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[Illustration: "THE CONNOISSEURS."

ENGRAVED BY PERMISSION OF HENRY GRAVES & CO., LONDON. AFTER THE
PAINTING BY SIR EDWIN LANDSEER. (SEE PAGE 814.)]




ST. NICHOLAS.

  VOL. XIII.      SEPTEMBER, 1886.        NO. 11.

  [Copyright, 1886, by THE CENTURY CO.]




STORIES OF ART AND ARTISTS: ENGLISH PAINTERS.

BY CLARA ERSKINE CLEMENT.


When Henry VIII. came to the throne of England, he was a magnificent
prince. He loved pleasure and pomp and invited many foreign artists to
his court. After a time, however, he became indifferent to art, and it
is difficult to say whether he lessened or added to the art-treasures of
England.

The long reign of Queen Elizabeth--forty-seven years--afforded great
opportunity for the encouragement of art. But most of the painters whom
she employed were foreigners.

King Charles I. was a true lover of art. Rubens and Vandyck were his
principal painters, and Inigo Jones his architect; the choice of such
artists proves the excellence of his artistic taste and judgment. He
employed many other foreign artists, of whom it need only be said that
the English artists profited much by their intercourse with them, as
well as by the study of foreign pictures which the King purchased.

In fact, before the time of William Hogarth, portraits had been the only
pictures of any importance which were painted by English artists, and no
one painter had become very eminent. No native master had originated a
manner of painting which he could claim as his own.

Hogarth was born near Ludgate Hill, London, in 1697.

In 1734, he produced some works which immediately made him famous. He
had originated a manner of his own; he had neither attempted to
illustrate the stories of Greek Mythology, nor to invent allegories, as
so many painters had done before him; he simply gave form to the nature
that was all about him, and painted just what he could see in London
every day. His pictures of this sort came to be almost numberless, and
no rank in society, no phase of life, escaped the truthful
representation of his brush.

He was a teacher as well as an artist, for his pictures dealt with
familiar scenes and subjects and presented the lessons of the follies of
his day with more effect upon the mass of the people than any writer
could produce with his pen, or any preacher by his sermons.

Hogarth died at his house in Leicester Fields, on October 26, 1764.

His success aroused a strong faith and a new interest in the native art
of England, which showed their results in the establishment of the Royal
Academy of Arts. A little more than four years after Hogarth's death,
this Academy was founded by King George III. The original members of the
Academy numbered thirty-four, and among them was


JOSHUA REYNOLDS,

who afterward became its first president.

His father, Samuel Reynolds, was the rector of a grammar school at
Plympton, in Devonshire, and in that little hamlet, on July 16, 1723,
was born Joshua, the seventh of eleven children.

When Joshua was but a mere child, his father was displeased to find him
devoted to drawing; on a sketch which the boy had made, his father
wrote: "This is drawn by Joshua in school, out of pure idleness." The
child found the "Jesuit's Treatise on Perspective," and studied it with
such intelligence that before he was eight years old he made a sketch of
the school and its cloister which was so accurate that his astonished
father exclaimed, "Now this justifies the author of the 'Perspective'
when he says that, by observing the laws laid down in his book, a man
may do wonders; for this is wonderful!"

When about twelve years old, Joshua, while in church, made a sketch upon
his thumb-nail of the Rev. Thomas Smart. From this sketch, he painted
his first picture in oils; his canvas was a piece of an old sail, his
colors were common ship-paint, and he did his work in a boathouse on
Cremyll Beach.

In 1740, when Joshua was seventeen years old, his father tried to carry
out his plan to apprentice him to a druggist, but the boy was greatly
opposed to this. He said, "I would prefer to be an apothecary rather
than an _ordinary_ painter; but if I could be bound to an eminent
master, I should choose that." Fortunately Lord Edgecumbe and other
friends advised the boy's father in his favor, and so Joshua was finally
sent to London and bound to Thomas Hudson, then the best portrait
painter in England. After two years, Hudson suddenly dismissed the youth
from his studio, though his agreement was for four years; the master
said that Joshua neglected his orders, but others believed Hudson to be
jealous of his pupil's success.

Joshua returned to Devonshire and settled at Plymouth, five miles from
his home. There he painted about thirty portraits of the principal
persons of the neighborhood, at the price of three guineas each. One of
these portraits, painted in 1746, was shown to him thirty years later,
when he lamented that his progress in all that time had been so little.

At the home of his friend, Lord Edgecumbe, he had formed a friendship
with the young Commodore Keppel, who in 1749 was ordered to the
Mediterranean. He invited Reynolds to sail with him as his guest, and,
the invitation being accepted, the painter did not return to England
until the end of 1752. He visited Portugal, Spain, Algiers, Minorca,
Italy, and France.

He kept diaries during this journey, which are very interesting and
valuable; they contain many sketches of scenes and pictures which he
admired, as well as his written opinions of all that he saw. Several of
these diaries are in the Lenox Library, in New York; others are in the
Soane Museum, London, and in the Museum of Berlin.

Not long after his return to England, Reynolds settled himself in
London. He lived in handsome rooms in St. Martin's Lane, and his sister
Frances was his housekeeper.

Very soon Reynolds's studio came to be the popular resort of artists,
and, through the influence of Lord Edgecumbe, many nobles became his
patrons. He painted a full-length portrait of Commodore Keppel, which at
once established his reputation. The Commodore was represented as
standing on a rocky shore with a stormy sea in the background. This
picture was received with enthusiasm, and in his second London year
Reynolds had one hundred and twenty sitters, among whom were many
notable people. The artist removed to Great Newport street, and charged
twelve guineas for a bust, twenty-four guineas for half-length and
double that sum for a full-length portrait.

Dr. Johnson and Reynolds met for the first time in 1753, and from that
time they were faithful friends. Dr. Johnson delighted not only in
Reynolds's success as a painter, but, perceiving his other talents, he
insisted on his writing for _The Idler_, by which means the artist
published a series of brilliant articles and made himself a name in
literary circles. This kindness was more than repaid, for, after Dr.
Johnson became too poor to keep house for himself, he was always welcome
to the home and purse of Reynolds.

In 1760, the master again raised his prices for his work, and at about
the same time established himself in the house in Leicester Square, in
which he passed the remainder of his life. This house was very fine,
and, though it exhausted all his savings to fit it up, he spent still
more in setting up a gorgeous carriage for his sister, and in other
expenses which served to advertise his success to all who observed them.

Reynolds seemed to have reached the height of popularity, when, in 1768,
he was elected first President of the Royal Academy, and was knighted by
the King. He was of great advantage to the Academy, and heartily devoted
to its interests. He was active in establishing its schools and
equipping them with models, libraries, and conveniences for study; he
gave much attention to its exhibitions, and founded the famous Academy
dinners, at which men of rank and genius were brought together in such a
way as to render these occasions the most remarkable gatherings in the
United Kingdom. From time to time he also delivered his well-known
"Discourses on Art," which are notable alike for the good judgment in
the selection of the subjects treated, and for the literary skill with
which they are written.

About 1770, Sir Joshua built a villa at Richmond Hill. In the same year,
he spent a month in Plympton, and at that time also, he brought to his
home his niece, Theophila Palmer, who remained with him until her
marriage, eleven years later. She was very beautiful, and is known to
all the world as the "Offy" of the famous "Strawberry Girl." Other
pictures of her which Sir Joshua painted also became famous.

With the exception of the trip with Commodore Keppel Sir Joshua spent
little time out of England. In 1768 he visited Paris, and in 1780 he
passed two months in Holland and Germany. When absent from London, he
was usually at the house of some friend in the country, or at his old
home, of which he was always fond.

[Illustration: COPY OF A PORTRAIT BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.]

Few men have been so much admired by such a diversity of people as was
Sir Joshua Reynolds. The testimony of his friends presents him to us as
a man of admirable character. Perhaps no one knew him more intimately
than James Northcote, who was received into his family as a poor
Devonshire lad; he remained with Sir Joshua five years, and left him a
prosperous painter. Northcote found him kindly, modest, and lovable in
every way. He thus describes him personally: "In his stature, Sir Joshua
Reynolds was rather under the middle size, of a florid complexion,
roundish, blunt features, and a lively aspect; not corpulent, though
somewhat inclined to it, but extremely active; with manners uncommonly
polished and agreeable. In conversation, his manner was perfectly
natural, simple, and unassuming. He most heartily enjoyed his
profession, in which he was both famous and illustrious; and I agree
with Mr. Malone, who says he appeared to him to be the happiest man he
had ever known."

In 1789, Sir Joshua lost the sight of his left eye, and though this
changed his whole life, he retained his calm cheerfulness, and occupied
his mind with the exciting topics of the time; for it happened that the
storming of the Bastille occurred in the very week in which he gave up
his pencil. He still used his brush a very little to finish or retouch
works which were still on his hands, but he sadly said: "There is now an
end of pursuit; the race is over, whether it is lost or won."

In 1790, troubles arose in the Academy, and Sir Joshua felt himself so
badly used that he resigned his presidency and his membership of the
institution. The King requested him to return, but he refused until the
Academy publicly apologized to him. He then resumed his office, and in
December delivered his final discourse.

The remainder of his life was a gradual decline; his sight grew weaker,
and his strength less, until February 23, 1792, when he died easily,
never having suffered much pain. The King directed that his body should
lie in state in the Academy rooms in Somerset House. The funeral was
grand and solemn; the pall-bearers were dukes, marquises, earls, and
lords; ninety-one carriages followed the hearse, in which were the first
nobles, scholars, and prelates of the realm, with all the members and
students of the Academy. He was buried near Sir Christopher Wren, in St.
Paul's Cathedral, where Vandyck had already been laid, and where, in
later years, a goodly number of painters have been buried around him. In
1813, a statue, by Flaxman, was erected to his memory near the choir of
the cathedral, and a Latin inscription recounts the talents and virtues
of the great man whom it commemorates.

[Illustration: THE LADIES WALDEGRAVE. (FROM A PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA
REYNOLDS.)]

Having thus traced the story of Sir Joshua's life, it now remains to
speak of him more especially as an artist.

His highest fame is as a portrait painter, and as such he was a great
genius. He had the power to reproduce the personal peculiarities of his
subjects with great exactness; he was also able to perceive their
qualities of temper, mind, and character, and he made his portraits so
vivid with these attributes that they were likenesses of the minds as
well as of the persons of his subjects. In his portrait of Goldsmith,
self-esteem is as prominent as the nose; passion and energy are in every
line of Burke's face and figure; and whenever his subject possessed any
individual characteristics, they were plainly shown in Reynolds's
portraits. So many of these pictures are famous that we can not speak of
them in detail. Perhaps no one portrait is better known than that of
the famous actress, Mrs. Sarah Siddons, as the Tragic Muse. It is a
noble example of an idealized portrait, and it is said that the "Isaiah"
of Michael Angelo suggested the manner in which it is painted. Sir
Thomas Lawrence declared this to be the finest portrait of a women in
the world, and it is certain that this one picture would have made any
painter famous. Sir Joshua inscribed his name on the border of the robe,
and courteously explained to the lady, "I could not lose the honor this
opportunity afforded me of going down to posterity on the hem of your
garment."

The original of this work is said to be that in the gallery of the Duke
of Westminster; a second is in the Dulwich Gallery. In speaking of Sir
Joshua as a portrait painter, Mr. Ruskin says: "Considered as a painter
of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him the prince of
portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyck had nobler
subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into
the minor varieties of heart and temper."

His portraits of simply beautiful women can scarcely be equaled in the
world. He perfectly reproduced the delicate grace and beauty of some of
his sitters and the brilliant, dazzling charms of others. He loved to
paint richly hued velvets in contrast with rare laces, ermine, feathers,
and jewels. It is a regret that so many of his works are faded, but
after all we must agree with Sir George Beaumont, when he said: "Even a
faded picture from him will be the finest thing you can have."

The most attractive of his works are his pictures of children. It is
true that they too are portraits, but they are often represented in some
fancy part, such as the "Strawberry Girl,"[1] a portrait of his niece
Offy; Muscipula, who holds a mouse-trap; the Little Marchioness; the
Girl with a Mob-cap, and many others. He loved to paint pictures of boys
in all sorts of characters, street-peddlers, gipsies, cherubs, and so
on. He often picked up boy models in the street and painted from them in
his spare hours, between his appointments with sitters. Sometimes he
scarcely hustled a beggar boy out of his chair in time for some grand
lady to seat herself in it. It is said that one day one of these
children fell asleep in so graceful an attitude that the master seized a
fresh canvas and made a sketch of it; this was scarcely done, when the
child threw himself into a different pose without awakening. Sir Joshua
added a second sketch to the first and from these made his beautiful
picture of "The Babes in the Wood." More than two hundred of his
pictures of children have been engraved, and these plates form one of
the loveliest collections that can be made from the works of any one
artist.

    [1] An engraving of this picture was given as the frontispiece of
        ST. NICHOLAS for April, 1876; and our readers will remember
        also the account of Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of "Little
        Penelope Boothby" in ST. NICHOLAS for November, 1875,
        illustrated with a full-page reproduction of the painting.--ED.

When Sir Joshua was at the height of his power, he was accustomed to
receive six sitters a day, and he often completed a portrait in four
hours.

Good prints from his works are now becoming rare and are valuable.

As we close this account of Sir Joshua Reynolds, it is pleasant to
remember that so great a man was so good a man, and to believe that
Burke did not flatter him when, in his eulogy, he said: "In full
affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and
by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign
powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility,
modesty, and candor never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation;
nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most
scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse."


RICHARD WILSON

was another original member of the Academy, and though not the first
English artist who had painted landscapes, he was the first whose
pictures merited the honorable recognition which they now have. Wilson's
story is a sad one; he was not appreciated while he lived, and his whole
life was saddened by seeing the works of foreign artists, which were
inferior to his own, sold for good prices, while he was forced to sell
his to pawnbrokers, who, it is said, could not dispose of them at any
price.

Wilson was the son of a clergyman and was born at Pinegas, in
Montgomeryshire, in 1713. He first painted portraits and earned money
with which, in 1749, he went to Italy, where he remained six years. His
best works were Italian views, and he is now considered as the best
landscape painter of his day, with the one exception of Gainsborough.

Wilson died in 1782, and it is pleasant to know that after more than
sixty years of poverty he received a legacy from a brother, and the last
two years of his life were years of peaceful comfort.


THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH,

though a great artist, had an uneventful life. He was the son of a
clothier and was born in Sudbury, in Suffolk, in 1727. His boyish habit
of wandering about the woods and streams of Suffolk, making sketches,
and finding in this his greatest pleasure, induced his father to send
him to London to study art, when about fifteen years old. He studied
first under a French engraver, Gravelot, who was of much advantage to
him; next he was a pupil of Francis Hayman at the Academy, in St.
Martin's Lane, but Nature was his real teacher.

After a time he settled in Hatton Square, and painted both portraits and
landscapes. But at the end of four years of patient work, his patrons
were so few that he left London and returned to Sudbury.

It happened that once when he was sketching a wood-scene, Margaret Burr
had crossed his line of sight; he had added her figure to his picture,
and from this circumstance they had come to be friends. Soon after,
Gainsborough returned to his home, and Margaret became his wife. He was
careless and unthrifty, while she was quite the reverse. She was thus a
true helpmate to him, and to her carefulness we owe the preservation of
many of his pictures.

After his marriage, Gainsborough settled in Ipswich; in 1760 he removed
to Bath, and here both in portraits and landscapes he made such a
reputation, that when, fourteen years later, he removed to London, he
was considered the rival of Reynolds in portraits and of Wilson as a
painter of scenery. Gainsborough was one of the original Academicians,
and on one occasion at a gathering of artists, Sir Joshua Reynolds
proposed the health of Gainsborough, and called him "the greatest
landscape painter of the day." Wilson, who was present, was piqued by
this, and exclaimed:

"Yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too."

Sir Joshua realized that he had been ungracious and apologized to
Wilson.

Gainsborough exhibited many works in the gallery of the Academy, but in
1783 he was offended by the hanging of one of his portraits, and refused
to send his pictures there afterward. He was an impulsive, passionate
man, and he had several disputes with Sir Joshua, who always admired and
praised the work of his rival. But when about to die, Gainsborough sent
for Reynolds to visit him, and all their differences were healed. The
truth was that they had always respected and admired each other. The
last words of Gainsborough were:

"We are all going to heaven, and Vandyck is of the company."

He died August 2, 1788.

The celebrated "Blue Boy," by Gainsborough, now in the Grosvenor
Gallery, is said to have been painted to spite Sir Joshua, who had said
that blue should not be used in masses.

But there was a soft and lovable side to this wayward man. His love for
music was a passion, and he once gave a painting of his, "The Boy at the
Stile," to Colonel Hamilton as a reward for his playing the flute.

His portraits may be thought to have too much of a bluish gray in the
flesh tints, but they are always graceful and pleasing. In 1876, his
famous painting "The Duchess of Devonshire" was sold for the
exceptionally high price of fifty thousand dollars.


GEORGE ROMNEY

was born at Beckside, in Cumberland, in 1734. His life was very
discreditable.

It is more pleasant to speak of his pictures, for his portraits were so
fine that he was a worthy rival to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His pictures are
mostly in private galleries, but that of the beautiful Lady Hamilton, in
the National Gallery, is a famous work. He was ambitious to paint
historical subjects, and some of his imaginary pictures are much
admired. He was fitful in his art, and he began so many works which he
left unfinished, that they were finally removed from his studio by
cart-loads. There was also an incompleteness in the pictures which he
called finished; in short, the want of steadfastness, which made him an
unfaithful husband and father, went far to lessen his artistic merit. At
the same time, it is true that he was a great artist and justly
celebrated in his best days; his works excel in vigorous drawing and
brilliant, transparent color. His pictures are rarely sold, and are as
valuable as those of his great contemporaries, Reynolds and
Gainsborough.


THOMAS LAWRENCE

is the only other portrait painter of whom mention need be made here. He
was born at Bristol, in 1769, and much of his work belongs to our own
century.

His father had been trained for the law, but had become an inn-keeper.
When a mere child, Thomas entertained his father's customers by his
recitations, and took their portraits with equal readiness.

When he was ten years old, his family removed to Oxford, where he
rapidly improved in his drawing. When he first saw a picture by Rubens
he wept bitterly and sobbed out:

"Oh, I shall never be able to paint like that!"

In 1785, he received a silver palette from the Society of Arts as a
reward for a copy of Raphael's "Transfiguration," which he had made when
but thirteen years old.

[Illustration: "THE BLUE BOY." (AFTER THE PAINTING BY THOMAS
GAINSBOROUGH. BY PERMISSION, FROM A FAC-SIMILE OF THE ETCHING
BY RAJON, PUBLISHED BY "L'ART.")]

In 1787, the young painter entered the Royal Academy, London, and from
that time his course was one of repeated successes. Sir Joshua Reynolds
was his friend and adviser; he early attracted the attention of the King
and Queen, whose portraits he painted when but twenty-two years old. He
was elected to the Academy in 1794; after Sir Joshua's death he was
appointed painter to the King; he was knighted in 1815, and five years
later he was elected president of the Academy. He was also a member of
many foreign academies and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Rarely is
the path to honor and fame made so easy as it was to Sir Thomas
Lawrence.

[Illustration: COPY OF A PORTRAIT BY GEORGE ROMNEY.]

His London life was brilliant. His studio was crowded with sitters, and
money flowed into his purse in a generous stream,--for his prices were
larger than any other English painter had asked. But all this did him
little good, for somehow he was continually in debt and always poor.

In 1814 he visited Paris, but he was recalled that he might paint the
portraits of the allied sovereigns, their statesmen, and generals. These
works were the first of the series of portraits of great men in the
Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. In 1818 he attended the Congress at
Aix-la-Chapelle, for the purpose of adding portraits of notable people
to the gallery of the Prince-Regent. At length he was sent to Rome to
paint a likeness of the Pope and Cardinal Gonsalvi. He seems to have
been inspired with new strength by his nearness to the works of the
great masters in the Eternal City, for those two portraits are in merit
far beyond his previous work, and after his return to England from 1820
to 1830, his pictures had a vigor and worth that was wanting at every
other period of his life. While in Rome, he also painted a portrait of
Canova which he presented to the Pope.

When he reached London, he found himself to be the president-elect of
the Academy; it was a great honor, and Lawrence accepted it with
modesty.

George IV., following the example of the graciousness of Charles I.
toward Vandyck, hung upon the painter's neck a gold chain bearing a
medal, on which the likeness of his majesty was engraved. In the
catalogue of the Academy, 1820, Lawrence is called "Principal Painter in
Ordinary to his Majesty, Member of the Roman Academy of St. Luke's, of
the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and of the Fine Arts in New York."
To the last he had been elected in 1818, and had sent to the academy a
full-length portrait of Benjamin West.

From that time on, there is little to relate of his life, except that he
was always busy and each year sent eight fine works to the Academy
Exhibition. His friends and patrons showed him much consideration, and
various honors were added to his list, already long. He was always
worried in regard to money matters, and he grieved much over the illness
of his favorite sister, but there was no striking event to change the
even current of his life.

On January 7, 1830, he expired suddenly, exclaiming, "This is
dying,"--almost the same words used by George IV., a few months later.

Sir Thomas Lawrence was a man of fine personal qualities; his generosity
may be called his greatest fault, for his impulses led him to give more
than he had--a quality which causes us to admire a man while at the same
moment it makes him guilty of grave faults.

He was always generous to unfortunate artists and, in that way, he spent
large sums. He was also true to his ideas of right and wrong, even at
the expense of his own advantage.

As an artist, Lawrence can not be given a very high rank, in spite of
the immense successes of his life. As in every case, there are opposite
opinions concerning him. He has hearty admirers, but he is also accused
of mannerisms and weakness. His early works are the most satisfactory,
because most natural; they are good in design, and rich in color.


JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER

was an artist of great genius, and has exercised a powerful influence on
the art of the nineteenth century. He was the son of a barber, and was
born in Maiden Lane, London (a squalid alley in the parish of Covent
Garden), on April 23, 1775. When the boy was five years old, he was
taken by his father to the house of a customer of the barber's, and
while the shaving and combing went on, the child studied the figure of a
rampant lion engraved upon a piece of silver. After his return home, he
drew a copy of the lion so excellent that it decided his career, for
then and there the father determined that his son should be an artist.
As a child and youth, he was always sketching, and while he was fond of
nature in all her features, he yet had a preference for water views with
boats and cliffs and shining waves.

In 1789, when fourteen years old, he entered the classes of the Royal
Academy, where he worked hard in drawing from Greek models. He had the
good fortune to be employed by Dr. Munro to do some copying and other
works, and by this stroke of luck he revelled in the fine pictures and
valuable drawings with which the house of his patron was filled. Toward
the end of Sir Joshua Reynolds's life, Turner was a frequent visitor at
his studio.

In 1790, he sent his first contribution to the Academy Exhibition; it
was a view of Lambeth Palace, in water-colors. During the next ten
years, he exhibited more than sixty works, embracing a great variety of
subjects. The pictures included views from more than twenty-six counties
of England and Wales.

In 1802, he was made a full member of the Academy and he also visited
the continent for the first time, traveling through France and
Switzerland only. He visited Italy in 1819, in 1829, and again in 1840.

The pictures of Turner are often compared with those of Claude Lorraine,
and at times he painted in rivalry with Cuyp, Poussin, and Claude,
aiming to adopt the manner of these masters.

In 1806, Turner followed the example of the great Lorraine in another
direction. Claude had made a _Liber Veritatis_, or "Book of Truth,"
containing sketches of his finished pictures, in order that the works of
other painters could not be sold as his. Turner determined to make a
_Liber Studiorum_, or "Book of Studies." It was issued in a series of
twenty numbers, containing five plates each, and the subscription price
was £17.10_s._ There were endless troubles with the engravers and it was
not paying well, and was abandoned after seventy plates were issued. It
seemed to be so worthless that Charles Turner, one of the engravers,
used some of the proofs for kindling paper. After the artist became
famous, however, this _Liber Studiorum_ grew to be very valuable. Before
Turner died, a copy was worth thirty guineas, and more recently a single
copy has brought three thousand pounds, or nearly fifteen thousand
dollars. Colnaghi, the London print dealer, paid Charles Turner fifteen
hundred pounds for the proofs which he had not destroyed; and when the
old engraver remembered how he had lighted his fires, he exclaimed, "I
have been burning bank-notes all my life."

[Illustration: COUNTESS GREY AND CHILDREN. (FROM A PORTRAIT BY SIR
THOMAS LAWRENCE.)]

Turner grew very rich, but he lived in a mean, careless style. As long
as his father lived, he waited upon his great son as a servant might
have done; and after his death, an untidy, wizened old woman, Mrs.
Danby, was the only person to care for the house or the interests of the
painter. His dress was that of a very common person, and it is
impossible to understand how a man who so admired the beautiful in
nature could live in so miserly a manner as that of Turner.

Some time before his death, Turner seemed to be hiding himself; his
friends could not discover his retreat, until, at last, his old
housekeeper traced him to a dingy Chelsea cottage. When his friends went
to him, he was dying, and the end soon came. His funeral, from Queen
Anne street, was an imposing one. The body was taken to St. Paul's
Cathedral, and there, surrounded by a large company of artists and
followed by the faithful old woman, it was laid to rest between the
tombs of Sir Joshua Reynolds and James Barry. His estate was valued at
about seven hundred thousand dollars and he desired that most of it
should be used to establish a home for poor artists, to be called
Turner's Gift. But the will was not clearly written--his relatives
contested it, and in the end, his pictures and drawings were given to
the National Academy; one thousand pounds was devoted to a monument to
his memory; twenty thousand pounds established the Turner Fund in the
Academy and yields annuities to six poor artists; and the remainder was
divided amongst his kinsfolk.

Perhaps there never was a painter about whose works more extreme and
conflicting opinions have been advanced. Some of his admirers claim for
him the very highest place in art. His enemies can see nothing good in
his works and say that they may as well be hung one side up as another,
since they are only a mixture of splashes of color, and lights and
shades. Neither extreme is correct. In some respects, Turner is at the
head of English landscape painters, and no other artist has had the
power to paint so many different kinds of subjects or to employ such
variations of style in his work. His water-colors are worthy of the
highest praise; indeed, he created a school of water-color painting. At
the same time, it is proper to say that the works executed in his latest
period are not even commended by Ruskin,--his most enthusiastic
admirer,--and are not to be classed with those of his earlier days and
his best manner.

This master was so fruitful, and he made so vast a number of pictures in
oil and water-colors, of drawings, and of splendid illustrations for
books, that we have no space in which to speak properly of the different
periods of his art. A large and fine collection of his paintings is in
the South Kensington Museum; "The Old Temeraire," the picture which he
would never sell, is there. "The Slave Ship," one of his finest
pictures, is owned in Boston, and other celebrated works of his are in
New York; but most of his pictures, outside the South Kensington Museum,
and the National Gallery, are in private collections, where no
catalogues have ever been made, so that no estimate of the whole number
can be given.

I shall tell you of but one more English painter,--an artist whose life
and works are both very interesting, and of whom all young people must
be fond,--


EDWIN LANDSEER.

He was the youngest of the three sons of John Landseer, the eminent
engraver, and was born at No. 83 Queen Anne street, London, in March,
1802. The eldest son, Thomas, followed the profession of his father, and
in later years, by his faithful engraving after the works of Edwin, he
did much to confirm the great fame of his younger brother. Charles, the
second son of John Landseer, was a painter of historical subjects, and
held the office of Keeper of the Royal Academy during twenty years.

Edwin Landseer had the good fortune to be aided and encouraged in his
artistic tastes and studies, even from his babyhood, for there are now
in the South Kensington Museum, sketches of animals made in his fifth
year, and good etchings which he did when eight years old.

John Landseer taught his son to look to nature alone as his model. When
fourteen, he entered the Academy schools, and divided his time between
drawing in the classes and sketching from the wild beasts at Exeter
Change. He was a handsome, manly boy, and the keeper, Fuseli, was very
fond of him, calling him, as a mark of affection, "My little dog boy."

He was very industrious and painted many pictures; the best of those
known as his early works is the "Cat's Paw." It represents a monkey
using the paw of a cat to push hot chestnuts from the top of a heated
stove; the struggles of the cat are useless and her kittens mew to no
purpose. This picture was once sold for one hundred pounds; it is now in
the collection of the Earl of Essex, at Cashiobury, and is worth more
than three thousand pounds. It was painted in 1822.

Sir Walter Scott was in London when the "Cat's Paw" was exhibited, and
he was so pleased by the picture that he sought out the young painter
and invited him to go home with him. Sir Walter's well-known love of
dogs was a foundation for the intimate affection which grew up between
himself and Landseer. In 1824, the painter first saw Scotland, and
during fifty years he studied its people, its scenery, and its customs;
he loved them all and could ever draw new subjects and new enthusiasm
from the breezy north. Sir Walter wrote in his journal, "Landseer's dogs
are the most magnificent things I ever saw, leaping and bounding and
grinning all over the canvas." The friendship of Sir Walter had a great
effect upon the young painter; it developed the imagination and romance
in his nature and he was affected by the human life of Scotland so that
he painted the shepherd, the gillie, and the poacher, and made his
pictures speak the tenderness and truth as well as the fearlessness and
the hardihood of the Gaelic race.

Landseer remained in the home of his father, until he was a person of
such importance that his friends felt that his dignity demanded a
separate establishment and urged this upon him. He could not lightly
sever his home ties, and it was after much hesitation that he removed to
No. 1 St. John's Wood Road, where he passed the remainder of his life.
He named his home "Maida Vale," in remembrance of the favorite dog of
Sir Walter Scott. It was a small house with a garden and a barn, which
he converted into a studio; from time to time he enlarged and improved
it, and it became the resort of a distinguished circle of people who
learned to love it for its generous hospitality and its atmosphere of
joyous content.

