I lifted my head from my father's shoulder, and asked, in some dismay,—

"What is it, father?"

"I've gotten myself in trouble, Anna. I've let chaos into my house. I wanted you to help me."

"What is it? what has happened?" I hastened to inquire.

"Only a hospital patient that I was foolish enough to bring away. I heartily wish that he was back again," said my father; and he put me from him to go, in obedience to the summons.

I was about to follow him, but he waved me back as I went into the hall, and he went on. I heard the ring of a low, frenzied laugh, as I began unwrapping from my journey. My casket of treasures I had committed to bands for keeping. Now I laid it down, and, folding up my protective robes, I had just gone to try my father's easy-chair, alone, when Jeffy's ebon head struck in again.

"I didn't see ye afore, Miss Anna. I'so mighty glad you've come;" and Jeffy atoned for his former omission by his present joy.

"How is he?" I questioned Jeffy, as if I knew all the antecedents of the case perfectly.

"Oh, he's jolly to-night. I think Master Percival might have let me stay to see the fun;" and Jeffy's eyes rolled to and fro in their orbits, as if anxious to strike against some wandering comet.

"Is tea over?" I asked.

"No, miss. Master said he'd wait for you. I'll go and tell that you're here;" and Jeffy took himself off, eager for action.

He was not long gone.

"It's all ready, waiting a bit for master. He can't come down just this minute," said Jeffy. "Look a here, Miss Anna,—isn't it vastly funny master's bringing a crazy man here? They say down in the kitchen, that as how it wouldn't 'a' been, if you'd been home. It's real good, though. It's the splendidest thing that's happened. Wait till you see him perform. Ask him to sing. It's frolicky to hear him."

The boy went on, and I did not stop him. I was as anxious for information as he to impart it. When he paused for breath, in the width of detail that he furnished, I asked,—

"When was this stranger brought here?"

"Three days ago, Miss Anna, I hope he'll stay forever and ever;" and Jeffy darted off at a mellifluous sound that dropped down from above.

"There! he has thrown the poker at the mirror again, I do believe," said another voice in the hall, and I recognized the housekeeper.

Staid Mrs. Ordilinier came in to greet me, with the uniform greeting of her lifetime. I verily believe that she has but one way of receiving. Electricity and bread-and-butter would meet the same recognitory reception.

"Did you hear that noise, Miss Anna?" she said, as another sound came, that was vastly like the shivering of glass.

"What was it, Mrs. Ordilinier?"

I gave her the question to gain information. I sought it,—but she, not disposed to gratify me at the moment, slowly ascended to ascertain the state of mirrors above. She met my father's silver hairs coming down. He did not say one word to her. He met me in the hall, took me back to the room, and, reseating me in my olden place, put his hand upon my head, and said,—

"This must help me, Anna."

"It will, papa; what is it?"

"I've a crazy man up-stairs. He can't do very much harm, for he is badly injured."

"How?" I asked.

"Railroad accident. Four days ago, locomotive and two passenger-cars off the track, down forty feet upon the rocks and stones, and all there was of a river," my father replied, with evident regret that the company had been so unfortunate, as well as his individual self.

"Who is it?" was my next question.

"Don't know, darling; haven't the least idea. He has the softest brown, curling hair of his own, with a wig over it. Can't find out his name, or anything about him. I like him, though, Anna. He's like somebody! used to know. I brought him here from the hospital, several days ago, but he hasn't given me much peace since, and the people down below think I'm as crazy as he; but I cannot help it; I will not turn him out now."

"Of course you wouldn't, father. We'll manage him superbly. I'll chain him for you."

My father rose up, comforted by my words, and said "it was time for tea." We went down. I was the Sophie of Aaron's home, at my father's table.

"Papa," I said, as if introducing the most ordinary topic of conversation, "what was the occasion of sister Mary's death? She was only seventeen. How young to die!"

My father sighed, and said,—

"Yes, it was young. She had fever, Anna. One of those long, low fevers that mislead one. I did not think she would die."

"Was Mary engaged to be married, father?"

Dr. Percival looked up at his daughter Anna with the look that says, "You're growing old," although she was twenty-three, and never had gone so far in life as his eldest daughter at seventeen.

"She was, Anna."

"To whom, father?"

"Perhaps you've seen him, Anna. I hear that he is come home. His name is Axtell,—Abraham Axtell."

I told my father of the first words,—where we had found him, tolling the bell,—and of his mother's death, and his sister's illness.

"Incomprehensible people!" was my father's sole ejaculation, as he went to look after the deranged patient.

I occupied myself for an hour in picking up the reins of government that I had thrown down when I went to Redleaf. Looking into "our room," and not finding father there, I went on, up to my own room. A warm, welcoming fire burned within the grate. I thought, "How good father is to think for me!" and with the thought there entered in another. It came in the sudden consciousness that the room was prepared for some one else than me. I glanced about it, and saw the strange, wild man, with eyes all aglow, looking at me from out the depths of my wonted place of rest. No one else was in the room. I turned around to leave, but, dropping my precious box of margarite, I stooped to pick it up.

"It is a good harbor to sail into. I'm content," said the voice from the corner, before I could escape.

I met father coming in.

"Why, how is this?" he said to me.

"You didn't tell me you had given up my room," I said.

"Didn't I? Well, I forgot. We couldn't take him higher."

"Is he so much hurt?" I asked.

"Three broken bones," my father replied. "It will be weeks, it may be months, before he will be well;" and he sighed hopelessly at the good deed, which, being done, pressed so heavily. "Don't look so sadly about it, Myrtle-Vine," he added; "take my room, if you like."

"That was not my thought," I said. "I do not mind the change of room."

The visit to Redleaf, which I had made to dawn in my horizon, was eclipsed by three broken bones, that suddenly undermined the arch of consistency.

Soothingly came the words that were spoken unto me. My father was all-willing to relinquish his cherished room,—his for sixteen years, and opening into that mysterious other room,—to give it up to me, his Myrtle-Vine; and a momentary pang that any interest in existence should be, except as circling around him, flew across the future, "the science whereof is to man but what the shadow of the wind might be,"—and I looked up into his eyes, and, twining his long white hair around my fingers, for a moment felt that forever and forever he should be the supreme object of earthly devotion. In my wish to evince the sentiment in action, I requested permission to assist in the care of the hospital patient.

"Oh, no, Anna! he is too wild now. When the excitement of the fever is gone, then will be your time."

Another of those many-toned, circling peals of laughter came from my room. My father went in. I went past the place that mortal eyes were not permitted to fathom, and, for the first time in my life, was curious to know its contents, and why I had never seen the interior thereof, I had grown up with the mystery, until I had accepted it, unquestioning, as a thing not for my view, and therefore out of recognition. It was as far away from me as the open sea of the North, and might contain the mortal remains of all the navigators of Hope that ever had wandered into the sea of Time for him who so holily guarded it.

"One far-away Indian-summery day, four years agone," "while yet the day was young," Dr. Percival, my father, had led an azure-eyed maiden in through the mysterious entrance, and shown unto her the veiled temple, its altar and its shrine, and she had come thence with the dew of feeling in her eyes and a purple haze around her brow, which she has worn there until it has tangled its pansy-web into an abiding-place, unto such time as the light is shut out forever, or the waves from the silver sea curl their mist up thither. I had much marvel then concerning the hidden mysteries; but Sophie so soon thereafter spake the naughty "I will," that the silent room forgot to speak to me. I have never heard sound thence since that morning-time.

"Why does not my father take me in? Am I not his child, even as Sophie?"

I asked these questions of Anna Percival, the while she stood at an upper window, and looked out over New York's surging lines of life. The roar of rolling wheels came muffled by distance and the shore of dwelling-places over which I looked. I counted the church-spires that threaded the vault of night a little of the upward way. How angels, that have lived forever in heaven, and souls just free from material things, must reach down to touch these towering masts, that tell which way the sails of spirit bend! These city churches, dedicated with solemn service unto the worship of the great I AM, the Lord God of Adam, the Jehovah Jireh of Israelites, the Holy Redeemer of Christians,—may the Lord of heaven and earth bless them every one! I looked forth upon them with tears. There never comes a time, in the busiest hurry of human ways, that I do not sprinkle a drop of love upon the steps as I pass,—that I do not wind a tendril of holy feeling up to height of tower or summit of spire for the great winds to waft onward and upward. God pity the heart that does not involuntary reverence to God's templed places, made sacred a thousand fold by every penitential tear, by every throb of devotion, by every aspiration after the divine existence, from which let down a little while, we wander, for what we know not! God doth not tell, save that it is to "love first Him, Sole and Individual," and then the fragments, the crumbs of Divinity that dwell in Man.

