Chapter 5

The village of Salmon Falls, in eastern New England, consists of a number of mills and factories, the railroad station, a store or two, and two hundred dwellings. Among these is the Denny mansion at the top of the hill, where the road climbs up from the station and the river. It is a large square house in the old colonial fashion, with two wings at the rear and a garden in front.

It was a warm July morning when Mr. John Denny, mill owner and proprietor of the homestead, had his chair rolled out to the porch, and with some assistance from the servants, reached it on his crutch and sat down in the shadow of the great house and out of the glare of the hot sun. The vine-covered porch and the wide piazza opened directly upon the garden and gave a full view of the road. Beyond there was an outlook over the open fields, the mills, the stream, and the village in the valley. By the road there was a stone wall and a wicker gate opening upon the grassy sidewalk outside. A table had been laid with a white cloth in the porch, and Mr. Denny sat by it and waited for the coming of his daughter and breakfast. While he sat thus he turned over a number of papers, and then, after a while, he began to talk to himself somewhat in this wise:

"Expense! expense! expense! There seems no end to it. Bills coming in every day, and every one larger than was expected. In my young days we built a shop and knew to a dollar what it would cost. Now the estimates are invariably short. The batting mill has already gone a thousand dollars beyond the estimates, and the roof is but just put on. Even the new chimney cost four dollars a foot more than was expected. Thank Heaven, it is done, and that expense is over. Could I walk, I might look after things and keep them within bounds. With my crushed foot I sit a prisoner at home, and must leave all to Lawrence. It is fortunate that I have one man I can trust with my affairs."

Just here Alma, his only child, a bright and wholesome girl of nineteen, appeared from the house. Fairly educated, sensible, and affectionate, but perhaps a trifle inexperienced by reason of her residence in this quiet place, she is at once the pride and the light of the house.

"Good morning, father. Are you well this happy summer's day?"

The old gentleman kissed her fondly, and asked did she pass a quiet night.

"Oh, yes. I didn't sleep much, that is all--for thinking."

"Thinking of what?"

"The expected guest. To-day is the 9th of July, and cousin Elmer comes."

"Ah, yes--Elmer Franklin. I had almost forgotten him."

"How does he look, father? Is his hair dark, or has he blue eyes? I hardly know which I like best."

"I do not remember. I've not seen the boy since he was a mere child, years ago. He has been at school since."

"He must be a man now. He is past twenty-one, and, as for school, why, it's the Scientific School, and I'm sure men go to that."

"You seem greatly interested in this unknown relative, Alma."

"He is to be our guest, father--for a whole month. Come! Will you have breakfast out here in the porch?"

"Yes, dear. It is quite comfortable here, and it will save the trouble of moving."

Thereupon Alma entered the house in search of the breakfast, and a moment after Mr. Lawrence Belford entered the garden at the street gate. The son of an old friend of Mr. Denny's lamented wife, Mr. Belford had been admitted to the house some months since as confidential clerk and business man. He was a rather commonplace person, about thirty years of age, and his education and manners were good if not remarkable. During his residence with the Dennys he had found time to fall in love with Alma, and they had been engaged--and with Mr. Denny's consent.

"Good morning, Lawrence. You're just in time for breakfast."

"Good morning, sir. Thank you, no. I have been to breakfast. I am just up from the station."

"Seen anything of the railroad coach? The train is in, and it is time for the coach to pass. Our guest may be in it."

"No, sir, but I saw the express coming up the hill with an extra large load of baggage."

Just here Alma returned from the house bearing a large tray of plates and breakfast things. The young people greet each other pleasantly, and Alma proceeds to lay the table.

"Now for breakfast, father. Everything waits upon a good appetite. Will you not join us, Lawrence?"

Mr. Belford replies that he has been to breakfast. Mr. Denny takes a cup of coffee, and while sipping it remarks:

"How many more window-frames shall you require for the new mill, Lawrence?"

"Ten more, sir. There is only a part of the fourth story unfinished."

"Alma, dear, do you remember how high we decided the new chimney was to be? Yes, thank you, only two lumps of sugar. Thank you. You remember we were talking about it when the Lawsons were here."

"Don't ask me. Ask Lawrence. I never can remember anything about such matters."

Just at that moment the express pulled up at the gate, and there was a knock. Alma rose hastily, and said:

"Oh! That must be Elmer."

She opened the gate, and young Mr. Elmer Franklin of New York entered. A man to respect: an open, manly face, clear blue eyes, and a wiry, compact, and vigorous frame. A man with a sound mind in a sound body. He was dressed in a gray travelling suit, and had a knapsack strapped to his back; in his hand a stout stick looking as if just cut from the roadside, and at his side a field glass in a leather case. Immediately behind him came a man bending under the load of an immense trunk. Alma smiled her best, and the young stranger bowed gallantly.

"Mr. Denny, I presume?"

"Welcome, cousin Franklin," said Mr. Denny from his chair. "I knew you at once, though it is years since any members of our families have met. Pardon me if I do not rise. I'm an old man, and confined to my chair."

Mr. Franklin offered his hand and said politely:

"Thank you, sir, for your kind reception. I am greatly pleased to---- Hullo! Look out there, boys! That baggage is precious and fragile."

Another man appeared, and the two brought in trunks and boxes, bundles and parcels, till there was quite a large heap of baggage piled up on the grass. Alma and Lawrence were properly amazed at this array of things portable, and Mr. Denny laid aside the breakfast things to look at the rather remarkable display.

The young man seemed to think apologies essential.

"I do not wonder that you are alarmed. I do not often take such a load of traps. I wrote you that my visit would be one of study and scientific investigation, and I was obliged to bring my philosophical apparatus and books with me."

"It is indeed a wonderful train of luggage for a man. One would have thought you intended to bring a wife."

Then Mr. Denny bethought him of his duty, and he introduced his newly found relative to his daughter and to Mr. Lawrence Belford, and then bade him draw up to the table for breakfast. The young man made the motions suitable for such an occasion, and then he turned to pay his expressman. This trifling incident deserves record as happily illustrating the young man's noble character.

"Thank you, sir. Breakfast will be a cheerful episode. I've a glorious appetite, for I walked up from the station."

"There's a coach, Mr. Franklin, and it passes our door."

"I knew that, sir, but I preferred to walk and see the country. Fine section of conglomerate you have in the road cutting just above the station."

"Eh! What were you saying?"

"I said that I observed an interesting section of conglomerate--water-worn pebbles, I should say--mingled with quartz sand, on the roadside. I must have a run down there and a better look at it after breakfast."

Mr. Denny was somewhat overwhelmed at this, and said doubtfully,

"Ah, yes, I remember--yes, exactly."

"Are you interested in geology, Miss Denny?"

Alma was rather confused, and tried hard to find the lump of sugar that had melted away in her coffee, and said briefly,

"No. I didn't know that we had any in this part of the country."

Mr. Belford here felt called upon to say:

"My dear Alma, you forget yourself."

"Why will you take me up so sharply, Lawrence? I meant to say that I didn't know we had any quartz conglomerate hereabouts."

Mr. Franklin smiled pleasantly, and remarked to himself:

"My dear Alma! That's significant. Wonder if he's spooney on her?"

Then he said aloud:

"The pursuit of science demands good dinners. Pardon me if I take some more coffee."

"Yes, do--and these rolls. I made them myself--expressly for you."

"Thank you for both rolls and compliment."

Mr. Lawrence took up some of the papers from the table and began to read them, and the others went on with their breakfast. Presently Mr. Denny said:

"I presume, Mr. Franklin, that you are greatly interested in your school studies?"

"Yes, sir. The pursuit of pure science is one of the most noble employments that can tax the cultivated intellect."

"But you must confess that it is not very practical."

Before the young man could reply Alma spoke:

"Oh! cousin Elmer--I mean Mr. Franklin--excuse me. You haven't taken off your knapsack."

Taking it off and throwing it behind him on the ground, he said:

"It's only my clothes."

"Clothes!" said Mr. Denny. "Then what is in the trunks?"

"My theodolite, cameras, chains, levels, telescopes, retorts, and no end of scientific traps."

Alma, quite pleased:

"How interesting. Won't you open one of the trunks and let us see some of the things?"

"With the greatest pleasure; but perhaps I'd better take them to my room first."

"Anything you like, Elmer--Mr. Franklin, I mean. Our house is your home."

Lawrence Belford here frowned and looked in an unpleasant manner for a moment at the young stranger, who felt rather uncomfortable, though he could scarcely say why. With apparent indifference he drew out a small brass sounder, such as is used in telegraph offices, and began snapping it in his fingers.

In his mind he said:

"Wonder if any of them are familiar with the great dot and line alphabet!"

Alma heard the sounder and said eagerly:

"Oh! cou--Mr. Franklin, what is that?"

"It is a pocket sounder. Do you know the alphabet?"

"I should hope so."

"I beg pardon. I meant Morse's."

"Morse's?"

"Yes. Morse's alphabet."

"No. You must teach it to me."

Thereupon he moved the sounder slowly, giving a letter at a time, and saying:

"A - -- L - -- - - M -- -- A - --.

That's your name. Queer sound, isn't it?"

"Let me try. Perhaps I could do it."

"My dear Alma, your father is waiting. You had best remove the things."

"Yes, Lawrence. I'll call Mary."

The maid soon appeared, and the breakfast things were removed. Then Mr. Denny drew Mr. Franklin's attention to the new factory chimney that stood in plain sight from where they sat.

The young man promptly drew out his field glass, and, mounting one of the steps of the porch, took a long look at the new shaft.

"Not quite plumb, is it?"

"Not plumb! What do you mean?"

"It is impossible," said Mr. Belford with some warmth.

"It looks so," said the young man with the glass still up at his eyes.

"I tell you it is impossible, sir. I built it myself, and I ought to know."

"Oh! Beg pardon. You can take the glass and see for yourself."

"I need no glass. I took the stage down only yesterday, and I ought to know."

"Allow me to take your glass, cousin Franklin," said Mr. Denny. He took the glass, but quickly laid it down with a sigh.

"My eyes are old and weak, and the glass does not suit them. I am very sorry to hear what you say. I would not have one of my chimneys out of line for the world."

"I am sorry I said anything about it, sir. I did not know the chimney belonged to you."

Alma was apparently distressed at the turn the conversation had taken, and tried to lead it to other matters, but the old gentleman's mind was disturbed, and he returned to the chimney.

"I designed it to be the tallest and finest chimney I ever erected, and I hope it is all correct."

"It is, sir," said Mr. Belford. "Everything is correct to the very capstones."

"It is my tallest chimney, Mr. Franklin--eighty-one feet and six inches; and that is two feet taller than any chimney in the whole Salmon Falls valley."

Mr. Franklin, in an innocent spirit of scientific inquiry, put his glass to his eyes and examined the chimney again. Alma began to feel ill at ease, and Lawrence Belford indulged in a muttered curse under his black moustache.

"Eighty-one feet and six inches--the tallest chimney in the valley."

No one seemed to heed the old gentleman's remark, and presently Mr. Franklin laid his field glass on the table, and taking out his brass sounder, he idly moved it as if absently thinking of something.

Alma suddenly looked up with a little blush and a smile. Her eyes seemed to say to him:

"I heard you call? What is it?"

He nodded pleasantly, and said, "Would you like to see some of my traps?"

"Oh, yes. Do open one of your trunks."

Mr. Franklin took out a bunch of keys and went to one of the trunks. As he did so he said to himself:

"Deuced bright girl! She learned my call in a flash. I must teach her the whole alphabet, and then will have some tall fun and circumvent that fool of a clerk."

This remark was applied to Mr. Belford, and was eminent for its touching truth.

While the young people were opening the trunk, Mr. Denny and Mr. Belford were engaged in examining the business papers spread on the table, and for several minutes they paid no attention to things done and said almost under their eyes.

Such a very strange trunk. Instead of clothing, it contained the most singular assortment of scientific instruments. Each was carefully secured so that no rude handling would harm it, and all shining and glistening brilliantly as if kept with the most exquisite care. Mr. Franklin unfastened a small brass telescope, mounted upon a stand, with a compass, levels, plumb line, and weight attached.

"That's my theodolite. There's a tripod in one of my boxes. I'll get it and mount it, and we'll have a shot at the chimney.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing! I'm going to measure it. Wouldn't you like to help me?"

"With all my heart. Tell me what to do."

"Presently. Wait till I've screwed things together; then I'll tell you what to do. Oh! By the way, I must tell you an amusing episode that happened at the railroad station while I was waiting for my luggage. There was a young man sending off a message at the little telegraph station, and I overheard the message and the comments of the operator."

Alma didn't appear to enjoy this incident.

"Not listening intentionally, you know. It was the telegraph I heard, not the people."

Alma felt better.

"It was all by mere sounds, and it ran this way: 'The old fool is here again.' That's what she said--the operator, I mean. 'To Isaac Abrams, 1,607 Barclay street, New York. I have secured the will. Foreclose the mortgage and realize at once. Get two state rooms for the 25th.--L. B.' That was the message, and it was so very strange I wrote it out in my---- Oh! Beg pardon, Miss Denny. Are you ill?"

Alma's face had assumed a sudden pallor, and she seemed frightened and ill at ease.

"'Tis nothing--really nothing! I shall be better presently."

Then, as if anxious to change the conversation, she began to ask rapid questions about the theodolite and its uses.

Mr. Franklin was too well bred to notice anything, but he confessed to himself that he had said something awkward, and, for the life of him, he could not imagine what it might be. He replied briefly, and then went on with his preparations for some time in silence, Alma meanwhile looking on with the greatest interest. The theodolite having been put together, Mr. Franklin opened another box and took out a wooden tripod, such as are used to support such instruments. He also took out a fine steel ribbon, or measuring tape, neatly wound up on a reel.

"You shall carry that, Miss Denny, and I'll shoulder the theodolite."

"Wait till I get my hat and the sun umbrella."

"To be sure; it will be warm in the fields."

Alma was soon arrayed in a dainty chip. At least she called it a chip, and the historian can do naught but repeat her language. Besides this, it was not bigger than a chip, and it looked very pretty tied under her chin. Over her head she carried its real protection, an immense Japanese paper umbrella, light, airy, and generous.

"Where are you going, Alma?" said Mr. Denny.

"Oh! only to the fields for a little walk. We'll be back presently."

The confidential clerk thought it strange that the daughter of the house should be so free with the stranger. But the young people were distant cousins, and it wouldn't have been polite in him to have objected to the little walk.

So the two, under the friendly shade of the big paper umbrella, went out to see the new chimney, while Mr. Denny and the confidential clerk staid behind to talk business.

The new chimney stood at the southeast corner of the great four-story mill, and close beside the little brick engine house. Alma led the youthful son of science out of the gate, down the road a few rods, and then they passed a stile, and took the winding path that straggled over the pastures to the mill.

Of course they talked volubly. This being the stern and prosy record of applied science, it becomes us not to report the chatterings of these two till they reached the base of the vast brick chimney, towering nearly eighty feet into the air above them. Its long shadow lay like a stiffened snake upon the fields, and Elmer, observing it, said:

"Good! We can use the shadow, too, and have double proof."

"How?" said the bright one, in a beautiful spirit of inquiry.

"If an upright stick, a foot long, casts a shadow three feet long, the shadow of another stick beside it, at the same time, is proportionally long."

"I knew that before. That isn't very high science."

"Why did you say 'how'?"

"Because I didn't think. Because I was a goose."

"Such terms are not choice, and are devoid of truth. Here! stern duty calls. Do you hold one end of the tape at the foot of the chimney, and I'll measure off the base line of our triangle."

Alma was charmed to be of use, and sat on a stone with the brass ring of the tape on her ring finger next her engagement ring, and her hand flat against the first course of bricks. Trifles sometimes hint great events. Little did she think that the plain brass ring on her finger was the hard truth of science that should shiver her gold ring to fragments and pale its sparkling diamond. Being a wholesome creature, and not given to romance, she thought nothing about it, which was wise. Her cousin, the knight of the theodolite, set his instrument upright upon the grass, and then ran the measuring line out to its full length.

"All right! Let the tape go."

Alma took off the brass ring, and the steel ribbon ran like a glittering snake through the grass, and she slowly followed it and joined her knight.

"Once more, please. Hold the ring on this bit of a stake that I've set up in the ground."

Alma, like a good girl, did as she was bid, and the ribbon ran out again to its full length. Another stake was set up, and the theodolite was placed in position and a sight obtained at the top of the tall chimney. A little figuring in a note-book, and then the son of high science quietly remarked:

"Seventy-six feet four inches--short five feet two inches."

Just here several urchins of an inquiring turn of mind drew near and began to make infantile comments, and asked with charming freedom if it was circus.

"No!" said Alma, from under her paper tent. "No! Run away, children, run away."

It was too warm for so much exertion, and they wouldn't move.

"Oh! never mind them. They don't trouble me; and if it amuses them, it's so much clear gain."

"They are some of the factory children, and I thought they might bother you."

"Inelegant, but thoughtful." He didn't say so. He only thought it, which was quite as well.

During this little episode the impressive facts that all this scientific exertion had brought out concerning the chimney were lost upon Alma. It was small consequence. She knew it well enough before night.

Now for the shadow by way of proof. The theodolite, paper umbrella, and admiring crowd of children trotted severally and collectively over the grass till they reached the chimney again.

"The tape-measure, Alma. You hold the ring, and I'll unreel the string."

It was surprising how quickly these two made each other's acquaintance. By the time the long shadow was measured, a stake set up, and the two shadows compared, they seemed to have known each other for weeks. Such is the surprising effect of pure science when applied to love.

Had it come to this already? She was engaged to the confidential, the chimney-builder. His ring glittered on her finger. True--all of it!

See them sauntering slowly (the thermometer at 87 deg.) homeward under the friendly shade of an oiled paper umbrella. They are indeed good friends already. They enter the house together, and the cheerful dinner bell greets their ears. She folds her oiled paper tent and he sets his instrument up in a corner of the great shady hall. She leads the way to the chamber that is to be his room during his stay, and then retires to her own to prepare for the frugal noontide meal.

The exact truth records that the meal was not severely frugal. It was otherwise, and so much nicer.

The entire family were assembled, and conversation was lively, considering the weather. Near the close of the meal it grew suddenly warm. The innocent son of science, proud of his accomplishments, made a most incautious statement, and the result was peculiar.

"Oh, uncle, you were saying this morning that my science was not very practical. I tried a bit of it on your chimney this morning, and what do you think I found?"

"I'm sure I can't tell," said Mr. Denny.

"I measured it, and it is exactly seventy-six feet, four inches high."

If he had dropped a can of nitro-glycerin under the table, the effect couldn't have been more startling. Mr. Lawrence Belford dropped his fruit knife with a ruinous rattle, his face assumed the color of frosted cake (the frosting, to be exact), and he seemed thoroughly frightened. Mr. Denny looked surprised, and said,

"What?"

Alma said nothing, but fished for the sugar in her strawberries and cream.

"What did you say, Mr. Franklin?"

"I said that I measured the new chimney, just for the fun of the thing, and found that it is exactly seventy-six feet, four inches high."

"It's an abominable lie."

"Lawrence!" said Alma, with an appealing glance.

"Are you sure, Mr. Franklin? Have you not made some mistake?"

"You are utterly mistaken, Mr. Franklin. I measured that chimney with a line from the top, and I know your statement is entirely incorrect."

"I hope so," said the old gentleman.

"It is so, sir," added Mr. Belford; and then, waxing bolder, he said, "How could this young person, just from school, know anything of such matters? Did he build a staging, or did he climb up the inside like a chimney sweep?"

Young Mr. Franklin saw that he had in some innocent fashion started a most disagreeable subject. Why Mr. Denny should be so disturbed and Mr. Belford so angry was past his comprehension. At the same time Mr. Belford's language was offensive, and he replied with some spirit:

"There is no need to climb the chimney, or use a line. It is a trifling affair to ascertain the height of any building with a theodolite, as you probably know."

"I tell you, sir, it is false--utterly false. Besides, you have made some mistake in the figures. You--you--but I've no patience with such boy's play. It's only fit for school children."

"Lawrence," said Alma, "you are unkind. I'm sure we meant no harm. I helped Mr. Franklin, and I'm sure he's right; besides, we measured the chimney by its shadow, and both statements were alike."

"Oh, if you've turned against me, I've nothing more to say."

Mr. Denny meanwhile seemed lost in deep study, and he hardly heeded what was going on.

"What can that boy know about such things? I tell you, it's----"

"It seems to me, Mr. Belford, you are unnecessarily excited," said Mr. Denny. "Mr. Franklin is a much younger man than you, but he showed a knowledge of this matter, and if his figures are correct----"

"They are, sir," said Elmer warmly. "I can show you the base line, and the theodolite is still at the same angle. Alma saw me measure the base, and she can tell you its length. There are the figures in my note-book."

Mr. Denny took the note-book and examined the figuring out of this problem, and Elmer went to the hall for his instrument. He returned with the theodolite still secured at the angle at which the sight had been taken. As he laid the instrument on the dining table, he said:

"I am very sorry, uncle, that I did anything about this matter. It was done in mere sport, and I wish I had said nothing concerning it. I would not had not Mr. Belford used the language he did."

Mr. Denny ran his eye over the figures in the book, and then, with a pained expression, he said briefly,

"Everything seems to be correct."

"Damnation! I'll break his head for him, the intermeddling fool." This language was not actually used by Mr. Belford, but he thought as much. His eyes flashed, and he clenched his fists under the table. Alma's presence alone restrained him from something more violent. He appeared calm, but inwardly he was angry. This unexpected announcement concerning the chimney he had built cast a heavy shadow over him, and his conscience awoke with a sudden smart.

Alma was greatly disturbed, and ready to cry for shame and vexation. She did not, for she felt sure this was only the beginning of a new trouble, and she well knew that heavy sorrows had already invaded the house. They needed no more.

Mr. Franklin glanced from one to another in alarm. He saw that he was treading upon uncertain ground, and he wisely held his peace. After a brief and awkward pause, Mr. Belford rose, and pleading the calls of business, went out, and the unhappy interview came to an end.

* * * * *

It was a strange room. Its belongings stranger still. A large square chamber, with windows on three sides and a door and a fireplace on the other. Just now the fireplace had fallen from its high estate and had become a catch-all for the wrecks of much unpacking. There was a small single bed, two chairs, and an indefinite number of tables. Impossible to say how many, for they were half obscured by numberless things scientific: microscopes, a retort, small furnace, two cameras, galvanic battery, coils of wire and rubber tubing, magic lantern, books, photographs, and papers; on a small desk a confused pile of papers; on the walls a great number of pictures and photographs.

The very den of a student of science. Hardly room to walk among the wilderness of traps, boxes, and trunks. At the window, the young man, just dressed, and taking a view of the mill and its new chimney.

"Gad! how mad the fellow was over my little measurements. Wonder what it all means? The girl's in trouble, the father has a grief, and the clerk--I can make nothing of him. What matter? My duty is with my books, that I may pursue pure science. The moment things become practical I drop 'em."

Then he turned and looked out of the next window.

"Fine view of the river. I must have another try at it with the camera."

He crossed the room, and standing in the bright morning sunshine, he looked about to examine the other L that had been thrown out from the back of the main building.

"That's Alma's room, and the next is the clerk's, the chimney man. The window is open, and the place looks as dark as a cave. I've a mind to light it up."

So saying he took a small hand mirror from a table near by. Holding it in the full sunlight, he moved it slowly about till the dancing spot of reflected light fell upon the open window and leaped in upon the opposite wall of the room. The observer with steady hand moved the spot of light about till he had probed the room, and found all it contained, which was nothing save a bed and two chairs.

"Applied science reports the man is fit for treason, spoils, and that sort of thing. He has no pictures. His room is a sleeping den. The man is a----Hallo! Steady there!"

The door in the room opened, and the student of applied science turned quickly away with his back to the wall beside his window. Cautiously raising the mirror, he held it near the window in such a way that in it he could see all that went on in the other room, without being himself seen.

Suddenly he saw something in the glass. Some one appeared at the window, looked out as if watching for something, and then withdrew into the bare little sleeping room. Then the figure in the mirror went to the bed and carefully turned all the clothes back. The student of science watched the mirror intently. The figure bent over the uncovered mattress and quietly opened the sacking and took something out. It sat down on the edge of the disordered bed and proceeded to examine the box or bundle, whatever it might be, that it had found in the bed.

Just here there was the sound of a distant door opening and closing. The figure crouched low on the bed, as if fearing to be seen, and waited till all was quiet again. Then it slowly opened the box or package, and took out a folded paper. The student bent over the mirror with the utmost interest. What did it mean? What would happen next? Nothing in particular happened. The figure closed the box, returned it to its hiding place in the bed, and then crept out of the range of reflected vision.

Why should the confidential clerk hide papers in his bed? What was the nature of the documents? A strange affair, certainly, but it did not concern him, and perhaps he had better drop the subject. He turned to his books and papers, and for an hour or more was too much occupied with them to heed aught else.

Suddenly there was a brisk series of taps at his door, like this:

- - -- - - -- -- - - -- --

"I'm here. Come in."

Alma, the bright one entered.

"What a room! Such disorder, Elmer."

"Yes. It is quite a comfortable den. I've unpacked everything, and--mind your steps--feel quite at home--thank you."

"I should say as much. Do look at the dust. I must have Mary up here at once."

"Madam, I never allow any female person to touch my traps. Mary may make the bed, but she must not sweep, nor dust, nor touch anything."

"Oh! really. Then I'll go at once."

"Better not."

"Why?"

"Because I've many things to show----"

"Oh, Elmer! What is that--that queer thing on the table? May I look at it?"

"That's my new camera."

"How stupid. I might have known that. Do you take pictures?"

"Photos? Yes. Will you sit?"

"Oh, dear, no. I hate photographs. It's so disagreeable to see oneself staring with some impossible expression, and sitting in an impossible palace, with a distant landscape and drapery curtains."

"Then I'll take a view for you. Find a seat somewhere while I rig things. See those two people sitting on the little bridge that crosses the race beyond the mill? I'll photograph them without their permission."

Alma looked out of the window when Elmer had raised the curtain, but declared she couldn't see anything.

"They are very far off. Take the field glass, and you'll see them."

Alma took the glass from the table, and looked out on the sunny landscape.

"I see what you mean, but I can't make out who they are, even with the glass. It's a man and a woman, and that's as much as I can see."

"You shall see them plain enough in a moment."

So saying, Elmer placed a long brass telescope upon a stand by the open window, and through it he examined the couple on the bridge. Meanwhile Alma gazed round the room and examined its strange contents with the greatest interest.

