CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CHILD FINA.

Nothing surprised the North Astonians more than what it was the fashion to call "the admirable manner in which Leam behaved to the child Fina." If the world which praised her had known all the compelling circumstances, would it have called her admirable then? Yet beyond those natural promptings of remorse which forced her to do the best she could for the child whom her fatal crime had rendered motherless, Leam did honestly behave well, if this means doing irksome things without complaint and sacrificing self to a sense of right. And this was all the more praiseworthy in that sympathy of nature between these two young creatures there was none, and the girl's maternal instinct was not of that universal kind which makes all children pleasant, whatever they may be. Hence, she did nobly when she did her duty with the uncompromising exactness characteristic of her; but then it was only duty, it was not love.

How should it be love? Her tenacity and reserve were ill matched with Fina's native inconstancy of purpose and childish incontinence of speech; her pride of race resented her father's adoption of a stranger into the penetralia of the family; and to share the name she had inherited from her mother with the daughter of that mother's rival seemed to her a wrong done to both the living and the dead. Naturally taciturn, unjoyful, and ever oppressed by that brooding consciousness of guilt hanging like a cloud over her memory, formless, vague, but never lifting, Fina's changeful temper and tumultuous vivacity were intensely wearisome to her. Nevertheless, she was forbearing if not loving, and the people said rightly when they said she was admirable.

Her grave patience with the little one did more to open her father's heart to her than did even her own wonderful beauty, which gratified his paternal pride of authorship, or than her efforts after docility to himself--efforts that would have been creditable to any one, and that with her were heroic. For Mr. Dundas, being of those clinging, clasping natures which must love some one, had taken poor madame's child into his affections in the wholesale manner so emphatically his own, now in these first days of his new paternity seeming to live only for the little Fina, and never happy but when he had her with him. It was the first time that he felt he had had a child of his own; and he gave her the love which would have been Leam's had Pepita been less of a savage than she was, and more discreet in the matter of doll-dressing.

The little round, fair-haired creature, with her picturesque Gainsborough head and rose-red lips, pretty, pleasant, facile, easily amused if easily made cross, divertible from her purpose if she was but coaxed and caressed, and if the substitute offered was to her liking--without tenacity, fluid, floating on the surface of things and born of their froth; loving only those who ministered to her pleasure and were in sight; forgetting yesterday's joys as though they had never been, and her dearest the moment they were absent--a child deliciously caressing because sensual by temperament and instinctively diplomatic, with no latent greatness to be developed as time went on and the flower set into the fruit. Epitomizing the characteristics of the class of which her mother had been a typical example, she was the pleasantest thing of his life to a man who cared mainly to be amused, and who liked with a woman's liking to be loved.

The strong love of children inherent in him, which had never been satisfied till now, seemed now to have gathered tenfold strength, and the love of the man, who had never cared for his own, for this his little daughter by adoption was almost a passion. If Leam could have been jealous where she did not love, she would have been jealous of her father and Fina. But she was not. On the contrary, it seemed to soften some of the bitterness of her self-reproach, and she was glad that madame's motherless child was not deserted, but had found a substitute for the protection which she had taken from her; for Leam, criminal, was not ignoble.

A few days after the meeting on the moor between Learn and Edgar, Mr. Dundas drove to the Hill, carrying Fina with him. Leam had a fit of shyness and refused to go: thus Sebastian had the child to himself, and was not sorry to be without his elder and less congenial daughter. He owned to himself that she was good, very good indeed, and a great deal better than he ever expected she would be; yet for all that, with her more than Oriental gravity and reserve, and that look of tragedy haunting her face, she was not an amusing companion, and the little one was.

Mr. Dundas had begun to take up his old habits again with the Harrowbys. He found the patient constancy of his friend Josephine not a disagreeable salve for a wounded heart and broken life; albeit poor dear Joseph was getting stout and matronly, and took off the keen edge of courtship by a willingness too manifest for wisdom. Sebastian liked to be loved, but he did not like to be bored by being made overmuch love to. The things are different, and most men resent the latter, how much soever they desire the former.

Edgar was in the drawing-room when Mr. Dundas was announced. He was booted and spurred, waiting his horse to be brought round. "What a pretty little girl!" he said after a time. True to his type, he was fond of children and animals, and children and animals liked him. "Come and speak to me," he continued, holding out his hand to Fina.--"Whose child is she?" vaguely to the company in general.

"Mine," said Mr. Dundas emphatically--"my youngest daughter, Fina Dundas."

Edgar knew what he meant. He had often heard the story from his sisters, and since his return home he had had Adelaide Birkett's comments thereon. He looked then with even more interest on the pretty little creature in dark-blue velvet and swansdown, careless, unconscious, happy, as the child of a mystery and a tragedy in one.

"Ah!" he said sympathetically. "Come to me, little one," again, coaxingly.

Fina, with her finger in her mouth, went up to him half shyly, half boldly, and wholly prettily. She let him take her on his knee and kiss her without remonstrance. She was of the kind to like being taken on knees and kissed--especially by gentlemen who were strong and matronly women who were soft--and she soon made friends. Not many minutes elapsed before, kneeling upon his knees, she was stroking his tawny beard and plaiting it in threes, pulling his long moustache, playing with his watch-guard, and laughing in his face with the pretty audacity of six.

"What a dear little puss!" cried Edgar, caressing her. "Very like you, Joseph, I should think, when you were her age, judging by your picture. Is she not, mother?"

"They say so, but I do not see it," answered Mrs. Harrowby primly.

She did not like to hear about this resemblance. There was something in it that annoyed her intensely, she scarcely knew why, and the more so because it was true.

"Poor madame used to say so: she saw it from the first, when Fina was quite a little baby," said Josephine in a low voice.

She was kneeling by her brother's side caressing Fina. She always made love to the little girl: it was one of her methods of making love to the father.

"Is she like her mother?" asked Edgar in the same low tones, looking at the child critically.

"A little," answered Josephine--"not much. It is odd, is it not, that she should be more like me?"

Just then Fina laid her fresh sweet lips against Edgar's, and he kissed her with a strange thrill of tenderness.

"Why, Edgar, I never saw you take so to a child before," cried Mrs. Harrowby, not quite pleasantly; and on Sebastian adding with his nervous little laugh, which meant the thing it assumed only to play at, "I declare I shall be quite jealous, Edgar, if you make love to my little girl like this." Edgar, who had the Englishman's dislike to observation, save when he offered himself for personal admiration, laughed too and put Fina away.

But the child had taken a fancy to him, and could scarcely be induced to leave him. She clung to his hand still, and went reluctantly when her stepfather called her. It was a very little matter, but men being weak in certain directions, it delighted Edgar and annoyed Sebastian beyond measure.

"I hope your elder daughter is well," then said Edgar, emphasizing the adjective, the vision of Leam as he first saw her, breasting the wind, filling his eyes with a strange light.

"Leam? Quite well, thanks. But how do you know anything about her?" was Sebastian's reply.

"I met her yesterday on the moor, and Rover introduced us," answered Edgar laughing.

"How close she is!" said her father fretfully. "She never told me a word about it."

"Perhaps she thought the incident too trifling," suggested Edgar, a little chagrined.

"Oh no, not at all! In a place like North Aston the least thing counts as an adventure; and meeting for the first time one of the neighbors is not an incident to be forgotten as if it were of no more value than meeting a flock of sheep."

Mr. Dundas spoke peevishly. To a man who liked to be amused and who lived on crumbs this reserved companionship was disappointing and tiresome.

"Leam is at home making music," said Fina disdainfully. She had caught the displeased accent of her adopted father, and echoed it.

"Does she make much music?" asked Edgar with his hand under her chin, turning up her face.

The child shrugged her little shoulders. "She makes a noise," she said; and those who heard her laughed.

"That is not a very polite way of putting it," said Edgar a little gravely.

"No," said Josephine.

"You should speak nicely of your sister, my little one," put in Sebastian.

Fina looked up into his face reproachfully. "You called it a noise yourself, papa," she said, pouting. "You made her leave off yesterday as soon as you came in, because you said she made your head ache with her noise, and set your teeth--something, I don't know what."

"Did I, dear?" he repeated carelessly. "Well, we need not discuss the subject. I dare say it amuses her to make music, as you call it, and so we need say no more about it."

"But you did say it was a noise," persisted Fina, climbing on to his knees and putting her arms round his neck. "And I think it a noise too."

"Poor Leam's music cannot be very first-rate," remarked Maria, who was a proficient and played almost as well as a "professional." "Four years ago she did not know her notes, and four years' practice cannot be expected to make a perfect pianiste."

"But a person may play very sweetly and yet not be what you call perfect," said Edgar.

"Do you think so?" Maria answered with a frosty smile. "I do not." Of what use to have toiled for thirty years early and late at scales and thorough-bass if a stupid girl like Leam could be allowed to play sweetly after four years' desultory practice? "Adelaide Birkett, if you will, plays well," she added; "but Leam, poor child! how should she?"

"I hope I shall have an opportunity of judging for myself," said Edgar with his company manner.--"When will you come and dine here, Dundas?--to-morrow? You and your elder daughter: we shall be very glad to see you."

He looked to his mother. Mrs. Harrowby had drawn her lips tight, and wore an injured air doing its best to be resigned. This was Edgar's first essay in domestic mastership, and it pained her, not unnaturally.

"Thanks," said Sebastian. "Willingly, if--" looking to Mrs. Harrowby.

"I have no engagement, and Edgar is master now," said that lady.

"And mind that Leam comes too," said Josephine, sharing her favorite brother's action by design.

"And me," cried Fina.

Whereat they all laughed, which made Fina cry, to be consoled only by some sweetmeats which Josephine found in her work-basket.

It was agreed, then, that the next day Leam and her father should dine at the Hill.

"Only ourselves," Edgar said, wanting the excuse of her "being the only lady" to devote himself to Leam. It was strange that he should be so anxious to see her nearer, and in company with his sisters and mother; for after all, why should he? What was she to him, either near or afar off, alone or in the inner circle of his family?

But when the next day came Mr. Dundas appeared alone. Leam had been taken with a fit of shyness, pride--who shall say?--and refused to accept her share of the invitation. Her father made the stereotyped excuse of "headache;" but headaches occur too opportunely to be always real, and Leam's to-night was set down to the fancy side of the account, and not believed in by the hearers any more than by the bearer.

Edgar raged against her in his heart, and decided that she was not worth a second thought, while the ladies said in an undertone from each to each, "How rude!" Maria adding, "How like Leam!" the chain of condemnation receiving no break till it came to Josephine, whose patient soul refrained from wrath, and gave as her link, "Poor Leam! perhaps she is shy or has really a headache."

In spite of his decision that she was not worth a second thought, the impression which Leam had made on Edgar deepened with his disappointment, and he became restless and unpleasant in his temper, casting about for means whereby he might see her again. He cast about in vain. This fit of shyness, pride, reluctance--who knows what?--continued with Leam for many days after this. If she went out at all, she went where she knew she should not be met; and if Edgar called at Ford House, she was not to be found. She mainly devoted herself to Fina and some books lent her by Alick, and kept the house with strange persistency. Perhaps this was because the weather was bad, for Leam, who could bear wind and frost and noonday sun, could not bear wet. When it rained she shut herself up in her own room, and pitied herself for the ungenial skies as she had pitied herself for some other things before now.

Sitting thus reading one miserably dark, cold, misty day, the child Fina came in to her with her lessons, which she repeated well. They were very small and insignificant little lessons, for Leam had a fellow-feeling for the troubles of ignorance, and laid but a light hand on the frothy mind inside that curly head. When they were finished the little one said coaxingly, "Now play with me, Leam! You never play with me."

"What can I do, Fina?" poor Leam replied.

She had never learnt to play when she was a child: she had never built towers and towns, made railway trains and coaches with the sofa and chairs, played at giants through the dark passages and screamed when she was caught. She had only sat still when mamma was asleep, or when she was awake played on the zambomba, or listened to her when she told her of the things of Spain, and made up stories with her dolls that were less edifying than those of Mother Bunch. She could scarcely, however, unpack that old box full of waxen puppets, with the one dressed in scarlet and black, with fishbone horns and a worsted tail, and a queer clumped kind of foot made of folds of leather, cleft in the middle, that used to go by the name of "El señor papa." What could she do?

"Shall I tell you a story?" she then said in a mild fit of desperation, for story-telling was as little in her way as anything else.

"Yes, yes, tell me a story!" Fina clapped her chubby hands together and climbed up into Leam's lap.

"What shall it be about--bears or tigers, or what?" asked Leam dutifully.

"Tell me about mamma, my own mamma, not Aunty Birkett," said Fina.

Leam shuddered from head to foot. This was the first time the little girl had mentioned her mother's name to her. Indeed, she did not know that she had ever heard of her at all--ever known that she had had a mother; but the servants had talked, and the child's curiosity was aroused. The dead mother is as much a matter of wondering inquiry as the angels and the stars; and Fina's imagination was beginning to bestir itself on the mysteries of childish life.

"I have nothing to tell you about her," said Leam, controlling herself, though she still shivered.

"Yes, you have--everything," insisted Fina. "Was mamma pretty?" playing with a corner of her sister's ribbon.

"People said so," answered Leam.

"As pretty as Cousin Addy?" she asked.

"About," said Leam, who thought neither supreme.

"Prettier than you?"

"I don't know: how can I tell?" she answered a little impatiently.

The mother's blood that ran in her, the mother's mould in which she had been formed, forbade her to put herself below madame in anything; but, as she was neither vain nor conscious, she found Fina's question difficult to answer.

"Oh," cried Fina, in a tone of disappointment, "then she could not have been very pretty."

"I dare say she was, but I do not know," returned Leam.

"And she died?" continued Fina, yawning in a childishly indifferent manner.

"Yes, she died."

"Why? Who killed her? Did papa?" asked Fina.

Leam's face was very white: "No, not papa."

"Did God?"

"I cannot tell you, Fina," said Leam, to whom falsehoods were abhorrent and the truth impossible.

"Did you?" persisted Fina with childish obstinacy.

"Now go," said Leam, putting her off her lap and rising from her chair in strange disorder. "You are troublesome and ask too many questions."

Fina began to cry loudly, and Mr. Dundas, from his library below, heard her. He came up stairs with his fussy, restless kindness, and opened the door of the room where his two daughters, of nature and by adoption, were.

"Heyday! what's all this about?" he cried. "What's the matter, my little Fina? what are you crying for? Tut, tut! you should not cry like this, darling; and, Leam," severely, "you should really keep the child better amused and happy. She is as good as gold with me: with you there is always something wrong."

Fina ran into his arms sobbing. "Leam is cross," she said. "She will not tell me who killed mamma."

The man's ruddy face, reddened and roughened with travel, grew white and pitiful. "God took her away, my darling," he said with a sob. "She was too good for me, and He took her to live with the angels in heaven,"

"And Leam's mamma? Is she in heaven too with the angels?" asked Fina, opening her eyes wide through their tears,

"I hope so," Sebastian answered in an altered voice.

Leam covered her face in her hands; then lifting it up, she said imploringly, "Papa, do not talk to her of mamma. It is sacrilege."

"I agree with you, Leam," said Mr, Dundas in a steady voice. "We meet at the same point, but perhaps by different methods."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

LETTERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA

BY LADY BARKER.

CAPE TOWN, October 16, 1875.

Safe, safe at last, after twenty-four days of nothing but sea and sky, of white-crested waves--which made no secret of their intention of coming on board whenever they could or of tossing the good ship Edinburgh Castle hither and thither like a child's plaything--and of more deceitful sluggish rolling billows, looking tolerably calm to the unseafaring eye, but containing a vast amount of heaving power beneath their slow, undulating water-hills and valleys. Sometimes sky and sea have been steeped in dazzling haze of golden glare, sometimes brightened to blue of a sapphire depth. Again, a sudden change of wind has driven up serried clouds from the south and east, and all has been gray and cold and restful to eyes wearied with radiance and glitter of sun and sparkling water.

Never has there been such exceptional weather, although the weather of my acquaintance invariably _is_ exceptional. No sooner had the outlines of Madeira melted and blended into the soft darkness of a summer night than we appeared to sail straight into tropic heat and a sluggish vapor, brooding on the water like steam from a giant geyser. This simmering, oily, exhausting temperature carried us close to the line. "What is before us," we asked each other languidly, "if it be hotter than this? How can mortal man, woman, still less child, endure existence?" Vain alarms! Yet another shift of the light wind, another degree passed, and we are all shivering in winter wraps. The line was crossed in greatcoats and shawls, and the only people whose complexion did not resemble a purple plum were those lucky ones who had strength of mind and steadiness of body to lurch up and down the deck all day enjoying a strange method of movement which they called walking.

The exceptional weather pursued us right into the very dock. Table Mountain ought to be seen--and very often is seen--seventy miles away. I am told it looks a fine bold bluff at that distance, Yesterday we had blown off our last pound of steam and were safe under its lee before we could tell there was a mountain there at all, still less an almost perpendicular cliff more than three thousand feet high. Robben Island looked like a dun-colored hillock as we shot past it within a short distance, and a more forlorn and discouraging islet I don't think I have ever beheld. When I expressed something of this impression to a cheery fellow-voyager, he could only urge in its defence that there were a great many rabbits on it. If he had thrown the lighthouse into the bargain, I think he would have summed up all its attractive features. Unless Langalibalele is of a singularly unimpressionable nature, he must have found his sojourn on it somewhat monotonous, but he always says he was very comfortable there.