I had not lighted the gas. The street-lamps sent up their rays, making the room semi-lucent. I took out my tower-key. What matter, if I held the cold iron thereof to my lips awhile? there was no frost in the March air then. I sent my restless fingers in and out of the wards, prisoning them often therein. As thus I stood, with cheek pressed against the windowpane, looking out upon the city, set into a rim of darkness, from out of which it flashed its million rays, papa came up.

"I didn't say good-night," he said, coming in, and to the window where I was. "But how is this, Anna? what has happened to my child? "—and he pointed to shining drops that glistened on the window-glass.

They must have come from my eyes; I could not deny their authorship, and so I confessed to tears of gladness at seeing him once more.

He looked fondly down at me through the dim light. I asked him after the tenant of my premises. He shook his head as one does in great doubt, said "life was uncertain," and repeated several other axioms, that were quite apart from his original style, and excessively annoying to me.

"Papa," I said, "why not tell me truly? will this man recover?"

"'Man proposes, God disposes,' my child," he said.

"I don't dispute the general truth," I replied,—"but, particularly, is this man's life in danger?"

He began to quote somebody's psalm or hymn about "fitful fevers and fleeting shadows."

My father has a fine, rich, variant power of sound with which to charm such as have ears to hear, and Anna Percival has been so endowed. Therefore she listened and waited to the end. When it came, she looked up into her father's face and said,—

"Papa, I am not a child, to be coaxed into forgetfulness; why will you not trust me? I am older than Sophie was when you took her in where I have not been; why will you not make me your friend?"—and some sudden collision of watery powers among the window-drops, whether from accretion or otherwise, sent a glistening rivulet down to the barrier of the sash.

Papa folded his arms, and looked at me. I could not bear to be thus shut out. I said so.

"Could you bear to be shut in?" he thought, and asked it.

"I think I could. I could bear anything that you gave me; I could keep anything that you intrusted to my keeping."

Papa looked at me as one does at a cherished vine the outermost edges of which are just frost-touched; then he folded me to his heart. I felt the throbbings thereof, and mine began to regret that I had intruded into the vestibule of his sacred temple; but a certain something went whispering within me, "You can feed the sacred fire," and I whispered to the whispering voice, and to my father's ear,—

"You'll take me in, won't you?"

"Come," was the only spoken word.

The room was not cheery; he felt it, and said,—

"You see what the effect is when my Myrtle-Vine is off my walls;" and he tossed aside books and papers that had evidently been astray for days, and lay now in his way.

Papa took a key (he wears it too, it seems: that is even more than I do with my tower's) from a tiny chain of gold about his neck, and unlocked the door connecting this silent room with his own. He went in, leaving me outside. He lighted a candle and left it burning there. He came, took my hand, and, with the leading whereby we guide a child, conducted me in thither. Then he went out and left me standing, bewildered, there.

I had anticipated something wonderful. What was here? It was a silent room. The carpet had a river-pattern meandering over its dark-blue ground: it must have been years since a broom went over it. Strange medley of furniture was here. I looked upon the walls. Pictures that must have come from another race and generation hung there. There were many of them. One side of the room held one only. It was a portrait. I remembered the original in life. "My mother," I exclaimed. In the room's centre, surrounded by various articles, was the very boat that I knew Mary Percival had guided out to sea to save Abraham Axtell. Two tiny oars lay across it. The paint was faded; the seams were open; it would hold water no longer. A sense of worship filled me. I looked up at the portrait. My mother smiled: or was it my fancy? Fancy undoubtedly; but fancies give comfort sometimes. I looked again at the boat. On its stern, in small, golden letters, was the name, "Blessing of the Bay," the very name given to the first boat built after the Mayflower's keel touched America's shore. "The name was a good omen," I thought. An armchair stood before the portrait. A shawl was spread over it. I lifted up the fringe to see what the shawl covered. Papa had come in.

"Don't do that, Anna," he said.

"Is it any harm, papa?"

"Your mother died sitting in that chair; her hands spread the shawl over it; it was the last work they did, Anna; it has never since been taken off."

I dropped the fringe; my touch seemed sacrilegious.

Near the chair was a small cabinet; it looked like an altar, or would have done so, had my father been a devotee to any religion requiring visible sacrifice. He opened it.

"Come hither, Anna,"—and I went.

Long, luxuriant bands of softly purplish hair lay within, upon the place of sacrifice.

"Sophie's is like this," I said.

"And Sophie wears one like unto this," said my father; and he took up a circlet of shining gold that lay among the tresses. "Sophie's marriage-ring was hallowed unto her. I gave it the morning she went out from me." He uttered these words with slow reverence of voice.

Why did self come up?

"You gave Sophie our mother's marriage-ring," I said, "and I"—

"Shall wear this," said my father. "I laid it here, with hers;" and he gently lifted the sacred hair, and, freeing the ring, put it upon my finger.

"This is not my marriage-day," I said. "Papa, I don't want it. Besides, gentlemen don't wear marriage-rings: how came you to?"

"Perhaps I have not worn this one; but will you wear it to please me?"

"Why will it please you? It is not symbolical, is it?"

"It makes you doubly mine," he said; and he led me back to outside life, with this strange sort of marriage-ring circling with its planet weight around my finger.

Did my father mean to keep me forever? And with the question came an answer that left sweet contentment in its pathway; it accorded with the intent of my heart.

"Father, have you made me your friend?" I asked, in the room that was terribly tossed, as I restored to place chairs that seemed to have been in a deplorably long dance, and to have forgotten their home at its close.

"You wear my ring, you have come into my orbit," he answered.

"That being true, I am as much interested in the flying comet in there as you are,—for if it strikes you, it hurts me;" and I waited his answer.

After a moment of pause, it came.

"My poor patient is very ill; his life will burn out, if the fever is not stayed;" and as the frenzied laugh reached us, Dr. Percival forgot my presence; he passed his hand slowly across his brow, as if to retouch memory, and then taking down a volume, he began to read. I waited long. At last he closed the book suddenly, said to himself, "I'll try it," and in half a moment my father's white hairs were separated from me by the impassable barrier of the sick-room.

I waited; he did not come. The chairs were not the only articles that had lost the commodity of order in my absence. I went to the table upon which were kept the papers, etc., that lingered there a little while, and then were thought no longer of. Idly I turned them over. What a chaos on a small scale! all the elements of literature were represented. I listened for coming footsteps; none came. "I may as well arrange this table," I thought, "as wait for the morrow;" and I made a beginning by sweeping the chaos at once upon the carpet. Then slowly I began picking them up, one by one, and appointing them stations. My task was nearly done, when, in turning over some magazines, I came upon a pile of papers that had been laid between the leaves of one, and ere I was aware of their presence, they slid down and scattered. I remember having felt a little surprise that my father should have left them there, but I hastened to gather them together. The last one of the number, I noticed, was torn; it had a foreign look. "Father has some new correspondent," I thought, as I looked at the number of mail-marks upon it. "He doesn't think much of it, though, or it would have received better treatment;" and I took a second look at it. A something in the feel of the paper seemed familiar. "It is good for nothing," I said aloud, and I tossed it toward the grate, put the pile of papers where I had found them, surveyed my work with satisfaction, and stood thinking whether or not I should wait to see my father again—it was more than an hour since he went up—to say good-night to me. "I will wait a half-hour; if he doesn't come then, I'll go," I said to the housekeeper, who came to see that all was right for the night, and to remind me that Redleaf had not proved very advantageous to my complexion, and to recommend early hours as a restorative.

In accordance with my promise, I drew a chair forward, placed my feet upon the fender, and began to study the dying embers that were slowly falling through the grate-bars. One, larger than usual, burned its way down. It lighted up, for an instant, the bit of paper, that had not fallen into the coals. Strange fancy it was that led me to imagine that I saw a capital A, followed immediately by that unknown quantity represented by x. I made an effort to gain it, scorched my face, and burned my fingers; for I touched the grate, in rescuing that which I had cast into the place of burning.

