"Yes, he has come," she said gently, looking on the bishop with great friendliness. "But tell me, will he always love me?"

"Surely he will," answered the bishop.

"And tell me," said Osra, "shall I always love him?"

"Surely," said the bishop again, most courteously. "Yet, indeed, madam," he continued, "it would seem almost enough to ask of Heaven to love now and now to be loved. For the years roll on, and youth goes, and even the most incomparable beauty will yield its blossoms when the season wanes; yet that sweet memory may ever be fresh and young, a thing a man can carry to his grave and raise as her best monument on his lady's tomb."

"Ah, you speak well of love," said she. "I marvel that you speak so well of love. For it is as you say; and to-day in the wood it seemed to me that I had lived enough, and that even Death was but Love's servant as Life is, both purposed solely for his better ornament."

"Men have died because they loved you, madam, and some yet live who love you," said the bishop.

"And shall I grieve for both, my lord—or for which?"

"For neither, madam; for the dead have gained peace, and they who live have escaped forgetfulness."

"But would they not be happier for forgetting?"

"I do not think so," said the bishop; and, bowing low to her again, he stood back, for he saw the king approaching with the Grand Duke; and the king took him by the arm, and walked on with him; but Osra's face lost the brief pensiveness that had come upon it as she talked with the bishop, and, turning to her lover, she stretched out her hands to him, saying:

"I wish there was a cottage, and that you worked for bread, while I made ready for you at the cottage, and then ran far, far, far, down the road to watch and wait for your coming."

"Since a cottage was not too small, a palace will not be too large," said he, catching her in his arms.

Thus the heart of Princess Osra found its haven and its rest; for a month later she was married to the Grand Duke of Mittenheim in the cathedral of Strelsau, having utterly refused to take any other place for her wedding. And again she and he rode forth together through the western gate; and the king rode with them on their way till they came to the woods. Here he paused, and all the crowd that accompanied him stopped also; and they all waited till the sombre depths of the glades hid Osra and her lover from their sight. Then, leaving them thus riding together to their happiness, the people returned home, sad for the loss of their darling princess. But, for consolation, and that their minds might less feel her loss, they had her name often on their lips; and the poets and story-tellers composed many stories about her, not always grounded on fact, but the fabric of idle imaginings, wrought to please the fancy of lovers or to wake the memories of older folk. So that, if a stranger goes now to Strelsau, he may be pardoned if it seem to him that all mankind was in love with Princess Osra. Nay, and those stories so pass all fair bounds that, if you listened to them, you would come near to believing that the princess also had found some love for all the men who had given her their love. Thus to many she is less a woman that once lived and breathed than some sweet image under whose name they fondly group all the virtues and the charms of her whom they love best, each man fashioning for himself from his own chosen model her whom he calls his princess. Yet it may be that for some of them who so truly loved her, her heart had a moment's tenderness. Who shall tell all the short-lived dreams that come and go, the promptings and stirrings of a vagrant inclination? And who would pry too closely into these secret matters? May we not more properly give thanks to heaven that the thing is as it is? For surely it makes greatly for the increase of joy and entertainment in the world, and of courtesy and true tenderness, that the heart of Princess Osra—or of what lady you may choose, sir, to call by her name—should flutter in pretty hesitation here and there and to and fro a little, before it flies on a straight swift wing to its destined and desired home. And if you be not the prince for your princess, why, sir, your case is a sad one.



CHAPTERS FROM A LIFE.

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS,

Author of "The Gates Ajar," "The Madonna of the Tubs," etc

EMERSON IN ANDOVER.—RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY RELIGIOUS TRAINING.—THE STUDIES OF A PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER.—THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR.

Perhaps no one has ever denied, or more definitely, has ever wished to deny, that Andover society consisted largely of people with obvious religious convictions; and that her visitors were chiefly of the Orthodox Congregational turn of mind. I do not remember that we ever saw any reason for regret in this "feature" of the Hill. It is true, however, that a dash of the world's people made their way among us.

I remember certain appearances of Ralph Waldo Emerson. If I am correct about it, he had been persuaded by some emancipated and daring mind to give us several lectures.

He was my father's guest on one of these occasions, and I met him for the first time then. Emerson was—not to speak disrespectfully—in a much muddled state of his distinguished mind, on Andover Hill. His blazing seer's gaze took us all in, politely; it burned straight on, with its own philosophic fire; but it wore, at moments, a puzzled softness.

His clear-cut, sarcastic lips sought to assume the well-bred curves of conformity to the environment of entertainers who valued him so far as to demand a series of his own lectures; but the cynic of his temperamental revolt from us, or, to be exact, from the thing which he supposed us to be, lurked in every line of his memorable face.

By the way, what a look of the eagle it had!



