OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM AND DEMOCRATIC IDEAS.

A movement which appeals not to the emotions, but to the intellect—whose advocates aim at enlightening-the public mind and convincing it of the truth of some new or disregarded principle, and the necessity of enforcing it—needs above all things open and active opposition, both as a stimulant to its supporters and as a means of arousing general attention. It has been very unfortunate for our Civil-Service Reformers that they have never been able to provoke discussion. They have had the field of argument all to themselves. Their repeated challenges have been received only with silent respect, scornful indifference, or expressions of encouragement still more depressing. Those whose hostility they were prepared to encounter have been the readiest to acknowledge the truth of their propositions—considered as pure abstractions—and have even invited them to apply their system—in conjunction with that which it seeks to supplant. Meanwhile, the popular interest has been kept busily absorbed by issues of a different nature; and the Reformers, snubbed in quarters where they had confidently counted on aid, and hustled from the arena in which they had fondly imagined they were to play a prominent part and exert a decisive influence, are now, it is announced, about to devote their energies to the quiet propagation of their views by means of tracts and other publications, abstaining from any appearance in the domain of actual politics either as a distinct party or as an organized body of independent voters appealing to the hopes and fears of existing parties, and ready to co-operate with one or the other according to the inducements offered for their support.

We heartily wish them success in this new enterprise, and it is as a contribution to their efforts that we publish in this number of the Magazine an article which, so far as our observation extends, is the first direct argumentative attack upon their doctrines and open defence of the system they have assailed. We shall not undertake to anticipate their reply, but I shall content ourselves with pointing out, on the principle of fas est ab hoste doceri, what they may learn from this attack, and especially what hints may be derived from it in regard to the proper objective point of their proposed operations. Hitherto, if we mistake not, they have been led to suppose that the only obstacles in their way are the interested antagonism of the "politicians" and the ignorant apathy of the great mass of the people, and it is because they have found themselves powerless to make head against the tactics of the former class that they intend to confine themselves henceforth to the work of awaking and enlightening the latter. There is always danger, however, when we are expounding our pet theories to a group of silent listeners, of ignoring their state of mind in regard to the subject-matter and mistaking the impression produced by our eloquence. George Borrow tells us that when preaching in Rommany to a congregation of Gypsies he felt highly flattered by the patient attention of his hearers, till he happened to notice that they all had their eyes fixed in a diabolical squint. Something of the same kind would, we fear, be the effect on a large number of persons of well-meant expositions of the English civil-service reform and its admirable results. Nor will any appeals to the moral sense excite an indignation at the workings of our present system sufficiently deep and general to demand its overthrow. Civil-service reform had a far easier task in England than it has here, and forces at its back which are here actively or inertly opposed to it. There the system of patronage was intimately connected with oligarchical rule; official positions were not so much monopolized by a victorious party as by a privileged class; the government of the day had little interest in maintaining the system, the bulk of the nation had a direct interest in upsetting it, and its downfall was a natural result of the growth of popular power and the decline of aristocracy. Our system, however similar in its character and effects, had no such origin; it does not belong to some peculiar institution which we are seeking to get rid of: on the contrary, it has its roots in certain conceptions of the nature of government and popular freedom—of the relations between a people and those who administer its affairs—which are all but universally current among us.

It is this last point which is clearly and forcibly presented in the article of our contributor, and which it will behoove the Reformers not to overlook. Nothing is more characteristic of the American mind, in reference to political ideas, than its strong conservatism. This fact, which has often puzzled foreign observers accustomed to connect democracy with innovating tendencies and violent fluctuations, is yet easily explained. Though ours is a new country, its system of government is really older than that of almost any other civilized country. In the century during which it has existed intact and without any material modification the institutions of most other nations have undergone a complete change, in some cases of form and structure, in others of theory and essence. Even England, which boasts of the stability of its government and its immunity from the storms that have overturned so many thrones and disorganized so many states, has experienced a fundamental, though gradual and peaceable, revolution. There, as elsewhere, the centre of power has changed, the chain of tradition has been broken, and new conceptions of the functions of government and its relations to the governed have taken the place of the old ones. But in America nothing of this kind has occurred: the "old order" has not passed away, nor have its foundations undergone the least change; the municipal and colonial institutions under which we first exercised the right of self-government, and the Constitution which gave us our national baptism, are still the fountain of all our political ideas; and our party struggles are not waged about new principles or animated by new watch words, but are fenced and guided by the maxims transmitted by the founders of the republic. This is our strength and our safeguard against wild experiments, but it is also an impediment to every suggestion of improvement. It binds us to the letter of tradition, leads us to confound the accidental with the essential, and gives to certain notions and certain words a potency which must be described as an anachronism. We still use the language of the Revolutionary epoch, recognize no perils but those against which our ancestors had to guard, and put faith in the efficacy of methods that have no longer an object, and of phrases that have lost their original significance. Because George III. distributed offices at his pleasure as rewards, and bound the holders to party services in conformity with his will, the sovereign people is to do the same. "Rotation in office" having been the means in the eighteenth century of dispelling political stagnation and checking jobbery and corruption, it is still the only process for correcting abuses and getting the public service properly performed. The prime duty of all good citizens is to emulate the incessant political activity of their patriotic forefathers, and it is owing solely to a too general neglect of this duty that ballot-stuffing and machine-running, and all the other evils unknown in early days and in primitive communities, have come into existence and gained sway throughout the land. These and similar views, according to our observation, characterize what we may without disrespect, and without confining the remark to the rural districts, term the provincial mind, and wherever they exist the ideas of the Civil-Service Reformers are not only not understood or treated as visionary, but are regarded with aversion and distrust as foreign, monstrous and inconsistent with popular freedom and republican government.

