There is an excellent inn, the Adirondac House, in Keeseville. Our

attentive host told us of Professor Agassiz, and the fiery nature of his

speculations regarding the probable history of the sandstone, whose

strata, laid as at Trenton Falls, horizontally, layer above layer, add

such interest and beauty to the stupendous walls, with their unseen,

water-covered depths below, and their graceful wreaths of arbor vittae

nodding and swaying above.

He also told us a tale of the war of 1812, when a bridge, known as the

'High Bridge,' crossed the Au Sable at the narrowest point, some eleven

feet in width. A rumor was abroad that the British were about to march

up from Plattsburg; whereupon the bridge, consisting of three beams,

each nine inches wide, was stripped of its planking. A gentleman had

left his home in the morning, and, ignorant of the fate of the bridge,

returned quite late at night. Urging his steed forward, it refused to

cross the bridge, and not until after repeated castigation would it make

the attempt. The crossing was safely accomplished, and the rider

suspected nothing amiss until he reached home and was asked how he had

come. 'By the High Bridge,' was his reply; whereupon he was informed

that the planking had been torn away, and he must have crossed upon a

string piece nine inches wide, hanging some hundred feet above the

surface of the water. His sensations may be imagined.

A venturesome expedition had also been essayed by our host, in the shape

of a voyage down the chasm in a boat. We presume he went at high water,

when the rapids would be less dangerous.

Keeseville is only four miles from Port Kent, a steamboat landing on

Lake Champlain nearly opposite Burlington, and the Adirondacs may then

be approached in several ways. A stage runs three times per week from

Keeseville through Elizabethtown and Schroon River to Schroon Lake.

North Elba and Lake Placid are some thirty-six miles distant, and may be

reached by a good road through the Wilmington Pass. Saranac is somewhat

farther, but readily accessible. Strong wagons and good teams are

everywhere to be found, and the only recommendation we here think

needful to make to the traveller is to have a good umbrella, a thick

shawl or overcoat, and as little other baggage as he or she can possibly

manage to find sufficient. Trunks are sadly in the way, and carpet bags

or valises the best forms for stowage under seats or among feet.

LOIS PEARL BERKELEY.

The fiery July noon was blazing over the unsheltered depot platform,

where everybody was in the agony of trying to compress half an hour's

work into the fifteen minutes' stop of the long express train. The day

was so hot that even the group of idlers which usually formed the still

life of the picture was out of sight on the shady side of the buildings.

Hackmen bustled noisily about; baggage masters were busier and crosser

than ever; there was the usual _melee_ of leave-takings and greetings.

With the choking dust and scalding glare of the sun, the whole scene

might have been an anteroom to Tophet.

From the car window, Clement Moore, brown, hollow-cheeked, and clad in

army blue, looked out with weary eyes on all the confusion. Half asleep

in the parching heat, visions of cool, green forest depths, and endless

ripple of leaves, of the ceaseless wash and sway of salt tides, drifted

across his brain, and rapt him out of the sick, comfortless present. But

they vanished like a flash with the sudden cessation of motion, and the

reality of his surroundings came back with a great shock. Captain

George, coming in five minutes after with a glass of iced lemonade in

one hand and a half dozen letters in the other, found necessary so much

of cheer and comfort as lay in--

'Keep courage, Clement, old fellow, it's only a few hours longer now.'

And then he fell to reading his epistles, testifying his disapprobation

of their contents presently by sundry grunts, ending finally in a

'Confound it!' given explosively and an explanation:

'Too bad, Moore! Here am I taking you home to get well in peace and

quiet, and Ellen has filled the house up with half a dozen girls, more

or less. Writes me to come home and be 'made a lion of;' as sensible as

most women!' And the grumble subsided. He broke out again shortly:

'Louise Meller--Lois Berkeley--Susy--' the other names were drowned in

the rattle of the starting train. The captain finished his letters, and

Clement Moore took up his broken dreams, but this time with a new

element.

Lois Berkeley. With the name came back a fortnight of the last

summer--perfect bright days, far-off skies filled with drifting fleets

of sunny vapor, summer green piled deep over the land, the gurgle of

falling waters, the shimmer of near grain fields, deep-hued flowers

glowing in the garden borders, all the prodigality of splendor that July

pours over the world. And floating through these memories, scarce

recognized, but giving hue and tone to them like a far-off, half-heard

strain of music--a woman's presence. By some fine, subtile harmony, such

as spirits recognize, all the summer glow and depth of color, as it came

back to him, came only as part of an exquisite clothing and setting for

a slender figure and dark face. All the dainty adaptations of nature

were but an expression, in a rude, material way, for those elegances and

fitnesses which surrounded her, and which were as natural to her very

existence as to the birds and flowers. Only a fortnight, and in that

fortnight every look and word of hers, every detail of dress, even to

the texture of the garments she wore, were indelibly fixed in his

memory. She was so daintily neat in everything, nothing soiled or coarse

ever came near her. Careless, too, he thought, remembering how, coming

through the parlor in the evening dusk, he had entangled himself in the

costly crape shawl left trailing across a chair, of the gloves he had

picked up fluttering with the leaves on the veranda, and the

handkerchiefs always lying about. Perhaps Clement Moore was over

critical in his fancies about ladies' dresses, and felt that inner

perfect cleanliness and refinement worked itself out in such little

matters as the material and color and fit of garments, and all the

trifles of the toilet. A soiled or rumpled article of attire showed a

dangerous lack of something that should make up the womanly character.

He had not reduced all these unreasonable men's notions to a system by

which to measure femininity. He did not even know he had them. An

excessive constitutional refinement and keenness of perception made him

involuntarily look for such scrupulous delicacy as belonging of course

to every woman he was thrown in contact with. He had always been

disappointed, at first with a feeling of half disgust with himself and

others, that his dreams were so different from the reality. It drove him

apart from the sex, and gained him the reputation of being shy or ill

natured. After finding that disappointments repeated themselves, he

accepted them as the natural order of events, let his fancies go as the

beau ideal that he was to seek for through life, and became the

polished, unimpressible man of society.

But this little Yankee girl had of a sudden realized his ideal.

Something in their first meeting, momentary though it was, and strange

according to conventional notions, struck the chord in his heart that

was waiting silent for the magic fingers that knew the secret of waking

it. If he had fancied that those fingers would never come, or coming,

never find it, that something in his unhappy birth set him apart with

that strange pain of yearning as his portion in life, and so had tried

to forget or choke the want under commonplace attachments and ties, he

was no worse than, nor different from, the rest of humanity. But all

humanity does not meet trial as unflinchingly and honorably--does not

put temptation out of its way as purely and honestly as did this

undisciplined life. It is hard to take at once the path that duty

orders: we linger to play with possibilities, shed some idle tears,

waste life before the necessity, and go back to everyday work weakened

and scarred and aching. And once or twice in a lifetime that black,

hopeless _never_ drops down, not the less grievous and inexorable

because simply a moral obligation.

Well, only babies cry for the moon. Anything clearly impossible and out

of our reach we very soon cease sighing for. Men do not cherish a

passion which they recognize as utterly hopeless; and Clement Moore,

being a man, and moreover an honorable one, put this summer idyl out of

his head and heart with all despatch. 'All blundering is sin.' If he had

blundered in allowing it to take such hold of his life, he expiated the

sin bravely. Sympathies bud and blossom with miraculous quickness in

this tropical atmosphere of affinity. He did not know till the

excitement of actual presence was over, and he had time to think

soberly, in the dead blank and quiet that followed, how it had grown to

be a part of his very existence. But whether that part was to be just a

pleasant remembrance through the dusty and hot years before him, or

whether it was to go deeper and wring his heart with bitterest sense of

loss, he did not quite realize. At any rate there was a risk in dwelling

on it. He had no more right to be running that risk than he had to be

trifling with a cup of deadliest poison; and so he shut away all the

golden-winged fancies that had sprung into life with those long, fervid

days. Shut them away and sealed their prison place. If they were dead,

or pleading for freedom in his still moments, he never asked nor

thought. He came back from his lounging summer trip with a certain new,

strange drive of purpose in him never seen before. The many events that

had crowded themselves into the next year did not smother his prisoners.

He never saw their corpses or thought of them sneeringly, and by that

sign knew they existed still. But dust and all the desolation of

desertion gathered about the hidden chamber that he never recurred to

now. Still he kept away from its neighborhood; at first setting a guard

of persistent physical action. He was always reading or writing or going

somewhere with a kind of hidden, misty aim in his most objectless

journeys. After--as the necessity for such occupation wore away, and he

lapsed back into the old listless ways of dreaming--his thoughts were

always busy with the future; never now did he indulge in those wayward

dreams of old. They had a dangerous tendency to take a certain forbidden

way. Finally, this self-control became a habit, and he scarcely felt its

necessity. The 'might have been' never came back more poignantly than as

a vague, shadowy regret, that gave everything a slightly flat and

unpalatable taste. But he did not take life any less fully, or with any

abatement of whatever earnestness was in him.

Men are not patient under sickness, at least not that unquestioning,

unresisting patience which most women and the lower animals show. These

especially who are usually well and robust are a trial to the flesh and

spirit of those about them. Moore was not the wonderful exception. His

first few weeks in the hospital were not so bad; but when the actual

racking pain was over, and nothing remained but that halting of the

physical machinery to which we never give a thought during perfect

action--the weakness hanging leaden weights to every limb, the unwonted

nervousness and irritability, the apparently causeless necessity for

inaction--he was anything but a resigned man. Captain George, getting

his furlough and carrying him off, was blessed from the deepest heart of

the ward nurses. He had a kind of feeling that this his first illness

was a matter in which the universe should be concerned, and with that

fretful self-exaggeration came that other unutterable yearning that

attends the first proof that we are coheirs with others to the ills

flesh is heir to, weary homesickness and childish desire for sympathy.

