Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885

by Various

CHARACTERS.

Mr. Nathaniel Nokes, a Retired Wine-Merchant.

Mr. Charles Nokes, his Nephew.

Mr. Robinson, Mr. Sponge, Mr. Rasper, Friends of Mr. Nokes the Elder.

Waiter.

Susan, Housemaid at the Hotel of the Four Seasons.

Mrs. Charles Nokes.

Landlady.

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SCENE I.—A handsome first-floor apartment in the Hotel of the Four Seasons, Paris. Outside the window, the court-yard, with fountain, and little trees in large pots.

Enter Mr. Nathaniel Nokes, with a small book in his hand, very smartly dressed, but in great haste, and with his shirt-collar much dishevelled. [Rings the bell violently.]

What's the good of these confounded French phrase-books? Who wants to know how to ask for artichoke soup, or how far it is to Dijon? I want a button sewn on my shirt-collar, and there's not one word about that.

Enter Waiter.

Nokes. Hi! what's-your-name! Voulez-vous—avoir—la—bonté—de—[I'm always civil and very distinct, but, somehow, I can never make myself understood.] I am going to be married, my good man; to be married—tout de suite—immediately, and there is no time to change my—my chemise d'homme. [Come, he'll understand that.] I want this button—button, button, button sewn on. Here, here—here. [Points to his throat.] Don't you see, you fool? [He thinks I want him to cut my throat. I shall never be in time at the Legation!] Idiot! Dolt! Send Susan, Susan, à moi, to me—or I'll kick you into the court-yard. [Exit Waiter, with precipitation.]

Nokes [alone]. And this is what they call a highly-civilized country! Talk of "a strong government" at home: what's the use of its being strong, if it can't make foreigners speak our language? What's the good of missionary enterprise, when here's a Christian man, within twelve hours of London, who can't get a shirt-button sewn on for want of the Parisian accent? I said "button, button, button," plain enough, I'm sure; and a button's a button all the world over. If it had not been for that excellent Susan, the English chambermaid, I should have perished in this place, of what the coroner's inquests call "want of the necessaries of life." All depends, as every one knows, on a man's shirt-button: if that goes wrong, everything goes, and one's attire is a wreck. But I suppose after to-day my wife will see to that,—though she is a Montmorenci. Constance de Montmorenci, that's her name: she's descended (she says) from a Constable of France. It's a more English-seeming name than gendarme, and I like her for that; but I am afraid we shan't have much in common—except my property. She don't speak English very fluently: she called me "my dove" the other day, instead of "my duck," which is ridiculous. She is not twenty, and I am over sixty,—which is perhaps also ridiculous.

Well, it's all Charles's fault, not mine. If he chooses to go and marry a beggar-girl without my consent, he must take the consequences,—if there are a dozen of them,—and support them how he can. "If you persist in this wicked and perverse resolve," said I, "I'll marry also, before the year's out." And now I'm going to do it,—if I can only get this shirt-button sewn on. He shall not have a penny of what I have to leave behind me. The little Nokes-Montmorencis shall have it all. She's a most accomplished creature is Constance. Sings, they tell me,—for it's not in English, so I don't understand it,—divinely; plays ditto; draws ditto. Speaks every language (except English) with equal facility and—Thank goodness, here's Susan.

Enter Susan, with housemaid's broom.

Susan. What do you please to want, sir?

Nokes. You, Susan; you, first of all, and then a shirt-button. I have not five minutes to spare. My bride is probably already at the Embassy, expressing her impatience in various continental tongues. Vite,—look sharp, Susan. [Aside.] Admirable woman!—she carries buttons about with her. I wonder whether the Montmorenci will do that.—Take care!—don't run the needle into me!

Susan. You must not talk, sir, or else I can't help it. Please to hold your head up a little higher.

Nokes. I shall do that when I've married the Montmorenci. [She pricks him.] Oh! oh!

Susan. I'm sure I hope as you'll be happy with her, sir; but you seem so fond of old England that I doubt whether you ought not to have chosen your wife from your native land. It seems a pity to be marrying in such haste, just because your poor nephew—pray don't speak, sir, or I shall certainly run the needle into you—just because Mr. Charles has gone and wedded the girl of his choice.

Nokes [passionately]. Hold your tongue, Susan! [She pricks him again.] Oh! oh!

Susan. There, sir, I told you what would happen. All I say is, I hope you may not marry in haste to repent at leisure. A fortnight is such a very short time to have known a lady before making her your bride. There, sir; I think the button will keep on now.

Nokes. Then I'm off, Susan. But, before I go, I must express my thanks to you for looking after me so attentively in this place. Here's a five-pound note for you. [Aside] I could almost find it in my heart to give her a kiss; but perhaps the Montmorenci wouldn't like it.

Susan [gratefully]. Oh, thank you, sir. May all happiness attend you, sir! and when you're married yourself, sir, don't be too hard upon that poor nephew of yours—

Nokes [angrily]. Be quiet. [Exit hastily.]

Susan [alone]. Now, there's as kind-hearted an old gentleman as ever lived,—and as good a one, too, if it was not for pigheadedness and tantrums. The idea of a five-pound note merely for helping him to get his victuals! He's been just like a baby in this 'ere 'otel, and I've been a mother to him. He couldn't 'a' got a drop o' milk if it hadn't been for me. Poor dear old soul! What a pity it is he should have such a temper! He is taking a wife to-day solely to keep a hasty word uttered agen his nephew and heir. Mademoiselle Constance de Montmorenci! ah, I've heard of her before to-day. Nanette, the head-chambermaid here, was once her lady's-maid. She's known her for more than a fortnight. Constance is a fine name, but it ain't quite the same as Constancy. Poor Mr. Nokes! What a mistake it was in him to drive all thoughts of matrimony off to the last, and then to come to Paris—of all places—to do it! What a curious thing is sympathy! He met her in the tidal train, and they were taken ill together on board the steamboat; that's how it came about. Poor old soul! He deserves a better fate. [Takes her broom and leans on it reflectively.] Heigh-ho! His honest English face was pleasant to look upon in this here outlandish spot; and none has been so kind to me since my poor missis died and left me under this roof, without money enough to pay my passage back to England. I was glad enough to take service here; for why should I go back to a country where there is not a soul to welcome me? And yet I should like to see dear old England again, too. [Tumult without. Mr. Nokes is seen rushing madly up the court-yard. Tumult in the passage; French and English voices at high pitch. Nokes without: Idiots! Frog-eaters! What is it I want? Nothing! nothing but to see France sunk in the sea!]

Enter Nokes (dishevelled and purple with passion, with an open letter in his hand; bangs the door behind him).

Susan. What is the matter, sir?

Nokes. Everything is the matter. You see this lily-white waistcoat; you see these matrimonial does [points to his trousers], these polished-leather boots, which are at this moment pinching me most confoundedly, though I don't feel it, because I'm in such a passion: well, they have been put on for nothing. I've been made a fool of by the Montmorenci. But if there's justice in heaven,—that is, in Paris,—if there's law in France, and blighted hopes are compensated in this country as they are at home, the hussy shall smart for it. Directly I'm married myself, I'll bring an action against her for breach of promise.

Susan. Married yourself, sir?

Nokes. Of course I'm going to be married,—at once, immediately,—within the week. There's only a week left to the end of the year. Do you suppose—does my nephew Charles suppose—no, for he knows me better—that I am not going to keep my word? that because the Montmorenci has played me false at the eleventh hour I am going to remain a bachelor for seven days longer? Never, Susan, never! [Walks hastily up and down the room.]

Susan. Lor, sir, do pray be a little quiet, I am sure if any young woman was to see you in this state she must be uncommonly courageous to take charge of such a husband. Do, pray, tell me what has happened.

Nokes. Nothing has happened. That's what I complain of. Just as I drove up to the Legation this letter was handed to me. It is from the brother of the Montmorenci, and is supposed to be written in the English tongue. He regrets that matters between Mademoiselle his sister and myself have been advanced with such precipitation.

Susan. Well, sir, you were rather in a hurry about it, I must say.

Nokes. Hurry! I was in nothing of the sort. We were in the same boat together for hours. We suffered agonies in company. And, besides, I had only three weeks at farthest to waste in making love to anybody. And now I've only one week,—all because this woman did not know her own mind.

Susan. How so, sir?

Nokes. Why, it seems she loves somebody else better. Her brother tells me—confound his impudence!—that this is only natural. At the same time, he allows I have some cause to complain, and therefore offers me the opportunity of a personal combat with what he is pleased to call the peculiar weapon of my countrymen, the pistol. Now, I should have said the peculiar weapon of my country was the umbrella. That is certainly the instrument I should choose if I were compelled to engage in mortal strife. But the idea of being shot in the liver in reparation for one's matrimonial injuries! To be laid up in that way when there is only a week left in which to woo and win another Mrs. Nokes! But what am I to do now? How am I to find a respectable young woman to take me at so short a notice?

Susan. There isn't many of that sort in Paris, sir, even if you gave 'em longer.

Nokes. Just so. Come, you're a sensible, good girl, and have helped me out of several difficulties; now, do you think you can help me out of this one?

Susan [demurely]. Have you got an almanac about you, sir?

Nokes. An almanac? Of course I have. I have given up the wine-trade, but I have not given up the habit so essential to business-men of carrying an almanac in my breast-pocket. Here it is.

Susan [takes almanac and looks through it attentively]. No, sir [sighs], it won't do.

Nokes. What won't do? What did you expect to find that would do—in an almanac—in such a crisis as this?

Susan. Well, sir [casting down her eyes], I was looking to see if it was leap-year; but it isn't.

Nokes. What! You were going to offer to fill the place of the Montmorenci. You impudent little hussy! [Aside] Gad, she's uncommonly pretty, though. Prettier than the other. I noticed that when she was sewing on my shirt-button; only I didn't think it right, under the circumstances, to dwell upon the idea. But there can't be any harm in it now.

Susan [sobbing]. I am afraid I have made you angry with me, Mr. Nokes. I was only in fun, but I see now that it was taking a liberty.

Nokes [very tenderly and chucking her under the chin]. We should never take liberties, Susan. [Kisses her.] Never. But don't cry, or you'll make your eyes red; and I rather like your eyes. [Aside] I didn't like to dwell upon the idea before, but she has got remarkably pretty eyes. It's a dreadful come-down from the Montmorenci, to be sure: still, one must marry somebody—within seven days. But then, again, I've written such flaming accounts of the other one to all my friends. I've asked Sponge and Rasper and Robinson to come down, and see us after the honeymoon at "the Tamarisks," my little place near Dover. And they are all eager to hear her sing and play, and to see her beautiful sketches in oil—Can you sing, and play, and sketch in oil, Susan?

Susan [gravely]. I don't know, sir; I never tried.

Nokes [aside]. Then there's her hands. The Montmorenci's, as I wrote to Rasper, were like the driven snow; and Susan's—though I didn't like to dwell upon the idea—are more like snow on the second day, in London. To be sure she will have nothing to do as Mrs. Nokes except to wash 'em. Then she can speak French like a native, or at least what will seem to Robinson and the others like a native. Upon my life, I think I might do worse. But then, again, she'll have relatives,—awful relatives, whom I shall have to buy off, or, worse, who will not be bought off. It's certainly a dreadful come-down. Susan [hesitatingly], Susan dear, what is your name?

Susan. Montem, sir; Susan Montem.

Nokes [aside]. By Jove! why, that's half-way to Montmorenci. It's not at all a bad name. But then what's the good of that if she's going to change it for Nokes? Oh, Montem, is it, Susan? And is your papa—your father—alive?

Susan [sorrowfully]. No, sir.

Nokes. That's capital!—I mean I'm so sorry. Poor girl! Your father's dead, is he? You're sure he's dead?

Susan [with her pocket-handkerchief to her eyes]. Quite sure, sir.

Nokes. And your mamma,—your excellent mamma,—she's alive, at all events?

Susan. No, sir; I am an orphan.

Nokes [aside]. How delightful! I love orphans. I'm an orphan myself. Ah, but then she's sure to have brothers and sisters,—pipe-smoking, gin-drinking brothers, and sisters who will have married idle mechanics, with executions in their houses every quarter-day. Susan, my dear, how many brothers and sisters have you?

Susan [sorrowfully]. I have none, sir. When my dear missis died I was left quite alone in the world.

Nokes. I'm charmed to hear it [embracing her], adorable young woman! [Bell rings without.] What are they pulling that bell about for? Confound them, it makes me nervous.

Susan [meekly]. I think they're wanting me, sir: you see, sir, I'm neglecting my work.

Nokes [kissing her]. No, you're not, Susan [kisses her again]: quite the contrary. So your name's Montem,—at present,—is it? How came that about?

Susan. Well, sir, I was left a foundling in the parish workhouse, at Salthill, near Eton. Nobody knew anything about me, and as I made my appearance there one Montem day, the board of guardians named me Montem.

Nokes. And how came you to be chambermaid at this hotel?

Susan [seriously]. It was through good Mr. Woodward, the curate at Salthill, that it happened, sir: he was my benefactor through life. Always kind to me at the workhouse, where he was chaplain, he got me a situation, as soon as I was old enough, with a lady. I lived with her first as housemaid, and then as her personal attendant, till she died under this roof.

Nokes [aside]. I don't wonder at that.

Susan. The people of the hotel here wanted an English chambermaid, and offered me the place, which, since my benefactor the clergyman was dead, I accepted thankfully.

Nokes. Poor girl! poor girl! [Pats Susan's head.] There, there! your feelings do you the greatest credit; but don't cry, because it makes your eyes red. Now, look here, Susan; there's only one thing more. You are very soft-hearted, I perceive, and it must be distinctly understood between us that you need never intercede with me in favor of that scoundrel Charles. I won't have it. You wouldn't succeed, of course, but if I ever happen to get fond of you—I mean foolishly fond of you, of course—your importunity might be annoying. When you are once my wife, however, and keeping your own carriage, I confidently expect that you will behave as other people do in that station of life, and show no weakness in favor of your poor relations.

Susan. I will endeavor, sir, in case you are so good as to marry a humble girl like me, to do my dooty and please you in every way.

Nokes. That's well said, Susan. [Kisses her.] You have pleased me in a good many ways already. [Aside] I must say, though I didn't like to dwell upon the idea before—[Tremendous ringing of bells, and sudden appearance of the mistress of the hotel. Tableau.]