AN UNFINISHED PAGE OF HISTORY.

I can easily understand why educated Americans cross the Atlantic every year in shoals in search of the picturesque; and I can understand, too, all that they say of the relief which ivied ruins and cathedrals and galleries, or any other reminders of past ages, give to their eyes, oppressed so long by our interminable rows of store-box houses, our pasteboard villas, the magnificence of our railway accommodations for Ladies and Gents, and all the general gaseous glitter which betrays how young and how rich we are. But I cannot understand why it is that their eyes, thus trained, should fail to see the exceptional picturesqueness of human life in this country. The live man is surely always more dramatic and suggestive than a house or a costume, provided we have eyes to interpret him; and this people, as no other, are made up of the moving, active deposits and results of world-old civilizations and experiments in living.

Outwardly, if you choose, the country is like one of the pretentious houses of its rich citizens—new, smug, complacently commonplace—but within, like the house again, it is filled with rare bits gathered out of every age and country and jumbled together in utter confusion. If you ride down Seventh street in a horse-car, you are in a psychological curio-shop. On one side, very likely, is a Russian Jew just from the Steppes; on the other, a negro with centuries of heathendom and slavery hinting themselves in lip and eye; the driver is a Fenian, with the blood of the Phoenicians in his veins; in front of you is a gentleman with the unmistakable Huguenot nose, and chin; while an almond-eyed pagan, disguised behind moustache and eye-glasses, courteously takes your fare and drops it for you in the Slawson box. Nowhere do all the elements of Tragedy and Comedy play so strange a part as on the dead-level of this American stage. It is because it is so dead a level that we fail to see the part they play—because "furious Goth and fiery Hun" meet, not on the battle-field, but in the horse-car, dropping their cents together in a Slawson box.

For example, as to the tragedy.

I met at dinner not long ago a lady who was introduced to me under a French name, but whose clear olive complexion, erect carriage and singular repose of manner would indicate her rather to be a Spaniard. She wore a red rose in the coils of her jetty hair, and another fastened the black lace of her corsage. Her eyes, which were slow, dark and brilliant, always rested on you an instant before she spoke with that fearless candor which is not found in the eyes of a member of any race that has ever been enslaved. I was told that her rank was high among her own people, and in her movements and voice there were that quiet simplicity and total lack of self-consciousness which always belong either to a man or woman of the highest breeding, or to one whose purpose in life is so noble as to lift him above all considerations of self. Although a foreigner, she spoke English with more purity than most of the Americans at the table, but with a marked and frequent recurrence of forcible but half-forgotten old idioms; which was due, as! learned afterward, to her having had no book of English literature to study for several years but Shakespeare. I observed that she spoke but seldom, and to but one person at a time; but when she did, her casual talk was the brimming over of a mind of great original force as yet full and unspent. She was, besides, a keen observer who had studied much, but seen more.

This lady, in a word, was one who would deserve recognition by the best men and women in any country; and she received it here, as many of the readers of Lippincott, who will recognize my description, will remember. She was caressed and feted by literary and social celebrities in Washington and New York; Boston made much of her; Longfellow and Holmes made verses in her honor; prying reporters gave accounts of her singular charm and beauty to the public in the daily papers.

