Of all that wet August the next morning was the freshest and

cheerfulest. Doctor McCall had packed his valise, carried it to the

station, and was now walking up the street, his hands clasped behind

him and his head down, after the leisurely fashion of Delaware and

Jersey farmers. People nodded an approving good-morning to him.

Busy Berrytown had passed verdict on him as a man who was idle for a

purpose, who permitted his brain to lie fallow, and who "loafed

and invited his soul" during these two weeks for the best spiritual

hygienic reasons.

"Too much brain-work, my friend Doctor Maria Muller tells me," said

the lawyer, De Camp, to a group of men at the station as McCall passed

them. "Is here for repose."

"Advanced?" said little Herr Bluhm, the phrenologist.

"Well, no. But Doctor Maria thinks his mind is open to conviction,

and that he would prove a strong worker should he remain here. She

has already begun to enlighten him on our newest theories as to a

Spontaneous Creation and a Consolidated Republic."

"Should think his properer study would be potatoes. Smells of the

barn-yard in his talk," rejoined one of the party.

"Doctor Maria's a fool!" snapped Bluhm. "She has read the index to

Bastian's book, and denies her Creator, and gabbles of Bacteria,

boiled and unboiled, ever since."

Doctor McCall meanwhile went down the cinder-path, to all passers-by

a clean-shaven, healthy gentleman out in search of an appetite for

breakfast. But in reality he was deciding his whole life in that brief

walk. Why, he asked himself once or twice, should he be unlike the

other clean-shaven, healthy men that he met? God knows he had no

relish for mystery. He was, as he had told Kitty, a commonplace man, a

thrifty Delaware farmer, in hearty good-fellowship with his neighbors,

his cattle, the ground he tilled, and, he thought reverently, with

the God who had made him and them. He had made a mistake in his early

youth, but it was a mistake which every tenth man makes--which had no

doubt driven half these men and women about him into their visionary

creeds and hard work--that of an unhappy marriage. It was many years

since he had heard of his wife: she had grown tired of warning him of

the new paths of shame and crime she had found for herself. In fact,

the year in which they had lived together was now so long past as to

seem like a miserable half-forgotten dream.

Irretrievable? Yes, it was irretrievable. There was, first of all,

the stupid, boyish error of a change of name. If he came back as this

child wished, all the annoyance which that entailed would follow him,

and the humiliating circumstances which had led to it would be brought

to life from their unclean graves. His father believed him dead.

Better the quiet, softened grief which that had left than the disgrace

which would follow his return. "I should have to tell him my wife's

story," muttered McCall. But he did not turn pale nor break into a

cold sweat at the remembrance, as Miss Muller's hero should have done.

This was an old sore--serious enough, but one which he meant to make

the best of, according to his habit. He had been a fool, he thought,

to come back and hang about the old place for the pleasure of hearing

his father talked of, and of touching the things he had handled a day

or two before. Growing into middle age, Hugh Guinness's likeness to

his father had increased year by year. The two men were simple as boys

in some respects, and would have been satisfied alone together. The

younger man halted now on the foot-bridge which crossed the creek,

looking out the different hollows where his father had taken him to

fish when he was a boy, and thinking of their life then. "But his wife

and mine would have to be put into the scales now," with an attempt at

whistling which died out discordantly.

There was one person to whom the shameful confession of his marriage

must be made--Miss Muller. That was the result, he thought, of his

absurd whim of loitering about Berry town. When he had met Maria

Muller before, he had no reason to think she cared a doit whether he

was married or single. Now--McCall's color changed, alone as he was,

with shame and annoyance. With all his experience of life and of

women, he had as little self-confidence as an awkward girl. But Maria

had left him no room for doubt.

"It would be the right thing to do. I ought to tell her. But it will

be a slight matter to her, no doubt."

If he had been a single man, in all probability he would have asked

Maria Muller to marry him that day. He was a susceptible fellow, with

a man's ordinary vanity and passions; and Maria's bright sweet face,

their loiterings along shady lanes and under Bourbon roses, the

perpetual deference she paid to his stupendous intellect, had had due

effect. He was not the man to see a strong, beautiful woman turn pale

and tremble at his touch, and preserve his phlegm.

He threw away his cigar, and jumped the fence into the Water-cure

grounds. "I'll tell her now, and then be off from old Berry town for

ever."

Miss Muller was standing in the porch. She leaned over the railing,

looking at the ragged rain-clouds driven swiftly over the blue

distance, and at the wet cornfields and clumps of bay bushes gray with

berries which filled the damp air with their pungent smell. Her dog,

a little black-and-tan terrier, bit at her skirt. She had just been

lecturing to her three students on the vertebrae, and when she

took him up could not help fumbling over his bones, even while she

perceived the color and scent of the morning. They gave her so keen a

pleasure that the tears rushed to her eyes, and she stopped punching

Hero's back.

"'The rain is over and gone,'" she recited softly to herself, "'the

vines with the tender grape give a good smell, and the time of the

singing of birds has come.' There is no poetry like that old Hebrew

love-song. If only it had not been hackneyed by being turned into a

theological allegory! Ha, doggy, doggy! There comes a friend of ours!"

suddenly laughing and hugging him as she caught sight of a large man

coming up the road with a swinging gait and loose white overcoat. She

broke off a rose and put it in her breast, tied on her hat and hurried

down to meet him, the Song of Solomon still keeping time with her

thoughts in a lofty cadence: "'Who is this that cometh up from the

wilderness leaning upon his beloved? Set me as a seal upon thine

heart, as a seal upon thine arm. For love is strong as death.'"

"What's that, Maria? I heard you intoning as I came up the hill?" Her

eyes were soft and luminous and her voice unsteady. I am afraid Doctor

McCall's eyes were warmer in their admiration than they should

have been under the circumstances. Why should she not tell him? She

repeated it. She had been chattering for two hours on cervical, dorsal

and lumbar vertebrae, without stopping to take breath. But she grew

red now and broke down miserably.

"'Love is strong as death,' eh?" said McCall, awkwardly holding the

gate open for her. "Friendship ought to be tough enough to bear a

pretty stout strain, then. Such friendship as ours, I mean. For I

think a man and woman can be friends without--without--Well, what do

you think, Maria?" feeling a sudden imbecility in all his big body.

The little woman beside him looked up scared and ready to cry: "I

don't know, John, I'm sure. Do be quiet, Hero!" Then like a flash she

saw that he meant to ask her to marry him: he meant to place love upon

the higher basis of friendship. Maria was used to people who found new

names for old things. Why! why! what folly was this, as she grew cold

and hot by turns? So often she had pictured his coming to claim her,

and how she would go out as one calm controlling soul should to meet

another, to be dual yet united through all eternity; and here she was

shivering and tongue-tied, like any silly school-girl! Love-making and

marriage were at a discount with the Advanced Club of which she was a

member, and classed with dancing, fashionable dressing and other such

paltry feminine frivolities. But Maria had meant to show them that a

woman could really love and marry, and preserve her own dignity. She

tried to find her footing now.

"Come into the summer-house, John. I should think our friendship would

bear any strain, for it does not depend on external ties."

"No, that's true. Now, as to your phalansteries and women's clubs and

sitz-baths, why that's all flummery to me. But young women must have

their whims until they have husbands to occupy their minds, I suppose.

There's that little girl at the Book-shop: how many leagues of tatting

do you suppose she makes in a year?"

"I really cannot say," sharply.

"But as to our friendship, Maria--"

"Yes. There may be a lack of external bonds" (speaking deliberately,

for she wanted to remember this crisis of her life as accurate in all

its minutiae); "but there is a primal unity, a mysterious sympathy, in

power and emotion. At least, so it seems to me," suddenly stammering

and picking up Hero to avoid looking at McCall, who stood in front of

her.

"I don't know. Primal unities are rather hazy to me. I can tell by a

woman's eye and hand-shake if she is pure-minded and sweet-tempered,

and pretty well, too, what she thinks of me. That's about as far as I

go."

"It pleases you to wear this mask of dullness, I know," with an

indulgent smile, with which Titania might have fondled the ass's head.

"But as to our friendship," gravely, "I feel I've hardly been fair

to you. Friendship demands candor, and there is one matter on which I

have not dealt plainly with you. You have been an honest, firm friend

to me, Maria. I had no right to withhold my confidence from you."

If Miss Muller had not been known as an advanced philosopher, basing

her life upon the Central Truths, she would have gained some credit

as a shrewd woman of business. "What do you mean, John?" she said,

turning a cool I steady countenance toward him.

"Sit down and I will tell you what I mean."

* * * * *

The patients, taking soon after their two hours' exercise, made their

jokes on the battle between the two systems, seeing the allopathist

McCall and Doctor Maria Haynes Muller in the summer-house engaged in

such long and earnest converse. Homoeopathy, they guessed, had the

worst of it, for the lady was visibly agitated and McCall apparently

unmoved. Indeed, when he left her and crossed the garden, nodding to

such of them as he knew, he had a satisfied, relieved face.

Maria went immediately in to visit her ward as usual. The patients

observed that she was milder than was her wont, and deadly pale.

One of them, addressing her as "Miss Muller," however, was sharply

rebuked: "I earned my right to the title of physician too hardly to

give it up for that which belongs to every simpering school-girl," she

said. "Besides," with a queer pitiful smile, "the sooner we doctors

sink the fact that we are women the better for the cause--and for us."

She met her brother in the course of the morning, and drew him into

the consulting-room.

"William," she said, fumbling with the buttons of his coat, "he is

going: he is going to take the afternoon train."

"Who? That fellow McCall?"

"Why do you speak so of him, William? He has just told me his story.

He is so wretched! he has been used so hardly!" She could scarcely

keep back the tears. In her new weakness and weariness it was such

comfort to talk to and hang upon this fat, stupid little brother, whom

usually she despised.

"Wretched, eh? He don't look it, then. As stout and easy-going a

fellow as I know. Come, come, Maria! The man has been imposing some

story on you to work on your sensibilities. I never fancied him, as

you know. He doesn't want to borrow money, eh?" with sudden alarm.

"Money? No."

"What is it, then? Don't look at me in that dazed way. You, are going

to have one of your attacks. I do wish you had Kitty's constitution

and some sense."

