The change of local government in 1871, when Congress gave the District of Columbia a legislature and a representative, was the particular event from which may be dated such innovations as make necessary a revision of the popular opinion. The visitors who come this month, and who have not been here since the last inauguration, will have to learn the capital anew. While the establishment of the territorial government and the organization of its outgrowths—particularly the Board of Public Works—mark the new departure by physical changes, all will understand that it was the first gun at Charleston, startling the stagnant pool here, which set in motion the successive waves that carried the city up to this departure. The public affairs of the city became practically unmanageable. A joint-stock company could not organize for the most trifling business without depending on the slow and uncertain action of Congress for a charter. A few active men, who saw that the old order of things could be endured no longer, met quietly in 1870 at the house of an honored citizen on K street to see what further they could see. They continued to meet at each other's homes, lightening their interchange of thought for the public by such an extension of hospitality as drew into their circle many influential Congressmen, and converted them to the new idea that there was something in Washington besides the national service. The result was, that the city government was abolished; a legislative assembly was created; a governor was appointed by the President of the United States; and a delegate was sent to Congress, instead of a crowd of lobbyists, to represent the District of Columbia. This delegate is always to be a member of the committee on the District, Congress has the constitutional right of exclusive legislation, and the Assembly cannot impose taxes of any consequence without especial authority from the people.

The wisdom of the change was doubted at first by many real friends of progress, who thought they saw grave legal complications arising; who knew what popular government in a large city, with no restriction of the election franchise, might mean; who at times thought of New York with a shudder; who knew that as Washington was the centre of everything political, it was necessarily the centre of political corruption; that her alleys were crowded with ignorant freedmen; that her ward politicians were as unscrupulous and skillful as the same class in other cities; and who thought it safer to trust the average Congressman than the small political trader and his chattels. But Congress sits as a perpetual court of appeal on the spot where its members can judge from personal knowledge, ready to overrule any act of the Assembly that can be shown to be a bad one; and one house of the Assembly, with the governor and executive boards, is appointed by the President. The election of the larger house and of the delegate to Congress is sufficient security to the people, and Washington is to-day in most respects the best-governed city of its size in the United States. The powers of the little Assembly are very limited: the governor can veto its measures; Congress can override them both; the President can veto the acts of Congress; two-thirds of Congress can still surmount this veto. This complicated system may retard good measures, but it is not probable that any very bad one can long survive under it.

The Baron Haussmann here is the Board of Public Works. It is grading, filling, paving, planting, fencing, parking, and making the thoroughfares what they would never have become by ordinary means. At last we see what Washingtonians never saw before—vast public operations having a consistent and tangible shape; obeying a purpose that can be understood, defined and executed; beginning somewhere and ending in something. Within its sphere this Board has despotic power: it would be worthless with any less. It dares to strike without fear or favor, and hit whoever stands in the way: the way would never be cleared if it did not. It makes bitter enemies by its inexorable exactions: the public cannot be served except at the expense of the individual. A strong party has fought it by injunctions and failed: the same persons will no doubt continue to fight, while the Board will no doubt continue to vindicate itself and go on with its work. It made some mistakes which wrought hardships to individuals who wished it well, but such were the difficulties before it at the outset that it might have made greater mistakes and still been forgiven. It is to be hoped that it will have enemies enough to watch it closely, criticise it sharply and hold it to a strict accountability; but should it have enough to really interfere with its present course, then we shall have to add one more, and a great one, to the list of Washington's calamities. The new blood that created it is able to sustain it, while the air it has done so much to purify is already laden with blessings from the lips of strangers.

In the matter of public improvements an equitable adjustment of relations—always heretofore uncertain and unsatisfactory—between the District and the general government still remains to be accomplished, and at this writing is impatiently awaited by the city. Congress should explicitly define for itself a course that can be depended upon, so that the city can go ahead and know what it ought to do. The general government, promising great things which began nowhere and ended in nothing, laid out the city for its own use, and gave more space to streets and ornamental grounds than to buildings. The plan was wise and good, but did not appear so until the liberal citizens, unable to endure the disgrace of such a city as the nation thrust upon them, taxing themselves six millions of dollars for street purposes, went generously to work, with their own money improved the immense fronts of the government property, which pays no taxes, evolved something tangible out of the old cloudy-magnificent plan, and gave the country, so far as they could, a decent capital.

There is another important matter for adjustment. The city has left nothing undone that money and labor could do to make the public schools the best in the United States. It is doubtful whether there has ever before been seen in any city or State an expenditure for public schools so generous, under all the circumstances, as that of Washington within the past few years. The best school-houses here are the best the Prussian commissioners, who lately came to inspect them, had ever seen. A very great number of the pupils educated by the city are the children of government servants whose homes are in the States, and who pay no considerable taxes here. Every State and Territory has received a liberal allotment of public land for school-purposes except the District of Columbia, which has probably done more for schools without the endowment, considering the time and taxable property at command, than any State has ever done with it.

Of course the city has received many benefits from the general government, but the considerable ones have been indirect. The excellent water-works, for instance, costing about three millions of dollars, were built with the nation's money and by army engineers, because the nation needed them, and show how entirely identical are the interests of both parties. Their respective duties, while they need defining anew, are so wedded that there is no room for serious difference. It is really a matter for congratulation that the general government held back and did not take more of the improvements into its own hands. The city's present claims are by so much stronger: the two governments can work in harmony, and any efforts that are now made will not be thrown away. Had Congress acted sooner we might have had more Washington canals, and Washington and Georgetown street-cars, and similar Congressional "improvements," beginning nowhere but in ignorance or selfishness, and ending in nothing but nuisances. The improvement of the interiors of the national grounds, however, by the general government, is now keeping pace with that of the exteriors by the city as nearly as is possible under present legislation, and their superintendence has become at last an office of some practical consequence to Washington. The general government owns about one-half of the property in the District, and during seventy years has expended for the improvement of the thoroughfares a little over one million of dollars. The city during the same time has expended for the same purpose nearly fourteen millions of dollars.

The old Washington idea seems to have consisted in finishing a city before it was begun. To use an architectural figure, the capital of the column has been well designed and partly carved, but the base is not yet laid. Those characteristics which the builders thought would be a sure foundation of greatness have proved insufficient in the past and will prove so in the future. The infusion of new blood has done wonders within ten years, but there is still needed the admixture of another current. Wealth and ideality—supposed to be possessed by all who are attracted hither—do not raise a man above material wants or fail to multiply them. When Washington shall give her utmost attention to satisfying the vulgarest common wants of common people, she will have taken her first real step toward—anything. She has had enough of fog and moonshine. She wants for a proper period the most unmitigated materiality—not as an end, of course, but as the first means of making something else possible. She will be made our republican Paris, if made so at all, by the aid of the shops, the wonderful skilled labor, the economical living of poor people, on which rested, as well as on higher things, the splendors of the imperial Paris. The average American lady goes to that city to buy "things," as well as to visit the Louvre, and while the late emperor endeavored to make his capital the social centre of the world, he did not scorn to make it a fashionable market and foster a Palace of Industry.

That Washington is an admirable place for manufactures is clear to all who have sought the facts. Whether she will ever become a manufacturing city is a question that must be settled by the citizens themselves. Whoever doubts that the growth of skilled labor here will be an indispensable condition of the higher growth that is sought fails to understand modern civilization, and should not have survived the days when things began nowhere and ended in nothing. The old thoroughbred Washingtonian will never invest a dollar to build a railroad or a modern workshop, of course. He does not know anything about them, and does not want to. His idea of business is to get real estate, and "hold on" till somebody else makes it valuable. Gentlemen of new Washington, Hercules will stand idle till he sees your own shoulders at the wheel. When you shall have the faithful, enlightened manual labor of New England, you may expect such flowers as Yale and Harvard and the aesthetic fruits they enfold. You may be unable to see any intimate connection between such labor and such culture, but nevertheless it exists. Old Washington could not see it, and now you are compelled to bury old Washington out of sight. It is time for Mohammed to start if he wants his mountain.

