THE GALAXY. (continued 3)

There was therefore a good deal of uncertainty about the conditions of the problem. The followers of the ducal family were some of them full of hope. The reappearance of a duke and duchess and their train might do wonders in restoring the old order of things. In Keeton petticoat influence counted for a great deal, and in other days those who had the promises of the wives hardly thought it worth while to go through the form of asking the husbands. But now there was a new condition of the political problem even in that respect. The ballot, which had made the voter independent of the influence of his landlord or his wealthy customer, had converted the power of the petticoat into a sort of unknown quantity. There could be little doubt that the moral influence and the traditional control would still prevail with some; but he must be a rash electioneering agent who would venture to say how many votes could thus be counted on. It is a remarkable tribute to the moral greatness of an aristocracy that the influence thus obtained in old days over the wives and daughters of Keeton was absolutely unearned by any overt acts of favor or conciliation. The later dukes and their families had always been remarkable for never making any advances toward the townspeople. None of the traders of the town, however wealthy and respectable, found themselves or their wives invited to any manner of festivity up at the ducal hall. All that the noble family ever did for the townspeople was to come at certain seasons to Keeton and allow themselves to be looked at. This was enough for the time. The illustrious ladies could be seen, and, as has been said, they did sometimes speak a word to favored and envied persons. They were loved for being great personages, not for anything they did to win such devotion. "Love is enough," says the poet.

All these considerations, however, rendered it hard to calculate the exact chances of opposition in the borough of Keeton. Of course revolutionary opinions were growing up, old people found, there as well as elsewhere. There was a new class of Conservatives springing up whom steady, old-fashioned politicians found it not easy to distinguish from the Radicals of their younger days. On the other hand, keen-sighted persons could not fail to perceive that, whereas in their youth almost all young men had a tendency to be or to fancy themselves Radicals, it was now growing rather the fashion for immature politicians to boast themselves Tories, and to talk of a spirited foreign policy and the dangers of Cosmopolitanism. It would be hard to say how things might turn out, knowing people thought, as they shook their heads, and hoped the expected contest might not come on for some time.

Now the contest was at hand. At least the sitting member had positively declared that he would sit no longer, and it was announced that the Duke was coming to Keeton, and that Mr. Augustus Sheppard was to be the Duke's candidate. No more striking proof could be given of the recent change in the political condition of Keeton than is found in the fact that the adoption of Mr. Sheppard as a candidate by the ducal family did not even to the most devoted and sanguine followers of the great house make Mr. Sheppard's election seem by any means a matter of absolute certainty. There was a tolerably strong conviction everywhere, long before any opposition was announced, that the Duke's candidate would not be allowed to walk over the course and right into the House of Commons this time. Nobody in the town would oppose the Duke very likely, but the man to oppose would come.

Now the man actually had come. Victor Heron had issued his address and was in Keeton. His address was original; he had positively refused from the first to make any grand professions of superior statesmanship or patriotism. He would tell Englishmen, he said, that he was seeking a seat in Parliament as a way of getting redress for a great wrong done to him, and through him to some of the principles most dear to the country. When he had fought his battle in Parliament and won or lost, he promised that he would then place himself in the hands of his constituents and resign the seat if they desired. The whole address was frank, odd, original, and perhaps seemed a little self-conceited. The author's absorption in his subject was mistaken by many people, as will happen sometimes, for self-conceit.

Mr. Sheppard's address, on the contrary, talked only of the good old Conservative principles which had made England the envy and admiration of all surrounding States; of the local interests of Keeton and the candidate's acquaintance therewith; and of the many splendid things done for the town by the noble family who had done it the honor to have a park there.

"I don't think Heron's address reads half badly," Mr. Money said, one evening in the absence of Heron, to his two companions; "on the whole, I shouldn't wonder if it took some people, the women particularly. Anything personal, anything in the nature of a grievance, is likely to have a good effect on many people, especially where the injured personage is young, and good-looking, and plucky. I wish the women had the votes here just for this once, for I think we should stand to win if they had."

"Then, papa, do you think we shan't win now?" Lucy asked.

Minola looked up eagerly for his answer.

"Well, Lucelet, I don't like to say; I am not quite charmed with the look of things. I find there are a good many very strong Radicals grown up in this place since there was a contest here before; and Heron's not wild enough for them by half. They are a little of the red-hot social-revolution sort of thing—the proletaire business, with a dash of the brabbling atheist—the fellows who think one is not fit to live if he even admits the possibility of another world. I am afraid these fellows will hold aloof from us altogether, or even take some whim of voting against us, and they may be strong enough to turn the scale."

Minola hoped that if her friend Mr. St. Paul had really any charm by which to extort victory for Heron as he had promised, he would not forget to use it in good time. But she began to have less faith, and less, in the possibility of any such feat. She was a little in the perplexed condition of some one of mediæval times, who has entered into a bargain for supernatural interference, and is not quite certain whether to wish that the compact may be really carried out or that it may prove to have been only the figment of a dream.

"I'm told we ought to have some poems done," Money went on to say. "Not merely squibs, you know, but appeals about right and justice, and the cause of oppressed humanity, and all that."

"I'm sure Minola could do some beautifully!" Lucy exclaimed, looking beseechingly toward her friend.

"Oh, no; I couldn't indeed! My appeals would be dreadfully weak; they could not rouse the spirits of any mortal creature. Now, if we only had Mary Blanchet!"

This, it must be owned, was Minola's fun, but it gave an idea to Mr. Money.

"Tell you what," he said; "we ought to have her brother—the bard you used to call him, Lucelet."

"Oh, no, papa; indeed I never called him anything of the kind. I never did, indeed, Nola."

"Well, whatever you called him, Lucelet, we can't do better than to have him. We'll put Pegasus into harness, by Jove—a capital good use to make of him too. I'll write to what's-his-name?—Blanchet—at once."

"But I don't think he would like it, papa; I think he would take offence at the idea of your asking him to do poems for an election. I don't think he would come."

"Oh, yes, he would come; we would make it worth his while. These young fellows give themselves airs to make you girls admire them, that they never think of trying on with men. It would be a rather telling thing here too if it got about that we had brought a real poet specially down from London. I'll write at once."

This seemed rather alarming to Minola.

"I doubt whether Mr. Heron would much like it," she pleaded. "I don't know whether they are such very good friends just now. I am rather afraid."

"Oh, yes; of course they must be good friends! Heron is not to have it all his own way in everything anyhow. He must like the idea; he shall. I'll write without telling him anything about it, and Heron couldn't help being friendly to any fellow who came under his roof, as one might say."

No one made any further objection.

"I wish Heron had not been so confoundedly particular about St. Paul," Mr. Money went on to say in a discontented tone. "That was absurd. St. Paul's no worse than lots of other fellows, and in such a thing as this we can't afford to throw away any offer of support. We have to fight against the Duke and his lot anyhow, and the help of St. Paul couldn't have done us any harm in that quarter, and it might have done us some good in others. I shouldn't wonder if St. Paul had some friends and admirers here still; and it is as likely as not that his being with us might conciliate a few of the mad Radicals. They might like him just because he is against his brother, the Duke."

"But Mr. Heron would not have such help as that," Lucy said, in tones of pride.

"Oh, by Jove! if you want to carry an election—and now, I suppose, if St. Paul has any influence at all, it will be given against us."

Minola thought of her unholy compact, and did not venture to say a word on the subject.

THE "UNIFORMED MILITIA" SERVICE.

I spent seven years of my boyhood at school among the hills of old Connecticut, about fifteen miles back of Bridgeport, in a region even now in almost its primitive simplicity and pastoral beauty. It has been left quiet and untouched between the iron ways of Housatonic and Danbury, equidistant from both, and sufficiently far away from either to be free from the impulse and incentive of that practical missionary of modern progress, the railroad.

City born, but partly country bred, I understand well the sentiment of the New Englander for his old home, and often live over again the days in those familiar hills and valleys of Fairfield. I would revel in enjoyment if it were possible for me to revisit them. It was there my eyes were open to the delights of a "town muster," and my steps taught rhythm by fife and drum.

In occasional musings I hear the old music as it used to reach me in waves of sound, now faint, then loud, as the variable wind would waft it, or as it escaped from obstructing hills. And I see the tall white and red plume of the commandant, undulating with his stride, and dipping salutes to the wind. Reader, if you have never realized the excitement of a "general training day" in the country, you have missed the freshest and most genuine pleasure of youth.

In the fall of 1842 occurred the Croton water celebration, a real city holiday. The procession was long, interesting, and gorgeous, for all of it except the military portion was profusely decorated with autumn flowers, odorless but beautiful, rich in color and variety. It might properly have been called the feast of dahlias.

The old fire department was out in all its glory, and richly arrayed. It always took part in metropolitan rejoicings, heartily and generously. But my interest was centred in the soldiers; fired then by a longing to shoulder a musket. I waited impatiently for the freedom of manhood and a fitting opportunity. When both came I enlisted in a city regiment, and continued the connection till after the close of the late civil war.

