"'I cannot stop,' answered the Lord. 'I am going to perform a great

miracle--that is, find a good mother among the women who are fond of

bull-fights; but everything will turn out well if the ass doesn't stop.

All I can do for you is that if you take it into your head to raise your

husband, your husband will be raised.'

"And indeed the wife took it into her head that her husband must be

raised, and her husband was raised, for even the dead can't resist the

whims of women."

The good news that Ramon had received was a letter from his brother, who

wished Santiago to be sent to him by the first steamer leaving Bilbao.

It was the 15th of August, the Feast of the Assumption, when Santiago,

accompanied by his father, prepared to start for Bilbao.

"Quica, who until the moment of departure had not shed a tear, because

she had only seen her son on the way to happiness, as you saw yours,

disconsolate mother, who now see only a sepulchre in the

Americas,--Quica now wept without restraint. Poor Catalina had wept so

much for a month and a half that there were no tears left in her eyes:

she did not weep, but she felt the faintness and sorrow which the dying

must experience. Santiago's eyes were moist at times, but soon shone

with joy.

"'Come, come! You are like a lot of crying children,' exclaimed Ramon,

tearing his son from the arms of Quica and Catalina. 'One would say that

it is a matter to cry over. Don't you see me? I too have a soul in my

soul-case....'

"And indeed he had, for tears as large as nuts rolled from his eyes.

Santiago and Ramon departed. Quica and Catalina sorrowfully followed

them with their eyes until they crossed a neighboring hill. Then the

young girl made an almost supernatural effort to calm herself, and said,

'Mother, I am going to take the sheep to the mountain.'

"'Do what you wish, my daughter,' answered Quica mechanically.

"It was Catalina's custom to open, the gate every morning to a flock of

sheep and lead them a stone's throw from the farmhouse, where she left

them alone; but this day she went with them as far as the hill that

Ramon and Santiago had just crossed, and from that hill she went on to

the next and the next, with her eyes always fixed on the road to Bilbao,

until, overcome by fatigue and dying with grief, she bowed her beautiful

head, and instead of retracing her steps to the farmhouse of Ipenza, she

went to the church in the valley and fell on her knees before the altar

of the Virgin of Solitude."

Santiago reaches Mexico in safety, and is kindly received by his uncle,

who dies ten years later and leaves him an immense fortune. Santiago at

once plunges into every species of dissipation, and soon destroys his

health. His physician recommends him as a last resort to return to his

native country and try the effect of the mountain-air. Meanwhile,

Catalina had grown up one of the prettiest girls of the village, and

Santiago's parents had died, leaving her a handsome dowry and the use of

the farm until it should be claimed by Santiago.

"One dark and rainy night Santiago returned to his home, broken down in

health and profoundly weary of life. Catalina receives him, and is

amazed at his changed appearance.

"'Are you ill, Santiago?' asked Catalina with infinite tenderness.

"'Yes--ill in body and mind.'

"'How do you feel, brother of my heart?'

"'I do not feel anything: that is my greatest misfortune.'"

In truth, the unfortunate Santiago had lost all the better feelings of

his heart. His return to the home of his innocent boyhood failed to

evoke any pure and noble sentiments: his heart continued paralyzed,

cold, indifferent to everything. But it was impossible for him to remain

in this condition under the influence of Catalina. He gradually began to

take an interest in the life around him and employ his wealth for the

benefit of his neighbors. Gradually, he awoke from his lethargy and

became well in body and mind. As the reader can imagine, the story

closes with his marriage to Catalina, who had such a great share in his

recovery.

In the story called "From One's Country to Heaven" (_Desde la Patria al

Cielo_) the author's endeavors show that the surest happiness is to be

found in one's native village. He begins with an ironical description of

the village of S---- in the Encartaciones, in which he depicts the

simplicity of the inhabitants and their backwardness, in regard to the

spirit of the age. In this village lived, among others, Teresa, a poor

widow, and her only child, Pedro. One day, while passing the palace of a

wealthy "Indian," he called her and said he was obliged to return to

America, and wished her to take care of his house during his absence.

The poor woman now saw herself relieved from want and able to educate

her son. The latter found in the rich library of the "Indian" food for

many years of study, and soon became dissatisfied with his quiet life in

the village, and eager to travel and see the countries about which he

had read such charming tales. He soon grew to despise everything around

him, and treated with scorn his neighbor Rose, who had long loved him

tenderly.

One day news arrived from Mexico that the "Indian" had died, leaving to

Teresa his palace at S---- and a large sum of money besides. Pedro was

now able to fulfil his dreams of travel, and started on his journey. He

first visits the Pass of Roncesvalles, and is nearly killed by the

indignant Frenchmen whom he asks about the defeat of Charlemagne and the

Twelve Peers. Pedro then proceeds to Bayonne, where he is so shocked by

the sight of young girls selling their hair to the highest bidder that

he determines to leave France, and we next find him in a Swiss chalet,

where he is disgusted by the lack of cleanliness. His feelings can be

imagined when he finds that the peasants have no popular traditions and

are not acquainted even with the name of William Tell. In despair, Pedro

directs his course to Germany, but finds no sylphs or sirens on the

banks of the Rhine, while maidens with blue eyes and golden hair are no

more abundant there than elsewhere. Greece next receives the wanderer,

who hears in Athens of railroads and consolidated funds: on Olympus he

finds a guano manufactory, and on Pindus a poet writing

fourteen-syllable endecasyllabics. He visits with a similar

disenchantment Constantinople, and then makes his way to England. There

poor Pedro is disgusted by the sordid, selfish spirit of the people. An

absurd scene at a village church fills him with horror. The bare walls

of the temple chill his heart, and after the service a domestic quarrel

between the curate and his jealous wife caps the climax and Pedro flees

to America. On landing in New York he is robbed of his watch: the thief

is arrested, but gives the watch to the magistrate, keeping the chain

for himself, and Pedro is condemned to pay the costs and the damages

suffered by the thief's character. On returning that evening from the

theatre he is garroted and robbed of all he has with him. The landlord

tells him that no one thinks of going out at night without a pair of

six-shooters, and adds that what happens in New York is nothing to what

goes on at Boston, Baltimore and New Orleans. The next day he reads an

editorial in the _New York Herald_ advising American merchants to

repudiate their foreign debts. He then determines to visit the different

States, and on passing through the South thanks God that slavery is

unknown in Europe. Railroad accidents, murders and political and social

corruption cause him to regard with profound horror the young republic,

which seems to him old in vice, and he starts for South America, the

Spanish part of which reminds him of a virgin overwhelmed with

misfortunes, but still full of youth and faith. In Vera Cruz, Pedro

visits the sepulchre of the "Indian" to whom he owes his fortune. A

letter from his mother is awaiting him there, and he bursts into tears,

and sails at once for his beloved home, which he reaches one beautiful

Sunday morning in May. His meeting with his mother takes place in the

church, and there also he sees Rose, whose constancy is now rewarded.

The story closes with the lines from Lista: "Happy he who has never seen

any other stream than that of his native place, and, an old man, sleeps

in the shade where he played a boy!"

Another story of the same collection, and one of the author's best, is

entitled _Juan Paloma_. The principal characters are Don Juan de

Urrutia, nicknamed Juan Paloma ("dovelike"), a wealthy and crusty old

bachelor, and Antonio de Molinar, a poor peasant, and his wife. The

moral of the story is in Don Juan's last words: "Blessed be the family!"

and in Juana's remark: "Alas for him who lives alone in the world, for

only his dogs will weep for him when he dies!"

The other stories of this volume, "The Mother-in-Law," "The Judas of the

Household" and "I Believe in God," all contain many charming scenes. In

the last a young girl is educated by an infidel father, and after his

death marries Diego, a village lad. She becomes a mother, but still

retains in her heart the seeds of atheism sown there by her father. Her

child, a girl, becomes ill, and a doctor is sent for from Bilbao.

"The doctor was long in coming, and Ascensita was devoured by impatience

and uncertainty. He arrived at last, and examined the child attentively,

observing a deep silence, which caused the poor mother the most

sorrowful anxiety.

"'Will the daughter of my heart recover?' Ascensita asked him in tears.

'For God's sake, speak to me frankly, for this uncertainty is more cruel

than the death of my daughter.'

"'Senora,' answered the doctor, 'God alone can save the child.'

"Ascensita fell senseless by the side of the cradle containing her

dying child. When she returned to herself Diego alone was at her side.

The unhappy mother placed her ear to the child's lips, and perceived

that it still breathed.

"'Diego,' she exclaimed, 'take care of the child of my soul!' and flying

down the stairs hastened to a hermitage near by, and falling on her

knees before the Virgin of Consolation exclaimed in grief, 'Holy Virgin!

pity me! Save the child of my heart! And if she has flown to heaven

since I left her side to fall at thy feet, beg thy holy Son to restore

her to life, as He did the maid of Galilee!'

"A woman who was praying in a corner of the temple arose weeping with

joy and grief, and hastened to clasp the unhappy mother in her arms and

call her daughter. It was her husband's mother, Agustina, who had also

gone to the temple to pray for the restoration of the child.

"'Mother,' exclaimed Ascensita, 'I believe in God! I believe in God and

hope in His mercy!'

"'My daughter, no one believes in it in vain,' answered Agustina,

bursting into tears. And both again knelt and prayed."

The mother's prayer was heard and the child recovered.

In the _Popular Narrations_, Trueba works up themes already popular

among the people, but clothes them in his own words and varies them to

suit his own taste. He says in the preface: "The task which I undertook

some time ago, and still continue, consists in collecting the

narrations, tales or anecdotes that circulate among the people and are

the work of the popular invention, which sometimes creates and at others

imitates, if it does not plagiarize, trying when it imitates to give to

the imitation the form of the original. Some of the writers or

collectors abroad, and especially in Germany, who have devoted

themselves to a similar task, have followed a method different from

mine; since, like the Brothers Grimm, they reproduce the popular tales

almost as they have collected them from the lips of the people. This

system is not to my taste, because almost all popular tales, although

they have a precious base, have an absurd form, and in order to enter

worthily into the products of the literary art they need to be perfected

by art, and have a moral or philosophical end, which nothing in the

sphere of art should be without."

The subjects of some of these stories are well known out of Spain. "St.

Peter's Doubts" (_Las Dudas de San Pedro_) is as old as the _Gesta

Romanorum_ (cap. 80), and is familiar to English readers from Parnell's

_Hermit_. Another, "A Century in a Moment" (_Un Siglo en un Momento_),

is the story of the woman allowed after death to come back to the earth

and see her lover, whom she finds faithless. Still another,

_Tragaldabas_, is familiar to the readers of Grimm's _Household Tales_,

where it figures as "Godfather Death."

The volume of _Popular Tales_ contains nineteen stories of the most

varying description. Some are popular in the broadest sense, as "The

Three Counsels" (_Los Consejos_), in which a soldier whose time of

service has expired buys from his captain with his pay three pieces of

advice: Always take the short cut on a road, Do not inquire into what

does not concern you, and Do nothing without reflection. The soldier on

his way home has occasion to put in practice all three counsels, and

thereby saves his life and property. Others, are legendary, as _Ofero_,

the legend of St. Christopher, and _Casilda_, the story of the Moorish

king's daughter converted to the Christian religion by a physician from

Judea, who proves to be Our Lord. One, "The Wife of the Architect" (_La

Mujer del Arquitecto_), is a local tradition of Toledo, and another,

"The Prince without a Memory" (_El Principe Desmemoriado_), is taken

from Gracian Dantisco's _Galateo Espanol_.

