"The one you are in love with," answered Number Five.

"But what if it were a case of 'How happy could I be with either'? Which offers the best chance of happiness,—a marriage between two persons of the same country, or a marriage where one of the parties is of foreign birth? Everything else being equal, which is best for an American to marry, an American or an English girl? We need not confine the question to those two young persons, but put it more generally."

"There are reasons on both sides," answered Number Five. "I have often talked this matter over with The Dictator. This is the way he speaks about it. English blood is apt to tell well on the stock upon which it is engrafted. Over and over again he has noticed finely grown specimens of human beings, and on inquiry has found that one or both of the parents or grandparents were of British origin. The chances are that the descendants of the imported stock will be of a richer organization, more florid, more muscular, with mellower voices, than the native whose blood has been unmingled with that of new emigrants since the earlier colonial times.—So talks The Dictator.—I myself think the American will find his English wife concentrates herself more readily and more exclusively on her husband,—for the obvious reason that she is obliged to live mainly in him. I remember hearing an old friend of my early days say, 'A woman does not bear transplanting.' It does not do to trust these old sayings, and yet they almost always have some foundation in the experience of mankind, which has repeated them from generation to generation. Happy is the married woman of foreign birth who can say to her husband, as Andromache said to Hector, after enumerating all the dear relatives she had lost,

"'Yet while my hector still survives, I see My father, mother, brethren, all in thee!'

"How many a sorrowing wife, exiled from her native country, dreams of the mother she shall see no more! How many a widow, in a strange land, wishes that her poor, worn-out body could be laid among her kinsfolk, in the little churchyard where she used to gather daisies in her childhood! It takes a great deal of love to keep down the 'climbing sorrow' that swells up in a woman's throat when such memories seize upon her, in her moments of desolation. But if a foreign-born woman does willingly give up all for a man, and never looks backward, like Lot's wife, she is a prize that it is worth running a risk to gain,—that is, if she has the making of a good woman in her; and a few years will go far towards naturalizing her."

The Tutor listened to Number Five with much apparent interest. "And now," he said, "what do you think of her companion?"

"A charming girl for a man of a quiet, easy temperament. The great trouble is with her voice. It is pitched a full note too high. It is aggressive, disturbing, and would wear out a nervous man without his ever knowing what was the matter with him. A good many crazy Northern people would recover their reason if they could live for a year or two among the blacks of the Southern States. But the penetrating, perturbing quality of the voices of many of our Northern women has a great deal to answer for in the way of determining love and friendship. You remember that dear friend of ours who left us not long since? If there were more voices like hers, the world would be a different place to live in. I do not believe any man or woman ever came within the range of those sweet, tranquil tones without being hushed, captivated, entranced I might almost say, by their calming, soothing influence. Can you not imagine the tones in which those words, 'Peace, be still,' were spoken? Such was the effect of the voice to which but a few weeks ago we were listening. It is hard to believe that it has died out of human consciousness. Can such a voice be spared from that world of happiness to which we fondly look forward, where we love to dream, if we do not believe with assured conviction, that whatever is loveliest in this our mortal condition shall be with us again as an undying possession? Your English friend has a very agreeable voice, round, mellow, cheery, and her articulation is charming. Other things being equal, I think you, who are, perhaps, oversensitive, would live from two to three years longer with her than with the other. I suppose a man who lived within hearing of a murmuring brook would find his life shortened if a sawmill were set up within earshot of his dwelling."

"And so you advise me to make love to the English girl, do you?" asked the Tutor.

Number Five laughed. It was not a loud laugh, she never laughed noisily; it was not a very hearty laugh; the idea did not seem to amuse her much.

"No," she said, "I won't take the responsibility. Perhaps this is a case in which the true reading of Gay's line would be—

"How happy could I be with neither.

"There are several young women in the world besides our two Annexes."

I question whether the Tutor had asked those questions very seriously, and I doubt if Number Five thought he was very much in earnest.

One of The Teacups reminded me that I had promised to say something of my answers to certain questions. So I began at once:

I have given the name of brain-tappers to the literary operatives who address persons whose names are well known to the public, asking their opinions or their experiences on subjects which are at the time of general interest. They expect a literary man or a scientific expert to furnish them materials for symposia and similar articles, to be used by them for their own special purposes. Sometimes they expect to pay for the information furnished them; at other times, the honor of being included in a list of noted personages who have received similar requests is thought sufficient compensation. The object with which the brain-tapper puts his questions may be a purely benevolent and entirely disinterested one. Such was the object of some of those questions which I have received and answered. There are other cases, in which the brain-tapper is acting much as those persons do who stop a physician in the street to talk with him about their livers or stomachs, or other internal arrangements, instead of going to his office and consulting him, expecting to pay for his advice. Others are more like those busy women who, having the generous intention of making a handsome present to their pastor, at as little expense as may be, send to all their neighbors and acquaintances for scraps of various materials, out of which the imposing "bedspread" or counterpane is to be elaborated.

That is all very well so long as old pieces of stuff are all they call for, but it is a different matter to ask for clippings out of new and uncut rolls of cloth. So it is one thing to ask an author for liberty to use extracts from his published writings, and it is a very different thing to expect him to write expressly for the editor's or compiler's piece of literary patchwork.

I have received many questions within the last year or two, some of which I am willing to answer, but prefer to answer at my own time, in my own way, through my customary channel of communication with the public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in order to get at facts which ought to be known, apply to all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is not always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are mousing fact-hunters to worry us with queries to which, for the sake of the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me begin with my brain-tappers.

And first, as the papers have given publicity to the fact that I, The Dictator of this tea-table, have reached the age of threescore years and twenty, I am requested to give information as to how I managed to do it, and to explain just how they can go and do likewise. I think I can lay down a few rules that will help them to the desired result. There is no certainty in these biological problems, but there are reasonable probabilities upon which it is safe to act.

The first thing to be done is, some years before birth, to advertise for a couple of parents both belonging to long-lived families. Especially let the mother come of a race in which octogenarians and nonagenarians are very common phenomena. There are practical difficulties in following out this suggestion, but possibly the forethought of your progenitors, or that concurrence of circumstances which we call accident, may have arranged this for you.

Do not think that a robust organization is any warrant of long life, nor that a frail and slight bodily constitution necessarily means scanty length of days. Many a strong-limbed young man and many a blooming young woman have I seen failing and dropping away in or before middle life, and many a delicate and slightly constituted person outliving the athletes and the beauties of their generation. Whether the excessive development of the muscular system is compatible with the best condition of general health is, I think, more than doubtful. The muscles are great sponges that suck up and make use of large quantities of blood, and the other organs must be liable to suffer for want of their share.

One of the Seven Wise Men of Greece boiled his wisdom down into two words,—NOTHING TOO MUCH. It is a rule which will apply to food, exercise, labor, sleep, and, in short, to every part of life. This is not so very difficult a matter if one begins in good season and forms regular habits. But what if I should lay down the rule, Be cheerful; take all the troubles and trials of life with perfect equanimity and a smiling countenance? Admirable directions! Your friend, the curly-haired blonde, with florid complexion, round cheeks, the best possible digestion and respiration, the stomach of an ostrich and the lungs of a pearl-diver, finds it perfectly easy to carry them into practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and lank hair, lean, hollow-eyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find it not so easy to be always hilarious and happy. The truth is that the persons of that buoyant disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht driven by a favoring breeze carries a wreath of sparkling foam before her, are born with their happiness ready made. They cannot help being cheerful any more than their saturnine fellow-mortal can help seeing everything through the cloud he carries with him. I give you the precept, then, Be cheerful, for just what it is worth, as I would recommend to you to be six feet, or at least five feet ten, in stature. You cannot settle that matter for yourself, but you can stand up straight, and give your five feet five its—full value. You can help along a little by wearing high-heeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor, keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which you hope to attain.

If, on the other hand, instead of going about cheerily in society, making the best of everything and as far as possible forgetting your troubles, you can make up your mind to economize all your stores of vital energy, to hoard your life as a miser hoards his money, you will stand a fair chance of living until you are tired of life,—fortunate if everybody is not tired of you.

