and eye-he knew that it was not he only who was greeting. With a decidedly friendly nod to Aglithrilled. "Good-afternoon, Miss Conisbrough," and "Good-afternoon, Mr. Aglionby," sounded delightfully original, and pregnant with meaning. Not another word was uttered by either. He dropped her hand, and turned away, and could have laughed aloud in the bitterness of his heart. "I'll open the door for you, Mr. Aglionby," came Rhoda's ringing voice; and, defying ceremony, she skipped before him into the hall. "We've only one retainer," she pursued, "and she is generally doing those things which she ought not to be doing, when she is wanted. Is that Bluebell you have in the brougham? Yes! Hey, old girl! Bluebell, Bluebell !" She patted the mare's neck, who tossed her head, and in her own way laughed with joy at the onby, she ran into the house again, and the carriage drove away. "Well?" cried Miss Rhoda, rushing into the parlor, panting. Judith was not there. Doubtless she had gone to prepare that cup of tea for which Mrs. Conisbrough pined. "Well ?" retorted Delphine. "I like him," chanted Rhoda, whirling round the room. "He's grave and dark, and fearfully majestic, like a Spaniard, but he smiles like an Englishman, and looks at you like a person with a clear conscience. a clear conscience. That's a good combination, I say; but, all the same, I wish Uncle Aglionby had not been so fascinated with him as to leave him all his money." To which aspiration no one made any reply. (To be continued.) THE FIRST AMERICAN BARONET. In the year 1587, when Raleigh's ill-fated colony of Roanoke was struggling for existence on the little, palmetto-crowned, ocean-washed island off Albemarle Sound, on the desolate Carolina coast, an event, alike interesting and important, took place one August day on the village green in front of the governor's house of logs. Manteo, a friendly Hatteras sagamore, was on that day created a feudal baron of England, under the title of Lord of Roanoke. We can imagine all of the concomitants of the strange scene. The little hamlet of palmetto logs, built among the magnolia and palm trees; Governor White, in his doublet and trunk hose, investing the solemn chief with his insignia of rank; the groups of Indian braves looking wonderingly on, their bows upon their shoulders, and their eagle feathers nodding in the breeze. In the doors of the cabins the women and the children of the "white strangers," dressed in fardingales and ruffs, stood peering curiously out, while over all shone the brilliant southern sun. To this scene, which happened nearly three hundred years ago, we go back for a beginning, for this was the first and last peerage ever created by England on this soil. last American who received a title of nobility from the British crown. William Phipps, of Massachusetts, was created a knight by William III., in 1692. Knight is a title four degrees lower than that of earl, which was bestowed on Manteo. Between them stand the titles of viscount, baron, and baronet. The title of viscount has never been borne in America, although one of the Virginian Carys was next male heir to the Viscount Hansdon. Thomas Fairfax was Baron of Cameron; but he inherited the title from his father before he ever came to America. Of American baronets there have been two, William Pepperell, of Maine, and William Johnson, of New York, both of whom were created such by George II., the first in 1745, and the latter in 1755. Sir William Pepperell, the first American baronet, was born at Kittery Point, Maine, June 27, 1696. Kittery was then one of the great commercial centres of the colonies. There is no better harbor on all the Atlantic coast than that afforded by the widening of the Piscataqua below Portsmouth and Kittery, and in the colonial period this was the great channel of trade above every other. Boston, Newport, and New York were But the hospitable Hatteras warrior was not the completely distanced by the enterprise of these Piscataqua ports. A thousand ships sailed every year from the great harbor; ships that visited the Mediterranean, the West Indies, Arabia; ships that circumnavigated the world. The father of William Pepperell was the richest merchant of Kittery. He had risen from poverty to be the owner of a hundred ships, and the founder of the most extensive commercial business which ever existed in the colonies. So the cradle of our young baronet was rose-lined as well as though he had been born in an old castle on the Avon or among the hills of Cumberland. But he knew what it was to labor, both with his head and his hands. During his boyhood the Indian war of Queen Anne raged in the colonies, and when sixteen years of age he took a musket and took his turn with the rest in mounting