Just as we entered the dining-room a young man came in by another

door, carrying a tray with dishes. I had seen plenty of Chinamen,

but this was not one, nor could I reconcile his appearance with the

position of a servant. He was tall, well-made, and his face, though

unnaturally pale, was decidedly good-looking. He wore a pair of coarse

gray pantaloons with a remarkable stripe down one leg, but had on a

beautifully clean and fine, white shirt fastened at the throat with a

diamond button. The weather was warm, and he was without coat or vest,

and had a sash of red knitted silk, such as Mexicans wear, round his

middle.

Ruth took the dishes from him and placed them on the table. "Please

tell Wang-Ho about the coffee, Lester," she said as he retired.

"Is that man a servant, Ruth?" I asked in an astonished whisper.

"No," she replied in the same low tone: "he is a murderer condemned

for life."

Mr. Denham hobbled in and slid down upon a seat. I appreciated his

gallant attention, but it was painful to see the effort it cost:

besides, much as I had seen, and familiar as I was becoming with

pioneer life, to be waited on at dinner by a young and handsome

murderer condemned to prison for life was a sensation new and

startling, and I was full of curiosity as to the nature of his crime

and the peculiar administration of the Western penal code that made

house-servants of convicts. Seeing my perturbation, Ruth evidently

intended to relieve it by the explanatory remark of "He is a 'trusty,'

Jenny dear," but really threw no light whatever on the subject.

It was a very nice dinner, served tastefully and with a home comfort

about everything connected with the table that seemed most unlike

a prison. Mr. Denham's intelligence and cheerfulness added to the

delusion that I was enjoying the hospitalities of a cultivated Eastern

home. He and his wife had kept themselves thoroughly familiar with all

topics of general interest through the medium of periodicals, and had

much to ask about the actual progress of improvements they had read of

and the changes occurring among dear and familiar Eastern scenes.

Lester came in again with the empty tray, and quietly gathered the

plates from the table preparatory to placing dessert. I wanted to look

at him--indeed, a fascination I could not resist drew my eyes to his

face like a magnet--yet, somehow, I dared not keep them there: the

consciousness of meeting his glance, and feeling that I should then be

ashamed of my curiosity, made them drop uneasily every time he turned;

and once when I found his gaze rest on me an instant, I felt myself

color violently under the quiet look of his steel-gray eyes.

One thing was very observable in the little group: the child Nellie

was intensely fond of the man, and he himself seemed to entertain and

constantly endeavor to express an exalted admiration for Mr. Denham.

While the latter was speaking Lester's animated looks followed every

word and gesture: he anticipated his unexpressed wishes, and watched

to save him the trouble of moving or asking for anything.

"No, no, Nellie, stay and finish your dinner: Lester is not quite

ready for you yet." Her mother said this in reference to the child's

eagerness to follow the trusty attendant from the room, and her

neglect of her meal in consequence. "Nellie is in the habit of

carrying up the sugar and cream for the coffee, and she thinks Lester

cannot possibly get on if she does not assist," said Ruth in smiling

explanation as Nellie hastened after him.

The next instant there was the mingled sound of a heavy fall or

succession of falls outside, and one quick, stifled scream from the

child.

"The dumb-waiter, quick! It has broken from its weights and scalded

Nell with the hot coffee," cried Ruth, making a spring toward the door

by which Lester had gone out.

Her husband, forgetting his lameness, was instantly at her side, but

some force held the door against them both, and abandoning it after

the first effort, the father turned hurriedly to the one leading

into the hall. I sat nearest that, and in the excitement I had moved

quickly aside, so that when it was flung violently open the moment

before my host the governor of the prison reached it, I was thrust

back against the wall, from which place, half dead with fright, I saw

the hall crowded with convicts, the foremost of whom held a pistol

directly toward Mr. Denham's head.

It snapped with a sharp report, and when the smoke cleared I found

Mr. Denham had dodged the fire and was closed in a scuffle with the

villain for the weapon. A dozen more seemed to spring on him from the

threshold; I heard his wife's cry of agony; and then the door at the

other side burst in, and Lester, with his gray eyes gleaming like a

flame, bounded over the body of a bloody convict that fell from his

grasp as he broke into the room. Quick as thought he caught up one

of the heavy chairs in his hands, and bringing it down with desperate

force on the heads of the governor's assailants, felled one, while the

other staggered back and dropped his pistol. Mr. Denham caught it

like a flash, and fired it in the face of a wretch who was aiming

at Lester's heart. The convicts fell back, and over their bodies the

governor and his aid sprang into the crowded hall.

"The child! the child! O God! my little daughter!" It was Ruth's voice

in tones of such anguish and terror as I never before heard uttered by

human voice.

She was looking from the window into the yard below, and there she

beheld Nellie lifted up as a shield against the guns of the guards by

a party of the escaping convicts. The little creature was deadly white

and perfectly silent: her great blue eyes were wide and frozen with

fright, and her little hands were clasped in entreating agony and

stretched toward her mother.

"Stand behind me and shoot them down, governor," cried Lester, dealing

steady blows with the now broken chair, and trying to make his own

body a shield for Mr. Denham. The governor continued to fire on the

convicts, who were pouring in a steady stream down the stairs from

out of the room where I had seen the shower of dust, and through the

ceiling of which, as it was afterward, proved, they had cut a hole,

and so escaped from the upper corridor of the prison.

I tried to hold Ruth in my arms, for in her frenzy to reach her child

she had flung up the window and endeavored to drop from it at the risk

of her life. "They will not dare to hurt her: God will protect her

innocent life," was all I could say, when a random ball from below

struck the window-frame, and, glancing off, stunned without wounding

the wretched mother. She fell, jarred by the shock, and I drew her as

well as I could behind the door, on the other side of which lay the

two bleeding prisoners who had tried to take her husband's life.

Groans, shouts, curses, yells and pistol-shots sounded in the hall and

on the stairs; only the back of the chair remained in Lester's grasp,

but heaps of men felled by its weight and crushed by their struggling

fellows had tumbled down and been kicked over the broken balustrade to

the hall below.

The guards had rallied from their surprise, and sparing the escaped

for the sake of the precious shield they bore, turned their fire upon

the escaping, cutting them off until the whole corridor below was

blocked with wounded, dead and dying. One more man appeared at the

clerk's door: he was a powerful fellow with a horse-pistol and a

stone-hammer. Lester had staggered back from a flying iron bar aimed

at his head by a villain he struck at without reaching, and who had

bounded down the stairs to receive his death from the guard's musket

at the door. The prisoner with the horse-pistol saw his advantage,

and, cursing the governor in blasphemous rage, aimed at him as he

fled. Recovering himself, Lester struck for his arm, but not soon

enough to stop the fire: the charge reached its object, but not his

heart, as it was meant to do. It glanced aside, and Mr. Denham's

pistol dropped: his right arm fell maimed at his side; but the field

was clear, and Lester, catching the fallen pistol, went down the

stairs over the bodies in a series of flying leaps.

"Where's my wife?" exclaimed Mr. Denham, turning round dizzily and

trying to steady his head with his uninjured hand. "Tell her I've gone

for Nellie;" and he made an effort to rush after Lester, but,

reaching the top of the stairs, dropped suddenly upon a convict's body

stretched there by his own pistol. Then I saw by the reddish hole

in his trousers just below the knee that he had been wounded before,

though he did not know it, and was now streaming with blood.

"Where's Nell? where's Edward?" asked Ruth, sitting up with a ghastly

face, and looking at me in a bewildered stare.

"All right, all safe, tell the lady," cried a clear, exulting voice

from below: "here's sweet little Miss Nellie, without a scratch on

her."

It was Lester's shout from the yard, and it rang through all the

building.

"Do you hear, Ruth? do you hear?" I screamed, beside myself with joy

and thankfulness. "He has saved your husband a dozen times, that hero,

and now he brings back your child to you. Oh, what a noble fellow! how

I envy him his feelings!"

He was in the room by this time with Nellie in his arms: he heard me

and gave me just one look. I never saw him again, but I never shall

forget it, for it revealed the long agony of a blighted life that

moment struggling into hope again through expiation. He did not wait

for Ruth's broken cry of gratitude, but was gone as soon as the child

was in her arms.

"Come, boys," I heard him cry cheerily outside, "lend a hand to help

the governor to his room: he's got a scratch or two, and the doctor's

coming to dress them. He will be all right again before we can get

things set straight round here."

Governor Denham's wounds were not so slight as Lester hoped, but they

were not dangerous, and when, to prevent my aunt's alarm for my safety

(for the news of "the break" spread rapidly through the town), I

parted from my friends before nightfall and rode back to the hotel

as I had come, I left three of the most excitedly grateful and happy

people behind me I had ever seen.

