Mr. Ramsay had never conceived of such a philosophical parent or agreeable state of affairs. He was very much embarrassed, and caught at a familiar idea in his confusion. "That's what I thought you would think,—that I was amusin' myself. And I wanted to tell you that I am not, you know. I have far too much respect for Miss Brown to dream of doin' such a thing," he said very eagerly.

"Oh, you mean at her expense? I understand now. Well, now, let me make your mind perfectly easy on that score. Bijou can take care of herself as well as any girl in America, and I never thought of such a thing. If you are thinking of her, that's all right. If you are thinking of yourself, of course that is another thing. She isn't thinking of marrying you. She doesn't care anything about you in that way, I am certain. I should have noticed it if she had been," said Mr. Brown, who labored under the usual parental delusion as to his daughter's heart having a glass window through which he could see all that went on there.

"I am tryin' to do what is best for both of us," said Mr. Ramsay honestly, blushing profusely. "And I came to say good-by. And here is a little note I have written Miss Brown. I have left it open, in case you wished to see it."

"Not at all,—not at all. Bijou would blow me up sky-high if she caught me reading it, I can tell you. I'll give it to her, certainly. I think you are giving yourself unnecessary concern; but your scruples, though novel, do you honor. If you think it best to give us up, you are, as far as you are personally concerned, the best judge. Good-by. Send us a line to say how you like the West. Good-by," said Mr. Brown, and smilingly accompanied him to the front door.

Papa Brown gave his daughter the note, which ran as follows:

"MY DEAR MISS BROWN,—I am going away, and you have been so awfully kind to me that I know you will excuse me writing to say how awfully grateful I am to your family for receiving a stranger as they have done."

Here "I shall often think of you" was carefully scratched out, and "I shall always remember it and the pleasant hours I have spent with them" substituted.

"And now I have got to say a disagreeable word, which is good-by. I hope you will have a fine hot summer and will think of me sometimes when you are spooning tremendously at croquet,—as you know you do, though it isn't fair. With best regards to all the members of your household, I am

"Faithfully yours,

"ARTHUR RAMSAY.

"P.S.—If I should drop into a good thing you will hear of it."

Mr. Ramsay had taken four hours to compose something that should not be actionable or compromising, and yet that should convey some idea of the state of his mind and feelings, and had turned out this masterpiece, which Bijou read in bitterness of soul over and over again.

"Excuse me writing," "fine hot summer," "croquet," she quoted mentally. "After all that has passed between us! If he had really cared for me, and anything had separated us, he would have had the common honesty and manliness to say so. No; he thinks me another Liverpool girl, 'hard hit.' He is running away from me." At this cruel idea, so abhorrent to her vanity, pride, affection, and general womanhood, the poor girl sank down on her bed overwhelmed, and did not leave her room for three days,—or rather eternities,—at the end of which time she met Mr. Ramsay by accident on the high-road and cut him dead.

"I must pull myself together and get away out of this," said Mr. Ramsay to Mr. Ketchum that evening. "I have bought of Albert Brown his ranch in Colorado, near Taylorsville, and I leave in the morning."

"WHAT!" cried Mr. Ketchum. "Has he sold you that tumble-down claim on a burnt prairie, miles from any wood or water? I know the place."

"I haven't examined the property; but he assures me it is a fine one. And, anyway, it is settled, I am going. A thousand thanks for all your kindness, Ketchum. An Englishman that I met in New York wants me to go huntin' with him, and I shall join him at St. Louis and go on out from there."

"Why, I thought you had all promised to go to Niagara as my guests in a few days. Do change your mind and stay, won't you?" urged Mr. Ketchum.

But Mr. Ramsay was obdurate, and took himself and a car-load of property off in the direction of the setting sun by the mid-day train next morning.

"Ramsay, I want you to promise me one thing. If, owing to that skunk Brown, you are disappointed out there, or don't get on, write or telegraph me, and I'll stand by you to the tune of ten thousand or so. Good-by, old fellow. Remember, I'm your friend," said generous Job, at the station. And as he went home he stopped and presented Mr. Albert Brown with a piece of his mind that any other man would only have taken in exchange for a flogging, delivered.

"How very nice and kind of the dear duke to give Mr. Ramsay an invite to join him!" said Mrs. Sykes, with emotion, at dinner that day.

F.C. BAYLOR.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

* * * * *



A TEMPLE PILGRIMAGE

Sauntering down the southerly side of Fleet Street, toward the historic spot where once stood Temple Bar, crested with its ghastly array of pike-pierced traitors' heads, the curious itinerant comes to an arched gate-way of Elizabethan architecture. The narrow lane which it guards is known as Inner Temple Street, and cleaves the Temple enclosure into unequal parts, ending at the river. Standing in the shady archway, with the roar and rattle, the glare and glitter, of Fleet Street at our backs, we instinctively feel that we are about to enter a new and strange locality, the quiet atmosphere and the cloister-like walks of which seem redolent of books and the pursuits of bookish men.

We are on the threshold of the Temple,—a spot than which none in all this historic metropolis is more replete with memories of the storied past. Nor does its interest consist solely in its associations with the men and manners of a by-gone epoch. Despite its antique architecture and its quaint observances, the Temple still maintains its reputation for scholarship and legal acumen. Its virility is fitly symbolized in the venerable and vigorous trees whose branching boughs wave above its walls: sound to the core, it sends forth new scions with perennial freshness.

The gray gate-way under which we have halted is one of the two chief entrances to the Temple. It was built in the reign of James I., being consequently nearly three centuries old. White-aproned porters, with numbered pewter badge on lapel, stand on either side, ready—for a consideration—to direct our transatlantic ignorance into veritable "paths of pleasantness and peace." Access to the Middle Temple from Fleet Street is had by way of another gate-house, built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1684, soon after the Great Fire. It is in the style of Inigo Jones, of reddish brick, with stone pointing. There are several other entrances,—many of them known only to the initiated,—through intricate courts and passages debouching on Fleet Street and the surrounding thoroughfares, and one from the river at Temple Pier; but, chiefly because of their proximity to the New Courts of Law, these two gate-ways are most frequented.

The boundaries of this famous abode of British wit and intellect may be roughly sketched as follows: on the north, Fleet Street; on the south, the Thames and the Victoria Embankment; on the east, Serjeants' Inn and the Whitefriars region; on the west, Essex Street, Strand. These boundaries remain substantially as they were six or seven centuries ago. The Middle Temple lies nearest the river; the Inner Temple is nearer to Fleet Street, and "inside"—that is, on the "city" side—of Temple Bar. Essex House and its purlieus, once the abode of the powerful earls of that name, were formerly a part of the Temple. It was called the Outer Temple, because "outside" of Temple Bar.

In the reign of Henry II., about the year 1185, the ground now included in the Temple area became the head-quarters in London of the crusading Knights Templar. Removing from humbler quarters in Holborn, the order, having become wealthy and ambitious, bought a tract of land extending from the walls of Essex House to Whitefriars, and from the river to Fleet Street. They erected a church, a priory, and other buildings clustered around in the mediaeval fashion, and in imitation of the Temple near the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

Under the first Richard and the third Henry the Templars increased in pelf, power, and pride. After a career commenced in zeal and purity, culminating in valor and fanaticism, and closing in corruption and indolence, in the year 1312, when the second Edward sat on the throne of England, the now useless order was formally abolished by Clement V., the reigning Pontiff. The Temple domain, by grant of the crown, then passed to Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who conveyed it to the Earl of Lancaster, a cousin of Edward II. It was then rented to the professors and students of the common law, who had recently become an incorporate body, In 1333 the Temple had apparently reverted to the crown, for we find Edward III. farming out the rents for twenty-five pounds a year.

The Knights Hospitallers of St. John, meantime, affected to be much scandalized at what they deemed a desecration of holy ground, and claimed the custody of the place. In 1340, in consideration of a hundred golden guineas contributed toward the armament against France, the king made over the Temple to the Hospitallers. They handsomely endowed the church with lands, and gave "a thousand fagots yearly from Lillerton Wood to nourish the church fires."

The records of the Temple date back no further than the reign of Henry VII., so that the history of the previous period; is more or less obscure and traditional: the precise manner in which the Temple passed from the control of the sword to that of the wig and gown is not certain. The Hospitallers of St. John, who already possessed a priory at Clerkenwell, in the north of London, after having vindicated the sanctity of the church and cloisters, are believed to have leased the buildings and the demesne to the lawyers for the rent of ten pounds, payable yearly. Another account says that the latter purchased the property outright. However this may have been, in the reign of Richard II. we find the legal fraternity of the metropolis securely domiciled in the locality they have ever since tenaciously clung to.

Even so early as the time of Henry VI. the brotherhood of lawyers had attained to an unwieldy growth, and it separated into two halls, the original two halls of the Knights Templar forming the nuclei around which the frequenters of each grouped themselves. Thus arose the Middle and Inner Temple. Under the eighth Henry the two societies became direct tenants of the crown once more. In 1609 James I. granted "letters patent to the mansion of the Inner Temple," at a yearly rent of ten sovereigns; and a like sum was exacted for the Middle Temple. The societies have not been disturbed in their holdings since that time.

The Temple to-day comprises two of the four great Inns of Court, —Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple,—which, taken collectively, constitute the backbone of the legal polity of England. Ben Jonson described them as "the noblest nurseries of humanity and liberty in the kingdom." They are all of great age and the recipients of rich revenues. The income of the Middle Temple alone (not the richest of the four) from the single item of rents is about thirteen thousand pounds yearly; but the affairs of the Inns are so shrouded in administrative secrecy that exact information on this topic is not easily obtained.

Until recently there was a fifth,—Serjeants' Inn, the members of which were lawyers who had risen to the rank of serjeant, or to the bench itself. Formerly such promotions terminated membership in the original Inn; but since the abolishment of the rank of sergeant at the English bar Serjeants' Inn has ceased to exist,—the name surviving only in the locality,—and the four Inns have readmitted those of their members on whom judicial honors were bestowed.

