A large, lank, muley or polled cow used to annoy me in this way when I was a dweller in a certain pastoral city. I more than half suspected she was turned in by some one; so one day I watched. Presently I heard the gate-latch rattle; the gate swung open, and in walked the old buffalo. On seeing me she turned and ran like a horse. I then fastened the gate on the inside and watched again. After long waiting the old cow came quickly round the corner and approached the gate. She lifted the latch with her nose. Then, as the gate did not move, she lifted it again and again. Then she gently nudged it. Then, the obtuse gate not taking the hint, she butted it gently, then harder and still harder, till it rattled again. At this juncture I emerged from my hiding place, when the old villain scampered off with great precipitation. She knew she was trespassing, and she had learned that there were usually some swift penalties attached to this pastime.

I have owned but three cows and loved but one. That was the first one, Chloe, a bright red, curly-pated, golden-skinned Devonshire cow, that an ocean steamer landed for me upon the banks of the Potomac one bright May day many clover summers ago. She came from the north, from the pastoral regions of the Catskills, to graze upon the broad commons of the national capital. I was then the fortunate and happy lessee of an old place with an acre of ground attached, almost within the shadow of the dome of the capitol. Behind a high but aged and decrepit board fence I indulged my rural and unclerical tastes. I could look up from my homely tasks and cast a potato almost in the midst of that cataract of marble steps that flows out of the north wing of the patriotic pile. Ah, when that creaking and sagging back gate closed behind me in the evening, I was happy; and when it opened for my egress thence in the morning, I was not happy. Inside that gate was a miniature farm redolent of homely, primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins, and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life. Outside of it were the marble and iron palaces, the paved and blistering streets, and the high, vacant, mahogany desk of a government clerk. In that ancient enclosure I took an earth bath twice a day. I planted myself as deep in the soil as I could to restore the normal tone and freshness of my system, impaired by the above mentioned government mahogany. I have found there is nothing like the earth to draw the various social distempers out of one. The blue devils take flight at once if they see you mean to bury them and make compost of them. Emerson intimates that the scholar had better not try to have two gardens; but I could never spend an hour hoeing up dock and red-root and twitch grass without in some way getting rid of many weeds and fungus, unwholesome growths that a petty, in-doors life was for ever fostering in my own moral and intellectual nature.

But the finishing touch was not given till Chloe came. She was the jewel for which this homely setting waited. My agriculture had some object then. The old gate never opened with such alacrity as when she paused before it. How we waited for her coming! Should I send Drewer, the colored patriarch, for her? No; the master of the house himself should receive Juno at the capital.

"One cask for you," said the clerk, referring to the steamer bill of lading.

"Then I hope it's a cask of milk," I said. "I expected a cow."

"One cask it says here."

"Well, let's see it; I'll warrant it has horns and is tied by a rope"; which proved to be the case, for there stood the only object that bore my name, chewing its cud, on the forward deck. How she liked the voyage I could not find out; but she seemed to relish so much the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet once more that she led me a lively step all the way home. She cut capers in front of the White House, and tried twice to wind me up in the rope as we passed the Treasury. She kicked up her heels on the broad avenue and became very coltish as she came under the walls of the capitol. But that night the long-vacant stall in the old stable was filled, and the next morning the coffee had met with a change of heart. I had to go out twice with the lantern and survey my treasure before I went to bed. Did she not come from the delectable mountains, and did I not have a sort of filial regard for her as toward my foster mother?

This was during the Arcadian age at the capital, before the easy-going southern ways had gone out and the prim new northern ways had come in, and when the domestic animals were treated with distinguished consideration and granted the freedom of the city. There was a charm of cattle in the streets and upon the commons: goats cropped your rose bushes through the pickets, and nooned upon your front porch, and pigs dreamed Arcadian dreams under your garden fence or languidly frescoed it with pigments from the nearest pool. It was a time of peace; it was the poor man's golden age. Your cow, or your goat, or your pig led a vagrant, wandering life, and picked up a subsistence wherever they could, like the bees, which was almost everywhere. Your cow went forth in the morning and came home fraught with milk at night, and you never troubled yourself where she went or how far she roamed.

Chloe took very naturally to this kind of life. At first I had to go with her a few times and pilot her to the nearest commons, and then left her to her own wit, which never failed her. What adventures she had, what acquaintances she made, how far she wandered, I never knew. I never came across her in my walks or rambles. Indeed, on several occasions I thought I would look her up and see her feeding in the national pastures, but I never could find her. There were plenty of cows, but they were all strangers. But punctually, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, her white horns would be seen tossing above the gate and her impatient low be heard. Sometimes, when I turned her forth in the morning, she would pause and apparently consider which way she would go. Should she go toward Kendall Green to-day, or follow the Tiber, or over by the Big Spring, or out around Lincoln Hospital? She seldom reached a conclusion till she had stretched forth her neck and blown a blast on her trumpet that awoke the echoes in the very lantern on the dome of the capitol. Then, after one or two licks, she would disappear around the corner. Later in the season, when the grass was parched or poor on the commons, and the corn and cabbage tempting in the garden, Chloe was loth to depart in the morning, and her deliberations were longer than ever, and very often I had to aid her in coming to a decision.

For two summers she was a well-spring of pleasure and profit in my farm of one acre, when in an evil moment I resolved to part with her and try another. In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in cattle left me. Juno never forgave me the execution of that rash and cruel resolve.

The day is indellibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for sale in the public market place. It was in November, a bright, dreamy, Indian summer day. A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and remorse. An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me. We condoled with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we berated in chorus the white-aproned but bloodstained fraternity who prowled about us. When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and when I strolled about she minded my cow. How shy the innocent beast was of those carnal market men. How she would shrink away from them. When they put out a hand to feel her condition she would "scrooch" down her back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding iron. So long as I stood by her head she felt safe—deluded creature—and chewed the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly and entreatingly till I returned.

At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to the hand of another. How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart!

Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a native—a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia: a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look. She evidently inherited a humped back. It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood. For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of corn stalks, in the open air, during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features. For one thing, her pedal extremities seemed lengthened; for another, her udder does not impede her travelling; for a third, her backbone inclines strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay. This last is a sure test. Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her friend.

The new comer even declined corn meal at first. She eyed it furtively, then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some relation to her native "shucks," when she fell to eagerly.

I cherish the memory of this cow, however, as the most affectionate brute I ever knew. Being deprived of her calf, she transferred her affections to her master, and would fain have made a calf of him, lowing in the most piteous and inconsolable manner when he was out of her sight, hardly forgetting her grief long enough to eat her meal, and entirely neglecting her beloved husks. Often in the middle of the night she would set up that sonorous lamentation and continue it till sleep was chased from every eye in the household. This generally had the effect of bringing the object of her affection before her, but in a mood anything but filial or comforting. Still, at such times a kick seemed a comfort to her, and she would gladly have kissed the rod that was the instrument of my midnight wrath.

But her tender star was destined soon to a fatal eclipse. Being tied with too long a rope on one occasion during my temporary absence, she got her head into the meal barrel, and stopped not till she had devoured nearly half a bushel of dry meal. The singularly placid and benevolent look that beamed from the meal-besmeared face when I discovered her was something to be remembered. For the first time also her spinal column came near assuming a horizontal line.

But the grist proved too much for her frail mill, and her demise took place on the third day, not of course without some attempt to relieve her on my part. I gave her, as is usual in such emergencies, everything I "could think of" and everything my neighbors could think of, besides some fearful prescriptions which I obtained from a German veterinary surgeon, but to no purpose. I imagined her poor maw distended and inflamed with the baking sodden mass which no physic could penetrate or enliven.

Thus ended my second venture in live stock. My third, which followed sharp upon the heels of this disaster, was scarcely more of a success. This time I led to the altar a buffalo cow, as they call the "mully" down south—a large, spotted, creamy-skinned cow, with a fine udder, that I persuaded a Jew drover to part with for ninety dollars. "Pag like a dish rack (rag)," said he, pointing to her udder after she had been milked. "You vill come pack and gif me the udder ten tollars" (for he had demanded an even hundred), he continued, "after you have had her a gouple of days." True I felt like returning to him after a "gouple of days," but not to pay the other ten dollars. The cow proved to be as blind as a bat, though capable of counterfeiting the act of seeing to perfection. For did she not lift up her head and follow with her eyes a dog that scaled the fence and ran through the other end of the lot, and the next moment dash my hopes thus raised by trying to walk over a locust tree thirty feet high? And when I set the bucket before her containing her first mess of meal, she missed it by several inches, and her nose brought up against the ground. Was it a kind of far-sightedness and near blindness? That was it, I think; she had genius, but not talent; she could see the man in the moon, but was quite oblivious to the man immediately in her front. Her eyes were telescopic and required a long range.

As long as I kept her in the stall, or confined to the enclosure, this strange eclipse of her sight was of little consequence. But when spring came, and it was time for her to go forth and seek her livelihood in the city's waste places, I was embarrassed. Into what remote corners or into what terra incognita might she not wander! There was little doubt but she would drift around home in the course of the summer, or perhaps as often as every week or two; but could she be trusted to find her way back every night? Perhaps she could be taught. Perhaps her other senses were acute enough to in a measure compensate her for her defective vision. So I gave her lessons in the topography of the country. I led her forth to graze for a few hours each day and led her home again. Then I left her to come home alone, which feat she accomplished very encouragingly. She came feeling her way along, stepping very high, but apparently a most diligent and interested sightseer. But she was not sure of the right house when she got to it, though she stared at it very hard.