"I suppose it is no use to urge it further, Ruth darling," said her

husband as we parted, "but I really wish you would go to San Francisco

with our friend and let Nellie have a chance to forget the shock

she has endured. You need the change too, if you would ever think of

yourself."

"It is because I do think of myself that I prefer to remain where I am

happiest," said Ruth decidedly. "As for Nell, she is a pioneer child,

and will soon be as merry and fearless as ever. But, Jenny dear, we

owe you an apology for the novel dinner-party we have given you. When

you come back it will seem like a frightful dream, and not a reality,

we shall all be so quiet and orderly again." As we stood alone in the

hall, from which every sign of the late terrible conflict had been

removed save the bloodstains that had sunk into the stone beyond the

power of a hasty washing to obliterate, Ruth said in a low whispering

tone that was full of pent-up feeling, "I told you that Lester was

a murderer condemned for life, Jenny, but there were extenuating

circumstances in connection with his crime. That is not his name we

call him by: I do not even know his real one, but I am convinced that

he belongs to educated and reputable people, and that he suffers the

keenest remorse for the wild life that led him so terribly astray. He

became desperately attached to a Spanish girl, who was married as a

child to a brutal fellow who deserted her, and she thought him dead.

She and Lester were to be married, I believe, when the missing husband

reappeared and tormented them both. The girl he treated shockingly,

and it was in a fit of rage at his abuse of her that Lester killed

him; but appearances were all against the deed, and he was convicted

of murder in the second degree and sentenced for life. Edward is kind

and discriminating, and he pitied him. Lester told his story freely,

and my husband gained his lasting gratitude by taking care of the

wretched girl and paying her passage in a vessel bound for her native

town in Mexico. The only favor we could show him here was to separate

him from the wretches in the common prison by making him a 'trusty'

or prison-servant. He understood our motive in doing so, and was very

thankful and most reliable. What we owe him to-day you know: he makes

light of it, protesting that he only picked up Nell from the gulch

where the escaped convicts had dropped her on their way to the hills;

but he cannot lessen the debt: it is too great to be calculated even."

The subsequent report proved that twenty-eight prisoners had conspired

to effect the break, and by secreting the tools they wrought with in

their sleeves passed in on Saturday from the wall-building to cut an

entrance through the ceiling of their own corridor into the loft above

Mr. Foster's room, through which they dropped while the family were at

dinner, choosing that hour so as to produce a surprise and secure the

child, who always went below with Lester to help carry up the coffee.

Of the whole number, five were killed outright and six wounded: twelve

escaped uninjured, but were nearly all afterward retaken; and five

repented their share in the movement or lacked courage to carry it

out, and so remained in the prison. The most interesting item of the

whole came to me at San Francisco in my friend's letter. It said: "We

are looking forward with great delight to your visit, and planning

every pleasure our sterile life can yield to make it enjoyable. But

you will not see Lester: he is gone. His pardon, full and entire in

view of his courage and fidelity, and the manly stand he took against

the murderous plotters, came on Monday last, and at nightfall he left

the prison to go by the stage to meet the midnight train. 'To Mexico!'

were his last words to us. Heaven bless him, and grant him wisdom and

courage to retrieve the past and open a fair bright future!"

MARGARET HOSMER.

FAREWELL.

[From Friederich Bodenstedt's _Aus dem Nachlasse

Mirza-Schaffys._]

Aloft the moon in heaven's dome.

Sultry the night, tempests foretelling:

For the last time before I roam

I see the surf in splendor swelling.

A ship glides by, a shadowy form,

Faint roseate lights around me sparkle,

A gathering mist precedes the storm,

And far-off forest tree-tops darkle.

The silver-crested waves are lashing

The pebbly shore tumultuously:

Absorbed I watch their ceaseless dashing,

Myself as still as bush or tree.

Within arise fond memories

Of moonlight evenings long since vanished,

Once full of life as waves and breeze,

From this familiar shore now banished.

Hushed in the grove is the birds' song,

Spring's blossoms tempests caused to perish;

Yet what through eye and ear did throng

The heart for evermore will cherish.

AUBER FORESTIER.

THE INSTRUCTION OF DEAF MUTES.

While I was a teacher in the Illinois Institution for the Deaf and

Dumb the following letters were written by some of the pupils. The

first was written the day after Thanksgiving, and ran thus:

"DEAR MOTHER: We had Thanks be unto God, no school yesterday,

Turkey mince-pies, and many other kinds of fruits."

The day after Christmas a boy wrote: "We had Glory to God in the

highest, no school yesterday, and a fine time." What he really meant

to say was, that they had a motto in evergreens of "Glory to God in

the Highest," and they had also a holiday.

This motto, by the way, got up by the pupils themselves, was striking.

It was placed over one of the dining-room doors, and the ceiling

being very low it was necessarily put just under it. A single glance

sufficed to show the utter impossibility of getting the "Glory" any

higher.

The younger pupils write in almost every letter, "There are ----

pupils in this institution, ---- boys and ---- girls. All of the

pupils are well, but some are sick." This is English pretty badly

broken.

These letters serve to illustrate a remark which Principal Peet of the

New York institution made to me not long ago: "The great difficulty in

instructing deaf mutes is in teaching them the English language."

In this, of course, he had reference to the deaf mutes of our own

country, and his statement appears, on its face, paradoxical. That

American children should learn at least to read the English language,

even when they cannot speak it, seems quite a matter of course. The

fact is, however, different. The first disadvantage under which the

deaf mute labors is the limited extent to which his mental powers have

been developed. This deficiency is attributable to two causes--his

deprivation of the immense amount of information to be gained by the

sense of hearing, and his want of language. Before an infant, one

possessed of all its faculties, has acquired at least an understanding

of articulate language, it has but vague and feeble ideas. No clear,

distinct conception is shaped in its mind. "Ideas," says M. Marcel in

his essay on the _Study of Languages_, "are not innate: they must be

received before they can be communicated. This is so true that native

curiosity impels us to listen long before we can speak.... Impression

... must therefore precede expression." Real thought, therefore,

it will be seen, grows with the child's acquisition of language--an

acquisition which is obtained in the earlier years entirely through

the organ of hearing. This principal avenue to the mind is closed

to the deaf mute. It is evident, therefore, that, lacking these two

fundamental sources of all knowledge, his mental growth is incredibly

slower than that of the hearing child. All that can be learned by

means of the other senses is, however, learned rapidly, these being

quickened and stimulated by the absence of one. Hence, the deaf-mute

child of eight or ten years of age often appears as bright and

intelligent as his more favored playmate. The latter, however, has a

store of knowledge and a fund of thought wholly unknown to the deaf

mute.

But it is the want of written language, and the obstacles in the way

of its acquirement, which constitute the chief disability of the deaf

mute in the attempt to gain an education. If you set a child of seven

years of age to learn Greek, requiring him to receive and express his

ideas wholly in that language, you would not hope for any very clear

expression of those ideas with less than a year's instruction, nor

would you expect him to appreciate the delicate beauties of the

_Odyssey_ in that length of time. The progress of the deaf mute in

any language, even the most simply constructed, is greatly slower than

that of the hearing child. The latter is assisted at every step by

his previous knowledge of his vernacular. The former does not think in

words, as you have done from your earliest recollection. Undertake to

do your thinking in a foreign tongue, of which you have but a limited

knowledge: the attempt is discouraging. The deaf mute thinks in signs.

This, his only vehicle of thought, is a hindrance instead of a help in

learning written language, there being no analogy whatever between the

two methods of expressing ideas.

With these tremendous odds against him the deaf-mute child is set to

the task of acquiring a knowledge of written language. His ideas (in

signs) shape themselves in this wise: "Horses, two, run fast." Of

course he does not think these words. The idea of a horse, its shape

and color, is probably imaged in his mind, or if the horse be not

present to his sight, the sign which he uses for that animal comes

into his thought. He next touches or grasps or holds up two of his

fingers, which he uses on all occasions to express number. Then

the idea of running by means of its sign, and lastly that of speed,

suggest themselves, the last two, however, being probably closely

connected, as in our own minds.

Observe, here, that the order in which the thoughts arrange themselves

is different from the manner of those who think by means of words. The

main idea is "horse," and he gives it the preference, as the older and

more simply constructed languages always did. It is reserved for our

cultured and perfected language to describe an object before

telling what that object is. Who will say that it is according to

philosophical principles that we say, "A fine large red apple,"

instead of "An apple, fine, red, large"? A deaf-mute boy tells me that

he saw two dogs fighting yesterday. He explains it in signs in this

manner: "Dogs, two, fight; first, second ear bit, blood much. Second

ran, hid; saw yesterday, I." Thus the fact is arranged in his mind.

