Aunt Nanny shook her head, and began the usual doleful story about the

war and its consequences; but Lilly gave me a quick look, and her face

absolutely flashed. Then she slyly raised those long slim fingers of

hers and spelled out, "_The cotton_."

Well, pretty soon we heard from the cotton. Uncle David had sent it to

England, and it had brought a good price. In he came one day and tossed

a little packet into my lap and into Lil's. We opened them, and out

tumbled five twenty-dollar gold-pieces.

"Well, young ladies," said he, "what shall you do with your wealth?"

"Go to New Orleans," said Lilly as coolly as ever she spoke in her life.

"Pooh! pooh!" said Aunt Nanny: "just put it in the bank for a nest-egg."

"Now, Aunt Nanny," said Lilly, who had a perfect genius for argument,

"what under heaven do we want with a nest-egg? Uncle David gave us this

without any conditions: we were to do just as we pleased with it. And I

am tired of staying on this old sand-bar: it just makes me sick to smell

the oleanders. I want to go somewhere--to see something of life. Mrs.

Long would be delighted to have us go over to New Orleans with her: this

money will buy us some new dresses; so _why_ can't we do it?"

"I think they might go, Nanny," said that blessed Uncle David; and then

Maum' Hepsey came in. She had been our black mammy, and was a privileged

character.

"Lor', yes, Miss Nanny!" said she: "let de chillen go, for massy's sake.

Dey gits tired joggin' along here in de same ole ruts. 'Tain't gwine ter

cost so very much; an' I'm willin' ter 'conomize six months ter help

'long."

The end of it all was that Aunt Nanny had to give her consent--that is,

she said, if Mrs. Long really wanted us. So she dressed in her best--a

long velvet cloak and a brocaded silk that looked very _ark_aic--and

went the same day to find out that lady's mind. She came back, of

course, with a warm repetition of Mrs. Long's invitation, and an urgent

entreaty to be ready in a week's time. Hence the commotion in our

family, for much had to be done in that week of preparation.

I did not suspect Lilly was not quite happy until one morning when we

were walking on the beach before breakfast. It was a morning to make one

in love with life. I danced along the hard shining white beach, and was

more interested in watching the water, that broke into as many ripples

as if the fishes were doing the diagonal waltz under the waves, than in

looking at Lilly's face; but finally I noticed that she had an ugly

little frown on her forehead.

"After all, Stell," she said, "one hundred dollars won't go a great

way."

"Well, of course, Lil, we don't expect to launch out, like Dinah, in

'gorgeous array.'"

"No, but we don't want to look like Southern paupers."

"As we are," said I, laughing.

"No matter: we must put the best foot foremost," said Lil, looking very

pretty and pale and earnest as the salt wind blew back her hair: "our

new silks, with some of Aunt Nanny's old lace, will do very well, but

how I wish we had some jewelry!"

"Oh, I don't care for that," said I.

"Good enough reason: you are younger than I am, and don't need it." (One

would have thought Lilly thirty years old.) "But I should look like a

different being with earrings. I must have a pair."

"The only question is how to get them," said I prosaically, for I'm

always acting as a drag on Lilly's wheels.

"True," she said with a tragic air. "Dear me! I'm tempted to duck my

head under the water, and let it stay there, when I think of all the

troubles of life."

"'You would be a mermaid fair,

Sitting alone, sitting alone,'

and all strung round with corals and pearls. But I'd rather be Stella

Tresvant on her way to New Orleans--and breakfast."

"Breakfast, indeed!" said Lilly with an accent of scorn.

Still, she ate this meal with a becoming appetite, and after it was

ended proposed that we should go and have a chat with Maum' Hepsey.

We found Maum' Hepsey in her cabin, sitting in a rickety old

rocking-chair, a short black pipe in her mouth from which she was

drawing vigorous whiffs of comfort. A slow fire was burning in the

fireplace, and on it was a huge black kettle half filled with white

Southern corn. This was "lye hominy" in course of preparation--the

succulent lye hominy dear to every Southern heart.

"Lor', chillen!" said Maum' Hepsey, "it's too hot for you to be in here.

Massy knows if I wazn't seasoned to it I'd drap in my tracks, dis fire

is so pow'ful drawin'."

"Oh, never mind, maum'; we can sit in the door. We just came to talk to

you about our troubles."

"Sakes alive! I thought your troubles waz about over, now dat you're

gwine ter have a trip to Orleans."

"That's it," sighed Lil: "we're going off to that grand city, where I

suppose the ladies wear silks and satins every day, and we've nothing to

wear."

"Whar's de money for de cotton?" Maum' Hepsey demanded, her lower jaw

dropping in such a surprised way that the black pipe fell out and barely

escaped the lye hominy.

"A hundred dollars doesn't go very far," said Lil contemptuously.

"Well, chillen, in my young days dat waz pretty much of a sum--sho's yo'

born it waz."

"Things are different now; and besides, Maum' Hepsey, you don't know how

a dressed-up lady ought to look."

"Highty-tighty!" said maum', while her eyes sparkled alarmingly. "As if

I ain't seen mo' finery in a month dan you has in every blessed year of

your life! Lor'! when my young mars' brung his bride over from Orleans

dat chile didn't have a gownd in her trunk dat warn't made of Injy silk;

an' she did look han'some a-trailin' round in 'em. An' you tell me I

donno what fine dressin' is! Go 'long, chile! you've lost your manners."

Maum' Hepsey was really offended, and I hastened to soothe her: "Lil

only meant that you didn't know how the ladies dressed now. We are to

have two new dresses, maum', but Lilly's trouble is that she hasn't any

jewelry."

She shook her turbaned head: "Jewelry costs a sight of money, honey. My

young mis', she had a ring on her finger wid a stun in it like a star.

'Twarn't no bigger 'n a baby hazelnut, but, sho's yo' born, chillen, dat

ring cost _ten hundred dollars_!"

"That was a diamond," said Lilly in an awed voice. "I never expect to

have one if I live to be a thousand years old."

"Chillen," said Maum' Hepsey, lowering her voice, "why don't you git

Miss Nanny to let you open dat trunk in de attic?"

"Whose is it, Maum' Hepsey?"

"Lor', honey! didn't you never hear 'bout dat trunk? It was lef' wid

your Uncle David for sto'age durin' de war. A slim, dark-complected

young man brought it one evenin' about sundown, an' from dat day to dis

none of us has ever set eyes on him."

"What do you suppose became of him?"

"De good Lord knows, honey. Mos' likely he waz killed: men dropped down

like oleander-blossoms in de high winds in dem dreadful days. Now, I

shouldn't wonder, chillen, if dar waz _money_ in dat trunk."

"So there might be," said Lilly with a start.

"It must ha' held somethin' valerble," said Maum' Hepsey, looking like a

solemn old owl, "else why should he ha' been so mighty pertickeler 'bout

havin' it stored safe? Den, ag'in, he must ha' been killed, else why

shouldn't he ha' come back for it? An' why should we let de

things--whatever is in it--moulder away, instead o' gettin' de good of

'em like sensible folks?"

"We shouldn't have any right," said I doubtfully.

"Oh shoo, chile, shoo! You'd have just as much right as de rats an'

mice."

Lilly jumped up. "I think Maum' Hepsey's idea a good one," said she.

"Who knows? That trunk may turn out a gold-mine."

Back we went to the house, and made an appeal to Aunt Nanny to be

allowed to open the trunk.

"Dear me, girls! what will you think of next?" said she. "I had almost

forgotten that old trunk."

"Tell us about the man who left it, aunty. What was his name?"

"That's what none of us know. He came here about dusk one evening--a

wild, distracted looking man he was--and said he wanted to leave a trunk

until called for. You know your uncle David was a commission-merchant,

and very often had packages left with him for safe-keeping. He had a

book in which he registered the names of the owners, descriptions of the

parcels, etc. He turned to his desk to get out this ledger, and when he

looked round again the man was gone. Your uncle ran to the door, but no

trace of him was to be seen. He says that he would have thought the

whole thing a dream, but for the little trunk on the floor."

"What a romance!" cried Lil.

"The poor fellow must have been killed," said Aunt Nanny. "We advertised

the trunk after the war, but no claimant ever came for it."

"And you've kept it all this time without looking into it? How could

you? It would have been a perfect Blue Beard's chamber to me."

"Dear me, child! With all the trouble that's come to this house I've had

other things to do than to go prying into strangers' trunks."

"Well, you've got to pry now," said Lilly with her little air of

decision. "Who knows what treasures we may unearth? Can't we open it,

aunty?"

"Yes, if Uncle David says so."

We could hardly wait for Uncle David to come home. We dragged the trunk

down from the attic to the sitting-room: finally, we went to the gate to

watch for Uncle David, and before he was well in the house had won his

consent to open the trunk. In fact, I think he was not without a mild

curiosity himself, though he said, "I feel uncommonly like a burglar,"

as he knelt down by the trunk and tried to force the lock.

"How do you know how a burglar feels?" said Lil saucily.

It was rather an exciting moment. A sea-breeze sprang up, and the blinds

rattled loudly, as though some angry hand were trying to break them

away. I started nervously and looked over my shoulder, half expecting to

see the wrathful face of a slim, dark man. A cold air blew through the

room. It almost seemed that viewless influences were interposing to save

the stranger's treasures from profanation.

It was a spring lock, and it flew open with a snap. We peered eagerly

into the trunk. Commonplace enough! Uncle David handed out one shirt

after another.

"Bah!" said Lilly, "only a man's shirts!"

"But only look!" said Aunt Nanny, "what exquisite linen! and how neatly

made! Some woman's hand is in this."

Lil picked one up and looked at it curiously: "Well, they are nicely

done: no sewing-machine work here. And see, aunty, here are initials."

The initials "C. G." were marked in delicate embroidery on all the

garments. Next came a lot of gentleman's handkerchiefs marked in the

same way, and with them half a dozen thread cambric, lace-bordered

handkerchiefs, evidently intended for a lady's use, and without mark.

The next thing was a dress-suit, in which we took very little interest:

then a yellow sheet of paper that we seized eagerly. We hoped it was a

letter, but it was a poem without date or signature, written in French:

Qu'elle est belle la marquise!

Que sa toilette est exquise!

Gants glacees a dix boutons,

Et bottines hauts talons!

Qu'elle est belle la marquise!

Quelles delices, quel delire,

Dans sa bouche et son sourire!

Et sa voix--qui ne dirait

Que le rossignol chantait?

Qu'elle est belle la marquise!

La marquise! ma marquise!

Bel amour est sa devise,

Et sa profession de foi

Est: je vous aime--aimez moi!

Qu'elle est belle la marquise!

"Oh, how interesting!" cried Lilly. "I shall die if I don't find out

something more about him."

"You'll never hear of him again," said I, "so make up your mind to

die."

"Perhaps he had left one he loved," said Uncle David, "and she waited

for him day after day, and he never came back to her."

Uncle David's voice was as sad as the echo in a tomb. I thought I saw

tears in the misty blue eyes behind the spectacles; and I believe at

that moment, for the first time in my life, I realized that Uncle David,

old and gray and wrinkled though he was, had a heart that had suffered.

"Well," said Lilly, shaking back her hair impatiently, "is there

anything more?"

"Only this little box."

We opened the box, and there, on a bed of pink cotton, were a pair of

cuff-buttons, the most elegant we had ever seen. They were onyx, with

diamond stars for a centre. The diamonds were all small except the

central ones, that were like the dewdrops at the tips of narrow leaves.

"How beautiful!" cried Lilly.

"These diamonds are of great value," said Uncle David, examining them

critically.

"But this man must have had friends," said I: "there must be some one in

the world to whom these things ought to belong."

"Until those friends are found," said Lilly, "I propose that we act as

Mr. Unknown's heir and executors. You can have the handkerchiefs, Stell,

and I will take these buttons: they could be made into lovely earrings."

"Oh, Lilly! should you like to wear them?"

"Certainly: why not?" and Lilly ran to the glass and held one of the

darkly-shining stones against her pale, pretty cheek.--"Don't oppose it,

aunty dear. Only think! fifteen years and the man not heard from!"

"Here are his initials again," said I, picking up the other button, on

whose gold side the initials were engraved. "'C. G.'--Constant Gower?

Colton Goran?"

"What nonsense, Stell!" interrupted Lilly.--"Tell me, Aunt Nanny--may I

have the buttons?"

"Oh, I suppose so, child. You always manage to have your own way; and

if your uncle David is willing, I've no objections."