Mistress of the hotel [to Nokes]. O vieux polisson! [To Susan] Coquine abominable!

Nokes [to Susan]. What is this lunatic raving about?

Susan. She remarks that I haven't finished my work on the second floor.

Nokes [impatiently]. Tell her to go to—the ground floor. Tell her you are going to be married to me within the week, and order a wedding-breakfast—for two—immediately.

Susan [aside]. I can never tell her that, for she is a Frenchwoman, and wouldn't believe it. I'll tell her something more melodramatic. I'll say that Mr. Nokes is my father, who has suddenly recognized and discovered his long-lost child.—Madame, c'est mon père longtemps absent, qui vous en prie d'accepter ses remerciments pour votre bonté à son enfant.

Mistress of the hotel [all smiles, and with both hands outstretched]. Milor, I do congratulate you. Fortunate Susan! You will nevare forget to recommend de hotel?

Nokes. Thank you, thank you; you're a sensible old woman. [Aside] She evidently sees no absurd disproportion in our years.—Breakfast, breakfast!—déjeûner à la what-do-you-call-it! champagne! [Exit landlady, smiling and bowing.]

Nokes. In the mean time, Susan, put on your bonnet and let's go out to—whatever they call Doctors' Commons here—and order a special license. [Susan goes.] Stop a bit, Susan; you forget something. [Kisses her.] [Aside] I did not like to dwell upon the idea before, but she's got a most uncommon pretty mouth.

---

SCENE II.—Drawing-room at the Tamarisks. Garden and Sea in the distance. Grand piano, harp, sketch-book; and huge portfolio.

Nokes [less gayly attired: solus]. Gad, I feel rather nervous. There's Sponge, and Rasper, and Robinson, all coming down by the mid-day train to lunch with me and my new wife,—the Montmorenci, as they imagine. It's impossible that Susan can keep up such a delusion, and especially as she insists on talking English. She says her French is so vulgar. But there! I don't care how she talks or what she talks, bless her. Everything sounds well from those charming lips. She's a kind-hearted, good girl, and worth eight hundred dozen (as I should say if I hadn't left the wine-trade) of the other one. There was something wrong about that Montmorenci vintage, for all her sparkle; corked or something. Now, my Susan's all good,—good the second day, good the third day, good every day. She's like port—all the better for keeping; and she's not like port—because there's no crustiness about her. She's a deuced clever woman. To hear her talk broken English when the squire's wife called here the other day was as good as a play. Everybody hereabouts believes she's a Frenchwoman; but then they're all country-people, and they'll believe anything. Sponge and Rasper and Robinson are all London born,—especially Rasper,—and London people believe nothing. They only give credit.

Enter Susan, in an in-door morning dress, but gloved.

Nokes. Well, my darling, have you screwed your courage up to meet these three gentlemen? Upon my life, I think it would be better if I told them at once that I had been jilted, and instead of the Montmorenci had found The Substitute infinitely preferable to the original; for I'm sure I have, Susan [fondly].

Susan [holding up her finger]. Constance, if you please, my dear. I'm continually correcting that little mistake of yours. How can I possibly keep up my dignity as a Montmorenci while you are always calling me Susan?

Nokes. Then why keep it up at all, my dear? Why not stand at once upon your merits, which I am sure are quite sufficient? Of course it would be a little come-down for me just at first; but that's no matter.

Susan. My good, kind husband! [Kisses his forehead.] No, dear; let me first show your friends that you have no cause to be ashamed of me. It will be much easier to do that if they think I am a born lady. Appearances do such a deal in the world.

Nokes. Yes, my dear, I've noticed that in the wine-trade. If you were to sell cider at eighty shillings a dozen, it would be considered uncommon good tipple by the customer who bought it. Tell them Madeira has been twice to China—twice to China [chuckles to himself]—and how they smack their lips! That reminds me, by the bye [seriously], of another set of appearances, Susan, which we have to guard against,—the pretence and show of poverty. You must learn to steel your heart against that, my dear. There's that nephew of mine been writing one of his persistent and appealing letters again. He adjures me to have pity, if not upon him, at all events upon his innocent Clara. But she ought not to have been his innocent Clara, and so I've told him. She ought not to have been his Clara at all. Now, do you remember your solemn promise to me about that young man?

Susan [sighing]. Yes, sir, I remember.

Nokes [angrily]. Why do you call me "sir," Susan?

Susan. Because when you look so stern and talk so severely you don't seem to be the same good, kind-hearted husband that I know you are. I'll keep my promise, sir, not to hold out my hand to your unfortunate nephew, but please don't let us talk about it. It makes me feel less reverence, less respect, and even less gratitude, sir,—it does, indeed,—since your very generosity toward me has made me the instrument of punishment, and—as I feel—of wrong. I have been poor myself, and what must that young couple think of my never answering their touching letter, put in my hands as I first crossed this threshold?

Nokes [testily]. Touching letter, indeed! Any begging-letter impostor would have written as good a one. It's all humbug, Susan. Mrs. Charles would like to see you whipped, if I know women. And as for my nephew—[Noises of wheels heard, and bell rings.] But there's the front-door bell. Here are our visitors from town. Had you not better leave the room for a minute or two, to wash those tears away? It would never do, you know, to exhibit a Montmorenci with red eyes. [Exit Susan.]

Nokes [solus]. That's the only matter about which my dear Susan and I are ever likely to fall out,—the extending what she calls the hand of forgiveness to Charles and his wife, just because they've got a baby. I'll never do it if they have twelve. I said to myself I wouldn't when he wrote to me about this marriage, and I always keep my word.

Enter Sponge, Rasper, and Robinson.

Nokes [shaking hands with all]. Welcome, my friends, welcome to the Tamarisks.

Robinson. Thank ye, Nokes, thank ye. But how changed we are at the Tamarisks! [Pointing to the piano and portfolio.] I mean how changed we are for the better! ain't we, Sponge? ain't we, Rasper?

Sponge [fawningly]. It was always a charming retreat, but we now see everywhere, in addition to its former beauties, the magical influence of a female hand.

Rasper [vulgarly]. Yes; no doubt of that. Directly I saw the new coach-house, I said, "By Jove, that's Mrs. N——'s doing! She'll spend his money for him, will Mrs. N——."

Nokes [annoyed]. You were very good, I'm sure.

Sponge. But it is here, within-doors, my dear Nokes, that the great transformation-scene has been effected. Pianos, harpsichords, sketch-books,—these all bespeak the presence of lovely and accomplished woman.

Robinson. May we venture to peep into this portfolio, my good fellow?—that is, if the contents have the interest for us that we believe them to have. It holds Mrs. Nokes's sketches, I presume.

Nokes. Yes, yes; they are her sketches and nobody else's. [Aside] Certainly they are, for I bought them for her in Piccadilly.—But here she comes to answer for herself. [Enter Susan.] Sus—I mean Constance, my dear, let me introduce to you three friends of my bachelor days, Mr. Sponge, Mr. Rasper, Mr. Robinson.

Susan [speaking broken English]. Gentlemens, I am mos glad to see you. My husband—hees friends are mai friends.

Rasper [aside]. She's devilish civil. If she had been English I should almost think she was afraid of us.

Sponge [bowing]. You are most kind, madam. The noble are always kind. [Aside to Nokes.] She's all blood, my dear fellow.

Nokes [looking toward her in alarm]. What? Where?

Sponge. No, no; don't misunderstand me. I mean she's all high birth. If I had met your wife anywhere—in an omnibus, for instance—and only heard her speak, I should have exclaimed, "There's a Montmorenci!"

Nokes [pleased]. Should you really, now, my dear Sponge? Well, that shows you are a man of discernment.

Robinson [to Susan]. It is such a real pleasure to us, Mrs. Nokes, that you speak English. We were afraid we should find it difficult to converse with you. Sponge is the only one of us who understands—

Sponge. Yes, madam, we did fear that since no other tongue is spoken in courts and camps—or, at all events, in courts—we should have some difficulty in following your ideas. But you speak English like a native.

Susan [emphatically]. I believe you. [Recollecting and correcting herself] Dat is, I do trai mai best. It please my mari—my what ees it?—my husband. He don't talk French heemself—not mooch.

Nokes. Well, I don't think you should quite say that, my dear. I could always make myself understood abroad, you know, though my accent is perhaps a little anglicized.

Susan [laughing]. Rayther so.

[Guests exchange looks of astonishment.]

Nokes [with precipation]. My dear, what an expression! The fact is, my friends, that madame has a young brother—Count Maximilian de Montmorenci—at school in England, and what she knows of our language she has mainly acquired from him. The consequence is, she occasionally talks—in point of fact—slang.

Susan [in broken English]. Cherk the tinklare, coot your luckies, whos your hattar? [To Rasper] Have your moder sold her mangle?

[Nokes, Sponge, and Robinson roar with laughter.]

Rasper [aside]. Confound that Nokes! He must have told her about my family. [With indignation] Madam, I—[Points by accident to the portfolio.]

Susan. What? you weesh to see mai sketch? Oh, yas! [Opens the portfolio; the three guests crowd round it. Nokes comes down to the front.]

Nokes [aside]. I wish they'd take their lunch and go away. They put me in a profuse perspiration. I know they'll find her out.

Robinson [with a sketch-book in his hand]. Beautiful!

Sponge [looking over his shoulder on tiptoe]. Exquisite! most lovely! it's what I call perfection.

Rasper. First-rate—only I've seen something like it before. [Aside] If I haven't seen that in some print-shop. I'll be hanged. [Blows.]

Susan. Ha! ha! you halve seen eet beefore, Mr.—Gasper? Think of that, my husband,—Mr. Gasper has seen it beefore!

Nokes [laughing uncomfortably]. Ha! ha! What a funny idea!

Rasper [obstinately]. But I have, though; and in a shop-window, too.

Susan [delightedly]. That is superbe, magnifique! I am so happy, so proud! My husband, they have copied this leetle work of mine in London!

[Robinson and Sponge clap their hands applaudingly.]

Rasper [shakes his head; aside]. Dashed if I don't believe it's a chromolithograph! [To Nokes] I say, Nokes, you wrote to us in such raptures about your wife's hands. Why does she keep her gloves on?

Nokes [confused]. Keep her gloves on? You mean why does she wear them in-doors? Well, the fact is, the Montmorencis always do it. It's been a family peculiarity for centuries,—like the Banshee. And, besides, she does it to keep her hands delicate: they're just like roses—I mean white roses,—if you could only see 'em. But then she always wears gloves.

Rasper [grunts disapproval]. Then I suppose it's no use asking her to give us a tune on the piano?

Nokes [hastily]. Not a bit, not a bit; of course not; and, besides, we shall have lunch directly.

Susan [approaching them]. What is dat, Mr. Gasper? Did you not ask for a leetle music? What you like for me to play?

Nokes [aside to Susan]. How can you be such a fool? Why, this is suicide! [To Rasper] My dear fellow, my wife would be delighted, but the fact is the piano is out of order. The tuner is coming to-morrow.

Susan [seats herself at the piano]. My dear husband, it weel do very well. He only said we must note "thomp, thomp" until he had seen it; dat is all. Now, gentlemens, what would you like?

Sponge [with an armful of music-books]. Nay, madam, what will you do us the favor to choose? [Aside] There is nothing I love so much in this world as turning over the leaves of a music-book for a lady of birth!

Susan. Ah, I am so sorry, because I do only play by de ear, here [points to her ear]. But what would you like, gentlemens? Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, it is all exactly de same to me.

Robinson. Oh, then, pray let us have Mendelssohn,—one of those exquisite Songs without Words of his.

Susan. Yas? with plaisir. I like dose songs best myself,—de songs without words.

Nokes [aside, despairingly]. It's impossible she can get out of this. Now we shall have an éclaircissement, an exposure, an explosion.

Susan [strikes piano violently with both hands, and a string breaks with a loud report]. Ah, quel dommage! How stupide, too, when he told me not to "thomp, thomp"! I am so sorry, gentlemens! I did hope to give you a song, but I cannot sing without an accompaniment.

Rasper [maliciously]. There's the harp, ma'am,—unless its strings are in the same unsatisfactory state as those of the piano.

Susan [with affected delight]. What, you play de harp, Mr. Gasper? I am so glad, because I do not play it yet myself: I am only learning. Come, I shall sing, and you shall play upon de harp.

Rasper [angrily]. I play the harp, madam! what rubbish! of course I can't.

Sponge [eagerly]. But I can, just a little,—just enough to accompany one of Mrs. Nokes's charming songs. [Brings the harp down to the front, and sits down to it, trying the strings.]

Nokes [aside]. The nasty little accomplished beast! He'll ruin everything. Susan is at her wits' end. [Aside to Susan] What on earth are we to do now?

Enter Servant.

[In stentorian tones] Luncheon is on the table! [Then, approaching Susan, he adds, in lower but distinct tones] A lady wishes to see you, madam, upon very particular business.

Susan [surprised]. A lady! what lady?

Nokes [to Susan, aside and impatiently]. Never mind what lady; see her at once, whoever she is: it will be an excuse for getting away from these people.—My wife is engaged for the present, my good friends, so we'll sit down to lunch without her.

[All bow and leave the room, receiving in return from Susan a stately courtesy. Nokes, the last to leave, kisses his hand to her.] Adorable Susan, you have conquered, you remain in possession of the field; but you must not risk another engagement. I will see to that. Champagne shall do its work on Rasper—Gasper.

Enter Mrs. Charles Nokes, neatly but cheaply attired. Susan rises, bows, and looks toward her interrogatively.

Mrs. Charles Nokes. I did not send in my name, madam, because I feared it would but prejudice you against your visitor. I am Charles's—that is, your husband's niece by marriage; not a near relation to yourself, you might say, if you wished to be unkind,—which [with earnestness] I do not think you do.

Susan [distressed, but endeavoring to remain firm]. Oh, but I do, ma'am. I wish to be as hard as a stone. [Aside] Only I can't. What a pretty, modest young creature she is!

Mrs. C.N. The poor give you no such severe character, madam; and, taking courage by their report, and being poor myself, and, alas! having been the innocent cause of making others poor, I have ventured hither.