Let him attempt to translate--for it is nothing but translation--this

simple statement into English. The perplexity which first seizes the

hapless school-boy over his "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres"

is nothing to it. Like him, he must go hunting, as if for a needle

in a haystack, for the word to put first. It is the last idea in his

sign-sentence. Then he slowly learns to pick out the words and arrange

them in English order--an order, as I said before, not founded on

philosophical principles, but in most instances wholly arbitrary.

This is by no means an easy task. Years of training do not ensure

him against ludicrous lapses. A fair percentage of the whole number

educated learn to construct sentences with tolerable accuracy; a

smaller percentage of these acquire fluency, precision and, in some

rare instances, grace of expression; but a large proportion never

become good English scholars.

The method of beginning their instruction is by means of simple

familiar objects, or, where these cannot be obtained, illustrations

of them. A picture of a horse is placed, at one end of the teacher's

blackboard. Instantly two fingers of each hand go up to the top of

each little head. If it were a picture of an animal with longer ears,

each would make an ass of himself. So far so good, only they do not

know the name of this animal, familiar as they are with him. The

teacher writes the name under the picture. The article "A" is also

written, which, though it puzzles them, they must take on trust. It

cannot be explained at this stage. The teacher then holds up an ear

of corn. Of course they know that very well, and make the sign for it,

shelling the fore finger. It is then laid upon the opposite end of

the blackboard, and its name written under it. A short pause, with a

glance first at the horse and then at the corn, soon brings out

the sign for "eats," which is written in its proper place, and the

sentence is complete. The little "ignorants," as they are dubbed by

the older pupils, are then plunged head and ears into the task of

learning to form the written characters as well as the construction of

sentences. It is setting foot in an unexplored wilderness. No ray of

light penetrates the darkness of that wilderness save the tiny torch

just placed in their hands.

Mr. Isaac Lewis Peet, principal of the New York institution, before

referred to in this paper, has lately been preparing a textbook for

the use of deaf-mute instructors, which promises to be of great

value. It reduces the whole of the earlier stages of instruction to a

perfected system, by which each part of speech, with the various

moods and tenses of the verbs, the different cases of nouns, etc., is

brought out in successive stages entirely by means of sentences. A

few illustrations will suffice to show the scope of the work, which

promises to be of much value also in the ordinary school-room, for

which it is likewise designed by the author. An object, such as a

pitcher, is placed on the teacher's desk. A pupil is required to come

forward and touch it. The teacher then asks the question, writing it

upon the blackboard or spelling it upon his fingers, "What did John

do?" Answer, "He touched the pitcher." A change from a boy to a girl

brings out another pronoun; a change of objects, another noun; a

change of actions, another verb.

In this way, by gradual, systematic stages, the language is taught by

actual and constant use, the teacher doing away entirely with signs

in the school-room. This is an end constantly aimed at in deaf-mute

instruction, as it forces the pupils to use language instead of signs

to express their thoughts. By constant effort at first, and constant

practice, words gradually take the place of signs in their modes of

thought, though not perhaps entirely.

Objective ideas are readily acquired by deaf mutes, their perceptive

faculties being usually keen and quick. Abstract subjects are less

readily apprehended, and sometimes cause great surprise. One Sunday

morning Dr. Gillett, principal of the Illinois institution, had for

the Scripture lesson in the chapel the "Resurrection." When he had

made it plain and simple for the comprehension of the new pupils, some

of the ideas, brought out by the lesson caused great astonishment, and

even consternation among them. The little fellows shook their heads in

utter skepticism at the thought of themselves dying.

"I'm not going to die," said one. "Sick people die: I'm well and

strong;" standing on his feet and shaking his arms in attestation of

the fact.

"But you will be sick some time," said Dr. G., "and you will have to

die."

But they did not believe him in the least. The next morning one little

fellow met the principal and said, "You said yesterday I was going to

die: well, here I am, and I ain't dead yet."

On Monday morning, when they assembled in school, they were still full

of the new ideas. "Dr. Gillett had said they all had to die: would

they, truly?" they asked me. I could only confirm the statement.

Whereupon they all began drawing graves, tombstones, weeping willows,

and all such funereal paraphernalia upon the blackboards. It was

a solemn scene, save for my own irrepressible laughter, which they

thought very unaccountable when they learned that I must suffer a like

fate. I explained as cheerfully as I could the delights of going to

heaven, whereupon one boy burst into tears, saying he did not want to

go to heaven: he would rather go home and see his mother.

One asked if we should go to heaven in the cars. I said I had been

told that we should go through the air, perhaps fly there. A little

girl immediately held up a wood-cut of a vulture, saying, "Ugly thing!

I don't want to be one." A boy whose new skates lay spoiling for the

ice in his trunk asked if he could skate there. Not having quite

the faith of the author of _Gates Ajar_, I could not answer "Yes"

unhesitatingly. A girl asked if fishes went to heaven. I answered

"No." "Where, then?" I replied that we ate the fishes, but was greatly

troubled afterward lest she should confound me with the question,

"What becomes of the snakes?"

In addition to the ordinary one-hand alphabet, the only one commonly

used by deaf mutes, there are five others. One of these is the

two-hand alphabet, sometimes used by hearing children at school. It is

clumsy and inconvenient, however. A second is made by the arms alone.

Still a third is formed by means of the body and arms also, in

various positions, to represent the different letters, and is used

in signaling at a distance. It is not often learned by deaf mutes,

however. A fourth is made entirely with the feet. But the most curious

of all is the facial or expression alphabet. Various emotions and

passions expressed on the face represent, by means of their initial

letters, the letters of the alphabet. Thus, A is indicated by an

expression of avarice, B by boldness, C by curiosity, D by devotion,

etc. This alphabet is sometimes so admirably rendered that words can

easily be spelled by means of it by the spectators.

Deaf mutes also excel in pantomime. A large amount of gesture and

pantomime is naturally employed in their conversation, and it thus

becomes easy to train them to perform pantomimic plays. I have seen

one young man, a deaf mute, whose narration in this manner of a hunter

who made a pair of buckskin breeches, hung them up during the summer,

drew them on when the rainy season came on, and found a hornet's nest

within, was interpreted amid roars of laughter. Thus told, it was far

more vivid than words could have possibly made it, and infinitely more

amusing.

The sign-language, growing slowly from natural signs--i.e., signs

representing the shape, quality or use of objects, or the action

expressed by verbs--has at length become a perfected system. This

language is the same throughout Europe and America, so that deaf mutes

from any country of Christendom who have acquired the regular system

can readily communicate with each other, however diverse their

nationality. Being formed from analogy, many of the signs are

exceedingly expressive. Thus, the sign for "headache" is made by

darting the two forefingers toward each other just in front of the

forehead. The sign for "summer" is drawing the curved forefinger

across the brow, as if wiping off the sweat. "Heat," or rather

"hotness," is expressed by blowing with open mouth into the hand,

and then shaking it suddenly as if burned. "Flame" and "fire" are

represented by a quivering, upward motion of all the fingers. The

memory of the ancient ruffled shirt of our forefathers is perpetuated

in the sign for "genteel," "gentility" or "fine." It is the whole open

hand, with fingers pointing upward, shaken in front of the breast.

"Gentleman" and "lady" are expressed by the signs for "man"

(the hat-brim) and "woman" (the bonnet-string), followed by the

ruffled-shirt sign. The sign for "Jesus" is doubtless the most tender

and touching in the whole language. It is made by touching the palm

of each hand in succession with the middle finger of the other. This

represents the print of the nails. The name "Jesus" itself does not

convey so pathetic and expressive a meaning as does this sign.

Hearing persons who understand the sign-language sometimes find it

exceedingly convenient as a means of communicating when they wish to

be private, I remember an amusing incident occurring at a festival

which I attended while teaching in the Illinois institution. Another

teacher and myself sat apart, surrounded by entire strangers. Near

by stood a lady in a gorgeous green silk dress, with many gaudy

accessories. My companion remarked in signs to me upon her striking

costume. I replied in like manner, expressing my appreciation of so

magnificent a proportion of apple-green silk. There was a great deal

of lady, but a great deal more of dress.

"See them dummies, Jake," she remarked to her husband at her side,

whose dazzling expanse of bright-figured velvet waistcoat and massive

gold chain was in admirable keeping with his wife's attire. It was a

_landscape_, begging the word, after Turner's own heart. "Them's two

dummies from the asylum, I know," she continued. "Let's watch 'em make

signs." And she gazed upon us from the serene heights of green sward

with an amused, patronizing smile.