So now, weakened physically with that strange new heartsickness,

paralyzing his will and giving freer scope to is feverish impatience,

George's careless words had rolled away the stone from the sepulchre,

and its prisoners were free. Not dead, not having lost a shade of color

from their wings, they nestled and gleamed through his heart, filling

the summer day with just such intangible perfect witchery as those other

days had been full of. Perhaps, too, time and absence had heightened the

charm. Imagination has such a way of catching up little scenes and words

and looks, and, without altering one of the facts, haloing them with

such a golden deceptive atmosphere, adding, day by day, faintest

touches, that they grow by and by into a something wholly different. So

that fortnight came back to him, an illuminated poem, along rich strains

of music, making every nerve thrill with the pleasure-pain of its

associations.

And by degrees, as the tide of sensation, thinned itself, lying back

with closed eyes, while the long train swept on through the torrid day,

separate pictures came before his inner sight. Just as keen and clear

were they as when they first fell on his vision. He had not blurred nor

dimmed their outlines with frequent recalling and suggestions of

difference.

A narrow strip of gray sand, ribbed with the wave wash to the very foot

of the reddish brown bowlders that bounded it. Standing thereon a

slender woman's figure, clad in quiet gray. The face was turned toward

him--a dark, unflushed face, with calm, fixed mouth, and clear gray eyes

under straight-drawn brows and long, separate, lashes. Fine, lustreless,

silky hair was pushed back into a net glittering with shining specks

under the narrow-brimmed straw hat. A face full of a waiting look, not

hopeful nor expectant, simply unsettled and watchful, yet fresh, and

rounded with the dimples and childlike curves of eighteen. Whatever of

yearning and unrest the years had brought lingered only about the

shadowy eyes and fine mouth. There were no haggard nor worn outlines,

and a baby's skin could not have been softer and finer.

At her feet crisped the shining ripples of the incoming tide. Far

beyond, calm and burnished, stretched the summer sea into the dreamy

distance, where the white noon sky, stricken through with intensest

light and heat, dropped down a palpitating arch to meet it. And in all

the dazzle of blue and white and silver and bare shining gray, she

stood, a straight, slender, haughty little figure, as indefinite of

color as all the rest; all but a narrow strip of scarlet at her throat,

falling in a flaming line to her waist. The shimmering atmosphere seemed

to pant about her; and through the high noon, over the still waters and

sleeping shore, hummed the peering strains of a weird little song. She

was singing softly:

'For men must work and women must weep,

And the sooner 'tis over the sooner to sleep.'

In the long parlor, the leaf ghosts that had all day long been flitting

in, were darkening with the sunset and filling the room with twilight

dimness. Deep in a crimson couch and haloed with the last brightness,

lay the long, white outlines of a reclining figure. A handful of Japan

lilies burned against the pure drapery, and another handful of tea

violets lay crushed in the fleecy handkerchief on the floor. Against the

cushions the exquisite contour of the sleeping face showed plainly.

Coolest quiet sphered the whole figure; not a suggestion of anything but

slowest calm grace disturbed its repose. But with the hushing rustle of

leaves with the summer murmur flowing in, seemed to come also the deep

monotone of the waves, when this inanimate statue was striking out at

his side through the rattle and rush of the surf, the wide eyes filled

with fierce light, the whole face fixed and stern with the strain of

heart muscle, toward the helpless shape shooting out on the undertow. He

had not seen her after, and, coming to seek her that night with words of

compliment and thanks, he was met by this white vision that had absorbed

all the fire and force of the afternoon into its blankness.

A depot platform--long afternoon shadows fell over the pretty country

station--standing alone in the woods. The small, temporary bustle about

the waiting train was not discordant with the dreamy, restful look of

the whole picture. Then the culminating hurry, the shriek and rattle of

the starting train--a little figure poising itself for an instant on the

car step--a face flushed a little, and dark eyes brightened with a flash

of surprised recognition--a quick gesture of greeting and farewell, and

then she was gone into the purple shades of evening.

Once again he had seen her, but from afar off, in the glare and heat of

a crowded assembly room. The face was a little thinner now, and the eyes

were looking farther away than ever. The blood-red light of rubies

flashed in the soft lace at her throat and wrists, and dropped in

glittering pendants against the slender neck. She was talking evidently

of a brilliant bouquet of pomegranates and daphnes that lay in her lap,

swinging dreamily the dainty, glittering white fan. And while he looked,

she drew away the heavy brocade she wore, from under a careless tread--a

slight, slow motion, wholly unlike the careless sweeps of other women.

The imperious nature that thrilled her even to the tips of the long

fingers, manifested itself, as inborn natures always do, under the

deepest disguises, in just this unconscious, most trifling of acts; and,

remembering the gesture, he asked, with words far lighter than the tone

or feeling:

'As much of a princess as ever?'

And Captain George answered:

'As much of a princess!' both unmindful that no word had been spoken to

token who was in the thought of each.

Very trifling things these were to remember. Very likely he had seen

scores of far more graceful and memorable scenes; but just these

trifles, coming back so vividly, proved to him, as nothing else could

have done, with what a keen, intense sympathy every word and look of

hers had been noted.

The spoken words roused him. In the ride that followed, twenty different

persons and things came into their talk; but never once the princess.

_That_, arousing himself again from his half-dreamful lapse from the old

guarded habit, was put away steadily and quietly. His battle had been

fought once. He was not to weaken his victory with fancies of the 'might

have been.' He had not been tempted, through all these months; he would

not tempt himself, now that real trial was so near at hand. Man as he

was, if escape had been possible, he would have fled. But there was

nothing to do but to go forward, and he called up that old, mighty,

intangible safeguard of honor. The matter was settled beyond any

question of surprise--he must avoid the long, sapping days of contact,

the wasting, feverish yearnings of absence coming after.

Flying over miles and miles of the summer land, heaped with the red

tangled sweets of clover fields, belted with white starry mayweed, blue

with marshy growth of wild flag, with hazy lines of far-off hills,

fading into purple depths of distance, and near low ones lying green and

calm close beside them, with brown clear brooks, famous trout streams,

after the New England fashion, went running across their way, the old

home pride leaped up in George's eyes and voice, and even Moore forgot

his weariness, and talked with a flash of the old, careless spirit.

The hack that brought them to their destination left them, deep in the

summer night, at the foot of the long avenue of elms--going up which,

with slow steps, on a sudden the house broke on them, ablaze with

lights, athrob with music, whereat there was a renewal of explosive

utterances, and the captain led his friend to the rear of the house to

insure a quiet entrance.

From the dark piazza, where he waited while George summoned some one to

receive them, he caught, through the long, open casement, the vista of

the parlors, with their glitter and confusion of light drapery and

glimpses of bright faces and light forms, and softened hum of voices, as

the dancers circled with the music. And through it all, straight down

toward him, floating in one of the weird Strauss waltzes, came the

princess, swathed in something white, airy, wide-falling. The same dark,

unflushed face, the same wide, far-looking eyes, and fixed mouth, the

same silky falling hair, but cut short now, and floating back as she

moved. It was only for a moment: the perfumed darkness that seemed to

throb with a sudden life of its own, the great, slow, summer stars above

him, the wailing, passionate music that came trembling out among the

heavy dew-wet foliage, the dark, calm earth about him, and the light and

color and giddy motion that filled the gleaming square before him,

struck in on his senses with staggering force; and then she swayed out

of his sight, and Mrs. Morris came forward with words of cheer and

welcome.

That night, lying sleepless after the music was hushed and the wheels

had done rolling away from the door, as if material enough for all fever

fancies had not been given, backward and forward through the corridor a

woman's garments trailed with light rustle, and a low voice hummed

brokenly the waltz he had heard. Ceasing by and by in a murmur of girls'

voices, and the old-remembered air, sung softly:

'For men must work and women must weep,

Though storms be sudden and waters deep.'

After that many days went by unmarked. His wound, aggravated by fatigue,

racked him with renewed pain; and when that was over, vitality was at

too low an ebb for anything but the most passive quiet. Before listless,

unnoting eyes drifted the crystal mornings, the golden hours steeped

deep in summer languors, the miracles of sun-settings and star-filled

holy nights. From his window he saw and heard always the ocean, blue and

calm, lapping the shore with dreamy ripple in bright days--driving

ghostly swirls of spray and fog clown the beach in stormy, gray ones.

The house itself seemed set in the deepest haunt of summertime. Great

trees, draped in the fullest growth of the year, rippled waves of green

high about it. All day long the leaf sounds and leaf shadows came

drifting in at the windows. Perfectest hush and quiet wrapped its

occasional faint strains of music, or chime of voices came up to him,

but did not break the silence. A place for a well soul to find its full

stature, for a tired or sick one to gather again its lost forces. And by

slow degrees the life held at first with so feeble a grasp came back to

him.

By and by there came a day when, from his balcony, he witnessed a

departure, full of girls' profuse adieux, and then the hush of vacancy

fell on the wide halls and airy rooms of the great house. That evening,

with slow steps, he came down the staircase. In the twilight of the

parlors showed dimly outlined a drift of woman's drapery, and the piano

was murmuring inarticulately. Outside, on the broad stone doorstep,

showed another drift, resolving itself into the muslins of Miss Nelly

Morris, springing up with glad words of welcome as his unsteady frame

came into view. Before half the protracted and vehement hand shaking was

over, Moore turned at a soft rustle behind him, and Nelly found her

introduction forestalled. Moore hoped, with his courtliest reverence,

that Miss Berkeley had not forgotten him.

She made two noiseless steps forward, and put out a small, brown band.

