The advanced Queen Anne designer takes a different view of the case. He tells us in all seriousness and with much enthusiasm that the domestic building of the colonists was far in advance of modern work, both in its picturesque aspects and its home-like comfort. He points to the huge beams and hanging knees which support the floors, their rudely-chamfered edges dubbed into shape with an axe, as evidence of the thought and skilful manipulation of the artificer, the sashes with muntins an inch and a half in width, glazed with coarse and greenish glass, and the mouldings, all hand-made, showing the wavy lines and irregular sections inseparable from rude hand-work, and then triumphantly asks, "Can your boasted machinery turn out such work as that?" I answer emphatically, No, it cannot; and for this we should be thankful. The colonial mechanics well understood the spirit of Sir Henry Wotton's apt saying, "In architecture, as in all other operative arts, the end is to build well." Would such men have spent their time in hewing out beams of oak ten or twelve inches square by main strength and patience if they had possessed the circular saw driven by steam-power? The weight of these huge beams, of badly-proportioned section, forced to support an overplus of width with comparatively small depth, wrought serious injury to their buildings,—settling floors, irregularly hollowing roofs and ridge-lines, and doing far more than time in rendering these old mansions picturesque and quaint "suggestions" for a revival of "high art." It seems probable that the workmen of the past would have been the first to welcome the advent of machinery and make use of its wide adaptations. At all events, they would never have stooped to the level of the ultra Queen Anne revivalists, who, in striving after the picturesque, have often set well-studied construction at defiance.

In this search after quaintness and picturesque effects roofs and ridge-lines are hollowed out with great labor, walls are made to bulge by nailing on furrings beneath the boarding, clear sheet-glass, easily procured of any dimensions, is voted "so inartistic," and the green crown glass and bull's-eyes are taken from some venerable farm-house, where they fitly belonged, to fill the irregular fenestration of a modern parlor.

What is the logical sequence of so anomalous a state of domestic architecture? Shall we sand our floors, and design chairs with high backs to break off the draughts from our rattling sashes, from which we have removed the cords and weights? abandon the equable temperature throughout our dwellings for individual fires unassisted by the furnace or steam-coil? revert to the moderator or carcel lamp, casting a dim light over a radius of a few feet and entirely below the level of the eye, and place on our outer doors the old brass knockers to awaken the denizens of a whole square with their noisy reverberations?

I think I may safely assert that such designs and architectural fashions are not the exponent of "high art;" and, while they may please for a time a people always alive to novelty, they will ultimately be set aside, on the ground of their unworthiness when measured by the standard of common sense. It has been said of common sense applied to building that "when and wherever architecture has been practised as a living art, as an outgrowth of the wants of the people who practise it, especially in those periods which are generally reckoned by the educated as the purest, this quality is everywhere recognized. From the rock-hewn cave and rude hut to the stateliest edifice, this principle will be found to exist; and, though a common-sense building may have no artistic beauty, a building which sets common sense at defiance will fail to please the intelligent observer."

Something there is more needful than expense, And something previous e'en to taste,—'tis sense, Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven, And, though no science, fairly worth the seven.

Critical writers, in reviewing architectural publications, have frequently remarked that the authors of such works, particularly those which profess to deal with the aesthetical side of the profession, while severely censuring the prevailing taste for what they term "debased art," and denouncing all methods adopted since the birth of the Renaissance, rarely offer us any formulas by following which we may advance the tone and sentiment of architecture. When they do offer any advice, it is too often in vague terms, scarcely to be understood by the general reader. Thus, one tells us that to follow taste alone is a delusion, and that architecture, to be worthy of its name, should be a logical development of the constructive sciences based upon man's necessities and the requirements of social life. In short, instead of offering a grammar of architecture suited to the wants of the general and unprofessional reader, these authors offer theoretical reasoning of an advanced order; instead of art-instruction, severe censures upon existing forms. The system by which architectural students are educated and prepared for the duties of professional life has much to do with their lack of readiness in formulating in after-years practical theories for the improvement of their art.

But the establishment of architectural schools at the Boston Institute of Technology, at Columbia College, and at Champagne, Illinois, with well-trained and enthusiastic professors at the head of each, and carefully-selected corps of assistants, is already doing much toward an improvement in students themselves, and in raising the standard of American architecture as a profession in the eyes of society. This student-system must in time create a body of men, well educated, enthusiastic, and bound together by an esprit de corps hitherto almost unknown among the great body of practising architects. The dictum passed by such a body upon the art and science of building will be received with respect by the laymen who employ them, and American architecture, in its better phases, will receive an impetus and a nervous strength in construction and composition which at present we find exemplified only in the scattered works of a few highly-trained practitioners. So far we have had in this country no fixed standard by which the educated architect may be tried and his professional position established. Unlike the practice of law and medicine, the field is free to all, and previous training is not required. In France, where the educational probation is long and severe and the rewards of success certain, the graduates of the schools are few in number compared with the lists of new names constantly appearing in the columns of our city directories with the designation of "architect." In America, young men, ambitious and anxious to succeed, after a few months spent in study and in copying drawings in some prominent office, set up for themselves. They naturally drift into the ranks of the Queen Anne designers, for the reason that their art is "free," and they can jumble together

A patchwork of Japan, And queer bits of Queen Anne, All mixed upon the plan Of as you like or as you can.

One of the most zealous of the English Queen Anne revivalists has made the candid confession of the real weakness under the apparent strength of the movement, in stating that "it is a bad style for students to cut their teeth upon." If it is a bad foundation for the education of students, certainly it must be bad for the stability and beauty of their future works.

Nothing that I have seen so cleverly portrays the young and "high art" architectural aspirant as the delineation of a character in a novel published in England under the title of "The Ambassador Extraordinary," and said to have been written by an eminent architect. With unsparing pen the author sketches a character, Georgius Oldhausen by name, F.S.A., professor of architecture of a very advanced order. The work is well executed, and we can almost see before us the architect who, disdaining such insignificant matters as good planning, stability of construction, and convenient disposition of parts, claims to be an artist pure and simple, and, leaving practical matters entirely out of the question, goes in heavily for the picturesque and pure mediaeval, Queen Anne, or Jacobean, as the case may be. Let us follow him as he conducts a friend over a church and conventual establishment in course of construction.

"Your rooms," says Monsignore, "seem to me to be made almost as uncomfortable as they possibly can be."

"Why, of course!" exclaims the astonished artist, fixing his glass somewhat indignantly in his eye. "What you call uncomfortable I call quaint."

"Very possibly I should call it the same; but, my dear sir, cui bono?"

"Cui bono!" answers the architect contemptuously. "That's what all modern people say; that's the horrible mistake of the whole modern world. We shall never recover the tone of the old men till we get rid of such jargon. Now, just for an instant, imagine the fathers of this abbey of ours going in for wash-hand-basins!"

He drops his eye-glass in sheer dismay at such an idea. They next visit the refectory. Master Georgius here excels himself. "I'm going in for doing it inside in red brick, and vaulting it in red brick too, with black diaper-patterns all over, you know."

"How pretty!"

"I hope not," (dropping his glass.) "The diapers will be quite irregular, and full of what you would very likely call mistakes."

"A sort of intentional accidents, George."

"Yes; not a bad term. And then the joints will be all raked out roughly, and the brick-work smeared, you know. I have quite a new idea about that. I mean to go in for letting the workmen have the use of all the rooms, with liberty to smudge them as much as they like; and so at the end we shall have a sort of antique effect, you know."

"They will be dirty."

"You may call it dirt," says Georgius, refixing his eye-glass. "I call it art. And there will be marks here and there where the fellows have lighted fires, you know."

"And caricatures on the walls, I suppose."

"Of course. I shall go in for that very much. I shall offer a prize for the quaintest. I'll have them done with a brush of paint, you know, or scratch them with a screw-driver, and so on. I call that real art."

"So it is, George."

"And smudges of candle-smoke everywhere, and grease, and all that sort of thing. Well, here's the dormitory; that's in yellow brick, with white ones, and red ones, and so on, intermixed at random. Magnificent!"

The tower he proposes to treat in an equally artistic manner. "I shall go in for building it quite rough on purpose, and have it washed over with something—that's a matter of detail, you know—to produce fungus, or moss, or lichens, or whatever you choose to call it; and I shall plant things in the crevices as we go up,—wall-flowers, and houseleek, and ferns, and couch-grass, and all that kind of thing, you know."

"But what is all that for?"

"What is it all for?" says Master Georgius, dropping his glass. "Why, what could it be for? To give authenticity to the tower, of course."

With all this so-called aestheticism and crude speculation upon the proper development of architecture as a fine art, I believe the reformers of the Queen Anne school have honestly attempted to improve and elevate the standard of our domestic buildings. At all events, they have brought into the ranks of the profession life and nerve, elements absolutely necessary to an honest development of art-methods. The sentiment for art pure and simple will gradually expand into a greater veneration for the scientific elements of their professional career, and the necessity of clearly demonstrating to the uneducated comprehension of mechanics the practicability of their designs will induce those habits of thought and investigation which, if honestly pursued, will elevate the standard of professional attainments. As a natural result, their designs when executed will give us edifices artistic in conception and detail, well planned, and built by the best-known methods of construction.

