But suppose, on the other hand, there are programmes. If one could get a sight of any dozen, taken at random, after all, I warrant there would be some curious if not edifying reading there. Names are (unintentionally enough) so slurred in the hurry of introduction—"Miss Mumble-mumble, allow me to introduce Mr. Jumble-jumble"—that, more often than not, neither party catches the other's name; and so She, even if she gives up her programme to be marked with the engagement, probably gets it back just scrawled with some initials; while He is driven to the expedient of entering on his programme some brief memorandum of dress or ornament—"blue and roses," "pearls," or the like—which may or may not serve to recall to him each fair personality in turn. Sisters, though, are apt to upset this descriptive arrangement by their provoking habit of going about in identical costumes. Some luckless wight has taken a satisfactory note of the dress and general appearance of a Miss Unknown, and then, horror! half an hour afterward he discovers that there are two wearers of such dress in the room, each the very ditto of the other. There is only one way out of it: when the destined dance arrives he must go boldly up to one of them with the usual "My dance, I believe?" For there's, at any rate, an even chance of his being right; while, at worst, if she answers, "I think not," his doubt is at once solved in favor of the other sister.

In the dances themselves there is not much variety. Society knows of four only—two "squares," quadrille and Lancers, and two "round," waltz and galop. Of these, waltzes are the most, and quadrilles the least, popular, it being of course understood that "round" dances occupy considerably more than half of every programme. Still, "squares" are not likely ever actually to disappear. There is a certain undeniable utility about them. They give breathing-times between waltz and galop; a share in the amusement of the evening to people who are too old or too ponderous, or otherwise unsuited for the whirling "rounds;" and scope for that pleasant institution, "sitting out," which, as everybody knows, consists in ostensibly engaging a partner for a "square," and then, instead of dancing it, deliberately spending the time in a quiet sit-down chat. "Dancing it," I see I have written, but truly it is only by courtesy that the word can be applied to a private-ball quadrille, in which nobody dreams of doing steps or attending to time, and the conventional ideal is reached by a sort of unconcerned-looking saunter, distantly suggestive of the formulated movements of the figures. But if you can't dance too ill for the "squares," on the other hand you can't dance too well for the "rounds," especially waltzes. All thorough-going dancers will now have nothing but the valse a trois temps, which requires both partners to be exactly in time both with one another and the music, and a partner who can only dance the old deux temps, or whose trois temps step is faulty, is not very likely, if a man, to be favored with many "rounds," or if a lady to be asked for them.

As for the talk of ball-rooms, its silliness and inanity are almost proverbial. And yet what else can one expect? In the "squares" one's attention is so constantly called off to some process of bowing, or setting, or crossing over, or turning round, that it is next to impossible to get half a dozen consecutive sentences of conversation at a time. Indeed, I have often meditated making a fortune by publishing, for the use of men whose small talk is limited, a pocket Dancers Conversation Book, to consist wholly of three-word beginnings of sentences, such as "Don't you think—," "Have you seen—," "Do you know—," and so on. The reader would be instructed, every time he found himself at rest beside his partner, to start one of these fragments, with a pleasant smile and an interrogative air, in well-founded confidence that by the time the third word was out of his mouth some exigency of the figure would require him to turn off to some independent movement on his own part, which ended, his partner might safely be assumed to have forgotten all about his last remark, and to be ready to listen to another equally illusory. But even supposing a couple have comparatively time to talk—as, for instance, during the short interval between two dances—how, if (as must continually happen) they were utter strangers to one another till ten minutes ago—how, I say, can they be expected to get beyond the veriest outworks and superficialities of conversation? The man (with whom it lies to take the lead) may possibly have a host of interests, and be able to talk sensibly or speciously on a variety of subjects, but at the start he is quite in the dark as to his partner's tastes and pursuits, and so almost perforce breaks ground with first one, and if that fails another, of the ordinary small-talk questions, on the chance of lighting upon some topic that the lady knows or cares about. There is always a hope of turning up trumps. "Have you been to the opera lately?" may discover an ardent musician, and pave the way for a long "sit-out" gossip on things musical. "Have you been in town long?" may lead to any amount of pleasantly rambling talk about places and people in the counties, or recollections of continental travel, perhaps the most fascinating of all kinds of "shop." Of course, if the partners are old friends, or even tolerably familiar acquaintances, the surface-fishing process is happily unnecessary, and they can plunge at once into deep waters. Still, even if they get upon so-called tender subjects, it's long odds they won't have time enough to get out of their depth. That danger is reserved for the quieter and more prolonged intercourse of picnic-parties and country-house life. Cupid's arrows seldom penetrate deep at a ball.

A careful observer of ball-room talk will not fail to notice what may be called the exclusive slang of society. He will find people "in society" habitually using a few pet words which they love, not because they are a bit better than the synonyms used by other people, but just because other people don't use them, whereby they serve as a sort of passwords or Masonic signs among the initiated. Just now plainness is all the fashion. Ladies who are not in society talk of "dresses" and "gentlemen," and grammatically contract "are not" into "aren't;" so the ladies of the Upper Ten say "gowns" and "men" and "ain't" for distinction's sake. And the same idea comes out at many points. The public-ball cavaliers rejoice in lavender- or lemon-colored kids, and display exuberant activity in the "squares;" so the dancing-man of society punctiliously gloves his hands in white, and strolls through a quadrille with an air of languid indifference. One romp, and one only, does the private ball countenance in the merry-go-round of the third figure of a "sixteen" (double) set of Lancers.

After every dance, in the early stage of the ball, there is a general set of the dancers in the direction of the tea-room. Till some time between midnight and one o'clock the door of the supper room is kept strictly closed, and light refreshments—tea, iced coffee, cream- and water-ices, various "cups" and lemonades and strawberryades, and cakes and biscuits and such-like—have undisputed possession of the field. Anything to get away for five minutes from the heated atmosphere of the dancing-room; so it is generally advisable to propose "tea" to your partner as an excuse for a visit to the back room down stairs (probably Paterfamilias's study or the children's school-room on other days); and, once there, you will ask instructions as to whether "tea" shall this time take the form of "cup," or something-ade, or ice. Most likely it will be the latter, and between "cream" and "water" [ices] her voice is almost sure, despite the certainty of consequential thirst, to be for "cream." But hardly has the preux chevalier successfully struggled at the buffet for the creamy spoonful when harp and horn are heard preluding to the next dance up stairs, and everybody must hurry back from passage, stairs or tea-room to find or await his or her next partner.

When the ball is at its fullest is the time for the really first-rate dancer to turn his talent to the best advantage. Nearly all London ball-givers have such an immense circle of acquaintances that, for some shorter or longer period of the evening, their parties are pretty sure to be overcrowded. Soon after midnight, it may be, all the world and his wife will just have arrived together, and the abomination of suffocation sets in. The staircase is congested and impassable: the dancing area in the ball-room is encroached upon till a space about as big as a dining-table is all the dancers have to dance in. At which crisis it wants no little skill and practice in a man to steer his partner deftly and without collisions through the intricate melee. It can be done, though, to a degree hardly credible till practically tested, the really greatest difficulties being, in point of fact, rather to start and stop than to avoid bumpings when once fairly underweight; but ladies suffer sufficiently from dizzy or clumsy partners to make them often, in a crowd, prefer to give their "rounds" to a man whose steering is good, rather than to one whose feet are less dexterous than his tongue.

At some unperceived moment toward one o'clock couples descending to the ice-room find the dining-room door wide open, the signal that the supper period has commenced. First, one or two make up their minds that the discovery is opportune, and enter shyly in the face of an expectant line of waiters drawn up behind the buffet. Note the arrangement of the room while there is yet space to grasp its details, for ten minutes hence, be sure, the place will be so thronged, with such an all-pervading hurry-scurry going on, that there will be no chance of noting anything. Facing you as you enter, down the length of one side of the room, runs a long buffet-table, the nearer side spread with the apparatus of eating and drinking, the centre laden with every variety of comestibles, interspersed at intervals with tall epergnes and other silver ornaments sacred to all that's aesthetically captivating in fruit and flower; while in the rear, calm, collected and decorous, stand a row of middle-aged ministering persons from Gunter's. There are no chairs at the buffet. If you sup there, you must sup standing—no great hardship, as the table is of course of a height just convenient for the purpose—and you can either accept the services of the ministering person opposite you, or help yourself from the multitude of dishes within reach. All very well, this, for those who are in a hurry, just snatching a morsel between two dances, and for all who see no practicable opportunity of doing better for their partners and themselves. For, an intervening gangway being of course left clear for folk to pass up and down to and along the buffet, the rest of the floor-space is occupied by three or more (according to the size of the room) small round tables, low, chair-surrounded, each laden with a due complement of plates, glasses, victuals, and so on, and each capable of accommodating three or four couples at a time. To one of these, if you are wise, and have the luck to espy any vacant chairs, you will surely—I am of course addressing my male readers—lead your partner. I assume that, with an experienced eye to this very thing, you have purposely contrived to engage one with whom you specially enjoy, or think it likely that you will enjoy, a good gossip, for a quadrille that occurs just at this period of the evening, and that you have suggested "sitting out" the dance in the supper-room; so that you have now descended the stairs happy in the consciousness of ten minutes or more of leisure before the next "round" will again demand your indefatigable trois temps in the ball-room.

