The next moment a sound came from the kitchen--something between a howl

and a roar--and following in its wake came Anarky. Almost inarticulate

with rage, she shook her brawny fist in Chang-how's face. "You

good-fur-nuthin' yaller _houn'!_" she exclaimed.

Mr. Smith wheeled around on his chair and looked at her in stern

surprise. Chang-how stood his ground and gazed at her with the unruffled

calm of a full moon beaming o'er a raging sea.

She turned to us, trembling with excitement: "Well, ef dat ain't de

beatinest trick et ebber I seed! Think dat yaller houn' ain't stole de

biskit outen de ub'n? An', 'fo' Gord! I didn't know he'd been out o'

here long 'nuff for a dog to snap at a fly! Ef you ain't de

oudaishusest--" She stopped and glared at him with the despairing,

silent venom of one who felt herself a pauper in words, a verbal

failure, a wretched creature who in the supreme hour of trial was

proving herself the wrong person in the wrong place.

Chang-how's hands were folded, and his eyes rested dreamily on the

floor. Evidently, he was contentedly rolling tea-leaves in his native

land.

Suspiciously regarding the abnormal appearance of Chang-how's neat white

jacket, I forbore to rebuke my sable favorite, but Mr. Smith, not having

observed the little protuberances which had attracted my attention

toward his more delicately-tinted protégé, said with decision, "Go to

the kitchen, Anarky, and send in supper or bring it yourself; and make

haste about it."

Anarky turned again to Chang-how and fixed her great black eyes on him

in silence. Then she sounded a note of solemn warning: "Lord! Lord!

Shang-hai!" said she, "ef ebber I _does_ cotch you out an' out, ef ebber

I _does_ git a good square holt on you, I'll t'ar you all to pieces! Yo'

mammy won't want what'll be left uv you, 'cos' 'twon't be wuf berryin'!"

"Shut upee! too much jawee," said Chang-how benignly, and dreamed again

of his native land. But for three days nothing was missing in Anarky's

department, and so far Chang-how escaped with unbroken bones.

On the evening of the fourth day I received a letter announcing the

coming of visitors, and it unfortunately occurred to me that Chang-how

might assist Anarky in the laundry, thus affording her an opportunity

for greater display in the culinary department; so I called him up: "You

washeeman, Chang-how?"

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

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

"All light! How muchee?"

"One dollar."

"Two dollar."

"One dollar."

"No washee one dollar," said Chang.

"No washee at all, then."

"One dollar ap."

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

"Melican man no washee ap."

"Oh yes. Melican woman suit me."

"All light! I washee one dollar."

"Very well. As soon, then, as you leave the dining-room go to the

laundry. And, Chang, no make cook cross."

"Cook too much talkee: cookee bad egg."

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

"All light! How muchee?"

"No matter: a quarter."

"Ap."

"A half, then."

Going to the laundry, I said to Anarky, "Chang-how will assist you in

the ironing to-day, so that you can get through quickly and show my

friends some of your best cooking, Anarky. I do hope--"

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

"Oh, he knows ever so much," said I with cheerful faith; "and I do hope

you will try to get on nicely with him this time. You know what the

Bible says about brothers dwelling together in unity, and all that?"

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

resisted Anarky.

"Oh yes, we are all brothers; and if you will only be Chang-how's long

enough to get through with the ironing, I will give you almost anything

you want."

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

a Orrisher."

"Try it to-day, though, Anarky, for my sake," said I persuasively; and

she consented, though sulkily enough.

Hearing Chang-how coming, I seated myself on the stairway leading into

the laundry, curious to see how they would work together.

Anarky pointed authoritatively to a heap of dried linen. "Sprinkle dem

ar cloze," said she to Chang. "I'm gwine out in de yard to git what's on

de line."

While she was gone, Chang-how, as is the manner of his people, filled

his mouth with water, and was blowing it in a fine spray over the linen

when Anarky appeared in the doorway, a basket of clothes on her head,

her knuckles on her hips. As she caught sight of Chang-how moistening

the linen with water from his mouth she stopped: she staggered, her

basket fell to the floor, and, stooping down, she threw her hands above

her head, then brought them down again with a violent slap on her knees.

"Good Lor'! come down," said she, "an' look at dat yaller houn'

a-spittin' on Mis' Maud's cloze.--I got you now! Can't nobody blame me

fur beatin' you 'bout _dat_."

Then she flew at him, and what a scene it was! She, black, brawny, of

immense physical power--he, lithe, sinewy, supple as a panther. It was a

spectacle! First one, then the other, seemed to have the advantage. She

would catch him in her powerful grasp, and, lifting him off his feet,

swing him in the air as if about to slam him to his final resting-place,

when by some inexplicable manoeuvre he would writhe from between her

fingers or wriggle himself to the back of her neck and mash her nose

flat against her breast as if bent on suffocating her or breaking her

neck. In a moment she would reach back with both hands and pull him over

her head very much as men doff a shirt. Likely as not, Chang came down

with his heels in the air, and at it they would go again. Presently she

was tripped, and fell with a violence that should have broken every bone

in her body, but before Chang-how could pursue his advantage she had

wheeled on her side, wound his queue halfway up her arm and had her knee

on his breast.

"Good for you, An--! I mean, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Stop! for

Heaven's sake, stop! You might kill him."

As well have spoken to the winds. And as they became more terribly in

earnest I began to scream for help: "Stop, Anarky! (Murder! murder!)--Here,

Chang, take the poker. (_Mu--u--u--r--_der!) Great Heaven! don't hit her

with it! Stop, Chang-how! (Mur--_d--e--r!_ Oh, mercy! somebody

come!)--Here, Anarky, take the pota- (Mur--_d--e--r--rr!_)--potato-masher

and don't kill (_M--u--r_--der!)--kill him with it, unless he kills you

first.--Oh, mercy! mercy! I don't know what else to give you all to keep

you from killing (Murder!)--killing each other with.--Anarky, you are

breaking his neck!--Here's a flatiron, Chang! (Murder! Fire! fire! fire!)"

This brought the neighbors and the neighbors' children, and their

neighbors and their neighbors' children, and finally a forlorn

policeman, who marched Anarky to the magistrate's office and left Chang

to do up his pigtail at leisure, and reflect how often he had sinned and

gone unwhipt of justice, and now, in the hour of peace and in the act of

duty, retribution had deliberately sought him out, and found him and

disposed of him as afore told.

It seems that Anarky went quietly enough to the magistrate, who gave her

the choice between going to jail and depositing five dollars as security

for her appearance next morning for examination. Not having five dollars

to deposit, she was allowed an hour in which to seek some one who would

go bail for her. At the end of that time she returned to the office

panting, exhausted, wiping the perspiration from her face with her blue

cotton apron.

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

Calmly turning down the sleeves that had been rolled above her shining

black elbows, she replied with contempt, "I ain't been arter no bail: I

dun been home an' finish beatin' de lites outen dat yaller houn'. Dat

all de bail _I_ wants! Which ef ennybody's lookin' fur him, dey kin

fin' his pigtail, an' maybe a piece uv his head a-stickin' to it, hin'

de chick'n-coop at Mas' Jim's. Now kyar me to jail an' lemme res'. I

boun' he don't spit on no mo' cloze _I_ got ter han'le!"

JENNIE WOODVILLE.

THE IDYL OF THE VAUCLUSE.

A dusky opening in a range of purpling hills; a vision of a cluster of

small white human homes; a shining, murmuring little river spanned by a

wooden bridge; a towering background of bald, steep rock, cleft at its

base into a shadowy cavern,--such is the first of my memories of the

Vaucluse. At the entrance of the little town stands a low white-walled

building, over the door of which is a tablet inscribed thus: "On the

site of this café Petrarch established his study. Here he wrote the

lines--

O soave contrada, O puro fiume,

Che bagni 'l suo bel viso e gli occhi chiari."

On the banks of the classic Sorgue I was offered the photographs of

Petrarch and Laura. I took them, and there, with the sweet May sunlight

flooding all the sod, with the fresh spring grass and buds bursting into

life beneath my feet, with the murmur of the glad young river in my

ears, I stood and gazed upon the faces of those lovers of five hundred

years ago, whose love was as a spring-time idyl. For they met in the

spring, they parted in the spring, their intercourse was like the

mingling of young winds with woodland violets; and, dust and ashes

though they have been for centuries, they still prefigure to our hearts

the eternal spring-time of the world.

And yet, could the picture that I held in my hand be a faithful

reproduction of the famous portrait of Laura which was painted at the

request of Petrarch by Simon Menimi and charmed him into verse with its

loveliness? It represented simply the head and bust. The face was

elongated, the cheeks hollow, the hair smoothed down below the ears. The

long, oval, half-shut eyes wore a horrible leer, as though the owner

were making a painful effort to close them. On the head was a stiff,

ungainly jewelled helmet, which terminated low on the forehead in a

triangular ornament. The long, slender throat was encircled by three

rows of pearls. The dress was cut squarely across the neck, and was

checkered off like a draught-board, while over one shoulder was thrown a

small lace scarf. The whole expression of the figure was that of

serious, earnest sobriety and saintliness, as understood by a mediæval

painter and treated according to his conception of his art, which

recognized no difference between a man's earthly love and his spiritual

patron, and made them equally crude, righteous, quaint and angular.

