did. When questioned about it, which was rarely, she usually replied

that she never "had the time," or that she had been "warned in dreams," or that she awaited her "king from over the seas"--some such _bêtise_. But to me the fact that she had never married was never a matter for wonder: she had never loved, I supposed, which was reason enough. She had her work in life--had written two very delightful books, made occasional illustrations for publishers, and played German music _à ravir_. At length she spoke, this Aunt Edith.

"Yes, my dear niece, I _have_ some advice to give you," she said in a low voice: "don't fall in love with a European."

"Do you think there is any danger?" I asked with mock seriousness.

"Not with a Frenchman or German," she quickly replied. "But let me tell you _my_ experience. I was not far from your age when I went to Europe with Cousin Helen. I had just refused an offer of marriage from a very noble fellow because I could not love him. He lacked the power to control me: I felt myself the stronger of the two. Not that women like to be ruled, but that they like that power in men which can rule if need be, generously, but never despotically. I had only in my imagination a conception of that love 'which passeth understanding'--which lifts a woman out of herself into a willing sacrifice that looks to calmer eyes as the height of folly. I liked men well, but none had ever stirred more than the even surface of my feelings, and I so firmly believed that no one ever could as to regard my 'falling in love' as most improbable. I really desired the experience, feeling that something is lost out of life if every phase of human feeling and emotion be not awakened. But I went to Europe, and walked straight into my fate.

"The day after my arrival in Paris, in passing through the court of the hotel where I was stopping, I encountered a gentleman who lifted his hat, and who looked at me in a manner that caused me to observe his eyes, which were large, black and exceptionally splendid. In figure he was tall and firmly built, an aquiline nose and clearly-cut chin giving a high-bred look to his face, and he wore some sort of a decoration which caught Helen's notice. At the table-d'hôte that evening I found myself seated next to him. Our table-talk, begun early in the meal, was the beginning of an acquaintance that developed into that strongest of affections which makes slaves of us all. I never forgot my proud birthright, and well understood the danger of a European alliance--or misalliance. The gentleman was quite Oriental, belonging to that country which has Bucharest for its capital. His family was of high distinction, connected with that of the reigning prince. He possessed a modest fortune, had been educated in Athens and Paris, and spoke four or five languages. He was ardent, jealous, passionate, but possessed a heart at once so loving, so full of every tender and winning quality, that it was easy to forgive outbursts of feeling and similar offences. He had spent some time in England, without, however, learning to speak much of the language. The history of his past life, as he related it to us, was quite in keeping with his character as a man. He had been affianced when quite young to a beautiful girl, quarrelled with her, broke off the engagement, then joined the Greek army, fought against the Turks, and was four times wounded.

"It was early in June when we arrived in Paris, and at the occurrence of my birthday in August we had become very well acquainted, as also with a number of his friends to whom he had introduced us. Wishing to observe my _fête_, he sent me a tiny bouquet--a rose and some sprays of fragrant flowers. In the evening he begged for some souvenir of the day, when I declared I had nothing to give.

"'Then I shall _take_ something,' he replied, and clipped from a curl a ring of my hair, which he placed in a locket attached to his watchguard, in the back of which he previously made a note of the day.

"'That will remain there for ever,' he remarked.

"'Which means six months, at the end of which time you will have forgotten me,' I replied.

"'Not at the end of six months, six years, nor six ages,' he warmly retorted.

"As the autumn months wore away, and he began to talk to me of marriage, the seriousness of his love frightened me, and it was not until I was assured by what seemed unmistakable proofs that all his statements in regard to himself were true that I in any sense considered the question of marriage with him. To be obliged always to talk French or Italian was not to my liking, and to marry anybody but a compatriot seemed very unpatriotic. But I loved him, and that was the solution of the whole matter. His kindness to us was without limit, and tendered in the most graceful and grateful manner. He knew some excellent English families who were living in Paris, whose acquaintance we afterward made, and who spoke of him in the highest terms of esteem.

"As the winter set in, Helen and I arranged to go to Italy. My friend was to take advantage of our departure to go to his 'provincial estates' on business, and afterward to join us in Italy. He gave us a letter to the Greek consul at Rome, a friend of his, to whose care he would confide his letters, and who, he thought, might be of real service to us notwithstanding our own ambassadorial corps there.

"My separation from him proved to me in a thousandfold manner how deep and strong was the bond that bound me to him. We had scarcely more than become well settled in Rome than a letter arrived which he had mailed at Vienna, and which the polite consul came and delivered in person. And what a letter it was!--only a page or two, but words alive with the love and passion of his heart. And that was the last letter, as it was the first, that I ever received from him. The cause of his silence none of us could tell. He knew that a letter sent to me in care of any one of the American consuls in Paris or in Italy would reach me. As the mystery of his silence deepened the attentions of the consul became more assiduous. For some reason I did not like the man, although he was very kind and gentlemanly. Once he lightly remarked that doubtless 'our friend had been _épris_ by some fair Austrian blond;' and the suggestion filled me with shame. Who knew but it might be true--that the man fell in love with every pretty new face--for mine was called beautiful then--and that after an entertaining season of flirtation he had bid me adieu? Of course I blamed myself for having been so confiding as to be deceived by a handsome adventurer without principle or honor. I cannot tell you what agony I suffered. I begged Helen to go on to Naples, for Rome had become very hateful to me. But at Rome, as you know, Helen fell ill with Roman fever, and died, and I returned to Rome to bury her body there in the Protestant cemetery. Four months had gone by, and not a word from my friend. Alone as I was, my troubles drove me nearly frantic. I returned to Paris. That I was so sad and changed seemed naturally due to Helen's death: nobody suspected that I was the victim of a keener sorrow. None of his friends had received news of him. I was too proud to show that my interest in him had been of more than ordinary meaning. Nobody knew of my love for him but Helen, and the secret was buried in her grave.

"I tarried a month or two in Paris, hoping against hope for news of him, without even the consolation of addressing him letters, as I did not know where one would reach him. To know he was dead would have been a relief: to think he had abandoned me, that he had been false, was insupportable. It was the most probable solution of the mystery, but I have never believed it, and I love him as deeply to-day as ever. I have schooled myself to cheerfulness and gayety, but having known him spoiled me for loving again. Here is his portrait," drawing a case from a drawer: "I wish you to see how handsome and good and noble a man may look to be, and yet--"

She paused, and I added, "Be a villain."

"So you see," she smiled, "how apropos my advice to you is: have nothing to do with foreigners."

I returned her the portrait without comment, kissed her good-night, and next day sailed out to sea, with Aunt Edith waving her handkerchief after me like a flag of warning. We lived in the country, six hours' ride from New York, and my oldest brother and Aunt Edith had followed me to the "water's edge," as she playfully expressed it. At London I was to join Cecilia Dayton, a handsome widow of forty-five, an old friend of ours, who was to act the part of "chaperone." We called her "St. Cecilia," although she was anything but saintly.

Late in the following winter we left Paris and went to Nice, where "the romance of a serviette" began; and I trust the reader will not question my truthfulness when I observe that what I am writing is, without exaggeration, strictly true.

St. Cecilia, from nervousness brought on by drinking strong tea (as I firmly believe), kept a small night-lamp burning in her room at night, so she should not be afraid to sleep. For this purpose she used tiny tapers, which float on the top of oil poured in a tumbler half full of water. We breakfasted in our own rooms, and the breakfast napkins of the Grand Hôtel, where we were stopping, were decidedly shabby and only about six inches square. On the morning of our leavetaking of Nice, St. Cecilia wanted a "rag" to tie over her bottle of oil, which she carried with her for her night-tapers, and cast her eyes about for one: she seized upon the raggedest of the serviettes.

"I don't consider this _stealing_, ma chère," she murmured in apology. "My bill is enormous! I feel that I've paid for this rag twice over."

So the serviette went with us by sea to Naples. There we were obliged for a time to occupy the same apartment, and the napkin taken off the bottle was lying about the room, for it was warm and there was no fire to throw it in. Tucking it away with soiled linen, it came back from the laundry clean and white, save one round oil-spot on it, and was thrown into my trunk along with the refreshed linen; and there it remained untouched until four months later, when I arrived at Vienna.

At Venice, Cecilia was obliged to return to Paris: she was to rejoin me a fortnight later at Vienna. Meantime, a young Englishwoman, Kate Barton, whose acquaintance we had made at Rome, was going to Vienna to join a party of cousins; and as we were both alone, we arranged to make the journey together. Kate was one of the merriest of English girls (a native, however, of Cape Town), a tall, rosy-cheeked blond, with a half dozen brothers distributed in the British army and provincial parliaments.

We left Venice at midnight in an Adriatic steamer, and arrived next morning at Trieste, a town which during our forced stay in it of forty-eight hours filled my mind with nothing but most disagreeable souvenirs. Life there was in complete contrast to the quiet, poetic, graceful existence at Venice, and the change from the one to the other had been so sudden as to act like a stunning blow. A detention caused by illness and the loss of a train through the purposed maliciousness of a hotel-waiter led to two results. One was our sending a telegram to the proprietor of the W----Hôtel in Vienna to inform him of the delay, as rooms had been engaged for us by a gentleman who was in the habit of lodging in that hotel when in Vienna, and who before leaving the city had shown the kind thoughtfulness of sending us a letter of introduction to the proprietor commending us to his courtesy. The other result was to bring about an acquaintance with a Prussian, Herr Schwager, which happened in this wise: Kate, whose wrath was fully aroused at the troubles we encountered in Trieste, was extravagant in her denunciations of those "horrid Germans" after we were once fairly seated in the cars bound for Gratz. Neither of us spoke German with any degree of ease or much intelligibility, and consequently gave vent to our opinions in plain English. A young man of a studious, gentlemanly appearance, but of unmistakable Teutonic descent, sat in one corner of the compartment, and from his frequent smiling at our talk I concluded that he understood English, and made bold to ask him if he did.

"Happily, I do," he replied, his handsome brown eyes twinkling with increased merriment, "and I am one of those 'horrid Germans.'"

His reply greatly amused Miss Barton, and opened the way to a very animated conversation, in which we learned that he had just come from Italy, had been on the same steamer as ourselves coming from Venice, and had stopped in the same hotel and suffered the same agonies. Then we talked of what we liked best in Italy, and he spoke of an American friend, Mr. Fanton, with whom he had greatly enjoyed Rome. The fact that he was a friend of John Fanton, whom I had known for years, and who was the last to bid me good-bye in Rome, was recommendation enough for any stranger, and constituted us friends at once. I forgot all about Aunt Edith's advice to have "nothing to do with foreigners," but placed at once the most unlimited confidence in Herr Schwager, who from the beginning of our acquaintance attached himself in a most brotherly way to our fortunes, proving himself in every particular a rare honor to his sex. However gross and brusque the German character may be, I must for ever make an exception of our Herr, whose genuine politeness, delicacy of kindness, refinement and manliness I have rarely seen equalled and never excelled.

Kate kept up her banter about the "horrid Germans," for which she had abundant reason in our journey from Gratz to Vienna. We had hoped to have a compartment to ourselves, to which end Herr Schwager had expended a florin; but at the last moment a portly Gratzian entered and settled himself by one of the windows which would command the Semmering Pass. He too spoke some English, and endeavored to be sociable. As we neared the pass he insisted upon my taking his seat the better to see the marvellous scenery, with which he was already familiar. I had been too long on the Continent not to have become suspicious of a voluntary sacrifice on the part of a European. It invariably means something: it covers an _arrière pensée_. He offers you a paper to read or a peach or a pear to eat, or buys a bouquet of flowers at a station, and if you accept the proffer of either he takes advantage of the obligation under which he has placed you and proceeds generally to smoke, remarking for form's sake that he "hopes it is not offensive," while you, under the burden of his kindness, smile a fashionable lie, and reply, "Not in the least." So our Gratzer withdrew to the farther end of the seat and began to smoke a most villainous cigar, and continued to smoke, lighting another when one was finished. I soon began to succumb to the poisonous effects of the close atmosphere, for, although we kept our windows open--it was the middle of June--the Gratzer with true German caution kept his firmly closed. But the effect upon Kate was even worse, and her pallid face plainly told how much she was suffering. We cast entreating looks upon Herr Schwager, who never smoked, but understood our annoyance without knowing just how to ask the Gratzer to cease. We poked our heads out of the window, opened cologne-bottles and indulged in various manifestations of disgust; but to no purpose: the Austrian smoked on. Finally, when he began on the fourth cigar, Kate, whose patience was utterly exhausted, begged me to ask him to stop. I naturally demurred, being under obligation to him, and replied, "You're the sicker, Kate: _you_ tell him."

When suddenly she lifted her pale face and shouted at him, "Oh, you _horrid_ German! we are nearly smoked to death! For mercy's sake, stop!"

"Ah, pardon!" he replied unconcernedly, taking the cigar from his mouth and putting it in his pocket.

Herr Schwager's amusement was boundless, and our satisfaction also, as we had no more smoke on the road to Vienna.

The landlord of the Hôtel W----, to whom we were recommended, received us with a pleasant cordiality, and at the same time apologized because he could not give us the rooms engaged for us until the next day; so we were temporarily lodged in a large room leading from an anteroom designed for a servant--an arrangement which is common in Austrian hotels. On the following morning, as Kate was waiting half dressed in the anteroom for the kammer-mädchen to bring her warm water, who should walk in upon her, _sans cérémonie_, but a long, black-gowned priest! He stared at her, nonchalantly looked about the room, and walked out with never a word. She might have regarded the intrusion as a mistake if a like visit from the same personage had not been made at the same hour next morning in our own rooms, to which we were that day transferred. The two successive intrusions were to us inexplicable, unless, in the light of succeeding events, we were to regard the priest as a detective officer or spy. Our apartments communicated, both being reached through an entry, while my room, lying beyond Kate's, was only reached by passing also from the entry through hers.

On the fourth day of our sojourn in the hotel, about nine o'clock in the morning, Kate tapped on the door leading into my room, and at my cry of "Entrez," came in. She was in a dressing-gown, her long, curling brown hair hanging over her shoulders and a very unusual expression on her face.

"More priests?" I asked in explanation.

"_Police!_" she exclaimed. "If we ever get out of this town alive I shall be thankful! I had rung as usual for water, and just as I had finished my bath I heard a knock at the outside door, and asking 'Wer ist da?' the chambermaid replied that _she_ was. I then opened the door a bit, and saw looking over her shoulders two strange men. My first thought was that they were friends of yours wishing to give you a surprise, and I cried out, 'Oh, you can't come in, for we are not dressed.' Then one of the men said in broken English, 'We shall and we _will_ come in;' and they forced the door in upon me, while I hastened to close and fasten the other, but was too late, for they followed at my heels. 'You are Miss W----?' the one who had already spoken said.--'No, I am not.'--'Then she is in the next room?'--'But you cannot go in, for she isn't dressed,' I said.--'You are her sister, and you come from the Grand Hôtel,' he continued; and you've no idea with what a ferocious face. It was dreadful! Then he said something about the _police_--that we must go to the _police-court_; and finally said he would give you five minutes to dress in. Now, there they are, banging at the door. Oh, what have we done? Why _did_ we ever come into this barbarous land?" and poor merry Kate was on the brink of hysterics.

"Oh, 'tis all a mistake," I replied, adjusting my necktie. "I will see the men, and the matter will be explained at once."

The noise from the street coming in from my open windows had prevented me from hearing the conversation in Kate's room, and I should have been inclined to regard her startling narrative as one of her jokes if it had not been for the loud banging on the door. I hastened to open it: the men came in, and, wishing to relieve Kate of their presence, I asked them to pass into my room. This they refused to do, taking a decided stand in Kate's. I was too curious to lose my presence of mind or show that I was annoyed, and with my blandest smile inquired why I was honored with so matinal a visit from two strangers, when the following dialogue ensued:

"We come from the police. You are Miss W----?"

"Yes."

"Englishwoman?"

"By no means."

"Yes you are; and this woman is your sister."

"No, she is not my sister."

"Yes, she is. You're English. No? What are you, then?"

"I'm American."

"Show your passport."

"Here it is;" and I opened the document bearing the American eagle and the signature of Hamilton Fish.

The two men put their heads together, neither being able to tell what sort of a paper it was, which secretly amused me. The men were in civilian's dress. Turning to Kate, her passport was demanded. She had none.

"And of what nation are you?" asked the spokesman.

