Love in a Bottle

Realization

Bridie

The froward girl would not answer me; she stared stupidly at me and almost seeming to mock me, finally throwing her apron over her head and shreiking like an imbecile, ran pell-mell from the room. "Where is your mistress?" Not a difficult question, but apparently one for which she had no answer. I went from room to room, hardly noticing where I went, and there was no sign of Rosalie, or Bridie, or of any human or animal movement. Even our little King Charles spaniel was nowhere in evidence. Dust lay thick on some of the small tables, Rosalie's usual flowers were not in their crystal vases, rather dreary bent stems, and the vases themselves cloudeded and green-black from water long-ago evaporated. When I threw open the heavy drapes to admit the thin winter sun, a miasma of dust rose up into the room like old regrets. Somewhere below the stairs I heard a door slam, - Bridie's final defection, I supposed - and I was left alone in the house, where not even a clock ticked, and the silence settled round me like a shroud.

New York

With the Doctor's note clutched in my hand, I made my way to the alleyway in Five Points he'd directed me to, to procure the necessary insurances against the coming again of my weakness and dread illness. One should have feared the idle threats of the thugs who lined the streets, if only one had not seen massacred and mutilated corpses piled and burning dully under the desert sky, been riding with murderers, and endured countless narrow escapes from certain peril. Once that fateful packet was safely procured from its sinister dispenser, then, home, home to Rosalie, at last!

A Reckoning

Fair Winds

Fair winds carried us swiftly North. What joy to feel the breeze at one's back, to see the flying spray and study the curious leaps of fishes and those jovial sea-companions, the dolphin, sporting in the bow wave of the graceful ship! With the doctor's care, I am much restored and feel like myself again, in health and vigor. There are coolies aboard, bound for New York, no doubt serving an iron master in a distant Hong, but they are desirous of reading, a cleanly, polite and civil group. I have been teaching them their letters, - they are teaching me some of their complicated picto-grams! - and showing them how to read English. They are very eager and quick to learn, especially the young ones, but their accent is comical. The Oriental tongue cannot be brought to pronounce certain words, and their speech sounds like a curious sing-song no matter how assiduously I drill them in proper American pronunciation. The Doctor tells me that these good people, who have become quite dear to me, are likely to labor like slaves in some dark Hong in New York, Philadelphia or Boston, until the end of their days for some distant master in China, and will only be returned home in a box, at their death, by a Chinese Burial Society to the Heavenly Kingdom, which is China!

Rosalie's Letter

Rosalie's letter, incredibly, was waiting for me here in Havana, having crossed the continent, and back, thanks to Bierstadt, to find me here. She has been ill! I cannot make out from her letter what is the matter. She has never been a good correspondent, and the Dear knows she is but young, however this epistle passes all bounds for vagueness, and worrisome circumambulation. She is ill, but of what? She writes that she has gone to her father in Waterville, so I imagine she is well enough to travel, but it increases my anxiety for returning home. This letter was written when Bierstadt and I were approaching Fort Laramie. Oh God!

The Doctor

On board the Challenge there is a gentleman who reminds me powerfully of my father. Like him, he feels the plight of any enslaved person deeply, and would have a world in which there was never a human soul in bondage. Broken by his time in the Opium Trade, on fast-flying clippers such as this, he has to resort to medications to maintain his equilibrium. His face is one of intelligence and kindness, but no gladness ever passes o'er his countenance. Nevertheless I find him a most gratifying companion. His emaciation revealed the depth of his commitment to the drug I seek, and together we have made an arrangement for supply. When we reach Chile, he tells me, we will together embark on a program of moiety which will raise the level of our health and reduce the dependency, with the aid of a local shrub, whose leaves, when chewed, produce a sense of euphoria and lightness without the terrible torpor induced by the poppy. With his care and advice, I should be ready to face what lies ahead for me and Rosalie in New York.

The Great Republic

Bierstadt, that Prince of friends, has given me his ticket to sail on the ship Great Republic, one of the fastest sailors in any Ocean. She is bound for Boston via the Cape, and will stop but twice, in Chile, and in Havana. However I could have gotten home, penniless and ill, broken and unable to do the least work, I do not know, without Bierstadt, so strong, so faithful, so generous and unstinting! He will go back via the Panama, through the jungle, on various steamers catch-as-catch can, and muleback or train, having the specie to do so. I rather envy him his monkeys and senoritas, but I know some time at sea - they estimate not much above 100 days - will put me back in health. This time of year is springtime in the Antipodes, so our voyage should not be perilous, but swift. Perhaps we may see some icebergs, I am told. And the winds are prevailing in our fortunate direction.

San Francisco

The "Golden Gate" of California is a maker of broken men and dreams. The bustle in the streets here, muddy, mired, impossible when it rains, which it frequently does, rivals that of New York in October but there are few women, and fewer gentlemen. All the races of the world are represented here, from German princes to the lowest of Mexican indians. All is gold, gold, gold! The City burns in patches, and is re-built it seems in but a day. The sound of hammering and cries of workers is constant, even into the evening. Competing bands at various houses of entertainment compete adding to the general cacophony of cries, hammerings, and stamp and clink of horses and vehicles. If there is a Hell, then it must be this. I retreated to this secluded Hong, in Chinatown. For some years, many hundreds, even above a thousand, of Chinese have been admitted on work permits to do the labor of women in the town, for the few women here are not laundresses, and they have built this little China, with all its vices and filth and strangeness, in the very center of the City. I have availed myself of one of their houses of rest, and restored my shattered self somewhat in that strange, malodorous berth. I have no ticket on a ship any longer, having traded it for opium with the keeper of this House, and very little coin or specie of any kind. How I shall ever leave this town, I do not know.

Lake Tahoe

Just across the boundary, we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake Tahoe, a crystal sheet of water fresh-distilled from the snow-peaks, its granite bottom visible at the depth of up to a hundred feet, its banks a celestial garden, lying in a basin thirty-five miles long and ten wide, and nearly seven thousand feet above the Pacific level. Geography has no superior to this glorious sea, this chalice of divine cloud-wine held sublimely up against the very press whence it was wrung. Here, virtually at the end of our overland journey, since our feet pressed the green borders of the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one little league, had translated us out of the infernal world into heaven.