But I felt that these harsh distorted outlines had naught in common with

Petrarch's Laura. For she had golden hair that floated loose in the

breeze and was the prison of enchained and captive Love, and she had

roses, red and white, upon her face, and a throat of snowy purity, and a

smile of such rare gentleness that when she passed them by men said,

"Sure this is an angel come from heaven!" That is the Laura who for

centuries has beamed upon humanity--a sweet, benign, refreshing

presence--from within her lover's sonnets. That is the Laura in whose

reality I believe, but the Laura who lies imprisoned and disguised

behind the grotesque mask of mediæval art I cannot, will not, recognize.

In Petrarch's utterance I find Laura, a pure spiritual shape in mind and

body and soul; but in her portrait I see only Laura clogged and choked

and bound about with the trammels of early art and the weight of crude,

untruthful detail. Thus, I believe that art at its best is but a dull,

material, mechanical means for the translation or reproduction of

thought and Nature, and that for the swift, living, electric flame of

truth we must refer in all ages and climes to speech pure and

simple--the speech of the poet.

There are many who doubt that the words in which Petrarch clothed his

love for Laura were words of sincerity and truth, and who blame his

fatal tendency to utilize every incident and feeling connected with her.

Unquestionably, there was a strong element of earthliness, a dilution of

the pure essence of his affection, in much that Petrarch wrote. It could

hardly have chanced otherwise with a man into whose life worldly

intercourse entered so largely. There must have been times when the pure

light of revelation was hidden from him, and he unknowingly supplied its

place with fancies of a lower kind. His experiences as he met them one

by one were, I doubt not, faithfully and sincerely treated, but after

they had fallen into the past he was enabled to view them by the cold

strong light of the intellect, and the instincts of his nature led him

to incorporate them in verse. It has always been a concomitant of the

poetic character, except perhaps in those lofty organizations whose

utterances are revelations, to regard its own personality objectively

and treat it as material for expression in speech. The very

word-crystallization that a thought or sentiment, however full of

inspiration, must needs undergo to make it palpable, denotes an amount

of conscious effort which detracts in a measure from its apparent

spontaneity. But in spite of the quaint conceits, the frequent play upon

words, the unworthy tricks of speech, the painful sacrifice to rhyme

which occasionally mar his verse, I believe Petrarch was sincere. If he

was only a pretence and a sham, then all the amatory poetry that has

been written since his time, intellectual or analytic, passionate or

sensuous, is a pretence and a sham. Petrarch's utterance must needs have

been founded on truth, else never could it have stood the test of five

centuries, and never would it have assimilated itself, as it has done,

with the poetic speech of an entire race. I know of hardly an English

poet in whose rhymes in the matter of love, and particularly among those

of a narrower range of thought and a lower plane of vision, one cannot

trace in a greater or less degree the influence of Petrarch. Thus, to

me, Petrarch remains the very king of spring-time poets. There are

summer poets, autumn poets and winter poets, but Petrarch was none of

these. Neither his passion nor his poetry ever ripened into summer or

faded into autumn. He will always typify the early youth of love and

song. I can never open his book of sonnets that I do not hear the rustle

of young winds in green boughs, and do not catch the faint sweet odor of

violets and primroses--the violets and primroses that grow on the banks

of the Sorgue in the Vaucluse--the violets and primroses that Laura wore

in her hair when Petrarch saw her kneeling in the church of Santa Chiara

in Avignon, and loved her all at once.

The bright little river Sorgue is here a rushing brook, tumbling and

foaming over the great stones in its bed, and imprisoned between two

green sloping banks covered with low trees and bushes and tendrils of

creeping ivy. It finds birth, this merry, roaring brook, in a dark,

mysterious, shadowy pool, overhung by wild fantastic masses of rock,

which loses itself far back in a dim cavern beneath the cliffs. Black

and motionless, sullen and inscrutable, it lies, this source of the

river Sorgue, a very pool of Lethe, looking as though it knew it drew

its sustenance from the deepest heart of the earth, held communication

with the hidden powers of Nature, and was one at the core with all the

mighty waters of the creation. What a type of the poet's own

genius--nourished deep down under the ground in the universal soul of

humanity, fed by the elements that centuries of solution have infused

into the hidden springs of the intellect, one in thought with all the

great minds that have watered the arid fields of lower human

intelligence, profound, unsearchable as the earth itself! And yet when

it rises to the surface of the world it becomes only a sunny, murmuring

river, which dances along among green banks and bushes; and, being

noticed by the careless passer-by, who cannot see the deep infinity of

waters of which it is the symbol, and knows not even whether they exist,

is termed "a pretty stream of thought and fancy, but one that hath no

profundity nor seriousness."

Across the river, on a hill just above its banks, a mass of tawny ruin

fades away into the blue of the sky and the gray of the cliffs. Wild

flowers grow all about it, dark brambles stretch their wanton arms over

all its space, and through the clefts in its jagged surface gleam the

shining walls of the village below and the hazy brightness of the wide

Rhone country. The people call this bit of rare coloring the castle of

"La Belle Laure," but we know that it was the home of a great cardinal,

Petrarch's trusty friend and generous patron.

Down in the valley among the white village walls nestles a low brown

house surrounded by a humble, sweet-smelling space of flowers. It is a

dainty little spot of earth, this garden, hallowed by such rare

associations. It is more precious than rubies, this small dark house,

for it sheltered from the outer world the body and soul of Petrarch. The

garden is enclosed by a hedge of sweet pale Provence roses and buds. I

remembered, as I stood there with the breath of the beautiful blossoms

creeping up about me, how Petrarch tells that walking one bright May day

with Laura, a friend and confidant of both approached them and gave to

each a rose, "all fresh and culled in Paradise," and said, "Such

another pair of lovers the sun ne'er shone upon," and left them with a

smile; and they remained all confused and trembling. Yes, I knew

instinctively that it was here, on this very consecrated spot, that the

sacred meeting had taken place; that he who gave the roses was no other

than the good cardinal of the castle; and that those roses of five

hundred years ago were the ancestors of the roses now blooming about me,

and plucked from this very hedge. No wonder that the perfumes of

Paradise are enchaliced in their hearts. Few flowers can boast such high

and haughty lineage as these, the bright posterity of those transfigured

love-tokens of centuries past. They are glorified for ever by

association with the highest, purest phase of human relation. They have

reached the apotheosis of flowerhood--the highest destiny vouchsafed to

aught that grows. They have become one with thought in immortality.

In the heart of the little garden stands a laurel tree, a shoot from

Petrarch's own sacred laurel tree. More young shoots and saplings are

springing up about it, all issuing from the great root that lies deep

underground--the root of five hundred years ago; and the tree

overshadows all the garden and the little crystal brook that sparkles

along by the side of the wall. As I gazed at the stately shape, with its

shining black berries and its glossy dark leaves, I knew that I had

found the keynote to much of Petrarch's music--not always that of his

best and most inspired moods. The resemblance of the name of Laura to

the _laurel_; the antique fable of the transformation of Daphne into a

laurel, and its adoption by Apollo as his emblem; the old superstition

that the laurel was shielded against thunderbolts; his desire to win the

laurel crown as the guerdon of his pains, both amorous and poetic,--were

chains of tradition and convention which Petrarch had not strength to

break, pompous, meaningless hieroglyphics which he felt it his duty to

interpret to men, hinderances and trammels to the development of his

genius. The laurel tree of Petrarch's garden is a fair type of one

phase of the poet's own speech, prone to derive its significance from

extraneous sources and overloaded with borrowed metaphor. But the laurel

receives a new meaning if we picture to ourselves Madonna Laura

reclining in its shadow on the banks of the little river, with flowers

scattered all about her garments and little Loves disporting in the air

about her wreathed head. Then it becomes instinct with life and

vitality, and we wonder why Petrarch deemed it needful to resort to the

dead and withered husks of antique fable for what lay there at his own

cottage-door, and waited but to be lifted from the sod--a wealth of

poetic illustration and conceit.

Since the day when I made the memory of the Vaucluse my own, I have read

how a great festival was held there in the summer-tide in honor of

Petrarch. I have read how they came, those intellectual debauchees, and

rioted and revelled and wrangled and jarred, and poisoned the chaste,

calm waters of the sacred river with the hot fumes of literary

dissension and argument. I have read how they came, with their heads

full of quotations and their notebooks full of impressions and hints for

effective rhapsody--how they feasted on the silver trout of the Sorgue,

and gathered Laura's roses to adorn their buttonholes, and stripped the

consecrated laurel of its leaves to make garlands for their own dull

heads, and poured forth international compliments, and glorified one

another, and hugged themselves for delight at their fine comprehension

of the poet, and fell on their knees before him, and immolated their

individual hearts and souls at the shrine of his genius; and, lo! there

was not a true appreciater of Petrarch among them all! The right

appraiser of Petrarch has been there before and since, but he was not

there then. The noise and the bustle and the wisdom of the multitude

held him aloof, and he waited until a more convenient season. He comes

by preference in the spring-time, knowing that then Nature and Petrarch

sing in unison. He is a poet, because it takes a poet to understand a

poet, no less than a hero a hero. He is of such simple, foolish mould

that when he thinks there is no one near to spy him out he casts himself

down upon the sod and kisses it with all tenderness, and caresses the

daisies with his finger-tips, greeting them as his younger brethren; for

there is something stirring in him which draws him nearer to earth's

heart than other men, and he loves to dwell upon his common origin with

flower and leaf. He does not fall down and worship Petrarch, because he

knows that Petrarch is only one expression of the great power that lives

behind all thought and speech--one part of the great whole that lies

spread out before him on the river and the cliff. But he takes the old

poet by the hand and looks straight into his eyes, and reads there what

is written in his own heart, and says, "We twain are brethren and

friends, sovereign and equal, for evermore."