She was accompanied by two of the men of her family. They did not speak English, but they were men of strong practical sense and business capacity, with the odd combination in their character of that exaggerated perception of honorable dealing which we are accustomed to call chivalric. They had, too, a grave dignity and composure of bearing which would have befitted Spanish hidalgos, and beside which our pert, sociable American manner and slangy talk were sadly belittled. These men (for I had a reason in making particular inquiries concerning them) were in private life loyal friends, good citizens, affectionate husbands and fathers—in a word, Christian men, honest from the marrow to the outside.

Now to the strange part of my story, revolting enough to our republican ears. This lady and her people, in the country to which they belong, are held in a subjection to which that of the Russian serf was comparative freedom. They are held legally as the slaves not of individuals, but of the government, which has absolute power over their persons, lives and property. Its manner of exercising that power is, however, peculiar. They are compelled to live within certain enclosures. Each enclosure is ruled by a man of the dominant race, usually of the lower class, who, as a rule, gains the place by bribing the officer of government who has charge of these people. The authority of this man within the limits of the enclosure is literally as autocratic as that of the Russian czar. He distributes the rations intended by the government for the support of these people, or such part of them as he thinks fit, retaining whatever amount he chooses for himself. There is nothing to restrain him in these robberies. In consequence, the funds set aside by the government for the support of its wretched dependants are stolen so constantly by the officers at the capital and the petty tyrants of the separate enclosures that the miserable creatures almost yearly starve and freeze to death from want. Their resource would be, of course, as they are in a civilized country, to work at trades, to farm, etc. But this is not permitted to them. Another petty officer is appointed in each enclosure to barter goods for the game or peltry which they bring in or crops that they manage to raise. He fixes his own price for both his goods and theirs, and cheats them by wholesale at his leisure. There is no appeal: they are absolutely forbidden to trade with any other person. The men of my friend's family—educated men and shrewd in business as any merchant of Philadelphia—when at home were liable to imprisonment and a fine of five hundred dollars if they bought from or sold to any other person than this one man. They are, too, taught no trade or profession. Each enclosure has its appointed blacksmith, carpenter, etc. of the dominant class, who, naturally, will not share their profits by teaching their trade to the others.

Within the enclosures my friend and her people, no matter how enlightened or refined they may be, are herded, and under the same rules, as so many animals. They cannot leave the enclosure without passes, such as were granted to our slaves before the war when they wished to go outside of the plantation. This woman, when seated at President Hayes's table, the equal in mind and breeding of any of her companions, was, by the laws of her country, a runaway, legally liable to be haled by the police back to her enclosure, and shot if she resisted. She and her people are absolutely unprotected by any law. It is indeed the only case, so far as I know, in any Christian country, in which a single class are so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings. They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own hands they build a house and gather about them the comforts of civilization and the wife and children to which the poorest negro, the most barbarous savage, has a right, any man of the dominant class can, without violating any law, take possession of the house, ravage the wife and thrust the children out to starve. The wrong-doer is subject to no penalty. The victim has no right of appeal to the courts. Hence such outrages are naturally of daily occurrence. Not only are they perpetrated on individuals, but frequently there is a raid made upon the whole of the inmates of one enclosure—whenever, in fact, the people in the neighborhood fancy they would like to take possession of their land. The kinsmen of my friend, with their clan numbering some seven hundred souls—a peaceable, industrious Christian community, living on land which had belonged to their ancestors for centuries—were swept off of it a few years ago at the whim of two of their rulers: their houses and poor little belongings were all left behind, and they were driven a thousand miles into a sterile, malarious region where nearly half of their number died. The story of their sufferings, their homesickness and their despair on the outward journey, and of how still later some thirty of them returned on foot, carrying the bones of those who had died to lay them in their old homes, is one of the most dramatic pages in history. De Quincey's "Flight of a Tartar Clan" does not equal it in pathos or as a story of heroism and endurance. At the end of their homeward journey, when almost within sight of their homes, the heroic little band were seized by order of the ruler of their enclosure and committed to prison. The tribe are still in the malarious swamps to which they were exiled. Strangers hold their farms and the houses which they built with their own hands.

The anomalous condition of a people legally ranking as animals, and not human beings, would naturally produce unpleasant consequences when they are criminally the aggressors. When they steal or kill they cannot be tried, sent to jail or hung as if they were human in the eye of the law. The ruler of each enclosure is granted arbitrary power in such cases to punish at his discretion. He is judge, jury, and often executioner. He has a control over the lives of these people more absolute than that of any Christian monarch over his subjects. If he thinks proper to shoot the offender, he can call upon the regular army of the country to sustain him. If the individual offender escapes, the whole of the inmates of the enclosure are held responsible, and men, women and children are slaughtered by wholesale and without mercy.

My readers understand my little fable by this time. It is no fable, but a disgraceful truth.