Well, two chairs secured, and partner comfortably seated on one of them, the next thing for the man to do, before settling down into conversation, is to forage at the buffet for supplies; for the stock originally placed on the little table is pretty sure to have been eviscerated in the course of the first half hour's attack. He doesn't ask his partner to say what she will have, knowing full well that ladies, young and old, even if so interrogated, are sure to give that invariable pair of successive answers, "chicken" and "jelly," not because they really prefer those to any other viands—as a matter of fact, their own inclinations, so far as they are earthly enough to have any, are generally very much otherwise—but from a modest wish to give the least possible trouble; chicken and jelly being stock dishes that are quite certain to be at hand in every supper-room. No, he is far more likely to please by asking to have the matter left in his hands, and thereupon going off to the buffet, to return with a small but varied collection of three or four samples, each on a separate plate, of the most novel and attractive of the culinary triumphs there displayed, for her to choose from. Which duty done, and some champagne and seltzer-water deftly mixed, he will with a light heart take possession of his reserved chair, and fall to upon one or other of the unchosen samples and the most thoroughly zestful chat of the evening.

Behooves it to say a word or two of the materials of the typical ball-supper? There is a family likeness about those turned out by Gunter that the experience of one season is enough to make one recognize. And, on the whole, the Gunterian supper is as good, in its way, as; need be. Nothing hot, of course, except oyster soup (specially adapted for deserving chaperons), and, maybe, some delicately browned cutlets; but cold meats of every shade of substantiality, from boars' heads and chickens and raised pies to the most delicate of sandwiches, tempting translucent aspics, in which larks, lobsters, prawns, fillets of sole, and such-like lie "imbedded and injellied," and ethereal plovers' eggs. Of sweets the multitude and variety is almost infinite; and indeed the possible combinations of things creamy and jammy and gelatinous are tolerably well known all over the world. Among them fresh strawberries combined with plain iced cream may be mentioned as holding a high place in general favor. As to the drinkables, sherry and claret are always at hand, but the almost universal beverage is a mixture of, say, two thirds of champagne to one of seltzer-water. The idea of this mixture is, no doubt, partly to get rid of that excess of fixed air which is apt to make undiluted champagne a rather uncomfortable material for a draught; but the custom is mainly the result of sad experience of the unwisdom of doing otherwise, owing (it must be admitted) to the badness of the so-called champagne only too commonly dispensed at ball suppers. How the man who wouldn't dream of giving his guests a glass of inferior wine at his dinner-table comes to think nothing of poisoning them with the cheap rubbish that audaciously flouts in advertising columns as "supper-champagne," has puzzled sager brains than mine. Surely, bad wine is not less injurious taken in repeated draughts in the small hours of the morning than it would be sipped in small doses at dinner-time; yet it's only here and there a logically-minded individual produces his dinner-champagne at his wife's dancing-parties; and everywhere else old and young with equal caution demand a prudent admixture of the seltzer that will, if anything can, avert a next-morning headache. The chaperon, warrantably hungry, taking her time over her supper in a comfortable corner, is often not to be tempted by any sparkling liquid; but the dancers want the nervous exhilaration that champagne, however inferior, at least temporarily supplies, and are rarely careful enough to shun the danger altogether.

"Are you going on anywhere?" is a query that not unfrequently meets one's ears about halfway through the evening. "Going on" is an essentially town practice. In the country, houses lie too far scattered for it, and there is seldom such a press of gayeties on foot together as to make it likely that two or more engagements will have been made for one night. But in London, owing to the limited number of evenings comprised in a season, as compared with the host of people who want to give their parties in the course of it, it constantly happens that folk who go out much find themselves invited to a dinner, a drum and a couple of dances, all on one and the same evening. Ay, and they manage to achieve them all, too, thanks to determination and broughams. To the dinner at eight P. M.; away at a quarter to eleven to put in an appearance and for ten minutes swell the hurried and promiscuous chatter at the drum; thence off again to one of the balls—to stay if it is good, or if it isn't to go on after a dance or two to the other. The custom is so thoroughly recognized that no hostess would ever dream of being offended with any of her guests for "going on" elsewhere whenever they think fit. Not that she is ever likely to know whether this or that individual does or does not do so; for it's not at all necessary before one goes off to say any formal good-night to the hostess, and in fact men very seldom do so. When they have had dancing enough, or, remembering some disagreeable necessity of being up and alert for work next morning, feel it's about time to be going bedward, they quietly slink down stairs to the cloak-room, get hats and wraps, and are off in a fast hansom without a word to anybody. It's all very well for the young lady, who has from day to day no calls upon her time but those of her own pleasures and engagements, to stay late at any particularly pleasant dance. She may collapse to her heart's content next morning, and still be ready again by nightfall for another round of excitements; but with her partners things are very different, unless, indeed, they are officers in the Household Brigade. The young barrister or banker, or what not, who is frivolous enough to like combining some nights of dancing in the season with hard days of work, soon finds that the only way of gratifying both tastes is to partake sparingly, in point of hours, of the former one; so he comforts himself with the reflection that there are as good balls in the season as ever came out of it, and resolutely says good-night to the most festive scenes by 2 A. M. at latest. By that time, indeed, the best of a private ball is very commonly over. No doubt there are delicious and long-to-be-remembered opportunities now and then seizable by staying later. Strauss' world-known "Blue Danube" waltz with an appreciative partner, and the rare luxury of ample dancing-space in an emptying room, is one such. But when the minute-hand of the hall-clock is approaching the third of the small hours, the endurance of the most indulgent and enduring of matrons is apt to get exhausted, and she carries off her brood, determined, like everybody else, not to be the last to go. In the tea-room she will get a strengthening draught of some clear soup or other in a tea-cup, and meanwhile John Thomas will have called the carriage to the door.

Next morning the Morning Post will serve up to its (mostly lady) readers a full list of the names of those who were at last night's balls, under the head of "Fashionable Entertainments." The Post is the one daily paper that systematically goes in for this kind of news, publishing every day during the season a long list of coming fixtures, as well as catalogues of the guests attending them. And I fear it must be owned that there are people not a few who take delight in having their parties and appearances chronicled in this small-beer manner, and that there are several grains of truth contained in the good-humoredly sarcastic lines in which that clever rhymer "C.S.C," parodying the Proverbial Philosophy of Mr. Tupper, gives worldly advice to young ladies entering society. Says "C.S.C.":

Choose judiciously thy friends, for to discard them is undesirable; Yet it is better to drop thy friends, O my daughter, than to drop thy H's. Dost thou know a wise woman? yea, wiser than the children of light? Hath she a position? and a title? and are her parties in the Morning Post? If thou dost, cleave unto her, and give up unto her thy body and mind; Think with her ideas, and distribute thy smiles at her bidding: So shalt thou become like unto her, and thy manners shall be "formed:" And thy name shall be a sesame at which the doors of the great shall fly open: Thou, shalt know every peer, his arms, and the date of his creation, His pedigree and their intermarriages, and cousins to the sixth remove; Thou shalt kiss the hand of royalty, and lo! in next morning's papers, Side by side with rumors of wars and stories of shipwrecks and sieges, Shall appear thy name, and the minutiae of thy headdress and petticoat, For an enraptured public to muse upon over their matutinal muffin.

Society expects every guest after a dance to go through the form of paying a call upon the giver. If you are an old friend of the house, or for any reason want to go in, it will be wise to defer your visit for two or three days, until the interior of the house has recovered its normal condition; for of course on the very day that follows a dance the rooms are in such a universal state of up-side-downness (if the word may be coined) that callers can't expect to be admitted. For which reason, if you don't want to go in, you can't do better than select this very day for leaving a card at the door; which last ceremony duly concluded, all possible respect and duty may be taken to have been shown and done to the private ball: at all events, the present writer—rejoice, long-suffering reader, if you still exist—has no further word or suggestion to offer, on this occasion, on the subject.

W. D. R.



THE LIVELIES.

IN TWO PARTS.—I.

"What under the canopy is all that hammering at the door?" said Mrs. Lively, glancing up from her crocheting.

Master Napoleon Lively, the person appealed to, was sucking a lemon through a stick of candy. He took this from his mouth, said, "Dunno," and then returned it to the anxious aperture.

"And don't care," said Mrs. Lively with spirit. "Any other child in the city would go to the door and find out what it means; but you! much you care to save your mother's feet!" Gathering her ball of worsted with the crocheting in her left hand, she swept out of the room and through the hall to the front door. She pulled this open. There stood a man with hammer in hand.

"No harm to ye's, marm," he said. "I's jist afther puttin' a bill on ye's door; for shure it's to be sowld, that the house is."

"Sold!" cried Mrs. Lively. "When?"

"Faith! whiniver it may please a body to buy it," was the definite reply.

Mrs. Lively read the bill: "'Six thousand dollars!' Why the whole property isn't worth six thousand, much less the lease for twelve years. Won't the owner take less?"