The Queen Anne revival, viewed apart from the incongruities which have been engrafted upon it, is a movement of great interest to the architectural fraternity. Although a worn-out and debased art was the foundation of this renaissance, the movement has given to us, in the works of its best masters, much that is beautiful and honest in theory and in real domestic comfort. It may be said to be the picturesque art of a hitherto unpicturesque time and people. Let us, then, cultivate the principles of Free-Classicism honestly and logically, striving to secure the best results from our studies and the works of our predecessors; but do not let us be carried away by our love for archaeology and attempt to make our Queen Anne houses of to-day simply a reflex of those of the early eighteenth century. If we attempt such purism we must fail signally as constructors and as artists. Architecture, to be a living art, must press forward and keep pace with the advance of civilization, combining and utilizing all the varied resources at its command, and aiming to meet all the public and domestic requirements of a complex and artificial state of civilization. To Americans, Queen Anne or early Georgian is the starting-point of architectural history. Let us, then, take it as our standard, the Alpha of our profession, and aim to emulate the old masters in their endeavors to do their best with the small means at their command. Let us so design our modern buildings as to obtain the best results from diversified industries, almost human machinery, and the refined taste and superior cultivation of our clients, and we shall be carrying out the Queen Anne revival more logically and with more common sense than by aiming simply to attain the quaint and picturesque aspects of earlier work, forgetting the necessities which compelled the builders of the eighteenth century to stop short in their aspirations for a better and truer art. Let us build strongly, honestly, and conveniently,—eclectically if we will,—and our modified and beautified Queen Anne will become the logical expression of American domestic architecture. It contains the germ of greatness and artistic truth: let us endeavor to secure that germ, and our dwellings, enriched and beautified, will realize the idea of Skelton, who tells us of the early masters who, centuries before the advent of Queen Anne or Free Classic architecture, were

Building royally Their mansions curiously, With turrets and with toures, With halls and with boures, Stretching to the starres; With glass windows and barres; Hanging about the walls, Clothes of golde and palles, Arras of rich arraye, Freshe as flowers in Maye.

GEORGE C. MASON, JR.



MORNING.

I woke and heard the thrushes sing at dawn,— A strangely blissful burst of melody, A chant of rare, exultant certainty, Fragrant, as springtime breaths, of wood and lawn. Night's eastern curtains still were closely drawn; No roseate flush predicted pomps to be, Or spoke of morning loveliness to me. But for those happy birds the night was gone! Darkling they sang, nor guessed what care consumes Man's questioning spirit; heedless of decay, They sang of joy and dew-embalmed blooms. My doubts grew still, doubts seemed so poor while they, Sweet worshippers of light, from leafy glooms Poured forth transporting prophecies of Day.

FLORENCE EARLE COATES.



NOS PENSIONS.

They have been many and of a widely various character. We tried them in England, in France, in Italy; we tried them likewise in Germany, Sweden, and Spain, but the result of that trying was, in these last-named countries, far more trying to our digestions and tempers than rich in such recollections as would add to the interest of this paper.

Our first European pension was, naturally, a London one. It was one of the innumerable host in the pale realms of Bloomsbury. Like others of its kind in that region, it prided itself upon its "connexion,"—or, less euphemistically, its custom,—and made a specialty of an Australian "connexion," as the next number upon the right made a specialty of Germans, the one upon the left of South Americans and Spaniards, the one opposite of Russians, and uncounted ones all over London of our countrymen. Although our house was largely frequented by Australians, it did by no means confine its privileges to them. Like every other London boarding-house, it was a perfect caravansary of foreigners of almost every nation and every shade of color. At one time, with a Danish landlord and an Irish landlady, we were Norwegians, Swedes, Russians, Spaniards, Germans, Italians, and East Indians. Also we were several Americans, as was proved one notable day. That day we heard the arrival of new-comers in the hall below. We saw not their hue, but we recognized their cry as that of our countrypeople. We are not madly enamoured of our countryman in foreign climes. There his least adorable qualities—his bumptiousness, his provincialism, his strident tones and "costume de Yank"—are always more strikingly conspicuous than the chivalry toward women and the self-respecting manliness we always recognize so emphatically in him when we return to our own land after a prolonged absence. Hence we panted not for the dinner-hour, that should show us the faces whose voices we recognized as to our own manner born. That hour came, however, as all hours come to those who know how to wait. We descended to the showy table, with its floral decorations of paper, muslin, and gay paint, the ladies in the evening dress of flowers, trains, and decolletee bodices which is the absurd custom of pretentious London pensions. We glanced along the table to note the new-comers. They were there, neatly and stylishly dressed in walking-costumes. They were three quiet gentlemanly and lady-like persons, but their faces were Medusa-like to almost every American who gazed upon them. The foreigners looked intensely amused at this collapse of the American contingent,—all save our Danish landlord, who stared with amazement. Next day our new-comers disappeared.

"How in the world did you congedier them?" somebody asked.

"I told them my Americans admire enough coppery Turks, South Americans, Japanese, and East Indians, but they turn to stone at sight of niggers," answered Mr. Nodskou.

The line was certainly not drawn at color, for our Parsees were dusky enough, goodness knows, and them our maidens found very captivating. Several of them spoke no English, and it was the fascinating pastime of our English, Australian, and American girls to teach them our common language. But the result was, alas, not a little confusing to our Parsees.

"Don't fancy you are learning English from those Americans," warned Britannia. "Their accent is horrible: they say the weather is 'fair' when they mean 'fine,' they call their luggage 'baggage,' and when they speak of their travelling-boxes talk of their 'trunks,' like elephants!"

"Don't be fooled by English English," advised Columbia: "the accent is like a mouthful of pudding, and when they mean to say the weather is bad they say it is 'nawsty;' they call their rubbers 'galoshes,' their depots 'stations,' and when they start on a journey they get their 'boxes' together, like sweet-biscuit-peddlers."

"Don't mind what either of them say," quoth Miss Melbourne. "Both are wrong. It is only we Australians, living between the two branches of the language, as it were, who select the best and gobble it."

"What must it to say when I have such a fear, such a fear, that I speak not?" asked one of the Parsees.

"Say you're dickey on your pins," laughed Australia.

"Say you feel all of a goneness," spoke up Columbia.

"No; that is Americanese," flouted Britannia: "say you're in a beastly funk!"

That our Parsees improved under such tuition was somewhat remarkable. The lingual advance of one of them was quite startling. Our young ladies had striven to teach him "good-by." One day, therefore, as the ladies were departing from the dining-room, leaving the gentlemen to their wine, our Parsee opened the door with grave, Oriental courtesy, and, bowing to the rustling covey, said solemnly, "By god, ladies, by god!"

During a political discussion in which English and Australians took chief parts, a Melbourne girl exclaimed excitedly, "Thank goodness, I'm not English!"

"Not Engleesh!" exclaimed her neighboring Parsee. "What are you but the small little brat of the mother-country?"

Not until we laughed did our grave Oriental remember that "brat" and "child" are not strictly synonymous.

Said one of our English girls afterward to me, with tact and taste pre-eminently British, "She glad she is not English! Really, I'd almost as soon be American as Australian."

Our Parsees were not our only peculiar people. We Americans found quite as much food for sly laughter in the queerness of our English habitues as they did in ours. Our English contingent was largely feminine, therefore, as goes without saying, very High-Church, very devote, and excessively Tory, worshipping the English aristocracy vastly more than that of celestial courts. Everybody knows the two diseases that virulently assail young Englishwomen,—"scarlet fever" and "black vomit,"—maladies provoked by association with red-coated officers and black-coated curates.

One of our fair Britons had the darker malady. She fasted regularly on Fridays and Tuesdays. We always recognized her jours maigres by the quantity of cakes and pastry we saw carried to her room just before dinner, to which dinner she came in nun-like gray silk, saintly coiffure, with ascetic pallor on cheeks wont to bloom with roses de Ninon, to dine, a la Sainte Catherine or Sainte Something else, on a few lentils or a lettuce-leaf.

One Sunday somebody asked this fair devotee to give us a certain popular but profane piano-arrangement. She was shocked beyond measure. A few moments' temptation, however, brought her to a compromise.

"I think there will be no harm if I play it slowly and make it as solemn as possible."

We smiled at the aesthetic piety of our Saint Catherine. But she did more than smile at our national practicality when, one evening, from the gay drawing-room we heard the clamor of a feminine arrival below:

"I won't see any rooms till I know your price. I won't stir a peg till I know what's to pay. I've come from Chicago, where folks know what's what, and I'm going to do Yoorup on the cheap!"

Saint Catherine worshipped her country's aristocracy. One day Jonathan happened to be putting on his coat in the hall, when somebody knocked at the front door. Forgetting that the act, so natural to an American, is ungentlemanly and menial in England, he opened the door himself. A couple of young swells inquired for Saint Catherine.

"I just saw her go out," answered Jonathan.

"Tell her that the brothers of Lord Verisopht called," said the spokesman.

"I'll tell her," spoke Jonathan; "but, good heavens, young man, don't lords' brothers have any names of their own in this country?"

Another day came a gorgeous individual with a bouquet to the door.

"What skion of the British nobility is that?" asked Jonathan.

"That is Lord Blank's footman," replied Saint Catherine.

"My! Well, whose footman is that?" continued her interlocutor, pointing to a less gorgeous person holding the reins.

"That is Lord Blank," answered Saint Catherine loftily.

"Sakes alive! Does that goose of a lord think he will stand any chance with the girls when he takes such a howling swell as that around with him?" asked simple Jonathan.

To this question Saint Catherine deigned no reply, having, perhaps, remarked the wicked twinkle of Jonathan's eye.

One of our pensionnaires objected very much to the American language. "It is principally slang," she said. This lady, no longer young, had been three times upon the eve of marriage, had had three bridal dresses, had countermanded three wedding-feasts. She was heiress at that time to the fifty thousand pounds she has since inherited, and the persistent failure of her matrimonial endeavors surprised us all.