Twenty years of service with musket and sabre failed to dull my enthusiasm. I left it, warned by the heaviness of approaching age and the demands of business, convinced of the propriety, the usefulness, and the value of a well regulated militia force.

Aware of how much has been said and written against such service, and of the misapprehension of those who had never studied its organization, its possibilities, and necessity, I propose to draw upon the practical experience of the past twenty-five years for the purpose of correcting wrong views without and suggesting new measures within. The service has been charged with costliness, uselessness, and pretentious display; with vain ambition, absence of organic purpose, and with being inimical to the morality of the individual member. All the charges have some foundation for their utterance, though the evils referred to are not the legitimate results of the organization, but rather the baleful fruit of irresponsible and ignorant commissions. The service is really worthy of conscientious labor and the support of the people.

In the present relations of government and society, a disciplined militia force is an essential part of the body politic, and an organism with vitality if properly administered. The central idea of the organization is a military body, directly from the people, for the conservation of governmental integrity and a protection to the State. Its collateral uses are an initial school for soldierly training, and in cities especially a supplementary and occasional aid to the police forces. In a general way the central idea is accepted, but in particulars is not carried out in equity between governments and the people. The theory is that the people are the State, and therefore must provide their own protection, but under proper authority. The authority exacts the service, at a great cost to the State, but denies reasonable compensation and encouragement to the individual member; therefore the people are not in sympathy with the organization. The service is brought in conflict with the people, in fact with itself, and the anomaly is presented of an organism in internal opposition. It is the duty of legislation and constituted authority to harmonize such an unnatural condition and change indifference into interest, ignorant neglect into intelligent support. Only in times of strife, like our late civil conflict, or the wars of 1812 and 1776, does the service rise to the dignity of an establishment and a recognized power. In times of peace it is permitted to exist, mainly in skeleton condition, without organic discipline, because the people have a false idea of its use and value. State military departments are not administered with intelligence, and military codes are subject to yearly legislative amendments without understanding; conditions of enlistment are altered, generally to the injury of the enlisted soldier, while recruiting for the uniformed corps languishes from lack of encouragement.

It is interesting to follow some of the changes of the New York State code and their inconsistent applications. For instance, when the law allowing relief from jury duty and the partial remission of assessment, to continue during life, was amended to cover terms of enlistment only, the Adjutant General of the State decided the amendments applied to prior enlistments, thereby breaking a contract between the State and enlisted men under the old law. But when the term of service was reduced from seven to five years, enlistments under the former law were held for the longer term. It is in such a spirit that all amendments are interpreted in favor of the State and against the individual. Fortunately the former provision has been reconsidered, and in a spirit of compromise relief from jury duty is reinstated in the code for life, but the abatement of assessments covers only terms of service. The State considers exemption from jury duty for life a relief, the nominal abatement of assessments during the service a benefit, and both together ample compensation to the militiamen. They would be in part, if immediately available, but the compensation is questionable, as the duty is generally performed too early in life for those legislative provisions to be of practical application. The abatement of an assessment is of little benefit to those who, probably, are without property till after their terms of service are completed, and the measure fails by limitation. Fortunately the relief from jury duty is a life provision, for it generally comes later in life, and after the militia service is performed. One does not, however, repay the cost of uniforms and other necessary expenses, nor the other compensate for the time which the service requires.

The New York State code says: "All able-bodied male citizens, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five, are subject to military duty," but also says that minors must obtain the written consent of parents or guardians to legalize an enlistment in a uniformed corps. Why such an incongruous distinction between uniformed corps and ununiformed militia? What right has the code to exact military service from a person who is condemned by the law as incompetent for citizenship, and is legally recognized by the law only as a child? And why exact military service from those who are in the decline of life? There are many who are physically able to do the duty under the age of twenty-one and over the age of forty, but they should be regarded as exceptional. Such service should be voluntary by the individual and optional with the State.

Spiritual, natural, and physical laws have stamped twenty-one the minimum age of manhood, and forty the culmination. Why should military law assume the power to control more?

The young absorb the elements of the future, the old dispose of them; within these life lines is practical manhood.

Patriotism enthusiastic becomes patriotism triumphant; during its passage the sentiment hardens into use.

Fault has been found by tax-payers with State and city governments for maintaining militia forces at such an expense. The censure is justified by the yearly exhibit of military expenditures, which is due in part to the unnecessary maintenance of skeleton regiments and battalions.

The prejudices of the people against soldiers in time of peace will never be overcome till they are educated to the necessity of a military establishment by intelligent administration of its affairs, proper information, greater proficiency, and a more decided application of its use. Satisfy the people of the necessity of the service, enlist their pride in its support by its efficiency, and its maintenance may be secured without opposition. People never grumble when they can see their money's worth.

If States have treated their militia forces as an inferior part of themselves, if military authorities have acted arbitrarily and ungenerously, militiamen themselves are not blameless. They have frittered away their opportunities, and belittled their profession, by vain-glory and personal ambition, and invited censure by inefficient service. Fortunately there are men and officers, companies and regiments, who, recognizing their mission, have conscientiously performed their duty and redeemed the service from greater obloquy. Their work has acted like leaven to the whole body. All honor to them for their intelligence, honest pride, and patriotic labor.

The "uniformed militia" system has a foundation of inherent strength capable of being built upon and extended to a perfectness not at present thought capable of. With its present incompleteness, its degree of usefulness is positive, and even under all the adverse circumstances referred to the condition of ably administered battalions bears upon the side of success and prosperity. Singular as it may seem, part of its weakness is from its own elements of apparent strength.

Recruits enlist with a very inadequate idea of its requirements. Many go through their term of service, sometimes pleased, oftener bored, but always with a sense of personal importance, and take their discharge with feelings of relief.

Some members are guilty of license when in uniform that they would not indulge in as citizens. Officers without capacity accept commissions and occasionally intrigue for command, from ambition and vanity, without a sense of their responsibility or a proper knowledge of their duties. There are also elements of disorder within the lines of duty which are hard to bear and difficult to control, because they arise from personal animosities. The judgment of an officer is warped to his hurt by his selfishness, wounded pride, and ambition, who will hold a commission to the injury of his company or battalion, even with the support of part of his command.

Is it to be wondered at that an organization with such elements of disorder in it should be regarded with disfavor by those ignorant of its trials, its duties, and its aims? And is it not an argument in its favor that its discipline is able to control and surmount such demoralizing tendencies?

It is not pleasant to deprecate a continuation of long services, but under certain circumstances it may result in injury to a corps. Officers of merit and distinction, with the personal veneration of their men, have been known to outlive their usefulness by retention of command after the freshness, activity, and judgment of their earlier manhood have departed. The idiosyncrasies of age and confirmed habits of authority do not readily accept advanced ideas, improvements in methods, and the inevitable changes of time.

Recruiting for uniformed corps has been and is a process without a system—a method without a principle; it is simply a necessity. As conducted at present it is derogatory to the dignity of the service, and in its practice humiliating and unpleasant to its members. The code really offers no inducement to militiamen.

Its failure to provide proper encouragement for recruiting is a defect which should have the serious consideration of military authorities and legislators at the earliest opportunity. It is a matter of vital importance to the service, and forces itself upon the attention of all commandants to their great concern.

It seems as though battalions are expected to perpetuate themselves, and they have to be, by force of circumstances, recruiting organizations for the State.

Personal application and argument have to take the place of official encouragement, and a service whose necessity, propriety, and benefits should be patent to all is left in a measure to factitious circumstances for a support. It is not, however, the sole purpose of this paper to cavil at authority, to criticise military codes, or condemn existing methods, but rather to show how the uniformed militia forces can be better rewarded by proper recognition and acknowledgment, and made more honorable by a higher standard of service. The indifference of the world and the early hostility of the church to amusements were fatal blunders which both have ascertained, and are now atoning for generously, but too thoughtlessly. Opposition has become permission without proper direction, and indiscriminate pleasure anticipates regulated and orderly recreation. This is a question of as great importance to the State as to society, of as vital interest to the church, as of welfare to the individual. Every care should be taken to recognize as orderly only those pleasures which have their foundation in use.

In every community, between the extremes of the artisan, who is almost precluded from the continuous and regular duties of a militiaman, by his occupation and necessities, and the student, who is generally unfitted for them by his intellectual preoccupation, is a numerous class, for whom the service is eminently adapted. Their inclination for occasional relief from business and clerical labors is a proper desire, and should not be permitted to degenerate into undisciplined sport for want of a legitimate pastime.