Each Inn possesses certain smaller or subordinate Inns, which formerly served as preparatory schools, but which are now mere collections of chambers. There are thus attached to the Inner Temple Clement's Inn, Clifford's Inn, and Lyon's Inn; to the Middle Temple, New Inn.

All the Inns of Court are unincorporated voluntary societies. In our modern nomenclature the name "inn" may seem a strange one for an institution of learning; but the term is a literal rendering of the ancient title hospitia applied to them in the Latin records, as distinguished from public lodging-houses (diversoria).

Each Inn consists of a hall, a chapel, a law-library, a set of rooms for the benchers, and a large number of houses, divided into small suites known as "chambers," and occupied chiefly by barristers, solicitors, and students, though tenancy is not restricted to these classes. The quiet, the studious environment, and the freedom from certain social obligations unavoidable in more fashionable quarters, have at all times rendered residence in the several Inns peculiarly attractive to that large class in England which consists in the main of young men of good family, moderate fortune, and no particular occupation.

The Inns possess the exclusive right of "calling students to the bar,"[A] also of "disbarring" a barrister for questionable practices,—a right exercised by Gray's Inn in 1864 in the case of the late erratic but brilliant Dr. Kenealy, counsel for the notorious Tichborne "claimant." From their decision no court, as such, can give relief. The disbarred one has only the right of appeal to and review by certain of the judges. The Inns neither govern nor license attorneys, who are admitted to practice by the courts.

[Footnote A: The origin of this term dates from the venerable custom of calling students to the bar that divided the benchers' dais from the body of the hall to bear their part in the "meetings" or discussions on knotty legal topics. We are informed by Lord Campbell that Sir Edward Coke "first evinced his forensic powers when deputed by the students to make a representation to the benchers of the Inner Temple at one of the 'moots' respecting the poor quality of the commons served in the hall. He argued with so much quickness of penetration and solidity of judgment that he gave entire satisfaction to the students and was much admired by the benchers."]

The Middle Temple affiliates with the Universities of London and Durham. A residence of three years and the keeping of twelve "commons" entitle a gentleman to be called to its bar, after certain qualifying examinations, if he be above twenty-three years of age. In the Inner Temple (by far the richest and most popular of the two societies) the candidate for admission must have taken his B.A. or passed an examination at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, or London. No one in holy orders can be called, and none are admitted without the consent of the benchers. The candidate must also furnish a statement in writing, outlining his rank, age, and residence, accompanied by a voucher as to his respectability signed by a bencher or two barristers. In short, the Inns of Court may be described as universities "with power to grant degrees in the municipal law of England, which constitute indispensable qualifications for practice in the superior courts of law." To secure these ends they have from time immemorial enjoyed the protection of the crown.

In former times the curriculum was comprehensive and the discipline severe. The fare provided was frugal, and the chambers were sparsely furnished. Luxury was tabooed, and the rules were rigidly enforced. From early morning till the hour of five in the evening, when supper was served, not an hour was wasted. Fortescue, writing in the time of Henry VI., gives a graphic account of these law-schools as they were in his day. "Students resort hither in great numbers to be taught as in common schools. Here they learn to sing and to exercise themselves in all kinds of harmony. On the working days they study law, and on the holy days Scripture, and their demeanor is like the behavior of such as are coupled together in perfect amity. There is no place where are found so many students past childhood as here." But in these degenerate days, when the jeunesse dorA(C)e decorate their "dens" with Queen Anne furniture, Turkish rugs, and choice bric-A -brac, it has been jocosely said that "dining in hall is the only legal study of Temple students." Of late years, however, "the best professional sentiment" has strongly and successfully tended in favor of keeping up the standard of these institutions as true seminaries of learning. Ample courses of lectures have been introduced, also subsequent searching examinations.

A glance at a map of the Temple shows conclusively that it has no connected plan. Its growth has been the outcome of the needs of many generations during the last half-dozen centuries, and it is at present a picturesque conglomeration of buildings of all sizes and shapes and styles, erected with no regard for architectural beauty or symmetry, and with no very great adaptability to their past or present use. Aside from the halls and libraries of the two societies, the Church of St. Mary, and one or two blocks of chambers, like Paper Buildings, there is no salient feature to impress the eye. Yet the uniform ugliness of some of the buildings constitutes not the least of their attractions. A hard grayish stone frequently appears, though there are a number of brick houses so mellowed by age that it would be difficult to name their original hue.

The chambers are frequently massed around four sides of a stone-paved court, from which direct entrance is had to the main staircases. In some of these flagged spaces a fountain tinkles; in others, sturdy elm- or plane-trees tower far above the red chimney-stacks; in the centre of another is the famous Temple pump. The several courts have distinguishing names, such as Garden Court, Pump Court, and Brick Court, and they connect with each other sometimes by an arched passage under the houses, at two sides of the square, or again by narrow alleys. Nor is the same level always preserved. Small flights of time-worn steps continually surprise us in our pilgrimage. The aggregate—barren courts, narrow passages, and winding lanes—forms a perfect labyrinth, very trying to a stranger or to one possessing a poor memory for localities.

The nomenclature of certain of these Temple courts possesses a breezy, countrified sound, utterly unsuggestive of musty tomes and special pleadings. Thus, we have Elm-Tree Court, Vine Court, Fig-Tree Court, and Fountain Court. The reader will recall to mind the fact that it was in the last-named locality, with its sprightly, sparkling, upward-springing stream, that Ruth Pinch—"gentle, loving Ruth"—held tryst with her lover, manly John Westlock. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, too, has embalmed this "pet and plaything of the Temple" in some pleasant stanzas:

The fountain's low singing is heard on the wind, Like a melody bringing sweet fancies to mind,— Some to grieve, some to gladden: around them they cast The hopes of the morrow, the dreams of the past. Away in the distance is heard the vast sound From the streets of the city that compass it round, Like the echo of fountains, or the ocean's deep call; Yet that fountain's low singing is heard over all.

Entering the houses, we find them mostly of a stereotyped pattern. A wainscoted, dark, and generally uncarpeted staircase gives access to landings on which abut the outer doors of the "sets," or chambers. These consist of two, three, or at most four rooms, in the style peculiar to the domestic architecture of the earlier years of the present century. High corniced ceilings, wainscoted walls, and shoulder-high chimney-pieces abound. Here and there, however, some opulent tenant has modernized his rooms; but the structures, inside and out, remain for the most part not materially changed from the later Georgian era of their erection,—a time when every gentleman sported a small-sword and ladies wore hoops and patches. The famous garden forms one of the chief charms of the Temple enclosure, and its beauty and atmosphere of quiet repose are justly celebrated. Here Shakespeare is believed to have sat and thought out some of his most masterly creations; here many of the great legal luminaries of the last few centuries walked and talked; and here the infantile footsteps of the subsequently famous "Elia" chased butterflies across the velvety sward. "The Temple Garden," says Mr. Walter Thornbury, "has probably been a garden from the time the white-robed Templars first came from Holborn and settled by the river-side." It covers an expanse of three acres, and its gay flower-beds, umbrageous trees, and emerald turf make it a veritable oasis to the inhabitants, and especially to the children, of that corner of the great metropolis. A pillar sundial in the centre of the grass bears the date 1770, and the iron gate, surmounted by a winged horse, which guards the entrance from the terrace, was erected in 1730. East of the sundial is a hoary old sycamore, sole survivor of three sisters, carefully protected by railings, under whose grateful shade, says local tradition, Johnson and Goldsmith were wont to chat. In the Middle Temple Garden stands a venerable catalpa-tree, planted by Sir Matthew Hale, "one of the most eminent of lawyers and excellent of men." The scene in "King Henry the Sixth,"[A] where the partisans of the rival houses of Lancaster and York assume the distinctive badges of the white and red rose, is laid in the Temple Garden. "Toward evening," says Dr. Dibdin, "it was the fashion for the leading counsel to promenade during the summer months in the Temple Gardens. Cocked hats and ruffles, with satin small-clothes, at that time constituted the usual evening dress." Anciently, the "moots" were held on the terrace of the Garden at five of the clock in the long summer evenings.

[Footnote A: Part I., act 2, scene 4.]

The great hall of the Middle Temple is one of the finest Elizabethan structures in the metropolis. It was commenced in 1562, when the old hall was converted into chambers, consumed a decade in building, and is of grand proportions. It is a hundred feet long, and the massive beauty of the glossy oaken roof, almost black with age, is alone worth an Atlantic voyage to see. The walls and windows are decorated with the arms of various members of the Inn, and the paintings are numerous and of great historical interest. Over the dais is a portrait of Charles I. on horse-back, by Vandyke, one of the three original paintings of the unhappy monarch by that great master. Another of the trio is at Windsor, while the third adorns Warwick Castle. There are also copies of portraits of Charles II., James II., William III., Queen Anne, and George II., and marble busts, by Behnes, of "Doubting" Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, the great Admiralty judge. The screen and the music-gallery are marvels of the wood-carver's art. Tradition says the screen was made of oak from the timbers of the wrecked Invincible Armada; but this cannot be, inasmuch as it was set up a dozen years before the doomed squadron sailed out of Lisbon harbor.

The Middle Temple Library, a handsome building of recent erection, situated on the river side of the Inn, at the southwest corner of the Temple Gardens, was opened by the Prince of Wales, October 31, 1861. While it is of nobler proportions than the library of the Inner Temple, it does not seem to be so well suited for the purposes of the student. Its location, however, is far more pleasant, on the margin of the flower-mantled garden, and within sight of the busy Victoria Embankment and of the panoramic river scenery. From the great oriel window a noble vista is unrolled. In the distance, the twin-towered Houses of Parliament are outlined against the sky, while the massive proportions of the "water front" of Somerset House, the motley groupings of the structures that crowd the intervening water-side, and the flashing river hound by many-arched bridges, fill the middle distance.