She refused to tell.

"And what is your name?"

She refused to answer that. The poor girl had become so nervous under the ordeal, which for her had been of a very violent character, that she imagined nothing could be more disgraceful and humiliating than to have her name mixed up with a police-affair.

Finding that she was inexorable, they returned to me with, "Well, miss, you must go with us to the police," and showed me a paper of arrest.

"And why must I go to the police?"

"Because you have been at the Grand Hôtel."

"What Grand Hôtel?"

"The Grand Hôtel. You must go to the police."

I rang the bell, and asked that the proprietor of the house come at once to my room. He came, and I demanded an explanation of the mystery.

"You must know, mademoiselle," he began, "that in Vienna we are all in the power of the police: they must have the name, nationality, business and address of every person who comes into the city. The morning after your arrival these men came and asked if two English ladies were stopping here. I said 'Yes.' They then said they believed you were persons they had been trying for two weeks to catch, and that you were very suspicious characters who had been stopping here in the Grand Hôtel. I told them it was not possible--that you had come direct from Italy; and I mentioned the telegram you had sent from Trieste, and that you had been recommended to my courtesy by a gentleman whom I well knew and who had many times lodged here. But they went away, and came back again next day, making some inquiries about you, and asking if numbers so and so were those of your rooms. You were out, and whether they visited your rooms or not I cannot say. This is all that I know. Now they are here again, and if they say you must go to the police-court, there will be no other way but to go."

"But I don't understand. I have my passport: there is my bill, receipted at the hotel in Trieste six days ago. I never knew before it was a crime for two English-speaking women to travel alone or to stop at a Grand Hôtel. Of what are we suspected? and upon what grounds suspected?"

"Why, a napkin has been seen among your effects with the mark of the Grand Hôtel upon it."

After a moment's thought it flashed into my mind that it was that Nice serviette, and, more amused than annoyed, I exclaimed, "Oh, I have it. 'Tis that serviette St. Cecilia took at Nice;" and opening my trunk soon had it in my hands, holding it up by two corners for the men to see and explaining how it came into my possession.

"It will go very hard with Madame Cecilia," observed the spokesman: "you will please give us her address."

My indiscretion at once became apparent, but I was a complete novice in "being arrested." To involve Cecilia in the affair would be but an aggravation of matters, and I at once decided, come what might, I would not give the police her address. Looking at the half-obliterated stamp in the corner of the napkin, there was unmistakably the mark "Grand Hôtel," but directly underneath "Nice," which the police, in their ardor to find me guilty of something which I could not find out, had undoubtedly mistaken for Wien, the German name for Vienna. I called their attention to the "Nice," asking what jurisdiction the Austrian government had over matters relating to hotels in Italy. They replied by looking very closely at the stamp, and then one of them took my passport and the napkin and went out, leaving the other man to guard our apartment, and soon returned with a new arrest for myself and my _gesellschafterin_, Miss Barton still refusing to give her name. The landlord had only placed mine in the visitors' book, thereby making himself liable to a fine of eight or ten dollars.

Nothing could have been more widely different than the effect produced upon Kate and myself. To me the whole affair was inexpressibly mysterious and ludicrous, notwithstanding the insolence of the police, and, as it seemed to me, their amazing stupidity. Poor Kate was the wrathfullest woman I ever saw, while her obstinate refusal to answer any questions about herself only increased the ferocity of the men, whose treatment of her was shameful in the extreme. They threatened to search our trunks, which aroused Kate's wrath the more. I observed that as they had assumed the right to unlock and search mine during my absence, they were probably already acquainted with its contents. They, however, abandoned the searching scheme, and ordered us to get ready to go to the police-court, which was about two minutes' walk distant. Kate declared that to the police-court she would not go, unless she were dragged there by her hair, while the men declared that she would then be taken by _armed force_. I concluded to telegraph to the American embassy for help, but that was denied me. Herr Schwager had called to see us only the day previous, saying his lodgings were quite in our neighborhood, but we had not asked his address. There seemed nothing to do but to go to the court and be my own lawyer. It never occurred to me that the landlord to whose courtesy I had been recommended would refuse to go with me; but when I asked him for his protection he begged to be excused, on the ground of being _very_ busy and that he could be of no service to me. I do not wish any reader to infer from this that he was an exceptional Viennese hotel-keeper--that is, exceptionally ungentlemanly: he was, on the contrary, a fair representative both of his trade and his countrymen. Austrian military officers and diplomatic attachés of the government have won in fashionable society a reputation for extreme politeness and gallantry toward women; which may be true, as neither under such conditions costs any earnest sacrifice. But the rank and file of the middle class of Austrians, the class with which travellers have naturally most to do, are most brusque and ungracious in manner as well as in deed, unembellished with any hint of courtesy.

I enjoyed a fling at the landlord by expressing surprise at his refusal to accompany me to the police-court, adding maliciously that American gentlemen were not famous for polished manners, but there was not one mean enough in the whole country to refuse his protection to a lady, a guest under his own roof and in a strange land, where the help of friends was denied her. I then appealed to Kate to go with me, as it would only end the trouble sooner, and that I would never allow her to go to such a place alone, but with tears streaming from her eyes she resisted my entreaties, and I followed one of the men to the court: the other remained behind to watch Kate.

I had no more idea of a police-court than I had of the reason why I was being taken there. It was mystery and curiosity that sustained me. I undoubtedly looked like an amused interrogation-mark, for the moment I was introduced into the presence of the grand interrogator of that inquisition, upon whose desk lay my passport and "that serviette," he smiled and remarked in French, "It is very evident, mademoiselle, that you have nothing to do with this affair."

"With what affair, monsieur? I haven't the faintest idea what I was brought here for," I responded.

"Why, just this: about a fortnight ago two Englishwomen stopped at the Grand Hôtel in this city, and left without paying their bills, carrying off with them all the household linen they could lay their hands on."

And so we had been arrested as house-linen thieves! It was too humiliating. I was then interviewed as to my companion's refusal to give her name, etc., which argued very much against her. I explained as well as I could the extreme annoyance and brutal treatment to which she had been subjected, her horror of having anything to do with a police-court, and how the disgrace of being suspected of a crime was aggravated by intense nervous excitement brought on by the insolence of the police. After considerable pleading on my part in her behalf--for I felt that I was the sole cause of the trouble--it was agreed upon that she should be relieved from coming to the court upon condition that she would sign a paper giving her name, nationality, etc., and I was dismissed without the slightest apology for the trouble to which I had been subjected. At that point the affair ceased to be funny, and, turning back after I had reached the door of exit, I made a short and as effective a speech as the polite language of the French would allow, in which I conveyed a frank idea of my opinion of Austrian courtesy. I succeeded well enough to convince my examiner of something--probably that he had caught a Tartar--and I left him tugging furiously at his moustache. My official escort led the way back to the hotel with a very crestfallen air, savage and sullen.

I found Miss Barton in a worse condition than ever, the persecutions of the guarding policeman having continued with increased ferocity. He had dogged every movement she made, until the poor girl had nearly gone mad; and it was only after long persuasion that I induced her to sign the paper, such a one as most travellers without passports in Austria are obliged to fill out. She finally wrote her name in a great scrawl which nobody could decipher, and gave as her country "Cape Town, Africa;" which again confounded the men, as they had no idea how a "Hottentot" could be an English subject. But they swallowed their ignorance, and finally went away.

When Kate had become restored to her normal condition she heaped upon herself all sorts of self-reproaches, and paid me extravagant compliments for what she called "good sense" and "presence of mind." As she demanded redress for the insults she had suffered, and as I wished to know by what right an Austrian policeman privily searched the trunks of American women who had the misfortune to come into the Austrian dominions, we posted off to our respective national ambassadors. Kate had the satisfaction of being told that she ought to congratulate herself upon getting off as well as she did, since two of her countrywomen had been arrested, put in jail and kept there for two weeks upon even less grounds for suspicion. The result of our complaints was, that the amplest official apologies were made by the Foreign Office, the two policemen severely censured and degraded from rank, while, through the influence of Herr Schwager, who went to the president of the police, an officer was sent from that organization to apologize to us in person. But what I cared most for I never got--an acknowledgment of the right of the police to search baggage _à plaisir_.

As might have been expected, our liking for Vienna had been thoroughly damped. From that moment Kate never saw an officer without fear and trembling, and officers were everywhere. "To think," she exclaimed, "that I have grown to be such a ninny! My brothers always said, 'Oh, we can trust Kate to go anywhere: she never gets nervous or afraid;' and here I am actually afraid to cross a street! I shall never have a moment's peace until I get out of this horrid country."

At the end of a fortnight, having entirely missed her cousins, she joined a party of Americans going to England. St. Cecilia meantime had arrived, and was of course entertained by the napkin adventure. But she could not abide Vienna, and quickly returned to Paris. As I wished to "do" the Exposition and run no more risks of arrest, I decided to withdraw to Baden, a half hour's ride by express from the Südbahn station of the Austrian capital, as the town was strongly recommended by Herr Schwager and several American friends residing in Vienna. Herr Schwager declared that with my small stock of _Deutsch sprechen_ the Badenites would cheat me out of my eyes, and very kindly volunteered to help me get installed. A history of the trials attending that transaction would alone "fill a volume," but I mention only one, and that simply because it seemed another link in the manifest chain of destiny.

An hour after our arrangement for my accommodation for the season had been settled "meine Wirthin" received a letter from her son-in-law that he was coming, and she informed me that she would need her guest-chamber for him, returning to me my advanced guldens at the same time she broke her bargain. Nothing was to be done but to look elsewhere, and eventually lodgings were obtained in the Bergstrasse, in quite another part of the town. The locality was excellent, being very near the promenade and music-gardens: then I liked the face of the _Haus-meisterin,_ as did Herr Schwager, who wisely remarked that he thought kindness of heart should rank high in that "benighted land."

I frequently went to Vienna, spending the day at the Exposition and returning to Baden in the evening. Upon one of these occasions I found upon my return to the Südbahn that I had a half hour to wait for the train. As I was hungry, I ordered a cup of coffee in the café waiting-room. Upon putting my hand in my pocket for my portemonnaie, lo! I had none, not a kreutzer to my name, and my portemonnaie contained also my return railway-ticket! I was alone: it was seven o'clock in the evening. My situation was dramatic, even comic, and I laughed to myself and smiled upon a gentleman and two ladies who sat at the same table, calmly remarking that I had been robbed of my _Gelttasche_: they smiled in return, and nothing more. I sent a _kellner_ to bring me the master of the café, whom I informed of my loss and my inability to pay my debt to him. He at once led me off to a _commissaire de police_--of whom there are always plenty about in civilian's dress--to whom I made a statement of my loss, describing my lost treasure and where I thought it had in all probability been taken. While we were talking a very distinguished-looking man, perhaps forty-five years of age, with magnificent black eyes, passed near, evidently interested. When through with the police I remarked that I did not know how I was to get back to Baden; whereupon the master of the café--who, by the way, spoke English well--exclaimed, "Oh, as to that, I will lend you what you need." Hearing this, the distinguished-looking stranger came up with a salaam, and, begging the conventional number of _pardons_, graciously volunteered any service he might be able to render me. I thanked him, explaining to him in a few words my misfortune, but that the master of the café--who had meantime purchased a railway-ticket for me--had gallantly come to my rescue. At this moment the car-bell rang: I gave my card to the _Meister_, took down his name, and hurried away to get a seat in the train, the owner of the black eyes following me, helping me as best he could, and, "if madame had no objections, would take a seat near her, as he too was _en route_ for Baden." He spoke in French, with a pure French accent, although it was evident he was not a Frenchman. He evinced a desire to continue an acquaintance so oddly begun, but I was obliged to doom him to disappointment. My mind was occupied with the grave question of finance, and about how long I should be obliged to remain in Baden before I should receive a remittance from London. I remembered having seen the gentleman once or twice in the park at Baden, and thought him, with his splendid eyes, graying hair and military bearing, a man of no ordinary appearance. He had the air of a person looking for some one, and the expression was sad. Under ordinary circumstances I should have been curious to learn more of him. My coolness of manner, accompanied by the almost rude brevity of my replies to his few ventured remarks, seemed to amuse him, for he smilingly observed that I was a true "Anglaise."

To be taken for English always aroused my honest indignation, and I quickly retorted, "Pardon, mais je ne suis pas Anglaise."

"Vraiment! but you speak with the English accent."

"Quite possible, monsieur, as English is my mother tongue, but I am a _vrai Américaine."_

"_Américaine! Américaine!_" he repeated eagerly. "I once knew an American lady, and I should prize above all things some knowledge of her. I hope I may have the honor--" A blast from the engine broke upon his speech at that juncture: we were at Baden.

Hastily thanking him--for abroad one falls into the continental habit of thanking people "mille fois" for what they do not do, as for what they do do--and saying "Bon jour," I hurried off to the Bergstrasse. The next morning I refunded my borrowed guldens to the master of the café by post (as I had not placed my entire bank in my purse), and feeling conscience-smitten at having, in my direst extremity, been befriended by one of those "dreadful Austrians" whom I had so bitterly berated, I hinted my amazement, along with my thanks, at having been the recipient of so graceful and needed a courtesy from a Viennese. He acknowledged the receipt of the money, adding, "I hope you do not take me for a Viennese: I am a Bavarian, and have lived twelve years in England."

Among the occupants of the house and dwellers in the garden where I lodged and lived was a young Austrian woman, two years married, with whom I formed a pleasant acquaintance, and whose chatty ways rapidly revived my knowledge of the German, in which language only she could express herself. I shall not soon forget her, for she told me that she married to please the "Eltern"--that she "had never loved," and was so naïve in her mode of reasoning as to prove a source of infinite surprise. She had no conception of any destiny for a girl but that of marriage, and never tired of asking about "American girls," whom I described as oftentimes living and dying unmarried.

"And do not the parents force them to marry? And what do they do if not marry? And when they get old, what becomes of them? And they are _doctors_ even? Did you ever see a woman-doctor?" etc., etc., and hundreds of similar questions.

One evening, two or three days after the "robbery," we went to sit in the park and listen to the music. On the end of a bench where we sat down was a poorly-clad, miserable-looking woman, who occupied herself in dozing and waking. I had no money in my pocket, but I could not rid myself of the idea that the poor wretch was dying of hunger, and her sharp contrast to the hundreds of elegantly-dressed people all about her and constantly moving to and fro only gave more force to her isolation and misery. At length, perhaps more to relieve my mind than otherwise, I begged my _Nachbarin_ to lend me a coin, which I slipped without a word into the creature's hand. To the surprise of both of us, she made no sign of acceptance or thanks. Ten or fifteen minutes later she rose, and coming near us she began to stammer out her thanks and to tell us how poor she was--that she could not work, and that for a month she had been coming to the park, hoping that where there were so many rich people some would kindly give her a trifle; but that in all that time but one person had done so--a gentleman who had given her a gulden; and if we would look she would point him out. We looked: it was the distinguished stranger. I confess to have been gratified, and to feeling confident that if he was one of the foreigners that Aunt Edith had bade me beware of, he was at least a gentleman and a Christian.

The last of August was nearing, and, as the heat was intense, I often went up a hill at the back of the park to be alone and enjoy the breezy atmosphere and the charming view the elevation commanded. On one of these occasions--it was the twenty-fifth and my birthday--I was more than usually absorbed in my thoughts when my attention was caught by a shadow passing over the declivity a little removed from where I sat, and looking up I recognized the giver of alms. He lifted his hat, begged pardon and hoped it was not an indiscretion to ask if I had recovered my purse; which opened the way to further conversation. The sun was fast setting, and the scene on earth and sky was resplendent. Leaning upon a rock, he contemplated the miracle in silent adoration.

"Ah, that is equal to what I have so often seen in America," I remarked.

After a moment he replied, "For many years no land has so much interested me as America, and upon no people do I look with so much interest. America gave me my supremest joy and my profoundest sorrow. Perhaps this confession may, in a measure, excuse my impolite intrusion upon you, as I am so thoroughly a stranger."

"Yes, and a foreigner," I laughed. "I have a dear, beautiful aunt Edith at home who warned me against foreigners. This is my _fête_, and as her birthday is the same as mine, I am naturally thinking of her just now, and recall her sage advice. As the sun is down, I will follow it and bid you good-night."