The poet—I was about to say the pagan poet—quickly recognized, to a degree, that he was not among a group of barbarians; and I remember the marked respect with which he observed my father's noble head and countenance, and the attention with which he listened to the low, perfectly modulated voice of his host. But Mr. Emerson was accustomed to do the talking himself; this occasion proved no exception; and here his social divination or experience failed him a little. Quite promptly, I remember, he set adrift upon the sea of Alcott.

Now, we had heard of Mr. Alcott in Andover, it is true, but we did not look upon him exactly through Mr. Emerson's marine-glass; and, though the Professor did his hospitable best to sustain his end of the conversation, it swayed off gracefully into monologue. We listened deferentially while the philosopher pronounced Bronson Alcott the greatest mind of our day—I think he said the greatest since Plato. He was capable of it, in moments of his own exaltation. I thought I detected a twinkle in my father's blue eye; but the fine curve of his lips remained politely closed; and our distinguished guest spoke on.

There was something noble about this ardent way of appreciating his friends, and Emerson was distinguished for it, among those who knew him well.

Publishers understood that his literary judgment was touchingly warped by his personal admirations. He would offer some impossible MS. as the work of dawning genius; it would be politely received, and filed in the rejected pigeon-holes. Who knows what the great man thought when his friend's poem failed to see the light of the market?

On this particular occasion, the conversation changed to Browning. Now, the Professor, although as familiar as he thought it necessary to be with the latest poetic idol, was not a member of a Browning class; and here, again, his attitude towards the subject was one of well-mannered respect, rather than of abandoned enthusiasm. (Had it only been Wordsworth!) A lady was present, young, and of the Browningesque temperament. Mr. Emerson expressed himself finely to the effect that there was something outside of ourselves about Browning—that we might not always grasp him—that he seemed, at times, to require an extra sense.

"Is it not because he touches our extra moods?" asked the lady. The poet's face turned towards her quickly; he had not noticed her before; a subtle change touched his expression, as if he would have liked to say: For the first time since this subject was introduced in this Calvinistic drawing-room, I find myself understood.

It chanced that we had a Chaucer Club in Andover at that time; a small company, severely selected, not to flirt or to chat, but to work. We had studied hard for a year, and most of us had gone Chaucer mad. This present writer was the unfortunate exception to that idolatrous enthusiasm, and—meeting Mr. Emerson at another time—took modest occasion in answer to a remark of his to say something of the sort.

"Chaucer interests me, certainly, but I cannot make myself feel as the others do. He does not take hold of my nature. He is too far back. I am afraid I am too much of a modern. It is a pity, I know."

"It is a pity," observed Mr. Emerson sarcastically. "What would you read? The 'Morning Advertiser'?" The Chaucer Club glared at me in what, I must say, I felt to be unholy triumph.

Not a glance of sympathy reached me, where I sat, demolished before the rebuke of the great man. I distinctly heard a chuckle from a feminine member. Yet, what had the dissenter done, or tried to do? To be quite honest, only, in a little matter where affectation would have been the flowery way; and I must say that I have never loved the Father of English Poetry any better for this episode.

The point, however, at which I am coming is the effect wrought upon Mr. Emerson's mind by the history of that club. It seemed to us disproportionate to the occasion that he should feel and manifest so much surprise at our existence. This he did, more than once, and with a genuineness not to be mistaken.

That an organization for the study of Chaucer could subsist on Andover Hill, he could not understand. What he thought us, or thought about us, who can say? He seemed as much taken aback as if he had found a tribe of Cherokees studying onomatopoeia in English verse.

"A Chaucer club! In Andover?" he repeated. The seer was perplexed.

Of course, whenever we found ourselves in forms of society not in harmony with our religious views, we were accustomed, in various ways, to meet with a similar predisposition. As a psychological study this has always interested me, just as one is interested in the attitude of mind exhibited by the Old School physician towards the Homoeopathist with whom he graduated at the Harvard Medical School. Possibly that graduate may have distinguished himself with the honors of the school; but as soon as he prescribes on the principles of Hahnemann, he is not to be adjudged capable of setting a collar-bone. By virtue of his therapeutic views he has become disqualified for professional recognition. So, by virtue of one's religious views, the man or woman of orthodox convictions, whatever one's proportion of personal culture, is regarded with a gentle superiority, as being of a class still enslaved in superstition, and therefore per se barbaric.

Put in undecorated language, this is about the sum and substance of a state of feeling which all intelligent evangelical Christians recognize perfectly in those who have preempted for themselves the claims belonging to what are called the liberal faiths.

On the other hand, one who is regarded as a little of a heretic from the sterner sects, may make the warmest friendships of a lifetime among "the world's people"—whom far be it from me to seem to dispossess of any of their manifold charms.

This brings me closely to a question which I am so often asked, either directly or indirectly, that I cannot easily pass this Andover chapter by without some recognition of it.

What was, in very truth, the effect of such a religious training as Andover gave her children?

Curious impressions used to be afloat about us among people of easier faiths; often, I think, we were supposed to spend our youth paddling about in a lake of blue fire, or in committing the genealogies to memory, or in gasping beneath the agonies of religious revivals.