Aside from the lustre shed around its history by many eminent lawyers and jurists, the Middle Temple has numbered among its students several great poets and dramatists, notably John Ford, William Congreve, Nicholas Rowe, Thomas Shadwell, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Moore. But, as their literary remains prove, few or none of them prosecuted their legal studies with that sedulous devotion which the law, proverbially a jealous mistress, demands. Sir William Blackstone, who immortalized his name by his "Commentaries on the Laws of England," was educated in the Middle Temple, where he was entered as a student, November 20, 1741, and by which he was called to the bar, April 26, 1750. In his Temple chambers, ere he finally consecrated his massive intellect to the legal profession, Blackstone wrote the famous "Farewell to the Muses:"

Lull'd by the lapse of gliding floods, Cheer'd by the warbling of the woods, How blest my days, my thoughts how free, In sweet society with thee! Then all was joyous, all was young, And years, unheeded, roll'd along; But now the pleasing dream is o'er,— These scenes must charm me now no more. Lost to the field and torn from you, Farewell! a long, a last adieu.

Edmund Burke was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747, and kept his terms in 1750. But the great tribune was never called to the bar. Had he been, what a powerful advocate, what a pitiless adversary, he would have made! Porson, the brilliant but bibulous classicist, has left behind him many sad stories of his pranks during his residence in Essex Court, where he had chambers immediately above those occupied by the future Baron Gurney, whom, in one of his debauches, he came near burning in his bed. Chaucer is believed to have entered as a student of the Middle Temple, where he is supposed to have formed a friendship with the "moral Gower." Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Thomas Overbury, Sir Edward Bramston, Lord-Keeper Guildford, Edmund Plowden,—perhaps the greatest lawyer of the Elizabethan epoch, —"Ugly" Dunning, who afterward became Lord Ashburton, and Lord Eldon, are among the ornaments of the British bench and bar who sprung from the Middle Temple.

Now, however, the glories of the Middle Temple rest chiefly in the past. It has decreased in wealth and in numbers. There is an old proverb which says, "The Inner Temple for the rich, the Middle Temple for the poor;" and a famous wit emphasized this saying by a happy mot. After one of its far from recherchA(C) dinners, he compared a gritty salad, of which he had been unlucky enough to partake, to "eating a gravel walk and meeting an occasional weed."

The hall of the Inner Temple is a modern building, and was opened by the Princess Louise on May 4, 1870. More spacious than the one it replaced, it contains a number of cosy offices and ante-rooms. There is also attached a lunch-room for the use of members, much frequented in term-time, when at the mid-day hour one may meet many of the great practitioners at the English bar. Passable portraits of William and Mary, Queen Anne, Lord Chief-Justice Coke, and Sir Thomas Littleton look upon the visitor, and the arms of the successive treasurers of the Inn are blazoned on the walls.

The Inner Temple Library is the most attractive, quiet, and convenient of any in the four Inns. Its plan comprises a series of book-lined apartments leading one into another. Besides a valuable and voluminous collection of authorities on legal topics, it possesses a unique array of works on general subjects. It stands on the terrace, and commands a view of the river. The noble hammer-beam roof is a fine specimen of its kind, spanning a chamber forty-two feet wide and ninety-six feet long. One of the stained-glass windows is emblazoned with the Templars' escutcheon. The debating-hall is in the Tudor style, and cost not far from seventy-five thousand dollars.

Several great jurists and a number of men equally eminent in other walks of life were connected with the Inner Temple, pre-eminent among whom stand Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord-Chancellor of England in 1587, and nicknamed the "Dancing Chancellor," Lord Tenterden, "one of the greatest Englishmen who ever sat in the seat of Gamaliel," who was admitted in 1795, and John Selden, who took up residence in Paper Buildings in 1604. The latter were consumed in the great fire of 1666. Audley, chancellor to the eighth Henry, Nicholas Hare, privy councillor to the latter monarch and Master of the Rolls under Mary, who resided in the court which now bears his name, the eminent lawyer Littleton and his no less famous commentator Coke, Lord Buckburst, Beaumont the poet, Sir William Follett, and Judge Jeffries of infamous memory, were all students within the Temple precincts.

Charles Lamb, whose father, John Lamb, was clerk to Mr. Salt, a bencher of the Inner Temple, was born in Crown Office Row. In 1809 he took chambers at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where some of the delightful "Elia" essays were penned. In one of these he says, "I was born and passed the first seven years of my life in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountains, its river, I had almost said,—for in those young years what was the king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places?—these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat to this day no verses more frequently or with kindlier emotion than those of Spenser where he speaks of this spot. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time,—the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street by unexpected avenues into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden, that goodly pile

Of buildings strong, albeit of paper hight,[A]

confronting with massy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically shrouded one named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream which washes the garden foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters and seems but just weaned from Twickenham Na?es! A man would give something to have been born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall where the fountain plays which I have made to rise and fall how many times, to the astonishment of the young urchins my contemporaries, who, not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were tempted to hail the wondrous work as magic." Though its courts may have been "magnificent" and "ample" to the contemplation of the kindly Lamb, they would scarce be so accounted now.

[Footnote A: Paper Buildings.]

The "great Cham of Literature," Dr. Samuel Johnson, resided for some time at No. 1, Inner Temple Lane. Indeed, it was while the doctor was living in the Temple that the world-famous "Literary Club" was founded. The faithful and receptive Boswell, too, as might be expected, lived within easy distance of the object of his veneration, at the foot of Inner Temple Lane. It was in 1763 that Boswell first made the acquaintance of the "Great Bear" and called on him in his Temple chambers.

Cowper the poet, as the reader doubtless remembers, at first embraced the law as his profession. He was duly articled to a solicitor of some eminence; but with how little ardor he devoted himself to the study may be inferred from the following candid confession: "I did actually live three years with Mr. Chapman, a solicitor,—that is to say, I slept three years in his house, but I lived, I spent my days, in Southampton Row. Here was I and the future Lord Chancellor [Thurlow] constantly employed from morning till night in giggling and making giggle instead of studying law." It is not surprising, as one of his biographers remarks, that when, at the age of twenty-one, he proudly became the occupant of a set of chambers in the Middle Temple, "he neither sought business nor business sought him."

While domiciled here, the hideous malady which darkened his manhood began to cast its gloomy pall on his mind. In the year 1759 he removed from the Middle Temple to better quarters in the Inner Temple. For a time the change seemed beneficial, but in 1763 what had hitherto been mere morbid melancholy became something very near the dreaded insanity. "I was struck, " he says, "not long after my settlement in the Temple, with such dejection of spirits as none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of. Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror and rising up in despair." His residence at the Temple extended in all through eleven years. The year above mentioned, the last of that term, found the poet in straitened circumstances. The twin offices of reading-clerk and clerk of committees in the House of Lords became vacant at this juncture, and both were at the disposal of a cousin of Cowper's. They were duly conferred on the poet. But the duties of these positions necessitated frequent attendance before the Peers, and to one who suffered from a morbid nervousness this prospect was most distasteful. Hence, almost immediately after having accepted them, Cowper resigned these posts and took instead that of clerk of the journals. Now another difficulty intervened. It was necessary, in order to qualify for this place, that he should undergo an examination at the bar of the House of Peers; and thus "the evil from which he seemed to have escaped again met him."

"A thunderbolt," he writes, "would have been as welcome to me as this intelligence. To require my attendance at the bar of the House, that I might there publicly entitle myself to the office, was in effect to exclude me from it. In the mean time, the interest of my friend, the honor of his choice, my own reputation and circumstances, all urged me forward, all urged me to undertake what I saw to be impracticable." The mental agony he suffered was wellnigh unbearable. He even contemplated with some calmness the coming of mental derangement, that thereby he might have good reason for throwing up the appointment. He made many attempts to destroy himself. "He purchased laudanum, but threw it away. He went down to the Custom-House Quay to throw himself into the river. He tried to stab himself." Finally, the most desperate attempt of all to extinguish the lamp of life took place in his Temple chambers. Thrice he essayed to hang himself by his garter,—first on his high canopy bedstead, and then on the door.

The public way which, starting at Fleet Street, runs between the Temple Church and Goldsmith Buildings, is a curious thoroughfare,—street it cannot be called. It inclines somewhat toward the river, with a very narrow foot-walk, scarcely wide enough for two to pass abreast. On one side is the hoary sanctuary, and on the other a row of gloomy, flat-fronted houses, whose dirty windows blink drowsily on the flagged way beneath.

The pavement of a part of this thoroughfare is unique. It consists of old tombstones. In 1842, the entire available space in the churchyard being covered with graves, the benchers decided to permit no more interments there, and ordered it to be paved over. A path now runs directly across the old cemetery, where rest the bones of the Knights Templar and their dependants, and many of the sculptured stones have become paving-flags. Worn and polished by the passage of many feet, the epitaphs are entirely defaced. Here and there a few letters of antique cut may with difficulty be deciphered; but soon no sign will survive to tell of this painful desecration.

A little outside the roadway the ground is slightly elevated, and near to, but outside of, the gilt-tipped railings which enclose the Temple Church lies a very unpretending slab of marble. Rising but a few inches above the level, one corner sunken and green with earth-mould, it is but a single remove from the general decay around it. No fence protects it, children play and fight their mimic battles thereon, and when last we saw it a group of workmen employed near by were discussing their noontide bread and cheese and beer in various lounging attitudes upon it. The slab is sadly chipped, yet it is not nearly so old as the years of the century. Surely the man whose death it commemorates departed this life

Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

Not so. Let us scrape aside the accumulated dirt, and trace with finger-tip the fast-vanishing inscription. It says, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith." This, then, is the way the world reveres its great ones. Of what avail a monument to the poet in Westminster Abbey, dignified by the celebrated epitaph of Dr. Johnson, when his tomb is thus relegated to the domain of neglect and oblivion? Even the site at present indicated is "entirely conjectural:" the precise position of the poet's grave has been long forgotten.