One of my prescriptions for longevity may startle you somewhat. It is this: Become the subject of a mortal disease. Let half a dozen doctors thump you, and knead you, and test you in every possible way, and render their verdict that you have an internal complaint; they don't know exactly what it is, but it will certainly kill you by and by. Then bid farewell to the world and shut yourself up for an invalid. If you are threescore years old when you begin this mode of life, you may very probably last twenty years, and there you are,—an octogenarian. In the mean time, your friends outside have been dropping off, one after another, until you find yourself almost alone, nursing your mortal complaint as if it were your baby, hugging it and kept alive by it,—if to exist is to live. Who has not seen cases like this,—a man or a woman shutting himself or herself up, visited by a doctor or a succession of doctors (I remember that once, in my earlier experience, I was the twenty-seventh physician who had been consulted), always taking medicine, until everybody was reminded of that impatient speech of a relative of one of these invalid vampires who live on the blood of tired-out attendants, "I do wish she would get well—or something"? Persons who are shut up in that way, confined to their chambers, sometimes to their beds, have a very small amount of vital expenditure, and wear out very little of their living substance. They are like lamps with half their wicks picked down, and will continue to burn when other lamps have used up all their oil. An insurance office might make money by taking no risks except on lives of persons suffering from mortal disease. It is on this principle of economizing the powers of life that a very eminent American physician,—Dr. Weir Mitchell, a man of genius,—has founded his treatment of certain cases of nervous exhaustion.

What have I got to say about temperance, the use of animal food, and so forth? These are questions asked me. Nature has proved a wise teacher, as I think, in my own case. The older I grow, the less use I make of alcoholic stimulants. In fact, I hardly meddle with them at all, except a glass or two of champagne occasionally. I find that by far the best borne of all drinks containing alcohol. I do not suppose my experience can be the foundation of a universal rule. Dr. Holyoke, who lived to be a hundred, used habitually, in moderate quantities, a mixture of cider, water, and rum. I think, as one grows older, less food, especially less animal food, is required. But old people have a right to be epicures, if they can afford it. The pleasures of the palate are among the last gratifications of the senses allowed them. We begin life as little cannibals,—feeding on the flesh and blood of our mothers. We range through all the vegetable and animal products, of nature, and I suppose, if the second childhood could return to the food of the first, it might prove a wholesome diet.

What do I say to smoking? I cannot grudge an old man his pipe, but I think tobacco often does a good deal of harm to the health,—to the eyes especially, to the nervous system generally, producing headache, palpitation, and trembling. I myself gave it up many years ago. Philosophically speaking, I think self-narcotization and self-alcoholization are rather ignoble substitutes for undisturbed self-consciousness and unfettered self-control.

Here is another of those brain-tapping letters, of similar character, which I have no objection to answering at my own time and in the place which best suits me. As the questions must be supposed to be asked with a purely scientific and philanthropic purpose, it can make little difference when and where they are answered. For myself, I prefer our own tea-table to the symposia to which I am often invited. I do not quarrel with those who invite their friends to a banquet to which many strangers are expected to contribute. It is a very easy and pleasant way of giving an entertainment at little cost and with no responsibility. Somebody has been writing to me about "Oatmeal and Literature," and somebody else wants to know whether I have found character influenced by diet; also whether, in my opinion, oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American national food.

In answer to these questions, I should say that I have my beliefs and prejudices; but if I were pressed hard for my proofs of their correctness, I should make but a poor show in the witness-box. Most assuredly I do believe that body and mind are much influenced by the kind of food habitually depended upon. I am persuaded that a too exclusively porcine diet gives a bristly character to the beard and hair, which is borrowed from the animal whose tissues these stiff-bearded compatriots of ours have too largely assimilated. I can never stray among the village people of our windy capes without now and then coming upon a human being who looks as if he had been split, salted, and dried, like the salt-fish which has built up his arid organism. If the body is modified by the food which nourishes it, the mind and character very certainly will be modified by it also. We know enough of their close connection with each other to be sure of that, without any statistical observations to prove it.

Do you really want to know "whether oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American national food"? I suppose the best answer I can give to your question is to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the morning, as an architect lays a bed of concrete to form a base for his superstructure. Pie when I can get it; that is, of the genuine sort, for I am not patriotic enough to think very highly of the article named after the Father of his Country, who was first in war, first in peace,—not first in pies, according to my standard.

There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is common to hear every form of bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it. Mr. Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a fellow-traveller refused the slice he offered him. "Why, Mr.," said be, "what is pie made for!" If every Green Mountain boy has not eaten a thousand times his weight in apple, pumpkin, squash, and mince pie, call me a dumpling. And Colonel Ethan Allen was one of them,—Ethan Allen, who, as they used to say, could wrench off the head of a wrought nail with his teeth.

If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better. You know enough not to eat or drink what you have found does not agree with you. You ought to know enough not to expose yourself needlessly to draughts. If you take a "constitutional," walk with the wind when you can, and take a closed car against it if you can get one. Walking against the wind is one of the most dangerous kinds of exposure, if you are sensitive to cold. But except a few simple rules such as I have just given, let your health take care of itself so long as it behaves decently. If you want to be sure not to reach threescore and twenty, get a little box of homoeopathic pellets and a little book of homeopathic prescriptions. I had a poor friend who fell into that way, and became at last a regular Hahnemaniac. He left a box of his little jokers, which at last came into my hands. The poor fellow had cultivated symptoms as other people cultivate roses or chrysanthemums. What a luxury of choice his imagination presented to him! When one watches for symptoms, every organ in the body is ready to put in its claim. By and by a real illness attacked him, and the box of little pellets was shut up, to minister to his fancied evils no longer.

Let me tell you one thing. I think if patients and physicians were in the habit of recognizing the fact I am going to mention, both would be gainers. The law I refer to must be familiar to all observing physicians, and to all intelligent persons who have observed their own bodily and mental conditions. This is the curve of health. It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of every day's life,—a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on the very nature of the force at work in the living organism. Thus we have our good seasons and our bad seasons, our good days and our bad days, life climbing and descending in long or short undulations, which I have called the curve of health.

From this fact spring a great proportion of the errors of medical practice. On it are based the delusions of the various shadowy systems which impose themselves on the ignorant and half-learned public as branches or "schools" of science. A remedy taken at the time of the ascent in the curve of health is found successful. The same remedy taken while the curve is in its downward movement proves a failure.

So long as this biological law exists, so long the charlatan will keep his hold on the ignorant public. So long as it exists, the wisest practitioner will be liable to deceive himself about the effect of what he calls and loves to think are his remedies. Long-continued and sagacious observation will to some extent undeceive him; but were it not for the happy illusion that his useless or even deleterious drugs were doing good service, many a practitioner would give up his calling for one in which he could be more certain that he was really being useful to the subjects of his professional dealings. For myself, I should prefer a physician of a sanguine temperament, who had a firm belief in himself and his methods. I do not wonder at all that the public support a whole community of pretenders who show the portraits of the patients they have "cured." The best physicians will tell you that, though many patients get well under their treatment, they rarely cure anybody. If you are told also that the best physician has many more patients die on his hands than the worst of his fellow-practitioners, you may add these two statements to your bundle of paradoxes, and if they puzzle you I will explain them at some future time.

[I take this opportunity of correcting a statement now going the rounds of the medical and probably other periodicals. In "The Journal of the American Medical Association," dated April 26,1890, published at Chicago, I am reported, in quotation marks, as saying, "Give me opium, wine, and milk, and I will cure all diseases to which flesh is heir."