Susan [aside]. Oh, I wish she wouldn't! I can't stand this. There's something in her face, too, that reminds me—but there! have I not promised my husband to be brutal and unfeeling? [Aloud] Madame, I am sorry, but I have noting for you. Mr. Noke, mai husband, he tell me dat hees nephew is very foolish, weeked jeune homme—

Mrs. C.N. [interrupting]. Foolish, madam, he may have been, nay, he was, to fall in love with a poor orphan like myself, who had nothing to give him but my love,—but not wicked. He has a noble heart. His sorrow is not upon his own account, but for his wife and child. He has bent his proud spirit twice to entreat his uncle's forgiveness, but in vain. And now I have come to appeal to you,—though you are not of my own country,—a woman to a woman.

Susan [aside]. Dear heart alive! I'm melting like a tallow candle.

Mrs. C.N. I was a poor Berkshire curate's daughter—

Susan [interrupting hastily]. A what? [Recollecting herself.] A poor curé's daughter—yas, yas—in Berkishire, qu'est-ce que c'est Berkishire?

Mrs. C.N. It is in the south of England, madam. We were poor, I say, and I had been used to straits, even before my poor father died. But my husband has been always accustomed to luxury and comfort, and now that poverty has come suddenly upon us—

Susan [interrupting with emotion, but still speaking broken English.] Were you considaired like your fader?

Mrs. C.N. Yes, madam, very like.

Susan [anxiously and tremblingly]. What was his name?

Mrs. C.N. Woodward, madam. He was curate of Salthill, near Eton.

Susan [throwing herself at her feet and kissing her hands]. Why, you're Miss Clara! and I'm Susan,—Susan Montem, to whom he was so kind and noble [sobbing]. I'm no more a Montmorenci than you are,—nor half as much. I'm a workhouse orphan, and—and—your aunt by marriage. [Aside, and clasping her hands]. Oh, what can I do to help them? what can I do?

Mrs. C.N. [fervently]. I thank heaven. There is genuine gratitude in your kind face. I remember you now, though I am sure I should never have recognized you, Susan.

Susan. I dare say not, Miss Clara [rising and wiping her eyes]. Fine feathers make fine birds. Lor, how I should like to have a talk with you about old times! But there, we've got something else to do first. Where's your good husband?

Mrs. C.N. In the garden, hiding in the laurel-bed, with Chickabiddy. That's our baby, you know.

[Carriage heard departing; they listen. Enter Mr. Nokes, slightly elevated with champagne, and not perceiving Mrs. C.N.]

Nokes. Hurrah, my dear! they're off, all three of them,—all five of them, for each of them sees two of the others; they have no notion that your name is Susan—[sees Mrs. C.N.] I mean Constance. [Aside] Oh, Lor! just as I thought we'd weathered the storm, too, and got into still water!

Susan [gravely]. She knows all about it, husband. That lady is the daughter of my benefactor, Mr. Woodward, to whom I owed everything on earth till I met you.

Nokes [with enthusiasm, and holding out both hands]. The deuce she is! I am most uncommonly glad to see you, ma'am, under this roof. [Aside to Susan] She don't look very prosperous, Susan: if there's anything that money can get for her, I'll see she has it; mind that.

Susan [aloud]. She is poor, sir, and much in need of home and friends.

Nokes [to Mrs. C.N.]. Then you have found them here, ma'am. You're a fixture at "the Tamarisks" for life, if it so pleases you.

Mrs. C.N. You are most kind, sir, but I have a husband and one little child.

Nokes. Never mind that: he'll grow. There's room here for you and your husband and the little child, even if he does grow. Where are they? Show them up.

Mrs. C.N. runs to window and calls, "Charles, Charles."

Nokes [aside]. I think I've had quite as much champagne as is good for me; just enough; the golden mean.

Enter Charles with baby, which he holds at full stretch of his arms.

Nokes [indignantly]. You young scoundrel! How dare you show your face in this house?

Mrs. C.N. [interfering]. You sent for him, sir.

Nokes. I sent for nothing of the sort. I sent for your husband.

Mrs. C.N. That is my husband, sir, and our little child. You promised us an asylum for life under your roof; and I am certain you will keep your word.

Nokes [to Susan, endeavoring to be severe]. Now, this is all your fault; and yet you promised me never to interfere on behalf of these people.

Susan. Nor did I, my dear husband. You have done it all yourself.

Nokes [aside]. It was all that last glass of champagne.

Charles [giving up the baby to his wife, and coming up with outstretched hand to his uncle]. Come, sir, pray forgive me. I could not enjoy your favors without your forgiveness, believe me.

Nokes [holding out his hand unwillingly]. There. [Aside] How could I be such a fool, knowing so well what champagne is made of?—Well, sir, if you have regained your place here, remember it has all happened through your aunt's goodness. Let nobody ever show any of their airs to my Susan.

Charles and his wife [together]. We shall never forget her kindness, sir.

Nokes. Mind you don't, then. For, you see, it's to her own disadvantage, since when I die—and supposing I have forgiven you—the child that has to grow will inherit everything, and Susan only have a life-interest in it.

Charles [hopefully]. I don't see that, sir. Why shouldn't you have children of your own?

Nokes [complacently]. True, true. Why shouldn't we? I didn't like to dwell upon the idea before, but why shouldn't we? At all events, Susan [comes forward with Susan], I am sure I shall never repent having shot at the pigeon—I mean, having wooed the Montmorenci, but won THE SUBSTITUTE.

James Payn.

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NEW YORK LIBRARIES

New York has been accused of being purely commercial in tone, and there was a period in her history when she must have pleaded guilty to the indictment. That day, however, is past: she has now many interests—scientific, artistic, literary, musical—as influential as that mentioned, though not perhaps numerically so important. Of the fine arts the city is the acknowledged New World centre, and it is fast forming a literary circle as noteworthy as that of any other capital. The latter owes its existence in part, no doubt, to the great publishing-houses, but has been attracted chiefly by the facilities for research afforded by those great storehouses of learning, the city libraries. Few old residents are aware of the literary wealth stored in these depositories, or of the extent to which they are consulted by scholars and by writers generally.

There are four large libraries in the city whose interest is almost purely literary,—the Society, the Astor, the Lenox, and the Historical Society's,—one both literary and popular,—the Mercantile,—one interesting as being the outcome of a great trades' guild,—the Apprentices',—and one purely popular,—the Free Circulating Library. There are others, of course, but the above are such as from their character and history seem best calculated for treatment in a magazine paper. The oldest of these is the Society Library, which is located in its own commodious fire-proof building at No. 67 University Place. This library is perhaps the oldest in the United States: its origin dates back to the year 1700, when, Lord Bellamont being governor and New York a police-precinct of five thousand inhabitants, the worthy burghers founded the Public Library. For many years it seems to have flourished in the slow, dignified way peculiar to Knickerbocker institutions. In 1729 it received an accession in the library of the Rev. Dr. Millington, rector of Newington, England, which was bequeathed to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and by it transferred to the New York Public Library. The institution remained under the care of the city until 1754, when a company of gentlemen formed an association to enhance its usefulness by bringing it under private control. They collected a number of books, and on application the Public Library was incorporated with these, and the whole placed under the care of trustees chosen by the shareholders. Believing that "a public library would be very useful as well as ornamental to the city," and also advantageous to "our intended college," the shareholders agreed to pay "five pounds each on the first day of May, and ten shillings each on every first of May forever thereafter." Subscribers had the right to take out one book at a time by depositing one-third more than the value of it with the library-keeper. Rights could be alienated or bequeathed "like any other chattel." No person, even if he owned several shares, could have more than one vote, nor could a part of a subscription-right entitle the holder to any privileges. By 1772 the Society had increased to such an extent that it was thought best to incorporate it, and a charter was secured from the crown. In its preamble seven "esquires," two "merchants," two "gentlemen," and one "physician" appear as petitioners, and fifty-six gentlemen, with one lady, Mrs. Anne Waddel, are named members of the corporation. The style of the latter was changed to the "New York Society Library," and the usual corporate privileges were granted, including the right to purchase and hold real estate of the yearly value of one thousand pounds sterling. The Society is practically working under this charter to-day, the legislature of New York having confirmed it in 1789. The earliest printed catalogue known to be in existence was issued about 1758: it gives the titles of nine hundred and twenty-two volumes, with a list of members, one hundred and eighteen in all. A second catalogue followed in 1761. During the Revolution many of the volumes were scattered or destroyed. The first catalogue printed after the war enumerates five thousand volumes; these had increased in 1813 to thirteen thousand, in 1838 to twenty-five thousand, and the present number is estimated at seventy-five thousand. Down to 1795 the library was housed in the City Hall, and during the sessions of Congress was used by that body as a Congressional Library. Its first building was erected in 1795, in Nassau Street, opposite the Middle Dutch Church, and here the library remained until 1836, when, its premises becoming in demand for business purposes, it was sold, and the Society purchased a lot on the corner of Broadway and Leonard Street. A building was completed on this lot in 1840, and the library removed thither from the rooms of the Mechanics' Society in Chambers Street, where it had been placed on the sale of its property in 1836. In 1853 a third removal was made, to the Bible House, its property on Broadway being again swallowed up by the advancing tide of business. In the same year its present property on University Place was purchased, on which, two years later, in 1855, the commodious building which it now occupies was erected, the Society taking possession in May, 1856. Many features of the Society Library are unique, to be met with, perhaps, in no other organization of the kind in the world. Many of its members hold shares that have descended to them from father to son from the time of the first founders. The annual dues are placed at such a figure (ten dollars) as practically to debar people with slender purses. The scholar, however, may have the range of its treasures on paying a fee of twenty-five cents, and the stranger may enjoy the use of the library for one month on being introduced by a member. The market value of a share is now one hundred and fifty dollars, with the annual dues of ten dollars commuted, but shares may be purchased for twenty-five dollars, subject to the annual dues. The library proper occupies the whole of the second floor. On the first floor, besides the large hall, is a well-lighted drawing-room, filled with periodicals in all languages, a ladies' parlor, and a conversation-room. The library-room is a large, airy, well-lighted apartment, with a series of artistic alcoves ranged about two of its sides. Here are to be found the Winthrop Collection, comprising some three hundred curious and ancient tomes, chiefly in Latin, which formed a part of the library of John Winthrop, "the founder of Connecticut," the De Peyster Alcove, containing one thousand volumes, very full in special subjects, the Hammond Library, collected by a Newport scholar, comprising some eighteen hundred quaint and curious volumes, and a collection of over six hundred rare and costly works on art contained in the John C. Green Alcove. This last alcove, which was fitted up and presented to the library by Mr. Robert Lenox Kennedy as a memorial of Mr. and Mrs. John C. Green, benefactors of the Society, is an artistic gem. The sides and ceilings are finished in hard woods by Marcotte, after designs by the architect, Sidney Stratton. Opposite the entrance is a memorial window, its centre-pin representing two female figures,—Knowledge and Prudence,—with the four great poets, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Chaucer, in the corners. On the east wall is a portrait of Mr. Green by Madrazo, and on the west a tablet with an inscription informing the visitor that, the library having received a donation of fifty thousand dollars from the estate of John Cleve Green, the trustees had placed the tablet as a memento of this munificence. There are books in this alcove not to be duplicated in European libraries. A work on Russian antiquities, for instance, containing beautifully-colored lithographs of the Russian crown-jewels, royal robes, ecclesiastical vestments, and the like, cannot be found, it is said, either in Paris or London. The scope of the collection may be seen by a glance at the catalogue, whose departments embrace architecture, art-study, anatomy, biography, book-illustration, cathedrals and churches, costumes, decorative, domestic, and industrial art, heraldry, painting, and picturesque art.

It is a coincidence merely, but nearly all the great libraries of the city are grouped within a block or two of Astor Place, making that short thoroughfare the scholarly centre of the town. In its immediate vicinity, on the corner of Second Avenue and Eleventh Street, stands the fire-proof building of the New York Historical Society, whose library and collection of paintings and relics form one of the features of the city. This Society dates back to the year 1804, when Egbert Benson, De Witt Clinton, Rev. William Linn, Rev. Samuel Miller, Rev. John N. Abeel, Rev. John M. Mason, Dr. David Hosack, Anthony Bleecker, Samuel Bayard, Peter G. Stuyvesant, and John Pintard, met by appointment at the City Hall and agreed to form a society "the principal design of which should be to collect and preserve whatever might relate to the natural, civil, or ecclesiastical history of the United States in general and of the State of New York in particular." Active measures were at once taken for the formation of a library and museum, special committees being appointed for the purpose. The range of the collection embraced books, manuscripts, statistics, newspapers, pictures, antiquities, medals, coins, and specimens in natural history. The Society made the usual number of removals before being finally established as a householder. From 1804 to 1809 it met in the old City Hall, from 1809 to 1816 in the Government House, from 1816 to 1832 in the New York Institution, from 1832 to 1837 in Remsen's Building, Broadway, from 1837 to 1841 in the Stuyvesant Institute, from 1841 to 1857 in the New York University, and at length, after surmounting many pecuniary obstacles, celebrated its fifty-third anniversary by taking possession of its present structure. Meantime, the efforts of the library committees had resulted in a collection of Americana of exceeding interest and value, the nucleus of the present library. In its one specialty this library is believed to be unrivalled. The Society has issued some twenty-four volumes of its own publications, in addition to numerous essays and addresses. Besides these, its library contains some seventy-three thousand volumes of printed works, chiefly Americana, many of them relating to the Indians and obscure early colonial history. Eight hundred and eleven genealogies of American families—the fountain-head of the national history—are a feature of the collection. The library also possesses one of the best sets of Congressional documents extant, also complete sets of State and city documents. There are four thousand volumes of newspapers, beginning with the first journal published in America,—the "Boston News-Letter" of 1704,—and comprising a complete record to the present day. There are also tons of pamphlets and "broadsides," and several hundred copies of the inflammatory hand-bills posted on the trees and fences of New York during the Revolution. The library is also rich in old family letters and documents containing much curious and interesting history. The Society is very conservative in its ways,—more so than most institutions of the kind. Theoretically, its stores of information can be drawn on by members only, but, as a general thing, properly accredited scholars, non-residents, have little difficulty in gaining access to them, provided the material sought is not elsewhere accessible.