guard. In fact, he remained a soldier all his life, and rose to the highest rank in the military service ever reached by an American colonist. But notwithstanding so much of his life was passed in camps, William Pepperell knew quite as well how to trade and speculate successfully. He inherited a certain mercantile genius from his father, and this was developed by years of service in the countingroom. In course of time he was taken into the business by his father, who gradually withdrew, leaving him to conduct it alone, which he showed himself amply able to do. In 1723 the young merchant married Mary, daughter of Grove Hurst, one of the leading business men of Boston. The wedding was a magnificent affair. The bride was young, beautiful, and of patrician descent. Two children, a son and a daughter, were born to the wedded couple. The great mansion which the elder Pepperell had built, in 1680, was enlarged to make room for the growing family. It was the grandest private residence in all New England. The two families lived together till the death of Colonel William, in 1734, at the good old age of eighty. Young William now became the sole director of a business that made him the most influential man in New England, outside of the crown officers. The business did not suffer any by the change. Indeed, it increased amazingly under his shrewd and energetic management. The banks of the Piscataqua resounded with the cheerful noise of his ship carpenters, and its tide was covered with the fleets of the great Kittery merchant. Maine was at that time magnificently wooded, and the Piscataqua River rendered accessible to him an almost inexhaustible supply of ship-timber. At his ship-yards schooner after schooner was built and sent to the West Indies, laden with codfish, furs, boards, cattle, and lamp oil, to exchange for sugar, coffee, and molasses. He had an extensive trade with the Carolinas, obtaining thence turpentine, rosin, and other products, which he exported to Europe. Thirty of his ships visited the Mediterranean ports at the end of every summer, selling their cargoes for piles of doubloons and ducats, which the far-sighted merchant laid out in land. There were summers when he had a hundred fishing vessels off the great banks of Newfoundland, some let out on shares to their crews, others manned and provided by Pepperell himself. The trade that he carried on in the interior with the Indians was not small. On the land which gradually came under his control a thousand men were employed in cutting timber. He built mills of his own, for he owned the whole magnificent valley of the Saco, with its endless water-power, and this timber was sawed into boards, masts, and ribs, which he sent even as far as England. Not only successful in his large foreign trade, Pepperell went to work and established the first importing house upon New England soil. Vast quantities of West India rum were sold at his warehouses. also dealt to some extent in slaves, thus laying the | foundation in New England of that system which has proved such a bane to the South. In one of his letters a large number of which have been preserved--he refers to the traffic in such a way as to show the purely mercantile spirit with which he regarded it : He "SIR: I received yours by Captain Morris, with bills of lading for ten negroes and twenty hogsheads of rum. One negro woman, marked Y on the left breast, died in about three weeks after her arrival, in spite of medical aid, which I procured. Two of the others died at sea. I am sorry for your loss. It may have resulted from insufficient clothing so early in the spring." William Pepperell was not a hard-hearted man. His cool reference to the commercial disaster, without alluding to the sufferings which the poor creatures may have undergone, was characteristic of the age. Slaves were only chattels in the eyes of our utilitarian forefathers. Meanwhile the rich merchant was winning other honors. A man of wealth and high social con self gave it his good offices, conferring the motto, nections in those days usually did not have to In 1744 England declared war against France. It was the third or fourth time within the century that the two rival kingdoms had been arrayed in arms against each other, and each time, as a matter of course, New England made war with Canada. It was so at this time; and if one could have been in Boston in the spring of 1745 he would have seen much to wonder at. The then provincial The then provincial town had for three months been the scene of a protracted and most exciting session of the colonial legislature, in grave deliberation upon the important scheme for the conquest of Louisburg, on the island of Cape Breton, the strongest fortress on the coast