And now for the land. We are close alongside of a wharf, and still a capital and faithful copy of a Scotch mist wraps houses, trees and sloping uplands in a fibry fantastic veil, and the cold drizzle seems to curdle the spirits and energies of the few listless Malays and half-caste boys and men who are lounging about. Here come hansom cabs rattling up one after the other, all with black drivers in gay and fantastic head and shoulder gear; but their hearts seem precisely as the hearts of their London brethren, and they single out new-comers at a glance, and shout offers to drive them a hundred yards or so for exorbitant sums, or yell laudatory recommendations of sundry hotels. You must bear in mind that in a colony every pot-house is a hotel, and generally rejoices in a name much too imposing to fit across its frontage. These hansoms are all painted white with the name of some ship in bright letters on the side, and are a great deal cleaner, roomier and more comfortable than their London "forbears." The horses are small and shabby, but rattle along at a good pace; and soon each cab has its load of happy home-comers and swings rapidly away to make room for fresh arrivals hurrying up for fares. Hospitable suggestions come pouring in, and it is as though it were altogether a new experience when one steps cautiously on the land, half expecting it to dip away playfully from under one's feet. A little boy puts my thoughts into words when he exclaims, "How steady the ground is!" and becomes a still more faithful interpreter of a wave-worn voyager's sensations when, a couple of hours later, he demands permission to get _out_ of his delicious little white bed that he may have the pleasure of getting _into_ it again. The evening is cold and raw and the new picture is all blurred and soft and indistinct, and nothing seems plain except the kindly grace of our welcome and the never-before-sufficiently-appreciated delights of space and silence.

OCTOBER 17.

How pleasant is the process familiarly known as "looking about one," particularly when performed under exceptionally favorable circumstances! A long and happy day commenced with a stroll through the botanic gardens, parallel with which runs, on one side, a splendid oak avenue just now in all the vivid freshness of its young spring leaves. The gardens are beautifully kept, and are valuable as affording a sort of experimental nursery in which new plants and trees can be brought up on trial and their adaptability to the soil and climate ascertained. For instance, the first thing that caught my eye was the gigantic trunk of an Australian blue-gum tree, which had attained to a girth and height not often seen in its own land. The flora of the Cape Colony is exceptionally varied and beautiful, but one peculiarity incidentally alluded to by my charming guide struck me as very noticeable. It is that in this dry climate and porous soil all the efforts of uncultivated nature are devoted to the _stems_ of the vegetation: on their sap-retaining power depends the life of the plant, so blossom and leaf, though exquisitely indicated, are fragile and incomplete compared to the solidity and bulbous appearance of the stalk. Everything is sacrificed to the practical principle of keeping life together, and it is not until these stout-stemmed plants are cultivated and duly sheltered and watered, and can grow, as it were, with confidence, that they are able to do justice to the inherent beauty of penciled petal and veined leaf. Then the stem contracts to ordinary dimensions, and leaf and blossom expand into things which may well be a joy to the botanist's eye. A thousand times during that shady saunter did I envy my companions their scientific acquaintance with the beautiful green things of earth, and that intimate knowledge of a subject which enhances one's appreciation of its charms as much as bringing a lamp into a darkened picture-gallery. There are the treasures of form and color, but from ignorant eyes more than half their charms and wonders are held back.

A few steps beyond the garden stand the library and natural history museum. The former is truly a credit to the Colony. Spacious, handsome, rich in literary treasures, It would bear comparison with similar institutions in far older and wealthier places. But I have often noticed in colonies how much importance is attached to the possession of a good public library, and how fond, as a rule, colonists are of books. In a new settlement other shops may be ill supplied, but there is always a good bookseller's, and all books are to be bought there at pretty nearly the same prices as in England. Here each volume costs precisely the same as it would in London, and it would puzzle ever so greedy a reader to name a book which would not be instantly handed to him.

The museum is well worth a visit of many more hours than we could afford minutes, and, as might be expected, contains numerous specimens of the _Bok_ family, whose tapering horns and slender legs are to be seen at every turn of one's head. Models are there also of the largest diamonds, and especially well copied is the famous "Star of South Africa," a magnificent brilliant of purest water, sold here originally for something like twelve thousand pounds, and resold for double that sum three or four years back. In these few hours I perceive, or think I perceive, a certain soreness, if one may use the word, on the part of the Cape Colonists about the unappreciativeness of the English public toward their produce and possessions. For Instance, an enormous quantity of wine is annually exported, which reaches London by a devious route and fetches a high price, as it is fairly entitled to do from its excellence. If that same wine were sent direct to a London merchant and boldly sold as Cape wine, it is said that the profit on it would be a very different affair. The same prejudice exists against Cape diamonds. Of course, as in other things, a large proportion of inferior stones are forced into the market and serve to give the diamonds that bad name which we all know is so fatal to a dog. But it is only necessary to pretend that a really fine Cape diamond has come from Brazil to ensure its fetching a handsome price, and in that way even jewelers themselves have been known to buy and give a good round sum, too, for stones they would otherwise have looked upon with suspicion. Already I have seen a straw-colored diamond from "Du Zoit's pan" in the diamond-fields cut in Amsterdam and set in London, which could hold its own for purity, radiance and color against any other stone of the same rare tint, without fear or favor; but of course such gems are not common, and fairly good diamonds cost as much here as in any other part of the world.

The light morning mists from that dampness of yesterday have rolled gradually away as the beautiful sunshine dried the atmosphere, and by midday the table-cloth, as the colonists affectionately call the white, fleece-like vapor which so often rests on their pet mountain, has been folded up and laid aside in Cloudland for future use. I don't know what picture other people may have made to their own minds of the shape and size of Table Mountain, but it was quite a surprise and the least little bit in the world of a disappointment to me to find that it cuts the sky (and what a beautiful sky it is!) with a perfectly straight and level line. A gentle, undulating foreground broken into ravines, where patches of green _velts_ or fields, clumps of trees and early settlers' houses nestle cosily down, guides the eye half-way up the mountain. There the rounder forms abruptly cease, and great granite cliffs rise, bare and straight, up to the level line stretching ever so far along. "It is so characteristic," and "You grow to be so fond of that mountain," are observations I have heard made in reply to the carping criticisms of travelers, and already I begin to understand the meaning of the phrases. But you need to see the mountain from various points of view and under different influences of sun and cloud before you can take in its striking and peculiar charms.

On each side of the straight line which is emphatically Table Mountain, but actually forming part of it, is a bold headland of the shape one is usually accustomed to in mountains. The "Devil's Peak" is uncompromising enough for any one's taste, whilst the "Lion's Head" charms the eye by its bluff form and deep purple fissures. These grand promontories are not, however, half so beloved by Cape Colonists as their own Table Mountain, and it is curious and amusing to notice how the influence of this odd straight ridge, ever before their eyes, has unconsciously guided and influenced their architectural tastes. All the roofs of the houses are straight--straight as the mountain; a gable is almost unknown, and even the few steeples are dwarfed to an imperceptible departure from the prevailing straight line. The very trees which shade the Parade-ground and border the road in places have their tops blown absolutely straight and flat, as though giant shears had trimmed them; but I must confess, in spite of a natural anxiety to carry out my theory, that the violent "sou'-easters" are the "straighteners" in their case.

Cape Town is so straggling that it is difficult to form any idea of its real size, but the low houses are neat and the streets are well kept and look quaint and lively enough to my new eyes this morning. There are plenty of people moving about with a sociable, business-like air; lots of different shades of black and brown Malays, with pointed hats on the men's heads: the women encircle their dusky, smiling faces with a gay cotton handkerchief and throw another of a still brighter hue over their shoulders. When you add to this that they wear a full, flowing, stiffly-starched cotton gown of a third bright color, you can perhaps form some idea of how they enliven the streets. Swarms of children everywhere, romping and laughing and showing their white teeth in broadest of grins. The white children strike me at once as looking marvelously well--such chubby cheeks, such sturdy fat legs--and all, black or white, with that amazing air of independence peculiar to baby-colonists. Nobody seems to mind them and nothing seems to harm them. Here are half a dozen tiny boys shouting and laughing at one side of the road, and half a dozen baby-girls at the other (they all seem to play separately): they are all driving each other, for "horses" is the one game here. By the side of a pond sit two toddles of about three years old, in one garment apiece and pointed hats: they are very busy with string and a pin; but who is taking care of them and why don't they tumble in? They are as fat as ortolans and grin at us in the most friendly fashion.

We must remember that this chances to be the very best moment of the whole year in which to see the Cape and the dwellers thereat. The cold weather has left its bright roses on the children's cheeks, and the winter rains exceptionally having this year made every blade of grass and leaf of tree to laugh and sing in freshest green. After the dry, windy summer I am assured there is hardly a leaf and never a blade of grass to be seen in Cape Town, and only a little straggling verdure under the shelter of the mountain. The great want of this place is water. No river, scarcely a brook, refreshes one's eye for many and many a league inward. The necessary water for the use of the town is brought down by pipes from the numerous springs which trickle out of the granite cliffs of Table Mountain, but there is never a sufficiency to spare for watering roads or grassplots. This scarcity is a double loss to residents and visitors, for one misses it both for use and beauty.

Everybody who comes here rides or drives round the "Kloof." That may be; but what I maintain is that very few do it so delightfully as I did this sunny afternoon with a companion who knew and loved every turn of the romantic road, who could tell me the name of every bush or flower, of every distant stretch of hills, and helped me to make a map in my head of the stretching landscape and curving bay. Ah! how delicious it was, the winding, climbing road, at whose every angle a fresh fair landscape fell away from beneath our feet or a shining stretch of sea, whose transparent green and purple shadows broke in a fringe of feathery spray at the foot of bold, rocky cliffs, or crept up to a smooth expanse of silver sand in a soft curling line of foam! "Kloof" means simply cleft, and is the pass between the Table Mountain and the Lion's Head, The road first rises, rises, rises, until one seems half-way up the great mountain, and the little straight--roofed white houses, the green velts or fields and the parallel lines of the vineyards have sunk below one's feet far, far away. The mountain gains in grandeur as one approaches it, for the undulating spurs which run from it down to the sea-shore take away from the height looking upward. But when these are left beneath, the perpendicular Walls of granite, rising sheer and straight up to the bold sky-line, and the rugged, massive strength of the buttress-like cliffs, begin to gain something of their true value to the stranger's eye. The most beautiful part of the road, however, to my taste, is the descent, when the shining expanse of Camp's Bay lies shimmering in the warm afternoon haze with a thousand lights and shadows from cloud and cliff touching and passing over the crisp water-surface. By many a steep zigzag we round the Lion's Head, and drop once more on a level road running parallel to the sea-shore, and so home in the balmy and yet bracing twilight. The midday sun is hot and scorching even at this time of year, but it is always cool in the shade, and no sooner do the afternoon shadows grow to any length than the air freshens into sharpness, and by sundown one is glad of a good warm shawl.

OCTOBER 18.

Another bright, ideal day, and the morning passed in a delicious flower-filled room looking over old books and records and listening to odd, quaint little scraps from the old Dutch records. But directly after luncheon (and how hungry we all are, and how delicious everything tastes on shore!) the open break with four capital horses comes to the door, and we start for a long, lovely drive. Half a mile or so takes us out on a flat red road with Table Mountain rising straight up before it, but on the left stretches away a most enchanting panorama. It is all so soft in coloring and tone, distinct and yet not hard, and exquisitely beautiful!

The Blue-Berg range of mountains stretch beyond the great bay, which, unless a "sou'-easter" is tearing over it, lies glowing in tranquil richness. This afternoon it is colored like an Italian lake. Here are lines of chrysoprase, green-fringed, white with little waves, and beyond lie dark, translucent, purple depths, which change with every passing cloud. Beyond these amethystic shoals again stretches the deep blue water, and again beyond, and bluer still, rise the five ranges of "Hottentots' Holland," which encircle and complete the landscape, bringing the eye round again to the nearer cliffs of the Devil's Peak. When the Dutch came here some two hundred years ago, they seized upon this part of the coast and called it Holland, driving the Hottentots beyond the neighboring range and telling them that was to be their Holland--a name it keeps to this day. Their consciences must have troubled them after this arbitrary division of the soil, for up the highest accessible spurs of their own mountain they took the trouble to build several queer little square houses called "block-houses," from which they could keep a sharp look-out for foes coming over the hills from Hottentots' Holland. The foes never came, however, and the roofs and walls of the block-houses have gradually tumbled in, and the gun-carriages--for they managed to drag heavy ordnance up the steep hill-side--have rotted away, whilst the old-fashioned cannon lie, grim and rusty, amid a tangled profusion of wild geranium, heath and lilies, I scrambled up to one of the nearest block-houses, and found the date on the dismounted gun to be more than a hundred years old. The view was beautiful and the air fresh and fragrant with scent of flowers.

But to return to our drive. I could gaze and gaze for ever at this lovely panorama, but am told this is the ugliest part of the road. The road itself is certainly not pretty just here, and is cloudy with a fine red dust, but this view of sea and distant hills is enchanting. Soon we get under the lee of the great mountain, and then its sheltering arms show their protective power; for splendid oak avenues begin to border the road all the way, and miniature forests of straight-stemmed pines and shimmering belts of the ghostly silver tree run up all the mountain-clefts. Stem and leaf of the silver tree are all of purest white; and when one gets a gleam of sunlight on a distant patch of these trees, the effect is quite indescribable, contrasting, as they do, with green of field and vineyard. The vines all about here and towards Constantia, thirteen miles off, are dwarf-plants, and only grow to the height of gooseberry-bushes. It is a particular species, which is found to answer best as requiring less labor to train and cultivate, and is less likely to be blown out of the ground by the violent "sou'-easters" which come sweeping over the mountain. These gales are evidently the greatest annoyance which Cape Colonists have to endure; and although everybody kindly suggests that I _ought_ to see one, just to understand what it is like, I am profoundly thankful that I only know it from their description and my own distinct recollection of the New Zealand "nor'-westers." Those were hot winds, scorching and curling up everything, whereas this is rather a cold breeze, although it blows chiefly in summer. It whirls along clouds of dust from the red clay roads and fields which penetrates and clings to everything in the most extraordinary manner. All along the road the stems and lower branches of the trees are dyed a deep brick-dust color, and I hear moving and pathetic stories of how it ruins clothes, not only utterly spoiling black silk dresses, but staining white petticoats and children's frocks and pinafores with a border of color exactly like the ruddle with which sheep are branded. Especially is it the terror of sailors, rendering the navigation along the coast dangerous and difficult; for it blends land and water into one indistinct whirl of vaporous cloud, confusing and blurring everything until one cannot distinguish shore from sea.

The vineyards of Constantia originally took their pretty name from the fair daughter of one of the early Dutch governors, but now it has grown into a generic word, and you see "Cloete's Constantia," "Von Reybeck Constantia," written upon great stone gateways leading by long avenues into the various vine-growing plantations. It was to the former of these constantias, which was also the farthest off, that we were bound that pleasant summer afternoon, and from the time we got out of the carriage until the moment we re-entered it--all too soon, but it is a long drive back in the short cold twilight--I felt as though I had stepped through a magic portal into the scene of one of Washington Irving's stories. It was all so simple and homely, so quaint and so inexpressibly picturesque. The house had stood there for a couple of hundred years, and looks as though it might last for ever, with its air of cool, leisurely repose and comfort and strength.

In the flagged hall stands a huge stalactite some ten feet high, brought a hundred years ago from caves far away in the distant ranges. It is shaped something like a Malay's hat, only the peak tapers to a point about eight feet high. The drawing-room--though it seems a profanation to call that venerable stately room by so flippant and modern a name--is large, ceiled with great beams of cedar, and lighted by lofty windows, which must contain many scores of small panes of glass. There were treasures of rarest old china and delfware, and curious old carved stands for fragile dishes. A wealth of swinging-baskets of flowers and ferns and bright girl-faces lighted up the solemn, shady old room, in which we must not linger, for there is much to see outside. First to the cellar, as it is called, though it is far from being under ground, and is, in fact, a spacious stone building with an elaborately-carved pediment. Here are rows and rows of giant casks, stretching on either hand into avenues in the black distance, but these are mere children in the nursery, compared to those we are going to see. First we must pause in a middle room full of quaintest odds and ends--crossbows, long whips of hippopotamus hide, strange rusty old swords and firearms--to look at a map of South Africa drawn somewhere about 1640. It hangs on the wall and is hardly to be touched, for the paint and varnish crack and peel off at a breath. It is a marvel of accurate geographical knowledge, and is far better filled in than the maps of yesterday. All poor Livingstone's great geographical discoveries are marked on it as being--perhaps only from description--known or guessed at all that long time ago. It was found impossible to photograph it on account of the dark shade which age has laid over the original yellow varnish, but a careful tracing has been made and, I believe, sent home to the Geographical Society. It is in the long corridor beyond this that the "stuck-vats" live--puncheons which hold easily some thousand gallons or so, and are of a solemn rotundity calculated to strike awe into the beholder's heart. Here is white constantia, red constantia, young constantia, middle-aged constantia, and constantia so old as to be a liqueur almost beyond price. When it has been kept all these years, the sweetness by which it is distinguished becomes so absorbed and blended as to be hardly perceptible.

Presently one of the party throws a door suddenly open, and, behold, we are standing right over a wild wooded glen with a streamlet running through it, and black washerwomen beating heaps of white clothes on the strips of shingle. Turtle-doves are cooing, and one might almost fancy one was back again on the wild Scotch west coast, until some one else says calmly, "Look at the ostriches!" Here they come, with a sort of dancing step, twisting their long necks and snake-like heads from side to side in search of a tempting pebble or trifle of hardware. Their wings are slightly raised, and the long fringe of white feathers rustles softly as they trot easily and gracefully past us. They are young male birds, and in a few months more their plumage, which now resembles that of a turkey-cock, will be jet black, except the wing-feathers. A few drops of rain are falling, so we hurry back to where the carriage is standing under some splendid oak trees, swallow a sort of stirrup-cup of delicious hot tea, and so home again as fast as we can go.

OCTOBER 19.

