The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

ILLUSTRATIONS

AN HISTORICAL ROCKY-MOUNTAIN OUTPOST.

The day might have graced the month of June, so balmy was the air, so warmly shone the sun from a cloudless sky. But the snow-covered mountain-range whose base we were skirting, the leafless cottonwoods fringing the Fontaine qui Bouille and the sombre plains that stretched away to the eastern horizon told a different story. It was on one of those days elsewhere so rare, but so common in Colorado, when a summer sky smiles upon a wintry landscape, that we entered a town in whose history are to be found greater contrasts than even those afforded by earth and sky. Today Pueblo is a thriving and aggressive city, peopled with its quota of that great pioneer army which is carrying civilization over the length and breadth of our land. Three hundred and forty years ago, as legend hath it, Coronado here stopped his northward march, and on the spot where Pueblo now stands established the farthermost outpost of New Spain.

The average traveller who journeys westward from the Missouri River imagines that he is coming to a new country. "The New West" is a favorite term with the agents of land—companies and the writers of alluring railway-guides. These enterprising advocates sometimes indulge in flights of rhetoric that scorn the trammels of grammar and dictionary. Witness the following impassioned utterances concerning the lands of a certain Western railroad: "They comprise a section of country whose possibilities are simply infinitesimal, and whose developments will be revealed in glorious realization through the horoscope of the near future." This verbal architect builded wiser than he knew, for what more fitting word could the imagination suggest wherewith to crown the possibilities of alkali wastes and barren, sun-scorched plains?

A considerable part of the New West of to-day was explored by the Spaniards more than three centuries ago. Before the English had landed at Plymouth Rock or made a settlement at Jamestown they had penetrated to the Rocky Mountains and given to peak and river their characteristic names. Southern Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona have been the theatres wherein were enacted deeds of daring and bravery perhaps unsurpassed by any people and any age; and that, too, centuries before they became a part of our American Union. The whole country is strewn over with the ruins of a civilization in comparison with which our own of to-day seems feeble. And he who journeys across the Plains till he reaches the Sangre del Cristo Mountains or the blue Sierra Mojadas enters a land made famous by the exploits of Coronado, De Vaca and perhaps of the great Montezuma himself.

In the year 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was sent by the Spanish viceroy of Mexico to explore the regions to the north. Those mountain-peaks, dim and shadowy in the distance and seeming to recede as they were approached, had ever been an alluring sight to the gold-seeking Spaniards. But the coveted treasure did not reveal itself to their cursory search; and though they doubtless pushed as far north as the Arkansas River, they returned to the capital from what they considered an unsuccessful expedition. The way was opened, however, and in 1595 the Spaniards came to what is now the Territory of New Mexico and founded the city of Santa Fé. They had found, for the most part, a settled country, the inhabitants living in densely-populated villages, or pueblos, and evincing a rather high degree of civilization. Their dwellings of mud bricks, or adobes, were all built upon a single plan, and consisted of a square or rectangular fort-like structure enclosing an open space. Herds of sheep and goats grazed upon the hillsides, while the bottom-lands were planted with corn and barley. Thus lived and flourished the Pueblo Indians, a race the origin of which lies in obscurity, but connected with which are many legends of absorbing interest. All their traditions point to Montezuma as the founder and leader of their race, and likewise to their descent from the Aztecs. But their glory departed with the coming of Cortez, and their Spanish conquerors treated them as an inferior race. Revolting against their oppressors in 1680, they were reconquered thirteen years later, though subsequently allowed greater liberty. By the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 they became citizens of the United States. From one extreme of government to another has drifted this remnant of a stately race, till now at last it finds itself safely sheltered in the arms of our great republic.

Such is the romantic history of a portion of our so-called "New West;" but it was with a view of ascertaining some facts concerning occurrences of more recent date, as well as of seeing some of the actors therein, that we paid a visit to Pueblo. We found it a rather odd mixture of the old and the new, the adobe and the "dug-out" looking across the street upon the imposing structure of brick or the often gaudily-painted frame cottage. It looked as though it might have been indulging in a Rip Van Winkle sleep, except that the duration might have been a century or two. High mesas with gracefully rounded and convoluted sides almost entirely surround it, and rising above their floor-like tops, and in fine contrast with their sombre brown tints, appear the blue outlines of the distant mountains. Pike's Peak, fifty miles to the north, and the Spanish Peaks, the Wawatoyas, ninety to the south, are sublime objects of which the eye never grows weary; while the Sierra Mojadas bank up the western horizon with a frowning mountain-wall. A notch in the distant range, forty miles to the north-west, indicates the place where the Arkansas River breaks through the barriers that would impede its seaward course, forming perhaps the grandest cañon to be found in all this mighty mountain-wilderness. Truly a striking picture was that on which Coronado and his mail-clad warriors gazed.

GENERAL VIEW OF PUEBLO, COLORADO, LOOKING NORTH-WEST—PIKE'S PEAK IN THE DISTANCE.

A motley throng compose the inhabitants of Pueblo. The dark-hued Mexican, his round face shaded by the inevitable sombrero, figures conspicuously. But if you value his favor and your future peace of mind have a care how you allude to his nationality. He is a Spaniard, you should know—a pure Castilian whose ancestor was some old hidalgo with as long an array of names and titles as has the Czar of All the Russias himself. Though he now lives in a forsaken-looking adobe hut with dirt floor and roof of sticks and turf that serves only to defile the raindrops that trickle through its many gaps—though his sallow wife and ill-favored children huddle round him or cook the scanty meal upon the mud oven in a corner of the room—he is yet a Spaniard, and glories in it. The tall, raw-boned man, straight as a young cottonwood, whose long black hair floats out from beneath his hat as he rides into town from his ranch down the river, may be a half-breed who has figured in a score of Indian fights, and enjoys the proud distinction of having killed his man. There is the hungry-looking prospector, waiting with ill-disguised impatience till he can "cross the Range" and follow again, as he has done year after year, the exciting chase after the ever-receding mirage—the visions of fabulous wealth always going to be, but never quite, attained. The time-honored symbol of Hope must, we think, give place to a more forcible representation furnished by the peculiar genius of our times; for is not our modern Rocky-Mountain prospector the complete embodiment of that sublime grace? His is a hope that even reverses the proverb, for no amount of deferring is able to make him heartsick, but rather seems to spur him on to more earnest endeavor. Has he toiled the summer long, endured every privation, encountered inconceivable perils, only to find himself at its close poorer than when he began? Reluctantly he leaves the mountain-side where the drifting snows have begun to gather, but seemingly as light-hearted as when he came, for his unshaken hope bridges the winter and feeds upon the limitless possibilities of the future. Full of wonderful stories are these same hope-sustained prospectors—tales that are bright with the glitter of silver and gold. Not a single one of them who has not discovered "leads" of wonderful richness or "placers" where the sands were yellow with gold; but by some mischance the prize always slipped out of his grasp, and left him poor in all but hope. And in truth so fascinating becomes the occupation that men who in other respects seem cool and phlegmatic will desert an almost assured success to join the horde rushing toward some unexplored district, impelled by the ever-flying rumors of untold wealth just brought to light. The golden goal this season is the great Gunnison Country; and soon trains of burros, packed with pick and shovel, tent and provisions, will be climbing the Range.

Pueblo has likewise its business-men, its men of to-day, who manage its banks, who buy and sell and get gain as they might do in any well-ordered city, though, truth to tell, there are very few of them who do not sooner or later catch the prevailing infection—a part of whose assets is not represented by some "prospect" away up in the mountains or frisking about the Plains in herds of cattle and sheep. But perhaps the most curiously-original character in all the town is Judge Allen A. Bradford, of whose wonderful memory the following good story is told: Years ago he, with a party of officers, was at the house of Colonel Boone, down the river. While engaged in playing "pitch-trump," of which the judge was very fond—and in fact the only game of cards with which he was acquainted—a messenger rushed in announcing that a lady had fallen from her horse and was doubtless much injured. The players left their cards and ran to render assistance, and the game thus broken up was not resumed. Some two years later the same parties found themselves together again, and "pitch-trump" was proposed. To the astonishment of all, the judge informed them how the score stood when they had so hurriedly left the game, and with the utmost gravity insisted that it be continued from that point!

On a bright sunny morning we sought out the judge's office, only to learn that he had not yet for the day exchanged the pleasures of rural life across the Fontaine for less romantic devotions at the shrine of the stern goddess. Later we were informed, upon what seemed credible authority, that upon the morning in question he was intending to sow oats. Though cold March still claimed the calendar, and hence such action on the part of the judge might seem like forcing the season, yet reflections upon his advanced years caused us to suppress the rising thought that perhaps some allusions to wild oats might have been intended. Hence we looked forward to a rare treat—judicial dignity unbending itself in pastoral pursuits, as in the case of some Roman magistrate. "A little better'n a mile" was the answer to our interrogatory as to how far the judge's ranch might be from town; but having upon many former occasions taken the dimensions of a Colorado mile, we declined the suggestion to walk and sought some mode of conveyance. There chanced to be one right at hand, standing patiently by the wayside and presided over by an ancient colored gentleman. The coach had been a fine one in its day, but that was long since past, and now its dashboard, bent out at an angle of forty-five degrees, the faded trimmings and the rusty, stately occupant of the box formed a complete and harmonious picture of past grandeur seldom seen in the Far West. Two dubious-looking bronchos, a bay and a white, completed this unique equipage, in which we climbed the mesa and then descended into the valley of the Fontaine. The sable driver was disposed to be communicative, and ventured various opinions upon current topics. He had been through the war, and came West fourteen years ago.

"Why, sah," he returned, "if the history ob my life was wrote up it would be wuth ten thousand dollars."

While regarding the valuation as somewhat high, we yet regretted our inability to profit by this unexpected though promising business-opportunity, and soon our attention was diverted by a glimpse of the judge's adobe, and that person himself standing by his carriage and awaiting our by no means rapid approach. He was about to go to town, and the oats were being sown by an individual of the same nationality as our driver, to whom the latter addressed such encouraging remarks as "Git right 'long dere now and sow dat oats. Don't stand roostin' on de fence all day, like as you had the consumshing. You look powerful weak. Guess mebbe I'd better come over dere and show you how."

Judge Bradford's career has been a chequered one, and it has fallen to his lot to dispense justice in places and under circumstances as various as could well be imagined. Born in Maine in 1815, he has lived successively in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado, and held almost every position open to the profession of the law. From the supreme bench of Colorado he was twice called to represent the Territory as delegate to Congress. In 1852, when he was judge of the Sixth Judicial District of Iowa, his eccentricities of character seem to have reached their full development. He exhibited that supreme disregard for dress and the various social amenities which not infrequently betray the superior mind. Never were his clothes known to fit, being invariably too large or too small, too short or too long. As to his hair, the external evidences were of a character to disprove the rumor that he had a brush and comb, while the stubby beard frequently remained undisturbed upon the judicial chin for several weeks at a time. The atrocious story is even told that once upon a time, when half shaven, he chanced to pick up a newspaper, became absorbed in its contents, forgot to complete his task, and went to court in this most absurdly unsymmetrical condition. But, despite these personal eccentricities, a more honest or capable judge has rarely been called upon to vindicate the majesty of the law. Upon the bench none could detect a flaw in his assumption of that dignity so intimately associated in all minds with the judiciary, but, the ermine once laid aside for the day, he was as jolly and mirthful as any of his frontier companions. Judge Bradford was no advocate, but by the action of a phenomenal memory his large head was stored so full of law as to emphasize, to those who knew him, the curious disproportion between its size and that of his legs and feet. These latter were of such peculiarly modest dimensions as to call to mind Goldsmith's well-known lines, though in this case we must, of necessity, picture admiring frontiersmen standing round while

The judge's mind is of the encyclopædical type, and facts and dates are his especial "strong holt." But his countenance fails to ratify the inward structure when, pausing from a recital, he gazes upon your reception of the knowledge conveyed with a kindly smile—a most innocent smile that acts as a strong disposer to belief. Whether it has been a simple tale of the early days enlivened with recollections of pitch-trump and other social joys, or whether the performances of savage Indians and treacherous half-breeds send a chill through the listener, it is all the same: at its close the judge's amiable features wear the same belief-compelling smile. Under its influence we sit for hours while our entertainer ranges through the stores of his memory, pulling out much that is dust-covered and ancient, but quickly renovated for our use by his ready imagination and occasional wit. With a feeling akin to reverence we listen—a reverence due to one who had turned his face toward the Rocky Mountains before Colorado had a name, who had made the perilous journey across the great Plains behind a bull-team, and who has since been associated with everything concerned in the welfare and progress of what has now become this great Centennial State, toward which all eyes are turning. Not without its dark days to him has passed this pioneer life, and none were more filled with discouragement than those during which he represented the Territory in Congress. He describes the position as one of peculiar difficulty—on one hand the clamors of a people for aid and recognition in their rapid development of the country, while on the other, to meet them, he found himself a mere beggar at the doors of Congressional mercy and grace, voteless and hence powerless. Truly, in the light of his experience, the office of Territorial delegate is no sinecure.

No one has more closely observed the course of events in the Far West than Judge Bradford, and his opinions on some disputed points are very decided and equally clear. Many have wondered that Pueblo, which had the advantage of first settlement, had long been a rendezvous of trappers and frontier traders, and lay upon the only road to the then so-called Pike's Peak mines, that viâ the Arkansas Cañon—that this outpost, situated thus at the very gateway of the Far West, should have remained comparatively unimportant, while Denver grew with such astonishing rapidity. But, in the judge's opinion, it was the war of the rebellion that turned the scale in favor of the Queen City. The first emigrants had come through Missouri and up the Arkansas, their natural route, and as naturally conducting to Pueblo. But when Missouri and South-eastern Kansas became the scenes of guerrilla warfare the emigrant who would safely convey himself and family across the prairies must seek a more northern parallel. Hence, Pueblo received a check from which it is only now recovering, and Denver an impetus whose ultimate limits no man can foresee.

Many strange things were done in the olden time. When the Plains Indians had gathered together their forces for the purpose of persistently harassing the settlement, the Mountain Utes, then the allies of the whites, offered their services to help repel the common enemy. Petitions went up to the governor and Legislature to accept the proffered services, but they were steadily refused. Our long-headed judge gives the reason: The administration was under the control of men who were feeding Uncle Sam's troops with corn at thirteen cents per pound, and other staples in proportion, and the Indian volunteers promised a too speedy ending of such a profitable warfare.

Thus eventfully has passed the life of Judge Bradford. During his threescore-and-five years he has moved almost across a continent, never content unless he was on the frontier. Long may he live to ride in his light coverless wagon in the smile of bright Colorado sunshine, honored by all who know him, and affording his friends the enjoyment of his rare good presence!

Thirty years ago this whole Rocky-Mountain region, now appropriated by an enterprising and progressive people, contained, besides the native Indians and the Mexicans in the south, only a few trappers and frontier traders, most of them in the employ of the American Fur Company. These were the fearless and intrepid pioneers who so far from fleeing danger seemed rather to court it. Accounts of their adventures—now a struggle with a wounded bear, again the threatened perils of starvation when lost in some mountain-fastness—have long simultaneously terrified and fascinated both young and old. We all have pictured their dress—the coat or cloak, often an odd combination of several varieties of skins pieced together, with fur side in; breeches sometimes of the same material, but oftener of coarse duck or corduroy; and the slouched hat, under whose broad brim whatever of the face that was not concealed by a shaggy, unkempt beard shone out red from exposure to sun and weather. The American Fur Company had dotted the country with forts, which served the double purpose of storehouses for the valuables collected and of places where the employés could barricade themselves against the too-often troublesome savages. For such a purpose, though not actually by the Fur Company, was built the old adobe fort the ruins of which are still to be seen on the banks of the Arkansas at Pueblo. How old it may have been no one seems to know, but certain it is that for long years, and in the earliest times, it was a favorite rendezvous. Here was always to be found a jolly good party to pass away the long winter evenings with song and story. Here Kit Carson often stopped to rest from his many perilous expeditions, enjoying, together with Fremont and other noted Rocky-Mountain explorers, the hospitalities of the old fort. Many times were its soft walls indented by the arrows of besieging Indians, but its bloodiest tragedy was enacted in 1854, when the Utes surprised the sleeping company and savagely massacred all.

While these events were transpiring at the old fort a party of Mexicans had journeyed from the south, crossed the Arkansas River and formed a settlement on the east side of the Fontaine. A characteristically squalid and miserable place it was, with the dwellings—they scarce deserved the name of houses—built in the side of the bluffs very much as animals might burrow in the ground. Part dug-out and part adobe were those wretched habitations, and the shed-like parts which projected from the hill were composed of all conceivable and inconceivable kinds of rubbish. Sticks, stones, bits of old iron, worn-out mattings and gunny-sacks entered more or less into the construction of these dens, all stuck together with the inevitable adobe mud. The settlement extended some distance along the side of the bluff, and the sloping plain in front was dignified as the plaza. Perhaps the dark-hued immigrants expected a large town to spring from these unpromising beginnings, and their plaza to take on eventually all the importance which a place so named ever deserves in the Spanish and Mexican mind. But the Pike's Peak excitement, originating in 1852 with the finding of gold by a party of Cherokee Indians, and reaching its culmination in 1859, brought a far different class of people to our Rocky-Mountain outpost, and a civilization was inaugurated which speedily compelled the ancient Mexican methods to go by the board. Thus, Fontaine was soon absorbed by the rising town of Pueblo, though the ancient dug-outs still picturesquely dot the hillside, inhabited by much the same idle and vagabond class from which the prosperous ranchman soon learns to guard his hen-roost.

The growth of any of our Far Western towns presents a curious study. In these latter days it frequently requires but a few months, or even weeks, to give some new one a fair start upon its prosperous way. Sometimes a mineral vein, sometimes the temporary "end of the track" of a lengthening railway, forms the nucleus, and around it are first seen the tents of the advance-guard. Before many weeks have elapsed some enterprising individual has succeeded, in the face of infinite toil and expense, in bringing a sawmill into camp. Soon it is buzzing away on the neighboring hillside, and the rough pine boards and slabs are growing into houses of all curious sizes and shapes, irregularly lining the main street. Delightfully free from conventionality are matters in these new towns. Former notions of things go for naught. Values are in a highly-disturbed state, and you will probably be charged more for the privilege of sleeping somewhere on the floor than for all the refined elegancies of the Fifth Avenue. The board-walks along the street, where they exist at all, plainly typify this absence of a well-defined dead level or zero-point in the popular sentiment; for the various sections are built each upon the same eccentric plan that obtains in the corresponding house. The result is an irregular succession of steps equally irregular, with enough literal jumping-off places to relieve any possible monotony attending the promenade. If the growth of the town seems to continue satisfactory, its houses—at least those in or near its central portions—begin gradually to pass through the next stage in their development. During this interesting period, which might be called their chrysalid state, they are twisted and turned, sometimes sawn asunder, parts lopped off here and applied elsewhere, and all those radical changes made which would utterly destroy anything possessed of protean possibilities inferior to those of the common Western frame house. But, as a final result of this treatment and some small additions of new material, at last emerges the shapely and often artistic cottage, resplendent in paint, and bearing small resemblance to the slab-built barn which forms its framework. If the sometime camp becomes a city—if Auraria grows into a Denver and Fontaine develops into Pueblo—the frame houses will sooner or later share a common fate, that of being mounted on wheels or rollers for a journey suburbward, to make room for the substantial blocks of brick or stone. By this curious process of evolution do most of our Western towns rapidly acquire more or less of a metropolitan appearance.

Pueblo, while not a representative Western town in these respects, yet in its early days presented some curious combinations, most of them growing out of the heterogeneous human mixture that attempted to form a settlement. The famous Green-Russell party, on its way from Georgia to the Pike's Peak country, had passed through Missouri and Kansas in 1858, and there found an element ripe for any daring and adventurous deeds in unknown lands. Many of the border desperadoes, then engaged in that hard-fought prelude to the civil war, found it desirable and expedient to leave a place where their violent deeds became too well known; and these, together with others who hoped to find in a new country relief from the anarchy which reigned at home, fell into the wake of the pioneers. Pueblo received its full share of Kansas outlaws about this time, and, what with those it already contained, even a modicum of peace seemed out of the question. Here, for instance, was found living with the Mexicans by the plaza a quarrelsome fellow named Juan Trujillo, better known by the sobriquet of Juan Chiquito or "Little John," which his diminutive stature had earned for him. This worthy is represented as a constant disturber of the peace, and he met the tragic fate which his reckless life had invited. From being a trusted friend he had incurred the enmitv of a noted character named Charley Antobees, than whom, perhaps, no one has had a more varied frontier experience. Coming to the Rocky Mountains in 1836 in the employ of the American Fur Company, he has since served as hunter, trapper, Indian-fighter, guide to several United States exploring expeditions, and spy in the Mexican war as well as in the war of the rebellion. Antobees still lives on the outskirts of Pueblo, and his scarred and bronzed face, framed by flowing locks of jet-black hair, is familiar to all. The frame that has endured so much is now bent, and health is at last broken, and about a year since an effort was made by Judge Bradford and others to secure him a pension. But twenty years back he was in his full vigor and able to maintain his own against all odds. Whether or not it is true we cannot say, but certain it is that he is credited with causing the death of Juan Chiquito. An Indian called "Chickey" actually did the deed, lying in ambush for his victim. Perhaps few were sorry at the Mexican's sudden taking off, and in a country where Judge Lynch alone executes the laws the whole transaction was no doubt regarded as eminently proper.

Among those who came to Pueblo with the influx of 1858 were two brothers from Ohio, Josiah and Stephen Smith. Stalwart young men were these, of a different type from the Kansans and Missourians, yet not of the sort to be imposed upon. They were crack rifle-shots, and even then held decided opinions on the Indian question—opinions which subsequent experiences have served to emphasize, but not change. And what with constant troubles with the savages, as well as with the scarcely less intractable Kansans, their first years in the Far West could not be called altogether pleasant. Many a time have their lives been in danger from bands of outlaw immigrants, who, dissatisfied with not finding gold lying about as they had expected, sought to revenge themselves upon the settlers, whom they considered in fault for having led the way. Their personal bravery went far toward bringing to a close this reign of terror and transforming the lawless settlement into a permanent and prosperous town. Still in the prime of life, they look back with pleasure over their most hazardous experiences, for time has softened the dangers and cast over them the glow of romance. And while none are more familiar with everything concerning the early history of Pueblo, it is equally true that none are more ready to gratify an appreciative listener, and the writer is indebted for much that follows to their inimitable recitals.

About the first work of any note undertaken in connection with the new town was the building of a bridge across the Arkansas. This was accomplished in 1860, when a charter was obtained from Kansas and a structure of six spans thrown across the river. It was a toll-bridge, and every crossing team put at least one dollar into the pockets of its owners. But trouble soon overtook the management. While one of the proprietors was in New Mexico, building a mill for Maxwell upon his famous estate, the other was so unfortunate as to kill three men, and was obliged, as Steph Smith felicitously expressed it, to "skip out." Thus the bridge passed into other hands, where it remained till it was partly washed away in 1863. The following little matter of history connected with its palmy days will be best given in the narrator's own words: "We had a blacksmith who misused his wife. The citizens took him down to the bridge, tied a rope around his body and threw him into the river. They kept up their lick until they nearly drowned the poor cuss, then whispered to him to be good to his wife or his time would be short. He took the hint, used his wife well, and everything was lovely. That was the first cold-water cure in Pueblo, and I ain't sure but the last." This incident serves to illustrate the inherent character of American gallantry, for, however wild or in most respects uncivilized men may appear to become under the influence of frontier life, instances are rare in which women are not treated with all the honor and respect due them. Indeed, I have sometimes thought that the general sentiment concerning woman is more refined and reverential among the bronzed pioneers at the outposts than under the influence of a higher civilization.

The Arkansas, ever changing its winding course after the manner of prairie-rivers, has long since shifted its bed some distance to the south, leaving only a portion of the old bridge to span what in high water becomes an arm of the river, but which ordinarily serves to convey the water from a neighboring mill. We lean upon its guard-rail while fancy is busy with the past. We picture the prairie-schooners winding around the mesas and through the gap: soon they have come to the grove by the river-bank; the horses are picketed and the camp-fire is blazing; brown children play in the sand while their parents lie stretched out in the shadow of the wagons. They left civilization on the banks of the Missouri more than a month ago, and their eyes are still turned toward those grand old mountain-ranges in the west over which the declining sun is now pouring its transfiguring sheen. The brightness dazzles the eyes, and the Mexican who rides by on a scarce manageable broncho with nose high in air might be old Juan Chiquito bent upon some murderous errand. But no: the rider has stopped the animal, and is soliciting the peaceful offices of a blacksmith, whose curious little shop, bearing the suggestive name of "Ute," is seen near the bridge. Here bronchos, mules and burros are fitted with massive shoes by this frontier Vulcan and sent rejoicing upon their winding and rocky ways. Our sleepy gaze follows along Santa Fé Avenue, and the eye sees little that is suggestive of a modern Western town. But soon comes noisily along a one-horse street-car, which asserts its just claims to popular notice in consequence of its composing a full half of a system scarce a fortnight old by filling the air with direful screeches as each curve is laboriously described. And later, when the magnificent overland train, twenty-six hours from Kansas City, steams proudly up to the station, fancy can no longer be indulged. The old has become new. The great Plains have been bridged, and the outposts of but a decade ago become the suburbs of to-day.

Doubtless Old Si Smith now and then indulges in reveries somewhat similar, but his retrospections would be of a minute and personal character. To warm up the average frontiersman, however—and Old Si is no exception—into a style at once luminous and emphatic and embellished with all the richness of the border dialect, it is only necessary to suggest the Indian topic. However phlegmatically he may reel off his yarns, glowing though they be with exciting adventure, it is the red-skins that cause his eyes to flash and his rhetoric to become fervid and impressive. To him the Indian is the embodiment of all that is supremely vile, and hence merits his unmitigated hatred. Killing Indians is his most delightful occupation, and the next in order is talking about it. His contempt for government methods is unbounded, and the popular Eastern sentiment he holds in almost equal esteem. The Smith brothers have had a varied experience in frontier affairs, in which the Indian has played a prominent part. They hold the Western views, but with less prejudice than is generally found. They argue the case with a degree of fairness, and many of their opinions and deductions are novel and equally just. Said Stephen Smith to the writer: "We've got this thing reduced right down to vulgar fractions, and the Utes have got to go. The mineral lands are worth more to us than the Indians are"—this with a suggestive shrug—"and if the government don't remove them from the reserves, why, we'll have to do it ourselves. There's a great fuss been made about the whites going on the Indian reserves; and what did it all amount to? Maybe fifty or sixty prospectors, all told, have got over the lines, dug a few holes and hurt nobody. But I suppose the Indians always stay where they ought to! I guess not. Some of them are off their reserves half the time, and they go off to murder and kill. Do they ever get punished for that? Not much, except when folks do it on their own account. But let a white man get found on the Indian reserves and there's a great howl. I want a rule that will work both ways, and I don't give much for a government that isn't able to protect me on the Indian reserves the same as anywhere else. Some years ago Indian troubles were reported at Washington, and Sherman was sent out to investigate. Of course they heard he was coming, and all were on their good behavior. They knew where their blankets and ponies and provisions came from. Consequently, Sherman reported everything peaceful: he hadn't seen anybody killed. That's about the kind of information they get in the East on the Indian question.

"Misused? Yes, the Indians have been misused, badly misused. I know that. But who have they misused? This whole country is covered with ruins, and they all go to show that it has been inhabited by a highly-civilized race of people. And what has become of them? I believe the Indians cleaned them out long years ago; and now their turn has come. I find it's a law of Nature"—and here the narrator's tone grew more reverent as if touching upon a higher theme—"that the weak go to the wall. It's a hard law, but I don't see any way out of it. The old Aztecs had to go under, and the Indians will have to follow suit."

Whatever humanitarians and archæologists may conclude concerning these opinions, they are nevertheless extensively held in the Far West. The frontiersman, who sees the Indian only in his native savagery, who has found it necessary to employ a considerable part of his time in keeping out of range of poisoned arrows, and who must needs be always upon the alert lest his family fall a prey to Indian treachery, cannot be expected to hold any ultra-humanitarian views upon the subject. He has not been brought in contact with the several partially-civilized tribes, in whose advancement many see possibilities for the whole race. He cannot understand why the government allows the Indians to roam over enormous tracts of land, rich in minerals they will never extract and containing agricultural possibilities they will never seek to realize. His plan would be to have only the same governmental care exercised over the red man as is now enjoyed by the white, and then look to the law of the survival of the fittest to furnish a solution of the problem. The case seems so clear and the arguments so potent that he looks for some outside reasons for their failure, and very naturally thinks he discovers them in governmental quarters. "There's too many people living off this Indian business for it to be wound up yet a while." Thus does a representative man at the outposts express the sentiment of no inconsiderable class.

Next to the Indian himself, the frontiersman holds in slight esteem the soldiers who are sent for the protection of the border. The objects of his supreme hatred still often merit his good opinion for their bravery and fighting qualities, but upon raw Eastern recruits and West-Point fledglings he looks with mild disdain. Having learned the Indian methods by many hard knocks, he doubtless fails to exercise proper charity toward those whose experiences have been less extended; and added to this may be a lurking jealousy—which, however, would be stoutly disclaimed—because the blue uniform is gaining honors and experience more easily and under conditions more favorable than were possible with him in the early days. "They be about the greenest set!" said an old Indian-fighter to whom this subject was broached, "and the sight of an Injun jest about scares 'em to death at first. I never saw any of 'em I was afraid of if I only had any sort of a show. Why, back in '59 I undertook to take a young man back to the States, and we started off in a buggy—a buggy, do you mind. When we got down the Arkansas a piece we heard the red-skins was pretty thick, but we went right on, except keeping more of a lookout, you know. But along in the afternoon we saw fifteen or twenty coming for us, and we got ready to give 'em a reception. We had a hard chase, but at last they got pretty sick of the way I handled my rifle, and concluded to let us alone for a while. They kept watch of us, though, and meant to get square with us that night. Well, we travelled till dark, stopped just long enough to build a big fire, and then lit out. When those Injuns came for us that night we were some other place, and they lost their grip on that little scalping-bee. They didn't trouble us any more, that's sure. And when we got to the next post there were nigh a hundred teams, six stages and two companies of soldiers, all shivering for fear of the Injuns. It rather took the wind out of 'em to see us come in with that buggy, and they didn't want to believe we had come through. But, like the man's mother-in-law, we were there, and they couldn't get out of it. And, sir, maybe you won't believe me, but those soldiers offered me seventy-five dollars to go back with them! That's the sort of an outfit the government sends to protect us!"

We have had frequent occasion since our frontier experiences began to ponder the untrammelled opulence of this Western word, outfit. From the Mississippi to the Pacific its expansive possibilities are momentarily being tested. There is nothing that lives, breathes or grows, nothing known to the arts or investigated by the sciences—nothing, in short, coming within the range of the Western perception—that cannot with more or less appropriateness be termed an "outfit." A dismal broncho turned adrift in mid-winter to browse on the short stubble of the Plains is an "outfit," and so likewise is the dashing equipage that includes a shining phaeton and richly-caparisoned span. Perhaps by no single method can so comprehensive an idea of the term in question be obtained in a short time, and the proper qualifying adjectives correctly determined, as by simply preparing for a camping-expedition. The horse-trader with whom you have negotiated for a pair of horses or mules congratulates you upon the acquisition of a "boss outfit." When your wagon has been purchased and the mules are duly harnessed in place, you are further induced to believe that you have a "way-up outfit," though, obviously, this should now be understood to possess a dual significance which did not before obtain, since the wagon represents a component part. The hardware clerk displays a tent and recommends a fly as forming a desirable addition to an even otherwise "swell outfit." The grocer provides you with what he modestly terms a "first-class outfit," albeit his cans of fruits, vegetables and meats are for the delectation of the inner man. Frying-pans and dutch-ovens, camp-stools and trout-scales, receive the same designation. And now comes the crowning triumph of this versatile term, as well as a happy illustration of what might be called its agglutinative and assimilating powers; for when horses and wagon have received their load of tent and equipments, and father, mother and the babies have filled up every available space, this whole establishment, this omnium gatherum of outfits, becomes neither more nor less than an "outfit."

The last five years have witnessed a wonderful material progress in the Far West. The mineral wealth discovered in Colorado and New Mexico has caused a great westward-flowing tide to set in. The nation seems to be possessed of a desire to reclaim the waste places and to explore the unknown. Cities that were founded by "fifty-niners," and after a decade seemed to reach the limits of their growth, have started on a new career. And for none of these does the outlook seem brighter than in the case of the city of Pueblo, the old outpost whose early history we have attempted to sketch. Its growth has all along been a gradual one, and its improvements have kept pace with this healthy advance. Its public schools, like those of all Far Western towns which the writer has visited are model institutions and an honor to the commonwealth. A handsome brick court-house, situated on high ground, is an ornament to the city, and differs widely from that in which Judge Bradford held court eighteen years ago—the first held in the Territory, and that, too, under military protection. Pueblo's wealth is largely derived from the stock-raising business, the surrounding country being well adapted to cattle and sheep. The rancheros ride the Plains the year round, and the cattle flourish upon the food which Nature provides—in the summer the fresh grass, and in the winter the same converted into hay which has been cured upon the ground. An important railway-centre is Pueblo, and iron highways radiate from it to the four cardinal points. These advantages of location should procure it a large share of the flood of prosperity that is sweeping over the State. But enterprises are now in progress which cannot fail to add materially to its importance as a factor in the development of the country. On the highest lift of the mesa south of the town, and in a most commanding position, it has been decided to locate a blast-furnace which shall have no neighbor within a radius of five hundred miles. With iron ore of finest quality easily accessible in the neighboring mountains, and coal-fields of unlimited extent likewise within easy reach, the production of iron in the Rocky Mountains has only waited for the growth of a demand. This the advancement and prosperity of the State have now well assured. Many kindred industries will spring up around the furnace, the Bessemer steel-works and the rail-mills that are now projected; and a few years will suffice to transform the level mesa, upon which for untold centuries the cactus and the yucca-lily have bloomed undisturbed, into a thriving manufacturing city whose pulse shall be the throb of steam through iron arms. The onlooking mountains, that have seen strange sights about this old outpost, are to see a still stranger—the ushering-in of a new civilization which now begins its march into the land of the Aztecs.

Perhaps these thoughts were occupying our minds as we climbed the bluffs for a visit to this incipient Pittsburg. The equipage did no credit to the financial status of the iron company, as it consisted of a superannuated express-wagon drawn by a dyspeptic white horse which the boy who officiated as driver found no difficulty in restraining. Two gentlemen in charge of the constructions, their visitor and two kegs of nails comprised this precious load. The day was cloudless and fine, albeit a Colorado "zephyr" was blowing, and the party, with perhaps the single exception of the horse, felt in fine spirits. The jolly superintendent, who both in face and mien reminded one of the typical German nobleman, was overflowing with story, joke and witty repartee. The site of the works was reached in the course of time. Excavations were in progress for the blast-furnace and accessory buildings, and developed a strange formation. The entire mesa seems built up of boulders packed together with a sort of alkali clay, dry and hard as stone, and looking, as our distingué guide remarked, as though not a drop of water had penetrated five feet from the surface since the time of the Flood. Two blast-furnaces, each with a capacity of five hundred tons, will be speedily built, to be followed by rail-mills, a Bessemer steel-plant and all the accessories of vast iron-and steel-works. With the patronage of several thousand miles of railway already assured, and its duplication in the near future apparently beyond doubt, the success of this daring frontier enterprise seems far removed from the domain of conjecture.

All this was glowingly set forth by the courtly superintendent, who, though but three months in the country, is already at heart a Coloradan. That there are some things about frontier life which he likes better than others he is free to admit. Among the few matters he would have otherwise he gives the first place to the tough "range" or "snow-fed" beef upon which the dwellers in this favored land must needs subsist. "I heard a story once," said he, "about a young man, a tenderfoot, who, after long wondering what made the beef so fearfully tough, at length arrived at the solution, as he thought, and that quite by accident. He was riding out with a friend, an old resident, when they chanced to come upon a bunch of cattle. The young man's attention seemed to be attracted, and as the idea began to dawn upon him he faced his companion, and, pointing to an animal which bore the brand "B.C. 45," savagely exclaimed, 'Look there! How can you expect those antediluvians to be anything but tough? Why don't you kill your cattle before they get two or three times as old as Methuselah?'"

We took a long ride that afternoon under a peerless sky, with blue mountain-ranges on one hand, whose ridges, covered with snow, seemed like folds of satin, and on the other the great billowy Plains, bare and brown and smooth as a carpet. The white horse, relieved of the kegs of nails, really performed prodigies of travel, all the more appreciated because unexpected. A stone-quarry for which we were searching was not found, but a teamster was, who, while everything solemnly stood still and waited, and amid the agonies of an indescribable stutter, finally managed to enlighten us somewhat as to its whereabouts. These adventures served to put us in excellent humor, so that when the road was found barricaded by a barbed wire fence, it only served to give one of the party an opportunity to air his views upon the subject—to argue, in fact, that the barbed wire fence had been an important factor in building up the agricultural greatness of the West. "For what inducements," he exclaims, "does the top rail of such a fence offer to the contemplative farmer? None, sir! His traditional laziness has been broken up, and great material prosperity is the result."

Whatever causes have operated to produce the effect, certain it is that the West is eminently prosperous to-day. Everywhere are seen growth, enterprise and an aggressiveness that stops at no obstacles. Immigration is pouring into Colorado alone at the rate of several thousands per week. The government lands are being rapidly taken up, and the stable industries of stock-raising and farming correspondingly extended. Manufacturing, too, is acquiring a foothold, and many of the necessaries of life, which now must be obtained in the East, will soon be produced at home. The mountains are revealing untold treasures of silver and gold, and the possibilities which may lie hid in the yet unexplored regions act as a stimulus to crowds of hopeful prospectors. But while Colorado is receiving her full share of the influx, a tide seems to be setting in toward the old empire of the Aztecs, and flowing through the natural gateway, our old Rocky-Mountain outpost. It is beginning to be found out that the legends of fabulous wealth which have come down to us from the olden time have much of truth in them, and mines that were worked successively by Franciscan monks, Pueblo Indians, Jesuit priests and Mexicans, and had suffered filling up and obliteration with every change of proprietorship, are now being reopened; and that, too, under a new dispensation which will ensure prosperity to the enterprise. Spaniard and priest have long since abandoned their claim to the rich possessions, and their doubtful sway, ever upon the verge of revolution and offering no incentive to enterprise, has given place to one of a different character. Under the protection of beneficent and fostering laws this oldest portion of our Union may now be expected to reveal its wealth of resources to energy and intelligent labor. And it may confidently be predicted that American enterprise will not halt till it has built up the waste places of our land, and in this case literally made the desert to blossom as the rose. Thus gloriously does our new civilization reclaim the errors of the past, building upon ancient ruins the enlightened institutions of to-day, and grafting fresh vigor upon effete races and nationalities. And now, at last, the Spanish Peaks, those mighty ancient sentinels whose twin spires, like eyes, have watched the slow rise and fall of stately but tottering dynasties in the long ago, are to look out upon a different scene—a new race come in the might of its freedom and with almost the glory of a conquering host to redeem a waiting land from the outcome of centuries of avaricious and bigoted misrule, and even from the thraldom of decay.

LOST.

ADAM AND EVE.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

From the day on which Adam knew that the date of Jerrem's trial was fixed all the hope which the sight of Eve had rekindled was again completely extinguished, and, refusing every attempt at consolation, he threw himself into an abyss of despair a hundred-fold more dark and bitter than before. The thought that he, captain and leader as he had been, should stand in court confronted by his comrades and neighbors (for Adam, ignorant of the disasters which had overtaken them, believed half Polperro to be on their way to London), and there swear away Jerrem's life and turn informer, was something too terrible to be dwelt on with even outward tranquillity, and, abandoning everything which had hitherto sustained him, he gave himself up to all the terrors of remorse and despair. It was in vain for Reuben to reason or for Eve to plead: so long as they could suggest no means by which this dreaded ordeal could be averted Adam was deaf to all hope of consolation. There was but one subject which interested him, and only on one subject could he be got to speak, and that was the chances there still remained of Jerrem's life being spared; and to furnish him with some food for this hope, Eve began to loiter at the gates, talk to the warders and the turnkeys, and mingle with the many groups who on some business or pretext were always assembled about the yard or stood idling in the various passages with which the prison was intersected.

One morning it came to her mind, How would it be for Adam to escape, and so not be there to prove the accusation he had made of Jerrem having shot the man? With scarce more thought than she had bestowed on many another passing suggestion which seemed for the moment practical and solid, but as she turned it round lost shape and floated into air, Eve made the suggestion, and to her surprise found it seized on by Adam as an inspiration. Why, he'd risk all so that he escaped being set face to face with Jerrem and his former mates. Adam had but to be assured the strain would not be more than Eve's strength could bear before he had adopted with joy her bare suggestion, clothed it with possibility, and by it seemed to regain all his past energy. Could he but get away and Jerrem's life be spared, all hope of happiness would not be over. In some of those distant lands to which people were then beginning to go life might begin afresh. And as his thoughts found utterance in speech he held out his hand to Eve, and in it she laid her own; and Adam needed nothing more to tell him that whither he went there Eve too would go. There was no need for vows and protestations now between these two, for, though to each the other's heart lay bare, a word of love scarce ever crossed their lips. Life seemed too sad and time too precious to be whiled away in pleasant speeches, and often when together, burdened by the weight of all they had to say, yet could not talk about, the two would sit for hours and neither speak a word. But with this proposition of escape a new channel was given to them, and as they discussed their different plans the dreadful shadow which at times had hung between them was rolled away and lifted out of sight.

Inspired by the prospect of action, of doing something, Adam roused himself to master all the difficulties: his old foresight and caution began to revive, and the project, which had on one day looked like a desperate extremity, grew by the end of a week into a well-arranged plan whose success seemed more than possible. Filled with anxiety for Eve, Reuben gave no hearty sanction to the experiment: besides which, he felt certain that now neither Adam's absence nor presence would in any way affect Jerrem's fate; added to which, if the matter was detected it might go hard with Adam himself. But his arguments proved nothing to Eve, who, confident of success, only demanded from him the promise of secrecy; after which, she thought, as some questions might be put to him, the less he knew the less he would have to conceal.

Although a prisoner, inasmuch as liberty was denied to him, Adam was in no way subjected to that strict surveillance to which those who had broken the law were supposed to be submitted. It was of his own free will that he disregarded the various privileges which lay open to him: others in his place would have frequented the passages, hung about the yards and grown familiar with the tap, where spirits were openly bought and sold. Money could do much in those days of lax discipline, and the man who could pay and could give need have very few wants unsatisfied. But Adam's only desire was to be left undisturbed and alone; and as this entailed no undue amount of trouble after their first curiosity had been satisfied, it was not thought necessary to deny him this privilege. From constantly going in and out, most of the officials inside the prison knew Eve, while to but very few was Adam's face familiar; and it was on this fact, aided by the knowledge that through favor of a gratuity friends were frequently permitted to outstay their usual hour, that most of their hopes rested. Each day she came Eve brought some portion of the disguise which was to be adopted; and then, having learnt from Reuben that the Mary Jane had arrived and was lying at the wharf unloading, not knowing what better to do, they decided that she should go to Captain Triggs and ask him, in case Adam could get away, whether he would let him come on board his vessel and give him shelter there below.

"Wa-al, no," said Triggs, "I woan't do that, 'cos they as I'se got here might smell un out; but I'll tell 'ee what: I knaws a chap as has in many ways bin beholden to me 'fore now, and I reckon if I gives un the cue he'll do the job for 'ee."

"Wa-al, that rests on how small a part you'm foaced to tell un of," said Triggs, "and how much you makes it warth his while. I'm blamed if I'd go bail for un myself, but that won't be no odds agen' Adam's goin': 'tis just the place for he. 'T 'ud niver do to car'y a pitch-pot down and set un in the midst o' they who couldn't bide his stink."

"Awh, the crew's right enuf—a set o' gashly, smudge-faced raskils that's near half Maltee and t' other Lascar Injuns. Any jail-bird that flies their way 'ull find they's all of a feather. But here," he added, puzzled by the event: "how's this that you'm still mixed up with Adam so? I thought 'twas all 'long o' you and Reuben May that the Lottery's landin' got blowed about?"

Eve shook her head. "Be sure," she said, "'twas never in me to do Adam any harm."

"And you'm goin' to stick to un now through thick and thin? 'Twill niver do for un, ye knaw, to set his foot on Cornish ground agen."

"He knows that," said Eve; "and if he gets away we shall be married and go across the seas to some new part, where no one can tell what brought us from our home."

Triggs gave a significant nod. "Lord!" he exclaimed, "but that's a poor lookout for such a bowerly maid as you be! Wouldn't it be better for 'ee to stick by yer friends 'bout here than—"

"I haven't got any friends," interrupted Eve promptly, "excepting it's Adam and Joan and Uncle Zebedee."

"Ah, poor old Zebedee!" sighed Triggs: "'tis all dickey with he. The day I started I see Sammy Tucker to Fowey, and he was tellin' that th' ole chap was gone reg'lar tottlin'-like, and can't tell thickee fra that; and as for Joan Hocken, he says you wouldn't knaw her for the same. And they's tooked poor foolish Jonathan, as is more mazed than iver, to live with 'em; and Mrs. Tucker, as used to haggle with everybody so, tends on 'em all hand and foot, and her's given up praichin' 'bout religion and that, and 's turned quite neighborly, and, so long as her can save her daughter, thinks nothin's too hot nor too heavy."

"Whether she hath or no!" exclaimed Triggs in surprise. "Then take my word they's heerd that Jerrem's to be hanged, and Joan's comin' up to be all ready to hand for 't."

"No, not that," groaned Eve, for at the mere mention of the word the vague dread seemed to shape itself into a certainty. "Oh, Captain Triggs, don't say that if Adam gets off you don't think Jerrem's life will be spared."

