"But, Cap," I said, "you cannot defend the custom of tearing children from their mothers?"

"No," he said gravely: "it hardened them. I have been as soft-hearted as any man over the supposed maternal anguish of negro women, but I assure you, old fellow, my own observation quite cured me. It may be there are cases, such as we weep over in Uncle Tom's Cabin, but my own experience shows not one. I think the custom of taking children in infancy to put them in dozens under the care of old negresses past work may be answerable for the indifference I have seen manifested by negro mothers. I have known more than one case where the love of a colored nurse for her white charge was strong as mother-love. I remember one woman who came to me in a violent rage to ask if I could not punish her mistress for striking her own child. The little fellow had been naughty, and had been corrected by his mother. 'What fo' she done slap Mars' Tom?' she asked: 'he ain't done nuffin', po' chile!'

"'Nonsense!' I said. 'The boy was naughty, and his mother boxed his ears. Why, Chloe,' I added, 'what do you mean by complaining? I have seen you take your own baby by one leg and throw him across the kitchen, without any regard to the stoves or kettles he might hit.'

"''Course you has,' she said coolly: 'he's allers under my feet.'

"'But you might strike his head and kill him.'

"'Well,' was the startling answer, 'he's nuffin' but a nigga.'

"And that was her own child, habitually treated with neglect and blows by his mother, while she cried over the cruelty of slapping the white child she had nursed. And it was not to curry favor, but from a sincere belief that the one child should be caressed and loved, while the other must expect knocks and blows, being 'nuffin' but a nigga.'

"One old crone told me, 'I've done had sixteen picaninnies, Mars' Cap'n, but I nebber seed none o' dem after dey was 'bout six weeks old. Dey was in de nussery, an' I was a rale smart cotton-picker, and couldn't be spar'd to nuss chillen, nohow.'

"'But were you not allowed to see your own children?' I asked, as much shocked as you would be.

"''Lowed! 'Course I was 'lowed ef I wanted to bother 'bout 'em. But Law's sakes! dey was all mixed up 'long o' de others, an' I wa'n't goin' fussin' 'bout some oder woman's baby, likely 'nuff.'

"Many such instances convinced me speedily that—whether from want of natural affection or from their having been educated to indifference I do not pretend to say—negro mothers in Mississippi had certainly no violent affection for their own offspring.

"But the most shocking case that came under my immediate notice was that of a woman seeking employment. She came to my office with two handsome boys, all three being bright mulattoes. The little fellows were about three and five years of age, with large brown eyes and pretty faces, full of fun and vivacity. The mother was a tall, fine-looking woman of twenty-two or -three, and claimed to be a good cook. I had one place in my mind, and sent her there, as a friend had mentioned to me that he wanted a cook, and if one came for employment would like to have her sent to him.

"Unfortunately, he objected to the children, but, thinking the mother could board them out, told her to 'get rid of the children' and he would employ her.

"The next day he came to me with a face of horror. 'Captain,' he said, 'the cook you sent me has murdered both her children!'

"'Murdered them?' I cried.

"'Yes. She is in the office, and you will have to see her, I suppose. It is awful!'

"I found the woman waiting my coming with a face of perfect composure.

"'Hannah,' I said, after I had heard the accusation of the people in the house where the crime was committed, 'what have you to say?'

"'Nuffin', Mars' Cap'n. Mars' T—— done sed I mus' git rid o' de picaninnies; and dey was bothersome, anyway—allers eatin', 'deed dey was, Mars' Cap'n'—this very earnestly, as if to defend herself—' allers a-hollerin' for suffin' to eat.'

"'But, Hannah, Mr. T—— wanted you to leave them with some of the women to board.'

"'Nebber sed so. Jes' sed—'deed he did—"You get rid o' dem chillens an' come here to cook." So I jes' waited till dey was asleep, an' cut deir throats. Dey nebber screeched.'

"I was sick with horror, but through the whole of the examination the woman showed no sign of emotion, though we all went to the house where the two pretty babies lay, stone dead."

"What became of her?" I asked.

"I have forgotten. I sent her to Vicksburg, as the case was too grave for my decision. I should not have held her accountable, as she was evidently under the impression that absolute obedience was the law for her race.

"It was odd," he continued, "but after that tragedy there came a farce in true dramatic order. My office was hardly cleared of the parties concerned in this dreadful murder when I was attracted to the window by the most horrible yelping and squealing, and saw two negroes, black as coals, barefooted, bareheaded and ragged, one leading a dog, one trying to drag two pigs into the yard attached to my quarters. Seeing me, one of them made a bow. 'Sarvent, Mars' Cap'n,' he said.

"'What do you want?' I asked. 'Tie those pigs up before you come in,' for he was dragging them up the steps.

"'Likely shoats, ain't dey?' said the other eagerly. 'We jes' come down 'bout dem ar shoats, Mars' Cap'n.'

"'An' dat ar dog,' broke in the other.

"Here the dog made a dash at the pigs, and in trying to escape the latter ran between the legs of the men, upsetting one. Such a hubbub of squealing pigs, barking dog, laughing and swearing men as ensued beggars description. When there was some order restored, the pigs and dog tied up in the yard, the biggest of the darkeys, scraping his best bow, said, 'We jes' come, Mars' Cap'n, 'bout a little complexity 'long o' dat ar dog and dem two shoats.'

"'No 'plexity it all, cap'n,' said the other.—'Jes' you keep to facks, you Hannibal.—You see, Mars' Cap'n, dat ar nigga he had de dog: jes' a good-for-nuffin' mongrel, he is, fo' sure now.'

"'Rale likely dog, Mars' Cap'n,' broke in the other. 'Dat ar dog'll twist a pig off'n his legs onto his back quicker'n winkin'—'deed will he.'

"I had been long enough in G—— to appreciate this speech, having seen droves of pigs in gardens or vegetable-patches routed by dogs. A monstrous pig would roll over perfectly helpless after a dexterous twist of a small dog holding the hind leg of the heavy animal between his teeth. I do not know how they are trained, but it is far more mirth-provoking than any circus to see two or three little yelping dogs rout some fifty great pigs in this way.

'"Ain't wuff two shoats,' growled the other darkey.

"'Wuff twenty-'leven racks o' bones like dem ar.'

"'Stop!' I said.—'You speak, Hannibal, and you wait till your turn,' I added to the other man.

"'You see, Mars' Cap'n,' said Hannibal, 'Bill he wanted dat ar dog o' mine powerful bad—'deed you did, you nigga!—an' he done swopped off two missable weak ole shoats on me for dat dog. Well, Mars' Cap'n, I done fed up dem shoats fo' free or fou' months; an', now dey's likely pigs an' a-makin' bacon, Bill he wants to swop back, he does.'

"'You see, Mars' Cap'n,' broke in the other, 'dat ar dog was to be a huntin'-dog, he was. Wish ter gracious you'd jes' see him hunt! Stan' an' bark an' yelp till dar ain't a quail in ten miles, he will, an' splash inter de ribber till he'll scare ebery duck fo' seven miles.'

"And then they went at it, abusing and defending the dog, till we heard a great scuffling, and saw the pigs had broken loose and were tearing down the street, followed by the dog, every nigger in sight, and, bringing up the rear, Hannibal and Bill, who never returned. How they settled their dispute I never heard."

"One! two!" chimed the mantel-clock, and we parted for the night, while I lay awake a long time musing upon the "Sambo" of my imagination and the "Sambo" of the experiences of Captain S——.

S. A. SHEILDS.



THE EMPRESS EUGENIE.

When the bloody business of the coup d'etat was definitely finished, the murder-stains washed from the streets, the victims interred, and a few thousand of the best and boldest hearts of France had taken the sorrowful road of exile, the new emperor bethought him of how best to gild his freshly-gained throne.