"This bit of paper, found in New York, had once been integral with that I had found within the church-yard tower in Redleaf," some inner voice assured me. "Yes, it is a part of it," I said, for I distinctly remembered the fragment whose possession I had so rejoiced over. Some one had written a letter to Miss Axtell; the envelope was torn,—one part there, another here. The letter itself I had found in the gloom of the passage-way; for it Miss Axtell had gone out to search, ill, and in the night; what must its contents have been, to have been worthy of such effort?—and for the time I quite forgot to connect this man, ill in my father's house, with the Herbert whose far-out-at-sea voice I had heard winding up at me through the very death-darkness of the tower. Suddenly the consciousness scintillated in my soul, and wonderful it was; but the picture of my dream came in with it, and I said again, "I am ready for the work which is given me to do," and I waited for its coming till I grew very weary, holding this fragment of envelope fast, as a ship clings to its anchor in mild seas. I ventured to knock at the entrance of my own room. All was silent within. I tried the second time. There came no answer. I dared not venture on the conquering third.

* * * * *

AT SYRACUSE.

All day my mule with patient tread Had moved along the plain, Now o'er the lava's ashen bed, Now through the sprouting grain, Across the torrent's rocky lair, Beneath the aloe-hedge, Where yellow broom makes sweet the air, And waves the purple sedge.

Lone were the hills, save where supine The dozing goatherd lay, Or, at a rude and broken shrine, The peasant knelt to pray; Or where athwart the distant blue Thin saffron clouds ascend, As Carbonari, hid from view, Their smouldering embers tend.

Luxuriant vale or sterile reach, A mountain temple-crowned Or inland curve of glistening beach, The changeful scene surround; While scarlet poppies burning near, And citrons' emerald gleam, Make barren intervals appear Dim lapses of a dream.

How meekly o'er the meadows gay The azure flax-blooms spread! What fragrance on the breeze of May The almond-blossoms shed! Wide-branching fig-trees deck the fields Or round the quarries cling, And cactus-stalks, with thorny shields, In wild contortions spring.

Here groves of cork dusk shadows throw, There vine-leaves lightsome sway, While chestnut-plumes serenely glow Above the olives gray; Tall pines upon the sloping meads Their sylvan domes uprear, And rankly the papyrus-reeds Low cluster in the mere.

And Syracuse with pensive mien, In solitary pride, Like an untamed, but throneless queen, Crouched by the lucent tide; With honeyed thyme still Hybla teemed, Its scent each zephyr bore, And Arethusa's fountain gleamed Pellucid as of yore.

Methought, upstarting from his bath, Old Archimedes cried, "Eureka!" in my silent path, Whose echoes long replied; That Pythias, in the sunset-glow, Rushed by to Damon's arms, While from the Tyrant's Cave below Moaned impotent alarms.

And where upon a sculptured stone The ruined arch beside, A hoary, bronzed, and wrinkled crone The twirling distaff plied,— Love with exalted Reason fraught In Plato's accents came, And Truth by Paul sublimely taught Relumed her virgin flame.

The ancient sepulchres that rose Along the voiceless street Time's myriad vistas seemed to close And bid life's waves retreat,— As if intrusive footsteps stole Beyond their mortal sphere, And felt the awed and eager soul Immortal comrades near.

The moss-grown ramparts loom in sight Like warders of the deep, Where, flushed with evening's amber light, The havened waters sleep; Unfurrowed by a Roman keel Or Carthaginian oar, The speared and burnished galleys now Their slumber break no more.

But when the distant convent-bell, Ere Day's last smiles depart, With mellow cadence pleading fell Upon my brooding heart,— And Memory's phantoms thick and fast Their fond illusions bred, From peerless spirits of the past, And wrecks of ages fled,—

Joy broke the spell; an emblem blest That lonely harbor cheered: As if to greet her pilgrim guest, My country's flag appeared! Its radiant folds auroral streamed Amid that haunted air, And every star prophetic beamed With Freedom's triumph there!

* * * * *

METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

All important changes in the social and political condition of man, whether brought about by violent convulsions or effected gradually, are at once recognized as eras in the history of humanity. But on the broad high-road of civilization along which men are ever marching, they pass by unnoticed the landmarks of intellectual progress, unless they chance to have some direct bearing on what is called the practical side of life. Such an era marked the early part of our own century; and though at the time a thousand events seemed more full-freighted for the world than the discovery of some old bones at the quarry of Montmartre, and though many a man seemed greater in the estimation of the hour than the professor at the Jardin des Plantes who strove to reconstruct these fragments, yet the story that they told lighted up all the past, and showed its true connection with the present. Cuvier, as one sees him in a retrospective glance at the wonderful period in which he lived, and which brought to the surface all its greatest elements,—one among a throng of exceptional men, generals, soldiers, statesmen, as well as men of commanding intellect in literary and scientific pursuits,—seems always standing at the meeting-point between the past and present. His gaze is ever fixed upon the path along which Creation has moved, and, as he travels back, recovering step by step the road that has been lost to man in apparently impenetrable darkness and mystery, the light brightens and broadens before him, and seems to tempt him on into the dim regions where the great mystery of Creation lies hidden.

Before the year 1800, men had never suspected that their home had been tenanted in past times by a set of beings totally different from those that inhabit it now; still farther was it from their thought to imagine that creation after creation had followed each other in successive ages, every one stamped with a character peculiarly its own. It was Cuvier who, aroused to new labors by the hint he received from the bones unearthed at Montmartre, to which all his vast knowledge of living animals gave him no clue, established by means of most laborious investigations the astounding conclusion, that, prior to the existence of the animals and plants now living, this globe had been the theatre of another set of beings, every trace of whom had vanished from the face of the earth. To his alert and active intellect and powerful imagination a word spoken out of the past was pregnant with meaning; and when he had once convinced himself that he had found a single animal that had no counterpart among living beings, it gave him the key to many mysteries.

It may be doubted whether men's eyes are ever opened to truths which, though new to them, are old to God, till the time has come when they can apprehend their meaning and turn them to good account. It certainly seems, that, when such a revelation has once been made, light pours in upon it from every side; and this is especially true of the case in point. The existence of a past creation once suggested, confirmation was found in a thousand facts overlooked before. The solid crust of the earth gave up its dead, and from the snows of Siberia, from the soil of Italy, from caves of Central Europe, from mines, from the rent sides of mountains and from their highest peaks, from the coral beds of ancient oceans, the varied animals that had possessed the earth ages before man was created spoke to us of the past.

No sooner were these facts established, than the relation between the extinct world and the world of to-day became the subject of extensive researches and comparisons; innumerable theories were started to account for the differences, and to determine the periods and manner of the change. It is not my intention to enter now at any length upon the subject of geological succession, though I hope to return to it hereafter in a series of papers upon that and kindred topics; but I allude to it here, before presenting some views upon the maintenance of organic types as they exist in our own period, for the following reason. Since it has been shown that from the beginning of Creation till the present time the physical history of the world has been divided into a succession of distinct periods, each one accompanied by its characteristic animals and plants, so that our own epoch is only the closing one in the long procession of the ages, naturalists have been constantly striving to find the connecting link between them all, and to prove that each such creation has been a normal and natural growth out of the preceding one. With this aim they have tried to adapt the phenomena of reproduction among animals to the problem of creation, and to make the beginning of life in the individual solve that great mystery of the beginning of life in the world. In other words, they have endeavored to show that the fact of successive generations is analogous to that of successive creations, and that the processes by which animals, once created, are maintained unchanged during the period to which they belong will account also for their primitive existence.

I wish, at the outset, to forestall any such misapplication of the facts I am about to state, and to impress upon my readers the difference between these two subjects of inquiry,—since it by no means follows, that, because individuals are endowed with the power of reproducing and perpetuating their kind, they are in any sense self-originating. Still less probable does this appear, when we consider, that, since man has existed upon the earth, no appreciable change has taken place in the animal or vegetable world; and so far as our knowledge goes, this would seem to be equally true of all the periods preceding ours, each one maintaining unbroken to its close the organic character impressed upon it at the beginning.

The question I propose to consider here is simply the mode by which organic types are preserved as they exist at present. Every one has a summary answer to this question in the statement, that all these short-lived individuals reproduce themselves, and thus maintain their kinds. But the modes of reproduction are so varied, the changes some animals undergo during their growth so extraordinary, the phenomena accompanying these changes so startling, that, in the pursuit of the subject, a new and independent science—that of Embryology—has grown up, of the utmost importance in the present state of our knowledge.