To be quite honest, I should say that I have not retained all the beliefs which I was taught—who does? But I have retained the profoundest respect for the way in which I was taught them; and I would rather have been taught what I was, as I was, and run whatever risks were involved in the process, than to have been taught much less, little, or nothing.

An excess of religious education may have its unfortunate aspects. But a deficiency of it has worse.

It is true that, for little people, our little souls were a good deal agitated on the question of eternal salvation. We were taught that heaven and hell followed life and death; that the one place was "a desirable location," and the other too dreadful to be mentioned in ears polite; and that what Matthew Arnold calls "conduct" was the deciding thing. Not that we heard much, until we grew old enough to read for ourselves, about Matthew Arnold; but we did hear a great deal about plain behaviour—unselfishness, integrity, honor, sweet temper—the simple good morals of childhood.

We were taught, too, to respect prayer and the Christian Bible. In this last particular we never had at all an oppressive education.

My Sunday-school reminiscences are few and comfortable, and left me, chiefly, with the impression that Sunday-schools always studied Acts; for I do not recall any lessons given me by strolling theologues in any other—certainly none in any severer—portions of the Bible.

It was all very easy and pleasant, if not feverishly stimulating; and I am quite willing to match my Andover Sunday-school experiences with that of a Boston free-thinker's little daughter who came home and complained to her mother:

"There is a dreadful girl put into our Sunday-school. I think, mamma, she is bad society for me. She says the Bible is exaggerated, and then she tickles my legs!"

I have said that we were taught to think something about our own "salvation;" and so we were, but not in a manner calculated to burden the good spirits of any but a very sensitive or introspective child. Personally, I may have dwelt on the idea, at times, more than was good for my happiness; but certainly no more than was good for my character. The idea of character was at the basis of everything we did, or dreamed, or learned.

There is a scarecrow which "liberal" beliefs put together, hang in the field of public terror or ridicule, and call it Orthodoxy. Of this misshapen creature we knew nothing in Andover.

Of hell we heard sometimes, it is true, for Andover Seminary believed in it—though, be it said, much more comfortably in the days before this iron doctrine became the bridge of contention in the recent serious, theological battle which has devastated Andover. In my own case, I do not remember to have been shocked or threatened by this woful doctrine. I knew that my father believed in the everlasting misery of wicked people who could be good if they wanted to, but would not; and I was, of course, accustomed to accept the beliefs of a parent who represented everything that was tender, unselfish, pure, and noble, to my mind—in fact, who sustained to me the ideal of a fatherhood which gave me the best conception I shall ever get, in this world, of the Fatherhood of God. My father presented the interesting anomaly of a man holding, in one dark particular, a severe faith, but displaying in his private character rare tenderness and sweetness of heart. He would go out of his way to save a crawling thing from death, or any sentient thing from pain. He took more trouble to give comfort or to prevent distress to every breathing creature that came within his reach, than any other person whom I have ever known. He had not the heart to witness heartache. It was impossible for him to endure the sight of a child's suffering. His sympathy was an extra sense, finer than eyesight, more exquisite than touch.

Yet, he did believe that absolute perversion of moral character went to its "own place," and bore the consequence of its own choice.

Once I told a lie (I was seven years old), and my father was a broken-hearted man. He told me then that liars went to hell. I do not remember to have heard any such personal application of the doctrine of eternal punishment before or since; and the fact made a life-long impression, to which I largely owe a personal preference for veracity. Yet, to analyze the scene strictly, I must say that it was not fear of torment which so moved me; it was the sight of that broken face. For my father wept—only when death visited the household did I ever see him cry again—and I stood melted and miserable before his anguish and his love. The devil and all his angels could not have punished into me the noble shame of that moment.



I have often been aware of being pitied by outsiders for the theological discipline which I was supposed to have received in Andover; but I must truthfully say that I have never been conscious of needing compassion in this respect. I was taught that God is Love, and Christ His Son is our Saviour; that the important thing in life was to be that kind of woman for which there is really, I find, no better word than Christian, and that the only road to this end was to be trodden by way of character. The ancient Persians (as we all know) were taught to hurl a javelin, ride a horse, and speak the truth.

I was taught that I should speak the truth, say my prayers, and consider other people; it was a wholesome, right-minded, invigorating training that we had, born of tenderness, educated conscience, and good sense, and I have lived to bless it in many troubled years.

What if we did lend a little too much romance now and then to our religious "experience"? It was better for us than some other kinds of romance to which we were quite as liable. What if I did "join the church" (entirely of my own urgent will, not of my father's preference or guiding) at the age of twelve, when the great dogmas to which I was expected to subscribe could not possibly have any rational meaning for me? I remember how my father took me apart, and gently explained to me beforehand the clauses of the rather simple and truly beautiful chapel creed which he himself, I believe, had written to modernize and clarify the old one—I wonder if it were done at that very time? And I remember that it all seemed to me very easy and happy—signifying chiefly, that one meant to be a good girl, if possible. What if one did conduct a voluminous religious correspondence with the other Professor's daughter, who put notes under the fence which divided our homes? We were none the worse girls for that. And we outgrew it, when the time came.