We dared not laugh. Dummies we had been dubbed, and dummies we must

remain to the end of the scene. Were ever mortals in such a fix? We

talked _them_ over well, however, while suffering tortures from our

pent-up emotions.

"That there one's rayther good-looking," ventured the proprietor of

the velvet and gold.

"Not so mighty, either," said his wife, bridling. "Face is too

chalky-like, and the other one is too fat." This was near being the

death of us both, as the two critics together would have turned

the scale at near five hundred. Consternation seized us just then,

however, as we saw a fellow-teacher approaching us who would be sure

to address us in spoken language and reveal us as two cheats. Hastily

retreating from the scene, we made our way to an anteroom, where it

was not considered a sin to laugh.

The instruction of deaf mutes in articulate speech has of late years

attracted considerable attention in both Europe and America. In

some of the European schools, in the Clark Institute at Northampton,

Massachusetts, and in a few of our State institutions it is brought

to great perfection. There are also special schools for this system of

teaching in most of our large cities. The majority of pupils in these

schools converse with ease, and understand readily what is said

to them by means of the motion of the lips. The Clark Institute at

Northampton, already referred to, under the conduct of Miss Harriet

Rogers, is the largest and most widely known of the schools for this

special method of instruction in this country. This is not a

State institution, but one endowed by the munificence of a private

gentleman, and consequently subject to none of the restrictions

imposed on the public institutions. Of course, only the most promising

pupils are sent there, and from these a careful selection is made, by

which means the highest possible success is ensured. Some of the

State institutions, however, burdened as they are with a large and

unassorted mass of pupils, have made most encouraging progress in

this direction. Of these, one of the most successful is the Illinois

institution. In its last published report the correspondence between

the principal and the parents of those pupils who have been taught by

this method is given, showing the utmost satisfaction at the progress

made and results attained.

Deaf mutes are divided into two classes--viz., entire mutes and

semi-mutes. The first comprises those who either have been born deaf

or have become so at so early an age as to have retained no knowledge

of articulate speech. The second class embraces those who have lost

their hearing after attaining such an age as still to be able to talk.

Speech is more easily and perfectly learned if the pupil has learned

to read before the loss of hearing. A knowledge of the sounds and

powers of the letters enables him to acquire the pronunciation of new

words with much greater facility than would be otherwise possible,

giving him a foundation on which to build his acquisition of spoken

language. To this last class, semi-mutes, articulation is invaluable,

enabling them to pursue their education with less difficulty, and

also to retain their power of communication with the outside world. In

regard to entire mutes, the utility of the accomplishment is seriously

questioned by some experienced educators. The fact must be admitted

that, while a much larger number of entire mutes can be taught to

converse intelligently and agreeably than would be imagined by those

unacquainted with the results obtained, the great mass of the deaf and

dumb must still be instructed wholly by means of written language. In

most instances, to ensure success, instruction should be begun at a

very much earlier age than it is possible to receive them into school,

and constantly practiced by all who hold communication with the pupil,

doing away entirely with the habit of using signs. It also requires

pupils of bright, quick mind, keen perceptive faculties, and an amount

of intelligence and perseverance on the part of the parents not found

in the average parent of deaf mutes; for it is well known that a

very large proportion of deaf mutes come from the poorer and more

illiterate classes. This is mainly attributable to the fact that by

far the larger number lose their hearing in infancy or early childhood

through disease--scarlet fever, measles and diphtheria being probably

the most frequent causes of deafness. Among those able to give

skillful nursing and to obtain good medical aid the number of cases

resulting in deafness is reduced to a minimum. Accidents, too, causing

deafness, occur more frequently among those unable to give their

children proper care. Congenital deafness is also probably greater

among the laboring classes, and is undoubtedly due to similar causes.

The methods used in the teaching of articulation form a subject of

much interest. The system has materially changed within the past few

years. The first step to be taken is to convey a knowledge of the

powers of the consonants and sounds of the vowels. Formerly, this

was done by what was called the "imitation method." The letter H was

usually the point of attack, the aspirate being the simplest of all

the powers of the letters. The teacher, holding up the hand of the

pupil, makes the aspirate by breathing upon his palm. This is soon

imitated, and thus a starting-point is gained. The feeling produced

upon the hand is the method of giving him an idea of the powers of the

consonants. A later and better system is that called "visible speech."

This is a system of symbols representing positions of the mouth and

tongue and all the organs of speech, and if the pupil does what

the symbols direct he cannot help giving the powers of the letters

correctly. By this method a more distinct and perfect articulation is

gained, with one-half the labor of the other method. As fast as

the powers of the letters are learned, the spelling of words is

undertaken. Many words are pronounced perfectly after a few trials:

others, however, often defy the most strenuous and persevering effort.

Entire mutes who undertake articulation are like hearing children

endeavoring to keep up the full curriculum of a modern school and

pursue the study of music in addition: the ordinary studies demand

all the energies of the child. Articulation consumes much time and

strength. Exceptional cases are of course to be found which are indeed

a triumph of culture, but the great mass of the deaf and dumb must

always be content with written language.

Articulation is also exceedingly trying to the unused or long-disused

throat and lungs. In this the teachers are likewise sufferers. The

tax upon the vocal organs is necessarily much greater than that in

ordinary speaking schools. But the disuse of the vocal organs in

articulate speech does not indicate that they are wholly unused. A

lady visiting an institution for the deaf and dumb a few years ago

poetically called the pupils the "children of silence." Considering

the tremendous volume of noise they are able to keep up with both

feet and throat, the title is amusingly inappropriate. A deaf-and-dumb

institution is the noisiest place in the world.

In summing up the results usually attained, let no discontented

taxpayer grumble at the large outlays annually made in behalf of the

deaf and dumb. If they learned absolutely nothing in the school-room,

the intelligence they gain by contact with each other, by the lectures

in signs, by intercourse with teachers, and the regular and systematic

physical habits acquired, are of untold value. Add to this a tolerable

acquaintance with the common English branches, such as reading,

writing, arithmetic--one of their most useful acquirements--geography

and history, and we have an amount of education which is of

incalculable value.

JENNIE EGGLESTON ZIMMERMAN.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CITY OF VIOLETS.

Wartburg, with its pleasant memories of delightful excursions during

the previous summer, was covered with snow, as if buried in slumber,

when I dashed past it on the 25th of March. A gray mantle of mist

obscured the sky, and by all the roadsides stood bushes loaded with

green buds shivering in the frosty air. The exquisite landscape, which

I had last seen glowing with such brilliant hues, now appeared robed

in one monotonous tint of gray, and the ancient towers and pointed

roofs of Weimar loomed with a melancholy aspect through the dense

fog. Only the welcome of my faithful friends, Gerhard Rohlfs and

his pretty, fair-haired wife, was blithe and gay. The brave desert

wanderer and bird of passage has now built himself a little wigwam or

nest near the railway-station: the grand duke of Weimar gave him for

the purpose a charming piece of ground with a delightful view. On the

25th of March a light veil of snow still rested on the ground, but two

days later we were listening to the notes of the lark and gathering

violets to take to Schiller's house and adorn the table of the beloved

singer. Everything was illumined by the brilliant sunlight--the

narrow bedstead on which he died, and all the numerous withered

laurel-wreaths and bouquets of flowers that filled it--while outside,

in Schiller's little garden, in the bed where his bust is placed,

violets nodded at us between the leaves of the luxuriant ivy.

And we carried in our hands bouquets of violets when we stood before

Goethe's house to pay our respects to the lady who in these bustling

days remains a revered memento of the times of Carl Augustus and his

poet-friend--Ottilie von Goethe. The beloved daughter-in-law of

the great master of song lives in the poet's house in the utmost

seclusion: few strangers know that she receives visitors. Only on rare

occasions is the classic little _salon_ opened in the evening to

a select few--only now and then, when the health of the aged lady

permits it, a circle of faithful friends gather round her listening

eagerly to her vivid descriptions of long-past days. The grand

duke himself often knocks at this door, and the grand duchess and

princesses take pleasure in coming hither. With deep emotion we

crossed the threshold over which Goethe's coffin was borne, and with

light step ascended the broad, easy staircase of the house that we

had so often heard described. Half-effaced frescoes, which had gleamed

over the head of the king of poesy, looked down upon us, and our eyes

wandered over the bronze figures past which Goethe had walked day

after day.