He took it in his left, with a smiling glance of apology at the

sling-fettered right arm. It was not often that Miss Berkeley's broad

lids found it worth their while to raise themselves for such a wide,

clear look as they allowed with the clasp. And then Nelly broke in:

'Then you two people know each other. Grand! And I've been wondering

these two weeks what to do with you! Why didn't you tell me, Leu?'

'How was I to identify Mr. Moore with 'George's friend from the army'?

Mr. Moore remembers he was on debatable ground last summer.'

Her soft, slow speech fell on his hearing like the silver ripple of

water, clear and fine cut, but without a bit of the New England

incisiveness of tone that filled his delicate Southern ear with slight,

perpetual irritation.

'But I've made my calling and election sure at last. I was transformed

into a mudsill and Northern hireling last spring.'

'In spite of the transformation, I recognized you as soon as you spoke.

I was not quite willing to be forgotten, you see, by any one who wore

the glorifying army cloth.'

They were out on the veranda now. Nelly was gazing with pitiful eyes at

the sleeve fastened away, while the wasted left hand drew forward a

great wicker chair into the circle of the moonlight. He caught the look:

'Not so very bad, Miss Nelly; not off, you see, only useless for the

present;' and he took a lowly seat at her side, near the princess's

feet.

'You are guiltless of shoulder straps. You might have obtained a

commission, I think. Why didn't you, I wonder,' she said speculatively.

'Because I knew nothing of military matters, for one thing, and hadn't

the assurance to take my first lesson as lieutenant or captain.'

Miss Berkeley's white lids lifted themselves again.

'More nice then wise, sir. Others do it,' was Nelly's comment.

'Yes, but I haven't forgotten the old copy-book instructions, 'Learn to

obey before you command,' and began at the beginning. I've taken the

first step toward the starred shoulder straps'--he wore the corporal's

stripes--' and am hopeful.'

'You'll never attain to them, you lazy Southron. Tell as about your camp

life.'

'There's very little to tell. Drill, smoke, loaf--begging your pardon

for the rough expression of a rough fact--drill again. As one day is, so

is another; they're all alike.'

'Well, tell us about your getting wounded, then, and the fight. George

will not get wounded himself, in spite of my repeated requests to that

effect.'

And so Moore fought his battle over again, in the midst of which Miss

Berkeley dropped out of the talk, folded some soft brilliant net over

her light dress, and went down the walk leading to the shore, and he did

not see her again that night.

After that he spent much of his time below stairs. Much alone; there

were walks and rides in which he could take no part. Despite of George's

prediction, he had peace and quiet, and gathered strength hourly.

Whatever of graciousness he _had_ seen or fancied in Miss Berkeley's

manner in that first unexpected meeting had all vanished. A subtile,

unconquerable something shut her out from all friendliness of speech or

action. She went about the house in her slow, abstracted way, or in her

other mood, with sudden darting motions like a swallow, or dreamed all

day beside the summer sea, coming back browner and with mistier looks in

her gray eyes, but always alone and unapproachable. So that in half a

dozen days he had not received as many voluntary sentences from her.

But one morning the clouds had gathered black and heavy. The sea fogs

had pitched their tents to landward, and their misty battalions were

driving gray across the landscape. Dim reaches of blank water--lay

beyond, weltering with an uneasy, rocking motion against the low, dark

sky. White, ghostly sea birds wheeled low, a fretful wind grieved about

the house, and a New England northeast storm was in progress. She was

standing at the window, looking out with eyes farther away than ever

over the haze-draped sea. Some fine, heavy material, the same indistinct

hue as the day outside, fell about her in large, sweeping folds. A

breath of sudden, penetrating perfume struck across his senses as he

approached her. 'And gray heliotrope!' he said; but the heliotrope

vanished as she turned and displayed the blaze of carnations at her

throat, and the gleam of crimson silk under the jaunty zouave.

'Lois Pearl Berkeley,' he read from the golden thimble he had nearly

crushed under foot. He half wondered if she would know what it was. He

never saw her do anything. She was never 'engaged,' nor in haste about

any occupation. The perfect freedom from the universal Yankee necessity

of motion, with which the brown, small hands fell before her, was as

thoroughly a part of her as the strange Indian scent which clung to

everything she touched, and sphered her like the atmosphere of another

world. He never could associate the idea of any kind of personal

care-taking with her dainty leisure, more than with the lilies of the

field, though they never appeared in as many graceful arrays as she.

'Yes, mine, thank you,' she said, and composedly dropped it into its

place in the most orderly of useless conglomerations of silken pockets

and puzzling pigeon holes. He watched her fingers, and then looked back

at her.

'Lois--such an odd name for you--such a quaint, staid Puritan name.'

'And I am neither quaint nor staid nor Puritan. Thank you. Yes, my

mother must have had recollections of her New England home strong on her

when she gave it me, down on the Louisiana shores. It always sounded

even to me a little strange and frigid among such half-tropical

surroundings.'

As she spoke a sudden pang of utter weariness and longing seized him. A

rush of the boyish malady of homesickness, concentrated from all the

dreary months of his long absence, and none the less poignant because it

was involuntary. The wide, cool, shadowy halls of his mother's house,

always aglow with blossoms and haunted with their odors, all the

superficial lotus-charm of Southern life--and he had lived it

superficially enough to catch all its poetry rose before him. It caught

away his breath and choked sudden tears into his eyes. Came and went

like a flash--for before she had done speaking a sudden new bond of

sympathy put away the _stranger_ forevermore, and he was no longer

alone.

'Then you are Southern born too,' he said, with a quick step forward,

and involuntarily outstretched hand. Hers dropped into it.

'Yes, I am hardly acclimated yet. I shiver under these pale Northern

skies from August till June. O my Louisiana, you never made 'life a

burden' with such dark, chill days, and sobbing, cruel winds!' She

turned to the windows. A sudden uncontrollable quaver of impatience and

longing ran through her speech and hurried the words with unusual

vehemence.

'I thought you must have liked the day, since you robed yourself in its

haze and mist.' He laid his hand lightly on her gray drapery with

reverent touch.

'And _I_ thought my carnations would redeem that. Since they

didn't--'and she tossed the whole bright, spicy handful on the table.

In a vase on the mantle, gray, passionate, odorous blooms were massed

loosely about a cluster of fragile, intense day lilies, and a dash of

purple and crimson trailed with the fuchsias over its edge, and gleamed

up from the white marble ledge. He went to the vase, shook out the

fuchsias, and laid the residue in her lap.

'Heliotrope, finally,' he said.

She brushed it lightly away with a half shudder.

'Not that. I don't like heliotrope. Its perfume is heart-breaking,

hopeless. It belongs in coffins, about still, dead faces. If it had a

voice, we should hear continual moans. It would be no worse than this,

though.'

'You will wear the lilies then, unless the heliotrope scent clings to

them too,' he said, gathering up the obnoxious flowers.

'Yes, if it doesn't jar your ideal to see them worn against such a

stormy day dress. To me they are the perfection of summer. No _color_

could be more intense than this spotless whiteness. There!' Fastening

them, the brittle stems snapped, and the flowers fell at her feet. 'No

flowers for me to-day, of your choosing at least. Practically, lilies

have such an uncomfortable way of breaking short off.'

A broad, bright ribbon lay drawn through 'Charles Anchester' on the

table. She knotted it carelessly at her throat.

'That will do for the now; but, O my carnations, how your mission

failed!' hovering over them a minute.

'Then you are not satisfied with the New England mean of perfection, in

everything, mentally, morally, and meteorologically?' going back to the

weather again.

'Satisfied! I'd exchange this whole pale summer for one hour of broad,

torrid noonlight. Deep, far-off tropical skies, great fronds of tropical

foliage, drawing their sustenance from the slowest, richest juices of

nature, gorgeous depths of color blazing with the very heart of the sun,

deep, intoxicating odors poured from creamy white or flaming flower

chalices, and always the silver-sprayed wash of the blue sea. I remember

that of my home. It is months and months since I have seen a magnolia or

jasmine.'

Fate sent Miss Morris to the parlor just then, luckily enough, perhaps,

and the first dash of rain from the coming storm struck the windows

sharply. Miss Berkeley shivered; a gray shadow swept up over her face,

and absorbed all the gleam and unrest. She moved off with her book to a

window; shut herself out from the room, and into the storm, with a heavy

fall of curtains; and Nelly's voice rippled through a tripping, Venetian

barcarole.

It stormed all the next day, and when twilight came, it rained still

with desperation. A narrow sphere of light from the flame low down in

its alabaster shade held the piano, and through the warm scented gloom

that filled the rest of the parlor thrilled echoing chords. Moore,

coming in, stopped in the dimness to listen. A troubled uncertainty made

itself felt through the strains, a sudden discordant crash jarred

through the room, and the performer rose abruptly. He came forward.

'O my prophetic soul, magnolias!' said Nelly, from her lounge, just

outside the lighted circle.

It had just come from him, the light, exquisite basket he held filled

with great, pink, flushed magnolia blooms. Nelly raved in most

fashionably extravagant adjectives. Lois looked at it with hungry eyes,

but motionless and speechless. He laid it before her on the table, and

turned away. She stood for a moment looking gravely down on it, then

buried her face among the cool petals with a sudden caressing motion.

Looking up again shortly, 'Thank you,' she said simply to the giver

chatting carelessly.

A broad illumination flooded the other end of the parlor a minute after,

and the chess board came into requisition. If Miss Morris found little

skill necessary to discomfit her opponent, and wondered thereat, she

could not see, as he saw, a dark face, bowed on tropic blooms, flushed

with unwonted glad color, lips apart and aquiver, wide eyes lustrous

with purple light, shining through the tears that gathered in them.