Lafayette Place is a wide, quiet thoroughfare, a few blocks in extent, opening into Astor Place on the north. On the left, a few doors from the latter street, stands the Astor Library, in some respects one of the noteworthy libraries of the world. John Jacob Astor died March 29, 1848, leaving a will which contained a codicil in these words: "Desiring to render a public benefit to the city of New York, and to contribute to the advancement of useful knowledge and the general good of society, I do by this codicil appoint four hundred thousand dollars out of my residuary estate to the establishment of a public library in the city of New York." The instrument then proceeded to give specific directions as to how the money was to be applied: first, in the erection of a suitable building; second, in supplying the same with books, maps, charts, models, drawings, paintings, engravings, casts, statues, furniture, and other things appropriate to a library upon the most ample scale and liberal character; and, third, in maintaining and upholding the buildings and other property, and in paying the necessary expenses of the care of the same, and the salaries of the persons connected with the library, said library to be accessible at all reasonable hours and times for general use, free of expense, and subject only to such conditions as the trustees may exact. It was further provided that its affairs should be managed by eleven trustees, "selected from the different liberal professions and employments of life and the classes of educated men." The mayor was also to be a trustee by virtue of his office. The entire fund was vested in this board, with power to expend and invest moneys, and to appoint, direct, control, and remove the superintendent, librarian, and others employed about the library. The first trustees were named in the will, and Washington Irving was chosen president.

Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, who it is said first suggested the idea of a library to Mr. Astor, was appointed first superintendent and despatched to Europe to purchase books, which he succeeded in doing to the best advantage, the political disturbances of 1848 having thrown many valuable libraries on the market. Meantime, a building had been commenced on the east side of Lafayette Place, on a lot sixty-five feet front by one hundred and twenty deep; but as the books arrived before this was completed they were placed temporarily in a hired house in Bond Street. The new building, which was opened January 9, 1854, was in the Byzantine style, after the design by Alexander Saeltzer, the lower story being of brownstone and the two upper stories of red brick. The main hall or library-room, beginning on the second floor, was carried up through two stories and lighted by a large skylight in the roof. Around the sides of this room were built two tiers of alcoves capable of holding about one hundred thousand books. The library opened on the date mentioned with about eighty thousand volumes, devoted chiefly to science, history, art, and kindred topics, the trustees agreeing with the superintendent that the design of the founder could only be carried out and the "advancement of knowledge" and "general good of society" be best secured by making the new library one of reference only.

In October, 1855, Mr. William B. Astor, son of the founder, conveyed to the trustees the lot, eighty feet front by one hundred and twenty deep, adjoining the library on the north, and proceeded to erect upon it an addition similar in all respects to the existing structure, the library thus enlarged being opened September 1, 1859, with one hundred and ten thousand volumes on its shelves. The addition led to a rearrangement of the material, the old hall being devoted to science and the industrial arts, and the new to history and general literature. In 1866 Mr. Astor further signified his interest in the library by a gift of fifty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars of it to be expended in the purchase of books, and on his death in 1875 left it a bequest of two hundred and forty-nine thousand dollars. In 1879 Mr. John Jacob Astor, grandson of the founder, added to this enduring monument of his family by building a second addition, seventy-five feet front and one hundred and twenty feet deep, on the lot adjoining on the north, making the entire building two hundred feet front by one hundred deep. At the same time an additional story was placed on the Middle Hall, and a new entrance and stairway constructed. The enlarged building, the present Astor Library, was opened in October, 1881, with two hundred thousand volumes and a shelf-capacity of three hundred thousand. Its present contents are estimated at two hundred and twenty thousand volumes, exclusive of pamphlets. The shelves are ranged in alcoves extending around the sides of the three main halls and subdivided into sections of six shelves each, each section being designated by a numeral. Each shelf is designated by a letter of the alphabet, beginning at the bottom with A. The alcoves have no distinguishing mark, the books being arranged therein by subjects which the distributing librarian is expected to carry in his mind. The first catalogue, in four volumes, was compiled by Dr. Cogswell and printed in 1861. This was followed in 1866 by an index of subjects from the same hand. Recently a catalogue in continuation of Dr. Cogswell's, bringing the work down to the end of 1880, has been prepared, and is being printed at the Riverside Press, Boston. The current card catalogue is arranged on the dictionary plan, giving author and subject under one alphabet. Opposite each title is written the number of the alcove and the letter designating the shelf. By the regulations the reader is required to find the title of the book desired in the catalogue, write it with the number and letter on a slip of paper provided for the purpose, and give it to the distributing librarian, who despatches one of his boy Mercuries to the shelf designated for the work. More often than not, however, the reader asks directly for the book desired, without consulting the catalogue, and it is rarely that the librarian cannot from memory direct his messenger to the section and shelf containing it. In the matter of theft and mutilation of books the library depends largely on the honor of readers, although some safeguards are provided. All readers are required to enter their names and addresses in a book, and the volume on being given out is charged to them, to be checked off on its return: it would be difficult, too, for a thief to purloin books without being detected by the employees or the porter in the vestibule. Yet books are stolen occasionally. In June, 1881, a four-volume work by Bentley on "Medicinal Plants," valued at sixty dollars, was taken from the library. It was soon missed, and search made for it without avail. A few weeks later, however, it was discovered by the principal librarian in a Broadway book-stall and recovered.

Few strangers in the city depart without paying a visit to the Astor Library, and it is one of the few lions of the city that do not disappoint. The main entrance is approached by two flights of stone steps, from the north and south, leading to a brownstone platform enclosed by the same material. From this, broad door-ways give entrance to the vestibule, sixty feet by forty, paved in black and white marble, and wainscoted four feet above the floor with beautifully variegated marble from Vermont. The panelled ceiling is elaborately frescoed, as well as the upper part of the walls. Busts of the sages and heroes of antiquity adorn the hall. From the vestibule a stairway of white marble, with massive newels of variegated marble, leads up to the library proper. The visitor enters this in the centre of Middle Hall. Before him, separated by a balustrade, are the desks and tables of the distributing librarian and his assistants. The ladies' reading-room is in the rear. On the left and right arched passages give access to the North and South Halls, in which the main reading-rooms are situated. The ceiling above is the skylight of the roof, and the alcoves, filled with the wealth of learning of all ages and peoples, rise on either hand quite to the ceiling. At long, green-covered tables, ranged in two parallel lines through the halls, are seated the readers, in themselves an interesting study. Scientists, artists, literary men, special students, inventors, and dilettante loungers make up the company. They come with the opening of the doors at nine in the morning, and remain, some of them, until they close at five in the evening. There are daily desertions from their ranks, but always new-comers enough to fill the gaps. Their wants are as various as their conditions. This well-dressed, self-respectful mechanic wishes to consult the patent-office reports of various countries, in which the library is rich. His long-haired Saxon neighbor is poring over a Chinese manuscript, German scholars being the only ones so far who have attacked the fine collection of Chinese and Japanese works in the library. Next him is a dilettante reader languidly poring over "Lothair:" were the trustees to fill their shelves with trashy fiction, readers of his class would soon crowd out the more earnest workers. Here is a student with the thirty or more volumes of the "New England Historic Genealogical Register" piled before him, flanked on one side by the huge volumes of Burke's "Peerage" and on the other by Walford's "County Families." There are many readers of this class, the library's department of Genealogy and Heraldry being well filled. There is a lady here and there at the tables working with a male companion, but, as a rule, they are to be found at the ladies' tables in the Middle Hall. There seem to be but two classes of readers here,—the lady in silken attire, engaged in looking out some item of family history or question of decorative art, and the brisk business-like literary lady, seeking material for story or sketch. Any student or literary worker who can show to the satisfaction of one of the trustees that he is engaged in work requiring free access to the library receives a card from the superintendent which admits him to the alcoves and places all the treasures of the library at his command. A register is placed near the distributing librarian's desk, in which on entering each visitor to the alcove is required to sign his name, and in this register each year is accumulated a roll of autographs of which any institution might be proud. Famous scholars, scientists, authors, journalists, poets, artists, and divines, both of this country and of Europe, are included in the lists.

Of its treasures of literary and artistic interest it is impossible to give categorical details. Perhaps the library prizes most the magnificent elephant folio edition, in four volumes, of Audubon's "Birds and Quadrupeds of North America," with its colored plates, heavy paper, and general air of sumptuousness. The work is rare as well as magnificent, and, though the library does not set a price upon its books, it is known that three thousand dollars would not replace a missing copy. In an adjoining alcove is an equally sumptuous but more ancient volume, the Antiphonale, or mammoth manuscript of the chants for the Christian year. This volume was used at the coronation of Charles X., King of France. The covers of this huge folio are bound with brass, beautiful illuminations by Le Brun adorn its title-pages, and then follows, in huge black characters, the music of the chants. In its immediate vicinity are many of the treasures of the library,—Zahn's great work on Pompeii, three volumes of very large folios, containing splendidly-colored frescos from the walls of the dead city; Sylvester's elaborate work of "Fac-Similes of the Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle Ages," in four large folios; and also Count Bastard's great work on the same, seeming more sumptuous in gold, silver, and colors. Another notable work is Count Littar's "Genealogies of Celebrated Italian Families," in ten folio volumes, emblazoned in gold, and illustrated with richly-colored portraits finished like ivory miniatures. There are whole galleries of European art,—Versailles, Florence, Spain, the Vatican, Nash's Portfolio of Colored Pictures of Windsor Castle and Palace, the Royal Pitti Gallery, Munich, Dresden, and others. A work on the "Archæology of the Bosphorus," presented by the Emperor of Russia to the library, is in three folio volumes, printed on thick vellum paper, with two folding maps and ninety-four illuminated plates: but two hundred copies of the book were printed, for presentation solely. Other notable gifts are the publications of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, in seventeen volumes, catalogue of antiquities, chiefly British, at Alnwick Castle, and one of Egyptian antiquities at the same, from the Duke of Northumberland, a complete file of the "Liberator," from Mr. Wendell Phillips, numerous works on Oriental art, from the imperial governments of Japan and China, and many thousand folio volumes of Parliamentary papers and British patents, from the British government. Of its Orientalia and its department of Egyptology the library is especially proud. The latter so good an authority as Professor Seyffarth pronounces second only to that of the British Museum.

In addition to the large collection of costly books of art with which this library is enriched, there are some of the rarest manuscripts and earliest printed books to be seen kept in glass cases in the Middle Hall. Among these may be mentioned the superbly illuminated manuscript of the ninth century entitled "Evangelistarium,"—one of the finest existing productions of the revival of learning under Charlemagne; the "Sarum Missal," a richly-emblazoned manuscript of the tenth century; some choice Greek and Latin codices once belonging to the library of Pope Pius VI.; and the Persian manuscripts recently acquired, which formerly were in the library of the Mogul emperors at Delhi, bearing the stamp of Shah Akbar and Shah Jehan. The writing is by the famous calligrapher Sultan Alee Meshedee (896 a.h., or 1518 a.d.).

There is as great a popular misconception of the character and purpose of the Lenox Library as of the Astor. The two are like and yet unlike,—alike in the rich treasures which they contain, but quite unlike in their scope and purposes. In reality the Lenox is a museum of art rather than a library: its books are, with few exceptions, rarities, "first editions," illuminated manuscripts, specimens showing the advance of the typographic art from the beginning, books of artistic interest, and works not to be found in this country, and sometimes not in Europe. Its collection of paintings and sculpture is important as well as its literary treasures. It is not a library of general reference, though many of its works will be sought by scholars for the value of their contents: it is, in short, a private art-gallery and library thrown open at stated times and under certain restrictions to the public. The library owes its existence to the munificence of Mr. James Lenox, a wealthy and educated gentleman of New York, who determined to establish permanently in his native city his fine collection of manuscripts, printed books, engravings and maps, statuary, paintings, drawings, and other works of art, by giving the land and money necessary to provide a building and a permanent fund for the maintenance of the same. In January, 1870, the legislature of New York passed an act "creating a body corporate by the name and style of 'The Trustees of the Lenox Library.'" Nine trustees were named, and these gentlemen organized by electing Mr. Lenox president and Mr. A.B. Belknap secretary. In the succeeding March Mr. Lenox conveyed to the trustees three hundred thousand dollars in stocks of the county of New York and bonds and mortgage securities, and also the ten lots of land fronting on Fifth Avenue on which the library-building now stands. One hundred thousand dollars were set apart for the formation of a permanent fund, and two hundred thousand dollars for a building-fund. Contracts for a library-building were made early In 1872, and work on it was begun in May of the same year,—the structure being finished in 1875. It has a frontage of one hundred and ninety-two feet on Fifth Avenue, overlooking the Park, and a depth of one hundred and fourteen feet on both Seventieth and Seventy-first Streets. The general plan is that of a central structure connecting two turreted wings which enclose a spacious entrance-court. From the court the visitor enters a grand hall or vestibule, from which every part of the building is reached. At either end is a spacious library-room. Stone stairways lead from each end of the vestibule to the mezzanine, or half-story, and the second-story landings. From the latter one enters the principal gallery, ninety-six by twenty-four, devoted to sculpture, and opening on the east into the picture-gallery. At either end of the hall of sculpture are library- and reading-rooms similar to those on the first floor. The stairway on the north continues the ascent to an attic or third-floor gallery. The building throughout is fitted up in a style befitting a shrine of the arts. The first-floor library-rooms are one hundred and eight feet long by thirty feet wide and twenty-four feet high, with level ceilings, beautifully panelled and corniced. The sides of the hall of sculpture are divided by five arcades, resting on piers decorated with niches, pilasters, and other architectural ornaments; the ceiling has deep panels resting on and supported by the pilasters; the walls are wainscoted in oak to the height of the niches. The picture-gallery is forty by fifty-six, well lighted from above by three large skylights. Iron book-cases, with a capacity for eighty thousand volumes, are arranged in two tiers on the sides of the galleries. The whole structure is as nearly fire-proof as it could possibly be made, and its massive walls and stone towers make it one of the prominent architectural features of the avenue. While the building was in progress, several benefactions of interest had accrued to the library. Mr. Lenox had given an additional one hundred thousand dollars, and in 1872 one hundred thousand dollars more, and Mr. Felix Astoin had promised to bestow his fine collection of some five thousand rare French works. On the 15th of January, 1877, the first exhibition of paintings and sculptures was opened to the public, and continued on two days of the week to the end of the year, and on the 1st of the following December an apartment for the exhibition of rare works and manuscripts was also opened to the public. Fifteen thousand people visited the library during this first year, thus indicating the popular appreciation of a collection of this kind. In 1881 nineteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-three admission-tickets were issued,—the largest number of visitors on any one day being eleven hundred, on the anniversary of Washington's birthday.

