"I fancy the chiefs of your party would demand a great deal more than a

bare decent living. Mr. Bailey, the rights of property rest on just this

fact in human nature: A man will work better for himself than he will for

somebody else. And you can't get him to work unless he is guaranteed the

fruits of his labor. Capital is brain, and Labor is muscle, but the brain

has as much to do with the creation of wealth as muscle: more, for it can

invent machines and do without muscle, while muscle cannot do without

brain. You can't alter human nature, Mr. Bailey. If you had a Commune,

every man would be for himself there as he is here: the weak would have

less protection than even now, for all the restraints of morality, which

are bound up inseparably with rights of property, would have been thrown

aside. Marx and Lasallis and Bradlaugh, clever as they are, can't prevent

the survival of the fittest. You knock your head against a stone wall, Mr.

Bailey, when you fight society. You have been knocking it all your life,

and now you are angry because your head is hurt. If you had never tried to

strip other men of their earnings because you fancied you ought to have

more, as skilful a blacksmith as you would have saved money and been a

capitalist himself. Supposing you give it up? Our firm will give you a

chance to make ploughshares and earn twenty dollars a week if you will

only promise not to strike us in return the first chance you get."

The workingman had listened with a curling lip. "Do you mean that for an

offer?" he said in a smothered voice.

"I mean it for an offer, certainly."

"Oh, William!" cried his wife, turning appealing eyes up to his face.

He grew suddenly white, and brought his clenched hand heavily down on the

table. The dishes rattled with the jar, and the baby, scared at the noise,

began to scream. "Then," said Bailey, "you may just understand that a man

ain't always a sneak if he _is_ poor; and you can be glad you ain't a man

that's tempting me to turn traitor."

"I am sure my friend didn't mean to hurt your feelings," Mrs. Greymer

explained quickly, giving the countess that expressive side-glance which

much more plainly than words says, "Now you _have_ done it!" Mrs. Bailey

was walking up and down soothing the baby: the little boy looked on

open-eyed.

"I am sorry if I have said anything which has seemed like an insult," said

the countess: "I certainly didn't intend one. Perhaps after you have

thought it all over you will feel differently. You know where to find me.

Good-evening."

She held out her hand, which Bailey did not seem to see, smiled on the

little boy and went out, leaving Mrs. Greymer behind.

A little girl with pretty brown curls and deep-blue eyes was making

sand-caves on the shore. The countess spoke to her in passing, and left

her staring at her two hands, which were full of silver coin. At the

bridge the countess paused to wait for her friend. She saw her come out,

attended by Mrs. Bailey: she saw Mrs. Bailey watch her, saw the little

girl give her mother the money, and then she saw the woman, still carrying

her baby in her arms, walk slowly down the river-bank to where a boat lay

keel uppermost like a great black arrowhead on the sand. Here she sat

down, and, clasping the child closer, hid her face in its white hair.

"And, upon my soul, I believe she is crying," said the spectator, who

stopped at the commandant's house and obtained the pass before she went

home.

On Monday, Mrs. Greymer proposed asking little Willie Bailey to spend a

week with them. The countess assented, merely saying, "You must take the

little skeleton to drive every day, and send the livery-bills to me."

"Then I shall drive over this afternoon if Freddy's sore throat is

better," said Mrs. Greymer.

But she did not go: Freddy's sore throat was worse instead of better, and

his sister had enough to do for some days fighting off diphtheria. So it

happened that it was a week before she was able to go to D----. She found

the Baileys' door swinging on its hinges, and a high-stepping hen of

inquisitive disposition investigating the front room: the Baileys had

gone.

"They went to Chicago four days ago," an amiable neighbor explained: "they

didn't say what fur. The little boy he cried 'cause he wanted to go on the

island fust. Guess _he_ ain't like to live long: he's a weak, pinin'

little chap."

Only once did Therese hear from Mrs. Bailey. The letter came a few days

after her useless drive to D----. It was dated Chicago, and expressed

simply but fervently her gratitude for all Mrs. Greymer's kindness.

Enclosed were three one-dollar bills, part payment, the writer said, "of

my debt to Mrs. von Arno, and I hope she won't think I meant to run away

from it because I can't just now send more." There was no allusion to her

present condition or her prospects for the future. Mrs. Greymer read the

letter aloud, then held out the bills to the countess.

She pushed them aside as if they stung her. "What does the woman think I

am made of?" she exclaimed. "Why, it's hideous, Therese! Write and tell

her I never meant her to pay me."

"I am afraid the letter won't reach her," said Mrs. Greymer.

Nor did it: in due course of time Therese received her own letter back

from the Dead-Letter Office. The words of interest and sympathy, the plans

and encouragement, sounded very oddly to her then, for, as far as they

were concerned, Martha Bailey's history was ended. It was in July the

countess had met them again. She was in Chicago. Otto was dead. He had

given back to his wife by his will the property which had come to him

through her: whether because of a late sense of justice or a dislike to

his heir, a distant cousin who wrote theological works and ate with his

knife, the countess never ventured to decide. The condition of part of

this property, which was in Chicago, had obliged her to go there. She

arrived on the evening of the fifteenth of July--a day Chicago people

remember because the great railroad strike of 1877 reached the city that

day.

The countess found the air full of wild rumors. Stories of shops closed by

armed men, of vast gatherings of Communists on the North Side, of robbery,

bloodshed and--to a Chicago ear most blood-curdling whisper of all--of a

contemplated second burning of the city, flew like prairie-fire through

the streets.

The countess's lawyer, whom she had visited very early on Thursday

morning, insisted on accompanying her from his office to her friend's

house on the North Side. On Halstead street their carriage suddenly

stopped. Putting her head out of the window, the countess perceived that

the coachman had drawn up close to the curbstone to avoid the onset of a

yelling mob of boys and men armed with every description of weapon, from

laths and brickbats to old muskets. The boys appeared to regard the whole

affair as merely a gigantic "spree," and shouted "Bread or Blood!" with

the heartiest enthusiasm; but the men marched closer, in silence and with

set faces. The gleaming black eyes, sharp features and tangled black hair

of half of them showed their Polish or Bohemian blood. The others were

Norwegians and Germans, with a sprinkling of Irish and Americans. Their

leader was a tall man whom the countess knew. He had turned to give an

order when she saw him. At that same instant a shabby woman ran swiftly

from a side street and tried to throw her arms about the man's neck. He

pushed her aside, and the crowd swept them both out of sight.

"I think I have seen a woman I know," said the countess composedly; "and

do you know, Mr. Wilder, that our horses have gone? Our Communist friends

prefer riding to walking, it seems." They were obliged to get out of the

carriage. The countess looked up and down the street, but saw no trace of

the woman. Apparently, she had followed the mob.

By this time some small boys, inspired by the occasion, had begun to show

their sympathy with oppressed labor by pelting the two well-dressed

strangers with potatoes and radishes, which they confiscated from a

bloated capitalist of a grocer on the corner. The shower was so thick that

Mr. Wilder was relieved when they reached the Halstead street

police-station, where they sought refuge. Here they passed a sufficiently

exciting hour. They could hear plainly the sharp crack of revolvers and

the yells and shouts of the angry mob blending in one indistinguishable

roar. Once a barefooted boy ran by, screaming that the police were driven

back and the Communists were coming. Then a troop of cavalry rode up the

street on a sharp trot, their bridles jingling and horses' hoofs

clattering. The roar grew louder, ebbed, swelled again, then broke into a

multitude of sounds--screams, shouts and the tumultuous rush of many feet.

A polite sergeant opened the door of the little room where the countess

was sitting to inform her the riot was over. They were just bringing in

some prisoners: he was very sorry, but one of them would have to come in

there. He was a prominent rioter whom they had captured trying to bring

off the body of his wife, who had been killed by a chance shot. It would

be only for a short time: the gentleman had gone for a carriage. He hoped

the lady wouldn't mind.

The lady, who had changed color slightly, said she should not mind. The

sergeant held the door back, and some men brought in something over which

had been flung an old blue-and-white shawl. They carried it on a shutter,

and the folds of a calico dress, torn and trampled, hung down over the

side.

Then came two policemen, pushing after the official manner a man covered

with dust and blood.

"Bailey!" exclaimed the countess. Their eyes met.

Bailey bent his head toward the table where the men had laid their burden.

"Lift that," he said hoarsely.

The countess lifted the shawl with a steady hand. There was an old white

straw bonnet flattened down over the forehead; a wisp of blue ribbon

string was blown across the face and over the red smear between the

eyebrow and the hair; the eyes stared wide and glassy. But it was the same

soft brown hair. The countess knew Martha Bailey.

"There was women and children on the sidewalk, but they fired right into

us," said Bailey. He spoke in a monotonous, dragging voice, as though

every word were an effort. "They killed her. I asked you to give me work

in your shop, and you wouldn't do it. Here's the end of it. Now you can go

home and say your prayers."

"I don't say prayers," answered the countess, "and you know I offered you

work. But don't let us reproach each other here. Where are your children?"

"Ain't you satisfied with what you have done already?" said Bailey. "Leave

me alone: you'd better."

"Gently now!" said one of the policemen.

"Whatever you may think of me," said the countess quietly, "you know Mrs.

Greymer was always your wife's friend. We only wanted to help her."

Bailey shook off the grasp of the policemen as though it had been a

feather: with one great stride he reached the countess and caught her

roughly by the wrist. "Look at _her_, will you?" he cried: "you and the

likes of you, with your smooth cant, have killed her! You crush us and

starve us till we turn, and then you shoot us down like dogs. Leave my

children alone."

"None of that, my man!" said the sergeant.

The two policemen would have pulled Bailey away, but the countess stopped

them. She had turned pale even to her lips, but she did not wince.

"Curse you!" groaned the Communist, flinging his arms above his head;

"curse a society which lets such things be! curse a religion--"

The policemen dragged him back. "You'd better go, I think, ma'am," said

the sergeant: "the man's half crazy with the sun and fighting and grief."

"You are right," said the countess. She stopped at the station-door to put

a bill in the policeman's hands: "You will find out about the children and

let me know, please."

Mr. Wilder, who had been standing in the doorway, an amazed witness of the

whole scene, led her out to the carriage. "He's a bad fellow, that

rioter," he said as they drove along.

The countess pulled her cuff over a black mark on her wrist. "No, he is

not half a bad fellow," she answered, "but for all that he has murdered

his wife."

Nor has she ever changed her opinion on that point; neither, so far as is

known, has William Bailey changed his.

OCTAVE THANET.

AT FRIENDS' MEETING.

Sunshine and shadow o'er unsculptured walls

Hang tremulous curtains, radiant and fair;

The breath of summer perfumes all the air;

Afar the wood-bird trills its tender calls.

More eloquent than chanted rituals,

Subtler than odors swinging censers bear,

Purer than hymn of praise or passionate prayer,

The silence, like a benediction, falls.

The still, slow moments softly slip along

The endless thread of thought: a holy throng

Of memories, long prisoned, find release.

The sacred sweetness of the hour has lent

These quiet faces, calm with deep content,

And one world-weary soul alike, the light of peace.

SUSAN M. SPALDING.

LETTERS FROM MAURITIUS.--I.

BY LADY BARKER.

EASTER SUNDAY, April 21, 1878.