Uncle David was equally willing, so Lilly took triumphant possession of

the buttons.

Another week saw us on our way to New Orleans. We were neither of us

seasick, and we enjoyed every moment of the voyage across the Gulf. Mrs.

Long seemed glad to have us, and was interested in our incessant talk.

Lilly of course gave her the whole story of the Frenchman's buttons, and

brought them out for her inspection. She said they would make lovely

earrings, and that she must attend to that the first thing on reaching

New Orleans.

She took us to the St. Charles Hotel, and with beating hearts we made

our toilettes for the table d'hote. What a grand occasion that was to

us! I was rather frightened, but Lilly actually seemed to grow taller as

she put on her new dress. She had chosen the suit herself, and while the

skirt was black silk, the bodice was deep crimson laced in the back. Her

face rose from it like a lily, pure and pale. I looked at her with

admiration and despair, for in my nervousness I felt that my face was

the color of an Indian peach. Once seated in the dining-room, however,

we soon began to feel a comfortable sense of our own insignificance, and

to look about at our neighbors as Mrs. Long was doing.

A season of delight now set in for us. We went to museums and

picture-galleries; we drove on the Shell Road that wound in shining

distance like a silver chain; and walked on Canal and Carondelet

streets, equally interested in the fine shop-windows and the fine

languid ladies who strolled past them.

To be in New Orleans at any time would have been joy enough, but it was

"gilding refined gold" to be there in the gay week preceding the

Carnival, and to look forward to Mardi-Gras itself to round off our

visit. Already immense "proclamations," printed in every color of the

rainbow, were thrown about the city like handbills, running somewhat in

this style:

"We command that Tuesday, Mardi-Gras, March 5, be set apart as a day of

Fun, Folly and Frolic, when the innocent license of the mask shall have

no let, when the places of festivity shall offer a night of pleasure to

all our people, and when the pageant of the Mystick Krewe of Comus shall

dazzle the eye and captivate the reason by the wonders of art and

beauty.

"Signed, REX.

"Attest: TYPHOON, PUCK."

Who composed this Mystic Krewe no one knew. Year after year, like a

splendid dream, a glittering procession moved through the streets at

dusk of Shrove-Tuesday, representing the fairest myths of fable and the

most gorgeous pageants of history. Mrs. Long, who had seen a Roman

Carnival, declared it far surpassed in magnificence by that of our own

Southern city. And we--lucky, lucky girls that we were!--were to see it

all! We were even to go to the grand ball at the opera-house; for,

though Aunt Nanny did not approve of balls, and we had never been to

one, Mrs. Long declared it would do no harm for "once in a way," and

that it would be a memory for a lifetime.

It is no part of my story to tell of the delights of the great day, nor

of its magnificent displays; nor of our fluttering hearts as we dressed

for the ball; nor of how pretty Lilly looked all in white, with white

flowers in her dark hair, and the onyx earrings shining against her fair

cheeks; nor even of the beautiful ball itself. A memory for a life Mrs.

Long declared it would be; and this, I doubt not, it will prove, but for

a reason she will never guess. Something happened so romantic, so

wonderful, so extraordinary, that I am sure when we are old, old

ladies--"sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything"--it will

give us a thrill of the blood to think of that Mardi-Gras ball.

We were dancing in a cotillon. It was the basket figure, where the

ladies are all grouped in the centre. I was on one side of Lilly: on the

other was a pretty, foreign-looking little creature dressed in black

with gleams of scarlet breaking through. Imagine what we felt when this

lovely apparition seized Lilly by the wrist and said in a low, agitated

voice, "In the name of Heaven, young lady, tell me where you got the

earrings that you wear in your ears!"

II.

The next moment the dance had separated us. Lilly and I had only time to

exchange one glance of wonder. After the dance, when we were taken back

to our seats and our partners had left us, the stranger came over to us

and said rapidly, in a low voice and with a strong French accent,

"Pardon my impertinence, _je vous en prie_. But is it that you will

answer my question?"

I did not know what to say, but Lilly, who is never at a loss, replied,

"The story would be rather long to give in a ballroom, and I don't know

what right you have to ask it."

"Verra true," said she gently; "but I did once see a pair of buttons ze

twins of your earrings. Ze letters 'C. G.' were engraved on ze gold

backs."

She was watching Lilly closely as she spoke. My sister blushed crimson,

and said, "If that be so, you have more right to them than I have."

"Ah, mon Dieu!" cried the stranger: "it is as I hoped! When can I see

you? Where? how?"

"Come and see me: I am at the St. Charles Hotel. My name is Lilly

Tresvant."

"You are with your mother?"

"No: with a friend--Mrs. Long."

"Ah, your chaperone! And she will wish to know who is your visitor. I

cannot have it arranged that way." She seemed in deep thought: then

said, "Listen, cheres demoiselles. There are reasons why I wish it not

known that we have met: I will explain all when I see you. Do you go

sometimes to ze French market?"

"Oh yes--often."

"Come, then, to-morrow morning: I will meet you. I will tell my story,

and you will tell yours. Mon Dieu! after all these years, how strange! I

must leave you now. Au revoir. Remember, to-morrow, early, at ze French

market; and not one word to your chaperone, Madame Long: you promise?"

We promised of course--what foolish girls wouldn't have promised?--and

the graceful little Frenchwoman moved away, leaving two girls more

interested and excited than they had ever been in all their lives. We

cared no more for the ball: we went home like people in a dream. We

scarcely slept that night, fearing to be late for the French market in

the morning. Before it was fairly light we had dressed ourselves and

hurried off.

"Oh, Stell!" cried my tall sister, "let us never say we haven't had an

adventure! No novel I ever read was half so exciting. I feel quite like

a heroine, don't you?"

"I think the little Frenchwoman is more the heroine of the piece."

"Yes, so she is; and she ought to be. Isn't she a charming, graceful,

pretty creature?"

"She is pretty," said I, hurrying along to keep pace with Lilly's long

steps, "but there was something about her I did not quite like. It

seemed to me she had a sort of common look, in spite of her fine dress."

"Common! Well, Stell, you had better not say anything more!" said Lilly

with crushing emphasis.

"It was so queer," persisted I, "that she made us promise not to say

anything to Mrs. Long!"

"Oh, that will all be explained."

"I felt like a conspirator stealing out of the house this morning."

"As if we don't go to the French market whenever we like! And there's

certainly no harm in going to meet a _lady_. If it had been a young man

now!" and Lilly's laugh rang out gayly.

The French market was as pretty and bright as usual, though it was the

dull Ash Wednesday morning. The long line of stalls was bright with

fruits and flowers, and walking about, buying, staring, chatting,

drinking coffee, eating oranges, were people of almost every nationality

under heaven. However, the unique interest of the scene, this morning

at least, was thrown away upon us. In the crowd we soon distinguished

the figure of the little Frenchwoman, and joined her at once. She had on

a close black bonnet and a veil, and did not look nearly so pretty as

she had looked the night before. Her skin lacked delicacy, and there was

a haggard look about her eyes.

"Mes cheres demoiselles," she exclaimed, "I have thought of nothing all

night but of seeing you here this morning."

We very truthfully assured her that such had been the case with

ourselves.

"You did not wear them?" exclaimed she, looking at Lilly's ears.

"I meant to," said Lilly with a start, "but getting off in such a hurry,

and never wearing them in the morning, I forgot to put them in."

"Ah, yes: they are too handsome for morning. You have ze good taste,

mademoiselle. Come, now, let us take some coffee together, then we can

go over where it is quiet and talk."

She took us to an old Frenchwoman's stand, and we each drank a cup of

the strong black coffee, which she insisted on paying for. Then we

crossed the market to a deserted stall, whose owner had probably sold

out her small stock at an early hour and gone home. We sat down, and she

began: "You have told me your name. Mine is Gardine--Vera Gardine. I

have a brother named Clement Gardine."

"C. G.!" cried Lilly.

"C. G.," said she with a sigh. "You have perhaps heard of the Gardine

family? The old name is well known in ze city."

We confessed with some shame that it was unknown to us.

She sighed again: "Ah! it is a sad story: I will tell it to you in ze

way ze most quickest. We are French, but born in zis country--creoles,

you know. I was but a leetle girl when ze war began, and my brother had

scarcely twenty years. But he was so brave, so reckless: go to ze war he

would, almost breaking ze heart of his--his--fiancee--what you call it

in English: his engaged girl--ze gentle, lovely Florine. When ze

Northern army came to New Orleans, Florine's father and mother ran away

with her to Texas--made of themselves refugees. Soon after both parents

died, and Florine was left so all alone that my brother determined to

marry her at once. He got a furlough from his general, and came home in

disguise. It was joy all mixed with fear to see him. Blockade-steamers

were running all ze time from New Orleans to Galveston, and he took

passage in one of them. He had no baggages, but one small trunk that I

packed for him--his dress-suit, some shirts that I had made, some lace

handkerchiefs that I was sending to Florine. In this trunk too were ze

star buttons, heirlooms in ze famille Gardine. He was to spend his

honeymoon in Texas until his furlough had expired: then he was to bring

Florine to me, and he was to go back to his regiment. He left me, brave,

strong, full of hope, and from zat time till one long year afterward I

neither saw nor heard from mon frere.

"I was distracted. I wrote letters here, there, everywhere. It was no

use. The city was besieged: I could not get out of it. Oh, what

suffering to remember!

"One day, in my heart-sickness, longing to do something with my life, I

went with one of ze good Sisters of our Church into ze city hospital.

And there I found my brother, his head shaved, raving with fever! He had

been fighting, they told me, with one of ze guerilla-bands around ze

city--had been captured and brought there wounded dangerously. I took

him home, nursed him night and day, and at last had my reward. He knew

me--ze consciousness had come back to him. You can guess ze questions I

poured out, but oh, mes cheres demoiselles, you cannot guess ze sister's

agony when I found zat mon pauvre frere had forgotten every circumstance

of ze past year!"

"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Lilly, her eyes filling with tears. "What did

you do?"

"What _could_ I do? Ze doctair said it was not an uncommon case. There

had been some injury to ze brain. Clement remembered coming to New

Orleans, and making his preparations to go to Florine; but from zat

time all was a dreadful blank. I drove him almost wild with my tears and

questions, for what had become of Florine? As soon as he was well, and

we could get away from the city, we went to Texas to try and find her,

but our search was all in vain.

"And now you can judge what I felt when I saw ze star buttons in zis

young lady's ears."--She turned to Lilly, and spoke in a voice all

broken with emotion: "It seemed that at last I had a key to unlock ze

door of that sad year. Tell me quickly, mademoiselle, where did you get

them? Did Florine give them to you? Is she dead? Tell me all."

"You are deceived, Miss Gardine," said Lilly, almost ready to burst into

tears. "All I can tell is very little. A trunk was brought to my uncle's

in Galveston by a young man, who rushed off before uncle could even ask

his name. From that day we have never heard from him, and out of

curiosity my sister and I persuaded Uncle David to let us open the

trunk."

Miss Gardine clasped her hands tragically: "Helas! after so much hope to

find only disappointment! Ze saddest part of it all is this," she went

on. "Since it all happened mon pauvre frere has been so miserable zat

sometimes he loses his mind: he is _mad_. No one knows this but

myself--no one shall know. In society he is ze elegant young man: yes,

people who admire him little dream when he is away, and they think him

on his plantation up ze Bayou Teche, zat he is in a private madhouse in

ze city, watched over by poor Vera."

She raised her handkerchief to her eyes, and Lilly and I looked at each

other with deep, silent sympathy.

"This is why I have begged your secrecy," she said. "Your chaperone,

Madame Long, possibly knows many people: she would talk. Ze misfortunes

of Clement Gardine must not be talked over by ze vulgaire herd."

"I am sure," said I diffidently, "that Mrs. Long would be prudent."

"My dear child," said mademoiselle, smiling sadly, "it is better not to

put her to ze test. Besides, what good would it do?"

"That is so, Stell," said Lilly impatiently. "Why are you always so

anxious to tell things?"

"I have one last hope," said Miss Gardine. "Ze doctair has said if my

brother could once remember zat last year he might be cured entierement.

It is brooding on zat subject that brought on his insanity: he needs a

shock. Now, if you will go with me when I visit him, and show him

suddenly ze star buttons--who knows?--all may come back to him. I have

told ze doctair all ze story, and he thinks it a plan of wisdom."

"I am sure it is," said Lilly, "and I will go with you with pleasure."

"To a madhouse?" cried I.

