Chapter 22

Gentle Octavia, Let your best love draw
to that point, which seeks But to preserve it.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

We shall not say it was an accident that brought Paul and Eve side by
side, and a little separated from the others; for a secret sympathy
had certainly exercised its influence over both, and probably
contributed as much as any thing else towards bringing about the
circumstance. Although the Wigwam stood in the centre of the village,
its grounds covered several acres, and were intersected with winding
walks, and ornamented with shrubbery, in the well-known English
style, improvements also of John Effingham; for, while the climate
and forests of America offer so many inducements to encourage
landscape gardening, it is the branch of art that, of all the other
ornamental arts, is perhaps the least known in this country. It is
true, time had not yet brought the labours of the projector to
perfection, in this instance; but enough had been done to afford very
extensive, varied, and pleasing walks. The grounds were broken, and
John Effingham had turned the irregularities to good account, by
planting and leading paths among them, to the great amusement of the
lookers-on, however, who, like true disciples of the Manhattanese
economy, had already begun to calculate the cost of what they termed
grading the lawns, it being with them as much a matter of course to
bring pleasure grounds down to a mathematical surface, as to bring a
rail-road route down to the proper level.

Through these paths, and among the irregularities, groves, and
shrubberies, just mentioned, the party began to stroll; one group
taking a direction eastward, another south, and a third westward, in
a way soon to break them up into five or six different divisions.
These several portions of the company ere long got to move in
opposite directions, by taking the various paths, and while they
frequently met, they did not often re-unite. As has been already
intimated, Eve and Paul were alone, for the first time in their
lives, under circumstances that admitted of an uninterrupted
confidential conversation. Instead of profiting immediately, however,
by this unusual occurrence, as many of our readers may anticipate,
the young man continued the discourse, in which the whole party had
been engaged when they entered the gate that communicated with the
street.

"I know not whether you felt the same embarrassment as myself, to-
day, Miss Effingham," he said, "when the orator was dilating on the
glories of the republic, and on the high honours that accompany the
American name. Certainly, though a pretty extensive traveller, I have
never yet been able to discover that it is any advantage abroad to be
one of the