The government under which a people—many of whom are educated, enlightened Christian gentlemen—are denied the legal rights of human beings and all protection of law is not the absolute despotism of Siara or Russia, but the United States, the republic which proclaims itself the refuge for the oppressed of all nations—the one spot on earth where every man is entitled alike to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only people in the world to whom it denies these rights are not its quondam slaves, not pagans, not runaway convicts, not the offscourings of any nation however degraded, but the original owners of the country.

The legal disability under which the Indian is held is as much of an outrage on human rights, and as bald a contradiction of the doctrines on which our republic is based, as negro slavery was.

R.H.D.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA

The humorous side of life was never more vividly brought before me than while living a few years ago in the vicinity of an Irish settlement in one of the suburbs of New York. What we call "characters" were to be found in every cottage—the commonplace was the exception. Indeed, I do not remember that it existed at all in "The Lane," as this locality was called.

Perhaps among the inhabitants of The Lane none more deserved distinction than Mary Magovern. The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all the masculine and feminine virtues. About the stiff, spotless and colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her grandchildren, stopping from time to time to remove the pipe from her mouth, that she might deliver in her full bass voice a peremptory order to the large yellow dog that lay at her feet. It was usually on the occasion of a carriage passing, when the dog would growl and rise. Very quickly out came the pipe, and immediately followed the words, "Danger, lay by thim intintions;" and the pipe was used as an indicator for the next movement—namely, to patiently lie down again upon the ground.

Mary Magovern kept a drinking-shop behind the living-rooms of her cottage, and the immense prestige she had in The Lane must have had some foundation in the power which this thriving business gave her, many of her neighbors being under the obligation of debt to her.

Mike Quinlan would have been her most frequent visitor had it not been for the ever-open eye of Mrs. Quinlan, which caused her husband to seek his delights by stealth at a village a mile away. Mike was an elderly and handsome man, but his wits had ebbed out as the contents of the wine-cup flowed in, and the beauty that had won so remarkable a person as Mrs. Quinlan in its first glow was somewhat marred. He was the owner of a small cart and a mule, and those who had stones or earth to move usually remembered to employ poor Mike. But it was on foot, as a more inconspicuous method of eluding the watchfulness of Mrs. Quinlan, that Mike slipped away to the neighboring village of an afternoon, and it was on foot that I one night saw Mrs. Quinlan going over the same road with an invincible determination in her countenance and a small birch rod in her hand. Mrs. Quinlan was somewhat younger than her lord and master: she had a clear, bright-blue eye, a roseate color in her little slender face, and gray hair tidily smoothed back beneath the dainty ruffles of her cap, about which a black ribbon was tied. She wore short petticoats and low shoes, and as she walked briskly along she smoothed her apron with the disengaged hand, as if, the balance of the family respectability having so wholly fallen upon her own shoulders, she would not disturb it by permitting a disorderly wrinkle. Half an hour later she passed again over the road, her face turned homeward and wearing an even greater austerity, the birch rod grasped firmly in her hand, and her worser half preceding her with a foolish smile upon his lips, half of concession, half of pride in the power to which he stooped.

Another of Mrs. Magovern's occasional visitors was Old Haley, who had regular employment upon our own place. Like Mike Quinlan, he rejoiced in a wife who was an ornament to her sex—a most respectable, handsome and intelligent woman, though education had done little to sharpen her wits or widen her experience. She could tell a one from a five dollar bill, as her husband would proudly inform you, and she could cook a dinner, do up a skirt or a frilled cap, keep a house or tend a sick friend, as well as any woman in the land. "Maggie's a janeous!" her husband would remark with a look of intense admiration.

One evening Mrs. Haley made her appearance at our house, asking for an audience of my mother. The object was to inform her—these sympathetic people like to be advised in all their affairs—that being in need of various household supplies she proposed on the following day to go to the city and purchase them at the Washington Market.

"I suppose you have been to the city before, Mrs. Haley?" remarked my mother.

"I have not, ma'am," said Mrs. Haley.

"Had you not better take some friend with you who has been there before, lest you should get lost?"

"Faith, I had, ma'am: I had a right to have moor sinse an' think o' that."

So Mrs. Haley departed, returning again in company with Mary Magovern: "Here's Mary Magovern, ma'am: she's goin' along wid me."

"Ah, that's very well.—You know the city, Mary? you've been there?"

"I have not, ma'am."

"Why, what, then, is the use of your going with Mrs. Haley?"

"We'll make a shtrict inquiry, ma'am."