If Petrarch had lived earlier in the centuries of Christianity, he would

have been a monk. His genius would have found expression in the

cloister-life, for the first monks were poets and philosophers. But he

lived at a period when that beautiful principle of asceticism was no

longer at one with genius. The fine essence of spirituality was gone

from it, and it had hardened into senseless form and matter; and the law

of his own mind forbade his pledging himself irrevocably to what in one

mood seemed highest and most precious, but what another mood might

contradict and openly defy. He knew that, although that ascetic temper

which took possession of his soul at times when his genius was loudest,

most clamorous, most importunate, was the basis of all monastic

principle, he might not imprison it, fleeting, evanescent, within the

dungeons of vows and formalism. And to-day, no less than in Petrarch's

time, the same spirit walks the earth, shines through the actions and

speech of all high souls, and yet refuses to bind itself to dull

external shows and symbols.

If Petrarch had not withdrawn himself to the solitude of the Vaucluse, I

doubt if we should know more of his passion for Laura to-day than could

be told in a score of sonnets. For with his mind overloaded by the

sights and sounds and honors that were heaped upon him, he never could

have separated her from the contingent circumstances that surrounded

their intercourse in Avignon. But there, on the banks of the Sorgue, he

viewed her image from afar, dismissed all the attendant episodes of

palace and revel, court and council, and beheld only the ideal--or

rather the real--Laura in her own worth and significance. Surely, never

was there verse through which showed so plainly the Nature under whose

auspices it was brought forth as those songs of Petrarch. I seem to feel

that they were written in solitude, not sublime, but pleasing, and in a

narrow valley shut out from contemplation of aught else. And I know, as

I leave the Vaucluse behind me, how deep a hold the memory of the loved

fountain must needs have taken upon the poet's mind, for I too have made

me a picture of a river, and a grotto, and a shadowy pool, and a low

brown house, and a stately laurel tree, which will always live in my

sense. And these things resolve themselves into one with a few scattered

sonnets, and a shadowy gold-haired form, and a handful of sweet small

roses, and, lo! I have made incarnate and have bound fast to me for ever

that beautiful old-time idyl of the Vaucluse.

CHARLOTTE ADAMS.

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

Rooshia? Why, yes, I ought to know something about Rooshia, seein' I've

lived there, off and on, this fifteen year and more; and if a young man

was to come to me and ax me where's the best place for a workin' man to

git on, I'd say to him, jist as I says it to you now, "Go to Rooshia!"

Why so? says you. Well, jist this way. You see, cotton-mills and

mowin'-machines and steam-ploughs and sich are quite new ideas out

there; and they haven't got the trick of workin' 'em properly, not yet;

so that any man as _has_ got it is pretty safe to git anything he likes

to ax in the way o' wages. Why, _I_ knowed a man once--common

factory-hand he was when he started: couldn't read nor write, nor

nothin'; but he had his wits about him, all the same,--well, _he_ cum

out here 'bout ten year ago, and went to some place on the Volga, with

some crack-jaw name or other that I can't reck'lect. First year he was

there he got as good pay as any overseer at home; next year he was

overseer himself; two year arter that he owned his own mill, he did; and

now, jist t'other day I gits a letter from him to say he's goin' home

ag'in, with money in both pockets, and a-goin' to buy a big house and a

bit o' ground, and I don't know what all. And if _that_ ain't gittin'

on, I should jist like to know what is!

But you mustn't think, neither, as it's all jist as easy as supping

porridge: it ain't that, nohow. I can tell yer, if you was to go into

one o' them hot work-rooms on a roastin' day in July, with the

thermometer anywhere you like above a hundred, you'd feel more like

lyin' down in the shade and havin' a drink o' beer than workin' hard for

nine or ten hours on end. They say we overseers have an easy life of it.

I wish them as says so had jist got to try it themselves for a day or

two. Then, ag'in, most likely there's only one road from your place to

the nearest town, and jist when you want to send off your stuff it'll

come on pourin' rain for ever so long, and the whole road'll be nothin'

but plash and mash, like a dish of cabbage-soup; and there the stuff'll

have to lie idle for weeks and weeks, and you've jist got to grin and

bear it. And in them parts, instead of one good pelt and have done with

it, it keeps on drip, drip, drip, for days and days in a sneaking

half-and-half kind o' way, as if it hadn't the pluck to come out with a

good hearty pour. The very thunder don't make a good round-mouthed peal

like it does at home, but a nasty jabberin' row, jist as if it was

a-tryin' to talk French. And, altogether, it is a place to try a chap's

temper: it is, indeed.

Are the native workmen good for much? says you. Well, that depends

pretty much on how you look at it. When you've once shown 'em how to do

a thing, they'll do it every bit as well as yourself; but they take a

powerful deal o' showin', they do. You see, a Rooshan has his own way of

doin' everything, and tryin' to teach him any other way is as bad as

eating soup with a one-pronged fork. And then to see how thick some on

'em are! Why, they may well be brave in battle, for it 'ud take a

precious clever bullet to git through one of _their_ 'eads, it would.

Here's one sample for yer: A friend o' mine in Mosker had got a Rooshan

servant--one o' them reg'lar _Derevenskis_ ("villagers"), and so one day

he sends him to the shop with two o' them twenty-kopeck pieces,[30]

tellin' him to buy bread with one and butter with t'other. Off goes the

chap, and never comes back ag'in; so at last his master goes to see

what's up; and there he finds Mr. Ivan at the door of the shop, holdin'

out the money in one hand and scratchin' his head with t'other, as if

he'd forgot his own name, and couldn't find hisself nowhow. "Oh,

_barin_" ("master"), says he in a voice like a fit o' chollerer,

"whatever am I to do now? I've been and _mixed_ the two pieces, and now

I don't know which was the one for the bread and which for the butter."

As for the Tartars, _they're_ troublesome in another way. They make

prime workmen--there's no denyin' it; and I had ought to know, seein' I

was over a gang of 'em myself for more'n a year--but they're the

hot-bloodedest lot as ever I saw yet, and reg'lar born imps for

fightin'; and when _they_ git up a shindy, look out! I can speak, for I

saw the big fight betwixt them and the Rooshans at Kazan 'bout three

year ago; and if you cares to hear the story, I'll tell yer jist how it

all happened.

You tell me as you've been to Kazan, and so, o' course, you'll remember

that the "Tartar Town," as they calls it, lies a mile or two east o' the

reg'lar Rooshan quarter; and midway between 'em's a dry gully

(leastways, it's dry in the summer-time, but you should jist see it

arter the spring thaw!), with a little bridge over it. Now, the Rooshan

gangs and the Tartar gangs, a-comin' from their work, used to cross each

other jist at this bridge; and o' course there was a good deal o'

chaffin' among 'em, and some fightin', too, now and then; for I needn't

tell _you_ that a Rooshan and a Tartar are jist about as fond of each

other as a Rooshan and a Turk. Now-a-days, the masters have had the

gumption to change the hours of work, and keep 'em out of each other's

way; but in _my_ time there was a scrimmage nearly every week, though

nothin' like this 'un I'm tellin' of.

Well, sir, I'd knocked off early that evenin', and strolled back to my

place with a young Rooshan merchant as I knowed--a right good feller,

name o' Michael Feodoroff. Just at the bridge we stopped to have a look

at the sunset; and a rare sight it was! There was the dark-red tower of

the old Tartar gateway standin' out ag'in the bright evenin' sky, and

the citadel-wall with all its turrets and battlements, and the gilt

cupolers o' the churches in the town, and the great green plain of the

Volga away below us, and the broad river itself a-shinin' wherever the

light fell on it, and the purple hills beyond tipped with gold every

here and there, jist like them Delectable Mountains as mother used to

read about on Sundays when I was a boy.

While we were standin' lookin' at it up comes half a dozen Rooshan

workmen, a-goin' home from their work, and four or five Tartars from

t'other side, a-goin' home from _theirn_; and they meets jist on the

bridge. As they crossed each other one o' the Rooshans pulls a bit o'

sassage out of his pocket and holds it up to the foremost Tartar (a

great ugly-lookin' bruiser with one eye), and says to him, chaffin'

like, "Hollo, Mourad! d'ye want a bit o' grease to make yer beard grow?"

Now, I needn't tell _you_ that offerin' pork to a Mussulman is like

drinkin' Dutch William's health at an Irish fair; and the words warn't

well out o' the Rooshan's mouth afore the Tartar had him by the throat

and was bangin' his head ag'in' the bridge-rails as if he was drivin' a

nail with it.

Then, all in one minute, a whole crowd of 'em seemed to start up out o'

the werry earth, and we found ourselves right in the middle of a reg'lar

tearin' fight--tossin' arms and fierce faces whirlin' all round us; men

strikin' and grapplin' and clawin' like fury; the broad, bearded faces

of the Rooshans and the flat sallow mugs of the Tartars all blurred up

together; and sich a yellin' and cursin' and screechin' a-goin' on that

I a'most thought myself one o' them old Roman hemperors a-lookin' on at

a wild-beast fight in the Call-and-see-'em.