The moment the focus of the glass was secured, Elmer hastily took the little camera, and adjusting a slide in it from a table drawer, he placed it before the telescope on the table and close to the eye hole. Then, by throwing a black cloth over his head, he looked into it, turned a screw or two, and in a moment had a negative of the distant couple.

"Aren't you almost ready?"

"In one moment, Alma. I must fix this first. I'll be right back."

So saying he took the slide from the little camera, and went out of the room into a dark closet in the entry.

Alma waited patiently for a few moments, and then she took up the field glass, and looked out of the window. Who could they be? They seemed to be having a cosy time together; but beyond the fact that one figure was a woman she could learn nothing. She wanted to take a look through the telescope, but did not dare to move the little camera that stood before it.

"Here's the picture," said Elmer as he entered the room.

Alma took the bit of glass he offered her, but declared she couldn't see anything but a dirty spot on the glass.

"That's the negative. Let me copy it, and then I'll throw it up with the stereopticon."

He selected another bit of glass from a box, and in a few minutes had it prepared and the two put together and laid in the sun on the window-seat.

"What's in that iron box, Elmer?"

"Nitrous oxide."

"The same thing that the dentists use?"

"Yes. Would you like to try a whiff? It's rather jolly, and will not hurt you in the least."

Elmer caught up a bit of rubber pipe, secured one end to the iron chest and inserted the other in a mouthpiece having the proper inhalation and exhalation valves.

"Put that in your mouth for a moment."

Alma, with beautiful confidence, put the tube in her mouth, and in a moment her pretty head fell back against the back of the chair in deep sleep. With wonderful speed and skill Elmer rolled a larger camera that stood in a corner out into the centre of the room, ran in a slide, adjusted the focus, and before the brief slumber passed had a negative of the sleeping one.

"Oh, how odd! What a queer sensation to feel yourself going and going, off and off, till you don't know where you are!"

"It is rather queer. I've often taken the gas myself--just for fun. Now, Alma, if you will let down the curtains, and close the shutters, and make the room dark, I'll light the lantern and show you the picture."

Alma shut the blinds, drew down the curtains, and closed all the shutters save one.

"Won't it be too dark?"

"No. It must be quite dark. You can stand here in the middle of the room and look at that bit of bare wall between the windows. I left that space clear for a screen."

Alma eagerly took her place, and said with a laugh:

"If this is the pursuit of pure science, it is very amusing. I'd like to study science--in this way."

"Yes, it is rather interesting----"

"Oh, Elmer, it's pitch dark."

"Never mind. Stand perfectly still and watch the wall. There--there's the spot of light. Now I'll run in the positive."

A round spot of white light fell on the unpapered wall, and then two dusky shadows slid over it, vague, obscure, and gigantic.

"There are your people. Now I'll adjust the focus. There--look."

A heavy sob startled him.

"Oh! It's that hateful Alice Green!"

Elmer opened the door of the lantern, and the light streamed full upon Alma. She was bathed in tears, and her shoulders, visible through her light summer dress, shook with sobs.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing! Oh, it's--nothing--let me--go----"

With an impatient gesture she tried to brush the tears from her eyes, and then, without a word, she hastily ran out of the room.

The student of pure science was surprised beyond measure. What had happened? What new blunder had he committed? With all his deep study of things material he was ignorant of things emotional and sentimental. This exhibition of anger and grief in his pretty cousin utterly disconcerted him. He did not know what to do, nor what to think, and he stood in the glare of his lantern for a moment or two in deep thought.

Then he closed the lantern and turning round, examined the shadowy picture thrown upon the wall. It represented a young man and a young woman seated upon the wooden rail of the bridge in the open air, and in most loving embrace. His arm was about her waist, and he was looking in her face. His straw hat hid his features, but the face of the young woman was turned toward the camera that had so perfectly mirrored them both. She seemed to be a young and pretty girl in the more lowly walks of life, and her lover seemed to be a gentleman. What a pity he hadn't looked up! Who could he be? And she? Alma's remark plainly showed that she at least knew the girl, and for some reason was hotly indignant with her.

Thinking he had made trouble enough already, Elmer took one more good look at the picture, and then prepared to destroy it. Something about the young man's hat struck him as familiar. It was a panama hat, and had two ribbons wound round it in a fanciful manner that was not exactly conventional.

He silently opened a shutter, and the picture faded away. He drew up the curtains and looked out on the bridge. The young couple had disappeared. Poor innocents! They little knew how their pictures had been taken in spite of themselves, and they little knew the tragic and terrible consequences that were to flow from the stolen photograph so strangely made. Elmer took the little slide from the lantern, and was on the point of shivering it to fragments on the hearthstone, when he paused in deep thought. Was it wise to destroy it? Had he not better preserve it? Perhaps he could some day solve the mystery that hung about it, and find out the cause of Alma's grief and anger. Perhaps he might help her; and there came a softening about his heart that seemed both new and wonderfully unscientific.

Shortly after this the dinner bell rang, and he went down to the dining-room. Alma sent word that she had a severe headache and could not appear. Mr. Belford was already there, and he looked at Mr. Franklin with an expression that made the young man uncomfortable in spite of himself. Mr. Denny was unusually thoughtful and silent, and conversation between the younger men was not particularly brilliant or entertaining. At last the dreary meal was finished. Mr. Belford rose first and went out into the hall. Mr. Franklin followed him, and saw something that quite took his breath away.

There lay the hat of the photograph, double ribbons and all. Mr. Belford quietly took it up and put it on, and it fitted him perfectly. Elmer stopped abruptly and looked at the man with the utmost interest. The confidential, the chimney builder paid no attention, and quickly passed on out of the front door.

"E. Franklin, you have made a discovery. The pursuit of pure science never showed anything half so interesting as this. You had better raise a cloud on the subject. Gad! It's cloudy enough already!"

This to himself as he slowly went up stairs to his room. Selecting a pipe, he filled it, and finding a comfortable seat, he fired up and prepared to examine mentally the events of the day.

"It was the confidential, making love to some village beauty, supposed to be 'Green,' by name, if not by nature. Alma loves him. That's bad. Perhaps she's engaged to him. Has she a ring? Yes--saw it the other day. The affair is cloudy--and--Gad! Blessed if I don't keep that lantern-slide! It may be of use some day. Come in."

This last was in response to a knock at the door. Mr. Belford entered, panama hat with two ribbons in hand.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Franklin. I thought I might find you here.".

"Yes, I'm at leisure. What can I do for you? Smoke?"

"No; I can't to-day. The fact is, I've a bad tooth, and smoking troubles it."

"Indeed? Let me see it. I'm a bit of a dentist."

"Are you? That's fortunate, for it aches sadly, and our nearest dentist is five miles away."

"Sit right here by the window, where I can have a good light."

Mr. Belford, a physical coward, could not bear pain; and though he was unwilling to be under obligations to one whom he considered a mere boy, he sat down in the proffered chair, and opened his mouth dutifully.

"Ah, yes--_dentes sapentia_. It's quite gone. Shall I take it out for you?"

"Will it be painful?"

"No. I'll give you nitrous oxide. Without it it might be very painful, for the tooth is much broken down."

Mr. Belford hesitated. Had he better place himself so utterly at the mercy of this young man?

"It will pass off in a moment, and leave no ill effects behind. You had better take it."

"Well, I will; but make it very mild, for I am afraid of these new-fangled notions."

"You need have no fear," said Elmer, bringing up his iron box of nitrous oxide, and selecting a pair of forceps from the mass of instruments in one of his trunks.

"It's very odd. It's the merest chance that I happened to have a pair of forceps. Are you ready now? Put this tube in your mouth, and breathe easily and naturally."

The patient leaned back in the chair, and the amateur stood silently watching him.

"It's a fearful risk, but I'm going to try it. I succeeded with Alma, and I fancy I can with this fool. He was a fool to run right into my arms in this fashion. No wonder his wisdom tooth was rotten. I'll have it out in a moment."

All this to himself. The patient closed his eyes, and fell into a deep sleep.

"Take it strong. It will not hurt you, and I must keep you quiet till the deed is done."

High science was to be brought to bear upon rascality, and he must move cautiously and quickly. The instant the patient was unconscious, Elmer bent over him and turned back his coat, and from the inside pocket he drew forth a folded paper. He had caught a glimpse of it when he looked in the man's mouth, and on the spur of the moment he had conceived and put into practice this bold stroke of applied science. Making the man comfortable, and giving him a little air with the gas, he opened the paper and spread it wide open before a pile of books in the full sunlight. The patient stirred uneasily. With a breathless motion Elmer plied him with more gas, and he sighed softly and slumbered deeper than ever. With a spring he reached the camera, rolled it up before the paper, and set in a new slide. It copied the paper with terrible certainty, and then, without reading it, Elmer folded the paper up again and restored it to his patient's pocket.

The patient revived. He put his hand in his mouth. The tooth was still there.

"Why, you didn't touch it?"

"No. I was delayed a bit. Take the gas again."

The man submitted, and inhaled more gas. At the instant he slumbered the forceps were deftly plied and the tooth removed. Bathing the man's face with water, the young dentist watched him closely till he revived again.

"Do you feel better?"

"Better! Why, I'm not hurt! Is it really out?"

"Yes. There it is in the washbowl."

"You did very well, young man. Excellently. I'm sure I'm much obliged."

"You're welcome," replied Mr. Franklin. "It was a trifling affair."

Repeating his thanks, the visitor put on his hat with its two ribbons and retired.

For an hour or more the youthful son of science worked over his new negatives, and then he quietly closed the shutters and lighted his stereopticon. The first picture he threw upon the wall greatly pleased him. With half-parted lips, a placid smile, and closed eyes, the sleeping Alma lived in shadowy beauty before him.

"Queer such a charming girl should belong to such a fool!"

Not choice language for a son of pure-eyed science, but history is history, and the truth must be told.

"Now for the paper."

He took Alma's stolen picture from the lantern, and inserted in its place a positive copy of the paper he had captured from her lover. Suddenly there flashed upon the wall a document of the most startling and extraordinary character. He read it through several times before he could bring himself to understand the peculiar nature of the important discovery he had made. Long and earnestly he gazed upon the gigantic writing on the wall, and then he slowly opened one of the shutters, and the magic writing faded away in the rosy light of the setting sun.

A moment after, the tea-bell rang. This over, young Mr. Franklin said he, must go out for his evening constitutional. He wished to be alone. The events of the day, the discoveries he had made, and, more than all, Alma's grief and silence at the supper-table, disturbed him. He wished more air, more freedom to think over these things and to devise some plan for future action.

Alma. What of her? Was he not growing to like her--perhaps love her? And she was engaged to that--that--he could not think of him with patience. The chimney, the two in the photo, and the strange paper: what did they all mean? Why were both father and daughter in such evident distress? He pondered these things as he walked through the shadowy lanes, and then, about eight o'clock, he returned, in a measure composed and serene.

There was a light in the parlor, and he went in and found Alma alone.

"Oh, Elmer! I'm glad you've come. It's very lonely here. Father has gone to bed quite ill, and Lawrence asked me to sit up till he returned. He's gone down to the village on some business. I can't see why he should. The stores are closed and the last train has gone."

She made a place for him on the sofa, and he sat down beside her. For some time they talked indifferently upon various matters--the weather, the heat of the day, and like trivialities.

Suddenly she turned upon him, and said, with ill-suppressed excitement:

"What did you do with it, Elmer?"

"Do with what?"

"The picture."

"Oh, yes--the lantern slide. I wish I had never made it. It's up stairs in my room."

"You didn't know it was Alice Green?"

"No. How should I? I did not know who either of the people was till the picture was thrown upon the wall."

"Do you know now--know both of them, I mean?"

"Yes--I think I do. One was Mr.----"

"Yes, Elmer, you may as well say it. It was Lawrence."

Elmer could think of nothing to say, and wisely said nothing. After a brief pause Alma said slowly, as if talking to herself:

"It was a cruel thing to do."

"I did not mean to be cruel."

"Oh, my dear--cousin, don't think of it in that way. It was Lawrence who was so cruel."

"Yes. It was not very gentlemanly; but perhaps he does not care for--for this person."

"He does. The picture was only confirmation of what I had heard before. I've done with him," she added in a sort of suppressed desperation. "I'm going to break our engagement this very night. I know it will nearly break my heart, and father will be very angry; but, Elmer, come nearer; let me tell you about it. I'm afraid of him. He has such an evil eye, and you remember the chimney--the day you came--I thought he would kill you, he was so angry."

Evidently she was in sore trouble. Even her language was marked by doubt and difficulty.

"Advise me, Elmer. Tell me what to do. I hardly know which way to turn, and I'm so lonely. Father is busy every day, and I can't talk to him. And Lawrence--I dare not trust him."

Here she began to cry softly, and hid her face in her handkerchief. The son of science was perplexed. What should he do or say? All this was new to him. That a young and pretty girl should appeal to him with such earnestness disconcerted him, and he did not know how to act. A problem in triangulation or knotty question in physics would have charmed him and braced him up for any work. This was so new and so peculiar that he said, "Don't cry, cousin," and repented it at once as a silly speech.

"I must. It does me good."

"Then I would."

Thereupon they both laughed heartily and felt better. He recovered his wits at once.

"Do you think you really love him?"

The man of science is himself again.

"No, I don't."

"Then--well, it's hardly my place to say it."

"Then break the engagement. That's what you mean. I intend to do so; but, Elmer, I wish you could be here with me."

"It would be impossible. Oh! I've an idea."

"Have you? There! I knew you would help me. You are so bright, Elmer, and so kind----"

He nipped her enthusiasm in the bud.

"Do you think you could telegraph to me from your pocket?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You know the letters now perfectly, and if you had your hand on an armature, you could send off messages quickly?"

"Yes. You know I learned the alphabet in one day, and it's nearly a week since you put up that line to my room. Think how we have talked with it already. And you remember the tea table, when the Lawsons and the Stebbens were here. Didn't I answer all your questions about Minna Lawson while I was talking with her by tapping on the table with a spoon?"

"Yes. So far so good; but now I'm going to try a most dangerous and difficult piece of scientific work, and you must help me. My plan is for you to keep in telegraphic communication with me while the interview goes on. Then, if he is insulting or troublesome, you can call me."

"How bright of you, Elmer. If Lawrence had been half so good and kind and bright--if he knew half as much--I might have loved him longer."

"Wait a bit, and I'll get the lines."

"May I go too?"

"Oh, yes; come."

The two went softly up the hall stairs, through the long entry to the L, and into Elmer's room. They set the lamp on a table, and Elmer dragged forth from the scientific confusion of the place a collection of telegraphic apparatus of all kinds.

"There's the battery. That I'll keep here. There is the recording instrument. That I'll keep here also. Now you want a small armature to open and close the current. Wait a bit! I'd better make one."

Alma sat down on a box, and her new Lohengrin set to work with shears and file to make something that would answer for an armature and still be small enough to hide in the hand. Cutting off two small pieces of insulated copper wire, he bound them together side by side at one end. The loose ends he separated by crowding a bit of rubber between them, and then with the file and his knife he removed a part of the insulating covering till the bright copper showed at the tips of each wire.

"There! You can hide that in the pocket of your dress, or hold it in your hand even. When you wish to close the circuit, pinch the wires, and they will touch each other. When you withdraw the pressure the rubber will push them apart."

Alma declared she could do it easily, and the armature having been connected with the wires and the battery, they both prepared to go to the parlor.

Down the stairs they crept, slowly unwinding two delicate coils of insulated wire as they went, and pushing them back against the wall well out of sight. When they came to the mats Alma lifted them up, and Elmer laid the wires down, and then the mats covered them from sight.

"Now, you sit here, in a comfortable chair, and hide the wires in the folds of your dress. I'll lead them off over the carpet behind you, and unless the----Lawrence is brighter than I think he is, he'll not find them."

These mysterious operations were hardly completed before the door bell rang and Lawrence came in. He did not seem particularly pleased to find Mr. Franklin sitting up with Alma, and the meeting was not very cordial. After a few unimportant remarks Mr. Franklin said that he must retire.

"I'd like to know, miss, what that puppy said to you. He's been here all the evening, I dare say."

"He has, Lawrence; but I will not have my friends spoken of in that way."

"Your friends indeed! What do you intend to do about it?"

Meanwhile her hand, persistently kept in her pocket, nervously moved the electric armature, and a sudden twinge of pain startled her. Her finger, caught between the wires, felt the shock of a returning current. Suddenly the pain flashed again, and she understood it. Elmer was replying to her. She forced herself to read his words by the pain the wires caused her, and she spelled out:

"Keep cool. Don't fear him."

"Seems to me you're precious silent, miss."

"One might well keep silence while you use such language as you do, Lawrence Belford."

"Who's a better right?"

"No man has a right not to be a gentleman, and as for your right, I have decided to withdraw it."

"What do you mean?" he cried in sudden anger.

She drew her hand out of her pocket, slowly took off her engagement ring, and said,

"That."

"Oh! We'll have none of that. You may put your ring on again."

"I shall never wear it again."

"Yes, you will."

"I shall not."

"Look here, Miss Denny. We'll have no nonsense. You are going to marry me next week. I suppose you know that mortgage is to be foreclosed on Monday, and you and your father will be beggars. I know how to stop all this, and I can do it. Marry me, and go to New York with me on Wednesday, and the mortgage will be withdrawn."

"We may find the will before that."

"Oh! You may, you may. You and your father have been searching for that will these ten years. You haven't found it yet, and you won't."

Alma under any ordinary circumstances would have quailed before this man. As it was, those trails of copper wire down her dress kept her busy. She rapidly sent off through them nearly all that was said, and her knight of the battery sat up stairs copying it off alone in his room, and almost swearing with anger and excitement.

Suddenly the messages stopped. He listened sharply at the door. Not a sound. The old house was as still as a grave. Several minutes passed, and nothing came. What had happened? Had he cut the wires? Had Alma fainted? Suddenly the sounder spoke out sharp and clear in the silent room:

"Elmer, come!"

He seized a revolver from the bureau, and thrusting it into his pocket, tore off the white strip of paper that had rolled out of the instrument, and with it in his hand he went quickly down stairs. He opened the door without knocking, and advanced into the middle of the room.

The moment he entered, Alma sprang up from her seat, pulling out the two wires as she did so, and throwing her arm about the young man, she cried out in an agony of fear and shame:

"Oh, Elmer, Elmer! Take me away! Take me to my father!"

He supported her with his right arm, and turned to face her assailant with the crumbled ribbon of paper still in his hand.

"What does this mean, sir? Have you been ill treating my cousin?"

"Go to bed, boy. It's very late for school children to be up."

"Your language is insulting, sir. I repeat it. What have you said or done to Miss Denny?"

"Oh! Come away! come away, Elmer!"

"None of your business, you puppy."

"There is no need to ask what you said, sir. I know every word and have made a copy of it."

"Ah! Listening, were you?"

"No, sir. Miss Denny has told me. Do you see those wires? They will entangle you yet and trip you up."

"Come away, Elmer. Come away."

"For the present I will retire, sir; but, mark me, your game is nearly up."

"By, by, children. Good night. Remember your promise, Miss Denny. The carriage will be all ready."

Without heeding this last remark, Elmer, with his cousin on his arm, withdrew. As they closed the door the telegraph wires caught in the carpet and broke. The man saw them, and picking one up, he examined it closely.

Suddenly he dropped it and turned ashen pale. With all his bravado, he quailed before those slender wires upon the carpet. He did not understand them. He guessed they might be some kind of telegraph, but beyond this everything was vague and mysterious, and they filled him with guilty alarm and terror.

CHARLES BARNARD.

FROM NORMANDY TO THE PYRENEES.

The other day, before the first fire of winter, when the deepening dusk had compelled me to close my book and wheel my chair closer, I indulged in a retrospect. The objects of it were not far distant, and yet they seemed already to glow with the mellow tints of the days that are no more. In the crackling flame the last remnant of the summer appeared to shrink up and vanish. But the flicker of its destruction made a sort of fantastic imagery, and in the midst of the winter fire the summer sunshine seemed to glow. It lit up a series of visible memories.

I.

One of the first was that of a perfect day on the coast of Normandy--a warm, still Sunday in the early part of August. From my pillow, on waking, I could look at a strip of blue sea and a section of white cliff. I observed that the sea had never been so brilliant, and that the cliff was shining like the coast of Paros. I rose and came forth with the sense that it was the finest day of summer, and that one ought to do something uncommon by way of keeping it. At Etretal it was uncommon to take a walk; the custom of the country is to lie all day upon the pebbly strand watching, as we should say in America, your fellow boarders. Your leisurely stroll, in a scanty sheet, from your bathing cabin into the water, and your trickling progress from the water back into your cabin, form, as a general thing, the sum total of your peregrination. For the rest you remain horizontal, contemplating the horizon. To mark the day with a white stone, therefore, it was quite sufficient to stretch my legs. So I climbed the huge grassy cliff which shuts in the little bay on the right (as you lie on the beach, head upward), and gained the bleak white chapel of Notre Dame de la Garde, which a lady told me she was sure was the original of Matthew Arnold's "Little Gray Church on the Windy Hill." This is very likely; but the little church to-day was not gray; neither was the hill windy.

I had occasion, by the time I reached the summit, to wish it had been. Deep, silent sunshine filled the air, and the long grass of the downs stood up in the light without a tremor. The downs at Etretal are magnificent, and the way they stretched off toward Dieppe, with their shining levels and their faintly-shaded dells, was in itself an irresistible invitation. On the land side they have been somewhat narrowed by cultivation; the woods, and farms, and grain fields here and there creep close enough to the edge of the cliff almost to see the shifting of the tides at its base. But cultivation in Normandy is itself picturesque, and the pedestrian rarely need resent its encroachments. Neither walls nor hedges or fences are anywhere visible; the whole land lies open to the breezes and to his curious footsteps. This universal absence of barriers gives an air of vastness to the landscape, so that really, in a little French province, you have more of the feeling of being in a big country than on our own huge continent, which bristles so unconsciously with prohibitory rails and stone-piles. Norman farmhouses, too, with their mossy roofs and their visible beams making all kinds of triangles upon the ancient plaster of their walls, are very delightful things. Hereabouts they have always a dark little wood close beside them; often a _chênaie_, as the term is--a fantastic little grove of tempest-tossed oaks. The trees look as if, some night, when the sea-blasts were howling their loudest and their boughs were tossing most wildly, the tumult had suddenly been stilled and they had stopped short, each in the attitude into which the storm was twisting it. The only thing the storm can do with them now is to blow them straight. The long, indented coast line had never seemed to me so charming. It stretched away into the light haze of the horizon, with such lovely violet spots in its caves and hollows, and such soft white gleams on its short headlands--such exquisite gradations of distance and such capricious interruptions of perspective--that one could only say that the land was really trying to smile as hard as the sea. The smile of the sea was a positive simper. Such a glittering and twinkling, such a softness and blueness, such tiny little pin-points of foam, and such delicate little wrinkles of waves--all this made the ocean look like a flattered portrait.

The day I speak of was a Sunday, and there were to be races at Fécamp, ten miles away. The agreeable thing was, of course, to walk to Fécamp, over the grassy downs. I walked and walked, over the levels and the dells, having land and ocean quite to myself. Here and there I met a shepherd, lying flat on his stomach in the sun, while his sheep, in extreme dishabille (shearing time being recent), went huddling in front of me as I approached. Far below, on the blue ocean, like a fly on a table of lapis, crawled a little steamer, carrying people from Etretal to the races. I seemed to go much faster, yet the steamer got to Fécamp before me. But I stopped to gossip with a shepherd on a grassy hillside, and to admire certain little villages which are niched in small, transverse, seaward-sloping valleys. The shepherd told me that he had been farm-servant to the same master for five-and-thirty years--ever since the age of ten; and that for thirty-five summers he had fed his flock upon those downs. I don't know whether his sheep were tired of their diet, but he professed himself very tired of his life. I remarked that in fine weather it must be charming, and he observed, with humility, that to thirty-five summers there went several rainy days.

The walk to Fécamp would be purely delightful if it were not for the _fonds_. The _fonds_ are the transverse valleys just mentioned--the channels, for the most part, of small water-courses which discharge themselves into the sea. The downs subside, precipitately, to the level of the beach, and then slowly lift their grassy shoulders on the other side of the gully. As the cliffs are of immense height, these indentations are profound, and drain off a little of the exhilaration of the too elastic pedestrian. The first _fond_ trike him as delightfully picturesque, and he is down the long slope on one side and up the gigantic hump on the other before he has time to feel hot. But the second is greeted with that tempered _empressement_ with which you bow in the street to an acquaintance with whom you have met half an hour before; the third is a stale repetition; the fourth is decidedly one too many, and the fifth is sensibly exasperating. The _fonds_, in a word, are very tiresome. It was, if I remember rightly, in the bottom of the last and widest of the series that I discovered the little town of Yport. Every little fishing village on the Norman coast has, within the last ten years, set up in business as a watering-place; and, though one might fancy that Nature had condemned Yport to modest obscurity, it is plain that she has no idea of being out of the fashion. But she is a miniature imitation of her rivals. She has a meagre little wood behind her and an evil-smelling beach, on which bathing is possible only at the highest tide. At the scorching mid-day hour at which I inspected her she seemed absolutely empty, and the ocean, beyond acres of slippery seaweed, looked very far away. She has everything that a properly appointed _station de bains_ should have, but everything is on a Lilliputian scale. The whole place looked like a huge Nüremburg toy. There is a diminutive hotel, in which, properly, the head waiter should be a pigmy and the chambermaid a sprite, and beside it there is a _Casino_ on the smallest possible scale. Everything about the _Casino_ is so harmoniously undersized that it seems a matter of course that the newspapers in the reading-room should be printed in the very finest type. Of course there is a reading-room, and a dancing-room, and a _café_, and a billiard-room, with a bagatelle board instead of a table, and a little terrace on which you may walk up and down with very short steps. I hope the prices are as tiny as everything else, and I suspect, indeed, that Yport honestly claims, not that she is attractive, but that she is cheap.

