'Is this a threat?' he cried. 'Is it to tell me that if I do not give my love where my honor tells me it should not be given, I must surely die! So, then, let it be. I accept the doom. One year ago, I would have cheerfully fought in the arena for your faintest smile. Now I would rather die there than have your sullied love forced upon me.'

Without another word he sat down again upon the stone bench. Even in that darkness she could note how resolute was his expression, how firm and unyielding his attitude. She had roused his nature, as she had never seen it before. She had not believed that a spirit which she had been accustomed to look upon as so much inferior in strength to her own, could show such unflinching determination; and for the moment she stood admiring him, and wondering whether, if he had always acted like that, he might not have bound her soul to his own and kept her to himself through all temptation and trial. Then, taking the other key, she unlocked the door in the rear wall of the cell, and threw it open. The narrow street behind the court was before him, and he was free to go.

'I meant it not for a threat,' she said. 'However low I may sink, I have not yet reached the pass of wishing to purchase or beg for affection. Why I spoke thus, I know not. It may be that I thought some gratitude might be due me for rescuing you. But I cannot tell what I, thought. Or it might have been that words were necessary for me, and that I used the first that came. But let that pass. Know only that your safety lies before you, and that it is in your power to grasp it. And now, farewell. You leave me drifting upon a downward course, Cleotos. Sometimes, perhaps, when another person is at your side, making your life far happier than I could have made it, you will think kindly of me.'

'I think kindly of you now, Leta,' he said. 'Whatever love I can give, apart from the love which I once asked you to accept, is yours. In everything that brotherly affection can bestow, there will be no limit to my care and interest for you. Nay, more, you shall now go away from hence with me; and though I cannot promise more than a brother's love, yet with that for your guide and protection, you can reach your native home in peace and security, and there work out whatever repentance you may have here begun.'

'And when we are there, and those who have known us begin to ask why, when Cleotos has brought Leta back in safety, he regards her only as a sister and a friend, and otherwise remains sternly apart from her, what answer can be given which will not raise suspicion and scorn, and make my life a burden to me? No, Cleotos, it cannot be. Cruel as my lot may be here, I have only myself to answer for it, and it is easier to hide myself from notice in this whirl of sin and passion than if at home again. And whatever may henceforth happen to me, the Fates are surely most to blame. How can one avoid his destiny?'

'The Fates do not carve out our destiny,' he said. 'They simply carry into relentless effect the judgments which our own passions and weaknesses pronounced upon ourselves. O Leta! have you considered what you are resolved upon encountering? Do you not know that some day this master of yours will tire of you, and fling you to some friend of his—a soldier, actor, or what not—that as the years run on and your beauty fades, you will fall lower and lower? Have not thousands like yourself thus gone on, until at last, becoming old and worthless, they are left to die alone upon some island in the Tiber? Pray that you may die a better death than that!'

'It is a sad picture,' she answered. 'It is not merely possible, but also probable. I acknowledge it all. And yet, if I saw it all unrolled before me as my certain doom, I do not know that I would try to shun it. Already the glitter of this world has changed my soul from what it was, and I am now too feeble of purpose to spend long years in retrieving the errors of the past. There came into my heart a thought—a selfish thought—that you might forget what has gone before; and then it seemed that I might succeed in winning back my peace, and so shun the fate which lies before me. But you cannot forget. I blame you not: you are right. You have never spoken more truly than when you said that I would have despised you if you had yielded. Therefore, that hope is gone; and now I must submit to the destiny which is coming upon me.'

'But, Leta, only strive to think that—'

'Nay, what is the use? Rather let me throw all regrets away, and strive not to think at all. Why not yield with a pleasant grace to the current, when we know that, in the end, struggle as we may, it will surely sweep us under?'

'Leta—dear Leta—'

'Not a word, dear Cleotos; it must not be. From this hour I banish all human affections from my heart, as I banish all hope. Could you remain here, you would see how relentless and fierce my nature will grow. Plots and schemes shall now be my amusement; for if I must be destroyed, others shall fall with me. This must be the last tender impulse of my life. I know not why it is, but I could now really weep. Cleotos, forgive me! I came hither, loving you not, but hoping to beguile you into receiving me again. I have failed, and I ought to hate you for it; and yet I almost love you instead. It is strange, is it not?

'But, Leta—'

'How my heart now feels soft and tender with our recollections of other days! Do you remember, Cleotos, how once, when children, we went together and stole the grapes from Eminides's vine? And how, when he would have beaten you, I stood before you, and prevented him? Who would then have thought that, in a few years, we should be here in Rome—slaves, and parting forever? We shall never again together see Eminides's vineyard, shall we?'

'O Leta—my sister—'

'There, there; speak not, but go at once, for some one comes near. Tarry no longer. If at home they ask after me, tell them I am dead. Farewell, dear Cleotos. Kiss me good-by. Do not grudge me that, at least. And may the gods bless you!'

He would still have spoken, would have claimed a minute to plead with her and try to induce her to leave the path she was pursuing, and go with him. But at that instant the voice of some one approaching sounded louder, and the tones of Sergias could be distinguished as he tried to troll forth the catch of a drinking melody. There was no time to lose. With a farewell pressure of her arm about Cleotos's neck, Leta pushed him through the aperture into the dark back street; and then, leaving the keys in the locks, turned back into the garden, and fled toward the house.



CREATION.

The primary characteristics of creation are aggregation, producing all existing forms; and dissolution, in which the parts suffer disintegration, their varied elements entering into new combinations. The active powers producing such normal condition of matter, which is ceaseless motion, are comprehended in attraction for aggregation, and repulsion for dissolution, alternately. This power of combing atoms and dissolving their connection is electric, which is only possessed by that element, in its dual character of attraction and repulsion; and thus we may reasonably assume that electricity is the material wherewith creative energy manifests its power in the varied combinations, dissolutions, and reconstructions which comprise all animate and inanimate existences. This same cosmical power, electricity, holds all worlds in their normal relations, and is the source of light and heat, as well as the connecting link, through our electric nerve cords, by which our minds alone commune with the outer world, in direct contact with our bodily senses, and hence becomes the medium of all our knowledge.

* * * * *

ELECTRICITY AS THE SOURCE OF LIGHT, HEAT, GRAVITATION, AND THE ORIGIN op ALL GLOBES, NEBULAE, AND COMETIC MATTER.

If space were wholly devoid of matter, all globes, or other masses of matter, would be dissipated into it, or a priori could not have been formed from it. The material interchange, passing through space, between globes, in all stages of formation, such as light, heat, and gravitation, could not be conducted through a vacuum, as their very presence would be destructive of vacuity. Materiality would be dissipated or absorbed in an attempted passage through vacuity; therefore, as we know that light, heat, and gravitation are, necessarily, material, space is but diffused materiality, at its minimum of etheriality. Globes moving in their orbits and on their axes must thus meet with resistance: this, together with the internal motion of their contained elements, necessarily excites the constant production of electricity, in its dual character of attraction and repulsion, according to its well-known laws; and this double character, alone possessed by electricity, when concentrated produces material affinity, with reciprocal attraction and repulsion, in all its atoms, thus forever preventing entire solidity or entire separation of its parts. Such condensation of matter by electric action, is the origin of heat and the variety produced by incandescence, which, therefore, accounts for the formation of globes from the materials in space, and their sustentation in orbit.

As motion is the normal condition of matter, and is the producer of electricity, therefore electric actions, concentrated in space, necessarily gathers cometic and nebulous matter from space, the materials, through incandescence, for future globes, with orbits contracting in proportion to condensation, its maximum of attraction. As material space is boundless, so the creation of globes is endless therein, through electric action, by producing gradual centres of material condensation, the mere whirlpool specks in infinite space.

Revolving bodies, gaseous, fluid, or solid, thus impress or charge the centres of their motion, by superinduced attraction, with electricity, as their Leyden jars. So, too, the central body, or primary of a system, so overcharged with electricity by its revolving secondaries, becomes positively electrified or repellant to all such revolving bodies; and thus the producers and accumulator are mutually attractive and repellant of each other.

The planets, by their lightning speed in orbits and on their axes, being producers, and the sun the recipient or accumulator of electricity; the latter, as the centre of our revolving system, is the Leyden jar, and thus becomes the overcharged positive source and dispenser of electric light and heat to the surrounding planets.

The planets, as producers, are always negatively electric, tending toward the accumulator, the sun; while the latter, as the accumulator, being overcharged, is positively electric, and repels. The sun being the greater body, the planets' negative electric attraction for it must always yield to the greater mass and tend toward the sun; while that great body, overcharged with accumulated positive electricity, is fully capable of repelling such tendency of the lesser revolving planets toward it. Attraction or gravitation with the planets, and repulsion (instead of centrifugal force) with the sun, forever and inexhaustibly retain the various bodies, of each system, in their respective orbits. As motion is the normal condition of matter, eternally producing electric action, and when centralized evolving light and heat; so light and heat are as inexhaustibly eternal as motion, and may thus be demonstrated as electric. The same principle of action applies to all individual globes of each separate system, conjointly; and collectively, the different systems mutually attract and repel each other, proportionate to mass and the weakened forces of distance, thus preserving a cosmical harmony throughout creation, forever forbidding collision or destruction of individual globes.

This theory will be found to correspond with the well-known laws of positive and negative electric action; as well as illustrative of the influence of electric light on vegetable production—the only artificially produced light, capable of imparting a healthy growth, and color—which, I think, clearly proves it to be of the same character as solar light. It is also corroborative of much that is inexplicable, except in the identity of electricity with solar effulgence, as the source of light, heat, and gravitation, as well as substituting repulsion for centrifugal force, and must forever disprove the theory of solar light being the result of mere metallic incandescence, or any other equally exhausting combustion. The latter theory, with such supposed expedients in nature, to carry out the mighty design of creation, belittles the subject by its transitoriness, and is, therefore, unworthy the conception of modern generations.