The best period of Landseer's life was from 1824 to 1840. In the latter
year, he had the first attack of a disease from which he was never again
entirely free; he suffered from seasons of depression that shadowed all
his life with gloom, and at times almost threatened the loss of his
reason.

It is said that Landseer was the first person who opened a communication
between Queen Victoria and the literary and artistic society of England.
Be that as it may, he was certainly the first artist to be received as a
friend by the Queen, who soon placed him on an unceremonious and easy
footing in her household.

He was a frequent visitor at the royal palaces and received many rich
gifts from both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Between 1835 and 1866,
he painted a great many pictures of the Queen, of the various members of
her family and of the pets of the royal household. In 1850 he was
knighted and was at the very height of his popularity and success.

With the single exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he visited and
received in his own house more distinguished persons than any other
British artist. He was the intimate friend of Dickens, Chantrey, Sidney
Smith, and other famous men.

Landseer had an extreme fondness for studying and making pictures of
lions, and from the time when, as a boy, he dissected one, he tried to
obtain the body of every lion that died in London. Dickens was in the
habit of relating that on one occasion, when he and others were dining
with the artist, a servant entered and asked, "Did you order a lion,
sir?" as if it was the most natural thing in the world. The guests
feared that a living lion was about to enter, but it turned out to be
the body of the dead "Nero," of the Zoölogical Gardens, which had been
sent as a gift to Sir Edwin.

His skill in drawing was marvelous, and was once shown in a rare way at
a large evening party. Facility in drawing had been the theme of
conversation, when a lady declared that no one had yet drawn two objects
at the same moment. Landseer would not allow that this could not be
done, and immediately took two pencils and drew a horse's head with one
hand and at the same time, a stag's head with the other hand. He painted
with great rapidity; he once sent to the exhibition a picture of rabbits
painted in three-quarters of an hour. Mr. Wells relates that at one time
when Landseer was visiting him, he left the house for church just as his
butler placed a fresh canvas on the easel before the painter; on his
return, three hours later, Landseer had completed a life-sized picture
of a fallow-deer, and so well was it done that neither he nor the artist
could see that it required retouching.

Several portraits of Landseer exist and are well known, but that called
the "Connoisseurs," painted in 1865 for the Prince of Wales, is of great
interest. Here the artist has painted a half-length portrait of himself
engaged in drawing, while two dogs look over his shoulders with a
critical expression.

In 1840, Landseer made a quite extended tour in Europe, and that was the
only time that he was long absent from Great Britain. In 1853, several
of his works were sent to the Exposition in Paris; he was the only
English artist who received the great gold medal.

Sir Edwin Landseer was also a sculptor, and though he executed but few
works in this art, the colossal lions at the base of Nelson's Monument
in Trafalgar Square, London, are a triumph for him. He was chosen for
this work on account of his great knowledge of the "king of beasts."

At his death he had modeled but one; the others were copied from it
under the care of the Baron Marochetti.

Sir Edwin continued to work in spite of sadness, failing health and
sight, and in the last year of his life he executed four pictures, one
being an equestrian portrait of the Queen.

He died October 1, 1873, and was buried with many honors in St. Paul's
Cathedral. He left a property of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds;
the pictures and drawings in his studio were sold for seventy thousand
pounds, and all this large sum, with the exception of a few small
bequests, was given to his brother Thomas and his three sisters, ten
thousand pounds being given to his brother Charles.

I suppose that many of the pictures of Sir Edwin Landseer are well known
to the readers of ST. NICHOLAS. "High Life" and "Low Life," "A Highland
Breakfast," "Dignity and Impudence," the "Cat's Paw," "The Monarch of
the Glen," the "Piper and Nutcrackers," and others, are familiar in the
form of prints to many people in many lands, and they are pictures which
all must love. It is needless to add any long opinion of the artistic
qualities of this master; the critic Hamerton has happily summed up an
estimate of him in these words: "Everything that can be said about
Landseer's knowledge of animals, and especially of dogs, has already
been said. There was never very much to say, for there was no variety of
opinions, and nothing to discuss. Critics may write volumes of
controversy about Turner and Delacroix, but Landseer's merits are so
obvious to every one that he stood in no need of critical explanations.
The best commentators on Landseer, the best defenders of his genius, are
the dogs themselves; and so long as there exist terriers, deer-hounds,
and blood-hounds, his fame will need little assistance from writers upon
art."

[Illustration: ONE OF THE LANDSEER LIONS AT THE BASE OF THE NELSON
MONUMENT, TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON.]




UNDER THE SNOW.

BY LILIAN DYNEVOR RICE.


    All in the bleak December weather,
    When north winds blow,
    Five little clovers lay warm together
    Under the snow.
    "Wait," said they, "till the robins sing;
    Wait, till the blossoms bud and spring;
    Wait, till the rain and the sunbeams gay
    Our winter blanket shall fold away--
    Then, we will try to grow."

    All in the fragrant May-time weather,
    When south winds blow,
    Five little clovers crept close together
    Under the snow.
    Poor, pink babies! They might have known
    'Twas only the pear-tree blossoms blown
    By the frolic breeze; but they cried, "Oh, dear!
    Surely the spring is late this year!
    Still, we will try to grow."

    All in the sultry August weather,
    When no winds blow,
    Five little clovers were sad together
    Under the snow.
    'Twas only the daisies waving white
    Above their heads in the glowing light;
    But they cried, "Will we never understand?
    It always snows in this fairyland--
    Yet, we will try to grow."

    All in the bright September weather,
    When west winds blow,
    Five little clovers were glad together
    Under the snow.
    For now 'twas the muslin kerchief cool,
    Of a dear little lass on her way to school.
    "The sweetest snow-fall of all," said they;
    "We knew our reward would come some day,
    If only we'd try to grow!"




NAN'S REVOLT.

BY ROSE LATTIMORE ALLING.


CHAPTER V.

The Ferris tea-table was a very cheery board, where good spirits of a
most delightful and commendable kind flowed freely. The stiff and solemn
Wilders, who "partook of the joys of life furtively," were inclined to
be scandalized. Who cared? Not the Ferrises, and so, as has been said,
that happy family enjoyed life despite their critical neighbors, and as
they all gathered about the scarlet cloth that evening, they looked like
a band that ought never to be broken.

Fun and laughter ran so high that the dear, tired father forgot his
legal cares and cracked his jokes. These were more or less bad,--but
what matter so long as the children thought him "just the darlingest,
funniest man in the world." No guest remained long in that genial
atmosphere without discovering the source of this sunny family-life, and
the true tendency of the current beneath all the froth and ripple of the
nonsense.

From father and mother, down to little Claire, it was a family of
_friends_. That was the entire secret. There were no petty animosities,
no bickerings; everything was open and above-board. Sincere and loving
confidence bound them together. The girls were interested in all their
father's cases in court; while he, in turn, listened to all their
girlish performances with undivided attention. No new gown or hat was
completely satisfactory until he had passed a favorable judgment. Here
in his own small court he was "Judge Ferris," in that title's noblest
sense. And the mother? She was best sister of all among her
daughters,--"Mother and sister and queen,--all in one precious little
woman," as Nan said, lifting her off her feet with a vigorous embrace.

But the toast was getting cold, and the festivity began as the plates
went 'round. The judicial wrinkles in Mr. Ferris's forehead were pulled
out by those radiating from the outer corners of his kind eyes; the
mother utterly lost her authority as the mirth rose to a gale; and
nobody paid the slightest attention to Lou's request for the honey.

"Nan," said Mrs. Ferris, laughing, "you are the only one who isn't
behaving outrageously, so please attend to your sister's wants." But her
observant eye did not leave her daughter's thoughtful face, and she
asked, during a purely accidental lull in the chatter,--for she
sympathized even with moods in her children:--"What is it, dear; what
are you thinking about? You seem to be taking the butter-dish into your
confidence--we are jealous."

Nan drew her eyes away, and, giving her mother a bright look, she
answered: "Why, I was thinking of the time, before we went to
boarding-school, when Papa called Evelyn and me to him and asked us
which we would rather have him do, scrimp us all our lives on advantages
and education, so that he could lay up something for our future, or,
instead of dowry or legacy, have our money as we went along, depending
upon our ability for the future."

"And we voted as a single man, didn't we?" said Evelyn.

"We did that same, Evelyn; we decided that we wanted but little here
below, but that we wanted that little right away!"

"And I recall how magnanimously you promised to share my last crust with
me," said Mr. Ferris, hitching Nan's chair nearer to him.

"Yes," continued she, "I'll never desert you. But I was going to say
that I don't think I have kept my part of the agreement. You have given
me advantages which even richer girls have not had, and I have not done
a thing with them yet. I have had a whole year of idleness, and I'm
tired of it, and want to go to work."

The family had heard something of this independent mood before, but, as
nothing alarming came of it, they received this announcement without any
demonstration of surprise; indeed, Mr. Ferris attended to the
dissolution of the sugar in his second cup of tea before looking up, and
then he said, "Yes?" with a slowly rising inflection.

"Yes!" came from Nan with a short downward one; "Yes, sir, and I have a
plan this time, and wish to consult my beloved family before doing
anything rash."

"So that you can do it afterward with a clear conscience, I suppose?"
ventured her father, wickedly.

"No, I shall do something a hundred times rasher if you oppose this
plan, for it is the least revolutionary thing I can think of."

"Well?"--said her father, inquiringly.

"You know how hard Aunt Hettie has tried to induce one of us to come
down to New York and spend the winter with her and Uncle Nat, and how
we have all begged off because they live so quietly and so far up town,
we thought we should simply stagnate? I should like to go there this
winter, not, I blush to say, for their sakes alone, but because I wish
to study."

[Illustration: NAN FOUND CATHY FILLING A FIREPLACE WITH GOLDEN-ROD.
(SEE NEXT PAGE.)]

"What! study more?" groaned Lou, who was only fourteen, and in the toils
of cube-root.

"Yes, study more," asserted Nan. "I want to take a course of lessons in
a school of design, for I think I may do something in that line that may
pay, after a while. Now, observe the latent beauty of my scheme. By
spending the winter with them, I shan't need any new clothes--which
means that I intend to pay for my lessons out of my own allowance."

"Oh, never mind that, dear child," Mr. Ferris said lovingly.

"Yes, I _will_ mind! That is just what makes us girls so
good-for-nothing;--we don't 'mind' enough! I really think it would be
fun to actually _need_ a new dress and know I couldn't have it until I
_earned_ it--buttons, whale-bones, and braid. Anyhow, if it were not
fun, it would be good for my character. Now what do you all think?" and
Nan helped herself to cake, observing that the others had finished
theirs.

Mr. Ferris, heaving an involuntary sigh, began:

"Well, dear, as you know, your mother and I consider it our duty to
bring up our girls so that each can, if the necessity should come, earn
her own living; and perhaps the time is here for one to fly out of the
nest to try her wings,--ah, me!"

"But that is just what I don't want to do; and one reason I hit upon
this plan is that it will take me away from home only one winter,
perhaps, and then not among strangers," said Nan.

"But," objected Mr. Ferris, "do you know anything about this school?"

"The Cooper Institute? I should think so. Why, it was reading about this
particular branch of decorative art in the newspaper, the other day,
that made me think of it."

"Then, little girl," he said fondly, "I think I am pleased with your
plan."

When they were all grouped before the fire, and Mr. Ferris had drawn Nan
close to him, as though somehow he were about to lose her, Evelyn took
her mother's hand in hers and began:

"Papa, don't think I am going to do nothing; I am not like Nan, nor can
I do the things she can; but I try to believe each has a special talent,
and if I have a passion, it is for housekeeping; and Mother and I have a
lovely plan!" And those two exchanged a laughing glance of great
portent.

Anything like secrecy immediately aroused in the Ferris family the most
vehement denunciation.

"What _do_ you mean?" demanded the chorus.

"Well, then, Mother hasn't the slightest idea what we are going to have
for breakfast to-morrow morning, because _I_ am the housekeeper of this
house, and I am going to buy everything and plan everything, and pay all
the bills,--with a little pecuniary aid from you, Papa,--and make a
study of beef and poultry, while Mother is going to do fancy-work and
read French novels. But I am only going to learn to do well what
ninety-nine girls out of every hundred have to do,--so there!"

"Splendid! splendid!" shouted Mr. Ferris, going over to this oldest of
the flock and taking her face lovingly between his hands. "I declare, I
don't know of which to be proudest; you mutually surpass each other, my
children."

"Wait until after to-morrow morning's breakfast, and I fear you will be
able to decide!" called the new housekeeper, as she disappeared to have
a consultation with the cook.

All these revolutionary measures were not of the sudden growth that
their speedy results seem to indicate. Any girl who enjoys the luxury of
aimlessness during that long-desired period after she has "finished,"
will, sooner or later, encounter that arch-fiend of happiness,
satiety,--the Apollyon of those who exist merely to have a "good time."
Nan had been reared amidst the most healthy influences, and her vigorous
young nature demanded more nourishing rations than those offered by the
life she had been leading. However, this longing had only come of late,
for she had been most devoted to the pomps and vanities, while her
parents had looked on with some anxiety, but held their peace, trusting
that she would "come out all right."

Bert's surroundings were different, her home influences being wholly
worldly, her mother desiring nothing more of her daughter than that she
should move among the best circles, finally making a brilliant marriage.
Bert had not only dutifully but eagerly explored those aristocratic
precincts, and had enjoyed herself hugely, as she observed everything in
her own original and critical way, amusing herself with her own
conclusions. Her wit and breeziness made her always welcome, and she
could even enliven the clammy atmosphere of a young ladies' luncheon, as
there was always sure to be grateful laughter at her end of the table.
This success was exhilarating for a while, until she began to discover
that she got very little for her pains. She herself needed stimulating;
she demanded equal exertion from others; "why should she be interested
in uninteresting people?" she should like to know. She didn't find out.
She was already very privately admitting to herself that she "would like
to shake the best circles from center to circumference." But the poor
girl did not know what might be the social result, and to make a break
had never occurred to her as a possibility until Nan's audacity
suggested it.

So, while Bert sat on the other side of her father's desk and signed
letters in her most elegant hand, "Mitchell & Co., per B.," wondering if
the junior members of the firms to which she had been writing would ever
guess who "B." was, or if they would conclude it stood for some stupid,
round-shouldered Brown or Bates or Baker,--Nan sped down to Cathy's to
be the first to announce Bert's business career, as Evelyn's new cares
detained her at home.

[Illustration: THE "B." OF MITCHELL & CO.]

Nan found Cathy filling a fireplace with a yellow glory of golden-rod.

"That's lovely!" commented Nan. "But what if you want a fire some of
these cool evenings?"

"Why, that's the beauty of my idea; the fire is all ready to light under
these, and when we want one all we have to do is to let the whole thing
burn up; the golden-rod will be dried by that time, and then I can get
more. See?"

"Good; that's sensible; for if there is anything I hate, it is a grate
too fine to have a big, roaring fire in it. You always were an artist in
flowers. But that isn't what I came to remark. What do you suppose Bert
has done now?"

Then followed a long talk, such as only girls are equal to, during which
Bert's clerkship and Evelyn's housekeeping venture were discussed, and
Nan's own plans divulged.

"Oh, me!" Cathy sighed hopelessly. "This is all very soul-stirring; I
only am behind. I can't dash about and assert myself as you girls do,
and besides, I think it is my duty to stay at home with Mother."

This duty Cathy had borne sweetly, for her mother was a doleful
companion, who was making the mistake of casting a shadow over this
daughter's life because her only other daughter had not been spared to
her. This grief and the loss of her husband many years before had not
taught her to make the lives of those still left to her as happy as
possible; yet Cathy cheerfully made "sunshine in a shady place," while
Fred manfully shouldered his father's business, which weighed heavily on
his young shoulders.

"But I do want an object in life besides," continued Cathy, "for staying
where I am put is only half my duty. If I should relieve Mother of the
housekeeping I believe she would die, so I can't follow Evelyn's
example. What _can_ I do?" she asked mournfully.

Nan was reflecting that there were three kinds of girls,--those who led,
like Bert; those who are led, like Evelyn; and those who must be pushed,
like Cathy. "And maybe it is my duty to push," she thought.

"Well, Catherine," she began, settling herself in her chair, "would you
really like to earn your own living?"

"Yes; I most certainly should like to do something toward it, for I have
often wondered if dear old Fred didn't forego part of his own profits
from the nursery for our sakes. Did you girls find out your vocations
all alone, without any help or suggestion from others?" she continued.

"Bert did, of course," said Nan. "Who ever knew her to take advice from
anybody? But Evelyn and I talked all day and all night, and alternately
propped each other's falling spirits, and last night the jury of the
entire family sat upon us!"

"Oh, yes----" and Cathy sighed again. "But you see I have nobody. Mother
wouldn't be interested, and Fred wouldn't hear of such a thing. He
thinks a girl should be very feminine, and let her brother support her
if she has no father. No, I must get on without sympathy."

"But you shan't! _I'm_ here on purpose to help you as I have been
helped. I feel it my duty to pass on the impulse."

"You are a dear, good girl, and I love you," Cathy said gratefully.
"I'll be your humble servant and do just what you tell me. I wish I
could go to New York with you and take lessons in flower-painting."

"You'd never get rich selling a daisy and a lily and a little buttercup.
You would better go to raising golden-rod in your brother's nursery, and
then peddle it about the city, filling people's fireplaces at a dollar
apiece!"

"I wish I could. Do you know, I should just love to raise flowers----"

"_That's it!_" screamed Nan delightedly. "Just the thing! Have a
hot-house,--cut-flowers for the million,--beat Haas & Schaeffer out of
town! You could do it, Cathy; you have exquisite taste in flowers, and
everybody will be crazy to have a basket or bouquet from the high-art
green-house! We girls will always buy of you,--why, Haas sent me a lot
of carnations for the Atwood party without any _stems_ to them----"

"And he never knows enough to have narcissus or daffodils, or any of
those stylish flowers!" excitedly broke in Cathy, with dilated eyes.

"And don't you charge _quite_ five dollars apiece for rose-buds either!"

"And I will cut _lots_ of leaves with them; and funeral people shall
_not_ have those hideous 'gates ajar' from my establishment!"

But at this both girls burst into a merry laugh, and seriously set about
discussing the ways and means.

Cathy decided to find out the cost of such an undertaking, and the
business outlook of the project before consulting Fred.

Nan remembered that her father knew a man somehow connected with a
green-house in another city.

Cathy mentioned a certain corner of their grounds where she could build
hers.

Nan suggested that she go down to Johnson's and see what books there
were on the subject; and so on, until at last they parted with a happy
sense of lively stir and aim.

But these four fortunes were not made in a day, and the time seemed long
before much but discouragement was achieved. Just here is where the
masculine pertinacity is valuable. Business results are slow, and the
feminine mind chafes at delay, and wants to see the net gain
immediately.

Bert found stenography very tedious, if not quite a bore; and there came
many days when she would have been willing to slip back into social
inertness, and keep to her slippers and book rather than present herself
in the dingy office. Although, when once she had conquered, it wasn't so
bad, for there _was_ a bright rug on the floor, and a small
feather-duster, hung up by a scarlet ribbon, did effective service. Her
sense of the humorous also came to her aid, for the expression of
relieved suspense she caught on her father's face as she appeared
regularly morning after morning amused her, and the one of loving
friendliness that began to settle there more than repaid her.

[Illustration: "I PLAY LOUD WALTZES ON THE PIANO, UNTIL THE SILENCE OF
THESE SEPULCHRAL ROOMS IS PUT TO FLIGHT." (SEE NEXT PAGE.)]

On Saturday, at the end of her first week, she found a little pile of
silver by her plate. She regarded it curiously for a moment, then
inquired doubtfully:

"Is this the exact sum you would have paid to a Mr. Snipkins, had such a
person been hired in my place, and done the work I have done?"

"Exactly, Bertha; no more, no less," her father replied, smiling.

"_Earned_," she murmured, slowly dropping the pieces one by one into her
purse. "What a queer feeling! Money for an equivalent given--I don't
believe I shall ever spend it!"

Mr. Mitchell looked particularly pleased, as he said: "Ah, you begin to
appreciate what a dollar stands for."

Evelyn's table blossomed out into all manner of pretty devices, each
studied from a newly purchased cook-book. The butter reposed in
beautifully shaped rolls on a feathery bed of parsley; even homely
roasted potatoes looked inviting as they lay in a nest made of the snowy
folds of a fringed napkin. Mr. Ferris declared he was twice fed by
Evelyn's banquets. So it was all very fine until the bills came in at
the end of the month; not that daintiness in serving cost anything, but
she had erred in other directions. Evelyn was in consternation, for she
had confidently supposed she could save a snug little bit from the sum
allotted for housekeeping expenses, and this amount she was at liberty
to spend as she chose, and she had already chosen to get a dozen tinted
finger-glasses, a Japanese bowl for broken ice, another for salad, and
so on, until, to her mind's eye, her table was a dream of color and
form; but when that eye opened on the grocery bill, and the butcher's
bill, and the milk bill, and then on minus six dollars and eighty-five
cents, it nearly dropped a tear of shame and disappointment.

"No," she thought, after suppressing her first impulse to ask her mother
what to do, "no! If I have been extravagant, I must find out where, and
pay for it; and this deficit shall come out of my own allowance. Next
month I will do better."

And she did.

Nan wrote from New York, about the middle of November:

     "Thanksgiving is coming, but I'm not. As my highest earthly
     desire is to earn twenty-five dollars, I'm not going to spend
     that much, especially as I haven't got it, for just two days'
     pleasure. I may mention, by way of a mere casual remark, that
     at present there isn't the dimmest possibility of my earning a
     punched coin this year, unless I happen to take a prize next
     spring. In my own humble imagination I have already done this
     and have, of course, chosen the things I shall buy with the
     money! But I do wish there were no rudiments to learn. They
     keep one back so! All this week I've devoted the forces of my
     nature to drawing straight lines and angles, However, I have
     long suspected that one of my faults was dislike of real hard
     work, so I am going to 'peg right along,' and lay foundations.

     "There are several nice girls in the class, and Aunt Hettie
     says that I may invite Ruth Manning, who has no home to go to,
     here to Thanksgiving dinner. I am having a gay time shaking up
     this quiet house. I play "loud waltzes on the piano," and sing
     at the top of my voice, which you well know penetrates to the
     gables of the garret, until the silence of these sepulchral
     rooms is put to flight. I am also adding worldly touches to
     these same tombs, and dear Aunty sees how much prettier they
     look, and wonders she never thought of the little changes I've
     made. And what do you think--I trimmed her up a bonnet; quite
     different from her usual head-gear, I can tell you, with really
     a furtive air of _style_ about it!--and I held her before the
     glass until I _made_ her own that she liked it; and when I
     marched her in to show it to Uncle Nat, and commanded him to
     say it was becoming, he said it looked like one she wore when
     he was courting her, whereat he kissed her, and she blushed
     with pleasure. _She will wear that bonnet next Sunday_,
     although I think she expects instant excommunication.

     "Tell Evelyn I long for the locusts and wild honey she seems to
     be serving up so charmingly; also that we made a great hit when
     we made over my brown suit, for it is quite 'the thing.' I
     think it is splendid of Fred Drake to loan Cathy the money to
     start her green things.

     "I'm going to paper my room with common manilla paper, when I
     get home, and then put splashes of gilt on it, happy-go-lucky
     style. I saw a room done so.

     "Hug yourselves all around, for
                                      "Your loving
                                                     "NAN FERRIS."

Yes, Cathy's brother behaved nobly when he once found she was
determined; and, when this hitherto gentle and submissive creature
announced to him that she could get her house built, heated, and stocked
for from six to eight hundred dollars, mentioning other items showing
careful study of the subject, and asked if she could not have that
amount out of her share of the property, he not only promised to "fix
it some way," and chucked her under the chin, as a special mark of
tenderness, but offered her the services of a young German boy who was
in his employ.

So it was not long before the sound of the hammer was heard in the land,
and the first snowflakes of winter fell on countless panes of glass,
while her little forest of tender plants sprouted and climbed, and
blossomed in the humid air below.

(_To be continued._)




LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.


CHAPTER XII.

A very few days after the dinner-party at the Castle, almost everybody
in England who read the newspapers at all knew the romantic story of
what had happened at Dorincourt. It made a very interesting story when
it was told with all the details. There was the little American boy who
had been brought to England to be Lord Fauntleroy, and who was said to
be so fine and handsome a little fellow, and to have already made people
fond of him; there was the old Earl, his grandfather, who was so proud
of his heir; there was the pretty young mother who had never been
forgiven for marrying Captain Errol; and there was the strange marriage
of Bevis, the dead Lord Fauntleroy, and the strange wife, of whom no one
knew anything, suddenly appearing with her son, and saying that he was
the real Lord Fauntleroy and must have his rights. All these things were
talked about and written about, and caused a tremendous sensation. And
then there came the rumor that the Earl of Dorincourt was not satisfied
with the turn affairs had taken, and would perhaps contest the claim by
law, and the matter might end with a wonderful trial.

There never had been such excitement before in the county in which
Erleboro was situated. On market-days, people stood in groups and talked
and wondered what would be done; the farmers' wives invited one another
to tea that they might tell one another all they had heard and all they
thought and all they thought other people thought. They related
wonderful anecdotes about the Earl's rage and his determination not to
acknowledge the new Lord Fauntleroy, and his hatred of the woman who was
the claimant's mother. But, of course, it was Mrs. Dibble who could tell
the most, and who was more in demand than ever.

"An' a bad lookout it is," she said. "An' if you were to ask me, ma'am,
I should say as it was a judgment on him for the way he's treated that
sweet young cre'tur' as he parted from her child,--for he's got that
fond of him an' that set on him an' that proud of him as he's a'most
drove mad by what's happened. An' what's more, this new one's no lady,
as his little lordship's ma is. She's a bold-faced, black-eyed thing,
as Mr. Thomas says no gentleman in livery 'u'd bemean hisself to be guv
orders by; an' let her come into the house, he says, an' he goes out of
it. An' the boy don't no more compare with the other one than nothin'
you could mention. An' mercy knows what's goin' to come of it all, an'
where it's to end, an' you might have knocked me down with a feather
when Jane brought the news."

In fact there was excitement everywhere at the Castle; in the library,
where the Earl and Mr. Havisham sat and talked; in the servants' hall,
where Mr. Thomas and the butler and the other men and women servants
gossiped and exclaimed at all times of the day; and in the stables,
where Wilkins went about his work in a quite depressed state of mind,
and groomed the brown pony more beautifully than ever, and said
mournfully to the coachman that he "never taught a young gen'leman to
ride as took to it more nat'ral, or was a better-plucked one than he
was. He was a one as it were some pleasure to ride behind."

But in the midst of all the disturbance there was one person who was
quite calm and untroubled. That person was the little Lord Fauntleroy
who was said not to be Lord Fauntleroy at all. When first the state of
affairs had been explained to him, he had felt some little anxiousness
and perplexity, it is true, but its foundation was not in baffled
ambition.

While the Earl told him what had happened, he had sat on a stool holding
on to his knee, as he so often did when he was listening to anything
interesting; and by the time the story was finished he looked quite
sober.

"It makes me feel very queer," he said; "it makes me feel--queer!"

The Earl looked at the boy in silence. It made him feel queer,
too--queerer than he had ever felt in his whole life. And he felt more
queer still when he saw that there was a troubled expression on the
small face which was usually so happy.

"Will they take Dearest's house away from her--and her carriage?" Cedric
asked in a rather unsteady, anxious little voice.

"_No!_" said the Earl decidedly--in quite a loud voice in fact. "They
can take nothing from her."

"Ah!" said Cedric, with evident relief. "Can't they?"

Then he looked up at his grandfather, and there was a wistful shade in
his eyes, and they looked very big and soft.

"That other boy," he said rather tremulously--"he will have to--to be
your boy now--as I was--wont he?"

"_No!_" answered the Earl--and he said it so fiercely and loudly that
Cedric quite jumped.

"No?" he exclaimed, in wonderment. "Wont he? I thought----"

He stood up from his stool quite suddenly.

"Shall I be your boy, even if I'm not going to be an earl?" he said.
"Shall I be your boy, just as I was before?" And his flushed little face
was all alight with eagerness.

How the old Earl did look at him from head to foot, to be sure. How his
great shaggy brows did draw themselves together, and how queerly his
deep eyes shone under them--how very queerly!

"My boy!" he said--and, if you'll believe it, his very voice was queer,
almost shaky and a little broken and hoarse, not at all what you would
expect an earl's voice to be, though he spoke more decidedly and
peremptorily even than before,--"Yes, you'll be my boy as long as I
live; and, by George, sometimes I feel as if you were the only boy I had
ever had."

Cedric's face turned red to the roots of his hair; it turned red with
relief and pleasure. He put both his hands deep into his pockets and
looked squarely into his noble relative's eyes.

"Do you?" he said. "Well, then, I don't care about the earl part at all.
I don't care whether I'm an earl or not. I thought--you see, I thought
the one that was going to be the Earl would have to be your boy, too,
and--and I couldn't be. That was what made me feel so queer."

The Earl put his hand on his shoulder and drew him nearer.

"They shall take nothing from you that I can hold for you," he said,
drawing his breath hard. "I wont believe yet that they can take anything
from you. You were made for the place, and--well, you may fill it still.
But whatever comes, you shall have all that I can give you--all!"

It scarcely seemed as if he were speaking to a child, there was such
determination in his face and voice; it was more as if he were making a
promise to himself--and perhaps he was.

He had never before known how deep a hold upon him his fondness for the
boy and his pride in him had taken. He had never seen his strength and
good qualities and beauty as he seemed to see them now. To his obstinate
nature it seemed impossible--more than impossible--to give up what he
had so set his heart upon. And he had determined that he would not give
it up without a fierce struggle.