"William," rousing herself, "he is going. He will never come back to

Berrytown or to me. Our whole lives depend on my seeing him once more.

Ask him to wait for a day--an hour."

"If he doesn't take the noon express, he can't go in an hour. You

certainly know that, Maria. Well, if I have to find him, I'd better go

at once," buttoning his coat irritably. "I never did like the fellow."

"Beg him to stay. Tell him that I have thought of a way of escape,"

following him, catching him by his sleeve, her small face absolutely

without color and her eyes glittering.

"Yes, I'm going. But I must find my overshoes first. It begins to look

like rain."

Miss Muller watched him to the door, and then crossed the hall to her

own room, locking the door behind her. The square table was piled with

medical books. She sat down and dropped her head on her arms. Over

went a bound volume of the _Lancet_ and a folio on diseases of the

kidneys to the floor. She looked down at them. "And I was willing to

give him up for that--that trash!" sobbing and rubbing her arms like

a beaten child. But she had so strong a habit of talking that even in

this pain the words would come: "I loved him so. He would have married

me! And I must be kept from him by a law of society! It is--it is,"

rising and wrenching her hands together, "a damnable law!"

For Miss Muller had taught herself to think and talk like a man.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

BOWERY ENGLAND.

A party of four Americans in London--Mr. Hill Bunker of Boston, Mrs.

Bunker, his wife, Miss Amy Abell of New York, and myself--we find

ourselves growing weary of that noisy town. We talk of a trip to the

country. It is the merry month of May.

"Just the time for 'bowery England, as Bulwer phrases it," says Amy.

"Let us go to Romsey and see the Boyces."

Carried unanimously. We take the train from the Waterloo Station

two hours later. When we get down at Romsey, "Fly, sir?" asks the

attentive porter--carries our luggage, calls the fly and touches

his hat thankfully for three-pence. The Romsey fly is a lumbering,

two-seated carriage, rather more pretentious than a London cab, but

far behind the glossy gorgeousness of a New York hackney-coach.

A short drive brings us to the White Horse Inn, under whose covered

arch we roll, and are met at the door by a maid. She conducts us to

a stuffy coffee-room up a flight of crumbling old stairs, and meekly

desires to know our will.

"Send the landlord, please."

The landlord comes, bowing low, and we make inquiries concerning the

distance to Paultons, the estate where the Boyces have been spending

the summer, and where we venture to hope they still are. He says it

is a matter of four miles, and that we can have a fly over for six

shillings. We order the fly to be got ready at once, and inquire if we

can have dinner now, it being late in the afternoon.

"Yes, sir," he replies. "Would you like some chicken and

sparrowgrass?"

"How long will they be in cooking?"

"Matter of arf an hour, sir."

As this means a matter of an hour, I ask if he can't get us up

something in a shorter time. He suggests that chops can be cooked

sooner.

"Chops be it, then. In the words of the immortal Pickwick, chops and

tomato sauce."

"No tomarter sauce, sir," with profound gravity.

"Sparrowgrass, then--chops and sparrowgrass."

He retires, and we all rush to the windows and look out upon the

quaint old village--a curious, old-fashioned scene. We feel as if

we had somehow become transmogrified, and instead of being

flesh-and-blood men and women from practical New York, were playing

our parts in some old English novel. Odd little tumble-down houses,

with peaked roofs and mullioned windows, ranged about a triangular

common, look sleepily out upon a statue of Palmerston in the middle of

the open place, the gray walls of Romsey Abbey, a thousand years old,

against the blue sky behind them.

About six o'clock our fly is at the door, and we are off, rattling

through the ancient streets into the smooth open country. Oh the

quaint, delightful old hedge-lined road, deep down below the level

of the fields on either side--a green lane shut in with fragrance and

delicious quiet! The hedges, perched upon the bank, tower high above

our heads, and there is no break in them save at rustic gates. We meet

characters on the road who have just stepped out of Trollope's novels.

A young man and girl stand on a bridge across which we trundle,

leaning companionably on the old stone parapet, and looking up the

little river through a long avenue of trees to the pillared mansion of

"Broadlands." A laborer, with a gay flower stuck in the buttonhole

of his smock-frock, goes whistling along the brown road under the

hedgerows. A country gentleman, driving alone in a basket phaeton,

looks inquisitively at our half-closed windows as if expecting the

sight of an acquaintance. Crumbling milestones stand by the wayside,

with deep-cut letters so smoothed by the hand of time that we cannot

read them as we pass. Flowers grow thick in the hedgerows. A boy is

lolling on the green grass in front of a cottage door--an uncombed

English hind, with a face of rustic simplicity and stolid ignorance.

At last we come to a gate which bars the road. The driver gets down

and opens it, and when we have passed through in the fly he tells us

we are now on Mr. Stanley's broad estate of Paultons. The driver wears

corduroy trousers, and touches his hat every time we speak to him and

every time he answers. He does not merely touch it when he is first

addressed, but he touches it continually throughout the conversation.

Bunker considers his conduct extremely touching.

We are presently driving through a bosky wood, and the driver touches

his hat to remark that we are nearly there now, he thinks.

"But where is the bad road the landlord spoke of?"

"Bad road, sir?" touching hat.

"Yes: the landlord said we could not drive fast because the road was

bad. Where is it bad?"

"All along back of 'ere, sir," touching hat. "We have pahst the worst

of it naow, sir: the rest is not so 'illy, sir," touching hat.

"Hilly? We haven't passed over anything bigger than a knoll. If this

is what the landlord meant by a hilly road, it _is_ a rich joke. Why,

it's as smooth as a floor, almost."

"He should go to California," says Amy, who has feeling reminiscences.

"He should go to the Yosemite Valley, over the road which runs through

Chinese Camp and Hodgden's. Probably the man never saw a rough road in

his life. I doubt if there is such a thing in England."

After half an hour's trundling along the unfenced roads of this fine

old estate, crossing ancient stone bridges, rolling through leafy

groves, startling fat cattle from their browsing, getting a hat-touch

from a shepherd who is leading his flocks across the fields in true

pastoral style, we reach the manor-house, standing stately amid dells

and dingles, pollards of fantastic growth and patches of fern and

gorse. The Boyces have returned to Paris, but nurse and the children

are still at the gardener's house, and thither we drive along the

banks of a sylvan lake, beyond which the rooks are cawing about the

chimneys.

The old gardener is nurse's father, and though he is now so old that

he no longer does any work, he is maintained in comfort by the family

in whose service he has spent a lifetime. Forty years of honest

service in one family! No wonder he feels that his destiny is for ever

linked with that of the people who have been his masters, man and boy,

for forty years. He has a delightful little cottage with thatched roof

and mullioned windows, and pretty vines rioting all over it, and in

front of it a flower-garden full of early bloom. The lilacs which

grow about so profusely are not of the color of our lilacs in America,

being of a rich purple; we should not know they were lilacs but for

the familiar odor.

A delicious ride back to Romsey in the twilight, carrying two of the

Boyce children with us. In the evening I stroll out alone, to look at

the village in the moonlight. The streets are like narrow lanes. The

houses are very old, and for the most part dilapidated, but streets

and houses are all as clean and neat as wax. Presently I come upon

the old abbey, its rugged walls and towers looming solemnly in the

moonlight, and pass the parson's house near by, all overrun with

vines, thinking of Trollope again and Framley parsonage.

Before going back to the White Horse Inn I wander round the village

until I find that I am lost. The discovery is not very alarming in a

place so small as this, even at night. I resolve to turn every corner

to the left, and see what will come of it. I presently find that

getting out into the country comes of it; and having crossed a bridge

and come upon a silent brickyard, and seen the long road winding

away into the open country, I am reminded of Oliver Twist--or was

it Pip?--running away from home and trudging off under the stars to

London. Somehow, it seems this road must lead to London.

Turning about, but still walking at random and turning left-hand

corners, I presently see the abbey tower again, and make for it. The

street through which I pass is apparently the home of the British

working man. A light burning in any house is most rare. Occasionally a

man can be seen through the odd little windows, smoking a pipe by the

blaze of the fire on the hearth. Here are the abbey windows, and now

I know where I am. Down this narrow, winding street, across the open

place where Lord Palmerston stands stonily in the moonlight, and I am

at the White Horse Inn again.

At nine o'clock next morning there is a rap at the door of my room.

The door being opened a man-servant is discovered, who touches his

forehead (having no hat to touch) and says, "The ladies would like to

'ave you breakfast with them, sir."

He is so very respectful in his manner of saying this that he is

inaudible, and being asked what he said, repeats the touching his

forehead and then repeats his words.

There are no muffins at breakfast--a fact which I record merely

because this is the first time since we have been in England that this

peculiarly English dish has been omitted at breakfast. It appears on

inquiry that muffins are a luxury of large towns. In villages they

are rarely obtainable at less than about a week's notice. In fact, you

can't get anything to eat, of any sort, without pretty liberal notice.

After breakfast we go to see the old abbey. It is an imposing and

well-preserved pile. It was founded by Ethelwold, a thane--one of

those righting, praying, thieving old rascals who lived in the tenth

century, and made things lively for any one who went past their houses

with money on his person. When Ethelwold had stolen an unusually large

sum one day, he founded the monastery and stocked it with nuns. It

was but a wooden shanty at first, but after having served till it was

worm-eaten and rotting with age, it was torn down and a fine stone

convent was built.

We walk about in that part of the abbey which is free from pews--by

far the larger part--and stare at the monumental stones let into the

floor and walls. If we did not know that Romsey had been the home

of Palmerston, we should learn it now, for these stones are thickly

covered with the legends of virtue in his family--wives, sisters, sons

and so forth, whose remains lie "in the vault beneath." After perusing

these numerous testimonials to the truly wonderful virtues of an

aristocracy whom we are permitted to survive, and after dropping some

shillings in the charity-box, which rather startle us by the noise

they make, we pass out of the cool abbey into the hot churchyard, and

read on a lonely stone which stands in a corner by the gate that

here lies the dust of Mary Ann Brown, "for thirty-five years faithful

servant to Mr. Appleford." Mary Ann no doubt had other virtues, but

they are not recorded: this is sufficient for a servant.