I toiled up the perpendicular cliff again, and took my way over the grass, for another hour, to Fécamp, where I found the peculiarities of Yport directly reversed. The place is a huge, straggling village, seated along a wide, shallow bay, and adorned, of course, with the classic _Casino_ and the row of hotels. But all this is on a very brave scale, though it is not manifest that the bravery of Fécamp has won a victory; and, indeed, the local attractions did not strike me as irresistible. A pebbly beach of immense length, fenced off from the town by a grassy embankment; a _Casino_ of a bold and unsociable aspect; a principal inn, with an interminable brown façade, suggestive somehow of an asylum or an almshouse--such are the most striking features of this particular watering-place. There are magnificent cliffs on each side of the bay, but, as the French say, without impropriety, it is the devil to get to them. There was no one in the hotel, in the Casino, or on the beach; the whole town being in the act of climbing the further cliff, to reach the downs on which the races were to be held. The green hillside was black with trudging spectators and the long sky line was fretted with them. When I say there was no one at the inn, I forget the gentleman at the door who informed me positively that he would give me no breakfast; he seemed to have staid at home from the races expressly to give himself this pleasure. But I went further and fared better, and procured a meal of homely succulence, in an unfashionable tavern, in a back street, where the wine was sound, the cutlets tender, and the serving-maid rosy. Then I walked along--for a mile, it seemed--through a dreary, gray _grand rue_, where the sunshine was hot, the odors portentous, and the doorsteps garnished with aged fishwives, retired from business, whose plaited linen coifs looked picturesquely white, and their faces picturesquely brown. I inspected the harbor and its goodly basin--with nothing in it--and certain pink and blue houses, which surround it, and then, joining the last stragglers, I clambered up the side of the cliff to the downs.

The races had already begun, and the ring of spectators was dense. I picked out some of the smallest people, looked over their heads, and saw several young farmers, in parti-colored jackets, and very red in the face, bouncing up and down on handsome cart-horses. Satiated at last with this diversion, I turned away and wandered down the hill again; and after strolling through the streets of Fécamp, and gathering not a little of the wayside entertainment that a seaport and fishing town always yields, I repaired to the Abbey church, a monument of some importance, and almost as great an object of pride in the town as the Casino. The Abbey of Fécamp was once a very rich and powerful establishment, but nothing remains of it now save its church and its _trappistine_. The church, which is for the most part early Gothic, is very stately and picturesque, and the _trappistine_, which is a distilled liquor of the _Chartreuse_ family, is much prized by people who take a little glass after their coffee. By the time I had done with the Abbey, the townsfolk had slid _en masse_ down the cliff again, the yellow afternoon had come, and the holiday takers, before the wine-shops, made long and lively shadows. I hired a sort of two-wheeled gig, without a board, and drove back to Etretal in the rosy stage of evening. The gig dandled me up and down in a fashion of which I had been unconscious since I left off baby-clothes; but the drive, through the charming Norman country, over roads which lay among the peaceful meadows like paths amid a park, was altogether delightful. The sunset gave a deeper mellowness to the standing crops, and in the grassiest corner of the wayside villages the young men and maidens were dancing like the figures in vignette illustrations of classic poets.

II.

You may say there is nothing in this very commonplace adventure to sentimentalize about, and that when one plucks sentimentally a brand from the burning one should pick out a more valuable one. I certainly call it a picked day, at any rate, when I went to breakfast at St. Jouin, at the beautiful Ernestine's. Don't be alarmed; if I was just now too tame, I am not turning wild. The beautiful Ernestine is not my especial beauty, but every one's, and to contemplate her charms you have only to order breakfast. They shine forth the more brilliantly in proportion as your order is liberal, and Ernestine is beautiful according as your bill is large. In this case she comes and smiles, really very handsomely, around your table, and you feel some hesitation in accusing so well-favored a person of extortion. She keeps an inn at the end of a lane which diverges from the high road between Etretal and Havre, and it is an indispensable feature of your "station" at the former place that you choose some fine morning and seek her hospitality. She has been a celebrity these twenty years, and is no longer a simple maiden in her flower; but twenty years, if they have diminished her early bloom, have richly augmented her _museé_. This is a collection of all the verses and sketches, the autographs, photographs, monographs, and trinkets presented to the amiable hostess by admiring tourists. It covers the walls of her sitting-room and fills half a dozen big albums which you look at while breakfast is being prepared, just as if you were awaiting dinner in genteel society. Most Frenchmen of the day whom one has heard of appear to have called at St. Jouin, and to have left their _homages_. Each of them has turned a compliment with pen or pencil, and you may see in a glass case on the parlor wall what Alexandre Dumas, Fils, thought of the landlady's nose, and how several painters measured her ankles.

Of course you must make this excursion in good company, and I affirm that I was in the very best. The company prefers, equally of course, to have its breakfast in the orchard in front of the house; which, if the repast is good, will make it seem better still, and if it is poor, will carry off its poorness. Clever innkeepers should always make their victims (in tolerable weather) eat in the garden. I forget whether Ernestine's breakfast was intrinsically good or bad, but I distinctly remember enjoying it, and making everything welcome. Everything, that is, save the party at the other table--the Paris actresses and the American gentlemen. The combination of these two classes of persons, individually so delightful, results in certain phenomena which seem less in harmony with appleboughs and summer breezes than with the gas lamps and thick perfumes of a _cabinet particulier_, and yet it was characteristic of this odd mixture of things that Mlle. Ernestine, coming to chat with her customers, should bear a beautiful infant on her arm, and smile with artless pride on being assured of its filial resemblance to herself. She looked decidedly handsome as she caressed this startling attribute of quiet spinsterhood.

St. Jouin is close to the sea and to the finest cliffs in the world. One of my companions, who had laden the carriage with his painting traps, went off into a sunny meadow to take the portrait of a windmill, and I, choosing the better portion, wandered through a little green valley with the other. Ten minutes brought us to the edge of the cliffs, which at this point of the coast are simply sublime. I had been thinking the white sea-walls of Etretal the finest thing conceivable in this way, but the huge red porphoritic-looking masses of St. Jouin have an even grander character. I have rarely seen anything more picturesque. They are strange, fantastic, out of keeping with the country, and for some rather arbitrary reason suggested to me a Spanish or even African landscape. Certain sun-scorched precipices in Spanish Sierras must have very much the same warmth of tone and desolation of attitude. A very picturesque feature of the cliffs of St. Jouin is that they are double in height, as one may say. Falling to an immense depth, they encounter a certain outward ledge, or terrace, where they pause and play a dozen fantastic tricks, such as piling up rocks into the likeness of needles and watch-towers; then they plunge again, and in another splendid sweep descend to the beach. There was something very impressive in the way their evil brows, looking as if they were all stained with blood and rust, were bent upon the blue expanse of the sleeping sea.

III.

In a month of beautiful weather at Etretal, every day was not an excursion, but every day seemed indeed a picked day. For that matter, as I lay on the beach watching the procession of the easy-going hours, I took a good many mental excursions. The one, perhaps, on which I oftenest started was a comparison between French manners, French habits, French types, and those of my native land. These comparisons are not invidious; I don't conclude against one party and in favor of the other; as the French say, _je constate_ simply. The French people about me were "spending the summer" just as I had so often seen my fellow countrymen spend it, and it seemed to me, as it had seemed to me at home, that this operation places men and women under a sort of monstrous magnifying glass. The human figure has a higher relief in the country than in town, and I know of no place where psychological studies prosper so as at the seaside. I shall not pretend to relate my observations in the order in which they occurred to me (or indeed to relate them in full at all); but I may say that one of the foremost was to this effect--that the summer question, for every one, had been more easily settled than it usually is at home. The solution of the problem of where to go had not been a thin-petalled rose, plucked from among particularly sharp-pointed thorns. People presented themselves with a calmness and freshness very different from the haggard legacy of that fevered investigation which precedes the annual exodus of the American citizen and his family. This impression, with me, rests perhaps on the fact that most Frenchwomen turned of thirty--the average wives and mothers--are so comfortably fat. I have never seen such massive feminine charms as among the mature _baigneuses_ of Etratal. The lean and desiccated person into whom a dozen years of matrimony so often converts the blooming American girl has no apparent correlative in the French race. A majestic plumpness flourished all around me--the plumpness of triple chins and deeply dimpled hands. I mused upon it, and I concluded that it was the result of the best breakfasts and dinners in the world. It was the corpulence of ladies who are thoroughly well fed, and who never walk a step that they can spare. The assiduity with which the women of America measure the length of our democratic pavements is doubtless a factor in their frequent absence of redundancy of outline. As a "regular boarder" at the Hotel Blanquet--pronounced by Anglo-Saxon visitors Blanket--I found myself initiated into the mysteries of the French dietary system. I assent to the common tradition that the French are a temperate people, so long as it is understood in this sense--that they eat no more than they want to. But they want to eat so much! Their capacity strikes me as enormous, and we ourselves, if we are less regulated, are certainly much more slender consumers.

The American breakfast has, I believe, long been a subject of irony to the foreign observer; but the American breakfast is an ascetic meal compared with the French _déjeuner à la fourchette_. The latter, indeed, is simply a dinner without soup; it differs neither generically nor specifically from the evening repast. If it excludes soup, it includes eggs, prepared in a hundred forms; and if it proscribes champagne, it admits beer in foaming pitchers, so that the balance is fairly preserved. I think it is rarely that an American will not feel a certain sympathetic heaviness in the reflection that a French family that sits down at half past eleven to fish and entrées and roasts, to asparagus and beans, to salad and dessert, and cheese and coffee, proposes to do exactly the same thing at dinner time. But we may be sure at any rate that the dinner will be as good as the breakfast, and that the breakfast has nothing to fear from prospective comparison with the dinner; and we may further reflect that in a country where eating is a peculiarly unalloyed pleasure it is natural that this pleasure should be prolonged and reiterated. Nothing is more noticeable among the French than their superior intelligence in dietary matters; every one seems naturally a judge, a dilettante. They have analyzed tastes and savors to a finer point than we; they are aware of differences and relations of which we take no heed. Observe a Frenchman of any age and of any station (I have been quite as much struck with it in the very young men as in the old) as he orders his breakfast or his dinner at a Parisian restaurant, and you will perceive that the operation is much more solemn than it is apt to be in New York or in London. (In London, indeed, it is intellectually positively brutal.) Monsieur has, in a word, a certain ideal for that particular repast, and it will make a difference in his happiness whether the kidneys, for instance, of a certain style, are chopped to the ultimate or only to the penultimate smallness. His directions and admonitions to the waiter are therefore minute and exquisite, and eloquently accentuated by the pressure of thumb and forefinger; and it must be added that the imagination of the waiter is usually quite worthy of the refined communion thus opened to it.

This subtler sense of quality is observable even among those classes in which in other countries it is generally forestalled by a depressing consciousness on the subject of quantity. Watch your Parisian porter and his wife at their mid-day meal, as you pass up and down stairs. They are not satisfying nature upon green tea and potatoes; they are seated before a meal which has been reasoned out, which, on its modest scale, is served in courses, and has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I will not say that the French sense of comfort is confined to the philosophy of nutrition, but it is certainly higher at this point (and perhaps one other) than it is elsewhere. French people must have a good dinner and a good bed; but they are willing that the bed should be stationed and the dinner be eaten in the most unpleasant neighborhoods. Your porter and his wife dine grandly and sleep soft in their lodge, but their lodge is in all probability a fetid black hole, five feet square, in which, in England or in America, people of their talents would never consent to live. French people consent to live in the dark, to huddle together, to forego privacy, and to let bad smells grow great among them. They have an accursed passion for coquettish furniture: for cold, brittle chairs, for tables with scolloped edges, for ottomans without backs, for fireplaces muffled in plush and fringe and about as cheerful as a festooned hearse. A French bedroom is a bitter mockery--a ghastly attempt to serve two masters which succeeds in being agreeable to neither. It is a thing of traps and delusions, constructed on the assumption that it is inelegant to be known to wash or to sleep, and yet pervaded with suggestions of uncleanness compared with which a well-wrung bathing sponge, well _en evidence_, is a delightful symbol of purity. This comes of course from that supreme French quality, the source of half the charm of the French mind as well of all its dryness, the genius for economy. It is wasting a room to let it be a bedroom alone; so it must be tricked out as an ingeniously contrived sitting-room, and ends by being (in many cases) insufferable both by night and by day. But allowing all weight to these latter reflections, it is still very possible that the French have the better part. If you are well fed, you can perhaps afford to be ill lodged; whereas, I doubt whether enjoyment of the most commodious apartments is compatible with inanition and dyspepsia.

IV.

If I had not cut short my mild retrospect by these possibly milder generalizations, I should have touched lightly upon some of the social phenomena of which the little beach at Etretal was the scene. I shall have narrated that the French, at the seaside, are not "sociable" as Americans affect to be in a similar situation, and I should subjoin that at Etretal it was very well on the whole that they were not. The immeasurably greater simplicity of composition of American society makes sociability with us a comparatively untaxed virtue; but anything like an equal exercise of it in France would be attended with alarming perils and inconveniences. Sociability (in the American sense of the word) in any aristocratic country would indeed be very much like an attempt to establish visiting relations between birds and fishes. At Etretal no making of acquaintance was observable; people went about in compact, cohesive groups, of natural formation, governed doubtless, internally, by humane regulation, but presenting to the world an impenetrable defensive front. These groups usually formed a solid phalanx about two or three young girls, compressed into the centre, the preservation of whose innocence was their chief solicitude. Here, doubtless, the groups were acting wisely, for with half a dozen _cocottes_, in scarlet petticoats, scattered over the sunny, harmless looking beach, what were mammas and duennas to do? In order that there should be a greater number of approachable-irreproachable young girls in France there must first be a smaller number of _cocottes_. It is not impossible, indeed, that if the approachable-irreproachable young ladies were more numerous, the _cocottes_ would be less numerous. If by some ingenious sumptuary enactment the latter class could be sequestrated or relegated to the background for a certain period--say ten years--the latter might increase and multiply, and quite, in vulgar parlance, get the start of it.

And yet after all this is a rather superficial reflection, for the excellent reason that the very narrow peep at life allowed to young French girls is not regarded, either by the young girls themselves or by those who have their felicity most at heart, as a grave privation. The case is not nearly so hard as it would be with us, for there is this immense difference between the lot of the _jeune fille_ and her American sister, that the former may as a general thing be said to be certain to marry. "Ay, to marry ill," the Anglo-Saxon objector may reply. But the objection is precipitate; for if French marriages are almost always arranged, it must be added that they are in the majority of cases arranged well. Therefore, if a _jeune fille_ is for three or four years tied with a very short rope and compelled to browse exclusively upon the meagre herbage which sprouts in the maternal shadow, she has at least the comfort of reflecting that according to the native phrase, _on s'occupe de la marier_--that measures are being carefully taken to promote her to a condition of unbounded liberty. Whatever, to her imagination, marriage may fail to mean, it at least means freedom and consideration. It does not mean, as it so often means in America, being socially shelved--and it is not too much to say, in certain circles, degraded; it means being socially launched and consecrated. It means becoming that exalted personage, a _mère de famille_. To be a _mère de famille_ is to occupy not simply (as is rather the case with us) a sentimental, but a really official position. The consideration, the authority, the domestic pomp and circumstance allotted to a French mamma are in striking contrast with the amiable tolerance which in our own social order is so often the most liberal measure that the female parent may venture to expect at her children's hands, and which, on the part of the young lady of eighteen who represents the family in society, is not infrequently tempered by a conscientious severity. All this is worth waiting for, especially if you have not to wait very long. Mademoiselle is married certainly, and married early, and she is sufficiently well informed to know, and to be sustained by the knowledge, that the sentimental expansion which may not take place at present will have an open field after her marriage. That it should precede her marriage seems to her as unnatural as that she should put on her shoes before her stockings. And besides all this, to browse in the maternal shadow is not considered in the least a hardship. A young French girl who is _bien élevée_--an expression which means so much--will be sure to consider her mother's company the most delightful in the world, and to think that the herbage which sprouts about this lady's petticoats is peculiarly tender and succulent. It may be fanciful, but it often seems to me that the tone with which such a young girl says _Ma mère_ has a peculiar intensity of meaning. I am at least not wrong in affirming that in the accent with which the mamma--especially if she be of the well-rounded order alluded to above--speaks of _Ma fille_ there is a kind of sacerdotal dignity.

V.

After this came two or three pictures of quite another complexion--pictures of which a long green valley, almost in the centre of France, makes the general setting. The valley itself, indeed, forms one delightful picture, although the country which surrounds it is by no means a show region. It is the old region of the Gâtinais, which has plenty of history, but no great beauty. It is very still, deliciously rural, and immitigably French. Normandy is Norman, Gascony is Gascon, but this is France itself--the typical, average, "pleasant" France of history, literature, and art--of art, of landscape art, perhaps, especially. Wherever I look in the country I seem to see one of the familiar pictures on a dealer's wall--a Lambinet, a Troyon, a Daubigny, a Diaz. The Lambinets perhaps are in the majority; the mood of the landscape usually expresses itself in silvery lights and vivid greens. The history of this part of France is the history of the monarchy, and its language is, I won't say absolutely the classic tongue, but a nearer approach to it than any local _patois_. The peasants deliver themselves with rather a drawl, but what they speak is good clean French that any cockney can understand, which is more than can be said sometimes for the violent jargon that emanates from the fishing folk of Etretal.

Each side of the long valley is a long low ridge, which offers it a high, bosky horizon, and through the middle of it there flows a charming stream, wandering, winding, and doubling, smothered here and there in rocks, and spreading into lily-coated reaches, beneath the clear shadow of tall, straight, light-leaved trees. On each side of the stream the meadows stretch away flat, clean, and magnificent, lozenged across with rows of sober foliage under which a cow-maiden sits on the grass hooting now and then, nasally, to the large-uddered browsers in front of her. There are no hedges, nor palings, nor walls; it is all a single estate. Here and there in the meadows stands a cluster of red-roofed hovels--each a diminutive village. At other points, at about half an hour's walk apart, are three charming old houses. The châteaux are extremely different, but, both picturesquely and conveniently, each has its points. They are very intimate with each other, so that these points may be amicably discussed. The points in one case, however, are remarkably strong. The château stands directly in the little river I have mentioned, on an island just great enough to hold it, and the garden flowers grow upon the further bank. This, of course, is a most delightful affair. But I found something very agreeable in the aspect of one of the others, when I made it the goal of certain of those walks before breakfast which of cool mornings in the late summer do not fall into the category of ascetic pleasures. (In France, indeed, if one did not do a great many things before breakfast, the work of life would be but meagerly performed.)

The dwelling in question stands on the top of the long ridge which encloses the comfortable valley to the south, being by its position quite in the midst of its appurtenant acres. It is not particularly "kept up," but its quiet rustiness and untrimmedness only help it to be picturesque. A grassy plateau approaches it from the edge of the hill, bordered on one side by a short avenue of horse-chestnuts, and on the other by a dusky wood. Beyond the chestnuts are the steep-roofed, yellow-walled farm buildings, and under cover of the wood a stretch of beaten turf, where, on Sundays and holidays, the farm-servants play at bowls. Directly before the château is a little square garden enclosed by a low stone parapet, interrupted by a high gateway of mossy pillars and iron arabesques, the whole of it overclambered by flowering vines. The house, with its yellow walls and russet roof, is ample and substantial; it is a very proper _gentilhommière_. In a corner of the garden, at the angle of the parapet, rises that classic emblem of rural gentility, the _pigeonnier_, the old stone dovecote. It is a great round tower, as broad of base as a lighthouse, with its roof shaped like an extinguisher, and a big hole in its upper portion, in and out of which a dove is always fluttering.

You see all this from the windows of the drawing-room. Be sure that the drawing-room is pannelled in white and gray, with old rococo moulding over the doorways and mantlepiece. The open garden gateway, with its tangled vines, makes a frame for the picture that lies beyond the little grassy esplanade where the thistles have been suffered to grow around a disused stone well, placed at quaint remoteness from the house (if, indeed, it is not a relic of an earlier habitation), a picture of a wide green country rising beyond the unseen valley, and stretching away to a far horizon in deep blue lines of wood. Behind, through other windows, you look out on the gardens proper. There are places that take one's fancy by some accident of expression, by some mystery of accident. This one is high and breezy, both sunny and shady, plain yet picturesque, extremely cheerful, and a little melancholy. It has what in the arts is called "style," and so it took mine.

Going to call on the peasants was as charming an affair as a chapter in one of George Sand's rural tales. I went one Sunday morning with my hostess, who knew them well and engaged their most garrulous confidence. I don't mean that they told her all their secrets, but they told her a good many; if the French peasant is a simpleton, he is a very shrewd simpleton. At any rate, of a Sunday morning in August, when he is stopping at home from work, and he has put on his best jacket and trowsers, and is loafing at the door of his neighbor's cabin, he is a very charming person. The peasantry in the region I speak of had admirably good manners. The curé gave me a low account of their morals; by which he meant, on the whole, I suspect, that they were moderate church-goers. But they have the instinct of civility and a talent for conversation; they know how to play the host and the entertainer. By "he," just now, I meant _she_ quite as much; it is rare that, in speaking superlatively of the French, in any connection, one does not think of the women even more than of the men. They constantly strike the foreigner as a stronger expression of the qualities of the race. On the occasion I speak of the first room in the very humble cabins I successively visited--in some cases, evidently, it was the only room--had been set into irreproachable order for the day. It had usually a sort of brown-toned picturesqueness, begotten of the high chimney-place, with its swinging pots, the important bed, in its dusky niche, with its flowered curtains, the big-bellied earthenware on the cupboard, the long-legged clock in the corner, the thick, quiet light of the small, deeply-set window; the mixture, on all things, of smoke-stain and the polish of horny hands. Into the midst of this "la Rabillon" or "la Mère Léger" brings forward her chairs and begs us to be seated, and seating herself, with crossed hands, smiles handsomely and answers abundantly all questions about her cow, her husband, her bees, her eggs, and her last-born. The men linger half outside and half in, with their shoulders against dressers and door-posts; every one smiles, with that simple, clear-eyed smile of the gratified peasant; they talk much more like George Sand's Berrichons than might be supposed. And if they receive us without gross awkwardness, they speed us on our way with proportionate urbanity. I go to six or eight little hovels, all of them dirty outside and clean within; I am entertained everywhere with the _bonhomie_, the quaintness, the good faces and good manners of their occupants, and I finish my tour with an esteem for my new acquaintance which is not diminished by learning that several of them have thirty or forty thousand francs securely laid by.

And yet, as I say, M. le Curé thinks they are in a bad way, and he knows something about them. M. le Curé, too, is not a dealer in scandal; there is something delightfully quaint in the way in which he deprecates an un-Christian construction of his words. There is more than one curé in the valley whose charms I celebrate; but the worthy priest of whom I speak is the pearl of the local priesthood. He has been accused, I believe, of pretentions to what is called _illuminisme_; but even in his most illuminated moments it can never occur to him that he has been chronicled in an American magazine, and therefore it is not indiscreet to say that he is the curé, not of Gy, but of the village nearest to Gy. I write this sentence half for the pleasure of putting down that briefest of village names and seeing how it looks in print. But it may be elongated at will, and yet be only improved. If you wish to be very specific, you may call it Gy-les-Nonnains--Gy of the Little Nuns. I went with my hostess, another morning, to call upon M. le Curé, who himself opened his garden door to us (there was a crooked little black cross perched upon it), and, lifting his rusty _calotte_, stood there a moment in the sunshine, smiling a greeting more benignant than words.

A rural _presbytère_ is not a very sumptuous dwelling, and M. le Curé's little drawing room reminded me of a Yankee parlor (_minus_ the subscription books from Hartford, on the centre-table) in some out-of-the-way corner of New England. But he took us into his very diminutive garden, and showed us an ornament that would not have flourished in the shade of a Yankee parlor--a rude stone image of the Virgin, which he had become possessed of I know not how, and for which he was building a sort of niche in the wall. The work was going on slowly, for he must take the labor as he could get it; but he appealed to his visitors, with a smile of indulgent irony, for an assurance that his little structure would not make too bad a figure. One of them told him that she would send him some white flowers to set out round his statue; whereupon he clasped his hands together over his snuff-box and expressed cheerful views of the world we live in. A couple of days afterward he came to breakfast, and, of course, he arrived early, in his new cassock and band. I found him in the billiard-room, walking up and down alone, and reading his breviary. The combination of the locality, the personage, and the occupation made me smile; and I smiled again when, after breakfast, I found him walking up and down the garden, puffing a cigarette. Of course he had an excellent appetite; but there is something rather cruel in those alternations of diet to which the French parish priest is subjected. At home he lives like a peasant--a fact which, in itself, is not particularly cruel, inasmuch as he is usually a peasant born. But his fellow peasants don't breakfast at the château and gaze adown the savory vistas opened by cutlets à la Soubise. They have not the acute pain of being turned back into the stale atmosphere of bread and beans. Of course it is by no means every day or every week even that M. le Curé breakfasts at the château; but there must nevertheless be a certain uncomfortable crookedness in his position. He lives like a laborer, and yet he is treated like a gentleman. The latter character must seem to him sometimes a rather heavy irony on the other. But to the ideal curé, of course, all characters are equal; he thinks neither too ill of his bad breakfasts, nor too well of his good ones. I won't say that the excellent man I speak of is the ideal curé, but I suspect he is an approach to it; he has a grain of epicureanism to an ounce of stoicism. In the garden path, beside the moat, while he puffed his cigarette, he told me how he had held up his head to the Prussians; for, hard as it seemed to believe it, that pastoral valley had been occupied by ravaging Teutons. According to this recital, he had spoken his mind civilly, but most distinctly, to the group of officers who had made themselves at home in his dwelling--had informed them that it grieved him profoundly that he was obliged to meet them standing there in his cassock, and not out in the fields with a musket in his hands and a dozen congenial spirits at his side. The scene must have been picturesque. The first of the officers got up from table and asked for the privilege of shaking his hand. "M. le Curé," he said, "j'estime hautement votre caractère."

Six miles away--or nearer, by a charming shaded walk along a canal--was an ancient town with a legend--a legend which, as a child, I read in my lesson-book at school, marvelling at the wood-cut above it, in which a ferocious dog was tearing a strange man to pieces, while the king and his courtiers sat by as if they were at the circus. I allude to it chiefly in order to mention the name of one of its promenades, which is the stateliest, beyond all comparison, in the world; the name, I mean, not the street. The latter is called Les Belles Manières. Could anything be finer than that? With what a sweep gentlemen must once have taken off their hats there; how ladies must once have curtsied, regardless of gutters, and how people must have turned up their toes as they walked!

VI.