"It is because Monsieur mon Pere is perfectly addled on the matter of settlements, and rowed with every one of my fiances," she explained.

She said one day, "The gov'nor has done me out of a guinea of my allowance this week. He's a first-class Do!"

Another time, "The mater and I prefer to live in our own house, but the gov'nor won't hear to it. He prefers 'diggin's' where he can always have his whist."

Some time after our sojourn in Bloomsbury "diggin's" we found ourselves in a Continental pension, the very reverse of this in every respect. It was a Parisian pension bourgeoise, but one entirely away from every haunt of foreigners as well as from foreign influences,—a pension as French as French could be, where we were not merely the only foreigners present, but the only ones who had ever penetrated there.

It was a large white house, standing in its own grounds, not far from the Bois de Vincennes, pre-eminently a pension bourgeoise, and without pretensions higher than the widows of shopkeepers and the relicts of small government employees that formed its support. Not counting ourselves, there were twenty Relicts and one Maiden, all with handsome incomes and diamonds, but with the habit of running far and wide upon the open boulevard in caps, loose sacques, and list slippers, and of boasting of the cheap bargains they made in stockings and gowns. Their toilets were always tout ce qu'il y a de plus bourgeois, their conversation ran upon public scandals, private gossip, and fluctuations of trade (almost all of them had kept shop with their departed consorts), their reading was Paul de Kock's novels and the feuilletons of "Le Petit Journal." The youngest widow was fifty, the Maiden ninety-and-nine. The latter was daughter of a man who had been concierge of the Tuileries during the reign of Charles X. She was dusky and shrivelled as any daughter of the Pharaohs, but her faculties were marvellously preserved and her memory rich with interesting personal gossip of a former period. We Americans should have delighted to draw upon that memory, but one thing hindered us: that was the insatiable, indomitable, unparalleled coquetry of our ancient Maiden. She would never talk with any woman when any man was in the room. She descended to the stuffy little salon only in the evening, when the Relicts were gathered to their gambling for sous and the atmosphere was an imitation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. She descended en grande tenue, the grandest ever seen there, frizzled, jewelled, and muffled to the throat in fleecy clouds of white wool. She came all quirks and quivers, all flutters and smiles, for there she met our only Monsieur,—Monsieur Boulanger, our landlord. She invariably took her seat beside him, and devoted quirks and quivers exclusively to him, tapping him with her fan, calling him "Mechant! mechant!" "farceur," or "quel diable d'homme!" twittering and carolling in her old broken voice, like a senile canary dreaming of its far-off youth. M. Boulanger was of peasant origin and appearance, gray-bearded and gray-haired, and clumping always in sabots over the stone floors, except in the salon in the evening. But her eyes were only for him; and the only occasion on which any of her own uninteresting sex had her attention was when Madame Boulanger pouted and pretended to be jealous, or some Relict showed pique that our only Monsieur was monopolized by our only Maiden. Then she smiled archly, cooed sweetly, and arched her ancient neck with visible triumph.

Before we left the pension bourgeoise our front door was hung with heavy black curtains, and our Maiden passed forth into the broad day for the first time in ten years. She went out unsmiling, uncooing, without flutter or quirk, and no date upon her pine coffin, for with her last breath she had forbidden it.

"Nobody need know that I have lived more than fifty years," she murmured; "and don't let Monsieur Boulanger look at me when I am dead."

One of our widows—Madame Notte—was almost stone-deaf. She was a dwarfish creature, passionately fond of cards, waxing into terrible tempers over them, and with only one interest in life,—worshipful love of her only son, a not too beautiful citoyen of fifty. This son fell ill and died. Poor Madame Notte knew of his illness, but not of its danger and final end. It was thought best to keep from her the knowledge that she was childless, lest the shock should be too great for her frail strength. She was told he had gone to Italy for his health; and when his widow and daughters came twice each week to visit her, they left their weeds at home, came in a close carriage in their gayest attire, and laughed and talked to her blithely with heavy hearts. All about the poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,—"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that winter; and from our hearts we prayed that all was well with them in that better country where it is always summer.

One of our Relicts prided herself upon her English, and criticised ours. "They speak English fairly well: I can understand them," I once heard her say of us to a group of Relicts in the garden; "but of course they speak only a patois: they are Americans."

"Why say you always to your infant, 'Hurry, my darling'?" she asked one day. "The pure Englishes says always, ''Urry, me darlink.'" Madame had acquired her English from her defunct lord, a commercial traveller from Lancashire.

One day, glancing at an envelope I had just addressed, she remarked, "Eh bien! you Americans are very like English, after all. In England the last name of almost every monsieur is 'Esq.'!"

Another day she sweetly remarked, "This knife has very bad bladders."

As knives in our country are not generally endowed with that physical possession, I could only stare my astonishment.

"Eh, I see! It is an English word, and you do not understand it. It means lame."

By which I discovered that had she spoken our transatlantic patois she would have said "blades."

Every one of our Relicts had her private sitting-room attached to her bed-room, the house having been built expressly to suit the demands of bourgeois widows with fortunes. Thus our salon was of very little account until after dinner, when our widows, instead of returning to their own rooms, the garden, or the boulevard, where they spent the day, herded together around card-tables almost as closely as sheep in a pen. The salon was not intended for daytime use; in the bitterest weather it had no fire until evening, and it had but a single window, which looked out upon the pavement of a well-like court arched over, three stories above, by a handkerchief bit of sky. Very little light or air ever entered the box-like place; during the day its atmosphere was stale and heavy, at night almost fetid. Whenever we ventured to pass an hour there our struggle was always against fate. Slyly we would leave the one door an inch ajar, or surreptitiously unclose the window a fraction as much. Scarcely, however, had we begun to congratulate ourselves upon success when half a score of antique roses flaunted and flared, and the death-knell of sly hopes sounded with echoed and re-echoed cry: "Mon Dieu! I smell air!" "Mon Dieu! Smell you not air?" "Mon Dieu! Smell we not air?" "Mon Dieu! Smells she not air?" "Mon Dieu! Smell they not air?"

Almost all our veuves had children and grandchildren in Paris, and we were continually surprised to see the mundane elegance of these younger branches of our withered old trees. It showed the usual history, however, of bourgeois parents who had worked steadily, lived humbly and economically, to gather dots for their daughters and open careers for their sons, to see them thus rise to positions in life far above their parents. Every day some of these younger branches came to our house in handsome carriages and toilets; and indeed on some days the number of elegant visitors who rang at our door gave the impression of a gay reception a la mode rather than of the ordinary visitors of a pension bourgeoise at Saint-Maude.

One of our Relicts was decidedly less bourgeoise and more paysanne than any of the rest. She was round as a ball, seventy years of age, and dressed always in short gray petticoats, black short-gown, and close white cap. Madame Boulanger kept close watch upon her, and tried to confine her to the sunny, high-walled garden set with a number of round little iron tables, where our Relicts took their after-dejeuner cafe on sunny days. But Madame Boulanger was not Argus-eyed, and thus we often saw Madame Leroy escape through the front door and roll like a huge balloon along the boulevard, bent on what she called "collecting her rents." The way she did it was to enter every open door and accost every grown person she saw with the stern reproach that he was behind-hand with his rent, and if he did not pay up by to-morrow she would send the huissier to sell him out. The poor creature was so well known in the neighborhood that she never received rough treatment, and was generally so thoroughly tired out by her rent-collecting as to be quite ready to return without resistance whenever one of our servants sought her. When she did not escape, and mingled with the conglomerate widowhood of the garden (she was never permitted in the salon, and went to bed with the chickens), her time was spent, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, going from Relict to Relict, telling always the same story,—always the same, and always a true one:

"Are you in trade? I am. My husband and I came to Paris from Normandy fifty years ago, on foot, with one hundred francs. We kept a green-grocery on Rue des Saints-Peres. When my husband died he left me one hundred thousand francs. I go to collect my rents: will you go? Are you in trade? I am. My husband and I came to Paris on foot," etc., etc., etc.

One of the most elegant of all our visitors was to this poor old Madame Leroy. She always came in an elegant landau, with liveried coachman and footman. Her toilets were of incomparable luxury, but likewise of restrained and cultured taste, being usually of black velvet, duchess-like laces, and queenly furs. She always went directly to this old peasant-woman's handsomely-furnished rooms, and we never saw her except as she descended from her carriage before the windows at which we sat. She was a tall, finely-formed, aristocratic-looking brunette of thirty-five or forty, artistically gotten up as to complexion and hair, and always smiling affectionately at the tea-kettle old figure waiting at the door to greet her. This aristocratic lady was known in the house as Madame la Princesse, and was the daughter of our ancient paysanne and green-grocer, whom a Slav noble had taken from a cafe chantant in Constantinople to endow with his name and fortune.

Another of our veuves filled her private salon with cats. There were seven of them, and the odor of her premises was ancient and cat-like. Three of these cats were sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything, and had lived with their mistress in these very rooms years before, when booming shells sped hot over the house, and fell sometimes close beside it, during the siege of Paris.

"How did you manage to feed them?" we asked.

"I bought slices of cat in the market and stewed them in wine," answered Madame Pognon. "Wine and rice were the only things we were not stinted in. Thus I could always make a ragout for Pierre, Jean, and Jacques, and they throve on it. But I had to keep them shut up, or they would have made ragouts instead of eaten them."