PHENOMENA OF HAZE, FOGS, AND CLOUDS.

The predominant haze, which generally envelops the landscape and reddens the sun and moon during long droughts, is usually ascribed to smoke from burning woods and forests, pervading the air. I have observed a similar prevalent haze, connected with other extensive droughts than the one from which the country is now (August) suffering, and have invariably heard the same vague and inadequate cause assigned. Observation proves conclusively, that the assigned is not the true general cause (although it has its purely local effect), as with winds, for days together, in opposite quarters from local fires on mountain or plain, such widespread districts remain enveloped in haze, although hundreds of miles distant. Neither over such districts was there any odor as from smoke pervading the atmosphere (except temporarily from some neighboring chimneys, which the then heavy air kept near the earth), nor felt by the eyes, which very perceptibly smart when exposed to smoke. It is impossible, with varying winds, that mere local fires should spread smoke so uniformly as to comprise most of the area of the drought, which on this occasion extended from our great western lakes to the Atlantic seacoast; and anomalously, too, that it should have continued so long after a rain had extinguished those fires.

I should assign a very different cause for this phenomenon. Rain drops are negatively electric, while suspended moisture, such as fog, displays itself in the form of vesicles or globules, distended by the presence and prevalence of positive electricity, which refracts the rays of light from so many myriad surfaces, that all objects are thus, necessarily, obscured to the eye. During droughts, when haze prevails, positive electricity in the air becomes in excess, which is heating, and therefore serves still more to subdivide, as well as to expand or distend the floating moisture in the atmosphere (of which it is never entirely deprived) into infinitesimal vesicles, or globules, like minute soap bubbles, and thus from such an infinite number of refracting surfaces is produced the haze, as well as the obscuration of the landscape and the reddened disks of the sun and moon, by the absorption of their heat or red rays, so characteristic of great droughts. This same infinitesimal vesicular condition of suspended moisture, is also the sufficient cause of there being no deposition of dew on such occasions, except where a local change of electric condition cools the air, thus temporarily clearing the atmosphere, and permitting a local deposition of the previously suspended moisture, in the form of dew.

All fogs are due to this same cause, as well as that which, in extreme wintry cold, overhangs the open water, as it yields its comparative heat to the air. The formation and suspension of clouds, in all their varied characteristics, have the same origin. That highly attenuated haze which invests the distant landscape, particularly mountains, with its magical purple hue, is due to the same, but still more ethereal interposition of infinitesimal globules of suspended moisture. In corroboration of this being the true explanation of the phenomena of haze, fogs, etc., is the fact, that as soon as clouds prevail, denoting an electric change in the atmosphere, all haze immediately disappears, or becomes embraced in the larger vesicles or globules, forming clouds.



FLY LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF A SOLDIER.

PART II.—CHEVRONS.

She sewed them on upside down. Please to remember that this was in May, 1861 (or was it 1851? it seems a long time ago), when a young lady of the most finished education, polished to the uttermost nine, could not reasonably be expected to know what a sergeant-major was, much less the particular cut and fashion of his badge of rank. I told her, exultingly, that I was appointed sergeant-major of our battalion. 'What's that?' she inquired, simply enough. I explained. The dignity and importance of the office was scarcely diminished in her mind by my explanation; and, indeed, I thought it the grandest in the army. Who would be a commissioned officer, when he could wear our gorgeous gray uniform, trimmed with red, the sleeves wellnigh hidden behind three broad red stripes in the shape of a V, joined at the top by as many broad red arcs, all beautifully set off by the lithe and active figure of Sergeant-Major William Jenkins? As for Mary, who protested that she never could learn the difference between all these grades, or make out the reason for them, she was for her part convinced that not even the colonel himself, certainly not that fat Major Heavysterne, could be grander, or handsomer, or more important than her William. So I forgave her for sewing on my chevrons upside down, although it was at the time an infliction grievous to be born, inasmuch as the fussy little quartermaster-sergeant was thereby enabled to get a day's start of in the admiration and envy of our old company. How they envied us, to be sure! But I had one consolation: Oates' were all straight; mine were arched. And she sewed mine on. His were done by Cutts & Dunn's bandy-legged foreman.

There never was such a uniform as ours. Not even the 'Seventh' itself—incomparable in the eyes of the three-months'—could vie in grand and soldierly simplicity, we thought, with the gray and red of the 9th Battalion, District of Columbia Volunteers. Gray cap, with a red band round it, letters A S, for 'American Sharpshooters' (Smallweed used to say he never saw it spelt in that way before, and to ask anxiously for the other S), gray single-breasted frock coat, with nine gilt buttons, and red facings on the collar and cuffs. Gray pantaloons, with a broad red stripe down the outer seam. The drummers sported the most gorgeous red stomachs ever seen, between two rows of twenty little bullet buttons. The color rendered us liable to be mistaken for the rebels, it is true; but this source of anxiety to the more nervous among us was happily prevented from leading to any unfavorable results by the fatherly care displayed by poor old General Balkinsop, under whose protection, we were sent into the field, in always keeping at least a day's march from the enemy!

When we non-commissioned staff officers were first promoted, we felt badly about leaving our companies; wanted to drill with them still, and so on. But this soon wore off under the pressure of new duties. For my part, I soon found that the adjutant, Lieutenant Harch, regarded it as quite a natural arrangement that the sergeant-major should attend to the office duties, while the adjutant occupied himself exclusively with what he was pleased to style the military part of the business; meaning thereby, guard mounting every morning and Sunday morning, inspection once a week, making an average of, say, twenty minutes work per diem for the adjutant, and leaving the poor sergeant-major enough to occupy and worry him for ten or eleven hours. 'Sergeant-major, publish these orders,' Lieutenant Harch would say, in tones of authority exceeding in peremptory curtness anything I have ever heard since from the commander of a grand army; and then, scraping a match—my match—upon the wall, he would begin attending to his 'military duties' by lighting a cigar—my cigar—and strolling up the avenue, on exhibition, preparatory to going home to dine, while the fag remained driving the pen madly, kindly assisted sometimes by Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, until long after the dinner hour of the non-commissioned staff. I think the company commanders must sometimes have doubted (unless they carefully refrained from reading orders, as I have sometimes thought probable) whether the adjutant could write his name; for all our orders used to be signed:

'By order of Major JOHNSON HEAVYSTERNE: FREDERICK HARCH, 1st Lieutenant and Adjutant, By WILLIAM JENKINS, Sergeant-Major.'

Now, if the printer sets this up properly, you will see that, even at that early day, we knew too much to adopt the sensation style of signing orders which some officers have since learned from the New York Herald, thus:

By command of Major-General BULGER! WASHINGTON SMITH, A. A.-G.

In those days there was but little of that distinction of ranks which has come to be better observed now that our volunteers have grown into an army. You see, the process of forming an army out of its constituent element follows pretty much the fashion set by that complex machine the human animal: the materials go through all the processes of swallowing, digestion, chylifaction, chymifaction, absorption, alteration, and excretion; bone, muscle, nerve, sinew, viscera, and what not, each taking its share, and discarding the useless material that has only served, like bran in horse feed, to give volume and prehensibility to the mass. Our non-commissioned staff messed with the major, who was as jolly a bachelor as need be, of some forty-nine years of growth, and thirty of butchering, that being his occupation. The adjutant, being newly married to a gaunt female, who, I hope, nagged him as he us, preferred to take his meals at home. Smallweed, who had somehow got made quartermaster, couldn't go old Heavysterne, he said, and so kept as long as he could to his desultory habits of living as a citizen and a bachelor. So our mess consisted of the major, who exercised a paternal care over the rest of us, superintending, indeed often joining in, our amusements and discussions, our quarrels and makings up; of Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates, who knew all about everything and everybody better than anybody, and was always ready to ventilate his superior knowledge on the slightest provocation, and who, as Smallweed, now Lieutenant Smallweed, used to say, 'would have made a d——d elegant quartermaster-sergeant, if he hadn't had a moral objection to issuing anything;' of Chaplain Bender, a sanctified-looking individual of promiscuous theology and doubtful morals (the funny men used to speak of him irreverently as Hell Bender); of the battalion commissary, Lieutenant Fippany, an unmitigated swell; of Commissary-Sergeant Peck, a stumpy little fellow, full of facts and figures, and always quiet and ready; of the writer, Sergeant-Major Jenkins, or Jinkens as my name used to be mispronounced, infinitely to my disgust; and lastly, semi-occasionally, of the sutler, Mr. Cann. The surgeon, old Doctor Peacack, ran a separate mess, consisting of himself, the assistant surgeon, Dr. Launcelot Cutts, and hospital steward Spatcheloe.