My next impressions were gathered on the margin of a southern sea--if the Bay of Biscay indeed deserves so soft-sounding a name. We generally have a mental image beforehand of a place we think of going to, and I supposed I had a tolerably vivid prevision of Biarritz. I don't know why, but I had a singular sense of having been there; the name always seemed to me expressive. I saw the way it lay along its gleaming beach; I had taken in imagination the long walks toward Spain over the low cliffs, with the blue sea always to my right, and the blue Pyrenees always before me. My only fear was that my mental picture was not brilliant enough; but this could easily be touched up on the spot. In truth, however, I was exclusively occupied in toning it down. Biarritz seemed to be decidedly below its reputation; I am at a loss to see how its reputation was made. There is a partial explanation that is obvious enough. There is a low, square, bare brick mansion seated on the sands, under shelter of a cliff; it is one of the first objects to attract the attention of an arriving stranger. It is not picturesque, it is not romantic, and even in the days of its prosperity it never can have been impressive. It is called the Villa Eugénie, and it explains in a great measure, as I say, the Biarritz which the arriving stranger, with some dismay, perceives about him. It has the aspect of one of the "cottages" of Newport during the winter season, and is surrounded by an even scantier umbrage than usually flourishes in the vicinity of those establishments. It was what the newspapers call the "favorite resort" of the ex-Empress of the French, who might have been seen at her imperial avocations with a good glass at any time from the Casino. The Casino, I hasten to add, has quite the air of an establishment frequented by gentlemen who look on ladies' windows with telescopes. There are Casinos and Casinos, and that of Biarritz is, in the summary French phrase, "impossible." Except for its view, it is moreover very unattractive. Perched on the top of a cliff which has just space enough to hold its immense brick foundations, it has no garden, no promenade, no shade, no place of out-of-door reunion--the most indispensable feature of a Casino. It turns its back to the Pyrenees and to Spain, and looks out prettily enough over a blue ocean to an arm of the low French coast.

Biarritz, for the rest, scrambles over two or three steep hills, directly above the sea, in a promiscuous, many-colored, noisy fashion. It is a watering-place, pure and simple; every house has an expensive little shop in the basement, and a still more expensive set of rooms to let above stairs. The houses are blue, and pink, and green; they stick to the hillsides as they can, and being near Spain, you try to fancy they look Spanish. You succeed perhaps, even a little, and are rewarded for your zeal by finding, when you cross the border a few days afterward, that the houses at San Sebastian look strikingly French. Biarritz is bright, crowded, irregular, filled with many sounds, and not without a certain second-rate picturesqueness; but it struck me as common and cocknified, and my vision travelled back to modest little Etretal, by its northern sea, as to a more truly delectable resting-place. The southwestern coast of France has little of the exquisite charm of the Mediterranean shore. It has of course a southern expression which in itself is always delightful. You see a brilliant, yellow sun, with a pink-faced, red-tiled house staring up at it. You can see here and there a trellis and an orange tree, a peasant woman in gold necklace, driving a donkey, a lame beggar adorned with ear-rings, a glimpse of blue sea between white garden walls. But the superabundant detail of the French Riviera is wanting; the softness, luxuriousness, enchantment.

The most picturesque thing at Biarritz is the Basque population, which overflows from the adjacent Spanish provinces and swarms in the crooked streets. It lounges all day in the public places, sprawls upon the curbstones, clings to the face of the cliffs, and vociferates continually in a shrill, strange tongue, which has no discoverable affinity with any other. The Basques look like the hardier and thriftier Neapolitan lazzaroni; if the superficial resemblance is striking, the difference is very much in their favor. Although those specimens which I observed at Biarritz appeared to enjoy an excess of leisure, they had nothing of a shiftless or beggarly air, and seemed as little disposed to ask favors as to confer them. The roads leading into Spain were dotted with them, and here they were coming and going as if on important business--the business of the abominable Don Carlos himself. They struck me as a very handsome race. The men are invariably clean shaved; smooth chins seem a positively religious observance. They wear little round, maroon-colored caps, like those of sailor-boys, dark stuff shirts, and curious white shoes, made of strips of rope laid together--an article of toilet which makes them look like honorary members of base-ball clubs. They sling their jackets, cavalier fashion, over one shoulder, hold their heads very high, swing their arms very bravely, step out very lightly, and when you meet them in the country at eventide, charging down a hillside in companies of half a dozen, make altogether a most impressive appearance. With their smooth chins and childish caps, they may be taken, in the distance, for a lot of very naughty little boys. They have always a cigarette in their teeth.

The best thing at Biarritz is your opportunity for driving over into Spain. Coming speedily to a consciousness of this fact, I found a charm in sitting in a landau and rolling away to San Sebastian, behind a driver in a high glazed hat with long streamers, a jacket of scarlet and silver, and a pair of yellow breeches and of jack-boots. If it has been the desire of one's heart and the dream of one's life to visit the land of Cervantes, even grazing it so lightly as by a day's excursion from Biarritz is a matter to set one romancing. Everything helping--the admirable scenery, the charming day, my operatic coachman, and smooth-rolling carriage--I am afraid I romanced more than it is decent to tell of. You face toward the beautifully outlined mass of the Pyrenees, as if you were going to plunge straight into them, but in reality you travel beneath them and beside them; you pass between their expiring spurs and the sea. It is on proceeding beyond San Sebastian that you seriously attack them. But they are already extremely picturesque--none the less so that in this region they abound in suggestion of the recent Carlist war. Their far-away peaks and ridges are crowned with lonely Spanish watch-towers and their lower slopes are dotted with demolished dwellings. It was hereabouts that the fighting was most constant. But the healing powers of nature are as remarkable as the destructive powers of man, and the rich September landscape appeared already to have forgotten the injuries of yesterday. Everything seemed to me a savory foretaste of Spain. I discovered an unconscionable amount of local color. I discovered it at St. Jean de Luz, the last French town, in a great brown church, filled with galleries and boxes, like a playhouse--the altar and chair, indeed, looked very much like a proscenium; at Bohebia, on the Bidassoa, the small yellow stream which divides France from Spain, and which at this point offers to view the celebrated Isle of Pheasants, a little bushy strip of earth adorned with a decayed commemorative monument, on which, in the seventeenth century, the affairs of Louis XIV. and his brother monarch were discussed in ornamental conference; at Fuentarabia (glorious name), a mouldering relic of Spanish stateliness; at Hondaye, at Irun, at Renteria, and finally at San Sebastian. At all of these wayside towns the houses show marks of Alphonsist bullets (the region was strongly Carlist); but to be riddled and battered seems to carry out the meaning of the pompous old escutcheons carven above the doorways, some of them covering almost half the house. It seemed to me, in fact, that the narrower and shabbier was the poor little dusky dwelling, the grander and more elaborate was this noble advertisement. But it stood for knightly prowess, and pitiless Time had taken up the challenge. I found it fine work to rumble through the narrow single street of Irun and Renteria, between the strange-colored houses, the striped awnings, the universal balconies, and the heraldic doorways.

San Sebastian is a lively watering-place, and is set down in the guidebooks as the Biarritz or the Brighton of Spain. It has of course a new quarter in the provincial-elegant style (fresh stucco cafés, barber shops, and apartments to let), looking out upon a planted promenade and a charming bay, locked in fortified heights, with a narrow portal to the ocean. I walked about for two or three hours, and devoted most of my attention to the old quarter, the town proper, which has a great frowning gate upon the harbor, through which you look along a vista of gaudy house fronts, balconies, and awnings, surmounted by a narrow strip of sky. Here the local color was richer, the manners more _naïf_. Here too was a church with a flamboyant Jesuit façade and an interior redolent of Spanish Catholicism. There was a life-sized effigy of the Virgin perched upon a table beside the great altar (she appeared to have been walking abroad in a procession), whom I looked at with extreme interest. She seemed to me a heroine, a solid Spanish person, as perfect a reality as Don Quixote or St. Theresa. She was dressed in an extraordinary splendor of laces, brocades, and jewels, her coiffure and complexion were of the finest, and she evidently would answer to her name if you spoke to her. Improving the stateliest title I could think of, I addressed her as Doña Maria of the Holy Office; whereupon she looked round the great dusky, perfumed church, to see whether we were alone, and then she dropped her fringed eyelids and held out her hand to be kissed. She was the Sentiment of Spanish Catholicism: gloomy, yet bedizened, emotional as a woman, and yet mechanical as a doll. After a moment I grew afraid of her, and went slinking away. After this I didn't really recover my spirits until I had the satisfaction of hearing myself addressed as "Cabellero." I was hailed with this epithet by a ragged infant, with sickly eyes and a cigarette in his lips, who invited me to cast a copper into the sea, that he might dive for it; and even with these limitations, the sensation seemed worth the cost of my excursion. It appeared kinder, to my gratitude, to make the infant dive upon the pavement.

A few days later I went back to San Sebastian, to witness a bull fight; but I suppose my right to descant upon this entertainment should be measured less by the gratification it afforded me than by the question whether there is room in literature for another bull fight. I incline to think there is not; the Spanish diversion is the best described thing in the world. Besides, there are other reasons for not describing it. It is extremely disgusting, and one should not describe disgusting things--except (according to the new school) in novels, when they have not really occurred, and are manufactured on purpose. But one has taken a certain sort of pleasure in the bull fight, and yet how is one to state gracefully that one has taken pleasure in a disgusting thing? It is a hard case. If you record your pleasure, distinctly, you seem to exaggerate it and to calumniate your delicacy; and if you record nothing but your displeasure, you feel rather crabbed and stingy. This much I can say, at any rate, that as there had been no bull fights in that part of the country during the Carlist war, the native dilettanti (and every man, woman, and child of them comes under this denomination) returned to their previous pastime with peculiar zest. The spectacle, therefore, had an unusual splendor. Under these circumstances it is highly picturesque. The weather was beautiful; the near mountains peeped over the top of the vast open arena, as if they too were curious; weary of disembowelled horses and posturing _espadas_, the spectator (in the boxes) might turn away and look through an unglazed window at the empty town and the cloud-shadowed sea. But few of the native spectators availed themselves of this privilege. Beside me sat a blooming matron, in a white lace mantilla, with three very juvenile daughters; and if these ladies sometimes yawned, they never shivered. For myself, I confess that if I sometimes shivered, I never yawned. A long list of bulls was sacrificed, each of whom had pretentions to originality. The _banderillos_, in their silk stockings and embroidered satin costumes, skipped about with a great deal of elegance; the _espada_ folded his arms, within six inches of the bull's nose, and stared him out of countenance; but I thought the bull, in any case, a finer fellow than any of his tormentors, and I thought his tormentors finer fellows than the spectators. In truth, we were all, for the time, rather sorry fellows together. A bull fight will, to a certain extent, bear looking at, but it will not bear thinking of. There was a more innocent picturesqueness in what I saw afterward, when we all came away, in the late afternoon, as the shadows were at their longest: the bright-colored southern crowd, spreading itself over the grass, and the women, with mantillas and fans, strolling up along before the mountains and the sea.

HENRY JAMES, JR.

THE BALLAD OF CONSTANCE.

I.

With diamond dew the grass was wet, T'was in the spring, and gentlest weather, And all the birds of morning met, And carolled in her heart together.

II.

The wind blew softly o'er the land, And softly kissed the joyous ocean: He walked beside her, on the sand, And gave and won a heart's devotion.

III.

The thistledown was in the breeze, With birds of passage homeward flying: His fortune called him o'er the seas, And on the shore he left her sighing.

IV.

She saw his barque glide down the bay-- Through tears and fears she could not banish; She saw his white sails melt away; She saw them fade; she saw them vanish.

V.

And "Go," she said; "for winds are fair, And love and blessing round you hover: When you sail backward through the air, Then I will trust the word of lover."

VI.

Still ebbed, still flowed the tide of years, Now chilled with snows, now bright with roses, And many smiles were turned to tears, And sombre morns to radiant closes.

VII.

And many ships came gliding by, With many a golden promise freighted: But nevermore from sea or sky Came love to bless her heart that waited.

VII.

Yet on, by tender patience led, Her sacred footsteps walked unbidden, Wherever sorrow bows its head, Or want and care and shame are hidden.

IX.

And they who saw her snow-white hair, And dark, sad eyes, so deep with feeling, Breathed all at once the chancel air, And seemed to hear the organ pealing.

X.

Till once, at shut of autumn day, In marble chill she paused and harkened, With startled gaze where far away The waste of sky and ocean darkened.

XI.

There, for a moment, faint and wan, High up in air, and landward striving, Stern-fore a spectral barque came on, Across the purple sunset driving.

XII.

Then something out of night she knew, Some whisper heard, from heaven descended, And peacefully as falls the dew Her long and lonely vigil ended.

XIII.

The violet and the bramble-rose Make glad the grass that dreams above her; And freed from time and all its woes, She trusts again the word of lover.

WILLIAM WINTER.

THE HEARTBREAK CAMEO.

"It is a cameo to break one's heart!" said Mrs. Dalliba, as she toyed with the superb jewel. "The cutting is unmistakably Florentine, and yet you have placed it among your Indian curiosities. I do not understand it at all."

Mrs. Dalliba was a connoisseur in gems; she had travelled from one extremity of Europe to the other; had studied the crown jewels of nearly every civilized nation, haunted museums, and was such a frequent visitor at the jewellers' of the Palais Royal, that many of them had come to regard her as an individual who might harbor burglarious intentions. She was a very harmless specialist, however, who, though she loved these stars of the underworld better than any human being, could never have been tempted to make one of them unfairly her own, and she seldom purchased, for she never coveted one unless it was something quite extraordinary, beyond the reach of even her considerable fortune. Meanwhile few of the larger jewelry houses had in their employ lapidaries more skilled than Mrs. Dalliba. She pursued her studies for the mere love of the science, devoting a year in Italy to mosaics, cameos, and intaglios. And yet the Crèvecoeur cameo had puzzled wiser heads than Mrs. Dalliba's, adept though she was. It was cut from a solid heart-shaped gem, a layer of pure white, shading down through exquisite gradations into deep green, and represented Aphrodite rising from the sea; the white form rose gracefully, with arms extended, scattering the drops of spray from her hands and her wind-blown hair; the foamy waves were beautifully cut with their intense hollows and snowy crests; it was evidently the work of a cultivated as well as a natural artist; it was not surprising that Mrs. Dalliba should insist that it could not have been executed out of Italy.

But Prof. Stonehenge was right too; it was a stone of the chalcedonic family, resembling sardonyx, except in color; others, similar to it both in a natural state and wrought into arrow-heads, had been found along the shores of Lake Superior. This seemed to have been brought away from its associates by some wandering tribe, for it had been discovered in Central Illinois. The nearest point at which other relics belonging to the same period had been found was the site of Fort Crèvecoeur, near Starved Rock, Illinois. After all, the stone only differed from the arrow-heads of Lake Superior in its beautiful carving and unprecedented size--and, ah, yes! there was another difference, the mystery of its discovery. No other skeleton among all the buried braves unearthed by scientific research at Crèvecoeur had been found with a gem for a heart--a gem that glittered not on the breast, but within a chest hooped with human bone. Mrs. Dalliba had just remarked that she had never felt so strong a desire to possess and wear any jewel as now; but when Prof. Stonehenge told how the uncanny thing rattled within the white ribs of the skeleton in which it was found, she allowed the gem to slip from her hand, while something of its own pale green flickered in the disgusted expression which quivered about the corners of her mobile mouth. The cameo was a mystery which had baffled geologist, antiquarian, and sculptor alike, for Father Francis Xavier had gone down to his grave with his secret and his cameo hidden in his heart. He had kept both well for two centuries, and when the heart crumbled in dust it took its secret with it, leaving only the cameo to bewilder conjecture.

Its story was, after all, a simple one. On the southern shore of Michillimackinac, in the romantic days of the first exploration of the great lakes by the Courreurs de Bois and pioneer priests, had settled good Père Ignace, a devoted Jesuit missionary. The old man was revered and loved by the Indians among whom he dwelt. His labors blossomed in a little village, called from his patron saint the mission of St. Ignace, that displayed its cluster of white huts and wigwams like the petals of a water-lily on the margin of the lake. Just back of the village was a round knoll which served as a landmark on the lake, for the shore near St. Ignace was remarkably level. On the summit of this mound the good father had reared a great white cross, and at its foot the superstitious Indians often laid votive offerings of strongly incongruous character. Here he had lived and taught for many years, succeeding in instructing his little flock in the French tongue, and in at least an outward semblance of the Catholic religion. Even the rude trappers, who came to trade at regular intervals, revered him, and lived like good Christians while at the mission, so as not to counteract his teaching by their lawless example. Here Père Ignace was growing old, and even this grasshopper of a spiritual charge was becoming a burden. His superior, at Montreal, understood this and sent him an assistant.

Very unlike Father Ignatius was Père François Xavier, a man with all the fire and enthusiasm of youth in his blood--just the one for daring, hazardous enterprises; just the one to undergo all the privation and toil of planting a mission; to undertake plans requiring superhuman efforts, and to carry them through successfully by main force of will. A better assistant for Father Ignatius could not have been found. It was force, will, and intellect in the service of love and meekness; only there was a doubt if the servant might not usurp the place of the master, and the sway of love be not materially advanced by its new ally. Indeed, if the truth had been known, even the Bishop of Montreal had felt that Father Francis Xavier was too ambitious a character to reside safely in too close proximity to himself; and engrossing employment at a distance for him, rather than the expressed solicitude for Father Ignatius, prompted this appointment. The results of the following year approved the arrangement. The mission received a new accession of life; its interests were pushed forward energetically.

Father Francis Xavier devoted himself to an acquisition of the various Indian dialects, and to excursions among the neighboring tribes. Converts were made in astonishing numbers, and they brought liberal gifts to the little church from their simple possessions. Father Ignatius had never thought to barter with the trappers and traders, but his colleague did; large church warehouses were erected, and the mission soon had revenues of importance. Away in the interior Father Xavier had discovered there was a silver mine; but this discovery, for the present, he made no attempt at exploiting. He had secured it to the church by title deed and treaty with the chief who claimed it; had visited it and assured himself that it would some day be very valuable, and he contented himself with this for the present, and even managed to forget its acquisition in his yearly report sent to Montreal. Father Francis Xavier was something of a geologist; his father was a Florentine jeweller, and the son had studied as his apprentice, not having at first been destined for the church. Even after taking holy orders, Father Francis Xavier had labored over precious stones designed for ecclesiastical decoration. His specialty had been that of a gem engraver, and his long white fingers were remarkably skilful and delicate. This northern region, with all its wealth of precious stones, was a great jewel casket for him, and he became at once an enthusiastic collector.

Before the coming of his assistant, Father Ignatius had managed his own simple housekeeping in all its most humble details. Now they had the services of an Indian maid of all work, who had been brought up under the eyes of Father Ignatius, and whom the old man regarded rather as a daughter than as a servant. Her moccasined feet fell as silently as those of spirits as she glided about their lodge. She never sang at her work, and rarely spoke, but she smiled often with a smile so childlike as to be almost silly in expression. Father Ignatius loved the silent smile, and a word from him was always sure to bring it; but it angered Father Francis Xavier more than many a more repulsive thing would have done. It seemed so utterly imbecile and babyish to him, he had got so far away from innocence and smiles and childhood himself, that the sight of them irritated him. The young Indian girl had a long and almost unpronounceable name. Père Ignace had baptized her Marie, and the new name had gradually taken the place of the old.

One day, as she was silently but dexterously putting to order the large upper room, which served Père Francis Xavier as study and dormitory, she paused before his collection of agates and minerals, and stroking the stones, said in her soft French and Indian patois, "Pretty, pretty." Father Xavier was seated at the great open window, looking over the top of his book away across the breezy lake. He heard the words, and knew that she was looking at him from the corner of her eye, but his only reply was a deeper scowl and a lowering of his glance to the printed page. The silly smile which he felt sure was upon her face faded out, but the girl spoke again, and this time more resolutely, determined to attract his attention. "Pretty stones. Marie's father many more, much prettier--much."

Father Xavier laid down his book. He was all attention. "Where did your father get them?" he asked.

"In the mountains climb, in the mines dig, in the lake dive, he seek them all the time summer."

"What does he do with them?"

"Cuts them like _mon père_," and Marie imitated in pantomime the use of the hammer and chisel. "Cut them all time winter, very many."

"What does he do that for?" asked the priest, surprised.

"All the same you," replied the girl--"make arrow-heads."

"Oh! he makes arrow-heads, does he? Mine are not arrow-heads, but I should like to see what your father does. Does he live far from here?"

"Marie take you to-night in canoe."

"Very well, after supper."

She had often taken him out upon the lake before, for she managed their birch-bark canoe with more skill than himself, and it was convenient to have some one to paddle while he fished or read or dreamed. She rowed him swiftly up the lake for several miles, then, fastening the canoe, led the way through a trail in the forest. The sun was setting, and "the whispering pines and the hemlocks" of the forest primeval formed a tapestry of gloom around the paternal wigwam as they reached it. Black Beaver, her father, reclined lazily in the door, watching the coals of the little fire in front of his tent. He was always lazy. It was difficult to believe that he ever climbed or dug or dived for agates as Marie had said, so complete a picture he seemed of inaction. The girl spoke a few words to him in their native dialect, and he grumblingly rose, shuffled into the interior of the wigwam, and brought out two baskets. One was a shallow tray filled with the finished heads in great variety of material and color. There were white carnelian, delicately striped with prophetic red, blood-stone deep-colored and hard as ruby, agates of every shade and marking, flinty jasper, emerald-banded malachite, delicate rose color, and purple ones made from shells, and various crystals with whose names Father François Xavier was unfamiliar. There was one shading from dark green through to red, only a drop of the latter color on the very tip of the arrow where blood would first kiss blood. Father Xavier looked at it in wondering admiration, and at last asked Black Beaver what he called it.

"It is a devil-stone," replied the Indian. "More here," and he opened the deeper basket in which were stored the unground and uncut stones, and placed a superb gem in Father Xavier's hand. He had ground it sufficiently to show that it was in two layers, white and green; in this there was no touch of red, but in every other respect it was the handsomer stone.

"Will you sell it to me?" asked the priest. "How much?"

The Indian smiled with an expression strangely like that of his daughter, and put it back with alacrity in his basket, saying, "Me no sell big devil-stone. No money buy."

"What do you mean to do with it?" asked Father Xavier.

"Make arrowhead--very hungry--no blood"; and he indicated the absence of the red tint. "Very hungry--kill very much--never have enough!"

"Then you mean to keep it and use it yourself?"

"No," said the other. "Me no hunt game--hunt stones."

"What will you do with it?" asked the puzzled priest.

"Give it away," said Black Beaver--"give away to greatest----"

"Chief?" asked Father Xavier.

Black Beaver shook his head.

"Friend then?"

"No," grunted the arrowhead maker--"give away to big _enemy_!"

"What did he mean by that?" Father Xavier asked of Marie on their way back to the mission. And the girl explained the superstition that Indians of their own tribe never killed an enemy with ordinary weapons, for fear that his soul would wait for theirs in the Happy Hunting Grounds; but if he was shot with a devil-stone, the soul could not fly upward, but would sink through all eternity, until it reached the deepest spot of all the great lakes under the stony gaze of the Doom Woman.

When he inquired further as to the whereabouts of the Doom Woman's residence he ascertained that she was only a sharp cliff among "the pictured rocks of sandstone" of the upper lake--a cliff that viewed from either side maintained its resemblance to a female profile looking sternly down at the water beneath it, which was here believed to be unfathomable. The Doom Woman still exists. Strange to say, under its sharp-cut features a steamer has since been wrecked and sunk, and its expression of gloomy fate is now awfully appropriate. Marie had visited "the great Sea Water" with her father. Nature's titanic and fanciful frescoing and cameo cutting had strongly wrought upon her impressionable mind, and the old legends and superstitions of paganism had been by no means effaced by the very slight veneer of Christianity which she had received at the mission.

From this evening Father Xavier's manner toward her changed. Her smile no longer seemed to irritate him, and a close observer might have noticed that she smiled less than formerly. He talked with her more, paid closer attention to her studies, made her little presents from time to to time, and spoke to her always with studied gentleness that was quite foreign to his nature. And Marie watched him at work over his stones, spent her spare time in rambling in search of those which she had learned he liked, and laid upon his table without remark each new discovery of quartz, or crystal, or pebble. She had been in the habit of making little boxes which she decorated with a rude mosaic of small shells, and Father Xavier noticed that these gradually acquired more taste and were arranged with some eye to the harmonies of color, while the forms were copied with Chinese accuracy from patterns on the bindings of his books or the borders of the religious pictures. Marie was developing under an art education which if carried far enough might effect great things. She even managed his graving tools with a good deal of accuracy, copying designs which he set her, until he wondered what his father would have thought of so apt an apprentice.

Suddenly, one morning in midsummer, Marie announced that she should leave them. Her father was going on a long expedition for stones to the head of Lake Superior, and she did not know when she might return. As she imparted this information she watched Father Xavier from the corner of her eye, and something of the old childish smile reappeared as he showed that he was really annoyed.

The summer passed profitably for the Black Beaver, and he began to think of returning to St. Ignace with his small store of valuable stones before the fall gales should set in. He was just a few days too late. When within sight of Michillimackinac a storm arose driving them out upon the open lake, and playing with their canoe as though it were a cockle shell. When the storm abated a cloudy night had set in; no land was visible in any direction; they had completely lost their direction, and knew not toward which point to seek the shore. Paddling at hazard might take them further out into the centre of the lake, and indeed they were too worn with battling with the storm to do any more than keep the tossed skiff from capsizing. Morning dawned wet and gray, after a miserable night; they were drenched to the skin, and almost spent with weariness and hunger, and now that a wan and ghostly daylight had come they were no better for it, for an impenetrable fog shut them in on every side. Marie and her mother began to pray. The Black Beaver sat dogged and inert, with upturned face, regarding the sky.

The day wore by wearily; some of the time they paddled straight onward, with sinking hearts, knowing not toward what they were going, and at others rested with the inaction of despair. When the position of the bright spot which meant the sun told that it lacked but an hour of sunset, and the clouds seemed to be thickening rather than dispersing, the Black Beaver gave a long and hideous howl. His wife and daughter shuddered when they heard it, as would any one, for a more unearthly and discordant cry was never uttered by man or beast; but they had double reason to shudder; it was the death cry of their nation.

"We can never live through another night," said he, and he covered his face with his arms.

"Father," said Marie, "try what power there is in the white man's God. Say that you will give Him your devil-stone if He will save us now."

"The priest may have it," said the Black Beaver, and he uncovered his face and sat up as though expecting a miracle. And the miracle came. The sun was setting behind them, and in front, somewhat above the horizon, the clouds parted, forming a circle about a white cross which hung suspended in the air. They all saw it distinctly, but only for a few moments; then the clouds closed and the vision vanished. With new hope the little party rowed toward the spot where they had last seen it, and through the fog they could dimly discern the outlines of the coast--they were nearing land. A little further on, and a village was visible, which gained a more and more familiar aspect as they approached. Night settled down before they reached it, but ere their feet touched the land they had recognized the mission of St. Ignace. The cross was not a vision. The clouds had parted to show them the great white landmark and sign which Father Ignatius had raised upon the little knoll.

The next day the Black Beaver unearthed his devil-stone, and fastening a silver chain to it, was about to carry it away and attach it to the cross, which was already loaded with the gifts of the little colony; but Marie took it from his hand. "I will give it to the good priest myself," she said. "He may see fit to place it on the image of the Virgin in the church."

