* * * * *

Six years passed, and the name of Harriet Martineau was recognized as a power in the land. Her "Illustrations of Political Economy" had sold well up into the hundred thousands. The little stories were read by old and young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned. Sir Robert Peel had written Harriet a personal letter of encouragement; Lord Brougham had paid for and given away a thousand copies of the booklets; Richard Cobden had publicly endorsed them; Coleridge had courted the author; Florence Nightingale had sung her praises, and the Czar of Russia had ordered that "all the books of Harriet Martineau's found in Russia shall be destroyed." Besides, she had incurred the wrath of King Philippe of France, who after first lavishly praising her and ordering the "Illustrations" translated into French, to be used in the public schools, suddenly discovered a hot chapter entitled, "The Error Called the Divine Right of Kings," and although Philippe was only a "citizen-king" he made haste to recall his kind words.

And I wish here to remark in parentheses that the author who has not made warm friends and then lost them in an hour by writing things that did not agree with the preconceived idea of these friends, has either not written well or not been read. Every preacher who preaches ably has two doors to his church—one where the people come in and another through which he preaches them out. And I do not see how any man, even though he be divine, could expect or hope to have as many as twelve disciples and hold them for three years without being doubted, denied and betrayed. If you have thoughts, and honestly speak your mind, Golgotha for you is not far away.

Harriet Martineau was essentially an agitator. She entered into life in its fullest sense, and no phase of existence escaped her keen and penetrating investigation. From writing books giving minute directions to housemaids, to lengthy advice to prime ministers, her work never lagged. She was widely read, beloved, respected, feared and well hated.

When her political-economy tales were selling their best, the Government sent her word that on application she could have a pension of two hundred pounds a year for life. A pension of this kind comes nominally as a reward for excellent work or heroic service. But a pension may mean something else: it often implies that the receiver shall not offend nor affront the one that bestows it. Could we trace the true inner history of pensions granted by monarchies, we would find that they are usually diplomatic moves.

Harriet made no response to the generous offer of a lifelong maintenance from the State, but continued to work away after her own methods. Yet the offer of a pension did her good in one way: it suggested the wisdom of setting aside a sum that would support her when her earning powers were diminished. From her two books written concerning her trip to America she received the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars. With this she purchased an insurance policy in the form of a deferred annuity, providing that from her fiftieth year to her death she should receive the annual sum of five hundred dollars. Nowhere in all the realm of Grub Street do we find a man who set such an example of cool wisdom for this crippled woman. At this time she was supporting her mother, who had become blind, and also a brother, who was a slave to drink.

Twenty-five years after the first offer of pension, the Government renewed the proposition. But Harriet said that her needs were few and her wants simple; that she had enough anyway, and besides, she could not consent to the policy of pensioning one class of persons for well-doing and forgetting all the toilers who have worked just as conscientiously, but along lowly lines; if she ever did need aid, she would do as other old women were obliged to do, that is, apply to the parish.

Miss Martineau wrote for the "Daily London News" alone, sixteen hundred forty-two editorials. She also wrote more than two hundred magazine articles, and published upwards of fifty books. Her work was not classic, for it was written for the times. That her influence for good on the thought of the times was wide and far-reaching, all thoughtful men agree. And he who influences the thought of his times influences all the times that follow. He has made his impress on eternity.

* * * * *

Opinions may differ as to what constitutes Harriet Martineau's best work, but my view is that her translation and condensation of Auguste Comte's six volumes into two will live when all her other work is forgotten. Comte's own writings were filled with many repetitions and rhetorical flounderings. He was more of a philosopher than a writer. He had an idea too big for him to express, but he expressed at it right bravely. Miss Martineau, trained writer and thinker, did not translate verbally: she caught the idea, and translated the thought rather than the language. And so it has come about that her work has been literally translated back into French and is accepted as a textbook of Positivism, while the original books of the philosopher are merely collected by museums and bibliophiles as curiosities.

Comte taught that man passes through three distinct mental stages in his development: First, man attributes all phenomena to a "Personal God," and to this God he servilely prays. Second, he believes in a "Supreme Essence," a "Universal Principle" or a "First Cause," and seeks to discover its hiding-place. Third, he ceases to hunt out the unknowable, and is content to live and work for a positive present good, fully believing that what is best today can not fail to bring the best results tomorrow.

Harriet had long considered that one reason for the very slow advancement of civilization was that men had ever busied themselves with supernatural concerns; and in fearsome endeavors to make themselves secure for another world had neglected this. Man had tried to make peace with the skies instead of peace with his neighbor. She also thought she saw clearly that right living was one thing, and a belief in theological dogma another. That these things sometimes go together, she of course admitted, but a belief in a "vicarious atonement" and a "miraculous conception" she did not believe made a man a gentler husband, a better neighbor or a more patriotic citizen. Man does what he does because he thinks at the moment it is the best thing to do. And if you could make men believe that peace, truth, honesty and industry were the best standards to adopt—bringing the best results—all men would adopt them.

There are no such things as reward and punishment, as these terms are ordinarily used: there are only good results and bad results. We sow, and reap what we have sown.

Miss Martineau had long believed these things, but Comte proved them—proved them in six ponderous tomes—and she set herself the task to simplify his philosophy.

There is one point of attraction that Comte's thought had for Harriet Martineau that I have never seen mentioned in print—that is, his mental attitude on the value of love in a well-ordered life.

In the springtime of his manhood, Auguste Comte, sensitive, confiding, generous, loved a beautiful girl. She did not share his intellectual ambitions, his divine aspiration: she was only a beautiful animal. Man proposes, but is not always accepted. She married another, and Comte was disconsolate—for a day.

He pondered the subject, read the lives of various great men, talked with monks and sundry friars gray, and after five years wrote out at length the reasons why a man, in order to accomplish a far-reaching and splendid work, must live the life of a celibate. "To achieve," said Comte, "you must be married to your work."

Comte lived for some time content in this philosophy, constantly strengthening it and buttressing it against attack; for we believe a thing first and skirmish for our proof afterward. But when past forty, and his hair was turning to silver, and crow's-feet were showing themselves in his fine face, and when there was a halt in his step and his laughter had died away into a weary smile, he met a woman whose nature was as finely sensitive and as silkenly strong as his own. She had intellect, aspiration, power. She was gentle, and a womanly woman withal; his best mood was matched by hers, she sympathized with his highest ideal.

They loved and they married.

The crow's-feet disappeared from Comte's face, the halt in his step was gone, the laugh returned, and people said that the silver in his hair was becoming.

Shortly after, Comte set himself to work overhauling all the foolish things he had said about the necessity of celibacy. He declared that a man without his mate only stumbled his way through life. There was the male man and the female man, and only by working together could these two souls hope to progress. It requires two to generate thought. Comte felt sure that he was writing the final word. He avowed that there was no more to say. He declared that should his wife go hence the fountains of his soul would dry up, his mind would famish, and the light of his life would go out in darkness.

The gods were envious of such love as this.

Comte's mate passed away.

He was stricken dumb; the calamity was too great for speech or tears.

But five years after, he got down his books and went over his manuscripts and again revised his philosophy of what constitutes the true condition for the highest and purest thought. To have known a great and exalted love and have it fade from your grasp and flee as shadow, living only in memory, is the highest good, he wrote. A great sorrow at one stroke purchases a redemption from all petty troubles; it sinks all trivial annoyances into nothingness, and grants the man lifelong freedom from all petty, corroding cares. His feelings have been sounded to their depths—the plummet has touched bottom. Fate has done her worst: she has brought him face to face with the Supreme Calamity, and thereafter there is nothing that can inspire terror.

The memory of a great love can never die from out the heart. It affords a ballast 'gainst all the storms that blow. And although it lends an unutterable sadness, it imparts an unspeakable peace.

A great love, even when fully possessed, affords no complete gratification. There is an essence in it that eludes all ownership. Its highest use seems to be a purifying impulse for nobler endeavor. It says at the last, "Arise, and get thee hence, for this is not thy rest."

Where there is this haunting memory of a great love lost there is always forgiveness, charity, and a sympathy that makes the man brother to all who endure and suffer. The individual himself is nothing; he has nothing to hope for, nothing to gain, nothing to win, nothing to lose; for the first time and the last he has a selflessness that is wide as the world, and wherein there is no room for the recollection of a wrong. In this memory of a great love, there is a nourishing source of strength by which the possessor lives and works; he is in communication with elemental conditions.

Harriet Martineau was a lifelong widow of the heart. That first great passion of her early womanhood, the love that was lost, remained with her all the days of her life: springing fresh every morning, her last thought as she closed her eyes at night. Other loves came to her, attachments varying in nature and degree, but in this supreme love all was fused and absorbed. In this love, you get the secret of power.

A great love is a pain, yet it is a benison and a benediction. If we carry any possession from this world to another it is the memory of a great love. For even in the last hour, when the coldness of death shall creep into the stiffening limbs, and the brain shall be stunned and the thoughts stifled, there shall come to the tongue a name, a name not mentioned aloud for years—there shall come a name; and as the last flickering rays of life flare up to go out on earth forever, the tongue will speak this name that was long, long ago burned into the soul by the passion of a love that fadeth not away.