One thing, supremely, I may say that I learned from the Andover life, or, at least, from the Andover home. That was an everlasting scorn of worldliness—I do not mean in the religious sense of the word. That tendency to seek the lower motive, to do the secondary thing, to confuse sounds or appearances with values, which is covered by the word as we commonly use it, very early came to seem to me a way of looking at life for which I know no other term than underbred.

There is no better training for a young person than to live in the atmosphere of a study—we did not call it a library, in my father's home. People of leisure who read might have libraries. People who worked among their books had studies.

The life of a student, with its gracious peace, its beauty, its dignity, seemed to me, as the life of social preoccupation or success may seem to children born to that penumbra, the inevitable thing.

As one grew to think out life for one's self, one came to perceive a width and sanctity in the choice of work—whether rhetoric or art, theology or sculpture, hydraulics or manufacture—but to work, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think I always respected a good blacksmith more than a lady of leisure.

I know it took me a while to recover from a very youthful and amusing disinclination to rich people, which was surely never trained into me, but grew like the fruit of the horse-chestnut trees, ruggedly, of nature, and of Andover Hill; and which dropped away when its time came—just about as useless as the big brown nuts which we cut into baskets and carved into Trustees' faces for a mild November day, and then threw away.

When I came in due time to observe that property and a hardened character were not identical, and that families of ease in which one might happen to visit were not deficient in education because their incomes were large—I think it was at first with a certain sense of surprise. It is impossible to convey to one differently reared the delicious naivete of this state of mind.

Whatever the "personal peculiarities" of our youthful conceptions of life, as acquired at Andover, one thing is sure—that we grew into love of reality as naturally as the Seminary elms shook out their long, green plumes in May, and shed their delicate, yellow leaves in October.

I can remember no time when we did not instinctively despise a sham, and honor a genuine person, thing, or claim. In mere social pretension not built upon character, intelligence, education, or gentle birth, we felt no interest. I do not remember having been taught this, in so many words. It came without teaching.

My father taught me most things without text-books or lessons. By far the most important portion of what one calls education, I owe to him; yet he never preached, or prosed, or played the pedagogue. He talked a great deal, not to us, but with us; we began to have conversation while we were still playing marbles and dolls. I remember hours of discussion with him on some subject so large that the littleness of his interlocutor must have tried him sorely. Time and eternity, theology and science, literature and art, invention and discovery came each in its turn; and, while I was still making burr baskets, or walking fences, or coasting (standing up) on what I was proud to claim as the biggest sled in town, down the longest hills, and on the fastest local record—I was fascinated with the wealth and variety which seem to have been the conditions of thought with him. I have never been more interested by anything in later life than I was in my father's conversation.

I never attended a public school of any kind—unless we except the Sunday-school that studied Acts—and when it came time for me to pass from the small to the large private schools of Andover, the same paternal comradeship continued to keep step with me. There was no college diploma for girls of my kind in my day; but we came as near to it as we could.

There was a private school in Andover, of wide reputation in its time, known to the irreverent as the "Nunnery," but bearing in professional circles the more stately name of Mrs. Edwards's School for Young Ladies. Two day-scholars, as a marked favor to their parents, were admitted with the boarders elect; and of these two I was one. If I remember correctly, Professor Park and my father were among the advisers whose opinions had weight with the selection of our course of study, and I often wonder how, with their rather feudal views of women, these two wise men of Andover managed to approve so broad a curriculum.

Possibly the quiet and modest learned lady, our principal, had ideas of her own which no one could have suspected her of obtruding against the current of her times and environment; like other strong and gentle women she may have had her "way" when nobody thought so. At all events, we were taught wisely and well, in directions to which the fashionable girls' schools of the day did not lift an eye-lash.

I was an out-of-door girl, always into every little mischief of snow or rainfall, flower, field, or woods or ice; but in spite of skates and sleds and tramps and all the west winds from Wachusett that blew through me, soul and body, I was not strong; and my father found it necessary to oversee my methods of studying. Incidentally, I think, he influenced the choice of some of our text-books, and I remember that, with the exception of Greek and trigonometry—thought, in those days, to be beyond the scope of the feminine intellect—we pursued the same curriculum that our brothers did at college. In some cases we had teachers who were then, or afterwards, college professors in their specialties; in all departments I think we were faithfully taught, and that our tastes and abilities were electively recognized.