The militia service, on a peace footing, is really a recreation, with an object and an organization of the most singular merit. Its system of physical training is superior to the abnormal development of the gymnasium, the fitful excitement of the ball-field, the constrained pull and single purpose of the oar, and the violent termination of a "shell" race. Its normal object, military training, is exacting, methodical, and thorough, and moral force of character, self-reliance, discipline of the mind, and knowledge of human nature are collateral results of company and battalion associations. There is an element of possible strength to the militia forces of the several States, which may have been thought of, but never utilized. I refer to the youth in every community who are old enough to be free from the constant necessity of elementary study and relieved from the absorbing application of higher educational branches, who are yet at school, but with sufficient leisure to do well or ill—that age between the watchful eye of maternal care and later parental authority: inchoate manhood, rough, awkward, and susceptible; wild with their first taste of liberty; full of anticipation and courageous in the future. The struggle between them and society for a place is long and doubtful. The State should adopt and help them by recognizing a cadet system to be attached to the uniformed corps, whose officers could inaugurate no wiser, more charitable, or more popular measure than to accept their services. The measure of good to the boy and the measure of benefit to the service would be reciprocal and incalculable. The cadet would take to the "school of the soldier" with enthusiasm. It would give him something proper to do, something right to think of; it would perfect his growing physique with grace, and engraft on his system the elements of manhood.

To all graduating classes in school, a membership in a cadet corps would be an incentive, and school commissioners could make such membership a reward of merit.

It would relieve the service from the present unpleasant feature of recruiting by keeping behind it a subordinate corps of well-drilled young soldiers from which its ranks could be kept full. It would relieve officers from the drudgery of squad-drills, and give the service the full time of their men instead of wasting six, perhaps more, months in the present recruit classes. It would also perfect the enlisted men and subordinate officers for their prospective duties by detailing them for detached service in cadet corps, in grades next higher than their own. Such detached service would be an honor and a prime incentive for all subordinate officers.

The uniformed militia system has been the growth of years upon the single theory of a military power direct from the people. Whatever merit has been developed in its practice is intrinsic, and has been brought to the surface by force of circumstances rather than by encouragement or appreciation. Upon the minimum basis of inherent value can be constructed a maximum power of State economy, by honoring the service with an establishment of intelligence and efficiency. Make the uniformed corps to the State and to the militia forces, in a comparative, what the West Point Academy is to the United States and to the regular army in a superlative degree.

I have treated militia service thus far as a recreation, because the members of uniformed corps have made it so. I will now refer to it as a duty, and endeavor to show how the service can be adjusted to the greater benefit of the State and be made of greater use to the people.

Declare all male citizens between the ages of twenty-one and forty subject to military duty as ununiformed militia, to be enrolled and brigaded, but kept immobile except for emergencies, to be officered when necessary from the subordinate officers of the uniformed corps.

The object of enrollment is twofold: to ascertain the available force of the State, and for the purpose of special taxation, to reimburse the State for military expenditures.

Eliminate all extrinsic material from the present force; disband skeleton battalions; make supernumerary their officers; reduce the force to the efficient corps now existing, or which may have to be organized, in place of ineffective ones, for the purpose of creating normal schools for military instruction. Never call out an ununiformed battalion in time of peace, or put a uniformed corps in the field in time of war; consider them component and interchangeable parts of one system. In active service let the former be the lungs and the latter the heart of a vital organism.

In no instance should a normal battalion be disbanded for the purpose of officering ununiformed corps, but should be kept intact with its field officers and company commandants—a kind of Gatling educational battery for the propulsion of brains. It would be just as sensible to put the West Point cadets in the field as a fighting corps as to put some of our best regiments. Their heads are worth more to the country than their bodies.

I have suggested special taxation of the enrolled militia to reimburse the State for its military expenditures. It can probably be collected more expeditiously and with less expense through a special department of the Commissioner of Jurors than through any other channel. It is now necessary for the Commissioner to keep lists of jurors and register all exempts, and the plan would certainly aid him in those duties of his department by giving him a fuller and more correct canvass of citizens.

The encouragement needed to induce men and officers to spend their leisure hours for ten years in these normal battalions is to void the present remission of assessment, as an inequitable provision—reimburse them for clothing, relieve them from jury duty for life, and exempt them from any possible future draft. With their discharges give the men sergeants' warrants, non-commissioned officers lieutenants' commissions, and advance officers' commissions one grade, waiting papers for possible future services. Furnish comfortable and substantial drill-rooms and armories, and reimburse battalions for proper musical expenditures.

The State should hold itself responsible to the general Government for its officers who may be touched by a draft and furnish the necessary substitutes as compensation in part for their former and prospective services.

Experience furnishes proof that well made, good-fitting clothing, stylish, but not extravagant, is much better and cheaper than the low-priced, ugly State uniforms, ground out by contract, allotted by sizes, and fitting by chance. There is no economy in the joint ownership of a uniform; the nominal owner is niggardly in purchase and the wearer careless in use. Let the uniform be chosen by corps, made in accordance with regimental bills of dress, by individual measure, and let the State reimburse the corps by a liberal commutation. To reimburse battalions for their music may seem a costly item—it certainly is a great expense to the present uniformed corps—but as the project is based upon the idea of a self-supporting establishment, there is no injury to the State; a nominal tax paid by the enrolled ununiformed militia should be sufficient to pay the entire expenditures of the State military department.

To honor discharged men and officers with a kind of brevet commission would be an incentive for ability and efficiency, and would be of sufficient value to invite the best class of young men to the ranks. Whatever may be questionable in the action of Congress for reducing the force of the regular army, there can be none in the policy of the State for reducing its force to the lowest possible point. Every man should be released from the ranks that can be, both in justice to himself and for general industrial effect. The cost of company drills, regimental brigade and division parades in time and money is immense, and out of all proportion to the doubtful value of such services, constituted as the force is. But a compact, thoroughly disciplined, and perfectly drilled force, of the highest obtainable military character, is necessary and should be well maintained for contingent purposes.

I have thrown out these views as applicable to the city and State of New York; but the ideas can be applied to the military department of every State, with such modifications as may be found necessary.

It would be expensive, impolitic, and unnecessary for the general Government to keep a regular army, through years of peace, of sufficient numerical force to meet successfully internal outbreaks or external pressure. The militia force should be trained to be the supporting power of the army for such contingencies. The doubts and fears and awful suspense of the people during the early days of the late rebellion would have been greatly lessened, perhaps quite avoided, had the regular and militia forces been in effective readiness for the struggle, and met the necessity of the hour. The uniformed corps could have been ordered to the front for temporary defence, as some were, and time given for mobilizing the ununiformed troops.

As it was all was confusion, distrust, and almost despair; only for the instinctive loyalty and inherent courage of the people, all would have been lost. The men of the first levy, the rank and file, were magnificent in material, confident in ability, honest in purpose, crude in development, difficult to discipline—it was hard for them to come under military law. Many of their officers were adventurers without experience or qualifications for command. They obtained commissions through personal influence rather than by merit. Militia officers, with all their imperfections, would have been of much greater service.

Is the affair of Bull Run to be wondered at, with such material, and in the light of later education? It was the incisive action of the war; it punctured the conceit of both armies.

C. H. Meday.

THE YOSEMITE HERMIT.

T he shadows were lying tolerably long on the green hillsides when the lumbering yellow stage, somewhat the worse for wear, drawn by four lean, dusty horses, also somewhat the worse for wear, drew up with a grand flourish in front of the Grand Hotel, Mariposa.

It was a long, low building, with a broad piazza in front and along one side; the façade was painted a dingy yellow to match the stage apparently, but the rest of the edifice had been neglected, and the superabundant rain and superabundant sunshine of Mariposa had left marks of their handiwork on the bare boards.

The loungers rushed out of the bar-room as soon as the wheels were heard, and stood grouped about the broad piazza exchanging jokes with the driver, who was known as Scotty, and asking the news from Hornitos and other way places.

Meanwhile the "Doctor," a stout, ruddy-complexioned man, whose appearance spoke well for his profession, descended from his seat on the box, and, opening the stage door with an air of pride and satisfaction, he assisted the one lady passenger to alight with a grace which would have done credit to Chesterfield. The loungers on the piazza started and drew back. All ceased their gibes with Scotty, and two or three removed their hats. She was not only a woman, but a very pretty woman—she was even beautiful.

She thanked the Doctor with a pretty grace, and turned her clear, hazel eyes upon the admiring group, scanning each face eagerly and wistfully. The Doctor said, "Allow me," and was about to escort her into the small den at one side known as the "Ladies' parlor," but she swept past him and walked straight into the bar-room, the Doctor, the loafers, and Scotty crowding in after her and regarding her movements with an undisguised admiration, and as much reverential curiosity as though she had been a visitant from another sphere.

The proprietor of the "Grand" was a podgy man, with an aggressively bald head and scaley eyes like an alligator's—though for that matter I may be libelling the alligator. His name was Sharpe, commonly corrupted into "Cutey" by some mysterious process.

He was pouring whiskey from a bottle into a glass, preparatory to serving himself, when the new comer walked—she walked like an angel—straight up to him and said, "Is this the landlord?"

Cutey was so astonished by the apparition that he dropped the glass—he called it a glass; it was in reality a stone-china cup about half an inch thick—and wasted the whiskey; it was only by the greatest presence of mind that he succeeded in saving the bottle.

"Ma-a-a'm?" he stammered, clutching at his bald head to see if there was a hat there.