CHARLOTTE BRONTE

I was not surprised, when I went down into the hall, to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night, and to feel through the open glass door the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze. Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A beggar woman and her little boy, pale, ragged objects both, were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse—some three or four shillings: good or bad they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed and blither birds sung, but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart. —Jane Eyre



Rumor has it that there be Americans who are never happy unless passing for Englishmen. And I think I have discovered a like anomaly on the part of the sons of Ireland—a wish to pass for Frenchmen. On Continental hotel-registers the good, honest name of O'Brian often turns queer somersaults, and more than once in "The States" does the kingly prefix of O evolve itself into Van or De, which perhaps is quite proper, seeing they all mean the same thing. One cause of this tendency may lie in the fact that Saint Patrick was a native of France; although Saint Patrick may or may not have been chosen patron saint on account of his nationality. But the patron saint of Ireland being a Frenchman, what more natural, and therefore what more proper, than that the whole Emerald Isle should slant toward the people who love art and rabbit-stew! Anyway, from the proud patronymic of Patricius to plain Pat is quite a drop, and my heart is with Paddy in his efforts to get back.

When Patrick Prunty of County Down, Ireland, shook off the shackles of environment, and the mud of the peat-bog, and went across to England, presenting himself at the gates of Saint John's College, Cambridge, asking for admittance, I am glad he handed in his name as Mr. P. Bronte, accent on the last syllable.

There is a gentle myth abroad that preachers are "called," while other men adopt a profession or get a job, but no Protestant Episcopal clergyman I have ever known, and I have known many, ever made any such claim. They take up the profession because it supplies honors and a "living." Then they can do good, too, and all men want to do good. So they hie them to a divinity school and are taught the mysteries of theological tierce and thrust; and interviewing a clerical tailor they are ready to accept the honors and partake of the living. After a careful study of the life of Patrick Bronte I can not find that his ambition extended beyond the desirable things I have named—that is to say, inclusively, honors and a living.

He was tall, athletic, dark, and surely a fellow of force and ambition to set his back on the old and boldly rap for admittance at the gates of Cambridge. He was a pretty good student, too, although a bit quarrelsome and sometimes mischievous—throwing his force into quite unnecessary ways, as Irishmen are apt to do. He fell in love, of course, and has not an Irishman in love been likened to Vesuvius in state of eruption? We know of at least one charming girl who refused to marry him, because he declined, unlike Othello, to tell the story of his life. And it was assumed that any man who would not tell who "his folks" were, was a rogue and a varlet and a vagrom at heart. And all the while Monsieur Bronte had nothing worse to conceal than that he was from County Down and his name Prunty. He wouldn't give in and tell the story of his life to slow music, and so the girl wept and then stormed, and finally Bronte stormed and went away, and the girl and her parents were sure that the Frenchman was a murderer escaping justice. Fortunate, aye, thrice fortunate is it for the world that neither Bronte nor the girl wavered even in the estimation of a hair.

Bronte got through school and came out with tuppence worth of honors. When thirty, we find him established as curate at the shabby little town of Hartshead, in Yorkshire. Little Miss Branwell, from Penzance, came up there on a visit to her uncle, and the Reverend Mr. Bronte at once fell violently in love with her dainty form and gentle ways. I say "violently," for that's the kind of man Bronte was. Darwin says, "The faculty of amativeness is not aroused except by the unfamiliar." Girls who go away visiting, wearing their best bib and tucker, find lovers without fail. One-third of all marriages in the United States occur in just this way: the bib and tucker being sprung on the young man as a surprise, dazzles and hypnotizes him into an avowal and an engagement.

And so they were married—were the Reverend Patrick Bronte and Miss Maria Branwell. He was big, bold and dictatorial; she was little, shy and sensitive. The babies came—one in less than a year, then a year apart. The dainty little woman had her troubles, we are sure of that. Her voice comes to us only as a plaintive echo. When she asked to have the bread passed, she always apologized. Once her aunt sent her a present of a pretty silk dress, for country clergymen's wives do not have many luxuries—don't you know that?—and Patrick Bronte cut the dress into strips before her eyes and then threw the pieces, and the little slippers to match, into the fireplace, to teach his wife humility. He used to practise with a pistol and shoot in the house to steady the lady's nerves, and occasionally he got plain drunk. A man like Bronte in a little town with a tired little wife, and with inferior people, is a despot. He busies himself with trifles, looks after foolish details, and the neighbors let him have his own way and his wife has to, and the result is that he becomes convinced in his own mind that he is the people and that wisdom will die with him.

And yet Bronte wrote some pretty good poetry, and had faculties that rightly developed might have made him an excellent man. He should have gone down to London (or up, because it is south) and there come into competition with men as strong as himself. Fate should have seized him by the hair and bumped his head against stone walls and cuffed him thoroughly, and kicked him into line, teaching him humility, then out of the scrimmage we might have gotten a really superior product.

Mrs. Bronte became a confirmed invalid. A man can not always badger a woman; God is good—she dies. Little Maria Branwell had been married eight years; when she passed out she left six children, "all of a size," a neighbor woman has written. Over her grave is a tablet erected by her husband informing the wayfarer that "she has gone to meet her Savior." At the bottom is this warning to all women: "Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh."

Five of these motherless children were girls and one a boy.

As you stand there in that stone church at Haworth reading the inscription above Maria Branwell's grave, you can also read the death record of the babes she left. The mother died on September Fifteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-one; her oldest daughter, Maria, on May Sixth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five; Elizabeth, June Fifteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-five; Patrick Branwell, on September Twenty-fourth, Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight; Emily, December Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight; Anne, May Twenty-eighth, Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine; and Charlotte, on March Thirty-first, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-five. Those whom the gods love die young: the Reverend Patrick Bronte lived to be eighty-five years old.

* * * * *

I got out of the train at Keighley, which you must pronounce "Keethley," and leaving my valise with the station-master started on foot for Haworth, four miles away.

Keighley is a manufacturing town where various old mansions have been turned into factories, and new factories have sprung up, square, spick-span, trimmed-stone buildings, with fire-escapes and red tanks on top.

One of these old mansions I saw had a fine copper roof that shone in the sun like a monster Lake Superior agate. It stands a bit back from the road, and on one great gatepost is a brass plate reading "Cardigan Hall," and on the other a sign, "No Admittance—Apply at the Office." So I applied at the office, which is evidently the ancient lodge, and asked if Mr. Cardigan was in. Four clerks perched on high stools, crouching over big ledgers, dropped their pens and turning on their spiral seats looked at me with staring eyes, and with mouths wide open. I repeated the question and one of the quartette, a wheezy little old man in spectacles and with whiskers on his neck, clambered down from his elevated position and ambled over near, walking around me, eying me curiously.

"Go wan wi' yer wurruk, ye idlers!" he suddenly commanded the others. And then he explained to me that Mr. Cardigan was not in, neither was Mr. Jackson. In fact, Mr. Cardigan had not been in for a hundred years—being dead. But if I wanted to look at goods I could be accommodated with bargains fully five per cent below Lunnon market. The little old man was in such serious earnest that I felt it would be a sin to continue a joke. I explained that I was only a tourist in search of the picturesque, and thereby did I drop ten points in the old man's estimation. But this did I learn, that Lord Cardigan has won deathless fame by attaching his name to a knit jacket, just as the name Jaeger will go clattering down the corridors of time attached to a "combination suit."

This splendid old mansion was once the ancestral home of a branch of the noble family of Cardigan. But things got somewhat shuffled, through too many hot suppers up to London (being south), and stacks of reds and stacks of blues were drawn in towards the dealer, and so the old mansion fell under the hammer of the auctioneer. What an all-powerful thing is an auctioneer's hammer! And now from the great parlors, and the library, and the "hall," and the guest-chambers echo the rattle of spinning-jennies and the dull booming of whirling pulleys. And above the song of whirring wheels came the songs of girls at their work—voices that alone might have been harsh and discordant, but blending with the monotone of the factory's roar were really melodious.

"We cawn't keep the nasty things from singin'," said the old man apologetically.

"Why should you?" I asked.

"Huh, mon! but they sing sacred songs, and chaunts, and a' that, and say all together from twenty rooms, a hundred times a day, 'Aws ut wuz in th' beginnin,' uz now awn ever shawl be, worl' wi'out end, Aamen.' It's not right. I've told Mr. Jackson. Listen now, didn't I tell ye?"

"Then you are a Churchman?"

And the old man wiped his glasses and told me that he was a Churchman, although an unworthy one, and had been for fifty-four years, come Michaelmas. Yes, he had always lived here, was born only across the beck away—his father was gamekeeper for Lord Cardigan, and afterwards agent. He had been to Haworth many times, although not for ten years. He knew the Reverend Patrick Bronte well, for the Incumbent from Haworth used to preach at Keighley once a year, and sometimes twice. Bronte was a fine man, with a splendid voice for intoning, and very strict about keeping out all heresies and such. He had a lot of trouble, had Bronte: his wife died and left him with eight or ten children, all smart, but rather wild. They gave him a lot of bother, especially the boy. One of the girls married Mr. Bronte's curate, Mr. Nicholls, a very decent kind of man who comes to Keighley once a year, and always comes to the factory to ask how things are going.

Yes, Mr. Nicholls' first wife died years and years ago. She used to write things—novels; but no one should read novels; novels are stories that are not so—things that never happened; they tell of folks that never was.

Having no argument to present in way of rebuttal, I shook hands with the old man and started away. He walked with me to the road to put me on the right way to Haworth.

Looking back as I reached the corner, I saw four "clarks" watching me intently from the office windows, and above the roar and jangle of machinery was borne on the summer breeze the sound of sacred song—shrill feminine voices:

"Aws ut wuz in th' beginnin', uz now awn ever shawl be, worl' wi'out end—Aamen!"