A court was to be constructed, and that right speedily. After the gloomy tragedy of the overthrow of the Republic, France was to be treated to the grand spectacular piece of the Second Empire. And for that a corps de ballet and trained supernumeraries were needed. The role of leading lady, too, was vacant. An empress was to be sought for without delay. Negotiations were opened with several princely houses for the hands of damsels of royal birth, but speedily came to naught. As yet, the new-made emperor was a parvenu amid his royal contemporaries. The negotiations for the hand of the Swedish princess Vasa did indeed promise at one time to be crowned with success. But the emperor sent his physician to take a look at the lady, and to judge if her physique promised healthful and numerous offspring; and this fact, coming to the ears of her family, caused a sudden stop to be put to the whole affair. Meantime, at the reunions of Compiegne, the personality of a young and lovely foreign countess was coming prominently into notice, owing to the evident impression that her charms had made upon the susceptible heart of Napoleon III. This lady, Eugenie Montijo, countess de Teba, was no longer in the first bloom of girlhood, having been born in 1826. But she was in the full meridian of a beauty which, had the crown matrimonial of France, like the apple of Ate, been dedicated to the fairest, would have ensured her the throne by sheer right divine. It is indeed said that as a young girl her charms were in no wise remarkable: on her first appearance in society at the court of Madrid she created no sensation whatever. She was too pale and quiet-looking to attract attention. But one day, the court being at Aranjuez, during a fete champetre, Mademoiselle de Montijo had the good or ill fortune to fall into one of the ornamental fishponds in the garden. She was taken out insensible, and her wet and clinging garments revealed a form of such statuesque perfection that all Madrid went raving about her beauty. She plunged a commonplace girl—she rose a Venus. And when she first attracted the notice of Napoleon she was indisputably one of the loveliest women in Europe. She was tall, slender, exquisitely proportioned, and her walk was that of a goddess. Her features were delicate and regular; her eyes long, almond-shaped, and full of a tender and dreamy sweetness: her small and faultlessly-shaped head was set upon a long, slender neck with the swaying grace of a lily upon its stalk; her shoulders were sloping and beautifully moulded, notwithstanding her lack of embonpoint, for in those days she was as slight as a reed. A profusion of fair hair—which she wore turned back from the face in the graceful style known as "a la Pompadour," but speedily to be rechristened "a l'Imperatrice"—and a hand and foot of truly royal beauty completed an ensemble of charms that were well calculated to drive poor masculine humanity out of its seven senses.

Cold and calculating as was Napoleon III., it drove him out of his, for in every respect such a marriage was an unwise and an impolitic one. It lent to his new-founded throne neither the lustre of an alliance with royalty nor the popularity that might have been gained by the selection of a Frenchwoman as the partner of his fortunes. The Spanish blood of the countess de Teba made her obnoxious in the eyes of many of her future subjects. Moreover, the antecedents of the lady were not altogether without reproach. Not that any actual stigma had ever clung to her character, but she had always been looked upon in European circles as that anomalous character in such society, a fast girl. Stories, some true and some false, were circulated respecting her follies and her escapades. Evidently, if Caesar's wife should be above suspicion, she was not the person who should have been selected to become the wife of Caesar.

The fact of the emperor's interest in the fair foreigner was revealed by an incident, slight in itself and only important by the emotions which it called forth. At one of the small intimate reunions at Compiegne, Mademoiselle de Montijo happened, while dancing, to entangle her feet in the long folds of her train, and she fell with some violence to the floor. The extreme anxiety and distress manifested by the emperor acted as a revelation to all present. A stormy opposition to the projected alliance was at once organized among the familiars of the emperor—the men who had aided in his elevation, and to whom it was too recent for them to stand in awe of him. MM. de Morny and de Persigny in particular were violent in their opposition. In fact, the latter went so far as to tell the emperor at the close of a long and stormy interview on the subject that it was hardly worth while to have made a coup d'etat to end it in such a manner. M. de Morny argued and reasoned with his imperial brother, but neither the violence of Persigny nor the arguments of De Morny made any impression on the cold and inflexible will of Napoleon III., and a few days later the countess made her appearance at one of the court-balls in a dress looped and wreathed with the imperial emblem-flower, the violet. The emperor, advancing toward her, presented her with a superb bouquet of the same significant blossoms. The meaning of that little scene was fully understood by the spectators. The marriage was irrevocably decided upon, and all that they had to do was to submit to the imperial will and make ready to offer their homage to the new empress. With the solitary exception of Prince Napoleon, the imperial family submitted with a good grace to the matrimonial projects of their chief. The Princess Mathilde in particular, although the marriage would depose her from the place that she then occupied as the first lady of the court, declared her willingness to bear the train of the new empress in public if such a duty should be required of her, as it had been of the sisters of the First Napoleon.

There remained, however, an arrangement to be completed which, though awkward and painful, was yet positively necessary. No one better than Napoleon III. was aware of the truth of the old adage which declares that a man must be off with the old love before he is on with the new. In an hotel on the Rue du Cirque dwelt a lady who had been the partner of his days of exile and ill-fortune, who had impoverished herself in his service, and who had devoted herself to furthering his aims with a persistency worthy of a better cause. This lady, the well-known Mrs. Howard, was now to be got rid of. A frank and open rupture was not in the style or the ideas of her royal and sphinx-like lover. A pretended secret mission to England lured her from Paris. She learned the truth at Boulogne, and hastened back to her home. There she found that her hotel had been visited by the police, and that a cabinet wherein she kept the letters of Louis Napoleon had been broken open and rifled of its contents. Deeply wounded by the treatment she had received, she withdrew, not without dignity, from all attempt at contesting the position with her rival. "I go," she wrote to Napoleon, "a second Josephine, bearing with me your star." To do justice to the emperor, it must be confessed that he treated her in other respects with royal liberality. The title of countess of Beauregard and a fortune of a million of dollars were allotted to her. She withdrew to England, where she afterward married. In 1865 a great longing to behold Paris once more came upon her. Her youth and beauty gone, a worn, disappointed and unhappy woman (for her marriage had turned out most wretchedly), she returned to Paris only to die. Her eldest son succeeded to the title of count de Beauregard, and was made consul at Zanzibar. Since the downfall of the Empire he has lived a sort of Bohemian existence in Paris, where his striking resemblance to Louis Napoleon has won for him the nickname of "the ghost" (le revenant).

Meanwhile, the preparations for the marriage were proceeding vigorously. The future empress and her mother had been installed in apartments at the Elysee. The household of the royal bride was already formed, including the princess of Essling as chief lady-in-waiting, and the Count (afterward Duke) Tascher de la Pagerie as head-chamberlain. The nuptial ceremony took place on the 30th of January. The bride's dress was composed of white velvet, with a veil of point d'Angleterre, the time being too short to have one of point d'Alencon manufactured. The details of the ceremony were closely copied from those of the wedding of Napoleon I. and Marie Louise, and the state-coach was the same that had been used at the coronation of the great emperor. It was a magnificent vehicle, covered with gilding and ornaments, and so heavy that the eight fine horses that drew it were less for show than for actual service. The ceremony took place in the cathedral of Notre Dame, which was illuminated for the occasion with fifteen thousand wax-lights. The bride was visibly agitated. She was as pale as death, and her voice in making the responses was scarcely audible. No wonder if in that hour a premonition of evil weighed upon her soul. The civil register of the imperial family—which, preserved by the devotion of some of the adherents of the Bonapartes, had been brought forth to be used at the civil ceremony which had taken place the day before—might well have thrilled her with forebodings. The last record inscribed on those pages had been the birth of the king of Rome. How had it fared with that scion of a mighty father? how might it fare with her own possible offspring?

It speedily became evident that the marriage, unpopular as it had been among the counsellors of the emperor, was still more so among the people at large. No cries of "Long live the empress!" save from the throats of paid agents of the government, rose to greet the beautiful Eugenie when she appeared in public. People stared sullenly at her as at a passing pageant, but were moved neither by her charms nor her gentle and gracious courtesy to any outburst of enthusiasm. To the masses she was "L'Espagnole," the heiress to the bitter hate inspired by the Austrian, Marie Antoinette. Epigrams on the marriage, seasoned with the cruel and ferocious wit for which the Parisians are so famous, circulated on all sides. Some bold hand affixed to the walls of the Tuileries a series of doggerel verses wherein the empress was first called by the nickname of "Badinguette," which was universally applied to her after the fall of the Empire. The author of these lines was discovered and banished to Cayenne, but his verses, set to a popular tune, were long sung in secret in the taverns and workshops of the suburbs.