Again I turned her forth, and again she came back, her telescopic eyes apparently of some service to her. On the third day there was a fierce thunderstorm late in the afternoon, and old buffalo did not come home. It had evidently scattered and bewildered what little wit she had. Being barely able to navigate those straits on a calm day, what could she be expected to do in a tempest?

After the storm had passed, and near sundown, I set out in quest of her, but could get no clue. I heard that two cows had been struck by lightning about a mile out on the commons. My conscience instantly told me that one of them was mine. It would be a fit closing of the third act of this pastoral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched and swollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, but neither of them had ever been mine.

The next day I continued the search, and the next, and the next. Finally I hoisted an umbrella over my head, for the weather had become hot, and set out deliberately and systematically to explore every foot of open common on Capitol hill. I tramped many miles, and found every man's cow but my own—some twelve or fifteen hundred, I should think. I saw many vagrant boys and Irish and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to my description, but in such diverse and widely separate places that I knew it was no cow of mine. And it was astonishing how many times I was myself deceived; how many rumps or heads, or liver backs or white flanks I saw peeping over knolls or from behind fences or other objects that could belong to no cow but mine!

Finally I gave up the search, concluded the cow had been stolen, and advertised her, offering a reward. But days passed, and no tidings were obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low—was indeed on the point of going out altogether, when one afternoon, as I was strolling over the commons (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of my lost milcher), I saw the rump of a cow, over a grassy knoll, that looked familiar. Coming nearer, the beast lifted up her head; and, behold! it was she! only a few squares from home, where doubtless she had been most of the time. I had overshot the mark in my search. I had ransacked the far-off, and had neglected the near-at-hand, as we are so apt to do. But she was ruined as a milcher, and her history thenceforward was brief and touching!

JOHN BURROUGHS.



LOVE'S MESSENGERS.

Who will tell him? Who will teach him? Have you voices, merry birds? Then be voice for me, and reach him With a thousand pleading words. Sing my secret, east and west, Till his answer be confessed!

Roses, when you see him coming, Light of heart and strong of limb, Make your lover-bees stop humming; Turn your blushes round to him— Blush, dear flowers, that he may learn, How a woman's heart can burn!

Wind—oh, wind—you happy rover! Oh that I were half as free— Leave your honey-bells and clover, Go and seek my love for me. Find, kiss, clasp him, make him know It is I who love him so!

MARY AINGE DE VERE.



THE HEAD OF HERCULES.

One of the most curious cases that ever came under my notice in a long course of criminal practice was not brought into any court, and, as I believe, has never been published until now. The details of the affair came under my personal cognizance in the following manner:

In 1858 I went down into the Shenandoah valley to spend my summer vacation among the innumerable Pages, Marshalls, and Cookes who all hailed me as cousin, by right of traditional intermarriages generations back. My first visit was to the house of McCormack Beardsley, a kinsman and school-fellow whom I had not seen since we parted at the university twenty years before.

We were both gray-haired old fellows now, but I had grown thin and sharp in the courts of Baltimore and Washington, while he had lived quietly on his plantation, more fat and jovial and genial with every year.

Beardsley possessed large means then, and maintained the unlimited hospitality usual among large Virginia planters before the war. The house was crowded during my stay with my old friends from the valley and southern countries. His daughter, too, was not only a beauty, but a favorite among the young people, and brought many attractive, well-bred girls about her, and young men who were not so attractive or well bred. Lack of occupation and a definite career had reduced the sons of too many Virginia families at that time to cards and horses as their sole pursuits; the war, while it left them penniless, was in one sense their salvation.

One evening, sitting on the verandah with Beardsley, smoking, and looking in the open windows of the parlor, I noticed a woman who sat a little apart, and who, as I fancied, was avoided by the younger girls. In a Virginia country party there are always two or three unmarried women, past their first youth, with merry blue eyes, brown hair, and delicate features—women "with a history," but who are none the less good dancers, riders, and able to put all their cleverness into the making of a pie or a match for their cousins. This woman was blue-eyed and brown-haired, but she had none of the neat, wide-awake self-possession of her class. She had a more childish expression, and spoke with a more timid uncertainty, than even Lotty Beardsley, who was still in the schoolroom. I called my host's attention to her and asked who she was.

"It is the daughter of my cousin, General George Waring. You remember him surely—of the Henrico branch of Warings?"

"Certainly. But he had only one child—Louisa; and I remember receiving an invitation to her wedding years ago."

"Yes. This is Louisa. The wedding never took place. It's an odd story," he said, after a pause, "and the truth is, Floyd, I brought the girl here while you were with us in the hope that you, with your legal acumen, could solve the mystery that surrounds her. I'll give the facts to you to-morrow—it's impossible to do it now. But tell me, in the mean time, how she impresses you, looking at her as a lawyer would at a client, or a—a prisoner on trial. Do you observe anything peculiar in her face or manner?"

"I observed a very peculiar manner in all those about her—an effort at cordiality in which they did not succeed; a certain constraint in look and tone while speaking to her. I even saw it in yourself just now as soon as you mentioned her name."

"You did? I'm sorry for that—exceedingly sorry!" anxiously. "I believe in Louisa Waring's innocence as I do in that of my own child; and if I thought she was hurt or neglected in this house—— But there's a cloud on the girl, Floyd—that's a fact. It don't amount even to suspicion. If it did, one could argue it down. But——Well, what do you make of her—her face now?"

"It is not an especially clever face, nor one that indicates power of any kind; not the face of a woman who of her own will would be the heroine of any remarkable story. I should judge her to have been a few years ago one of the sensible, light-hearted, sweet-tempered girls of whom there are so many in Virginia; a nice housekeeper, and one who would have made a tender wife and mother."

"Well, well? Nothing more?"

"Yes. She has not matured into womanhood as such girls do. She looks as if her growth in every-day experiences had stopped years ago; that while her body grew older her mind had halted, immature, incomplete. A great grief might have had that effect, or the absorption of all her faculties by one sudden, mastering idea."

"You are a little too metaphysical for me," said Beardsley. "Poor Lou isn't shrewd by any means, and always gives me the feeling that she needs care and protection more than most women, if that is what you mean."

"There is a singular expression in her face at times," I resumed.

"Ah! Now you have it!" he muttered.

"Sitting there in your parlor, where there is certainly nothing to dread, she has glanced behind and about her again and again, as though she heard a sound that frightened her. I observe, too, that when any man speaks to her she fixes on him a keen, suspicious look. She does not have it with women. It passes quickly, but it is there. It is precisely the expression of an insane person, or a guilty one dreading arrest."

"You are a close observer, Floyd. I told my wife that we could not do better than submit the whole case to your judgment. We are all Lou's friends in the neighborhood; but we cannot look at the matter with your legal experience and unprejudiced eyes. Come, let us go into supper now."

The next morning I was summoned to Beardsley's "study" (so called probably from the total absence of either book or newspaper), and found himself and his wife awaiting me, and also a Doctor Scheffer, whom I had previously noticed among the guests—a gaunt, hectic young man, apparently on the high road to death, the victim of an incurable consumption.

"I asked William Scheffer to meet us here," said Mr. Beardsley, "as Louisa Waring was an inmate of his father's house at the time of the occurrence. She and William were children and playmates together. I believe I am right, William. You knew all the circumstances of that terrible night?"

The young man's heavy face changed painfully. "Yes; as much as was known to any one but Louisa, and—the guilty man, whoever he was. But why are you dragging out that wretched affair?" turning angrily on Mrs. Beardsley. "Surely any friend of Miss Waring's would try to bury the past for her!"

"No," said the lady calmly. "It has been buried quite too long, in my opinion; for she has carried her burden for six years. It is time now that we should try to lift it for her. You are sitting in a draught, William. Sit on this sofa."

Scheffer, coughing frightfully, and complaining with all the testiness of a long-humored invalid, was disposed of at last, and Beardsley began:

"The story is briefly this. Louisa, before her father's death, was engaged to be married to Colonel Paul Merrick (Merricks of Clarke county, you know). The wedding was postponed for a year when General Waring died, and Louisa went to her uncle's—your father, William—to live during that time. When the year was over, every preparation was made for the marriage: invitations were sent to all the kinsfolk on both sides (and that included three or four counties on a rough guess), and we—the immediate family—were assembled at Major Scheffer's preparing for the grand event, when——" Beardsley became now excessively hot and flurried, and getting up, thumped heavily up and down the room.

"After all, there is nothing to tell. Why should we bring in a famous lawyer to sit in judgment on her as if the girl were a criminal? She only did, Floyd, what women have done since the beginning—changed her mind without reason. Paul Merrick was as clever and lovable a young fellow as you would find in the State, and Louisa was faithful to him—she's faithful to him yet; but on the night before the wedding she refused to marry him, and has persisted in the refusal ever since, without assigning a cause."

"Is that all of the story?" I asked.

Beardsley was silent.

"No," said his wife gently; "that is not all. I thought McCormack's courage would fail before he gave you the facts. I shall try and tell you——"

"Only the facts, if you please, without any inferences or opinions of others."