A few days later Marie placed the coveted stone in Father Xavier's hand; but what was his bitter disappointment to find that she had marred the exquisite thing by a rude attempt at a delineation upon it of the vision of the cross. She had carefully chiselled away the milky white layer, excepting on the crests of some very primitive representations of waves, and within the awkwardly plain cross in the centre of the gem. All his hopes of cutting a face upon this lovely jewel were crushed; it was ruined by her unskilful work. Father Xavier was completely master of his own emotions. He took the stone without remark, and hung it, as Marie requested, about the neck of the Madonna. Each day as he said mass the sight of the mutilated jewel roused within him resentful feelings against poor, well-wishing little Marie. He had been very kind to her since he had first seen the stone in the possession of her father, but now it was worse than before. He avoided her markedly, for the smile which so annoyed him still lighted her face whenever she saw him, and there was in it a reproachful sadness which was even more aggravating than its simple childishness had been.

One day Father Xavier in turning over his papers came across an old etching of Venus rising from the sea. The figure, with its outstretched arms, suggested a possibility to him. He made a careful tracing of it, took it to the church and laid it upon the stone. All of its outlines came within the white cross; there was still hope for the cameo. All that winter Father Xavier toiled upon it, exhausting his utmost skill, but never exhausting his patience. His chief trial was in the extreme hardness of the stone, which rapidly wore out his graving tools. At last it was finished, and Father Xavier confessed to himself, in all humility, that he had not only never executed so delicate a piece of workmanship, but he had never seen its equal. Every curve of the exquisite-hued waves was studied from the swell that sometimes swept grandly in from the lake on the long reef of rocks a few miles above St. Ignace. The form of the goddess was modelled from his remembrance of the Greek antique. It was a gem worthy of an emperor. What should he do with it?

As the spring ripened into summer, ambitious thoughts flowered in Père Francis Xavier's soul. What a grand bishopric this whole western country would make with its unexplored wealth of mines, and furs, and forest. Why should he be obliged to make reports of the revenue which his own financiering had secured to the mission, to the head at Montreal? Why should not his reverence the Lord Bishop Francis Xavier dwell in an episcopal palace built somewhere on these lakes, with unlimited spiritual and temporal sway over all this country? To effect such a scheme it would be necessary for him to see both the King of France and the Pope. He was not sure that even if he could return to Europe immediately, he had the influence necessary in either quarter, but the cameo was a step in the right direction. Something of the same thought occurred at the same time to the Bishop of Montreal. Father Xavier's reports showed the mission to be in a flourishing condition. The first struggles of the pioneer were over. Father Xavier must not be left in too luxurious a position. The Chevalier La Salle was now fitting out his little band designed to explore the lakes and follow the Mississippi from its source to the Gulf. A most important expedition; it would be well that the Jesuit fathers should share in the honors if it proved successful, and if the little party perished in its hazardous enterprise, Père Francis Xavier could perhaps be spared as easily as any member of his spiritual army.

And so, in the summer of 1679, the Chevalier sailed up the Lac du Dauphin, as Lake Erie was then called, into the Lac d'Orleans, or Huron, carrying letters in which Père Francis Xavier was ordered to leave his charge for a time in order to render all the assistance in his power to the explorers. The Bishop of Montreal could never have guessed with what heartfelt joy his command was obeyed. Father Xavier was tired of this peaceful life, tired of "the endless wash of melancholy waves," of the short cool summers, and long white blank of winter; tired of inaction, of the lack of stimulating surroundings, of the gentleness of Father Ignatius and Marie's haunting smile. Here, too, might be the very occasion he craved of making himself famous and deserving of reward as an explorer. It was true that he started as a subordinate, but that was no reason that he should return in the same capacity. Marie had served the noble guests with pleasant alacrity, passing the rainbow-tinted trout caught as well as broiled by her own hand, and the luscious huckleberries in tasteful baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious dignity by little Marie; once only was Père François Xavier annoyed by the absence of a display of childish pleasure in an ever ready smile.

History tells how trial and privation of every kind waited on this little band of heroic men--how hunger, and cold, and fever dogged their steps; how the Indians proved treacherous and hostile; how, having reached central Illinois after incredible exertion, they found themselves in the dead of winter unable to proceed further, and surrounded by tribes incited against them by some unknown enemy. A fatality seemed to hang over them; suspicious occurrences indicated that they had a traitor among their number, but he was never discovered. La Salle did not despair or abandon the enterprise, but when six of his most trusted men mutinied and deserted, he lost hope, and became seized with a presentiment that he would never return from his expedition. Father Xavier was his confidant as well as confessor, but he seems not to have been able to disperse the gloom which settled over the leader's mind. Perhaps he did not endeavor to do so. Hopeless but still true to his trust, La Salle constructed near Peoria a fort which he named Crèvecoeur, in token of his despondency and disappointment. Leaving Tontz Main de Fer in command here with the greater part of his men, he set out with five for Frontenac, on the 2d of March, 1680, intending to return with supplies to take command again of his party, and to proceed southward. It was at this point that the most inexplicable event of the entire enterprise occurred. Before the party divided _some one_ attempted to poison the Chevalier La Salle. The poison was a subtle and slow one, similar in its effects to those used by the Borgia family; the secret of its manufacture was thought to be unknown out of Italy. Fortunately he had taken an under or overdose of it, and the effects manifested themselves only in a long illness. He was too far on his journey from Fort Heartbreak when stricken down to return to it, and was mercifully received and nursed back to health by the friendly Pottawottamies.

While the leader was lying sick in an Indian lodge, the knightly Tontz, ignorant of the fate of his friend, was having his troubles at the little fort of Heartbreak. Père François Xavier had remained with him, and aided him with counsels and personal exertions; he had made himself so indispensable that he was now lieutenant; if anything should happen to Tontz, he would be commander. He was secretary of the expedition, drew careful maps, and made voluminous daily entries in a journal, which was afterward found to be a marvel of painstaking both in the facts and fictions which it contained. Scanty mention was there of La Salle and Tontz Main de Fer, and much of Père François Xavier, but it was clear, explicit, depicting the advantages of an acquisition of this territory to the crown of France in glowing terms, and strongly advising that the man who had most distinguished himself in the difficulties of its discovery should be appointed as governor, or baron, under the royal authority.

While Father Xavier was compiling this remarkable piece of authorship, the Iroquois descended in warlike array upon the somewhat friendly disposed Illinois Indians, in whose midst Fort Crèvecoeur had been built. The suspicious Indian mind immediately connected the advent of their enemies with the building of the fort, and regarded the little garrison with distrust. Tontz, at the instance of Father Xavier, presented himself to their chief, and offered to do anything in his power to prove his friendly intentions. The chief accepted his services, and sent him as ambassador to inquire into the cause of the coming of the Iroquois. This mission had nearly been his last, for Tontz was received with stabs, and hardly allowed to give the message of the chief. His ill treatment at the hands of their enemies did not reassure the suspicious Illinois, who ordered Tontz to immediately evacuate the fort and return with his forces to the country whence he had come. In his wounded condition such a journey was extremely hazardous, and it must have been with grave doubts as to his surviving it that Father Xavier took temporary command of the returning expedition.

It was the spring of 1681. Father Xavier had been absent nearly two years. Father Ignatius missed him sadly--all the life and fire seemed to have gone out of the mission. Even Marie moved about her work in a listless, languid way, which contrasted markedly with her once lithe and rapid movements. They had not once heard from the explorers, and Father Ignatius shook his head sadly, and feared that he would never see his energetic colleague again. The Black Beaver had slept through the last months of winter, and, as with the general awakening of spring the bears came out of their dens, and the snakes sunned themselves near their holes, he too stretched himself lazily and awoke to a consciousness of what was passing around him. In the first place something was amiss with Marie. When she came to the wigwam it was not to chat merrily of the affairs of the mission. She did not braid as many baskets as formerly, and no longer showed him new patterns in shell mosaic on the lids of little boxes. He was a curious old man, and he soon drew her secret from her. Marie loved Père François Xavier, and he had gone.

The Black Beaver went down to the mission one evening and had a long talk with Father Ignatius. He ascertained first that Père François Xavier really meant to return; then, with all the dignity of an old feudal baron, he offered Marie as a bride for his spiritual son. Very gently the good Père Ignace explained that Romish priests were so nearly in the kingdom of heaven that the question of marrying and giving in marriage was not for them to consider. The Black Beaver went home, told no one of his visit, and for several days indulged in the worst drunken spree of which he was capable. When he came out of it he announced to his wife and Marie that he was going away on his annual trip for stores, but that they need not accompany him.

Marie knelt as usual in the little church on the evening of the day on which her father had gone away. Père François Xavier had replaced the cameo on the Virgin's breast before he went; it was a safer place than the vault of a bank would have been, had such a thing existed in the country. There was no one in the island sacrilegious enough to rob the church. Marie had gazed at the stone each time that she repeated the prayer which he had taught her. She looked up now, and it was gone.

Half-way upon their northward route, Tontz's band were struggling wearily on when they were met by a solitary Indian, who, though he carried a long bow, had not an unfriendly aspect. He eyed the little band silently as they passed by him in defile, then ran after them, and inquired if the Père François Xavier, of Mission St. Ignace, was not of their number. He was informed that the reverend father had remained a short distance behind to write in his journal, but that he would soon overtake them; and he was warmly pressed to remain with them if he had messages for the priest, and give them to him when he arrived; but the Indian shook his head and passed on in the direction in which they told him he would be likely to meet Father Xavier. The party halted and waited hour after hour for the priest, but he did not come. Finally two went back in search, and found him lying upon the sod with upturned face--the place where he had written last in his journal marked by a few drops of his heart's blood, and the long shaft of an arrow protruding from his breast. They drew it out, but the arrow-head had been attached, as is the custom in some Indian tribes, by means of a soft wax, which is melted by the warmth of the body, and it remained in the heart. Father Xavier had been dead some hours. They buried him where they found him, and proceeded on their march. Tontz recovered on the way. They reached Michillimackinack in safety, where they were joined two months later by La Salle; and the world knows the result of his second expedition.

Little Marie learned by degrees to smile again, and in after years married another arrow-head maker, as swarthy and as shaggy as the Black Beaver. There is no moral to my story except that of poetic justice. Père François Xavier had sown a plentiful crop of stratagems, and he learned in the lonely forest that "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."

Meanwhile to all but you, my readers, the Crèvecoeur cameo remains as great a mystery as ever.

LIZZIE W. CHAMPNEY.

MONSIEUR DELILLE.

NOTE-BOOK OF A SECRETARY OF LEGATION.

The newspapers of Berlin announced the arrival of a superior artist, the celebrated M. Delille of the Théâtre Français de Paris, where he had played first parts. Born and bred in the French metropolis, it was believed he would not only open new sources of amusement to the public, but add elegance to the French even of the highest regions. Everybody was talking of him. His acquisition, rendered possible only by a _différend_ with the Paris manager, was a triumph for Berlin. I was quite curious to see him.

One day I stepped into Rey's perfumery shop to buy some cologne water. The rooms were crowded with fashionable ladies looking over the glittering and fragrant assortment of _savons de toilette_, _pâtes d'amandes_, _huiles essentielles_, _eaux de vie aromatisées_, etc. While making my purchase, a very handsome fellow came in who excited unusual attention. His toilette _recherchée_, his noble but modest air made one look at him again and again. He spoke with Rey in a voice so harmonious and in such French as one does not hear every day even in Paris. I heard a lady whisper to another: "Ah, voilà qui est parlez Français (that is the way to speak French)." The stranger was certainly _somebody_, or so many furtive glances would not have been cast at him. I might, by inquiry, easily have ascertained who he was, but I found a kind of pleasure in prolonging my curiosity. The Emperor Nicholas of Russia was daily expected. He was supposed to be the handsomest man in the world. But he was six feet two, taller than this person. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin had arrived the previous afternoon; but, it seemed to me, no German could speak French with just that modulation. The Prince de Joinville was expected. Perhaps it was he.

"Will you kindly give yourself the trouble to send the box to M. Delille, Friedrich strasse 30?"

Ah ha! _Le voilà!_ There was my man. Strange I had not thought of him.

I had a season ticket at the French theatre for the purpose of learning French, and I had been as much entertained as instructed (I mean instructed in the language). Every one knows a Frenchman can infuse airy elegance into a button, bestow a marketable value upon a straw, breathe _esprit_ into a feather, and make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. So the poet can transform any incident into an attractive vaudeville. The tender _situation dramatique_, the humorous _coup de théâtre_, _the jeu d'esprit_ sparkling up into music, the elevated sentiment, the merciless exposure of vice and folly, the purest and noblest morality, largely mixed with an ostentatious ridicule of every sacred truth, and an absolute disregard of every principle of decency and duty, give strange glimpses into French social life.

As a school for the French student, however, the theatre is a useful institution. For French has got to be learned somehow or other. A dancing master of my acquaintance used always to commence his course by a short address to his class in which he remarked: "Mesdemoiselles! La chose la plus importante du monde c'est la danse!" (the most important thing in the world is dancing.) Perhaps he was right. In that case I must add that the next most important thing in the world is the French language; at least to a foreigner on the continent of Europe. Without that you do not know anything. You are a straw man. You are a deaf and dumb creature. Ladies gaze at you with compassion, gentlemen with contempt, children with wonder, while waiters quiz you, cheat you, and make the imaginary mill behind your back.

Impressed with the inconvenience of this position, I had long ago commenced a siege of the French language. I studied it _a fond_. I looked into every _y_ and _en_. I had attended the French theatre as a school, and profited by the performances. The company was excellent, particularly one young girl, Mlle. Fontaine. Her playing was unsurpassable. She knew always when to go on and when to stop. Perfect simplicity, a taste never at fault, delightful humor, a high tragic power; to these add a lovely face, a beautiful form, grace in every movement, a voice just as sweet as a voice could be, and you have a dim idea of Mlle. Fontaine. In her private life, moreover, she enjoyed the reputation of being without reproach. The whole world repeated of her the old saying: "Elle n'a qu'un défaut, celui de mettre de l'esprit partout!" (She has but one fault: she touches nothing without importing to it a charm of her own.)

When M. Delille came out, Mlle. Fontaine and he generally played together, amid thundering plaudits of overflowing audiences. Delille himself was a perfect artist. The French theatre was in its glory.

One morning, hard at work in my office, I was surprised by a card, "Monsieur Delille, du Théâtre Français." The gentleman wished to have the honor of a few moments' conversation.

The theatre and all the various personages of its imaginary world were so completely apart from my real life, that I could scarcely have been more surprised at receiving a card from Louis XIV., or hearing that the General Napoleon Bonaparte was waiting at the door, and desired the honor of my acquaintance.

M. Delille entered, hat in hand, with bow and smile, as I had so often seen him do in the theatre drawing-rooms. We had a pleasant chat. He spoke no English, which forced upon me the necessity of exhibiting my dazzling French. He complimented me upon it. I told him it was principally owing to himself and to Mlle. Fontaine. This brought out the object of his visit. He was going to be married. He had been in America, which emboldened him to consider himself in some sort my countryman, and to request the honor of my presence at the ceremony.

"And the lady?"

"_Monsieur_," he said, "_peut-on douter_? (can you doubt?) Mlle. Fontaine! You are to come to the French church at 3. You will, then, will you not, do us the honor to dine at our lodgings, Friedrich strasse, No. 30?"

I returned his own answer:

"Monsieur, peut-on douter?"

At the hour appointed I was at the church. I found quite an assembly--artists, painters, sculptors, actors, critics, poets, newspaper writers, several members of the corps diplomatique, some officers, a few gentlemen of the court, etc.

The bride and groom appeared very simply attired. Their deportment was perfect. The ceremony was impressive. In a short time the holy bands had made them one. There was no acting about either of them. M. Delille was pale; Mademoiselle still paler. Their emotion was obviously genuine. Some folks think when actors tremble or shed tears, it must be only acting; and that they can get married or die as easily in the world as on the stage. This is a mistake. Getting really married is as serious a step to them as to you; and they know that real dying is a very different thing from those exits which they make at the end of the tragedy. They struggle with life, and walk forward toward death just as do their fellow-creatures, who preach from the pulpit, speak in the Senate, or congregate on the exchange. The rich banker; the self-important diplomat; the general, covered with orders; the minister, who holds the helm of state; the emperor, the queen, who deign to honor the representation with their presence, smile when they behold themselves reflected on the stage. But there is not so much difference, as they are pleased to suppose, between themselves and their theatre colleagues. Shakespeare says:

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.

The question is, which of these men and women are the best? Perhaps the theatre statesman would have administered the affairs of his country with more wisdom; the dramatic banker would have made his money more honestly and used it with greater discretion; the stage general would have conducted the war with more humanity and success; and the senators, in "Julius Cæsar" and "Damon and Pythias," would have been less open to bribery and corruption than the gentlemen who have really occupied similar positions in the world. Perhaps, if M. Delille had been Admiral Blank, he would have looked at his chart, and not run his ship upon that rock in the Mediterranean on a clear summer morning. Perhaps, if Mme. Delille had been Empress of France, she would not have striven quite so hard to bring on the last war with Prussia.

From the church to the lodgings of Monsieur and Madame Delille. On passing through the entrance, in Berlin generally a way for horses and carriages, you would scarcely expect such elegant apartments. The moment you crossed the threshold you were in another world. Everything rich, tasteful, new; the walls superbly papered; the woodwork painted like snow and varnished like a mirror: Brussels carpet, then not over-common in the richest houses; lounges, _chaises longues_, sofas, divans; a strong smell of Russia binding from splendid volumes on the table, and gleaming from mahogany book-cases; beautiful paintings and engravings; a lavish display of clocks on tables and writing-desks; one, looking down from a loftier pedestal, clicked audibly the seconds and struck the quarters with a solemn sound, like the booming of some far-off old cathedral bell hanging in the clouds. Everything told of the new married man: everything new, bright, unexceptionable, faultless, perfect--like the new wife, the new husband, the new affection, the new hopes, yet unexposed to the wear and tear of years.

I was among the first. My host and hostess awaited their guests. Mademoiselle--I beg her pardon--madame received me with graceful cordiality. The company immediately began to appear, principally performers whose faces I had never seen before, except on the stage, associated with incidents, words, actions, intrigues, and scenes of the poet's imagination. I enjoyed as if I had been a boy, recognizing the various characters whose pranks, joys, and sorrows I had followed with so much interest: the wicked "jeune homme à la mode," the bewitching "femme de chambre," the _vieux_ "général sous l'empire," the rich _banquier de Paris_, the handsome, dangerous _guardien_, the naughty husband who had exclaimed, "Ciel ma femme!" the jealous lover, the hard-hearted landlord, and the _comique_ of the troupe, upon whose mobile face I could scarcely look without laughing when he asked me: "Voulez-vous bien avoir la bonté de passer le sel?" There were present several from the court: the Marquis de B----, who in private theatricals at the King's had distinguished himself; M. le Comte de S----, supposed to be a little _impressionné_ by Mlle. Zoé, the last successful débutante, and now among the guests.

Mme. Delille looked like a lady born, and did the honors of her house like one. The servant announced the dinner, and we adjourned to the dining-room.

The dinner was _on ne peut pas mieux_. I sat between the lady of the house and Mlle. Zoé. One of the French arts is that of placing people at ease in society. It is not uncommon to meet persons not wanting in intelligence, yet who, unless you draw them out, will simply remain in the whole evening. My charming neighbors drew me out immediately. They possessed a magnetism which made talking, and in one's best style, as easy as flying to a bird. Mlle. Zoé said a great many brilliant and surprising things; but Mme. Delille's manners and conversation were far superior. I found in her a thoughtful, cultivated, balanced mind, inspiring genuine esteem. I was struck by her views of political events and characters. She touched lightly and skilfully upon various personages with wisdom and humor, but with charity. She referred to her own position in life as an actress in a way which interested me extremely, and she found opportunity amid the miscellaneous conversation to relate her history, and how she came to adopt a profession contrary to her taste; and a more touching story I never heard. The conversation even ascended to higher subjects. I was not a little astonished to find in a young and universally flattered French actress a noble-minded, superior woman, who had suffered deeply, and thought seriously and spiritually upon subjects generally considered irreconcileable with her profession.

The dinner was finished; the nuts and the jokes were cracked; the café, the chasse-café, the enigmas, the conundrums, the anecdotes, the songs, the _tableaux-vivants_ followed each other. My amiable hostess seemed to think I must have had enough of it, and, with her graceful acquiescence, I stole out after a confidential pantomimic leave-taking with her and my host.

I became subsequently well acquainted with Monsieur and Madame Delille, and have seldom known more interesting persons. Occasionally they invited me to a quiet family dinner, where I always met one or two distinguished guests; and sometimes I had the pleasure of having them at my house in a quiet way. They both rose more and more in my esteem the more I observed their inner life and character. As years rolled on, my visits were enlivened by the sight of small drums, trumpets, horses with their tails pulled out, and dolls with their noses knocked off. Sometimes very pretty little cherubs peeped in at the door, or were invited for half an hour to the dinner table.

The world went on with its ways. More than one throne was vacated and filled anew. Great knotty questions of diplomacy rose and disappeared. Mehemet Ali, M. Thiers, the King of Hanover, Metternich, the Chartist, the anti-corn law league, Sir Robert and Mr. Cobden filled the newspapers. Nations growled at each other like bulldogs, and we had wars and rumors of wars a plenty.

One day who should come in but Monsieur and Madame Delille, the very picture of a perfectly happy man and wife. They came to bid me good-by. He had made his fortune, wound up his affairs with the theatre, and abandoned his profession for ever. Madame was at the summit of earthly felicity. She spoke with inexpressible delight of the change in her life. She had longed so often to quit the theatre, and now at last her dream was realized. M. Delille was going to buy a cottage in the south of France, and to be perfectly happy with his dear wife and four children. Amid oranges, lemons, and grapes, beneath the blue summer sky, surrounded by flowers, the waves of the beautiful Mediterranean breaking at his feet, he intended to pass the rest of his days in unclouded peace and joy. He had worked all his life, and now he was going to take his reward.

"But," said I, "did you say _four_ children?"

"_Mais oui!_ I have four.

"Why, it seems but yesterday that----"

"_Comptez donc!_ Six years and six months."

His picture of future felicity was very bright. I thought in my heart that such plans of retirement were--but I suppressed my sermon and congratulated him upon his prospects. Why should I disturb his happiness even though it might be a dream? What but a dream would have been even the realization of all his hopes?

We parted after embracing like old friends. I had more respect for those two than I had for a great many whose sonorous titles did not cover qualities half so estimable, manners half so agreeable, characters half so pure, or a sense of religion half so true and deep.

The French theatre declined after the departure of Monsieur and Madame Delille. I had entirely ceased attending or taking any interest in it.

Two years passed, when one day, in a lonely part of the Thiergarten, I met--whom do you think? M. Delille; but pale, sad, solitary, subdued.

"Well, here I am again," said he. "All my fine dreams have disappeared. I won't bore you with the story. The fact is--that is to say--one can never count upon one's plans in this world. I have lost my fortune, and accepted an invitation to become director of the Berlin French theatre. I am to form a new company. There is a great opposition to this, and the matter has raised up against me furious enemies. They accuse me of everything base. You know me. You know I would not be guilty of anything dishonorable."

I looked into his sad, ingenuous face, and replied:

"I am sure you would not."

"Oh, I thank you. But the worst remains to be told. My wife--my poor, dear wife--who had been my consolation in all this trouble! _Pauvre Marie!_ she is very ill, and I was obliged to leave her in Paris, or to lose all our prospects. She would have it so. This annoys me. This makes me unhappy. With her I am proof against all troubles. Ah, monsieur, you do not know my Marie. The most faithful, the most gentle, the purest, the----"

"But is she so dangerously ill?"

"I hope not. I think not. She will be here in a few weeks. The doctor has given me his _word of honor_."

A couple of months more. A series of articles, in the mean time, appeared in the newspapers against M. Delille and the new French theatre government. The venomous shafts were launched by an able hand. Gall is sweet compared with them. An actor is the most sensitive of human beings. His reputation is his all. The personal malice and interest of the writer were obvious, but the public were too busy to examine. The crowd enjoy a battle, without caring much about the right.

I met M. Delille a few days after the appearance of the fifth of these articles, and expressed my indignation. His manner of viewing the subject was really noble and more instructive to me than many a sermon. He spoke temperately of the _désagrément_ of his position and the wisdom of keeping on his way calmly. "An actor," he said, "is a public target. Every one has the right to shoot at him. I cannot always forget, but I try to forgive."

"And your wife?"

His face darkened.

"Oh, I am weary. She does not get well. She lingers on. She is not strong enough to come to me. I cannot go to her. She will not consent. They would declare I had run away. Her short letters are full of encouragement and consolation. Ah, if these men knew--but we must be patient. The doctor positively assures me she is doing very well."

Three weeks later I was again taking a walk through the Thiergarten, wrapped in my cloak, for it was winter, when I perceived M. Delille sitting on a quite wet bench. His face was very pale. I never saw a sadder expression. Hoping to rally him, I said:

"What a melancholy countenance! What a brown study! Come, I have arrived in time to laugh to you and of it!"

His face did not reply to my gayety. He asked after my health.

"But you are sitting on a wet, snowy bench. You will take cold."

"No, I shall not take cold."

"And how," said I, "is your----"

I paused, for I now for the first time remarked a black crape on his hat.

He perceived my embarrassment and relieved me.

"My children?"

I was silent.

"They are very well, I thank you--they are very well."

"Come," added he, with an effort, after covering his eyes a moment with his hand, "what have we now? Is there _really_ to be a war?"

THEODORE S. FAY.

INFLUENCES.

The southern bird, which, swift in airy speed, Toward ruder regions wings its careless way, Wafts from its plumage oft a floating seed, Unheeded relic of some tropic day.

And lo! a wonder! on the spot beneath The tiny germ asserts its mystic power; With sudden bloom illumes the rugged heath, And bursts at once to fragrance, light, and flower.

All the sad woodland flushes at the sight: The brook, which murmured, sparkles now, and sings: The cowslips watch, with yearning, strange delight, The bird which shed such glories from its wings,

Watching it hover onward free and far; Breathing farewell with restless doubt and pain. What were a heaven with but one only star? Must this be all? Will it not come again?

While the new lily, lonely in her pride, Sighing through silver bells, repeats the strain, Longing for sister blossoms at her side, And whispering soft, Will it not come again?

CHARLES CARROLL.

DRIFT-WOOD.

THE TWELVE-MONTH SERMON.