There are a few business-men in Washington who are as enlightened, as liberal, as trustworthy as any in the country; and abundant is their reward. There are a few who deal only in good wares, who always sell them at a reasonable profit, who believe that any kind of deception is a blunder, who manage their establishments with economy, who are aware that the more money they permit their customers to make the more they will ultimately make themselves,—who, in short, have learned the principles of business and have the character to stand by them. But so many fall short—often through ignorance—in one or more of these respects that the average business character is low. If a lady wishes to spend twenty-five dollars in shopping, she can generally travel eighty miles—to Baltimore and back—and save enough of that small sum to pay her for going, besides being sure of finding what she wants. The Washington shopkeepers may really think that they cannot help this. They must help it, or consent to be soon shoved aside by those who can. Instead of being troubled by the sight of his best customers going as far as New York whenever they have anything of consequence to buy, the genuine old Washington retailer seems to take a calm satisfaction in putting such fastidious buyers to so much inconvenience. Here it is rather the exception than the rule for the man of small business to do just what he promises to do. He don't know the value of another's time, is used to disappointments himself, and somehow or other will manage to disarrange your most careful calculations. Unable himself to meet an engagement thoroughly and exactly, he seems determined that nobody else shall.

But you cease censuring the average business-man when you begin to deal with the average Washington mechanic. There are some good ones, but they are absorbed by the large and experienced dealers in labor, and are beyond the knowledge or reach of ordinary mortals. You want a little job done at your house; you call on a "boss;" certainly—it shall be done instantly; a workman will be sent in a few minutes; two days afterward he comes and "looks at it;" the next day he returns with another man and they both look at it; another day passes, and an apprentice-boy, with a lame negro to wait on him, comes and makes your home hideous by pretending to begin; when they have given your family a proper amount of information, and torn things to pieces sufficiently, they go away. Two more days elapse, and you go again to the boss; he is surprised—he supposed the work had been done, for he had given "orders;" at the end of a week perhaps the job that should have consumed two hours of honest work is done; then, if you pay the boss no more than the work actually cost him, you know that the sum is twice as much as it should have cost him. As a generalization this is a true picture of Washington labor.

These things are trifles? They are just what determine the permanent residence of multitudes of valuable citizens. They are the trifles that in the aggregate make the difference between civilization and barbarism. For every broken promise or slighted piece of work the city suffers. Civilized people like to live smoothly and comfortably. Washington, thinking of something besides hotels and boarding-houses, and the people of leisure who come once a year to fill them for a few weeks, must provide for a permanent population of moderately poor people. The word of a merchant or banker is supposed to be as good as his bond; his occupation is gone when this ceases to be the case; his standing is reported in a business guide-book, and dealers with him act accordingly. Cannot some of the methods that enforce integrity in higher branches of business be more systematically applied by dealers in manual labor? The men who are reforming the city's outward appearance have an opportunity of doing something in this direction. A Northern mechanic who reverences his conscience, and makes the most of his opportunities to gain knowledge and character, cannot emigrate to a better place than Washington.

Yet when one looks into the past he thinks that perhaps labor is improving as fast as other things here. He is inclined to admire it when he remembers how much worse it used to be. John Adams was the first occupant of the White House, and this is what his wife said in a private letter just after moving into it: "To assist us in this great castle, and render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly wanting, not one single one being hung through the whole house, and promises are all you can obtain. If they put me up bells, and let me have wood enough to keep fires, I design to be pleased. But, surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to cut and cart it?" Seventy-two years ago the President's wife could get nothing but promises toward hanging a servant's bell! Washington was in a forest and couldn't furnish wood enough to warm the presidential hearthstone! The forests and people of that day are gone, but those eternal "promises" remain.

The recent building in Washington has been mostly that of dwellings, which the ordinary visitor, following the old routes between the Capitol and West End, will hardly notice, although they have covered many acres within the past four years. Since the Board of Public Works has settled—some would say unsettled—the foundations of things, we may expect to see the heavy building for business purposes, which must soon take place even if there be no change in the character of business, conducted with a little system and uniformity. The streets themselves have been made so fine that it will require some moral courage—a thing for which Washington is not noted—to disfigure them by the hideous jumbles that accorded so well with the old ways. Such splendid monstrosities as the Treasury—as a whole, the worst public building in the city, although good in parts, so situated that one must go down stairs from Pennsylvania Avenue to get into the grand north entrance, without proportion, completeness or consistency—it will be impossible even for Congress to build.

Both the physical and moral appearance of Washington truly represent the civilization of the nation as a whole. Such is, after all, the only description that can be given; and so vast and heterogeneous is the nation that to many readers this will be no description at all. A farmer measures out a half bushel of wheat, "levels" it, and tells you truly that the only difference is in quantity between that in the measure and that which it came from in the bin: take the architecture, the people, the ideas of all these States, shake them together in a half bushel, "level" them, and you can truly say you have Washington. Any noteworthy character of its own is still lacking. So long as it is nothing more than a representative of the whole country, it will in many desirable things fall far below a dozen other cities, whose independence has enabled them to reach excellences toward which Washington vaguely aspires. As the capital it will not be the best and most enlightened, but will be the "average" city. As an independent one its destiny is now in its own hands, and facilities are thrown at its feet such as no other can hope to have. There have been good excuses for its shortcomings in the past. There are none now. Two years ago, Washington was a great boy who had grown up under the repressive guardianship of his Uncle Samuel; he had not been permitted to do anything for himself; he had no money except the few pennies which the old gentleman had grudgingly given him for menial services. He needed higher culture and better business habits than his uncle exhibited: the leading-strings were at last sufficiently cut. His guardian, still exercising a good deal of authority, has permitted him to go into business for himself; given him the use of the greatest library in the United States; surrounded him with specimens of architecture invaluable as models or as warnings; opened to him the treasures of the Smithsonian, the Coast Survey and a unique medical museum; given him the benefit of a fine observatory; placed at his disposal magnificent pleasure-grounds; set before him a botanical garden; put up for him some good statues and pictures; shown him models of all the mechanical inventions of the age; sent to him as associates the first statesmen, jurists and captains of the land; and brought to his door as guests the polished representatives of all civilized countries. What more does the boy want that he may make a man of himself? Nothing but a will of his own so to develop his natural resources that he can use these things. Will he now refuse to earn the necessary money to enjoy them, and insist on living, in shabby-genteel ignorance and idleness, exclusively on the pocket-money of the visitors to whom his uncle introduces him? If he does, shall we call him a gentleman?

CHAUNCEY HICKOX.



IN THE CRADLE OF THE DEEP.

Forty days in the great desert of the sea—forty nights camped under cloud-canopies, with the salt dust of the waves drifting over us. Sometimes a Bedouin sail flashed for an hour upon the distant horizon, and then faded, and we were alone again; sometimes the west, at sunset, looked like a city with towers, and we bore down upon its glorified walls, seeking a haven; but a cold gray morning dispelled the illusion, and our hearts sank back into the illimitable sea, breathing a long prayer for deliverance.

Once a green oasis blossomed before us—a garden in perfect bloom, girded about with creaming waves; within its coral cincture pendulous boughs trailed in the glassy waters; from its hidden bowers spiced airs stole down upon us; above all, the triumphant palm trees clashed their melodious branches like a chorus with cymbals; yet from the very gates of this paradise a changeful current swept us onward, and the happy isle was buried in night and distance.

In many volumes of adventure I had read of sea-perils: I was at last to learn the full interpretation of their picturesque horrors. Our little craft, the Petrel, had buffeted the boisterous waves for five long weeks. Fortunately, the bulk of her cargo was edible: we feared neither famine nor thirst. Moreover, in spite of the continuous gale that swept us out of our reckoning, the Petrel was in excellent condition, and, as far as we could judge, we had no reason to lose confidence in her. It was the gray weather that tried our patience and found us wanting: it was the unparalleled pitching of the ninety-ton schooner that disheartened and almost dismembered us. And then it was wasting time at sea. Why were we not long before at our journey's end? Why were we not threading the vales of some savage island, reaping our rich reward of ferns and shells and gorgeous butterflies?