It is decided that I must take a drive in a Cape cart; so directly after breakfast a smart workman-like-looking vehicle, drawn by a pair of well-bred iron-gray cobs, dashes up under the portico. There are capital horses here, but they fetch a good price, and such a pair as these would easily find purchasers at one hundred and fifty pounds. The cart itself is very trim and smart, with a framework sort of head, which falls back at pleasure, and it holds four people easily. It is a capital vehicle, light and strong and uncommonly comfortable, but I am warned not to imagine that all Cape carts are as easy as this one. Away we go at a fine pace through the delicious sparkling morning sunshine and crisp air, soon turning off the red high-road into a sandy, marshy flat with a sort of brackish back-water standing in pools here and there. We are going to call on Langalibalele, and his son, Malambuli, who are located at Uitvlugt on the Cape downs, about four miles from the town. It is a sort of farm-residence; and considering that the chief has hitherto lived in a reed hut, he is not badly off, for he has plenty of room out of doors as well as a good house over his head. We bump over some strange and rough bits of sandy road and climb up and down steep banks in a manner seldom done on wheels. There is a wealth of lovely flowers blooming around, but I can't help fixing my eyes on the pole of the cart, which is sometimes sticking straight up in the air, its silver hook shining merrily in the sun, or else it has disappeared altogether, and I can only see the horses' haunches. That is when we are going _down_ hill, and I think it is a more terrible sensation than when we are playfully scrambling up some sandy hillock as a cat might.

Here is the location at last, thank Heaven! and there is Langalibalele sitting in the verandah stoep (pronounced "stoup") on his haunches on a brick. He looks as comfortable as if he were in an arm-chair, but it must be a difficult thing to do if you think seriously of it. The etiquette seems to be to take no notice of him as we pass into the parlor, where we present our pass and the people in authority satisfy themselves that we are quite in rule. Then the old chief walks quietly in, takes off his soft felt hat and sits himself down in a Windsor arm-chair with grave deliberation. He is uncommonly ugly; but when one remembers that he is nearly seventy years of age, it is astonishing to see how young he looks. Langalibalele is not a true Kafir at all: he is a Fingor, a half-caste tribe contemptuously christened by the Kafirs "dogs." His wool grows in distinct and separate clumps like hassocks of grass all over his head. He is a large and powerful man and looks the picture of sleek contentment, as well he may. Only one of his sons, a good-natured, fine young man, black as ebony, is with him, and the chief's one expressed grievance is that none of his wives will come to him. In vain he sends commands and entreaties to these dusky ladies to come and share his solitude. They return for answer that "they are working for somebody else;" for, alas! the only reason their presence is desired is that they may cultivate some of the large extent of ground placed at the old chief's disposal. Neither he nor his stalwart son would dream for a moment of touching spade or hoe; but if the ladies of the family could only be made to see their duty, an honest penny might easily be turned by oats or rye. I gave him a large packet of sugar-plums, which he seized with childish delight and hid away exactly like the big monkeys at the Zoo.

By way of a joke, Malambuli pretended to want to take them away, and the chattering and laughing which followed was almost deafening. But by and by a gentleman of the party presented a big parcel of the best tobacco, and the chuckling old chief made over at once all my sweetmeats "jintly" to his son, and proceeded to hide away his new treasure. He was dressed exactly like a dissenting minister, and declared through the interpreter he was perfectly comfortable. The impression here seems to be that he is a restless, intriguing and mischief-making old man, who may consider himself as having come out of the hornets' nest he tried to stir up uncommonly well.

We don't want to bump up and down the sandy plain again, so a lively conversation goes on in Dutch about the road between one of my gentlemen and somebody who looks like a "stuck-vat" upon short legs. The dialogue is fluent and lively, beginning with "Ja, ja!" and ending with "All right!" but it leads to our hitting off the right track exactly, and coming out at a lovely little cottage-villa under the mountain, where we rest and lunch and then stroll about up the hill spurs, through myrtle hedges and shady oak avenues. Then, before the afternoon shadows grow too long, we drive off to "Groote Schuur," the ancient granary of the first settlers, which is now turned into a roomy, comfortable country-house, perfect as a summer residence, and securely sheltered from the "sou'-easters." We approach it through a double avenue of tall Italian pines, and after a little while go out once more for a ramble up some quaint old brick steps, and so through a beautiful glen all fringed and feathered with fresh young fronds of maiden-hair ferns, and masses of hydrangea bushes, which must be beautiful as a poet's dream when they are covered with their great bunches of pale blue blossom. That will not be until Christmas-tide, and, alas! I shall not be here to see, for already my three halcyon days of grace are ended and over, and this very evening we must steam away from a great deal yet unvisited of what is interesting and picturesque, and from friends who three days ago were strangers, but who have made every moment since we landed stand out as a bright and pleasant landmark on life's highway.

ON SANKOTA HEAD.

"Yay, Jim, there ain't no doubt but Sairy Macy's a mighty nice gal, but, thee sees, what I'm a-contendin' fur is that she's tew nice fur thee--that is, not tew nice egzackly, but a leetle tew fine-feathered. No, not that egzackly, nuther; but she's a leetle tew fine in the feelin's, an' I don't b'lieve that in the long run thee an' she'll sort well tugether. Shell git eout o' conceit with thy ways--thee _ain't_ the pootiest-mannered feller a gal ever see--an' thee'll git eout o' conceit with hern. Thee'll think she's a-gittin' stuck up, an' she'll think thee's a-gittin'low-minded. Neow, Jim, my 'dvice is good; an' ef thee'll take it, an' not go on with this thing no furder, thee'll both be glad on it arterwa'ds. 'Spesh'ly 's she ain't very rugged, an' sickly gals had oughter hev rich husbands."

"But, father, Sairy an' me loves o' 'nother."

"Oh, wal, then it's tew late ter say nothin'," said the old man with a mingled sigh and smile as, raising his basket of quahaugs to his shoulder, he walked off, pressing his bare feet into the yielding sand with the firm but clumsy tread of vigorous old age. The rough hat of plaited straw was pushed back from a brow that with a cultivated nature would have been considered as evidence of considerable intellectual power, but, as it was, only showed the probable truth of the opinion of his neighbors, that "Stephen Starbuck was a shrewd, common-sense ole feller."

Jim was of a little finer grade than his father, having inherited some of the traits of his gentle mother, but the young Hercules could by no means have been mistaken for an Apollo; neither did his somewhat heavy features bear the expression of unselfish loyalty which would have given better promise than any mere refinement of features or manner for the future happiness of Sarah Macy. But she found nothing wanting in her lover as she stood on the cliff-head gazing down upon him. Sarah knew that the man she loved was not considered her equal, but because she loved him she believed him capable of becoming all that she or others could desire. There is in the world no faith so absolute as that of a woman in the possibilities of the man she loves. Had Sarah read of Sir Galahad--but this was in 1779, and the fame of the search for the Holy Grail had not reached the popular ear--she would have said to herself, "My Jim is just so pure and holy." Had "her Jim" been a Royalist during the English Revolution, Prince Rupert's laurels would not have been unshared. Had Jim been a Puritan--though the little Quaker maiden did not love Puritans over well, and did not fancy her Jim as fighting on that side--England's Protector would not have borne the name of Cromwell. Or if Jim were not one of the peace-loving Friends, and would enlist in the present struggle for liberty, the fame of Commodore James Starbuck should soon eclipse that of Paul Jones.

Not for the world would Sarah have given voice to the heretical desire, but in her inmost heart was even now a wish that her dear Jim held religious opinions that would not interfere with his showing to the country how talented, noble and valiant he was; while the fair-haired, sunburnt, indolent young Hercules idly gazing out to sea was fired with no higher ambition for himself than to be able soon to erect on the Head another small house like that of his father, to which he might bring "the sweet little girl who loved him, so much." For Sarah had committed the common mistake of loving women, and had let Jim see how dear he was to her. So now, instead of dwelling on his love for her and scheming how he might be worthy of her heart, he was fully satisfied with himself, and inclined to grumble at Fortune for not at once bestowing the trifle he asked at her hands.

"Jim, how long's thee goin' ter stan' there? If the water _is_ pretty, thee can see it any day, so 't ain't worth while to look at it all day ter a time."

As, the sweet tones floated down the cliff Jim turned lazily to smile up at the speaker, and, raising his heavy basket of quahaugs, came leisurely up the steep sand-path, which seemed to shrink from his weight at every step: "Wal', Sairy, I wa'n't a-thinkin' much o' the water: I was a-thinkin' o' thee, an' o' what fayther said a little spell ago."

"What was that, Jim?" Sarah's tone was a little anxious, for she knew that there was a jealousy among some of the islanders of the facts that her father had brought with him a few heavy articles of "real mahogany furnitur," and that her stepmother had always been able to hire others to do her spinning and weaving, and even to "help her at odd spells with the heft o' the housework."

"Oh, nothin'," replied Jim, passing his free arm carelessly round the girl's waist--"othin', undly th' old story 'beout heow we'd best not merry, 'cause by'm-by thee'll git ter feelin' better nor me."

"But thee don't believe him, Jim? Thee knows better. Thee knows," adding this with the sweet and sincere but often sadly mistaken humility of love--"thee knows thou art better than me. Thou art so grand and so noble! If folks only knew thee better they would wonder at thee fur puttin' up wi' me. I wish I could make thee a better wife. But, Jim, if I ain't very strong, I'm pretty good at contrivin', an' I don't believe but what I can manage so's to git along a'most as well as them that's tougher."

"Git along? O' course thee'll git along," answered Jim patronizingly. "I telled mother th'other day that I didn't cafe ef thee wa'n't 's strong as Mary Allen: thee was a good deal smarter, an' I'd be willin' tu resk but what I'd hev as little waitin' on ter dew fur thee 's fur her. Besides"--and here a gleam of real if shallow affection sprang from Jim's eyes as he looked down at the loving creature by his side--"besides, I'd _like_ to take care o' thee, Sairy--I would indeed."

It is said that the sky has no color of its own--that the deep blue we think so beautiful is only owing to the atmosphere through which we view it. To Sarah this very slight expression of her lover's care for her bore more weight than the most passionate protestations of affection could have done to a colder nature, for it was colored by the glowing tints of her own warm love; and when the two parted that day she carried with her a sweet, satisfying sense of being beloved by the "best man on the earth" even as she loved him; while he whistled cheerily over his net-mending, thinking "what a sweet little thing it was!" "how pretty its eyes were!" and "how kitten-like its ways!" and only checked his whistling once in a while to wonder whether the day would ever really come when "Sairy would feel herself better than him," and to think it also a little hard that old Thomas Macy was "so sot agin' the match" that he would give his daughter no portion but an outfit of clothes and household linen. "He might jest's well's not," reasoned Jim to himself, "give us a little lift: I guess he would if Sairy's own mother was alive; but them step-mothers never wants to give nothin' ter the fust wives' childern." In which opinion Jim did the second Mrs. Macy much injustice, for it was owing solely to her influence that Sarah's father had consented to provide his daughter with even a new dress in which to be married to "that big, lazy boy o'old Steve Starbuck's."

Meantime, sad, gentle old Mrs. Starbuck had been turning over many things in her mind. She felt her son's defects; she knew that warm-hearted, imaginative Sarah Macy would be doing a foolish thing to marry Jim--as foolish a thing as in her inmost heart she felt, rather than acknowledged, that she herself had done when she married Jim's father. But the mother-heart longed that her son should grow to be what she desired (and what poor Sarah thought he already was), and she hoped much from the elevating influence of so good a wife.

So, as she sat knitting, while Jim and his father sat, hats on heads and pipes in mouths, mending their nets, old Mrs. Starbuck had "made a plan." "Father," said, she at last, "I've be'n thinkin'--"

"Yay," replied the old man gruffly but not unkindly--"yay, I 'spect so. Thee's pooty nigh allus a-thinkin' o' suthin. What is it neow? Eout with it!"

"I've be'n thinkin' that Jim's all the child we've got--"

"Wal, yay. Hain't had no other--not's I knows on. What o' that?"

"Well, I was a-thinkin' that, that bein' so, an' Jim an' Sairy thinkin' so much o' 'nother, it wa'n't o' no use fur them ter keep waitin' along year eout an' year in fur a chance tu keep house by 'emselves. They'd best git married right off an' come an' live along o' us."

"W'y, ole woman!"

"W'y, mother!"

"Yay; I hear both on ye," said the gentle old mother with a half smile. "I s'posed likely ye'd think strange on't at fust; but ye h'ain't no need ter, fur it's a sens'ble thing ter dew, an' yell see't so when ye've thought on't a spell: see if ye don't."

So well was the proposal liked that very soon the simple ceremony of the Friends made James and Sarah husband and wife; and for a while all seemed happiness in the humble cottage on the cliff--cottage so humble that it scarcely deserved even that lowly name.

Sarah Macy's father owned one of the largest dwellings on Nantucket--a two-story "double house" with two rooms on each side of a broad hall running through the house from front to rear. On one side of this hall was the "best bedroom," ghostly with tightly-closed white shutters and long white dimity curtains to the "four-poster" and shining white sanded floor, and the "best-room," terrible in its grandeur of cold white walls, straight hard sofa, "spider-legged" table, grenadier-like chairs and striped woolen carpet underlaid with straw. In the rear, on the other side of the hall, was the kitchen with its big brick oven, its yawning fireplace overhung with corpulent iron pots or shining copper kettles depending from numerous gallows-like cranes; with its glittering copper, brass and pewter utensils arrayed on snowy-shelves; with its spotless tables, Its freshly-sanded floor and its heavily-beamed, whitewashed ceiling, from which hung many a bunch of savory herbs or string of red pepper-pods or bunch of seed-corn, or perhaps even a round-backed ham, to get a little browner in the smoke that would sometimes pour out from the half-ignited mass of peat. In front of the kitchen was the "living-room," in one corner of which stood a carved high-post bedstead--glory of the Macys and envy of their neighbors--with its curtains of big figured chintz, brown sunflowers sprawling over a white ground, drawn aside in the daytime to display the marvelous patchwork of the quilt beneath. Fuel was scarce even then on the sandy isle; and economy compelled Mr. and Mrs. Macy to make use of this living-room as a bedchamber also, since Thomas Macy confessed to "bein rather tender," and to liking a warm room to sleep In, though his neighbors often insinuated that he was killing himself by the Indulgence. And indeed the heat must have been stifling when we consider the size of the fireplace, nine feet wide by four deep, with a yawning throat, through which the rain poured freely down on stormy nights, putting out the best arranged mass of coals, ashes and peat, and, in spite of the little gutter purposely made round the broad brick hearth, sometimes overflowing and drenching a portion of the neat rag carpet, in which, with true Quaker consistency, no gay-colored fragment had been allowed a place.

In striking contrast to all this magnificence was the lowly home to which James Starbuck brought his happy bride. This little house was "double" also--that Is, it was entered in the centre by a small square passage just big enough for the outer door to swing in. On one side of this entry was a tiny parlor, as dismal as rag carpet, fireless hearth, dingy paper and dark-green paper shades to the small windows could make it. On the other side of the entry was the tiny and cold bedroom of the senior Starbucks. In the centre of the house rose a massive chimney, big enough to retain all the heat from a dozen fires. Across the rear of parlor, chimney and bedroom ran the long, low sunshiny kitchen. At one end of this certain ladder-like stairs conducted to the loft, which had served Jim for a "roosting-place" ever since he had grown big enough to be trusted o' nights so far away from his mother. On Sarah's advent into the family the dismal "best-room" was made habitable by the addition of a "four-poster"--which Mrs. Starbuck senior regretted was only of cherry-wood and not carved--and by sundry little feminine contrivances of Sarah's own.

I said that for a time all seemed to go on happily in this humble home. And the seeming would have been reality had Jim possessed the faith in his wife which she had in him. True, he loved and believed in her after his fashion, and his mother was a strong ally on his wife's side; but Jim had one fatal weakness of character. He resented the slightest look that was anything but simple admiration on the part of his wife. A strong nature is not afraid of censure, but a weak one, pleading sensitiveness, is easily roused to small retaliations, repaying what is good in intention with what is evil. Jim, as his father had truly told him, was "not the pootiest-mannered feller a gal ever see," and in the daily home-life this became apparent to Sarah as it had never been in all the years they had been near neighbors. Naturally, she wished her husband to be pleasing to her father, and at last ventured to hint, as delicately as she could, at various little points in which improvements might be made. At first Jim did not seem very restless under such reproofs, given, as they were, with many a loving kiss and winsome look; but as months went on his wife's caresses were more carelessly received, and her hinted corrections with more of resentment. One evening stately old Thomas Macy had "happened in," and Jim had greatly grieved his wife by his curt, uncivil manner to her father. After he had gone Sarah spoke in a low tone and kindly as always, but with more spirit than she had ever before manifested or felt, of her husband's disrespectful ways to the aged.

For a moment after his wife had ceased, Jim sat with his hat pulled closely over his eyes, fiercely biting into the apple he was eating--biting and throwing the bits into the glowing mass of peat on the hearth. Then he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "I see! It's all come true, what ev'rybody said. Thee thinks thee an' thy folks is better'n me an' my folks, an' keeps all the time a-naggin' on me. I wish I'd merried Mary Allen! I won't stan' no more o' this talk. If I ain't to be maaster o' my own house I won't stay in't." (The house was his father's, but angry men never think of such trifles.) And waxing pitiful of himself, he continued in a broken and injured tone, "The bed o' the sea's the bes' place fur a man whose own wife's got tew big feelin' ter put up wi' his ways."

With this dignified burst of eloquence the angry fellow flung himself out of the house, letting in at the door as he went a dash of cold, sleety rain and a gust of wind that put out the flickering tallow dip that was enabling Sarah to take the last stitches in the tiny white slip that now fell from her fingers. Too sorely wounded for resentment, too fond of her husband to wish even his parents to see him in the light in which he was now revealed to her, Sarah silently stooped to recover her work, and as she did so her hand was met under the table by a sympathizing pressure from that of her mother-in-law. This was too much, and, laying her head in the elder woman's lap, poor Sarah wept without restraint; while the mother sorrowfully and tenderly stroked her soft brown tresses. The father, quietly puffing at his pipe, seemed to take no notice, only now and then glancing with kindly eye covertly from under his hat-brim at the two grieving women.

Silently, but for the roaring of the wind and surf and fitful dashing of the rain, the hours passed on till the high clock in the kitchen corner sharply struck eleven. This was a late hour for those times, and a faint fear began to come upon them all. Could it be that Jim had really meant what he said? "Had he--" And the two women looked blankly at each other. Not a word had been uttered, but each felt the other's dread.