Within a few days after she had seen Mr. Havisham, the woman who claimed
to be Lady Fauntleroy presented herself at the Castle, and brought her
child with her. She was sent away. The Earl would not see her, she was
told by the footman at the door; his lawyer would attend to her case. It
was Thomas who gave the message, and who expressed his opinion of her
freely afterward, in the servants' hall. He "hoped," he said, "as he had
wore livery in 'igh famblies long enough to know a lady when he see one,
an' if that was a lady he was no judge o' females."

"The one at the Lodge," added Thomas loftily, "'Merican or no 'Merican,
she's one o' the right sort, as any gentleman 'u'd reckinize with 'alf a
heye. I remarked it myself to Henery when fust we called there."

[Illustration: "SHE WAS TOLD BY THE FOOTMAN AT THE DOOR THAT THE EARL
WOULD NOT SEE HER."]

The woman drove away; the look on her handsome, common face half
frightened, half fierce. Mr. Havisham had noticed, during his interviews
with her, that though she had a passionate temper and a coarse, insolent
manner, she was neither so clever nor so bold as she meant to be; she
seemed sometimes to be almost overwhelmed by the position in which she
had placed herself. It was as if she had not expected to meet with such
opposition.

"She is evidently," the lawyer said to Mrs. Errol, "a person from the
lower walks of life. She is uneducated and untrained in everything, and
quite unused to meeting people like ourselves on any terms of equality.
She does not know what to do. Her visit to the Castle quite cowed her.
She was infuriated, but she was cowed. The Earl would not receive her,
but I advised him to go with me to the Dorincourt Arms, where she is
staying. When she saw him enter the room, she turned white, though she
flew into a rage at once, and threatened and demanded in one breath."

[Illustration: "'SHALL I BE YOUR BOY, EVEN IF I'M NOT GOING TO BE AN
EARL?' SAID CEDRIC."]

The fact was that the Earl had stalked into the room and stood, looking
like a venerable aristocratic giant, staring at the woman from under his
beetling brows, and not condescending a word. He simply stared at her,
taking her in from head to foot as if she were some repulsive curiosity.
He let her talk and demand until she was tired, without himself uttering
a word, and then he said:

"You say you are my eldest son's wife. If that is true, and if the proof
you offer is too much for us, the law is on your side. In that case,
your boy is Lord Fauntleroy. The matter will be sifted to the bottom,
you may rest assured. If your claims are proved, you will be provided
for. I want to see nothing either of you or the child so long as I live.
The place will unfortunately have enough of you after my death. You are
exactly the kind of person I should have expected my son Bevis to
choose."

And then he turned his back upon her and stalked out of the room as he
had stalked into it.

Not many days after that, a visitor was announced to Mrs. Errol, who was
writing in her little morning room. The maid, who brought the message,
looked rather excited; her eyes were quite round with amazement, in
fact, and being young and inexperienced, she regarded her mistress with
nervous sympathy.

"It's the Earl hisself, ma'am!" she said in tremulous awe.

When Mrs. Errol entered the drawing-room, a very tall, majestic-looking
old man was standing on the tiger-skin rug. He had a handsome, grim old
face, with an aquiline profile, a long white mustache, and an obstinate
look.

"Mrs. Errol, I believe?" he said.

"Mrs. Errol," she answered.

"I am the Earl of Dorincourt," he said.

He paused a moment, almost unconsciously, to look in to her uplifted
eyes. They were so like the big, affectionate, childish eyes he had seen
uplifted to his own so often every day during the last few months, that
they gave him a quite curious sensation.

"The boy is very like you," he said abruptly.

"It has been often said so, my lord," she replied, "but I have been glad
to think him like his father also."

As Lady Lorridaile had told him, her voice was very sweet, and her
manner was very simple and dignified. She did not seem in the least
troubled by his sudden coming.

"Yes," said the Earl, "he is like--my son--too." He put his hand up to
his big white mustache and pulled it fiercely. "Do you know," he said,
"why I have come here?"

"I have seen Mr. Havisham," Mrs. Errol began, "and he has told me of the
claims which have been made----"

"I have come to tell you," said the Earl, "that they will be
investigated and contested, if a contest can be made. I have come to
tell you that the boy shall be defended with all the power of the law.
His rights----"

The soft voice interrupted him.

"He must have nothing that is _not_ his by right, even if the law can
give it to him," she said.

"Unfortunately the law can not," said the Earl. "If it could, it should.
This outrageous woman and her child----"

"Perhaps she cares for him as much as I care for Cedric, my lord," said
little Mrs. Errol. "And if she was your eldest son's wife, her son is
Lord Fauntleroy, and mine is not."

She was no more afraid of him than Cedric had been, and she looked at
him just as Cedric would have looked, and he, having been an old tyrant
all his life, was privately pleased by it. People so seldom dared to
differ from him that there was an entertaining novelty in it.

"I suppose," he said, scowling slightly, "that you would much prefer
that he should not be the Earl of Dorincourt."

Her fair young face flushed.

"It is a very magnificent thing to be the Earl of Dorincourt, my lord,"
she said. "I know that, but I care most that he should be what his
father was--brave and just and true always."

"In striking contrast to what his grandfather was, eh?" said his
lordship sardonically.

"I have not had the pleasure of knowing his grandfather," replied Mrs.
Errol, "but I know my little boy believes----" She stopped short a
moment, looking quietly into his face, and then she added, "I know that
Cedric loves you."

"Would he have loved me," said the Earl dryly, "if you had told him why
I did not receive you at the Castle?"

"No," answered Mrs. Errol; "I think not. That was why I did not wish him
to know."

"Well," said my lord, brusquely, "there are few women who would not have
told him."

He suddenly began to walk up and down the room, pulling his great
mustache more violently than ever.

"Yes, he is fond of me," he said, "and I am fond of him. I can't say I
ever was fond of anything before. I am fond of him. He pleased me from
the first. I am an old man, and was tired of my life. He has given me
something to live for. I am proud of him. I was satisfied to think of
his taking his place some day as the head of the family."

He came back and stood before Mrs. Errol.

"I am miserable," he said. "Miserable!"

He looked as if he was. Even his pride could not keep his voice steady
or his hands from shaking. For a moment it almost seemed as if his
deep, fierce eyes had tears in them. "Perhaps it is because I am
miserable that I have come to you," he said, quite glaring down at her.
"I used to hate you; I have been jealous of you. This wretched,
disgraceful business has changed that. After seeing that repulsive woman
who calls herself the wife of my son Bevis, I actually felt it would be
a relief to look at you. I have been an obstinate old fool, and I
suppose I have treated you badly. You are like the boy, and the boy is
the first object in my life. I am miserable, and I came to you merely
because you are like the boy, and he cares for you, and I care for him.
Treat me as well as you can, for the boy's sake."

He said it all in his harsh voice, and almost roughly, but somehow he
seemed so broken down for the time that Mrs. Errol was touched to the
heart. She got up and moved an arm-chair a little forward.

"I wish you would sit down," she said in a soft, pretty, sympathetic
way. "You have been so much troubled that you are very tired, and you
need all your strength."

It was just as new to him to be spoken to and cared for in that gentle,
simple way as it was to be contradicted. He was reminded of "the boy"
again, and he actually did as she asked him. Perhaps his disappointment
and wretchedness were good discipline for him; if he had not been
wretched he might have continued to hate her, but just at present he
found her a little soothing. Almost anything would have seemed pleasant
by contrast with Lady Fauntleroy; and this one had so sweet a face and
voice, and a pretty dignity when she spoke or moved. Very soon, by the
quiet magic of these influences, he began to feel less gloomy, and then
he talked still more.

"Whatever happens," he said, "the boy shall be provided for. He shall be
taken care of, now and in the future."

Before he went away, he glanced around the room.

"Do you like the house?" he demanded.

"Very much," she answered.

"This is a cheerful room," he said. "May I come here again and talk this
matter over?"

"As often as you wish, my lord," she replied.

And then he went out to his carriage and drove away, Thomas and Henry
almost stricken dumb upon the box at the turn affairs had taken.


CHAPTER XIII.

Of course, as soon as the story of Lord Fauntleroy and the difficulties
of the Earl of Dorincourt were discussed in the English newspapers, they
were discussed in the American newspapers. The story was too
interesting to be passed over lightly, and it was talked of a great
deal. There were so many versions of it that it would have been an
edifying thing to buy all the papers and compare them. Mr. Hobbs read so
much about it that he became quite bewildered. One paper described his
young friend Cedric as an infant in arms,--another as a young man at
Oxford, winning all the honors, and distinguishing himself by writing
Greek poems; one said he was engaged to a young lady of great beauty,
who was the daughter of a duke; another said he had just been married;
the only thing, in fact, which was _not_ said was that he was a little
boy between seven and eight, with handsome legs and curly hair. One said
he was no relation to the Earl of Dorincourt at all, but was a small
impostor who had sold newspapers and slept in the streets of New York
before his mother imposed upon the family lawyer, who came to America to
look for the Earl's heir. Then came the descriptions of the new Lord
Fauntleroy and his mother. Sometimes she was a gypsy, sometimes an
actress, sometimes a beautiful Spaniard; but it was always agreed that
the Earl of Dorincourt was her deadly enemy, and would not acknowledge
her son as his heir if he could help it, and as there seemed to be some
slight flaw in the papers she had produced, it was expected that there
would be a long trial, which would be far more interesting than anything
ever carried into court before. Mr. Hobbs used to read the papers until
his head was in a whirl, and in the evening he and Dick would talk it
all over. They found out what an important personage an Earl of
Dorincourt was, and what a magnificent income he possessed, and how many
estates he owned, and how stately and beautiful was the Castle in which
he lived; and the more they learned, the more excited they became.

"Seems like somethin' orter be done," said Mr. Hobbs. "Things like them
orter be held on to--earls or no earls."

But there really was nothing they could do but each write a letter to
Cedric, containing assurances of their friendship and sympathy. They
wrote those letters as soon as they could after receiving the news; and
after having written them, they handed them over to each other to be
read.

This is what Mr. Hobbs read in Dick's letter:

     "DERE FREND: i got ure letter an Mr. Hobbs got his an we are
     sory u are down on ure luck an we say hold on as longs u kin an
     dont let no one git ahed of u. There is a lot of ole theves wil
     make al they kin of u ef u dont kepe ure i skined. But this is
     mosly to say that ive not forgot wot u did fur me an if there
     aint no better way cum over here an go in pardners with me.
     Biznes is fine an ile see no harm cums to u Enny big feler that
     trise to cum it over u wil hafter setle it fust with Perfessor
     Dick Tipton. So no more at present

                                                           "DICK."

And this was what Dick read in Mr. Hobbs's letter:

     "DEAR SIR: Yrs received and wd say things looks bad. I believe
     its a put up job and them thats done it ought to be looked
     after sharp. And what I write to say is two things. Im going to
     look this thing up Keep quiet and Ill see a lawyer and do all I
     can And if the worst happens and them earls is too many for us
     theres a partnership in the grocery business ready for you when
     yure old enough and a home and a friend in

                              "Yrs truly,            SILAS HOBBS."

"Well," said Mr. Hobbs, "he's pervided for between us, if he aint a
earl."

"So he is," said Dick. "I'd ha' stood by him. Blest if I didn't like
that little feller fust-rate."

The very next morning, one of Dick's customers was rather surprised. He
was a young lawyer just beginning practice. As poor as a very young
lawyer can possibly be, but a bright, energetic young fellow, with sharp
wit and a good temper. He had a shabby office near Dick's stand, and
every morning Dick blacked his boots for him, and quite often they were
not exactly water-tight, but he always had a friendly word or a joke for
Dick.

That particular morning, when he put his foot on the rest, he had an
illustrated paper in his hand--an enterprising paper, with pictures in
it of conspicuous people and things. He had just finished looking it
over, and when the last boot was polished, he handed it over to the boy.

"Here's a paper for you, Dick," he said; "you can look it over when you
drop in at Delmonico's for your breakfast. Picture of an English castle
in it, and an English earl's daughter-in-law. Fine young woman,
too--lots of hair--though she seems to be raising rather a row. You
ought to become familiar with the nobility and gentry, Dick. Begin on
the Right Honorable the Earl of Dorincourt and Lady Fauntleroy. Hello! I
say, what's the matter?"

The pictures he spoke of were on the front page, and Dick was staring at
one of them with his eyes and mouth open, and his sharp face almost pale
with excitement.

"What's to pay, Dick?" said the young man. "What has paralyzed you?"

Dick really did look as if something tremendous had happened. He pointed
to the picture, under which was written:

"Mother of Claimant (Lady Fauntleroy)."

It was the picture of a handsome woman, with large eyes and heavy braids
of black hair wound around her head.

"Her!" said Dick. "My, I know her better'n I know you!"

The young man began to laugh.

"Where did you meet her, Dick?" he said. "At Newport? Or when you ran
over to Paris the last time?"

Dick actually forgot to grin. He began to gather his brushes and things
together, as if he had something to do which would put an end to his
business for the present.

"Never mind," he said. "I know her! An I've struck work for this
mornin'."

And in less than five minutes from that time he was tearing through the
streets on his way to Mr. Hobbs and the corner store. Mr. Hobbs could
scarcely believe the evidence of his senses when he looked across the
counter and saw Dick rush in with the paper in his hand. The boy was out
of breath with running; so much out of breath, in fact, that he could
scarcely speak as he threw the paper down on the counter.

"Hello!" exclaimed Mr. Hobbs. "Hello! What you got there?"

"Look at it!" panted Dick. "Look at that woman in the picture! That's
what you look at! _She_ aint no 'ristocrat, _she_ aint!" with withering
scorn. "She's no lord's wife. You may eat me, if it aint Minna--_Minna!_
I'd know her anywheres, an' so'd Ben. Jest ax him."

Mr. Hobbs dropped into his seat.

"I knowed it was a put-up job," he said. "I knowed it; and they done it
on account o' him bein' a 'Merican!"

"Done it!" cried Dick, with disgust. "_She_ done it, that's who done it.
She was allers up to her tricks; an' I'll tell yer wot come to me, the
minnit I saw her pictur. There was one o' them papers we saw had a
letter in it that said somethin' 'bout her boy, an' it said he had a
scar on his chin. Put them two together--her 'n' that there scar! Why,
that there boy o' hers aint no more a lord than I am! It's _Ben's_
boy,--the little chap she hit when she let fly that plate at me."

Professor Dick Tipton had always been a sharp boy, and earning his
living in the streets of a big city had made him still sharper. He had
learned to keep his eyes open and his wits about him, and it must be
confessed he enjoyed immensely the excitement and impatience of that
moment. If little Lord Fauntleroy could only have looked into the store
that morning, he would certainly have been interested, even if all the
discussion and plans had been intended to decide the fate of some other
boy than himself.

Mr. Hobbs was almost overwhelmed by his sense of responsibility, and
Dick was all alive and full of energy. He began to write a letter to
Ben, and he cut out the picture and inclosed it to him, and Mr. Hobbs
wrote a letter to Cedric and one to the Earl. They were in the midst of
this letter-writing when a new idea came to Dick.

"Say," he said, "the feller that give me the paper, he's a lawyer. Let's
ax him what we'd better do. Lawyers knows it all." Mr. Hobbs was
immensely impressed by this suggestion and Dick's business capacity.

"That's so!" he replied. "This here calls for lawyers."

And leaving the store in the care of a substitute, he struggled into his
coat and marched down-town with Dick, and the two presented themselves
with their romantic story in Mr. Harrison's office, much to that young
man's astonishment.

If he had not been a very young lawyer, with a very enterprising mind
and a great deal of spare time on his hands, he might not have been so
readily interested in what they had to say, for it all certainly sounded
very wild and queer; but he chanced to want something to do very much,
and he chanced to know Dick, and Dick chanced to say his say in a very
sharp, telling sort of way.

"And," said Mr. Hobbs, "say what your time's worth a' hour and look into
this thing thorough, and _I'll_ pay the damage,--Silas Hobbs, corner of
Blank street, Vegetables and Fancy Groceries."

"Well," said Mr. Harrison, "it will be a big thing if it turns out all
right, and it will be almost as big a thing for me as for Lord
Fauntleroy; and at any rate, no harm can be done by investigating. It
appears there has been some dubiousness about the child. The woman
contradicted herself in some of her statements about his age, and
aroused suspicion. The first persons to be written to are Dick's brother
and the Earl of Dorincourt's family lawyer."

And actually, before the sun went down, two letters had been written and
sent in two different directions--one speeding out of New York harbor on
a mail steamer on its way to England, and the other on a train carrying
letters and passengers bound for California. And the first was addressed
to T. Havisham, Esq., and the second to Benjamin Tipton.

And after the store was closed that evening, Mr. Hobbs and Dick sat in
the back-room and talked together until midnight.

(_To be concluded._)




[Illustration]

INVERTED.

BY JOHN B. TABB.


    "Bicycles!--Bicycles!"
    Nay; to shun laughter,
    _Try_ cycles first,
    And _buy_ cycles after;
    For surely the buyer
    Deserves but the worst,
    Who would buy cycles, failing
    To try cycles first!




A LAKE GEORGE CAPSIZE.

BY EDWARD EGGLESTON.

[Illustration: A QUIET ROW ON THE "BROAD LAKE."]


Lake George can be the calmest and loveliest sheet of water that ever
was shut in by mountain walls, but like all mountain lakes it is very
fickle. If you have never seen it "cut up its didos," you do not yet
really know our Lake. In the fall, when the tourists have gone and the
hotels and cottages are quiet, Lake George now and then gets into a
great rage and becomes quite sublime.

One day in the latter part of October, there came into our bay a trim
little sloop-rigged sailboat, with three men aboard. They were after the
ducks that always make Dunham's Bay a resting-place on their long autumn
journey to the southward. This little yacht, if I may call it one, had
not been long in view when there broke upon the lake a fierce, cold,
north wind, driving the whitecaps up into the bay like a frightened
flock of sheep.

The sailboat could now stand only the mainsail, and even with that it
reeled and tumbled about fearfully in the hands of its unskilled crew,
and two or three times it was nearly driven ashore, for the men seemed
quite unable to make it beat up into the wind.

[Illustration: "CHARLIE BROUGHT THE BOW OF THE BOAT TO THE MAN IN THE
WATER AND TOOK HIM ABOARD." (SEE NEXT PAGE.)]

While the gale was thus running into the bay, my young friend Charlie
Fraser, with a boy's love for excitement, came and asked permission to
go out in my rowboat, to see "what kind of a rough-water boat she might
be." Though I knew him to be both a good oarsman and a good swimmer, and
though the boat had always behaved admirably in a sea, I hesitated,
until he proposed not to venture beyond Joshua's Rock, which marks the
line between the bay and the "broad lake," as the people call it at this
point. After I had let him go, I reproached myself for trusting a boy of
sixteen in a gale that was momently increasing in violence. But Charlie
did not care to risk too near an approach to the broad lake; he soon saw
that there was danger of swamping even in the bay, and therefore he put
about for home. In passing the sailboat, which was laboring hard among
the rushing, roaring whitecaps, he had shouted to the young men to take
in a reef; but they kept the whole mainsail flying, though they had to
place all the ballast up to windward and then to sit in a row upon the
windward gunwale of the boat to keep it from upsetting. Finding that the
gale, which continued to rise, would certainly upset them in spite of
all their exertions, one of them eased off the sheet, while the man at
the tiller at the same moment brought the boat's head into the wind.
This left all the weight of the ballast and the men on one side, with no
balancing force of wind in the sail, and the light sloop tipped
completely over in the direction opposite to the one they had feared.
The sail lay flat upon the water, with one poor fellow under it, while
another, encumbered with a big overcoat, was floundering in the waves;
the third succeeded in climbing to the upper side of the capsized sloop
and sitting astride of it. The wild, frightened cries of the young men
rose above the hissing of wind and the roaring of waves, and Charlie
brought his boat around and rowed for them. The waves jerked one of his
oars from the rowlock, but he soon had it in its place, and was pulling
as a strong boy can pull when cries of drowning men are in his ears.

"Help! quick! I'm going! Oh, help! help!" rang in his ears and spurred
him to do his utmost, as he headed straight for the sailboat,
disregarding the waves that broke now and then into his own boat.

When Charlie got up to the wreck, he presented the bow of his boat first
to the man who had emerged from under the sail. This young man took
hold, then lost his grip and went down as the water tossed the boat; and
Charlie held on to the seat to keep from being pitched after him. Then
the man came up, gurgling, sputtering, and getting a new hold on the
boat succeeded in scrambling in. Holding the boat into the teeth of the
wind, Charlie then brought the bow to the other man in the water, and so
took him aboard. There were now three people and a great deal of water
in the boat; and Charlie concluded that it had all it would carry, and
that it would be necessary to land his two passengers before taking the
stout young man who maintained an uneasy perch on the capsized yacht.
Shouting some words of encouragement to him, Charlie started for the
shore; but the young man on the boat, benumbed by his ducking and the
icy wind, and perhaps discouraged at seeing the rowboat leave him, fell
off the capsized yacht into the water with a cry for help. Charlie put
back just in time to grab him as he again let go his hold, and began to
sink. But the rowboat had all it would bear in such a sea, and before
taking him aboard, it was necessary to make the others throw overboard
their wet coats and overcoats. Then the stout young man was pulled in
over the stern, and Charlie soon brought the rowboat, staggering under
its load of four persons and a great weight of water, safely to dock. A
little while after, the three dripping duck-hunters were drying by the
kitchen fire.

"I was under the sail," said one of them to me, "and if the boat hadn't
come to our help just when it did, it would have been the end of me."

A New York gentleman who heard of this affair wrote to the office of the
United States Life Saving Service, at Washington, asking for the silver
medal of the Government for Charlie Fraser. Of course there was a great
deal of formality to be gone through with; affidavits were made by
eye-witnesses, and filed away at Washington, and there the matter rested
for months. Meantime Charlie had no recognition of his act except a
letter from the mother of one of the young men, though he had, I
suppose, what was better--the consciousness of having done his duty
manfully in a pinch. One administration at Washington went out, and
another came in, and we concluded that the medal had been forgotten. But
one day there came to Charlie a very large official envelope, in the
corner of which there was boldly printed "Treasury Department." It was
also marked "Official Business," and was addressed in big letters and
looked very impressive. The inside of it seemed equally important, and
it read:

    "MR. CHARLES M. FRASER:

    "SIR: I have the pleasure to transmit herewith a silver
    life-saving medal which has been awarded you under authority of
    section 7 of the Act of June 20, 1874, section 12 of the Act of
    June 18, 1878, and section 9 of the Act of May 4, 1882, in
    recognition of your courage and humanity in saving three
    persons from drowning October 25, 1884.

    "I have the honor to be, very respectfully,

                                                     D. MANNING,
                                                      "_Secretary._"

And the same day there reached him by express the silver medal in a neat
case.

[Illustration: OBVERSE. REVERSE.]




A ROCKY MOUNTAIN HERMIT.

(_Concluded._)

BY ALFRED TERRY BACON.


One evening my quiet hermitage seemed more silent than ever before. That
small dog, Gip, slept soundly on the earthen floor, tired out with a
long day's run through the park. I had just chased away a friendly
striped snake that had squirmed in through a mouse-hole and settled
itself comfortably, wishing to make its home with me. The field-mice
trooped silently about the room in dozens, over the table and under the
chairs,--but there is no defense against them. The other night they had
the impudence to sit on my pillow and pull out my hair for their nests.
"Their tameness is shocking to me," as Alexander Selkirk, the original
Robinson Crusoe, complained of the beasts on his island.

[Illustration: HEAD OF THE BISON, OR AMERICAN BUFFALO. [SEE NEXT PAGE.]]

Plotting against the mice, without lighting a lamp I sat by the doorway
as the darkness deepened, for the night was too warm and too fine for
lamp-light. The long midsummer twilight faded to a narrow band of gray
just over the mountain-peak; and looking out, I could hear none of the
familiar sounds of the wilderness--even the murmuring pine-woods were
hushed in the perfectly calm night. But presently a soft splashing sound
came from the pool in the brook behind the house. It reminded me that
for nearly a year I had been living within fifty steps of a colony of
beavers, and had not yet seen a single one of them; for they are never
out by daylight and I am never out by night.

The brook which runs through the park dwindles to a very small stream
after the summer heat has melted all the snow from the peak; and there
would be too little water for the beavers to swim in if they had not
built a number of solid dams across the stream, making as many pretty
ponds, where they and the muskrats and the wild ducks lead a jolly life
together. There is a chain of five of these beaver-ponds, which begins
quite near the house. Often in the early morning, we see places where
they have been at work all night, mending their dams, cutting down
willow bushes, and even felling trees of some size with a smooth cut
that a skillful woodman might be proud of; but all day long there is
never a sound of work in the silent village. So, hearing something
plunging into the pond in the late twilight, I stole to the bank and
looked through an opening in the willow thicket. There by the dim light
I saw their round, dark bodies swimming around and around and up and
down the pond as silently as fishes, with only a gentle splash now and
then as they dipped beneath the surface. It must have been a holiday
evening with them, for they were taking a rest from their hard work, and
it seemed in the darkness as if they were only playing together in the
water.

But I had only a little time to watch them, for some slight noise or the
scent of the enemy soon spread an alarm, and in a moment every beaver
had disappeared from the pond.

Some years ago, we used to read that all the beavers would soon be
killed; for beaver fur had long been fashionable, and the price of every
skin was very high. It is strange that the life and happiness of
millions of little animals in the backwoods of America and Siberia
should depend on the whims of the grand ladies of Paris and London; but
so it is. When the beaver fur went out of favor, and the slaughter of
the Alaska seals began, the beavers increased wonderfully in all the
Western creeks and rivers. But if the Princess of Wales should happen to
fancy a garment of beaver fur, woe to the unhappy little beavers of the
Rocky Mountains! Thousands of other grand ladies must follow the
fashion, and thousands of beavers must furnish the fur.

In riding over the green turf of the open country, one sees everywhere
white objects which so reflect the strong sunshine that they almost
dazzle the eye. These are the bleaching skulls of the buffaloes that
used to roam in thousands through this region. Every one has read how,
only fifty years ago, millions of buffaloes wandered over nearly half of
the United States; now there are no great herds except in the Territory
of Montana, and from that territory more than a hundred thousand skins
have been sent to the East in a year. For nearly every skin that is sent
away, about half a ton of fine meat is left to decay on the prairie. It
is a reckless waste of animal life, and I am sorry to say that our
government does very little to stop it. Within ten years there will be
no more great herds of buffaloes in the United States. Small bands of
them will linger hidden away in valleys, but by the time some boys who
read this have lived to be old men, the American bison will probably be
seen only where it is kept as a curiosity; just as the one little band
of aurochs--the last descendants of the wild cattle which used to roam
over all Europe--is kept by the Emperor of Russia. Still, even now, at
times, single buffaloes or small bands of them will wander back here to
their old grazing-grounds. Last summer a party of hay-makers saw a band
of a dozen or more in a remote valley behind the peak. And a few days
later, one of our neighbors at the nearest ranch, beyond the mountains,
was sitting in the doorway of his snug home one morning, after an early
breakfast, when to his astonishment, a great buffalo bull came trotting
easily along within a hundred yards of the door. He would hardly have
been more surprised had an elephant or a rhinoceros happened in for a
morning call; for he had never seen a buffalo, nor had he ever expected
to see one at his own ranch. But his surprise left him breath enough to
shout, "A buffalo! a buffalo!" The house was full of men just in from
the work of gathering beef-cattle for shipment; and at the startling
word, every man seized the nearest rifle or pistol or shot-gun, and
dashed away to join the chase; only one or two stopping hastily to throw
a saddle on a horse. As soon as the chase began, the big beast ran
swiftly into the thicket along the creek, and was able to keep out of
sight for some time. The chase was long and exciting, but the buffalo's
pursuers were too many for him. Some followed up his trail, while others
watched the outskirts of the thicket; and at last one of the best
marksmen among them, catching sight of the big black body, took a quick
line aim and brought the buffalo down with a single bullet; so all the
inhabitants of the ranch were feasted with buffalo-meat as long as it
could be kept from spoiling. But where the great herds range, there is
no such excitement about killing them.

One day a young fellow from the East was listening eagerly with me to
the yarns of an old buffalo-hunter, and as the hunter finished his
story, the young man said:

"It must be tremendously exciting sport, John!"

"Well, I'll tell you how it is," said John. "It's about as exciting as
if you were to go out into the corral and shoot a dozen of those old
dairy-cows with a pistol."

With a swift horse, trained to the business, and a heavy revolver, a man
who can aim truly may often ride into a herd of buffaloes, overtaking
them one by one when they are running their hardest, and, riding close
beside them, can put his bullets into the hearts of dozens of them in a
single day's hunt. That is the reason why the bison is the first of all
the wild animals to disappear at the approach of civilized man--it can
not possibly escape from a swift horseman.

[Illustration: "A COLONY OF BEAVERS."]

The most abundant game animals among the mountains are the deer. The
white-tailed deer is small and much like the antelope in color, but has
a far more sleek and handsome coat. The black-tailed or mule deer is
twice as large as its white-tailed cousin, and wears a quaker-colored
coat, which in summer is tinged with brown. Sometimes, on horseback, I
have met the deer in the mountains without giving them any alarm, and we
have stood and gazed at one another at our leisure, just to satisfy
curiosity. But they know that a man on foot or carrying a rifle is a
dangerous creature, and they never stop long to look at him. Usually,
even before the hunter catches sight of them, they have seen him. They
do not bound away through the forest with a jump and a crash; but, even
if taken by surprise, they vanish away between the yellow trunks of the
pines as silently as the shadow of the low swooping vulture slides
across the grass. They dart so noiselessly through the dark woods that
in the distance they seem more like a troop of flying spirits than a
herd of animals.