of America. It is unnecessary to speak at length of the unanimous decision of the legislation to proceed in its reduction, or of the scene presented at that early provincial muster, when the drums, beaten in town and village, summoned the colonists to the war, and the recruits, rallied from the hills and valleys of New England, came marching into Boston. Of how the Puritan clergy, by strong appeals from the pulpit, roused the religious zeal of their hearers against the French, by investing the enterprise with the character of a crusade, while the great Whitefield him His youthful experience when he mounted guard, with musket in hand, and his distinguished militia service, were now to prove useful to Pep usual energy. Men rallied to his standard in sur- The protracted siege, and interesting details of plined farmers, opened the eyes of astonished Europe. Nor was it to the colonists themselves a lesser revelation. Then, for the first time, dawned upon them a consciousness of their own strength, and then were aroused those aspirations which were destined to culminate thirty years later in the great revolution which was to sever their allegiance to the British crown. Great were the rejoicings which welcomed the news of the fall of Louisburg, both in the colonies and the mother country. Every large town in the provinces was illuminated, and bon-fires were kindled in London in honor of the victory. The great participators in the event were specially rewarded. Commodore Warren, who commanded the fleet, was made rear-admiral of the blue, and a baronet. His great compeer, the rich merchant of Kittery, also received a baronetcy, the title of which dated from October, 1745. Pepperell was in Boston when he received the letter that conferred upon him the lordly title, which no other man in America held. He immediately started home by way of land. But the news of his new dignity reached there before him. He was met at a distance of many miles by a troop of horse, and at Salem he was entertained at a splendid banquet, which was attended by all the noted persons in the colony. When he reached Kittery, he found the whole harbor illuminated. A series of entertainments followed until Christmas, at which the whole country-side attended. Sir William Pepperell, baronet of England, hunting colonial nobleman, and viceroy of almost boundless domain, now relinquished his trade and ship-building to his son and son-in-law, and devoted himself to the cares and pastimes of his new rank. The style he lived in may be truly called baronial. His grand old mansion crowning the hill and looking out to sea, surrounded by its broad park where droves of deer sported, with its large halls, heavy carving, grand staircases, where half a dozen ladies could walk abreast, was a fit residence for such a personage. Splendid mirrors and costly paintings adorned its walls. Heavy silver plate and rare old china glittered on the baron's table. Wine one hundred years old, from the delicate, spicy brands of the Rhineland to the fiery Tuscan, was in his cellars. He kept a coach with six white horses. A retinue of slaves and hired menials looked to him as their lord, and he had a barge upon the river in which he was rowed by a crew of Africans in gaudy livery. No household in America lived in such state and magnificence. The only man in all the colonies worth two hundred thousand pounds sterling, reigning grandly over grand estates, for, like an English peer, he might have traveled all day long upon his own land, sovereign lord, in fact, of more than two hundred thousand acres, timber, plain and valley, in New Hampshire and Maine. Sir William Pepperell could do this and yet not live beyond his means. He The portrait of the great man is before me as I write, which probably is a correct likeness of him. He has a broad, full brow, overhanging, large, deep-blue eyes. His nose is long and handsome; the lips delicately cut as those of a woman. was evidently a good liver, for his handsome face has a florid look, and his chin is double. He wears the large wig common at that time. Put upon that head the three-cornered Kevenhuller hat, laced with gold and silver galloon; array that tall, martial form in a square-cut scarlet coat trimmed with gold lace, a long-flapped waistcoat, blue silk stockings drawn up over the knees, white velvet breeches, large hanging cuffs and lace ruffles, and square-toed, short-quartered shoes, with high red heels and small diamond buckles, and you behold Pepperell, something as he appeared when conducting the siege of Louisburg or entertaining his guests at Kittery. In 1749 Sir William visited England, where he was received with distinguished honor. Dukes and princes of the blood welcomed and fêted him. The