The father rose and said with a well-affected yawn, "Guess likely Jim's went deown ter Uncle Will'amses, an' they thought as 't's so stormy he'd bes' not come back. So guess I'll jest go eout ter the shed and git some more peat, fur ter keep the fire."

Thus leaving the mother and wife partially reassured, the old father slipped out and down the track, cut deeply in the sand by the one-horse carts, to "Uncle Will'amses," as fast as the storm would permit. But no Jim had been seen there; and still more anxiously the stout old man fought his way back against winds that seemed strong" enough to blow him like a feather over the cliff's edge, and against the spray which shot up from the beach below, smitten by the sounding surf, clear over the high top of Sankota Head.

Reaching his door during a brief lull in the wind, he heard faintly but distinctly the booming of guns fired by a ship in distress. "It mus' be some vessil on the shoals, an' mos' likely Jim's heard her an' got some o' th' other boys, an' 's went off in 's boat ter help her. Poor soul!" With this comforting reflection the father cheered the watchers inside, who had grown fearfully anxious, as the clock had long ago struck for midnight.

"We mus' build a fire on the Head ter light 'em," said the old man. "There hed oughter be a light'us here, but 's there ain't none, we mus' dew the bes' we kin,"

So saying, he harnessed the horse--almost as old as himself--and with the aid of the two women loaded the sled with dry wood and started with it to the cliff, while the mother and daughter followed behind as best they might, struggling to keep alive without being set on fire by the coals in the iron pot which they carried between them. It was a weary half mile, wind, spray and rain all contending against the feeble folk who had come out to help back to land and home the brave fellows who had gone to succor the distressed. They made all the more sure that this was the case, because Jim's new boat, the pride and joy of his life, was not to be found at the spot where he had only that day drawn, it high above the reach of even such a storm as this, ready for building over it on the morrow its winter house of pine-boughs and turf.

At last a fire was kindled; and leaving the women to watch it, old Stephen took several weary trips back to the cottage after fuel, making serious inroads upon a stock at the best not too large to meet the demands of the coming winter. The flame, fanned by the blast even more than dashed by the spray and rain, sprang upward, casting its ruddy lances of light backward over the sandy downs, destitute even then of tree or shrub to break the force of the gale, and forward over the frothing white tops and deep, black troughs of waves that seemed to the excited eyes of the watching women like so many separate fiends leaping upward and stretching out white hands to clutch helpless victims and hurry them to the hell beneath. And all the while the surf thundered at the foot of the trembling cliff. No form could be discovered through the darkness beyond the near neighborhood of the shore; and but for the flash of the gun, which was seen continually, though its sound was but seldom heard above the surf and the wind, the watchers would have thought there was no ship near.

By and by the rain ceased, but there was no moon, and impenetrable wind-clouds still hid the stars. Out through the blackness of the night the flame-light quivered in long, bright streams over the endless lines of ever-advancing waves, but revealed to the watchers no ship, no boat, no tokens even of wreck, only the ceaseless reaching upward of the beckoning white hands; and the wind bore no sound, save at intervals the dull distant boom of the cannon. But ever the solemn surf thundered on the beach below, and the sand-cliff trembled and crumbled beneath its resounding blows.

The old man, who, with a seaman's owl-like eyesight, kneeled intently gazing out through the darkness in the direction of the flash, suddenly exclaimed, "I don't un'erstan' it! That air ship hadn't oughter be in 'stress off where she is. She ain't on no shoal, nor nothin'. She's jest a-lyin' tew. An' I don't see no signs o' no boats nuther; an's fur's I kin see, them folks is a firin' off that air gun jest fur the musicalness on't. Blast 'em! Come, gals: we mought as well be walkin' along hum as ter stop a-yawpin' here in the wind an' spray, a-burnin' up the winter's kindlin' fur folks 'at's a-foolin' on us. 'Spesh'ly as I think she's a Britisher. Blast her!"

The old Quaker was not accustomed to use strong language of any sort, but evidently the human nature in him was so powerful in this instance that he could not help indulging in the most emphatic admissible invective.

But the mother and wife were not so easily satisfied. In their eyes the strange ship and all on board her were not of as much consequence as the unworthy missing Jim, whose fate they associated with it. Jim's boat, they said, was gone. No one could have taken her but Jim himself. He would never have put out on such a night as this save to go to the help of the distressed ship; and if he was on the water, the light burning on Sankota Head would guide him safely back. So, in the midst of spray and wind, the three kneeled on the cliff and kept the blaze alight till the rising dawn made it useless, when, to the dismay of the watchers, the ship hoisted sail and bore away. She showed no colors, but the old islander, once a whaler, declared that she was a British man-o'-war.

But where was Jim? The unanswering surf still boomed at the foot of the cliff, though the height of the waves was rapidly diminishing, and the water was gradually assuming the peculiarly bland expression that often comes after a storm, reminding one of the cat that has "eaten the canary," but there was no sign of incoming boat or men.

Chilled to the bone with the wind and cold sea-spray of the November night, and to the heart with sorrow and disappointment, the three returned to the lonely house. Running to meet them came Mary Allen, breathlessly crying, "Where's Eben and Jim?"

Poor Sarah could not answer, but the brave old mother, a veteran in sorrows, replied with trembling lips, "We don't know anythin' o' thy brother, Mary; an' Jim hain't b'en hum sence las' night. His boat's gone, an' we thought he might ha' went out to help the ship that was a-firin' all night. But she's sailed off this mornin' all right; an' father, he says she was a Britisher an' undly a-firin' ter fool us folks. So I don't know nothin' about it," uttering the last words in a drearily hopeless tone that gave them exceeding pathos.

For a moment Mary stood in dismay; then she cried wildly, "Oh, they're drowned, they're drowned! Jim come deown ter eour heouse las' night a-sayin' he'd heard the firin' o' a ship in 'stress, an' askin' Eb ter go with him an' help him git his boat eout, an' telled me ter run along deown to Zack Tumnaydoo's An' ax Zack an' Ellery ter go with 'em. An' I did, an' that's the las' anybody's seen o' any one on 'em. Oh dear! oh dear!" And wringing her hands, the sobbing girl ran back as quickly as she had come to impart to her mother and sisters the full extent of her evil tidings.

The cold, sad, desolate weeks and months that now rolled slowly on are to this day remembered on Nantucket as those of the "hard winter." Provisions were scarce, fuel was difficult to obtain, the harbor was frozen over, so that few fish could be taken there, and all communication with "the main" was cut off by British cruisers. In January the cherished old horse was killed because there was no longer hay to feed him, and even oats were "too precious to be fed to dumb beasts." In February the stalwart old Stephen lay grimly down to die, saying pityingly, "It's time, gals: I can't dew ye no more good by stayin'; an' I'm so tired."

The day succeeding the silent funeral, where two women had dropped the few tears that were left them to shed, good old Thomas Macy came and took his daughter and her mother to his own home. And in windy, still frozen March the wail of a tiny baby was heard in the house.

Under all the trouble the two brave women made no moan. Silently clinging together, never losing sight of each other for more than a few moments at a time, they yet said nothing of their greatest grief, that Jim should have disappeared with such unworthy words on his lips and thoughts in his heart, until, a few days after the baby's birth, Sarah said to her mother, "I know he's not dead. If he'd ha' died, he'd ha' come back and told me he was sorry. Fur I dew think he'd be sorry. Don't thee, mother?" And the mother nodded assent and smiled through her tears.

But, in truth, they had a more substantial reason than poor Sarah's wistful fancy for thinking that Jim was living. When the ice broke up, his boat was found in a little cove, where it had floated right-side up, without any serious injury except the carrying away of the sails. Of course this discovery roused new hopes in the homes of the missing men. It did not "stand to reason" that four big strong, temperate young fellows, brought up to the hardy, amphibious island-life, had all fallen overboard, any more than it "stood to sense" that the boat had upset and then righted of itself. Besides, "none of the boy's corpuses had ever floated up." So the Tucketers took courage and felt sure that, whatever had become of the missing men, they were not drowned.

But still the slow months came and went, till the summer and autumn and another winter had passed by; and patient old Rachel Starbuck grew daily a little quieter and a little grayer; and the brave young wife grew a little stronger to bear, but not a whit less loving or prone to suffer, and stately old Thomas Macy grew daily more gentle and pitying in his ways as he looked long at the winsome face of the happy, wee grandchild, that throve and crowed and tried to utter sweet little hesitating words as gayly as if the world had never a sin, a sorrow or a weakness in it.

One day Sarah and her mother had carried the baby down to the small cottage at the back of the cliff, whither they went to attend to some little household matter; for, although they did not mention the subject, even to themselves, they still kept all there in readiness against Jim's coming home. Here, in the soft May sunshine, the red-frocked baby was sitting on the green turf step, playing with some "daffies," first of the season, which Sarah had plucked from the little garden in the rear. The mother and daughter were in the house, when both were alarmed by a scream from the usually merry child. A man had it closely clasped in his arms, kissing it and calling it between half-choked sobs his "own pretty, pretty baby." The man was thin, pock-marked, bald, and clad in a ragged uniform of a British sailor, but to the faithful, longing eyes of mother and wife there was no mistaking their Jim.

It was long ere the story could be told, but at last they learned that on that sad November night Jim and his companions had gone out to the relief of the signaling ship. She was, as old Stephen had conjectured, a British man-o'-war. Being short of hands, and having on board as pilot a renegade native of the island, who knew where a ship could "lay-to" in safety, she had taken advantage of the storm to attract strong men within the range of her guns, then to command them to surrender, and thus to impress them into "His Majesty's service" as "able seamen."

For a long time Jim had managed to keep alive his resentful feelings toward his wife, accusing of being the source of all his misfortunes the poor little woman who was loving and longing so sincerely for him. But when illness came he could hold out no longer. "I made up my mind then," said he, "that if ever I got hum agin, I'd go deown on my knees an' ax pardin' o' my Sairy."

But she had never been angry, and was now only too thankful that Jim and his friends had escaped safely.

"Ah!" said Jim in telling his adventures, "we hed a clus run on 't, Sairy, but thee'd better believe that air British navy's a fust-rate place fur larnin' a feller ter know when he's well off. An' Sairy, when I longed so fur thee an' mother, an' thought o' what a wretch I was to speak so ter the dearest little woman in the world, I c'u'd see that I hadn't knowed when I was well off."

Jim's was not an unselfish kind of repentance, but it was the best it was in his nature to offer, and Sarah had long ago learned that her Jim was not the saint and hero she had once dreamed, but only a weak and common-place man; and she asked for nothing higher from him. To his best she had a right, and with that she was content, smiling on her husband with eyes full of a love as tender and true as when in the old days she had gazed down upon her lover from the cliff-head, while the mother laid her hand softly on his scanty hair, and said solemnly, "May God keep thee thus, my son!" adding, after a moment's pause, "But I wish thy fayther was here to see." And a tender silence for the memory of the rough but kindly-natured old man fell over them all; while the baby, reconciled to the stranger, poked her little fingers in the marks on his face, and cried because she could not get them off.

ETHEL C. GALE.

AT THE OLD PLANTATION.

TWO PAPERS.--II.

The eastern sky is just beginning to assume that strange neutral tint which tells of the approaching dawn when we open the heavy hall door and step out into the crisp, frosty air. No moonlight hunting for me, with the cold, deceitful light making phantom pools of every white sand-patch in the road, and ghostly logs and boulders of every wavering shadow. You are always gathering up your reins for leaps over imaginary fence-panels, which your horse goes through like a nightmare, and always unprepared for the real ones, which he clears when you are least expecting it. If the cry bears down on you, and you rein up for a view, the fox is sure to dodge by invisibly under cover of some dark little bay, and you get home too late for a morning nap and too early for the breakfast, which you have been longing after for the last two hours. Then, too, your horse has lost his night's rest, and will be jaded for two days in consequence. No: the time to throw the dogs off for a fox-hunt is that weird hour which the negroes significantly call "gray-day:" it is the surest time to strike a trail, and by the time Reynard begins to dodge and double there will be plenty of light to ride by and to get a good view. If the fox gets away or the cover is drawn without a find, you are always sure of having your spirits raised by the cheerful sunrise: by the time you get home, tired and spattered, the ladies are down stairs ready to make pretty exclamations over the brush or to chaff you pleasantly for your want of success; and then there is just time to get your hair brushed and your clothes changed before the mingled aromas of fried sausage and old Java put the keen edge on your already whetted appetite.

A ride across country after a rattling pack of English hounds on a thoroughbred hunter with a field of red-coated squires is an experience which few hunters on this side of the water have ever enjoyed, but with the incidents of which every reader of English novels is familiar. The chase of the red fox in Maryland or Virginia has some features in common with the British national sport, but that of the gray fox in the more southern States differs materially from both. The latter animal is smaller and possessed of less speed and endurance than his more northern brother, but he is far more common and quite as cunning. He makes shorter runs, but over very different ground, always keeping in the woods and dodging about like a rabbit, so that a different style of horse and a different method of riding are required for his capture. There is no risk of breaking your neck over a five-barred gate or a stone wall, but you may be hung in a grapevine, or knocked out of the saddle by a low limb, or have your knee scraped against a tree-trunk. It is true you may catch your fox in twenty minutes, and three hours is an extraordinary run, but then you may catch four or five between daylight and ten o'clock of an autumn morning.

The horses stretch their necks toward the stables and whinny as they think of the bundles of untasted fodder: the dogs require no notes of the horn to rouse them, for they know the signs and are already capering about in eager merriment, throwing their heads into the air occasionally to utter a long and musical bay. This wakes up the curs about the negro-yard, and their barking stirs up the geese, the combined chorus rousing all the cocks in the various poultry-houses, so that we ride off amid a hub-bub of howling, cackling, neighing and crowing which would awaken the Seven Sleepers. We are first at the meet, and the old woods ring with the mellow, winding notes of our horns--no twanging brass reeds in the mouth-pieces, but honest cow-horn bugles, which none but a true hunter can blow. The hounds grow wild at the cheering sound, and howl through every note of the canine gamut; the echoes catch the strain and fling it from brake to bay; the dying cadence strengthens into an answering blast, and the party is soon increased to half a dozen bold riders and twenty eager dogs. Venus, the beautiful "flag-star of heaven," is just toning her brilliancy into harmony with the pale light which creeps slowly up from the eastern horizon, and some wakeful crow in the pine-thicket gives an answering caw to the goblin laugh of the barred owl in the cypress, as we leap our horses into a field of sedge and cheer on the dogs to their work. For half an hour we ride in silence save the words of encouragement to the hounds, which are snuffing about unsuccessfully and whipping the hoar-frost with their tails from the dry yellow stems of the grass. Now and then some eager young dog opens on the trail of a rabbit which has started from its form, but the crack of a whip restrains him, and the other hounds pay no attention to him. Suddenly a sharp, quick yelp comes from the farthest corner of the field, and the older dogs stop instantly and raise their heads to listen. Hark to old Blucher! There he is again, and the whole pack give tongue and dash off to the call which never deceives them. We catch a glimpse of the old fellow's white throat as he trots about in a zigzag course, poking his tan muzzle into every clump of tall grass and giving tongue occasionally as he sniffs the cold trail. Presently a long, quavering cry comes from old Firefly; again and again Blucher opens more and more eagerly; another and another dog takes it up, and the trot quickens into a lope. The trail grows warmer as they follow the line of fence, and just as we settle ourselves in the saddle for a run it all stops and the dogs are at fault. But Blucher is hard to puzzle and knows every trick of his cunning game. Running a few panels down the fence, he rears up on it and snuffs the top rail, and then, with a yell of triumph, dashes over it into the woods, with the whole pack in full cry at his heels. A ringing cheer announces that the fox has "jumped," and the field scatters in pursuit. Two only, the subscriber being one, follow the dogs with a flying leap. Some dash off in search of a low panel, others to head off the cry through the distant gate, while others stop to pull the rails and make a gap. For ten minutes we keep well behind the hounds, with a tight rein and heads bent to avoid the hanging oak limbs. But the fox has turned and plunged into a brake which no horse can go through, and we draw up and listen to decide where we can head him off with the greatest certainty; then turn in different directions and spur through the young black-jacks. Ah! there he goes, with dragging brush and open mouth, and the pack, running close enough together to be covered by a table-cloth, not sixty yards behind him. I am in at the death this time, for he cannot run a hundred yards farther, and the brush is mine, for there's no one else in sight. With a savage burst the dogs dash after him into the thicket and then--dead silence, not a yelp, as they scatter and run backward and forward, nosing under every dead leaf and up the trunk of every tree. The fault is complete, and the young dogs give it up and lie down panting, while the older hounds try every expedient to puzzle out the trail and take up the scent again. He certainly has not treed, there is neither earth nor hollow to hide him, and yet the scent has gone! And it never came back. If any reader can tell what became of that fox, he is a wiser man than I. Certain it is that we never heard of him again; and for aught I know to the contrary, he may have been that identical Japanese animal which turns into tea-kettles and vanishes in puffs of smoke. It does not take long, however, to make another find, and we go home after a three hours' chase with two fine brushes and appetites which would ruin any hotel-keeper in a week.