A characteristic of our Relicthood en bloc was its idleness. I never saw one of them with a piece of knitting or any other work in her hands during all the weeks we were there. In fine weather they loitered and basked in the garden, gossiping or amusing themselves with novelettes cut from the penny papers and passed from one to the other in turn. The front door stood almost always open, and the suburban neighborhood about it was during pleasant days largely flecked by the grave gowns and white caps belonging to our pension. Nearly all were Bonapartists (for was not trade good during the Empire?) and found the present times sadly out of joint. Nearly all had stood behind counters or at cashiers' desks, and had thus never learned more strictly feminine employments, and now, retired upon their rentes, they found time heavy upon their hands. None were conspicuously devote: they had never been so in their younger days, and they were not of natures to be spiritualized by long familiarity with life. Death could not be far off from most of them, but they never spoke of it, never seemed to think of it; and, although life was dull, they clung to it as by monotonous habit that is but knows not why.

* * * * *

Still another of our well-remembered pensions was on the bright Vesuvian Bay. The flaming mountain overlooked us, Naples floated beyond us like a dream-city, before us the Mediterranean shimmered and shone like a sultana's satin tunic. We could drop a stone from our windows into the sea; we ran dripping from our sea-baths up long stairs, across tiled balconies, into our vast rooms; all day and all night the swish and lisp of the soft tides mingled with our voices and dreams.

As somebody said of us that summer, we were a "cosmopolitan mess," a hotch-potch of nationalities, such as is always found in so general a rendezvous as Italy. We were rather less of a hotch-potch, however, than in London, but somehow it seemed to us that our peculiarities were more salient than they could ever appear in proper and conventional Bloomsbury. We were largely German, as the travelling population of Italy is. In Bloomsbury our medium of expression was the English language, and English was the language at table, no matter how foreign our company. But in this Italian pensione, where the faces were continually changing, the languages changed as often. One day only English was the rule, and those who could not unite with the majority remained mute. Another day, with a tremendous incursion of Teutons, who always seem to travel in hordes, only German gutturals held the table, and we who had no facility with them muttered meek French or sullen English to our neighbors. The next day French would be the rule, and Teuton must mumble in it and Anglo-Saxon stammer or hold its peace. Curiously enough, although we were in Italy, Italian was rarely, almost never, spoken among us, our only use of it being in orders to the servants. Our landlady was English, with an Italian husband, but they both held only upper menial places in the establishment, and never dreamed of sitting at table with us or of meeting us upon any terms of equality. This want of familiarity with Italian proves how little mere travellers and haunters of pensioni ever know of the middle-class inhabitants of the country. The Italians themselves stir from home very seldom; they almost never admit foreigners into their own houses, and when forced abroad seek cheap Italian inns rather than the innumerable boarding-houses infested by the outer barbarian. Italian peasant life is open to all foreigners, but not that of the middle classes.

Our landlord had a daughter whose cheek was pale and whose garments hung loosely upon her. When first we remarked this and her heavy eye, everybody laughed.

"The usual story,—loves and rides away," was remarked in various languages.

It was heartless to laugh, but we could not help it. For wan and drooping landlords' daughters had become so familiar to us in Italian pensioni that we needed only to glance at the set of each one's gown and the tint of her cheek to know if HE were still present and wooing or had faithlessly ridden away. The race, however, was not always to the rider.

One evening under our window, when the air swooned with languid scent of lemon- and orange-blossoms, we heard a sobbing and a sighing that reminded us of the Mock Turtle in "Alice in Wonderland." Glancing out, by the soft light of the summer moon, enhanced by the shimmering water, we saw two persons who seemed to be weeping in each other's arms under a shuddering ilex. The stouter one—he was not the taller—we recognized as a young Teuton for whose sake we had seen a gown very loose and a cheek very wan afar off among the Alban Hills only a month before.

"I love you, Tita, I love you. I have thought I loved a dozen times before, but I was mistaken. I never loved any girl before," he boohooed.

"Dio mio!" laughed the girl. "All the Tedeschi say that who come here. I wonder they are not tired of the old tune. I—I am fiance to a bel Espagnol who rode away a month ago, and who ought to have been back before now."

We found our Teuton fellow-pensionnaires to have tastes more unnatural than for landlords' daughters. One of them we had remarked for his extreme beauty, not entirely of feature and rich olive hue, but of pathetic, dreamy expression,—as we said, like an ideal St. John. At first we never spoke of him except as "St. John." We gradually ceased to call him so, however, when we had seen him several times at table, and we grew finally so coarsely irreverent as to call him "Mange-tout."

Our meat was brought from distant Naples, making the journey without ice, under a broiling Italian sun. Often it came to table so shorn of its pristine freshness that not the hungriest of us could condone its odor. One sultry night everybody's plate went away untouched, save two or three. Flesh and fowl were "high,"—yea, "twice high," as the British gourmet prefers his game. St. John's plate was not sent away. That ideal being was served three times, after which he rose and helped himself from the side-table, remarking half apologetically as he did so, "The cook has really surpassed himself to-day!"

"Ja! ja!" echoed our Teutons.

We saw our St. John next morning sucking raw eggs before his coffee.

"Because the nourriture is poor. I do it to strengthen me," he explained.

"When I am well I eat all I can hold," he confidentially imparted to the table-d'hote. "When I am ill I eat more than I do when I am well."

One of our pensionnaires was a swarthy Brazilian, living upon a colossal and mysteriously-begotten fortune and spending what remained to him of life upon the Mediterranean shores. He knew every pensione of the whole wide region, and in strident, barbaric tones—continually reminding us of the savage aboriginal blood betrayed by narrow eyes and high cheek-bones—flooded our table-d'hote with the gossip of pensioni at Capri, Castellamare, Pompeii, Sorrento, and Salerno,—the giddiness of all the widows, the cunning of the young girls, the wickedness of the wives, and the barefaced or clever intriguing of husband-hunting mammas. All that year, as we quietly slipped from one Mediterranean pensione to another, we met and recognized the heroes and heroines of our Brazilian's chroniques scandaleuses, and we breathed many a thanksgiving that we were slipping east while he slipped west and thus were not known of name and evil fame in advance of our coming.

Our Brazilian was a devout Catholic, which led to his giving great offence at our table. Nobody could endure to pass him anything or to take anything from him, and the hideous bird-of-prey-like rattling of his right hand at any service turned many a delicate appetite away and made our Brazilian of almost Gorgon-like effect upon all new-comers. The finger-nails of his right hand were vowed to the Virgin: for two years they had been uncut, and now, like fiendish claws, extended two inches beyond the withered and dusky fingers.

"Why am I not liked by ces belles dames?" he asked one day. "They never ask me to their excursions; they seem to shrink from taking my hand."

"Because of your talons," somebody ventured to explain.

"Oh, no! the Blessed Virgin would never allow that," he asserted confidently.

Before the end of the summer, however, he seemed to lose confidence in the Virgin's tampering with natural law for his sake. One day we saw that the talons were sacrificed, and were told that the Mother of God had announced to our Brazilian in a dream that she would accept a vow never to cut his hair in place of the devoted nails.

A few days later our divoto came upon the loggia, where sat a bevy of ladies of many nations, in a screeching aboriginal rage.

"I sacrificed my vow to you belles dames, although I refused it to Madame la Duchesse de B——," he screamed, "and yet you avoid me. Am I not an homme fait" (certainly our sixty-year-old Brazilian had never read "Pendennis"), "and better than any of these boys you admire? Do you imagine the Blessed Virgin will not pay you off for this? Do you think she will go back on a man like me,—of whom Victor Emanuel himself was jealous when I rode on the Pincian with Madame la Princesse della Gr——?"

* * * * *

We thus found many peculiar people in the varied experiences of nos pensions. We found often learning and often culture, but more vulgarity than we did refinement, more splendor than delicacy of habit, more blatant ignorance than culture, more sans gene than dignity of manners and character. It is always thus in any mere "cosmopolitan mess," any "hotch-potch of nationalities." For the eccentric and obnoxious types are always and everywhere those most largely en evidence, while the gentle and refined nestles closest to the cool, still, mossy ground, leaving sunny flaunting to wider blooms and stronger perfumes.



A RANDOM SHOT.

An existence, if even a dull one, in a large and busy city full of life, when contrasted in the mind of a romantic young lady of eighteen summers with an enforced captivity in an isolated cottage by the sea-shore, grows to possess charms and an excitement which, until so considered, may have remained totally unappreciated.

Could anything be more depressing than the knowledge that this latter condition must be endured with no other companion than a hypochondriacal papa, whose ailings so monopolized his time and attention that a daughter's happiness sunk into insignificance? Little wonder that she should melt into tears at so undesirable a prospect, that she should pity herself and her luckless fate, and that, when fully realizing the depths of loneliness into which she was to be precipitated for five long, weary months, she should jump at the dismal conclusion that her doll was stuffed with the most inferior variety of saw-dust and wish with lachrymose sincerity that she were dead and buried and out of this world of sorrow. Papa might then wish that he had been more considerate. Perhaps; but at that particular moment he was contemplatively assimilating his fish, and that process admitted of no consideration whatever beyond that of the fish itself. So when his daughter raised her tearful eyes to his saffron countenance across the board she found no signs in it of the sympathy she felt so much need of. What could she expect, anyway? Dr. Nevercure had been consulted, and this time felt that something desperate must be done. His patient had persistently refused to pronounce himself in any degree benefited by the long course of physic which he had prescribed, and in fact had become an elephant upon his professional hands; and thus, as a last resort, he had recommended an entire change of air and perfect quiet, with a periodical harmless dose for the sake of appearances. Nevercure must be obeyed; the patient himself, since it seemed to be his delight to fancy himself an invalid, must naturally be supposed to find a pleasure in the remedies for his sufferings, and therefore evinced no regret whatever at the leaden prospects, but, on the contrary, made a most exasperating exhibition of saintly resignation, very galling to the young lady, who considered herself the only one really injured.