The year's end is traditionally the season for moralizing and retrospect. _Eheu! fugaces anni_ is a sigh that even the Latin primer teaches us; and though in schoolbook days calling the years fugacious seems absurd, we catch the meaning as they glide away. To schoolboys the man of fifty is immoderately old: thirty marks a milestone on the downhill of life. People whom we looked upon as of great antiquity, in childhood, turn out to have been mere striplings. I saw "old Kent" yesterday after the lapse of thirty years, and protest he was younger than when he rapped sepulchral silence from his resounding desk. "How are you, Quilibet First?" he said, quite in the ancient way; he seemed once more to brandish the ferrule on his awful throne.

Boys always call schoolmasters and sextons "old," irrespective of their years. Clerks in the shop style their employer "the old gentleman" without meaning to impute antiquity. Gray-haired diggers and pounders speak of their overseer as "the old man," even though he be a rosy-cheeked youth of two-and-twenty. Lexicographers should look to this. "Old" evidently means sometimes "having independent authority," and does not necessarily signify either lack of freshness or being stricken in years. Thus Philip Festus Bailey's dictum, that "we live in deeds, not years," is borne out by common parlance, and future Worcesters and Websters must make a note of it.

Whoever, also, reaches a fixed position of authority, seems (rightly enough, as the world goes) to have achieved success in life. This measurement of success by the kind of occupation one follows begins with us in short clothes. Mary's ambition is to be "either a milliner, a queen, or a cook;" the ideal of Augustus is a woodchopper, killing bears when they attack him at his work, and living in a hut. The sons of confectioners must be marvels if they grow up alike unspoiled in morals by the universal envy of comrades, and unspoiled in teeth by the parental sugar-plums. People of older growth attach childish importance to the trade one plies. Nobs and nabobs (at least on the stage) disinherit daughters offhand for marrying grocers, and groan over sons who take to high art. The smug and prudent citizen shudders at the career of the filibuster, while the adventurer would commit suicide rather than achieve a modest livelihood in tape and needles. The mother of Sainte Beuve was sorely distressed at his pursuit of literature, a career that she reckoned mere vagabondage, despite his brilliant feats in it, until the day he was elected to the French Academy, and thereby became entitled to $300 a year. "Then my mother was a little reassured; thenceforth, _j'avais une place_."

When the close of the year sets us to reckoning up how much we have made of life, pray what is that "success" of which we all talk so glibly? It is plainly a standard varying according to each man's taste and temperament, his humility or vanity, and shifting as his life advances. What to the Bohemian is success to the Philistine is stark failure. The anchoret looks on this sublunary sphere as one of sighing, the attorney as one of suing--there being all that difference betwixt law and gospel. Sixty years cannot see life through the eyes of sixteen. When men, fearing to measure themselves, seek the judgment of their fellows, adulation or affection may lead astray. In the year's retrospect of science, touching the solar eclipse it is said: "Cape Flattery is our northwestern cape, and there occurred the largest obscuration of the sun in the United States." "Cape Flattery," I fear, is the locus of largest obscuration for the United States every year, and was particularly so in the past twelvemonth of jubilee and gratulation; and what the mantle of flattery is for the sunlight of truth in the nation it is in the individual. In politics, at any rate, the centennial year is closing with some reproof of our all-summer conceit. Our frame of government is not so flawless as we fancied; the pharisaic contrast we drew between our politics and those of other nations is no longer so effective.

And with men as with nations, a ray of clear light reveals the shams and shortcomings of what is hastily styled success. The pushing, elbowing fellow gets ahead in the struggle of life, but his success is a questionable one. The bargaining man, who, partly by instinct and partly by practice, judges everything from the point of view, "How is that going to affect me?" will no doubt make money. Even his most disinterested advice pivots on the thought, "What will pay me best?" as the magnet surely wheels to the pole. But when all is done, to have achieved this artistic perfection of self-seeking is a sorry account to give of life.

Thus, the very successes on which we plume ourselves are sometimes badges of disaster, as we ourselves may secretly know if others do not. "When one composes long speeches," says Jarno, "with a view to shame his neighbors, he should speak them to a looking-glass." If not a hypocrite or a vain man, he may find himself blushing at the thought _de me fabula narratur_. The only alteration that our satire on others may require is to change the name of the folly or fault we lash, and then the stripes will be merited by ourselves. The other day Temple and I listened to a discourse of the Rev. Dr. Waddell of St Magdalen's on the perils of novel-reading. I think the worthy doctor really refrains from that sin; he is certainly severe on those who are given to it. "That fat man," said Temple, as we strolled away from St. Magdalen's sanctuary, "is too greedy, too gluttonous to listen to any cry but that of his own stomach. His god is his belly. His indifference to the sufferings of others amounts to a disease."

"What disease do you call it?" I asked.

"Fatty degeneration of the heart," replied Temple, with a laugh. On the other hand, quite shocked at people who "make pigs" of themselves, is Mrs. Pavanne, who starves her stomach to beautify her back, and who, I assure you, would prefer after three days' fasting a new boiled silk and trimmings to any similarly treated leg of mutton and capers.

Grundy is a model of social demeanor and domesticity, but occasionally cheats in a bargain wherever it is safe; Gregory, honest as the day, gets tipsy. Let Gregory remember his own weakness before scorning Grundy, and let Grundy respect the good in Gregory before holding him up to disgrace. The question is often not whether X is a saint and Y a Satan, but rather what road a man's indulgence takes. Is it body or spirit that rules him--his fear, lust, vanity, gluttony, surliness, or sloth? his humility, generosity, piety, sense of justice, sense of duty? Is his cardinal weakness a vice or only a foible--a crime that degrades or only a pettiness that narrows him?

If we hold with Scripture that he who ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city, we must not give all the laurels of success to the mighty, wealthy, witty, and renowned. Poor John Jones, the clerk yonder at a thousand a year, if we reckon at anything gentleness, courage, simplicity, devotion to mother, wife, and babes, has made as great a success of life as old Rollin Ritchie, the head of the house. You would imagine a first use of wealth to be the liberty to pick at will one's employees and allies, one's friends and agents, to repel the dishonest and rebuke the impudent, dealing with those whom one chooses to deal with, where personal choice can fairly be exercised; but such a privilege is Utopian in business, even among men of fortune, and envied Ritchie has little more freedom than humble Jones. Besides, the pursuit of startling success, though it often ruins possibilities of contentment, rarely creates them. Frédéric Soulié, having had the misfortune to gain $16,000 in one year by his pen, refused a government place at $3,000, with leisure to write an occasional play or a novel; he was eager to produce half a dozen plays and novels in a twelvemonth, says a biographer, and to repeat his $16,000; and he died of work and watching in two years more.

We are not, in these kindly Christmas days, to cynically deny to unpromising careers all power of recovery. Temple was telling me the other day of this instance known to him: Honorius had an exceedingly dissolute son, who pursued his vicious courses almost unchecked by parental rein, until he seemed to think his iniquities the rather fostered than forbidden. But one day a friend of both questioned the father why he allowed his son such abused license? "Sir," replied he, "if my son chooses to go to the devil, as he is now fast going, he alone must take the consequences." The conversation being reported to our young rake, he was so affected by the view of his responsibility, which he now appreciated for the first time, as to turn back toward the way of virtue. And as before he had conceived his father in some sort liable for those scandalous excesses, so now, being driven from that strange error, he chooses for himself the path of honor and usefulness.

In judging unsuccessful lives, too, we need to make large allowance for the unknown elements of fortune. "It is fate," says the Greek adage, "that bringeth good and bad to men; nor can the gifts of the immortals be refused." But we can find justification for charitable judgments without resorting to this general theory. We discover one youth, who promised well, ruined by a bad choice of profession, while a second, who selected well, finds the immediate problem in life to be not personal eminence, but providing for a wife and half a dozen children: and if he does fitly provide for them, pray, why set down his life, however pruned of its first ambitious pinions, as a failure?

So, finally, our unaspiring old-year homily simply chimes in with the traditional spirit of Christmastide--season of hopeful words and wishes, of kindness for the struggling, of encouragement for the discouraged, of charity for the so-called failures.

RIBBONS AND CORONETS AT MARKET RATES.

It is said that a Yankee has arranged to furnish foreign titles (warranted genuine) of "earl or count for $10,000; European orders, from $250 to $10,000; membership in foreign scientific and literary societies, $250 and upward." The story is plausible. Impecunious princes and potentates have been known to replenish their purses in this way, though hitherto usually by private sale rather than market quotations. It is not probable that our ingenious countryman has the Order of the Seraphim or of the Annonciade at disposal, or that he can supply the Golden Fleece to whoever will "gif a good prishe," or even that he would pretend to furnish the Black Eagle of Prussia in quantities to suit purchasers. He can hardly be the medium of creating many Knights of the Garter, nor can the Bath or the St. Michael and St. George very well be in his list of decorations "to order." But we know from the Paris and Vienna fairs that a Cross of the Legion is obtainable by Americans of the mercantile class; and as for the Lion and the Sun, it was an order created by some bygone shah for the express purpose of rewarding strangers who had rendered service to Persia; and what service more substantial, pray, than helping to fill the Persian purse? When you come to central and southern Europe, titles are going a-begging, and hard-up princelets will presumably be eager to raise the wind with them.

And there will be buyers as well as sellers. To the democratic mind a royal star or ribbon is an object of befitting reverence. None of our countrymen would, indeed, on purchasing a title, really ask to be addressed as "Your lordship," or even to be familiarly called Grand Forester or Sublime Bootjack to His Serene Highness--unless in private, by some very much indulged servitor or judicious retainer. But though the badge of nobility may not be worn in the streets by the happy purchaser, for fear of attracting a rabble of the curious, he can fondly gaze upon it in the privacy of home, or try it on for the admiration of the domestic circle, or haply submit it to the inspection of discreet friends.

The case is different with the "bogus diploma" trade. Business and not vanity is doubtless the ruling motive with the foreigners who strut in plumage bought of the Philadelphia "university." The diploma of M. D. is worth its price for display before the eyes of the patients waiting in the "doctor's" office, while to Squeers of Dotheboys Hall the degree of A. M. is good for at least three new pupils, and Ph. D. for a dozen. I presume that in some of the foreign magazines and weekly newspapers of a certain class, D. D. or L.L. D. has a real cash value of at least five per cent. more in pay, or perhaps it may turn the scale in favor of an article which, without that honorary signature, might be put in the waste-paper basket. So long as such practical results can be had the diploma trade is likely to flourish, with full variety offered to buyers.

Now, it is not impossible to turn to trade account an Order of the Elephant, of the Iron Crown, of the Legion of Honor, or of the Medjidieh, as probably shrewd mechanics,contractors, and tradesmen in America and England can attest. But while this is an additional inducement to buyers, I am sure the new industry appeals to a loftier emotion than that of mere money-making. America, in fact, is ripe for this improvement. The modern phrase of ambition here in America is "social status;" and dealers in heraldry are doing a business so thriving in coats of arms for seal rings and scented note-paper, that I fancy it is this that has suggested the trade in noble titles. The village of Podunk looks down on the neighboring town of Hardscrabble. "Hardscrabble," say the scornful Podunkers, "plumes itself on its wealth, but Podunk prides herself on her birth--on her extremely old families!" In fact you find all over the republic people talking of their aristocratic families, and their "refined neighborhood," and "refined birth"--even where, after all, it may be only a case of refined petroleum.

Here, then, is the sphere and the opportunity for the enterprising middleman. He appeals to a tuft-hunting instinct so deep in human nature that the mere surface difference of republic or monarchy hardly touches it. In a London church you will see a pew full of ladies' maids, and presently there is a great crowding and squeezing, and a low whisper of "make room for Lady Philippa." It is only another lady's maid joining her friends; but they all get titles by reflection. Turn from this scene to the New York area steps, and the artful little rascal who is peddling strawberries, says to Bridget, who answers the bell, "Have some berries, _lady_?" knowing that this will make a market, if anything can. The fact is, we all like to be "Colonel" and "Deacon" and "Doctor," instead of simple Jones, Brown, and Robinson; calling us "the judge" or "alderman" is a perpetual titillation of a pleasant feeling. "Good morning, Mr. Secretary," or, "I hope you are very well, State Senator," is a greeting that carries a kind of homage with it; and from that you go upward in titular recognition of official eminence until you come to "His Great Glorious and most Excellent Majesty, who reigns over the Kingdoms of Thunaparanta and Tampadipa and all the Umbrella-Bearing Chiefs of the Eastern Country, the King of the Rising Sun, Lord of the Celestial Elephants, Master of Many White Elephants, the Great Chief of Righteousness, King of Burmah."

_Macte virtute_ I would say, then, to the peddlers of stars, crosses, garters, and A. S. S.'s. There are poverty-stricken principalities and hard-up beys and khedives enough to find ribbons for a thousand American buttonholes, and to turn ten thousand of our exemplary fellow citizens to chevaliers. An envious public sentiment might prevent the wearing of all the ribbons and crosses that a liberal man of means could buy; but decorations, like doorplates, are "so handy to have in the house." The centennial year, by bringing to our shores a shoal of titled personages, has presumably whetted the appetite of our people for heraldic distinctions. But for years before we had even the village tailor appearing occasionally in the local newspaper as Sir Knight Shears, and the apothecary as Most Worthy Grand Commander and Puissant Potentate Senna. If it is pleasant for Bobby Shears and Sammy Senna to be knighted by their cronies and customers, how much more agreeable to the American mind a decoration and investiture from a real prince!

The possibilities, to be sure, are limited. Aristocratic exclusiveness confines the Garter to twenty-five persons, the Order of the Thistle is only for Scotch nobles, and the Iron Cross of Savoy is purely Italian; military or naval services are required for the St. George of Russia and the Victoria Cross; and it is to be feared that some sort of illustrious services would be needed even for the Leopold of Belgium, the Iron Cross of Prussia, the St. James of Spain, or the Tower and Sword of Portugal. But in the little principalities of Germany, where the people are ravenous for titular distinctions, there is a large supply; and as, in fine, there are said to be sixscore orders of chivalry scattered over both Christian and Mussulman lands, a wealthy aspirant may not despair of reaching one or two of them without the pangs of knight errantry.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

COMPLICATIONS OF THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

Baron von Weber, a distinguished English engineer, predicts that the Channel tunnel between England and France, if constructed, will be the cause of great annoyance to English railway managers, and bring forward some very acute observations in support of this opinion.

_The English railway system was a world of its own_; it was an insular world which could hardly have been more peculiar if it had belonged to another quarter of the globe altogether. All this, however, will change as soon as the tunnel is pierced between England and the Continent.

_England will then no longer be an island, but a peninsula_, and although the isthmus which connects it with the Continent will be submarine, its effect on the railway system will be exactly the same as if it were a natural one.

If the importance of the object to be attained by the Channel tunnel is to bear any rational proportion at all to the means required, the tunnel will be constructed only if a very considerable goods traffic between the two shores is expected, besides the large passenger traffic. Such a traffic, which would have to compete with sea carriage, is only possible for goods if shifting the loads is completely avoided, and the wagons and trucks can run from England far into the Continent and _vice versa_. Now the English exports to the Continent far exceed the imports from it. The English trucks, therefore, loaded with rails, machines, coals, cotton goods, etc., will, after passing the tunnel, be scattered far and wide on the continental railways (whose length exceeds threefold that of the whole British system), and will have to run distances five times as great as from London to the Highlands.

The English railway companies, who are now able to follow their rolling stock almost with the naked eye, who know exactly how long each truck will take to run the short distances in their island, who can, therefore, provide proper loads both for the up and down journeys, hence making the best use of their stock, and who are always aware in whose hands their trucks are, will suddenly see a great number of them disappear out of their sight and beyond their control on long journeys and unknown routes. They will no longer be able to calculate, even approximately, when the stock will return. England will therefore lose an important percentage of its rolling stock, which will be but incompletely replaced by the foreign wagons, which will remain in England a much shorter time on account of the shorter distances. The deficiency will have to be made up at considerable expense. The stock will travel as far as the shores of the Black and Egean seas, to the east coast of the Baltic, to the southernmost point of Italy, and to the Pyrenees; it will pass over the lines of a dozen or more foreign companies, be brought under the influence of three or four different legislatures, police regulations, by-laws, Government inspections, etc., and where three or four different languages are officially in use.

Quite new legal obligations and intricacies will appear if the companies having to forward goods direct into foreign countries send their wagons into the territories of different jurisdictions. It will not be of much use if the English companies attempt formally to confine their transactions to the French railway which joins theirs. Claims from Turkish, Russian, Austrian, Italian, German, Belgian, and French railways will still be brought against them, in some cases requiring direct and immediate communication.

A TOWN OF DWARFS.

A writer in the London "Times" describes the effect of excessive intermarriage on the inhabitants of Protés, a little town in the province of Santander, Spain. Until eighteen or nineteen years ago, the village was quite shut off from the rest of the world. Its inhabitants, from their ever-recurring intermarriages, had become quite a race of dwarfs. On market days the priests might be seen, with long black coats and high black hats, riding in to purchase the simple provision for the week's consumption--men of little intelligence and no learning, sprung from the lowest ranks. About eighteen years ago the Galician laborers, or Gallegos, from the mines of Galicia, swarmed into the town for lodgings, etc., and since their colonization the population has increased in strength, stature, education, intellect, and morality. Their intellects, also, have improved--intellects which had been stunted, dwarfed, and ruined by their frequent intermarriages.

WHOOPING COUGH.

According to Dr. Sturges, an English physician, whooping cough is not always to be escaped by preventing contagion, for at a certain age the disposition toward this disease is so great that the child will originate it. He says: "Whooping cough is a nervous disease of immature life, due immediately, like nervous asthma, to a morbid exaltation of sensibility of the bronchial mucous membrane. Although possible in a modified form at all ages, it has its period of special liability and full development simultaneously with that time of life when the nervous system is irritable and the mechanism of respiration diaphragmatic. A child of the proper age with catarrh and cough is thus on the very brink of whooping cough. A large proportion of such children will develop the disease for themselves upon casual provocation, all contagion and all epidemic influence apart." Therefore he does not think contagion plays the important part generally supposed, and the assumption of a specific morbid poison is in his opinion entirely gratuitous. As to treatment he says:

"The specific remedies for whooping cough (which have their season and may be said now to include all drugs whatever of any potency) have all of them a certain testimony in their favor. They agree in a single point: whether by their nauseousness, the grievous method of their application, or the disturbance they bring to the child's habits and surroundings, the best vaunted remedies--emetics, sponging of the larynx, ill-flavored inhalation, change of scene, beating with the rod--all are calculated to _impress_ the patient, and find their use accordingly.

BRITISH ASSOCIATION NOTES.

The committee appointed to test experimentally Ohm's law, that with any conductor the electromotive force is proportioned to the current produced, reports that this law is absolutely correct. If a conductor of iron, platinum, or German silver of one square centimetre in section has a resistance of one ohm for infinitely small currents, its resistance when acted on by an electromotive force of one volt (provided its temperature is kept the same) is not altered by so much as the millionth of a millionth part. This fine result is the more gratifying since Ohm's law is entirely empirical and does not rest at all upon logical deduction.

The vast amount of water circulating through the solid earth is shown by the calculations of the committee on the underground waters of the Permian and New Red sandstones.

Taking an average rainfall of 30 inches per annum, and granting that only 10 inches percolate into the rock, the supply of water stored up by the Permian and New Red formations was estimated by the committee to amount to 140,800,000 gallons per square mile per year. This rate would give, for the 10,000 square miles covered by the formations, in Great Britain, 1,408,000,000,000 gallons. Only a very small proportion of this amount is made available for the supply of cities and towns.

The subject of the chemical constitution of matter was taken up by Mr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., who amused and interested the chemical section by a number of drawings of tetrahedra, octahedra, etc., on to which he dexterously stuck representations of oxygen atoms, chlorine atoms, and so on. His general endeavor seemed to be to convince his auditors that in most basic salts oxygen is divalent, being in direct combination with the acidifying constituent of the molecule, but that when oxygen is not so directly related to this constituent in basic salts it is tetravalent.

In the geological section, Dr. Bryce observed that there are two lines along which earthquakes are commonly observed in Scotland, the one running from Inverness, through the north of Ireland, to Galway bay, and the other passing east and west through Comrie. The phenomena of earthquakes in the latter district are now being systematically observed and recorded, under the direction of a committee appointed by the British Association, seismometers being employed on the two principles of vertical pendulum and delicately poised cylinders. Arrangements have been made to ascertain whether shocks in this region can be traced to any common central point, there being reason to believe them to be connected with a mass of granite in Glen Lednoch, whose position was indicated on a map exhibited by the author. He thought the Comrie earthquakes may be explained on Mr. Mallet's theory of a shock produced by the fall of huge masses of rock from the roof of huger caverns in the earth's crust.

In a paper on the plants of the coal measures, Prof. W. C. Williamson expressed his strong conviction that the flora of the coal measures would ultimately become the battlefield on which the question of evolution with reference to the origin of species would be fought out. There would probably never be found another unbroken period of a duration equal to that of the coal measures. Further, the roots, seeds, and the whole reproductive structure of the coal-measure plants are all present in an unequalled state of preservation. With reference to calamites, Prof. Williamson said that what had formerly been regarded as such had turned out to be only casts in sand and mud of the pith of the true plant. He had lately obtained a specimen of calamite with the bark on which showed a nucleal cellular pith, surrounded by canals running lengthwise down the stem; outside of these canals wedges of true vascular structure; and lastly, a cellular bark.

In the department of anthropology, Dr. Phené read a paper "On Recent Remains of Totemism in Scotland." He defined Totemism as a form of idolatry; a totem was either a living creature or a representation of one, mostly an animal, very seldom a man. It was considered, from reference to Pictish and other devices, that a dragon was a favorite representative among such people of Britain as had not been brought under Roman sway.

Mr. W. J. Knowles read a paper "On the Classification of Arrowheads," recommending the use of the following terms: stemmed, indented, triangular, leaf-shaped, kite-shaped, and lozenge-shaped. Commander Cameron, the African explorer, mentioned that arrow-heads of the same shape as many exhibited by Mr. Knowles were in use in various African tribes. One shape was formed so as to cause the arrow to rotate, and was principally used for shooting game at long distances. The shape of the arrows varied according to the taste of the makers; in one district there were forty or fifty different shapes.

Commander Cameron gave drawings of the men with horns, a tribe of which has been found by Captain J. S. Hay. According to the reproductions of these drawings by the illustrated papers, these horns are very prominent, and project forward from the cheekbone.

Mr. Gwin-Jeffreys, whose experience in deep-sea dredging makes his opinion valuable, said that telegraph engineers did not sufficiently take account of the sharp stones on the sea bottom, but assumed too readily that they had to deal with a soft bottom only.

Mr. John Murray of the Challenger expedition announced that meteoric dust is found in the sea ooze, a result that follows as a matter of course from the discovery that this cosmic dust is falling all over the earth.

AN ENGLISH CROP.

The yearly trial of harvesting machines was made this year at Leamington, and the rye grass field, where the reapers and mowers were worked, has its history given in the "Engineer," London. "It will be interesting if we first describe this rye grass crop and the preceding crop. A crop of wheat was grown in this field of seven acres last year, and by the end of September it was well cultivated and sown with rye grass seed. Three crops before this have been cut this year, the weight of which was about eight tons to the acre for each crop, and as the selling price was 1s. 6d. (36 cents) per cwt., this was at the rate of £12 ($60) per acre per crop, or £36 per acre for the three crops. Had not the last crop been set apart for the reaper and mower trials, it would have been cut three weeks ago, when there were again about eight tons to the acre. As it was, however, last week the crop had gone too much to seed, and was too much laid for being of prime quality; the result of which is, Mr. Tough, the owner, reckons the plants are too much spent to stand well through a second year, and he therefore contemplates turning it over in the spring for mangolds. Mr. Tough calculated, however, that there were ten tons to the acre this cut, and lots of carts and vans came to take the best of it; that is, the parts which were not laid and yellow at the bottom, at the same price, 1s. 6d. per cwt. The carts are weighed in over a weigh-bridge, and weighed out again after the buyers have loaded up as much as they choose or require. We may add this is better than selling by square measure. As to the next growth, Mr. Tough says he shall get two more fair cuts this autumn if the weather be warm, and he expects the two together will weigh eight tons per acre more. As there will be a certain sale for this at 1s. 6d. per cwt., this year's yield will realize the great return of £60 ($300) per acre.

INFLUENCE OF WHITE COLORS.

Prof. Wallace gave at Glasgow some curious speculations based upon the peculiarities observable in white animals. He had been discussing at great length and with rare knowledge the distribution of butterflies, remarking that some of the island groups were noticeably light-colored, and endeavored to connect their color with their environment as follows:

Some very curious physiological facts, bearing upon the presence or absence of white colors in the higher animals, have lately been adduced by Dr. Ogle. It has been found that a colored or dark pigment in the olfactory region of the nostrils is essential to perfect smell, and this pigment is rarely deficient except when the whole animal is pure white. In these cases the creature is almost without smell or taste. This, Dr. Ogle believes, explains the curious case of the pigs in Virginia adduced by Mr. Darwin, white pigs being poisoned by a poisonous root, which does not affect black pigs. Mr. Darwin imputed this to a constitutional difference accompanying the dark color, which rendered what was poisonous to the white-colored animals quite innocuous to the black. Dr. Ogle, however, observes, that there is no proof that the black pigs eat the root, and he believes the more probable explanation to be that it is distasteful to them, while the white pigs, being deficient in smell and taste, eat it, and are killed. Analogous facts occur in several distinct families. White sheep are killed in the Tarentino by eating Hypericum Criscum, while black sheep escape: white rhinoceroses are said to perish from eating Euphorbia Candelabrum; and white horses are said to suffer from poisonous food, where colored ones escape. Now it is very improbable that a constitutional immunity from poisoning by so many distinct plants should in the case of such widely different animals be always correlated with the same difference of color; but the facts are readily understood if the senses of smell and taste are dependent on the presence of a pigment which is deficient in wholly white animals. The explanation has, however, been carried a step further, by experiments showing that the absorption of odors by dead matter, such as clothing, is greatly affected by color, black being the most powerful absorbent, then blue, red, yellow, and lastly white. We have here a physical cause for the sense inferiority of totally white animals which may account for their rarity in nature. For few, if any, wild animals are wholly white. The head, the face, or at least the muzzle or the nose, are generally black. The ears and eyes are also often black; and there is reason to believe that dark pigment is essential to good hearing, as it certainly is to perfect vision. We can therefore understand why white cats with blue eyes are so often deaf; a peculiarity we notice more readily than their deficiency of smell or taste.