An hour's ride on the velvet cushions of a railway carriage brings us,

with our Paultons friends, the Boyce boys, to Southampton, which was

an old town when King Canute was young. We take rooms at a pretentious

marble hotel with a mansard roof, attached to the station--a railroad

hotel, in fact, but strikingly unlike that institution as we know it

in America. Wide halls, solid stone staircases, gorgeous coffee-room,

black-coated waiters, and the inevitable buxom landlady with a

regiment of blooming daughters for assistants--one presiding over the

accounts, another officiating at the beer-pumps, a third to answer

questions, and all very much under the influence of their back hair

and other charms of person. One of them alleviates the monotony of the

office duties by working at embroidery in bright worsteds.

Strolling out, Bunker and I consult certain shabby worthies who are

yawning on the boxes of a long line of wretched hacks drawn up by the

sidewalk across the street, and find that we can charter a vehicle for

two shillings an hour. These cabbies have more nearly the air of our

own noble hackmen than any we have seen in England. Americans are no

novelty to them, for ship-loads of American tourists are put off here

at frequent intervals, and the cabbies have a thin imitation of

the voting hackman's independence. They stop short, however, of his

impudence. They are lazy, but they touch their hats occasionally.

We choose two of the tumble-down vehicles and go after the ladies. My

driver is an elderly man with a hat which has seen better days, and

I have chosen his hack, not because it is less likely to drop off

its wheels than the others, but because he himself looks like a seedy

Bohemian. He proves to be a very intelligent fellow, with a ready turn

for description which serves him in good stead whenever his horse gets

tired of walking and stops short. At such times our Bohemian pretends

that he has stopped the horse himself in order to point out and

comment upon some curious thing in the immediate vicinity.

It is pleasant driving. The hack is open, and we hoist sun-umbrellas

and look about comfortably. Presently the weary horse stops in the

middle of the street.

"'Ere you are, sir," says Cabby briskly, turning half round on his box

and pointing to an old stone structure which stretches quite across

the High street. "This 'ere is the old Bar Gate, sir, one of the

hancient gates of the town. Part of the horiginal town wall. Was a

large ditch 'ere, sir, and another there, and a stone bridge betwixt

the two, and the young bucks in them days did use to practice harchery

right 'ere where you see the lamp-post. The Guild'all is _hin_ the

gate, sir, right hinside it, with a passage hup. I'll drive through

the harch, sir, and you'll see the hother side. Cluck!" (to the

horse).

On the other side, the horse not taking a notion to stop again, the

driver is not forced to resume his remarks. Turning about as we pass

on, we look up at the old Norman gate-tower, with its handsome archway

and projecting buttresses, and Amy says she fancies she sees a knight

in armor looking out through the narrow crevice which may have been a

window in olden times. This, being an altogether proper fancy for the

place, is received with applause.

The next time the horse concludes to stop we are in the midst of what

is here called the Common--in fact, a magnificent old forest park,

with a smooth road running through it, and numberless winding paths in

among the bosky depths. I fancy Central Park might come to look like

this if allowed to go untrimmed and unfussed-over for two or three

hundred years.

"The Common, sir," says Cabby, turning about, "where King Chawles did

use to 'unt wild boars. Fav'rite walk of Halexander Pope, sir, the

poet, and Doctor Watts, which wrote the 'ymn-book. Cluck!"

From the top of a high hill a splendid wide landscape is seen, with

Romsey in the distance, and (the horse having stopped again) Cabby

points out Queen Elizabeth's shooting-box across the fields. In a lot

close by cricketers are at play, and a little farther on, where there

is a vine-covered beerhouse, a crowd of clod-hoppers are gathered in

a green field, looking at two of their number engaged in a

rough-and-tumble fight in their shirt-sleeves.

The road after this running down hill, the horse continues to jog

along for a considerable distance, stopping at last under a towering

old wall looking out on the sea.

"Wind Whistle Tower, sir," says Cabby, pointing up at a square tower

projecting from the old wall overhead, and above it the remains of

an old round tower thickly overrun with ivy. And, using his fingers

industriously, Cabby proceeds to call off the names of various castles

and towers here visible--notably, Prince Edward's Tower, bold and

round, from whose summit three men were looking down.

"What are those?" asks Bunker in the carriage behind us, pointing to

the old brass guns which sit on the wall like Humpty Dumpty.

"Them, sir," says Cabby, "was put there by 'Enry the Heighth, and this

'ere wall was the purtection of the town when the Frenchmen hassaulted

it."

"Ho!" says Bunker, contemptuously. "Just fancy one of our ironclads

paying any attention to the barking of those popguns!"

Whereupon the horse starts again, and we go lazily on, Cabby dropping

in a word of enlightenment here and there to the effect that this old

tumble-down part of the ancient wall is the celebrated Arcade, which

formed part of the wall of the King's Palace; and this queer old lane

running up through the walls like a sewer is Cuckoo lane; and that is

Bugle street, where in olden times the warden blew; and here are the

remains of Canute's palace, with its elliptical and circular arches

and curious mouldings.

Discharging the cab in the High street, we walk about. In a shop where

we pause for a moment there is a quartette of half-naked barbarians,

such as, with all our boasted varieties of humanity, were never yet

seen in New York. We have abundant Chinese and Japanese there, and

occasionally an Arab or a Turk, and the word African means with us a

man and a brother behind our chair at dinner or wielding a razor in

a barber-shop. These men here are pure barbarians, just landed from a

vessel direct from Africa. Hideously tattooed, and their heads shaved

in regular ridges of black wool, with narrow patches of black scalp

between, they are here in a small tradesman's shop in bowery England

buying shirts. They know not a word of English, but chatter among

themselves the most horrible lingo known to the Hamitic group of

tongues. They grimace in a frightful manner, and skip and dance, and

writhe their half-naked bodies into the most exaggerated contortions

known to the language of signs. The dignified English salesmen are

at their wits' end how to treat them. The instinct of the British

shopkeeper fights desperately with his disposition to be shocked. From

the Ashantee gentlemen's gestures it can only be concluded that white

shirts are wanted, but when white shirts are shown the negroes make

furious objection to the plaited bosoms. They want shirts such as are

fashionable at home. It is easy to be seen that they are Dandy Jims

in Africa. They are all young, and, in a sense, spruce. One of them

carries a little switch cane, evidently just bought: while he examines

the shirts, testing the strength of the stuff by pulling it with his

two hands, he holds his cane between his bare legs for safe-keeping.

Sitting in the billiard-room of the hotel in the evening smoking our

cigars, Bunker and I are accosted by a brisk little man, who asks us

if we play billiards. Bunker doesn't. I do sometimes at home, but not

the English game.

"Oh, we play the 'Merican game too. 'Appy to play the 'Merican game

with you, sir."

"Try him a game," says Bunker. "It won't hurt you."

Not liking to refuse an invitation from a polite Englishman, who

appears to be a stranger here, I consent. This is billiard-room

etiquette the world over.

The cue is like a whip-stock. It positively runs down to a point not

bigger than a shirt-button, and it bends like a switch. The balls are

not much larger than marbles. To make up for this, the table is big

enough for a back yard, broad, high, dull of cushion, and with six

huge pockets. I am ignominiously beaten. My ball jumps like a living

thing. It hops off the table upon the floor at almost every shot, and

when it does not go on the floor it goes into one of the six yawning

pockets. The pockets bear the same relative proportion to the balls

that a tea-cup bears to a French pea. At the end of the game my ball

has been everywhere except where I intended it to go, and I have

"scratched" thirty.

"A hundred's the game," says the Englishman, putting up his cue. "One

shilling."

I wonder if this is an English custom--to pay your victor a shilling,

instead of paying the keeper of the tables. But as there is no one

else to pay, I pay the Englishman. Bunker has fallen asleep in his

chair.

"Going on the Continent?" the Englishman asks.

"Not at present. We return to London first, and go from there."

"'Ave you got a guide?"

I am on the point of saying that guides are a nuisance I do not

tolerate, when the Englishman hands me a bit of paste-board. "There is

my card, sir," he says. "A. SHARPE, Interpreter and Courier." On the

opposite side I read--

SPEAKS SPRICHT PARLE PARLA

French, Französich, Frangais, Francese,

German, Deutsch, Allemand, Tedesco,

Italian and Italienisch u. Italien et Italiano ed

English Englisch Anglais Inglese

fluently sehr geläufig. courrament. correntemente.

At present he has charge of this billiard-room, but he is ready to

follow me to the ends of the earth for a period of not less than three

months. I tell him I can get on without a guide.

"But I would go on the most reasonable terms. I would go for as low as

ten pounds a month and my expenses."

"Would you go for nothing?" Bunker wakes up and pops this out at him

so suddenly as to quite take his breath away.

He expands his hands at his trousers pockets, shrugs his shoulders and

looks volumes of reproach.

"Because," Bunker adds, in a soothing tone, "I shouldn't like to have

you along, even at that price."

He immediately goes to putting the room to rights.

"Horrible breath that man had," says Bunker when we come out: "did you

notice it?"

"Yes."

"Take that breath around with us on the Continent! Why, if he was in

Cologne itself, his breath would be in the majority."

I had my umbrella in the billiard-room, and next morning I can't find

it anywhere. At breakfast I ask the pompous head-waiter if he knows of

my umbrella. He states that he does not. After breakfast I look in the

billiard-room. It is not there. I go down to the office, and interrupt

the worsted work there in progress by requesting that a search be made

for my missing umbrella. The young lady whose ear I have gained

kindly condescends to call the porter, and turning me over to that

functionary returns to her worsted. The porter is respectful, but

doubtful. The moment he learns that the lost article is an umbrella

his manner is pervaded with a gentle hopelessness. He, however,

listens forbearingly to my story.

"And aboot what time was it, sir, when ye went ty bed?"

"About half-past eleven."

"Oh, then the night porter ull know of it, sir. He's abed now. I'll

ask him when he gets oop."

And so, when we go to Netley Abbey, I take a covered cab, because of

my lost umbrella. It was a beautiful umbrella to keep off the sun.

Nobody can make an umbrella like an Englishman. I should be sorry

to lose it. I bought it in Regent street only a few days ago, but I

already love it with a passionate affection.

