Chapter 10

SHORE.

At last they glided once more through the stony jaws of the harbor, as if returning again to the earth from a sojourn in the land of the disembodied. When Clementina's foot touched the shore she felt like one waked out of a dream, from whom yet the dream has not departed, but keeps floating about him, waved in thinner and yet thinner streams from the wings of the vanishing sleep. It seemed almost as if her spirit, instead of having come back to the world of its former abode, had been borne across the parting waters and landed on the shore of the immortals. There was the ghostlike harbor of the spirit-land, the water gleaming betwixt its dark walls, one solitary boat motionless upon it, the men moving about like shadows in the star twilight. Here stood three women and a man on the shore, and save the stars no light shone, and from the land came no sound of life. Was it the dead of the night or a day that had no sun? It was not dark, but the light was rayless. Or rather it was as if she had gained the power of seeing in the dark. Suppressed sleep wove the stuff of a dream around her, and the stir at her heart kept it alive with dream-forms. Even the voice of Peter's Annie, saying, "I s' bide for my man.--Gude-nicht, my leddy," did not break the charm. Her heart shaped that also into the dream. Turning away with Malcolm and Lizzy, she passed along the front of the Seaton. How still, how dead, how empty like cenotaphs, all the cottages looked! How the sea, which lay like a watcher at their doors, murmured in its sleep! Arrived at the entrance to her own close, Lizzy next bade them good-night, and Clementina and Malcolm were left.

And now drew near the full power, the culmination of the mounting enchantment, of the night for Malcolm. When once the Scaurnose people should have passed them, they would be alone--alone as in the spaces between the stars. There would not be a living soul on the shore for hours. From the harbor the nearest way to the House was by the sea-gate, but where was the haste with the lovely night around them, private as a dream shared only by two? Besides, to get in by that they would have had to rouse the cantankerous Bykes, and what a jar would not that bring into the music of the silence! Instead, therefore, of turning up by the side of the stream where it crossed the shore, he took Clementina once again in his arms unforbidden and carried her over. Then the long sands lay open to their feet. Presently they heard the Scaurnose party behind them, coming audibly, merrily on. As by a common resolve they turned to the left, and crossing the end of the Boar's Tail, resumed their former direction, with the dune now between them and the sea. The voices passed on the other side, and they heard them slowly merge into the inaudible. At length, after an interval of silence, on the westerly air came one quiver of laughter, by which Malcolm knew his friends were winding up the red path to the top of the cliff. And now the shore was bare of presence, bare of sound save the soft fitful rush of the rising tide. But behind the long sandhill, for all they could see of the sea, they might have been in the heart of a continent.

"Who would imagine the ocean so near us, my lady?" said Malcolm after they had walked for some time without word spoken.

"Who can tell what may be near us?" she returned.

"True, my lady. Our future is near us, holding thousands of things unknown. Hosts of thinking beings with endless myriads of thoughts may be around us. What a joy to know that, of all things and all thoughts, God is nearest to us--so near that we cannot see Him, but, far beyond seeing Him, can know of Him infinitely!"

As he spoke they came opposite the tunnel, but he turned from it and they ascended the dune. As their heads rose over the top, and the sky-night above and the sea-night beneath rolled themselves out and rushed silently together, Malcolm said, as if thinking aloud, "Thus shall we meet death and the unknown, and the new that breaks from the bosom of the invisible will be better than the old upon which the gates close behind us. The Son of man is content with my future, and I am content."

There was a peace in the words that troubled Clementina: he wanted no more than he had, this cold, imperturbable devout fisherman. She did not see that it was the confidence of having all things that held his peace rooted. From the platform of the swivel they looked abroad over the sea. Far north in the east lurked a suspicion of dawn, which seemed, while they gazed upon it, to "languish into life," and the sea was a shade less dark than when they turned from it to go behind the dune. They descended a few paces and halted again.

"Did your ladyship ever see the sun rise?" asked Malcolm.

"Never in open country," she answered.

"Then stay and see it now, my lady. He'll rise just over yonder, a little nearer this way than that light from under his eyelids. A more glorious chance you could not have. And when he rises, just observe, one minute after he is up, how like a dream all you have been in to-night will look. It is to me strange, even to awfulness, how many different phases of things, and feelings about them, and moods of life and consciousness, God can tie up in the bundle of one world, with one human soul to carry it."

Clementina slowly sank on the sand of the slope, and like lovely sphinx of northern desert gazed in immovable silence out on the yet more northern sea. Malcolm took his place a little below, leaning on his elbow--for the slope was steep--and looking up at her. Thus they waited the sunrise.

Was it minutes or only moments passed in that silence, whose speech was the soft ripple of the sea on the sand? Neither could have answered the question. At length said Malcolm, "I think of changing my service, my lady."

"Indeed, Malcolm!"

"Yes, my lady. My--mistress does not like to turn me away, but she is tired of me, and does not want me any longer."

"But you would never think of finally forsaking a fisherman's life for that of a servant, surely, Malcolm?"

"What would become of Kelpie, my lady?" rejoined Malcolm, smiling to himself.

"Ah!" said Clementina bewildered, "I had not thought of her. But you cannot take her with you," she added, coming a little to her senses.

"There is nobody about the place who could, or rather who would, do anything with her. They would sell her. I have enough to buy her, and perhaps somebody might not object to the encumbrance, but hire me and her together. _Your_ groom wants a coachman's place, my lady."

"Oh, Malcolm! do you mean you would be _my_ groom?" cried Clementina, pressing her palms together.

"If you would have me, my lady; but I have heard you say you would have none but a married man."

"But, Malcolm, don't you know anybody that would--Could you not find some one--some lady--that--I mean, why shouldn't you be a married man?"

"For a very good and to me rather sad reason, my lady: the only woman I could marry or should ever be able to marry would not have me. She is very kind and very noble, but--It is preposterous, the thing is too preposterous: I dare not have the presumption to ask her."

Malcolm's voice trembled as he spoke, and a few moments' pause followed, during which he could not lift his eyes. The whole heaven seemed pressing down their lids. The breath which he modelled into words seemed to come in little billows.

But his words had raised a storm in Clementina's bosom. A cry broke from her as if driven forth by pain. She called up all the energy of her nature and stilled herself to speak. The voice that came was little more than a sob-scattered whisper, but to her it seemed as if all the world must hear. "Oh, Malcolm," she panted, "I _will_ try to be good and wise. Don't marry anybody else--_anybody_, I mean; but come with Kelpie and be my groom, and wait and see if I don't grow better."

Malcolm leaped to his feet and threw himself at hers. He had heard, but in part, and he _must_ know all. "My lady," he said with intense quiet, "Kelpie and I will be your slaves. Take me for fisherman, groom, what you will. I offer the whole sum of service that is in me." He kissed her feet. "My lady, I would put your feet on my head," he went on, "only then what should I do when I see my Lord and cast myself before _Him_?"

But Clementina, again her own to give, rose quickly, and said with all the dignity born of her inward grandeur, "Rise, Malcolm: you misunderstand me."

Malcolm rose abashed, but stood erect before her, save that his head was bowed, for his heart was sunk in dismay. Then slowly, gently, Clementina knelt before him. He was bewildered, and thought she was going to pray. In sweet, clear, unshaken tones, for she feared nothing now, she said, "Malcolm, I am not worthy of you. But take me--take my very soul if you will, for it is yours."

Now Malcolm saw that he had no right to raise a kneeling lady: all he could do was to kneel beside her. When people kneel, they lift up their hearts; and the creating Heart of their joy was forgotten of neither. And well for them, for the love where God is not, be the lady lovely as Cordelia, the man gentle as Philip Sidney, will fare as the overkept manna.

When the huge tidal wave from the ocean of infinite delight had broken at last upon the shore of the finite, and withdrawn again into the deeps, leaving every cistern brimming, every fountain overflowing, the two entranced souls opened their bodily eyes, looked at each other, rose, and stood hand in hand, speechless.

"Ah, my lady!" said Malcolm at length, "what is to become of this delicate smoothness in my great rough hand? Will it not be hurt?"

"You don't know how strong it is, Malcolm. There!"

"I can scarcely feel it with my hand, my lady: it all goes through to my heart. It shall lie in mine as the diamond in the rock."

"No, no, Malcolm! Now that I am going to be a fisherman's wife, it must be a strong hand--it must work. What homage shall you require of me, Malcolm? What will you have me do to rise a little nearer your level? Shall I give away lands and money? And shall I live with you in the Seaton? or will you come and fish at Wastbeach?"

"Forgive me, my lady: I can't think about things now--even with you in them. There is neither past nor future to me now--only this one eternal morning. Sit here, and look up, Lady Clementina: see all those worlds: something in me constantly says that I shall know every one of them one day--that they are all but rooms in the house of my spirit; that is, the house of our Father. Let us not now, when your love makes me twice eternal, talk of times and places. Come, let us fancy ourselves two blessed spirits lying full in the sight and light of our God--as indeed what else are we?--warming our hearts in His presence and peace, and that we have but to rise and spread our wings to soar aloft and find--What shall it be, my lady? Worlds upon worlds? No, no. What are worlds upon worlds in infinite show until we have seen the face of the Son of man?"

A silence fell. But he resumed: "Let us imagine our earthly life behind us, our hearts clean, love all in all. But that sends me back to the now. My lady, I know I shall never love you aright until you have made me perfect. When the face of the least lovely of my neighbors needs but appear to rouse in my heart a divine tenderness, then it must be that I shall love you better than now. Now, alas! I am so pervious to wrong! so fertile of resentments and indignations! You must cure me, my divine Clemency. Am I a poor lover to talk, this first glorious hour, of anything but my lady and my love? Ah! but let it excuse me that this love is no new thing to me. It is a very old love: I have loved you a thousand years. I love every atom of your being, every thought that can harbor in your soul, and I am jealous of hurting your blossoms with the over-jubilant winds of that very love. I would therefore ever behold you folded in the atmosphere of the Love eternal. My lady, if I were to talk of your beauty, I should but offend you, for you would think I raved and spoke not the words of truth and soberness. But how often have I not cried to the God who breathed the beauty into you that it might shine out of you, to save my soul from the tempest of its own delight therein! And now I am like one that has caught an angel in his net, and fears to come too nigh, lest fire should flash from the eyes of the startled splendor, and consume the net and him who holds it. But I will not rave, because I would possess in grand peace that which I lay at your feet. I am yours, and would be worthy of your moonlight calm."

"Alas! I am beside you but a block of marble," said Clementina. "You are so eloquent, my--"

"New groom," suggested Malcolm gently.

Clementina smiled. "But my heart is so full," she went on, "that I cannot think the filmiest thought. I hardly know that I feel: I only know that I want to weep."

"Weep, then, my word ineffable!" cried Malcolm, and laid himself again at her feet, kissed them, and was silent.

He was but a fisher-poet--no courtier, no darling of society, no dealer in fine speeches, no clerk of compliments. All the words he had were the living blossoms of thought rooted in feeling. His pure clear heart was as a crystal cup, through which shone the red wine of his love. To himself, Malcolm stammered as a dumb man, the string of whose tongue has but just been loosed: to Clementina his speech was as the song of the Lady to Comus, "divine enchanting ravishment." The God of truth is surely present at every such marriage-feast of two radiant spirits. Their joy was that neither had foiled the hope of the other.

And so the herring-boat had indeed carried Clementina over into Paradise, and this night of the world was to her a twilight of heaven. God alone can tell what delights it is possible for Him to give to the pure in heart who shall one day behold Him. Like two that had died and found each other, they talked until speech rose into silence--they smiled until the dews which the smiles had sublimed claimed their turn and descended in tears.

All at once they became aware that an eye was upon them. It was the sun. He was ten degrees up the slope of the sky, and they had never seen him rise. With the sun came a troublous thought, for with the sun came "a world of men." Neither they nor the simple fisher-folk, their friends, had thought of the thing, but now at length it occurred to Clementina that she would rather not walk up to the door of Lossie House with Malcolm at this hour of the morning. Yet neither could she well appear alone.

Ere she had spoken Malcolm rose. "You won't mind being left, my lady," he said, "for a quarter of an hour or so, will you? I want to bring Lizzy to walk home with you."

He went, and Clementina sat alone on the dune in a reposeful rapture, to which the sleeplessness of the night gave a certain additional intensity and richness and strangeness. She watched the great strides of her fisherman as he walked along the sands, and she seemed not to be left behind, but to go with him every step. The tide was again falling, and the sea shone and sparkled and danced with life, and the wet sand gleamed, and a soft air blew on her cheek, and the lordly sun was mounting higher and higher, and a lark over her head was sacrificing all Nature in his song; and it seemed as if Malcolm were still speaking strange, half-intelligible, altogether lovely things in her ears. She felt a little weary, and laid her head down upon her arm to listen more at her ease.

Now, the lark had seen and heard all, and was telling it again to the universe, only in dark sayings which none but themselves could understand: therefore it is no wonder that, as she listened, his song melted into a dream, and she slept. And the dream was lovely as dream needs be, but not lovelier than the wakeful night. She opened her eyes, calm as any cradled child, and there stood her fisherman.

"I have been explaining to Lizzy, my lady," he said, "that your ladyship would rather have her company up to the door than mine. Lizzy is to be trusted, my lady."

"'Deed, my leddy," said Lizzy, "Ma'colm's been ower guid to me, no to gar me du onything he wad hae o' me. I can haud my tongue whan I like, my leddy. An' dinna doobt my thouchts, my leddy, for I ken Ma'colm as weel's ye du yersel', my leddy."