In those parts of the mountains which are so rocky and rough that few
animals can approach them, and on the high barrens where the snow lies
late in summer, the beautiful big-horn sheep live undisturbed. It is
only when they come down to the streams for water, that the hunter can
have a fair chance of shooting them. They are swift and handsome
animals. Their heads are crowned with ribbed and curving horns larger
than those the broad-horned Texas cattle carry. Their coats are not
woolly, but are covered with glossy brown hair, shading off in the lower
parts to a white as pure as the snow-drifts among which they live. There
are no animals, excepting the Swiss chamois and other wild goats, that
can run and jump among jagged rocks as they do; and it is useless for
any man or beast to try to chase them on the mountain-tops. But a few
weeks ago, before the boys went out to work with the cattle, two of them
were searching for horses in a cañon opening westward from the valley,
and Gip was trotting along behind them, when a turn in the trail
suddenly showed them a flock of wild sheep climbing a steep path up the
rocky side of the cañon. Both men took quick aim and fired, and the
flock went bounding on toward their home among the crags, with one fine
young buck lagging behind, his leg broken by a bullet. Yet no man may
hope to overtake a wild sheep among the rocks, even though the sheep has
but three legs to go on; so, after wounding their fine game, it seemed
as if they must lose him. But just as they were making up their minds to
the disappointment, Gip took in the trouble with one quick glance and
ran to their aid. He has never been taught to hunt, but he is a very
wise dog, and does very well without training. He went scrambling up
over the rocks ten times faster than a man could go, and soon headed off
the wounded sheep. Now Gip is small, and a wild sheep is very large, and
tall like a deer; and it seemed impossible that so little a dog could
stop it. But the sheep naturally lowered its head to bring its horns to
bear on the dog; and Gip, seeing its head within reach, gave a snap at
its nose and hung on for dear life, though he was almost lifted from the
ground. Even a mountain sheep can not be very nimble with a broken leg,
and a dog on the end of its nose; so the boys soon climbed up after him,
and when near enough not to endanger the plucky little dog, they ended
the sheep's life with another shot. And so, for many days, all the men
at the cabin lived on mutton finer even than the famous mutton that is
fattened on the English downs.

Not long ago, old Frank, the man who lives alone at the ranch on the
western side of the mountains, had the good fortune to come upon two
little wild lambs in open ground, where he could easily overtake them;
for they were only a few days old. Being a lone man and fond of pets, he
carried them home in his arms and fed them every day with milk, until
they became as tame as kittens. When they grew to be large sheep, their
perfect tameness made them famous curiosities even in the Far West; but
they were much greater curiosities when their owner took them to the
Eastern States,--for I doubt if a tame big-horn sheep had ever before
been seen in an American city. The great price which the rare animals
brought well paid the man for all his trouble.

[Illustration: HEAD OF A MULE DEER.]

Any of the grazing and browsing animals which live in the Far West may
easily be tamed if they are caught young. The antelope and deer are not
uncommon pets at the frontier ranches; the mountain sheep and elk can be
tamed as readily, but it is more difficult to catch them.

Nearly all the men on the ranches of Wyoming are engaged in the cattle
business; and they are so accustomed to throwing the lasso in catching
the free cattle and horses, that when they come on the young wild
animals, they have little trouble in roping them. The cow-boys, when
they are sociable about the roaring hearth-fires in winter, have many
curious stories to tell about capturing every kind of wild animal with
their ropes. Sometimes when a few of them are away together gathering
cattle, they will come on a bear, and, even if unarmed, it is easy for
the boys to throw one or two ropes around the bear and hold it until
some armed man comes to finish the work. The only trouble is in finding
a horse brave enough to run near a bear while his rider throws the rope.
One man, very skillful with the rope, has told me how he lassoed a
mountain lion. Those great cats are so greedy that when they find a
carcass, they will eat until they are stupid and slow in their
movements, like a boa constrictor when it is filled with food; so, when
this cow-boy found a large old lion just finishing its dinner, he had no
difficulty in throwing a noose over its head and dragging it after his
horse until another man came up to end its life.

[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD SHEEP.]

Soon this queer, lonely way of living will come to an end for me. Often
every day shall I look down the valley, hoping to see the white canvas
top of the prairie-schooner heave in sight on the pass leading in from
the open country. When all the cow-boys have finished gathering cattle
and come home to the peak, the old cabin will be crowded and lively
enough. Then the rest of the summer will be filled with hard work in
getting together the fat beef-steers and driving them a long journey to
the Pacific Railroad, where they will be loaded on trains and carried
away to feed the beef-eaters of America and England.

The curlew is still whistling under the plum-bushes not far away, so
that the dog sometimes starts up to see who calls him; but now all the
fragrant plum-blossoms have fallen away and the small green fruit hangs
in clusters. Midsummer has gone; with it came the scorching southeast
wind which turns the grass to hay and kills the flowers like a November
frost. And, since they are dead, the wilderness is too lonely. While
they lived, they were society enough for a hermit; they smiled a sweet
good-morning at every sunrise, and filled the evening twilight with
fragrance which carried my thoughts away to an old New England home and
to happy days spent long ago in gathering forest flowers on the
Connecticut hills. There has been enough of hermit life for one year. It
has been pleasant; but the end of it will be pleasant, too.




[Illustration]

The Dangerous Dog


    The dangerous dog in the drawing-room lay,
    And snapped at the houseflies that came in his way.
    "I'm a dangerous canine!" he said
    "Beware how you trouble a creature of my--"
    But his speech was cut short as he happened to spy
    A bumble-bee close to his head!




GEORGE WASHINGTON.

[_An Historical Biography._]

BY HORACE E. SCUDDER.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON'S SWORD,--NOW IN THE LIBRARY OF THE STATE
DEPARTMENT AT WASHINGTON.]


CHAPTER XXII.

MR. WASHINGTON.

It was hard for Washington at first to forget that he was no longer
Commander-in-Chief. He had so long been accustomed to wake early, and at
once begin to think of the cares of the day, that it was a novel
sensation to discover that he had no cares beyond looking after his
estate. It chanced that the winter of 1783-4 was a very severe one. The
roads were blocked with snow, the streams were frozen, and Washington
found himself almost a prisoner at Mount Vernon. He was not even able to
go to Fredericksburg to see his mother, until the middle of February. He
was not sorry for his enforced quiet. It left him leisure to look over
his papers and enjoy the company of his wife and his wife's
grandchildren, whom he had adopted as his own children. His public
papers had been put into the hands of Col. Richard Varick, in 1781, and
they were now returned to him, arranged and classified and copied into
volumes, in a manner to delight the methodical soul of their author.

[Illustration: A LAMP THAT ONCE BELONGED TO WASHINGTON--NOW IN THE
NATIONAL MUSEUM.]

As the spring came on, and the snow and ice melted, the roads were again
open, and Mount Vernon was soon busy with its old hospitality.
Washington foresaw that he would have plenty of visitors, but he did not
mean to let his life be at the mercy of everybody, and he meant to keep
up his regular habits and his plain living. "My manner of living is
plain," he wrote to a friend, "and I do not mean to be put out of it. A
glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready, and such as will be
content to partake of them are always welcome. Those who expect more
will be disappointed."

[Illustration: WASHINGTON'S TREASURE CHEST.]

The house at Mount Vernon before this time had been very much like that
in which Washington was born; now he found it necessary to enlarge it,
and accordingly added an extension at each end, making it substantially
as it now appears. He was his own architect, and he drew every plan and
specification for the workmen with his own hand. He amused himself also
with laying out the grounds about his house, and planting trees,--a
great pleasure to him. Every morning he arose early, and despatched his
correspondence before breakfast, which was at half-past seven. His horse
stood ready at the door, and as soon as breakfast was over, he was in
the saddle, visiting the various parts of his estate. Sometimes he went
hunting, for he never lost his fondness for the chase. He dined at
three o'clock, and usually spent the afternoon in the library, sometimes
working at his papers till nine o'clock; but when not pressed by
business, and when his house was full of guests, he spent the evening
with them. If he was alone with his family, he read aloud to them; and
very often on Sundays, when they could not go to church, he sat down and
read a sermon and prayers.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON'S SECRETARY AND BOOK-CASE AT MOUNT VERNON.]

Guests crowded upon him, and he was especially glad to see his old
comrades. A visit from Lafayette was the occasion of a very gay time,
when Mount Vernon was full of visitors, and the days were given to
sport.

Washington had constant applications from persons who wished to write
his life or paint his portrait. There was a sculptor named Wright who
undertook to get a model of Washington's face. "Wright came to Mount
Vernon," so Washington tells the story, "with the singular request that
I should permit him to take a model of my face, in plaster of Paris, to
which I consented with some reluctance. He oiled my features, and
placing me flat upon my back, upon a cot, proceeded to daub my face with
the plaster. Whilst I was in this ludicrous attitude, Mrs. Washington
entered the room, and seeing my face thus overspread with the plaster,
involuntarily exclaimed. Her cry excited in me a disposition to smile,
which gave my mouth a slight twist, or compression of the lips, that is
now observable in the busts which Wright afterward made." A more
successful sculptor was Houdon, who was commissioned by Virginia to make
a statue of Washington. He also took a plaster model, and the fine
statue which he made stands in Richmond. A portrait painter, named Pine,
also paid a visit to Mount Vernon about this time with a letter from one
of Washington's friends to whom Washington wrote during Pine's visit:

     "'In for a penny, in for a pound,' is an old adage. I am so
     hackneyed to the touches of the painter's pencil, that I am now
     altogether at their beck, and sit, like 'patience on a
     monument,' whilst they are delineating the lines of my face. It
     is a proof among many others of what habit and custom can
     effect. At first I was as impatient at the request, and as
     restive under the operation as a colt is of the saddle. The
     next time I submitted very reluctantly, but with less
     flouncing. Now no dray moves more readily to the thill than I
     do to the painter's chair. It may easily be conceived,
     therefore, that I yielded a ready obedience to your request,
     and to the views of Mr. Pine."

Washington was a most considerate and courteous host. He was very fond
of young people, but his silent ways and the reputation which he enjoyed
as a great man made it difficult for the young always to be easy in his
presence. The story is told of his coming into a room once, when dancing
was going on, and the sport suddenly ceased. Washington begged the young
people to go on, but they refused until he left the room. Then, after
they felt free again to dance, he came back and peeped through the open
door.

[Illustration: ONE OF A SET OF FIRE-BUCKETS AT MOUNT VERNON.]

He was very apt to affect older people in the same way. He was a large
man, with large hands and feet, and eyes that looked steadily at one.
When not speaking, he was very apt to forget there were other people in
the room, and his lips would move as he talked to himself while thinking
hard upon some matter. But he did not neglect people. One of his
visitors tells this story: "The first evening I spent under the wing of
his hospitality, we sat a full hour at table, by ourselves, without the
least interruption, after the family had retired. I was extremely
oppressed with a severe cold and excessive coughing, contracted from the
exposure of a harsh winter journey. He pressed me to use some remedies,
but I declined doing so. As usual, after retiring, my coughing
increased. When some time had elapsed, the door of my room was gently
opened and, on drawing my bed-curtains, to my utter astonishment I
beheld Washington himself standing at my bed-side, with a bowl of hot
tea in his hand. I was mortified and distressed beyond expression."

[Illustration: HOUDON'S STATUE OF WASHINGTON.]

Although Washington had now retired to Mount Vernon, and seemed
perfectly willing to spend the rest of his days as a country gentleman,
it was impossible for him to do so. The leaders of the country needed
him, and he was himself too deeply interested in affairs to shut his
eyes and ears. He was especially interested in the Western country,
which then meant the Ohio Valley and the region bordered by the Great
Lakes. In the autumn of 1784, he made a tour beyond the Alleghanies, for
the purpose of looking after the lands which he owned there; but he
looked about him not only as a land-owner, but as a wise, far-seeing
statesman.

It was a wild journey to take in those days. Washington traveled nearly
seven hundred miles on horseback, and had to carry camping conveniences
and many of his supplies on pack-horses. He had especially in mind to
see if there might be a way of connecting by a canal the water system of
Virginia with the Western rivers. After he came back, he wrote a long
letter to the Governor of Virginia, in which he gave the result of his
observation and reflection. He was not merely considering how a
profitable enterprise could be undertaken, but he was thinking how
necessary it was to bind the Western country to the Eastern in order to
strengthen the Union. Many people had crossed the mountains and were
scattered in the Mississippi Valley. They found the Mississippi River a
stream easy to sail down, but the Spaniards held the mouth of the river,
and if the latter chose to make friends with those Western settlers,
they might easily estrange them from the Eastern States. Besides this,
Great Britain was reaching down toward this last territory from Canada.
In every way, it seemed to him of importance that good roads and good
water communication should bind the East and the West together. He
thought Virginia was the State to do this. It extended then far to the
westward, and it had great rivers flowing to the sea. It was the most
important State in the country, and it was very natural that Washington
should look to it to carry out his grand ideas; for the separate States
had the power at that time--Congress was unable to do anything. It is
interesting to see how Washington, who thought he could go back to Mount
Vernon and be a planter, was unable to keep his mind from working upon a
great plan which intended the advantage of a vast number of people. He
was made to care for great things, and he cared for them naturally.


CHAPTER XXIII.

CALLED TO THE HELM.

While Washington was busy planting trees at Mount Vernon and making
excursions to see his Western lands, the country was like a vessel which
had no captain or pilot, drifting into danger. During the War for
Independence, one of the greatest difficulties which Washington had to
overcome was the unwillingness of the several States to act together as
one nation. They called themselves the United States of America, but
they were very loosely united. Congress was the only body that held
them together, and Congress had no power to make the States do what they
did not care to do. So long as they all were fighting for independence,
they managed to hold together; but as soon as the war was over and the
States were recognized as independent, it was very hard to get them to
do anything as one nation. Every State was looking out for itself, and
afraid that the others might gain some advantage over it.

This could not go on forever. They must be either wholly independent of
one another or more closely united. The difficulty was more apparent
where two States were neighbors. Virginia and Massachusetts might manage
to live apart, though in that case troubles would be sure to arise, but
how could Virginia and Maryland maintain their individual independence?
The Chesapeake and Potomac seemed to belong to one as much as to the
other; and when foreign vessels came up the stream, was each State to
have its own rules and regulations? No. They must treat strangers at any
rate in some way that would not make each the enemy of the other.

These two States felt this so strongly that they appointed a commission
to consider what could be done. Washington was a member of the
commission, and asked all the gentlemen to his house. They not only
discussed the special subject committed to them, but they looked at the
whole matter of the regulation of commerce in a broad way, and agreed to
propose to the two States to appoint other commissioners, who should
advise with Congress and ask all the States of the Union to send
delegates to a meeting where they could arrange some system by which all
the States should act alike in their treatment of foreign nations and of
each other.

That was exactly what Congress ought to have been able to do, but could
not, because nobody paid any attention to it. Nor did this meeting,
which was called at Annapolis in September, 1786, accomplish very much.
Only five States sent delegates, and these delegates were so carefully
instructed not to do much, that it was impossible for the convention to
settle affairs. Still, it was a step forward. It was very clear to the
delegates that a general convention of all the States was necessary, and
so they advised another meeting at which all the thirteen States should
be represented, and the whole subject of the better union of the States
should be considered.

This meeting, which was the great Constitutional Convention of 1787, was
held in Philadelphia, and to it Virginia sent George Washington as one
of her delegates. He was heart and soul in favor of the movement. It was
what he had been urging on all his correspondents for a long time. He
was at first reluctant to go back into public life after having so
completely retired; but as soon as he saw that it was his duty to accept
the appointment, he set to work to qualify himself for taking part in
the deliberations of the convention. Probably no one in America
understood better than he the character of Americans and the special
dangers through which the country was passing; but several, no doubt,
were better informed about the practical working of government and about
the history of other confederations. He had never been very much of a
reader of books, but he had been a member for many years of the Virginia
House of Burgesses, and so knew how government was carried on on a small
scale, and now he began to read diligently and to compare accounts of
ancient and modern political unions. He made abstracts of them, and, in
fact, went to work as if he were at school, so in earnest was he to
learn this important lesson.

On May 9, 1787, Washington set out from Mount Vernon in his carriage for
Philadelphia. He was a famous man and could not go to the convention
without attracting attention. So, when he reached Chester, in
Pennsylvania, he was met by General Mifflin, who was then Speaker of the
Assembly of Pennsylvania, and by various public men, who escorted him on
the way. At the ferry across the Schuylkill, where Gray's Ferry Bridge
now is, he was met by a company of light horse, and so entered the city.
One of his first errands was to call on Benjamin Franklin, who was
President of Pennsylvania, as the governor was then called. No doubt
they talked long and earnestly about the work before them, for they were
the two most eminent men in the convention.

Washington was made the presiding officer of the convention. For four
months it met from day to day, engaged in the great work of forming the
Constitution under which we are now governed. There were many long and
earnest debates; and the members felt the importance of the work upon
which they were engaged. At last, the Constitution was formed. It was
not satisfactory to everybody, but the members all agreed to sign it and
recommend it to the country for adoption. George Washington, as
president of the convention, was the first to set his name down; and
there is a tradition that as he took the pen in his hand he arose from
his seat, considered a moment, and then said:

"Should the States reject this excellent Constitution, the probability
is that an opportunity will never again be offered to cancel another in
peace; the next will be drawn in blood."

Washington, as president of the convention, was directed to draw up a
letter, stating what the convention had done, and send it with the
Constitution to Congress. This he did. He was not entirely satisfied
with the Constitution, as he wrote to Patrick Henry: "I wish the
Constitution which is offered had been more perfect; but I sincerely
believe it is the best that could be obtained at this time. And, as a
constitutional door is opened for amendments hereafter, the adoption of
it, under the present circumstances of the Union, is, in my opinion,
desirable."

[Illustration: CRAB-TREE STAFF PRESENTED BY BENJ. FRANKLIN TO GEN.
WASHINGTON; NOW IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT LIBRARY AT WASHINGTON.]

He said at first that he should not say anything for or against the
Constitution. If it were good, it would work its way; if bad, it would
recoil on those who drew it up. Perhaps he thought it was not becoming
in those who discussed its parts and finally signed it, to do anything
more than send it out and leave the people to do what they would with
it. But he could not keep silent long. Everybody was debating it; the
principal members of the convention were defending it; there was danger
that it would not be adopted, and soon Washington, in his letters, was
using arguments in support of it. There is no doubt that his name at the
head of the paper did a great deal toward inducing people to accept it.
It was more than a year before enough States had adopted the
Constitution to make it the law of the land, but as time went on, and it
was more certain that the new government would go into operation, the
question arose as to who should be the first President of the United
States. It can hardly be called a question; at any rate, it was answered
at once by all. Every one named Washington, and his friends began to
write to him as if there could be no doubt on this point. The most
distinguished advocate of the new Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, who
had been one of Washington's aids in the war, wrote to him:

"I take it for granted, sir, you have concluded to comply with what
will, no doubt, be the general call of your country in relation to the
new government. You will permit me to say that it is indispensable you
should lend yourself to its first operations. It is to little purpose to
have introduced a system, if the weightiest influence is not given to
its firm establishment in the outset."

[Illustration: SUGAR-BOWL BELONGING TO A DINNER-SET PRESENTED TO MARTHA
WASHINGTON BY GENERAL LAFAYETTE.]

Washington was by no means elated at the prospect. On the contrary, he
was extremely reluctant to be President. He was not old; he was
fifty-seven years of age when the election took place, but his hard life
as a soldier had broken his constitution, and the cares and anxieties he
had undergone had made him feel old. "At my time of life," he wrote to
Lafayette, "and under my circumstances, the increasing infirmities of
nature and the growing love of retirement do not permit me to entertain
a wish beyond that of living and dying an honest man on my own farm. Let
those follow the pursuits of ambition and fame who have a keener relish
for them, or who may have more years in store for the enjoyment." He was
perfectly sincere in saying this. He knew that some people would not
believe him, and would assert that he was only saying all this to get
the credit of humility; but his best friends believed him, and to one of
these he wrote: "If I should receive the appointment, and if I should be
prevailed upon to accept it, the acceptance would be attended with more
diffidence and reluctance than ever I experienced before in my life. It
would be, however, with a fixed and sole determination of lending
whatever assistance might be in my power to promote the public weal, in
hopes that, at a convenient and early period, my services might be
dispensed with, and that I might be permitted once more to retire, to
pass an unclouded evening, after the stormy day of life, in the bosom of
domestic tranquillity."

There never was any doubt about the people's choice. Every vote was cast
for Washington.

(_To be continued._)




[Illustration: BEARS EATING CORN: "THIS WAS REALLY THOUGHTFUL OF FARMER
JONES, EH?"]




[Illustration]

TODDLEKINS AND TROT.

BY ANNA M. PRATT.


    "Dear Toddlekins," said little Trot,
      "May I talk to you a while?"
    "Why, yeth, of courthe," said Toddlekins,
      With a bashful little smile.

    "Now, Toddlekins," said little Trot,
      "If we should meet a bear"----
    "Good graciouth me!" said Toddlekins,
      "You give me thuch a thcare!"

    "If we should meet a bear," said Trot,
      "Would you let me save your life?"
    "Oh merthy! Yeth!" said Toddlekins,
      "But I will _not_ be your wife!"




[Illustration]

OUR ADVENTURE AT THE FLUME.

BY W. L.


A dark, solemn-looking place it was, and although Fred and I were as
dauntless explorers as Stanley or Greely, our courage began to ooze away
as we looked in at the gloomy flume from which issued the cold and
sluggish water. We had come upon the ruined archway of an old mill,
still standing with crumbling walls above the slow-moving waters of its
former busy tail-race. The low, dark archway was overhung with birch,
witch-hazel, and thimbleberry; and as we peered into its blackness,
suggestions of dragons and serpents, castle-dungeons and witches'
caverns and monsters' dens came into our minds already sufficiently full
of wild, boyish fancies and strange imaginings.

Fred "double dared" me to go in, and I was foolish enough to think that
no boy of spirit could refuse a "double dare." So, cutting weapons from
the sapling birches, we stepped into the cold and repulsive-looking
water. B-r-r-r!--what a shiver it gave us!

It was late in the afternoon. The shadows that lay in the deep ravines
along the mountain-side looked strange and weird; and as we stepped
within the gloom of the archway, a blue heron, gaunt and ungainly, with
its twisted neck and long, dangling legs, flew down the creek, uttering
its harsh and dismal cry.

Neither Fred nor I was feeling remarkably lion-hearted; the call of the
heron had brought our hearts almost into our mouths; and just then, as
we stood hesitating and peering in, something moved in the darkness
beyond us, and a black object that seemed, as Fred said, "as big as an
eagle" flung itself out of the shadows full into our startled faces.

[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO THE FLUME.]

Panic-stricken, we turned to fly. The bottom of the pool was slippery,
the roof of the archway was low; Fred's feet flew up, my head received a
sudden bump, and both of us went down in six inches of water.

With a shriek of terror from each valiant explorer thus stricken down by
the magic spells of the goblin of the den, we scrambled to our feet,
dripping and disheartened, and made for the light; and as we did so we
caught a glimpse of our assailant skimming away in the twilight--neither
goblin, witch, nor monster, but only a harmless and equally frightened
black bat.




[Illustration]

THE CRAFTY CRAB


    There once was a crafty young Crab
    Who always went round in a cab
    He wished no one to say
    That he walked the wrong way
    But his coachman the secret did blab




MORRA.

BY SUSAN ANNA BROWN.

[Illustration]


Among boys and girls there is a constant demand for new games, and many
are invented every year, which are in fashion for a few months and then
disappear altogether.

But almost every successful game is an adaptation of some old amusement
that was enjoyed centuries ago. Tennis, base-ball, marbles, and many
other common sports have been played for ages, in one form or another,
while most games of cards can be traced back to the sixteenth century.

Many games which seem very simple and hardly worthy of the name require,
in reality, considerable skill and dexterity. This is especially true of
the game of Morra, which is played enthusiastically in Italy by persons
of all ages.

Almost any day, in walking along a Roman street, a little group may be
discovered gathered about a pair of Morra-players. From the noise and
excitement, a foreigner would conclude that a quarrel of some sort was
going on; but if he pause and join the company, he will see that the
chief actors are all interested in the progress of the game, and that
the loud screams which the players give at brief intervals are nothing
more dangerous than the simultaneous calling out of numbers. He will
also see that their eyes are fixed too earnestly on each other to notice
the increasing crowd of spectators, and that both have their left hands
constantly raised, and that at each shout the right hands are thrown
violently forward. This is the old, old game of Morra which is referred
to by Cicero, and other writers of his day. On many ancient monuments
are found carvings which represent Morra-players. It was played on the
banks of the Nile in the time of the Pharoahs; and in spite of its
simplicity it is still a standard amusement around the Levant.

Perhaps some of the boys and girls on this side of the water would like
to try it; but I shall warn them that, although it seems easy enough, it
will require considerable practice to become at all proficient in it.

The two players are placed opposite each other, and simultaneously each
throws out the right hand with some of the fingers extended, while the
rest are doubled over the palm, at the same instant shouting out the sum
of the fingers which he guesses are extended on his adversary's hand and
his own. Of course, knowing how many he has put up himself, the only
point is to guess the number of his adversary and instantly add it to
his own, a process which requires some practice and experience, as an
experiment will soon show, beginners often making amusing mistakes; as,
for instance, saying "ten!" when they themselves have only one or two
fingers up, or "four!" when the whole hand is extended.

If both guess correctly, or incorrectly, neither makes anything, but if
one happens to hit the right number when his adversary misses, he scores
one, by extending one finger on the left hand, which is held up
constantly, that no unfair count may be recorded. The game is usually
five, but sometimes "double morra" is played, the score being ten. In
this case, at the end of the first five, the hands are brought together
with a slap, to indicate that the second half is begun. This slap is
also given at the completion of an ordinary game.

The great point is to play as rapidly as possible and exactly in unison,
as otherwise an opportunity is given for unfair advantage.

A very old Latin proverb describes an honest man as, "Trustworthy enough
to play Morra in the dark"; and it is a very good description, for one
who has no honor about trifles can never be trusted in graver matters.

[Illustration]




THE KELP-GATHERERS.

[_A Story of the Maine Coast._]

BY J. T. TROWBRIDGE.


CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE OLD COW'S BACK.

Once more in the boat's stern with his steering paddle, Perce Bucklin
gazed eagerly over the bobbing heads of the twins, who were rowing, and
reported his observations, as they approached the castaway on the back
of the "Old Cow."

"It's nobody I can make out," he said, when near enough to recognize, as
he believed, any person he knew. "But that isn't a yachting-cap he has
on; it's a handkerchief tied around his head. The sun on the water
dazzles me or I ---- Boys," he suddenly exclaimed, "it isn't a man!
It's a boy!"

And he shouted, "Hello, there!"

The castaway returned the hail, and as the boat came nearer, cried out:

"That you, Perce Bucklin?"

Then Perce uttered an ejaculation of the greatest astonishment:

"Boys, it's Olly Burdeen!"

"No!" "Jingo!" "You don't say!" exclaimed the twins, who wouldn't
believe him until they turned their heads and saw for themselves.

"Hullo, Olly!" called Moke.

"How did you ever get there?" asked Poke.

"Pull, boys!" said Perce impatiently, as they held their oars while
looking around. "He must have been aboard the yacht,"--for as yet Olly
made no answer. He was in fact too much agitated with joy and gratitude,
after his long hours of suffering in mind and body, to make any coherent
explanations.

The dory came dancing over the waves.

"Where's the yacht?" Perce demanded.

"I don't know anything about any yacht," answered the miserable, happy
Olly, stepping down to the water's edge to meet his deliverers.

"Hasn't the Susette been lost?" Perce inquired.

As he was still some little distance away, and the waves were dashing on
the rocks, all Olly understood was something about the Susette being
lost.

It gave him a shock, with which, however, came a gleam of consolation.
Mr. Hatville, then, had not returned home.

I will do Olly the justice to say that he could not under any
circumstances have rejoiced at such a disaster as the wreck of the
yacht; yet it was some comfort to think that the loss of the watch had
not yet been discovered.

"I haven't heard of it!" Olly said in a shaky voice.

"Then how in the world did you get where you are?" inquired Perce, and
as Olly was too much overcome by his feelings to answer at once, he
continued: "We concluded you must have been aboard of the Susette.
Where's the best place to take you on?"

"Right here," said Olly. "But I've a boat, too, around on the other
side. I'd like to save that."

"A boat!" Moke exclaimed. "Then why in the name of common sense----"

"Why didn't you go ashore?" cried Poke.

"It leaks, and I haven't any oars nor anything to bail with. It was all
I could do to get over here in it, without sinking. I was on the
"Calf's" back till the waves began to break over it this morning."

Here a sob caught poor Olly's voice, at the recollection of all he had
gone through.

"On the 'Calf'!" said Perce. "How did it happen? But never mind about
that till we get you out of your scrape."

The dory pulled around the "Old Cow," while Olly scrambled over the
back, picking up on his way the second thwart, which he had used to
paddle with, and afterward in making his signals of distress.

On the seaward side was a cleft in the rock, into which he had propelled
his dory on the top of a wave, and where, leaping to the ledges, he had
held it by the painter while the wave went out. There it was still,
jammed high up in the chasm, where the buffets of the tide had left it.

Olly alone could never have got it out without waiting for the next tide
to help him; it was all his companions could do to loosen and lift it
from those rocky jaws. This they did, after effecting a landing on the
little islet; while Olly, who acknowledged himself half starved, ate
some of the provisions they had brought, and between mouthfuls told his
surprising story.

One very important particular, however, he took care not to mention, so
that no light was thrown upon the mystery of the watch which had found
its resting-place in Perce Bucklin's pocket.

It would be hard to say whether this was a disappointment or a relief to
the finder. He had so fully persuaded himself that there was some
connection between the watch picked up on the beach and the human being
cast on the rock, that he could not easily give it up, even after
discovering who that human being was.

True, Olly was not a very probable owner of such a timepiece. Yet that
was not an impossible thing; at any rate, he might know something about
it. Perce was anxious to solve the riddle, even if it should be at his
own cost; for he had no wish, as I have said before, to keep what
belonged to another.