Through the hot paved streets, over a floating bridge, past the

cliff at the river's mouth, through a shady grove of noble yews

and sycamores, past a picturesque hamlet full of vine-curtained and

straw-thatched cottages, through a forest of oaks and past a willow

copse, and there is the grand old ruin of Netley Abbey lifting its

picturesque and solemn fingers of ivy-hung stone above the tops of the

trees which surround and shelter it in its hoary age.

It is really curious how dramatically effective a grand old ruin is.

The weird sense of being in the presence of olden time comes over us

immediately. We look about us to see the spirit of some cloistered

monk come stealing by with hood and girdle. Here--actually here,

in these nooks all crumbling under Time's gnawing tooth--did old

Cistercian monks kneel with shaved heads and confess their sins, and

their bones have been powdered into dust three hundred years!

Romsey Abbey--within whose well-kept walls we rather yawned over

Palmerstonian eulogiums--is a thousand years old. This abbey is only

six hundred and thirty-two years old. Romsey has been restored, and

modern men go to church there on Sunday decorously. Netley has been

left to go to utter ruin. Grass grows in its long-drawn aisles. Owls

hoot in its moss-clothed chimneys. It is dramatically effective.

We wander through cloistered courts into the main body of the church.

Yonder stood the pulpit, here gathered the worshipers. The carpet is

green grass. Trees grow within the walls. Ivy clambers from side to

side of the tall windows, in place of the stained glass once there.

Most of the windows have tumbled to decay, walls and all. The roof is

the sky--naught else.

We climb up the stone staircase in the turret. All the stone steps are

worn with deep hollows where human feet have trodden up and down for

centuries, and storms have sent rivulets of water pouring through many

a wild night. Some of the steps are worn quite in two and broken away,

which makes the ascent frightening to the ladies.

Up here ("on the second floor," as Bunker says) the carpet is again

grass, and Bunker and I clamber through a little archway into the

cloister gallery, where the monks used to look down on the service

below when they felt inclined. The ladies look after us, brave

adventurers that we are (only two or three million men have been here

before us, perhaps, since the ruin became a popular success), and

refuse to follow in our rash footsteps. The crumbling wall is full of

owls' nests. Rooks and swallows fly continually in and out of their

holes. We could kick a loose stone down into the chancel if there were

any stones to kick.

The ladies declare themselves dizzy and afraid, and we help them down

the dark winding turret staircase again, and go into the enclosed

parts of the ruin. Here is where the monks lived. The walls still

stand, and parts of the roof. The windows are thickly ivy-hung and

moss-grown. Here is the room where the monks did whilom dine. For

three hundred years this dining-room was in daily use, and in the spot

where erst the dining-table stood now grows a stalwart tree, whose

branches tower and spread beyond the crumbling walls. Passing strange!

More strange is the sight in the next room, the chapter-house, where

the abbot held his gravest councils, and where the most honored of the

monks were buried beneath the floor when they died. And since the

roof fell in, after long battling with storms, perhaps a hundred years

after the last monk was buried, one day a seed fell. A tree grew up in

the room. It spread its tall branches high above the piled-up stones,

and shook its brown leaves down, autumn after autumn, for years and

years. It grew slowly old, and at last it died. It fell down in its

death in the room where it had grown, and its once sturdy trunk struck

against the old ruined walls and broke. Its roots were torn out of the

ground by the fall, and stuck up their gnarled fingers in the empty

room. And the grass grew over the roots, weaving a green cloak to hide

their nakedness. The old trunk stretches now across the space in the

room, and leans its old head against the abbey wall. I didn't read

this story in a guide-book. It was told to me by the principal actor,

the tree.

In the abbot's kitchen we get into the huge hooded fireplace--seven

of us--and there is room for more. We look up the chimney and see

the glossy green ivy leaves overhead, and the blue sky shining beyond

them. We toss a pebble down into the subterranean passage where, they

say, the monks were wont to pass out after provisions during a time

of siege; which must have been somewhat demoralizing to the besiegers,

whoever they were. I stoop to pick up something in the grass of

the kitchen floor, which has a glitter of gold upon it, and my face

flushes with eager anticipation as I seize it.

"What have you found?" asks Amy.

"A relic of the monks?" asks Bunker.

"It's a champagne cork," I am forced to reply. "The truth is, Netley

Abbey is a show, like Niagara Falls and Bunker Hill Monument. Of

course crowds of tourists come here, and of course they pop champagne

and ginger beer, and cut their confounded initials in the venerable

stones."

"Yes," says Bunker, "I saw 'W.S.' cut in the wall at the top of the

turret stairs. Saves you the trouble, you know."

"I don't do that sort of thing, thank you."

Nevertheless, it was curious to see some nobody's name cut at full

length in the stone, with the date underneath--1770.

When we return to the hotel the night porter reports that he has not

found my umbrella. So I must go off without it. Our train leaves at

ten minutes past five this afternoon, and we shall be in London early

in the evening. It is now four o'clock: we have ordered dinner for

this hour, and so we sit down to our soup.

"Please give us our dinner without any delay now," I say to the

pompous head-waiter, "for we must take the train at ten minutes past

five."

The man bows stiffly and retires. We finish the soup, and wait.

When we get tired of waiting we call the head-waiter to us: "Are you

hastening our dinner?"

"Fish directly, sir," he answers, and walks solemnly away. We begin to

grow fidgety. Fifteen minutes since the soup, and no fish yet. Bunker

swears he'll blow the head-waiter up in another minute. Just as he is

quite ready for this explosion the fish arrives. All hail! I lay it

open.

"Why, it's not done!" I cry in consternation. "There, there! Take it

away, and bring the meat."

With an air of grave offence the man bears it solemnly out. Then we

wait again. And wait. And wait.

"Good gracious!" cries Bunker, "here's half an hour gone, and we've

had nothing but soup! I really must blow this fellow up."

"Stop! there it comes."

Enter the waiter with great dignity, and solemnly deposits before

us--the fish again!

He has had it recooked. We attack it hurriedly, and bid the waiter for

Goodness' sake bring the rest of the dinner _instantly_, or we must

leave it.

"And I'm about half starved," growls Bunker.

More waiting. Five minutes pass. Ten.

"Oh come, I can't stand this!" cries Bunker, jumping up with his

napkin round his neck, and striding over to the head-waiter, where he

stands in a Turveydroppy attitude, leaning against a sideboard with

his arms folded. "Look here!" Bunker ejaculates: "_can_ you be made

to understand that we are in a hurry? Would half a dollar be any

inducement to you to wake up and look around lively? Because we have

got to take those cars in exactly twelve minutes," showing his watch,

"and as the dinner is already paid for, I want to get it before I go."

"Certainly, sir," says the pompous ass with slow indifference, "dinner

directly. John!" to our waiter, who is now placing the meat on the

table, "serve the genl'm'n's dinner _directly_."

Bunker stares at the fellow as Clown stares at Harlequin after having

cut him in two, in dumb amazement at the fact that Harlequin is not in

the least disturbed by being cut in two.

"I wonder," he mutters as he returns to the table, "if that

unmitigated wooden image of a dunderhead would pay any attention if I

were to kick him?"

"No--not if you were to tie a pack of fire-crackers to his coat-tail

and light them. He knows his business too well. The first duty of

an English head-waiter is to be dignified, as it is that of a French

head-waiter to be vigilant and polite."

"Besides," remarks Amy quietly, "I don't suppose the man had an idea

of what you meant by 'those cars,' if he even knew what a half dollar

signified."

"Well, we must be off. Time's up. We shall miss the train. Good-bye,

boys. You can sit still and finish your dinner in peace."

Good-bye to our friends from Paultons--good-bye. And then we rush out,

and _do_ miss the train. It is five o'clock ten minutes and a quarter.

English trains go on time--English dinners don't.

We finally get off at seven o'clock. Just before we leave a waiter

comes up to me and says in a casual manner, "Found your humbreller

yet, sir?"

"No."

"Wat kind of er humbreller was it, sir?"

"Neat little brown silk umbrella, with an ivory handle."

"W'y, I wouldn't wonder if that was your humbreller in the corner now

in the reading-room, sir."

I make haste to look. Yes, there it is, my beloved, long-lost

umbrella, quietly leaning against the wall in a dark corner, behind a

pillar, behind a big arm-chair, where nobody ever placed it, I'll take

my oath, but this rascally waiter, who expects to get a shilling for

showing where he hid it.

"Is _that_ your humbreller, sir?" the waiter says, rubbing his

hands and getting in my way as I walk briskly out, at peril of being

stumbled over by my hurrying feet. I scorn to reply, but I give him

a glance of such withering contempt that I trust it pierced to his

wicked heart, and will remain there, a punishment and a warning, to

the last day of his base life. An English waiter's hide is very thick,

however. He has probably hidden many a gentleman's umbrella since.

At eleven o'clock we are back in our cozy London lodgings, and at

twelve we are sleeping the sleep of profound fatigue, and dreaming of

ghostly monks wandering among the weird old ruins of Netley.

WIRT SIKES.

DAY-DREAM.

Here, in the heart of the hills, I lie,

Nothing but me 'twixt earth and sky--

An amethyst and an emerald stone

Hung and hollowed for me alone!

Is it a dream, or can it be

That there is life apart from me?--

A larger world than the circling bound

Of light and color that lap me round?

Drowsily, dully, through my brain,

Like some recurrent, vague refrain,

A world of fancy comes and goes--

Shadowy pleasures, shadowy woes.

Spectral toils and troubles seem

Fashioned out of this foolish dream:

Round my charmèd quiet creep

Phantom creatures that laugh and weep.

Nay, I know they are meaningless,

Visions of utter idleness:

Nothing was, nor ever will be,

Save the hills and the heavens and me.

KATE PUTNAM OSGOOD.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE GLADSTONE FAMILY.

There is no doubt that had Mr. Gladstone followed his personal

inclinations when his Irish education scheme broke down last March,

he would have retired from office. He is now sixty-four, and it may be

fairly questioned whether there exists a man who for forty-six years

has worked his brain harder. It is no light labor to read for the

highest honors in even one school at Oxford, and Mr. Gladstone read

for them in two. He gained "a double first," which meant at that time

a first class both in classics and mathematics. Forthwith he plunged

into political essay-writing, until in 1834 he further added to his

labors by entering the House of Commons as M.P. for Newark.