As I rose to go he made no reply, as if he had been indifferent to what I had said. I glanced at his face: it was ashen white. He was opening a locket attached to his watchguard, from which he lifted a ring of dark hair, and then drawing it nearer his eyes he spoke as if reading a date: "Le vingt-cinq août."

The pallor of his face, joined to its outline, which was in full profile, held me where I stood as if spellbound. Somewhere, a long time ago, I had seen that face.

"Yes, it is an unusual coincidence," he remarked, as if just comprehending what had been said. "But your aunt Edith must be much older than you?"

"No: only ten years."

"Is she married?"

"No."

"And you?"

"Nor I, monsieur. We belong to the noble army of old maids, which on the other side is a more honorable and obstinate sisterhood than here."

He smiled faintly, and wiped his forehead with a large white handkerchief.

"If I should go to America," he observed, "I should greatly desire to visit the locality where women like you live and die unmarried."

"Oh, for that matter, you can't miss them," I replied laughingly: "they're common from Maine to California. Spinsterhood is an outgrowth of our Declaration of Independence--'liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"

"But, really, I desire to know the name of the place where you live: I am sure it will interest me greatly. Will you not write it for me?" And he offered me a blank card.

"Oh, certainly, but I don't understand why."

"I may possibly go and see your aunt Edith and tell her I saw you on the top of a mountain. Perhaps you would like to send her a message?"

"Well, if you see her," I replied in the same tone, moving away, "tell her I haven't forgotten to beware of foreigners."

"Just one more word," he entreated, following me. "Is your aunt Edith, Edith Mack?"

"Yes, but how should you know?" and in that moment it flashed upon my mind like sudden daybreak. "And you are--" I stammered.

"A man who has loved her many a year. To-morrow I leave Vienna for England, to sail for New York. I cannot say more to you now than that I begin to see my way through a sad, sad mystery. Here is my card. Adieu!"

The bright glow left in the atmosphere by the brilliant sunset had quite died away, but it was light enough for me to read the superscription: "LE CHEVALIER ACHILLE ROMA."

I walked back to my lodgings in a manner probably quite sane to other people, although the distance was compassed by myself in a condition of complete unconsciousness as to how. Like the phantasmagoria of fated events swept before my mind the train of complicated circumstances that had led to my finding Aunt Edith's lost lover. And the beautiful romance at the end had resulted from my having disregarded her warning to "beware of foreigners."

* * * * *

There is not much more to tell. I left Baden at the end of the month, and returned to Paris. Six weeks later I had a letter from Aunt Edith urging me to come home for her wedding, which would take place prior to the holidays. The Chevalier Roma had long since become convinced that his "friend," the consul at Rome, was the key to the whole mischief, but his suspicions in that direction came too late for him to regain a clue to Aunt Edith. Several letters sent to her name at New York of course had never reached her. The surest and quickest way to accomplish his desire, to prove to the heart he had through so many years cherished how true and loyal had been his allegiance, how deep and sincere his love, was the one he had chosen and acted upon with such alacrity.

A few weeks after my aunt's marriage I received the wedding-cards of Herr Schwager and Miss Kate Barton. After all, merry Kate had accepted a "horrid German" for her husband, and thereby the truth suddenly dawned upon my mind that _I_ had been the recipient of the Herr's exceeding kindness because I was "neighbor to the rose."

MARY WAGER-FISHER.

THE CENSUS OF 1880.

The taking of the census of the United States is, at any time, an event of national interest and importance. That of the tenth census, in 1880, will be especially interesting, as marking the completion of the first century of our declared independence. We shall then ascertain, more fully and concisely than we have yet been able to do, exactly what progress has been made in one hundred years by a people left free to work out its own destiny, alike in form of government and in material, moral and intellectual development, under no check except its own self-imposed restraints. The record of such progress ought to be the most valuable contribution ever made to political, economic and social science. Whether it shall prove so or not depends chiefly on the manner in which the essential work is done. It is already time that public attention should be drawn to this important event, since the law under which the census is to be taken must, if it shall be at all adequate to the occasion, be passed by the present Congress.

The United States is the first nation which ever implanted in its Constitution a provision for taking at regular periods a census of its people. The makers of that instrument seemed to have an intuitive sense of the importance of such a step, for they had no guide and borrowed from no precedent. It is true the fundamental law provides only for an enumeration of persons, but under the authority given to Congress to "provide for the general welfare" such laws have heretofore been passed as have rendered our census reports documents of inestimable value. It is doubtful if any people have ever taken so great pains to find out "how they are getting along," or have ever made so great and immediate use of that information. So marked is the fact that the Constitution requires a decennial census that a distinguished French writer on statistics declares, "The United States presents in its history a phenomenon which has no parallel. It is that of a people who instituted the statistics of their country on the very day when they formed their government, and who regulated in the same instrument the census of their citizens, their civil and political rights and the destinies of their country."

To understand the progressive steps by which our census has reached its present magnitude and importance a brief glance is necessary at the successive laws under which the enumeration has been made and the manner in which their results have been presented.

The first census was taken in 1790, under the act of March 1 of that year, and many of the worst features of that tentative experiment still remain to vex the soul of every one who desires a census which shall be in accord with the demands of science and the times. Then, as now, the United States marshals were designated to conduct the enumeration. They were authorized to employ as many assistants as might be needful, and each assistant was required, prior to making his return, to "cause a correct copy of the schedule, signed by himself, to be set up at two of the most public places within his division, there to remain for the inspection of all concerned." It is from this crude law that the mischievous custom is borrowed of having a copy of the census returns deposited with the county court clerk. As originally conducted, the system was harmless, since only the names of heads of families were given and only the number of persons constituting the family reported. The compensation was also based on the number of persons returned by the assistant marshals. The form of schedule was as follows:

______________________________________________________________ |Free White | | | | |Males of 16| |Free White| | Names of |years and |Free White|Females, |All Other|Slaves. Heads of |upwards, |Males |including |Free | Families.|including |under 16 |heads of |Persons. | |heads of |years. |families. | | |families. | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------

Such and so simple were the results sought at the first census, the enumeration for which was to commence on the 1st of August, 1790, and to close within nine months thereafter, and the returns were to be made to the President of the United States on or before September, 1, 1791. These results were published in an octavo pamphlet of fifty-two pages. No officer of the government seems to have had any supervision of the work of preparing it for the press. The returns were doubtless handed by the President to some clerk for compilation, and communicated to Congress along with other routine and miscellaneous documents accompanying the annual message.

The second census was taken under the act of February 28, 1800, and, like the first, was confined to an enumeration of the population under the care of the United States marshals, but the whole work was prosecuted under the direction of the Secretary of State. The number of facts to be returned was somewhat enlarged by further inquiries into the ages of the inhabitants: otherwise there was no substantial change.

The act providing for the taking of the third census was passed March 26, 1810, and was almost identical with that for the second census.

A great step in advance was, however, taken in the act of May 1, 1810, which imposed upon the marshals and their assistants the additional duty of taking, under direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, an account of the manufacturing establishments and manufactures of the several districts, at an aggregate expense not exceeding thirty thousand dollars.

The only changes introduced into the act of March 14, 1820, for taking the fourth census, provided for a return of the number of males between sixteen and eighteen, the number of foreigners not naturalized, and the colored population by age and sex. The provisions for a return of manufactures were re-enacted, the results to be reported to the Secretary of State (J.Q. Adams). But these returns, like those of the third census, were of very slight value.

In the act of March 23, 1830, for taking the fifth census, provision is made for ascertaining the number of blind and deaf and dumb, and the returns of age and sex were required with greater fulness than before. The time for commencing the enumeration was changed from August 1 to June 1, and the work was to be completed in six instead of nine months. The return of manufactures required by the two preceding census laws was omitted.

The act of March 3, 1839, for the sixth census, differed very slightly from that for the fifth, except that returns were also required of the number of insane and idiotic, the number of Revolutionary pensioners, and of the manufacturing, agricultural and educational statistics. By an amendment adopted February 26, 1840, the time for completing the enumeration was reduced to five months from June 1, and, for the first time provision is made for special supervision of the work by requiring the appointment of a superintending clerk.

Thus it appears that down to the taking of the sixth census, in 1840, the chief object aimed at was the enumeration of the population. No effort was made to arrive at, or even approach, by any thorough and scientific process the great facts relating to our material progress and prosperity, or to supervise the publication of such returns as were required. But the report for that year shows a great advance over any preceding one both in quantity and quality of information. The decade then closing was one of great life and movement. The States west of the Alleghanies were rapidly filling up with immigrants, whose arrival was followed by speculations hitherto unknown. Fabulous wealth was speedily followed by utter bankruptcy. The railroad, the steamship and the telegraph foreshadowed the approaching revolution in methods of commerce and communication. A new life was dawning.

These commercial changes and social revolutions were continued with increasing intensity during the next decade. The great famine in Ireland sent us swarms of laborers. The Mexican war brought us California, and the discovery of gold there marked the beginning of a new era in our material condition. It was under the influence of these stimulating events that the seventh census was undertaken. To make such preparations that it should, to some extent, embody the spirit of the time and furnish us with a correct statement of our condition under the new impulses and burdens of the nation, an act was passed March 3, 1849, creating a census board, whose duty it should be to prepare, and cause to be printed, forms and schedules for the enumeration of the population, and also for collecting "such information as to mines, agriculture, commerce, manufactures, education and other topics as will exhibit a full view of the pursuits, industry, education and resources of the country; _provided_, the number of said inquiries, exclusive of enumeration, shall not exceed one hundred." On the same day the Department of the Interior was established, and all matters relating to the census were transferred to that department. The census board reported "an act for taking the seventh and subsequent censuses of the United States," which became a law May 23, 1850, and under that law the censuses of 1850, 1860 and 1870 were taken.

However far that law was an improvement upon either of those under which the preceding censuses were taken, it is now wholly inadequate--so much so, indeed, that the superintendent of the ninth census (1870) declared, "It is not possible for one who has had such painful occasion as the present superintendent to observe the workings of the census law of 1870 to characterize it otherwise than as clumsy, antiquated and barbarous. The machinery it provides is as unfit for use in the census of the United States in this day of advanced statistical science as the smooth-bore muzzle-loading 'queen's arm' of the Revolution would be for service against the repeating rifle of the present time." It includes many inquiries which are practically worthless, and excludes many vitally necessary to an understanding of our social and industrial condition. Thus the questions, "Has this season produced average crops?" "What crops are short?" "What are the average wages of a female domestic per week, without board?" "How much road-tax did you pay, and how?" may be of some interest, if regarded as conundrums, but are practically of as little value as the color of one's hair or the average number of hours one sleeps; while, as matters of fact, the answers to them have been so unsatisfactory that no attempt has ever been made to classify them, and in the census of 1870 they were discarded altogether, though still forming part of the law. Nor is the method required for ascertaining the facts relating to manufactures of any greater value. The inquiries are the same in regard to every kind of industry, whether the product be cloth, leather, iron or silver, and are confined solely to wages, kinds and quantities. No means are provided for ascertaining with skill and exactness the necessary details of the varied manufactures of the country. The schedules for agricultural returns are also the same for all sections--for cotton and sugar-cane in Maine, for maple-sugar and hops in Louisiana. These, however, are merely superficial defects, some of which might easily be remedied in the hands of a competent superintendent, as was the case with the census of 1870. The graver inherent defects are equally obvious, but not equally susceptible of remedy. Nothing short of a new law will accomplish that result.

In the first place, the officer designated to take the census is, in every point of view, objectionable. That officer is the United States marshal, originally selected, probably, for no better reason than that, as there was such an officer in every State whose services could be made available, it was better to use him than to create a new office. But neither the legitimate duties of his office nor the department to which he belongs justify such a selection. His duties are chiefly connected with violations of law, and he is necessarily associated in public opinion with the criminal side of life. A police-officer is not a good census-taker. Moreover, many of the States are divided into several marshalships from considerations which do not at all enter into the taking of the census. Thus, New York has three districts, the largest of which contains more than two and a quarter millions of inhabitants, while Florida has two districts, the smaller of which, but by far the more important so far as the legitimate duties of the marshal are concerned, contains scarcely six thousand inhabitants. Massachusetts is a district with over a million and a third of people: so is Arizona, with less than ten thousand.

Then the methods of payment are unfair, irrational and cumbersome. They bear no relation to the amount of work performed, are irregular in their operation, are obscure in their manner of calculation, and impose needless labor alike on the officer to be paid and the census office. To say that the square root of an area multiplied by the square root of the number of horses indicates the number of miles travelled in taking a census is as absurd as to say that the square root of the yards of cloth in a suit multiplied by the square root of the number of stitches taken to make the suit will give the length of the thread used. In its practical working in 1860 the result was to give to one assistant marshal a per diem of $1.66 and to another $31.32 for the same labor. A proposition which works out such a result may serve for a joke in negro minstrelsy: it will hardly be accepted as honest figuring by the recipient of the minimum pay.

But the greatest objection of all is to the schedules created by the law of 1850. The number of inquiries is limited by that law to one hundred, though why that number should be selected as the limit, except at haphazard, is a mystery. It is purely arbitrary, and in its practical working is mischievous. Statistical inquiries ought to be exhaustive, whether the questions asked are ten or ten thousand. To limit the number to one hundred requires the lumping together of incongruous facts or the entire omission of some of prime importance. Of what real value is the answer to the question, "Kind of motive-power?" in relation to manufactures unless other details are given? Yet only such questions can be asked where the margin is so narrow. In the census of Massachusetts for 1875, 304 inquiries were made, embracing 1337 topics; and so satisfactorily was the work done that out of a population of 1,651,912 only 43 persons were unaccounted for when the statistics of occupations were compiled; while in the United States census of 1870 the number thus unaccounted for exceeded 1,000,000. In Rhode Island no less than 561 inquiries were made in the census of 1875, and the result is the most complete census--not merely of persons, but of every kind of manufacture and production--yet taken in any State. The returns of cotton, woollen and iron manufactures show what can and ought to be done in that direction for the whole nation in 1880. They answer the requirements set forth by the superintendent of the census of 1870 by presenting "tables so full of technical information as to become the handbook of manufacturers."

By the side of the census reports for 1875 of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and even of the young State of Iowa, those of the United States hitherto published appear like incomplete, vague and childish efforts. For instance, in the census of Massachusetts for 1875, in the agricultural statistics, 140 different items are reported, exclusive of 10 included among "domestic products," but reckoned in the United States census among agricultural products. Of these 150 items, only 24 are reported in the United States census of 1870, although some of those omitted are from $1,500,000 to $5,000,000 in annual value. In the case of manufactures the defects are still more striking--ludicrously so but for the importance of the subject. By the schedules of 1850 the facts called for in regard to manufactures are simply these: number of establishments, horse-power, hands employed, capital, wages, materials, products. The 1 establishment which employed 3 hands and turned out $3000 worth of artificial eyes demanded and received exactly the same treatment with the 22,573 flouring- and grist-mills with their army of 58,448 workmen and $444,985,143 of products. On this Procrustean bed all are stretched or shrunken--the giant industries by which men are fed, clothed, housed and shod, with their 1,000,000 of men and $2,000,000,000 of products, and the pigmy occupations of making skewers, calcium-lights, mops, dusters, etc., employing 150 persons and aggregating $150,000 of products.

And this leads directly to a consideration of the measures necessary to secure a proper census of the United States in 1880. To begin with, as already reiterated, a new law is imperatively demanded: no good thing can come of the present statute. As early as possible during this present Congress a committee on the tenth census should be appointed, which should carefully study the laws and methods of every civilized state and country in which a census is taken, and from these collect whatever is best, giving at the same time ample power to the superintendent in all matters of administration and appointment. Such a law might be as short and simple as that of Rhode Island, which is comprised in eight brief sections, yet is so comprehensive that under its provisions was compiled the most complete census yet taken in this country, if not in the world.

The time at which the census is taken should be changed from June 1 to at least November 1, if not to January 1, when the labors of the year are ended, when the harvest has been gathered in, the books made up and the family naturally talk over the events of the past twelve-month. Then, if ever, is the time when full, frank and honest answers will be given, and the census-taker will be hailed rather as a friend than an enemy in disguise. The method adopted years ago in all other civilized countries, and in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 1875, of leaving the blank schedules in advance at each house and manufactory, to be filled up carefully and thoughtfully, and to be called for on a given day, should also be adopted. The result of the first attempt in Massachusetts was that 37 per cent. of the schedules was found ready for delivery to the enumerator, and for the remaining 63 per cent. the labor was greatly diminished by the readiness of the people to answer all inquiries intelligently. The number who at first failed or refused to comply was only one hundred, and of manufacturers less than twenty; and these all subsequently made the necessary returns. The total answers of all kinds received at the census office was 13,000,000, at a cost to the State of one dollar for each hundred answers.