* * * * *

As one moves out of Keighley the country becomes stony; the trees are left behind, and there rises on all sides billow on billow of purple heather. The way is rough as the Pilgrim's Progress road to Paradise. These hillside moors are filled with springs that high up form rills, then brooks, then cascades or "becks," and along the Haworth road, wherever one of these hurrying, scurrying, dancing becks crosses the highway, there is a factory devoted to keeping alive the name of Cardigan. Next to the factory is a "pub.," and publics and factories checker themselves all along the route. Mixed in with these are long rows of tenement-houses well built of stone, with slate roofs, but with a grimy air of desolation about them that surely drives their occupants to drink. To have a home a man must build it himself. Forty houses in a row, all alike, are not homes at all.

I believe an observant man once wrote of the hand being subdued to what it works in. The man who wrote that surely never tramped along the Haworth road as the bell rang for twelve o'clock. From out the factories poured a motley mob of men, women and children, not only with hands dyed, but with clothing, faces and heads as well. Girls with bright-green hair, and lemon-colored faces, leered and jeered at me as they hastened pellmell with hats askew, and stockings down, and dragging shawls, for home or public-house. Red and maroon children ran, and bright-scarlet men smoked stolidly, taking their time with genuine grim Yorkshire sullen sourness.

"How far is it to Haworth?" I asked one such specimen.

"Ef ye pay th' siller for a double pot a' 'arf and 'arf. Hi might tell ye"; and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward a ginshop near by.

"Very well," said I; "I'll buy you a double pot of 'arf and 'arf, this time."

The man seemed a bit surprised, but no smile came over his spattered rainbow face as he led the way into the drink-shop. The place was crowded with men and women scrambling for penny sandwiches and drinks fermented and spirituous. Some of these women had babies at their breasts, the babies being brought by appointment by older children who stayed at home while the mothers worked. And as the mothers gulped their Triple XXX, and swallowed hunks of black bread, the little innocents dined. The mothers were rather kindly disposed, though, and occasionally allowed the youngsters to take sips out of their foaming glasses, or at least to drain them. Suddenly a woman with purple hair spied me and called in falsetto:

"Ah, Sawndy McClure has caught a gen'l'mon. Why didn't I see 'im fust an' 'arve 'im fer a pet?"

There was a guffaw at my expense and 'arf and 'arf as well, for all the party, or else quarrel. As it was, my stout stick probably saved me from the "personal touch." I stayed until the factory-bells rang, and out my new-found friends scurried for fear of being the fatal five minutes late and getting locked out. Some of them shook my hand as they went, and others pounded me on the back for luck, and several of the girls got my tag and shouted, "You're it!"

I used to think that Yorkshire folks were hopelessly dull and sublimely stupid, quarrelsome withal and pigheaded to the thirty-second degree; but I have partially come to the conclusion that their glum ways often conceal a peculiar kind of grim humor, and beneath the tough husk is considerable good nature.

The absence of large trees makes it possible to see the village of Haworth several miles away. It seems to cling to the stony hillside as if it feared being blown into space. There is a hurrying, rushing rill here, too, that turns a little woolen-mill. Then there is a "Black Bull" tavern, with a stable-yard at the side and rows of houses on the one street, all very straight up and down. One misses the climbing roses of the ideal merry England, and the soft turf and spreading yews and the flowering hedgerows where throstles and linnets play hide-and-seek the livelong day. It is all cold gray stone, lichen-covered, and the houses do not invite you to enter, and the gardens bid no welcome, and only the great purple wastes of moorland greet you as a friend and brother.

Outside the Black Bull sits a solitary hostler, who feels it would be a weakness to show any good humor. So he bottles his curiosity and scowls from under red, bushy eyebrows.

Turning off the main street is a narrow road leading to the church—square and gray and cold. Next to it is the parsonage, built of the same material, and beyond is the crowded city of the dead.

I plied the knocker at the parsonage door and asked for the rector. He was away at Kendal to attend a funeral, but his wife was at home—a pleasant, matronly woman of near sixty, with smooth, white hair. She came to the door knitting furiously, but from her regulation smile I saw that visitors were not uncommon.

"You want to see the home of the Brontes? That's right, come right in. This was the study of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, Incumbent of this Parish for fifty years."

She sang her little song and knitted and shifted the needles and measured the foot, for the stocking was nearly done. It was a blue stocking (although she wasn't) with a white toe; and all the time she led me from room to room telling me about the Brontes—how there were the father, mother and six children. They all came together. The mother died shortly, and then two of the little girls died. That left three girls and Branwell the boy. He was petted and made too much of by his father and everybody. He was the one that always was going to do great things. He made the girls wait on him and cuffed them if they didn't, and if they did, and all the time told of the things he was going to do. But he never did them, for he spent most of his time at the taverns. After a while he died—died of the tremens.

The three Bronte girls, Emily, Charlotte and Annie, wrote a novel apiece, and never showed them to their father or to any one. They called 'emselves Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, and their novels were the greatest ever written—they wrote them 'emselves with no man to help. Their father was awful mad about it, but when the money began to come in he felt better. Emily died when she was twenty-seven. She was the brightest of them all; then Annie died, and only Charlotte and the old man were left. Charlotte married her father's curate, but old Mr. Bronte wouldn't go to the wedding: he went to the Black Bull instead. Miss Wooler gave the bride away—some one had to give her away, you know. The bride was thirty-eight. She died in less them a year, and old Mr. Bronte and Charlotte's husband lived here alone together.

This was Charlotte's room; this is the desk where she wrote "Jane Eyre"—leastwise they say it is. This is the chair she sat in, and under that framed glass are several sheets of her manuscript. The writing is almost too small to read; and so fine and yet so perfect and neat! She was a wonderful tidy body, very small and delicate and gentle, yet with a good deal of her father's energy.

Here are letters she wrote: you can look at them if you choose. This footstool she made and covered herself. It is filled with heather-blossoms—just as she left it. Those books were hers, too—many of them given to her by great authors. See, there is Thackeray's name written by himself, and a letter from him pasted inside the front cover. He was a big man they say, but he wrote very small, and Charlotte wrote just like him, only better, and now there are hundreds of folks write like 'em both. Then here's a book with Miss Martineau's name, and another from Robert Browning—do you know who he was?

Yes, the church is always open. Go in and stay as long as you choose; at the door is a poorbox and if you wish to put something in you can do so—a sixpence most visitors put in, or a shilling if you insist upon it. You know we are not a rich parish—the wool all goes to Manchester now, and the factory-hands are on half-pay and times are scarce. You will come again some time, come when the heather is in bloom, won't you? That's right. Oh, stay! the boxwood there in the garden was planted by Charlotte's own hands—perhaps you would like a sprig of it—there, I thought you would!

* * * * *

All who write concerning the Brontes dwell on the sadness and the tragedy of their lives. They picture Charlotte's earth-journey as one devoid of happiness, lacking all that sweetens and makes for satisfaction. They forget that she wrote "Jane Eyre," and that no person utterly miserable ever did a great work; and I assume that they know not of the wild, splendid, intoxicating joy that follows a performance well done. To be sure, "Jane Eyre" is a tragedy, but the author of a tragedy must be greater than the plot—greater than his puppets. He is their creator, and his life runs through and pervades theirs, just as the life of our Creator flows through us. In Him we live and move and have our being. And I submit that the writer of a tragedy is not cast down or undone at the time he pictures his heroic situations and conjures forth his strutting spirits. When the play ends and the curtain falls on the fifth act, there is still one man alive, and that is the author. He may be gorged with crime and surfeited with blood, but there is a surging exultation in his veins as he views the ruin that his brain has wrought.

Charlotte loved the great stretch of purple moors, hill on hill fading away into eternal mist. And the wild winds that sighed and moaned at casements or raged in sullen wrath, tugging at the roof, were her friends. She loved them all, and thought of them as visiting spirits. They were her properties, and no writer who ever lived has made such splendid use of winds and storm-clouds and driving rain as did Charlotte Bronte. People who point to the chasing, angry clouds and the swish of dripping rosebushes blown against the cottage-windows as proof of Charlotte Bronte's chronic depression know not the eager joy of a storm walk. And I am sure they never did as one I know did last night: saddle a horse at ten o'clock and gallop away into the darkness; splash, splash in the sighing, moaning, bellowing, driving November rain. There's joy for you! ye who toast your feet on the fender and cultivate sick headache around the base-burner—there's a life that ye never guess!

But Charlotte knew the clouds by night and the swift-sailing moon that gave just one peep out and disappeared. She knew the rifts where the stars shone through, and out alone in the breeze that blew away her cares she lifted her voice in thankfulness for the joy of mixing with the elements, and that her spirit was one with the boisterous winds of heaven.

People who live in beautiful, quiet valleys, where roses bloom all the year through, are not necessarily happy.

Southern California—the Garden of Eden of the world—evolves just as many cases per capita of melancholia as bleak, barren Maine. Wild, rocky, forbidding Scotland has produced more genius to the acre than beautiful England: and I have found that sailor Jack, facing the North Atlantic winter storms, year after year, is a deal jollier companion than the Florida cracker whose chief adversary is the mosquito.

Charlotte Bronte wrote three great books: "Jane Eyre," "Shirley" and "Villette." From the lonely, bleak parsonage on that stony hillside she sent forth her swaying filament of thought and lassoed the world. She lived to know that she had won. Money came to her, all she needed, honors, friends and lavish praise. She was the foremost woman author of her day. Her name was on every tongue. She had met the world in fair fight; without patrons, paid advocates, or influential friends she made her way to the very front. Her genius was acknowledged. She accomplished all that she set out to do and more—far more. The great, the learned, the titled, the proud—all those who reverence the tender heart and far-reaching mind—acknowledged her as queen.