We may say of this collection, as of the last, that, although the

stories show much humor and skill, they are not among the author's best.

He is most at home in the simple pictures of life in the Encartaciones

or in the country near Madrid. The latter is the scene of the stories

in the volume entitled _Rural Tales_ (_Cuentos campesinos_), which

contains some of the author's most charming productions. They are

generally longer than the others--one, "Domestic Happiness" (_La

Felicidad domestica_), filling over ninety-two octavo pages. "Seed-time

and Harvest" (_Las Siembras y las Cosechas_) is a charming story of Pepe

and his wife Pepa, the former of whom sows wheat in his fields, and the

latter economy, love and virtue by the fireside. The best story of the

collection, however--and, to our mind, one of the best that Trueba has

written--is the one called "The Style is the Man" (_El Estilo es el

Hombre_), which is so well worth a translation that we will not spoil it

by an analysis.

We have said that Trueba's works have been great popular successes. He

has endeared himself to all who love poetry and the simple, honest life

of the Spanish people. His beloved province has not forgotten him, and

in 1862 unanimously elected him archivist and chronicler of Biscay, with

a salary of nine hundred dollars a year. The poet henceforth turned his

attention to a history of Biscay, which has not yet appeared, though

some preliminary studies have been published in a work entitled

_Chapters of a Book_ (_Capitulos de un Libro_). Trueba resided at this

period of his life at Bilbao, which he was obliged to leave in haste

during the last Carlist war, and he has since lived in Madrid. He has

published there several volumes of romances and historical novels, some

of which have been very successful; but Trueba's real strength is in his

poetry and short stories, which may be favorably compared with the best

of this class of literature--with Auerbach's _Tales of the Black

Forest_, for example. The reader is at once attracted to the author,

whose personality shines through most of his stories and is always

apparent in his poetry. Simple, honest, patriotic, religious, he is a

type of the best class of Spaniards--a class that will some day win for

their country the respect of other nations and bring back a better glory

than that founded on conquest.

T. F. CRANE.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS.

CHAPTER XVII.

My first meeting with Georgy Lenox on the seashore was not my last. The

habits of the family made it easy for us to have our interviews

uninterrupted, and probably unperceived, for although we were all early

risers we rarely met each other till breakfast-time. Helen went to her

father's room at half-past seven, and they read and talked together

until my mother called them at nine o'clock. As for my mother, purest of

all women as she was, she felt she was not pure enough to meet the new

day until she had spent an hour at her Bible and on her knees in prayer.

There is a light that comes out of the west sometimes toward evening

after a stormy day which seems to be sent straight from the fount of

light itself. Such light was always in my mother's eyes when I kissed

her good-morning, and I knew it had come to her as she knelt on bended

knees. She was tranquil in these days with a Heaven-born tranquillity,

but I know now that she had a pang of dread for every throb of love.

She spoke to me once of my increasing intimacy with Georgina. "There is

nothing you are concealing from me, Floyd?" she said, her brown eyes

reading my face.

She had come to my bedside after I had gone to rest for the night,

impelled by a restlessness to be certain that all was well with her dear

ones before she could close her eyes.

"I cannot think what you mean, mother," I answered. "I have nothing to

conceal."

She sighed. "Georgy is a beautiful girl," she said quietly, "but she

baits too many lures for men, Floyd. It seems to me she is trying to win

you, my dear boy. She is born to make men unhappy. Do not trust her. Oh,

why is she here?"

"Because Helen has asked her to remain, mother."

"Helen pities her and tries to please her. She is one too many in the

house, Floyd: she will do some harm to some of us. She is cold and

treacherous at heart, and she never sees us happy, contented together

but that she hates us every one."

I thought my mother fanciful, and told her that she was prejudiced

against the girl, who had grown up from infancy under her eyes.

"I know her better than you do, mother," I affirmed stubbornly.

She smiled a patient, melancholy smile. "If I am prejudiced," said she

gently, "it is because of what her misconduct cost my son years ago. Do

you think I can ever forget that but for her caprice and self-will you

would never have had those years of suffering, Floyd? But we women know

each other. It is at times a sad knowledge, and for our prescience the

men whom we would serve misjudge us and tell us we hate each other.

Georgina is in love this summer. You do not guess what man she has set

her wishes upon?"

I stirred restlessly on my pillow, but I looked at her with something

like anger against her growing in my heart.

"Good-night, mother," I returned. "It is none of my business to read any

girl's heart through a sister-woman's cold trained eyes. If Miss Lenox

is in love, God bless her! I say. I suppose I am not the lucky fellow."

My mother kissed me softly on my forehead and went out; and, alas! it

was many a day afterward before there was perfect peace and confidence

between us again. Not that we were cold or constrained--indeed, we were

more than ever gentle and tender in our ways ... but there was a subject

which was heavy on our hearts of which we were not again to speak, and

there may have been a meaning in my face which she did not venture to

read, for I resented it if her look fastened upon me too closely.

But the pleasant country-house life went on quite unchecked by events of

any sort. Few visitors were admitted, and it was understood at the Point

that rigid seclusion from all society was the will of Miss Floyd. The

young girl was much talked about: she held every advantage of youth,

beauty, enormous wealth, and, almost more than all these, she possessed

that prestige which inheres in families that maintain quietly and

proudly their reserve, dignity and indifference to the transitory

fashions of society. Georgy Lenox became more and more involved in the

watering-place dissipations as the season advanced and the hotels

filled. She came and went in shimmering toilettes of all hues with an

air of radiant enjoyment, but her outgoings and incomings disturbed no

one but myself. Helen would kiss her and tell her there was no one half

so beautiful; Mr. Floyd would lean back in his chair and smile at her

with the admiration in his eyes that all men who are not churls feel it

a discourtesy to withhold from a pretty woman; and even my mother, with

a conscientious wish to do her duty by the young girl, would inquire

carefully about every chaperone, every invitation, and would herself

direct what time the carriage should be sent to bring her home.

I have already spoken of our pleasant labors together in the study over

poor Mr. Raymond's papers. Many a treasure did Mr. Floyd and Helen find

there. After the death of his daughter Mr. Raymond had jealously taken

possession of every scrap of paper which belonged to her, and now her

husband was at last to see a hundred testimonials of her love for him of

which he had never dreamed. There was the young girl's journal before

she was married, bound in blue velvet and clasped with gold: there were

the letters the poor little woman had written, shuddering before her

great trial, to the husband and the child who should survive her. I

believe all young mothers on the threshold of outward and visible

maternity believe they are to die in their agony, but these tokens of

his young wife's unspoken dread touched Mr. Floyd so closely we almost

had cause to regret that he had seen them.

"She never told me of her premonition of death," he said to my mother

over and over again. "She seemed very glad and proud that she was going

to bring me a little child."

Helen had run off with her blue velvet-covered book.

"Some time," said Mr. Floyd, "I want to read every word she wrote, but

these letters are enough now: I can bear nothing more." And even these

he could not well endure until my mother had talked them over with him

again and again.

The quiet, happy life which we led in these days suited Mr. Floyd's

health, and there was no recurrence of the alarming symptoms which had

filled me with dread a few months before. "I begin to think," he

remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a

bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly,

and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat,

until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died

young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was

of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a

good many years yet. I suppose Helen will marry by and by. I should like

to be a witness of her happiness, rounded, full, complete, sanctified by

motherhood. Think, Mary, of my holding Helen's children on my knee!"

"I think often of grandmotherhood myself," my mother replied. "It is a

symptom of advancing age, James."

I heard the talk, but Helen was far enough from guessing what plans her

father was forming for his ultimate satisfaction, and I could fancy her

superb disdain at such mention. It was easy for me to see that her love

for her father was quite enough for her: she invested it with all the

charming prettinesses that a dainty coquette uses with her lover. She

was arch, gay, imperious, tender, all in a breath: I confess that I

often felt that, let her once put forth her might, not Georgy Lenox

could be more winning, sweet and seductive. But all her tenderness was

for her father: with me she was sometimes proud and shy, sometimes

wearing the manner of a loving little child. I often called her "little

sister" in those days, and so, and in no other wise, I held her. When

she was kind, we had pleasant talks together: when she treated me with

coolness and reserve, I laughed and let her go. Her father needed her,

and I did not; and I paid scant attention to her little caprices,

although I scolded her for them now and then.

"Do you wish to treat me as you treat Thorpe?" I would ask. "I am not a

tame cat yet."

"How do I treat Mr. Thorpe?" she inquired. "I intend to treat him as I

do the man who places my chair."

"You don't always manage that, my dear child. For instance, last night,

when you were going to sing, you showed plainly that you were vexed at

his officiousness in opening the piano and placing your stool for you,

and declined singing at once. Now, had Mills performed those slight

services you would have said coolly, 'Thank you, Mills,' and not have

wasted a thought on the matter more than if some interior mechanism had

raised the cover of the instrument."

"But Mr. Thorpe looks at me as Mills would never dare to look. He

thrusts his personality upon me," exclaimed Helen in a small fury. "Let

him pay his compliments to Georgy: I do not want them. Think of it! he

called me Miss Helen this morning!"

"What did you tell him?"

"I told him nothing: I looked----"

"I pity him then: I know how you can look."

"Am I so dreadful?" she asked coaxingly. "Tell me how to behave to young

gentlemen, Floyd. Really, I don't know."

"To me you should behave in the most affectionate manner, mademoiselle.

Granted that, the more disdainful you are to other fellows the more I

shall admire you."

"Really, now?"

"Well, since you are in earnest, dear child, if I were you I would show

nothing but kindness to my friends.

Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike;

But, like the sun, they shine on all alike,

is a very pretty description of the manner of a successful woman."

"But I cannot be like that," she cried plaintively. "Would you like me

to treat you and Mr. Thorpe in precisely the same way, Floyd?"

"Not at all. Don't count me in with the rest of your admirers: I must

have the first, best, dearest place."

"I am sure you always do," she remonstrated in a tone of injury. "You

come next after papa. If I behave badly to you sometimes, it is because

I like to see if you mind my putting on little airs." That was candor.

"Well, Miss Kitten," said I, "you seem to know how to behave to young

men. I shall waste no more advice upon you."

And indeed she did not require it. She possessed in an exquisite degree

that gift of a delightful manner which generally comes through

inheritance, and cannot be perfectly gained by education. But my

suggestion regarding Thorpe bore fruit, and henceforward she was a

little more queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never

displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he

quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse

patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face

of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed

would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject.

However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it

well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied that he was less

cheerful in those times than he seemed. In fact, I was ready to believe

that he was in reality, as he was in pretence, seeking to win Helen's

attention. Mr. Floyd looked at the matter in the same light.

"When he gets his conge he cannot complain of having received

encouragement," he said once or twice. "But he's no fool: can it be that

he is in love with Miss Lenox all the time, and that he tries to pique

her with a show of devotion to Helen?"

"Tony Thorpe will never be in love with a poor girl," I replied: "there

is nothing of that sort."