The woman repeated her question; the crowd by the doorway, headed by the Doctor, strained their ears to listen. She had a low voice, tolerably sweet. Such music had never before been heard within those low walls, perhaps. They wished she would say more. Old "Punks" muttered that she 'minded him of his Lyddy—"jest sech a voice!" which remark brought down upon him much contumely afterward, and a threat from the Doctor to "put daylight through him." After a helpless look around him, Cutey admitted that he was the landlord, with the air of a cornered scoundrel confessing a crime.

"Then perhaps you can tell me what I wish to know," said the woman, fixing her clear, sweet eyes upon him. "I want to find a man named Wilmer—James Courtney Wilmer."

Cutey shook his head sorrowfully.

"Thar be so many names," said he: "skurce any man goes by his own name. Be he livin' in Mariposa, ma'am?"

"I do not know," was the reply, with a suggestion of tears in the voice, at which every heart in the crowd by the door was touched and unhappy.

Punks nudged Scotty with his elbow.

"What's that fellow's name that wus partners with Circus Jack in the Banderita?" he whispered.

Scotty rapped his forehead with his horny hand, and ran his fingers into his bushy, tow-colored hair, with a clutch of desperation.

"Punks," he whispered, "I allers counted you a fool, but you ain't; you air a shinin' light! His name wus Jim Wilmer."

Then, coloring up to the roots of his hair, he advanced and said:

"If you please, ma'am."

The woman turned at this, meeting a whole battery of eyes without any seeming consciousness of it.

"There wus a feller named Jim Wilmer here—wus partners in the Banderita, with a feller named Circ—leastways, I don't know his name, but we called him Circus Jack, ma'am."

The woman's face—her beautiful face—turned as white as the collar at her throat; she leaned against the bar and tried to speak, but the words died on her lips.

Finally, with an effort, she half whispered:

"Do you know where he is now?"

Then, as the men looked at each other, she cried in a clearer tone, "Is he dead?"

"No, no, ma'am. He wus here, 'taint a month," said Scotty. "I think he's off huntin' in the hills. I'll find Circus Jack, and bring him up here. He'll be likely to know—him and Jim wus real good friends."

"Thank you," said the stranger softly, in a voice which smote Scotty's heart exceedingly.

The Doctor, meanwhile, had gone for Mrs. Sharpe, who presently entered, and invited the stranger to "hev a little tea."

She was a small fair woman, with a washed-out look, and a mouth not innocent of dipping, but she looked and spoke kindly, and the stranger was glad enough to answer, "Yes," and follow her into the dining-room. The crowd fell back as she approached, but only enough to give her room to pass. Some stealthily touched her dress as she swept by them, and when she had disappeared, and the door had closed, forty tongues were loosed at once, and a scene of excitement ensued only equalled by the one which followed on the shooting of "the Judge" by "Little Jack," over a game of poker, in that very bar-room of the Grand Hotel.

"Mought I ax your name, ma'am?" inquired Mrs. Sharpe.

"Marian Kingsley," was the faint reply.

"Miss or Mrs., ma'am?" pursued Mrs. Sharpe, glancing at the shapely, white, ringless hands.

The stranger gave a slight impatient twitch. "It doesn't matter," she said. "Call me Marian. That will do as well as anything."

Mrs. Sharpe was a washed-out woman. Many of the natural and laudable instincts remained, perhaps being fast colors; but a horror of the class to which she now supposed Marian to belong was one which had faded out of her nature. She gave a slightly supercilious look, which fell upon the woman like moonlight on ice, and pursued her inquiries.

"Came from 'Frisco?"

"I came through there. I didn't see anything of the place."

"Whar did yer come from?"

"Philadelphia." The tone was changed. She evidently felt the impalpable rudeness of the faded woman, and knew how to resent it in the same way. More conversation ensued, in the course of which Mrs. Sharpe discovered that Marian had a little money—enough to pay her board for a few months—and that she had come there to find "James Courtney Wilmer."

Mrs. Sharpe had information to give as well as to take, for she knew something of Jim.

"We called him Jim," she said, a little scornfully. "He didn't git no 'Courting' from we."

Poor Marian gave a faint smile. "There might be other James Wilmers," she said. "I wanted to be sure."

Mrs. Sharpe didn't think this could be the one.

"He's a rough, ragged creeter," she said, "and 's had the snakes fur weeks at a time."

Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her beautiful face.

"Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe.

Marian nodded.

"'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita. Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go."

In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared, escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the presence of "the ladies."

"'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to, and them of mine wus about dead beat."

Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circumlocutions, and profane epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his power in regard to the man she had come to find.

No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral part of the city of "Butterflies." The butterflies, by the by, for which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but "Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground.

Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above him.

There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story: that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he had stumbled upon some miserable secret, which was dead and buried, but could not rest in its grave; that there was no room left for doubt, which is sometimes blessed, and he had fled without a word; disappeared, and left to her own wretched heart the task of telling her the reason why.

Circus Jack did not tell Marian these stories, though he had heard them all; indeed, they had all been retold and discussed in the bar-room, not half an hour since. An average woman would have repeated them to her, and thus tempted her to reveal the truth; but a chivalrous heart beat under Jack's flannel shirt, and he could no more bear to hurt her than he could have crushed a little bird to death with his hand.

If any of the stories were true, and she yet loved poor Jim, he told her enough to wring her heart and haunt her dreams for ever.

The winter that he spent in the hollow of a great pine tree, on the rim of Yosemite valley, was perhaps his happiest and most peaceful. Every Yosemite tourist stops to peep inside this tree, and to wonder if a man really lived there. "It was comfortable enough," says the hale old pioneer of the valley below. "He had plenty of room. We both slept in it one night."

At which the tourist peeps in again, and wonders if the long-limbed Texan was not a bit cramped by the footboard.

When Circus Jack told Marian the story it was fresher and less wonderful than now.

"Was the snow very deep?" she said. "Was there no danger of his freezing to death?"

"I never hearn much about it anyhow," said Circus Jack, "'cept thet he lived thar alone cuttin' shingles. I 'spect the snow was 'bout four or five foot deep up thar whar he lived. He's a close-mouthed one, I tell yer. Never git nothin' outer him, an' when he's drunk he don't tell nothin' whatsomd-ever!"

This, with a glance half pitying, half reassuring, as though he would promise her that the secret, whatever it might be, was safe.

One comforting doubt beat at the woman's heart all the while that Jack was talking. "Perhaps this man was not the one!"

She mentioned this at length, and asked Jack what his quandom "partner" was like.

"He was a slight-built feller, rayther light-complected," was the reply. "An' han'some! I called him han'some, didn't you, Scotty?"

Scotty, thus appealed to, gave a profane assent. He had scarcely moved a muscle since he sat down, with his eyes fixed on Marian's fair, ever-changing face. Mrs. Sharpe, after a vain attempt to engage him in conversation, had quietly withdrawn, having no relish for being one of a quartette where two did all the talking.

"Was he—an—educated man?" inquired Marian hesitatingly, feeling in a vague way that the question might offend Jack.

"Yes, he war," replied that worthy in a contemplative tone. "When he war drunk I hev hearn him talkin' a lot of stuff like po'try. Thar's a pile of books in my cabin now that he used ter read consid'able. I can't make head nor tail to 'em. P'r'aps you might."

"I would like to see them," said Marian eagerly.

Jack nodded, and a pause ensued. At length Scotty remarked that the "old man," meaning Cutey, was "reyther late in lightin' up," at which Jack arose and bade the stranger "good night."

Marian put out her hand, saying, "We will be good friends, I hope."

Circus Jack took it by the finger tips cautiously, careful not to hurt it with his horny fingers.

"I'll do ary thing in the world fur yer, madam," he replied earnestly and ingenuously.

"There was one thing I wished to ask," she said, "though it may be a foolish question. Did you ever notice any—ring—that he wore or—carried?"

"They wus a ring, but I'm beat ef I kin tell what kind. Once when Jim was turrible sick, an' his hand swelled up, I wanted to file it off, but he fought so I couldn't. He said when he got well thet it never had ben off, nor never shouldn't be while he had life to fight."

"Can't you tell me what it was like?" she asked.

"I ain't no hand," said Circus Jack, rubbing his head. "I'd know it ef I seed it, but——"

"Was it like this?" She drew a dainty purse from her pocket, and took from its safest corner a plain, flat band of gold, with a small disk on it, shaped like the half of a heart placed horizontally.

"Prezactly!" exclaimed Circus Jack with emphasis.

She opened her purse to put it back, but it fell from her hand, scattering her little stock of money over the floor, and a moment after, when Mrs. Sharpe came in, in response to frantic halloos from Scotty, she found Marian in a dead faint upon the floor, with Scotty and Circus Jack, with hands clasped behind them, kneeling on either side of her like uncouth angels, while scattered coins and escaping masses of golden-brown hair formed a halo about her head.

She was ashamed of and provoked at her weakness afterward; said she was fatigued with her long and wearisome ride, and that she never fainted before; but if she had been an accomplished diplomatist, she could have planned nothing better for her popularity.

