Snow, indeed, actually nourishes animal life. It holds in its bosom numerous animalcules: you may have a glass of water, perfectly free from infusoria, which yet, after your dissolving in it a handful of snow, will show itself full of microscopic creatures, shrimp-like and swift; and the famous red snow of the Arctic regions is only an exhibition of the same property. It has sometimes been fancied that persons buried under the snow have received sustenance through the pores of the skin, like reptiles imbedded in rock. Elizabeth Woodcock lived eight days beneath a snow-drift, in 1799, without eating a morsel; and a Swiss family were buried beneath an avalanche, in a manger, for five months, in 1755, with no food but a trifling store of chestnuts and a small daily supply of milk from a goat which was buried with them. In neither case was there extreme suffering from cold, and it is unquestionable that the interior of a drift is far warmer than the surface. On the 23d of December, 1860, at 9 P.M., I was surprised to observe drops falling from the under side of a heavy bank of snow at the eaves, at a distance from any chimney, while the mercury on the same side was only fifteen degrees above zero, not having indeed risen above the point of freezing during the whole day.

Dr. Kane pays ample tribute to these kindly properties. "Few of us at home can recognize the protecting value of this warm coverlet of snow. No eider-down in the cradle of an infant is tucked in more kindly than the sleeping-dress of winter about this feeble flower-life. The first warm snows of August and September, falling on a thickly pleached carpet of grasses, heaths, and willows, enshrine the flowery growths which nestle round them in a non-conducting air-chamber; and as each successive snow increases the thickness of the cover, we have, before the intense cold of winter sets in, a light cellular bed covered by drift, six, eight, or ten feet deep, in which the plant retains its vitality. ... I have found in midwinter, in this high latitude of 78 deg. 50', the surface so nearly moist as to be friable to the touch; and upon the ice-floes, commencing with a surface-temperature of-30 deg., I found at two feet deep a temperature of-8 deg., at four feet + 2 deg., and at eight feet + 26 deg.. ... The glacier which we became so familiar with afterwards at Etah yields an uninterrupted stream throughout the year." And he afterwards shows that even the varying texture and quality of the snow deposited during the earlier and later portions of the Arctic winter have their special adaptations to the welfare of the vegetation they protect.

The process of crystallization seems a microcosm of the universe. Radiata, mollusca, feathers, flowers, ferns, mosses, palms, pines, grain-fields, leaves of cedar, chestnut, elm, acanthus: these and multitudes of other objects are figured on your frosty window; on sixteen different panes I have counted sixteen patterns strikingly distinct, and it appeared like a show-case for the globe. What can seem remoter relatives than the star, the starfish, the star-flower, and the starry snow-flake which clings this moment to your sleeve?—yet some philosophers hold that one day their law of existence will be found precisely the same. The connection with the primeval star, especially, seems far and fanciful enough, but there are yet unexplored affinities between light and crystallization: some crystals have a tendency to grow toward the light, and others develop electricity and give out flashes of light during their formation. Slight foundations for scientific fancies, indeed, but slight is all our knowledge.

More than a hundred different figures of snow-flakes, all regular and kaleidoscopic, have been drawn by Scoresby, Lowe, and Glaisher, and may be found pictured in the encyclopaedias and elsewhere, ranging from the simplest stellar shapes to the most complicated ramifications. Professor Tyndall, in his delightful book on "The Glaciers of the Alps," gives drawings of a few of these snow-blossoms, which he watched falling for hours, the whole air being filled with them, and drifts of several inches being accumulated while he watched. "Let us imagine the eye gifted with microscopic power sufficient to enable it to see the molecules which composed these starry crystals; to observe the solid nucleus formed and floating in the air; to see it drawing towards it its allied atoms, and these arranging themselves as if they moved to music, and ended with rendering that music concrete." Thus do the Alpine winds, like Orpheus, build their walls by harmony.

In some of these frost-flowers the rare and delicate blossom of our wild Mitella diphylla is beautifully figured. Snow-flakes have been also found in the form of regular hexagons and other plane figures, as well as in cylinders and spheres. As a general rule, the intenser the cold the more perfect the formation, and the most perfect specimens are Arctic or Alpine in their locality. In this climate the snow seldom falls when the mercury is much below zero; but the slightest atmospheric changes may alter the whole condition of the deposit, and decide whether it shall sparkle like Italian marble, or be dead-white like the statuary marble of Vermont,—whether it shall be a fine powder which can sift through wherever dust can, or descend in large woolly masses, tossed like mouthfuls to the hungry South.

The most remarkable display of crystallization which I have ever seen was on the 13th of January, 1859. There had been three days of unusual cold, but during the night the weather had moderated, and the mercury in the morning stood at + 14 deg.. About two inches of snow had fallen, and the trees appeared densely coated with it. It proved, on examination, that every twig had on the leeward side a dense row of miniature fronds or fern-leaves executed in snow, with a sharply defined central nerve, or midrib, and perfect ramification, tapering to a point, and varying in length from half an inch to three inches. On every post, every rail, and the corners of every building, the same spectacle was seen; and where the snow had accumulated in deep drifts, it was still made up of the ruins of these fairy structures. The white, enamelled landscape was beautiful, but a close view of the details was far more so. The crystallizations were somewhat uniform in structure, yet suggested a variety of natural objects, as feather-mosses, birds' feathers, and the most delicate lace-corals, but the predominant analogy was with ferns. Yet they seemed to assume a sort of fantastic kindred with the objects to which they adhered: thus, on the leaves of spruce-trees and on delicate lichens they seemed like reduplications of the original growth, and they made the broad, fiat leaves of the arbor-vitae fully twice as wide as before. But this fringe was always on one side only, except when gathered upon dangling fragments of spider's web, or bits of stray thread: these they entirely encircled, probably because these objects had twirled in the light wind while the crystals were forming. Singular disguises were produced: a bit of ragged rope appeared a piece of twisted lace-work; a knot-hole in a board was adorned with a deep antechamber of snowy wreaths; and the frozen body of a hairy caterpillar became its own well-plumed hearse. The most peculiar circumstance was the fact that single flakes never showed any regular crystallization: the magic was in the combination; the under sides of rails and boards exhibited it as unequivocally as the upper sides, indicating that the phenomenon was created in the lower atmosphere, and was more akin to frost than snow; and yet the largest snow-banks were composed of nothing else, and seemed like heaps of blanched iron-filings.

Interesting observations have been made on the relations between ice and snow. The difference seems to lie only in the more or less compacted arrangement of the frozen particles. Water and air, each being transparent when separate, become opaque when intimately mingled; the reason being that the inequalities of refraction break up and scatter every ray of light. Thus, clouds cast a shadow; so does steam; so does foam: and the same elements take a still denser texture when combined as snow. Every snow-flake is permeated with minute airy chambers, among which the light is bewildered and lost; while from perfectly hard and transparent ice every trace of air disappears, and the transmission of light is unbroken. Yet that same ice becomes white and opaque when pulverized, its fragments being then intermingled with air again,—just as colorless glass may be crushed into white powder. On the other hand, Professor Tyndall has converted slabs of snow to ice by regular pressure, and has shown that every Alpine glacier begins as a snow-drift at its summit, and ends in a transparent ice-cavern below. "The blue blocks which span the sources of the Arveiron were once powdery snow upon the slopes of the Col du Geant."

The varied and wonderful shapes assumed by snow and ice have been best portrayed, perhaps, by Dr. Kane in his two works; but their resources of color have been so explored by no one as by this same favored Professor Tyndall, among his Alps. It appears that the tints which in temperate regions are seen feebly and occasionally, in hollows or angles of fresh drifts, become brilliant and constant above the line of perpetual snow, and the higher the altitude the more lustrous the display. When a staff was struck into the new-fallen drift, the hollow seemed instantly to fill with a soft blue liquid, while the snow adhering to the staff took a complementary color of pinkish yellow, and on moving it up and down it was hard to resist the impression that a pink flame was rising and sinking in the hole. The little natural furrows in the drifts appeared faintly blue, the ridges were gray, while the parts most exposed to view seemed least illuminated, and as if a light brown dust had been sprinkled over them. The fresher the snow, the more marked the colors, and it made no difference whether the sky were cloudless or foggy. Thus was every white peak decked upon its brow with this tiara of ineffable beauty.

The impression is very general that the average quantity of snow has greatly diminished in America; but it must be remembered that very severe storms occur only at considerable intervals, and the Puritans did not always, as boys fancy, step out of the upper windows upon the snow. In 1717, the ground was covered from ten to twenty feet, indeed; but during January, 1861, the snow was six feet on a level in many parts of Maine and New Hampshire, and was probably drifted three times that depth in particular spots. The greatest storm recorded in England, I believe, is that of 1814, in which for forty-eight hours the snow fell so furiously that drifts of sixteen, twenty, and even twenty-four feet were recorded in various places. An inch an hour is thought to be the average rate of deposit, though four inches are said to have fallen during the severe storm of January 3d, 1859. When thus intensified, the "beautiful meteor of the snow" begins to give a sensation of something formidable; and when the mercury suddenly falls meanwhile, and the wind rises, there are sometimes suggestions of such terror in a snowstorm as no summer thunders can rival. The brief and singular tempest of February 7th, 1861, was a thing to be forever remembered by those who saw it, as I did, over a wide plain. The sky suddenly appeared to open and let down whole solid snow-banks at once, which were caught and torn to pieces by the ravenous winds, and the traveller was instantaneously enveloped in a whirling mass far denser than any fog; it was a tornado with snow stirred into it. Standing in the middle of the road, with houses close on every side, one could see absolutely nothing in any direction, one could hear no sound but the storm. Every landmark vanished, and it was no more possible to guess the points of the compass than in mid-ocean. It was easy to conceive of being bewildered and overwhelmed within a rod of one's own door. The tempest lasted only an hour; but if it had lasted a week, we should have had such a storm as occurred on the steppes of Kirgheez in Siberia, in 1827, destroying two hundred and eighty thousand five hundred horses, thirty thousand four hundred cattle, a million sheep, and ten thousand camels,—or as "the thirteen drifty days," in 1620, which killed nine-tenths of all the sheep in the South of Scotland. On Eskdale Moor, out of twenty thousand only forty-five were left alive, and the shepherds everywhere built up huge semicircular walls of the dead creatures, to afford shelter to the living, till the gale should end. But the most remarkable narrative of a snowstorm which I have ever seen was that written by James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, in record of one which took place January 24th, 1790.