If then the prevalence of white-coloration is generally accompanied with some deficiency in the acuteness of the most important senses, this color becomes doubly dangerous, for it not only renders its possessor more conspicuous to its enemies, but at the same time makes it less ready in detecting the presence of danger. Hence, perhaps, the reason why white appears more frequently in islands where competition is less severe and enemies less numerous and varied. Hence, also, a reason why albinoism, although freely occurring in captivity, never maintains itself in a wild state, while melanism does. The peculiarity of some islands in having all their inhabitants of dusky colors--as the Galapagos--may also perhaps be explained on the same principles; for poisonous fruits or seeds may there abound, which weed out all white or light-colored varieties, owing to their deficiency of smell and taste. We can hardly believe, however, that this would apply to white-colored butterflies, and this may be a reason why the effect of an insular habitat is more marked in these insects than in birds or mammals. But though inapplicable to the lower animals, this curious relation of sense acuteness with colors may have had some influence on the development of the higher human races. If light tints of the skin were generally accompanied by some deficiency in the senses of smell, hearing, and vision, the white could never compete with the darker races, so long as man was in a very low and savage condition, and wholly dependent for existence on the acuteness of his senses. But as the mental faculties become more fully developed and more important to his welfare than mere sense acuteness, the lighter tints of skin, and hair, and eyes, would cease to be disadvantageous whenever they were accompanied by superior brain power. Such variations would then be preserved; and thus may have arisen the Xanthochroic race of mankind, in which we find a high development of intellect accompanied by a slight deficiency in the acuteness of the senses as compared with the darker forms.

AN INVOLVED ACCIDENT.

Though American recklessness of life is proverbial among foreigners, we may be thankful that India-rubber bags of explosive gases are not carried by ignorant boys through our streets, as in Newcastle, England. The practice resulted by a singular chain of mishaps in a violent explosion. The first error was in using a bag for conveying an explosive gas; the second in using a _leaky_ bag; the third in the experimenter, who put coal gas into a bag containing oxygen; the fourth in sending a boy to deliver it. Then comes a chapter of results. The boy became tired and stopped to rest, dropping the bag on the pavement. Just as he did so a passer-by lit his pipe and threw the burning match down. By chance it fell upon the innocent looking bag, and probably just at the spot where it leaked. After the consequent explosion only two pieces of the bag could be found, one of which was thrown through the top windows of the bank. Even the sound wave, or wave of concussion, had a mind to distinguish itself. It entirely missed the first floor windows of the bank, and left them uninjured, though the windows in both the ground floor and the second floor were broken. The wave seems to have crossed the street, smashing the ground windows there, and then been deflected back across the street and upward to the top story of the bank.

AN OLD AQUEDUCT SYSTEM.

Ancient life is not usually considered to have been very cleanly, but it is to the credit of the Romans that as much as 2,200 years ago they made up their minds to reject the water of the Tiber as unfit to drink. They hunted for springs in the mountains, and in the course of a few centuries so many aqueducts were built that Rome had theoretically a better supply of water than any modern city enjoys. Practically, however, the Romans suffered from a peculiar kind of water pilfering. Instead of 400,000,000 gallons daily which the springs furnished, the city received only 208,000,000 gallons. This immense loss, says a careful paper by the Austrian engineer, E. H. d'Avidor, arose partly through neglect of the necessary repairs in the aqueducts, but still more through the water being positively _stolen_. For one of the principal favors by which the State and the emperors were in the habit of rewarding minor services was by granting concessions for the _lost_ water; that is, for the water which escaped through the overflow of the reservoirs, cisterns, and public fountains, or through the defects in the aqueducts and mains. The consequence, of course, was that every landed proprietor who had obtained a concession for the waste water escaping from an aqueduct passing through his grounds was anxious to increase this waste as much as possible--and from this wish to intentional injury was but a step. The overseers and slaves in charge were constantly bribed to abstain from repairing damages which had arisen, or to cause new ones to arise, and these abuses reached such a pitch that one aqueduct (Tepula) brought _no_ water whatever to Rome during several years, the whole having been wasted, or rather abstracted on its way. The irregularities of the water supply were still further increased by the nature of the mains and distributing pipes, which, as I have mentioned, were mere lead plates soldered into a pear-shaped section, incapable of resisting even the most moderate pressure and liable to injury by a common knife, so that any evil-disposed person could tap the main almost wherever he pleased. At a later period, indeed, the Romans appear to have used short clay pipes; lengths of such mains have been discovered, consisting of two-feet spigot and socket pipes carefully laid in and covered with a bed of concrete. These have outlasted all the lead pipes, and are still frequently found in good condition.

In the reign of Augustus, when Rome had about 350,000 inhabitants within its walls, there was a supply of something like 680 gallons per head; that is, about forty times as much as the valuation for Vienna. But there were in ancient Rome no less than 1,352 public fountains, 591 jet fountains, 19 large fortified camps or barracks, 95 thermæ or immense public baths, and 39 arenas or theatres, all of which were supplied with a superfluity of constantly flowing water. The reservoirs contained only about 6,000,000 gallons, and the distribution must have been very irregular, and it has been calculated that some houses received ten times as much water as others. Just as the Western miner reckons the quantity of water by the _inch_, the Roman estimated it by the _quinarius_, or amount that could flow through a pipe of one and a quarter _finger_ diameter, under a head of twelve inches. This would yield about ninety-two gallons in twelve hours, and the price was so low that the householder paid only about half a cent _per year_ for each gallon supplied daily. Ninety-two gallons a day would therefore cost less than half a dollar a year. (In New York it would cost nearly $18.) But though cheap, the water was not a vested right of all citizens. The poor had it for nothing in the ample baths, wash houses, and fountains, but householders could only obtain the right of water supply by a petition to the consul, and in later times to the emperor himself; even then, however, with difficulty. It was a matter of favor and a reward of merit, that applied only to the person to whom it was granted, not transferable by gift or sale, and which lapsed with the death of the owner or the sale of the house for which it had been granted.

GALVANISM CANNOT RESTORE EXHAUSTED VITALITY.

Dr. B. W. Richardson says that artificial respiration is a much more effective means of restoring the drowned or asphyxiated than galvanism. By the use of an intermittent current of galvanism it is possible to make the respiratory muscles of an animal recently dead act in precise imitation of life, and the heart can be excited into brisk contraction by the same means. But the result was that "the muscles excited by the current dropped quickly into irrevocable death through becoming exhausted under the stimulus, and that in fact the galvanic battery, according to our present knowledge of its use in these cases, is an all but certain instrument of death. By subjecting animals to death from the vapor of chloroform in the same atmosphere, and treating one set by artificial respiration with the double-acting pump, and the other set by artificial respiration excited by galvanism, I found that the first would recover in the proportion of five out of six, the second in proportion of one out of six. Further, I found that if during the performance of mechanical artificial respiration the heart were excited by galvanism, death is all but invariable." This results from the fact that "the passage of a galvanic current through the muscles of a body recently dead confers on those muscles no new energy; that the current in its passage only excites temporary contraction; that the force of contraction resident in the muscles themselves is but educed by the excitation, and to strike the life out of the muscles by the galvanic shock without feeding the force, expended by contraction, from the centre of the body, is a fatal principle of practice."

CURIOUS OPTICAL EXPERIMENTS.

Prof. Nipher of the Washington university at St. Louis describes some optical illusions, easily tried and apparently very singular, as follows: 1. Fold a sheet of writing paper into a tube whose diameter is about three cm. Keeping both eyes open, look through the tube with one eye, and look at the hand with the other, the hand being placed close by the tube. An extraordinary phenomenon will be observed. A hole the size of the tube will appear cut through the hand, through which objects are distinctly visible. That part of the tube between the eye and the hand will appear transparent, as though the hand was seen through it. This experiment is not new, but I have never seen it described. The explanation of it is quite evident.

2. Drop a blot of ink upon the palm of the hand, at the point where the hole appears to be, and again observe as before. Unless the attention be strongly concentrated upon objects seen through the tubes the ink-spot will be visible within the tube (apparently), but that part of the hand upon which it rests will be invisible, unless special attention be directed to the hand. Ordinarily the spot will appear opaque. By directing the tube upon brilliantly illuminated objects, it will, however, appear transparent, and may be made to disappear by proper effort. By concentrating the attention upon the hand, it may also be seen within the tube (especially if strongly illuminated), that part immediately surrounding the ink spot appearing first.

3. Substitute for the hand a sheet of unruled paper, and for the ink spot a small hole cut through the paper. The small hole will appear within the tube, distinguishing itself by its higher illumination, the paper immediately surrounding it being invisible. Many other curious experiments will suggest themselves. For example: if an ink spot somewhat larger than the tube be observed, the lower end of the tube will appear to be blackened on the inside.

ICE MACHINES.

Ice machines are constructions designed to employ the heat generated from coal in extracting the heat stored up in water at the ordinary temperature. One ton of coal will make 15 tons of ice, and yet only about 1 per cent. of the power used is utilized, these machines being especially wasteful of heat. The work is done through the medium of some volatile fluid, like ether or ammonia, or by the use of previously cooled air. Raoul Pictet, who advocates the employment of another fluid--sulphurous acid solution--says that every machine must comply with five conditions: 1. Too great pressure must not occur in any part of the apparatus. 2. The volatile liquid employed ought to be so volatile that there will be no danger of air entering. 3. It is necessary to have a system of compression which does not require the constant introduction of grease or of foreign materials into the machine. 4. The liquid must be stable, it must not decompose by the frequent changes of condition, and it must not exert chemical action on the metals of which the apparatus is constructed. 5. Lastly, it is necessary, as far as possible, to remove all danger of explosion and of fire, and for this reason the liquid must not be combustible. The only substance, in his opinion, that answers these requirements is sulphurous acid. This subject is a very important one. If the utilization of heat could be carried to 3 per cent., as in most machines, it might be possible to make ice cheaper in New York than to gather, store, and transport it.

AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES.

Some months ago the telegraph announced that a Congress of Americanistes had met in Nancy in France, and few people in this country could imagine who the congressmen were or whether they were of this country. It was, in fact, the meeting of a society, composed chiefly of Europeans, which means to prosecute studies in the history, language, and character of American aborigines. This is a laudable work. America probably offers the most important field for ethnological study in the world. The great extent of her two continents gave the freest scope for the complete development of whatever capacity for civilization her people had; and yet savagism continued here for many centuries after it had ceased in Europe. Thus the student in going back three hundred years can penetrate the past as far in this country as he can reach in Europe by pursuing his inquiries back for two to three thousand years. Under ordinary circumstances this fact would make American history much easier to study than those of Europe where the remnants left by the savage tribes are dimmed by an extraordinary progress or covered by the débris of centuries of movement. But the truth is it is about as easy to learn the habits of the ancient Britons as those of the American tribes, even the most civilized, five centuries ago. This is partly due to the wanton destruction of valuable records by the early conquerors and partly to the prepossession that most men, even able ones, seem to be shackled with; namely, that the origin of America's former inhabitants is to be sought in some people of Asia. If they would leave that question for the twentieth century to decide, and begin a painstaking inquiry into what was going on in this country before its discovery, ask not _who_, but what sort of men inhabited it, their habits and their relations, the gentlemen who compose this society of Americanistes would probably reach valuable results. There is plenty to occupy them. If they do not want to grapple at once such a knotty subject as the relation of the Mound Builders to the existing tribes, let them explore Spain for relics of the Aztecs. It is highly probable that records of the most precious character are still to be found there in public archives and in private hands, the descendants perhaps of common soldiers of Cortes's army, who were quite likely to send home during and after the Conquest things that were odd and quaint to them and which would be invaluable to us now. As it is, the time of the Nancy Congress of Americanistes has been too much occupied with efforts to make the ancient inhabitants of this country a tag to one of the numerous Asian migrations. All such attempts have been failures, for the simple reason that we do not have facts enough to prove _any_ theory. Still they have done some good work, and though the subject is not of the most importance, we can but think that M. Comettant's paper on "Music in America" before its discovery by Columbus must have been as correct in purpose as it appears daring in subject.

* * * * *

Some seeds will germinate when placed between pieces of ice and kept at a freezing temperature; and it is thought that, this method will afford an easy means of selecting varieties of seed which will bear a cold climate.

* * * * *

The explosion in the coal mines at Jabin, Belgium, last February, was due to the ignition of fine coal powder suspended in the air.

* * * * *

A Vienna lady, who had been maid of honor to the Empress Maria Theresa, lately died in that city at the age of one hundred and nineteen years. That is certainly a well established case of longevity extending beyond a century.

* * * * *

The rare metal vanadium is worth 13,000 francs ($2,600) per pound; about eight times as much as gold. And yet vanadium is, as Dr. Hayes has shown, a very widely diffused metal. It forms, however, only a mere trace in most rocks.

* * * * *

W. Siemens has lately determined velocity of propagation of electricity in suspended iron telegraph wires, and finds it to be between 30,000 and 35,000 miles per second. Kirchhoff had determined it at 21,000 miles and Wheatstone at 61,900 miles.

* * * * *

Prof. Forel of Switzerland has proved that the water of lakes oscillates almost constantly from one bank to another, and this not only from end to end, but also from side to side. Thus the Swiss lakes have two _Seiches_, as they are called, in opposite directions.

* * * * *

The sewage schemes have had a good many indignant critics and fervent defenders. Of the former is Mr. Louis Thompson, who says that the sewage discharged into seacoast harbors floats on the surface, being lighter than salt water. Its solid portions are cast up on the shore and in shoal places, there to become the food of animals, among which are shell fish, that serve for man's food.

* * * * *

Boys' kites can be kept from plunging by making both the wood cross pieces in the form of a bow, instead of flat. The string is placed a little above the centre of the upright bow, and a very light tail attached. These kites are very steady, and if a string attached to one side of the centre is pulled after the kite has risen, it can be made to fly as much as thirty degrees from the wind. For this reason it is proposed to use kites for bringing a vessel to windward.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Mrs. Annie Edwards's last book[K] does not open well in point of style. The first paragraph of the first chapter is: "She was a woman of nearly thirty when I first saw her; a woman spiritless and worn beyond her years," etc. This beginning not only a chapter but a book with a pronoun implying an antecedent is very bad, in the low and vulgar way of badness. It brings to mind the superhuman daily efforts of the "American humorist" of journalism to be funny; and it should be left to him and to his kind. And in the next paragraph Mrs. Edwards describes her heroine as "walking wearily along the weary street of Chesterford St. Mary." Bad style again, and this time in the way of affectation. A man's way may be weary if he is tired or weak; but not even then should it be so called, when he has just been spoken of as weary himself, or as walking wearily; and weary as applied descriptively to a village street is almost nonsense. These defects are not important, but they arrest attention as being at the very opening of the story. And it must be confessed that for a chapter or two "A Point of Honor" is rather slight in texture and commonplace. It is, however, interesting enough to lead us on, and the reader who holds his way into the third or fourth chapter is repaid. The authoress then warms up to her work, and begins to show her quality, which is that of a true literary artist. We do not say a great artist, be it observed, but a true artist. She paints only _genre_ pictures; but unlike most works of that class (on canvas at least), they are not mere representations of pretty faces and pretty clothes. She works with a real knowledge of the human heart, and her work is full of feeling. She does nothing in the grand style; even her most loving women do not have grand passions; but all her work is truthful and warm with real life, and her earnest people are really in earnest. The story of "A Point of Honor" is interesting, although its incidents are not all out of the common way. Gifford Mohun, the handsome young heir of Yatton, an estate in Devonshire, loves, when he is only twenty, one Jane Grand, a beautiful and sweet-natured girl who is only a year younger than himself. Nothing is known of her history. She herself does not know her own parentage. All this has been concealed from her at her father's request, and with some reason; for it comes out that she is the daughter of a felon, who died in the hulks, by a minor French actress, a modification of whose name, Grandet, she bears. When she knows this, she refuses to taint Mohun's name and life with such dishonor, and he accepts her decision; doing so with two implications on the part of the authoress: first, that he was selfish in doing so at all; next, that doing it he did it coldly and with a false affectation of feeling. He leaves Yatton and its neighborhood, and plunges into dissipation. Jane remains at Chesterford, leading her solitary life and loving him. Meantime the vicar, Mr. Follett, a man of strong nature, much tenderness, and great tact, whose character is admirably drawn, loves Jane, and quietly bides his time. After ten years, however, Mohun returns, walks into Jane's parlor, and asks her to be friends with him. She, loving him no less than ever, assents gladly, and thereafter he is almost domesticated in her cottage. He has become somewhat gross in manner and in speech, as well as in person; but Jane loves him, and watches for his coming, day by day, as when she was a girl. This goes on for some months, with a slight admixture of the curate, when all at once a new personage appears upon the scene. Mohun receives a letter, which he shows to Jane, and asks her advice about. It is from a Matty Fergusson, whom he remembers as the untidy little daughter of some disreputable people he knew something of at a German watering place. She tells a sad tale of destitution, and asks him to recommend her to some of his friends as a governess or companion. He is disgusted and angered at the intrusion, and proposes to send her a five-pound note, or perhaps ten pounds, and so end the matter. But Jane, whom he asks to write the letter for him, is touched with pity for the poor girl's forlornness and suffering, and writes an invitation to her to come to Chesterford and visit her for a week. She brings a Greek horse within the walls of her little Troy. She and Gifford expect to see a poor, meek, limp, shabbily dressed slip of a girl; but Miss Matty Fergusson enters the cottage a tall and magnificently beautiful young woman; her grandeur both of toilet and person quite dwarfing the poor little cottage and its poor little mistress. The end is now visible. Matty Fergusson is the adventuress daughter of an adventuress mother. Nothing was true in her letter except the story of her poverty; and she has played this game with the direct purpose of catching the master of Yatton. She succeeds; and when Jane speaks to him about its being time for his overwhelming young friend to depart, he becomes rude and makes a brutal speech, which undeceives Jane, and kills her love for him. Mohun, however, does not give himself up to the Fergusson without an attempt at freedom, and an endeavor to resume his relations with Jane, whom he now appreciates at her full worth. He confesses and deplores his fault and begs forgiveness, and offers to break with Miss Fergusson at any cost, if Jane will give him back her love. But she, although she forgives, will not receive him again on the old footing, and he drives off with his handsome adventuress wife, and Jane loves and is married to Mr. Follett. The story is told with great and yet with very simple skill, and the characters of the few personages are revealed rather than portrayed. And by the way, we remark upon Mrs. Edwards's ability to interest her readers and work out a story with few materials. She rarely depends for her effects upon more than four or five personages. She is equally reserved in her manner. She does not paint black and white, but with human tints only in light and shadow. In this book Mohun's selfishness is shown with a very delicate hand, and although we are left in no doubt as to his real character, he is dealt with in such an impartial and artistic spirit, that some similarly selfish men will apologize for him and some others will, it may be hoped, read themselves in him and struggle against the worse part of their natures. Jane is, perhaps, more angel than woman, but then a good woman who loves is so often truly angelic with an admixture of human passion that makes her more loveable as well as more loving than any angel ever was, that we cannot find fault with poor Jane's perfection. In reading this book we cannot but remark the common nature of its subject in women's novels nowadays. The themes on which they write endless variations are the selfishness of men, and the unselfishness of women in love. Of the men in the women-written novels of the day, so many are plausible, agreeable, clever, accomplished, heartless creatures; only a few escape the general condemnation, and they are those queer creatures "women's men"--impossible, and bores, like Daniel Deronda. The heroines, major and minor, love devotedly. But George Eliot does not fall into the latter blunder. For some reason she is able to see the feminine as well as the masculine side of social and sexual selfishness. This treatment of men on the part of the sex is remarkable, for women themselves will admit and do admit, in unguarded moments, that there is somewhat less of disinterestedness in this matter on woman's side than on man's. But the point, we suppose, is this, that woman, when she does love with all her heart, loves with a blind devotion, an exclusiveness of admiration and of passion, and a persistency, which she demands from man, which, not having, she doubts whether she is loved at all, and which, it must be confessed, rare in woman, is much more rare in man, with whom indeed it is exceptional. The truth is that man's love is as different from woman's as his body is; but it is, therefore, none the less worth having if she would only think so. Man is made to have less exclusiveness of feeling in this respect than woman has. He would not be man else, nor she woman if she were otherwise. The mistake is in her expectation of receiving exactly the same as she gives. She has found out that she does not get it, or does so very rarely, and the men in women's novels of the Gifford Mohun type are one of the ways in which she proclaims and avenges her wrongs.

--"The Barton Experiment," by "the author of 'Helen's Babies,'"[L] cannot be called a novel--hardly a tale--and yet it is a story--the story of a great "temperance movement" at Barton, which is supposed to be a village somewhere at the west--in Kentucky, we should say, from certain local references. We do not know who the author of Helen's Babies is--he, and Helen, and her babies being alike strangers to us; but he is a clever writer, and a humorist, with no little dramatic power. His personages are studies from nature, and have individuality and life; albeit they reveal a somewhat narrow horizon of observation. He uses largely, but always humorously, the western style of exaggeration; as, for example, when he makes one of his reformers tell a steamboat captain that if he will stop drinking whiskey, he will make a reputation, and "be as famous as the Red River raft or the Mammoth Cave--_the only thing of the sort west of the Alleghanies_." He describes his people in a way that shows that he has them in the eye of his imagination; as in this portrait of a Mrs. Tappelmine: "With face, hair, eyes, and garments of the same color, the color itself being neutral; small, thin, faded, inconspicuous, poorly clad, bent with labors which had yielded no return, as dead to the world as saints strive to be, _yet remaining in the world for the sake of those whom she had often wished out of it_," etc. The book is in every way clever, and its purpose is admirable--the lesson which it is written to teach being that personal effort and personal sacrifice on the part of reformers is necessary to reclaim hard drinkers. But the radical fault of all such moral story writing is that the writer makes his puppets do as he likes. The drinking steamboat captain yields to the persuasions of his friend, and even submits to necessary personal restraint. But how if he had not yielded? Old Tappelmine gives up his whiskey for the sake of money and employment, which inducements are strongly backed by his neutral-colored wife; but how if he had been brutally selfish and immovable? In both these cases, and in all the others, failure was at least quite as likely as success. People in real life cannot be managed as they can upon paper. Still the book contains a truth, and is likely to do good.

--The same publishers have also brought out an illustrated book by Bayard Taylor,[M] which is suitable to the coming holiday season. It is a collection of short tales of adventure in different parts of the world, in which boys take a prominent part. It is one of the fruits of the author's extended travels, and is manly, simple, and healthy--a very good sort of book for those for whom it is intended, which, in these days of mawkish or feverish "juvenile" literature, is saying much for it.

--Why Miss Thacher should call a little book, which contains a little collection of little sketches, "Seashore and Prairie," we do not see. It is rather a big and an affected name for such a slight thing. But it is bright and pleasant, and well suited to the needs of those who cannot fix their attention long upon any subject. We regret to see in it marks of that extravagance and affectation in the use of language which are such common blemishes of style in our ephemeral literature. For example: a very sensible and much needed plea for the preservation of birds, is called "The Massacre of the Innocents;" and we are told that "a St. Bartholomew of birds has been _inaugurated_." Miss Thacher should leave this style of writing to the newspaper reporters.

--The large circle of readers who are interested in Palestine, and the lands and waters round about it, will find Mr. Warner's last book of travel[N] very pleasant reading--full of information and suggestion. He observes closely, describes nature with a true feeling for her beauties, and men with spirit and a fine apprehension of their peculiarities. He is not very reverent, and breaks some idols which have been worshipped. He is not an admirer of the Hebrews, or of anything that is theirs, except their literature. His style is lively and agreeable, but we cannot call it either elegant or correct. He tells some "traveller's stories;" for instance, one about catching an eagle's feather on horseback (pp. 103, 104). True he "has the feather to show;" but on the whole he makes not too many overdrafts upon the credulity of his readers, and does not color much too highly.

--In his latest tale[O] Mr. Yates introduces American characters, following what seems to be the prevailing fashion among English authors, especially those who are not of the first rank. Mr. Yates manages his foreign scenes and characters with good judgment, but his Americans we should not recognize as such without his introduction. The scene of the story is in England. Sir Frederick Randall, a dissolute young nobleman, is condemned to imprisonment, under an assumed name, for forgery. Making his escape, he woos a beautiful and innocent American girl, the daughter of a petroleum millionaire from Oil City. As he is already married, it is necessary to dispose of one wife before he takes another. This he does by throwing madam over a cliff by the seashore. Caught by projecting bushes, she is, without his knowledge, rescued alive by some Americans, who are yachting off the coast. One of these Americans has long loved Minnie Adams, the pretty American girl, but she and her parents are fascinated by Sir Frederick's title and the expected introduction to high-class English society. Minnie marries the would-be murderer, and after a year of trouble and brutal treatment, severe sickness ensues, during which she is nursed by her husband's first and only legal wife. Finally Sir Frederick is murdered by an old comrade of his debaucheries, and the two wives are equitably distributed between the two American gentlemen.

--Messrs. Hurd & Houghton are doing good service in reissuing the Riverside edition of the Waverley Novels.[P] The well-chosen proportion of page and type and the excellent work of the Riverside press have combined to make these volumes, what American books are too apt not to be--a thing of permanent beauty. The publishers intend to bring out the edition quite rapidly. Five volumes are ready, and the others will follow at the rate of one each month. The present is the great era of mediocre men. A horde of novel writers gain their living successfully enough, and we take them up and talk about what they are doing, and how their works compare with each other, as if their doings had real importance. But what are they to the enduring genius of Abbotsford? He has not only proved an inexhaustible source of delight to two generations of readers, but has founded an industry--the publication of his works--which is likely to be for scores of years to come a permanent source of livelihood to hundreds.

* * * * *

It is evident that we have not a new light of poetry in Mr. Voldo.[Q] He tells us that this is a first attempt, and it may well be the last, for he seems to have been led--and misled--into the practice of poetic expression by a certain gift, in his case fatal, of rhythm. The flow of his lines is far superior to the meaning or the expression. In fact the latter is so involved and farfetched, that the former is often entirely obscured. To find out what it is he tries to tell us would really be a painful process, and the few attempts we have made were too immediately fatiguing to produce any results. Two of his poems are worth reading, one because its versification is well managed, and the other because its story is simple and naturally told. It is a relief after so many pages of overstraining at words, and it shows that Mr. Voldo can be really pleasant, if he will only be simple. Well, two out of fifty is above the average!

