FROWENFELD'S CLERK.

BY GEORGE W. CABLE.

GEORGE W. CABLE was born at New Orleans in 1840, and has spent almost his whole life in that city. He fought, during the war, on the Confederate side, but since the reconstruction of the South, he has been a thorough and fervent friend of Northern-or, rather, anti-slavery-civilization. He was not regularly educated, but his instinctive feeling for style and color in literature received the usual development through work for the newspapers, though he was in mercantile life when he began to write the "Old Creole Days" sketches. These were followed by "The Grandissimes," a novel; "Madame Delphine," a brief romance; a sketch of the "History of New Orleans," and "Dr. Sevier," a novel. In the winter of 1883-84 he began a series of public readings from his books, which had a success almost as immediate and widespread as the books themselves.

It was some two or three days after the interview just related that the apothecary of the rue Royale found it necessary to ask a friend to sit in the shop a few minutes while he should go on a short errand.

On his return to the shop his friend remarked that if he received many such visitors as the one who had called during his absence, he might be permitted to be vain. It was Honoré Grandissime, and he had left no message.

"Frowenfeld," said his friend, "it would pay you to employ a regular assistant."

Joseph was in an abstracted mood.

"I have some thought of doing so."

Unlucky slip! As he pushed open his door next morning, what was his dismay to find himself confronted by some forty men. Five of them leaped up from the door-sill, and some thirty-five from the edge of the trottoir, brushed that part of their wearing-apparel which always fits with great neatness on a Creole, and trooped into the shop. The apothecary fell behind his defenses that is to say, his prescription desk-and explained to them in a short and spirited address that he did not wish to employ any of them on any terms. Nine-tenths of them understood not a word of English; but his gesture was unmistakable. They bowed gratefully, and said good-day.

Now Frowenfeld did these young men an injustice; and though they were far from letting him know it, some of them felt it, aud interchanged expressions of feeling reproachful to him as they stopped on the next corner to watch a man painting a sign. He had treated them as if they all wanted situations. Was this so? Far from it. Only twenty men were applicants; the other twenty were friends who had come to see them get the place. And

again, though, as the apothecary had said, none of them knew anything about the drug business-no, nor about any other business under the heavens-they were willing that he should teach them-except one. A young man of patrician softness and costly apparel tarried a moment after the general exodus, and quickly concluded that on Frowenfeld's account it was probably as well that he could not qualify, since he was expecting

from France an important Government appointment as soon as these troubles should be settled and Louisiana restored to her former happy condition. But he had a friend-a cousin-whom he would recommend, just the man for the position; a splendid fellow; popular, accomplished-what? the best trainer of dogs that M. Frowenfeld might ever hope to look upon; a "so good fisherman as I never saw!"-the marvel of the ballroom-could handle a partner of twice his weight; the speaker had seen him take a lady so tall that his head hardly came up to her bosom, whirl her in the waltz from right to left-this way! and then, as quick as lightning, turn and whirl her this way, from left to right" so grezful ligue a peajohn! He could read and write, and knew more comig song!"-the speaker would hasten to secure him before he should take some other situation.

The wonderful waltzer never appeared upon the scene; yet Joseph made shift to get along, and by and by found a man who partially met his requirements. The way of it was this: With his forefinger in a book which he had been reading, he was one day pacing his shop floor in deep thought, when there came in— or, more strictly speaking, there shot in-a young, auburn-curled, blue-eyed man, whose adolescent buoyancy, as much as his delicate, silver-buckled feet and clothes of perfect fit, pronounced him all-pure-Creole. His name, when it was presently heard, accounted for the blond type by revealing a Franco-Celtic origin. "'Sieur Frowenfel'," he said, advancing like a boy coming in after recess, "I'ave somet'ing beauteeful to place into yo' window." He wheeled half around as he spoke, and seized from a naked black boy, who at that instant entered, a rectangular object enveloped in paper.