James Hogg at this time belonged to a sort of literary society of young shepherds, and had set out, the day previous, to walk twenty miles over the hills to the place of meeting; but so formidable was the look of the sky that he felt anxious for his sheep, and finally turned back again. There was at that time only a slight fall of snow, in thin flakes which seemed uncertain whether to go up or down; the hills were covered with deep folds of frost-fog, and in the valleys the same fog seemed dark, dense, and as it were crushed together. An old shepherd, predicting a storm, bade him watch for a sudden opening through this fog, and expect a wind from that quarter; yet when he saw such an opening suddenly form at midnight, (having then reached his own home,) he thought it all a delusion, as the weather had grown milder and a thaw seemed setting in. He therefore went to bed, and felt no more anxiety for his sheep; yet he lay awake in spite of himself, and at two o'clock he heard the storm begin. It smote the house suddenly, like a great peal of thunder,—something utterly unlike any storm he had ever before heard. On his rising and thrusting his bare arm through a hole in the roof, it seemed precisely as if he had thrust it into a snow-bank, so densely was the air filled with falling and driving particles. He lay still for an hour, while the house rocked with the tempest, hoping it might prove only a hurricane; but as there was no abatement, he wakened his companion-shepherd, telling him "it was come on such a night or morning as never blew from the heavens." The other at once arose, and, opening the door of the shed where they slept, found a drift as high as the farm-house already heaped between them and its walls, a distance of only fourteen yards. He floundered through, Hogg soon following, and, finding all the family up, they agreed that they must reach the sheep as soon as possible, especially eight hundred ewes that were in one lot together, at the farthest end of the farm. So, after family-prayers and breakfast, four of them stuffed their pockets with bread and cheese, sewed their plaids about them, tied down their hats, and, taking each his staff, set out on their tremendous undertaking, two hours before day.

Day dawned before they got three hundred yards from the house. They could not see each other, and kept together with the greatest difficulty. They had to make paths with their staves, rolled themselves over drifts otherwise impassable, and every three or four minutes had to hold their heads down between their knees to recover breath. They went in single file, taking the lead by turns. The master soon gave out and was speechless and semi-conscious for more than an hour, though he afterwards recovered and held out with the rest. Two of them lost their head-gear, and Hogg himself fell over a high precipice, but they reached the flock at half-past ten. They found the ewes huddled together in a dense body, under ten feet of snow,—packed so closely, that, to the amazement of the shepherds, when they had extricated the first, the whole flock walked out one after another, in a body, through the hole.

How they got them home it is almost impossible, to tell. It was now noon, and they sometimes could see through the storm for twenty yards, but they had only one momentary glimpse of the hills through all that terrible day. Yet Hogg persisted in going by himself afterwards to rescue some flocks of his own, barely escaping with life from the expedition; his eyes were sealed up with the storm, and he crossed a formidable torrent, without knowing it, on a wreath of snow. Two of the others lost themselves in a deep valley, and would have perished but for being accidentally heard by a neighboring shepherd, who guided them home, where the female portion of the family had abandoned all hope of ever seeing them again.

The next day was clear, with a cold wind, and they set forth again at daybreak to seek the remainder of the flock. The face of the country was perfectly transformed: not a hill was the same, not a brook or lake could be recognized. Deep glens were filled in with snow, covering the very tops of the trees; and over a hundred acres of ground, under an average depth of six or eight feet, they were to look for four or five hundred sheep. The attempt would have been hopeless but for a dog that accompanied them: seeing their perplexity, he began snuffing about, and presently scratching in the snow at a certain point, and then looking round at his master: digging at this spot, they found a sheep beneath. And so the dog led them all day, bounding eagerly from one place to another, much faster than they could dig the creatures out, so that he sometimes had twenty or thirty holes marked beforehand. In this way, within a week, they got out every sheep on the farm except four, these last being buried under a mountain of snow fifty feet deep, on the top of which the dog had marked their places again and again. In every case the sheep proved to be alive and warm, though half-suffocated; on being taken out, they usually bounded away swiftly, and then fell helplessly in a few moments, overcome by the change of atmosphere; some then died almost instantly, and others were carried home and with difficulty preserved, only about sixty being lost in all. Marvellous to tell, the country-people unanimously agreed afterwards to refer the whole terrific storm to some secret incantations of poor Hogg's literary society aforesaid; it was generally maintained that a club of young dare-devils had raised the Fiend himself among them in the likeness of a black dog, the night preceding the storm, and the young students actually did not dare to show themselves at fairs or at markets for a year afterwards.

Snow-scenes less exciting, but more wild and dreary, may be found in Alexander Henry's Travels with the Indians, in the last century. In the winter of 1776, for instance, they wandered for many hundred miles over the farthest northwestern prairies, where scarcely a white man had before trodden. The snow lay from four to six feet deep. They went on snow-shoes, drawing their stores on sleds. The mercury was sometimes -32 deg.; no fire could keep them warm at night, and often they had no fire, being scarcely able to find wood enough to melt the snow for drink. They lay beneath buffalo-skins and the stripped bark of trees: a foot of snow sometimes fell on them before morning. The sun rose at half past nine and set at half past two. "The country was one uninterrupted plain, in many parts of which no wood nor even the smallest shrub was to be seen: a frozen, sea, of which the little coppices were the islands. That behind which we had encamped the night before soon sank in the horizon, and the eye had nothing left save only the sky and snow." Fancy them encamped by night, seeking shelter in a scanty grove from a wild tempest of snow; then suddenly charged upon by a herd of buffaloes, thronging in from all sides of the wood to take shelter likewise,—the dogs barking, the Indians firing, and still the bewildered beasts rushing madly in, blinded by the storm, fearing the guns within less than the fury without, crashing through the trees, trampling over the tents, and falling about in the deep and dreary snow! No other writer has ever given us the full desolation of Indian winter-life. Whole families, Henry said, frequently perished together in such storms. No wonder that the Aboriginal legends are full of "mighty Peboan, the Winter," and of Kabibonokka a his lodge of snow-drifts.

The interest inspired by these simple narratives suggests the reflection, that literature, which has thus far portrayed so few aspects of external Nature, has described almost nothing of winter beauty. In English books, especially, this season is simply forlorn and disagreeable, dark and dismal.

"And foul and fierce All winter drives along the darkened air."

"When dark December shrouds the transient day, And stormy winds are howling in their ire, Why com'st not thou?. ... Oh, haste to pay The cordial visit sullen hours require!"

"Winter will oft at eve resume the breeze, Chill the pale morn, and bid his driving blasts Deform the day delightless."

"Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire, With whom you might converse, and by the fire Help waste the sullen day."

But our prevalent association with winter, in the Northern United States, is with something white and dazzling and brilliant; and it is time to paint our own pictures, and cease to borrow these gloomy alien tints. One must turn eagerly every season to the few glimpses of American winter aspects: to Emerson's "Snow-Storm," every word a sculpture,—to the admirable storm in "Margaret,"—to Thoreau's "Winter Walk," in the "Dial,"—and to Lowell's "First Snow-Flake." These are fresh and real pictures, which carry us back to the Greek Anthology, where the herds come wandering down from the wooded mountains, covered with snow, and to Homer's aged Ulysses, his wise words falling like the snows of winter.

Let me add to this scanty gallery of snow-pictures the quaint lore contained in one of the multitudinous sermons of Increase Mather, printed in 1704, entitled "A Brief Discourse concerning the Prayse due to God for His Mercy in giving Snow like Wool." One can fancy the delight of the oppressed Puritan boys, in the days of the nineteenthlies, driven to the place of worship by the tithing-men, and cooped up on the pulpit-and gallery-stairs under charge of the constables, at hearing for once a discourse which they could understand,—snow-balling spiritualized. This was not one of Emerson's terrible examples,—"the storm real, and the preacher only phenomenal"; but this setting of snow-drifts, which in our winters lends such grace to every stern rock and rugged tree, throws a charm even around the grim theology of the Mathers. Three main propositions, seven subdivisions, four applications, and four uses, but the wreaths and the gracefulness are cast about them all,—while the wonderful commonplace-books of those days, which held everything, had accumulated scraps of winter learning which cannot be spared from these less abstruse pages.