I was not allowed, I remember, to inflict my musical talents upon the piano for more than one hour a day; my father taking the ground that, as there was only so much of a girl, if she had not unusual musical gift and had less than usual physical vigor, she had better give the best of herself to her studies. I have often blessed him for this daring individualism; for, while the school "practice" went on about me, in the ordinary way, so many precious hours out of a day that was all too short for better things—I was learning my lessons quite comfortably, and getting plenty of fresh air and exercise between whiles.

I hasten to say that I was not at all a remarkable scholar. I cherished a taste for standing near the top of the class, somewhere, and always preferred rather to answer a question than to miss it; but this, I think, was pure pride, rather than an absorbing, intellectual passion. It was a wholesome pride, however, and served me a good turn.

At one epoch of history, so far back that I cannot date it, I remember to have been a scholar at Abbott Academy long enough to learn how to spell. Perhaps one ought to give the honor of this achievement where honor is due. When I observe the manner in which the superior sex is often turned out by masculine diplomas upon the world with the life-long need of a vest-pocket dictionary or a spelling-book, I cherish a respect for the method in which I was compelled to spell the English language. It was severe, no doubt. We stood in a class of forty, and lost our places for the misfit of a syllable, a letter, a definition, or even a stumble in elocution. I remember once losing the head of the class for saying: L-u-ux—Lux. It was a terrible blow, and I think of it yet with burning mortification on my cheeks.

In the "Nunnery" we were supposed to have learned how to spell. We studied what we called Mental Philosophy, to my unmitigated delight; and Butler's Analogy, which I considered a luxury; and Shakespeare, whom I distantly but never intimately adored; Latin, to which dead language we gave seven years apiece, out of our live girlhood; Picciola and Undine we dreamed over, in the grove and the orchard; English literature is associated with the summer-house and the grape arbor, with flecks of shade and glints of light, and a sense of unmistakable privilege. There was physiology, which was scarcely work, and astronomy, which I found so exhilarating that I fell ill over it. Alas, truth compels me to add that Mathematics, with a big M and stretching on through the books of Euclid, darkened my young horizon with dull despair; and that chemistry—but the facts are too humiliating to relate. My father used to say that all he ever got out of the pursuit of this useful science in his college days—and he was facile valedictorian—was the impression that there was a sub-acetate of something dissolved in a powder at the bottom.

All that I am able to recall of the study of "my brother's text-books," in this department, is that there was once a frightful odor in the laboratory for which Professor Hitchcock and a glass jar and a chemical were responsible, and that I said, "At least, the name of this will remain with me to my dying hour." But what was the name of it? "Ask me no more."

In the department of history I can claim no results more calculated to reflect credit upon the little student who hated a poor recitation much, but facts and figures more. To the best of my belief, I can be said to have retained but two out of the long list of historic dates with which my quivering memory was duly and properly crowded.

I do know when America was discovered; because the year is inscribed over a spring in the seaside town where I have spent twenty summers, and I have driven past it on an average once a day, for that period of time. And I can tell when Queen Elizabeth left this world, because Macaulay wrote a stately sentence:

"In 1603 the Great Queen died."

It must have been the year when my father read De Quincey and Wordsworth to me on winter evenings that I happened for myself on Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The first little event opened for me, as distinctly as if I had never heard of it before, the world of letters as a Paradise from which no flaming sword could ever exile me; but the second revealed to me my own nature.

The Andover sunsets blazed behind Wachusett, and between the one window of my little room and the fine head of the mountain nothing intervened. The Andover elms held above lifted eyes arch upon arch of exquisite tracery, through which the far sky looked down like some noble thing that one could spend all one's life in trying to reach, and be happy just because it existed, whether one reached it or not. The paths in my father's great gardens burned white in the summer moonlights, and their shape was the shape of a mighty cross. The June lilies, yellow and sweet, lighted their soft lamps beside the cross—I was sixteen, and I read Aurora Leigh.

A grown person may smile—but, no; no gentle-minded man or woman smiles at the dream of a girl. What has life to offer that is nobler in enthusiasm, more delicate, more ardent, more true to the unseen and the unsaid realities which govern our souls, or leave us sadder forever because they do not? There may be greater poems in our language than Aurora Leigh, but it was many years before it was possible for me to suppose it; and none that ever saw the hospitality of fame could have done for that girl what that poem did at that time. I had never a good memory—but I think I could have repeated a large portion of it; and know that I often stood the test of hap-hazard examinations on the poem from half-scoffing friends, sometimes of the masculine persuasion. Each to his own; and what Shakespeare or the Latin Fathers might have done for some other impressionable girl, Mrs. Browning—forever bless her strong and gentle name!—did for me.

I owe to her, distinctly, the first visible aspiration (ambition is too low a word) to do some honest, hard work of my own, in the World Beautiful, and for it.

It is April, and it is the year 1861. It is a dull morning at school. The sky is gray. The girls are not in spirits—no one knows just why. The morning mail is late, and the Boston papers are tardily distributed. The older girls get them, and are reading the head-lines lazily, as girls do; not, in truth, caring much about a newspaper, but aware that one must be well-informed.