Mr. Gladstone's father was, as most people are aware, a Liverpool

merchant of Scotch descent. This gentleman was the architect of his

own fortunes, which arose in no slight degree out of his connection

with the United States. Having been sent to this country by a firm

largely interested in the corn trade, he discharged their business

to their entire satisfaction, whilst at the same time he made very

valuable business connections on his own account, which materially

served him when at a later period he himself embarked in business.

He made a large fortune, but it did not appear at his death to be so

great as it was, because he gave his younger sons the bulk of their

portions during his lifetime--to avoid legacy duty, people said.

To his eldest son he left considerable estates in Scotland--to the

younger sons, about one hundred thousand pounds apiece. The eldest,

Sir Thomas Gladstone, is a very worthy man, but nowise remarkable for

ability. He has one son, and has had six daughters. Four survive, and

all are unmarried.

The next brother, Robertson, an eccentric person whose indiscreet

speeches must often have made his statesman brother feel very hot,

continues the paternal business at Liverpool. The third, John Neilson,

was, socially speaking, the flower of the flock. He was a captain in

the navy, from which he had retired many years prior to his death in

1863, and a member of Parliament. By his wife, a singularly excellent

and charming woman, he had several children, who may be said to pretty

nearly monopolize the feminine charms of the Gladstone family. One

of these married the earl of Belmore, an Irish nobleman, who lately

returned from a not very successful gubernatorial career in New

South Wales. Both Sir Thomas and Captain Gladstone were decided

Conservatives.

William Ewart is the fourth brother. "That young brother of mine will

make a noise in the world some of these days," said Captain Gladstone

to a fellow-middy as his brother turned away from bidding him good-bye

just before he was about to start on a cruise; and the words were

certainly prophetic. Mr. Gladstone married when he was thirty. His

wife was one of the two sisters of Sir Stephen Glynne. The English

aristocracy contains a great many sets, and the Glynnes were in the

intellectual set, comprising such men as the dukes of Argyll and

Devonshire, and Lords Derby, Stanhope and Lyttelton. Mrs. Gladstone

and her sister were married on the same day to two of the finest

intellects of their time. The younger, whose mental gifts were far

superior to those of her sister, married Lord Lyttelton.

Mr. Gladstone has a large family. The eldest son has for some time

been in Parliament, but has established no reputation for notable

capacity, and it is said that, with the exception of one of his

younger brothers, none of the family are remarkable in this respect.

Mrs. Gladstone is a person of great kindness of heart and untiring

benevolence. She is full of schemes for doing good: hospitals,

convalescent institutions, etc. find in her an ever-ready friend,

to the neglect, it is whispered, of her domestic duties. There is an

amusing story told of how some time ago a few guests arrived at her

house in response to an invitation to dinner. They waited in vain for

the rest of the party, for whose delay their hostess was at a loss

to account. At length she turned aside and opened her blotting-book,

which quickly revealed the cause of the guests' non-appearance--the

invitations were lying there. They had been written, but never sent.

In London the prime minister--who has an indifferent official

residence, which he and his family have occasionally occupied, in

Downing street--lives in Carlton-House Terrace. It is a beautiful

house, but not by any means well adapted for party-giving, for it is

so constructed that circulation is almost impossible. If you once

get into a room, you must stay there; whereas half the charm of

Lady Palmerston's famous parties at Cambridge House was the free

circulation the rooms afforded, enabling you to pass right round a

quadrangle, and thus easily find an acquaintance or get away from a

bore. Mr. Gladstone's house has a fine double staircase, and it will

derive interest in after days from the circumstance that, standing at

the head, Lord Russell took leave of the party he had led, and pointed

to his then host as his successor.

Carlton-House Terrace is in many respects the most delightful

situation in London, for, whilst extremely central, it is very quiet.

It stands between Pall Mall and St. James's Park. One side faces a

strip of beautifully kept garden, which lies between the terrace and

the row of palaces formed by the Senior United Service, Athenaeum,

Travelers' and Carlton Clubs. The other side has a charming prospect

over St. James's Park. In summer this is really lovely, for all ugly

objects are obscured by the foliage, amid which glimpses are obtained

of the pinnacles and fretted towers of the palace of Parliament on the

one hand, and those of its venerable neighbor, the majestic abbey,

on the other. It was here that Bunsen passed his London days, and the

reader of his memoirs will remember frequent references to the charms

of his house. It may well be imagined how great a boon it is to the

toil-worn minister to find himself, as it were, in a garden, with only

the distant roar, like that of the sea, to remind him as he sits in

his study that five minutes walk across that pleasant park will bring

him to Downing street, and three more to the Treasury bench in the

House of Commons.

In the country most of his time is spent at Hawarden Castle in

Flintshire, about six hours from London. This is the ancestral seat of

Mrs. Gladstone's brother, Sir Stephen Glynne, lord lieutenant of

the county, whose family have held this property for centuries. Sir

Stephen is a very shy man of retired habits. By a family arrangement

his house is the country abode of his sister and brother-in-law.

In earlier life, Sir Stephen and his two brothers-in-law, Mr.

Gladstone and Lord Lyttelton, formed an unfortunately favorable

estimate of certain mines, into which much of the fortune of Sir

Stephen and his sisters went, and from which it never came out again.

There was one other brother, the late rector of Hawarden. He died

about a year ago, and Mr. Gladstone's second son, Stephen, was

appointed his successor. The living, in the gift of Sir Stephen, is

very valuable. Mr. Glynne, the clergyman, died without a son, and the

title will therefore on Sir Stephen's death be extinct. As matters

now stand, it may be presumed that Mr. W.H. Gladstone, the prime

minister's eldest son, will succeed to the Hawarden estates.

Mr. Gladstone has himself recently increased the family interest

around Hawarden by purchase. About five years ago the state of his

finances were the talk of the town, and a number of people, especially

of the Conservative party, avowed themselves in a position to assert

from personal knowledge that he was ruined. There was no just ground

for such a statement, and like so many other absurd rumors it died

out. None of Mr. Gladstone's daughters are married, nor is his eldest

son.

WHITSUNTIDE AMONG THE MENNISTS.

Certain great festivals of the Christian Church which were ignored by

the Puritans and Quakers have always continued in high repute among

the Pennsylvania Germans. Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide and

Ascension Day are celebrated not only in the Lutheran, the Reformed

or Calvinistic and the Moravian churches, but among the descendants

of those Swiss Anabaptists who, being driven from their homes by

religious persecution, finally took shelter in that part of the land

of Penn now called Lancaster county, these quiet sectarians being

known among us by the names of Mennists and Amish (pronounced

Menneests and Ommish).

The movable feast of Whitsunday or Pentecost, which occurs on the

seventh Sunday after Easter, is a solemn occasion in the Mennonite

meetings, for at this time is held one of the great semi-annual

observances of bread-breaking and feet-washing. The ensuing day,

Whitmonday, is a great secular festival. All the spring bonnets are

then in readiness for the "Dutch" girls. The young farmer of eighteen

or more, whose father has granted his heart's desire in the form of a

buggy, or who has otherwise attained to that summit of rural felicity,

harnesses and attaches to it one of the horses with which the farm is

so well supplied, and takes his girl into the county-town. Here

they walk the streets, partake of simple refreshments, meet their

acquaintances or talk with them in the tavern parlor. Sometimes they

visit a circus or menagerie whose managers have made a timely visit to

our inland city.

On the ensuing day, Tuesday, while the Dutch boys are working the

corn, you may perchance hear their father's voice raised to a higher

pitch than usual, which circumstance he explains when he comes in

sight, thus: "The boys is sleepy to-day. Yesterday was Whissuntide,

you know. They got home late." For custom forbids their leaving

the girl of their choice before the small hours, and allows them,

nevertheless, no remission from labor on the succeeding day.

The people, however, whose religious services I am about to describe

impose upon their members a stricter rule of earlier hours, etc. They

are called New (or Reformed) Mennists.

It was on Whitsunday, May 31, 1868, that I paid a visit to one of

our New Mennist meeting-houses, and found before nine o'clock in the

morning that the services had already begun. The first apartment we

entered was a sort of tiring-room, where along the walls hung

the shawls and black sun-bonnets of the sisters. Here were also

traveling-bags, and a cradle stood ready to receive one or more of the

babies that were in attendance. In the adjoining room were heard

the familiar notes of "Old Hundred," and "Du bist der Weg" was sung

pleasantly without any instrumental accompaniment.

When we entered the whitewashed apartment in which the meeting had

assembled I saw upon a small platform at the farther end five men, who

were apparently preachers or elders. At the same end of the room were

seated the soberly clad members of the sect--the men on one side of

the apartment, with their broad-brimmed hats removed; on the other

side the sisters, with their extremely plain book-muslin caps and

otherwise sober attire.

A portion of the services was in English. Dr. ----, a practitioner of

medicine and a bishop in this Church, spoke extemporaneously in our

language. He gave a long account of the ordinances of the Jewish

Church, and then of those which the "Lord Jesus instituted in the

place of these--the baptism that was celebrated a week ago, and this

Lord's Supper, this feet-washing, this kiss of peace, this manner of

visiting offenders;" the last phrase being an allusion to the severe

rule which forbids the New or Reformed Mennists to eat, etc. with

those excommunicated by the society.

The Mennists, as I understand, hold in general those doctrines that

are considered evangelical. The services were much prolonged, and the

congregation became restless. But at length, while a younger brother

was speaking in "Dutch" or German, there came in another bearing

a parcel wrapped in a white cloth. He was followed by one carrying

something tied in a blue-and-white cloth, which being opened disclosed

a demijohn. The white parcel was received by the preacher upon the

desk, and when opened showed a great loaf of our beautiful Lancaster

county bread divided into slices. After prayer several preachers took

slices, and passing around among the congregation broke off bits

which they gave to the communicants. The wine in the demijohn was then

poured into small, bright tin cups, like milkmen's measures, and was

distributed among the members. A hymn in the German language was sung,

two lines at a time, while the wine was handed round.