The prevalent ideas respecting the reproduction of animals are made up from the daily observation of those immediately about us in the barn-yard and the farm. But the phenomena here are comparatively simple, and easily traced. The moment we extend our observations beyond our cattle and fowls, and enter upon a wider field of investigation, we are met by the most startling facts. Not the least baffling of these are the disproportionate numbers of males and females in certain kinds of animals, their unequal development, as well as the extraordinary difference between the sexes among certain species, so that they seem as distinct from each other as if they belonged to separate groups of the Animal Kingdom. We have close at hand one of the most striking instances of disproportionate numbers in the household of the Bee, with its one fertile female charged with the perpetuation of the whole community, while her innumerable sterile sisterhood, amid a few hundred drones, work for its support in other ways. Another most interesting chapter connected with the maintenance of animals is found in the various ways and different degrees of care with which they provide for their progeny: some having fulfilled their whole duty toward their offspring when they have given them birth; others seeking hiding-places for the eggs they have laid, and watching with a certain care over their development; others feeding their young till they can provide for themselves, and building nests, or burrowing holes in the ground, or constructing earth mounds for their shelter.

But, whatever be the difference in the outward appearance or the habits of animals, one thing is common to them all without exception: at some period of their lives they produce eggs, which, being fertilized, give rise to beings of the same kind as the parent. This mode of generation is universal, and is based upon that harmonious antagonism between the sexes, that contrast between the male and the female element, that at once divides and unites the whole Animal Kingdom. And although this exchange of influence is not kept up by an equality of numeric relations,—since not only are the sexes very unequally divided in some kinds of animals, but the male and female elements are even combined in certain types, so that the individuals are uniformly hermaphrodites,—yet I firmly believe that this numerical distribution, however unequal it may seem to us, is not without its ordained accuracy and balance. He who has assigned its place to every leaf in the thickest forest, according to an arithmetical law which prescribes to each its allotted share of room on the branch where it grows, will not have distributed animal life with less care.

But although reproduction by eggs is common to all animals, it is only one among several modes of multiplication. We have seen that certain animals, besides the ordinary process of generation, also increase their number naturally and constantly by self-division, so that out of one individual many individuals may arise by a natural breaking up of the whole body into distinct surviving parts. This process of normal self-division may take place at all periods of life: it may form an early phase of metamorphosis, as in the Hydroid of our common Aurelia, described in the last article; or it may even take place before the young is formed in the egg. In such a case, the egg itself divides into a number of portions: two, four, eight, or even twelve and sixteen individuals being normally developed from every egg, in consequence of this singular process of segmentation of the yolk,—which takes place, indeed, in all eggs, but in those which produce but one individual is only a stage in the natural growth of the yolk during its transformation into a young embryo. As the facts here alluded to are not very familiar even to professional naturalists, I may be permitted to describe them more in detail.

No one who has often walked across a sand-beach in summer can have failed to remark what the children call "sand saucers." The name is not a bad one, with the exception that the saucer lacks a bottom; but the form of these circular bands of sand is certainly very like a saucer with the bottom knocked out. Hold one of them against the light and you will see that it is composed of countless transparent spheres, each of the size of a small pin's head. These are the eggs of our common Natica or Sea-Snail. Any one who remembers the outline of this shell will easily understand the process by which its eggs are left lying on the beach in the form I have described. They are laid in the shape of a broad, short ribbon, pressed between the mantle and the shell, and, passing out, cover the outside of the shell, over which they are rolled up, with a kind of glutinous envelope,—for the eggs are held together by a soft glutinous substance. Thus surrounded, the shell, by its natural movements along the beach, soon collects the sand upon it, the particles of which in contact with the glutinous substance of the eggs quickly forms a cement that binds the whole together in a kind of paste. When consolidated, it drops off from the shell, having taken the mould of its form, as it were, and retaining the curve which distinguishes the outline of the Natica. Although these saucers look perfectly round, it will be found that the edges are not soldered together, but are simply lapped one over the other. Every one of the thousand little spheres crowded into such a circle of sand contains an egg. If we follow the development of these eggs, we shall presently find that each one divides into two halves, these again dividing to make four portions, then the four breaking up into eight, and so on, till we may have the yolks divided into no less than sixteen distinct parts. Thus far this process of segmentation is similar to that of the egg in other animals; but, as we shall see hereafter, it seems usually to result only in a change in the quality of its substance, for the portions coalesce again to form one mass, from which a new individual is finally sketched out, at first as a simple embryo, and gradually undergoing all the changes peculiar to its kind, till a new-born animal escapes from the egg. But in the case of the Natica this regular segmentation changes its character, and at a certain period, in a more or less advanced stage of the segmentation, according to the species, each portion of the yolk assumes an individuality of its own, and, instead of uniting again with the rest, begins to subdivide for itself. In our Natica heros, for instance, the common large gray Sea-Snail of our coast, this change takes place when the yolk has subdivided into eight parts. At that time each portion begins a life of its own, not reuniting with its seven twin portions; so that in the end, instead of a single embryo growing out of this yolk, we have eight embryos arising from a single yolk, each one of which undergoes a series of developments similar in all respects to that by which a single embryo is formed from each egg in other animals. We have other Naticas in which the normal number is twelve, others again in which no less than sixteen individuals arise from one yolk. But this process of segmentation, though in these animals it leads to such a multiplication of individuals, is exactly the same as that discovered by K.E. von Baer in the egg of the Frog, and described and figured by Professor Bischof in the egg of the Rabbit, the Dog, the Guinea-Pig, and the Deer, while other embryologists have traced the same process in Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes, as well as in a variety of Articulates, Mollusks, and Radiates.

Multiplication by division occurs also normally in adult animals that have completed their growth. This is especially frequent among Worms; and strange to say, there are species in this Class which never lay eggs before they have already multiplied themselves by self-division.

Another mode of increase is that by budding, as in the Corals and many other Radiates. The most common instance of budding we do not, however, generally associate with this mode of multiplication in the Animal Kingdom, because we are so little accustomed to compare and generalize upon phenomena that we do not see to be directly connected with one another. I allude here to the budding of trees, which year after year enlarge by the addition of new individuals arising from buds. I trust that the usual acceptation of the word individual, used in science simply to designate singleness of existence, will not obscure a correct appreciation of the true relation of buds to their parents and to the beings arising from them. These buds have the same organic significance, whether they drop from the parent stock to become distinct individuals in the common acceptation of the term, or remain connected with the parent stock, as in Corals and in trees, thus forming growing communities of combined individuals. Nor will it matter much in connection with the subject under discussion, whether these buds start from the surface of an animal or sprout in its interior, to be cast off in due time. Neither is the inequality of buds, varying more or less among themselves, any sound reason for overlooking their essential identity of structure. We have seen instances of this among Acalephs, and it is still more apparent among trees which produce simultaneously leaf and flower-buds, and even separate male and female flower-buds, as is the case with our Hazels, Oaks, etc.

It is not, however, my purpose here to describe the various modes of reproduction and multiplication among animals and plants, nor to discuss the merits of the different opinions respecting their numeric increase, according to which some persons hold that all types originated from a few primitive individuals, while others believe that the very numbers now in existence are part of the primitive plan, and essential to the harmonious relations existing between the animal and vegetable world. I would only attempt to show that in the plan of Creation the maintenance of types has been secured through a variety of means, but under such limitations, that, within a narrow range of individual differences, all representatives of one kind of animals agree with one another, whether derived from eggs, or produced by natural division, or by budding; and that the constancy of these normal processes of reproduction, as well as the uniformity of their results, precludes the idea that the specific differences among animals have been produced by the very means that secure their permanence of type. The statement itself implies a contradiction, for it tells us that the same influences prevent and produce change in the condition of the Animal Kingdom. Facts are all against it; there is not a fact known to science by which any single being, in the natural process of reproduction and multiplication, has diverged from the course natural to its kind, or in which a single kind has been transformed into any other. But this once established, and setting aside the idea that Embryology is to explain to us the origin as well as the maintenance of life, it yet has most important lessons for us, and the field it covers is constantly enlarging as the study is pursued. The first and most important result of the science of Embryology was one for which the scientific world was wholly unprepared. Down to our own century, nothing could have been farther from the conception of anatomists and physiologists than the fact now generally admitted, that all animals, without exception, arise from eggs. Though Linnaeus had already expressed this great truth in the sentence so often quoted,—"Omne vivum ex ovo,"—yet he was not himself aware of the significance of his own statement, for the existence of the Mammalian egg was not then dreamed of. Since then the discoveries of von Baer and others have shown not only that the egg is common to all living beings without exception, from the lowest Radiate to the highest Vertebrate, but that its structure is at first identical in all, composed of the same primitive elements and undergoing exactly the same process of growth up to the time when it assumes the special character peculiar to its kind. This is unquestionably one of the most comprehensive generalizations of modern times.