As for the faded-out woman, her opinion, which had been tottering under a severe reproof from Cutey, now underwent a complete revolution.

"Them kind never faints!" she said to herself dogmatically, as she assisted Marian to her room and begged her to "take things easy like." She patiently answered one hundred and seven inquiries that evening, varying from, "How's the sick lady?" to, "Jim Wilmer's gal perking up a little arter her faint?" and for the rest of Marian's stay in Mariposa she proved that kindliness of heart had been one of the "fast colors."

It was but natural that Cutey should feel a friendly interest, since he dealt out at least two hundred extra drinks, at highly remunerative prices, on her account that evening; and moreover, the Doctor "tipped" him handsomely for extra care and attention. In a week after her arrival, Marian had learned all that anybody in Mariposa knew regarding "Jim." She wore that curious ring upon her finger now. There were two letters upon the disk, but no one ever had the hardihood to ask what they were.

Punks, whose eyes were keen, and whose curiosity was keener, declared that they were "i l," with a "little quirl-like" between.

Punks also knew—a fact which did credit to his powers and habits of observation—that on the disk of the ring which Jim wore on his little finger were the letters "Fa."

Punks desired to know what "Fail" spelled but "fail." He further inquired "what they wanted to hev sech a doggoned mis'able word as thet on a ring fur?"

"'T'orter be 'love' or sunthin'," he added critically.

It was only after much questioning in divers places, and the exercise of a deal of patience and some finesse, that Marian learned the present whereabouts of the half-crazed hermit "all unblessed." When last seen, something less than a week before her arrival, he had been wandering through the neighboring mountains, half-clothed in wretched rags, living on berries and roots, alternately muttering and shrieking the vagaries of his unhinged mind.

They were loth to tell her, even those who knew it. Their rude externals seemed to have made their hearts softer. It hurt them to see the pink color fade from her cheeks, and the shadow of sharp pain creep over her beautiful face; so she had to learn the lesson of smiling when her heart ached worst. The two Mexicans, cattle herders, who had seen him, were eagerly questioned; but they could tell nothing that she did not know, save that they were quite sure that it was Jim, and not some other unfortunate, whom they had seen.

They gave a stupid assent when asked by Marian to secure him and bring him into town the next time that they saw him; and a "Si, Señor," considerably less stupid in a subsequent private interview with Jack, who promised them "heap money" for their labor.

Marian had the books which Jim had left in the cabin: commonplace Greek and Latin books, which might have belonged to anybody, save that on one fly leaf was written in a scrawling hand, "J. C. Wilmer," and this yellow page, and this faded ink, she covered with her kisses and baptized with her tears. And another weary week crept by.

The Doctor noticed with disapprobation strongly expressed how pale and worn-looking the pretty woman grew. Not professionally; indeed, his title was merely honorary, bestowed in recognition of his services in prescribing the "Golden Anti-bilious Pills" for Bob Jinks, which, or nature in spite of them, had effected a cure, and restored to bereft Mariposa society an efficient and valuable member.

The Doctor's interest afforded considerable amusement to the habitués of the "Grand" bar-room, and they fairly roared with sympathy when he profanely expressed his sorrow to see her wasting her beauty in tears over "another feller."

One Saturday night, two weeks and a day since Marian's arrival, the whole population of the town were at the Grand, either drinking, gambling, or purchasing provisions of Cutey's deputy, who presided over the tin can department with activity and grace; and all, whatever their occupation, were swearing vigorously and unceasingly.

Marian sat up stairs in her tiny room burning with feverish anxiety. Her long years of home-waiting, the comfortless journey, even the first week of uncertainty, had been easier to bear than this anxious waiting. The Mexicans had not hesitated to say that he must be dead by this time; but that she did not believe; he might be starving, crazed, nearly dead, but surely she might see him once more and hear him say that he forgave her; perhaps even nurse him back to reason and health and hope again.

The brawling and laughter down stairs made her shudder. "If I was only a man!" she whispered fiercely, clenching her little hands. "Can I do nothing but sit here and wait? Oh, God, be merciful!" she cried.

Then suddenly a thought flashed into her mind. She did not stop to think of it; she acted upon it.

The Doctor's partner, profoundly studying his cards, was somewhat disconcerted to see the table kicked over, and the Doctor's "hand" on the floor. Without a question, he put his hand back for his pistol, when the sudden stillness in the room caught his attention, and all that followed caused him to forget the affront.

In the centre of the room, her disordered hair flying about her face, her clear eyes flashing with excitement, her cheeks flaming with color, more beautiful than they had ever seen her look before, Marian stood waiting for silence. Men crowded up to the doorways and filled the windows, certain from the sudden quiet that "something was up."

"Won't you help me?" she cried out. "What can I do to find him? He may be starving to death! He would not have left you to starve! You"—she gasped and drew her breath hard—"you—whom he was good to—you remember—a hundred things, but you forget him! and let him—rave his life away—and starve to death—alone." She choked. She could not speak another word! but she stood with her lips parted, her eyes flashing, looking eagerly, almost angrily, from one face to another.

Circus Jack bounded on to a table; it was rickety, and reeled with his weight; but Punks and Bob Jinks steadied it; they were friends of Jack's; besides, they had just won from him at poker, and felt very friendly. "Fellers!" said Jack, "to-morrow's Sunday. I'm going out ter hunt fer poor Jim, and ain't comin' back till I find him. Them as wants ter 'comp'ny me kin call at my cabin to-night."

"I will go with you, Jack," said the Doctor impressively.

"Me, too, you bet!" cried Scotty.

"Count me in," growled a bass voice from the window.

"Me too," squeaked Punks. "All as'll go say, 'Ay!'"

And an "Ay!" came from those rough voices with such a ringing burst of good will as must have startled the very birds asleep in the distant trees.

Nay! some faint echo of it may have been heard at the very gates of heaven itself. The tears rolled down Marian's cheeks. She tried to say, "God bless you!" but the tears had the right of way, and the words broke into something unintelligible.

A sudden shame came over them that they had not thought of this before. Memories of homes, of mothers, of wives, came knocking at their hearts, and would not be denied. The sleeves of rough and not over clean flannel shirts were drawn across eyes that had scorned tears, through sickness, discomfort, and disappointment.

Cutey came to the rescue.

"Gentlemen!" he said, waving his hand over the bar, "help yourselves. My j'ints are stiff, and I can't go; but I'll treat the crowd. Free drinks, gentlemen!"

And leaving his bar to the tender mercies of his thirsty friends, Cutey offered his arm to Marian, and escorted her to her own door, where he took leave of her with a low bow.

Then he went down stairs four steps at a time, lest his choice liquors should be annihilated in his absence.

It was Monday noon when they returned. Marian sat at the window in the easiest chair the house afforded, sickening with fever. She watched them coming into town with a restless, helpless anxiety. She watched them scatter to their cabins, and saw Circus Jack coming on toward the hotel alone.

She buried her face in her hands. He had said that he would never come back until he found him. Had they become discouraged, or——

She could not believe that they had found him. Her heart seemed to cry out, "No! no!" Jack came up, with little Mrs. Sharpe at his heels.

"Be keerful!" said the faded woman. "She mighty poorly."

Jack came in as lightly as his heavy boots would allow.

"The boys said fur me ter tell yer they wus all dretful sorry fur yer. We buried him jist whar we found him. He'd a ben dead nigh on to a couple of weeks, I reckon. Don't yer look so, lady. Poor Jim! he warn't never happy, even when he was drunk. He's better off up thar. We flung a few stones together to mark the place, and I'll guide you and Mrs. Sharpe thar any time."

Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, he added tenderly, "And I tuk the ring offen his finger. He couldn't fight fur it now; an I thought as mebby you'd like it."

He took it from the corner of his handkerchief; she held up her finger for it, and he slipped it on. Then he saw that the letters spelled "Faith." "Thet Punks!" he thought to himself contemptuously.

She looked up into his face with a stony smile—no tears now.

"Thank you," she said.

Four weeks afterward the Doctor lifted Marian into the stage. She was strong enough for her journey now, she said. Two days before she had visited the lonely cairn. It was a tiresome horseback ride too. She seemed to be getting well very fast. The Doctor told her so.

"People never die when they wish to," she answered sadly.

Circus Jack came to the stage-door to bid her "Good-by."

"What can I do for you to thank you?" she asked earnestly.

Jack hesitated.

"Ef you wouldn't mind, ma'am," he said, "I'd like—to—kiss your hand. I've got a dear old mother home—ef you wouldn't mind!"

Without a blush or a change of countenance she put her arm around his neck and kissed his lips.

"Good-by, dear old fellow," she said.

Then Scotty cracked his whip, the crowd on the piazza raised their hats—even the poor, chagrined Doctor—a subdued cheer was given, and the lumbering stage disappeared in a cloud of dust, the nodding mariposas on the hillside looking curiously at it as it went by.

Clara G. Dolliver.

THE PUNISHED.

Ella Wheeler.

ALFRED DE MUSSET.