Goldsmith Buildings, of course, take their name from the erratic poet and playwright. In one of them he lived and died, just above the rooms tenanted by the learned Blackstone, who, at that time engaged in penning the fourth volume of his "Commentaries," was often grievously annoyed by the dancing- and drinking-parties, the games of blind-man's-buff, and the noisy singing of "poor Noll" and his boon companions. Goldsmith took up residence in the Temple in the spring of the year 1764, in a very shabby set of rooms, which he shared with Jeffs, the butler of the society. Here Dr. Johnson visited him, says Mr. Forster, "and on prying and peering about in them after his short-sighted fashion, flattening his face against every object be looked at, Goldsmith's uneasy sense of their deficiencies broke out. 'I shall soon be in better chambers, sir, than these,' he said. 'Nay, sir,' answered Johnson, 'never mind that: nil te quaesiveris extra.'"

In 1765, his purse having become somewhat more plethoric, he removed to Garden Court, then, as now, one of the choice spots in the Temple Area. Here he sported a man-servant, and ran head over ears in debt to his trades-people. Three years later, in 1768, we find the happy-go-lucky spendthrift squandering four hundred of the five hundred pounds which the partial success of "The Good-Natured Man" netted him in the purchase of a set of chambers in No. 2 Brick Court, much to the sorrow of the studious Blackstone, whose fellow-tenant he thus became. The nocturnal revelries of Goldy and his intimates are happily described in Mr. Forster's biography. Supper-parties were frequent, "preceded by blind-man's-buff, forfeits, or games of cards, when Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk." He would "sing all kinds of Irish songs," and with special enjoyment "gave them the Scotch ballad of 'Johnny Armstrong' (his old nurse's favorite);" with great cheerfulness "he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way to the general amusement;" and to an "accompaniment of uncontrolled laughter he once danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin," the wife of an Irish merchant.

A volume would not contain the thrilling story of the trials and triumphs, the struggles and successes, of the dead-and-gone generations whose feet have polished the cool gray flags of the purlieus of the Temple. Comedy and tragedy have been enacted within its walls; penury and prodigality have dwelt beneath the same rafters; the versatile genius and the plodding dullard have taken their maiden flights toward fame in its halls. Soldiers and statesmen, poets and playwrights, courtiers, wits, and adventurers, have herein acted their various parts. Yet, despite the checkered lives that have run their course within its pale, and notwithstanding the lustre shed upon its history by the many great jurists nurtured there, the Temple gains its greatest renown from the residence therein of that famous trio, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Lamb.

The immortal pump, so often alluded to in the Temple annals, stands in the centre of Hare Court,—not in Pump Court, as might not unreasonably be expected. It yields a copious supply of the coolest spring-water, and the office-lads of the surrounding chambers make many pilgrimages hither, stone pitcher in hand, during the sultry summertime. Charles Lamb, in an epistle to Coleridge, in his happiest vein, says, "I have been turned out of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself; but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and roomy.... The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare Court, where there is a pump always going; just now it is dry. Hare Court's trees come in at the window,—so that it's like living in a garden." Again, writing from the Temple in 1810 to his friend Manning, who is in China, Lamb says, "The household gods are slow to come, but here I mean to live and die. Come, and bring any of your friends the mandarins with you. My best room commands a court in which are trees and a pump, the water of which is excellent cold—with brandy, and not very insipid without." At about the same time we find Mary Lamb recording that her genial brother had suddenly taken to living like an anchorite. He tabooed all alcoholic drinks, and confined himself to cold water and cold tea. But the beverage drawn from Hare Court did not agree with his internal economy: he suffered in consequence from cramps and rheumatism, and his abstention from generous fluids was, we are forced to infer, exceedingly brief.

The poet Garth, who exposed the apothecaries of London to reprobation and ridicule in his satirical poem "The Dispensary," also humorously alludes to Hare Court's pump:

And dare the college insolently aim To equal our fraternity in fame? Then let crabs' eyes with pearls for virtue try, Or Highgate Hill with lofty Pindus vie; So glowworms may compare with Titan's beams, And Hare Court pump with Aganippe's streams.

The one structure in the Temple area that overshadows all others in point of interest is the famous round church, consecrated to St. Mary by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the year 1185. This prelate's presence in England was on an errand to invoke the assistance of Henry II. against Saladin, who had recently inflicted several disastrous defeats on the Templars in the Holy Land.

The church was finished about 1240. It is one of the four round churches still remaining in England. Its plan is that of a central round tower, supported by six beautiful clustered columns, crossed by a nave and transepts. Notwithstanding the lapse of ages, and although its beauties were for centuries hidden beneath a variety of hideous excrescences, it remains to-day one of the best specimens of early Gothic architecture extant. In 1682, 1695, 1706, 1737, and 1811 extensive repairs were made. In 1828 the exterior was thoroughly restored and recased with stone, and several unsightly structures that impeded the view of the church were removed. All of these so-called restorations were, however, but partial in extent. Many outrageous additions and much meretricious ornamentation, added at various epochs, were allowed to remain.

Finally, in 1845, steps were taken looking to a thorough renovation and restoration of the venerable pile. The purity of the marble columns had been sullied by several coats of paint and whitewash, while many of the foliated capitals of the columns supporting the "Round" bore traces of gilding. These latter were scraped and cleaned; an eight-feet-high oak wainscot was removed; light, movable seats were substituted for the heavy pews of Charles II.'s time that encumbered the Round; the pavement was lowered to its original level, thus revealing the bases of the columns; the organ (built by the famous Father Smith in the reign of Charles II.) was removed to its present position in the choir, and the whole interior, by means of these and other extensive changes, was exhibited in its pristine purity.

It is difficult to understand the crass stupidity which blocked up exquisite Norman windows, covered carved capitals with a thick coat of cement, closed many of the arches with wooden partitions, planted a cumbrous pulpit and reading-desk immediately under the dome, and hid the noble groined ceiling behind a shell of flat, whitewashed boarding. In the course of these repairs much of the marble-work was found to require renewal, for replacing which some old quarries in the Isle of Purbeck, unworked for generations, were reopened.

On the pavement, immediately under the Round, are several marble effigies of mail-clad knights,—"Associates of the Temple." Those that have been identified represent Geoffry de Magnaville, Earl of Essex, one of the barons who fought against King Stephen; another, having clean-cut features and clad in chain-armor, commemorates William Marshall, who was Protector during the reign of Henry III,; and by his side rests his son, a leader of the Barons in their memorable struggle against King John. The effigy of Gilbert Marshall, third son of the Protector, reposes near the western door-way, and hard by is the figure of a warrior in the act of prayer, supposed to be intended for Robert, Lord of Ros. Five or six other figures, some of remarkable beauty, and all in good preservation, two of heroic stature, are unidentified.

Service is held daily in the Temple Church, and admission is practically free. On Sunday mornings, however, the introduction of a bencher is requisite to secure admittance. The music is of the best of its kind, and the organ, though of great age, is renowned as one of the purest-and sweetest-toned instruments in London.

No account of the Temple would be complete without some mention of its many curious sundials. Each garden possesses a plain pillar-dial. There is one in Temple Lane with the motto, "Pereunt et imputantur," and "Vestigia nulla retrorsum" appears on another in Essex Court. In Pump Court, high up on the front of a house is a large, rectangular dial, with gilt figures and stile, bearing the inscription, "Shadows we are and like shadows depart." Over the dial is the traditional Temple lamb bearing a cross.[A] In Brick Court there is a dial with the apt legend, "Time and tide tarry for no man." In the year 1828 an ancient building on Inner Temple Terrace was demolished, and with it a sundial bearing the strange but not inappropriate inscription, "Begone about your business." The story runs that, many years before, a crusty old bencher had promised the dial-maker to provide a motto for the then new dial. The messenger, however, arrived at an inopportune time, received the above curt dismissal in answer to his request, and conveyed it to his master as the legend to be engraved.

[Footnote A: The devices of the Middle and Inner Temple are a lamb and a horse respectively, and they may be frequently seen blazoned on window and wall. An irreverent wit once scrawled these lines on the Temple gate:

As by the Templars' hold you go, The horse and lamb displayed In emblematic figures show The merits of their trade.

The clients may infer from thence How just is their profession: The lamb sets forth their innocence, The horse their expedition.

O happy Britons, happy isle, Let foreign nations say, Where you get justice without guile, And law without delay!

In answer and in ridicule of which, a second scribbler penned the following stanzas beneath:

Deluded men, these holds forego, Nor trust such cunning elves: These artful emblems tend to show Their clients, not themselves.

'Tis all a trick; these are all shams By which they mean to cheat you: But have a care,—for you're the lambs, And they the wolves that eat you.

Nor let the thought of "no delay" To these their courts misguide you: 'Tis you're the showy horse, and they The jockeys that will ride you.]

The din and devastation of civil strife and the smoke and flame of conflagration have more than once surged high and furious in and around the Temple. In Wat Tyler's rebellion many of the houses were razed by the rioters, books and parchments were carried away and fed to bonfires, and it was the intention of the rebels to destroy the precinct and the lawyers together, for thus, they said, they would obliterate both unjust laws and corrupt law-makers. The "No-Popery" rioters in 1780 marched to attack the Temple, but were awed into flight by the apparently determined front presented by the lawyers and students, who were really in desperate fear themselves. Street-fights with the lawless Alsatians of the adjoining Whitefriars region were at one time frequent.[B] In 1553, and again in 1669, the mayor of the city essayed to "pass through the cloisters with drawn sword." The Temple claimed immunity from civic control, and on both occasions the mayor's weapon was beaten down and a bloody affray resulted. An appeal growing out of this event was made to Charles II. by Heneage Finch in behalf of the Temple, but the question is still unsettled. Hence the modern Templars close their gates at ten o'clock every night, and when the "charity children" of the adjacent parishes "beat the bounds" on Ascension Day, redouble their vigilance. The rich rental of the property pays no local taxes, though repeated efforts have been made to assess it.