After these services were concluded feet-washing began by reading the

passage from the 13th chapter of John on the subject, and this

was followed by many remarks. I observed that one elderly brother,

speaking in a mournful tone and in our Dutch manner, quoted,

"Nimmermehr soll du mein Fees wasche" ("Thou shalt never wash my

feet"). These discourses were followed by the announcement, "Next

Sunday there will be bread-breaking at Landisville."

Now arose a confusion from carrying out benches, from arranging others

in two long rows facing each other, etc. The two principal preachers

were seen disencumbered of their coats, much animated conversation

began, and feet-washing did not seem to be observed with so much

seriousness as the Supper. I took a seat near the end of two long

benches which were arranged to face each other, and on which sat some

of the brethren whose feet were to be washed by one of the preachers.

Common unpainted tubs containing water were brought in by two men. Dr.

----, the bishop already mentioned, had a great piece of white linen

tied around his waist. He passed along between the two rows of men as

they sat facing each other, bearing his tub alternately from a brother

in one row to one in the other, so that both rows were finished

at about the same time. Quietly the men took off their shoes and

stockings. They did not put their feet forward much. As Dr. ---- came

to each participant he set his tub down before him, washed his feet a

little, wiped them on the long white apron or towel, then shook hands

with him and kissed him. He thus ministered to thirty persons, a

somewhat laborious undertaking, but his powerful frame was suited to

the exertion. The same water and the same towel served for all.

Meantime, the sisters, in another part of the room, were arranged in

smaller companies on benches placed in a similar manner. I said to a

sister, "Do the preachers wash the sisters' feet?"

"Oh no," she answered: "the sisters does it."

Some of the sisters were very friendly, and not unwilling to converse.

One said, "One sister washes as many as she is pretty well able: it's

hard on the back."

"And does she have a towel?" said I.

"She girds a towel, and then she washes and wipes them, and gives them

a kiss."

"Do you all have your feet washed?" I inquired further.

"No, not those that have any weakness that prevents."

"And will all these brothers have their feet washed?"

"All that communes."

"And do not all commune?"

"Yes, without they feel that they have something against another. Now

if I feel that I have something against her--placing her hand upon a

sister.

"I understand," interrupted I. "'If thou bring thy gift to the

altar--' And how many," I continued, "will there be in such a meeting

as this that will not commune? Will there be half a dozen?"

"Oh yes; but by another year all will likely be right, and then they

will commune. Now, I did not commune nor have my feet washed."

"Why not?" said I.

"Why, I felt at this time such confusion of mind, as if the Enemy was

against me--"

"Well, it was not anything against a brother or sister?"

"No, I count them all ahead of me: I count myself the poorest member."

At the conclusion of the feet-washing a hymn was sung. Among those who

had their feet washed was a young man apparently about twenty-two, and

who looked full of fun. It seems that even such may be in membership

with so strict a sect. It was about one o'clock when the meeting

ended, having been in session four hours and a half.

The great simplicity of the surroundings on this occasion may lead

the reader to suppose that the congregation was poor. It was, however,

composed in a great measure of some of the thriftiest farmers in one

of the richest upland sections of the United States.

Some time after attending this meeting I called upon an aged Amish man

to converse with him upon their religious society, etc. The Amish

are another branch of the Mennonites, and those among us are likewise

descendants of Swiss refugees. They are the most primitive of the

three divisions of the sect, preserving the use of the Dutch or German

language not only in their religious meetings, but almost entirely in

their own families.

I mentioned to this aged man the feet-washing that I had attended,

and told how Dr. ----, the bishop, had washed the feet of the other

brethren.

"Did he wash them all?" said my Amish acquaintance.

"Yes, all that were assigned to him. How is it among you?"

"They wash each other's, every two and two. If he washes them all, he

puts himself in Christ's place. _He_ says, 'Wash each other's feet.'"

This, I am also informed, is the rule among the third division, the

Old Mennists, the most numerous branch of these remarkable people.

P.E.G.

THE RAW AMERICAN.

London at present abounds in Americans on their way to the Vienna

Exposition. Many of them are commissioners from various States. Some

have lands to sell or other financial axes to grind. Of such the

Langham Hotel is full. The Langham is the nearest approach to an

American hotel in London. There, though not a guest, you may pass in

and out without explaining to the hall-porter who you are, what you

are, where you come from or what you want: you may there enter and

retire without giving your pedigree, naturalization papers or a

certificate of good character. At other English hotels something

analogous to this is commonly required.

We, who have been in England a full year, look down with an air of

superiority on the raw, the newly-arrived American. We are quite

English. We have worn out our American clothes. We have on English

hats with tightly-curled rims and English stub-toed boots. We know the

intricacies of London street navigation, and Islington, Blackfriars,

Camden Town, Hackney, the "Surrey Side," Piccadilly, Regent and Oxford

streets, the Strand and Fleet street, are all mapped out distinctly

in our mind's eye. We are skilled in English money, and no longer pass

off half crowns for two-shilling pieces. We are real Anglo-Americans.

But the raw American, only arrived a week, is in a maze, a confusion,

a hurry. He is excited and mystified. He tries to appear cool and

unconcerned, and is simply ridiculous. His cards, bearing his name,

title and official status, he distributes as freely as doth the winter

wind the snow-flakes. Inquire at the Langham office for Mr. Smith, and

you find he has blossomed into General Smith.

He is always partaking or about to partake of official dinners. He

feels that the eyes of all England are upon him. He is dressed _à la_

bandbox--hat immaculate in its pristine gloss, white cravat, umbrella

of the slimmest encased in silken wrapper. A speck of mud on his

boots would tarnish the national honor. Commonly, he is taken for a

head-butler. He drinks much stout. He eats a whitebait dinner before

being forty-eight hours in London, and tells of it. All this makes him

feel English.

You meet him. He is overjoyed. He would talk of everything--your

mutual experience in America, his sensations and impressions since

arriving in England. He talks intelligibly of nothing. His brain is

a mere rag-bag, shreddy, confused, parti-colored. Thus he empties it:

"Passage over rough;" "London wonderful;" "Dined with the earl of

---- yesterday;" "Dine with Sir ---- to-day;" "To the Tower;"

"Westminster;" "New York growing;" "Saint Paul's"--going, going, gone!

and he shakes hands with you, and is off at a Broadway gait straight

toward the East End of London for his hotel, which lies at the West

End.

In reality, the man is not in his right mind. He is undergoing the

mental acclimatization fever. Should he stay in London for three

months, he might recover and begin to find out where he is. But six

months hence he will have returned to America, fancying he has seen

London, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Vienna, and whatever other places

his body has been hurried through, not his mind; for that, in the

excitement and rapidity of his flight, has streamed behind him like

the tail of a comet, light, attenuated, vapory, catching nothing,

absorbing nothing.

Occasionally this fever takes an abusive phase. He finds in England

nothing to like, nothing to admire. Sometimes he wishes immediately to

revolutionize the government. He is incensed at the cost of royalty.

He sees on every side indications of political upheaval. Or he becomes

culinarily disgusted. Because there are no buckwheat cakes, no codfish

cakes, no hot bread, no pork and beans, no mammoth oysters, stewed,

fried and roasted, he can find nothing fit to eat. The English

cannot cook. Because he can find no noisy, clattering, dish-smashing

restaurant, full of acrobatic waiters racing and balancing under

immense piles of plates, and shouting jargon untranslatable,

unintelligible and unpronounceable down into the lower kitchen, he

cannot, cannot eat.

PRENTICE MULFORD.

FAREWELL.

The occasion commemorated in the following verses--one of those

festive meetings with which tender-hearted Philadelphians are wont to

brace themselves up for sorrowful partings--called forth expressions

of deep regret and cordial good wishes, in which many of our readers,

we doubt not, will readily join:

If from my quivering lips in vain

The faltering accents strove to flow,

It was because my heart's deep pain

Bade tears be swift and utterance slow;

For in that moment rose the ghosts

Of pleasant hours in bygone years;

And your kind faces, O my hosts!

Showed blurred and dimly through my tears.

I could not tell you of the pride

That thrilled me in that parting hour:

Grief held command all undenied,

And only o'er my speech had power.

I found no words to tell the thoughts

That strove for utterance in my brain:

With gratitude my soul was fraught,

And yet I only spoke of pain.

O friends! 'tis you, and such as you,

That make this parting hard to bear!

Pass all things else my past life knew:

I scarcely heed--I do not care.

I lose in you the dearest part

Of pleasant time that here now ends:

Hand parts from hand, _not_ heart from heart,

And I must leave you, O my friends!

What can the future's fairest hours

Bring me to recompense for these?

Acquaintances spring like the flowers--

Friends are slow growth, like forest trees.

Come hope or gladness, what there will--

Days bright as sunshine after rain--

The past gave life's best blessings still:

We'll find no friends like these again.

I leave you in the dear old home

That once was mine--now mine no more:

Henceforth a stranger I must come

To haunts so well beloved of yore;

Yet if your faces turn to mine

The kindly smile I'm wont to see,

Not all, not all I must resign--

My lost home's light still shines for me!

Whatever chance or change be mine

In other climes, 'neath foreign skies,

Your love, your kindness, I shall hold

Dearest amid dear memories.

O eyes grown dim with falling tears!

O lips where Sorrow lays her spell!

The saddest task of all life's years

Is yours--to look and say farewell!

LUCY H. HOOPER.

AUGUSTIN'S, April 7, 1873.

NOTES.

Between the careers of Cavour and Thiers no sound parallel can easily

be traced, but in their characters--or rather in their diplomatic

methods and arts--there would seem to be some curious and almost

ludicrous points of resemblance, if we may accept as true a sketch

of the great Italian statesman made by M. Plattel, the author of

"Causeries Franco-Italiennes," fifteen years ago. M. Plattel, who

wrote from close personal observation, at that time described Count

Cavour as being physically "M. Thiers magnified;" or, if you prefer,

M. Thiers is the count viewed through the big end of an opera-glass.

The count, says M. Plattel, "has the spectacles, and even a similar

expression of finesse. When things take a serious turn, the count puts

both hands in his pockets; and if you see him do that, expect to hear

this threat: 'If you do not pass this bill, _signori deputati_, I

consider you incapable of longer managing the affairs of the country:

I have the honor of bidding you good-evening.' For (and this is a

strange peculiarity) this first minister is never steadier than when

in danger of falling; and his grand oratorical, or rather ministerial,

figure of speech is to seize his hat and his cane, whereupon the

chamber rises and begs M. de Cavour to sit down. M. de Cavour lets

them plead a while, and then--he sits down again! Reading his speeches

now in Paris, I can fancy the count with his hat by his side and his

hand on the door-knob. Heaven knows how many times that comedy-proverb

of Musset called 'A door must either be open or shut,' has been

gravely played by the Sardinian Parliament and the prime minister!"