"It's more than likely he would, 'specially from the likes of ye's. Shure! folks most ginerly wants all they kin git, and ef they can't git it they'll be afther takin' less. The gintleman says as it must be sold immadiate, for the owner is bruck to smitherations."

Here was prospective trouble. Mrs. Lively went down the doorsteps and along the paved walk to her husband's office, in the front basement. The doctor laid down his pen, expecting a patient, but, seeing that it was only his wife, resumed it.

"There's a bill put up on our door: the house is for sale—six thousand dollars. I'll warrant it could be got for five: I think it's worth six, though. We may have to move out at a day's notice, and we've just had this office newly papered, and the kitchen repainted, and, dear me! just got those Brussels carpets down in the parlors. It's too provoking! I know those carpets'll have to be cut and slashed into ribbons to make them fit other rooms. I was afraid of that when I got them. Until you own a house we oughtn't to get anything nice. But, oh dear! if I waited till we owned a home, I should go down to my grave on a two-ply. But where in the name of reason are we going? There isn't another vacant house in this neighborhood that I'd live in. And just think of the damage to your practice in moving your office! What are we going to do? Why in the world don't you say something? Can't you suggest something? One would think you hadn't any interest in the matter. But it's always the way. I've had to do all the planning for this family ever since I came into it, and I came into it before it was a family. Oh, you needn't smile: I know you're thinking that I haven't given you a chance to say anything; but I wouldn't talk if you'd talk, and I wouldn't bother myself about our arrangements if you would. It's too provoking about this house. It just suits me: there isn't a thing about it I should wish to have altered."

"Closets, little kitchen, back stairs," said Napoleon, who had entered the office unobserved, and who had often heard his mother denounce the house as most inconvenient in these three particulars.

"What have you come for?" the mother demanded sharply. "Go back to the sitting-room, and learn your geography lesson for to-morrow."

"Have learnt it," replied the imperturbable Napoleon.

"Then go and get your arithmetic."

"Have got it."

"Well, then, get your history."

"Have."

"And your grammar and spelling and German—you've learned them all, have you?"

"Yes."

"Then go and take your walk."

"Have."

"For pity's sake, what is it you haven't done?"

"Nothing."

"Every duty of life discharged, is it?" and Mrs. Lively smiled in spite of herself.

"'Cept eating."

"Except eating! Of course: I never knew a time in your life when you'd finished up your eating.—What are you going to do about that bill?" Mrs. Lively continued, turning to her husband.

"I can't do anything about it except to leave it there," replied the gentleman, smiling quietly.

"It's exasperating," cried the lady. "I don't see how I can ever give up this house."

"We might buy it," said Dr. Lively. "I've been thinking about it for some time."

"How can we? Where's the money?"

"I have some in bank."

"You have, and you didn't let me know it, you mean, stingy thing!" said Mrs. Lively between a pout and a smile. "How much have you in bank?"

"Four or five thousand."

"Why, where did you get it?"

"Saved it."

"Why, you've always talked as poor as poverty, especially if I wanted a bonnet or anything—said you were barely making a living."

"No man is making a living till he can afford to own a home," said the doctor, laying aside his pen. "I'll go and see the agent, and learn what we can get the house for."

"Well, beat him down: don't give him six thousand for it, and don't decide on anything till you've consulted me. After all, there are a good many things about this house that don't suit me. Maybe, we can get a lot and build a house to suit us better for the same money."

"Hardly," said Dr. Lively.

"Well, really, I don't know about buying this house," said the lady in an undecided way. "I should like to be nearer church, and Nappy ought to be nearer his school."

"But my practice is all in this neighborhood, and it's a most excellent neighborhood—permanent: the people own their houses. To go into a new neighborhood would be like going into a new city. I should have to build up a practice with new people."

Dr. Lively saw the agent, and agreed to pay five thousand dollars in cash for the house, and five hundred in one year, at six per cent. "Now, my dear," he said to his wife, "we've got to save that five hundred dollars this year."

"Don't I know that? I suppose, now, I shall have to hear that ding-donged at me for the next twelve months. You'll fling it at me every time I ask for change. I dare say before the year is out I shall repent in sackcloth and ashes that we ever bought the house. Save it! Of course I've got to save it. It never enters your head that it's possible for you to save anything."

"Who saved the five thousand?" asked the doctor quietly.

"For pity's sake, how could I save it if you never gave it to me? I didn't even know you'd made it. I'm sure my dress has been shabby enough to suit the stingiest mortal in existence. There isn't a woman in our church that dresses plainer than I do."

"As you are going out," said the doctor, changing the subject, "you can call at the savings bank and get the money: the agent will be here in the morning with the papers."

Mrs. Lively came home in due time and displayed ten five-hundred-dollar bills. "They offered to give me a cheque," she said, "but these bills look so much richer."

"But a cheque is safer in case of accident," the doctor suggested.

"What in the world's going to happen to-night? You are such a croaker, always anticipating trouble!"

"Oh no; I don't anticipate a fire or a robbery before morning," the doctor said.

That night, when Mrs. Lively went to bed, she took the doctor's purse from his pocket and put it under her pillow. All night long she was dreaming about those bills. The next morning, when she woke, her first act was to look for the purse. There it was, just where she had placed it. She returned it to her husband's pocket, and then dressed without waking him, for he had been called up that night to see a patient.

Very promptly at eight o'clock the agent for the house presented himself in Dr. Lively's office. Who ever knew an agent behind time when a sale was to be consummated?

Dr. Lively looked over the papers carefully, and, being satisfied, opened his purse to make the cash payment. If the agent's eyes had not been eagerly watching the purse for the forthcoming bills, but instead had been fixed on Dr. Lively's face, they would have seen in it first a look utterly blank, then one of intense alarm.

"Excuse me a moment," he said as he closed his purse. He left the office and hurried to Mrs. Lively's sitting-room.

"Well, is the deed done?" the lady asked with the complacent air of a land-holder.

"What did you do with the money?" the doctor asked anxiously. "I thought you put it in my purse."

"I did," replied Mrs. Lively, her eyes dilating with alarm.

"It isn't here," the doctor asserted. "You must be mistaken."

"I am not mistaken," said the lady, panting with alarm. "I did put it in your purse. You've dropped it out somewhere."

"That is impossible: I haven't opened my purse since those bills were brought into the house until just now in my office. You must have put the bills somewhere else. Look in your purse."

"I tell you I put the money in your purse," replied Mrs. Lively with asperity, at the same time opening her purse with an impatient movement. "It isn't here: I knew it wasn't. I tell you again I put it in your purse, and you've dropped it out somewhere."

"But I haven't opened the purse till a moment since in my office," the doctor reiterated.

"Then you've dropped the bills in the office."

"No, I have not. I was holding the purse over the table when I opened it, and I perceived at once that it was empty, even to my small change."

"Well, that shows that the money has been dropped out of the purse some time when you opened it. If I put the bills somewhere else, what's become of the change? You've lost it all out together, you see."

"Then it must be in the house somewhere," said the doctor, evidently staggered, "for I haven't been out since those bills were brought home."

"Yes, you have," urged Mrs. Lively from her vantage-ground. "You were called up last night to see that child on Morgan street."

"But I didn't lose it there. For when I wanted to make change for a five-dollar bill, I found that I hadn't my purse; and that reminds me, I found it in my pocket this morning, though it wasn't there last night."

"I can explain that," said Mrs. Lively after a moment's hesitation. "I put the purse under my pillow last night, and returned it to your pocket this morning."

"Then of course you lost the money out," said the doctor promptly.

"Of course! I might have known you would lay it on me if there was a shadow of a chance. I had nothing in the world to do with the losing of that money."

"You ought to have got a cheque."

"Why in Heaven's name didn't you tell me to?"

All this while the two had been looking the room over, rummaging through drawers, looking on whatnots, brackets, shelves, etc.

"Well, I can't keep the agent waiting any longer," said the doctor. "I'll tell I him I'll bring the money round to him;" and he left the room.

"What are you standing there for?" said Mrs. Lively, whirling sharply on Napoleon. "Go, and look for that money."

"Where?"

"How do I know where? Look anywhere and everywhere. There's no telling where your father lost it. Napoleon Lively," she exclaimed, a sudden idea seeming to strike her, "what did you do with that money?"

"Nothing," answered the youth with cool indifference.

"Where did you hide it?"

"Didn't hide it."

His perfect nonchalance was irresistibly convincing.

"Have you found it?" said the doctor, re-entering the room.

"Found it!" Mrs. Lively snapped out the words, and then her lips shut close together as if with the vehemence of the snapping.

"Perhaps the house was entered last night," suggested the doctor.

"I locked every door and window, and they were all locked this morning when I got up," replied Mrs. Lively. "Perhaps you left the front door open when you went out in the night. I'll warrant you did: it would be just like you."

"I did not leave the door open," replied the doctor. "I found it locked when I got back, and opened it with my night-key. Besides, I was not out of the house more than forty minutes, and you told me when I got back that you hadn't been asleep."

"I told you I had scarcely been asleep," said Mrs. Lively.