I t had been known for some time that M. Paul de Musset was preparing a biography of his illustrious brother, and the knowledge had been grateful to Alfred de Musset's many lovers; for the author of "Rolla" and the "Lettre à Lamartine" has lovers. The book has at last appeared—more than twenty years after the death of its hero.1 It is probably not unfair to suppose that a motive for delay has been removed by the recent death of Mme. Sand. M. Paul de Musset's volume proves, we confess, rather disappointing. It is a careful and graceful, but at the same time a very slight performance, such as was to be expected from the author of "Lui et Elle" and of the indignant refutation (in the biographical notice which accompanies the octavo edition of Alfred de Musset's works) of M. Taine's statement that the poet was addicted to walking about the streets late at night. As regards this latter point, M. Paul de Musset hastened to declare that his brother had no such habits—that his customs were those of a gentilhomme; by which the biographer would seem to mean that when the poet went abroad after dark it was in his own carriage, or at least in a hired cab, summoned from the nearest stand. M. Paul de Musset is a devoted brother and an agreeable writer; but he is not, from the critic's point of view, the ideal biographer. This, however, is not seriously to be regretted, for it is little to be desired that the ideal biography of Alfred de Musset should be written, or that he should be delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the critics. Those who really care for him would prefer to judge him with all kinds of allowances and indulgences—sentimentally and imaginatively. Between him and his readers it is a matter of affection, or it is nothing at all; and there is something very happy, therefore, in M. Paul de Musset's fond, fraternal reticency and extenuation. He has related his brother's life as if it were a pretty "story"; and indeed there is enough that was pretty in it to justify him. We should decline to profit by any information that might be offered us in regard to its prosaic, its possibly shabby side. To make the story complete, however, there appears simultaneously with M. Paul de Musset's volume a publication of a quite different sort—a memoir of the poet by a clever German writer, Herr Paul Lindau.2 Herr Lindau is highly appreciative, but he is also critical, and he says a great many things which M. Paul de Musset leaves unsaid. As becomes a German biographer, he is very minute and exhaustive, and a stranger who should desire a "general idea" of the poet would probably get more instruction from his pages than from the French memoir. Their fault is indeed that they are apparently addressed to persons whose mind is supposed to be a blank with regard to the author of "Rolla." The exactions of bookmaking alone can explain the long analyses and prose paraphrases of Alfred de Musset's comedies and tales to which Herr Lindau treats his readers—the dreariest kind of reading when an author is not in himself essentially inaccessible. Either one has not read Alfred de Musset's comedies or not felt the charm of them—in which case one will not be likely to resort to Herr Lindau's memoirs—or one has read them, in the charming original, and can therefore dispense with an elaborate German résumé.

In saying just now that M. Paul de Musset's biography of his brother is disappointing, we meant more particularly to express our regret that he has given us no letters—or given us at least but two or three. It is probable, however, that he had no more in his hands. Alfred de Musset lived in a very compact circle; he spent his whole life in Paris, and his friends lived in Paris near him. He was little separated from his brother, who appears to have been his best friend (M. Paul de Musset was six years Alfred's senior), and much of his life was passed under the same roof with the other members of his family. Seeing his friends constantly, he had no occasion to write to them; and as he saw little of the world (in the larger sense of the phrase), he would have had probably but little to write about. He made but one attempt at travelling—his journey to Italy, at the age of twenty-three, with George Sand. "He made no important journeys," says Herr Lindau, "and if one excepts his love affairs, he really had no experiences." But his love affairs, as a general thing, could not properly be talked about. M. de Musset shows good taste in not pretending to narrate them. He mentions two or three of the more important episodes of this class, and with regard to the others he says that when he does not mention them they may always be taken for granted. It is perhaps indeed in a limited sense that Alfred de Musset's love affairs may be said to have been in some cases more important than in others. It was his own philosophy that in this matter one thing is about as good as another—

Putting aside the "ivresse," which was constant, Musset's life certainly offers little material for narration. He wrote a few poems, tales, and comedies, and that is all. He did nothing, in the sterner sense of the word. He was inactive, indolent, idle; his record has very few dates. Two or three times the occasion to do something was offered him, but he shook his head and let it pass. It was proposed to him to accept a place as attaché to the French embassy at Madrid, a comfortable salary being affixed to the post. But Musset found no inspiration in the prospect. He had written about Spain in his earlier years—he had sung in the most charming fashion about Juanas and Pepitas, about señoras in mantillas stealing down palace staircases that look "blue" in the starlight. But the desire to see the picturesqueness that he had fancied proved itself to have none of the force of a motive. This is the fact in Musset's life which the writer of these lines finds most regrettable—the fact of his contented smallness of horizon—the fact that on his own line he should not have cared to go further. There is something really exasperating in the sight of a picturesque poet wantonly slighting an opportunity to go to Spain—the Spain of forty years ago. It does violence even to that minimum of intellectual eagerness which is the portion of a contemplative mind. It is annoying to think that Alfred de Musset should have been meagrely contemplative. This is the weakness that tells against him, more than the weakness of what would be called his excesses. From the point of view of his own peculiar genius, it was a good fortune for him to be susceptible and tender, sensitive and passionate. The trouble was not that he was all this, but that he was lax and soft; that he had too little energy and curiosity. Shelley was at least equally tremulous and sensitive—equally a victim of his impressions, and an echo, as it were, of his temperament. But even Musset's fondest readers must feel that Shelley had within him a firm, divinely-tempered spring against which his spirit might rebound indefinitely. As regards intense sensibility—that fineness of feeling which is the pleasure and pain of the poetic nature—M. Paul de Musset tells two or three stories of his brother which remind one of the anecdotes recorded of the author of the "Ode to the West Wind." "One of the things which he loved best in the world was a certain exclamation of Racine's 'Phædra,' which expresses by its bizarrerie the trouble of her sickened heart:

When Rachel used to murmur forth this strange, unexpected plaint, Alfred always took his head in his two hands and turned pale with emotion."

The author describes the poet's early years, and gives several very pretty anecdotes of his childhood. Alfred de Musset was born in 1810, in the middle of old Paris, on a spot familiar to those many American visitors who wander across the Seine, better and better pleased as they go, to the museum of the Hôtel de Cluny. The house in which Musset's parents lived was close to this beautiful monument—a happy birthplace for a poet; but both the house and the street have now disappeared. M. Paul de Musset does not relate that his brother began to versify in his infancy; but Alfred was indeed hardly more than an infant when he achieved his first success. The poems published under the title of "Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie" were composed in his eighteenth and nineteenth years; he had but just completed his nineteenth when the volume into which they had been gathered was put forth. There are certainly—if one considers the quality of the poems—few more striking examples of literary precocity. The cases of Chatterton and Keats may be equally remarkable, but they are not more so. These first boyish verses of Musset have a vivacity, a brilliancy, a freedom of feeling and of fancy which may well have charmed the little cénacle to which he read them aloud—the group of littérateurs and artists which clustered about Victor Hugo, who, although at this time very young, was already famous. M. Paul de Musset intimates that if his brother was at this moment (and as we may suppose, indeed, always) one of the warmest admirers of the great author of "Hernani" and those other splendid productions which project their violet glow across the threshold of the literary era of 1830, and if Victor Hugo gave kindly audience to "Don Paez" and "Mardoche," this kindness declined in proportion as the fame of the younger poet expanded. Alfred de Musset was certainly not fortunate in his relations with his more distinguished contemporaries. Victor Hugo "dropped" him; it would have been better for him if George Sand had never taken him up; and Lamartine, to whom, in the shape of a passionate epistle, he addressed the most beautiful of his own, and one of the most beautiful of all poems, acknowledged the compliment only many years after it was paid. The cénacle was all for Spain, for local color, for serenades, and daggers, and Gothic arches. It was nothing if not audacious (it was in the van of the Romantic movement), and it was partial to what is called in France the "humoristic" as well as to the ferociously sentimental. Musset produced a certain "Ballade à la Lune" which began—