In common parlance, we understand by an egg something of the nature of a hen's egg, a mass of yolk surrounded with white and inclosed in a shell. But to the naturalist, the envelopes of the egg, which vary greatly in different animals, are mere accessories, while the true egg, or, as it is called, the ovarian egg, with which the life of every living being begins, is a minute sphere, uniform in appearance throughout the Animal Kingdom, though its intimate structure is hardly to be reached even with the highest powers of the microscope. Some account of the earlier stages of growth in the egg may not be uninteresting to my readers. I will take the egg of the Turtle as an illustration, since that has been the subject of my own especial study; but, as I do not intend to carry my remarks beyond the period during which the history of all vertebrate eggs is the same, they may be considered of more general application.

It is well known that all organic structures, whether animal or vegetable, are composed of cells. These cells consist of an outside bag inclosing an inner sac, and within that sac there is a dot. The outer bag is filled with semi-transparent fluid, the inner one with a perfectly transparent fluid, while the dot is dark and distinct. In the language of our science, the outer envelope is called the Ectoblast, the inner sac the Mesoblast, and the dot the Entoblast. Although they are peculiarly modified to suit the different organs, these cells never lose this peculiar structure; it may be traced even in the long drawn-out cells of the flesh, which are like mere threads, but yet have their outer and inner sac and their dot,—at least while forming.

In the Turtle the ovary is made up of such cells, spherical at first, but becoming hexagonal under pressure, when they are more closely packed together. Between these ovarian cells the egg originates, and is at first a mere granule, so minute, that, when placed under a very high magnifying power, it is but just visible. This is the incipient egg, and at this stage it differs from the surrounding cells only in being somewhat darker, like a drop of oil, and opaque, instead of transparent and clear like the surrounding cells. Under the microscope it is found to be composed of two substances only: namely, oil and albumen. It increases gradually, and when it has reached a size at which it requires to be magnified one thousand times in order to be distinctly visible, the outside assumes the aspect of a membrane thicker than the interior and forming a coating around it. This is owing not to an addition from outside, but to a change in the consistency of the substance at the surface, which becomes more closely united, more compact, than the loose mass in the centre. Presently we perceive a bright, luminous, transparent spot on the upper side of the egg, near the wall or outer membrane. This is produced by a concentration of the albumen, which now separates from the oil and collects at the upper side of the egg, forming this light spot, called by naturalists the Purkinjean vesicle, after its discoverer, Purkinje. When this albuminous spot becomes somewhat larger, there arises a little dot in the centre,—the germinal dot, as it is called. And now we have a perfect cell-structure, differing from an ordinary cell only in having the inner sac, inclosing the dot, on the side, instead of in the centre. The outer membrane corresponds to the Ectoblast, or outer cell sac, the Purkinjean vesicle to the Mesoblast, or inner cell sac, while the dot in the centre answers to the Entoblast. When the Purkinjean vesicle has completed its growth, it bursts and disappears; but the mass contained in it remains in the same region, and retains the same character, though no longer inclosed as before.

At a later stage of the investigation, we see why the Purkinjean vesicle, or inner sac of the egg, is placed on the side, instead of being at the centre, as in the cell. It arises on that side along which the axis of the little Turtle is to lie,—the opposite side being that corresponding to the lower part of the body. Thus the lighter, more delicate part of the substance of the egg is collected where the upper cavity of the animal, inclosing the nervous system and brain, is to be, while the heavy oily part remains beneath, where the lower cavity, inclosing all the organs of mere material animal existence, is afterwards developed. In other words, when the egg is a mere mass of oil and albumen, not indicating as yet in any way the character of the future animal, and discernible only by the microscope, the distinction is indicated between the brains and the senses, between the organs of instinct and sensation and those of mere animal functions. At that stage of its existence, however, when the egg consists of an outer sac, an inner sac, and a dot, its resemblance to a cell is unmistakable; and, in fact, an egg, when forming, is nothing but a single cell. This comparison is important, because there are both animals and plants which, during their whole existence, consist of a single organic cell, while others are made up of countless millions of such cells. Between these two extremes we have all degrees, from the innumerable cells that build up the body of the highest Vertebrate to the single-celled Worm, and from the myriad cells of the Oak to the single-celled Alga.

But while we recognize the identity of cell-structure and egg-structure at this point in the history of the egg, we must not forget the great distinction between them,—namely, that, while the cells remain component parts of the whole body, the egg separates itself and assumes a distinct individual existence. Even now, while still microscopically small, its individuality begins; other substances collect around it, are absorbed into it, nourish it, serve it. Every being is a centre about which many other things cluster and converge, and which has the power to assimilate to itself the necessary elements of its life. Every egg is already such a centre, differing from the cells that surround it by no material elements, but by the principle of life in which its individuality consists, which is to make it a new being, instead of a fellow-cell with those that build up the body of the parent animal and remain component parts of it. This intangible something is the subtile element that eludes our closest analysis; it is the germ of the immaterial principle according to which the new being is to develop. The physical germ we see; the spiritual germ we cannot see, though we may trace its action on the material elements through which it is expressed.

The first change in the yolk, after the formation of the Purkinjean vesicle, is the appearance of minute dots near the wall at the side opposite the vesicle. These increase in number and size, but remain always on that half of the yolk, leaving the other half of the globe clear. One can hardly conceive the beauty of the egg as seen through the microscope at this period of its growth, when the whole yolk is divided, with the dark granules on one side, while the other side, where the transparent halo of the vesicle is seen, is brilliant with light. With the growth of the egg these granules enlarge, become more distinct, and under the microscope some of them appear to be hollow. They are not round in form, but rather irregular, and under the effect of light they are exceedingly brilliant. Presently, instead of being scattered equally over the space they occupy, they form clusters,—constellations, as it were,—and between these clusters are clear spaces, produced by the separation of the albumen from the oil.

At this period of its growth there is a wonderful resemblance between the appearance of the egg, as seen under the microscope, and the firmament with the celestial bodies. The little clusters or constellations are unequally divided: here and there they are two and two like double stars, or sometimes in threes or fives, or in sevens, recalling the Pleiades, and the clear albuminous tracks between are like the empty spaces separating the stars.

This is no fanciful simile: it is simply true that such is the actual appearance of the yolk at this time; and the idea cannot but suggest itself to the mind, that the thoughts which have been at work in the universe are collected and repeated here within this little egg, which offers us a miniature diagram of the firmament. This is one of the first changes of the yolk, ending by forming regular clusters with a sort of net-work of albumen between, and then this phase of the growth is complete.

Now the clusters of the yolk separate, and next the albumen in its turn concentrates into clusters, and the dark bodies, which have been till now the striking points, give way to the lighter spheres of albumen between which the clusters are scattered. Presently the whole becomes redissolved: these stages of the growth being completed, this little system of worlds is melted, as it were: but while it undergoes this process, the albuminous spheres, after being dissolved, arrange themselves in concentric rings, alternating with rings of granules, around the Purkinjean vesicle. At this time we are again reminded of Saturn and its rings, which seems to have its counterpart here. These rings disappear, and now once more out of the yolk mass loom up little dots as minute as before; but they are round instead of angular, and those nearest the Purkinjean vesicle are smaller and clearer, containing less of oil than the larger and darker ones on the opposite side. From this time the yolk begins to take its color, the oily cells assuming a yellow tint, while the albuminous cells near the vesicle become whiter.

Up to this period the processes in the different cells seem to have been controlled by the different character of the substance of each; but now it would seem that the changes become more independent of physical or material influences, for each kind of cell undergoes the same process. They all assume the ordinary cell character, with outer and inner sac,—the inner sac forming on the side, like the Purkinjean vesicle itself; but it does not retain this position, for, as soon as its wall is formed and it becomes a distinct body, it floats away from the side and takes its place in the centre. Next there arise within it a number of little bodies crystalline in form, and which actually are wax or oil crystals. They increase with great rapidity, the inner sac or mesoblast becoming sometimes so crowded with them, that its shape is affected by the protrusion of their angles. This process goes on till all the cells are so filled by the mesoblast, with its myriad brood of cells, that the outer sac or ectoblast becomes a mere halo around it. Then every mesoblast contracts; the contraction deepens, till it is divided across in both directions, separating thus into four parts, then into eight, then into sixteen, and so on, till every cell is crowded with hundreds of minute mesoblasts, each containing the indication of a central dot or entoblast. At this period every yolk cell is itself like a whole yolk; for each cell is as full of lesser cells as the yolk-bag itself.