The drum-major, Musician Tappit, having refused to be mustered in, and the War Department having presently refused to let us have any musicians at all, used to appear only on parades, gorgeous in his gray uniform and ornamental red stomach, disappearing with exemplary regularity, and diving into his upholsterer's cap and baize apron upon the slightest prospect of work or danger. I don't think it was ever my bad fortune to eat more unpleasant meals than those eaten at our mess table. The officers, excepting the major, but specially including the chaplain, used to insist on being helped first and excessively to everything; also on inviting their friends to dine on our plates, there being no extra ones; also on giving us the broken chairs, one in particular, that was cracked in a romp between the chaplain and the adjutant, and that pinched you when you sat on it. Then Lieutenant Harch was always playing adjutant at the dinner table, settling discussions ex cathedra in a sharp tone, and ordering his companions to help him to dishes, as thus: 'Sergeant-Major, p'tatoes!' 'Oates, beef!' 'Hurry up with those beans!' To be monosyllabic, rude to his superiors and equals, and overbearing to his inferiors in rank, this fledgling soldier—our comrade of a few days since, and presently the subordinate of most of us, through standing still while we went ahead—used to think the perfection and essence of the military system. And then that smug-faced, smooth-tongued, dirty-looking chaplain, with his second-hand shirt collars and slopshop morality—was it whiskey or brandy that his breath smelt oftenest of? He was the first chaplain I had seen, and I confess his rank breath, dirty linen, and ranker and dirtier hypocrisy, gave me a disgust toward his order that it took long months and many good men to obliterate.

The best part of May we spent in drilling and idling and grumbling, and some of us, not so hard worked as Sergeant-Major Jenkins, in the true military style of conviviality, usually terminating in an abrupt entry in the orderly book, opposite the name of the follower of Bacchus, 'Drunk; two extra tours guard duty;' or 'Drunk again; four extra tours knapsack drill.' Now, the knapsack drill, as practised by well-informed and duty-loving sergeants of the guard, simply consists in requiring the delinquent to shoulder, say, for two hours in every six, a knapsack filled with stones, blankets, or what not, until it weighs twenty, thirty, or perhaps forty pounds, according to the nature of the case and the officer who orders the punishment.

Quartermaster-Sergeant Oates and I went up, one afternoon, with Lieutenant Smallweed, Corporal Bledsoe of our old company, and two or three others, to see the famous 'Seventh' drill, out at Camp Cameron, which I suppose nearly everybody knows is situated about a mile and a half north of the President's house, on the 14th-street road, and just opposite to a one-horse affair that used to call itself 'Columbian College,' but which, after passing through a course of weak semi-religio-secessionism, gradually dried up, leaving its skin to the surgeon-general for a hospital. The afternoon we selected to visit Camp Cameron turned out to be an extra occasion. General Thomas, the adjutant-general of the army, was to present a stand of colors to the 'Seventh' on behalf of Mr. Secretary Cameron, on behalf of some ladies, I think. Ladies! I admire you very much, for the very many things wherein you are most admirable, but why, oh! why, in the name of the immortals, will you, why will you present flags? Don't do it any more, please. They are always packed up in a box and left somewhere almost as soon as your handkerchiefs have ceased waving, your soprano hurrahs ceased ringing; or else they are given to some pet officer for a coverlet. They cost a great deal of money; they oblige the poor soldiers to endure a mort of flatulent oratory at a parade rest; and they force the poor colonel, in a great perspiration, to stumble through a few feeble, ineffectual, and disjointed words of thanks, which he committed to memory last night from the original, written for him by the adjutant or the young regimental poet, but of which he has forgotten almost every other word. The wise old Trojan says, speaking of the horse (I get my quotations from the newspapers, you may be sure):

'Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes;'

implying that he is opposed to going into that speculation in wooden horseflesh, because he fears the Greeks, even when they bring gifts. Just so, I fear the ladies, especially when they present flags. Remember Punch's advice to young persons about to be married? 'Don't!'

The Seventh, after going through the usual evening parade, and a few simple man[oe]uvres, formed square, facing inward, with General Thomas and the oil-skin sausage that contained the new colors, and all the regimental officers, in the centre. General Thomas's feeble pipes sounded faintly enough for about half an hour, during which time no man in the ranks heard more than a dozen words. Then Colonel Lefferts responded in a few inaudible, but no doubt very appropriate remarks. Then 'the boys,' seeing that the time had come, cheered lustily, after the hypothetical manner of the rocket. But there was one thing we did hear, standing on tiptoe, and straining every ear. The Seventh was to go somewhere. The crisis of the war had come. The Seventh was going to shoot at it. Their thirty days were almost out; but they were going to be shot at, just like any of us three-months men.

To leave their canned fruits, and milk, and fresh eggs, and board floors, and a stroll on the avenue in the afternoon, and go where glory waited for them! Happy, happy gray-breasts! We wandered enviously round the excited camp, and talked with our friends. Many were the rumors, appalling to us in those days, when we were yet unused to camp 'chin.' The regiment was to go to Harper's Ferry. Johnston was there. They would hang him if they took him. They were to march straight to Richmond, One man of the 'Engineer Company' was going to resign, he said, because his company had to remain to guard the camp. They were to take two days' rations and forty rounds of cartridges per man—ball cartridges. Forty rounds of ball cartridges and two days' work! Surely, we thought, the days of the rebellion are numbered. And then, chewing the bitter cud of the reflection that the war would almost certainly be ended before we got a chance at the enemy, we wandered sadly back to our quarters, Smallweed growling horribly all the way. Our 'headquarters' we find in a great state of excitement. We find the orderly and Major Heavysterne discussing the prospects of the rebels being able to hold out a month, and Color-Sergeant Hepp and the adjutant both trying to decide the dispute. Hepp thinks they can't do without leather, and the adjutant thinks the want of salt must fetch them in a few weeks. Thinks? Decides! Whatever may be doubtful, this is certain. Everybody seems strangely excited. We tell them our news. 'Tell us some'n do'n know!' rasps Lieutenant Harch; 'our b'ttalion's goin', too; get ready, both of, quick! Smallweed, where in the h— have you been? I've had to do all your work.' We were to go at nine o'clock at night. It was then eight. Whither? No one knew. The chaplain comes in, with symptoms of erysipelas in his nose, and a villanous breath, to tell us, while we—the quartermaster-sergeant and I—are packing our knapsacks and leaving lines of farewell for those at home and at other people's homes, that the major has imparted to him in confidence the awful secret that we are bound for Mount Vernon, to remove the bones of Washington. This gives us something terrible to think of as we march down, in quick time (a suggestion of that adjutant, I know), to the Long Bridge, and during the long delay there, spent by commanding officers in pottering about and gesticulating. By commanding officers? There is one there who does not potter, standing erect—that one with the little point of fire between his fingers that marks the never-quenched cigarette—talking to Major Heavysterne in low and earnest tones, but perfectly cool and clear the while. That is our splendid Colonel Diamond, as brave and good a soldier as ever drew sword, as noble and true a Christian as ever endured persecution and showed patience. They are discussing a plan for crossing the river in boats, landing at a causeway where the Alexandria road crosses Four Mile Run, and so cutting off the impudent picket of the enemy's cavalry that holds post at the Virginia end of the Long Bridge. The battalion commanders are evidently dazzled by the brilliancy of the moonlight and the colonel's scheme, for it soon becomes apparent that they haven't the pluck and dash necessary to render such an operation successful. Even we young soldiers, intent upon the awful idea of resurrecting Washington's bones, and little dreaming then of becoming the pioneers of the great invasion, could see the hitch. Presently the major got a definite order, and beckoning to us of the battalion staff, began to cross the bridge. Dusky bodies of troops, their arms glistening in the moonlight, had been silently gliding past us while the discussion progressed. Most of them seemed to have halted on the bridge, we found as we passed on, and to have squatted down in the shade of the parapet, gassing, smoking, or napping. It was nearly midnight. We had got to the middle of the causeway, and found ourselves alone, bathed in silence and moonlight and wonder, when up dashed a horseman from the direction of the Virginia side. He stopped, and peered at us over his horse's neck. 'O'Malley, is that you?' says the major, seeing it is an Irish officer belonging to Colonel Diamond's staff. 'Yes,' says the captain, 'and who the devil are you?' 'Major Heavysterne. Won't you please ride back and send my battalion forward? You'll find the boys standing on the draw. Cap'n Bopp, of the Fisler Guards, is the senior officer, I believe.' But the Irishman was off, with an oath at the major's stupidity in forgetting to order his men forward. Presently the battalion came creeping up, silently enough, I thought, but the adjutant made the excuse of a casual 'ouch' from a man on whose heels Hrsthzschnoffski had casually trodden, to shriek out his favorite 'Stop 'at talken'!' 'Do you command this battalion?' asks Captain Pipes, sternly; and straightway there would have been a dire altercation, but for the major's gentle interference. The bridge began to sway and roar under our steps. We were on the draw. Clinging to the theory of Washington's bones, I peered over the draw, in the hope of seeing a steamer; there was nothing there but the sop and swish of the tide. Perhaps we were not going to Mount Vernon at all! 'Halt! Who are these sleeping beauties on the draw? Ah! these are the Bulgers. 'Say, Bulger,' I ask of one of them, 'who's ahead of you?' 'A'n't nobody,' he replied indignantly, as who should say, Who can be ahead of the invincible Bulger Guards. Nobody! Here was great news. ''Orr'd H'RCH!' drones the major, in low tones; and 'Owa'' H'MP,' sharply, ''Orrrr 'RRRCH,' gruffly, repeat the captains. On we go, breaking step to save the bridge, surprise and fluttering in our hearts. A'n't nobody ahead! Now we are on the hard dirt, the sacred soil, of the pewter State, mother of Presidents, the birthplace of Washington, the feeding ground of hams, but otherwise the very nursery and hive of worthlessness, humbug, sham, and superstition. Virginia, that might have been the first, and proudest, and most enlightened State in the Union, that is the last and most besodden State in or half out of it—But while my apostrophe runs on, the bit between its teeth, the head of our little column muffles its tread on the sacred soil itself, dirtying its boots in the sacred mud, the roar of the bridge ceases, the last files and the sergeant-major run after them to close up, in obedience to the sharp mandate of the major, and the invasion is begun. No man spoke a word; no sound was audible save the distant hum and cracking of the city, the cry of a thousand frogs, and the muffled tramp of our advancing footsteps. I thought the enemy, if any were near, must surely hear the cartridges rattle in my cartridge box as we double-quicked to close up, and I put my hand behind me to stop the clatter. If any enemy were near, indeed! There seemed an enemy behind every bush, a rebel in every corner of the worm fence. I am in the rear of the column, I thought, and my heart went thump, bump, and my great central nervous ganglion ached amain. 'Sergeant-major,' whispers Major Heavysterne; 'Sergeant-major,' barks the adjutant. 'Fall out four files and keep off to the right, and about fifty paces in advance of the battalion, and examine the ground thoroughly. Report any signs of the enemy.' The ache grew bigger, and I perspired terribly as I inquired, in tones whose tremor I hoped would be mistaken for ardor, whether any one was ahead of us. 'No one except the enemy,' laughed the major, quietly. No one except the enemy! Fifty paces from any one except the enemy, by my legs, each pace a yard! 'The ground to the right is all water, and about seven feet deep,' I reported joyfully, having ascertained the fact. 'Then go fifty yards ahead, as far to the right as you can get, and keep out of sight,' were our new orders. I thought we would keep out of sight well enough! We were going up hill—up the hill on which Fort Runyon now stands. Here is a shanty. What if it should be full of the enemy, and we but four poor frightened men, with our battalion hidden by the turn in the road. Mechanically I cocked my rifle and opened the door, and strained my eyes into the darkness. Nobody. I let down the hammer again.