"I didn't know you in that suit of clothes, Olly," he said, as they were
getting the boat out of the crevice, "and with that handkerchief on your
head! I never saw such a change in anybody,--did you, boys?"

"He looks as pinched as if the lobsters had been nipping him," said
Moke.

"And as blue about the gills as a turkey-gobbler," said Poke.

"I lost my hat overboard last night," said Olly, "I tied on my
handkerchief this morning after I got tired of waving it. I thought you
would be more apt to see the board. Wasn't I missed? Wasn't anybody
looking for me?"

"No," Perce replied. "The young lady with the nose--the tall one--said
you went with the yachters."

"She!" exclaimed Olly, who still had feelings left that could be hurt by
such evidence of Amy Canfield's utter indifference to him. "She knew
better than that."

"Mrs. Murcher knew better," said Perce. "She thought you had gone home
to show your new suit to the folks. Did the boarder make you any other
present?"

"Wasn't that enough?" returned Olly, munching a cold boiled egg.

"It will do for a beginning," said Perce. "But with such a suit as that,
it seems as if you ought to have a handsome--watch-chain; needn't mind
about any watch," he added with a laugh, intending thus to make a jest
of his remark if Olly didn't take it in earnest.

Poor Olly tried to smile with his pinched, empurpled face; at the same
time casting down his eyes in some alarm, to see what there was about
his dress to put such a notion into Perce's head.

"Olly doesn't feel like joking," observed Moke.

"Neither would you, I guess!" exclaimed Olly, glad to change the
subject. "All night on the rocks except when I was paddling or swimming
for my life. No fire, not a mouthful to eat, not a wink of sleep! I got
wet through a second time, getting over here from the 'Calf,' in a
sinking boat. I can't tell you how it made me feel, boys, to see your
fire on the beach last night, and again this morning! Why didn't you see
me? I tried the handkerchief, and then the board, but I thought you
never would look!"

"We were too far off," said Poke.

"We were too busy minding our own business," said Moke.

"That reminds me, the seaweed is waiting for us," said Poke. "Hurry up,
boys!"

Perce was the last to leave the island; and he himself got wet up to his
waist by a wave, in preventing the boat from being dashed upon the rocks
after the others were aboard.

He did not care for a little salt water himself. But he thought of the
watch in the pocket of his trousers. That, however, would probably not
be much hurt by a few additional drops after what it had been through
already. As far as he was concerned, the mystery had not been cleared
up, at all, as he had expected it would be, by the rescue of the
castaway.

If Olly had frankly told his entire story, how gladly would Perce have
taken the treasure-trove from his pocket and held it out to him,
exclaiming: "Here is your watch, boy!" gladdening his eyes with the
sight. But as it was, both were silent on the subject which now filled
both their minds.

Olly had already learned from his companions that their only reasons for
thinking the yacht had been wrecked, was the fact of its not having
returned the night before, and the appearance, that morning, of a human
form on the outlying rock,--excepting always the very private reason in
Perce Bucklin's trousers-pocket.

Mr. Hatville was then most likely still undrowned; and now that his own
life was saved, Olly began to study how he should shirk the
responsibility of his guilty borrowing,--in his troubled thoughts
looking every way except the right way, and inventing plausible
fictions, where nothing would avail like the simple truth. He sat in the
stern of his companions' dory, leading his own in tow by the painter;
dejected and silent, and more than once thinking he would watch for a
chance, when nobody was observing him, to drop overboard the watch-seal
and the fragment of chain which he still carried in his vest.


CHAPTER XIV.

OLLY HAS A BAD DREAM.

Long before the rescuers and the rescued reached the shore with their
leaky boat in tow, the excitement among Mrs. Murcher's boarders in
regard to the yacht had been allayed by a telegram. The adverse wind of
the evening before had caused the Susette to put into Portland; whence
some of the party were to return by rail that morning.

[Illustration: "THE CASTAWAY RETURNED THE HAIL, AS THE BOAT CAME
NEARER."]

So said the message; in consequence of which, interest in the unknown
individual on the back of the "Old Cow" languished somewhat, until the
arrival of the little party on the beach. Then it went up to the
bubbling point again; and there was the liveliest effervescence of
curiosity to know how Olly Burdeen, the faithful, unromantic chore and
errand boy, had met with so wonderful an adventure.

Accompanied, or preceded, by those who had gone down to see him
disembark, he mounted with slow, miserable, anxious feet the piazza
steps.

There all the other ladies came out eagerly to meet him, and pressed
around, marveling and questioning; and Mrs. Murcher, flushed from her
molding-board, held up both her doughy hands.

"Why, Olly! where _have_ you been?" said one.

"In his new suit of clothes!" said another.

"The first time he ever wore them!" exclaimed a third.

And one laughed; the one of all whom Olly most dreaded to have see him
in that plight.

It was not an ill-natured laugh by any means; and she would have helped
it if she could. But Amy Canfield had a merry disposition. And Olly
after his night of terror and fatigue, still oppressed with a horrible
anxiety, humbled, drooping, rolling his distressed eyes in fear of
encountering Mr. Hatville's, with the handkerchief still on his head and
his new clothes torn at the knees,--it must be owned that Olly did look
ridiculous.

"Why, Amy!" said Mrs. Merriman, "how _can_ you laugh?"

"It's so funny!" replied the tall brunette; "and I'm so glad he is
rescued," she added, discreetly. "We all were so anxious, thinking the
Susette had gone on the rocks; and it was only our Olly after all."

"What _has_ happened to you, Olly?" cried Mrs. Murcher, amazed to the
end of her doughy fingers.

"I just went out to take a little row, last evening," murmured the
forlorn Olly. "I lost one oar; it got tangled in the kelp, and a wave
wrenched it out of my hand. Then I broke another, and the wind blew me
off shore."

"And you've been all night on the 'Old Cow'?" said the good landlady.

"Worse than that," said Olly. "I was on the 'Calf.' And a part of the
time in the water. I guess if anybody had been there on the 'Calf's'
back in my place--alone--such a night!--waiting for the tide to rise and
cover 'em--I guess they wouldn't have thought it much of a joke!" And
Olly's voice broke.

"It must have been terrible, Olly! Do forgive my laughing!" said Amy,
relenting. "How did you get to the 'Old Cow'?"

Olly faltered forth more of his wretched story, which was listened to
with many an expression of surprise and sympathy, for he was rather a
favorite with Mrs. Murcher and her lady boarders.

He had wished to go directly home to Frog-End, and had tried to induce
the boys to carry him over in the ox-cart. But they were in haste to
resume their work, which had been too long interrupted already; and they
could not see why he should object to returning to the boarding-house.

After all, he thought to himself, the dreaded inquiry regarding the
watch might as well be met first as last.

The kindness he met with made him feel more miserably remorseful and
apprehensive than ever, for he knew that it was lavished upon him
because his friends were still ignorant of what might at any minute now
come to their knowledge.

He was really worn out with the long, fearful strain on his mind and
strength, and he was quite willing to accept Mrs. Murcher's advice that
he should go at once to bed and "take something hot."

The nucleus of the boarding-house was, as we have said, an old
farm-house, which accounted for its not very sightly situation, there in
a hollow of the hills. Besides the spacious addition, the original
building remained, and at the end of the upper corridor was the old
attic, with two or three steps descending to the door.

Olly's room was there, and there he was soon in bed, with ample leisure
to think over the terrible part of his experience which was happily
past, and the part which was unhappily to come.

He had not ventured to ask about the yachting party, lest something
concerning the watch should come out. But he had accidentally overheard
some one speak of the Susette having run into Portland. Everything else
was uncertain. But, thankful for a reprieve however brief from the
impending catastrophe, he ate the steaming gruel Mrs. Murcher brought
him, sank into a state of stupor, and was soon rehearsing in dreams his
dire adventures.

He was having a distressing conversation with a dog-fish of enormous
size. The monster came up out of the sea, and resting its elbow on the
"Calf's" shoulder, and its face on its hand,--a face and attitude
grotesquely suggestive of Mr. Hatville,--accused Olly of having one of
that gentleman's eyes in his pocket, although there were two spectral
eyes as big as watches in the speaker's head, at the moment. The dispute
was growing frightfully loud, when Olly cut it short by kicking the
dog-fish, or Mr. Hatville, or whoever it was, back into the sea, and
immediately woke.


CHAPTER XV.

IT WAS NOT A DOG-FISH.

It is generally a very good way to get out of trouble, to wake, and find
it a dream. But that did not serve Olly's turn this time. The voice was
still heard, louder and louder, not in the sea, as he had fancied, but
behind the door which separated his garret from the corridor.

"I paid two hundred and forty dollars for that watch, and fifteen
dollars for the chain, let alone the seal, and I want to know who has
them!"

It was Mr. Hatville's voice pure and simple, without any fishy element
about it. At the same time a good pair of boots, such as no dog-fish
ever wore, were tramping excitedly across the floor. Poor Mrs. Murcher's
anxious, protesting voice was heard in reply, but not loud enough for
Olly to make out the words.

"I hung it up when I was changing my clothes, and then went off and
forgot it!" burst forth the male voice again. "But I supposed it would
be safe here. I didn't know you had thieves in your house, Mrs.
Murcher!"

"I haven't, sir! unless they are among your own friends," the landlady
answered, in a higher key than before. "I don't believe it is stolen. It
must be somewhere!"

"Of course it's somewhere!" the boarder retorted--"somewhere in some
rogue's keeping. I'd like to see the fellow who dared to lay hands on
it--the best time-keeper I ever saw! Stem-winder; chronometer movement;
heavy, fine gold case! I had it regulated down to the finest point; it
was losing only about a second and a half a month."

Other voices here joined in; the corridor appeared to be filling with
boarders, all excited by the news of Mr. Hatville's loss.

"No," said that gentleman; "I wasn't at all anxious about it; only, when
I found we couldn't get back last night, I was vexed to think it would
run down. I wouldn't have had that happen for five dollars. Where's
Olly?" he demanded. "_He_ must know something about it."

Olly trembled in his bed. He would have preferred just then to take his
chances with a whole school of dog-fishes, of the largest size, rather
than confront the wrathful owner of the watch.

"I don't think he knows anything about it," said Mrs. Murcher, now
quite near Olly's door. "He has been away all night; he has had a
terrible time out at sea--in the sea--and on the rocks. Don't disturb
him! He's fast asleep."

"If he hasn't slept for a week, and can't sleep again for a fortnight,"
cried Hatville, "I'll have him up and see if he knows anything about
that watch."

"Let me speak to him!" said Mrs. Murcher. "You've no idea how weak and
tired and worn out he is. I've got him into a perspiration, and now if
it is checked, I shall expect nothing in the world but that he will have
a fit of sickness, and may be never get over it."

"It ought not to check an honest boy's perspiration, to tell what he
knows about my chronometer," Hatville muttered, while Mrs. Murcher,
stepping down the two or three stairs that led to the old attic, opened
Olly's door.

"Sh!" she whispered gently, motioning Mr. Hatville back. "He's so sound
asleep! It's such a pity to wake him, poor boy! But I suppose I must."

Oily lay with his back toward her, with his head and face covered by the
sheet. His perspiration hadn't ceased, by any means; he felt that he was
fast dissolving in a clammy feeling of abject fear.

"He's in such a beautiful, dewy, childlike, innocent sleep" said the
motherly Mrs. Murcher, laying her hand softly on his brow. "Just the
thing he needs; better than all the medicine in the world!" She was
tempted to add, "or than all the watches!"

Still Hatville did not relent. Without strongly suspecting Olly of
taking the watch, he was yet determined to pursue his investigations,
even if he broke the most beautiful, dewy, childlike, innocent slumber
on earth.

"Shake him!" he said.

So Mrs. Murcher shook, gently at first, then more and more vigorously,
saying, "Olly! Oliver! Olly Burdeen! Oliver Burdeen!" more and more
loudly in his ear, until he suddenly sprang up with a muttered cry.

"Stop that boat! stop that----she's running on the 'Old Cow'! Oh,
boys!--where am I?"

And, appearing to recognize Mrs. Murcher's presence for the first time,
he rolled up his eyes and sank back with a groan on the pillow.


CHAPTER XVI.

A BAD AWAKING.

"He's delirious!" whispered the landlady.

"He's dreaming," replied the boarder.

"Olly! Wake up a minute! What's become of my watch?"

"Watch?" repeated Olly, still disguising his real fears in a
well-feigned fictitious terror. "What watch? I thought I was in the
water again!"

His voice trembled, though not altogether from that more remote cause
which he desired to impress upon the minds of spectators.

"My watch, which I left hanging in the case beside my bureau when I went
yachting yesterday," said Hatville, as much imposed upon as the
sympathizing Mrs. Murcher herself. "What has become of it?"

"Your watch?" Olly repeated, with a bewildered air, as if beginning
dimly to comprehend the question. "How should I know? I've been away.
I've been wrecked. Haven't they told you?"

"You haven't the watch, _have_ you?" exclaimed the landlady.

"His watch? Mr. Hatville's? Of course I haven't! What should I have his
watch for?"

The brunt of the inquiry thus met, Olly felt that he was acting his part
very well, and took courage. Then somebody in the corridor whispered to
Mr. Hatville, who immediately asked:

"What boy was that who came here to the house for you last evening?"

"Boy? I don't know of any boy!" said Olly.

"You remember, Amy; you showed him upstairs," said Mrs. Merriman.

"I know the one you mean; one of the Frog-End boys!" exclaimed Mrs.
Murcher. "He said he and some friends of Olly's were camping on the
beach, and they wanted him to join them. It can't be that _he_ took it!"

"Who showed him upstairs? You, Amy?" cried Hatville.

It was a moment of fearful suspense to Olly, who remembered what Perce
had said of coming to invite him to their picnic, and learning that he
had either sailed in the yacht or gone home to show his new clothes. He
stopped breathing to hear Amy's reply, in clear, silvery tones, from the
farther end of the corridor.

"Yes; I showed him up, and pointed out Olly's room. Mrs. Murcher thought
Olly was there, trying on his new clothes."

"But he wasn't," said Mrs. Murcher. "And the boy came downstairs again
in a very few minutes."

"Where was he during those few minutes?" Mr. Hatville demanded. "Did you
watch him, Amy?"

"I? No, indeed! Why should I take the trouble to watch him?" cried Miss
Canfield.

"What was to prevent his going into my room," Hatville inquired, "and
taking the watch?"

"Nothing that I know of." The silvery accents faltered. "I don't know
but I am to blame, Mr. Hatville!"

"Oh, no! It wasn't your business to watch strangers who gain admission
to the house," said Hatville.

"But I did something which I see now was very indiscreet," Amy
exclaimed. "It was growing quite dark in the passage, and I opened the
door of your room to let in more light. I knew you were not there, and I
had no idea your watch was. I am very sorry."

[Illustration: "'SHAKE HIM,' SAID MR. HATVILLE."]

"You are very frank," replied Hatville. "But don't blame yourself. Of
course, you had no idea of putting temptation in the way of a rogue."

"No; and I can't believe he was a rogue--such a fine, honest-looking
face as he had!" Amy exclaimed. "But I had no business to open your
door."

Olly overheard this conversation with strangely mingled feelings of envy
and remorse, of fear and guilt. How admirable was Amy's prompt
confession of her fault, and how readily it was forgiven! Why couldn't
he have had a little of her courage, owned his folly, and thrown himself
upon Mr. Hatville's mercy! His implied denial had now cut him off from
that only noble course; and he saw no way to disentangle the web in
which he had involved both himself and his friend.

"Wasn't it the same boy who came here again this morning?" asked Mr.
Merriman. "He had discovered Olly on the 'Old Cow,'--though nobody knew
it was Olly; and he came to get oars and a spy-glass."

"Yes," said one of the other ladies; "and he came upstairs to look from
the windows. He might have gone into your room then, Mr. Hatville."

"But if he had stolen the watch the night before, would he have shown
his face here again this morning?" argued the landlady, who had been
too much bewildered by what had occurred in her house, to take much part
in the previous conversation.

"He might have done just that thing," Hatville replied, "in order to
brazen it out, and make a show of innocence. But most likely he saw the
chronometer then, and, having had time to think about it, he watched for
a chance to take it this morning, when it was supposed I might have been
lost in the yacht."

That seemed very probable; and Mrs. Murcher was obliged to admit that
there had been no other stranger about the place, to her knowledge,
except the messenger who brought Mr. Hatville's telegram. He, however,
had not got out of his buggy.

"That same boy is on the beach now, gathering seaweed," said Mrs.
Merriman. "At least, he was there a short time ago."

"That's good news!" cried Hatville, gayly. "Who'll go with me and point
him out? We'll interview this seaweed-gatherer, who does a little side
business in other people's watches!"

And Olly could hear his boots departing in haste through the corridor
and descending the stairs. One or two ladies went with him to identify
the supposed culprit; while others remained to discuss this last
exciting revelation.

"Such a bright, interesting boy!" said one; "I shouldn't have believed
it of him!"

"I thought him a young hero!" cried another, "to leave his work and
start off to the rescue!"

"Well!" said a third, "I thought so, too. He certainly organized the
whole thing; and it seems strange to me that he should have shown so
much zeal to save the life, perhaps, of the very person whose watch he
had just taken!"

"You can't tell much from a boy's looks, or his actions either, as to
what he may do when exposed to temptation," was the rather severe
rejoinder of the first speaker.

"Not unless you know him pretty well," added one of the others.

"As we know Olly, for instance," observed some one else. "I actually
believe Mr. Hatville at first suspected he had taken it."

"Absurd!" "Preposterous!" "Nonsense!" chorused all together. All which
Olly overheard with feelings which can hardly be imagined by anybody not
actually suffering what he suffered then.

Had the lady boarders spoken harshly or suspiciously of him, he might
have hardened his heart. But their kind words made him bitterly regret
that he had not kept his good reputation by frankly owning the fault,
which, if discovered now, must convict him of dishonesty.

And to a boy like him,--not a bad boy at heart, by any means, as I trust
you all understand,--it was a terrible thing to know that another was
accused of downright theft, in consequence of his own foolish and
cowardly conduct. And that one a friend,--a friend, too, who had just
rescued him from danger and distress! Poor Olly almost wished he had
been left to perish; that he had never reached the back of the "Old
Cow," or been seen or heard of again.

All this he kept to himself, and lay with his face turned to the wall,
thinking of the probable result of the charge against Perce Bucklin, and
of retribution falling upon himself; when Mrs. Murcher came and pulled
the coverlet carefully over his shoulder, and shut the door again gently
as she went out, leaving him, as she supposed, to sleep.

"Of course they can't prove anything against Perce," he tried to console
himself by thinking; for he was utterly ignorant of the astounding
evidence that was to free him from the last shadow of suspicion, and fix
the guilt on his friend.

(_To be continued._)




THE AMBITIOUS KANGAROO.


    They held a great meeting a king to select,
      And the kangaroo rose in a dignified way,
    And said, "I'm the one you should surely elect,
      For I can out-leap every beast here to-day."
    Said the eagle, "How high can you climb toward the sky?"
      Said the nightingale, "Favor us, please, with a song!"
    Said the hawk, "Let us measure our powers of eye!"
      Said the lion, "Come wrestle, and prove you are strong!"
    But the kangaroo said, "It would surely be best,
    In our choice of a king, to make leaping the test!"




WONDERS OF THE ALPHABET.

BY HENRY ECKFORD.

SEVENTH PAPER.


Great was the surprise of scholars, both Hindoo and European, when
certain students of old languages claimed that the letters of the
Sanskrit, the classical language of India, were originally derived from
an alphabet, akin to the Ph[oe]nician, used by a great branch of the
great race of peoples who are called Shemites, or Semites, after one of
the sons of Noah. (The Jews, Arabs, Philistines, Hittites,
Ph[oe]nicians, and Aramæans are Semites.) Those students believe that
the wonderful peninsula of India, which, as far back as traditions go,
has been crowded with men of various colors and different tongues,
received a Semitic alphabet under two forms by two different roads, and
perhaps at periods far apart. They believe that there was a land road
and a sea road. They trace one alphabet by land, through Bactria and
Cashmere, from one fierce and intelligent nation to another; and they
believe that they have traced a second alphabet from Arabia to India by
way of the Red Sea. The nation that carried the latter alphabet is
supposed to have been the Sabæans, an ancient people of Arabia, who were
once as powerful in the Southern seas as the Ph[oe]nicians, their
kindred, were in the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the word Sanskrit means nothing to you, but it is the name of an
important old Oriental language. Sanskrit stands in very much the same
relation to many Eastern languages as Latin does to the languages of
Italy, Spain, and France. In the last century, William Jones, a Welshman
of marked genius, went, like many young Britons, to India to advance his
fortunes under the British mercantile government of that land. It was he
who first called the attention of Europe to Sanskrit. Since his day much
of its poetry and legends has been read, many of its fables and dramatic
works have been translated. The word Sanskrit means polished and
perfected; and polished and perfected its alphabet certainly is. It is
the most complete and most carefully devised alphabet of all those that
we know. Sanskrit writing is very solid and handsome in appearance,--a
stately script worthy of holding the decrees which mighty monarchs
issued from courts magnificent with all the splendors of the Orient.
There are not twenty-two letters as in the Ph[oe]nician alphabet, nor
twenty-six as in ours--there are forty-seven! Instead of beginning with
A, the Sanskrit alphabet begins with K. Why? Because K is a letter
spoken from the throat. Indian grammarians carefully noted in what parts
of the throat and mouth the different sounds of their language were
made, and, for convenience, they systematized their ample alphabet on
this admirable plan. They put their fourteen vowels by themselves as
broad, open sounds which were shorter or longer; and, taking the
consonants, they placed first on the list those which are spoken from
the throat, then those spoken from the palate, then those spoken from
the roof of the mouth nearest the brain, then those spoken from the
teeth, and finally those spoken from the lips. The list of consonants
starts with those uttered low down in the throat and ends with those
uttered from the lips; added to these are the soft and flowing
consonants called semi-vowels--Y, R, L, and V; and after these come the
sibilants, or hissed letters, and the letter H,--forty-seven in all.

The Indian grammarians who devised this complete and scientific system
must have had ears almost as sharp as those of the boy in the old story
who was said to be able to hear the grass growing. They distinguished
between a number of consonants containing a sound of N,--between
"twangs" very slightly differing in sound; and they placed them also in
the order of their utterance, beginning with an N uttered from the
throat and ending with one spoken with the tongue close to the lips. Our
language has two or three different N sounds, but our alphabet does not
distinguish them. The French language also has several N sounds not
indicated by the alphabet, so that one can not hope to speak French
intelligibly, still less accurately, without practice with teachers who
can render the different N sounds. The Spanish alphabet tries to
indicate a second N by putting a mark over the N--thus, Ñ. Then, too, we
have three sounds for which our alphabet has but one letter, S; while
the Sanskrit alphabet has three letters, one for each sound of S. In the
alphabet, as in many other matters, the more enlightened nations of
India put to shame the most advanced nations of the Western World.

Did you ever notice how, in our script, or written characters, for the
sake of clearness and to keep some letters distinct from others, we have
gradually come to write some of them with tall heads above the upper
line, or with long tails below the lower line? And still we are
constantly mistaking an l for a badly crossed t, and a g for a j or a y;
while some letters that do not go above or below the line, such as m, n,
i, w, u, and r, are constantly confounded in rapid writing. We are so
used to this confusion that we seldom think of it, and we fail to wonder
why some arrangement is not generally agreed to, which would do away
with it. By remembering this fact, you will avoid the mistake of
thinking because our alphabet, written or printed, is so good, that it
could not be better. There is great room for improvement in both
departments; in the printed form, the difference between n and u, for
instance, is none too great; while in writing hardly one person in ten
thousand distinguishes them from each other,--which letter is meant must
be guessed by the reader. But the men and women who set up type and
correct proofs are much bothered by these defects in our alphabet.

The difficulty of having changes made in existing alphabets is very
great, yet this is not necessarily a disadvantage. Much insight into the
origin and gradual improvements of sets of letters has been gained by
studying the order in which the several letters stand. The order varies
greatly in different nations, and varies slightly at different epochs in
the same nation. In taking the Ph[oe]nician letters, the Greeks dropped
some, used others for slightly different sounds, and added a few to
express sounds that were important to them or that did not exist in the
Ph[oe]nician. But this was done very gradually. It never has been easy
to induce people to change and improve their alphabets.

But there is another reason why men have refused to change the order of
letters by inserting a new and useful letter in the place where it
naturally belonged. The Greeks and many other peoples used the letters
of the alphabet for numerals. We use our own numbers without stopping to
think whence they came. The cumbersome system used by the Romans, and
called after them, consisted of strokes (I-II-III-IIII) to indicate the
four fingers, and two strokes joined (V) to represent the hand, or five
fingers. Ten was a picture of two hands, or two V's (X). Among the
Etruscans the half of one, or, as we put it, 1/2 was >, which we think
stood for a forefinger crooked in order to denote the half of one
finger. But when the Etruscans and Greeks worked at the higher
mathematics or attempted hard sums in arithmetic, they are much more
likely to have used letters, in order to avoid the clumsiness of these
numerals; in other words, they used what looked like a kind of algebra.
We know that they tried to simplify the Roman numerals at Rome by making
four and nine with three strokes instead of four, by placing an I
before the V and an I before the X (IV and IX).

Our use of the numerals which we call "Arabic" is comparatively recent,
and it is believed that the Arabs got these numbers from India several
centuries after the Koran was written, or about eight hundred years
after Christ. But the fact that the Greeks and others used the letters
of their alphabets for numerals, caused the order in which they were
written to remain fixed. If _alpha_ stood for 1, _beta_ for 2, _gamma_
for 3, _delta_ for 4, and so on up to ten, then a newly coined or newly
adopted letter could not be inserted without great confusion; it had to
be tacked on to the end of the alphabet. So, when scholars find in
inscriptions letters, adopted from another alphabet, which stand out of
their natural order, they can make a shrewd guess at the century in
which the inscription was made. Suppose an alphabet, which is also used
for numerals, loses a letter in the course of time, because there is
very little or no use for it; then that letter is still of service for a
numeral, and it can not be dropped as a number, though it drops out as a
letter. When it is found still employed as a numeral, it reveals some of
the history of the alphabet to which it once belonged. These are only a
few of many methods of determining the age of a given inscription. Old
coins are very useful in settling what the alphabets of various nations
were at different epochs.

Our own numerals are extremely convenient for ordinary arithmetic.
Algebra, in which letters stand for numbers, is useful for abstract
reasoning in mathematics; it treats of the properties of numbers in
general. Whether the Indian numerals were originally part of some
ancient alphabet, or a series of shortened signs originally somewhat
like the Roman numerals that we still use, is not really decided.

There was a curious fashion among certain grammarians and mathematicians
of Old India which may be mentioned here. They liked to increase their
own importance by making knowledge hard to attain; as it imposed on
their pupils, and even more on the outside world. They also wished to
exercise the memories of their pupils, and keep them mindful of certain
numbers and dates by means of memorizing words. In works on arithmetic
and prosody, they deliberately wrote out long words which meant nothing
if looked at as parts of a sentence, but stood for so many numbers if
the reader had the clew. If such a grammarian wished to write the number
twelve by this method, he would write down "moon, eyes"; because there
is one moon and two eyes. If he wished to signify the number 1486, he
would write "moon, seas, mountains, seasons"; because in India people
believed that in the world there were _one_ moon, _four_ seas, and
_eight_ mountain chains, and _six_ seasons during the year. So ingenious
were they in hiding plain things under an artificial system! The
priestly rulers of Egypt, also moved by pride and the desire to seem
learned, began at a remote period to make the hieroglyphics as hard as
possible to understand. For a given word they would always choose as
little known and seldom used a character as they could think of. And
doubtless this did render them objects of greater reverence in the eyes
of pupils and of common folk.

But to return to the numbers that we call Arabic and the Arabs call
Indian. The numbers used by the peoples of India who wrote in Sanskrit
were very like the figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0, that we use
to-day. Even closer resemblances will be found if one goes back to the
earliest forms of our numerals; for, during the last thousand years, our
numbers have undergone some slight changes. We took them, as you have
heard, from the Arabs, who did not employ them much before 800 A. D.;
and the use of them did not penetrate into Europe by way of Italy and
Spain until four centuries later. Together with these numerals, the
Arabs learned from India how to do sums by algebra. For algebra, though
an Arabic word, is a science of which the Arabs were ignorant before
they reached India. How long the Indians of Hindostan had used this
system of notation along with their alphabet, we can not yet determine;
but it is quite possible that the old grammarians who improved the
Sanskrit were enabled to fashion its alphabet into so scientific an
order of groups because this separate system of numerals existed at even
a more remote period, and had been found handier than the signs of the
alphabet. Not using their letters as numerals, they could marshal them
on the best system they were able to devise, as we, too, have been able
to do with our alphabet ever since we got the Indian numerals from the
Arabs.

It may be said that the invention of these numerals and of algebra for
the higher mathematics stamps the old Hindoos as one of the most
wonderful races of the world.

(_To be concluded._)




[Illustration: "THIS SEAT RESERVED."]




THE BROWNIES AT LAWN-TENNIS.

BY PALMER COX.


    One evening as the woods grew dark,
    The Brownies wandered through a park,
    And soon a building, quaint and small,
    Appeared to draw the gaze of all.
    Said one: "This place contains, no doubt,
    The tools of workmen hereabout,
    Who trim the vine, and shape the tree,
    Or smooth the walks, as chance may be."
    Another said: "You're quite astray,
    The workmen's tools are miles away;
    Within this building may be found
    The fixtures for the tennis ground.
    A meadow near, both long and wide,
    For half the year is set aside,
    And marked with many a square and court,
    For those who love the royal sport.
    On afternoons assembled there,
    The active men and maidens fair
    Keep up the game until the day
    Has faded into evening gray.
    And then the racket, net, and ball
    Are stowed away for future call."