"And when must we go?" she asked, continuing a series of questions which her sudden burst of tears had interrupted.

"Friday morning," replied Mr. Moreley curtly.

"Friday morning! And this is Tuesday night! Why, papa, I—"

"Mabel, I said Friday morning. My arrangements are made, and I will not hear another word about it."

And he didn't. Mabel left the table as soon as decorum would permit, and betook herself up-stairs to her own sanctum to nurse her grief in solitude.

She sat long by the open window, pondering over her hapless lot, her chin upon her hand, her dark eyes far away in thought,—sad thought, judging from their expression,—the wind playing in her light, wavy hair, her full red lips parted slightly, showing the interest which her theme awakened, and the fresh bloom upon her cheeks now going, now coming, following in some subtile way the quick movements of her mind. An hour slid by, and then she started from her revery with a sudden thought. The sadness in her eyes gave way to mirth and a twinkle of fun; the color came faster, the lips broke into a most roguish smile.

"I'll do it!" she whispered. "I will!" she added, with convincing emphasis and a countenance brimming over with mischief.

It was a foolish project,—a most insane and inexcusable one. It had, however, the spice of romance, and it might afford her some amusement and a little excitement during the coming months of misery. It was suggested by some demon of mischief, and was all the more attractive coming from such a source. It came about naturally enough, too. On the morning of that same day her particular intimate, Anna Desbrough, and she had fallen upon the college catalogue which Anna's brother Tom had sent for to guide him in his preparatory studies. The names of the students had proved interesting reading-matter, and the two girls had speculated as to the probable appearance of this one and that, and had even gone so far as to select the one whom they thought they would prefer among those mentioned. They had indulged in a vast deal of imaginative nonsense, and had finally thrown the book aside and returned to more rational topics; but the recollection of the morning's pastime had not quite faded from Mabel's mind. The name was still fresh in her memory,—Mortimer Granville Dudley: how grand! how musical!

"I will!" she had exclaimed, with determination; and, being a young lady of her word, she hastily collected pen, ink, and paper to carry out her threat.

"MY DEAR MR. DUDLEY," she wrote (she had hesitated long between "Mr. Dudley" and plain "Mort," with the result shown), "how long ago it seems since those days when we were playmates together! I hardly think it probable, though, that you can have forgotten me. My position would certainly be a very awkward one if you had. But, remembering as I do so well those happy times, and particularly your juvenile vows of constancy at the moment of our parting, I cannot believe that I am mistaken in trusting in their sincerity and truth.

"By a mere accident I heard the other day of your whereabouts, and, as I for one still feel the same interest in my playmate that I used to, I resolved, I think I may say courageously, to discover whether he still gave promise of fulfilling all the hopes I then entertained for him.

"I wonder if some of our early experiences are still as fresh in your mind as they are in mine! Do you remember that day you made me stand guard while you 'blew' old Jones's eggs in retaliation for his having turned informer against you? I think it was the time he told about your having promoted a fight between two dogs. And do you remember the day on the skating-pond when you broke through the ice and frightened me into fits by disappearing three times below the surface, while all the time you were standing, as you afterward confessed, on solid bottom? I thought then I should never forgive you for causing me in that unguarded moment to betray my feelings. And then the telegraph scheme by which we communicated that time I had the measles. It all seems to have occurred in some other world, looking back at it now; and yet what happy times those were! I believe I could go on forever with these reminiscences; but perhaps they are not as sweet to you as they are to me; perhaps I am only boring you with them. It would be a great disappointment to me, though, to know that you never looked back with a sigh to those days and never gave a thought to your once so devoted playmate.

"I am going to a place called Stillton this summer. I dare say you never heard of it: it is in Maine; and I must confess I anticipate a very stupid time there. Perhaps I shall have nothing else to do but reflect upon the days of my early youth. Am I quite forgotten?

"Your playmate of old,

"JANE JENNINGS.

"BOSTON, June 10, 188-."

The nom de plume was borrowed from Mabel's faithful servant,—nurse in earlier days, a description of maid now,—and was a safe one, as old Jane proper was never known to receive letters, and, moreover, could not have deciphered her own name on the envelope had one arrived for her.

The conflict on the following morning as to whether it should be sent or destroyed, the tremble of the little hand that finally dropped it irrevocably into the iron post-box, the vain reproaches and unanswered longings for its return, the subsequent prayers that it might by some providential interference be intercepted or miscarry, all followed in due course, as well as later a revulsion of feeling and an anxious watching for the mails, hope deferred, and sickness of heart.

Friday came. The journey, miserable as was its object, was accomplished, and Stillton, in all its tomb-like silence and drowsy do-nothingness, with its few glaring white houses and its one dusty road, offering no apology or explanation whatever for its purposeless existence, at last was reached, and Farmer Galusha Krinklebottom, in accordance with Dr. Nevercure's arrangements, met the jaded travellers at the station in his rickety shay, prepared to take them over to the cottage.

"'Tain't more'n three mile," he said consolingly. "The roads ain't none too good this season, an' Kittie—that's her" (pointing to his mare)—"don't feel over-skittish; she's nigh onter fourteen year, an' right smart, too, fur her age, but sorter broken-winded latterly; but I guess we'll make it afore dark.—Go 'long, Kittie!"

The ancient mare started off. Her fore-legs were stiff and jointless, her hip-bones painfully prominent, her ribs sadly bare, and her nose hung dejectedly toward the ground; but she still possessed some mechanical power of locomotion, and the "shay" began to squeak and rattle in her wake. Galusha was proud of his native hamlet. "That there's our meetin'-house," he said, but its whitewash and green blinds did not seem to excite the travellers' admiration. "An' that longish house yonder's Pincus's."

"Pincus's?" asked Mabel, with a yawn.

"Pincus Sass's, mum. 'Tis the hotel, mum. That's him in the door. Hulloa, Pincus!" he shouted, shooting a line of tobacco-juice over the dash-board.

"Haow, Galusha!" came in nasal accents from the door-way. "Who ye got in the phayton?"

"The folks as has took the cottage yonder!" called back Galusha.

"Humph! I'll be dummed!" was Pincus's audible comment as the shay rattled on.

"Yonder's the store," presently added Galusha, pointing with his two feet of whip-stock to a place placarded with patent-medicine advertisements, and apparently the rendezvous for all the tobacco-chewers of the neighborhood.

"And the post-office?" asked Mabel timidly.

"In the store, mum. Barton Bump's our pos'master. Some'at of a man, Barton is. He was 'p'inted by the Pres'dent 'imself. Barton fit in the war, yer see, an' I 'spect Gen'ral Grant took a powerful shine to him. He made him pos'master fust thing."

The greatness of Barton Bump did not seem to impress the party as much as Galusha anticipated. "Git 'long, Kittie!" he said, retiring into himself and seeking solace in a fresh mouthful of tobacco. He couldn't contain himself long, though. He soon exclaimed, "So you's the folks as has took the cottage yonder. Well, I want t' know!" He paused again to chew awhile, and then continued, "Yer ain't bin much hereabouts, I reckon?" Another reflective cud. "Well, 'tain't so durned 'citin' here, maybe, as 't might be up to Bosting, but we 'casion'lly gets up reels an' sich for the young folks an' 'joys erselves.—Go 'long, Kittie!—You heard tell, I reckon, on Farmer Manton, lives down 'longside this here cottage of yourn. No? Well, I want t' know. He's 'sider'ble of a man in these parts, Manton is. His gals is great on's on flare-ups, an' powerful smart gals they be, too.—Go 'long, Kittie Krinklebottom!—But durn me if he ain't got the cussedest boy as ever stepped! He don't do nothin' but mope about an' ac' silly. He didn't never do no chores about the yard nor nothin', an' one fine day he come to Manton an' says, 'Dad,' says he, 'I want to go to college,' says he. Well, the old man was that cumflusticated an' took aback that says he, 'John,' says he, 'yer ain't no durned use on the farm,' says he, 'an', if yer got the notion, go, an' God bless yer!' An' John went,—that's nigh onter four year ago,—an' he ain't got ter be perfessor nor nothin' yet. I guess as he's cracked; an' one day says I, kinder kind-like, 'Farmer Manton,' says I, 'John's not right,' says I. 'Galusha,' says he, kinder hot, 'you mind yer own business,' says he. 'I ain't father to no idjots.' An' I ain't said no more sence."

Galusha laughed long and heartily over this reminiscence, while Kittie jogged on along the road to the sea. Presently they turned a sharp bend in the road; a pretty little Queen-Anne cottage came in sight, backing upon a thick wood and overlooking the ocean, and Galusha, reining in the mare, just as though she would not have come to a halt unassisted, exclaimed, "Here yer be!"

It required, of course, three or four days for Mabel to become accustomed to her new surroundings. There was the prettily-furnished house to make acquaintance with, while she wondered all the time what ever induced its owner to plant it so utterly out of the world; there was the little forest of pines to explore, and its most romantic nooks to be discovered; and there was the sea, a thing of never-failing beauty, to gaze upon from the rocky cliffs, as it dashed itself in fine spray against their base, or from the broad crescent beach beyond, as it rolled its crested billows up the sandy slope. Yes, all these things were very pleasant,—far more delightful than she had anticipated. She thought during those first few days that she would like to live on there forever, until the novelty wore off and her father's ailings crushed out the new life which the change had given birth to and kept him locked in his own den with his miseries; and even then nature began to pall as a constant and sole companion, and her mind turned with ever-increasing anxiety to the one event which could possibly break this spell of monotony. Had her letter in fact miscarried? or could it be that the favored recipient had treated it with cold contempt, ruthlessly destroyed it or cast it into the wastepaper-basket? Many were the painful, blush-provoking thoughts that each terrible possibility suggested. She had long since decided that she had been a little fool, and that of course Seniors in college had better things to do than to answer silly girls' more silly letters, when one day on her regular visit to Barton Bump's store she overheard the following:

"It's bin a-kickin' round this here store three days, an' I ain't goin' ter be bothered no longer. Hiram, jes' you stick the dratted thing in one o' them 'ficial en-vellups, an' 'dress it to Wash'ton, D.C."