The old lady paused for a moment, and then began: "A couple of days before the wedding we went over to Major Scheffer's to help prepare for it. You know we have no restaurateurs nor confectioners to depend upon, and such occasions are busy seasons. The gentlemen played whist, rode about the plantation, or tried the Major's wines, while indoors we, all of us—married ladies and girls and a dozen old aunties—were at work with cakes, creams, and pastry. I recollect I took over our cook, Prue, because Lou fancied nobody could make such wine jelly as hers. Then Lou's trousseau was a very rich one, and she wanted to try on all of her pretty dresses, that we might see how——"

"My dear!" interrupted Mr. Beardsley, "this really appears irrelevant to the matter——"

"Not at all. I wish Mr. Floyd to gain an idea of Louisa's temper and mood at that time. The truth is, she was passionately fond of her lover, and very happy that her marriage was so near; and being a modest little thing, she hid her feeling under an incessant, merry chatter about dresses and jellies. Don't you agree with me, William?"

The sick man turned on the sofa with a laugh, which looked ghastly enough on his haggard face. "I submit, Aunt Sophie, that it is hardly fair to call me in as a witness in this case. I waited on Lou for two or three years, Mr. Floyd, and she threw me over for Merrick. It is not likely that I was an unprejudiced observer of her moods just then."

"Nonsense, William. I knew that was but the idlest flirtation between you, or I should not have brought you here now," said his aunt. "Well, Mr. Floyd, the preparations all were completed on the afternoon before the wedding. Some of the young people had gathered in the library—Paul Merrick and his sisters and—you were there, William?"

"Yes, I was there."

"And they persuaded Lou to put on her wedding dress and veil to give them a glimpse of the bride. I think it was Paul who wished it. He was a hot, eager young fellow, and he was impatient to taste his happiness by anticipation. It was a dull, gusty afternoon in October. I remember the contrast she made to the gray, cold day as she came in, shy and blushing, and her eyes sparkling, in her haze of white, and stood in front of the window. She was so lovely and pure that we were all silent. It seemed as if she belonged then to her lover alone, and none of us had a right to utter a word. He went up to her, but no one heard what he said, and then took her by the hand and led her reverently to the door. Presently I met her coming out of her chamber in a cloak and hat. Her maid Abby was inside, folding the white dress and veil. 'I am going down to Aunty Huldah's,' Lou said to me. 'I promised her to come again before I was married and tell her the arrangements all over once more.' Huldah was an old colored woman, Lou's nurse, who lived down on the creek bank and had long been bedridden. I remember that I said to Louisa that the walk would be long and lonely, and told her to call Paul to accompany her. She hesitated a moment, and then turned to the door, saying Huldah would probably be in one of her most funereal moods, and that she would not have Paul troubled on the eve of his wedding day. She started, running and looking back with a laugh, down the hill." Mrs. Beardsley faltered and stopped.

"Go on," said Dr. Scheffer. "The incidents which follow are all that really affect Louisa's guilt or innocence."

"Go on, mother," said Beardsley hastily. "Louisa's innocence is not called in question. Remember that. Tell everything you know without scruple."

The old lady began again in a lower voice: "We expected an arrival that afternoon—Houston Simms, a distant kinsman of Major Scheffer's. He was from Kentucky—a large owner of blooded stock—and was on his way home from New York, where his horses had just won the prizes at the fall races. He had promised to stop for the wedding, and the carriage had been sent to the station to meet him. The station, as you know, is five miles up the road. By some mistake the carriage was late, and Houston started, with his valise in his hand, to walk to the house, making a short cut through the woods. When the carriage came back empty, and the driver told this to us, some of the young men started down to meet the old gentleman. It was then about four o'clock, and growing dark rapidly. The wind, I recollect, blew sharply, and a cold rain set in. I came out on the long porch, and walked up and down, feeling uneasy and annoyed at Louisa's prolonged absence. Colonel Merrick, who had been looking for her all through the house, had just learned from me where she had gone, and was starting with umbrellas to meet her, when she came suddenly up to us, crossing the ploughed field, not from the direction of Huldah's cabin, but from the road. We both hurried toward her; but when she caught sight of Colonel Merrick she stopped short, putting out her hands with a look of terror and misery quite indescribable. 'Take me away from him! Oh, for God's sake!' she cried. I saw she had suffered some great shock, and taking her in my arms, led her in, motioning him to keep back. She was so weak as to fall, but did not faint, nor lose consciousness for a single moment. All night she lay, her eyes wandering from side to side as in momentary expectancy of the appearance of some one. No anodyne had any effect upon her—every nerve seemed strained to its utmost tension. But she did not speak a word except at the sound of Colonel Merrick's voice or step, when she would beg piteously that he should be kept away from her. Toward morning she fell into a kind of stupor, and when she awoke appeared to be calmer. She beckoned to me, and asked that her uncle Scheffer and Judge Grove, her other guardian, should be sent for. She received them standing, apparently quite grave and composed. She asked that several other persons should be called in, desiring, she said, to have as many witnesses as possible to what she was about to make known. 'You all know,' she said, 'that to-morrow was to have been my wedding day. I wish you now to bear witness that I refuse to-day or at any future time to marry Paul Merrick, and that no argument or persuasion will induce me to do so. And I wish,' raising her hand, to keep silence—'I wish to say publicly that it is no fault or ill doing of Colonel Merrick's that has driven me to this resolve. I say this as in the sight of Almighty God.' Nobody argued, or scarcely, indeed, spoke to her. Every one saw that she was physically a very ill woman; and it was commonly believed that she had received some sudden shock which had unhinged her mind. An hour afterward the searching party came in (for the young men, not finding Houston Simms, had gone out again to search for him). They had found his dead body concealed in the woods by Mill's spring. You know the place. There was a pistol shot through the head, and a leathern pocketbook, which had apparently contained money, was found empty a few feet away. That was the end of it all, Mr. Floyd."

"You mean that Simms's murderer was never found?"

"Never," said Beardsley, "though detectives were brought down from Richmond and set on the track. Their theory—a plausible one enough too—was that Simms had been followed from New York by men who knew the large sum he earned from the races, and that they had robbed and murdered him, and readily escaped through the swamps."

"It never was my belief," said Dr. Scheffer, "that he was murdered at all. It was hinted that he had stopped in a gambling house in New York, and there lost whatever sum he had won at the races; and that rather than meet his family in debt and penniless, he blew out his brains in the first lonely place to which he came. That explanation was plain enough."

"What was the end of the story so far as Miss Waring was concerned?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, it never has had an end," said Mrs. Beardsley. "The mystery remains. She was ill afterward; indeed, it was years before she regained her bodily strength as before. But her mind had never been unhinged, as Paul Merrick thought. He waited patiently, thinking that some day her reason would return, and she would come back to him. But Louisa Waring was perfectly sane even in the midst of her agony on that night. From that day until now she has never by word or look given any clue by which the reason of her refusal to marry him could be discovered. Of course the murder and her strange conduct produced a great excitement in this quiet neighborhood. But you can imagine all that. I simply have given you the facts which bear on the case."

"The first suspicion, I suppose, rested on Merrick?" I said.

"Yes. The natural explanation of her conduct was that she had witnessed an encounter in the woods between Simms and her lover, in which the old man was killed. Fortunately, however, Paul Merrick had not left the house once during the afternoon until he went out with me to meet her."

"And then Miss Waring was selected as the guilty party?"

No one answered for a moment. Young Scheffer lay with his arm over his face, which had grown so worn and haggard as the story was told that I doubted whether his affection for the girl had been the slight matter which he chose to represent it.

"No," said Beardsley; "she never was openly accused, nor even subjected to any public interrogation. She came to the house in the opposite direction from the spot where the murder took place. And there was no rational proof that she had any cognizance of it. But there were not wanting busybodies to suggest that she had met Simms in the woods, and at some proffered insult from him had fired the fatal shot."

His wife's fair old face flushed. "How can you repeat such absurdity, McCormack?" she said. "Louisa Waring was as likely to go about armed as—as I!" knitting vehemently at a woollen stocking she had held idly until now.

"I know it was absurd, my dear. But you know as well as I that though it was but the mere breath of suspicion, it has always clung to the girl and set her apart as it were from other women."

"What effect did that report have on Merrick?" I asked.

"The effect it would have on any man deserving the name," said Beardsley. "If he loved her passionately before, she has been, I believe, doubly dear to him since. But she has never allowed him to meet her since that night."

"You think her feeling is unchanged for him?"

"I have no doubt of it," Mrs. Beardsley said. "There is nothing in Lou's nature out of which you could make a heroine of tragedy. After the first shock of that night was over she was just the commonplace little body she was before, and could not help showing how fond she was of her old lover. But she quietly refused to ever see him again."

"Merrick went abroad three years ago," interposed her husband. "I'll let you into a secret, Floyd. I've determined there shall be an end of this folly. I have heard from him that he will be at home next week, and is as firm as ever in his resolve to marry Miss Waring. I brought her here so that she could not avoid meeting him. Now if you, Floyd, could only manage—could look into this matter before the meeting, and set it to rights, clear the poor child of this wretched suspicion that hangs about her? Well, now you know why I have told you the story."

"You have certainly a sublime faith in Mr. Floyd's skill," said Scheffer with a disagreeable laugh. "I wish him success." He rose with difficulty, and wrapping his shawl about him, went feebly out of the room.

"William is soured through his long illness," Beardsley hastened to say apologetically. "And he cared more for Lou than I supposed. We were wrong to bring him in this morning"; and he hurried out to help him up the stairs. Mrs. Beardsley laid down her knitting, and glanced cautiously about her. I saw that the vital point of her testimony had been omitted until now.