So why prate of her sorrows! Did she not work them up into art? Why weep over her troubles when these were the weapons with which she won? Why sit in sackcloth on account of her early death, when it is appointed unto all men once to die, and with her the grave was swallowed up in victory?



CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

My life is but a working-day, Whose tasks are set aright: A while to work, a while to pray, And then a quiet night. And then, please God, a quiet night Where Saints and Angels walk in white. One dreamless sleep from work and sorrow, But reawakening on the morrow. —In Patience



As a study in heredity, the Rossetti family is most interesting. Genius seems so sporadic a stuff that when we find an outcrop along the line of a whole family we are wont to mark it on memory's chart in red. We talk of the Herschels, of Renan and his sister, of the Beechers, and the Fields, in a sort of awe, mindful that Nature is parsimonious in giving out transcendent talent, and may never do the like again. So who can forget the Rossettis—two brothers, Dante Gabriel and William Michael, and two sisters, Maria and Christina—each of whom stands forth as far above the ordinary, yet all strangely dependent upon one another?

The girls sing songs to the brothers, and to each other, inscribing poems to "my loving sister"; when Dante Gabriel, budding forth as artist, wishes a model for a Madonna, he chooses his sister Christina, and in his sketch mantles the plain features with a divine gentleness and heavenly splendor such as only the loving heart can conjure forth. In the last illness of Maria, Christina watches away the long, lagging hours of night, almost striving with her brothers for the right of serving; and at Birchington-on-the-Sea, Dante Gabriel waits for death, wearing out his friends by insane suspicions, and only the sister seems equal to ministering to this mind diseased, plucking from memory its rooted sorrow.

In a few years Christina passes out, and of the four, only William is left; and the task of his remaining years is to put properly before the world the deathless lives of his brother and sisters gone.

Gabriel Rossetti, father of the illustrious four, was an Italian poet who wrote patriotic hymns, and wrote them so well that he was asked to sing them elsewhere than in Italy. This edict of banishment was followed by an order that the poet be arrested and executed.

The orders of banishment and execution appear quite Milesian viewed across the years, but to Rossetti it was no joke. To keep his head in its proper place and to preserve his soul alive, he departed one dark night for England. He arrived penniless, with no luggage save his lyre, but with muse intact. Yet it was an Italian lyre, and therefore of small avail for amusing Britons. Very naturally, Rossetti made the acquaintance of other refugees, and exile makes fast friends. It is only in prosperity that we throw our friends overboard.

He came to know the Polidori family—Tuscan refugees—proud, intellectual and rich. He loved one of the daughters of Seignior Polidori, and she loved him. He was forty and she was twenty-three—but what of that! A position as Professor of Languages was secured for him in King's College. He rented the house at Thirty-eight Charlotte Street, off Portland Place, and there, on February Seventeenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven, was born their first child, Maria Francesca; on May Twelfth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, was born Dante Gabriel; on September Twenty-fifth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine, William Michael; on December Fifth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty, Christina Georgiana. The mother of this quartette was a sturdy little woman with sparkling wit and rare good sense. She used to remark that her children were all of a size, and that it was no more trouble to bring up four than one, a suggestion thrown in here gratis for the benefit of young married folks, in the hope that they will mark and inwardly digest. In point of well-ballasted, all-round character, fit for Earth or Heaven, none of the four Rossetti children was equal to his parents. They all seem to have had nerves outside of their clothes. Perhaps this was because they were brought up in London. A city is no place for children—nor grown people either, I often think. Birds and children belong in the country. Paved streets, stone sidewalks, smoke-begrimed houses, signs reading, "Keep Off the Grass", prying policemen, and zealous ash-box inspectors are insulting things to greet the gaze of the little immigrants fresh from God. Small wonder is it, as they grow up, that they take to drink and drugs, seeking in these a respite from the rattle of wheels and the never-ending cramp of unkind condition. But Nature understands herself: the second generation, city-bred, is impotent.

No pilgrim from "the States" should visit the city of London without carrying two books: a Baedeker's "London" and Hutton's "Literary Landmarks." The chief advantage of the former is that it is bound in flaming red, and carried in the hand, advertises the owner as an American, thus saving all formal introductions. In the rustle, bustle and tussle of Fleet Street, I have held up my book to a party of Americans on the opposite sidewalk, as a ship runs up her colors, and they, seeing the sign, in turn held up theirs in merry greeting; and we passed on our way without a word, ships that pass in the afternoon and greet each other in passing. Now, I have no desire to rival the flamboyant Baedeker, nor to eclipse my good friend Laurence Hutton. But as I can not find that either mentions the name "Rossetti," I am going to set down (not in malice) the places in London that are closely connected with the Rossetti family, nothing extenuating.

London is the finest city in the world for the tourist who desires liberty as wide as the wind, and who wishes to live cheaply and live well. In New York, if you want lodgings at a moderate price, you must throttle your pride and forsake respectability; but they do things different in Lunnon, you know. From Gray's Inn Road to Portland Place, and from Oxford Street to Euston Road, there is just about a square mile—a section, as they say out West—of lodging-houses. Once this part of London was given up to the homes of the great and purse-proud and all that. It is respectable yet, and if you are going to be in London a week you can get a good room in one of these old-time mansions, and pay no more for it than you would pay for a room in an American hotel for one day. And as for meals, your landlady will get you anything you want and serve it for you in the daintiest style, and you will also find that a shilling and a little courtesy will go a very long way in securing creature comforts. American women in London can live in this way just as well as men. If you are a schoolma'am from Peoria, taking your vacation, follow my advice and make your home in the "Bedford District," within easy reach of Stopford Brooke's chapel, and your London visit will stand out forever as a bright oasis in memory's desert waste. All of which I put in here because Larry Hutton forgot to mention it and Mein Herr Baedeker didn't think it worth while.

When in London I usually get a room near the British Museum for ten shillings a week; and when I want to go anywhere I walk up to the Gower Street Station, past the house where the mother of Charles Dickens had her Young Ladies' Establishment, and buying a ticket at the "Booking-Office" am duly set down near the desired objective point. You can go anywhere by the "Metropolitan," or if you prefer to take Mr. Gladstone's advice, you climb to the top of an Oxford Street bus, and if you sit next the driver you have a directory, guide and familiar friend all at your service.

Charlotte Street is a narrow little passage running just two squares, parallel with Portland Place. The houses are built in blocks of five (or more), of the plainest of plain bricks. The location is not far from the Gower Street Station of the Metropolitan Railway, and only a few minutes' walk from the British Museum. Number Thirty-eight is the last but one on the east side of the street. When I first saw it, there was a sign in the window, "Apartments," and back of this fresh cambric curtains. Then the window had been cleaned, too, for a single day of neglect in London tells its tale, as does the record of crime on a rogue's face. I paused and looked the place over with interest. I noted that the brass plate with the "No. 38" on it had been polished until it had been nearly polished out of sight, like a machine-made sonnet too much gone over. The steps had been freshly sanded, and a little lemon-tree nodding in one of the windows made the rusty old house look quite inviting. A stout little woman with a big market-basket, bumped into me and apologized, for I had stepped backwards to get a better look at the upstairs windows. The stout little woman set down her basket on the steps, took a bunch of keys from a pocket under her big, white, starched apron, selected one, turned to me, smiled, and asked, "Mebbe, Sir, you wasn't looking for apartments, I dunno?" Then she explained that the house was hers, and that if I would step in she would show me the rooms. There were two of 'em she could spare. The first floor front was already let, and so was the front parlor—to a young barrister. Her husband was a ticket-taker at Euston Station, and didn't get much since last cutdown. Would I care to pay as much as ten shillings, and would I want breakfast? It would only be ninepence, and I could have either a chop or ham and eggs. She looked after her boarders herself, just as if they were her own folks, and only took respectable single gentlemen who came well recommended. She knew I would like the room, and if ten shillings was too much I could have the back room for seven and six.

I thought the back room would answer; but explained that I was an American and was going to remain in London only a short time. Of course the lady knew I was an American: she knew it from my hat and from my foreign accent and—from the red book I had in my hand. And did I know the McIntyres that lived in Michigan?

I evaded the question by asking if she knew the Rossettis who once lived in this house. "Oh, yes; I know Mr. William and Miss Christina. They came here together a year ago, and told me they were born here and that their brother Dante and their sister, too, were born here. I think they were all writin' folks, weren't they? Miss Rossetti anyway writes poetry, I know that. One of my boarders gave me one of her books for Christmas. I'll show it to you. You don't think seven and six is too much for a room like this, do you?"

I inwardly noted that the ceilings were much lower than those of my room in Russell Square and that the furniture was old and worn and that the room looked out on an army of sooty chimney-pots, but I explained that seven and six seemed a very reasonable price, and that ninepence for breakfast with ham and eggs was cheap enough, provided the eggs were strictly fresh.

So I paid one week's rent in advance on the spot, and going back to Russell Square told my landlady that I had found friends in another part of the city and would not return for two days. My sojourn at Number Thirty-eight Charlotte Street developed nothing further than the meager satisfaction of sleeping for two nights in the room in which Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born, and making the acquaintance of the worthy ticket-taker, who knew all four of the Rossettis, as they had often passed through his gate.