"Wa-al, my poor maid, us must hope so," said the compassionate captain; "but 'tis the warst o' they doin's that sooner or later th' endin, of 'em must come. 'Twould never do to let 'em prosper allays," he added with impressive certainty, "or where 'ud be the use o' parsons praichin' up 'bout heaven and hell? Why, now, us likes good liquor cheap to Fowey; and wance 'pon a time us had it too, but that ha'n't bin for twenty year. Our day's gone by, and so 'ull theirs be now; and th' excise 'ull come, and revenoos 'ull settle down, and folks be foaced to take to lousterin' for the bit o' bread they ates, and live quiet and paceable, as good neighbors should. So try and take heart; and if so be that Adam can give they Bailey chaps the go-by, tell un to come 'longs here, and us 'ull be odds with any o' they that happens to be follerin' to his heels."

Charmed with this friendly promise, Eve said "Good-bye," leaving the captain puzzled with speculations on women and the many curious contradictions which seem to influence their actions; while, the hour being now too late to return to the prison, she took her way to her own room, thinking it best to begin the preparations which in case of Adam's escape and any sudden departure it would be necessary to have completed.

Perhaps it was her interview with Captain Triggs, the sight of the wharf and the ships, which took her thoughts back and made them bridge the gulf which divided her past life from her present self. Could the girl she saw in that shadowy past—headstrong, confident, impatient of suffering and unsympathetic with sorrow—be this same Eve who walked along with all hope and thought of self merged in another's happiness and welfare? Where was the vanity, where were the tricks and coquetries, passports to that ideal existence after which in the old days she had so thirsted? Trampled out of sight and choked beneath the fair blossoms of a higher life, which, as in many a human nature, had needed sorrow, humiliation and a great watering of tears before there could spring forth the flowers for a fruit which should one day ripen into great perfection.

No wonder, then, that she should be shaken by a doubt of her own identity; and having reached her room she paused upon the threshold and looked around as if to satisfy herself by all those silent witnesses which made it truth. There was the chair in which she had so often sat plying her needle with such tardy grace while her impatient thoughts did battle with the humdrum, narrow life she led. How she had beat against the fate which seemed to promise naught but that dull round of commonplace events in which her early years had passed away! How as a gall and fret had come the thought of Reuben's proffered love, because it shadowed forth the level of respectable routine, the life she then most dreaded! To be courted and sought after, to call forth love, jealousy and despair, to be looked up to, thought well of, praised, admired,—these were the delights she had craved and these the longings she had had granted. And a sigh from the depths of that chastened heart rendered the bitter tribute paid by all to satiated vanity and outlived desire. The dingy walls, the ill-assorted furniture (her mother's pride in which had sometimes vexed her, sometimes made her laugh) now looked like childhood's friends, whose faces stamp themselves upon our inmost hearts. The light no longer seemed obscure, the room no longer gloomy, for each thing in it now was flooded by the tender light of memory—that wondrous gift to man which those who only sail along life's summer sea can never know in all the heights and depths revealed to storm-tossed hearts.

"What! you've come back?" a voice said in her ear; and looking round Eve saw it was Reuben, who had entered unperceived. "There's nothing fresh gone wrong?" he asked.

"No, nothing;" but the sad smile she tried to give him welcome with was so akin to tears that Reuben's face assumed a look of doubt. "'Tis only that I'm thinking how I'm changed from what I was," said Eve. "Why, once I couldn't bear this room and all the things about it; but now—Oh, Reuben, my heart seems like to break because perhaps 'twill soon now come to saying good-bye to all of it for ever."

"Yes, where Adam goes I shall go too: don't you think I should? What else is left for me to do?"

"You feel, then, you'd be happy—off with him—away from all and—everybody else?"

"Happy! Should I be happy to know he'd gone alone—happy to know I'd driven him away to some place where I wouldn't go myself?" and Eve paused, shaking her head before she added, "If he can make another start in life—try and begin again—"

"You ought to help him to it," said Reuben promptly: "that's very plain to see. Oh, Eve, do you mind the times when you and me have talked of what we'd like to do—how, never satisfied with what went on around, we wanted to be altogether such as some of those we'd heard and read about? The way seems almost opened up to you, but what shall I do when all this is over and you are gone away? I can't go back and stick to trade again, working for nothing more but putting victuals in myself."

For a moment Eve did not speak: then, with a sudden movement, she turned, saying to Reuben, "There's something that before our lives are at any moment parted I've wanted to say to you, Reuben. 'Tis that until now, this time while we've been all together here, I've never known what your worth is—what you would be to any one who'd got the heart to value what you'd give. Of late it has often seemed that I should think but very small of one who'd had the chance of your liking and yet didn't know the proper value of such goodness."

Reuben gave a look of disavowal, and Eve continued, adding with a little hesitation, "You mustn't think it strange in me for saying this. I couldn't tell you if you didn't know how everything lies between Adam and myself; but ever since this trouble's come about all my thoughts seem changed, and people look quite different now to what they did before; and, most of all, I've learnt to know the friend I've got, and always had, in you, Reuben."

Reuben did not answer for a moment. He seemed struggling to keep back something he was yet prompted to speak of. "Eve," he said at length, "don't think that I've not made mistakes, and great ones too. When first I fought to battle down my leaning toward you, why was it? Not because of doubting that 'twould ever be returned, but 'cos I held myself too good a chap in all my thoughts and ways to be taken up with such a butterfly concern as I took you to be. I'd never have believed then that you'd have acted as I've seen you act. I thought that love with you meant who could give you the finest clothes to wear and let you rule the roast the easiest; but you have shown me that you are made of better woman's stuff than that. And, after all, a man thinks better of himself for mounting high than stooping to pick up what can be had for asking any day."

"No, no, Reuben: your good opinion is more than I deserve," said Eve, her memory stinging her with past recollections. "If you want to see a dear, kind-hearted, unselfish girl, wait until Joan comes. I do so hope that you will take to her! I think you will, after what you've been to Jerrem and to Adam. I want you and Joan to like each other."

"I don't think there's much fear of that," said Reuben. "Jerrem's spoke so freely about Joan that I seem to know her before ever having seen her. Let me see: her mind was at one time set on Adam, wasn't it?"

"I think that she was very fond of Adam," said Eve, coloring: "and, so far as that goes, I don't know that there is any difference now. I'm sure she'd lay her life down if it would do him good."

"Poor soul!" sighed Reuben, drawn by a friendly feeling to sympathize with Joan's unlucky love. "Her cup's been full, and no mistake, of late."

"Did Jerrem seem to feel it much that Uncle Zebedee 'd been took so strange?" asked Eve.

"I didn't tell him more than I could help," said Reuben. "As much as possible I made it out to him that for the old man to come to London wouldn't be safe, and the fear of that seemed to pacify him at once."

"I haven't spoken of it to Adam yet," said Eve. "He hasn't asked about his coming, so I thought I'd leave the telling till another time. His mind seems set on nothing but getting off, and by it setting Jerrem free."

But Reuben made no rejoinder to the questioning tone of Eve's words, and after a few minutes' pause he waived the subject by reverting to the description which Eve had given of Joan, so that, in case he had to meet her alone, he might recognize her without difficulty. Eve repeated the description, dwelling with loving preciseness on the various features and points by which Joan might be known; and then Reuben, having some work to do, got up to say good-bye.

"Good-bye," said Eve, holding out her hand—"good-bye. Every time I say it now I seem to wonder if 'tis to be good-bye indeed."

"Well, then, do you think I'd let you go without a word? Ah, Eve, no! Whatever others are, nobody's yet pushed you from your place, nor ever will so long as my life lasts."

CHAPTER XXXVII

At length the dreaded day was over, the trial was at an end, and, in spite of every effort made, Jerrem condemned to die. The hopes raised by the knowledge of Adam's escape seemed crowned with success when, to the court's dismay, it was announced that the prisoner's accuser could not be produced: he had mysteriously disappeared the evening before, and in spite of a most vigorous search was nowhere to be found. But, with minds already resolved to make this hardened smuggler's fate a warning and example to all such as should henceforth dare the law, one of the cutter's crew, wrought upon by the fear lest Jerrem should escape and baffle the vengeance they had vowed to take, was got to swear that Jerrem was the man who fired the fatal shot; and though it was shown that the night was dark and recognition next to impossible, this evidence was held conclusive to prove the crime, and nothing now remained but to condemn the culprit. The judge's words came slowly forth, making the stoutest there shrink back and let that arrow from the bow of death glance by and set its mark on him upon whose face the crowd now turned to gaze.

For Jerrem stands all unmoved and calm while, dulled by the sound of rushing waters, the words the judge has said come booming back and back again. A sickly tremor creeps through every limb and makes it nerveless; a sense of growing weight presses the flesh down as a burden on the fainting spirit; one instant a thousand faces, crowding close, keep out the air; the next, they have all receded out of sight back into misty space, and he is left alone, with all around faded and grown confused and all beneath him slipping and giving way. Suddenly a sound rouses him back to life: a voice has smote his ear and cleaved his inmost soul; and lifting his head his eyes are met by sight of Joan, who with a piercing shriek has fallen back, deathlike and pale, in Reuben's outstretched arms.

Then Jerrem knows that hope is past and he must die, and in one flash his fate, in all its misery and shame, stands out before him, and reeling he totters, to sink down senseless and be carried off to that dismal cell allotted to those condemned to death; while Reuben, as best he can, manages to get Joan out of court and into the open air, where she gradually comes back to life again and is able to listen to such poor comfort as Reuben's sad heart can find to give her. For by reason of those eventful circumstances which serve to cement friendships by suddenly overthrowing the barriers time must otherwise gradually wear away, Reuben May and Joan Hocken have (in the week which has intervened between her arrival and this day of trial) become more intimate and thoroughly acquainted than if in an ordinary way they had known each other for years. A stranger in a large city, with not one familiar face to greet her, who does not know the terrible feeling of desolation which made poor Joan hurry through the crowded streets, shrinking away from their bustle and throng toward Reuben, the one person she had to turn to for sympathy, advice, assistance and consolation? With that spirit of perfect trust which her own large heart gave her the certain assurance of receiving, Joan placed implicit reliance in all Reuben said and did; and seeing this, and receiving an inward satisfaction from the sight, Reuben involuntarily slipped into a familiarity of speech and manner very opposed to the stiff reserve he usually maintained toward strangers.

Ten days were given before the day on which Jerrem was to die, and during this time, through the various interests raised in his behalf, no restriction was put upon the intercourse between him and his friends; so that, abandoning everything for the poor soul's welfare, Reuben, Joan and Jerrem spent hour after hour in the closest intercourse. Happily, in times of great extremity the power of realizing our exact situation is mostly denied to us; and in the case of Joan and Jerrem, although surrounded by the terrors and within the outposts of that dreaded end, it was nothing unfrequent to hear a sudden peal of laughter, which often would have as sudden an end in a great burst of tears.

To point to hopes and joys beyond the grave when every thought is centred and fixed on this life's interests and keen anxieties is but a fruitless, vain endeavor; and Reuben had to try and rest contented in the assurance of Jerrem's perfect forgiveness and good-will to all who had shown him any malice or ill-feeling—to draw some satisfaction from the unselfish love he showed to Joan and the deep gratitude he now expressed to Uncle Zebedee.

What would become of them? he often asked when some word of Joan's revealed the altered aspect of their affairs; and then, overcome by the helplessness of their forlorn condition, he would entreat Reuben to stand by them—not to forget Joan, not to forsake her. And Reuben, strangely moved by sight of this poor giddy nature's overwrought emotion, would try to calm him with the ready assurance that while he lived Joan should never want a friend, and, touched by his words, the two would clasp his hands together, telling each other of all the kindness he had showed them, praying God would pay him back in blessings for his goodness. Nor were theirs the only lips which spoke of gratitude to Reuben May: his name had now become familiar to many who through his means were kept from being ignorant of the sad fate which awaited their boon companion, their prime favorite, the once madcap, rollicking Jerrem—the last one, as Joan often told Reuben, whom any in Polperro would have fixed on for evil to pursue or misfortune to overtake, and about whom all declared there must have been "a hitch in the block somewheres, as Fate never intended that ill-luck should pitch upon Jerrem." The repetition of their astonishment, their indignation and their sympathy afforded the poor fellow the most visible satisfaction, harassed as he was becoming by one dread which entirely swallowed up the thought and fear of death. This ghastly terror was the then usual consignment of a body after death to the surgeons for dissection; and the uncontrollable trepidation which would take possession of him each time this hideous recollection forced itself upon him, although unaccountable to Reuben, was most painful for him to witness. What difference could it make what became of one's body after death? Reuben would ask himself, puzzled to fathom that wonderful tenderness which some natures feel for the flesh which embodies their attractions. But Jerrem had felt a passing love for his own dear body: vanity of it had been his ruling passion, its comeliness his great glory—so much so that even now a positive satisfaction would have been his could he have pictured himself outstretched and lifeless, with lookers-on moved to compassion by the dead grace of his winsome face and slender limbs. Joan, too, was caught by the same infection. Not to lie whole and decent in one's coffin! Oh, it was an indignity too terrible for contemplation; and every time they were away from Jerrem she would beset Reuben with entreaties and questions as to what could be done to avoid the catastrophe.

The one plan he knew of had been tried—and tried, too, with repeated success—and this was the engaging of a superior force to wrest the body from the surgeon's crew, a set of sturdy miscreants with whom to do battle a considerable mob was needed; but, with money grown very scarce and time so short, the thing could not be managed, and Reuben tried to tell Joan of its impossibility while they two were walking to a place in which it had been agreed they should find some one with a message from Eve, who, together with Adam, was in hiding on board the vessel Captain Triggs had spoken of. But instead of the messenger Eve herself arrived, having ventured this much with the hope of hearing something that would lessen Adam's despair and grief at learning the fate of Jerrem.

"Ah, poor sawl!" sighed Joan as Eve ended her dismal account of Adam's sad condition: "'tis only what I feared to hear of. But tell un, Eve, to lay it to his heart that Jerrem's forgived un every bit, and don't know what it is to hold a grudge to Adam; and if I speak of un, he says, 'Why, doan't I know it ain't through he, but 'cos o' my own headstrong ways and they sneaks o' revenoo-chaps?' who falsely swored away his blessed life."

"Does he seem to dread it much?" asked Eve, the sickly fears which filled her heart echoed in each whispered word.

"Not that he don't," said Joan, lifting her hand significantly to her throat: "'tis after. Oh, Eve," she gasped, "ain't it too awful to think of their cuttin' up his poor dead body into bits? Call theyselves doctors!" she burst out—"the gashly lot! I'll never let wan o' their name come nighst to me agen."

"Nothing now," said Joan—"for want o' money, too, mostly, Eve; and the guineas I've a-wasted! Oh, how the sight o' every one rises and chinks in judgment 'gainst my ears!"

"If we'd got the money," said Reuben soothingly, "there isn't time. All should be settled by to-morrow night; and if some one this minute brought the wherewithal I haven't one 'pon whom I dare to lay my hand to ask to undertake the job."

"Then 'tis no use harpin' 'pon it any more," said Joan; while Eve gave a sigh, concurring in what she said, both of them knowing well that if Reuben gave it up the thing must be hopeless indeed.

Here was another stab for Adam's wounded senses, and with a heavy heart and step Eve took her way back to him, while Reuben and Joan continued to thread the streets which took them by a circuitous road home to Knight's Passage.

But no sooner had Eve told Adam of this fresh burden laid on poor Jerrem than a new hope seemed to animate him. Something was still to be done: there yet remained an atonement which, though it cost him his life, he could strive to make to Jerrem. Throwing aside the fear of detection which had hitherto kept him skulking within the little vessel, he set off that night to find the Mary Jane, and, regardless of the terrible shame which had filled him at the bare thought of confronting Triggs or any of his crew, he cast himself upon their mercy, beseeching them as men, and Cornishmen, to do this much for their brother-sailor in his sad need and last extremity; and his appeal and the nature of it had so touched these quickly-stirred hearts that, forgetful of the contempt and scorn with which, in the light of an informer, they had hitherto viewed Adam, they had one and all sworn to aid him to their utmost strength, and to bring to the rescue certain others of whom they knew, by whose help and assistance success would be more probable. Therefore it was that, two days before the morning of his sentenced death, Eve was able to put into Reuben's hand a scrap of paper on which was written Adam's vow to Jerrem that, though his own life paid the forfeit for it, Jerrem's body should be rescued and saved.

Present as Jerrem's fears had been to Reuben's eyes and to his mind, until he saw the transport of agitated joy which this assurance gave to Jerrem he had never grasped a tithe of the terrible dread which during the last few days had taken such complete hold of the poor fellow's inmost thoughts. Now, as he read again and again the words which Adam had written, a torrent of tears burst forth from his eyes: in an ecstasy of relief he caught Joan to his heart, wrung Reuben's hand, and from that moment began to gradually compose himself into a state of greater ease and seeming tranquillity. Confident, through the unbroken trust of years, that Adam's promise, once given, might be implicitly relied on, Jerrem needed no further assurance than these few written words to satisfy him that every human effort would be made on his behalf; and the knowledge of this, and that old comrades would be near, waiting to unite their strength for his body's rescue, was in itself a balm and consolation. He grew quite loquacious about the crestfallen authorities, the surprise of the crowd and the disappointment of the ruffianly mob deprived of their certain prey; while the two who listened sat with a tightening grip upon their hearts, for when these things should come to be the life of him who spoke them would have passed away, and the immortal soul have flown from out that perishable husk on which his last vain thoughts were still being centred.

Poor Joan! The time had yet to come when she would spend herself with many a sad regret and sharp upbraiding that this and that had not been said and done; but now, her spirit swallowed up in desolation and sunk beneath the burden of despair, she sat all silent close by Jerrem's side, covering his hands with many a mute caress, yet never daring to lift up her eyes to look into his face without a burst of grief sweeping across to shake her like a reed. Jerrem could eat and drink, but Joan's lips never tasted food. A fever seemed to burn within and fill her with its restless torment: the beatings of her throbbing heart turned her first hot, then cold, as each pulse said the time to part was hurrying to its end.

By Jerrem's wish, Joan was not told that on the morning of his death to Reuben alone admittance to him had been granted: therefore when the eve of that morrow came, and the time to say farewell actually arrived, the girl was spared the knowledge that this parting was more than the shadow of that last good-bye which so soon would have to be said for ever. Still, the sudden change in Jerrem's face pierced her afresh and broke down that last barrier of control over a grief she could subdue no longer. In vain the turnkeys warned them that time was up and Joan must go. Reuben entreated too that they should say good-bye: the two but clung together in more desperate necessity, until Reuben, seeing that further force would be required, stepped forward, and stretching out his hand found it caught at by Jerrem and held at once with Joan's, while in words from which all strength of tone seemed to die away Jerrem whispered, "Reuben, if ever it could come to pass that when I'm gone you and she might find it some day in your minds to stand together—one—say 'twas the thing he wished for most before he went." Then, with a feeble effort to push her into Reuben's arms, he caught her back, and straining her close to his heart again cried out, "Oh, Joan, but death comes bitter when it means good-bye to such as you!" Another cry, a closer strain, then Jerrem's arms relax; his hold gives way, and Joan falls staggering back; the door is opened—shut; the struggle is past, and ere their sad voices can come echoing back Jerrem and Joan have looked their last in life.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

When Reuben found that to be a witness of Jerrem's death Joan must take her stand among the lawless mob who made holiday of such sad scenes as this, his decision was that the idea was untenable. Jerrem too had a strong desire that Joan should not see him die; and although his avoidance of anything that directly touched upon that dreaded moment had kept him from openly naming his wishes, the hints dropped satisfied Reuben that the knowledge of her absence would be a matter of relief to him. But how get Joan to listen to his scruples when her whole mind was set on keeping by Jerrem's side until hope was past and life was over?

"Couldn't 'ee get her to take sommat that her wouldn't sleep off till 'twas late?" Jerrem had said after Reuben had told him that the next morning he must come alone; and the suggestion made was seized on at once by Reuben, who, under pretence of getting something to steady her shaken nerves, procured from the apothecary near a simple draught, which Joan in good faith swallowed. And then, Reuben having promised in case she fell asleep to awaken her at the appointed hour, the poor soul, worn out by sorrow and fatigue, threw herself down, dressed as she was, upon the bed, and soon was in a heavy sleep, from which she did not rouse until well into the following day, when some one moving in the room made her start up. For a moment she seemed dazed: then, rubbing her eyes as if to clear away those happy visions which had come to her in sleep, she gazed about until Reuben, who had at first drawn back, came forward to speak to her. "Why, Reuben," she cried, "how's this? Have I been dreamin', or what? The daylight's come, and, see, the sun!"

And here she stopped, her parched mouth half unclosed, as fears came crowding thick upon her mind, choking her further utterance. One look at Reuben's face had told the tale; and though she did not speak again, the ashen hue that overspread and drove all color from her cheeks proclaimed to him that she had guessed the truth.

"'Twas best, my dear," he said, "that you should sleep while he went to his rest."

But the unlooked-for shock had been too great a strain on body and mind, alike overtaxed and weak, and, falling back, Joan lay for hours as one unconscious and devoid of life. And Reuben sat silent by her side, paying no heed as hour by hour went by, till night had come and all around was dark: then some one came softly up the stairs and crept into the room, and Eve's whispered "Reuben!" broke the spell.

Yes, all had gone well. The body, rescued and safe, was now placed within a house near to the churchyard in which Eve's mother lay: there it was to be buried. And there, the next day, the commonplace event of one among many funerals being over, the four thus linked by fate were brought together, and Adam and Joan again stood face to face. Heightened by the disguise which in order to avoid detection he was obliged to adopt, the alteration in Adam was so complete that Joan stood aghast before this seeming stranger, while a fresh smart came into Adam's open wounds as he gazed upon the changed face of the once comely Joan.

A terrible barrier—such as, until felt, they had never dreaded—seemed to have sprung up to separate and divide these two. Involuntarily they shrank at each other's touch and quailed beneath each other's gaze, while each turned with a feeling of relief to him and to her who now constituted their individual refuge and support. Yes, strange as it seemed to Adam and unaccountable to Joan, she clung to Reuben, he to Eve, before whom each could be natural and unrestrained, while between their present selves a great gulf had opened out which naught but time or distance could bridge over.

So Adam went back to his hiding-place, Reuben to his shop, and Joan and Eve to the old home in Knight's Passage, as much lost amid the crowd of thronged London as if they had already taken refuge in that far-off land which had now become the goal of Adam's thoughts and keen desires. Eve, too, fearing some fresh disaster, was equally anxious for their departure, and most of Reuben's spare time was swallowed up in making the necessary arrangements. A passage in his name for himself and his wife was secured in a ship about to start. At the last moment this passage was to be transferred to Adam and Eve, whose marriage would take place a day or two before the vessel sailed. The transactions on which the successful fulfilment of these various events depended were mostly conducted by Reuben, aided by the counsels of Mr. Osborne and the assistance of Captain Triggs, whose good-fellowship, no longer withheld, made him a valuable coadjutor.

Fortunately, Triggs's vessel, through some detention of its cargo, had remained in London for an unusually long time, and now, when it did sail, Joan was to take passage in it back to Polperro.

"Awh, Reuben, my dear," sighed Joan one evening as, Eve having gone to see Adam, the two walked out toward the little spot where Jerrem lay, and as they went discussed Joan's near departure, "I wish to goodness you'd pack up yer alls and come 'longs to Polperro home with me: 't 'ud be ever so much better than stayin' to this gashly London, where there ain't a blow o' air that's fresh to draw your breath in."

"How not have 'ee?" exclaimed Joan. "Why, if so be I thought you'd come I'd never stir from where I be until I got the promise of it."

"Why, iss there would—oceans," returned Joan. "Laws! I knaws clocks by scores as hasn't gone for twenty year and more. Us has got two ourselves, that wan won't strike and t' other you can't make tick."

Reuben smiled: then, growing more serious, he said, "But do you know, Joan, that yours isn't the first head it's entered into about going down home with you? I've had a mind toward it myself many times of late."

"Why, then, do come to wance," said Joan excitedly; "for so long as they leaves me the house there'll be a home with me and Uncle Zebedee, and I'll go bail for the welcome you'll get gived 'ee there."

Reuben was silent, and Joan, attributing this to some hesitation over the plan, threw further weight into her argument by saying, "There's the chapel too, Reuben. Only to think o' the sight o' good you could do praichin' to 'em and that! for, though it didn't seem to make no odds before, I reckons there's not a few that wants, like me, to be told o' some place where they treats folks better than they does down here below."

"Joan," said Reuben after a pause, speaking out of his own thoughts and paying no heed to the words she had been saying, "you know all about Eve and me, don't you?"

"How I've felt about her, so that I believe the hold she's got on me no one on earth will ever push her off from."

"Awh, poor sawl!" sighed Joan compassionately: "I've often had a feelin' for what you'd to bear, and for this reason too—that I knaws myself what 'tis to be ousted from the heart you'm cravin' to call yer own."

"Why, yes, of course," said Reuben briskly: "you were set down for Adam once, weren't you?"

"Awh, and there's they to Polperro—mother amongst 'em, too—who'll tell 'ee now that if Eve had never shawed her face inside the place Adam 'ud ha' had me, after all. But there! all that's past and gone long ago."

There was another pause, which Reuben broke by saying suddenly, "Joan, should you take it very out of place if I was to ask you whether after a bit you could marry me? I dare say now such a thought never entered your head before."

"Well, iss it has," said Joan; 'and o' late, ever since that blessed dear spoke they words he did, I've often fell to wonderin' if so be 't 'ud ever come to pass. Not, mind, that I should ha' bin put out if 't had so happened that you'd never axed me, like, but still I thought sometimes as how you might, and then agen I says, 'Why should he, though?'"

"There's many a reason why I should ask you, Joan," said Reuben, smiling at her unconscious frankness, "though very few why you should consent to take a man whose love another woman has flung away."

"Awh, so far as that goes, the both of us is takin' what's another's orts, you knaw," smiled Joan.

"Iss, so far as I goes 'tis, with all my heart." Then as she took his hand a change came to her April face, and looking at him through her swimming eyes she said, "And very grateful too I'm to 'ee, Reuben, for I don't knaw by neither another wan who'd take up with a poor heart-broke maid like me, and they she's looked to all her life disgraced by others and theyselves."

Reuben pressed the hand that Joan had given to him, and drawing it through his arm the two walked on in silence, pondering over the unlooked-for ending to the strange events they both had lately passed through. Joan's heart was full of a contentment which made her think, "How pleased Adam will be! and won't mother be glad! and Uncle Zebedee 'ull have somebody to look to now and keep poor Jonathan straight and put things a bit in order;" while Reuben, bewildered by the thoughts which crowded to his mind, semed unable to disentangle them. Could it be possible that he, Reuben May, was going down to live at Polperro, a place whose very name he had once taught himself to abominate?—that he could be willingly casting his lot amid a people whom he had but lately branded as thieves, outcasts, reprobates? Involuntarily his eyes turned toward Joan, and a nimbus in which perfect charity was intertwined with great love and singleness of heart seemed to float about her head and shed its radiance on her face; and its sight was to Reuben as the first touch of love, for he was smitten with a sense of his own unworthiness, and, though he did not speak, he asked that a like spirit to that which filled Joan might rest upon himself.

That evening Eve was told the news which Joan and Reuben had to tell, and as she listened the mixed emotions which swelled within her perplexed her not a little, for even while feeling that the two wishes she most desired—Joan cared for and Reuben made happy—were thus fulfilled, her heart seemed weighted with a fresh disaster: another wrench had come to part her from that life soon to be nothing but a lesson and a memory. And Adam, when he was told, although the words he said were honest words and true, and truly he did rejoice, there yet within him lay a sadness born of regret at rendering up that love so freely given to him, now to be garnered for another's use; and henceforth every word that Reuben spoke, each promise that he gave, though all drawn forth by Adam's own requests, stuck every one a separate thorn within his heart, sore with the thought of being an outcast from the birthplace that he loved and cut off from those whose faces now he yearned to look upon.

No vision opened up to Adam's view the prosperous life the future held in store—no still small voice then whispered in his ear that out of this sorrow was to come the grace which made success sit well on him and Eve; and though, as years went by and intercourse became more rare, their now keen interest in Polperro and its people was swallowed up amid the many claims a busy life laid on them both, each noble action done, each good deed wrought, by Adam, and by Eve too, bore on it the unseen impress of that sore chastening through which they now were passing.

Out of the savings which from time to time Adam had placed with Mr. Macey enough was found to pay the passage-money out and keep them from being pushed by any pressing want on landing.

Already, at the nearest church, Adam and Eve had been married, and nothing now remained but to get on board the vessel, which had already dropped down the river and was to sail the following morning, Triggs had volunteered to put them and their possessions safely on board, and Reuben and Joan, with Eve's small personal belongings, were to meet them at the steps, close by which the Mary Jane's boat would be found waiting. The time had come when Adam could lay aside his disguise and appear in much the same trim he usually did when at Polperro.

Joan was the first to spy him drawing near, and holding out both her hands to greet the welcome change she cried, "Thank the Lord for lettin' me see un his ownself wance more!—Awh, Adam! awh, my dear! 't seems as if I could spake to 'ee now and know 'ee for the same agen.—Look to un, Reuben! you don't wonder now what made us all so proud of un at home."

Reuben smiled, but Adam shook his head: the desolation of this sad farewell robbed him of every other power but that of draining to the dregs its bitterness. During the whole of that long day Eve and he had hardly said one word, each racked with thoughts to which no speech gave utterance. Mechanically each asked about the things the other one had brought, and seemed to find relief in feigning much anxiety about their safety, until Triggs, fearing they might outstay their time, gave them a hint it would not do to linger long; and, with a view to their leavetaking being unconstrained, he volunteered to take the few remaining things down to the boat and stow them safely away, adding that when they should hear his whistle given it would be the signal that they must start without delay.

The spot they had fixed on for the starting-place was one but little used and well removed from all the bustle of a more frequented landing. A waterman lounged here and there, but seeing the party was another's fare vouchsafed to them no further interest. The ragged mud-imps stayed their noisy pranks to scrutinize the country build of Triggs's boat, leaving the four, unnoticed, to stand apart and see each in the other's face the reflection of that misery which filled his own.

Parting for ever! no hopes, no expectations, no looking forward, nothing to whisper "We shall meet again"! "Good-bye for ever" was written on each face and echoed in each heart. Words could not soothe that suffering which turned this common sorrow into an individual torture, which each must bear unaided and alone; and so they stood silent and with outward calm, knowing that on that brink of woe the quiver of an eye might overthrow their all but lost control.

The sun was sinking fast; the gathering mists of eventide were rising to shadow all around; the toil of day was drawing to its close; labor was past, repose was near at hand; its spirit seemed to hover around and breathe its calm upon those worn, tried souls. Suddenly a shrill whistle sounds upon their ears and breaks the spell: the women start and throw their arms around each other's necks. Adam stretches his hand out, and Reuben grasps it in his own.

"Reuben, good-bye. God deal with you as you shall deal with those you're going among!"

"Joan!" and Adam's voice sounds hard and strained, and then a choking comes into his throat, and, though he wants to tell her what he feels, to ask her to forgive all he has made her suffer, he cannot speak a word. Vainly he strives, but not a sound will come; and these two, whose lives, so grown together, are now to be rent asunder, stand stricken and dumb, looking from out their eyes that last farewell which their poor quivering lips refuse to utter.

"God bless and keep you, Eve!" Reuben's voice is saying as, taking her hands within his own, he holds them to his heart and for a moment lets them rest there.—"Oh, friends," he says, "there is a land where partings never come: upon that shore may we four meet again!"

Then for a moment all their hands are clasped and held as in a vice, and then they turn, and two are gone and two are left behind.

And now the two on land stand with their eyes strained on the boat, which slowly fades away into the vapory mist which lies beyond: then Reuben turns and takes Joan by the hand, and silently the two go back together, while Adam and Eve draw near the ship which is to take them to that far-off shore to which Hope's torch, rekindled, now is pointing.

Good-bye is said to Triggs, the boat pushes off, and the two left standing side by side watch it away until it seems a speck, which suddenly is swallowed up and disappears from sight. Then Adam puts his arm round Eve, and as they draw closer together from out their lips come sighing forth the whispered words, "Fare-well! farewell!"

OUR GRANDFATHERS' TEMPLES.

If on the fourteenth day of May, 1607, when the Rev. Robert Hunt celebrated the first sacramental service of the Church of England on American soil, there had suddenly sprung up at Jamestown the pillars and arches of a fully-equipped cathedral, whose stones had remained to tell us of the days when they first enshrined the worship of the earliest colonists, our most ancient Christian church would still be less than three hundred years old—a hopelessly modern structure in comparison with many an abbey and cathedral of England and the Continent.

In a comparative sense, we look in vain for old churches in a new country, for in our architecture, if nowhere else, we are still a land of yesterday, where age seems venerable only when we refuse to look beyond the ocean, and where even a short two hundred years have taken away the larger share of such perishable ecclesiastical monuments as we once had. Our grandfathers' temples, whether they stood on the banks of the James River or on the colder shores of Massachusetts Bay, were built cheaply for a scanty population: their material was usually wood, sometimes unshapen logs, and their sites, chosen before the people and the country had become fitted to each other, were afterward often needed for other uses. So long as London tears down historic churches, even in the present days of fashionable devotion to the old and the quaint, and so long as the Rome of 1880 is still in danger from vandal hands, we need only be surprised that the list of existing American churches of former days is so long and so honorable as it is. If we have no York Minster or St. Alban's Abbey or Canterbury Cathedral, we may still turn to an Old South, a St. Paul's and a Christ Church. It is something, after all, to be able to count our most famous old churches on the fingers of both hands, and then to enumerate by tens those other temples whose legacy from bygone times is scarcely less rich.

The American churches of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were plain structures, unpretending without and unadorned within; and this for other reasons than the poverty of the community, the lack of the best building-materials, and the absence both of architects and of artistic tastes. It was a simple ritual which most of them were to house, and the absence of an ornate service demanded the absence of ornamentation, which would be meaningless because it would symbolize nothing. The influence of the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Baptists in Rhode Island, the Dutch Reformed in New York, the Lutherans and Presbyterians in the Middle and Southern colonies, and the Friends in Pennsylvania, whatever their denominational differences, was a unit in favor of the utmost simplicity consistent with decency and order; and though there was a difference between Congregational churches like the Old South in Boston and the Friends' meeting-houses in Philadelphia, the difference was far less marked than that existing between the new and old buildings of the Old South society, which the modern tourist may compare at his leisure in the Boston of to-day. Even the Episcopalians shared, or deferred to, the prevailing spirit of the time: they put no cross upon their Christ Church in Cambridge, nearly a hundred and thirty years after the settlement of the place, lest they should offend the tastes of their neighbors. The Methodists, the "Christians," the Swedenborgians, the Unitarians and the Universalists were not yet, and the Moravians were a small and little-understood body in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Nearly all the colonists, of whatever name, brought from Europe a conscientious love of religious simplicity and unpretentiousness: for the most part, the English-speaking settlers were dissenters from the Church which owned all the splendid architectural monuments of the country whence they came; and it was not strange that out of their religious thought grew churches that symbolized the sturdy qualities of a faith which, right or wrong, had to endure exile and poverty and privation—privation not only from social wealth, but from the rich store of ecclesiastical traditions which had accumulated for centuries in cathedral choirs and abbey cloisters.

Therefore, the typical New England meeting-house of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may perhaps be taken as the best original example of what America has to show in the way of church-building. To be sure, its cost was modest, its material was perishable wood, its architectural design was often a curious medley of old ideas and new uses, and even its few ornaments were likely to be devoid of the beauty their designers fancied that they possessed. But it was, at any rate, an honest embodiment of a sincere idea—the idea of "freedom to worship God;" and it was adapted to the uses which it was designed to serve. It stood upon a hill, a square box with square windows cut in its sides—grim without and grim within, save as the mellowing seasons toned down its ruder aspects, and green grass and waving boughs framed it as if it were a picture. Within, the high pulpit, surmounted by a sounding-board, towered over the square-backed pews, facing a congregation kept orderly by stern tithing-man and sterner tradition. There was at first neither organ nor stove nor clock. The shivering congregation warmed itself as best it might by the aid of foot-stoves; the parson timed his sermon by an hour-glass; and in the singing-seats the fiddle and the bass—viol formed the sole link (and an unconscious one) between the simple song-service of the Puritan meeting-house and the orchestral accompaniments to the high masses of European cathedrals. The men still sat at the end of the pew—a custom which had grown up in the days when they went to the meeting-house gun in hand, not knowing when they should be hastily summoned forth to fight the Indians. In the earliest days the drum was the martial summons to worship, but soon European bells sent forth their milder call. Behind the meeting-houses were the horse-sheds for the use of distant comers—a species of ecclesiastical edifice still adorning the greater number of American country churches, and not likely to disappear for many a year to come.

In the elder day there was no such difference as now between city and country churches, for the limitations of money and material bore upon both more evenly. But with growing wealth and the choice of permanent locations for building came brick and stone; English architects received orders; and the prevailing revival led by Sir Christopher Wren and his followers dotted the Northern colonies with more pretentious churches, boasting spires not wholly unlike those which were then piercing London skies. With costlier churches of permanent material there came also the English fashion of burial in churchyards and chancel-vaults, and mural tablets and horizontal tombstones were laid into the mortar which has been permitted, in not a few cases, to preserve them for our own eyes.

But our oldest churches, as a rule, have been made more notable by the political events with which they have been associated than by the honorable interments that have taken place beneath their shadow. Their connection with the living has endeared them to our memories more than their relations to the dead. Not because it is Boston's Westminster Abbey or Temple Church has the Old South been permitted to come down to us as the best example of the Congregational meeting-houses of the eighteenth century, but because of the Revolutionary episodes of which it was the scene, and which are commemorated in the stone tablet upon its front. The Old South Church, built in 1729, belonged to the common class of brick structures which replaced wooden ones; for, like Solomon's temple, its predecessor had been built of cedar sixty years before. The convenient location of the Old South and the capaciousness of its interior brought to it the colonial meetings which preceded the Revolution, and especially that famous gathering of December 13, 1773, whence marched the disguised patriots to destroy the taxed tea in Boston harbor. The convenient access and spacious audience-room of the old church also led to its occupancy as a riding-school for British cavalry in 1775. Even now, in the quiet days following the recent excitement attending its escape from fire and from sale and demolition, the ancient church still finds occasional use as a place for lectures and public gatherings. Its chequered days within the past decade have at least served to make its appearance and its part in colonial history more familiar to us, and have done something to save other churches from the destruction which might have overtaken them.

As the Old South stands as the brick-and-mortar enshrinement of the best Puritan thought of the eighteenth century, so King's Chapel in Boston, built twenty-five years later, represents the statelier social customs and the more conservative political opinions of the early New England Episcopalians. Its predecessor, of wood, was the first building of the Church of England in New England. The present King's Chapel, with its sombre granite walls and its gently-lighted interior, suggests to the mind an impression of independence of time rather than of age. One reads on the walls, to be sure, such high-sounding old names as Vassall and Shirley and Abthorp, and on a tomb in the old graveyard near by one sees the inscriptions commemorating Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts and his son John, governor of Connecticut. But King's Chapel seems the home of churchly peace and gracious content; so that, as we sit within its quaint three-sided pews, it is hard to remember the stormy scenes in which it has had part. Its Tory congregation, almost to a man, fled from its walls when the British general, Gage, evacuated Boston; the sterner worshippers of the Old South occupied its Anglican pews for a time; and later it was the scene of a theological movement which caused, in 1785, the first Episcopal church in New England—or rather its remnant—to become the first Unitarian society in America.

In Salem street, Boston, left almost alone at the extreme north end of the city, is Christ Church, built in 1723. Its tower contains the oldest chime of bells in America, and from it, according to some antiquarians, was hung the lantern which on April 18, 1775, announced to the waiting Paul Revere, and through him to the Middlesex patriots in all the surrounding country, that General Gage had despatched eight hundred men to seize and destroy the military stores gathered at Concord by the Massachusetts Committees of Safety and Supplies. Thus opened the Revolutionary war, for the battles at Lexington and Concord took place only the next day.

The white-spired building at the corner of Park and Tremont streets, Boston, known as the Park Street Church, is hardly so old as its extended fame would lead one to suppose, for it dates no farther back than the first quarter of the present century. Its position as the central point of the great theological controversies of 1820 in the Congregational churches of Eastern Massachusetts has made it almost as familiar as the "Saybrook Platform." The meeting-house was built at the time when the greater part of the Boston churches were modifying their creeds, and when the Old South itself would have changed its denominational relations but for the vote of a State official, cast to break a tie. Its inelegance and rawness are excused in part by its evident solidity and sincerity of appearance. In its shadow rest Faneuil, Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

Boston has other churches which, like the Park Street, are neither ancient nor modern, the Hollis Street Church and the First Church in Roxbury being good examples. New England has hardly a better specimen of the old-fashioned meeting-house on a hill than this old weather-beaten wooden First Church in Roxbury, the home of a parish to which John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians, once ministered. Another quaint memorial of the old colonial days survives in the current name, "Meeting-house Hill," of a part of the annexed Dorchester district of Boston.

St. Paul's Church, on Boston Common, was the first attempt of the Episcopalians of the city, after the loss of King's Chapel, to build a temple of imposing appearance. Controversies theological and architectural rose with its walls, and young Edward Everett, if report is to be credited, was the author of a tract, still in circulation, in which its design and its principles formed the text for a criticism on the religion to whose furtherance it was devoted. Standing as it does next the United States court-house, the uses of the two buildings seem to have been confused in the builders' minds; for there is something ecclesiastical in the appearance of the hall of justice, which was originally a Masonic temple, and something judicial in the face of the church.

In Cambridge, three miles from Boston, the eighteenth-century Episcopalians not only possessed a church, but also displayed to unwilling eyes a veritable "Bishop's Palace"—the stately house of the Rev. East Apthorp, "missionary to New England" and reputed candidate for the bishopric of that region. Mr. Apthorp was rich and influential, but his social and ecclesiastical lot was not an easy one, and he soon returned to England discouraged, leaving his "palace" to come down to the view of our own eyes, which find in it nothing more dangerous to republican institutions than is to be discovered in a hundred other of the three-story wooden houses which used so to abound in Massachusetts. Christ Church, Cambridge, in which the bishop in posse used to minister, and which stands opposite Harvard College, was designed by the architect of King's Chapel, and has always been praised for a certain shapely beauty of proportion. For the last twenty years it has boasted the only chime of bells in Cambridge, whose quiet shades of a Sunday evening have been sweetly stirred by the music struck from them by the hands of a worthy successor of the mediæval bell-ringers, to whom bells are books, and who can tell the story of every ounce of bell-metal within twenty miles of his tower. It was of this church, with its Unitarian neighbor just across the ancient churchyard where so many old Harvard and colonial worthies sleep, that Holmes wrote:

The suburbs of Boston are not poor in churches of the eighteenth, or even of the seventeenth, century. The oldest church in New England—the oldest, indeed, in the Northern States—still standing in Salem, was built in 1634, and its low walls and tiny-paned windows have shaken under the eloquence of Roger Williams. It has not been used for religious purposes since 1672. In Newburyport is one of the American churches, once many but now few, in which George Whitefield preached, and beneath it the great preacher lies buried. A curious little reminder of St. Paul's, London, is found here in the shape of a whispering gallery. Another landmark is the venerable meeting-house of the Unitarian society in Hingham, popularly known as the "Old Ship." Built in 1681, it was a Congregational place of worship for nearly a century and a half. Its sturdiness and rude beauty form a striking illustration of the lasting quality of good, sound wooden beams as material for the sanctuary. Preparations have already been undertaken for celebrating the second centennial of the ancient building. Nearly as old, and still more picturesque with its quaint roof, its venerable hanging chandelier of brass, its sober old reredos and its age-hallowed communion-service, is St. Michael's, Marblehead, built in 1714, where faithful rectors have endeavored to reach six generations of the fishermen and aristocracy of the rocky old port. The antiquarian who has seen these old temples and asks for others on the New England coast will turn with scarcely less interest to St. John's, Portsmouth; the forsaken Trinity Church, Wickford, Rhode Island, built in 1706; or Trinity, Newport, where Bishop Berkeley used to preach. In Newport, indeed, one may also speculate beneath the Old Mill on the fanciful theory that the curious little structure was a baptistery long before the days of Columbus—the most ancient Christian temple on this side the sea.

It is not uncommon to find comparatively new American churches to which their surroundings or their sober material or their quiet architecture have given a somewhat exaggerated appearance of age. Such is the case with the curious row of three churches—the North and Centre Congregational and Trinity Episcopalstanding side by side on the New Haven green in a fashion unknown elsewhere in our own country. Any one of these three churches looks quite as old as that shapely memorial of pre-Revolutionary days, St. Paul's Chapel, New York, built in 1766 in the prevailing fashion of the London churches. As with St. Paul's, there was also no marked appearance of antiquity in the North Dutch Church, New York, removed in recent years. The poor old Middle Dutch Church in the same city, with its ignoble modern additions and its swarm of busy tenants, would have looked old if it could have done so, but for modern New Yorkers it has no more venerable memory, in its disfigurement and disguise, than that furnished by its use, for a time, as the city post-office.

New York is poor in old buildings, and especially poor in old churches. Besides St. Paul's, the comparatively modern St. John's Chapel and the John Street Methodist Church, it really has nothing to show to the tourist in search of ancient places of worship. The vicinity can boast a few colonial temples—the quaint old Dutch church at Tarrytown, dear to the readers of Irving; the Tennent Church on the battle-ground of Monmouth, New Jersey, with its blood-stains of wounded British soldiers; and a charmingly plain little Friends' meeting-house, no bigger than a small parlor, near Squan, New Jersey, being the most strikingly attractive. In Newark one notes the deep-set windows and solid stone walls of the old First Presbyterian Church, and the quiet plainness of Trinity Episcopal Church, which looks like Boston's King's Chapel, with the addition of a white wooden spire.

