John townsend trowbridge (1827–1916) was born two years after the opening of the Erie Canal and died during the First World War. The friend of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Walt Whitman (at a time when Longfellow and Holmes refused to meet the author ofLeaves of Grass), he wrote gouts of poems, a string of plays, and at least forty novels, more than one a popular success. Having started with hack work in New York, with hack work he continued, growing so impoverished in the Grub Street of the day that at one point he took...

Guy Vernon, a wealthy plantation owner from Louisiana

Florinda, a penniless but beautiful young woman

Rob Lorne, a poet and journalist, Florinda’s suitor

Saturn, Vernon’s mulatto manservant

Captain Jones, captain of a Yankee steamer

Nancy, Florinda’s maid

Aunt, Florinda’s wealthy relative and guardian

George Lazell, Lorne’s college friend, now reading for the law

Doctor, employed to tend Vernon

With various servants, coachmen, members of society...

He was as fair a bachelor as ever

Resolved to take a wife at forty-five.

Indeed, how one so amiable and clever,

Good-looking, rich, et cetera, could contrive

Till the high noon of manhood not to wive

Was a vexed theme, and long remained a mystery

To those who did not know his early history.

And none knew that among his bride’s relations.

At Saratoga, where you meet all grades

Of well-dressed people spending short vacations,

Manoeuvring mothers, marriageable maids,

And fortune hunters on their annual raids,

He saw her waltz, and spite of every barrier

Of years or influence...

Know ye the land?—and so forth. Cuba seems

The later western Eden of our planet.

What wafted incense from the gate of dreams,

What heavenly zephyrs hover o’er and fan it!

With groves of orange, mango, and pomegranate,

And flowering forests through whose wealth of blooms,

Like living fires, dart birds of gorgeous plumes.

There by still bays the tall flamingo stands,

The sunrise flame of whose reflected form

Crimsons the glassy wave and glistening sands.

There, large and luminous, throughout the warm,

Soft summer eves myriads of fireflies swarm

Like the bright spirits of departed flowers

Nightly revisiting...

Foreseeing all her friends’ immense astonishment,

Going to meet it with an equal dread,

Florinda gave her maid a strict admonishment

Just what to say, and what to leave unsaid,

To questions soon to shower upon her head,

For, first suspicions having proved unjust,

The girl was granted all the greater trust.

Deep was the dear old Aunt’s amazement, meeting

At the hall door the unexpected bride.

Then, having passed the first tumultuous greeting,

“Your husband, Florie! Where is he?” she cried,

Still more bewildered—while the niece replied,

“Some sudden and important information

Obliged him to return by his...

Meanwhile Lazell accepted the commission,

Though it was long before he could report.

He moved with all the caution and precision

Of any practiced diplomat at court

Or strategist advancing on a fort;

And ’twas no fault of his if something less

Was compassed than unqualified success.

All Lorne could tell him of the strange event,

Or he himself could learn at Guy’s plantation,

Or at the bank from which the drafts were sent,

Or elsewhere, bearing on the situation,

Was added carefully to his equation

When, by no common difficulties daunted, he

Essayed to cipher out the unknown quantity....

I do not say that Guy was to be sorted

With wretches guilty of some heinous treason,

Only that he was quite absurdly courted—

To his annoyance, partly for which reason

He hurried to the mountains for a season,

With Mrs. Vernon, to piece on a truer

And happier ending to their bridal tour.

Happier no doubt it was, and yet not wholly

Happy for either. Vernon was oppressed

By a persistent, gentle melancholy.

It seemed as if the world within his breast

Were, like the peaceful world without, possessed

By the sad spirit of the early fall,

Which in...

Lorne undertook the business with a zeal

And promptness hardly to have been expected.

The lodging house had little to reveal;

And yet one clue that Saturn had neglected

Showed where his baggage went, and where he checked it

For a swift western train that afternoon—

Which Lorne, this point decided, followed soon.

And now commenced the rather curious chase

Of the escaping husband by the lover.

’Mid crossing trains Lorne often lost the trace

Whereby he hoped to hunt the pair to cover,

Which happy chances helped him to recover,

A friendly clerk or baggageman somewhere

Remembering Saturn’s face...