"You would never know it was zat," said the French lady: "it is like one

fine private house, ze patients are all so gentle."

The end of it was that we promised to meet her at the Catholic cathedral

the next day, and go with her to see her brother. "Dress very simply,"

said she at parting, "and do not fear anysing. If any one speaks to you

in ze house, all you must do is to make one courtesy very respectful,

and humor them in their leetle fancies."

Mrs. Long noticed the next day our preoccupation and aversion to our

usual interests, but, thinking it the natural reaction after the

excitement of the past weeks, she forbore to question us.

We were promptly at the place of appointment next day, and so was Miss

Vera. A carriage was called, and we were driven rapidly to a house just

on the edge of the city--a fine, rambling old house, set far back in

beautiful grounds and surrounded by an iron fence. Heavy iron gates

swung open harshly, and closed after us with a clanging, dismal sound. I

clung to Lilly's arm, feeling very nervous, but her courage seemed to

rise with the occasion. "You had better take the earrings out," said

Miss Gardine before we went in: "here is a box I have brought on

purpose."

Lilly handed her the earrings, together with the package of lace

handkerchiefs that I had appropriated.

By this time we had reached the door. Miss Gardine unlocked it with a

key she had in her pocket, and we entered a beautiful picture-hung hall

with a silver lamp swinging from its ceiling. On either side were rooms

exquisitely furnished, it seemed to us in a hasty glance. Certainly,

Miss Vera had been right when she had said there was nothing to frighten

any one about this madhouse. In a boudoir that we passed a young lady

sat at a piano singing--a beautiful girl dressed in blue, with bare

arms. I glanced inquiringly at Vera. "Yes," said she, nodding her head,

"zat is one of ze saddest cases here. Her lover was killed in a duel on

ze bridal-eve, and she became insane. She is quite incurable."

We went up a flight of broad stairs, and in the hall encountered an old

lady with white hair elaborately dressed. "Why! why! why!" said she,

stopping short: "who are these girls, Marie? You must be having a

party."

"Only some friends from the country, madame, come to spend an hour with

me," said Vera in French and with a low courtesy.

"Very decent-looking girls," said madame, looking at us coolly through a

gold-mounted glass. "Here, Marie! When you did my hair you made the pins

stick in me. Just see if you can't relieve me."

She sat down, and Vera--or "Marie," as this poor old mad lady called

her--gave some deft touches to the gray head. "That is better," said

madame graciously. "Now, where's your cap, child?"

"In my pocket, madame."

"Put it on, put it on: I don't want you to be aping lady-airs."

Vera pulled out a little cap and put it on her silky black locks,

smiling sweetly, and greatly impressing us by her amiability and tact.

Then the old lady went down the stairs, and the French girl said with a

shrug, "Sometimes she fancies me her maid, sometimes her daughter--la

pauvre femme!"

Up another flight, and we stopped before a closed door.

"He is here," said Vera in a low, intense voice.

Lilly put her hand on her heart as if to stop its beating. As for me, I

was only conscious of a feeling of burning curiosity.

Vera threw open the door. A young man was seated in the centre of the

room, leaning on a table. His face was buried in his hands. "He will sit

that way for hours," whispered his sister.--Then she said aloud,

"Clement!"

He looked up; an angry flush rose to his face; with one bound he was at

Vera's side, snatched the little cap from her head and tore it into

shreds.

I was fearfully alarmed at this exhibition, and Vera looked deeply

mortified. "He has never been so violent," she exclaimed; "and this was

my fault: I had forgotten that I had on ze miserable little thing."--She

fixed her eyes on him steadily and said, "Clement, I have brought some

visitors to see you."

A gleam of something like reason crossed his face: he made a graceful

bow. Lilly looked fascinated. He was a singularly handsome man, very

dark, with glittering black eyes, and hair falling on his shoulders. On

his head was a red velvet smoking-cap.

"They have brought something to show you, Clement," she went on, as

slowly as if counting her words--"something that you have missed for

many years."

She opened the box and flashed the earrings before his eyes. He started

up, and in a voice of anguish he cried, "The star buttons!"

"He recognizes! he remembers!" cried Vera.

"Remember?" he exclaimed--"remember what? A ship ploughing the Gulf--"

He stopped, pressed his hands madly to his forehead. "Down, down, demon

pain!" Then the words came pouring out like a torrent: "Light breaks

through the night. A ship crosses the Gulf: a woman begs me, for the

sake of her I love, to go with her--to save her father. He is in prison,

he has murdered a man, but he is old: she loves him--she kneels to me. I

promised to help him escape: I did my best. I said Florine could wait.

I left my trunk in an old man's counting-room. We laid our plans, but we

failed in all. The father was shot like a dog; I was captured; I was

sent up the country for trial. Months in prison: free at last to fly to

Florine, to find my bride. Now, now, now, it comes to me. I was too

late: Florine had been murdered by the Indians!"

He flung his arms above his head and fell to the floor. We were in a

state of the wildest excitement.

"Oh, he is saved! I am sure of it!" cried Vera. "Go now, dear young

ladies: he must not see you when he comes to himself. Ze carriage is

waiting. I will see you again."

"But we leave New Orleans to-morrow," said Lilly.

"I will write to you. You are my friends for life."

Lilly hastily scribbled an address on a card. "Here is my address," she

said: "you will surely write?"

"Yes, yes! Heaven bless you!" She seized Lilly's hand and kissed it.

"You shall hear from me: you shall find that Vera Gardine is not

ungrateful."

She hurried us out, closing the door behind us. The way was clear: we

ran lightly through the halls, hardly daring to breathe until we were

safely out of the house and in the carriage.

"Drive to the Catholic cathedral," said Lilly. The carriage-door was

shut, and then we could give vent to our emotions. Lilly was half wild:

she laughed and cried together. "Do you think he will get well?" she

said: "_do_ you think so?"

"How can I tell, Lilly? The buttons seemed to give him enough of a

shock."

"Wasn't it wonderful? Oh, Stella, what a romance! It is all perfectly

clear to me now."

"It's far from being clear to me."

"Why, don't you see: he met this woman on the boat and engaged with her

in some desperate enterprise to save her father. He left the trunk at

Uncle David's--"

"Yes, but why didn't he give a name or an address with the trunk?"

"I suppose he was so beside himself that he hardly knew what he was

doing. You can see that he is of a very excitable temperament. Then the

rest of it is easy to imagine. Poor, poor fellow! how he must have

suffered! Didn't you think him very handsome, Stella?"

"Yes, very: he looked like the Corsair."

"Do you suppose he will ever get over it?"

"Get over what?"

"Poor Florine's death."

"Oh, never!" said I emphatically.

Lilly sighed a little, and said that she thought Vera ought never to

marry, but to devote her life to consoling Clement for all he had

suffered.

If Mrs. Long had thought us abstracted before, I don't know what she

thought now. We scarcely spoke unless she addressed us, and then we made

answers as wide of the mark as a boy's first shots. Only once Lilly

roused to interest: Mrs. Long was speaking of the old French families of

New Orleans, and Lilly said, "Oh, Mrs. Long, did you ever hear of the

Gardines?"

"Yes, indeed," said the lady: "they're one of the oldest and best

families. Vera Gardine is quite a belle in society, and Clement is a

fine young man. He does not fritter away his time, as so many young men

do, but works away like a good fellow at his plantation up on the Bayou

Teche."

Lilly and I stole a look at each other. How we should have electrified

good Mrs. Long had we told her all we knew about poor Clement Gardine!

We went back to Galveston, feeling that a whole world of experience had

opened to us since we left it. We were not the same girls, and never

could be again. Lilly flew into a passion when she found Uncle David

wearing one of "C. G.'s" sacred shirts, and insisted that they should be

done up at once in a parcel ready to send to Miss Gardine.

"I am determined to have them both come over and make us a visit," she

said confidentially to me.

We had not been forbidden to tell the story at home, but while Aunt

Nanny and Maum' Hepsey listened very sympathetically. Uncle David

laughed a good deal, and said, "She's going to write to you, is she?

Well, show me the letter when it comes."

We waited long for that letter, and at last it came; and when we had

read it we knew exactly how a man might feel upon whom a rock fell out

of a clear sky--that is, if he had time to feel anything. Here is the

letter:

"MES CHERES DEMOISELLES: You will watch with your pretty eyes many days

for the postman before that he bring you this lettre. And why? Because I

am going to be very generous. You have gif me ze diamond: I will give

you ze lesson. But it is not safe to gif it too soon; so I leave this

lettre in charge of un ami, who is to mail it four weeks from zis day.

My lesson is zis: 'Do not ever talk loud when you travel; do not keep

secrets from your chaperone; and when you have a diamond hold on to

it--gardez-le.' Do you understand, mes jolies et simples demoiselles?

When you gave ze histoire of ze earrings to your Madame Long on ze

steamer, 'Clement'--ha! ha!--heard it all. Clement--whose name is

Jules--live very mooch by his wits; and he saw that these diamonds must

be his--that you were two dear leetle geese--pardon!--ready to have ze

feathers plucked. How to get at you he did not know: you were always

with that chaperone with sharp eyes. It was I--Marie, Jules's little

wife--who made up ze plan, so bold, so simple, so originale, ma foi! We

had been in bad circumstance a long while: I was ze French maid chez

Madame Gardine. Comprenez-vous? On ze ball-night Mademoiselle Vera was

sick, but I was well. I took her ticket--I wore her belle robe--I went

to ze ball for one dance, to meet you. My pretty romance turned your

little heads. I have been on ze stage: I have not forgot how to act. I

took you to ze Gardine house--ze madhouse, you know. Ze family were

going out to dine, but we were too early. You saw Mademoiselle Vera at

ze piano: you met madame in ze hall. It was for me an excited moment,

but you suspected nothing. Jules did his part not ill: he won ze tears

from your eyes. One of ze lace handkerchiefs I have kept, cheres

demoiselles, as a souvenir: the others, with ze diamond earrings, were

changed into money tout de suite. They sold for much money: we have been

able to take a little trip, perhaps to Cuba, where we eat ices and drive

along beautiful roads; perhaps to one gay Northern city, where we go to

the play every night. Wherever it is we are happy--we think much of you.

Jules calls you our sweet benefactors. And I tell you all this that you

may know I spoke not false when I said, 'Vera Gardine will not be

ungrateful'--a promise that you must own well kept by MARIE ZANETTI.

"P. S. And that pauvre 'C. G.!' we wonder mooch about him. Charmante

mystere!"

Lilly fainted outright, and we had a time of it generally. In the midst

of it all, Uncle David said dryly, "Well, Nanny, I suppose you may hand

me over that bundle of shirts now."

* * * * *

It may be worth mentioning that years after we met the real Gardines,

and very charming people we found them. And it is I who am now Mrs.

Clement Gardine, and am living on my husband's Louisiana plantation. As

for Lilly, she can laugh now as she thinks of the accomplished rogues

who deceived us so nicely, but she has developed a pronounced hatred for

the French language, and I don't believe any one could ever win her

heart whose initials happened to be "C. G."

SHERWOOD BONNER.

AN ENGLISH TEACHER IN THE UNITED STATES.

When I landed in Boston, in January, 1874, it was neither to "make my

fortune" nor to hunt buffaloes or bears in the neighborhood of that

classic city. Nevertheless, just to show my readers that there is a

measure of truth in the prevalent impressions here of John Bull's

general ignorance and apathy as to what is going on in America, I

willingly admit that not till I had been a few days resident in

Cambridge did the unpalatable fact fully dawn upon me that the country

was undergoing the ordeal of "hard times"--a phrase, by the way, which I

have had dinned into my ears almost incessantly as far back as I can

remember. Besides, although I could not help knowing that the States

have been peopled by Europeans, I was hardly prepared to find Americans

proper--the descendants of Revolutionary ancestors--in such an appalling

minority; and it certainly surprised me to find that Ireland and Germany

were responsible for so large a proportion of the population. When I

walked in the streets or visited the stores or public buildings

disillusion trod close on my heels: I was constantly accosting, or being

accosted by, persons of Irish or German or other foreign nationality,

who, though displaying characteristics that somehow distinguished them

from their countrymen in Europe, did not fall in with my ideal of the

American people. I do not mean precisely that they fell short of that

ideal, but simply that "the shoe wouldn't fit," to use a common

expression. I began at last, in my bewilderment, to inquire whether

there were any Yankees in or about Boston, anyhow; and thus it

transpired that after a few days "prospecting" I finally transferred

myself and my fortunes from Boston to old Cambridge, where, it is

needless to say, I found plenty of the genuine American article that had

been the object of my quest.