"How's her head, Seccuni?"--"Nor'-nor'-east, quarter east, saar." Such had

been the question often asked, at my impatient prompting, of the placid

Lascar quartermaster during the past fortnight. And the answer generally

elicited a sigh from the good-natured captain of the Actæa, a sigh which I

reproduced with a good deal of added woe in its intonation and a slight

dash of feminine impatience. For this easterly bearing was all wrong for

us. "Anything from the south would do," but not a puff seemed inclined to

come our way from the south. Seventeen days ago we scraped over the bar at

the mouth of D'Urban harbor, spread our sails, and fled away before a fair

wind toward the north end of Madagascar, meaning to leave it on the

starboard bow and so fetch "L'Ile Maurice, ancienne Ile de France," as it

is still fondly styled. The fair wind had freshened to a gale a day or two

later, and bowled us along before it, and we had made a rapid and

prosperous voyage so far. Sunny days and cold, clear, starry nights had

come and gone amid the intense and wonderful loveliness of these strange

seas. Not a sail had we passed, not a gull had been seen, scarcely a

porpoise. But now this radiant Easter Sunday morning finds us almost

becalmed on the eastern side of Mauritius, with what air is stirring dead

ahead, but only coming in a cat's-paw now and then. Except for one's

natural impatience to drop anchor it would have been no penance to loiter

on such a day, and so make it a memory which would stand out for ever in

bold relief amid the monotony of life. "A study of color" indeed--a study

in wonderful harmonies of vivid blues and opalesque pinks, amethysts and

greens, indigoes and lakes, all the gem-like tints breaking up into

sparkling fragments every moment, to reset themselves the next instant in

a new and exquisite combination. The tiny island at once impresses me with

a respectful admiration. What nonsense is this the geography-books state,

and I have repeated, about Mauritius being the same size as the Isle of

Wight? Absurd! Here is a bold range of volcanic-looking mountains rising

up grand and clear against the beautiful background of a summer sky, on

whose slopes and in whose valleys, green down to the water's edge, lie

fertile stretches of cultivation. We are not near enough to see whether

the pale shimmer of the young vegetation is due to grass or waving

cane-tops. Bold ravines are cut sharply down the mountainous sides and

lighted up by the silvery glint of rushing water, and the breakers, for

all the mirror-like calm of the sea out here, a couple of miles from

shore, are beating the barrier rocks and dashing their snow aloft with a

dull thud which strikes on the ear in mesmeric rhythm. Yes, it is quite

the fairest scene one need wish to rest wave-worn and eager eyes upon, and

it is still more beautiful if you look over the vessel's side. The sea is

of a Mediterranean blue, and is literally alive with fish beneath, and

lovely sea-creatures floating upon, the sunlit water. It appears as if one

could see down to unknown depths through that clear sapphire medium,

breaking up here and there into pale blue reflections which are even more

enchanting than its intense tints. Fishes, apparently of gold and

rose-color or of a radiant blue barred and banded with silver, dart,

plunge and chase each other after the fragments of biscuit we throw

overboard. Films of crystal and ruby oar themselves gently along the upper

surface or float like folded sea-flowers on the motionless water. A flock

of tiny sea-mews, half the size of the fish, are screaming shrilly and

darting down on the shoal; but as for their catching them, the idea is

preposterous, for the fish are twice as big as the birds.

Still, we want to get on: we sadly want to beat another barque which

started a couple of hours after us from Natal, and we are barely drifting

a knot an hour. It is not in the least too hot. D'Urban was very sultry

when we left, but I have been shivering ever since in my holland gown,

thinking fondly and regretfully of serge skirts and a sealskin jacket down

in the hold. It may be safely taken as an axiom in travelling that you

seldom suffer from cold more than in what are supposed to be hot climates,

and the wary _voyageuse_ will never separate herself hopelessly from her

winter wraps, even when steering to tropical lands. In spite of all my

experience, I am often taken in on this point, and I should have perished

from cold during this voyage as we got farther south if it had not been

for the friendly presence of a rough Scotch plaid. Even the days were cold

on deck out of the sun, and the long nights--for darkness treads close on

the heels of sunset in the winter months of these latitudes--would have

indeed been nipping without warm wraps.

But no one thinks of wraps this balmy Easter Sunday. It is delicious as to

temperature, only we are in an ungrateful hurry, and the stars find us

scarcely a dozen miles from where they left us. I sit up to see myself

safe through the narrow passage between Flat Island and Round Island, and

fall asleep at last to the monotonous chant of so many "fathoms and no

bottom," for we take soundings every five minutes or so in this reefy

region. An apology for wind gets up at last, which takes us round the

north end of the island, and we creep up to the outer anchorage of Port

Louis, on its western shore, slowly but safely in that darkest hour before

dawn.

Bad news travels fast, they say, and some one actually took the trouble of

getting out of his bed and rowing out to us as soon as our anchor was down

to tell us, with apparently great satisfaction, that we had lost our race,

and that we should have to go into quarantine with the earliest dawn.

Having awakened all the sleepers with this soothing intelligence, and

called up a host of bitter feelings of rage and disappointment in the

heart of every one on board, this friendly voice bade us good-night, and

the owner rowed away into the gloom around, apparently at peace with

himself and all the world.

How can I set forth the indignation we all felt to be put in quarantine

because of a little insignificant epidemic of fever at D'Urban, in coming

to a place noted as a hotbed of every variety of fever? If it was measles,

or even chicken-pox, we declared we could have understood it. But _fever_!

This sentiment was found very comforting, and it was a great

disappointment to find how little convincing it appeared to the

authorities. However, the anticipation proved to have been much worse than

the reality, for as we were all perfectly well, and had been so ever since

leaving D'Urban, the quarantine laws became delightfully elastic, and in a

couple of days or so the yellow flag was hauled down, and a more gay and

cheerful bit of bunting proclaimed to our friends on shore that we were no

longer objects of fear and aversion.

In two minutes F---- is on board, and in two minutes more I am in a boat

alongside, being swiftly rowed to the flat shore of Port Louis through a

crowd of shipping, for the fine harbor of the little island seems to

attract to itself an enormous number of vessels. From Calcutta and China,

Ceylon and Madras, Pondicherry, London, Marseilles, the Cape, Callao and

Bordeaux, and from many a port besides, vessels of all varieties of rig

and tonnage come hither.

In the daytime, as I now see it for the first time, Port Louis is indeed a

crowded and busy place, and its low-pitched warehouses and

unpretending-looking buildings hold many and many thousand tons of

miscellaneous merchandise coming in or going out. But at sunset an exodus

of all the white and most of the creole inhabitants sets in, leaving the

dusty streets and dingy buildings to watchmen and coolies and dogs. It is

quite curious to notice, as I do directly, what a horror the English

residents have of sleeping even one single night in Port Louis; and this

dread certainly appears to be well founded if even half the stories one

hears be true. Some half dozen officials, whose duties oblige them to be

always close to the harbor, contrive, however, to live in the town, but

they nearly all give a melancholy report of the constant attacks of fever

they or their families suffer from.

Certainly, at the first glance, Port Louis is not a prepossessing place to

live, or try to live, in. I will say nothing of the shabby shops, the

dilapidated-looking dwellings, one passes in a rapid drive through the

streets, because I know how deceitful outside appearances are as to the

internal resources or comforts of a tropical town. Those dingy shops may

hold excellent though miscellaneous goods in their dark recesses, and

would be absolutely unbearable to either owner or customer if they were

lighted with staring plate-glass windows. Nor would it be possible to

array tempting articles in gallant order behind so hot and glaring a

screen, for no shade or canvas would prevent everything from bleaching

white in a few hours. As for the peeled walls of house and garden, no

stucco or paint can stand many weeks of tropical sun and showers.

Everything gets to look blistered or washed out directly after it has been

renovated, and great allowances must be made for these shortcomings so

patent to the eye of a fresh visitor. What I most regretted in Port Louis

was its low-lying, fever-haunted situation. It looks marked out as a

hotbed of disease, and the wonder to me is, not that it should now and for

ten years past have the character of being a nest for breeding fevers, but

that there ever should have been a time when illness was not rife in such

a locality. Sheltered from anything like a free circulation of air by

hills rising abruptly from the seashore, swampy by nature, crowded to

excess by thousands of emigrants from all parts of the coast added to its

own swarming population, it seems little short of marvellous that even by

day Europeans can contrive to exist there long enough to carry on the

enormous trade which comes and goes to and from its harbor. Yet they do

so, and on the whole manage very well by avoiding exposure to the sun and

taking care to sleep out of the town. This is rendered possible to all by

an admirable system of railways, which are under government control, and

will gradually form a perfect network over the island. The engineering

difficulties of these lines must have been great, and it is an appalling

sight to witness a train in motion. So hilly is the little island that if

the engine is approaching the chances are it looks as if it were about to

plunge wildly down on its head and turn a somersault into the station, or

else it seems to be gradually climbing up a steep gradient after the

fashion of a fly on the wall. But everything appears well managed, and the

dulness of the daily press is never enlivened by accounts of a railway

accident.

For two or three miles out of Port Louis the country is still flat and

marshy, and ugly to the last degree--not the ugliness of bareness and trim

neatness, but overgrown, dank and mournful, for all its teeming life. By

the roadside stand, here and there, what once were handsome and hospitable

mansions, but are now abodes of desolation and decay. The same sad story

may be told of each--how their owners, well-born descendants of old French

families, flourished there, amid their beautiful flowers, in health and

happiness for many a long day until the fatal "fever year" of 1867, when

half the families were carried off by swift death, and the survivors

wellnigh ruined by hurricanes and disasters of all sorts. Poor little

Mauritius has certainly passed through some very hard times, but she has

borne them bravely and pluckily, and is now reaping her reward in

returning prosperity. Sharp as has been the lesson, it is something for

her inhabitants to have learned to enforce better sanitary laws, and there

is little fear now but that their eyes have been opened to the importance

of health regulations.

One effect of the epidemic which desolated Port Louis has been the

creation of the prettiest imaginable suburbs or settlements within eight

or ten miles of the town. These districts have the quaintest French

names--Beau Bassin, Curépipe, Pamplemousse, Flacq, Moka, and so forth,

with the English name of "Racehill" standing out among them in cockney

simplicity. My particular suburb is the nearest and most convenient from

which F---- can compass his daily official duties, but I am not entitled

to boast of an elevation of more than eight hundred feet. Still, there is

an extraordinary difference in the temperature before we have climbed to

even half that height, and we turn out of a green lane bordered by thick

hedges of something exactly like English hawthorn into a wind-swept

clearing on the borders of a deep ravine where stands a bungalow-looking

dwelling rejoicing in the name of "The Oaks." It might much more

appropriately have been called "The Palms," for I can't see an oak

anywhere, whilst there are some lovely graceful trees with rustling giant

leaves on the lawn; but I cannot look beyond the wide veranda, where Zulu

Jack is waiting to welcome me with the old musical cry of "Jakasu-casa!"

and my little five-o'clock tea-table arranged, just as I used to have it

in Natal, on the shady side of the house. Yes, it is home at last, and

very homelike and comfortable it all looks after the tossing, changing

voyaging of the past two months, for I have come a long way round.

BEAU BASSIN, May 21st.

I feel as if I had lived here all my life, although it is really more

unlike the ordinary English colony than it is possible to imagine; and yet

(as the walrus said to the carpenter) this "is scarcely odd," because it

is not an English colony at all. It is thoroughly and entirely French, and

the very small part of the habits of the people which is not French is

Indian. The result of more than a century of civilization, and of the

teachings of many colonists, not counting the Portuguese discoverers early

in the sixteenth century, is a mixed but very comfortable code of manners

and customs. One has not here to struggle against the ignorance and

incapacity of native servants. The clever, quick Indian has learned the

polish and elegance of his French masters, and the first thing which

struck me was the pretty manners of the native--or, as they are called,

creole--inhabitants. Everybody has a "Bon soir!" or a "Salaam!" for us as

we pass them in our twilight walks, and the manners of the domestic

servants are full of attention and courtesy. Mauritius first belonged to

the Dutch (for the Portuguese did not attempt to colonize it), who seem to

have been bullied out of it by pirates and hurricanes, and who finally

gave it up as a thankless task about the year 1700. A few years later the

French, having a thriving colony next door at Bourbon, sent over a

man-of-war and "annexed," unopposed, the pretty little island. But there

were all sorts of difficulties to overcome in those early days, and it was

not even found possible--from mismanagement of course--to make the place

pay its own working expenses. Then came the war with England at the

beginning of this century; and that made things worse, for of course we

tried to get hold of it, and there were many sharp sea-fights off its

lovely shores, until, after a gallant defence, a landing was effected by

the English, who took possession of it somewhere about 1811. Still, it

does not seem to have been of much use to them, for the French inhabitants

naturally made difficulties and declined to take the oath of allegiance;

so that it was not until the great settling-day--or rather year--of 1814,

when Louis XVIII. "came to his own again" and definitively ceded Mauritius

to the British, that we began to set to work, aided by the inhabitants

with right good-will, to develop and make the most of its enormous natural

resources.

I really believe Mauritius stands alone in the whole world for variety of

scenery, of climate and of productions within the smallest imaginable

space. It might be a continent looked at through reversed opera-glasses

for the ambitious scale of its mountains, its ravines and its waterfalls.

When once you leave the plains behind--it is all on such a toy scale that

you do this in half an hour--you breathe mountain-air and look down deep

gorges and cross wide, rushing rivers. Of course the sea is part of every

view. If it is lost sight of for five minutes, there is nothing to do but

go on a few yards and turn a corner to see it again, stretching wide and

blue and beautiful out to the horizon. As for the length and breadth of

the island representing its area, the idea is wildly wrong. The acreage is

enormous in proportion to this same illusory length and breadth, which

very soon fades out of the newcomer's mind. One confusing effect of the

hilly nature of the ground is that one dwarfs the relative length of

distances, and gets to talk of five miles as a long way off. At first I

used to say--rather impertinently, I confess--"Surely nothing can be very

far away here!" but I have learned better already in this short month, and

recognize that even three miles constitute something of a drive. And the

chances are--nay, the certainty is--that three miles in any direction will

show you a greater variety of beautiful scenery than the same distance

over any other part of the habitable globe. The only expression I can find

to describe Mauritius to myself is one I used to hear my grandmother use

in speaking of a pretty girl who chanced to be rather _petite_. "She is a

pocket Venus," the old lady would say; and so I find myself calling L'Ile

Maurice a pocket Venus among islets.