The next morning they started, and at four o'clock Old Haley came in much anxiety of mind to seek comfort of my mother: "Maggie's not come, ma'am. Faith, I'm throubled, for the city is a quare place."

When it grew late Haley returned again and again, in ever-increasing anxiety, to be reassured. At last, when the family were retiring to bed, came Mrs. Haley and Mrs. Magovern to report their arrival. In spite of the lateness of the hour my mother received them, and in spite of their wearied and worn faces administered a gentle rebuke for the anxiety that Mrs. Haley had caused her spouse.

"Well, indade it's no wonder he was throubled," said Mrs. Haley, "an' it's a wonder we got here at all. We got nothing at the Washington Market, for we couldn't find it at all: I think they tuk it away to Washington. It was in the mornin' airly that we got to the city, ma'am, an' there was a koind of a carr, an' a gintleman up on the top of it, an' anuther gintleman at the dure of it, wid the dure in his hand, an' he sez, sez he, 'Git in, ladies,' sez he.—'We're goin' to the Washington Market, sur,' sez I.—That's where I'll take yez, ladies,' sez he. 'Pay yer fares, ladies.' An' we got in, ma'am, an' wint up to the top of the city, an' paid tin cints, the both of us. An' there was a great many ladies an' gintlemen got in an' done the same, ma'am, an' some got out one place an' some another. An' whin we got up to the top of the city, 'Mrs. Magovern,' sez I,' this isn't the Washington Market,' sez I.—' It is not, Mrs. Haley,' sez she.—'We'll git out, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'We will, Mrs. Haley,' sez she. An' thin, ma'am, there was a small bit of a howl in the carr, and it was through the howl the ladies an' gintlemen would cry out to the gintleman on the top o' the carr, and he'd put his face down forninst it an' spake wid thim; an' I cried up through the howl to him, an' sez I, 'Me an' Mrs. Magovern will git out, sur,' sez I, 'for this isn't the Washington Market at all.'—'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but that's where I'll take yez,' sez he. 'Sit down, ladies,' sez he, 'and pay me the money,' sez he. 'I had a great many paple to lave,' sez he. An' indade he had, ma'am. An' we paid the money agin, an' we wint down to the bottom o' the city. 'This is not the Washington Market, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'It is not, Mrs. Haley,' sez she.—'We'll git out, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'We will, Mrs. Haley,' sez she. Thin came the gintleman that first had the dure in his hand. 'What's the matther, ladies?' sez he.—'This isn't the Washington Market, sur,' sez I.—'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but the city is a great place,' sez he, 'an' it's not aisy to go everywhere at wonst,' sez he; 'an' if yez will have patience,' sez he, 'ye'll git there,' sez he. 'Git in, ladies,' sez he, 'an' pay yer fares.' Wid all the houses there's in the city, an' all the sthrates there's in it, faith, it was no good at all to thry to foind our way alone; but thim wur false paple—they niver took us to the Washington Market at all; an' it was all the day we wint up to the top o' the city and down to the bottom o' the city, and spinding our money at it. An' sez I, 'Mrs. Magovern, it would be better for us if we wint home,' sez I.—'It would, Mrs. Haley,' sez she; an' we come down to the boat, an' it was two hours agin befoor the boat would go, an' thin we come home; an' it's toired we are, an' it's an' awful place, the city is."

Haley's statements could seldom be relied on, but his untruth fulness was never a matter of self-interest, but rather of amiability. He desired to tell you whatever you desired to know, and to tell it as you would like to hear it, even if facts were so perverse as to be contrary.

One day I wanted to do an errand in the village, and called for the horse and carriage. Haley brought them to the door. As I took the reins I remembered that it was noon and the horse's dinner-time: "Did the horse have his dinner, Haley?"

"I just gave it to him, ma'am; and an ilegint dinner he had."

"Why did you feed him just when I was about to drive him?"

"Oh, well, it's not much he got."

"He should have had nothing."

"Faith, me lady, I ownly showed it to him."

There were no more respectable people in The Lane than John Godfrey and his family. His pretty little wife with an anxious face tenderly watched over an ever-increasing family of daughters, till on one most providential occasion the expected girl turned out to be a boy, and I went with my sisters to congratulate the happy mother. "What will you name the little fellow, Mrs. Godfrey?" I asked, sympathetically.

The poor woman looked up with a smile, saying weakly, "John Pathrick, miss—John afther the father, an' Pathrick afther the saint."

The following year the same unexpected luck brought another boy, and again we young girls, being much at leisure, carried our congratulations: "What will be the name of this little boy, Mrs. Godfrey?"

"Pathrick John, miss—Pathrick afther the saint, an' John afther the father."