I was so took aback that I jist stood and stared like a fool; but

Feodoroff had his wits about him, and dragged me into a corner where we

could see it all without bein' swep' in. I saw d'reckly that it was more

than a plain bout o' fisticuffs, for several of the Rooshans had got out

their knives, and were slashin' about like one o'clock; and the Tartars,

on their side, had begun to tear out the rails o' the palisade and to

crack the skulls of the Rooshans with them. Just then Ivan Martchenkoff,

one o' my best men, came tumblin' down at my feet with half a dozen

Tartars atop of him; and as he fell he caught sight of me, and cried to

me for help.

Well, _that_ was more'n I could stand. I busted loose from Feodoroff

(who tried to hold me), and leapt right among 'em. I cotched the

uppermost Tartar by the scruff o' the neck, and chucked him away like a

kitten; and the second I hit sich a dollop behind the ear as made him

look five ways at once; but just then two o' the rips jumped upon me

from behind, and down I went. Then Feodoroff flew in to save me, but the

crowd closed upon him, and down _he_ went too; and I thought 'twas all

up with us both.

Jist then I heerd a rumble of wheels up the slope leadin' to the bridge,

and then a great shout of "_Soldati! soldati!_" ("The soldiers! the

soldiers!").

Then I lay close to the ground and made myself as small as I could, for

I knowed that if they fired into sich a crowd with cannon it 'ud just

mow 'em down like grass. The next minute I heerd an orficer's voice

singin' out, "Halt! front! fire!" But instead of the bang of a cannon

there cum a hiss like fifty tea-kettles a-bilin' over, and then a great

splash, and the crowd scattered fifty ways at once; and I found myself

wringin' wet all in a minute. Then somebody gripped hold o' me and

pulled me up, and there was Feodoroff, and beside him Lieutenant

Berezinski of the garrison laughin' fit to burst. And when I looked

round the whole place was a puddle o' water, with dozens of men rollin'

in it like flies in treacle; and at the end of the bridge was ten or

twelve sogers, and right in front of 'em a great steam _fire-engine_!

Then I understood it all, and began laughin' as loud as anybody.

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

"I think I have," says the lieutenant; "and that, too, without wasting a

cartridge or killing a man. When you go home to England, Yakov

Ivanovitch (James son of John), you can say that if you haven't stood

fire, you've stood water, and been at the battle of Voyevoda."[31]

DAVID KER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE COLORED CREOLES OF BALTIMORE.

It is well known that many French families, fugitives from St. Domingo,

took refuge in Baltimore during the last decade of the eighteenth

century. They gracefully and gratefully accepted favors and kindness of

various kinds, but they were too proud and self-reliant to resign

themselves to eat the bread of charity or lead lives of indolence. Some,

born to fortune and ancient titles, employed their talents and

accomplishments promptly and without hesitation. Counts and marquises

became gardeners (introducing a great variety of fruits and vegetables

unknown before in the United States), dancing-masters, music-teachers,

drawing-masters, architects, chemists, confectioners, cigar-makers and

teachers of their own beautiful language. The names of many of those

_émigrés_ are now borne by the most estimable citizens of the community

which first sheltered their ancestors: they are ornaments of society,

distinguished in the professions and skilled in the arts and sciences.

But it is not of this high and noble class that I desired to speak: it

is of a more humble but not less worthy set of French people who came

here at the same time. I allude to the colored creoles who were the born

slaves of these ladies and gentlemen. Some shared the dangers of their

flight from St. Domingo: others found a way, by tedious voyages, to join

their old masters and tender their services, not as slaves, but as

honest, humble, faithful servants. It was honorable both to master and

slave that such cordial relations should have existed under such trying

circumstances. Some of the creoles were good cooks, bakers,

snuff-makers, laundry-women, etc.; and the most beautiful and touching

part of this relation between the master and their former slaves was

that hundreds of the latter laid the profits of their labor at the feet

of their white friends with reverence and devotion. Many old ladies and

gentlemen, accustomed to every attention from the best trained servants,

were altogether incapable of helping themselves, and were dependent on

the bounty and tender care of their former slaves. Most of the better

class of French _émigrés_ retained all their former habits of domestic

life, such as taking a cup of coffee before rising in the morning and an

eleven-o'clock _déjeuner à la fourchette_, while those who could afford

it had a modest _petit souper_ at nine o'clock in the evening. At the

latter were often found the élite of this French society. Music, dancing

and refined conversation were indulged in for two or three hours: old

memories and stirring events were recalled and the bonds of nationality

and family affection were more closely knit. French only was spoken at

these soirées, and the elegant manners of the old school were observed

in perfection.

The most remarkable of this set was a Madame Valanbrun, the widow of a

gentleman of large fortune and high position in St. Domingo. He died

before the Revolution. She was only twenty-five when the massacre took

place, beautiful, accomplished and fascinating. Her estates were

extensive, and she lived in one of the principal cities of the island.

At the time of the outbreak she escaped to a Baltimore vessel,

accompanied by several of her house-servants, and saved a part of her

fortune--plate, jewels and some gold coin. Arriving in Baltimore, she

found several of her friends already there. With the elastic temper

peculiar to the French, she determined to make the best of her changed

circumstances. Having purchased a large house in a cheap part of the

city, she fitted up her own suite of rooms on the second floor. Here she

received company, and was attended by her servants as if she had been a

queen. At that period snuff-taking was very fashionable and almost

universal. Some of madame's servants were very expert in making snuff,

cigars and cigarettes: these articles they sold at high prices, for they

soon became well known. Others of her servants made confections, cakes,

sweetmeats, which they carried around in baskets: some made dresses, and

others went out as nurses. The arrangements for all these various

employments were made by the servants themselves, but the profits were

carefully reserved for the queen bee of the hive.

For many years Madame Valanbrun was the centre of the French society of

Baltimore. She had few acquaintances outside of this circle, but the

most distinguished foreigners who visited the city--French, Spanish and

Italian--and several young Americans ambitious to become better

acquainted with the French language, were glad to have the entrée of her

salon.

Time wore on. The Bourbons were restored to the throne, and many French

families returned to France to seek their lost fortunes. Some were

successful, but most of them were doomed to disappointment and continued

poverty. Madame Valanbrun remained contented with her humble but

comfortable lot. By degrees her corps of servants was reduced by death,

a new race of competitors sprang up, and her income each year grew less

and less.

In 1832, when the Asiatic cholera fell upon Baltimore like an Alpine

avalanche upon a quiet Italian village, the colored creoles suffered

more, relatively, than any other portion of the population, probably

because they lived in the more confined streets in the centre of the

city. The venerable physician who furnished most of the particulars for

this sketch said: "I was passing through a narrow and rather dirty

street one day during the height of the cholera, when I met Dr. B----,

who asked me whether I did not know Madame Valanbrun: if so, would I go

with him to see her in one of the houses near? He had been there a few

hours before, and thought she had a severe attack of cholera. We went,

and found the venerable old lady _in articulo mortis_. She was much

changed, and the surroundings indicated an equally great change in her

circumstances which it was melancholy to witness. But one feature

redeemed all that was disgusting in the picture: round the squalid bed

five or six old negroes, men and women, knelt in deep devotion like

fixed statues, offering up their prayers to the Throne of grace for the

departing soul of their beloved mistress, whose life had been so

chequered by the sunshine of pleasure and the clouds of adversity. She

had just received the last rites of the Church. The priest had retired

to perform similar duties elsewhere, leaving the humble but devoted

blacks to watch the last breath of life and to close the eyes of their

lifelong friend and mistress. I never felt more veneration at the

deathbed of any of my own kindred, or deeper respect for mourners than I

then felt for those faithful servants of Madame Valanbrun. The old lady

died that evening. She devised the small remnant of her property to be

divided among her old servants in common.

"Among these colored Creoles were some remarkable women. Well do I

remember Suzette, Fanny, Clementine, as faithful watchers at sick beds:

many precious lives did they save by their skill, judgment and fidelity.

They were not _eye_-servants, working for money only: they worked from

the purest motives of benevolence, from the sentiment of Christian

charity.

"Another instance of fidelity came under my notice when I was a student

of medicine in 1819. I boarded at a good old Frenchman's, whose few

domestics were French creoles. One of these was the washerwoman. When

quite young she had left St. Domingo with her old mistress, who had been

kind to her in the days of prosperity on the island. The old lady

managed to save a small portion of her wealth, and lived quietly with

her former servant, now her faithful friend. Madame Curchon, as she grew

older, required more comforts than her slender means could afford, and

Lizette determined to take in washing. She soon obtained as much as she

could attend to, and spent her earnings in making madame comfortable in

her old age.

"About this time appeared a fine-looking negro sailor from St. Domingo.

He had heard that Lizette, his former sweetheart, was alone in

Baltimore, and he came in search of her. He found her. She welcomed him

joyously, with her affection for him unchanged. He told her he would

marry her at once and take her back to the West Indies. Lizette

explained to her lover that she considered herself bound in honor to her

old mistress, though no longer her slave, adding that if he would give

her five hundred dollars to leave with Madame Curchon her conscience

would be free of all charge of ingratitude, and she would follow him to

any part of the world. He said he would not pay a dollar for her, as she

was a free woman and had worked for the old lady long enough.