The scope and objects of this unique institution are so admirably set forth by the trustees in their report to the legislature for 1881 that we append an extract. "The library," they observe, "differs from most public libraries. It is not a great general library intended in its endowment and present equipment for the use of readers in all or most of the departments of human knowledge.... Beyond its special collections it should be regarded as supplementary to others more general and numerous and directly adapted to popular use. It is not like the British Museum, but rather like the Grenville collection in the British Museum, or perhaps still more like the house and museum of Sir John Soane in Lincoln's Inn's Fields, in London, both lasting monuments of the learning and liberality of their honored founders. Thus, while the library does not profess to be a general or universal collection of all the knowledge stored up in the world of books, it is absolutely without a peer or a rival here in the special collections to which the generous taste and liberal scholarship of its founder devoted his best gifts of intellectual ability and ample resources of fortune. It represents the favorite studies of a lifetime consecrated after due offices of religion and charity to the choicest pursuits of literature and art. It would be difficult to estimate the value or importance of these marvellous treasures, whose exhibition hitherto only in part has challenged the admiration of all scholars and given a new impulse to those studies for which they furnish an apparatus before unseen in America.... The countless myriads of volumes produced in the past four centuries of printing with movable types have left in all the libraries of all the nations comparatively few monuments, or even memorials, of so many eager, patient, or weary generations of men whose works have followed them when they have rested from their labors. The Lenox Library was established for the public exhibition and scholarly use of some of the most rare and precious of such monuments and memorials of the typographic art and the historic past as have escaped the wreck and been preserved to this day. That exhibition and use must be governed by regulations which will insure to the fullest extent the security and preservation of the treasures intrusted to our care, in the enforcement of which the trustees anticipate the sympathy and co-operation of all scholars and men of letters, through whose use and labors alone the public at large must chiefly derive real and permanent benefit from this and all similar institutions." The "regulations" adopted by the trustees for the preservation of their treasures do not seem unreasonable. Admission is by ticket, which may be procured of the librarian by addressing him by mail. We have space for but the briefest possible glimpses at these treasures. The chief rarities in typography are found in the north and south libraries on the first floor. In "first editions" it would be difficult to say whether the library prides itself most on its Bibles, its Miltoniana, or its Shakesperiana. In Bibles the whole art of printing with movable types is fully portrayed, the series beginning with the "Mazarin," or Gutenberg, Bible, the first book ever printed with movable types. There are Bibles in all languages. There is the first complete edition of the New Testament in Greek ever published, its title-page dated Basle, 1516. In a glass case in the north library are the four huge "Polyglot" Bibles, marvels of typography, known as the Complutensian, Antwerp, Paris, and English Polyglots. In the same case repose the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Vaticanus,—three great folios, in the original Greek and Hebrew, sacred to scholars as the works on which all authority for the Scriptures rests. Tyndale's New Testament, the first ever printed on English ground, dated London, 1536, is here, and that rare copy of the King James version known as the "Wicked Bible." In this copy the printer, as a satire on the age, omitted the word "not" from the seventh commandment, and for this piece of waggery was heavily fined, the money going, it is said, to establish the first Greek press ever erected at Oxford. Among its "first editions" the library has that of Homer, 1488, and that of Dante, 1472. The Milton collection deserves special notice: in addition to the first editions of the poet's various works, it contains a folio volume of letters and documents pertaining to Milton and his family, with autograph manuscripts giving exceedingly interesting details of the poet's private life and fortunes. One of these is a long original letter from Milton himself to his friend Carlo Dati, the Florentine, with the latter's reply; there are also three receipts or releases signed by Milton's three daughters, Anne Milton, Mary Milton, and Deborah Clarke, a bond from Elizabeth Milton, his widow, to one Randle Timmis, and several other agreements and assignments, with the autographs of attesting witnesses. In folio editions of Shakespeare, and in commentaries, glossaries, and dissertations, the library is also exceedingly rich. Its collection of Americana is the wonder and delight of scholars. We must mention the first publication of the printed letter of Columbus, one in each of its four editions, giving the first account of his discoveries in the West, with three autograph letters of Diego Columbus, his son; the "Cosmographia Introductio," printed at St. Dié, 1507,—the first book in which a suggestion of the name "America" occurs; and also the first map, printed in 1520, in which the name appears. Here is the first American book printed,—a Mexican work, dated 1543-44; the Bay Psalm-Book, 1640, the first work printed in New England; and the first book printed in New York,—the Laws of the Province, by Bradford, issued in 1691: the Puritan evidently placing the gospel first, and the Knickerbocker the law.

Leaving the typographical treasures of the library, we ascend the broad marble stairway to the floor above, for a brief glance at the paintings and statuary. In the hall devoted to sculpture are many noble and beautiful works of art in marble, the most noticeable perhaps being Powers's "Il Penseroso," the bust of Washington and the "Babes in the Wood" by Crawford, and the statue of Lincoln by Ball. In the picture-gallery on the east are a hundred and fifty subjects. On the south wall hangs a canvas which is at once recognized as the masterpiece. It is Munkácsy's "Blind Milton dictating 'Paradise Lost' to his Daughters." This painting is fitly supported on one side by a portrait of Milton owned for many years by Charles Lamb, and on the other by a copy of Lely's fine portrait of Cromwell.

The Mercantile is the popular library of the city; in no sense a public library, however, for the student or stranger must advance a pretty liberal entrance-fee before he can avail himself of its benefits. This institution is a pleasing example of what can be done by many hands, even though there be little in them: it has reached its present proportions without endowment or State aid, chiefly through the steady, continuous efforts of the merchants' clerks of the city. They have always managed it, one generation succeeding another, and they have in it to-day the largest circulating library in America. Mr. William Wood, a benevolent gentleman who devoted many of his later years to improving the condition of clerks, apprentices, and sailors, is regarded as the founder. Mr. Wood was a native of Boston, and in business there during early life, but later removed to London. After distributing much dole to the poor of that city, he founded a library for clerks in Liverpool, and subsequently one in Boston, the latter being the first of its kind in this country. The various mercantile libraries at Albany, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and other places are said to have been founded on the plan of this. In 1820 Mr. Wood began interesting the merchants' clerks of New York in the project of a library for themselves. The first meeting to consider it was held at the Tontine Coffee-House, in Wall Street, on November 9 of that year; and at an adjourned meeting on the 27th of the same month a constitution was formed and officers elected. The young men contributed a little money for the purchase of books, the merchants more, many books were begged or purchased by Mr. Wood, and on the 12th of February, 1821, the library was formally opened, with seven hundred volumes, in an upper room at No. 49 Fulton Street. The first librarian was Mr. John Thompson, who received, it is remembered, one hundred and fifty dollars a year as salary. It was not long before the library, like its fellows, began its migrations up town, Harpers' Building, on Cliff Street, being its second abode. This removal occurred in 1826, and the association had then become so strong that it was able to open a reading-room in connection with its library. Old readers remember that there were four weekly newspapers and seven magazines in this first reading-room. Its membership at that time numbered twelve hundred, there were four thousand four hundred volumes on its shelves, and its annual income amounted to seventeen hundred and fifty dollars.

In 1828 the library was desirous of building: many of the merchants and substantial men of the city were willing to aid it, but doubted the wisdom of trusting such large property interests to the management of young men. They formed, therefore, the Clinton Hall Association, to hold and control real estate for the benefit of the library, with fund shares of one hundred dollars each. The first year thirty-three thousand five hundred dollars had been subscribed, and the corporation began erecting the first Clinton Hall, at the corner of Nassau and Beekman Streets. Here the library remained for nearly a score of years, or until 1853, when a brisk agitation was begun for its removal up-town. A small but determined party favored its removal. The more conservative objected. At length, in January, 1853, the question was put to the vote, and lost by a large majority. But while the excitement was still at its height it was learned that the association had sold Clinton Hall and had purchased the old Italian Opera-House in Astor Place. Here, in May, 1855, the library opened, and here it has since remained, although for several years past the question of a farther removal up-town has been agitated. The constitution of this excellent institution provides that it shall be composed of three classes of members,—active, subscribing, and honorary. Any person engaged on a salary as clerk may become an active member, if approved by the board of directors, on subscribing to the constitution and paying an initiation-fee of one dollar, and two dollars for the first six months, his regular dues thereafter being two dollars semi-annually, in advance. Active members only may vote or hold office. Subscribing members may become such by a payment of five dollars annually or three dollars semi-annually. Persons of distinction may be elected honorary members by a vote of three-fourths of the members of the board of direction. The board of direction is composed of a president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary, and eight directors, the former elected annually, the directors four for one year and four for two years. There is also a book committee, which reports one month previous to each annual meeting. From the last annual report of the board it appears that in April, 1883, there were 198,858 books in the library. The total number of members at the same time was 3136, and the honorary members (71), the editors using the library (54), and the Clinton Hall stockholders (1701) swelled the total number of those availing themselves of its privileges to 4962. The total circulation for the year was 112,375 volumes, of which 27,549 were distributed from the branch office, No. 2 Liberty Place, and 1695 books were delivered by messengers at members' residences. In 1870 the circulation was 234,120, the large falling off—over one-half—being due to the era of cheap books. The department of fiction, of course, suffers most. This in 1870 formed about seventy per cent. of the circulation. In 1883 the number of works of fiction circulated was 53,937,—not quite fifty per cent.

To gain a fair idea of the popularity of the library one should spend a mid-winter Saturday afternoon and evening with the librarian and his busy assistants. Early in the afternoon numbers of young ladies leave the shopping and fashionable thoroughfares up-town and throng the library-room. The attendants, all young men, work with increased animation under the stimulus. Books fly from counter to alcoves and return, messenger-boys dart hither and thither, the fair patrons thumb the catalogues and chatter in sad defiance of the rules. They are long in making their selections, and appeal for aid to the librarians. But the last of this class of visitors departs before the six-o'clock dinner or tea, and the attendants have a respite for an hour. At seven the real rush begins, with the advent of the clerks and other patrons employed in store or office during the day, each intent on supplying himself with reading-matter for the next day. From this hour until the closing at nine the librarians are as busy as bees: there is a continual running from counter to alcove and from gallery to gallery. In some of the reports of the librarian interesting data are given of the tastes of readers and the popularity of books. Fiction, as we have seen, leads; but there is a growing taste for scientific and historical works. Buckle, Mill, and Macaulay are favorites, and Tyndall, Huxley, and Lubbock have many readers. The theft of its books is a serious drain on the library each year, but the destruction of its rare and valuable works of reference is still more provoking. Common gratitude, it might seem, would deter persons admitted to the privileges of its alcoves from injuring its property. What shall we think, then, of the vandals who during the past year twice cut out the article on political economy in "Appletons' Cyclopædia," so mutilated Thomson's "Cyclopædia of the Useful Arts" as to render it valueless, and bore off bodily Storer's "Dictionary of the Solubilities," the second volume of the new edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," Andrews's "Latin Dictionary," and several other valuable works?

There is a library in the city, the Apprentices', on Sixteenth Street, whose existence is hardly known even to New-Yorkers, which is exceedingly interesting to the student as an instance of the good a trades' union may accomplish when its energies are rightly directed. Here is a library of about sixty thousand volumes, with a supplementary reference library of forty thousand seven hundred and fifty works, and a well-equipped reading-room, free of debt, and free to its patrons, and all the result of the well-directed efforts of the "Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen." This society first organized for charitable purposes in 1792, receiving its first charter on the 14th of March of that year. In January, 1821, its charter was amended, the society being empowered to support a school for the education of the children of its deceased and indigent members and for the establishment of an "Apprentices' Library for the use of the apprentices of mechanics in the City of New York." A small library had been opened the year before at 12 Chambers Street, and there the library remained, constantly growing in number of volumes and patrons, till 1835, when it was removed to the old High-School Building, at 472 Broadway, which the society about that time purchased. It remained there until 1878, when it followed the march of population up-town, removing to its present spacious and convenient rooms in Mechanics' Hall, in Sixteenth Street. Strange as it may seem, the Apprentices' is the nearest approach to a public library on a large scale that the city can boast. It is absolutely free to males up to the age of eighteen; after that age it is required of the beneficiaries that they be engaged in some mechanical employment. Ladies who are engaged in any legitimate occupation may partake of its benefits. Books are loaned, the applicants, besides meeting the above conditions, being only required to furnish a guarantor. The total circulation of this excellent institution for 1881-82 was 164,100 volumes, and its beneficial influence on the class reached may be imagined. It is nevertheless a class library; and the fact still remains that New York, with her vast wealth and her splendid public and private charities, has yet to endow the great public library which will place within reach of her citizens the literary wealth of the ages. There is scarcely a disease, it is said, but has its richly-endowed hospital in the city, the number of eleemosynary institutions is legion, but the establishment of a public library, which is usually the first care of a free, rich, intelligent community, has been unaccountably neglected. The subject is now receiving the earnest thought of the best people of the city. Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the best method of founding and supporting such an institution. Some argue that this should be done by the city alone, holding that the self-respecting workingman and workingwoman will never patronize a free library instituted solely by private charity. Others urge that such an institution to be successful should be free from city control and entirely the result of private munificence. The latter gentlemen have added to the cogency of their arguments by a practical demonstration. Early in 1880 they organized on a small scale a free circulating library which should exist solely by the benefactions of the public, with the object of furnishing free reading at their homes to the people. The general plan adopted was a central library, with branches in the various wards, by this means bringing the centres of distribution within easy reach of the city's homes. The success of the institution has been such that its development should be carefully followed. It began operations by leasing two rooms of the old mansion, No. 36 Bond Street, and in March, 1880, "moved in," opening with a few hundred volumes donated chiefly from the libraries of its projectors. The first month—March—1044 volumes were circulated. By October this had grown to 4212. The next year—1881-82—the circulation reached 69,280, and it continued to increase until in 1883 it reached 81,233,—an increase of nearly 10,000 over the preceding year. In May, 1883, the library was removed to the comfortable and roomy building, No. 49 Bond Street, which had been purchased and fitted up for it by the trustees. Early in December, 1884, the Ottendorfer Library, at 135 Second Avenue, the first of the projected branch libraries, was opened with 8819 volumes, 4784 of which were in English and 4035 in German, the whole, with the library building, being the gift of Mr. Oswald Ottendorfer, of New York. The branch proved equally popular, having circulated during the past year—1885—97,000 volumes, while the circulation of the main library has increased to 104,000 volumes, the combined circulation of both libraries exceeding that of any other in the city. The percentage of loss has been only one book for 31,768 circulated. The report of the treasurer shows that the annual expenses of the library—about twelve thousand dollars—have been met by voluntary contributions, and that it has a permanent fund of about thirty-two thousand dollars besides its books. These figures prove that libraries of this character will be appreciated, and used by the people. The library committee say, in their last report, that after four years' experience they feel competent to begin the establishment of branch libraries, and observe that at least six of these centres of light and intelligence should be opened in various quarters of the city. It is understood that lack of funds alone prevents the institution from entering on this wider field. When one considers the liberal and too often indiscriminate charities of the metropolis, and reflects that the need and utility of this excellent enterprise have been demonstrated, it seems impossible that pecuniary obstacles will long be allowed to stand in the way of its legitimate development.