In the first place, I never said I will cure, or can cure, or would or could cure, or had cured any disease. My venerated instructor, Dr. James Jackson, taught me never to use that expression. Curo means, I take care of, he used to say, and in that sense, if you mean nothing more, it is properly employed. So, in the amphitheatre of the Ecole de Medecine, I used to read the words of Ambroise Pare, "Je le pansay, Dieu le guarist." (I dressed his wound, and God cured him.) Next, I am not in the habit of talking about "the diseases to which flesh is heir." The expression has become rather too familiar for repetition, and belongs to the rhetoric of other latitudes. And, lastly, I have said some plain things, perhaps some sharp ones, about the abuse of drugs and the limited number of vitally important remedies, but I am not so ignorantly presumptuous as to make the foolish statement falsely attributed to me.]

I paused a minute or two, and as no one spoke out; I put a question to the Counsellor.

Are you quite sure that you wish to live to be threescore and twenty years old?

"Most certainly I do. Don't they say that Theophrastus lived to his hundred and seventh year, and did n't he complain of the shortness of life? At eighty a man has had just about time to get warmly settled in his nest. Do you suppose he doesn't enjoy the quiet of that resting-place? No more haggard responsibility to keep him awake nights,—unless he prefers to retain his hold on offices and duties from which he can be excused if he chooses. No more goading ambitions,—he knows he has done his best. No more jealousies, if he were weak enough to feel such ignoble stirrings in his more active season. An octogenarian with a good record, and free from annoying or distressing infirmities, ought to be the happiest of men. Everybody treats him with deference. Everybody wants to help him. He is the ward of the generations that have grown up since he was in the vigor of maturity. Yes, let me live to be fourscore years, and then I will tell you whether I should like a few more years or not."

You carry the feelings of middle age, I said, in imagination, over into the period of senility, and then reason and dream about it as if its whole mode of being were like that of the earlier period of life. But how many things there are in old age which you must live into if you would expect to have any "realizing sense" of their significance! In the first place, you have no coevals, or next to none. At fifty, your vessel is stanch, and you are on deck with the rest, in all weathers. At sixty, the vessel still floats, and you are in the cabin. At seventy, you, with a few fellow-passengers, are on a raft. At eighty, you are on a spars to which, possibly, one, or two, or three friends of about your own age are still clinging. After that, you must expect soon to find yourself alone, if you are still floating, with only a life-preserver to keep your old white-bearded chin above the water.

Kindness? Yes, pitying kindness, which is a bitter sweet in which the amiable ingredient can hardly be said to predominate. How pleasant do you think it is to have an arm offered to you when you are walking on a level surface, where there is no chance to trip? How agreeable do you suppose it is to have your well-meaning friends shout and screech at you, as if you were deaf as an adder, instead of only being, as you insist, somewhat hard of hearing? I was a little over twenty years old when I wrote the lines which some of you may have met with, for they have been often reprinted:

The mossy marbles rest On the lips that he has prest In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb.

The world was a garden to me then; it is a churchyard now.

"I thought you were one of those who looked upon old age cheerfully, and welcomed it as a season of peace and contented enjoyment."

I am one of those who so regard it. Those are not bitter or scalding tears that fall from my eyes upon "the mossy marbles." The young who left my side early in my life's journey are still with me in the unchanged freshness and beauty of youth. Those who have long kept company with me live on after their seeming departure, were it only by the mere force of habit; their images are all around me, as if every surface had been a sensitive film that photographed them; their voices echo about me, as if they had been recorded on those unforgetting cylinders which bring back to us the tones and accents that have imprinted them, as the hardened sands show us the tracks of extinct animals. The melancholy of old age has a divine tenderness in it, which only the sad experiences of life can lend a human soul. But there is a lower level,—that of tranquil contentment and easy acquiescence in the conditions in which we find ourselves; a lower level, in which old age trudges patiently when it is not using its wings. I say its wings, for no period of life is so imaginative as that which looks to younger people the most prosaic. The atmosphere of memory is one in which imagination flies more easily and feels itself more at home than in the thinner ether of youthful anticipation. I have told you some of the drawbacks of age; I would not have you forget its privileges. When it comes down from its aerial excursions, it has much left to enjoy on the humble plane of being. And so you think you would like to become an octogenarian? "I should," said the Counsellor, now a man in the high noon of bodily and mental vigor. "Four more—yes, five more—decades would not be too much, I think. And how much I should live to see in that time! I am glad you have laid down some rules by which a man may reasonably expect to leap the eight barred gate. I won't promise to obey them all, though."

Among the questions addressed to me, as to a large number of other persons, are the following. I take them from "The American Hebrew" of April 4, 1890. I cannot pretend to answer them all, but I can say something about one or two of them.

"I. Can you, of your own personal experience, find any justification whatever for the entertainment of prejudice towards individuals solely because they are Jews?

"II. Is this prejudice not due largely to the religious instruction that is given by the church acid Sunday-school? For instance, the teachings that the Jews crucified Jesus; that they rejected him, and can only secure salvation by belief in him, and similar matters that are calculated to excite in the impressionable mind of the child an aversion, if not a loathing, for members of 'the despised race.'

"III. Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jew, so far as your personal experience has gone, any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?

"IV. Can you suggest what should be done to dispel the existing prejudice?"

As to the first question, I have had very slight acquaintance with the children of Israel. I shared more or less the prevailing prejudices against the persecuted race. I used to read in my hymn-book,—I hope I quote correctly,—

"See what a living stone The builders did refuse! Yet God has built his church thereon, In spite of envious Jews."

I grew up inheriting the traditional idea that they were a race lying under a curse for their obstinacy in refusing the gospel. Like other children of New England birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan exclusiveness. The great historical church of Christendom was presented to me as Bunyan depicted it: one of the two giants sitting at the door of their caves, with the bones, of pilgrims scattered about them, and grinning at the travellers whom they could no longer devour. In the nurseries of old-fashioned Orthodoxy there was one religion in the world,—one religion, and a multitude of detestable, literally damnable impositions, believed in by uncounted millions, who were doomed to perdition for so believing. The Jews were the believers in one of these false religions. It had been true once, but was now a pernicious and abominable lie. The principal use of the Jews seemed to be to lend money, and to fulfil the predictions of the old prophets of their race.

No doubt the individual sons of Abraham whom we found in our ill-favored and ill-flavored streets were apt to be unpleasing specimens of the race. It was against the most adverse influences of legislation, of religious feeling, of social repugnance, that the great names of Jewish origin made themselves illustrious; that the philosophers, the musicians, the financiers, the statesmen, of the last centuries forced the world to recognize and accept them. Benjamin, the son of Isaac, a son of Israel, as his family name makes obvious, has shown how largely Jewish blood has been represented in the great men and women of modern days.

There are two virtues which Christians have found it very hard to exemplify in practice. These are modesty and civility. The Founder of the Christian religion appeared among a people accustomed to look for a Messiah, a special ambassador from heaven, with an authoritative message. They were intimately acquainted with every expression having reference to this divine messenger. They had a religion of their own, about which Christianity agrees with Judaism in asserting that it was of divine origin. It is a serious fact, to which we do not give all the attention it deserves, that this divinely instructed people were not satisfied with the evidence that the young Rabbi who came to overthrow their ancient church and found a new one was a supernatural being. "We think he was a great Doctor," said a Jewish companion with whom I was conversing. He meant a great Teacher, I presume, though healing the sick was one of his special offices. Instead of remembering that they were entitled to form their own judgment of the new Teacher, as they had judged of Hillel and other great instructors, Christians, as they called themselves, have insulted, calumniated, oppressed, abased, outraged, "the chosen race" during the long succession of centuries since the Jewish contemporaries of the Founder of Christianity made up their minds that he did not meet the conditions required by the subject of the predictions of their Scriptures. The course of the argument against them is very briefly and effectively stated by Mr. Emerson:

"This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man."