"This little love-story came to the knowledge of the boarders through

our kind-hearted landlady, and they agreed to subscribe one hundred

dollars toward the payment of the amount fixed on by Lizette: the old

mistress knew nothing of this romance in low life. Some weeks passed:

the man remained stubborn in his idea of right, and she in her

conscientious sense of what was due to her dear old mistress. Lizette

positively refused to abandon madame to an old age of poverty. Her lover

finally returned to the West Indies without her. Whatever disappointment

the faithful creole may have suffered, she remained true to her trust,

and was for many years the comfort and companion of this poor old French

lady."

Another instance of creole gratitude and fidelity is worth recording. A

lady who had enjoyed wealth and luxury at home escaped the massacre, but

arrived in America entirely destitute. Her feeble health required

constant care and delicate food. She was accompanied in her flight by

her faithful servant Fanny, who devoted herself to the care and comfort

of her former mistress. Fanny rented a small brick house containing five

rooms--two chambers, two rooms below and a kitchen. In the upper rooms

she made her dear old godmother as comfortable as any lady could be, and

when her duties called her elsewhere she placed another in attendance

there. The constant piety of this excellent creole was an edifying

sight. Fanny still lives, but her dear friend is no more: she believes

firmly that they will again be united, to part no more.

One fact connected with these colored Creoles is worthy of mention.

Although they have been living in this country for more than

three-quarters of a century, they have never united themselves, as

social beings, with any of our American negroes. They have treated them

with kindness and politeness, helped them in poverty and visited them in

sickness, but have never intermarried with them, never gone to their

churches, never joined any of the various African societies so

conspicuous on certain days of parade. Distinguished for their honesty,

they have seldom appeared in the courts either as plaintiffs or

defendants. Respected by all, they have never demanded social equality.

Scarcely a dozen of the colored creoles who originally emigrated from

St. Domingo are now alive, but their descendants are numerous. They form

a very worthy part of the community in which they live. They retain many

of the traditionary qualities of their ancestors, and among the

shiftless, dependent and often destitute negroes around them they are

conspicuous for their industry, integrity and morality.

E.L.D.

GLIMPSES OF BRUSSELS.

To leave Paris for Brussels is to exchange excitement for tranquillity,

a crowd for a few, the oppressive newness and vivacity of to-day for a

mild animation tempered with a flavor of bygone ages. Brussels has been

called a miniature Paris. I should rather consider her as the younger

sister of the great city--less beautiful, less decked out, less

accomplished, less versed in the ways of the world, yet keeping a

certain freshness and virginity of aspect that is lacking in her more

brilliant elder.

There is one thing that a foreign resident of Paris is apt to find very

enjoyable in Brussels, and that is the absence of the eternal crowd

that mars for many people a full enjoyment of the pleasant places of

Paris. Her thronging millions overwhelm you on every festive day or

joyous occasion. Any little outside show or attraction calls together in

some restricted space the population of a small city. Thirty thousand

people rushed to hear the Spanish students play on the guitar in the

garden of the Tuileries. Twenty thousand go every Sunday to the Salon

during the period that it remains open. One hundred thousand go out to

the races on ordinary days, and twice that number attend the Grand Prix.

Hence comes a famine of conveyances and of seats, and a plethora of

companions that are far from being uniformly agreeable.

In Brussels one has enough of human surroundings. There is no lack of

companionship in her gardens, her galleries, her streets and her parks.

She is not a solitude, as are some of the dead cities of Italy and

Germany or some of the minor provincial towns in Belgium and France. The

influence of her three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants is very

comfortably apparent. But where Paris pours forth her tens of thousands,

Brussels sends out some hundreds. Hence there is always room and to

spare. And she is well-to-do in the world, is this pretty capital of

Belgium. She is growing and thriving, and wears every mark of an active

and contented prosperity. New and handsome streets meet the view on

every side. Foremost among these is the elegant Avenue Louise, named

after the late queen of the Belgians, which leads out to the spacious

and lovely Bois de la Cambre, a second Bois de Boulogne, omitting the

traces of the siege. The Avenue Louise reminds me very much of South

Broad street in Philadelphia. It forms an almost unbroken row of elegant

private residences, extending for full two miles to the very gate of the

Bois. The centre of the roadway is macadamized and bordered with rows of

trees, thus forming a charming road to the Bois for the private

carriages of the Belgian aristocracy.

The royal family of Belgium appear but little in public. A series of

family misfortunes, combined with the ill-health of the king, has

induced them to live in comparative retirement. Of the children of the

late king Leopold, but three survive, the present king, the Count de

Flandres and the luckless empress Charlotte. The last, still sunk in a

state of hopeless insanity, inhabits the Château de Tervueren. The king,

with his wife and family, passes most of his time at the Château de

Laeken. He is a great sufferer from a disease which has attacked one of

his legs. The queen, an Austrian archduchess, was formerly one of the

most beautiful princesses of Europe, but she has never regained either

her health or her spirits since the death of her only son some years

ago, and looks faded and careworn. On the king's death the crown will

pass to his only brother, the Count de Flandres. This gentleman, whose

wife, a beautiful and spirited lady, is a princess of the house of

Hohenzollern, is as deaf as a post. He inhabits a very handsome palace

in the heart of Brussels, and his own sleeping apartments are on the

ground floor. One summer night the sentinel in charge was amazed to see

a crowd gathered in front of the windows of the count's room, and

evidently highly amused. On approaching it was discovered that the

attendants had failed to close the outside shutters, and had drawn the

lace curtains merely. The room was brilliantly lighted, and of course

every part of it was distinctly visible from without. And there,

Dans le simple appareil

D'une beauté qu'on vient d'arracher au sommeil,

the heir to the Belgian throne was peacefully walking to and fro in a

brown study, unconscious that the eyes of some hundreds of his future

subjects were fixed upon his lightly-draped form. His deafness prevented

him from hearing the noise outside the window, and rendered all warnings

by means of sounds ineffectual. So the prince's chamberlain was aroused,

and after some delay His Royal Highness was released from his very

undignified position.

Among the proprietors of the new buildings of Brussels is cited the

empress Eugénie. Whole rows of newly-erected and handsome shops were

pointed out to me as being her property. A very strong sympathy for the

dethroned imperial family seemed to be prevalent in Brussels, as well as

an equally strong dislike to the Germans. I was amused to find that two

animals in the Zoological Garden, a very cross monkey and a

savage-looking African boar, both bore the name of Bismarck.

This Zoological Garden, by the by, is unworthy of the beautiful city to

which it belongs. It is small, shabby and ill-kept, contains very few

animals, and has become a sort of beer-garden, with open-air concerts

and a skating-rink for its chief attractions. A very large and beautiful

aquarium, a vast grotto of artificial rock-work, is really worth seeing,

but its contents are of the most commonplace kind.

The picture-gallery--or Musée Royal, as it is called--has recently been

rearranged, and the modern paintings that used to be on view in the ducal

palace are now installed in a series of new and beautifully-decorated

rooms. Thither have also been removed a number of pictures by contemporary

Belgian painters that used to adorn the public buildings of Brussels.

Chief among these is Gallait's noble picture of the _Abdication of Charles

V_. This fine work, considered by some critics as the masterpiece of the

great Belgian artist, is worthy of the pencil of Delaroche. Nor is it in

style unlike the best productions of that master, recalling the _Death of

Elizabeth_ by its admirable grouping and refinement of color.

Verboeckhoven is seen here at his best, his _Flock of Sheep in a Storm_, a

large and carefully-finished work, being replete with all the most

striking characteristics of his genius. Madou's _Interrupted Ball_ is a

brilliant and vivacious representation of a village festival troubled by

the intrusion of a group of dandies of the Directory--gay Incroyables who

chuck the country damsels under the chin, rouse their swains to jealous

wrath and otherwise misconduct themselves. Rohbe's pictures of still life

are perfect feasts of coloring, warm, rich and glowing as the heart of a

crimson rose brimming with the sunshine and sweetness of a summer's day.

The Musée itself is a noble building, and in point of arrangement and of

decoration forms a contrast to the dreary halls of the Luxembourg. The

gallery devoted to the old masters contains some valuable specimens of

early Flemish art, and some extremely interesting historical portraits,

the gem of the collection being a wonderfully fine portrait by Holbein

of Sir Thomas More.

But the most interesting point in all Brussels is the Hôtel de Ville.

That marvellous edifice, that looks as though it ought to be preserved

in a velvet-lined case, so delicate and elaborate are its multitudinous

sculptures, lifts the exquisite tracery of its spire against the summer

sky, as perfect in its beauty as when Alva and Egmont and Orange passed

beneath its shadow ages ago. No spot in Europe, save perhaps the Tower

of London, is more haunted by historic memories than is this perfect

marvel of architectural beauty. The centuries roll back as we stand

beneath its shadow. There is a stain of blood upon the stones, and

Philip of Spain rides by, and the duke of Alva comes through yonder

doorway, and the air is full of thronging phantoms and of cries--the

wail of the Netherlands beneath the sword of the oppressor.