Philadelphia is richer than any other American city in buildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the older streets it is a frequent sight to see quaint little houses of imported English brick modestly laid in alternate red and black, curiously like the latest modern fashion. The ample room for growth possessed by this widespreading city has saved many an ancient house for present use as dwelling or store. One is not surprised, therefore, to find on the old streets near the Delaware three churches of weather-stained brick which seem trying to make the piety of an elder age useful to the worshippers of to-day. All three of these churches—Gloria Dei, Christ and St. Peter's—now have their chief work among the poor people whom one always finds in a business quarter near the river-front, but each attracts, by its old-time associations and its modern missionary spirit, a goodly circle of attendants from the western parts of the city. Gloria Dei Church, the oldest of the three, was built in 1700 by Swedish Lutherans on the spot where the Swedish predecessors of the Friends had located their fortified log church twenty-three years earlier. Its bell and communion-service and some of its ornamental woodwork were presented by the king of Sweden. It is surrounded by the usual graveyard, in which lies Alexander Wilson, the lover and biographer of birds, who asked to be buried here, in a "silent, shady place, where the birds will be apt to come and sing over my grave." The Old Swedes' Church retained its Lutheran connection until recent years, when it became an Episcopal parish.

Christ Church and St. Peter's were formerly united in one parochial government, and to the two parishes ministered William White, the first Church-of-England minister in Pennsylvania, the friend and pastor of Washington, the chaplain of Congress and one of the first two bishops of the American Church. The present structure of Christ Church was begun in 1727, but not finished for some years. The parish is older, dating from 1695. Queen Anne gave it a communion-service in 1708. In 1754 came from England its still-used chime of bells, which were laboriously transferred during the Revolution to Allentown, Pennsylvania, lest they should fall into British hands and be melted up for cannon. At Christ Church a pew was regularly occupied by Washington during his frequent residence in Philadelphia; and here have been seated Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and many another patriot, besides Cornwallis, Howe, André and others on the English side. Around and beneath the church are many graves covered by weather-worn stones, and on the walls of the interior there are a number of mural tablets.

St. Peter's Church was begun in 1758, and completed three years later. In quiet graciousness of appearance it is like another Christ Church, and its interior arrangements are still more quaint, the chancel being at the eastern end of the church, while the pulpit and lectern are at the western. In the adjoining churchyard is a monument to Commodore Decatur.

One cannot find in all America sweeter and quainter memorials of a gentle past—memorials still consecrated to the gracious work of the present—than the churches and other denominational houses in the old Moravian towns of Pennsylvania. At Bethlehem, as one stands in the little three-sided court on Church street and looks up at the heavy walls, the tiny dormer windows and the odd-shaped belfry which mark the "Single Sisters' House" and its wings, one may well fancy one's self, as a travelled visitor has said, in Quebec or Upper Austria. Still more quaint and quiet is Willow Square, behind this curious house, where, beneath drooping willow-boughs, one finds one's self beside the door of the old German chapel, with the little dead-house, the boys' school and the great and comparatively modern Moravian church near by. Through Willow Square leads the path to the burying-ground, where lie, beneath tall trees, long rows of neatly-kept graves, each covered with a plain flat stone, the men and the women lying on either side of the broad central path. Several of the ancient Moravian buildings date from the middle of the last century. The Widows' House stands, opposite the Single Sisters' Range, and across the street from the large church is the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies, established in 1749, and by far the oldest girls' school in the United States.

It was in 1778 that the Single Sisters gave to Pulaski that banner of crimson, silk which is commemorated in Longfellow's well-known "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns at Bethlehem." The poem, however, written in the author's early youth, and preserved for its rare beauty of language and fine choice of subject, rather than for its historical accuracy, has done much to perpetuate a wrong idea of the Moravian spirit and ritual. Mr. Longfellow writes in his first stanza

But the Moravians know nothing of chancels, tapers, cowled heads, censers, altars or nuns. Their faith has always been the simplest Protestantism, their churches are precisely such as Methodists or Baptists use, and their ritual is plainer than that of the most "evangelical" Episcopal parish. Their "single sisters' houses," "widows' houses" and "single brethren's houses"—the last long disused—are simply arrangements for social convenience or co-operative housekeeping. Mr. Longfellow's poetic description applies to the Moravian ceremonial no more accurately than to a Congregational prayer-meeting or a Methodist "love-feast."

Beside the deep and silent waters of the James River in Virginia, undisturbed by any sound save the flight of birds and the rustle of leaves, stands all that is left of the first church building erected by Englishmen in America. A good part of the tower remains, the arched doorways being still intact, and it seems a pitiable misfortune that the honestly-laid bricks of the venerable building could not have come down to our day. But, as it is, this ancient square block of brick forms our one pre-eminent American ruin. Nothing could be a more solemn monument of the past than the lonely tower, surrounded by thick branches and underbrush and looking down upon the few crumbling gravestones still left at its base. Jamestown, long abandoned as a village, has now become an island, the action of the waters having at last denied it the remaining solace of connection with the mainland of the Old Dominion, of whose broad acres it was once the chief town and the seat of government—the forerunner of all that came to America at the hands of English settlers.

In the slumberous old city of Williamsburg, three miles from Jamestown, stands the Bruton parish church, two hundred and two years old, and still the home of a parish of sixty communicants. Built of brick, with small-paned windows and wooden tower, its walls have listened to the eloquence of the learned presidents of the neighboring William and Mary College, and its floor has been honored by the stately tread of many a colonial governor, member of the legislature or Revolutionary patriot; for Williamsburg was the capital and centre of Virginia until the end of the eighteenth century, and shared whatever Virginia possessed of political or personal renown. Washington, of course, was more than once an attendant at Bruton Church, and so were Jefferson and Patrick Henry and an honorable host. In the church and in the chapel of William and Mary College—which the ambitious colonists used to think a little Westminster Abbey—was the religious home of a good share of what was stateliest or most honorable in the early colonial life of the South.

Other old churches still dot the Virginia soil—St. John's, Richmond; Pohick Church, Westmoreland county; Christ Church, Lancaster county; St. Anne's, Isle of Wight county. Their antiquities, and those of other ancient sanctuaries of the Old Dominion, have been painstakingly set forth by Bishop Meade and other zealous chroniclers, and their attractiveness is increased, in most cases—as at Jamestown—by the loneliness of their surroundings. Another old church, left in the midst of sweet country sights and gentle country sounds, is St. James's, Goose Creek, South Carolina. St. Michael's and St. Philip's at Charleston in the same State have heard the roar of hostile cannon, but have come forth unscathed. The demolished Brattle Street Church in Boston was not the only one of our sacred edifices to be wounded by cannonballs, for the exigences of the fight more than once, during the Revolution and the civil war, brought flame and destruction within the altar-rails of churches North and South.

The growth of the Roman Catholic Church in America has been so recent that it can show but few historical landmarks. The time-honored cathedral at St. Augustine, Florida, and the magnificent ruin of the San José Mission near San Antonio, Texas, and one or two weather-stained little chapels in the North-west, are nearly all the churches that bring to us the story of the priestly work of the Roman ecclesiastics during the colonial days.

We have no State Church, and the different Presidents have made a wide variety of choice in selecting their places of worship in Washington. St. John's, just opposite the White House, has been the convenient Sunday home of some of them: others have followed their convictions in Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian and other churches. But the city of Washington is itself too young to be able to boast any very ancient associations in its churches, and few of its temples have been permitted to record the names of famous occupants during a series of years. Our whole country, indeed, is a land of many denominations and a somewhat wandering population; and older cities than Washington have found one church famous for one event in its history, and another for another, rather than, in any single building, a series of notable occurrences running through the centuries. The nearest approach to the record of a succession of worthies occupying the same church-seats year after year is to be found in the chronicles of our oldest college-chapels, as, for instance, at Dartmouth, where the building containing the still-used chapel dates from 1786. But though poverty and custom unite in making our colleges conservative, their growth in numbers demands, from time to time, new and more generous accommodations for public worship; and so the little buildings of an earlier day are either torn down or kept for other and more ignoble uses, like Holden Chapel at Harvard. This quaint little structure was built in 1744, and is now used for recitation-rooms, but at one period in its career it served as the workshop of the college carpenter.

In the years since our grandfathers built their places of worship we have seen strange changes in American church buildings—changes in material, location and adaptation to ritual uses. We have had a revival of pagan temple-building in wood and stucco; we have seen Gothic cathedrals copied for the simplest Protestant uses, until humorists have suggested that congregations might find it cheaper to change their religion than their unsuitable new churches; we have ranged from four plain brick walls to vast and costly piles of marble or greenstone; we have constructed great audience-rooms for Sunday school uses alone, and have equipped the sanctuary with all culinary attachments; we have built parish-houses whose comfort the best-kept mediæval monk might envy, and we have put up evangelistic tabernacles only to find the most noted evangelists preferring to work in regular church edifices rather than in places of easy resort by the thoughtless crowd of wonder-seekers. But not all these doings have been foolish or mistaken: some of them have been most hopeful signs, and the next century will find excellent work in the church-building of our day. The Gothic and Queen Anne revivals, at their best, have promoted even more than the old-time honesty in the use of sound and sincere building-material; and not a few of our newer churches prove that our ecclesiastical architects have something more to show than experiments in fanciful "revivals" that are such only in name. We shall continue to do well so long as we worthily perpetuate the best material lesson taught by our grandfathers' temples—the lesson of downright honesty of construction and of a union between the spirit of worship and its local habitation.

WILL DEMOCRACY TOLERATE A PERMANENT CLASS OF NATIONAL OFFICE HOLDERS?

It is no doubt a public misfortune that so much of that thoughtful patriotism which, both on account of its culture and its independence, must always be valuable to the country, should have been wasted, for some time past, upon what are apparently narrow and unpractical, if not radically unsound, propositions of reform in the civil service. There is unquestionably need of reform in that direction: it would be too much to presume that in the generally imperfect state of man his methods of civil government would attain perfection; but it must be questioned whether the subject has been approached from the right direction and upon the side of the popular sympathy and understanding. At this time propositions of civil-service reform have not even the recognition, much less the comprehension, of the mass of the people. Their importance, their limitations, their possibilities, have never been demonstrated: no commanding intellectual authority has ever taken up the subject and worked it out before the eyes of the people as a problem of our national politics. It remains a question of the closet, a merely speculative proposition as to the science of government.

What, then, are the metes and bounds of this reform? How much is demanded? How much is practicable?

Not attempting a full answer to all of these questions, and intending no dogmatic treatment of any, let us give them a brief consideration from the point of view afforded by the democratic system upon which the whole political fabric of the United States is established. We are to look at our civil-service reform from that side. Whatever in it may be feasible, that much must be a work in accord with the popular feeling. It may be set down at the outset, as the first principle of the problem, that any practicable plan of organizing the public service of the United States must not only be founded upon the general consent of the people, but must also have, in its actual operation, their continual, easy and direct participation. Any scheme, no matter by what thoughtful patriot suggested, no matter upon what model shaped, no matter from what experience of other countries deduced, which does not possess these essential features can never be worth the serious attention of any one who expects to accomplish practical and enduring results.

(Possibly this may seem dogmatic, to begin with; but if we agree to treat the question as one in democratic politics, the principle stated becomes perfectly apparent.)

It must be fair, then, and for the purposes of this article not premature, to point out that the measure which is especially known as "civil-service reform," and which has been occasionally recognized in the party platforms along with other generalities, is one whose essence is the creation of a permanent office-holding class. Substantially, this is what it amounts to. A man looking forward to a place in the public service is to regard it as a life occupation, the same as if he should study for a professional career or learn a mechanical trade. Once in office, after a "competitive examination" or otherwise, he will expect to stay in: he will hold, as the Federal judges do, by a life-tenure, "during good behavior." This is now substantially the system of Great Britain, which, in the judgment of Mr. Dorman B. Eaton, is so much better than our own as to actually reduce the rate of criminality in that country, and which, he declares, only political baseness can prevent us from imitating. A change of administration there, Mr. Eaton adds, only affects a few scores of persons occupying the highest positions: the great mass of the officials live and die in their places, indifferent to the fluctuation of parliamentary majorities or the rise and fall of ministries.

A little more than half a century has passed since John Quincy Adams, unquestionably the best trained and most experienced American administrator who ever sat in the Presidency, undertook to establish in the United States almost precisely the same system as that which Great Britain now has. Admission to the places was not, it is true, by means of competitive examination, but the feature—the essential feature—of permanent tenure was present in his plan. Mr. Adams took the government from Mr. Monroe without considering any change needful: his Cabinet advisers even included three of those who had been in the Cabinet of his predecessor, and these he retained to the end, though at least one of the three, he thought, had ceased to be either friendly or faithful to him. Retaining the old officers, and reappointing them if their commissions expired, selecting new ones, in the comparatively rare cases of death, resignation or ascertained delinquency, upon considerations chiefly relating to their personal capabilities for the vacant places, Mr. Adams was patiently and faithfully engaged during the four years of his Presidency in establishing almost the precise reform of the national service which has been in recent times so strenuously urged upon us as the one great need of the nation—the administrative purification which, if effectually performed, would prove that our system of government was fit to continue in existence. Mr. Adams's plan did, indeed, seem excellent. It commanded the respect of honest but busy citizens absorbed in their private affairs and desirous that the government might be fixed, once for all, in settled grooves, so that its functions would proceed like the steady progress of the seasons. It was an attempt to run the government, as has been sometimes said, "on business principles." The President was to proceed, and did proceed, as if he had in charge some great estate which he was to manage and direct as a faithful and exact trustee. This, no one can deny, had the superficial look of most admirable administration.

But President Adams had left out of account largely what we are compelled to sedulously consider—public opinion. He had acquired most of his experience abroad, and his principal service at home, as Secretary of State, had been in a remarkably quiet time, when party movements were neither ebbing nor flowing, so that he had forgotten how strong and vigorous the democratic feeling was amongst the population of these States. This is a forgetfulness to which all men are liable who long occupy official position, and who seldom have to submit themselves to that severe and rude competitive examination which the plan of popular elections establishes. Unfortunately for him, he was not responsible to a court of chancery for the management of his trust, but to a tribunal composed of a multitude of judges. His accounts were to be passed upon not by one learned and conservative auditor guided by familiar precedents and rules of law, but a great, tumultuous popular assembly, which would approve or disapprove by a majority vote. When, therefore, it appeared to the people that he was forming a body of permanent office-holders—was recruiting a civil army to occupy in perpetuity the offices which they, the mass, had created and were taxed to pay for—the fierce, and in many respects scandalous, partisan assault which Jackson represented, if he did not direct, gathered overwhelming force. It seemed to the popular view that a narrow, an exclusive, an aristocratic system was being formed. The President appeared to be, while honestly and carefully preserving their trust from waste or loss, committing it to a control independent of them—an official body which, having a permanent tenure, would be altogether indifferent to their varying desires. Such a scheme of government was therefore no more than an attempt to stand the pyramid on its apex: Mr. Adams's administration, supported chiefly by those whose aspirations were for an honest and capable bureaucracy, and who could not or would not face the rude questionings of democracy, ended with his first four years, and went out in such a whirlwind of partisan opposition as brought in, by reaction, the infamous "spoils system" that at the end of half a century we are but partially recovered from.

To designate more particularly the great fact which had been disregarded in this notable experiment of fifty years ago, and which is apparently not sufficiently considered in the measures of reform that have been more recently pressed upon us, we may declare that the government of the United States is, as yet, the direct outcome of what may be called the political activity of the people. Whether or not, having read history, we must anticipate a time here when the many, weary of preserving their own liberties, will resign their power to a few, it is certain that no such inclination yet appears. The government is the product of the public mind and will when these are moved with reference to the subject. It is created freshly at short intervals, and the manner of the creation is seldom languid or careless, but usually earnest, intense and heated. Upon this point there has no doubt been much misapprehension. As it has happened—perhaps rather oddly—that those of our thoughtful patriots whose warnings and appeals have reached public notice have had their experiences mostly in city life, surrounded by the peculiar conditions which exist there, the conclusions they have drawn in some respects are applicable only to their own surroundings. They have discovered persons who had forgotten or did not believe that liberty could be bought only with the one currency of eternal vigilance, and coupled with these others who were too busy to attend to the active processes by which the government is from time to time renewed; and they have concluded, with fatal inaccuracy of judgment, that this exceptional disposition of a small number of persons was a type of the whole population. Nothing could be more absurdly untrue. Outside of a very limited circle no such political fatigue exists. The people generally are deeply interested in public affairs and willing to attend to their own public duties. Their concern in regard to measures, methods and candidates is seldom laid aside. The political activity to which we have called attention thus at some length is earnest, persistent and exacting.

It will be useful for the reformer of the civil service to give some study to the manifestations of this activity. He will find it one of the most marked and characteristic features in the life of the American people. If he will take the pains to examine the civil organization of the country, he will find that its roots run to every stratum of society. The number of persons interested in politics, not as a speculative subject, but as a practical and personal one, is wonderfully great. Thus, in most of the States there exists that modification of the ancient Saxon system of local action by "hundreds"—the township organization. This alone carries a healthy political movement into the farthest nook and corner of the body politic: every citizen of common sense may well be consulted in this primary activity, and every household may be interested in the question whether its results are good or bad. But besides this, simple and slightly compensated as are the positions belonging to the township, there are in every community many willing to fill them. To be a supervisor of the roads,[1] to be township constable and collector of the taxes, to audit the township accounts, to be a member of the school board, to be a justice of the peace, is an inclination—it may be a desire—entertained by many citizens; and if the ambition may seem to be a narrow one, its modesty does not make it unworthy or discreditable. But these men alone, active in the politics of townships, form a surprising array. If we consider that in Pennsylvania there are sixty-seven counties, with an average of say forty townships in each, here are twenty-six hundred and eighty townships, having each not less than ten officials, and making nearly twenty-seven thousand persons actually on duty at one time in a single State in this fundamental branch of the service. And if we estimate that besides those who are in office at least two persons are inclined and willing, if not actually desirous, to occupy the place now filled by each one—a very moderate calculation—we multiply twenty-six thousand eight hundred by three, and have over eighty thousand persons whose minds are quick and active in local politics on this one account. But we may proceed further. There are the cities and boroughs, their official business more complex and laborious, and in most cases receiving much higher compensation. The competition for these is in many instances very great: in the case of large cities we need not waste words in elaborating the fact. It is difficult to estimate the number of persons to whom the municipal corporations give place and pay compensation in the State of Pennsylvania, but five thousand is not an extravagant surmise, while it would be equally reasonable to presume that for each place occupied at least three others would be willing to fill it, so that on this account we may make a total of twenty thousand. But there are also the county offices. Besides the judicial positions, altogether honorable, held by long terms of election and receiving liberal compensation, there are in each county an average of fifteen other officials, making in the State, in round numbers, one thousand. These, again, may be multiplied by four: there are certainly three waiting aspirants for each place. But ascend now to the State system, with its several executive departments, the legislature, the charitable and penal institutions and the appointments in the gift of the governor. Great and small, these may reach one thousand (the Legislature alone, with its officers and employés, accounts for over three hundred), and certainly there are at least five persons looking toward each of the several places.

Upon such an estimate, then, of the political activities of one State we have such a showing as this:

Some allowance should be made, no doubt, for persons whose inclinations for position cover all the different fields—who may be said to be watching several holes. But we have not considered how many citizens of Pennsylvania are inclined to national positions—the Presidency, seats in Congress or some of the numerous places in the general service of the Federal government. These two classes, it is probable, would offset each other.

Subtracting, however, the odd thousands from the total stated, we may fix at one hundred thousand the number of citizens in the one State who, by reason of occupying some position of public duty or of being inclined to fill one, are actively interested in the subject of politics. This is almost exactly one-seventh of the whole number of voters in the State: it presents the fact that in every group of seven citizens there is one, presumably of more than the average in capacity and intelligence, whose mind is quick and sensitive to every question affecting political organization. We are brought thus to the same point which we reached by an observation of the township system—the fact that every part of society is permeated by the general political circulation. It is like the human organism: nerves and blood-vessels extend, with size and capacity proportioned for their work, to the most remote extremity, and the whole is alive.

Let us, however, guard strictly, at this point, against a possible misconception. It is not to be understood that these one hundred thousand citizens are simply "office-seekers," using the ordinary and offensive sense of the term. The activity in affairs which we describe is distinct from a sordid desire to grab the emoluments of office. The vast majority of the places, including all those in the townships—which, with the aspirants to them, make four-fifths of the whole—are either without any pay at all or have an amount so small as to be beneath our consideration. But a small part of the offices which we have enumerated carry emoluments sufficient to furnish a living for the most economical incumbent. The inspiration of the political interest evidenced by this one-seventh part of the citizenship is not an unworthy one at all: on the contrary, it is that essential democratic inclination without which our form of government must quickly stagnate. It would be foolish to say that no selfish motive enters into this tremendous manifestation of energy and effort (until humanity assumes a higher form the moving power of the mercenary principle must be very great), but it is fair and it is accurate to ascribe to the men in affairs a much loftier and more honorable impulse—the aspiration to share in the conduct of their own government, the unwillingness to be ignored or excluded in the administration of what is universally denominated a common trust. That they enjoy, if they do not covet, such pecuniary advantage as their places bring is reasonable, but it is true, to their credit, that they do appreciate more than this the honor that attaches to the public station and the pleasure which may be experienced in the discharge of its conspicuous duties.

Let us presume that even this imperfect study of the political activities of a single State may present some conception of the tremendous force and energy that go to the making, year by year, of the various branches of our government. Certainly, any student of this field may accept with respect the admonition that there is no languor, no fatigue, no feeling of genteel disgust with politics, in what has thus been presented him. If, then, his plan of reorganization for the civil service is intended to be set up without consulting the popular inclination, or possibly even in opposition to it, he may well stand hesitant as to his likelihood of success. The question may confront him at once: Is the organization of a permanent official class in the administration of the general government likely to accord with the desires of the people? And we may add, Is it consistent with the general character of our form of government? Is it not attended by conclusive objections?

It is not the purpose of this article to attempt answering these questions fully. We do not propose to throw ourselves across the path of those undoubtedly sincere, and probably wise, students of this subject who have arrived at the positive conclusion that to establish a permanent tenure for the great body of the national office-holders, and to appoint to vacancies among them upon the tests of a competitive or other examination, is the panacea for all our public disorders, the regenerative process which will lift our whole system into a higher and purer atmosphere. We do not say that these gentlemen may not be right, but we are willing to examine the subject.

Upon viewing, then, the tremendous popular activity in local and State affairs—and we must reflect that there is "more politics to the square foot" in some of the newer States than there is in Pennsylvania—the inquiry is natural whether this stops short of all national politics. Certainly it does not. The offices in the general government, though their importance and their influence are usually overestimated, are a great object of attention with the whole country. The vehement democratic movement toward them that marked the time of Jackson is still apparent, though it proceeds with diminished force and is regulated and tempered by the strong protest which has been made against the scandals of the "spoils system," and against the theory that government by parties must be a continual struggle for plunder. It is noticeable that no administration has ever really attempted the formation of an irremovable body of officials. No party has ever yet explicitly declared itself in favor of such a policy. No actual leader of any party, bearing the responsibility of its success or failure in the elections, has ever yet sincerely and persistently advocated the measure. None wish to undertake so tremendous a task. He would indeed be a powerful orator who could carry a popular gathering with him in favor of the proposition that hereafter the holding of office was to be made more exclusive—that the people were to put away from themselves, by a renunciation of their own powers, the expectancy of occupying a great part of the public places. Rare as may be the persuasive ability of the true stump-orator, and serene as his confidence may be in his powers, there would be but few volunteers to enter a campaign upon such a platform as that. It would be a forlorn hope indeed.

The view of the people undoubtedly is (1) that the public places are common property; (2) that any one may aspire to fill them; and (3) that the elevation to them is properly the direct or nearly direct result of election. The elective principle is democratic. It has been, since the beginning of the government, steadily consuming all other methods of making public officers. In most States the appointing power of the governor, which years ago was usually large, has been stripped to the uttermost. It is thirty years in Pennsylvania since even the judiciary became elective by the people. And in those States—of which Delaware furnishes an example—where most of the county officers are still the appointees of the governor, the tendency to control his action by a display of the popular wish—such an array of petitions, etc. as amounts to a polling of votes—is unmistakable. The governor is moved, obviously, by the people. And if to some this general tendency toward the elective idea seems dangerous, it must be answered that it is not really so if the people are in fact capable of self-government. Conceding this as the foundation of our system, we cannot, at this point and that, expect to interpose a guardianship over their expression.

To the permanency of tenure it is that we have given, and expect will generally be given, most attention. This is the essence of the proposed "reform." The manner of selecting new appointees is of no great consequence if the vacancies are to occur so seldom as must be the case where incumbents hold for life. Whether the new recruits come in upon the certificates of a board of examiners, such as the British Civil-Service Commission, or upon the scrutiny of the Executive and his advisers, as now, is a consideration of minor importance. It is the idea of an official class, an order of office-holders, which appears to throw itself across the path of the democratic activity which we have attempted to describe. This is the point of conflict—if any. We might, it is true, take many measures to ensure the colorless and harmless character of the system. Up to a recent time the government clerks in England were deprived of the suffrage, in order that they might be perfectly indifferent to politics. It is probable that in time our own officials would lose the ordinary instincts of a democratic citizenship, and would regard with coldness, if not contempt, the activities that lead to a renewal of the government. But however smoothly they might move in the pursuance of their clerical routine, however faultless they might become in their round of prescribed duties, would they not still obstruct the public purpose? Would not even this emasculate order of placemen, standing apart a sacrificed though favored class, still present themselves as unpardonable offenders? When it should be discovered that they claimed the possession in perpetuity of the offices in the national government, and had organized themselves as a standing army of placemen, can it be believed that they would not be swept aside by the same iconoclastic onset which ended the Adams administration?

We do not pause here to represent the apparent inconsistency of desiring to de-citizenize a large number of intelligent members of the community, or the risk of creating a class in the republic forbidden to take any active interest in the renewals of its organization, or the impolicy of diminishing the force and courage of the popular will in its grapple with the problem of self-government; but all these comments may suggest themselves.

Popular expectancy, it may fairly be declared, follows all the stations of public life with a jealous if not an eager eye. There is abundant evidence of this in the county and township systems. Taking, for example, the administration of county affairs in any of the States, it will be found that the officers, by a rule that seems generally satisfactory, hold during short terms, and are seldom re-elected immediately to the same place. The rule is rotation—giving a large number of persons their "turn"—and changes are regularly made. A man disappointed this year for a particular place waits until the time comes to fill it again, and in many counties, other things being about equal, the fact that he has waited patiently and now presents the oldest claim governs the selection. The antipathy to one who seeks to hold on to his place beyond the ordinary term—the dislike for a grabber who desires more than is usually assigned—is a perfectly well-known feature in politics. The county system of Pennsylvania will afford abundant proof of the statements here made: the terms of the officers, who are all elective, do not average more than four years, even including such court-officials as the clerks and prothonotaries, whose duties are in some particulars technical and difficult, requiring an acquaintance with the forms of legal procedure. But it is further true that in the States where county officers are appointed by the governor no protracted tenure results. On the contrary, the pressure upon him of the public expectation seldom permits the reappointment of an officer whose commission is expiring.

With this rule of change, primary as its application is, and within the direct comprehension and control of the people, there does not appear to be any general discontent. It is accepted, so far as we can discover, as a just and proper system by which an equality of claims upon the common favor is maintained. It is reasonable to presume, therefore, that amongst a people fairly acquainted with their own business, and possessing a fair education both of the schools and of experience in life, many persons in every community are competent to serve as its officials. At any rate, in the midst of these usages we discover no demand that the terms of office be made permanent, and that the place-holders be put beyond the reach of a removal. There is no apparent realization that such a "reform" is demanded; and if it be difficult, as has been stated, to awaken popular enthusiasm in behalf of a permanent tenure in the national civil service, there seems to be nothing in the rules of primary politics to help smooth the way.

It may be asked now whether it is not almost certainly true that some sound principle lies in the methods which an intelligent community, unrestrained by ancient conventional ideas or repressive systems of law, applies to its own political organization. Is not this instinctive democratic plan an essential principle of a government founded upon equal rights? Is it not a law of Change which characterizes the civil service of a democracy, and not a law of Permanence?

We can hardly doubt that the facts which have been stated concerning the disposition of the people toward the offices in their government are capable of a philosophical explanation; and as they proceed with evident freedom and naturalness from the very bosom of communities accustomed to independent thought and action, the conclusion is irresistible that this is the temper and the tendency of a free government. Startling as it may be to propose change rather than permanency in the civil service, that may prove to be best adapted to our wants. Consciously or not, such a rule has been established by the people themselves; and while it has scarcely found a formal presentation, much less had careful examination and argument, there can be little doubt that such a principle, substantially as we have described, lies close to the hearts of the people. The right of election, the idea that public officers should be elective, and the expectation that there will be a rotation of duties and honors, are popular principles which are unmistakable.

Apart from the consideration that whatever is fundamental in popular government, whatever tends to the preservation of individual freedom and equality of rights, must be a safe principle, there could be much said from the most practical stand-point in favor of rotation in office. All human experience proves the usefulness of change. Rest is the next thing to rust. In physics things without motion are usually things without life; and in government it is the bureaus least disturbed by change that are most stagnated and most circumlocutory. The apparent misfortune of having men experienced in public affairs make way, at intervals, for others of less experience is itself greatly exaggerated. There are facts so important in compensation that the assumed evil becomes one of very moderate proportions. For it will be seen upon careful observation that no important function of the government, not even in the national service, calls for a character or qualification—sometimes, but rarely, for any sort of special or technical skill—which is not being continually formed and trained either in the movements of private life and business experience or in the political schools which are furnished by the State, the county and the township. The functions of the government are substantially the guardianship of the same interests for which the State, the county, the township and the individual exercise concern. Government has lost its mystery: even diplomacy has somewhat changed from lying and chicanery to common-sense dealing. The qualities that are required in the government—industry, economy, integrity, knowledge of men and affairs—are precisely those which are of value to every individual citizen, and which are taught day by day everywhere—to the lads in school and college and to the men in their occupations of life. Such qualities a community fit to govern itself must abundantly possess. There is nothing occult in the science of government. The administration in behalf of the people of the organization which they have ordered is nothing foreign to their own knowledge. They have ceased to consider themselves unfit for self-rule: they no longer think of calling in from other worlds a different order of beings to govern them.

We may accept without fear principles which seem startling, but which are proved to be rooted in democratic ground, so long as we have faith in the democratic system itself. There is no road open for the doubter and questioner of popular rights but that which leads back to abandoned ground. We may proceed, then, with an attempt to explain the philosophy of the rule of Change. Shall it not be stated thus:

That, due regard being had to the preservation of simplicity and economy—forbidding thus the needless increase of offices and expenses—it is then true that the active participation by the largest number of persons in the practical administration of their own government is an object highly to be desired in every democratic republic.

The government must be the highest school of affairs. Shall it be declared that to study there and to have its diploma is not desirable for all? Is it not perfectly evident that the more who can learn to actually discharge the duties belonging to their own social organization, the better for them and the better for it?

All these propositions necessarily imply the existence of an intelligent and patriotic people, at least of such a majority. So always does every plan of popular government. Whatever of disappointment presents itself to the author of any scheme of "reform," upon finding that he has constructed a system which is ridden down by the political activity of the people, he must blame the plan upon which our fabric is built. If he is chagrined to find that his imperium in imperio is not practicable, and that nothing can make here a power stronger than the source of power, he must solace his hurt feelings with the reflection that the system was never adapted to his contrivance, and that our fathers, when in the beginning they resolved to establish a government by the people, gave consent thereby to all the apparent risks and inconveniences of having the people continually minding their own affairs.

With a just comprehension of the democratic forces that give motion and life to the governmental system of the United States, and of the manner in which they affect the public service in all its departments, the wise advocate of reform must approach his work. His patriotism and thoughtfulness are both necessary. To proceed against the democratic law is not practicable: to establish a new system which is inconsistent with the abundant vitality and conscious strength of that already established is a futile proposition indeed.

THE PRICE OF SAFETY.

Thirty-three years ago—that is, shortly before Christmas, 1847—I went over to Paris to pass a few weeks with my family. The great railway schemes of the two previous years in England had broken down a good many men in our office—draughtsmen, surveyors and so on. I wonder if the present public recollects those days, when the Times brought out double supplements to accommodate the advertisements of railroads, when King Hudson was as much a potentate as Queen Victoria, when Brunel and Stephenson were autocrats, and when everybody saw a sudden chance of getting rich by shares or damages? Those days were the beginning of that period of prosperity of which the recent "hard times" were the reaction. Then twenty guineas a night for office-work was sometimes paid to youngsters not yet out of their teens. In the great offices the young men worked all day and the alternate nights to get plans ready for Parliament, sustained by strong coffee always on the tap, till some of them went mad with the excitement and the strain.

I had worked hard both in the field and office during the closing months of 1847, but I broke down at last, and was sent to recover my health under the care of my family. That family consisted of my father—a half-pay English officer—my mother and three sisters, then living au troisième in the Rue Neuve de Berri, not far from the newly-erected Russian church, and the windows of the appartement commanded a side view down the Champs Élysées. I only needed rest and recreation, both of which my adoring family eagerly provided me. My sisters were three lively, simple-hearted, honest English girls, who had a large acquaintance in Paris, and took great pride and pleasure in introducing to it their only brother. We were not only invited to our embassy and on visiting terms with all the English Colony (that colony whose annals at that period are written in The Adventures of Philip, and to which Thackeray's mother and nearest relatives, like ourselves, belonged), but we were, in virtue of some American connections, admitted to the American embassy on the footing of semi-Americans.

We enjoyed our American friends greatly. I formed the opinion then, which I retain now, that cultivated Americans, the top-skimming of the social cream, are some of the most charming people to be met with in cultivated society. To all that constitutes "nice people" everywhere they join a soupçon of wild flavor which gives them individuality. They are to society what their own wild turkeys and canvasbacks are to the menu.

One of my sisters, Amy, the eldest, had been ill that winter, and was not equal to joining in the gayeties that the others enjoyed. Her principal amusement was walking in the Gardens of Monceaux, a private domain of King Louis Philippe in the Batignolles, a quiet, humdrum spot, where she could set her foot upon green turf and gravel. The streets of Paris, the Boulevards, and the Champs Élysées were too attractive to a pleasure-seeker like myself to allow me to content myself with the pale attractions of Monceaux, but I went there with my sister once or twice, because French etiquette forbade her walking even in these quiet garden-paths alone.

One day it was proposed by her that we should go again. I could not, in common humanity, refuse, and so consented. Poor Amy "put on her things," as our girls called it, and we descended to the porte-cochère, intending to engage the first passing citadine. As we stepped into the street, however, a gay carriage with high-stepping gray horses, a chasseur with knife and feathers, and a coachman in a modest livery on a hammer-cloth resplendent with yellow fringes and embroideries, drew up at our door: a pretty hand was laid upon the portière and a voice cried, "Amy! Amy! I was coming for you."

Miss Leare bowed to me gracefully and motioned to her chasseur to open the carriage-door. "Get in," she said. "I have the carriage for two hours: what shall we do with it? Mamma is at the dentist's.—Amy, I thought you would enjoy a drive, and so I came for you."

I helped Amy in, and was making my bow when Miss Leare stopped me. "Come too," she said cordially: "Amy's brother surely need not be taboo. Shall we drive to the Bois?"

"I was going to Monceaux," said Amy. "Would it be quite the thing for us to drive alone to the Bois?"

"Oh-h-h!" said Miss Leare, prolonging her breath upon the vocative.—"You see," she added, turning to me, "I am so unprepared by previous training that I shall never become au fait in French proprieties. Indeed, I hold them in great reverence, but they seem to be for ever hedging me in; nor can I understand the meaning of half of them. In America I was guided by plain right and wrong.—Why shall we not outrage etiquette, Amy, by 'going alone,' as you call it, to Monceaux? Is it that the place is so stiff and solemn and out of the way that we may walk there without a chaperon? I should have thought seclusion made a place more dangerous, allowing that there be any danger at all.—In America, Mr. Farquhar, your escort would be enough for us, and the fact that Amy is your sister would give a sort of double security to your protection."

"Hermie, Amy—Hermione, which is English and American for Tasso's Erminia.—Do you like my name, Mr. Farquhar? We have strange names in America, English people are pleased to say.—Victor!" she went on, calling to the chasseur without pausing for any reply, "stop at some place where they sell candy. Mr. Farquhar will get out and buy us some."

Obediently to her order, we stopped at a confectioner's. I was directed to put my hand into the carriage-pocket, where I should find some "loose change," kept there for candy and the hurdy-gurdy boys. Then I was directed to go into the "store" and choose a pound of all sorts of "mixed candy."

I had not more than made myself intelligible to a young person behind the counter when the carriage-door was opened and both the girls came in, Miss Hermione declaring that she knew I should be embarrassed by the multitude of "sweeties," and that I should need their experience to know what I was about.

With dawdling, laughing and good-comradeship we chose our bonbons, and getting back into the barouche we proceeded to crunch them as we drove on to Monceaux. It was like being children over again, with a slight sense of being out of bounds. I had never seen confectionery eaten wholesale in that fashion. Such bonbons were expensive, too. Trained in the personal economy of English middle-class life, it would never have occurred to me to buy several francs' worth of sugar-plums and to eat them by the handful. But as the fair American sat before me, smiling, laughing, petting Amy and saying fascinating impertinences to myself, I thought I had never seen so bewitching a creature. Her frame, though svelte and admirably proportioned, gave me an idea of vigor and strength not commonly associated at that time with the girls of America. Her complexion, too, was healthy: she was not so highly colored as an English country girl, but her skin was bright and clear. Her face was a perfect oval, her hair glossy and dark, her eyes expressive hazel. Her points were all good: her ears, her hands, her feet, her upper lip and nostrils showed blood, and the daintiness and taste of her rich dress seemed to denote her good taste and fine breeding. My sisters, could not tie their bonnet-strings as she tied hers, nor were their dresses anything like hers in freshness, fit or daintiness of trimming.

We alighted at last at old Monceaux, and walked about its solemn alleys. Sometimes Miss Leare talked sense, and talked it well. Those were exciting days in Paris. It was February, 1848, and a great crisis was nearer at hand in politics than we suspected; besides which there had been several events in private life which had increased the general excitement of the period—notably the murder of Marshal Sebastiani's daughter, the poor duchesse de Praslin. Hermione could talk of these things with great spirit, but sometimes relapsed into her grown-up childishness. She talked, too, with animation of the freedom and happiness of her American girlhood. My sister Amy had always taken life au grand sérieux; Ellen was a little too prompt to flirt with officers and gay young men, and needed repression; Lætitia went in for book-learning, and measured every one by what she called their "educational opportunities." My sisters were as different as possible from this butterfly creature, who seemed to sip interest and amusement out of everything.

At the end of two hours we drove back to Mrs. Leare's hôtel, which was opposite our own apartment in the Rue Neuve de Berri, the hôtel that a few weeks later was occupied by Prince Jerome. Here Hermione insisted upon our coming in while the carriage drove to the dentist's for her mother.

The reception-rooms in Mrs. Leare's hôtel were very showy. They were filled with buhl and knick-knacks gathered on all parts of the Continent, and lavishly displayed, not always in good keeping. A little sister, Claribel, came running up to us when we entered, and clung fondly to Hermione, who sat down at the Erard grand piano and sang to us, without suggestion, a gay little French song. She was taking lessons, Amy afterward told me, of the master most in vogue in Paris and of all others the most expensive. Amy, who could sing well herself, disparaged Hermione's voice to me, and sighed as she thought of the waste of those inestimable lessons.

Then Miss Hermione lifted the top of an ormolu box on the chimney-piece of a boudoir and showed Amy and me, under the rose as it were, some cigarettes, with a laugh. "Mamma's," she said: "she has a faiblesse that way."

I was so amused by her, so fascinated, so completely at my ease with her, that I could have stayed on without taking note of time had not Amy remembered that it was our dinner-hour. We took our leave, and met Mrs. Leare on the staircase ascending to her apartment. She greeted Amy with as much effusion as was compatible with her ideas of fashion, and said she was "right glad" to hear we had been passing the morning with Hermione.

"I wish you would come very often. I like her to see English girls: you do her so much good, Amy.—Mr. Farquhar, we shall hope to see you often too. I have a little reception here every Sunday evening."

With that she continued her course up stairs, and we descended to the porte-cochère.

She was a faded woman, "dressed to death," as Amy phrased it, and none of my people had a good word for her.

"The Leares are rolling in riches, I believe," remarked my father, "and an American who is rich has no hereditary obligations to absorb his wealth, so that it becomes all 'spending-money,' as Miss Hermione says. The head of the family—King Leare I call him—stays at home in some sort of a counting-room in New York and makes money, giving Mrs. Leare and Miss Hermione carte blanche to spend it on any follies they please. I never heard anything exactly wrong concerning Mrs. Leare, but she does not seem to me the woman to be trusted with that very nice young daughter. I feel great pity for Miss Leare."

"Miss Leare has plenty of sense and character," said my mother: "I do not think her mother's queer surroundings seem to affect her in any way. She moves among the Frenchmen, Poles and Italians of her mother's court like that lady Shakespeare—or was it Spenser?—wrote about among the fauns and satyrs. With all her American freedom she avoids improprieties by instinct. I have no fears for her future if she marries the right man."

"Indeed, mamma," said Amy, "I wish she would keep more strictly within the limit of the proprieties. She makes me nervous all the time we are together."

"My dear, you never heard her breathe a really unbecoming word or saw her do an immodest thing?" said my mother interrogatively.

"They say Mrs. Leare wants to marry her to that Neapolitan marquis who is so often there," put in Ellen. "On dit, she will have a dot of two millions of francs, or, as they call it, half a million of dollars."

"Such a rumor," I broke in, rather annoyed by this turn in the conversation, "may well buy her the right to be a marchioness if she will."

"Indeed it won't, then," said Ellen sharply, "for she thinks Americans should not 'fix' themselves permanently abroad. She says she means to marry one of her own folks, as she calls her countrymen."

"She knows an infinite variety of things, and has had all kinds of masters," sighed Lætitia: "she speaks all the languages in Europe. I believe Americans have a peculiar facility for pronunciation, like the Russians, and she learned at her school in America philosophy, rhetoric, logic, Latin, algebra, chemistry."

"I wonder she should be so sweet a woman," said my father. "She seems a good girl—I never took her for a learned one—but her mother is a fool, and I should think her father must be that or worse. I wonder what he can be like? It seems to an Englishman so strange that a man should stay at home alone for years, and suffer his wife and family to travel all over the Continent without protection."

Though my father, mother and sisters declined the Sunday invitation of Mrs. Leare, I went to her reception. The guests were nearly all Italians, Poles, Spaniards or Frenchmen. There was no Englishman present, but myself, and only one or two Americans. I felt at once how out of place my mother, the country matron, and my father, ce respectable viellard, would have been in such a circle. But Mrs. Leare's guests were not the jeunesse dorée nor the dubious nobility I had expected to meet in her salon. The Frenchmen among them were all men whose names were familiar in French political circles—men of revolutionary tendencies and of advanced opinions. I afterward discovered they had taken advantage of Mrs. Leare's desire to be the head of a salon to use her rooms as a convenient rendezvous. It was safe ground on which to simmer their revolutionary cauldron. It was seething and bubbling that night, although neither the Leares nor myself were aware of what was brewing. The talk was all about the Banquets, especially the impending reform banquet in the Rue Chaillot. The gentlemen present were not exactly conspirators: they were for the most part political reformers, who, being cut off from the usual modes of expressing themselves through a recognized parliamentary opposition or by the medium of petition, had devised a system of political banquets, some fifty of which had already been held in the departments, and they were now engaged in getting one up in Paris in the Twelfth arrondissement.

At that time, in a population of thirty-five millions, there were but a quarter of a million of French voters, and as in France all places (from that of a railroad guard to a seat on the bench) were disposed of by the government, it was very easy for ministers to control the legislature. A reform, really needed in the franchise, was the object proposed to themselves by the original heads of the Revolution of 1848, though when they had set their ball in motion they could neither control it nor keep up with it as it rolled downward.

The prevalent idea in Mrs. Leare's salon was that the banquet of the Rue Chaillot would go off quietly, that the prefect of police would protest, and that the affair would then pass into the law-courts, where it would remain until all interest in the subject had passed away. One was sensible, however, that there was a general feeling of excitement in the atmosphere. Paris swarmed with troops, evidently under stricter discipline than usual. People looked into each other's faces interrogatively and read the daily papers with an anxious air.

Though I did not at the time fully appreciate what I saw, I was struck by the business-like character of the men about me. The guests, I thought, took very little notice of the lady of the house. I did not then suspect that they were using her hospitality for their own purposes, and that they felt secure in her total incapacity to understand what they were doing. She, meantime, intent on filling her reception-rooms with celebrities and titled persons, was charmed to have collected so many distinguished men around her.

Hermione appeared bewildered, uncomfortable and restless, like a spectator on the edge of a great crowd. "There are too many strangers here to-night," she said: "mamma and I do not know one half of them. They have been brought here by their friends. To have a salon is mamma's ambition, but this is not my idea of it. I feel as if we were out of place among these men, who talk to each other and hardly notice us at all."

We sat together and exchanged our thoughts in whispers. It was one of those crowds that create a solitude for lovers. Not that we talked sentiment or that we were lovers. We conversed about the excitements of the day—of the Leste affair, in which the king and the king's ministry were accused of protecting dishonesty; of the Beauvallon and D'Equivilley duel and the Praslin murder, in connection with both of which the royal family and the ministry were popularly accused of protecting criminals—and at last the conversation strayed away from France to Hermione's own girlhood. She told me of her happy country home in Maryland with her grandmother, and sighed. I asked her if she was going to the English ball to be given on Wednesday night at the beautiful Jardin d'Hiver in the Champs Élysées.