Then the piano began, played dreamily, irregularly, with slender, single

threads of tune, and frequent pauses, as if the preoccupied mind let the

listless fingers fall away from the keys. They gathered up finally all

the broken strains into a low, slow-moving harmony. Through it Moore

heard the soft lap of waves, the slow rock of Pacific tidal swells,

flowing and ebbing and flowing again through flaming noons, about

half-submerged bits of world, palm-shaded, sun-drenched, or swaying

white with moonlight under purple midnights, holy with the clear burning

stars: heard the gurgle and ripple of falling streams, deepening into

the wide flow of mighty rivers, bearing in their calm sweep the secrets

of a zone--of ice-choked springs, of the dead stillness of Northern

forests, and the overgrowth, and passionate life of endless summers.

The red and white combatants now held truce over a queen check, while

the players sat silent, listening.

Suddenly, through the murmur and rhythmic flow of water sounds, struck

shrill and sharp the opening strains of a march--not such marches as

mark time for dainty figures crowding ballroom floors, but triumphant,

cruel, proud, with throbbing drum-beat--steadying the tramp of weary

feet over red battle fields. Its unswerving hurry, its terrible, calm

excitement, brought before his vision long blue lines--the fixed faces

sterner than death, with steady eyes and quickened breath--the nervous

clutch of muskets, as the rattle of small arms and boom of cannon came

nearer and nearer, the fluttering silken banners, the calm sunshine, and

sweet May breath--and the quick, questioning note of a meadow lark

dropped down through the silence of the advancing column. As the

maddening music stormed and beat about him, his heart throbbed audibly,

and the rushing currents of his fiery Southern blood sounded in his

ears. Honor, prudence, resolution, everything was swept away in the lava

tide of excitement. Before him he saw the crown of his life. All heaven

and all earth should not stop him short of it. He rose and began

crossing the room, with heavy, resolute tread. In the dimness, the

player was hardly visible; he would assure himself of her mortality at

least. A sudden, fierce hunger for sight and touch thrilled him.

Midway he stopped. The music dropped with a shock from its fiery

enthusiasm. Was it only an echo, or an army of ghosts crossing a dim

field, long since fought over--the steady tramp, tramp, the pendulum of

time? Unutterably wailing, pitiful, it sent plaintive, piercing cries up

to the calm, dead heavens. All the fearful sights he had seen rose

before him. Upturned lay faces calm in death as in a child's sleep, with

all camp roughnesses swept away in that still whiteness; strong men's,

with that terrible scowl of battle or the distortion of agonized death

on them--mangled and crushed forms--all the wreck of a fought battle,

terrible in its suggestive pathos. It sank away into the minor of water

voices, soft, monotonous, agonizing in its utter passivity, a brilliant

arpeggio flashed up the keys like a shower of gold, and Miss Berkeley

rose with white face and trembling breath, and Nelly was alone in the

room, sobbing nervously in her armchair.

The storm passed that night, with great swayings of trees, and dash of

broad raindrops, and piled up broken masses of fleecy white clouds,

tossed about by the rough, exultant September wind. Bright days

followed, mellowing with each one to sunnier, calmer perfection. Moore

passed them in his own room. That night had torn away all the disguises

that he had put upon his heart. He knew now that he loved this

woman--knew it with such a bitter sense of humiliation as such proud

spirits writhe under when honor turns traitor and betrays them to the

enemy. 'Lead us not into temptation.' If it meant anything in the old

habit of child's prayer which clung to him yet, it meant that he should

put himself out of its way, since he had proved himself too weak to meet

it. His inborn honesty let him build no excuses for his failure. He saw,

and acknowledged with a flush of scorn and curling lip, his own

treachery to himself in his hour of need. That he had not committed

himself--that his self-betrayal was only known to self--was no merit of

his--simply a circumstance. And circumstances seemed mighty in their

influence upon him, he thought, with a feeling of deepest contempt. All

pride and self-reliance were taken out of him. Absence, at least, would

be a safeguard, since it would render harmless such impulses as those of

that night. However much he might sin in yearning, she; should never

know, never be exposed to the risk of being drawn into his guilt and

pain. He had come at last to the place where all the old delicate pride

was merged in the one anxious fear that she should suffer. He would go

away the next day; he would not see her again--never see her

voluntarily--putting away fiercely the sudden pang of yearning: not that

he came at once to such a conclusion.

Honor, pride, self-respect, having failed him once, were not easily

recalled to their allegiance. His was no feeble nature, to sin and

repent in an hour. He fought over every inch of his way, and came out at

last conqueror, but scarred and weary and very weak in heart, and

distrustful of himself.

They had gone to ride that afternoon--he had seen them drive away. He

would go down and make the necessary arrangements for his departure. And

so it happened that he stood an hour before sunset in the parlor. A

sudden heart sickness drove the blood from his lips with the wrench of

remembrance. It did not strengthen him to meet her, cool and royal, in

filmy purple, putting out her hand with frank friendliness, and with a

new quaver of interest in her voice. Those fatal magnolias: all the

outside world seemed pressing nearer these two strangers in a strange

land.

'How pale you are! You have been ill again.'

'No,' he said, almost harshly. 'You like tiger lilies,' lifting a stem

crowded with the flaming whirls.

'Like them? yes--don't you? As I like the fiery, deafening drum-roll and

screaming fife, and silver, sweet bugle-calls. Think where they found

these wide, free curves of outline--that flaming contrast of color.

Indian skies have rounded over them, Indian suns poured their fervor

into their hearts. In the depth of forest jungles the velvet-coated

tiger has shaken off their petals--glittering, deadly cobras crushed

them in their slow coils; gorgeous-winged birds and insects swept them

in their flight.'

Some new mental impulse sent a rare, faint flush to the olive cheeks,

and filled the uplooking clear eyes with light. This purple-clad shape,

with fiery nasturtiums burning on the breast and filling the air with

their peculiar odor, with the barbaric splendor of tiger lilies

reflecting their lurid glare about her as she stood, bore no more

likeness to the ordinary haughty woman than fire to snow. He would have

liked to have crowned her with pomegranate blossoms--have dropped the

silvery sheen of ermine under her feet, and have knelt there to worship.

She moved away impatiently, trailed her noiseless drapery through the

room once or twice, and came back to the window, where he stood looking

out. Before them lay the sea, calm in a sheen of blue, gathering faint

amethystine vapors, that the sunset would light up in a miracle of

bronze and purple and rose.

'You should have been with us last night! A soft, rushing south wind

filled all the air with whispers, and drew up a veil of lace round the

horizon, very high up in the east. Stars were few; the new moon dropped

tender, faint beams down into the gray mist and grayer water that broke

in ripples of white fire against the dark in the west, and mingled with

the mystery in the east. I want to go again. Mr. Moore, I can manage a

boat; will you go with me?'

With every minute he saw his hard-earned victory slipping away. With

every minute his reeling sense lost foothold in the strange, new

fascination of her excited presence. Will rallied to a last effort; he

muttered some broken excuse, that she must have thought an assent, for

she dropped a soft, white, clinging shawl over her shoulders, slipped

the tie of the jaunty hat beneath her chin, and he could only follow her

as she slid through the flicker of shade and sunshine down to the beach,

where the summer sea washed lazily.

Low in the west and northwest lay piled ominous clouds; white, angry

thunder heads began showing themselves.

'A grand sunset for to-night, and a shower perhaps. We shall be back

before it breaks.'

A small boat--a frail thing of white and gilding--floated at anchor.

Lois shook out the sail in her character of manager, seated herself at

the helm, and they drifted out. No word was spoken; the light in her

eyes grew brighter and brighter; the scarlet curves of her mouth more

and more intense. Sitting with face turned away from the west, she did

not see, as he did, the rising blackness. The wind freshened, skimming

in fitful gusts over the waves, and the little craft flung off the spray

like rain. Away off in the shadow of the cloud the water was black as

death, a faint line of white defining its edge. Was she infatuated? As

for him, he grew very calm, with a kind of desperation. Better to die

so, with her face the last sight on earth--his last consciousness her

clinging arms, sinking down to the dark, still caverns beneath--than to

live out the life that lay before him. He leaned forward and looked over

into the green depths of the sea. Sunshine still struck down in rippling

lines, a golden network. Soft emerald shadows hung far down, breaking up

into surface rifts of cool dimness as the waves swung over them.

Her hat had fallen back; her whole face was alive with a proud, exultant

delight in the exhilarating motion. Higher and higher rose the veil of

cloud, and the blackness in the water was creeping toward them. Sea

birds wheeled low about them, with their peculiar quavering cry, and a

low swell made itself felt. Miss Berkeley turned her head; a sudden look

of affright blanched her face to deadliest whiteness. A hand's breadth

of clear sky lay beneath the sun, and down after them, with the speed of

a racer, came that great black wave. Before it the blue ripples shivered

brightly; behind it the angry water tossed and seethed. In its bosom,

lurid, phosphorescent lights seemed to flit to and fro. Its crest was

ragged and white with dashes of foam. She took in the whole in a

second's glance, and made a movement to bring the boat's head up to the

wind. As the white face turned toward him, a quick instinct of

self-preservation seized him, and he sprang up to lower the sail.

Something caught the halliards. His left arm was of little service; his

right hung useless at his side. She reached forward--one hand on the

tiller--to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun--a

sudden flaw struck them--the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of

her slight hold--the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow,

surged downward with a heavy lurch, and the gale was on them. A great

blow, and swift darkness, then fierce currents rushing coldly past him;

strange, wild sounds filling his ears; and when his vision cleared

itself, he saw Lois, unimpeded by her light drapery, striking out for

the sunken ledge, half a dozen yards away, over which the spray was

flying furiously. He ground his teeth with impatience as his nerveless

arm fell helpless; but he reached her side at last. A narrow shelf, with

barely sufficient standing room for two. Great, dark waves, with strange

lights flashing through them, whirled blinding deluges high above their

heads, as he held her close. With the instinct of the weaker toward the

stronger, she grasped and clung to him; and the fierce exultation that

thrilled through his veins with actual contact, made him strong as a

giant. And then, close on the gale, came the rain, beating down the

waves with its heavy pour. In the thunder and tramp of the storm no

human voice could have made itself audible, if speech had been needed.