After some time--in the course of which I succeeded in making myself

known to three or four of the college professors and tutors--I was told

by one of them of a gentleman who, he thought, might be able to help me

in obtaining employment. He is a man of genius and good-nature, and

through him I got really useful introductions. From this time there were

no _external_ difficulties in my way, beyond those experienced by many

other men around me who had been on the lookout for vacancies for months

before I had become one of their anxious number. But differences of

training and experience remained to constitute real and very serious

obstacles, although--and let me say it here, as I shall have plenty of

occasion to grumble further on--the chief deterring or exclusive

influence I ever suffered from in Boston or Cambridge was that of a

kindness so much in excess of my capacity to make fair returns that I

had often to flinch from accepting it. Literary and professional men in

those twin-cities come nearer, to my thinking, to Wieland's cosmopolites

(_Die Abderiten_) than any other class of people I know.

But let us to school. I may as well say at once that I never at any

time, while in the United States, commanded salaries (or incomes) equal

to some I had received in England; and I am now more than ever convinced

of the fact that England offers an unequalled field for a teacher of

ability and perseverance, always provided that he is as competent an

authority on cricket and boating as he is on Greek particles and the

working of the differential calculus. I speak, of course, simply of the

ordinary university graduate, who (like myself), not being from

patrician ranks or Mammon-blessed, must hew out a position for himself

without any aid from the patronage of influential friends or relatives.

Given a moderate amount of classical and mathematical stock in trade,

together with correct personal habits and fair capacity for imparting

instruction, and an English teacher who adds to these qualifications

some skill in the chief bodily pastimes, may go on his way in peace: he

shall have his reward. Let me add, however, that if he is a man of

ramshackle tendencies, the offices of drill-sergeant, cricket-referee

and supervisor of table-etiquette which he has to combine with his

ordinary tutorial duties will in time become so irksome--especially if

it is his lot to fall upon inferior schools--that he will be disposed to

sacrifice all his pecuniary advantages and chances of unlimited

promotion for the sake of a little peace of mind and unhampered leisure.

My readers are not to suppose that my object is to institute a full

comparison between the schools of England and the United States: I have

not the wide experience of American schools that would justify me in

attempting such a task. For instance, although I have made a careful

study of the working methods and interior economy of the common schools

of the three American cities in which I have exercised my

vocation--namely, Boston, New York and Philadelphia--I have never taught

in the public schools; and any survey of the educational facilities of

the country that leaves them out would resemble a performance of

_Hamlet_ with the role of the prince omitted. Nevertheless, my brief

sojourn here has been a chequered and, in some respects, an amusing one;

and any one who chooses to hear my record of it may add as much salt as

he pleases, for I promise to be perfectly frank in my utterances.

I obtained my first pupils by answering a newspaper advertisement--I

have already named the three cities which my experience covers--and they

consisted of two young ladies, aged respectively eighteen and twenty-two

years. Their education had been thoroughly neglected, or, rather, they

had idled away the golden chances of their youth, and now their

ignorance, for ladies of their social standing, was astonishing. But

mark the anomaly: had they been Englishwomen of the same rank and

similarly uneducated, they would have been uncouth and ungrammatical in

speech, awkward in manner and dowdy in dress. There is no people upon

whom the transforming, refining effects of a thorough training are so

marked--because, it must be confessed, the native soil so much needs

cultivation--as upon the English people. But these girls were ladylike

in manner, tastefully dressed, and their speech was entirely free from

the barbarisms of an uneducated Englishwoman's language: I hasten to

add, however, that I would sooner have the Englishwoman for a pupil. Two

Englishwomen who required assistance from a private tutor would submit

in patience to a prolonged course of laborious and irksome work, all

unmindful of the doings of society and the absorbing interests of the

hour, so long as the ultimate object was some day attained. My fair

Americans were undoubtedly intelligent, and even spasmodically

hard-working, but their impatience of sustained, systematic work,

combined with--or rather caused by--their devotion to social pleasures,

not one of which they would forego on any consideration, prevented them

from reaping any appreciable benefit. I instance their case, not because

it was the first or the only one of the kind that fell into my hands,

but because it revealed to me at the outset a trait of the American

character--especially of the women--which confronted me at every turn of

the road afterward; namely, _a want of repose_--a defect which would

seem to be largely accountable for the insensibility manifested by a

great portion of the American young women of the middle classes to the

fact that they have advantages at school such as their sisters in

England would accept in an ecstasy of gratitude.

About the middle of my first summer I was advised to try one of the

school "agencies" that abound in the larger cities, especially in New

York; and I accordingly registered myself in the best-known and most

widely-recommended office. Perhaps it may be of interest to the reader

unversed in such matters to learn what are the conditions on which an

agent undertakes to introduce an applicant to persons wishing a teacher.

To begin, the teacher fills up a "form of application" by naming his

qualifications and references, and affixing his signature to the

contract between him and the agent, the terms of which are as follows:

"Registration for one year, two dollars in advance; commission, four and

a half per cent. of salary or income for one year only--board, when

included in compensation, to be rated at two hundred dollars for the

school-year. This commission is due as soon as the engagement is made."

In the printed receipt which is handed the applicant there is a curt,

business-like recapitulation of all the conditions, in which occurs the

following memorandum: "I shall give you notice of vacancies as they

occur which, _in my judgment_, seem suited to your wishes and

qualifications." The italics are my own. An admirable loophole of

retreat, truly: "in my judgment"! When a despondent candidate wakes up

morning after morning for months to read in the newspapers over the

signature of his agent such an advertisement as this: "Engagements for

the fall term now being made. Many teachers wanted. Capable persons

should not delay in coming forward,"--it is no doubt consoling to him to

infer that had the "judgment" perceived him to be suited for any of

these presumably numerous vacancies, he would certainly have had the

judgment's dictum to that effect.

In the course of a year I received notices of two vacancies. One was the

principalship of a boarding-school somewhere in West Virginia, in which

I should have to realize what income I might from the payments for board

at a rate prescribed by the patrons of the establishment. The difficulty

with me in this case was that before I came near the question, "What are

the chances of success in such an undertaking?" the previous question

presented itself as even more difficult: "Where am I to get the money

with which to make the attempt?" The other vacancy was a mastership in a

school in Portland, Oregon. My health has always been robust, especially

since my deliverance from the Centennial and solar fervors of 1875 and

1876, and therefore I had no desire to try the paradisiacal climate of

the uttermost West; but, nevertheless, I wrote twice, at an interval of

a month, to the address with which I had been furnished, and at last

received a letter from a bishop's wife, intimating that "there must be

some mistake: no vacancy had occurred in that institution for many

months." _Quis declarabit?_ A mistake or a myth?

Now, as no American will deny that there are a few things which are

better managed in England than in the United States, I submit that the

method of bringing teacher and employer into communication by means of a

professional agent is one of these things. At all events, there is

nothing equivocal about the English method. Let the reader judge for

himself from the following details: (1) The registration-fee is one

shilling, not eight (two dollars). (2) The commission--generally five

per cent.--is payable, not as soon as an engagement is made, but at the

end of the first half year of service, and _provided only that there is

to be a continuance of the engagement_: surely a beneficent provision

for the poor teacher. (3) One cannot travel very far in Britain: for ten

dollars one can go from London to John O'Groat's. (4) Vacancies are

announced by bulletin in the office as they occur, and a notification is

sent by post to distant registered candidates: secrecy in regard to the

whereabouts and emoluments of a position is quite unnecessary, because

the principals who patronize--or, rather, hire--the agent will employ

teachers only through him. (5) A teacher is never asked the contemptible

question, "How much salary do you expect?" The amount of salary

attached, together with a description of the duties of the position, is

set down in the notification. (6) The agent is simply an introducer: he

of course has to be satisfied, _before_ the registration of the

applicant, that the latter is really a teacher and a man of character,

but beyond that the "judgment" part of the business is relegated to the

principal who receives the application.

Reverting again to my first summer, I have a little incident to relate:

One evening I was introduced to a middle-aged, sharp-looking little

man, who, I was informed, was the principal of a flourishing college in

a Western State--a college in a town, both of which he had himself

founded. This gentleman and I managed to spend the evening together

pleasantly enough, but my astonishment was great next morning when I

received a letter from him offering me a situation in his establishment.

I had an interview with him, and concluding from all the appearances

that the location was a healthy and civilized one, the school a

prosperous one, and himself an energetic, cultivated gentleman, I was on

the point of accepting, when it suddenly occurred to me that in my

anxiety to learn whether the position was desirable in other respects

not a word had been said on the subject of salary. My expressing a wish

to be enlightened upon this important particular produced an immediate

hitch in the negotiations, but the practical upshot was that the greater

part of my salary was to consist virtually of unreclaimed land! Since

that magnificent occasion I have regarded with magnanimous forbearance

requisitions emanating from that portion of the West.

At last, however, my answer to an advertisement was successful, and in

September I was duly installed as teacher of the classics in a school of

some fifty boys in one of the three cities I have mentioned. The

following extract from the principal's letter of engagement will show

what is naturally the chief difficulty an English teacher has to

encounter in his search for an employer in the United States: "On the

whole, I think the most favorably of you out of some forty applicants;

the only fear I have arising from the well-known fact that American lads

are so unlike those of the old country, and require different methods of

discipline."

The salary, though a moderate one--not by a third equal to salaries in

English schools of the same grade--was yet reasonable; and when it is

added that it was a day-school; that there was held only one session of

five hours, with a roomy interval for lunch, gymnastics and music; that

each teacher had a large, well-furnished and cleanly-kept room to

himself--a luxury which is rare in the best English schools; that each

department was under the charge of a separate teacher, who was never

required to step out of his own special walk--another school-virtue not

common in English schools; that the principal fulfilled my ideal of a

calm, judicious and discriminating headmaster,--it is no wonder that I

began to congratulate myself upon having at last fallen upon a school

that furnished a combination of what I consider the best features of

both the English and Scotch schools, to the exclusion of all that is

detestable and soul-harassing in either. "No more for me," I

soliloquized, "of presiding magisterially at the odious dinner-table, at

which not a whisper is tolerated, and even the irrepressible chuckle

over some accident to the earthenware is accounted a crime; no more of

solemn marching in procession on Sunday morning and evening to some

fantastic, farcical 'High Church,' whose funereal-mummeries served only

to mask the furtive deviltries of the brisker members of my charge; no

more onsets at tea-time, when returned home with the boys from an

exhausting walk, of infuriated farmers demanding vengeance for rifled

orchards and shattered fences; no more morning calls from elderly maiden

ladies in neighboring summer boarding-houses, reporting a hail of shot

from ubiquitous catapults during the night-watches; no more sitting up

o' nights, when on duty for the day, reading with the drones against the

approaching Oxford or Cambridge 'local,' and rushing stealthily up

stairs every now and then to pounce upon the perpetrators of hideous

catcalls." All this I had escaped from, and more. And now what a

contrast! Saturdays and Sundays were my own, and I could worship in the

Hebrew or Mohammedan temple, just as I chose; and for the rest of the

week I should have all day, after four hours' pleasant culling of

Horatian and Homeric flowers, to devote to some abstruse study, perhaps

local politics.

As if any one should expect perfection or perfect satisfaction (which is

the same thing) in this wicked, cross-grained world! First of all,

although it came last of all, it transpired toward the end of the year

that the school was not paying, and the teachers (of whom there were by

far too many) were warned that they would have to be satisfied with half

salaries during the remainder of the school-year. This blow did not fall

very heavily on any one but myself, as all the other teachers had

engagements in other schools, as well as friends and relatives

throughout the city. The boys were very fickle: a succession of bad

averages on their weekly reports would send them off in high dudgeon to

some other school; and though there were fresh accessions taking place

from time to time, the frequent interchanging was injurious alike to the

tone of the school and to the school exchequer. There were, too, one or

two bad boys who should have been expelled, but whose expulsion would

have lost to the school their independent sympathizers as well, and so

would have seriously embarrassed the finances. An American principal

with a bevy of "free and independent" youths to cater for is in an

inconceivably different position from his English _confrere_, who is

empowered to read his pupils' weekly letters to their parents and to

send a policeman in pursuit of any runaway malcontent among them. From

the moment an English boy leaves his father's house he is under the

complete control of his principal, and consequently a ruinous veering

about from school to school is effectually prevented, while the

retention of a decidedly vicious boy would obviously be a most

unprofitable policy. I have seen a rich English parent bring back his

truant offspring to be soundly flogged in presence of his grinning

schoolmates--an ugly spectacle, and now happily a rare one in England;

but the reverse of the picture, though far less shocking, is by no means

pleasantly suggestive. I have heard an American lady express her

surprise to a principal, with unmistakable tartness in her tone, that

her son, who was at once the idlest and most troublesome boy in his

class, always brought home averages of sixty or seventy, "when young

A----, who lives next us, and is considered quite a slow boy, receives

ninety and over every time. _Don't_ you think there must be some

mistake, or--or unfairness--in the marking?"