On reaching the second story, Ottilie von Goethe came forward to greet

us, looking like an apparition from another world. Her figure was

small and fragile, but there was an aristocratic repose in all her

movements. A white lace cap trimmed with dark-red velvet bows rested

on her hair, which was arranged over her temples in thick gray curls,

framing her face, from which a pair of brown eyes greeted us with a

bright, cordial glance. A white knit shawl covered her shoulders and a

black silk dress fell around her in ample folds. At her side stood her

younger sister, a canoness, who was paying her a few days' visit--an

amiable lady with a very cheerful temperament. Ottilie von Goethe

shared the violets with her. An easy conversation commenced. Frau von

Goethe was very much interested in Herr Rohlfs' travels and Edward

Vogel's fate, and said that one of her grandsons also cherished the

same ardent, restless longing to see foreign countries and people.

Then she spoke of her own journeys to Italy, "a long, long time ago,"

and of the charms of Venice and Verona. Underlying the words was a

slight tone of regret that she was now not only bound to the spot, but

also to the house, for invalids cannot venture out of doors to enjoy

the spring until the first of May, and September drives them back into

their quiet cell. "How often one longs for a distant horizon!" she

sighed. My eyes wandered over the wilderness of ancient roofs upon

which the windows of Goethe's house looked out, and discovered a small

spot where the blue mountain-peaks appeared.

"Why, there is a distant horizon!" I involuntarily exclaimed.

"Ah, but even that is so near!" replied Frau von Goethe, smiling.

The room where we were, as well as the adjoining apartment into which

we were allowed to peep, was full of relics of all kinds. Each article

probably had its special history, from the paintings and drawings

on the walls and the old-fashioned chests, chairs and tables, to the

cups, vases, glasses, coverlets, and cushions arranged in the neatest

order, some standing or lying around the apartment, others visible

through the glass doors of a cupboard. But the most interesting object

to me was the portrait of Goethe painted by Stieler. It has been

made familiar to all by copies, and represents the poet, though at

an advanced age, in the full possession of his physical strength. He

holds in his hand a letter, from which he is in the act of looking up:

the face is turned slightly aside. It seems as if the glance was one

of greeting to some friend who is just entering. The colors are still

wonderfully fresh and the expression bewitching. The large eyes beam

with the fire of genius, Olympian majesty is enthroned upon the brow,

and the curve of the lips possesses unequaled grace and beauty. A more

aristocratic, noble mouth cannot be imagined. Who could have resisted

the eloquence of those lips?

"This picture is not in the least idealized: it is a perfect likeness

of my father-in-law," observed Frau von Goethe, and added that this

portrait by Stieler was one of the best which had ever been painted.

Not far from the superb portrait of the father appears the melancholy

face of the son, August von Goethe, but I sought in vain for a picture

of the bud so early broken, Goethe's granddaughter, the lovely Alma,

who died in Vienna.

Fran von Goethe noticed with evident pleasure our eager interest in

her surroundings, and showed us many a relic. As she spoke of the

radiance of those long-past days which still gilded her quiet life,

she seemed to me like the venerable figure in the tale of the "Seven

Ravens," who relates marvelous stories to a listening group. Gradually

a throng of shapes from the dim past entered the small room and

gathered round the speaker, who suddenly became transfigured by the

light of youth. She was again the poet's cheerful nurse, the fair

flower of the household, the happy mother, the intellectual woman, the

centre of a brilliant circle. I gazed as if at a buried world, which

suddenly became once more alive: its inhabitants, clad in antique

garments, walked past us, stared in astonishment, and seemed to say,

We too were happy and beloved, feted and praised, the blue sky arched

over us also, and we plucked violets and rejoiced in their fragrance

till the deep, heavy sleep came.

Wait--only wait:

Soon thou too will rest.

It was a cold, feeble hand I respectfully kissed at parting, and I

remained under its spell, lingering in the strange world conjured

up by Ottilie von Goethe, till we stood before Goethe's pretty

summer-house and the blue violets peeped at us from the turf. The

windows stood wide open, the mild breeze swept gently in, and the sun

also looked to see if everything was in order in "der alte Herr's"

rooms. Far away between the trees gleamed the white pillars of the

house, and the ground at our feet was covered with a blue carpet. It

is said that nowhere in North Germany are there so many violets as

in the vicinity of Weimar. And why? Because, as the people poetically

say, "der alte Herr," whenever he went to walk, always filled his

pockets with violet-seeds, and scattered them everywhere with lavish

hands.

ELISE POLKO.

LA BEFANA.

Putting out of the question the Piazza of St. Peter's with Bernini's

encircling colonnades, which is a special thing and unlike anything

else in the world, the Piazza Navona is the handsomest piazza in Rome.

It is situated in the thickest and busiest part of the city, far out

of the usual haunts of the foreign residents, and nearly in the centre

of that portion of the city which is enclosed between the Corso and

the great curving sweep of the Tiber. It is handsome, not only

from its great space and regular shape--a somewhat elongated double

cube--but from its three fountains richly ornamented with statuary

of no mean artistic excellence, and from the clean and convenient

pavement which, intended for foot-passengers only, occupies all the

space save a carriage-way close to the houses encircling it. This

large extent of pavement, well provided with benches, and protected

from the incursion of carriages, which make almost every other part of

Rome more or less unsafe for all save the most wide-awake passengers,

renders the Piazza Navona a playground specially adapted for

nurses and their charges, who may generally be seen occupying it in

considerable numbers. But on the occasion on which I wish to call the

reader's attention to it the scene it presents is a very different and

far more locally characteristic one.

We will suppose it to be about midnight on the fifth of January, the

day preceding the well-known revel, now come to be mainly a children's

festival, which English people call Twelfth Night and celebrate by the

consumption of huge plumcakes and the drawing of lots for the offices

of king and queen of the revels. The Italians call it the festival

of the "Befana," the word being a readily-perceived corruption of

"Epifania." Of course the sense and meaning of the original term have

been entirely forgotten, and the Befana of the Italian populace is a

sort of witch, mainly benevolent indeed, and especially friendly to

children, to whom in the course of the night she brings presents, to

be found by them in the morning in a stocking or a shoe or any

other such fantastic hiding-place. But Italians are all more or less

children of a larger growth, and at Rome especially the populace of

all ages, ever ready for _circenses_ in any form, make a point of

"keeping" the festival of the Befana, who holds her high court on her

own night in the Piazza Navona.

We will betake ourselves thither about midnight, as I have said. It

is a bitterly cold night, and the stars are shining brilliantly in the

clear, steely-looking sky--such a night as Rome has still occasionally

at this time of year, and as she used to have more frequently when

Horace spoke of incautious early risers getting nipped by the cold.

One of the first things that strikes us as we make our way to the

place of general rendezvous muffled in our thickest and heaviest

cloaks and shawls is the apparent insensibility of this people to the

cold. One would have expected it to be just the reverse. But whether

it be that their organisms have stored up such a quantity of sunshine

during the summer as enables them to defy the winter's cold, or

whether their Southern blood runs more rapidly in their veins, it is

certain that men, women and children--and especially the women--will

for amusement's sake expose themselves to a degree of cold and

inclement weather that a Northerner would shrink from.

For some days previously, in preparation for the annual revel,

a series of temporary booths have by special permission of the

municipality been erected around the piazza. In these will be sold

every kind of children's toys--of the more ordinary sorts, that is

to say; for Roman children have never yet been rendered fastidious in

this respect by the artistic inventions that have been provided for

more civilized but perhaps not happier childhood. There will also be

a store of masks, colored dominoes, harlequins' dresses, monstrous and

outrageous pasteboard noses, and, especially and above all, every kind

of contrivance for making a noise. In this latter kind the peculiar

and characteristic specialty of the day are straight tin trumpets

some four or five feet in length. These are in universal request among

young and old; and the general preference for them is justified by the

peculiarly painful character of the note which they produce. It is a

very loud and vibrating sound of the harshest possible quality. One

feels when hearing it as if the French phrase of "skinning the ears"

were not a metaphorical but a literal description of the result of

listening to the sound. And when hundreds of blowers of these are

wandering about the streets in all parts of the town, but especially

in the neighborhood of the Piazza Navona, making night hideous with

their braying, it may be imagined that those who go to their beds

instead of doing homage to the Befana have not a very good time of it

there.

It is a curious thing that the Italians, who are denizens of "the land

of song," should take especial delight in mere abundance of discordant

noise. Yet such is unquestionably the case. They are in their festive

hours the most noisy people on earth. And the farther southward you

go the more pronounced and marked is the propensity. You may hear boys

and men imitating the most inharmonious and vociferous street-cries

solely for the purpose of exercising their lungs and making a noise.

The criers of the newspapers in the streets must take an enthusiastic

delight in their trade; and I have heard boys in the street who had

no papers to sell, and nothing on earth to do with the business,

screaming out the names of the different papers at the hour of their

distribution at the utmost stretch of their voices, and for no reason

on earth save the pleasure of doing it--just as one cock begins to

crow when he hears another.