* * * * *

It is only two years since a prominent American geologist wrote to a foreign scientific paper that he had been on the point of sending to Germany for two or three men to assist him in an important State survey.[R] His reason for this determination was that our country did not possess men competent to find and follow up intelligently the different strata; except those who were already engaged on other surveys. Luckily this discreditable act was prevented by the sudden abandonment of one of these other surveys, which released assistants enough to satisfy this extremely difficult gentleman. The truth is that, by some means, geological science has been pushed in this country with great vigor and with grand results. Within the last ten years there has been a revival of energy in that particular science which recalls the golden days of Hugh Miller, Murchison, Agassiz, and Lyell. The time when the very exacting gentleman, above alluded to, could not find helpers on this side of the Atlantic, was the middle point around which were grouped the surveys of Newberry and Andrews in Ohio, Clarence King in Nevada, Whitney in California, Wheeler and Powell south of the Pacific Railroad, and Hayden north of that line. Michigan was just finishing a partial, but extremely productive, survey of her mineral regions. Missouri had plunged hopefully into another. Pennsylvania was planning the comprehensive work in which Leslie and his aids are now engaged. Indiana, New Jersey, and other States had taken the great steps so much desired by the initiated all over the world, and had made the geologist a standing member of their government. All this had been done without the _necessary_ importation of a foreigner. One or two foreigners had obtained employment on these surveys, but only because they came here and sought the work. Nearly every one of the young men who performed the work of assistants was an American. It is safe to say that in this revival of geological work from twenty to fifty young Americans have learned to be scientific men. As to the results of their activity, it is sufficient to read a report like that of Mr. Powell, to find how rapidly they are adding to our knowledge of the earth's history, and even altering the canons of scientific belief. Mr. Powell tells us that in his first expedition, eight years ago, and for three years after that, he tried hard to find in the west the equivalents of the State epochs and periods so well known as the basis of geological nomenclature, and nearly all taken from the exposures in New York and other Eastern and Southeastern States. It was not until this attempt was abandoned that he began to make progress. He had to study the western regions by themselves, and leave correspondences to the future. That was the experience of all the workers in the west, and it brings plainly to view the great fact, of which not all, even of our best known geologists, are yet fully persuaded, that the geological record, though doubtless a unit, is not uniform over the whole country. These shackles thrown off, the geology of the west leaped up with a vigor which is astonishing. It seemed to be pretty evident, from Prof. Huxley's lectures here, that he had not before imagined what results had been obtained in America. This is not surprising. Few foreigners are able to keep along with the work performed in this country, where there is such a direful supposed lack of workers! It is a fact that at present there is no part of the world where the discoveries made in this science are of so general importance as here. The Rocky mountains owe their name "to great and widely spread aridity," the mountains being "scantily clothed with vegetation and the indurated lithologic formations rarely masked with soils." But there are many systems of uplifts in this region, and Mr. Powell distinguishes three in the field covered by his report. They are the Park mountains ("the lofty mountains that stand as walls about the great parks of Southern Wyoming, Colorado, and Northern New Mexico"); the Basin Range system (named by Gilbert from the fact that many of them surround basins that have no drainage to the sea); and the Plateau Province. It is worth remarking that in the west the geologist precedes or accompanies the topographer, and accordingly has an opportunity to name the regions according to real peculiarities rather than chance suggestions. The future map will be significant of the past history as well as of the ocular features of the landscape. Mr. Powell gives careful sections of the strata in the Plateau Province, where they are about 46,000 feet thick. Few persons imagine the vast amount of work, exploration, and comparison which such drawings embody. The beds form a series of groups unlike those of the New York geologists, but the great geologic ages are as well defined as elsewhere. The synchronism remains to be fully established by palæontological proofs. He thinks he has been able to fix upon the true point of division between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic ages, and to prove that coal was deposited through about 7,000 feet of Cretaceous and about 4,500 feet of Cenozoic beds. Mr. Powell's literary style is excellent--not involved, but clear and energetic. He was wise to abandon the idea of publishing an itinerary, which would, as he says, "encumber geological literature with a mass of undigested facts of little value." Geology has enough of such meaningless reports. As it is, we follow him with confidence, and he gives us a story that is plain and comprehensible.

* * * * *

The publications of the Massachusetts Board of Health[S] have been of a superior character, and have given that organization decided prominence among similar American boards. The question of how to prevent river pollution in their State they think can best be solved by placing advisory power in the hands of some Government officer, upon whose conclusions legislative action for each case should be based. This officer would be paid by the parties in interest. Good results are to be obtained only by comparing and altering when necessary what is done. In this country too little is known about this subject, and the appointment of an official "with power" is the first step toward knowledge. The suggestions made as to the way to deal with sewage are also mostly good, but it is doubtful whether general purification can wisely be enforced in the present state of sanitary science. If there are any very bad cases of pollution, they may properly be provided for in the way suggested, and experience gained from them. The lack of experience here is partially corrected by studying the work accomplished abroad; but a rapid review of such work can never replace the slower results of individual experience. The report of Mr. Kirkwood, the engineer, adds to the abundant testimony we already have of the efficacy and power of Nature's quietest work. Analyses show that the water of Charles river above the Newton lower falls is, when filtered, fit, though barely fit, to drink, and yet it has received the refuse of forty-two mills and factories, with a population of 14,000 persons known to be sewering into the river, and a population in the basin of three times that number. The river has a dry-weather flow of only twenty million gallons in twenty-four hours. On the general subject of sewage utilization the secretary concludes that in this country the sewage has no value, but can in some places, at least, be utilized without loss. In the death rate of Massachusetts towns the village of Canton (4,192 population) carries the palm, with only 11.9 deaths per thousand. Holyoke, 56.5 per thousand, has the highest.

--The report that a city is to be built in England on strict sanitary principles, in which man may, if he will, live to a hundred and fifty years of age, will give additional interest to this address[T] in which Dr. Richardson develops the project. The address was delivered a year ago, when the Doctor was president of the Health Department of the Social Science Association. It deserves attention because it indicates, pretty nearly, the goal toward which all the conscious and unconscious improvement in our living for centuries has tended. Whether man can obtain such control over the duration of his life depends very largely upon whether he finds himself able to submit to the discipline and self-abnegation without which the mechanical improvements made will have only partial success. Perfect living is not merely a thing of appliances. These are necessary, but the subjection of the will to the requirements of orderly conduct is equally necessary. However, Dr. Richardson says that "Utopia is but another word for time," and it is certain that his ideal of public and private life will be at least approached by the slow progress of small improvements. Some people have objected that they don't want to live a century and a half, and that a city where men two hundred years of age might occasionally be seen walking about is just the place they would most carefully avoid. But we can none of us escape our fate. If society is progressing toward that end, let us accept it, and even allow the men of science to hurry up matters a century or two. It is, perhaps, significant that this change in man's estate comes just at the time when a reduction in the rate of interest is taking place, and it seems likely that a man will have to live to a hundred years in order to accumulate enough to buy him a house. When he has it, he will need another half century to enjoy it. At all events read this ideal, extraordinary, and learned exposition of the health of the future.

--The idea of collecting in one volume a concise statement of modern theories of the mode in which we receive impressions is excellent, and it has been well carried out by Prof. Bernstein.[U] Touch, sight, hearing, smell, and taste are treated from an anatomical and experimental point of view, and the researches of Helmholtz, Weber, and the numerous band of investigators who have in late years devised so many ingenious modes of testing the operation of these senses are well represented. The book contains probably as much exact and accurate information, and as thorough a treatment of the subject, as can be contained in a volume of this size. It is an advanced treatise that places the reader in possession of the latest theories on these occult subjects. Of necessity it is not new; but this treatment and the facts here given will be found novel by most readers.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote K: "_A Point of Honor._" By MRS. ANNIE EDWARDS. 16mo, pp. 325. New York: Sheldon & Co.]

[Footnote L: "_The Barton Experiment._" By the author of "Helen's Babies." New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

[Footnote M: "_Boys of Other Countries._ Stories for American Boys." By BAYARD TAYLOR. 12mo, pp. 164. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.]

[Footnote N: "_In the Levant._" By C. D. WARNER. 12mo, pp. 374. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.]

[Footnote O: "_Going to the Bad._ A Novel." By EDMUND YATES. Boston: William F. Gill & Co. 75 cts.]

[Footnote P: "_Waverley Novels._" Riverside Edition. "Waverley," "Guy Mannering," "Rob Roy," "The Antiquary." New York: Hurd & Houghton. $3.50 per volume.]

[Footnote Q: "_A Song of America, and Minor Lyrics._" By V. VOLDO. New York: Hanscom & Co.]

[Footnote R: "_Report on the Geology of the Eastern Portion of the Unita Mountains and Adjacent Country._" With Atlas. By J. W. POWELL. Washington: Department of the Interior.]

[Footnote S: "_Seventh Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts._" Boston: Wright & Potter.]

[Footnote T: "_Hygeia_: A City of Health." By BENJAMIN WARD RICHARDSON. MacMillan & Co.]

[Footnote U: "_The Five Senses of Man._" By JULIUS BERNSTEIN. Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton & Co. (International Scientific Series.)]

BOOKS RECEIVED.

"_Outlines of Lectures on the History of Philosophy._" By J. J. ELMENDORF, L.L. D. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

"_Modern Materialism; its Attitude Toward Theology._" By J. MARTINEAU, L.L. D. The same.

"_A Child's Book of Religion._" By O. B. FROTHINGHAM. The same.

"_An Alphabet in Finance._" By G. MCADAM. The same.

"_Roddy's Ideal._" By HELEN K. JOHNSON. The same.

"_History of French Literature._" By HENRI VAN LAREN. The same.

"_Lectures on the History of Preaching._" By J. A. BROADUS, D. D., LL. D. Sheldon & Co., New York.

"_Why Four Gospels?_" By Rev. D. D. GREGORY. The same.

"_Rules for Conducting Business in Deliberative Assemblies._" By P. H. MELL, D.D., LL.D. The same.

"_A Young Man's Difficulties with His Bible._" By D. W. FAUNCE, D.D. The same.

"_A Vocabulary of English Rhymes._" By Rev. S. W. BARNUM. D. Appleton & Co., New York.

"_The Carlyle Anthology._" By E. BARRETT. H. Holt & Co., New York.

"_Our Mutual Friend._" By CHARLES DICKENS. Condensed by R. Johnson. The same.

"_Life and Times of William Samuel Johnston, LL.D._" By E. E. BEARDSLEY, D.D., LL.D. Hurd & Houghton, New York.

"_Washington._ A Drama in Five Acts." By MARTIN F. TUPPER. J. Miller, New York.

"_Castle Windows._" By L. C. STRONG. H. B. Nims & Co., Troy, N. Y.

"_That New World_, and Other Poems." By Mrs. S. M. B. PIATT. J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston.

"_Light on the Clouds_; or, Hints of Comfort for Hours of Sorrow." By M. J. SAVAGE. Lockwood, Brooks & Co., Boston.

"_In the Sky Garden._" By L. W. CHAMPNEY. The same.

"_The Religion of Evolution._" By M. J. SAVAGE. The same.

"_Student Life at Harvard._" The same.

"_Long Ago._ (A year of Child life)." By ELLIS GRAY. The same.

"_The Young Trail Hunters_; or, The Wild Riders of the Plains." By S. W. COZZENS. Lee & Sheppard, Boston.

"_Vine and Olive_; or, Young America in Spain and Portugal." By W. T. ADAMS (Oliver Optic). The same.

"_The National Ode._" By BAYARD TAYLOR. W. F. Gill & Co., Boston.

"_Hold the Fort._" By P. P. BLISS. The same.

"_The Poetical and Prose Writings of Charles Sprague._" A. Williams & Co., Boston.

"_Corinne_; or, Italy. A Love Story." By MME. DE STAEL. T. B. Peterson & Bro., Philadelphia.

"_Frank Nelson in the Forecastle_; or, The Sportsman's Club among the Whalers." By HARRY CASTLEMON. The same.

"_Fridthjof's Saga._ A Norse Romance." By E. FEGNER, Bishop of Mexico. S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago.

"_Viking Tales of the North._" By ANDERSON. The same.

"_Michigan Board of Agriculture._ 1875." Lansing, Mich.

NEBULÆ.

--During the progress of the canvass for the Presidential election--in our September number--we made a promise which seemed about the safest that could be made, but which proved to be a rash one--so rash that at this moment we are entirely unable to redeem it--as unable as if we had undertaken to say which exhibitor at the Philadelphia Exhibition would not get a medal. We said that we would give our readers accurate information, in our December number, as to which party was likely to carry the day. What may happen before these words are printed and laid before our readers we cannot tell; and the experience of the past few weeks has taught us caution as to prediction and promise, even upon apparent certainty; but although the election is more than a month past, _we_ do not know who is to be President, and no one is wiser on this subject than we are. The matter is not one to be treated lightly. It is of the gravest possible importance. No consequence of our civil war is more serious or more deplorable than that condition of the former slave States, which has caused this prolonged uncertainty with regard to the result of the election, and that political state of the whole country which has made this uncertainty the occasion of such intense and embittered feeling, and such desperate measures by the managers of both the great political parties. In fact, the war of secession is not at an end. Twelve years have passed since the military forces of the seceders surrendered to those of the Government, but the contest, or one arising from it, prolongs itself into the present, when those are men who, when the war broke out, were too young to understand its causes. And at the same time we are suffering, in our prostrate trade and almost extinguished commerce, another grievous consequence of the same dire internecine struggle. Truly ourselves and our institutions are sorely tried. A like combination of disastrous circumstances would bring about a revolution in any other country. If we go through this trial safely, we may not only feel thankful, but take some reasonable pride in the national character and in the political institutions that will bear such a long and severe strain without breaking. And yet we all have faith that we shall endure it and come out in the end more stable and more prosperous than ever.

--The cause of this trouble is a change in the political substance and the political habits of the country, of which the average citizen seems to have little knowledge and of which he takes less thought. We do not refer to the change of the functions of the Electoral College from those of a real electing body to those of a mere recorder of the votes of the people of the several States, which has been much remarked upon of late years. That change took place very early; and thus far it has been productive of no trouble or even of inconvenience. If that were all, there would be little need of any modification of our system of electing the President. But there has been of later years--say within the last half century--a change from the political condition of the country to which the Electoral College was adapted. We are in the habit, in patriotic moments, of lauding the wisdom and the foresight of the fathers of the republic. And they were wise, and good, and patriotic men; but as to their foresight, it would seem that we are to-day a living witness that they were quite incapable of seeing into the political future. We are now demanding that the Electoral College shall be abolished, and the President be elected by a direct popular vote; and yet nothing is surer than that the distinct purpose of the founders of our Federal Union was to prevent such an election. Their design was to establish, not a democratic government, working more or less by mass-meeting--a direct vote of the mass of the citizens--but a representative republican government, in which the people should commit their affairs to their representatives, who should have full power to manage them according to their discretion, entirely irrespective of the dictation of their constituents, although not without respect for their opinions and wishes. The doctrine of instruction, by which the representative is turned into a mere delegate--a sort of political attorney--is new and is entirely at variance with the design of the founders of the republic, to which, of course, the Constitution was adapted. It was supposed, assumed as a matter of course, by them that there would always be a body of men of high character and intelligence, who would have sufficient leisure to perform the functions of legislators, governors, and other officers, for a small compensation, and that the people at large would freely commit their affairs to these gentlemen, choosing, of course, those whose general political views were most in accordance with their own. So it was at the time of the war of Independence, and at that of the formation of the Constitution. Of such a political conception the Electoral College was a legitimate product. The "Fathers" didn't _mean_ that the people should decide between the merits of the candidates for the Presidency. They thought--and shall we therefore decry their wisdom?--that a small body of intelligent and well educated men, men of character and social position, accustomed to the study of public affairs, was better fitted to choose such an officer as the President of the United States than the whole mass of the people. Moreover, the people themselves have changed, and have become in substance and in condition something that the "Fathers" did not dream of. States in which the vote of the mass of the citizens should be in the hands of negroes or of emigrants from the peasant class of Europe were not among the political conditions for which their foresight provided.

--The great controlling fact in our politics is this one, so little regarded not only by the general public, but by men in active political life--the thorough change which has taken place in our society and in the attitude of the people toward the Government. As a consequence of this change, political power has passed almost entirely out of the hands of the class of men to whom the framers of our Constitution intended to commit the administration of the Government which they called into being. It has fallen into those of men generally much inferior in cultivation and in position. And as we have already said, the very substance of the political constituency has changed. A suffrage practically universal and a controlling vote in one part of the country of emancipated negro slaves and in the other of uneducated foreign emigrants was not the political power to which Franklin, and Jefferson, and Hamilton and Adams, and their co-workers, supposed they were required to adapt their frame of government. And now no small part of our difficulty arises from the failure of a very large portion of our people, North as well as South, to perceive or at least fully to appreciate this change and its inevitable consequences. It is agreed by all students of political history, that the weakness of a written constitution lies in its inflexibility; and the error of many of our political managers lies in their failure to appreciate this truth and their assumption that the country is to be governed now just as it was in the days of Washington. But the fact is that such a condition of political affairs as now exists in South Carolina and in Louisiana would have been not only morally but physically impossible in the earlier years of the republic. "The people" in those States, and to a certain extent in all the States, but chiefly at the South, has not the same meaning that it had three-quarters of a century ago. Over the whole country the conditions of our political problem have changed; but most of all there; and the result is a strain upon our political institutions, and even upon our social institutions, which taxes their stability to the utmost. The present crisis is only inferior in its gravity to that which preceded the attempted secession; and now as then South Carolina takes the lead. But serious as the peril is, we shall pass through it safely. We did not emerge safely from the greater danger, to be overwhelmed by the less. Wisdom and firmness in the highest degree are demanded by the emergency; but wisdom and firmness will control it, and whatever measures may become necessary we may be sure that they will be fraught with no peril to our liberties, or to the stability of our Government. The nervous apprehension exhibited by some people that any grave political disturbance and consequent manifestation of power on the part of the central Government is likely to end in a usurpation, and an enslavement of the American people, may be surely characterized, if not as weak, at least as unwarranted. Think of it coolly for a moment, and see how absurd it is. Any man born and bred in the United States ought to be ashamed to entertain such a notion for a moment. If we look back through the long and weary years of our civil war, we shall find that mistakes were made on the side of the arbitrary exercise of power, from which a few individuals suffered; but indefensible as some of these were, according to the strict letter of the law, we can now see their real harmlessness to the public as clearly as we see the error of those who committed them. At no time have our liberties been in less peril than when the President of the United States had under his absolute command an army larger than that ever actually controlled by any monarch (fables and exaggerations allowed for), and when the warrant of the Secretary of War would have lodged any man in a Federal fortress. We see now the folly of the vaticinations against the endurance of our liberty which were uttered by many foreign wiseacres and some weak-kneed natives. Whatever may come of our present trouble, let us not forget the lessons of our recent experience. In spite of any bugaboo we shall remain a Federal republic and a free people.

--One accompaniment of the singular result of the election has been sufficiently ridiculous--the daily reports of "the situation" as they appeared in the columns and at the doors of the Republican and Democratic newspapers. The phrase "to lie like a bulletin" has been justified to the fullest extent. On which side lay the deviation from truth it was impossible to say; but if one respectable journal's assertions were true, the others surely were false. It was strange and laughable to read on one bulletin board, "Republican Victory! Election of Hayes! South Carolina and Florida ours by large majorities!" and then to find only a few yards off a no less flaming announcement of "Democratic Triumph! Tilden elected! South Carolina and Florida give decided Democratic majorities!" And this was not only ridiculous, but somewhat incomprehensible. For the newspapers which made these flatly contradictory announcements at the same time and within short distances, all equally prided themselves on their reputation as purveyors of news--news that could be relied upon. Moreover, their means of obtaining news are pretty well known to the public and quite well to each other. True the "reliable gentleman," and the "distinguished member of Congress," figured somewhat largely as the sources of those very discrepant statements; and those persons are notoriously untrustworthy; even more so than the "intelligent contraband" of the war times. But after all it was a puzzle--unless, indeed, upon the assumption that these newspapers published each of them, not what they knew to be the fact, but what they thought their readers would like to be told; a theory not to be entertained for a moment. Nevertheless the facts as they presented themselves did seem to be worthy of some candid consideration by the journalistic mind; for to mere outsiders they seemed to point to the prudence and safety, to say the least, of more caution and reserve of assertion, with the certainty that the introduction of these new elements into the news department of journalism would tend to the elevation of the profession, and would beget a confidence in that department of our leading journals which it may perhaps be safely said does not exist in a very high degree at present. Possibly, however, the question may have presented itself in this form to the journalistic mind: "If we continue to announce victory for our own party, and it so turns out in the end, we are all right, and we shall have pleased our readers." If the contrary, we shall merely have to denounce the frauds of our opponents which have falsified the truth that we told, and we shall have pleased our readers all the same." Ingenious gentlemen.

--Among the humors of the election is one so significant that it should not be allowed to pass by unrecorded. One Irish "American" was describing to another the glories of a procession which had made night hideous to those not particularly interested in it; and he closed the glowing account by saying, "Oh, it wuz an illigent purrceshin intoirely! Div'l a naygur or a Yankee int' ut!" Doubtless this gentleman would think an election equally illigant in which neither a naygur nor a Yankee presumed to vote.

--The period of the election excitement was marked also by the close of the great Centennial Exhibition, which must be regarded as a very great success, and which, we are pleased to record, proved far more successful pecuniarily than we anticipated that it would. Among the grand expositions of the world's industry this one stands alone, we believe, in its possession of a surplus over and above its enormous expenses. This, however, is but one witness to the admirable manner in which it was managed. But even if it had failed in this respect, as at first it seemed probable that it would, the money lost would have been well spent in producing the impression which it left upon all, or nearly all, of the intelligent foreigners whom it drew to Philadelphia. We happen to have heard some of these, who had not only been present at other exhibitions of the same kind in Europe, but had held the position of judges there, say that the Philadelphia exhibition was superior to all the others, not, it is true, in the beauty and value of the foreign articles exhibited, but in the native productions and in the arrangement, the system and discipline of the whole affair. The American machinery and tools elicited the highest admiration from qualified European judges. They found in them the results of a union of the highest scientific acquirement with a corresponding excellence of material and exactness in manufacture. All the tools used in the higher departments of mechanics elicited this expression of admiration, and with regard to those exhibited by two or three manufacturers the approbation was without qualification and in the highest terms. This result will be largely beneficial to our national reputation; for it was just in these respects, science, thoroughness, and exactness, that our foreign critics were prepared to find us wanting.

--The richness and variety of American slang is remarked upon by almost all English travellers, who, however, might find at home, in the language of high-born people, departures from purity quite as frequent and as great as those prevalent with us, although perhaps not so gross; for it must be confessed that most of our slang is coarse and offensive, at least in form. But the most remarkable American peculiarity in regard to slang, or indeed in regard to any new fangle in language, is the quickness with which it is adopted, and comes, if not into general use, into general knowledge. This readiness of adaptability to slang may, however, be attributed almost entirely to the reporters and correspondents, and "makers-up" of our newspapers, who catch eagerly at anything new in phraseology as well as in fact, to give a temporary interest to their ephemeral writing. Here, for example, is the word "bulldose," the occasion of our remarks. A man who went on a journey to South America or to Europe four months ago would have departed in the depths of deplorable ignorance as to the very existence of this lovely word; returning now, he would find it in full possession of the newspapers--appearing in correspondence, in reports, in sensation headlines, and even in leading articles. Although to the manner born, he would be puzzled at the phraseology of the very newspaper which mingled itself with his earliest recollections and with his breakfast; for there he would find the new word in all possible forms and under all possible modifications: _bulldose_, the noun, _to bulldose_, the verb, _bulldosing_, the present participle, _bulldosed_, the past participle, and even, to the horror of the author of "Words and their Uses," and in spite of him, _being bulldosed_, "the continuing participle of the passive voice." Such a phenomenon in language is peculiar to this country. But notwithstanding the fears of the purists and the philologers, it does not threaten the existence of the English language here, nor is it at all likely to affect it permanently even by the addition of one phrase or word. For our use of slang of this kind is the most fleeting of temporary fashions. Such slang passes rapidly into use and into general recognition, and passes as quickly out again. Bartlett's "Dictionary of Americanisms" is full of words of this kind--_locofoco_, for example--which lived their short lives, and then passed not only out of use, but out of memory. While they are in vogue, however, they deform our speech, and they tend to increase our habits of looseness in language; and they bring reproach upon us such as that with an allusion to which we began this item. For our reputation's sake we should stop this; it subjects us with some reason to ridicule. But we shall not stop, because the men who could stop it--the editors--will not do so. Very few newspapers in the country--only two or three--are really edited as to the language used in them; and as to slang of this sort, it is regarded as something pleasant to the ears of the average reader, who is supposed to think it funny. This is enough. If the readers want it, the editors will furnish it; and so we may expect to be "bulldosed," or otherwise dosed with some like nauseous mess of language, until journalism has some other purpose than to pander to the lower cravings of the moment.

--It is said that in the schools for girls it is now becoming the fashion to teach the large angular handwriting which is commonly used by Englishwomen. The announcement is welcome and surprising in one respect; for it implies that writing is taught in schools, as to which an acquaintance with the chirography of the rising generation justly awakens some doubts. But as to the beneficial result of the adoption of the style in question, that is a matter of some uncertainty. This angular English hand is very elegant and lovely to look upon in a little note, particularly if it assures you of the fair writer's high regard, or asks you to dinner. But in fact it is so uncertain in its forms that sometimes it is quite difficult to tell which is meant, the high regard or the dinner. We have heard of one case of deplorable uncertainty. A lady going out of town hastily on a short visit left a key upon her husband's table with a slip of paper on which was written in the new style a few words which after much toil and with the hint from the key, he deciphered and read as "Key of wine closet. Please put on gin-sling." He was amazed; for whatever his fondness might have been for gin-sling, it was not his habit to put it on the table. Wherefore he inferred that instead of "gin-sling" he should read "green seal," but there was none of that brand of champagne in the wine closet. Further investigation led him to adopt the reading, "please put on full swing." This, however, he abandoned as not exactly a feminine exhortation in that particular matter. Then for "gin-sling" he read "gunning," and "gun sing," and "grinning," all of course to be abandoned in their turn. Submitted to an expert, the elegant lines were pronounced to be unmistakably, "Key of wine closet. Recase pat on gnu eing," not a highly intelligible letter of instruction. Finally, in his perplexity, he remembered something that the lady had once said upon the subject of the danger of leaving the particular key in question lying about loose or even in an accessible drawer, and then it flashed upon him that the writing was, or was meant to be, "Key of wine closet. Please put on your ring." Hence it appears that the elegant English hand is very easily read when you know what the fair writer means to say. Observe, too, that the perplexity would have been obviated by the introduction of a much needed pronoun--_it_. If the lady had written, "Put it," etc., there would have been a guide out of the labyrinth. No small part of the obscurity found in writing arises from compression. It is better to take the trouble to write two words, and thereby be understood, than to write one, in angular Anglican elegance, and leave your reader in darkness.