"I suppose so," she replied, "but I don't care for large assemblies: I feel afraid of the men I meet. I wish your mother could chaperon me: it would be much nicer to be with her than with my own. Mamma understands nothing about looking after me; she wants to have a good time herself, and I am only in her way. Do you know, Mr. Farquhar, I have a theory that when women have missed anything they ought to have enjoyed in early life, they always want to go back and pick it up. Mamma had no pleasures in her youth, no attentions, no gayety. If I am to be chaperoned, I like the real thing. If I were at home in Maryland, where my father came from, I should need no one to protect me: you could take me to the ball."

"Yes, you. You would call for me, and wait till I was ready to come down. Then you and I would go alone," she added, enjoying my look of incredulity. "It is the custom: no harm could come of it," she added. "We would walk to our ball."

"You suppose a good deal," she interrupted. "You suppose a girl without self-respect or good sense, and perhaps a man without honor. Here, of course, things cannot be like that. Society seems founded upon different ideas from those prevalent with us about men and women. Here, I admit, a girl finds comfort and protection and ease of mind in a good chaperon. Yet it seemed strange to me to put on leading-strings when I came out here: I had been used to take care of myself for so many years."

"Why, Miss Leare," I said, laughing, "you cannot have been many years in society."

"I am twenty," she said frankly, "and we came to Europe about three years ago. But before that time I had been in company a good deal. Not in the city, for I was not 'out,' but in the hotels at Newport, at the Springs and in the country. In America one has but to do what one knows is kind and right, and no one will think evil: here one may do, without suspecting it, so many compromising things."

"Does the instinct that you speak of to be kind and right always guide the young American lady?"

"I suppose so—so far as I know. It must. She walks by it, and sets her feet down firmly. Here I feel all the time as if I were walking among traps blindfolded."

The ball of the Jardin d'Hiver in the Champs Élysées was a superb success. The immense glass-house was fitted up for dancing, and all went merry as a marriage-bell, with a crater about to open under our feet, as at the duchess of Richmond's ball at Brussels.

Miss Leare was there, but quiet and dignified. There was not the smallest touch of vulgarity about her. The coarse readiness to accept publicity which distinguishes the underbred woman, whether in England or America, the desire to show off a foreign emancipation from what appear ridiculous French rules, were not in her.

Yet she might have amused herself as she liked with complete impunity, for Mrs. Leare appeared to leave her entirely alone. I danced with her as often as she would permit me, and my heart was no longer in my own possession when I put-her into her carriage about dawn.

Two or three days after I called, but the ladies were not in, so that except at church at the Hôtel Marboeuf on Sunday morning I saw nothing of Miss Hermione. Monday, February 21st, was sunny and bright. The public excitement was such that an unusual number of working-men were keeping their St. Crispin. The soldiers, however, were confined to their quarters: not a uniform was to be seen abroad. Our night had been disturbed by the continuous rumble of carts and carriages.

"Is it a fine day for the banquet?" I heard Amy say as our maid opened her windows on Tuesday morning.

"There is to be no banquet," was the answer. "Voyez done the proclamation posted on the door of the barrack at the corner of the Rue Chaillot."

I sprang from my bed and looked out of my window. A strange change had taken place in the teeming little caserne at the corner. Instead of the usual groups of well-behaved boy-soldiers in rough uniforms, the barrack looked deserted, and its lower windows had been closed up to their top panes with bags of hay and mattresses. Not a soldier, not even a sentry, was to be seen.

I dressed myself and went out to collect news. The carts that had disturbed us during the night had been not only employed in removing all preparations for the banquet, but in taking every loose paving-stone out of the way. I found the Place de la Madeleine full of people, all looking up at the house of Odillon Barrot, asking "What next?" and "What shall we do?" Odillon Barrot was the hero of the moment—literally of the moment. In forty-eight hours from that time his name had faded from the page of history. In the Place de la Concorde there was more excitement, for threats were being made to cross the bridge and to insult the Chambers. The Pont de l'Institut, notwithstanding the efforts of the garde municipale or mounted police, was greatly crowded. A party of dragoons, on sorrel ponies barely fourteen hands high, rode up and began to clear the bridge, but gently and gradually. The crowd was retiring as fast as its numbers would permit, when some of the municipal guard rode through the ranks of the dragoons and set themselves, with ill-judged roughness, to accelerate the operation. The crowd grew angry, and stones began to be thrown at the guard and soldiers.

Growing anxious for the women I had left in the Rue Neuve de Berri, I returned home by side-streets. A crowd had collected on the Champs Élysées about thirty yards from the corner of our street, and was forming a barricade. All were shouting, all gesticulating. Citadines at full speed were driving out of reach of requisition; horses were going off disencumbered of their vehicles; the driver of a remise was seated astride his animal, the long flaps of his driving-coat covering it from neck to tail; a noble elm was being hewn down by hatchets and even common knives. An omnibus, the remise, a few barrels and dining-tables, a dozen yards of pave torn up by eager hands, a sentry-box, some benches and the tree, formed the barricade. Gamins and blouses worked at it. The respectables looked on and did not trouble the workers. Suddenly there was a general stampede among them. A squadron of about fifty dragoons charged up the Champs Élysées. One old peasant-woman in a scanty yellow-and-black skirt, which she twitched above her knees, led the retreat. But soon they stopped and turned again, while the dragoons rode slowly back, breathing their horses. Nobody was angry, for nobody had been hurt, but they were frightened enough.

At this moment, stealing from a porte-cochère where she had taken refuge during the fright and sauve gui peut, came a figure wrapped in dark drapery. Could it be possible? Hermione Leare! In a moment I was at her side. She was very pale and breathless, and she was glad to take my arm. "What brings you here?" I whispered.

"Our servants have all run away: they think mamma is compromised. Victor, our chasseur, broke open mamma's secretary and took his wages. She is almost beside herself. She wanted to send a letter to the post, and as it is steamer-day I thought papa had better know that thus far nothing has happened to us. There was nobody to take the letter: I said I would put it in the box in the Rue Ponthieu."

"No: I could not get to the Rue Ponthieu. They were firing down the street, and now I dare not."

"Trust it to me, Miss Leare, and promise me to send for me if you have any more such errands. You must never run such risks again."

"I have to be the man of the family," she answered, almost with an apologetic air.

"Do not say that again. I shall come over three times a day while this thing lasts to see if you have any commissions."

She smiled and pressed my hand as she turned into her own porte-cochère. Frightened servants and their friends were in the porter's lodge, who gazed after her with exclamations as she went up the common stair.

The remainder of that day passed with very little fighting. Up to that time it had been a riot apropos of a change of ministry, but in the night the secret societies met and flung aside the previous question.

When we awoke on Wednesday morning, February 23d, we were struck by the strange quiet of the streets. No provisions entered Paris through the barrier, no vehicles nor venders of small wares. The absolute silence, save when "Mourir pour la Patrie" sounded hoarsely in the distance, was as strange as it was unexpected. I had always connected an insurrection with noise. It was rumored that Guizot the Unpopular had been dismissed, and that Count Mole, a man of half measures, had been called to the king's councils. The affair looked to me as if it were going to die out for want of fuel. But I was mistaken: the blouses, who had not had one gun to a hundred the day before, had been all night arming themselves by domiciliary requisitions. The national guard was not believed to be firm.

The night before, an hour after I had parted with Miss Hermione, I had made an attempt to see her and Mrs. Leare, without any success. Not even bribery would induce the concierge to let me in. His orders were peremptory: "Pas un seul, monsieur, personne"—madame received nobody.

Early on Wednesday morning I again presented myself: the ladies were not visible. Later in the day I called again, and was again refused. But several times Amy had seen Hermione at a window, and they had made signs across the street to one another. I began to understand that Mrs. Leare was overwhelmed by the responsibility she had incurred in opening her salon to men whom she now perceived to have been conspirators, and that she was obstinately determined not to compromise herself further by giving admittance to any one.

Our bonne had been able to ascertain from the concierge of the Leare house that madame was hysterical, and could hardly be controlled by mademoiselle.

I was in the streets till five o'clock on Wednesday, when, concluding all was over, I came home, intending to make another effort to see the Leares, and if possible to take Miss Hermione, with Ellen and Lætitia, to view the debris of the two days' fight—to let them get their first glimpse of real war in the Place de la Concorde, where a regiment was littering down its horses for the night, and a peep into the closed gardens of the Tuileries.

When I got up to our rooms I found my sisters at a window overlooking the courtyard of Mrs. Leare's hotel, and they all cried out with one voice, "Mrs. Leare's carriage is just ready to drive away."

I looked. A travelling-equipage stood in the courtyard. On it the concierge was hoisting trunks, and into it was being heaped a promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country postilion—who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy—was standing in carpet slippers (having divested himself of his boots of office) harnessing three undersized gray Normandy mares to an elegant travelling-carriage.

Hermione herself, Claribel her little sister, Mrs. Leare and the old colored nurse got quickly in. Mrs. Leare was in tears, with her head muffled in a yard or two of green barège, then the distinctive mark of a travelling American woman. The child's-nurse had long gold ear-drops and a head-dress of red bandanna. There was not a man of any kind with them except the postilion. The concierge opened the gates of the courtyard.

"Stop! stop!" I cried, and rushed down our own staircase and out of our front door.

As I ran past their entrance a woman put a paper into my hand. I had no time to glance at it, for the carriage had already turned into the Rue Ponthieu. For some distance I ran after it, encountering at every step excited groups of people, some of whom seemed to me in search of mischief, while some had apparently come out to gather news. There were no other carriages in the streets, and that alone enabled me to track the one I was in chase of, for everybody I met had noticed which way it had turned. It wound its way most deviously through by-streets to avoid those in which paving-stones had been torn up or barricades been formed, and the postilion made all possible speed, fearing the carriage might be seized and detached from his horses. But the day's work was finished and the disorders of the night were not begun.

Forced at last to slacken my speed and to take breath, I glanced at the paper that I still held in my hand. It contained a few words from Hermione: "Thank you for all the kindness you have tried to show us, dear sir. My mother has heard that all the English in Paris are to be massacred at midnight by the mob, and directs me to give you notice, which is the reason I address this note to you and not to Amy. Mamma is afraid of being mistaken for an Englishwoman. We have secured post-horses and are setting out for Argenteuil, where we shall take the railway. Again, thank you: your kindness will not be forgotten by H. LEARE."

This note reassured me. I no longer endeavored to overtake the carriage, but I pushed my way as fast as possible beyond the nearest barrier. Once outside the wall of Paris, I was in the Banlieu, that zone of rascality whose inhabitants are all suspected by the police and live under the ban. Of course on such a gala-day of lawlessness this hive was all astir. At a village I passed through I tried to hire a conveyance to Argenteuil. I also tried to get some railway information, but nobody could tell me anything and all were ravenous for news. I secured, however, without losing too much time, a seat with a stout young country-man who drove a little country cart with a powerful gray horse, and was going in the direction I wanted to travel.

"What will be the result of this affair?" I said to him when he had got his beast into a steady trot.

He shrugged his shoulders. A French workingman has a far larger vocabulary at his command than the English laborer. "Bon Dieu!" he exclaimed: "who knows what will come of it? A land without a master is no civilized land. We shall fall back into barbarism. What there is certain is, that we shall all be ruined."

At length, to my great relief, we saw a carriage before us; and we drove into the railway-station at the same moment as the Leares.

"You here, Mr. Farquhar?" cried Hermione. "How good of you! You cannot guess the relief. Help me to get them out, these helpless ones."

We lifted Mrs. Leare on to the platform of the railway, weeping and trembling. The old colored nurse could not speak French, and seemed to think her only duty was to hold the hand of little Claribel and to stand where her young mistress placed her. All looked to Hermione. She carried a canvas bag of five-franc pieces and paid right and left. I tried to interfere, as she was giving the postilion an exorbitant sum.

"No, hush!" she whispered: "we can afford to pay, but in our situation we cannot afford to dispute."

She then deputed me to see after the "baggage," as she called the luggage of the party, and went with her mother into the glass cage that the French call a salle d'attente at a railway-station.

We had come from the seat of war, and every one crowded around us asking for news. I had little to tell, but replied that I believed the affair was nearly over. I did not foresee that two hours later a procession roaring "Mourir pour la Patrie" under the windows of the Hôtel des Affaires Étrangères would be fired into by accident, and that the émeute of February, 1848, would be converted into a revolution.

It was nine o'clock in the evening. The lamps were lighted in the station. The night was cloudy, but far off on the horizon we could see a gleam of radiance, marking the locality of the great city.

After an hour of very anxious waiting, during which Mrs. Leare was beside herself with nervous agitation, the locked doors of our prison were flung open and we were permitted to seat ourselves in a railway-carriage.

Hermione's tender devotion to her mother, the old servant and the child was beautiful to witness. Now that Mrs. Leare was helpless on her daughter's hands, they seemed to have found their natural relations. Hermione said few words to me, but a glance now and then thanked me for being with them. The train started. For about three miles all went on well, although we travelled cautiously, fearing obstructions. Suddenly the speed of our train was checked, and there was a cry of consternation as we rounded a sharp curve. The bridge over the Seine at its third bend was ablaze before us!

All the men upon the train sprang out upon the track as soon as the carriage-doors were opened, and in a few moments we were surrounded by ruffians refusing to let us go on.

No, they were not willing to let us go back to Paris. Conspirators against the people might be making their escape. They had set fire to the bridge, they said, to prevent the train from passing over. It must remain where it was. If we passengers desired to return to Paris, we must walk there.

My remonstrance was drowned in the confusion. Suddenly the party of women under my charge stood at my elbow: Mrs. Leare was leaning on Hermione's arm; Mammy Christine and Claribel cowered close and held her by her drapery.

"Make no remonstrances," she said in a low voice: "let us not excite attention. An Englishman never knows when not to complain: an American accepts his fate more quietly. These people mean to sack the train. We had better get away as soon as possible."

"I can walk. We must find some means of transporting mamma, Mammy Chris and Clary."

As Hermione said this she turned to an official and questioned him upon the subject. He thought that there was a little cart and horse which might be hired at a neighboring cottage.

"No: I put greater trust in my own powers of persuasion.—Mammy dear, take good care of mamma: we shall be back directly."

Her we was very sweet to me, and I shared her mistrust of my French and my diplomacy.

The glare of the burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off. Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to say a Frenchman has no word for home. But the conclusion that the man of Anglo-Saxon birth deduces from this lack in his vocabulary is false: no man cares more for the domicile that shelters him. Hermione made her request with sweet persuasiveness. I saw at once it would have been refused if I had made it, but to her they made excuses. The old horse, they said, was very old, the old cart was broken.

"Let me look at it," said Hermione. At this they led us into an outhouse, where she assisted me to make a careful inspection. I might have rejected the old trap at once, but she offered a few suggestions, which she told me in an aside were the fruit of her experiences in Maryland and Virginia, and the cart was pronounced safe enough to be driven slowly with a light load.

A half-grown son of the house was put in charge of it. Hermione suggested he should bring the family clothes-line in case of a breakdown, and prevailed upon the farmer's wife to put in plenty of fresh straw, a blanket and a pillow. She made a bargain, less extravagant than I expected, with the peasant proprietor, promising, however, a very handsome pourboire to his son in the event of our good fortune. The farmer stipulated, in his turn, that cart, horse and lad were not to pass the barrier, that the boy should walk at the horse's head, and that the cart was to contain only two women and little Claribel.

It was harnessed up immediately. Hermione and I followed it on foot back to the little band of travellers waiting beside the railway.

"No," she answered: "leave them to their fate. I dare not overload the cart, and I doubt whether those men with hungry eyes would let us take them. Mamma," she whispered, "has her diamonds."

"You will get into the cart, Miss Leare?" I said as I saw her motioning to the old colored woman to take the place beside her mother.

"No indeed," she replied: "our contract stipulated only for mamma, Mammy and Clary: Mammy is crippled with rheumatism. If you have no objection I will walk with you."

"A long stretch," she said with a half sigh, "but I am young, strong, and excitement counts for something: besides, there is no remedy. We must consider them."

There had been about fifteen other persons on the train. A dozen of these, finding we were going to walk back to Paris, proposed to join us. The night was growing dark, and we pushed on. There was no woman afoot but Hermione. "Madame" they called her, evidently taking her for my wife, but by no word or smile did she notice the blunder. After a while she accepted my arm, drawing up her skirts by means of loops or pins. We had one lantern among us, and from time to time its glare permitted me to see her dainty feet growing heavy with mud and travel.

It was not what could be called a lovers' walk, tramping in the dark through mud and water, on a French country road, at a cart's tail, and hardly a word was exchanged between us; yet had it not been for fears about her safety it would have been the most delightful expedition I had ever known.

From time to time Mrs. Leare and the old nurse in the cart complained of their bones. Hermione was always ready with encouragement, but she said little else to any one. She appeared to be reserving all her energies to assist her physical endurance and to strengthen her for her task of taking care of the others.

I had always seen my sisters and other girls protected, sheltered, cared for: it gave me a sharp pang to see this beautiful and dainty creature totally unthought of by those dependent on her. Nor did Mrs. Leare seem to feel any anxiety about my comradeship with her daughter. I could fully appreciate Hermione's remark about her chaperonage being very unsatisfactory.

Every now and then we passed through villages along whose straggling streets the population was aswarm, eager for news and wondering at our muddy procession. In one of the villages I suggested stopping, but Mrs. Leare was now as frantic to get home again as she had been to get away. She said, and truly, that it had been a wild plan to start from Paris—that if she had seen me and had heard that I thought the émeute was at an end and that the report about the English was untrue, she should never have left her apartment. She had been frightened out of her senses by some men en blouse who had made their way into her rooms and had carried off her pistol and a little Turkish dagger. Victor's theft of his own wages had upset her. She had insisted upon setting out. Hermione had got post-horses somehow: Hermione ought never to have let her come away.

About three in the morning we reached a larger village than we had hitherto passed. The inhabitants had been apprised of the events in the Rue Neuve des Capucines before the ministry of the Affaires Étrangères, and the revolutionary element had increased in audacity. A crowd of turbulent-looking working-men dressed in blouses, armed with muskets, old sabres and all kinds of miscellaneous weapons, stopped our way. Some seized the head of the old horse, some gathered round the cart and lifted lanterns into the faces of the ladies. The French workman is a much more athletic man than the French soldier. I own to a sensation of deadly terror for a moment when I saw the ladies in the midst of a lawless rabble whose brawny arms were bared as if prepared for butchery of any kind. Far off, too, a low rattle of distant musketry warned us that the tumult in Paris was renewed.

"Mourir pour la Patrie" appeared to come from every throat, and many of the crowd were the worse for liquor. Indeed, these patriots had rendezvoused at a cabaret at the entrance of the village, and swarmed from its tables to intercept us. The ladies, they insisted, must alight and be examined. Mammy Chris was drawn out of the cart, looking as if her face had been rubbed in ashes: Mrs. Leare was nervously excited, Hermione went up to her, supported her and drew her bag of diamonds out of her hand. I took Claribel in my arms.

"Yes, Americans, republicans!" cried Mrs. Leare: "we fraternize with all republicans in France."

"Aristos," said a man between his teeth, glancing at her dress and at that of Hermione.

Hermione replied (unwilling to use the word "aristocrat") by an American idiom: "He said we belonged to the Upper Ten."

"But we don't! Oh, Hermie, your father belongs to a good family in Maryland, but my grandfather made shoes. I was quite poor when he married me. I was only sixteen."

"What you say?" said a railroad-hand who knew a little English. "You say you are not some aristos?"

"C'est bien! c'est bien!" cried another, raising his lantern to her blanched and beautiful face.

"You will let us all pass, monsieur?" she said persuasively: "you will even be our escort a little way. We will pay handsomely for your protection."

Before he could answer her two or three fellows, more drunk than the rest, burst out with a proposition: "She says they are not aristos, but republicans. Let her prove it. She cannot, if she be a true republican, refuse to kiss her fellow-patriots."

But Hermione laid a restraining hand upon my arm. "Gentlemen," she said in clear tones and perfect French, "it is quite true that we are Americans and republicans. We wish you well, and if it be for the good of France to be free under a republican form of government, no one can wish her prosperity more than ourselves. But in our free country, messieurs, a woman is held free to give her kiss to whom she will, and according to our custom she gives it only to her betrothed or to her husband." Here stooping she picked up a little boy who had worked himself into the forefront of the crowd, and before I knew what she was about to do she had lifted him upon the cart beside her. She looked a moment steadily at the men around her, holding the boy's hand in both her own, then turning toward him and pressing her lips upon his face, she said, "Messieurs, I kiss your representative: I cannot embrace a multitude;" and placed a piece of money in the gamin's hand.

For a moment there was some doubt what view the crowd might take of this, but her beauty, her fearlessness, and, above all, the awe inspired by her womanliness, prevailed. They shouted "Vive la République!"

"With all my heart," replied Hermione. "Now shout for me, gentlemen: Vive la République des États Unis!"

They were completely won. A French crowd is never dangerous or unmanageable till it has tasted blood, and besides it has—or at least in those days it used to have—sentiments, to which it was possible with a little tact to appeal successfully.

The opposition to our progress came to an end. Mrs. Leare and old Mammy were helped back into the cart, and a man offered them some wine. They brought some also to Hermione. I pressed her to drink it, which she did to their good health, and giving back the glass placed in it a napoleon. "Do me the favor, messieurs," she said, "to drink your next toast to our American republic."

Cheers rose for her. There was no longer any talk of detaining us: the old horse was urged forward. Hermione took my arm. We marched on, escorted by the rabble. At the end of the village-street they all gave us an unsteady cheer and turned back to their wine-tables. Hermione proceeded in silence a little farther. Then I felt her slipping from my arm, and was just in time to catch her.

Without compunction I requested Mammy Chris to get out of the cart and put her young lady in her place, pillowing her head as carefully as I could on my own coat, and proceeding in my shirtsleeves.

We were then not half a mile from the Banlieu, which we passed without adventure, much to my surprise, its inhabitants having taken advantage of the confusion to pour into Paris and infest its richer quarters.

The ladies were obliged to get out at the barrier and to send back the cart to its proprietor. Again I had the happiness of supporting Hermione while I carried little Claribel, and Mrs. Leare and Mammy walked on ahead.

"I feel humiliated," I said, "that the whole burden of those dreadful moments should have fallen upon you."

"And to avoid that feeling you were ready to knock down a drunken blouse in English style?" she said, smiling. "No, Mr. Farquhar, nothing but the power that a woman finds in her own womanhood could have brought us through safely. Those men had all had mothers, and each man had some sort of womanly ideal. I could not have managed a crowd of poissardes, but, thank Heaven, there is yet a chord that a woman may strike in the hearts of men."

The dawn of Thursday, February 24, 1848, was breaking at the eastward when I arrived with Mrs. Leare, Hermione, the nurse and child at their own apartment. I went up stairs with them. All was cold and cheerless in the rooms. There were no servants. Mrs. Leare sat down; the old nurse bemoaned her rheumatism and her aching bones; Hermione, with the assistance of the concierge's wife, lighted a fire, made some tea and waited on her mother.

For several days afterward she was very ill. She knew nothing of passing events—of the king's flight, of the triumphal and victorious processions that passed up the Champs Élysées, of the sudden impossibility of procuring supplies of change, and of the consequent difficulty of paying household bills with billets de mille francs without gold or silver.

Each day I went several times to make inquiries, and twice I saw Mrs. Leare in bed, but Hermione was invisible.

My father, an honorable British officer of the old school, perceived how things were with me. "My son," he said one day, "there are two courses open to you. You have nothing but your profession. Your education and the premium on your admittance to the office of the great man for whom you work have been my provision for you: the little property I have to leave must support your sisters. You cannot under such circumstances address Miss Leare. You must either go back at once to your work in England and forget this episode, or you may go out to America and see her father. You can tell him you have nothing on which to support his daughter, and ask if he will give you leave to address the young lady. No son of mine, situated like yourself, shall offer himself in any other way to an heiress whose father is three thousand miles away, and who is supposed to have two millions of francs for her dowry."

I saw he was right, but, forlorn as the hope was of any appeal to Mr. Leare, I would not relinquish it. I resolved to go out to America and see him, and wrote to England to secure letters of introduction to the chief engineers in the United States and Canada. Meantime, my father proposed that we should go together and call upon Mrs. and Miss Leare.

Hermione received us in the boudoir, looking like a bruised lily: her mother came in afterward.

"We are going right straight home," she said, "the moment we can get money to get away. I have written to Mr. Leare that he must find some means to send me some."

"I am glad to hear you say this, madame," said my father. "My son has just made up his mind to go out to America and seek employment on one of your railways."

"Why, Mr. Farquhar, that will suit us exactly," cried Mrs. Leare.—"Hermione, won't it be lovely if Mr. Farquhar takes care of us on the voyage?—You will engage your passage—won't you?—in the same steamer as we do?—No one was ever so good a squire of dames as your son, Captain Farquhar. Hermione and I shall never forget our obligations to him."

"No, madame," said my father; and he got up and walked to the fireplace, where in his embarrassment he laid his hand upon the ornamented box which held the cigarettes of the fast lady.

She rose up too and went hastily toward him, anxious he should not surprise her little frailty.

"The truth is, madame," whispered my father, who never could restrain his tongue from any kindly indiscretion, "the poor fellow is suffering too much from the attractions of Miss Leare. He has nothing but his profession, and I tell him he must not dare to address her in her father's absence."

"My dear captain, what does that matter? And I believe Hermione would have him too," said her mother.

"Oh, no matter," interrupted Mrs. Leare: "her father always told her just to please herself. Mr. Farquhar is an Englishman and of good family. He has his profession to keep him out of mischief, and Hermie will more than pay her own expenses. Indeed, I dare not go home without a gentleman to look after us on the passage: my nerves have been too shattered, and I never again shall trust a courier. Do let your son go back with us," she implored persuasively; and added, as she saw that he still hesitated, "Besides, what rich man in America knows how long he may be rich? 'Spend your money and enjoy yourself' has always been my motto."

Thus urged, what could my father do but suppose that Mrs. Leare knew Mr. Leare's views better than he did? He no longer held out on the point of honor.

During the voyage to New York I learned to understand her father's character, and when he met us on the wharf I was no longer afraid of him.

Hermione's choice in marriage seemed to be wholly left to herself. Mr. Leare told me, when I had that formidable talk with him dreaded by all aspirants to the hand of a man's daughter, that Hermione had too much good sense, self-respect and womanliness to give herself away to a man unworthy of her. "That she can love you, sir," he said, "is sufficient recommendation."

That it might be sufficient in my case I hoped with all my soul, but felt, as Hermione had expressed it early in our acquaintance, that society in America must be founded upon very different opinions than our own in regard to the relations of men and women.

THE AUTHORS OF "FROUFROU."

No doubt it will surprise some theatre-goers who are not special students of the stage to be told that the authors of Froufrou are the authors also of the Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein and of La Belle Hélène, of Carmen and of Le Petit Duc. There are a few, I know, who think that Froufrou was written by the fertile and ingenious M. Victorien Sardou, and who, without thinking, credit M. Jacques Offenbach with the composition of the words as well as the music of the Grande Duchesse; and as for Carmen, is it not an Italian opera, and is not the book, like the music, the work of some Italian? As a matter of fact, all these plays, unlike as they are to each other, and not only these, but many more—not a few of them fairly well known to the American play-goer—are due to the collaboration of M. Henri Meilhac and M. Ludovic Halévy.

Born in 1832, M. Henri Meilhac, like M. Émile Zola, dealt in books before he began to make them. He soon gave up trade for journalism, and contributed with pen and pencil to the comic Journal pour Rire. He began as a dramatist in 1855 with a two-act play at the Palais Royal Theatre: like the first pieces of Scribe and of M. Sardou, and of so many more who have afterward abundantly succeeded on the stage, this play of M. Meilhac's was a failure; and so also was his next, likewise in two acts. But in 1856 the Sarabande du Cardinal, a delightful little comedy in one act, met with favor at the Gymnase. It was followed by two or three other comediettas equally clever. In 1859, M. Meilhac made his first attempt at a comedy in five acts, but the Petit fils de Mascarille had not the good fortune of his ancestor. In 1860, for the first time, he was assisted by M. Ludovic Halévy, and in the twenty years since then their names have been linked together on the title-pages of two score or more plays of all kinds—drama, comedy, farce, opera, operetta and ballet. M. Meilhac's new partner was the nephew of the Halévy who is best known out of France as the composer of the Jewess, and he was the son of M. Léon Halévy, poet, philosopher and playwright. Two years younger than M. Henri Meilhac, M. Ludovic Halévy held a place in the French civil service until 1858, when he resigned to devote his whole time, instead of his spare time, to the theatre. As the son of a dramatist and the nephew of a popular composer, he had easy access to the stage. He began as the librettist-in-ordinary to M. Offenbach, for whom he wrote Ba-ta-clan in 1855, and later the Chanson de Fortunio, the Pont des Soupirs and Orphée aux Enfers. The first very successful play which MM. Meilhac and Halévy wrote together was a book for M. Offenbach; and it was possibly the good fortune of this operetta which finally affirmed the partnership. Before the triumph of the Belle Hélène in 1864 the collaboration had been tentative, as it were: after that it was as though the articles had been definitely ratified—not that either of the parties has not now and then indulged in outside speculations, trying a play alone or with an outsider, but this was without prejudice to the permanent partnership.

This kind of literary union, the long-continued conjunction of two kindred spirits, is better understood amongst us than the indiscriminate collaboration which marks the dramatic career of M. Eugène Labiche, for instance. Both kinds were usual enough on the English stage in the days of Elizabeth, but we can recall the ever-memorable example of Beaumont and Fletcher, while we forget the chance associations of Marston, Dekker, Chapman and Ben Jonson. And in contemporary literature we have before us the French tales of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian and the English novels of Messrs. Besant and Rice. The fact that such a union endures is proof that it is advantageous. A long-lasting collaboration like this of MM. Meilhac and Halévy must needs be the result of a strong sympathy and a sharp contrast of character, as well as of the possession by one of literary qualities which supplement those of the other.

One of the first things noticed by an American student of French dramatic literature is that the chief Parisian critics generally refer to the joint work of these two writers as the plays of M. Meilhac, leaving M. Halévy altogether in the shade. At first this seems a curious injustice, but the reason is not far to seek. It is not that M. Halévy is some two years the junior of M. Meilhac: it lies in the quality of their respective abilities. M. Meilhac has the more masculine style, and so the literary progeny of the couple bear rather his name than his associate's. M. Meilhac has the strength of marked individuality, he has a style of his own, one can tell his touch; while M. Halévy is merely a clever French dramatist of the more conventional pattern. This we detect by considering the plays which each has put forth alone and unaided by the other. In reading one of M. Meilhac's works we should feel no doubt as to the author, while M. Halévy's clever pictures of Parisian society, wanting in personal distinctiveness, would impress us simply as a product of the "Modern French School."

Before finally joining with M. Halévy, M. Meilhac wrote two comedies in five acts of high aim and skilful execution, and two other five-act pieces have been written by MM. Meilhac and Halévy together. The Vertu de Célimène and the Petit fils de Mascarille are by the elder partner—Fanny Lear and Froufrou are the work of the firm. Yet in these last two it is difficult to see any trace of M. Halévy's handiwork. Allowing for the growth of M. Meilhac's intellect during the eight or ten years which intervened between the work alone and the work with his associate, and allowing for the improvement in the mechanism of play-making, I see no reason why M. Meilhac might not have written Fanny Lear and Froufrou substantially as they are had he never met M. Halévy. But it is inconceivable that M. Halévy alone could have attained so high an elevation or have gained so full a comic force. Perhaps, however, M. Halévy deserves credit for the better technical construction of the later plays: merely in their mechanism the first three acts of Froufrou are marvellously skilful. And perhaps, also, his is a certain softening humor, which is the cause that the two later plays, written by both partners, are not so hard in their brilliance as the two earlier comedies, the work of M. Meilhac alone.

It may seem something like a discussion of infinitesimals, but I think M. Halévy's co-operation has given M. Meilhac's plays a fuller ethical richness. To the younger writer is due a simple but direct irony, as well as a lightsome and laughing desire to point a moral when occasion serves. Certainly, I shall not hold up a play written to please the public of the Palais Royal, or even of the Gymnase, as a model of all the virtues. Nor need it be, on the other hand, an embodiment of all the cardinal sins. The frequenters of the Palais Royal Theatre are not babes; young people of either sex are not taken there; only the emancipated gain admittance; and to the seasoned sinners who haunt theatres of this type these plays by MM. Meilhac and Halévy are harmless. Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could hurt any one capable of understanding it. Most of their plays are not to be recommended to ignorant innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not meant for young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his virtue sits easily on him, and though he is sound on the main question, he looks upon the vagaries of others with a gentle eye. M. Halévy, it seems to me, is made of somewhat sterner stuff. He raises a warning voice now and then—in Fanny Lear, for instance, the moral is pointed explicitly—and even where there is no moral tagged to the fable, he who has eyes to see and ears to hear can find "a terrible example" in almost any of these plays, even the lightest. For the congregation to which it was delivered there is a sermon in Toto chez Tata, perhaps the piece in which, above all others, the Muse seems Gallic and égrillarde. That is a touch of real truth, and so of a true morality, where Tata, the fashionable courtesan, leaning over her stairs as Toto the school-boy bears off her elderly lover, and laughing at him, cries out, "Toi, mon petit homme, je te repincerai dans quatre ou cinq ans!" And a cold and cutting stroke it is a little earlier in the same little comedy where Toto, left alone in Tata's parlor, negligently turns over her basket of visiting-cards and sees "names which he knew because he had learnt them by heart in his history of France." Still, in spite of this truth and morality, I do not advise the reading of Toto chez Tata in young ladies' seminaries. Young ladies in Paris do not go to hear Madame Chaumont, for whom Toto was written, nor is the Variétés, where it was played, a place where a girl can take her mother.

It was at the Variétés in December, 1864, that the Belle Hélène was produced: this was the first of half a score of plays written by MM. Meilhac and Halévy for which M. Jacques Offenbach composed the music. Chief among these are Barbe-bleue, the Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, the Brigands and Périchole. When we recall the fact that these five operas are the most widely known, the most popular and by far the best of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and Halévy, or to point out how important a thing the quality of the opera-book is to the composer of the score. These earlier librettos were admirably made: they are models of what a comic opera-book should be. I cannot well imagine a better bit of work of its kind than the Belle Hélène or the Grande Duchesse. Tried by the triple test of plot, characters and dialogue, they are nowhere wanting. Since MM. Meilhac and Halévy have ceased writing for M. Offenbach they have done two books for M. Charles Lecoq—the Petit Duc and the Grande Demoiselle. These are rather light comic operas than true opéras-bouffes, but if there is an elevation in the style of the music, there is an emphatic falling off in the quality of the words. From the Grande Duchesse to the Petit Duc is a great descent: the former was a genuine play, complete and self-contained—the latter is a careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the composer to fill up. The story—akin in subject to Mr. Tom Taylor's fine historical drama Clancarty—is pretty, but there is no trace of the true poetry which made the farewell letter of Périchole so touching, or of the true comic force which projected Général Bourn. Carmen, which, like Périchole, owes the suggestion of its plot and characters to Prosper Mérimée, is little more than the task-work of the two well-trained play-makers: it was sufficient for its purpose, no more and no less.

Of all the opera-books of MM. Meilhac and Halévy, that one is easily first and foremost which has for its heroine the Helen of Troy whom Marlowe's Faustus declared

In the Belle Hélène we see the higher wit of M. Meilhac. M. Halévy had been at the same college with him, and they had pored together over the same legends of old time, but working without M. Meilhac on Orphée aux Enfers, M. Halévy showed his inferiority, for Orphée is the old-fashioned anachronistic skit on antiquity—funny if you will, but with a fun often labored, not to say forced—the fun of physical incongruity and exaggeration. But in the Belle Hélène the fun, easy and flowing, is of a very high quality, and it has root in mental, not physical, incongruity. Here indeed is the humorous touchstone of a whole system of government and of theology. And, allowing for the variations made with comic intent, it is altogether Greek in spirit—so Greek, in fact, that I doubt whether any one who has not given his days and nights to the study of Homer and of the tragedians, and who has not thus taken in by the pores the subtle essence of Hellenic life and literature, can truly appreciate this French farce. Planché's Golden Fleece is in the same vein, but the ore is not as rich. Frere's Loves of the Triangles and some of his Anti-Jacobin writing are perhaps as good in quality, but the subjects are inferior and temporary. Scarron's vulgar burlesques and the cheap parodies of many contemporary English play-makers are not to be mentioned in the same breath with this scholarly fooling. There is something in the French genius akin to the Greek, and here was a Gallic wit who could turn a Hellenic love-tale inside out, and wring the uttermost drop of fun from it without recourse to the devices of the booth at the fair, the false nose and the simulation of needless ugliness. The French play, comic as it was, did not suggest hysteria or epilepsy, and it was not so lacking in grace that we could not recall the original story without a shudder. There is no shattering of an ideal, and one cannot reproach the authors of the Belle Hélène with what Theophrastus Such calls "debasing the moral currency, lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition."

Surpassed only by the Belle Hélène is the Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein. It is nearly fifteen years since all the world went to Paris to see an Exposition Universelle and to gaze at the "sabre de mon père," and since a Russian emperor, going to hear the operetta, said to have been suggested by the freak of a Russian empress, sat incognito in one stage-box of the little Variétés Theatre, and glancing up saw a Russian grand duke in the other. It is nearly fifteen years since the tiny army of Her Grand-ducal Highness took New York by storm, and since American audience after audience hummed its love for the military and walked from the French Theatre along Fourteenth street to Delmonico's to supper, sabring the waiters there with the venerated weapon of her sire. The French Theatre is no more, and Delmonico's is no longer at that Fourteenth-street corner, and Her Highness Mademoiselle Tostée is dead, and M. Offenbach's sprightly tunes have had the fate of all over-popular airs, and are forgotten now. Où sont les neiges d'antan?

It has been said that the authors regretted having written the Grande Duchesse, because the irony of history soon made a joke on Teutonic powers and principalities seem like unpatriotic satire. Certainly, they had no reason to be ashamed of the literary quality of their work: in its class it yields only to its predecessor. There is no single figure as fine as Calchas—Général Boum is a coarser outline—but how humorous and how firm is the drawing of Prince Paul and Baron Grog! And Her Highness herself may be thought a cleverer sketch of youthful femininity than even the Hellenic Helen. It is hard to judge the play now. Custom has worn its freshness and made it too familiar: we know it too well to criticise it clearly. Besides, the actors have now overlaid the action with over-much "business." But in spite of these difficulties the merits of the piece are sufficiently obvious: its constructive skill can be remarked; the first act, for example, is one of the best bits of exposition on the modern French stage.

Besides these plays for music, and besides the more important five-act comedies to be considered later, MM. Meilhac and Halévy are the authors of thirty or forty comic dramas—as they are called on the English stage—or farce-comedies in one, two, three, four, and even five acts, ranging in aim from the gentle satire of sentimentality in La Veuve to the outspoken farce of the Réveillon. Among the best of the longer of these comic plays are Tricoche et Cacolet and La Boule. Both were written for the Palais Royal, and they are models of the new dramatic species which came into existence at that theatre about twenty years ago, as M. Francisquc Sarcey recently reminded us in his interesting article on the Palais Royal in The Nineteenth Century. This new style of comic play may be termed realistic farce—realistic, because it starts from every-day life and the most matter-of-fact conditions; and farce, because it uses its exact facts only to further its fantasy and extravagance. Consider La Boule. Its first act is a model of accurate observation; it is a transcript from life; it is an inside view of a commonplace French household which incompatibility of temper has made unsupportable. And then take the following acts, and see how on this foundation of fact, and screened by an outward semblance of realism, there is erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Théâtre Français, M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Variétés whom we had lately seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la vérité la plus absolue avec la fantasie la plus pure." And this is the merit of La Boule: its most humorous inventions have their roots in the truth.

Better even than La Boule is Tricoche et Cacolet, which is the name of a firm of private detectives whose exploits and devices surpass those imagined by Poe in America, by Wilkie Collins in England, and by Gaboriau in France. The manifold disguises and impersonations of the two partners when seeking to outwit each other are as well-motived and as fertile in comic effect as any of the attempts of Crispin or of some other of Regnard's interchangeable valets. Is not even the Légataire Universel, Regnard's masterpiece, overrated? To me it is neither higher comedy nor more provocative of laughter than either La Boule or Tricoche et Cacolet; and the modern plays, as I have said, are based on a study of life as it is, while the figures of the older comedies are frankly conventional. Nowhere in Regnard is there a situation equal in comic power to that in the final act of the Réveillon—a situation Molière would have been glad to treat.

Especially to be commended in Tricoche et Cacolet is the satire of the hysterical sentimentality and of the forced emotions born of luxury and idleness. The parody of the amorous intrigue which is the staple of so many French plays is as wholesome as it is exhilarating. Absurdity is a deadly shower-bath to sentimentalism. The method of Meilhac and Halévy in sketching this couple is not unlike that employed by Mr. W.S. Gilbert in H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. Especially to be noted is the same perfectly serious pushing of the dramatic commonplaces to an absurd conclusion. There is the same kind of humor too, and the same girding at the stock tricks of stage-craft—in H.M.S. Pinafore at the swapping of children in the cradle, and in Tricoche et Cacolet at the "portrait de ma mère" which has drawn so many tears in modern melodrama. But MM. Meilhac and Halévy, having made one success, did not further attempt the same kind of pleasantry—wiser in this than Mr. Gilbert, who seems to find it hard to write anything else.

As in the Château à Toto MM. Meilhac and Halévy had made a modern perversion of Dame Blanche, so in La Cigale did they dress up afresh the story of the Fille du R'egiment. As the poet asks—

I have cited La Cigale, not because it is a very good play—for it is not—but because it shows the present carelessness of French dramatists in regard to dramatic construction. La Cigale is a very clever bit of work, but it has the slightest of plots, and this made out of old cloth; and the situations, in so far as there are any, follow each other as best they may. It is not really a play: it is a mere sketch touched up with Parisianisms, "local hits" and the wit of the moment. This substitution of an off-hand sketch for a full-sized picture can better be borne in a little one-act play than in a more ambitious work in three or four acts.

And of one-act plays Meilhac and Halévy have written a score or more—delightful little genre pictures, like the Été de Saint-Martin, simple pastels, like Toto chez Tata, and vigorous caricatures, like the Photographe or the Brésilien. The Frenchman invented the ruffle, says Emerson: the Englishman added the shirt. These little dramatic trifles are French ruffles. In the beginning of his theatrical career M. Meilhac did little comedies like the Sarabande and the Autographe, in the Scribe formula—dramatized anecdotes, but fresher in wit and livelier in fancy than Scribe's. This early work was far more regular than we find in some of his latest, bright as these are: the Petit Hôtel, for instance, and Lolotte are etchings, as it were, instantaneous photographs of certain aspects of life in the city by the Seine or stray paragraphs of the latest news from Paris.

It is perhaps not too much to say that Meilhac and Halévy are seen at their best in these one-act plays. They hit better with a single-barrel than with a revolver. In their five-act plays, whether serious like Fanny Lear or comic like La Vie Parisienne, the interest is scattered, and we have a series of episodes rather than a single story. Just as the egg of the jelly-fish is girt by circles which tighten slowly until the ovoid form is cut into disks of independent life, so if the four intermissions of some of Meilhac and Halévy's full-sized plays were but a little longer and wider and deeper they would divide the piece into five separate plays, any one of which could fairly hope for success by itself. I have heard that the Roi Candaule was originally an act of La Boule, and the Photographe seems as though it had dropped from La Vie Parisienne by mistake. In M. Meilhac's earlier five-act plays, the Vertu de Celimène and the Petit fils de Mascarille, there is great power of conception, a real grip on character, but the main action is clogged with tardy incidents, and so the momentum is lost. In these comedies the influence of the new school of Alexandre Dumas fils is plainly visible. And the inclination toward the strong, not to say violent, emotions which Dumas and Angier had imported into comedy is still more evident in Fanny Lear, the first five-act comedy which Meilhac and Halévy wrote together, and which was brought out in 1868. The final situation is one of truth and immense effectiveness, and there is great vigor in the creation of character. The decrepit old rake, the Marquis de Noriolis, feeble in his folly and wandering in helplessness, but irresistible when aroused, is a striking figure; and still more striking is the portrait of his wife, now the Marquise de Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear the adventuress—a woman who has youth, beauty, wealth, everything before her, if it were not for the shame which is behind her: gay and witty, and even good-humored, she is inflexible when she is determined; hers is a velvet manner and an iron will. The name of Fanny Lear may sound familiar to some readers because it was given to an American adventuress in Russia by a grand-ducal admirer.

After Fanny Lear came Froufrou, the lineal successor of The Stranger as the current masterpiece of the lachrymatory drama. Nothing so tear-compelling as the final act of Froufrou had been seen on the stage for half a century or more. The death of Froufrou was a watery sight, and for any chance to weep we are many of us grateful. And yet it was a German, born in the land of Charlotte and Werther,—it was Heine who remarked on the oddity of praising the "dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears—a talent which he has in common with the meanest onion." It is noteworthy that it was by way of Germany that English tragedy exerted its singular influence on French comedy. Attracted by the homely power of pieces like The Gamester and Jane Shore, Diderot in France and Lessing in Germany attempted the tragédie bourgeoise, but the right of the "tradesmen's tragedies"—as Goldsmith called them—to exist at all was questioned until Kotzebue's pathetic power and theatrical skill captured nearly every stage in Europe. In France the bastard offspring of English tragedy and German drama gave birth to an equally illegitimate comédie larmoyante. And so it happens that while comedy in English literature, resulting from the clash of character, is always on the brink of farce, comedy in French literature may be tinged with passion until it almost turns to tragedy. In France the word "comedy" is elastic and covers a multitude of sins: it includes the laughing Boule and the tearful Froufrou: in fact, the French Melpomene is a sort of Jeanne qui pleure et Jeanne qui rit.