"I don't like Helen's having lovers," said Mr. Floyd. "When I married my

wife it was the pleasantest thing in the world to know that no other man

had ever breathed a word of love in her ears. 'The hand of little

employment hath the daintier sense.' The first sound of a lover's voice

brings a thrill to a girl's heart which she never knows but once. Miss

Lenox's perceptions in that way must be considerably toughened:

sole-leather is nothing in thickness compared to the epidermis of a

coquette's heart. Now, a man can love with delicacy, fervor, passion a

score of times. Women are frail creatures, are they not? I would like to

have my little girl give her heart once, receive unbounded love in

return, and never think of another man all her life. But Fate will

manage her affairs for her, as for us all."

I have said that my morning interviews with Miss Lenox on the beach

continued for a time. Suddenly they ceased: she came to the rendezvous

no more, and it was impossible for me to get near enough to her to seek

an explanation. I had felt quite dissipated and like a man of the world

when I jumped out of my bed half awake each morning with an appointment

on my hands. I had not told myself that it was bliss to meet her, and in

fact had smiled a little at the recollection that it had been she who

had asked me to join her ramble. Once or twice I had designated the

whole thing a bore, and had wished it might rain and let me have a

comfortable morning's nap instead of an hour or two with the most

beautiful of girls at a romantic trysting-place. But most men deceive

themselves about their feelings concerning women. When the first time I

did not find Georgina awaiting me (for my orders were to join her walk,

not to have her join mine) I lay on the rocks and took a nap until

Thorpe came along the beach as usual and awoke me. But when I had failed

to find her the second morning I was restless and disturbed. After two

more fruitless quests I grew by turns insanely jealous and wretchedly

self-distrustful.

Had I vexed her? What had I said? what had I done? I went over and over

again every word of our talks: every mood of hers, every blush and

glance and smile, lived again for me. We had spoken of many things those

mornings we had met, yet there had been small reference to our mutual

relations; and certainly if there were love-making on my part, it had

colored none of our moods to any passion. I had travelled and seen many

people: I had been introduced in courts, and had, by Mr. Floyd's

influence, penetrated into an exclusive and brilliant continental

society, where I had found much to observe. These reminiscences of mine

had delighted Georgina: she had the irresistible feminine instinct for

details, the analysis of which made a mastery of brilliant results

easily attainable to her who possessed, to begin with, remarkable

beauty, and, if not tact, so bewildering a way of doing what she chose

that in the eyes of men at least she lacked nothing which grace and good

taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything

concerning Mr. Floyd--his friends abroad, his habits, his _vie intime_

at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he

was minister at ----. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days,

but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what

she wished.

But why had she suddenly given me up? Had she tired of me, exhausted me,

wrung my mind dry of interest; and flung me by like a squeezed orange? I

lay in wait for her in the passages that I might speak to her, but she

seemed never to be alone any more. I would lurk in her path for hours,

only to be rewarded by the sight of her dress vanishing in another

direction. I wrote her notes, to none of which would she reply. "If a

woman flies, she flies to be pursued," I had heard all my life. Elusive,

mocking goddess that she was, I felt every day more and more ardent in

my pursuit, yet I rarely saw her now except at breakfast, when she was

demure, a little weary, and altogether indifferent to me. I determined

to follow her into society.

It was early in July now, and the watering-place life was at its gayest.

I had hitherto accepted no invitations, from respect for the habits of

the house where I was staying, but now I examined with interest every

card and note brought to me. Accordingly, I set out on a round of

pleasure-seeking, which soon transformed me from a boy whose foolish aim

in life was to be as clever as other men into an impassioned lover.

Other men may look back upon their first love with a certain pleasing

sentimentality: in spite of all the years that now lie between me and

the fever of those few months at The Headlands, I still suffer bitterly

from the recollection of that time.

CHAPTER XVIII.

I had gone with Georgina to a picnic one day at her request, meeting her

at the house of Mrs. Woodruff, with whom she was staying for a

fortnight, at the Point. The picnic meant merely a drive for miles back

into the country and a lunch in the woods prepared by a French cook, but

it was a delightful road through shadows of tall forest trees, the glare

of sunlight alternating with green copsewood coolness. They were cutting

the grass and clover in the fields, and the air was fresh with the scent

of new-mown hay: half the land on either side of us was covered with

ripening grain, and the light breeze that played perpetually over it

gave us endless shimmerings and glimmerings of wonderful light almost as

beautiful as the tints that play over the sea.

I had every need to find the beauty of the summer gracious to me that

day. It was but another of many days when every throb of my feeling for

Georgy Lenox became an anguish hard to bear. She was opposite me as we

rode through the fair country, but she neither looked at nor spoke to

me. I was much lionized, however, by Mrs. Woodruff, a pretty, faded,

coquettish woman, who had been balancing herself on the very edge of

proprieties for years, but who still, thanks to a certain weariness she

compelled in men, was yet safe enough in her position as a matron.

Georgy's companion was a titled foreigner just then a favorite at the

Point, but of whom I need not speak.

"Did you ask me to come that I might hear you talk with the count?" I

asked her when once that day I had a chance to address her.

"But the count would talk to me," she returned, laughing. "Do you

suppose I care for him? I think him the most odious man I know, with his

waxed moustache, his small green eyes, his wicked mouth and teeth. But

Mrs. Woodruff is dying for him, and half the women here hate me in their

hearts because he pays me attention. I like you infinitely better,

Floyd."

"Then come away and sit upon the rocks with me."

"Oh, I cannot afford to do those romantic, compromising things. You see

that, as we are both staying at The Headlands, where everybody's

curiosity is centred this summer, we are much observed, much commented

upon."

"It seems to me you are not at all afraid of compromising yourself with

other men."

"Now you are cross and jealous. Perhaps if you betrayed a little less

interest in me you might make me less afraid of concession. And you must

not watch me so: the count himself spoke about your eyes ready to burn

me with their melancholy fire."

"Hang the count!"

"With all my heart! I am tired of his hanging about me, however. Now go

away: at the dance to-night I will talk to you all you wish."

There were plenty of beautiful girls at the picnic, and not a few of

them sat outside the circle quite neglected or wandered away like

school-girls in couples, picking ferns and gathering pale wood-blossoms;

but since I could not speak to Georgina at my ease, there seemed to me

neither meaning nor occupation for the slowly-passing hours. I have

sometimes wondered how those women feel to whom society brings no

homage, no real social intercourse, who sit outside the groups formed

around their more brilliant sisters and behold their easy triumphs. They

seem patient and good-natured, but must they not wonder in their hearts

why one woman's face and figure are a magnet compelling every man to

come within the circle of her attraction, while others, not less fair

and sweet, seem depolarized?

Georgy had many successful days, and this was but one of them. She

understood allurement now not as an accident, but as a science, and she

practised it cleverly. She had already heard bold language from the

count, so held him in check as he sat beside her, giving him at times,

however, "a side glance and look down," and to his trained habits of

observation showed constantly that she was perfectly aware of his

presence even if she seemed to ignore him. She was openly flirting with

Frank Woolsey (a cousin of mine), but since she knew him for a veteran

whose admiration only counted to lookers-on, she consoled herself by

other little diversions, and scarcely a man there but felt his pulses

tingle as she sent him a bright word or a careless smile.

Thorpe was there, but dull, moody, distrait, and he joined me and poured

into my ears his disgust at this form of entertainment. He had eaten

ants in his salad, he affirmed, his wine was corked, his _pate_ spoiled.

"What are we here for?" he asked. "I see no reason in it. I suppose Miss

Lenox is enjoying herself, and she thinks the men about her are in a

seventh heaven. What do even the cleverest women know about the men they

meet? Woolsey hates her like poison; the count is on the lookout for a

_belle heritiere_ and is yawning over his loss of time; and I doubt if

one of that group except Talbot would marry her. I don't think many of

us are pleased with that sort of thing. We don't want too fierce a light

to beat about the woman we are dreaming of. She has no love or respect

for sweetness and womanly virtue for their own sake--no faith in their

value to her, further than that the semblance of them may attract

admirers."

"You're out of humor, Thorpe," said I: "don't vent it on her."

"I _am_ out of humor," he exclaimed, "devilishly out of humor! For God's

sake, Randolph, tell me if you think I have any chance with Miss Floyd."

"Look here, Thorpe," I returned under my breath: "I have no business to

make any suppositions concerning that young lady, but I will say just

this much. Do you see that bird in the air hovering above that oak

tree?"

He followed my look upward toward the unfathomable blue. "I do," he

returned.

"I think there is just as much chance of that bird's coming down at your

call and nestling in your bosom as there is of your winning the young

lady you allude to."

He looked crestfallen for a moment: then his thorough coxcombry resumed

its sway. "You see," said he, with a consummate air of reserve, "you

know nothing about the affair at all, Randolph."

"You'd much better drop the subject, Thorpe," I remarked: "I assure you

it's much safer let alone."

I contrived to live through the long hours of the day. At sunset we

drove back to the Point, I giving up my seat in Mrs. Woodruff's barouche

to a lady and joining Frank Woolsey and Thorpe in a dog-cart. We none of

us spoke, but smoked incessantly, our eyes upturned to the sky, which

was lovely, mystical, wonderful, with the pale after-glow thrilling it

with the most beautiful hues. Before we had reached the town a strange

yellow moonlight had crept over the landscape, making the trees gloom

together in solemn masses, while the sea glimmered in a thousand lines

of trembling light away, away into remote horizons. We all enjoyed the

drive, although none of us spoke until we got down from the cart at the

steps of the hotel.

"That was the best part of the day," observed my cousin Frank. "What

good times we fellows might have if there were no women to disturb us!"

Thorpe growled some inarticulate assent or dissent, as the case might

be, and went up to his room, while Frank and I had our cigars out on the

piazza.

A dance at Mrs. Woodruff's was to follow the picnic, and thither we

resorted about ten o'clock and found the chairs placed for a German.

Georgy Lenox was there, radiant in a ravishing toilette, waiting for

Frank to lead the cotillon with her. She nodded to me pleasantly as she

took her seat. I was angry with myself for my disappointment, doubly

angry with her for causing it. It cost me my self-respect to be so

utterly at her mercy. What did I gain by following her into this gay

coterie but pang upon pang of humiliation and pain? Why did I come,

indeed? It was not the first time she had broken her promises to me. Yet

what could I expect of her? Bright, gay, dazzling creature that she was,

warm and eager in her love of vigorous life, could she sit down with me

in a corner and talk while the rest of the world palpitated and glowed

and whirled around her to the music of the waltz, which stirred even my

crippled limbs with a wild wish for voluptuous swaying motion in rhythm

with the melodious melancholy strain? No, I could not blame her: I was

merely out of my place. Let me go home and remember what a gulf of

disparity separated me from my fellows.

So I walked out of the house through the grounds into the street, and

along the road home to The Headlands. It was a long walk for me, yet I

overcame the distance quickly, and long before eleven o'clock gained the

house, entered quietly and sat down beside my mother on her sofa, unseen

by Mr. Floyd and Helen, who were in the next room.

I was half mad with baffled desire, blind anger and fatigue that night,

and the sound of Helen's voice as she sang some song like a lullaby was

like a blessing. My mother did not speak to me; only smiled gently in my

face and kissed me on my forehead. Her tenderness touched my heart, and

my head drooped to her shoulder, then to her lap, and I lay there like a

boy comforted by his mother's touch, just as I was. A kind of peaceful

stupor came over me. Helen went on singing some quiet German piece of

which her father was fond, with many verses and a sweet, moving story.