Fear had oozed out of my fingers' ends, in lifting the latch, just as valor did from those of Bob Acres, and Jenkins was himself again. We jobbed our bayonets under the lager-beer counter, to provide for the case of any lurking foe in that quarter. Just here the road forked. Sending two of us to the right, the rest kept on the Alexandria. 'Look there,' chatters Todd second between his teeth, wafting in my face a mingled odor of fear and gin cocktails. 'Where?' 'Why there! on top of the hill—a horse.' 'Is that a horse?' 'Yes.' 'A man on him, too!' 'Two of 'em!' Click, click, click, from our locks. We creep on and up stealthily. We are scarcely thirty yards distant from the two horsemen, when a man darts out from the left-hand side of the road behind us—two men—three! We are surrounded. Todd second would have fired, but I held him back. 'Who's that?' I whispered; 'speak quick, or I fire!' 'Can't you see, you d—d fool,' barks out our surly adjutant, who, unknown to us, had been leading a similar scout on the opposite side of the road. Click, click, from up the hill. The enemy are going to shoot. An awful moment. We steady our rifles and our nerves; all trace of fear is gone; nothing remains but eagerness for the conflict that seems so near, and with a bound, without waiting for orders, we move quickly up the hill. Lieutenant Harch moves his men out into the road, where the bright moonlight betrays, perhaps multiplies, their number; the horsemen spring to their saddles, and are off at a clattering gallop, to alarm Alexandria. 'Don't shoot!' shrieks the adjutant; our rifles waver; the hill hides the flying picket; the chance is lost; presently all Alexandria will be awake, and a beautiful surprise frustrated. As we peer into the moonlit distance from the top of the hill now almost spaded away and trimmed up into Fort Runyon, feeling the solemnity of the occasion impressed upon us with dramatic force by all the surroundings—by our loneliness, by our character as the harbingers of the advance of the armies of American freedom and American nationality, and by the recent flight of the first squad of the enemy whom we had met with hostile purpose: as we dreamily drink in all these and many other vague ideas, up comes our battalion, and occupies the hill, the major sending off a company to hold the bridge where the road crosses the canal and forks to Arlington and Fairfax Court House. Presently there pass by us regiments from Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and it may be from other States which I forget. Some turn off to the right, to settle on the hill which is now scooped into Fort Albany; others press forward to Alexandria, the bells of which town very soon begin to ring a frightened peal of alarm and confusion. We move out a half mile farther and halt, our night's work being over, and other things in store; the moonlight wanes, and grows insensibly into a chilly daylight, presently reddened by the sun of to-morrow. All this seems to us to have occupied scarcely half an hour, but it is broad day again for certain, and surely we are a mortally tired and aching battalion as we march back listless, hot, sleepy, and gastric, over the Long Bridge, to our armory, there to fall asleep over breakfast in sheer exhaustion, and to spend the remainder of the day in a dry, hard series of naps, not the least refreshing—such as leave you the impression of having slept in hot sand. As we—the quartermaster-sergeant and I—stroll down the avenue that afternoon according to our wont, we hear the news of Ellsworth's death, of the occupation of Alexandria by our forces, and of the flight of the enemy's handful of silly, braggadocio Virginia militia, hastily collected to brag and drink the town safe from the pollution of the vile Yankee's invading foot. Ah! V'ginia; as thou art easily pleased to sing of thy sister-in-law, Ma'yland,

'The taaeirahnt's foot is awn thai sho','

and will be likely to remain thar a right tollable peert length of time, I expect.

Nothing but bridge guarding in the festering swamp on the Virginia side of the Potomac, varied by multiplying details for extra duty as clerks in all imaginable offices, falls to our lot until the 10th of June, when, after a number of rumors, and many dark forebodings as to what the District men would do, we are finally ordered into the field as a part of the Chickfield expedition, originally designed for the capture of Dregsville, I believe; an object which may have been slightly interfered with by its detailed announcement about a week beforehand in one of the Philadelphia papers. The expedition consisted of the First, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Battalions of District of Columbia Volunteers, the First New Hampshire, the Ninth New York, and the Seventeenth Pennsylvania, which would call itself the First. I think four other regiments from the same State did the same thing, it being a cardinal principle with them, perhaps, that each regiment was to claim two different names and three different numbers, and that at least four other regiments were fiercely to dispute with it each name and each number: for example, there was the

First Pennsylvania Artillery, } calling itself the... } } First Pennsylvania Militia, Infantry, } First calling itself the... } Pennsylvania } Regiment. First Pennsylvania Volunteers, Infantry,} calling itself the... } } First Pennsylvania Volunteers, Infantry,} calling itself, and called by } the Governor, the... }

And for another example there was a regiment which called itself the 'Swishtail Carbines,' after a beastly ornament in the hats of its men; the 'Shine Musketoons,' after their lieutenant-colonel; the '289th Pennsylvania Volunteers,' after the State series of numbers, which began with 280 or thereabout; and the 'First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Reserve Corps, Breech-Loading Carbineers,' and doubtless by other names, though I don't remember them.

Besides this tremendous host—we had never seen so large a force together, and thought it the most invincible of armadas—we had a battery of artillery, composed of three or four different kinds of guns, as the fashion was in the good old days of our company posts, wherefrom we were just emerging in a chrysalis state, and also two companies of cavalry; one a real live company of regulars, commanded by Captain Cautle, of the Third Dragoons, the other led by Captain (he called himself major, and his company a battalion) Cutts, formerly and since an enterprising member of the firm of Cutts & Dunn, who made my uniform, and who will make your clothes, if you wish, my dear reader, and charge you rather less than three times their value, after the manner of Washington tailors; which charge will appear especially moderate when you remember that the clothes will almost fit, and won't wear out so very soon after all, as is the way with Washington clothes. Indeed, as the tactics say, 'this remark is general for all the deployments;' and the same may as well be said of all bills and things made in the great city of sheds, contractors, politicians, dust, and unfinished buildings. But is this a description of Washington? We are at Chickfield, where the loyal Maryland farmers come to us to protect their loyalty, to charge a dollar a panel for old worm fences thrown down by 'the boys,' to sell forage at double prices, to reclaim runaway negroes, and to assure us of the impossibility of subjugating the South. And here, in the peaceful village of Chickfield, the object of our expedition having been happily frustrated by the newspapers, we enjoy our ease for a week or ten days, and our first camp experiences. Oh! that first experience of unboxing tents smelling loudly as of candle grease, of finding the right poles, of vainly endeavoring to pitch them straight, of hot and excited officers rushing hither and thither in a flurry, trying to instruct the different squads in their work, and straightway frustrated by the thick heads, or worse, by the inevitable suggestions of those remarkably intelligent corporals, who seem to consider themselves as having a special mission direct from heaven to know everything except how to do what they are bid. And oh! the first camp cookery, when everything is overdone except what is underdone; when the soup is water, and the coffee grounds, and the tea (we had tea in the three-months!) senna! And after a day of worry, hurry, confusion, and awful cooking, the first rough sleep, with a root running across your ribs, and a sizable gravel indenting the small of your back! How the teamsters talk all night, and the sentinels call wildly, incessantly, for the corporal of the guard! How you dream of being hung on a wire, as if to dry, with your head on a jagged rock; of an army of sentinels pacing your breast, ceaselessly engaged in coming to an 'order arms;' of millions of ants crawling over and through you; of having your legs suddenly thrust into an icehouse, and a brush fire built under your head; of black darkness, in which you fall down, down, down, down—faster, faster, faster!—till crash! you bump against something, and split wide open with a thundering roar, which gradually expands into the sound of a bugle as you awake to renewed misery, and are, as Mr. Sawin says, 'once more routed out of bed by that derned reveille.'