To a certain extent, popular opinion respecting the young and lovely Eugenie was correct. She was indeed emphatically not the wife that Louis Napoleon should have chosen. A woman of intelligence and force of character might have done much to aid in founding his throne on a more stable basis. The downfall of the Empire, though probably inevitable, might have been delayed for at least a generation. But his choice had fallen upon a lady who had but one qualification for the position in which he had placed her—namely, extreme personal beauty. She was indeed kind-hearted and amiable, and among the temptations of a court as dissolute as was that of Louis XV. she preserved her reputation unspotted. But she was narrow-minded and unintellectual, a bigoted Catholic, and so blinded by national and religious prejudices that many of the most fatal mistakes of the Empire are directly traceable to her influence. An alliance with a royal princess would have strengthened the throne of Louis Napoleon: an alliance with a French lady would have drawn toward him the hearts of the nation. But Eugenie was neither a princess nor a Frenchwoman, nor yet a woman of vigorous and commanding intellect; and his union with her was undoubtedly a serious political error.

But for some time all went well. She ruled gracefully over her allotted realm, which was that of Fashion. The influence of a crowned Parisian beauty over the social doings of the world can hardly be over-estimated. Eugenie invented toilettes that were copied by all the women in the civilized world: she invented crinoline, and added a new product to the manufactures of the earth. No woman better understood the art of dress than she. Certain of her toilettes have retained their celebrity to this day. Never did the art of costly dress reach so high a pinnacle. She fringed her ball-dresses with diamonds, and covered them with lace worth two thousand dollars a yard. Then, like many wise and economical ladies, she undertook to have her dresses made at home, and installed a dressmaker's establishment in the Tuileries, where these splendid garments were prepared under her immediate supervision. The workroom was directly over her private apartments. By means of a trapdoor, whose mechanism was skilfully dissimulated among the ornaments of the cornice and ceiling, a mannikin, arrayed in the garb that was in progress, could be lowered for the empress's inspection. This singular branch of the royal household was under the charge of a functionary whose business it was to purchase silks, velvets and laces at wholesale prices and to superintend the workwomen. The knowledge of its existence was soon spread abroad, and did the empress infinite harm. The petty economy of the proceeding horrified and disgusted the Parisians, who, economical themselves, have ever scorned that virtue in their sovereigns. Many of the partisans of the court denied the existence of such an establishment, but during the period that elapsed between the downfall of the Empire and the outbreak of the Commune the curious throngs that visited the Tuileries might trace amid the mouldings of the ceiling in the empress's boudoir the outline of the famous trapdoor.

It would have been well had she never turned her attention to any less feminine or more dangerous pursuits. But in an evil hour for France and for the nation she undertook to dabble in politics. Left regent during the Austro-Italian campaign, she acquired a taste for reigning, which was increased by the flatteries of her husband's ministers and the counsels of her confessor. It was currently said at court that the Mexican expedition "came ready-made from her boudoir." She hated the United States, as a true daughter of Spain could not fail to detest the coveters of Cuba and the friends of progress and of enlightenment. Consequently, she did not fail to further a project whose real aim was to deal the great republic, then struggling in the throes of civil war, a decisive stab in the back. She approved of the war with China, and condescended to enrich her private apartments with the spoils of the Summer Palace. But her pet project, the one that she had most at heart, was the war with Prussia. The now historical phrase, "This is my war," was uttered by her to General Turr soon after the outbreak of hostilities. And when, an exile and discrowned, she first sought the presence of Queen Victoria, she sobbed out with tears of vain remorse, "It was all my fault. Louis did not want to go to war: 'twas I that forced him to it." Poor lady! bitterly indeed has she atoned for that unwise exercise of undue influence. The holy crusade of which she dreamed against the enemies of her Church and of her husband's throne ended in giving her son's inheritance to the winds.

Nor was her domestic life a happy one. She loved her husband; and indeed Napoleon III. seems to have possessed a rare power of attracting and securing the affections of those about him. Few that came within the influence of his kindly courtesy, his grave and gentle voice, but fell captive to the spell thus subtly exercised. He made many and warm personal friends, even among those who were hostile to his politics and his dynasty. And by three women at least he was loved with a fervor and a constancy that no trial could shake. One of these was the Princess Mathilde, his cousin and once his intended wife; another was Mrs. Howard; the third was his wife. But, like many men who are much loved, Louis Napoleon was incapable of anything like genuine and constant love for any woman. His passion for his lovely empress was as brief as it had been violent. He vexed her soul and tortured her heart by countless conjugal infidelities. She resented this state of affairs with all the vehemence of an outraged wife and a jealous Spaniard. It is said that she once soundly boxed the ears of the distinguished functionary who filled in her husband's household the post that the infamous Lebel held during the latter days of the life of Louis XV. Twice she fled abruptly from the court, unable to bear the presence of insolent and triumphant rivals, and the ingenuity of the fashionable chroniclers of the day was taxed to invent plausible pretexts for her sudden journeys to the Scottish or the Italian lakes. No wonder that the soft eyes grew sadder and the smiles more forced as the years passed on and brought only weariness, disenchantment and the shadow of the coming end.

Alphonse Daudet has said in Le Nabab that there exists in the life of every human being a golden moment, a luminous peak, where all of glory or success that destiny reserves is granted; after which comes the decadence and the descent. This golden moment in the life of the empress Eugenie was the occasion of the first French international exhibition in 1855. She was then in the full pride of her womanhood and her loveliness. The greatest lady in Europe, Queen Victoria, had been her guest, had embraced her as an equal and had given her proofs of real and sincere friendship. Enveloped in clouds of priceless lace and blazing with diamonds of more than regal splendor, she had presided, la belle des belles, over the opening of the exhibition in the Champs Elysees. And, above all, the event so anxiously desired by her husband and by the supporters of his cause was near at hand. She was soon to become the mother of the heir to the imperial throne. With every aspiration gratified, every wish accomplished, she did indeed seem in that year of grace the most enviable of human beings. The later splendors of the exhibition of 1867 were more apparent than real, and the gorgeous assemblage of reigning sovereigns brought with it for Eugenie a subtle and premeditated insult. The kings and emperors who responded to the imperial invitation and came to visit the court of Napoleon III., with one exception, that of the king of the Belgians, left their wives at home. They acted as men do in private life when they receive invitations to a ball given by a family of doubtful standing with whom they are unwilling to quarrel.

I have spoken of the birth of the prince imperial. It may perhaps interest the reader to know how much this auspicious event cost the French nation. Not less than nine hundred thousand francs (one hundred and eighty thousand dollars), of which twenty thousand dollars were paid for the young gentleman's first wardrobe. The whole amount expended at the birth of the Comte de Paris did not exceed this latter sum.

The details of the scenes at the Tuileries after the downfall of the Empire, and those of the flight of the empress, are well known. It is now generally conceded that after Sedan the fate of the imperial dynasty was in the hands of Eugenie. Had she withdrawn to Tours or to Bourges, summoned the Assembly to meet there, and called around her the partisans of the Empire, she might have saved the heritage of her son. But her essentially feminine and frivolous nature was not fitted for deeds of high resolve or for heroic determinations. A morbid dread of following in the footsteps of Marie Antoinette had pursued her in the later years of her prosperity. She knew that she was unpopular, and visions of the fate of the Austrian queen or of the still more horrible one of the Princesse de Lamballe must have risen before her as the shouts of the Parisian mob, exulting in the downfall of her husband, met her ear. In that hour of disaster and of woe no Frenchman, for all the boasted chivalry of the race, was at hand to aid or protect the fair lady who had so long queened it at the Tuileries. The Austrian ambassador, the Italian minister, the Corsican Pietrio planned and managed her escape from the palace. She took refuge in the house of an American, her dentist, Dr. Thomas W. Evans. He it was who got her out of Paris and accompanied her to the seacoast, placing his own carriage at her disposal. She crossed the Channel in the yacht of an English gentleman. Thus guarded by aliens, she passed from the land of her queenship to that of exile.