"I think it but right to tell you—nobody has ever heard it before"—coming close to me, her old face quite pale. "When I undressed Louisa that night her shoes and stockings were stained, and a long reddish hair clung to her sleeve. She had trodden over the bloody ground and handled the murdered man."

Every professional man will understand me when I say I was glad to hear this. Hitherto the girl's whim and the murder appeared to me two events connected only by the accident of occurrence on the same day. Now there was but one mystery to solve.

Whatever success I have had in my practice has been due to my habit of boldly basing my theories upon the known character of the parties implicated, and not upon more palpable accidental circumstances. Left to myself now, I speedily resolved this case into a few suppositions, positive to me as facts. The girl had been present at the murder. She was not naturally reticent: was instead an exceptionally confiding, credulous woman. Her motive for silence, therefore, must have been a force brought to bear on her at the time of the murder stronger than her love for Merrick, and which was still existing and active. Her refusal to meet her lover I readily interpreted to be a fear of her own weakness—dread lest she should betray this secret to him. Might not her refusal to marry him be caused by the same fear? some crushing disgrace or misery which threatened her through the murder, and which she feared to bring upon her husband? The motive I had guessed to be strong as her love: what if it were her love? Having stepped from surmise to surmise so far, I paused to strengthen my position by the facts. There were but two ways in which this murder could have prevented her marriage—through Merrick's guilt or her own. His innocence was proven; hers I did not doubt after I had again carefully studied her face. Concealed guilt leaves its secret signature upon the mouth and eye in lines never to be mistaken by a man who has once learned to read them.

Were there but these two ways? There was a third, more probable than either—fear. At the first presentation of this key to the riddle the whole case mapped itself out before me. The murderer had sealed her lips by some threat. He was still living, and she was in daily expectation of meeting him. She had never seen his face, but had reason to believe him of her own class. (This supposition I based on her quick, terrified inspection of every man's face who approached her.) Now what threat could have been strong enough to keep a weak girl silent for years, and to separate her from her lover on their wedding day? I knew women well enough to say, none against herself; the threat I believed hung over Merrick's head, and would be fulfilled if she betrayed the secret or married him, which, with a weak, loving woman, was equivalent, as any man would know, to betrayal.

I cannot attempt to make the breaks in this reasoning solid ground for my readers; it was solid ground for me.

The next morning Beardsley met me on leaving the breakfast table. He held a letter open in his hand, and looked annoyed and anxious.

"Here's a note from Merrick. He sailed a week sooner than he expected—has left New York, and will be here to-night. If I had only put the case in your hands earlier! I had a hope that you could clear the little girl. But it's too late. She'll take flight as soon as she hears he is coming. Scheffer says it's a miserable, bloody muddle, and that I was wrong to stir it up."

"I do not agree with Dr. Scheffer," I said quietly. "I am going now to the library. In half an hour send Miss Waring to me."

"You have not yet been presented to her?"

"So much the better. I wish her to regard me as a lawyer simply. State to her as formally as you choose who I am, and that I desire to see her on business."

I seated myself in the library; placed pen and ink, and some legal-looking documents, selected at random, before me. Red tape and the formal pomp of law constitute half its force with women and men of Louisa's calibre. I had hardly arranged myself and my materials when the door slowly opened, and she entered. She was alarmed, yet wary. To see a naturally hearty, merry little body subjected for years to this nervous strain, with a tragic idea forced into a brain meant to be busied only with dress, cookery, or babies, appeared to me a pitiful thing.

"Miss Waring?" reducing the ordinary courtesies to a curt, grave nod. "Be seated, if you please." I turned over my papers slowly, and then looked up at her. I had, I saw, none of the common feminine shrewdness to deal with; need expect no subtle devices of concealment; no clever doublings; nothing but the sheer obstinacy which is an unintellectual woman's one resource. I would ignore it and her—boldly assume full possession of the ground at the first word.

"My errand to this house, Miss Waring, is in part the investigation of a murder in 1854, of which you were the sole witness—that of Houston Simms——"

I stopped. The change in her face appalled me. She had evidently not expected so direct an attack. In fact, Beardsley told me afterward that it was the first time the subject had been broached to her in plain words. However, she made no reply, and I proceeded in the same formal tone:

"I shall place before you the facts which are in my possession, and require your assent to such as are within your knowledge. On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 5, 1854, Houston Simms left the Pine Valley station, carrying a valise containing a large sum of money. You——"

She had been sitting on the other side of the table, looking steadily at me. She rose now. She wore a blue morning dress, with lace ruffles and other little fooleries in which women delight, and I remember being shocked with the strange contrast between this frippery and the speechless dread and misery of her face. She gained control of her voice with difficulty.

"Who has said that I was a witness of the murder?" she gasped. "I always explained that I was in another part of the wood. I went to aunty Huldah——"

"Pray do not interrupt me, Miss Waring. I am aware that you were the witness—the sole witness—in this matter." (She did not contradict me. I was right in my first guess—she had been alone with the murderer.) "On returning from your nurse's cabin you left the direct path and followed the sound of angry voices to the gorge by Mill's spring——"

"I did not go to play the spy. He lied when he said that," she cried feebly. "I heard the steps, and thought Colonel Merrick had come to search for me."

"That matters nothing. You saw the deed done. The old man was killed, and then robbed, in your sight"—I came toward her, and lowered my voice to a stern, judicial whisper, while the poor girl shrank back as though I were law itself uttering judgment upon her. If she had known what stagy guesswork it all was! "When you were discovered, the murderer would have shot you to insure your silence."

"I wish he had! It was Thad who would have done that. The white man's way was more cruel—oh, God knows it was more cruel!"

(There were two then.) I was very sorry for the girl, but I had a keen pleasure in the slow unfolding of the secret, just as I suppose the physician takes delight in the study of a new disease, even if it kills the patient.

"Yes," I said with emphasis. "I believe that it would have been less suffering for you, Miss Waring, to have died then than to have lived, forced as you were to renounce your lover, and to carry about with you the dread of the threat made by those men."

"I have not said there was a threat made. I have betrayed nothing." She had seated herself some time before by the table. There was a large bronze inkstand before her, and as she listened she arranged a half dozen pens evenly on the rest. The words she heard and spoke mattered more to her than life or death; her features were livid as those of a corpse, yet her hands went on with their mechanical work—one pen did not project a hair's breadth beyond the other. We lawyers know how common such puerile, commonplace actions are in the supreme moments of life, and how seldom men wring their hands, or use tragic gesture, or indeed words.

"No, you have betrayed nothing," I said calmly. "Your self-control has been remarkable, even when we remember that you believed your confession would be followed by speedy vengeance, not on your head, but Colonel Merrick's."

She looked up not able to speak for a minute. "You—you know all?"

"Not all, but enough to assure you that your time of suffering is over. You can speak freely, unharmed."

Her head dropped on the table. She was crying, and, I think, praying.

"You saw Houston Simms killed by two men, one of whom, the negro Thad, you knew. The white man's face was covered. You did not recognize him. But he knew you, and the surest way to compel you to silence. I wish you now to state to me all the details of this man's appearance, voice, and manner, to show me any letters which you have received from him since" (a random guess, which I saw hit the mark)—"in short, every circumstance which you can recall about him."

She did not reply.

"My dear Miss Waring, you need have no fear on Colonel Merrick's account. The law has taken this matter out of your hands. Colonel Merrick is protected by the law."

"Oh! I did not understand," meekly.

To be brief, she told me the whole story. When she reached the spring she had found the old man bleeding and still breathing. He died in her arms. The men, who had gone back into the laurel to open the valise, came back upon her. The negro was a desperate character, well known in the county. He had died two years later. The other man was masked and thoroughly disguised. He had stopped the negro when he would have killed her, and after a few minutes' consultation had whispered to him the terms upon which she was allowed to escape.

"You did not hear the white man's voice?"

"Not once."

"Bring me the letters you have received from him."

She brought two miserably spelled and written scrawls on soiled bits of paper. It was the writing of an educated man, poorly disguised. He threatened to meet her speedily, warned her that he had spies constantly about her.

"That is all the evidence you can give me?"

"All." She rose to go. I held the door open for her, when she hesitated.

"There was something more—a mere trifle."

"Yes. But most likely the one thing that I want."

"I returned to the spring again and again for months afterward. People thought I was mad. I may have been; but I found there one day a bit of reddish glass with a curious mark on it."

"You have it here?"

She brought it to me. It was a fragment of engraved sardonyx, apparently part of a seal; the upper part of a head was cut upon it; the short hairs curving forward on the low forehead showed that the head was that of Hercules.

Some old recollection rose in my brain, beginning, as I may say, to gnaw uncertainly. I went to my room for a few minutes to collect myself, and then sought Beardsley.

He was pacing up and down the walk to the stables, agitated as though he had been the murderer.

"Well, Floyd, well! What chance is there? What have you discovered?"

"Everything. One moment. I have a question or two to ask you. About ten years ago you commissioned me to buy for you in New York a seal—an intaglio of great value—a head of Hercules, as I remember. What did you do with it?"

"Gave it to Job Scheffer, William's father. Will has it now, though I think it is broken."

"Very well. What have Dr. Scheffer's habits been, by the way? Was he as fond of turning the cards as the other young fellows?"

"Oh, yes, poor boy! There was a rumor some years ago that he was frightfully involved in Baltimore—that it would ruin the old man, in fact, to clear off his debts of honor. But it died out. I suppose William found some way of straightening them out."

"Probably. Where is Dr. Scheffer now? I have a message for him."