Only ten of my sixteen boys had been in the school before that year, and

of those ten only four had passed through the regular curriculum of the

school from the primary department to the graduating class. Those four

were notably the most advanced and the only thoroughly-grounded boys of

the sixteen. A few of the others had attended nearly all the private

schools in the city, while two of them had been oscillating between the

public and private schools for years at their own sweet wills, and could

never decide whether the commercial or classical department of the

school in question was the one for which they were best fitted. It may

well be understood, therefore, what a medley my classes presented, and

how unlikely it was, in the face of all these drawbacks, that their

acquirements should be above mediocrity. On the score of natural

abilities, however--in quickness of perception, facility in

generalization, readiness and coherence of expression, and clearness of

head generally--it would not be at haphazard one could find an equal

number of boys in any English school to match them.

As to the vexed subject of discipline, my experience leads me to say

that, provided I was left to my own way, I would rather manage a class

of twenty American boys than of twenty English. The common cry about

Young America's disrespect for authority or worth seems to me to be

founded on a misconception, when, indeed, it is anything but the wailing

of ignorance or cant. I am strongly possessed of a belief that American

children know intuitively where respect is really due, and that there

they fully and unhesitatingly award it. I at least have found among them

a more genuine, spontaneous sentiment of regard for their teachers than

either in England or Scotland--a sentiment utterly free from the

cringing submissiveness which too often passes muster in England as a

juvenile virtue. However feared--and, _accordingly_, respected--an

English teacher may be by his scholars, he is nevertheless an ogre to

most of them--to the aristocrat a plebeian pedagogue to whom he must

defer, just as, when he is a little older and sports a scarlet tunic, he

must submit to the unlettered sergeant-major who teaches him his

goose-step; to the rich _parvenu_ more intolerable still, as the pruner

of his obtrusive vulgarities of speech and manner, the index of his

social inferiority and the standing menace to his innate rudeness, that

is only intensified by his consciousness of wealth; to the poor man's

son essentially a "schoolmaster"--a wielder of the ferule and a

bloodless automaton, to whom, as Southey wrote,

The multiplication-table is his creed,

His paternoster and his decalogue;

to only the emancipated and discerning few what he really is at his

best--their greatest earthly friend and benefactor. All I have seen of

American schoolboys impresses me that the feeling which dictates their

bearing toward their teachers is born of a clear-sighted and intuitive

appreciation of superior knowledge, worth or experience, and not of

conventional observance or necessity. It is generally said abroad that

American children are unruly, forward and irreverent toward their

parents and elders; and one reason assigned is that parents are careless

of teaching their children the little ceremonies and graduated

formalities of speech, "in which," as an English bishop recently alleged

in an after-dinner speech, "there is embodied so much wholesome

discipline that a careful attendance to the practice of them gives the

young man or woman an advantage not offered by any other method of

training." Spartan, but indigestible! A keener observer than the

bishop--the heresiarch Thackeray--wrote in his _Philip_: "I never saw

people on better terms with each other, more frank, affectionate and

cordial, than the parents and the grown-up young folks in the United

States;" and certain it is that the description is applicable to the

intercourse between teachers and pupils.

The faults of the latter are aimlessness and impatience; and their

misfortune--which is largely responsible for those faults--is that they

are too soon allowed to plunge into the quagmire called by euphemism

"society," and often whelmed in its sorry pleasures and petty

ambitions--too soon, also, invested with the right to manage their own

affairs and to choose their own associates, advisers, and even

instructors; in a word, permitted to breathe the invigorating spirit of

the Declaration of Independence before their constitutions are fitted

for its reception. This may sound trite enough, but I see no other way

of accounting for the intellectual--and, alas! moral--failure of so many

of the brilliantly-gifted lads whom I have known and loved in these

United States.

I might proceed to give a few illustrations of this resultless

restlessness, this dissipation of the youthful forces, to which I have

alluded; but there is one phase of my experience here which goes further

to prove its prevalence and baneful effects than a thousand instances

derived from my knowledge of boys in school or in the closer contact of

private tuition. From time to time there appear in the "Instruction"

column of the daily newspapers advertisements like the following:

"Wanted, lessons in the evenings by a gentleman of neglected education;"

"Wanted, lessons in grammar and conversation (_sic_) by a married

couple." It was by answering such advertisements as these that I fell

upon the most satisfactory portion of my labors in this country, and met

with pupils of both sexes the memory of whom will be to me a source of

pride as well as of pleasure as long as I live. Ladies and gentleman of

good social standing they were, who, bitterly regretting neglected early

opportunities, had the moral courage to "go to school"--with the wise

meekness and receptiveness engendered in fine natures by ultimate

self-disparagement--even when their avocations seemed to preclude the

possibility of sustained and fruitful study. But when I contemplate a

long array of such pupils (covering a period of three years)--from the

young banker's clerk or embryo lawyer chagrined with himself because of

the poor figure he cut at last week's party, and commendably determined

to try and remedy his defects, to the mature business- or even

professional-man, humiliated because his accomplished wife's every

sentence made him feel ashamed of his squandered youth, and so

constrained, at the eleventh hour, to employ a private tutor--it is

difficult for me not to recognize that in a country where the children

enjoy so many privileges, where they are taught regularly,

systematically, patiently, conscientiously--where, in short, everything

is taught, and everything is taught well--there must be some mistake in

the exercise of the parental guardianship that creates and fosters the

aimlessness and impatience which prevent so many of the children from

reaping adequate benefit from their noble heritage.

One thing that occasioned me a good deal of trouble and anxiety in my

first school was the system of "marking" for each lesson with a view to

obtaining a weekly average standard. Not that I was unused to the

method, but I had never before seen it pushed to such an extent nor

pursued on exactly the same principle. A boy would be marked up by his

various teachers in about a dozen subjects during the week, and on

Friday a printed slip would be handed him showing his weekly average in

each subject and in all the subjects taken together. An average of 95

per cent. was quite common; 80 was not in high favor; 70 was shaky,

while 60 was quite bad. A quarter's experience of it convinced me that

the thing was a piece of abominable red tape: I do not mean in theory,

but in the results of its working in that particular case. I had seen

boys and men in school and college in England and Scotland obtain

"first-class honors" with a mark of 75, and I now marvelled how it

happened that boys who had but a faint idea of what hard work really

meant were able to produce such brilliant results, more especially when

so much of their time and attention was devoted to the preparation of

orations and dialogues, and even to the rehearsal of private theatricals

(the principal would have gone crazy had any one presumed to call them

by that name in his hearing) for the approaching "entertainment," two of

which treats were offered "_by the school_" (a great deal in those three

words) to the public during the year. I may mention that on these two

occasions it was the part of the principal to ascend the stage during

the _entr'acte_ and read off from a paper he held in his hand a few

particulars regarding those precious averages which seemed in the

speaker's and hearers' minds to be exactly commensurate with the

standing and progress of the pupils.

My marking made me for some time rather unpopular; and beginning at last

to follow the time-honored injunction, "When you are in Rome do as the

Romans do," I hoisted my boys from the sixties and seventies to the more

plausible eighties and nineties. It was, no doubt, an unprincipled thing

to do, but I soothed my outraged conscience with the thought that I was

making a martyr of myself--that when the examination-week arrived the

examiners' reports would confound me by exposing the difference between

my paper and their gold. The examination-week did arrive, of course, and

I found that I was to be myself the examiner of my classes. Let not the

reader think that I would be pleasantly satiric when I say that not till

then did I fully awake to the fruitful meaning of the expression,

"American independence." And neither let him infer that I take such a

school to be a representative American high-class school: I only say

that it is a fair representative of a class of schools that is both

numerous and popular in the cities I have named above. Here, indeed, was

an application of the _sui-juris_ principle that, though it certainly

eased my feeling of apprehension and doubt as to the probable results of

the examination, yet filled me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction.

And the reason is not far to seek: my English training would naturally

have the effect of making me look for a verdict on my work not to my own

notebook, nor even to the principal's returns, but to some higher and

extra-mural authority who should test the attainments of the pupils and

the efficiency of the school by a searching and impartial examination.

In English middle-class schools the advent of the "Oxford and Cambridge

Schools Examination Board" is regarded with no small anxiety by

principals, masters and scholars alike. It marks an epoch in their

lives, and is the only period of the year in which there is anything

like a _rapprochement_ between them, as if in the presence of some

imminent crisis. The eccentric jackanapes who is by turns the butt and

witling of the school stands for once consciously on equal terms with

his principal, and can for once even "cheek" the school-bully with

perfect impunity. All is excitement, anticipation, preparation and much

consuming of midnight oil. Perhaps a very brief account, in conclusion,

of the methods of procedure in these examinations may interest the

reader; and in case he should think that my object in offering my sketch

is to draw an invidious comparison between the English and American

methods of examination, I refer him to an animated and interesting

correspondence in the April issue of the _Nation_ between President

Eliot of Harvard and Professor Adams of Michigan University--a

discussion in which the former gentleman enthusiastically claims for the

English method a degree of excellence which the most ardent home

advocates of the system--who know its _working_ faults as well as its

positive advantages--would hesitate to claim for it.

The English board holds two kinds of examinations: First, examinations

of schools for the benefit of schools exclusively, and having no effect

to admit individuals to the universities or to exempt them from

subsequent examinations, whether at the universities or elsewhere;

second, examinations of individuals for certificates which give

exemption from the entrance-examinations at Oxford and Cambridge, from

the earliest examinations of the university course, and from the

preliminary examinations of certain professional bodies. The

examinations cover thirty-four different and carefully-specified

subjects (no candidate taking the whole), and on the average two hours

are allowed for writing answers to the questions in each subject; the

examinations last from eight to twelve days, and are held three times in

the year; and the schedule of days, subjects and hours for each year is

published nearly a year in advance. The decision of the board is upon

the individual: "Has he passed a satisfactory examination in a

sufficient number of subjects?" and the board takes no account whatever

of the opinions and certificates of school-authorities concerning the

individual. A printed report is annually made by the board, showing the

name of each person who obtained a certificate, the subjects in which he

satisfied the examiners, and the school from which he came. The

examinations are conducted in writing for all the subjects, but for a

few subjects oral examinations are superadded. The questions are

printed; they are the same for every candidate in any given subject; and

they are made public when the examinations are over. In order to secure

uniformity of standard at the examinations, the results obtained at the

different places of examination are compared by the central board of

examiners. Each candidate pays a fee of two pounds, and from these fees

each examiner is liberally paid for every day of service spent in

setting questions, attending the examinations and looking over the

answers of candidates.

There never was a method of examination without its drawbacks, and the

chief weakness of the English system is that it tends to excite a spirit

of rivalry which is apt to resort for aid to cramming processes. As yet,

however, the examinations have been conducted in such a manner that the

special "cramming-schools"--of which there are not a few--have very

generally come to grief, even when they have had successes before the

examiners for the civil service.

D. C. MACDONALD.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE RUSSIAN PRESS.

In its present form Russian journalism is a kind of geological diagram,

the primary strata being typified by the ministerial organs (the

_Russian Invalid_ and the _Northern Bee_) and their shadow the _Journal

de St. Petersbourg_; the transition period by the _Voice_ (_Golos_) and

the _Moscow Gazette_; and the more advanced ages by the _Russian World_

(_Russki Mir_). The last, although dating back only to the Franco-German

war, has already made itself conspicuous for the exceptional accuracy of

its information, the wide range of its topics and the frank and manly

tone of its criticism. Thanks to it and to its two great forerunners

above mentioned, the utterances of Russian journalism carry with them

more weight than they would otherwise do--a result materially aided by

the decay of the censorship, the worst and meanest legacy of Russia's

dark ages, which has lately had a chance of showing itself as absurd as

it is hateful under the congenial guidance of General Schidlovski. The

rulers of the empire have begun to perceive that it is hardly worth

while to hire men at exorbitant prices to deface articles which they

cannot read and condemn books which they cannot understand; and the

common sense of Russia has long since revolted against a system which is

still as uselessly and childishly vexatious as when pilloried in

imperishable language a century ago by Beaumarchais.