Suddenly, in the recitation room, where I am refreshing my accomplishments in some threatening lesson, I hear low murmurs and exclamations. Then a girl, very young and very pretty, catches the paper and whirls it overhead. With a laugh which tinkles through my ears to this day, she dances through the room and cries:

"War's begun! War's begun!"

An older girl utters a cry of horror, and puts her hand upon the little creature's thoughtless lips.

"Oh, how can you?" so I hear the older girl. "Hush, hush, hush!"



THE TOUCHSTONE.

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

The King was a man that stood well before the world; his smile was sweet as clover, but his soul withinsides was as little as a pea. He had two sons; and the younger son was a boy after his heart, but the elder was one whom he feared. It befell one morning that the drum sounded in the dun before it was yet day; and the King rode with his two sons, and a brave army behind them. They rode two hours, and came to the foot of a brown mountain that was very steep.

"Where do we ride?" said the elder son.

"Across this brown mountain," said the King, and smiled to himself.

"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.

And they rode two hours more, and came to the sides of a black river that was wondrous deep.

"And where do we ride?" asked the elder son.

"Over this black river," said the King, and smiled to himself.

"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.

And they rode all that day, and about the time of the sun-setting came to the side of a lake, where was a great dun.

"It is here we ride," said the King; "to a King's house, and a priest's, and a house where you will learn much."

At the gates of the dun, the King who was a priest met them, and he was a grave man, and beside him stood his daughter, and she was as fair as the morn, and one that smiled and looked down.

"These are my two sons," said the first King.

"And here is my daughter," said the King who was a priest.

"She is a wonderful fine maid," said the first King, "and I like her manner of smiling."

"They are wonderful well-grown lads," said the second, "and I like their gravity."

And then the two Kings looked at each other, and said, "The thing may come about."

And in the meanwhile the two lads looked upon the maid, and the one grew pale and the other red; and the maid looked upon the ground smiling.

"Here is the maid that I shall marry," said the elder. "For I think she smiled upon me."

But the younger plucked his father by the sleeve. "Father," said he, "a word in your ear. If I find favor in your sight, might not I wed this maid, for I think she smiles upon me?"

"A word in yours," said the King his father. "Waiting is good hunting, and when the teeth are shut the tongue is at home."



Now they were come into the dun, and feasted; and this was a great house, so that the lads were astonished; and the King that was a priest sat at the end of the board and was silent, so that the lads were filled with reverence; and the maid served them, smiling, with downcast eyes, so that their hearts were enlarged.

Before it was day, the elder son arose, and he found the maid at her weaving, for she was a diligent girl. "Maid," quoth he, "I would fain marry you."

"You must speak with my father," said she, and she looked upon the ground smiling, and became like the rose.

"Her heart is with me," said the elder son, and he went down to the lake and sang.

A little after came the younger son. "Maid," quoth he, "if our fathers were agreed, I would like well to marry you."

"You can speak to my father," said she, and looked upon the ground and smiled and grew like the rose.

"She is a dutiful daughter," said the younger son, "she will make an obedient wife." And then he thought, "What shall I do?" and he remembered the King her father was a priest, so he went into the temple and sacrificed a weasel and a hare.

Presently the news got about; and the two lads and the first King were called into the presence of the King who was a priest, where he sat upon the high seat.

"Little I reck of gear," said the King who was a priest, "and little of power. For we live here among the shadows of things, and the heart is sick of seeing them. And we stay here in the wind like raiment drying, and the heart is weary of the wind. But one thing I love, and that is truth; and for one thing will I give my daughter, and that is the trial stone. For in the light of that stone the seeming goes, and the being shows, and all things besides are worthless. Therefore, lads, if ye would wed my daughter, out foot, and bring me the stone of touch, for that is the price of her."

"A word in your ear," said the younger son to his father. "I think we do very well without this stone."

"A word in yours," said his father. "I am of your way of thinking; but when the teeth are shut the tongue is at home." And he smiled to the King that was a priest.



But the elder son got to his feet, and called the King that was a priest by the name of father. "For whether I marry the maid or no, I will call you by that word for the love of your wisdom; and even now I will ride forth and search the world for the stone of touch." So he said farewell and rode into the world.

"I think I will go, too," said the younger son, "if I can have your leave. For my heart goes out to the maid."

"You will ride home with me," said his father.

So they rode home, and when they came to the dun, the King had his son into his treasury. "Here," said he, "is the touchstone which shows truth; for there is no truth but plain truth; and if you will look in this, you will see yourself as you are."

And the younger son looked in it, and saw his face as it were the face of a beardless youth, and he was well enough pleased; for the thing was a piece of a mirror.

"Here is no such great thing to make a work about," said he; "but if it will get me the maid, I shall never complain. But what a fool is my brother to ride into the world, and the thing all the while at home."