Her voice was delicious in its way, with a noble and simple style, and a

pathetic charm in some of its cadences I never heard surpassed. Mr.

Floyd never tired of hearing her. After a time the ballad came to an

end.

"Floyd has come, papa," I heard her say.

"Why, no! Has he? so early?"

"Go on singing, Helen," whispered my mother. "Floyd has gone to sleep."

She sang something soft, cooing, monotonous, a strain a mother might

sing as she hushed her baby at her breast: then she came out, followed

by her father, and both sat down beside us. I, half shyly, half through

dread of talking, went on counterfeiting sleep.

"Poor boy!" exclaimed Mr. Floyd. "He has evidently walked back from the

Point. He was tired out with his dissipations, or Miss Georgina was

coquetting with other men or ate too much to suit him. If I were in love

to extremity of passion with Miss Lenox, or rather with her brilliant

flesh-tints and her hands and feet, I should recover the moment I saw

her at table. She is the frankest gourmande I ever saw, and will be

stout in five years."

"Now, papa, Georgy's hands and feet are nothing so particular."

"Helen's are smaller and much better shaped," said my mother jealously.

"Now, Mary, how little you understand the points of a woman! Helen has

hands that I kiss"--and he kissed them--"the most beautiful hands in the

world; and she has feet whose very shoe-tie I adore; but, nevertheless,

there is nothing aggressive about her insteps and ankles. She considers

her feet made to walk with, not to captivate men with."

"I should hope not," said Lady Disdain, with plenty of her chief

attribute in her voice. "I prefer that nobody should know I have any

feet."

"That is just it. Now, Miss Lenox never comes in or goes out of a room

but every man there knows the color of her stockings."

"I am ashamed of you, papa!--Scold him, Mrs. Randolph. I think him quite

horrid."

"Since, my mouse, you don't want to be admired for your feet and hands,

what points of your beauty may we venture to obtrude our notice upon?"

"Oh, you may love me for whatever you like. But I don't want other

people ever to think of me in that way at all."

"Your intellect is a safe point, perhaps."

"I do not want anybody to love me at all, papa, except yourself."

"Not even Floyd?"

"Floyd would never be silly," Helen said indignantly. "Floyd likes me

because we are old friends: he knew grandpa and you, papa, and all

that."

"You are easily satisfied if you are contented with affection on the

score of your aged relatives."

"How soundly he sleeps!" murmured Helen; and I knew that she bent close

to me as she spoke, for I could feel the warmth of her young cheeks.

Half to frighten her, half because I wanted to see how she looked as she

regarded me, I suddenly opened my eyes.

"You weren't asleep at all!" she exclaimed, laughing and quite

unembarrassed. "But I think you were wicked to hoax us so. Did you hear

everything we said?"

"Indeed, Helen," I said, "I was fast asleep, I do believe, until you

confessed your affection for me. You did not expect me to sleep through

that?"

She stared at me blankly, then looked at the others with dilating eyes.

"Did I say anything about that?" she asked, growing pale even to her

lips and tears gathering in her eyes.

"Why, no, you foolish child!" said her father, drawing her upon his

knee: "he is only teasing you. As if anybody had any affection for one

of the Seven Sleepers!--Well, Floyd, how happened you to come back so

soon? The carriage was going for you at midnight.--Here, Mills, Mr.

Randolph has already returned, and the coachman may go to bed."

"The day was pretty long," I returned. "I had had enough of it, and so

set out and walked back. I was well tired out when I came in, and that

put me to sleep."

"It was a shame for you to walk so far," exclaimed Helen imperiously:

"you are not strong enough for such an effort. There are eight horses in

the stables, every one of them pawing in his stall, longing for a

gallop, and for you to be obliged to walk four miles! Don't do such a

dreadful thing again, Floyd."

I sprang up and limped about, feeling impatient and cross. "In spite of

my poor leg," I returned, "I am a fair walker. Don't set me down as a

helpless cripple, Helen."

I was bitter and wrathful still, or I trust I was too magnanimous to

have wounded her so.

"Floyd!" exclaimed my mother in a tone of reproof; but I did not turn,

and went down the long suite of parlors and stood at the great window

which overlooked the sea. It was all open to the summer night, and the

lace curtains waved to and fro in the breeze. Solemnly came up the

rhythmic flow of the waves as they beat against the rocks. I pushed

aside the draperies and looked out at the wide expanse of waters lying,

it seemed, almost at my feet, for everything else but the great silver

plain of sea was in shadow. Above, the moon had it all her own way

to-night: the constellations shone pale, and seemed weary of the

firmament which at other times they span and compass with their myriad

splendors. Mars moved in a stately way straight along above the southern

horizon to his couch in the west: even his red light was dim.

But what stillness and peace seemed possible beneath this throbbing sea?

I sighed as I listened to the sound of the waves and gazed at the great

golden pathway of the moon across the silver waters. I knew that some

one had followed me and stood timidly behind me: I guessed it was Helen,

but did not know until a slim satin hand stole into mine, for surely it

was not my mother's hand. Hers was warm and firm in its pressure: the

touch of this was soft and cool like a rose-leaf. I held the hand close,

but did not turn.

"Floyd!" she whispered timidly, "dear Floyd!"

"I hear you, Helen," I returned wearily.

"Are you angry with me? Do not be angry."

"I am only angry with myself: I am not behaving well to-night."

She came in front of me and looked up in my face. "I don't want you to

think," she said in a little faint trembling voice, "that--that I--that

I--" She quite broke down.

"I really don't know what you mean, Helen."

"Floyd," she cried passionately, "I think I would die before I would

wilfully hurt your feelings!"

"Why, my poor little girl," said I, quite touched at the sight of her

quivering face and the sound of her impassioned voice, "you did not hurt

my feelings for an instant. What I said was in answer to my own

thoughts. I like to say such things to myself at times, and remember

that I do not possess the advantages of other men. Besides, facts are

facts: I am lame. I cannot dance, and although I can walk, it is with a

limping gait: I should be a poor fellow in a foot-race. I don't suppose

that my being a cripple will forfeit me anything in the kingdom of

heaven, but, nevertheless, it obliges me to forego a good many pleasures

here on earth."

"You are not a cripple!" she burst out impetuously. "You have every

advantage! What is it that you cannot dance? I despise men who whirl

about like puppets: I have never seen them waltzing but they must make

themselves ridiculous. I am glad you cannot dance: you are on the level

of too much dignity and noble behavior to condescend to such petty

things. And surely you do not want to run a foot-race!" she added with

an intensity of disdain which made me laugh, high-wrought and painful

although my mood was. Then her lip trembled, and I saw tears in her eyes

as she went on. "If you were a cripple," she pursued in a low, eager

voice, "really a helpless cripple, everybody would love you just the

same. Why, Floyd, what do you think it is to me that, as you say, you do

not possess the advantages of other men? Have you forgotten how it all

came about? I was a little girl then, but there is nothing that happened

yesterday clearer to my memory than that terrible morning when I cost

you so dear. I know how I felt--as if forsaken by the world. I wondered

if God looked down and saw me, alone, in danger, blind and dizzy and

trembling, so that again and again I seemed to be slipping away from

everything that held me. I could not have stayed one minute more had I

not heard your voice. You were so strong, so kind, Floyd! When you

reached me your hands were bleeding, your face scratched and torn, your

breath came in great pants, but you looked at me and smiled. And then

you carried me to the top and put me in safety, and I let you go down,

down, down!" She was quite speechless, and leaned her cheek against my

hand, which she still held, and wet it freely with her tears.

"If you mind your lameness," she said brokenly, with intervals of

sobs--"if you feel that Fate is cruel to you--that there is any reason

why you cannot be perfectly happy--then I wish," she exclaimed with

energy, "that I had never been born to do you this great injury. I love

my life, I love papa, I love your mother and you, and it seems to me as

if I were going to be a very happy woman; but still, if you carry any

regret for that day in your heart, I wish I had died when I was so sick

before you came: I wish I lay up there on the hill with the grass

growing over me."

What was anybody to do with this overwrought, fanciful child? She was so

wonderfully pretty too, with her great dark, melancholy eyes, her

flushed, tear-stained cheeks, her rich rare lips! "Oh, Helen," I

murmured, holding her close to me, "I don't want you to go under the

green grass: I'm very glad you are alive. I would have broken all my

bones in your service that day and welcome, so that you might be well

and unhurt. Come, now, cheer up: I am going to be a pleasanter fellow

than I have been of late. Dry your eyes, dear. Your father will be

laughing at you. Come, let us go and take a stroll in the moonlight: it

is quite wicked not to indulge in a little romance on a sweet midsummer

night like this."

When I had gone to my room that night, and sat, still bitter, still

discontented, looking off through my open window toward the Point, and

wondering who was looking in Georgy Lenox's starry eyes just

then--thinking, with a feeling about my forehead like a band of burning

iron, that some man's arm was sure to be about her waist, her face

upturned to his, her floating golden hair across his shoulder as they

danced,--while, I say, such fancies held a firm clutch over my brain and

senses, devouring me with the throes of an insane jealousy, my mother

came in and sat down beside me.

"My dear boy," she said, putting her hand on my shoulder, "I am going to

give you a caution. You must remember that Helen, with all her frankness

and impetuosity, is still no child. Don't win her heart unthinkingly."

I felt the blood rush to my face, and I think I had never in all my life

experienced such embarrassment.

"I'm not such a coxcomb, mother, as to believe any girl could fall in

love with me--Helen above all others."

She smiled, with a little inward amusement in her smile. "You must

remember," she said again softly, "that Helen is not a child, and you

surely would not make her suffer."

"Why, mother," I gasped, "we are just like brother and sister: our

intimacy is the habit of years."

"Good-night, my son," my mother said, and went away still smiling: "I

have perfect faith in your magnanimity."

I remembered with a flash of guilty self-consciousness one or two

little circumstances about our talk by the window two hours before which

I have not set down here. It had seemed an easy task to soothe the

child. If there had been any absurdity like that my mother hinted at,

would she--could I-- No, never! She was a careless child, with fits of

coldness, imperious tenderness and generosity. Not a woman at all. The

idea was quite distasteful to me that Helen was a grown-up woman with

whom I must be on my guard.

However, Helen's manner to me next day and at all times was calculated

to assure any man that she was a wilful, self-sustained young creature

of extraordinary beauty and grace, who was devoted to her father, and to

him alone. I saw Thorpe one evening pick up, by stealth, the petals of a

crimson rose which had dropped from the stalk that still nestled in the

black ribbon at her throat, and I laughed at him for his pains as he

laid them carefully away in his pocket-book.

"Miss Floyd," said I, "here is another rose. Don't honor that poor

skeleton of a vanished flower."

She saw the accident which had befallen her rose, and took mine from me

and replaced her ornament with a fresh blossom. "Give me the poor stem,"

said I as she was about to throw it away.

"What is that for?" she asked, staring at me as I placed it in my

buttonhole. "What do you want of the poor old thing?"

And, mistrusting some mischief beneath my sentimental behavior, she was

quite tart with me the entire evening, and would not speak to Thorpe at

all, but sat demurely between my mother and Mr. Floyd, her eyes nailed

on some embroidery, and behaving altogether like a spoiled child of

twelve years old.