[Footnote B: Salisbury Court, Whitefriars, enjoyed for centuries the privilege of a sanctuary—at first for criminals, but finally for debtors only—until 1697, when it was abolished by royal warrant. It was nicknamed "Alsatia," in imitation of the frontier province of the same name, which was long a cause of contention and familiarly known to English soldiers in the long Continental wars. As Cunningham observes, "In the Temple students were trying to keep the law, and in Alsatia, adjoining, debtors to avoid and violate it. The Alsatians were troublesome neighbors to the Templars, and the Templars as troublesome neighbors to the Alsatians."]

In 1666 the Great Fire of London burnt its way westward as far as the Temple. After consuming several sets of chambers and a quantity of title-deeds to many valuable estates, the course of the flames was stayed just east of the Temple Church. But in 1678-79, in the mouth of January, a large area was burned over. The fire lasted from midnight till noon of the ensuing day. Pump Court, Vine Court, part of Brick Court, Elm-Tree Court, Hare Court, part of Middle Temple Hall, a portion of Inner Temple Hall, and the old cloisters, were swept away. The season was remarkable for its severity: the Thames was frozen over, and the supply of water entirely inadequate. So great hogsheads of ale were hoisted up from the cellars and the liquor fed to the clumsy hand-engines of the period. When the ale gave out, recourse was had to gunpowder,—buildings in the track of the flames being blown up; but in this dangerous work the Temple library was demolished. In the end, however, the Temple was the gainer by this fire: much better structures took the place of the old rookeries, and the entire precinct was purified.

Around the hoary walls of the Temple cluster memories of many a strange custom or quaint observance. The revels at Yule-tide, St. Stephen's Day, New Year's Day, and Twelfth Night were not surpassed anywhere in "merrie England." Feasts, masques, and play-acting at various times greatly scandalized the more sober and staid among the benchers. Stowe tells us that the readers of his day "for upwards of three weeks kept a splendid table, feasting the nobility, judges, bishops, principal officers of state, and sometimes the king himself, insomuch that it has cost a reader above one thousand pounds,"—a mint of money in those frugal days. Revelries grew in frequency and attractiveness as the business of instruction declined, so much so that we are compelled to believe that at one period the qualifications for admission were merely nominal. A banquet given by Sir Heneage Finch the year following the restoration of Charles II. lasted from the 4th to the 17th of August, and all London was invited and made welcome.

In one point the Templars of to-day are not a whit behind their predecessors: they give good dinners. For centuries the benchers of the two societies have dined in each other's company once a year in the great hall; and to Mr. Thornbury we are indebted for the following description of a Temple dinner of to-day:

"An Inner Temple banquet is a very grand thing. At five or half-past five the barristers and students in their gowns follow the benchers in procession to the dais; the steward strikes the table solemnly a mystic three times; grace is said by the treasurer or senior bencher present, and the men of law fall to. In former times it was the custom to blow a horn in every court to announce the meal. The benchers observe somewhat more style at their table than the other members do at theirs. The general repast is a tureen of soup, a joint of meat, a tart, and cheese to each mess, consisting of four persons, and each mess is allowed a bottle of port wine. Dinner is served daily to the members of the Inn during term-time,—the masters of the bench dining on the dais, and the barristers and students at long tables extending down the hall. On grand days the judges are present, who dine in succession with each of the four Inns of Court. To the parliament chamber, adjoining the hall, the benchers repair after dinner. The 'loving-cups' used on certain grand occasions are huge silver goblets, which are passed down the table filled with a delicious composition, immemorially termed 'sack,' consisting of sweetened and exquisitely flavored white wine. The butler attends the progress of the cup to replenish it, and each student is by rule restricted to a sip; yet it is recorded that once, though the number present fell short of seventy, thirty-six quarts of the liquid were sipped away. At the Inner Temple, on May 29, a gold cup of sack is handed to each member, who drinks to the happy restoration of Charles II."

The Temple has been for generations a favorite abode with men of letters and others having no leaning toward or connection with the bar. It is a vast bachelors' hall. Fleet Street and its immediate vicinity is the centre of the publishing interest of London. Here many of the great dailies are edited and printed, and "Brain Street," as George Augustus Sala fitly nicknamed it, is midway between the "city" and the "West End, "—the "down town" and the "up town" of London, if such a simile is permissible as applied to a brick-and-mortar polypus whose members radiate toward every point of the compass. No part of the Temple is more than five minutes' walk from this centre of intellectual industry, and yet, once within its walls, the silence and seclusion are complete. The roar and rattle of Fleet Street and the Strand might be a thousand miles away, for scarce a murmur penetrates beyond the Temple gates. The quiet, stone-paved courts, the grassy nooks gemmed with a few choice blossoms, the soft-plashing fountains, overshadowed by sturdy elm-, plane-, or fig-trees, the cool stone archways leading from one court to another, the park-like expanse of the Temple Garden, bounded by the bustling Embankment and the swift-flowing river, are surroundings favorable alike to the labors of a busy journalist, to the novelist's weavings of fiction, to the poet's subtile creations, to the purposeful studies of the patient scholar, or to the objectless dreamings of the mere "man about town."

HENRY FREDERIC REDDALL.

* * * * *



"MEES."

Red-armed Annette gave a final glance at the table, and as the clock was striking eight summoned Frau Pastorin Raben's boarders to supper. Promptly came the two Von Ente girls, high-born and high-posed damsels, forced to make themselves teachers. It had been a sad blow to their pride. The elder was somewhat consoled by a huge carbuncle brooch given to her by Kaiser Wilhelm himself. The younger was named for a very great lady; and when a letter came from the very great lady the recipient lifted her head and remembered that, whatever happened, she was a Von Ente.

Following them close, there entered the dining-room a woman who painted pictures and sold them. Hedwig Vogel was about fifty, tall, angular, hard-featured. She was reported to be very rich and very mean. Moreover, she was an undoubted democrat; for when Elsa von Ente's lady patron came to the house, everybody kissed the august dame's hand except Hedwig Vogel and "the Mees." Of course "the Mees," poor thing! knew no better; but FrAulein Vogel!—a woman guilty of such a misdemeanor was capable of putting dynamite in Bismarck's night-cap. She responded curtly to the greeting given to her by the Von Entes, and then asked where the Frau Pastorin might be.

"Here," answered a soft voice, and the plump, smiling, suave mistress of the house entered and seated herself at the table. As she bowed her head to invoke a blessing on the smoked herring, the raw ham, the salad, the three kinds of bread, a tardy boarder opened the dining-room door. She stood on the threshold for a minute, then moved swiftly to her place.

"Good-evening, Mees," said the Frau Pastorin, and "Good-evening, Mees," echoed the Von Entes. FrAulein Vogel contented herself with a nod, and attacked bread and ham in hungry silence.

"Your walk has given you a fine color," the Frau Pastorin continued blandly. Then, turning to the artist, "You should paint the Mees, FrAulein. 'A Study of America.' That would sound well, would it not?"

The Study of America smiled a little disdainfully, and refused the raw ham and the herring offered to her by Elsa von Ente. She had refused raw ham and smoked herring at least a hundred times, but yet the Frau Pastorin protested.

"I am sad there is nothing for you," she murmured in English,—a language she fondly fancied she spoke.

"Oh, there is bread galore," said the Mees.

This set the hostess to thinking. Bread she understood; but what was bread galore?

"I should like to learn some American dishes," she said. "Buckwhit cakes, —so, is it right?—I have read of them. How you would relish them to-night, would you not?"

"No," said Mees ungraciously.

"Not?" said the Von Entes, who talked together habitually. "But what then?"

"Beef—mutton—chickens," said Mees.

"We have them here," murmured the Frau Pastorin sweetly.

"Do you?" said Mees, quite as sweetly. And Hedwig Vogel burst out laughing. The Frau Pastorin bit her lip, the Von Ente girls looked blank, and Annette scuttled away, smelling danger from afar, for she knew full well that she often received a vicarious reproof.

Supper over, the table was cleared and a big Bible laid before the Frau Pastorin, who, as a clergyman's widow, felt that it was her duty to set a good example to the sojourners beneath her roof. Hedwig Vogel, however, did not stay to the reading: she went up to her bare, lonely rooms. They were totally lacking in character, for neither the woman nor the artist was betrayed in their appointments. Everything was scrupulously clean and painfully neat about them. German-fashion, the square table was pushed close to the sofa, and held a lamp and four never-opened books. Here FrAulein Vogel seated herself, turned up the lamp-wick, and then crossed her long, lean, sinewy hands in her lap. The tall white porcelain stove made the room so warm that she presently rose and set a window open a little way. She was indeed a dangerous, unconventional creature, a Prussian who cared neither for great ladies nor draughts. She stood there, feeling the damp air of early spring blow in her face. From the beer-hall near by came the sound of music; over the pavement rattled a cart drawn by two weary dogs and followed by a yet wearier peasant-woman; with a brave clink-clank of spurs and sword strode by a brave lieutenant. Above all these sounds FrAulein Vogel's quick ear caught a light foot-fall on the bare stairs without. She crossed the parlor and flung open the door.

"Mees."

"Yes, most gracious lady."

"Ridiculous,—'gracious lady'! Come in."

Mees obeyed, and took the place of honor on the sofa beside the painter.

"I have a favor to ask," she said, with a deprecatory smile, "Don't call me Mees, please. It does not mean anything."

"Shall I say Mees Varing?" asked the painter, with a struggle to pronounce the name properly.

"Unless you like Kitty better," said Mees.

"Kitty—Kitty." FrAulein Vogel repeated it gravely. "Kitty." She smiled. "Kitty Varing, of New York. Now I have it all."

"No," said Kitty, "not quite. Of Withlacootchie, New York."

They both laughed, the Indian name was so unmanageable. Kitty finally wrote it down, and the painter pronounced it over and over again. At last she straightened up, and said sternly,

"But where is the picture, Mees—Kitty?"