The sea rang its monotonous changes—fair weather and foul, days like death itself, followed by days full of the revelations of new life, but mostly days of deadly dullness, when the sea was as unpoetical as an eternity of cold suds and blueing.

I cannot always understand the logical fitness of things, or, rather, I am at a loss to know why some things in life are so unfit and illogical. Of course, in our darkest hour, when we were gathered in the confines of the Petrel's diminutive cabin, it was our duty to sing psalms of hope and cheer, but we didn't. It was a time for mutual encouragement: very few of us were self-sustaining, and what was to be gained by our combining in unanimous despair?

Our weatherbeaten skipper—a thing of clay that seemed utterly incapable of any expression whatever, save in the slight facial contortion consequent to the mechanical movement of his lower jaw—the skipper sat, with barometer in hand, eyeing the fatal finger that pointed to our doom: the rest of us were lashed to the legs of the centre-table, glad of any object to fix our eyes upon, and nervously awaiting a turn in the state of affairs, that was then by no means encouraging.

I happened to remember that there were some sealed letters to be read from time to time on the passage out, and it occurred to me that one of the times had come, perhaps the last and only, wherein I might break the remaining seals and receive a sort of parting visit from the fortunate friends on shore.

I opened one letter and read these prophetic lines: "Dear child"—she was twice my age, and privileged to make a pet of me—"Dear child, I have a presentiment that we shall never meet again in the flesh."

That dear girl's intuition came near to being the death of me: I shuddered where I sat, overcome with remorse. It was enough that I had turned my back on her and sought consolation in the treacherous bosom of the ocean—that, having failed to find the spring of immortal life in human affection, I had packed up and emigrated, content to fly the ills I had in search of change; but that parting shot, below the water-line as it were, that was more than I asked for, and something more than I could stomach. I returned to watch with the rest of our little company, who clung about the table with a pitiful sense of momentary security, and an expression of pathetic condolence on every countenance, as though each were sitting out the last hours of the others.

Our particular bane that night was a crusty old sea-dog whose memory of wrecks and marine disasters of every conceivable nature was as complete as an encyclopaedia. This "old man of the sea" spun his tempestuous yarn with fascinating composure, and the whole company was awed into silence with the haggard realism of his narrative. The cabin must have been air-tight—it was as close as possible—yet we heard the shrieking of the wind as it tore through the rigging, and the long hiss of the waves rushing past us with lightning speed. Sometimes an avalanche of foam buried us for a moment, and the Petrel trembled like a living thing stricken with sudden fear: we seemed to be hanging on the crust of a great bubble that was, sooner or later, certain to burst and let us drop into its vast, black chasm, where in Cimmerian darkness we should be entombed for ever.

The scenic effect, as I then considered, was unnecessarily vivid: as I now recall it, it seems to me strictly in keeping and thoroughly dramatic. At any rate, you might have told us a dreadful story with almost fatal success.

I had still one letter left—one bearing this suggestive legend: "To be read in the saddest hour." Now, if there is a sadder hour in all time than the hour of hopeless and friendless death, I care not to know of it. I broke the seal of my letter, feeling that something charitable and cheering would give me strength. A few dried leaves were stored within it. The faint fragrance of summer bowers reassured me: somewhere in the blank world of waters there was land, and there Nature was kind and fruitful: out over the fearful deluge this leaf was borne to me in the return of the invisible dove my heart had sent forth in its extremity. A song was written therein, perhaps a song of triumph: I could now silence the clamorous tongue of our sea-monster, who was glutting us with tales of horror, for a jubilee was at hand, and here was the first note of its trumpets.

I read:

Beyond the parting and the meeting I shall be soon: Beyond the farewell and the greeting, Beyond the pulse's fever-beating, I shall be soon.

I paused. A night black with croaking ravens, brooding over a slimy hulk, through whose warped timbers the sea oozed—that was the sort of picture that arose before me. I looked farther for a crumb of comfort:

Beyond the gathering and the strewing I shall be soon: Beyond the ebbing and the flowing, Beyond the coming and the going, I shall be soon.

A tide of ice-water seemed rippling up and down my spinal column: the marrow congealed within my bones. But I recovered. When a man has supped full of horror, and there is no immediate climax, he can collect himself and be comparatively brave. A reaction restored my soul.

Once more the melancholy chronicler of the ill-fated Petrel resumed his lugubrious narrative. I resolved to listen, while the skipper eyed the barometer, and we all rocked back and forth in search of the centre of gravity, looking like a troupe of mechanical blockheads nodding in idiotic unison. All this time the little craft drifted helplessly, "hove to" in the teeth of the gale.

The sea-dog's yarn was something like this: He once knew a lonesome man who floated about in a waterlogged hulk for three months—who saw all his comrades starve and die, one after another, and at last kept watch alone, craving and beseeching death. It was the staunch French brig La Perle, bound south into the equatorial seas. She had seen rough weather from the first: day after day the winds increased, and finally a cyclone burst upon her with insupportable fury. The brig was thrown upon her beam-ends, and began to fill rapidly. With much difficulty her masts were cut away, she righted, and lay in the trough of the sea rolling like a log. Gradually the gale subsided, but the hull of the brig was swept continually by the tremendous swell, and the men were driven into the foretop cross-trees, where they rigged a tent for shelter and gathered what few stores were left them from the wreck. A dozen wretched souls lay in their stormy nest for three whole days in silence and despair. By this time their scanty stores were exhausted, and not a drop of water remained: then their tongues were loosened, and they railed at the Almighty. Some wept like children, some cursed their fate: one man alone was speechless—a Spaniard with a wicked light in his eye, and a repulsive manner that had made trouble in the forecastle more than once.

When hunger had driven them nearly to madness they were fed in an almost miraculous manner. Several enormous sharks had been swimming about the brig for some hours, and the hungry sailors were planning various projects for the capture of them: tough as a shark is, they would willingly have risked life for a few raw mouthfuls of the same. Somehow, though the sea was still and the wind light, the brig gave a sudden lurch and dipped up one of the monsters, who was quite secure in the shallow aquarium between the gunwales. He was soon despatched, and divided equally among the crew: some ate a little, and reserved the rest for another day; some ate till they were sick, and had little left for the next meal. The Spaniard with the evil eye greedily devoured his portion, and then grew moody again, refusing to speak with the others, who were striving to be cheerful, though it was sad enough work.

When the food was all gone save a few mouthfuls that one meagre eater had hoarded to the last, the Spaniard resolved to secure a morsel at the risk of his life. It had been a point of honor with the men to observe sacredly the right of ownership, and any breach of confidence would have been considered unpardonable. At night, when the watch was sleeping, the Spaniard cautiously removed the last mouthful of shark hidden in the pocket of his mate, but was immediately detected and accused of theft. He at once grew desperate, struck at the poor wretch whom he had robbed, missed his blow, and fell headlong from the narrow platform in the foretop, and was lost in the sea. It was the first scene in the mournful tragedy about to be enacted on that limited stage.

There was less disturbance after the disappearance of the Spaniard: the spirits of the doomed sailors seemed broken: in fact, the captain was the only one whose courage was noteworthy, and it was his indomitable will that ultimately saved him.

One by one the minds of the miserable men gave way: they became peevish or delirious, and then died horribly. Two, who had been mates for many voyages in the seas north and south, vanished mysteriously in the night: no one could tell where they went nor in what manner, though they seemed to have gone together.

Somehow, these famishing sailors seemed to feel assured that their captain would be saved: they were as confident of their own doom, and to him they entrusted a thousand messages of love. They would lie around him—for few of them had strength to assume a sitting posture—and reveal to him the story of their lives. It was most pitiful to hear the confessions of these dying men. One said: "I wronged my friend; I was unkind to this one or to that one; I deserve the heaviest punishment God can inflict upon me;" and then he paused, overcome with emotion. But another took up the refrain: "I could have done much good, but I would not, and now it is too late." And a third cried out in his despair: "I have committed unpardonable sins, and there is no hope for me. Lord Jesus, have mercy!" The youngest of these perishing souls was a mere lad: he too accused himself bitterly. He began his story at the beginning, and continued it from time to time as the spirit of revelation moved him: scarcely an incident, however insignificant, escaped him in his pitiless retrospect. Oh the keen agony of that boy's recital! more cruel than hunger or thirst, and in comparison with which physical torture would have seemed merciful and any death a blessing.