All that day the Lively household was in extreme commotion. Every bedstead was stripped naked, and each article of bedding was separately shaken in the middle of the room; the contents of every drawer were turned out; every piece of furniture was moved; every floor was carefully swept. The house, in short, was turned inside out. Advertisements were put in the papers; handsome rewards were offered; the police were notified of the loss. The detectives were of opinion that the house had been entered, but there was not the slightest clew to the burglars.

It was Friday, the sixth of October, when the loss was discovered. On the seventh the house was again looked over, inch by inch.

"You must have put that money somewhere else than in my purse," said Dr. Lively to his wife. "Have you looked in the pockets of all your dresses?"

"Don't say to me again that I didn't put that money in your purse," said Mrs. Lively vehemently: "I won't bear it. You might as well tell me that I don't see you this minute. There never was anything in this world that makes me so tearing mad as to be contradicted about something that I perfectly well know. I'd go into any court and swear that I put that money in your purse; and I don't want to hear any more of your insinuations. Do you think I've stolen the money? You've lost it out of the purse—that's all there is about it. This house has no more been entered than I've been burglaring."

"Then where's the money?"

"How in the name of sense do you think I know? I'd go and get it if I knew. Dear! dear! dear! dear! The savings of ten years gone in a night, after all my pinching! I've done my own work—"

"When you couldn't get a girl," said Napoleon.

"I've worn old-fashioned clothes; I've twisted and screwed in every possible way to save that money—"

"Pa saved it," was Napoleon's emendation.

"Well," retorted the lady, "he'd better not have saved it: he'd better have let his family have it. What's the use of saving money for burglars?"

"You think now that the burglars have it?" said the doctor dryly.

"Oh, for pity's sake, hush! I don't think anything about it. I believe I'm going insane. How in the universe we're ever going to live is more than I can conceive."

"My dear, we are better off than we were ten years ago, for I yet have my practice, and we are as well off as you thought we were two days ago; and you were happy then."

"Happy!" There was a volume of bitter scorn in the word as Mrs. Lively uttered it.

"Oh, my dear!" said the husband in a tone of piteous remonstrance.

The next evening, which was Sunday, Dr. Lively and wife went to church, and; heard a sermon by the Rev. Charles Hilmer from the words, "Help one another."

"What's the use of preaching such stuff?" said Mrs. Lively with petulance when they were out of church. "Nobody heeds it. Who's going to help us in our loss?"

"Our lesson from that sermon is, that we are to help others," said the doctor.

"We help others! I'd like to know what we've got to help others with! Five thousand dollars out of pocket!"

"There's a fire somewhere," said the doctor as an engine whirled by them while they stood waiting for a car.

The lady and gentleman proceeded to their home on the South Side, and went to bed, though the fire-bells were still ringing. About midnight they were roused by a violent ringing of the door-bell. Dr. Lively started up with a patient on his mind. "There's a fire somewhere," he exclaimed immediately, perceiving the glare in the room. Mrs. Lively was out of bed in an instant.

"Where? where's the fire?" she cried. "Is the house afire? I believe in my soul it is."

"No," said Dr. Lively, who had gone to the window; "but there's a tremendous fire to the south-west. The flames seem to be leaping from roof to roof. That was a policeman who rang us up. He seems to be waking all this neighborhood."

They dressed hurriedly, called up Napoleon, and went out at the front door, and on with the stream toward the fire. The street was crowded with people, the air thick with noises, and everywhere it was as light as day. They passed on under the lurid heavens, and reached a hotel which stood open. Two streams of people were on the stairs—one hurrying down, the other going up for a view of the fire. Our party followed the stream up the stairs and on to the roof. It was crowded with spectators, all greatly excited. Making their way to the front of the roof, our couple stood spellbound by a vision which once seen could never be forgotten. It was like a look into hell. The whole fire seemed below them, a surging, tempest-lashed ocean of flame, with mile-long billows, mile-high breakers and mile-deep shadows. All about the flaming ocean, except to the leeward, was a sea of faces, white and upturned, and rapt as with some unearthly vision. Stretching out for miles were housetops swarming with crowds, gazing appalled at the spectacle in which the fate of every man, woman and child of them was vitally involved. At times the gale, with a strong, steady sweep, would level the billows of fire, and bear the current northward with the majestic flow of a great river. Then the flames would heave and part as with earthquake throes, dash skyward in jets and spouts innumerable, and pile up to the north-east mountains of fire that seemed to touch the heavens. Clouds of smoke obscured at times the view of the streets below, without making inaudible the roll of wheels, the beat of hoofs, the tramp of human feet, the cry of human voices, the scream of the engines, the thunder of falling buildings, the maniacal shriek of the gale, the Niagara-like roar of the fire; and ever and anon, striking through all the tumult, the deep, solemn voice of the great court-house bell, and the one word it seemed to say to the trembling city—"Doomed! doomed! doomed."

"We must go home," said Mrs. Lively in a lost, bewildered way.

"Yes," assented the doctor: "there is no safety this side the river. All the engines in creation couldn't stop that fire. Why in God's name don't they pull down houses or explode them? Come!"

But the lady continued to gaze in a fascinated way at the unearthly spectacle. It was all so wild, so awful, that the brain reeled. The doomed houses in the path of the fire seemed to her to be animate things—dumb, helpless, feeling creatures, that trembled and shrank as the flames reached out cruel fingers for them. She shook off the bewildered, dazed feeling, but it came again as the tempest of flame and smoke went racing to the north. Street and house and steeple and the vast crowds seemed sailing away on some swift crescent river to a great, vague, yawning blackness beyond.

They hurried down into the street. Momently the crowds, the tumult, the terror were growing. Every house stood open, the interior as clear as at noonday. Men, women and children were moving about in eager haste, tearing up carpets, lifting furniture and loading trucks. Ruffians were pushing in at the open doors, snatching valuables and insulting the owners. There was a hasty seizing of goods, and a wild dash into the street from imperiled houses, a shouting for trucks and carriages, piteous inquiries for absent friends, distressed cries for absent protectors, screams of little children, swift, wild faces pushing eagerly in this direction and that; oaths and prayers and shoutings; women bowed beneath mattresses and heavy furniture; wheels interlocking in an inextricable mass; horses rearing and plunging in the midst of women separated from their husbands and little children from their mothers; men bearing away their sick and infirm and their clinging little ones; the shower of falling brands, and the roar of the oncoming flood of destruction.

In the next block but one to our doctor's home a brand had lodged in the turret of a little wooden Catholic church, and, pinned there by the fierce gale, was being blown and puffed at as with a blowpipe. There was no time to lose. While he stopped on the street to secure a truckman, Mrs. Lively hurried in to get together the most valuable of their belongings. For a time she proceeded with considerable system, tying in sheets and locking in trunks the best of the bedding and other necessaries. Then she got together some family relics, looked longingly at some paintings, took down a quaintly-carved Black-Forest clock from its shelf, and then set it back, feeling that something else would be more needed. But as the roar of the tempest came nearer she was seized with panic, and no longer knew what she did. When Dr. Lively came in to announce the dray at the door he found his wife making for a trunk with a tin baking-pan in one hand and a cloth duster in the other.

"For Heaven's sake, Priscilla, don't pack up such trash!" he cried. "Have you got up the parlor carpets?"

"Oh dear! no: I never thought of them. Nappy might get them up if he would. Napoleon! Where under the sun is that boy? Napoleon!" she called.

"Here," answered Napoleon through a mouthful of cake. He entered with a basket in his hand.

"Why in the world don't you go to work and help?"

"Am helping."

"What are you doing?"

"Packing."

"Packing what, I'd like to know?"

"Victuals."

"Of course! I might have known without asking. What in the world shall we want with victuals, in the street without roof or bed?"

But the father told him to hold on to his basket.

"You may be sure he'll do that," said the mother. "What in the world are all those boxes you've got there?" she asked as she dragged a sheet full of articles to the front door.

"Some things from my office," the doctor replied hurriedly.

"I just know they're those plants and fossils and casts and miserable things that have been in my way everlastingly. I was in hopes they'd get burnt up."

Without heeding his wife, Dr. Lively disappeared into the house for something else.

"Take those boxes off," she said to the drayman.

"Blast my eyes if I'm going to be lifting boxes off and on here all night for any darned twenty-five dollars that ever was paid. Hurry your things on here, or, by Godfrey! I'll dump 'em and be off. Blast me if I'll wait here a second beyond five minutes."

Just then the doctor reappeared, and began to turn over the contents of a sheet before tying it. "Oh, my dear," he cried in a tone of mingled remonstrance and despair, "we can't spare room for these worthless traps;" and he pitched out a pair of vases, two pin-cushions, a dustpan, a sieve, a kitchen apron, a statuette of Psyche, a pair of plaster medallions, Our Mutual Friend in paper cover, a pink tarletan dress, a dirty tablecloth, an ice pitcher, a flat-iron, a mosquito-bar, a hoop-skirt, a backgammon-board and a bottle of hair restorative.

"They're worth a thousand times more than those old rocks and things you've loaded up the dray with," Mrs. Lively maintained.