After breakfast a walk to the cotton-houses would be in order, for the successful planter is he who trusts nothing to the overseer which can have his personal supervision, and he must excuse himself to such of his guests as prefer a cigar by the library fire to an hour spent in observing the details of plantation work. In the days of which I write horse-power was preferred to steam, and negro-power to both; and few planters of the fine black-seed cotton could be convinced that any "power-gin" could be invented which would not injure the long, silky "staple" or fibre of the lint. The old-time "foot-gins" were used exclusively, and the gin-house was a place of curious interest to all visitors. In one end of the long room was the huge pile of seed-cotton which was to pass through the rollers as the first step toward its preparation for the market. How simply does a sudden stroke of inventive genius solve a problem which wise men have regarded as insoluble! Not much more than a century ago a commission of practical English _savans_ discouraged the cultivation of a textile fabric which "might be useful but for the impossibility of clearing it of the seeds!" But the foot-gin appeared on the scene, and indigo went down before cotton. Ranged along the walls of the room are some twenty rough wooden frames, looking like a compromise between a straw-cutter and a sewing-machine, each furnished with two strong rollers operated by a treadle and acting precisely like those of a clothes-wringer. Behind each of these machines stands a man or woman with one ever-moving foot upon the treadle-board, feeding the seed-cotton from a large bag to the greedy rollers, which seize it and pass the lint in fleecy rolls into another bag prepared for it, while the seed, like shirt-buttons touched by the afore-mentioned wringer, rolls off from the hither side to form a pile upon the floor. Thence it will be carted to the seed-house to be rotted into manure for the next crop, there being no better fertilizer for cotton than a compost of which it forms the base. A portion of it, however, will be reserved to be boiled with cow-peas and fed to the milch-cattle, no food being superior to its rich, oily kernel in milk-producing qualities. The negro mothers use it largely in decoction as a substitute for cocoa, and the white mothers under similar circumstances having it parched and ground like coffee, when it makes an exceedingly palatable and nutritious beverage. The "green-seed" or short-staple variety is far inferior to the black for this purpose, and produces white, sticky, cottony-looking butter; indeed, most dairywomen insist that "you can pick the lint out of it." The ginned cotton is carried to the platforms, where it is "specked" by the women--leaves, dirt and other impurities being picked out by hand--and spread out to dry and bleach in the sun; thence we follow it to the "moting-room," where it is thoroughly and finally overhauled, every minute particle of dirt or other foreign matter and every flock of stained and discolored cotton being picked out. This room is always in the second story, and at one end of it a circular hole is cut in the floor; through this hole hangs the bag of strong, close gunny-cloth, very different from the coarse covering which suffices for the lower grades of "short-staple," supported by a stout iron hoop larger by some inches than the hole in the floor, and to which the end of the bag is securely sewed. The cotton is thrown into this bag and packed with an iron rammer by a man who stands in it, his weight assisting in the packing, each bag being made to contain upward of four hundred pounds.

Everything seeming to go on as it ought and all the necessary orders and directions being given, we walk out to take a look at the poultry. There are fowls in abundance and superabundance, but our kind host is most proud of his flock of three hundred white turkeys; and a beautiful sight they are, scattered over the grassy lawn. Ranging, as these fine birds will, over a mile or two of woods abounding in their wild brethren, convenient mistakes were often made by the pineland gunners, whose rifles were always ready to pick off a stray gobbler without waiting to know whether he was wild or tame, and so the old gentleman introduced the white stock to prevent the possibility of such errors. For a similar reason no ducks were raised except those which wear top-knots. It is no unusual thing for wild gobblers and mallards to come up with the tame stock to the poultry-yard, and the bronze feathers and shy habits of many of the young turkeys show evidence of their free parentage.

It is just impossible for a city man to remain indoors in the country with the broad fields, the shady woods, the bright blue sky and the merry pipe of birds calling him out to active exercise and unaccustomed sport. He is sure to think himself a sportsman, even if uncertain whether the shot or powder should first enter the gun; and if an old hand at the trigger, his uneasiness while in the house becomes almost painful. Every article of hunting-gear is overhauled again and again; boots are greased, shot-pouches filled, powder-charges remeasured, guns cleaned and ramrods oiled; and I once had a fine Manton--as sweet a piece as ever came to the shoulder--almost ruined by an eager friend, who, after going through all this during a stormy morning, insisted on taking off the locks and triggers, just to while away the time. The introduction of the breech-loader most happily obviates all this, since such lagging hours may now be occupied in charging and crimping cartridges. But there is nothing to detain us longer to-day: the "Bob Whites" are waiting for us among the pea-vines, and the snipe among the tussocky grass of the old rice-field. Di and Sancho have caught sight of the guns, and are capering about in the wildest excitement, for it is a long time since they have seen anything more "gamey" than a city pigeon. Birding over good dogs is the very poetry of field-sports. The silken-haired setter and the lithe pointer are as far the superiors of the half-savage hound as the Coldstream Guards are of the Comanches. The hound has no affection and but little intelligence, and the qualities which make him valuable are purely those of instinct. The long, hungry cry with which he follows the deer and the sharp, angry yelp which he utters when chasing the fox tell plainly that the motives which prompt him thus to use his delicate nose and unwearying powers of endurance are precisely those which carry the Indian to the hunt or on the war-path. He hunts for any master who will cheer him on, has no tactics but to stick to the trail and give tongue as long as the scent will lie, and must be whipped off the game when caught to prevent his devouring it on the spot. The setter, on the other hand, is intelligent, affectionate and faithful. If properly trained and reared, he loves his master and will hunt for no one else, learns to understand human language to an astonishing degree and exhibits reasoning powers of no mean order. He hunts purely for sport, understands the habits of his game, and regulates his tactics accordingly, and delivers the birds uninjured to his master, sometimes controlling his appetite and carrying the game long distances for this purpose. I have frequently discovered that my dogs, brought up in the house, understood words which had never been taught them. My old favorite Di always answers the dinner-bell and stands near my chair for odd scraps. Being somewhat annoyed one day by her eagerness, I said playfully, "Go to the kitchen and tell Annie to feed you." She at once rushed off and scratched the kitchen door until the girl opened it, and then stood by the tray of scraps looking at her and wagging her tail. Wanting one of my little sons one evening, I said, "Di, go find the boys!" She rushed off, looking and smelling about their usual haunts, but returned unsuccessful. I scolded and sent her a second and third time, with the same result: a few minutes after she came quietly behind me with the _hat_ of my youngest boy in her mouth: she had taken it from a table in the passage, and her wagging tail said plainly, "Will this answer? It's the best I can do." The same dog will creep carefully upon partridges, and stand as if cut in marble lest they should fly, but will chase turkeys at full speed, giving tongue like a hound, and then lie still for hours while they are called up and shot, nor will she ever confound the different habits of the two birds or the different methods of hunting them.

Such are the highly-bred and intelligent animals which are eagerly waiting for us to-day--Di, with her white coat, soft as wavy silk, her chestnut ears and one spot on the back alone marring its snowy purity; Sancho, jet black, with "featherings" like a King Charles spaniel. They are over the fence already, and tearing about the field so recklessly in the exuberance of their joy that they must certainly startle any game which may be there. The timid little field-buntings glide away on silent wing through the grass; the meadow-larks rise with gentle flappings and sail off with that easy flight so tempting to very young wing-shots; now and then a flock of doves whistle off too far for a certain shot, and clouds of crow-blackbirds rise with hoarse chirps and seek less public feeding-grounds; a rabbit dashes off from a brier-patch and both dogs rush pell-mell at his heels, but a single note from the whistle brings them to a sudden halt and makes them look thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Off they go again, as wild as deer; but suddenly Di's whole action changes: crouching to the ground and beating her sides rapidly with her tail, she runs hither and thither, snuffing eagerly in the grass. Now Sancho comes up and catches the cold trail, for a covey has certainly been in that place to-day. Most probably they rose from the spot, frightened by the swoop of a hawk, and made for the nearest cover, for the dogs can do nothing with the scent. But that little whiff of the exciting effluvia has brought them down to their work, and a beautiful sight it is as they quarter the ground with quickly-beating tails and noses high in the air, crossing and recrossing the wind in zigzag lines and concentric circles, hunting the ground so closely that no trail, however cold, can escape their keen sense of smell. A wave of the hand to Sancho, and the sagacious fellow is off toward the far corner of the field, when suddenly Di stops in mid-career with a jerk that must try every sinew in her frame. The birds are right under her nose, and she dares not move a muscle, but stands as if changed into stone, her eyes starting with excitement, her nostrils expanded, her feathery stern quivering stiffly out behind and every line of her figure standing out like whipcord. "Toho!" The black dog catches the sound and turns his head: he sees her rigid form, and backs her where he stands as firmly as if he too had the scent. There is no hurry, for the dogs are true as steel and will stand there as long as the frightened birds lie, while the latter, obedient to the instinct of sudden terror, will cower where they are for an hour, with their heads drawn back, their mottled breasts pressed to the earth and their legs gathered under them, ready to spring into the air. We cock our guns, agree to shoot respectively at the birds which go right or left or straight before us, and then advance to flush the covey ourselves. The staunch dog never winces as we pass her: two paces, three, a sudden rush and whirr as of many wings, five sharp reports in quick succession and four birds down! Another, wild with fright, rises straight up for twenty feet and darts off behind us, but his beautiful head droops as the crack of my last barrel resounds on the air and a cloud of feathers floats downward. The shot has struck him in the line of flight, and he goes to the ground with a bounce, some thirty yards away, as if hurled there by a vigorous arm. The well-trained dogs come to the "Down! charge!" while we reload our guns, and then seek the dead birds and bring them carefully in to us.

Leaving the broken covey to be worked up on our return, we push on to another part of the large pea-field, where, perched upon the topmost limb of a tall dead pine, we see a red-tailed hawk engaged in quiet observation. There is no surer sign of birds, but it takes close hunting to find them, for they dare not move about while their savage enemy is on the watch. As we approach the hawk stretches out his neck, jerks his wings two or three times and oscillates his ungainly body, and then, with a loud scream of angry disappointment, he is off. The tree stands in a little piece of sedge, not far from a dense growth of pine-saplings, and we know that the moment the hawk left his perch the birds started for the cover, and our only chance for shooting is to head them off and turn them. The dogs have struck the running trail, and their action is totally different from what it was with the first covey. Crouching flat to the ground, they glide after the startled birds with a snake-like movement, now stopping, now running swiftly in. Suddenly Di leaves the trail and dashes off at full speed to the right. Making a wide circuit, she skirts the pines, and, turning short round, comes to a firm stand in the very face of the retreating covey, while Sancho lies prone with his nose between his paws. It is an old trick of hers thus to "huddle" running birds, and we follow her example, come up behind her, and get six with four barrels as the birds rise in a bunch.

But if the reader follows us too closely, he will have all the fatigue of a long tramp without the compensation of healthful excitement and full game-pockets. Thirty-five fine birds in a pile on the pantry-table offer a capital _raison d'être_ for weary feet and soiled fingers when we reach home just in time for the supper-bell. There have been some arrivals while we were gone, for Christmas is near at hand, and the old house is filling up with guests. To-morrow the "St. John's Hunting-Club" has its monthly deer-hunt and dinner at Black Oak, and we need a good night's rest to prepare us for an experience the omission of which would render imperfect any truthful reminiscence of life at the old plantation.

During the months spent at the plantation there is little social visiting among the gentlemen, and, except on Sundays and occasions of public meetings, the various local clubs offer their only opportunities for seeing each other, Another object--at least, under the old _régime_--was to bring together those who occupied somewhat different social positions. Formerly the clubs were strictly exclusive, and, indeed, this feature was never lost, but in every community there would be some _novi homines_, clever men many of them, whom the old gentry were quite willing to recognize, though a marked difference in culture prevented family visiting. These could be admitted to membership, and at the club-house could be met on equal terms. The hunting feature was always preserved, though few of the older members ever joined in the sport. Under the rules there was a place, a day and an hour for the weekly meet; and I remember when it was a safe thing to be at "the White Bridge" on the Santee Canal any Saturday morning at nine o'clock. Somebody was sure to be there with dogs and driver, prepared for a "wallet-hunt"--i.e., an all-day hunt with wallets at the crupper well filled with hunter's cheer. Once a month the club met for dinner, each member "finding" in turn, and on that day a single drive, or at most two, was all that could be enjoyed. The club-house was a plain frame building in the woods, with a huge fireplace at each end, heavy stationary pine table extending the length of the room, and broad soft-pine benches. The dishes, wines, liquors and cigars were all specified in the rules, the finder being allowed two extra dishes at will, and supplying all the crockery, cutlery and glass. The kitchen was a rough shed close to the cool and shaded spring of pure, clear water. Being myself but a guest, I have not the privilege of extending an invitation to the reader; so, by his leave, we will drop the present tense and I will assume the part of _raconteur_. How vividly do the scenes of that day come back through the highways of memory, crowded as they are with experiences of more than twenty varied years! As I rode up to the bridge on that bright December morning I found a party which promised rare sport. There was Kit Gillam with his crooked nose, and Tom Clifton with his deadly Manton and fine cry of dogs, and cheery Jack Parker, who hunted only for the good company, and whose gun was as likely as not to be unloaded when the deer came out to him. Two drives were decided on which might be relied on for shooting, and yet were small enough to give ample time for reaching the club-house before dinner.

As we rode toward our stands I thought it a good chance to settle a point which had long excited my curiosity. "Kit," said I, "I have often wondered how your nose got out of plumb. What caused it?"

"When I was a little bit of a boy I fell down and stepped on it."

This very satisfactory explanation brought us to our ground, and we were soon at our respective stands and listening eagerly for the trail-notes of the old hounds. The deer have regular runs, from which they rarely deviate, and which do not vary in the course of years. These are guarded by the standers while the game is driven down from the opposite direction. A large drive may have a dozen of these stands, by one of which the deer will almost certainly pass, but which one nobody knows. Quiet is absolutely necessary and a cigar is fatal to sport, but concealment is useless, as these animals see imperfectly in daylight.

I had not to wait long before I caught the distant cheering and hand-clapping of the drivers as they encouraged the dogs to hunt. In the quiet of the sombre woods every sound was distinctly audible. Suddenly three or four quick, sharp yelps brought my gun to the "ready," and the hammers clicked as a burst of music followed. But above the clamor of the hounds came the crack of the driver's whip, and his voice, mellowed by distance, was heard in angry tones: "Come back yah, you good-for-nuttin', wutless lee' rabbit-dog, you! I sway maussa ha' for shoot da' puppy 'fore he spile ebery dog in de pack!"

Soon, however, came another open, deep and musical, and there was no mistaking old Drummer's trail-note: then Killbuck joined in, and then the cry became general. For a while the broken, quavering tongue tells that the dogs are only trailing and the deer is still cowering in his bed, or perhaps has sneaked out of the drive at the first sound of the horn. Hark! what a burst! They had "started" within two hundred yards of me. The next moment there was a rustle of leaves, and a yearling doe dashed by. I am not a dead shot, and have nothing to say about that first barrel, but the second sent her down and over with a roll that almost broke her neck. The dogs were stopped and the deer thrown over the pommel of one of the boys, and we rode on to try the Brunswick swamp. The boy had assured us that "One pow'ful big buck bin in day (there) las' night. I see all he track gwine in, an' I nebber see none come out."

We were soon strung along the narrow dam across which the game was to be forced by the drivers, who had to make their way through an ugly bog among cypress "knees" and dense brier-patches. Jack Parker stood next to me, fidgeting about uneasily, because it was against rules to talk on stand. Jack's prominent feature was his nose, and he had an incorrigible trick of blowing it "out loud" whenever there was a particular reason for keeping perfectly quiet. The dogs had begun to open, and their loose, scattering trail-notes indicated turkeys. Looking directly before me, I saw seven noble gobblers stepping cautiously toward my stand. Their glossy breasts glittered with coppery lustre in the straggling sunbeams as, with drooping wings and expanded tails, they advanced, looking fearfully about and uttering their low alarm-notes, "Quit! quit! quit!" Three more steps will make a certain shot, and--out rang Jack's nasal clarion, loud and clear as the _morte_ at a fox-chase. I looked round in horror, and there stood my hunter complacently eying me and flourishing his white silk handkerchief, while his gun leaned against a tree ten paces distant: "Expect I'd better go back to my stand, eh? Are those dogs barking at a deer?"

I jumped to my feet for a snap-shot at the old gobbler which flew over me, making a clear miss. Bang! bang! went two more guns; a woodcock whistled up from the bog and two swamp-rabbits dashed into the brier. The dogs came out, shaking the water from their coats, and the spattered drivers rode through the creek. There was not a feather to show, and of course everybody was "down" on Jack, but with an air of deep injury he put it off on me with the question, "Why didn't you tell me the turkeys were coming? How can a fellow help having a cold?"

We reached the club-house just in time to take our seats as dinner was served, and were in capital condition to enjoy the rich mutton, the fat turkey, the juicy home-cured ham and the rare old madeira which graced the board. This last was a specialty with the gentlemen of those days, and probably no cellars in the world could boast choicer vintage than the "Newton & Gordon" and "Old Leacock" which cheered the table of that "hunting-club." There were stronger liquors, too, though these were chiefly used as appetizers before dinner. The moderate use of brandy was universal, but the drunkenness which blots these days of prohibitory laws was comparatively rare. Few ever left the club-house "disguised" by liquor except the young men, who then, as now and always, would occasionally indulge in a "frolic." With the clearing of the board came the regular and volunteer toasts, and then an hour of "crop-talk" and "horse-talk" and hunting-stories over the wine and cigars. With the departure of the older members came the inevitable quarter-race, with its accompaniment of riding feats which would have done credit to a Don Cossack. The equestrian performance was commenced by Kit Gillam (who now dismounts and leads over every little ditch) forcing his active chestnut up the wooden steps and into the club-room, and rearing him on the dining-table. Then came a leaping-match over a ten-railed fence, resulting in the barking of some shins and the demolition of sundry panels of rail. Joe Keating, the wildest rider I ever knew, had emptied his tumbler too often, and insisted on running his horse home through the woods. An hour after he was overtaken trudging along the road, perfectly sober, with the saddle on his shoulders and the bridle over his arm.

"Why, Joe, where's your horse?"

"Dead!" was the laconic reply.

Sure enough. He had run full against a huge pine, and the horse had gone down with a broken skull. He never tried it again.