Around the Hôtel de Ville are grouped a series of antique buildings, the

one more exquisite than the other--the ancient halls of the corporations

of Brussels, among which that of the brewers shows supreme by reason of

the luxury of its carvings and the care wherewith its beauty and

solidity have been maintained throughout the centuries. In one of the

simplest houses of the square Victor Hugo first took refuge after the

great catastrophe of the _coup d'état_. It bore the number 27. A

tobacco-shop occupied the ground floor. The poet's parlor was furnished

in a style of bald simplicity, with chairs and a sofa covered with black

haircloth. But he was wont to say, pointing to the Hôtel de Ville, "I

have the most wonderful piece of carving in the world for a sideboard."

In this modest abode he wrote _Napoléon le Petit_. Then, stirred by the

historic memories around him, he chose the Inquisition itself for a

subject, and planned his as yet unpublished tragedy of _Torquemada_. The

dwelling in the Grande Place became the haunt of all the proscribed

republicans of France. Yet Belgium gave them but a cold welcome and

grudging hospitality. They were subjected to a series of humiliating

formalities, chief among which was the requirement of the authorities

that each should provide himself with a permit of residence. These

permits were temporary and revocable, and their holders were obliged to

go weekly to ask for their renewal at the central police-office. It is

not surprising, therefore, that so few of the fugitives should have

remained in Belgium. Seven thousand took refuge there after the coup

d'état, but only two hundred and fifty took up their abode on Belgian

soil. Yet Brussels remained, in some sense, the continental

head-quarters of Victor Hugo, though never kindly or generous in her

treatment of the great exile. In 1871, the rumor having gone abroad that

he had offered shelter to some of the fugitive Communists, his house was

attacked by an armed mob, and its inmates barely escaped with their

lives.

Brussels possesses among her other sights a curiosity with which she

could very well dispense--namely, the Wiertz Gallery. It is a collection

of horrors depicted on a colossal scale by a man whose powers of

painting were scarcely equal to those of a respectable scene-painter. A

series of nightmares, expressed with a sort of epileptic violence and

without any artistic value, clothe the walls of the immense studio with

gigantic abominations. There is neither originality of conception nor

intelligence of execution to redeem their hideousness: their horror is

of the simplest bugaboo kind. A man blowing his head to pieces with a

pistol-shot; a supposed corpse coming to life in its coffin; the First

Napoleon in the flames of hell, with a multitude of women shaking at

him the bloody severed limbs of their sons and husbands; a child burned

alive in its cradle; the head of a decapitated criminal, and the visions

that filled its brain,--such are some of the ghastly imaginings of this

diseased and uneducated nature. Compare such works as these with Doré's

crudest conceptions, and the difference between the inventions of genius

and those of a morbid intellect becomes at once apparent.

L.H.H.

AN OFF YEAR.

It is a great luxury to find ourselves and the country in the midst of

what Marshal MacMahon might style a _quadrennate_, and to be at the

neutral and central point from which a much-vexed people can look both

ways for a Presidential election. The contest of two years ago is over,

and that of two years hence not near enough to beget mentionable worry.

This equator of partisanship, lying midway between the two polls, is a

happy medium of repose. The trade-winds of party passion blow from both

sides fiercely toward it, but fail to break its calm. The average

American--even the average professional American politician--possesses

his soul in patience. He looks forward to no revolution, and, when he

thinks of the matter at all, is entirely certain that the night of the

first Tuesday in November, 1880, will bring nothing more tremendous than

the usual hubbub among the telegraph-operators, the reporters and the

haunters of the clubs and leagues. He doubts the due abnormal succession

of the Presidents as little as he does that of the British kings, and a

great deal less than he does that of some of the continental monarchs,

to say nothing of the French ruler, whose septennate happens also to be

within about two years of its close.

So pleasant it is to be at leisure to bestow attention on life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness, without thought of the usually engrossing

machinery so painfully and minutely contrived for facilitating our

advance to those ends! To forget the means and for once look at the

object; to ignore the strife for free government, and be placidly and

contentedly free; to shut our eyes on eternal vigilance, and realize

that we have paid that price and have the receipt in our pockets; to

intermit our nursing of the tree and enjoy the fruit; to feel that life

in a republic is not necessarily and always "the fever called

living,"--such is, for the present interval, our lot. Self-government is

such very hard work that those engaged in it are entitled to occasional

holidays. Nature demands it. Whether their stated Sabbath come once in

four years or once in seven, it must come. No wonder that it is apt to

prove too welcome and seductive, and that healthy relaxation should grow

into harmful lethargy, Sunday into "Blue Monday." Examples of that

result are abundant enough to warn us when we need warning. They have

chromoed in brilliantly illuminated text, in all the languages and

alphabets, the maxim about eternal vigilance, and hung it up over our

council-fires and our domestic hearths. We can only venture, perhaps, to

half close our eyes and view it sleepily as through cigar-smoke, or turn

our backs upon it for a little while and go out into a world of other

cares which takes no note of elections, constitutions, statutes or

office-holding. The shorter the interval the less should our enjoyment

of it be marred. Investigations into past elections serve only to

interfere with it, or to assist the newspapers in interfering with it;

and newspapers are our daily food or a part of it. Three-fourths of the

reading-matter in the five or six thousand of them published in the

Union are filled with politics, although the conductors of them, like

the rest of us, are aware that politics are temporarily in eclipse. They

can teach us nothing on that subject, and we want to learn nothing.

Their occupation as trade-journals devoted to the art and science of

government is gone. Other periodicals devoted to a specialty, whether

iron, coal, calico or the Thirty-nine Articles, show judgment and

compassion on their readers when a "slack" time comes by turning

miscellaneous and slipping in choice literary tidbits among their

regular "shop" items. The five thousand should do likewise. If they

will not wholly exclude politics, they might at least sweep political

news and disquisitions into a separate corner of the sheet--say among

the jokes, base-ball accidents and last year's advertisements.

Could our legislators and their chroniclers only convince themselves

that they are _de trop_, that the best they can do just now is to assist

us in cultivating a transitory oblivion of them and their deeds, and

that, instead, they are depriving us of the refreshment of our forty

winks, they would show a correct understanding of the situation. If they

cannot be altogether silent, they might at least give their noise

another pitch, and direct it into some humdrum monotone that would not

jar upon our slumbers. Do their worst, however, they cannot take from us

the delicious consciousness that it will be two years before another

Presidential campaign. Panoplied in that reflection, we can stand a good

deal.

We sometimes think it must have been a vast relief to the Poles when

partition came and the three powers for good and all put an end to their

perpetually recurring agony of electing a king. To the masses of the

people, who were serfs, and had no more the right of suffrage or any

other attribute of liberty than their cattle, we have no doubt it was

so. Only by the small minority of privileged and fussy nobles, who went

armed to the hall of election, ready to silence effectually any

troublesome minority-man who should undertake to defeat their choice

with his veto, could the loss of the wonted excitement have been

seriously felt. That it was a relief to the neighboring nations, whose

peace was constantly compromised by the recurrence of Poland's stormy

call for a new king, is certain enough. The change threw a few very

worthy men out of business--the Kosciuskos, Pulaskis, Czartoriskis,

etc.--but it did away with a much larger number who were standing

nuisances, and it left the surplus energy of many more to seek more

legitimate and profitable paths. Of course the fate of the Poles,

prosperous though their country is beyond anything dreamed of in the

days of its nominal independence, is not enviable to us. It were to be

wished that they had been cured of the regular--or irregular--spasms of

selecting a chief without losing their national autonomy. What we remark

is, that the strain of that convulsion was greater than they or their

neighbors could bear, and that all concerned, with the trifling

exceptions named, must have breathed freer and deeper when it was put an

end to.

E.C.B.

CONJUGAL DISCORDS.

The weaknesses and follies of woman are a theme on which men, from the

sage to the clown, have at all times been eloquent. Her natural coquetry

in dress, her maternal vanity, her devotion to the little elegancies of

the home, to clean windows and fresh curtains, are inexhaustible sources

of masculine merriment or abuse. What housekeeper ever complained of an

aching back or of nervous irritation without being scolded by her "lord"

for some extra work she had done in beautifying the home? Men never seem

to learn that women, as a rule, cannot find life endurable in the

atmosphere of dust and disorder which characterizes bachelor

housekeeping, and which seldom disturbs the equanimity of the masculine

mind in the least. Men and women are so different in their tastes and

ways that there must always be discord and unhappiness in the household

until the sexes give over trying to change or remodel those tastes and

ways, and learn to respect them. Men must accept as inevitable the fact

that women to be happy must have artistic, or at least dainty and cozy,

environments; and women must learn to preserve their souls in quiet when

men spill their tobacco and ashes over the carpets and tables, for

probably no man ever lived who could fill a pipe, even from a wash-tub,

without scattering the tobacco over the premises.

That the sexes will give over trying to reform each other does not seem

likely to happen very soon. Indeed, one might be pardoned for believing

that matrimony is specially adapted to develop all the imperfections

and meannesses of human character, and that even of those matches that

are made in heaven the devil arranges all the subsequent conditions.

There is hardly a pure and innocent delight that unmarried women enjoy

which they can carry into that blissful world bounded by the

marriage-ring. One of those delights is that of squandering a little

money, which is merely the equivalent of man's spending it as he likes,

without accounting to any one. Few wives can do this and not be

subjected to the humiliation of hearing the husband say, "My dear, are

you not a little extravagant? Is all that money gone that I gave you

last week?"