At last the truck moved off, followed by Dr. Lively, shouting to his wife to come on and not lose sight of him. Mrs. Lively seized a carpet-bag in which she had packed her silver and jewelry, and rushed into the street, screaming to Napoleon to follow and not lose sight of her. Napoleon hung his basket of provisions on his arm and stuck his hat on his head. Then he went to the pantry and poked up cookies through a lift between his hat and forehead, until there was no vacant space remaining in the top of his hat. Then he crammed a cake in his mouth, filled his pockets and both hands, and left the rest to their doom.

The wind, which for a time had blown steadily to the north-east, was now seemingly bewildered. At times there would be a dead calm, as though the fierce gale had tired itself out; then it would sweep roaring down a street with the force of a hurricane, and go shrieking through an alley as though sucked through a tube; again, it seemed to strike from every quarter of the compass, while anon a vast whirlwind was formed, swirling and circling till one half expected to see the glowing masses of masonry lifted and whirled like autumn leaves.

On went our party as fast as the press would permit. One bundle after another, as it took fire from falling brands, was pitched off the truck and left to burn out on the pavement; and to these bundle-pitchings Mrs. Lively kept up a running accompaniment of groans and ejaculations. When they had reached the corner of Washington and La Salle, the truckman signified his intention of throwing off his load.

"They'll be safe here," he said. Dr. Lively, too, thought this, for he did not believe that the flames could pass the double row of fireproof buildings on La Salle street and others in the neighborhood. But as he was bound for a friend's house across the river, on the North Side, he would of course have preferred to take his goods with him, even if there had been no danger from pillagers. But no arguments or persuasions, even when offered in the shape of the gentleman's last five-dollar bill, could induce the drayman to cross the river. He dumped on the sidewalk all that remained of the Livelies' earthly possessions, and disappeared in the press.

Again and again, but all in vain, Dr. Lively offered his forlorn hope, his one greenback, to procure the transportation of his goods across the river. But that five-dollar bill was so scorned and snubbed by the ascendent truckmen that the doctor found himself smiling at his conceit that the poor, despised thing, when returned to his purse, went sneakingly into the farthest and deepest corner.

As he could not leave his goods, it was decided that Mrs. Lively and Napoleon should cross the river without him. He sat down on Mrs. Lively's big Saratoga trunk to await developments. He did not have to wait long. The double row of fireproofs, which was to have held the fire at bay, was attacked and went down; then the Chamber of Commerce melted away; shortly after the court-house was assailed. Dr. Lively gave up his trunks and bundles as lost, and as too insignificant, in that wild havoc, to be worth a sigh. He did feel a desire, however, for a clean shirt in which to face the heavens. Then, too, he wanted to bring something through the fire—to preserve something which would serve as a memento of his ante-igneous life. The best thing in the way of a relic which he could secure was a case of sea-weeds mounted on cards. He made a hasty bundle of these and a few articles of underwear, tucked it under his arm, and then looked about him, considering which way he should go. The wind had again risen to a hurricane. All around him was a storm of fire-brands, as though the flakes in a snow-storm had been turned to flame. Great sheets of blazing felt-roofing were driving overhead. Everywhere timbers and masonry were falling: walls a half square in length came down with the thunder's crash, and in such quick succession that the noise ceased to be noticed. Thousands of frantic people were pushing wildly in every direction. The crowds seemed bewildered, lost, frenzied. And what wonder? The world seemed to be burning up, the heavens to be melting: a star looked like a speck of blood, so that the whole canopy of heaven when visible seemed blood-spattered.

As the doctor was gazing at the terrible spectacle the cry ran from mouth to mouth that all the bridges across the west branch of the river were burned. There were thousands of spectators from the West Division who had come over to witness the melting away of the South Side business-palaces. If the bridges were burned, there remained but one avenue by which they could reach their homes. There were cries of "The tunnel! the tunnel!" a panic and a grand rush, in which everybody was borne westward toward Washington street tunnel. Dr. Lively found himself forced into the tunnel. It was crowded with two streams of wildly-excited people moving in opposite directions. One was rushing to the rescue of property on the South Side or to see the fire—the other, to get away from it. Most of these latter were carrying articles of furniture and bales of goods, or they were wheeling loaded barrows. Everybody was crowding and pushing. Our doctor had made his way through about one-third of the tunnel when suddenly every light went out. The great gasometer of the South Side gas-works had exploded. He was under the river, in the bowels of the earth, in the midst of that wild crowd of humanity, and in utter darkness. "There will be a panic," he thought: "all the weak will be overrun and trampled to death. God help them and help us all!" Then there came to him a flash of inspiration: "Keep to the right!" he shouted, "to the right!" "Keep to the right!" repeated an abetting voice. "To the right!" "Keep to the right!" "Right! right!" The blessed words ran along from one end of the dark way to the other. Then a hush seemed to fall on the lips as though the hearts were at prayer, and the two streams moved along like processions through the dark valley of the shadow of death.

Facing about, Dr. Lively squeezed his way through a dense throng on North Water street bridge till he gained the North Division. Here he sat down on the steps of a warehouse to take breath, and looked back on the scene he had left. The fire had reached the river, which reflected the lurid horror above, and seemed a stream of molten metal, or a current of glowing lava poured from some wide rent in the earth. Struggling human creatures in the blazing, hissing, sputtering waters realized Dante's imaginings of tortured, writhing souls on the red floor of hell.

Tired and faint, Dr. Lively pressed on to the north. He was not long in learning that the fire was already raging in the doomed North Division, and that the waterworks were disabled. Reaching the house of his friend, where his family had taken refuge, he found them all informed of the peril to the North Side, and getting ready to move. His friend decided to take refuge on the prairies. "There we can keep up the race," he said.

"I'm going where I can get water," said Dr. Lively: "it's the only thing under heaven that this fire-fiend won't eat. There isn't a suburb but may be burned. I'm going toward the lake." So he took possession of his wife and boy and started for Lincoln Park. There were lights in all the houses, and eager, swift-moving figures were seen through the doors and windows: everywhere people were getting their things into the streets. Shortly after, the flames, it was; noticed, were beginning to pale. A weird kind of light began to creep over burning house, blazing street and ruined wall. The day was dawning. With a kind of bewildered feeling our friends watched the coming on of the strange, ghostly morning, and saw the pale, sickly, shamefaced sun come up out of the lake. It was ten o'clock before they reached the old cemetery south of Lincoln Park. Hundreds had already arrived here with their belongings, representing every article that pertains to modern civilization. Parties were momently coming in with more loads. Here our friends halted. Mrs. Lively dropped down in a fugitive rocking chair, thinking what a comfort it would be to go off into a faint. But without a pillow or salts or camphor it was a luxury in which she did not dare to indulge, though she had a physician at hand. Right in front of her she noticed a besmutched, red-eyed woman who had something familiar in her appearance. "Why, it's myself!" she said to her husband, pointing to a large plate mirror; leaning against an old headstone.

"Yes," said the doctor smiling, "we all look like sweeps."

Napoleon seated himself on a grave and opened his lunch-basket.

"Did anybody ever?" cried the mother. "This boy's brought his basket through. There's nothing in all the world except something to eat that he would have devoted himself to in this way."

"Nothing could have proved more opportune," said the father.

Then they ate their breakfast, sharing it with a little girl who was crying for her father, and with a lady who was carrying a handsome dress bonnet by the ribbons, and who in turn shared her portion with her poodle dog. They offered a slice of cake to a sad old gentleman sitting on an inverted pail with his hands clasped above a gold headed cane, and his chin resting on them. He shook his head without speaking, and went on gazing in a dreary, abstracted way into the air, as though oblivious of everything around him. "'Though I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there,'" he said in slow measured soliloquy. His lip began to quiver and the tears to stream down his furrowed face. Dr. Lively heard, and wiped his eyes on the back of his hand: he had nothing else to receive the quick tears. Just then a hearse with nodding black plumes came by loaded with boxes and bundles, on which were perched a woman and five children, the three youngest crowing and laughing in unconscious glee at their strange circumstances. This was followed by two buggies hitched together, both packed with women and children drawn by a single horse, astride of which was a lame man.

"What is it, madam?" said Dr. Lively to a woman who was wringing her hands and crying piteously.

"Why, you see," she said between her sobs, "me and Johnny made our livin' a-sellin' pop-corn; and last night we had a bushel popped ready for the Monday's trade; and now it's all gone: we've lost everything—all that beautiful corn: there wasn't a single scorched grain."

"But think what others have lost—their beautiful homes and all their business—"

She suddenly ceased crying, and, turning upon him, said sharply, "We lost all we had: did they lose any more'n they had?"

A young man came pressing through the crowd, desperately clutching a picture in a handsome gilt frame. Through the smoke and smutch which stained the canvas was seen a gray-haired, saintly woman's head.

"The picture of his mother," thought the doctor with a swelling about his heart.

"I saved dese," said a jolly-faced German, extending his two hands; "and dey is all I had when I come from de Faderland to Chicago. And saved you nothin'?"

The man appealed to had about him three children and a pale delicate woman.

"I saved these," he said with a gesture that was an embrace. "All the baby-faces we left hanging on the walls in the home where all were born."