Presently there comes an order for us to march to Billsburg, and there join the army of the Musconetcong, commanded by that dauntless hero, Major-General Robert Balkinsop. Of course we march in a hurry, as much as possible by night, 'without baggage,' as the orders say—meaning with only two wagons to a company. The other battalions of D.C. Vols. stay behind and loaf back to Washington, there to be mislaid by Major-General Blankhed, who is so preoccupied with issuing and affixing his sign manual to passes for milk, eggs, and secessionists, to cross and recross Long Bridge, that the war must wait for him or go ahead without him. We go on to glory, as we suppose (deluded three-months!), and march excitedly, with all our legs, fearing we shall be too late. As we near Billsburg, we can hear the since familiar tick—tack, pip—pop—pop of a rattling skirmish, and the vroom—vroom of volley firing. Anxiously, eagerly—no need for the colonel to cry 'Step out lively!'—we press forward, with all the ardor of recruits. Recruits! Hadn't we been a month in service, and been through one great invasion already? There they are! See the smoke? Where? On top of that hill! Halt! Our battalion deploys as skirmishers with a useless cheer. We close up. We load with ball cartridge, and most of us, on our individual responsibility, fix bayonets; it looks so determined—nothing like the cold steel, we think. Slowly, resolutely, we advance. An aid comes galloping back. We crowd round him. The colonel looks disgustedly handsome. What does he say? Pshaw! It's only the 284th Pennsylvania, part of General Balkinsop's body guard, discharging muskets after rain. Only three soldiers, a negro, a couple of mules, and an old woman, have been hurt so far, and 'the boys' will be through in an hour or so more!

Well, as we were sent for in a hurry, of course we waited a week. How General Balkinsop man[oe]uvred the great army of the Musconetcong; what fatherly, nay, grandmotherly care he took to keep us out of danger; how cautiously he spread, his nets for the enemy, and how rapidly he left them miles behind; how we killed nothing but chickens, wounded nothing but our own silly pride, and captured nothing but green apples and roasting ears; all this, and more, let history tell. The poor old general kept us safe, at all events; and if the enemy, with half our numbers, was left unharmed, and allowed quietly and leisurely to move off and swell his force elsewhere, and so whip us in detail, what of it? Didn't we save our wagon train? And isn't that, as everyone knows, the highest result of strategy?

And then came the battle (the battle!) of Bull Run, with its first glowing, crowing accounts of victory, and its later story of humiliation and shame! Ah! let me shut up the page! My heart grows sick over this mangy, scrofulous period of our national disease; give me air!

Luckily for me, I had a raging fever just after that awful 21st of July, 1861. When I awoke from my delirium, and had got as far as tea, toast, and the door of the hospital, they told me of the great uprising of the people, of General McClellan's appointment to command the Army of the Potomac, of how 'our boys' had reenlisted for the war, and of how I, no longer Sergeant-Major William Jenkins, was to be adjutant of the regiment, and might now take off my chevrons, and put on my SHOULDER STRAPS.

She sent them to me in a letter. Wait a month, and I'll tell you.



THE FIRST FANATIC.

When Noah hewed the timber Wherewith to build the ark, Outside the woods one shouted— 'That wild fanatic!—hark!'

And when he drew the beams And laid them on the plain, One said,'He has no balance, He surely is insane.'

And when he raised the frame, One clear, sunshiny day, 'Poor fool of one idea,' A smiling man did say.

When he foretold the flood, And stood repentance teaching, They sneered, 'You radical, We'll hear no ultra preaching!'

And when he drove the beasts and birds Into the ark one morn, They shouted, 'Odd enthusiast!' And laughed with ringing scorn.

When he and all his house went in, They gazed, and said, 'Erratic!' 'A pleasant voyage to you, Noah! You canting, queer fanatic!'



SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY.

V.—THE ADIRONDACS.

This interesting mountain region embraces the triangular plateau lying between Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario and the Mohawk. The name was formerly restricted to the central group containing the highest peaks, but is now applied to the various ranges traversing the northeastern counties of the State of New York. The loftiest points are found in the County of Essex and the neighboring corners of Franklin; but the surfaces of Clinton, St. Lawrence, Herkimer, Hamilton, Warren, and Washington are all diversified by the various branches of the same mountain system. The principal ranges have a general northeasterly and southwesterly direction, and are about six in number. They run nearly parallel with one another, and with the watercourses flowing into Lake Champlain, namely, Lake George and Putnam's Creek, the Boquet, Au Sable, and Saranac Rivers. Recent surveys made by, or under the direction of, Professor A. Guyot, will doubtless furnish us with more accurate information regarding ranges and measurements of heights than any we can now refer to. So far as we have been able to learn from the best authorities within our reach,[2] the situation and names of the most prominent ranges are as follows: The most southerly is that known as the Palmertown or Luzerne Mountains, and embraces the highlands of Lake George, terminating at Mount Defiance, on Lake Champlain. This range has also been called Black Mountain range and Tongue Mountains. The second range, the Kayaderosseras, ends in the high cliff overlooking Bulwagga Bay. The third, or Schroon range, terminates on Lake Champlain in the high promontory of Split Rock. It borders Schroon Lake, and its highest peak is Mount Pharaoh, nearly 4,000 feet above tidewater. The fourth, or Boquet range, finds its terminus at Perou Bay, and contains Dix Peak (5,200 feet), Nipple Top (4,900 feet), Raven Hill, and Mount Discovery. The fifth or Adirondac range (known also as Clinton or Au Sable) meets Lake Champlain in the rocks of Trembleau Point, and embraces the highest peaks of the system, namely, Mount Tahawus (Marcy), 5,379 feet, and Mounts Mc-Intire, McMartin, and San-da-no-na, all above 5,000 feet in elevation. The series nest succeeding on the northwest, does not consist of a single distinguishable range, but of a continuation of groups which may be considered as a sixth range, under the name of Chateaugay or Au Sable. Its highest points are Mount Seward (5,100 feet), and Whiteface, nearly 5,000 feet in height. We have also seen noticed as distinguishable a ridge still exterior to the last mentioned, as Chateaugay, i.e., the range of the St. Lawrence.

[Footnote 2: NEW YORK SATE GAZETTEER.]

The above-named ranges are not always clearly defined, as cross spurs or single mountains sometimes occupy the entire space between two ridges, reducing the customary valley to a mere ravine. The usual uncertainty and redundancy of nomenclature common to mountain regions, adds to the difficulty of obtaining or conveying clear ideas of the local distribution of elevation and depression. On the northern slope, the three rivers, Boquet, Au Sable (with two branches, East and West), and Saranac, furnish to the traveller excellent guides for the arrangement of his conceptions, regarding the general face of the country. To the south, the same office is performed by the various branching headwaters of the Hudson.

These mountains are granitic, and the river bottoms have a light, sandy soil. The Au Sable well deserves its name, not only from the bar at its mouth, but also from the sand fields through which it chiefly flows. Steep, bare peaks, wild ravines, and stupendous precipices characterize the loftier ranges. The waterfalls are numerous and beautiful, and the lakes lovely beyond description. More than one hundred in number, they cluster round the higher groups of peaks, strings of glittering gems about the stately forms of these proud, dark-browed, Indian beauties—mirrors wherein they may gaze upon the softened outlines of their haughty heads, their wind-tossed raiment of spruce fir, pines, and birch.

In the lowest valleys the oak and chestnut are abundant, but as we leave the shores of Lake Champlain and ascend toward the west, the beech and basswood, butternut, elm, ash, and maple, hemlock and arbor vitae, tamarack, white, black, and yellow pines, white and black birch, gradually disappear, until finally the forest growth of the higher portions of the loftier summits is composed almost exclusively of the various species of spruce or fir. The tamarack sometimes covers vast plains, and, with the long moss waving from its sombre branches, looks melancholy enough to be fancied a mourner over the ring of the axe felling noble pines, the crack of the rifle threatening extermination to the deer once so numerous, or the cautious tread of the fisherman under whose wasteful rapacity the trout are gradually disappearing. We have reason to be thankful that all are not yet gone—that some splendid specimens are left to tell the glorious tale of the primeval forest, that on the more secluded lake shores an occasional deer may yet be seen coming down to drink, and that in the shadier pools the wary and sagacious prince of fishes still disports himself and cleaves the crystal water with his jewelled wedge.

Berries of all sorts spring up on the cleared spots; the wide-spreading juniper, with its great prickly disks, covers the barer slopes; the willow herb, wild rose, clematis, violet, golden rod, aster, immortelle, arbutus, harebell, orchis, linnaea borealis, mitchella, dalibarda, wintergreen, ferns innumerable, and four species of running pine, all in due season, deck the waysides and forest depths.

The climate is intensely cold in winter, and in the summer cool upon the heights, but in the narrow sandy valleys the long days of June, July, and August are sometimes uncomfortably hot. The nights, however, are ordinarily cool. Going west through the middle of the region, from Westport to Saranac, a difference of several weeks in the progress of vegetation is perceptible. Long after the linnaea had ceased to bloom at Elizabethtown, we found its tender, fragrant, pink bells flushing a wooded bank near Lake Placid. Good grass grows upon the hillsides, and in the valleys are found excellent potatoes, oats, peas, beans, and buckwheat. The corn is small, but seems prolific, and occasional fields of flax, rye, barley, and even wheat, present a flourishing appearance. Lumber, charcoal, and iron ore of an excellent quality are, however, the present staples of this mountain region. Bears and panthers are found in some secluded localities, and the farmer still dreads the latter for his sheep. The wolves are said to kill more deer than the hunters. The otter and beaver are found among the watercourses, and the mink or sable is still the prey of the trapper. The horses are ordinarily of a small breed, but very strong and enduring.