city of London presented him with a silver table and a service of plate, and the king made him, at Pitt's suggestion, a lieutenant-general of the royal army. Soon after his return, a domestic bereavement saddened the great man's life; this was the death of his only son, Andrew, a promising young man of twenty-six. His only daughter, Elizabeth, had married Colonel Nathaniel Sparhawk, in 1742, and he how declared their oldest son, William, his heir, on the condition that he should assume the Pepperell name, an arrangement that was speedily consummated. The baronet lived eight years after this event, continuing in active life until the last. He was prominent in the Seven Years' war, although he held no separate command. From 1756 to 1758 he was acting governor of Massachusetts. He died in 1759. His obsequies were attended by a vast concourse. The drooping flags at half-mast on both sides of the Piscataqua, the solemn knell from the neighboring churches, the responsive minute guns from all the batteries, and the mournful runbling of the muffled drums, announced that a great man had fallen and was descending to the tomb. He was truly the most brilliant and distinguished personage of that generation in America, and although the famous men who came came after him-Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lee, Adams, and many others-figured in great events, still the name and memory of Sir William Pepperell are well-nigh as famous as those of the Dii Majores of our history. The baronet's tomb at Kittery is often visited by the tourist. It is a marble structure, occupying a pleasant spot on a commanding eminence. On it is engraved, with the knight's age and the date of birth and death, the Pepperell escutcheon arms, argent a chevron gules between three pineapples. The crest is a knight's helmet, plumed, and with the visor down. The pine-apples are probably indicative of his West India trade, by which he secured a large part of his wealth. Across the way stands the goodly residence that he built, solitary, but splendid still. Every part of the old mansion shows that firmness and solidity which is so visible in every particular of the business and character of the Pepperells. A strange air of desolation hovers over the great house. One can scarcely fancy that it has been the scene of festivity that was almost princely. The second baronet espoused the royal cause in the revolutionary contest, and so lost his American estates, which were confiscated. His daughter, and coheiress, married William Congreve, the great commoner, a descendant of the poet. SETH MARVIN'S MIRROR. BY LUCY M. BLINN. "HETTY, Hetty! Mehitabel Marvin ! What are you about up there, that you can't answer me? Why don't you hurry down and go to the spring for some water? Here it is nigh on to suppertime and five great hungry men to feed; my fire almost out-neither wood nor water in the house -the baby screaming at the top of his voice, while my head aches fit to split; and no wonder It is enough to drive a woman crazy! Here, Tommy, run to the lot, like a good boy, and get some chips to make mother a fire, and be quick about it!" Hetty, a pretty, rosy-cheeked girl of fourteen, came hurrying down the stairs at this imperative summons, caught up the pail and threw on her sun bonnet, saying, as she passed through the room, "I'm real sorry, mother; I forgot all about the water. I was reading a story in the magazine that Mary Greene lent me, it was just splendid! I do wish father would let us take something to read, books or papers or something! We don't have anything like other folks ;" and she went out, giving the door a little spiteful "bang" after her. Tommy, a brown-faced, bare-footed urchin of seven summers, took the basket, mounted a stick, and trotted contentedly off to the "lot," while the weary Mrs. Marvin drew the cradle to the side of the table and rocked it with one foot, while she pared the potatoes and made the biscuit for the supper for the men, who would soon be in from the wheat-field, tired and hungry; striving, meanwhile, to soothe the cries of the wailing baby by singing, in a dejected, disconsolate minor key: "Oh, there will be mourning, Mourning, mourning, mourning, When the judgment day shall come!" Hetty very soon returned from the spring, flushed and breathless with the exertion of carrying the heavy pail so far; Tommy, upon his wooden charger, brought the basket of chips to the door, and supper was steaming at the fire by the time the men had made themselves ready for the meal. “Why, why, mother!" said Mr. Marvin, with a frown, as he took one of the biscuits, "what's the matter with the cakes? There's something wrong; they're half dough!" "The wood gave out and I had to send to the |