While she was speaking Clementina rose, and they went straight to the door in the bank. Through the tunnel and the young wood and the dew and the morning odors, along the lovely paths, the three walked to the house together. And oh, how the larks of the earth and the larks of the soul sang for two of them! and how the burn ran with music, and the air throbbed with sweetest life! while the breath of God made a little sound as of a going now and then in the tops of the fir trees, and the sun shone his brightest and best, and all Nature knew that the heart of God is the home of his creatures.

When they drew near the house Malcolm left them. After they had rung a good many times the door was opened by the housekeeper, looking very proper and just a little scandalized.

"Please, Mrs. Courthope," said Lady Clementina, "will you give orders that when this young woman comes to see me to-day she shall be shown up to my room?"

Then she turned to Lizzy and thanked her for her kindness, and they parted--Lizzy to her baby, and Clementina to yet a dream or two. Long before her dreams were sleeping ones, however, Malcolm was out in the bay in the Psyche's dinghy catching mackerel: some should be for his grandfather, some for Miss Horn, some for Mrs. Courthope, and some for Mrs. Crathie.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

CHÂTEAU COURANCE.

During the earlier years of the reign of Napoleon III., Fontainebleau was a favorite resort of the emperor and the court, and consequently was much frequented by good republicans from this democratic land of freedom. When, in the later time, De Morny's speculation at Biarritz called the court to the seaside, the sightseeing fraternity followed. Fontainebleau was deserted, and has since been almost unknown to Americans, few caring to crowd into the little cabarets save the faithful community of artists, who still go there to study the grand old trees of the finest forest in France. But among the elder generation of our fellow-citizens who have "done the Continent" there must be many who, in the palmy days of Fontainebleau, have seen the imperial hunt winding through the greenwood aisles in much magnificence of environment, and heard the blare of horn and bay of hound dying away in the distance as the splendid assembly pursued the gorgeous if somewhat theatrical and spiritless pleasures of the chase. It may have happened on such an occasion that an early return of the green-and-gold-clad cortége has indicated a failure of the day's sport, and the word "Courance" has passed from lip to lip as explaining the disappointment. And then, perhaps, Madame Busque, the polite mistress of the Hôtel du Sol, has communicated the information that the obstinate pig of a stag had the stupidity to run toward Le Courance, and the chase was therefore abandoned. Why? _Mais_, because Le Courance is an impenetrable wilderness, and besides--this with significant shrug and gesture--besides, one goes not there. Not His Majesty? No, not even His Majesty.

Continued inquiry may have elicited the fact that Château Courance, with its wide park, situated some three leagues south-west from Fontainebleau, had once been a splendid feudal residence, but was now supposed to be in ruins, having been abandoned and wholly closed to the world for the greater part of a century. The resident artists, if appealed to, may have told of legends heard among the foresters and peasantry of old-time tragedies, and of supernatural appearances haunting the deserted place. They may have repeated, too, the gossip of the studios touching rare and curious works of art, paintings by great masters, plate by Cellini and early Sèvres porcelain lost to the world within the walls of the château. But as rumor, while giving these details, also maintained that no human creature except a few faithful descendants of the household had been even within the limits of the park for nearly a hundred years, the practical American mind may not have found much in these tales worth remembering.

Attempts, however, have not been wanting to penetrate the mysteries surrounding Château Courance, but it is believed that none ever met with success until a very recent period. The authorities always interfered by virtue of a royal mandate, still on the statute-books of France, which forbids any entry to the demesne of Courance without the express consent of the count or his intendant. Furthermore, a superstitious dread of any approach to the place prevails among the people, and this feeling has been strong enough to defeat the several secret explorations known to have been undertaken.

Courance, then, remained but a name and a shadow for many and many a year, drifting slowly back to the sole dominion of Nature and out of the very memory of mankind. But the late war, sweeping over the land and destroying so much of old France, made a break at last in the barriers surrounding the ancient demesne--not, indeed, by direct assault, as Fontainebleau and its neighborhood were not in the line of the Prussian march, but by one of those little eddies of reaction by which great movements affect distant currents of event.

Among the first to fly from Paris when the gates opened at the end of the war were the artists. More hungry to feast their eyes than to satisfy physical cravings, many hastened to Fontainebleau, content with Madame Busque's thin pottage if they could but spend their days among the trees. Two American painters were of their number--Perry from Boston, and Johnston from Baltimore. Belonging to the Can't-get-away Club, they had stood the siege manfully, and been very helpful at our legation when the whole establishment was turned into a hospital. On receipt of the fund from the United States for the relief of sufferers from the war, Minister Washburne appointed these gentlemen on the sub-commission of distribution in the district of the Loiret. The active and enthusiastic young men were instrumental in doing a vast amount of good, and were the recipients of endless ovations of the gratitude which poured out in effusion at that time toward all bearing the American name. It is impossible to overstate the hearty good-will entertained by all classes and manifested on all occasions, an opportunity to do a service or afford a pleasure being looked upon as a piece of enviable fortune.

Johnston was a connoisseur in bric-à-brac and mediæval art, his studio being head-quarters for the students interested in such matters. He and his coterie had persuaded themselves that a certain lost Velasquez could be traced to the possession of the Courance family, and he was most anxious to visit the château in search of the picture. This and the natural curiosity common to both artists made up motives of appeal too strong to be resisted, and they accordingly allowed their wishes to become known in certain influential quarters. How the affair was managed they never knew, and indeed never inquired, but in due time they received an invitation to join a party coursing for hares in the wastes of La Pontoise, and this they understood as an intimation that their desire to visit Courance was about to be gratified.

The old royal post-road from Paris to Lyons, passing through Fontainebleau, runs nearly due south until it strikes the high banks of a small tributary of the Seine, when it turns south-west and climbs the hills toward Nemours, the next post-town. These hills slope off westward to the desert or waste of La Pontoise, one of those blister-scars, still to be seen in France, left by the feudal system, which stripped the soil of the last grain of fertility and gave nothing in return. La Pontoise was aforetime a grand estate, possessed by a branch of the Foix family, the great ducal house of Nemours. Its farms wasted by the improvidence of the _ancien régime_, its park and château destroyed by desperate peasantry during the frenzy of '93, there remains nothing now but pine-barrens and furze-patches, with a pile of blackened ruins as a monument of former glory and folly.

Between this sterile, uninhabitable solitude and the precipitous, broken ridge forming the north-eastern boundary of the Loiret lies Courance. No road leads thitherward, no path approaches its forgotten gate. The stream which formerly flowed past the entrance-lodge is dammed up by the fallen bridge and spreads out in a broad morass.

To this uninviting neighborhood came the coursing-party at the time appointed. After a sufficiently successful day's sport the American guests accepted an invitation to pass the night with the mayor of Mont Plésis, the other gentlemen returning to Fontainebleau. Monsieur le Maire loitered by the way until the last of the hunters had disappeared, and then struck off across country toward Courance. Making such haste as the nature of the ground permitted, he directed his course toward a tall chestnut tree, the outlying sentinel of a host of its brethren in the park. Arriving beneath the tree, he dismounted, and was immediately addressed by an old man in peasant costume, whom he presented as Monsieur Gambeau, the intendant of Courance. As the twilight was already falling, the mayor hastened to depart, after cordially commending his charge to the care of the intendant.

Their new host brought out a stout cob from the furze near by, and led the way south-westward. After a silent ride of half a mile or more he dismounted, and, producing a lantern, carefully piloted the horses over a heap of stones overgrown with briers, probably a fallen section of wall giving entrance to the park. Then turning more to the west, they followed a sort of bridle-path leading directly into dense forest, where the fading twilight was wholly obscured and the swinging lantern afforded the only beacon to steer by. The close-growing trees impinged sharply on shins and elbows, and overhanging boughs frequently occasioned still more serious encounters. Patience and temper were nearly exhausted when a sudden glare shot out of the darkness, and the intendant pulled up before an open door whence issued a blaze of light.

A man came from within to take the horses, and was introduced by the intendant as his son Émile and the heir to his office. Émile had the same serious and reserved manner as his father, but he showed more cordiality. He apologized for the poor appearance of the place, saying it had never been more than a keeper's lodge, but that he had endeavored to make it comfortable for them.

The door opened immediately into a good-sized square room, with a wide fireplace occupying half the farther side, having a great fire of logs and branches burning on the hearth. In the middle of the floor stood a solid old oak table, whereon smoked a most inviting supper, served in an incongruous array of quaint and curious dishes and antique vessels--fine glass, splendid silver, broken delft, and translucent porcelain that drew a cry of admiration from the delighted artists.

The intendant thawed out rapidly, warmed by the generous supper and perhaps an extra sip or two of rare old Beaujolais. Allowing himself to be prompted by M. Gambeau junior, he entertained his guests with many a tradition of the Courance family--their heroism in war, their wisdom in peace, their conspicuous splendor at court, their kindness and liberality at home. As to the château and its contents, he knew very little. It stood just as it had been left, with all the appointments of a noble household and a full retinue, but he had never been through the rooms to examine them, and now only entered the place twice a year to go through the form of putting in order the private apartments of the last count, who had given orders that his rooms should be kept ready for his return. There were pictures--yes, a great many pictures--but all black, and some falling from the frames: those in the count's rooms were kept clean, however, and were very pretty--truly, very fine.

The explorers were called early next morning by agreement, and after a breakfast corresponding with the evening meal they were supplied with peasant costume--blue blouse, knit cap and cotton trousers; and being further equipped with a lantern, hatchet and substantial lunch, they set out for the château. The walk was a delightful scramble through the neglected old woods for perhaps half a mile, when a seemingly impenetrable thicket barred the way. M. Gambeau said this was the line of the ancient moat, and they must cut their way through or make a long détour to the rear of the château, the side on which he usually approached. The hatchet was plied vigorously, hands were scratched, clothes torn, many a fall taken and many a fight had with the clinging vines, as they crawled and clambered through, and came out at a fallen wicket in the wall of the courtyard, passing which Château Courance stood close before them.

With exclamations of surprise and pleasure they found, instead of the gray and mouldering ruin they had pictured in expectation, a stately and beautiful mansion of white marble shining in the morning sun, with every outline perfect and clear cut against the blue sky. It seemed for a moment as if the life-scenes of a noble household might be called to animation there if the awakening signal could but be given. But a second glance revealed the assaults of decay and the work of Nature reclaiming that dominion which she concedes to man only for a time.

The artists subsequently described the place, as they then saw it, nearly as follows: "The main building is of Pyrenean marble, of composite architecture, the openings of the first story being square, while those of the second are pointed. It is perhaps two hundred feet deep, with a front of one hundred feet, flanked by pointed towers and approached by a broad flight of steps leading to a massive square pavilion. It is very rich in ornamented detail of cut stone, all remaining in place and perfectly preserved. This M. Gambeau calls distinctively 'the new house,' as it is supposed to be less than two hundred years old. It is connected by curtain walls with the chapel on one side, and on the other with the old château, some of whose great square towers, built of the red stone of the country, must be very ancient indeed. The façade of 'the new house' fronts on a broad terrace, which descends ten or twelve feet to stone-paved courtyards, the whole enclosed by moat and wall. This façade and terrace, as also the broad steps leading to the paved courts, are decorated with statuary in profusion. The windows of the second story have light, graceful balconies, hung up like festoons of flowers. Grotesque gargoyles cling to every corner, and each projection and angle is turned to ornament in fine designs of cut stone.

"All the sky-lines of this beautiful building are perfect, and the entire upper part looks indeed like a 'new house,' so bright and fair does it remain. But the lower stories and the adjoining grounds tell the story of desertion and decay. Over, around and through the entire demesne climbs and twines and trails the veiling vegetation of a hundred years, filling the arched doorways, screening the windows, hanging from the parapets, and covering the pavements with a disguise of greenery, like a masque half hiding the face of a court beauty."

Finishing his sketch, Perry was about to run up the marble steps, but the intendant detained him, politely but decidedly stating that this could not be permitted. "When M. le Comte descended those steps he commanded that human creature should rest not the foot there until his return. And no person has ever passed there, unless, possibly, himself."

"How himself? Has he ever returned, then?"

"Who knows? I have never seen him, at least; and I have no envy for that, comprehend well. When one sees him 'tis time to make one's peace; and I hope my time has not yet come."

"This becomes interesting. There is a tradition, is there not?"

"One says it. When I was a child my grandfather came home from here one day very sad, very silent, gave his keys to my father, sent for the curé. Behold, the end! What one said was that he had seen M. le Comte. Also, my father. It is twenty-two years last day of Our Lady since he returned home from here, cold, white and trembling, and put himself to arrange his affairs. He said he was not ill, but the terrible whisper again agitated itself--'He has seen M. le Comte!' He went to rest as usual, and rose not again. Bah! this is not agreeable, all this. Let us go to the house."

Skirting the courtyards, the intendant led the way to the rear of the château, passing between the moat and the grim old walls of the mediæval towers. Here the work of time was found to be more noticeable: the gardens showed a strange confusion of fine and rare vegetation run wild, mingled with intruding native growths; many of the wooden buildings, formerly the offices of the household, had fallen to the ground; and the chapel, an offset from the "new house," was partly in ruins.

Lighting his lantern, M. Gambeau descended a narrow passage leading to the cellars. The exploration of the interior may be narrated in the words of the adventurers:

"It was very dark, and at first we could see nothing, but presently the glimmer of the dim lantern disclosed vast pillars and low arches of rough, unhewn stone, and in the aisles rows of casks shrouded with cobwebs and half buried in dust.