Professor Rossetti lived for twelve years at Thirty-eight Charlotte Street; he then moved to Number Fifty in the next block, which is a somewhat larger house. It was here that Mazzini used to come. The house had been made over somewhat, and is now used as an office by the Registrar of Vital Statistics. This is the place where Dante Gabriel and a young man named Holman Hunt had a studio, and where another young artist by the name of William Morris came to visit them; and here was born "The Germ," that queer little chipmunk magazine in which first appeared "Hand and Soul" and "The Blessed Damozel," written by Dante Gabriel when eighteen, the same age at which Bryant wrote "Thanatopsis." William Bell Scott used to come here, too. Scott was a great man in his day. He had no hair on his head or face, not even eyebrows. Every follicle had grown aweary and quit. But Mr. Scott was quite vain of the shape of his head, for well he might be, since several choice sonnets had been combed out of it. Sometimes when the wine went round and things grew merry, then sentimental, then confidential, Scott would snatch off his wig to display to the company his fine phrenological development, and tell a story about Nelson, who, too, used to wear a wig just like his, and after every battle would take it off and hand it over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it.

The elder Rossetti died in this house, and was carried to Christ Church in Woburn Square, and thence to Highgate. His excellent wife waited to see the genius of her children blossom and be acknowledged. She followed thirty years later, and was buried in the same grave with her husband, where, later, Christina was to join them.

Frances Mary Polidori was born at Forty-two Broad Street, Golden Square, the same street in which William Blake was born. I found the street and Golden Square, but could not locate the house. The policeman on the beat declared that no one by the name of Rossetti or Blake was in business thereabouts; and further he never heard of Polly Dory. William Michael Rossetti's home is one in a row of houses called Saint Edmund's Terrace. It is near the Saint John's Road Station, just a step from Regent's Park, and faces the Middlesex Waterworks. It is a fine old house, built of stone I should judge, stuccoed on the outside. With a well-known critic I called there, and found the master wearing a long dressing-gown that came to his heels, a pair of new carpet slippers and a black plush cap, all so dusty that we guessed the owner had been sifting ashes in the cellar. He was most courteous and polite. He worships at the shrine of Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau, and regards America as the spot from whence must come the world's intellectual hope. "Great thoughts, like beautiful flowers, are produced by transplantation and the commingling of many elements." These are his words, and the fact that the Rossetti genius is the result of transplanting need not weigh in the scale as 'gainst the truth of the remark. Shortly after this call, at an Art Exhibition, I again met William Michael Rossetti. I talked with him some moments—long enough to discover that he was not aware we had ever met. This caused me to be rather less in love with the Rossetti genius than I was before.

The wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti died, aged twenty-nine, at Fourteen Chatham Place, near Blackfriars Bridge. The region thereabouts has been changed by the march of commerce, and if the original house where the artist lived yet stands I could not find it. It was here that the Preraphaelites made history: Madox Brown, Burne-Jones, Ruskin, William Morris and the MacDonalds. Burne-Jones married one of the MacDonald daughters; Mr. Poynter, now Director of the National Gallery, another; Mr. Kipling still another—with Rudyard Kipling as a result, followed in due course by Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd, who are quite as immortal as the rest.

At this time Professor Rossetti was dead, and William Michael, Maria, Christina and the widowed mother were living at One Hundred Sixty-six Albany Street, fighting off various hungry wolves that crouched around the door. Albany Street is rather shabby now, and was then, I suppose. At One Hundred Twelve Albany Street lives one Dixon, who takes marvelous photographs of animals in the Zoological Gardens, with a pocket camera, and then enlarges the pictures a hundred times. These pictures go the round world over and command big prices. Mr. Dixon was taking for me, at the National Gallery, the negatives from which I made photogravures for my Ruskin-Turner book. Mr. Dixon knows more in an artistic and literary way than any other man in London (I believe), but he is a modest gentleman and only emits his facts under cross-examination or under the spell of inspiration. Together we visited the house at One Hundred Sixty-six Albany Street.

It was vacant at the time, and we rummaged through every room, with the result that we concluded it makes very little difference where genius is housed. On one of the windows of a little bedroom we found the word "Christina" cut with a diamond. When and by whom it was done I do not know. Surely the Rossettis had no diamonds when they lived here. But Mr. Dixon had a diamond and with his ring he cut beneath the word just noted the name, "Dante Gabriel Rossetti." I have recently heard that the signature has been identified as authentic by a man who was familiar with Rossetti's handwriting.

When the firm of Morris and Company, Dealers in Art Fabrics, was gotten under way, and Dante Gabriel had ceased to argue details with that pre-eminently sane man, William Morris, his finances began to prosper. Morris directed and utilized the energies of his partners. He marshaled their virtues into a solid phalanx and marched them on to victory. No doubt that genius usually requires a keeper. But Morris was a genius himself and a giant in more ways than one, for he ruled his own spirit, thus proving himself greater than one who taketh a city.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, we find Dante Gabriel throwing out the fact that his income was equal to about ten thousand dollars a year. He took the beautiful house at Eighteen Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, near the little street where lived a Scotchman by the name of Thomas Carlyle, and in the same block where afterwards lived George Eliot, and where she died. He wanted his brother and sisters and his mother to share his prosperity, and so he planned that they should all come and live with him; and besides, Mr. Swinburne and George Meredith were to come, too. It was to be one big happy family. But the good old mother knew the human heart better than did her brilliant son. She has left on record these words: "Yes, my children all have talent, great talent; I only wish they had a little commonsense!"

So for the present she remained with William, her daughters, and her two aged unmarried sisters in the plain old house in Albany Street. But Dante Gabriel moved to Cheyne Walk, and began that craze for collecting blue china that has swept like a blight over the civilized world. His collection was sold for three thousand five hundred dollars some years after—to pay his debts—less than one-half of what it had cost him. Yet when he had money he generously divided it with the folks up in Albany Street. But by and by William, too, got to making money, and the quarters at Number One Hundred Sixty-six were abandoned for something better.

William was married and had taken a house of his own—I don't know where. The rest of the household consisted of the widow, Mrs. Rossetti, Miss Charlotte Lydia Polidori, Maria and Christina—and seven cats. And so we find this family of five women living in peace and comfort, with their books and pictures and cats, at Thirty Torrington Square, in a drowsy, faded, ebb-tide mansion. Maria was never strong; she fell into a decline and passed away. The management of the household then devolved on Christina. Her burdens must have been heavy in those days, or did she make them light by cheerful doing? She gave up society, refused the thought of marriage, and joined that unorganized sisterhood of mercy—the women who toil that others may live. But she sang at her work, as the womanly woman ever does. For although a woman may hold no babe in her arms, the lullaby leaps to her tongue, and at eventide she sings songs to the children of her brain—sweet idealization of the principle of mother-love.

Christina Rossetti comes to us as one of those splendid stars that are so far away they are seen only at rare intervals. She never posed as a "literary person"—reading her productions at four-o'clocks, and winning high praise from the unbonneted and the discerning society editor. She never even sought a publisher. Her first volume of verses was issued by her grandfather Polidori unknown to her—printed by his own labor when she was seventeen and presented to her. What a surprise it must have been to this gentle girl to have one of her own books placed in her hands! There seems to have been an almost holy love in this proud man's heart for his granddaughter. His love was blind, or near-sighted at least, as love is apt to be (and I am glad!), for some of the poems in this little volume are sorry stuff. Later, her brothers issued her work and found market for it; and once we find Dante Gabriel almost quarreling with that worthy Manxman, Hall Caine, because the Manxman was compiling a volume of the best English sonnets and threatening to leave Christina Rossetti out.

Christina had the faculty of seizing beautiful moments, exalted feelings, sublime emotions, and working them up into limpid song that comes echoing to us as from across soft seas. In all her lines there is a half-sobbing undertone—the sweet minor chord that is ever present in the songs of the Choir Invisible, whose music is the gladness as well as the sadness of the world.

I have a dear friend who is an amateur photographic artist, which be it known is quite a different thing from a kodak fiend. The latter is continually snapping a machine at incongruous things; he delights in catching people in absurd postures; he pictures the foolish, the irrelevant, the transient and the needless. But what does my friend picture? I'll tell you. He catches pictures only of beautiful objects: swaying stalks of goldenrod, flights of thistle-down, lichen on old stone walls, barks of trees, oak-leaves, bunches of acorns, single sprays of apple-blossoms. Last Spring he found two robins building a nest in a cherry-tree: he placed his camera near them, and attaching a fine wire to spring the shutter, took a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Robin Redbreast laying down the first coarse straws for their nest. Then he took a picture every day for thirty days of that nest—from the time four blue eggs are shown until four, wide-open mouths are held hungrily for dainty grubs. This series of photographs forms an Epic of Creation. So, if you ask me to solve the question of whether photography is art, I'll answer: it all depends upon what you picture, and how you present it.

Christina Rossetti focused her thought on the beautiful object and at the best angle, so the picture she brings us is nobly ordered and richly suggestive.

And so the days passed in study, writing, housework, and caring for old ladies three. Dante Gabriel, talented, lovable, erratic, had gotten into bad ways, as a man will who turns night into day and tries to get the start of God Almighty, thinking he has found a substitute for exercise and oxygen. Finally he was taken to Birchington, on the Isle of Thanet (where Octave found her name). He was mentally ill, to a point where he had through his delusions driven away all his old-time friends.