The men are chiefly of the Vermont type, most of the original settlers having come from the neighboring State. The school house, court house, church, and town hall are hence regarded as among the necessary elements of life to the well-ordered citizen. Honest dealing, thrift, and cleanliness are the rule, and the farm houses are comfortable and well cared for. The men look intelligent, and the women are handsome, although, indeed, too many pale or sallow complexions give evidence of sedentary habits, and of the almost universal use of saleratus and hot bread [??]. The families of many farmers far in among the mountains rarely taste fresh meat, but subsist chiefly upon salt pork, fish, fresh or salted, as the season will permit, potatoes, wheat, rye, and Indian meal, with berries, dried apples, perhaps a few garden vegetables, plenty of good milk, and excellent butter. Eggs, chickens, and veal are luxuries occasionally to be enjoyed, and, should one of the family be a good shot, venison and partridge may appear upon the bill of fare. Bright flowers ornament the gardens, and gay creepers embower doors and windows. Along the more secluded roads are the log cabins of the charcoal burners, said cabins containing, if apparently nothing else, two or three healthy, chubby, pretty children, and a substantial cooking stove, of elaborate pattern, recently patented by some enterprising compatriot.

Among the most remarkable features of these mountains are the 'Passes,' answering to Gaps, Notches, and Cloves in other parts of the Union. They afford means for excellent roads from end to end of the mountain region, and are, in addition, eminently picturesque. The two most noteworthy are the Indian and Wilmington Passes; the first too rugged for the present to admit of a road; and the latter containing the beautiful Wilmington Fall. Many of the mountains have been burned over, and the bare, gaunt-limbed timber, and contorted folds of gray, glittering rock, afford a spectral contrast to the gentler contours of hills still clad in their natural verdure, bright or dark as deciduous or evergreen trees preponderate. The variety of form is endless; long ridges, high peaks, sharp or blunt, sudden clefts, great bare slides, flowing curves, convex or concave, serrated slopes crowned with dark spruce or jagged as the naked vertebrae of some enormous antediluvian monster, stimulate the curiosity and excite the imagination of the beholder. There is an essential difference in the character of the views obtained, whether looking from the south, or the east. In the former case, the eye, following the axes of the ranges, sees the mountains as a cross ridge of elevated peaks; and in the latter, where the sight strikes the ranges perpendicularly to their axes, one, or, at most, two ridges are all that can be seen from any single point.

This region may be approached from Lake Champlain by way of Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Port Henry, Westport, and Port Kent, the two latter places being the nearer to the higher peaks; or from the lake country in Hamilton County, by way of Racket and Long Lakes.

* * * * *

The night boat for Albany, June 27th, 1864, was crowded with passengers fleeing from pavements, summer heats, and stifling city air, to green fields, cool shadows of wooded glens, or life-giving breezes from mountain heights. True, there were some who, like Aunt Sarah Grundy, bitterly lamented the ample rooms and choice fare of their own establishments, and whose idea of a 'summer in the country' was limited to a couple of months at Saratoga or Newport, with a fresh toilette for each succeeding day; but even these knew that there were at both places green trees, limpid waters, whether of lake or ocean, and a wide horizon wherein to see sunsets, moonrises, and starlight. Aunt Sarah went to Newport; she found there fewer of such persons as she was pleased to designate as 'rabble,' and the soft, warm fogs were exactly the summer atmosphere for a complexion too delicate to be exposed to the fervent blaze of a July sun.

But the majority were not of Aunt Sarah's stamp. They were men, wearied with nine months' steady work, eager for country sports, for the freedom of God's own workhouse, where labor and bad air and cramped positions need not be synonymous; or women, glad to escape the routine of housekeeping, the daily contest with Bridget or Katrine, with Jean, Williams, or Priscilla. There were young girls, with round hats and thick boots, anxious to substitute grassy lanes or rocky hillsides for the flagstones of avenues; lads, to whom climbing of fruit trees and rowing boats were pleasant reminiscences of some foregone year; and finally, children, who longed for change, and whose little frames needed all the oxygen and exercise their anxious parents could procure for them.

Such, doubtless, was a large portion of the precious freight of our 'floating palace,' whose magnificence proved to us rather of the Dead-Sea-apple sort, as we had arrived upon the scene of action too late to procure comfortable quarters for the night, and, in addition, soon after daybreak found ourselves aground within sight of Albany, and with no prospect of release until after the departure of the train for Whitehall. At a few moments past seven, we heard the final whistle, and knew that our journey's end was now postponed some four and twenty hours. We afterward learned that by taking the boat to Troy we would have run less risk of delay, as the Whitehall and Rutland train usually awaits the arrival of said boat. At nine o'clock we reached Albany, and one of our number spent a dreary day, battling with headache and the ennui of a little four year old, who could extract no amusement from the unsuggestive walls of a hotel parlor. About five in the afternoon we left for Whitehall, where we purposed passing the night. This movement did not one whit expedite the completion of our journey, but offered a change of place, and an additional hour of rest in the morning, as the lake-boat train from Whitehall was the same that left Albany shortly after seven.

We found Whitehall a homely little town, in a picturesque situation, on the side of a steep hill, past which winds the canal, and under which thundered the train that on the following morning bore us to the lake, where the pleasant steamboat 'United States' awaited her daily cargo. The upper portion of Lake Champlain is very narrow, and the channel devious; the shores are sometimes marshy, sometimes rocky, and the bordering hills have softly swelling outlines. Our day was hazy, and the Green Mountains of Vermont seemed floating in some species of celestial atmosphere suddenly descended upon that fair State. We passed the Narrows (a singular, rocky cleft, through which flows the lake), and soon after came to Ticonderoga, with its ruined fort and environing hills.

After leaving Crown Point, the lake becomes much wider, and at Port Henry spreads out into a noble expanse of water. Behind Port Henry, the Adirondac peaks already begin to form a towering background. Westport, however, has a still more beautiful situation. The lake there is very broad, the sloping shores are wooded, the highest peaks of the Green Mountains are visible to the east and northeast, and the Adirondacs rise, tier after tier, toward the west.

On the boat were wounded soldiers going to their homes. Poor fellows! They had left their ploughs and their native hills, to find wounds and fevers in Virginia. When one looked upon the tranquil lake and halo-crowned mountains, it seemed almost impossible that the passions of evil men should have power to draw even that placid region into the vortex, and hurl back its denizens scarred and scathed, to suffer amid its beauty. And yet were these men the very marrow and kernel of the landscape, the defenders of the soil, the patriots who were willing to give themselves that their country might remain one and undivided, that the 'home of the brave' might indeed be the 'land of the free.'

At Westport we left the boat, and found the stage to Elizabethtown, a buckboard, already crowded with passengers. An inn close at hand furnished us the only covered wagon we chanced to see during our ten weeks' sojourn among the Adirondacs. The drive to Elizabethtown (eight miles) was hot and dusty, for we faced the western sun, and the long summer drought was just then commencing to make itself felt. Nevertheless, there was beauty enough by the wayside to make one forget such minor physical annoyances. As the road rose over the first hills, the views back, over the lake and toward those hazy, dreamy-looking Vermont mountains, seemed a leaf from some ancient romance, wherein faultless knights errant sought peerless lady loves with golden locks flowing to their tiny feet, and the dragons were all on the outside, dwellers in dark caverns and noisome dens. In our day, I fear, we have not improved the matter, for the dark caverns seem to have passed within, and the dragons have been adopted as familiars.

By and by, on some arid spots, appeared the low, spreading juniper, which we had previously known only as the garden pet of an enthusiastic tree fancier. And thus, perhaps, the virtues which here we cultivate by unceasing care and watchfulness, will, when we are translated to some wider sphere, nearer to the Creator of all, burst upon us as simple, natural gifts to the higher and freer intelligences native to that sphere.

Raven Hill is the highest point between Westport and Elizabethtown. It is a beautifully formed conical hill, rising some twenty-one hundred feet above the sea level, and contributing the cliffs on the northern side of the 'Pass,' through which leads the road into the valley of the Boquet, that vale known formerly as the 'The Pleasant Valley,' in which was Betseytown, now dignified into Elizabethtown. Does an increase in civilization and refinement indeed destroy familiarity, render us more strange one to another, even, through much complexity, to our own selves? The southern side of the Pass is formed by the slope of the 'Green Mountain,' once so called from its beautiful verdure, now, alas! burnt over, bristling with dead trees and bare rocks, and green only by reason of weeds, brambles, and a bushy growth of saplings. The view, descending from the summit of the Pass into the Pleasant Valley, is charming. The Boquet runs through green meadows and cultivated fields, while round it rise lofty mountains—the 'Giant of the Valley' (alias 'Great Dome' or 'Bald Peak'), being especially remarkable, with its summits, green or bare, round or peaked, glittering with white scars of ancient slides. To the west lies the Keene Pass, a steep, rocky gateway to the Au Sable River and the wonders beyond. This view of the descent into the Pleasant Valley is even more striking from a road passing over the hills some five miles south of Elizabethtown. The vale is narrower, the point of view higher, and the opposite mountains nearer and more lofty. The Giant of the Valley rises directly in the west, and Dix's Peak closes the vista to the south. On a semi-hazy afternoon, with the sunlight streaming through in broad pathways of quivering glory, it would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting scene.

There are in Elizabethtown two inns,[3] one down by the stream, a branch of the Boquet, and the other up on the 'Plain,' near the court house. The latter has decidedly the advantage in situation. Both are owned by the same landlord, and are well kept. We arrived in the midst of court week, and found every place filled with lawyers, clients, witnesses, and even, behind the bars of the brick jail, we could see the prisoners, more fortunate than their city compeers, in that they breathed pure air, and could look out upon the everlasting hills, solemn preachers of the might and the rights, as well as the mercy of their Creator.

[Footnote 3: During the past season, the Mansion House, on the Plain, was not opened until near the close Of the summer. We understand it is to be henceforth a permanent 'institution.']