Then the bearded lip quivered and the lids were dropped over the brimming eyes. The mother looked up with clear, unfaltering features, and with a light grateful, almost joyous, in her fine eyes, and said softly, "But all the real faces we've brought along."

Then one of the little girls took up the story: "Oh, mother, Tommy's picture will be burned, and we can never get another. Tommy's dead, you know," she explained.

The mother's eyes grew misty, and so did the German's and the doctor's, and many others. There they were in that old deserted cemetery, a company of strangers, not one of whom had ever seen the other's face before, exchanging their confidences and mingling their tears.

All day long the fugitives poured into this strange encampment, and by night they numbered thirty thousand. There was shouting, swearing, laughing, weeping, waiting. There was pallid stupefaction, sullen silence, faces of black despair—every kind of face except the happy variety. The air was thick with frightful stories of arson; of men hanged to lamp-posts; of incendiaries hurled headlong into the fires they had kindled; of riot, mobs and lawlessness. There was scarcely a suburb that was not reported to be burning up, and prairie-fires were said to be raging. The fate of Sodom was believed to have overtaken Chicago and her dependent suburbs.

"There's no safety here," said Mrs. Lively nervously as the flames approached the cemetery. "Do let's get out of this horrid place. What in the world do you want to stay here for?"

"My dear," replied the doctor with a twinkle, "I don't want to stay here. We are not certainly safe, but I don't know of any place where our chances would be better."

"Let's go down to the beach, get on a propeller and go out into the lake."

"But, my dear, 'the Sands' and the lake shore are already thronged. It is said that people were lying in the lake, and others standing up to their necks in water—women with children in their arms. The propellers have doubtless taken off fugitives to their entire capacity."

In the mean time the fire came on. Everywhere over the dead leaves and dry grass and piles of household goods, and against the headboards and wooden crosses, the brands were falling; and the people were running and dodging, and fighting the incipient fires.

"Oh, we shall be burned to death here: I knew all the time we should," cried Mrs. Lively, dodging to the right to escape a torch, and then running backward over a grave, beyond the reach of a second. Dr. Lively stamped out the fires. "What under the sun are we going to do?" persisted the lady.

"Dodge the brands—that's your work—and look out that Napoleon doesn't get on fire in one of his dreams."

"Look there!" said Napoleon.

"Look where?" cried Mrs. Lively, whirling around.

"There."

"Where is there?"

"Dead-house."

"The dead-house! Good Heavens! it's afire!"

"This fire-demon," said the doctor, "isn't going to let any of us off. It strikes at the living through their dead."

The dead-house, fortunately empty, was consumed, the headboards and crosses were burned, the trees were scorched and blackened, the graves were seared: all the life which the years had drawn from the entombed ashes was laid again in ashes.

After a horrible suspense these graveyard campers saw the fiery tide recede from their quarters and sweep on to the north. Then came on the weird, elfinish night, that mockery of day, when, except in the direction of the lake, great mountains of fire loomed up on every side against the horizon, so that one felt environed, besieged, engirdled by horrors.

"Try to get some sleep," said Dr. Lively to his wife when the torrent had swept by to the north.

"Sleep!" said Mrs. Lively. "How can anybody sleep with these terrible fires all around? It seems to me as if I were in some part of the infernal regions. I shall always know after this how hell looks."

"I don't think the fire will trouble us any more to-night, but I'll watch: there will be plenty of watchers, indeed, to give the alarm. Lie down and try to get some rest."

"Where in the world is anybody to lie? On a grave? What in the world are you eating?" continued Mrs. Lively, turning on Napoleon.

"Shoemake" answered the boy. "Want some?"

Mrs. Lively took some of the crimson, acrid berries and put them in her mouth.

"You're hungry," said the father compassionately.

"Awful," answered the lad.

"Where are you going?" asked the mother as he started off.

"To bed," he replied, and he stretched himself out on a piece of carpet where half a dozen children were sleeping.

"Now do, Priscilla, lie down and try to sleep," the husband insisted.

"How under the stars do you suppose I could sleep with hunger and thirst gnawing at the pit of my stomach? Do let me alone: I want to try to think out something—to plan for the future. What under the sun is to become of us?"

"My dear," said the doctor, "don't worry about the future. I'll take care of it some way, if the fire will ever let us out of our present prison. We have our lives, our hands and our heads, and we must thank God."

"Heads! I feel as if I'd lost mine. I think sometimes that I'm insane."

"Oh no: you ain't of the kind that go insane."

"I suppose you mean by that I've got no feelings, no sensibility."

"No, I don't mean that;" and Dr. Lively became silent, as though it was useless to prolong the conversation.

They were sitting together on the ground, she leaning against a headstone.

"Let me sit there against that stone, and you put your head on my lap," the doctor proposed.

"What in the world is the use of it?" she said. "Do you think I'm deaf that I could sleep with all this moaning around me? Just hear it! One would think all these graves had just been made, and that all these people were chief mourners for the dead."

"The strangest bivouac ever seen under heaven!" said the doctor, looking around. "In a life liable to such vicissitudes," he continued softly, "it is important that we possess our spirits."

"Oh, for pity's sake, don't preach! What's the use?" said the wife.

"What's the use, indeed?" said the husband in a saddened tone. "If one heed not the voice of the past twenty-four hours—" He left the sentence unfinished.

"Oh, I know. Everybody, the world over, will be preaching about Chicago. She was so wicked. Sodom and Gomorrah and Babylon! That'll be the talk. I suppose we shall be told ten thousand times that riches have wings—just as though we hadn't seen the wings and couldn't swear to the color of them. But, dear me! I've been thinking that your story of losses by the fire is not worth telling. I wish to goodness we'd bought the house. If you hadn't lost the money, we might have now a respectable-sized story to tell of our losses. I shall be ashamed to tell that we lost just some clothes and household traps, when some people have lost millions. How much better it would sound to say that our house and everything in it was burned! People wouldn't know but it was a fifty-thousand-dollar house. But a few chairs and bedquilts!—it's too small to talk about."

"We've lost enough to satisfy me," said the doctor. "All my practice that I've been ten years in building up! I'm exactly where I was when I began in Chicago. We own but five dollars in the world—haven't even a change of clothes."

"I've a mind to say that we had just bought the house, and it was burned," said Mrs. Lively. "I'm sure it was just the same. But then you never would stand by me in the story: you'd be sure to let the cat out."

"But what good would come of such a story?" asked the doctor.

"Why, people would be so much sorrier for us. Nobody could feel sorry for that old pop-corn woman you were talking to, even if she did lose all she had; and just so it will be with us. It's just like you to be always missing a good thing. If you'd only bought the house before you lost the money!"

"You're determined to saddle the loss of that money on me," the doctor said smiling.

"Well, who lost it if you didn't?"

"I'm sure I can't say."

"Of course you can't. You might as well say that black isn't black as that you didn't lose that money."

"I'll acknowledge, once for all, that I lost the money if you'll let the subject drop," said he wearily. "It's wasting time and breath to talk about it. There," he continued soothingly, "try to forget, and go to sleep."

"It's wasting time and breath telling me to go to sleep," replied the wife.

"Hurrah! here's a cigar!" said the doctor, producing one from his pocket. "Now, if I only had a match to light it!"

"For patience' sake, you needn't be at a loss for a light for a cigar when all this universe is afire. Go and light it at that headboard over there, and then sit down and take your comfort while I'm starving. Why in the world doesn't it rain? I don't see why the Lord should have such a spite against Chicago: we ain't any worse than other people."

And thus the woman continued to run on all night. Up to two o'clock she complained because it didn't rain, and after that she shivered and moaned because it did.

With the morning, water-carts and bakers' wagons began to arrive on the ground. These were quickly emptied among the hungry, thirsty people. Dr. Lively spent his five dollars to within fifty cents for the relief of the sufferers about him. Mrs. Lively obstinately refused to take anything.

"I won't eat bread at twenty-five cents a loaf, and I won't drink water at ten cents a quart. I'll die first!" she declared.

"I want you to take me to the West Division," Dr. Lively said to one of the bakers. He had already tried a dozen times to make terms with teamsters to this end. "I have a wife and child."

"I'll do it for five dollars apiece," replied the man.

"I haven't any money. Will you take a set of silver forks in pawn?"

"He sha'n't have my forks," said Mrs. Lively violently.—"How dare you speculate on our calamities?" she demanded of the baker. "You sha'n't have my forks: I'll stay here and starve first. I mean to stand this siege of extortion to the last gasp."

"But, my dear," remonstrated the doctor, "there are people here who are already near their last gasp. There are the sick and infirm and little children. There are women now on this desolate ground in the pangs of childbirth, and infants not an hour old. These must have help. I must get over to the West Division. There are some hearts over there, I am sure."

"I'll take you, sir," said the baker, "and I don't want none of your silver. I'm beat, sir: I never thought of women hit that way. I can't fight with sich, and with babies born in a graveyard. I'm whipped, sir. I ain't never had much of a chance to make a extry dollar: I thought this fire had give me a chance. My shop was left, full of flour. I was bakin' all night; but darn me if I kin put the screw onto babies, and women in childbed. You shall have my horse and cart and all my bakery for 'em. Come, load up."[A]

[Footnote A: It need scarcely be said that the incidents here related are literal facts, which came under the writer's observation in the midst of the scenes described.]