The crowd on the piazza is so thick and close-packed that it is a

difficult matter to move in any direction when you are once within it,

but good-humor and courtesy are universal. An Italian crowd is always

the best-behaved crowd in the world--partly, I take it, from the

natural patience of the people, and the fact that nobody is ever in a

hurry to move from the place in which he may happen to be; and partly

as a consequence of the general sobriety. Even on such a night of

saturnalia as this of the Befana very little drunkenness is to be

seen. Although the crowd is so dense that every one's shoulder is

closely pressed against that of his neighbor, there is a great deal of

dancing going on. Here and there a ring is formed, carved out, as it

were, from the solid mass of human beings, in which some half dozen

couples are revolving more or less in time to the braying of a bagpipe

or scraping of a fiddle, executing something which has more or less

semblance to a waltz. The mode in which these rings are formed is at

once simple and efficacious. Any couple who feel disposed to dance

link themselves together and begin to bump themselves against their

immediate neighbors. These accept the intimation with the most perfect

good-humor, and assist in shoving back those behind them. A space

is thus gained in the first instance barely enough for the original

couple to gyrate in. But by violently and persistently dancing

up against the foremost of the little ring the area is gradually

enlarged: first one other couple and then another are moved to follow

the example, and they in their turn assist in bumping out the limits

of the ring till it has become some twenty feet or so in diameter.

These impromptu ball-rooms rarely much exceed that size, but dozens

of them may be found in the course of one's peregrinations around the

large piazza. The occupants of some of them will be found to consist

of town-bred Romans, and those of others of people from the country.

There is no mistaking them one for the other, and the two elements

rarely mingle together. The differences to be observed in the bearing

and ways of the two are not a little amusing, and often suggestive of

considerations not uninstructive to the sociologist. The probabilities

are that the music in the case of the first mentioned of the above

classes will be found to consist of a fiddle--in that of the latter,

of a bagpipe, the old classical _cornamusa_, which has been the

national instrument of the hill-country around the Campagna for it

would be dangerous to say how many generations. In either case there

seems to be an intimate connection between the music and the spirit of

the public for which it is provided. The peasant of the Campagna and

of the Latian, Alban and Sabine hills takes his pleasure, even that of

the dance, as an impertinent Frenchman said of us Anglo-Saxons, _moult

tristement_. That indescribable air of sadness which, as so many

observers have concurred in noting, broods over the district which

they inhabit seems to have communicated itself to the inmost nature

and character of the populations. They are a stern, sad, sombre and

silent race, for what I have said above of a tendency to noisiness and

vociferation must be understood to apply to the town-populations only.

Their dance is generally much slower than that of the city-folk. In

these latter days increased communication has taught some of them to

assimilate their dancing with more or less successful imitation to the

waltz, but in many cases these parties of peasants may still be seen

practicing the old dances, now wholly unknown in the city. But whether

they are keeping to their old figures and methods or endeavoring to

follow new ones, the difference in their bearing is equally striking.

The dancing of peasants must necessarily be for the most part heavy

and awkward, but despite this the men of the Campagna and the hills

are frequently not without a certain dignity of bearing, and the women

often, though perhaps not quite so frequently, far from devoid of

grace. Especially may the former quality be observed if, as is likely,

the dancers belong to the class of mounted herdsmen, who pass their

lives on horseback, and whose exclusive duty it is to tend the herds

of half-wild cattle that roam over the plains around Rome. These are

the "butteri" of whom I wrote on a former occasion in these pages--the

aristocracy of the Campagna. And it is likely that dancers on the

Piazza Navona on a Befana night should belong to this class, for the

Campagna shepherd is probably too poor, too abject and too little

civilized to indulge in any such pastime.

Little of either grace or dignity will be observed in the

Terpsichorean efforts of the Roman _plebs_ of the present day.

Lightness, _brio_, enjoyment and an infinite amount of "go" may be

seen, and plenty of laughter heard, and "lazzi"--sallies more or less

imbued with wit, or at least fun, and more or less repeatable to ears

polite. But there is a continual tendency in the dancing to pass

into horse-play and romping which would not be observed among the

peasantry. In a word, there is a touch of blackguardism in the city

circles, which phase could not with any justice or propriety be

applied to the country parties.

But it is time to go home. The moon is waning: _suadentque cadentia

sidera somnum_, if only there were any hope of being able to be

persuaded by their reasonable suggestions. But truly the town seems to

afford little hope of it. We make our way out of the crowd with some

difficulty and more patience, and are sensible of a colder nip in the

January night-air as we emerge from it into the neighboring streets.

But even there, though the racket gradually becomes less as we leave

the piazza behind us, there is in every street the braying of those

abominable tin trumpets, and we shall probably turn wearily in our

beds at three or four in the morning and thank Heaven that the Befana

visits us but once a year.

T.A.T.

ERNESTO ROSSI.

The stage of Paris has long been conceded to be the first in the

world. In France the player is not only born--he must be made. Before

the embryo performer achieves the honors of a public début he has been

trained in the classes of the Conservatoire to declaim the verse of

Racine and to lend due point and piquancy to the prose of Molière.

He is taught to tread in the well-beaten path of French dramatic art,

fenced in and hedged around with sacred traditions. If he attempts

to embody any one of the characters of the classic drama, every tone,

every gesture, every peculiarity of make-up, every shade and style in

his costume, is prescribed to him beforehand. Originality of treatment

and of conception is above all things to be avoided. So spoke Molière,

so looked Lekain, so stepped Talma; therefore all the succeeding

generations of players must so speak and look and walk. Let us imagine

the process transferred to our English stage--the shades of Burbage

and Betterton prescribing how Hamlet and Richard III. should be

played--the manners of the seventeenth century forcibly transferred

to our modern stage. The process would be intolerable. Worse still, it

would have the effect on our comparatively undramatic race of crushing

out every spark of originality and of wholly hindering the development

of histrionic talent. With the French such results are happily, to a

certain extent, impossible. There is scarcely any French man or woman

of ordinary intelligence who does not possess sufficient capacity for

acting to be capable of being trained into a very fair performer. The

preponderance of beautiful women on the French stage above those to

be found in other stations of life may be accounted for on the ground

that any young girl of the lower classes possessing extraordinary

beauty and ordinary intelligence can readily, from the bent of her

national characteristics, be trained into an actress. But while the

high-comedy theatres and those of the melodrama flourish, there can

be no doubt but that the highest type of acting finds no chance for

development in France. The actor who possesses one spark of genius

soon escapes from the galling fetters of classicism and tradition, and

takes refuge in comedy or in melodrama. Thus did Frédéric Lemaître

in his prime, and thus, too, in later days, did the accomplished and

brilliant Lafontaine.

From these causes, or from others of a kindred nature, the French

tragic stage has within our generation possessed no actor of

commanding genius. One actress indeed adorned it for a few brief

years--the great Rachel. But she, strange and unnatural production

of unnatural art, was a phenomenon, and one not likely to be soon

reproduced. The art of the Comédie Française is to-day inimitable.

Like Thalberg's playing, it is the very apotheosis of the mechanical.

There talent is trained and cut and trimmed into one set fashion, till

the very magnitude of the work becomes imposing, as the gardens of

Le Nôtre in their grand extent almost console the spectator for the

absence of virgin forests and of free-gushing streams. But could the

forest be brought side by side with the parterre, could Niagara pour

its emerald floods or Trenton its amber cascades side by side with the

Fountain of Latona or the Great Basin of Neptune, Nature, terrible

in her grandeur, would rule supreme. Such has been the comparison

afforded by the appearance of Ernesto Rossi on the Parisian stage.

It was Shakespeare and genius coming into direct competition with

perfectly-trained talent and with Racine.

Early last October a modest announcement was made that Signor Rossi

would give two performances at the Salle Ventadour, one of them to

be for the benefit of the sufferers by the Southern inundations.

_Othello_ was the play selected for both occasions. The first night

arrived. The unlucky opera-house, shorn of its ancient popularity, was

not half filled. Public curiosity was not specially aroused. Nobody

cared particularly to see an Italian actor perform in a translation of

a play by an English dramatist. Of the scanty audience present,

fully one-half were Italians, and the rest were mostly English, lured

thither by the desire of comparing the new actor with his great

rival, Salvini. There was a sprinkling of Americans and a scanty

representation of the Parisian public.