Under such a law, enacted by the present Congress, and by such methods, the census report of 1880 would become a document to which every good citizen could point with pride and congratulation. We should no longer be mortified with such errors and shortcomings as are so frankly commented on in the census report of 1870. We should have not merely a correct enumeration of the population, with all the important facts connected with their domestic and social condition, but also such a return of the occupations, manufacturing industries, education and commercial operations, and all the elements which go to make up the material well-being of the races on this portion of the continent, as would mark a new departure in our national life. The absurd inanities which characterize so much of the report of the superintendent of the census of 1860, and the _doctrinaire_ theories injected into the report of 1850, ought never again to find expression in any public document bearing the official sanction of the United States.

The census report of 1860, as compared with that of 1870, is as the Serbonian bog to a well-appointed lawn. For the first time since its inception the taking of the census was in 1870 placed in thoroughly competent hands. By inherited ability, as well as by previous training, General Walker possesses in an eminent degree the qualities essential to the fitting and successful execution of such a task. At every step he shows the skill and readiness of a master workman; and it will be fortunate for the country if he shall be selected as superintendent of the tenth census under a law of his own devising.

As to the results to be revealed by the tenth census, it is not worth while to speculate. That they will be disappointing in many aspects to the national pride, or at least to the national vanity, there can be little doubt; but it is to be hoped we have outlived the period when the truth can make us angry. Of course there will be no such increase of population as marked our earlier career down to 1860, nor should we expect much increase in the reported wealth of the country since 1870. For the first time, except in the decade from 1820 to 1830, there will be no increase of area, unless all signs fail. Whatever the changes may be, they will more fully concern our social and political condition than in any previous decade, except perhaps the last.

An early and intelligent interest in this important subject is all that is requisite to secure the needed reform. It is not creditable to the country that the census of 1870 was taken under the provisions of the law of 1850: it will be disgraceful should that of 1880 be subjected to the same fate, as it must be unless a new law is passed before the first of January of that year. The matter should be pressed upon the attention of Congress during its present session. In 1870 an admirable law was passed by the House of Representatives under the skilful and intelligent leadership of Hon. James A. Garfield, but it failed in the Senate because of the apathy of some and the personal pique of others. It seems incredible that in that dignified body so little attention was paid to this vast subject. Again and again its consideration was postponed because a sufficient attendance could not be secured to act upon the proposed law, which at last fell to the ground, a victim to the indifference and prejudice of those who ought to have acted more wisely in a matter that so nearly concerns the welfare and good name of a great nation.

HENRY STONE.

CHANG-HOW AND ANARKY.

"Gret beezle!"

A dismayed silence while Anarky, our cook--black as night, eyes set square in her head, that head set level on her stout black shoulders--walked around the Chinese youth my husband had brought home as an experiment in our domestic life--around the Chinese youth with his wiry frame and insinuating stoop of the shoulders, and a smile of neutral tint lying placid but wary on his buff countenance.

"Lordy-mussy!" quoth Anarky. Another vehement, aggressive pause on her part, a silence observant and self-defensive on his. "Name o' Satan, Mis' Maud! what is it?"

"This is to be your fellow-servant, Anarky."

"Gret Beezle! Wish I may die ef I didn't think it wor a yaller rat!"

"Anarky, I am ashamed of you! What should Mr. Smith want with a yellow rat?"

"Thought he bought it at de sukus in New York, an' gif to you like he did dat monkey. Ef it ain't no rat, an' ain't a monkey, name o' Satan, what kin it be? 'Tain't a 'ooman, for all dem gret long sleeves: you know dat yo'se'f. An' 'tain't like no man as eber _I_ seed. What dat hangin' on to its head? An' what motter wid its eyes, sot crank-sided right 'ginst its nose, kickin' up der heels, pintin' ebry way for Sunday--one en' uv um ez sharp as a 'nittin'-needle, an' tudder en' ez roun' ez a marble?"

Chang-how sent one eye skirmishing in my direction, and the other toward Anarky, and the same deprecatory yet wary smile rested like moonlight on his placid face.

"That will do, Anarky," said I. "I wish you to understand that this is to be your fellow-servant. You will cook and wash as usual. Chang-how will attend in the dining-room, and do I don't know yet exactly what else; but I wish you to be kind to him, remembering that he is a stranger in a strange land. Also, I will have no further remarks on his personal appearance."

Silenced by authority, but unmoved by my eloquence, Anarky made another tour of inspection--silently raised the end of Chang-how's queue, disgustedly let it fall, and went to the door. There she stopped and looked at him again. "Good Lord!" said she under her breath by way of parting salute.

The look of mild unconcern that had rested on Chang-how's features was rippled by a quaint, cunning smile, and for the first time he cast a quick glance full at her, then stood again with folded hands, calm, submissive, apparently unobservant.

Seeing the antagonism that was likely to exist between them, I myself showed Chang-how and his bundle to the room he was to occupy, and in a short time he emerged clad in a neat white jacket, his queue deftly bound around his head, ready for business.

The fellow was exceedingly bright and quick, and, though he never seemed to be "takin' notes," nothing escaped his observation. He learned our ways in an incredibly short time, and when those ways did not come in conflict with any habit previously formed he adapted himself to them at once; but woe to any pet notion that interfered with Chang's preconceived ideas! That notion had to go to the wall. However, that has nothing to do here.

Whether Chang-how had been "takin' notes" was a debatable point, but that somebody was taking everything takable on the premises soon became a self-evident proposition; and this was uncomfortable for more reasons than one. Mr. Smith and I almost quarrelled about it. He would not believe it to be Chang-how, and I was determined it should not be Anarky. Said he, "Anarky is taking advantage of the popular idea that the Chinese are invariably dis--"

"Now, who ever heard anything like that?" I interrupted. "What does Anarky know about the popular idea concerning the Chinese? About as much as I should know if you were to talk to me about the Teutonic idiom for mezzo-tinted phonetics."

"You have convinced me, my dear, that Chang-how is the guilty party; but the idea I meant to convey before you knocked me down with those big words was this--that Anarky, knowing what people think of the Chinese, indulges her dishonest yearnings, believing we shall suppose the thief to be Chang-how."

"But I know it _isn't_ Anarky, because Anarky always had a blundering, awkward, above-board way of stealing that made it only _taking_ things, and she was always getting caught; and Chang-how always manages not to be found out. And I know it is Chang-how; I know it by that. It shows he is used to it."

Mr. Smith laughed.

"It does! and I know it _is_ Chang-how and it _isn't_ Anarky."

Then Mr. Smith laughed again, and said women were born to be lawyers.

Chang-how would come to me (he was dining-room servant, you remember): "Evly one spoonee no come homee."

"How you mean, Chang-how? Where spoonee go?"

"All no light: all longee. Spoonee go 'way: I no find him."

"Oh, but you must find them, Chang-how. How many go?"

"Four spoonee."

"But they are solid silver! You really must find them."

"You tell where lookee, I go lookee."

"I am sure I don't know were you are to look. And two forks were missing last week!"

I stared reflectively at a June-bug on the window-sill. Chang-how stood with folded hands and drooping shoulders, a seraphic calm upon his features, as of one who had stood upon the burning deck when all but he had fled. Evidently he had done his duty. I was so impressed with this fact, and that the responsibility, if not the guilt, was now mine, that I simply said, "Go set the table then, Chang-how. Mr. Smith will have to tell us what to do when he comes home."

Exit Chang.

Enter Anarky: "Mis' Maud, how many hank'chers you sent out dis week?"

"Twenty-three, I believe."

"An' now I ain't got but nineteen. You see dat? How many socks for Mas' Jim?"

"Six or seven, I suppose. Why?"

"You see dat again? Ain't but fo' par lef'! Ef I don't beat him, shoze I'm a nigger!"

"Your Mas' Jim?" I asked, smiling.

"'Tain't nobody but dat yaller varmint dat's stealin' roun' de lot.--Lor'! Lor'! ef I jes' could cotch him!"

"Anarky, while we are talking about it, I--I really wish you would manage a little better about the biscuit and--well, the eggs, and--and a good many little things of the kind. I am sure we have an abundance of everything, and it mortifies me exceedingly not to have it at table. Haven't you and Chang everything you want, and as much?"

"We gits more'n 'nuff. An' what goes outen de kitchen goes correc'. Whar dey lands 'tween dar an' de din'-room don't nobody know but dat yaller dorg. I misses things cornstant--things dat I ain't took my eyes off 'em, 'cep' ter wink; an', bless de Lord! while I wor a-winkin' de lard done took to its heels or de flour flewed away."

The next evening, when Chang brought in supper, Anarky walked by his side in solemn state, empty-handed, dignified, watchful. He appeared totally unconscious of his escort, and I made no remark; but Mr. Smith sent him into the hall on an errand, and during his absence Anarky rose to explain: "Which you see all dem biskit, Mis' Maud?"

"Yes: I am glad we are getting all right again, Anarky."

"Well, I got dat many mo' in de ub'n now--jes' like I use ter hab 'fo' dat--" Here an appalling idea seemed to strike her. "War dat Chow-chow nigger?" she exclaimed, and made a dash toward the door. As she reached it Chang-how quietly glided in and handed Mr. Smith the paper he had gone for.

The next moment a sound came from the kitchen--something between a howl and a roar--and following in its wake came Anarky. Almost inarticulate with rage, she shook her brawny fist in Chang-how's face. "You good-fur-nuthin' yaller _houn'!_" she exclaimed.

Mr. Smith wheeled around on his chair and looked at her in stern surprise. Chang-how stood his ground and gazed at her with the unruffled calm of a full moon beaming o'er a raging sea.

She turned to us, trembling with excitement: "Well, ef dat ain't de beatinest trick et ebber I seed! Think dat yaller houn' ain't stole de biskit outen de ub'n? An', 'fo' Gord! I didn't know he'd been out o' here long 'nuff for a dog to snap at a fly! Ef you ain't de oudaishusest--" She stopped and glared at him with the despairing, silent venom of one who felt herself a pauper in words, a verbal failure, a wretched creature who in the supreme hour of trial was proving herself the wrong person in the wrong place.

Chang-how's hands were folded, and his eyes rested dreamily on the floor. Evidently, he was contentedly rolling tea-leaves in his native land.

Suspiciously regarding the abnormal appearance of Chang-how's neat white jacket, I forbore to rebuke my sable favorite, but Mr. Smith, not having observed the little protuberances which had attracted my attention toward his more delicately-tinted protégé, said with decision, "Go to the kitchen, Anarky, and send in supper or bring it yourself; and make haste about it."

Anarky turned again to Chang-how and fixed her great black eyes on him in silence. Then she sounded a note of solemn warning: "Lord! Lord! Shang-hai!" said she, "ef ebber I _does_ cotch you out an' out, ef ebber I _does_ git a good square holt on you, I'll t'ar you all to pieces! Yo' mammy won't want what'll be left uv you, 'cos' 'twon't be wuf berryin'!"

"Shut upee! too much jawee," said Chang-how benignly, and dreamed again of his native land. But for three days nothing was missing in Anarky's department, and so far Chang-how escaped with unbroken bones.

On the evening of the fourth day I received a letter announcing the coming of visitors, and it unfortunately occurred to me that Chang-how might assist Anarky in the laundry, thus affording her an opportunity for greater display in the culinary department; so I called him up: "You washeeman, Chang-how?"

"Oh yes, I washee all light," said Chang.

"You help Anarky iron to-day I give you more money."

"All light! How muchee?"

"One dollar."

"Two dollar."

"One dollar."

"No washee one dollar," said Chang.

"No washee at all, then."

"One dollar ap."

"Nor a dollar and a half: I get other washee."

"Melican man no washee ap."

"Oh yes. Melican woman suit me."

"All light! I washee one dollar."

"Very well. As soon, then, as you leave the dining-room go to the laundry. And, Chang, no make cook cross."

"Cook too much talkee: cookee bad egg."

"Well, you no make cookee cross perhaps I give you more money."

"All light! How muchee?"

"No matter: a quarter."

"Ap."

"A half, then."

Going to the laundry, I said to Anarky, "Chang-how will assist you in the ironing to-day, so that you can get through quickly and show my friends some of your best cooking, Anarky. I do hope--"

"What Shang-doodle know 'bout i'unin'?" asked Anarky sulkily.

"Oh, he knows ever so much," said I with cheerful faith; "and I do hope you will try to get on nicely with him this time. You know what the Bible says about brothers dwelling together in unity, and all that?"

"Chang-jaw ain't none o' my brudder, an' I ain't none o' his'n," resisted Anarky.

"Oh yes, we are all brothers; and if you will only be Chang-how's long enough to get through with the ironing, I will give you almost anything you want."

"Gimme a nigger all day long," said Anarky: "I fa'rly hates a Chinee an' a Orrisher."

"Try it to-day, though, Anarky, for my sake," said I persuasively; and she consented, though sulkily enough.

Hearing Chang-how coming, I seated myself on the stairway leading into the laundry, curious to see how they would work together.

Anarky pointed authoritatively to a heap of dried linen. "Sprinkle dem ar cloze," said she to Chang. "I'm gwine out in de yard to git what's on de line."

While she was gone, Chang-how, as is the manner of his people, filled his mouth with water, and was blowing it in a fine spray over the linen when Anarky appeared in the doorway, a basket of clothes on her head, her knuckles on her hips. As she caught sight of Chang-how moistening the linen with water from his mouth she stopped: she staggered, her basket fell to the floor, and, stooping down, she threw her hands above her head, then brought them down again with a violent slap on her knees.

"Good Lor'! come down," said she, "an' look at dat yaller houn' a-spittin' on Mis' Maud's cloze.--I got you now! Can't nobody blame me fur beatin' you 'bout _dat_."

Then she flew at him, and what a scene it was! She, black, brawny, of immense physical power--he, lithe, sinewy, supple as a panther. It was a spectacle! First one, then the other, seemed to have the advantage. She would catch him in her powerful grasp, and, lifting him off his feet, swing him in the air as if about to slam him to his final resting-place, when by some inexplicable manoeuvre he would writhe from between her fingers or wriggle himself to the back of her neck and mash her nose flat against her breast as if bent on suffocating her or breaking her neck. In a moment she would reach back with both hands and pull him over her head very much as men doff a shirt. Likely as not, Chang came down with his heels in the air, and at it they would go again. Presently she was tripped, and fell with a violence that should have broken every bone in her body, but before Chang-how could pursue his advantage she had wheeled on her side, wound his queue halfway up her arm and had her knee on his breast.

"Good for you, An--! I mean, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Stop! for Heaven's sake, stop! You might kill him."

As well have spoken to the winds. And as they became more terribly in earnest I began to scream for help: "Stop, Anarky! (Murder! murder!)--Here, Chang, take the poker. (_Mu--u--u--r--_der!) Great Heaven! don't hit her with it! Stop, Chang-how! (Mur--_d--e--r!_ Oh, mercy! somebody come!)--Here, Anarky, take the pota- (Mur--_d--e--r--rr!_)--potato-masher and don't kill (_M--u--r_--der!)--kill him with it, unless he kills you first.--Oh, mercy! mercy! I don't know what else to give you all to keep you from killing (Murder!)--killing each other with.--Anarky, you are breaking his neck!--Here's a flatiron, Chang! (Murder! Fire! fire! fire!)"

This brought the neighbors and the neighbors' children, and their neighbors and their neighbors' children, and finally a forlorn policeman, who marched Anarky to the magistrate's office and left Chang to do up his pigtail at leisure, and reflect how often he had sinned and gone unwhipt of justice, and now, in the hour of peace and in the act of duty, retribution had deliberately sought him out, and found him and disposed of him as afore told.

It seems that Anarky went quietly enough to the magistrate, who gave her the choice between going to jail and depositing five dollars as security for her appearance next morning for examination. Not having five dollars to deposit, she was allowed an hour in which to seek some one who would go bail for her. At the end of that time she returned to the office panting, exhausted, wiping the perspiration from her face with her blue cotton apron.

"Who is going bail for you?" she was asked.