The storm passed as suddenly as it had risen. Through a rift in the

clouds a dash of blood-red light burst over the troubled waters, and

with it a sudden quiet fell about them. They were to have their 'grand

sunset' finally.

'We are too far from the mainland to reach it without help; no boats are

likely to pass this way after this storm; the tide is at its lowest now;

it rises high over this ledge.'

In his quiet voice a half-savage triumph made itself heard. This

near-coming fate, that he believed inevitable, put away completely all

claims of that world that lay behind him--shut out everything but their

own individuality. Time had narrowed to a point; all landmarks were

swept away.

Miss Berkeley's face had lost none of its whiteness; but the pallor was

not of fear. The great eyes burned star-like, and the mouth was like

iron. She looked up as his even tones fell on her ear. Something in his

gaze fixed hers; through fearless, unveiled eyes, the soul looked

straight out to his. What he saw there dazzled and blinded him. He

caught her up to his heart suddenly and fiercely. His lips crushed hers

in a long, clinging kiss, that seemed to drink up her very life. For

them, the brightness that for others is dissipated over long years of

the future, was concentrated into the single intense moment of the

present--this one moment, that seemed to burst into bud and blossom, the

fruition of a lifetime. The sky lifted away and poured down fuller

floods of light; the air vibrated with strange, audible throbs. When he

released her, she did not move away. Never again, though they lived out

a century, could the past be quite what it had been before; through it

they had come to this, the crowning perfection of their lives. Through

the future would run the memory of a caress in which--she was not a

woman who measured her gifts--she had dissolved all the hope and promise

of that future for him. Desperation was no small element in the whirl.

Only into the eternities could he carry the _now_ pure and loyal. It had

nothing to do with time; only through the shadow of the coming death had

he attained to it.

The fancy that had always haunted him with her peculiar name and dainty

presence, prompted the 'Marguerite!'

She was not a woman to whom people give pet names. A _rested_, loving

smile gleamed over her face, and her lips sought his again.

'My darling!'

'Mine!' and then time drifted on, unbroken by the speech which would

have jarred the new, perfect harmony. Neither _thought_--the life

currents that had met so wildly and suddenly, left space in their full,

disturbed flow, for just the one consciousness of delirious, satisfying

love. While the fiery sunset paled, he held the little drenched figure

close, her warm breath flowing across his cheek.

Out of the gathering dimness shoreward, came a hail. It struck him with

an icy chill that death could never have brought. She raised her head,

listening. The longing and temptation to hold her to his breast, and

sink down through the green, curling waves, came back stronger than

ever. Only so could he hope to keep her. That inexorable future of time

reaching out to grasp him back again, would put them apart so

hopelessly. His voice was hoarse--broken up with the heart wrench.

'Marguerite, will you die here with me, or go back again to the life

that will separate us?'

She did not understand him. Why should she? Did she not love him, and he

her? and what _could_ come between them? For her a future burst suddenly

into hope with that faint call. In it lay untried, unfathomable sources

of happiness.

Another breathless kiss--this time crowded with the agony of a parting

for him--and then, as the hail came again, nearer and more distinct, the

white shawl, that still clung about her, floated in the air as a signal.

They lifted her into the rescuing boat shortly, white and breathless,

and wrapped her in heavy shawls. Not senseless, lying against his

breast, the dark eyes opened once to meet his, and the pallid face

nestled a little closer to its resting place. He could not tell if the

time were long or short, before Nelly's voice broke on his ear.

'Only a comedy, instead of the tragedy which mother is arranging up at

the house!'

The half-hysterical quaver broke into the woman's refuge of tears, and

sobs with that; and Moore gave up his burden to stronger arms.

'Up at the house,' Mrs. Morris, busied with her blazing fires and

multitudinous appliances for any stage of disaster, met them with the

quiet tears that mothers learn to shed, and the reverent 'Thank God!'

that comes oftenest from mothers' lips.

And the bustle being over, he looked reality and duty straight in the

face. The man was in no sense a coward--_flinch_ was not in him. He came

out on the upper balcony two hours later, with the face of a man over

whom ten years more of life had gone heavily. A dozen steps away sat

Marguerite--the white heart of a softened glow of light. She came out at

his call quiet and stately, but with a kind of shy happiness touching

eye and cheek with light and flame. At sight of her, all the mad passion

in his heart leaped up--a groan came in place of the words he had

promised himself. He strode away with heavy, hard footfalls. Not

strange, since he was trampling Satan and his own heart under his feet.

He came back again, quickly, eagerly, as a man forcing himself forward

to a mortal sacrifice, who feels that resolution may fail. The words

that came finally were half a groan, half an imprecation, hissed through

clenched teeth.

'Three years ago, a Louisiana lady promised to be my wife. She is not

dead; the engagement is not broken.'

There were no words beyond the plain statement of facts that he had any

right to use--harsh and brutal though they seemed. Seen in the

earth-light that had broken on him with that rescuing hail, he had acted

the coward and villain. If she thought him so, he had no right to demur.

There was no need of other words. The eyes, after their first terrified

glance, had fixed themselves out on the night, and then the lids fell,

and the wondering, stunned look changed slowly into one of perfect

comprehension. Not a muscle moved. The present, leaping forward, laid

before her the future, scorched and seared, beyond possibility of bloom

again. She looked into it with just the same attitude--even to the

tapering fingers laid lightly on the railing--as five minutes before she

had dreamed over a land of promise. He, looking down on her white

face--whiter in the silver powder of the moonlight--saw a look of utter,

hopeless quiet settle there--such quiet as one sees in an unclosed

coffin, such marble, impassive calm, neither reproachful nor grieving,

as covers deadly wounds--settle never again to rise till Death shall

sweep it off. Some lives are stamped at once and forever; and faces

gather in an hour the look that haunts them for a lifetime.

Then he knew that no one ever bears the consequences of a sin alone. On

this woman, for whom he would have gone to death, he had drawn down the

curse. He was powerless to help her; all that he could give--the promise

of lifelong love and tenderness--was itself a deadly wrong--would blast

his life in giving, hers in receiving. In the minutes that he stood

there, gazing into her face, all the waves and billows of bitterest

realization of helplessness went over his heart.

She turned to go away. 'Marguerite!' The man's despairing soul, his

bitter struggles and failures, atoned for in this last agony, made

itself utterance in that one cry. She turned back, without looking up;

even his eager gaze could not force up the heavy lids. Then, with that

sweet, miraculous woman's grace of patience and pity, she put out her

hand, and as he bowed his head over it, touched her lips to his cheek

with quick, light contact, and glided away.

Earliest morning shimmered lances of gray, ghostly light on the horizon,

and across the sea to the waiting shore. They struck grayest and

ghostliest on a high balcony, where a woman's figure crouched, swathed

in damp, trailing drapery, with silky, falling hair about a still face,

and steadfast eyes that had burned just as steadfastly through the long

hours gone by. Great, calm stars, circling slowly, had slipped out of

sight into the waves; the restless, grieving ocean had swayed all night

with heavy beat against the beach; mysterious whisperings had stirred

the broad summer leaves, heavy with dew and moonlight; faint night

noises had drifted up to her, leaving the silence unrippled by an echo;

till the old moon dropped a wasted, blood-red crescent out of sight, and

the world, exhausted with the passion of the yearning night, shrouded

itself in the gloom and quiet that comes before the dawn.

To the watcher, who, with strained, unconscious attention, had taken in

every change of the night, the promise of the day came almost as a

personal wrong. That the glare of the sunshine should fall on her

pain--that the necessity for meeting mere acquaintances with the same

face as yesterday should exist, now that her life lay so scorched and

sere before her, filled her with rebellious impatience.

But when, with the growing light, the first sounds of household waking

came to her, she rose wearily, and went, with tired, heavy steps to her

own room. And Nelly, coming in half an hour later, with an indefinite

sense of uneasiness, found an older face than last evening's on the

pillow, with harder lines about the mouth, and with a wearier droop of

the eyelids. The voice, too, that answered her good morning, had a kind

of echoing dreariness in it. But such traces are not patent to many eyes

or ears, and Nelly did not realize them.

There are a few women, mostly of this dark, slender type, who bear these

wrenching heart agonies as some animals bear extremest suffering of

body--not a sound or struggle testifies to pain--receiving blow after

blow without hope or thought of appeal--going off by and by to die, or

to suffer back to life alone. Not much merit in it, perhaps--a passive,

hopeless endurance of an inevitable torture; but such tortures warp or

shape a lifetime. Rarely ever eyes that have watched out such a night

see the sun rise with its old promise.

Clement Moore, coming slowly back to life after a fortnight of delirium,

found the woods ablaze with October, and Miss Berkeley gone. Another

fortnight, and he was with his regiment. Captain George--off on some

scouting expedition--was not in camp to meet him. But stretched out on

the dry turf a night or two after, through the clash of the band on the

hillside above broke Captain George's sonorous voice, and straightway

followed such a catalogue of questions as dwellers in camps have always

ready to propound to the latest comer from the northward. Concluding

finally with--

'And you didn't fall in love with 'the princess'?' Poor Captain George!

The prodigious effort _ought_ to have kept the heart throb out of his

voice, though it didn't. Moore's quick ear caught it (sympathy has a

wonderfully quickening effect on the perceptions sometimes), and he took

refuge in a truth that in no way touched the past few months--feeling

like a coward and traitor meanwhile, and yet utterly helpless to save

either himself or his friend from coming evil. Another item added to

retributive justice.