When Othello came upon the stage the foreign actor received but a cool

and unenthusiastic greeting. His appearance was a disappointment

to those familiar with the majestic bearing and picturesque garb of

Salvini. His dress was unbecoming, and the dusky tint of his stage

complexion accorded ill with his blue eyes. Then, too, his conception

of the character jarred on the ideas of those who had seen the other

great Italian actor. It was hard to dethrone the majestic and princely

Moor, the stately general of Salvini's conception, to give place to

the frank, free-hearted soldier, intoxicated with the gladness of

successful wooing, that Rossi brings before us. Certain melodramatic

points, also, in the earlier acts, such as the "Ha!" wherewith Rossi

with upraised arms starts from Desdemona when Brabantio reminds him

"She has deceived her father, and may thee,"

seemed exaggerated and out of place. In the scenes with Iago he

equaled Salvini, yet did not in any one point surpass him. Nor did

he in any way imitate him. The fury of the two Othellos is widely

different. Salvini is the fiercer, for Rossi's rage has a background

of intensest suffering. One is an enraged tiger, the other a wounded

lion. Both are maddened--the one with wrath, the other with pain.

But in the last act, with the unutterable anguish of its closing

scenes--the swift remorse, the unavailing agony of that noble nature,

too late undeceived, the wild, pathetic tenderness wherewith Othello

clasped the dead Desdemona to his heart, smoothing back her loosened

tresses with an inarticulate cry of almost superhuman love and

woe--the horror of the catastrophe was all swallowed up in a sympathy

whose pain was wellnigh too great to be aroused by mimic despair. The

fall of the curtain was greeted with a tempest of applause. Men

sprang to their feet and wildly waved their hats in the air. Shouts of

"Bravo, Rossi!" and "Vive Rossi!" arose on all sides. Ladies stood

up in the boxes waving their handkerchiefs, and every hand and throat

joined in the universal uproar. Before noon the next day every seat in

the house was engaged for the second representation. The great actors

of the French stage came to study the acting of this new genius who

had so suddenly made his appearance in their midst. To this sudden

success succeeded the announcement of a prolonged engagement, the

failing health of the younger Rossi having decided his father to

relinquish all immediate idea of an American tour.

The second character that Rossi assumed was Hamlet, and in this he

achieved the greatest success of his Parisian engagement. The opera

of Thomas had rendered the public familiar with the personage of the

hero, and the magnates of the Grand Opera came to the Salle Ventadour

to study this new and forcible presentment of the baritone prince,

who wails and warbles through the operatic travesty of Shakespeare's

masterpiece. That the impersonation will prove wholly acceptable to

all Shakespearian critics in England or America is extremely doubtful.

For the Hamlet of Rossi is mad--undeniably, unmistakably mad--from the

moment of his interview with the Ghost. But once accept that view, and

the characterization stands unrivaled upon our modern stage. Nothing

can be imagined at once more powerful or more pathetic than that

picture of a "noble mind o'erthrown," alternating between crushed,

hopeless misery and wild excitement--thirsting for the rest and peace

that only death can bestow, yet shrinking from the fearful leap

into the dim unknown beyond the grave. The scene with the Queen is

inimitably grand. One feels that the entrance of the Ghost comes

only in time to stay the frenzied hand, and then follows the swift

revulsion when Hamlet, melting into tenderest pathos, kneels at his

mother's feet to beseech her to repent--a mood that changes anew to

frenzy when his wild wandering thoughts are turned toward the King.

It is only in the last scene of the play that the approach of death

scatters the clouds that have so long obscured the grief-tortured

brain. Nothing can be imagined finer or more picturesque than this

closing scene. On the raised daïs in the centre of the stage, and

on the throne from which the King has been hurled, the dying prince,

conqueror and sovereign in this last supreme moment, dominates the

scene of death and carnage, triumphant over all, even in the clutches

of his own relentless doom.

As the Hamlet of Rossi is unmistakably mad, so his Macbeth is an

undeniable craven and criminal. I can compare this personation to

nothing so much as to that of a man haunted by a fiend. For the steps

of Macbeth are dogged ever by an unseen devil--namely, his own evil

yet coward nature. He is wicked and he is afraid. The whole physique

of Rossi in the scene in the first act where the king heaps favors and

commendations on his valiant warrior was eloquent of conscious guilt:

the constrained attitude, the shifting, uneasy glance, told, louder

than words, of a wicked purpose and a stinging conscience. From

the moment of the murder the wretched thane lives in a perpetual

atmosphere of fear. He is afraid of everything--first of his own

unwashed hands, and next of the dead king; then of Banquo and of

Banquo's ghost; and finally he is afraid of all the world. It is only

at the last that the mere physical courage of the soldier reasserts

itself, and Macbeth, driven to bay by Fate, fights with the fierce

energy of despair.

As to Rossi's Lear, it is not to be criticised. Words fail when the

heartstrings are thrilled to trembling and to tears. The pathos

of Lear's recognition of Cordelia was past the power of words to

describe. He stands at first gazing in vague bewilderment at the face

of his child, then into the darkened and troubled gaze steals anew the

light of reason and of recognition: unutterable sorrow, inexpressible

remorse, sweep across the quivering features, and with an inarticulate

sob Lear would fain sink on his knees at his wronged daughter's feet

to pray for pardon. That people rose and left the house in a very

passion of tears is the fittest criticism that can be bestowed upon

this personation.

The list of the Shakesperian characters closed with Romeo. Rossi was

the divinest of lovers, in spite of his forty years and his stalwart

proportions, and the balcony scene was an exquisite love-duet that

needed not the aid of music to lend it sweetness. But in the Italian

version the play was so cut and garbled that there could be little

pleasure in listening to it for any one familiar with the original.

Outside of his Shakespearian répertoire, Rossi has appeared in only

two plays--the _Kean_ of the elder Dumas, and _Nero_, a tragedy

by Signer Cosso, The first, originally written for Lemaître, is an

ill-constructed, improbable melodrama. But it contains one grand

scene--namely, that where Kean, whilst playing Hamlet, goes mad upon

the stage; and this scene Rossi renders superbly. As to Nero, it is

marvelous to witness the complete eclipse of the refined, accomplished

gentleman and intellectual actor behind the brutal physiognomy of the

wicked emperor. It is Hamlet transformed into a prize-fighter.

In person, Signor Rossi is less strikingly handsome than is his

rival, Salvini, but he possesses a singularly attractive and pleasing

countenance. He is a Piedmontese, blue-eyed and fair-complexioned,

with chestnut hair, the abundant locks of which are just touched with

gray. He is tall and finely proportioned, with the chest of a Hercules

and the hands and feet of a duchess. Off the stage he is peculiarly

pleasing in manner, and is said to be a noble-hearted and generous

gentleman, as well as an amiable and genial companion, singularly free

from conceit and delighting in his art.

L.H.H.

BISHOP THIRLWALL'S PRECOCITY.

We do not remember to have seen in the various notices relative to the

late Bishop Connop Thirlwall, the well-known historian, any mention

of his precocity, which must have been almost without a parallel.

Thirlwall came of a long line of clergymen. His father was chaplain

to Dr. Percy (_Percy's Reliques_), bishop of Dromore, and in 1809

he published some specimens of the early genius of his son under

the title of "_Primitiæ; or, Essays and Poems on Various Subjects,

Religious, Moral and Entertaining._ By Connop Thirlwall, eleven years

of age. Dedicated by permission to the Bishop of Dromore." In the

preface it is stated that at three years old Connop read English so

well that he was taught Latin, and at four read Greek with an ease and

fluency that astonished all who heard him. An accidental circumstance

revealed his talent for composition when he was seven. Mrs. Thirlwall

told her elder son, in her husband's absence, to write out his

thoughts on a certain subject. Connop asked leave to do the same, and

produced to her astonishment the following: "How uncertain is life!

for no man can tell in what hour he shall leave the world. What

numbers are snatched away in the bloom of youth, and turn the fine

expectation of parents into sorrow! All the promising pleasures of

this life will fade, and we shall be buried in the dust. God takes

away a good prince from his subjects only to transplant him into

everlasting joy in heaven. A good man is not dispirited by death,

for it only takes him away that he may feel the pleasures of a better

world. Death comes unawares, but never takes virtue with it. Edward

VI. died in his minority, and disappointed his subjects, to whom he

had promised a happy reign." These reflections were probably

suggested by some sermon the boy had heard, but the composition is an

extraordinary piece of work at such an age.

His effusions are on various themes, and comprise quite a pretty

little poem, written when he was eleven, on Tintern Abbey. But perhaps

the most remarkable circumstance of all is that this youthful prodigy

lived to amply fulfill the promise of his youth, and proved as

sagacious and moderate in the use of knowledge as he was marvelous

in his powers of acquiring it. There is a remarkable tribute to these

powers in John Stuart Mill's _Autobiography_, where he says: "The

speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly

every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since bishop of

St. David's, then a chancery barrister, unknown except by a high

reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union. His speech

was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences I

set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never

since heard any one whom I placed above him."