A confused sense of having heard that sentence before came over me. "Why, Mrs. Godfrey," I said, "was not that the name of your last child?"

"To be shure, miss. Why would I be trating one betther than the other?"

A member of this same family, upon receiving a blow with a stone in the eye, left her somewhat overcrowded paternal home for the quieter protection of her widowed aunt, Mrs. King, and one day my sister and myself knocked at Mrs. King's door to inquire about the state of the injured organ.

"Troth, miss, it's very bad," said Mrs. King.

"What do you do for it, Mrs. King?"

"Do?" said Mrs. King, suddenly applying the corner of her apron to her overflowing eyes—"Do?" she continued in a broken voice. "I've been crying these three days."

"But what do you do to make it better?"

Mrs. King took heart, folded her arms, and thus applied herself to the setting forth of her humane exertions: "In comes Mistress Magovern, an', 'Mrs. King,' sez she, 'put rar bafesteak to the choild's oye;' an' that minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak wint to it. Thin comes Mrs. Haley. 'Is it rar bafesteak ye'd be putting to it, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Biling clothes, Mrs. King,' sez she. That minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak come afif an' the biling clothes wint to it. In comes Mrs. Quinlan. 'Will ye be destryin' the choild's oye intirely, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Cowld ice, Mrs. King.' An' that minit, ma'am, the biling clothes come aff an' the cowld ice wint to it. Oh, I do be doin' iverything anybody do tell me."

It was a memorable sight to see the Gunning twins wandering down The Lane hand in hand when their maternal relative had gone out washing for the day and taken the door-key with her. "Thim lads is big enough to take care of thimsilves," she would remark, though "the lads" were not yet capable of coherent speech. No doubt they wandered into some neighbor's at meal-time and received a willingly-given potato or a drink of milk. They seemed happy enough, and their funny, ugly little faces were defaced by no tears. They grew in time old enough to explain their position to inquiring passers-by and to pick up and eat an amazing quantity of green apples. A lady passing one day stopped and remonstrated with one of them. "Barney," she said, "it will make you ill if you eat those green apples."—"I do be always atin' of them, ma'am," replied Barney, stolidly.

Perhaps it may have been the green apples, but from whatever cause Barney fell ill, and all that the doctor prescribed made him no better. "It's no matther, stir," said Mrs. Gunning one morning: "yer needn't come ag'in. I'll just go an' ask Mrs. ———" (my mother).

The next morning the doctor, meeting my mother, laughingly remarked that it was very plain that they couldn't practise in the same district: he had just met Mrs. Gunning, who informed him that "what Mrs. ——— gave her the night befoor done the choild a power of good."

The day preceding our departure from the place my sister and I passed through The Lane, and received the most amiable farewells, accompanied with blessings, and even tears. The figure I best remember is that of Mrs. Regan, who, bursting out from her doorway, stood in our path, and, dissolving in tears, sobbed out, "Faith, I'm sorry yez be goin'. I don't know what I'll do at all widout yez;" and, seizing my sister's hand, gave her this unique recommendation: "Ye were always passing by mannerly—niver sassy nor impidint, nor nothing."

The Lane has changed to-day. A Chinese grocer has, I hear, set up a shop in its midst. Some of its most noted characters have passed away, and the younger generation have taken on habits more American than those of their predecessors.

M.R.O.

A CHILD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

A quaint and charming volume, which has fallen in our way, is Little Charlie's Life, "the autobiography of a child between six and seven years of age, written with his own hand and without any assistance whatever." It was at the urgent request of the gentleman who acted as editor, Rev. W.R. Clark—thus rescuing an inimitable little work from comparative oblivion—that the parents of the youthful author reluctantly consented to the publication of this curious delineation of child-life. From the date of his birth (1833), Charlie must have written his work some forty years ago. How long he was engaged in its composition is not stated, but from the internal evidence yielded by the spelling and the handwriting (for the work is lithographed in exact imitation of the manuscript) we should infer that it occupied two or three years, the handwriting of the first seven chapters being in imitation of ordinary printing, while the remaining chapters appear in an ordinary schoolboy's hand. We may add that it is copiously illustrated by himself, and that the illustrations are worth their weight in gold, supplementing as they do, in a superfluously exact and curiously quaint manner, this most unique work.

He starts with this account of himself: "My name is Charles John Young, and I was born in Amfort, a pretty village in Hampshire, 1833 in July, that pleasant time when the birds sing merrily and flowers bloom sweetly. My father and mother are the kindest in the world, and I love them dearly and both alike. I shall give a description of them by and by. In the mean time I shall just say that my papa is a clergyman."