Georgy Lenox had returned from her visit at Mrs. Woodruff's, and seemed

a little quiet and weary of late. I was not so much at her service as

before, but had begun to console myself by teaching in song what, like

other young poets, I had experienced in suffering. I thank Heaven that

no eyes but my own ever beheld the tragedy I wrote that summer: still,

I am a little tender-hearted over it yet, and believe that it was, after

all, not so bad as it might have been. At any rate, it enabled me to

find some relief from my passionate unrest in occupation, and even my

own high-sounding phrases may have taught me some scanty heroism. After

all, if one fights one's own battle bravely, does it make so much matter

about other things? Our battles to-day, like the rest of those fought

since creation, show poor cause if regarded from any other standpoint

save the necessity of fighting them. Most of our fiercest struggles for

life have no adequate reason: it is not so necessary for us to live as

we think it is. That we do not get what we want, or that we sink beneath

our load of trouble, signifies little in the aggregate of the world's

history. But, all the same, our cries of despair go up to Heaven, and

there seems no need in the universe so absolute, so final, as that we

ourselves should live and be happy.

It is hard for a man of middle age, with a cool brain and tranquillized

passions, to retrace the history of his youth. There is much that he

must smile over--much, too, which is irksome for him to dwell upon. Many

experiences which in their freshness seemed holy and sacred, in after

years, stripped of their disguise of false sentiment and the aureole

with which they were invested by youthful imagination, become absolutely

loathsome--just as when we see tamely by daylight the tawdry stage which

last night made a world for us full of all the paraphernalia of high

romanticism--silver and velvet robes, plumed hats, dim woodland vistas

and the echo of a distant high note, youthful beauty, rope-ladders,

balconies, daggers, poison, and passionate love-strains. This skeleton

framework of the illusion, these well-worn contrivances, tarnished gold

lace and mock splendors, disenchant us sadly, and what we took for

Horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:

Blow, bugle: answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying,

is now discovered to be a cheap-trumpet imitation of the enchanted

notes we dreamed of hearing.

After Miss Lenox returned from the Point she was, as I have said, a

little pensive: this little shadow upon the splendor of her beauty lent

a subtlety and charm to her manner. If there had been a fault in her

loveliness before, it was that it remained always equal: the same light

seemed always to play over face and hair, the liquid clearness of her

eyes was always undimmed, and there was a trifle of over-robustness

about the rounded contours of her figure. In spite of all her beauty, it

had at times been hard for me to realize that she was a woman to give

herself thoroughly to love. I had already had many dreams of her, yet

never one where I thought she could have given me the infinite softness

of a caressing touch or feel the motherly quality which lies at the

bottom of every true woman's love for man. Now the splendor of her eyes

was veiled, her smile was half melancholy, her voice less clear and

ringing.

When a man loves a woman, and her mood changes and softens, he reads but

one meaning in her tenderness; and it was not long before I had begun

fully to believe that there was hope for me. There seemed to be no one

to meddle in my wooing. True, Judge Talbot came constantly to the house

to see Miss Lenox, and lacked none of the signs by which we read a man's

errand in his demeanor; but I did not fear any rivalry from him. Youth,

at any rate, is something in itself, independent of other advantages: no

wonder it vaunts itself and believes in its own power. That Georgy would

think for an instant of giving herself to this man did not seriously

occur to me. His face was like the face of thousands of successful men

whom we see daily in the great marts of the world. His forehead was

broad but low, his eyes inclined to smallness and set closely together,

his brows shaggy and overhanging: his cheeks were heavy, and the fleshy

formation of his mouth and chin denoted both cruelty and sensuality. He

was a wealthy man: such men are always rich. He had the reputation of

holding an iron grip over everything he claimed, and never letting it

go. He had been married in early life, and now had sons and daughters

past the age of the girl upon whom he was eagerly pressing his suit.

He came to dinner now and then, and over his wine he was noisy,

boisterous and bragging. He had been in Congress with Mr. Floyd years

before, and, though of different parties, they had innumerable

recollections in common, and, much as I disliked Mr. Talbot, I

recognized his cleverness in anecdote and the clearness and conciseness

of his narratives. I could endure him among men, but with women he was

odious, and, for some reasons occult and inexplicable to any man, plumed

himself upon his success with them. He understood himself too well, and

relied too entirely upon his natural abilities, to make any effort to

hide his gross ignorance upon all subjects requiring either literary or

mental culture. He had been eminently successful without any such

acquirements in every field he entered, and consequently considered them

non-essentials in a man's career--very good to have, like the cream and

confectionery at dessert, tickling the palates of women and children,

but eschewed by sensible men. He had travelled twice over Europe, seeing

everything with the voracious curiosity of a strong man eager to get his

money's worth: after his experience of cities rich in high historic

charm, works of art where the rapture and exaltation of long-vanished

lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable

marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places

where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in

certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to

grapple with the difficulties of foreign tongues.

No, it did not in those days occur to me that I had a rival in Mr.

Talbot. Helen and I used to laugh at his crass ignorance, and mystify

him now and then by our allusions. Miss Lenox was never vivacious at

table, and used to listen languidly to all of us, turning to me now and

then and regarding me with a sort of pleased curiosity when she thought

I overmatched her heavy admirer.

As I have said, I had turned to composition as an amusement, an

occupation, and perhaps a refuge from feelings which were rapidly

becoming an ever-present pain. I recall one day when I had sat for hours

at my desk writing busily, utterly wrapped up in my fancies--so

engrossed, indeed, that when I had finished my work I looked with

astonishment at my watch and discovered that it was long past two

o'clock. I rose and went to the window, pushed aside the curtains and

threw open the blinds, and gazed out. I overlooked the garden, which was

deserted except by the bees and humming-birds busy among the flowers.

The mid-day heat had passed, and a breeze rustled the leaves and moaned

in the pine trees. It was a fair world, and I felt what one often

experiences in coming back to reality after high emotion--a sort of

strangeness in the beauty of tree and grass and sea and wood.

While I stood there some one advanced along the garden-path, looked up,

saw me and beckoned. It was but a moment's effort to join her, and

almost before I had realized what I was doing I was beside Miss Lenox in

the garden.

"Come and sit down in the arbor," she said softly.

"No," I returned, remembering that I had sworn to myself not to yield to

her caprices, "I am going for a walk."

She regarded me pensively. "May I go?" she asked.

"Oh yes, you may go, Georgy," I said with a little laugh. "I am only too

happy, I am afraid, if you ask to go anywhere with me."

"Don't take me where it is wet," she observed simply, "for I have on

thin slippers;" and she stretched out a little foot.

"I will take care of you," I answered her.

She took up the folds of her full white dress in her hands, and we set

out. The mood was upon me to take the old paths across the sloping

uplands into the woods on the hill that Helen and I had tramped over so

often in our childhood. Beneath us lay the sea, a wide plain of placid

waters, blue in the foreground, with opal tints playing over it as it

spread out toward the horizon; above us were the woods luxuriant in

their midsummer verdure, silent except for the occasional note of a wild

bird; and about us were the green fields, fresh mown of late, with

thickets of grape and wild convolvulus and star-wreathed

blackberry-vines making a luxuriant tangle over the fences.

Georgy walked before me in the narrow path, and I followed closely,

watching her fine free movements, the charm of her figure in its plain

white morning-dress bound at the waist with a purple ribbon. Her

golden-yellow hair lay in curls upon her shoulders: now and then I

caught a glimpse of the contour of her face as she half turned to see if

I were close behind her. Neither of us spoke for a long time.

My own thoughts flew about like leaves in a wind, but I wondered of what

she was thinking. Although I had known her all my life, she was not easy

for me to understand; or rather my impressions of her at this time were

so colored by the passion of my own hopes that it was impossible for me

to find a clew to her real feelings. Perhaps she was thinking of Jack:

she was thinking--I was sure she was thinking--of something sweet, sad

and strange, or she could not have looked so beautiful.

Suddenly she stopped in her walk and uttered a little cry. "It is wet

here," she cried with vexation: "we must turn back, Floyd."

"I said I would take care of you," I exclaimed quickly, and putting my

arms about her I raised her and carried her safely over the spot where a

hundred springs trickled up to the surface and made a morass of the

luxuriant grass. I did not set her down at once. For weeks now, sleeping

and waking, I had been haunted by a fierce longing to hold her to my

heart as I held her now, and it was not so easy to put by so great a

joy. When at last I reached the stile I released her, and she sat down

on the stone and looked at me with a half smile.

"If you call that taking care of me, Floyd--" said she, shaking her

head.

"You are not angry with me, Georgina?"

"How could I be angry with you?" she said, putting out her hand to me

and speaking so kindly that I dared to press her little rosy palm to my

lips. "But how strong you are, Floyd! You carried me like a feather's

weight, and yet I am tall and very heavy. You know how to take care of

me, indeed."

"If I might always take care of you!" I said, my heart beating and the

blood rushing to my face. "I can carry you home if you will. Don't you

remember about the Laird of Bothwick declaring that no man should marry

his daughter save the one who should carry her three miles up the

mountain-side? If I could have such a chance with you!"

"But about the daughter of the old laird: did she find a lover so strong

as to carry her to the mountain-top?"

"Yes: one of her suitors took her in his arms and strode along, crying,

'Love gives me strength--love gives me speed.' However, he was not happy

after all, poor fellow! When he reached the goal he died. How could he

have died then?"

"What did the young lady do?" inquired Georgy, laughing. "I suppose

another lover rode by her side as she walked home, and that she married

him for his pains. That is the way the brave men of the world are

rewarded, Floyd. Don't be too generous, nor too strong, nor too

self-forgetful. You will gain nothing by it."

"Do you mean that I shall not gain you, Georgy?"

"Oh, I said nothing about myself. Why do you ask me all these questions

as soon as we are alone? I am afraid sometimes to let you talk to me,

although there are few people in the world whom I like so well to have

near me. Women will always love you dearly, Floyd. You are so gentle, so

harmonious with pleasant thoughts and pleasant doings: you seem less

selfish and vain than other men. You deserve that some woman should

make you very happy, Floyd."

"There is but one woman who can do it, Georgy."

"I am not so sure of that. I do not know why you think of me at all:

what is it about me that attracts you? Helen is younger than I am--a

hundred times more beautiful. No, sir, you need make no such

demonstrations. If you like my poor face best, it is because we are old

friends, and you are so true, so kind, to the old memories. Do not

interrupt me yet. I think you are blind to your own interests when you

pass Helen by: she is so rich that if you marry her you can live a life

like a prince."

"But if I do not wish to lead a prince's life, Georgy?" said I, a little

nettled at the indifference which must prompt such comparisons of Helen

to herself. "Nothing could induce me to marry a rich woman, even if

Helen were to be thought of by a poor fellow like me. I have no vague

dreams about the future: my hopes are clear and definite. I want a

career carved by my own industry, my own taste: I want--above all

things, I want--the wife of whom I am always thinking."

"And who is she, my poor boy?"

"You know very well, Georgy," I returned, throwing myself beside her and

gazing up into her face. "Since I was a little fellow in Belfield, and

used to look out of the school-room window with Jack Holt, and see you

going past the church with your red jacket and your curls on your

shoulders, I have had just one dream of the girl I could love so well

that I could die for her. I used to lie on the hilltop then and fancy

myself a bold knight on a white steed who should gallop down those

sunshiny streets and seize you in his arms, raise you to the saddle and

carry you away into Fairyland to live with him for ever. My longing has

not changed: I want the same thing still."