Christina, aged fifty-one, and the mother, aged eighty-two, went to take care of him, and they did for him with all the loving tenderness what they might have done for a sick baby; but with this difference—they had to fight his strength. Yet still there were times when his mind was sweet and gentle as in the days of old; and toward the last these periods of restful peace increased, and there were hours when the brother, sister and aged mother held sweet converse, almost as when children they were taught at this mother's knee. Dante Gabriel Rossetti died April Ninth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two. His grave is in the old country churchyard at Birchington.

Two years afterward the mother passed out; in Eighteen Hundred Ninety, Eliza Polidori died, aged eighty-seven; and in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-three, her sister Charlotte joined her, aged eighty-four. In Christ's Church, Woburn Square, you can see memorial tablets to these fine souls, and if you get acquainted with the gentle old rector he will show you a pendant star and crescent, set with diamonds, given by the Sultan during the Crimean war, "To Miss Charlotte Lydia Polidori for distinguished services as Nurse." And he will also show you a silver communion set marked with the names of these three sisters, followed by that of "Christina Georgiana Rossetti."

And so they all went to their soul's rest and left Christina alone in the big house with its echoing halls—too big by half for its lonely, simple-hearted mistress and her pets. She felt that her work was done, and feeling so, the end soon came. She died December Twenty-ninth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four—passing from a world that she had never much loved, where she had lived a life of sacrifice, suffering many partings, enduring many pains. Glad to go, rejoicing that the end was nigh, and soothed by the thought that beyond lay a Future, she fell asleep.



ROSA BONHEUR

The boldness of her conceptions is sublime. As a Creative Artist I place her first among women, living or dead. And if you ask me why she thus towers above her fellows, by the majesty of her work silencing every detractor, I will say it is because she listens to God, and not to man. She is true to self. —Victor Hugo



When I arrive in Paris I always go first to the Y.M.C.A. headquarters in the Rue de Treville—that fine building erected and presented to the Association by Banker Stokes of New York. There's a good table-d'hote dinner there every day for a franc; then there tare bathrooms and writing-rooms and reading-rooms, and all are yours if you are a stranger. The polite Secretary does not look like a Christian: he has a very tight hair-cut, a Vandyke beard and lists of lodgings that can be had for twenty, fifteen or ten francs a week. Or, should you be an American Millionaire and be willing to pay thirty francs a week, the secretary knows a nice Protestant lady who will rent you her front parlor on the first floor and serve you coffee each morning without extra charge.

Not being a millionaire, I decided, the last time I was there, on a room at fifteen francs a week on the fourth floor. A bright young fellow was called up, duly introduced, and we started out to inspect the quarters.

The house we wanted was in a little side street that leads off the Boulevard Montmartre. It was a very narrow and plain little street, and I was somewhat disappointed. Yet it was not a shabby street, for there are none such in Paris; all was neat and clean, and as I caught sight of a birdcage hanging in one of the windows and a basket of ferns in another I was reassured and rang the bell.

The landlady wore a white cap, a winning smile and a big white apron. A bunch of keys dangling at her belt gave the necessary look of authority. She was delighted to see me—everybody is glad to see you in Paris—and she would feel especially honored if I would consent to remain under her roof. She only rented her rooms to those who were sent to her by her friends, and among her few dear friends none was so dear as Monsieur ze Secretaire of ze Young Men Christians.

And so I was shown the room—away up and up and up a dark winding stairway of stone steps with an iron balustrade. It was a room about the size of a large Jordan-Marsh drygoods-box.

The only thing that tempted me to stay was the fact that the one window was made up of little diamond panes set in a leaden sash, and that this window looked out on a little courtway where a dozen palms and as many ferns grew lush and green in green tubs and where in the center a fountain spurted. So a bargain was struck and the landlady went downstairs to find her husband to send him to the Gare Saint Lazare after my luggage.

What a relief it is to get settled in your own room! It is home and this is your castle. You can do as you please here; can I not take mine ease in mine inn?

I took off my coat and hung it on the corner of the high bedpost of the narrow, little bed and hung my collar and cuffs on the floor; and then leaned out of the window indulging in a drowsy dream of sweet content. 'Twas a long, dusty ride from Dieppe, but who cares—I was now settled, with rent paid for a week!

All around the courtway were flower-boxes in the windows; down below, the fountain cheerfully bubbled and gurgled, and from clear off in the unseen rumbled the traffic of the great city. And coming from somewhere, as I sat there, was the shrill warble of a canary. I looked down and around, but could not see the feathered songster, as the novelists always call a bird. Then I followed the advice of the Epworth League and looked up, not down, out, not in, and there directly over my head hung the cage all tied up in chiffon (I think it was chiffon). I was surprised, for I felt sure it could not be possible there was a room higher than mine—when I had come up nine stairways! Then I was more surprised; for just as I looked up, a woman looked down and our eyes met. We both smiled a foolish smile of surprise; she dodged in her head and I gazed at the houses opposite with an interest quite unnecessary.

She was not a very young woman, nor very pretty—in fact, she was rather plain—but when she leaned out to feed her pet and found a man looking up at her she proved her divine femininity beyond cavil. Was there ever a more womanly action? And I said to myself, "She is not handsome—but God bless her, she is human!"

Details are tiresome—so suffice it to say that next day the birdcage was lowered that I might divide my apple with Dickie (for he was very fond of apple). The second day, when the cage was lowered I not only fed Dickie but wrote a message on the cuttlefish. The third day, there was a note twisted in the wires of the cage inviting me up to tea.

And I went.

* * * * *

There were four girls living up there in one attic-room. Two of these girls were Americans, one English and one French. One of the American girls was round and pink and twenty; the other was older. It was the older one that owned the bird, and invited me up to tea. She met me at the door, and we shook hands like old-time friends. I was introduced to the trinity in a dignified manner, and we were soon chatting in a way that made Dickie envious, and he sang so loudly that one of the girls covered the cage with a black apron.

With four girls I felt perfectly safe, and as for the girls there was not a shadow of a doubt that they were safe, for I am a married man. I knew they must be nice girls, for they had birds and flower-boxes. I knew they had flower-boxes, for twice it so happened that they sprinkled the flowers while I was leaning out of the window wrapped in reverie.

This attic was the most curious room I ever saw. It was large—running clear across the house. It had four gable-windows, and the ceiling sloped down on the sides, so there was danger of bumping your head if you played pussy-wants-a-corner. Each girl had a window that she called her own, and the chintz curtains, made of chiffon (I think it was chiffon), were tied back with different-colored ribbons. This big room was divided in the center by a curtain made of gunny-sack stuff, and this curtain was covered with pictures such as were never seen on land or sea. The walls were papered with brown wrapping-paper, tacked up with brass-headed nails, and this paper was covered with pictures such as were never seen on sea or land.

The girls were all art students, and when they had nothing else to do they worked on the walls, I imagined, just as the Israelites did in Jerusalem years ago. One half of the attic was studio, and this was where the table was set. The other half of the attic had curious chairs and divans and four little iron beds enameled in white and gold, and each bed was so smoothly made up that I asked what they were for. White Pigeon said they were bric-a-brac—that the Attic Philosophers rolled themselves up in the rugs on the floor when they wished to sleep; but I have thought since that White Pigeon was chaffing me.

White Pigeon was the one I saw that first afternoon when I looked up, not down, out, not in. She was from White Pigeon, Michigan, and from the very moment I told her I had a cousin living at Coldwater who was a conductor on the Lake Shore, we were as brother and sister. White Pigeon was thirty or thirty-five, mebbe; she had some gray hairs mixed in with the brown, and at times there was a tinge of melancholy in her laugh and a sort of half-minor key in her voice. I think she had had a Past, but I don't know for sure.

Women under thirty seldom know much, unless Fate has been kind and cuffed them thoroughly, so the little peachblow Americaine did not interest me. The peachblow was all gone from White Pigeon's cheek, but she was fairly wise and reasonably good—I'm certain of that. She called herself a student and spoke of her pictures as "studies," but she had lived in Paris ten years. Peachblow was her pupil—sent over from Bradford, Pennsylvania, where her father was a "producer." White Pigeon told me this after I had drunk five cups of tea and the Anglaise and the Soubrette were doing the dishes. Peachblow the while was petulantly taking the color out of a canvas that was a false alarm.

White Pigeon had copied a Correggio in the Louvre nine years before, and sold the canvas to a rich wagon-maker from South Bend. Then orders came from South Bend for six more Louvre masterpieces. It took a year to complete the order and brought White Pigeon a thousand dollars. She kept on copying and occasionally receiving orders from America; and when no orders came, potboilers were duly done and sent to worthy Hebrews in Saint Louis who hold annual Art Receptions and sell at auction paintings painted by distinguished artists with unpronounceable names, who send a little of their choice work to Saint Louis, because the people in Saint Louis appreciate really choice things.

"And the mural decorations—which one of you did those?" I remarked, as a long pause came stealing in.

"Did you hear what Mr. Littlejourneys asked?" called White Pigeon to the others.

"No; what was it?"

"He wants to know which one of us decorated the walls!"

"Mr. Littlejourneys meant illumined the walls," jerked Peachblow, over her shoulder.

Then Anglaise gravely brought a battered box of crayon and told me I must make a picture somewhere on the wall or ceiling: all the pictures were made by visitors—no visitor was ever exempt.

I took the crayons and made a picture such as was never seen on land or sea. Having thus placed myself on record, I began to examine the other decorations. There were heads and faces, and architectural scraps, trees and animals, and bits of landscape and ships that pass in the night. Most of the work was decidedly sketchy, but some of the faces were very good.