While the luckless Perle drifted aimlessly about, driven slowly onward by varying winds under a cheerless sky, sickness visited them: some were stricken with scurvy; some had lost the use of their limbs and lay helpless, moaning and weeping hour after hour; vermin devoured them, and when their garments were removed and cleansed in the salt water, there was scarcely sunshine enough to dry them before night, and they were put on again, damp, stiffened with salt, and shrunken so as to cripple the wearers, who were all blistered and covered with boils. The nights were bitter cold: sometimes the icy moon looked down upon them; sometimes the bosom of an electric cloud burst over them, and they were enveloped for a moment in a sheet of flame. Sharks lingered about them, waiting to feed upon the unhappy ones who fell into the sea overcome with physical exhaustion, or who cast themselves from that dizzy scaffold, unable longer to endure the horrors of lingering death. Flocks of sea-fowl hovered over them; the hull of the Perle was crusted with barnacles; long skeins of sea-grass knotted themselves in her gaping seams; myriads of fish darted in and out among the clinging weeds, sporting gleefully; schools of porpoises leaped about them, lashing the sea into foam; sometimes a whale blew his long breath close under them. Everywhere was the stir of jubilant life—everywhere but under the tattered awning stretched in the foretop of the Perle.

Days and weeks dragged on. When the captain would waken from his sleep—which was not always at night, however, for the nights were miserably cold and sleepless—when he wakened he would call the roll: perhaps some one made no answer; then he would reach forth and touch the speechless body and find it dead. He had not strength now to bury the corpses in the sea's sepulchre; he had not strength even to partake of the unholy feast of the inanimate flesh: he lay there in the midst of pestilence, and at night, under the merciful veil of darkness, the fowls of the air gathered about him and bore away their trophy of corruption.

By and by there were but two left of all that suffering crew—the captain and the boy—and these two clung together like ghosts, defying mortality. They strove to be patient and hopeful: if they could not eat, they could drink, for the nights were dewy, and sometimes a mist covered them—a mist so dense it seemed almost to drip from the rags that poorly sheltered them. A cord was attached to the shrouds, the end of it carefully laid in the mouth of a bottle slung in the rigging. Down the thin cord slid occasional drops: one by one they stole into the bottle, and by morning there was a spoonful of water to moisten those parched lips—sweet, crystal drops, more blessed than tears, for they are salt—more precious than pearls. A thousand prayers of gratitude seemed hardly to quiet the souls of the lingering ones for that great charity of Heaven.

There came a day when the hearts of God's angels must have bled for the suffering ones. The breeze was fresh and fair; the sea tossed gayly its foam-crested waves; sea-birds soared in wider circles, and the clouds shook out their fleecy folds, through which the sunlight streamed in grateful warmth: the two ghosts were talking, as ever, of home, of earth, of land. Land—land anywhere, so that it were solid and broad. Oh, to pace again a whole league without turning! Oh, to pause in the shadow of some living tree!—to drink of some stream whose waters flowed continually—flowed, though you drank of them with the awful thirst of one who has been denied water for weeks, and weeks, and weeks!—for three whole months—an eternity, as it seemed to them!

Then they pictured life as it might be if God permitted them to return to earth once more. They would pace K——street at noon, and revisit that capital restaurant where many a time they had feasted, though in those days they were unknown to one another; they would call for coffee, and this dish and that dish, and a whole bill of fare, the thought of which made their feverish palates grow moist again. They would meet friends whom they had never loved as they now loved them; they would reconcile old feuds and forgive everybody everything; they held imaginary conversations, and found life very beautiful and greatly to be desired; and somehow they would get back to the little cafe and there begin eating again, and with a relish that brought the savory tastes and smells vividly before them, and their lips would move and the impalpable morsels roll sweetly over their tongues.

It had become a second nature to scour the horizon with jealous eyes: never for a moment during their long martyrdom had their covetous sight fixed upon a stationary object. But it came at last. Out of a cloud a sail burst like a flickering flame. What an age it was a-coming! how it budded and blossomed like a glorious white flower, that was transformed suddenly into a barque bearing down upon them! Almost within hail it stayed its course, the canvas fluttered in the wind; the dark hull slowly rose and fell upon the water; figures moved to and fro—men, living and breathing men! Then the ghosts staggered to their feet and cried to God for mercy. Then they waved their arms, and beat their breasts, and lifted up their imploring voices, beseeching deliverance out of that horrible bondage. Tears coursed down their hollow cheeks, their limbs quaked, their breath failed them: they sank back in despair, speechless and forsaken.

Why did they faint in the hour of deliverance when that narrow chasm was all that separated them from renewed life? Because the barque spread out her great white wings and soared away, hearing not the faint voices, seeing not the thin shadows that haunted that drifting wreck. The forsaken ones looked out from their eyrie, and watched the lessening sail until sight failed them, and then the lad with one wild cry leaped toward the speeding barque, and was swallowed up in the sea.

Alone in a wilderness of waters! Alone, without compass or rudder, borne on by relentless winds into the lonesome, dreary, shoreless ocean of despair, within whose blank and forbidding sphere no voyager ventures; across whose desolate waste dawn sends no signal and night brings no reprieve; but whose sun is cold, and whose moon is clouded, and whose stars withdraw into space, and where the insufferable silence of vacancy shall not be broken for all time.

O pitiless Nature! thy irrevocable laws argue rare sacrifice in the waste places of God's universe!...

* * * * *

The Petrel gave a tremendous lurch, that sent two or three of us into the lee corners of the cabin; a sea broke over us, bursting in the companion-hatch, and half filling our small and insecure retreat; the swinging lamp was thrown from its socket and extinguished; we were enveloped in pitch-darkness, up to our knees in salt water. There was a moment of awful silence: we could not tell whether the light of day would ever visit us again; we thought perhaps it wouldn't. But the Petrel rose once more upon the watery hilltops and shook herself free of the cumbersome deluge; and at that point, when she seemed to be riding more easily than usual, some one broke the silence: "Well, did the captain of the Perle live to tell the tale?"

Yes, he did. God sent a messenger into the lonesome deep, where the miserable man was found insensible, with eyes wide open against the sunlight, and lips shrunken apart—a hideous breathing corpse. When he was lifted in the arms of the brave fellows who had gone to his rescue, he cried "Great God! am I saved?" as though he couldn't believe it when it was true: then he fainted, and was nursed through a long delirium, and was at last restored to health and home and happiness.

Our cabin-boy managed to fish up the lamp, and after a little we were illuminated: the agile swab soon sponged out the cabin, and we resumed our tedious watch for dawn and fairer weather.

Somehow, my mind brooded over the solitary wreck that was drifting about the sea: I could fancy the rotten timbers of the Perle clinging together, by a miracle, until the Ancient Mariner was taken away from her, and then, when she was alone again, with nothing whatever in sight but blank blue sea and blank blue sky, she lay for an hour or so, bearded with shaggy sea-moss and looking about a thousand years old. Suddenly it occurred to her that her time had come—that she had outlived her usefulness, and might as well go to pieces at once. So she yawned in all her timbers, and the sea reached up over her, and laid hold of her masts, and seemed to be slowly drawing her down into its bosom. There was not an audible sound, and scarcely a ripple upon the water, but when the waves had climbed into the foretop, there was a clamor of affrighted birds, and a myriad bubbles shot up to the surface, where a few waifs floated and whirled about for a moment. It was all that marked the spot where the Perle went down to her eternal rest.

"Ha, ha!" cried our skipper, with something almost like a change of expression on his mahogany countenance, "the barometer is rising!" and sure enough it was. In two hours the Petrel acted like a different craft entirely, and by and by came daybreak, and after that the sea went down, down, down, into a deep, dead calm, when all the elements seemed to have gone to sleep after their furious warfare. Like half-drowned flies we crawled out of the close, ill-smelling cabin to dry ourselves in the sun: there, on the steaming deck of the schooner, we found new life, and in the hope that dawned with it we grew lusty and jovial.