When the mesoblast has become thus infinitely subdivided into hundreds of minute spheres, the ectoblast bursts, and the new generations of cells thus set free collect in that part of the egg where the embryonic disk is to arise. This process of segmentation continues to go on downward till the whole yolk is taken in. These myriad cells are in fact the component parts of the little Turtle that is to be. They will undergo certain modifications, to become flesh-cells, blood-cells, brain-cells, and so on, adapting themselves to the different organs they are to build up; but they have as much their definite and appointed share in the formation of the body now as at any later stage of its existence.

We are so accustomed to see life maintained through a variety of complicated organs that we are apt to think this the only way in which it can be manifested; and considering how closely life and the organs through which it is expressed are united, it is natural that we should believe them inseparably connected. But embryological investigations have shown us that in the commencement none of these organs are formed, and yet that the principle of life is active, and that even after they exist, they cannot act, inclosed as they are. In the little Chicken, for instance, before it is hatched, the lungs cannot breathe, for they are surrounded by fluid, the senses are inactive, for they receive no impressions from without, and all those functions establishing its relations with the external world lie dormant, for as yet they are not needed. But they are there, though, as we have seen in the Turtle's egg, they were not there at the beginning. How, then, are they formed? We may answer, that the first function of every organ is to make itself. The building material is, as it were, provided by the process which divides the yolk into innumerable cells, and by the gradual assimilation and modification of this material the organs arise. Before the lungs breathe, they make themselves; before the stomach digests, it makes itself; before the organs of the senses act, they make themselves; before the brain thinks, it makes itself; in a word, before the whole system works, it makes itself; its first office is self-structure.

At the period described above, however, when the new generations of cells are just set free and have taken their place in the region where the new being is to develop, nothing is to be seen of the animal whose life is beginning there, except the filmy disk lying on the surface of the yolk. Next come the layers of white or albumen around the egg, and last the shell which is formed from the lime in the albumen. There is always more or less of lime in albumen, and the hardening of the last layer of white into shell is owing only to the greater proportion of lime in its substance. In the layer next to the shell there is enough of lime to consolidate it slightly, and it forms a membrane; but the white, the membrane, and the shell have all the same quality, except that the proportion of lime is more or less in the different layers.

But, as I have said, the various envelopes of eggs, the presence or absence of a shell, and the absolute size of the egg, are accessory features, belonging not to the egg as egg, but to the special kind of being from which the egg has arisen and into which it is to develop. What is common to all eggs and essential to them all is that which corresponds to the yolk in the bird's egg. But their later mode of development, the degree of perfection acquired by the egg and germ before being laid, the term required for the germ to come to maturity, as well as the frequency and regularity of the broods, are all features varying with the different kinds of animals. There are those that lay eggs once a year at a particular season and then die; so that their existence may be compared to that of annual plants, undergoing their natural growth in a season, to exist during the remainder of the year only in the form of an egg or seed. The majority of Insects belong to this category, as do also our large Jelly-Fishes; many others have a slow growth, extending over several years, during which they reach their maturity, and for a longer or shorter time produce broods at fixed intervals; while others, again, reach their mature state very rapidly, and produce a number of successive generations in a comparatively short time, it may be in a single season.

I do not intend to enter upon the chapter of special differences of development among animals, for in this article I have aimed only to show that the egg lives, that it is itself the young animal, and that the vital principle is active in it from the earliest period of its existence. But I would say to all young students of Embryology that their next aim should be to study those intermediate phases in the life of a young animal, when, having already acquired independent existence, it has not yet reached the condition of the adult. Here lies an inexhaustible mine of valuable information unappropriated, from which, as my limited experience has already taught me, may be gathered the evidence for the solution of the most perplexing problems of our science. Here we shall find the true tests by which to determine the various kinds and different degrees of affinity which animals now living bear not only to one another, but also to those that have preceded them in past times. Here we shall find, not a material connection by which blind laws of matter have evolved the whole creation out of a single germ, but the clue to that intellectual conception which spans the whole series of the geological ages and is perfectly consistent in all its parts. In this sense the present will indeed explain the past, and the young naturalist is happy who enters upon his life of investigation now, when the problems that were dark to all his predecessors have received new light from the sciences of Palaeontology and Embryology.

* * * * *

BLIND TOM.

Only a germ in a withered flower, That the rain will bring out—sometime.

Sometime in the year 1850, a tobacco-planter in Southern Georgia (Perry H. Oliver by name) bought a likely negro woman with some other field-hands. She was stout, tough-muscled, willing, promised to be a remunerative servant; her baby, however, a boy a few months old, was only thrown in as a makeweight to the bargain, or rather because Mr. Oliver would not consent to separate mother and child. Charity only could have induced him to take the picaninny, in fact, for he was but a lump of black flesh, born blind, and with the vacant grin of idiocy, they thought, already stamped on his face. The two slaves were purchased, I believe, from a trader: it has been impossible, therefore, for me to ascertain where Tom was born, or when. Georgia field-hands are not accurate as Jews in preserving their genealogy; they do not anticipate a Messiah. A white man, you know, has that vague hope unconsciously latent in him, that he is, or shall give birth to, the great man of his race, a helper, a provider for the world's hunger: so he grows jealous with his blood; the dead grandfather may have presaged the possible son; besides, it is a debt he owes to this coming Saul to tell him whence he came. There are some classes, free and slave, out of whom society has crushed this hope: they have no clan, no family-names among them, therefore. This idiot-boy, chosen by God to be anointed with the holy chrism, is only "Tom,"—"Blind Tom," they call him in all the Southern States, with a kind cadence always, being proud and fond of him; and yet—nothing but Tom? That is pitiful. Just a mushroom-growth,—unkinned, unexpected, not hoped for, for generations, owning no name to purify and honor and give away when he is dead. His mother, at work to-day in the Oliver plantations, can never comprehend why her boy is famous; this gift of God to him means nothing to her. Nothing to him, either, which is saddest of all; he is unconscious, wears his crown as an idiot might. Whose fault is that? Deeper than slavery the evil lies.

Mr. Oliver did his duty well to the boy, being an observant and thoroughly kind master. The plantation was large, heartsome, faced the sun, swarmed with little black urchins, with plenty to eat, and nothing to do.

All that Tom required, as he fattened out of baby- into boyhood, was room in which to be warm, on the grass-patch, or by the kitchen-fires, to be stupid, flabby, sleepy,—kicked and petted alternately by the other hands. He had a habit of crawling up on the porches and verandas of the mansion and squatting there in the sun, waiting for a kind word or touch from those who went in and out. He seldom failed to receive it. Southerners know nothing of the physical shiver of aversion with which even the Abolitionists of the North touch the negro: so Tom, through his very helplessness, came to be a sort of pet in the family, a playmate, occasionally, of Mr. Oliver's own infant children. The boy, creeping about day after day in the hot light, was as repugnant an object as the lizards in the neighboring swamp, and promised to be of as little use to his master. He was of the lowest negro type, from which only field-hands can be made,—coal-black, with protruding heels, the ape-jaw, blubber-lips constantly open, the sightless eyes closed, and the head thrown far back on the shoulders, lying on the back, in fact, a habit which he still retains, and which adds to the imbecile character of the face. Until he was seven years of age, Tom was regarded on the plantation as an idiot, not unjustly; for at the present time his judgment and reason rank but as those of a child four years old. He showed a dog-like affection for some members of the household,—a son of Mr. Oliver's especially,—and a keen, nervous sensitiveness to the slightest blame or praise from them,—possessed, too, a low animal irritability of temper, giving way to inarticulate yelps of passion when provoked. That is all, so far; we find no other outgrowth of intellect or soul from the boy: just the same record as that of thousands of imbecile negro-children. Generations of heathendom and slavery have dredged the inherited brains and temperaments of such children tolerably clean of all traces of power or purity,—palsied the brain, brutalized the nature. Tom apparently fared no better than his fellows.

It was not until 1857 that those phenomenal powers latent in the boy were suddenly developed, which stamped him the anomaly he is to-day.

One night, sometime in the summer of that year, Mr. Oliver's family were wakened by the sound of music in the drawing-room: not only the simple airs, but the most difficult exercises usually played by his daughters, were repeated again and again, the touch of the musician being timid, but singularly true and delicate. Going down, they found Tom, who had been left asleep in the hall, seated at the piano in an ecstasy of delight, breaking out at the end of each successful fugue into shouts of laughter, kicking his heels and clapping his hands. This was the first time he had touched the piano.