To-day, in her abode at Chiselhurst, the widow of Napoleon III. attracts scarcely less of the world's interest and attention than she did as throned empress and queen of Fashion. Unfortunately, the supreme tact that once was her distinguishing quality seems to have deserted her in the days of her decadence. She, the most graceful of women, has not learned the art of growing old gracefully. She had played the part of a beauty and the leader of fashion for years. Now that she is past fifty that character is no longer possible to her. But she might have assumed another—less showy, perhaps, but surely far more touching. With her whitening hairs she might have worthily worn the triple dignity of her widowhood, her maternity and her misfortune. She has chosen instead, with a weakness unworthy of the part that she has played on the wide stage of contemporary history, to clutch vainly after the fleeting shadow of her vanished charms. A head loaded with false yellow hair, a face covered with paint and powder, a mincing gait and the airs and graces of an antiquated coquette,—such to-day is she who was once the world's wonder for her loveliness and grace, a bewigged Mrs. Skewton succeeding to the dazzling vision that swerved the calculating policy of Napoleon III. and won his callous heart, and that still smiles upon us from the canvas of Winterhalter.

LUCY H. HOOPER.

* * * * *



OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.



A LOST COLONY.

Why does nobody—antiquarian, historian, or even novelist—open again that forgotten page of history, the story of the lost colony of Norwegians who disappeared in the fourteenth century from the shores of Greenland? Doctor Hayes, after he came back, had a good deal to say of them, but he did not gather all the facts, and his book, I believe, is now out of print.

I know no mystery made of such nightmare stuff as this in history; and mysteries are growing scarce now-a-days as eggs of the terrible Dinornis: we cannot afford to lose one of them.

The foremost figure in the story is of course Leif hin-hepna ("the happy"). There is much to be unearthed concerning that famous pioneer in discovery and religion, and we Americans surely ought to have enough interest in him to do it, as Leif unearthed this continent for us out of the hold of the sea and Demigorgon ages ago, while the dust of which Columbus was to be made centuries later was yet blowing loose about the streets of Genoa. Leif, besides discovering new worlds, turned the souls of all his father's subjects from paganism to such Christianity as the times afforded. I protest, this vigorous young Greenlander heads the roll of unrecognized heroes in the world: heathen and Christians have made demigods and saints out of much flimsier stuff than he.

The colony, too, out of which he came, what a spectral shadow it is beside the live flesh-and-blood figures of other nations! At the banquet of the boar-eating Scottish thanes there was one empty chair, and that was filled by a ghost. We hear of the East and West Bygds, settlements with hundreds of farms, churches, cathedrals, monasteries, set on the narrow rim of green coast which edges Greenland, lying between the impenetrable wall of ice inland and the Arctic Sea without. They had their religion, which Leif brought to them; they were busy and prosperous; they married, traded, fought, loved and died; and with a breath they all vanished from off the face of the earth. There is no ghost-story like this in literature.

Where will you find, too, such a delightful flavor of ancient mystery as in the old chronicles which tell of these people? Besides the Sagas there are the voyages of long-ago-forgotten navigators—Arthur himself, the Venetian brothers Nicolo and Antonio Zeni, King Zichmni, divers Frisian fishermen. These old records, coffee-colored with age and frail as skeleton leaves, are yet to be found in certain libraries, and surely would tempt any one with a soul above newspapers. In them you shall hear how these voyagers, in their poor barkentines of from ten to two hundred tons, entered into this region of enormous tides, of floating hordes of mountainous icebergs, of flaming signs in the sky—into all the horrors, in fact, of an Arctic winter and night, darkened still deeper for them by nameless superstitious terrors. They went down to these deeps in very much the temper with which a living man now-a-days would adventure into hell. The icy peaks of the far-off land they knew were glittering silver, and the sea was full of malignant spirits which guarded it. A mountain-magnet lay hid under the sea, dragging the ships down to it (as late, indeed, as 1830 skilled Danish navigators declared that they felt the stress from it, and fled in terror): the unnatural tides were the breathing of angry Demigorgon. There were, however, other sights and sounds not to be explained in even this reasonable fashion. On a fair day and a calm sea panic would seize the soul of every man on board, and the ship would turn and beat homeward, "as one who knows a frightful fiend doth follow him behind."

It is the mystery of the lost colony, however, which ought to be opened by some competent hand. In 1406, Queen Margaret, it will be remembered, laid an interdict upon trade with them: for two centuries afterward not even a passing barkentine touched upon the Greenland shore. At the end of that time, when explorers were sent from the civilized world in search of the long-forgotten colonists, they had utterly vanished. There, to this day, are their dwellings and churches, solidly built of stone in an architectural style which Graah fifty years ago described as simple and elegant: there are even the ruins of the monastery which the Zeni brothers declare was heated by a magical hot sulphurous spring, the waters of which were conveyed through the building by pipes. But the people had absolutely disappeared. Not even a bit of pottery, a grave or a bone was left; which last is a noteworthy circumstance, as portions of the human body are almost indestructible in that climate. Seventeen expeditions have been sent out by the Danish and Norwegian governments in search of this lost colony, the last of which was within the present half century. One of these was headed by Egedi, a poor Norwegian clergyman to whom is owing the civilization of Greenland, and of whose strange heroic life we know too little.

There are two or three conjectures to account for the disappearance of this colony. One is that they were all murdered by the Skroeellings. But where are their bones? Besides, the colonists numbered from fifteen to twenty thousand, and were much superior to the natives in size, strength, intelligence and knowledge of war.

Graah, a Danish navigator who came in search of them in 1828, believes that they were carried off bodily by the English after the ravages of the "black death" in England, to repair the waste of human life, citing a treaty of 1433 in which England was charged with abducting Danish subjects for that end. Another theory is that the Frisian king Zichmni carried them off captive. Pope Nicholas asserts this outrage as a fact in a bull in 1448. But Zichmni is as uncertain a personage in history as Demigorgon; and the good popes were not so infallible as to matters of general news before the establishment of telegraph and postal service as they are now.

Mr. Dalton Dorr, who accompanied Hayes, tells me that among the Esquimaux there is a tradition that a colony of foreigners once owned the land, and about five centuries ago emigrated in a body northward, crossing the Mer de Glace—that they found an open sea, and somewhere within the eternal rampart of snow and ice now dwell securely by its shores. As early as 1500 the migratory Skroeellings told of this colony far to the north-east. These rumors possessed substance enough to warrant the expeditions from Denmark, which have all been directed to the eastern coast. Graah heard from his guides of a strange people with high features, hoarse voices and large stature living beyond the limits passed by Europeans.

Here is a mystery surely worth finding out—a people exiled from their kind for centuries living at the Pole—something better worth search than even Franklin's bones. To give it reality, too, we must remember how many Arctic explorers have caught sight, as they thought, of an open sea near the Pole—a sea with strong, iceless swells, and on whose shores warm rains fell. Nobody need suggest that these people would probably, after our search, not be worth looking for. What shall we do with the North-west Passage when we have found it?

R. H. D.



THE DIFFICULTIES OF BEING AGREEABLE.

"A man will please more by never offending than by giving a great deal of delight." In this remark of Doctor Johnson's lies the art of being agreeable. But nothing is more difficult than to avoid offending. Most people are offended by trifles. For instance, persons generally take umbrage at superior brilliance of conversation. "The man who talks for fame will never please." Even he who talks to unburden his mind will please only some old and solitary friend. Large experience and great learning, however quietly carried, are very offensive to those who have them not. Clever things cannot be said unobtrusively enough. A person so brilliant as to make others feel that his efforts are above theirs will be detested. Moreover, one of the difficulties of being agreeable is that the apprehension of offending and the small hope of pleasing destroy all captivation of manner. The confident expectation of pleasing is an infallible means of pleasing. Characters pleased with themselves please others, for they are joyous and natural in mien, and are at liberty from thinking of themselves to pay successful attention to others. Still, the self-conceited and the bragging are never attractive, self being the topic on which all are fluent and none interesting. They who dwell on self in any way—the self-deniers, the self-improvers—are hateful to the heart of civilized man. The Chinese, who knew everything beforehand, are perfect in self-abnegation of manner. "How are your noble and princely son and your beautiful and angelic daughter?" says Mandarin Number One.—"Dog of a son have I none, but my cat of a daughter is well," says Mandarin Number Two.

To set up for an invariably agreeable person you must adjust yourself to the peculiarities of others. You must talk of books to bookworms: you must be musical with musicians, scientific with savants. Furthermore, you have to make believe all the time that you are enjoying yourself. The belle is a lady who has an air of enjoying herself with whomsoever she talks. We like those who seem to delight in our company. You must not overdo it, and thus make yourself suspected of acting; but do not imagine that you will please without trying. Those who are careless of pleasing are never popular. Those who do not care how they look invariably look ugly. You will never please without doing all these things and more.