This assimilation of the moon suspended above a church spire to a dot upon an i became among the young Romanticists a sort of symbol of what they should do and dare; just as in the opposite camp it became a by-word of horror. But this was only playing at poetry, and in his next things, produced in the following year or two, Musset struck a graver and more resonant chord. The pieces published under the title of "Un Spectacle dans un Fauteuil" have all the youthful grace and gayety of those that preceded them; but they have beyond this a suggestion of the quality which gives so high a value to the author's later and best verses—the accent of genuine passion. It is hard to see what, just yet, Alfred de Musset had to be passionate about; but passion, with a poet, even when it is most genuine, is very much of an affair of the imagination and the personal temperament (independent, we mean, of strong provoking causes), and the sensibilities of this young man were already exquisitely active. His poems found a great many admirers, and these admirers were often women. Hence for the young poet, says M. Paul de Musset, a great many romantic and "Boccaciennes" adventures. "On several occasions I was awaked in the middle of the night to give my opinion on some question of high prudence. All these little stories having been confided to me under the seal of secrecy, I have been obliged to forget them; but I may affirm that more than one of them would have aroused the envy of Bassompierre and Lauzun. Women at that time were not wholly absorbed in their care for luxury and dress. To hope to please, young men had no need to be rich; and it served a purpose to have at nineteen years of age the prestige of talent and glory." This is very pretty, as well as very Gallic; but it is rather vague, and we may without offence suspect it to be, to a certain extent, but that conventional coup de chapeau which every self-respecting Frenchman renders to actual or potential, past, present, or future gallantry. Doubtless, however, Musset was, in the native phrase, lancé. He lived with his father and mother, his brother and sister; his purse was empty; Seville and Granada were very far away; and these "Andalusian passions," as M. Paul de Musset says, were mere reveries and boyish visions. But they were the visions of a boy who was all ready to compare reality with romance, and who, in fact, very soon acceded to a proposal which appeared to offer a peculiar combination of the two. It is noticeable, by the way, that from our modest Anglo-Saxon point of view these same "Andalusian passions," dealing chiefly with ladies tumbling about on disordered couches, and pairs of lovers who take refuge from an exhausted vocabulary in biting each other, are an odd sort of thing for an ingenuous lad, domiciled in the manner M. Paul de Musset describes, and hardly old enough to have a latch-key, to lay on the family breakfast table. But this was very characteristic all round. Musset was not a didactic poet, and it was not for him to lose time by taking his first steps as one. His business was to talk about love in unmistakable terms, to proclaim its pleasures and pains with all possible eloquence; and he would have been quite at a loss to understand why he should have blushed or stammered in preluding to so beautiful a theme. Herr Lindau thinks that even in the germ Musset's inspiration is already vicious—that "his wonderful talent was almost simultaneously ripe and corrupted." But Herr Lindau speaks from the modest Saxon point of view; a point of view, however, from which, in such a matter, there is a great deal to be said.

The great event in Alfred de Musset's life, most people would say, was his journey to Italy with George Sand. This event has been abundantly—superabundantly—described, and Herr Lindau, in the volume before us, devotes a long chapter to it and lingers over it with peculiar complacency. Our own sentiment would be that there is something extremely displeasing in the publicity which has attached itself to the episode; that there is indeed a sort of colossal indecency in the way it has passed into the common fund of literary gossip. It illustrates the base, the weak, the trivial side of all the great things that were concerned in it—fame, genius, and love. Either the Italian journey was in its results a very serious affair for the remarkable couple who undertook it—in which case it should be left in that quiet place in the history of the development of the individual into which public intrusion can bring no light, but only darkness—or else it was a piece of levity and conscious self-display; in which case the attention of the public has been invited to it on false grounds. If there ever was an affair it should be becoming to be silent about, it was certainly this one; but neither the actors nor the spectators have been of this way of thinking; one may almost say that there exists a whole literature on the subject. To this literature Herr Lindau's contribution is perhaps the most ingenious. He has extracted those pages from Paul de Musset's novel of "Lui et Elle" which treat of the climax of the relations of the hero and heroine, and he has printed the names of George Sand and Alfred de Musset instead of the fictitious names. The result is perhaps of a nature to refresh the jaded vision of most lovers of scandal.

We must add that some of his judgments on the matter happen to have a certain felicity. M. Paul de Musset has narrated the story more briefly—having, indeed, by the publication of "Lui et Elle," earned the right to be brief. He mentions two or three facts, however, the promulgation of which he may have thought it proper, as we said before, to postpone to Mme. Sand's death. One of them is sufficiently dramatic. Musset had met George Sand in the summer of 1833, about the time of the publication of "Rolla"—seeing her for the first time at a dinner given to the contributors of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," at the Trois Frères Provençaux. George Sand was the only woman present. Sainte-Beuve had already endeavored to bring his two friends together, but the attempt had failed, owing to George Sand's reluctance, founded on an impression that she should not like the young poet. Alfred de Musset was twenty-three years of age; George Sand, who had published "Indiana," "Valentine," and "Lélia," was close upon thirty. Alfred de Musset, as the author of "Rolla," was a very extraordinary young man—quite the young man of whom Heinrich Heine could say "he has a magnificent past before him." Upon his introduction to George Sand, an intimacy speedily followed—an intimacy commemorated by the lady in expansive notes to Sainte-Beuve, whom she kept informed of its progress. When the winter came the two intimates talked of leaving Paris together, and, as an experiment, paid a visit to Fontainebleau. The experiment succeeded, but this was not enough, and they formed the project of going to Italy. To this project, as regarded her son, Mme. de Musset refused her consent. (Alfred's father, we should say, had died before the publication of "Rolla," leaving his children without appreciable property, though during his lifetime, occupying a post in a government office, he had been able to maintain them comfortably.) His mother's opposition was so vehement that Alfred gave up the project, and countermanded the preparations that had already been made for departure.

"That evening toward nine o'clock," says M. Paul de Musset, "our mother was alone with her daughter by the fireside, when she was informed that a lady was waiting for her at the door in a hired carriage, and begged urgently to speak with her. She went down accompanied by a servant. The unknown lady named herself; she besought this deeply grieved mother to confide her son to her, saying that she would have for him a maternal affection and care. As promises did not avail, she went so far as sworn vows. She used all her eloquence, and she must have had a great deal, since her enterprise succeeded. In a moment of emotion the consent was given." The author of "Lélia" and the author of "Rolla" started for Italy together. M. Paul de Musset mentions that he accompanied them to the mail coach "on a sad, misty evening, in the midst of circumstances that boded ill." They spent the winter at Venice, and M. Paul de Musset and his mother continued to hear regularly from Alfred. But toward the middle of February his letters suddenly stopped, and for six weeks they were without news. They were on the point of starting for Italy, to put an end to their suspense, when they received a melancholy epistle informing them that their son and brother was on his way home. He was slowly recovering from an attack of brain fever, but as soon as he should be able to drag himself along he would seek the refuge of the paternal roof.

On the 10th of April he reappeared alone. A quarter of a century later, and a short time after his death, Mme. Sand gave to the world, in the guise of a novel, an account of the events which had occupied this interval. The account was highly to her own advantage and much to the discredit of her companion. Paul de Musset immediately retorted with a little book which is decidedly poor as fiction, but tolerably good, probably, as history. As a devoted brother, given all the circumstances, it was perhaps the best thing he could do. It is believed that his reply was more than, in the vulgar phrase, Mme. Sand had bargained for; inasmuch as he made use of documents of whose existence she had been ignorant. Alfred de Musset, suspecting that her version of their relations would be given to the world, had, in the last weeks of his life, dictated to his brother a detailed statement of those incidents to which misrepresentation would chiefly address itself, and this narrative Paul de Musset simply incorporated in his novel. The gist of it is that the poet's companion took advantage of his being seriously ill, in Venice, to be flagrantly unfaithful, and that, discovering her infidelity, he relapsed into a brain fever which threatened his life, and from which he rose only to make his way home with broken wings and a bleeding heart.

Mme. Sand's version of the story is that his companion's infidelity was a delusion of the fever itself, and that the charge was but the climax of a series of intolerable affronts and general fantasticalities.

Fancy the great gossiping, vulgar-minded public deliberately invited to ponder this delicate question! The public should never have been appealed to; but once the appeal made, it administers perforce a rough justice of its own. According to this rough justice, the case looks badly for Musset's fellow traveller. She was six years older than he (at that time of life a grave fact); she had drawn him away from his mother, taken him in charge, assumed a responsibility. Their literary physiognomies were before the world, and she was, on the face of the matter, the riper, stronger, more reasonable nature. She had made great pretensions to reason, and it is fair to say of Alfred de Musset that he had made none whatever. What the public sees is that the latter, unreasonable though he may have been, comes staggering home, alone and forlorn, while his companion remains quietly at Venice and writes three or four highly successful romances. Herr Lindau, who analyzes the affair, comes to the same conclusion as the gross synthetic public; and he qualifies certain sides of it in terms of which observant readers of George Sand's writings will recognize the justice. It is very happy to say "she was something of a Philistine;" that at the bottom of all experience with her was the desire to turn it to some economical account; and that she probably irritated her companion in a high degree by talking too much about loving him as a mother and a sister. (This, it will be remembered, is the basis of action with Thérèse, in "Elle et Lui." She becomes the hero's mistress in order to retain him in the filial relation, after the fashion of Rousseau's friend, Mme. de Warens.) On the other hand, it seems hardly fair to make it one of Musset's grievances that his comrade was industrious, thrifty, and methodical; that she had, as the French say, de l'ordre; and that, being charged with the maintenance of a family, she allowed nothing to divert her from producing her daily stint of "copy."