Christmas Eve has come at last, and the old plantation is in all its glory. Carriage after carriage has deposited its freight of blooming girls and merry-eyed children at the broad, open hall-door. There is not a vacant stall in the stables, nor an unoccupied bedroom among all the seventeen of the spacious mansion. The broad dinner-table is set diagonally in the long dining-room, and to-morrow, at least, the guests will have to take two turns at filling its twenty seats, while the children go through the same manoeuvre in the pantry. Where they will all sleep to-night is a mystery which none can unravel save the busy, hospitable "lady of the manor;" but it makes little difference, for there will be little sleeping done. The day passes in riding-parties and rowing-parties and similar amusements, as each freely follows the bent of his inclination. "Brass," the negro fiddler, has been summoned, and "Newport" comes with his stirrup and steel for the "triangle" accompaniment, and the merry feet of the dancers are soon keeping time to the homely but inspiriting music. The "German" and the "Boston" have not usurped the places of the old-time cotillon, quadrille and Virginia reel, and the dance is often varied by romping games of "Blindman's Buff," "Move-House" and "Stage-Coach," in which old and young unite with equal zest.

But this is not the limit of the fun. From time immemorial Christmas Eve has been licensed for the performance of all sorts of tricks, and demure little faces are flitting about convulsed by the effort to conceal the merry sense of mischief. The stockings are duly hung for Saint Nicholas, and the holly, with its glossy leaves and scarlet berries, stands ready to be planted in the parlor, to bloom to-morrow into all kinds of rich flowers and gift-fruit. At nine o'clock the work of arranging the Christmas tree begins. The ladies retire, and after a quiet smoke by the roaring hall-fire the gentlemen follow suit. To bed, but not to sleep. Jack Parker is the first man ready, and bounces into the best bed to secure the softest place; but the bars have been skillfully removed, and he is the centre of a rather mixed pile on the floor. I feel another, to be sure that all is right, and slip cozily between the sheets, but some graceless little wretch has placed a walking-cane "athwart-ships," which nearly breaks my back. None escape. Some find their sheets strewed with chaff or cockle-burs, some find no sheets at all. At midnight a fearful roar comes from the girls' room, followed by pretty shrieks and terrible confusion; but it is only the old Cochin rooster, which was slyly shut up in the empty chimney-place before they retired, indulging in his first crow.

Daylight puts an end to all sleep, for the boys are on the piazza ready to welcome Christmas with innumerable packages of fire-crackers. We rise to find our pantaloons sewed up, our boots stuffed with wet cotton, our tooth-brushes dusted with quinine and our _café noir_ sweetened with salt. These practical jokes are all taken in good part and made to contribute to the jollity of the season. At the breakfast-table lumps of cracked marble serve admirably for loaf-sugar, except that the hottest coffee will not dissolve them, and boiled eggs tempt the appetite only to disappoint with their sawdust filling. Then all assemble on the piazza to witness the merriment of the crowd of negroes who have assembled to claim little gifts of tobacco and sugar and to receive the annual glass of whisky which a time-honored custom bestows. The liquor is served in a wine-glass, and swallowed eagerly by men, women and boys from ten years old upward. Then they disperse to get their portion of the Christmas beef which has been slaughtered for their special benefit, and we prepare for service at the parish church, which stands among the shadows of the old forest oaks an easy walk from the house. There the solemn services temper and soften, but do not check or lessen, the joy and good-will which so well become the season, and which find their appropriate manifestation in all kinds of innocent amusement. The religious and the social observances of the day react each upon the other, and harmonize most admirably in the impressions which they produce. The interchange of gifts and tokens around the Christmas tree follows most appropriately, and the Christmas feast is marked by profuse hospitality and keen enjoyment unmarred by riot or excess.

Ah, well! there are piles of dusty memories in the old cockloft still untouched, but I shall rummage no more to-night. The scenes which have floated past me with the wreathing smoke of my cigar are green and fragrant to me with a freshness which time can never blight, but they never can harden into reality again for any mortal experience. They have gone into the irretrievable past with a state of things which some may regret and others rejoice in, and well will it be if the new _régime_ shall supply their places with other pictures which twenty years hence it may be no less pleasant to remember.

ROBERT WILSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A GERMAN AGRICULTURAL FAIR.

From the 27th to the 30th of September all Stuttgart flocks to Cannstatt for the _Volksfest_; and this year every good Würtemberger was bound to feel an additional interest in the fête on account of the opening ceremony, the inauguration of a statue to the late king, Wilhelm I.--and "well beloved," one is tempted to add from the way in which his people still speak of him. "The old king" and "this one" they say with an inflection of voice anything but flattering to the latter. Our landlady assures us that let the weather look as threatening as it would, the sun always contrived to burst out when in former times the late king rode into the arena to give the prizes; and she is evidently by no means certain it will not pour all three days of the fair this year. However, to judge from the skies, "this one" is not so bad as he might be: the sun shines propitious on him too, and consequently on us as we set forth to see what we can see. The second is the great day, as the prizes are then distributed; but already on Monday the booths and shows were on the field, and Cannstatt was gay with banners and wreaths and garlands of green. The carpenters were still hard at work hammering at seats for us to occupy next day, but the wonderful triumphal arch stood quite completed and worthy of sincere admiration. No one knows who has not seen it worked into an architectural design how beautiful a string of onions can be, how gorgeous a row of vegetable-marrows, how delicate a cluster of turnips. It sounds puerile, but it was lovely nevertheless. Imagine a temple-like construction all composed of odorous pine, with an arched portal on either hand, and then every line and curve, every niche and pillar and balustrade, defined with glowing fruit. It was looped in festoons and hung in tassels of red and white and gold: the arms of Würtemberg even were traced in yellow corn, while above it all rose a graceful column, a mosaic from base to summit of every fruit that autumn can bring to perfection.

That was the great show: after that, mammoth cucumbers and carrots or rows of agricultural implements did not detain us long. The next best thing was to see the booths and the crowd on the outskirts of the exhibition. There the circus was in full blast, and triumphant, brazen-throated opposition to all smaller attractions that had ventured into that neighborhood. The performing dogs in red petticoats were reduced to making an appearance before their tent to entice spectators, and Harlequin and Columbine had to shout themselves hoarse inviting people to come in and split with laughter for sixpence. Those who did not aspire to a seat under painted canvas gathered round a melancholy bear dancing a _pas seul_ on the grass with heartbroken gravity. Then came the _Schützhallen_, where the marksmen stationed themselves three feet from the target and cracked away at it with no other visible effect than that produced on a monkey doing its tricks close by: at every shot the poor little creature stopped fiddling and looked over its shoulder with a distressed air of "If I'm not hit this time!" Hand-organs, penny trumpets and rattles quite drowned the voice of a street-songstress with a large assortment of vocal music before her, from which she was giving the public a selection. Whether the songs had any reference to the pictures that formed her background we did not discover, but, at all events, the latter were tragic in the extreme. "The twenty-four-year-old murderer of his mother and six brothers and sisters" was there portrayed in a neat suit of black, with a hatchet in his hand and a very irresolute expression of countenance, while the various members of his family, seen through the open bedroom doors, awaited their fate in peaceful slumber. The booths, with toys, gingerbread, sausages, cheese and light literature tastefully intermingled, went on and on like the restaurants that lined each side of the long avenue. Around primitive tables family parties clinked foaming glasses and hailed with demonstrative hospitality any stray cousin who chanced that way. In one of the last of these improvised _Trinkhallen_ we came upon a young man and maiden who had the place quite to themselves. Her brown parasol kept the sun off them both, and it was of no sort of consequence that they had nothing more interesting than the back of a shed to look at. Future prospects were the only ones they cared for: the present had no need of anything but a faint beeriness, conducive to day-dreaming.

As we get into the carriage again our coachman says we must see the new statue. Accordingly, we drive through the town and halt before it in the square. It is very fine, glowing like gold from the mint. The king sits his charger well, and gazes majestically at nothing in particular: still, one must be a little critical, and we imagine the horse's tail is not quite right. But then is not the whisk of a tail in bronze almost impossible to conceive of? If the artist suffers no severer censure than that, he will probably call himself a happy man. The inscription on the pedestal of the statue reads, "From his grateful people." High and low have contributed to it, and gladly. "That was a man!" says our driver. He was a soldier under him, and knows. And in fact the old king seems to have been always doing something for the country, so that the gratitude is not without a cause. The inhabitants of Cannstatt have special reason to remember him kindly: he himself was grateful to them and showed it. In the troublous times of 1848 he was sadly in need of money: Ludwigsburg (another satellite of Stuttgart) refused it, while Cannstatt came up to the mark handsomely. The royal creditor never forgot that. He instituted the _Volksfest_ as a sort of memorial, and Cannstatt is proud and prosperous, while Ludwigsburg is like a city of the dead. So the coachman affirms; and once conversation is opened between us it flows without intermission. His head is over his shoulder all the way as we roll back to the city under the beautiful trees of the palace grounds. "If the old king had been living, Würtemberg would never have joined in the last war: he would have told Prussia to fight it out by herself." Apropos of the war, we ask what he thinks of Bismarck. He evidently thinks a great deal of him, though not perhaps in the generally accepted sense of that expression. He states as a fact that there _are_ limits, leaving it to us to understand that the chancellor of the empire has overstepped them. He declares further that a Prussian, and especially a Berliner, is always to him an obnoxious member of society through his insisting on knowing everything (except his own place) better than anybody else. "Now, there was the Prussian general before this last one," he continues, changing from politics to court-gossip (naturally, since 1870, military matters in Würtemberg flourish under Prussian auspices): "the first ball he went to at the palace he asked the queen to dance! _Our_ queen!! And then he took his whole family, and they sat in chairs that never were meant for them, so that the king had to say to him next day, "Mr. General, first come I, and then my ministers, and then this one, and then that one, and _then_ you." He went back to Berlin soon after. It is pleasanter to sit one's self down where one doesn't belong than to be set down by somebody else." Our driver chuckles, and then bursts out afresh, "Asking the _queen_ to dance!" He certainly has perfect faith in his own stories.

We saw the successor of that presumptuous military man next day among the greater and lesser lights that revolve around the throne of Würtemberg. We ourselves were stationary, crowded into the foremost of the tiers of seats that rose surrounding the immense enclosure, and in the best place for observation, close by the royal pavilion. The hills, bright in the sun and velvet in shadow, made a natural amphitheatre beyond, a little church with its pretty tower looked picturesquely down from a neighboring height, and the whole place was gay with flags and branches, glittering uniforms and gorgeous liveries. We were to see the _hohe Herrschaften_ come in at the farthest entrance and drive around directly before our seats. As the trumpets flourish and the first magnificence sweeps by we hear all about us, "The princess Vera," and "No, the duchess of Uhra," and "Is it?" "Isn't it?" "Which is it?" till we finally settle down to the serene conclusion that it is either one or the other. There is no mistaking the queen, however, with the outriders, six superb black horses and postilions in scarlet and gold. The Majesty herself looks pale and resigned, bending to the right and left in answer to the bows and _hochs._ Our neighbors "the Weimars" come in full force. A superfluous prince of that family appears to have drifted to these regions, and makes our street aristocratic for us. Young Weimar looks uncommonly well in his hussar uniform, and the old prince and his wife and daughter are resplendent. We met them later that same day in town, but they had taken off their best clothes, and truth compels us sadly to admit that we should hardly have known them.

In the course of time, after various false alarms on our part, the band confidently strikes up "God Save the King!" and there is a flashing and prancing in the distance that creates a great stir. The citizen guard, a stately body of burghers, rides out with the king on this day of all the year, and comes caracoling by in fine style, he in the midst bowing and smiling. And now, after the _Herrschaften--hohe_ and _höchste_--come the animals. First, horses haughtily stepping, and then splendid bulls with wreaths on their horns and garlands round their--waists shall we say?--are led before the king, standing at the foot of the steps and handing the prizes to the farmers, who present themselves, ducking and scraping. It seems a shame to tie up the creatures' legs so, and put rings through their noses: some have even a cloth bound over their heads; and if all these precautionary measures are necessary, it ought to be a relief when the procession of mild cows begins, They look out amiably from under the floral crowns that have slipped low on their brows, or turn with half-conscious pride to the handsome little calves that trot beside them. The sheep, seeking to attract too early the notice of royalty, dash out in a flock, and are driven back with jeering and hooting, as they deserve to be. Then the pigs stagger by: their garlands are excessively unbecoming. Such of the family of swine as are too young to stagger are wheeled in handcarts in the rear; and so the ceremonies are closed, except for a couple of races which take place immediately, and with no great éclat. The burgher races these are called, while on the third and last day are the officers' races. The rain prevented our attending them, and we consoled ourselves, hearing it intimated by those who had been at Ascot and Longchamps that we had not lost a great deal.

G.H.P.

A PAIR OF WHEELS AND AN OLD PARASOL.

The threads from which the tissue of history is being woven are ever in unceasing and rapid motion in the hands of the Fates. But these deities for the most part love to work unseen, like the bees. It is only when the spinning is going on with exceptional rapidity and vigor that the movements of the threads and the characteristics of the operation can be observed on the surface of social life, Such is the case in these days at Rome, and it is not necessary to watch the actions of governments or listen to the discussions of legislative chambers in order to assure one's self of the fact. One cannot walk the streets without having the phenomena which are the outward and visible signs of it thrust in a thousand ways on the observation of our senses. The other day I read a whole chapter of contemporary history compressed into the appearance of a pair of wheels engaged in their ordinary daily duty in the streets. It was in that central and crowded part of the city which is between the church of the Gesù and the Farnese palace, a labyrinth of tortuous streets and lanes, not often visited by foreigners unless when bent on some special expedition of sight-seeing. There are no sidewalks for foot-passengers in these streets. They are narrow, very tortuous and very crowded. Foot-passengers and vehicles of all sorts find their way along as best they may in one confused mass. It was there I saw the historic pair of wheels in question. They were attached to the barrow of a coster-monger, who was retailing a stock of onions, carrots and "cavolo Romano" which he had just purchased at the neighboring market of the "Campo de' Fiori." His wares, I fear, had been selected from the refuse of the market, and he and his barrow were in a state of dilapidated shabbiness that matched his stock in trade. But not so the wheels on which his barrow was supported. They were wheels of the most gorgeous description. The spokes and the circumference were painted of the most brilliant scarlet, and the entire nave was gilded so as to have the appearance of a solid mass of gold. It is impossible to imagine anything more _bizarre_ than the effect of these magnificent wheels doing the work of carrying such an equipage. Nevertheless, the apparition seemed to attract very little attention in the crowded street. The grand scarlet and gilded wheels flamed along among the crowd of shabby men and shabby vehicles with their load of onions and cabbages, and scarcely anybody turned his head to stare at them. I suppose the denizens of the district were used to the apparition of them. To me they looked as if they had been the originals from which Guido Reni painted those of the car in which he has placed the celebrated Aurora of his world-famous fresco. They were solidly and heavily built wheels--very barbarous an English carriage-builder would have considered them in their heavy and clumsy magnificence--but they were very gorgeous. What could be the meaning of their appearance in public under such circumstances? I was walking with an Italian friend at the time, who saw my state of amazement at so strange a phenomenon, and explained it all by a single remark.

"Yes," said he, "there go a pair of His Eminence's wheels. They are sharing the fortunes of their late master in a manner that is at once dramatic and historical."

The wheels from a cardinal's carriage! Of course they were. How was it possible that such wheels should be mistaken for any other in the world? A few years ago, when pope and cardinals had not yet suffered the horrible eclipse which has overtaken them, one of the most notable features of the Roman streets and suburban roads used to consist of the carriages of the members of the Sacred College taking their diurnal drive. It was not etiquette for a cardinal to walk in the streets, or indeed anywhere else, without his carriage following him. There was no mistaking these barbarously gorgeous vehicles. They were all exactly like each other, and unlike any other carriages to be seen in the nineteenth century--heavy, clumsy, coarsely built and gorgeously painted of the most flaming scarlet, and largely gilded. They were drawn by long-tailed black horses covered with heavy harness richly plated with silver, or something that looked like it, and driven by a coachman whose livery, always as shabby as magnificent, was as heavily laden with huge masses of worsted lace of the kind that used to be placed on carriage-linings some five-and-twenty years ago. Two similarly bedizened footmen always stood on the monkey-board at the rear, who descended and walked behind His Eminence and his chaplain when the cardinal left his carriage to get his constitutional. Ichabod! Ichabod! The glory has departed! Such cavalcades are no longer to be seen crawling along the Via Appia, or following His Eminence on a fine and sunny afternoon about four o'clock as he walks on the footpath between the Porta Pia and the Basilica of St. Agnes in search of an appetite for his dinner. The world will never see such carriages and such servants any more. _Fuit Ilium!_ I thought of the old lines on the "high--mettled racer," and of "imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, stopping a hole to keep the wind away." To see such splendor reduced to the service of such vile uses! Yes, as my Italian friend said, "There go the cardinal's wheels," and it is impossible not to feel sure that the phenomenon is symbolical of the way the cardinal is going himself. When an institution, a dignity, a social arrangement of any sort, has grown to be purely ornamental, has become so splendid that its splendor has come to be the essence of it, it will no longer be able to exist shorn of its splendor, however much it may in its origin have been adapted for use rather than for show. The wheels were heavy, cumbrous and ill put together; they were not well adapted for the costermonger's purpose, and will probably fall to pieces before long. Their fate is a type of that of their once master. That ornamental individual, shorn of his ornamental character, is useless. His _raison d'être_ is gone as entirely as Othello's occupation was. And it will probably not be long before the fate of the cardinal's wheels overtakes the cardinal himself.