What a Pecksniffian business it is to go into! Who wants to refrain from smart, spiteful sayings when he happens to think of them, to abjure laughing at friends and ridiculing enemies, to renounce the tart rebuff, the keen riposte? Amazing that any succeed! and many do. There are some gentlemen who are entirely agreeable—"gentlemen all through," like Robert Moore in Shirley. They have order, neatness, delicacy of movement, reticence, incuriosity: their unaffected English has almost the charm of a musical composition. They are generally men whose mothers well nagged them when they were small with perpetual adjurations: "Do not bang the door," "Stop kicking your feet," "Stop clinking your plate with your fork," and so on.

In some inscrutable way, young girls often attain thorough agreeableness. Look at lazy little Jane: she has acquired the highest charm of repose. Look at Sally, who used to be such an angular and hurried little girl: she is all quips and cranks and wreathed smiles now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident, blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the highly-embellished performances of other girls.

Ladies who make a profession of pleasing become irresistibly alluring. Actresses have abundant hair, fine teeth, all physical beauty, because they train themselves to beauty, though not originally better endowed than most others. Actresses' voices are set habitually, not in complaining, whining, creaking or vociferating keys, but in chest-tones clear and calm in quality. Actresses do not grow old, partly in consequence of their constant attention to the toilette, partly in consequence of the fact that they have hope and ambition, and enough occupation and enough rest, and do not worry over trifles.

To remain young is one of the difficulties of being agreeable. Whoever does so is obliged to adopt the Aristotelian maxim of moderation, Placidity of temper is necessary to the clear-pencilled eyebrow and the magnolia complexion. Frowns, weeping, excitement, despair and laughter wrinkle the face. Nature keeps women's forms well rounded to extreme old age, and their faces remain agreeable when they take the trouble to keep them so. The brow, the fair front, need never be furrowed. Of all we meet in the street, very few have tranquil, undistorted faces: the old are screwed out of shape, the young are going to be so. A well-preserved beauty is one who neither puckers her face into wrinkles nor mauls it with her hands: she never buries her knuckles in her cheeks, nor rests cheek on palm or chin on hand, nor folds her fingers around her forehead while reading, nor rubs her "argent-lidded eyes." She veils her face from the wind; she does not work with uncovered neck and arms: therefore they do not become tawny. She avoids immoderate toil, which makes the hair to fall, the features sharp, the skin clammy and yellow. She avoids immoderate laziness, as causing obesity and a greasy complexion or pallor, lassitude and loss of vitality. Such are; the difficulties of being agreeable.

M. D.



OUR SUB-GARDENER.

He who doubts that civilized progress and industry is beneficial to birds, and promotes their comfort and multiplication, never saw the robin and the purple grakle following the plough on a summer's morning. The ploughman is not more punctually afield than his unbidden but welcome feathered attendants. They are ahead of him, perched patiently in the trees that dot fence or hedgerow. They see the team afar off, and as the gate rattles in opening for its admission the glad tidings is sent down the line in whistle or chirrup, the most musical of breakfast-bells. The worm that but for the intrusive ploughshare would blush unseen beneath the soil, and but for the feathered detective on the lookout for him would regain his subterranean retreat, might take a less cheery view of the philosophy of the matter; but he too is, taken collectively, favored by tillage and fattens on high-farming like an English squire. But we are not at present occupied with his feelings. Somebody must suffer in the battledore game of eat and be eaten, and we shall let the chain of continuous destruction rest here with the grub that reaps where he hath not sown. Horse, man and bird are honestly and harmoniously picking up a living at the expense of a fourth party that also thrives in the long run.

Not many of us get out with the plough at the orthodox hour of sunrise. It is a privilege few, comparatively, possess, and fewer still enjoy. The doctors recommend it warmly, on the ground that, though perhaps productive of rheumatism, it is death to dyspepsia. The faculty have, however, on this point piped to us in vain, and it is not at all in consequence of their advice that those who luxuriate in early agriculture adopt that system of hygiene, any more than the birds, who, as we have remarked, are first up and out, and who, at this season, in flat defiance of all medical rules, adopt a purely animal diet. Later, long after Lent, their food is varied with fruits and seeds, but never to such an extent as to amount to vegetarianism. This carnivorous taste ranks high in the "charm of earliest birds" so interesting to the cultivator. He, as a rule, is not wrapped up in the strawberry or the cherry that in the fulness of time comes to be levied on, in very moderate percentage, by a few of his musical associates. We do not forget that the blackbird has a weakness for planted maize, and that the quota of the cornhill is very truly and safely stated in the doggerel—

One for de blackbird, one for de crow, Two for de cut-worm, and two for to grow.

The cut-worm is here correctly defined as the enemy, while the excise claimed by the birds is head-money for his extirpation. An adaptation of this instructive couplet to gardening for the guidance of those of us who do not farm, but garden in a small way, would naturally enlarge the allowance of the cut-worm. From the more limited demesne the crow and the grakle are generally excluded. What is their loss is the cut-worm's gain. Nowhere does he run (or burrow) riot more successfully than in old gardens. Living in darkness, from an apparent consciousness that his deeds are evil, he seems to be fully advised of all that goes on above ground. One would fancy that he has a complete system of subterranean telegraphs, like those coming into vogue in Europe. He learns within a few hours or minutes of every new lot of plants sprouting from the seed or set out from the hotbed. Upon both he sets systematically to work, following his row with a precision and thoroughness at once admirable and exasperating. You go out of a May afternoon, and with the tenderest care establish in their summer homes your very choicest plants. Reverse "One counted them at break of day, and when the sun set where were they?" and the tale that greets you the next morning is told. Did the spoiler need them for food, you would be partly reconciled to his proceedings, or at least would know how to frame some sort of an excuse for them. But he merely divides the succulent stem close to the surface of the ground, above or below, and leaves the wreck unutilized even by him. A comfort is that flight is not his forte. He is generally to be found by the exploring penknife or trowel close by the scene of his crime, and is thus easily subjected to condign punishment. But his wife, family and friends survive in different spots of the adjacent underworld, to give evidence of their existence only in subsequent havoc. The titillative rake or the peremptory hoe does not help you much in their discovery; for their color is that of the soil, their size as various as that of bits of gravel, and they are not easily perceptible to a cursory glance from the ordinary height of the eye. Here is where keener optics than yours, sharpened perhaps by a keener impulse—that of the stomach—come to the rescue. The catbird, whose imploring mew you listened to from your bed some time before thinking proper to respond to it, is intently watching operations from the other end of the border or the square. His lusty youngsters have been trained, after the good old fashion, to early hours, and they are impatient for breakfast. Their parent sees what you do not, and astonishes you by suddenly pouncing upon a bit of earth you have just broken and seizing a stout worm. This stranger, if presentable to the family circle, he is at once off with, his spouse taking his place in the field. Or the youngsters may still be in futuro. All the same: whatever turns up is welcome to him. His appetite seems as insatiable as that of half a dozen nestlings: they, you know, will eat three or four times their own weight in twelve hours. He is thus immensely useful to you, but your appreciation of that fact is as nothing to his estimate of your value to him. He accepts you as a being sent for his benefit. You are a part of his scheme of providence. True, he pities while he rejoices over you. Your blindness and stupidity in not seeing the fat and luscious tidbits he snaps up from almost beneath your feet is of course a subject of wonder and disdain. But he learns to make allowances for you, and comes to view your failings charitably, especially as they enure to his benefit, and so lean to Virtue's side. Fear of you he has none. Indeed, you inspire in him a certain sense of protection, for in your presence his habitual vigilance is lulled, and his apprehensive glances over his right and left shoulders fall to a lower figure per minute. He has learned there to feel safe from hawk and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact distance measures the comparative boldness and familiarity of the two species. The catbird is, say, ten yards more companionable than his red-vested relative in the latter's most genial and trustful mood; and his faith is of a more robust type and less easily and permanently weakened by rebuffs. The robin rarely hovers round you, but likes to have the whole premises quietly to himself. His attachment does not take a personal hue, but is rather to locality. His acquaintanceship with you is never so intimate as that of the catbird, who soon recognizes your step, your dress and the peculiar touch and cadence of your hoe, even as a college oarsman will identify the stroke of a chum or a rival a quarter of a mile off. If the robin does fix your individuality in his mind, he deigns to make no sign thereof. At most he accepts you as part of the mechanism of creation. You make no draft upon his bump of reverence. He does not set you on his Olympus. This mark of the spirit which makes him, on the whole, a more respectable and dignified character than his less gayly-dressed cousin tends in some sense to commend him the less to you, since we all like the homage of the "inferior animals," birds or voters. You half dislike the independence of the robin, who is equally at home in the parterre or the forest, on the gravel-walk or in the upper air. On the other you have more hold. He is rarely seen higher than twenty feet above ground, and is strictly an appendage of the shrubbery and the orchard. Even in his unhappy voice there is a domestic tone, closely imitated as it is from Grimalkin. Imitated, we say, for we have never been able fully to believe that this mew is the bird's original note. We shall ever incline to the impression that it is an acquired dialect, picked up in the mere wantonness born of a conscious and exceptional power of mimicry.