"Ah, you don't want to see it," Kitty exclaimed; "and I don't want to show it to you. I tell you I have no talent. I suppose, though, patience must tell in the end," she added, half to herself.

"Yes, it will tell," said the painter grimly. "It will tell—something. Go get your picture now."

Kitty crossed the corridor to her own little room. There was the picture, —a sketch in oils of the best-known model in DAYsseldorf, this time rigged out as a Roman peasant. The girl looked at the picture with a frown; she seized it as though she would dash it on the floor in scorn, but, checking the impulse, she carried it to FrAulein Vogel.

The successful painter looked at the sketch in silence for a full minute, holding it off at arm's length. Finally, she laid it down on the table, murmuring, "And after three years' hard work!"

"Only a year's real work," Kitty broke in eagerly. "I have only been here a year, you know; and those two years at home I ought not to count, for I did not work then as I do now."

"Why not?" asked FrAulein Vogel sharply. And Kitty changed color.

"Ah, one must not ask questions," FrAulein Vogel remarked; "but one can have plenty of suspicions. I dare say you were in love, and, as love failed, you have taken to art. So it goes with women. Everything but marriage is a pis-aller."

Kitty half rose: the stray arrow had sped home, and it rankled in a new wound.

"I am a woman myself," added FrAulein Vogel, with a droll smile that melted the girl's anger in an instant.

Kitty dropped down on the sofa. "Well," she said gayly, "I grant that I was in love once on a time; but that is all past. Now I want to be a painter. Listen: I have not much money, I have no friends,—that is, friends such as we read about,—and I must learn to make some money. When I am thirty I shall begin to make money; otherwise—"

"You are spending your capital," said FrAulein Vogel.

"If I spent only my income I should either wear shoes and no clothes, or clothes and no shoes," answered Kitty, laughing, with a little air of recklessness that sat well on her. "Besides," she added sagely, "it is well to burn one's ships. Sink or swim."

"But you are quite sure of swimming?" said FrAulein Vogel, taking up the picture again and looking at it closely.

"It is very bad," Kitty said.

"Abominable," said the painter. She drew a long breath and shook her head. "Abominable," she repeated, almost as though such an abominable piece of work demanded respect. "Ach! You leave old Zweifarbe's studio," she exclaimed. "Send your easel over to me. You want to make some money? Good. There are many artists here in DAYsseldorf who say I cannot paint; there is not one who will say I have not made money. Perhaps I can teach you." And FrAulein Vogel burst out laughing, while Kitty stared at her in blank surprise.

"But you have never taken pupils," she stammered.

"I have never died; but I suppose I shall," was the response.

And so old Zweifarbe lost a pupil,—for Kitty's easel was straightway borne on the back of a sturdy dienstmann to FrAulein Vogel's studio. What a chatter, what a commotion, it caused in the nest of painters! They chirped and gossiped and pecked each other like a flock of sparrows. The Frau Pastorin expressed the popular sentiment when she discussed Hedwig Vogel's eccentricities.

"How much a lesson?" she said, half closing one shrewd gray eye. "How much a lesson? Ah, she would not take pupils,—no, no, not while she was Hedwig Vogel; and der liebe Gott knows she will never be Hedwig anything else. But she will make an exception for our deer Mees Varing; oh, yes, an exception! Wait till Mees Varing's rich American friends come along and buy some of the great Vogel's pictures. You will see."

"But has the Mees any rich friends?" asked her crony the Frau Doctorin.

And then the parson's widow laughed in a worldly way.

"So pretty a girl," she said, "so fine a complexion, such little feet! And those winning ways!"

From which it will be seen that the Frau Pastorin could admire and appreciate a woman who was young and beautiful. So could the painters; but that is easier to believe. And so could the tight-booted lieutenants; but that is perfectly understood. When Kitty Waring crossed the Hof Garten, even that old woman who years and years ago sold little Heinrich Heine plums would point out the girl to her contemporary the venerable under-gardener.

"HAYbsch" the old woman would growl.

"Aber leichtsinnig—leichtsinnig," the old man would add,—for he was a misogynist.

But Kitty was not quite leichtsinnig, although she did stroll through the garden sometimes with Fritz Goebel, sometimes with Otho Weiss, sometimes with her fellow-countryman Joe Buckley. They were all young, all painters, all poor. Who cared what they did? What if they sat on a beach under a linden-tree and played cat's-cradle like children? What if they made little excursions to Zons or to Xanten? What if there was a supper in Joe Buckley's studio, and Kitty Waring and Anna van der Meer—a sedate creature from Rotterdam was she—were taught how to make a true, good bowl? Who cared? In fact, all DAYsseldorf cared.

One day the Frau Pastorin called Kitty into her parlor. "Dear child," she began, "if your good mother—"

"She has been dead fifteen years," said Kitty.

"If your father—" continued the Frau Pastorin.

"He? Oh, I can't remember him at all," said Kitty.

"Have you no family?" was the question that the Frau Pastorin put squarely.

"An uncle or two somewhere in Iowa," Kitty answered. "An aunt brought me up, and then died, poor thing!" A smile flitted across Kitty's face, and tears sprang to her eyes; but her questioner saw only the smile. The world is full of such purblind folk.

"Where were you last night so late?" she said acridly.

Kitty turned on the plump little woman and looked down at her.

"When Miss Smythe told me that I should find a pleasant home here, she made a sad mistake," was the irrelevant answer that Mees gave. It puzzled the Frau Pastorin for full a week. Then Hedwig Vogel and Mees paid their honest debts and took up quarters with Frau Tisch, in the Rosenstrasse.

"It is much pleasanter here," cried; Kitty, as she moved about the parlor, transforming the commonplace aspect of the room. "And it is cheap, too. I thought Frau Tisch would ask more than Frau Raben."

"It is less because we club together," said FrAulein Vogel.

Kitty might have suspected something if her new friend had not had the name of being so close-fisted. Who would dream that Hedwig Vogel could be free-handed?—she who would beat a gemAYse-frau out of two cents; she who refused to subscribe to the fund for painters' widows, declaring that it was as likely she would leave a widow as be left one. She was not susceptible, she cared naught for sweet smiles and gentle ways. That she, a gaunt, grim, brusque woman of fifty, could suddenly feel all the stifled mother-love within her spring up,—that was preposterous, the vain imagining of a romancer.

They worked together, these two, in Hedwig Vogel's studio, and Kitty strove to make up for her lack of talent by her abundance of patience.

"Why did you decide to be a painter?" FrAulein Vogel asked her one day.

"Because I had a start in that line," Kitty answered. "If I had had a start in music I should have tried to play or sing. I wonder if I could sing? They say everybody has a voice. People are just like fields: plough 'em up, plant cabbages, plant potatoes, you can raise some sort of a crop. How do you happen to be a painter?"

Hedwig Vogel paused, palette in one hand, brush in the other. "Because I would rather paint than eat," she answered.

"That is genius," said Kitty solemnly. "I would rather eat. That is lack of genius. But because I want to eat I paint. That is—what would you call that?"

"You have a daub of ochre on your nose," said FrAulein Vogel.

"Anyway," Kitty remarked after a while, "if worse came to worst I could teach. There is German. Now, I really speak German well, don't I? I could teach that."

"Oh, you have the gift o' gab!" said the painter. "But you will be married, sure."

A long silence followed. "I am twenty-four," said Kitty.

"There is no safety for you this side of the grave," said FrAulein Vogel.

"I may be married, but I doubt it," Kitty continued. "I—" And then she dropped her brushes, flung herself prone on the floor, and burst into passionate tears. Hedwig Vogel did not try to comfort her, but she knelt beside her and put her strong right arm about the girl's quivering shoulders. At last Kitty sat up and brushed back her tangled hair.

"Every day I think of him," she said. "Every day I hope, I pray he will come. I watch for the postman,—I have watched for him so long. He never brings me a letter, but my heart stops beating when he draws near the house. When he rings the bell, when the servant comes up the stairs, I shut my eyes. I can almost believe I have the letter in my hand. I almost see the words. But there is never a letter,—there never can be. Oh, I—" She rose and walked to and fro. "I am to blame," she added, laying her hand on Fraulein Vogel's shoulder. "I wronged him by my suspicion, my petty jealousy; then I ran away from him, and expected him to roam over Europe trying to find me. I hid myself from him, and I am eating my heart out because he does not come."

"Suppose," said FrAulein Vogel, "that he is seeking for you now?"

Kitty's wet eyes shone for a moment. "I am not worth that," she said.

"But if he loves you?"

"Oh, he loves me, I know!" she exclaimed. "And I doubted him. I thought all manner of base thoughts, and I told him of them to his face,—to him, the noblest, dearest,—and he never reproached me. Do you wonder I am ashamed to write to him? Do you wonder I dare not ask his pardon?"

"If he loves you he would forgive anything," said FrAulein Vogel.

The room had grown dark, and they mechanically washed their brushes, cleaned their palettes, and made ready to go home. As they crossed the Hof Garten, two or three young painters joined them, and the talk ran on gayly. FrAulein Vogel had heard Kitty's laugh ring out many a time before, but never until now did she hear the sad note that dimmed the sweetness of it. The young men turned away at last.

"To-morrow, then, at eight," sang out Otho Weiss.

"Until to-morrow," cried the others.

"Until to-morrow," Kitty echoed. "Always to-morrow," she added softly to herself.

"I do not understand," said FrAulein Vogel, going back to the talk in the studio.

"I was jealous," Kitty answered simply. "He was above me in station—"

"I thought there was no rank in America," said FrAulein Vogel.

"Then you cannot understand how a big tradesman scorns a little one," Kitty rejoined. "My aunt kept a shop, but she would never let me help her sell pins and needles and tape. No, I must go to school with girls whose fathers sold pins by the ton instead of by the paper,—or by the pound, as you do here. His father sold them by the ton,—a mere matter of big and little. The family was reconciled to me after a while. You see, the family had to be reconciled, for Frank did not care what they said to him."