On their way through the burnt district, on the ill-fated Chicago Avenue, they passed a ruined wall where people were preparing to dig out two men. One was crying piteously in mixed German and English for help. The other, except his head and shoulders, was completely buried beneath the ruins. As the people began to remove the rubbish he said in a tone expressive at once of pluck and agony, "Leave me, and go and get out that bawling Dutchman: he ain't dead, and I am."

As it proved, he was broken all to pieces, both legs and both arms being fractured, one of the arms in two places.

Of course Dr. Lively found the hearts he went to seek, not only among the favored few whom God had spared the bitter cup, but all over the world. We all know the beautiful story—how all the cities and villages and hamlets of the land were on the housetops, watching the burning of Chicago, marking her needs, and speeding the relief as fast as steam and lightning could bring it. We know of that message of love, the sweetest, the most wonderful the world ever heard since Christ died for us. Through the pallid stupefaction, the sullen silence, the awful gloom, the black despair that were settling over Chicago's heart, it pierced, and from all the world it came: "We have heard thy cry, O our sister! Our hearts are aching for thee; our tears are flowing for thee; our hands are working for thee." Oh, how it electrified us in Chicago! If any refused, if any gave grudgingly, we saw it not, we knew it not. We saw only the eager outstretched hand of love.

And we know now the sequel of the wonderful story—how Chicago has proved herself worthy of the great love wherewith the world hath loved her, and of the great faith wherewith the world hath believed in her. She has come up out of her bereavement strong through suffering, wearing yet her badge of mourning, her face subdued, but uplifted, wise and strong of purpose; her eye sad, but earnest and true; her figure less imperious, but majestic and regal; her spirit less arrogant, but just as brave, just as heroic, and more human.

SARAH WINTER KELLOGG.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]



A STRAYED SINGER.

Most of us know what a pathos is mixed with the sweet surprise of meeting a beautiful thing in strange and inferior surroundings, in circumstances that suggest an utter incongruity between the subject and the situation, and imply an awful weight of loneliness and an intolerable lack of sympathy. The Alpine harebell on the edge of the glacier, the caged lion gazing vacantly into a wearisome monotony of idleness, the shivering little Italian fiddling about our winter streets, make the same appeal, in various measure, to this consciousness of incongruity that in another phase would stimulate our laughter instead of our tears.

As with space, so with time. It is the appreciation of the discord between the subject and its surroundings that awakens our sympathy for men "born out of their time," as we express it with an arrogance of wiser judgment. In every period of history, affronting the great averages of intellectual development, appear certain minds classified at once as being either before or behind their age. To the first class belong the great reformers, discoverers, inventors—men whose immense genius, concentrated upon one idea, carries them beyond their fellows, as a straight-going steamer distances a pleasure-yacht. These men we do not think of pitying, unless they come too near us, and then we call them fools or fanatics.

But there are lost children of the second class whose fate we all deplore—children of an earlier age or a summer clime, drifting about in this laborious world like helpless babes in the wood; bright-eyed, luxurious young Greeks, rebelling against pain and intolerant of toil, struggling in vain to hold their own among keen, restless Yankees; dreamy mystics, strayed from the shadows of some cloister, their vague eyes dazzled by the sun; artists of early Italy, worshiping the mediaeval Madonna; poets, belonging of right to the court of Elizabeth, or companions of the wandering and disastrous fortunes of "the fairest and crudest of princesses."

It is of an Elizabethan poet strayed into our Victorian age that I propose to write. Few people except professed students of literature know more of Thomas Lovell Beddoes than his name. More than a year ago an article on him appeared in the Fortnightly, half biographical, half occupied with a sketch of his principal tragedy—an article doing more justice to the dramatic than to the lyric quality of his genius. But it is by his songs that his name is kept in the minds of men to-day—exquisite snatches of melody, full of the peculiar charm of that Elizabethan age to which they properly belong.

In 1851 an edition of his poems in two volumes, with a memoir and letters, was published by Pickering. The edition was small and soon exhausted, but the literary world of England was unanimous in its praise; and Landor, Browning, Proctor, and many others came out with generous tributes to the genius of that poet whose circle of listeners has always been so small. "Nearly two centuries have elapsed," wrote Walter Savage Landor, with his hearty enthusiasm, "since a work of the same wealth of genius as Death's Jest-Book has been given to the world." And Browning wrote to Mr. Kelsall, the author of the memoir: "You might pick out scenes, passages, lyrics, fine as fine can be: the power of the man is immense and irresistible."

The two volumes contain, besides the Life and letters, two dramas, The Brides' Tragedy and Death's Jest-Book, two unfinished plays, Torrismond and The Second Brother, and many dramatic and poetic fragments and songs. The Life is an uneventful history, but the letters, though singularly free from egotism, bring up before us a most interesting character—a curious mixture of genius and want of faith in that genius, of energy and self-distrust, of intense devotion to practical studies and the most impractical and dreamy fancy, an affectionate nature lonely and misunderstood, a spirit of the most sturdy and uncompromising independence, a mind of keen and scientific insight—a character made up, in short, of all the warring elements of philosopher, physician, politician and poet.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was born in Clifton in 1803, and died at Bale in Switzerland in 1849. His mother was a sister of Maria Edgeworth, and his father a distinguished physician and an intimate friend of Sir Humphry Davy. In the father's character we may trace the principal traits of the son: a strong scientific bent, a fondness for poetic dreams, an invincible independence, were predominant in both. The character of Lovell Beddoes' poetry was the natural outgrowth of his early studies. His schoolfellows at the Charterhouse speak of him at the age of fourteen as already thoroughly versed in the best English literature and a close student of the dramatists, from the Elizabethan to those of his own day. He was always ready to invent and carry out any acts of insubordination, which he informed with so much wit and spirit that the very authorities were often subdued by their own irresistible laughter. It was one phase of his dramatic genius, that seemed to be constantly impelling him to get up some striking situation wherein he might pose as a youthful Ajax defying the lightnings. At Oxford his restless independence was continually prompting him to affront his tutors. He was always in opposition to the spirit of the occasion, whatever it might be.

This spirit of rebellion inspired him with an intense interest in German literature and German politics, as representing the ultra-liberal tendencies of the day. Shelley, too, the rejected of Oxford, whose name was scarcely to be mentioned to the British Philistine of the moment, was one of Beddoes' idols, and he joined with two other gentlemen in the expense of printing the first edition of the poet's posthumous works in 1824, afterward withdrawn by Mrs. Shelley. Byron was the popular poet then, and universal Young England was turning down its shirt-collars in a mockery of woe. But this boy of twenty, with his sturdy independence, would judge for himself, and wrote to a friend: "I saw —— (the greatest fool within the walls of my acquaintance) the other night at Oxford, repeating the whole of the Deformed in raptures. God forgive him!"

In 1821, while yet a freshman, he published a little volume of poems called The Improvisatore, of which he was soon ashamed. Long before he left Oxford he used to hunt the unfortunate volume through the libraries of his acquaintance, and cutting out all the pages leave the binding intact, a hollow mockery, upon their shelves. The next year, however, he published The Brides' Tragedy, a drama of very great originality and power, and a most extraordinary production for a boy of nineteen. The Edinburgh Review and the London Magazine. then at the height of their power, came out with critical and highly laudatory notices by Proctor (Barry Cornwall) and George Darley, and the former was ever after one of Beddoes' warmest personal friends. In July, 1825, he went to Goettingen, where his brilliant achievements as a student of medicine won him numerous honors. The rest of his life was spent in Germany and Switzerland, with occasional brief visits to England, but his heart was with the German radicals, and he found the united attractions of science, liberalism and Swiss scenery far more powerful than love of his native land. He threw himself with enthusiasm into the discussion of the scientific and political questions of the day, soon became a master of the language, wrote a great deal for the German newspapers, both in prose and verse, and used jestingly to call himself "a popular German poet."

About this time he began his finest tragedy, Death's Jest-Book, still undergoing correction and revision at the time of his death in his forty-sixth year. He was never weary of making alterations: never satisfied with the result of his labors, he tore up scene after scene, or struck out remorselessly the finest passage in a drama if he thought it inharmonious with the context. He had a theory that no man should devote himself entirely to poetry unless possessed of most extraordinary powers of imagination, or unfitted, by mental or bodily weakness, for severer scientific pursuits. The studies of the physician and the dramatist were to his mind allied by Nature, and he looked upon tragedy as the fitting and inevitable result of combined physiological and psychological researches. And he afterward declared himself determined "never to listen to any metaphysician who is not both anatomist and physiologist of the first rank." This was in 1825, when German and French scientists were just beginning to explore the hidden mysteries of matter, and to trace its intimate and subtle connections with the mind, and when protoplasm was still an unknown quantity toward whose discovery science was slowly feeling its way.