So they rode back to the other dun, and showed the mirror to the King that was a priest; and when he had looked in it, and seen himself like a King, and his house like a King's house, and all things like themselves, he cried out and blessed God. "For now I know," said he, "there is no truth but the plain truth; and I am a King indeed, although my heart misgave me." And he pulled down his temple and built a new one; and then the younger son was married to the maid.

In the meantime the elder son rode into the world to find the touchstone of the trial of truth; and whenever he came to a place of habitation, he would ask the men if they had heard of it. And in every place the men answered: "Not only have we heard of it, but we alone of all men possess the thing itself, and it hangs in the side of our chimney to this day." Then would the elder son be glad, and beg for a sight of it. And sometimes it would be a piece of mirror, that showed the seeming of things, and then he would say: "This can never be, for there should be more than seeming." And sometimes it would be a lump of coal, which showed nothing; and then he would say: "This can never be, for at least there is the seeming." And sometimes it would be a touchstone indeed, beautiful in hue, adorned with polishing, the light inhabiting its sides; and when he found this, he would beg the thing, and the persons of that place would give it him, for all men were very generous of that gift; so that at the last he had his wallet full of them, and they chinked together when he rode; and when he halted by the side of the way, he would take them out and try them, till his head turned like the sails upon a windmill.

"A murrain upon this business!" said the elder son, "for I perceive no end to it. Here I have the red, and here the blue and the green; and to me they seem all excellent, and yet shame each other. A murrain on the trade! If it were not for the King that is a priest, and whom I have called my father, and if it were not for the fair maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge, I would even tumble them all into the salt sea, and go home and be a King like other folk."

But he was like the hunter that has seen a stag upon a mountain, so that the night may fall, and the fire be kindled, and the lights shine in his house, but desire of that stag is single in his bosom.

Now after many years the elder son came upon the sides of the salt sea; and it was night, and a savage place, and the clamor of the sea was loud. There he was aware of a house, and a man that sat there by the light of a candle, for he had no fire. Now the elder son came in to him, and the man gave him water to drink, for he had no bread; and wagged his head when he was spoken to, for he had no words.

"Have you the touchstone of truth?" asked the elder son; and when the man had wagged his head, "I might have known that," cried the elder son; "I have here a wallet full of them!" And with that he laughed, although his heart was weary.

And with that the man laughed too, and with the fuff of his laughter the candle went out.

"Sleep," said the man, "for now I think you have come far enough; and your quest is ended, and my candle is out."

Now, when the morning came, the man gave him a clear pebble in his hand, and it had no beauty and no color, and the elder son looked upon it scornfully and shook his head, and he went away, for it seemed a small affair to him.

All that day he rode, and his mind was quiet, and the desire of the chase allayed. "How if this poor pebble be the touchstone, after all?" said he; and he got down from his horse, and emptied forth his wallet by the side of the way. Now, in the light of each other, all the touchstones lost their hue and fire, and withered like stars at morning; but in the light of the pebble, their beauty remained, only the pebble was the most bright. And the elder son smote upon his brow. "How if this be the truth," he cried, "that all are a little true?" And he took the pebble, and turned its light upon the heavens, and they deepened above him like the pit; and he turned it on the hills, and the hills were cold and rugged, but life ran in their sides so that his own life bounded; and he turned it on the dust, and he beheld the dust with joy and terror; and he turned it on himself, and kneeled down and prayed.

"Now thanks be to God," said the elder son, "I have found the touchstone; and now I may turn my reins, and ride home to the King and to the maid of the dun that makes my mouth to sing and my heart enlarge."

Now, when he came to the dun, he saw children playing by the gate where the King had met him in the old days, and this stayed his pleasure; for he thought in his heart, "It is here my children should be playing." And when he came into the hall, there was his brother on the high seat, and the maid beside him; and at that his anger rose, for he thought in his heart, "It is I that should be sitting there, and the maid beside me."

"Who are you?" said his brother. "And what make you in the dun?"

"I am your elder brother," he replied. "And I am come to marry the maid, for I have brought the touchstone of truth."



Then the younger brother laughed aloud. "Why," said he, "I have found the touchstone years ago, and married the maid, and there are our children playing at the gate."

Now at this the elder brother grew as gray as the dawn. "I pray you have dealt justly," said he, "for I perceive my life is lost."

"Justly?" quoth the younger brother. "It becomes you ill, that are a restless man and a runagate, to doubt my justice or the King my father's, that are sedentary folk and known in the land."

"Nay," said the elder brother; "you have all else, have patience also, and suffer me to say the world is full of touchstones, and it appears not easily which is true."

"I have no shame of mine," said the younger brother. "There it is, and look in it."

So the elder brother looked in the mirror, and he was sore amazed; for he was an old man, and his hair was white upon his head; and he sat down in the hall and wept aloud.

"Now," said the younger brother, "see what a fool's part you have played, that ran over all the world to seek what was lying in our father's treasury, and came back an old carle for the dogs to bark at, and without chick or child. And I that was dutiful and wise sit here crowned with virtues and pleasures, and happy in the light of my hearth."