The second little bit of street incident which recently occurred to me was in itself less striking, but seemed to me to symbolize changes of yet higher moment and wider significance. This time what I saw was in the Ghetto. Many of my readers probably know what the Ghetto at Rome is, but untraveled stayers-at-home may very excusably never have heard of it. The Ghetto is the Jews' quarter in Rome--the district in which they were for many generations compelled to reside and to be locked in by night, and where from habit the greater part, especially of the poorer members of the Jewish community, still live. As will be easily believed, it is the worst and most wretched quarter of the city--the lowest physically as well as morally--and inundated with tolerable certainty every year by the rising of the Tiber. The dilapidated and filthy streets of the other parts of old papal Rome used to look clean and spruce by comparison with the lurid and darksome dens of the Ghetto. There are Ghettos in London--streets where the children of Israel congregate, not in obedience to any law old or new, but drawn together by mutual attraction and similarity of occupation. And the occupations there are very much of the same nature as those pursued in the Ghetto of Rome--the buying and selling of old clothes and second-hand property of all sorts, the preparation and distribution of fried fish, and here and there a little usury. But the _genius loci_ here impresses on the trade in discarded odds and ends a peculiar character of its own. A much larger number of old pictures figure among the hoards of useless "property" than would be the case elsewhere. The constant decay of noble and once wealthy families furnishes to the second-hand market a much more abundant supply of the remains of articles that were once rich and rare in their day--old damask hangings torn from walls that have witnessed the princely revelry of many a generation; rich brocades and stuffs that have made part of the moving pageant in the same saloons; lace of the finest and rarest from the vestments of deceased prelates, whose heirs, as regards such property, have probably been their serving-men; purple and scarlet articles from the wardrobes of cardinals and princes of the Church; and odds and ends of various sorts widely different in kind from aught that could be found in similar repositories in other cities. And another specialty of the Roman Ghetto is that it is not altogether easy to obtain a sight of the miscellaneous treasures of this rag-fair. Partly because the low-lying and narrow lanes of the Ghetto are too murky and filthy to permit of the advantageous exposure of the merchandise in question; partly, probably, from an habitual consciousness on the part of the dealers that the details of their traffic in all its particulars are not of a nature to be safely submitted to the public eye; partly from that secretiveness which is the natural result of living for many generations from father to son under the tyranny of an alien race, whose bitterly hostile prejudices were but little restrained by law or justice; and partly also, no doubt, from the genuine Roman laziness, which in its perfection is capable of overriding even Jewish keenness of trade,--the Jew brokers of the Ghetto are often unwilling to show their hidden stores to the first comer. Some amount of diplomacy and some show of the probability of effecting an advantageous deal must be had recourse to in order to attain the purpose of the explorer.

On the recent occasion to which I have referred these difficulties had been overcome, and I had made my way into the interior of one of the dens I have described in the company of a lady friend who is a confirmed and irreclaimable lace-hunter, and who in pursuit of her game would have confronted worse obstacles than any that we had to encounter. For, in truth, the exterior appearance and the entrance-chambers are the worst part of the Ghetto dwellings. One is curiously reminded of the old mediæval stories of Jewish dwellings, where the utmost squalor and poverty of exterior was a mere blind for an interior gorgeous with every manifestation of wealth and luxury. I will not say that much of the latter is to be found in the dwellings of the Ghetto, but a degree of comfortable decency and indications of the possession of capital may be met with which the exterior appearances would not have led one to anticipate. Well, we had reached the third floor of one of these sinister-looking abodes, conducted by a fat old Jewess with a pair of huge black eyes, a large smooth face as yellow as a guinea, and a vast development of bust clad in dirty white wrappers of some sort. A door on the landing-place jealously locked with two huge keys admitted us into a suite of three good-sized rooms crammed from floor to ceiling with a collection of articles more heterogeneous than can easily be conceived--far more so than can be described.

Those who have ever accompanied a lady lace-hunter when she has struck a promising trail know that the business in hand is likely to be a somewhat long one. My companion on the present occasion very soon convinced the Jewess that she knew quite as much about the matter as she, the dealer, did. But I presume that some of the old yellow stores produced were "the real thing;" for my friend and the old Jewess soon became immersed in an eager and, as it seemed to me interminable, discussion as to qualities, condition and values. Meantime, I had to amuse myself as best I might by looking at the multifarious objects. I must content myself with mentioning one article, the appearance of which in such a place struck me as strange and not a little significant. It was simply an old parasol, very much faded and a little tattered, but not such a parasol as your fair hands ever carried, my dear madam, nor such as the once equally fair hands of any generation of your ancestors ever carried. The article in question was more like the shelter which we see represented in Chinese paintings as carried over the heads of persons of high rank among the Celestials. It was very large, not much curved into the shape of a dome when expanded, very clumsily and coarsely put together, but of gorgeous magnificence of material. It was made of a very thick and rich damask silk, additionally ornamented by embroidery in gold and silver thread, and the handle and points of the supports were richly gilt. In a word, I perceived at once, not being a novice in such matters, that the article before me was one of the canopies used for holding over the "Host" when the holy sacrament is carried by the priest through the streets to a dying person. It needs but a moment's reflection on the Roman Catholic theory of the sacrament of the "Last Supper" to be aware of the extremely sacred nature of the uses to which this parasol had been put, and of the associations connected with it. Nevertheless, I found this bit of sacred church property in the hands of a Jew broker, exposed to sale for a few francs to the first comer, heretic, scoffer or infidel, that might take a fancy to buy it. This would hardly have been the case when the pope was absolute master of Rome and of all in it. The thing could not have happened save by the dishonesty and cynical disbelief of some priest, and indeed probably of more than one. And, upon the whole, it struck me as a second curious indication of the somewhat breakneck speed with which the threads of history are spinning themselves in these days and in these latitudes.

T.A.T.

MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

A great deal of discussion has recently taken place on the subject of medical education in the United States. To a foreigner, or to one not acquainted with the influences that have led to and have kept up this discussion, it might seem to be the result of a spontaneous outburst of popular feeling, earnestly demanding much-needed progress. Really, however, the very reverse is the case; and the revolutionists are those whose _kind_ and _sympathetic_ interest in the welfare of the community is prompted solely by selfish considerations. The changes urged by these self-condemning philanthropists are not demanded by the medical profession nor by the public; neither have they been, nor will they be, sustained by both or by either. This assertion is clearly proved by the experience of the University of Pennsylvania, In 1846 the American Medical Association recommended to all medical colleges certain changes and improvements in their courses of instruction. In consequence of this recommendation the University of Pennsylvania extended its session to six months: not a _single medical college in the country followed_ its progressive lead, and after continuing the experiment for six years at great pecuniary loss, it was reluctantly obliged to retrace its steps, and to return to the old standard as to length of session. During the period of this advance the classes of the University fell off greatly, and the classes of other medical schools correspondingly increased. Even medical men sent their sons to other medical schools, to save the time and money necessary for the longer course. Indeed, medical men, as a rule, have sought to evade the restrictions as to length of time of study, etc. more than any other class; and the statement, that the "student usually dates his medical studies from the time he buys his first _Chemistry_" applies more frequently to the sons of _physicians_ than to any others. Hence, I declare that these proposed changes are not demanded by the medical profession nor by the public.

The writer of a recent article in _Lippincott's Magazine_ (Dr. H.C. Wood) on "Medical Education in the United States" seems to have been so lost in admiration at the methods of instruction followed in European medical colleges as to be utterly blind to the good in the system of medical education as it exists in this country--a system the _necessary_ result of our political, social, financial and territorial conditions; a system which, though in the abstract may not be the best, is certainly, judging from its results, the best _possible_ under our peculiar circumstances. This much abused system of medical education (only greatly improved in its extent and thoroughness--improvements developed by the constant advances in knowledge) is the same system which has produced the great medical men of the United States during the past seventy-five years--medical practitioners whose success has been surpassed by none in Europe; surgeons whose skill has been, and is, world-wide in reputation; authors whose works are standard authorities everywhere. It is the same system of medical instruction--I quote verbatim (italics mine) from this article that holds it up to scorn--which "accomplished such _splendid results_ during the late rebellion." The writer says: "The great resources of the medical profession were proved during the civil war, when there was created in a few months a service which for magnitude and efficiency has rarely if ever been equaled. Indeed, military medicine was raised by it to a point _never reached before that time in Europe_ and the results achieved have, in many points, _worked a revolution in science_." After this frank declaration of the inestimable value and glorious results of American medical education, the writer draws the _logical_(?) sequence that it (American medical education) is responsible for a case of most heartrending malpractice, which he relates, compared to which the Japanese hari-kari were merciful mildness, and approaching more nearly the tortures by crucifixion as administered by this same _kind-hearted_ people. With about as much reason and justice might he conclude that the _American system_ of Sunday-school education is lamentably inferior to that of Great Britain, _because_(!) Jesse Pomeroy was a possibility in that most respectable town of Boston.

Dr. Wood alludes to the ignorance of the American medical student, and makes a statement "not founded on the authority of official publication," in which he endeavors to show that from "six to ten per cent." of American medical students have an ignorance of vulgar fractions and rudimentary astronomy that would exclude them from an ordinary infant-school. Every one familiar with the students attending our first-class American medical colleges knows perfectly well that in origin and in culture they compare favorably with the young men engaged in the study of law and divinity, or with those entering upon mercantile or manufacturing pursuits. True, there are some imperfectly educated, but certainly not "six or ten per cent." destitute of that knowledge taught even in _American_ infant-schools, and without knowing, and without the statement "being founded on the authority of any official publication," I _infer_ that in _Europe_, owing to their "better methods," similar knowledge is communicated to the average European child many months _before its birth_.

Next follows a comment on the poverty of the American medical student. Dr. Wood says: "Even worse than this, however, is the fact that the summer between the winter courses is often not spent in study, but in idleness, or, not rarely, in acquiring in the school-room or harvest-field the pecuniary means of spending the subsequent winter in the city." Alas! this _is_ too true. Providence seems to have ordained that our young _American_ doctors are not always reared in the lap of luxury and wealth as the fittest preparation for the trials, hardships and self-denials of their future lives. It is also true that some _other_ young American professional men have been compelled "in the school-room or harvest-field" to acquire the means to prosecute their professional studies. Daniel Webster, the son of a New England farmer, taught school at Fryeburg, Maine, "upon a salary of about one dollar per diem." "His salary was all saved ... as a fund for his _own professional_ education and to help his brother through college." "During his residence at Fryeburg, Mr. Webster borrowed (he was too poor to buy) Blackstone's _Commentaries_." Mr. Webster's great rival, Henry Clay, also was compelled to resort to the "school-room and harvest-field to obtain the pecuniary means," etc. etc. etc. The son of the poor widow with seven children "applied himself to the labor of the field with alacrity and diligence;" "and there yet live those who remember to have seen him oftentimes riding his sorry horse, with a rope bridle, no saddle, and a bag of grain." "By the familiar name of the Mill-boy of the Slashes do these men ... perpetuate the remembrance of his lowly yet dutiful and unrepining employments." American biography is so filled with similar instances, showing how the great characters of her great men acquired their development and strength in the stern gymnasium of poverty, even in "the school-room and harvest-field," that I could fill volumes with the glowing records. The youngest American school-boy recognizes Abraham Lincoln and Henry Wilson in this _American_ galaxy. Whose heart has not been stirred by the life-story of the great Hugh Miller, the stonecutter's pick earning for him humble means, thereby enabling him to acquire that learning which made his name a household word even in America. Truth, then, as I have remarked, obliges me to admit that we have in our medical colleges some young men who labor "in harvest-fields and school-rooms" in order that they may honorably pay their way, rather than eat the bread or accept the gratuities of pauperism.

Last March there graduated at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania one of these self-supporting young men. He was the son of a missionary clergyman: the father was poor in pocket, but the son was not poor in spirit. During the interval between his winter courses of lectures, rather than be a burden to his father, rather than accept gratuitous instruction from the school, he went into the coal regions of Pennsylvania and worked in a coal-mine, as a common miner, to procure funds to enable him to complete his professional studies; and, _strange_ as it may seem, this young miner passed an excellent examination, and received the unanimous vote of the medical faculty for his degree. I mention this case, but every year there are several similar; and we always find that the school-teachers and miners are by no means at the foot of the graduating class.

Concerning clinical teaching, we have the following statement: "The clinical teaching in an American hospital is comprised in the following routine: Once or twice a week, from one to five hundred men being congregated in an amphitheatre, the professor lectures upon a case brought into the arena, perhaps operates, and when the hour has expired the class is dismissed. Evidently, under such circumstances there cannot be the training of the senses, the acquiring of a knowledge of the hourly play of symptoms of disease and of familiarity with the proper handling of the sick and wounded, which is of such vital importance, and which can be the outcome only of daily contact with patients." What can the writer of this sentence mean? Certainly, no one knows better than he does that such _is not_ the practice in the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, in Bellevue and in many other large hospitals, where clinics and dispensary services are held for _several hours daily_ throughout the year, and where the student has furnished him abundant opportunities four "acquiring a knowledge of the ... symptoms of disease, ... of handling the sick and wounded," etc. etc. That the American medical student profits by these opportunities, and learns his clinic lessons well, is proved by the unexpected and evidently unintended testimony which occurs toward the close of the article, where Dr. Wood says, "The great resources of the medical profession in America were proved during the civil war, when there was created in a _few months_ a service which for _magnitude_ and _efficiency_ has _rarefy if ever been equaled_. Indeed, military medicine was raised by it to a point _never reached before_ that time _in Europe_, and the results achieved have in many points worked a _revolution in science_." The italics in this quotation are mine, as they also are in those which follow.

But (says the article under review) "the largest proportion of our prominent physicians have educated themselves after graduation." As if this were an extraordinary or unusual circumstance! Certainly, they have; and so have all prominent men in all professions and all pursuits of life, in every age and every country, not even excepting the much-lauded men of Great Britain and the continent of Europe. What young lawyer is entrusted with an important cause immediately after admission to the Bar? And as the young doctor (according to the aforesaid showing) "gains his first practical knowledge while serving as a hospital resident, under the supervision of experienced men," so the young lawyer, _even in Great Britain_, must gain _his_ first practical knowledge by constant attention at the courts, and by diligently following the proceedings of his preceptor's and other offices. Even the young clergyman, whose business it is to save _souls_, has to do very much as the young doctor does, and, like him, is often "thrown at once on his own resources, gaining his experience without supervision, and at the _expense_ of the _poorer classes_, who _naturally_ fall to his charge, and whose ignorance precludes them from an even approximately correct estimate of" his fitness. "It is one of the saddest features of our system that the famed skill of our best" _(clergymen)_ "should so often be acquired at such a cost."

What can be more unphilosophical and illogical than to compare the young doctor, or any other young professional man, to a new piece of machinery, fresh from the manufactory, complete and perfect in all its parts? And yet something like this is _attempted_ in the article before us. Even as Minerva sprang from the brain of Jove the complete and perfect goddess of learning, so would our Utopian writer have the young doctors to come from the brains of their medical professors complete and perfect; only, if his idea be correct, their medical professors have so little brains that the annual graduating medical classes of the United States would be immediately reduced from the frightful army of three thousand "legalized murderers" to the comparatively small and easily counted number of _one graduate_ (of course, springing from one head). No; the young doctor, at graduation, cannot be compared to a new, complete and perfect machine fresh from the manufactory; rather, let him be compared to the young marsupial creature at birth, extremely rudimentary, whose natural, and hence fittest, place is the parental pouch, but which in due time becomes the vigorous and well-developed specimen. I suppose, if I compare the young doctor to the young marsupial, I should also say that _his_ protecting parental pouch, in which he acquires growth and vigor, is the hospital where he goes after graduation, or the practice which he sees under his preceptor's supervision.

The article continues: "The remarks which follow do not apply to the medical department of Harvard College or to _one or two other schools_" (the italics are mine); and farther on it continues: "In other words, Harvard has copied the European plan of medical teaching in some of its essential features, and as a consequence its medical diploma is the _only one_ issued by _any prominent medical American_ college which is a _guarantee_ that its possessor has been well educated in the science and practice of medicine." Where can we find meekness and modesty like this?--modesty as becoming as it is unexpected and surprising, seeing that the writer fills _two_ professorships in the University of Pennsylvania, Does he hang his head so low in his--I was about to say _singular_--self-abasement (but, considering, the _two_ professorships, I suppose I should say _doubled_ self-abasement) that he cannot see? or are his eyes so blinded by the effulgence of "Harvard" and "European" plans that he fails to recognize and appreciate the immense advantages offered by his own home institutions? I do not propose to make any invidious remarks concerning Harvard, but I maintain that an _honest_ and _just_ comparison of the schools, of their requirements, of the character of their teachings and the facilities they furnish their students, _must_ show that modesty alone prevented Professor "H.C. Wood, Jr., M.D.," also excepting from his sweeping denunciations the two great schools of Philadelphia, though I only speak for and defend the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania from an attack unjust, uncalled-for and untrue.

R.A.F. PENROSE.

The party opposed to any reforms in medical education has, of course, a right to be heard, and Dr. Penrose is well entitled to represent it both by his position and by the evident heartiness with which he is prepared to defend the existing system at every point. In impugning the motives of those who have attacked it he lays himself open to an obvious retort; but it is sufficient to remark that the contest is not of a nature to call for or justify the use of personalities, which could serve only to divert attention from the real issues.

The arguments put forward by Dr. Penrose may be summarized as follows: 1st, that the proposed changes are not demanded either by the public or by the profession; 2d, that the present system is the best possible in a nation constituted like ours; 3d, that the preparatory education of our medical students is equal to that of law or divinity students, or of young men entering upon mercantile or manufacturing pursuits; 4th, that in certain cases obstacles in the way of a regular and thorough training have been overcome and success achieved in spite of them; and 5th, that it is unavoidable and proper that medical men, as well as members of other professions, should educate themselves after graduation.

It will be observed that none of these arguments except the last, which is based on a mere verbal ambiguity, touches the two subjects discussed in Dr. Wood's article--namely, the _need_ of reform and the _methods_ by which, if practicable, it is to be effected. Dr. Penrose does not venture to assert that the existing system is perfect, or to deny that the suggested changes are in the nature of improvements. What he wishes us to believe is that the system, whatever its defects, is as good a one as Americans have a right to demand, and that it is so closely interwoven with our political and social institutions as to admit of no separate handling. Similar arguments are frequently urged against the desire to raise the standard and widen the avenues of the "higher education." We are thus taught to regard ourselves as a poor and struggling nation with no claim to the possession of intellectual luxuries, or as having bound ourselves to forego any aspirations to an equality with other nations in respect of culture when we secured the advantages of popular government and its social concomitants. It would seem, however, to be a sounder, as it is certainly a more gratifying belief, that precisely because we have attained these advantages it will be easier for us to appropriate all the benefits which civilization has to offer--possible for us to make more rapid strides than have been made by other nations, impeded by a diversity of interests and conflicts between the government and the people. No doubt the comparative youthfulness of the nation will account for our backward condition in certain respects; but surely it is time to abandon this and every similar plea as an argument against any attempt at progress.