As he penetrated deeper and deeper into the arcana of anatomy and physiology his judgment of his own poetry grew more and more severe. The more he knew of Truth, the nearer absolute perfection must that Beauty be which would compete with her for his heart. Busy with a pursuit in which his progress was marked by absolute tests that even his modesty could not disown, he shrank from trying to reach vague eminences in poetry that he judged himself unable to attain. There is something in his style that recalls Heine when he writes, "Me you may safely regard as one banished from a service to which he was not adapted, but who has still a lingering affection for the land of dreams—as yet, at least, not far enough in the journey of science to have lost sight of the old two-topped hill." And again: "I am essentially unpoetical in character, habits and ways of thinking; and nothing but the desperate hanker for distinction so common to the young gentlemen at the university ever set me upon rhyming. If I had possessed the conviction that I could by any means become an important or great dramatic writer, I would have never swerved from the path to reputation; but seeing that others who had devoted their lives to literature, such as Coleridge and Wordsworth—men beyond a question of far higher originality and incomparably superior poetical feeling and genius—had done so little, you must give me leave to persevere in my preference of Apollo's pill-box to his lyre, and should congratulate me on having chosen Goettingen instead of Grub street for my abode.... It is good to be tolerable or intolerable in any other line, but Apollo defend us from brewing all our lives at a quintessential pot of the smallest ale Parnassian!"

There are so many racy bits of anecdote and opinion scattered through this correspondence, so many things worth keeping for their own sakes or as throwing new light upon the character of their writer, that it is hard to choose a single specimen, but with one more extract we must strive to be content. Beddoes' friend and editor had been trying to get from him some personal details about his daily life, pursuits and fancies, which, with his usual horror of the egotistical, he flatly declined to give. "I will not venture on a psychological self-portraiture," he writes, "fearing—and I believe with sufficient reason—to be betrayed into affectation, dissimulation or some other alluring shape of lying. I believe that all autobiographical sketches are the result of mere vanity—not excepting those of St. Augustine and Rousseau—falsehood in the mask and mantle of truth. Half ashamed and half conscious of his own mendacious self-flattery, the historian of his own deeds or geographer of his own mind breaks out now and then indignantly, and revenges himself on his own weakness by telling some very disagreeable truth of some other person; and then, re-established in his own good opinion, marches on cheerfully in the smooth path toward the temple of his own immortality. Yet even here, you see, I am indirectly lauding my own worship for not being persuaded to laud my own worship. How sleek, smooth-tongued, paradisaical a deluder art thou, sweet Self-conceit! Let great men give their own thoughts on their own thoughts: from such we can learn much; but let the small deer hold jaw, and remember what the philosopher says, 'Fleas are not lobsters: d——n their souls!'"

Caring nothing even for professional honors, Beddoes refused various professorships in Germany, and traveled about to Zurich, to Bale, and to the other German centres of learning as his desires prompted him. Always the same independent and rebellious spirit that he had shown himself as a boy, he sympathized warmly with the democratic movements then agitating Switzerland and the Rhine provinces, and devoted both his purse and his pen to aid the anti-oligarchic and anti-clerical party. In 1848 he had intended to go back to England, but in the spring of that year a slight wound received while dissecting infused a poison into his system that undermined his health. In May, while seeking restoration in the purer air of Bale, his horse fell with him, and his left leg was so badly broken that amputation became necessary. Until the autumn he seemed to be doing well, but then the poison imbibed at Frankfort declared itself once more, and a slow fever set in which terminated in death on the 26th of January, 1849.

Beddoes' great fault as a dramatist he was quite aware of himself, and had pointed out to the friend who was continually urging him to write: "The power of drawing character and humor—two things absolutely indispensable for a good dramatist—are the first two articles in my deficiencies; and even the imaginative poetry I think you will find in all my verse always harping on the same two or three principles; for which plain and satisfactory reasons I have no business to expect any great distinction as a writer." He could draw types of character, but not individuals: the power of making the creations of the mind seem as real as "our dear intimates and chamber-fellows" was denied him. But he was not wholly destitute of humor, though he was possessed of but one kind—that grim, sardonic quality which we find so often among the Elizabethans—that mocking irony most like the grin upon a skull. His fools are his best characters, so far as strength and originality go. Here is a snatch from the wise conversation of two of these worthies in Death's Jest-Book:

"Isbrand. Good-morrow, Brother Vanity! How? soul of a pickle-herring, body of a spagirical tosspot, doublet of motley, and mantle of pilgrim, how art thou transmuted! Wilt thou desert our brotherhood, fool sublimate? Shall the motley chapter no longer boast thee? Wilt thou forswear the order of the bell, and break thy vows to Momus? Have mercy on Wisdom and relent.

"Mandrake. Respect the grave and sober, I pray thee. To-morrow I know thee not. In truth, I mark that our noble faculty is in its last leaf. The dry rot of prudence hath eaten the ship of fools to dust: she is no more seaworthy. The world will see its ears in a glass no longer. So we are laid aside and shall soon be forgotten; for why should the feast of asses come but once a year, when all the days are foaled of one mother? O world! world! The gods and fairies left thee, for thou wert too wise; and now, thou Socratic star, thy demon, the great Pan, Folly, is parting from thee. The oracles still talked in their sleep, shall our grandchildren say, till Master Merriman's kingdom was broken up: now is every man his own fool, and the world's sign is taken down.

"Isbrand. Farewell, thou great-eared mind! I mark, by thy talk, that thou commencest philosopher, and then thou art only a fellow-servant out of livery."

Isbrand is the brother of the slain knight Wolfram: his foolery is but the disguise of his revenge, and thus he rails over the body of his brother: "Dead and gone! a scurvy burden to this ballad of life. There lies he, Siegfried—my brother, mark you—and I weep not, nor gnash the teeth, nor curse: and why not, Siegfried? Do you see this? So should every honest man be—cold, dead, and leaden-coffined. This was one who would be constant in friendship, and the pole wanders; one who would be immortal, and the light that shines upon his pale forehead now, through yonder gewgaw window, undulated from its star hundreds of years ago. That is constancy, that is life. O moral Nature!"

It is unnecessary to try to describe the plot of this strange drama, if plot it may be called. The poem rather resembles the old bridge at Lucerne with the gloomy figures of the Dance of Death painted along its wormeaten sides, while over its old timbers rolls the current of busy life, and the laughter of children echoes from its roof. With the exception of Isbrand, the characters of the play are pale and shadowy enough, but the poetry that they speak is wonderful. The gloom and tender beauty of the verse are inextricably united, as in the plays of Webster, whose "intellectual twin" Beddoes might have been. Here is a lovely sketch of "a melancholy lady:"

Duke. Thorwald, I fear hers is a broken heart. When first I met her in the Egyptian prison, She was the rosy morning of a woman: Beauty was rising, but the starry grace Of a calm childhood might be seen in her. But since the death of Wolfram, who fell there, Heaven and one single soul only know how, I have not dared to look upon her sorrow.

Thorwald. Methinks she's too unearthly beautiful. Old as I am, I cannot look at her, And hear her voice, that touches the heart's core, Without a dread that she will fade o' th' instant. There's too much heaven in her; oft it rises, And, pouring out about the lovely earth, Almost dissolves it. She is tender too; And melancholy is the sweet pale smile With which she gently does reproach her fortune

But the greatest beauty of this singular poem, with its wild medley of jesters and spirits, knights and fiends, Deaths and tender women, "like flowers on a grave," is the wonderful perfection of its songs. There are no less than thirteen in this play, some of them the wild mockery remind us of their faults. A turgid inflation in the tragic passages, a tendency to bombast, even more apparent in the man of forty-six than in the boy of nineteen, mar the calm strength of many of his scenes. The cloying sweetness that overloaded the verses of his juvenile work he left behind him as he grew older, but the Marlowe-like extravagance that noted in the soliloquies of Hesperus still comes to the surface occasionally in the pages of Death's Jest-Book. It is the extravagance of strength, however, not of weakness.

It is not often that we see a poet giving up the glorious race from sheer distrust of his power to win, but such was the case of Beddoes. A want of faith in his own genius was for ever paralyzing his hand. To succeed, as he himself knew but too well, and as he wrote to his editor, "a man must have an exclusive passion for his art, and all the obstinacy and self-denial which is combined with such a temperament—an unconquerable and always enduring will, always working forward to the only goal he knows." This singleness of purpose Beddoes never possessed. Inheriting from his father the qualities of both poet and physician, the faculties of the scientific man, trained and cultivated through a long life by Dr. Thomas Beddoes (with whom poetry was but an occasional pastime), seem to have overbalanced and diverted the poetic genius of his son. The hereditary instinct overcame the individual bent. And in spite of Lovell Beddoes' opinion that "the studies of the dramatist and physician are closely, almost inseparably, allied," is it not true that the analytical faculty so essential to the latter is rarely found in connection with great creative ability? Sainte-Beuve never forgave Balzac for saying that critics were unsuccessful authors, but he should have consoled himself with the of the jesters, but many of them very beautiful; and there are three more in The Brides' Tragedy. Since the days of Elizabeth we have had nothing to compare with them. They have that delicate poise of beauty, like the lighting of a butterfly on a bending flower, that adds to our delight the keen sense of its transitoriness. Here is one—"a voice from the waters:"