"In his room. But this matter of Louisa Waring——"

"Presently. Have patience."

I went up to the young man's room. After all, the poor wretch was dying, and to compel him to blast his own honorable name seemed but brutal cruelty. I had to remember the poor girl's wasted face and hopeless eyes before I could summon courage to open the door after I had knocked. I think he expected me, and knew all that I had to say. A man in health would soon have known that I was acting on surmise, and defied me to the proof. Scheffer, I fancied, had been creeping through life for years with death in two shapes pursuing him, step by step. He yielded, cowed submissive at the first touch, and only pleaded feebly for mercy.

The negro had been his body servant—knew his desperate straits, and dragged him into the crime. Then, he had loved Louisa: he was maddened by her approaching marriage. The scheme of ensuring her silence and driving Merrick away was the inspiration of a moment, and had succeeded. He only asked for mercy. His time was short. He could not live beyond a few weeks. I would not bring him to the gallows.

I was merciful, and I think was right to be so. His deposition was taken before his uncle, Mr. Beardsley, who was a magistrate, and two other men of position and weight in the community. It was to be kept secret until after his death, and then made public. He was removed at once to his father's house.

On Colonel Merrick's arrival that evening, this deposition was formally read to him. I do not think it impressed him very much. He was resolved to marry Miss Waring in spite of every obstacle.

"But I never would have married you unless the truth had been discovered—never," she said to him that evening as they stood near me in the drawing-room. Her cheeks were warm, and her dark eyes full of tender light. I thought her a very lovely woman.

"Then I owe you to Mr. Floyd after all?" he said, looking down at her fondly.

"Oh, I suppose so," with a shrug. "But he is a very disagreeable person! Cast-iron, you know. I am so thankful you are not a lawyer, Paul."

JAMES M. FLOYD.



ROMANCE.

I would I were mighty, victorious, A monarch of steel and of gold— I would I were one of the glorious Divinities hallowed of old— A god of the ancient sweet fashion Who mingled with women and men, A deity human in passion, Transhuman in strength and in ken.

For then I could render the pleasure I win from the sight of your face; For then I could utter my treasure Of homage and thanks for your grace; I could dower, illumine, and gladden, Could rescue from perils and tears, And my speech could vibrate and madden With eloquence worthy your ears.

You meet me: you smile and speak kindly; One minute I marvel and gaze, Idolatrous, worshipping blindly, Yet mindful of decorous ways. You pass; and the glory is ended, Though lustres and sconces may glow: The goddess who made the scene splendid Has vanished; and darkly I go.

You know not how swiftly you mounted The throne in the depths of my eyes; You care not how meekly I counted Those moments for pearls of the skies; Or, knowing it, all is forgotten The moment I pass from your sight— Consigned to the fancies begotten Of chaos and slumber and night.

But I—I remember your glances, Your carelessest gesture and word, And out of them fashion romances Man never yet uttered nor heard; Romances too splendid for mortals, Too sweet for a planet of dole; Romances which open the portals Of Eden, and welcome my soul.

J. W. DEFOREST.



BEER.

Poets, in every age since the time of Anacreon, have sung odes in praise of wine. The greatest bards of every clime have sought inspiration in its sparkling depths. But the poet, even German, is yet unborn, who, moved by sweet memories of the nectar of his fatherland, shall chant in rhyme the virtues of his national drink. Yet though its merit has inspired neither of the sister graces, poetry and song, to strike the lyre in its honor, it has had, none the less, an important mission to perform. To its plebeian sister beer, as a healthful beverage, wine must yield the palm. As a common drink, suited to human nature's daily need, it has never been surpassed. If it has nerved no hand to deeds of daring, or struck the scintillating sparks of genius from the human brain, it has added immensely to the health, long life, and happiness of many nations, and is destined to still greater triumphs, as life becomes studied more from a hygienic standpoint.

Beer is believed to have been invented by the Egyptians, and is of almost universal use; the zone of the cereals being more extended than that of the grape. Greek writers before Christ mention a drink composed of barley, under the name of zythos. This beverage was not unknown to the Romans, and we find it first mentioned by the historian Tacitus. By the nations of the West it was regarded as a nourishing drink for poor people. They prepared it from honey and wheat. Among the ancient Germans and Scandinavians, however, beer was in former times the national beverage, and was prepared from barley, wheat, or oats, with the addition of oak bark, and later of hops.

The ancients put bitter herbs in beer, and the present use of hops is in imitation. Modern beer was born at the time of Charlemagne, an epoch at which hops were first cultivated. The earliest writing in which one finds mention of hops as an aroma to beer is in a parchment of St. Hildegarde, abbess of the convent of St. Rupert, at Bingen on the Rhine. The art of fabricating beer remained for a long time a privilege of convents. The priests drank Pater's beer, while the lighter or convent beer was used by the laity. Although beer has been manufactured of all the cereals, barley only can be called its true and legitimate father.

Bavaria and Franconia were already in the fourteenth century celebrated for their excellent beer, and the German cities, of which each one soon had its own brewery, vied with their predecessors. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Upper and Lower Saxony breweries became well known. The Braunschweiger, Einbeker, Goettinger, Bremer, and Hamburger beer, as well as the breweries of the cities of Wuerzen, Zwickau, Torgau, Merseburg, and Goslar, were far and wide celebrated. Bavarian beer has long made the tour of the world. Bock beer from Bavaria and from the Erzgebirge is exported to Java and China.

German lager beer, as a healthy and lightly stimulating beverage, is welcome in both hot and cold countries. It is liked as well by the Russians and Scandinavians as by the inhabitants of the tropics. It is brewed by Germans in all parts of the globe—in Valenciennes, Antwerp, Madrid, Constantinople, and even in Australia, Chili, and Brazil.

The English commenced later than the Germans to make beer. In 1524, however, they not only brewed beer, but used hops in its fabrication.

The Greek and Latin races, which drank wine, had but little taste for beer, which divided them from the Germanic races as a sharp boundary. Beer and wine seem to have had an influence in forming the temperament of these widely differing races. While wine excites the nervous system, beer tranquillizes and calms it. The action of a particular kind of daily drink, used for centuries, must in this respect have been more or less potent. Hence, perhaps, the Teuton's phlegm and the Gaul's excitability.

There may be said to be three principal types of beer—the Bavarian, Belgian, and English. The Bavarian is obtained by the infusion or decoction of sprouted barley; then by the fermentation of deposit, in tubs painted internally with resin. The varieties most appreciated are the Bock and Salvator beers. The beers of Belgium have the special character of being prepared by spontaneous fermentation, and the process is therefore slow. The principal varieties are the Lambick, the Faro, the March beer, and the Uytzd. In the English beer the must is prepared by simple infusion and the fermentation is superficial. On account of its great alcoholic richness it is easily conserved. The ale, the porter, and the stout are the chief varieties of English beer, which differ among themselves only by the diverse proportion of their ingredients and the different degrees of torrefaction of the barley, rendering it more or less brown. In France only the superficial method of fermentation is employed. In a litre of Strasburg beer one finds 5 1-4 grammes of albumen, 45 grammes of alcohol, and .091 of salts. The ordinary Bavarian beer contains three per cent. of alcohol and six and a half per cent. of nourishing extracts. The beers the most sticky to the touch are the heaviest in volume and the most nutritious. It is historical that in very olden days the Munich city fathers tried the goodness of the beer by pouring it out on a bench and then sitting down in their leather inexpressibles, and approved of it only when they remained glued to the seat.

In Nuremberg there is a school of brewers, where one may learn all the mysteries of beer brewing. Certain breweries, however, pretend to possess secrets pertaining to the art known exclusively to them. For example, one family near Leipsic is said to have possessed for a century the secret which chemistry has tried in vain to discover, of making the famous Gose beer.

"Good beer," says Dr. Paolo Mantegazza, a celebrated Italian writer on medicine, "is certainly one of the most healthy of alcoholic drinks. The bitter tonic, the richness of the alimentary principle which it contains, and its digestibility make it a real liquid food, which, for many temperaments, is medicine. The English beer, which is stronger in spirit than some wines, never produces on the stomach that union of irritating phenomena vulgarly called heat, and for this reason beer is often tolerated by the most weak and irritable persons, and can be drunk with advantage in grave diseases."[A] Laveran, a French physician, counsels it for consumptives, and for nervous thin people in the most diverse climates.

In the intoxication by beer there is always more or less stupidity. Beer is by no means favorable to l'esprit. It is doubtful if it has ever inspired the great poets or the profound thinkers who make Germany, in science, the leading country in Europe. Reich, Voigt, and many great writers have launched their anathemas against it. As a stimulant beer is less potent than wine or tea and coffee. The forces of soldiers have never been sustained on a fatiguing march, nor can they be incited to a battle, by plentiful libations of beer. During the late French-Prussian war nearly every provision train which left Bavaria carried supplies of beer to the Bavarian troops. It was found very favorable for the convalescent soldiers in the hospitals, but inferior to coffee or wine as a stimulant on the eve of battle.

The old chroniclers of Bavaria relate this curious tale of the origin of the celebrated bock beer. There was one day in olden times at the table of the Duke of Bavaria, as guest, a Brunswick nobleman. Now there had long prevailed at the court the custom of presenting to noble guests, after the meal, a beaker of the Bavarian barley juice, not without a warning as to its strength. The Brunswicker received the usual cup, emptied it at a draught, and pronounced it excellent. "But," he continued, "such barley juice as we brew at home in Brunswick is equalled by no other. Our Mumme is the king of beers, so that the bravest drinker cannot take two beakers of it without sinking under the table." The duke listened with displeasure to the haughty words of the knight, for he was not a little proud of the brewings of his country, and commanded his cup-bearer, with a meaning look, to challenge him.