This is the beginning of the cool season, which lasts till November; and

really the climate just now is very delightful. A little too windy,

perhaps, for my individual taste, but that is owing to the rather exposed

situation of my house. The trade winds sweep in from the south-east, and

very nearly blow me and my possessions out of the drawing-room. Still, it

would be the height of ingratitude to quarrel with such a healthy,

refreshing gale, and I try to avoid the remorse which I am assured will

overtake me in the hot season if I grumble now. Of course it is hot in the

sun, but ladies need seldom or never expose themselves to it. The

gentlemen are armed, when they go out, with white umbrellas, and keep as

much as possible out of the fierce heat. At night it is quite cold, and

one or even two blankets are indispensable; yet this is by no means one of

the coolest situations in the island, though it bears an excellent

character for healthiness. Of course I can only tell you this time of what

lies immediately around me, for I have hardly strayed five miles from my

own door since I arrived. There is always so much to do in settling one's

self in a new home. This time, I am bound to say, the difficulties have

been reduced to a minimum, not only from the prompt kindness and

helpfulness of my charming neighbors, but because I found excellent

servants ready to my hand, instead of needing to go through the laborious

process of training them. The cooks are very good--better indeed than the

food material, which is not always of the best quality. The beef is

imported from Madagascar, and is thin and queerly butchered, but presents

itself at table in a sufficiently attractive form: so do the long-legged

fowls of the island. But the object of distrust is always the mutton,

which is more often goat, and consequently tough and rank: when it is only

kid one can manage it, but the older animal is beyond me. Vegetables and

fruit are abundant and delicious, and I have tasted very nice fish, though

they do not seem plentiful. Nor is the actual cost of living great for

what is technically called "bazaar"--_i.e.,_ home-grown--articles of daily

food. Indeed, such things are cheap, and a few rupees go a long way in

"bazaar." The moment you come to _articles de luxe_ from England or

France, then, indeed, you must reckon in dollars, or even piastres, for it

sounds too overwhelming in rupees. Wine is the exception which proves the

rule in this case, and every one drinks an excellent, wholesome light

claret which is absurdly and delightfully cheap, and which comes straight

from Bordeaux. Ribbons, clothes, boots and gloves, all things of that

sort, are also expensive, but not unreasonably so when the enormous cost

of carriage is taken into account. Everything comes by the only direct

line of communication with England, in the "Messageries Maritimes," which

is a swift but costly mode of transmission. Still, all actual necessaries

are cheap and plentiful in spite of the teeming population one sees

everywhere.

In our daily evening walk we cut off a corner through the bazaar, and it

is most amusing to see and hear the representatives of all the countries

of the East laughing, jangling and chatting in their own tongues, and

apparently all at once. Besides Indians from each presidency, there are

crowds of Chinese, Cingalese, Malabars, Malagask, superadded to the creole

population. They seem orderly enough, though perhaps the police reports

could tell a different tale. If only the daylight would last longer in

these latitudes, where exercise is only possible after sundown! However

early we set forth, the end of the walk is sure to be accomplished

stumblingly in profound darkness. Happily, there are no snakes or

poisonous reptiles of any sort, nor have I yet seen anything more

personally objectionable than a mosquito. I rather owe a grudge, though,

to a little insect called the mason-fly, which has a perfect passion for

running up mud huts (compared to its larger edifices on the walls and

ceiling) on my blotting-books and between the leaves of my pet volumes.

The white ants are the worst insect foe we have, and the stories I hear of

their performances would do credit to the Arabian Nights. I have already

learned to consider as pets the little soft brown lizards which emerge

from behind the picture-frames at night as soon as ever the lamps are lit.

They come out to catch the flies on the ceiling, and stalk their prey in

the cleverest and stealthiest fashion. Occasionally, however, they quarrel

with each other, and have terrific combats over head, with the invariable

result of a wriggling inch of tail dropping down on one's book or paper.

This cool weather is of course the time when one is freest from insect

visitors, and I have not yet seen any butterflies. A stray grasshopper,

with green wings folded exactly like a large leaf, or an inquisitive

mantis, blunders on to my writing-table occasionally, but not often enough

to be anything but welcome. As my sitting-room may be said, speaking

architecturally, to consist merely of a floor and ceiling, there is no

reason why all the insects in the island should not come in at any one of

its seven open doors (I have no windows) if they choose.

The houses are very pretty, however, in spite of their being all doorway.

The polished floors--unhappily, mine are painted _red_, which is a great

sorrow to me--the large rooms, with nice furniture and a wealth of

flowers, give a look of great comfort and elegance to the interior. The

wide, low verandas are shaded on the sunny side by screens or blinds of

ratan painted green, and from the ceiling dangle baskets, large baskets,

filled with every imaginable variety of fern. I never saw anything like

the beauty of the foliage. The _leaves_ of the plants would give color and

variety enough without the flowers, and they too are in profusion. Every

house stands in its own grounds, and I think I may say that every house

has a beautiful shrubbery and garden attached to it. Of course, with all

this warm rain constantly falling, the pruning-knife is as much needed as

the spade, but the natives make excellent and clever gardeners, and every

place is well and neatly kept. Mine is the only overgrown and yet empty

garden I have seen, but, all the same, I have more flowers in my

drawing-room than any one else, for all my neighbors take compassion on me

and send me baskets full of the loveliest roses every morning. Then it is

only necessary to send old Bonhomme, the gardener, a little way down the

steep side of the ravine to pick as much maiden-hair or other delicate

ferns as would stock the market at Covent Garden for a week.

If it were not for everybody being in such a terror about their health,

this lonely little island would be a very charming place. But ever since

_the_ fever a feeling of sanitary distrust seems to have sprung up among

the inhabitants, which strikes a newcomer very vividly. The European

inhabitants _look_ very well, and the ladies and children are far more

blooming--though I acknowledge it is a delicate bloom--than any one I saw

in Natal. Still, you can detect that the question of health is uppermost

in the public mind. If a house is spoken of, its only recommendation need

be that it is healthy. There is very little society at night, because

night air is considered dangerous: even the chief attraction of

lawn-tennis, the universal game here, is that "it is so healthy." And to

see the way the gentlemen wrap up after it in coats which seem to have

been made for arctic wear! Of course they are quite right to be careful,

and it is a comfort to know that with proper care and the precautions

taught by experience there is no reason why, under the blessing of God, a

European should not enjoy as good health in Mauritius as in other places

with a better reputation. There are nearly always cases of fever in Port

Louis, and three or four deaths a day from it; but then the native white

and creole population is very large, and the proportion is not so

alarming.

One of the things which I think are not generally understood is, how

completely the whole place is French. It is not in the least like any

colony which I have ever seen. It is a comfortable settlement, where

families have intermarried and taken root in the soil, regarding it with

quite as fond and fervent an affection as we bear to our own country.

Instead of the apologies for, and abuse of, a colony (woe to you if _you_

find fault, however!) with which your old colonist greets a new arrival, I

find here a strong patriotic sentiment of pride and love, which is

certainly well merited. When you take into consideration the tiny

dimensions of the island, its distance from all the centres of

civilization, its isolation, the great calamities which have befallen it

from hurricane, drought and pestilence, and the way it has overlived them

all, there is every justification for the pride and glory of its

inhabitants in their fair and fertile islet. Never were such good roads: I

don't know how they are managed or who keeps them in order, except that I

believe everything in the whole place is done by government. Certainly,

government ought to be patted on the back if those neat, wide, well-kept

roads are its handiwork. But, as I was saying, it is a surprise to most

English comers to find how thoroughly French the whole place is, and you

perceive the change first and chiefly in the graceful and courteous

manners of the people of all grades and classes. Instead of the delightful

British stare and avoidance of strangers, every one, from the highest

official to the poorest peasant, has a word or bow of greeting for the

passer-by; and especially is this genial civility to be admired and

noticed at the railway-stations and in the carriages. You never hear

English spoken except among a few officials, and a knowledge of French is

the first necessity of life here. Unhappily, there is a patois in use

among the creoles and other natives which is very confusing. It is made up

of a strange jumble of Eastern languages, grafted on a debased kind of

French, and gabbled with the rapidity of lightning and a great deal of

gesticulation. At a ball you hear far more French than English spoken, and

at a concert I attended lately not a single song was in English. Even in

the Protestant churches there is a special service held in French every

Sunday, as well as another in Tamil, besides the English services; so a

clergyman in Mauritius needs to be a good linguist. The polished floors,

well _frotté_ every morning, and the rather set-out style of the rooms,

all make a house look French. The business of the law-courts and the

newspapers are also in French, with only here and there a column of

English. The notifications of distances, the weights and measures, the

"avis aux voyageurs," the finger-posts, wayside bills, signs on

shop-fronts, are all in French. When by any chance the owner of a shop

breaks out into an English notification of his wares--and it is generally

a Chinaman or Parsee who is fired by this noble ambition--the result is as

difficult to decipher as if it were a cuneiform inscription.

The greatest difference, as it is the one which most affects my individual

comfort, which I have yet found out between Mauritius and an ordinary

English colony is the poverty of the book-shops. Your true creole is not a

reading character, though, on the other hand, he has a great and natural

taste for music. I miss the one or even two excellent book shops where one

could get, at quite reasonable prices too, most of the new and readable

books which I have always found in the chief town of every English colony.

At Cape Town, Christchurch, New Zealand, Maritzburg, D'Urban, there are

far better booksellers than in most English country towns. Here it appears

to me as if the love of literature were confined to the few English

officials, who devour each other's half dozen volumes with an appetite

which speaks terribly of a state of chronic mental famine. I keep hoping

that I shall always be as busy as I am now, and so have very little time

for reading, for if it is ever otherwise I too shall experience the

universal starvation.

BEAU BASSIN, June 20th.

It has never been my lot hitherto, even in all my various wanderings, to

stand of a clear starlight night and see the dear old Plough shining in

the northern sky whilst the Southern Cross rode high in the eastern

heaven. But I can see them both now; and the last thing I always do before

going to bed is to go out and look first straight before me, where the

Plough hangs luminous and low over the sea, and then stroll toward the

right-hand or eastern side of the veranda and gaze up at the beautiful

Cross through the rustling, tall tree-tops. It is much too cold now to sit

out in the wide veranda and either watch the stars or try to catch a

glimpse of the monkeys peeping up over the edge of the ravine in the

moonlight, thereby awakening poor rheumatic old Boxer's futile rage by

their gambols. My favorite theory is that one is never so cold as in a

tropical country, and I have had great encouragement in that idea lately.

We are always regretting that no fireplace has been included in the

internal arrangements of this house, and when we go out to dinner part of

the pleasure of the evening consists in getting well roasted in front of a

coal-fire in the drawing-room. I am assured that a few months hence I

shall utterly deny this said theory, and refuse to believe the fireplaces

I see occasionally could ever be used except as receptacles for pots of

ferns and large-leaved plants. At present, however, it is, as I say,

delightfully, bracingly cold in the morning and evening, and almost too

cold for comfort at night unless indeed you are well provided with

blankets. We take long walks of three or four miles of an evening,

starting when the sun sinks low enough for the luxuriant hedges by the

roadside to afford us occasional shelter, and returning either in the

starlight dusk or in the crisper air of a moonlight evening. In every

direction the walk is sure to be a pretty one, whether we have the hill of

the Corps-de-Garde before us, with its distinctly-marked profile of a

French soldier of the days of the Empire lying with crossed hands, the

head and feet cutting the sky-line sharp and clear, or the bolder outlines

of blue Mount Ory or cloud-capped Pieter Both. Our path always lies

through a splendid tangle of vegetation, where the pruning-knife seems the

only gardening tool needed, and where the deepening twilight brings out

many a heavy perfume from some hidden flower. Above us bends a vault of

lapis-lazuli, with globes of light hanging in it, and around us is a

heavenly, soft and balmy air. Whenever I say to a resident how delicious I

find it all, he or she is sure to answer dolefully, "Wait till the hot

weather!" But my idea is, that if there _is_ this terrible time in front

of us, it is surely all the more reason why we should enjoy immensely the

agreeable present. That there is some very different weather to be battled

with is apparent by the extraordinary shutters one sees to all the houses.

Imagine doors built as if to stand a siege, strengthened by heavy

cross-pieces of wood close together, and, instead of bolt or lock, kept in

their places by solid iron bars as thick as my wrist. Every door and

window in the length and breadth of the island is furnished with these

_contre-vents_, or hurricane-shutters, and they tell their own tale. So do

the huge stones, or rather rocks, with which the roofs of the humbler

houses and verandas are weighted. My expression of face must have been

something amusing when I remarked triumphantly the other day to one of my

acquaintances, who had just observed that my house stood in a very exposed

situation, "But it has been built a great many years, and must have stood

the great hurricanes of 1848 and 1868." "Ah!" replied Cassandra

cheerfully; "there was not much left of it, I fancy, after the '48

hurricane, and I _know_ that the veranda was blown right _over_ the house

in the gale of '68." Was not that a cheerful tale to hear of one's house?