Naturally, Tom became a nine-days' wonder on the plantation. He was brought in as an after-dinner's amusement; visitors asked for him as the show of the place. There was hardly a conception, however, in the minds of those who heard him, of how deep the cause for wonder lay. The planters' wives and daughters of the neighborhood were not people who would be apt to comprehend music as a science, or to use it as a language; they only saw in the little negro, therefore, a remarkable facility for repeating the airs they drummed on their pianos,—in a different manner from theirs, it is true,—which bewildered them. They noticed, too, that, however the child's fingers fell on the keys, cadences followed, broken, wandering, yet of startling beauty and pathos. The house-servants, looking in through the open doors at the little black figure perched up before the instrument, while unknown, wild harmony drifted through the evening air, had a better conception of him. He was possessed; some ghost spoke through him: which is a fair enough definition of genius for a Georgian slave to offer.

Mr. Oliver, as we said, was indulgent. Tom was allowed to have constant access to the piano; in truth, he could not live without it; when deprived of music now, actual physical debility followed: the gnawing Something had found its food at last. No attempt was made, however, to give him any scientific musical teaching; nor—I wish it distinctly borne in mind—has he ever at any time received such instruction.

The planter began to wonder what kind of a creature this was which he had bought, flesh and soul. In what part of the unsightly baby-carcass had been stowed away these old airs, forgotten by every one else, and some of them never heard by the child but once, but which he now reproduced, every note intact, and with whatever quirk or quiddity of style belonged to the person who originally had sung or played them? Stranger still the harmonies which he had never heard, had learned from no man. The sluggish breath of the old house, being enchanted, grew into quaint and delicate whims of music, never the same, changing every day. Never glad: uncertain, sad minors always, vexing the content of the hearer,—one inarticulate, unanswered question of pain in all, making them one. Even the vulgarest listener was troubled, hardly knowing why,—how sorry Tom's music was!

At last the time came when the door was to be opened, when some listener, not vulgar, recognizing the child as God made him, induced his master to remove him from the plantation. Something ought to be done for him; the world ought not to be cheated of this pleasure; besides—the money that could be made! So Mr. Oliver, with a kindly feeling for Tom, proud, too, of this agreeable monster which his plantation had grown, and sensible that it was a more fruitful source of revenue than tobacco-fields, set out with the boy, literally to seek their fortune.

The first exhibition of him was given, I think, in Savannah, Georgia; thence he was taken to Charleston, Richmond, to all the principal cities and towns in the Southern States.

This was in 1858. From that time until the present Tom has lived constantly an open life, petted, feted, his real talent befogged by exaggeration, and so pampered and coddled that one might suppose the only purpose was to corrupt and wear it out. For these reasons this statement is purposely guarded, restricted to plain, known facts.

No sooner had Tom been brought before the public than the pretensions put forward by his master commanded the scrutiny of both scientific and musical skeptics. His capacities were subjected to rigorous tests. Fortunately for the boy: for, so tried,—harshly, it is true, yet skilfully,—they not only bore the trial, but acknowledged the touch as skilful; every day new powers were developed, until he reached his limit, beyond which it is not probable he will ever pass. That limit, however, establishes him as an anomaly in musical science.

Physically, and in animal temperament, this negro ranks next to the lowest Guinea type: with strong appetites and gross bodily health, except in one particular, which will be mentioned hereafter. In the every-day apparent intellect, in reason or judgment, he is but one degree above an idiot,—incapable of comprehending the simplest conversation on ordinary topics, amused or enraged with trifles such as would affect a child of three years old. On the other side, his affections are alive, even vehement, delicate in their instinct as a dog's or an infant's; he will detect the step of any one dear to him in a crowd, and burst into tears, if not kindly spoken to.

His memory is so accurate that he can repeat, without the loss of a syllable, a discourse of fifteen minutes in length, of which he does not understand a word. Songs, too, in French or German, after a single hearing, he renders not only literally in words, but in notes, style, and expression. His voice, however, is discordant, and of small compass.

In music, this boy of twelve years, born blind, utterly ignorant of a note, ignorant of every phase of so-called musical science, interprets severely classical composers with a clearness of conception in which he excels, and a skill in mechanism equal to that of our second-rate artists. His concerts usually include any themes selected by the audience from the higher grades of Italian or German opera. His comprehension of the meaning of music, as a prophetic or historical voice which few souls utter and fewer understand, is clear and vivid: he renders it thus, with whatever mastery of the mere material part he may possess, fingering, dramatic effects, etc.: these are but means to him, not an end, as with most artists. One could fancy that Tom was never traitor to the intent or soul of the theme. What God or the Devil meant to say by this or that harmony, what the soul of one man cried aloud to another in it, this boy knows, and is to that a faithful witness. His deaf, uninstructed soul has never been tampered with by art-critics who know the body well enough of music, but nothing of the living creature within. The world is full of these vulgar souls that palter with eternal Nature and the eternal Arts, blind to the Word who dwells among us therein. Tom, or the daemon in Tom, was not one of them.

With regard to his command of the instrument, two points have been especially noted by musicians: the unusual frequency of occurrence of tours de force in his playing, and the scientific precision of his manner of touch. For example, in a progression of augmented chords, his mode of fingering is invariably that of the schools, not that which would seem most natural to a blind child never taught to place a finger. Even when seated with his back to the piano, and made to play in that position, (a favorite feat in his concerts,) the touch is always scientifically accurate.

The peculiar power which Tom possesses, however, is one which requires no scientific knowledge of music in his audiences to appreciate. Placed at the instrument with any musician, he plays a perfect bass accompaniment to the treble of music heard for the first time as he plays. Then taking the seat vacated by the other performer, he instantly gives the entire piece, intact in brilliancy and symmetry, not a note lost or misplaced. The selections of music by which this power of Tom's was tested, two years ago, were sometimes fourteen and sixteen pages in length; on one occasion, at an exhibition at the White House, after a long concert, he was tried with two pieces,—one thirteen, the other twenty pages long, and was successful.

We know of no parallel case to this in musical history. Grimm tells us, as one of the most remarkable manifestations of Mozart's infant genius, that at the age of nine he was required to give an accompaniment to an aria which he had never heard before, and without notes. There were false accords in the first attempt, he acknowledges; but the second was pure. When the music to which Tom plays secondo is strictly classical, he sometimes balks for an instant in passages; to do otherwise would argue a creative power equal to that of the master composers; but when any chordant harmony runs through it, (on which the glowing negro soul can seize, you know,) there are no "false accords," as with the infant Mozart. I wish to draw especial attention to this power of the boy, not only because it is, so far as I know, unmatched in the development of any musical talent, but because, considered in the context of his entire intellectual structure, it involves a curious problem. The mere repetition of music heard but once, even when, as in Tom's case, it is given with such incredible fidelity, and after the lapse of years, demands only a command of mechanical skill, and an abnormal condition of the power of memory; but to play secondo to music never heard or seen implies the comprehension of the full drift of the symphony in its current,—a capacity to create, in short. Yet such attempts as Tom has made to dictate music for publication do not sustain any such inference. They are only a few light marches, gallops, etc., simple and plaintive enough, but with easily detected traces of remembered harmonies: very different from the strange, weird improvisations of every day. One would fancy that the mere attempt to bring this mysterious genius within him in bodily presence before the outer world woke, too, the idiotic nature to utter its reproachful, unable cry. Nor is this the only bar by which poor Tom's soul is put in mind of its foul bestial prison. After any too prolonged effort, such as those I have alluded to, his whole bodily frame gives way, and a complete exhaustion of the brain follows, accompanied with epileptic spasms. The trial at the White House, mentioned before, was successful, but was followed by days of illness.

Being a slave, Tom never was taken into a Free State; for the same reason his master refused advantageous offers from European managers. The highest points North at which his concerts were given were Baltimore and the upper Virginia towns. I heard him sometime in 1860. He remained a week or two in the town, playing every night.