Such a flat, oily sea as it was then! So transparent that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, striped like little one-legged harlequins.

Flat-headed gonies sat high on the water, piping their querulous note as they tugged at something edible, a dozen of them entering into the domestic difficulty: one after another would desert the cause, run a little way over the sea to get a good start, leap heavily into the air, sail about for a few minutes, and then drop back on the sea, feet foremost, and skate for a yard or two, making a white mark and a pleasant sound as it slid over the water.

The exquisite nautilus floated past us, with its gauzy sail set, looking like a thin slice out of a soap-bubble; the strange anemone laid its pale, sensitive petals on the lips of the wave and panted in ecstasy: the Petrel rocked softly, swinging her idle canvas in the sun; we heard the click of the anchor-chain in the forecastle, the blessedest sea-sound I wot of; a sailor sang while he hung in the ratlines and tossed down the salt-stained shrouds. The afternoon waned: the man at the wheel struck two bells—it was the delectable dog-watch. Down went the swarthy sun into his tent of clouds; the waves were of amber; the fervid sky was flushed; it looked as though something splendid were about to happen up there, and that it could hardly keep the secret much longer. Then came the purplest twilight; and then the sky blossomed all over with the biggest, ripest, goldenest stars—such stars as hang like fruits in sun-fed orchards; such stars as lay a track of fire in the sea; such stars as rise and set over mountains and beyond low green capes, like young moons, every one of them; and I conjured up my spells of savage enchantment, my blessed islands, my reefs baptized with silver spray; I saw the broad fan-leaves of the banana droop in the motionless air, and through the tropical night the palms aspired heavenward, while I lay dreaming my sea-dream in the cradle of the deep.

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.



HER CHANCE.

Mary Trigillgus tucked the money away in her purse. It was a very small sum, but it was the utmost that could be spared for the evening outfit: she and her mother had talked it all over, and such was the decision.

"Now, Mary," said her mother, "don't get a tarletan, or anything exclusively for evening wear: you so seldom go to parties that you can't afford such a dress. I would try to get a nice silk. Something that's a little out of style by being made up fashionably might answer very well."

Mary gave a sigh and turned her face toward the shops, feeling how difficult it would be to purchase a fashionable outfit with the scanty sum in her purse. And she sighed many another time that afternoon as she went from shop to shop. The goods were too expensive for her slender purse, or they were poor or old-fashioned. Twilight was settling down on the gay streets; window after window was flashing into light, revealing misty laces with gay ribbons and silks streaming like banners; the lamplighters on every hand were building their walls of flame; and yet Mary wandered from store to store, each moment more bewildered and undecided as to the best investment for her money.

She approached a brilliant store, passed it with lingering step, then paused, turned back, and stood looking down the glittering aisle. The large mirror at the farther end seemed scarcely broader than the little cracked bureau-glass in her humble room before which she dressed her hair in the mornings. The clerks were hurrying to and fro, eager and business-like, while fine ladies were coming and going, jostling her as she stood just outside the door. Among the hurrying forms her eye sought one familiar and loved: not a woman's, I need scarcely say, else why does she stand in the shadow there, with her veil half drawn over her face, trembling and frightened? Why else does her cheek glow with shame?

Poor Mary! You feel like a guilty thing in thus seeking a man who has never declared his love; but let me whisper a word in your ear: True love is woman's blue ribbon of honor: without it her nature is the rose tree without the rose—the dead egg among the cliffs: quickened by the grand passion, it is the eagle soaring to the stars. Your heart is a grander thing now than ever before. Next to loving God, the best thing for woman is to love a good man. Take the comfort of this thought, and leave the humiliation to the heart too hard or too light for loving.

Were I looking into your eyes, my reader, telling my story by word of mouth, I can fancy we might hold something like this dialogue: "Whom was Mary Trigillgus, this keeper of a small day-school—whom was she seeking in this brilliant store? One of the underclerks, perhaps?" "No." "The bookkeeper?" "No." "The confidential clerk?" "You must guess again." "The junior partner?" "No, it was Christian Van Pelt, the sole proprietor of that fine establishment, one of the merchant princes of the city." "But what right had Mary Trigillgus, this obscure school-teacher, to love this man of fortune? How did she ever come to his acquaintance?" And then I should tell you a very long story, and a tedious one perhaps, of two Hollanders, close friends, who settled in New Amsterdam; of how fortune had prospered the one until Christian Van Pelt, his lineal descendant, was among the leaders in the dry-goods trade of New York City; of how various disasters had befallen the family of the other, until the daughter of the house, and its only lineal descendant, Mary Trigillgus's mother, had married an intemperate spendthrift, who had at his death left her penniless, though the grandchild, Mary Trigillgus, had inherited the small house in which mother and daughter found a home.

In the back parlor Mary kept a school for small children: the front chamber was let to a quiet man, who went down town at eight and returned at five, and whom they seldom saw except when he rapped at the sitting-room door on the first day of every month to hand in the three five-dollar bills which covered his rent. Besides these sources of revenue there were a few day-boarders, who sometimes paid for their keeping and sometimes did not.

An intercourse and a show of friendship had all along been maintained between the families of these Hollanders; and now Mrs. Van Pelt, the young merchant's mother, was to give a large party. Mary Trigillgus had been invited, and her mother had insisted on an acceptance of the invitation.

"They are quite friendly to you, Mary, and you can't afford to throw away such friends," the mother said.

So it was for Christian Van Pelt's broad, square figure that Mary's eager eyes were seeking; but in vain they sought: it was nowhere to be seen. A choking feeling of disappointment rose in her heart—a disappointment very unequal to the occasion, since she had meant nothing more than to get a sight of the loved figure and then to go on her way. Having satisfied herself that he was not in the store, a yearning desire possessed her to enter the place where he every day walked—a place to her invested with romance, haunted by his presence—a place to which her thoughts often wandered as some stupid child stood by her side in the little school-room spelling out his reading-lesson. She had not for months entered the store—not since that evening when, in her poor parlor, Christian Van Pelt, the rich young merchant, had looked into her eyes with a look that thrilled her for many a day, and spoken some nothings in tones that set her heart throbbing. Indeed, since that day she had avoided passing the store, lest she might seem, even to herself, to be seeking him. And yet her poor eyes and heart were ever seeking him in the countless throngs that passed up and down the busy streets.

"I'll get my dress from his store," she said mentally. "I shall wear it with the greater pleasure that he has handled it. My patronage will be to him but as the drop to the ocean," she said with a little bitterness, "but it will be a sweet thought to me that I have contributed even one drop to the flood of his prosperity."

So she entered Christian Van Pelt's trade-palace, and said, in answer to the smart clerk's look of inquiry, "I am looking for a silk that will do for the evening and also for the street—something a little out of style, perhaps, might answer."

"We have some bargains in such silks—elegant dress-patterns at a third of what they cost us in Paris. Step this way;" and Mary found herself going back and back through the spacious building, with her image advancing to meet her.

In a few seconds the counter was strewn with silks at most enticing figures, and the clerk showed them off to such advantage, gathering them so dexterously into elegant folds, shifting them so skillfully in the brilliant gas-light, persuading the lady, in the mean while, in such a clever, lawyer-like way: "These cost us in Paris three times the money I am offering them for, and they are but very little passe; there is an extraordinary demand for them; they are going like wildfire; country merchants are ordering them by the score; we sent eighty pieces to Chicago, to one house, yesterday, and fifty patterns to Omaha this morning; one hundred and ten we last week shipped to the South; the whole lot will perhaps be sold by to-morrow," etc.—that poor Mary felt like a speculator on the verge of a great chance. So she decided on a light-green brocade, and could not gainsay the smooth-tongued clerk as he assured her, while tying the bundle, that she had secured a very handsome and elegant dress at a great bargain.