"'These are the wine-vaults,' said M. Gambeau, endeavoring to throw light into the black recesses of the crypts on either hand.

"Perry stepped aside and struck one of the casks with his stick, when, stumbling over the skid on the floor, he brought the whole pile of tierces tumbling down in a heap of mould, rust and dirt. Escaping from the smudge and smell of dead wood, we went up a few steps to another level in the foundations, and came into the kitchens of the 'new house.' The main kitchen is a vaulted chamber, divided by rows of pillars, the ceiling being perhaps twenty feet in the clear, and the area of the entire floor thirty feet by fifty. At either end are stone platforms, something like a blacksmith's forge, only much larger, and over these smoke-hoods are suspended, connected with the cavernous chimneys. At each corner of these hearths are iron cranes hung with chains, and between two of these cranes the intendant pointed out an indescribable mass of something supposed to be a stag roasted whole--not at present a very toothsome-looking morsel. Dozens of pots and kettles hang from the chains, and scores of pans and ovens stand in rows underneath. Thickly scattered over the floor near these fireplaces are the bones of game and poultry, probably dragged there by rats, though we did not encounter rat or mouse or any living thing within the walls, and our friend tells us there has been no form of life in the château during his memory.

"The ascent from the kitchens is by an inclined plane, a broad roadway, up which the mammoth triumphs of last-century culinary skill were hauled on trucks, several of which vehicles stand near the foot of the way. The banquet-hall occupies nearly one-half the entire first floor of the 'new house.' We entered this magnificent apartment at the lower end from a dark lobby, and it seemed ablaze with light and color, though we presently noticed that only the ceiling and upper half of the room were illuminated, the floor and furniture being in shadow and covered with dust. On one side are six large windows opening on the terrace, the lower sashes overgrown with vines and blocked up with accumulated rubbish, while the upper panes are comparatively clean and clear. The ceiling is divided into panels by heavy carved and gilded mouldings, the panels painted with mythological designs in the style of the seventeenth century. The early morning sun lit up these splendors, making the white and gold and thousand bright tints shine like the array of Solomon, while from the height of our heads to the tiles under foot the entire area was covered with one monotonous coating of dark-gray dust.

"The other side of the room is nearly filled by the great fireplace and two doors, united in one design of carved woodwork extending to the ceiling. At the upper end are also two doors, and between these a raised dais overhung by a canopy of purple Utrecht velvet. Two tables extend the whole length of the hall, while on the dais is a smaller table, with but six chairs. Two of these chairs are very rich and curious, and stand in the centre facing the room--evidently seats of honor. They are of ebony, wrought in the most intricate and bewildering patterns, while each convolution and entanglement is followed and almost covered by a running vine of inlaid gold wire.

"The other seats about the room are mostly tabourets, covered with Cordova leather, embossed in gold and colors and tooled by hand in free arabesque designs. Two long tables extend through the room, and a smaller one occupies the dais: these tables are literally 'boards'--heavy planks jointed together resting on solid, richly-carved trestles, all black with age. They are apparently covered with a full service for a grand banquet, and the intendant said they had never been disturbed since they were prepared for a marriage-feast on the day when the château was deserted.

"Perry's quick eye first rested on a large piece of quaint and uncouth form in the centre of the dais-table, which he at once said must be the masterpiece of the collection. Imagine my surprise and disappointment on wiping off some of the dirt to find it nothing but coarse crockery, somewhat resembling queensware, ornamented with blue enameled figures such as decorate old preserve-jars at home. I said it looked to me like a foot-bath, but Perry insisted on examining it, and, removing the cover, found the bottom was a silver plate with this inscription: 'Presented by His Most Christian Majesty, Louis XIV., king of France and Navarre, to his devoted vassal and servitor, Melun du Guesclin, Sieur de Courance, Dec. 25, 1714.' Perry declared he recognized it as a veritable piece of that rare faïence made by Pierre Clerissy for the Grand Monarch when he coined all his plate to pay the army in Flanders. The king subsequently gave most of the set to Villars and his officers after the Peace of Utrecht. Perry has seen almost every collection in Europe, and he says there are not fifty pieces of this ware in existence.

"For my part, I was more interested in the zephyr-glasses I found on this table of the early Venetian manufacture, delicate and graceful as the flacons of Fairyland. There are imitations of this exquisite glass now made, but there were none a hundred years ago, and these are unquestionably genuine. A remarkable chalice also attracted our notice, and we decided it to be either the bridal or the christening-cup of the Courance family. It is a mass of solid silver, about fourteen inches high, on a base of ebony and pearl: it is wrought out of block silver in the Genoese method, and is designed in deep panels divided by wreathed columns: these panels are covered with inscriptions, seemingly of names and dates, most of them illegible--'Robillard Puyraveau du Guesclin, 1602,' being the earliest we could make out. We found several varieties, or, as Perry says, 'classes,' of porcelain--beautiful plates of Sèvres, painted in the most charming designs by masters to us unknown--and of the different sorts of this ware there must be several hundred pieces, each a gem of price to-day.

"Of course we flew from one thing to another, and did not wait upon any order of our going about, nor did we examine a tenth part of the treasures on the tables: but it strikes me now that the wealth in silver alone there must be simply enormous. The intendant could tell us nothing positive, and everything is so black and encrusted with dust that we could not see with certainty: but it is probable that what appears to be family plate, literally covering these tables, is the Courance heirloom silver. Much of it is very old, as shown by the antique designs and the marks of wear. Near the centre of one of the long tables we cleared up eighteen or twenty beautiful pieces of the Italian school established in Paris under the patronage of Francis I., and on the dais-table a full set, the exquisite work of the Antwerp smiths, dated 1598.

"We had no means for brushing off the pictures, and M. Gambeau was not in the least inclined to help us, being not at all pleased with our disturbing the dust of ages so freely. However, the walls are in a good state, and we could see very well that between the windows they are decorated by Boucher with the elaborate and formal panels of Paris in his time. At the lower end of the room is a very large and magnificent fruit-and flower-piece by Jan van Huysum of Amsterdam. On each side of the dais are grand entrances from the main hall of the 'new house,' but the floor is broken up at this end of the salon, probably by rats, and rather than risk a fall we returned by the kitchen passage.

"Crossing under the grand stairway, we tumbled through a wood-closet into the drawing-room, a splendid apartment on the first floor of the 'new house,' corresponding to the banquet-salon, only that the side wall, instead of having windows, is penetrated by three wide arches opening into a suite of state apartments extending through the old château. The most noticeable things in these rooms are the hangings, arranged apparently in chronological series, beginning with the quaint and curious needlework covering the bare stone walls of the red tower, and continuing in regular order through the several rooms, to the masterpieces of Lebrun and Mignard. Some of them have fallen, and lie in mouldering heaps on the floor, but most of them are still in place, and in none of the royal palaces I have visited is the progress of the art of tapestry so fully illustrated as here. We could have spent the day with delight in comparing the different specimens, but our half-suffocated guide protested so decidedly against our dust-raising that we had to desist long before we wanted to. The furniture of these rooms is also arranged in historic order, but of course the succession is not so marked as in the case of the tapestries; still, between the rude black wooden settles of the earliest period and the gilded and brocaded fauteuils of the Louis Quatorze salon the contrast is sufficiently striking. The splendors of the great drawing-room are still fresh: the white enamel is brilliant, the ormolu untarnished, and the rich upholstery gorgeous as when first received from Paris. A good American 'spring cleaning' would put this, and indeed most of the apartments, in condition for immediate occupancy.

"The greater number of the pictures are family portraits, like those of any other gallery of the same sort, but in the modern rooms are several examples of Flemish masters of great interest and value. A treck-schuyt, with market-women, by Albert Cuyp, quite characteristic of that artist and his school, a tavern fireside by Ostade, and two of Quintin Matsys' studies of single figures, are the most important.

"I must not omit to mention a remarkable old cabinet in one of these state rooms, which Perry recognized as a specimen of Bruges carving of the fifteenth century. It is a very curious and wonderfully ingenious piece of work, the ornamentation appearing at first like a rather confused grouping of flowers and fruit cut in high relief, but seen at the proper angle rich and beautiful compositions are discovered of the most intricate and difficult character--processions of cupids, leading leopards or tugging at great wains; children at play, chasing each other through mazes of vines; juvenile lovers, sentimentalizing; and a hundred pretty conceits, all formed by the outlines of the fruit and flowers first seen. Each figure is perfectly represented, and each graceful and delicate fancy is carried out with marvellous skill.

"The grand drawing-room opens in the main hall, which occupies the entire central part of the 'new house.' It is about forty feet in width by two hundred in depth, and has the roof of the château for its ceiling. At one end is the great portal, with a high-arched window over it: at the other is the wide and beautiful staircase, leading to a gallery which on either side of the hall gives access to the second floor of the building. The walls are divided into panels by the columns and brackets supporting the gallery, and these panels are ornamented alternately by trophies of arms and entire suits of armor, all rusted. A few tattered banners still depend from the gallery, but most that was perishable in the hall has succumbed to time and the weather. The intendant said that within his time a violent hailstorm had broken some of the panes in the arched window, since when the birds, the rains and the snows have come in and done much damage in the old hall.

"On the second floor, over the banquet-room, are the private apartments of the last count, and over the drawing-room are the state chambers. Of these the suites in the front of the house have the royal arms of France over the entrance--an indication that they were once occupied by royalty. These rooms are the only ones in the château furnished with carpets. The hangings and upholstery were originally white velvet and white silk throughout. They are no longer white, though comparatively clean and well preserved; but the effect when these abundant draperies were fresh and bright must have been superb. We surmised that these were intended for the bridal apartments, but M. Gambeau could not support our conjectures with any positive information. The bed is really a work of art, canopied and covered with white satin, over which is the dower of a princess in exquisite point lace. The pillow-slips and centre-piece of the coverlet are perfect gems--the richest and most lovely lace I ever saw.

"Before entering the count's rooms M. Gambeau produced a brush and removed some of the dust with which we were thickly covered, and on opening the door we were surprised at the brilliant cleanliness of the place. The old man took much credit to himself, informing us that the rooms were always kept in order, the late count's instructions having been that they should be maintained just as he had left them, ready for occupancy when he returned. The furniture is plain, the only valuable things in the rooms being a collection of French pictures of the last century, selected with good taste and judgment. There are several battle-pieces by Gerard Lairesse, in one of which, a dashing cavalry-charge, the Courance banner leads the van. Boucher has two landscapes, scenes in the park according to M. Gambeau--very careful, faithful works; and there are several large pictures by Vien, similar to his suburban studies in the Louvre. At the foot of the bed is an older painting, probably by Joseph Imbert, the subject being the Virgin and Child, treated quite in his manner.

"On a table in the dressing-room are nearly a dozen swords, some of them very rich and splendid. One in particular, an elegant, dainty dress-rapier, is fairly encrusted with gems and jewelry. On the chairs, scattered about the room, a courtier's wardrobe of the utmost magnificence lies as if thrown down in confusion--silks, velvets, laces and embroideries, collars and chains set with precious stones, orders and decorations blazing with diamonds--a piled-up profusion indeed of all the luxurious and costly appointments of a favorite at the most gorgeous and extravagant court in Europe.

"We took an _al-fresco_ lunch in the court, provided beforehand by the intendant, and then returned through the entire range of buildings to the chapel. Our old friend failed us here. He had never been in the chapel, and declined to accompany us farther than the entrance. We had reserved the chapel until the afternoon, thinking it would prove the richest treasury of the château, studio-rumors placing here a collection of original old masters. But we were grievously disappointed, finding nothing but black ruin and decay. The roof over the chancel is entirely open to the sky, and a wide-yawning crack extends down the rear wall to the ground, as if a lightning-stroke had riven it asunder. The canvas of the altar-piece has fallen like a covering over the altar, screening and preserving it, so that its beautiful marble and alabaster sculptures still retain their integrity; but the picture itself crumbled to pieces as we touched it, and the other paintings, of which there are a great number, are all in much the same state--black, defaced and destroyed beyond recognition or hope of restoration. If there are originals of Salvator Rosa, Rubens or Rembrandt here, they are lost to the world for ever."

* * * * *

The foregoing description has been summarized from letters and statements of the artist visitors. The following sketch is from the same sources, collated with popular tradition and hints obtained from historic researches. Partly narrative, partly legend and partly surmise, it gives the story of Château Courance as nearly as it will probably ever be known.

Early in the eighteenth century the estates of Courance came into the possession of Raoul Boismonard du Guesclin, a minor, probably then very young. He apparently resided in Paris, and may have seen the sunset glories of the court of Louis the Great. At all events, not long after the death of the Grand Monarch the youthful Du Guesclin accompanied the equally youthful Louis XV. on that journey to Lorraine which was terminated so abruptly at Metz by the almost fatal illness of the king. Later, he was in personal attendance on his royal friend during Marshal Saxe's splendid campaign, and at Fontenoy proved himself a worthy descendant of his ancestor, the great constable of France. The idle life of a luxurious court, growing more and more effeminate in the long years of peace that followed Fontenoy, seems to have ill suited this scion of the Courance family, ever in history a race of soldiers, men of high spirit and stirring temper. With many other gentlemen of France he espoused as a volunteer the cause of Maria Theresa. It is probable that most of his active life was passed in the Austrian service, as he won distinguished honors and was a chief of cavalry in the Seven Years' War. Home interests were not neglected, however, as the Courance estates were improved under his management, while the neighboring domains were drifting to ruin. It appears also that during his last campaigns he adopted into his military family the younger son of an old Courance neighbor, Henri d'Armagnac de Foix, a cadet of the house of Pontoise.