Charles Burr Todd.

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THE DRAMA IN THE NURSERY.

A Darwinian might find evidence of the pedigree of our species in the inherent taste for mimicry which we share, at all events, with the anthropoid apes. This instinct of mimicry I take to be the humble beginning from which dramatic art has sprung, and it appears in the individual at a very early stage. Perhaps it is even expressed in the first squalls of infancy, though this possibility has been overlooked or obscured by philosophic pedantry. Now anent these squalls. Hegel gravely declares that they indicate a revelation of the baby's exalted nature (oh!), and are meant to inform the public that it feels itself "permeated with the certitude" that it has a right to exact from the external world the satisfaction of its needs. Michelet opines that the squalls reveal the horror felt by the soul at being enslaved to nature. Another writer regards them as an outburst of wrath on the part of the baby at finding itself powerless against environing circumstances. Some early theologians, on the other hand, pronounced squalling to be a proof of innate wickedness; and this view strikes one as being much nearer the mark. But none of these accounts are completely satisfactory. Innate wickedness may supply the conception; it is the dramatic instinct that suggests the means. Here is the real explanation of those yells which embitter the life of a young father and drive the veteran into temporary exile. It happens in this wise. The first aim of a baby—not yours, madam; yours is well known to be an exception, but of other and common babies—is to make itself as widely offensive as possible. The end, indeed, is execrable, but the method is masterly. The baby has an a priori intuition that the note of the domestic cat is repulsive to the ear of the human adult. Consequently, what does your baby do but betake itself to a practical study of the caterwaul! After a few conscientious rehearsals a creditable degree of perfection is usually reached, and a series of excruciating performances are forthwith commenced, which last with unbroken success until the stage arrives when correction becomes possible. This process may check the child's taste for imitating the lower animals in some of their less engaging peculiarities, but his dramatic instincts will be diverted with a refreshing promptness to the congenial subjects of parent or nurse.

No sooner is your son and heir invested with the full dignity of knickerbockers than he begins to celebrate this rise in the social scale by "playing at being papa." The author of "Vice Versa" has drawn an amusing picture of the discomforts to papa which an exchange of environment with his school-boy son might involve. But there is another side to the question; and at Christmas-time, for instance, most papas would probably be glad enough to exchange the joys and responsibilities of paternity for the simple taste which can tackle plum-pudding and the youthful digestion for which this delicacy has no terrors. However, while it is impossible, or at least inexpedient, for papa to play at being his own urchin, the latter is restrained by no considerations, moral or otherwise, from attempting to personate his papa.

It is often said sententiously that the child is the father of the man. In this case most of us should blush for our parentage. It will be conceded at once (subject, of course, to special reservations in favor of individual brats) that the baby is the most detestable of created beings. But its physical impotence to some extent neutralizes its moral baseness. In the child the deviltries of the baby are partially curbed, but this loss is compensated for by superior bodily powers. Now, the virtuous child—if such a conception can be framed—when representing papa would delight to dwell on the better side of the paternal character, the finer feelings, the flashes of genius, the sallies of wit, the little touches of tenderness and romance, and so forth. Very likely; but the actual child does just the reverse of this. Is there a trivial weakness, a venial shortcoming, a microscopic spot of imperfection anywhere? The ruthless little imp has marked it for his own, and will infallibly reproduce it, certainly before your servants, and possibly before your friends.

"Now we'll play at being in church," quoth Master George in lordly wise to his little sisters. "I'm papa." Whereupon he will twist himself into an unseemly tangle of legs and arms which is simply a barbarous travesty of the attitude of studied grace with which you drink in the sermon in the corner of your family pew.

"Master George, you mustn't," interposes the housemaid, in a tone of faint rebuke, adding, however, with a thrill of generous appreciation, "Law, 'ow funny the child is, and as like as like!" Applause is delicious to every actor, and under its stimulus your first-born essays a fresh flight. Above the laughter of the nurses and the admiring shrieks of his sisters there rises a weird sound, as of a sucking pig in extremis. Your son, my unfortunate friend, is attempting, with his childish treble pipes, to formulate a masculine snore. This is a gross calumny. You never—stop!—well, on one occasion perhaps—but then there were extenuating circumstances. Very likely; but the child has grasped the fact without the circumstances, and has framed his conclusion as a universal proposition. It is a most improper induction, I admit; but logic, like some other things, is not to be looked for in children.

Next comes mamma's turn. Perhaps she has weakly yielded on some occasion to young hopeful's entreaties that he might come down to the kitchen with her to order dinner. By the perverse luck that waits on poor mortals, there happened on that very day to be a passage of arms between mistress and cook. Rapidly forgotten by the principals, it has been carefully stored up in the memory of the witness, who will subsequently bestow an immense amount of misguided energy in teaching a young sister to reproduce, with appropriate gesture and intonation, "Cook, I desire that you will not speak to me in that way. I am extremely displeased with you, and I shall acquaint your master with your conduct."

Small sisters, by the way, may be made to serve a variety of useful purposes of a dramatic or semi-dramatic nature. They may safely be cast for the unpleasant or uninteresting characters of the nursery drama. They form convenient targets for the development of their brothers' marksmanship; and they make excellent horses for their brothers to drive, and, it may be added, for their brothers to flog.

When the subjects afforded by its immediate surroundings are exhausted, Theatre Royal Nursery turns to fiction or history for materials. And here, too, the perversity of childhood is displayed. It is not the virtuous, the benevolent, the amiable, that your child delights to imitate, but rather the tyrant and the destroyer, the ogre who subsists in rude plenty on the peasantry of the neighborhood, or the dragon who is restricted by taste or convention to one young lady per diem, till the national stock is exhausted, or the inevitable knight turns up to supply the proper dramatic finale.

The varied incident of the "Pilgrim's Progress," its romance, and the weird fascination of its goblins and monsters, make it a favorite source of dramatic adaptations. And here, if any man doubt the doctrine of original sin, let him note the fierce competition among the youngsters for the part of Apollyon, and put his doubts from him. With a little care a great many scenes may be selected from this inimitable work. Christian's entry into the haven of refuge in the early part of his pilgrimage can be effectively reproduced in the nursery. It will be remembered that the approach was commanded by a castle of Beelzebub's, from which pilgrims were assailed by a shower of arrows. It is this that gives the episode its charm. One child is of course obliged to sacrifice his inclinations and personate Christian. The rest eagerly take service under Beelzebub and become the persecuting garrison. The "properties" required are of the simplest kind. The nursery sofa or settee—a position of great natural strength—is further fortified with chairs and other furniture to represent the stronghold of the enemy. Christian should be equipped with a wide-awake hat, a stick, and a great-coat (papa's will do, or, better still, a visitor's), with a stool wrapped up in a towel and slung over his shoulders to do duty as the bundle of sins. He is then made to totter along to a "practical" gate (two chairs are the right thing) at the far end of the room, while the hosts of darkness hurl boots, balls, and other suitable missiles at him from the sofa. Sometimes the original is faithfully copied, and bows and arrows are employed; but this is, on the whole, a mistake: there is some chance of Christian being really injured, and this, though of course no objection in itself, is apt to provoke a summary interference by the authorities. Christian's passage through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is another favorite piece. Here, too, there are great opportunities for an enterprising demon. It will be necessary, however, for the success of the performance that Christian should abandon his strictly defensive attitude in the narrative and lay about him with sufficient energy to produce a general scrimmage.

"Robinson Crusoe" is a treasure-house of situations, some of which gain a piquancy from the dash of the diabolical with which Crusoe's terrors invested them. Even where this is wanting there is plenty of bloodshed to take its place, and a happy combination of horrors is supplied by the cannibal feast which Crusoe interrupts. The youngest member of the troupe is, on the whole, the best victim; but, failing this, any pet animal sufficiently lazy or good-tempered to endure the process makes a tolerable substitute. "Masterman Ready," "The Swiss Family Robinson," and other cognate works, together with appropriate selections from sacred and profane history, are adapted with a shamelessness which would make a dramatic author's blood run cold.

Lions, tigers, and wild beasts generally are common objects of nursery imitation, either from a genuine admiration of their qualities or from the mysterious craving for locomotion on all-fours with which children seem possessed. This branch of the art, however, struggles under some difficulties. It has, of course, to contend with the undisguised opposition of authority. This is hardly a matter for marvel, and perhaps not even a matter for regret. A prudential regard for the knees of puerile knickerbockers and the corresponding region of feminine frocks may explain a good deal of parental discouragement in the matter; and there is little public sympathy to counteract this, for it is felt that the total decay of these mimes would not be a serious loss either to dramatic art or to peace and quietness.

In one sense, no doubt, these amusements of childhood are matters of little moment; but, in spite of their seeming triviality, they have a genuine importance which should not be overlooked. The spontaneous exhibitions of children at play often reveal latent tastes, tendencies, or traits of character to one who is able to interpret them aright. If this be so,—and it is no longer open to doubt,—it is clear that even infant acting may furnish hints and assistance of the highest value to an intelligent system of education. It is true, no doubt, that till quite lately any such possibility was steadily ignored; but it is only quite lately that anything like an intelligent system of early education has been attempted. The idiosyncrasies of a child, instead of being carefully observed, were either disregarded as meaningless or repressed as being naughty. No greater mistake could be possible; and this at last is beginning to be understood. The first struggles of a young consciousness to express itself externally are nearly always eccentric, and often seem perverse. But this is nothing more than we ought to expect. The oddities of a child's conduct are in reality nothing else than direct expressions of character, uncurbed by the conventions which regulate the demeanor of adults, or direct revelations of some taste or aptitude, which education may foster, but which neglect will hardly crush. The world contains a woful number of human pegs thrust forcibly into holes which do not fit them, and the world's work suffers proportionately from this misapplication of energy. The mischief is abundantly clear, but the remedy, if we do not shut our eyes to it, is tolerably clear also. Just as this condition of things is largely due to our unscientific neglect of variations in character and the wooden system of education which this neglect has produced, so we may expect to see its evils disappear by an abolition of the one and a reform of the other. If the world be indeed a stage, with all humanity for its corps dramatique it must surely be well for the success of the performance that the cast should take account of individual aptitudes, and that to each player should be allotted the part which he can best support in the great drama of Life.

Norman Pearson.

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OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

"The Man who Laughs."

The degree of culture and good breeding which a man possesses may be very correctly determined by the way he laughs. The primeval savage, from whom we trace descent, was distinguished above everything else by his demonstrativeness; and there is much in our present type of social manners and conduct which betrays our barbarous origin. The brute-like sounds that escape from the human throat in the exercise of laughter, the coarse guffaw, the hoarse chuckle, and the high, cackling tones in which many of the feminine half of the world express their sense of amusement, attest very painfully the animal nature within us. It was Emerson, I believe, who expressed a dislike of all loud laughter; and it is difficult to imagine the scene or occasion which could draw from that serene and even-minded philosopher a broader expression of amusement than that conveyed in the "inscrutable smile" which Whipple describes as his most characteristic feature. Yet Emerson was by no means wanting in appreciation of the comic. On the contrary, he had an abiding sense of humor, and it was this—a keen and lively perception of the grotesque, derived as part of his Yankee inheritance—that kept him from uniting in many of the extravagant reform movements of the day. Few of us, however, even under the sanction of an Emerson, would wish to dispense with all sound of laughter.

The memory of a friend's voice, in which certain laughing notes and tones are inextricably mingled with the graver inflections of common speech, is almost as dear as the vision of his countenance or the warm pressure of his hand. Yet among such remembrances we hold others, of those from whom the sound of open laughter is seldom heard, the absence of which, however, denotes no diminished sense of the humorous and amusing. A quick, responsive smile, a flash or glance of the eye, a kindling countenance, serve as substitutes for true laughter, and we do not miss the sound of that which is supplied in a finer and often truer quality.

The freest, purest laughter is that of childhood, which is as spontaneous as the song of birds. It is impossible that the laughter of older people should retain this sound of perfect music. Knowledge of life and the world has entered in to mar the natural harmonics of the human voice, which not all the skill and efforts of the vocal culturists can ever again restore. It is only those who in attaining the years and stature of manhood have retained the nature of the child, its first unconscious truth and simplicity, whose laughter is wholly pleasant to hear. I recall the laugh of a friend which corresponds to this description, a laugh as pure and melodious, as guiltless of premeditated art or intention, as the notes of the rising lark; yet its owner is a man of wide worldly experience. It is natural that I, who know my friend so well, should find in this peculiarly happy laugh of his the sign and test of that type of high, sincere manhood which he represents; but it is a dangerous business, this attempting to define the character and disposition of people by the turn of an eyelid, the curve of a lip, or a particular vocal shade and inflection. Not only has Art learned to imitate Nature very closely, but Nature herself plays many a trick upon our credulity in matters of this kind. Upon a woman who owns no higher motive than low and selfish cunning she bestows the musical tones of a seraph, as she sheathes the sharp claws of all her feline progeny in cases of softest fur. Rosamond Vincy is not the only example which might be furnished, either in or out of print, in proof that a low, soft voice, that excellent thing in woman, may have a wrongly persuasive accent, luring to disappointment and death, like the Lorelei's song, to which the harsh tones of the most strong-minded Xantippe are to be preferred.