Frowenfeld's window was fast growing to be a place of art exposition. A pair of statuettes, a golden tobacco-box, a costly jewel-casket, or a pair of richly gemmed horse-pistols-the property of some ancient gentleman or dame of emaciated fortune, and which must be sold to keep up the bravery of good clothes and pomade that hid slow starvation, went into the shop-window of the ever-obliging apothecary, to be disposed of by tombola. And it is worthy of note in passing, concerning the moral education of one who proposed to make no conscious compromise with any sort of evil, that in this driveling species of gambling he saw nothing hurtful or improper. But "in Frowenfeld's window"

appeared also articles for simple sale or mere transient exhibition; as, for instance, the wonderful tapestries of a blind widow of ninety; tremulous little bunches of flowers, proudly stated to have been made entirely of the bones of the ordinary catfish; others, large and spreading, the sight of which would make any botanist fall down "and die as mad as the wild waves be," whose ticketed merit was that they were composed exclusively of materials produced upon Creole soil; a picture of the Ursulines' convent and chapel, done in forty-five minutes by a child of ten years, the daughter of the widow Felicie Grandissime; and the siege of Troy, in ordinary ink, done entirely with the pen, the labor of twenty years, by "a citizen of New Orleans." It was natural that these things should come to "Frowenfeld's corner," for there, oftener than elsewhere, the critics were gathered together. Ah! wonderful men, those critics; and, fortunately, we have a few still left.

The young man with auburn curls rested the edge of his burden upon the counter, tore away its wrappings and disclosed a painting.

He said nothing-with his mouth; but stood at arm's length balancing the painting, and casting now upon it and now upon Joseph Frowenfeld a look more replete with triumph than Cæsar's three-worded despatch.

The apothecary fixed upon it long and silently the gaze of a somnambulist. At length he spoke:

"What is it?"

"Louisiana rif-using to hanter de h-Union!" replied the Creole, with an ecstasy that threatened to burst forth in hip-hurrahs. Joseph said nothing, but silently wondered at Louisiana's anatomy.

"Gran' subjec'!" said the Creole.

Allegorical," replied the hard-pressed apothecary.

"Allegoricon? No, sir! Allegoricon never saw that pigshɔe. If you insist to know who make dat pigshoe-de hartis' stan' bif-ore you!"

"It is your work?"

"'Tis de work of me, Raoul Innerarity, cousin to de distingwish Honoré Grandissime. I swear to you, sir, on stack of Bible as 'igh as yo' head!"

He smote his breast.

"Do you wish to put it in the window?"

"Yes, seh."

"For sale?"

M. Raoul Innerarity hesitated a moment before replying: "'Sieur Frowenfel', I think it is a foolishness to be too proud, eh? I want you to say, 'My frien', 'Sieur Innerarity, never care to sell anything; 'tis for egshibbyshun'; mais-when somebody look at it, so," the artist cast upon his work a look of languishing covetousness, "you say, foudre tonnerre! what de dev'!-I take dat ris-pon-sibble-ty-you can have her for two hun'red fifty dollah!' Better not be too proud, eh, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"

"No, sir," said Joseph, proceeding to place it in the window, his new friend following him about, spaniel-wise; "but you had better let me say plainly that it is for sale.”

"Oh I don't care-mais-my rillation' will never forgive me! Mais-go-ahead-I-don't-care! 'Tis for sale."

"'Sieur Frowenfel'," he resumed, as they came away from the window," one week ago"-he held up one finger-" what I was doing? Makin' bill of ladin', my faith!-for my cousin Honoré! an' now, I ham a hartis'! So soon I foun' dat, I say, 'Cousin Honoré'"-the eloquent speaker lifted his foot and administered to the empty air a soft, polite kick-"I never goin' to do anoder lick o' work so long I live; adieu!

He lifted a kiss from his lips and wafted it in the direction of. his cousin's office.

"Mr. Innerarity," exclaimed the apothecary, "I fear you are making a great mistake."

"You tink I hass too much?"

"Well, sir, to be candid, I do ; but that is not your greatest mistake."

"What she's worse?"

The apothecary simultaneously smiled and blushed.

"I would rather not say; it is a passably good example of Creole art; there is but one way by which it can ever be worth what you ask for it."

"What dat is ?"

The smile faded and the blush deepened as Frowenfeld replied:

"If it could become the means of reminding this community that crude ability counts next to nothing in art, and that nothing