"He loved you," said FrAulein Vogel.

"Yes, but they wanted him to love somebody else. Perhaps he would have done so if I had not come in his way. Perhaps he would have married the right girl,—a limp, languid creature, with money enough to build a cathedral like the one at Cologne. She made the trouble. They said he was tired of me, that he repented his impetuosity; and I heard it all, and I grew jealous,—jealous of nothing. I reproached him, told him that he wanted her and her money. Then came the crash. My aunt died. I had a chance to come to Europe with some people, and I did not even bid him good-by. Now I expect him to write to me—to find me."

She laughed a little as she said this. "Some day," said FrAulein Vogel. "If he loves you," she added.

"I doubted him," Kitty said, "and I deserve all this. Ah, if you knew him, if you saw him, you would know what a fool I was!"

They had reached the house by this time, and, as Kitty opened the door, she added, "I must write soon. I must hear something about him. What may not have happened in a year? Perhaps he is dead."

She did not mention her lover again to FrAulein Vogel, but she showed her his portrait; and the sharp-eyed painter looked at the frank, manly face a long time.

"Write to him, you foolish woman," she said.

"Not yet. I will wait a little longer," Kitty rejoined.

The summer wore away. In August they went for a fortnight to a little place near Remagen,—Bad Neunahr it is called,—and here Kitty's eyes were opened, and she suddenly awoke to the fact that her new friend was no ordinary friend.

"You need not worry about money," said FrAulein Vogel. "If you don't learn how to make it, you know how to spend it. I could never learn that myself."

But in the autumn Kitty only worked the harder, believing with all her heart that patience would make a respectable, picture-selling painter out of a Chinese mandarin. When the gray dawn stole in at the window she sprang out of bed, dressed, and was off to the studio for an hour before breakfast. She begrudged the time spent for dinner, she bemoaned a dark day, and she laid her brushes down reluctantly in the twilight. In the evening she wanted to go to the theatre, to a concert, to a supper. Such as she find plenty of companions, and from time to time DAYsseldorf raised its hands over her doings. FrAulein Vogel watched and waited in a sort of patient agony, but at last, not without deep reflection, she wrote a letter to Kitty's sweetheart. She read his name on the back of a photograph, she knew well how to spell the name of the town, she knew the town was near New York, she knew New York was in North America, and she had to buy an extra big envelope to hold the whole address. But the letter was a terrible thing, and a happy thought came to her. She made a little picture of Kitty,—a perfect little picture,—and beneath it she wrote name and address. That was better than a thousand letters. Carefully she did it up, placing tissue-paper above and beneath the cardboard, and laying it tenderly in a white box. Surely it could not go astray, unless all the post-office men were blind; but, to make sure, she would register it, if that were possible. All must be done without Kitty's knowledge, and the touch of mystery made the romance the sweeter. One fine day she sallied forth to send the little portrait on its way. She entered the Hof Garten, sauntered down the Linden AllA(C)e thinking all the while how delightfully the comedy would end. Her own part, as good fairy of the play, pleased her, too, and she smiled to herself as she strayed off from the AllA(C)e and, seating herself on a bench that was well screened from prying eyes, she gave herself up to revery. Of course the lover would come, of course he would carry Kitty off; but FrAulein Vogel did not mean to be left far behind. She would look after Kitty, for the foolish, impetuous creature would need at least two people to keep her out of mischief.

"Frank."

Some one uttered the name, and FrAulein Vogel peered through the leaves. Sitting near was a pale, sweet-faced woman, drawing figures in the gravel with the tip of her parasol.

"Frank," she repeated, "shall we go home?"

"Do you mean Withlacootchie or the hotel?" was the answer.

The man had his back to FrAulein Vogel, but now he turned, and she recognized him. The portrait had lied a little, as portraits will lie, and yet he was a handsome man enough, after all.

"Home or the hotel, dear?" His voice was very gentle, and his smile tender. "Are you tired of wandering?" he added.

"Oh, no!" she said, "but whither shall we wander?"

"Up-stairs, down-stairs, in my ladies' chamber," he rejoined. "Last summer, the Tyrol; last winter, Italy; this summer, Switzerland; now,—where? We are making a long honeymoon of it."

"And are you tired?" she asked.

He gave a rapid glance up and down the AllA(C)e then stooped and kissed her.

FrAulein Vogel had not understood all the words, the caress she saw. She rose and went slowly homeward. In the tiny DAYssel the swans were floating majestically, and, standing there on the bank, she tore the box and the picture into scraps and flung them in the water. The swans hastened after the bits of white paper; they fought and screamed over them, and the victor proudly bore away a fragment from his envious mates, only to discover that it was worthless.

CHARLES DUNNING.

* * * * *



THE NEXT VACATION.

If it finds you with fifty dollars and a fortnight at your command, you cannot do better than spend both on the Great Lakes.

You don't care for water? But the Great Lakes are not water. You follow closely the most interesting and wonderful shore, and seven different times stop for several hours at places on the coast.

Or perhaps you do care for water, and would not like hugging the shore? One day, at least, on Lake Huron, you would be out of sight of land; and if you should have a lake storm, you would have all the ocean "fun" you would care for.

Or you were thinking of the Thousand Isles? There are a thousand isles in the northern part of Lake Huron, just before you turn into the little winding river that leads to the "Soo."

Or you had planned to see Lake George this year? You will see a beautiful copy of Lake George as you leave the little town of Hancock and pass from the narrow river into a broad expanse dotted with islands, just before entering the canal that leads to the upper part of Lake Superior.

But you had rather go West, among the mines? What mines can you find, more interesting than the great copper-mines of Calumet and Hecla and Quincy?—the only place in the United States, indeed, where you can see the curious man-engine, with its arrangement of changing-platforms for carrying the miners up and down.

Well, you meant to go "canoeing." Some very choice canoeing and shooting of rapids you can have during the hours at the Sault Ste. Marie, popularly known as the "Soo," and during the two days that the steamer waits at Duluth before the return-trip Lake Superior will prove not an unattractive spot to paddle about in.

Add to this the interest of the magnificent new locks at the "Soo," the historical and romantic associations with Marquette and Mackinac (for you will not forget that Miss Woolson's "Anne" lived on the Great Lakes), and the creature comforts of big state-rooms, with large, comfortable beds, and running water in the basins, on admirable steamers that set an excellent hotel-table, and you will wonder, as we did, that so few tourists seem to know about, or care for, one of the most enjoyable excursions in the country,—I am quite sure I can say the most enjoyable for the little money it costs.

We took it ourselves quite by accident,—willing to go out of our way a little on the journey to Colorado in the heat of summer for the sake of a little trip by water to compensate for the sea-shore cottage we were leaving behind us for the season. We did not, indeed, begin the trip, as the steamers do, at Buffalo; for, although time and tide wait for no man at the East, at the West there are no tides, and time was willing to make an appointment for us to overtake the steamer at Detroit. We were glad of an excuse for lingering at the House Beautiful in Buffalo, where we would rather spend Sunday any time than on any lake in the world. Fortunately, we had "been to the Falls" many times before, and had seen Niagara in winter splendor and summer loveliness: so we were at liberty to idle away the fleeting hours in the shades of Delaware Avenue, on charming piazzas, till the time came when we must start on the flying trip through Canada if we would overtake the steamer Japan.

She was just gliding into her dock at Detroit as we stepped from the cars, and we still had three or four hours' leisure before she would start again in which to drive about the pretty city and call on friends. Just before midnight we embarked, and our first experience of the Great Lakes was a night of peaceful and serene slumber.

Peaceful and serene, too, was the following day,—a patient waiting for the scenery to begin, sitting with novels on what was facetiously known as "the back piazza" of the Japan, out of sight of land, but gliding over a sea so smooth that the hanging flower-baskets on the deck scarcely stirred. If you scorn such tame delights when apparently at sea, remember that it might have been rough as only lakes are rough in a great storm. It was very warm. The captain's assurance that the next morning we should want to borrow his overcoat and mittens had no effect in disguising the fact that it was warm. The ladies dressed for dinner, many of them in white; and the only excitement of the afternoon was the "sighting" of the Michigan, United States man-of-war, cruising in lake-waters. A little knot of officers on deck waved their handkerchiefs; a little knot of pretty girls on the Japan were responding eagerly, when a severe and elderly voice was heard to say, with distinctness, "The officers' wives are on board the Japan. They are waving to them."

And in fact, as we glided past, a little child was seen at a port-hole of the Michigan, waving a handkerchief to mamma on the Japan. It had been seriously ill, and the mother, forbidden by the United States government to remain with her sick child on the Michigan, preferred to leave him there with his father, where he could have the care of the special surgeon who understood the case, while she followed as closely as she could in one of the lake-steamers. Ah, how interested we all were! It is recorded in history that certain enemies of the Egyptians used to go into battle with them with each man holding a cat in his arms. Suppose in our next war we try the effect upon our enemies of letting each of our soldiers carry a white-robed baby? One thing is certain, the Michigan captured the Japan with all on board that day simply by exhibiting that little white figure at its port-hole. The next day at the "Soo" not a murmur of dissent was heard when the good-natured captain, who had no European mails on board, said he would wait an extra hour for the Michigan to come up, that the anxious mother might have twenty-four hours' later news.

On the second morning there was an entire change of weather and landscape. The sun still shone gloriously (the thermometer that day in Chicago stood at 94), but rugs, seal-skins, and hoods were in demand. We were no longer out of sight of land, but were threading our way in and out among a thousand isles, with hills that seemed almost mountains threatening to bar our course before long if we did not turn back the way we came. No one, the captain said, had ever been known to guess the channel correctly; but before long we had made a sharp turn to the left at the only spot that offered an outlet, and found the Great Lakes narrowed suddenly to a beautiful winding river which led us in the course of another hour or two to the "Soo." Here the steamer would wait three hours, and we could explore the queer little town,—quite a popular resort in summer,—or inspect the splendid locks of the great canal, or shoot the rapids. To me it was a genuine pleasure to find at last some rapids that were visible to the naked eye. The famous rapids of the St. Lawrence had been a severe disappointment, but here were rapids worthy of the name. Lake Superior was visibly above us, Lake Huron visibly below, and between ran the turbulent little stream which of course must be flowing into Lake Huron, though we could not have told merely by looking at it which way the current ran.