The concerts were unique enough. They were given in a great barn of a room, gaudy with hot, soot-stained frescoes, chandeliers, walls splotched with gilt. The audience was large, always; such as a provincial town affords: not the purest bench of musical criticism before which to bring poor Tom. Beaux and belles, siftings of old country families, whose grandfathers trapped and traded and married with the Indians,—the savage thickening of whose blood told itself in high cheekbones, flashing jewelry, champagne-bibbing, a comprehension of the tom-tom music of schottisches and polkas; money-made men and their wives, cooped up by respectability, taking concerts when they were given in town, taking the White Sulphur or Cape May in summer, taking beef for dinner, taking the pork-trade in winter,—toute la vie en programme; the debris of a town, the roughs, the boys, school-children,—Tom was nearly as well worth a quarter as the negro-minstrels; here and there a pair of reserved, homesick eyes, a peculiar, reticent face, some whey-skinned ward-teacher's, perhaps, or some German cobbler's, but hints of a hungry soul, to whom Beethoven and Mendelssohn knew how to preach an unerring gospel. The stage was broad, planked, with a drop-curtain behind,—the Doge marrying the sea, I believe; in front, a piano and chair.

Presently, Mr. Oliver, a well-natured looking man, (one thought of that,) came forward, leading and coaxing along a little black boy, dressed in white linen, somewhat fat and stubborn in build. Tom was not in a good humor that night; the evening before had refused to play altogether; so his master perspired anxiously before he could get him placed in rule before the audience, and repeat his own little speech, which sounded like a Georgia after-dinner gossip. The boy's head, as I said, rested on his back, his mouth wide open constantly; his great blubber lips and shining teeth, therefore, were all you saw when he faced you. He required to be petted and bought like any other weak-minded child. The concert was a mixture of music, whining, coaxing, and promised candy and cake.

He seated himself at last before the piano, a full half-yard distant, stretching out his arms full-length, like an ape clawing for food,—his feet, when not on the pedals, squirming and twisting incessantly,—answering some joke of his master's with a loud "Yha! yha!" Nothing indexes the brain like the laugh; this was idiotic.

"Now, Tom, boy, something we like from Verdi."

The head fell farther back, the claws began to work, and those of his harmonies which you would have chosen as the purest exponents of passion began to float through the room. Selections from Weber, Beethoven, and others whom I have forgotten, followed. At the close of each piece, Tom, without waiting for the audience, would himself applaud violently, kicking, pounding his hands together, turning always to his master for the approving pat on the head. Songs, recitations such as I have described, filled up the first part of the evening; then a musician from the audience went upon the stage to put the boy's powers to the final test. Songs and intricate symphonies were given, which it was most improbable the boy could ever have heard; he remained standing, utterly motionless, until they were finished, and for a moment or two after,—then, seating himself, gave them without the break of a note. Others followed, more difficult, in which he played the bass accompaniment in the manner I have described, repeating instantly the treble. The child looked dull, wearied, during this part of the trial, and his master, perceiving it, announced the exhibition closed, when the musician (who was a citizen of the town, by-the-way) drew out a thick roll of score, which he explained to be a Fantasia of his own composition, never published.

"This it was impossible the boy could have heard; there could be no trick of memory in this; and on this trial," triumphantly, "Tom would fail."

The manuscript was some fourteen pages long,—variations on an inanimate theme. Mr. Oliver refused to submit the boy's brain to so cruel a test; some of the audience, even, interfered; but the musician insisted, and took his place. Tom sat beside him,—his head rolling nervously from side to side,—struck the opening cadence, and then, from the first note to the last, gave the secondo triumphantly. Jumping up, he fairly shoved the man from his seat, and proceeded to play the treble with more brilliancy and power than its composer. When he struck the last octave, he sprang up, yelling with delight:—

"Um's got him, Massa! um's got him!" cheering and rolling about the stage.

The cheers of the audience—for the boys especially did not wait to clap—excited him the more. It was an hour before his master could quiet his hysteric agitation.

That feature of the concerts which was the most painful I have not touched upon: the moments when his master was talking, and Tom was left to himself,—when a weary despair seemed to settle down on the distorted face, and the stubby little black fingers, wandering over the keys, spoke for Tom's own caged soul within. Never, by any chance, a merry, childish laugh of music in the broken cadences; tender or wild, a defiant outcry, a tired sigh breaking down into silence. Whatever wearied voice it took, the same bitter, hopeless soul spoke through all: "Bless me, even me, also, O my Father!" A something that took all the pain and pathos of the world into its weak, pitiful cry.

Some beautiful caged spirit, one could not but know, struggled for breath under that brutal form and idiotic brain. I wonder when it will be free. Not in this life: the bars are too heavy.

You cannot help Tom, either; all the war is between you. He was in Richmond in May. But (do you hate the moral to a story?) in your own kitchen, in your own back-alley, there are spirits as beautiful, caged in forms as bestial, that you could set free, if you pleased. Don't call it bad taste in me to speak for them. You know they are more to be pitied than Tom,—for they are dumb.



KINDERGARTEN—WHAT IS IT?

What is a Kindergarten? I will reply by negatives. It is not the old-fashioned infant-school. That was a narrow institution, comparatively; the object being (I do not speak of Pestalozzi's own, but that which we have had in this country and in England) to take the children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor. Very good things, indeed, in their way. Their principle of discipline was to circumvent the wills of children, in every way that would enable their teachers to keep them within bounds, and quiet. It was certainly better that they should learn to sing by rote the Creed and the "definitions" of scientific terms, and such like, than to learn the profanity and obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who wished for anything which might be called the development of her child would think of putting it into an infant-school, especially if she lived in the country, amid

"the mighty sum Of things forever speaking,"

where any "old grey stone" would altogether surpass, as a stand-point, the bench of the highest class of an infant-school. In short, they did not state the problem of infant culture with any breadth, and accomplished nothing of general interest on the subject.

Neither is the primary public school a Kindergarten, though it is but justice to the capabilities of that praiseworthy institution, so important in default of a better, to say that in one of them, at the North End of Boston, an enterprising and genial teacher has introduced one feature of Froebel's plan. She has actually given to each of her little children a box of playthings, wherewith to amuse itself according to its own sweet will, at all times when not under direct instruction,—necessarily, in her case, on condition of its being perfectly quiet; and this one thing makes this primary school the best one in Boston, both as respects the attainments of the scholars and their good behavior.

Kindergarten means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, the discoverer of the method of Nature, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit,—also to renew their manifestation year after year. He does not expect to succeed unless he learns all their wants, and the circumstances in which these wants will be supplied, and all their possibilities of beauty and use, and the means of giving them opportunity to be perfected. On the other hand, while he knows that they must not be forced against their individual natures, he does not leave them to grow wild, but prunes redundancies, removes destructive worms and bugs from their leaves and stems, and weeds from their vicinity,—carefully watching to learn what peculiar insects affect what particular plants, and how the former can be destroyed without injuring the vitality of the latter. After all the most careful gardener can do, he knows that the form of the plant is predetermined in the germ or seed, and that the inward tendency must concur with a multitude of influences, the most powerful and subtile of which is removed in place ninety-five millions of miles away.

In the Kindergarten children are treated on an analogous plan. It presupposes gardeners of the mind, who are quite aware that they have as little power to override the characteristic individuality of a child, or to predetermine this characteristic, as the gardener of plants to say that a lily shall be a rose. But notwithstanding this limitation on one side, and the necessity for concurrence of the Spirit on the other,—which is more independent of our modification than the remote sun,—yet they must feel responsible, after all, for the perfection of the development, in so far as removing every impediment, preserving every condition, and pruning every redundance.

This analogy of education to the gardener's art is so striking, both as regards what we can and what we cannot do, that Froebel has put every educator into a most suggestive Normal School, by the very word which he has given to his seminary,—Kindergarten.

If every school-teacher in the land had a garden of flowers and fruits to cultivate, it could hardly fail that he would learn to be wise in his vocation. For suitable preparation, the first, second, and third thing is, to

"Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher."

The "new education," as the French call it, begins with children in the mother's arms. Froebel had the nurses bring to his establishment, in Hamburg, children who could not talk, who were not more than three months old, and trained the nurses to work on his principles and by his methods. This will hardly be done in this country, at least at present; but to supply the place of such a class, a lady of Boston has prepared and published, under copyright, Froebel's First Gift, consisting of six soft balls of the three primary and the three secondary colors, which are sold in a box, with a little manual for mothers, in which the true principle and plan of tending babies, so as not to rasp their nerves, but to amuse without wearying them, is very happily suggested. There is no mother or nurse who would not be assisted by this little manual essentially. As it says in the beginning,—"Tending babies is an art, and every art is founded on a science of observations; for love is not wisdom, but love must act according to wisdom in order to succeed. Mothers and nurses, however tender and kind-hearted, may, and oftenest do, weary and vex the nerves of children, in well-meant efforts to amuse them, and weary themselves the while. Froebel's exercises, founded on the observations of an intelligent sensibility, are intended to amuse without wearying, to educate without vexing."