This is a great deal, but it is not enough. Like many other native

institutions, Russian journalism is merely a fine fragment. Russia has a

multitude of ships, but no navy; a number of ministers, but no

government; a host of journals, but no press. The Russian daily papers

(with the exception of an occasional "double edition" on the part of the

_Bourse Gazette_) consist of a single broadsheet, the large type of

which reduces its contents to a minimum. Fully one-half of this limited

space is usually occupied with advertisements and official

announcements, while even the few remaining columns are often deplorably

misused. One detestable custom, originally borrowed from France, is that

of "padding" a journal with tenth-rate novels, pointless anecdotes and

would-be humorous _feuilletons_, such as the weakest "comic annual"

would decline without thanks. Another failing of Russian journalism is

its fondness for the _tu-quoque_ style of argument, retorting every

mention of Poland by an allusion to Ireland. But, despite all this,

there is much hope for the future of Russian journalism. It is no slight

gain that, in a country which has long been regarded as the very

incarnation of truth-stifling despotism, any journal should be found to

speak as the _Golos_ recently spoke on the question of Russia's naval

forces: "The Crimean war, which tried so severely the qualities of our

army, cannot be said to have tested those of our fleet, inasmuch as it

never gave itself a chance of being tested. At the first approach of the

enemy it hastened to shelter itself behind the forts of Cronstadt,

whence it never emerged till the close of the war. Now, if the sole use

of the navy upon which we yearly expend millions of roubles be to shrink

out of harm's way at the first sign of danger, we might just as well

have no navy at all."

Besides the journals above named, the Moscow _Son of the Fatherland_ and

two others published in the capital (the _Birjeviya Vedomosti_, or

_Bourse Gazette_, and the _Peterburgskiya Vedomosti_, or _St. Petersburg

Gazette_), though now eclipsed by their younger rivals, formerly held a

high place among Russian dailies. The Russian magazines cannot be dealt

with in the limited space of the present article: it must suffice to

mention the two most important--namely: the _Russki Vestnik_ (_Russian

Courier_) and the _Vestnik Yevropi_ (_Courier of Europe_). Several of

M. Tourgueneff's later stories have made their first appearance in the

pages of the latter, which, numbering among its contributors some of the

foremost writers in Russia, and combining, like the _Revue des Deux

Mondes_, the functions of a review with those of a magazine, is in every

way the worthy successor of its now defunct forerunner, the

_Sovremennik_ (_Contemporary_), formerly owned and edited by the poet

Nekrassoff.[B]

The comic element of Russian journalism is represented by the _Iskra_

(_Spark_) and _Budilnik_ (_Alarm-Bell_), the latter having the

superiority in pictorial illustrations, though the savage and personal

cast of its satire, together with its imprudent fondness for political

allusions, has more than once all but occasioned its suppression. Both

journals are published weekly, and both have a considerable circulation,

though it must be owned that their title of "comic" is for the most part

a sad misnomer. That the Russians are naturally devoid of humor no

reader of Gogol or Griboiedoff, Pushkin, Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can

believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into

the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a

combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of

Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally

oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month

or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career of

untranslatable pleasantry, till some special atrocity calls forth the

fatherly admonition of the police. Immediately a reaction ensues,

filling the objectionable columns with harmless sneers at the weather

and other safe objects of attack, until the effect of the warning has

died away, and all goes on as before.

Those of our readers who were in Russia a few years ago must remember

the famous caricature of "National Music," representing the various

journals as a band of musicians. In the foreground stands the minister

of police as bandmaster, regulating the time with the flourish of his

baton: on his right is the _Russian Invalid_ (the government organ) with

a trombone, on his left the _Military Gazette_ with a kettledrum.

Immediately below, the _Moscow Gazette_, in the person of its celebrated

chief, M. Katkoff, is playing in a reckless, haphazard fashion upon an

enormous bass fiddle. Close by are the two leading comic journals, the

one tinkling a triangle, the other blowing the pandean pipes. Farther on

the _Voice_ (_Golos_) is bawling through a speaking-trumpet, and the

_Bourse Gazette_ flourishing a tambourine, a host of minor performers

being loosely sketched in the background; while far in the distance a

hand outstretched from a cloud of mist is tolling a cracked church-bell,

symbolical of M. Kerzen's famous _Kolokol_ (_Bell_), at that time in the

zenith of its sinister renown; and Russia, as a young lady in a

ball-dress, is vainly attempting, with a look of dismay, to close her

ears against the uproar.

Equally clever and equally audacious is a more recent travesty of the

well-known scene in Dante's _Inferno_ where Bertrand de Born, a noted

sower of sedition, comes forth with his severed head in his hands. In

the Russian version the renowned editor of the _Moscow Gazette_ is seen

hobbling along with a cannon-ball labelled "Police Surveillance" at his

ankle, and carrying by the hair his own head, which is so drawn as to

bear a grotesque likeness to an inkstand with a pen in each ear. The

text of Dante is thus travestied:

And by the hair he with despairing look

Upheld his head, which cried to me, "Oh woe!

Himself is his own inkstand! Thus are two

In one tormented."

The backwardness of the Russian press, attributed to so many different

causes, is really due to one very simple one--the want of readers. Among

a population of whom only nine per cent. can read, and who neither know

nor care what passes in the world of politics, the existence of free

public opinion, or indeed of any opinion at all, can hardly be expected;

and thus, while no country contains such frantic republicans as Russia,

no government is more absolutely secure. Upon that tremendous passivity

the utmost efforts of such men as Netchaieff and Bakounin fall like a

pellet on the hide of an elephant. The popular cries which madden other

races are utterly meaningless to the docile, unemotional "mujik," loyal

and conservative to the very marrow of his bones.

But the vivifying of these petrified millions may safely be left to the

influence of time. The provincial schools recently established may be

trusted to do their work, however slowly; and the "educated Russia"

dreamed of by Alexander I. may yet crown the age of Alexander II. Those

who, like the writer, have lived in the villages of the interior, and

have seen the Russian peasant as he really is, cannot but have hopes of

his future, in the teeth of the hasty and one-sided observers who love

to depict him as a brute with the single human attribute of dishonesty.

The ignorance, sluggishness and intemperance of the mujik belong to the

system under which he has been reared: his frank hospitality, cheery

good-humor and simple child-like piety are all his own. To raise these

brave, simple natures out of the unwholesome darkness which has so long

imprisoned them is a noble and Christian work; as far above the mere

material emancipation of 1861 as the soul is above the body.

D. K.

A MIDSUMMER NOON'S PHANTASM.

"Ghosts? No, I don't believe in ghosts: I have seen too many of them,"

is a very fair thing on one of the oldest of subjects. My case is

different. I have been trying all my life to believe in ghosts, and saw

my first four days ago. Toward noon I fell into a doze--very short and

slight it must have been--over my book. No one was in the room, and the

door was closed. The book was held up in the usual position, a little

below the level of the eye, in the right hand. I awoke--if the word can

be applied to what was so very slight a slumber--and saw limned with

perfect distinctness against the page the head of a girl or boy six or

eight years old, blue-eyed, light-haired, and fair but not clear in

complexion. It was below life-size, not more than four inches in height.

Only the head was visible, without anything below the jaw. At first it

seemed perfectly solid, but the lines of print, which were still held up

as in reading, gradually showed themselves through the fading apparition

until it entirely died away. This happened in about a third of a minute,

the beautiful little face continuing the whole time to gaze at me with a

calm but not sad expression. It was not in full front, the right side

being turned to me in what is called a three-quarter position. The light

which illuminated it did not come from the window, which was directly

behind me and gave all the light there was in the room, and yet the

impression was in no respect that of a picture. Not for a moment did

this interpretation occur to me, strongly as did the evanescent

character of the head militate against the idea of reality. The fading

was most rapid at the occiput, and may be said to have begun there,

extending to the right and upward. There was no background or accessory

of any kind, the head being quite isolated and detached, objectively as

subjectively.

The lineaments were not those of any one of my acquaintance, and

recalled no countenance I had ever seen. If the appearance suggested a

young member of the family, it was not because of resemblance, but from

his being frequently in my mind, and apt to be associated with any alarm

due to the tinge of superstition from which none of us are wholly free.

For the reason already given it could not have been a reminiscence of a

picture. The shading and coloring were too exact for anything painted.

My easel was, it is true, near by, on the opposite side of me, and on it

were two heads of nearly the size of that I describe; but they were

hard-featured old saints of a deep mahogany hue, relieved by a very dark

background, and therefore the exact antipodes of my shadowy visitant. On

these I had been painting an hour or two before; and that is the

solitary connection conceivable between the spectre and anything

tangible. The reader will perhaps be inclined to set it down as having

been complementary to them. I do not think it was; but were it so, the

point mainly craving explanation remains untouched--that what I saw was

with the waking eye. It may have come from the land of dreams, or from a

remote outlying province of it, but its perceptible existence was

entirely in the realm of actualities. I was not conscious, and had no

recollection, of having had a dream. It is true that, according to a

theory necessarily and in its nature incapable of being sustained by

positive proof, we may have unconscious dreams, and be always dreaming

when asleep without knowing it. Persons who rise at night, take pen and

paper and solve problems which had been the worry of their waking hours,

and return to their couch still asleep, present cases analogous to mine

in so far as their unconscious mental activity leaves an outcome and

expression obvious to the senses. Another parallel would be that of a

sleep-walking artist who should when in a state of somnambulism execute

a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine.

The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep

what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand,

would, should I transfer my aerial sitter to canvas, simply paint what I

saw when wide awake, just as in undertaking to reproduce any other face

from memory, whether observed once for twenty seconds or frequently and

for longer periods.

It is usual to explain the common stories of phantoms by attributing

them to ocular illusion, aided or not aided by the imagination or by

particular conditions of the bodily or mental health. The eye, of

course, is never quite proof against deception, but there needs some

little material for it; and in my case there was absolutely none--no

waving sheet or trees or clouds, nothing but the printed page; and that

was visible, unchanged except by the utterly inharmonious and contrasted

image before it. My imagination was not affected before, at the time, or

after. My pulse may have been a little quickened for the moment, for I

did not accept the appearance as a matter of course, as we do

everything, however preposterous, in a dream, but, on the contrary,

quite recognized its abnormal character. I know of no existing cause of

especial or temporary liability to any delusion of the kind. In short,

though I have not--and had not when I continued after the disappearance

to contemplate, without moving a muscle, the book against which the head

had been projected, and coolly reflect upon what I had seen--the

slightest belief that it was supernatural, I should be compelled, if

called on in court, to swear that I had seen what must be provisionally

named a spectre. "If I stand here, I saw it!"

E. C. B.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

As the traveller is whirled along over the great stretch of railway

between Liverpool and London, he passes (about midway) through Nuneaton,

a busy little manufacturing town, situated in a most delightful and

fruitful part of the "Garden Land." About two miles from this town

(which the gifted authoress has dubbed "Milby" in her _Scenes of

Clerical Life_), on the broad smooth highway leading to the ancient and

renowned city of Coventry, stands the house where Marian Evans was born.

It is a large brick building, surrounded by a well-stocked and pleasant

garden, devoid of ornament, but highly suggestive of comfort and

convenience--such a house as our forefathers used to build fifty years

ago, when comfort was not sacrificed to appearance, and when the owner

had more to do with the design than the architect.

Robert Evans, the father of the renowned authoress, was bailiff to Lord

Howe and to Sir Roger Newdigate--father of the present M. P. of that

name, who is such an earnest champion of Protestantism as it is

reflected in the Church of England, and who has made such earnest but as

yet fruitless endeavors to have a bill passed for the periodical

visitation and inspection of the monastic and conventual institutions of

Great Britain. Her brother, Isaac P. Evans, still occupies that

responsible position, and resides in the old homestead. The country

around Mrs. Lewes's early home is rich in historic associations. Not far

away is Bosworth Field, and in another direction are the ruins of Astley

Castle, within whose strong walls Lady Jane Grey passed a portion of her

brief, chequered life. Near the castle stands--or stood--a tree in which

her father, the duke of Suffolk, took refuge when pursued by the

emissaries of the sanguinary queen. A small table used by him while

concealed in the huge hollow trunk is still preserved.