"By your leave, Sir Knight," replied the page, "what you say is not quite true. If it pleases you and my lord Duke, I should like to lay a wager with you."

The duke nodded assent, and the knight, smiling scornfully, challenged the cup-bearer to pledge him.

"Your Brunswick Mumme," continued the page, "may pass as a refreshing drink; but with our beer you cannot compare it, for the best of our brewings is unknown to you. In case, however, you please again to make your appearance at the hospitable court of my gracious lord, I will promise you a beaker of beer which cannot be equalled in any other country of united Christendom. I will drink the greatest bumper that can be found in our court of your Mumme at one draught, if you can take of our beer, even slowly, three beakers. He who a half hour afterward can stand on one leg and thread a needle shall win the wager, and receive from the other a mighty cask of Tokayer Rebensafte."

This speech received loud applause, and the Brunswicker laughingly accepted the challenge.

After the knight had departed the duke tapped the page on the shoulder and said, "Take care that thou dost not repent thy word, and that the Brunswicker does not win the wager."

The first morning in May the Brunswicker rode into the castle and was welcomed by the duke. All eyes were turned on the cup-bearer, who shortly afterward appeared with a suite of pages carrying on a bier two little casks, one bearing the Bavarian arms and the other those of Brunswick. The right to give to the contents of the former a particular name was reserved to the duke. The page produced likewise a monstrous silver bumper and three beakers of the ordinary size. It was long before the bumper was filled to the rim, and then it required two men to raise it to the table. In the mean time another page placed the three beakers before the knight, who could not suppress a sarcastic laugh at the huge bumper which the page, taking in his strong arms, placed to his lips. As the knight emptied the last beaker the cup-bearer turned down the bumper. Two needles and a bundle of silk lay on the table. It wanted a few moments of the half hour, and the Brunswicker ran toward the garden for fresh air. Hardly arrived in the court, a peculiar swimming of the head seized him, so that he fell to the ground. A servant saw him from the window, and hastened out, followed by the court, with the duke in advance. There lay the Brunswicker, and tried in vain to rise.

"By all the saints, Herr Ritter, what has thrown you in the sand?" inquired the duke sympathetically.

"The bock, the bock" (the goat, the goat), murmured the knight with a heavy tongue.

A burst of sarcastic laughter echoed in the courtyard. In the mean time the page stood on one foot, and without swaying threaded the needle.

"The bock, the bock," repeated the duke smiling. "Our beer is no longer without a name. It shall be called bock, that one may take care."

The bock season lasts about six weeks, from May into June. Just before it commences a transparency of a goat, drinking from a tall, slender glass, is placed as a sign before certain beer locals, called in Munich dialect bock stalls, not because goats are kept there, but because wonderful beer, called bock, is dispensed.

He who has not lived in Bavaria can have no idea of what importance beer is in Bavarian life. There are in Munich Germans who exist only for beer, and there have been pointed out to me old gentlemen who have frequented daily the same local for twenty-five or thirty years, and even occupied the same seat, and pounded the same table, by way of enforcing their views, in discussing the politics of the day. They are called Stammgaeste (literally stock guests), and are much honored in their respective locals.

The greatest personages do not disdain the meanest locals, provided the beer is good and to their taste. Naked pine tables do not disgust them, nor the hardest benches. Often on the table skins of radishes, crusts of bread, cigar stumps, tobacco ashes, herring heads, and cheese rinds form a fragrant melange. The inheritors of this precious legacy push it away without undue irritability. Radishes are carried about by old women called radi-weibers, who do a thriving business besides in nuts and herrings. One cannot find in any other country of the world radishes of such size, tenderness, and flavor—a brown variety inherited by the happy Muencheners with their breweries. Nowhere else does cutting and salting them rank as an art. To prepare one scientifically they pare it carefully, slit it in three slices nearly to the end, place salt on the top, and draw the finger over it, as if it were a pack of cards. The salt falls between the slices, and when they are pressed together becomes absorbed.

In a German Bier Local are represented all classes of society. Beer is the great leveller of social distinctions. The foaming glass of King Gambrinus unites all Germans of all states, climates, and professions in a closer brotherhood than the sceptre of the Hohenzollerns, and links that portion of the Teutonic race over which the stars and stripes throws its protecting folds to the dear fatherland.

Fine wines are a perquisite of money. The fortunate aristocrat and the house of Israel, which everywhere waxes fat on the needs of travellers, may sip their champagne, their Lachrymae Christi, and their Hockheimer, while less favored humanity contents itself with sour vin ordinaire; but beer is the same for all, and in some breweries each one must search for a glass, rinse it, and present himself in his turn at the shank window, to which there is no royal road. "La biere," which a great writer calls "ce vin de la reforme," is essentially a democratic drink. It became popular at a time when a fatal blow had been struck at class privileges and priestly exclusiveness.

Manfully does a true-hearted Bavarian stand by his brewery, in ill as well as good report. If the beer turns out badly, he does not find it a sufficient reason to desert his local for some other, but rather remains with touching devotion, and anticipates the approaching end of the old beer and the advent of new, with implicit trust and confidence in the future. Some years ago the Bavarian post and railway conductors distinguished themselves by the mournful zeal with which they notified to the passengers the nearing of the frontier. At each station they were sorrowfully communicative.

"The last Bairischer[B] but four, gentlemen! Gentlemen, there are only two more real Bairischers! Gentlemen," with tears in the voice, "the last Bairischer."

The passengers rushed to the buffet and drank.

Even now, with that curious affection with which every Bavarian's heart turns to his Mecca of beer, the salutation to a stranger is, "Are you going to Munich? Da werden sie gutes Bier trinken."[C]

"You came from Munich! Ach! da haben sie gutes Bier getrunken."[D]

Even in Beerland there are different kinds of beer, like the federal union, one in many and many in one. Between them are sometimes irreconcilable differences, as for example, between the white and Actiens beer of Berlin. The former is made of wheat, and is exclusively a summer beverage, and a glass of it is fondly termed a "kleine Weisse" (a little white one), perhaps in irony, for it is served in excentric mammoth tumblers, which require both hands to lift.

Then there is the Vienna beer, the antipodes of the Bavarian. The latter must be drunk soon after it is made, while the former must lie many months in the cellar before it is ready for use. In Austria, that forcible union of States of clashing interests and nationalities, which is not a nation, but only a government reposing on bayonets, the population is divided between the partisans of King Gambrinus and those of Bacchus.

As little as an artist could maintain that he was familiar with the works of the great masters when he had not visited Italy, so little could a beer drinker assert that he had seen beer rightly drunk when he had not been in Munich. All over the world beer is regarded as a refreshment, but in Munich it is the elixir of life, the fabled fountain of youth and happiness. It is looked upon as nourishment by the lower classes, who drink for dinner two masses[E] of it, with soup and black bread. For the price of the beer they could procure a good portion of meat, but they universally maintain that they are best nourished with beer and bread.

The Bavarian drinks to satisfy his "thirst, that beautiful German gift of God." If he is healthy, he drinks because it keeps his life juices in their normal state; if he is sick and in pain, because it is a soothing and harmless narcotic; if he is hungry, because beer is nourishment; if he has already eaten, because beer promotes digestion; if he is warm, because it is cooling and refreshing; if he is cold, because it warms him; if he is fatigued, because it is a tonic and sovereign strength renewer; if he is angry, because beer soothes him and gives him time to consider; if he needs courage, because beer is precisely the right stimulant. Where the Americans fly to their bitters "to tone up the system and enliven the secretions," the Germans resort to beer; and many are of opinion that frequent trips to the bock stalls in the spring are more healing than a visit to Carlsbad or Baden Baden, where one drinks disgusting water. In all circumstances and all moods they drink and are comforted.

The Jews believed that the sacred waves of the Jordan were powerful to wash away all human suffering, either of the soul or body. Faith was necessary to this pious healing. To the Muenchener beer is the river of health. His faith in it dates from his earliest infancy, and he resorts to its beneficent influence at least seven times a day, and drinks his last Kruegl with apparently the same relish as the first. The quantity which Germans drink is something incredible. Bavarian students usually take from five to seven masses per day. (At the German Jesuit seminary in Prague the novices are allowed daily seven, the clericos ten, and the priests twelve pints of beer.)

Beer is considered good not only for men, but for women, for girls and boys, and even unweaned infants.

"Mein Kruegl" the Muenchener speaks of as of his natural and human rights. He was born with a right to his beer, and his Kruegl, as "man is born with a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and equally with these the State must look after this right. The kruegls, or beer mugs, of each brewery are inspected by the police, to see if the measure is correct, and if the ware has no poisonous lead in its composition. The royal K is stamped on them by the King's authority. The police also examine the contents of the beer with the same zeal as the water or the condition of the sewers.

The Germans as a nation are patient of wrong and peace-loving, but the rumor of a tax on beer raises a frightful commotion, and a riot is often the consequence. As well tax air, water, and fire as beer, the fifth element.