After the Peace of Hubertsburg the count returned to France, entrusted, it is supposed, with a mission respecting a matrimonial alliance between France and Austria, which was afterward accomplished in the marriage of the archduchess Marie Antoinette and the dauphin. Louis XV. received the companion of his youth with great cordiality and honor. At a court audience the sovereign distinguished the soldier by removing the royal sword and scarf and with his own hands hanging the splendid guerdon over the shoulders of his subject and friend.

Leaving his protégé, D'Armagnac de Foix, in charge of affairs in Paris, the count hastened to Courance, where his neighbors hailed his arrival with every demonstration of welcome. Fêtes, hunting-parties, excursions, balls and banquets were given for his entertainment, and all the families of the Loiret joined in lionizing the brilliant _chef d'escadron_, heroes being a rarity in France during those piping times of peace.

Among these old and new friends the count met Madame Chiron de la Peyronie, relict of Admiral Chiron of the Grand Monarch's navy. This lady resided with her son and daughter near what was then the pretty village of La Pontoise. Her children were making their début in the informal society of the country-side, and their grace, beauty and guileless charms were heralded to the general before they were permitted to take part in the festivities incident to his return. A fox-hunt in the Forest of Fontainebleau was the occasion of their first meeting. Mademoiselle de la Peyronie and her brother, magnificently mounted, dashed up to the rendezvous at a gallop, making it the goal of a merry race. With glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes the young equestrian presented a very charming picture of maidenly loveliness. From the moment of her first appearance the count was fascinated, and during a long day's chase he scarcely left her bridle-rein. The next day he visited the family, and thereafter sought the young lady's presence with the frankest disregard of propriety. When remonstrated with for such inconsiderate devotion, the straightforward soldier settled the matter by immediately galloping over to La Pontoise and demanding of Madame de la Peyronie the hand of her daughter in marriage.

How far the widow should be held responsible for the events which followed can never be known. She was doubtless flattered by the brilliant offer, and perhaps overborne by the impetuous ardor of a suitor accustomed to regard obstacles and opposition only as something to be conquered. But she knew her daughter's heart was already engaged, and although marriage alliances were usually made by parents without reference to the bride's inclinations or opinions, the custom can hardly be held to exculpate the mother in this case.

The Pontoise family having fallen into poverty, Henri d'Armagnac de Foix had been educated by the parish curé, and when tutors came from Nemours to the children of Madame de la Peyronie the young Henri had shared their studies, passing parts of several days in each week with them at their house. Growing up together, the three became inseparable friends until, in course of years, Chiron began to find his part in the companionship somewhat _de trop_. That Henri and Thérèse should become lovers was so natural that the families on each side tacitly sanctioned the relation without any formal recognition. The old admiral had left a fair dot for his daughter, and on the other hand the De Foix, though impoverished, belonged to the ducal house of Nemours and ranked among the highest of the noblesse; so the match was not unsuitable, and all friends were probably satisfied. But there was no contract or ceremony of betrothal, as the lovers were still very young when Henri went away to the wars, he being at the time scarce twenty years of age. When, therefore, Thérèse's hand was demanded by the count de Courance, her mother was not deterred from giving her consent by any implied obligation to the youthful heir of La Pontoise. Who could deny the suit of the distinguished soldier, holder of the largest and richest estates in the Loiret, the personal friend of the king? Certainly not Madame de la Peyronie. She surrendered at discretion, the betrothal took place at once, and the marriage was appointed for the earliest possible day, the magnificent preparations for the event being the only occasion for delay.

Artists and artisans were brought from Paris, Château Courance was converted for the time into a busy workshop, the neighborhood thrown into a fever of excitement, and the work of making ready for the wedding was urged forward with the vigor of a military campaign. The general spent his days between Courance, where he directed the rehabilitation of the château, and La Pontoise, where he became the most devoted of cavaliers.

Mademoiselle de la Peyronie must have been dazzled by her brilliant conquest, and the sincere love of the truly noble man, the modest hero and splendid gentleman, lavished upon her every hour, could not fail to move at least her gratitude and esteem. But as the days flew by the young girl paled and drooped, and when the brief period of betrothal drew toward a close the mother's ingenuity must have been taxed to find excuses for the wayward moods and manifest misery of her unhappy child. She fell into melancholy, and sought in solitude opportunity for constant tears. Her favorite resort was a hill overlooking the road to Fontainebleau and Paris, and here she would sit for hours, gazing steadily toward the north, as if expecting some one who never came.

All too soon the wedding-day arrived. From every direction came to Courance, where the ceremony was to be performed in the chapel, the great families of the Loiret--a more distinguished assembly of the aristocracy of France than could have been gathered elsewhere beyond the limits of Paris and the court. Throngs of lovely dames and gallant gentlemen greeted the arrival of the bridal-party from La Pontoise, and if the shrinking bride attracted attention, her emotion was attributed to maiden shyness, none dreaming that a desperate terror was shaking that harassed heart.

At noon the preliminary observances were concluded, the assembly moved to the chapel, and the bishop of Nemours advanced to the altar to unite Raoul Boismonard du Guesclin and Thérèse Chiron de la Peyronie in the holy bonds of wedlock. The bridal pair knelt before him, the solemn office of the Church began, when the sharp ring of a horse's hoof struck the stones of the courtyard, and the breathless hush of the sacred place was broken as the betrayed lover burst into the chapel.

With an agonizing cry the bride flew to his arms, and, moved by an instinctive impulse, he turned to bear his beloved away. One instant the count stood fast, clutching the hilt of a dainty rapier at his side, the gift of the king. The next that delicate blade flashed from its jewelled sheath, drove through the body of Henri de Foix, and pierced to the heart the unhappy girl clinging to his breast.

The wedding-guests scattered in consternation; the friends of the murdered lovers took up their dead and departed; the master of Courance summarily dismissed every living creature from the place, instructed the intendant to close the château, and at nightfall he too left his home, to return no more. His final command, made imperative and solemn, was that no human being should ever be permitted to come within the walls of the park.

From Paris he sent back an express bearing a royal mandate repeating and confirming his injunction prohibiting entry to Courance. Then passed into oblivion Raoul Boismonard du Guesclin, count de Courance. The last descendant of the warlike constable, the only representative of a long line of soldiers and statesmen, closed his life in impenetrable obscurity, and with him one of the great historic families of the realm disappears from the annals of France.

JOHN V. SEARS.

THE MARSH.

Safely moored on the dappled water, The broad green lily-pads dip and sway, While like a skipper a gray frog rides The biggest leaf in the tiny bay.

Merrily leap the brown-cheeked waves To seize the sunlight's liberal gold, Which strays and wanders among the reeds, And on the stones of the beach is rolled.

O'er marish meadows, and far beyond, Silken and green or velvety gray, Tufted grasses with shifting colors In the wholesome north wind toss and play.

Lonely and sad, on the sea of green The cardinal-flower a lighthouse stands, A scarlet blaze in the morning sun To guide the honey-bees' toiling bands.

What was it for, this flower's beauty, Its royal color's marvellous glow, Not, like a good deed, still rejoicing The soul that grew it, though no one know?

All unconscious, only a flower, Life without zest, and death without thought, Lost as a stone to the sweet deep pleasure Its scarlet wonder to me has brought.

Has it, I ponder, no sense of pleasing, No least estate in the world of joy? Have the leaf and the grasses no conscious sense Of what they give us--no want or cloy?

Not so unlike us. The words that weight us With keenest sorrow and longest pain Fall oft from lips that rest unconscious If that they give us be loss or gain.

Do I only have power to fill me From sun and flower with joy intense? Has yon cold frog on his lonely leaf No lower share through a duller sense?

Think you the ladies he woos are sought For form or color or beauty's sake?-- That, touched with sorrow, he mourns to-day Some mottled Helen beneath the lake?

Why should fret us this constant riddle, To know if Nature be kind or harsh To the pensive frog on his green-ribbed raft, The scarlet queen of the lonely marsh?

Haply, in thought-spheres far above us Some may watch us with doubts like ours, Asking if we have wit or reason, Asking if pain or joy be ours.

But _does_ it vex me, this endless riddle I toss about in my helpless brain, To know if life be worth the having, If just mere being be any gain?

Scarce can I answer. Something surely The thought has brought me this summer morn-- Something for me in life were missing If frog and flower had ne'er been born.

S. WEIR MITCHELL.

IN A RUSSIAN "TRAKTEER."

We have it on the authority of no less a personage than Charles the Bold of Burgundy (the Charles of _Quentin Durward_, at least) that "never was Englishman who loved a dry-lipped bargain;" and the same thing may safely be said of the modern Russian. But although the _trakteer_ (or coffee-house, as we should call it) undoubtedly witnesses many keen trials of commercial fence, this is very far from being its only use. What the Agora was to the Athenian, what the Forum was to the Roman, what the "tea-house" still is to the "heathen Chinee" and the "ice-house" to the West Indian,--all this, and more, the trakteer is to the Russian. It is his dining-saloon, his drinking-bar, his news-room (when he happens to be able to read), his place of meeting with his friends; and, in a word, his place of resort for any and every purpose.

In such a place the groups of figures are diverse enough to satisfy the most exacting "painter from life," and the dialogue is often far more entertaining (which is not saying much) than that of many a popular vaudeville. Indeed, a dramatist on the lookout for a bit of "comic business" _not_ "adapted from the French" could not do better than drop into a trakteer in Moscow--or, better still, Kazan--and make good use of his eyes and his notebook for twenty minutes or half an hour.

Let us suppose our explorer to be strolling along the narrow, tortuous streets of the Kitai-Gorod (Chinese Town) at Moscow on a fine winter day, with the crisp snow crackling under foot, and the clear, bright, frosty sky over head. Away he goes, past painted houses and staring signs and gilded church-towers--past dark, narrow shop-doors like exaggerated rat-traps, with a keen, well-whiskered tenant peering watchfully out of each--past clamorous groups of blue-frocked, red-girdled cabmen--past sheepskin-clad beggars, each with his little tablet stamped with a gilt cross to show that the alms bestowed are to be devoted to the building of some apocryphal church, probably of the same kind as that spoken of by Petroleum V. Nasby: "The proceeds air to be devoted entirely to the 'church'--which is _me_."

At length, after many turnings and windings, he comes out upon the vast open space of the Krasnaya Ploshtchad (Red Plain), with the statues of Minin and Pojarski on his right, and on his left the cluster of many-colored domes that crown the fantastic church of Vasili the Blessed, while right in front of him rise the red-turreted wall of the Kremlin and the tall spear-pointed tower of the "Gate of Salvation." And now, being by this time somewhat fatigued by the exertion of a prolonged tramp in a heavy fur overcoat and felt-lined goloshes, he makes for a doorway above which appears, in crabbed Slavonian characters, the familiar word "[Cyrillic: TRAKTIR]."

Pushing open the heavy swing-door (through which issues a whiff of hot air charged with a combination of greasy smells that might knock down a rhinoceros), our hero enters the long, low, dingy room, and is instantly relieved of his coat and cap by half a dozen ready hands, while as many voices greet him with the stereotyped formula, "Be happy,[B] barin! What are you pleased to command?"

The "barin" is pleased to command a glass of tea, the customary order with trakteer-frequenters, and it is obeyed almost as soon as given. Off skips one of the shirt-sleeved brotherhood, and returns in a twinkling with a small tray, on which stand a large teapot full of hot water, a smaller one filled with strong, rich, aromatic tea, a big tumbler (the Russian substitute for a tea-cup), and several lumps of sugar in a tiny saucer.

[B] This is the literal meaning of the Russian _Zdravstvuite!_ which answers to our "Good-morning!"

He proceeds to fill the glass, with scientific nicety of proportion, from both pots at once, launches into it a thin slice of lemon, and then pronounces the talismanic word "Gotovo!" (ready).

While sipping his tea the inquirer after truth allows his eye to wander over the room, and sees in every feature the "interior" displayed by every Russian trakteer from the White Sea to the Black--bare whitewashed walls, toned down to a dull gray by smoke and steam and grease; plank floor; double windows, with sand strewn thickly between them; rough, battered-looking chairs and tables, literally on their last legs; and close-cropped waiters in dingy shirt-sleeves, with flat, wide-mouthed faces that look very much like a penny with a hole through it.

And the _habitués_ of the place are as queer as the place itself. Were Asmodeus at our explorer's elbow, he would whisper that these two gaunt, sallow men opposite him, whose flat heads and long lithe frames remind one irresistibly of a brace of Indian snakes, and whose conversation seems to consist entirely of criticisms upon the weather or good-humored personal "chaff," are in reality concluding a bargain which involves many thousands of roubles; that this chubby little man near the door, the very picture of artless simplicity, is one of the keenest and most skilful speculators on the Moscow Exchange; and that yonder couple of greasy, unkempt, lumpish-looking men in shabby brown coats, who are devouring salted cucumbers in the farther corner, can put down half a million dollars apiece any day they like.