Calmly turning down the sleeves that had been rolled above her shining black elbows, she replied with contempt, "I ain't been arter no bail: I dun been home an' finish beatin' de lites outen dat yaller houn'. Dat all de bail _I_ wants! Which ef ennybody's lookin' fur him, dey kin fin' his pigtail, an' maybe a piece uv his head a-stickin' to it, hin' de chick'n-coop at Mas' Jim's. Now kyar me to jail an' lemme res'. I boun' he don't spit on no mo' cloze _I_ got ter han'le!"

JENNIE WOODVILLE.

THE IDYL OF THE VAUCLUSE.

A dusky opening in a range of purpling hills; a vision of a cluster of small white human homes; a shining, murmuring little river spanned by a wooden bridge; a towering background of bald, steep rock, cleft at its base into a shadowy cavern,--such is the first of my memories of the Vaucluse. At the entrance of the little town stands a low white-walled building, over the door of which is a tablet inscribed thus: "On the site of this café Petrarch established his study. Here he wrote the lines--

O soave contrada, O puro fiume, Che bagni 'l suo bel viso e gli occhi chiari."

On the banks of the classic Sorgue I was offered the photographs of Petrarch and Laura. I took them, and there, with the sweet May sunlight flooding all the sod, with the fresh spring grass and buds bursting into life beneath my feet, with the murmur of the glad young river in my ears, I stood and gazed upon the faces of those lovers of five hundred years ago, whose love was as a spring-time idyl. For they met in the spring, they parted in the spring, their intercourse was like the mingling of young winds with woodland violets; and, dust and ashes though they have been for centuries, they still prefigure to our hearts the eternal spring-time of the world.

And yet, could the picture that I held in my hand be a faithful reproduction of the famous portrait of Laura which was painted at the request of Petrarch by Simon Menimi and charmed him into verse with its loveliness? It represented simply the head and bust. The face was elongated, the cheeks hollow, the hair smoothed down below the ears. The long, oval, half-shut eyes wore a horrible leer, as though the owner were making a painful effort to close them. On the head was a stiff, ungainly jewelled helmet, which terminated low on the forehead in a triangular ornament. The long, slender throat was encircled by three rows of pearls. The dress was cut squarely across the neck, and was checkered off like a draught-board, while over one shoulder was thrown a small lace scarf. The whole expression of the figure was that of serious, earnest sobriety and saintliness, as understood by a mediæval painter and treated according to his conception of his art, which recognized no difference between a man's earthly love and his spiritual patron, and made them equally crude, righteous, quaint and angular.

But I felt that these harsh distorted outlines had naught in common with Petrarch's Laura. For she had golden hair that floated loose in the breeze and was the prison of enchained and captive Love, and she had roses, red and white, upon her face, and a throat of snowy purity, and a smile of such rare gentleness that when she passed them by men said, "Sure this is an angel come from heaven!" That is the Laura who for centuries has beamed upon humanity--a sweet, benign, refreshing presence--from within her lover's sonnets. That is the Laura in whose reality I believe, but the Laura who lies imprisoned and disguised behind the grotesque mask of mediæval art I cannot, will not, recognize. In Petrarch's utterance I find Laura, a pure spiritual shape in mind and body and soul; but in her portrait I see only Laura clogged and choked and bound about with the trammels of early art and the weight of crude, untruthful detail. Thus, I believe that art at its best is but a dull, material, mechanical means for the translation or reproduction of thought and Nature, and that for the swift, living, electric flame of truth we must refer in all ages and climes to speech pure and simple--the speech of the poet.

There are many who doubt that the words in which Petrarch clothed his love for Laura were words of sincerity and truth, and who blame his fatal tendency to utilize every incident and feeling connected with her. Unquestionably, there was a strong element of earthliness, a dilution of the pure essence of his affection, in much that Petrarch wrote. It could hardly have chanced otherwise with a man into whose life worldly intercourse entered so largely. There must have been times when the pure light of revelation was hidden from him, and he unknowingly supplied its place with fancies of a lower kind. His experiences as he met them one by one were, I doubt not, faithfully and sincerely treated, but after they had fallen into the past he was enabled to view them by the cold strong light of the intellect, and the instincts of his nature led him to incorporate them in verse. It has always been a concomitant of the poetic character, except perhaps in those lofty organizations whose utterances are revelations, to regard its own personality objectively and treat it as material for expression in speech. The very word-crystallization that a thought or sentiment, however full of inspiration, must needs undergo to make it palpable, denotes an amount of conscious effort which detracts in a measure from its apparent spontaneity. But in spite of the quaint conceits, the frequent play upon words, the unworthy tricks of speech, the painful sacrifice to rhyme which occasionally mar his verse, I believe Petrarch was sincere. If he was only a pretence and a sham, then all the amatory poetry that has been written since his time, intellectual or analytic, passionate or sensuous, is a pretence and a sham. Petrarch's utterance must needs have been founded on truth, else never could it have stood the test of five centuries, and never would it have assimilated itself, as it has done, with the poetic speech of an entire race. I know of hardly an English poet in whose rhymes in the matter of love, and particularly among those of a narrower range of thought and a lower plane of vision, one cannot trace in a greater or less degree the influence of Petrarch. Thus, to me, Petrarch remains the very king of spring-time poets. There are summer poets, autumn poets and winter poets, but Petrarch was none of these. Neither his passion nor his poetry ever ripened into summer or faded into autumn. He will always typify the early youth of love and song. I can never open his book of sonnets that I do not hear the rustle of young winds in green boughs, and do not catch the faint sweet odor of violets and primroses--the violets and primroses that grow on the banks of the Sorgue in the Vaucluse--the violets and primroses that Laura wore in her hair when Petrarch saw her kneeling in the church of Santa Chiara in Avignon, and loved her all at once.

The bright little river Sorgue is here a rushing brook, tumbling and foaming over the great stones in its bed, and imprisoned between two green sloping banks covered with low trees and bushes and tendrils of creeping ivy. It finds birth, this merry, roaring brook, in a dark, mysterious, shadowy pool, overhung by wild fantastic masses of rock, which loses itself far back in a dim cavern beneath the cliffs. Black and motionless, sullen and inscrutable, it lies, this source of the river Sorgue, a very pool of Lethe, looking as though it knew it drew its sustenance from the deepest heart of the earth, held communication with the hidden powers of Nature, and was one at the core with all the mighty waters of the creation. What a type of the poet's own genius--nourished deep down under the ground in the universal soul of humanity, fed by the elements that centuries of solution have infused into the hidden springs of the intellect, one in thought with all the great minds that have watered the arid fields of lower human intelligence, profound, unsearchable as the earth itself! And yet when it rises to the surface of the world it becomes only a sunny, murmuring river, which dances along among green banks and bushes; and, being noticed by the careless passer-by, who cannot see the deep infinity of waters of which it is the symbol, and knows not even whether they exist, is termed "a pretty stream of thought and fancy, but one that hath no profundity nor seriousness."

Across the river, on a hill just above its banks, a mass of tawny ruin fades away into the blue of the sky and the gray of the cliffs. Wild flowers grow all about it, dark brambles stretch their wanton arms over all its space, and through the clefts in its jagged surface gleam the shining walls of the village below and the hazy brightness of the wide Rhone country. The people call this bit of rare coloring the castle of "La Belle Laure," but we know that it was the home of a great cardinal, Petrarch's trusty friend and generous patron.

Down in the valley among the white village walls nestles a low brown house surrounded by a humble, sweet-smelling space of flowers. It is a dainty little spot of earth, this garden, hallowed by such rare associations. It is more precious than rubies, this small dark house, for it sheltered from the outer world the body and soul of Petrarch. The garden is enclosed by a hedge of sweet pale Provence roses and buds. I remembered, as I stood there with the breath of the beautiful blossoms creeping up about me, how Petrarch tells that walking one bright May day with Laura, a friend and confidant of both approached them and gave to each a rose, "all fresh and culled in Paradise," and said, "Such another pair of lovers the sun ne'er shone upon," and left them with a smile; and they remained all confused and trembling. Yes, I knew instinctively that it was here, on this very consecrated spot, that the sacred meeting had taken place; that he who gave the roses was no other than the good cardinal of the castle; and that those roses of five hundred years ago were the ancestors of the roses now blooming about me, and plucked from this very hedge. No wonder that the perfumes of Paradise are enchaliced in their hearts. Few flowers can boast such high and haughty lineage as these, the bright posterity of those transfigured love-tokens of centuries past. They are glorified for ever by association with the highest, purest phase of human relation. They have reached the apotheosis of flowerhood--the highest destiny vouchsafed to aught that grows. They have become one with thought in immortality.

In the heart of the little garden stands a laurel tree, a shoot from Petrarch's own sacred laurel tree. More young shoots and saplings are springing up about it, all issuing from the great root that lies deep underground--the root of five hundred years ago; and the tree overshadows all the garden and the little crystal brook that sparkles along by the side of the wall. As I gazed at the stately shape, with its shining black berries and its glossy dark leaves, I knew that I had found the keynote to much of Petrarch's music--not always that of his best and most inspired moods. The resemblance of the name of Laura to the _laurel_; the antique fable of the transformation of Daphne into a laurel, and its adoption by Apollo as his emblem; the old superstition that the laurel was shielded against thunderbolts; his desire to win the laurel crown as the guerdon of his pains, both amorous and poetic,--were chains of tradition and convention which Petrarch had not strength to break, pompous, meaningless hieroglyphics which he felt it his duty to interpret to men, hinderances and trammels to the development of his genius. The laurel tree of Petrarch's garden is a fair type of one phase of the poet's own speech, prone to derive its significance from extraneous sources and overloaded with borrowed metaphor. But the laurel receives a new meaning if we picture to ourselves Madonna Laura reclining in its shadow on the banks of the little river, with flowers scattered all about her garments and little Loves disporting in the air about her wreathed head. Then it becomes instinct with life and vitality, and we wonder why Petrarch deemed it needful to resort to the dead and withered husks of antique fable for what lay there at his own cottage-door, and waited but to be lifted from the sod--a wealth of poetic illustration and conceit.

Since the day when I made the memory of the Vaucluse my own, I have read how a great festival was held there in the summer-tide in honor of Petrarch. I have read how they came, those intellectual debauchees, and rioted and revelled and wrangled and jarred, and poisoned the chaste, calm waters of the sacred river with the hot fumes of literary dissension and argument. I have read how they came, with their heads full of quotations and their notebooks full of impressions and hints for effective rhapsody--how they feasted on the silver trout of the Sorgue, and gathered Laura's roses to adorn their buttonholes, and stripped the consecrated laurel of its leaves to make garlands for their own dull heads, and poured forth international compliments, and glorified one another, and hugged themselves for delight at their fine comprehension of the poet, and fell on their knees before him, and immolated their individual hearts and souls at the shrine of his genius; and, lo! there was not a true appreciater of Petrarch among them all! The right appraiser of Petrarch has been there before and since, but he was not there then. The noise and the bustle and the wisdom of the multitude held him aloof, and he waited until a more convenient season. He comes by preference in the spring-time, knowing that then Nature and Petrarch sing in unison. He is a poet, because it takes a poet to understand a poet, no less than a hero a hero. He is of such simple, foolish mould that when he thinks there is no one near to spy him out he casts himself down upon the sod and kisses it with all tenderness, and caresses the daisies with his finger-tips, greeting them as his younger brethren; for there is something stirring in him which draws him nearer to earth's heart than other men, and he loves to dwell upon his common origin with flower and leaf. He does not fall down and worship Petrarch, because he knows that Petrarch is only one expression of the great power that lives behind all thought and speech--one part of the great whole that lies spread out before him on the river and the cliff. But he takes the old poet by the hand and looks straight into his eyes, and reads there what is written in his own heart, and says, "We twain are brethren and friends, sovereign and equal, for evermore."

If Petrarch had lived earlier in the centuries of Christianity, he would have been a monk. His genius would have found expression in the cloister-life, for the first monks were poets and philosophers. But he lived at a period when that beautiful principle of asceticism was no longer at one with genius. The fine essence of spirituality was gone from it, and it had hardened into senseless form and matter; and the law of his own mind forbade his pledging himself irrevocably to what in one mood seemed highest and most precious, but what another mood might contradict and openly defy. He knew that, although that ascetic temper which took possession of his soul at times when his genius was loudest, most clamorous, most importunate, was the basis of all monastic principle, he might not imprison it, fleeting, evanescent, within the dungeons of vows and formalism. And to-day, no less than in Petrarch's time, the same spirit walks the earth, shines through the actions and speech of all high souls, and yet refuses to bind itself to dull external shows and symbols.

If Petrarch had not withdrawn himself to the solitude of the Vaucluse, I doubt if we should know more of his passion for Laura to-day than could be told in a score of sonnets. For with his mind overloaded by the sights and sounds and honors that were heaped upon him, he never could have separated her from the contingent circumstances that surrounded their intercourse in Avignon. But there, on the banks of the Sorgue, he viewed her image from afar, dismissed all the attendant episodes of palace and revel, court and council, and beheld only the ideal--or rather the real--Laura in her own worth and significance. Surely, never was there verse through which showed so plainly the Nature under whose auspices it was brought forth as those songs of Petrarch. I seem to feel that they were written in solitude, not sublime, but pleasing, and in a narrow valley shut out from contemplation of aught else. And I know, as I leave the Vaucluse behind me, how deep a hold the memory of the loved fountain must needs have taken upon the poet's mind, for I too have made me a picture of a river, and a grotto, and a shadowy pool, and a low brown house, and a stately laurel tree, which will always live in my sense. And these things resolve themselves into one with a few scattered sonnets, and a shadowy gold-haired form, and a handful of sweet small roses, and, lo! I have made incarnate and have bound fast to me for ever that beautiful old-time idyl of the Vaucluse.

CHARLOTTE ADAMS.

A "TARTAR FIGHT" AT KAZAN, AND HOW IT WAS STOPPED.

Rooshia? Why, yes, I ought to know something about Rooshia, seein' I've lived there, off and on, this fifteen year and more; and if a young man was to come to me and ax me where's the best place for a workin' man to git on, I'd say to him, jist as I says it to you now, "Go to Rooshia!" Why so? says you. Well, jist this way. You see, cotton-mills and mowin'-machines and steam-ploughs and sich are quite new ideas out there; and they haven't got the trick of workin' 'em properly, not yet; so that any man as _has_ got it is pretty safe to git anything he likes to ax in the way o' wages. Why, _I_ knowed a man once--common factory-hand he was when he started: couldn't read nor write, nor nothin'; but he had his wits about him, all the same,--well, _he_ cum out here 'bout ten year ago, and went to some place on the Volga, with some crack-jaw name or other that I can't reck'lect. First year he was there he got as good pay as any overseer at home; next year he was overseer himself; two year arter that he owned his own mill, he did; and now, jist t'other day I gits a letter from him to say he's goin' home ag'in, with money in both pockets, and a-goin' to buy a big house and a bit o' ground, and I don't know what all. And if _that_ ain't gittin' on, I should jist like to know what is!

But you mustn't think, neither, as it's all jist as easy as supping porridge: it ain't that, nohow. I can tell yer, if you was to go into one o' them hot work-rooms on a roastin' day in July, with the thermometer anywhere you like above a hundred, you'd feel more like lyin' down in the shade and havin' a drink o' beer than workin' hard for nine or ten hours on end. They say we overseers have an easy life of it. I wish them as says so had jist got to try it themselves for a day or two. Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin' but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and bear it. And in them parts, instead of one good pelt and have done with it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and days in a sneaking half-and-half kind o' way, as if it hadn't the pluck to come out with a good hearty pour. The very thunder don't make a good round-mouthed peal like it does at home, but a nasty jabberin' row, jist as if it was a-tryin' to talk French. And, altogether, it is a place to try a chap's temper: it is, indeed.