The next day Mary and her mother spent in studying and discussing the latest fashion-plates, but the elaborate descriptions of expensive costumes plunged the girl into another state of bewilderment and slough of despond. She heartily regretted having accepted the invitation. She began to dread the party as an execution—to shrink from exhibiting herself to Christian with the fine ladies and gentlemen who would form the company at Mrs. Van Pelt's. However, the dress was cut and made, and in this there was a fair degree of success, for necessity had taught these women considerable skill in the use of the scissors and needle. The dress was trimmed with some handsome old lace that had been in the mother's family for years. Mrs. Trigillgus pronounced the dress very handsome as she spread it on the bed and stepped off to survey it, and even the despondent Mary took heart, and as she surveyed her image in the mirror at the conclusion of her toilet for the important evening, she felt a degree of complacency toward herself—a feeling of admiration even.

"You look like a snowdrop, dear," said the mother fondly; and the comparison was not inapt, for the young girl's Saxon complexion and fair hair were in pretty contrast with the lace-decked silk of delicate green falling about her.

As she had no attendant, she went early to Mrs. Van Pelt's, feeling at liberty to be unceremonious; and she thought, with a beating heart, that Christian would be her escort home. Mrs. Van Pelt was not in the parlor when Mary entered, but Christian received her kindly, though with a slight embarrassment that embarrassed her. She tried to keep the love-flicker from her eyes and the love-tremor from her voice as she sat there alone with the man she loved, trying to reply indifferently to his indifferent remarks, and wondering if he could not hear the beating of her heart. She was greatly relieved at the entrance of Mrs. Van Pelt. When this lady had kissed her guest, she stepped off a few paces and looked the girl over.

"Your dress is very becoming, my dear," she said, "but why did you get a brocade? Don't you know that brocades are out of style? Nobody wears brocades; and they are not trimming with lace at all. I wish you had advised with me."

The blood rushed to Mary's face. Though she did not turn her eyes to Christian's, she knew that they were looking at her—that he was noting her confusion and comprehending its cause. "He knows why I have bought this brocade," was her thought, "and he knows that I am humiliated in having my poverty held up to his view. Of course Christian knows that I am poor, and he must know, as a consequence, that I wear poor clothes. I can endure that he should know this in a general way, while I shrink from having the details of my poverty revealed to him. I would not wish my patched gaiters and darned stockings held up for his inspection."

Mary hesitated a moment before replying to Mrs. Van Pelt's criticism. Then, with a feeling that it was better to acknowledge a poverty of which both her companions were cognizant than an ignorance of style, she said, with a slight kindling of the eye, "I decided on this dress from economical considerations, and the lace is some which my mother's great-grandmother brought from Holland.—I have reminded them, at least, that I had a grandfather," she thought.

As she finished speaking she lifted her eyes to Christian's. She could not understand the expression she saw there. But the poor girl's satisfaction in her dress was all gone. She was ready to reproach her mother for the reassuring words that had helped to generate it. "What if it is pretty? it is old-fashioned. No matter that the lace is rich, when nobody wears it. I must look as though I were dressed in my grandmother's clothes. I wish I was back in my poor home. There I am at least sheltered from criticism. I am a fool in daring to face fashion: I am the silly moth in the candle."

If these were Mary's thoughts as she sat there with her two friends, what must they have become as the regally-dressed ladies, one after another, were announced? There were the majestic sweep of velvet, the floating of cloudlike gossamer, the flashing diamond, the starry pearl, the flaming ruby, the blazing carbuncle. There were marvelous toilets where contrast and harmony and picturesqueness—the effect of every color and ornament—had been patiently studied as the artist studies each shade and line on his canvas. And when the laugh and the jest and the wit were sounding all about her, and the intoxicating music came sweeping in from the dancing-room, there came over Mary a lost feeling amid the strange faces and voices—a bewildered, dizzy feeling, such as the semi-conscious opium-eater might have, half real, half dreaming. It was all so strange, so separate from her, as though, herself invisible, she was watching a festival among a different order of beings. Everybody was coming and going, continually varying his pastime, while she sat as unobserved as though invisible. Occasionally an eye-glass was leveled at her, or some lady accidentally placed beside her superciliously inspected the lace and green brocade.

Mrs. Van Pelt found her in the course of the evening, and insisted that she should go to the dancing-room and see the dancing. Mary begged to remain seated where she was. She dreaded any move that would render her more conspicuous, and dreaded especially being recalled to Christian's mind. But the hostess insisted, so the wretched girl crept out of her retreat, and with a dizzy step traversed the parlors and halls to the dancing-rooms. The band was playing a delicious waltz, and graceful ladies and elegant gentlemen were moving to its measures. Mary's eyes soon discovered Christian waltzing with a young girl in a rose-colored silk. She was not a marked beauty, but the face was refined and pretty, and was uplifted to Christian's with a look of listening interest. A pang of jealousy shot through Mary's heart as she saw this and noted the close embrace in which Christian held his partner, with his face bent down to hers. Soon they came whirling by.

"There is Christian with Miss Jerome," said Mrs. Van Pelt. "Her father is said to be worth four millions."

The next moment Mrs. Van Pelt was called away, and Mary was again left to her isolation. With a dread of having Christian see her there, old-fashioned and neglected, a stranger to every individual in the assemblage of wealth and fashion, she slipped quietly away into the library, where some elderly people were playing whist. She would have gone home, but she lived in an obscure street some distance away. With a sense of suffocation she now remembered that she would have to recall herself to Christian's mind, for she must depend upon him to see her home. "He has not thought of me once this evening," she said bitterly. Soon supper was announced. Gentlemen and ladies began to pair off, not one mindful of her. She was hesitating between remaining there in the library and going unattended to the refreshment-room, when a white-haired gentleman entered from the parlor. He glanced at Mary, and was passing on when he paused and looked again. A moment of hesitation ensued while the young girl and the old gentleman gazed at each other.

"Miss Trigillgus, I believe?" he said, finally. "My name is Ten Eyck. I knew your mother when she was a girl, and I knew her father. Allow me the pleasure of escorting you to supper."

Mary took the proffered arm with the feeling of one who unexpectedly encounters a friend in a foreign land.

As he reseated her in the library after supper he said, "Present me kindly to your mother: if ever I can serve her, I should be glad to do so."

At length the party was ended. Every guest had gone except Miss Trigillgus.

"I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you to see me home, Mr. Van Pelt," she said to Christian with a burning at her heart.

"Allow me the pleasure, you mean to say," replied Christian with a bow.

This was but a passing pleasantry, and Mary should not have allowed it to bring the color to her cheek, and that peculiar, half-disdainful look to her eye and lip.

"I fear you haven't had a pleasant evening," said Mrs. Van Pelt as Mary took leave of her hostess.

"It was not to be expected that I should, being an entire stranger."

"Well, dear, come and spend a quiet evening with me soon; and give my love to your mother."

Mary went up to the dressing-room, and soon reappeared, looking demure and nun-like in her white hood and black-and-white plaid shawl. How she dreaded the ride home with Christian! and yet for a whole week she had been longing for this very thing. The thought of the party had always brought the throbbing anticipation of the ride with Christian after the party. How near he had seemed then, and ever since the memorable evening when they had sat together over that book of engravings! How happy she had been then! how hopeful of his love! But now, what a gulf there seemed between them! What had she to do with this atmosphere of wealth and luxury and fashion where Christian dwelt? He had been pleased to amuse himself for a brief space with looking into her eyes, with making some silly speeches, which he had straightway forgotten, but which she—poor fool!—had laid away in her heart.

Thus she was thinking as Christian handed her into the carriage. She wondered what he would talk about. For a time there was a constrained and painful silence, and Mary tried to think of something to say, that she might hide her aching heart from his merciless gaze. Finally she remarked that the streets were quiet, and he that the night was fine; and in such commonplaces the ride was passed.

Mary found her mother up, eager to learn her impressions of the first large party she had ever attended.

"I am very tired, mother," she said, determined to end the torturing inquisition, "and am aching to get to bed. I'll tell you about the party to-morrow. Don't call me early: let me have a good sleep."