Still, it does seem that, however right Shakespeare was when he said a man may smile and smile and be a villain still, no real villain could indulge in hearty, spontaneous laughter. Much smiling is one of the thin disguises in which a certain kind of knavery seeks to hide itself, but it is easy to conjecture that the low ruffian type of villain, like that seen in Bill Sykes and Jonas Chuzzlewit, neither laughs nor smiles, being as destitute of the courage to listen to the sound of its own voice as of the wit that summons artifice to its aid in protection of its guilty devices.

The ghastly effect of guilt laughing with constrained glee to hide suspicion of itself from the eyes of innocence is vividly portrayed in Irving's performance of "The Bells," in the scene where Mathias, by a supreme effort of will, joins in Christian's laugh over the supposition that it might have been his, the respected burgomaster's, limekiln in which the body of the Polish Jew was burned. Genuine laughter must spring from a pure and undefiled source. It may not always be of tuneful quality, but it must at least contain the note of sincerity. I have in mind the outbursts of deep-chested sound with which another friend evinces his appreciation of a humorous remark or incident, a laugh which many fastidious people would pronounce too hard and rough by half, bending their heads and darting from under, as if suddenly assailed by some rude nor'wester. But I like the pleasant shock bestowed in those strong, breezy tones, and the feeling of rejuvenation and new expectancy which it imparts.

Another laugh echoes in memory as I write, a girl's laugh this time, not "idle and foolish and sweet," as such have been described, but clear, and strong, and odd almost to the point of the ludicrous, yet charmingly natural withal. A young woman's laugh is apt to begin at the highest note, and, running down the scale, to end in a sigh of mingled relief and exhaustion an octave or so lower down. This particular girl, however, takes the other way, and, running her chromatic neatly up from about middle C, pauses for a breath, and then astonishes her audience by striking off two perfectly attuned notes several degrees higher up, hitting her mark with the ease and deftness of a prima donna. So odd and surprising a laugh is sure to be quickly infectious, and its owner is never at a loss for company in her merriment, while a cheerful temper, unclouded by a shade of envy or suspicion, is not in the least disturbed by the knowledge that others are laughing at as well as with her.

The question of what we shall laugh at deserves more attention than our manner of laughing. "There is nothing," says Goethe, "in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at," adding, "The man of understanding finds almost everything ridiculous, the man of thought scarcely anything." This last corresponds somewhat to a sentiment found in Horace Walpole: "Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."

With many people laughter seems to be an appetite, which grows by what it feeds on, until all power of discrimination between the finer and the more vulgar forms of wit is lost. Certain it is that the habit of laughter is as easy to fall into as it is dangerous to all social dignity. The muscles of the mouth have a natural upward curve,—a fact which speaks well for the disposition of Mother Nature who made us, and may also be held to signify that there are more things in the world deserving our approval than our condemnation. But the hideous spectacle presented in the contorted visage of Hugo's great character contains a wholesome warning even for us of a later age; for there is a social tyranny, almost as potent as the kingly despotism which ruled the world centuries ago, that would fain shape the features of its victims after one artificial pattern. We laugh too much, from which it necessarily follows that we often laugh at the wrong things, a fault which betrays intellectual weakness as well as moral cupidity. The determining quality in true laughter lies in the degree of innocent mirth it gives expression to; and when jealous satire, envy, or malice add their dissonant note to its sound, its finest effect is destroyed and its opportunity lost.

C.P.W.

Why we Forget Names.

In the last years of his life the venerated Emerson lost his memory of names. In instance of this many will remember the story told about him when returning from the funeral of his friend Longfellow. Walking away from the cemetery with his companion, he said, "That gentleman whose funeral we have just attended was a sweet and beautiful soul, but I cannot recall his name." The little anecdote has something very touching about it,—the old man asking for the name of the life-long friend, "the gentleman whose funeral we have just attended."

When I saw Mr. Emerson a year prior to his own death, this defect of memory was very noticeable, and extended even to the names of common objects, so that in talking he would use quaint, roundabout expressions to supply the place of missing words. He would call a church, for instance, "that building in the town where all the people go on Sunday."

This loss of memory of names is very common with old people, but it is not confined to them. Almost every one has at some time experienced the peculiar, the almost desperate, feeling of trying to recall a name that will not come. It is at our tongue's end; we know just what sort of a name it is; it begins with a B; yet did we try for a year it would not come. One curious fact about the phenomenon is that it seems to be contagious. If one person suddenly finds himself unable to recall a name, the person with whom he is talking will stick at it also. The name almost always gets the best of them, and they have to say, "Yes, I know what you mean," and go on with their talk.

I have never seen an explanation of this name-forgetfulness; but it is not difficult to find a reason for it. What needs explaining is that names are so obstinate, and grow more obstinate the harder we try, while other things we have forgotten and are trying to recall generally yield themselves to our efforts. Moreover, in other cases of forgetfulness we never experience that peculiar and most exasperating feature of name-forgetfulness,—the feeling that we know the word perfectly well all the time. This last fact, indeed, seems to show that we have not forgotten the name at all, but have simply lost the clue to it.

Now, let us inquire why this clue is so hard to find. Scientific men who study the human mind and make a business of explaining thought, emotion, memory, and the like, have an expression which they use frequently, and which sounds difficult, but which really it is very easy as well as interesting to understand. They speak of the association of ideas. The association of ideas means simply the fact which every one has noticed, that one thing tends to call up another in the mind. When you recall a certain sleigh-ride last winter, you remember that you put hot bricks in the sleigh; and this reminds you that you were intending to heat a warming-pan for the bed to-night; and the thought of warming the bed makes you think of poor President Garfield's sickness, during which they tried to cool his room with ice. Each of these thoughts (ideas) has evidently called up another connected—associated—with it in some way. This is the association of ideas: it is a law that governs almost all our thinking, as any one may discover by going back over his own thoughts. Perhaps an easier way to discover it will be to observe the rapid talk of an afternoon caller on the family, and see how the conversation skips from one subject to another which the last suggested, and from that to another suggested by this, and so on.

Just this association of ideas it is which enables us to recall things we have forgotten. Our ideas on any subject—say that sleigh-ride last winter—resemble a lot of balls some distance apart in a room, but all connected by strings. If there is any particular ball we cannot find,—that is, some fact we cannot remember,—then if we pull the neighboring balls it is likely that they by the connecting strings will bring the missing ball into sight. To illustrate this, suppose that you cannot remember the route of that sleigh-ride. You recall carefully all the circumstances associated with the ride, in hopes that some one of them will suggest the route that was taken. You think of your companions, of the moon being full, of having borrowed extra robes, of the hot bricks—Ah, there is a clue! The bricks were reheated somewhere. Where was it? They were placed on a stove,—on a red-hot stove with a loafers' foot-rail about it. That settles it. Such stoves are found only in country grocery-stores; and now it all comes back to you. The ride was by the hill road to Smith's Corners. It is as if there were a string from the hot-bricks idea to the idea that the bricks were reheated, to this necessarily being done on a stove, to the peculiar kind of stove it was done on, to the only place in the neighborhood where such a stove could be, to Smith's Corners; and this string has led you, like a clue, to the fact you desired to remember.

We can now return to the question asked above: In trying to recall names, why is it so difficult to find a clue? After what has been said, the question can be put in a better form: Why does not the association of ideas enable us to recall names as it does other things? The answer is, that names (proper names) have very few associations, very few strings, or clues, leading to them. It is easy to see this; for suppose you moved away from the neighborhood of that sleigh-ride many years before, and in thinking over past times find yourself unable to recall the name of the Corners where the store stood. The place can be remembered perfectly, and a thousand circumstances connected with it, but they furnish no clue to the name: the circumstances might all remain the same and the name be any other as well. The only association the name has is with an indistinct memory of how it sounded. It was of two words: the second was something like Hollow, or Cross roads, or Crossing; the first began with an S. But it is vain to seek for it: no clue leads to it. Were it the ride you sought to remember, many of its details could be recalled, some of which might lead to the desired fact; but a name has no details, and it is only possible to say of it that it sounded so and so, if it is possible to say that.

It may be asked, how, then, is it that we do remember some names, as those in use every day? Just as the multiplication-table is remembered,—by force of familiarity. Constant repetition engraves them in the mind. When in old age the vigor of the mind lessens, the engraving wears out and names are hard to recall, since there is no other clue to them than this engraved record.

There may be mentioned one slight help in recalling names when the case is important or desperate. It consists in going back to the period when the name was known and deliberately writing out a circumstantial account of all the connected incidents, mentioning names of persons and places whenever they can be remembered. If this is done in a casual way, without thinking of the purpose in view,—as if one were sending a gossipy letter of personal history to a friend,—the mind falls into an automatic condition that may result in producing the desired name itself. Every one must have observed that it is this automatic activity of the mind, and not conscious effort, which recovers lost names most successfully. We "think of them afterwards."

Xenos Clark.

A Reminiscence of Harriet Martineau.

It is more than fifty years since I, a mere child, spent a summer with my parents in a sandy young city of Indiana. Eight or nine hundred souls, perhaps more, were already anchored within its borders. Chicago, a lusty infant just over the line, her feet blackened with prairie mud, made faces, called names, and ridiculed its soil and architecture. Nevertheless it was a valiant little city, even though its streets were rivers of shifting sand, through which "prairie-schooners" were toilsomely dragged by heavy oxen or a string of chubby ponies,—these last a gift from the coppery Indian to the country he was fast forsaking. Clouds of clear grit drifted into open casements on every passing breeze, or, if a gale arose, were driven through every crevice. Our little city was cradled amid the shifting sand-hills on Michigan's wave-beaten shore. Indeed, it had received the name of the grand old lake in loving baptism, and was pluckily determined to wear it worthily. Its buildings were wholly of wood, and hastily constructed, some not entirely unpretentious, while others tilted on legs, as if in readiness at shortest notice to take to their heels and skip away. In those early days there was only the round yellow-bodied coach swinging on leathern straps, or the heavy lumber-wagon, to accommodate the tide of travel already setting westward. It was a daily delight to listen to the inspiring toot of the driver's horn and the crack of his long whip, as, with six steaming horses, he swung his dusty passengers in a final grand flourish up to the hospitable door of the inn.

One memorable morning brought to the unique little town a literary lion,—a woman of great heart, clear brain, and powerful pen,—in short, Harriet Martineau. Her travelling companions were a professor, his comely wife, and their eight-year-old son. The last-named was much petted by Miss Martineau, and still flourishes in perennial youth on many pages of her books of American travel. Michigan City felt honored in its transient guest. The whisper that a real live author was among us filled the inn hall with a changing throng eager to obtain a glimpse of the celebrity. Not among the least of these were "the two little girls" she mentions in her "Society in America," page 253. At breakfast the party served their sharpened appetites quite like ordinary folk,—Miss Martineau in thoughtful quiet, broken now and again by a brisk question darted at the professor, who answered in a deliberate learned way that was quite impressive. A shiver of disgust ruffled his plump features at the absence of cream, which the host excused by the statement that, the population having outgrown its flocks and herds, milk was held sacred to the use of babes. Miss Martineau listened to the professor's complaints with a twinkle of mirth in her eyes, while that indignant gentleman vigorously applied himself to the solid edibles at hand. Shortly after breakfast the strangers sallied forth in search of floral treasures, over the low sand-hills stretching toward the lake (a spur of which penetrated the main street), where in the face of the sandy drift nestled a shanty quite like the "dug-out" of the timberless lands in Kansas and New Mexico. The tomb-like structure, half buried in sand, only its front being visible, seemed to afford Miss Martineau no end of surprised amusement as she climbed to its submerged roof on her way to the summit of the hill. A window-garden of tittering young women merrily watched the progress of the quick-stepping Englishwoman, and, really, there was some provocation to mirth, from their stand-point. Anything approaching a blanket, plain, plaided, or striped, had never disported itself before their astonished gaze as a part of feminine apparel, except on the back of a grimy squaw. Of blanket-shawls, soon to become a staple article of trade, the Western women had not then even heard; and here was a civilized and cultivated creature enveloped in what seemed to be a gay trophy wrested from the bed-furniture! Then, too, the "only sweet thing" in bonnets was the demure "cottage," fashioned of fine straw, while the woman in view sported a coarse, pied affair, whose turret-like crown and flaring brim pointed ambitiously skyward. Stout boots completed the costume criticised and laughed over by the merry maidens who yet stood in wholesome awe of the presence of the wearer. With what a wealth of gorgeous wild flowers and plumy ferns the pilgrims came laden on their return! Quoting from "Society in America," page 253, Miss Martineau says, "The scene was like what I had always fancied the Norway coast, but for the wild flowers, which grew among the pines on the slope almost into the tide. I longed to spend an entire day on this flowery and shadowy margin of the inland sea. I plucked handfuls of pea-vine and other trailing flowers, which seemed to run all over the ground."

Miss Martineau piled her treasures on a table and culled the specimens worthy of pressing, and it seemed to pain her to reject the least promising of her perishable plunder. She must have had a passion for flowers, judging from the tenderness with which she handled the lovely fronds and delicate petals under inspection, while her mouth was continually open in admiring exclamation.

And now came what I still fondly remember as the Musicale. A little comrade came in the twilight to sing songs with me. With arms interlaced, we paced the upper hall, vociferously warbling as breath was given us, when a door opened, and the gifted, dark-faced woman, with kindly eyes, beamed out on us. "Come," she called, "come in here, children, and sing your songs for me: I am very fond of music." Very bashfully we signified our willingness to oblige,—indeed, we dared not do otherwise,—and sidled into the room. Closing the door, our hostess curled herself comfortably on a gayly-cushioned lounge, and proceeded to adjust a serpent-like, squirming appendage to her ear. With an encouraging nod, she bade us commence, closing her eyes meanwhile with an air of expectant rapture. But the vibrating trumpet stirred our foolish souls to explosive laughter, partially smothered in a simultaneous strangled cough. Wondering at the double paroxysm and subsequent hush of shame, she unclosed her eyes, softly murmuring, "Don't be bashful nor afraid, my dears. I am very far from home, and you can make me very happy, if you will. Pray begin at once, and then I will also sing for you." Taking courage, we piped as bidden, rendering in a childish way the strains of "Blue-Eyed Mary," "Comin' through the Rye," "I'd be a Butterfly," and "Auld Lang Syne," Our audience, with bright, attentive looks, regarded the performance in pleased approval, softly tapping time on her knee with a slender finger.