There are several very ancient churches in the vicinity of the residence

where George Eliot passed her early days. The parish church of Nuneaton,

to which she alludes in her _Scenes of Clerical Life_, is a grand

structure, six hundred years old, with a massive embattled tower

containing a chime of eight melodious bells; and Coton (Shepperton)

Church, which in her girlhood she attended with her parents, is perhaps

still more ancient, as it is certainly more weatherbeaten and venerable

in appearance. The writer's parents have often seen the future authoress

sitting in the antiquated, high-peaked family pew and taking part with

grave attention in the service.

In Atteborough, a village in the same neighborhood, there resided an

eccentric character named Joe Liggens. He had received a university

education, but, lacking application and industry, had chosen no pursuit

in life, and passed his time in lounging around his native village and

frequenting the tap-room of its alehouse, where, surrounded by an

admiring crowd, he puffed away at his long pipe, removing it from his

lips only when he deigned to express an opinion upon some subject of

debate and give his open-mouthed hearers the benefit of his wisdom and

erudition. When _Scenes of Clerical Life_ first appeared in _Blackwood's

Magazine_, describing places and persons familiar to the villagers, they

naturally wondered who the author could be, and decided at last that it

could be no other than Joe Liggens. Had he not been to Oxford? Didn't he

know Latin and all sorts of things? And wasn't he acquainted with the

scenes and personages described in the new book? No one else could be

thought of combining these various and essential qualifications. When

Joe was questioned on the subject he merely smiled and said nothing--the

strongest confirmatory proof, and an exhibition of the modesty inherent

in genius. In recognition of the honor he had conferred upon his native

place, a subscription was started for the impecunious Joe, and a goodly

sum was on the point of being presented to him when the real name of

"George Eliot" was revealed, and Joe Liggens found himself treated as an

impostor by those who had thrust upon him undeserved honors.

W. B.

THE FATE OF SOUTH JERSEY.

The Camden and Atlantic, the Philadelphia and Atlantic City, the New

Jersey Southern, and some minor railroads, pass through portions of New

Jersey long known as the "Jersey Barrens." They are all new roads,

comparatively speaking, but they have wonderfully stimulated the

enterprise that has created so many flourishing villages that ten years

ago had never been heard of. Vineland, the fairest and most flourishing

village in the country, as well as the largest, is only about fifteen

years old. Its population is six thousand. Forbidding-looking swamps,

giving rise to swarming myriads of mosquitoes and to malaria through

their dank, decaying vegetation, have been converted into flourishing

cranberry-meadows, and the dry land into fine vineyards and

fruit-orchards surrounding homes of every grade of elegance, from the

simple vine-covered cottage to the costly villa with carefully-kept

evergreen hedges enclosing exquisite lawns, statues, fountains and rare

flowers. The extent of these hedges is estimated at seventy-five miles.

But this prosperous reclamation of the waste lands of South Jersey has

already received a check from an insidious but terrible enemy, destined

to undo the labor of years unless promptly and wisely attacked. This

enemy is drought, traceable directly to the destruction of the forests.

Formerly, glass-manufacturing companies established themselves in

well-wooded regions, used the forests for their furnaces, and when these

were exhausted migrated to new places to repeat the work of devastation.

Then the settlers "cleared up" the land extensively, and since the

railroads have been built the burning of the woods along their routes by

cinders from the locomotives has been terribly frequent, and often

extensive. A conductor on the Camden and Atlantic stated last year that

he had counted fifteen forest-fires during one trip from Camden to the

sea.

Yet nothing is done to prevent these ever-recurring calamities. The

citizens complain, mourn over the destruction, grumble at the railroads,

and thank God when the fires are at a safe distance from their own

homes. When personally threatened, they turn out, men, women and

children, aided by terror-stricken and sympathizing neighbors, and

"fight the fire" by felling trees and clearing away the inflammable

matter in the path of the fire. Sometimes a whole neighborhood will

struggle for days together without respite as only the desperate can.

Many of these fires, it is said, are due to the wilful mischief of boys

and others. Hundreds of acres are destroyed every year. Along the Camden

and Atlantic almost every tract of woodland has been burned over once or

more.

The effect of the decrease of the rainfall in South Jersey is already

serious. The water-supply in Vineland, Hammonton and other places is

constantly lowering: all the wells except those that were dug very deep

at first have had to be lowered at least two feet.

The most practical step at present toward arresting the destruction of

woodlands is no doubt the organization of forest-protecting and planting

societies like those in Germany, which have now so far secured the aid

of the legislative power that no landowner can cut down one of his own

forest trees without the consent of the authorities. This seems like

tyranny, but it is really that wisdom which recognizes the good of the

whole community as paramount to any private consideration.

M. H.

THE SAFFAH COBBLESTONES.

_Le Devoir_ gives some interesting information about the wonderful

stones of Saffah, now on exhibition in the Asia Minor department of the

Museum of the Louvre. This department has lately been reopened to the

public, after being closed six months for internal improvements.

Visitors pass before the cases containing these ordinary-looking

cobblestones, and wonder why they should be there instead of in the

street, where they seem to belong. But these ordinary-looking stones

are, in the eyes of scholars, among the most precious objects of

history: they are covered with writings in some unknown, and even

unheard-of, tongue. Some of the writing is fine, some coarse: sometimes

the lines are straight, from right to left, and sometimes they wind

about, like the trail of a serpent, in every direction. Saffah is a

desert plain in Syria extending east from the lakes of Damascus, and a

part of it is covered with these curious stones. Antiquaries like Renan,

Ganneau, De Vogue, Waddington and Pierret are sorely puzzled over the

writing on them, for the character resembles none that has yet been

deciphered. They will not, however, abandon the task, for antiquaries

are Patience personified; and we shall one day know the history,

language, manners and customs of a race whose very existence up to the

present time has not even been suspected.

M. H.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] The published statistics of the Russian press are manifestly

untrustworthy; but the post-office returns of St. Petersburg show that

82,000 copies of daily and 40,000 of weekly papers, with 50,000 copies

of monthly periodicals, are yearly sent to the provinces. The largest

circulation (26,000) belongs to M. Katkoff's _Moscow Gazette_

(_Moskovskiya Vedomosti_). Besides the native journals, 17 German

papers, 5 French, 4 Polish, 2 Tartar and 1 Hebrew are published in

Russia. Of English papers, the _Manchester Guardian_, thanks to the

number of Lancashire workmen in the interior, has the widest

circulation: the _Times_ comes second, the _Illustrated London News_

third.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

The Atlantic Islands as Resorts of Health and Pleasure. By S. G. W.

Benjamin. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Invalids and pleasure-seekers have here a guidebook to the summer and

winter resorts of the North Atlantic, from the desolate rocks called the

Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the ever-bland Madeira

and the over-bright Bahamas. The varied company of the isles embraces

even Wight, where Cockney consumptives go to get out of the mist, and

the Norman group consecrated to cream and Victor Hugo. The author's good

descriptive powers are assisted by a number of drawings, many of which

are finely done and well discriminate the local character of the

different places, latitudes and circumstances of life. He does not

appear to be much of a valetudinarian himself, or he would hardly have

been able to venture on and report for our benefit so wide a range of

travel and experience; but his preference obviously is for the island

most thoroughly tempered to the needs of an enfeebled constitution, and

which welcomes most wooingly those whose first craving is to keep

alive--Madeira. Such of us as associate their earliest recollections of

the name with the annual cask of wine will read with interest that

though the wine, thanks to the oidium or some malady of that sort, is a

thing of the past, the spot retains many other charms ample to justify a

trip to its shores by a more roundabout way than the slow and direct or

costly and circuitous routes laid down by Mr. Benjamin. Teneriffe ranks

close to Madeira, and the Valley of Orotava, scooped out of the flank of

the famous peak, is recommended as simply perfection for sufferers from

"pulmonary complaints, rheumatism or neuralgia," and beneficial even in

Bright's disease. The thermometer in this happy valley stops at

fifty-eight degrees in winter, and averages from sixty-eight to

seventy-two degrees in summer. Should you find this temperature too

inclement, you can descend to the port at its mouth and luxuriate in a

range of sixty-four to eighty degrees. Where we write the figure at this

moment is ninety degrees in the shade, and those semi-tropical outposts

of the anciently-known world seem arctic.

Bermuda, New York's onion- and potato-garden, is presented to us in a

less fascinating light, owing possibly, in part, to the fact that Mr. B.

does not like onions, and was nearly stifled on his return by the odor

of that nutritious esculent under battened hatchways. But he sees a

great deal to delight sound travellers, and objects mainly in behalf of

the sick to the climate, which is only a modification of that of the

continent, with an extra tempest or two thrown in. In protesting against

the antiquated mode of landing maintained by Bermudan conservatism, he

thinks a more modern, rational and convenient plan would be hooted down

by the wharf-mob in the spirit of "Demetrius the coppersmith." We

believe the Ephesian was a maker of silver images, though Alexander may

have been actuated by a like motive in opposing Paul's proceedings as

not good for trade.

Speaking of landing-places, that of Columbus is transferred, in a

notable note on the Bahamas, from Cat Island to Watling's Island. The

former has no lake, as the latter has; and Columbus insists on a lake.

He also went in one day with oars around the north end--a feat

impossible in one case and easy in the other. Watling, for this and

other reasons dwelt on by English surveyors, is on the new maps

rebaptized San Salvador, in rectification of euphony not less than of

historic truth. If now equally successful inquiry could be brought to

bear on the identity of the Discoverer's bones, claimed alike by Hayti

and Cuba, it would be an additional comfort to the lovers of fact.

Steam-service is steadily growing more frequent, regular and

expeditious, and the next generation of Americans will doubtless pack

their portmanteaus as lightly for the Canaries, the Loffodens and the

Galapagos as that now in being does for Appledore or Mount Desert. For

individual health, relaxation or enjoyment, not more than for the

general invigoration and well-being of the race, we need to be on easier

terms with the sea. The old maritime spirit, so striking to the eyes of

Burke, seems to have died out from among us. If we are to have a

brilliant and assured future, we must not look for it wholly to the

land. It may not rise sheer, Britain- and Aphrodite-like, from the

breast of ocean, but it must yet rest partly upon that most solid of

supports, the ever-shifting wave.

The Principles of Light and Color. By Edwin D. Babbitt. New York:

Babbitt & Co.

Were we to open this book about the middle we should be disposed to set

it down, on the strength of its latter half, as a contribution to the

literature of the Pleasantonian (or blue-glass) school of natural

philosophy. This impression would be humored by the bluish tint of the

paper upon which it is printed. But an inspection of the entire work

would show that it is something more comprehensive and ambitious, not to

say more interesting and suggestive. It is the product of a bold and

original, if not exactly close and systematic, thinker--one who, with a

longer and severer experimental training in the fields he has chosen for

exploration, would command the respectful attention of leading

scientific men. He begins with the reflection that, "in spite of the

wonderful achievements of experimental scientists, no definite

conceptions of atomic machinery, or the fundamental processes of

thermal, electric, chemical, physiological or psychological action, have

been attained." He proposes to remedy this failure, and to carry the

natural sciences to their "basic principles." He proceeds to speculate

with great ingenuity on the nature of light, the form, relations and

movements of atoms, the action of electricity upon them, the

constitution of the atmosphere, mode of creation of the solar system,

and the _rationale_ of chemical affinity. From these lofty regions he

stoops to his conclusion in the new science of "chromo-therapeutics." He

undertakes to define and explain the alleged effects upon mind, soul and

body of all the colors of the spectrum. Among these colors he assigns

the place of honor to blue, that tint emanating from the frontal portion

of the brain in rays visible to certain finely-organized individuals,

and being associated with the highest intellectual faculties. Red

belongs to the opposite pole of the cerebral sphere, and holds special

relations with the grosser part of man's abstract nature. In this

mysterious region of inquiry he joins hands with some questionable

allies, such as the Spiritualists, the phrenologists and the

mesmerizers. The power of the clairvoyants he does not doubt. Indeed, he

claims to have used it himself, and to have fattened on it, his present

weight of one hundred and eighty pounds having been attained, he tells

us, together with perfect health, by the judicious employment of "these

subtler agencies." One is tempted to ask, in view of such a result, why

waste time on the color-cure when the mesmeric system succeeds so

admirably?

Should we demur to these eccentricities of an enthusiastic savant, he

would perhaps point us to similar excesses in some of the acknowledged

lights of intellectual progress, and cite as a recent instance of the

madness of too much learning the ascription, by the brilliant yet

matter-of-fact and practical Tyndall, of almighty "potency" to matter.