Suddenly the attention of the taker of notes is attracted by the mention of a familiar subject, the Franco-German war, and, turning round, he sees at the table next his own two men in earnest conversation--the one a big, florid, red-bearded fellow with a huge crimson comforter round his bull neck, who is laying down the law in the most _ex-cathedrâ_ fashion to his neighbor, a meek-looking little man with gray hair and bright, restless eyes, not unlike those of a squirrel. At first, the surrounding buzz of conversation and the clatter of plates and glasses allow him to catch only a stray word of the dialogue every here and there; but after a time a temporary lull in the hub-bub brings out in strong relief the following words, spoken with all the confidence of a man accustomed to be listened to:

"Every one has his turn, Yakov Andreievitch (James the son of Andrew), and no man can escape what is ordained for him. The Nyemtzi (Germans) have beaten the French. Well, what then? By and by, please God, the French will beat the Nyemtzi. 'To live a lifetime is not to cross a field,' and everything must change sooner or later."

The little man, who is listening to his big neighbor's philosophizings with an air of timid admiration, remains silent for a moment, as if digesting the profound wisdom contained in the last remark, and then ventures to observe, "You speak truly, Pavel Petrovitch (Paul the son of Peter), but, in the mean time, what if these godless Germans fall upon Holy Russia?"

"Well, what if they do?" echoes the big man in a tone of supreme disdain. "Let them try it! Ach, Yakov Andreievitch! how you talk! Surely you're not such a brainless fool as to think that those hogs can ever beat the Pravoslavnié (orthodox)? Don't you know that Father Alexander Nikolaievitch (the emperor) is the mightiest of all the kings of the earth?"

"Well--yes--of course," answers the other hesitatingly; "but still, you know, didn't Tsar Napolevon march over our borders in the year '12, and burn Mother Moscow?"

"And what then?" rejoins the oracle, surveying him with calm, indulgent contempt. "Don't you know that the devil helped him, or he could never have done anything?"

His hearer responds to this unanswerable argument by a murmur of assent, and washes it down with a huge gulp of tea.

"And then," pursues Paul, following up his advantage, "didn't Napolevon come to an evil end at last, as the devil's servants always do? Didn't we beat him and take him prisoner? and wasn't he chained to a rock in the middle of the sea, beyond thrice nine lands, and kept there till he rotted?"

"You speak truth, Brother Pavel; and it served him right, too, the accursed infidel! for burning our churches and blaspheming the orthodox faith."

Then follows a short pause, during which the two speakers sip their tea with genuine Russian enjoyment. At length, Yakov Andreievitch breaks the silence by saying, in a reverential undertone, "Tell me now, Pavel Petrovitch--you who know everything--how _did_ the Nyemtzi manage to take Paris-Gorod if it was such a strong place? I've heard our folks in the village talk about it, but I couldn't quite make out what they said--something about trenches, and a bom--bom--"

"Bombardirovanié (bombardment) you mean," suggested his companion, rolling out the magnificent polysyllable with unmistakable enjoyment.

"That's it!" says the other, visibly relieved at being helped over this awkward place. "Now, tell me, please, Pavel Petrovitch, what _is_ a bombardment? Something to do with firing guns, hasn't it?"

"I'll explain all that to you in two words, brother," answers the oracle in a tone of indulgent superiority. "Here, we'll say, is the town--this tumbler here; and these four lumps of sugar round it, here, and here, and here, are the enemy. Well, then, you see, the enemy begin firing their great cannon at the walls to try and knock them down; and then the soldiers inside dig little holes in the ground, called trenches, and burrow in them to avoid the cannon-balls. Then the people outside here--the besiegers, you know--fire great round things, called bombs, straight up in the air, so as to fall right into these holes, as you'd put a cork in a bottle, and smother the men in them; and when they're all dead the town gives in; and that's called a bombardment."

"Gospodi ponilni!" (Lord have mercy!), cries the startled listener. "What strange things there are in this world, to be sure!--Well, Pavel Petrovitch, it's time for us to be going; so let's have one more little glass together and be off."

DAVID KER.

THE NEW SOPRANO.

"Try that chair by the fire, Steve, and comfort your soles on the mantel while I unearth a pair of slippers for you. I've a small mound of them in the closet, built up of the individual gifts of 'grateful pupils.'"

"A cruel waste! You should be a centipede, Hal, instead of that forlorn biped, a bachelor. By the way, speaking of single-blessedness, how it must harrow you, my boy, to witness diurnally the bliss of the bride and bridegroom who sit opposite you here at table! Favor them with Lamb's 'Complaint against Married People,' will you? and send me the bill."

"Bride and bridegroom? Well, that _is_ rich! Have a cigar, deluded youth, while I enlighten you concerning this mellifluous couple. Did you mark the gentleman particularly? You can't take him in at a glance: there's too much of him. Goodwin his name is--Timothy Goodwin: 'Good Timothy' his friends dub him; and the title applies.

"He sat next me at table when I first came to Mrs. Tewksbury's, five years ago, and from the outset he showed a fatherly interest in me--an interest which this quaking stripling of an organist appreciated, I can assure you. Being one of the pillars of St. Luke's--the church I play at, you remember--and an esteemed musical critic withal, his hearty approval of me as a performer was an immense advantage to me.

"You'd hardly suppose such a quiet, imperturbable earthling as he looks to be would rhapsodize over music, would you? It was a surprise to me to find how deeply it moved him. He soon fell into the habit of dropping into my room after tea when he heard me at the piano; and many a time I've caught the great, strong fellow mopping his eyes surreptitiously over affecting passages.

"As I came to know him intimately, and to feel what a staunch, tender-hearted, domestic sort of individual he was, I began to wonder he had never married. One day I asked him in a joking way how a rich man like himself could reconcile it with his conscience to remain a bachelor in America, where there was such a preponderance of unmarried ladies to be supported? He made a wry face, and said he had assumed the maintenance of two spinster step-cousins: wasn't that his part?

"'Or if you think it isn't, Hal, I'll tell you what I'll do,' he added, laughing. 'You marry yourself, and I'll support your wife. Won't that be fair?'

"'Hardly fair for the lady,' I remarked, adding that I should pity the luckless unknown who should thus fail to secure him as her Benedict.

"The idea seemed to amuse him immensely.

"'You kindly insinuate that it would be a benevolence in me to take a wife,' said he with a twinkle in his eye. 'Now, I protest I'm not conceited enough to think that. On the contrary, if a woman should consent to give herself to me, I should consider the benevolence entirely on her side. Can't say I crave such a charity just at present, though,' he added in comic haste, stretching his long arms as if to waive the bequest. 'The fact is, Hal, I've never seen the girl I want. Being hard upon forty, it stands to reason I never shall see her: I fear she died young. May I trouble you to play Beethoven's Funeral March in respect to her memory?'

"And so the subject dropped.

"Timothy was no woman-hater, you understand. Indeed, he admired the whole sex, but in a collective way, as you might admire the Galaxy without preferring any individual star. Young ladies were to him nebulous and mysterious creations, to be reverenced from a distance: he never lavished upon one of them a tithe of the attentions he lavished upon me. I had terrible headaches in those days, and I shall never forget how patiently he would sit making passes over my head till the pain yielded to his touch, as it was sure to do sooner or later. He had more magnetism than any other man I knew. Detesting a dress-coat and white kids as he detested the machinations of the Evil One, he seldom went into society, but he was always ready for lectures and concerts, marching off to the hall with me on his arm as proudly as if I had been the most bewitching damsel. Excepting on Saturday, when I was usually engaged at the choir rehearsal, we were rarely separated of an evening.

"We had gone on in this David-and-Jonathan style perhaps a year, when Miss Sparrow came to St. Luke's as soprano singer. I remember her first appearance in our dim old gallery that last Sunday in Lent--how she seemed to brighten and glorify the place like a ray from heaven. And then her voice! It set you thinking of angels. Moreover, she had the complexion peculiar to that family, and the blue eyes and golden hair. For the life of me, I couldn't help twisting my neck to look at her, at the imminent risk of spoiling my accompaniment.

"That noon Timothy electrified me by appearing in the organ-loft while it still echoed with the benediction, though heretofore he had invariably waited for me after service in the vestibule. I happened just then to be congratulating the new soprano on being in such capital voice that morning, and as the tenor stepped across to shake hands with Timothy, I went on talking with her till she left. When I turned the singers were gone, and there stood my poor David, frowning at a music-rest so savagely that I fancied he must be suffering from a bad headache, and expressed my sympathy.

"'Headache? I haven't a headache,' he growled, stalking down stairs in advance.

"I thought he needn't have felt so enraged if he hadn't, and walked on in dumb dignity. Presently he observed testily that when he honored me with a call in my citadel, it might be polite in me to introduce him to my friends.

"I said I thought he knew the members of the choir--all, at least, but the soprano.

"'Well, she's somebody, I suppose.'

"'I beg your pardon, Timothy,' I cried amazed. It didn't occur to me you'd care to become acquainted with her. I didn't present you because I fancied you'd consider the introduction a bore.'

"'You're sure of that, Hal?' he asked with a sort of fierce eagerness. You haven't any personal motive for not wishing to extend Miss Sparrow's circle of gentlemen friends?'

"I burst out laughing at the absurdity of the idea. It was but a week, remember, since my own introduction to the young lady.

"Timothy drew a long breath, and straightway spent it in questions concerning her:

Who was her father? Who was her mother? Had she a sister? Had she a brother?

"I told him all I knew. Her father lived on State street; her mother lived in heaven: sisters she had none, but of little brothers something less than a score, who dogged her steps as persistently as the bass follows the air. To escort her home from rehearsal was to lead the van of an infant squadron, a running accompaniment which the night before had disturbed my mental harmony.

"For, though I did not feel it necessary to enlarge on this point to Timothy, I had conceived a prodigious fancy myself for the sweet little soprano, and should have been glad to learn more of her and less of her fraternal blessings. I afterward discovered why she surrounded herself with these as with a garment. It was from pure compassion for her father. He was a nervous invalid, and the proximity of those boys distracted him. Of course it did: I could enter into the old gentleman's feelings perfectly. It distracted me too. Don't smile, my dear fellow. The prancing young ubiquities were well enough in their way, I'll admit: I only objected to having them in mine.

"All that week my beloved Timothy seemed strangely preoccupied and erratic, capping the climax Saturday evening by fidgeting into my room in his next day's clothes to announce in a shame-faced fashion that, by the way, he believed he'd look in with me that night at rehearsal if agreeable.

"It was not agreeable: it was decidedly otherwise, for it upset a deep-laid scheme of mine. As Fate would have it, by means of sundry extra rehearsals for Easter I had made great progress in my acquaintance with Miss Sparrow during the last few days, and but for Timothy I should have called upon her that evening with the gift of a new ballad, and so, maybe, have had the pleasure of escorting her to St. Luke's, to the routing of the brotherkins.

"Well, I could only toss the roll of music under the sofa as gently as masculine depravity would permit, and conduct my music-greedy friend to the choir-meeting, ostensibly to listen to the chants, though I knew, and he knew, that he had always heretofore objected to hearing them practised.

"Of course I presented him in due form to Miss Sparrow when she arrived. He bowed like a worshipping devotee, and as she moved to her place by the contralto sat down with an exalted expression upon his hat, to the audible amusement of the youthful Sparrows perched on the gallery steps. I glanced at him again during the first soprano solo, and saw him in the same position, his eyes fixed on the singer. Rehearsal over, he coolly walked up to her to proffer his escort. I verily believe she was too startled to decline it. She accepted his arm with a look of blank amazement, and the two set off together through the April slosh, followed by the inevitable juvenile guard. Judging from the bespattered condition of Timothy's overcoat that night, the younglings danced about him like frisky satyrs all the way; but he wore the face of one who has walked with angels far above this mud-ball.

"This indifference to his broadcloth struck me at the time as peculiar, for he has such a constitutional horror of dirt that he really keeps up his muscle by the use of the clothes-brush; still, though I afterward saw him spread his Sunday beans with mustard and his Monday bacon with oil, it was not till late on the latter evening that I came to a just appreciation of his abnormal state. Without knocking he bolted into my room in great agitation.

"'For the love of mercy, Hal, tell me what to do!' he cried, upsetting the piano-stool without perceiving it. 'You're younger than I, and understand the nature of women better.'

"I did, did I? Well, I agreed with him on hearing his story.

"He had just returned from Miss Sparrow's. The young lady hadn't invited him to call: she didn't receive calls now, in fact, on account of her father's rapidly increasing illness, though Timothy was not aware of this. I dare say she thought he had come at my request with the new anthem I had promised to send, and she ran down to the parlor at once, not even stopping to put down the vial of medicine she happened to have in her hand.

"'Good-evening, Mr. Goodwin,' said she--nothing more nor less; and then she stood quietly awaiting his message, very pale and interesting, I've no doubt, from grief and watching.

"I know Timothy's great warm heart swelled with compassion for the afflicted young thing, but even to express his sympathy he would not touch so much as the hem of her garment till she gave him the right, much less would he take her hand.

'"I'm afraid you're hardly prepared for what I'm about to say, Miss Sparrow,' he began, pacing the roam, and probably hurling the words at her like pebbles from a sling. 'I'm aware it isn't customary for a man to declare himself on so short an acquaintance, but I'm a plain, straightforward fellow, desperately in earnest.'

"Fancy the little soprano's wonderment! I seem now to see her 'baby-blue' eyes opening each moment wider and wider.

"'Till now I have never met any woman whom I wished to marry,' Timothy went on, 'and I am forty years old. When at middle age love comes for the first time to a man of my temperament, it is no milk-and-water sentiment, Miss Sparrow. I feel that I could give my life to make you happy. Will you be my wife?'

"'You don't mean to say you charged upon the poor girl in that merciless way?' I broke in, cutting short his narrative.

"He looked aggrieved and sorely puzzled. What had he done amiss? Hadn't he acted the part of a gentleman in avowing his feelings? Wasn't it more honorable to tell her his intentions frankly than it would have been to try to steal her affections unawares?