Just now the weather is wet and windy as well as cold, and the constant

and capricious heavy showers reduce the lawn-tennis players to despair.

If any one asked me what was the serious occupation of my life here, I

should answer without hesitation, "Airing my clothes." And it would be

absolutely true. No one who has not seen it can imagine the damp and

mildew which cover everything if it be shut up for even a few days.

Ammonia in the box or drawer keeps the gloves from being spotted like the

pard, but nothing seems to avail with the other articles of clothing.

Linen feels quite wet if it is left unused in the _almirah_, or chest of

drawers, for a week. Silk dresses break out into a measle-like rash of

yellow spots. Cotton or muslin gowns become livid and take unto themselves

a horrible charnel-house odor. Shoes and books are speedily covered a

quarter of an inch deep by a mould which you can easily imagine would

begin to grow ferns and long grasses in another week or so.

Hats, caps, cloth clothes, all share the same damp fate, whilst, as for

the poor books, their condition is enough to make one weep, and that in

spite of my constant attention and repeated dabbings with spirits of wine.

And this is not the dampest part of the island by any means. Do not

suppose, however, that damp is the only enemy to one's toilette here. I

found a snail the other day in my wardrobe which had been journeying

slowly but effectively across some favorite silken skirts. Cockroaches

prefer tulle and net, and eat their way recklessly and rapidly through

choicest lace, besides nibbling every cloth-bound book in the island. On

the other hand, the rats confine their attentions chiefly to the boots and

shoes of the resident, and are at all events good friends to the makers

and sellers of those necessary articles. So, you see, garments are likely

to be a source of more trouble than pleasure to their possessor if he or

she is at all inclined to be always _tiré à quatre épingles_.

Except these objectionable creatures, there is not much animal life astir

around me in the belle isle. It is too cold still for the butterflies, and

I do not observe much variety among the birds. There are flocks of minas

always twittering about my lawn--glossy birds very like starlings in their

shape and impudent ways, only with more white in the plumage and with

brilliant orange-colored circles round their eyes. There are plenty of

paroquets, I am told, and cardinal birds, but I have not yet seen them. A

sort of hybrid canary whistles and chirps in the early mornings, and I

hear the shrill wild note of a merle every now and then. Of winged game

there are but few varieties--partridges, quails, guinea-fowl and pigeons

making up the list--but, on the other hand, poultry seems to swarm

everywhere. I never saw such long-necked and long-legged cocks and hens in

my life as I see here; but these feathered giraffes appear to thrive

remarkably well, and scratch and cackle around every Malabar hut. I have

not seen a sheep or a goat since I arrived, nor a cow or bullock grazing.

The milch cows are all stall-fed. The bullocks go straight from shipboard

to the butcher, and the horses are never turned out. This is partly

because there is no pasturage, the land being used entirely for sugar-cane

or else left in small patches of jungle. As might be expected from such a

volcanic-looking island, the surface of the ground is extremely stony, but

the sugar-cane loves the light soil, and I am told that it thrives best

where the stones are just turned aside and a furrow left for the

cane-plant. After a year or so the furrow is changed by the rocks being

rolled back again into their original places, and the space they occupied

is then available for young plants. The wild hares are terrible enemies to

the first shoots of the cane, and we pass picturesque _gardiens_ armed

with amazing _fusils_ and clad in every variety of picturesque rag,

keeping a sort of boundary-guard at the edges of the sprouting

cane-fields. There are a great many dogs to be seen about, and they are

also regarded as gardiens; for the swarming miscellaneous Eastern

population does not bear the best reputation in the world for honesty, and

the police seem to have their hands full. All that I know about the use of

the dogs as auxiliaries is that they yelp and bark hideously all night at

each other, for every one seems to resent as a personal insult any

nocturnal visit from a neighbor's dog.

The horses are better than I expected. When one hears that every

four-footed beast has to be imported, one naturally expects dear and

indifferent horses, but I am agreeably surprised in this respect. We have

horses from the Cape, from Natal, and even from Australia, and they do not

appear to cost more here than they would in their respective countries. I

may add that there is also no difficulty whatever in providing yourself

with an excellent carriage of any kind you prefer, and it is far better to

choose one here than to import one. I mention this because a carriage or

conveyance of some sort is the necessary of necessaries here--as

indispensable as a pair of boots would be in England. I scarcely ever see

any one on horseback: people never seem to ride, to my great regret. I am

assured that it will be much too hot to do so in the summer evenings, and

that the hardness of the roads prevents riding from being an agreeable

mode of exercise. Every village can furnish sundry _carrioles_ for hire,

queer-looking little conveyances, like a minute section of a tilt-cart

mounted on two crazy wheels and drawn by a rat of a pony. Ponies are a

great institution here, and are really more suitable for ordinary work

than horses. They are imported in large numbers from Pegu and other parts

of Birmah, and also from Java, Timur and different places in the Malay

Archipelago. They stand about twelve or fourteen hands high, and are the

strongest, healthiest, pluckiest little beauties imaginable, full of fire

and go. Occasionally I meet a carriage drawn by a handsome pair of mules,

and they are much used in the numerous carts and for farm-work, especially

on the sugar estates. They are chiefly brought from South America and from

the Persian Gulf, and have many admirers, but I cannot say I like them as

a substitute either for horses or for the gay little ponies. This is such

an exceedingly sociable place that I have frequent opportunities of

looking at the nice horses of my visitors, and most of the equipages would

do credit to any establishment. The favorite style of carriage in use here

is very like a victoria, only there is a curious custom of _always_

keeping the hood up. It looks so strange to my eyes to see the hood, which

projects unusually far as a screen against either sun or rain, kept

habitually up, even during the brief and balmy twilight, when one fancies

it would be so much more agreeable to drive swiftly through the soft air

without any screening _soufflet_. Of course it would be quite necessary to

keep it up in the daytime, or even late at night against the heavy dew,

but this does not begin to fall until it is too dark to remain out

driving.

I must say I like Mauritius extremely. It is so _comfortable_ to live in a

place with good servants and commodious houses, and the society is

particularly refined and agreeable, owing chiefly to the mixture of a

strong French element in its otherwise humdrum ingredients. I have never

seen such a wealth of lovely hair or such beautiful eyes and teeth as I

observe in the girls in every ball-room here; and when you add exceedingly

charming--alas! that I must say foreign--manners and a great deal of

musical talent, you can easily imagine that the style of the society is a

good deal above that to be found in most colonies.

What weigh upon me most sadly in the Mauritius are the solitude and the

intense loneliness of the little island. We are very gay and pleasant

among ourselves, but I often feel as if I were in a dream as far as the

rest of the world is concerned, or as if we were all living in another

planet. Only once in a month does the least whisper reach us from the

great outer world beyond our girdling reef of breaking foam: only once in

four long weeks can any tidings come to us from those we love and are

parted from--any news of the progress of events, any thrilling incidents

of daily history; and it is strange how diluted the sense of interest

becomes by passing through so long an interval of days and weeks. The

force of everything is weakened, its strength broken. Can you fancy the

position of a ship at sea, not voyaging toward any port or harbor, but

moored in the midst of a vast, desolate ocean? Once in a weary while of

thirty days another ship passes and throws some mailbags on board, and

whilst we stretch out clamorous hands and cry for fuller tidings, for more

news, the vessel has passed out of our reach, and we are absolutely alone

once more. It is the strangest sensation, and I do not think one can ever

get reconciled to it. True, there is a great deal of talk just now about a

connecting cable which is some day to join us by electric wires to the

centres of civilization; but no telegraphic message can ever make up for

letters, and it will always be too costly for private use except on great

emergencies. Strange to say, the mercantile community, which is a very

influential one here, objects strongly to proposals of either telegraphic

or increased postal communication. They have no doubt good reasons for

their opinion, but I think if their pretty little children were on the

other side of the world, instead of close at hand, they would agree with

me that it is very hard to wait for four weeks between the mails.

AN ADVENTURE IN CYPRUS

"So this is Cyprus?" cries my English companion, Mr. James P----, turning

his glass with a critical air upon the glorious panorama that lies

outspread before us in all the splendor of the June sunrise. "Well, upon

my word, it's not so bad, after all!"

Such a landscape, however, merits far higher praise than this thoroughly

English commendation. To the right surge up against the bright morning

sky, wave beyond wave, an endless succession of green sunny slopes which

might pass for the "Delectable Mountains" of Bunyan. To the left cluster

the vineyards which have supplied for nineteen centuries the far-famed

"wine of Cyprus." In front extends a wide sweep of smooth white sand,

ending on one side in a bold rocky ridge, and on the other in the tall

white houses and straggling streets and painted church-towers and gilded

cupolas of the quaint old town of Larnaka, which, outlined against a

shadowy background of purple hills, appears to us as just it did to Coeur

de Lion and his warriors when they landed here seven hundred years ago on

their way to the fatal crusade from which so few of them were to

return.[A] And all around, a fit frame for such a picture, extend the blue

sparkling sea and the warm, dreamy, voluptuous summer sky.

"Wasn't it here that Fortunatus used to live?" says P----. "I wish I could

find his purse lying about somewhere: it would come in very handy just

now."

"You forget that its virtue ended with his life," answer I; "and,

moreover, the illustrious man didn't live here, but at Famagosta, farther

along the coast, where, I dare say, the first Greek you meet will show

you 'ze house of Signor Fortunato,' and the original purse to boot, all

for the small charge of one piastre."

Our landing is beset by the usual mob of yelling vagabonds, eager to

lighten our pockets by means of worthless native "curiosities," "antiques"

manufactured a month before, or vociferous offers to show us "all ze fine

sight of ze town, ver' sheap." Just as we have succeeded in fighting our

way through the hurly-burly a venerable old Smyrniote with a long white

beard, in whom we recognize one of our fellow-passengers on the steamer,

accosts us with a low bow: "Want see ze old shursh, genteelmen? All ze

Signori Inglesi go see zat. You wish, I take you zere one minute."

"All right!" shouts P---- with characteristic impetuosity: "I'm bound to

see all I can in the time. Drive on, old boy: I'm your man."

Away we go, accordingly, along the deep, narrow, tunnel-like streets,

flanked on either side by tall blank houses such as meet one at every turn

in Cairo or Djeddah or Jerusalem, between whose projecting fronts the

sunny sky appears like a narrow strip of bright blue ribbon far away

overhead, while all below is veiled in a rich summer twilight of purple

shadow, like that which fills the interior of some vast cathedral. But

ever and anon a sudden break in the ranked masses of building gives us a

momentary glimpse of the broad shining sea and dazzling sunlight, which

falls upon many a group that a painter would love to copy--tall, gaunt

Armenians, whose high black caps and long dark robes make their pale,

hollow faces look doubly spectral; low-browed, sallow, bearded Russians;

brawny English sailors, looking down with a grand, indulgent contempt upon

those unhappy beings whom an inscrutable Providence has doomed to be

"foreigners;" stolid Turks, tramping onward in silent defiance of the

fierce looks cast at them from every side; sinewy Dalmatians, with

close-cropped black hair; dapper Frenchmen, with well-trimmed moustaches,

casting annihilating glances at the few ladies who happen to be abroad;

and barefooted Greeks, with little baskets of fruit or fish perched on

their heads--ragged, wild-eyed and brigand-like as the lazzaroni who rose

from the pavement of Naples at the call of Masaniello.

"Awful rascals some of these fellows look, eh?" remarks P---- in a stage

whisper.

"Yes, their faces are certainly no letter of recommendation. There is some

truth, undoubtedly, in the _last_ clause of the old proverb: 'Greek wines

steal all heads, Greek women steal all hearts, and Greek men steal

everything.'"

But at this moment our attention is drawn to a crowd a little way ahead,

the centre of attraction being apparently a good-looking young Greek from

the Morea, whose jaunty little crimson cap with its hanging tassel sets

off very tastefully his dark, handsome face and the glossy black curls

which surround it. He is leaning against the pillar of a gateway in an

attitude of unstudied grace that would charm an Italian painter, and

singing, to the accompaniment of his little three-stringed guitar, a

lively Greek song, of which we only come up in time to catch the last

verse:

Look in mine eyes, lady fair:

There your own image you'll see.

Open my heart and look there:

_There_ too your image will be.

The coppers that chink into the singer's extended hat show how fully his

efforts are appreciated; but at this moment P----, with the free-and-easy

command of a true John Bull, elbows his way through the throng, and calls

out: "Holloa, Johnny! we only got the fag-end of that song. Tip us

another, and here's five piastres for you" (about twenty-five cents).