Of course we should reply that Tyndall was a sincere and earnest

student, and not a charlatan or a fanatic; whereto our author might

respond, and respond justly, in sharp disclaimer of the latter brace of

characters. He seems to be sincere: he can read and think, and does

both, as the first part of his book, and much of the rest of it, show.

He would have escaped the imputation we have suggested as not unapt to

be cast upon him, secured a full hearing in a more respectable quarter,

and gained higher aid in the development of his ideas, had he been less

hasty in forming and stating some of his ultimate conclusions and the

practical application of them. Many very able men who have preceded him

in scientific labor, and who do not believe that "the bowels will be

aroused into animation" by the exhibition of "a small strip of yellow

glass three inches in depth, bordered by its affinitive violet," to the

umbilical region, or that "Major Buckley developed one hundred and

forty-eight persons so that they could read sentences shut up in boxes

or nuts," would listen attentively to what he has to say on the anatomy

of an atom, metachronism and "chromatic attraction."

Around the World in the Yacht Sunbeam. By Mrs. Brassey. New York: Henry

Holt & Co.

Some of the best books of travel we have had lately have been written by

women. Their way of looking at new things, even if superficial--which is

not by any means always a safe assumption--is pleasant and refreshing

after the more sober, philosophic and blue-booky style of comment we are

accustomed to be favored with by observers of the other sex. Many

valuable trivialities are lost by the effort to go deeper than the

surface. The phases of life, manners and scenery which strike one in a

rapid tour are perhaps most instructive, and certainly most

entertaining, when reproduced just as they appear. The light female

touch, which revolts at figures and documents, is well suited to that

work, if work it can be called. The male traveller, we know, does much

of his research when he gets home, keeping up, however, with a view to

that end, a solemnly didactic frame of mind all the time he is abroad.

He is thus apt to give us less of what he sees than of what he

thinks--an error into which a woman is less prone to fall. She is less

critical, less ashamed of being startled and pleased, and more frank and

naive in her confession of it. She resembles in this respect the

delightful voyagers of the Middle Ages--the Polos, Batutas and

Mandevilles--who were too much occupied with the novelty of everything

they saw to bore us with their opinions, and who were untrammelled by

the slightest idea of publishing a resume of political, religious or

economic conclusions when they got home. What an infinitesimal

proportion of us understand even our own country! Why, then, obscure and

flatten our impressions of foreign lands by supposing, and preparing to

make others believe, that we can understand them after a cursory study

of a few weeks or months?

Mrs. Brassey is not a literary woman. She has no "mission," and makes no

pretensions to culture. She simply chronicles a tour made in her

husband's yacht, accompanied by two or three young children and as many

friends. But she has good sense, good temper and character, and what she

writes fully justifies her husband's prefatory statement, that "the

voyage would not have been undertaken, and assuredly it would never have

been completed, without the impulse derived from her perseverance and

determination." Unprepared by special study, and quite devoid of

science, she yet notes well, and interests us in, the animals, plants,

human occupants and natural phenomena generally of the countries

visited. And without any command or affectation of imagery or fine

language she is very graphic in her descriptions of sea and shore. Her

account of a visit to the great Hawaian volcano is one of the best we

have ever read, being simple, terse and vivid, without the overloading

with detail that spoils so many of the pen-pictures of the day.

The trip was made in eleven months of 1876-77. The route lay from

Chatham to Madeira, Rio, the river Plate, Valparaiso (through the

Straits of Magellan), the Society and Sandwich Islands, Yokohama,

Hong-Kong, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Alexandria, Malta, and so on back to

England. It thus threaded a large part of the tropical world, and we are

led to perceive a greater variety in tropical life and scenery than we

are in the habit of realizing. The rapidity of movement facilitated

this, as it brought the different points more closely together, and made

what there was of contrast more striking. Not that the movements of the

party were uniformly hurried either, for weeks were spent in Rio, the

Pampas, Chili and Japan, and sufficient stoppages made at many other

places. The slow passage through the stormy Straits makes us acquainted

with the savages of the Land of Fire and their picturesque country,

decidedly more damp than fiery. Japan was reached in the season of ice

and snow, and the author, wrapped in furs and ulsters, was puzzled by

the native contempt of the thermometer as shown in their wooden-walled

houses with paper partitions and the popular passion for the lightest

possible raiment. We join in her amazement at the proceedings, on a

frosty morning, of the propellers of her _jenrishka_--or, as it is

punningly termed, _pull-man-car_--who, compelled by law to wear their

clothes in town, deliberately stopped when they struck the country and

divested themselves of almost the last stitch--a performance paralleled

in the opposite hemisphere by a party of Fuegians, man, wife and son,

who came off in a canoe to trade, and stripped themselves utterly of

their one garment of fine sea-otter skins in exchange for beads and

tobacco. The author seems to have armed herself against surprises of

this and all other kinds, and to have set out prepared to accept

outlandish ways as they came, and look on the bright and reasonable side

of everything. She manifests no national prejudice, whether against

savage or civilized people, and commends frankly American carriages,

railways, tramways, calicoes and canned fruits wherever she meets them;

and that is, for one or another item of the list, nearly everywhere.

Our manufacturers will read with interest the compliments recorded as

paid by their customers, actual and possible, in the Pacific and Indian

Oceans to the superior merit of their fabrics as compared with those of

Manchester.

Altogether, should Mrs. Brassey's yacht be ready for another

circumnavigation before ours, we do not know that we should refuse the

offer of a spare berth.

Art-Education. A Lecture by General William Birney. Delivered February

6, 1878, before the Washington Art-Club. Washington: Art-Club.

This brochure is mainly a sketch of the consequences to industrial art

of the English Exhibition of 1851, or a consideration of the fruits of

the South Kensington Art-School. The humiliation of England in that

Exhibition is well known, and the way in which she profited by the

bitter lesson is full of instruction to this country. Thoughtful

Americans, whether directly concerned in the welfare of laboring men or

not, remember uneasily the troubles of last year, listen with compassion

to whatever sounds of distress come from the assemblies of those who

call themselves "workingmen," and look with anxiety for evidence of

returning prosperity and contentment. All Americans worth mentioning are

workers and are in sympathy with labor. If any "workingmen" think that

there is a large or powerful class in this country opposed to the

interests of labor, they should at once dismiss the notion, and look

further for the cause of their troubles. Considerate people see that the

"workingmen" should take a wider view of their situation than most of

them seem to do; that they should look above and beyond the ranks of

partisans for the light they need; that they should listen to those who

will discuss their problem with the coolness, the disinterestedness, the

unhesitating honesty which characterize the leading scientists of the

day in other fields of inquiry. Such are the speakers and writers they

should invite to their assistance. Instead of wasting their breath in

expressions of self-admiration, in threadbare platitudes about the

nobility and rights of labor, in appeals to the omnipresent politician,

in complaints against labor-saving machinery, in talk about the

Eight-Hour law, it would be more encouraging if they would try to

supplant foreign workmen by simply excelling them in workmanship, and

try to find employment by the creation of new industries. Higher

education in industrial art is the stepping-stone to this.

As the depression is the result of a combination of causes, it is not

probable that a panacea exists. Complete restoration will come from

several remedies, each having its due effect in its own time and place.

But perhaps the most potent of all, one indispensable to thorough and

lasting prosperity, is thus revealed by General Birney:

"Although the United States has not hitherto directed her attention to

art, her manifest destiny is to do so. The necessity of events will

compel it. We have entered upon a long peace, in which we shall have to

compete with civilized nations for the supply of the markets of the

world. A population of forty millions cannot exist in comfort when they

sell to the world nothing but agricultural implements, sewing-machines,

revolvers, clocks, corn, cheese and cheap cottons, and buy everything

else from it. The end of that course must be national ruin.

"For self-preservation, we must manufacture: we must have skilled labor.

The rapid increase of scientific knowledge makes art a necessity. As

science throws men out of employ, art must provide employment. The

scientist and artist must walk hand in hand. The invention of

labor-saving machinery for the farmer, enabling one man to do the work

which formerly required ten, is rapidly driving men from the country to

the cities. The invention of other machinery is rapidly throwing large

numbers of workmen out of employ. Political causes are adding to this

evil. How to put the unemployed millions to work is the problem of the

day. The salvation of the country depends upon its solution. The nation

stands before each public man demanding that he shall read the riddle or

be destroyed.

"One of the helps to a solution, if not a solution, is the introduction

of skilled labor. It takes but a few men to fashion a ton of iron into

bars, but a thousand are not too many to work it into watch-springs.

Five men can make all the coarse pottery used in this District: it takes

five hundred to make its decorated ware and porcelain. Rough hand-labor

is being superseded by machinery. But the demand is greater than ever

before for skilled labor, both to manage the machinery and to take the

product where machinery has left it and fashion it into value by the

art of the decorator. Such a workman plies his handiwork at his own

house, teaching his sons the secrets of his trade. He is the necessary

coadjutor of the machine-owner, and has no need to resort to the brutal

methods of Molly Maguires and trades-unions to get a fair reward for his

labor. Let demagogues rant about our danger from competition with the

_pauper_ labor of Europe! We never were, and never will be, injured by

that. What we should fear is the skilled labor of well-paid, cultured

and educated artisans."

The French, who won so easy a victory over the English in 1851 in the

manufacture of whatever directly augments the luxury and elegance of

life, now fear that England will overcome France on her own ground. An

able Parisian, criticising the Exhibition of 1878, and acknowledging the

facts it reveals, asks the French government to send, at the public

expense, a hundred workmen every year to Great Britain as a means of

keeping French artisans abreast of British and holding their own in the

markets. Ours is not a paternal government. If it should send a hundred

men to England, half of them might be political bummers, whose chief

study would be, not how to learn to work for the benefit of their

countrymen, but how to live without work. The American people are as

individuals supposed to take care of their own business. Do our

trades-unions and labor-clubs and workingmen's associations send a

hundred picked men abroad every year for study and practice? Are they

too conceited or ignorant to realize what most concerns them? Thousands

of foreign subjects are earning money from us, while thousands of our

countrymen are suffering. This is not the fault of those foreign

workmen, nor of the American purchasers of their artistic work, nor of

our government. It is in a great degree because Americans have not the

skill and taste to take up material where machinery leaves it, and lay

it down beautified by the touch of real art. An "appeal to the

ballot-box," the sovereign remedy of a true American for every ill; the

enactment that two and two shall make five, which is about what the

Eight-Hour law amounts to; the declaration by statute that so much of

one metal shall equal so much of another metal,--has there not been

enough of this? Would not a few hundred well-educated emissaries of our

trades-unions and labor associations kept in the technical schools and

workshops abroad be of rather more value? "How many of the graduates of

the South Kensington Art-School, and artisans whose ability is traceable

to it, might have been induced to try here the fine work which now, in

England, is making the French tremble for their laurels, by a judicious

use of the money which public halls, meetings, brass bands, processions,

delegations, disturbances, transparencies, lobbyists, blather-skites and

strikes have cost the 'workingmen' of America?"

_Books Received._

The Army of the Republic: Its Services and Destiny. By Henry Ward

Beecher.--How to Spend the Summer; Where to Go; How to Go; How to Save

Money. (Christian Union Extras.) New York: Christian Union Print.

Sensible Etiquette of the Best Society, Customs, Manners, Morals and

Home Culture. Compiled from the best authorities. By Mrs. H. O. Ward.

Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

Gabrielle; or, The House of Maureze. From the French of Henri Greville.

Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.

Hathercourt. By Mrs. Molesworth ("Ennis Graham"). (Leisure-Hour Series.)

New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Hints to Plumbers and Householders. By W. L. D. O'Grady. New York: The

American News Co.

Poems and Ballads. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. (Second Series.) New

York: R. Worthington.

Pauline, and Other Poems. By Hanford Lennox Gordon. New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons.

How to Take Care of our Eyes. By Henry C. Angell, M. D. Boston: Roberts

Brothers.

Rothmell. By the author of "That Husband of Mine." Boston: Lee &

Shepard.

Maid Ellice. By Theo. Gift. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt

& Co.

Chips from Many Blocks. By Elihu Burritt. Toronto: Rose-Belford

Publishing Co.

Bluffton: A Story of To-day. By M. J. Savage. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Somebody Else. By G. P. Lathrop. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

His Inheritance. By Adeline Trafton. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Poems. By W. T. Washburn. New York: Jesse Haney & Co.