Beginning first at the foundation, the preacher must prove, "Prop. I. That the Snow is fitly resembled to Wool. Snow like Wool, sayes the Psalmist. And not only the Sacred Writers, but others make use of this Comparison. The Grecians of old were wont to call the Snow, ERIODES HUDOR Wooly Water, or wet Wool. The Latin word Floccus signifies both a Lock of Wool and a Flake of Snow, in that they resemble one another. The aptness of the similitude appears in three things." "1. In respect of the Whiteness thereof." "2. In respect of Softness." "3. In respect of that Warming Vertue that does attend the Snow." [Here the reasoning must not be omitted.] "Wool is warm. We say, As warm as Wool. Woolen-cloth has a greater warmth than other Cloathing has. The wool on Sheep keeps them warm in the Winter season. So when the back of the Ground is covered with Snow, it keeps it warm. Some mention it as one of the wonders of the Snow, that tho' it is itself cold, yet it makes the Earth warm. But Naturalists observe that there is a saline spirit in it, which is hot, by means whereof Plants under the Snow are kept from freezing. Ice under the Snow is sooner melted and broken than other Ice. In some Northern Climates, the wild barbarous People use to cover themselves over with it to keep them warm. When the sharp Air has begun to freeze a man's Limbs, Snow will bring heat into them again. If persons Eat much Snow, or drink immoderately of Snow-water, it will burn their Bowels and make them black. So that it has a warming vertue in it, and is therefore fitly compared to Wool."

Snow has many merits. "In Lapland, where there is little or no light of the sun in the depth of Winter, there are great Snows continually on the ground, and by the Light of that they are able to Travel from one place to another... At this day in some hot Countreys, they have their Snow-cellars, where it is kept in Summer, and if moderately used, is known to be both refreshing and healthful. There are also Medicinal Vertues in the snow. A late Learned Physician has found that a Salt extracted out of snow is a sovereign Remedy against both putrid and pestilential Feavors. Therefore Men should Praise God, who giveth Snow like Wool." But there is an account against the snow, also. "Not only the disease called Bulimia, but others more fatal have come out of the Snow. Geographers give us to understand that in some Countries Vapours from the Snow have killed multitudes in less than a Quarter of an Hour. Sometimes both Men and Beasts have been destroyed thereby. Writers speak of no less than Forty Thousand men killed by a great Snow in one Day."

It gives a touching sense of human sympathy, to find that we may look at Orion and the Pleiades through the grave eyes of a Puritan divine. "The Seven Stars are the Summer Constellation: they bring on the spring and summer; and Orion is a Winter Constellation, which is attended with snow and cold, as at this Day.... Moreover, Late Philosophers by the help of the Microscope have observed the wonderful Wisdom of God in the Figure of the Snow; each flake is usually of a Stellate Form, and of six Angles of exact equal length from the Center. It is like a little Star. A great man speaks of it with admiration, that in a Body so familiar as the Snow is, no Philosopher should for many Ages take notice of a thing so obvious as the Figure of it. The learned Kepler, who lived in this last Age, is acknowledged to be the first that acquainted the world with the Sexangular Figure of the Snow."

Then come the devout applications. "There is not a Flake of Snow that falls on the Ground without the hand of God, Mat. 10. 29. 30. Not a Sparrow falls to the Ground, without the Will of your Heavenly Father, all the Hairs of your head are numbred. So the Great God has numbred all the Flakes of Snow that covers the Earth. Altho' no man can number them, that God that tells the number of the Stars has numbred them all.... We often see it, when the Ground is bare, if God speaks the word, the Earth is covered with snow in a few Minutes' time. Here is the power of the Great God. If all the Princes and Great Ones of the Earth should send their Commands to the Clouds, not a Flake of snow would come from thence."

Then follow the "uses," at last,—the little boys in the congregation having grown uneasy long since, at hearing so much theorizing about snow-drifts, with so little opportunity of personal practice. "Use I. If we should Praise God for His giving Snow, surely then we ought to Praise Him for Spiritual Blessings much more." "Use II. We should Humble our selves under the Hand of God, when Snow in the season of it is witheld from us." "Use III. Hence all Atheists will be left Eternally Inexcusable." "Use IV. We should hence Learn to make a Spiritual Improvement of the Snow." And then with a closing volley of every text winch figures under the head of "Snow" in the Concordance, the discourse comes to an end; and every liberated urchin goes home with his head full of devout fancies of building a snow-fort, after sunset, from which to propel consecrated missiles against imaginary or traditional Pequots.

And the patient reader, too long snow-bound, must be liberated also. After the winters of deepest drifts the spring often comes most suddenly; there is little frost in the ground, and the liberated waters, free without the expected freshet, are filtered into the earth, or climb on ladders of sunbeams to the sky. The beautiful crystals all melt away, and the places where they lay are silently made ready to be submerged in new drifts of summer verdure. These also will be transmuted in their turn, and so the eternal cycle of the seasons glides along.

Near my house there is a garden, beneath whose stately sycamores a fountain plays. Three sculptured girls lift forever upward a chalice which distils unceasingly a fine and plashing rain; in summer the spray holds the maidens in a glittering veil, but winter takes the radiant drops and slowly builds them up into a shroud of ice which creeps gradually about the three slight figures: the feet vanish, the waist is encircled, the head is covered, the piteous uplifted arms disappear, as if each were a Vestal Virgin entombed alive for her transgression. They vanishing entirely, the fountain yet plays on unseen; all winter the pile of ice grows larger, glittering organ-pipes of congelation add themselves outside, and by February a great glacier is formed, at whose buried centre stand immovably the patient girls. Spring comes at last, the fated prince, to free with glittering spear these enchanted beauties; the waning glacier, slowly receding, lies conquered before their liberated feet; and still the fountain plays. Who can despair before the iciest human life, when its unconscious symbols are so beautiful?



A STORY OF TO-DAY.

PART V.

There was a dull smell of camphor; a further sense of coolness and prickling wet on Holmes's hot, cracking face and hands; then silence and sleep again. Sometime—when, he never knew—a gray light stinging his eyes like pain, and again a slow sinking into warm, unsounded darkness and unconsciousness. It might be years, it might be ages. Even in after-life, looking back, he never broke that time into weeks or days: people might so divide it for him, but he was uncertain, always: it was a vague vacuum in his memory: he had drifted out of coarse, measured life into some out-coast of eternity, and slept in its calm. When, by long degrees, the shock of outer life jarred and woke him, it was feebly done: he came back reluctant, weak: the quiet clinging to him, as if he had been drowned in Lethe, and had brought its calming mist with him, out of the shades.

The low chatter of voices, the occasional lifting of his head on the pillow, the very soothing draught, came to him, unreal at first: parts only of the dull, lifeless pleasure. There was a sharper memory pierced it sometimes, making him moan and try to sleep,—a remembrance of great, cleaving pain, of falling giddily, of owing life to some one, and being angry that he owed it, in the pain. Was it he that had borne it? He did not know,—nor care: it made him tired to think. Even when he heard the name Stephen Holmes, it had but a far-off meaning: he never woke enough to know if it were his or not. He learned, long after, to watch the red light curling among the shavings in the grate when they made a fire in the evenings, to listen to the voices of the women by the bed, to know that the pleasantest belonged to the one with the low, shapeless figure, and to call her Lois when he wanted a drink, long before he knew himself.

They were very long, pleasant days in early December. The sunshine was pale, but it suited his hurt eyes better: it crept slowly in the mornings over the snuff-colored carpet on the floor, up the brown foot-board of the bed, and, when the wind shook the window-curtains, made little crimson pools of mottled light over the ceiling,—curdling pools, that he liked to watch: going off, from the clean gray walls and rustling curtain and transparent crimson, into sleeps that lasted all day.

He was not conscious how he knew he was in a hospital: but he did know it, vaguely; thought sometimes of the long halls outside of the door with ranges of rooms opening into them, like this, and of very barns of rooms on the other side of the building with rows of white cots where the poor patients lay: a stretch of travel from which his brain came back to his snug fireplace, quite tired, and to Lois sitting knitting by it. He called the little Welsh-woman, "Sister," too, who used to come in a stuff dress, and white bands about her face, to give his medicine and gossip with Lois in the evening: she had a comical voice, like a cricket chirping. There was another with a real Scotch brogue, who came and listened sometimes, bringing a basket of undarned stockings: the doctor told him one day how fearless and skilful she was, every summer going to New Orleans when the yellow fever came. She died there the next June: but Holmes never, somehow, could realize a martyr in the cheery, freckled-faced woman whom he always remembered darning stockings in the quiet fire-light. It was very quiet; the voices about him were pleasant and low. If he had drifted from any shock of pain into a sleep like death, some of the stillness hung about him yet; but the outer life was homely and fresh and natural.

The doctor used to talk to him a little; and sometimes one or two of the patients from the eye-ward would grow tired of sitting about in the garden-alleys, and would loiter in, if Lois would give them leave; but their talk wearied him, jarred him as strangely as if one had begun on politics and price-currents to the silent souls in Hades. It was enough thought for him to listen to the whispered stories of the sisters in the long evenings, and, half-heard, try and make an end to them; to look drowsily down into the garden, where the afternoon sunshine was still so summer-like that a few hollyhocks persisted in showing their honest red faces along the walls, and the very leaves that filled the paths would not wither, but kept up a wholesome ruddy brown. One of the sisters had a poultry-yard in it, which he could see: the wall around it was of stone covered with a brown feathery lichen, which every rooster in that yard was determined to stand on, or perish in the attempt; and Holmes would watch, through the quiet, bright mornings, the frantic ambition and the uproarious exultation of the successful aspirant with an amused smile.

"One'd thenk," said Lois, sagely, "a chicken never stood on a wall before, to hear 'em, or a hen laid an egg."