It is easy to believe that Musset may have tried the patience of a tranquil associate. George Sand's Jacques Laurent, in "Elle et Lui," is a sufficiently vivid portrait of a highly endowed, but hopelessly petulant, unreasonable, and dissipated egotist. We are far from suspecting that the portrait is perfectly exact; no portrait by George Sand is perfectly exact. Whatever point of view she takes, she always abounds too much in her own sense. But it evidently has a tolerably solid foundation in fact. Herr Lindau holds that Alfred de Musset's life was literally blighted by the grief that he suffered in Italy, and that the rest of his career was a long, erratic, unprofitable effort to drown the recollection of it. Our own inclination would be to judge him at once with more and with less indulgence. Whether deservedly or no, there is no doubt that his suffering was great; his brother quotes a passage from a document written five years after the event, in which Alfred affirms that, on his return to Paris, he spent four months shut up in his room in incessant tears—tears interrupted only by a "mechanical" game of chess in the evening. But Musset, like all poets, was essentially a creature of impression; as with all poets, his sentimental faculty needed constantly to renew itself. He found his account in sorrow, or at least in emotion, and we may say, in differing from Herr Lindau, that he was not a man to let a grievance grow stale. To feel permanently the need of smothering sorrow is in a certain sense to be sobered by it. Musset was never sobered (a cynical commentator would say he was never sober). Emotions bloomed again lightly and brilliantly on the very stem on which others had withered. After the catastrophe at times his imagination saved him, distinctly, from permanent depression; and on a different line, this same imagination helped him into dissipation.

M. Paul de Musset mentions that in 1837 his brother conceived a "passion sérieuse" for an attractive young lady, and that the liaison lasted two years—"two years during which there was never a quarrel, a storm, a cooling-off; never a pretext for umbrage or jealousy. This is why," he adds, "there is nothing to be told of them. Two years of love without a cloud cannot be narrated." It is noticeable that this is the third "passion sérieuse" that M. Paul de Musset alludes to since the dolorous weeks which followed the return from Venice. Shortly after this period another passion had come to the front; a passion which, like that which led him to Italy, was destined to have a tragical termination. This particular love affair is commemorated, in accents of bitter melancholy, in the "Nuit de Décembre," just as the other, which had found its catastrophe at Venice, figures, by clear allusion, in "Nuit de Mai," published a few months before. It may provoke a philosophic smile to learn, as we do from M. Paul de Musset—candid biographer!—that the "motives" of these two poems are not identical, as they have hitherto been assumed to be. It had never occurred to the reader that one disillusionment could follow so fast upon the heels of another. When we add that a short time afterward—as the duration of great intimacies of the heart is measured—Alfred de Musset was ready to embark upon "two years of love without a cloud" with still another object—to say nothing of the brief interval containing a sentimental episode of which our biographer gives the prettiest account—we seem to be justified in thinking that, for a "blighted" life, that of Alfred de Musset exhibited a certain germinal vivacity.

During his stay in Italy he had written nothing; but the five years which followed his return are those of his most active and brilliant productivity. The finest of his verses, the most charming of his tales, the most original of his comedies, belong to this relatively busy period. Everything that he wrote at this time has a depth and intensity which distinguishes it from the jocosely sentimental productions of his début, and from the somewhat mannered and vapidly elegant compositions which he put forth, at wide intervals, during the last fifteen years of his life. This was the period of Musset's intellectual virility. He was very precocious, but he was at the same time, at first, very youthful. On the other hand, his decline began early; in most of his later things, especially in his verses (they become very few in number), the inspiration visibly runs thin. "Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre," he had said, and both clauses of the sentence are true. His glass held but a small quantity; the best of his verses—those that one knows by heart and never wearies of repeating—are very soon counted. We have named them when we have mentioned "Rolla," the "Nuit de Mai," the "Nuit d'Aout" and the "Nuit d'Octobre"; the "Lettre à Lamartine," and the "Stances à la Malibran." These, however, are perfection; and if Musset had written nothing else, he would have had a right to say that it was from his own glass that he drank. The most beautiful of his comedies, "Il ne faut pas badiner avec l'Amour," dates from 1834, and to the same year belongs the "Lorenzaccio," the strongest, if not the most exquisite, of his dramatic attempts. His two most agreeable nouvelles, "Emmeline" and "Fréderic et Bernerette," appeared about the same time. But we have not space to enumerate his productions in detail. During the fifteen last years of his life, as we have said, they grew more and more rare; the poet had, in a certain sense, out-lived himself. Of these last years Herr Lindau gives a rather realistic and unflattered sketch; picturing him especially as a figure publicly familiar to Parisian loungers, who were used to observe him as "an unfortunate with an interesting face, dressed with extreme care," with the look of youth and the lassitude of age, seated in a corner of a café and gazing blankly over a marble table on which "a half empty bottle of absinthe and a quite empty glass" stood before him. M. Paul de Musset, in describing his brother's later years, is mindful of the rule to glide, not to press; with a very proper fraternal piety, he leaves a great many foibles and transgressions in the shade. He mentions, however, Alfred's partiality for spirits and stimulants—a taste which had defined itself in his early years. Musset made an excessive use of liquor; in plain English, he got drunk. Sainte-Beuve, somewhere in one of his merciless but valuable foot-notes, alludes to the author of "Rolla" coming tipsy to the sittings of the French Academy. Herr Lindau repeats a pun which was current on such occasions. "Musset s'absente trop," said some one. "Il s'absinthe trop," replied some one else. He had been elected to the Academy in 1852. His speech on the occasion of his reception was a disappointment to his auditors. Herr Lindau attributes the sterility of his later years to indolence and perversity; and it is probable that there is not a little justice in the charge. He was unable to force himself; he belonged to the race of gifted people who must do as it pleases them. When a literary task was proposed to him and he was not in the humor for it, he was wont to declare that he was not a maid-of-all-work, but an artist. He must write when the fancy took him; the fancy took him, unfortunately, less and less frequently. With a very uncertain income, and harassed constantly by his debts, he scorned to cultivate a pecuniary inspiration. He died in the arms of his brother in the spring of 1857.

He was beyond question one of the first poets of our day. If the poetic force is measured by the quality of the inspiration—by its purity, intensity, and closely personal savor—Alfred de Musset's place is surely very high. He was, so to speak, a thoroughly personal poet. He was not the poet of nature, of the universe, of reflection, of morality, of history; he was the poet simply of a certain order of personal emotions, and his charm is in the frankness and freedom, the grace and harmony, with which he expressed these emotions. The affairs of the heart—these were his province; in no other verses has the heart spoken more characteristically. Herr Lindau says very justly that if he was not the greatest poet among his contemporaries, he was at any rate the most poetically constituted nature. A part of the rest of Herr Lindau's judgment is worth quoting:

He has remained the poet of youth. No one has sung so truthfully and touchingly its aspirations and its sensibilities, its doubts and its hopes. No one has comprehended and justified its follies and its amiable idiosyncrasies with a more poetic irony, with a deeper conviction. His joy was young, his sorrow was young, and young was his song. To youth he owes all happiness, and in youth he sang his brightest chants. But the weakness of youth was his fatal enemy, and with youth faded away his joy in existence and in creation.

This is exactly true. Half the beauty of Musset's writing is its simple suggestion of youthfulness—of something fresh and fair, slim and tremulous, with a tender epidermis. This quality, with some readers, may seem to deprive him of a certain proper dignity; and it is very true that he was not a Stoic. You may even call him unmanly. He cries out when he is hurt; he resorts frequently to tears, and he talks much about his tears. (We have seen that after his return from Venice they formed, for four months, his principal occupation.) But his defence is that if he does not bear things like a man, he at least, according to Shakespeare's distinction, feels them like a man. What makes him valuable is just this gift for the expression of that sort of emotion which the conventions and proprieties of life, the dryness of ordinary utterance, the stiffness of most imaginations, leave quite in the vague, and yet which forms a part of human nature important enough to have its exponent. If the presumption is against the dignity of deeply poetic utterance, poor Musset is, in the vulgar phrase, nowhere—he is a mere grotesque sound of lamentation. But if in judging him you don't stint your sympathy, you will presently perceive him to have an extraordinarily precious quality—a quality equally rare in literature and in life. He has passion. There is in most poetry a great deal of reflection, of wisdom, of grace, of art, of genius; but (especially in English poetry) there is little of this peculiar property of Musset's. When it occurs we feel it to be extremely valuable; it touches us beyond anything else. It was the great gift of Byron, the quality by which he will live in spite of those weaknesses and imperfections which may be pointed out by the dozen. Alfred de Musset in this respect resembled the poet whom he appears most to have admired—living at a time when it had not begun to be the fashion to be ashamed to take Byron seriously. Mr. Swinburne in one of his prose essays speaks of him with violent scorn as Byron's "attendant dwarf," or something of that sort. But this is to miss the case altogether. There is nothing diminutive in generous admiration, and nothing dwarfish in being a younger brother; Mr. Swinburne's charge is too coarse a way of stating the position. Musset resembles Byron in the fact that the beauty of his verse is somehow identical with the feeling of the writer—with his immediate, sensible warmth—and not dependent upon that reflective stage into which, to produce its great effects, most English poetic expression instantly passes, and which seems to chill even while it nobly beautifies. Musset is talked of nowadays in France very much as Byron is talked of among ourselves; it is noticed that he often made bad verse, and he is accused of having but half known his trade. This sort of criticism is eminently just, and there is a weak side of the author of "Rolla" which it is easy to attack.