From two to three miles from the Valley House is the top of Raven Hill, seemingly a watchtower on the outskirts of the citadel of the Adirondacs. The ascent is easy, and the view panoramic, embracing Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains, Burlington and Westport, the bare, craggy hills to the north, the higher ranges to the west, with the abrupt precipices of the 'Keene Pass' and the lofty 'Dome' and 'Bald Mountain,' Dix's Peak to the south, a clear lake known as 'Black Pond' among the hills toward Moriah, and at the base the Pleasant Valley with the winding Boquet River.

Near the lower hotel is Wood Mountain, about half as high as Raven Hill, and offering a view somewhat similar, although of course not so extended. The distance to the top is but little over a mile, and the pathway, although somewhat steep, is very good.

A visit to the iron mines and works at Moriah can readily be made from Elizabethtown. The distance is from twelve to fourteen miles. One of the mines is quite picturesque, being cut into the solid rock, under a roof supported by great columns of the valuable ore. The workmen, with their picks and barrows, passing to and fro, as seen from the top of the excavation, look like German pictures of tiny gnomes and elves delving for precious minerals. The yield from the ore is about eighty per cent., and of very superior quality. The return road passes down the hill, whence is the splendid view of the 'Valley' before mentioned.

A delightful excursion can also be made to 'Split Rock,' about nine miles up the valley of the Boquet. The little river there, in two separate falls, makes its way through a rocky cleft. The basins of the upper, and the singularly winding chasm of the lower fall, are especially worthy of observation. At Split Rock we first made any extensive acquaintance with a costume which threatens to be immensely popular among the Adirondacs, namely, the Bloomer, and in the agility displayed by some of its fair wearers we beheld the results likely to spring from its adoption as a mountain walking dress. Our private observation was, that moderately full, short skirts, without hoop of course, terminating a little distance above the ankle, and worn with clocked or striped woollen stockings, were more graceful than a somewhat shorter and scantier skirt, with the pantalette extending down to the foot. The former seems really a la paysanne, while the latter, in addition to some want of grace, suggests Bloomer, and the many absurdities which have been connected with that name. It is a great pity that a sensible and healthful change in walking attire should have been caricatured by its own advocates, and thus rendered too conspicuous to be agreeable to many who would otherwise have adopted it in some modified and reasonable form.

Near New Russia, about five miles from Elizabethtown, is a brook flowing among moss-covered stones and rocks, overhung by giant trees of the original forest; and just out of Elizabethtown is a glen, through which pours a pretty stream, making pleasant little cascades under the shadow of a less aged wood, and within a bordering of beautiful ferns, running pines, and bright forest blossoms. We should also not neglect to mention Cobble Hill, a bold pile of rocks, rising directly out of the plain on which a portion of the town is situated.

But we had heard of the 'Walled Rocks of the Au Sable,' and Elsie and I could not rest until our own eyes had witnessed that they were worthy of their reputation. We left Elizabethtown at half past six in the morning, our team a fast pair of ponies, belonging to our landlord. The previous days had been warm and obstinately hazy, but for that especial occasion the atmosphere cooled and cleared, and lent us some fine views back toward the Giant of the Valley and the Keene Pass. The first ten miles of road were excellent. We then crossed a little stream known as Trout Brook, a tributary of the Boquet, and, by a somewhat rough and stony way, began to ascend the high land separating the Boquet from the Au Sable. This ridge includes the 'Poke a Moonshine' Mountain, a rude pile of rocks, burnt over, and with perpendicular precipices of some three or four hundred feet, facing the road which winds along the bottom of the declivity. This cleft thus becomes another 'Pass,' and, with the huge rocks fallen at its base, offers a wild and rather dreary scene. To the north, near the foot of the mountain, are two ponds, Butternut and Auger, which wind fantastically in and out among the hills. As we descended the ridge, we looked toward Canada, far away over rolling plains and hillocks, and soon after reached the sandy stretch of the basin of the Au Sable, in the midst of which is Keeneville, twenty-two miles from Elizabethtown.

By the wayside we passed a solitary grave, the mound and headstone in a patch of corn and potatoes. Was the unknown occupant some dear one whom the dwellers in the humble cabin near by were unwilling to send far away from daily remembrance, or were they too poor to seek the shelter of the common graveyard, or, again, had the buriers of that dead one followed to the 'land of promise,' or departed to some other far country, leaving this grave to the care or rather carelessness of stranger hands, and did the snowy headstone recall no memory of past love to the laborer who ploughed his furrow near that mound, or to the children who played around it?

Ah! thus, not only in the mystical caverns of beauty, poetry, and romance are hidden the graves of buried hopes, but even amid the corn and potatoes of daily life rise the ghostly head and foot stones of aspirations dead and put away out of sight, dead in the body, in daily act, but living yet in spirit, and influencing the commonplace facts to which they have yielded the field, permeating the everyday routine with the ennobling power of lofty desires, and keeping the wayworn traveller from sinking into the slough of materialism or the quicksands of utter weariness. The man who in his youth dreamed of elevating his kind by a noble employment of the gifts of genius, may find that genius apparently useless, a hindrance even to prosperity, but he can nevertheless sow along his way seeds of beauty not lost upon the thinking beings about him, and bearing fruit perhaps in some future generation. The woman whose reveries have pictured her a Joan of Arc, leading her country's armies to victory, and finally yielding her life in the good cause, may sew for sanitary commissions, and, nursing in some hospital, dropping medicines, making soups and teas, die of some deadly fever, a willing sacrifice to her country.

Later in the day we saw the corn and potatoes growing up to the very verge of an exquisite waterfall, reckless strength and glorious poetry side by side with patient utility and humble prose. This union seemed not strange and unnatural, as did that of the solitary grave with the active labor of supplying the living with daily food, the grave the more lonely that the living with their material wants encircled it so closely.

Keeseville is a manufacturing town, situated upon the Au Sable, which here breaks through a layer of Potsdam sandstone, and presents a series of most interesting and wonderful falls and chasms. About a mile below the village is the first fall of eighty feet. The river has here a large body of water, and falls in fan shape over a rapid descent of steps. It takes a sharp turn, so that without crossing the stream, a fine view can be obtained of the dancing, glittering sheet of foam. About half a mile below is Birmingham, another manufacturing town, which has done its best, but without entire success, to destroy the beauty of the second fall, immediately below the bridge, said bridge being erected upon natural piers at the sides and in the centre of the stream.

Here begins a chasm which continues for the distance of about a mile and a half. Wonderfully grand are these Walled Rocks of the Au Sable, through, which rushes the river, pent up between literally perpendicular walls, a hundred or more feet in height, and from eleven to sixty or eighty feet apart, generally from twelve to fourteen. The water sometimes rushes smoothly and deeply below, and sometimes falls over obstructions, roaring, and tumbling, and foaming. The turns in the river are very sudden, and there are great cracks and gullies extending from top to base, pillars of rock standing alone or leaning against their companions. Occasionally, looking down one of these clefts, one sees nothing but the rock walls with a foaming, rapid rushing below. At one of these most remarkable points, a rude stairway has been constructed, by which the traveller can descend to the bottom, and, standing by the water's edge, look up to the top of this singular chasm. The walls finally lower, and the river flows out into a broad basin, whence it ere long finds its way into Lake Champlain. The banks are wooded with pines, hemlocks, spruce, arbor vitaae, beech, birch, and basswood, and the ground is covered with ferns, harebells, arbutus, linnaea, mitchella, blue lobelia, and other wild flowers.

There is an excellent inn, the Adirondac House, in Keeseville. Our attentive host told us of Professor Agassiz, and the fiery nature of his speculations regarding the probable history of the sandstone, whose strata, laid as at Trenton Falls, horizontally, layer above layer, add such interest and beauty to the stupendous walls, with their unseen, water-covered depths below, and their graceful wreaths of arbor vittae nodding and swaying above.

He also told us a tale of the war of 1812, when a bridge, known as the 'High Bridge,' crossed the Au Sable at the narrowest point, some eleven feet in width. A rumor was abroad that the British were about to march up from Plattsburg; whereupon the bridge, consisting of three beams, each nine inches wide, was stripped of its planking. A gentleman had left his home in the morning, and, ignorant of the fate of the bridge, returned quite late at night. Urging his steed forward, it refused to cross the bridge, and not until after repeated castigation would it make the attempt. The crossing was safely accomplished, and the rider suspected nothing amiss until he reached home and was asked how he had come. 'By the High Bridge,' was his reply; whereupon he was informed that the planking had been torn away, and he must have crossed upon a string piece nine inches wide, hanging some hundred feet above the surface of the water. His sensations may be imagined.

A venturesome expedition had also been essayed by our host, in the shape of a voyage down the chasm in a boat. We presume he went at high water, when the rapids would be less dangerous.

Keeseville is only four miles from Port Kent, a steamboat landing on Lake Champlain nearly opposite Burlington, and the Adirondacs may then be approached in several ways. A stage runs three times per week from Keeseville through Elizabethtown and Schroon River to Schroon Lake. North Elba and Lake Placid are some thirty-six miles distant, and may be reached by a good road through the Wilmington Pass. Saranac is somewhat farther, but readily accessible. Strong wagons and good teams are everywhere to be found, and the only recommendation we here think needful to make to the traveller is to have a good umbrella, a thick shawl or overcoat, and as little other baggage as he or she can possibly manage to find sufficient. Trunks are sadly in the way, and carpet bags or valises the best forms for stowage under seats or among feet.



LOIS PEARL BERKELEY.