E. C. B.



A NEW AND INDIGNANT ITALIAN POET.

Mrs. Leo Hunter's selection of an "Expiring Frog" as a subject for poetical composition has lately been surpassed by a new Italian poet. The latter, Signer Giovanni Rizzi, has just published at Milan a small volume of sonnets, chiefly ironical in character, in which he gives vent to his disgust at the positive and materialistic tendencies of the present day. The theme of the three most remarkable among these productions is that useful but not very aesthetic animal, the hog.

Signer Rizzi is the professor of literature at the military school and the high school for girls in Milan. Not long ago his three sonnets to the hog—or, more literally, the boar (maiale)—appeared in an Italian journal called Illustrazione Italiana, prefaced by a letter to the editor, in which the author stated that as apes, toads and caterpillars have now been triumphantly introduced into literature, he no longer felt any hesitation about bringing forward in the same way his esteemed friend the boar. These three pieces, together with others of the same form and character, have now been published as a book under the title of Un Grido. This work begins with an address to the reader, in which the poet laments the prevailing tendency of public opinion, and protests against what he considers a determined war on all old and honored beliefs and feelings, and a substitution therefor of a vague and revolting materialism. Then come five sonnets to Pietro Aretino, the witty poet and scoffer of the Renaissance era. Aretino is invited to reappear among men, for the world, says Rizzi, has again become worthy of such a man's presence. Leaving Dante to Jesuits, and Beatrice to priests, it has made Aretino its favorite model, and has, consequently, said farewell to everything resembling shame. In the last of these five sonnets the poet addresses his beloved thus: "And we too, O Love! do we still keep holy honor, home, faith, prayer, truth and noble sorrow?"

After the five sonnets to Aretino come the three to the boar (Al Maiale) which have already been mentioned. Here the author enters into a mock glorification of that animal, and declares himself ready to give up all pretensions to any superiority over it. He proceeds to "swear eternal friendship" with it, and offers it his hand to solemnize the compact; but, suddenly remembering that such old-fashioned practices must be very distasteful to his new friend, he immediately apologizes for having conformed to such a ridiculous old prejudice. He does not expect his "long-lost brother" to make any effort to elevate himself or to change his swinish nature in any particular, but thinks we should all bring ourselves down to the boar's mental and physical level as soon as we can. The closing verses of the third sonnet may be freely rendered as follows:

And when, at last, the grave shall close above us, No solemn prayer our resting-place should hallow, No flowers be strewn by hands of those that love us.

But if, at times, you'll come where we are lying, O worthy friend! upon our graves to wallow, That thought should give us joy when we are dying.

The last piece in this little collection is addressed to "The Birds of my Garden" (Agli Uccelletti del mio Giardino). Though inferior to the others in boldness and originality of conception, it is much more graceful and attractive, and shows that the writer is by no means deficient in elegance of style and delicacy of treatment.

Signor Rizzi may, it is probable, be taken as a type of a large class among his countrymen, to which the iconoclastic tendencies of our time seem strange and horrible. Indeed, it is possible that he is one of the earliest heralds of a widespread reaction in opinion and feeling throughout his native land. At any rate, his poems can hardly fail to become popular, and to produce some effect among a people so susceptible to the influences of witty and sarcastic poetry as are the Italians even at this day.

W. W. C.



A NEZ PERCE FUNERAL.

"Call me, Washington, when they are going to bury him," said the doctor.

George Washington, evidently not quite sure that he understood the doctor, said with an interrogative glance, "You like—see him—dead man—put in ground?" And, pointing downward and alternately bending and extending one knee, he made a semblance of delving.

The doctor nodded.

"Good! Me tell you."

"I want to go, Washington," said the lieutenant.

"And I too," said the lieutenant's guest, myself.

George Washington was one of the Nez Perce prisoners surrendered by Joseph to General Miles after the battle of Bear-Paw Mountain. The dead man was one of the wounded in that action who died from his wounds, aggravated, no doubt, by fatigue and exposure while the prisoners were marching to the east in the winter of 1877 under orders from the War Department. George spoke a few words of English, and was quite an intelligent Indian. He was very clean—for an Indian—and was comfortably clad.

"How soon?" asked the doctor.

"He—call me—when he ready: me call you."

"Good! Then I shall go to dinner."

"We had better eat our dinner," said the lieutenant: "it is growing late.—Come and have some dinner, Washington."

Washington seemed not quite sure that he understood correctly. He had a modest distrust of his English. In the matter of an invitation to dinner doubt is admissible. "You—want me—" here George Washington tapped himself on the savage breast—"eat—with you?" And here, gracefully reversing his hand, with the index extended, he touched the lieutenant on the civilized bosom.

"Yes: come in."

We three entered the tent. As it was an ordinary "A" tent, with a sheet-iron stove in it, it was pretty full with the addition of two good-sized white men and an Indian of no contemptible proportions. The lieutenant and I sat on the blankets, camp-fashion: Washington sat on my heavy riding-boots, with the stove perforce between his legs.

"Good wahrrm!" ejaculated George Washington, hugging the stove.

"Hustleburger!" shouted the lieutenant.

"Yes, sir."

"George Washington will take dinner with us. Set the table for three."

"All right, sir, lieutenant!"

"Good man—docther," Washington remarked, nodding several times to emphasize his observation: "ver'—good man—docther."

We eagerly assented, pleased to see that the Indian appreciated the doctor's kindness to his people.

Rabelais's quarter of an hour began to hang heavily on us. Washington was equal to the occasion: taking a survey of the tent, he nodded approvingly and remarked, "Good tepee."

"Not bad this weather."

"Good eyes!" said Washington in a burst of enthusiasm.

These two simple words in their Homeric immensity of expression meant all this: "The fire made on the ground in our Indian lodges fills them with continual smoke, and consequently we Indians suffer very much from sore eyes. Now, your little stove, while it warms the tent much better than a fire, does not smoke, and your eyes are not injured."

Our habitual table, a small box, was not constructed on the extension plan. It would not accommodate three. So Hustleburger handed directly to each guest a tin cup of macaroni soup. Washington disposed of the liquid in a very short time, but the elusive nature of the macaroni rather troubled him. We showed him how to overcome its slippery tendency. Smacking his lips, he said, with a broad smile, "Good! What you call him?"

"Macaroni."

"Maclony? Good! Maclony—maclony." he continued, repeating the word to fix it in his memory.

Our only vegetable was some canned asparagus. Washington was delighted with it after he had been initiated into the mystery of its consumption. He did not stop at the white. "What you call—him?"

"Asparagus."

"Spalagus—spalagus? Goo-oo-d!"

"Did you never eat asparagus before, Washington?"

"Never eat him—nev' see him. Spalagus—spalagus! Goo-oo-d!"

Hustleburger now brought in the dessert, which consisted of canned currant-jelly, served in the can. Each guest helped himself from the original package, using a "hard tack" for a dessert-plate, more antiquo. Washington was bidden to help himself. Before doing so, however, he wished to test the substance placed before him, and, taking a little on the end of his spoon, he carried it to his lips. Then an expression of intense enjoyment overspread his dusky face; his black eyes sparkled like diamonds; his full lips were wreathed in a smile. "Ah! goo-oo-oo-d!" he cried, with a mouthful of o's. "What you call HIM?"

"Jelly."

"Yelly? Ah! yelly goo-oo-ood! Me—like—yelly—much." And he helped himself plentifully.