[Illustration]

    "In other lands than those we tread,
    I played the game," another said,
    "And proved my skill and muscle stout,
    As 'server' and as 'striker-out.'
    And all the rules can quote as well
    As those who print them out to sell;
    The lock that hangs before us there
    Bears witness to the keeper's care,
    And tramps or burglars might go by,
    If such a sign should meet the eye.
    But we, who laugh at locks or law
    Designed to keep mankind in awe,
    May praise the keeper's cautious mind,
    But all the same an entrance find,
    And for the present evening claim
    Whate'er is needed for the game."

    Ere long, the path that lay between
    The building and the meadow green,
    Was crowded with the bustling throng,
    All bearing implements along;
    Some lugging stakes or racket sets,
    And others buried up in nets
    Until their feet alone they showed
    Beneath their loose and trailing load.
    To set the posts and mark the ground
    The proper size and shape around,
    With service-line and line of base,
    And courts, both left and right, in place,
    Was work that caused but slight delay;
    And soon the sport was under way.
    And then a strange and stirring scene
    Was pictured out upon the green.

[Illustration]

    Some watched the game and noted well
    Where this or that one would excel.
    And shouts and calls that filled the air
    Proved even-handed playing there.
    With anxious looks some kept the score,
    And shouted "'vantage!" "game all!" or
    To some "love, forty!" "deuce!" to more;
    But when "deuce set!" the scorer cried,
    Applause would ring on every side.

    At times so hot the contest grew,
    Established laws aside they threw,
    And in the game where four should stand,
    At least a dozen took a hand.
    Some tangled in the netting lay
    And some from base-lines strayed away.
    Some hit the ball when out of place
    Or scrambled through unlawful space.
    But still no game was forced to halt
    Because of this or greater fault.
    And there they sported on the lawn
    Until the ruddy streaks of dawn
    Gave warning that the day was near,
    And Brownies all must disappear.

[Illustration]




A MATTER-OF-FACT CINDERELLA.

BY MRS. ANNIE A. PRESTON.


"Oh! what a fine carriage, and what handsome horses! They are as gay as
the coach and horses of Cinderella!" and the bright-faced little girl,
with a glory of spring sunshine illuminating her glossy hair, clasped
her bare brown hands in delight.

"It dashed by so quickly, I had not time to notice it," replied Grandma
Eaton, looking over her glasses down the turf-striped country road after
the rapidly departing carriage. "I wonder whose it can be? There! it has
stopped. What is that for, Ella, child?"

"I don't know, Grandma, dear; but I think something about the harness
has given way. See! the horses are dancing and prancing. The gentleman
has jumped from the carriage. He has taken something from his pocket. It
looks like a knife. Oh, yes!"

"I had good eyes once, but they have served their day," sighed Grandma
Eaton.

"The horses are quiet, now," went on Ella, who had not once taken her
observant eyes from a spectacle so unusual for that quiet neighborhood.
"Now the strap is mended, I think, and everything is all right," added
the child with a little sigh of regret; and as the gentleman drove
swiftly on, she left the window and skipped out to the edge of the road,
to see the fine horses prance away.

"I guessed rightly, Grandma, dear!" cried Ella as she came running back
from the scene of the accident. "It was a broken strap, for here is a
piece, almost torn in two, that was cut off. And here is a penny I found
right under it; a bright, new penny--as yellow as gold!"

"This is no penny," said the woman, taking the shining coin in her own
hand and looking at it closely; "it is an eagle. I know an eagle when I
see one, although I have not had one of my own for many a day."

"Ten mills make one cent, ten cents make one dime, ten dimes make one
dollar, ten dollars make one eagle! A golden eagle! Oh, how much good it
will do us!" exclaimed the little girl as she glanced at her
grandmother's thin shawl and at the scant belongings of their humble
home.

"We are not to think of that," said Grandma Eaton, speaking so decidedly
that a flush overspread her thin, worn face. "The coin belongs to the
gentleman who just dropped it; and I do not doubt that a way will be
opened for it to be returned to its owner. Those who seek to do right
seldom lack opportunity. Cinderella's horses and carriage pass this way
too seldom to escape notice, and probably some of our neighbors will be
able to tell us to whom they belong."

But all the men in the quiet, out-of-the-way neighborhood had been at
town-meeting that afternoon, and none of the women folk, excepting
Grandma Eaton and little Ella, had seen the fine sight. They would have
remembered it almost as the figment of a dream, had it not been for the
bright ten-dollar gold piece laid away in cotton in Grandma Eaton's best
china tea-pot, on the top shelf of the parlor cupboard.

On the very next Monday morning after this episode, that same
glossy-haired, blue-eyed Ella, with grandma's thin shawl pinned about
her shoulders, made one of a bevy of girls who, with arms full of books,
slates, and lunch-baskets, were drawing near a plain little brown
school-house, standing in the shade of a tall, plumy pine-tree on a
sandy hillside that was supposed to be exactly in the center of the Pine
Meadow school-district.

"Oh, there's a fire in the school-house!" cried Lizzie Barber; "and I'm
glad, for my fingers are cold. I was in such a hurry I forgot my
mittens."

"We don't often find a fire made on the first day of school," said Abby
Wood, "because the committee-man has to go for the teacher."

"He must have kindled it before he started away," said Ella, "because it
has been burning some time. I can tell by the thinness of the smoke."

"That is just like you, Ella Eaton," put in Angelina Brown. "You're
always pretending to know things by what you see that no one else would
ever think about. Can't you be obliging enough to look through the walls
and tell us who is there? Perhaps school has begun."

"I have no way of telling that," laughed Ella, good-naturedly; "but, no
doubt some of the boys are there to make first choice of the seats."

"The boys must have climbed in at one of the windows," whispered Ella.
"Let us serenade them to let them know we are here."

And she began one of their familiar school songs in a clear, ringing
voice, her companions at once joining in with the melody.

By this time they had crossed the waste of sand, and were at the
school-house door; but, on trying to enter, they were surprised to find
the stout hasp and padlock as secure as it had been through all the long
vacation.

Immediately heavy footsteps were heard hurriedly crossing the
school-room, one of the small windows was thrown up with a bang, and a
stout, rough-looking, tangled-haired, shabby fellow scrambled out in
great haste. He cast his eyes sharply about, made a rush at the group of
affrighted little girls huddled together upon the broad door-stone,
grabbed Ella's lunch-basket with one hand, and Angelina's dinner-pail
with the other, cleared the low rail fence near by at a running jump,
and was lost to sight in the woodland at the end of the field.

As the ruffianly tramp ran in one direction, the little girls, dropping
all their wraps and traps, and seizing hold of hands, ran almost as fast
in the other.

How far they might have gone, had they not been turned about by meeting
the committee-man and the pretty young lady teacher, it would be hard to
say.

The girls were sure a grim, weather-beaten tramp would be found under
every desk, and two or three in the wood closet, and they could not be
persuaded to enter the school until a thorough search had been made.

It was not so bad as that; but what they did find was a broken window, a
fragment of bread, the teacher's chair split into kindlings and nearly
burned, and a large bundle of expensive silks and laces.

The intruder had apparently either fallen asleep by the fire and
overslept himself, or, not supposing that school was to begin so early
in the season, had intended to make the secluded building his
hiding-place for the day.

"There was a burglary committed at Willinotic night before last," said
Mr. Stiles, the committee-man, "and I fancy these are a part of the
spoils. A large reward is offered for the detection and identification
of the robbers; so, girls, it will be to your advantage to remember how
that fellow looked."

"I shall never forget him," said Lizzie; "he was the tallest man I ever
saw."

Abby was sure he was short. Angelina fancied he was lame; and Ella
remembered he had a bent nose. They all agreed that he was fierce and
horrid, and were equally sure they should know him if they should ever
see him again.

[Illustration: "THE GOLD PIECE WAS LAID AWAY IN GRANDMA EATON'S BEST
CHINA TEA-POT."]

The affair made a great local excitement; and when the goods were
identified as belonging to the great Willinotic dry goods firm of Clark
& Rogers, the girls who had enjoyed such an experience with a real
burglar were the envy of all the boys in the community.

But time sped on, the nine-days' excitement had become but a memory in
the dull routine of school duties, and June had arrived with its roses,
when one day word came from Clark & Rogers, asking Mr. Stiles, the
committee-man, to bring the little girls who had encountered the
burglar, to Willinotic, to see if they could pick him out of a number of
men who had been arrested while undermining a railway culvert some days
before: "There is a tall one, and a short one, a lame one, and one with
a bent nose," the letter said; "so it seems that there is a great deal
of material upon which the little women may exercise their memories."

"I am so glad my mother sent to New York for my gypsy hat," said
Angelina. "My mother finished my blue dress last night," said Lizzie;
and while Abby was telling what she expected to wear, Ella ran on ahead,
fearing that she might be questioned upon the same subject, for she knew
very well that nothing new, pretty, or fresh would fall to her lot. A
thought of the gold eagle did cross her mind; but she bravely put it
away from her.

And neither could the dear old grandmother help thinking of the gold
piece when she heard that Ella had been summoned to Willinotic; but she,
too, resolutely conquered the temptation, saying to herself:

"My grandchild shows her good breeding in her gentle manners and speech,
and they are better than fine clothes."

The day at Willinotic was a unique experience for the bevy of little
country girls. They enjoyed the hour's ride on the railway and the fine
sights in the handsome streets of the large town; but the grand,
white-marble court-house, where they were taken, filled most of them
with a vague alarm. The sultry summer air drew cool and fresh through
the long corridors, and they almost shivered as they were given seats in
a lofty room, from which the glaring sun was studiously excluded.
Through the half-open doorway they caught glimpses of the grave,
gold-spectacled judge at his high desk; the black-coated lawyers seated
at their long table in front; the witness-stand with its railing; and a
pale-faced prisoner sitting beside an officer.

"There is going to be a thunder-shower," said Angelina, "and I know I
shall be frightened to death."

"Let's all take hold of hands," said Abby Wood. "I never felt so
lonesome in all my life. I'm going back to the depot for fear we shall
be left."

"I'll go with you," said Lizzie. "I don't remember anything about the
old tramp, only that he was short--and I wish I hadn't come."

"Why, Lizzie Barber," cried Angelina, "you have always said he was the
tallest man you ever saw! How Mr. Stiles will laugh!"

"Well, I shan't stay to be laughed at!" half sobbed Lizzie. "Come,
Ella."

"We must not leave this room, where Mr. Stiles told us to stay until he
came for us," said Ella, so resolutely that her companions sat down
again, although Abby whispered to Angelina:

"The idea of our minding a little girl like Ella, just as if she were
the school-teacher herself!"

Happily, Mr. Stiles appeared in time to prevent another outbreak,
saying:

"Come, Angelina. You may as well go in first."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Angelina. "I wish Mother had come!" And she was led
away into the great court-room.

One by one Mr. Stiles came for the girls, until Ella was left alone. She
curled herself up like a kitten in one of the large arm-chairs, and
silently took in her unaccustomed surroundings with keen enjoyment.

"Come, Ella," said Mr. Stiles kindly. And she followed him slowly into
the court-room, hearing some one whisper lightly as she passed:

"So there is another one. I wonder if her testimony will carry as much
weight as that of her mates. It was foolish to expect such children, and
girls too, to identify any one."

As Ella cast a slow, thoughtful look about the room, her blue eyes
suddenly dilated, and, leaving Mr. Stiles's side, she walked straight up
to one of the lawyers, who regarded her curiously, when, dropping a
quaint little courtesy that her grandmother had taught her, she said
modestly:

"Excuse me, sir,--perhaps I ought not to tell you here, but perhaps I
may not see you again,--and I found your gold eagle."

"What did you say?" asked the gentleman kindly. "How do you happen to
know me, little girl? And what was that about a gold eagle?"

"I do not know you, sir; but Grandma says one may speak to a stranger on
business. I saw you that day--Freeman's meeting-day, it was, you
know--when you drove through North Damesfield, and a strap in your
harness broke. When you took out your knife to mend it, you dropped a
gold eagle, and I picked it up. Grandma has it at home in her china
tea-pot, and will be ever so glad I saw you, for ten dollars is a great
deal of money to have in the house--when it is not your own."

It was a funny little episode to happen in the crowded court-room, and
the lawyers all turned to listen; and the grave judge, from his high
seat, looked kindly down upon the little girl, while a smiled tugged at
the corners of his mouth and hinted of granddaughters at home.

"How do you know it was I who lost the money?" asked Mr. Gorden, with
twinkling eyes.

[Illustration]

"Why, I saw you, sir, and I could not help knowing you again."

"How was it, Mr. Gorden?" asked the judge, as if this diversion was not
altogether unwelcome; and the lawyer replied:

"I did drive through North Damesfield, on Freeman's meeting-day, by the
old turnpike, to avoid the mud by the river road. The harness did break,
and I feared for a time that I might have trouble with my horses; I had
purchased them only two days before. I did make a new hole in the strap
with my pocket-knife, and I surely on that day lost a ten-dollar gold
piece. I thought, however, that it was stolen from me at the miserable
little tavern where I had spent the previous night. I am so glad to find
myself mistaken, that I gladly give the gold piece to my little friend
here, who, it seems to me, has a better claim to it than I have."

"Oh, sir, I thank you, but, indeed, I do not think Grandma would let me
take it, because, really, it doesn't belong to me at all."

"It does, if I choose to give it to you, my child," said the gentleman,
smoothing her glossy curls. "And now, do you think you will be so sure
of the fellow who gave you such a sorry fright, and stole your dinner,
as you were of me?"

"Oh, yes, sir! If he is here, I shall know him. I saw him plainly." And,
turning about as she was told, she faced the half dozen prisoners, with
a little shiver. "That is the one," she said at once; "the one with his
hands in his pockets. His nose is bent just a little to one side, you
see. And, oh! sir! if you look at the thumb on his right hand you will
see that the end has been cut off; and that the nail grows sharp and
long, like a claw. I saw it when he snatched my lunch-basket, but I have
never thought of it since. I seemed to see it again when I saw his
face."

"That is an interesting little point, showing the association of ideas,"
said one of the lawyers in a low tone to another; and the prisoner whom
the little girl designated was ordered to take his hands from his
pockets. He refused doggedly at first; but, seeing that it was of no use
for him to resist, he withdrew them, and, holding up his peculiar thumb
in a defiant way, he muttered:

"The girl saw my thumb when she came in, and spoke about it because she
wants to get the reward."

"The prisoner kept his hands in his pockets ever since he entered the
court-room," said the sheriff.

"Not continually, I think," said one of the lawyers; and Mr. Gorden
suggested:

"It may be well to put this child's memory to another test." And,
turning to Ella, he asked kindly, "Are you often in Willinotic, little
girl?"

"I was never here until to-day, sir," she answered.

"Do you think you would know my horses if you saw them on the street?"
inquired Mr. Gorden.

"Yes, sir," said Ella, "I am sure I should know them anywhere."

"She will have her match this time, I fancy," said one of the lawyers to
another in a low voice; "of course she is not prepared for the variety
of teams to be seen on our main street."

A great deal of curiosity was felt in regard to this third test of the
womanly little girl's memory, and the court took a recess, lawyers,
judge, Mr. Stiles, and all the school-girls going to the deep balcony
of the court-house.

Ella seemed simply unconscious that the eyes of the whole party centered
upon her as she leaned against the railing, holding her hat in her hand,
while the wind lifted her curls and brought the color back to her pale
cheeks.

There were, indeed, many fine carriages and horses. Ella was closely
observant, but not confused. She did not appear to notice one team more
than another until ten minutes had passed; then the color went out of
her cheeks again, her eyes opened wide, and she exclaimed:

"There they come, sir! up the street--the gray with a sorrel mate. It is
a different carriage, but the very same lap robe. You had it spread over
a white fur one when I saw you."

"Very true," said Mr. Gorden. "Your three tests of memory are
unimpeachable; and now, will you be so kind as to tell us how it happens
that your memory is so much more retentive than that of most children of
your age?"

"I suppose, sir," said Ella, as the others gathered about to listen, "it
is because my father used to teach me that it was rude and useless to
stare long at any person or anything. He said I must train my eye to see
everything at a glance, and we used to amuse ourselves by looking at
pictures in that way. It is just like a game; and one can play at it all
alone, too. I have kept it up because I live alone with my grandma out
on the old turnpike, and I seldom have any one to play with. I only had
one good look at you, sir, but I saw your black eyes, your gray
mustache, and the look in your face that can be stern or can be very
kind."

At this, Squire Gorden's brother lawyers all laughed in concert and the
grave judge smiled, for they all were familiar with the look which the
little girl had so artlessly described.

The thief confessed his crime later.

"I noticed how that blue-eyed girl looked at me that morning at the
school-house," he said, "and I felt, somehow, as though she would know
me if she ever saw me again."

The burglar was sent to prison; and Ella not only was given the gold
eagle she had found, but she also received the reward for identifying
the thief. And she won so many warm and helpful friends that day at the
court-house that her grandmother used often to say: "That was really a
Cinderella coach and pair to you, dear. And you are a matter-of-fact
Cinderella yourself, though you have no fairy godmother, such as she
had."

"But I have you, dear Grandma," said Ella, "and you're worth a dozen
fairy godmothers. So I'm luckier than the other Cinderella, after all!"




[Illustration]

A T-party


    She Twirled upon her Tip-Toes light,
    Tossed back her Tangled Tresses bright,
    And cried "I'm Truly Tired of play,
    I'll have a Tea-party To-day!"
    She set The Table 'neath a Tree,
    With Tempting Tarts,
                and Toast,
                      and Tea.
    Ten Tiny cups upon The Tray,
        Ten plates
          and spoons in Trim array,
    Ten Twinkling Tapers
      Thin and Tall,
    And Then The feast was ready all.
    The Thrushes Trilled and Twittered sweet,
    The Turf was Tender 'neath her feet.
  Her Tidy cap with lace was rimmed
                      Her Tasteful gown was Tucked and Trimmed
  "Now here am I and here's The Treat!" she cried "But who is There
          To eat?
  I'm very Thirsty for my Tea, I Think I'll be The company."

    And sipping now and Tasting Then
    She ate and drank for all The Ten!




WORK AND PLAY FOR YOUNG FOLK.--XVI.

VENETIAN MARQUETRY; OR, A PERFECT IMITATION OF INLAID WOOD-WORK.

BY CHARLES G. LELAND.


There are few persons who have not admired marquetry, or the sort of
mosaic work made by sawing out pieces of wood of different colors and
fitting them into one another. This is effected in three ways. The first
is by simply sawing out squares, diamonds, crosses, or any pattern of
which all the pieces are alike and can be fitted together. The designing
of these is a very interesting exercise. I may briefly say that it can
be done by drawing cross lines at equal distances, like those of a
chess-board, and tracing similarly-sized pieces from them. The Arabs and
Moors excelled in such designing and work.

[Illustration: DESIGN FOR A PATTERN IN ONE COLOR.]

The second kind of marquetry is made with a fret, or "jig," or scroll
saw. One of these may be had for a few cents, but a good equipment for
the work costs from fifty cents up to any price, according to the scale
on which the pupil wishes to work. Any hardware dealer will procure a
complete outfit, and there are now so many books of instruction and of
patterns for the work, that it is hardly necessary for me to explain it
more in detail. In a few words, it consists in taking two pieces of very
thin board, of different colors, fastening the two together, drawing a
pattern on a piece of paper, gumming it on to one surface, and then
sawing the two out. Of course, if it be neatly done, one piece will fit
into the other. Thus, if one be black and the other white, the black
pattern will fit into the white ground, and the white pattern into the
black ground.

The third kind of marquetry is made with veneers, which are sheets of
wood almost as thin as paper, and as the process of making it is rather
difficult for amateurs, I shall not describe it here.

But there is a fourth, and far easier process, called Venetian
Marquetry, which has never, to my knowledge, been fully noticed in
print; though it is so obvious a method that I dare say many have used
it. Much of the old marquetry was made of white wood stained with dyes.
Venetian Marquetry is a very perfect imitation of this, not to be
distinguished from the sawed-out patterns. It is made as follows:

Take a thin panel, or board, of holly or any other nice white or
light-yellow wood. Pine may be used when no other can be had, though it
is, from its softness, the worst for the purpose. Draw a pattern on it.
This may be done by tracing. Then with a knife-wheel, mark out in the
wood the entire outline of your pattern, cutting in to the depth of at
least one tenth of an inch. (A knife-wheel is like a pattern-wheel; that
is, it is a little disk, or flat wheel, not larger than a three-cent
piece, set in a handle; but the edge of a pattern-wheel is like the
rowel of a spur, in sharp points, while that of the knife-wheel, or
cutting-wheel, is thin and sharp. It must be very strongly made.)

Use the utmost care in marking out your pattern with the wheel. If there
are corners too sharp to turn with the wheel, mark them with a thin
penknife. In fact, if you can not obtain a wheel, the whole may be done
with a penknife. The wheel simply makes a more even, continuous line,
and is more convenient to use. When the partial division of the pieces
is effected, paint the pattern with the dyes made for wood. Care should
be taken to apply these very thinly indeed, in small quantity, to let
them dry thoroughly, and then to renew them.

[Illustration: AN EASY PATTERN.]

Warping may be prevented by carefully dampening the back of the panel,
by screwing down the wood, or by keeping it pressed down by a weight
while drying. Perhaps the best way in most cases is to fasten strips
across the back.

Great pains must be taken to prevent the dyes from spreading beyond the
outlines. The only difference between this Venetian work and sawed-out
inlaying lies in this, that the pieces of wood are not quite cut
through. That is all. If they were, it would be real inlaid marquetry.
As dyes were very extensively used to color much of the finest old work,
it will be admitted that the chief difference between this method and
that in which all the pieces are fret-sawn, is that this is by far the
easier. Fret-sawing of two or three veneers is, for a young amateur,
much more difficult than marking out and dyeing a pattern. And it is a
very important consideration that this beautiful art or method may be
employed where a variety of woods and tools are not available. There are
few places where two or three cheap dyes for wood, a piece of white
wood, and a thin penknife can not be obtained. Thus, even common ink
thinned with water will make a slate-colored dye, while several coats
will stain wood jet-black. (When the dyed surface is very dry, rub it
off carefully with soft paper, renew the ink, let it dry, rub off the
surface again, and then oil it.) Umber in coffee will make a brown dye.
But best of all are the dyes sold for the purpose.

The channels, or fine lines cut by the knife, may be carefully closed
with any kind of filler. A good one may be made by very thoroughly
mixing fine varnish and flour, or by rubbing up size with umber or any
other coloring matter.

A great defect in much of the old marquetry was the same fault that the
Englishman found in the autumnal landscape in America, when he said, "It
is very pretty, to be sure, but don't you think it's a trifle gaudy?"
The old artists in wood used as many colors as they could get together;
and amateurs and beginners greatly incline to this. But an artist in
decorative work can produce the best and most vigorous effects with few
colors and large easy patterns.

[Illustration: AN EASY DESIGN FOR A BORDER.]

Very good work may be made by cutting away the wood here and there, and
introducing substances which can not be imitated, such as ivory or
tortoise-shell, metal, jet, or mother-of-pearl. Simple round, diamond,
or square figures give to the whole an appearance of inlaying.

Venetian, or solid, marquetry may be applied with the aid of stencils,
to large surfaces, such as the panels of doors, and dados.

There are few arts, indeed, in which so good effects can be produced
with so little labor and at so little expense as this. Even those who
are unable to design or draw can, with a little thought, arrange simple
patterns in attractive groups. Leaves and fruit, even without shading,
are easily represented.

[Illustration: DESIGN FOR A BOX-LID OR PANEL.]

It is not difficult to learn to engrave, or run lines, on wood. Any one
can learn to do it after a few days' practice. It is done with a small
triangular-pointed tool, such as is used by wood-engravers. These
gravers, of the best quality, cost fifty cents each. The lines of
leaves and flowers, and a hundred other details, look best in marquetry
when they are executed in this manner. I have just been examining a
piece of marquetry two hundred and fifty years old. The inlaying is the
best of the work, and most of it is done in lines so as to give it the
appearance of a colored engraving.

The work, when finished, may be rubbed down and oiled and polished. Or
it can be varnished. Mastic varnish is best for this purpose, but it is
the most difficult of all kinds to apply evenly.

There is still another kind of inlaying which is not included in the
foregoing paper. To make it, take a board of hard, wood, well seasoned,
and lay on it a coat of thick varnish. Take the sawed-out pieces, which
should be of the thinnest tortoise-shell, ivory or wood, and dispose
them on the board. When the first varnish is dry, lay on, for a ground,
varnish very much thickened with flour or color. When this is dry,
repeat it; and so on, until the ground thus made is as high as the
pattern.

When inlaying is done with pieces of stone, it is called mosaic. It will
be observed that in making solid marquetry, all the difficulty is
limited to marking out a pattern on a smooth piece of hard white wood,
and then tracing it carefully with the point of a penknife or with a
cutting-wheel. The whole work is not much harder than cutting out a
picture with the point of a penknife. The dye is more apt to spread
evenly if, in applying it, you first give the surface a thin wash of
water.

It should be remembered that where two lines are run together in
parallels, as for instance, in long stems, the wood lying between is
very apt to break off. This can only be prevented by using the point of
a thin penknife-blade or a very small wheel, with very great care. For
some work a wheel the third of an inch diameter should be used. In cases
where the design is very delicate, the line need be merely scratched
into the wood. Any indenting which will restrain the flow of the dyes,
and indicate a distinct outline is sufficient. Great attention should be
paid to this. Do not expect to make a perfect piece of marquetry at a
first effort.

[Illustration: A SUGGESTION FOR THE DECORATION OF A CHEST IN VENETIAN
MARQUETRY.]

There is a piece of Venetian marquetry in the South Kensington Museum,
London, which was presented by the last Doge of Venice to Sir Richard
Worsely. It last came from Apeldoorcombe, in the Isle of Wight. It is at
present the property of Sir Thomas Winter. The _Court Journal_ said of
it, that even Her Majesty the Queen has not so fine a piece of furniture
in all Windsor Castle. Its date is 1602. My attention was directed to it
by a London merchant who deals solely in marquetry. And by this the
reader may learn that Venetian marquetry is really capable of producing
great artistic results.

[Illustration: A BORDER OR PANEL.]




[Illustration]


    Oh where are you going my dear little maid?
    To the school o' fine arts--if you please, she said
    To learn how to paint on china and glass
    On velvet and satin, silk, linen and brass
    On wood, tin and canvas, on matting and zinc
    Slate, marble and tiles, and leather I think.
    I have already painted a screen and three plaques
    A whole set of dishes and two little racks
    A stand for umbrellas--
    A lovely one too--
    With a ground of sienna--
    And bands of light blue.
    And cat tails, a dozen, so straight and erect
    Growing up all around with artistic effect
    There are other things too--
    Which I can't stop to tell,
    But I think for six lessons
    I've done very well.




[Illustration: "MISS MAMIE SEZ DESE ARE 'HIGHLY CULLUD.'--I'D LIKE TO
KNOW EF DEY'RE ANY MO' HIGHLY CULLUD DAN I AM!"]




[Illustration]

A Lesson in Geography

By M. B. Jordan


    "A Lesson in Geography,
    With all the States to bound!"
    My boys grew sober in a trice,
    And shook their heads and frowned,--
    And this was in the nursery,
    Where only smiles are found.

    Then suddenly up jumped Boy Blue,--
    Youngest of all is he,--
    And stood erect beside my chair.
    "Mamma," he said, "bound me!"
    And all the other lads looked up
    With faces full of glee.

    I gravely touched his curly head;
    "North, by a little pate
    That's 'mixed' in 'mental 'rithmetic,'
    And 'can't get fractions straight.'
    That never knows what time it is,
    Nor where are books or slate.

    "South, by two feet--two restless feet
    That never tire of play,
    But never fail to gladly run
    (Even on a holiday)
    On others' errands willingly,
    In most obliging way.

    "East, by a pocket stuffed and crammed
    With, oh so many things!
    With tops and toys and bits of wood,
    And pennies, knives, and strings,
    And by a little fist that lacks
    The glow that water brings.

    "West by the same; and well explored
    The pocket by the fist.
    The capital, two rosy lips
    All ready to be kissed.
    And,--darling, now I've bounded you;
    The class may be dismissed."




HURLY-BURLY.

(_A Nonsense Rhyme._)

BY EMMA MORTIMER WHITE.


    When the Mother Goose cow jumped over the moon,
      And the little dog laughed to see,
    The horse hurrahed and tossed up his hat,
      And "whistled an air, did he."
    The camel danced the Highland fling,
      And the elephant put on skates,
    While the cat went into the butcher trade
      And charged the highest rates.
    The mackerel rode a circus colt;
      The whale leaped over the trees;
    While the catfish rode on a bicycle,
      That ran itself with ease.
    The tiger went to bed in his boots;
      The lion shot at a mark;
    The eagle banged his hair in front,
      And offered himself to a park.
    The horned owl laughed till he almost cried,
      Then cried till his eyes were dim;
    But the wisest of all was a wise old hen
      Who taught herself to swim.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.


Well, my hearers, how do I find you this time? Getting ready for school,
do you say? Ah, of course! Your Jack knows all about it. The season will
soon begin at the little red school-house, and it will be a joy to see
the bright procession that will go marching by my meadow every morning,
the girls chatting and humming in the cheeriest way, and the boys
all whistling gayly--whether just for the fun of it or to keep up
their courage, I'll not attempt to say. And the dear Little
School-ma'am--bless her!--she'll be in a perfect glow of delight!

It seems to me that the very walls of the school-houses ought to throb
with pride over the wise young heads and the clear, happy voices that
will soon make them echo with sounds of busy work and play. And so
success to you all, my dears, throughout the whole term!


POOR LARK!