"But when I was to marry Jack you did not seem to mind," said Georgina,

looking at me with that new pensiveness she had learned of late.

"You knew my heart very little. When Jack told me that you were still

free, I hated myself, my joy, my renewal of hope, seemed so

contemptibly little in contrast with his great despair. I would not have

wronged him. God knows, I pity him when I remember what he has lost!

Still, I too loved you as a child: I never had it in my power to serve

you, but I had no other thought but you. Why may it not be, dear? Who

can love you better than I do? Even although I am not rich, who will

take better care of you than I shall? I am sure you love me a little. Do

not put the feeling by, but think of it: do not deny it--let it have its

chance."

She rose with an absent air. "We must go on," she said dreamily; and I

helped her over the stile, and we walked slowly through the wood. She

leaned upon my arm, but her face was downcast, and her broad hat

concealed it from me.

"I wish," I said after a time, "you would let me know some of those

thoughts."

She looked up at me pale but smiling. "Do you know, Floyd," she

murmured, "I do think you could make me happy if anybody could."

"Promise me that I may have the chance. End now, Georgy, all your

doubts, all my fears. You will be happier so."

"But we should be poor!" she cried sharply. "I could not be contented to

marry a poor man. You may be clever, Floyd--I do not know much about

cleverness in men--but, all the same, it is hard for a man to make money

until he has worked for many, many years. I could not wait for you. I am

older than you, and everybody is wondering why, with all my

opportunities, I have not married. You'd much better give me up," she

added, looking into my face steadily and smiling, although her lip

trembled, "and let Mr. Talbot have me. He is rich, and can marry me at

once. He is waiting for my answer now, and it is best that I should, as

you say, end it all."

I shuddered as this pang disturbed my warm bliss. "For Heaven's sake,

don't joke, Georgy!" I exclaimed. "I can't even hear you allude to the

possibility of marrying such a man as that with equanimity. I am not so

poor. Mr. Floyd--" But, after all, I could not tell her of Mr. Floyd's

generosity to me: it seemed like basing calculations upon his death to

assure her that the course of events was to bring me a fortune.

She looked at me with eagerness. "Tell me now," she said, putting her

hand upon my arm. "If you love me, Floyd, you cannot keep a secret from

me."

To describe the beauty of her face, the fascination of her manner, the

thrill of her touch, words are quite powerless, mere pen-scratches. If

any man could have withstood her, I was not that man. Shame to relate, I

soon had told her everything--that Mr. Floyd had for years placed an

ample income at my disposal--that I had seen his will, which gave me,

without restriction, a clear third of his fortune.

She was meditative for a while. "But," she said then with a trifle of

brusqueness, "if you marry me he will be angry and change all that: he

does not like me. He has different plans for you: he wants you to marry

Helen."

"Don't say that," I cried, "for I love Mr. Floyd so well, I owe him so

much, I could refuse him nothing."

"You mean that if he asked you to marry Helen you would give me up,

would take her?" she retorted with a flaming color on her cheeks and a

gleam in her eyes. "You do not care for me, then. You are merely

playing with me: you love her, after all."

"Now, that is nonsense, Georgy," I said gently, for through her jealousy

I had the first glimpse, I fancied, of something like real love for me;

"and I do not like to hear Helen's name bandied about in this way. You

may be sure that she will stand in no need of suitors: I shall never be

one of them. Now, then, who is it that is coquetting? You know whom I

love--what I want. I am very much in earnest--unsettled in heart and

mind, body, soul and spirit, until I have your answer. Tell me, Georgy

darling, is it or is it not to be?"

But I was to have no answer that day. Miss Lenox said it was very

tiresome hearing me reiterate that dreary question, and that she saw

raspberries in the thicket which I must gather for her. Although, when

she had eaten them, she let me kiss the lovely stained lips, I was still

far enough from knowing whether they were mine or not--whether she liked

to raise my ardent dreams merely to disappoint them, or whether at heart

it was, as she sometimes hinted, that she did care for me with something

of the intimate, clinging habit which bound _me_ so closely to _her_.

ELLEN W. OLNEY.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

DAWN IN THE CITY.

The city slowly wakes:

Her every chimney makes

Offering of smoke against the cool white skies:

Slowly the morning shakes

The lingering shadowy flakes

Of night from doors and windows, from the city's eyes.

A breath through heaven goes:

Leaves of the pale sweet rose

Are strewn along the clouds of upper air.

Healer of ancient woes,

The palm of dawn bestows

On feverish temples peace, comfort on grim despair.

Now the celestial fire

Fingers the sunken spire;

Crocket by crocket slowly creepeth down;

Brushes the maze of wire,

Dewy, electric lyre,

And with a silent hymn one moment fills the town.

Over emergent roofs

A sound of pattering hoofs

And anxious bleatings tells the passing herd:

Scared by the piteous droves,

A shoal of skurrying doves,

Veering, around the island of the church has whirred.

Soon through the smoky haze,

The park begins to raise

Its outlines clearer into daylit prose:

Ever with fresh amaze

The sleepless fountains praise

Morn, that has gilt the city as it gilds the rose.

High in the clearer air

The smoke now builds a stair

Leading to realms no wing of bird has found:

Things are more foul, more fair;

A distant clock, somewhere,

Strikes, and the dreamer starts at clear reverberant sound.

Farther the tide of dark

Drains from each square and park:

Here is a city fresh and new create,

Wondrous as though the ark

Should once again disbark

On a remoulded world its safe and joyous freight.

Ebbs all the dark, and now

Life eddies to and fro

By pier and alley, street and avenue:

The myriads stir below,

As hives of coral grow--

Vaulted above, like them, with a fresh sea of blue.

CHARLES DE KAY.

THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.

IV.--MACHINERY.

[Illustration: APPLEBY'S STEAM-CRANE, WITH FIXED JIB FOR USE ON

TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT TRACK.]

The machinery in the Paris Exposition covers a larger space than any

other of the eight departments of material, machinery and products which

occupy the buildings and annexes. The ninth department, Horticulture, is

outdoors on the grounds or in greenhouses. Foreign machinery has about

half the space, and French machinery the remainder. Few countries are

without annexes, the space allotted to each, though supposed to be

ample, being utterly insufficient to hold the multitude of objects

presented.

In preference to taking the classes of machinery in turn, and visiting

the various nations in search of exemplars of the classes in rotation,

it will be more interesting to take the nations in order and arrive at

an idea of the rate and direction of their relative progress, modified

so largely by the respective natural productions of the countries and by

the habits and degrees of civilization of their inhabitants. When put to

a trial of its strength, each nation naturally brings forward the

matters in which it particularly excels.

Prominent in the section of the Netherlands, the name so descriptive of

the land where not less than two hundred and twenty-three thousand acres

are below the level of the sea and kept constantly drained by artificial

means, are the engineering and mechanical devices for the reclamation

and preservation of land, the formation of outlet-canals for the centres

of commerce, and the bridging of the rivers and estuaries which

intersect the maritime portions of the country. Some of the models and

relief-maps were shown in the Netherlands section in the Main Building

at Philadelphia, but the exhibition is more perfect here, as much has

been added in the two intervening years.

The works for the drainage of the Haarlemmer Meer illustrate the means

employed for the last great drainage-work completed. This lake had an

area of 45,230 acres, an average depth of seventeen feet below low

water, and was drained between 1848 and 1853. Being diked to exclude the

waters which naturally flowed into it, three large engines were built in

different places around it, and the work of pumping out 800,000,000 tons

of water commenced. The engines have cylinders of twelve feet diameter,

and are capable of lifting 2,000,000 tons of water in twenty-four hours

from the depth of seventeen feet to the level of the _boezem_, or

catch-water basin, of the district. The boezem carries the water to the

sea, into which it discharges by sluices at Katwyk on the North Sea and

at Sparndam and Halfweg on the Y, or the southern end of the Zuyder Zee.

The land reclaimed is now in excellent tillage, and one farm on the

tract is referred to in agricultural journals as one of the three model

farms of the world. The three engines are called the Leeghwater, the

Cruquius and the Lynden, from three celebrated engineers who had at

different times proposed plans for draining the Haarlemmer Meer.

Proposals for its drainage were made by one of these engineers as far

back as 1663. The next enterprise in hand is the drainage of the

southern lobe of the Zuyder Zee, which is stated to have an average

depth of thirteen feet, and it is intended to cut it off by a dike from

the northern basin and erect sufficient engines around it to pump it out

in thirteen years at the rate of a foot a year, working night and day.

Another engineering device, very necessary in a land where foundations

are so frequently built under water, is the enclosed caisson with

compressed air, as shown in detail in this exhibit. It was originally

invented by M. Triger to keep the water expelled from the sheet-iron

cylinders which he sunk through quick-sands in reaching the

coal-measures in the vicinity of the river Loire in France. The seams of

coal in this district lie under a stratum of quicksand from fifty-eight

to sixty-six feet in thickness, and they had been inaccessible by all

the ordinary modes of mining previously practised. The system has been

much amplified and improved since, especially in sinking the foundations

of the St. Louis and the New York East River bridges, and does not

require specific description. An improved air-lock, by which access is

given from the exterior to the working chamber at the part where the men

work in an atmosphere sufficiently condensed to exclude water from the

lower open end--like a tumbler inverted in water--is the principal

addition which America has made to the device.

We need not go abroad to find long bridges, but the great bridge, with

three immense iron trusses and eight smaller ones, over the Wahal near

Bommell would be respectable anywhere. Our Louisville bridge is a

parallel example for length, but the truss is different.

The dikes and jetties of the new embouchure of the Meuse embrace the

same features of extending a river's banks into deep water, and by

confining the stream making it scour out its own bed, as now so

successfully practised by Captain Eads in one of the passes of the

Mississippi River. Limbs and saplings made into gabions and staked

together form mattresses, and by loading with stone are sunk in

position. They soon become silted up, and are practically solid. Others

are made and laid upon them _ad libitum_, and at last raise the crest

above the level of the sea, the last course being laid with the

advantage of high-water spring tides. This foundation supports courses

of pitched masonry on its side, and these protect the stone or gravel

embankment, which forms a roadbed. The river's water, instead of, as

formerly, depositing its silt at the embouchure as its motion is

arrested on reaching the open sea, carries its silt along and deposits

it farther out: if a favorable shore-current occurs, it is swept away

laterally, and so disposed of.

The maritime canal of Amsterdam is another late success of this

remarkable people, which leads the world in dikes and drainage of low

lands, as the Italian does in the art and area of irrigation. The

present canal may satisfy the great and still rising commerce of

Amsterdam, the previous ship-canal, fifty-one miles in length, built in

1819-25 at a cost of $4,250,000, and deep and wide enough to float two

passing frigates, having proved insufficient.

Belgium is happily situated, and well provided by Nature and art to

enter into any competitive trial. With admirable skill, great provision

of iron and coal and a people of economical habits that permit them to

work at low wages without being impoverished, she is, besides working

up her own abundant material, rolling the iron of England into rails,

and making it into locomotives for Great Britain, whose own people lack

the work thus done abroad. The "Societe Cockerill-Seraing" has an

enormous space devoted to the machinery for the exploitation of iron.

Compressed forgings in car-wheels and other shapes are piled on the

floor, and a whole railway rail-rolling mill train is shown in motion.