Are the native workmen good for much? says you. Well, that depends pretty much on how you look at it. When you've once shown 'em how to do a thing, they'll do it every bit as well as yourself; but they take a powerful deal o' showin', they do. You see, a Rooshan has his own way of doin' everything, and tryin' to teach him any other way is as bad as eating soup with a one-pronged fork. And then to see how thick some on 'em are! Why, they may well be brave in battle, for it 'ud take a precious clever bullet to git through one of _their_ 'eads, it would. Here's one sample for yer: A friend o' mine in Mosker had got a Rooshan servant--one o' them reg'lar _Derevenskis_ ("villagers"), and so one day he sends him to the shop with two o' them twenty-kopeck pieces,[30] tellin' him to buy bread with one and butter with t'other. Off goes the chap, and never comes back ag'in; so at last his master goes to see what's up; and there he finds Mr. Ivan at the door of the shop, holdin' out the money in one hand and scratchin' his head with t'other, as if he'd forgot his own name, and couldn't find hisself nowhow. "Oh, _barin_" ("master"), says he in a voice like a fit o' chollerer, "whatever am I to do now? I've been and _mixed_ the two pieces, and now I don't know which was the one for the bread and which for the butter."

As for the Tartars, _they're_ troublesome in another way. They make prime workmen--there's no denyin' it; and I had ought to know, seein' I was over a gang of 'em myself for more'n a year--but they're the hot-bloodedest lot as ever I saw yet, and reg'lar born imps for fightin'; and when _they_ git up a shindy, look out! I can speak, for I saw the big fight betwixt them and the Rooshans at Kazan 'bout three year ago; and if you cares to hear the story, I'll tell yer jist how it all happened.

You tell me as you've been to Kazan, and so, o' course, you'll remember that the "Tartar Town," as they calls it, lies a mile or two east o' the reg'lar Rooshan quarter; and midway between 'em's a dry gully (leastways, it's dry in the summer-time, but you should jist see it arter the spring thaw!), with a little bridge over it. Now, the Rooshan gangs and the Tartar gangs, a-comin' from their work, used to cross each other jist at this bridge; and o' course there was a good deal o' chaffin' among 'em, and some fightin', too, now and then; for I needn't tell _you_ that a Rooshan and a Tartar are jist about as fond of each other as a Rooshan and a Turk. Now-a-days, the masters have had the gumption to change the hours of work, and keep 'em out of each other's way; but in _my_ time there was a scrimmage nearly every week, though nothin' like this 'un I'm tellin' of.

Well, sir, I'd knocked off early that evenin', and strolled back to my place with a young Rooshan merchant as I knowed--a right good feller, name o' Michael Feodoroff. Just at the bridge we stopped to have a look at the sunset; and a rare sight it was! There was the dark-red tower of the old Tartar gateway standin' out ag'in the bright evenin' sky, and the citadel-wall with all its turrets and battlements, and the gilt cupolers o' the churches in the town, and the great green plain of the Volga away below us, and the broad river itself a-shinin' wherever the light fell on it, and the purple hills beyond tipped with gold every here and there, jist like them Delectable Mountains as mother used to read about on Sundays when I was a boy.

While we were standin' lookin' at it up comes half a dozen Rooshan workmen, a-goin' home from their work, and four or five Tartars from t'other side, a-goin' home from _theirn_; and they meets jist on the bridge. As they crossed each other one o' the Rooshans pulls a bit o' sassage out of his pocket and holds it up to the foremost Tartar (a great ugly-lookin' bruiser with one eye), and says to him, chaffin' like, "Hollo, Mourad! d'ye want a bit o' grease to make yer beard grow?"

Now, I needn't tell _you_ that offerin' pork to a Mussulman is like drinkin' Dutch William's health at an Irish fair; and the words warn't well out o' the Rooshan's mouth afore the Tartar had him by the throat and was bangin' his head ag'in' the bridge-rails as if he was drivin' a nail with it.

Then, all in one minute, a whole crowd of 'em seemed to start up out o' the werry earth, and we found ourselves right in the middle of a reg'lar tearin' fight--tossin' arms and fierce faces whirlin' all round us; men strikin' and grapplin' and clawin' like fury; the broad, bearded faces of the Rooshans and the flat sallow mugs of the Tartars all blurred up together; and sich a yellin' and cursin' and screechin' a-goin' on that I a'most thought myself one o' them old Roman hemperors a-lookin' on at a wild-beast fight in the Call-and-see-'em.

I was so took aback that I jist stood and stared like a fool; but Feodoroff had his wits about him, and dragged me into a corner where we could see it all without bein' swep' in. I saw d'reckly that it was more than a plain bout o' fisticuffs, for several of the Rooshans had got out their knives, and were slashin' about like one o'clock; and the Tartars, on their side, had begun to tear out the rails o' the palisade and to crack the skulls of the Rooshans with them. Just then Ivan Martchenkoff, one o' my best men, came tumblin' down at my feet with half a dozen Tartars atop of him; and as he fell he caught sight of me, and cried to me for help.

Well, _that_ was more'n I could stand. I busted loose from Feodoroff (who tried to hold me), and leapt right among 'em. I cotched the uppermost Tartar by the scruff o' the neck, and chucked him away like a kitten; and the second I hit sich a dollop behind the ear as made him look five ways at once; but just then two o' the rips jumped upon me from behind, and down I went. Then Feodoroff flew in to save me, but the crowd closed upon him, and down _he_ went too; and I thought 'twas all up with us both.

Jist then I heerd a rumble of wheels up the slope leadin' to the bridge, and then a great shout of "_Soldati! soldati!_" ("The soldiers! the soldiers!").

Then I lay close to the ground and made myself as small as I could, for I knowed that if they fired into sich a crowd with cannon it 'ud just mow 'em down like grass. The next minute I heerd an orficer's voice singin' out, "Halt! front! fire!" But instead of the bang of a cannon there cum a hiss like fifty tea-kettles a-bilin' over, and then a great splash, and the crowd scattered fifty ways at once; and I found myself wringin' wet all in a minute. Then somebody gripped hold o' me and pulled me up, and there was Feodoroff, and beside him Lieutenant Berezinski of the garrison laughin' fit to burst. And when I looked round the whole place was a puddle o' water, with dozens of men rollin' in it like flies in treacle; and at the end of the bridge was ten or twelve sogers, and right in front of 'em a great steam _fire-engine_! Then I understood it all, and began laughin' as loud as anybody.

"You've cooled their courage this time, Mr. Lieutenant," says I.

"I think I have," says the lieutenant; "and that, too, without wasting a cartridge or killing a man. When you go home to England, Yakov Ivanovitch (James son of John), you can say that if you haven't stood fire, you've stood water, and been at the battle of Voyevoda."[31]

DAVID KER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE COLORED CREOLES OF BALTIMORE.

It is well known that many French families, fugitives from St. Domingo, took refuge in Baltimore during the last decade of the eighteenth century. They gracefully and gratefully accepted favors and kindness of various kinds, but they were too proud and self-reliant to resign themselves to eat the bread of charity or lead lives of indolence. Some, born to fortune and ancient titles, employed their talents and accomplishments promptly and without hesitation. Counts and marquises became gardeners (introducing a great variety of fruits and vegetables unknown before in the United States), dancing-masters, music-teachers, drawing-masters, architects, chemists, confectioners, cigar-makers and teachers of their own beautiful language. The names of many of those _émigrés_ are now borne by the most estimable citizens of the community which first sheltered their ancestors: they are ornaments of society, distinguished in the professions and skilled in the arts and sciences.

But it is not of this high and noble class that I desired to speak: it is of a more humble but not less worthy set of French people who came here at the same time. I allude to the colored creoles who were the born slaves of these ladies and gentlemen. Some shared the dangers of their flight from St. Domingo: others found a way, by tedious voyages, to join their old masters and tender their services, not as slaves, but as honest, humble, faithful servants. It was honorable both to master and slave that such cordial relations should have existed under such trying circumstances. Some of the creoles were good cooks, bakers, snuff-makers, laundry-women, etc.; and the most beautiful and touching part of this relation between the master and their former slaves was that hundreds of the latter laid the profits of their labor at the feet of their white friends with reverence and devotion. Many old ladies and gentlemen, accustomed to every attention from the best trained servants, were altogether incapable of helping themselves, and were dependent on the bounty and tender care of their former slaves. Most of the better class of French _émigrés_ retained all their former habits of domestic life, such as taking a cup of coffee before rising in the morning and an eleven-o'clock _déjeuner à la fourchette_, while those who could afford it had a modest _petit souper_ at nine o'clock in the evening. At the latter were often found the élite of this French society. Music, dancing and refined conversation were indulged in for two or three hours: old memories and stirring events were recalled and the bonds of nationality and family affection were more closely knit. French only was spoken at these soirées, and the elegant manners of the old school were observed in perfection.

The most remarkable of this set was a Madame Valanbrun, the widow of a gentleman of large fortune and high position in St. Domingo. He died before the Revolution. She was only twenty-five when the massacre took place, beautiful, accomplished and fascinating. Her estates were extensive, and she lived in one of the principal cities of the island. At the time of the outbreak she escaped to a Baltimore vessel, accompanied by several of her house-servants, and saved a part of her fortune--plate, jewels and some gold coin. Arriving in Baltimore, she found several of her friends already there. With the elastic temper peculiar to the French, she determined to make the best of her changed circumstances. Having purchased a large house in a cheap part of the city, she fitted up her own suite of rooms on the second floor. Here she received company, and was attended by her servants as if she had been a queen. At that period snuff-taking was very fashionable and almost universal. Some of madame's servants were very expert in making snuff, cigars and cigarettes: these articles they sold at high prices, for they soon became well known. Others of her servants made confections, cakes, sweetmeats, which they carried around in baskets: some made dresses, and others went out as nurses. The arrangements for all these various employments were made by the servants themselves, but the profits were carefully reserved for the queen bee of the hive.

For many years Madame Valanbrun was the centre of the French society of Baltimore. She had few acquaintances outside of this circle, but the most distinguished foreigners who visited the city--French, Spanish and Italian--and several young Americans ambitious to become better acquainted with the French language, were glad to have the entrée of her salon.

Time wore on. The Bourbons were restored to the throne, and many French families returned to France to seek their lost fortunes. Some were successful, but most of them were doomed to disappointment and continued poverty. Madame Valanbrun remained contented with her humble but comfortable lot. By degrees her corps of servants was reduced by death, a new race of competitors sprang up, and her income each year grew less and less.

In 1832, when the Asiatic cholera fell upon Baltimore like an Alpine avalanche upon a quiet Italian village, the colored creoles suffered more, relatively, than any other portion of the population, probably because they lived in the more confined streets in the centre of the city. The venerable physician who furnished most of the particulars for this sketch said: "I was passing through a narrow and rather dirty street one day during the height of the cholera, when I met Dr. B----, who asked me whether I did not know Madame Valanbrun: if so, would I go with him to see her in one of the houses near? He had been there a few hours before, and thought she had a severe attack of cholera. We went, and found the venerable old lady _in articulo mortis_. She was much changed, and the surroundings indicated an equally great change in her circumstances which it was melancholy to witness. But one feature redeemed all that was disgusting in the picture: round the squalid bed five or six old negroes, men and women, knelt in deep devotion like fixed statues, offering up their prayers to the Throne of grace for the departing soul of their beloved mistress, whose life had been so chequered by the sunshine of pleasure and the clouds of adversity. She had just received the last rites of the Church. The priest had retired to perform similar duties elsewhere, leaving the humble but devoted blacks to watch the last breath of life and to close the eyes of their lifelong friend and mistress. I never felt more veneration at the deathbed of any of my own kindred, or deeper respect for mourners than I then felt for those faithful servants of Madame Valanbrun. The old lady died that evening. She devised the small remnant of her property to be divided among her old servants in common.

"Among these colored Creoles were some remarkable women. Well do I remember Suzette, Fanny, Clementine, as faithful watchers at sick beds: many precious lives did they save by their skill, judgment and fidelity. They were not _eye_-servants, working for money only: they worked from the purest motives of benevolence, from the sentiment of Christian charity.

"Another instance of fidelity came under my notice when I was a student of medicine in 1819. I boarded at a good old Frenchman's, whose few domestics were French creoles. One of these was the washerwoman. When quite young she had left St. Domingo with her old mistress, who had been kind to her in the days of prosperity on the island. The old lady managed to save a small portion of her wealth, and lived quietly with her former servant, now her faithful friend. Madame Curchon, as she grew older, required more comforts than her slender means could afford, and Lizette determined to take in washing. She soon obtained as much as she could attend to, and spent her earnings in making madame comfortable in her old age.

"About this time appeared a fine-looking negro sailor from St. Domingo. He had heard that Lizette, his former sweetheart, was alone in Baltimore, and he came in search of her. He found her. She welcomed him joyously, with her affection for him unchanged. He told her he would marry her at once and take her back to the West Indies. Lizette explained to her lover that she considered herself bound in honor to her old mistress, though no longer her slave, adding that if he would give her five hundred dollars to leave with Madame Curchon her conscience would be free of all charge of ingratitude, and she would follow him to any part of the world. He said he would not pay a dollar for her, as she was a free woman and had worked for the old lady long enough.

"This little love-story came to the knowledge of the boarders through our kind-hearted landlady, and they agreed to subscribe one hundred dollars toward the payment of the amount fixed on by Lizette: the old mistress knew nothing of this romance in low life. Some weeks passed: the man remained stubborn in his idea of right, and she in her conscientious sense of what was due to her dear old mistress. Lizette positively refused to abandon madame to an old age of poverty. Her lover finally returned to the West Indies without her. Whatever disappointment the faithful creole may have suffered, she remained true to her trust, and was for many years the comfort and companion of this poor old French lady."

Another instance of creole gratitude and fidelity is worth recording. A lady who had enjoyed wealth and luxury at home escaped the massacre, but arrived in America entirely destitute. Her feeble health required constant care and delicate food. She was accompanied in her flight by her faithful servant Fanny, who devoted herself to the care and comfort of her former mistress. Fanny rented a small brick house containing five rooms--two chambers, two rooms below and a kitchen. In the upper rooms she made her dear old godmother as comfortable as any lady could be, and when her duties called her elsewhere she placed another in attendance there. The constant piety of this excellent creole was an edifying sight. Fanny still lives, but her dear friend is no more: she believes firmly that they will again be united, to part no more.

One fact connected with these colored Creoles is worthy of mention. Although they have been living in this country for more than three-quarters of a century, they have never united themselves, as social beings, with any of our American negroes. They have treated them with kindness and politeness, helped them in poverty and visited them in sickness, but have never intermarried with them, never gone to their churches, never joined any of the various African societies so conspicuous on certain days of parade. Distinguished for their honesty, they have seldom appeared in the courts either as plaintiffs or defendants. Respected by all, they have never demanded social equality.

Scarcely a dozen of the colored creoles who originally emigrated from St. Domingo are now alive, but their descendants are numerous. They form a very worthy part of the community in which they live. They retain many of the traditionary qualities of their ancestors, and among the shiftless, dependent and often destitute negroes around them they are conspicuous for their industry, integrity and morality.

E.L.D.

GLIMPSES OF BRUSSELS.

To leave Paris for Brussels is to exchange excitement for tranquillity, a crowd for a few, the oppressive newness and vivacity of to-day for a mild animation tempered with a flavor of bygone ages. Brussels has been called a miniature Paris. I should rather consider her as the younger sister of the great city--less beautiful, less decked out, less accomplished, less versed in the ways of the world, yet keeping a certain freshness and virginity of aspect that is lacking in her more brilliant elder.

There is one thing that a foreign resident of Paris is apt to find very enjoyable in Brussels, and that is the absence of the eternal crowd that mars for many people a full enjoyment of the pleasant places of Paris. Her thronging millions overwhelm you on every festive day or joyous occasion. Any little outside show or attraction calls together in some restricted space the population of a small city. Thirty thousand people rushed to hear the Spanish students play on the guitar in the garden of the Tuileries. Twenty thousand go every Sunday to the Salon during the period that it remains open. One hundred thousand go out to the races on ordinary days, and twice that number attend the Grand Prix. Hence comes a famine of conveyances and of seats, and a plethora of companions that are far from being uniformly agreeable.

In Brussels one has enough of human surroundings. There is no lack of companionship in her gardens, her galleries, her streets and her parks. She is not a solitude, as are some of the dead cities of Italy and Germany or some of the minor provincial towns in Belgium and France. The influence of her three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants is very comfortably apparent. But where Paris pours forth her tens of thousands, Brussels sends out some hundreds. Hence there is always room and to spare. And she is well-to-do in the world, is this pretty capital of Belgium. She is growing and thriving, and wears every mark of an active and contented prosperity. New and handsome streets meet the view on every side. Foremost among these is the elegant Avenue Louise, named after the late queen of the Belgians, which leads out to the spacious and lovely Bois de la Cambre, a second Bois de Boulogne, omitting the traces of the siege. The Avenue Louise reminds me very much of South Broad street in Philadelphia. It forms an almost unbroken row of elegant private residences, extending for full two miles to the very gate of the Bois. The centre of the roadway is macadamized and bordered with rows of trees, thus forming a charming road to the Bois for the private carriages of the Belgian aristocracy.