The musician seems to understand him, and with a slight preliminary

flourish on his instrument pours forth, in a voice as clear and rippling

as the carol of a bird, a song which may be thus translated:

Men fret, men toil, men pinch and pare,

Make life itself a scramble,

While I, without a grief or care,

Where'er it lists me ramble.

'Neath cloudless sun or clouded moon,

By market-cross or ferry,

I chant my lay, I play my tune.

And all who hear are merry.

When summer's sun unclouded shines,

And mountain-shadows linger,

I watch them dance among the vines

As quicker moves my finger;

And so they sport till day is o'er,

And black-robed Night advances,

And where the maidens tripped before,

The lovely moonbeam dances.

When 'neath the rush of winter's rain

The dripping forests welter,

The shepherd opes his door amain,

And gives me food and shelter.

I touch my chords, I trill my lay,

The firelight glances o'er us,

And wind and rain, in stormy play,

Join in with lusty chorus.

'Mid rustling leaves, 'neath open sky,

I live like lark or swallow:

There's not a bird more free to fly

Than I am free to follow.

And when grim Death his bow shall bend,

My mortal course suspending,

Oh may my life, howe'er it end,

Have music in its ending!

Such music, supplemented by such a voice, strongly tempts us to remain and

hear more; but our impatient guide urges us onward, and in another minute

we stand before the dark, low-browed archway of the old church which we

have come to see.

The quaint architecture of the outside is strange and old-world enough,

but when we enter, the dim interior, haunted by weird shadows and ghostly

echoes, has quite an unearthly effect after the bustling life of the city.

As is usual in Greek and Russian churches, there are no seats of any kind,

the whole interior being one wide bare space, dimly lighted by the two

tall candles on the altar and a few little oil-lamps attached to the

pictures of saints adorning the walls. The decorations have that air of

tawdry finery which is the most displeasing feature of the Eastern

churches; but the four frescoes at the farther end (representing the

Adoration of the Magi, our Lord's Baptism, the Crucifixion, and the

Descent into Hell), rude as they are, have a grim power which takes hold

of our fancy at once. Dante himself might approve the last of the four, in

which the lurid atmosphere, the hideous contortions of the demons, and the

surging flight of the half-awakened dead, with their blank faces and stony

eyes, contrast magnificently with the grand calmness of the divine Figure

in the centre--a perfect realization of the noble words of Milton:

Some howled, some shrieked,

Some bent their fiery darts at thee, while Thou

Sat'st unappalled in calm and sinless peace.

The only occupant of the building is a tall, dignified-looking priest, who

at once takes upon himself the part of expositor; but he is suddenly

interrupted by the hurried entrance of a man who whispers something in his

ear. The priest instantly vanishes into the sacristy, and, reappearing

with something like a casket under his arm, goes hastily out, muttering as

he passes us some words which my comrade interprets as "Follow me."

We obey at once; but, in truth, it is no light matter to do so, for the

good father sets off at a pace which, considering the heat of the day and

the weight of his trailing robes, is simply astounding. Up one street,

down another, round a corner, along a narrow lane--on he rushes as if bent

upon rivalling that indefatigable giant who "walked round the world every

morning before breakfast to sharpen his appetite."

"By Jove!" mutters P----, mopping his streaming face for the twentieth

time, "what he's going to show us ought to be something special, by the

hurry he's in to get to it. Anyhow, it's a queer style of showing us the

way, to go pelting on like that, and leave us to take care of ourselves.

I'll just halloo to him to slacken speed a bit."

But just as he is about to do so the priest halts suddenly in front of a

high, blank wall of baked clay, in the midst of which a door opens and

swallows him as if by magic. We come tearing up a moment later, and are

about to enter at his heels when our way is unexpectedly barred by an ugly

old Greek with one eye and with a threadbare crimson cap pulled down over

his lean, sallow face, which looks very much like a half-decayed cucumber.

"What do you want?" he growls, eying us from head to foot with the air of

a bulldog about to bite.

We explain our errand, and are electrified with the information that we

have been on the point of intruding ourselves into a private house; that

the priest's business there is to pray over the master of it, who is

dangerously ill; and that, in short, we have been "hunting upon a false

scent" altogether. Having imparted this satisfactory information, Cerberus

shuts the door in our faces (which are sufficiently blank by this time),

and leaves us to think over the matter at our leisure.

"Confound the old mole!" growls P---- wrathfully: "if he didn't want us,

why on earth did he tell us to follow him, I should like to know?"

"Are you quite sure that he _did_ say so?" ask I. "What were the Greek

words that he used?"

"'Mê akolouthei,' or something like that."

"Which means, '_Don't_ follow,'" I retort, transfixing the abashed

offender with a look of piercing reproach. "If _that's_ all that's left of

your Greek, you'd better buy a lexicon and take a fresh start. However,

there's nobody to tell tales if _we_ don't, that's one comfort."

And so ends the first and last of our adventures in Cyprus.

DAVID KER.

NEIGHBORLY LOVE.

Eine Welt zwar bist du, O Rom; doch ohne die Liebe

Wäre die Welt nicht die Welt, wäre denn Rom auch nicht Rom.--GOETHE:

_Elegy I_.

"Maytide in Rome! The air 's a mist of gold,

In rainbow colors are the fountains springing,

The streets are like a garden to behold,

And in my heart a choir of birds are singing.

Haste to thy window, love: I wait for thee.

High o'er the narrow lane our glance may meet,

Our stretched hands all but clasp. Hither to me,

And make the glory of the hour complete.

"No sound, no sign! The bowed blinds are not stirred.

I dare not cry, lest from the common street

Some passing idler catch one sacred word

That's dedicate to her. How may I greet

My love to-day? how may I lure her near?

Ah! I will write my message on her wall

In living sunshine. She shall see and hear:

The silent fire of heaven shall sound my call."

He draws his casement: on the glittering glass

A captured sunbeam flashes sudden flame:

Between her blinds demure he makes it pass:

Its joyous radiance tells her whence it came.

She feels its presence like a fiery kiss;

Mantling her face leaps up the maiden's blood;

She flies to greet him. Oh immortal bliss!

For ever thus is old Rome's youth renewed.

EMMA LAZARUS.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

POE AND MRS. WHITMAN.

Burns's Highland Mary, Petrarch's Laura, and other real and imaginary

loves of the poets, have been immortalized in song, but we doubt whether

any of the numerous objects of poetical adoration were more worthy of

honor than Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, the friend and defender of Edgar A.

Poe. That he should have inspired so deep and lasting a love in the heart

of so true and pure a woman would alone prove that he was not the social

pariah his vindictive enemies have held up to the world's wonder and

detestation. The poet's love for Mrs. Whitman was the one gleam of hope

that cheered the last sad years of his life. His letters to her breathed

the most passionate devotion and the most enthusiastic admiration. One

eloquent extract from his love-letters to Mrs. Whitman will suffice. In

response to a passage in one of her letters in which she says, "How often

have I heard men, and even women, say of you, 'He has great intellectual

power, but no principle, no moral sense'!" he exclaims: "I love you too

truly ever to have offered you my hand, ever to have sought your love, had

I known my name to be so stained as your expressions imply. There is no

oath which seems to me so sacred as that sworn by the all-divine love I

bear you. By this love, then, and by the God who reigns in heaven, I swear

to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor. I can call to mind no act of

my life which would bring a blush to my cheek or to yours."

Carried away by the ardor and eloquent passion of her poet-lover, and full

of the sweetest human sympathy and the tenderest human charity for one so

gifted but so unfortunate, Mrs. Whitman, against the advice of her

relatives and friends, consented to a conditional engagement. It was in

relation to this engagement, and the cause of its being broken off, that

one of the most calumnious stories against Poe was told, and believed both

in America and in Europe, but especially in England. Why the engagement

was broken, and by whom, still remains buried in mystery, but that Poe was

guilty of any "outrage" at her house upon the eve of their intended

marriage was emphatically denied by Mrs. Whitman. She pronounced the whole

story a "calumny." In a letter before me she says: "I do not think it

possible to overstate the gentlemanly reticence and amenity of his

habitual manner. It was stamped through and through with the impress of

nobility and gentleness. I have seen him in many moods and phases in those

'lonesome, latter years' which were rapidly merging into the mournful

tragedy of death. I have seen him sullen and moody under a sense of insult

and imaginary wrong. I have _never_ seen in him the faintest indication of

savagery and rowdyism and brutality."

Some of the most tenderly passionate of Mrs. Whitman's verses were

inspired by her affection for Poe. She wrote six sonnets to his memory,

overflowing with the most exalted love and generous sympathy. The first of

these sonnets ends thus:

_Thou_ wert my destiny: thy song, thy fame,

The wild enchantments clustering round thy name,

Were my soul's heritage--its regal dower,

Its glory, and its kingdom, and its power.

When malice had exhausted itself in heaping obloquy upon the name of the

dead poet, it was the gentle hand of woman that first removed the odium

from his memory. It was Mrs. Whitman--who loved him and whom he

loved--that dared to penetrate the "mournful corridors" of that sad,

desolate heart, with its "halls of tragedy and chambers of retribution,"

and tell the true but melancholy story of the unhappy master of the Raven.

It was she who generously came forward as "one of the friends" of him who

was said to have no friends. She was his steady champion from first to

last. Whether it was some crackbrain scribbler who tried to prove Poe

"mad," some accomplished scholar who endeavored to disparage him in order

to magnify some other writer, or some silly woman who attempted to foist

herself into notice by relating "imaginary facts" concerning the poet's

hidden life, Mrs. Whitman was always ready to defend her dead friend.

One of the most touching incidents in Poe's early life was his affection

and fidelity to Mrs. Helen Stannard, who had completely won the sensitive

boy's heart by her kindness to him when he came to her house with her son,

a favorite school-friend. This lady died under circumstances of peculiar

sorrow, and her young admirer was in the habit of visiting her grave every

night. It was she--"the one idolatrous and purely ideal love" of his

passionate boyhood--who inspired those exquisite lines, "Helen, thy beauty

is to me." Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard, in his article on Poe published in

_Harper's Monthly_ for May, 1872, says, in allusion to Mrs. Stannard: "The

memory of this lady _is said_ to have suggested the most beautiful of his

minor poems, 'Helen,' though I am not aware _that Poe ever countenanced

the idea_." As Mrs. Whitman had distinctly stated in _Edgar Poe and his

Critics_ that Mrs. Stannard _had_ inspired the poem, she addressed a note

to Mr. Stoddard upon the subject, to which he sent the following reply:

"MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN: So many months have elapsed since I wrote the paper

on Poe about which you write that I am unable to remember what I said in

it. I certainly had no intention to discredit any statement that you made

in _Edgar Poe and his Critics_, and if I have done so I am sorry for it,

and ask your forgiveness."

In one of Mrs. Whitman's letters, now lying before me, she says: "So much

has been written, and so much still continues to be written, about Poe by

persons who are either his avowed or secret enemies, that I joyfully

welcome every friendly or impartial word spoken in his behalf. His enemies

are uttering their venomous fabrications in every newspaper, and so few

voices can obtain a hearing in his defence. My own personal knowledge of

Mr. Poe was very brief, although it comprehended memorable incidents, and

was doubtless, as he kindly characterized it in one of his letters of the

period, 'the most earnest epoch of his life;' and such I devoutly and

emphatically believe it to have been. You ask me to furnish you with

extracts from his letters, literary or otherwise. There are imperative

reasons why these letters cannot and _ought_ not to be published at

present--not that there was a word or a thought in them discreditable to

Poe, though some of them were imprudent, doubtless, and liable to be

construed wrongly by his enemies. They are for the most part strictly

_personal_. The only extract from them of which I have authorized the

publication is a fac-simile of a paragraph inserted between the 68th and

69th pages of Mr. Ingram's memoir in Black's (Edinburgh) edition of the

complete works of Poe. The paragraph in the original letter (dated

November 24, 1848) consists of only eight lines: 'The agony which I have

so lately endured--an agony known only to my God and to myself--seems to

have passed my soul through fire, and purified it from all that is weak.

Henceforward I am strong: this those who love me shall see, as well as

those who have so relentlessly endeavored to ruin me. It needed only some

such trials as I have just undergone to make me what I was born to be by

making me conscious of my own strength.' This and a protest against the

charge of indifference to moral obligations so often urged against him,

which I permitted Mr. Gill to extract for publication from a long letter

filled with eloquent and proud remonstrance against the injustice of such

a charge, are the only passages of which I have authorized the

publication. Other letters have been published without my consent. I have

endeavored to reconcile myself to the unauthorized use of private letters

and papers, since the effect of their publication has been on the whole

regarded as favorable to Poe."