It seems as if there should be certain laws of etiquette regulating the relation of different religions to each other. It is not civil for a follower of Mahomet to call his neighbor of another creed a "Christian dog." Still more, there should be something like politeness in the bearing of Christian sects toward each other, and of believers in the new dispensation toward those who still adhere to the old. We are in the habit of allowing a certain arrogant assumption to our Roman Catholic brethren. We have got used to their pretensions. They may call us "heretics," if they like. They may speak of us as "infidels," if they choose, especially if they say it in Latin. So long as there is no inquisition, so long as there is no auto da fe, we do not mind the hard words much; and we have as good phrases to give them back: the Man of Sin and the Scarlet Woman will serve for examples. But it is better to be civil to each other all round. I doubt if a convert to the religion of Mahomet was ever made by calling a man a Christian dog. I doubt if a Hebrew ever became a good Christian if the baptismal rite was performed by spitting on his Jewish gabardine. I have often thought of the advance in comity and true charity shown in the title of my late honored friend James Freeman Clarke's book, "The Ten Great Religions." If the creeds of mankind try to understand each other before attempting mutual extermination, they will be sure to find a meaning in beliefs which are different from their own. The old Calvinistic spirit was almost savagely exclusive. While the author of the "Ten Great Religions" was growing up in Boston under the benignant, large-minded teachings of the Rev. James Freeman, the famous Dr. John M. Mason, at New York, was fiercely attacking the noble humanity of "The Universal Prayer." "In preaching," says his biographer, "he once quoted Pope's lines as to God's being adored alike 'by saint, by savage, and by sage,' and pronounced it (in his deepest guttural) 'the most damnable lie.'"

What could the Hebrew expect when a Christian preacher could use such language about a petition breathing the very soul of humanity? Happily, the true human spirit is encroaching on that arrogant and narrow-minded form of selfishness which called itself Christianity.

The golden rule should govern us in dealing with those whom we call unbelievers, with heathen, and with all who do not accept our religious views. The Jews are with us as a perpetual lesson to teach us modesty and civility. The religion we profess is not self-evident. It did not convince the people to whom it was sent. We have no claim to take it for granted that we are all right, and they are all wrong. And, therefore, in the midst of all the triumphs of Christianity, it is well that the stately synagogue should lift its walls by the side of the aspiring cathedral, a perpetual reminder that there are many mansions in the Father's earthly house as well as in the heavenly one; that civilized humanity, longer in time and broader in space than any historical form of belief, is mightier than any one institution or organization it includes.

Many years ago I argued with myself the proposition which my Hebrew correspondent has suggested. Recognizing the fact that I was born to a birthright of national and social prejudices against "the chosen people,"—chosen as the object of contumely and abuse by the rest of the world,—I pictured my own inherited feelings of aversion in all their intensity, and the strain of thought under the influence of which those prejudices gave way to a more human, a more truly Christian feeling of brotherhood. I must ask your indulgence while I quote a few verses from a poem of my own, printed long ago under the title "At the Pantomime."

I was crowded between two children of Israel, and gave free inward expression to my feelings. All at once I happened to look more closely at one of my neighbors, and saw that the youth was the very ideal of the Son of Mary.

A fresh young cheek whose olive hue The mantling blood shows faintly through; Locks dark as midnight, that divide And shade the neck on either side; Soft, gentle, loving eyes that gleam Clear as a starlit mountain stream; So looked that other child of Shem, The Maiden's Boy of Bethlehem!

—And thou couldst scorn the peerless blood That flows unmingled from the Flood, Thy scutcheon spotted with the stains Of Norman thieves and pirate Danes! The New World's foundling, in thy pride Scowl on the Hebrew at thy side, And lo! the very semblance there The Lord of Glory deigned to wear!

I see that radiant image rise, The flowing hair, the pitying eyes, The faintly crimsoned cheek that shows The blush of Sharon's opening rose, Thy hands would clasp his hallowed feet Whose brethren soil thy Christian seat, Thy lips would press his garment's hem That curl in wrathful scorn for them!

A sudden mist, a watery screen, Dropped like a veil before the scene; The shadow floated from my soul, And to my lips a whisper stole: —Thy prophets caught the Spirit's flame, From thee the Son of Mary came, With thee the Father deigned to dwell, Peace be upon thee, Israel!

It is not to be expected that intimate relations will be established between Jewish and Christian communities until both become so far rationalized and humanized that their differences are comparatively unimportant. But already there is an evident approximation in the extreme left of what is called liberal Christianity and the representatives of modern Judaism. The life of a man like the late Sir Moses Montefiore reads a lesson from the Old Testament which might well have been inspired by the noblest teachings of the Christian Gospels.

Delilah, and how she got her name.

Est-elle bien gentille, cette petite? I said one day to Number Five, as our pretty Delilah put her arm between us with a bunch of those tender early radishes that so recall the rosy-fingered morning of Homer. The little hand which held the radishes would not have shamed Aurora. That hand has never known drudgery, I feel sure.

When I spoke those French words our little Delilah gave a slight, seemingly involuntary start, and her cheeks grew of as bright a red as her radishes. Ah, said I to myself; does that young girl understand French? It may be worth while to be careful what one says before her.

There is a mystery about this girl. She seems to know her place perfectly,—except, perhaps, when she burst out crying, the other day, which was against all the rules of table-maiden's etiquette,—and yet she looks as if she had been born to be waited on, and not to perform that humble service for others. We know that once in a while girls with education and well connected take it into their heads to go into service for a few weeks or months. Sometimes it is from economic motives,—to procure means for their education, or to help members of their families who need assistance. At any rate, they undertake the lighter menial duties of some household where they are not known, and, having stooped—if stooping it is to be considered—to lowly offices, no born and bred servants are more faithful to all their obligations. You must not suppose she was christened Delilah. Any of our ministers would hesitate to give such a heathen name to a Christian child.

The way she came to get it was this: The Professor was going to give a lecture before an occasional audience, one evening. When he took his seat with the other Teacups, the American Annex whispered to the other Annex, "His hair wants cutting,—it looks like fury." "Quite so," said the English Annex. "I wish you would tell him so,—I do, awfully." "I'll fix it," said the American girl. So, after the teacups were emptied and the company had left the table, she went up to the Professor. "You read this lecture, don't you, Professor?" she said. "I do," he answered. "I should think that lock of hair which falls down over your forehead would trouble you," she said. "It does sometimes," replied the Professor. "Let our little maid trim it for you. You're equal to that, aren't you?" turning to the handmaiden. "I always used to cut my father's hair," she answered. She brought a pair of glittering shears, and before she would let the Professor go she had trimmed his hair and beard as they had not been dealt with for many a day. Everybody said the Professor looked ten years younger. After that our little handmaiden was always called Delilah, among the talking Teacups.

The Mistress keeps a watchful eye on this young girl. I should not be surprised to find that she was carrying out some ideal, some fancy or whim,—possibly nothing more, but springing from some generous, youthful impulse. Perhaps she is working for that little sister at the Blind Asylum. Where did she learn French? She did certainly blush, and betrayed every sign of understanding the words spoken about her in that language. Sometimes she sings while at her work, and we have all been struck with the pure, musical character of her voice. It is just such a voice as ought to come from that round white throat. We made a discovery about it the other evening.

The Mistress keeps a piano in her room, and we have sometimes had music in the evening. One of The Teacups, to whom I have slightly referred, is an accomplished pianist, and the two Annexes sing very sweetly together,—the American girl having a clear soprano voice, the English girl a mellow contralto. They had sung several tunes, when the Mistress rang for Avis,—for that is our Delilah's real name. She whispered to the young girl, who blushed and trembled. "Don't be frightened," said the Mistress encouragingly. "I have heard you singing 'Too Young for Love,' and I will get our pianist to play it. The young ladies both know it, and you must join in."

The two voices, with the accompaniment, had hardly finished the first line when a pure, ringing, almost childlike voice joined the vocal duet. The sound of her own voice seemed to make her forget her fears, and she warbled as naturally and freely as any young bird of a May morning. Number Five came in while she was singing, and when she got through caught her in her arms and kissed her, as if she were her sister, and not Delilah, our table-maid. Number Five is apt to forget herself and those social differences to which some of us attach so much importance. This is the song in which the little maid took part:

TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE.

Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Tell reddening rose-buds not to blow! Wait not for spring to pass away, —Love's summer months begin with May! Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Too young? Too young? Ah, no! no! no!