"Ain't ye goin' to advertise it, dad?"

"'Tain't no good advertisin' it, Hiram. There ain't nobody as calls herself Jennings in the hull county, an' I know it."

But Mabel interrupted him. "Miss Jane Jennings, is it? Why, that letter is for me!" she exclaimed eagerly.

"Fur you, miss?" asked Barton, glancing at her suspiciously over his spectacles. "Ain't your name Moreley?"

"Yes," she answered, in some embarrassment, "but—but Jane Jennings is our servant, you know. Give me the letter. I will take it to her."

Barton hesitated. He hadn't had any communication with the government for some time, and liked to remind them in the capital now and then of his existence. "Well," he said finally, and with reluctance, "ef you're sartin', why, here ye be." And Mabel took it, and bore it away with a palpitating heart, quite forgetting to purchase the supplies which the cook had commissioned her to bring home for dinner.

In the most secluded spot in the dark pine wood she broke the seal and read as follows:

"MY LONG-LOST JENNIE,—Remember my charming little playmate? Remember the one object that makes my childhood a bright picture to look back upon? Of course I do, with all the pleasure in the recollection that her presence used to inspire in those happy days. Remember the diabolical exploit with Jones's eggs? Distinctly. And the telegraph system? I believe I could go through the alphabet now. And I remember, too, that day on the skating-pond, with contrition, however, and a prayer that my heartlessness may be forgiven. How can I ever have been unkind to my faithful Jennie? Nor have I forgotten—how could I?—our tender parting. You said that you could never forget me, and now your letter proves that you were sincere; and I hope my answer may convince you that when I told you of my never-failing constancy I spoke the truth.

"It is a delightful surprise to me to have heard from you at last. The years that I have been thinking and dreaming of you and wishing for news of you are over, and now I have at last found the idol of my boyish admiration.

"But you must have changed as well as I in all this time. I should like very much to have a likeness of you as you are now, to compare with that which is indelibly stamped on my memory. Won't you send me one?

"It surprises me that in recalling those experiences of ours you should have omitted the one that is most vivid and most delightful to me. Can it be that you have forgotten the little house we built under the old chestnut-tree, where you prepared the supper on your best doll's china for the weary hunter who used to return laden with green apples, currants, strawberries, and other wild beasts, the spoils of his chase? How generous and self-sacrificing you used to be with the slender provisions, and anxious lest the foot-sore huntsman should not get enough to sustain his toilsome existence! What an example you were of domesticity! and I cannot believe that you are anything else to-day but the same good pattern for womanhood.

"Do let me hear from you soon again. Although I have existed so long in ignorance even as to whether you were still alive, the knowledge now that you are so, and that you have still a corner in your memory, if not in your heart, for me, has revived all my old feelings and keeps me in constant hope of further news of you.

"As ever, your affectionate playmate,

"MORT."

Notwithstanding all the hopes and fears of the past few days, there was the reply, after all, and Mabel, after reading it through three times, concluded that "Mort" must be "splendid," and that this sort of sport was far ahead of anything she had yet attempted. It combined, so she argued, all the spice of a heavy flirtation with the advantage of a strict incognito, and, with judicious management, she thought that it might be carried on in perfect safety for some time to come.

Mr. Moreley was worse than usual that evening; dinner, without the articles which Mabel should have brought from the village, was not a success, and such a catastrophe always aggravated his disease. Having learned who was to blame for it, it was many days before he could forgive or forget his daughter's inhuman treatment of her much-suffering papa, so that she was left even more than usual to her own devices, and spent a deal of her time either with novels or her writing-case in the romantic corners of the pine wood or on the rocks and along the beach by the sea.

Dudley's letter had been answered one afternoon, when the late sun was throwing long shadows and touching the distant sails upon the ocean with a shade of delicate pink, when a gentle breeze was only rippling the surface of the water and the waves were only murmuring soft music upon the sand; and if but half of the tender emotion which these surroundings gave birth to were transferred to her paper, Dudley, if his heart were at all as he had represented it, must have found in her reply an ample reward for his strange constancy. Circumstances, at any rate, went to show that it had been very welcome and pleasing to its recipient, for it was scarcely three days later that a second missive for Miss Jane Jennings reached the Stillton office and was duly claimed by Mabel before any possible accident could throw it into other hands. She had perused it with marked pleasure; it had contained many fresh allusions to "childhood's happy hour," many additional and very original accounts of doings in their fancied youth, several frank compliments, and a reiterated and very urgent request for a photograph. She had allowed several days to pass in considering what notice to take of this somewhat impudent demand. At one time she almost concluded to let Mr. Dudley drop altogether. What right had he to call upon her for her likeness? At another she was quite as firmly resolved to send him one. The whispered vanity which told her that he would not be disappointed in it was not easily resisted. At last, however, a simple middle course—an easy way out of the difficulty—suggested itself, and, as it promised, too, to throw another puzzling veil of mystery over her identity, she seized it eagerly, and that very afternoon put it into execution. Seated on the rocks that overlooked the sea, gathering thoughts in long gazes toward the distant horizon, and allowing imagination to roam as freely as could her eyes over the unbounded ocean, she wrote her answer. After touching upon the episodes of their earlier days which his last letter had brought to light, and adding the details of a few more experiences which her fertile mind suggested, she turned to the subject of the photograph. "I wish it were better," she wrote. "It is a shockingly poor likeness, I know, but may serve as a reminder of your little playmate, if not as a perfect representation of her." She sealed the envelope, enclosing the picture, and, seeing Galusha Krinklebottom drive by just at the moment, hailed him, and sent photograph, letter, and all in his care to the mails.

It is strange how, even after bitter experience, many of us persist in putting the cart before the horse,—doing the deed before taking the proper consideration of its consequences. When the letter had gone, and not before, Mabel fully realized that she had done something positively wicked and unpardonable. Her terrible sin kept her awake all that night and preyed upon her mind for days afterward. "I hardly know the girl," she pleaded in self-excuse to her injured conscience. "What of that?" exclaimed the voice sternly. "I don't like her, anyhow," she added, almost in tears. "What of that?" persisted the voice angrily. Oh, well, it was done and could not be undone now. It was mean, perhaps, to send him another girl's picture, but, considering that the whole world acknowledged that Mabel Moreley was far the better-looking of the two, did not this sacrifice of vanity palliate the offence? It seemed, after all, a very remote possibility that any harm could come to the other girl through this freak of hers. She could not, of course, have sent her own picture, and this was the only one in her collection that had seemed at all passable: so, eventually, the iniquity of the proceeding faded before these convincing arguments, and she soon found herself much more interested in looking forward to the receipt of the likeness which he could not fail to send in return than with reproaches over a hasty piece of folly.

The reply arrived in due course, and with it the photograph of a handsome face, with fine, bold eyes, a prominent nose, an expressive mouth, and a moustache in the springtime of its existence. It was captivating, but, after her own deception, she was naturally in doubt as to who the true owner of that very attractive physiognomy might be. If indeed it were Dudley, her random shot had hit the mark. To her imagination he had always been handsome; whether he were so in reality had never before seemed at all a matter of importance; but now, with a picture before her from which a lasting impression might be derived, it became necessary either to accept it or reject it. Should this face, then, be hereafter regarded as that of her playmate in his maturer years? After careful scrutiny she decided that it should, and from that time, when it was not in her hands undergoing admiration, it lay in secure repose among the treasured notes, faded flowers, and sweet-smelling rose-leaves in her writing-case. Not many days later she felt impelled to acknowledge its receipt, and, taking her materials in this precious box to a shaded corner of the pine wood, spread them out before her and was soon deep in her pleasant task. She was necessarily obliged to draw heavily upon imagination in tracing the points in the photograph which she asserted recalled vividly his youthful countenance, and, when at last she had finished, lay back exhausted by the effort, and soon fell into a condition of dreaminess bordering closely on sleep. Suddenly, however, the sound of approaching footsteps aroused her, and before she had time to gather together all her sacred belongings, the figure of a tall man, in a slouch hat and with an unprepossessingly cadaverous cast of features, appeared from behind the rocks, which until then had hidden them from each other's view. He stopped short on discovering her, raised his hat in some confusion, muttered something in apology for his intrusion, and was just planning a hasty retreat, when she asked, with some nervousness, "Do you wish to see my father?"

"No," he answered, with equal embarrassment. "I—I was going down to the beach. I forgot for the moment that—that this place was occupied: this is a short cut for me. I hope you will excuse my trespassing. I live just back of here," he went on, in an explanatory way, as she made no reply. "My name is Manton."

"Oh!" Mabel exclaimed, remembering Galusha Krinklebottom's story of the young man who was "not right," and concluding that this must be he. "I am sure there can be no objection to your taking this way to the beach, Mr. Manton," she answered, smiling sweetly, in the hope of averting a possible outbreak of lunacy.

He thanked her with a grave, formal bow, and started to pass on, when his eye fell upon the recently-arrived photograph as it lay on a rock by her side. He stopped, and looked quickly from it to her face and then back at the picture.