It's no longer "Up with the Lark," I hear, for that oft-praised bird
gets up, it seems, altogether too late. An enthusiastic naturalist has
amused himself by investigating the question at what hour in summer the
commonest small birds wake up and sing. He says:--The greenfinch is the
earliest riser, as it pipes as early as half-past one in the morning. At
about half-past two the blackcap begins, and the quail apparently wakes
up half an hour later. It is nearly four o'clock, and the sun is well
above the horizon before the real songster appears in the person of the
blackbird. He is heard half an hour before the thrush, and the chirp of
the robin begins about the same length of time before that of the wren.
Finally the house sparrow and the tom-tit occupy the last place on the
list. This investigation has altogether ruined the lark's reputation for
early rising. That celebrated bird is quite a sluggard, as it does not
rise till long after chaffinches, linnets, and a number of hedgerow
birds have been up and about for some time.

But hold! There's such a thing as overdoing a good habit. Some of these
birds seem to have lost their reckoning. There's the greenfinch, for
instance--the idea of getting up at the ridiculous hour of half-past one
in the morning! If he keeps on, he'll soon have to begin each day on the
day before! No, no! Such early risers as he are not to be imitated. So
we may have to go back to the lark after all. Or there's the tom-tit.
He's a contented, sensible little fellow, and gets up at just the right
time, I should say. Yes, let it be "Up with the tom-tit!" What say you,
my dears?


THOSE MOCKING-BIRDS AGAIN.

                                             TRAVIS COUNTY, TEXAS.

     DEAR JACK: I have been long acquainted with you and ST.
     NICHOLAS. I live about two miles from Austin, the capital city
     of Texas. Birds of all kinds found in Texas may be seen about
     the place at proper seasons. Mocking-birds build their nests in
     the trees within a few yards, or steps, of the house. Last
     July, two young mocking-birds were taken from a nest of five.
     The two young mocking-birds taken from the nest were placed
     carefully in a large-sized cage, and the cage was suspended
     from a hook at the side of the front hall-door. The young birds
     were constantly and regularly fed for two weeks, night and
     morning, by both parent-birds, who hovered about the young ones
     during the day singing and frisking, and upon numerous
     occasions fighting off objectionable intruders and making great
     fluttering and noisy remonstrance when cats, dogs, or chickens
     appeared beneath the cage.

     At the end of two weeks, the young mocking-birds then being
     about able to fly, the cage was taken inside the hall-way, and
     there hung, covered with a mosquito-bar, to protect the little
     prisoners from stinging insects.

     In the hall-way, the old birds could not reach the young to
     feed them, but they would fly in and through the house; this
     they did for several days, and then, apparently, they abandoned
     our locality and their young altogether. As we thought the old
     birds would not return, we again placed the cage outside the
     house, in its first position, but on one occasion we failed to
     entirely cover the cage with the mosquito-bar; and that very
     evening, at the usual feeding-time, about dusk, both old birds
     were seen, for the first time since their departure. Each bird
     had food or poison in its beak, and each was seen feeding it to
     the young birds; and then they flew away and did not return.
     Not suspecting any danger to the young birds, we allowed the
     cage to remain in the same place all night.

     Next morning early, we found one young bird dead in the cage,
     and the other barely alive, reeling and dazed as if under the
     influence of a poisonous weed or narcotic. Within a few hours,
     it too was dead. I am sorry that I lost two very beautiful
     birds; and I think the parent-birds poisoned the young
     captives, as the old birds were not seen by us again. Shall not
     the verdict be "guilty" instead of "not guilty"? Decide the
     question, Dear Jack.

                                    Yours truly,    LOUISE A-----.

No, thank you! You can't persuade me to be the judge in _such_ a case.
For if I should undertake to decide the question of guilt, I'd be sure
to point out the fact that in every instance the poisoned birds were in
cages, not in nests. And then you wise human folk would be sure to
say that that wasn't a fair way of stating the case, or that I was
prejudiced. And perhaps I am. I'm neither a bird nor a human being, you
see; I'm only Jack-in-the-Pulpit. So settle this matter for yourselves.


A LIVING ISLAND.

     DEAR JACK: The alligator is not in any way an attractive
     animal. On the contrary, it is about as repellant in looks and
     disposition as any living creature very well can be. And yet in
     one respect, at least, it is to be envied: It can go through
     life without ever needing a dentist, unless it be to eat him;
     for it never keeps its teeth long enough to give them any
     chance to decay or ache or get out of order in any way. When an
     alligator's tooth is worn out or broken or in need of any kind
     of repair, it drops out, and, behold! a new one is ready to
     take its place. But I hardly need say that the alligator's
     teeth are a joy only to itself.

     Another peculiarity of the alligator is its ability to sleep.
     Like other reptiles, it is so cold-blooded that it likes warmth
     and hates cold. It needs water, too, and as the dry season and
     the cool season come on together in Florida, there is a double
     reason why the Florida alligator should go into winter
     quarters. It buries itself in the mud after the manner of its
     kind and settles down for a long nap.

     Sometimes it happens that grass and quick-growing shrubs spring
     up on the back of this torpid animal. As a rule these are all
     shaken or washed off when, with the first warm rains, the
     alligator rouses itself and makes for the water; but
     occasionally, for some reason, the mud clings and with it the
     plant growth, so that when the half-awakened creature slides
     into the water and floats stupidly off, it looks like a
     floating island.

     In one such instance, a plover was so deceived as to build its
     nest in the plant-growth on the alligator's back. The living
     island so freighted floated slowly down the stream until it was
     noticed by a party of boys who were out fishing. They saw the
     plover rise from the little island, and suspecting a nest to be
     there, they gave up their fishing and rowed out to it.

     They never suspected the nature of the island until they had
     bumped their boat rather rudely into it once or twice, and so
     vexed the alligator that it opened its huge mouth with a
     startling suddenness that brought a chorus of yells from the
     nest-robbers, and sent them off in a fit mood to sympathize
     with the plover, which was fluttering about and crying
     piteously at the raid upon its nest.

     The poor bird was doomed to lose its nest, however, for the
     alligator, having at last been thoroughly roused, discovered
     how hungry it was, and dived down in search of food, thus
     washing off island, nest and all.

                        Yours very truly,         JOHN R. CORYELL.

[Illustration: A LIVING ISLAND.]


WRONG NAMES FOR THINGS.

Dear, dear! Here's a startling list of accusations! If any of you young
wise-acres have made up your minds to write a dictionary when you grow
up, here's a warning for you! Is it possible that there are so many
things in the world that have been wrongly named? Just listen to this
letter from my friend, M. E. L.

    DEAR JACK: It is odd how names mislead. The calla lily is a calla,
    not a lily. The tuberose is not a rose at all. The strawberry and
    the blackberry are not berries. German silver came not from Germany,
    any more than did the Turkish bath from Turkey. French calf and
    Russian leather are both American. There is no wax in sealing-wax,
    and not a bit of bone in all the whalebone in the world. China-ware
    is made in our own country. Pinks are not all pink. Not every one
    called Black is a colored person; and how very many are called Wise
    who are not!

                                  Yours truly,              M. E. L.


WHO CAN ANSWER THIS?

DEAR JACK: Like the Little School-ma'am's friend, Dorothy
G----, I have been reading the "Life of Longfellow," and I
found in it the following extract from his diary, which has
puzzled me:

     "R. at tea. He gave us the following verse for finding on what
     day of the week the first of any month falls:

        'At Dover dwells George Brown, Esquire,
        Good Christopher Finch and Daniel Frier.'"

Now, can you, Dear Jack, or can some of your wise friends tell me how to
discover on what day of the week the first of any month falls, by the
aid of this couplet?

                                     Yours truly,          M. W----.




[Illustration]

THE AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION

SIXTY-FIFTH REPORT.


AGASSIZ AND AUDUBON.

In many respects the characters of these two great naturalists were
alike,--and especially in their affectionate gentleness and mercy.
Although, in the interests of science, both were led to destroy the
lives of many animals, no men were more careful to avoid needless
slaughter and unnecessary pain. It was Audubon who said, "_The moment a
bird was dead, however beautiful it had been when in life, the pleasure
arising from the possession of it became blunted._" This saying has
become the motto of a large and rapidly growing society, organized in
1886, and known as the AUDUBON SOCIETY, for the protection of birds.
This society, recognizing the increasing influence of the AGASSIZ
ASSOCIATION, has sent to us a special invitation to co-operate in its
work. The circular of the AUDUBON SOCIETY shows, first, the alarming
rate at which our birds are being exterminated. It gives a series of
startling facts; for example, "One New York firm had on hand, February
1, 1886, 200,000 skins," and it closes this paragraph as follows: "These
figures tell their own story; but it is a story which might be known
even without them; we may read it plainly enough in the silent hedges,
once vocal with the morning songs of birds, and in the deserted fields,
where once bright plumage flashed in the sunlight."

The purpose of the Society is to prevent, as far as possible,

1. The killing of any wild bird not used for food.

2. The taking or destroying of the eggs or nests of any wild birds.

3. The wearing of the feathers of wild birds.

THE plan of work is very simple.

There are no expenses of any sort whatever. There are no conditions of
age. No formal organization is required. Each one can join by agreeing
to any one of the three following pledges:

PLEDGE NO. 1.--I pledge myself not to kill, wound, nor capture any wild
bird not used for food so long as I remain a member of the Audubon
Society; and I promise to discourage and prevent, so far as I can, the
killing, wounding or capture of birds by others.

PLEDGE NO. 2.--I pledge myself not to rob, destroy nor in any way
disturb or injure the nest or eggs of any wild bird so long as I remain
a member of the Audubon Society; and I promise to discourage and
prevent, so far as I can, such injury by others.

PLEDGE NO. 3.--I pledge myself not to make use of the feathers of any
wild bird as ornaments of dress or household furniture, and by every
means in my power to discourage the use of feathers for decorative
purposes.

These pledges are not to be understood as hindering the signer from
taking such birds, eggs or nests as he may require for _scientific
purposes_, but refer only to wanton or mercenary destruction and
robbery. Therefore no member of the AGASSIZ ASSOCIATION can feel any
hesitation about allying himself also with the AUDUBON SOCIETY. Boys and
girls can often do more than others to protect nesting birds.


FROM MEXICO.

We are in the State Michoacan, the Garden State of the Republic, with
thirty or forty thousand inhabitants. It is a pleasant place to live in;
seven thousand feet above the sea; fine air, good water, and very
healthy. The corridors of the house are inhabited by a colony of birds.
The female looks like the female English sparrow. The male has a scarlet
breast and cap. The egg is robin-blue, with a ring of black spots around
the larger end. It is called the _Gorriones_. The buzzard is very common
here. On a trip we took, we saw the fine Mocha coffee growing, and some
of the cities could not be seen on account of the banana plants which
shade the coffee. Here we have all the familiar wild flowers, and many
strange ones. I belong to an Ohio Chapter of the A. A.--G. A. Harriman.


ASSEMBLY REPORT.

We hope to receive regular annual reports from all assemblies of the A.
A., as well as from the individual Chapters, and have the pleasure this
month, of giving the following from the Assembly of Essex County, N. J.
"The first call for an Assembly meeting was sent out by East Orange, B.
Four Chapters only responded. We decided to have five delegates from
each Chapter. We have meetings on the last Saturday evening of every
other month, from September to June; five meetings for the year. We have
reports of progress from the associate Chapters, papers by members,
discussions of methods of work, and occasional addresses. We have had
many difficulties to contend with, but feel that our meetings have been
pleasant and helpful, and should say from our experience thus far, by
all means encourage the formation of Assemblies.

                    Very sincerely yours,                N. M. DORR.


BOSTON ASSEMBLY.

Chapters 112, 729, 760, and 820 of Boston, Mass., have united for the
purpose of forming a Boston Assembly.

All Chapters, in or near Boston, that would like to join, are invited to
address

                           MR. THOMAS H. FAY, Sec. of Committee,
                                    8 N. Grove street, Boston, Mass.


DELAYED REPORTS.

551, _Clinton, Iowa_. We have over three hundred specimens, and a small
library. We have been studying turtles, and have noticed that the eye of
a turtle shuts from the bottom. We now intend to take up fishes, and as
the Mississippi river is within one block of our rooms, we shall not
lack specimens. We have held thirty-eight meetings, and cases of absence
are rare.--Henry Towle, Sec.

567, _Fort Meade, Florida_.--Our Chapter of five, all of our own family,
left Iowa, September 25, 1884. We came down the Skunk river to the
Mississippi, thence to New Orleans, thence to Tampa, and are now living
nine miles southeast from Fort Meade. We left Sigourney, Iowa, in the
Ena, a Racine boat, eighteen feet long, forty-two inches beam, with
water-tight compartments. We had tent and camping outfit which we
carried in another boat. Our party consisted of the five members of the
Chapter, and a baby, one year old. We reached New Orleans Thursday,
December 4, just ten weeks from our time of starting. This includes
stops at all the principal towns. Our actual running time was 397 hours.
Distance, 1812 miles; average, 4.53 miles per hour; least daily
distance, five miles; greatest, sixty-five. The first cotton was seen at
New Madrid, Mo.; the first cane, below Grady's Landing; first Spanish
moss, just below Greenville, Miss.

After being here a year, three of our number made another long
excursion. Tuesday, December 1, 1885, we put our boat into Peace creek,
thence to Charlotte Harbor, up the Caloosahatchie, through lakes Fliet
and Hicapochee, into lake Okeechobee; across the northern end of the
lake, into the Kissimee river, up to Kissimee lake, then up Tiger creek
into Tiger lake, whence we walked thirty-five miles home, making in the
round, 700 miles, in six weeks. Once we were over seven days without
seeing a soul outside our own party. One of our lady members claims the
honor of being the first white woman that ever crossed Okeechobee in a
small boat. In all these travels, we have never been disturbed by man or
beast, and have always been treated kindly. The Okeechobee trip was made
at an expense of twelve dollars for three of us. The trip down the
Mississippi cost about one dollar per day for the six. This, of course,
does not include cost of boats, tents, and equipage. We found it a
pleasant method of travel, and many of the A. A. might enjoy something
similar. My wife and two daughters made the trip, so it is within the
range of young lady members, if they have a taste for such
travels.--Irving Keck, Sec. "567."

568, _Meadville, Pa._ We number now only four, the others having left
college; but what we lack in number is made up in zeal. We study nature
with a great deal more care than when we first formed a Chapter, and
have spent some of our most enjoyable hours in rambling though the
woods.

We send greeting to the Chapters, and say, "Long live the A. A., as one
of the best schools in which any one can learn."--F. L. Armstrong, Sec.

574, _Indianapolis, Ind._ The future looks bright. We are all
interested, and, although very lately reorganized, we hope to grow
rapidly.--Tom Moore, Sec.


CONCERNING "PUFF-BALLS."

    All our botanical friends will be interested in the following paper
    on the curious fungi commonly called "puff-balls"; but I must
    emphasize the words of caution given by Professor Trelease and warn
    you not to eat any puff-balls whatever, until you have been taught
    to distinguish the good from the poisonous, by a competent botanist,
    with the actual specimens in his hand. So long as you have the
    slightest doubt, remember the old test--"Eat one,--then if you live,
    it was an edible mushroom; if you die, it was a poisonous fungus!"
    Here is what Professor Trelease says:

I have been asked several times by the boys of the Agassiz Association
to go with them on little collecting excursions, and I have always found
them much interested in toadstools, and other fungi. From what I have
seen on these and similar excursions, I have been led to think that if
given a little idea about some of these plants a good many people would
be glad to observe them more closely.

One group of fungi in particular--the puff-balls--has a great deal of
interest for me. It is a very difficult group to study, and if the
sharp-eyed boys of the Agassiz Chapters all over the country will be on
the lookout for puff-balls this summer and fall, they can be of
assistance in some work that there is much need of doing with these
plants.

Every boy who lives in the country must have seen the giant puff-ball
(_Lycoperdon bovista_) that grows in pastures, looking like a great
white egg, sometimes nearly two feet high, set up on its small end. It
is not easy to see where these curious growths come from, for they
sometimes appear as large as one's fist, or larger, in the morning, in
places where there was nothing of the sort the night before. Then they
often grow for several days, and finally turn brown and break up into a
dusty mass that at last blows away like smoke, leaving nothing but a
dried, torn remnant behind.

When one of these large puff-balls is seen, scrape the dirt away
carefully about it, and the secret of its appearance will be discovered;
for a mass of fine white threads spread away from it in every direction.
This spawn takes the place of the roots of a tree, absorbing food from
the decaying leaf mold, or whatever there may be of the same nature in
the ground. All of its food is obtained in this way; so that the
delicate spawn-threads may spend a long time in feeding and storing up
food before they give any evidence of their existence. But at last a
puff-ball begins to grow; at first, very small, then larger, but never
very large, until a rain may give it the opportunity to break through
the sod, and then, swelling up rather than growing, it suddenly makes
its appearance.

While they are young, firm, and pure white, when cut open, these large
puff-balls are very good eating, sliced, seasoned well, and fried in
butter, and especially if dipped in egg and cracker crumbs. But I must
caution my readers to leave other fungi alone, even if they think the
specimens they find are mushrooms, _for some of the fungi that look a
good deal like mushrooms are extremely poisonous_. Even a puff-ball soon
loses its value for food, and should never be eaten after it becomes the
least discolored, or offensive in smell. When this change occurs, it
seems as if the plant was rapidly going to decay; but this is not the
case,--it is simply ripening. For a puff-ball is nothing more nor less
than the fruit of the underground mycelium, or spawn; and the dusty mass
that it dries into is composed of myriads of spores, which take the
place of the seeds of flowering plants. How many puff-balls there would
be if every one of these microscopic spores developed! In a puff-ball
sixteen inches in diameter, if they occupy only one-third of the space,
there are no less than 300,000,000,000,000,000 spores,--an inconceivable
number. I do not know why it is, but these spores do not germinate
readily, and very few of them produce other plants. Perhaps it is quite
as well, as, if they all grew, there would be room for no other kind of
vegetation.

Another very good edible puff-ball is the little lead-colored species
(_Bovista plumbea_), about as large as a marble, that is very common in
hilly pastures. When it is young and white, it is even more delicious
than the large species. With these I think I should let my bill-of-fare
rest.

A few other common puff-balls are the exquisite earth-stars (_Geaster_),
that are commonest in sandy places and under evergreens; the studded
puff-ball (_Lycoperdon gemmatum_), very abundant on the ground in woods;
the fleecy white puff-ball (_L. Wrightii_) that grows along paths in
meadows; and the pear-shaped puff-ball (_L. pyriforme_), found
everywhere on old logs, in tufts that are united by firm white cords.

These plants will make an interesting addition to the cabinet of a
Chapter that will take the trouble to look for them and preserve them
properly. They ought to be gathered in two states,--just before they
open to discharge their spores, and when perfectly ripe. They must not
be handled so as to rub off the mealy or warty covering that some have,
and should be carefully taken home in a basket and laid in a good warm
place to dry. Some of the larger species soften and become so offensive
when first beginning to ripen that they may appear to be spoiled; but if
put in an out-of-the-way place, where they will annoy nobody, they
usually come out all right. When fully dry they should be laid in
pasteboard trays or boxes, properly labeled, and put into the cabinet.

I shall be very glad to name puff-balls for members of the Agassiz
Association as far as I can. Specimens sent for identification must be
dried, carefully wrapped in tissue-paper, and packed with cotton or soft
paper in a tin or wooden box, addressed to me as below. Each specimen
sent should be marked with a number corresponding to that of the
duplicate kept for the Chapter cabinet, so that my names may be given
with reference to the numbers. If any specimens are to be returned, this
should be indicated in the letter accompanying them, and the proper
amount of return postage included.

                                               WILLIAM TRELEASE,
                               Shaw School of Botany, St. Louis, Mo.

[Illustration: 1. FLEECY WHITE PUFF-BALL. 2. BEECH EARTH STAR. 3.
LEAD-COLORED PUFF-BALL. 4. STUDDED PUFF-BALL. 5. PEAR-SHAPED PUFF-BALL.]


NOTES.

_Frogs' Eggs._ I think I can tell Mrs. N. B. Jones (see April number)
what her "jelly-like mass" was. Last spring our boys brought home
similar masses, some globular, some in strings. We put them in water in
a sunny place. In less than a week we had tiny tadpoles swimming about.
Unfortunately the curiosity concerning them was so great that they were
continually lifted from the water, and after a few weeks all died. We
thought the eggs must have been frogs' eggs, but we had two or three
varieties. I hope to repeat the experiment, and continue it long enough
to see exactly what animal will develop.--Mrs. J. C. Kinear, Sec. Ch.
598.

_Mocking-bird._ One or two subscribers have stated through
"Jack-in-the-Pulpit," that the mocking-bird, (_mimus polyglottus_) is
not guilty of poisoning its young; but I have positively seen it done.
The birds will feed their young for a while and when they find that it
is impossible to get at them through the wires of the cage, they bring a
poisonous red berry, which the young eat. I can furnish the signatures
of six or eight persons who have seen this with their own eyes.--P. L.
Benedict, Sec. 331.

     [_This establishes the fact that mocking-birds have brought
     berries believed to be poisonous, to their young. But it is
     unsafe, as I have before shown, to infer the bird's motives
     from its acts. We can not know that the bird changed the diet
     of its young "because it could not get at them," nor do we know
     that it knew the deadly nature of the berries. A jury could not
     convict of murder._]

_Devil-fish._--_And Ostriches._ Last summer we saw a devil-fish of the
ray family, genus _Cephaloptera_. It had something like great wings on
its sides. These were called pectorals. From tip to tip across these it
was sixteen feet, four inches, and from head to junction of tail, eight
feet six inches. Its tail was about two feet long, and not more than an
inch in thickness. A flour-barrel was put in its mouth.

We had also, fortunately, an opportunity of seeing thirty-six live
ostriches. They belonged to Dr. Sketcherly, who bought them in Port
Natal, and was taking them to his ostrich farm in Los Angeles,
California. We noticed that the males were all black, with white tail
and wing-feathers, and pink bills; while the females were gray, with
white tail and wings like the males, and black bills, which were
triangular, with one end rounded off, and not duck-bill shaped, as I
have read. Their legs resemble those of a horse, only they have two
toes. Their eyes were large, dark, and mild. Two males were said to be
very dangerous. A whole turnip was picked up and swallowed by one of
them, and it was quite surprising to see it gradually turning from the
front of his neck around to the back portion of it, and finally
disappear suddenly into his back between the wings, where the craw was
said to be situated. Five natives were in attendance. Their features
were regular, and their complexion dark brown; they had straight, black
hair. One of them spoke English.--Mrs. E. E. Walden, Galveston, Texas.

_Buttercups._ I have noticed that buttercups often make a mistake and
grow six petals, instead of five.--C.

     [_Such variations are common. I have seen trilliums with four
     parts throughout; Houstonias, with five and six divisions; and
     Hepaticas completely double, like tiny roses._]

_Bees._ A simple remedy for honey thieves. A gentleman who owns a bee
farm discovered a large swarm of bees stealing honey from one of his
smallest hives. The latter, because of their inferior numbers, were
unable to protect their stores, and he tried various methods to aid
them.

One day, at the suggestion of a friend, he laid a branch of asparagus
before the entrance, completely concealing it from the eyes of the
marauding bees, which flew wildly around, searching in vain for the
opening, while the occupants of the hive, having made their exit through
the asparagus, knew what lay behind it, and afterward stored their honey
unmolested.--Agnes Lydon, Sec. Milwaukee Chapter E.


MINUTES OF A GOOD MEETING.

"Meeting called to order at 1.10 P. M. For the benefit of new members,
an explanation of the organization of the Chapter (No. 331) was given,
also of the origin of the A. A. The hand-book of the A.A. was then
reviewed, each topic taken up and explained, portions of the
constitution, by-laws, etc., being read. Next came the report of the
secretary. Next, that of the treasurer. The question, 'Ought the English
sparrow in this country to be considered an American bird?' was decided
in the affirmative. Then came the election of new members. Three were
elected. The revised copy of by-laws was then signed by all present.
Secretary then read extracts from the A. A. columns of ST. NICHOLAS, and
explained about 'centuries.' He also read from the reports of other
Chapters. A motion was then made that some one member bring in at each
meeting an essay. Secretary then read annual report to be sent to Lenox.
Approved. The next step was the paying of initiation fees by the new
members. The treasurer was authorized to send to Lenox for a 'charter.'
The questions in ornithology in December ST. NICHOLAS, and the answers
to same in March number, by Percy L. Benedict, Sec. 331, were read by
the Vice-President. Next came a chemical experiment on the nature of
flame,--the three cones, luminous, semi-luminous, non-luminous. A bent
glass tube was thrust into the non-luminous cone and lighted at the
other end,--a proof that the gas around the wick was not ignited."

Question for next meeting, "Which is the most useful animal?" Meeting
adjourned at 2.50 P. M.--Percy L. Benedict, Secretary.


                                                       KIOTO, JAPAN.

I was unfortunate enough, last March, to have all my letters,
letter-book, hand-books, and other matter relating to the A. A. as
secretary of Chapter 789, burn, together with everything else in my
house, and the house itself. I have thus lost the addresses of some
persons who had written to this Chapter. I mention this only to explain
to those who might otherwise have occasion to think this Chapter
negligent, the reason we can not answer them, unless they will have
the kindness to write again.--C. M. Cady.

    _Every member of the A. A. will regret to hear of the misfortune
    that befell Mr. Cady in the burning of his house. Doubtless those
    members who had written to the Japan Chapter will now write again._


EXCHANGES.

Every collector is invited to send for my exchange list.--S. O. Pindar,
Hickman, Ky.

I wish to correspond with all Chapters intending to raise silk-worms
next year.--Chas. A. Jenkins, Sec. Ch. 447, Chittenango, N. Y.

Mr. L. L. Goodwin, Daisy, Tenn., will exchange fragments of ancient
pottery, arrow-heads, stone axes, and tomahawks--genuine and scarce;
write first. I specially desire a large star-fish, entire jaws of a
shark, a large lobster, and jaws and teeth of sea-fishes.


CHAPTERS, NEW AND REORGANIZED.

   _No._    _Name._              _No. of_     _Address._
                                _Members._
    972  Anadarko, Ind. Ter. (A)    --  Charley A. Reynolds.
    234  New York, N. Y. (G)         4  Miss Isabella Roelker, 237 W.
                                          51st Street.
     63  East Dennis, Mass. (A)     20  Harry E. Scars.
    535  Hallowell, Maine (A)        4  Miss M. Lillian Hopkins.
     40  Sauquoit, N. Y. (A)        12  Miss H. Josephine Campbell.
    156  Peoria, Ill. (A)            5  W. T. Van Buskirk, 111 Penn.
                                          Ave.
    973  Ludington, Mich. (B)       13  Miss Emma Gaudette.
    592  New York, N. Y. (P)         4  Miss Cecilia A. Francis, 54 W.
                                          58th Street.
    974  Richmond, Va. (C)           4  Miss Rebekah N. Woodbridge, 8 E.
                                          Franklin St.
    193  Providence, R. I. (A)       5  Harry I. Griffin, 110 Carpenter
                                          Street.
    250  Houghton, Mich. (A)        36  Morton C. Getchell.
     16  Kerr City, Florida (A)      6  Miss Emma Hammond.
    165  Norwalk, Ct. (A)            6  Mr. A. Quintard.
    705  Philadelphia, Pa. (Y)      --  Miss Edith Earpe, 641 N. 43d
                                          Street.
    723 Hopkinton, Mass. (A)         5  Geo. W. Chandler.
    841 Montclair, N. J. (B)         4  Mr. Wm. Hollins, Box 277.

DISSOLVED.

    458  Haverhill, Mass.               F. H. Chase.
    620  Manlius, N. Y.                 Geo. C. Beebe.
    900  San Francisco, Cal.            H. H. Loy.


NOTICE.

Secretaries of Chapters 701-800 are requested to send in their reports
as near _Sept. 20_ as possible.

All are invited to join the Association.

               Address all communications for this Department to
                                 MR. HARLAN H. BALLARD, Lenox, Mass.




THE LETTER-BOX.

    Contributors are respectfully informed that, between the 1st of
    June and the 15th of September, manuscripts can not conveniently
    be examined at the office of ST. NICHOLAS. Consequently, those
    who desire to favor the magazine with contributions will please
    postpone sending their MSS. until after the last-named date.

       *       *       *       *       *

                                                   WASHINGTON, D. C.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: This is the first letter I have ever written you.
I like your stories very much; the best one of this year, I think,
is "Little Lord Fauntleroy." Only I did not like to have the new Lord
Fauntleroy coming in to take his place. I hope Mrs. Burnett will have
the Earl buy the new Lord Fauntleroy out.

                                Your interested reader,     MARY G--

       *       *       *       *       *


                                     CLIFTON, NEAR BRISTOL, ENGLAND.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: We are an English family with big and little members
in it. Whenever ST. NICHOLAS comes there is a great rush for it. We
think it much better than any of our English magazines. We live near the
Suspension Bridge, which is 254 feet above the river. Our horses eat
sugar, apples, and salt out of our hands. One is called Howard, the
other, Chester. We hardly ever get any ice here, and very little snow.
We think that "Little Lord Fauntleroy" is a real good story; it is very
like English life. We enjoy the letters from the little American boys
and girls very much. Please print this letter, as it comes a long
way--from England. I am a big member writing for the rest of our family.

                  Always your faithful readers,   THE SPARKE FAMILY.

       *       *       *       *       *


    B: The story you name is founded on an actual tricycle journey by a
    group of friends.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                 "CORTLANDT," OMAHA.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I have never seen any letters from Omaha, in your
delightful pages, so I think I must write, and hope you will print this
letter. My mother and I think that "Little Lord Fauntleroy" is the most
beautiful story we have ever read, and we have persuaded my father to
read it, and he enjoyed it as much as we. My mother thinks Cedric will
die before the end, but I hope not. I do not go to school, but I take
French lessons of such a jolly little American "Mademoiselle!" Would it
not be fun for a certain number of boy and girl readers of ST. NICHOLAS
to send a list of five or ten of their favorite books and the authors'
names to you, and be printed! I hope this letter is not too long to
print.

