music; for I had determined to become a composer, and I was looking
forward, after taking my degree, to completing my musical education
abroad; but my mother's health was precarious, and, when the time came,
she found herself unequal to making the journey, and the change of
habits and surroundings that it implied. We lived very quietly in
Liverpool for three or four years; then she died, and, after I had
settled our affairs, I found myself in possession of a small income and
alone in the world. Without loss of time I set out for the Continent.
I went to a German city, where the best musical training was to be had,
and made my arrangements to pass several years there. At the banker's,
when I went to provide for the regular receipt of my remittances, I met
a young American, by name Paton Jeffries. He was from New England, and,
I think, a native of the State of Connecticut; his father, he told me,
was a distinguished inventor, who had made and lost a considerable
fortune in devising a means of promoting sleep by electricity. Paton
was studying to be an architect, which, he said, was the coming
profession in his country; and it was evident, on a short acquaintance,
that he was a fellow of unusual talents--one of those men of whom you
say that, come what may, they are always sure to fall on their feet.
For my part, I have certainly never met with so active and versatile a
spirit. He was a year or so older than I, rather tall than short,
lightly but strongly built, with a keen, smiling, subtle face, a
finely-developed forehead, light wavy hair, and gray eyes, very
penetrating and bright. There was a pleasing kind of eagerness and
volubility in his manner of talking, and a slight imperfection, not
amounting to a lisp, in his utterance, which imparted a naive charm to
his speech. He used expressive and rapid gestures with his hands and
arms, and there was a magnetism, a fascination, about the whole man
that strongly impressed me. I was at that period much more susceptible
of impressions, and prone to yield to them, than I am now. Paton's
rattling vivacity, his knowledge of the world, his entertaining talk
and stories, his curiosity, enterprise, and audacity, took me by storm;
he was my opposite in temperament and character, and it seemed to me
that he had most of the advantages on his side. Nevertheless, he
professed, and I still believe he felt, a great liking for me, and we
speedily came to an agreement to seek a lodging together. On the second
day of our search, we found just what we wanted.
It was an old house, on the outskirts of the town, standing by itself,
with a small garden behind it. It had formerly been occupied by an
Austrian baron, and it was probably not less than two hundred years
old. The baron's family had died out, or been dispersed, and now the
venerable edifice was let, in the German fashion, in separate floors or
_etages_, communicating with a central staircase. Some alterations
rendered necessary by this modification had been made, but
substantially the house was unchanged. Our apartment comprised four or
five rooms on the left of the landing and at the top of the house,
which consisted of three stories. The chief room was the parlor, which
looked down through a square bow-window on the street. This room was of
irregular shape, one end being narrower than the other, and nearly
fitting the space at this end was a kind of projecting shelf or
mantelpiece (only, of course, there was no fireplace under it, open
fireplaces being unknown in Germany), upon which rested an old cracked
looking-glass, made in two compartments, the frame of which, black with
age and fly-spots, was fastened against the wall. The shelf was
supported by two pilasters; but the object of the whole structure was a
mystery; so far as appeared, it served no purpose but to support the
looking-glass, which might just as well have been suspended from a nail