We have not space, and for the reasons indicated we see no necessity, to discuss Dr. Penrose's positions in detail. It will be sufficient to notice generally what seems to us their inherent weakness. His assertion that no changes are _now_ demanded by the public or the profession is, he thinks, "clearly proved" by the fact that thirty years ago some that were introduced in the University of Pennsylvania at the suggestion of the American Medical Association ended in failure. But what this experience really proves is, that the defects of the system were even then admitted, while the remedies are still to be applied. At Harvard this has been done; and the question for other medical schools is whether they are to follow the example or to be deterred by a bugbear--whether, for example, the University of Pennsylvania, after raising her scientific and art departments to a higher level, shall be content to let her medical school remain stationary. It is the opinion of intelligent physicians who are not parties to this controversy that the experiment which failed in 1846 would succeed now. The new plan adopted at Harvard, which exacts three years of study, and embraces lectures, recitations, clinical conferences and written examinations of the most stringent character, has, we are informed, attracted a class of very superior men. Compared with the effort made here in 1846, this change may be described as a revolution, and it has proved a success.

We are at a loss to understand what Dr. Penrose wishes to prove by his citation of cases in which eminence has been reached--chiefly, it is to be noticed, in politics or the law--by persons who have had insufficient opportunities for study. If the disadvantage was imaginary, where was the merit of overcoming it? If it was real, as most people would admit, what is the objection to insisting on it as such? In the great majority of cases it is _not_ overcome, and the result is, that the country is overstocked with men engaged in the practice of professions for which they are inadequately qualified. As to the skill that is gained by practice, the ripe knowledge that may result from experience, this cannot without a confusion of terms be described as "education." It will in general be most surely and rapidly acquired by those who have received the best training, and the great object of our higher educational institutions should be to provide such training--not, by maintaining a low standard, to facilitate the efforts of those who, from whatever cause, would find it difficult to meet the demands of a higher one. Such persons may have a claim to encouragement and assistance in their endeavors to reach the mark; but they have no right to expect that the distance shall be regulated to suit their convenience.

Dr. Wood's admissions in regard to the excellence of the army medical service during the war are seized upon with natural exultation by his opponent, who draws from them a legitimate inference in favor of the general status of medical skill and knowledge throughout the country. If Dr. Wood really intended to say--what his language, we confess, would seem to imply--that the service attained its high state of efficiency in a few months, we do not well see how he is to resist the conclusion thus pressed upon him. But we conceive the truth to be that either his phraseology or his recollection of the facts was at fault. It is well known that at the beginning of the war it was impossible to find competent surgeons in anything like the number that was needed, and that the examining boards were consequently forced to be ridiculously lenient. We know of an able surgeon who after a battle found that he had not a single assistant in his corps who could be trusted to perform an operation. This state of matters was the direct result of the imperfect education given in the schools. Not one man in ten who leaves them has ever been practically exercised in operations on the cadaver, and the proportion was still smaller before the war. It is easy therefore to understand, while it would be painful to recall, the circumstances under which the great bulk of our army surgeons acquired the requisite proficiency. The ultimate success of our medical service, like the final triumph of our armies, was preceded by many woeful blunders and mishaps, and, like that, was due in great measure to a lavish outlay which would scarcely have been possible in any European war, and to the general devotion and united efforts which drew out all the resources of the country, of whatever kind, and directed them to the furtherance of a single aim.

OUR EARLY NEWSPAPERS.

In looking over the contents of the old newspapers of this country, of which there was a considerable number as early as the year 1730, one is specially struck by the number of advertisements of slave sales and of runaway slaves, apprentices and servants. The following are common examples:

"To be sold, a very likely Negro woman about 30 years of Age, has been in this city about 10. She is a fine Cook, has been brought up to all sorts of House Work, and speaks very good English. She has had the small Pox, and has now a Young Child. Enquire further concerning her and the Conditions of Sale of Mary Kippen, or the Printer hereof."--_New York Weekly Journal_, May 9, 1735.

"Just arrived from _Great Britain_, and are to be Sold on board the Ship Alice and Elizabeth, Capt. _Paine_ Commander several likely _Welch_ and _English_ Servant Men, most of them Tradesmen. Whoever inclines to purchase any of them may agree with said Commander, or Mr. _Thomas Noble_, Merchant, at Mr. Hazard's, in New York; where also is to be Sold several Negro Girls and a Negro Boy, and likewise good _Cheshire_ Cheese."--_New York Gazette_, Sept. 11, 1732.

Here is a notice from the same paper, date 1735, which shows very clearly the position of the apprentice one hundred and forty years ago:

"Run away on the 5th. Instant from John Bell of the city of New York Carpenter, an Apprentice Boy named James Harding, aged about 19 years, being a tall well-set Lad of a Fresh Complexion, he wears a Wig, he is spley-footed and shuffles with his feet as he Walks, has a Copper coloured Kersey Coat with large flat white Mettle Buttons, a grey Duroy Coat lined with Silk, it is pretty much faded by wearing, a broad blue striped Waistcoat and Breeches and a pair of blue striped Tickin Breeches, in warm weather he often bleeds at the nose." Then follows the offer of forty shillings to any one who will give information whereby his master, John Bell, can regain possession of the runaway.

That the women of that time were strong-minded, or at least that they were disposed to assist in the reformation of bad husbands, is shown by the following from the same journal, date December 31, 1733. The subject, or victim, was one William Drinkwater, living near New York, who had proved quarrelsome with his neighbors and abusive to his wife: "The good Women of the Place took the Matter into Consideration and laid hold of an Opportunity, to get him tied to a Cart, and there with Rods belaboured him on his Back, till, in striveing to get away, he pulled one of his Arms out of Joint, and then they unti'd him. Mr. _Drinkwater_ Complained to Sundrie Magistrates of this useage, but all he got by it was to be Laughed at; Whereupon he removed to New Milford where we hear he proves a good Neighhour and a loving Husband. _A Remarkable Reformation ariseing from the Justice of the good Women._"

Another advertisement indicates a toilet article now out of fashion:

"To be Sold by _Peter Lynch_, near Mr. _Rutgers_ Brewhouse, very good Orange Butter, it is excellent for Gentlewomen to comb up their Hair with, it also cures Children's sore Heads."

The next sounds quite as odd:

"_James Munden_ Partner with _Thomas Butwell_ from London, Maketh Gentlewomens Stays and Childrens Coats in the Newest Fashion, that Crooked Women and Children will appear strait," Same paper, date February, 1735.

It is a curious fact that the deaths at that time, both in the New York and New England papers, were announced not by the names of the deceased, but by the churches to which they belonged. For example: "Buried in the city last week, _viz._, Church of England 26, Dutch 24, Lutheran 2, French 1, Presbyterians 3. The number of Blacks we refer till Next Week."--_New England Weekly Journal_, Nov. 1, 1731. Sometimes the number is recorded as four or five, or even less: therefore the record must be very imperfect, and there seems to have been no notice taken of those who were not buried from any church.

M.H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Dante and his Circle; with the Italian Poets preceding him. Edited and translated in the original Metres by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Revised and rearranged edition, Boston: Roberts Bros.

Dante is so great a figure in Italian literature that he hides from sight the host of minor poets who preceded him, and throws his own contemporaries so into the shade that we are apt to think that Italian poetry began with him, and that its second exponent is Petrarch. Such a view is to be regretted, not only because it overlooks much that is in itself valuable, but because it attributes to a period of slow development a phenomenal character. There were many poets worth listening to before the great Florentine wrote the _New Life_ or the _Divine Comedy_, and many whom he listened to and praised, although his prophetic foresight told him that he would one day bear their glory from them.

It was to make us acquainted with these forgotten singers that Mr. Rossetti wrote some years ago his charming book. _The Early Italian Poets_, which, after being long out of print, he now presents to us in a revised and rearranged edition. The author's wish is not merely to give us a glimpse of the quaint conceits of a school that continued in Italy the waning influence of the Troubadours, but to open to us the intimate social life of the literary men of that period as reflected in their vague Platonic rhapsodies, their friendly letters, their jests and quarrels, their joy and sadness. Interwoven with all this are stately _canzoni_, and dainty sonnets full of quaint conceits, like that wherein Jacopo da Lentino (1250) sings _Of his Lady in Heaven_:

I have it in my heart to serve God so That into Paradise I shall repair-- The holy place through the which everywhere I have heard say that joy and solace flow. Without my lady I were loath to go-- She who has the bright face and the bright hair-- Because if she were absent, I being there, My pleasure would be less than naught, I know. Look you, I say not this to such intent As that I there would deal in any sin: I only would behold her gracious mien, And beautiful soft eyes, and lovely face, That so it should be my complete content To see my lady joyful in her place.

We seem, in turning over these pages, to see the brilliant, ever-changing current of Italian thirteenth and fourteenth century life--from Palermo, where Frederick II. held an almost Oriental court, to the communes of Central Italy, the best type of which is the merchant-city of the Arno, whose sons in those days could fight as well as wield the yardstick, and sing in strains that have rarely been equaled. In the first division of the work the great poet and his friends are brought vividly before us from the time when, a sensitive child, his eyes first beheld Beatrice and his new life began, to the painful hours of bereavement and exile. The poet, it is known, made a curious sonnet out of a dream he had after his first meeting with Beatrice, and, in accordance with the fashion of the day, sent it to various well-known poets, asking them to interpret his vision. The answers are all given here; and among those whose attention was thus attracted to the precocious youth was one whom he calls his "first friend," Guido Cavalcanti--after Dante one of the most interesting literary personages of the day. Rash and chivalrous, we can follow him in his poems from the time he made his pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James, and fell in love on the way with Mandetta of Toulouse, to the turbulent days of Florentine party strife, when he rides down Messer Corso Donati, "the baron," and wounds him with his javelin, and then goes into exile at Sarzana, where he sings his dying song and sends it to his lady, "who," he says, "of her noble grace shall show thee courtesy." All the poets were not as constant as their own lines would have us believe. Dante reproaches the famous Cino da Pistoja for fickleness, and the latter confesses the charge, and declares he cannot get "free from Love's pitiless aim." Guido Cavalcanti rebukes Dante himself for his way of life after the death of Beatrice; and this valuable sonnet should be read in connection with the beautiful passage in the _Purgatory_ (xxx. 55-75) where Beatrice herself upbraids the tearful poet.

In the second part, comprising _Poets chiefly before Dante_, we have specimens of the Sicilian school--a _canzone_ by the great Frederick, and a sonnet by his luckless son Enzo, who died in prison at Bologna after a confinement of nearly twenty-three years. Of more importance are the poems of Guido Guinicelli, of which the philosophical one entitled "Of the Gentle Heart" was a nine days' wonder, but which, even in Rossetti's elegant version, seems cold and formal. The most natural and pleasing pieces among much that is artificial and conventional are a ballad and two "catches" by Sacchetti, who died just after 1400, and properly does not belong to Dante's circle. Mr. Rossetti's readers will, however, be grateful to him for his delightful versions of the two catches, one "On a Fine Day," the other "On a Wet Day," giving the experiences of a band of young girls who have gone to spend the afternoon in the fields and are overtaken by a shower.

Poems like these, unfortunately, are rare. The range is a limited one--Platonic love in its conventional form, or the still more conventional form of chivalric love, imported bodily from the Troubadours. Scattered here and there are some noble poems; as, for instance, the one attributed to Fazio degli Uberti on his lady's portrait, which begins--

I look at the crisp golden-threaded hair, Whereof, to thrall my heart, Love twists a net; Using at times a string of pearls for bait, And sometimes with a single rose therein.

Mr. Rossetti has performed his task in a way to deserve the warmest praise. The difficulties he has overcome are very great, consisting not merely of intricate rhyme and assonance, which he has faithfully reproduced, but a text often corrupt and meaning often obscure. He says himself in his preface that "The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this commandment--that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one;" and this commandment, as far as we can see, he has not broken in a single case, while in some instances, we are bold enough to say, the translation is better than the original.

History of the Army of the Cumberland, its Organization, Campaigns and Battles. Written at the request of Maj.-Gen. George H. Thomas, chiefly from his private military journal and other official documents furnished by him. By Thomas B. Van Horne, U.S. Army. Illustrated with campaign and battle maps compiled by Edward Ruger, late Superintendent Topographical Engineer Office, Head quarters Department of the Cumberland. 2 vols. and atlas. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

It was natural that General Thomas should make choice of some one to whom he could entrust the task of writing his military history. For that purpose he chose Mr. T.B. Van Home, a chaplain in the regular army, and the work, which was begun in 1865 and finished in 1872, was subject to Thomas's own examination. The result is now, after this long delay, presented to the public in a shape that does great credit to the publishers, whose imprint is almost synonymous with good workmanship. Of the literary skill, or want of it, on the part of the author not much need be said: he is evidently zealous in his anxiety to do honor to the memory of General Thomas, and to do justice to all who served with him; but he is sadly lacking in the art of suitably clothing his ideas with fitting words, and much of his elaborate composition is badly wasted in trying to find extravagant language for the recital of important events. In some cases, where the official reports printed at the close of each chapter recite in simple words the actual occurrences, the text of the book is overlaid with unusual words and involved sentences, in which the statement of the same facts is lost in a cloud of phraseology of a very curious and original kind. "Primal success," "the expression of a stride," "the belligerence of the two armies," "philosophy of the victory," "palpable co-operation," "the expression of an insurrection,"--these are some of the odd inventions of the author; and for instances of passages just as odd, but too long for citation, we refer to the description of the battle of Shiloh--a weak imitation of Kinglake's worst style--where we are told that "change is the prophecy of unexpected conditions." Fortunately, the second volume is much less marred by such faults, and the great event of Thomas's career, the battle of Nashville, is told with clearness and in full detail.

Although Thomas is the hero of the book from the time when he took command at Camp Dick Robinson in August of 1861, it was not till October, 1863, which brings us to page 394 of the first volume, that he succeeded to the command of the Army of the Cumberland, after Rosecrans, who had followed Buell and Sherman and Anderson. Under the other generals Thomas had served with marked ability and fidelity, and his dealing with them is fairly reflected by the author of this work, for he rarely criticises either of Thomas's commanding officers--for the most part merely records the operations of the army, and puts in most prominence Thomas's own services, just as his military journal no doubt supplied the material. Of all that long and dreary marching and countermarching through Kentucky and Tennessee the account is full and clear, and we find Buell and Halleck saying that they know nothing of any plan of campaign in the very midst of their operations. At last with Halleck, and still more with Grant in authority, there were movements ordered that had some relation to each other and a general plan of operations, and then the overwhelming strength of the North began to turn the scale. Thomas was called on by Rosecrans, as he had been by Buell, for advice, but he was obliged to act independently too; and then, as at Stone River, he showed an energy and a capacity that ought to have secured his earlier promotion. At Chickamauga he was actually left in command by Rosecrans, and while the latter was looking for new help elsewhere, Thomas at the front saved the shattered army and led it safely back to Chattanooga, where it underwent its famous long siege. The measures for its relief were planned by Rosecrans, approved by Grant, and executed by Thomas, with large assistance from "Baldy" Smith, whose skill as an engineer was fully attested then. When Thomas did at last succeed to the command of the Army of the Cumberland, he showed his superiority to his predecessors by marked improvement in his method of securing supplies, in his use of cavalry, and in the increased efficiency of his infantry. When Johnston, thanks to Davis's unwise interference with the Confederate armies, gave way to Hood, the latter almost at once gave token of his inferior skill by being defeated by the Army of the Cumberland--by less than half of it, in fact--in an attack intended to destroy three armies of more than five times the number of the Union force actually engaged. Thomas was in command at this battle of Peach-tree Creek, one of the sharpest and most significant actions of the campaign, though no official report is found at the end of the chapter in which it is described. The events that led up to the victory of Nashville are always worth the telling, and the account given in this work may be looked upon as in some respects Thomas's own version of them. A brief chapter by Colonel Merrill of the Engineers gives a very good description of three of the leading features of the work done by that corps in the Army of the Cumberland. To cross great rivers there was need of pontoon-bridges; to protect the long lines of railroads it was necessary to provide block-houses; to go through a country that was often a trackless forest, and always badly provided with real high-roads, it was all-important to have maps, and to reproduce them rapidly and plentifully. Colonel Merrill's chapter is pithy, pointed and to the purpose, showing how well our technical troops did their share of work, and how large and important that share was in securing the general result. The maps are also well done, and therefore useful in enabling a reader to follow out the details of the narrative.

_BOOKS RECEIVED._

Dissertations and Discussions; Political, Philosophical and Historical. By John Stuart Mill. Vol. V. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

From Everglade to Canon with the Second Dragoons, 1836-75, Compiled by Theo. F. Rodenbough. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Grand'ther Baldwin's Thanksgiving, with other Ballads and Poems. By Horatio Alger, Jr. Boston: Loring.

Shakespeare Hermeneutics; or, The Still Lion. By C.M. Ingleby, M.A., LL.D. London: Trübner & Co.

Minutes of the Ohio State Archæological Convention. Columbus: Printed for the Society by Paul & Thrall.

Strength of Beams under Transverse Loads. By Prof. W. Allan. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for 1876. New York: Catholic Publication Society.

Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1874. Washington: Government Printing-office.

Our Poetical Favorites. Second Series. By Aschel C. Kendrick. New York: Sheldon &Co.

Camp-Life in Florida. By Charles Hallock. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co.

Lectures on Art. Second Series. By H. Taine. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Pretty Miss Bellew. By Theo. Gift. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Drawn from. Life. By Charles Dickens. New York: E.J. Hale & Son.

The Conquest of Europe: A Poem of the Future. By Confucius.

Cartoons. By Margaret J. Preston. Boston: Roberts Brothers.