"'But how did Miss Sparrow take it?'

"'That's what troubles me,' said my wretched friend. 'She didn't take it kindly: she seemed offended, and would have run away if I had not put my hand on the door-knob and begged her to hear me through. I assured her I would not press her for an immediate answer, but she only burst out crying declaring I had no right to say such things to her: she would tell her father. As if I should object to his being told! Indeed, I should have spoken to him myself on the subject this morning had not Dr. Pillsbury said he was too ill to see strangers. I tried to make this plain to Miss Sparrow. I implored her to tell me how I had vexed her, but she broke away from me and rushed out of the room. I cannot understand her conduct. I might have known such a bright young girl couldn't fancy an old fossil like me, but am I so bad a fellow, Hal, that she need feel insulted by my love? I would have walked barefooted over burning coals sooner than have wounded her as I have done.' And so on, and so on, till the cock crew.

"I ventured a second time to hint that he had merely been too precipitate in his wooing, but he shook his head incredulously, and finally went away as mystified as he came.

"At our next meeting the little soprano asked me in a shy, conscious way if my friend were quite well. Had I ever fancied his brain affected? I might have answered with a simple negative: I shall always think a little better of myself, Steve, that then and there, in the full bewitchment of Miss Sparrow's presence, I had manliness enough to speak a good word for Timothy--to tell her that, spite of some eccentricities, he had the finest brain, as well as the warmest heart, of any man of my acquaintance.

"I did not see her again for months, as she withdrew from the choir to devote herself exclusively to her father, whose sufferings were becoming daily more intense. These were not so much from actual pain, as from extreme nervousness that opiates failed to relieve. Dr. Pillsbury often spoke of the case--the doctor was boarding here then--and one day he appealed to Timothy to go with him and try his magnetic power upon the patient. A queer look came over Timothy's face, but he went at once, and was able to soothe the sick man simply by the laying on of hands. After this, while Mr. Sparrow lived, he went often, and comforted him greatly in his last hours, not only by his mesmeric influence, but indirectly as well by keeping those boys out of the way. The money he spent at that time in taking the lads to panoramas and menageries would have constituted him life member of a missionary society.

"You can see the natural result. Having proved a blessed narcotic to the dying father, Timothy ceased to be an irritant to the daughter. An irritant? Timothy couldn't irritate her, and she couldn't irritate Timothy. I've studied them curiously the three years of their married life, only to arrive at this conviction. And you took them for bride and groom? No wonder! since they still feast with unabated relish on connubial sweets. Ah, well! such diet is not for me, my boy: I thrive upon sour grapes."

PENN SHIRLEY.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

MIRIDITE COURTSHIP.

The Miridites were until very lately an unknown people to a vast majority of even well-informed persons in Europe and America. But since their late uprising against the Turks their name has appeared conspicuously in many despatches from the seat of war, and their movements have excited the active interest of the public all over the civilized world. Their close proximity to the Montenegrins, their indomitable courage and love of liberty, and the natural advantages of their country for purposes of defence and for the infliction of damages on Turkish trade with the coast of the Adriatic, all render them dangerous enemies to the Ottoman empire. And, indeed, nothing but their greater hostility to the Montenegrins has prevented their being a more troublesome neighbor to the Turks than the latter have yet found them. Though apparently pacified for the present, they are not likely to forget any grievance, real or imaginary, and they may yet take a very active part in the operations of the hostile forces near their country. A sudden movement on their part might have caused the complete destruction of the Turkish army now overrunning Montenegro.

But it is not only in a political light that these little-known mountaineers are interesting to the outside world. Their habits, character and tones of thought are so essentially peculiar, and so widely different not only from those of fully-civilized countries, but from those existing in the districts immediately adjoining them, that in reading descriptions of this part of Albania our interest is constantly being excited on some new point.

Instead of dressing in rich and gorgeously-colored attire, like the other Albanians, the Miridites wear a conspicuously plain costume. The dress of the men consists of a long white woollen coat, a red belt, white pantaloons, rough hide boots and a white felt cap. The women wear coats like the men, embroidered and fringed aprons, red trousers, and blue handkerchiefs twisted around the head. The dress of the priests seems to us strikingly inappropriate, or at least far removed from our notions of sacerdotal vestments. It consists of a red fez cap, a cloth jacket, and just such baggy blue trousers as are worn by Greek sailors. The Miridites are all Roman Catholics, and are as fanatical and violent in their feelings on the subject of religion as the most ignorant peasants of Galway or the _softas_ of Constantinople. They will allow no Mohammedan to settle in their country, and their hatred of the Greek Church is hardly less pronounced. Yet their religious observances partake of one or two features which are entirely Greek, and would not be authorized by Romish Church dignitaries in any other country. And, in fact, the zeal of these pious mountaineers seems to be tempered with very little knowledge, for they look upon Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of their country and race, as an absolute deity, and are in the habit of praying to Christ to intercede for them with Saint Nicholas.

Another remarkable thing about these people is that they will not, like the other Albanians generally, fight as mercenaries. When they have assisted the Turks in their wars--and they have done so repeatedly and very effectively--it has been as auxiliaries and, as they claim, independent allies. They take pride in tracing their descent from the followers of George Castriote, or _Scanderbeg_, who was born at Castri in their territory, and their prince, Prenk Bib Doda, confidently asserts that the world-renowned Scanderbeg was his own ancestor. They consider, therefore, that it would disgrace the memory of their heroic forefathers to fight as mere hirelings.

But perhaps the most extraordinary custom of the Miridites is that by means of which they get their wives. When a young man among them contemplates marriage, he first goes to some Mohammedan locality and finds out where the maidens are wont to stay. Then he returns, organizes a party of friends and relatives, and, swooping down on the habitation of the bride-elect, carries her off to his mountain-home and to a state of wedlock. But the most singular part of the whole affair is that, in spite of the appearance of violence, the matter is really devoid of any hostile feeling, and is, in fact, a perfectly amicable arrangement; for the husband afterward hands over to the bride's relatives the price that is considered a bride's equivalent in that part of the world, and both sides remain contented and on intimate and agreeable terms with each other. The idea in giving this semblance of force to a courtship, and literally _taking_ to one's self a wife, seems to be that it is more manly to seize upon the lady than to sue for her. Why Mohammedan women are always selected for capture by these fanatical Christians does not appear. But it is probable that a desire to make proselytes is the chief motive which causes this action. The women taken are not Turkish, but members of Albanian tribes which have become Mohammedan; so it is probable that they, and consequently their children, are looked upon as stray sheep brought back to the fold. As for the Miridite women, they must take their chances of getting husbands among the other Christian tribes of Northern Albania, or else remain virgins all their days, for on no account will the Miridite men marry within the tribe.

W. W. C.

FRIEND ABNER IN THE NORTH-WEST.

Friend Amos: As thee knows I have been here now some little time, thee will trust me to give thee a fair description of the country and the people. The fertility of the land is so widely known that I need not attempt to enlarge upon that to thee. Broad tracts of gently-rolling prairie-land spread over the southern portions of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and vast pine-forests are laid under tribute in the north. The Mississippi River, which flows between the two States, sorely disappointed me. I looked for a broad and mighty mass of water, and I found a stream, here at least, and even for hundreds of miles south, by no means as imposing as our own Delaware. On either side of it rises a continuous range of limestone bluffs, showing, far up their rocky sides, the clear wearing of the ancient water-line. Among these bluffs, stretching back some miles from the river, curl beautiful and fertile valleys, planted in which, and often indeed clinging to the unpromising sides of the ragged bluffs, are the dwellings of the settlers. In the portions longest inhabited rise often pretty, and sometimes even stately, residences, but in the western portions many of the settlers are colonists from Norway and Germany, and, as these are mostly poor, they live more commonly in mere hovels, and stable their stock under masses of straw resting on frames of posts. The long and tedious winters being severe on stock, the farmers devote themselves, in a great degree, to the culture of wheat.

The climate has not the evenness of our own, and the reports I know thee has heard to the contrary are mistaken. The mercury not unfrequently falls to thirty-five and forty degrees below zero in many localities, but the air is dry, and does not try one as much, perhaps, as thee would imagine: the bitter winds, however, sweep across these prairies and through and about the valleys until it verily seems, Friend Amos, that the unaccustomed limbs must freeze. The people, however, are not easily terrified, but heap on their fires such quantities of wood as seemed to me extravagant (for wood is abundant here, but coal dear), and pass the winters cheerfully. I have noticed that affections of the lungs are rarer here than in our climate, and that the most of those so afflicted brought their diseases with them from the East.

I was surprised to find that the body of the people are by no means either ignorant or uncultivated, and have even been shown official statistics to prove that in the fundamentals at least--reading and writing--the percentage of ignorance is nearly one-third smaller than that of Pennsylvania. There is less of higher culture, it is true, and the most respected and respectable citizens are often heard lapsing into strange inaccuracies of language and pronunciation. One of the most common is the use of "dooz" where "does" is meant. "I be" and "you be" are common instead of "I am" and "you are." In some localities along the Mississippi River "slough" is pronounced as if it were "slew." These are, of course, only laxities, and not the result of ignorance. Though learning commands much respect, persons of high education are comparatively rare, but shrewdness and general capacity, together with the will to work and the ambition to succeed, are more universal than with us. I have been pleased to observe that "gentlemen of leisure" and moneyed young men without employment are almost totally lacking. The greater number of the business-men, particularly of the most enterprising and energetic, are quite young. The most remarkable circumstance concerning them is the fact that many of them come to the West with wholly insufficient, and sometimes even no, capital, and open business, relying largely on their adroitness in "kiting," as it is called, which is practically buying on long time and selling on short credit or for cash, trusting to quick returns to meet liabilities. In a few cases this practice is in the end successful, because circumstances favor, but with the large majority of such failure of course is only a question of time. It is to me astonishing to what an extent this experiment is carried. Let me relate to thee a case which came to my personal knowledge. This was of a buyer of wheat in a country town. It seems that it is the custom of the large commission-merchants of Chicago and Milwaukee to receive from country buyers consignments of produce for disposal, on which they make advances. This person had secured, by the aid of a friend, a credit of a few hundred dollars at a certain country store, and proceeded to buy produce from the farmers, paying in orders on the store. When he had sufficient he shipped a car to the Eastern market, making at the same time a draft on the consignee against the bill of lading. This he assigned to the keeper of the store, and drew orders against it for more produce. I was informed that he had, a short time ago, in a busy season, purchased and shipped during one single week fifty thousand bushels of wheat, and all without a dollar of capital he could call his own. I am assured, Amos, that thee will be as much astonished as thy friend was to learn that such things are regularly done by these wonderful people. These things account quite easily for the constant ebbing and flowing of the tide of business-men in these little "cities."

Society, in the newer sections, is evidently unsettled. Money of course commands respect, as money does everywhere; intelligence, in at least reasonable measure, and some little cultivation, are regarded as essentials among the better class of associates; but while the mixture is settling, and the constituents separating and crystallizing, many wandering atoms seem to be at home nowhere. Family or blood is but little regarded, occupation is no hinderance ordinarily, and even well-known irregularities do not necessarily exclude. One of the earliest cautions I received was never to allude slightingly to divorced people in public, "For who knows but there may be several such among the company?" Among the ladies, accomplishments, except dancing, are said to be somewhat neglected, although in all the arts of pleasing and in the graces of domestic life they are peculiarly happy.

Trusting now, Friend Amos, that thee may learn to appreciate as I have the excellencies of this country and these people, and to realize how greatly in reality they surpass our estimates, I will tell thee no more till I see thee in person. Though I very much admire the people, and wonder at their methods and their progress, I long to free myself from all this bustle and strain and rest in peace at home.

In brotherly love, yours truly,

ABNER.

HOW SHALL WE CALL THE BIRDS?

Birds are the most effective aids to the farmer and the florist in checking the increase of noxious insects that destroy the fruits of labor. A single pair will destroy hundreds of worms, grubs, moths or beetles in a single day; and when they are present in sufficient numbers no insect or creeping thing escapes their sharp little eyes or their exceeding quickness of motion. As they multiply rapidly, there is no reason why every one of our fruit trees, every shrub and vine, should not have its nest of birdlings. This would be the solution of the dreadful curculio question, I believe. Heretofore, we have built fences around our orchards and enclosed fowls in them. This at one time was supposed to be very effective, but a hundred chickens to the square rod are not so effective as a pair of birds nesting in each tree, from the simple fact that the former can only catch the insects that drop to the ground. After we have shaken the curculio beetles off, to be sure the chickens will devour them readily, but then the pest has generally done its work. It is not unusual to have every plum, apricot, nectarine or apple on a tree stung in a single day; and in South Jersey the curculio has proved victorious in the struggle with man. Every year we see these trees white with blossoms, and as regularly every specimen of the fruit bearing the plague-spot--a tiny crescent-shaped wound in the cuticle--withering, fading and falling. We painfully gather up this fallen fruit by the bushel, burn it to destroy the grub of the curculio, and, hoping against hope, witness the same disaster the following year.