Nor did Holmes smile once because the chicken burlesqued man: his thought was too single for that yet. It was long before he thought of the people who came in quietly to see him as anything but shadows, or wished for them to come again. Lois, perhaps, was the most real thing in life then to him: growing conscious, day by day, as he watched her, of his old life over the gulf. Very slowly conscious: with a weak groping to comprehend the sudden, awful change that had come on him, and then forgetting his old life, and the change, and the pity he felt for himself, in the vague content of the fire-lit room, and his nurse with her interminable knitting through the long afternoons, while the sky without would thicken and gray and a few still flakes of snow would come drifting down to whiten the brown fields,—with no chilly thought of winter, but only to make the quiet autumn more quiet. Whatever honest, commonplace affection was in the man came out in a simple way to this Lois, who ruled his sick whims and crotchets in such a quiet, sturdy way. Not because she had risked her life to save his; even when he understood that, he recalled it with an uneasy, heavy gratitude; but the drinks she made him, and the plot they laid to smuggle in some oysters in defiance of all rules, and the cheerful pock-marked face he never forgot.

Doctor Knowles came sometimes, but seldom: never talked, when he did come: late in the evening generally: and then would punch his skin, and look at his tongue, and shake the bottles on the mantel-shelf with a grunt that terrified Lois into the belief that the other doctor was a quack, and her patient was totally undone. He would sit, grim enough, with his feet higher than his head, chewing an unlighted cigar, and leave them both thankful when he saw proper to go.

The truth is, Knowles was thoroughly out of place in these little mending-shops called sick-chambers, where bodies are taken to pieces, and souls set right. He had no faith in your slow, impalpable cures: all reforms were to be accomplished by a wrench, from the abolition of slavery to the pulling of a tooth.

He had no especial sympathy with Holmes, either: the men were started in life from opposite poles: and with all the real tenderness under his surly, rugged habit, it would have been hard to touch him with the sudden doom fallen on this man, thrown crippled and penniless upon the world, helpless, it might be, for life. He would have been apt to tell you, savagely, that "he wrought for it."

Besides, it made him out of temper to meet the sisters. Knowles could have sketched for you with a fine decision of touch the role played by the Papal power in the progress of humanity,—how jar it served as a stepping-stone, and the exact period when it became a wearisome clog. The world was done with it now, utterly. Its breath was only poisoned, with coming death. So the homely live charity of these women, their work, which, no other hands were ready to take, jarred against his abstract theory, and irritated him, as an obstinate fact always does run into the hand of a man who is determined to clutch the very heart of a matter. Truth will not underlie all facts, in this muddle of a world, in spite of the positive philosophers, you know.

Don't sneer at Knowles. Your own clear, tolerant brain, that reflects all men and creeds alike, like colorless water, drawing the truth from all, is very different, doubtless, from this narrow, solitary soul, who thought the world waited for him to fight down his one evil before it went on its slow way. An intolerant fanatic, of course. But the truth he did know was so terribly real to him, he had suffered from the evil, and there was such sick, throbbing pity in his heart for men who suffered as he had done! And then, fanatics must make history for conservative men to learn from, I suppose.

If Knowles shunned the hospital, there was another place he shunned more,—the place where his communist buildings were to have stood. He went out there once, as one might go alone to bury his dead out of his sight, the day after the mill was burnt,—looking first at the smoking mass of hot bricks and charred shingles, so as clearly to understand how utterly dead his life-long scheme was. He stalked gravely around it, his hands in his pockets; the hodmen who were raking out their winter's firewood from the ashes remarking, that "old Knowles didn't seem a bit cut up about it." Then he went out to the farm he had meant to buy, as I told you, and looked at it in the same stolid way. It was a dull day in October. The Wabash crawled moodily past his feet, the dingy prairie stretched drearily away on the other side, while the heavy-browed Indiana hills stood solemnly looking down the plateau where the buildings were to have risen.

Well, most men have some plan for life, into which all the strength and the keen, fine feeling of their nature enter; but generally they try to make it real in early youth, and, balked then, laugh ever afterwards at their own folly. This poor old Knowles had begun to block out his dream when he was a gaunt, gray-haired man of sixty. I have known men so build their heart's blood and brains into their work, that, when it tumbled down, their lives went with it. His fell that dull day in October; but if it hurt him, no man knew it. He sat there, looking at the broad plateau, whistling softly to himself, a long time. He had meant that a great many hearts should be made better and happier there; he had dreamed——God knows what he had dreamed, of which this reality was the foundation,—of how much freedom, or beauty, or kindly life this was the heart or seed. It was all over now. All the afternoon the muddy sky hung low over the hills and dull prairie, while he sat there looking at the dingy gloom: just as you and I have done, perhaps, some time, thwarted in some true hope,—sore and bitter against God, because He did not see how much His universe needed our pet reform.

He got up at last, and without a sigh went slowly away, leaving the courage and self-reliance of his life behind him, buried with that one beautiful, fair dream of life. He never came back again. People said Knowles was quieter since his loss; but I think only God saw the depth of the difference. When he was leaving the plateau, that day, he looked back at it, as if to say good-bye,—not to the dingy fields and river, but to the Something he had nursed so long in his rugged heart, and given up now forever. As he looked, the warm, red sun came out, lighting up with a heartsome warmth the whole gray day. Some blessing power seemed to look at him from the gloomy hills, the prairie, and the river, which he was to see again. His hope accomplished could not have looked at him with surer content and fulfilment. He turned away, ungrateful and moody. Long afterwards he remembered the calm and brightness which his hand had not been raised to make, and understood the meaning of its promise.

He went to work now in earnest: he had to work for his bread-and-butter, you understand? Restless, impatient at first; but we will forgive him that: you yourself were not altogether submissive, perhaps, when the slow-built hope of life was destroyed by some chance, as you called it, no more controllable than this paltry burning of a mill. Yet, now that the great hope was gone on which his brain had worked with rigid, fierce intentness, now that his hands were powerless to redeem a perishing class, he had time to fall into careless, kindly habit: he thought it wasted time, remorsefully, of course. He was seized with a curiosity to know what plan in living these people had who crossed his way on the streets; if they were disappointed, like him. He went sometimes to read the papers to old Tim Poole, who was bed-ridden, and did not pish or pshaw once at his maundering about secession or the misery in his back. Went to church sometimes: the sermons were bigotry, always, to his notion, sitting on a back seat, squirting tobacco-juice about him; but the simple, old-fashioned hymns brought the tears to his eyes:—"They sounded to him like his mother's voice, singing in paradise: he hoped she could not see how things had gone on here,—how all that was honest and strong in his life had fallen in that infernal mill." Once or twice he went down Crane Alley, and lumbered up three pair of stairs to the garret where Kitts had his studio,—got him orders, in fact, for two portraits; and when that pale-eyed young man, in a fit of confidence, one night, with a very red face drew back the curtain from his grand "Fall of Chapultepec," and watched him with a lean and hungry look, Knowles, who knew no more about painting than a gorilla, walked about, looking through his fist at it, saying, "how fine the chiaroscuro was, and that it was a devilish good thing altogether." "Well, well," he soothed his conscience, going down-stairs, "maybe that bit of canvas is as much to that poor chap as the phalanstery was once to another fool." And so went on through the gas-lit streets into his parishes in cellars and alleys, with a sorer heart, but cheerfuller words, now that he had nothing but words to give.

The only place where he hardened his heart was in the hospital with Holmes. After he had wakened to full consciousness, Knowles thought the man a beast to sit there uncomplaining day after day, cold and grave, as if the lifeful warmth of the late autumn were enough for him. Did he understand the iron fate laid on him? Where was the strength of the self-existent soul now? Did he know that it was a balked, defeated life, that waited for him, vacant of the triumphs he had planned? "The self-existent soul! stopped in its growth by chance, this omnipotent deity,—the chance burning of a mill!" Knowles muttered to himself, looking at Holmes. With a dim flash of doubt, as he said it, whether there might not, after all, be a Something,—some deep of calm, of eternal order, where these coarse chances, these wrestling souls, these creeds, Catholic or Humanitarian, even that namby-pamby Kitts and his picture, might be unconsciously working out their part. Looking out of the hospital-window, he saw the deep of the stainless blue, impenetrable, with the stars unconscious in their silence of the maddest raging of the petty world. There was such calm! such infinite love and justice! it was around, above him; it held him, it held the world,—all Wrong, all Right! For an instant the turbid heart of the man cowered, awe-struck, as yours or mine has done when some swift touch of music or human love gave us a cleaving glimpse of the great I AM. The next, he opened the newspaper in his hand. What part in the eternal order could that hold? or slavery, or secession, or civil war? No harmony could be infinite enough to hold such discords, he thought, pushing the whole matter from him in despair. Why, the experiment of self-government, the problem of the ages, was crumbling in ruin! So he despaired just as Tige did the night the mill fell about his ears, in full confidence that the world had come to an end now, without hope of salvation,—crawling out of his cellar in dumb amazement, when the sun rose as usual the next morning.

Knowles sat, peering at Holmes over his paper, watching the languid breath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, the face outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before. He fancied the slough of disappointment into which God had crushed the soul of this man: would he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first step in his stairway, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood to the depth of impotent poverty? He could not tell if the quiet on Holmes's face were stolid defiance or submission: the dumb kings might have looked thus beneath the feet of Pharaoh. When he walked over the floor, too, weak as he was, it was with the old iron tread. He asked Knowles presently what business he had gone into.

"My old hobby in an humble way,—the House of Refuge."

They both laughed.

"Yes, it is true. The janitor points me out to visitors as 'under-superintendent, a philanthropist in decayed circumstances.' Perhaps it is my life-work,"—growing sad and earnest.