'I thought you knew'--flashing the diamond on his hand in the

moonlight--'somewhere beyond the lines yonder a lady wears the companion

to this--or did, last spring.'

And George's spirits rose immensely thereupon.

The old, miserable monotony of camp life began again. It wore on him,

this machine-like existence, this blind, unquestioning obedience, days

and nights of purposeless waiting, brightened by neither hope nor

memory. He had hated it before; now he loathed it with the whole

strength of his unrestful soul. But it did him good. Brought face to

face with his life, he met the chances of his future like the man he

was, and at last, out of the blackness end desolation, came the comfort

of conquering small, every-day temptations, more of a comfort than we

are willing to admit at first thought.

This bare, unbroken life cuts straight down to the marrow of a man.

Stripped of all conventionalities, individuals come out broadly. The

true metal shows itself grandly in this strange, impartial throwing

together of social elements--this commingling on one level of all ranks

and conditions of men in the same broad glare of every-day trial,

unmodified by any of society's false lights. The factitious barriers of

rank once broken over, all early associations, whether of workshop or

college, go for nought, or, rather, for what they are worth. The _man_

gravitates to his proper place, whether he makes himself known with the

polished sentences of the school, or in terse, sinewy, workman's talk.

And through the months Moore learned to respect humanity as it showed

itself, made gentler to every one, driven out from himself, perhaps, by

the bitterness and darkness that centred in his own heart. It was a new

phase of life for him, but he bated his haughty Southern exclusiveness

to meet it. Before, he had kept himself aloof as far as the surroundings

allowed from those about him--now, his never-failing good nature, his

flow of song and story, his untiring physical endurance, all upborne by

a certain proud delicacy and reticence, made him a general favorite. But

he hailed as a relief the long, exhausting marches that came after a

while. Bodily weariness stood in the place of head or heart exercise,

and men falling asleep on the spot where they halted for the night,

after a day in the clinging Virginia mud, had little time for the noisy

outbreaks that filled the evenings in days of inaction. So he did his

private's duty bravely, with cheery patience, relieving many a slender

boy's arms of his gun, helping many another with words of cheer as he

slumped on at his side, always with some device for making their dreary

night-stops more endurable. Thanksgiving came and went. George went

home on furlough. Moore refused one, and ate the day's extra allowance

of tough beef and insipid rice with much fought-against memories of his

New England festivals. The winter went on. Christmas days came. The

man's brown face was getting positively thinner with homesick

recollections of the Southern carnival. This brilliant, ready spirit,

who never grew sour nor selfish under any circumstances, actually spent

two good hours, the afternoon before Christmas day, in a brown study,

and with a suspicious, tightened feeling in his throat, and mistiness in

his eyes. Coming in at nightfall from his picket duty, tired and hungry,

Jim Murphy, stretching his long length before the fire, rose on his

elbow to find half a dozen epistles he had brought down to camp that

day.

'Yer letthers, Musther Moore.' Jim, even with his sudden accession of

independence as an American citizen, paid unconscious deference to the

world-old subtile difference between gentleman and 'rough,' and used the

title involuntarily.

He opened them sitting by the same fire, munching his hard tack as he

read. Murphy, watching him, saw his lips quiver and work over one

bearing half a dozen postmarks--a letter from his mother, conveyed

across the lines by some sleight-of-hand of influence or pay, and mailed

and remailed from place to place, till weeks had grown into months since

it was written. Noncommittal as it had need to be--filled with home

items to the last page--there his heart stood still, to bound again

furiously back, and his breath came sharp and hot. He rose blinded and

staggering. Jim Murphy, seeing how white and rigid his face had grown,

came toward him, putting out his hand with a dumb impulse of sympathy,

not understanding how the shock of a great hope, springing full grown

into existence, sometimes puts on the semblance of as great a loss.

Private Moore's application for a furlough being duly made, that night

was duly granted.

'Just in time--the last one for your regiment!' said the good-natured

official, registering the necessary items.

In another hour he was whirling away, and in early evening two days

later he stepped out into the clear moonlight and crisp air of a

Northern city.

A New England sleighing season was at its height. The streets were

crowded with swift-flying graceful vehicles, the air ringing with bell

music and chimes of voices. Out through the brilliant confusion he went

to the quiet square where the great trees laid a dark tracery of shadow

upon the snow beneath. No thought of the accidents of absence or

company, or any of the chances of everyday life, had occurred to him

before. A carriage stood at the door. He almost stamped with impatience

till the door opened and he was admitted. The change to the warm,

luxurious gloom of the parlors quieted him a little, but he paced up and

down with long strides while he waited. The strong stillness that he had

resolutely maintained was broken down now with a feverish restlessness.

She came at length--it seemed to him forever first--with the rustle and

shimmer of trailing lengths of silk down the long room. A fleecy mist

covered neck and arms, and some miracle of a carriage wrapping lay white

and soft about her face. She did not recognize him in the obscurity; his

message of 'a friend' had not betrayed him. But his voice, with its new,

proud hopefulness, its under vein triumphant and eager, struck her into

a blinding, giddy whirl, in which voice and words were lost. It passed

in a moment, and he was saying, 'And I am free now--honorably free--and

have come where my heart has been, ever since that month on the seaside.

Most gracious and sovereign lady,'--he broke into sudden, almost

mirthful speech, dropping on one knee with a semblance of humility

proved no mockery by the diamond light in the brown eyes and the

reverent throb that came straight from his voice.

She bent over him as he knelt, and drew her cool, soft hands across his

forehead and down his face, and her even, silvery syllables cut like

death:

'Mr. Moore, last night I promised to marry your friend, Captain Morris.'

For the space of a minute stillness like the grave filled the room, and

then all the intense strain of heart and nerve gave way, as the bitter

tide of disappointment broke in and rolled over his future; and without

word or sound he dropped forward at her feet.

She knelt down beside him with a low, bitter cry. It reached his dulled

sense; he rose feebly.

'Forgive me; I have not been myself of late, I think; and this--this was

so sudden,' and he walked away with dull, nerveless tread.

On the table, near her, lay her handkerchief. It breathed of heliotrope.

Her words came back to him: 'Only in coffins, about still, dead faces.'

He stopped in his walk and looked down on her. Forever he should

remember all that ghostly sheen of silvery white about a rigid face with

unutterably sad fixed mouth and drooping lids. He thrust the fleecy

handful into his breast.

'I may keep this?' and took permission from her silence.

'Good-by;' the words came through ashy lips, a half sob. She knelt as

impassive as marble, as cold and white. He waited a moment for the word

or look that did not come, turned away, the hall door fell heavily shut,

and he was gone.

Fifteen minutes after, Miss Berkeley was whirling to the house where she

was to officiate as bridesmaid, and where she was haughtier, and colder,

and ten times more attractive than ever.

Private Moore, waiting for the midnight return train, found life a grim

prospect.

Three weeks after, a summons came from the captain's tent. George had

just returned from his own furlough, and this was their first meeting.

Even while their hands clasped, his new, happy secret told itself.

'Congratulate me, Clement Moore! You remember Lois Berkeley? She has

promised to be Lois Berkeley Morris one day!' and, with happy lover's

egotism, did not notice the gray shade about his hearer's lips.

Various items of news followed.

'A truce boat goes over to-morrow,' remembering the fact suddenly;

'there will be opportunity to send a few letters; so, if you wish to

write to that lady 'beyond the lines'--

The voice that replied was thin and harsh:

'Miss Rose declined alliance with a 'Yankee hireling,' and was married

last October.'

Honest George wrung his friend's hand anew, and heaped mental anathemas

on his own stupidity for not seeing how haggard and worn the dark face

had grown--anathemas which were just enough, perhaps, only he hardly saw

the reason in quite the right light. But he spared all allusions to his

own prospects thereafter, and finding that Moore rather avoided than

sought him, measured and forgave the supposed cause by his own heart.

At length came a time when a new life and impulse roused into action

even that slowly moved great body, the officers of the Potomac Army, and

that much-abused and sorely tried insignificant item, the army itself.

On every camp ground reigned the confusion of a flitting. All the roads

were filled with regiments hurrying southward, faces growing more and

more hazard with fatigue and privation, weak and slender forms falling

from the ranks, cowards and traitors skulking to the rear, till at

length on the banks of the river stood an army, hungry, footsore,

marchworn, but plucky, and ready for any service that might be required

of them, even if that service were but to 'march up the hill and then

march down again'--what was left of them.

An atom in the moving mass of blue, Clement Moore shared the pontoon

crossing, was silent through the storms of cheers that greeted each

regiment as they splashed over and up the bank, and, drawn up in line of

battle at last, surveyed the field without a pulsation of emotion. Other

men about him chafed at the restraint; he stood motionless, with eyes a

thousand miles away. And when the advance sounded, and the line started

with a cheer, no sound passed his lips. A half-unconscious prayer went

up that he might fall there, and have it over with this life battle,

that had gone so sorely against him. He moved as in a dream. The whirl

and roar of battle swept around and by him; he charged with the

fiercest, saw the blue lines reel and break only to close up and charge

again, took his life in his hand a dozen times, and stood at length with

the few who held that first line of rifle pits, gazing in each other's

faces in the momentary lull, and wondering at their own existence. Then

came a shock, shivers of red-hot pain ran through every nerve, and

then--blissful, cool unconsciousness. Captain George, galloping by, with

the red glare of battle on his face, saw the fall, and halted. A half

dozen ready hands swung the body to his saddle. For a little the tide of

battle eddied away, and in the comparative quiet, George tore down the

hill to a spring bubbling out under the cedars.

The darkness that wrapped the wounded man dissolved gradually. The

thunder and crash of guns, the mad cheers, the confusion of the bands

withdrew farther and farther, and drifted away from his failing senses.

He was back in his Southern home; the arm under his head was his

mother's; and he murmured some boyish request. Jasmine and clematis

oppressed him with their oversweetness; overhead the shining leaves of

the magnolia swung with slow grace. So long since he had seen a

magnolia, not since that evening--a life time ago, it seemed; the sight

and fragrance fell on him as her cool touch did that last time. The

heart throbs choked him then; he was choking again. 'Water, mother--a

drink!' and something wet his lips and trickled down his throat, not

cool and sweet as the rippling water he longed for, and he turned away

with sickly fretfulness; but a new strength thrilled through his limbs.

He opened his eyes; a face, battle-stained, but tear-wet like a woman's,

bent over him.

'O Clement, dear old fellow, do you know me?'

He smiled faintly, with stiffening lips. 'Yes, I know. I've prayed for

it, George. I couldn't live to see her your wife. Good-by, dear boy.

Tell mother--' He wandered again. 'Kiss me, mother--now Lois, my

Marguerite. Into thy hands, O Lord--' A momentary struggle for breath,

and then Morris laid back the grand head, and knelt, looking down on the

beautiful face, over which the patient strength of perfect calm had

settled forever.

'So that was it, after all,' he said, bitterly. 'Fool not to see; and he

was worth a generation of such as I.'

He turned away, tightened his saddle girths, cast a look on the

pandemonium before him, looked back with one foot already in the

stirrup.

'I sha'n't see him again in this hell, even if I come out of it myself.'

And going back, with gentle fingers he removed the few trinkets on the

body. In an inner pocket of the blouse he found a small packet. He

opened it on the spot. A lady's handkerchief, silky fine, white as ever.

No need of the delicate tracery in the corners to tell him whose. The

perfume that haunted it still called back too vividly that evening when

he had wondered at and loved her more for the strange, perfect calm that

chilled a little his outburst of happiness. He folded it back carefully,

touched his lips as a woman might have done to the cold forehead, and

mounted, plunging up the hill to the fight that had recommenced over the

trench. Later in the day, the ball that fate moulded for Captain George

found him. He gave one low, pitiful cry as it crashed through his bridle

arm, and then a merciful darkness closed about him.

Two months after, white and thin, with one empty sleeve fastened across

his chest, he stood where another had stood waiting for the same woman.

Through the window drifted in the early spring fragrance; a handful of

early spring flowers lay on the table. A soft rustle and slow step

through the hall, and he rose as Lois came in. She glanced at the empty

sleeve with grave, wide eyes, and sat down near him. He would not have

known the face before him, it had so altered; the hair pushed back from

hollow, blue-veined temples, the sharpened, angular outlines, and an

old, suffering look about the mouth and sunken eyes.

Few words were spoken--nothing beyond the most commonplace greetings.

Then she said:

'I should have come to you, but I have been ill myself; near death, I

believe,' she added, wearily.

She gave the explanation with no throb of feeling. She would have

apologized for a careless dress with more spirit once.

He rose and laid a packet before her.

'A lady's handkerchief--yours, I think. I was with him when he died,

though his body was not found afterward. I was hurt myself, you know,

and could not attend to it,' he said, deprecatingly.

She did not touch it, looking from it up to him with eyes filled with

just such a grieved, questioning look as might come into the eyes of

some animal dying in torture. He could not endure it. He put out his

white, wasted left hand.

'My poor child!' She shivered, caught her breath with a sob, and,

burying her face in the pillows of a couch, gave way to her first tears

in an agony of weeping. And he sat apart, not daring to touch her, nor

to speak--wishing, with unavailing bitterness, that it had been he who

was left lying stark and still beneath the cedars.

The storm passed. She lay quiet now, all but the sobs that shook her

whole slight frame. He said, at last, very gently:

'If I had known--you should have told me. He was my best friend.' His

voice trembled a little. 'I know how I must seem to you. His murderer,

perhaps; surely the murderer of your happiness.' A deeper quaver in the

sorrowful tones. 'It is too late now, I know; but if it would help you

ever so little to be released from your promise--'

There was no reply.

'You are free. I am going now.' He bent over her for a breath, making a

heart picture of the tired face, the closed eyes, and grieved mouth.

Only to take her up for a moment, with power to comfort her--he would

have given his life for that--and turned away with a great, yearning

pain snatching at his breath. In the hall he paused a moment, trying to

think. A light step, a frail hand on his arm, a wistful face lifted to

his.

'Forgive me; I have been very unkind. You are so good and noble. I will

be your wife, if you will be any happier.'

He looked down at her pityingly. 'You are very tired. Shall you say that

when you are rested again? Remember, you are free.'

'If not yours, then never any one's.'

His arm fell about her, his lips touched her forehead quietly; he led

her back to her couch, and arranged her pillow, smiling a little at his

one awkward hand.

'I shall not see you again before I go back, unless you send for me.'

She put out her hand and touched the bowed face quickly and lightly; and

with that touch thrilling in his veins he went away.

Through Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Charleston siege, Captain

George, no longer captain, now twice promoted for cool bravery, has

borne a charmed life--a grave, calm man, remembering always a still

face, 'pathetic with dying.'

Out from the future is turned toward him another face, no less pathetic

in its unrest of living. The soldiers in the Capital hospitals, dragging

through the weary weeks of convalescence, know that face well. For hours

of every day she goes about busied with such voluntary service as she is

permitted to do. She sees tired faces brighten at her coming--is

welcomed by rough and gentle voices. Always patient, ready, thoughtful,

she is 'spending' herself--waiting for the end.

THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER

LANGUAGES.

_ARTICLE TWO._

CORRESPONDING FIRST DISCRIMINATIONS IN THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE.

The purpose of these papers, as announced and partially carried forward

in the preceding one, is to explain the nature of the NEW SCIENTIFIC

UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, a component part of the new Science of UNIVERSOLOGY,

and to exhibit its relation to the Lingual Structures hitherto extant.

For this purpose we entered upon the necessary preliminary consideration

of the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. We found that the

latest developments of Comparative Philology upon this subject, as

embodied in Prof. Mueller's recent work, 'Lectures on the Science of

Language,' brought us no farther along to the goal of our investigation

than Compound Roots--one-, two-, three-, four-, five--(or more) letter

Roots--some four or five hundred of which are the insoluble residuum

which the Philologists furnish as the Ultimate Elements of Language. It

was pointed out that these Roots are not, however, the _Ultimate_

Elements of Language, any more than Compound Substances are the Prime

Constituents of Matter; and that, as Chemistry, as a Science, could

begin its career, only after a knowledge of the veritable Ultimate

Elements of the Physical Constitution of the Globe was obtained, so a

_True Science of Language_ must be based upon an understanding of the

value and meaning of the True Prime or Ultimate Elements of Speech--the

_Vowels_ and _Consonants_.

It is with the exposition of the nature of these Fundamental

Constituents of Language, and of their Correspondential Relationship or

_Analogy_ with the Fundamental Constituents of Thought, the Ultimate

Rational Conceptions of the Mind, that the New UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE begins

its developments. Through its agency we may hope to find, therefore, a

satisfactory solution to the problem of the Origin of Speech, which

Comparative Philology abandons at the critical point, and so to be able

to pass to the consideration of the more specific objects of our present

inquiry.

* * * * *

UNIVERSOLOGY establishes the fact that there is Analogy or Repetition of

Plan throughout the various Departments of the Universe. It

demonstrates, in other words, that the same Principles which generate,

and the same Laws which regulate, the Phenomena of the Universe as a

whole, fulfil the same functions in connection with the Phenomena of

every one of its parts. The Mathematical, Psychological, or any other

specific Domain is, therefore, an expression or embodiment of the same

System of Principles and Laws, with reference to both Generals and

Details, which is otherwise exhibited in Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry,

and elsewhere universally; just as the same Architectural Plan may be

variously employed in constructions of different size, material, color,

modes of ornamentation, etc.; and may be modified to suit the

requirements of each individual construction. To every Elementary Form

of _Thought_ there is, consequently, a corresponding and related Law of

_Number_, of _Form_, of _Color_, of _Chemical_ Constitution, and of

_Oral Sound_ or _Speech_. Every Basic Idea, to state it otherwise,

pertaining to the Universe at large or to any of its Divisions, has its

counterpart or double in every other Division. Or, to express it yet

another way: the manifold, diverse, and unlike Appearances or Phenomena

which the Universe presents to our understanding, are not _radically_

and _essentially_ different; but are the same Typal Ideas or Thoughts of

God or of Nature, arrayed in various garbs, and, hence, assuming varying

presentations. The Numerical _Unit_, the Geometrical _Point_, the

Written _Dot_, the _Globule_, the Chemical _Atom_, the Physical

_Molecule_, the Physiological _Granule_, the _Yod_ or _Iota_, the least

Element of Sound, are, for example, _Identical Types_, differently

modified or clothed upon in accordance with the medium through which

they are to be _phenomenally_ presented. It is with this _Echo_ or

Repetitory Relationship, existing between all the Domains of the

Universe, but more particularly as exhibited between the two Domains of

_Ideas_ and _Language_, that we are at present concerned.

It is sufficiently obvious that Analogy should be sought for first, in

the _Generals_ of any department under examination, and, subsequently,

through them, in the _Particulars_. In respect to the two Domains now

under special consideration, this relation is between the Fundamental

Elements of Thought, including those called by the Philosophers the

Categories of the Understanding, and the Fundamental Elements of

Language. In pointing out the Correspondence subsisting between the

Elements of these two Domains, I shall use, partly by way of

condensation, and partly by copious extracts, the Elaborate Expositions

contained in the yet unpublished text books of Universology. And, as

what follows relating to this subject will consist, almost wholly, of

this material, I do not deem it essential to encumber the page with

numerous and unnecessary quotation marks. It is advisable to caution the

Reader, however, that as my present purpose is explanation and

illustration only, and not formal demonstration, what is about to be

given will be mostly in the nature of mere statement, unaccompanied by

any other evidence of its truthfulness than may be found in the

self-supporting reasonableness of the statements themselves.