Now, we can have these much-desired friends, the birds, by the thousand about our farms and gardens and orchards. There are many ways of attracting them and ensuring their return to us every year, but the first step involves a sacrifice: we must destroy, shut up or banish every cat from the premises. Some will find this hard to do. Puss is a very old favorite. Long before the Pharaohs she was petted, and even held sacred. The Egyptian goddess Pacht had the head of a cat. The origin of the veneration of the cat was, it is said, her mice-destroying power. In a famine-visited country like Egypt the preservation of the crops of grain was of prime importance; and the cat--allowed from its sacred character to increase and multiply as cats have the power to do--was no doubt a very effective means to that end. But in this age of progress we _can_ dispense with cats--in the country at least. I have proved by experiment that a half dozen wire-spring mice-traps, kept clean and freshly baited with toasted cheese, are better than as many cats to keep pantries and cupboards free of mice. As for rats, everybody knows that one rat-terrier in a granary is better than an army of cats.

Many people, in their simplicity of soul, have believed that it is possible to have the confidence of birds without banishing the cats, and even that the cat might be so reformed that she would come to respect the rights of the birds. These people generally refer triumphantly to the "Happy Family" of Barnum--a cage containing a bird, a monkey, a cat and several mice, all living together in sleepy amity. But this will not do. The animals of that "family" were kept in such a semi-torpid state by confinement and high living--even if they were not daily dosed, as some declared, with Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup--that they had not spirit enough to exercise their natural passions.

No, puss cannot be reformed; and since there are so many who cannot bring their minds to destroy their favorite cats, nor to shut them up from spring till fall, would it not be well to have cat boarding-houses opened in cities to meet this need? I could name more than one who would patronize such an institution. Our cat, old Navet--so called from her habit of bringing up turnips from the cellar and insisting upon munching them in the library--has been sent some miles away to a friend, who, having several cats already, cannot expect to have birds about the house; but if this resource failed, I should not hesitate long between even Navet and the birds.

I had always known that more birds would nest about places where there were no cats; but as I had always seen some birds in summer about all houses, I did not realize what a wonderful effect would be produced by the total absence of this dreaded foe to birds until I resolved to have no cat about in summer, and banished the last one. From that day the birds began to come nearer and nearer, stay longer each day, and finally, reassured, build their nests in the grapevines, in the orchard trees, in the little evergreens near the house, and in the branches of the raspberries and blackberries. Scores came where formerly there had been but two or three pairs. Two pairs of pretty brown sparrows (_Spizella socialis_) built nests in a small Chinese honeysuckle on a veranda-pillar not six feet from the front door. These nests were about four and five feet high; and although the veranda, being furnished with rustic chairs and a comfortable Mexican hammock, was almost constantly occupied, yet the birds built their nests and tended their little families as unconcerned, as confident of our protection apparently, as if we had been creatures of their own kind. They would not move from their work when we approached so closely that our faces were only a few inches from the nests. This spring more little houses were made and fastened up in the trees--rude little painted boxes, with a roof and a door in front, the whole set on a small board serving for a doorstep as well as general foundation. The bluebirds were specially delighted with these houses, and took possession almost as fast as they were put up. The catbird, a first cousin of the Southern mocking-bird, is also very fond of the neighborhood of human beings, and many others which I know imperfectly as yet.

Besides building little houses for bluebirds and others, a very effective means of attracting birds generally is a little tray for crumbs, seeds, etc. A piece of board a foot square with an inch-high border to keep the food from blowing off, and fastened upon a tree, will answer every purpose, though it may be improved by a roof. But the wisest device for calling birds about the house--in places where there are no brooks or springs near especially--is a bird-bath. Almost all birds are fond of bathing; and any one who will but take the trouble to fill a shallow dish every day with water, and place it in some shady nook, will be repaid a thousand-fold by the sight of the birds bathing--some flashing the spray in all directions, some dressing their wet plumage in the near branches, some disputing the right to the first plunge.

To those enjoying the luxury of a garden-fountain it is very easy to arrange a very excellent bath of this kind, and it is surprising that so few have thought of it. All that is necessary is to place the edge of a very shallow dish under the drip of the fountain-basin. Half an inch of water is sufficient--small birds will not bathe unless the water is very shallow, and they do not like to get under the spray--or a little platform could be managed in the fountain-basin. For my birds, as a dish placed upon the ground always excites the insolent curiosity and meddling of the turkeys, I have had recourse to another device: a little platform on four posts about three feet high, perforated to admit a wash-basin to the rim. Around three sides of this table I set a dozen supple oak saplings, fastening them by iron staples to the edge of the table, and bringing them all together, wigwam style, over head about three feet above the basin. At the foot of the saplings I planted madeira-vine roots, which will produce an abundance of foliage and blossom after they grow, but not being willing to wait for this, I covered all the saplings separately from ground to peak with evergreens from the woods, and then carpeted the whole floor under the table with various colored mosses. The whole effect of the structure, standing in the shade of the trees, is very pretty and quaint. As the water should be changed every night, the waste poured over the mosses will keep them always in good condition. Of course this basin of water is far too deep for any sort of bird except a wader or a swimmer, and to arrange it exactly right, so that the bathing depth can be uniform, as the heat of the day dries up the water, has not been so easy as one might imagine it would be. The best thing I have found thus far is a circle of board held submerged on one side by a weight and a string, the other side floating. A more perfect thing could doubtless be contrived, and will be by many who like myself love the birds, and have determined to foster their presence in every way for their beneficent services, material and æsthetical.

M. H.

A CHEERING SIGN.

Very pleasant reading is a California item of court-proceedings going to show that a Mongol still stands within the pale of the law upon the soil of the Golden State. A wanton murder of some Chinese at Chico was judicially avenged by the sentencing of two of the Caucasian participants to twenty-five years' imprisonment, and of a third to the nicely-calculated, if not nicely-adjusted, term of twenty-seven years and a half. Had the unhappy victims been whites, or even blacks, the arithmetic of time would probably not have been drawn on, but summary recourse would have been made to such punishment as eternity could furnish. But we must not be too exacting. Let us be grateful that the criminal law has any shield, be it of the thinnest, for the Chinaman.

Very different is the case when the Celestial ox gores the Yankee bull. Indemnity, swift and condign, does what mortal hand can do to heal the hurt. A Chinese court, upon Chinese soil, is not allowed to try a Chinese for an injury done to the Christian stranger within Chinese gates. Treaties imposed by the strong arm reserve practical jurisdiction to our own representatives; and it is the peers of the alleged sufferer, not the peers of the accused, who virtually try the cause. Similar rules obtain in the other Mongolian empire. We all possess, as still quite a fresh sensation, a memory of the account published a few years since of the committing of harikari by a Japanese official of high social standing, at the bidding of a native court, in atonement of an affront offered to an American officer--how the representatives of the United States were formally invited, in full uniform, to witness the bloody self-immolation of the proud but to the law submissive Mongol; how everything went off _en règle_, from the theatrical preparation of the stage with seat, sword and red carpet to the climax of decapitation of the culprit by his body-servant; and how our representatives in gilt and blue filed out shocked, but vindicated, and satiated with more than the full measure of justice pressed down and running over.

Harikari has not begun, nor is it likely soon to begin, to thin the ranks of our Californian office-holders. Few die, none resign, and absolutely none are got rid of in that way. They have no treaty-courts to make them afraid. Their lives are their own, and we hope may always be. But we trust, also, that they will accord a like privilege to their neighbors from over the way, and cultivate the impression that life may be dear as well to a man with a lemon complexion, oblique eyes and a pig-tail. As an evidence of a dawning disposition to accept this view we may be permitted to hail with satisfaction the disappearance for twenty-seven years and six months of a Californian who declined adopting it.

E. C. B.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Peru. Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas. By E. George Squier, late United States Commissioner to Peru. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Mr. Squier does not give us the date of his explorations in Peru, but he tells us that they occupied him two years, during which he "crossed and recrossed the Cordillera and the Andes from the Pacific to the Amazonian rivers, sleeping in rude Indian huts or on bleak _punas_ in the open air, in hot valleys or among eternal snows, gathering with eager zeal all classes of facts relating to the country, its people, its present and its past." It must not be inferred from this description that he claims the honors of a pioneer or discoverer. Many previous travellers had pursued the same quest, encountered the same hardships and described the same objects. Few of them, however, had enjoyed the same advantages or possessed equal fitness for the task. His previous studies and investigations had familiarized him with the aboriginal history of America and with many of its existing relics; his appointment as commissioner of the United States to Peru for the settlement of some disputed claims gave him facilities which, as a foreigner, he might otherwise have lacked; and his equipments both for personal comfort and for scientific and artistic purposes seem to have been as complete as a single traveller could be expected to provide. The result is a work which, if not actually the ablest, is the most thorough and satisfactory, which the subject has yet called forth. It contrasts in all respects with the latest of its predecessors, Hutchinson's _Two Years in Peru_, a book of still greater size, but deficient in all the elements of critical and literary power, while replete with pretentiousness and dogmatism. In the narration of his journeys and adventures Mr. Squier is always entertaining; his account of the present condition of the country and the people is instructive, though somewhat meagre; his descriptions of ancient remains, if not always as vivid or even as clear as one might desire, are generally more careful and minute than any that have before been given of them, and are supplemented by admirable views and plans that add greatly to the value and attractiveness of the volume. Finally, while his knowledge and training have well qualified him to form independent judgments, he neither seeks to discredit all previous research nor to support any of the fantastic theories of which American antiquarianism has been so prolific. He was not open to the temptation that leads those who are first in the field to magnify its marvels, and he is equally free from that tendency to belittle them which betrays the desire of later explorers to display their own superior acumen. He makes no attempt to reconstruct the past by piecing together accumulated details and calling to his aid the imaginative faculty, which, in history and science as well as in art, gives form and life to its material. But his conclusions, if general in nature and limited in range, are such as commend themselves to all minds competent to grasp the problems presented and not led astray by prepossessions. He finds the existing relics in Peru substantiating in the main the accounts given by the Spanish writers of its condition at the time of the Conquest, and he finds that condition accordant with the early history of civilization under similar circumstances in other parts of the world. He does not think it necessary, therefore, either to account for the existence of those monuments with the ruins of which the soil is so thickly strewn by an immigration from India or Egypt, nor to reduce them to the proportions and character of the Pueblo remains in New Mexico, in order to prove that America, in contrast with the Eastern continent, has had but one original type of development, and that the lowest. On the contrary, he holds it certain that "the civilization of the ancient Peruvians was indigenous," and he considers it to have passed through several stages, and to have proceeded independently among different races and tribes, culminating at last in the organization of a national polity and a common rule. Under that rule he believes that "the material prosperity of the country was far in advance of what it is now. There were greater facilities of intercourse, a wider agriculture, more manufacture, less pauperism and vice, and--shall I say it?--a purer and more useful religion." With the ruins that throw light upon the "customs, modes of life, and political, social and domestic organization" of "the vanished empire of the Incas," are others that point to a wholly different state of society and an immeasurable antiquity. "Combined with the stupendous and elaborate remains of Tiahuanuco--remains as elaborate and admirable as those of Assyria, of Egypt, Greece or Rome--there are others that are almost exact counterparts of those of Stonehenge, and Carnac in Brittany, to which is assigned the remotest place in monumental history. The rude sun-circles of Sillustani, under the very shadow of some of the most elaborate, and architecturally the most wonderful, works of aboriginal America, are indistinguishable counterparts of the sun-circles of England, Denmark and Tartary." Such evidence, concurrent with that which abounds in more northern regions, points unmistakably to an early development on this continent, similar in character and course, and coeval or anterior in date, to that which has left like indications in so many parts of the Eastern hemisphere. There the records are more scattered and more varied, as from the size and conformation of the continents and the greater diversities of climate we might have expected them to be; and those at least of a later period are, from the nature of the case, more easy of interpretation in the light of legend, tradition and written history. But the general features are intelligible in all, and the revelation which they make is identical. They show the human mind, under like external conditions and with like internal conceptions, advancing on the same line from barbarism to culture; they show a struggle and rivalry of races and tribes, in which one or another shoots forward for a time, and is then outstripped or pushed aside; they show a gradual sifting, blending and consolidation, in which primitive and fortuitous forms of association are superseded by a system presenting the symmetry and composite character of an artificial structure. Everywhere the process is marked by the final predominance of two principles, which stimulate, direct and regulate all the efforts that are made toward artistic expression, industrial science and social organization. For the human mind at this stage all conceptions of Nature may be comprised under the name of religion, and all ideas of order and co-operation under that of monarchical rule. The monuments of this period that have sprung from the united labor of the community all attest the control and supervision of one or both of these powers. Not only do temples and palaces bear this stamp, but all public works of whatever nature testify, by the gigantic results in comparison with the deficient means, to such an authority in those who planned them and such a subordination in those by whom they were executed as cannot be conceived of either under the looser organizations of barbarism or the more equitable arrangements of modern life. The cyclopean walls, the imposing edifices, the subterranean aqueducts, the mountain terraces, of Peru tell the same tale as pyramids and temples, towers and palaces, in Egypt, Assyria or India. The critic who can find in the ruins at Gran Chimu and Pachacamac only "communal houses" inhabited by "groups of families" on the method of the Iroquois, in the vast isolated structures of Tiahuanuco the remains of "an Indian pueblo after the ordinary form," and in the enormous and elaborate fortifications of Cuzco and Ollantay-tambo the works of village communities and petty tribes, is not only bent on the support of a theory at whatever cost of truth and sense, but predetermined, one would say, to hold it as a monopoly. Compared with absurdities of this order, the wildest imaginings of M. Brasseur de Bourbourg are entitled to be ranked with the conjectures of a sane philosophy.