"Now it is my turn," said Miss Martineau. Straightening herself and casting aside the trumpet, primly folding her hands and pursing her mouth curiously, she began, in a high, quavering voice, a song whose burden was the fixed objection on the part of a certain damsel to forsaking the pleasures of the world for the seclusion and safety of a convent:

Now, is it not a pity such a pretty girl as I
Should be sent to a nunnery to pine away and die?
But I won't be a nun,—- no, I won't be a nun;
I'm so fond of pleasure that I cannot be a nun.

It is impossible to give an idea of the jerky style of the lady's singing which so tickled our sensitive ears. At every repetition of the refrain, Susy and I squeezed our locked fingers spasmodically in order to suppress the unseemly laughter bubbling to our lips. At every emphatic word she nodded at us merrily, thus adding to our inward disquiet.

I like now, when picturing Harriet Martineau entertaining with noble themes the men and women of letters she drew around her in England and America, to remember, in connection with her strong, plain face and brilliant intellect, the simple kindliness with which she once unbent to a brace of little Hoosier maids in the "Far West."

F.C.M.

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LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

"Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence[A]." Edited by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

The northeastern corner of the ancient Pays de Vaud, only part of which is included in the modern canton, is little known to tourists. It lies away from the chief lines of travel, and it has neither the magnificent views that draw the visitor aside to Orbe nor the associations that induce him to stop at Coppet or Clarens. Yet its breezy upland plains and its quiet villages—some of them once populous and prosperous towns—are not devoid of charm, or of the interest connected with historical epochs and famous names. The "lone wall" and "lonelier column" at Avenches date from the period when this was the Roman capital of Helvetia. Morat still shows many a mark and relic of its siege by Charles the Bold and of the overthrow of his forces by the Swiss. Payerne was the birthplace, in 1779, of Jomini, the greatest of all writers on military operations, whose precocious genius, while he was a mere stripling and before he had witnessed any battles or manoeuvres, penetrated the secret of Bonaparte's combinations and victorious campaigns, which veteran commanders were watching with mere wonderment and dismay. At Motiers, a few miles farther north, was born, in 1807, Louis Agassiz, who at an equally early age displayed a like intuitive comprehension of many of the workings of Nature, and who subsequently became the chief exponent of the glacial theory and the highest authority on the structure and classification of fishes. Each of these two men gave his ripest powers and longest labors to a great country far from their common home,—Jomini to Russia, Agassiz to the United States; and, dissimilar as were their objects and pursuits, their intellectual resemblance was fundamental. The pre-eminent quality of each was the power of rapid generalization, of mastering and subordinating details, of grasping and applying principles and laws. Agassiz differed as much from an animal-loving collector like Frank Buckland, whose father was one of his stanchest friends and co-workers, as Jomini differed from a fighting general like Ney, to whom he suggested the movements that resulted in the French victory at Bautzen. Switzerland is equally proud of the great strategist and the great naturalist, but to Americans in general the former is at the most a mere name, while the career of the latter is an object of wide-spread and even national interest.

In the volumes before us the story of that career is clearly and completely, yet concisely, set forth. Readers of biography who delight mainly in social gossip may complain of the absence of everything of the kind; but such matter neither belonged to the subject nor was required for its elucidation. We are prone to draw a distinction between what we call a man's personal life and the larger and more active part of his existence, and to fancy that the clue to his character lies in some minor idiosyncrasies, or in habits and tastes that were perhaps accidentally formed. But every earnest worker reveals in his methods and achievements not alone his intellectual capacities, but all the deep and essential qualities of his nature. With Agassiz this was conspicuously the case. The enthusiasm, the singleness of purpose, and the indefatigable energy that constituted the fond, so to speak, of his character were as open to view as the features of his countenance. Hence the single and strong impression he produced on all with whom he came in contact, the sympathy he so quickly kindled, and the co-operation he so readily enlisted. It was easily perceived that he was no self-seeker, that no thought of personal interest mingled with his devotion to science, and that he was not more intent on absorbing knowledge than desirous of diffusing it. No one has ever more fully and happily blended the qualities of student and teacher, and it was in this double capacity that he became so public and prominent a figure and exerted so wide an influence in the country of his adoption.

Some men overcome obstacles and attain their ends by sheer persistency of will, others by tact and persuasiveness, while there is a third class, before whom the barred doors open as they are successively approached, through what are called either fortunate accidents or Providential interventions, but are seen, on closer inspection, to have been the direct and natural effects of the force unconsciously exerted by an harmonious combination of qualities. Agassiz's career was full of such instances. The insistent desire of his parents, while stinting themselves to secure his education, that he should adopt a bread-winning profession, yielded, not to any urgent appeals or dogged display of resolution, but to the proof given by his labors that he was choosing more wisely for himself. Cuvier, without any request or expectation, resigned to the neophyte who, after following in his footsteps, was outstripping him in certain lines, drawings and notes prepared for his own use. Humboldt, at a critical moment, saved him from the necessity for abandoning his projects by an unsolicited loan, supplemented by many further acts of assistance of a different kind. In England every possible facility and aid was afforded to him as well by private individuals as by public institutions. In America, men like Mr. Nathaniel Thayer and Mr. John Anderson needed only in some chance way to become acquainted with his plans to be ready to provide the means for carrying them out. It was the same on all occasions. The United States government, the Coast Survey, the legislature of Massachusetts, private individuals throughout the country, showed a rare willingness, and even eagerness, to forward his views. The man and the object were identified in people's minds, and, as in all such cases, a feeling was roused and an impulse generated which could have sprung from no other source.

The attractiveness and charm which everybody seems to have found in him had perhaps the same origin. It does not appear that his nature was peculiarly sympathetic, that it was through any unusual flow and warmth of feeling toward others that he so quickly became the object of their attachment or regard. Of course, we do not intend to intimate that he was deficient in strength of affection or in the least degree cold or unresponsive. But his "magnetism," to use the current word, lay in the ardor and singleness of his devotion to science, not as an abstraction, but as a potent agency in civilization, in the union of elevation with enthusiasm, in an openness that seemed to reveal everything, yet nothing that should have been hidden. Hence this biography, little as it deals with purely personal matters, awakens an interest of precisely the same kind as that which the living Agassiz was accustomed to excite. For the student of comparative zoology or of glacial action all that is here told about these subjects can have only an historical value. But no reader can follow the successive steps of a career that was always in the truest sense upward without being touched by that inspiring influence which it constantly diffused, and which Americans, above all others, have reason to hold in grateful remembrance.

Illustrated Books.

"The Sermon on the Mount." Boston: Roberts Brothers.

"Poems of Nature." By John Greenleaf Whittier. Illustrated from Nature by Elbridge Kingsley. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

"Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." A Romaunt. By Lord Byron. Boston: Ticknor & Co.

"The Last Leaf." Poem. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Illustrated by George Wharton Edwards and F. Hopkinson Smith. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

"Pepper and Salt; or, Seasoning for Young Folks." Prepared by Howard Pyle. New York: Harper & Brothers.

"Davy the Goblin; or, What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,'" By Charles E. Carryl. Boston; Ticknor & Co.

"Bric-à-Brac Stories." By Mrs. Burton Harrison. Illustrated by Walter Crane. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

"Rudder Grange." By Frank R. Stockton. Illustrated by A.B. Frost. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

In turning over the pictorial books of the season one experiences a genuine pleasure in coming upon this illustrated edition of "The Sermon on the Mount," which belongs to a high order of merit from its satisfactory interpretation of the subject and the beauty of its general design and careful detail. It is, of course, a modern performance, and nothing is more characteristic of most modern art than that it does consciously, from reminiscence and with a reaching after certain effects, what was once done simply, intuitively, and from the urgency of poetic feeling. A great difference must naturally exist not only in the outward mode but in the spirit of a group of modern artists who set to work to illuminate a sacred text, and that in which the task was undertaken by cloistered monks in whose gray lives a longing for beauty, for color, found expression only here. Thus one realizes that the decorative borders—which one looks at over and over again in this volume, and which actually satisfy the eye—do not represent the artist's own actual dreams, but are founded instead upon the ecstatic visions of Fra Angelico and others as they bent over their work in their silent cells; but they are beautiful nevertheless, far transcend what is merely decorative, and are full of imagination and feeling. In fact, into this frame-work, which might have contained nothing beyond conventional imitation, Mr. Smith has put vivid touches which show that he has the faculty to conceive and the skill to handle which belong to the true artist. It would be easy to instance several of these borders as remarkably good in their way: that which surrounds the "Lord's Prayer" suggests dazzling effects in jewelled glass. The book is made up in a delightful way, with full-page pictures interspersed with vignettes illustrating the text and set round with those richly-designed borders to which we have alluded. Mr. Fenn's pictures of actual places in the Holy Land, besides striking the key-note of veracity which puts us in a mood to see the whole story under fresh lights, are full of beauty and charm. We are inclined to like everything in the book, although in the various ways in which the beatitudes are interpreted we are conscious of some incongruities, and wish that certain illustrations had made way for designs showing more unity of conception among the artists. For instance, Mr. Church's introduction of a New England scene of tomahawking Indians cannot be said to throw a flood of light upon the meaning of "Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake." Mr. St. John Harper's pictures are a trifle obscure; but their obscurity veils their want of pertinence and suggests subtilties that flatter the imagination into fitting the application to suit itself. Any mention of the book which failed to include Mr. Copeland's work on the engrossed text would be altogether inadequate, for it is very perfect, very beautiful, full of surprises and delightful quaintnesses, and helps to make the book what it actually is, a complete whole, which really answers our wishes of what an illustrated book should be.

Mr. Whittier's "Poems of Nature" make the felicitous occasion this year for one of Messrs. Houghton & Mifflin's rich and attractive series of their authors' selected works. An admirable etching of the poet faces the title-page, and the poems, chiefly descriptive of New England scenes, are illustrated by designs from nature, the work of a single artist. That Mr. Kingsley is in sympathy with the poet, and that he is an impassioned lover of nature and the various moods of nature, no one can doubt, and the impression of truthfulness which his work produces on the mind makes his pictures interesting and full of sentiment even when they are not entirely successful. Perhaps he aims in general at rather too large effects to bring them out vividly; for when the scene he chooses is least composite he is at his best. "Deer Island Pines," for example, and "The Merrimac" are excellent, and we find much charm in "A Winter Scene" and in a Boughton-like "November Afternoon."

There is a certain temerity in undertaking to illustrate a work like "Childe Harold," which, if it has been read at all, has aroused its own distinct conceptions of scenery in the mind of its reader which must make any ordinary pictures setting off familiar lines tame and insipid. It is the triumph of art when the artist can bring out meanings and beauties in the text hitherto undreamed of; but we acquit the artists of the present book of any failure in that respect, for their intention seems never to have gone beyond amiable commonplace. The little cuts are all pleasant, trim, and, if not suggestive, at least not sufficiently the reverse to be displeasing. The head-pieces to the cantos are extremely good, and the two scenes "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods" and "There is a rapture on the lonely shore" we like sufficiently well to exempt them from the accusation of insipidity.

Happy the poet who lives to see one of the poems he carelessly flung off in early youth come back to him in his old age in such a setting as is here given to Dr. Holmes's "Last Leaf." "Just when it was written," the author says in his delightful and characteristic "Envoi" to the reader, "I cannot exactly say, nor in what paper or periodical it was first published. It must have been written before April, 1833,"—that is, when he was in the early twenties. The poem has always been a favorite, its sentiment suggesting Lamb's "All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." It must henceforth be ranked as a classic, for it is the happy destiny of the two artists who have worked together to give it this exquisite setting forth to make its actual worth clear to every reader. They have put nothing into the lines which was not there already, but they have shown fine insight in their choice of subjects and in conveying delicate and far-reaching meanings. They have subordinated—as designers do not invariably do—their instinctive methods and capricious inclinations to a careful study of their subject. The result is—instead of a pretty but chaotic decorativeness interspersed with florid and meaningless exaggerations—a complete and beautiful whole marred by no redundancy or incongruity. Their full play of intelligence brought to bear upon the suggestions of the poet has developed a series of pictures which give occasionally a delightful sense of surprise at their grace and unexpectedness. For example, the three which illustrate

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom

have absolutely a magical effect. Besides the full-page pictures, etchings, and photo-gravures, the minor details of title-lines, head- and tail-pieces, and the like, are executed in a way so pretty and clever as to leave nothing to be desired. The rich quarto is sumptuously bound, and, altogether, as a holiday gift-book the work has every element of beauty and appropriateness.

"Pepper and Salt" is one of those brilliantly clever books for little people which rouse a wonder as to whether the juvenile mind keeps pace with the highly stimulated imaginative powers of modern artists and finds solid entertainment in the richly-seasoned feast prepared for it. There is plenty of humor and whim in this volume, in which many old apologues appear in new shapes; wit, too, is to be found, and a sprinkling of wisdom. Effective designs, droll, fantastic, and invariably ingenious, set off the least of the poems and stories, and make it as striking and attractive a quarto as will be found among the young people's books this season.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" gave a new stimulus to children's literature, with its effective magic for youthful minds and its brilliant success among all classes of readers. "Davy the Goblin" is one of the many volumes which have been founded, so to say, on its idea and been carried along by its impulse. Thus little can be said for the actual originality of the book, although it deals in new combinations and abounds in droll situations. It is well printed and illustrated, and most children will be glad to have a new excursion into Wonderland.

Mrs. Burton Harrison's "Bric-à-Brac Stories," illustrated by Walter Crane, make an attractive volume with a good deal of solid reading within its covers. The stories are told with the verve and skill of a genuine story-teller, old themes are reset, and new material dexterously worked in, with characters drawn from fairy- and dream-land, and, set off by Mr. Crane's delightful drawings, the whole book is particularly attractive.

"Rudder Grange" is one of the books which it is essential to have always with us, and we are glad to see the stories so well illustrated, although the subject passes the domain of the artist, Mr. Stockton's humor being of that delicate and elusive order which strikes the inward and not the outward sense. "Pomona reading" in the wrecked canal-boat is a droll contribution, and many of the cuts show that the artist is in full harmony with the spirit of the author.