"Would we go up the rapids?" We had heard of going down the rapids, but in reality the most wonderful part of the performance is going up. Not only is the current fearfully swift, even close to the shore as it is necessary to keep, but the water seems to be only a few inches deep, and the rocks are as thick as plums in a Christmas pudding. Yet two Indians, standing erect, one in the bow and one in the stern of the canoe, pole you up the stream against these terrible odds as easily and surely as a Harvard oarsman might row you across Seneca Lake. Then they pause for a moment.

"How will you have it going down? Rough?" they ask.

"Rough," we answer, wondering what in the world they can mean by speaking as if they were the autocrats of wind and current.

But it seems there are two channels,—one near shore for the timid, and one in mid-stream. We were not to be betrayed into any exhibition of timidity after that first hesitating question, "Do you know the rapids well? How many times have you taken people down?" To which the quiet reply had been, "Three times a day, lady, for twenty years." Twenty thousand times, by rough calculation!

So we went over in mid-stream, and were not sorry,—receiving as we stepped ashore what is probably a part of every programme, the compliment of being "the bravest lady that ever went over the falls."

Many a pleasant day, or week, one might undoubtedly spend at the Sault Ste. Marie, or at Mackinac; but if you have only turned through the straits and gone southward again to Chicago through Lake Michigan, do not think of saying that you have taken the trip on the Great Lakes. To me the Great Lakes will always mean Lake Superior. It is something unique in the geography of the world, and you have the consciousness of your actual height above the level of the sea as you rarely have on any elevated land that is not actually a mountain. Ruskin says that for him the flowers lose their light, the river its music, when he tries to divest any given landscape of its associations with human struggle and endeavor. Our New World scenery, of course, has little of that wonderful charm of association; but there is something singularly impressive in the mere silence and vastness of our great Northern solitudes.

We entered Lake Superior late in the afternoon, and the only event of the evening was a magnificent aurora. Toward midnight the gorgeous tints changed to a thin wedge of perfectly white light, against which in a duskier white the sails of passing vessels were distinctly outlined, though no hulls were visible.

At Marquette, in the morning, a party of Finnish emigrants on board left the ship. Half a dozen Americanized Finns, who had evidently been the inspiring cause of this influx of new citizens, had come to the wharf to greet the new arrivals. They had the same short stature, the same stolid features, as their relatives on board; but there was a difference. The white shirt, the clean collar, the smart straw hat and vivid necktie, with a vigorous step, alert manner, decisive tones, and a certain tendency to help the women with their heavy boxes, distinctly individualized those who had been awhile under American influence.

All day we basked in the sunshine on the captain's bridge. Think of being glad to bask in the sunshine on a 4th of August! Between Marquette and Portage River we passed but one house,—one solitary, lonely house, set on the very edge of the "unsalted sea;" before it a vast expanse of limitless waters, behind it an unbroken, limitless forest; no fields, no crops, no roads, only space enough cleared for the tiny cabin and tinier shed. What had lured people there? What kept them alive? No neighbors, no mail, no farm, no apparent object in life, and only one small rowboat to get away in.

Yet they had put a curtain up at the window! No human being could by any possibility look in at that window. Even the curtain could only be detected with an opera-glass from the steamer that passed twice a week. But the sweet instinct of privacy and home had had its way, and every night the little curtain that never shut out anything but the incurious moonlight or the innocent stars was drawn as regularly as the shades of a Fifth Avenue mansion. Later we learned that it was the Life-Saving Station of Lake Superior.

"No nap this afternoon, ladies," said the captain as he left the luncheon-table. "You must be on the lookout for Portage River."

All the afternoon we watched for the little river, eked out by a canal, that enables us to cut off one hundred and twenty miles of what would be the course around Keweena Point, besides giving what is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole trip. So narrow is the opening of the river that no trace of it is to be seen till we are close upon it; yet swift as the dove from far Palmyra flying, unerring as an arrow from the bow, the great ship sweeps across the lake to exactly the right spot. The river is hardly the width of a canal, yet curves as no canal would ever curve, so that the captain in giving orders has to watch both ends of the vessel to see that neither runs aground. It would be impossible for two steamers to pass each other in the river, and the contingency of their meeting is guarded against by the fact that returning steamers have to go round the Point, being too heavily laden with flour from Duluth. As it was, there were but thirteen feet of water in the river, and the Japan drew twelve.

Once in the river, we experienced a most extraordinary transformation. Every one knows what it is to pass in a day or two from northern snow to southern roses, or in a few hours from valley roses to mountain snow; but here, in five minutes, and remaining on precisely the same level, we passed from October to July. The cold lake-breeze died away, and on the little inland river the sun was actually oppressive. Seal-skins were cast aside, and we sent hastily below for sun-umbrellas. The speed of the steamer was slackened to four miles an hour. You heard no click of machinery or swash of water against the sides: we were gliding on through a green and lovely marsh, with water-lilies all about us and wild roses in the distance. Cattle stood knee-deep in pleasant brooks, locusts hummed and buzzed in the warm air, all sweet summer sounds and scents encompassed us. There was even a little settlement of scattered houses; but the expected steamer had evidently created no excitement in the inmates. It would not stop; it brought them neither mail nor summer boarder: why should they care just to see it pass? One man, painting the window-sashes of his house with his back to the steamer, never even turned or paused from his work, though we were so near that he might have heard what was said about him on the deck. It is not the dweller in the wilderness, but the denizen of cities, that longs for something to happen.

At Hancock the steamer waits several hours, giving an opportunity to visit the wonderful copper-mines. We chanced to be there just at the hour to see one of the unique sights of America,—the working of the man-engine that brings the miners up from their work. Even by machinery it takes them half an hour to reach daylight. The mine is worked to the depth of fifteen hundred feet, and for five hundred we could gaze down into the dark and awful shaft, lit for us by the candles burning in the miners' caps. Two long beams, to which are attached at right angles little platforms at intervals of eight feet, each platform holding one man, work up and down. As each man reaches the level of the platform above on the opposite beam the engine stops just long enough for him to step from one to the other. The long, silent, spectral procession, moving with such shadowy precision and constant motion, with the glimmering lights changing, not fitfully, but with the regularity of well-trained will-o'-the-wisps, made a panorama not easily forgotten. Every minute or two, as the engine paused, the miner whose platform had reached the top sprang suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, out of the opening into which we were gazing, touched his hat, and disappeared into the town. Long as we waited, the procession was not yet ended when we had to go back to the Japan.

It is just beyond Hancock that the river broadens into the beautiful expanse so like Lake George. As we glided away from the wharf in the light of a splendid sunset, it was curious to look back at the simple little town, so remote from luxury, even from civilization, so humble in its own wants and pleasures, yet pouring such vast sources of supply into the great world of which it knew nothing and asked nothing, save the privilege of enriching it.

At twilight we entered the canal. I have been up the Saguenay, I have been over the Marshall Pass and through the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas, and I have seen many noble scenes in Europe, but no scenery has ever impressed me with such solemnity as the landscape on that canal in the twilight of an August afternoon. Nor was it merely a personal impression. There were two hundred souls on board, with the usual proportion of giddy young girls and talkative youths; the negro waiters as we entered the canal were singing and playing their violins; but in an instant, as the speed of the steamer was again checked to four miles an hour, every sound was hushed on board. During the hour that was occupied in going through the canal, it is a literal fact that not a sound was heard on the great steamer but the low impressive orders of the captain and—if you chanced to be on the captain's bridge—the ticking of the clock in the wheel-house. People spoke in whispers, if they spoke at all, quite unconscious of it till they remembered it afterward. What made it so impressive? I am sure I do not know. Certainly there was nothing awful in the scenery, and we never were in less danger in our lives. We were moving peacefully through a long, narrow sheet of perfectly calm water, stretching straight as a die from the river to the upper lake. If anything had happened, we could have jumped ashore on either side, and another steamer from Buffalo would have come through in a day or two and picked us up. The only thing possible to fear was that we might ground in the shallow water, an emergency from which we could only be relieved, as there are no tides in the lakes, by the tedious process of lightening the cargo. It was a perfectly clear evening after a most beautiful day. But on either side of us, far as the eye could reach, stretched an apparently unbroken forest. Through the narrow vista cleared for our silvery pathway a slow and stately twilight came solemnly to fold us in its embrace, as we advanced solemnly and slowly from vast and awful solitudes to solitudes more vast and awful still. As we drew near the lake again, a little light-house gleamed, and, as we swept past it out into the broad expanse of limitless waters, the cheerful throb of the machinery quickened again upon the sea, the pleasant swish of the water against the ship greeted us once more, life, movement, and gayety sprang out again on board, and in an instant the entire steamer had burst into laughter and chat and song. We were really in far more danger, from storm or collision or fire, out on the great lake; but the sense of awe had been lifted from us.

We were due at Duluth at four o'clock of the following afternoon. What would she be like, this "zenith city of the unsalted seas," with such a stately avenue of approach? At three o'clock we began to see in the distance what seemed to be her cloud-capped towers and domes and palaces; at half-past three a beautiful little humming-bird, blown from the shore, lit on my scarlet necktie and pecked at this strange flower from the East; at four we were at the wharf.

"I think," said my companion slowly, gazing sorrowfully at the shanties that had made such splendid domes in the distance, "I think I should have called it Delusion, instead of Duluth. It looks like a town in Dickens's 'American Notes' illustrated by Dor?