With a feeling of sickening disgust she laid off the silk and lace and flowers which a few hours before had so pleased her. The pale face which met her as she stood before her mirror was very unlike the happy, expectant face she had seen there in the early evening. Turning from the piteous image, she hurriedly put the mean dress away, longing to have the sheltering darkness about her. Soon she had laid her head on the pillow, where, with eyes staring into the darkness, it throbbed for a weary while. "What am I to Christian Van Pelt?" This was the question the poor heart argued and re-argued. One sweet delicious evening stood over against this last, so full of heartache.

The next morning Mary felt weary with all the world. Her home seemed poorer and meaner than ever; the boarders disgusted her with their coarseness; teaching was unrelieved drudgery; everything was distasteful. To her mother's renewed inquiries about the party she replied wearily, "My dress was poor and mean, mother; and had I spent our year's income on my toilet, it would have still been poor, compared with those I saw last night. For such as I there is nothing in fashionable life but heart-burning and humiliation."

A few days after this there came from Mrs. Van Pelt to Miss Trigillgus an invitation to tea. She at once longed and dreaded to meet Christian; so the invitation was declined on the plea of indisposition. It was renewed two evenings, later, and she was obliged to accept it. Mary never looked better than on that evening. She wore a blue empress-cloth, which heightened the fairness of her complexion and of her bright hair. After tea she and Mrs. Van Pelt were looking at some old pictures. They were discussing an ambrotype of herself, taken when she was thirteen, when a servant announced guests in the parlor.

"You were a pretty child, my dear," said Mrs. Van Pelt, rising to go to the parlor, "and you are a handsome woman—a beautiful woman, I may say—your beauty ought to be a fortune to you—but you lack style. I must take you in hand," she continued, talking all the way to the door. "I shall need some amusement after Christian's marriage, to keep me from being jealous of his little wife;" and she disappeared through the door, little dreaming of the arrow she had sent to the poor heart.

Mary caught her breath, and Christian saw her stagger at the shot. Taken by surprise, completely off his guard, he opened his arms and received the stricken girl in his bosom, and pressed his lips to hers. But Mary had not lost her consciousness. Quickly recovering, she disengaged herself and reached a chair. She was more self-possessed than he. He sat down beside her, quivering in every fibre.

"Mary! Mary!" he cried in passionate beseechment, "I never meant to win your love to betray it. We have both been surprised into a confession of our love for each other, and now let me lay open my heart to you. I do love you, as you must have seen, for I have not been always able to keep the love out of my eyes and voice. You will recall one evening—I know you must remember it—when I was near declaring my love and asking you to be my wife. I don't know why I did not—why I left my story but half told. I sometimes wish that I had declared myself fully, and that we were now pledged to each other. But the very next morning I sustained heavy losses in my business, and others soon followed, and to-day I am threatened with utter ruin. If I cannot raise a hundred thousand dollars this week, and as much in another week, I am a bankrupt. And now you will understand why in two days I am to marry Miss Jerome."

Mary started again. Was the execution, then, so near? She drew a long breath, as though gathering her strength for a hard struggle. "Christian," she said in a low tone that trembled with the energy underlying it, "my poor Christian, you are bewildered. These troubles have shut the light away from your path, and you have lost your way in the darkness. If this is true which you have told me, do you not see that when you have delivered yourself from this threatened bankruptcy, you are yet a bankrupt—a bankrupt in heart and happiness? How can you weigh wealth and position against the best good than can ever come to either of us? I am not afraid of poverty, for I have known nothing else; and surely you do not dread it for yourself. This love is the one good thing which God has permitted in my pitiless destiny. Am I unwomanly? If I plead for my life, who can blame me? And shall that which is more than life go from me without a word? Oh, I cannot smile and look cold as though I was not hurt: I am pierced and torn. Yet, Christian, for your sake, rather than for mine, I entreat. You would bring desolation into both our lives. I might endure it, but how could you bear through the years the memory of your deed? You are trampling on your manhood. You are giving to this woman's hungry heart a stone: you are buying with a lie the holiest thing in her womanhood."

"For four generations my house has withstood every financial storm. The honorable name which my ancestors bequeathed to me I will maintain at every hazard," Christian replied with gloomy energy.

"And you will marry Miss Jerome?"

"Yes: it is my only hope."

"Then God help you, Christian. Your lot is harder than mine. At the worst, my life shall be true: I shall hide no lie in my heart, to fester there." Her words, begun in tenderness, ended in a tone of scorn. "And now I must ask you to see me home."

She left the room, and soon returned cloaked and hooded, to find Christian waiting in overcoat and gloves and with hat in hand. With her arm in his they walked in perfect silence through the gay, bustling streets, passing God knows how many other spirits as sad as their own. When they came to the humble little house which was Mary's home, Christian stopped on the step as though he would say something, but Mary said "Good-night," and passed into the hall.

We magazine-writers have no chance in the space allotted to a short story for a quantitative analysis of emotions and situations, or for following the processes by which marked changes come about in the human heart. We must content ourselves with informing the reader that certain changes or modifications ensued, trusting that he will receive the statement without requiring reasons or the modus operandi.

For a time it seemed to Mary Trigillgus that the sun would never shine for her again, but a certain admixture in her feeling of scorn and contempt for Christian prevented her from sinking into a total despondency. As she revolved day after day the strange separation of two lives which should have flowed on together, there grew in her heart a kind of bitterness toward the society which had demanded the separation. And then the diffused bitterness gathered, and was concentrated on the woman and the man who had robbed her of her happiness. Especially did her heart rise against Christian Van Pelt. Gold had won him from her: he had made his choice between gold and her love; and then she would chafe against the poverty which from her earliest recollection had fettered her tastes and aspirations, and at every step had been her humiliation. And then she would feel a wild, unreasoning longing to win gold. What a triumph to earn gold beyond what his wife had brought him—beyond what they would together possess! From the time this thought first occurred to her it never left her except for brief intervals. Day after day, hour after hour, it recurred to her, until she became possessed with it. It was in her dreams by night, and with the day she seized and revolved it, until her brain whirled with delirium. A hundred wild schemes and projects came and went in scurrying confusion. With hungry eyes she read the daily advertisements of "Business Chances," "Partners Wanted," etc., and in answering some of these was led into some strange discoveries and adventures.

"I am mad! I am losing my reason! More gold than their millions! I cannot even make a living for myself, lunatic!" she would say; and straightway in fancy would read in the papers the announcement of a fortune being left to Mary Trigillgus—of great and marvelous riches coming to her—and would thrill with her triumph over Christian Van Pelt. She would even pen these announcements to see how they looked, and read them aloud to study their sound.

Mrs. Trigillgus grew alarmed at her daughter's unaccountable moods. A physician was summoned, who decided that she was overworked, and advised a few months in the country. But Mary refused to leave the city, and continued to search for her "chance."

One day she was reading the New York Tribune, when her eye caught a little paragraph in relation to the eclipse of the sun which was to occur on the twentieth of August, and of the preparations that were being made in the scientific world for its observance—of the universal interest it was exciting, etc. etc.

Mary thought of the amount of smoked glass which would be prepared for the day, then of the soiled fingers, then of a remedy for this, and then—her chance flashed upon her.

For a time she sat there, with kindled eyes, with throbbing heart and brain, revolving and shaping her thought. Then she put on her hat and took the omnibus for Mr. Ten Eyck's office.

"Mr. Ten Eyck," she said, after the customary commonplaces, "you once said that you would be glad to serve my mother. Are you as willing to serve her daughter?"

"Certainly," replied Mr. Ten Eyck, growing a little uneasy; "that is, if I can, you understand."

"I have urgent need for money."

Mr. Ten Eyck began to fidget visibly.

"I own a house and lot on Thirty-second street. How much money can you lend me on it? It is a house of seven rooms."

"I know the house," answered Mr. Ten Eyck. "Your mother's father left it to you. There is no encumbrance on it?"

"None."

"Allow me to suggest, Miss Trigillgus, as your mother's old friend, that this step should be well considered before it is decided upon. The necessity should be very urgent before you mortgage your home. As your mother's old friend, may I inquire how you intend using this money? Do not answer me if you have any hesitancy in giving me your confidence."