In an ancient neighborhood of Munich, behind the post, and best entered from Maximilian street, is a little square remarkable for its ugliness. All the houses are old, and one feels upon entering it as if one had suddenly walked back into the middle ages. On the east side stands a time-gray, low, irregular building, resembling in architecture, or by its want of it, nothing of the present age. This is the royal Hof Brauerei. After 10 A. M. a constant stream of thirsty souls flows along the streets and narrow alleys leading toward its dismal-looking portals. Its beer is celebrated as being the finest in the world, and is the standard by which all other beers are judged. It is the poetry of beer; it is to all other brewings what Shakespeare is to the drama; what the Coliseum is to other antiquities. None of the beer is exported or sold; it is all drunk on the spot, and when it gives out no other brewery can supply a drop comparable with it. The Parisians, who have heaped every luxury, from the poles to the tropics, in their capital of the world, have not enough money in the Bank of France to purchase a cask of it. It is said that Maximilian II. resolved that the best beer in the world should be made at the royal brewery in Munich. It has never been expected that it would yield any revenue, but merely pay its expenses. It is now under the protection of the present King, and the ingredients are inspected by an officer of the royal household.

For its dirt, its darkness, and its utter want of service, the Hof Brauerei is unequalled in the world, and nowhere else can be found such a mixed society. Entering the low-vaulted room, each one looks anxiously about for an empty mug. These are of gray stone, containing a mass, the price of which is seven and a half kreutzers. Spying one, he hastens to secure it from other competitors. The first who reaches it carries it off in triumph to the spring in the anteroom, rinses it, and presents himself behind a queue of predecessors at the shank window, where several pairs of hands are occupied all day long in filling mugs from the great casks within. This accomplished, he returns to the guest room and searches for a seat. If found, it is certainly not luxurious—a wooden bench of pine, stained by time and continual use to a dark dirt color, behind an ancient table. The walls and ceiling are grim with age, and the atmosphere hazy with smoke. The scene baffles description. All classes of society are represented. Side by side with the noble or learned professor, one sees the poorest artisan and the common soldier. Here and there the picturesque face of an artist is in close proximity to a peasant, and through the smoky atmosphere one catches the gleam of the scarlet or sky-blue cap of a German student, or the glitter of an epaulette. The Catholic of the most ultramontane stamp is there, as well as the Jew, the Protestant, and the freethinker. Here stands a pilgrim from far America, armed with a Baedeker, and there an Englishman with the inevitable Murray under his arm, too amazed or disdainful to search for a mass. Remarkable also are the steady habitues of the place, with Albert Duerer-like features which look as if hastily hewn out of ancient wood with two or three blows of a hatchet, or with smoke-dried physiognomies having a tint like that of a meerschaum pipe, acquired by years of exposure to the thick atmosphere of smoky breweries. They are there morning, noon, and night, year in and year out. Some talk over the news of the day, but most sit in silence. Not a few make a meal with bread and radishes, or a sausage brought from the nearest pork shop.

In Munich a singular and ancient custom prevails. If by chance the cover of a mug is left up, any individual who chooses may seize it, and drink the contents. At the Hof Brauerei I once saw a newly arrived Englishman, carrying the usual red guidebook, quit the room for an instant, leaving uncovered his just acquired mass of beer. There came along a seedy-looking old gentleman, evidently a Stammgast. A gleam of satisfaction stole over his wooden features as he espied the open mug. Pausing a moment, he lifted it to his lips and slowly drank the contents. Setting it down empty, with a face mildly radiating satisfaction, he went his way. Presently the owner of the beer returned, took his seat, and lifted the mass, without looking, to his lips. With intense astonishment he put it down again, appeared not to believe the evidence of his senses, applied his glass to his eye, looked with anxiety into his mug, and became satisfied of its emptiness. At his neighbors he cast a quick glance of indignant suspicion—the look of a Briton whose rights were invaded. No one even looked up; apparently the occasion was too common to excite attention. Gradually his face regained its composure. He procured a new supply, and as the wonderful barley juice disappeared became again calm and happy. Miraculous mixture! Who would not, under thy benign influence, forget all rancor and bitterness, even though his deadliest enemy sat opposite?

In the Haupt und Residenz Stadt Muenchen, as Munich is always called in official documents, many of the breweries bear the names of orders of monks, because there the friars in olden days made particularly good beer. The breweries borrowed from them the receipt and the name. Hence the brewery to the Augustiner, to the Dominikaner, to the Franciskaner, and the Salvator.

New beer is in all cities of America and Europe a simple fact. In Munich it is an important public and private family event, concerning each house as well as the entire city.

The opening of the Salvator brewery in the suburbs of Munich, for its brief season of a month in the spring, assumes for the inhabitants the importance of a long anticipated holiday. Thither an eager crowd of townspeople make pilgrimage. I was present on one of these auspicious occasions, and found a joyous multitude of more than two thousand persons, filling to overflowing the capacious building gayly trimmed with evergreens interspersed with the national colors. A band discoursed excellent music, that necessary element, without which no German scene is complete. The waiters, more than usually adroit in supplying the wants of the crowd, carried in their hands fourteen glasses at a time with professional dexterity. The peculiar delicacy of the occasion, aside from the beer, seemed to be cheese, plentifully sprinkled with black pepper.

Late in the evening the people became more excited and sympathetic, and then it was proposed to sing "Herr Fisher," a popular German song of the people. A verse was sung by a few voices as a solo; then followed a mighty chorus from all the persons present. Each one raised the cover of his beer mug at the commencement, and let it fall with a clang at the close of the chorus, with startling effect.

In Munich one-half of the inhabitants appear to be engaged in the fabrication of beer and the entire population in drinking it. It impresses one as being the only industry there. The enormous brewery wagons, drawn by five Norman horses, are ever to be seen. On the trains going from the city there is ordinarily a beer car painted in festive white. It bears an inscription, that none may mistake its contents, and perhaps that the peasants may bless it as it passes. It is looked upon with as much reverence as if it bore the ark of the covenant.

All over Germany, among the most ordinary of birthday or holiday presents are the elegantly painted porcelain tops for beer glasses. The works of great masters may be found copied in exquisite style for this purpose, as well as illustrations suited to uncultivated tastes. To these pictures there are appropriate mottoes, and often a verse adapted to the comprehension of the most uneducated peasant. A favorite among the Bavarians, judging from the frequency with which it is met with in all parts of Bavaria, represents a peasant in a balcony waving her kerchief to her lover, departing in a little skiff, on an intensely blue sea. Beneath, in patois, is the doggerel:

Beautifully blue is the sea, But my heart aches in me, And my heart will never recover Till returns my peasant lover.

Equally a favorite is the following:

A rifle to shoot, And a fighting ring to hit, And a maiden to kiss, Must a lively boy have.

The rings to which the rhyme refers are of huge size, of silver, with a sharp-edged square of the same metal. They are heirlooms among the peasants, and are worn on the middle finger. It is the custom in a quarrel to hit one's adversary with the Stozzring on the cheek, which it tears open.

In Germany many of the great breweries have summer gardens in the suburbs of the cities. In Berlin there are magnificent Biergaerten, where the two most necessary elements of German existence, beer and music, are united. I need only refer to the Hof Jaeger, with its flowers, fountains, miniature lake, and open-air theatre, where popular comedies are performed. Three times per week there is an afternoon concert by one or two regiment bands. Thither the Germans conduct their families. In the winter there are concert rooms in the cities, where "music is married," not "to immortal verse," but to beer; and these classical concerts are patronized by people of high respectability.

Beer is peculiarly suited to the American temperament, too nervous and sensitive. It is certain that the human race always has, and probably always will, resort to beverages more or less stimulating. The preaching of moralists and the efforts of legislators will not exclude them permanently from our use. It is not in the use but in the abuse of these that the difficulty lies. Neither tea nor coffee answers for all temperaments and all occasions as nervous aliments. The extraordinary and increasing diffusion of liquors is one of the social ulcers of modern society, particularly in America. It is unfortunately true that the use of strong alcoholics is increasing every day, to the great detriment of public health and morals. Taken merely to kill time, they often end by killing the individual.

One of the great advantages of beer, too much forgotten even by physicians, is that it reverses the influence of alcohol, by which it loses its irritating properties on the mucous membrane of the stomach. The celebrated Dr. Bock (late professor of pathological anatomy in the university at Leipsic) says, "Beer exercises on the digestion, on the circulation, on the nerves, and above all on the whole system, a beneficial effect."[F]

It would be well if Americans would adopt it instead of the innumerable harmful beverages which ruin the health and poison the peace of society.

S. G. YOUNG.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: "Quadri della Natura Umana."]

[Footnote B: The local term in Bavaria for a glass of beer.]

[Footnote C: There you will drink good beer.]

[Footnote D: There you drank good beer.]

[Footnote E: A mass equals fifteen-sixteenths of a quart.]

[Footnote F: "Buch vom gesunden und kranken Menschen" (9th edition).]



ON READING SHAKESPEARE.

PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD.

We have followed Shakespeare's course of dramatic production down to the time when he began to embody in the work by which he earned his bread and made his fortune the results of an intuitive knowledge of human nature and a profound reflection upon it never surpassed, if ever equalled, and which, even if possessed, have never been united in any other man with a power of expression so grand, so direct, so strong, and so subtle. "Twelfth Night," "Henry V.," and "As You Like It" mark the close of his second period, which ended with the sixteenth century. His third period opens with "Hamlet," which was written about the year 1600. But here I will say that the division of his work into periods, and the assignment of his plays to certain years, is only inferential and approximative. We are able to determine with an approach to certainty about what time most of his plays were written; but we cannot fix their date exactly. Nor is it of very great importance that we should do so. There are some people who can fret themselves and others as to whether a play was written in 1600 or in 1601, as there are others who deem the question whether its author was born on the 23d of April in one year, and died on the same day of the same month in another, one of great importance. I cannot so regard it. A few days in the date of a man's birth or death, a few months in the production of a play—these are matters surely of very little moment. What is important to the student and lover of Shakespeare is the order of the production of his works; and this, fortunately, is determinable with a sufficient approach to accuracy to enable us to know about at what age he was engaged upon them, and what changes in his style and in his views of life they indicate.