Too young for love? Ah, say not so, While daisies bloom and tulips glow! June soon will come with lengthened day To practise all love learned in May. Too young for love? Ah, say not so! Too young? Too young? Ah, no! no! no!



IX

I often wish that our Number Seven could have known and corresponded with the author of "The Budget of Paradoxes." I think Mr. De Morgan would have found some of his vagaries and fancies not undeserving of a place in his wonderful collection of eccentricities, absurdities, ingenuities,—mental freaks of all sorts. But I think he would have now and then recognized a sound idea, a just comparison, a suggestive hint, a practical notion, which redeemed a page of extravagances and crotchety whims. I confess that I am often pleased with fancies of his, and should be willing to adopt them as my own. I think he has, in the midst of his erratic and tangled conceptions, some perfectly clear and consistent trains of thought.

So when Number Seven spoke of sending us a paper, I welcomed the suggestion. I asked him whether he had any objection to my looking it over before he read it. My proposal rather pleased him, I thought, for, as was observed on a former occasion, he has in connection with a belief in himself another side,—a curious self-distrust. I have no question that he has an obscure sense of some mental deficiency. Thus you may expect from him first a dogma, and presently a doubt. If you fight his dogma, he will do battle for it stoutly; if you let him alone, he will very probably explain its extravagances, if it has any, and tame it into reasonable limits. Sometimes he is in one mood, sometimes in another.

The first portion of what we listened to shows him at his best; in the latter part I am afraid you will think he gets a little wild.

I proceed to lay before you the paper which Number Seven read to The Teacups. There was something very pleasing in the deference which was shown him. We all feel that there is a crack in the teacup, and are disposed to handle it carefully. I have left out a few things which he said, feeling that they might give offence to some of the company. There were sentences so involved and obscure that I was sure they would not be understood, if indeed he understood them himself. But there are other passages so entirely sane, and as it seems to me so just, that if any reader attributes them to me I shall not think myself wronged by the supposition. You must remember that Number Seven has had a fair education, that he has been a wide reader in many directions, and that he belongs to a family of remarkable intellectual gifts. So it was not surprising that he said some things which pleased the company, as in fact they did. The reader will not be startled to see a certain abruptness in the transition from one subject to another,—it is a characteristic of the squinting brain wherever you find it. Another curious mark rarely wanting in the subjects of mental strabismus is an irregular and often sprawling and deformed handwriting. Many and many a time I have said, after glancing at the back of a letter, "This comes from an insane asylum, or from an eccentric who might well be a candidate for such an institution." Number Seven's manuscript, which showed marks of my corrections here and there, furnished good examples of the chirography of persons with ill-mated cerebral hemispheres. But the earlier portions of the manuscript are of perfectly normal appearance.

Conticuere omnes, as Virgil says. We were all silent as Number Seven began the reading of his paper.

Number Seven reads.

I am the seventh son of a seventh son, as I suppose you all know. It is commonly believed that some extraordinary gifts belong to the fortunate individuals born under these exceptional conditions. However this may be, a peculiar virtue was supposed to dwell in me from my earliest years. My touch was believed to have the influence formerly attributed to that of the kings and queens of England. You may remember that the great Dr. Samuel Johnson, when a child, was carried to be touched by her Majesty Queen Anne for the "king's evil," as scrofula used to be called. Our honored friend The Dictator will tell you that the brother of one of his Andover schoolmates was taken to one of these gifted persons, who touched him, and hung a small bright silver coin, either a "fourpence ha'penny" or a "ninepence," about his neck, which, strange to say, after being worn a certain time, became tarnished, and finally black,—a proof of the poisonous matters which had become eliminated from the system and gathered upon the coin. I remember that at one time I used to carry fourpence ha'pennies with holes bored through them, which I furnished to children or to their mothers, under pledges of secrecy,—receiving a piece of silver of larger dimensions in exchange. I never felt quite sure about any extraordinary endowment being a part of my inheritance in virtue of my special conditions of birth. A phrenologist, who examined my head when I was a boy, said the two sides were unlike. My hatter's measurement told me the same thing; but in looking over more than a bushel of the small cardboard hat-patterns which give the exact shape of the head, I have found this is not uncommon. The phrenologist made all sorts of predictions of what I should be and do, which proved about as near the truth as those recorded in Miss Edith Thomas's charming little poem, "Augury," which some of us were reading the other day.

I have never been through college, but I had a relative who was famous as a teacher of rhetoric in one of our universities, and especially for taking the nonsense out of sophomorical young fellows who could not say anything without rigging it up in showy and sounding phrases. I think I learned from him to express myself in good old-fashioned English, and without making as much fuss about it as our Fourth of July orators and political haranguers were in the habit of making.

I read a good many stories during my boyhood, one of which left a lasting impression upon me, and which I have always commended to young people. It is too late, generally, to try to teach old people, yet one may profit by it at any period of life before the sight has become too dim to be of any use. The story I refer to is in "Evenings at Home," and is called "Eyes and No Eyes." I ought to have it by me, but it is constantly happening that the best old things get overlaid by the newest trash; and though I have never seen anything of the kind half so good, my table and shelves are cracking with the weight of involuntary accessions to my library.

This is the story as I remember it: Two children walk out, and are questioned when they come home. One has found nothing to observe, nothing to admire, nothing to describe, nothing to ask questions about. The other has found everywhere objects of curiosity and interest. I advise you, if you are a child anywhere under forty-five, and do not yet wear glasses, to send at once for "Evenings at Home" and read that story. For myself, I am always grateful to the writer of it for calling my attention to common things. How many people have been waked to a quicker consciousness of life by Wordsworth's simple lines about the daffodils, and what he says of the thoughts suggested to him by "the meanest flower that blows"!

I was driving with a friend, the other day, through a somewhat dreary stretch of country, where there seemed to be very little to attract notice or deserve remark. Still, the old spirit infused by "Eyes and No Eyes" was upon me, and I looked for something to fasten my thought upon, and treat as an artist treats a study for a picture. The first object to which my eyes were drawn was an old-fashioned well-sweep. It did not take much imaginative sensibility to be stirred by the sight of this most useful, most ancient, most picturesque, of domestic conveniences. I know something of the shadoof of Egypt,—the same arrangement by which the sacred waters of the Nile have been lifted, from the days of the Pharaohs to those of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing to heaven was a symbol which spoke to the Puritan exile as it spoke of old to the enslaved Israelite. Was there ever any such water as that which we used to draw from the deep, cold well, in "the old oaken bucket"? What memories gather about the well in all ages! What love-matches have been made at its margin, from the times of Jacob and, Rachel downward! What fairy legends hover over it, what fearful mysteries has it hidden! The beautiful well-sweep! It is too rarely that we see it, and as it dies out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent on its cast-iron uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had lost half its attraction? So long as the dairy farm exists, doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance; but the loss of the well-sweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk were diluted to twice its present attenuation.

The well-sweep had served its turn, and my companion and I relapsed into silence. After a while we passed another farmyard, with nothing which seemed deserving of remark except the wreck of an old wagon.

"Look," I said, "if you want to see one of the greatest of all the triumphs of human ingenuity, one of the most beautiful, as it is one of the most useful, of all the mechanisms which the intelligence of successive ages has called into being."

"I see nothing," my companion answered, "but an old broken-down wagon. Why they leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where people can see it as they pass, is more than I can account for."

"And yet," said I, "there is one of the most extraordinary products of human genius and skill,—an object which combines the useful and the beautiful to an extent which hardly any simple form of mechanism can pretend to rival. Do you notice how, while everything else has gone to smash, that wheel remains sound and fit for service? Look at it merely for its beauty.