"If you can inoculate these infant beggars and thieves with your theory, it will be practice when you are dead."

"I think that," said Knowles, gravely, his eye kindling,—"I think that."

"As thankless a task as that of Moses," said the other, watching him curiously. "For you will not see the pleasant land,—you will not go over."

The old man's flabby face darkened.

"I know," he said.

He glanced involuntarily out at the blue, and the clear-shining, eternal stars. If he could but believe in the To-Morrow!

"I suppose," he said, after a while, cheerfully, "I must content myself with Lois's creed, here,—'It'll come right some time.'"

Lois looked up from the saucepan she was stirring, her face growing quite red, nodding emphatically some half-dozen times.

"Do you find your fallow field easily worked?"

Knowles fidgeted uneasily.

"No. Fact is, I'm beginning to think there's a good deal of an obstacle in blood. I find difficulty, much difficulty, Sir, in giving the youngest child true ideas of absolute freedom and unselfish heroism."

"You teach them by reason alone?" said Holmes, gravely.

"Well,—of course,—that is the true theory; but I—I find it necessary to have them whipped, Mr. Holmes."

Holmes stooped suddenly to pat Tiger, hiding a furtive smile. The old man went on, anxiously,—

"Old Mr. Howth says that is the end of all self-governments: from anarchy to despotism, he says. Old people are apt to be set in their ways, you know. Honestly, we do not find unlimited freedom answer in the House. I hope much from a woman's assistance: I have destined her for this work always: she has great latent power of sympathy and endurance, such as can bring the Christian teaching home to these wretches."

"The Christian?" said Holmes.

"Well, yes. I am not a believer myself, you know; but I find that it takes hold of these people more vitally than more abstract faiths: I suppose because of the humanity of Jesus. In Utopia, of course, we shall live from scientific principles; but they do not answer in the House."

"Who is the woman?" asked Holmes, carelessly.

The other watched him keenly.

"She is coming for five years. Margaret Howth."

He patted the dog with the same hard, unmoved touch.

"It is a religious duty with her. Besides, she must do something. They have been almost starving since the mill was burnt."

Holmes's face was bent; he could not see it. When he looked up, Knowles thought it more rigid, immovable than before.

When Knowles was going away, Holmes said to him,—

"When does Margaret Howth go into that devils' den?"

"The House? On New-Year's." The scorn in him was too savage to be silent. "You will have fulfilled your design by that time,—of marriage?"

Holmes was leaning on the mantel-shelf; his very lips were pale.

"Yes, I shall, I shall,"—in his low, hard tone.

Some sudden dream of warmth and beauty flashed before his gray eyes, lighting them as Knowles never had seen before.

"Miss Herne is beautiful,—let me congratulate you in Western fashion."

The old man did not hide his sneer.

Holmes bowed.

"I thank you, for her."

Lois held the candle to light the Doctor out of the long passages.

"Yoh hevn't seen Barney out 't Mr. Howth's, Doctor? He's ther' now."

"No. When shall you have done waiting on this—man, Lois? God help you, child!"

Lois's quick instinct answered,—

"He's very kind. He's like a woman fur kindness to such as me. When I come to die, I'd like eyes such as his to look at, tender, pitiful."

"Women are fools alike," grumbled the Doctor. "Never mind. 'When you come to die?' What put that into your head? Look up."

The child sheltered the flaring candle with her hand.

"I've no tho't o' dyin'," she said, laughing.

There was a gray shadow about her eyes, a peaked look to the face, he never saw before, looking at her now with a physician's eyes.

"Does anything hurt you here?" touching her chest.

"It's better now. It was that night o' th' fire. Th' breath o' th' mill, I thenk,—but it's nothin'."

"Burning copperas? Of course it's better. Oh, that's nothing!" he said, cheerfully.

When they reached the door, he held out his hand, the first time he ever had done it to her, and then waited, patting her on the head.

"I think it'll come right, Lois," he said, dreamily, looking out into the night. "You're a good girl. I think it'll all come right. For you and me. Some time. Good night, child."

After he was a long way down the street, he turned to nod good-night again to the comical little figure in the doorway.

If Knowles hated anybody that night, he hated the man he had left standing there with pale, heavy jaws, and heart of iron; he could have cursed him, standing there. He did not see how, after he was left alone, the man lay with his face to the wall, holding his bony hand to his forehead, with a look in his eyes that if you had seen, you would have thought his soul had entered on that path whose steps take hold on hell.

There was no struggle in his face; whatever was the resolve he had reached in the solitary hours when he had stood so close upon the borders of death, it was unshaken now; but the heart, crushed and stifled before, was taking its dire revenge. If ever it had hungered, through the cold, selfish days, for God's help, or a woman's love, it hungered now with a craving like death. If ever he had thought how bare and vacant the years would be, going down to the grave with lips that never had known a true kiss of real affection, he remembered it now, when it was too late, with bitterness such as wrings a man's heart but once in a lifetime. If ever he had denied to his own soul this Margaret, called her alien or foreign, he called her now, when it was too late, to her rightful place; there was not a thought nor a hope in the darkest depths of his nature that did not cry out for her help that night,—for her, a part of himself,—now, when it was too late. He went over all the years gone, and pictured the years to come; he remembered the money that was to help his divine soul upward; he thought of it with a curse, pacing the floor of the narrow room, slowly and quietly. Looking out into the still starlight and the quaint garden, he tried to fancy this woman as he knew her, after the restless power of her soul should have been chilled and starved into a narrow, lifeless duty. He fancied her old, and stern, and sick of life, she that might have been——what might they not have been, together? And he had driven her to this for money,—money!

It was of no use to repent of it now. He had frozen the love out of her heart, long ago. He remembered (all that he did remember of the blank night after he was hurt) that he had seen her white, worn-out face looking down at him; that she did not touch him; and that, when, one of the sisters told her she might take her place, and sponge his forehead, she said, bitterly, she had no right to do it, that he was no friend of hers. He saw and heard that, unconscious to all else; he would have known it, if he had been dead, lying there. It was too late now: why need he think of what might have been? Yet he did think of it through the long winter's night,—each moment his thought of the life to come, or of her, growing more tender and more bitter. Do you wonder at the remorse of this man? Wait, then, until you lie alone, as he had done, through days as slow, revealing as ages, face to face with God and death. Wait until you go down so close to eternity that the life you have lived stands out before you in the dreadful bareness in which God sees it,—as you shall see it some day from heaven or hell: money, and hate, and love will stand in their true light then. Yet, coming back to life again, he held whatever resolve he had reached down there with his old iron will: all the pain he bore in looking back to the false life before, or the ceaseless remembrance that it was too late now to atone for that false life, made him the stronger to abide by that resolve, to go on the path self-chosen, let the end be what it might. Whatever the resolve was, it did not still the gnawing hunger in his heart that night, which every trifle made more fresh and strong.

There was a wicker-basket that Lois had left by the fire, piled up with bits of cloth and leather out of which she was manufacturing Christmas gifts; a pair of great woollen socks, which one of the sisters had told him privately Lois meant for him, lying on top. As with all of her people, Christmas was the great day of the year to her. Holmes could not but smile, looking at them. Poor Lois!—Christmas would be here soon, then? And sitting by the covered fire, he went back to Christmases gone, the thought of all others that brought her nearest and warmest to him: since he was a boy they had been together on that day. With his hand over his eyes he sat quiet by the fire until morning. He heard some boy going by in the gray dawn call to another that they would have holiday on Christmas. It was coming, he thought, rousing himself,—but never as it had been: that could never be again. Yet it was strange how this thought of Christmas took hold of him,—famished his heart. As it approached in the slow-coming winter, the days growing shorter, and the nights longer and more solitary, so Margaret became more real to him,—not rejected and lost, but as the wife she might have been, with the simple passionate love she gave him once. The thought grew intolerable to him; yet there was not a homely pleasure of those years gone, when the old school-master kept high holiday on Christmas, that he did not recall and linger over with a boyish yearning, now that these things were over forever. He chafed under his weakness. If the day would but come when he could go out and conquer his fate, as a man ought to do! On Christmas eve he would put an end to these torturing taunts, his soul should not be balked longer of its rightful food. For I fear that even now Stephen Holmes thought of his own need and his own hunger.

He watched Lois knitting and patching her poor little gifts, with a vague feeling that every stitch made the time a moment shorter until he should be free, with his life in his hand again. She left him at last, sorrowfully enough, but he made her go: he fancied the close air of the hospital was hurting her, seeing at night the strange shadow growing on her face. I do not think he ever said to her that he knew all she had done for him; but no dog or woman that Stephen Holmes loved could look into his eyes and doubt that love. Sad, masterful eyes, such as are seen but once or twice in a lifetime: no woman but would wish, like Lois, for such eyes to be near her when she came to die, for her to remember the world's love in. She came hobbling back every day to see him after she had gone, and would stay to make his soup, telling him, child-like, how many days it was until Christmas. He knew that, as well as she, waiting through the cold, slow hours, in his solitary room. He thought sometimes she had some eager petition to offer him, when she stood watching him wistfully, twisting her hands together; but she always smothered it with a sigh, and, tying her little woollen cap, went away, walking more slowly, he thought, every day.