The earlier chapters describe the various migrations of the family from one parish to another, and from them we have no difficulty in recognizing in "papa" the Rev. Julian Young, who possessed no small share of the talents that distinguished his father, the celebrated tragedian, Charles Young, and which seem to have been transmitted to our author, who, we understand, has honorably served his country in Her Majesty's army. From his earliest years Charlie seems to have been strongly influenced by religious feelings. His creed was a bright and trustful one, a realization of God's presence and of the need of speaking to Him as to one who could always hear and help. When he was about three years old, we are told in the editor's interesting preface, he was often heard offering up little petitions for the supply of his child-like wants. Once, when, his nurse left him to fetch some more milk, his father overheard him saying, "O God, please let there be enough milk in the jug for me to have some more, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen." Many quaint little religious reflections and scriptural allusions are interspersed throughout the book. In one place he declares that "without papa and mamma the garden would be to me what the wilderness was to John the Baptist;" while again he offers up a pathetic prayer for a baby-brother; and throughout we are struck by the fact that his religion was pre-eminently one of love. Charlie's educational advantages were of the noblest and best, home-training largely predominating. In the ninth chapter he refers in a simple matter-of-fact way to his early studies: "Mamma devotes her time in teaching me and in reading instructive books with me. Papa tells me about the productions of the earth, rivers, mountains, valleys, mines, and, most wonderful of all, the formation of the human body." Further on we read: "Nothing of any great importance occurred now for some time. My life was spent quietly in the country, as the child of a Wiltshire clergyman ought, mamma devoting her time in teaching me, and my daily play going on the same, till at last papa and mamma took me to the splendid capital of England." However much this brilliant transition may have dazzled him, he still prefers his quiet country home, arguing thus: "As to living there [in London], I should not like it. The reason why—because its noisy riots in the streets suit not my mood like the tranquil streams and the waving trees I love in England's country.... 'Tis true—oh, how true!—in the poetic words of Mr. Shakespeare, 'Man made the town, God made the country.'"

Despite the stilted style and absurdly pompous descriptions, with an occasional terrible breakdown, Charlie's love of Nature, and especially of the animal creation, seems to have been most genuine. He speaks of "the wide ocean which when angry roars and clashes over the beach, but when calm crabs are seen crawling on the shore and the sun shines bright over the waves," and of "the billows rolling over each other and foaming over the rough stones," with an apparently real enthusiasm. The softer emotions of his nature were engrossed in this way, as we infer from the negative evidence afforded by his autobiography that he reached his seventh year without any experience of the tender passion.

His physiological ideas in the speculations regarding the origin of a baby-brother are naïvely expressed: "One day I was told that a baby was born [this was when he was three years and a half old], and upon going into mamma's bedroom I saw a red baby lying in an arm-chair wrapped in swaddling-clothes. It puzzled me very much to think how he came into the world: it was mysterious, very, and I cannot make it out now. My first thought was, that he must have had airy wings, and after he had come they had disappeared. My second thought was that he was so very little as to be able to come through the keyhole, and increased rapidly in size, just as it says in the Bible that a grain of mustard-seed springs to be so large a tree that the fowls of the air can roost upon it."

In his sixth year Charlie evinced poetic tendencies. We have in one of his poems a description of his grandpapa, "a venerable old gentleman with dark eyes, gray hair, noble features, and altogether very generous aspect." Here is "a song appropriate to him:"

At the head of this poem is a picture of the old ancestor, consisting of a hat, a head, a walking-stick, one arm and two legs, one of which—whether the right or left is doubtful, as their origin is concealed by the aforesaid arm—is much longer than the other, and walking in a contrary direction. The most wonderful feature of this sketch is the "hair streaming in the wind," the distance from the poll to the end of the flowing locks being longer than the longest leg.

We cannot conclude without an extract describing a "dreadful accident" which happened to our youthful author; "perhaps," as he solemnly says, "for a punishment of my sins, or to show me that Death stands ready at the door to snatch my life away:" "One night papa had been conjuring a penny, and I thought I should like to conjure; so I took a round brass thing with a verse out of the Bible upon it that I brought into bed with me. I thought it went down papa's throat, so I put it down my throat, and I was pretty near choked. I called my nurse, who was in the next room. She fetched up papa, and then my nurse brought the basin. Papa beat my back, and I was sick. Lo! there was the counter! Papa said, 'Good God!' and my nurse fainted, but soon recovered. Don't you think papa was very clever when he beat my back? Papa then had a long talk afterward with me about it—a very serious one."