Men and women seem incapacitated, in the very nature of things, from

understanding each other. While mutually enamored they meet as upon a

bridge--a Bridge of Sighs perhaps: break this, and they are for ever

separated as by an impassable gulf. Leaving aside entirely the enamored

state, do men as a rule seek the society of women and prefer it to that

of men? The thriving clubs, the billiard- and drinking-saloons, and the

other resorts of men common all over the civilized world, seem very like

a negative answer to the question. In savage life we know that the sexes

do not hunt or fish or do any work together. In our modern drawing-rooms

most men confess themselves "bored." They long to get away to their

clubs or some other resort of their fellows. When husbands spend their

evenings at home, if no one happens to call it is not common for them to

enter into long and exhilarating conversations with their wives. To be

sure, wives are too often ignorant of the subjects that interest

intelligent men; still, not more ignorant than before marriage, when the

one bridge upon which they could meet was unbroken. _Then_ conversation

never flagged: it was ever new and entrancing. Both talked pure

nonsense, while having the art of "kissing full sense into empty words."

On the other hand, it is, I think, quite a defensible proposition,

despite the inferences to the contrary drawn from the failure of the

Women's Hotel, that women enjoy conversation with women more than with

men when there is no possible question of gallantry or flirtation; and,

finally, that the recognition of the fact that men and women are not by

nature in sympathetic accord, but only attracted through the law of

compensation or opposites, will do more than all other things combined

to make them study each other's natures and to respect sexual biases and

characteristics, the motive for that study being, of course, the

consummation of the ideal marriage, where man and woman set themselves

together "like perfect music unto noble words."

M.H.

A RUSSIAN GENERAL IN CENTRAL ASIA.

Afternoon in Tashkent, the burning sun of Central Asia glaring upon the

dusty streets and countless mud-hovels of the great city; files of

camels gliding past with their long, noiseless stride, led by gaunt

brown men in blue robes and white turbans; a deep archway in a high wall

of baked earth, above which appear the trees of a spacious garden, and

just within the entrance two tall, wiry, black-eyed Cossacks, in flat

forage-caps, soiled cotton jackets and red goatskin trousers, leaning

indolently on their long Berdan rifles.

At my approach, however, the two sentinels start up briskly enough--as

well they may, for they are guarding one whom every man in Bokhara would

give his best horse for a fair chance of murdering. My announcement that

I am expected by the governor-general is received with evident suspicion

and a crossing of bayonets to bar my way; but, happily, a passing

aide-de-camp recognizes me and promptly leads me in.

The clustering trees, through which the sunshine filters in a rich,

subdued light suggestive of some great cathedral, are deliciously cool

and shady after the blinding glare outside; but there is life enough in

the scene, nevertheless. White-frocked soldiers are hurrying to and fro;

laced jackets, shining epaulettes, clinking spurs and sabres meet us at

every turn; and in the centre of all, under a huge spreading tree

planted years before any Russian had set foot in Turkestan, sits a

towering form whose vast proportions and bold swarthy face seem to dwarf

every other figure in the group. Twelve years ago, General Kolpakovski

was a private soldier in the Russian army: to-day he is the commander of

thirty thousand men and absolute master of a territory as large as the

States of New York and Pennsylvania together.

"Fine fellow, isn't he?" says my conductor, looking admiringly at the

stalwart form of his chief. "Did you ever hear of his ride across the

steppes from here to Kouldja? He started with twelve Tartars, and you

know what horsemen _they_ are. Well, three of them broke down the first

day, five more the second, and all the rest on the third; and the

general got in by himself. Ever since then the Tartars have called him

'The Chief with the Iron Skin;' and the soldiers go about singing,

Kolpakovski molodetz--

Fsadnik Tatarski--glupetz!

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

"Well done!"

"Ay, and he did a better thing still two years ago. He was crossing the

mountains with a Cossack squadron in the heat of summer. Presently up

comes one fellow: 'Your Excellency, my horse is lame.'--'Go back,

then.'--Another man, seeing that, thought he'd get off the same way; so

_he_ calls out, 'My horse is lame, Your Excellency.'--'Get off and lead

him, then,' says Kolpakovski; and the unfortunate fellow had to tramp up

hill all day, and tow his horse after him into the bargain, with the

thermometer ninety-five in the shade."

But just at this moment my name is called, and I go up to the general's

chair, to receive a cordial handshake, a few words of frank, manly

kindness, and the passport which is to carry me northward across the

steppes as far as the border of Siberia.

D.K.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Memoir of William Francis Bartlett. By Francis Winthrop Palfrey. Boston:

Houghton, Osgood & Co.

The Story of my Life. By the late Colonel Meadows Taylor. Edited by his

Daughter. With a Preface by Henry Reeve. London: William Blackwood &

Sons.

We put these two books together, not on account of any similarity in the

scenes and events, the characters and careers, depicted in them, but

because each in its way brings under a strong light the qualities on

which nations rely in seasons of peril and emergency, but of which in

ordinary times there is only a consciousness as of a latent source of

strength, the sound and enduring pith beneath many accretions of

questionable fibre and tenacity. General Bartlett may very well stand

for a type of the "heroes" produced by our civil war--men who, neither

bred to the profession of arms nor inspired by military or political

ambition, quitting their homes and chosen vocations at the call of their

country or their State, devoted themselves heart and soul to the duties

and demands of the hour, distinguished themselves not more by their

bravery than by their strict attention to discipline, and in seasons of

discouragement and defeat, of bad generalship or defective organization,

gave to the respective armies that "staying power," so rare in a citizen

soldiery, which prolonged the contest until it ended in the sheer

exhaustion of the weaker party. Conspicuous examples of this class were

sent forth, perhaps, by every State, and within its borders were often

regarded with a fonder admiration than the great commanders on whom a

larger responsibility and more complex duties brought a more anxious and

less partial scrutiny. Massachusetts, in particular, which could boast

of no eminent professional soldier and whose "political generals"

carried off the palm of a disastrous incapacity, turned with especial

pride to those of her sons who in the camp and in the field were

recognized as models of zeal, fidelity and gallantry. Of this

number--and it was not small--Bartlett, though one of the youngest, was

the most distinguished. He showed from the first equal coolness and

daring in battle, as well as the special faculty of a minute

disciplinarian. The regiments which he trained and led were among those

that headed victorious charges and stemmed the torrent of defeat,

besides presenting a faultless appearance on parade and resisting

temptations to plunder. He himself was repeatedly disabled by severe

wounds, and, being captured before Petersburg, passed many of the last

months of the war in confinement, suffering from a disease which

permanently injured his system and shortened his life. Yet he survived

most of the comrades whose careers had opened with a like promise, and

down to his death, in 1876, was full of enterprise and activity as a

private citizen, bearing a spotless reputation, and displaying qualities

which, it seems to have been generally believed, would have found their

fittest field in some high public position. The story of his life is

well and modestly told by his friend Colonel Palfrey, and may be

specially commended to readers capable of being stirred and stimulated

by memories and examples which have certainly not been dimmed by the

greater lustre of those of a more recent date.

It would be unfair to expect in such a narrative the rich and varied

interest that belongs to the autobiography of Meadows Taylor, whose

career was as eventful and exciting as that of any hero of romance, and

who has told it with a vividness and graphic power which few writers of

romance have equalled. "He was one of the last of those," remarks Mr.

Reeve, "who went out to India as simple adventurers." His boyhood and

youth were full of precocious adventure and achievement. At the age of

sixteen he obtained a commission in the military contingent of the

Nizam. At seventeen he was employed as interpreter on courts-martial,

and at eighteen was appointed "assistant police superintendent" of a

district comprising a population of a million of souls. The duties of

this post "involved not only direct authority over the ordinary

relations of society, but the active pursuit of bands of Dacoits, Thugs

and robbers," and occasional military expeditions to reduce some lawless

chief to obedience. But the most remarkable and laborious years of his

life were those during which he filled the office of "political agent"

at Shorapoor, administering the affairs of that principality and holding

the guardianship of the young rajah during a long minority, while cut

off from intercourse with Europeans and exposed to continual plottings

and intrigues of native functionaries and court favorites. The skill,

tact and courage with which he executed the delicate and complicated

functions of this anomalous position, and encountered its difficulties

and perils, make themselves felt and appreciated in all the details of

the narrative, while the picture presented of Eastern character and

manners is one which only the most intimate knowledge, combined with

rare faculties of delineation, could furnish, and differs in many

features from any other to be found in European descriptions of life in

India. "Meadows Taylor was never, properly speaking, in the civil

service of the East India Company or the Crown, nor did he hold any

military appointment in the British Indian army. He was throughout life

an officer of the Nizam. He never even visited Calcutta or Bengal." He

was thus thrown out of the main line of advancement, and never attained

the rank or emoluments that fell to the share of many less gifted

contemporaries. Hence the peculiarly adventurous character of his career

and the novelty of the scenes which he depicts. Hence, too, perhaps, the

width of his attainments, the enlightened spirit he displayed in his

intercourse with the natives, and his cultivation of his literary powers

as the main resource of his leisure while isolated from the society of

his own race. His start in life belonged to a period long antecedent to

the days of competitive examinations, but his assiduity and desire for

knowledge needed no stimulant and were the keys to his early success.