It is with a very droll effect that a French paper has revived this

curious description, _à propos_ of the perpetual repetition of the

drama played by the French Assembly and the French president, in which

the constant threats of resignation on the one hand are invariably

followed by passionate and despairing entreaties to "stay" on the

other. It is the old story of Cavour and the door-knob over again;

and even the great Bismarck, by the way, does not disdain a resort

occasionally to the same terrible pantomime. "The only _coup d'état_

to be feared from M. Thiers," said M. Dufaure in the Assembly, "is his

withdrawal." It is, the quarreling and reconciliation of Horace and

Lydia: "What if the door of the repudiated Lydia again open to me?"

"Though you are stormier than blustering Adriatic, I should love to

live with you," etc. Such is the billing and cooing, after quarrel,

between the president and the Assembly. Still, it is clear that the

puissant hat-and-cane argument must date back to Cavour.

* * * * *

The recent proposition of some English writers to elevate a certain

class of suicides to the rank of a legalized "institution," under the

pleasant name of "euthanasia," suggests the inquiry whether, without

any scientific vindication of the practice, there will not always be

suicides enough in ordinary society. At any rate, however it may be in

England, just across the Channel, in France, thousands of people every

year break the "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," leaving the ills they

have to "fly to others that they know not of." The official figures

show that in a period of twenty-two years no less than 71,207 persons

committed suicide in France. The causes were various--business

embarrassments, domestic chagrins, the brutishness produced by liquor,

poverty, insanity, the desire to put an end to physical suffering by

"euthanasia," and so on; but they are pretty nearly all included in

the "fardels" which Hamlet mentions, from the physical troubles of the

"heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," up

to the mental distress wrought by the "whips and scorns of time, the

oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised

love," and so on in the well-remembered catalogue. Perhaps the most

interesting point in these statistics concerns the means employed for

suicide. These are thus tabulated: Hanging, 24,536; drowning, 23,221;

shooting, 10,197; asphyxia by charcoal fumes (a true Paris appliance),

5587; various cutting instruments, 2871; plunging or jumping from an

elevated place (an astonishing number), 2841; poison, 1500; sundry

other methods, 454. Hanging and drowning are thus accountable for more

than half the French suicides. The little stove of charcoal suggests

itself as a remedy at hand to many a wretch without the means to buy

a pistol or the nerve to use a knife. The cases of voluntary resort

to poison are astonishingly few, but it must be remembered that the

foregoing figures only embrace successful suicides, and antidotes to

poison often come in season where the rope or the river would

have made quick and fatal work. _La France_ notes, regarding these

statistics, that their details show that men oftenest use pistols, and

women oftenest try poison, in their attempts at suicide. What is more

curious, each man is likely to employ an instrument familiar to him:

thus, hunters and soldiers resort to the pistol, barbers trust

the razor, shoemakers use the knife, engravers the graving-tool,

washerwomen poison themselves with potash or Prussian blue; though,

of course, these are only general rules, with a great many exceptions.

And in Paris it is said that among all ranks and professions, and in

both sexes, at least half of the suicides are by asphyxiation with

charcoal. Surely in France one hardly needs to preach any doctrine of

not patiently suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

A healthier and more inspiring morality would be that of the story of

the baron of Grogzwig and his adventure with the "Genius of Despair

and Suicide," as narrated in an episode of _Nicholas Nickleby_; for

the stout baron, after thinking over his purpose of making a voluntary

departure from this world, and finding he had no security of being any

the better for going out of it, abandoned the plan, and adopted as a

rule in all cases of melancholy to look at both sides of the question,

and to apply a magnifying-glass to the better one.

* * * * *

In Philadelphia, at least, where there is still a respect for age, the

tidings will be received with respectful regret of the death of Nono,

a noted pensionary of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, at the ripe age

of more than a hundred years. To have achieved the celebrity of being

the oldest inmate of that institution was no despicable distinction,

but the venerable centenarian had other claims to honor. A native of

the Marquesas Islands, he was brought by Bougainville in 1776 to

the Royal Museum, afterward known as the Jardin des Plantes. It has

frequently been alleged that parrots may live a hundred years:

Nono has established the fact by living still longer. As he thus

contributes an illustration to science, so surely he might point a

general moral and adorn a historic tale. If Thackeray could discourse

so wisely on "Some Carp at Sans Souci," the vicissitudes which this

veteran Parisian witnessed in the French capital from 1776 to 1873,

under two empires, two royal dynasties and three republics, might be

worth a rhapsody. Nono seems to have been a well-preserved old parrot.

Magnificent in youth, he attained literally a green old age, for his

plumage was still fresh and thick. Very naturally, he had lost his

houppe, and was almost totally bald. However, his eye was clear and

bright enough to have read the finest print or followed the finest

needlework; and it had the _narquois_, lightly skeptical look of those

who have seen a great deal of life. In short, Nono was a stylish and

eminently respectable old bird. That worthy person, Monsieur Chavreul,

who treats the animals of the Jardin like a father, has stuffed

and mounted the illustrious Nono as a testimonial of affection and

respect.

* * * * *

The connection between war and botany is, at first, not specially

obvious, and yet a very clear bit of testimony to their relation was

disclosed by the siege of Paris. Two naturalists have published a

_Florula Obsidionalis_, which, as its name partly indicates, is a

catalogue of the accidental flora of the late investment of Paris.

They reckon in their list not less than one hundred and ninety species

before unknown to the neighborhood of the French capital, whereof

fifty-eight are leguminous (such as peas, beans, etc.), thirty-four

are composite, thirty-two are _plantes grasses_, and sixty-six belong

to other families. Almost all are to be found chiefly on the left bank

of the Seine, though also discoverable at Neuilly and in the Bois de

Boulogne. Of course, these new-comers are all accounted for as the

produce of seeds brought by the German army. They will gradually die

out; and yet some few may remain as permanent conquerors of the soil,

since among the flora of Paris is still reckoned one plant whose seed

was brought into France by some Russian forage-train in 1815.

* * * * *

As the impudence, dishonesty, laziness and rapacity of servants at

watering-places have long been familiar subjects of satire, it is

just to say a word on the other side in favor of some extreme

Northern resorts. At the White Mountains, for example, the waiters and

waitresses are of a better class than is generally met. Some of the

young girls are farmers' daughters, who go to the hotels to see the

fashions and earn a little pocket-money. The colored cook at one of

the great houses teaches dancing during the winters. Not a few are

school-teachers, others students at country academies, who pass their

vacation in this way in order to earn enough to buy text-books or

pay the winter's tuition. Many of them are more intelligent and well

educated than some of the shoddies they wait upon. They are usually

quicker in movement and of more retentive memory than the average

American waiter; and though each has a great deal to do at times, yet

even during the tremendous moment of dinner they contrive to find a

few little intervals for harmless flirtations in the dining-room. They

are for the most part well-mannered too, and if they talk to you of

each other as "this lady" or "that gentleman," what is it more than

some waiters do with far less reason? The New Hampshire villages

become versed every summer in the latest imported fashions, thanks to

the quick eyes of the hotel waitresses.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Lars: A Pastoral of Norway. By Bayard Taylor. Boston: Osgood & Co.

Mr. Taylor's muse has of late become very still-faced, decorous and

mindful of the art-proprieties. Cautious is she, and there is perhaps

nothing in this pastoral that will cause the grammarian to wince, or

make the censorious rhetorician writhe in his judgment-seat with

the sense that she is committing herself. Not such were the early

attributes of the great itinerant's poetry. When he used to unsling

his minstrel harp in the wilds of California or on the sunrise

mountains of the Orient, there were plenty of false notes, plenty

of youthful vivacities that overbore the strings and were heard as a

sudden crack, and, withal, a good deal of young frank fire. Now there

is much finish and the least possible suspicion of ennui. But the

life-history of _Lars_ is worth reading. It is a calm procession of

pictures, without pretence, except the slight pretence of classical

correctness. The first part, which reflects Norwegian manners in a way

reminding us more or less of the exquisite stories of Bjornsen, tells

how two swains of Ulvik, Lars the hunter and Per the fisher, quarrel

for love of Brita, and at a public wrestling decide the question by a

combat, fighting with knives, in Norse fashion, while hooked to each

other at the belt. They strip, _à la_ Heenan and Sayers. Mr. Taylor,

who does not often come behind the occasion when he can get a human

figure to describe statue-wise or under a studio light, is perhaps a

trifle too Phidian in bringing out the good looks of his fish-eating

gladiators:

The low daylight clad

Their forms with awful fairness, beauty now

Of life, so warm and ripe and glorious, yet

So near the beauty terrible of Death.

Lars, the victor, has all the ill-luck. His foe falls lifeless, his

sweetheart calls him a murderer, and he flies from the law. Another

scene quickly shows him crossing the broad ocean, as so many

Norwegians and Swedes had crossed before him, and seeking the

protection of Swedish forts on Delaware banks. Long, sad days pass on

the ocean,

Till shining fisher-sails

Came, stars of land that rose before the land;

and soon he leaps to shore in New Sweden, only to find that the

civilization he seeks has set like a sinking planet into the abiding

enlightenment of another race and creed. Governor Printz's fortress

on Tinicum isle is a ruin of yellow bricks: the wanderer strays up the

broad stream

To where, upon her hill, fair Wilmington

Looks to the river over marshy weeds.

He saw the low brick church with stunted tower,

The portal-arches, ivied now and old,

And passed the gate: lo! there the ancient stones

Bore Norland names and dear familiar words!

It seemed the dead a comfort spake.