A smell of burning woollen became unpleasantly noticeable. Washington still had the stove between his legs: it was red-hot. He never moved, but ate "yelly."

"Washington, you're burning!" cried the lieutenant.

Washington smiled. "Much wah-r-rum!" he remarked in the coolest manner possible.

"Throw open the front, then."

A long, shrill cry now rang through the silence and the darkness. Washington jumped up suddenly, ran out of the tent, and uttered a cry in response so similar that it might pass for an echo of the first. Then, returning, he said, "He call. He—ready—put—dead man—down. Come! Me—come back—eat—yelly."

Fortunately, the Indian camp was not far off. The night was pitch-dark. Led by Washington, we got through the thick underbrush without much trouble. The grave was dug near the water's edge, where the Missouri and the Yellowstone, meeting, form an angle. A large fire of dry cottonwood at the head of the grave fitfully lit up the dismal scene. A bundle of blankets and buffalo-robes lay by the open grave. Some Indians of both sexes with bowed and blanketed heads stood near it. Washington was evidently awaited. As soon as he appeared a little hand-bell was rung, and a number of dark, shrouded figures with covered faces crept forth like shadows from the lodges throughout the camp and crowded around the grave, a mute and gloomy throng.

The bell was rung again, and the dark crowd became motionless as statues. Then Washington in a mournful monotone repeated what I supposed to be prayers for the dead. At the end of each prayer the little bell was rung and responses came out of the depths of the surrounding darkness. Then the squaws chanted a wild funeral song in tones of surpassing plaintiveness. At its close the bell tinkled once more, and the figures that surrounded the grave vanished as darkly as they came. Washington, one or two warriors and ourselves alone remained.

"You like—see—him—dead man?" asked Washington.

The question was addressed to me.

I never want to look on a dead face if I can avoid it; so with thanks I declined. Washington seemed a little disappointed, as if he considered we showed a somewhat uncourteous want of interest in the deceased. Noticing this, the lieutenant said he would like to see the dead man's face, and, preceded by Washington, we moved toward the bundle of blankets and buffalo-robes that lay by the side of the grave. Washington threw back the buffalo-robes, and a bright gleam of the cottonwood fire disclosed the upturned face of the dead Nez Perce and lightened up the long, thick locks of glossy blue-black hair. It was the face of a man about thirty—bold, clear-cut features and long, aquiline nose: a good face and a strong face it seemed in death.

When we had looked upon the rigid features a few moments, Washington covered the face of his dead brother. The body, coffined in blankets and skins, was placed in the grave, and the men began to throw the earth upon it.

"That's—all," said Washington. "Come!"

And he moved away toward our tent.

He seemed to think some apology necessary for the simplicity of the ceremonial. "If," said he, "Chapman [the interpreter]—he tell—we sleep here to-morrow—we put dead man—in ground—when sun he ver' litt'; an' Yoseph he come—an' you come—an' I come—all come—white man an' Injun."

"He was a fine-looking young man," I remarked, alluding to the dead Indian.

Washington was pleased by the compliment to his departed brother. He stopped short, and, turning toward me, said, "Yes, he fine young man—good man—good young man."

"I thought he was rather an oldish man," remarked the lieutenant.

"No, no," replied Washington, touching his head—"all black hairs—no white hairs. Good young man."

And Washington led the way back toward the lieutenant's tent, saying, "Let us go—eat up—yelly."

J. T.



REFORM IN VERSE.

A want of the day is some good fugitive poetry: bad is superabundant. The demand is for short and telling effusions in plain, direct and intelligible English, speaking to feelings possessed by everybody, and placing incidents, scenes and creatures, familiar or exceptional, in a poetic light, bright and warm rather than fierce or dazzling. The millions are waiting to be stirred and charmed, and will be very thankful to the singer who shall do it for them. Studied obscurity of thought and language, verbal finicalities and conceits, and mere ingenuities of any kind, rhythmic, mental or sentimental, will not meet the occasion: that sort of thing is overdone already. It is the "swollen imposthume" of refinement, an excrescence on culture, a penalty of which we have suffered enough. The Heliconian streams which are not deep, but only dark, must run dry if they cannot run clear. Sparkling and pellucid rills, wherein we can all see our own-selves and trace our own dreams, irradiated with light like the flickering of gems, and set off with rich foil, are those to attract the popular eye. Genuine humor, pathos, elevation and delicacy of fancy seek no disguise, but aim at the utmost simplicity of expression. Inversions, like affectation in every shape, are foreign to them. True songsters, like the birds, warble to be heard, understood and loved, and not to astonish or puzzle.

We read the other day, duly headed "For the —— ——," and signed with the contributor's name and place of residence, Wolfe's well-known lines to his wife, the one good thing preserved of him, and better, in our humble judgment, than those on the burial of Moore. The wearer of borrowed plumes was obviously confident that his theft would not be detected, readers of to-day having been so long unfamiliar with poetry of that character as to be sure to set it down as original and hail the reviver of it as a new light. Perhaps he may turn out to have been right in that impression, and figure as the herald, if not an active inaugurator, of a new era of taste in verse. He cannot remain the only practical asserter of the theory that it is better to steal good poetry than to write bad. Should his followers, however, shrink from downright theft, they might consent to shine as adapters. Some who are masters of English undefiled might help the cause by translating some of the best bits of Browning, Swinburne and Rossetti, to say nothing of Tennyson, who has gradually constructed a dialect of his own and trained us to understand it.

By fugitive poetry we mean the work of those usually classed as song-writers and lyrists, leaving out the big guns, if we have had any of the latter tribe since Milton, who was himself strongest in short poems. Most modern poets have made their debut in the periodical press, and those who did not have shown a painful tendency to run to epic. The age respectfully declines epics.

We should not despair of the suggested revival. Ours is not the first period that has suffered under the dealers in concetti. They have had things somewhat their own way before—in the century which included Spenser and Donne, for instance. Our euphuists may pass away like those of the Elizabethan era, or, like the best of them, live in spite of faults with which they were gratuitously trammelled.

E. B.

* * * * *



LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Bits of Travel at Home. By H. H. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

The author's present home we should incline to fix in Colorado, but she includes New England and California in her travels, and finds something beautiful to describe wherever she goes within those broad limits. The Yosemite, the Big Trees, the Mormons, the Chinese, the snow-sheds, drawing-room cars, agates, prairie-and mountain-flowers, New Hampshire life and scenery, and an infinity of like material, are readably, and not incongruously, presented in her little book. Population is so sparse and Nature so redundant in the scene of most of her descriptions as to render them sometimes a little lifeless, and oblige her to depend too solely upon her powers of landscape painting with the pen. We miss the human element, as we do in the vast, however luxuriant, pictures of Bierstadt and Moran—artists who preceded her on the same sketching-ground. Not that she fails to make the most of what Nature places before her. Rather, she makes too much of it, and lavishes whole pages on truthful, minute and vivid, but bewildering, detail of mountain, river, rock, plain, plants and sea. She is enraptured, for example, with Lake Tahoe and with the wild flowers of California and Colorado, and enables us to understand why she is so; but the raptures are not shared by the reader, partly for the very reason that they are so elaborately explained. Printer's ink, when used as a pigment or pencil, should be used sparingly, with a few, sharp, clear, bold touches, and without painful finish or niggling. What amplification would not weaken instead of heightening the effect of "the copse-wood gray that waved and wept on Loch Achray"? Breadth, distance and atmosphere are obscured by H. H.'s carefully itemized foregrounds. But the itemizing is done admirably and con amore by one who is a botanist, a poet and an observer. The Great Desert is no desert to her: no square foot of it is barren. Even the sage-brush has a charm, if only from its dim likeness to a miniature olive tree, both being glaucous and hoary. An oasis of irrigated clover on Humboldt River is made a theme for an idyl. The vast rocks, when bare even of moss, are at least rich and various in tint and form, and have plenty of meaning to her.

A traveller between Omaha and San Francisco might well carry this pocket volume as a lorgnette. It will show him what he might otherwise miss, and make more visible to him what he sees. It belongs to a high class of railroad literature, and is in style and matter so full of movement as to suggest the railway to readers by the fireside.