It was Mrs. Whitman who first attempted to trace Edgar Poe's descent from

the old Norman family of Le Poer, which emigrated to Ireland during the

reign of Henry II. of England. Lady Blessington, through her father,

Edmund Power, claimed the same illustrious descent. The Le Poers were

distinguished for being improvident, daring and reckless. The family

originally belonged to Italy, whence they passed to the north of France,

and went to England with William the Conqueror. In a letter dated January

3, 1877, Mrs. Whitman says: "For all that I said on the subject I _alone_

am responsible. A distant relative of mine, a descendant, like myself,

from Nicholas le Poer, had long ministered to my genealogical proclivities

by stories which from my childhood had vaguely haunted and charmed my

imagination. When I discovered certain facts of Poe's history of which he

had previously made little account, he seemed greatly impressed by my

theory of our relationship. Of course I endowed him with my traditional

heirlooms. John Savage, who wrote some fine papers on Poe, which I _think_

appeared in the _Democratic Review_, perhaps in 1858, said to a friend of

mine that the things most interesting and valuable to him in my little

book (_Poe and his Critics_) were its genealogical hints."

When M. Stephane Mallarmé, an enthusiastic admirer of Poe's, undertook to

translate his works into French, he addressed Mrs. Whitman a complimentary

letter, from which the following passages are translated: "Whatever is

done to honor the memory of a genius the most truly divine the world has

seen, ought it not first to obtain your sanction? Such of Poe's works as

our great Baudelaire left untranslated--that is to say, the poems and many

of the literary criticisms--I hope to make known to France. My first

attempt, 'Le Corbeau,' of which I send you a specimen, is intended to

attract attention to a future work now nearly completed. I trust that the

attempt will meet your approval, but no possible success of my future

design could cause you, madam, a satisfaction equal to the joy, vivid,

profound and absolute, caused by an extract from one of your letters in

which you expressed a wish to see a copy of my 'Corbeau.' Not only in

space--which is nothing--but in _time_, made up for each of us of the

hours we deem most memorable in the past, your wish seemed to come to me

from _so_ far, and to bring with it the most delicious return of long

cherished memories; for, fascinated with the works of Poe from my infancy,

it has been a long time that your name has been associated with his in my

earliest and most intimate sympathies. Receive, madam, this expression of

a gratitude such as your poetical soul may comprehend, for it is my inmost

heart that thanks you."

Mrs. Whitman translated Mallarmé's inscription intended for the Poe

monument in Baltimore. The last verse was thus rendered:

Through storied centuries thou shall proudly stand

In the Memorial City of his land,

A silent monitor, austere and gray,

To warn the clamorous brood of harpies from their prey.

E.L.D.

A LITTLE PERVERSITY IN WOMEN.

MRS. PHILIP MARKHAM. PHILIP MARKHAM.

MISS ETHEL ARNOLD. FRANK BEVERLY.

(The four have been dining together and discussing the people

they had met some hours before at a reception.)

_Philip Markham._ At all events, I call her a very beautiful woman.--Don't

you say so, Beverly? I am telling Miss Arnold that I considered Miss St.

John handsome.

_Mrs. Markham._ Oh, Philip, how can you say so?

_Beverly._ I admired her immensely.

_Mrs. M._ (with a shrug). Oh, I dare say. A round, soulless face, a large

waist--

_Philip._ You women have no eyes. She has cheeks (to quote Cherbuliez)

like those fruits one longs to bite into, a pair of fine eyes, well-cut

lips--(Breaks off and laughs).

_Mrs. M._ (severely). Pray go on.

_Philip._ Not while you regard me with that virtuous air of condemnation.

_Mrs. M._ I confess I saw nothing to admire in the girl except that she

looked healthy and strong.

_Miss Arnold._ Nor did I. Moreover, she had the fault of being badly

dressed.

_Beverly._ She was beautiful, then, not by reason of her dress, as most of

your sex are, but in spite of it. You women always underrate physical

beauty in each other.

_Mrs. M._ (pretending not to have heard Beverly's remark). Yes, Ethel,

very badly dressed, and her hair was atrociously arranged.

_Philip._ Oh, we did not look at her hair, we were so much attracted by

her face and figure.

_Mrs. M._ (piqued). Take my advice, Ethel, and never marry. While we were

engaged Philip never thought of seeing beauty in any girl except myself:

now he is in a state of enthusiasm bordering upon frenzy over every new

face he comes across.

_Beverly._ He knows, I suppose, that you do not mind it--that you are the

more flattered the more he admires the entire sex.

_Mrs. M._ Of course I do not _mind_ it: the only thing is--

_Philip._ Well, what is the only thing, Jenny?

_Beverly._ You remember, Cousin Jenny, I was talking the other day about

the perversity of your sex. You either cannot or will not understand your

husbands: they hide nothing, extenuate nothing, yet you fail to grasp the

idea of that side of their minds which is at once the best and the most

dangerous. If Philip did not regard all women with interest, and some with

particular interest, he could not have had it in his head to be half so

much in love with you as he is.

_Philip._ That is true, Frank--so true that we won't ask how you found it

out.

_Miss A._ You men always stand by each other so faithfully! Now, I have

observed these traits among my married friends: the husbands invariably

give a half sigh at the sight of a beautiful girl, implying, "Oh, if I

were not a married man!" while the wives, on meeting a man who attracts

admiration, as uniformly believe that, let him be ever so handsome, clever

or fascinating, he cannot compare with their own particular John.

_Mrs. M._ That is true, Ethel; and it shows how much more faithful women

are than men.

_Philip._ Now, Jenny, that is nonsense.

_Beverly._ Oh, I dare say there is a soupçon of truth in it. But I think I

could give wives a recipe for keeping their husbands' affections, which,

unpopular although it might be, would yet prove salutary.

_Miss A._ Give it by all means, Mr. Beverly. Anything so beneficial would

naturally be popular.

_Beverly._ Pardon me, no. Were I to suggest a pilgrimage, a fast, or

scourgings even, the fair sex would undertake the remedy at once, for they

like some éclat about their smallest doings. All I want them to do is to

correct their little spirit of self-will and cultivate good taste.

_Mrs. M._ Women _self-willed_! Most women have no will at all.

_Beverly._ I never saw a woman yet who had not a will; and I am the last

person to deny their right to it. What I suggest is that they suit it to

the requirements of their lives, not let it torment them by going all

astray, by delighting in its errors and persisting in its chimeras.

_Miss A._ I grant the first, that we have wills, but I do insist that we

have good taste.

_Beverly._ Now, then, we will consider this abstract question. I maintain

that, considering their interest in women and their natural zest in

pursuing them, men show more right up-and-down faithfulness and devotion

to their obligations than women do.

_Philip._ Hear! hear!

_Miss A._ Oh, if you start upon the hypothesis that man is a being

incapable of--

_Beverly._ Not at all. You must, however, grant at the outset that man is

the free agent in society--has always been since the beginning of

civilization. He has made all the laws, enjoying complete immunity to suit

the requirements of his wishes and needs, yet everybody knows that, in

spite of the clamor of the woman-suffragists, all the laws favor women.

The basis of every system of civilized society proves that men are

inclined to hold themselves strictly to their obligations toward your sex.

There is no culprit toward whom a jury of men are less lenient than one

who has manifested any light sense of his domestic duties. Is not that

true?

_Mrs. M._ I suppose it is. But it ought to be so, of course. It is

impossible for men to be good enough to their wives.

_Beverly._ Just so. But what I claim is, that while every man holds, at

least theoretically, to the very highest ideal of a man's duties in the

marriage relation, very few wives render their husbands' existences so

altogether happy that these obligations become not only the habit but the

joy of their lives.--Don't interrupt me, Jenny.--Not but what the lovely

creatures are willing--nay, anxious--to do so, but just at the point of

accomplishment their little failings of blindness and perversity come in.

They are determined to retain their husbands' complete allegiance, but

their devices and contrivances are mostly dull blunders. Considering what

a frail tie, based on illusion, binds the sexes, my wonder as a bachelor

is that men are, as a rule, as faithful to their wives as they seem to be.

_Philip._ We have been friends, Frank, for fifteen years, and I married

your first cousin, but notwithstanding all that Jenny will insist now that

I give up your acquaintance.

_Mrs. M._ No, Philip, I am not angry with Frank: I only feel sorry for

him.

_Miss A._ So do I. Yet I am curious to know, Jenny, what he means by

saying that wives' devices to keep their husbands' love are mostly dull

blunders.

_Beverly._ I am waiting for a chance to develop my views. I know plenty of

men who are absolutely loyal to their wives--faithful to the smallest

obligation of married life--yet who regard their marriage as the great

folly of their youth. Now, a woman's intuitions ought to be, it seems to

me, so clear and unerring that she should never permit her face and voice

to become unpleasant to her husband. And this effect generally comes from

the absurdity of her attempts to hold him to her side: they have ended by

repelling him. Now, if your sex would only remember that we are horribly

fastidious, and that it is necessary to behave with good taste--

_Mrs. M._ Oh! oh! Monster!

_Miss A._ Barbarian!

_Beverly._ I will give you an instance. In our trip up and down the

Saguenay last summer you both remember the bridal couple on board the

boat?

_Philip._ I remember the bride, a charming creature. The young fellow

could not compare with her in any qualities of cleverness or good looks.

_Beverly._ Perhaps not. At the same time, he was her superior in some nice

points. Pretty although the bride was, and enviable as we considered his

good-luck, one could not help wincing for him when this delicate, refined

little creature "showed off" before the crowd of indifferent passengers.

At table she put her face so close to his, and when they stood or sat

together on deck she hung about him in such a way, that, as I noticed over

and over, it brought the blood to his cheeks and made him ashamed to raise

his eyes. Depend upon it, that young man, in spite of his infatuation,

said within himself a hundred times on his wedding-journey, "Poor innocent

little darling! she has no idea of the attention she attracts to us."

_Mrs. M._ (eagerly). Yes, she did know all about it. She was so proud of

being newly married that if everyone with whom she came in contact would

not allude to her position she made a point of confiding the fact that she

was a bride of a week, and actually wore me out with pouring her raptures

into my ears.

_Miss A._ Jenny, you should not have told that. It will confirm Mr.

Beverly in his cynicism regarding her want of taste.

_Philip._ I remember the morning the young fellow and I walked into

Chicoutimi together that I said to him, "Lately married, I believe?" and

he only nodded stiffly and pointed out the falls in the distance.

_Beverly._ Now, it is a deliciously pretty blunder for a bride to proclaim

her good-luck, but it is a blunder nevertheless. For six months a man

forgives it: after that he has no fondness for being paraded as a part and

parcel of a woman's belongings. By that time he has probably found out

that she is not all gushing unconsciousness. Besides this adorable

innocence I observed something else in this pretty bride. Despite her

fresh raptures, she was capable of jealousy: if her husband left her for

an hour he found her a trifle sullen on his return.

_Miss A._ She had nobody else.

_Mrs. M._ She naturally wanted to feel that he was interested in nothing

besides her.

_Beverly._ But she should not have shown it. This is another perverse and

suicidal inconsistency on a woman's part: she should never exhibit these

small meannesses of pique, sullen tempers, jealousy, to her husband, since

they place her wholly at a disadvantage, making her less attractive than

the objects she wishes to detach him from.

_Mrs. M._ (a little embarrassed and looking toward her husband

deprecatingly, at which he laughs and shakes his head). Woman is a

creature of impulse. She does not study what it is most politic for her to

do: she gives herself utterly--she simply asks for everything in return.

_Beverly._ Does she give herself utterly? Does she not generally keep an

accurate debit-and-credit account of what is due to her? Then the moment

she feels her rights infringed upon, what is her usual course? She holds

it her prerogative to set out upon a course of conduct eminently qualified

to displease the very man whom it is her interest and her salvation to

please.

_Mrs. M._ But he should try as well to please her.

_Beverly._ That is begging the question. Besides, her requirements are

unreasonable. She holds too tight a rein: a man is never safe after he

feels that strain at the bit. Now even you, Jenny--whom I hold up as a

model of a wife--you will not let Philip express his admiration for a

pretty woman without--

_Mrs. M._ (eagerly). I delight in having him admire any one whom I

consider worthy of admiration. I do not like to see any man run away with

by an infatuation for mere outside beauty.

_Beverly._ Yet "mere outside beauty" is clearly the most important gift

Nature has bestowed upon women.

_Mrs. M._} Oh! oh! oh!

_Miss A._}

_Philip._ What is your recipe, Frank, for putting an end to disagreements

between husbands and wives?

_Beverly._ Wives are to give up studying their own requirements, and try

to understand their husbands.

_Miss A._ And what will the result be?

_Beverly._ All men, instead of remaining bachelors like myself, will

become infatuated with domestic life. No man could resist the prospect of

being constantly caressed, waited upon, admired, flattered. And once

married, a man's own home would become so fascinating a place to him that

he would never, except against his will, exchange it for his club or the

drawing-room of his neighbor's wife.

_Miss A._ And in return are husbands prepared to give up a nice sense of

their own requirements and study to understand their wives?

_Beverly._ Not at all: they are far too stupid to understand their wives:

there is something too fine and elusive about a woman's intellect and

heart to be attained by one of our sex. Besides, are things ever

equal--two souls ever just sufficiently like and unlike exactly to

understand each other? Let women perfect themselves in the art of giving

happiness, and the good action will command its own reward.

_Miss A._ Do you comprehend, Jenny, what the full duty of woman is? For my

part, I think it is better to go on in the old way, since it is said that

"a mill, a clock and a woman always want mending." I think women have

their own little requirements.

_Mrs. M._ (who has left her seat and gone round to her husband, and is

cracking his almonds with an air of being anxious to conciliate him). The

fact is, Ethel, you unmarried women know nothing at all about it.

L.W.

ORGANIZATIONS FOR MUTUAL AID.

A French gentleman, M. Court, has lately published in _La Religion Laïque_

a series of articles upon this subject that have attracted much attention.

He proposes the establishment of a national fund for the support of the

aged and infirm, managed by eight members chosen annually, half by the

Chamber of Deputies, half by the Senate. The fund is to be raised by

legacies and donations; by a gift from the state of ten millions of

francs; by a percentage deducted by the state, the departments and the

communes from the pay of those who contract to furnish materials for

building, to do work, etc.; by a tax upon all who employ servants or other

laborers (one franc a month for each employé); and by a deduction from

collateral inheritances (_successions collatérals_). In time, about every

member of the community would be subjected directly or indirectly to

taxation for the support of the institution, and would have a right to its

benefits.

To the ordinary mind the plan appears wholly impracticable from its

magnitude, if for no other cause; but it is evidently presented in good

faith, and is further proof of the general growth of the sentiment that

capital owes a debt to the labor of the world which cannot be satisfied

with the mere payment of wages. Most of the "sick funds" or other

provisions for the care of disabled workmen in great industrial

establishments owe their origin to the initiative of the proprietor. M.

Godin, the founder of the _Familistère_, a palatial home for the families

of some five hundred men employed in his iron-works at Guise, was one of

the first to institute a fund for mutual assistance and medical service,

supported by means of a tax of twenty cents a month on the salary of each

workman. Foreseeing the troubles that would arise should he attempt to

manage this fund in the interest of his men, he wisely refused to have any

share in this work, and induced them to elect a board of managers from

their own number having entire responsibility in the matter. The board is

composed of eighteen members, each of whom receives from M. Godin an

indemnity of five francs a month for time lost in visiting the sick,

committee-work, etc.

"The assessment," writes M. Godin, "for the support of the fund to which

the workmen consented amounted to about one per cent. of their earnings.

The chief of the establishment at the same time contributed all the money

resulting from fines for spoiling work and for infractions of the rules of

the manufactory. Thanks to this combination, the three principal causes of

discord between patron and workman on the subject of relief-funds are

removed. First, mistrust and suspicion are avoided. The managers of the

treasury are of their own number, and therefore the workmen feel perfectly

free to hold them to strict account for every sou received or disbursed.

Second, as the fines for breaking the rules are devoted to the fund, the

workmen themselves are the sole gainers. This teaches them to respect the

rules, and they are little disposed to side with the refractory when they

oppose a fine. Third, fines for spoiling work cause no ill-will; indeed,

they are submitted to with a good grace. The fine benefits the fund; and,

moreover, as in the case of fines for breaking rules, the workman has

always a jury of his peers to appeal to: the board of managers is always

at hand to approve or disapprove of the fine."

The fund thus administered has proved a great blessing to those who have

claims upon it, and the members of the board have worked together over

twelve years in the most exemplary harmony; or, in M. Godin's words, it

has "parfaitement fonctionné sans conflits, sans contestations d'aucune

sorte, et de manière à donner d'excellentes résultats." The average yearly

receipts have been eighteen thousand nine hundred francs; average

disbursements, eighteen thousand seven hundred and ninety-four francs.

Possibly these facts and figures may be of service to some of our chiefs

of industry who are studying to improve the condition of their employés.

M.H.

NEW YORK AS AN ART-PATRON.

That cities, like individuals, have idiosyncrasies that may be defined and

estimated, and that may be depended upon to lead to the adoption of a

certain line of action by the community in view of a certain set of

circumstances, is a fact which is continually receiving fresh

illustrations. The attitude of New York toward Mr. Theodore Thomas is a

case in point. There is among the works of the Scottish poet Alexander

Wilson, better known as the "American Ornithologist," a ballad entitled

"Watty and Meg; or, The Wife Reformed." Its moral is for all to read.

Watty's measure of domestic felicity was but scant, and when the burden

laid upon him became greater than he could bear he determined to leave the

cause of his misery:

Owre the seas I march this morning,

Listed, tested, sworn an' a',

Forced by your confounded girning.

Farewell, Meg! for I'm awa'.

In view of losing her husband and victim, Meg repented and swore to mend

her ways, conceding even Watty's stipulation to keep the family purse:

Lastly, I'm to keep the siller:

This upon your saul you swear.

Mr. Thomas gave New York no such opportunity, and she is now lamenting him

as Tom Hood's "female Ranter" mourns "The Lost Heir," "for he's my darlin'

of darlin's." She wonders why he did not continue

Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a-playing at making dirt-pies:

I wonder he left the court, where he was better off than all the other

young boys,

With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells and a dead kitten by

way of toys.

And, in truth, Mr. Thomas got little more from the city he has for

twenty-five years clung to and taught. If he came back, is it not likely

he might meet with the Lost Heir's reception? In the Scotch ballad also we

are left in uncertainty as to the genuineness of Meg's tears and promised

reform; and in any case no one can blame Mr. Thomas for announcing his

intention only after it was beyond alteration.

It is not that New York cares for the money which would have kept him.

When did it refuse money when its sympathies were aroused? Look at its

magnificent charities, its help to Chicago, to famine-stricken China, and

the thousands that were daily poured into the hands of the sufferers from

yellow fever in the South. Religion is supported with the same munificent

liberality. But when literature, music or art are to be sustained, the

community becomes either flighty or apathetic. The best of New York's

monuments are the gifts either of societies formed upon the basis of a

common sentiment with which society at large has no active sympathy, or of

men of other nationalities. It has been broadly hinted that New York would

never have acquired the Cesnola collection of Cypriote pottery, gems and

statuary had it not found a competitor in England. The luxury of beating

the Britishers was too tempting to be declined, and led to a result which

might not have been reached had the question been nothing more than one of

art and art-education. Competition supplied the stimulus which should have

been furnished by a sense of the desirability of securing a collection so

rich and in every way, historically and artistically, so valuable. The New

York public, again, was never really interested in the Castellani

collection. It grudged the additional entrance-fee of twenty-five cents

levied by the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum. No leader arose to open

its eyes to the true value of a complete collection of majolica and

mediæval jewelry. The only known authority upon the subject of ceramics

proved to be a blind leader of the blind, and the only result of Mr.

Clarence Cook's interference was to leave the aforesaid gentleman in the

melancholy plight of a plucked crow. The collection was reshipped to

Europe while the feathers were still flying, and the public felt itself to

be a gainer to the extent of witnessing a piece of good sport. No sense of

loss spoiled its enjoyment of the fun.

When, some months ago, it was announced that a college of music was to be

founded, New York scarcely paused to examine the plans of the proposed

building. The scheme fell prone to the ground upon the day of its birth.

The few who were in earnest communicated none of their fire to the

community at large. Society looked upon Mr. Thomas in a precisely similar

manner. It complacently regarded him as the greatest conductor of the age,

and its complacency was fed by its having an imaginary proprietary

interest in him. But while the few who really understood him and the

themes he handled bowed to him as their Apollo, the many had no real

homage to pay either of heart or head. He educated the people, and the

people believed in him and in the dictum of judges more competent than

they. But he was always above them, the men of influence and wealth who in

all such matters represent and _are_ society. He led them to lofty

heights, but no sooner had they reached one than he was seen flying to

another loftier still and still more perilous. He worked, moreover, as

only a genius and an enthusiast could work. He began by winning his

auditors. He went down to their level, humored them, pleased them, and

then filled their ears with music that was ravishing even when only

partially intelligible. Insensibly they grew to like it, and although

defections were large and many refused to rise above the "popular"

standard, there is no doubt that he succeeded in elevating the taste of

the general public. Year by year he was bringing his audiences nearer to

himself, and year by year he was winning new converts from the love of the

meretricious and flashy to that of the noble and pure.

He alone derived no benefit from his labors. He had no adequate support,

no relief from the most sordid and worrying cares of life. He found

himself almost forced into competition that was degrading. Had he entered

into it he would have thrown down with his own hand the structure he had

spent his life in rearing. He was alternately warmed by the admiration and

love of a few and chilled by general apathy, and has chosen wisely in

going where he will at least be lifted above the necessity of struggling

for subsistence. New York has lost him, but had it known that Cincinnati

was trying to coax him away it would have let him go never.

It is singular that the matter of making New York attractive to the lovers

of art and music is never looked at by its wealthy citizens from the

commercial point of view. Art and music exert influences that can be

computed upon strict business principles, and the policy of neglecting

them is extremely short-sighted. Every addition to the attractions of a

city, and especially of a city essentially commercial, is an addition to

its prosperity. The prestige that would have accrued to New York, and the

wealth that would certainly have been attracted to it, had it adopted

Cincinnati's course of action, would unquestionably have far more than

compensated for the outlay attending the endowment of a college of music

and the engagement of Theodore Thomas. With this assumption the

idiosyncrasy of New York may be viewed in full. Like the prudent merchant

of moderate attainments and medium culture, it is not far-seeing when a

question arises not strictly in its line of business. Sympathetic,

outwardly decorous, keenly sensitive, full of pity for the suffering, New

York enters the field of art in a purely mercantile spirit. It has no

love, but only that peculiar kind of affection that is the outgrowth of

triumph over a rival. An individual parallel might be found in the case of

the old gentleman who haunted the auction-rooms and filled his house with

loads of vases, bronzes and the like. "It's not the things I care for," he

said, "but there isn't a millionaire in the city I haven't outbid in

getting them together."

J.J.

ONE OF THE SIDE ISSUES OF THE PARIS EXPOSITION.

Slowly, but not the less surely, does the succession of international

industrial expositions strengthen the sentiment of peace among the

nations. Those who were interested in observing how gradually our

civilization is becoming industrial can remember during the Centennial

Exposition several notable instances of this. The Exposition of Paris and

the recent arbitration at Berlin have both stimulated the thought of

Europe in this direction, and the following instances of the direction it

is taking will be of interest, especially as they are such as are not

likely to be noticed by the regular correspondents.

A pamphlet has been published at Foix, one of the provincial towns of

France, entitled, _Les Rondes de la Paix_. It was written by M. Adolphe de

Lajour, and its scope will appear from the following extract: "Why not

declare Constantinople and the Straits neutral? Why not declare

Constantinople the city for congresses of _unity_--the metropolis, the

Washington, of the United States of the two worlds? Why from the various

populations, differing in race, in manners, in religion and in language,

who inhabit the Balkan peninsula, should not a confederation of the United

States of the Danube be created on the model of Switzerland?"

In the Exposition itself a printed sheet has been distributed, entitled

"La Marseillaise de la Paix." It was printed by the associated compositors

in the office of M.A. Chaix, who has recently organized his establishment

so that a share in the profits is accorded to the workers. The first two

verses of this new version will suffice to show its character:

Allons, enfant de la patrie,

La jour de gloire est arrivé.

De la Paix, de la Paix chérie,

L'etendard brillant est levé! (_bis_)

Entendez-vous vers nos frontières,

Tous les peuples ouvrant leurs bras,

Crier à nos braves soldats:

Soyons unis, nous sommes frères!

Plus d'armes, citoyens, rompez vos bataillons!

Chantez,

Chantons!

Et que la Paix féconde nos sillons!

Pourquoi ces fusils, ces cartouches?

Pourquoi ces obus, ces canons?

Pourquoi ces cris, ces chants farouches,

Ces fiers défis aux nations? (_bis_)

Pour nous Français, oh! quelle gloire,

De montrer au monde dompté,

Que les droits de l'humanité

Sont plus sacrés que la victoire!

Plus d'armes, etc.

E.H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Superstition and Force: Essays on the Wager of Law, the Wager of Battle,

the Ordeal, Torture. By Henry C. Lea. Third Edition, revised.

Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea.

Many will be tempted to say that this, like the _Decline and Fall_, is one

of the uncriticisable books. Its facts are innumerable, its deductions

simple and inevitable, and its _chevaux-de-frise_ of references bristling

and dense enough to make the keenest, stoutest and best-equipped assailant

think twice before advancing. Nor is there anything controversial in it to

provoke an assault. The author is no polemic. Though he obviously feels

and thinks strongly, he succeeds in attaining impartiality. He even

represses comment until it serves for little more than a cement for his

data. What of argument there is shapes itself mostly from his collation.

The minute and recondite records he throws together, in as much sequence

as the chaotic state of European institutions and society in the Middle

Ages will allow, are left to their own eloquence. And eloquent they are.

Little beyond the citation of them is needed to show the brutality of

chivalry, the selfish cruelty of sacerdotalism, and the wretchedness of

the masses enslaved by political and religious superstition, until Roman

law had a second time, after an interval of a thousand years, effected a

conquest of the Northern barbarians. The work does not confine itself,

historically, to that period nor to Europe, but what excursions are made

outside of that time and country are chiefly in the way of introduction

and conclusion. The moral defects which produce and perpetuate the follies

and abuses discussed by Mr. Lea are confined to no time or race. They are

inherent and abiding, and he takes care not to let us forget that the

struggle to subdue them cannot anywhere or at any time be safely relaxed.

We inherit, with their other possessions, the weaknesses and proclivities

of our ancestors, and we even find some of their specific acts of error

and injustice still imbedded in the institutions under which we live, and

more or less vividly reproduced in the routine of individual, corporate or

public existence. The compurgator slides into the witness and the juryman,

bringing with him the oath on the Bible and trial for perjury, and the

feed champion of the Church into the patron. The ordeal of battle is

fought out bloodlessly by lawyers, with often quite as little regard to

the merits of the case as could have been shown in the olden lists. Only

the baser physical ordeals, of fire, hot and cold water, etc., with

torture as a part of the regular machinery of justice, have died out,

evidencing the great rise in intelligence and independence of the bulk of

the people--the "lower orders" to whom these gross expedients were chiefly

applied. Other forms of legal outrage, however, less apparent and palpable

to the senses, have run deep into the nineteenth century, and are not yet

wholly abolished. Mr. Lea, by the way, does not, we observe, refer to the

trial of Bambridge in 1729 for torturing prisoners for debt "in violation

of the laws of England." Perhaps he threw it aside in the redundance of

other illustrative material. We must add, as proof of his impartiality,

the comparatively slight mention made of torture under the Inquisition--a

thing of which we have been told so much as to have fallen into a sort of

popular belief that the Holy Office had a monopoly of this particular

atrocity.

Man will always, in some guise or other, manifest his faith in and

dependence on miracles, and will never cease to implore the special

interposition of the Deity. It is so much simpler thus to make a daily

convenience of his Creator than to consult those dry abstractions, the

laws of Nature. Of this deep and tiresome _x_ and _y_ he has not time to

solve the equation, granting it to be, in its ultimate terms, soluble. Who

shall say in each instance whether the impulse to decline that method and

adopt the shorter be superstition or religion?

Whether looked on as a picture or a mirror, a work such as this has

lasting value. It enables us at any time to gauge the progress of

enlightenment, to ascertain what real gain has been made, what is

delusive, and what remains to be done that it is possible to do; for we

must not expect the record of human fatuity to be closed in our day.

The Witchery of Archery. By Maurice Thompson. New York: Charles Scribner's

Sons.

The author of this little volume certainly succeeds in proving the truth

of his title to the extent of convincing his readers that archery has its

witchery; and we gather from his words that he has made practical converts

and imparted to many some portion of his own devotion to the immemorial

implement he may be said to have, in this country and among its white

inhabitants, reinvented. Seated in our easy-chair, we follow him gayly and

untiringly into the depths of the woods, drink in the rich, cool, damp

air, and revel in the primeval silence that is only broken by the twang of

the bowstring or the call of its destined victim. We enjoy his marvellous

shots with some little infusion of envy, and his exemplary patience under

ill-success and repeated failure with perhaps more. We end, like his

"Cracker" friend, with respecting sincerely the "bow-and-arrers" we were

at first disposed to view with amused contempt; and we close the book with

an unqualified recognition of the value of the bow as a means of athletic

training--a healthful recreation for those who have difficulty in finding

such means.

This ancient weapon of war and the chase, which has won so many battles

and conquered so many kingdoms, has since the introduction of gunpowder

been too readily allowed to sink into a plaything for boys. They retain

something of a passion for it. Many can remember when they were wont to

select the choicest splits of heart-hickory from the wood-pile, lay them

aside to season, and then shape them, or have them shaped by stronger and

defter hands, into the four-foot bow, equivalent to the six-foot bow of

the man. The arrows were harder to get in any satisfactory quantity, for

they were rapidly shot away, and they were hard to properly point and

scientifically feather. The processes were altogether too abstruse to come

out well from homemade work in boyish hands. So the results were not

usually brilliant, being confined to the destruction of a few sparrows,

the breaking of some windows and the serious maltreatment of the family

cat. Such achievements did not commend themselves to parents, and archery

rested under a cloud from which it failed to emerge as the youthful

practitioners grew up. It retained its charm for them in books, however.

The visit of Peter Parley to Wampum was the most delightful part of that

historian's works; and Robin Hood and William Tell earned a yearning and

trustful admiration which refuses to yield to the criticisms employed in

reducing those characters to myths--triumphs of the "long-bow" in another

sense. And here we are reminded that Mr. Thompson's affection is lavished

wholly on the long-bow. The cross-bow, a weapon which largely superseded

it in the Middle Ages for war and sport, the English gentleman's

"birding-piece" before he took to the gun, he will not hear of. The

sportsman of tender years often prefers it. It is less troublesome in the

matter of ammunition. Any missile will answer for it, from a sixpenny nail

to a six-inch pewter-headed bolt--projectiles which travel two hundred

yards with force and precision. The draft on the muscular strength is of

course the same with either form of the bow, but the long-bow admits of

its being more easily graduated, and is therefore preferable for the

exercise-ground.

Mr. Thompson, we observe, seems to disregard the spiral arrangement of the

feather, and the rotary movement around the axis of flight imparted by it

to the arrow. He uses three strips of feather, which is better than two

flat ones for the purpose of keeping the missile steady, but still does

not prevent its swerving toward the end of its course, as more than one

vexatious incident of his hunting record shows. This usage may help to

account for the superiority of the old bowmen to the amateurs of to-day in

accuracy at long ranges. The best targets reported on the part of the

latter, such as "eleven shots in a nine-inch bull's-eye, out of thirteen,

at forty yards," and "ten successive shots in a sheet of paper eight

inches square at thirty yards," are poor by the side of the exploits of

the yeomen and foresters on the archery-grounds of yore. To split a

willow-wand at two hundred paces must have required something in the way

of practice and system more precise and absolute than the guesswork Mr.

Thompson concedes to be unavoidable to-day with the utmost care and

experience. It could not have been done with a missile liable, in the

calmest atmosphere, the moment it passed the point-blank, to unaccountable

aberrations, vertically and horizontally.

The China-Hunters' Club. By the Youngest Member. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

The literature of which this is a new specimen would have astonished the

reading public of ten years ago, as it probably will that of ten years

hence. Library shelves which knew it not at the former period are nearly

filled now, and fast becoming crowded. Shall we predict that at the future

date named their contents will be nearly invisible for dust? No. Much of

what is going through the press on the subject of pottery will have its

use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile

art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest

only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even

these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand

was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what

Staffordshire modeller or woodcutter was responsible for the usually

atrocious decorations of those utensils. They will smile but once over the

pleasant lunacy of a hunt, printed and illustrated, among New England

cottages for forgotten and more or less damaged crockery. The Youngest

Member herself--by that time promoted probably to the ranks of the matrons

whose treasures she delights to ransack--will be slow to recall and

understand her enthusiasm of to-day, and marvel at her ever having

detected charms in the homely things of clay she deems worthy of the

graver. We, her contemporaries, however, living in the midst of the

contagion to which she is a conspicuous victim, can follow her flying

footsteps in the chase after potsherds with some sympathy, lag though we

may far in the rear. We enjoy the lively style in which she depicts her

"finds," and the bright web of sentiment and story with which she weaves

them into unity. The receptacles of beer, tea, cider and shaving-soap that

figure in her woodcuts are old friends we are glad to see again, and none

the less so for the somewhat startling duty they are made to perform in

the illustration of æsthetic culture. We learn secrets about them we never

dreamed of before. We are told where they came from, have explained to us

the mystic meaning of their designs, and are pointed to the stamps on

their bottoms or some other out-of-the-way part of their anatomy

infallibly betraying their age, nativity and parentage. Every reader will

be treated to special revelations of this sort, some more, some less, some

one and some another. For our individual share we are favored with

enlightenment as to three of our private possessions. One of these is the

Dog Fo, a little white Chinese monstrosity. We have been familiar from

childhood with two of him, seated in unspeakable but complacent

hideousness at the opposite ends of the chimney-piece. No. 2 is a gallon

pitcher, sacred to the gingerbread of two generations, and ornamented with

a ship under full sail on one side and a coat-of-arms on the other, not

now remembered, the whole article having recently disappeared in some way

or direction unknown and untraceable unless by the most indefatigable of

ceramists. The third is a smaller pitcher in mottled unglazed clay,

antique in shape and ornamentation, except that a figure in the costume of

Queen Bess's time stands cheek-by-jowl with a group resembling that on the

Portland Vase. This anachronism caused us to be puzzled by the word

Herculaneum impressed on the bottom, not unworthy as the general beauty of

the work was of such a source. The mystery stands explained by the book

before us. Herculaneum was the name of a manufactory of earthenware near

Liverpool, in this case almost as misleading as the inscription of Julius

Cæsar on a dog-collar too hastily inferred to have been worn by a canine

pet of the great dictator.

The author concludes, "as a result of our hunting along the roads of New

England, that there is a great deal of money-value in old crockery which

lies idle in pantries, and that collectors who have money to spend do a

great deal of good in a small way by giving the money for the crockery.

And, strange as you may think it, it is very rare to find an owner of old

pottery in the country, whatever be the family associations, who would not

rather have the money."

_Books Received._

Plays for Private Acting. Translated from the French and Italian. By

Members of the Bellevue Dramatic Club of Newport. (Leisure-Hour Series.)

New York: Henry Holt & Co.

A Primer of German Literature. By Helen S. Conant.--A Year of American

Travel. By Jessie Benton Fremont.--Hints to Women on the Care of Property.

By Alfred Walker. (Harper's Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper &

Brothers.

A Handbook of Politics for 1878: Being a Record of Important Political

Action, National and State, from July 15, 1876, to July 1, 1878. By Hon.

Edward McPherson, LL.D., of Gettysburg, Pa. Washington: Solomons &

Chapman.

Christine Brownlee's Ordeal. By Mary Patrick.--A Beautiful Woman. By Leon

Brook. (Nos. 7 and 8 of Franklin Square Library.) New York: Harper &

Brothers.

The Cossacks: A Tale of the Caucasus in 1852. By Count Leo Tolstoy.

Translated from the Russian by Eugene Schuyler. New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons.

D'ye Want a Shave? or, Yankee Shavings; or, A New Way to get a Wife: A

Three-Act Comedy. By William Bush. St. Louis. William Bush.

Colonel Dunwoddie, Millionaire. (No. 5 Harper's Library of American

Fiction.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

Play-Day Poems. Collected and edited by Rossiter Johnson. (Leisure-Hour

Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Maid Ellice: A Novel. By Theodore Gift. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York:

Henry Holt & Co.

Chums: A Satirical Sketch. By Howard MacSherry. Jersey City: Charles S.

Clarke, Jr.

The Student's French Grammar. By Charles Heron Wall. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

The Ring of Amethyst. By Alice Wellington Rollins. New York: G.P. Putnam's

Sons.

The Crew of the "Sam Weller." By John Habberton. New York: G.P. Putnam's

Sons.

Saxe Holm's Stories. Second Series. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Samuel Johnson. By Leslie Stephen. New York: Harper & Brothers.

_Music Received._

The Battle Prayer. By Himmel. Part-songs for Male Voices, No. 4. (Lotus

Club Collection.) Composed and arranged by A.H. Rosewig. Philadelphia: Wm.

H. Boner & Co.

Weep no More: Song. Words by Mrs. A.B. Benham; Music by Augustus V.

Benham, the great Child Pianist. Philadelphia: Wm. H. Boner & Co.

Who is Sylvia? Song for Soprano or Tenor. (English, German and Italian

Words.) By Franz Schubert. Philadelphia: Wm. H. Boner & Co.

Whoa, Emma! Written and Composed by John Read. Philadelphia: Wm. H. Boner

& Co.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Lord Beaconsfield is not the first to appreciate the strategic value

of Cyprus. It was fully valued by the Venetians, as well as by the Knights

of St. John, who would fain have made _it_ their island-fortress instead

of Rhodes; while Napoleon singled it out as one of the principal points in

his projected anti-Turkish campaign in 1798.