The royal family of Belgium appear but little in public. A series of family misfortunes, combined with the ill-health of the king, has induced them to live in comparative retirement. Of the children of the late king Leopold, but three survive, the present king, the Count de Flandres and the luckless empress Charlotte. The last, still sunk in a state of hopeless insanity, inhabits the Château de Tervueren. The king, with his wife and family, passes most of his time at the Château de Laeken. He is a great sufferer from a disease which has attacked one of his legs. The queen, an Austrian archduchess, was formerly one of the most beautiful princesses of Europe, but she has never regained either her health or her spirits since the death of her only son some years ago, and looks faded and careworn. On the king's death the crown will pass to his only brother, the Count de Flandres. This gentleman, whose wife, a beautiful and spirited lady, is a princess of the house of Hohenzollern, is as deaf as a post. He inhabits a very handsome palace in the heart of Brussels, and his own sleeping apartments are on the ground floor. One summer night the sentinel in charge was amazed to see a crowd gathered in front of the windows of the count's room, and evidently highly amused. On approaching it was discovered that the attendants had failed to close the outside shutters, and had drawn the lace curtains merely. The room was brilliantly lighted, and of course every part of it was distinctly visible from without. And there,

Dans le simple appareil D'une beauté qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,

the heir to the Belgian throne was peacefully walking to and fro in a brown study, unconscious that the eyes of some hundreds of his future subjects were fixed upon his lightly-draped form. His deafness prevented him from hearing the noise outside the window, and rendered all warnings by means of sounds ineffectual. So the prince's chamberlain was aroused, and after some delay His Royal Highness was released from his very undignified position.

Among the proprietors of the new buildings of Brussels is cited the empress Eugénie. Whole rows of newly-erected and handsome shops were pointed out to me as being her property. A very strong sympathy for the dethroned imperial family seemed to be prevalent in Brussels, as well as an equally strong dislike to the Germans. I was amused to find that two animals in the Zoological Garden, a very cross monkey and a savage-looking African boar, both bore the name of Bismarck.

This Zoological Garden, by the by, is unworthy of the beautiful city to which it belongs. It is small, shabby and ill-kept, contains very few animals, and has become a sort of beer-garden, with open-air concerts and a skating-rink for its chief attractions. A very large and beautiful aquarium, a vast grotto of artificial rock-work, is really worth seeing, but its contents are of the most commonplace kind.

The picture-gallery--or Musée Royal, as it is called--has recently been rearranged, and the modern paintings that used to be on view in the ducal palace are now installed in a series of new and beautifully-decorated rooms. Thither have also been removed a number of pictures by contemporary Belgian painters that used to adorn the public buildings of Brussels. Chief among these is Gallait's noble picture of the _Abdication of Charles V_. This fine work, considered by some critics as the masterpiece of the great Belgian artist, is worthy of the pencil of Delaroche. Nor is it in style unlike the best productions of that master, recalling the _Death of Elizabeth_ by its admirable grouping and refinement of color. Verboeckhoven is seen here at his best, his _Flock of Sheep in a Storm_, a large and carefully-finished work, being replete with all the most striking characteristics of his genius. Madou's _Interrupted Ball_ is a brilliant and vivacious representation of a village festival troubled by the intrusion of a group of dandies of the Directory--gay Incroyables who chuck the country damsels under the chin, rouse their swains to jealous wrath and otherwise misconduct themselves. Rohbe's pictures of still life are perfect feasts of coloring, warm, rich and glowing as the heart of a crimson rose brimming with the sunshine and sweetness of a summer's day.

The Musée itself is a noble building, and in point of arrangement and of decoration forms a contrast to the dreary halls of the Luxembourg. The gallery devoted to the old masters contains some valuable specimens of early Flemish art, and some extremely interesting historical portraits, the gem of the collection being a wonderfully fine portrait by Holbein of Sir Thomas More.

But the most interesting point in all Brussels is the Hôtel de Ville. That marvellous edifice, that looks as though it ought to be preserved in a velvet-lined case, so delicate and elaborate are its multitudinous sculptures, lifts the exquisite tracery of its spire against the summer sky, as perfect in its beauty as when Alva and Egmont and Orange passed beneath its shadow ages ago. No spot in Europe, save perhaps the Tower of London, is more haunted by historic memories than is this perfect marvel of architectural beauty. The centuries roll back as we stand beneath its shadow. There is a stain of blood upon the stones, and Philip of Spain rides by, and the duke of Alva comes through yonder doorway, and the air is full of thronging phantoms and of cries--the wail of the Netherlands beneath the sword of the oppressor.

Around the Hôtel de Ville are grouped a series of antique buildings, the one more exquisite than the other--the ancient halls of the corporations of Brussels, among which that of the brewers shows supreme by reason of the luxury of its carvings and the care wherewith its beauty and solidity have been maintained throughout the centuries. In one of the simplest houses of the square Victor Hugo first took refuge after the great catastrophe of the _coup d'état_. It bore the number 27. A tobacco-shop occupied the ground floor. The poet's parlor was furnished in a style of bald simplicity, with chairs and a sofa covered with black haircloth. But he was wont to say, pointing to the Hôtel de Ville, "I have the most wonderful piece of carving in the world for a sideboard." In this modest abode he wrote _Napoléon le Petit_. Then, stirred by the historic memories around him, he chose the Inquisition itself for a subject, and planned his as yet unpublished tragedy of _Torquemada_. The dwelling in the Grande Place became the haunt of all the proscribed republicans of France. Yet Belgium gave them but a cold welcome and grudging hospitality. They were subjected to a series of humiliating formalities, chief among which was the requirement of the authorities that each should provide himself with a permit of residence. These permits were temporary and revocable, and their holders were obliged to go weekly to ask for their renewal at the central police-office. It is not surprising, therefore, that so few of the fugitives should have remained in Belgium. Seven thousand took refuge there after the coup d'état, but only two hundred and fifty took up their abode on Belgian soil. Yet Brussels remained, in some sense, the continental head-quarters of Victor Hugo, though never kindly or generous in her treatment of the great exile. In 1871, the rumor having gone abroad that he had offered shelter to some of the fugitive Communists, his house was attacked by an armed mob, and its inmates barely escaped with their lives.

Brussels possesses among her other sights a curiosity with which she could very well dispense--namely, the Wiertz Gallery. It is a collection of horrors depicted on a colossal scale by a man whose powers of painting were scarcely equal to those of a respectable scene-painter. A series of nightmares, expressed with a sort of epileptic violence and without any artistic value, clothe the walls of the immense studio with gigantic abominations. There is neither originality of conception nor intelligence of execution to redeem their hideousness: their horror is of the simplest bugaboo kind. A man blowing his head to pieces with a pistol-shot; a supposed corpse coming to life in its coffin; the First Napoleon in the flames of hell, with a multitude of women shaking at him the bloody severed limbs of their sons and husbands; a child burned alive in its cradle; the head of a decapitated criminal, and the visions that filled its brain,--such are some of the ghastly imaginings of this diseased and uneducated nature. Compare such works as these with Doré's crudest conceptions, and the difference between the inventions of genius and those of a morbid intellect becomes at once apparent.

L.H.H.

AN OFF YEAR.

It is a great luxury to find ourselves and the country in the midst of what Marshal MacMahon might style a _quadrennate_, and to be at the neutral and central point from which a much-vexed people can look both ways for a Presidential election. The contest of two years ago is over, and that of two years hence not near enough to beget mentionable worry. This equator of partisanship, lying midway between the two polls, is a happy medium of repose. The trade-winds of party passion blow from both sides fiercely toward it, but fail to break its calm. The average American--even the average professional American politician--possesses his soul in patience. He looks forward to no revolution, and, when he thinks of the matter at all, is entirely certain that the night of the first Tuesday in November, 1880, will bring nothing more tremendous than the usual hubbub among the telegraph-operators, the reporters and the haunters of the clubs and leagues. He doubts the due abnormal succession of the Presidents as little as he does that of the British kings, and a great deal less than he does that of some of the continental monarchs, to say nothing of the French ruler, whose septennate happens also to be within about two years of its close.

So pleasant it is to be at leisure to bestow attention on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without thought of the usually engrossing machinery so painfully and minutely contrived for facilitating our advance to those ends! To forget the means and for once look at the object; to ignore the strife for free government, and be placidly and contentedly free; to shut our eyes on eternal vigilance, and realize that we have paid that price and have the receipt in our pockets; to intermit our nursing of the tree and enjoy the fruit; to feel that life in a republic is not necessarily and always "the fever called living,"--such is, for the present interval, our lot. Self-government is such very hard work that those engaged in it are entitled to occasional holidays. Nature demands it. Whether their stated Sabbath come once in four years or once in seven, it must come. No wonder that it is apt to prove too welcome and seductive, and that healthy relaxation should grow into harmful lethargy, Sunday into "Blue Monday." Examples of that result are abundant enough to warn us when we need warning. They have chromoed in brilliantly illuminated text, in all the languages and alphabets, the maxim about eternal vigilance, and hung it up over our council-fires and our domestic hearths. We can only venture, perhaps, to half close our eyes and view it sleepily as through cigar-smoke, or turn our backs upon it for a little while and go out into a world of other cares which takes no note of elections, constitutions, statutes or office-holding. The shorter the interval the less should our enjoyment of it be marred. Investigations into past elections serve only to interfere with it, or to assist the newspapers in interfering with it; and newspapers are our daily food or a part of it. Three-fourths of the reading-matter in the five or six thousand of them published in the Union are filled with politics, although the conductors of them, like the rest of us, are aware that politics are temporarily in eclipse. They can teach us nothing on that subject, and we want to learn nothing. Their occupation as trade-journals devoted to the art and science of government is gone. Other periodicals devoted to a specialty, whether iron, coal, calico or the Thirty-nine Articles, show judgment and compassion on their readers when a "slack" time comes by turning miscellaneous and slipping in choice literary tidbits among their regular "shop" items. The five thousand should do likewise. If they will not wholly exclude politics, they might at least sweep political news and disquisitions into a separate corner of the sheet--say among the jokes, base-ball accidents and last year's advertisements.

Could our legislators and their chroniclers only convince themselves that they are _de trop_, that the best they can do just now is to assist us in cultivating a transitory oblivion of them and their deeds, and that, instead, they are depriving us of the refreshment of our forty winks, they would show a correct understanding of the situation. If they cannot be altogether silent, they might at least give their noise another pitch, and direct it into some humdrum monotone that would not jar upon our slumbers. Do their worst, however, they cannot take from us the delicious consciousness that it will be two years before another Presidential campaign. Panoplied in that reflection, we can stand a good deal.

We sometimes think it must have been a vast relief to the Poles when partition came and the three powers for good and all put an end to their perpetually recurring agony of electing a king. To the masses of the people, who were serfs, and had no more the right of suffrage or any other attribute of liberty than their cattle, we have no doubt it was so. Only by the small minority of privileged and fussy nobles, who went armed to the hall of election, ready to silence effectually any troublesome minority-man who should undertake to defeat their choice with his veto, could the loss of the wonted excitement have been seriously felt. That it was a relief to the neighboring nations, whose peace was constantly compromised by the recurrence of Poland's stormy call for a new king, is certain enough. The change threw a few very worthy men out of business--the Kosciuskos, Pulaskis, Czartoriskis, etc.--but it did away with a much larger number who were standing nuisances, and it left the surplus energy of many more to seek more legitimate and profitable paths. Of course the fate of the Poles, prosperous though their country is beyond anything dreamed of in the days of its nominal independence, is not enviable to us. It were to be wished that they had been cured of the regular--or irregular--spasms of selecting a chief without losing their national autonomy. What we remark is, that the strain of that convulsion was greater than they or their neighbors could bear, and that all concerned, with the trifling exceptions named, must have breathed freer and deeper when it was put an end to.

E.C.B.

CONJUGAL DISCORDS.

The weaknesses and follies of woman are a theme on which men, from the sage to the clown, have at all times been eloquent. Her natural coquetry in dress, her maternal vanity, her devotion to the little elegancies of the home, to clean windows and fresh curtains, are inexhaustible sources of masculine merriment or abuse. What housekeeper ever complained of an aching back or of nervous irritation without being scolded by her "lord" for some extra work she had done in beautifying the home? Men never seem to learn that women, as a rule, cannot find life endurable in the atmosphere of dust and disorder which characterizes bachelor housekeeping, and which seldom disturbs the equanimity of the masculine mind in the least. Men and women are so different in their tastes and ways that there must always be discord and unhappiness in the household until the sexes give over trying to change or remodel those tastes and ways, and learn to respect them. Men must accept as inevitable the fact that women to be happy must have artistic, or at least dainty and cozy, environments; and women must learn to preserve their souls in quiet when men spill their tobacco and ashes over the carpets and tables, for probably no man ever lived who could fill a pipe, even from a wash-tub, without scattering the tobacco over the premises.

That the sexes will give over trying to reform each other does not seem likely to happen very soon. Indeed, one might be pardoned for believing that matrimony is specially adapted to develop all the imperfections and meannesses of human character, and that even of those matches that are made in heaven the devil arranges all the subsequent conditions. There is hardly a pure and innocent delight that unmarried women enjoy which they can carry into that blissful world bounded by the marriage-ring. One of those delights is that of squandering a little money, which is merely the equivalent of man's spending it as he likes, without accounting to any one. Few wives can do this and not be subjected to the humiliation of hearing the husband say, "My dear, are you not a little extravagant? Is all that money gone that I gave you last week?"

Men and women seem incapacitated, in the very nature of things, from understanding each other. While mutually enamored they meet as upon a bridge--a Bridge of Sighs perhaps: break this, and they are for ever separated as by an impassable gulf. Leaving aside entirely the enamored state, do men as a rule seek the society of women and prefer it to that of men? The thriving clubs, the billiard- and drinking-saloons, and the other resorts of men common all over the civilized world, seem very like a negative answer to the question. In savage life we know that the sexes do not hunt or fish or do any work together. In our modern drawing-rooms most men confess themselves "bored." They long to get away to their clubs or some other resort of their fellows. When husbands spend their evenings at home, if no one happens to call it is not common for them to enter into long and exhilarating conversations with their wives. To be sure, wives are too often ignorant of the subjects that interest intelligent men; still, not more ignorant than before marriage, when the one bridge upon which they could meet was unbroken. _Then_ conversation never flagged: it was ever new and entrancing. Both talked pure nonsense, while having the art of "kissing full sense into empty words." On the other hand, it is, I think, quite a defensible proposition, despite the inferences to the contrary drawn from the failure of the Women's Hotel, that women enjoy conversation with women more than with men when there is no possible question of gallantry or flirtation; and, finally, that the recognition of the fact that men and women are not by nature in sympathetic accord, but only attracted through the law of compensation or opposites, will do more than all other things combined to make them study each other's natures and to respect sexual biases and characteristics, the motive for that study being, of course, the consummation of the ideal marriage, where man and woman set themselves together "like perfect music unto noble words."

M.H.

A RUSSIAN GENERAL IN CENTRAL ASIA.

Afternoon in Tashkent, the burning sun of Central Asia glaring upon the dusty streets and countless mud-hovels of the great city; files of camels gliding past with their long, noiseless stride, led by gaunt brown men in blue robes and white turbans; a deep archway in a high wall of baked earth, above which appear the trees of a spacious garden, and just within the entrance two tall, wiry, black-eyed Cossacks, in flat forage-caps, soiled cotton jackets and red goatskin trousers, leaning indolently on their long Berdan rifles.

At my approach, however, the two sentinels start up briskly enough--as well they may, for they are guarding one whom every man in Bokhara would give his best horse for a fair chance of murdering. My announcement that I am expected by the governor-general is received with evident suspicion and a crossing of bayonets to bar my way; but, happily, a passing aide-de-camp recognizes me and promptly leads me in.