Two of the rolls are stated to have rolled 10,500 tons of steel rails,

and are in apparent good order yet.

[Illustration: WHEELOCK'S AUTOMATIC CUT-OFF STEAM-ENGINE.]

The Belgium system of sinking shafts for mines and wells, invented by

Kind and Chaudron, exhibited here as in Philadelphia, attracts great

attention from its gigantic proportions. Imagine an immense

boring-chisel (_trepan_), weighing 26,000 pounds and with a breadth of

over six feet, worked up and down by machinery, the steel studs on its

face stamping the rocks into dust, so that they can be removed with a

bucket with bottom valves which is dropped into the hole and is worked

up and down until the detritus and water, if any, creep into it, when it

is withdrawn and emptied. The repetition of these processes makes the

shaft of two metres diameter. Then comes the larger trepan, with a width

of 4.80 metres, and repeats the process on a larger scale. This enormous

chisel weighs 44,000 pounds. The system is much in favor, and forty-five

shafts have been thus sunk between 1854 and 1877 in Belgium, France,

England and Germany. Cast-iron lining is lowered in sections as the

shaft deepens, the sections being added at the top and bolted together.

The Belgian exhibit contains also one of those immense paper-machines

invented by the brothers Fourdrinier about fifty years ago, and now used

almost universally for the best class of machine-made papers. They are

used by Wilcox at Glen Falls, Delaware county, Penn., in making the

government note and bond paper, and are a marvel of art. The Frenchmen

who invented the machine brought it into use in England, but they were

much hampered and discouraged by difficulties, and it was never a

pecuniary success to them. It was a legacy to the future, and they have

joined the army of martyrs to mechanical science. The machine in the

Belgian section is one hundred and thirty feet long, and the Swiss

machine, near by, is nearly as large. The French, with their customary

ingenuity, have reduced the proportions very considerably. The Swiss

machine makes paper one metre and a half wide.

The remainder of the Belgian exhibit of machinery may be summarized:

rock drills on the principle of those used at Mont Cenis; the

gas-engines of Otto; machine tools, lathes, drills and planers; a very

curious machine for cutting bevel or straight gears, built by a firm at

Liege, and worthy of attention by Mr. Sellers or Mr. Corliss, whose

ingenious machines for the same purpose were at Philadelphia; the

woollen machinery of Celestine Martin of Verviers, which I recollect to

have seen in Philadelphia also; multitubular boilers, rudder propeller,

and hand fire-engines Then we see a number of locomotives and tramway

engines, rail and street cars, winding, mining, crane and portable

engines, and a full set of vacuum-pans for sugar, with engines,

centrifugal filters and hydraulic presses. A glance at Guibal's great

mine-ventilator fan, fifty feet in diameter and with ten wooden vanes,

and we may quit the section of Belgium, which is the next largest after

England of all the foreign departments here.

The exhibition of Denmark is principally agricultural machinery, its

iron ploughs being copies of the English, and its reapers of the

American, while the dairy machines and apparatus are its own, and very

excellent.

The embroidering-machine of Hurtu & Hautin is shown working in the Swiss

section, and is a great success. The web or cloth to be embroidered is

stretched between horizontal rollers in a vertical frame which hangs

suspended in the machine from the shorter end of a lever above. On each

side of this floating frame is a track on which a carriage alternately

approaches and recedes. Each carriage carries as many nippers in a row

as equals the number of needles, which in this case is two hundred and

twelve. The needles have an eye in the middle and are pointed at each

end. The carriage advances, the nippers holding the threaded needles,

and pushes them through the cloth: the nippers on the other side are

waiting to receive them and shut upon them, those which have just thrust

them into the cloth opening automatically; the second carriage retreats

and draws the silk through the cloth with the requisite tightness, and

then comes forward, thrusting the other end of the needles through the

cloth to be grasped by the nippers on the first carriage, and so on. The

frame holding the cloth is moved by an arrangement of levers under the

control of the operator, who conducts a tracer point on the long end of

the lever over the design, which is suspended before him. The frame

moves in obedience to the action of the tracer, but in a minified

degree, and each needle repeats on a scale of one-twentieth the design

over which the tracer is moved step by step between each stitch. Thus

two hundred and twelve embroideries according to a prescribed pattern

are made by each needle; and, in fact, though it was not stated, to

avoid complicating the description, a second row of a similar number of

needles is carried by the same carriages and operates upon a second web

stretched between another pair of rollers in the same floating frame.

The object of the rollers is to reel off new cloth as the embroidery

progresses and to reel on the work done. A similar machine is shown in

the French section, in the Salle de l'Ecole Militaire.

The Jacquard loom is shown in many sections--Swiss, French, United

States, English and others--principally upon silk handkerchiefs and

motto-ribbons. The exhibit of carpet-weaving is far inferior to the

Philadelphian. The Swiss exhibit of machinery for making paper of wood

pulp is very large and ample, but the Belgian annex shows the finest and

largest varieties of paper so made to be found in the Exposition. The

paper, white and of various colors, made from about forty trees and

twenty different straws, grasses and forage-plants, is shown in large

rolls.

Of Russia there is not much to say except as regards the work of the

Ecole Imperiale Technique de Moscou. This is a remarkable

exemplification of tools, methods of work, parts of engines and

machines, all finished with extreme care and fitted with great nicety.

It is fuller than it was in Philadelphia, but many of the portions are

readily recognizable. The machine tools, hydraulic presses, stationary

engines and hand fire-engines are closely associated with the military

and naval objects, cannons, ambulances, field-forges and an excellent

lifeboat, systeme de Bojarsky.

Austria comes with no more striking exhibit than the malteries and

breweries of Nobak Freres and Fritze. The immense extent of the

magazines for barley and hops; the size and height of the malteries,

where by continuous processes the grain is damped, sprouted and dried

and the malt ground; the number and capacity of the various vessels in

which the infusions of malt and hops are made and mixed; and the

apparently interminable series of engines, pumps and pipes by which the

steam and liquids are conducted,--are confusing until some study

evolves order out of the apparent confusion. The wort is cooled

artificially, time being a great object as well as the saving of aroma,

and the yet innocent liquid is poured in a torrent into the

fermentation-vats, where Nature will have her own way and eliminate the

ingredients which convert the mawkish wort into the sparkling and

refreshing beer. Four hundred and fifty of these establishments have

been erected by this firm in Europe; which must be some comfort to

those, not vignerons, who think the prospects of the vine are materially

clouded by the _Phylloxera_.

But Austria is not beery alone. She has fine exhibits in horology,

electric and pneumatic telegraphy, and in tools, grain-mills, gang-saw

mills, and machines for making paper bags. More important, as some might

say, are the admirable locomotives and stationary engines, cars,

fire-engines, and her collection of iron-work, in which are exhibited

cast-iron car-wheels, made by Ganz & Co. of Buda-Pesth, which have been

in use twenty-one years and have run without apparent severe injury a

distance of 549,108 kilometres, or nearly 280,700 miles.

The beet-root sugar interest is becoming very important in Austria, but

the evidences of the Exhibition indicate that the diffusion-process

holds better credit there than in France, where it is not approved of.

The rotative apparatus shown is an immense affair, with a series of

eight tall tanks arranged on a circular carriage and rotating on a

vertical axis, so as to bring each in turn to the charging and

discharging positions. Each tank has its own system of pumps. Beet-root

is difficult to exploit for various reasons, chemical and other. Like

the vine, it is particular in its nutriment, requires great skill to

remove extraneous substances, and can hardly be handled by the French

system without a set of machinery costing about eighty thousand dollars.

From Austria to Spain is but a step, but it is not productive of much

information in the matter we have in hand. A beaming-machine for cotton

warps, red, white and yellow, stands solitary in its section, and next

to it is a model of a _cirque de taureau_, composed of nineteen thousand

pieces of tin laboriously put together without solder, as if that were a

merit, and stated to be the work of two years. In the arena the wooden

bull regards with indifference two mounted cavaliers and seven footmen

in various provoking attitudes. Near by are various machines and presses

for the treatment of grapes and olives, grinders and presses in variety,

a sugar-cane press and a turbine. Barcelona would seem to be the most

enterprising of Spanish cities. Several exemplifications of the

excellent iron of Catalonia and Biscay suggest the direction in which

Spain has taken its most important industrial start of late years. An

admirable model of the quay of the copper-mining company of the Rio

Tinto is another evidence in the same line which the maps, plans and

ores amply corroborate.

[Illustration: BLAKE STONE-CRUSHER.]

Two steps, in violation of all preconceived geographical notions, but in

obedience to the Exposition authorities, land us in China, where we find

things mechanical in much the same state of progress as Marco Polo

viewed them some centuries since. The silk tissues brought from the far

East were famous in the days of the Roman magnificence, and here is the

loom. The marvel is how such a web can be made on such a rough machine.

A blue silk warp of delicate threads is in the loom, which has nine

heddles, and the partly-finished fabric shows a woof consisting of a

narrow gilded strip of paper. The sheen of the figured goods is

something remarkable. It is a parallel case to that of the shawls of

Kashmir, where the natives, trained for generations, succeed in

producing by great care and unlimited expenditure of time fabrics with

which the utmost elaboration of our machinery scarcely enables us to

compete.

The machine for the whitening of rice by the removal of the brown

coating from the pure white grain is similar to that shown from Siam at

the Centennial, but, unlike the latter, the faces of the two round

horizontal wooden blocks which act as mill-stones are serrated, whereas

the Siamese rubbers were made of sun-dried clay, the serrations

consisting of bamboo strips inserted in the clay while yet plastic. The

motion is similar, not being continuously revolving, but reciprocatory,

and the method is customary in all the rice-eating regions except India,

and is well known in parts of the latter, though not universal. The

grain of Eastern Asia, including India and Malaysia, is almost

universally rice, of which two, and even three, crops a year are raised

in some regions, and the processes of cooking are simple among these

vegetarians, the variation consisting principally in the choice of

condiments or of certain additional esculents or fruits in their season.

The grinding of grain is, however, universally known, though meal forms

but a small proportion of the daily food. The mortar and pestle in the

Chinese section show the more usual method, and there, as in some parts

of India, the pestle is placed on the end of a poised horizontal beam

which is worked by the foot of the operator at the end opposite to the

pestle.

We meet in the Chinese section with the original of our fanning-mill or

winnowing-machine for grain. Though China has had the same machines for

centuries, we have not knowingly copied many of them. The fanning-mill,

porcelain and the _cheng_ may be fairly credited to her. The last is the

original of all our free-reed musical instruments. It is shown here, and

was also at the Centennial, and it was the carrying of one overland to

Russia, where it fell into the hands of Kratzenstein, the organ-builder

to Queen Catharine II., which initiated the free reed in Europe, and led

to the accordions, concertinas, harmoniums and parlor organs which

perhaps afford the cheapest and loudest music for a given expenditure of

muscle and wind of anything we have.

The spinning and winding machinery of China is simple enough, but so

much like that of our great-grandmothers that it does not arrest

particular attention. It is otherwise with the irrigating-machine, which

in its various modifications produces, by the fruitfulness induced, the

food of scores of millions in China, India, Syria and Egypt--the cogged

wheel on a vertical axis, with an ox travelling beneath it, and a

horizontal shaft moved thereby and carrying an endless chain of pots or

buckets, either hanging from the cord or moving in an inclined chute.