Putnam's Art Handbooks. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

This series of manuals for beginners with pencil and palette will include five small books. The two before us treat of "Landscape Painting" and "Sketching from Nature." Both are old acquaintances, reprinted respectively from the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth London editions. When they first came under our eye, more years ago than we need state, they bore the imprint of a London firm of color-dealers, and were loaded down with advertisements and less direct recommendations of their wares to an extent that rather obscured the valuable and interesting part of the publications. This rubbish has been swept away in the American edition, so that the tyro can get at what he needs to know more readily, and use it with more confidence, than when he was puzzled to distinguish between solid instruction and hollow puffery. The notes added by the American editor are very scant, and yet so sensible as to enhance one's regret at their paucity and meagreness. Directions for the use of pigments and vehicles well enough adapted for the English climate may require modification for ours. Moreover, British artists have not unfrequently, in their methods, shown themselves too prone to sacrifice durability to immediate effect. The list of colors has, too, been enriched by some accessions within the past third of a century which demand mention. Such points should be considered in a new edition of the brochure on landscape painting. Generally speaking, it is a good guide, and may safely be placed in the hands of the young colorist.

The sketcher from Nature will find in the other a succinct set of rules clearly stated. He will not need much else if he has a good hand and eye, and the industry and perseverance to use them. He has first to render objects and scenes by simple lines; and to assist him in that the elementary laws of perspective are here laid before him. Some mechanical appliances, such as a small frame that may be carried in the pocket, divided by equidistant wires, vertical and horizontal, and serving, when held before the eye, to fix the relative situation of points in the view, we do not find alluded to. Perhaps they are as well let alone, as corks have been abandoned in the swimming-school.

When the series is completed the whole may well be bound together. Smaller type, thinner paper and less margin would make a book readily portable, containing all that is indispensable to the student, and a good deal besides that the maturer artist will be none the worse for being reminded of. One who has attained some little facility with the pencil might adopt it as a sufficient mentor in the field or in the studio, and accept its guidance in a path to be perfected by his own powers, according to their measure, toward such pleasure, elevation of taste or fortune as art offers. Studies abound everywhere. The ruins, arched bridges and picturesque dwellings and other erections of Europe are but slenderly to be regretted by the American beginner. He has no lack of clouds, rocks, trees, houses, etc., embracing within their contours every possible line and shade. He may even learn precision of line and tint better than his Transatlantic brother, who is apt to be tempted into carelessness by the ragged variety and indecision of the objects offered by his surroundings and nearly unknown here. The broken and wandering touch suggested by the jagged stones of a crumbling castle is not that which one should begin by cultivating. Breadth and firmness in form, color and chiaroscuro are attainments to be first held in view, and never to be lost sight of.

We have often wondered that the technique of art should have so meagre a literature. Its philosophy and poetry have employed many pens, and been exhaustively analyzed, but this has been mostly the work of outsiders—of critics devoid even of the qualification laid down by Disraeli of having failed in the practical exploitation of the field they discuss, but for all that often powerful critics. Artists have rarely been able to paint their pictures in black and white and run them through the press. They cannot so display the infinite gradations that grow upon their canvas, nor trace in words the subtle principles which have presided at the birth of their works and of every part of them. General rules they can lay down, as poets can the elements of their own trade; but these rules are at the command of the veriest daub or rhymester; the manifold development of them to results almost divine remaining, even to those who achieve it in either walk, evasive and untraceable. The masters of verse and art have mapped out for us none of their secrets. The deductions we make from their practice are our deductions, not theirs. Raffaelle, if questioned, could only point to his palette spread with the common colors, and Homer had not even pen and ink. Our versifiers are provided with admirable paper and gold pens, and our artists, young and old, with the colors Elliott once told an inquirer he made his marvellous flesh-tints with—red, blue and yellow.

Adventures of a Consul Abroad. By Luigi Monti. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

This is a didactic or illustrative story, with a moral we find thus laid down on the last page: "Our government sends men abroad who, after hard labor and long experience, learn a complicated, delicate and responsible profession; and no sooner have they learned it, and are able to perform creditably to themselves and the government they represent all its intricate duties, than they are recalled and replaced by inexperienced men, who have to go through the same ordeal, and never stay long enough to be of real service to their country."

The gentleman upon whose shadowy shoulders is placed the heavy task of pointing this dictum is Samuel Sampleton, Esq., teacher of a private seminary on Cape Cod, who gets tired of the young idea and seeks more profitable and expanded fields of labor. He has not, at the outset, the slightest preparation for the duties of the position—that of United States consul at Verdecuerno (a translation of Palermo into "Greenhorn")—or even knowledge of what they are. His utter lack of information in the premises is indeed quite exceptional, especially in a New England teacher. We should have expected an average lad of fourteen in any part of the Union to have suspected that a consul would need some acquaintance with the language of the people among whom he was stationed, if not some slight notion of the general routine and purposes of the office. Mr. Sampleton, however, is not lacking in shrewdness and energy, and sets to work manfully, despite the difficulties of his situation, general and special. After several trying years, the comical tribulations of which are graphically set forth, he is just beginning to feel himself at home when he is summarily placed there in another sense by recall. He comes back as poor as he went, save in experience and the languages, and resumes the ferule with the determination not again to abandon it for the pen of the public employe.

It is chiefly to the social side of consular life that Mr. Monti introduces us, and most of the scenes belong to that aspect. The salary, no longer eked out by fees and other perquisites, is much inferior to the emoluments of other consuls at the same port, and the American representative is consequently entirely outshone by his colleagues of other nationalities. A considerable degree of diplomatic style is expected from the corps, and kept up by all but himself. In dinners, equipages, buttons and gold lace, and display of every kind, not merely France, England and Russia, but Denmark and Turkey, leave him deep in the shade. They have consular residences, large offices and reading-rooms, with secretaries, interpreters and the other paraphernalia of a small embassy, while Jonathan nests, with his wife, on the third or fourth flat of a suburban rookery, and uses his dining-room for an office. The sea-captains grumble at having to seek him in such a burrow, and being accorded nothing when they get there beyond the barest official action. He cannot interchange courtesies with the magnates of the city, and thus places himself and the interests of his country, so far as that often potent means of influence goes, at a great disadvantage. A pompous commodore brings an American squadron into port, and is ineffably disgusted at finding his consul utterly unable to do the honors or in any way assist the cruise.

Our author holds that the compensation of these mercantile and quasi-diplomatic agents ought to be largely increased, it being now inadequate as measured either by their labor and responsibility or by the allowances made by other nations, our commercial rivals. Certainly, additional pay in any reasonable proportion would be but a trifle in comparison with the result should it promote the rise of our marine from its present unprecedented state of depression. If consuls will create, or recreate, shipping, and reintroduce the American flag to the numerous foreign ports to which it is becoming each year more and more a stranger, let us by all means have them everywhere and at liberal salaries, with quant. suff. of clerks, assistants, flunkeys, dress-suits for dinner-parties and court-suits for state receptions, and all the other necessaries of an efficient consulate, the want whereof so vexed the soul of Mr. Sampleton. And then let us make fixtures of these gentlemen, with good behavior for their tenure of office, and in the selection of them endeavor to apply abroad the test it seems next to impossible to adhere to at home—honesty, capacity and fidelity.

Books Received.

The Bible for Learners. By Dr. H. Oort and Dr. I. Hooykaas. Volume II. From David to Josiah, from Josiah to the supremacy of the Mosaic Law. Authorized Translation. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

A Vision of the Future: A Series of Papers on Canon Farrar's "Eternal Hope." By Various Divines. (No. 3 of the International Religio-Science Series.) Detroit: Rose-Belford Publishing Co.

The Cincinnati Organ, with a Brief Description of the Cincinnati Music Hall. Edited by George Ward Nichols. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

Protection and Revenue in 1877. By William G. Sumner. (Economic Monographs, No. 8.) New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Hallock's American Club List and Sportsman Glossary. By Charles Hallock. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co.

Shooting Stars, as observed from the "Sixth Column" of the Times. By W. L. Alden. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Christ, His Nature and Work: A Series of Discourses by Eminent Divines. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Fords, Howard & Hurlbert.

Children of Nature. By the Earl of Desart. Toronto: Rose-Belford Publishing Co.

Francisco: A Poem. By William Watrous. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co.

Aspirations of the World. By L. Maria Child. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

THE END