Mr. Squier, as we have seen, gives no countenance to baseless speculations, and the publication of his book has, it is evident, fallen on them as a heavy blow and great discouragement. The preciseness of his details gives a force and authority to both his statements and opinions which cannot easily be evaded or resisted even by those most given to substituting assumptions for evidence and facts. His descriptions of the stone-work of the ancient Peruvians are not likely to suggest to unsophisticated readers an identity of race and institutions with the inhabitants of wigwams. "The joints are all of a precision unknown in our architecture, and not rivalled in the remains of ancient art that had fallen under my notice in Europe. The statement of the old writers, that the accuracy with which the stones of some structures were fitted together was such that it was impossible to introduce the thinnest knife-blade or finest needle between them, may be taken as strictly true. The world has nothing to show in the way of stone-cutting and fitting to surpass the skill and accuracy displayed in the Indian structures of Cuzco. All modern work of the kind there--and there are some fine examples of skill--looks rude and barbarous in comparison." We may imagine the straits to which the advocates of Lo are driven when they point to the absence of mortar or cement of any kind in such walls as a proof of rudeness and ignorance in the builders. But, as Mr. Squier reminds us, Humboldt found a true mortar in the ruins of Pullal and Canuar, in Northern Peru. Humboldt found, too, in the same region the remains of paved roads not inferior to any Roman roads which he had seen in Italy, France or Spain; and though Mr. Squier states that few traces of such roads now exist in the southern part of the country, and infers that they never existed here, since "the modern pathways must follow the ancient lines," and "there is no reason why they should have suffered more from time and the elements in one part of the country than in another," it seems to us impossible to reject in so summary a fashion the testimony of early writers, given, not in mere general terms, but with a minuteness of description rivalling his own. Possibly, the explanation may be found partly in the fact that the roads in one part of the country were generally more ancient than in the other--many of them, as we know, dating from a period anterior to the Inca rule--and partly to the greater devastations wrought by the European conquerors and their descendants in the neighborhood of the capital and on the most frequented routes. In other particulars, such as the size of the Peruvian houses and the existence of windows, Mr. Squier finds the facts to have been understated by Humboldt. Generally, as we have already intimated, he finds full confirmation of the accounts of such writers as Cieza de Leon and Garcilasso de la Vega in those relics which still survive as the surest witnesses of the past, defying the tooth of time, the ravages of violence and the denials and assumptions of a crazy scepticism.

Camp, Court and Siege: A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation during Two Wars, 1861-65, 1870-71. By Wickham Hoffman. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Had the third of this book which is devoted to the writer's reminiscences of the late civil convulsion in his own country been omitted or reserved for expansion into a separate publication, the remainder would have had more unity and attractiveness. The latter is by far the more interesting portion. Expanded and fortified by details, references and documents, Major Hoffman's account of his experience as secretary of legation at Paris in the year of the siege might have filled--and may yet be made to fill--an important place among memoirs of its class. His narrative style is clear and pleasant, if never vivid or impressive. It harmonizes with the complexion of truth, and truth is the first thing we ask from the diarist and observer. Our confidence is won by his direct and unambitious way of telling what he saw and shared.

We should think it not improbable that the writer will adopt this course, and use more fully the material which must be at his command for illustrating, from an exceptionally favorable point of view, the fall of the Second Empire and the double fall of its capital. The American legation, under Mr. Washburne, was brought into close relations with the Empire, the Republic and the Commune by means of its delegated character as protector of North German subjects during the war. It was, for that period, much the most notable among the foreign embassies in France. While those of the principal European powers, as for most of the time the French government itself, left the capital, it, with the representatives of two or three minor states, remained at its post. Outside of the very onerous function assumed by it at the request of the German government, it had other great cares and great opportunities for good. These appear to have been encountered and used with remarkable tact and energy. Its display of those qualities has been gratefully acknowledged by its own people, those of Germany and many of the French. At the outbreak of the war thirty thousand Germans were established in Paris. Summary expulsion was decreed against these, and the American minister and his subordinates had the sole charge of applying the meagre funds sent by their own sovereign for mitigating the suffering due to that order. Some thousands, unable to leave or preferring to run all risks, remained throughout the war. This unhappy remnant constantly looked to the American ministry for aid to subsist and to escape violence. Mr. Hoffman ventures to place the banishment of the Germans, for acuteness if not mass of suffering, by the side of the ejection of the Huguenots and the Moors. This exaggeration serves at least to show the impression it made on an eye-witness.

Major Hoffman's remarks on the causes of the moral breakdown of the Empire and of the French army do not help us to much that is novel. He lays more than the usual stress on Ultramontanism as an influence. The death of the archbishop of Paris could have been prevented, he thinks, had the Versailles authorities acted with due promptness and determination; and he avers his belief that the liberalism of that prelate made his death not unacceptable to the Church party represented now by Eugénie and MacMahon. He ascribes fanaticism also to the savior of Paris that was to be--Trochu. Trochu's main hope, he believes, was miraculous interposition. His statement of the extent to which unreasoning panic had possession of both soldiers and citizens supports the idea that supernatural aid only could have saved the city.

The better, and really ruling, traits of the French people are not to be studied in their periods of "Gallic fury." Thus it is that the book before us is an unsafe guide on that point. Six years have rolled away since the revolt of the Commune, the loss of two rich provinces and the imposition of a tribute nearly half as large as the debt of the United States. The evidence given and the effective results shown of patience, perseverance, order, determined good faith, industry and self-control have no parallel in a like period of the history of any modern people.

The Plains of the Great West and their Inhabitants. By R. I. Dodge. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Here we are favored with a glance through another military lorgnette, but at a scene geographically, socially and politically the antipodes of Paris. Colonel Dodge leads us into the haunts of the original denizens of Western America, and depicts their traits with a hand made facile by long familiarity. At part of the aborigines--and that part obviously most attractive to and most assiduously studied by him--he bids us look through the sights of the rifle or along the dappled double-barrel. At the other he essays, with less success perhaps, to aid us with the eye of the amateur statesman and political economist. The wearers of fur and feather have no moral side. The Indian has. His condition and future are correspondingly complicated. How to shoot him is not the sole and simple question, as it is with his original compatriots except the buffalo. With the latter shaggy and multitudinous creature the fate of the Indian of the Plains is more or less linked. They move together, and may be said to die together. On a map of the territory between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi are traced two pairs of reservations. Of one the Yellowstone, and of the other the Arkansas, is the centre. Each pair is composed of a buffalo-range and a group of Indian tribes. The three lines of east-and-west railway separate them, and shoulder to right and left, north and south, the savage and his herds.

Of the enormous numbers of the wild cattle which were once the exclusive property of the Indian we have been accustomed to form but a very inadequate idea. They exceed those which have raised the Tartar into the comparatively high rank of a pastoral nomad. The patriarch or poet Job was a famous cattle-owner, but he was a small dairyman by the side of a Cheyenne or Rickaree chief, and a stampede of a small detachment of buffalo would have run down unnoticed the whole of his live-stock. In the three years 1872-74 four and a half millions of buffalo--considerably more than half as many as all the black cattle in the British Islands--were slaughtered. From this fact may be gathered an impression of the vast provision of human food until lately stored by Nature in a region still marked on modern geographies as a desert. Of the value of this endowment the Indian, with all his improvidence, had some notion. It was a resource he may be said to have husbanded. Of nothing like the wanton and shameful destruction dealt by the whites since the feeding-grounds were made accessible by rail was he ever guilty. He managed his hunts systematically, placed them under the rigid control of a sort of guild known as "dog-soldiers," and allowed to be slain only what were needed for his wants. The buffalo was to him what the cocoa-palm is to the Polynesian; and more, for he needed warm shelter and warm clothing. He cared for it accordingly. It grew around him almost as the cocoa-grove around the hut of the islander. A herd will even now graze quietly for days in the neighborhood of an Indian village of a thousand souls, while an encampment of half a dozen whites disperses it instantly. The whites kill only for the hides, two of which they lose for every one saved in merchantable condition. A very small proportion of the flesh is utilized when the railway happens to be near enough, and within a like limit of territory the bones are collected. In the single year 1874 over ten millions of tons of these were sent East to fertilize the exhausted fields of the Atlantic slope with the refuse riches of the "desert."

No treaties are made with the buffalo. He is swindled by no agents, post-traders or secretaries at war. He addresses no pathetic remonstrances to his Great Father, and expresses no sense of his wrongs by taking scalps or inflicting worse horrors still. School-houses, temperance societies, small-pox and whiskey are not for him. Yet does he move toward annihilation, as we have said, in singularly close lock-step with the Indian. His problem, like the other, is being settled by the settler. Were the red man edible, the parallelism in destiny would be more complete. As it is, the quadruped will disappear before the biped native. Individuals of the latter will be absorbed into the bosom of civilization, as the remnants of the Senecas, the Oneidas and the Pamunkeys have long since been. As a race, the Indians' best hope is euthanasia. Even that is desperately uncertain. The Cherokees, Creeks and Choctaws, with their minor associates in the Indian Territory, are, though not increasing in numbers, living in peace and something like industry. Yet they are at the mercy of any vagabond who should take it into his head to "salt" with gold-dust or silver-ore any ravine in the midst of their country. No law and no army would avail to repel the rush. They would go the way of the Sioux of the Black Hills, and would have only the choice of drifting out of existence on the outskirts of white society or of being washed high and dry over the frontier. Where are the sixty thousand Indians who at the time of the transfer of California were so comfortably coddled under the wing of the missions? They have been the victims of no recorded war, and the agents never had a chance at them. They have gone, however, with a rapidity unexampled anywhere east of the mountains.

Solutions of the Indian problem are endless, and the writer of the book named at the head of these paragraphs has his shy at it. His plan is new chiefly in blaming all round--traders, Quakers, Indians, government and frontiersmen. If we can venture to centralize his invective, we should lay it specially on the heads of the class the Indians term "squaw-men"--the whites who have Indian wives and are established among the lodges. Of these he gives us a conjectural census--a hundred agencies and reservations and ten squaw-men to each. From this thousand are drawn all the interpreters; and not a solitary interpreter, Colonel Dodge insists, can be relied upon. They are, every man of them, in league with the agents and traders against the government and the Indians. The two last named--parties of the first part, as we should style them--never come together and never understand each other. The colonel's cure is remitting the whole thing to army control. But that, we need not say, has been tried, with results by no means brilliant.

For those who have never even seen an annuity distributed to aggravate the muddle with their suggestions would be most presumptuous. It is as little as we can do to abstain. We may venture here only to say a word in mitigation of the deep stain left upon the fair fame of the United States by its management of Indian affairs. The contrast so frequently drawn with the course of things in Canada is not wholly just. It was the French who saved the Canadian Indians from the mere sordid extinction which has befallen most of their southern congeners, as it was the Spaniards who kept the California tribes alive. The natives--or rather the French half-breeds--were made trappers and voyageurs before the English conquest of the province. But for that preparation they might have gone the way of our Indians under Anglo-Saxon pressure. Climate also favored them. Only an infinitesimal fraction of British America is capable of white colonization.

Dropping a theme which bids fair to remain undisposed of, like the disputes of Hogarth's doctors, till the patient is dead, we revert to Colonel Dodge's book, and to those of its pages which it is clear he wrote most _en amateur_. Soldier and student, he is above all a sportsman. It is delightful to follow him over the plain and (in spirit and untearable trousers) into the chaparral. Anywhere between the Rio Grande, the Missouri and Bridger's Pass he seems to be as much at home as on his own farm. All its live-stock is familiar to him. His sheep are of the big-horn breed; his black cattle, the two varieties of buffalo, mountain and lowland; and his poultry, the prairie-chicken and its relatives. He is both interesting and instructive. The puma and the panther he avers to be distinct species. The prong-horned antelope--the only American species, and now, we believe, assigned by naturalists to a genus of its own--he demonstrates to shed its horns. He describes six species of native grouse; to which if we add two others not found within the limits he describes, we have eight for the United States against two in Great Britain and four for all Europe. His stories of sport and adventure are given with circumstance and animation. Extra spice is thrown in by a moderate infusion of second-hand relations of a more or less imaginative character, which he is careful to separate from the fruit of his own experience and observation. The physical conformation of the country and its climate are described with remarkable distinctness. We do not know a book on the subject that comes up more faithfully to its title.

_Books Received._

The Struggle against Absolute Monarchy, 1603-1688: Epochs of English History. By Bertha Meriton Cordery. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Tudors and the Reformation, 1485-1603: Epochs of English History. By M. Creighton, M.A. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping. Compiled from Original Recipes. Marysville, Ohio: Buckeye Publishing Co.

University Life in Ancient Athens. By W. W. Capes, M.A. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Children of Light. By Rev. William W. Faris. (The Fletcher Prize Essay, 1877.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Reconciliation of Science and Religion. By Alexander Mitchell, LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Syrian Sunshine. By T. G. Appleton. (Town-and-Country Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Anonymous Hypothesis of Creation. By James J. Furniss. New York: Charles P. Somerby.

Personal Immortality, and other Papers. By John Oppenheim. New York: Charles P. Somerby.

Harry. By the Author of "Mrs. Jerningham's Journal." New York: MacMillan & Co.

Birds and Poets, with other Papers. By John Burroughs. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

Atlas Essays. Number 2, Biographical and Critical. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co.

In the Camargue. By Emily Bowles. (Loring's Tales of the Day.) Boston: Loring.

Eugénie. By B. M. Butt. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Mar's White Witch: A Novel. By G. Douglas. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Table Talk. By A. Bronson Alcott. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Transcriber's Notes

Page 177 dun-colered replaced with dun-colored.

Pages 158-165 Della Scala, Delle Scale, Della Scale and Delle Scala both retained.

Page 189 Eitzgerald corrected to Fitzgerald.