The governor is a myth, the Swedes are dead, the Scandinavian tongues

have been changed to English, and an English exactly conformed to King

James's translation of the Scriptures. The first girl he speaks to

checks him for addressing her with a civility:

"Nay," she said, "not _lady_! call me Ruth."

With the father of this primitive Nausicaa, on Hockessin Farm, the

wanderer abides as herdsman. Soon, under the propaganda of Ruth's

soft eyes and the drowsy spell of the Delawarean society, he joins the

peaceful sect amongst which he labors. It is easier, though, to

change his plural pronouns to the scriptural _thou_ and _thee_ of King

James's translators than to tame his heroic Viking blood, swift to

boil into wrath at the show of oppression. Such an outburst leads to a

quaint scene of acknowledgment and repentance, where lies

Up beyond the woods, at crossing-roads,

The heart of all, the ancient meeting-house.

Lars, prayed over by the brethren, bursts forth in tears and

supplications among the worshipers, and is received into full harmony

with them:

So into joy revolved the doubtful year,

And, ere it closed, the gentle fold of Friends

Sheltered another member, even Lars....

And all the country-side assembled there

One winter Sabbath, when in snow and sky

The colors of transfiguration shone,

Within the meeting-house. There Ruth and Lars

Together sat upon the women's side;

And when the peace was perfect, they arose:

He took her by the hand, and spake these words,

As ordered: "In the presence of the Lord

And this assembly, by the hand I take

Ruth Mendenhall, and promise unto her,

Divine assistance blessing me, to be

A loving and a faithful husband, even

Till death shall separate us." Then spake Ruth

The like sweet words; and so the twain were one.

It is not often that a liturgy has been translated into metre with

less change of its form and substance.

The imbedding of a raw Northern native in this lap of repose and in

this transfiguring matrimonial alliance is the grand problem of the

poem. What will Lars do, now that he is a man of peace and a Child of

Light, with the burden of conscience? In America he is a saint and an

apostle. In Europe he is known but as a proscribed murderer. The later

scenes, where Lars, accompanied by his true and tender wife, meets his

old love, his neighbors, and his rival restored to life, are of a more

ambitious character than any that have preceded. The holy principles

imbibed on the shores of Delaware are made to triumph, and Lars,

dropping the sharp blade from his hand in the thronged arena whither

he is forced once more, stands first as a laughing-stock, and then as

an apostle, among his old neighbors. It is a position full of moral

force, and we find ourselves--suddenly recovering in a degree from the

calm view we had taken of the poem as a work of art--asking _how_ we

should be so sensible of the grandeur of the situation if the poet by

his skill had not brought out its peculiarity.

* * * * *

A Lady of the Last Century. By Dr. Doran. London: Bentley.

This is the life of a lady remarkable in herself and in her

surroundings. Of every day in her life she could say, in the words of

Horace, "I have lived." "She never had a fool for an acquaintance,"

says her biographer, "nor an idle hour in the sense of idleness." Her

father, Mr. Robinson, who belonged to an eminent family which had been

settled about a century at Rokeby, subsequently the seat of Scott's

friend Morritt, in Yorkshire, married when a boy of eighteen a rich

young lady of very superior quality in every respect, and by her had

a large family. His wife's mother married secondly Middleton, the

biographer of Cicero, who took a great fancy to her grand-daughter,

Elizabeth Robinson, and paid much attention to her intellectual

development. In fact, from the cradle to the grave she was thrown

amongst the erudite and cultivated in a very uncultivated age. During

her girlhood Elizabeth Robinson had every advantage and pleasure which

wealthy and devoted parents could give her, and when twenty-two she

married Mr. Edward Montagu, a grandson of the first earl of Sandwich,

and first cousin of the celebrated Lady Mary's husband.

Mrs. Montagu was far more fortunate in her choice than the brilliant

daughter of the duke of Kingston. Her husband was in every way

estimable and amiable, and her letters afford ample evidence how

thoroughly she appreciated his character. They had only one child, who

died in infancy, and when Mr. Montagu died he bequeathed to his widow

the whole of his property, which she in turn left to her nephew, who

took the name of Montagu and became Lord Rokeby.

A few years after their marriage Mr. Montagu, already affluent,

received a great accession of fortune in the shape of colliery

property in the north of England. This enabled his wife to entertain

very liberally, and, in conjunction with her talents and high

connections, gave her a commanding place in society. They took a large

house in Hill street, then the extremity of the West End, which became

the resort of that class who, being anxious to put an end to eternal

card-playing and introduce rather more of the intellectual into

social intercourse, received from a chance circumstance the name

of "blue-stockings." There were to be seen Burke, Fox, Hannah More,

Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, etc. Subsequently, Mrs. Montagu fitted up

a room whose walls were hung with feathers, and thence came Cowper's

well-known lines and Macaulay's passage: "There were the members

of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised and exchanged

repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu." After

her husband's death a great deal of business devolved on her in the

management of his estates, and here she showed those qualities which

are singularly conspicuous in Englishwomen of rank. She went down to

Northumberland, inspected her farms, visited her colliers, and

made acquaintance with her tenants. She seems particularly to have

appreciated the people in Yorkshire, and her descriptions of them

recall in no slight degree some of those of the sisters Bronté. Her

principal seat was at Sandleford in Berkshire, where she spent

large sums in improvements under the celebrated landscape-gardener

"Capability Brown."

She survived her husband twenty-five years, and about twenty years

before her death removed to a fine house which she had erected in a

then new part of London, Portman Square, and which is still known as

Montagu House. But the entertainments there given were, though more

splendid, less notable than in the humbler mansion in Hill street, for

Mrs. Montagu herself was getting into years, and many of those who had

been the brightest ornaments of the Hill street parties were passing

away. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, at the age of seventy. She was of an

affectionate disposition, but had somewhat less sensibility perhaps

than most men would like to see in a woman; yet, on the whole, she

played her part in life extremely well, being wise, generous and true.

The book is particularly interesting for the rich aroma of association

around it, and would have been far more so had Dr. Doran taken the

trouble to give a few notes, of which there is not a single one in the

whole book--a serious drawback, more especially to American readers.

* * * * *

The Treaty of Washington: Its Negotiation, Execution, and the

Discussions relating thereto. By Caleb Cushing. New York: Harper &

Brothers.

Mr. Cushing has given another proof of the great capacity of some

men to do very clever work, but to fail utterly in giving an adequate

account of the work itself or of the way in which it was done. Trained

by long experience in public business, and intimately acquainted

by long residence in Washington with the methods of diplomatic

negotiation and interpretation, he was eminently fitted to be the

colleague of Mr. Evarts as counsel for the government before the

Geneva arbitration. Here he undertakes to give an account of the

task there brought to a result so favorable to the United States.

Unluckily, he shows that he is always and only an advocate. Much that

may have been useful for his duties in that office is prominent in a

disagreeable way in his recital of the Geneva award. His language is

loose and offensive, often without meaning to be so, but oftener in

a way that shows how much he must have been galled by the lord

chief-justice of England. Whatever Sir Alexander Cockburn may have

done there, and however much he may have fallen from his high estate

as one of the arbitrators to the less dignified position of an

advocate for English claims, he will have a sweet revenge in seeing

the anger that he has excited in one of the American representatives,

now become their spokesman. Mr. Cushing falls into the blunder that

was once so common in our American state papers as to give good cause

for that happy phrase of Nicholas Biddle--"Western Orientalisms." The

tone of the book, which ought to be a simple story, is stilted and

rhetorical. The result of all the long discussions is the best praise

of our American statesmen who were its authors, but it is dwarfed and

lessened by the fulsome praise given to the foreign representatives

who brought it about. Of "bad language," in keeping with the

bad spirit of the book, the following may serve as specimens:

"Pretensiveness," "frequentation," "annexion," "capitulations"

instead of "treaties," "monogram" for "monograph," "it needs to,"

"howmuchsoever," "law-books invested with the reflection of fine

scenery," "imposed itself," "I demand of myself," and other such

phrases without number.

Once done with Sir Alexander Cockburn and the work at Geneva, Mr.

Cushing shows himself and his country to much better advantage in

discussing the "Mixed Commission" now sitting at Washington, the

Northwest Boundary, the Fisheries, and the general provisions of the

Washington treaty. He has, however, simply forestalled the ground

for some better writer on the important history which belongs to that

negotiation, and will give the reading and reflecting public, both

abroad and at home, a very unfavorable impression of the great task in

which he played so important a part, and of the qualities of mind and

temper he must have brought to it, since at this late day he finds

no better impetus to the work of writing its history than unexplained

anger at one of the members of the board before which Mr. Cushing

argued the cause of his country, and helped to win it.

_Books Received._

The Drawing-Room Stage: A Series of Original Dramas, Comedies, Farces,

and Entertainments for Amateur Theatricals and School Exhibitions. By

George M. Baker. Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

Five Years in an English University. By Charles Astor Bristed, late

Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. Third edition.

Revised by the Author. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

Memoirs of Madame Desbordes-Valmore. By the late C.A. Sainte-Beuve.

With a Selection from her Poems. Translated by Harriet W. Preston.

Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Livingstone and his African Explorations: together with a Full Account

of the Young, Stanley and Dawson Search Expeditions. New York: Adams,

Victor & Co.

The Mother's Register: Current Notes of the Health of Children. From

the French of Professor J.B. Fonssagrines. New York: G.P. Putnam &

Sons.

Thorvaldsen: His Life and Works. By Eugene Plon. Translated from the

French by J. M. Luyster. Illustrated. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Scientific and Industrial Education: its Importance to our Country. By

G.B. Stebbins. Detroit: Daily Post Printing Establishment.

Never Again. By W.S. Mayo, M.D., author of "Kaloolah," "The Berber,"

etc. New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons.

The World-Priest. From the German of Leopold Schafer. By Charles T.

Brooks. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The Cuban Question in the Spanish Parliament. London: Press of the

Anglo-American Times.

Treason at Home: A Novel. By Mrs. Greenough. Philadelphia: T.B.

Peterson & Brothers.

Myths and Myth-Makers. By John Fiske, M.A., LL.B. Boston: James R.

Osgood & Co.

An Account of the Sphynx at Mount Auburn. Illustrated. Boston: Little,

Brown & Co.