Do you remember how Christmas came last year? how there was a waiting pause, when the great States stood still, and from the peoples came the first awful murmurs of the storm that was to shake the earth? how men's hearts failed them for fear, how women turned pale and held their children closer to their breasts, while they heard a far cry of lamentation for their country that had fallen? Do you remember how, through the fury of men's anger, the storehouses of God were opened for that land? how the very sunshine gathered new splendors, the rains more fruitful moisture, until the earth poured forth an unknown fulness of life and beauty? Was there no promise there, no prophecy? Do you remember, while the very life of the people hung in doubt before them, while the angel of death came again to pass over the land, and there was no blood on any door-post to keep him from that house, how slowly the old earth folded in her harvest, dead, till it should waken to a stronger life? how quietly, as the time came near for the birth of Christ, this old earth made ready for his coming, heedless of the clamor of men? how the air grew fresher, day by day, and the gray deep silently opened for the snow to go down and screen and whiten and make holy that fouled earth? I think the slow-falling snow did not fail in its quiet warning; for I remember that men, too, in a feeble way tried to make ready for the birth of Christ. There was a healthier glow than terror stirred in their hearts; because of the vague, great dread without, it may be, they drew closer together round household fires, were kindlier in the good old-fashioned way; old friendships were wakened, old times talked over, fathers and mothers and children planned homely ways to show the love in their hearts and to welcome in Christmas. Who knew but it might be the last? Let us be thankful for that happy Christmas-day. What if it were the last? What if, when another comes, and another, some voice, the kindest and cheerfullest then, shall never say "Happy Christmas" to us again? Let us be thankful for that day the more,—accept it the more as a sign of that which will surely come.

Holmes, even, in his dreary room and drearier thought, felt the warmth and expectant stir creeping through the land as the day drew near. Even in the hospital, the sisters were in a busy flutter, decking their little chapel with flowers, and preparing a Christmas fete for their patients. The doctor, as he bandaged his broken arm, hinted at faint rumors in the city of masquerades and concerts. Even Knowles, who had not visited the hospital for weeks, relented and came back, moody and grim. He brought Kitts with him, and started him on talking of how they kept Christmas in Ohio on his mother's farm; and the poor soul, encouraged by the silence of two of his auditors, and the intense interest of Lois in the background, mazed on about Santa-Claus trees and Virginia reels until the clock struck twelve and Knowles began to snore.

Christmas was coming. As he stood, day after day, looking out of the gray window, he could see the signs of its coming even in the shop-windows glittering with miraculous toys, in the market-carts with their red-faced drivers and heaps of ducks and turkeys, in every stage-coach or omnibus that went by crowded with boys home for the holidays, hallooing for Bell or Lincoln, forgetful that the election was over and Carolina out.

Pike came to see him one day, his arms full of a bundle, which turned out to be an accordion for Sophy.

"Christmas, you know," he said, taking off the brown paper, while he was cursing the Cotton States the hardest, and gravely kneading at the keys, and stretching it until he made as much discord as five Congressmen. "I think Sophy will like that," he said, tying it up carefully.

"I am sure she will," said Holmes,—and did not think the man a fool for one moment.

Always going back, this Holmes, when he was alone, to the certainty that homecomings or children's kisses or Christmas feasts were not for such as he,—never could be, though he sought for the old time in bitterness of heart; and so, dully remembering his resolve, and waiting for Christmas eve, when, he might end it all. Not one of the myriads of happy children listened more intently to the clock clanging off hour after hour than the silent, stern man who had no hope in that day that was coming.

He learned to watch even for poor Lois coming up the corridor every day,—being the only tie that bound the solitary man to the inner world of love and warmth. The deformed little body was quite alive with Christmas now, and brought its glow with her, in her weak way. Different from the others, he saw with a curious interest. The day was more real to her than to them. Not because, only, the care she had of everybody and everybody had of her seemed to reach its culmination of kindly thought for the Christmas time; not because, as she sat talking slowly, stopping for breath, her great fear seemed to be that she would not have gifts enough to go round; but deeper than that,—the day was real to her. As if it were actually true that the Master in whom she believed was freshly born into the world once a year, to waken all that was genial and noble and pure in the turbid, worn-out hearts; as if new honor and pride and love did come with the breaking of Christmas morn. It was a beautiful faith; he almost wished it were his. (Perhaps in that day when the under-currents of life shall be bared, this man with his self-reliant soul will know the subtile instincts that drew him to true manhood and feeling by the homely practice of poor Lois. He did not see them now.) A beautiful faith! it gave a meaning to the old custom of gifts and kind words. Love coming into the world!—the idea pleased his artistic taste, being simple and sublime. Lois used to tell him, while she feebly tried to set his room in order, of all her plans,—of how Sam Polston was to be married on New-Year's,—but most of all of the Christmas coming out at the old schoolmaster's: how the old house had been scrubbed from top to bottom, was fairly glowing with shining paint and hot fires,—how Margaret and her mother worked, in terror lest the old man should find out how poor and bare it was,—how he and Joel had some secret enterprise on foot at the far end of the plantation out in the swamp, and were gone nearly all day.

She ceased coming at last. One of the sisters went out to see her, and told him she was too weak to walk, but meant to be better soon,—quite well by the holidays. He wished the poor thing had told him what she wanted of him,—wished it anxiously, with a dull presentiment of evil.

The days went by, cold and slow. He watched grimly the preparations the hospital physician was silently making in his case, for fever, inflammation.

"I must be strong enough to go out cured on Christmas eve," he said to him one day, coolly.

The old doctor glanced up shrewdly. He was an old Alsatian, very plain-spoken.

"You say so?" he mumbled. "Chut! Then you will go. There are some—bull-dog men. They do what they please,—they never die unless they choose, begar! We know them in our practice, Herr Holmes!"

Holmes laughed. Some acumen there, he thought, in medicine or mind: as for himself, it was true enough; whatever success he had gained in life had been by no flush of enthusiasm or hope; a dogged persistence of "holding on," rather.

Christmas eve came at last; bright, still, frosty. "Whatever he had to do, let it be done quickly "; but not till the set hour came. So he laid his watch on the table beside him, waiting until it should mark the time he had chosen: the ruling passion of self-control as strong in this turn of life's tide as it would be in its ebb, at the last. The old doctor found him alone in the dreary room, coming in with the frosty breath of the eager street about him. A grim, chilling sight enough, as solitary and impenetrable as the Sphinx. He did not like such faces in this genial and gracious time, so hurried over his examination. The eye was cool, the pulse steady, the man's body, battered though it was, strong in its steely composure. "Ja wohl!—ja wohl!" he went on chuffily, summing up: latent fever,—the very lips were blue, dry as husks; "he would go,—oui?—then go!"—with a chuckle. "All right, glueck zu!" And so shuffled out latent fever? Doubtless, yet hardly from broken bones, the doctor thought,—with no suspicion of the subtile, intolerable passion smouldering in every drop of this man's phlegmatic blood.

Evening came at last. He stopped until the cracked bell of the chapel had done striking the Angelus, and then put on his overcoat, and went out. The air was cold and pungent. The crowded city seemed wakening to some keen enjoyment; even his own weak, deliberate step rang on the icy pavement as if it wished to rejoice with the rest. I said it was a trading city: so it was, but the very trade to-day had a jolly Christmas face on; the surly old banks and pawnbrokers' shops had grown ashamed of their doings, and shut their doors, and covered their windows with frosty trees, and cathedrals, and castles; the shops opened their hearts; some child's angel had touched them, and they flushed out into a magic splendor of Christmas trees, and lights, and toys; Santa Claus might have made his head-quarters in any one of them. As for children, you stumbled over them at every step, quite weighed down with the heaviness of their joy, and the money burning their pockets; the acrid old brokers and pettifoggers, that you met with a chill on other days, had turned into jolly fathers of families, and lounged laughing along with half a dozen little hands pulling them into candy-stores or toy-shops: all the churches whose rules permitted them to show their deep rejoicing in a simple way had covered their cold stone walls with evergreens and wreaths of glowing fire-berries: the child's angel had touched them too, perhaps,—not unwisely.

He passed crowds of thin-clad women looking in through open doors, with red cheeks and hungry eyes, at red-hot stoves within, and a placard, "Christmas dinners for the poor, gratis"; out of every window on the streets came a ruddy light, and a spicy smell; the very sunset sky had caught the reflection of the countless Christmas fires, and flamed up to the zenith, blood-red as cinnabar.

Holmes turned down one of the back streets: he was going to see Lois, first of all. I hardly know why: the child's angel may have touched him, too; or his heart, full of a yearning pity for the poor cripple, who, he believed now, had given her own life for his, may have plead for indulgence, as men remember their childish prayers, before going into battle. He came at last, in the quiet lane where she lived, to her little brown frame-shanty, to which you mounted by a flight of wooden steps: there were two narrow windows at the top, hung with red curtains; he could hear her feeble voice singing within. As he turned to go up the steps, he caught sight of something crouched underneath them in the dark, hiding from him: whether a man—or a dog he could not see. He touched it.

"What d' ye want, Mas'r?" said a stifled voice.

He touched it again with his stick.

The man stood upright, back in the shadow: it was old Yare.

"Had ye any word wi' me, Mas'r?"

He saw the negro's face grow gray with fear.

"Come out, Yare," he said, quietly. "Any word? What word is arson, eh?"

The man did not move. Holmes touched him with the stick.

"Come out," he said.

He came out, looking gaunt, as with famine.

"I'll not flurr myself," he said, crunching his ragged hat in his hands,—"I'll not."

He drove the hat down upon his head, and looked up with a sullen fierceness.