FREAKS OF KLEPTOMANIA.

A few months ago England, more especially the part thereof contiguous

to royal Windsor, was thrown into consternation by the report that

a box had been discovered, sunk just below water-mark in the Thames,

attached by a string to a tree, and containing a number of keys, which

were believed to belong to doors leading to the royal jewel-coffers.

The nine days' wonder which this intelligence, naturally enough,

produced, has since had a curious explanation. They were not keys of

the royal apartments at all, but Eton keys, the fruits of the

kleptic propensities of an unfortunate Eton boy, who--like a very

distinguished and noble member of Mr. Disraeli's cabinet, who is said

even now not to be able to resist the temptation offered at cabinet

councils by "Dizzy's" green kid gloves--had already paid the penalty

for similar offences by being sent away. A most extraordinary

instance of this propensity occurred a few years ago at a very wealthy

nobleman's house in the north of England. During a visit there

a lady's diamonds disappeared. There was great and general

consternation, and the detective police were summoned from London. The

jewels were subsequently discovered in a closet attached to the noble

host's dressing-room.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Round my House: Notes of Rural Life in France in Peace and War. By

Philip Gilbert Hamerton. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The time has at last come when Englishmen and Americans seem disposed

to study the character of the French people with some care and to

judge it with impartiality. The overthrow of its military power did

less to lower the nation in the eyes of foreigners than its subsequent

course has done to raise it; and now that it is fairly entering on

a new career in a mood and under auspices that cannot but awaken

the strongest hopes, we have probably seen the last of the typical

Frenchman of the Anglo-Saxon imagination--a being capable of the most

frantic actions and incapable of a serious thought, a compound of

frivolity and ferocity, the fit subject and facile instrument of a

despotism that knew how to gratify his vanity while restraining his

mad ebullitions. Among the excuses that might be offered for such

misconceptions is the dearth of information in the literature of

France itself in regard to the life and habits of the general mass of

the population. In these days it is to novels that we chiefly go

for pictures of character and manners, and French novels are almost

exclusively devoted to pictures of Parisian manners. Balzac, it

is true, has given us delineations of provincial life; but the

delineations of Balzac are often more enigmatical than the problems

of real life, and even if we could always accept the portraitures they

give us as undistorted, they generally presuppose a knowledge on the

part of the reader on those points on which the foreigner is most apt

to be ignorant. In any case, we shall be best instructed by a writer

who both understands our lack and is able to supply it, and these

qualifications, with others scarcely less essential, Mr. Hamerton

has brought to his task. He has thoroughly familiarized himself with

French usages, but he has not lost his sense of the difference between

them and those of his own land, and of the consequent necessity for

explaining as well as describing, and of tracing peculiarities to

their source. If he is free from the common prejudices of the foreign

observer, he has not adopted the passions or the partialities of the

native. He can write with fairness of different classes and factions,

and can discriminate between ordinary impulses and actions and those

that have their origin in strong excitement. Finally, he neither

overloads us with facts and statistics nor seeks to amuse us with

fancies or caricatures. He is always sober and always agreeable.

The matter of this volume was collected during a fixed residence of

several years in one of the central provinces of France. No doubt Mr.

Hamerton had a previous acquaintance with the country and with its

language far exceeding that of the mere tourist, and his wife, it

appears, is a Frenchwoman, the daughter of an ex-préfet. But he makes

few allusions to any former experiences, and draws no comparisons

between the conditions of life or the characteristics of the people in

different provinces. This is perhaps to be considered a defect in the

book, though it might not have possessed the same attractiveness had

its scope been wider. It is an advantage, too, that the locality was

not one which excites curiosity by its strongly marked features or

abnormal types. Travelers often seem to imagine that they have only to

tell us about Brittany or Gascony to win our interest, whereas it is

precisely such regions that have the least novelty for us, just as

the scenery of the Scottish Highlands has been made more familiar

to Americans than that of almost any other part of Britain. Mr.

Hamerton's house, as he gives us clearly to understand, though he

suppresses names, was in the neighborhood of Autun. The situation

was a strictly rural one, but with easy access to the town and the

feasibility of reaching Paris, Lyons or Geneva in a night's journey

by rail. It had, he writes, "one very valuable characteristic in great

perfection--namely, variety. There was nothing in it very striking at

first sight, but we had a little of everything." It was in an elevated

plain about fifteen miles in diameter and nearly circular, girt by a

circus of hills rising fifteen hundred feet above the general level.

A trout stream ran through the property. There were pretty estates

around of about two hundred acres each, with houses in general of

modest dimensions and architecture, though occasionally aspiring to

the dignity of châteaux. Roman and mediæval remains, with architecture

of different periods, were to be found in the city, as well as a

public library and art-gallery, cafés and the inevitable _cercle_. The

flora, owing to the diversities of elevation, was varied, and while

vineyards clothed the foot of the slopes and gigantic old chestnuts

looked down on them from above, the vegetation of the hill-tops

was that of Lancashire or Scotland. It follows, of course, that the

pursuits and habits of the population were correspondingly various,

and there was ample opportunity for studying the different classes of

society, from the noblesse to the peasants. The results of this study

are presented, not in the form of labored analyses, but in easy and

flowing sketches, sometimes in the form of narrative, always full of

illustrative details, and winning without much discussion or argument

a ready assent to the author's conclusions. Many statements in the

book will, of course, not be new to generally well-informed readers,

but it is not often that they come with the same force and freshness

from direct observation, and still more rarely is their relation to

each other or their bearing on the subject to which they relate

so clearly and correctly indicated. Among the points on which Mr.

Hamerton has thus thrown a stronger light are the characteristics and

position of French ladies, divided, "in this part of the world," he

writes, "into two distinct classes: the home women and the visiting

women--_les femmes d'intérieur_, and _les femmes du monde_; the exact

theory of the _mariage de convenance_, which is popularly but

wrongly considered as based on mere mercenary motives; and the mental

condition of the peasant, with his natural quickness of intellect and

his stupendous ignorance, his adherence to tradition and ingrained

superstitiousness, and his suspicion of the nobles and tendency to

emancipate himself from clerical influence. It is France in a state

of transition that Mr. Hamerton paints, and his anticipations have

already to some extent been justified by events. "My hope for France

is," he says, "that a system of regularly-working representative

government may be the final result of the long and eventful

revolution, and that this form of government may give the country

certain measures which it very greatly needs. A thorough system

of national education is one of them, a real religious equality is

another. These would never be conceded by a French monarchy of any

type with which past experience has made the country familiar.... The

only chance of real representation lies in the Republic."

_BOOKS RECEIVED_.

Improved Diary, or Marginal Index-Book of Daily Record: a Diary

provided with Marginal Indices so arranged that any day of the year

may be referred to at once, and the various subject-matters recorded

in it may be arranged for ready reference, together with Calendars,

Interest Table, etc. Devised and arranged by M.N. Lovell. Published

exclusively by the Erie Publishing Co., Erie, Pa.

The Review of Gen. Sherman's Memoirs. Examined Chiefly in the light of

its own Evidence. By C.W. Moulton. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

The Chevalier Casse-Cou: The Search for Ancestors. Translated from the

French original. By Thomas Picton. New York: R.M. De Witt.

Proceedings of American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, held

at Hartford, Conn., Sept. 28, 1875. Baltimore: Wm. K. Boyle & Sons.

Brief Biographies. Vol. II. English Radical Leaders. By R.J. Hinton.

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Foot Notes; or, Walking as a Fine Art. By Alfred Barren. Wallingford,

Conn.: Wallingford Printing Co.

Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education. No. 7.

Washington: Government Printing-office.

In Doors and Out; or, Views from the Chimney-corner. By Oliver Optic.

Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Among my Books. (Second Series.) By Jas. Russell Lowell. Boston: James

R. Osgood & Co.

The Reading Club and Handy Speaker, No. 3. By George M. Baker. Boston:

Lee & Shepard.

Her Dearest Foe. (Leisure-Hour Series.) By Mrs Alexander. New York:

Henry Holt & Co.

Pebbles from Old Pathways. By Minnie Ward Patterson. Chicago: C.J.

Burroughs & Co.

Bridge and Tunnel Centres. By John B. McMaster. New York: D. Van

Nostrand.

Safety Valves. By Richard H. Buel, C.E. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Guido and Lita. By the Marquis of Lorne. New York: Macmillan & Co.

The Asbury Twins. By Sophie May. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Sea-Weed and Sand: Poems. By Ben Wood Davis.