                               Your loving friend,      MENIE C. W--

       *       *       *       *       *


                                         CHRIST-CHURCH, NEW ZEALAND.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I thought you would like to get a letter from New
Zealand, as I don't think you have had one from such a long way. We have
had your magazine for two years, and we all like you very much and look
forward to getting you from the booksellers every month; and I am afraid
we sometimes squabble over it, as we are three children and we all want
it at once. Margaret, my eldest sister, generally gets it first because
she can cut it best. We have a nice pony, and we call him Joe, or
Joseph, because he is a piebald and has a coat of many colors. The
rabbits are so bad in New Zealand that we have to keep ferrets to kill
them. Father has a station, or sheep-run, with 28,000 sheep, and we are
afraid of the rabbits overrunning it and eating up the grass, so father
says I must bring up all my young kittens to be turned out on the run
to kill the rabbits. We went to England when I was four, and I liked it
very much, and was so pleased to see Granny and the aunties; but, oh,
dear, the voyage made me so sick! Now, dear ST. NICHOLAS, I hope you
will find room to put this in your magazine some day. Good-bye.

                             Your devoted reader,    ADINE ACTON A--

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                              PARIS.

MY DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am a little American girl, but I am in Europe
now, with my mother. We were in London the other day, and I went to
Madame Tussaud's wax-works. The figures are, perhaps, better than those
of the "Eden Musée," but the likenesses are simply miserable, especially
Washington's, which resembles "Bunthorne," in "Patience"; and Lincoln,
who was a much taller man than the late General Grant, was represented
as a much smaller one.

                                    Your very loving     PAQUERELLE.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                           NEW YORK.

DEAR OLD ST. NICHOLAS: This is the first time I have ever written to
you, although I have taken you for thirteen years,--ever since you were
published,--and have quite often thought of doing it. I am only a New
York girl, and can not write you about lovely scenery and stirring
events like the girls and boys who live at a distance, but can only say
again and again how dearly I love you, and how eagerly I look for you
every month.

I have enjoyed the series "From Bach to Wagner" _so_ much, as I am very
fond of music and take violin lessons. I like "Little Lord Fauntleroy"
better than any story you have had in a long time,--but Mrs. Burnett is
always delightful,--and it makes it so nice to have it illustrated by
Mr. Birch, whose drawings I admire greatly. I hope you will not find
this letter too long to print or consider me too old to be one of your
admirers, as I am not yet seventeen. I do not belong to the A. A., much
to my regret. I used to be a member of the "Town and Country Club," but
had to give it up for want of time. Good-bye, dear ST. NICK, and believe
me,

                                Affectionately yours,      AMETHYST.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                       PORTLAND, OR.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I have been taking you for nearly three years, and
think you are very nice. I think "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and the
"Brownies" are splendid. I like to read the Letter-Box. I am eight years
old and have lived in Portland nearly five years; and I go to see my
grandpa in the East sometimes. I have crossed the continent five times,
and, my Mamma says, have spent about five weeks of my life in a
sleeping-car.

                                         Yours truly,   LOUISE K. S.

       *       *       *       *       *


                             16 CARLTON ROAD, FITZHUGH, SOUTHAMPTON.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: We are very fond of you; we jump for joy when you
come each month. We have taken you for two years in Buenos Ayres; now we
are living in England, but in a little while we are going to Geneva; but
wherever we are, we hope to see you. Our favorite stories are: "His One
Fault," "Oh, Dear," "The Brownies," "Little Lord Fauntleroy." Mother
likes "Personally Conducted." This is the first letter we have written;
we should like to see it printed.

                    Your little friends,   BELLA, WILLIE, AND MIDGE.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                    LIVERPOOL, N. Y.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am a little girl nine years old. I have a little
sister and a baby brother. My little sister Enid thinks the "Brownies"
going to the "surtus" is the best. I think "Little Lord Fauntleroy" is
very nice. We have a big mastiff dog named Zippo. He weighs one hundred
and forty pounds. He came from England when he was eighteen months old.
He was raised by an earl. Perhaps it was Little Lord Fauntleroy's
grandfather. I hope you will print this in your Letter-Box.

                                   Your Constant Reader,   BESSIE C.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                   WASHINGTON, D. C.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: We have neither of us ever written to you before, but
now we want to tell you something. We were seated at our desks in
school, when the door opened and the principal entered, followed by four
great Indians. None but the interpreter could speak English. They were
dressed in citizens' clothes, so were not so interesting as they might
have been. The next day several of us sent our albums to them, and the
interpreter wrote the names of each, and then he whose name was signed,
made his own cross underneath. Three of their names are:

  "Young Prophet."
  "Stiff Wing."
  "Young Bear."

                            Your devoted readers,    ED. AND KITTIE.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                       PHILADELPHIA.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: My age is twelve years, and I am so fond of my
mother; so I must tell you how much we are all pleased with "Little Lord
Fauntleroy" and his "Dearest" mother.

My father is an Englishman, but we live in this country; we all love the
Queen, and we have a very high regard for the President and this
Government.

My father has been a great fisherman, and has fished in many waters in
this country; one time he caught a large pickerel, and the boy that was
rowing the boat had no shoes on, so when the large fish was drawn in the
boat it had its mouth wide open, and it slid to the boy's foot and came
near decapitating his big toe. Another time he hooked a large rock fish,
and it pulled him in the river, out of the boat, and he came near
drowning.

We all love the ST. NICHOLAS, for the many, many pretty stories you give
us. Now, "Dearest" No. 2, I will say good-bye.

                                                    JAMES LARDNER H.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                         BANGOR, ME.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am reading the story of "Little Lord Fauntleroy,"
and I like it very much. I do not like the grandpa very much; yet I
think when the grandpa sees Lord Fauntleroy's mother, he will like her,
and have her come up and live with them. From your friend,

                                                            L. C. B.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                     LOUISVILLE, KY.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I often thought I would like to send you some of my
poetry, and will inclose a piece that I composed last September, while
sailing my boat at Barnegat. I am eleven years old, and have been
writing poetry and stories for several years. I would be so much pleased
to see this letter and poem printed in ST. NICHOLAS, and if you do not
like this poetry I could send you other pieces called "The Frisky Calf,"
"Blacksmith's Song," "Rivuletta," etc. Good-bye, dear ST. NICHOLAS.

                                           Yours truly,  ELLEN N. L.

    THE FATHOMLESS DEEP.

    Ships have gone down, and bags of gold,
    And copper and silver and riches untold
    Lie on the bottom of the fathomless deep,
    Where so many souls have gone to sleep.

    Ships have gone down with lively crews,
    And there is no one to tell the sad news
    About how many souls unwillingly sleep
    On the bottom of the fathomless deep.

    Lobsters and crabs and fishes all,
    From the big whale down to the minnow small,
    And porpoises frolic and jump and leap
    In the waters of the fathomless deep.

    The waves break with a rush and roar
    Upon the sands, as they did of yore;
    And often and often people weep
    For the souls that have died in the fathomless deep.

    Sailors sail on the ocean green,
    And will continue to do so, I ween;
    For they wont take warning from the souls that sleep
    On the bottom of the fathomless deep.

  BARNEGAT CITY, N. J., Sept. 11, 1885.

       *       *       *       *       *


    "A JEWEL":--Your little story is very clever, as the work of a girl
    of your age, and we should gladly print it in the Letter-Box if
    there were space for it. But we are sorry to say that we can not
    possibly make room for the story in our already over-crowded
    columns.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                      PARIS, FRANCE.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am an American boy, living in Paris; I do not like
it much here. I have been to the Louvre several times since I have been
here, and the delightful "Stories of Art and Artists" have a double
interest, for when I go to the Louvre I can look for the works of
artists mentioned in those stories. I have seen the picture of Mme. le
Brun and her daughter there, and it is beautiful. I have seen also a
good many of David's. I am eleven years old, and have two sisters and
one brother, all younger than myself, and we all wait for you with
impatience. I have taken you now for three years, and to part with you
would be like parting with an old friend.

"Little Lord Fauntleroy" is the nicest next to "Art and Artists," I
think. I go to a school with over eleven hundred boys. I leave the house
at ten minutes of eight, in the morning, and I do not get home until six
at night.

I hope you will print this, as it is my first letter. Now, with much
love to you and the Little School-ma'am, I remain,

                                 Your constant reader,      J. H. T.

       *       *       *       *       *


    In the article in our last number, entitled "A Royal Fish," the
    author stated that in this country a salmon weighing fifty pounds
    was considered a very large one. But a correspondent now sends us
    the following item describing a salmon which weighed seventy-two
    pounds. No salmon of this weight, however, has ever been caught
    _with a rod_ on the American side of the ocean. Here is the item:

"Crowds of well-dressed people, men and women, went to Fulton Market
yesterday and looked at an enormous salmon which was on exhibition. Mr.
Blackford, to whom it belonged, had put a row of big strawberries along
its back and stuffed green moss into its capacious mouth. The fish came
from the Dalles, a noted fishing place on the Columbia River, Oregon. It
measured fifty-two inches from its nose to the tip of its tail, was
twelve inches broad, and weighed seventy-two pounds. It was caught in a
net."

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                      BALATON FURED.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I like you very much and most of all Sophie Swett
and Frank Stockton and Miss Alcott and Mary Mapes Dodge. I am a little
English girl, and I live in Hungary. We are going away in the spring,
and father has gone already.

                         Your loving reader,         KATHLEEN YOUNG.

       *       *       *       *       *


    BALATON FURED, HUNGARY.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I feel I must add a few lines to my little daughter's
note, to tell you that, as she is suffering from spinal complaint, she
is obliged always to lie on her back; so to her--cut off from so many of
the pleasures of stronger children--you are doubly welcome. Indeed, we
all are very partial to you; your magazine has the distinction of being
the most shabby book on our book-shelves. In our home, as no doubt in
hundreds of others, you are a household word. Kathleen begs you, if you
have room, to print her letter. With every good wish, very truly yours,

                                                        MARIA YOUNG.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                   WASHINGTON, D. C.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am eleven years old, and have been taking you for
several years. I like you better than any other magazine. I have a
brother twenty-one months younger than I am, and we look very much
alike, and wear the same kind of clothes. He said he had a dream the
other night, which he thought was very funny. He dreamed we were playing
near the State Department, and a man told him not to get on the grass or
he would whip him. After a while he dreamed that I came along and got on
the grass, when the man caught me and whipped me by mistake, thinking I
was my brother.

He thought the dream was very funny, but I did not see the fun in it.

                             Yours affectionately,        CHARLES C.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                      WASIOJA, MINN.

DEAR OLD SAINT: Although my brothers and I have taken you for nearly ten
years, this is the first letter I have written you.

I want to thank you for Mr. Stockton's valuable "Personally Conducted"
series, and also for Mr. Scudder's "George Washington." Mr. Stockton's
"Personally Conducted" makes me feel as if I had visited the places he
describes.

I am, and always shall be, an interested reader.

                                                         FRED. J. S.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                    GARDINER, MAINE.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I have been your constant reader since I was a very
little girl, and you are still my favorite magazine, although I read
many others. Last summer I tried a string house, but not as you
described, for it is impossible to make morning-glories grow under a
tree, as they need a great deal of sun. My house was shaped like a tent,
with sloping sides, and outside of the morning-glories I planted a
border of nasturtiums, but although I began it early, planted the seeds
very thick, and took the greatest pains with it, it did not succeed, and
I don't think I shall try it again, as the season here is probably too
short. But I should advise any one who intends making a string house not
to make it under a tree, but on a frame in the open ground. I think it
is a great pity you don't come more than once a month (and I am sure all
the rest of your readers will agree with me), I am so much interested in
Mrs. Burnett's "Little Lord Fauntleroy." I hope you will have another
paper on "Historic Girls" soon. I have no pets, as a great many of your
readers seem to have, except a very small aquarium, but have in place of
them three collections, which I have collected almost entirely myself,
and am much interested in. The first, and most interesting to me, is one
of birds' eggs, the second, moths, insects, and butterflies, and, last
but not least, a small collection of minerals. I hope you will find room
to print this, but I suppose it is hard to choose among all the letters
that must be sent to you.

                                    Your constant reader,     AMY R.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                         HONOLULU, SANDWICH ISLANDS.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I have never written you a letter before, but when I
was looking over the letters in the ST. NICHOLAS (for which I have
lately become a subscriber) I didn't see any letter from Honolulu, so I
thought I would write you one about the volcano in Hawaii, which you
know is one of the Hawaiian Islands. Well, about three weeks ago we
heard that the bottom of the volcano had fallen in. We were afraid that
we would have some severe earthquakes or, perhaps, a tidal wave; some
thought the Islands might all sink, but nothing of the kind has
occurred. Mr. S----, a photographer, was the first to see it; he had
been let down by ropes, and was standing on a ledge taking photographs
of the crater. The volcano was unusually active. He took the
photographs, and just as he was taking one he saw the whole thing caving
in. First the bottom fell out and then the sides fell in, and down it
all went, leaving nothing but a bottomless hole. No sooner was he hauled
up than the ledge on which he had been standing fell in.

                                Yours truly,                HENRY W.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                  NEW GLASGOW, N. S.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I have taken you for ten years. We stopped for one
year, and we could not do without you, so we have commenced again. I
think "Little Lord Fauntleroy" is a beautiful story. I have never seen
a letter from this province before. I hope to see my letter in print.
Your constant reader,

                                                        BESSIE G. T.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                                        ATLANTA, GA.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am a little boy from the South, and have only gone
to school a few months; but as my mamma says I must some day be a
Governor, and my grandma expects me to be a President, I will commence
with ST. NICHOLAS. I will be satisfied if I am ever as wise and good as
was Mr. Paul Hayne, our poet, who died last summer.

He had a splendid horse named Dick. Often, when he would ride out in the
woods to compose a poem, he would take me with him if I would promise
not to speak a word, and I know it was harder for me not to speak than
for him to write the poem.

                                                           ALBERT A.

       *       *       *       *       *


    We acknowledge with many thanks the receipt of pleasant letters from
    the young friends whose names here follow: Raynor Brothers, Eva
    Campbell, Emma C. Tate, Cara Sanford, Bessie Bradenbaugh, L. C.,
    May, "Harry's Mother," Bessie L. Lake, Ernst C. Bernbaum, Mary P.
    F., John Kelso, Annie Howard, Fawn Evans, Willie C. Hardy, Millicent
    R., Alice D. Leigh, George B. Stratton, Frank M. Crispin, Alfred B.
    Cushing, Flossie, Emily Innes, Reno Blackstone, Mollie Orr, Lottie
    E. W., Violet A., Maudie Brown, Florence H., Kitty Russell, M. S.
    R., Emma T., Eloise L. Derby, A. J. S., Grace F. Schoff, Maude
    Jackson, Fanny H. Murdock, Rosa R. A. & Rudie E. B., Geneviève D.,
    Ettie Coombs, Roy Strong, Bertha Parsons, Maud T., Olive S. Stewart,
    Pansy O'Donnell, "Katisha," Cora Hoyt, Elizabeth K. Stewart, First
    Ward School, Charlotte Dennison, Dollie M. Brooks, Bessie Roberts,
    Anna D. W., Charles P. Clark, M. E. R., Matty J., Florence A.,
    Florence V. Thorpe, Roland Wilber, Gertie Doud, Nellie & Ninita,
    Josie M. Merghau, A. B. Baylis, Jr., Audley & Ronald, Ella H. W., W.
    le bas T., Emma Willcutt, Dot, Evan, & Brooks, S., Lucy Hathaway,
    Lucy P. K., Kathleen, T. C., Constant Reader, Geraldine, Maud Elaine
    Caldwell, E. Parks, Amy H. Silvester, Winnie Galloway, Henry J.
    Parsons, Tryphosa, Theodosia, Tryphena Van----, E. C. N., Harry
    Armstrong, Charlie P. G., Beth M., Walter Bassett, W. L. Briscoe,
    Constance R., Nellie B. R., Emilie K., Wennie B. Dorrance, O. W. G.,
    Dodey Smart, Mary & May, Duncan Kilborn, Annie Russell Anthony, and
    Minnie R.




THE RIDDLE-BOX.


ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE AUGUST NUMBER.

CHARADE. Keepsake.

OCTAGON. 1. Dab. 2. Cecil. 3. Decolor. 4. Aconite. 5. Bilious. 6. Lotus.
7. Res.

GREEK CROSS. I. 1. Rate. 2. Aver. 3. Teas. 4. Erst. II. 1. Tore. 2.
Omer. 3. Reps. 4. Erst. III. 1. Erst. 2. Rhea. 3. Seas. 4. Task. IV. 1.
Task. 2. Area. 3. Seat. 4. Kate. V. 1. Task. 2. Anne. 3. Snap. 4. Kept.

INVERTED PYRAMIDS. I. Across: 1. Oratory. 2. Erode. 3. Toe. 4. L. II.
Across: 1. Masonic. 2. Sabot. 3. Mow. 4. E.

ILLUSTRATED CENTRAL ACROSTICS. Centrals, Socrates. Cross-words: 1.
snowShoes. 2. dragOn-fly. 3. chiCken. 4. baRns. 5. bAt. 6. aTe. 7.
reEls. 8. opoSsum.

EGYPTIAN PUZZLE. Centrals, Memnon. Cross-words: 1. M. 2. gEm. 3. caMel.
4. oraNges. 5. crocOdile. 6. AlexaNdrian.

CUBE. From 1 to 2, imperial; 2 to 4, lanneret; 3 to 4, lapidist; 1 to 3,
immortal; 5 to 6, schooner; 6 to 8, rounding; 7 to 8, hoveling; 5 to 7,
Shadrach; 1 to 5, Iris; 2 to 6, leer; 4 to 8, tang; 3 to 7, lash.

RIMLESS WHEELS. I. Andersen. From 1 to 9, Anne; 2 to 9, Nile; 3 to 9,
dome; 4 to 9, Erie; 5 to 9, rise; 6 to 9, size; 7 to 9, edge; 8 to 9,
nine. II. Farragut. From 1 to 9, face; 2 to 9, able; 3 to 9, ripe; 4 to
9, rare; 5 to 9, acre; 6 to 9, gape; 7 to 9, urge; 8 to 9, type.

DIAMOND. 1. H. 2. Jib. 3. Judea. 4. Hidalgo. 5. Belle. 6. Age. 7. O

DOUBLE ACROSTIC. Primals, Herrick; finals, Shelley. Cross-words: 1.
HardinesS. 2. EmbellisH. 3. RationalE. 4. RehearsaL. 5. IdenticaL. 6.
CarmelitE. 7. KnowinglY.

BEHEADINGS. Salmagundi. 1. S-ear. 2. A-rid. 3. L-imp. 4. M-ope. 5.
A-mid. 6. G-lad. 7. U-rim. 8. N-ail. 9. D-ram. 10. I-ago.

ZIGZAG. The Atlantic Cable Landed. Cross-words: 1. True. 2. sHow. 3.
glEe. 4. galA. 5. saTe. 6. sLap. 7. Atom. 8. oNce. 9. laTe. 10. semI.
11. raCe. 12. aChe. 13. Arid. 14. aBle. 15. hiLl. 16. hirE. 17. haLe.
18. hAil. 19. Need. 20. iDea. 21. stEw. 22. benD.

       *       *       *       *       *

TO OUR PUZZLERS: In sending answers to puzzles, sign only your initials
or use a short assumed name; but if you send a complete list of answers
you may sign your full name. Answers should be addressed to ST. NICHOLAS
"Riddle-box," care of THE CENTURY CO., 33 East Seventeenth street, New
York City.

ANSWERS TO ALL THE PUZZLES IN THE JUNE NUMBER were received, before June
20, from Maud E. Palmer--Jo and I--Maggie T. Turrill--"B. L. Z. Bub,
No. 1"--Mamma and Fanny--"B. L. Z. Bub, No. 2"--Hazel--"San Anselmo
Valley"--"Shumway Hen and Chickens"--D. B. Shumway--M. Margaret and
E. Muriel Grundy--Carrie Seaver and Alice M. Young--F. W. Islip.

ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE JUNE NUMBER were received, before June 20,
from M. L. Bosher, 1--Marion Strong, 1--Grace A. Zublin, 2--E. V.
Sudell, 2--Prince and Prancer, 1--Paul Reese, 13--R. E. B., 1--Jas. A.
Bond, 2--Nellie L. Howes, 6--T and Coffee, 1--Nanon and Ninon, 4--H. R.
H., 1--Robert Nead, 3--R. Earle Olwine, 1--Helen W. Gardner, 1--"Jack
and Jill," 5--Effie K. Talboys, 7--M. Clare H. Guion, 4--Karl E. Sommer,
3--"Silver-tongue," 1--Alice Blackinton, 1--C. F. Bishop, 3--"Squid,"
5--"Dad," 1--"The Reads," 3--Florence Althaus, 8--No name, Cleveland,
1--No name, Oakdale, 12--"May and 79," 7--"Young Man," 6--"Tiger,"
2--Laura and Irene, 7--E. M. B. and A. G. B., 2--Mamie R., 13--Lucia C.
Bradley, 11--Nellie and Reggie, 11--H. Lovejoy, 9--"Jack Sprat,"
5--Kittie, Chessie, Avis, and Grace, 7--Gen. T. Hughes, 2--Smed,
12--Helen Burnham, 2--Patience, 3--Arthur and Bertie Knox, 8--We, Us, &
Co., 4--"Mohawk Valley," 10--Pearl Colby and Nell Bates, 10--Louise
Joynes, 3--Daisy Van Ingen, 1--Elise Ripley, Ripley, 7--Lucy M. Bradley,
11--Fred T. Pierce, 4--Sadie and Bessie Rhodes and "De Grassy,"
10--"Original Puzzle Club," 12--Hattie Weil, 2--Eleanor Peart, 4--Ida
and Edith M. Swamwick, 7--"Two Cousins," 13--Lewis Kilborn, 2--Langham,
2--Dash, 12--Eugene Kell and Mamma, 1.


CONNECTED PYRAMIDS.

             *

          .  *  .

       .  .  *  .  .

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

             *

          .  *  .

       .  .  *  .  .

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

UPPER PYRAMID. Across: 1. In moping. 2. The cry of an animal. 3. Relish.
4. A horseman's cap. Downward: 1. In moping. 2. To depart. 3. A small
sweet-cake. 4. Elapsed. 5. Preyed upon. 6. A conjunction. 7. In moping.

LOWER PYRAMID. Across: 1. In moping. 2. A period. 3. To pass through by
filtering. 4. An old-fashioned Spanish ship. Downward: 1. In moping. 2.
A musical syllable. 3. A kind of fish. 4. Spoken. 5. A unit. 6. A call
to excite attention. 7. In moping.

Centrals, reading downward (eight letters), a bucolic.

                                                     "MYRTLE GREEN."


CROSS-WORD ENIGMA.

    My first is in rise, but not in fall;
    My second in entry, but not in hall;
    My third is in give, but not in take;
    My fourth is in pie, but not in cake;
    My fifth is in gun, but not in toy;
    My sixth is modest, but not in coy;
      My whole is easily found, no doubt,--
      'Tis a thing the world would scarce "run" without.

                                                  LELAND STANFORD B.


BURIED QUADRUPEDS.

1. If you will give me the broken seal, Pa can replace it, I am sure. 2.
It would certainly be a very good idea to do so, Ethel. 3. The little
black cub is only waiting for a chance to bite you. 4. I will not give
her mine. 5. He gave them each a moist piece of preserved ginger. 6. She
did not encourage Nettie to pursue her musical studies. 7. The parlor is
already dusted, and ready for our visitors. 8. How will a man, in his
position, ever retrieve himself? 9. I was there when Lem urged his claim
so persistently. 10. Did you ask if Pa could stop at the big grocery.
11. Pa can stop, I am sure. 12. I set out this shallow pan daily, for
the birds. 13. At the sound of the familiar tap I ran to the window. 14.
Did you call Jack a lazy lad?

                                                     PAUL R. PIERCE.


DIAMOND.

1. In alpaca. 2. Chance. 3. Pleasantry. 4. A thin fabric. 5. Studied
with an abstracted gaze. 6. To clear. 7. In alpaca.

                                                        "[OE]DIPUS."


CONNECTED SQUARES.

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

    *  *  *  *  *  *  *

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

    .  .  .  *  .  .  .

I. Upper Left-hand Square: 1. A spring. 2. A nobleman. 3. Surface. 4. To
contrive.

II. Upper Right-hand Square: 1. A scheme. 2. A slender cord. 3. Small
insects. 4. A snug abode.

III. Lower Left-hand Square: 1. To devise. 2. Erudition. 3. Artifices.
4. A snug place.

IV. Lower Right-hand Square: 1. A collection of boxes. 2. A
reverberation. 3. A pretense. 4. A small city.

                                                       "SAM WELLER."


DOUBLE ACROSTIC.

My primals spell what every one is wishing for, and my finals spell
where it may come from.

CROSS-WORDS (of equal length): 1. A bivalve shell-fish. 2. A Russian
feminine name. 3. To lend. 4. A prefix signifying half. 5. Destitution.
6. A part sung by a female voice. 7. A part of speech. 8. A girl's name.

                                                        "[OE]DIPUS."


[Illustration]

NUMERICAL ENIGMA

I am composed of one hundred and twenty-one letters, and form a
four-line stanza by Celia Thaxter.

My 30-87-70-58 is joyous. My 45-20-75-17-98-34 is a color. My
64-5-89-54 is part of a bottle. My 67-49-82-11-9 is an apparition.
My 102-25-77-118-107 is a poor cottage. My 53-113-83-94-38 is
an apartment in a ship. My 85-27-42-33-121-73 is to deter. My
60-114-80-16-97-21-56-31-115-55 is the science of Egyptian antiquities.
My 110-13-92 is part of a fish. My 40-91-120-103-99 is airy. My
62-1-51-69-29-103-86-7-12 is extraordinary. My 23-32-57-3-47 is to
gather. My 79-65-14-96-43-2 is to loiter. My 116-36-108-66-4-78 is to
manifest. My 6-61-52-104 is to lash. My 74-101-59-112-72-119-50-88
is abased. My 26-76-24-109 is a fierce animal. My 68-81-63-28-117
is to halt. My 48-41-18-39-100 is strong. My 93-44-10-71 is to be
incandescent. My 90-37-19-95 is to draw or paint. My 111-35-22-84
is secure. My 106-8-46-15 is to impede.

                                                 "CORNELIA BLIMBER."


DOUBLE ZIGZAG.

    1  *  *  * 11  *  *  *
    *  2  *  *  * 12  *  *
    *  *  3  *  *  * 13  *
    *  *  *  4  *  *  * 14
    *  *  5  *  *  * 15  *
    *  6  *  *  * 16  *  *
    7  *  *  * 17  *  *  *
    *  8  *  *  * 18  *  *
    *  *  9  *  *  * 19  *
    *  *  * 10  *  *  * 20

CROSS-WORDS: 1. A very small cake. 2. Having the quality of imbibing.
3. Singular. 4. Those who have charge of money. 5. A free gift.
6. Cleanses. 7. Personal satires. 8. Destitute of pores. 9. To punish.
10. Primitive.

The zigzag from 1 to 10 spells the name given to a certain day in
September; from 11 to 20, the name of a dish eaten in England on that
day.

                                                     FRANK SNELLING.


RHYMED WORD-SQUARE.

    (1.) A kind of meat.
    (2.) An odor sweet.
    (3.)  Struggled, strived, contended.
    (4.) Last, but not least.
    (5.) A Persian priest.
          And now my rhyme is ended.

                                                         "KATASHAW."


OCTAGON.

1. A jump. 2. Pertaining to the pope. 3. A lip having a fissure like
that of a hare. 4. To act. 5. Flattery. 6. A measure. 7. By means of.

                                                       "ROYAL TARR."


BEHEADINGS.

1. Behead to acknowledge with gratitude, and leave a bunch of yarn. 2.
Behead to frequent, and leave a relative. 3. Behead discloses, and leave
enclosures. 4. Behead a fine rain, and leave land surrounded by water.
5. Behead askant, and leave oblique. 6. Behead a large wave or billow,
and leave to incite. 7. Behead very dark, and leave attenuated. 8.
Behead to imbibe, and leave a place of amusement. 9. Behead fanciful,
and leave to distribute. 10. Behead a subterraneous canal, and leave a
pitcher. 11. Behead a mountain nymph, and leave to peruse. 12. Behead
the present occasion, and leave formerly.

The beheaded letters will spell the name of an inventor.

                                                    WILLIE AND CORT.


CROSS-WORD ENIGMA.

    You will find me in the _orchard_, where the pears and apples grow;
    I'm discovered in the _clauses_ that the lawyers so well know;
    I am found in every _present_ that our loving friends bestow;
    I am bound up in the _caskets_ that will splendid jewels show;
    I am seen within the _patient_ who is sick of drugs and pills;
    The _planter_ carries me with him while riding o'er his hills;
    'Mongst the letters of the _ledgers_ I feel perfectly at home;
    And from the _muffins_, sweet and fresh, I never wish to roam;
    The _fairies_ hold me in their arms as through the air they fly;
    And every _scholar_ claimeth me as he at work will ply;
    I take part in all the _ballads_ that are sung by young and old;
    I am portion of the _denizen_ who roams the forests bold;
    In _thickets_ I'm not absent, as you all must plainly see;
    And my whole comes in September, filling farmers full of glee.

                                                               C. D.


TRIANGULAR PRISM.

          1
        . . .
      .   .   .
    2     .     3
    .     .     .
    .     .     .
    .     .     .
    .     .     .
    .     4     .
    .   .   .   .
    . .       . .
    5 . . . . . 6

From 1 to 2, one of an ancient race of people; from 1 to 3, a fragment;
from 2 to 5, a small bird of the titmouse family; from 1 to 4, a form of
instruction by means of questions and answers; from 3 to 6, a snout or
trunk; from 4 to 5, to coin; from 4 to 6, a collective body; from 5 to
6, a structure of cross-barred work.

                                                      "ROSE MADDER."