* * * * *

It was the basic and axiomatic proposition of Hegel's Philosophy, that

the first discrimination of Thought and Being in any sphere is into two

factors, a _Something_ and a _Nothing_;--that which constitutes the

_main_ or _predominant_ element of the Conception or Creation, and that

which we endeavor to exclude from contemplation or activity, but which,

nevertheless, by virtue of the impossibility of _perfect_ or _absolute_

abstraction, inevitably becomes a _minor_ or _subordinate_ element in

the Idea or the Act which may be engaging the attention. _Something_ and

_Nothing_ are also averred to be _equal_ factors in the Constitution of

Thoughts or Things, because both are alike indispensable to the

cognition of either; because, in other words, it is only by the presence

of the _Nothing_ as a _background_ or _contrasting_ element, that the

_Something_ has an independent or cognizable existence. If there were no

blank space, for instance, there could be no Moon, relatively, or so far

as our ability to perceive it is concerned. For the Moon is, in this

illustration, a _Something_ which is visible to us, and of which we have

a knowledge, only by reason of the fact that it is surrounded by and

contrasted with that which is _not_ Moon, and which, in reference to the

particular aspect under consideration is, therefore, a _Nothing_; though

it in turn may be a _Something_ or main object of attention in some

other view or conception, where some other factor shall be the Nothing.

That this Relationship of Antithesis and Rank existed, as between the

Constituents of some Thoughts or Things, was known from the earliest

times, and gave rise to the terms _Positive_ and _Negative_, expressive

of it. But Hegel was the first--of modern Philosophers, at least--to

point out its necessarily _Universal_ and fundamental character, and to

assume it as the starting-point in the development of all Philosophy and

Science.

So far as concerns the investigation of the Universe from the

_Philosophical_ point of view (which is the less precise and definite

aspect), Hegel is right in affirming that the first discrimination of

all Thought and Being is that between _Something_ and _Nothing_. But he

is wrong in regarding the starting-point or first differentiation of

_Science_, as being identical with that of _Philosophy_. Science

considers, primarily and predominantly, the more exact and rigorous

relations of Phenomena; and the existence of an _exact_ and _definite_

point of departure in Thought and Being, more fundamental, from the

Scientific or rigorously precise point of view, than that of Hegel, is

the initiatory proposition of UNIVERSOLOGY.

A full explanation of the nature of this Starting-point is not, however,

in place here. And as the discrimination into _Something_ and _Nothing_

serves all the purposes of our present inquiry, a single word respecting

the character of the Universological Point of Departure in question is

all that it is now necessary to say concerning it.

This Starting-point of Thought and Action has reference to the Ideas of

_Oneness_ (Primitive Unity) and _Twoness_ (Plurality). These conceptions

give rise to _two_ Primordial Principles, which form the basis of the

development of UNIVERSOLOGY, and which are fundamental in every

Department of the Universe and in the Universe as a whole, namely: _The

Principle of Unism_ (from the Latin _unus_, _one_), the _Spirit_ of the

Number _One_, the Principle of _Undifferentiated_, _Unanalyzed_,

_Agglomerative_ Unity; and _The Principle of_ DUISM (from the Latin

_duo_, _two_), the _Spirit_ of the Number _Two_, the Principle of

_Differentiation_, _Analysis_, _Separation_, _Apartness_, or

_Plurality_, typically embodied in _Two_, the first division of the

Primitive Unity, and especially representative of the Principle of

Disunity, the essence of all division or plurality. _One_, in the Domain

of _Number_, and UNISM, in the Department of Primordial Principles,

correspond, it must be added, with _The Absolute_ (the Undifferentiated

and Unconditioned), as one of the Aspects of Being; while _Two_, in the

Domain of _Number_, and _Duism_, among Primordial Principles, are allied

with _The Relative_ (the Differentiated and Conditioned), of which

latter Domain _Something_ and _Nothing_ are the two Prime Factors. The

distinction between _One_ and _Two_, or their analogous Aspects of

Being, _Absolute_ and _Relative_, is, therefore, prior to that between

_Something_ and _Nothing_, because _Something_ and _Nothing_ are two

terms of _The Relative_ (_Two_), which has first to be itself

discriminated from _The Absolute_ (_One_) before it can be sub-divided

into these two factors.

While the nature of this discrimination into _Something_ and _Nothing_

may be sufficiently intelligible to the student of Metaphysics, it may

not be so to the Reader unaccustomed to Philosophical Speculation. For

the purpose, therefore, of rendering it somewhat clearer, I will point

out the manner in which it exhibits itself in respect to the

Constitution of the External World and elsewise.

The Totality of all material objects and substances is the _Positive_

Material Universe. This is contained in _Space_, which is the _Negative_

Material Universe. Compoundly the two, _Matter_ and _Space_, are the

whole Material Universe, as to the Parts or Constituent Factors of which

it consists.

Theoretically, and in one, and by no means an unimportant sense, the

_Zero_-Element or _Nothing_-side of the Universe or of a given

Department of Being, is one whole half, or an equal hemisphere of the

Totality of Being. Thus, for example, _Zero_ (0) in the usage of the

Arabic Numbers, while it is represented in an obscure way merely by a

single figure below the nine digits, yet stands over, in a sense,

against all the digits, and all their possible combinations, as equal to

them all in importance. For it is by means of this _Zero_ (0) that the

One (1) for instance, becomes 10, 100, 1000, etc.; and that all the

_Positive_ Numbers acquire their relative values, according to the

places or positions in space which they occupy.

In another sense, however, the Negative Ground of Being, in the Universe

at large, or in any given Domain, quickly sinks out of view, and

Positive Being becomes the whole of what is commonly regarded. It is in

this sense that, ordinarily, in speaking of The Digits of Number, the

_Zero_ is left out of the count.

In the same manner, when speaking or thinking of the Material Universe,

while the notion of _Space_ is ever present, and is, in the absolute

sense, an equal half of the whole conception, still it is Matter, the

total congeries of objects and substances in Space, of which we mainly

think; the Space, as such, being understood and implied, but

subordinated as a mere _negative_ adjunct of the _positive_ idea.

In strictness, _Matter_ and _Space_ are so mutually dependent on each

other, that either without the other is an impossible conception. The

notion of Space permeates that of Matter; passing through it, so to

speak, as well as surrounding it; so that it needs no proof that Matter

cannot be conceived of as existing without Space. But, on the other

hand, Space is only the negation of Matter; the shadow, as it were, cast

by Matter; and, so, dependent on Matter for the very origin of the idea

in the mind.

If _Space_, therefore, be the analogue of _Nothing_; _Matter_, wholly

apart from Space, is only a _theoretical_ Something, really and actually

as much a Nothing as Space itself, when abstractly considered in its

equally impossible separation from Matter. But Matter, completely

separated from Space, is the exact external analogue of the _Something_

opposed to the _Nothing_ of abstract Metaphysical Thinking. Here, then,

is a lucid exposition, by virtue of these analogies, of the famous

Metaphysical Axiom of Hegel, which, at its announcement, threw all

Europe into amazement:

_Something_ = (_equal to_) _Nothing_.

It is the logic of this statement that all _Reality_ or Relative Being

is a product of two factors, each of which is a _Nothing_. The

strangeness of this proposition will disappear when it is recognized

that these two Nothings are mere aspects or sides of presentation of the

Product, which is itself the only Reality. In respect to the _Real

Being_, those two sides are _Nothings_. But, as appearances or ideal

views of the Reality under the process of analytical abstraction in the

mind, they are so far _Somethings_ as to receive names and to be treated

of and considered as _if_ they were _Realities_. _Reality_ in the

_Absolute_ aspect, the aspect of _Undifferentiated Unity_, (Unismal),

contains these two factors interblended and undiscriminated. In the

_Relative_ aspect, that of _Duality_, (Duismal), it is the compound of

these two factors separated and distinguished. Finally, in the

_Integral_ aspect of _Compound Unity_ (Trinismal), it consists of the

_Unismal_ and the _Duismal_ aspects contrasted--the only _real_ state,

or possible condition of actual existence. _And this is the Type of all

Reality or Real Existence in every department of Being in the Universe._

But practically and ordinarily, these strictly analytical views of the

question of existence are abandoned. Reality, compounded, as we have

seen that it is when viewed in this way, of a Positive and a Negative

Factor, is assumed as itself a Simple Element and set over against the

grand residuum of Negation in the Universe of Being. This is what Kant,

less analytical than Hegel, has done, when, in distributing the

Categories of Thought, he has contrasted REALITY with NEGATION.

This is, as if, in respect to the External Material World, we were to

divide Matter--the Planets, for example, first assigning to them the

portions of Space which they bodily and respectively fill as if it were

a part of themselves--from the remaining ocean or grand residuum of

Space which surrounds them and in which they float. This residuum of

Space would then be spoken of as _Space_, and the Planetary Bodies,

_along with and including the spaces which they fill_, would be spoken

of as _Matter_. This is a kind of division, less analytical, but more

convenient, obvious, and practical, than the other which would attempt

to separate the whole of Space from the Matter within Space. It is in

this more practical manner that we _ordinarily_ think of the division of

the Heavens into the Domains of _Matter_ and _Space_.

Between _Reality_, then, including a subordinate portion of Space--the

content and volume of the Planet--and the grand ocean of Space, outlying

and surrounding the Planet, there is _Limitation_, the outline of the

Planet, the _Limit_ or dividing surface between the space within it and

the space without.