"Yoh've got me, an' I'm glad of 't. I'm tired, fearin'. I was born for hangin', they say," with a laugh. "But I'll see my girl. I've waited hyur, runnin' the resk,—not darin' to see her, on 'count o' yoh. I thort I was safe on Christmas-day,—but what's Christmas to yoh or me?"

Holmes's quiet motion drove him up the steps before him. He stopped at the top, his cowardly nature getting the better of him, and sat down whining on the upper step.

"Be marciful, Mas'r! I wanted to see my girl,—that's all. She's all I hev."

Holmes passed him and went in. Was Christmas nothing to him? How did this foul wretch know that they stood alone, apart from the world?

It was a low, cheerful little room that he came into, stooping his tall head: a tea-kettle humming and singing on the wood-fire, that lighted up the coarse carpet and the gray walls, but spent its warmest heat on the low settee where Lois lay sewing, and singing to herself. She was wrapped up in a shawl, but the hands, he saw, were worn to skin and bone; the gray shadow was heavier on her face, and the brooding brown eyes were like a tired child's. She tried to jump up when she saw him, and not being able, leaned on one elbow, half-crying as she laughed.

"It's the best Christmas gift of all I I can hardly b'lieve it!"—touching the strong hand humbly that was held out to her.

Holmes had a gentle touch, I told you, for dogs and children and women: so, sitting quietly by her, he listened with untiring patience to her long story; looked at the heap of worthless trifles she had patched up for gifts, wondering secretly at the delicate sense of color and grace betrayed in the bits of flannel and leather; and took, with a grave look of wonder, his own package, out of which a bit of woollen thread peeped forth.

"Don't look till to-morrow mornin'," she said, anxiously, as she lay back trembling and exhausted.

The breath of the mill! The fires of want and crime had finished their work on her life,—so! She caught the meaning of his face quickly.

"It's nothin'," she said, eagerly. "I'll be strong by New-Year's; it's only a day or two rest I need. I've no tho't o' givin' up."

And to show how strong she was, she got up and hobbled about to make the tea. He had not the heart to stop her; she did not want to die,—why should she? the world was a great, warm, beautiful nest for the little cripple,—why need he show her the cold without? He saw her at last go near the door where old Yare sat outside, then heard her breathless cry, and a sob. A moment after the old man came into the room, carrying her, and, laying her down on the settee, chafed her hands and misshapen head.

"What ails her?" he said, looking up, bewildered, to Holmes. "We've killed her among us."

She laughed, though the great eyes were growing dim, and drew his coarse gray hair into her hand.

"Yoh wur long comin'," she said, weakly. "I hunted fur yoh every day,—every day."

The old man had pushed her hair back, and was reading the sunken face with a wild fear.

"What ails her?" he cried. "Ther' 's somethin' gone wi' my girl. Was it my fault? Lo, was it my fault?"

"Be quiet!" said Holmes, sternly.

"Is it that?" he gasped, shrilly. "My God! not that! I can't bear it!"

Lois soothed him, patting his face childishly.

"Am I dyin'?" she asked, with a frightened look at Holmes.

He told her no, cheerfully.

"I've no tho't o' dyin'. I dunnot thenk o' dyin'. Don't mind, dear! Yoh'll stay with me, fur good?"

The man's paroxysm of fear for her over, his spite and cowardice came uppermost.

"It's him," he yelped, looking fiercely at Holmes. "He's got my life in his hands. He kin take it. What does he keer fur me or my girl? I'll not stay wi' yoh no longer, Lo. Mornin' he'll send me t' th' lock-up, an' after"——

"I care for you, child," said Holmes, stooping suddenly close to the girl's livid face.

"To-morrow?" she muttered. "My Christmas-day?"

He wet her face while he looked over at the wretch whose life he held in his hands. It was the iron rule of Holmes's nature to be just; but to-night dim perceptions of a deeper justice than law opened before him,—problems he had no time to solve: the sternest fortress is liable to be taken by assault,—and the dew of the coming morn was on his heart.

"So as I've hunted fur him!" she whispered, weakly. "I didn't think it wud come to this. So as I loved him! Oh, Mr. Holmes, he's hed a pore chance in livin',—forgive him this! Him that'll come to-morrow'd say to forgive him this."

She caught the old man's head in her arms with an agony of tears, and held it tight.

"I hev hed a pore chance," he said, looking up,—"that's God's truth, Lo! I dunnot keer fur that: it's too late goin' back.—Mas'r," he mumbled, servilely, "it's on'y a little time t' th' end: let me stay with Lo. She loves me,—Lo does."

A look of disgust crept over Holmes's face.

"Stay, then," he muttered,—"I wash my hands of you, you old scoundrel!"

He bent over Lois with his rare, pitiful smile.

"Have I his life in my hands? I put it into yours,—so, child! Now put it all out of your head, and look up here to wish me good-bye."

She looked up cheerfully, hardly conscious how deep the danger had been; but the flush had gone from her face, leaving it sad and still.

"I must go to keep Christmas, Lois," he said, playfully.

"Yoh're keepin' it here, Sir." She held her weak gripe on his hand still, with the vague outlook in her eyes that came there sometimes. "Was it fur me yoh done it?"

"Yes, for you."

She turned her eyes slowly around, bewildered. The clear evening light fell on Holmes, as he stood there looking down at the dying little lamiter: a powerful figure, with a face supreme, masterful, but tender: you will find no higher type of manhood. Did God make him of the same blood as the vicious, cringing wretch crouching to hide his black face at the other side of the bed? Some such thought came into Lois's brain, and vexed her, bringing the tears to her eyes: he was her father, you know.

"It's all wrong," she muttered,—"oh, it's far wrong! Ther' 's One could make them 'like. Not me."

She stroked her father's head once, and then let it go. Holmes glanced out, and saw the sun was down.

"Lois," he said, "I want you to wish me a happy Christmas, as people do."

Holmes had a curious vein of superstition: he knew no lips so pure as this girl's, and he wanted them to wish him good-luck that night. She did it, laughing and growing red: riddles of life did not trouble her childish fancy long. And so he left her, with a dull feeling, as I said before, that it was good to say a prayer before the battle came on. For men who believed in prayers: for him, it was the same thing to make one day for Lois happier.



METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

IV.

In presenting Classification as the subject of a series of papers in the "Atlantic Monthly," I am aware that I am drawing largely upon the patience of its readers; since the technical nature of the topic renders many details necessary which cannot be otherwise than dry to any but professional naturalists. Yet believing, as I do, that classification, rightly understood, means simply the creative plan of God as expressed in organic forms, I feel the importance of attempting at least to present it in a popular guise, divested, as far as possible, of technicalities, while I would ask the indulgence of my readers for such scientific terms and details as cannot well be dispensed with, begging them to remember that a long and tedious road may bring us suddenly upon a glorious prospect, and that a clearer mental atmosphere and a new intellectual sensation may well reward us for a little weariness in the outset. Besides, the time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world; for we have reached the point where the results of science touch the very problem of existence, and all men listen for the solving of that mystery. When it will come, and how, none can say; but this much at least is certain, that all our researches are leading up to that question, and mankind will never rest till it is answered. If, then, the results of science are of such general interest for the human race, if they are gradually interpreting the purposes of the Deity in creation, and the relation of man to all the past, then it is well that all should share in its teachings, and that it should not be kept, like the learning of the Egyptians, for an exclusive priesthood who may expound the oracle according to their own theories, but should make a part of all our intellectual culture and of our common educational systems. With this view, I will endeavor to simplify as far as may be my illustrations of the different groups of the Animal Kingdom, beginning with a more careful analysis of those structural features on which classes are founded.

I have said that the Radiates are the lowest type among animals, embodying, under an infinite variety of forms, that plan in which all parts bear definite relations to a vertical central axis. The three classes of Radiates are distinguished from each other by three distinct ways of executing that plan. I dwell upon this point; for we shall never arrive at a clear understanding of the different significance and value of the various divisions of the Animal Kingdom, till we appreciate the distinction between the structural conception and the material means by which it is expressed. A comparison will, perhaps, better explain my meaning. There are certain architectonic types, including edifices of different materials, with an infinite variety of architectural details and external ornaments; but the flat roof and the colonnade are typical of all Grecian temples, whether built of marble or granite or wood, whether Doric or Ionic or Corinthian, whether simple and massive or light and ornamented; and, in like manner, the steep roof and pointed arch are the typical characters of all Gothic cathedrals, whatever be the material or the details. The architectural conception remains the same in all its essential elements, however the more superficial features vary. Such relations as these edifices bear to the architectural idea that includes them all, do classes bear to the primary divisions or branches of the Animal Kingdom.

The three classes of Radiates, beginning with the lowest, and naming them in their relative order, are Polyps, Acalephs or Jelly-Fishes, and Echinoderms or Star-Fishes and Sea-Urchins. In the Polyps the plan is executed in the simplest manner by a sac, the sides of which are folded inward, at regular intervals from top to bottom, so as to divide it by vertical radiating partitions, converging from the periphery toward the centre. These folds or partitions do not meet in the centre, but leave an open space, which is the main cavity of the body. This open space, however, occupies only the lower part of the body; for in the upper there is a second sac hanging to a certain distance within the first. This inner sac has an aperture in the bottom, through which whatever enters it passes into the main cavity of the body. A central opening in the top forms a kind of mouth, around which are radiating tentacles connecting with the open chambers formed by the partitions within. Cutting such an animal across in a transverse section, we shall see the radiation of the partitions from the centre to the circumference, showing still more distinctly the typical structure of the division to which it belongs.