So it happens that Froufrou is a comedy. And indeed the first three acts are comedy of a very high order, full of wit and rich in character. I mentioned The Stranger a few lines back, and the contrast of the two plays shows how much lighter and more delicate French art is. The humor to be found in The Stranger is, to say the least, Teutonic; and German humor is like the simple Italian wines: it will not stand export. And in The Stranger there is really no character, no insight into human nature. Misanthropy and Repentance, as Kotzebue called his play (The Stranger was Sheridan's title for the English translation he revised for his own theatre), are loud-sounding words when we capitalize them, but they do not deceive us now: we see that the play itself is mostly stalking sententiousness, mawkishly overladen with gush. But in Froufrou there is wit of the latest Parisian kind, and there are characters—people whom we might meet and whom we may remember. Brigard, for one, the reprobate old gentleman, living even in his old age in that Bohemia which has Paris for its capital, and dyeing his few locks because he feels himself unworthy to wear gray hair,—Brigard is a portrait from life. The Baron de Cambri is less individual, and I confess I cannot quite stomach a gentleman who is willing to discuss the problem of his wife's virtue with a chance adorer. But the cold Baronne herself is no commonplace person. And Louise, the elder daughter of Froufrou, the one who had chosen the better part and had kept it by much self-sacrifice,—she is a true woman. Best, better even than Brigard, is Gilberte, nicknamed "Froufrou" from the rustling of her silks as she skips and scampers airily around. Froufrou, when all is said, is a real creation, a revelation of Parisian femininity, a living thing, breathing the breath of life and tripping along lightly on her own little feet. Marrying a reserved yet deeply-devoted husband because her sister bid her; taking into her home that sister, who had sacrificed her own love for the husband; seeing this sister straighten the household which she in her heedless seeking for idle amusement had not governed, then beginning to feel herself in danger and aware of a growing jealousy, senseless though it be, of the sister who has so innocently supplanted her by her hearth, and even with her child; making one effort to regain her place, and failing, as was inevitable,—poor Froufrou takes the fatal plunge which will for ever and at once separate her from what was hers before. What a fine scene is that at the end of the third act, in which Froufrou has worked herself almost to a frenzy, and, hopeless in her jealousy, gives up all to her sister and rushes from the house to the lover she scarcely cares for! And how admirably does all that has gone before lead up to it! These first three acts are a wonder of constructive art. Of the rest of the play it is hard to speak so highly. The change is rather sudden from the study of character in the first part to the demand in the last that if you have tears you must prepare to shed them now. The brightness is quenched in gloom and despair. Of a verity, frivolity may be fatal, and death may follow a liking for private theatricals and the other empty amusements of fashion; but is it worth while to break a butterfly on the wheel and to put a humming-bird to the question? To say what fate shall be meted out to the woman taken in adultery is always a hard task for the dramatist. Here the erring and erratic heroine comes home to be forgiven and to die, and so after the fresh and unforced painting of modern Parisian life we have a finish full of conventional pathos. Well, death redeems all, and, as Pascal says, "the last act is always tragedy, whatever fine comedy there may have been in the rest of life. We must all die alone."

THE KING'S GIFTS.

Cyrus the king in royal mood
Portioned his gifts as seemed him good:
To Artabasus, proud to hold
The priceless boon, a cup of gold—
A rare-wrought thing: its jewelled brim
Haloed a nectar sweet to him.
No flavor fine it seemed to miss;
But when the king stooped down, a kiss
To leave upon Chrysantas' lips,
The jewels paled in dull eclipse
To Artabasus: hard and cold
And empty grew the cup of gold.
"Better, O Sire, than mine," cried he,
"I deem Chrysantas' gift to be."
Yet the wise king his courtiers knew,
And unto each had given his due.

To all who watch and all who wait
The king will come, or soon or late.
Choose well: thy secret wish is known,
And thou shalt surely have thine own—
A golden cup thy poor wealth's sign,
Or on thy lips Love's seal divine.

BAUBIE WISHART.

"I have taken you at your word, you see, Miss Mackenzie. You told me not to give alms in the street, and to bring the begging children to you. So here is one now."

Thus introduced, the begging child was pushed forward into the room by the speaker, a lady who was holding her by one shoulder.

She was a stunted, slim creature, that might have been any age from nine to fourteen, barefooted and bareheaded, and wearing a Rob Roy tartan frock. She entered in a sidelong way that was at once timid and confidently independent, and stared all round her with a pair of large brown eyes. She did not seem to be in the least frightened, and when released by her guardian stood at ease comfortably on one foot, tucking the other away out of sight among the not too voluminous folds of her frock.

It was close on twelve o'clock of a March day in the poor sewing-women's workroom in Drummond street. The average number of women of the usual sort were collected together—a depressed and silent gathering. It seemed as if the bitter east wind had dulled and chilled them into a grayer monotony of look than usual, so that they might be in harmony with the general aspect which things without had assumed at its grim bidding. A score or so of wan faces looked up for a minute, but the child, after all, had nothing in her appearance that was calculated to repay attention, and the lady was known to them all. So "white seam" reasserted its old authority without much delay.

Miss Mackenzie laid down the scissors which she had been using on a bit of coarse cotton, and advanced in reply to the address of the newcomer. "How do you do? and where did you pick up this creature?" she asked, looking curiously at the importation.

"Near George IV. Bridge, on this side of it, and I just took hold of her and brought her off to you at once. I don't believe"—this was said sotto voce—"that she has a particle of clothing on her but that frock."

"Baubie Wishart, mem." She spoke in an apologetic tone, glancing down at her feet, the one off duty being lowered for the purpose of inspection, which over, she hoisted the foot again immediately into the recesses of the Rob Roy tartan.

Baubie Wishart glanced down again in thought for an instant, then raised her eyes for the first time directly to her questioner's face: "He used to be a Christy man, but he canna be that any longer, sae he goes wi' boords."

Down came the foot once more, and this time took up its position permanently beside the other: "Because mother drinks awfu', an' pawned the banjo for drink." This family history was related in the most matter-of-fact, natural way.

Baubie Wishart's eyes wandered all round the room, and with one toe she swept up a little mass of dust before she answered in a voice every tone of which spoke unwilling truthfulness, "Just whiles—Saturday nichts."

"Ay," looking up quickly, "excep' just whiles when he's fou—Saturday nichts, ye ken—and then he beats me; but he's rale kind when he's sober."

"No, mem," with a shake of the head that seemed to convey that she had something else, and probably better, to do.

"Ay, mem," answered Baubie quite readily: "it's a kind of a bad word I hear in the streets."

"Thirteen past," replied Baubie, with a promptness that made her listeners smile, suggesting as it did the thought that the question had been put to her before, and that Baubie knew well the import of her answer.

She grew more communicative now. She could not read, but, all the same, she knew two songs which she sang in the streets—"Before the Battle" and "After the Battle;" and, carried away by the thought of her own powers, she actually began to give proof of her assertion by reciting one of them there and then. This, however, was stopped at once. "Can knit too," she added then.

Baubie Wishart looked puzzled, consulted her toes in vain, and then finally gave it up.

"I should like to do something for her," observed her first friend: "it is time this street-singing came to an end."

"She is intelligent, clearly," said Miss Mackenzie, looking curiously at the child, whose appearance and bearing rather puzzled her. There was not a particle of the professional street-singer about Baubie Wishart, the child of that species being generally clean-washed, or at least soapy, of face, with lank, smooth-combed and greasy hair; and usually, too, with a smug, sanctimonious air of meriting a better fate. Baubie Wishart presented none of these characteristics: her face was simply filthy; her hair was a red-brown, loosened tangle that reminded one painfully of oakum in its first stage. And she looked as if she deserved a whipping, and defied it too. She was just a female arab—an arab plus an accomplishment—bright, quick and inconsequent as a sparrow, and reeking of the streets and gutters, which had been her nursery.

"Poor little atom! I suppose you will find out where the parents live, and send the school-board officer to them. That is the usual thing, is it not? I must go, Miss Mackenzie. Good-bye for to-day. And do tell me what you settle for her."

"Go and sit by the fire, Baubie Wishart, for a little, and then I shall be ready to talk to you."

Nothing loath apparently, Baubie established herself at the end of the fender, and from that coign of vantage watched the on-goings about her with the stoicism of a red Indian. She showed no symptom of wonder at anything, and listened to the disquisitions of Miss Mackenzie and the matron as to the proper adjustment of parts—"bias," "straights," "gathers," "fells," "gussets" and "seams," a whole new language as it unrolled its complexities before her—with complacent indifference.

At last, all the web of cotton being cut up, the time came to go. Miss Mackenzie buttoned up her sealskin coat, and pulling on a pair of warm gloves beckoned Baubie, who rose with alacrity: "Where do your father and mother live?"

"I know the place," observed Miss Mackenzie, to whom, indeed, most of these haunts were familiar. "Take me there now, Baubie."

They set out together. Baubie trotted in front, turning her head, dog-fashion, at every corner to see if she were followed. They reached the Grassmarket at last, and close to the corner of the West Bow found an entry with the whitewashed inscription above it, "Kennedy's Lodgings." Baubie glanced round to see if her friend was near, then vanished upward from her sight. Miss Mackenzie kilted her dress and began the ascent of the stairs, the steps of which, hollowed out as they were by the tread of centuries of human feet, afforded a not too safe footing.

Arrived at the third floor, she found Baubie waiting for her, breathless and panting.

A long, narrow passage lay before them, off which doors opened on all sides. Precipitating herself at one of these doors, Baubie Wishart, who could barely reach the latch, pushed it open, giving egress to a confusion of noises, which seemed to float above a smell of cooking, in which smell herrings and onions contended for the mastery.

It was a very large room, low-ceilinged, but well enough lighted by a couple of windows, which looked into a close behind. The walls had been whitewashed once upon a time, but the whitewash was almost lost to view under the decorations with which it was overlaid. These consisted of pictures cut out of the illustrated weekly papers or milliners' books. All sorts of subjects were represented: fashion-plates hung side by side with popular preachers and statesmen, race-horses and Roman Catholic saints; red-and white-draped Madonnas elbowed the "full-dress" heroines of the penny weeklies. It was a curious gallery, and a good many of the works of art had the merit of being antique. Generations of flies had emblazoned their deeds of prowess on the papers: streaks of candle-grease bore witness to the inquiring turn of mind, attracted by the letter-press, or the artistic proclivities of Kennedy's lodgers. It was about two, the dinner-hour probably, which accounted for the presence of so many people in the room. Most, but not all, seemed to be of the wandering class. They were variously employed. Some were sitting on the truckle-beds that ran round the walls; one or two were knitting or sewing; a cripple was mending baskets in one of the windows; and about the fire a group were collected superintending the operations which produced, though not unaided, the odors with which the room was reeking.

Miss Mackenzie stood for a few minutes, unnoticed apparently, looking about her at the motley crowd. Baubie on entering the room had raised herself for a second on tiptoe to look into a distant corner, and then, remarking to herself, half audibly, "His boords is gane," subsided, and contented herself with watching Miss Mackenzie's movements.

There seemed to be no one to do the honors. The inmates all looked at each other for a moment hesitatingly, then resumed their various occupations. A young woman, a sickly, livid-faced creature, rose from her place behind the door, and, advancing with a halting step, said to Miss Mackenzie, "Mistress Kennedy's no' in, an' Wishart's oot wi's boords."

"I wanted to see him about this child, who was found begging in the streets to-day."

Miss Mackenzie looked curiously at the woman, wondering if she could belong in any way to the Wishart family. She was a miserable object, seemingly in the last stage of consumption.

"Eh, mem," she answered hurriedly, and drawing nearer, "ye're a guid leddy, I ken, an' tak' t' lassie away oot o' this. The mither's an awfu' wuman: tak' her away wi' ye, or she'll sune be as bad. She'll be like mysel' and the rest o' them here."

"I will, I will," Miss Mackenzie said, shocked and startled, recoiling before the spirit-reeking breath of this warning spectre. "I will, I will," she repeated hastily. There was no use remaining any longer. She went out, beckoning to Baubie, who was busy rummaging about a bed at the top of the room.

Baubie had bethought her that it was time to take her father his dinner. So she slipped over to that corner of the big kitchen which was allotted to the Wishart family and possessed herself of a piece of a loaf which was hidden away there. As she passed by the fire she profited by the momentary abstraction of the people who were cooking to snap up and make her own a brace of unconsidered trifles in the shape of onions which were lying near them. These, with the piece of bread, she concealed on her person, and then returned to Miss Mackenzie, who was now in the passage.

"Baubie," said that lady, "I will send some one here about you. Now, don't let me hear of your singing in the streets or begging again. You will get into trouble if you do."

She was descending the stairs as she spoke, and she turned round when she had reached the entry: "You know the police will take you, Baubie."

Without waiting for her answer, Miss Mackenzie entered a tiny shop close by, purchased a mutton-pie and handed it to Baubie Wishart, who received it with wondering reverence. Miss Mackenzie took her way home westward up the Grassmarket. She turned round before leaving it by way of King's Stables, and caught sight of Bauble's frock by the entry of Kennedy's Lodgings—a tiny morsel of color against the shadow of the huge gray houses. She thought of the big kitchen and its occupants, and the face and words of the poor girl, and promised herself that she would send the school-board officer to Kennedy's Lodgings that very night.

Baubie waited till her friend was well out of sight: then she hid her mutton-pie in the same place with the onions and the piece of bread, and started up the Grassmarket in her turn. She stopped at the first shop she passed and bought a pennyworth of cheese. Then she made her way to the Lothian road, and looked up and down it anxiously in search of the walking advertisement-man. He was not there, so she directed her course toward Princes street, and after promenading it as far east as the Mound, she turned up into George street, and caught sight of her father walking along slowly by the curbstone. It was not long before she overtook him.

"Od, lassie, I wis thinkin' lang," he began wearily as soon as he realized her apparition. Baubie did not wait for him to finish: with a peremptory nod she signified her will, and he turned round and followed her a little way down Hanover street. Then Baubie selected a flight of steps leading to a basement store, and throwing him a look of command flitted down and seated herself at the bottom. It was sheltered from the cold wind and not too much overlooked. Wishart shifted the boards from about his shoulders, and, following her, laid them against the wall at the side of the basement-steps, and sat down heavily beside her. He was a sickly-looking man, sandy-haired, with a depressed and shifty expression of face—not vicious, but weak and vacillating. Baubie seemed to have the upper hand altogether: every gesture showed it. She opened the paper that was wrapped about her fragment of rank yellow cheese, laid it down on the step between them, and then produced, in their order of precedence, the pie, the onions and the bread.

A nod was all the answer, for Baubie, who was hungry, was busy breaking the piece of loaf. Wishart with great care divided the pie without spilling much more than half its gravy, and began on his half of it and the biggest onion simultaneously. Baubie ate up her share of pie, declined cheese, and attacked her onion and a great piece of crust. The crust was very tough, and after the mutton-pie rather dry and tasteless, and she laid it down presently in her lap, and after a few minutes' passive silence began: "That," nodding at the cheese, or what was left of it rather, "wis all I got—ae penny. The leddy took me up till a hoose, an' anither are that wis there came doon hame and gaed in ben, an' wis speirin' for ye, an' says she'll gie me till the polis for singin' an' askin' money in t' streets, an' wants you to gie me till her to pit in schuil."

She stopped and fixed her eyes on him, watching the effect of her words. Wishart laid down his bread and cheese and stared back at her. It seemed to take some time for his brain to realize all the meaning of her pregnant speech.

"Ay," he said after a while, and with an effort, "I maun tak' ye to Glasgae, to yer aunt. Ye'll be pit in schuil if yer caught."

"I'll no bide," observed Baubie, finishing off her onion with a grimace. The raw onion was indeed strong and hot, even for Bauble's not too epicurean palate, but it had been got for nothing—a circumstance from which it derived a flavor which many people more dainty than Bauble Wishart find to be extremely appetizing.

"Bide!" echoed her father: "they'll mak' ye bide. Gin I had only the banjo agen!" sighed the whilom Christy man, getting up and preparing to adjust the boards once more.

The last crumb of the loaf was done, and Bauble, refreshed, got up too. "Whenll ye be hame?" she questioned abruptly when they had reached the top of the steps.

"Seven. Gaeway hame wi' ye, lassie, noo. Ye didna see her?" he questioned as he walked off.

"Na," replied Bauble, standing still and looking about her as if to choose which way she should take.

He sighed deeply, and moved off slowly on his way back to his post, with the listless, hopeless air that seems to belong to the members of his calling.

Bauble obeyed her parent's commands in so far as that she did go home, but as she took Punch and Judy in her course up the Mound, and diverged as far as a football match in the Meadows, it was nearly seven before Kennedy's Lodgings saw her again.

The following morning, shortly after breakfast, Miss Mackenzie's butler informed her that there was a child who wanted to speak with her in the hall. On going down she found Bauble Wishart on the mat.

"Where is your father? and why did he not come with you?" asked Miss Mackenzie, puzzled.

"He thoucht shame to come an' speak wi' a fine leddy like you." This excuse, plausible enough, was uttered in a low voice and with downcast eyes, but hardly was it pronounced when she burst out rapidly and breathlessly into what was clearly the main object of her visit: "But please, mem, he says he'll gie me to you if ye'll gie him the three shillin's to tak' the banjo oot o' the pawn."

This candid proposal took Miss Mackenzie's breath away. To become the owner of Baubie Wishart, even at so low a price, seemed to her rather a heathenish proceeding, with a flavor of illegality about it to boot. There was a vacancy at the home for little girls which might be made available for the little wretch without the necessity of any preliminary of this kind; and it did not occur to her that it was a matter of any moment whether Mr. Wishart continued to exercise the rôle of "sandwich-man" or returned to his normal profession of banjo-player. Baubie was to be got hold of in any case. With the muttered adjuration of the wretched girl in Kennedy's Lodgings echoing in her ears, Miss Mackenzie determined that she should be left no longer than could be helped in that company.

How earnest and matter of fact she was in delivering her extraordinary errand! thought Miss Mackenzie to herself, meeting the eager gaze of Baubie Wishart's eyes, looking out from beneath her tangle of hair like those of a Skye terrier.

"I will speak to your father myself, Baubie—tell him so—to-morrow, perhaps: tell him I mean to settle about you myself. Now go."

The least possible flicker of disappointment passed over Baubie's face. The tangled head drooped for an instant, then she bobbed by way of adieu and vanished.

That day and the next passed before Miss Mackenzie found it possible to pay her long-promised visit to Mr. Wishart, and when, about eleven in the forenoon, she once more entered the big kitchen in Kennedy's Lodgings, she was greeted with the startling intelligence that the whole Wishart family were in prison.

The room was as full as before. Six women were sitting in the middle of the floor teasing out an old hair mattress. There was the same odor of cooking, early as it was, and the same medley of noises, but the people were different. The basket-making cripple was gone, and in his place by the window sat a big Irish beggar-woman, who was keeping up a conversation with some one (a compatriot evidently) in a window of the close behind.

The mistress of the house came forward. She was a decent-looking little woman, but had rather a hard face, expressive of care and anxiety. On recognizing her visitor she curtsied: "The Wisharts, mem? Yes, they're a' in jail."

"All in jail?" echoed Miss Mackenzie. "Will you come outside and speak to me? There are so many people—"

"Eh yes, mem: I'm sure ye fin' the room closs. Eh yes, mem, the Wisharts are a' in the lock-up."

They were standing outside in the passage, and Mrs. Kennedy held the door closed by the latch, which she kept firmly grasped in her hand. It struck Miss Mackenzie as being an odd way to secure privacy for a privileged communication, to fasten the door of their room upon those inside. It was expressive, however.

"Ye see, mem," began the landlady, "Wishart's no a very bad man—jist weak in the heid like—but's wife is jist something awfu', an' I could not let her bide in a decent lodging-house. We hae to dra' the line somewhere, and I dra' it low enough, but she wis far below that. Eh, she's jist terrible! Wishart has a sister in Glasgae verra weel to do, an' I h'ard him say he'd gie the lassie to her if it wer na for the wife. The day the school-board gentleman wis here she came back: she'd been away, ye ken, and she said she'd become a t'otaller, an' so I sed she micht stay; but, ye see, when nicht came on she an' Wishart gaed out thegither, an' jist to celebrate their bein' frien's again she an' him gaed intil a public, an' she got uproarious drunk, an' the polis took her up. Wishart wis no sae bad, sae they let him come hame; but, ye see, he had tasted the drink, an' wanted mair, an' he hadna ony money. Ye see, he'd promised the gentleman who came here that he widna send Baubie oot to sing again. But he did send her oot then to sing for money for him, an' the polis had been put to watch her, an' saw her beg, an' took her up to the office, an' came back here for Wishart. An' so before the day was dune they were a' lockit up thegither."

Such was the story related to Miss Mackenzie. What was to be done with Baubie now? It was hardly fair that she should be sent to a reformatory among criminal children. She had committed no crime, and there was that empty bed at the home for little girls. She determined to attend the sheriff-court on Monday morning and ask to be given the custody of Baubie.

When Monday morning came, ten o'clock saw Miss Mackenzie established in a seat immediately below the sheriff's high bench. The Wisharts were among the first batch tried, and made their appearance from a side-door. Mrs. Wishart came first, stepping along with a resolute, brazen bearing that contrasted with her husband's timid, shuffling gait. She was a gypsy-looking woman, with wandering, defiant black eyes, and her red face had the sign-manual of vice stamped upon it. After her came Baubie, a red-tartan-covered mite, shrinking back and keeping as close to her father as she could. Baubie had favored her mother as to complexion: that was plain. The top of her rough head and her wild brown eyes were just visible over the panel as she stared round her, taking in with composure and astuteness everything that was going on. She was the most self-possessed of her party, for under Mrs. Wishart's active brazenness there could easily be seen fear and a certain measure of remorse hiding themselves; and Wishart seemed to be but one remove from imbecility.

The charges were read with a running commentary of bad language from Mrs. Wishart as her offences were detailed; Wishart blinked in a helpless, pathetic way; Baubie, who seemed to consider herself as associated with him alone in the charge, assumed an air of indifference and sucked her thumb, meantime watching Miss Mackenzie furtively. She felt puzzled to account for her presence there, but it never entered her head to connect that fact with herself in any way.

"Guilty or not guilty?" reiterated the clerk: "this is not the time to speak." "She kens it a', an' she wis to tak' the lassie."

"Guilty or not guilty? You must plead, and you can say what you like afterward." Wishart stopped, not without an appealing look at the kind lady, and pleaded guilty meekly. A policeman with a scratched face and one hand plastered up testified to the extravagances Mrs. Wishart had committed on the strength of her conversion to teetotal principles.

Baubic heard it all impassively, her face only betraying anything like keen interest while the police-officer was detailing his injuries. Three months' imprisonment was the sentence on Margaret Mactear or Wishart. Then Wishart's sentence was pronounced—sixty days.

He and Baubie drew nearer to each other, Wishart with a despairing, helpless look. Baubie's eyes looked like those of a hare taken in a gin. Not one word had been said about her. She was not to go with her father. What was to become of her? She was not long left in doubt as to her fate.

"I will take the child, sheriff," said Miss Mackenzie eagerly and anxiously. "I came here purposely to offer her a home in the refuge."

"Nothing could be better, Miss Mackenzie. It is very good of you to volunteer to take charge of her."

Mrs. Wishart disappeared with a parting volley of blasphemy; her husband, casting, as he went, a wistful look at Miss Mackenzie, shambled fecklessly after the partner of his joys and sorrows; and the child remained alone behind. The policeman took her by an arm and drew her forward to make room for a fresh consignment of wickedness from the cells at the side. Baubie breathed a short sigh as the door closed upon her parents, shook back her hair, and looked up at Miss Mackenzie, as if to announce her readiness and good will. Not one vestige of her internal mental attitude could be gathered from her sun-and wind-beaten little countenance. There was no rebelliousness, neither was there guilt. One would almost have thought she had been told beforehand what was to happen, so cool and collected was she.

Pleased with her success, Miss Mackenzie, so speaking, took the little waif's hand and led her out of the police-court into the High street. She hardly dared to conjecture that it was Baubie Wishart's first visit to that place, but as she stood on the entrance-steps and shook out her skirts with a sense of relief, she breathed a sincere hope that it might be the child's last.

A cab was waiting. Baubie, to her intense delight and no less astonishment, was requested to occupy the front seat. Miss Mackenzie gave the driver his order and got in, facing the red tartan bundle.

"Na, niver," replied Baubie in a rapt tone and without looking at her questioner, so intent was she on staring out of the windows, between both of which she divided her attention impartially.

They were driving down the Mound, and the outlook, usually so far-reaching from that vantage-ground, was bounded by a thick sea-fog that the east wind was carrying up from the Forth and dispensing with lavish hands on all sides. The buildings had a grim, black look, as if a premature old age had come upon them, and the black pinnacles of the Monument stood out sharply defined in clear-cut, harsh distinctness against the floating gray background. There were not many people stirring in the streets. It was a depressing atmosphere, and Miss Mackenzie observed before long that Baubie either seemed to have become influenced by it or that the novelty of the cab-ride had worn off completely. They crossed the Water of Leith, worn to a mere brown thread owing to the long drought, by Stockbridge street bridge, and a few yards from it found themselves before a gray stone house separated from the street by a grass-plot surrounded by a stone wall: inside the wall grew chestnut and poplar trees, which in summer must have shaded the place agreeably, but which this day, in the cold gray mist, seemed almost funereal in their gloomy blackness. The gate was opened from within the wall as soon as Miss Mackenzie rang, and she and Baubie walked up the little flagged path together. As the gate clanged to behind them Baubie looked back involuntarily and sighed.

"Don't fear, lassie," said her guide: "they will be very kind to you here. And it will be just a good home for you."

It may be questioned whether this promise of a good home awoke any pleasing associations or carried with it any definite meaning to Baubie Wishart's mind. She glanced up as if to show that she understood, but her eyes turned then and rested on the square front of the little old-fashioned gray house with its six staring windows and its front circumscribed by the wall and the black poplars and naked chestnuts, and she choked down another sigh.

"Now, Mrs. Duncan," Miss Mackenzie was saying to a comfortably-dressed elderly woman, "here's your new girl, Baubie Wishart."

"Oh dear, yes: the sheriff made no objection. And now, Mrs. Duncan, I hope she will be a good girl and give you no trouble.—Come here, Baubie, and promise me to do everything you are told and obey Mrs. Duncan in everything."

There seemed to be no necessity for further exhortation. Baubie's demeanor promised everything that was hoped for or wanted, and, perfectly contented, Miss Mackenzie turned her attention to the minor details of wardrobe, etc.: "That frock is good enough if it were washed. She must get shoes and stockings; and then underwear, too, of some sort will be wanted."

"That will it," responded the matron; "but I had better send her at once to get a bath."

A big girl was summoned from a back room and desired to get ready a tub. It was the ceremony customary at the reception of a neophyte—customary, and in general very necessary too.

Baubie's countenance fell lower still on hearing this, and she blinked both eyes deprecatingly. Nevertheless, when the big girl—whom they called Kate—returned, bringing with her a warm whiff of steam and soap, she trotted after her obediently and silently.

After a while the door opened, and Kate's yellow head appeared. "Speak with ye, mem?" she said. "I hae her washen noo, but what for claes?"

"Oh no.—I'll come and look at her clothes, Kate." As she spoke Miss Mackenzie rose and followed the matron and Kate into a sort of kitchen or laundry.

In the middle of the floor was a tub containing Miss Wishart mid-deep in soapsuds. Her thick hair was all soaking, and clung fast to her head: dripping locks hung clown over her eyes, which looked out through the tangle patient and suffering. She glanced up quickly as Miss Mackenzie came in, and then resigned herself passively into Kate's hands, who with a piece of flannel had resumed the scrubbing process.

Miss Mackenzie was thinking to herself that it was possibly Baubie Wishart's first experience of the kind, when she observed the child wince as if she were hurt.

"It's yon' as hurts her," said Kate, calling the matron's attention to something on the child's shoulders. They both stooped and saw a long blue-and-red mark—a bruise all across her back. Nor was this the only evidence of ill-treatment: other bruises, and even scars, were to be seen on the lean little body.

No answer from Baubie, who seemed to be absorbed in watching the drops running off the end of her little red nose, which played the part of a gargoyle to the rest of her face.

Miss Mackenzie repeated the question, sternly almost: "Bauble Wishart, I insist upon knowing who gave you that bruise."

"A didna gie't to mysel', mem." was the answer from the figure in the soapsuds. There was a half sob in the voice as of terror, and her manner had all the appearance of ingenuousness.

The matron and Miss Mackenzie looked at each other significantly, and agreed tacitly that there was no use in pushing the question.

"Od!" said Kate, who had paused in the act of taking a warm towel from the fireplace to listen, "a'body kens ye didna gie it till yoursel', lassie."

"Where are her clothes?" said the matron. "Oh, here. Yon frock's good enough if it was washed; but, losh me! just look at these for clothes!" She was exhibiting some indescribable rags as she spoke.

"Kate," said Miss Mackenzie, "dress her in the lassie Grant's clothes: they are the most likely to fit her. Don't lose time: I want to see her again before I go."

Kate fished up her charge, all smoking, from the soapsuds and rubbed her down before the fire. Then the tangled wet hair was parted evenly and smoothed into dark locks on either side of her face. Raiment clean, but the coarsest of the coarse, was found for her. A brown wincey dress surmounted all. Shoes and stockings came last of all, probably in the order of importance assigned to them by Kate.

From the arm-chair of the matron's sitting-room Miss Mackenzie surveyed her charge with satisfaction. Baubie looked subdued, contented, perhaps grateful, and was decidedly uncomfortable. Every vestige of the picturesque was gone, obliterated clean by soap and water, and Kate's hair-comb, a broken-toothed weapon that had come off second best in its periodic conflicts with her own barley-mow, had disposed for ever of the wild, curly tangle of hair. Her eyes had red rims to them, caused by superfluous soap and water, and in its present barked condition, when all the dirt was gone, Baubie's face had rather an interesting, wistful expression. She seemed not to stand very steadily in her boots, which were much too big for her.

Miss Mackenzie surveyed her with great satisfaction. The brown wincey and the coarse apron seemed to her the neophyte's robe, betokening Baubie's conversion from arab nomadism to respectability and from a vagabond trade to decorous industry.

"Now, Baubie, you can knit: I mean to give you needles and worsted to knit yourself stockings. Won't that be nice? I am sure you never knitted stockings for yourself before."

"Now, what bed is she to get, Mrs. Duncan? Let us go up stairs and see the dormitory."

"I thought I would put her in the room with Kate: I changed the small bed in there. If you will just step up stairs, Miss Mackenzie?"

The party reached the dormitory by a narrow wooden staircase, the whiteness of which testified to the scrubbing powers of Kate's red arms and those of her compeers. All the windows were open, and the east wind came in at its will, nippingly cold if airy. They passed through a large, low-ceilinged room into a smaller one, in which were only four beds: a small iron stretcher beside the window was pointed out as Baubie's. Miss Mackenzie turned down the red-knitted coverlet and looked at the blankets. They were perfectly clean, like everything else, and, like everything else too, very coarse and very well worn.

Baubie, fresh from the lock-up and Kennedy's Lodgings, might have been expected to show some trace of her sense of comparison, but not a vestige of expression crossed her face: she looked up in civil acknowledgment of having heard: that was all.

"I shall look in again in the course of a week," announced Miss Mackenzie.—"Good-bye, Baubie: do everything Mrs. Duncan tells you."

With this valedictory Miss Mackenzie left the matron, and Kate attended her down stairs; and Baubie was at last alone.

She remained standing stock-still when they left her by the bedside—when the door, shut by Kate, who went out last, hid them from her view. She listened in a stupid kind of way to the feet tramping on the bare boards of the outer dormitory and down the stairs: then all was still, and Baubie Wishart, clean, clothed and separated from her father for the first time in her life, was left alone to consider how she liked "school." She felt cold and strange and lonely, and for about three minutes' space she abandoned herself without reserve to the sensation. Then the heavy shoes troubled her, and in a fit of anger and impatience she suddenly began to unlace one. Some far-off sound startled her, and with a furtive, timorous look at the door she fastened it up again. No one came, but instead of returning to the boot she sprang to the window, and, mounting the narrow sill, prepared to survey the domain that lay below it. There was not much to see. The window looked out on the back green, which was very much like the front, save that there was no flagged walk. A few stunted poplars ran round the walls: the grass was trodden nearly all off, and from wall to wall were stretched cords from which fluttered a motley collection of linen hung out to dry. There was no looking out of it. Baubie craned her adventurous small neck in all directions. One side of the back green was overlooked by a tenement-house; the other was guarded by the poplars and a low stone wall; at the bottom was a dilapidated outhouse. The sky overhead was all dull gray: a formless gray sea-mist hurried across it, driven by the east wind, which found time as well to fill, as it passed, all the fluttering garments on the line and swell them into ridiculous travesties of the bodies they belonged to, tossing them the while with high mockery into all manner of weird contortions.

Baubie looked at them curiously, and wondered to herself how much they would all pawn for—considerably more than three shillings no doubt. She established that fact to her own satisfaction ere long, although she was no great arithmetician, and she sighed as she built and demolished an air-castle in her own mind. Though there was but little attraction for her in the room, she was about to leave the window when her eye fell on a large black cat crouched on the wall, employed in surveillance of the linen or stalking sparrows or in deadly ambush for a hated rival. Meeting Baubie's glance, he sat up and stared at her suspiciously with a pair of round yellow, unwinking orbs.

"Ki! ki! ki!" breathed Baubie discreetly. She felt lonely, and the cat looked a comfortable big creature, and belonged to the house doubtless, for he stared at her with an interested, questioning look. Presently he moved. She repeated her invitation, whereon the cat slowly rose to his feet, humped his back and yawned, then deliberately turned quite round, facing the other way, and resumed his watchful attitude, his tail tucked in and his ears folded back close, as if to give the cold wind as little purchase as possible. Baubie felt snubbed and lonely, and drawing back from the window she sat down on the edge of her bed to wait events.

Accustomed as she was to excitement, the experiences of the last few days were of a nature to affect even stronger nerves than hers, and the unwonted bodily sensations caused by the bath and change of garments seemed to intensify her consciousness of novelty and restraint. There was another not very pleasant sensation too, of which she herself had not taken account, although it was present and made itself felt keenly enough. It was her strange sense of desolation and grief at the parting from her father. Baubie herself would have been greatly puzzled had any person designated her feelings by these names. There were many things in that philosophy of the gutter in which Baubie Wishart was steeped to the lips undreamt of by her. What she knew she knew thoroughly, but there was much with which most children, even of her age and class in life, are, it is to be hoped, familiar, of which Baubie Wishart was utterly ignorant. Her circumstances were different from theirs—fortunately for them; and amongst the poor, as with their betters, various conditions breed various dispositions. Baubie was an outer barbarian and savage in comparison with some children, although they perhaps went barefooted also; but, like a savage too, she would have grown fat where they would have starved. And this she knew well.

Kate's yellow head, appearing at the door to summon her to dinner, put an end to her gloomy reverie. And with this, her first meal, began Baubie's acquaintance with the household of which she was to form an integral portion from that hour.

They gave her no housework to do. Mrs. Duncan, whom a very cursory examination satisfied as to the benighted ignorance of this latest addition to her flock, determined that Baubie should learn to read, write and sew as expeditiously as might be. In order that she might benefit by example, she was made to sit by the lassie Grant, the child whose clothes had been lent to her, and her education began forthwith.

It was tame work to Baubie, who did not love sitting still: "white seam" was a vexation of spirit, and her knitting, in which she had beforehand believed herself an adept, was found fault with. The lassie Grant, as was pointed out to her, could knit more evenly and possessed a superior method of "turning the heel."

Baubie Wishart listened with outward calmness and seeming acquiescence to the comparison instituted between herself and her neighbor. Inwardly, however, she raged. What about knitting? Anybody could knit. She would like to see the lassie Grant earn two shillings of a Saturday night singing in the High street or the Lawnmarket. Baubie forgot in her flush of triumphant recollection that there had always been somebody to take the two shillings from her, and beat her and accuse her of malversation and embezzlement into the bargain. Artist-like, she remembered her triumphs only: she could earn two shillings by her braced of songs, and for a minute, as she revelled in this proud consciousness, her face lost its demure, watchful expression, and the old independent, confident bearing reappeared. Baubie forgot also in her present well-nourished condition the never-failing sensation of hunger that had gone hand in hand with these departed glories. But even if she had remembered every circumstance of her former life, and the privations and sufferings, she would still have pined for its freedom.

The consequence of her being well fed was simply that her mind was freed from what is, after all, the besetting occupation of creatures like her, and was therefore at liberty to bestow its undivided attention upon the restraints and irksomeness of this new order of things. Her gypsy blood began to stir in her: the charm of her old vagabond habits asserted itself under the wincey frock and clean apron. To be commended for knitting and sewing was no distinction worth talking about. What was it compared with standing where the full glare of the blazing windows of some public-house fell upon the Rob Roy tartan, with an admiring audience gathered round and bawbees and commendations flying thick? She never thought then, any more than now, of the cold wind or the day-long hunger. It was no wonder that under the influence of these cherished recollections "white seam" did not progress and the knitting never attained to the finished evenness of the lassie Grant's performance.

None the less, although she made no honest effort to equal this model proposed for her example, did Baubie feel jealous and aggrieved. Her nature recognized other possibilities of expression and other fields of excellence beyond those afforded by the above-mentioned useful arts, and she brooded over her arbitrary and forcedly inferior position with all the intensity of a naturally masterful and passionate nature. It was all the more unbearable because she had no real cause of complaint: had she been oppressed or ill-treated in the slightest degree, or had anybody else been unduly favored, there would have been a pretext for an outbreak or a shadow of a reason for her discontent. But it was not so. The matron dispensed even-handed justice and motherly kindness impartially all round. And if the lassie Grant's excellences were somewhat obtrusively contrasted with Baubie's shortcomings, it was because, the two children being of the same age, Mrs. Duncan hoped to rouse thereby a spark of emulation in Baubie. Neither was there any pharisaical self-exaltation on the part of the rival. She was a sandy-haired little girl, an orphan who had been three years in the refuge, and who in her own mind rather deprecated as unfair any comparison drawn between herself and the newly-caught Baubie.

Day followed day quietly, and Baubie had been just a week in the refuge, when Miss Mackenzie, faithful to her promise, called to inquire how her protégée was getting on.

The matron gave her rather a good character of Baubie. "She's just no trouble—a quiet-like child. She knows just nothing, but I've set her beside the lassie Grant, and I don't doubt but she'll do well yet; but she is some dull," she added.

"Are you happy, Baubie?" asked Miss Mackenzie. "Will you try and learn everything like 'Lisbeth Grant? See how well she sews, and she is no older than you."

"Ay, mem," responded Baubie, meekly and without looking up. She was still wearing 'Lisbeth Grant's frock and apron, and the garments gave her that odd look of their real owner which clothes so often have the power of conveying. Baubie's slim figure had caught the flat-backed, square-shoulder form of her little neighbor, and her face, between the smooth-laid bands of her hair, seemed to have assumed the same gravely-respectable air. The disingenuous roving eye was there all the time, could they but have noted it, and gave the lie to her compressed lips and studied pose.

That same day the Rob Roy tartan frock made its appearance from the wash, brighter as to hue, but somewhat smaller and shrunken in size, as was the nature of its material for one reason, and for another because it had parted, in common with its owner when subjected to the same process, with a great deal of extraneous matter. Baubie saw her familiar garb again with joy, and put it on with keen satisfaction.

That same night, when the girls were going to bed—whether the inspiration still lingered, in spite of soapsuds, about the red frock, and was by it imparted to its owner, or whether it was merely the prompting of that demon of self-assertion that had been tormenting her of late—Baubie Wishart volunteered a song, and, heedless of consequences, struck up one of the two which formed her stock in trade.

The unfamiliar sounds had not long disturbed the quiet of the house when the matron and Kate, open-eyed with wonder, hastened up to know what was the meaning of this departure from the regular order of things. Baubie heard their approach, and only sang the louder. She had a good and by no means unmusical voice, which the rest had rather improved; and by the time the authorities arrived on the scene there was an audience gathered round the daring Baubie, who, with shoes and stockings off and the Rob Roy tartan half unfastened, was standing by her bed, singing at the pitch of her voice. The words could be heard down the stairs:

She finished it off deliberately, and turned her bright eyes and flushed face toward the speaker.

"Who gave you leave, Baubie Wishart," went on the angry matron, "to make yon noise? You ought to think shame of such conduct, singing your good-for-nothing street-songs like a tinkler. One would think ye would feel glad never to hear of such things again. Let me have no more of this, do ye hear? I just wonder what Miss Mackenzie would say to ye!—Kate, stop here till they are all bedded and turn off yon gas."

Long before the gas was extinguished Baubie had retired into darkness beneath the bed-clothes, rage and mortification swelling her small heart. Good-for-nothing street-songs! Tinkler! Mrs. Duncan's scornful epithets rang in her ears and cut her to the quick. She lay awake, trembling with anger and indignation, until long after Kate had followed the younger fry to rest, and their regular breathing, which her ears listened for till they caught it from every bed, warned her that the weary occupants were safely asleep: then she sat up in bed. The moonlight was streaming into the room through the uncurtained window, and lit up her tumbled head and hot face. After a cautious pause she stepped out on the floor and went round the foot of her bed to the window. She knelt down on the floor, as if she were in search of something, and began feeling with her hand on the lower part of the shutter. Then, close to the floor, and in a place where they were likely to escape detection, she marked clearly and distinctly eight deep, short scratches in an even line on the yellow-painted woodwork. She ran her fingers over them until she could feel each scratch distinctly. Eight! She counted them thrice to make sure, then jumped back into bed, and in a few minutes was as fast asleep as her neighbors.

The days wore into weeks, and the weeks had soon made a month, and time, as it went, left Baubie more demure, quieter and more diligent—diligent apparently at least, for the knitting, though it advanced, showed no sign of corresponding improvement, and the rest of her work was simply scamped. March had given way to April, and the late Edinburgh spring at last began to give signs of its approach. The chestnuts showed brown glistening tips to their branch-ends, and their black trunks became covered with an emerald-colored mildew; the rod-like branches of the poplars turned a pale whitish-green and began to knot and swell; the Water of Leith overflowed, and ran bubbling and mud-colored under the bridge; and the grass by its banks, and even that in the front green of the refuge, showed here and there a red-eyed daisy. The days grew longer and longer, and of a mild evening the thrush's note was to be heard above the brawling of the stream from the thickets of Dean Terrace Gardens.

Baubie Wishart waited passively. Every day saw her more docile and demure, and every day saw a new scratch added to her tally on the window-shutter behind her bed.

May came, and the days climbed with longer strides to their goal, now close; on reaching which they return slowly and unwillingly, but just as surely; and to her joy, about, the third week in May, Baubie Wishart counted one warm, clear night fifty-nine scratches on the shutter. Fifty-nine! She knew the number well without counting them.

Whether she slept or watched that night is not known, but the next morning at four saw Baubie make a hasty and rather more simple toilette than usual, insomuch as she forgot to wash herself, brush her hair or put on her shoes and stockings. Barefooted and bareheaded, much as she had come, she went. She stole noiselessly as a shadow through the outer dormitory, passing the rows of sleepers with bated breath, and not without a parting glance of triumph at the bed where her rival, Elizabeth Grant, was curled up. Down the wooden stair, her bare feet waking no echoes, glided Baubie, and into the school-room, which looked out on the front green. She opened the window easily, hoisted herself on the sill, crept through and let herself drop on the grass below. To scramble up the trunk of one of the chestnuts and swing herself over the wall was quickly done, and then she was once more on the flagged path of the street, and the world lay before her.

As she stood for one moment, breathless with her haste and excitement, she was startled by the sudden apparition of the house cat, who was on his way home as surreptitiously as she was on hers abroad. He had one bloody ear and a scratched nose, and stared at her as he passed: then, probably in the hope of finding an open door after her, he jumped over the wall hurriedly. Baubie was seized with a sudden panic lest the cat should waken some one in the house, and she took to her heels and ran until she reached the bridge. The morning sun was just beginning to touch the tall tops of the houses, and the little valley through which the Water of Leith ran lay still in a kind of clear grayish light, in which the pale tender hues of the young leaves and the flowering trees were all the more vividly beautiful. The stream was low, and it hurried along over its stony bed, as if it too were running away, and in as great a hurry to be free of all restraints as truant Baubie Wishart, whose red frock was now climbing the hilly gray street beyond.

She could hear, as she strained herself to listen for pursuing voices, the rustle and murmur of the water with an odd distinctness as it rose upon the still air of the summer morning.

Not a creature was to be seen as she made her way eastward, shaping her course for Princes street, and peering, with a gruesome fear of the school-board officer, round every corner. That early bird, however, was not so keenly on the alert as she gave him the credit of being, and she reached her goal unchallenged after coasting along in parallel lines with it for some time.

The long beautiful line of Princes street was untenanted as the Rob Roy tartan tacked cautiously round the corner of St. David street and took a hasty look up and down before venturing forth.

The far-reaching pale red beams of the morning sun had just touched and kindled as with a flame the summit of the Rock, and the windows of the Castle caught and flashed back the greeting in a dozen ruddy reflections. The gardens below lay partly veiled in a clear transparent mist, faintly blue, that hovered above the trees and crept up the banks, and over which the grand outlines of the Rock towered as it lifted its head majestically into the gold halo that lay beyond.

Not a sound or stir, even the sparrows were barely awake, as Baubie darted along. Fixing her eye on that portion of the High School which is visible from Princes street, she pushed along at a pace that was almost a run, and a brief space saw her draw up and fall exhausted on the steps that lead up to the Calton Hill.

The child's feet, unused now for some time to such hardships, were hot and bruised, for she had not stopped to pick her footing in her hasty course, and she was so out of breath and heated that it seemed to her as if she would never get cool or her heart cease fluttering as if it would choke her. She shrank discreetly against the stone wall at her side, and there for three long hours she remained crouched, watching and waiting for the hour to chime when the grim black gate opposite would open.