Suddenly my eye spied the form of a sleeping dog, a great shaggy Saint Bernard with head outstretched on his paws, sound asleep. I stopped and whistled.

The girls laughed.

"It is only the picture of a dog," said Soubrette.

"I know; but you should pay dog-tax on such a picture—did you draw it?" I asked White Pigeon.

"Did I! If I could draw like that, would I copy pictures in the Louvre?"

"Well, who drew it?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Of course I can guess. I am a Yankee—I guess Rosa Bonheur."

"Well, you have guessed right."

"Stop joking and tell me who drew the Saint Bernard."

"Madame Rosalie, or Rosa Bonheur, as you call her."

"But she never came here!"

"Yes, she did—once. Soubrette is her great-grandniece, or something."

"Yes, and Madame Bonheur pays my way and keeps me in the Ecole des Beaux Arts. I'm not ashamed for Monsieur Littlejourneys to know!" said Soubrette with a pretty pout; "I'm from Lyons, and my mother and Madame Rosalie used to know each other years ago."

"Will Madame Rosalie, as you call her, ever come here again?"

"Perhaps."

"Then I'll camp right here till she comes!"

"You might stay a year and then be disappointed."

"Then can't we go to see her?"

"Never; she does not see visitors."

"We might go visit her home," mused Soubrette, after a pause.

"Yes, if she is away," said Anglaise.

"She's away now," said Soubrette; "she went to Rouen yesterday."

"Well, when shall we go?"

"Tomorrow."

* * * * *

And so Soubrette could not think of going when it looked so much like rain, and Anglaise could not think of going without Soubrette, and Peachblow was getting nervous about the coming examinations, and must study, as she knew she would just die if she failed to pass.

"You will anyway—sometime!" said White Pigeon.

"Don't urge her; she may change her mind and go with you," dryly remarked Anglaise with back towards us as she dusted the mantel.

Then I expressed my regret that the trinity could not go, and White Pigeon expressed her regret because they had to stay at home. And as we went down the stairs together we chanted the Kyrie eleison for our small sins, easing conscience by the mutual confession that we were arrant hypocrites.

"But still," mused White Pigeon, not quite satisfied, "we really did not tell an untruth—that is, we did not deceive them—they understood—I wouldn't tell a real whopper, would you?"

"I don't know—I think I did once."

"Tell me about it," said White Pigeon.

But I was saved, for just as we reached the bottom stair there was a slight jingling of keys, and the landlady came up through the floor with a big lunch-basket. She pushed the basket into my hands and showering us with Lombardy French pushed us out of the door, and away we went into the morning gray, the basket carried between us. The basket had a hinged cover, and out of one corner emerged the telltale neck of a bottle. It did not look just right; suppose we should meet some one from Coldwater?

But we did not meet any one from Coldwater. And when we reached the railway-station we were quite lost in the crowd, for there were dozens of picnickers all carrying baskets, and from the cover of each basket emerged the neck of a bottle. We felt quite at home packed away in a Classe Trois carriage with a chattering party of six High-School botanizing youngsters. When the guard came to the window, touched his cap, addressing me as Le Professeur, and asked for the tickets for my family, they all laughed.

Fontainebleau was the fourth stop from Paris. My family scampered out and away and we followed leisurely after. Fontainebleau is quite smug. There is a fashionable hotel near the station, before which a fine tall fellow in uniform parades. He looked at our basket with contempt, and we looked at him in pity. Just beyond the hotel are smart shops with windows filled with many-colored trifles to tempt the tourist. The shops gradually grew smaller and less gay, and residences with high stone walls in front took their places, and over these walls roses nodded. Then there came a wide stretch of pasture, and the town of Fontainebleau was left behind.

The sun came out and came out and came out; birds chirruped in the hedgerows and the daws in the high poplars called and scolded. The mist still lingered on the distant hills, and we could hear the tinkle of sheep-bells and the barking of a dog coming out of the nothingness.

White Pigeon wore flat-soled shoes and measured off the paces with an easy swing. We walked in silence, filled with the rich quiet of country sounds and country sights. What a relief to get away from noisy, bustling, busy Paris! God made the country!

All at once the mists seemed to lift from the long range of hills on the right and revealed the dark background of forest, broken here and there with jutting rocks and beetling crags. We stopped and sat down on the bank-side to view the scene. Close up under the shadow of the dark forest nestled a little white village. Near it was the red-tile roof of an old mansion, half-lost in the foliage. All around this old mansion I could make out a string of small buildings or additions to the original chateau.

I looked at White Pigeon and she looked at me.

"Yes; that is the place!" she said.

The sun's rays were growing warmer. I took off my coat and tucked it through the handle of the basket. White Pigeon took off her jacket to keep it company, and toting the basket, slung on my cane between us, we moved on up the gently winding way to the village of By. Everybody was asleep at By, or else gone on a journey. Soon we came to the old, massive, moss-covered gateposts that marked the entrance to the mansion. A chain was stretched across the entrance and we crawled under. The driveway was partly overgrown with grass, and the place seemed to be taking care of itself. Half a dozen long-horned Bonnie Brier Bush cows were grazing on the lawn, their calves with them; and evidently these cows and calves were the only mowing-machines employed. On this wide-stretching meadow were various old trees; one elm I saw had fallen split through the center—each part prostrate, yet growing green.

Close up about the house there was an irregular stone wall and an ornamental iron gate with a pull-out Brugglesmith bell at one side. We pulled the bell and were answered by a big shaggy Saint Bernard that came barking and bouncing around the corner. I thought at first our time had come. But this giant of a dog only approached within about ten feet, then lay down on the grass and rolled over three times to show his goodwill. He got up with a fine, cheery smile shown in the wag of his tail, just as a little maid unlocked the gate.

"Don't you know that dog?" asked White Pigeon.

"Certainement—he is on the wall of your room."

We were shown into a little reception-parlor, where we were welcomed by a tall, handsome woman, about White Pigeon's age.

The woman kissed White Pigeon on one cheek, and I afterwards asked White Pigeon why she didn't turn to me the other, and she said I was a fool.

Then the tall woman went to the door and called up the stairway: "Antoine, Antoine, guess who it is? It's White Pigeon!"

A man came down the stairs three steps at a time, and took both of White Pigeon's hands in his, after the hearty manner of a gentleman of France. Then I was introduced.

Antoine looked at our lunch-basket with the funniest look I ever saw, and asked what it was.

"Lunch," said White Pigeon; "I can not tell a lie!"

Antoine made wild gesticulations of displeasure, denouncing us in pantomime.

But White Pigeon explained that we only came on a quiet picnic in search of ozone and had dropped in to make a little call before we went on up to the forest. But could we see the horses?

Antoine would be most delighted to show Monsieur Littlejourneys anything that was within his power. In fact, everything hereabouts was the absolute property of Monsieur Littlejourneys to do with as he pleased.

He disappeared up the stairway to exchange his slippers for shoes, and the tall woman went in another direction for her hat. I whispered to White Pigeon, "Can't we see the studio?"

"Are we from Chicago, that we should seek to prowl through a private house, when the mistress is away? No; there are partly finished canvases up there that are sacred."

"Come this way," said Antoine. He led us out through the library, then the dining-room and through the kitchen.

It is a very comfortable old place, with no extra furniture—the French know better than to burden themselves with things.

The long line of brick stables seemed made up of a beggarly array of empty stalls. We stopped at a paddock, and Antoine opened the gate and said, "There they are!"

"What?"

"The horses."

"But these are broncos."

"Yes; I believe that is what you call them. Monsieur Bill of Buffalo, New York, sent them as a present to Madame Rosalie when he was in Paris."

There they were—two ewe-necked cayuses—one a pinto with a wall-eye; the other a dun with a black line down the back.

I challenged Antoine to saddle them and we would ride. The tall lady took it in dead earnest, and throwing her arms around Antoine's neck begged him not to commit suicide.

"And the Percherons—where are they?"

"Goodness! we have no Perches."

"Those that served as models for the 'Horse Fair,' I mean."

White Pigeon took me gently by the sleeve, and turning to the others apologized for my ignorance, explaining that I did not know the "Marche aux Chevaux" was painted over forty years ago, and that the models were all Paris cart-horses.

Antoine called up a little old man, who led out two shaggy little cobs, and I was told that these were the horses that Madame drove. A roomy, old-fashioned basket phaeton was backed out; White Pigeon and I stepped in to try it, and Antoine drew us once around the stable-yard. This is the only carriage Madame uses. There were doves, and chickens, and turkeys, and rabbits; and these horses we had seen, with the cows on the lawn, make up all the animals owned by the greatest of living animal-painters.

Years ago Rosa Bonheur had a stableful of horses and a kennel of dogs and a park with deer. Many animals were sent as presents. One man forwarded a lion, and another a brace of tigers, but Madame made haste to present them to the Zoological Garden at Paris, because the folks at By would not venture out of their houses—a report having been spread that the lions were loose.

"An animal-painter no more wants to own the objects he paints than a landscape-artist wishes a deed for the mountain he is sketching," said Antoine.

"Or to marry his model," interposed White Pigeon.

"If you see your model too often, you will lose her," added the Tall Lady.

We bade our friends good-by and trudged on up the hillside to the storied Forest of Fontainebleau. We sat down on a log and watched the winding Seine stretching away like a monstrous serpent, away down across the meadow; just at our feet was the white village of By; beyond was Thomeray, and off to the left rose the spires of Fontainebleau.

"And who is this Antoine and who is the Tall Lady?" I asked, as White Pigeon began to unpack the basket.