"See the perfect circles, the outer and the inner. A circle is in itself a consummate wonder of geometrical symmetry. It is the line in which the omnipotent energy delights to move. There is no fault in it to be amended. The first drawn circle and the last both embody the same complete fulfillment of a perfect design. Then look at the rays which pass from the inner to the outer circle. How beautifully they bring the greater and lesser circles into connection with each other! The flowers know that secret,—the marguerite in the meadow displays it as clearly as the great sun in heaven. How beautiful is this flower of wood and iron, which we were ready to pass by without wasting a look upon it! But its beauty is only the beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for our admiration. Look at that field of flowering grass, the triticum vulgare,—see how its waves follow the breeze in satiny alternations of light and shadow. You admire it for its lovely aspect; but when you remember that this flowering grass is wheat, the finest food of the highest human races, it gains a dignity, a glory, that its beauty alone could not give it.

"Now look at that exquisite structure lying neglected and disgraced, but essentially unchanged in its perfection, before you. That slight and delicate-looking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any slender contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart, was ever subjected to. It has rattled for years over the cobble-stones of a rough city pavement. It has climbed over all the accidental obstructions it met in the highway, and dropped into all the holes and deep ruts that made the heavy farmer sitting over it use his Sunday vocabulary in a week-day form of speech. At one time or another, almost every part of that old wagon has given way. It has had two new pairs of shafts. Twice the axle has broken off close to the hub, or nave. The seat broke when Zekle and Huldy were having what they called 'a ride' together. The front was kicked in by a vicious mare. The springs gave way and the floor bumped on the axle. Every portion of the wagon became a prey of its special accident, except that most fragile looking of all its parts, the wheel. Who can help admiring the exact distribution of the power of resistance at the least possible expenditure of material which is manifested in this wondrous triumph of human genius and skill? The spokes are planted in the solid hub as strongly as the jaw-teeth of a lion in their deep-sunken sockets. Each spoke has its own territory in the circumference, for which it is responsible. According to the load the vehicle is expected to carry, they are few or many, stout or slender, but they share their joint labor with absolute justice,—not one does more, not one does less, than its just proportion. The outer end of the spokes is received into the deep mortise of the wooden fellies, and the structure appears to be complete. But how long would it take to turn that circle into a polygon, unless some mighty counteracting force should prevent it? See the iron tire brought hot from the furnace and laid around the smoking circumference. Once in place, the workman cools the hot iron; and as it shrinks with a force that seems like a hand-grasp of the Omnipotent, it clasps the fitted fragments of the structure, and compresses them into a single inseparable whole.

"Was it not worth our while to stop a moment before passing that old broken wagon, and see whether we could not find as much in it as Swift found in his 'Meditations on a Broomstick'? I have been laughed at for making so much of such a common thing as a wheel. Idiots! Solomon's court fool would have scoffed at the thought of the young Galilean who dared compare the lilies of the field to his august master. Nil admirari is very well for a North American Indian and his degenerate successor, who has grown too grand to admire anything but himself, and takes a cynical pride in his stolid indifference to everything worth reverencing or honoring."

After calling my companion's attention to the wheel, and discoursing upon it until I thought he was getting sleepy, we jogged along until we came to a running stream. It was crossed by a stone bridge of a single arch. There are very few stone arches over the streams in New England country towns, and I always delighted in this one. It was built in the last century, amidst the doubting predictions of staring rustics, and stands to-day as strong as ever, and seemingly good for centuries to come.

"See there!" said I,—"there is another of my 'Eyes and No Eyes' subjects to meditate upon. Next to the wheel, the arch is the noblest of those elementary mechanical composites, corresponding to the proximate principles of chemistry. The beauty of the arch consists first in its curve, commonly a part of the circle, of the perfection of which I have spoken. But the mind derives another distinct pleasure from the admirable manner in which the several parts, each different from all the others, contribute to a single harmonious effect. It is a typical example of the piu nel uno. An arch cut out or a single stone would not be so beautiful as one of which each individual stone was shaped for its exact position. Its completion by the locking of the keystone is a delight to witness and to contemplate. And how the arch endures, when its lateral thrust is met by solid masses of resistance! In one of the great temples of Baalbec a keystone has slipped, but how rare is that occurrence! One will hardly find another such example among all the ruins of antiquity. Yes, I never get tired of arches. They are noble when shaped of solid marble blocks, each carefully beveled for its position. They are beautiful when constructed with the large thin tiles the Romans were so fond of using. I noticed some arches built in this way in the wall of one of the grand houses just going up on the bank of the river. They were over the capstones of the windows,—to take off the pressure from them, no doubt, for now and then a capstone will crack under the weight of the superincumbent mass. How close they fit, and how striking the effect of their long radiations!"

The company listened very well up to this point. When he began the strain of thoughts which follows, a curious look went round The Teacups.

What a strange underground life is that which is led by the organisms we call trees! These great fluttering masses of leaves, stems, boughs, trunks, are not the real trees. They live underground, and what we see are nothing more nor less than their tails.

The Mistress dropped her teaspoon. Number Five looked at the Doctor, whose face was very still and sober. The two Annexes giggled, or came very near it.

Yes, a tree is an underground creature, with its tail in the air. All its intelligence is in its roots. All the senses it has are in its roots. Think what sagacity it shows in its search after food and drink! Somehow or other, the rootlets, which are its tentacles, find out that there is a brook at a moderate distance from the trunk of the tree, and they make for it with all their might. They find every crack in the rocks where there are a few grains of the nourishing substance they care for, and insinuate themselves into its deepest recesses. When spring and summer come, they let their tails grow, and delight in whisking them about in the wind, or letting them be whisked about by it; for these tails are poor passive things, with very little will of their own, and bend in whatever direction the wind chooses to make them. The leaves make a deal of noise whispering. I have sometimes thought I could understand them, as they talk with each other, and that they seemed to think they made the wind as they wagged forward and back. Remember what I say. The next time you see a tree waving in the wind, recollect that it is the tail of a great underground, many-armed, polypus-like creature, which is as proud of its caudal appendage, especially in summer-time, as a peacock of his gorgeous expanse of plumage.

Do you think there is anything so very odd about this idea? Once get it well into your heads, and you will find it renders the landscape wonderfully interesting. There are as many kinds of tree-tails as there are of tails to dogs and other quadrupeds. Study them as Daddy Gilpin studied them in his "Forest Scenery," but don't forget that they are only the appendage of the underground vegetable polypus, the true organism to which they belong.

He paused at this point, and we all drew long breaths, wondering what was coming next. There was no denying it, the "cracked Teacup" was clinking a little false,—so it seemed to the company. Yet, after all, the fancy was not delirious,—the mind could follow it well enough; let him go on.

What do you say to this? You have heard all sorts of things said in prose and verse about Niagara. Ask our young Doctor there what it reminds him of. Is n't it a giant putting his tongue out? How can you fail to see the resemblance? The continent is a great giant, and the northern half holds the head and shoulders. You can count the pulse of the giant wherever the tide runs up a creek; but if you want to look at the giant's tongue, you must go to Niagara. If there were such a thing as a cosmic physician, I believe he could tell the state of the country's health, and the prospects of the mortality for the coming season, by careful inspection of the great tongue, which Niagara is putting out for him, and has been showing to mankind ever since the first flint-shapers chipped their arrow-heads. You don't think the idea adds to the sublimity and associations of the cataract? I am sorry for that, but I can't help the suggestion. It is just as manifestly a tongue put out for inspection as if it had Nature's own label to that effect hung over it. I don't know whether you can see these things as clearly as I do. There are some people that never see anything, if it is as plain as a hole in a grindstone, until it is pointed out to them; and some that can't see it then, and won't believe there is any hole till they've poked their finger through it. I've got a great many things to thank God for, but perhaps most of all that I can find something to admire, to wonder at, to set my fancy going, and to wind up my enthusiasm pretty much everywhere.