The old gentleman looked at her with such kindly, fatherly solicitude that, after a moment of confused hesitation, she answered: "I will give the confidence you invite, Mr. Ten Eyck. I have a plan by which I can make a fortune in a few days. I propose to manufacture glasses for the great eclipse—say three millions of eclipse-glasses—and distribute them throughout the United States and the Canadas."

Mr. Ten Eyck stared at her through his golden-bowed glasses: "What kind of glasses? Explain yourself more fully."

"I shall buy up all the common glass in New York and Pittsburg, and in other cities perhaps, at the lowest possible figure. Much of the refuse glass will answer my purpose. I shall have it cut, three inches by five, stain it, put two stained surfaces together, and bind with paper. At ten cents apiece the gross proceeds of three millions will be three hundred thousand dollars."

"And how will you distribute them?"

"Through the news agents," she answered promptly, "and on the same terms at which they push the newspapers. By this great system I shall secure a simultaneous distribution throughout the whole country."

Mr. Ten Eyck had laid off his glasses and assumed an attitude of deep attention: "Suppose it should rain on eclipse-day?"

"I have thought of that contingency. I should anticipate it by having the glasses in the market for two or three days preceding the eclipse. To give the glass additional value, I should paste on it a printed slip stating the hour when the eclipse will begin, the period of its duration, and the moment of total obscuration." Then she started and glowed with a sudden revelation that came flashing through her brain. "I will make the glasses an advertising medium," she continued eagerly. "I will make the advertisements pay all the expenses, and much more. Can I not find a man in New York City, or somewhere in the United States, who would pay a hundred thousand dollars to have three millions of people reading in one moment the merits of his wares or of his remedies! And if such a man cannot be found, one who will purchase the exclusive right to advertise with me, I'll parcel it out. Yes, I can pay all expenses with the advertisements; but I must have some ready money to begin with—to initiate the enterprise. Will you lend me the money on my house and lot?"

Mr. Ten Eyck resumed his glasses, and sat for a long time staring into a pigeon-hole of his desk in profound meditation.

"My dear Miss Trigillgus, allow me, as your mother's old friend, to speak plainly to you. You are planning an enterprise of such proportions that no woman could go through with it. In the most skillful hands great risk would attend it, even with abundance of money to back it; and let me assure you that a woman without business education and with cramped means could have no chance whatever in the arena of experts. Her defeat would be inevitable. I would gladly serve you, Miss Trigillgus, and I think, pardon me, that my surest way of doing this is to decline making the loan you ask, and to advise you, as your mother's old friend, to abandon this scheme."

"I shall consider your advice, Mr. Ten Eyck," said Miss Trigillgus, "and I thank you for it, whether I act upon it or not;" and she gave a cold bow that contradicted her words.

Mary made many other attempts to raise money, but all were unsuccessful. A few mornings after this her advertisement appeared in the Tribune, calling for a partner with ten thousand dollars to take a half interest in an enterprise which was sure to net a quarter of a million within a month. It had such an extravagant sound that it was set down as a humbug, and few answered it. She had interviews with two young men of such suspicious appearance that she did not dare reveal her scheme to them. Day after day the card appeared with no satisfactory result; and Mary perceived with a kind of frenzy the short time in which her great work was to be accomplished growing shorter and shorter. She moved cautiously, lest her grand idea should be appropriated, but she left no stone unturned for raising the money. Finally, on the ninth of August, impatient, anxious, nervous, she had six thousand dollars in hand, and only ten days intervened before the day of the eclipse. She went immediately to an eminent solicitor of patents, who had influence at Washington, and made application for a patent for advertising on eclipse-glasses. The solicitor thought there was no doubt but that the patent could be secured, so that she might freely proceed with her enterprise. She next contracted with a glass-factory for five thousand dollars' worth of glass, and engaged one hundred men to cut and stain it and put up the eclipse-glasses. Then she made several endeavors to see the president of the news agency, and after repeated failures she opened a correspondence by letter with him, briefly outlining her plan, and asking him to undertake through the news agents the distribution of the glasses. The next morning she received in response, through the post-office, these lines:

"MISS TRIGILLGUS: You have been anticipated in your enterprise. We are engaged to distribute eclipse-glasses for another party."

As Mary read the cruel words that ended all her hopes, she fell lifeless to the floor, and was thus discovered by her mother.

The following day there came a confirmatory note from the solicitor of patents, stating that she had been anticipated also in her application for a patent.

From this period Mary's moods became indescribable. From a state of unrelieved despondency she issued so merry, in such exhilaration, that her mother was glad to welcome back the shadowed mood which soon succeeded. The sagacity of physicians, of her most familiar acquaintances, of her mother, was all at fault. No one could decide whether or not her mind was unhinged, whether or not Mary Trigillgus was insane; for it must be remembered that her friends were ignorant of the events we have been narrating—her love for Christian Van Pelt, her disappointment, her grand scheme, the sacrifice of her home and the failure of her enterprise.

The nineteenth of August came, the day preceding the grand event of the century. Mary Trigillgus and her mother were lingering at the breakfast-table. The girl seemed wild and hawk-like, startling her mother with her unnatural merriment, commenting with weird brilliancy and grotesqueness and sparkle on the various items as Mrs. Trigillgus read them. At length she read a paragraph about the eclipse. "'And we would advise every reader,'" she continued, "'to furnish himself with an eclipse-glass, which he can procure at any of the news depots for the sum of ten cents. The glass is nicely finished, and is very perfect for the purpose intended. We understand that five millions of these glasses have been put into the market, for which the country is indebted to the genius and enterprise of our young fellow-citizen, Mr. Christian Van Pelt, assisted by Mr. W. V. Ten Eyck.'"

"He has done it! he has again stabbed me!" cried Mary Trigillgus, with the maniac's glare in her eyes. "The gold is his—his and hers! Piles of gold! and they have cut it out of my heart, dug it out of my brain! I have nothing left! Don't you see, mother, I am only an empty shell? Stab me here in the heart, where he has stabbed me: it won't hurt. There's nothing there! nothing! it's all hollow." There was no longer any doubt that Mary Trigillgus's mind was unhinged.

During all that day men and children were crying the eclipse-glasses in the street, selling them at every door.

"Hear them! hear them!" the poor maniac would cry. "They are selling millions of them! they are piling the gold all about him and her! They are to have a palace of gold, and Mary's to have only the ashes. Poor Mary! poor Mary! All the good's for them, all the pain's for Mary!" and then she would weep herself into a quiet mood of despondency.

The next day, the day of the eclipse, Mary demanded one of the glasses, and would not be diverted from her desire. She read the advertisement on the eclipse-glass: "Babcock's Fire-Extinguisher will put out any fire! Get one!"

"Mother, get me one: I have a fire here;" and she pressed her hand to her brow. She examined the glass again and again, looking it over and over, and reading the advertisement aloud: "Babcock's Fire-Extinguisher will put out any fire! Get one!" All day long, at short intervals, she was running to the window and looking through the glass at the sun.

And when the grand hour arrived for the wonderful phenomenon, when the five million glasses were raised to witness the obscuration, and the weird twilight had settled over all nature, this young life too had passed into a total eclipse, from which it has never for a moment emerged.

The poor lunatic never rages. She is sweet and harmless as a child. She makes frequent visits to the glass-factories and to the news-rooms to inquire after the progress of her enterprise, and over and over again makes her contract to advertise the "Babcock Fire-Extinguisher," and comes back with promises to her mother of the boundless riches which are to flow in upon them.

As for Christian Van Pelt, his wrong to Mary had been unintentional, as he was ignorant of her connection with the eclipse-glass scheme. Though Mr. Ten Eyck had been honest in advising Miss Trigillgus to abandon her plans, under the persuasion that with her limited means and want of business training the result could not fail to be disastrous, he yet saw that with capital and energy to push it a grand success might be achieved. Having little loose capital, and his time being well occupied, he unfolded the scheme to Christian Van Pelt, and together they put the enterprise through. Mr. Ten Eyck argued that since Miss Trigillgus had abandoned the plan, as he really supposed had been the case, he was not wronging her by prosecuting it himself. He was one of that numerous class who fail to perceive that ideas have commercial value.