Mabel's face grew scarlet. Could it be that he recognized it? Was her secret discovered? Or was this merely a madman's strange idiosyncrasy?

"We have a mutual friend, I think," he said, rather bluntly, though in a gentle tone.

"Indeed?" asked Mabel nervously.

"That must be Mort Dudley," he went on, half to himself, and still gazing at the photograph.

("Then it must be his own likeness!" inwardly exclaimed Mabel.)

"I beg your pardon if I am mistaken," Manton added apologetically; "the picture caught my eye and reminded me very strongly of a college classmate of mine."

"Then you know Mr. Dudley?" she asked, deeply interested, and forgetful now of the stranger's reputed mental unsoundness.

"Yes, indeed," he replied, looking at the photograph more closely. "This is his class-picture. I have one like it. It is an excellent likeness of him; don't you think so?"

Mabel said that she thought it was, and blushed again as she said it.

Manton concluded from this that there must be something thicker than mere friendship between Dudley and his new acquaintance, and an awkward silence ensued.

"Yes," continued Manton presently, "Dudley was the warmest friend I had at college. I hadn't many," he added, in a tone that struck Mabel as being somewhat sad. "I hadn't time to make many friends, or even acquaintances. The work was rather harder for me than for most of the men, I think; but Dudley, from the very first, helped me when he could, and I think was the only cheering influence I met with during the entire course. He was always so full of life and so jolly, and at the same time sympathetic, and never depressed and in the blues, as I frequently was. I never could understand why he was so good a friend to me, unless perhaps because there may be a force of attraction between two extremes."

"Yes; I should not fancy you at all like him," Mabel said, trying to impress him with her intimate knowledge of Dudley's nature.

"No, not at all. In the first place, he has been so differently brought up: he has travelled, seen a great deal of the world, and profited by this experience, and I don't believe has ever had to take a thought of dollars and cents: thus he is naturally liberal both in his ideas and with his money. I am not,—not because I don't wish to be, but because I cannot be. Secondly, he is another animal physically,—an athlete born; while I have never engaged in any sport, know nothing of such matters, nor could I learn them. And then there is such a vast difference mentally between us: his mind is as quick and nimble as his muscles, while mine is much like a muddy stream, I'm afraid,—opaque and sluggish. Yes, I have often wondered over his friendship for me."

"I think you are detracting from your own virtues in order to flatter his," said Mabel, smiling, but rejoicing inwardly over the happy selection she had made in the college catalogue.

Manton protested that he had said no more than the truth, and continued to sound the praises of his friend until the hour for Mabel's luncheon arrived, when he departed for his solitary stroll upon the beach, delighted, though by no means as much so as Mabel was, at having found a friend of Dudley's.

After this it happened, if not by actual design, at any rate with suspicious frequency, that Manton took the short cut to the beach and that Mabel read her books and wrote her letters in the pine wood. One day when they met thus, and after their acquaintance had grown to be some three weeks old, Manton found the young lady (whom he had never regarded in any other light than that of Dudley's betrothed) very abstracted and apparently little inclined to lend the customary willing ear to his tales of their mutual friend. This troubled him sorely. That there had been some lovers' quarrel he could not doubt, and it pained him to think that any cloud should have arisen to darken the brightness of his friend's existence.

"Have you heard from Mort to-day?" he asked suddenly, in his blunt fashion.

After a moment's hesitation, Mabel acknowledged that she had, but further than that she vouchsafed him no information, and he soon concluded to continue his journey to the beach, his presence seeming only to add to Miss Moreley's nervousness and evident irritation.

What was she to do? How could she save herself now? Why indeed had she done this foolish thing? She took the letter from her pocket to read it once more, hoping that some suggestion might spring from it, some possible means for her escape be brought to light.

"Miraculous as it may appear to you," he wrote, dating his letter from Newport, "I have met the image of my early playmate! It was at a garden-party, yesterday. At first it seemed impossible that two such faces could exist. I was on the point of rushing to her, clasping her in my arms, and hailing her with all the warmth that would only be natural upon discovering my long-lost Jennie, but some prudent voice suggested asking for an introduction first. I did so. To my astonishment, the name was not Jennings at all, but Bathersea, and her acknowledgement of my impressive bow and more expressive smile was as chilly as a winter morning. I took occasion to introduce my name into the conversation, fearing that she might have misunderstood it. No light of intelligence beamed from her lovely eyes. I referred to my college days (and I suspect she took me for a Freshman), I hinted at Stillton, I even suggested that we had met as babies; but she only said that her recollection did not extend to that early period, and left me—for what? it is humiliating, but I will acknowledge it—for another fellow. This at last convinced me that she could not be my Jennie. Her resemblance to the photograph, however, was perfect,—really startling. In justice I must add that she was lovely. It is the face that has captivated me, not the girl; she rather snubbed me,—but that face! I never saw half so much beauty in one face before."

It was bad enough that he should have actually met the girl whose picture she had been cowardly enough to send in place of her own, but what followed literally chilled the blood in her veins. He was coming! Coming to Stillton! Coming to find her! Was actually on the way at that moment to claim her acquaintance,—perhaps to show her letters and reveal all her deceit to that inexorable papa of hers should she disclaim all knowledge of him, or to make matters even more difficult to explain should she confess the truth of their relations. "Heavens!" she exclaimed, in fright. "What shall I do? what shall I do?" Her time for action was fast growing short. The afternoon was rapidly advancing. Ah, might not Manton be her saviour? But how explain to Manton her deceit toward him during all this time of their acquaintance? No, she could not tell him: he would not understand. Could she not boldly confront him, implore him to forgive and forget her thoughtless foolishness, beg him to spare her, to leave her before this terrible secret should reach her father's ears and bring everlasting woe and disgrace upon her? This seemed to call for even more courage than was required to face the awful alternative. Should she, then, confess all to the father whose ire she so greatly feared?—go to him now with tears of repentance and cast herself at his feet, praying for mercy and for protection? There was the cliff, with its terrifying height and its sharp, ugly crags: she would almost rather throw herself into the swashing, roaring waves at its base than tell the tale of her folly. Yet—oh, what was she to do? Quick! Time was flying on its swiftest wings. He might be there at any moment. Oh, would no one save her?

While she was still hoping and praying and despairing, no conclusion reached, no aiding hand outstretched for her deliverance, the day advanced toward its end; the sun sank lower and still lower upon the ridge of those long, darkly-wooded hills to the westward, shed its last red rays upon the ocean, reflected its dying brilliancy upon the fleecy clouds above, and soon left nothing but a fading twilight to show men their way about the world. To a man seeking unknown objects in a hitherto unexplored vicinity this condition of affairs is unpropitious; but Dudley, having tied his hired steed to a neighboring fence, concluded nevertheless not to be daunted, and proceeded on foot in search of the "new-fangled, sorter yaller-and-red, p'inted-roofed house," where the village postmaster had told him the lady whom he sought resided. It was not difficult to find: it was the only thing for miles around that laid any claims to "new-fangledness," and he recognized it at a glance. From behind the hedge that bordered the place he scrutinized each window. No smiling face appeared to welcome him. He scanned the lawn, the shrubbery, the dark shade beneath the trees: no girlish figure could be seen to answer to the one he carried in his mind.

"Perhaps my letter hasn't reached her," was his disappointed soliloquy. Then followed a few moments of silent thought. Suddenly he pulled himself together, put on a bold front, stalked manfully up to the porch, and rang the bell determinedly. When a man in brass buttons appeared to answer his summons, Dudley felt decidedly more reassured, and his previous fears of being greeted with a countryman's heavy boot were agreeably dispelled.

"Is Miss Jennings in?" he asked, feeling for his card-case.

James stared. "Beg pardon, sir?"

"Miss Jennings,—Miss Jane Jennings," he repeated, with emphasis.

James surveyed the visitor from his jaunty straw hat to his neat patent-leathers, cast a queer look at the crocodile card-case, replied, "Humph! I'll see," and shut the door in his face.

"Infernal impudence, by Jove!" exclaimed Dudley, in wrath. "Does the dolt take me for a tramp?" There was nothing for it, however, but to wait where he was, which he did with bad grace enough until he heard a hand upon the inner knob and saw the door slowly open, to disclose the generous proportions of Mabel's maid.

"The old woman, by the gods!" he whispered, in dismay.

"I called—" he began.

"Yes, sir," replied Jane, in a flutter of excitement.

"I called—er—I have the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Jennings, I presume?"

"Miss Jennings,—Jane Jennings," she corrected, and blushing at the title.

Dudley stared open-mouthed. "Miss Jennings! Jane Jennings!" he repeated, in astonishment. Then a terrible possibility dawned upon him. A cold perspiration broke out all over him. Oh, god of love, was this his precious Jennie? Had he made an irrevocable ass of himself over this lump of ancient human flesh? A hue of brilliant scarlet suffused his countenance. Oh, what an imbecile, a simple, drivelling idiot, he had been!

"Was it me that you wished to see, sir?" she asked, wondering at his strange manner.

"No!" he answered fiercely. "I think there must be some mistake," he added more calmly, struggling to repress his feelings. "Very sorry to have—er—Good-day." He turned suddenly, and, without another glance at his long-lost Jennie, quickly gained the road and the welcome cover of the hedge.

His uppermost feeling was undoubtedly that of anger mixed with mortification, and he swore with sublime eloquence at his own folly as soon as he was out of ear-shot of the house; but the ludicrous side of his situation could not but strike him before he had gone many steps, and he laughed grimly in spite of himself while repeating the undeniable assertion that he had been a lamentable fool.