"His perfect acquaintance with the languages of Southern India--Teloogoo

and Mahratta, as well as Hindoostanee--was," we are told, "the

foundation of his extraordinary influence over the natives of the

country and of his insight into their motives and character." He taught

himself land-surveying and engineering, and constructed roads, tanks and

buildings. He studied geology, botany and antiquities, and applied the

knowledge thus obtained to practical purposes. He gained an acquaintance

with the principles of law, Hindoo, Mohammedan and English, that he

might devise codes and rules of procedure for a country where there were

no courts or legislation, and where he had to administer justice

according to his own lights. In the midst of his thousand avocations he

found time to write a series of novels portraying the manners and

superstitions of India, and depicting the various epochs of its history,

with a fidelity and liveliness that have gained for these works a wide

popularity. Yet perhaps the strongest impression made by this record of

his life comes from the evidence it affords of his humane and

conciliatory spirit in his dealings with the native Indians of every

class, his unselfish devotion to their welfare, his habit of treating

them as equals and his power of inspiring them with confidence, with the

result of enabling him to preserve a large and important district from

participation in the Mutiny, without the aid of troops and against the

constant pressure and appeals of surrounding populations all in full

revolt. His autobiography has already gone through several editions in

England, and we cannot but regret that it has not been republished in

America, where the interest in the country and events to which it

relates is of course far less general and intense, but where, we may

hope, the appreciation of heroic energy and noble achievements is not

less common. The book is not to be confounded with the class to which

the lives of governor-generals and military commanders in India belong.

Arrian complained that the expedition of the Ten Thousand was far more

famous in his day than the exploits of Alexander; and this narrative of

what must be considered an episode of the British rule in India is

likely to hold the attention of most readers more closely than many

volumes that recount the grander events of that wonderful history.

Walks in London. By Augustus J.C. Hare, author of "Walks in Rome," etc.

New York: George Routledge & Sons.

Not many visitors to London would be likely to take all or half the

walks described in Mr. Hare's two thick volumes, even if the word

_walks_ should be so interpreted as to include commoner modes of transit

between distant points of interest and through interminable

thoroughfares. In Rome or Venice the tourist may be expected to follow

religiously the prescriptions of his guide-book: he is there for that

purpose, he has no other means of employing his time, and he would be

ashamed to report that he had omitted to see or do anything that Jones

or Smith had seen and done. But a few rapid excursions in a hansom cab

will enable him to visit all the "sights" that are _de rigueur_ in

London--Westminster Abbey and Hall and the Houses of Parliament; the

Museum, the Zoological and the National Gallery; St. Paul's, Guildhall

and the Bank and Exchange; the Monument, the Tower and the

Tunnel,--after which he may devote himself without scruple to an endless

round of social amusements, or to "the proper study of mankind" with all

varieties and countless specimens of the genus collected for his

inspection. It is only the zealous investigator, primed with the

associations of English literature from Chaucer to Dickens, who will be

apt to put himself under Mr. Hare's guidance, and to explore patiently

the widely-separated districts in which lie scattered and almost hidden

the relics that attest the identity of London through the ages of growth

and change that have transformed it from the "Hill Fortress" of Lud or

the Colonia Augusta of the Romans into the commercial metropolis of the

world, with a population, circumference and aggregate of wealth

exceeding those of most of the other European capitals combined. Yet one

who undertakes this labor with the due amount of knowledge and

enthusiasm may be sure of finding his reward in it. Though London is the

supreme embodiment of modern life, with its ceaseless absorption and

accumulation, it is none the less imbued with a conservative spirit

which has saved it from the wholesale demolitions and ruthless

remodellings to which Paris has been subjected. Mr. Hare speaks with

just indignation of the destruction of Northumberland House at Charing

Cross, but this has so far been an exceptional instance, though it is

perhaps an ominous one. The traveller may still step aside from the busy

Strand into the silent and beautiful Temple Church with its tombs of

Crusaders, pause as he leaves his banker's in Bishopsgate to take a

survey of Crosby Hall and Sir Paul Pindar's house with their reminders

of the financial magnates of a bygone time beautifying their homes in

the City as visible proclamations of their prosperity, and find, as he

wanders through Aldgate and Bevis Marks, Wych street, Holborn and

Lincoln's Inn, Southwark and Lambeth, hundreds of quaint fronts or

picturesque memorials linked with names and events, epochs and usages,

that have been familiar to his mind from childhood. But many such

scenes and objects will escape notice or fail of due appreciation unless

an informant be at hand qualified to proffer the needed suggestions

without indulging in wearisome garrulity. Mr. Hare seems to us to meet

very well the requirements of this office, his book being a happy medium

between the concise though comprehensive, and for ordinary purposes

indispensable, manual of Baedeker and the voluminous works of Timbs and

Cunningham.

* * * * *

_Books Received._

Putnam's Art Hand-books. Edited by Susan N. Carter, Principal of the

"Women's Art-School, Cooper Union." "Landscape Painting" and "Sketching

from Nature." New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Current Discussion: A Collection from the Chief English Essays on

Questions of the Times. By Edward L. Burlingame. Second volume:

Questions of Belief. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Economic Monographs: France and the United States; Suffrage in Cities;

Our Revenue System and the Civil Service--shall they be Reformed? New

York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Off on a Comet: A Journey through Planetary Space. From the French of

Jules Verne, by Edward Roth. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen &

Haffelfinger.

A Year Worth Living: A Story of a Place and of a People one cannot

afford Not to Know. By William M. Baker. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

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

Lee & Shepard.

The Fall of Damascus: An Historical Novel. By Charles Wells Russell.

Boston: Lee & Shepard.

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

Shepard.

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

Print.

* * * * *

_New Music Received._

The Broken Ring, and The Young Recruit: Part-songs for Male Voices.

Composed and arranged by A.H. Rosewig. (Lotus Club Collection.)

Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Strew Sweet Flowers o'er my Grave: Song and Chorus. Words and Music by

M.C. Vandercook. Arranged by D.H. Straight. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner &

Co.

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

Boner & Co.

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

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1807.

[2] Fuller's _Worthies_.

[3] _Churches of Bristol._

[4] Taylor's _Book about Bristol_.

[5] _The Churchgoer._

[6] The documents are given in full in the appendix of Dr. J.J.

Chaponnière's memoir in vol. iv. of the _Mém. de la Soc. Archéol. de

Genève_. The former is signed by Bonivard, apostolic prothonotary and

_poet-laureate_.

[7] The story is told by Bonivard himself in his _Chronicles_, and may be

found in full detail in the Second Series of Dr. Merle d'Aubigné's volumes

on the Reformation, vol. i. chaps. viii. and x. The story that Pecolat,

about to be submitted a second time to the torture, and fearing lest he

might be again tempted to accuse his friends, attempted to cut off his own

tongue with a razor, seems to be authenticated. The whole story is worthy

of being told at full length in English, it is so full of generous

heroism.

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

Bonivard in his _Chronicles_.

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

[10] We have the history of one of them in a brief of Pope Clement VII.

addressed to the chapter and senate of Geneva, in which he expresses his

sorrow that in a city which he has carried in his bowels so long such

high-handed doings should be allowed. One Francis Bonivard has not only

despoiled the rightful prior of his living, but--what is worse--has chased

his attorney with a gun and shot the horse that he was running away upon:

"_quodque pejus est, Franciscum Tingum ejusdem electi procuratorem,

negocium restitucionis dicte possessionis prosequentem, scloppettis

invasisse, et equum super quo fugiebat vulnerasse_." His Holiness

threatens spiritual vengeance, and explains his zeal in the case by the

fact that the excluded prior is his cousin.

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

[12] It is needful to caution enthusiastic tourists that nearly all the

details of Byron's poem are fabulous. The two brothers, the martyred

father, the anguish of the prisoner, were all invented by the poet on that

rainy day in the tavern at Ouchy. Even the level of the dungeon, below the

water of the lake, turns out to be a mistake, although Bonivard believed

it: the floor of the crypt is eight feet above high-water mark. As for the

thoughts of the prisoner, they seem to have been mainly occupied with

making Latin and French verses of an objectionable sort not adapted for

general publication. (See Ls. Vulliemin: _Chillon, Étude historique_,

Lausanne, 1851.)

[13] This touching tribute of conjugal affection is all the more honorable

to Bonivard from the fact that this wife, like the others, had provoked

him. Only a few months before he had been compelled to appear before the

consistory to answer for treating her in a public place with profane and

abusive language, applying to her some French term which is expressed in

the record only by abbreviations.

[14] Avolio: _Canti Popolari di Noto._

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

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

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

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

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

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

[21] These gifts are called _spinagghi_ and _cubbaìta_.

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

Com. of Palermo.

[23] Traina (_Vocab. Sicil._) defines _macadàru_ as nuptial-bed, and cites

Pasqualino, who derives the word from the Arabic _chadar_, which signifies

"bed," "couch."

[24] So called, according to Traina (_Vocab. Sicil._), because of the

frequent occurrence of the notes _fa, sol, la_.

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

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

[27] This may be translated, "Palermo needs a long purse." See Pitrè:

_Fiabe, Novelle, etc.,_ No. cclxviii.

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

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

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

[31] This play upon _voda_ ("water") and _voyevod_ ("a general") has no

equivalent in English. Perhaps the best rendering would be "the battle of

_Water_loo."