The ploughs, harrows, rakes, flails, spades, hoes and forks are of the

usual clumsy description, not to be apprehended by the reader without

cuts, and many of them only reasonably effective even in the mellow soil

repeatedly stirred and occasionally flooded with water. The seed-drill

for planting one row, with a share on each side to turn soil on to the

grain, is an anticipation of some later inventions nearer home. The

thresher is a square frame drawn over the grain--which is spread upon

the bare ground--and is furnished on its under side with steel blades

which not only shell the grain out of the ear, but also reduce the straw

into chaff, which is desirable, as storing for feed more conveniently.

Southern nations have but little conception of our use of hay. Grain for

the man and straw for the beast is the usual division. The ancient Roman

_tribulum_ and the modern Syrian _morej_, were or are similar, and the

"sharp" threshing instrument of Isaiah may be seen to-day in the Tunis

exhibit, being a frame of boards with sharp flint spalls inserted into

its under surface.

We might linger with profit over the elaborate models of Chinese

manufactures--sugar, rice, tobacco, paper, etc., showing the stages of

cultivation, manufacture, and packing for transportation and market--but

perhaps it will be as well to slip across the alley and visit the

ancient island of Zipango.

Zipango, Nipon, Japon, have one consistent syllabic element, and the

rulers of the country are so desirous that it should take its place

among the civilized nations of the world that they have not shown to any

liberal extent the native machinery, except in the form of models which

attract but little attention, a few machines for winding and measuring

silk, some curious articles of bamboo and ratan, fishpots and baskets,

and cutlery of native shapes.

[Illustration: TOOL-GRINDING EMERY-WHEEL.]

The exclusiveness which had marked the policy of Japan from time

immemorial, and which was somewhat roughly intruded upon by Captain

Perry, and subsequently by other explorers and diplomatists, has given

place to a change which amounts to a revolution. Japan, under the name

of Zipango, took its place on the map of the world some time before

Columbus discovered, unwittingly to himself, that a continent intervened

between Western Europe and Eastern Asia. When Columbus made his voyage

in search of Asia, assisted by those very estimable persons Ferdinand

and Isabella, it was on the part of the latter intended as a flank

movement against the Portuguese, who, consequent upon the discovery of

the passage of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco da Gama, had obtained a

patent from the pope for the eastern route to India. The globe of Martin

Behaim at that time depicted Zipango as off the coast of Asia and near

the longitude actually occupied by the Carolinas and Florida, the

eastward extension of Asia being fearfully exaggerated. The globe of

John Schoener, of 1520, fourteen years after the death of Columbus, had

Zipango in the same place, and Cuba alongside of it, ranging north and

south. So loath were geographers to give up preconceived ideas. Columbus

died supposing he had discovered "fourteen hundred islands and three

hundred and thirty-three leagues of the coast of Asia," and hence our

group are called the West Indies, and our aborigines Indians. Such are

one's reflections as one wanders in the Japanese section, dreaming among

the objects of a land which has just awaked from what may be called the

sleep of centuries.

Italy has much that is valuable as well as beautiful in other classes,

but her attempts in agricultural machinery are but rude. Here, for

example, is a plough. Well, perhaps it is not exactly that which made

the trench over which Remus leaped, to be slain by his twin

wolf-nursling, but it is the plough of Bocchi Gaetano of Parma, is

twelve feet long and weighs something under half a ton. Another, hard

by, is two feet longer and has but one handle. Efforts are evident,

however, to assimilate the country to the portions of Europe more

advanced in mechanical matters. When we reflect upon how much we owe to

Italy, we can but wish her well, but we cannot delay long with her in a

search for objects of mechanical interest except to examine her models

of tunnels, manner of scaffolding, boring and blasting. The Mont Cenis

tunnel must stand as the grandest work of its kind until that of Saint

Gothard is finished. An exemplification by a model constructed to a

scale of the electric ballista of Spezzia for testing the hundred-ton

gun lately made in England for Italy attracts a great many visitors, and

the large photographs which give the condition of the butt after each

impact of the projectiles brings up again the double problem as it is

stated: How to construct a gun and projectile which shall be able to

pierce the heaviest armor; and how to construct armor which shall be

proof against the heaviest shot. Many saw with interest in the Machinery

Building at the Centennial the eight-inch armor-plating made by Cammell

of Sheffield, tested in one case by nine spherical shots overlapping,

making an indentation of 3.12 inches with balls from a seven-inch gun

driven by thirty pounds of powder at a range of seventy feet. They are

here again, and so is the nine-inch armor with a much deeper indentation

from a chilled Palisser bolt. Here is also a new-comer, John Brown,

whose armor of four and a half inches of steel welded on to the same

thickness of iron resists the Palisser bolt, which only penetrates the

thickness of the steel. What might happen to it with a pointed steel

bolt from a sixty- or one-hundred-ton gun is another matter. To set our

minds at rest as to what would occur in the event supposed comes Sir

Joseph Whitworth, who exhibits his gun with polygonal rifling, the bore

being a hexagon with rounded corners. The projectiles are moulded of the

same shape, and are fired as they are cast, without planing. One of

these bolts, six diameters long and weighing twenty-nine and a half

pounds, was fired from a twelve-pounder gun through a four and a half

inch armor-plate. The exhibit also shows a flat-fronted Whitworth

fluid-pressed steel shell, three diameters long, weighing eight hundred

and eight pounds, which was fired at Gavre, France, without a bursting

charge, from a Whitworth twelve-inch, thirty-five-ton gun, and

penetrated iron sixteen inches thick and twelve inches of oak backing.

The shell remained entire and was only slightly distorted. The question

seems to be answered, unless the plates are made twenty inches thick,

and that is impossible on a vessel to be manoeuvred.

Sweden comes next, and the scene changes; for the weapon which suggested

the remarks was only, as it were, one gun in a garden. Instead of wine

and olives we find iron and furs. Except some Indian steels, there is no

better metal than that of Sweden, and horse-shoe nails are made of it

all over Europe and the United States. Iron in ore, pig, rails, bars,

rods, wire; iron in tools, files, wheels, balls, shells, pans, boilers,

stoves, springs; iron _ad lib_.

The agricultural machines of Sweden, like those of Denmark, are copies

of the American and English, and the same is true to a large extent of

the engines, saw-mills, water-wheels and wood-working machinery. The

statement would not be true of the very elaborate exercising-machines

(_la gymnastique medicale mecanique_) invented by Gustave Zander of

Stockholm. They embrace every conceivable variety of effort, and also

another class of applications which may be termed shampooing, as they

consist of kneading and rubbing. Among the twenty machines are those

designed for flexing, stretching and extending the limbs, for kneading

the back and neck, for rubbing the body and limbs to induce circulation

and simulate the effect of exercise in the cases of weak persons or

those confined to their beds by casualties. Some of these were in

Philadelphia in 1876.

Steering-apparatus and gun-harpoons for whaling testify to the maritime

character of the people, as do the boats and ropes. The great exhibit

of _pate de bois_ shows the anxiety of the people to turn their

extensive forests to good account in the markets of the world. White

pine seems to be the principal wood thus used. Norway and Sweden have

been shipping timber for some centuries, and yet seem to need no laws to

restrain the denudation of their hills; certainly not to encourage

rainfall. Bergen has 88.13 inches per annum, which is just double that

of Philadelphia, and four inches greater than that of Sitka, where the

people say it is always raining. Of course these figures are small when

compared to spots on the Himalayas, where Hooker observed a fall of 470

inches in seven months, and on one occasion 30 inches in four hours; the

latter equal to the average annual rainfall of France.

The American machinery, which occupies a position between Norway and

England, is creditable in kind and quality, but fails very far in giving

a correct idea of the multiplicity of our industries. Almost the only

evidence of our textile manufactures are two of Tilt's Jacquard

silk-weaving looms. The telephones of Edison and Gray excite unremitting

astonishment and admiration, and have both received the highest possible

awards. Our wood-working is practically shown in a large variety by Fay

& Co. of Cincinnati, and one or two other special machines by other

makers. The Wheelock engine, which drives all the machinery in our

section of the main building, has very properly been awarded a grand

prize. It is all that can be desired in an engine, and has a singular

simplicity of construction, with few working parts. It is the same which

drove the machinery in the Agricultural Building at the Centennial. The

steam is admitted and exhausted by a valve at each end of the cylinder

placed directly below the port. The cut-off valve is behind the main

valve: the mechanism for operating the valves is on the outside of the

steam-chest, and easily accessible. The valves and seats are made

tapering in their general diameter, and the pressure of steam comes on

one side, also acting to keep the collar in contact with the sleeve.

[Illustration: TWEDDELL'S HYDRAULIC RIVETING-MACHINE.]

The Waltham Watch Company is considered by some of the most influential

European journals as the most important in the American section on

account of the revolution it is making in that important industry. When

the Swiss commissioner went home from the Centennial he published a

letter fairly throwing up the sponge, and when the company's exhibit

appeared for the first time in Europe at an international exposition it

was regarded as carrying the war into Africa. The American system of

making by machinery all the parts of an article--say, of a watch--of a

given grade by means of gauges and templets, so that the parts may be

"assembled," and of such singular exactitude in their making that any

part may be replaced by the corresponding piece of any other watch of

the same grade, has in this manufactory attained its highest results,

greatest precision and most perfect illustration. The whole collection

of watches was sold within a few weeks after the opening. The latest

improvements in the balance to secure perfect isochronism under varying

conditions of temperature would delight the soul of Harrison, who worked

from 1728 to 1761 on the problem of a compensator for the changes of

rate due to the expansion and contraction of the metal, and received the

reward of twenty thousand pounds sterling offered by the Board of

Longitude.

Tiffany's exhibit has been admired and patronized, but is not quite

within my range of subjects. Darling, Brown & Sharpe have their

machine-tools and gauges, Bliss & Williams their presses and dies. We

have the Baxter, Snyder and Lovegrove portable engines, Taylor's and

Aultman's agricultural engines. Our railroad exhibit is not very full:

we have a Philadelphia and Reading coal-burning locomotive, a Pullman

car, the Westinghouse brake, Stephenson's street-cars, car-wheels from

Baldwin's and Lobdell's: the latter also sends calender-rolls of

remarkable quality. As a sort of set-off to the Austrian car-wheels

which have run for twenty-one years, as previously mentioned, Lobdell

has a pair which have run 245,000 miles on the Missouri, Iowa and

Nebraska Railway. The Fairbanks scales in great variety, both of size

and purpose, and of a finish and an accuracy which have become

proverbial; the Howe scales; the Goodyear boot- and shoe-machinery;

Stow's flexible shaft; Lechner's coal-mining engine; Allen & Roeder's

riveting-machine; and Delamater's punches and shears,--are a few more of

the representative machines.

Sewing-machines are not in as great variety in the American section as

they were in Philadelphia. There are, however, enough of American and

European to foot up about eighty exhibitors. Wheeler & Wilson's have

been awarded the grand prize, and there are various medals for others,

both home and foreign--the American machine, Cole's and Wardwell's among

the number. The various hardware exhibits, such as the Disston saws,

Ames shovels, Collins axes, Batcheller forks, Russell & Erwin builders'

hardware, as well as the Remington, Colt, Winchester, Sharpe and Owen

Jones rifles and revolvers, and the Gatling and Gardner guns, are a

little on one side of my present line of subjects.