The second class is that of Jelly-Fishes or Acalephs; and here the same plan is carried out in the form of a hemispherical gelatinous disk, the digestive cavity being hollowed, or, as it were, scooped, out of the substance of the body, which is traversed by tubes that radiate from the centre to the periphery. Cutting it across transversely, or looking through its transparent mass, the same radiation of the internal structure is seen again; only that in this instance the radiating lines are not produced by vertical partition-walls, with open spaces between, as in the Polyps, but by radiating tubes passing through the gelatinous mass of the body. At the periphery is a circular tube connecting them all, and the tentacles, which hang down when the animal is in its natural position, connect at their base with the radiating tubes, while numerous smaller tentacles may form a kind of fringe all round the margin.

The third and highest class includes the Star-Fishes, Sea-Urchins, and Holothurians or Beches-de-Mer. The radiation is equally distinct in each of these; but here again the mode of execution differs from that of the two other classes. The internal cavity and the radiating tubes, instead of being connected with the outer wall of the body as in Polyps, or hollowed out of the substance of the body as in Jelly-Fishes, are here inclosed within independent walls of their own, quite distinct from the wall of the body. But notwithstanding this difference, a transverse section shows in these animals, as distinctly as in all the rest, the radiating structure typical of the whole branch. In these three classes we have no difference of plan, nor even any modification of the same plan,—for either one of them expresses it as clearly as any other,—but simply three different ways of executing one structural idea.



I have mentioned only three classes of Radiates. Cuvier had five in his classification; for he placed among them the Intestinal Worms and the Infusoria or Animalcules. The Intestinal Worms are much better known now than they were in his day. Their anatomy and embryology have been traced, and it has been shown that the essential features of these parasites are the same as those of all Articulates, their whole body being divided into successive, movable joints or rings. Cuvier was misled by the circular arrangement of certain parts around the mouth, and by the presence of a wreath of feelers around the head of some of these Worms, resembling the tentacles of many Radiates. This is, however, no indication of radiate structure, but a superficial feature in no way related to the internal organization.

We must carefully distinguish between affinity and analogy among animals. The former is founded on identity of plan; the latter only upon external resemblance, produced by similar features, which, when they are intimately connected with the whole internal organization, as in some groups, may be considered as typical characters, but when only grafted, as it were, in a superficial manner on animals of another type, have no relation to the essential elements of structure, and become at once subordinate and unimportant. Such is the difference between the tentacles in a Radiate and the wreath of feelers in a Worm;—the external effect may be much the same; but in the former every tentacle opens into one of the chambers as in a Polyp, or connects with one of the radiating tubes as in Acalephs, or with the locomotive suckers as in Star-Fishes, and is therefore closely linked with the whole internal organization; whereas the feelers in the latter are only external appendages, in no way connected with the essential structural elements. We have a striking illustration of this superficial resemblance in the wings of Birds and Insects. In Birds, wings are a typical feature, corresponding to the front limbs in all Vertebrates, which are constructed in the same way, whether they are arms as in Man, or forelegs as in Quadrupeds, or pectoral fins as in Fishes, or wings as in Birds. The wing in an Insect, on the contrary, is a flattened, dried-up gill, having no structural relation whatever to the wing of a Bird. They are analogous only because they resemble each other in function, being in the same way subservient to flight; but as organs they are entirely different.

In adding Infusoria to the Radiates, Cuvier was false to his own principle of founding all classification on plan. He was influenced by their seeming simplicity of structure, and placed them in the lowest division of the Animal Kingdom on that account. But even this simplicity was only apparent in many of them. At certain seasons of the year myriads of these little Animalcules may be seen in every brook and road-side pool. They are like transparent little globules, without any special organization, apparently; and were it not that they are in constant rotation, exhibiting thus a motion of their own, one would hardly suspect that they were endowed with life. To the superficial observer they all look alike, and it is not strange, that, before they had been more carefully investigated, they should have been associated together as the lowest division of the Animal Kingdom, representing, as it were, a border-land between animal and vegetable life. But since the modern improvements in the microscope, Ehrenberg, the great master in microscopic investigation, has shown that many of these little globules have an extraordinary complication of structure. Subsequent investigations have proved that they include a great variety of beings: some of them belonging to the type of Mollusks; others to the type of Articulates, being in fact little Shrimps; while many others are the locomotive germs of plants, and so far from forming a class by themselves, as a distinct group in the Animal Kingdom, they seem to comprise representatives of all types except Vertebrates, and to belong in part to the Vegetable Kingdom, Siebold, Leuckart, and other modern zooelogists, have considered them as a primary type, and called them Protozoa; but this is as great a mistake as the other. The rotatory motion in them all is produced by an apparatus that exists not only in all animals, but in plants also, and is a most important agent in sustaining the freshness and vitality of their circulating fluids and of the surrounding medium in which they live. It consists of soft fringes, called Vibratile Cilia. Such fringes cover the whole surface of these little living beings, and by their unceasing play they maintain the rotating motion that carries them along in the water.

The Mollusks, the next great division of the Animal Kingdom, also include three classes. With them is introduced that character of bilateral symmetry, or division of parts on either side of a longitudinal axis, that prevails throughout the Animal Kingdom, with the exception of the Radiates. The lowest class of Mollusks has been named Acephala, to signify the absence of any distinct head; for though their whole organization is based upon the principle of bilateral symmetry, it is nevertheless very difficult to determine which is the right side and which the left in these animals, because there is so little prominence in the two ends of the body that the anterior and posterior extremities are hardly to be distinguished. Take the Oyster as an example. It has, like most Acephala, a shell with two valves united by a hinge on the back, one of these valves being thick and swollen, while the other is nearly flat. If we lift the shell, we find beneath a soft lining-skin covering the whole animal and called by naturalists the mantle, from the inner surface of which arise a double row of gills, forming two pendent folds on the sides of the body; but at one end of the body these folds do not meet, but leave an open space, where is the aperture we call the mouth. This is the only indication of an anterior extremity; but it is enough to establish a difference between the front and hind ends of the body, and to serve as a guide in distinguishing the right and left sides. If now we lift the mantle and gills, we find beneath the principal organs: the stomach, with a winding alimentary canal; the heart and liver; the blood-vessels, branching from either side of the heart to join the gills; and a fleshy muscle passing from one valve of the shell to the other, enabling the animal by its dilatation or contraction to open and close its shell at will. A cut across an animal of this class will show us better the bilateral arrangement of the parts. In such a section we see the edge of the two shells on either side; within these the edge of the mantle; then the double rows of gills; and in the middle the alimentary canal, the heart, and the blood-vessels branching right and left. Some of these animals have eye-specks on the edge of the mantle; but this is not a constant feature. This class of Acephala includes all the Oysters, Clams, Mussels, and the like. When named with reference to their double shells, they are called Bivalves; and with them are associated a host of less conspicuous animals, known as Ascidians, Brachiopods, and Bryozoa.



The second class in this type is that of Gasteropoda, so named from the fleshy muscular expansion on which they move, and which is therefore called a foot: a very inappropriate name; since it has no relation or resemblance to a foot, though it is used as a locomotive organ. This class includes all the Snails, Slugs, Cockles, Conchs, Periwinkles, Whelks, Limpets, and the like. Some of them have no solid covering; but the greater part are protected by a single shell, and on this account they are called Univalves, in contradistinction to the Acephala or Bivalves. These shells, though always single, differ from each other by an endless variety of form and color,—from the flat simple shell of the Limpet to the elaborate spiral and brilliant hues of the Cones and Cowries. Different as is their external covering, however, if we examine the internal structure of a Gasteropod, we find the same general arrangement of parts that prevails in the Acephala, showing that both belong to the same great division of the Animal Kingdom. The mantle envelops the animal, and lines its single shell as it lined the double shell of the Oyster; the gills are placed on either side of it; the stomach, with the winding alimentary canal, is in the centre of the body; the heart and liver are placed in the same relation to it as in the Acephala; and though the so-called foot would seem to be a new feature, it is but a muscular expansion of the ventral side of the body. There is an evident superiority in this class over the preceding one, in the greater prominence of the anterior extremity, where there are two or more feelers, with which eyes more or less developed are connected; and though there is nothing that can be properly called a head, yet there can be no hesitation as to the distinction between the front and hind ends of the body.



The third and highest class of Mollusks has been called Cephalopoda, in reference again to a special feature of their structure. They have long arms or feelers around the head, serving as organs of locomotion, by which they propel themselves through the water with a velocity that is quite extraordinary, when compared with the sluggishness of the other Mollusks. In these animals the head is distinctly marked,—being separated, by a contraction or depression behind it, from the rest of the body. The feelers, so prominent on the anterior extremity of the Gasteropoda, are suppressed in Cephalopoda, and the eyes are consequently brought immediately on the side of the head, and are very large in proportion to the size of the animal. A skin corresponding to the mantle envelops the body, and the gills are on either side of it;—the stomach with its winding canal, the liver, and heart occupy the centre of the body, as in the two other classes. This class includes all the Cuttle-Fishes, Squids, and Nautili, and has a vast number of fossil representatives. Many of these animals are destitute of any shell; and where they have a shell, it is not coiled from right to left or from left to right as in the spiral of the Gasteropoda, but from behind forwards as in the Nautilus. These shells are usually divided into a number of chambers,—the animal, as it grows, building a wall behind it at regular intervals, and always occupying the external chamber, retaining, however, a connection with his past home by a siphon that runs through the whole succession of chambers. The readers of the "Atlantic Monthly" cannot fail to remember the exquisite poem suggested to the Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by this singular feature in the structure of the so-called Chambered Shells.