In the first ten years of the seventeenth century, between his thirty-seventh and forty-seventh year, he produced "Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," his part of "Pericles," "All's Well that Ends Well," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Troilus and Cressida," "Cymbeline," "Coriolanus," and "Othello." These, with other works, were the fruit of his mind in its full maturity and vigor. Think of it a moment! what a period it was! As my eye lights upon the back of the eleventh volume of my own edition and the eighth of the Cambridge edition, and I read "HAMLET, KING LEAR, OTHELLO," I am moved with a sense of admiration and wonder which, if I allow it to continue, becomes almost oppressive; and I also take pleasure in the result of a convenience of arrangement that brought into one volume these three marvellous works—the three greatest productions of man's imagination, each wholly unlike the others in spirit and in motive.

Although they were not written one after the other, but with an interval of about five years between them, it would be well to read them consecutively and in the order above named, which is that in which they happen to be printed in the first collected edition (1623) of Shakespeare's plays. They were written—"Hamlet" in 1600-2, "King Lear" in 1605, and "Othello" about 1610, its date being much more uncertain than that of either of the others. The thoughtful reader who, having followed the course previously marked out, now comes to the study of these tragedies, is prepared to apprehend them justly, not only in their own greatness, but in their relative position as the product of their author's mind in its perfected and disciplined maturity—as the splendid triple crown of Shakespeare's genius. No other dramatist, no other poet, has given the world anything that can for a moment be taken into consideration as equal to these tragedies; and Shakespeare himself left us nothing equal to any one of them, taken as a whole and in detail; although there are some parts of other late plays—"Macbeth," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Troilus and Cressida," and "The Tempest"—which, in their grandeur of imagination and splendor of language, bear the stamp of this great period.

And yet such was the merely stage-providing nature of Shakespeare's work, that even "Hamlet," produced at the very height of his reputation, is, like the Second and Third Parts of "King Henry VI.," which came from his 'prentice hand, connected in some way, we do not know exactly what, with a drama by an elder contemporary upon the same subject. There are traces in contemporary satirical literature of a "Hamlet" which had been performed as early as 1589, or possibly two years earlier. It is remarkable that in the first edition of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (1603) Polonius is called Corambis, and Reynaldo, Montano; in which latter names we may safely assume that we have relics of the old play; and, although I am sure that in this edition of 1603 we have merely a mutilated and patched-up version, surreptitiously obtained, and printed in headlong haste, of the perfected play (in which opinion I differ from some English scholars, whose learning and judgment I respect, but to whom I would hold myself ready to prove, under forfeit, to their satisfaction the correctness of my view); there are also in this mutilated 1603 edition passages which not only are manifestly not what Shakespeare wrote, but not even a mutilated form of what he wrote. They are probably taken from the older play to supply the place of passages of the new play which could not be obtained in time for the hasty publication of this pirated edition of Shakespeare's tragedy. Remark, here, in this hasty and surreptitious edition, evidence of the great impression suddenly made by Shakespeare's "Hamlet." On its production it became at once so popular that a piratical publisher was at the trouble and expense of getting as much of the original as he could by unfair means, and vamping this up with inferior and older matter to meet the popular demand for reading copies. There is evidence of a like success of "King Lear." Since the time when these plays were produced there has been, we are called upon to believe, a great elevation of general intelligence, and there surely has been a great diffusion of knowledge; and yet it may be safely remarked that "Saratoga" and "Pique" and "The Golden Age," which ran their hundred nights and more, are not quite equal to "Hamlet" or to "King Lear," which, even with all their success, did not run anything like a hundred nights; and we may as safely believe that if "Hamlet" or "King Lear" were produced for the first time this winter in New York or in London, there would not be such a great and sudden demand for copies that extraordinary means would be taken by publishers to supply it. This superiority of the general public taste in dramatic literature during the Elizabethan era is one of the remarkable phenomena in literary history; and it is one that remains unaccounted for, and is, I think, altogether inexplicable, except upon the assumption that theatres nowadays rely for their support upon a public of low intellectual grade, and a taste for gross luxury and material splendor.

In reading "Hamlet" there is little opportunity of comparing it instructively with any of its predecessors. Its principal personage is entirely unlike any other created by Shakespeare. The play is all Hamlet: the other personages are mere occasions for his presence and means of his development. But Polonius is something the same kind of man as old Capulet in "Romeo and Juliet;" and although there were opportunities enough for the noble Veronese father to utter sententiously the knowledge of the world which he had gained by living in it, see how comparatively meagre and superficial his "wise saws" are compared with the counsel that Polonius gives to his son and to his daughter, and to the King and Queen; although Polonius, with all his sagacity, is garrulous and a bore; in Hamlet's words, a tedious old fool. As to Hamlet's character, Shakespeare did not mean it to be altogether admirable or otherwise, but simply to be Hamlet—a perfectly natural and not very uncommon man, although he expresses natural and not uncommon feelings with the marvellous utterance of the great master of dramatic poetry. And Hamlet's character is not altogether admirable; but it is therefore none the less, but probably the more, deeply interesting. How closely packed the play is with profound truths of life philosophy is shown by the fact that it has contributed not only very much more—four or five times more—than any other poem of similar length to the storehouse of adage and familiar phrase, but at least twice as much as any other of Shakespeare's plays. I know two boys who, going to see the play for the first time, some years before the appearance of a like story in the newspapers, came home and did actually, in the innocence of their hearts, qualify the great admiration they expressed for it by adding, "but how full it is of quotations." In fact, about one eighth of this long play has become so familiar to the world that it is in common use, and is recognized as the best expression known of the thoughts that it embodies. This, however, is not an absolute test of excellence, for it is remarkable that "King Lear" is very much behind it, and also behind "Othello," in this respect; and indeed there are several plays, including "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," "Henry IV.," "As You Like It," and "The Merchant of Venice," which are richer than "King Lear" in passages familiarly quoted; and yet as to the superiority of "King Lear" to the other plays I think there can be no doubt. It is the greatest tragedy, the greatest dramatic poem, the greatest book, ever written; so great is it, in fact, so vast in its style, so lofty in its ideal, that to those who have reflected upon it and justly apprehended it, it has become unplayable. As well attempt to score the music of the spheres, or to paint "the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf." In "King Lear" there is a personage who may be very instructively compared with others of the same kind by the student of Shakespeare's mental development. This is the Fool. Shakespeare's fools or clowns (such as those in "Love's Labor's Lost" and in "Hamlet") are among the most remarkable evidences of his ability to make anything serve as the occasion and the mouthpiece of his wit and his wisdom. He did not make the character; he found it on the stage, and a favorite with a considerable part of the play-goers. It was, however, as he found it, a very coarse character, rude as well as gross in speech, and given to practical joking. He relieved it of all the rudeness, if not of all the grossness, and reformed the joking altogether; but he also filled the Fool's jesting with sententious satire, and while preserving the low-comedy style of the character, brought it into keeping with a lofty and even a tragic view of life. In "King Lear" the Fool rises into heroic proportions, and becomes a sort of conscience, or second thought, to Lear. Compared even with Touchstone he is very much more elevated, and shows not less than Hamlet, or than Lear himself, the grand development of Shakespeare's mind at this period of its maturity. In the representation of Shakespeare's plays there has been no greater affront to common sense than the usual presentation of this Fool upon the stage as a boy, except the putting a pretty woman into the part, dressed in such a way as to captivate the eye and divert the attention by the beauty of her figure. It is disturbing enough to see Ariel, sexless, but, like the angels, rather masculine than feminine, represented by a woman dressed below the waist in an inverted gauze saucer, and above the waist in a perverted gauze nothing; but to see Lear's Fool thus unbedecked is more amazing than Bottom's brutal translation was to his fellow actors. This Fool is a man of middle age, one who has watched the world and grown sad over it. His jesting has a touch of heart-break in it which is prevented from becoming pathetic only by the cynicism which pertains partly to his personal character and partly to his office. He and Kent are about of an age—Kent, who when asked his age, as he comes back disguised to his old master, says, "Not so young as to love a woman for her singing, nor so old as to dote on her for anything; I have years on my back forty-eight"—a speech which contains one of the finest of Shakespeare's minor touches of worldly-wise character drawing. The German artist Retsch in his fine outline illustrations of this play has conceived this Fool with fine appreciation of Shakespeare's meaning. He makes him a mature man, with a wan face and a sad, eager eye. The misrepresentation of the character has its origin in Lear's calling the Fool "boy"—a term partly of endearment and partly of patronage, which has been so used in all countries and in all times. A similar misunderstanding of a similar word fool, which Lear touchingly applies to Cordelia in the last scene—"and my poor fool is hanged"—caused the misapprehension until of late years[G] that Lear's court Fool was hanged—although why Edmund's creatures should have been at the trouble in the stress of their disaster to hang a Fool it would puzzle any one to tell.