The clustering trees, through which the sunshine filters in a rich, subdued light suggestive of some great cathedral, are deliciously cool and shady after the blinding glare outside; but there is life enough in the scene, nevertheless. White-frocked soldiers are hurrying to and fro; laced jackets, shining epaulettes, clinking spurs and sabres meet us at every turn; and in the centre of all, under a huge spreading tree planted years before any Russian had set foot in Turkestan, sits a towering form whose vast proportions and bold swarthy face seem to dwarf every other figure in the group. Twelve years ago, General Kolpakovski was a private soldier in the Russian army: to-day he is the commander of thirty thousand men and absolute master of a territory as large as the States of New York and Pennsylvania together.

"Fine fellow, isn't he?" says my conductor, looking admiringly at the stalwart form of his chief. "Did you ever hear of his ride across the steppes from here to Kouldja? He started with twelve Tartars, and you know what horsemen _they_ are. Well, three of them broke down the first day, five more the second, and all the rest on the third; and the general got in by himself. Ever since then the Tartars have called him 'The Chief with the Iron Skin;' and the soldiers go about singing,

Kolpakovski molodetz-- Fsadnik Tatarski--glupetz!

("Kolpakovski's a fine fellow: the Tartar horseman is a fool.")

"Well done!"

"Ay, and he did a better thing still two years ago. He was crossing the mountains with a Cossack squadron in the heat of summer. Presently up comes one fellow: 'Your Excellency, my horse is lame.'--'Go back, then.'--Another man, seeing that, thought he'd get off the same way; so _he_ calls out, 'My horse is lame, Your Excellency.'--'Get off and lead him, then,' says Kolpakovski; and the unfortunate fellow had to tramp up hill all day, and tow his horse after him into the bargain, with the thermometer ninety-five in the shade."

But just at this moment my name is called, and I go up to the general's chair, to receive a cordial handshake, a few words of frank, manly kindness, and the passport which is to carry me northward across the steppes as far as the border of Siberia.

D.K.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Memoir of William Francis Bartlett. By Francis Winthrop Palfrey. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co.

The Story of my Life. By the late Colonel Meadows Taylor. Edited by his Daughter. With a Preface by Henry Reeve. London: William Blackwood & Sons.

We put these two books together, not on account of any similarity in the scenes and events, the characters and careers, depicted in them, but because each in its way brings under a strong light the qualities on which nations rely in seasons of peril and emergency, but of which in ordinary times there is only a consciousness as of a latent source of strength, the sound and enduring pith beneath many accretions of questionable fibre and tenacity. General Bartlett may very well stand for a type of the "heroes" produced by our civil war--men who, neither bred to the profession of arms nor inspired by military or political ambition, quitting their homes and chosen vocations at the call of their country or their State, devoted themselves heart and soul to the duties and demands of the hour, distinguished themselves not more by their bravery than by their strict attention to discipline, and in seasons of discouragement and defeat, of bad generalship or defective organization, gave to the respective armies that "staying power," so rare in a citizen soldiery, which prolonged the contest until it ended in the sheer exhaustion of the weaker party. Conspicuous examples of this class were sent forth, perhaps, by every State, and within its borders were often regarded with a fonder admiration than the great commanders on whom a larger responsibility and more complex duties brought a more anxious and less partial scrutiny. Massachusetts, in particular, which could boast of no eminent professional soldier and whose "political generals" carried off the palm of a disastrous incapacity, turned with especial pride to those of her sons who in the camp and in the field were recognized as models of zeal, fidelity and gallantry. Of this number--and it was not small--Bartlett, though one of the youngest, was the most distinguished. He showed from the first equal coolness and daring in battle, as well as the special faculty of a minute disciplinarian. The regiments which he trained and led were among those that headed victorious charges and stemmed the torrent of defeat, besides presenting a faultless appearance on parade and resisting temptations to plunder. He himself was repeatedly disabled by severe wounds, and, being captured before Petersburg, passed many of the last months of the war in confinement, suffering from a disease which permanently injured his system and shortened his life. Yet he survived most of the comrades whose careers had opened with a like promise, and down to his death, in 1876, was full of enterprise and activity as a private citizen, bearing a spotless reputation, and displaying qualities which, it seems to have been generally believed, would have found their fittest field in some high public position. The story of his life is well and modestly told by his friend Colonel Palfrey, and may be specially commended to readers capable of being stirred and stimulated by memories and examples which have certainly not been dimmed by the greater lustre of those of a more recent date.

It would be unfair to expect in such a narrative the rich and varied interest that belongs to the autobiography of Meadows Taylor, whose career was as eventful and exciting as that of any hero of romance, and who has told it with a vividness and graphic power which few writers of romance have equalled. "He was one of the last of those," remarks Mr. Reeve, "who went out to India as simple adventurers." His boyhood and youth were full of precocious adventure and achievement. At the age of sixteen he obtained a commission in the military contingent of the Nizam. At seventeen he was employed as interpreter on courts-martial, and at eighteen was appointed "assistant police superintendent" of a district comprising a population of a million of souls. The duties of this post "involved not only direct authority over the ordinary relations of society, but the active pursuit of bands of Dacoits, Thugs and robbers," and occasional military expeditions to reduce some lawless chief to obedience. But the most remarkable and laborious years of his life were those during which he filled the office of "political agent" at Shorapoor, administering the affairs of that principality and holding the guardianship of the young rajah during a long minority, while cut off from intercourse with Europeans and exposed to continual plottings and intrigues of native functionaries and court favorites. The skill, tact and courage with which he executed the delicate and complicated functions of this anomalous position, and encountered its difficulties and perils, make themselves felt and appreciated in all the details of the narrative, while the picture presented of Eastern character and manners is one which only the most intimate knowledge, combined with rare faculties of delineation, could furnish, and differs in many features from any other to be found in European descriptions of life in India. "Meadows Taylor was never, properly speaking, in the civil service of the East India Company or the Crown, nor did he hold any military appointment in the British Indian army. He was throughout life an officer of the Nizam. He never even visited Calcutta or Bengal." He was thus thrown out of the main line of advancement, and never attained the rank or emoluments that fell to the share of many less gifted contemporaries. Hence the peculiarly adventurous character of his career and the novelty of the scenes which he depicts. Hence, too, perhaps, the width of his attainments, the enlightened spirit he displayed in his intercourse with the natives, and his cultivation of his literary powers as the main resource of his leisure while isolated from the society of his own race. His start in life belonged to a period long antecedent to the days of competitive examinations, but his assiduity and desire for knowledge needed no stimulant and were the keys to his early success. "His perfect acquaintance with the languages of Southern India--Teloogoo and Mahratta, as well as Hindoostanee--was," we are told, "the foundation of his extraordinary influence over the natives of the country and of his insight into their motives and character." He taught himself land-surveying and engineering, and constructed roads, tanks and buildings. He studied geology, botany and antiquities, and applied the knowledge thus obtained to practical purposes. He gained an acquaintance with the principles of law, Hindoo, Mohammedan and English, that he might devise codes and rules of procedure for a country where there were no courts or legislation, and where he had to administer justice according to his own lights. In the midst of his thousand avocations he found time to write a series of novels portraying the manners and superstitions of India, and depicting the various epochs of its history, with a fidelity and liveliness that have gained for these works a wide popularity. Yet perhaps the strongest impression made by this record of his life comes from the evidence it affords of his humane and conciliatory spirit in his dealings with the native Indians of every class, his unselfish devotion to their welfare, his habit of treating them as equals and his power of inspiring them with confidence, with the result of enabling him to preserve a large and important district from participation in the Mutiny, without the aid of troops and against the constant pressure and appeals of surrounding populations all in full revolt. His autobiography has already gone through several editions in England, and we cannot but regret that it has not been republished in America, where the interest in the country and events to which it relates is of course far less general and intense, but where, we may hope, the appreciation of heroic energy and noble achievements is not less common. The book is not to be confounded with the class to which the lives of governor-generals and military commanders in India belong. Arrian complained that the expedition of the Ten Thousand was far more famous in his day than the exploits of Alexander; and this narrative of what must be considered an episode of the British rule in India is likely to hold the attention of most readers more closely than many volumes that recount the grander events of that wonderful history.

Walks in London. By Augustus J.C. Hare, author of "Walks in Rome," etc. New York: George Routledge & Sons.

Not many visitors to London would be likely to take all or half the walks described in Mr. Hare's two thick volumes, even if the word _walks_ should be so interpreted as to include commoner modes of transit between distant points of interest and through interminable thoroughfares. In Rome or Venice the tourist may be expected to follow religiously the prescriptions of his guide-book: he is there for that purpose, he has no other means of employing his time, and he would be ashamed to report that he had omitted to see or do anything that Jones or Smith had seen and done. But a few rapid excursions in a hansom cab will enable him to visit all the "sights" that are _de rigueur_ in London--Westminster Abbey and Hall and the Houses of Parliament; the Museum, the Zoological and the National Gallery; St. Paul's, Guildhall and the Bank and Exchange; the Monument, the Tower and the Tunnel,--after which he may devote himself without scruple to an endless round of social amusements, or to "the proper study of mankind" with all varieties and countless specimens of the genus collected for his inspection. It is only the zealous investigator, primed with the associations of English literature from Chaucer to Dickens, who will be apt to put himself under Mr. Hare's guidance, and to explore patiently the widely-separated districts in which lie scattered and almost hidden the relics that attest the identity of London through the ages of growth and change that have transformed it from the "Hill Fortress" of Lud or the Colonia Augusta of the Romans into the commercial metropolis of the world, with a population, circumference and aggregate of wealth exceeding those of most of the other European capitals combined. Yet one who undertakes this labor with the due amount of knowledge and enthusiasm may be sure of finding his reward in it. Though London is the supreme embodiment of modern life, with its ceaseless absorption and accumulation, it is none the less imbued with a conservative spirit which has saved it from the wholesale demolitions and ruthless remodellings to which Paris has been subjected. Mr. Hare speaks with just indignation of the destruction of Northumberland House at Charing Cross, but this has so far been an exceptional instance, though it is perhaps an ominous one. The traveller may still step aside from the busy Strand into the silent and beautiful Temple Church with its tombs of Crusaders, pause as he leaves his banker's in Bishopsgate to take a survey of Crosby Hall and Sir Paul Pindar's house with their reminders of the financial magnates of a bygone time beautifying their homes in the City as visible proclamations of their prosperity, and find, as he wanders through Aldgate and Bevis Marks, Wych street, Holborn and Lincoln's Inn, Southwark and Lambeth, hundreds of quaint fronts or picturesque memorials linked with names and events, epochs and usages, that have been familiar to his mind from childhood. But many such scenes and objects will escape notice or fail of due appreciation unless an informant be at hand qualified to proffer the needed suggestions without indulging in wearisome garrulity. Mr. Hare seems to us to meet very well the requirements of this office, his book being a happy medium between the concise though comprehensive, and for ordinary purposes indispensable, manual of Baedeker and the voluminous works of Timbs and Cunningham.

* * * * *

_Books Received._

Putnam's Art Hand-books. Edited by Susan N. Carter, Principal of the "Women's Art-School, Cooper Union." "Landscape Painting" and "Sketching from Nature." New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Current Discussion: A Collection from the Chief English Essays on Questions of the Times. By Edward L. Burlingame. Second volume: Questions of Belief. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Economic Monographs: France and the United States; Suffrage in Cities; Our Revenue System and the Civil Service--shall they be Reformed? New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Off on a Comet: A Journey through Planetary Space. From the French of Jules Verne, by Edward Roth. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.

A Year Worth Living: A Story of a Place and of a People one cannot afford Not to Know. By William M. Baker. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The Voyages and Adventures of Vasco da Gama. By George M. Towle. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The Fall of Damascus: An Historical Novel. By Charles Wells Russell. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Adventures of a Consul Abroad. By Samuel Sampleton, Esq. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

The Future State (Christian Union Extras). New York: Christian Union Print.

* * * * *

_New Music Received._

The Broken Ring, and The Young Recruit: Part-songs for Male Voices. Composed and arranged by A.H. Rosewig. (Lotus Club Collection.) Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Strew Sweet Flowers o'er my Grave: Song and Chorus. Words and Music by M.C. Vandercook. Arranged by D.H. Straight. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Monthly Journal of Music and General Miscellany. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Latest and Best Lancers. By Frank Green. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1807.

[2] Fuller's _Worthies_.

[3] _Churches of Bristol._

[4] Taylor's _Book about Bristol_.

[5] _The Churchgoer._

[6] The documents are given in full in the appendix of Dr. J.J. Chaponnière's memoir in vol. iv. of the _Mém. de la Soc. Archéol. de Genève_. The former is signed by Bonivard, apostolic prothonotary and _poet-laureate_.

[7] The story is told by Bonivard himself in his _Chronicles_, and may be found in full detail in the Second Series of Dr. Merle d'Aubigné's volumes on the Reformation, vol. i. chaps. viii. and x. The story that Pecolat, about to be submitted a second time to the torture, and fearing lest he might be again tempted to accuse his friends, attempted to cut off his own tongue with a razor, seems to be authenticated. The whole story is worthy of being told at full length in English, it is so full of generous heroism.

[8] "Je n'ai vu ni lu oncques un si grand mépriseur de mort," says Bonivard in his _Chronicles_.

[9] The text of this act is given by Chaponnière, p. 156.

[10] We have the history of one of them in a brief of Pope Clement VII. addressed to the chapter and senate of Geneva, in which he expresses his sorrow that in a city which he has carried in his bowels so long such high-handed doings should be allowed. One Francis Bonivard has not only despoiled the rightful prior of his living, but--what is worse--has chased his attorney with a gun and shot the horse that he was running away upon: "_quodque pejus est, Franciscum Tingum ejusdem electi procuratorem, negocium restitucionis dicte possessionis prosequentem, scloppettis invasisse, et equum super quo fugiebat vulnerasse_." His Holiness threatens spiritual vengeance, and explains his zeal in the case by the fact that the excluded prior is his cousin.

[11] _Advis et Devis des difformes Reformateurz_, pp. 149-151.

[12] It is needful to caution enthusiastic tourists that nearly all the details of Byron's poem are fabulous. The two brothers, the martyred father, the anguish of the prisoner, were all invented by the poet on that rainy day in the tavern at Ouchy. Even the level of the dungeon, below the water of the lake, turns out to be a mistake, although Bonivard believed it: the floor of the crypt is eight feet above high-water mark. As for the thoughts of the prisoner, they seem to have been mainly occupied with making Latin and French verses of an objectionable sort not adapted for general publication. (See Ls. Vulliemin: _Chillon, Étude historique_, Lausanne, 1851.)

[13] This touching tribute of conjugal affection is all the more honorable to Bonivard from the fact that this wife, like the others, had provoked him. Only a few months before he had been compelled to appear before the consistory to answer for treating her in a public place with profane and abusive language, applying to her some French term which is expressed in the record only by abbreviations.

[14] Avolio: _Canti Popolari di Noto._

[15] Guastella: _Canti Popolari del Circondario di Modica._

[16] D'Ancona: _Venti Canti Pop. Siciliani_, No. 5.

[17] An "ounce" equals twelve francs seventy-five centimes.

[18] Auria: _Miscellaneo_, MS. _segnato_ 92, A. 28, Bib. Com. Palermo.

[19] Pitrè: _Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti Pop. Sicil.,_ No. cxlviii.

[20] Piaggia: _Illustrazione di Milazzo_, p. 249.

[21] These gifts are called _spinagghi_ and _cubbaìta_.

[22] Alessi: _Notizie della Sicilia_, No. 164, MS. QqH. 44, of the Bib. Com. of Palermo.

[23] Traina (_Vocab. Sicil._) defines _macadàru_ as nuptial-bed, and cites Pasqualino, who derives the word from the Arabic _chadar_, which signifies "bed," "couch."

[24] So called, according to Traina (_Vocab. Sicil._), because of the frequent occurrence of the notes _fa, sol, la_.

[25] Buonfiglio e Costanzo: _Messinà, Città Nobìlissima_.

[26] Pitrè: _Studj di Poesia Pop.,_ p. 21.

[27] This may be translated, "Palermo needs a long purse." See Pitrè: _Fiabe, Novelle, etc.,_ No. cclxviii.

[28] Dante: _Div. Com.,_ _Purg.,_ vi. 84.

[29] See the _Giornale di Sicilia_, An. xv., No. 84.

[30] 20 kopecks = 6-1/2 d., or 1/5 of a rouble.

[31] This play upon _voda_ ("water") and _voyevod_ ("a general") has no equivalent in English. Perhaps the best rendering would be "the battle of _Water_loo."