As he swung himself into his saddle prepared to shake the dust of Stillton that very night from his feet, a voice came to him through the semi-obscurity:

"Hold on, there! Hold on, I say!"

He gave his nag a good kick in the flank and urged him to the top of his speed.

"Hold on there! Dudley! Hold on!"

He was recognized—caught! That cursed photograph of his! "Go on, you brute, go on!" he cried to his sorry beast. There was not much speed in him, however, and a minute later footsteps were quickly overtaking him.

"I say, Dudley! Don't you know me?" panted his pursuer.

He turned for an instant in his saddle. Why! Could he believe his eyes? Surely it was Manton! He reined in.

"Why, Manton, old boy, what—"

"Dudley, what on earth brings you here?" gasped Manton.

"That's just what I've been trying to find out, Manton. Take my oath I don't know."

"Humph!" ejaculated Manton, fixing his eyes curiously upon his friend.

"I don't," reiterated Dudley.

"No girl in the case?" suggested Manton significantly.

"Girl!" He laughed uneasily. Could Manton be in the joke? "No," he answered, "I can safely say that there is not," the figure of the old nurse clearly in his mind.

"Come, now, Dudley," said Manton; "perhaps I know more about your affairs than you think I do. She was frightfully cut up this morning, and I think your letter did it."

"Cut up, was she? Ha! ha! Cut up! She appeared to be in one pretty substantial piece just now, notwithstanding."

"Look here, Dudley; get off that horse and come over to the farm for supper. There's something wrong. I want to have a talk with you. Now, there has been some misunderstanding, hasn't there?"

"Well, I confess I was rather taken in."

"Taken in! Nonsense! Do you imagine she would take you in?"

"It struck me that she might, boots and all," replied Dudley, with a sad grin.

"Do talk sense, Dudley. It's a pity that this should have occurred."

"A d—d shame, I call it."

"I would swear that she loves you, Dud."

"Really, I suppose I ought to feel flattered; but, somehow, Manton, I can't get up much enthusiasm over her. She's not exactly my style."

"You're very fastidious, then. Here, come this way through the wood: it's a short cut. I confess my experience has been very much more limited than yours, but I never saw a girl more—"

"A what?" asked Dudley, with a sneer.

"A young lady, then,—more charming, more lovely in every respect, than Miss Moreley."

"Miss who? Moreley? (I believe he has got one of those wandering fits, poor fellow!) Well, Manton, old boy, I won't dispute that for a moment, because—"

"Yet you say that she is not 'your style.'"

"Oh, I must get him home immediately," sighed Dudley inwardly, commiserating his friend.

"She talks of you incessantly, Dud, and only seems happy when I am answering her thousand and one questions about you."

(A young lady hidden among the rocks and pines blushes crimson as this speech is wafted to her on the still evening air, and stamps her little foot in vexatious indignation.)

"Her manner to-day," continued Manton, "showed plainly that your letter this morning hurt her exceedingly."

"Miss Moreley! Letter this morning! My letter! Come, now. By Jove! Stop a moment. I believe— Tell me, did you ever chance to see her handwriting?"

"Yes: I've mailed several of her letters to you."

"You don't say so! Is that her writing?"

"Yes."

Dudley muttered something incoherent about "little wretch!" "Jane Jennings!" and, pointing excitedly to the scene of his recent discomfiture, asked, "Lives there, doesn't she?"

Manton, too astonished at his friend's remarkable conduct to speak, nodded assent, and Dudley hastened away toward the house, shouting back, "I'll see you later, old fellow!"

"Oh, don't! don't! don't!" came a shrill voice from among the rocks.

Both turned. "Why, here she is now!" cried Manton.

There was an awkward pause. The blush upon her face detracted nothing from her beauty. Dudley felt drawn toward her as a needle is drawn by the North Star. He walked quickly toward her, hesitated as she drew back, stopped as she cast her eyes upon the ground, and presently said, "Life would be a very sad thing, would it not, if we had no pleasant memories of the past? I believe the thoughts of those happy days of our childhood are the sweetest I have ever had. It brings them back to me very vividly to find you now after so many years. Won't you even shake hands with your old playmate?"

She put out her hand shyly and reluctantly, and he took it in both of his.

"I'll walk on, Dud, and put this horse of yours in the barn," said Manton. "I'll come back presently." And he left them, feeling that perhaps the reconciliation which he was looking forward to between them would be more complete if they were left alone.

"Are you angry with me for coming?" asked Dudley softly, when he had gone.

"You should not have done it," she answered.

"Were we never to meet?"

"Never."

"Then I am glad I took matters into my own hands," said he, laughing.

"But you must go to-night—now."

"Impossible."

The subject gave rise to considerable argument, at the end of which, however, Dudley remained as determined as before, and, as a matter of fact, he did stay, accepting Farmer Manton's hospitable invitation to make his house his home. He would stay a week, he said; he had no immediate pressing engagements, and his delight at being with his old friend Manton once more was too great to admit of his leaving immediately upon finding him.

The week proved to be a delightful one. Farmer Manton's buxom daughters got up one of their celebrated "flare-ups" in his honor, and all the female population of Stillton was set by its ears. Mabel was not present, of course,—fortunately, too, perhaps, for her state of heart and mind was strangely and unnaturably irritable at that time, and his promiscuous attentions to the various country belles might have provoked a feeling of which she would afterward have been very much ashamed.

The week was over, yet he lingered. The sea-breezes, he declared, were just the sort of tonic he needed, and the quiet country-life the very thing he had been longing for for years.

One day, after an introduction by Farmer Manton to Mr. Moreley, he enlarged so eloquently upon the benefits of such an atmosphere, and spoke so feelingly about the ailments to which the latter considered himself a martyr, that the old gentleman's heart actually warmed toward him, and he violated all the laws of his monotonous existence and one of Dr. Nevercure's most specific instructions by inviting him to dinner.

"How did you do it?" asked Mabel, with an incredulous smile, when he told her down on the beach that afternoon of his unexpected success with the much-feared parent.

"Oh, it's my fatal fascination, I suppose," he answered exasperatingly.

The weeks that followed were passed much as all of us have passed some happy weeks of our own lives, and the rest of their story is but the old one once more repeated.

Dudley persistently maintains to this day that there is much more in a name than is generally conceded, but his young wife ridicules such nonsense, saying that it was nothing but a random shot that chanced to hit the mark. A significant fact is that the boy has been named plain John, after their never-to-be-forgotten friend John Manton.

C. W. WILMERDING.



THE PEABODY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY.

In respect to her facility and opportunities for advancing the cause of scientific knowledge, Harvard University certainly stands pre-eminent. She has a splendid astronomical observatory, and laboratories for chemistry and physics unexcelled elsewhere. Her botanical garden is the only one for instruction of any consequence in the Union, and its director, Asa Gray, is the chief of American botanists. In the Museum of Comparative Zoology, founded by Louis Agassiz and sustained by his son, Alexander Agassiz, Cambridge possesses the most productive, and in some respects the completest, museum of animal life in the United States, while it offers to the laboratory student of natural history advantages which he can find equalled nowhere else in the whole world. Last, and most modern, it has a museum of anthropology which in point of material is rivalled only by the National Museum at Washington, and in point of instructiveness is probably in advance of anything yet attained in the United States, despite its youth and small resources. This school and storehouse is the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, whose merits deserve a wider recognition than they have yet received.

When, in 1866, George Peabody, of philanthropic fame, was distributing his bequests among the educational institutions of the Eastern States, he was desirous of giving to Harvard a certain sum of money, but was puzzled as to its proper application. It was suggested to him to endow a department of archaeological research, and his proposition to that effect was considered by several friends of the university. The institution had peculiar needs at that time. Its finances generally were weak. The library and the zoological museum especially needed money, and the idea of a special department of prehistoric science was entirely new. It was decided, however, not to attempt to influence Mr. Peabody away from his own plan. President Walker saw that European minds were eagerly turning toward studies of primitive man, that the interest in the subject would grow from year to year, and that, as the first museum in the country devoted to this branch, it would have the best chance for securing collections rapidly going to destruction or distributed through private cabinets. More than all, the fittest man to take charge of it was at hand, in the person of Professor Jeffries Wyman. On the 3d of November, 1866, therefore, the arrangements were completed, and Mr. Peabody delivered to a board of trustees one hundred and fifty thousand dollars as an endowment. On the first of the following month Dr. Wyman began his curatorship.

As yet, of course, there was no museum. As a nucleus, Professor Wyman contributed some Indian implements and crania, the nooks and corners of the college were ransacked for stray skulls, stone axes and arrow-heads, pottery that had been ploughed up in the suburbs, and relics of colonial days, all of which, when brought together, served to fill a few empty cases in a room of Boylston Hall. Soon afterward, printed circulars were issued, and gifts began to flow in from the neighborhood, illustrating the life of the native races at and just before the time of the Pilgrims' landing. Several societies in Boston made permanent deposits of ethnological accumulations in the infant establishment; Mr. E. G. Squier, the Peruvian explorer, sent a Peruvian mummy of great value, with seventy-five crania, and promised larger gifts; the Smithsonian Institution gave a lot of duplicates, many of which were gathered by the great Wilkes Exploring Expedition; the Honorable Caleb Cushing forwarded antiquities gathered by his command during the Mexican war; and several famous collections were bought in Europe, illustrating the stone and bronze ages. Thus public interest was stimulated, and even at the end of the first year a very presentable sketch of a picture of the aboriginal people of the world was to be seen in that small room in Boylston Hall. It was accessible to any interested visitors, and began to receive attention from the scientific world, particularly after the first annual report appeared in January, 1868, containing an original essay by the curator and a full statement of the growing importance of the museum.