The above pathetic story is accurately illustrated, but we especially regret that we cannot transfer to these pages some of the marvellous delineations of the animals in the Clifton Zoological Garden.

M.S. D.

WANTED—A REAL GAINSBOROUGH.

I am an unmarried man of twenty-four. After that confession it is hardly necessary to add that I am in the habit of thinking a great deal about a person not yet embodied into actual existence—i.e.. my future wife. I have not yet met her—she is a purely ideal being—but at the same time I so often have a vivid conception of her looks, her air, her walk, her tones even, that she seems to be present. My misery is that I cannot find her in real life.

No one need fancy that I am an imaginative man: quite the contrary is the fact. I am a lawyer, and have an office in Bond street. Every morning at eight o'clock I take the Sixth Avenue horse-cars and ride down to Fourteenth street. I have a fancy for walking the rest of the way, and toward evening I saunter back homeward along Broadway and Union Square.

Prosaic as these journeys may seem, they are nevertheless the inspiration of my hopes, the feeders of my visions. It is at such times that I enjoy my glimpses of the lady I long to meet. I jostle gentle creatures at every step: feminine shapes and feminine tones are on every side presented to eyes and ears. I trust nobody will be prejudiced against me when I confess that I see the fair one of my dreams in the shop-windows. Once having seen her, I become immeasurably happy, and go on dreaming about her until we meet again. It may seem a curious admission, but this beautiful although impalpable being is suggested by the charming dresses, hats and bonnets displayed on the milliners' blocks. None of our artists can paint portraits now-a-days: Art seems to have withdrawn her gifts from them and endowed the dressmakers and milliners instead.

It was at first difficult for me to decide on the personality of my beloved. My earliest fancy was for a blond: at least the dress was of pale blue silk with a profusion of lace trimmings. Her hat was of straw faced with azure velvet, and the crown surrounded by a long plume, also of ciel blue. I knew by heart the features of this fair young creature, invisible although she was to others. They seemed to belong more to a flower than to a face: her eyes were large and blue, full of appealing love; her hair was of course golden; her smile was angelic; and her whole expression was one of sweetness and goodness. She was my first dream: little although she belonged to actual life, she used to trip about by my side and sit with me in my room at home. Suddenly, however, I became enamored of a different creature, and my dream changed. I began to think of my lovely blond regretfully as of a beautiful creature too good for earth who died young. It is the habit of the shopkeepers to change the figures in their windows, and one morning I fell in love with quite a different creature. She wore when I first saw her a long dress of black silk and velvet sparkling with jet; over her shoulders was thrown carelessly a mantle of cream-colored cloth; on her head was a plush hat—what they call a Gainsborough—trimmed with a long graceful plume, also of cream-color. Although only her back was toward me, I knew by instinct exactly what her face was. She was dark of course, with a low broad forehead, about which clustered little short curls; her eyes were superb, at once laughing and melancholy; her features suggested rather pride than softness; but her smile was enchanting, open, sunny, like a burst of light from behind a cloud. Nothing could be more real than this vision. At first the discovery of this magnificently-endowed woman rendered me happy: I used to walk past the shop half a dozen times a day to look at her. Her costumes varied, but they always suggested the same dark but brilliant lineaments, the same graceful movements, the same peculiarly lovely tones. She often looked back at me over her shoulder, but had an air of evading me. All at once, with surprise and delight, I remembered that she might be found in actual existence, in real flesh and blood. I deserted the image for a week in the hope of finding the reality. I paced Fifth Avenue; I went to the dry-goods stores; I attended the theatres. Often I seemed to see her before me—the picturesque hat, the long plume, the rich mantle and dress. At such moments while I pressed forward my heart beat. When the cheek turned toward me and the eyes lighted up with surprise at my disappointed stare, it was easy enough to see that I had made a mistake. There was the hat, the cloak, the bewitching little frippiness of lace and net and ribbon about the bust. She had, however, copied the masterpiece without investing herself with its soul: her face was vague and characterless, her whole personality void of that eloquent womanliness which had so wrought upon me. This experience was so many times repeated that I was frightfully tormented by it. The familiar dress seemed to reveal with appalling truthfulness the lack of those qualities of heart and soul which I demanded. Those lovely, picturesque outlines suggest not only rounded cheeks colored with girlish bloom, but something more; and the graceful draping is not a meaningless husk.

I have gone back to my shop-window image. She never disappoints me. She is as beautiful, as magnificently endowed, as full of fascinating life and spirit, as ever. I sometimes think, unless I find her actual prototype, of buying that Gainsborough hat, that cloth mantle and velvet dress, and hanging them up in my room.