The last tinge of crimson and purple had faded before the golden glories of the day as the sun climbed higher and higher in the serene blue sky. The red cliffs of Salisbury Crags glared with a hot lustre above the green slopes of the hill, and in the white dust of the high-road a million tiny stars seemed to sparkle and twinkle most invitingly to Baubie's eyes. The birds had long been awake and busy in the bushes above her head, and from where she sat she could see, in the distant glitter of Princes street, all the stir of the newly-raised day.

It was a long vigil, and her fear and impatience made it seem doubly longer. At last the clock began to chime eight, and before it was half done the wicket in the great door opened with a noisy clang after a preliminary rattle.

First came a boy, who cast an anxious look round him, then set off at a run; next a young woman, for whom another was waiting just out of sight down the road; last of all (there were only three released), Baubie, whose heart was beginning to beat fast again with anxiety, saw the familiar, well-known figure shamble forth and look up and down the road in a helpless, undecided way. The next moment the wicket had clapped to again. Wishart glanced back at it, sighed once or twice, and blinked his eyes as though the sunlight were too strong for them.

After a second of hesitation he began to move cityward, obeying some sheep-like instinct which impelled him to follow those who had gone on before. Baubie saw this, and, just waiting to let him get well under way and settle into his gait, she gathered herself up and sprang across the road upon him with the suddenness and rapidity of a flash.

He fairly staggered with surprise. There she was, exactly as he had left her, dusty, barefooted and bareheaded. The wind had tossed up her hair, which indeed was only too obedient to its will, and it clustered all the more wildly about her face because of having been cropped to the regulation length of the refuge.

"Lassie, is't you?" he ejaculated, lost in astonishment. Then, realizing the fact, he gave expression to his feeling by grinning in a convulsive kind of way and clapping her once or twice on the shoulder next him. "Od! I niver! Didna the leddy—"

Baubie cut him short. "Sed I widna bide," she observed curtly and significantly.

Gestures and looks convey, among people like the Wisharts, far more meaning than words, and Baubie's father perfectly understood from the manner and tone of her pregnant remark that she had run away from school, and had severed the connection between herself and the "kind leddy," and that in consequence the situation was highly risky for both. They remained standing still for a moment, looking at each other. The boy and the woman were already out of sight, and the white, dusty high-road seemed all their own domain.

Wishart shuffled with his feet once more, and looked in the direction of Princes street, and then at Baubie inquiringly. It was for her, as usual, to decide. Baubie had been his Providence for as long as he had memory for—no great length of time. He was conjecturing in his own mind vaguely whether his Providence had, by any chance, got the desiderated three shillings necessary for the redemption of the banjo hidden away in the Rob Roy tartan. He would not have been surprised had it been so, and he would have asked no questions.

Seeing that her eyes followed the direction of his with a forbidding frown, he said tentatively, "Ye didn'—didna—"

"What?" snapped Baubie crossly: she divined his meaning exactly. "Come awa' wi' ye!" she ordered, facing right round countryward.

"We'll gae awa' til Glasgae, Baubie, eh? I'm thinkin' to yer auntie's. She"—with a gesture of his head backward at the prison—"will no' be oot this month; sae she'll niver need to ken, eh?"

The first turn to the right past the High School brought them out on the road before Holyrood, which lay grim and black under the sun-bathed steeps of Arthur's Seat. On by the Grange and all round the south-eastern portion of the city this odd couple took their way. It was a long round, but safety made it necessary. At last, between Corstorphine's wooded slopes and the steeper rise of the Pentlands, they struck into the Glasgow road. In the same order as before they pursued their journey, Baubie leading as of old, now and again vouchsafing a word over her shoulder to her obedient follower, until the dim haze of the horizon received into itself the two quaint figures, and Baubie Wishart and the Rob Roy tartan faded together out of sight.

GAS-BURNING, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

"It is remarkable what attention has been attracted all over the country by the recent experiments with Edison's inventions," observed my friend the traveller as our host turned a fuller flow of gas in the chandelier. "Even in the little villages out West, of only one bank and not one good hotel, the topics which last spring generally excited most interest in all circles were Edison's electric light and Bell's telephone."

"Very likely," replied our host, an elderly gentleman of fortune. "If we had such impure gas as is found in many of the villages and small cities not so very far West, I'd never light a burner in my library again. As it is, I do so very rarely. The products of gas combustion act on the bindings until firm calf drops in pieces, and even law-sheep loses its coherency, as the argument of the opposing counsel does when your own lawyer begins to talk."

"The effect on the upholstery and metallic ornaments is as bad as upon the books," added our hostess. "This room will have to be refurnished in the spring—all on account of the changes in color both of the paper and the silk and cotton fabrics; and the bronze dressing on those statuettes is softening, so that there are lines and spots of rust all over them."

"Perhaps, my dear, they would have suffered equally from the atmosphere without gas," replied the old gentleman, looking at his wife over his glasses.

"Our friend here has a hundred thousand more in gas stock than he had a year ago, and I suspect that he is still a bear in the market," said his neighbor a chemist, who had just dropped in.

"You did well to buy—if you sell at once," said the traveller, who was interested in the electric light to some unknown extent: "gas stock will finally have to go down."

"When the sun shines in the night, not before," asserted a young accountant from the gas-works who had been holding a private talk with the daughter of the house at the other corner of the room.

"But yet gas has gone up again lately. You may thank the electric-light boom for the temporary respite you have had from poor gas at high prices."

"Yes; some of the companies put gas down lower than they could manufacture it, in order to hold their customers at a time when people almost believed that Edison's light would prove a success."

"But it was a success. It proved an excellent light, displayed a neat lamp, and gave no ill effects upon either the atmosphere or the eyes; and the perfect carbons showed a surprising endurance. The only difficulty is that the invention is not yet perfected so as to go immediately into use."

"But the lower part of the glasses becomes dark with deposited carbon," returned the chemist. "If carbons could be made to last long enough to render the lamps cheap, this smoking of the globes would set a limit at which the lamps would cease to be presentable; and the cleaning, and the exhausting of air again, are difficult and expensive."

"That isn't likely within a century. Besides, by the fault of the consumer gas-light costs now one-third more than it should for the same light. The best English authorities state this to be the case in Great Britain, and I have no question that such is the fact here."

"By the use of economical burners and of governors to regulate the flow of gas."

"I am not an advocate of any special burner, but of all that are constructed on right principles."

"There are many kinds of burners. Do you not have some classification for them?" inquired the young lady, who was fresh from Wellesley.

"The usual forms of the burner," replied the chemist "—or, more properly, the forms of the tip—are the fishtail, the batwing and the argand. In the first the gas issues through two holes which come together at the top, so that the two jets of gas impinge and form a flat flame; in the batwing the gas issues in a thin sheet through a slit in a hollow knob; while in the argand the gas enters a short cylinder or broad ring, escaping thence through numerous holes at the upper edge. There are many varieties of each of these, differing in the construction of the part below the tip. The argand has long been the favorite burner for the table and desk. Its advantages are a strong, steady light, but, as you know, it is apt to smoke at every slight increase in the pressure of the gas, though there are recent improved forms in which this fault is in a measure corrected. A properly-made argand burner will give a light equal to three whole candles (spermaceti, of the standard size and quality) for every foot of gas burned. Of the argand burners, Guise's shadowless argand has been considered the best, but of late years Sugg's Letheby burner has carried off the palm. Wood's burner has been a favorite, as, being a fishtail, it could be used with a short chimney, which gives the flame steadiness. By the arms on the chimney-frame the flame is broadened at the bottom, with a smaller dark space at the base than in any other flat-flame burner. It is so constructed that the quantity of gas passing is regulated by turning a tap in the lower part of the burner, which changes the size of the orifice in the tube. Ten years ago this burner, with a regulator at the meter, was generally thought to be the most economical contrivance possible. It is now little used. Yet either the batwing or the fishtail tip can be used in any common burner except the argand. The old brass and iron tips are mostly superseded by those of "lava," being liable to an early change of the orifice from incrustation and rust. In the flat-flame burners there are differences in the internal arrangement. Perhaps our young gas-manufacturer here can tell us what is now the most approved burner."

The young man confessed that he had specimens of the best kinds of flat-flame burners in his pocket. He quickly brought from his overcoat in the hall a small paper parcel from which he produced several bright little brass tubes, explaining that he carried them because somebody was always inquiring about the best kind of burner. "These save talk," said he.

With a small wrench he removed one of the old burners, and the several kinds were successively tested in its place. Some gave a better light, but it was objected that they might consume more gas. Whereupon the chemist tore a strip from his well-worn handkerchief, and, having damped it, wound the ribbon several times around the top of the old burner (which had been replaced), leaving the orifice uncovered. The new burner was screwed down over this, making a gas-tight connection. "There," said he, "we have a gauge. The new burner will receive the same amount of gas that the old one consumed—no more, no less—but the current is slightly checked."

The burner gave the same amount of light as before, so far as the eye could perceive.

"In the combustion of gas for heating purposes," continued the chemist, "seek the burner with free, rapid delivery through small holes. For light you want something different. Suppose you send a current of gas up into this sewing-thimble: it can find an exit only by turning backward. Then suppose it escapes from the thimble only to enter a larger cavity above it, whence it must issue through a burner-tip with an orifice of the usual size. The current, you perceive, is twice completely broken. It will be seen that only the expansive force of the gas, together with its buoyancy, acts upon the jets, instead of a direct current. Now, it will always be found that the burner which best carries out the principles just illustrated—other points being equal—will give more light with a less quantity of gas than any other. This also exhibits the chief principle of most of the governors or regulators.

"You will observe that this checking of the current is attained in various ways in different burners," continued the chemist as he unscrewed and dissected the samples before him. "In some it is done by a perforated metal disk in the orifice; in others, by a bit of wool, which checks slightly a slow current, and by the pressure of a strong one becomes compacted and forms a more effective obstacle. In most cases, however, it soon becomes solid with condensed matters from the gas. Another form of check is a small cap having perpendicular slits at the sides. The cylinder of the cap, being smaller than the orifice of the burner, screws down into it; the openings being shortened or lengthened according as the cylinder is screwed up or down. One objection to this is the trouble required in regulating. Here is another burner, in which the orifice ends in a cap whose sides, near the bottom, are pierced with four pin-holes directed downward. This reverses the direction of the current of gas, which then escapes through the pin-holes downward into a chamber, then turns upward along its sides to the tip, on entering which it again turns. Each burner is able to consume economically a flow of gas peculiar to itself, which can be ascertained by a minute's experiment, and then regulated by the tap in the pipe. But this requires much care, and is apt to be neglected. A very small tap in the burner (as in the Wood and Ellis burners), which can be adjusted so as to require no further attention, seems the best method of effecting this graduation."

The chemist now pulled a manuscript from his pocket and read from it as follows: "The quantity of light decreases with disproportionate rapidity by reduced consumption; for, as experiments have shown, when consuming only two feet per hour, eighty-five per cent. of the gas is lost; with two and a half feet the loss is sixty per cent.; and with three and a half feet it is thirty-four per cent. of that derived from the gas when burning the full quantity for which the burner is constructed. In some experiments made upon this matter under the direction of referees appointed by the London Board of Trade the loss at the other extreme is given. They report: 'Instead of the gas giving increased light as the rate of consumption is increased, it will be seen that in every case there is a point beyond which the light decreases relatively to the proportion of gas consumed. In every case, too, this point lies far below the maximum of gas-consumption, observing the turning-points in the case of the different burners.' Again, every burner has a certain amount of gas which it will consume to the greatest advantage as to both light and economy; which in a completely-regulated burner is quickly found, and the delivery fixed by the small tap. When the gas is issuing from the burner at so low a pressure that the flame is just on the point of smoking, the maximum effect for the quantity of gas consumed in that particular burner is attained, because in that case the quantity and intensity of the light are most advantageously balanced. For the same reason, the burner best suited for light is one in which the jet-openings are proportionately large, so as to prevent as much as possible too great contact with the air in the lower part of the flame. In case the air-currents disturb the light, it is necessary to turn on a stronger flow, which secures steadiness, but sets economy at naught."

"It would be a good thing," said the young fellow, interrupting him, "if some person would invent a burner that should heat the gas before its discharge. We could then get a perfect combustion of the carbon, and so greater brilliancy and economy."

"That is a very common error. Mr. Leslie's burner was designed on that very theory: the result was contrary to expectation."

"Leslie's burner is a form of the argand. The gas, instead of issuing from holes pierced in a solid ring, is conducted to the flame in separate small tubes upward of an inch long. Twenty-eight of these tubes are inserted in a ring two inches in diameter, and converge to one inch at the ends, where the gas escapes. These tubes become hot very quickly when the gas is lighted, and it issues at a high temperature. Here is the result of a test made by Mr. Clegg, and given on page 344 of his valuable work on coal gas:

COMMON ARGAND, FIFTEEN HOLES.
Consumption per hour in cubic feet:
6 feet, light = 17.4 standard candles.
5 feet, light = 13.64 standard candles

LESLIE'S BURNER, TWENTY-EIGHT HOLES.
6 feet, light = 14.73 standard candles.
5 feet, light = 11.28 standard candles.

"In experimenting with common burners, argand and others, it is found that, if the aperture in the tip is too small for the orifice in the body of the burner, the escaping gas is too highly heated and is consumed too quickly. So with Leslie's burner in an increased degree. Theories brought to the test of experiment are often disappointing."

The chemist now proceeded to illustrate his harangue with the argand upon the table, which he lighted and turned on full, without replacing the chimney. The dull-red flame streamed up to a height of eight inches or more, waving and smoking slightly. He now turned down the gas and replaced the chimney, then set the tap at the same angle as before. "Here," said he, "we have a flame barely four inches high—of brilliant white—which gives more light than the taller flame did. The cause of the shortening of the flame is the more rapid combustion of the gas, owing to the increased draught or air-supply in the chimney. From the greater intensity of this flame a much larger quantity of light is produced than by the longer flame. If too tall a chimney is used, the flame is shortened still more and its brilliancy increased, but not to a degree sufficient to compensate for the diminished surface. The light, you are doubtless aware, comes from the incandescence of the carbon, heated by the union of the hydrogen of the gas with a portion of the oxygen of the air."

The chemist now read from his manuscript again: "Carburetted hydrogen of a passably good quality requires two volumes of pure oxygen for its complete combustion and conversion into carbonic acid and water. Atmospheric air contains, in its pure state, about twenty per cent. of oxygen; therefore, one cubic foot of gas requires for its perfect combustion ten cubic feet of air. If less be admitted to the flame, a quantity of free carbon will escape, and be deposited in the form of black smoke. If an excess of air be admitted, we shall find that the quantity of nitrogen accompanying this excess has a tendency to extinguish the flame, while it takes no part in the elective affinity constantly going on between the other elements—namely, hydrogen, oxygen and the vapor of carbon.

"Again," said he, turning down the gas, "if the flame be reduced to a consumption of two feet per hour, its light will be equal to that of one candle only; but on raising the chimney, thus, about half an inch from the gallery or support the light is greatly increased, or by simply placing a disk on top of the chimney the light is increased ninefold; both of which effects seem to result from a diminished current of air, while at the same time there is an ample supply. Lastly, with the ordinary glass moon-globe so generally used in dwellings with the fishtail burner little difference can be perceived between the light given from the flame by four feet and that from six feet of gas per hour, in consequence of the strong current of air passing up through the globe; but if the top of the glass be enclosed by a talc cover having an orifice in the centre about an inch in diameter, then the conditions of the burner are completely changed. The light is greatly increased, because the highest economical advantage is then approached."[2]

"Smoke from the aperture and lamp-black on the cover must result from such an arrangement," objected the old gentleman.

"There need be very little of either," responded the chemist. "From some burners there is little light without smoke. A smoky flame may arise from too much carbon, but the gas companies in this part of the country are not apt to make their product too rich; and such a condition is not likely to occur except with vapor-gas when warm weather quickly succeeds to a cold spell in the winter season. The consumer's immediate remedy in any case is to use a smaller tip with the fishtail and batwing burners, and a taller chimney with the argand; which devices will give a quicker movement to the gas in one case and to the air in the other. The smoking, however, may be caused by carbonic acid, which checks combustion. There is always more or less of this in gas, arising from a partial combustion in the retorts when charging them with coal or while withdrawing the exhausted charge. But it is only by excessively slow and careless work that this can happen to a serious extent. Only an expert can tell when this condition exists, though if the symptoms do not yield to manipulations of the chimney and tap, it may be suspected. There is no effective remedy for this adulteration which can be applied by the consumer except a vigorous complaint against the company which supplies the stuff.

"There remains one burner or lamp to be mentioned, contrived with special reference to health," he continued—"the ventilating standard lamp of Doctor Faraday, used in the House of Lords. In this there is an outer glass by which the vitiated air passes away through the pipe communicating with the external air. The lamp is interesting, but there is a question whether there is any practical advantage in its use. Rutter's ventilating lamp is of different form, having a globe instead of an outer cylinder, the gas and air coming in from above. Some of the best dwellings now being erected in the vicinity of New York are provided with tin pipes leading from the burners to the open air. In some the pipe receives the foul air from an open metallic or mineral shade over the burner; others have a larger pipe enclosing the gas-pipe for ventilation, the tops of the two pipes (including the burner) being enclosed by a globe pierced with holes for fresh air. There is said to result a good ventilation, with economy of gas, an increased steadiness of the flame and power of light. A better arrangement is a third pipe enclosing the gas-pipe and enclosed in the ventilating-pipe, opening to the air, instead of the holes in the globe, which in this case should be air-tight. This plan is said to have reached its perfection when the three pipes are filled with wire gauze to some extent. This, being heated by the escape of hot gases in the ventilating-pipe, sends both the air and the gas to the flame already highly heated. The result is said to be admirable as regards ventilation, steadiness and power of the light and economy of gas.

"With these lamps the pressure of the gas-current is of great importance; and I now turn to that subject. It is a general complaint in buildings whose rooms are high that the flow of gas on the lower floor is deficient, while on the upper floors there is a greater supply than is necessary. This inconvenience arises from the upper stories being subjected to less atmospheric pressure than the lower, every rise of ten feet making a difference in the pressure of about one-tenth of an inch of water; and, consequently, a column of gas acquires that amount of pressure additional. The following table, recording an experiment of Mr. Richards, will show the result in respect to light:

Suppose a building of six floors is supplied from the gas-mains at a pressure of six-tenths, and that the difference of altitude between the highest and lowest light is equal to fifty feet: the gas in the highest or sixth floor will issue from the burners at a pressure of eleven-tenths; the fifth floor, at ten-tenths; and so on. In order to secure an entirely equable flow and economical light a regulator is necessary on each floor above the first. The gas companies are frequently obliged to supply mills at a much greater pressure than is stated above as necessary, in order that the ground floors may have sufficient light."

"Little need be said of them, as they fall within the domain of the companies and the public inspector of gas. Under favorable conditions gas-meters will remain in order for ten years or more; and when they become defective they as often favor the consumer, probably, as they do the gas company. Their defects do not often occasion inconvenience; and when they once get out of order they run so wild that their condition is soon detected, when the errors in previous bills should be corrected by estimate of other seasons."

"You haven't mentioned the apparatus (carburetters) for increasing the richness of the gas, which can be applied by the consumer upon his own premises," said the old gentleman.

"There is little need. The burners should be adjusted to the quality of gas furnished. If there were any real gain in this method of enrichment, the gas companies are the parties who could make the most of it: indeed, many of them do to such an extent as can be made profitable. But whenever the temperature of the atmosphere falls, the matter added to the gas is deposited in the pipes, sometimes choking them entirely at the angles. No: arrange your burners and regulators to suit the gas that is furnished, demand of the company that it fulfil the law and the contract in regard to the quality of the gas, and give all gas-improving machines the go-by.[3]

"Light having, perhaps, been sufficiently considered for the present needs, we have now to note the effects of the combustion of gas upon the atmosphere, and through this upon the furnishing of rooms and the health of the persons living therein," said the chemist, again taking up his manuscript. "The usual products from the combustion of common illuminating gas are carbonic acid, sulphuric acid, ammonia and water-vapor. Every burner consuming five cubic feet of gas per hour spoils as much air as two full-grown men: it is therefore evident that the air of a room thus lighted would soon become vitiated if an ample supply of fresh air were not frequently admitted.

"Remember," said he, looking up from the paper, "that nearly the same effects proceed from the combustion of candles and lamps of every kind when a sufficient number of these are burned to give an equal amount of light. Carbonic acid is easily got rid of, for the rooms where gas is burned usually have sufficient ventilation near the floor by means of a register, or even the slight apertures under the doors—together with their frequent opening—to carry off the small quantity emitted by one or two burners. But there are other gases which must have vent at the upper part of the room, while fresh air should be admitted to supply the place of that which is chemically changed."

Returning to his manuscript, he continued: "The burners which give the least light, burning instead with a low, blue flame, form the most carbonic acid and free the most nitrogen. Such are all the burners for heat rather than light. But the formation of sulphuric acid gas may be the same in each. In the yellow flame the carbon particles escape to darken the light colors of the room, not being heated sufficiently to combine with the oxygen. This product of the combustion of gas (free carbon) might be regarded as rather wholesome than otherwise (as its nature is that of an absorbent) were it not the worst kind of dust to breathe—in fact, clogging the lungs to suffocation. In vapor gas—made at low heat—the carbon is in a large degree only mechanically mixed with the hydrogen, and is liable, especially in cold weather, to be deposited in the pipes. This leaves only a very poor, thin gas, mainly hydrogen, which burns with a pale blue flame, as seen in cold spells in winter. High heats and short charges in the retorts of the manufactory give a purer gas and a larger production. Gas made at high heat will reach the consumer in any weather very nearly as rich as when it leaves the gas-holder; for, thus made, the hydrogen and carbon are chemically combined, instead of the hydrogen merely bearing a quantity of carbon-vapor mechanically mixed and liable to deposit with every reduction of temperature. To relieve the atmosphere of the gases and vapors proceeding from combustion is, of course, the purpose of ventilation. The sulphuric acid gas and ammonia will be largely in combination with the water-vapor, which also proceeds from combustion, so that all will be got rid of together. The vaporization of libraries to counteract the excessive dryness (or drying, rather) which causes leather bindings to shrink and to break at the joints, would be of doubtful utility, since it might only serve to carry into the porous leather still more of the gases just mentioned. The action of both sulphuric acid and ammonia is, undoubtedly, to destroy the fibre of leather, so that it crumbles to meal or falls apart in flakes.

"In a very interesting paper read by Professor William R. Nichols of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before the American Association of Science at its Saratoga meeting in 1879, the results of many analyses of leather bindings were given, showing the presence of the above-named substances in old bindings in many times greater quantity than in new. Still, their presence did not prove them to be the cause of the decay; and Professor Nichols proposes to ascertain the fact by experiments requiring some years for demonstration.

"In the hope of deciding the question with reasonable certainty at once, I have made careful examinations of the books in the three largest libraries of Boston and Cambridge, each differing from the others in age and atmosphere. The bindings of the volumes examined bore their own record in dates and ownership, by which the conditions of their atmosphere in respect to gas and (approximately) to heat were made known for periods varying from current time to over two hundred years. In the Public Library the combined influences of gas, heat and effluvium have wrought upon the leather until many covers were ready to drop to pieces at a touch. The binding showed no more shrinkage than in the other libraries, but in proportion to the time the books had been upon the shelves the decay of the leather was about the same as in the Athenæum. I am informed that many of the most decayed have from time to time been rebound, so that a full comparison cannot be made between this and the others. In the Athenæum less gas has been used, and there is very little effluvium, but the mealy texture of the leather is general among the older tenants of the shelves. Numbers of volumes in the galleries were losing their backs, which were more or less broken off at the joints from the shrinkage and brittleness of the leather. The plan has been proposed of introducing the vapor of water to counteract the effects of dryness upon the bindings. In this library the atmosphere has the usual humidity of that out of doors, being warmed by bringing the outer air in over pipes conveying hot water, while the other libraries have the higher heat of steam-pipes. If, therefore, its atmosphere differs from that of the other libraries in respect to moisture, the variation is in the direction of greater humidity, without any corresponding effect on the preservation of bindings. In fact, proper ventilation and low shelves seem to be the true remedies for these evils, or, rather, the best means of amelioration, since there is no complete antidote to the decay common to all material things. The last condition involves the disuse of galleries and of rooms upon more than one flat, unless the atmosphere in the upper portions of the lower rooms be shut off from the higher, as it should be. Another precaution which might be taken with advantage is to use the higher shelves for cloth bindings.

"In the Harvard College Library no gas has ever been used, nor any other artificial illuminator to much extent. Neither had any large number of the volumes been exposed to the products of gas-combustion, except for a brief time before they were placed here. The bindings in this library showed very little crumbling, but many covers were breaking at the joints from the shrinking which arises from excessive dryness. In common with many other substances, leather yields moisture to the air much more readily than it receives it from that medium. Cloth bindings showed no decay at all here—very little in any of the libraries, except in the loss of color. It should be stated that the volumes which I examined at Harvard College were generally older than those inspected in the other libraries. There are parchment bindings in each of the libraries hundreds of years old, apparently just as perfect in texture as when first placed upon the shelves of the original owner. The parchment was often worn through at the angles, but there was no breakage from shrinking, the material having been shrunken as much as possible when prepared from the skin. At Harvard College I examined an embossed calf binding stretched on wooden sides which was above a hundred years old. It was in almost perfect preservation, and not much shrunken. This volume, being very large, was on a shelf next the ground floor—a position which it had probably held ever since the erection of the building.

"Professor Nichols does not mention morocco in his tables of analyses. Indeed, morocco was so little used for bookbindings until within about thirty years that it affords a less ample field for investigation than any other of the leathers now in common use. My attention was therefore directed specially to this material, of which I found some specimens having a record of nearly fifty years. My observation was, that in all the libraries these were less affected by decay, in proportion to their age, than other leathers. In Harvard College Library the best Turkey morocco, with forty years of exposure, showed no injury except from chafing. The outer integument was often worn away, exposing the texture of the skin, which was still of strong fibre. In the Athenæum, on the contrary, many of the moroccos showed the same decay as the calf, russia and sheep. There was, however, a wide difference in the condition of moroccos of the same age—some showing as much decay as the calf, while others had scarcely any of the disintegration common to the older calf bindings. The same might, indeed, be said of all leathers, those tanned by the quick modern methods, with much more acid than is used in old processes, in which time is a large factor, showing always a more rapid deterioration. But, the methods being the same, morocco, the oiliest of the common leathers and the one having the firmest cuticle, endures the best.

"The order of endurance of leather (as observed by librarians) against atmospheric effects is as follows, descending from the first to the last in order: Parchment, light-colored morocco, sheep, russia, calf. Cloth wears out quickly by use, but appears—the linen especially—to be affected by the atmosphere only in loss of color. These observations all refer to the ordinary humidity of the air in frequented rooms.

"This, then, is the result of my inquiries: I found the shrinking and breaking resulting from heat much the same in all the libraries, but most in that where the heating is from the outer air brought in over hot-water pipes, the two other libraries examined being warmed by steam-pipes having a higher temperature. I found the mealy structure—or instead thereof flakiness—to prevail most in the Athenæum, next in the Public Library: in the latter, however, many volumes have been rebound, thus raising the average of condition. In the Harvard College Library no gas—in fact, little if any artificial light—is used, and here, too, the mealy structure and disintegration are mostly absent. I conclude, therefore, from these limited observations, that heat is responsible for a large part of the damage to leather bindings, its effects being evidently supplemented and hastened by gas-combustion.

"The ventilating lamps before described, though rather cumbrous to eyes accustomed to the small and simple apparatus commonly used, might prove valuable in rooms containing fabrics liable; to be injured by the gases from open burners."

As the chemist concluded his reading the traveller remarked to the somewhat weary listeners, "You now see the vast amount of study and care required to use gas with economy and safety. I could not have argued the cause of a new, clean, gasless and vaporless light like electricity any better myself."

"It will be found," responded the chemist, "that there are more troubles and dangers connected with the electric light—besides the larger expense—than are thought of now."

"At any rate," said the old gentleman, "gas stock won't go lower for twenty years than it has been this winter."

"I wish I was," murmured the young fellow, with a side-glance at his fair neighbor, who immediately removed to another part of the room.

THE ΑΡΑΞ ΛΕΓΟΜΕΝΑ IN SHAKESPEARE

When we examine the vocabulary of Shakespeare, what first strikes us is its copiousness. His characters are countless, and each one speaks his own dialect. His little fishes never talk like whales, nor do his whales talk like little fishes. Those curious in such matters have detected in his works quotations from seven foreign tongues, and those from Latin alone amount to one hundred and thirty-two.

Our first impression, that the Shakespearian variety of words is multitudinous, is confirmed by statistics. Mrs. Cowden Clarke has counted those words one by one, and ascertained their sum to be not less than fifteen thousand. The total vocabulary of Milton's poetical remains is no more than eight thousand, and that of Homer, including the Hymns as well as both Iliad and Odyssey, is about nine thousand. In the English Bible the different words are reckoned by Mr. G.P. Marsh in his lectures on the English language at rather fewer than six thousand. Those in the Greek Testament I have learned by actual count to be not far from five thousand five hundred.

Some German writers on Greek grammar maintain that they could teach Plato and Demosthenes useful lessons concerning Greek moods and tenses, even as the ancient Athenians, according to the fable of Phædrus, contended that they understood squealing better than a pig. However this may be, any one of us to-day, thanks to the Concordance of Mrs. Clarke and the Lexicon of Alexander Schmidt, may know much in regard to Shakespeare's use of language which Shakespeare himself cannot have known. One particular as to which he must have been ignorant, while we may have knowledge, is concerning his employment of terms denominated απαξ λεγόμενα.

The phrase απαξ λεγόμενα—literally, once spoken—may be traced back, I think, to the Alexandrian grammarians, centuries before our era, who invented it to describe those words which they observed to occur once, and only once, in any author or literature. It is so convenient an expression for statistical commentators on the Bible, and on the classics as well, that they will not willingly let it die.

The list of απαξ λεγόμενα—that is, words used once and only once—in Shakespeare is surprisingly long. It embraces a greater multitude than any man can easily number. Nevertheless, I have counted those beginning with two letters. The result is that the απαξ λεγόμενα with initial a are 364, and those with initial m are 310. There is no reason, that I know of, to suppose the census with these initials to be proportionally larger than that with other letters. If it is not, then the words occurring only once in all Shakespeare cannot be less than five thousand, and they are probably a still greater legion.

The number I have culled from one hundred and forty-six pages of Schmidt is 674. At this rate the total on the fourteen hundred and nine pages of the entire Lexicon would foot up 6504. It is possible, then, that Shakespeare discarded, after once trying them, more different words than fill and enrich the whole English Bible. The old grammarians tell us that a certain part of speech was called supine, because it was very seldom needed, and therefore almost always lying on its back—i.e. in Latin, supinus. The supines of Shakespeare outnumber the employés of most authors.

The array of Shakespearian απαξ λεγόμενα appears still vaster if we compare it with expressions of the same nature in the Scriptures and in Homer. In the English Bible words with the initials a and m used once only are 132 to 674 with the same initials in Shakespeare. The scriptural once-onlys would be more than twice as many as we find them were they as frequent in proportion to their total vocabulary as his are.

The Homeric απαξ λεγόμενα with initial m are 78, but were they as numerous in proportion to Homer's whole world of words as Shakespeare's are, they would run up to 186; that is, to more than twice as many as their actual number.

In the Greek New Testament I have enumerated 63 απαξ λεγόμενα beginning with the letter m—a larger number than you would expect, for it is as large as that in both English Testaments beginning with that same letter, which is also exactly 63. It indicates a wider range of expression in the authors of the Greek original than in their English translators.

The 310 Shakespearian words with initial m used once only I have also compared with the whole verbal inventory of our language so far as it begins with that letter. They make up one-fifth almost of that entire stock, which musters in Webster only 1641 words. You will at once inquire, "What is the nature of these rejected Shakespearian vocables, which he seems to have viewed as milk that would bear no more than one skimming?"

The percentage of classical words among them is great—greater indeed than in the body of Shakespeare's writings. According to the analysis of Weisse, in an average hundred of Shakespearian words one-third are classical and two-thirds Saxon. But then all the classical elements have inherent meaning, while half of the Saxon have none. We may hence infer that of the significant words in Shakespeare one-half are of classical derivation. Now, of the απαξ λεγόμενα with initial a, I call 262 words out of 364 classical, and with initial m, 152 out of 310; that is, 414 out of 674, or about four-sevenths of the whole Shakespearian host beginning with those two letters. In doubtful cases I have considered those words only as classical the first etymology of which in Webster is from a classical or Romance root. In the biblical words used once only the classical portion is enormous—namely, not less than sixty-nine per cent.—while the classical percentage in Shakespearian words of the same class is no more than sixty-one.

Among the 674 a and m Shakespearian words occurring once only the proportion of words now obsolete is unexpectedly small. Of 310 such words with initial m, only one-sixth, or 51 at the utmost, are now disused, either in sense or even in form. Of this half-hundred a few are used in Shakespeare, but not at present, as verbs; thus, to maculate, to miracle, to mud, to mist, to mischief, to moral—also merchandized and musicked. Another class now wellnigh unknown are misproud, misdread, mappery, mansionry, marybuds, masterdom, mistership, mistressship.

Then there are slight variants from our modern orthography or meanings, as mained for maimed, markman for marksman, make for mate, makeless for mateless, mirable, mervaillous, mess for mass, manakin, minikin, meyny for many, momentarry for momentary, moraler, mountainer, misgraffing, misanthropos, mott for motto, to mutine, mi'nutely for every minute.

None seem wholly dead words except the following eighteen: To mammock, tear; mell, meddle; mose, mourn; micher, truant; mome, fool; mallecho, mischief; maund, basket; marcantant, merchant; mun, sound of wind; mure, wall; meacock, henpecked; mop, grin; militarist, soldier; murrion, affected with murrain; mammering, hesitating; mountant, raised up; mered, only; man-entered, grown up.

About one-tenth of the remaining απαξ λεγόμενα with initial m are descriptive compounds. Among them are the following adjectives: Maiden-tongued, maiden-widowed, man-entered (before noted as obsolete), many-headed, marble-breasted, marble-constant, marble-hearted, marrow-eating, mean-apparelled, merchant-marring, mercy-lacking, mirth-moving, moving-delicate, mock-water, more-having, mortal-breathing, mortal-living, mortal-staring, motley-minded, mouse-eaten, moss-grown, mouth-filling, mouth-made, muddy-mettled, momentary-swift, maid-pale. From this list, which is nearly complete, it is evident that such compounds as may be multiplied at will form but a small fraction of the words that are used once only by Shakespeare.

The words used once only by Shakespeare are often so beautiful and poetical that we wonder how they could fail to be his favorites again and again. They are jewels that might hang twenty years before our eyes, yet never lose their lustre. Why were they never shown but once? They remind me of the exquisite crystal bowl from which I saw a Jewess and her bridegroom drink in Prague, and which was then dashed in pieces on the floor of the synagogue, or of the Chigi porcelain painted by Raphael, which as soon as it had been once removed from the Farnesina table was thrown into the Tiber. To what purpose was this waste? Why should they be used up with once using? Specimens of this sort, which all poets but Shakespeare would have paraded as pets many a time, are multifarious. Among a hundred others never used but once, we have magical, mirthful, mightful, mirth-moving, moonbeams, moss-grown, mundane, motto, matin, mural, multipotent, mourningly, majestically, marbled, martyred, mellifluous, mountainous, meander, magnificence, magnanimity, mockable, merriness, masterdom, masterpiece, monarchize, menaces, marrowless.

Again, a majority of Shakespearian απαξ λεγόμενα being familiar to us as household words, it seems impossible that he who had tried them once should have need of them no more. Instances—all with initial m—are as follows: mechanics, machine, maxim, mission, mode, monastic, marsh, magnify, malcontent, majority, manly, malleable, malignancy, maritime, manna, manslaughter, masterly, market-day-folks, maid-price, mealy, meekly, mercifully, merchant-like, memorial, mercenary, mention, memorandums, mercurial, metropolis, miserably, mindful, meridian, medal, metaphysics, ministration, mimic, misapply, misgovernment, misquote, misconstruction, monstrously, monster-like, monstrosity, mutable, moneyed, monopoly, mortise, mortised, muniments, to moderate, and mother-wit These words, and five thousand more equally excellent, which have remained part of the language of the English-speaking world for three centuries since Shakespeare, and will no doubt continue to belong to it for ever, we are apt to declare he should have worn in their newest gloss, not cast aside so soon. Why was he as shy of repeating any one of them even once as Hudibras was of showing his wit?—

This question, why a full third of Shakespeare's verbal riches was never brought to light more than once, is probably one which nobody can at present answer even to his own satisfaction. Yet the phenomenon is so remarkable that every one will try after his own fashion to account for it. My own attempt at a provisional explanation I will present in the latter part of this paper.

Let us first, however, notice another question concerning the απαξ λεγόμενα—namely, that which respects their origin. Where did they come from? how far did Shakespeare make them? and how far were they ready to his hand? No approach to answering this inquiry can be made for some years. Yet as to this matter let us rejoice that the unique dictionary of the British Philological Society is now near publication. This work, slowly elaborated by thousands of co-workers in many devious walks of study on both sides of the Atlantic, aims to exhibit the first appearance in a book of every English word. In regard to the great bulk of Shakespeare's diction it will enable us ten years hence to determine how much of it was known to literature before him, and how much of it he himself gathered or gleaned in highways and byways, or caused to ramify and effloresce from Saxon or classical roots and trunks, thus "endowing his purposes with words to make them known." Meantime, we are left to conjectures. As of his own coinage I should set down such vocables as motley-minded, mirth-moving, mockable, marbled, martyred, merriness, marrowless, mightful, multipotent, masterdom, monarchize, etc. etc.

But, however much of his linguistic treasury Shakespeare shall be proved to have inherited ready-made—whatever scraps he may have stolen at the feast of languages—it is clear that he was an imperial creator of language, and lived while his mother-tongue was still plastic. Having a mint of phrases in his own brain, well might he speak with the contempt he does of those "fools who for a tricksy word defy the matter;" that is, slight or disregard it. He never needed to do that. Words were "correspondent to his command, and, Ariel-like, did his spiriting gently."

In a thousand cases, however, Shakespeare cannot have rejected words through fear lest he should repeat them. It has taken three centuries for the world to ferret out his απαξ λεγόμενα: can we believe that he knew them all himself? Unless he were the Providence which numbers all hairs of the head, he had not got the start of the majestic world so far as that, however myriad-minded we may consider him. An instinct which would have rendered him aware of each and every individual of five thousand that he had employed once only would be as inconceivable as that of Falstaff, which made him discern the heir-apparent in Prince Hal when disguised as a highwayman. In short, Shakespeare could not be conscious of all the words he had once used, more than Brigham Young could recognize all the wives he had once wedded.

In the absence of other theories concerning the reasons for Shakespeare's απαξ λεγόμενα being so abundant, I throw out a suggestion of my own till a better one shall supplant it.

Shakespeare's forte lay in characterization, and that endlessly diversified. But when he sketched each several character it seems that he was never content till he had either found or fabricated the aptest words possible for representing its form and pressure most true to life. No two characters being identical in any particular more than two faces are, no two descriptions, as drawn by his genius, could repeat many of the selfsame characterizing words. Each of his vocables thus became like each of the seven thousand constituents of a locomotive, which fits the one niche it was ordained to fill, but everywhere else is out of place, and even dislocated. The more numerous his ethical differentiations, the more his language was differentiated.

His personages were as multifarious as have been portrayed by the whole band of Italian painters; but, as a wizard in words, he resembled the magician in mosaic, who can delineate in stone every feature of those portraits because he can discriminate and imitate shades of color more numberless than even Shakespeare's words.

It is hard to believe that the Shakespearian characters were born, like Athene from the brain of Zeus, in panoplied perfection. They grew. The play of Troilus was a dozen years in growth. According to the best commentators, "Shakespeare, after having sketched out a play on the fashion of his youthful taste and skill, returned in after years to enlarge it, remodel it, and enrich it with the matured fruits of years of observation and reflection. Love's Labor Lost first appeared in print with the annunciation that it was 'newly corrected and augmented,' and Cymbeline was an entire rifacimento of an early dramatic attempt, showing not only matured fulness of thought, but laboring intensity of compressed expression." So speaks Verplanck, and his utterance is endorsed by Richard Grant White.

Such being the facts, it is clear that Shakespeare treated his dramas as Guido did the Cleopatra, which he would not let leave his studio till ten years after the non-artistic world deemed that portrait fully finished. Meantime, the painter in moments of inspiration was pencilling his canvas with curious touches, each approximating nearer his ideal. So the poet sought to find out acceptable words, or what he terms "an army of good words." He poured his new wine into new bottles, and never was at rest till he had arrayed his ideas in that fitness of phrase which comes only by fits.

Had he survived fifty years longer, I suppose he would to the last have been perfecting his phrases, as we read in Dionysius of Halicarnassus that Plato up to the age of eighty-one was "combing and curling, and weaving and unweaving, his writings after a variety of fashions." Possibly, the great dramatist would at last have corrected one of his couplets as a modern commentator has done for him, so that it would stand,

To speak seriously with a writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica: "His manner in diction was progressive, and this progress has been deemed so clearly traceable in his plays that it can enable us to determine their chronological sequence." The result is, that while other authors satiate and soon tire us, Shakespeare's speech for ever "breathes an indescribable freshness."

In the last line I have quoted there is a απαξ λεγόμενα but it is a word which I think you would hardly guess. It is the last word—variety.

On every average page of Shakespeare you are greeted and gladdened by at least five words that you never saw before in his writings, and that you never will see again, speaking once and then for ever holding their peace—each not only rare, but a nonsuch—five gems just shown, then snatched away. Each page is studded with five stars, each as unique as the century-flower, and, like the night-blooming cereus, "the perfume and suppliance of a minute"—ipsa varietate variora. The mind of Shakespeare was bodied forth as Montezuma was apparelled, whose costume, however gorgeous, was never twice the same. Hence the Shakespearian style is fresh as morning dew and changeful as evening clouds, so that we remain for ever doubtful in relation to his manner and his matter, which of them owes the greater debt to the other. The Shakespearian plots are analogous to the grouping of Raphael, the characters to the drawing of Michael Angelo, but the word-painting superadds the coloring of Titian. Accordingly, in studying Shakespeare's diction I should long ago have said, if I could, what I read in Arthur Helps, where he treats of a perfect style—that "there is a sense of felicity about it, declaring it to be the product of a happy moment, so that you feel it will not happen again to that man who writes the sentence, nor to any other of the sons of men, to say the like thing so choicely, tersely, mellifluously and completely."

In the central court of the Neapolitan Museum I saw grape-clusters, mouldings, volutes, fingers and antique fragments of all sorts wrought in rarest marble, lying scattered on the pavement, exposed to sun and rain, cast down the wrong side up, and as it were thrown away, as when the stones of the Jewish sanctuary were poured out in every street. Nothing reveals the sculptural opulence of Italy like this apparent wastefulness. It seems to proclaim that Italy can afford to make nothing of what would elsewhere be judged worthy of shrines. We say to ourselves, "If such be the things she throws away, what must be her jewels?" A similar feeling rises in me while exploring Shakespeare's prodigality in απαξ λεγόμενα. His exchequer appears more exhaustless than the Bank of England.

AN EPISODE OF SPANISH CHIVALRY.

Don Quijote's readers are aware of the enormous popularity of the romances of chivalry, but they are apt to imagine that these represent a purely ideal state of things. This is undoubtedly the case as far as knight-errantry is concerned, but certain distinctive habits and customs of chivalry prevailed in Spain and elsewhere long after the feudal system and the earlier and original form of chivalry had passed away. One of the most curious instances of this survival of chivalry occurred in Spain in the first half of the fifteenth century, and after commanding the admiration of Europe furnished Don Quijote with an admirable argument for the existence of Amadis of Gaul and his long line of successors. The worthy knight had been temporarily released from his confinement in the Enchanted Cage, and had begun his celebrated reply to the canon's statement that there had never been such persons as Amadis and the other knights-errant, nor the absurd adventures with which the romances of chivalry abound. Don Quijote's answer is a marvellous mixture of sense and nonsense: the creations of the romancer's brain are placed side by side with the Cid, Juan de Merlo and Gutierre Ouijada, whose names were household words in Spain: "Let them deny also that Don Fernando de Guerara went to seek adventures in Germany, where he did combat with Messer George, knight of the household of the duke of Austria. Let them say that the jousts of Sucro de Quiñones, him of the Pass, were a jest."

It is to these jousts, as one of the most characteristic episodes of the reign of John II. and of the times, that we wish to call attention.[4]

On the evening of Friday, the 1st of January, 1434, while the king and his court were at Medina del Campo and engaged in the rejoicings customary on the first day of the New Year, Suero de Quiñones and nine knights clad in white entered the saloon, and, coming before the throne, kissed the hands and feet of the king, and presented him through their herald with a petition of which the following is the substance:

"It is just and reasonable for those who are in confinement or deprived of their freedom to desire liberty; and since I, your vassal and subject, have long been in durance to a certain lady—in witness whereof I bear this chain about my neck every Thursday—now, therefore, mighty sovereign, I have agreed upon my ransom, which is three hundred lances broken by myself and these knights, as shall more clearly hereafter appear—three with every knight or gentleman (counting as broken the lance which draws blood) who shall come to a certain place this year; to wit, fifteen days before and fifteen days after the festival of the apostle St. James, unless my ransom shall be completed before the day last mentioned. The place shall be on the highway to Santiago, and I hereby testify to all strange knights and gentlemen that they will there be provided with armor, horses and weapons. And be it known to every honorable lady who may pass the aforesaid way that if she do not provide a knight or gentleman to do combat for her, she shall lose her right-hand glove. All the above saving two things—that neither Your Majesty nor the constable Don Alvaro de Luna is to enter the lists."

After the reading of this petition the king took counsel with his court and granted it, for which Quiñones humbly thanked him, and then he and his companions retired to disarm themselves, returning shortly after in dresses more befitting a festal occasion.