"It's quite a romance; are you sure you want to hear it?"

"I must hear it."

And so between bites White Pigeon told me the story.

The Tall Lady is a niece of Madame Rosalie's. She was married to an army officer at Bordeaux when she was sixteen years old. Her husband treated her shamefully; he beat her and forced her to write begging letters and to borrow money of her relatives, and then he would take this money and waste it gambling and in drink. In short, he was a Brute.

Madame Rosalie accidentally heard of all this, and one day went down to Bordeaux and took the Tall Lady away from the Brute and told him she would kill him if he followed.

"Did she paint a picture of the Brute?"

"Keep quiet, please!"

She told him she would kill him if he followed, and although she is usually very gentle I believe she would have kept her word. Well, she brought the Tall Lady with her to By, and this old woman and this young woman loved each other very much.

Now, Madame Rosalie had a butler and combination man of business, by name of Jules Carmonne. He was a painter of some ability and served Madame in many ways right faithfully. Jules loved the Tall Lady, or said he did, but she did not care for him. He was near fifty and asthmatic and had watery eyes. He made things very uncomfortable for the Tall Lady.

One night Jules came to Madame Rosalie in great indignation and said he could not consent to remain longer on account of the way things were going on. What was the trouble? Trouble enough, when the Tall Lady was sneaking out of the house after decent folks were in bed, to meet a strange man down in the evergreens! Well I guess so!!

How did he know?

Ah, he had followed her. Moreover, he had concealed himself in the evergreens and waited for them, to make sure.

Yes, and who was the man?

A young rogue of a painter from Fontainebleau named Antoine de Channeville.

Madame Rosalie took Jules Carmonne at his word. She said she was sorry he could not stay, but he might go if he wished to, of course. And she paid him his salary on the spot—with two months more to the end of the year.

The next day Madame Rosalie drove her team of shaggy ponies down to Fontainebleau and called on the young rogue of an artist. He came out bareheaded and quaking to where she sat in the phaeton waiting. She flecked the off pony twice and told him that as Carmonne had left her she must have a man to help her. Would he come? And she named as salary a sum about five times what he was then making.

Antoine de Channeville seized the wheel of the phaeton for support, gasped several gasps, and said he would come.

He was getting barely enough to eat out of his work, anyway, although he was a very worthy young fellow. And he came.

He and the Tall Lady were married about six months after.

"And about the Brute and—and the divorce!"

"Gracious goodness! How do I know? I guess the Brute died or something; anyway, Antoine and the Tall Lady are man and wife, and are devoted lovers besides. They have served Madame Rosalie most loyally for these fifteen years. They say Madame Rosalie has made her will and has left them the mansion and everything in it for their ownest own, with a tidy sum besides to put on interest."

It was four o'clock when we got back to the railroad-station at Fontainebleau. We missed the train we expected to take, and had an hour to wait. White Pigeon said she did not care so very much, and I'm sure I didn't. So we sat down in the bright little waiting-room, and White Pigeon told me many things about Madame Rosalie and her early life that I had never known before.

* * * * *

Early in the century there lived in Bordeaux a struggling artist (artists always struggle, you know) by the name of Raymond Bonheur. He found life a cruel thing, for bread was high in price and short in weight, and no one seemed to appreciate art except the folks who had no money to buy. But the poor can love as well as the rich, and Raymond married. In his nervous desire for success, Raymond Bonheur said that if he could only have a son he would teach him how to do it, and the son would achieve the honors that the world withheld from the father.

So the days came and went, and a son was expected—a firstborn—an heir. There wasn't anything to be heir to except genius, but there was plenty of that. The heir was to bear the name of the father—Raymond Bonheur.

Prayers were offered and thanksgivings sung.

The days were fulfilled. The child was born.

The heir was a girl.

Raymond Bonheur cursed wildly and tousled his hair like a bouffe artist. He swore he had been tricked, trapped, seduced, undone. He would have bought strong drink, but he had no money, and credit, like hope, was gone.

The little mother cried.

But the baby grew, although it wasn't a very big baby. They named her Rosa, because the initial was the same as Raymond, but they always called her Rosalie.

Then in a year another baby came, and that was a boy. In two years another, but Raymond never forgave his wife that first offense. He continued to struggle, trying various styles of pictures and ever hoping he would yet hit on what the public desired. Mr. Vanderbilt had not yet made his famous remark about the public, and how could Raymond plagiarize it in advance?

At last he got money enough to get to Paris—ah, yes, Paris, Paris, there talent is appreciated!

In Paris another baby was born—it was looked upon as a calamity. The poor little mother of the four little shivering Bonheurs ceased to struggle. She lay quite still, and they covered her face with a white sheet and talked in whispers, and walked on tiptoe, for she was dead.

When an artist can not succeed, he begins to teach art—that is, he shows others how. Raymond Bonheur put his four children out among kinsmen in four different places, and became drawing-master in a private school. Rosa Bonheur was ten years old: a pug-nosed, square-faced little girl in a linsey-woolsey dress, wooden shoon, with a yellow braid hanging down her back tied with a shoestring. She could draw—all children can draw—and the first things children draw are animals.

Her father had taught her a little and laughed at her foolish little lions and tigers, all duly labeled.

When twelve years of age the good people with whom she lived said she must learn dressmaking. She should be an artist of the needle. But after some months she rebelled and, making her way across the city to where her father was, demanded that he should teach her drawing. Raymond Bonheur hadn't much will—this controversy proved that—the child mastered, and the father, who really was an accomplished draftsman, began giving daily lessons to the girl. Soon they worked together in the Louvre, copying pictures.

It was a queer thing to teach a girl art—there were no women artists then. People laughed to see a little girl with yellow braid mixing paints and helping her father in the Louvre; others said it wasn't right.

"Let's cut off the braid, and I'll wear boy's clothes and be a boy," said funny little Rosalie.

Next day, Raymond Bonheur had a close-cropped boy in loose trousers and blue blouse to help him.

The pictures they copied began to sell. Buyers said the work was strong and true. Prosperity came that way, and Raymond Bonheur got his four children together and rented three rooms in a house at One Hundred Fifty-seven Faubourg Saint Honore.

Rosalie saw that her father had always tried to please the public; she would please no one but herself. He had tried many forms; she would stick to one. She would paint animals and nothing else.

When eighteen years old, she painted a picture of rabbits, for the Salon. The next year she tried again. She made the acquaintance of an honest old farmer at Villiers and went to live in his household. She painted pictures of all the livestock he possessed, from rabbits to a Norman stallion. One of the pictures she then made was that of a favorite Holland cow. A collector came down from Paris and offered three hundred francs for the picture.

"Merciful Jesus!" said the pious farmer; "say nothing, but get the money quick! The live cow herself isn't worth half that!"

The members of the Bonheur family married, one by one, including the father. Rosa did not marry: she painted. She discarded all teachers, all schools; she did not listen to the suggestions of patrons, and even refused to make pictures to order.

And be it said to her credit, she never has allowed a buyer to dictate the subject. She followed her own ideas in everything; she wore men's clothes, and does even unto this day.

When she was twenty-five, the Salon awarded her a gold medal. The Ministere des Beaux Arts paid her three thousand francs for her "Labourge Nivernais."

Raymond Bonheur grew ill in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, but before he passed out he realized that his daughter, then twenty-seven years old, was on a level with the greatest masters, living or dead.

She began "The Horse Fair" when twenty-eight. It was the largest canvas ever attempted by an animal-painter. It was exhibited at the Salon in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, and all the gabble of jealous competitors was lost in the glorious admiration it excited. It became the rage of Paris. All the honors the Salon could bestow were heaped upon the young woman, and by special decision all her work henceforth was declared exempt from examination by the Jury of Admission. Rosa Bonheur, five feet four, weighing one hundred twenty pounds, was bigger than the Salon.

But success did not cause her to swerve a hair's breadth from her manner of work or life. She refused all social invitations, and worked away after her own method as industriously as ever. When a picture was completed, she set her price on it and it was sold.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty she bought this fine old house at By, that she might work in quiet. Society tried to follow her, and in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-four the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie went to By, and the Empress pinned to the blue blouse of Rosa Bonheur the Cross of the Legion of Honor, the first time, I believe, that the distinction was ever conferred on a woman.

And now at seventy-four she is still in love with life, and while taking a woman's tender interest in all sweet and gentle things, has yet an imagination that in its strength and boldness is splendidly masculine.

Rosa Bonheur has received all the honors that man can give. She is rich; no words of praise that tongue can utter can add to her fame; and she is loved by all who know her.



MADAME DE STAEL

Far from gaining assurance in meeting Bonaparte oftener, he intimidated me daily more and more. I confusedly felt that no emotion of the heart could possibly take effect upon him. He looks upon a human being as a fact or as a thing, but not as a fellow-creature. He does not hate any more than he loves; there is nothing for him but himself; all other things are so many ciphers. The force of his will lies in the imperturbable calculation of his selfishness. —Reflections



Fate was very kind to Madame De Stael.

She ran the gamut of life from highest love to direst pain—from rosy dawn to blackest night. Name if you can another woman who touched life at so many points! Home, health, wealth, strength, honors, affection, applause, motherhood, loss, danger, death, defeat, sacrifice, humiliation, illness, banishment, imprisonment, escape. Again comes hope—returning strength, wealth, recognition, fame tempered by opposition, home, a few friends, and kindly death—cool, all-enfolding death.

If Harriet Martineau showed poor judgment in choosing her parents, we can lay no such charge to the account of Madame De Stael.