Look here! There are crowds of people whirled through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with their witch-broomsticks overhead,—if they don't come from Salem, they ought to,—and not more than one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought for their convenience. They know that without hands or feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they can see, they are transported from place to place, and that there is nothing to account for it except the witch-broomstick and the iron or copper cobweb which they see stretched above them. What do they know or care about this last revelation of the omnipresent spirit of the material universe? We ought to go down on our knees when one of these mighty caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse which seems to know not whether its train is loaded or empty. We are used to force in the muscles of horses, in the expansive potency of steam, but here we have force stripped stark naked,—nothing but a filament to cover its nudity,—and yet showing its might in efforts that would task the working-beam of a ponderous steam-engine. I am thankful that in an age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. Perhaps you would wonder to see how some very common sights impress me. I always take off my hat if I stop to speak to a stone-cutter at his work. "Why?" do you ask me? Because I know that his is the only labor that is likely to endure. A score of centuries has not effaced the marks of the Greek's or the Roman's chisel on his block of marble. And now, before this new manifestation of that form of cosmic vitality which we call electricity, I feel like taking the posture of the peasants listening to the Angelus. How near the mystic effluence of mechanical energy brings us to the divine source of all power and motion! In the old mythology, the right hand of Jove held and sent forth the lightning. So, in the record of the Hebrew prophets, did the right hand of Jehovah cast forth and direct it. Was Nahum thinking of our far-off time when he wrote, "The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings"?

Number Seven had finished reading his paper. Two bright spots in his cheeks showed that he had felt a good deal in writing it, and the flush returned as he listened to his own thoughts. Poor old fellow! The "cracked Teacup" of our younger wits,—not yet come to their full human sensibilities,—the "crank" of vulgar tongues, the eccentric, the seventh son of a seventh son, too often made the butt of thoughtless pleasantry, was, after all, a fellow-creature, with flesh and blood like the rest of us. The wild freaks of his fancy did not hurt us, nor did they prevent him from seeing many things justly, and perhaps sometimes more vividly and acutely than if he were as sound as the dullest of us.

The teaspoons tinkled loudly all round the table, as he finished reading. The Mistress caught her breath. I was afraid she was going to sob, but she took it out in vigorous stirring of her tea. Will you believe that I saw Number Five, with a sweet, approving smile on her face all the time, brush her cheek with her hand-kerchief? There must have been a tear stealing from beneath its eyelid. I hope Number Seven saw it. He is one of the two men at our table who most need the tender looks and tones of a woman. The Professor and I are hors de combat; the Counsellor is busy with his cases and his ambitions; the Doctor is probably in love with a microscope, and flirting with pathological specimens; but Number Seven and the Tutor are, I fear, both suffering from that worst of all famines, heart-hunger.

Do you remember that Number Seven said he never wrote a line of "poetry" in his life, except once when he was suffering from temporary weakness of body and mind? That is because he is a poet. If he had not been one, he would very certainly have taken to tinkling rhymes. What should you think of the probable musical genius of a young man who was particularly fond of jingling a set of sleigh-bells? Should you expect him to turn out a Mozart or a Beethoven? Now, I think I recognize the poetical instinct in Number Seven, however imperfect may be its expression, and however he may be run away with at times by fantastic notions that come into his head. If fate had allotted him a helpful companion in the shape of a loving and intelligent wife, he might have been half cured of his eccentricities, and we should not have had to say, in speaking of him, "Poor fellow!" But since this cannot be, I am pleased that he should have been so kindly treated on the occasion of the reading of his paper. If he saw Number Five's tear, he will certainly fall in love with her. No matter if he does Number Five is a kind of Circe who does not turn the victims of her enchantment into swine, but into lambs. I want to see Number Seven one of her little flock. I say "little." I suspect it is larger than most of us know. Anyhow, she can spare him sympathy and kindness and encouragement enough to keep him contented with himself and with her, and never miss the pulses of her loving life she lends him. It seems to be the errand of some women to give many people as much happiness as they have any right to in this world. If they concentrated their affection on one, they would give him more than any mortal could claim as his share. I saw Number Five watering her flowers, the other day. The watering-pot had one of those perforated heads, through which the water runs in many small streams. Every plant got its share: the proudest lily bent beneath the gentle shower; the lowliest daisy held its little face up for baptism. All were refreshed, none was flooded. Presently she took the perforated head, or "rose," from the neck of the watering-pot, and the full stream poured out in a round, solid column. It was almost too much for the poor geranium on which it fell, and it looked at one minute as if the roots would be laid bare, and perhaps the whole plant be washed out of the soil in which it was planted. What if Number Five should take off the "rose" that sprinkles her affections on so many, and pour them all on one? Can that ever be? If it can, life is worth living for him on whom her love may be lavished.

One of my neighbors, a thorough American, is much concerned about the growth of what he calls the "hard-handed aristocracy." He tells the following story:—

"I was putting up a fence about my yard, and employed a man of whom I knew something,—that he was industrious, temperate, and that he had a wife and children to support,—a worthy man, a native New Englander. I engaged him, I say, to dig some post-holes. My employee bought a new spade and scoop on purpose, and came to my place at the appointed time, and began digging. While he was at work, two men came over from a drinking-saloon, to which my residence is nearer than I could desire. One of them I had known as Mike Fagan, the other as Hans Schleimer. They looked at Hiram, my New Hampshire man, in a contemptuous and threatening way for a minute or so, when Fagan addressed him:

"'And how much does the man pay yez by the hour?'

"'The gentleman does n't pay me by the hour,' said Hiram.

"'How mosh does he bay you by der veeks?' said Hans.

"'I don' know as that's any of your business,' answered Hiram.

"'Faith, we'll make it our business,' said Mike Fagan. 'We're Knoights of Labor, we'd have yez to know, and ye can't make yer bargains jist as ye loikes. We manes to know how mony hours ye worrks, and how much ye gets for it.'

"'Knights of Labor!' said I. 'Why, that is a kind of title of nobility, is n't it? I thought the laws of our country did n't allow titles of that kind. But if you have a right to be called knights, I suppose I ought to address you as such. Sir Michael, I congratulate you on the dignity you have attained. I hope Lady Fagan is getting on well with my shirts. Sir Hans, I pay my respects to your title. I trust that Lady Schleixner has got through that little difficulty between her ladyship and yourself in which the police court thought it necessary to intervene.'

"The two men looked at me. I weigh about a hundred and eighty pounds, and am well put together. Hiram was noted in his village as a 'rahstler.' But my face is rather pallid and peaked, and Hiram had something of the greenhorn look. The two men, who had been drinking, hardly knew what ground to take. They rather liked the sound of Sir Michael and, Sir Hans. They did not know very well what to make of their wives as 'ladies.' They looked doubtful whether to take what had been said as a casus belli or not, but they wanted a pretext of some kind or other. Presently one of them saw a label on the scoop, or longhandled, spoon-like shovel, with which Hiram had been working.

"'Arrah, be jabers!' exclaimed Mike Fagan, 'but has n't he been a-tradin' wid Brown, the hardware fellah, that we boycotted! Grab it, Hans, and we'll carry it off and show it to the brotherhood.'

"The men made a move toward the implement.

"'You let that are scoop-shovel alone,' said Hiram.

"I stepped to his side. The Knights were combative, as their noble predecessors with the same title always were, and it was necessary to come to a voie de fait. My straight blow from the shoulder did for Sir Michael. Hiram treated Sir Hans to what is technically known as a cross-buttock.

"'Naow, Dutchman,' said Hiram, 'if you don't want to be planted in that are post-hole, y'd better take y'rself out o' this here piece of private property. "Dangerous passin," as the sign-posts say, abaout these times.'

"Sir Michael went down half stunned by my expressive gesture; Sir Hans did not know whether his hip was out of joint or he had got a bad sprain; but they were both out of condition for further hostilities. Perhaps it was hardly fair to take advantage of their misfortunes to inflict a discourse upon them, but they had brought it on themselves, and we each of us gave them a piece of our mind.

"'I tell you what it is,' said Hiram, 'I'm a free and independent American citizen, and I an't a-gon' to hev no man tyrannize over me, if he doos call himself by one o' them noblemen's titles. Ef I can't work jes' as I choose, fur folks that wants me to work fur 'em and that I want to work fur, I might jes' as well go to Sibery and done with it. My gran'f'ther fit in Bunker Hill battle. I guess if our folks in them days did n't care no great abaout Lord Percy and Sir William Haowe, we an't a-gon' to be scart by Sir Michael Fagan and Sir Hans What 's-his-name, nor no other fellahs that undertakes to be noblemen, and tells us common folks what we shall dew an' what we sha'n't. No, sir!'