After the dancing the regulations for the jousts, consisting of twenty-two chapters, were publicly read. In addition to the declarations in the petition, it is provided that in case two or more knights should come to ransom the glove of any lady, the first knight only will be received, and no one can ransom more than one glove. In the seventh chapter Quiñones offers a diamond to the first knight who appears to do combat for one of three ladies to be named by him, among whom shall not be the one whose captive he is. No knight coming to the Pass of Honor shall select the defender with whom to joust, nor shall he know the name of his adversary until the combat is finished; but any one after breaking three lances may challenge by name any one of the defenders, who, if time permits, will break another lance with him. If any knight desires to joust without some portion of his armor named by Quiñones, his request shall be granted if reason and time permit. No knight will be admitted to the lists until he declare his name and country. If any one is injured, "as is wont to happen in jousts," he shall be treated as though he were Quiñones himself, and no one in the future shall ever be held responsible for any advantage or victory he may have gained over any of the defenders of the Pass. No one going as a pilgrim to Santiago by the direct road shall be hindered by Quiñones unless he approach the aforesaid bridge of Orbigo (which was somewhat distant from the highway). In case, however, any knight, having left the main road, shall come to the Pass, he shall not be permitted to depart until he has entered the lists or left in pledge a piece of his armor or right spur, with the promise never to wear that piece or spur until he shall have been in some deed of arms as dangerous as the Pass of Honor. Quiñones further pledges himself to pay all expenses incurred by those who shall come to the Pass.

Any knight who, after having broken one or two lances, shall refuse to continue, shall lose his armor or right spur as though he had declined to enter the lists. No defender shall be obliged to joust a second time with any one who had been disabled for a day in any previous encounter.

The twenty-first chapter provides for the appointment of two knights, "caballeros anliguos è probados en annas è dignas de fè," and two heralds, all of whom shall swear solemnly to do justice to all who come to the Pass, and who shall decide all questions which may arise.

The last chapter provides "that if the lady whose I [Quiñones] am shall pass that way, she shall not lose her glove, and no one but myself shall do combat for her, for no one in the world could do it so truly as I."

When the preceding provisions had been read, Quiñones gave to the king-at-arms a letter signed and sealed, which invited to the Pass all knights so disposed, granting safe conduct to those of other kingdoms, and declaring the cause of said trial of arms. Copies of the above letter were also given to other heralds, who were provided with everything necessary for long journeys, and in the six months that intervened before the day fixed for the jousts the matter had been proclaimed throughout all Christendom. Meanwhile, Quiñones provided horses and arms and everything necessary for "such an important enterprise."

In the kingdom of Leon, about ten miles east of Astorga and on the highway from that city to the capital, is the bridge of Orbigo. Suero de Quiñones did not select Orbigo with reference to convenience of access from the Castiles, but because it must be passed by pilgrims to Santiago; and that year (1434) was especially sacred to the saint, whose festival, on the 25th of July, has always been celebrated with great pomp. The Spaniards having been forbidden to go to Jerusalem as crusaders, and being too much occupied at home with the Moors to make such a long pilgrimage, wisely substituted Santiago, where the remains of St. James, the patron of Spain, is supposed to rest. His body is said to have floated in a stone coffin from Joppa to Padron (thirteen miles below Santiago) in seven days, and for nearly eight centuries lay forgotten in a cave, but was at length miraculously brought to light by mysterious flames hovering over its resting-place, and in 829 was removed to Santiago. In 846 the saint made his appearance at the celebrated battle of Clavijo, where he slew sixty thousand Moors, and was rewarded by a grant of a bushel of grain from every acre in Spain. His shrine was a favorite resort for pilgrims from all Christendom until after the Reformation, and the saint retained his bushel of grain (the annual value of which had reached the large sum of one million dollars) until 1835.

It was near the highway, in a pleasant grove, that Quiñones erected the lists, a hundred and forty-six paces long and surrounded by a palisade of the height of a lance, with various stands for the judges and spectators. At the opposite ends of the lists were entrances—one for the defenders of the Pass—and there were hung the arms and banners of Quiñones, as well as at the other entrance, which was reserved for the knights who should come to make trial of their arms. In order that no one might mistake the way, a marble king-at-arms was erected near the bridge, with the right arm extended and the inscription, "To the Pass."

The final arrangements were not concluded until the 10th of July, the first day of the jousts. Twenty-two tents had been erected for the accommodation of those engaged in the enterprise as well as for mere spectators, and Quiñones had provided all necessary servants and artisans, among whom are mentioned kings-at-arms, heralds, trumpeters and other musicians, notaries, armorers, blacksmiths, surgeons, physicians, carpenters, lance-makers, tailors, embroiderers, etc. In the midst of the tents was erected a wooden dining—hall, hung with rich French cloth and provided with two tables—one for Quiñones and the knights who came to the Pass, and the other for those who honored the jousts with their presence. A curious fact not to be omitted is that the king sent one of his private secretaries to prepare daily accounts of what happened at the Pass, which were transmitted by relays to Segovia (where he was engaged in hunting), so that he should receive them within twenty-four hours.

On Saturday, the 10th of July, 1434, all the arrangements having been completed, the heralds proceeded to the entrance of the lists and announced to Quiñones that three knights were at the bridge of Orbigo who had come to make trial of their arms—one a German, Messer Arnoldo de la Floresta Bermeja of the marquisate of Brandenburg, "about twenty-seven years old, blond and well-dressed;" the others two brothers from Valencia, by name Juan and Per Fabla. Quiñones was greatly delighted at their coming, and sent the heralds to invite them to take up their quarters with him, which they did, and were received with honor at the entrance of the lists in the presence of the judges. It being Saturday, the jousting was deferred until the following Monday, and the spurs of the three knights were hung up in the judges' stand as a sort of pledge, to be restored to their owners when they were ready to enter the lists.

The next morning the trumpets sounded, and Quiñones and his nine companions heard mass in the church of St. John at Orbigo, and took possession of the lists in the following fashion: First came the musicians with drums and Moorish fifes, preceded by the judge, Pero Barba. Then followed two large and beautiful horses drawing a cart filled with lances of various sizes pointed with Milan steel. The cart was covered with blue and green trappings embroidered with bay trees and flowers, and on every tree was the figure of a parrot. The driver of this singular conveyance was a dwarf. Next came Quiñones on a powerful horse with blue trappings, on which were worked his device and a chain, with the motto Il faut deliberer[5] He was dressed in a quilted jacket of olive velvet brocade embroidered in green, with a cloak of blue velvet, breeches of scarlet cloth and a tall cap of the same color. He wore wheel-spurs of the Italian fashion richly gilt, and carried a drawn sword, also gilt. On his right arm, near the shoulder, was richly embroidered his device in gold two fingers broad, and around it in blue letters,

With Quiñones were his nine companions in scarlet velvet and blue cloaks bearing Quiñones' device and chain, and the trappings of their horses blue, with the same device and motto. Near Quiñones were many knights on foot, some of whom led his horse to do him honor. Three pages magnificently attired and mounted closed the procession, which entered the lists, and after passing around it twice halted before the judges' stand, and Quiñones exhorted the judges to decide impartially all that should happen, giving equal justice to all, and especially to defend the strangers in case they should be attacked on account of having wounded any of the defenders of the Pass.

The next day, Monday, at dawn the drums beat the reveille, and the judges, with the heralds, notaries and kings-at-arms, took their places in their stands. The nine defenders meanwhile heard mass in a large tent which served as a private chapel for Quiñones, and where mass was said thrice daily at his expense by some Dominicans. After the defenders were armed they sent for the judges to inspect their weapons and armor. The German knight, Arnoldo, had a disabled hand, but he declared he would rather die than refrain from jousting. His arms and horse were approved, although the latter was superior to that of Quiñones. The judges had provided a body of armed soldiers whose duty it was to see that all had fair play in the field, and had a pile of lances of various sizes placed where each knight could select one to suit him.

Quiñones and the German now entered the lists, accompanied by their friends and with "much music." The judges commanded that no one should dare to speak aloud or give advice or make any sign to any one in the lists, no matter what happened, under penalty of having the tongue cut out for speaking and a hand cut off for making signs; and they also forbade any knight to enter the lists with more than two servants, one mounted and the other on foot. The spur taken from the German the previous Saturday was now restored to him, and the trumpets sounded a charge, while the heralds and kings-at-arms cried Legeres allér! legeres allér! é fair son deber.

The two knights charged instantly, lance in rest, and Quiñones encountered his antagonist in the guard of his lance, and his weapon glanced off and touched him in the armor of his right hand and tore it off, and his lance broke in the middle. The German encountered him in the armor of the left arm, tore it off and carried a piece of the border without breaking his lance. In the second course Quiñones encountered the German in the top of his plastron, without piercing it, and the lance came out under his arm-pit, whereupon all thought he was wounded, for on receiving the shock he exclaimed Olas! and his right vantbrace was torn off, but the lance was not broken. The German encountered Quiñones in the front of his helmet, breaking his lance two palms from the iron. In the third course Quiñones encountered the German in the guard of his left gauntlet, and passed through it, and the head of the lance stuck in the rim without breaking, and the German failed to encounter. In the fourth course Quiñones encountered the German in the armor of his left arm without breaking his lance, and the German failed to encounter. In the next course both failed to encounter, but in the sixth Quiñones encountered the German in the joint of his left vantbrace, and the iron passed half through without breaking, while the shaft broke in the middle, and the German failed to encounter. After this last course they went to the judges' stand, where their jousting was pronounced finished, since they had broken three lances between them. Quiñones invited the German to supper, and both were accompanied to their quarters by music, and Quiñones disarmed himself in public.

The two Valencian knights did not delay to challenge Quiñones, since he had remained uninjured; and, as they had the right to demand horses and arms, they chose those which Quiñones had used in the last joust. The chronicler adds: "It seems to me that they did not ask it so much for their honor as for the safety of their skins." The judges decided that Quiñones was not bound to give his own armor, as there were other suits as good: nevertheless, he complied, and sent in addition four horses to choose from. He was also anxious to joust with them, but Lope de Estuñiga refused to yield his place, and cited the chapter of the regulations which provided that no one should single out his adversary. Quiñones offered him a very fine horse and a gold chain worth three hundred doubloons, but Estuñiga answered that he would not yield his turn although he were offered a city.

At vespers Estuñiga and Juan Fabla were armed and the judges examined their arms, and although Fabla had the better horse, they let it pass. At the sound of the trumpet Estuñiga entered the lists magnificently attired, and attended by two pages in armor bearing a drawn sword and a lance. Juan Fabla followed immediately, and at the given signal they attacked each other lance in rest. Fabla encountered Estuñiga in the left arm, tearing off his armor, but neither of them broke his lance. In the four following courses they failed to encounter. In the sixth Fabla encountered his adversary in the breastplate, breaking his lance in the middle, and the head remained sticking in the armor. They encountered in the seventh course, and Estuñiga's servant, who was in the lists, cried out, "At him! at him!" The judges commanded his tongue to be cut out, but at the intercession of those present the sentence was commuted to thirty blows and imprisonment. They failed to encounter in the eighth course, but in the ninth Estuñiga broke his lance on Fabla's left arm: the latter failed to encounter, and received a great reverse. After this they ran nine courses without encountering, but in the nineteenth Estuñiga met Fabla in the plastron, and his lance slipped off on to his helmet, but did not break, although it pierced the plastron and the iron remained sticking in it. By this time it had grown so dark that the judges could not distinguish the good from the bad encounters, and for this reason they decided that the combat was finished the same as though three lances had been broken. Estuñiga invited Fabla to sup with Quiñones, "and at table there were many knights, and after supper they danced."

That same day there arrived at the Pass nine knights from Aragon, who swore that they were gentlemen without reproach. Their spurs were taken from them, according to the established custom, and hung up in the judges' stand until they should enter the lists.

The succeeding combats were but repetitions, with trifling variations, of those just described. From dawn, when the trumpet sounded for battle, until the evening grew so dark that the judges could not distinguish the combatants, the defenders maintained the Pass against all comers with bravery and honor.

The third day there passed near Orbigo two ladies, and the judges sent the king-at-arms and the herald to ascertain whether they were of noble birth and provided with knights to represent them in the lists and win them a passage through Orbigo, and also to request them to give up their right-hand gloves. The ladies answered that they were noble and were on a pilgrimage to Santiago; their names were Leonora and Guiomar de la Vega; the former was married and accompanied by her husband; the latter was a widow. The king-at-arms then requested their gloves to be kept as a pledge until some knight should ransom them. Frances Davio, an Aragonese knight, immediately offered to do combat for the ladies. The husband of Doña Leonora said that he had not heard of this adventure, and was unprepared to attempt it then, but if the ladies were allowed to retain their gloves, as soon as he had accomplished his pilgrimage he would return and enter the lists for them. The gloves, however, were retained and hung in the judges' stand. The matter caused some discussion, and finally the judges decided that the gloves should not be kept, for fear it should seem that the defenders of the Pass were interfering with pilgrims, and also on account of Juan de la Vega's chivalrous response. So the gloves were sent on to Astorga to be delivered to their owners, and Juan de la Vega was absolved from all obligation to ransom them, "and there was strife among many knights as to who should do battle for the sisters."

On the 16th of July, Frances Davio jousted with Lope de Estuñiga, and when the trial of arms was ended with great honor to both, Davio swore aloud, so that many knights heard him, "that never in the future would he have a love-affair with a nun, for up to that time he had loved one, and it was for her sake that he had come to the Pass; and any one who had known it could have challenged him as an evil-doer, and he could not have defended himself." Whereat Delena, the notary and compiler of the original record of the Pass, exclaims, "To which I say that if he had had any Christian nobleness, or even the natural shame which leads every one to conceal his faults, he would not have made public such a sacrilegious scandal, so dishonorable to the religious order and so injurious to Christ."

The same day the king-at-arms and herald announced to Quiñones that a gentleman named Vasco de Barrionuevo, servant of Ruy Diaz de Mendoza, mayor-domo of the king, had come to make trial of his arms, but as he was not a knight he prayed Quiñones to confer that honor on him. Quiñones consented, and commanded him to wait at the entrance of the lists, whither he and the nine defenders went on foot accompanied by a great crowd. Quiñones asked Vasco if he desired to become a knight, and on his answering in the affirmative he drew his gilt sword and said, "Sir, do you promise to keep and guard all the things appertaining to the noble order of chivalry, and to die rather than fail in any one of them?" He swore that he would do so, and Quiñones, striking him on the helmet with his naked sword, said, "God make thee a good knight and aid thee to live and act as every good knight should do!" After this ceremony the new knight entered the lists with Pedro de los Rios, and they ran seven courses and broke three lances.

On the festival of St. James (July 25th) Quiñones entered the lists without three of the principal pieces of his armor—namely, the visor of his helmet, the left vantbrace and breastplate—and said, "Knights and judges of this Passo Honroso, inasmuch as I announced through Monreal, the king's herald, that on St. James's Day there would be in this place three knights, each without a piece of his armor, and each ready to run two courses with every knight who should present himself that day, know, therefore, that I, Suero de Quiñones, alone am those three knights, and am prepared to accomplish what I proclaimed." The judges after a short deliberation answered that they had no authority to permit him to risk his life in manifest opposition to the regulations which he had sworn to obey, and declared him under arrest, and forbade all jousting that day, as it was Sunday and the festival of St. James. Quiñones felt greatly grieved at their decision, and told them that "in the service of his lady he had gone into battle against the Moors in the kingdom of Granada with his right arm bared, and God had preserved him, and would do so now." The judges, however, were inflexible and refused to hear him.

The last day of July, late in the afternoon, there arrived at the Pass a gentleman named Pedro de Torrecilla, a retainer or squire of Alfonso de Deza, but no one was willing to joust with him, on the ground that he was not an hidalgo. The generous Lope de Estuñiga, hearing this, offered to dub him a knight, but Torrecilla thanked him and said he could not afford to sustain in becoming manner the honor of chivalry, but he would make good the fact that he was an hidalgo. Lope de Estuñiga was so much pleased by this discreet answer that he believed him truly of gentle blood, and to do him honor entered the lists with him. It was, however, so late that they had only time to run three courses, and then the judges pronounced their joust finished. Torrecilla esteemed so highly the fact that so renowned a knight as Lope de Estuñiga should have condescended to enter the lists with him that he swore it was the greatest honor he had ever received in his life, and he offered him his services. Estuñiga thanked him, and affirmed that he felt as much honored by having jousted with him as though he had been an emperor.[7]

A few days after the above events an incident occurred which shows how contagious the example of Quiñones and his followers was, and to what amusing imitations it led. A Lombard trumpeter made his appearance at the Pass, and said that he had been to Santiago on a pilgrimage, and while there had heard that there was at the Passo Honroso a trumpeter of the king of Castile named Dalmao, very celebrated in his line, and he had gone thirty leagues out of his way in order to have a trial of skill with him; and he offered to stake a good trumpet against one of Dalmao's. The latter took the Lombard's trumpet and blew so loud and skilfully that the Italian, in spite of all his efforts, was obliged to confess himself conquered, and gave up his trumpet.

So far, the encounters, if not entirely bloodless, had not been attended by any fatal accident. The defenders had all been wounded, more or less severely: once Quiñones concealed the fact until the end of the joust in which his antagonist had been badly hurt, and it was only when the knights were disarmed that it was discovered that Quiñones was bleeding profusely. On another occasion his helmet was pierced by his adversary's lance, the fragment of which he strove in vain to withdraw. All believed him mortally wounded, but he cried, "It is nothing! it is nothing! Quiñones! Quiñones!" and continued as though nothing had occurred. After three encounters the judges descended from their stands and made him remove his helmet to see whether he was wounded. When it was found that he was not, "every one thought that God had miraculously delivered him." Quiñones was also wounded in his encounter with Juan de Merlo, and again concealed the fact until the end of the combat, when he asked the judges to excuse him from jousting further that day, as his right hand, which he had previously sprained, was again dislocated, and caused him terrible suffering; and well it might, for the flesh was lacerated and the whole arm seemed paralyzed.

The wounds received the 28th of July were, unfortunately, sufficiently healed by the 6th of August to enable him to enter the lists with the unhappy Esberte de Claramonte, an Aragonese. "Would to God," exclaims the chronicler, "he had never come here!" In the ninth encounter Quiñones' lance entered his antagonist's left eye and penetrated the brain. The luckless knight broke his lance in the ground, was lifted from his saddle by the force of the blow, and fell dead without uttering a word; "and his face seemed like the face of one who had been dead two hours." The Aragonese and Catalans present bewailed his death loudly, and Quiñones was grieved in his soul at such a great misfortune. Every possible honor was shown the dead knight, and the welfare of his soul was not forgotten. Master Anton, Quiñones' confessor, and the other priests were sent for to administer the sacraments, and Quiñones begged them to chant the Responsorium[8] over the body, as was customary in the Church, and do in all respects as though he himself were the dead man. The priest replied that the Church did not consider as sons those who died in such exercises, for they could not be performed without mortal sin, neither did she intercede for their souls; in proof whereof he referred to the canonical law, cap. de Torneamentis.[9] However, at the earnest request of Quiñones, Messer Anton went with a letter to the bishop of Astorga to ask leave to bury Claramonte in holy ground, Quiñones promising if it were granted to take the dead knight to Leon and bury him in his own family chapel. Meanwhile, they bore the body to the hermitage of Santa Catalina, near the bridge of Orbigo, and there it remained until night, when Messer Anton returned without the desired license; so they buried Claramonte in unconsecrated ground near the hermitage, with all possible honor and amid the tears of the assembled knights. This mournful event does not seem, however, to have made a very deep impression, for that same afternoon the jousting was continued.

The remaining days were marked by no unusual occurrence: several were seriously but not fatally wounded, and one by one the defenders of the Pass were disabled; so that when the 9th of August, the last day of the jousts, arrived, Sancho de Ravenal was the only one of the ten defenders who was able to enter the lists. He maintained the Pass that day against two knights, and then the jousts were declared ended. When the decision was known there was great rejoicing and blowing of trumpets, and the lists were illuminated with torches. The judges returned the spurs which still hung in the stand to the owners who through lack of time had not been able to joust. Quiñones and eight of his companions (Lope de Aller was confined to his bed by his wounds) entered the lists in the same manner and order as on the first day, and halting before the judges Quiñones addressed them as follows: "It is known to Your Honors how I presented myself here thirty days ago with these companions, and the cause of my so doing was to terminate the captivity in which until this moment I was to a very virtuous lady, in token of which I have worn this iron collar continually every Thursday. The condition of my ransom was, as you know, three hundred lances broken or guarding this Pass thirty days, awaiting knights and gentlemen who should free me from said captivity; and whereas I believe, honorable sirs, that I have fulfilled everything according to the terms set down at the beginning, I therefore beg you will command me to remove this iron collar in testimony of my liberty."

The judges answered briefly as follows: "Virtuous gentleman and knight, after hearing your declaration, which seems just and true, we hereby declare your enterprise completed and your ransom paid; and be it known to all present that of the three hundred lances mentioned in the agreement but few remain yet to be broken, and these would not have remained unbroken had it not been for lack of adversaries. We therefore command the king-at-arms and the herald to remove the collar from your neck and declare you from this time henceforth free from your enterprise and ransom." | The king-at-arms and the herald then descended from the stand, and in the presence of the notaries with due solemnity took the collar from Quiñones' neck in fulfilment of the judges' command.

During the thirty days' jousting sixty-eight knights had entered the lists: of these, one, Messer Arnoldo de la Floresta Bermeja (Arnold von Rothwald?), was a German; one an Italian, Messer Luis de Aversa; one Breton,[10] three Valencians, one Portuguese, thirteen Aragonese, four Catalans, and the remaining forty-four were from the Castiles and other parts of Spain. The number of courses run was seven hundred and twenty-seven, and one hundred and sixty-six lances were broken. Quiñones was afterward killed by Gutierre Quijada, one of the knights who took part in the Passo Honroso, and with whom he seems to have had some kind of a feud. Quiñones' sword may still be seen at Madrid in the Royal Armory, No. 1917.

AUTOMATISM.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

A few months ago, walking along Fifteenth street, I came up behind a friend and said, "Good-morning." No answer. "Good-morning, sir," a little louder.—"Oh, excuse me: I did not hear you the first time."—" How then did you know that I had spoken twice?" My friend was nonplussed, but what had happened was this: on my first speaking the impulse of the voice had fallen upon his ear and started a nerve-wave which had struggled up as far as the lower apparatus at the base of the brain, and, passing through this, had probably even reached the higher nerve-centres in the surface of the cerebrum, near to which consciousness resides, but not in sufficient force to arouse consciousness. When, however, the attention was excited by my second address, it perceived the first faint impulse which had been registered upon the protoplasm of the nerve-centres, although unfelt. Probably most of my readers have had a similar experience. A word spoken, but not consciously heard, has a moment afterward been detected by an effort as distinctly conscious as that made by the man who is attempting to decipher some old faint manuscript. This incident and its explanation will serve to illustrate the relation which seems to exist between consciousness and sensation, and also between consciousness and the general mental actions.

It will perhaps render our thinking more accurate if we attempt to get a clear idea just here as to what consciousness is and what it is not. Various definitions of the term have been given, but the simplest and truest seems to be that it is a knowledge of the present existence of self, and perhaps also of surrounding objects, although it is conceivable that a conscious person might be shut off from all contact with the external world by abolition of the senses. Consciousness is certainly not what the philosopher and the theologian call the Ego, or the personality of the individual. A blow on the head puts an end for the time being to consciousness, but not to the man's personality. Neither is consciousness the same as the sense of personal identity, although it is closely connected with it. The conviction of a man that he is the same person through the manifold changes which occur in him as the successive years go on is evidently based on consciousness and memory. This is well illustrated by some very curious cases in which the sense or knowledge of personal identity has been completely lost. Not long ago an instance of such complete loss was recorded by Doctor Hewater (Hospital Gazette, November, 1879). The gentleman who was the subject of this loss found himself standing upon the dépôt-platform in Belaire City, Ohio, utterly ignorant of who he was or where he came from or where he was going to. He had a little money in his pocket, and in his hand a small port-manteau which contained a pair of scissors and a change of linen. He was well dressed, and on stating at the nearest hotel his strange condition and asking for a bed, was received as a guest. In the evening he went out and attended a temperance lecture. Excited by the eloquence of the speaker, he was seized with an uncontrollable impulse, rushed from the room and began to smash with a club the windows of a neighboring tavern. The roughs ran out of the saloon and beat him very badly, breaking his arm: this brought him to the police-station, and thence to the hospital. For months every effort was made to identify him, but at the date of reporting without avail. He was known in the hospital as "Ralph," that name having been found on his underclothing. His knowledge upon all subjects unconnected with his identity is correct: his mental powers are good, and he has shown himself expert at figures and with a pen. For a long time it was thought that he was feigning, but every one about him was finally convinced that he is what he says he is—namely, a man without knowledge of his personal identity. This curious case, which is by no means unparalleled in the annals of psychological medicine, shows how distinct memory is from consciousness. Memory of the past was in Ralph entirely abolished so far as concerned his own personality, but consciousness was perfect, and the results of previous mental training remained, as is shown by his use of figures. It was as though there was a dislocation between consciousness and the memory of self.

The distinctness of consciousness from memory is also shown by dreams. Events which have passed are often recalled during the unconsciousness of sleep. The curious although common carrying of the memory of a dream over from the unconsciousness of sleep to the consciousness of waking movements further illustrates the complete distinction between the two cerebral functions.

If memory, then, be not part of consciousness, what is its nature? There is a law governing nervous actions both in health and disease which is known as that of habitual action. The curious reflex movements made by the frog when acid is put upon its foot, as detailed in my last paper, were explained by this law. The spinal cord, after having frequently performed a certain act under the stimulus of conscious sensation, becomes so accustomed to perform that act that it does it when the oft-felt peripheral impulse comes again to it, although the cerebral functions and consciousness are suspended. A nerve-centre, even of the lowest kind, once moulded by repeated acts, retains their impression—i.e. remembers them. Learning to walk is, as was shown in the last paper, training the memory of the lower nerve-centres at the base of the brain until at last they direct the movements of walking without aid from consciousness. The musician studies a piece of music. At first the notes are struck in obedience to a conscious act of the will founded upon a conscious recognition of the printed type. By and by the piece is so well known that it is played even when the attention is directed to some other subject; that is, the act of playing has been repeated until the lower nerve-centres, which preside over the movements of the fingers during the playing, have been so impressed that when once the impulses are started they flow on uninterruptedly until the whole set has been gone through and the piece of music is finished. This is the result of memory of the lower nerve-centres. At first, the child reads only by a distinct conscious effort of memory, recalling painfully each word. After a time the words become so impressed upon the lower nerve-centres that we may read on when our attention is directed to some other thing. Thus, often we read aloud and are unconscious of what we have read, precisely as the compositor habitually sets up pages of manuscript without the faintest idea of what it is all about. This law of habitual action applies not only to the lower nerve-centres in their healthy condition, but with equal force in disease. It is notorious that one of the great difficulties in the cure of epilepsy is the habit which is acquired by the nerve-centres of having at intervals attacks of convulsive discharge of nerve-force. Some years since I saw in consultation a case which well illustrates this point. A boy was struck in the head with a brick, and dropped unconscious. On coming to be was seized with an epileptic convulsion. These convulsions continually recurred for many months before I saw him. He never went two hours without them, and had usually from thirty to forty a day—some, it is true, very slight, but others very severe. Medicines had no influence over him, and with the idea that there might be a point of irritation in the wound itself causing the epilepsy, the scar was taken out. The result was that the seizures were the same day reduced very much in frequency, and in a short time became amenable to treatment, so that finally complete recovery occurred. He had, however, probably fifty convulsions in all after the removal of the scar before this result was achieved. Undoubtedly, in this case the point of irritation was removed by the operation. The cause of the convulsions having been taken away, they should have stopped at once. But here the law of habitual action asserted itself, and it was necessary to overcome the remembrance of the disease by the nerve-centres. It is plain that the higher nerve-centre remembers the idea or fact because it is impressed by ideas and facts, precisely as the lower spinal nerve-centres in the frog remember irritations and movements which have impressed them. The faculty of memory resides in all nerve-centres: the nature of that which is remembered depends upon the function of the individual centre. A nerve-cell which thinks remembers thought—a nerve-cell which causes motion remembers motion.

The so-called cases of double consciousness are perfectly simple in their explanation when the true nature of memory is borne in mind. In these cases the subject seems to lead a double life. The attacks usually come on suddenly. In the first attack all memory of the past is lost. The person is as an untaught child, and is forced to begin re-education. In some of these cases this second education has gone on for weeks, and advanced perhaps beyond the stage of reading, when suddenly the patient passes back to his original condition, losing now all memory of events which had occurred and all the knowledge acquired in what may be called his second state, but regaining all that he had originally possessed. Weeks or months afterward the second state reoccurs, the individual now forgetting all memory of the first or natural condition. It is usually found that events happening and knowledge acquired during the first attack of what we have called the second state are remembered in subsequent returns, so that the second education can be taken up at the point at which it was lost, and progress be made. This alternation of conditions has in some instances gone on for years, the patient living, as it were, two lives at broken intervals. This condition, usually called double consciousness, is not double consciousness at all, but, if the term may be allowed, double memory. It is evidently allied in its nature to the loss of the sense of personal identity. Certain phenomena of remembrance seen frequently in exhausting diseases, and especially in old age, show the permanence of impressions made upon the higher nerve-centres, and are also very similar in their nature to this so-called double consciousness. Not long since a very aged lady of Philadelphia, who was at the point of death, began to talk in an unknown tongue, soon losing entirely her power of expressing herself in English. No one could for a time make out the language she was speaking, but it was finally found to be Portuguese; and in tracing the history of the octogenarian it was discovered that until four or five years of age she had been brought up in Rio Janeiro, where Portuguese is spoken. There is little difference between the nature of such a case and that of the so-called double consciousness, both involving the forgetting of that which has been known for years.

There is a curious mental condition sometimes produced by large doses of hasheesh which might be termed double consciousness more correctly than the state to which the name is usually applied. I once took an enormous dose of this substance. After suffering from a series of symptoms which it is not necessary here to detail, I was seized with a horrible undefined fear, as of impending death, and began at the same time to have marked periods when all connection seemed to be severed between the external world and myself. During these periods I was unconscious in so far that I was oblivious of all external objects, but on coming out of one it was not a blank, dreamless void upon which I looked back, a mere empty space, but rather a period of active but aimless life, full, not of connected thought, but of disjointed images. The mind, freed from the ordinary laws of association, passed, as it were, with lightning-like rapidity from one idea to another. The duration of these attacks was but a few seconds, but to me they seemed endless. Although I was perfectly conscious during the intermissions between the paroxysms, all power of measuring time was lost: seconds appeared to be hours—minutes grew to days—hours stretched out to infinity. I would look at my watch, and then after an hour or two, as I thought, would look again and find that scarcely a minute had elapsed. The minute-hand appeared motionless, as though graven in the face itself: the laggard second-hand moved so slowly that it seemed a hopeless task to watch it during its whole infinite round of a minute, and I always gave up in despair before the sixty seconds had elapsed. When my mind was most lucid there was a distinct duplex action in regard to the duration of time. I would think to myself, "It has been so long since a certain event!"—an hour, for example, since the doctor was summoned—but Reason would say, "No, it has been only a few minutes: your thoughts and feelings are caused by the hasheesh." Nevertheless, I was not able to shake off, even for a moment, this sense of the almost indefinite prolongation of time. Gradually the periods of unconsciousness became longer and more frequent, and the oppressive feeling of impending death more intense. It was like a horrible nightmare: each successive paroxysm was felt to be the longest I had suffered. As I came out of it a voice seemed constantly saying, "You are getting worse; your paroxysms are growing longer and deeper; they will overmaster you; you will die." A sense of personal antagonism between my will-power and myself, as affected by the drug, grew very strong. I felt as though my only chance was to struggle against these paroxysms—that I must constantly arouse myself by an effort of will; and that effort was made with infinite toil and pain. It seemed to me as if some evil spirit had the control of the whole of me except the will, and was in determined conflict with that, the last citadel of my being. Once or twice during a paroxysm I felt myself mounting upward, expanding, dilating, dissolving into the wide confines of space, overwhelmed by a horrible, unutterable despair. Then by a tremendous effort I seemed to break loose and to start up with the shuddering thought, "Next time you will not be able to throw this off; and what then?" The sense of double consciousness which I had to some extent is often, under the action of hasheesh, much more distinct. I have known patients to whom it seemed that they themselves sitting upon the chair were in continual conversation with a second self standing in front of them. The explanation of this curious condition is a difficult one. It is possible that the two sides of the brain, which are accustomed in health to work as one organ, are disjoined by the poison, so that one half of the brain thinks and acts in opposition to the other half.

From what has already been said it is plain that memory is entirely distinct from consciousness, and that it is in a certain sense automatic, or at least an attribute of all nerve-centres. If this be so, it would seem probable, a priori, that other intellectual acts are also distinct from consciousness. For present purposes the activities of the cerebrum may be divided into the emotional and the more strictly-speaking intellectual acts. A little thought will, I think, convince any of my readers that emotions are as purely automatic as the movements of the frog's hind leg. The Irishman who said that he was really a brave man, although he had a cowardly pair of legs which always ran away with him, was far from speaking absurdly. It is plain that passion is something entirely beyond the conscious will, because it is continually excited from without, and because we are unable to produce it by a mere effort of the will without some external cause. The common phrase, "He is working himself up into a passion," indicates a perception of the fact that consciousness sometimes employs memories, thoughts, associations, etc. to arouse the lower nerve-centres that are connected with the emotion of anger. It is so also with various other emotions. The soldier who habitually faces death in the foremost rank of the battle, and yet shrinks in mortal fear or antipathy from a mouse, is not an unknown spectacle. It is clear that his fear of the little animal is based not upon reason, but upon an uncontrollable sensitiveness in his nervous system acquired by inheritance or otherwise. It does not follow from this that conscious will is not able to affect emotion. As already pointed out, it can arouse emotion by using the proper means, and it undoubtedly can, to a greater or less extent, directly subdue emotion. The law of inhibition, as it is called by the physiologist, dominates the whole nervous system. Almost every nerve-centre has above it a higher centre whose function it is directly to repress or subdue the activity of the lower centre. A familiar instance of this is seen in the action of the heart: there are certain nerve-centres which when excited lessen the rate of the heart's beat, and are even able to stop it altogether. The relation of the will-power to the emotions is directly inhibitory. The will is able to repress the activity of those centres which preside over anger. In the man with red hair these centres may be very active and the will-power weak; hence the inhibitory influence of the will is slight and the man gets angry easily. In the phlegmatic temperament the anger-centres are slow to action, the will-power strong, and the man is thrown off his balance with difficulty. It is well known that power grows with exercise, and when we habitually use the will in controlling the emotional centres its power continually increases. The man learning self-control is simply drilling the lower emotional centres into obedience to the repressive action of the higher will. Without further demonstration, it is clear that emotion is distinct from conscious will, and is automatic in the sense in which the term has been used in this article.

Imagination also is plainly distinct from consciousness. It acts during sleep. Often, indeed, it runs riot during the slumbers of the night, but at times it works with an automatic regularity exceeding its powers during the waking moments. It is also true that judgment is exercised in sleep, and that reason sometimes exerts its best efforts in that state. But not only do the intellectual nets go on without consciousness during sleep, but also while we are awake. Some years since I was engaged in working upon a book requiring a good deal of thought. Very frequently I would be unable to solve certain problems, but leaving them would find a day or two afterward, on taking pen in hand, that the solution traced itself without effort on the paper clearly and logically. During the sleeping hours, or during the waking hours of a busy professional life, the brain had, without my consciousness, been solving the difficulties. This experience is by no means a peculiar one. Many scientific workers have borne testimony to a similar habit of the cerebrum. The late Sir W. Rowan Hamilton, the discoverer of the mathematical method known as that of the quaternions, states that his mind suddenly solved that problem after long work when he was thinking of something else. He says in one place: "Tomorrow will be the fifteenth birthday of the quaternions. They started into life or light full grown on the 16th of October, 1843, as I was walking with Lady Hamilton to Dublin and came up to Brougham Bridge; that is to say, I then and there felt the galvanic circle of thought closed, and the sparks which fell from it were the fundamental equations between I, F and K exactly as I have used them ever since. I felt the problem to have been at that moment solved—an intellectual want relieved which had haunted me for at least fifteen years before." Mr. Appolo, a distinguished scientific inventor, stated in the Proceedings of the Royal Society that it was his habit to get the bearings and facts of a case during the day and go to bed, and wake the next morning with the problem solved. If the problem was a difficult one he always passed a restless night. Examples might be multiplied. Sir Benjamin Brodie, speaking of his own mental action, states that when he was unable to proceed further in some investigation he was accustomed to let the matter drop. Then "after an interval of time, without any addition to my stock of knowledge, I have found the obscurity and confusion in which the subject was originally enveloped to have cleared away. The facts have seemed all to settle themselves in their right places, and their mutual relations to have become apparent, although I have not been sensible of having made any distinct effort for that purpose."

Not only is there such a thing, then, as unconscious thought, but it is probable that the best thinking is rarely, if ever, done under the influence of consciousness. The poet creates his work when the inspiration is on him and he is forgetful of himself and the world. Consciousness may aid in pruning and polishing, but in creating it often interferes with, rather than helps, the cerebral action. I think any one of my readers who has done any literary or scientific writing will agree that his or her best work is performed when self and surrounding objects have disappeared from thought and consciousness scarcely exists more than it does in a dream. Sometimes the individual is conscious of the flow of an undercurrent of mental action, although this does not rise to the level of distinct recognition. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of a business-man of Boston who, whilst considering a very important question, was conscious of an action going on in his brain so unusual and painful as to excite his apprehension that he was threatened with palsy; but after some hours his perplexity was all at once cleared up by the natural solution of the problem which was troubling him, worked out, as he believed, in the obscure and restless interval. "Jumping to a conclusion," a process to which the female sex is said to be especially prone, is often due to unconscious cerebration, the reasoning being so rapid that the consciousness cannot follow the successive steps. It is related that Lord Mansfield once gave the advice to a younger friend newly appointed to a colonial judgeship, "Never give reasons for your decisions. Your judgments will very probably be right, but your reasons will almost certainly be wrong." The brain of the young judge evidently worked unconsciously with accuracy, but was unable to trace the steps along which it really travelled.

We are not left to the unaided study of our mental processes for proof that the human brain is a mechanism. In the laboratory of Professor Goltz in Strasburg I saw a terrier from which he had removed, by repeated experiments, all the surface of the brain, thereby reducing the animal to a simple automaton. Looked at while lying in his stall, he seemed at first in no wise different from other dogs: he took food when offered to him, was fat, sleek and very quiet. When I approached him he took no notice of me, but when the assistant caught him by the tail he instantly became the embodiment of fury. He had not sufficient perceptive power to recognize the point of assault, so that his keeper, standing behind him, was not in danger. With flashing eyes and hair all erect the dog howled and barked furiously, incessantly snapping and biting, first on this side and then on that, tearing with his fore legs and in every way manifesting rage. When his tail was dropped by the attendant and his head touched, the storm at once subsided, the fury was turned into calm, and the animal, a few seconds before so rageful, was purring like a cat and stretching out its head for caresses. This curious process could be repeated indefinitely. Take hold of his tail, and instantly the storm broke out afresh: pat his head, and all was tenderness. It was possible to play at will with the passions of the animal by the slightest touches.

During the Franco-German contest a French soldier was struck in the head with a bullet and left on the field for dead, but subsequently showed sufficient life to cause him to be carried to the hospital, where he finally recovered his general health, but remained in a mental state very similar to that of Professor Goltz's dog. As he walked about the rooms and corridors of the soldiers' home in Paris he appeared to the stranger like an ordinary man, unless it were in his apathetic manner. When his comrades were called to the dinner-table he followed, sat down with them, and, the food being placed upon his plate and a knife and fork in his hands, would commence to eat. That this was not done in obedience to thought or knowledge was shown by the fact that his dinner could be at once interrupted by awakening a new train of feeling by a new external impulse. Put a crooked stick resembling a gun into his hand, and at once the man was seized with a rage comparable to that produced in the Strasburg dog by taking hold of his tail. The fury of conflict was on him: with a loud yell he would recommence the skirmish in which he had been wounded, and, crying to his comrades, would make a rush at the supposed assailant. Take the stick out of his hand, and at once his apathy would settle upon him; give him a knife and fork, and, whether at the table or elsewhere, he would make the motions of eating; hand him a spade, and he would begin to dig. It is plain that the impulse produced by seeing his comrades move to the dining-room started the chain of automatic movements which resulted in his seating himself at the table. The weapon called into new life the well-known acts of the battle-field. The spade brought back the day when, innocent of blood, he cultivated the vineyards of sunny France.

In both the dog and the man just spoken of the control of the will over the emotions and mental acts was evidently lost, and the mental functions were performed only in obedience to impulses from without—i.e. were automatic. The human brain is a complex and very delicate mechanism, so uniform in its actions, so marvellous in its creation, that it is able to measure the rapidity of its own processes. There are scarcely two brains which work exactly with the same rapidity and ease. One man thinks faster than another man for reasons as purely physical as those which give to one man a faster gait than that of another. Those who move quickly are apt to think quickly, the whole nervous system performing its processes with rapidity. This is not, however, always the case, as it is possible for the brain to be differently constructed, so far as concerns its rapidity of action, from the spinal cord of the same individual. Our power of measuring time without instruments is probably based upon the cerebral system of each individual being accustomed to move at a uniform rate. Experience has taught the brain that it thinks so many thoughts or does so much work in such a length of time, and it judges that so much time has elapsed when it has done so much work. The extraordinary sense of prolongation of time which occurs in the intoxication produced by hasheesh is probably due to the fact that under the influence of the drug the brain works very much faster than it habitually does. Having produced a multitude of images or thoughts in a moment, the organ judges that a corresponding amount of time has elapsed. Persons are occasionally seen who have the power of waking at any desired time: going to bed at ten o'clock, they will rouse themselves at four, five or six in the morning, as they have made up their minds to do the previous night. The explanation of this curious faculty seems to be that in these persons the brain-functions go on with so much regularity during sleep that the brain is enabled to judge, though unconsciously, when the time fixed upon has arrived, and by an unconscious effort to recall consciousness.

Of course the subject of automatism might have been discussed at far greater length than is allowable in the limits of two magazine articles, but sufficient has probably been said to show the strong current of modern physiological psychology toward proving that all ordinary mental actions, except the exercise of the conscious will, are purely physical, produced by an instrument which works in a method not different from that in which the glands of the mouth secrete saliva and the tubules of the stomach gastric juice. Some of my readers may say this is pure materialism, or at least leads to materialism. No inquirer who pauses to think how his investigation is going to affect his religious belief is worthy to be called scientific. The scientist, rightly so called, is a searcher after truth, whatever may be the results of the discovery of the truth. Modern science, however, has not proved the truth of materialism. It has shown that the human organism is a wonderful machine, but when we come to the further question as to whether this machine is inhabited by an immortal principle which rules it and directs it, or whether it simply runs itself, science has not, and probably cannot, give a definite answer. It has reached its limit of inquiry, and is unable to cross the chasm that lies beyond. There are men who believe that there is nothing in the body save the body itself, and that when that dies all perishes: there are others, like the writer, who believe that they feel in their mental processes a something which they call "will," which governs and directs the actions of the machine, and which, although very largely influenced by external surroundings, is capable of rising above the impulses from without, leading them to believe in the existence of more than flesh—of soul and God. The materialist, so far as natural science is concerned, stands upon logical ground, but no less logical is the foundation of him who believes in human free-will and immortality. The decision as to the correctness of the beliefs of the materialist or of the theist must be reached by other data than those of natural science.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM AND DEMOCRATIC IDEAS.

A movement which appeals not to the emotions, but to the intellect—whose advocates aim at enlightening-the public mind and convincing it of the truth of some new or disregarded principle, and the necessity of enforcing it—needs above all things open and active opposition, both as a stimulant to its supporters and as a means of arousing general attention. It has been very unfortunate for our Civil-Service Reformers that they have never been able to provoke discussion. They have had the field of argument all to themselves. Their repeated challenges have been received only with silent respect, scornful indifference, or expressions of encouragement still more depressing. Those whose hostility they were prepared to encounter have been the readiest to acknowledge the truth of their propositions—considered as pure abstractions—and have even invited them to apply their system—in conjunction with that which it seeks to supplant. Meanwhile, the popular interest has been kept busily absorbed by issues of a different nature; and the Reformers, snubbed in quarters where they had confidently counted on aid, and hustled from the arena in which they had fondly imagined they were to play a prominent part and exert a decisive influence, are now, it is announced, about to devote their energies to the quiet propagation of their views by means of tracts and other publications, abstaining from any appearance in the domain of actual politics either as a distinct party or as an organized body of independent voters appealing to the hopes and fears of existing parties, and ready to co-operate with one or the other according to the inducements offered for their support.

We heartily wish them success in this new enterprise, and it is as a contribution to their efforts that we publish in this number of the Magazine an article which, so far as our observation extends, is the first direct argumentative attack upon their doctrines and open defence of the system they have assailed. We shall not undertake to anticipate their reply, but I shall content ourselves with pointing out, on the principle of fas est ab hoste doceri, what they may learn from this attack, and especially what hints may be derived from it in regard to the proper objective point of their proposed operations. Hitherto, if we mistake not, they have been led to suppose that the only obstacles in their way are the interested antagonism of the "politicians" and the ignorant apathy of the great mass of the people, and it is because they have found themselves powerless to make head against the tactics of the former class that they intend to confine themselves henceforth to the work of awaking and enlightening the latter. There is always danger, however, when we are expounding our pet theories to a group of silent listeners, of ignoring their state of mind in regard to the subject-matter and mistaking the impression produced by our eloquence. George Borrow tells us that when preaching in Rommany to a congregation of Gypsies he felt highly flattered by the patient attention of his hearers, till he happened to notice that they all had their eyes fixed in a diabolical squint. Something of the same kind would, we fear, be the effect on a large number of persons of well-meant expositions of the English civil-service reform and its admirable results. Nor will any appeals to the moral sense excite an indignation at the workings of our present system sufficiently deep and general to demand its overthrow. Civil-service reform had a far easier task in England than it has here, and forces at its back which are here actively or inertly opposed to it. There the system of patronage was intimately connected with oligarchical rule; official positions were not so much monopolized by a victorious party as by a privileged class; the government of the day had little interest in maintaining the system, the bulk of the nation had a direct interest in upsetting it, and its downfall was a natural result of the growth of popular power and the decline of aristocracy. Our system, however similar in its character and effects, had no such origin; it does not belong to some peculiar institution which we are seeking to get rid of: on the contrary, it has its roots in certain conceptions of the nature of government and popular freedom—of the relations between a people and those who administer its affairs—which are all but universally current among us.