"Methinks you have a cruel tongue," said the elder brother; and he pulled out the clear pebble, and turned its light on his brother; and behold, the man was lying; his soul was shrunk into the smallness of a pea, and his heart was a bag of little fears like scorpions, and love was dead in his bosom. And at that the elder brother cried out aloud, and turned the light of the pebble on the maid, and lo! she was but a mask of a woman, and withinsides she was quite dead, and she smiled as a clock ticks, and knew not wherefore.

"Oh, well," said the elder brother, "I perceive there is both good and bad. So fare ye all as well as ye may in the dun; but I will go forth into the world with my pebble in my pocket."



MAGAZINE NOTES.

MRS. HUMPHRY WARD—DR. JOWETT.

The late Dr. Jowett is reported to have once said to Mrs. Humphry Ward: "We shall come in the future to teach almost entirely by biography. We shall begin with the life that is most familiar to us, 'The Life of Christ,' and we shall more and more put before our children the great examples of persons' lives so that they shall have from the beginning heroes and friends in their thoughts."

The editors of this magazine thoroughly agree with Dr. Jowett. It has been, for a long time, their great desire to publish in these pages a "Life of Christ" which shall be, to quote Mr. Hall Caine's words in the December MCCLURE'S, "as vivid and as personal from the standpoint of belief as Renan's was from the standpoint of unbelief."

THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND.

It is hard to realize the meaning of these figures, which represent the present circulation of MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE. Three years ago five magazines—"The Century," "Harper's," "Scribner's," "The Cosmopolitan," and "Munsey's"—apparently occupied the whole magazine field. But their total circulation was not over five hundred thousand copies. The circulation of MCCLURE'S is now equal to three-fifths of the combined circulation of all its rivals at the time it started.

"Harper's Magazine" and "The Century" for many years supplied the need of the American people for great illustrated monthlies. One imagines that every intelligent family in the United States takes one or the other, or both, of these magazines. "Harper's" is over half a century old, and "The Century" has just completed twenty-five years of splendid life.

MCCLURE'S has a circulation equal to both these giants of the magazine world.

We mention these facts, not for the mere sake of comparison, but simply to enable our friends to understand what a circulation of three hundred thousand means.

And while we are speaking about ourselves we might mention that for three months—October, November, and December—we had, month by month, more paid advertising than any other magazine, while our December number had more pages of paid advertising than any other magazine at any time in the history of the world.

Another interesting fact is that during the two months of November and December, MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE made greater strides in permanent circulation than any other magazine ever made.

OUR OWN PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT.

We have been compelled by the large circulation of the MAGAZINE to purchase a complete printing and binding plant. This we hope to install before the first of March. The capacity of the plant will be not less than five hundred thousand copies a month, and, under pressure, we can print six hundred thousand copies.

We have secured the best and most modern presses, and, with proper pressmen, shall be able to print as beautiful a magazine as can be made anywhere.

ANTHONY HOPE'S NEW NOVEL

begins in our April number. It is a spirited story of adventure. It is his first novel since "The Prisoner of Zenda," and has even more action than that splendid story.

THE LIFE OF LINCOLN

will increase in interest as the history comes nearer our own time. Every chapter will contain much that is new, and every number of the magazine will have several portraits of Lincoln.

THE EARLY LIFE OF LINCOLN.

We have collected the first four Lincoln articles, added new matter both in text and pictures, and shall, in a few days, issue a volume with the above title. It will contain twenty portraits of Lincoln, and over one hundred other pictures, and will deal with the first twenty-six years of Lincoln's life.

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

in the next two numbers tells about the writing of "The Gates Ajar." She was then only twenty years old. The effect of the book on the public, the correspondence it brought her, and the acquaintances it secured her, will be amply dwelt upon. These are two remarkable papers in literary autobiography.

COLONEL ELLSWORTH, BY COLONEL JOHN HAY.

Ellsworth's death at Alexandria—"the first conspicuous victim of the war"—although he was only twenty-four, was the dramatic end of a most romantic and picturesque career; and no one knows its details so well as Colonel Hay. Ellsworth "was one of the dearest of the friends of my youth," says Colonel Hay. Moreover, he was a particular favorite and protege of President Lincoln's when Colonel Hay was Lincoln's private secretary. Colonel Hay's paper, therefore, is one of quite extraordinary interest. There will be published with it some very interesting pictures.

"THE SABINE WOMEN"—A CORRECTION.

Changes made in Mr. Low's article in the January number at the very moment of going to press, occasioned a mistake which should be corrected, though, no doubt, most of our readers have detected it for themselves. In the note to David's picture of "The Sabine Women," the picture was described as portraying the seizure of the Sabine women by the Romans, whereas it portrays the interposition of the women in a battle following the seizure.

THE END