"I took the opportunity to explain to Sir Michael and Sir Hans what it was our fathers fought for, and what is the meaning of liberty. If these noblemen did not like the country, they could go elsewhere. If they did n't like the laws, they had the ballot-box, and could choose new legislators. But as long as the laws existed they must obey them. I could not admit that, because they called themselves by the titles the Old World nobility thought so much of, they had a right to interfere in the agreements I entered into with my neighbor. I told Sir Michael that if he would go home and help Lady Fagan to saw and split the wood for her fire, he would be better employed than in meddling with my domestic arrangements. I advised Sir Hans to ask Lady Schleimer for her bottle of spirits to use as an embrocation for his lame hip. And so my two visitors with the aristocratic titles staggered off, and left us plain, untitled citizens, Hiram and myself, to set our posts, and consider the question whether we lived in a free country or under the authority of a self-constituted order of quasi-nobility."

It is a very curious fact that, with all our boasted "free and equal" superiority over the communities of the Old World, our people have the most enormous appetite for Old World titles of distinction. Sir Michael and Sir Hans belong to one of the most extended of the aristocratic orders. But we have also "Knights and Ladies of Honor," and, what is still grander, "Royal Conclave of Knights and Ladies," "Royal Arcanum," and "Royal Society of Good Fellows," "Supreme Council," "Imperial Court," "Grand Protector," and "Grand Dictator," and so on. Nothing less than "Grand" and "Supreme" is good enough for the dignitaries of our associations of citizens. Where does all this ambition for names without realities come from? Because a Knight of the Garter wears a golden star, why does the worthy cordwainer, who mends the shoes of his fellow-citizens, want to wear a tin star, and take a name that had a meaning as used by the representatives of ancient families, or the men who had made themselves illustrious by their achievements?

It appears to be a peculiarly American weakness. The French republicans of the earlier period thought the term citizen was good enough for anybody. At a later period, "Roi Citoyen"—the citizen king was a common title given to Louis Philippe. But nothing is too grand for the American, in the way of titles. The proudest of them all signify absolutely nothing. They do not stand for ability, for public service, for social importance, for large possessions; but, on the contrary, are oftenest found in connection with personalities to which they are supremely inapplicable. We can hardly afford to quarrel with a national habit which, if lightly handled, may involve us in serious domestic difficulties. The "Right Worshipful" functionary whose equipage stops at my back gate, and whose services are indispensable to the health and comfort of my household, is a dignitary whom I must not offend. I must speak with proper deference to the lady who is scrubbing my floors, when I remember that her husband, who saws my wood, carries a string of high-sounding titles which would satisfy a Spanish nobleman.

After all, every people must have its own forms of ostentation, pretence, and vulgarity. The ancient Romans had theirs, the English and the French have theirs as well,—why should not we Americans have ours? Educated and refined persons must recognize frequent internal conflicts between the "Homo sum" of Terence and the "Odi profanum vulgus" of Horace. The nobler sentiment should be that of every true American, and it is in that direction that our best civilization is constantly tending.

We were waited on by a new girl, the other evening. Our pretty maiden had left us for a visit to some relative,—so the Mistress said. I do sincerely hope she will soon come back, for we all like to see her flitting round the table.

I don't know what to make of it. I had it all laid out in my mind. With such a company there must be a love-story. Perhaps there will be, but there may be new combinations of the elements which are to make it up, and here is a bud among the full-blown flowers to which I must devote a little space.

Delilah.

I must call her by the name we gave her after she had trimmed the Samson locks of our Professor. Delilah is a puzzle to most of us. A pretty creature, dangerously pretty to be in a station not guarded by all the protective arrangements which surround the maidens of a higher social order. It takes a strong cage to keep in a tiger or a grizzly bear, but what iron bars, what barbed wires, can keep out the smooth and subtle enemy that finds out the cage where beauty is imprisoned? Our young Doctor is evidently attracted by the charming maiden who serves him and us so modestly and so gracefully. Fortunately, the Mistress never loses sight of her. If she were her own daughter, she could not be more watchful of all her movements. And yet I do not believe that Delilah needs all this overlooking. If I am not mistaken, she knows how to take care of herself, and could be trusted anywhere, in any company, without a duenna. She has a history,—I feel sure of it. She has been trained and taught as young persons of higher position in life are brought up, and does not belong in the humble station in which we find her. But inasmuch as the Mistress says nothing about her antecedents, we do not like to be too inquisitive. The two Annexes are, it is plain, very curious about her. I cannot wonder. They are both good-looking girls, but Delilah is prettier than either of them. My sight is not so good as it was, but I can see the way in which the eyes of the young people follow each other about plainly enough to set me thinking as to what is going on in the thinking marrow behind them. The young Doctor's follow Delilah as she glides round the table,—they look into hers whenever they get a chance; but the girl's never betray any consciousness of it, so far as I can see. There is no mistaking the interest with which the two, Annexes watch all this. Why shouldn't they, I should like to know? The Doctor is a bright young fellow, and wants nothing but a bald spot and a wife to find himself in a comfortable family practice. One of the Annexes, as I have said, has had thoughts of becoming a doctress. I don't think the Doctor would want his wife to practise medicine, for reasons which I will not stop to mention. Such a partnership sometimes works wonderfully well, as in one well-known instance where husband and wife are both eminent in the profession; but our young Doctor has said to me that he had rather see his wife,—if he ever should have one,—at the piano than at the dissecting-table. Of course the Annexes know nothing about this, and they may think, as he professed himself willing to lecture on medicine to women, he might like to take one of his pupils as a helpmeet.

If it were not for our Delilah's humble position, I don't see why she would not be a good match for any young man. But then it is so hard to take a young woman from so very lowly a condition as that of a "waitress" that it would require a deal of courage to venture on such a step. If we could only find out that she is a princess in disguise, so to speak,—that is, a young person of presentable connections as well as pleasing looks and manners; that she has had an education of some kind, as we suspected when she blushed on hearing herself spoken of as a "gentille petite," why, then everything would be all right, the young Doctor would have plain sailing,—that is, if he is in love with her, and if she fancies him,—and I should find my love-story,—the one I expected, but not between the parties I had thought would be mating with each other.

Dear little Delilah! Lily of the valley, growing in the shade now,—perhaps better there until her petals drop; and yet if she is all I often fancy she is, how her youthful presence would illuminate and sweeten a household! There is not one of us who does not feel interested in her,—not one of us who would not be delighted at some Cinderella transformation which would show her in the setting Nature meant for her favorite.

The fancy of Number Seven about the witches' broomsticks suggested to one of us the following poem:

THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES.

Lookout! Look out, boys! Clear the track! The witches are here! They've all come back! They hanged them high,—No use! No use! What cares a witch for a hangman's noose? They buried them deep, but they would n't lie, still, For cats and witches are hard to kill; They swore they shouldn't and wouldn't die, Books said they did, but they lie! they lie!

—A couple of hundred years, or so, They had knocked about in the world below, When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call, And a homesick feeling seized them all; For he came from a place they knew full well, And many a tale he had to tell. They long to visit the haunts of men, To see the old dwellings they knew again, And ride on their broomsticks all around Their wide domain of unhallowed ground.

In Essex county there's many a roof Well known to him of the cloven hoof; The small square windows are full in view Which the midnight hags went sailing through, On their well-trained broomsticks mounted high, Seen like shadows against the sky; Crossing the track of owls and bats, Hugging before them their coal-black cats.

Well did they know, those gray old wives, The sights we see in our daily drives Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, Brown's bare hill with its lonely tree, (It wasn't then as we see it now, With one scant scalp-lock to shade its brow;) Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells, Of "Norman's Woe" with its tale of dread, Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead, (The fearful story that turns men pale Don't bid me tell it,—my speech would fail.)