It is this last point which is clearly and forcibly presented in the article of our contributor, and which it will behoove the Reformers not to overlook. Nothing is more characteristic of the American mind, in reference to political ideas, than its strong conservatism. This fact, which has often puzzled foreign observers accustomed to connect democracy with innovating tendencies and violent fluctuations, is yet easily explained. Though ours is a new country, its system of government is really older than that of almost any other civilized country. In the century during which it has existed intact and without any material modification the institutions of most other nations have undergone a complete change, in some cases of form and structure, in others of theory and essence. Even England, which boasts of the stability of its government and its immunity from the storms that have overturned so many thrones and disorganized so many states, has experienced a fundamental, though gradual and peaceable, revolution. There, as elsewhere, the centre of power has changed, the chain of tradition has been broken, and new conceptions of the functions of government and its relations to the governed have taken the place of the old ones. But in America nothing of this kind has occurred: the "old order" has not passed away, nor have its foundations undergone the least change; the municipal and colonial institutions under which we first exercised the right of self-government, and the Constitution which gave us our national baptism, are still the fountain of all our political ideas; and our party struggles are not waged about new principles or animated by new watch words, but are fenced and guided by the maxims transmitted by the founders of the republic. This is our strength and our safeguard against wild experiments, but it is also an impediment to every suggestion of improvement. It binds us to the letter of tradition, leads us to confound the accidental with the essential, and gives to certain notions and certain words a potency which must be described as an anachronism. We still use the language of the Revolutionary epoch, recognize no perils but those against which our ancestors had to guard, and put faith in the efficacy of methods that have no longer an object, and of phrases that have lost their original significance. Because George III. distributed offices at his pleasure as rewards, and bound the holders to party services in conformity with his will, the sovereign people is to do the same. "Rotation in office" having been the means in the eighteenth century of dispelling political stagnation and checking jobbery and corruption, it is still the only process for correcting abuses and getting the public service properly performed. The prime duty of all good citizens is to emulate the incessant political activity of their patriotic forefathers, and it is owing solely to a too general neglect of this duty that ballot-stuffing and machine-running, and all the other evils unknown in early days and in primitive communities, have come into existence and gained sway throughout the land. These and similar views, according to our observation, characterize what we may without disrespect, and without confining the remark to the rural districts, term the provincial mind, and wherever they exist the ideas of the Civil-Service Reformers are not only not understood or treated as visionary, but are regarded with aversion and distrust as foreign, monstrous and inconsistent with popular freedom and republican government.

AN UNFINISHED PAGE OF HISTORY.

I can easily understand why educated Americans cross the Atlantic every year in shoals in search of the picturesque; and I can understand, too, all that they say of the relief which ivied ruins and cathedrals and galleries, or any other reminders of past ages, give to their eyes, oppressed so long by our interminable rows of store-box houses, our pasteboard villas, the magnificence of our railway accommodations for Ladies and Gents, and all the general gaseous glitter which betrays how young and how rich we are. But I cannot understand why it is that their eyes, thus trained, should fail to see the exceptional picturesqueness of human life in this country. The live man is surely always more dramatic and suggestive than a house or a costume, provided we have eyes to interpret him; and this people, as no other, are made up of the moving, active deposits and results of world-old civilizations and experiments in living.

Outwardly, if you choose, the country is like one of the pretentious houses of its rich citizens—new, smug, complacently commonplace—but within, like the house again, it is filled with rare bits gathered out of every age and country and jumbled together in utter confusion. If you ride down Seventh street in a horse-car, you are in a psychological curio-shop. On one side, very likely, is a Russian Jew just from the Steppes; on the other, a negro with centuries of heathendom and slavery hinting themselves in lip and eye; the driver is a Fenian, with the blood of the Phoenicians in his veins; in front of you is a gentleman with the unmistakable Huguenot nose, and chin; while an almond-eyed pagan, disguised behind moustache and eye-glasses, courteously takes your fare and drops it for you in the Slawson box. Nowhere do all the elements of Tragedy and Comedy play so strange a part as on the dead-level of this American stage. It is because it is so dead a level that we fail to see the part they play—because "furious Goth and fiery Hun" meet, not on the battle-field, but in the horse-car, dropping their cents together in a Slawson box.

I met at dinner not long ago a lady who was introduced to me under a French name, but whose clear olive complexion, erect carriage and singular repose of manner would indicate her rather to be a Spaniard. She wore a red rose in the coils of her jetty hair, and another fastened the black lace of her corsage. Her eyes, which were slow, dark and brilliant, always rested on you an instant before she spoke with that fearless candor which is not found in the eyes of a member of any race that has ever been enslaved. I was told that her rank was high among her own people, and in her movements and voice there were that quiet simplicity and total lack of self-consciousness which always belong either to a man or woman of the highest breeding, or to one whose purpose in life is so noble as to lift him above all considerations of self. Although a foreigner, she spoke English with more purity than most of the Americans at the table, but with a marked and frequent recurrence of forcible but half-forgotten old idioms; which was due, as! learned afterward, to her having had no book of English literature to study for several years but Shakespeare. I observed that she spoke but seldom, and to but one person at a time; but when she did, her casual talk was the brimming over of a mind of great original force as yet full and unspent. She was, besides, a keen observer who had studied much, but seen more.

This lady, in a word, was one who would deserve recognition by the best men and women in any country; and she received it here, as many of the readers of Lippincott, who will recognize my description, will remember. She was caressed and feted by literary and social celebrities in Washington and New York; Boston made much of her; Longfellow and Holmes made verses in her honor; prying reporters gave accounts of her singular charm and beauty to the public in the daily papers.

She was accompanied by two of the men of her family. They did not speak English, but they were men of strong practical sense and business capacity, with the odd combination in their character of that exaggerated perception of honorable dealing which we are accustomed to call chivalric. They had, too, a grave dignity and composure of bearing which would have befitted Spanish hidalgos, and beside which our pert, sociable American manner and slangy talk were sadly belittled. These men (for I had a reason in making particular inquiries concerning them) were in private life loyal friends, good citizens, affectionate husbands and fathers—in a word, Christian men, honest from the marrow to the outside.

Now to the strange part of my story, revolting enough to our republican ears. This lady and her people, in the country to which they belong, are held in a subjection to which that of the Russian serf was comparative freedom. They are held legally as the slaves not of individuals, but of the government, which has absolute power over their persons, lives and property. Its manner of exercising that power is, however, peculiar. They are compelled to live within certain enclosures. Each enclosure is ruled by a man of the dominant race, usually of the lower class, who, as a rule, gains the place by bribing the officer of government who has charge of these people. The authority of this man within the limits of the enclosure is literally as autocratic as that of the Russian czar. He distributes the rations intended by the government for the support of these people, or such part of them as he thinks fit, retaining whatever amount he chooses for himself. There is nothing to restrain him in these robberies. In consequence, the funds set aside by the government for the support of its wretched dependants are stolen so constantly by the officers at the capital and the petty tyrants of the separate enclosures that the miserable creatures almost yearly starve and freeze to death from want. Their resource would be, of course, as they are in a civilized country, to work at trades, to farm, etc. But this is not permitted to them. Another petty officer is appointed in each enclosure to barter goods for the game or peltry which they bring in or crops that they manage to raise. He fixes his own price for both his goods and theirs, and cheats them by wholesale at his leisure. There is no appeal: they are absolutely forbidden to trade with any other person. The men of my friend's family—educated men and shrewd in business as any merchant of Philadelphia—when at home were liable to imprisonment and a fine of five hundred dollars if they bought from or sold to any other person than this one man. They are, too, taught no trade or profession. Each enclosure has its appointed blacksmith, carpenter, etc. of the dominant class, who, naturally, will not share their profits by teaching their trade to the others.

Within the enclosures my friend and her people, no matter how enlightened or refined they may be, are herded, and under the same rules, as so many animals. They cannot leave the enclosure without passes, such as were granted to our slaves before the war when they wished to go outside of the plantation. This woman, when seated at President Hayes's table, the equal in mind and breeding of any of her companions, was, by the laws of her country, a runaway, legally liable to be haled by the police back to her enclosure, and shot if she resisted. She and her people are absolutely unprotected by any law. It is indeed the only case, so far as I know, in any Christian country, in which a single class are so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings. They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own hands they build a house and gather about them the comforts of civilization and the wife and children to which the poorest negro, the most barbarous savage, has a right, any man of the dominant class can, without violating any law, take possession of the house, ravage the wife and thrust the children out to starve. The wrong-doer is subject to no penalty. The victim has no right of appeal to the courts. Hence such outrages are naturally of daily occurrence. Not only are they perpetrated on individuals, but frequently there is a raid made upon the whole of the inmates of one enclosure—whenever, in fact, the people in the neighborhood fancy they would like to take possession of their land. The kinsmen of my friend, with their clan numbering some seven hundred souls—a peaceable, industrious Christian community, living on land which had belonged to their ancestors for centuries—were swept off of it a few years ago at the whim of two of their rulers: their houses and poor little belongings were all left behind, and they were driven a thousand miles into a sterile, malarious region where nearly half of their number died. The story of their sufferings, their homesickness and their despair on the outward journey, and of how still later some thirty of them returned on foot, carrying the bones of those who had died to lay them in their old homes, is one of the most dramatic pages in history. De Quincey's "Flight of a Tartar Clan" does not equal it in pathos or as a story of heroism and endurance. At the end of their homeward journey, when almost within sight of their homes, the heroic little band were seized by order of the ruler of their enclosure and committed to prison. The tribe are still in the malarious swamps to which they were exiled. Strangers hold their farms and the houses which they built with their own hands.

The anomalous condition of a people legally ranking as animals, and not human beings, would naturally produce unpleasant consequences when they are criminally the aggressors. When they steal or kill they cannot be tried, sent to jail or hung as if they were human in the eye of the law. The ruler of each enclosure is granted arbitrary power in such cases to punish at his discretion. He is judge, jury, and often executioner. He has a control over the lives of these people more absolute than that of any Christian monarch over his subjects. If he thinks proper to shoot the offender, he can call upon the regular army of the country to sustain him. If the individual offender escapes, the whole of the inmates of the enclosure are held responsible, and men, women and children are slaughtered by wholesale and without mercy.

My readers understand my little fable by this time. It is no fable, but a disgraceful truth.

The government under which a people—many of whom are educated, enlightened Christian gentlemen—are denied the legal rights of human beings and all protection of law is not the absolute despotism of Siara or Russia, but the United States, the republic which proclaims itself the refuge for the oppressed of all nations—the one spot on earth where every man is entitled alike to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only people in the world to whom it denies these rights are not its quondam slaves, not pagans, not runaway convicts, not the offscourings of any nation however degraded, but the original owners of the country.

The legal disability under which the Indian is held is as much of an outrage on human rights, and as bald a contradiction of the doctrines on which our republic is based, as negro slavery was.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA

The humorous side of life was never more vividly brought before me than while living a few years ago in the vicinity of an Irish settlement in one of the suburbs of New York. What we call "characters" were to be found in every cottage—the commonplace was the exception. Indeed, I do not remember that it existed at all in "The Lane," as this locality was called.

Perhaps among the inhabitants of The Lane none more deserved distinction than Mary Magovern. The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all the masculine and feminine virtues. About the stiff, spotless and colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her grandchildren, stopping from time to time to remove the pipe from her mouth, that she might deliver in her full bass voice a peremptory order to the large yellow dog that lay at her feet. It was usually on the occasion of a carriage passing, when the dog would growl and rise. Very quickly out came the pipe, and immediately followed the words, "Danger, lay by thim intintions;" and the pipe was used as an indicator for the next movement—namely, to patiently lie down again upon the ground.

Mary Magovern kept a drinking-shop behind the living-rooms of her cottage, and the immense prestige she had in The Lane must have had some foundation in the power which this thriving business gave her, many of her neighbors being under the obligation of debt to her.

Mike Quinlan would have been her most frequent visitor had it not been for the ever-open eye of Mrs. Quinlan, which caused her husband to seek his delights by stealth at a village a mile away. Mike was an elderly and handsome man, but his wits had ebbed out as the contents of the wine-cup flowed in, and the beauty that had won so remarkable a person as Mrs. Quinlan in its first glow was somewhat marred. He was the owner of a small cart and a mule, and those who had stones or earth to move usually remembered to employ poor Mike. But it was on foot, as a more inconspicuous method of eluding the watchfulness of Mrs. Quinlan, that Mike slipped away to the neighboring village of an afternoon, and it was on foot that I one night saw Mrs. Quinlan going over the same road with an invincible determination in her countenance and a small birch rod in her hand. Mrs. Quinlan was somewhat younger than her lord and master: she had a clear, bright-blue eye, a roseate color in her little slender face, and gray hair tidily smoothed back beneath the dainty ruffles of her cap, about which a black ribbon was tied. She wore short petticoats and low shoes, and as she walked briskly along she smoothed her apron with the disengaged hand, as if, the balance of the family respectability having so wholly fallen upon her own shoulders, she would not disturb it by permitting a disorderly wrinkle. Half an hour later she passed again over the road, her face turned homeward and wearing an even greater austerity, the birch rod grasped firmly in her hand, and her worser half preceding her with a foolish smile upon his lips, half of concession, half of pride in the power to which he stooped.

Another of Mrs. Magovern's occasional visitors was Old Haley, who had regular employment upon our own place. Like Mike Quinlan, he rejoiced in a wife who was an ornament to her sex—a most respectable, handsome and intelligent woman, though education had done little to sharpen her wits or widen her experience. She could tell a one from a five dollar bill, as her husband would proudly inform you, and she could cook a dinner, do up a skirt or a frilled cap, keep a house or tend a sick friend, as well as any woman in the land. "Maggie's a janeous!" her husband would remark with a look of intense admiration.

One evening Mrs. Haley made her appearance at our house, asking for an audience of my mother. The object was to inform her—these sympathetic people like to be advised in all their affairs—that being in need of various household supplies she proposed on the following day to go to the city and purchase them at the Washington Market.

"Had you not better take some friend with you who has been there before, lest you should get lost?"

So Mrs. Haley departed, returning again in company with Mary Magovern: "Here's Mary Magovern, ma'am: she's goin' along wid me."

The next morning they started, and at four o'clock Old Haley came in much anxiety of mind to seek comfort of my mother: "Maggie's not come, ma'am. Faith, I'm throubled, for the city is a quare place."

When it grew late Haley returned again and again, in ever-increasing anxiety, to be reassured. At last, when the family were retiring to bed, came Mrs. Haley and Mrs. Magovern to report their arrival. In spite of the lateness of the hour my mother received them, and in spite of their wearied and worn faces administered a gentle rebuke for the anxiety that Mrs. Haley had caused her spouse.

"Well, indade it's no wonder he was throubled," said Mrs. Haley, "an' it's a wonder we got here at all. We got nothing at the Washington Market, for we couldn't find it at all: I think they tuk it away to Washington. It was in the mornin' airly that we got to the city, ma'am, an' there was a koind of a carr, an' a gintleman up on the top of it, an' anuther gintleman at the dure of it, wid the dure in his hand, an' he sez, sez he, 'Git in, ladies,' sez he.—'We're goin' to the Washington Market, sur,' sez I.—That's where I'll take yez, ladies,' sez he. 'Pay yer fares, ladies.' An' we got in, ma'am, an' wint up to the top of the city, an' paid tin cints, the both of us. An' there was a great many ladies an' gintlemen got in an' done the same, ma'am, an' some got out one place an' some another. An' whin we got up to the top of the city, 'Mrs. Magovern,' sez I,' this isn't the Washington Market,' sez I.—' It is not, Mrs. Haley,' sez she.—'We'll git out, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'We will, Mrs. Haley,' sez she. An' thin, ma'am, there was a small bit of a howl in the carr, and it was through the howl the ladies an' gintlemen would cry out to the gintleman on the top o' the carr, and he'd put his face down forninst it an' spake wid thim; an' I cried up through the howl to him, an' sez I, 'Me an' Mrs. Magovern will git out, sur,' sez I, 'for this isn't the Washington Market at all.'—'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but that's where I'll take yez,' sez he. 'Sit down, ladies,' sez he, 'and pay me the money,' sez he. 'I had a great many paple to lave,' sez he. An' indade he had, ma'am. An' we paid the money agin, an' we wint down to the bottom o' the city. 'This is not the Washington Market, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'It is not, Mrs. Haley,' sez she.—'We'll git out, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'We will, Mrs. Haley,' sez she. Thin came the gintleman that first had the dure in his hand. 'What's the matther, ladies?' sez he.—'This isn't the Washington Market, sur,' sez I.—'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but the city is a great place,' sez he, 'an' it's not aisy to go everywhere at wonst,' sez he; 'an' if yez will have patience,' sez he, 'ye'll git there,' sez he. 'Git in, ladies,' sez he, 'an' pay yer fares.' Wid all the houses there's in the city, an' all the sthrates there's in it, faith, it was no good at all to thry to foind our way alone; but thim wur false paple—they niver took us to the Washington Market at all; an' it was all the day we wint up to the top o' the city and down to the bottom o' the city, and spinding our money at it. An' sez I, 'Mrs. Magovern, it would be better for us if we wint home,' sez I.—'It would, Mrs. Haley,' sez she; an' we come down to the boat, an' it was two hours agin befoor the boat would go, an' thin we come home; an' it's toired we are, an' it's an' awful place, the city is."

Haley's statements could seldom be relied on, but his untruth fulness was never a matter of self-interest, but rather of amiability. He desired to tell you whatever you desired to know, and to tell it as you would like to hear it, even if facts were so perverse as to be contrary.

One day I wanted to do an errand in the village, and called for the horse and carriage. Haley brought them to the door. As I took the reins I remembered that it was noon and the horse's dinner-time: "Did the horse have his dinner, Haley?"

There were no more respectable people in The Lane than John Godfrey and his family. His pretty little wife with an anxious face tenderly watched over an ever-increasing family of daughters, till on one most providential occasion the expected girl turned out to be a boy, and I went with my sisters to congratulate the happy mother. "What will you name the little fellow, Mrs. Godfrey?" I asked, sympathetically.

The poor woman looked up with a smile, saying weakly, "John Pathrick, miss—John afther the father, an' Pathrick afther the saint."

The following year the same unexpected luck brought another boy, and again we young girls, being much at leisure, carried our congratulations: "What will be the name of this little boy, Mrs. Godfrey?"

A confused sense of having heard that sentence before came over me. "Why, Mrs. Godfrey," I said, "was not that the name of your last child?"

A member of this same family, upon receiving a blow with a stone in the eye, left her somewhat overcrowded paternal home for the quieter protection of her widowed aunt, Mrs. King, and one day my sister and myself knocked at Mrs. King's door to inquire about the state of the injured organ.

"Do?" said Mrs. King, suddenly applying the corner of her apron to her overflowing eyes—"Do?" she continued in a broken voice. "I've been crying these three days."

Mrs. King took heart, folded her arms, and thus applied herself to the setting forth of her humane exertions: "In comes Mistress Magovern, an', 'Mrs. King,' sez she, 'put rar bafesteak to the choild's oye;' an' that minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak wint to it. Thin comes Mrs. Haley. 'Is it rar bafesteak ye'd be putting to it, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Biling clothes, Mrs. King,' sez she. That minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak come afif an' the biling clothes wint to it. In comes Mrs. Quinlan. 'Will ye be destryin' the choild's oye intirely, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Cowld ice, Mrs. King.' An' that minit, ma'am, the biling clothes come aff an' the cowld ice wint to it. Oh, I do be doin' iverything anybody do tell me."

It was a memorable sight to see the Gunning twins wandering down The Lane hand in hand when their maternal relative had gone out washing for the day and taken the door-key with her. "Thim lads is big enough to take care of thimsilves," she would remark, though "the lads" were not yet capable of coherent speech. No doubt they wandered into some neighbor's at meal-time and received a willingly-given potato or a drink of milk. They seemed happy enough, and their funny, ugly little faces were defaced by no tears. They grew in time old enough to explain their position to inquiring passers-by and to pick up and eat an amazing quantity of green apples. A lady passing one day stopped and remonstrated with one of them. "Barney," she said, "it will make you ill if you eat those green apples."—"I do be always atin' of them, ma'am," replied Barney, stolidly.

Perhaps it may have been the green apples, but from whatever cause Barney fell ill, and all that the doctor prescribed made him no better. "It's no matther, stir," said Mrs. Gunning one morning: "yer needn't come ag'in. I'll just go an' ask Mrs. ———" (my mother).

The next morning the doctor, meeting my mother, laughingly remarked that it was very plain that they couldn't practise in the same district: he had just met Mrs. Gunning, who informed him that "what Mrs. ——— gave her the night befoor done the choild a power of good."

The day preceding our departure from the place my sister and I passed through The Lane, and received the most amiable farewells, accompanied with blessings, and even tears. The figure I best remember is that of Mrs. Regan, who, bursting out from her doorway, stood in our path, and, dissolving in tears, sobbed out, "Faith, I'm sorry yez be goin'. I don't know what I'll do at all widout yez;" and, seizing my sister's hand, gave her this unique recommendation: "Ye were always passing by mannerly—niver sassy nor impidint, nor nothing."

The Lane has changed to-day. A Chinese grocer has, I hear, set up a shop in its midst. Some of its most noted characters have passed away, and the younger generation have taken on habits more American than those of their predecessors.

A CHILD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

A quaint and charming volume, which has fallen in our way, is Little Charlie's Life, "the autobiography of a child between six and seven years of age, written with his own hand and without any assistance whatever." It was at the urgent request of the gentleman who acted as editor, Rev. W.R. Clark—thus rescuing an inimitable little work from comparative oblivion—that the parents of the youthful author reluctantly consented to the publication of this curious delineation of child-life. From the date of his birth (1833), Charlie must have written his work some forty years ago. How long he was engaged in its composition is not stated, but from the internal evidence yielded by the spelling and the handwriting (for the work is lithographed in exact imitation of the manuscript) we should infer that it occupied two or three years, the handwriting of the first seven chapters being in imitation of ordinary printing, while the remaining chapters appear in an ordinary schoolboy's hand. We may add that it is copiously illustrated by himself, and that the illustrations are worth their weight in gold, supplementing as they do, in a superfluously exact and curiously quaint manner, this most unique work.

He starts with this account of himself: "My name is Charles John Young, and I was born in Amfort, a pretty village in Hampshire, 1833 in July, that pleasant time when the birds sing merrily and flowers bloom sweetly. My father and mother are the kindest in the world, and I love them dearly and both alike. I shall give a description of them by and by. In the mean time I shall just say that my papa is a clergyman."

The earlier chapters describe the various migrations of the family from one parish to another, and from them we have no difficulty in recognizing in "papa" the Rev. Julian Young, who possessed no small share of the talents that distinguished his father, the celebrated tragedian, Charles Young, and which seem to have been transmitted to our author, who, we understand, has honorably served his country in Her Majesty's army. From his earliest years Charlie seems to have been strongly influenced by religious feelings. His creed was a bright and trustful one, a realization of God's presence and of the need of speaking to Him as to one who could always hear and help. When he was about three years old, we are told in the editor's interesting preface, he was often heard offering up little petitions for the supply of his child-like wants. Once, when, his nurse left him to fetch some more milk, his father overheard him saying, "O God, please let there be enough milk in the jug for me to have some more, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." Many quaint little religious reflections and scriptural allusions are interspersed throughout the book. In one place he declares that "without papa and mamma the garden would be to me what the wilderness was to John the Baptist;" while again he offers up a pathetic prayer for a baby-brother; and throughout we are struck by the fact that his religion was pre-eminently one of love. Charlie's educational advantages were of the noblest and best, home-training largely predominating. In the ninth chapter he refers in a simple matter-of-fact way to his early studies: "Mamma devotes her time in teaching me and in reading instructive books with me. Papa tells me about the productions of the earth, rivers, mountains, valleys, mines, and, most wonderful of all, the formation of the human body." Further on we read: "Nothing of any great importance occurred now for some time. My life was spent quietly in the country, as the child of a Wiltshire clergyman ought, mamma devoting her time in teaching me, and my daily play going on the same, till at last papa and mamma took me to the splendid capital of England." However much this brilliant transition may have dazzled him, he still prefers his quiet country home, arguing thus: "As to living there [in London], I should not like it. The reason why—because its noisy riots in the streets suit not my mood like the tranquil streams and the waving trees I love in England's country.... 'Tis true—oh, how true!—in the poetic words of Mr. Shakespeare, 'Man made the town, God made the country.'"

Despite the stilted style and absurdly pompous descriptions, with an occasional terrible breakdown, Charlie's love of Nature, and especially of the animal creation, seems to have been most genuine. He speaks of "the wide ocean which when angry roars and clashes over the beach, but when calm crabs are seen crawling on the shore and the sun shines bright over the waves," and of "the billows rolling over each other and foaming over the rough stones," with an apparently real enthusiasm. The softer emotions of his nature were engrossed in this way, as we infer from the negative evidence afforded by his autobiography that he reached his seventh year without any experience of the tender passion.

His physiological ideas in the speculations regarding the origin of a baby-brother are naïvely expressed: "One day I was told that a baby was born [this was when he was three years and a half old], and upon going into mamma's bedroom I saw a red baby lying in an arm-chair wrapped in swaddling-clothes. It puzzled me very much to think how he came into the world: it was mysterious, very, and I cannot make it out now. My first thought was, that he must have had airy wings, and after he had come they had disappeared. My second thought was that he was so very little as to be able to come through the keyhole, and increased rapidly in size, just as it says in the Bible that a grain of mustard-seed springs to be so large a tree that the fowls of the air can roost upon it."

In his sixth year Charlie evinced poetic tendencies. We have in one of his poems a description of his grandpapa, "a venerable old gentleman with dark eyes, gray hair, noble features, and altogether very generous aspect." Here is "a song appropriate to him:"

At the head of this poem is a picture of the old ancestor, consisting of a hat, a head, a walking-stick, one arm and two legs, one of which—whether the right or left is doubtful, as their origin is concealed by the aforesaid arm—is much longer than the other, and walking in a contrary direction. The most wonderful feature of this sketch is the "hair streaming in the wind," the distance from the poll to the end of the flowing locks being longer than the longest leg.

We cannot conclude without an extract describing a "dreadful accident" which happened to our youthful author; "perhaps," as he solemnly says, "for a punishment of my sins, or to show me that Death stands ready at the door to snatch my life away:" "One night papa had been conjuring a penny, and I thought I should like to conjure; so I took a round brass thing with a verse out of the Bible upon it that I brought into bed with me. I thought it went down papa's throat, so I put it down my throat, and I was pretty near choked. I called my nurse, who was in the next room. She fetched up papa, and then my nurse brought the basin. Papa beat my back, and I was sick. Lo! there was the counter! Papa said, 'Good God!' and my nurse fainted, but soon recovered. Don't you think papa was very clever when he beat my back? Papa then had a long talk afterward with me about it—a very serious one."

The above pathetic story is accurately illustrated, but we especially regret that we cannot transfer to these pages some of the marvellous delineations of the animals in the Clifton Zoological Garden.

WANTED—A REAL GAINSBOROUGH.

I am an unmarried man of twenty-four. After that confession it is hardly necessary to add that I am in the habit of thinking a great deal about a person not yet embodied into actual existence—i.e.. my future wife. I have not yet met her—she is a purely ideal being—but at the same time I so often have a vivid conception of her looks, her air, her walk, her tones even, that she seems to be present. My misery is that I cannot find her in real life.

No one need fancy that I am an imaginative man: quite the contrary is the fact. I am a lawyer, and have an office in Bond street. Every morning at eight o'clock I take the Sixth Avenue horse-cars and ride down to Fourteenth street. I have a fancy for walking the rest of the way, and toward evening I saunter back homeward along Broadway and Union Square.

Prosaic as these journeys may seem, they are nevertheless the inspiration of my hopes, the feeders of my visions. It is at such times that I enjoy my glimpses of the lady I long to meet. I jostle gentle creatures at every step: feminine shapes and feminine tones are on every side presented to eyes and ears. I trust nobody will be prejudiced against me when I confess that I see the fair one of my dreams in the shop-windows. Once having seen her, I become immeasurably happy, and go on dreaming about her until we meet again. It may seem a curious admission, but this beautiful although impalpable being is suggested by the charming dresses, hats and bonnets displayed on the milliners' blocks. None of our artists can paint portraits now-a-days: Art seems to have withdrawn her gifts from them and endowed the dressmakers and milliners instead.

It was at first difficult for me to decide on the personality of my beloved. My earliest fancy was for a blond: at least the dress was of pale blue silk with a profusion of lace trimmings. Her hat was of straw faced with azure velvet, and the crown surrounded by a long plume, also of ciel blue. I knew by heart the features of this fair young creature, invisible although she was to others. They seemed to belong more to a flower than to a face: her eyes were large and blue, full of appealing love; her hair was of course golden; her smile was angelic; and her whole expression was one of sweetness and goodness. She was my first dream: little although she belonged to actual life, she used to trip about by my side and sit with me in my room at home. Suddenly, however, I became enamored of a different creature, and my dream changed. I began to think of my lovely blond regretfully as of a beautiful creature too good for earth who died young. It is the habit of the shopkeepers to change the figures in their windows, and one morning I fell in love with quite a different creature. She wore when I first saw her a long dress of black silk and velvet sparkling with jet; over her shoulders was thrown carelessly a mantle of cream-colored cloth; on her head was a plush hat—what they call a Gainsborough—trimmed with a long graceful plume, also of cream-color. Although only her back was toward me, I knew by instinct exactly what her face was. She was dark of course, with a low broad forehead, about which clustered little short curls; her eyes were superb, at once laughing and melancholy; her features suggested rather pride than softness; but her smile was enchanting, open, sunny, like a burst of light from behind a cloud. Nothing could be more real than this vision. At first the discovery of this magnificently-endowed woman rendered me happy: I used to walk past the shop half a dozen times a day to look at her. Her costumes varied, but they always suggested the same dark but brilliant lineaments, the same graceful movements, the same peculiarly lovely tones. She often looked back at me over her shoulder, but had an air of evading me. All at once, with surprise and delight, I remembered that she might be found in actual existence, in real flesh and blood. I deserted the image for a week in the hope of finding the reality. I paced Fifth Avenue; I went to the dry-goods stores; I attended the theatres. Often I seemed to see her before me—the picturesque hat, the long plume, the rich mantle and dress. At such moments while I pressed forward my heart beat. When the cheek turned toward me and the eyes lighted up with surprise at my disappointed stare, it was easy enough to see that I had made a mistake. There was the hat, the cloak, the bewitching little frippiness of lace and net and ribbon about the bust. She had, however, copied the masterpiece without investing herself with its soul: her face was vague and characterless, her whole personality void of that eloquent womanliness which had so wrought upon me. This experience was so many times repeated that I was frightfully tormented by it. The familiar dress seemed to reveal with appalling truthfulness the lack of those qualities of heart and soul which I demanded. Those lovely, picturesque outlines suggest not only rounded cheeks colored with girlish bloom, but something more; and the graceful draping is not a meaningless husk.

I have gone back to my shop-window image. She never disappoints me. She is as beautiful, as magnificently endowed, as full of fascinating life and spirit, as ever. I sometimes think, unless I find her actual prototype, of buying that Gainsborough hat, that cloth mantle and velvet dress, and hanging them up in my room.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Most readers interested in English history have long felt the need of such a work as this, in which the results of recent research among original sources and of the critical examination of earlier labors are gathered up and summarized in a narrative at once clear and concise, free from disquisition, minuteness of detail and elaborate descriptions, without being meagre or superficial, devoid of suggestiveness or of animation. In calling his work a History of the English People, Mr. Green has not undertaken to deviate from the beaten track, devoting his attention to social development and leaving political affairs in the background. What he has evidently had in view is the fact that English history is in a special sense that of the rise and growth of free institutions, exhibiting at every stage the mutual influence or combined action of different classes, permeated even when the Crown or the aristocracy was most powerful by a popular spirit, and contrasting in this respect with that of France and Spain, in which during many centuries the mass of the people lost instead of gaining ground, representative bodies analogous to the English Parliament were deprived of their rights or swept out of existence, and liberty was sacrificed to national consolidation and unity. Whence this difference came need hardly be pointed out. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were neither freer nor more enterprising than the Franks and other Teutonic families; but the fortune which carried them to Britain saved them from inheriting any onerous share of the great legacy of the Roman Empire—with the task of absorbing and transmitting its language and civilization—secured them against the risk of being either merged in a more numerous race or submerged by a new influx, and thus preserved an identity and continuity which link their latest achievements with their earliest exploits, and stamp their whole career with the same character.

With such a subject, Mr. Green has had no difficulty in so marking its divisions as to concentrate attention on successive epochs without dropping the thread that runs through the whole. The earlier portions of his work are naturally the most instructive and the fullest of interest. The last volume, indeed, which covers the ground from the Revolution to the battle of Waterloo, besides including the index to the whole work, gives far too rapid a survey of momentous and familiar events to afford profit or satisfaction. One feels that, while the style retains its fluency, the tone has lost its warmth, and that much of the writing must have been perfunctory: the reading, at all events, cannot but be so. But scarcely any one, however well acquainted with the ground, can follow without pleasure and an enlargement of view Mr. Green's account of "Early England," "England under Foreign Kings," "The Charter" and "The Parliament" (from 1307 to 1461), which form the subjects of the first four books; while the next four, occupying the second and third volumes, and entitled "The Monarchy," "The Reformation," "Puritan England" and "The Revolution," are marked by a grasp of thought, a fine sense of proportion, a thorough knowledge and well-balanced judgment of men and events, and not unfrequently a dramatic force, which sustain the interest throughout, and which make them a valuable addition, and sometimes a necessary corrective, to the fuller and more brilliant narratives in which the same periods and subjects have been separately treated.

Mr. Green does not appear to have gone deeply into the study of original sources, but it is only in his incidental treatment of continental history that his deficiencies in this respect become palpable. Here he is often inaccurate, and even when his facts are correct his mode of stating them shows that he is not master of the whole field, and has little appreciation of mingled motives and attendant circumstances. Such a sentence as this: "The restoration of the towns on the Somme to Burgundy, the cession of Normandy to the king's brother, Francis, the hostility of Brittany, not only detached the whole western coast from the hold of Lewis, but forced its possessors to look for aid to the English king who lay in their rear," could not have been written with any clear ideas of either the political or the geographical relations of the places mentioned. What is meant by the "western coast"? Not, certainly, the towns on the Somme, which lie in the north-east, nor Normandy, which has indeed a western coast of its own, but cannot be said to form part of the western coast of France. Nor does Brittany include "the whole western coast," or even the larger portion of it, while it could not have been "detached from the hold of Lewis," inasmuch as he had never held it. As little will that remark apply to the other provinces on the western coast, as these were still in his possession. Who are meant, therefore, by the "possessors" of this misty coast, and why the English king is said to have lain "in their rear," can only be conjectured. It is a small blunder that the French king's brother is called "Francis" instead of Charles, since we must not suspect Mr. Green of confounding him with the duke of Brittany, who bore the former name. But the whole passage, in connection with what follows it, indicates that the author has mixed up the state of affairs at two very close, but very distinct, conjunctures. Many similar instances of defective knowledge might be cited, nor are they confined to this early period. The remark, in regard to Charles of Austria (the emperor Charles V.), that "the madness of his mother left him next heir of Castille" is nonsense: he was her heir in any case, while through her madness he became nominally joint, and virtually sole, ruler of the kingdom. His son Philip had not been "twice a widower" when he married Mary of England, and the assertion that "he owed his victory at Gravelines mainly to the opportune arrival of ten English ships of war" is patriotic, but foolish. That "Catholicism alone united the burgher of the Netherlands to the noble of Castille, or Milanese and Neapolitan to the Aztec of Mexico and Peru," would be an incomprehensible statement even if Peru had been inhabited by the Aztecs. Such errors, however, cannot seriously impair the value of Mr. Green's work. Its merits, as regards both matter and form, are solid and varied. The scale on which it was planned adapts it admirably to the gap which it was intended to fill, and, except in the latter portions, its comparative brevity of treatment excludes neither important facts nor modifying views. No shorter work could give the reader any adequate knowledge or conceptions in regard to English history, and no longer work is needed to make him fully acquainted with its essential features.

There is a time appointed to read novels—a time which belongs, like that of other good things, to youth, when the real and the ideal merge into each other, and even the most practical beliefs turn upon the notion that the world was created for ourselves, and that the general system of things is bound to furnish circumstances and incidents which shall flatter our unsatisfied desires. It seems a pity that it should not fall to the lot of the critic to write down his impression of new books at this epoch, when he is most fitted to enjoy them. When romance and other delights have blankly vanished—" gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were"—he is scarcely fitted to trust the worth of his own impressions. Reading from mere idle curiosity or with critical intentions, and reading with delight, with eager absorption in the story and an eager desire to know how it turns out, are two different matters. The loss of this capacity for enjoyment of the every-day novel is not a subject for self-gratulation, coming as it does from our own absence of imagination and from narrowing instead of increasing powers. That period of our existence when we could read anything which offered should be looked back upon with a feeling of purely admiring regret, and in our efforts to master the novel of to-day we should endeavor to bring back the glory and the sweetness of the early dream.

It is not so very long ago that Mr. William Black's novels began to charm us. He did not take Fame at a single leap, but wooed her patiently, and suffered many a repulse. His first book, Ion; or, Marriage, was probably the very worst novel ever written by a man who was finally to make a great success. The Daughter of Heth achieved this result, and The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, A Princess of Thule and Macleod of Dar deepened, one by one, the witchery the first threw over us. The author's power was especially shown in investing his maidens with glamour and piquancy: Coquette and Sheila led their captives away from the suffocating dusts and the burning heats of life. Then his backgrounds were so well chosen—those mysterious reaches of the far northern seas, the slow twilights over the heaving ocean, the swift dawns, the storms and the lightnings, and the glad blue skies. Even the music of the bagpipes inspired lamentations only less sweet than notes of joy. Mr. Black still has lovely girls; his yachts still pitch and roll and scud over the tossed and misty Hebridean seas; there are the same magical splendors of air and sky and water and shores; the wail of the pibroch is heard as of yore—

Why, then, is it that his last book fails to do more than arouse dim memories of some previous enjoyment? Why are his violets without perfume? Why is his music vacant of the old melodies?

In Roy and Viola, on the contrary, Mrs. Forrester is seen at her best, and has given us a book of lively interest. The situation in some respects suggests that of Daniel Deronda: D'Arcy is a sort of Grandcourt cheapened and made popular, acting out his instincts of tyranny and brutality with more ostentation and less good taste. What is subtly indicated by George Eliot is given with profuse effect by the present writer. Viola, if not a Gwendolen, is yet an unloving wife. Sir Douglas Roy plays a somewhat difficult rôle—that of friend to the husband and undeclared lover to the wife—without losing our respect. He is in many ways a successful hero, and acts his part without either insipidity or priggishness. A genial optimist like Mrs. Forrester, as her old readers may well believe, sacrifices to a hopelessly unhappy marriage no lot which interests us. Disagreeable husbands die at an auspicious moment, and everybody is finally made happy in his or her own way, which includes the possession of plenty of money. The conversations are piquant, and the interest of the story is well kept up.

The Wellfields is a falling off from Probation, which in its turn was a distinct falling-off from Miss Fothergill's initial story, The First Violin. The characters are dim, intangible, remote, possessing no reality even at the outset, and as they progress becoming even more estranged from our belief and sympathy. Jerome is too feeble to arouse even our resentment, which we mildly expend on Sara instead for displaying grief for so poor a creature. When an author publishes one successful book, it should be a matter of serious thought whether it is not worth while to make such a triumph the crowning event of his or her destiny, lest Fate should have in reserve the tedious trials which await those who are compelled to hear that their sun has set.

Mrs. Walford's last book has, in a measure, retrieved a certain reputation for interest which her Cousins had lost. In Troublesome Daughters, however, one looks in vain for the fulfilment of the promise of Mr. Smith and her delightful Van: A Summer Romance.

In Brigitta we find enough of Auerbach's charm to like the story, simple as it is. It recalls his greater books only by the fidelity of the tone and the clearness of the pictures. Xander is well drawn, and the tragedy of his life, portrayed as it is by those few strong touches which reveal the real artist, is profoundly impressive.

Geo. P. Rowell & Co.'s American Newspaper Directory, containing Accurate Lists of all the Newspapers and Periodicals published in the United States, Territories and the Dominion of Canada, together with a description of the towns and cities in which they are published. New York: George P. Rowell & Co.

The Skin in Health and Disease. By L. Duncan Bulkley, M.D. (American Health Primers.) Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston.

The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl. Edited by Robert Grant. Vignette Illustrations. Boston: A. Williams & Co.

The Life and Public Services of James A. Garfield. By Major J.M. Bundy. New York: A.D. Barnes & Co.

The Mystery of Allanwold. By Mrs. Elizabeth Van Loon. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.

Political and Legal Remedies for War. By Sheldon Amos, M.A. New York: Harper & Brothers.

A Selection of Spiritual Songs, with Music for the Sunday-school. New York: Scribner & Co.

FOOTNOTES

[1] I use here the official nomenclature of Pennsylvania: by whatever title the local officials are known in the various States, the general fact is of course the same in all.

[2] In some tests given in Richards' Treatise on Coal Gas (p. 293) the following results were shown: Obstruction of light by—

A	clear		glass	globe,	about	12	per cent.
An	engraved		"	"	"	24	"
Obscured	all	over	"	"	"	40	"
Opal			"	"	"	60	"
Painted			"	"	"	64	"

[3] There is a recent method of adding carbon to the gas which is not liable to the objection of clogging the pipes. By a small apparatus a stick of naphthaline is attached to the burner so as to be slowly vaporized. It is not yet in the hands of dealers in gas-fixtures.

[4] Our narrative is drawn from the Libra del Passo Honroso, defendido por el excelente caballero Suero de Quiñones, copilado de un libro antiguo de mano por Fr. Juan de Pineda, Religiose de la orden de San Francisco. Segunda edicion. Madrid, 1783, in the Crónicas españolas, vol. v.

[5] In modern French, Il faut délivrer—"It is necessary to release," referring to the chain worn by Quiñones.

[6] "If it does not please you to show moderation, I say, in truth, that I am unfortunate."

[7] Prosper Mérimée, in a note to his History of Peter the Cruel (London, 1849, vol. i., p. 35), says, referring to the above episode, "I do not think that at that period an example of similar condescension could be found anywhere except in Spain. A century later the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, the valiant Bayard, refused to mount a breach in company with lansquenets."

[8] Beginning, "Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna," etc.

[9] The Church as early as 1131 (Council of Rheims) endeavored to prevent these dangerous amusements by denying burial in consecrated ground with funeral rites to those who were killed in tournaments.

[10] Puymaigre explains this almost total absence of Frenchmen by the fact that in 1434 the wars between Charles VII and the English were being waged. The English pilgrims to Santiago (the large number of whom we have previously mentioned) were probably non-combatants.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

DECEMBER, 1880.
Vol. XXVI.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

AN HISTORICAL ROCKY-MOUNTAIN OUTPOST.

LOST.

ADAM AND EVE.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

OUR GRANDFATHERS' TEMPLES.

WILL DEMOCRACY TOLERATE A PERMANENT CLASS OF NATIONAL OFFICE HOLDERS?

THE PRICE OF SAFETY.

THE AUTHORS OF "FROUFROU."

THE KING'S GIFTS.

BAUBIE WISHART.

GAS-BURNING, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

THE ΑΡΑΞ ΛΕΓΟΜΕΝΑ IN SHAKESPEARE

AN EPISODE OF SPANISH CHIVALRY.

AUTOMATISM.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM AND DEMOCRATIC IDEAS.

AN UNFINISHED PAGE OF HISTORY.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA

A CHILD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

WANTED—A REAL GAINSBOROUGH.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

FOOTNOTES

Citizens	politically	active	as	to	townships,			80,000
"	"	"	"	"	cities	and	boroughs	20,000
"	"	"	"	"	counties	"	"	4,000
"	"	"	"	"	the	State,	"	5,000
								-------
	Making	a	total	of				109,000

1/10	inch	of	water	gave	the	light	of	12	candles
5/10	"	"	"	"	"	"	"	6	"
10/10	"	"	"	"	"	"	"	2	"
40/10	"	"	"	"	"	"	no	appreciable	light.

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

DECEMBER, 1880. Vol. XXVI.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

AN HISTORICAL ROCKY-MOUNTAIN OUTPOST.

LOST.

ADAM AND EVE.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CHAPTER XXXVII

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

OUR GRANDFATHERS' TEMPLES.

WILL DEMOCRACY TOLERATE A PERMANENT CLASS OF NATIONAL OFFICE HOLDERS?

THE PRICE OF SAFETY.

THE AUTHORS OF "FROUFROU."

THE KING'S GIFTS.

BAUBIE WISHART.

GAS-BURNING, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

THE ΑΡΑΞ ΛΕΓΟΜΕΝΑ IN SHAKESPEARE

AN EPISODE OF SPANISH CHIVALRY.

AUTOMATISM.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM AND DEMOCRATIC IDEAS.

AN UNFINISHED PAGE OF HISTORY.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA

A CHILD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

WANTED—A REAL GAINSBOROUGH.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

FOOTNOTES

DECEMBER, 1880.
Vol. XXVI.