The fiery July noon was blazing over the unsheltered depot platform, where everybody was in the agony of trying to compress half an hour's work into the fifteen minutes' stop of the long express train. The day was so hot that even the group of idlers which usually formed the still life of the picture was out of sight on the shady side of the buildings. Hackmen bustled noisily about; baggage masters were busier and crosser than ever; there was the usual melee of leave-takings and greetings. With the choking dust and scalding glare of the sun, the whole scene might have been an anteroom to Tophet.

From the car window, Clement Moore, brown, hollow-cheeked, and clad in army blue, looked out with weary eyes on all the confusion. Half asleep in the parching heat, visions of cool, green forest depths, and endless ripple of leaves, of the ceaseless wash and sway of salt tides, drifted across his brain, and rapt him out of the sick, comfortless present. But they vanished like a flash with the sudden cessation of motion, and the reality of his surroundings came back with a great shock. Captain George, coming in five minutes after with a glass of iced lemonade in one hand and a half dozen letters in the other, found necessary so much of cheer and comfort as lay in—

'Keep courage, Clement, old fellow, it's only a few hours longer now.'

And then he fell to reading his epistles, testifying his disapprobation of their contents presently by sundry grunts, ending finally in a 'Confound it!' given explosively and an explanation:

'Too bad, Moore! Here am I taking you home to get well in peace and quiet, and Ellen has filled the house up with half a dozen girls, more or less. Writes me to come home and be 'made a lion of;' as sensible as most women!' And the grumble subsided. He broke out again shortly: 'Louise Meller—Lois Berkeley—Susy—' the other names were drowned in the rattle of the starting train. The captain finished his letters, and Clement Moore took up his broken dreams, but this time with a new element.

Lois Berkeley. With the name came back a fortnight of the last summer—perfect bright days, far-off skies filled with drifting fleets of sunny vapor, summer green piled deep over the land, the gurgle of falling waters, the shimmer of near grain fields, deep-hued flowers glowing in the garden borders, all the prodigality of splendor that July pours over the world. And floating through these memories, scarce recognized, but giving hue and tone to them like a far-off, half-heard strain of music—a woman's presence. By some fine, subtile harmony, such as spirits recognize, all the summer glow and depth of color, as it came back to him, came only as part of an exquisite clothing and setting for a slender figure and dark face. All the dainty adaptations of nature were but an expression, in a rude, material way, for those elegances and fitnesses which surrounded her, and which were as natural to her very existence as to the birds and flowers. Only a fortnight, and in that fortnight every look and word of hers, every detail of dress, even to the texture of the garments she wore, were indelibly fixed in his memory. She was so daintily neat in everything, nothing soiled or coarse ever came near her. Careless, too, he thought, remembering how, coming through the parlor in the evening dusk, he had entangled himself in the costly crape shawl left trailing across a chair, of the gloves he had picked up fluttering with the leaves on the veranda, and the handkerchiefs always lying about. Perhaps Clement Moore was over critical in his fancies about ladies' dresses, and felt that inner perfect cleanliness and refinement worked itself out in such little matters as the material and color and fit of garments, and all the trifles of the toilet. A soiled or rumpled article of attire showed a dangerous lack of something that should make up the womanly character. He had not reduced all these unreasonable men's notions to a system by which to measure femininity. He did not even know he had them. An excessive constitutional refinement and keenness of perception made him involuntarily look for such scrupulous delicacy as belonging of course to every woman he was thrown in contact with. He had always been disappointed, at first with a feeling of half disgust with himself and others, that his dreams were so different from the reality. It drove him apart from the sex, and gained him the reputation of being shy or ill natured. After finding that disappointments repeated themselves, he accepted them as the natural order of events, let his fancies go as the beau ideal that he was to seek for through life, and became the polished, unimpressible man of society.

But this little Yankee girl had of a sudden realized his ideal. Something in their first meeting, momentary though it was, and strange according to conventional notions, struck the chord in his heart that was waiting silent for the magic fingers that knew the secret of waking it. If he had fancied that those fingers would never come, or coming, never find it, that something in his unhappy birth set him apart with that strange pain of yearning as his portion in life, and so had tried to forget or choke the want under commonplace attachments and ties, he was no worse than, nor different from, the rest of humanity. But all humanity does not meet trial as unflinchingly and honorably—does not put temptation out of its way as purely and honestly as did this undisciplined life. It is hard to take at once the path that duty orders: we linger to play with possibilities, shed some idle tears, waste life before the necessity, and go back to everyday work weakened and scarred and aching. And once or twice in a lifetime that black, hopeless never drops down, not the less grievous and inexorable because simply a moral obligation.

Well, only babies cry for the moon. Anything clearly impossible and out of our reach we very soon cease sighing for. Men do not cherish a passion which they recognize as utterly hopeless; and Clement Moore, being a man, and moreover an honorable one, put this summer idyl out of his head and heart with all despatch. 'All blundering is sin.' If he had blundered in allowing it to take such hold of his life, he expiated the sin bravely. Sympathies bud and blossom with miraculous quickness in this tropical atmosphere of affinity. He did not know till the excitement of actual presence was over, and he had time to think soberly, in the dead blank and quiet that followed, how it had grown to be a part of his very existence. But whether that part was to be just a pleasant remembrance through the dusty and hot years before him, or whether it was to go deeper and wring his heart with bitterest sense of loss, he did not quite realize. At any rate there was a risk in dwelling on it. He had no more right to be running that risk than he had to be trifling with a cup of deadliest poison; and so he shut away all the golden-winged fancies that had sprung into life with those long, fervid days. Shut them away and sealed their prison place. If they were dead, or pleading for freedom in his still moments, he never asked nor thought. He came back from his lounging summer trip with a certain new, strange drive of purpose in him never seen before. The many events that had crowded themselves into the next year did not smother his prisoners. He never saw their corpses or thought of them sneeringly, and by that sign knew they existed still. But dust and all the desolation of desertion gathered about the hidden chamber that he never recurred to now. Still he kept away from its neighborhood; at first setting a guard of persistent physical action. He was always reading or writing or going somewhere with a kind of hidden, misty aim in his most objectless journeys. After—as the necessity for such occupation wore away, and he lapsed back into the old listless ways of dreaming—his thoughts were always busy with the future; never now did he indulge in those wayward dreams of old. They had a dangerous tendency to take a certain forbidden way. Finally, this self-control became a habit, and he scarcely felt its necessity. The 'might have been' never came back more poignantly than as a vague, shadowy regret, that gave everything a slightly flat and unpalatable taste. But he did not take life any less fully, or with any abatement of whatever earnestness was in him.

Men are not patient under sickness, at least not that unquestioning, unresisting patience which most women and the lower animals show. These especially who are usually well and robust are a trial to the flesh and spirit of those about them. Moore was not the wonderful exception. His first few weeks in the hospital were not so bad; but when the actual racking pain was over, and nothing remained but that halting of the physical machinery to which we never give a thought during perfect action—the weakness hanging leaden weights to every limb, the unwonted nervousness and irritability, the apparently causeless necessity for inaction—he was anything but a resigned man. Captain George, getting his furlough and carrying him off, was blessed from the deepest heart of the ward nurses. He had a kind of feeling that this his first illness was a matter in which the universe should be concerned, and with that fretful self-exaggeration came that other unutterable yearning that attends the first proof that we are coheirs with others to the ills flesh is heir to, weary homesickness and childish desire for sympathy.

So now, weakened physically with that strange new heartsickness, paralyzing his will and giving freer scope to is feverish impatience, George's careless words had rolled away the stone from the sepulchre, and its prisoners were free. Not dead, not having lost a shade of color from their wings, they nestled and gleamed through his heart, filling the summer day with just such intangible perfect witchery as those other days had been full of. Perhaps, too, time and absence had heightened the charm. Imagination has such a way of catching up little scenes and words and looks, and, without altering one of the facts, haloing them with such a golden deceptive atmosphere, adding, day by day, faintest touches, that they grow by and by into a something wholly different. So that fortnight came back to him, an illuminated poem, along rich strains of music, making every nerve thrill with the pleasure-pain of its associations.

And by degrees, as the tide of sensation, thinned itself, lying back with closed eyes, while the long train swept on through the torrid day, separate pictures came before his inner sight. Just as keen and clear were they as when they first fell on his vision. He had not blurred nor dimmed their outlines with frequent recalling and suggestions of difference.

A narrow strip of gray sand, ribbed with the wave wash to the very foot of the reddish brown bowlders that bounded it. Standing thereon a slender woman's figure, clad in quiet gray. The face was turned toward him—a dark, unflushed face, with calm, fixed mouth, and clear gray eyes under straight-drawn brows and long, separate, lashes. Fine, lustreless, silky hair was pushed back into a net glittering with shining specks under the narrow-brimmed straw hat. A face full of a waiting look, not hopeful nor expectant, simply unsettled and watchful, yet fresh, and rounded with the dimples and childlike curves of eighteen. Whatever of yearning and unrest the years had brought lingered only about the shadowy eyes and fine mouth. There were no haggard nor worn outlines, and a baby's skin could not have been softer and finer.

At her feet crisped the shining ripples of the incoming tide. Far beyond, calm and burnished, stretched the summer sea into the dreamy distance, where the white noon sky, stricken through with intensest light and heat, dropped down a palpitating arch to meet it. And in all the dazzle of blue and white and silver and bare shining gray, she stood, a straight, slender, haughty little figure, as indefinite of color as all the rest; all but a narrow strip of scarlet at her throat, falling in a flaming line to her waist. The shimmering atmosphere seemed to pant about her; and through the high noon, over the still waters and sleeping shore, hummed the peering strains of a weird little song. She was singing softly: