THE GALAXY. (continued 4)

The labor of assorting finished, the clerk's next duty is to count up the money of each bank. In doing this he examines each note to be sure that they all bear the same title. In some groups great care is required to ensure correctness in this process. For instance, a clerk will tell you that there are Springfield banks in every State in the Union. He exaggerates a little, but group 38 is nevertheless the bête noir of the assorting room. In the second assortment, as in the first, even hundreds of dollars make a full package. Notes of active banks are pinned up, the "fit" in blue straps and the "unfit" in green, each package marked with the group number, the bank number, the amount, the assorter's signature, and the date. Notes wrongly grouped are thrown together and put up in white straps, for return next day to the first assorter. "Odds" are enveloped in yellow or pink straps, accordingly as they are "unfit" or "fit," and are ultimately put in the vault until the group is next brought up for assortment. When the contents of a till have all been counted out, the assorter's cash is in the four items of full packages of notes of active banks, "52's," "errors" of first assortment, and "odds." The money of each of these items is strapped up in a bundle properly marked, and the amounts entered in the book. Delivery is made to the second assortment teller in a manner similar to that already described.

Of course, in a room where one or two millions of dollars are handled daily, rigid discipline is required to prevent loss through carelessness or peculation. A clerk on leaving his till must lock up his money. No assorter is allowed to leave the room during business hours except on a pass, to be taken up by the doorkeeper. This is obtained from the superintendent of assorters, who, before issuing it, examines the till of the applicant to see that everything is in shape. Slips of paper, perforated by a punch, are the sops which placate the Cerberus of the agency. Each assorter is provided with a card on which are printed two sets of numbers, from one to thirty-one, and a certificate that the holder's cash was properly balanced and his till in order at the close of business on the day of the month last punched. On this card the teller, after examining the assorter's money, makes one punch, and the superintendent of assorters another, after a minute inspection of the till and its surroundings. Thus the assorter receives the only passport on which he may leave the office for the day. In the afternoon, when all the money handled has been deposited in the safes, the superintendent of the agency makes a tour of all the rooms. The safes are then closed, and finally the Treasurer tries all the locks.

The work of the second assortment is by most clerks pretty easily learned, and upon this beginners are usually placed. The mechanical difficulties are, however, the same as those already noticed in connection with the first assortment; and speed can be acquired only by long and diligent practice. The agency offers few attractive positions to a clerk, whatever his grade. Currency long in circulation becomes so mutilated as to be difficult to handle. It is soiled and dusty, and often emits the most disgusting smells. One memorable shipment of several millions from San Francisco still lingers in the recollection of the unfortunate clerks, who spit and sneezed over the filthy mass. The notes were begrimed with every soil of the Pacific slope, and made odorous by association with every species of vice and uncleanliness to which human flesh is subject. The labor of the assorter and counter, even at the best, is severe and unpleasant; while from motives of economy the task is heaped up to the maximum and the pay cut down to the minimum.

The next process after assortment is to "make up" all the packages of all denominations into bundles, each containing only notes of a single bank. For this purpose the currency of active banks is delivered from the assorters through the teller to a "maker-up" who takes an inventory. Next day he assorts the packages of a group in a till similar to those already described, except that it is laid flat upon a low counter. Then he takes the contents of a box, ascertains, by examining the upper note of each package, that the money is all the issue of a single bank, and writes in ink upon a blank label the title of the bank, the amount of each denomination, and the total of all, signs and dates this, and straps it upon the bundle. Having emptied all the boxes of his till in this manner, he prepares a list of the amount of each bank's money made up, and verifies his work by comparing the footing with the total charged to him on the previous evening. This list is delivered to the bookkeepers, and upon it the accounts of the agency are based. From motives of saving in express charges, when the total of a bank's currency in the till is less than five hundred dollars, the money is not made up, but thrown aside as "odds," together with all excess over even thousands of dollars, when such excess is less than five hundred. These "odds" are returned, after account, to the vault. The work of making up employs from two to four persons constantly. Absolute correctness is of high importance, and great painstaking is required. Even a moment's relaxation of attention is likely to produce an error which, if not discovered, would involve the misplacement of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Fortunately, the system of checks and proofs is so thorough that all errors are discovered unfailingly, and the consequences confined to the agency. The different colored straps noticed in use for packages are but one feature of a general scheme by which currency in the office is made to indicate, at a glance, its description, proper place, and future course. The possibility of error or confusion in large amounts is thus reduced to the last degree. And minute precautions will hardly be deemed superfluous, when it is considered that all the processes described in this article are going on simultaneously every day at the heaped-up tills and counters.

On leaving the hands of the maker-up, the money is taken to the proving-room. Here the bundles are distributed among a force of women, who recount all the notes for the purpose of verifying the amount, the description, and the assortment. If, among the notes of a bank, is found one of another, the estray is exchanged, through the superintendent of assorters, for a note of the proper description. The prover, having ascertained that her money is correct according to the accompanying label, puts her initials to the latter, as well as upon each package of notes, wraps and ties the bundle, and carries it to a table, where, in her presence, the knots are sealed. First, however, the unfit notes are cancelled by removing a triangular piece from each of the lower corners. This is done by means of a knife, which is moved by hand with a lever, which easily cuts through two hundred notes at a time. The sealed packages are then put in the hands of the delivery clerk. At his counter the fit parcels are enveloped in a stout outside wrapper and directed to the various banks whose notes are contained in each. In this shape these parcels are taken to the office of the Adams Express Company for shipment. The unfit notes are delivered to the Comptroller of the Currency, by whose clerks they are again counted. When there is no longer any possibility of incorrectness either in the amount or the description, orders are made out for the issue of new currency, and the redeemed notes are carried to the basement of the Treasury, where they are put in a machine and reduced to pulp. This product is sold to paper makers, who, in consideration of its quality, are willing to buy it at a good price. There is a possibility, therefore, that the banker who several months ago forwarded his shipment of currency for redemption, may have the substance of his note return to him in these pages, bearing this account of the experiences of the journey.

Frank W. Lautz.

UNKNOWN PERSONS.

I was wandering through the Uffizi gallery in Florence one day, with my guide-book open in my hand, when I met the subjects of this story. They were by a large window, nine of them, framed in a little gilt frame a foot or so square. I looked at them, and then, by force of habit, I looked at the guide-book. "Portraits of nine unknown persons," it said. I went nearer and looked at them again, and after that I saw the guide-book no more. They were not portraits or unknown persons, but nine new friends who told me the story of their lives as I stood by the window gazing.

There were eight brothers of them, of a noble family, and dwelling in happy Tuscany. They lived in the country. Their mother was dead—died when Barnaba first opened his wondering eyes at her. Their father was a student, and loved his boys, and his books, and nature, and determined to keep them all together. "If we live in town," he said, "I can't do this; I am not very rich, so I will remain in my country home, and my boys and I will have a life of our own." Such a merry, merry life as the boys had together. Everything was turned to play for them, even their studies. Their principal delight was acting, and in their little plays, queer compounds of Grecian dramas and childish dreams, each one had his regular part. It was Pietro who was always the main figure, made the grandest speeches, and prayed the longest prayers—for they had religious dramas sometimes—and strutted around the most. They made Giuseppe their hero for all that, carried him in on their shoulders from battle, and crowned him with laurel at the end of the fourth act regularly. Domenico played the scholar: he had so grave an air, so learned a mien. Guido was the soldier boy. Let him but throw his cap on his wavy hair, or toss his coat over his shoulder and strut upon the mimic stage, and you would have sworn he was armed to the teeth, and that you could hear the click of his spurs.

How Barnaba loved Guido! How he would twirl his long hair over his finger secretly, hoping 'twould wave, and try to strut in on the stage heroically too. But he was sure to blunder a bit, poor Barnaba. He was the youngest, you see, and had poor parts given him that he didn't suit. He was not meant for a page, and sometimes, while Pietro would strut around and puff and declaim, little Barnaba was clenching his nervous hands tightly behind him, and longing that he might speak out like a man too. But no one ever dreamed that the stiff little page, with the long hair and the wondering eyes, had any wishes other than to make a good page. For Barnaba had a firm mouth, spite of the tremble at the corners, and it was always readier to shut than to open.

The other three boys, Luigi, Leonardo, and Leone, were good boys and happy boys, but they were by nature "the populace." They were always ready to come in on the stage as "the excited crowd" or "the hooting rabble." They threw up their hats and cried, "Si, si" splendidly, but then they would cry, "Nò, nò" just as well if it was their part to do so. So you can see they made a capital populace. Very near them, in a beautiful villa, there lived for a while in the summer time, once a little girl. Henrighetta she was called by her friends, but the boys' father bade them call her la signorina, "because," said he, "it is well to respect women." "But Henrighetta is only a little girl," said Barnaba. "Pshaw, she'll be a woman some day," laughed Guido, and twirled on his toes, "and I'll be a man." And he pulled away at some very make-believe moustaches, and raised his eyebrows until even his grave father laughed. For at this time Guido was only eleven and Barnaba seven. Pietro, the eldest—he was seventeen—very aged indeed, the lads thought. So Henrighetta became their playmate.

Shortly before she left the villa they had a great play. It was the best they had ever had. There was a prologue and an epilogue, written and spoken by Pietro, and ever so much shouting, and a very bloody scene in which Guido rescued Henrighetta from the ruffians, who were being led by a traitor page (Barnaba, of course) to kill her for her jewels. "Luigi," said Barnaba, "I hate to be mean, even in a play. I wish you would be the page and let me be a ruffian." Then Luigi laughed hard, and told his brothers. And they said, "Fancy Barnaba a ruffian," and laughed until poor Barnaba looked sadder than ever. "Oh, you'll make a real good page, and you know you have to kiss Henrighetta's long dress," said Guido, as he whittled a little gun. "So I will," said Barnaba, and was quite happy.

Now, really Henrighetta was a good deal like other girls, not very pretty or very wise, but fresh and happy. But with the eight boys she was a queen indeed—dared even to speak threateningly to Pietro, though she was but ten years old, and stamped her foot one day at Guido. Oh, how vexed he was! Yet she was always kind to Barnaba, and on the night of the play bade him kiss her hand instead of her dress, if he wished. It was very inappropriate, but Barnaba thought it angelic, and imprinted just the most serious and tender kiss on Henrighetta's chubby fingers at the moment when Guido carried her off from her terrible fate. They had quite an audience that night. Henrighetta's friends were many, and they all said how beautifully she looked when she was married to Guido at the close of the play, as she was, of course, with Pietro for a cardinal and Barnaba as page, to hold up my lady's train.

Well, the boys grew up, and though they wandered off to see the world and study, they found their way home often and often. Barnaba alone stayed there all the while. He grew of use to his father in writing, became his private secretary, and seemed to be as much a part of the home as the olive grove near by, or the long, shaded walks he loved so well. Barnaba's hair was as straight as ever, and his white collar grew crumpled sooner than it ought, and he looked as if he belonged somewhere else. Observing people wondered sometimes, but only a little, and Barnaba's brothers would have told you he was a shy, good boy, and his father would have said the same, and I dare say Barnaba himself might have replied a little in like manner, had he replied at all. But Barnaba did not talk much. He read, and dreamed, and walked in the woods. Sometimes at evening he would take off his cap, and the wind would blow his hair, and a light would burn in his eyes, and you would have thought, "Barnaba will do something surely." But he never did.

It was in the summer time, twelve years later than the play time, that Henrighetta came again to the villa. It was a little dull for her, for all the boys were away from home but Giuseppe and Barnaba. Giuseppe was older and angelic. He went to see the poor, and he had written a beautiful book about the Cross, and he slept in a little room on a hard bed, and said his prayers a great deal. His brothers would cross themselves often in speaking of him. "Giuseppe is a holy man," they would say. There was a verse in Giuseppe's book that Barnaba loved. He said it often to himself. It was this: "There is a road, and the name of it is Patience; the flowers that grow by it are few, but they are very sweet; and if you pluck them and weave them into a crown, the fragrance shall last for ever."

Barnaba was in the woods one day, saying these words softly to himself, when the lady Henrighetta approached. She was dressed all in white, and Barnaba thought her very beautiful and proud. Yet she spoke so sweetly to him. "Are you not my old friend Barnaba?" she asked. Had he been patient, and had he plucked one of the rare sweet flowers? It seemed so, truly. She spoke so sweetly, and she smiled at him, and she seated herself by him. "I am going to make a wreath for myself," she said, "while my father talks to your brother near by, and you shall get me flowers and tell me about your brothers—where you all are and what you are doing." Such dainty commands! How Barnaba flew for the flowers! How oddly he looked with his long hair flowing, and his eager hands clutching up the sweetest herbs, and grasses, and blossoms, all for her. "May I make your wreath?" he said, for Barnaba knew well what flowers loved each other.

What a happy Barnaba! How the sun shone, and the trees whispered that day, and how she talked to him, told him of all the years, of her travels, for she had seen much, and he sat and listened, and wove the flowers together, and watched her white hands and her full, soft throat. And after the lady Henrighetta talked she sang a little. It was such a fair day, so dreamy, and shady, and restful. She sang scraps of old Italian songs. When Barnaba had finished the wreath he handed it to her to place upon her head. "What shall I give you for this?" she said, and held out her hand. It was only a moment, yet it was a long enough moment to have placed a kiss upon it, and Barnaba was a man, and Barnaba longed to do it, but did he dare? While he wondered Giuseppe and her father joined them, and they all walked home to Henrighetta's together, talking of the olden times. Then they bade her good-by. She lingered at the doorway to watch them go. Barnaba looked back once and saw her standing there, all in white, with the wreath he had made crowning her dark hair. "And the fragrance shall last for ever," he whispered so softly that Giuseppe did not hear.

The next day Guido came home. He was a real soldier now, with spurs and a jaunty cloak, and such a twinkle in his eye and swing in his walk and laugh in his voice that you longed to see him enter the room, and wished for him to speak—not that he said so much, but he said it so well. The quiet home was always changed when Guido arrived. Merry songs were heard all over the house, horns, and racings, and laughter. And this time Guido was more than ever gay. He and the lady Henrighetta grew to be great friends. They would ride and walk, and although there were always people with them, they seemed to talk for each other all the time, and to smile for each other all the time. Every one saw it and smiled too—every one but Barnaba. He was very busy during this while with his father, correcting proofs for a new book on archæology.

It was not until twelve long days had gone by that he again saw the lady Henrighetta. Then he went over one evening to her father's villa, "where we are to have some plays as we used to do," said Guido. Barnaba's heart beat hard, and he longed to see the lady Henrighetta again. She was getting ready for the play. "Barnaba, you are to be page, please," said Guido, "and hold my lady's train." So Barnaba was page, and the play began. There were many strange faces and voices in it, and it was a studied play, each part learned by rote. It did not seem like old times at all. Barnaba began to feel very far away, when suddenly he was called to where the lady Henrighetta was, and bidden to follow her as her page. She greeted him kindly. "All you have to do is to stand by my side," she said. To stand by her side! And then the curtain rose again, and the lady Henrighetta, clad in regal robes, sailed forward, and Barnaba, clad as a page, followed her meekly and stood at her side.

What a little hum there was when she appeared! and when Guido strode rapidly in toward her and pressed her passionately, how the applause rang! It was an intense scene, and Guido seemed intensely in earnest. "How well he plays," thought Barnaba. Then, as Guido looked at Henrighetta and Henrighetta really blushed a little and dropped her eyelids, Barnaba's soul rose. It was a strong soul; it was a man's soul; and it was in a white heat of rage now. If he, the page, had but a sword to kill him, the lover! Just then he heard a little whisper which the others did not hear. It was too low. Guido had said, not "Leonora, mia cara," as the play said, but "Henrighetta, mia cara." There was a sudden movement on the stage. It was the page who had turned quickly, frantically. He had nearly reached the door when he turned again and came back, white but firm, with a strange smile on his lip, and resumed his place. Guido swore. The pretty tableau was spoiled. I am afraid even my lady sighed softly, but Barnaba did not know that. She had told him to stand by her side, and her command must be obeyed.

The scene over, however, Barnaba rushed from the house, out into the fresh air. He turned and gazed back through the window. There they stood together, side by side, smiling, happy, Guido and Henrighetta, and here was poor Barnaba, still in the trappings of livery, with his heart all torn in his hands. Out in the darkness he dropped his head toward the earth. Giuseppe saw the face, and came toward him. "What is it, brother?" asked he softly. "What have you lost?" Barnaba looked up at him. His brave, firm lips trembled once. "My life," he said; "I have lost my life." There was a silence. "He that loseth his life shall find it," said Giuseppe. "These are the words of the Lord." And the two brothers crossed themselves and walked homeward together in silence.

It was six months after, at the time of the wedding, that the portrait was painted. Giuseppe is in the centre. The brothers all said 'twas his place. Pietro has his cowl over his head, you see, but he is fat and hearty for all that. Domenico leans on a book, as ever, and the populace smile pleasantly and in a well-bred manner. Guido and his wife are side by side—the daring, jaunty, happy man and his high-born, full-throated, soft-eyed wife. And where is Barnaba? Just over her. Below her, even in the picture, he should have been, he thinks, and beside her, never, but once, in a play. Dear, poor, brave Barnaba! He has changed in the six months. His collar is as twisted, his hair as long and straight, and his eyes as full of wonder; but there are two new turns to his lips—smiling turns. "I've lost," they seem to say, "and I might have won. Life has treated me poorly, but I owe her no grudge. Guido and his wife have gone away. Giuseppe is visiting the poor. Pietro is at his priestly work—what is it? The others are back in their lives." Barnaba walks in the grove alone, and repeats to himself: "There is a road, and the name of it is Patience. The flowers that grow by it are few, but they are very sweet; and if you pluck them and weave them into a crown, the fragrance shall last forever." And Barnaba smiles.

Mary Murdoch Mason.

THE DEAD STAR.

John James Piatt.

THE LONDON THEATRES.

A person taking up his residence in a foreign city is apt, I think, to become something of a playgoer. In the first place he is usually more or less isolated, and in the absence of complex social ties the theatres help him to pass his evenings. But more than this, they offer him a good deal of interesting evidence upon the manners and customs of the people among whom he has come to dwell. They testify to the civilization around him, and throw a great deal of light upon the ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving of the community. If this exotic spectator to whom I allude is a person of a really attentive observation, he may extract such evidence in very large quantities. It is furnished not by the stage alone, but by the theatre in a larger sense of the word: by the audience, the attendants, the arrangements, the very process of getting to the playhouse. The English stage of to-day, of which I more particularly speak, certainly holds the mirror as little as possible up to nature—to any nature, at least, usually recognized in the British islands. Nine-tenths of the plays performed upon it are French originals, subjected to the mysterious process of "adaptation"; marred as French pieces and certainly not mended as English; transplanted from the Gothic soil into a chill and neutral region where they bloom hardly longer than a handful of cut flowers stuck into moist sand. They cease to have any representative value as regards French manners, and they acquire none as regards English; they belong to an order of things which has not even the merit of being "conventional," but in which barbarism, chaos, and crudity hold undisputed sway. The English drama of the last century deserved the praise, in default of any higher, of being "conventional"; for there was at least a certain method in its madness; it had its own ideal, its own foolish logic and consistency. But he would be wise who should be able to indicate the ideal, artistic and intellectual, of the English drama of today. It is violently and hopelessly irresponsible. When one says "English drama" one uses the term for convenience' sake; one means simply the plays that are acted at the London theatres and transferred thence to the American. They are neither English nor a drama; they have not that minimum of ponderable identity at which appreciation finds a starting-point. As the metaphysicians say, they are simply not cognizable. And yet in spite of all this, the writer of these lines has ventured to believe that the London theatres are highly characteristic of English civilization. The plays testify indirectly if not directly to the national manners, and the whole system on which play-going is conducted completes the impression which the pieces make upon the observer. One can imagine, indeed, nothing more characteristic than such a fact as that a theatre-going people is hopelessly destitute of a drama.

I ventured a month ago to record in these pages a few reminiscences of the Comédie Française; and I have a sort of feeling that my readers may, in the light of my present undertaking, feel prompted to accuse me of a certain levity. There is a want of delicacy, they may say, in speaking of the first theatre in the world one day and of the London stage the next. You must choose, and if you talk about one, you forfeit the right to talk about the other. But I think there is something to be done in the way of talking about both, and at all events there are few things it is not fair to talk about if one does so with a serious desire to understand. Removing lately from Paris to the British metropolis, I received a great many impressions—a sort of unbroken chain, in which the reflections passing through my fancy as I tried the different orchestra-stalls were the concluding link. The impressions of which I speak were impressions of outside things—the things with which in a great city one comes first into contact. I supposed that I had gathered them once for all in earlier years; but I found that the edge of one's observation, unlike that of other trenchant instruments, grows again if one leaves it alone. Remain a long time in any country, and you come to accept the manners and customs of that country as the standard of civilization—the normal type. Other manners and customs, even if they spring from the same soil from which you yourself have sprung, acquire by contrast an unreasonable, a violent, but often a picturesque relief. To what one may call a continentalized vision the aspect of English life seems strange and entertaining; while an Anglicized perception finds, beyond the narrow channel, even greater matter for wonderment.

The writer of these lines brought with him, at the outset of a dusky London winter, a continentalized, and perhaps more particularly a Parisianized, fancy. It was wonderful how many things that I should have supposed familiar and commonplace seemed strikingly salient and typical, and how I found, if not sermons in stones and good in everything, at least examples in porter-pots and reflections in coal-scuttles. In writing the other day of the Théatre Français, I spoke of M. Francisque Sarcey, the esteemed dramatic critic; of the serious and deliberate way in which he goes to work—of the distance from which he makes his approaches. During the first weeks I was in London, especially when I had been to the play the night before, I kept saying to myself that M. Francisque Sarcey ought to come over and "do" the English theatres. There are of course excellent reasons why he should not. In the first place, it is safe to assume that he comprehends not a word of English; and in the second, it is obligatory to believe that he would, in the vulgar phrase, not be able to "stand" it. He would probably pronounce the English stage hopelessly and unmitigably bad and beneath criticism, and hasten back to Delaunay and Sarah Bernhardt. But if we could suppose him to fight it out, and give the case a hearing, what a solid dissertation we should have upon it afterward at the bottom of the "Temps" newspaper! How he would go into the causes of the badness, and trace its connections with English civilization! How earnestly he would expatiate and how minutely he would explain; how fervently he would point the moral and entreat his fellow countrymen not to be as the English are lest they should lapse into histrionic barbarism!

I felt, to myself, during these days, in a small way, very much like a Francisque Sarcey; I don't mean as to the gloominess of my conclusions, but as to the diffusiveness of my method. A spectator with his senses attuned to all those easy Parisian harmonies feels himself, in London, to be in a place in which the drama cannot, in the nature of things, have a vigorous life. Before he has put his feet into a theatre he is willing to bet his little all that the stage will turn out to be weak. If he is challenged for the reasons of this precipitate skepticism, he will perhaps be at loss to give them; he will only say, "Oh, I don't know, cela se seut. Everything I see is a reason. I don't look out of the window, I don't ring the bell for some coals, I don't go into an eating-house to dine, without seeing a reason." And then he will begin to talk about the duskiness and oppressiveness of London; about the ugliness of everything that one sees; about beauty and grace being never attempted, or attempted here and there only to be wofully missed; about the visible, palpable Protestantism; about the want of expression in people's faces; about the plainness and dreariness of everything that is public and the inaccessibility of everything that is private; about the lower classes being too miserable to know the theatre, and the upper classes too "respectable" to understand it.

And here, if the audacious person we are conceiving is very far gone, he will probably begin to talk about English "hypocrisy" and prudery, and to say that these are the great reason of the feebleness of the stage. When he approaches the question of English "hypocrisy" you may know that he is hopelessly Gallicized, or Romanized, or Germanized, or something of that sort; and indeed his state of mind at this point strikes me myself with a certain awe. I don't venture to follow him, and I discreetly give up the attempt. But up to this point I can see what he may have meant, in the midst of his flippancy, and I remember how to my own imagination at first everything seemed to hang together, and theatres to be what they were because somehow the streets, and shops, and hotels, and eating-houses were what they were. I remember something I said to myself after once witnessing a little drama of real life at a restaurant. The restaurant in question is in Piccadilly, and I am trying to think under which of the categories of our Gallicized observer it would come. The remarkable façade, covered with gilded mosaics and lamps, is certainly a concession to the idea of beauty; though whether it is a successful one is another question. Within it has, besides various other resources, one of those peculiar refectories which are known in England as grill-rooms, and which possess the picturesque feature of a colossal gridiron, astride of a corresponding fire, on which your chops and steaks are toasted before your eyes. A grill-room is a bad place to dine, but it is a convenient place to lunch. It always contains a number of tables, which accommodate not less than half a dozen persons; small tables of the proper dimensions for a tête-â-tête being, for inscrutable reasons, wholly absent from English eating-houses.

The grill-room in question is decorated in that style of which the animus is to be agreeable to Mr. William Morris, though I suspect that in the present application of his charming principles he would find a good deal of base alloy. At any rate, the apartment contains a number of large medallions in blue pottery, pieced together, representing the heathen gods and goddesses, whose names are inscribed in crooked letters in an unexpected part of the picture. This is quite the thing that one would expect to find in one of those cloisters or pleasances, or "pleached gardens," in which Mr. Morris's Gothic heroines drag their embroidered petticoats up and down, as slow-pacedly as their poet sings. Only, in these pretty, dilettantish cloisters there would probably be no large tickets suspended alongside of the pictorial pottery, inscribed with the monstrous words, Tripe! Suppers! This is one of those queer eruptions of plainness and homeliness which one encounters at every turn in the midst of the massive luxury and general expensiveness of England—like the big, staring announcement, Beds, in the coffee-house windows, or Well-aired Beds painted on the side walls of taverns; or like a list of labels which I noticed the other day on a series of japanned boxes in a pastry-cook's shop. They seemed to me so characteristic that I made a note of them.

The reason of my being in the pastry-cook's shop was my having contracted in Paris the harmless habit of resorting to one of these establishments at the luncheon hour, for the purpose of consuming a little gateau. Resuming this innocent practice on English soil, I found it attended with serious difficulties—the chief of which was that there were no gateaux to consume. An appreciative memory of those brightly mirrored little shops on the Paris boulevards, in which tender little tarts, in bewildering variety, are dispensed to you by a neat-waisted patissière, cast a dusky shadow over the big buns and "digestive biscuits" which adorn the counter of an English bakery. But it takes a good while to eat a bun, and while you stand there solemnly disintegrating your own, you may look about you in search of the characteristic. In Paris the pastry-cooks' shops are, as the French say, coquettish—as coquettish as the elegant simplicity of plate glass, discreet gilding, polished brass, and a demonstrative dame de comptoir can make them. In London they are not coquettish—witness the grim nomenclature alluded to above; it was distributed over a series of green tin cases, ranged behind the counters: Tops and bottoms—royal digestives—arrow-root—oat-cake—rice biscuit—ratafias.

I took my seat in the grill-room at a table at which three gentlemen were sitting: two of them sleek British merchants, of a familiar and highly respectable type, the other a merchant too, presumably, but neither sleek nor British. He was evidently an American. He was a good-looking fellow and a man of business, but I inferred from the tentative, experimental, and even mistrustful manner with which he addressed himself to the operation of lunching, and observed the idiosyncrasies of the grill-room, that he found himself for the first time in England. His experiment, however, if experiment it was, was highly successful; he made a copious lunch and departed. He had not had time to reach the door when I perceived one of the British merchants of whom I just now spoke beginning to knock the table violently with his knife-handle, and to clamor, "Waiter, waiter! Manager, manager!" The manager and the waiter hastened to respond, while I endeavored to guess the motive of his agitation, without connecting it with our late companion. As I then saw him pointing eagerly to the latter, however, who was just getting out of the door, I was seized with a mortifying apprehension that my innocent compatriot was a dissembler and a pickpocket, and that the English gentleman, next whom he had been sitting, had missed his watch or his purse. "He has taken one of these—one of these!" said the British merchant. "I saw him put it into his pocket." And he held up a bill of fare of the establishment, a printed card, bearing on its back a colored lithograph of the emblazoned façade that I have mentioned. I was reassured; the poor American had pocketed this light document with the innocent design of illustrating his day's adventures to a sympathetic wife awaiting his return in some musty London lodging. But the manager and the waiter seemed to think the case grave, and their informant continued to impress upon them that he had caught the retiring visitor in the very act. They were at a loss to decide upon a course of action; they thought the case was bad, but they questioned whether it was bad enough to warrant them in pursuing the criminal. While this weighty point was being discussed the criminal escaped, little suspecting, I imagine, the perturbation he had caused. But the British merchant continued to argue, speaking in the name of outraged morality. "You know he oughtn't to have done that—it was very wrong in him to do it. That mustn't be done, you know, and you know I ought to tell you—it was my duty to tell you—I couldn't but tell you. He oughtn't to have done it, you know. I thought I must tell you." It is not easy to point out definitely the connection between this little episode, for the triviality of which I apologize, and the present condition of the English stage; but—it may have been whimsical—I thought I perceived a connection. These people are too highly moral to be histrionic, I said; they have too stern a sense of duty.

The first step in the rather arduous enterprise of going to the theatre in London is, I think, another reminder that the arts of the stage are not really in the temperament and the manners of the people. This first step is to go to an agency in an expensive street out of Piccadilly, and there purchase a stall for the sum of eleven shillings. You receive your ticket from the hands of a smooth, sleek, bottle-nosed clerk, who seems for all the world as if he had stepped straight out of a volume of Dickens or of Thackeray. There is almost always an old lady taking seats for the play, with a heavy carriage in waiting at the door; the number of old ladies whom one has to squeeze past in the stalls is in fact very striking. "Is it good?" asks the old lady of the gentleman I have described, with a very sweet voice and a perfectly expressionless face. (She means the play, not the seat.) "It is thought very good, my lady," says the clerk, as if he were uttering a "response" at church; and my lady being served, I approach with my humbler petition. The dearness of places at the London theatres is a sufficient indication that play-going is not a popular amusement; three dollars is a high price to pay for the privilege of witnessing any London performance that I have seen. (One goes into the stalls of the Théâtre Français for eight francs.) In the house itself everything seems to contribute to the impression which I have tried to indicate—the impression that the theatre in England is a social luxury and not an artistic necessity. The white-cravatted young man who inducts you into your stall, and having put you into possession of a programme, extracts from you, masterly but effectually, the sixpence which, as a stranger, you have wondered whether you might venture to give him, and which has seemed a mockery of his grandeur—this excellent young man is somehow the keynote of the whole affair. An English audience is as different as possible from a French, though the difference is altogether by no means to its disadvantage. It is much more "genteel"; it is less Bohemian, less blasé, more naïf, and more respectful—to say nothing of being made up of handsomer people. It is well dressed, tranquil, motionless; it suggests domestic virtue and comfortable homes; it looks as if it had come to the play in its own carriage, after a dinner of beef and pudding. The ladies are mild, fresh colored English mothers; they all wear caps; they are wrapped in knitted shawls. There are many rosy young girls, with dull eyes and quiet cheeks—an element wholly absent from Parisian audiences. The men are handsome and honorable looking; they are in evening dress; they come with the ladies—usually with several ladies—and remain with them; they sit still in their places, and don't go herding out between the acts with their hats askew. Altogether they are much more the sort of people to spend a quiet evening with than the clever, cynical, democratic multitude that surges nightly out of the brilliant Boulevards into those temples of the drama in which MM. Dumas, fils, and Sardou are the high priests. But you might spend your evening with them better almost anywhere than at the theatre.

As I said just now, they are much more naïf than Parisian spectators—at least as regards being amused. They cry with much less facility, but they laugh more freely and heartily. I remember nothing in Paris that corresponds with the laugh of the English gallery and pit—with its continuity and simplicity, its deep-lunged jollity and its individual guffaws. But you feel that an English audience is intellectually much less appreciative. A Paris audience, as regards many of its factors, is cynical, skeptical, indifferent; it is so intimately used to the theatre that it doesn't stand on ceremony; it yawns, and looks away and turns its back; it has seen too much, and it knows too much. But it has the critical and the artistic sense, when the occasion appeals to them; it can judge and discriminate. It has the sense of form and of manner; it heeds and cares how things are done, even when it cares little for the things themselves. Bohemians, artists, critics, connoisseurs—all Frenchmen come more or less under these heads, which give the tone to a body of Parisian spectators. These do not strike one as "nice people" in the same degree as a collection of English patrons of the drama—though doubtless they have their own virtues and attractions; but they form a natural, sympathetic public, while the English audience forms only a conventional, accidental one. It may be that the drama and other works of art are best appreciated by people who are not "nice"; it may be that a lively interest in such matters tends to undermine niceness; it may be that, as the world grows nicer, various forms of art will grow feebler. All this may be; I don't pretend to say it is; the idea strikes me en passant.

In speaking of what is actually going on at the London theatres I suppose the place of honor, beyond comparison, belongs to Mr. Henry Irving. This gentleman enjoys an esteem and consideration which, I believe, has been the lot of no English actor since Macready left the stage, and he may at the present moment claim the dignity of being a bone of contention in London society second only in magnitude to the rights of the Turks and the wrongs of the Bulgarians. I am told that London is divided, on the subject of his merits, into two fiercely hostile camps; that he has sown dissension in families, and made old friends cease to "speak." His appearance in a new part is a great event; and if one has the courage of one's opinion, at dinner tables and elsewhere, a conversational godsend. Mr. Irving has "created," as the French say, but four Shakespearian parts; his Richard III. has just been given to the world. Before attempting Hamlet, which up to this moment has been his great success, he had attracted much attention as a picturesque actor of melodrama, which he rendered with a refinement of effect not common upon the English stage. Mr. Irving's critics may, I suppose, be divided into three categories: those who justify him in whatever he attempts, and consider him an artist of unprecedented brilliancy; those who hold that he did very well in melodrama, but that he flies too high when he attempts Shakespeare; and those who, in vulgar parlance, can see nothing in him at all.

I shrink from ranging myself in either of these divisions, and indeed I am not qualified to speak of Mr. Irving's acting in general. I have seen none of his melodramatic parts; I do not know him as a comedian—a capacity in which some people think him at his best; and in his Shakespearian repertory I have seen only his Macbeth and his Richard. But judging him on the evidence of these two parts, I fall hopelessly among the skeptics. Mr. Henry Irving is a very convenient illustration. To a stranger desiring to know how the London stage stands, I should say, "Go and see this gentleman; then tell me what you think of him." And I should expect the stranger to come back and say, "I see what you mean. The London stage has reached that pitch of mediocrity at which Mr. Henry Irving overtops his fellows—Mr. Henry Irving figuring as a great man—c'est tout dire." I hold that there is an essential truth in the proverb that there is no smoke without fire. No reputations are altogether hollow, and no valuable prizes have been easily won. Of course Mr. Irving has a good deal of intelligence and cleverness; of course he has mastered a good many of the mysteries of his art. But I must nevertheless declare that for myself I have not mastered the mystery of his success. His defects seem to me in excess of his qualities and the lessons he has not learned more striking than the lessons he has learned.

That an actor so handicapped, as they say in London, by nature and culture should have enjoyed such prosperity, is a striking proof of the absence of a standard, of the chaotic condition of taste. Mr. Irving's Macbeth, which I saw more than a year ago and view under the mitigations of time, was not pronounced one of his great successes; but it was acted, nevertheless, for many months, and it does not appear to have injured his reputation. Passing through London, and curious to make the acquaintance of the great English actor of the day, I went with alacrity to see it; but my alacrity was more than equalled by the vivacity of my disappointment. I sat through the performance in a sort of melancholy amazement. There are barren failures and there are interesting failures, and this performance seemed to me to deserve the less complimentary of these classifications. It inspired me, however, with no ill will toward the artist, for it must be said of Mr. Irving that his aberrations are not of a vulgar quality, and that one likes him, somehow, in spite of them. But one's liking takes the form of making one wish that really he had selected some other profession than the histrionic. Nature has done very little to make an actor of him. His face is not dramatic; it is the face of a sedentary man, a clergyman, a lawyer, an author, an amiable gentleman—of anything other than a possible Hamlet or Othello. His figure is of the same cast, and his voice completes the want of illusion. His voice is apparently wholly unavailable for purposes of declamation. To say that he speaks badly is to go too far; to my sense he simply does not speak at all—in any way that, in an actor, can be called speaking. He does not pretend to declaim or dream of declaiming. Shakespeare's finest lines pass from his lips without his paying the scantiest tribute to their quality. Of what the French call diction—of the art of delivery—he has apparently not a suspicion. This forms three-fourths of an actor's obligations, and in Mr. Irving's acting these three-fourths are simply cancelled. What is left to him with the remaining fourth is to be "picturesque"; and this even his partisans admit he has made his specialty. This concession darkens Mr. Irving's prospects as a Shakespearian actor. You can play hop-scotch on one foot, but you cannot cut with one blade of a pair of scissors, and you cannot play Shakespeare by being simply picturesque. Above all, before all, for this purpose you must have the art of utterance; you must be able to give value to the divine Shakespearian line—to make it charm our ears as it charms our mind. It is of course by his picturesqueness that Mr. Irving has made his place; by small ingenuities of "business" and subtleties of action; by doing as a painter does who "goes in" for color when he cannot depend upon his drawing. Mr. Irving's color is sometimes pretty enough; his ingenuities and subtleties are often felicitous; but his picturesqueness, on the whole, strikes me as dry and awkward, and, at the best, where certain essentials are so strikingly absent, these secondary devices lose much of their power.

Mr. Fechter in Hamlet was preponderantly a "picturesque" actor; but he had a certain sacred spark, a heat, a lightness and suppleness, which Mr. Irving lacks; and though, with his incurable foreign accent, he could hardly be said to declaim Shakespeare in any worthy sense, yet on the whole he spoke his part with much more of the positively agreeable than can possibly belong to the utterance of Mr. Irving. His speech, with all its fantastic Gallicisms of sound, was less foreign and more comprehensible than that strange tissue of arbitrary pronunciations which floats in the thankless medium of Mr. Irving's harsh, monotonous voice. Richard III. is of all Shakespeare's parts the one that can perhaps best dispense with declamation, and in which the clever inventions of manner and movement in which Mr. Irving is proficient will carry the actor furthest. Accordingly, I doubt not, Mr. Irving is seen to peculiar advantage in this play; it is certainly a much better fit for him than Macbeth. He has had the good taste to discard the vulgar adaptation of Cibber, by which the stage has so long been haunted, and which, I believe, is played in America to the complete exclusion of the original drama. I believe that some of the tenderest Shakespearians refuse to admit the authenticity of "Richard III."; they declare that the play has, with all its energy, a sort of intellectual grossness, of which the author of "Hamlet" and "Othello" was incapable. This same intellectual grossness is certainly very striking; the scene of Richard's wooing of Lady Ann is a capital specimen of it. But here and there occur passages which, when one hears the play acted, have all the vast Shakespearian sense of effect.

It is hard to believe that Shakespeare did not write that. And when Richard, after putting an end to Clarence, comes into Edward IV.'s presence, with the courtiers ranged about, and announces hypocritically that Providence has seen fit to remove him, the situation is marked by one or two speeches which are dramatic as Shakespeare alone is dramatic. The immediate exclamation of the Queen—

—followed by that of one of the gentlemen—

—such touches as these, with their inspired vividness, seem to belong to the brushwork of the master. Mr. Irving gives the note of his performance in his first speech—the famous soliloquy upon "the winter of our discontent." His delivery of these lines possesses little but hopeless staginess and mannerism. It seems indeed like staginess gone mad. The spectator rubs his eyes and asks himself whether he has not mistaken his theatre, and stumbled by accident upon some prosperous burlesque. It is fair to add that Mr. Irving is here at his worst, the scene offering him his most sustained and exacting piece of declamation. But the way he renders it is the way he renders the whole part—slowly, draggingly, diffusively, with innumerable pauses and lapses, and without a hint of the rapidity, the intensity and entrain which are needful for carrying off the improbabilities of so explicit and confidential a villain and so melodramatic a hero.

Just now, when a stranger in London asks where the best acting is to be seen, he receives one of two answers. He is told either at the Prince of Wales's theatre or at the Court. Some people think that the last perfection is to be found at the former of these establishments, others at the latter. I went first to the Prince of Wales's, of which I had a very pleasant memory from former years, and I was not disappointed. The acting is very pretty indeed, and this little theatre doubtless deserves the praise which is claimed for it, of being the best conducted English stage in the world. It is, of course, not the Comédie Française; but, equally of course, it is absurd talking or thinking of the Comédie Française in London. The company at the Prince of Wales's play with a finish, a sense of detail, what the French call an ensemble, and a general good grace, which deserve explicit recognition. The theatre is extremely small, elegant, and expensive, the company is very carefully composed, and the scenery and stage furniture lavishly complete. It is a point of honor with the Prince of Wales's to have nothing that is not "real." In the piece now running at this establishment there is a representation of a boudoir very delicately appointed, the ceiling of which is formed by festoons of old lace suspended tent fashion or pavilion fashion. This lace, I am told, has been ascertained, whether by strong opera glasses or other modes of inquiry I know not, to be genuine, ancient, and costly. This is the very pedantry of perfection, and makes the scenery somewhat better than the actors. If the tendency is logically followed out, we shall soon be having Romeo drink real poison and Medea murder a fresh pair of babes every night.

The Prince of Wales's theatre, when it has once carefully mounted a play, "calculates," I believe, to keep it on the stage a year. The play of the present year is an adaptation of one of Victorien Sardou's cleverest comedies—"Nos Intimes"—upon which the title of "Peril" has been conferred. Of the piece itself there is nothing to be said; it is the usual hybrid drama of the contemporary English stage—a firm, neat French skeleton, around which the drapery of English conversation has been adjusted in awkward and inharmonious folds. The usual feat has been attempted—to extirpate "impropriety" and at the same time to save interest. In the extraordinary manipulation and readjustment of French immoralities which goes on in the interest of Anglo-Saxon virtue, I have never known this feat to succeed. Propriety may have been saved, in an awkward, floundering, in-spite-of-herself fashion, which seems to do to something in the mind a violence much greater than the violence it has been sought to avert; but interest has certainly been lost. The only immorality I know on the stage is the production of an ill-made play; and a play is certainly ill made when the pointedness of the framework strikes the spectator as a perpetual mockery upon the flatness of the "developments." M. Sardou's perfectly improper but thoroughly homogeneous comedy has been flattened and vulgarized in the usual way; the pivot of naughtiness on which the piece turns has been "whittled" down to the requisite tenuity; the wicked little Jack-in-the-Box has popped up his head only just in time to pull it back again. The interest, from being intense, has become light, and the play, from being a serious comedy, with a flavor of the tragic, has become an elaborate farce, salted with a few coarse grains of gravity. It is probable, however, that if "Peril" were more serious, it would be much less adequately played.

The Prince of Wales's company contains in the person of Miss Madge Robertson (or Mrs. Kendal, as I believe she is nowadays called) the most agreeable actress on the London stage. This lady is always pleasing, and often charming; but she is more effective in gentle gayety than in melancholy or in passion. Another actor at the Prince of Wales's—Mr. Arthur Cecil—strikes me as an altogether superior comedian. He plays in "Peril" (though I believe he is a young man) the part of a selfish, cantankerous, querulous, jaundiced old East Indian officer, who has come down to a country house to stay, under protest, accompanied by his only son, a stripling in roundabouts, whom he is bringing up in ignorance of the world's wickedness, and who, finding himself in a mansion well supplied with those books which no gentleman's library should be without, loses no time in taking down Bocaccio's "Decameron." Mr. Arthur Cecil represents this character to the life, with a completeness, an extreme comicality, and at the same time a sobriety and absence of violence which recalls the best French acting. Especially inimitable is the tone with which he tells his host, on his arrival, how he made up his mind to accept his invitation: "So at last I said to Percy, 'Well, Percy, my child, we'll go down and have done with it!'"

At the Court theatre, where they are playing, also apparently by the year, a "revived" drama of Mr. Tom Taylor—"New Men and Old Acres"—the acting, though very good indeed, struck me as less finished and, as a whole, less artistic. The company contains, however, two exceptionally good actors. One of them is Mr. Hare, who leads it, and who, although nature has endowed him with an almost fatally meagre stage presence, has a considerable claim to be called an artist. Mr. Hare's special line is the quiet natural, in high life, and I imagine he prides himself upon the propriety and good taste with which he acquits himself of those ordinary phrases and light modulations which the usual English actor finds it impossible to utter with any degree of verisimilitude. Mr. Hare's companion is Miss Ellen Terry, who is usually spoken of by the "refined" portion of the public as the most interesting actress in London. Miss Terry is picturesque; she looks like a pre-Raphaelitish drawing in a magazine—the portrait of the crop-haired heroine in the illustration to the serial novel. She is intelligent and vivacious, and she is indeed, in a certain measure, interesting. With great frankness and spontaneity, she is at the same time singularly delicate and lady-like, and it seems almost impertinent to criticise her harshly. But the favor which Miss Terry enjoys strikes me, like that under which Mr. Henry Irving has expanded, as a sort of measure of the English critical sense in things theatrical. Miss Terry has all the pleasing qualities I have enumerated, but she has, with them, the defect that she is simply not an actress. One sees it sufficiently in her face—the face of a clever young Englishwoman, with a hundred merits, but not of a dramatic artist. These things are indefinable; I can only give my impression.

Broadly comic acting, in England, is businesslike, and high tragedy is businesslike; each of these extremes appears to constitute a trade—a métier, as the French say—which may be properly and adequately learned. But the acting which covers the middle ground, the acting of serious or sentimental comedy and of scenes that may take place in modern drawing-rooms—the acting that corresponds to the contemporary novel of manners—seems by an inexorable necessity given over to amateurishness. Most of the actors at the Prince of Wales's—the young lovers, the walking and talking gentlemen, the housekeeper and young ladies—struck me as essentially amateurish, and this is the impression produced by Miss Ellen Terry, as well as (in an even higher degree) by her pretty and sweet-voiced sister, who plays at the Haymarket. The art of these young ladies is awkward and experimental; their very speech lacks smoothness and firmness.

I am not sorry to be relieved, by having reached the limits of my space, from the necessity of expatiating upon one of the more recent theatrical events in London—the presentation, at the St. James's theatre, of an English version of "Les Danicheff." This extremely picturesque and effective play was the great Parisian success of last winter, and during the London season the company of the Odéon crossed the channel and presented it with an added brilliancy. But what the piece has been reduced to in its present form is a theme for the philosopher. Horribly translated and badly played, it retains hardly a ray of its original effectiveness. There can hardly have been a better example of the possible infelicities of "adaptation." Nor have I the opportunity of alluding to what is going on at the other London theatres, though to all of them I have made a conscientious pilgrimage. But I conclude my very desultory remarks without an oppressive sense of the injustice of omission. In thinking over the plays I have listened to, my memory arrests itself with more kindness, perhaps, than elsewhere, at the great, gorgeous pantomime given at Drury Lane, which I went religiously to see in Christmas week. They manage this matter of the pantomime very well in England, and I have always thought Harlequin and Columbine the prettiest invention in the world. (This is an "adaptation" of an Italian original, but it is a case in which the process has been completely successful.) But the best of the entertainment at Drury Lane was seeing the lines of rosy child faces in the boxes, all turned toward the stage in one round-eyed fascination. English children, however, and their round-eyed rosiness, would demand a chapter apart.

H. James, Jr.

SOUNDING BRASS.

BEING A RIGHTE TRUTHFULL HISTORIE OF YE ANCIENT TIME.

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity"—which is love—"I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal."

It was Sergeant Wright who repeated the words thoughtfully to himself, nearly two hundred years ago, while his gaze was riveted upon the glowing rim and cavernous hollow of a ponderous brazen object. It was not a bell, though there was metal enough in it to have formed a very respectable one for the village church.

At that early day bells were not common in New England; in the seaport towns, that formed the colony of Plymouth, the faithful were summoned to church by the blowing of a conch shell; at other towns there are records of a "peece" being fired, or of a drummer being paid to beat a reveille for sleepy souls. In Deerfield, where the events we are about to chronicle took place, the practice seems to have been to simply hoist a flag at the time appointed for public service. Any of these means, except the drum, appears on some accounts preferable to the modern church bell. To any one who has resided in a Catholic country, where the ringing of bells, from matins to vespers, is incessant, to one with recent memories of college days, of being rung up in the morning before having his sleep out, rung to prayers before he had finished his breakfast, rung to recitation before he had mastered his lesson, and rung to bed before reaching the "Yours truly" of his love letter, the Sabbath bell is not likely to suggest ideas of a devotional character. After all, is it not essentially a relic of barbarism, a pagan institution like the beating of gongs in the Chinese ceremony of chinchinning the moon? The blowing of the conch shell is not open to the objection of degrading association; it must have called to mind the trumpets and rams' horns in the awe-inspiring Hebrew ceremonial. Fancy instead of the ding-dong of sounding brass in most village churches, that can sometimes hardly be distinguished from the locomotive bell, the clear liquid notes of a silver bugle, similar in character to one of the musical infantry calls, flung by the echoes from hill to hill, and dying faintly away over the meadows and along the river. Even the custom of firing a cannon, one great noise, heard at the furthest boundaries of the parish, and then done with, would be better than the continual repetition of the strokes of a bell, now violent and quick, as though calling out all the hose and hook and ladder companies of the fire department, now slowly dying away, tantalizing the listener with the expectation that now at last they are really going to cease, only to bitterly disappoint him by breaking out again with renewed clamor. Most beautiful of all must have been the silent lifting of the flag, a symbol which evangelist Bliss has taken from the signal service in "Hold the Fort":

And how popular such a summons would be with the ungodly—leaving them in peace to enjoy their Sunday morning nap!

But we are wandering from our subject. Suffice it to say that the object of sounding brass into which Sergeant Wright was looking was not a bell. Neither was it a cannon, for a howitzer of that calibre, or a few smaller pieces of sounding brass, would have prevented the sad tragedy of the Indian captivity, and in that case the events herein chronicled would never have transpired. Sergeant Judah Wright was looking at Mr. Hoyt's brass kettle. He was billetted upon the family, and had so won the hearts of all but the mother, by his ready helpfulness and kindliness of manner, that they had come to consider him as one of their own number, and had almost forgotten the arbitrary way in which their acquaintance had begun. His frequent presence in the kitchen, and assistance in the labors of the family, was not, however, altogether of a disinterested nature, being prompted by the same feeling that caused Jacob's fourteen years of servitude for Rachel to seem but a day—"the love he bore her."

If Jean Ingelow had lived and written at that time, the Sergeant might have borrowed a verse or two to explain his love for Goodman Hoyt's kitchen:

Ah, that flat-iron! It was while beneath her deft fingers it passed swiftly over the smoking linen, that "the iron entered his soul"; iron, we mean, of the nature from which Cupid forges his arrow-heads.

Matters came to a crisis in the spring of 1703. The family had "gone a-sugaring" in Mr. Hoyt's "plantation" of maples, and the Sergeant and Mary had been left to watch the great kettle of sap as it seethed and boiled over the coals. The text which heads our story was one from which the Rev. John Williams had preached on the preceding Sunday, and the sermon had been the subject of conversation that day.

"I fear me much that thou art but as that kettle, Judah," was the remark of Goodwife Hoyt as she moved away after another bucket of sap—"mere sounding brass and a tinkling cowbell!"

Roguish Sally Hoyt, the younger sister of modest Mary, could not forbear a saucy fling at the lovers.

"Yea, Judah, art thou like the kettle," she said, striking it a rap with the paddle with which she was stirring its contents. But the kettle, full to the brim of syrup, failed to respond with its usual resonant ring. "Hearest thou, Sergeant? It is no more 'sounding brass,' the reason thereof being that it is so filled with fire and sweetness that it can hold no more. The same being a token, brethren, as our godly pastor would say, that the heart of our beloved brother Sergeant Wright is so filled with that charity which is love, that he hath lost his proper and natural brazen-facedness, and can no more convey the knowledge of his condition to the lady of his choice than can this kettle utter the clamor which is natural unto it."

"Go thy ways for a saucy hussy," exclaimed Mary, with sudden consciousness, and with a mocking laugh the merry girl was gone. But the fat was in the fire, and when Goodwife Hoyt returned with more sap, she found the syrup there too, and the Sergeant kissing the unresisting Mary behind a neighboring maple. For which wanton proceeding the good woman, since she could not banish him from her family, sent away her daughter to dwell with a distant relative, saying ere she went:

"I do prophesy that this silly affection will presently fail; so long as I have a tongue in my mouth I will speak against it, for the knowledge that I have of Sergeant Wright tendeth not to edifying."

The Sergeant did not reply verbally; but when Mary in her exile opened her Bible to the chapter containing the text which had led to a declaration, she was attracted by another which bore marginal notes in a well known hand and which seemed to answer for him:

"Charity," which is love, "never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away."

Time passed on, and one winter's night the French and Indians burst upon the little town of Deerfield, and carried it away captive. The last sight that the Sergeant caught through the open kitchen door was of the great brass kettle which he and Mr. Hoyt had the night before filled with wort or new beer, standing by the side of Mary's ironing-board; then the blazing timbers fell over both with a deafening crash, and he was marched away with pinioned arms.

The horrors of that captivity are too well known to need repetition. Through them all Sergeant Wright, by his manly heroism and patient endurance, his care for Sally, and filial devotion to Mrs. Hoyt, at last so won her unwilling heart that she was constrained to admit that the old prejudicial knowledge which she had of him had vanished away.

The efforts put forth by the French to induce the captives to remain in Canada are notorious. A young French officer having fallen in love with Sally Hoyt, a Jesuit priest endeavored to persuade her to the marriage. After a sermon from the texts Deuteronomy xxi., 10-13: "When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, and seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire that thou wouldest have her to thy wife, then she ... shall remain in thine house, and thou shalt be her husband and she shall be thy wife," and 1 Timothy v., 14: "I will, therefore, that the younger women marry," etc., he addressed her personally before the congregation. Sally, remembering how her random shaft had in time past stirred up Sergeant Wright to an expression of his feelings, and having in mind a bashful lover, a certain shock-headed Ebenezer Nims, more generally known as "the Nims boy," for whom she had an inexplicable good will and who had been "captivated with her," as the ancient chronicle stated with more truth than it knew, answered adroitly that she had no ill will toward marriage as a state, but that she preferred to wed with one of her own people, and requested that "inquisition should be made" whether there were not one willing to become her husband among the captives. A cold shudder ran down Sergeant Wright's spinal column. Who could the child mean but him? Had she misinterpreted his brotherly care and affection? And yet she knew of his love for her sister. It was with a great sigh of relief that he saw "the Nims boy" suddenly start from his seat, a timid, shrinking boy no longer, but transformed on the instant by the girl's challenge to as brave a knight as ever tilted in tourney for lady's love, and running the gauntlet of the eyes of friend and foe, place himself at her side.

The wily Jesuit was caught in his own toils; he acknowledged it by marrying them upon the spot, and adding by way of benediction to the usual Latin formula—"Mulier hominis confusio est."

When the younger sister marries before the elder it is the custom, in some parts of the country, to bring in the brass kettle and make the slighted one dance in it. Neither sister nor kettle were present on this occasion, but the time was not far distant when both would be found again. The captives were to be returned. Sergeant Wright had believed all along, in spite of the mountains of difficulty in the way, that this would be; and yet he said to himself on that homeward march, "Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity," which is love, "it profiteth me nothing." And in the joy of their first meeting, the only words that Mary Hoyt could utter were: "Charity suffereth long—beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; charity never faileth."

On their wedding day they visited the site of the old homestead. There, in the hollow that had been the cellar, lay the old brass kettle, and in it a flat-iron that had fallen off Mary's ironing-board. The wort with which the kettle had been filled had prevented it from entirely melting, and since she could not dance in it at her sister's wedding, she was lifted in it now by her husband and danced in it at her own.

The kettle has been preserved as a relic by the Wright family. It hangs in the upper part of the old mansion, and is so arranged that by pulling a cord below, the flat iron strikes against it, and so awakens the servants. And this story, which began with a tirade against bells, ends in finding its beloved kettle transformed into one; yet to the whole line and genealogy of the Wrights, by whom it has been cherished, it has brought its blessing of faith and hope, and though but a bit of sounding brass, yet in all its history to these presents it lacketh not that charity which is love.

Lizzie W. Champney.

A ROMAN PICTURE.

Mary Lowe Dickinson.

ENGLISH WOMEN.

The consideration of the interesting subject which I now take up is not new to me. Long ago I found myself thinking about it when occasion to do so presented itself; and in this I was helped by the views of English society presented in the literature of the day, some of the most interesting studies of which are furnished in the novels written by Englishwomen. Indeed, the whole subject of English life and character has long been of the profoundest interest to me; and a recent visit to England is rather the occasion than the cause of much of what I shall write upon it. To say this is due to myself if not to my readers.1

One day a lady whom I had had the pleasure of taking in to dinner in a country house near London, and whom I had soon found to be one of those simple-minded, good-natured, truth-telling women who are notably common in England, spoke to me about some ladies who on a previous day had attracted her attention, adding, "I knew they were Americans." "How?" I asked. "Oh, we always know American women!" "But how, pray?" She thought a moment, and answered: "By their beauty—they are almost always pretty, if not more—by their fine complexions, and by their exquisite dress." I did not tell her that I thought that she was right; but that she was so I had by that time become convinced. And yet I should say that the most beautiful women I had ever seen were Englishwomen, were it not for the memory of a Frenchwoman, a German, and a Czech. But the latter three were rare exceptions. Beauty is very much commoner among women of the English race than among those of any other with which I am acquainted; and among that race it is commoner in "America" than in England. I saw more beauty of face and figure at the first two receptions which I attended after my return than I had found among the hundreds of thousands of women whom I had seen in England.

The types are the same in both countries; but they seem to come near to perfection much oftener here than there. Beauty of feature is, however, sometimes more clearly defined in England than here. The mouth in particular when it is beautiful is more statuesque. The curves are more decided, and at the junction of the red of the lips with the white there is a delicately raised outline which marks the form of the feature in a very noble way. This may also be said of the nostril. It gives a chiselled effect to those features which is not so often found in "America"; but the nose itself, the brow, and the set and carriage of the head are generally finer among "Americans." In both countries, however, the head is apt to be too large for perfect proportion. This is a characteristic defect of the English type of beauty. Its effect is seen in Stothard's figures, in Etty's, and in those of other English painters. Another defect is in the heaviness of the articulations. Really fine arms are rare; but fine wrists are still rarer. Such wrists as the Viennoise women have—of which I saw a wonderful example in the Viennoise wife of a Sussex gentleman—are almost unknown among women of English race in either country. It is often said, even in England, that "American" women have more beautiful feet than Englishwomen have. This I am inclined to doubt. The feet may be smaller here; and they generally look smaller because Englishwomen wear larger and heavier shoes. They are obliged to do so because they walk more, and because of their moister climate. But mere smallness is not a beauty in a foot more than in any other part of the body. Beauty is the result of shape, proportion, and color; and feet are often cramped out of shape and out of proportion in other countries than China. A foot to be beautiful should seem fit for the body which it supports to stand upon and walk with. It is said by some persons, who by saying it profess to know, that nature, prodigal of charms to Englishwomen in bust, shoulders, and arms, is chary of them elsewhere, and that their beauty of figure is apt to stop at the waist. Upon this point I do not venture to give an opinion; but I am inclined to doubt the judgment in question upon general physiological principles. The human figure is the development of a germ; and it is not natural that, whatever may be the case with individuals, the type of a whole race in one country should present this inconsistency. Possibly those who started this notion were unfortunate in their occasions of observation and comparison.

There is more beauty in the south of England than in the north. When I left Birmingham on my way southward, although in addition to my observation northward I had there the opportunity of seeing the great throngs chiefly of women called together by the triennial musical festival, my eyes had begun to long for the sight of beauty. The women were hard-featured, coarse in complexion, without any remarkable bloom, but rather the contrary, and ungainly in figure. I found a great improvement in this respect in the lower counties; and in London of course more than elsewhere. For it is remarkable that according to some law, which has never yet been formulated, or from some cause quite undiscovered, perhaps undiscoverable, beautiful women are always found in the greatest numbers where there are the most men and the most money.

Much has been said about the complexion of the women of England, which has been greatly praised. I have not found it exceptionally beautiful. It is often fresh, oftener ruddy, but still oftener coarse. A delicate, finely-graduated bloom is not common. The rosy cheeks when looked at closely are often streaked with fine lines and mottled with minute spots of red; and the white is still oftener not like that of a lily, or, better, of a white rose, but of some much coarser object in nature. It is true that in making these odious comparisons I cannot forget certain women, too common in "America," who seem to be composed in equal parts of mind and leather, the elements of body and soul being left out so far as is consistent with existence in human form. But such women are also to be found in England, although perhaps in fewer numbers than here.

As to dress, that, as a man, I must regard as a purely adventitious and an essentially unimportant matter. If a woman be beautiful, or charming without actual beauty, a man cares very little in what she is dressed, so long as she seems at ease in her clothes, and their color is becoming to her and harmonious. There is no greater mistake than the assumption that being dressed in good taste is indicative of good breeding, of education, or of social advantage of any kind. Nor is it even a sign of good taste in any other particular. You shall see a woman who has come out of the slums, and whose life is worthy of her origin and her breeding, although it may have become gilded and garish, and she shall dress herself daily, morning, noon, and night, with such an exquisite sense of fitness in all things, with such an instinctive appreciation of harmony of outline and color, that your eye will be soothed with the sight of her apparel; and she shall nevertheless be vulgar in mind and manners, sordid in soul, in her life equally gross and frivolous. And the converse is no less true. Women most happy in the circumstances of their birth and breeding, intelligent, cultivated, charming, of whose sympathy in regard to anything good or beautiful you may be sure, will dress themselves in such an incongruous, heterogeneous fashion that the beauty which they often possess triumphs with difficulty over their effort to adorn it.

I feel, therefore, that I am saying very little against Englishwomen when I say that in general they are the worst dressed human creatures that I ever saw, except perhaps the female half of a certain class of Germans. The reputation that they have in this respect among Frenchwomen and "Americans" is richly deserved. Good taste is simply absent. The notion of fitness, congruity, and "concatenation accordingly" does not exist. In form the Englishwoman's dress is dowdy, in color frightful. If not color-blind, she seems generally to be blind to the effect of color, either singly or in combination. At the Birmingham festival I saw a lady in a rich red-purple (plum color) silk—high around the neck of course, as it was morning—and over this swept a necklace of enormous coral beads. It made one's eyes ache to look at her. This was not an uncommon, but a characteristic instance. Such combinations may be justly regarded as the rule in Englishwomen's dress. For purple they have strong liking. They not only wear it in gowns, but they use it for trimming, in bands and flounces, in ribbons, in feathers. They combine it with all other colors. An Englishwoman seems to think herself "made" if she can deck herself in some way with purple silk or velvet, or ribbons or feathers. Of course I am excepting from these remarks a few who have intuitive good taste, and other few who employ French modistes, and who submit implicitly to their authority. The latter condition is essential; for even when the main body of an Englishwoman's dress is in good taste she is very apt to destroy its effect by some incongruous addition from her stores of heterogeneous jewels, or by some other ornament—a collar, a cape, a fichu, or a ribbon. They have a sad way of putting forlorn things about their necks and on their heads which is very depressing, unless it is astonishing, which happens sometimes. An Englishwoman will be tolerably well dressed, and then will make a bundle of herself by tying up her neck and shoulders in a huge piece of lace; or she will wear specimens of two or three sets of jewels; or she will put a colored feather in her hair, or a bonnet on her head, that would tempt a tyrant to bring it to the block. I remember seeing a marchioness whose family was noble in the middle ages riding with an "American" lady who had not as much to spend in a year as the other had in a week; but the marchioness was so obtrusively ill dressed and the American with such good taste and simplicity that both being unusually intelligent, both perfectly well bred and self-possessed, and both fine healthy women, a person ignorant of their rank would have been likely to mistake the latter for the noblewoman.

It has been said that Englishwomen dress better in full evening dress than in what is known as demi-toilette. I cannot think so. It is not the English dress that then looks better, but the Englishwoman; that is, if she has fine shoulders, breasts, and arms. It is the beauty that is revealed, the woman pure and simple, that pleases the eye, just as is the case elsewhere. For the things that an Englishwoman will put on, or put half-off herself, in the evening, are amazing to behold. An Englishwoman in full dress who has not a fine figure is even more dowdy than she is in the morning. For then she is likely to be at least neat and tidy, and she may wear a gown that is comparatively unobtrusive in form and color. Indeed, the best dress that the average Englishwoman wears is her simple street dress, which is apt to be of some sober color—black, gray, light or dark, or a dark soft blue, and to be entirely without ornament—not a flounce or a bow, or even a button except for use, with a bonnet, or oftener a hat, equally sober in tint and in form. And this is best for her; in this she is safe. If she would not risk offence, let her enfold herself thus. Let her by no means wander forth into the wilderness of mingled colors: "that way madness lies." This outward show is in no way the consequence of carelessness. No one in England seems to be careless about anything, least of all a woman about her dress. It is helpless, hopeless, elaborated dowdyism. And yet as I write there rise up against me, with sweet, reproachful faces, figures draped worthily of their beauty; and more could not be said even for the work of Worth himself. One of many I particularly remember with whom I took five o'clock tea at the house of one of the Queen's chaplains, and who bore a name that may be found in the "Peveril of the Peak." Her bright intelligence and her rich beauty (her oval cheek was olive) would have made me indifferent to her dress had it been a homespun bedgown. But shall I ever forget the beautiful curves and tint of that soft-gray broad-leafed felt hat and feather, the elegance of the dark carriage dress that harmonized so well with it, or the perfect glove upon the hand that was held out so frankly to bid me good-by? No, fair British friends, it is not you that I mean; it is those other women whom I saw, but did not know.

It is because of the average Englishwoman's sad failure in dressing herself that the notion has got abroad that Englishmen are finer looking than Englishwomen. For the dress of the men is notably in good taste. It is simple, manly, neat; and although sober in tint and snug in cut, it is likely to have its general sobriety lightened up with a little touch of bright, warm color. On the other hand, the dress of "American" men is generally far, very, very far, inferior to that of the women in the corresponding conditions of life. This helps to produce the corresponding mistaken notion that the women in "America" are handsomer than the men; upon the incorrectness and essential absurdity of which I have already commented.

As to another attributed superiority of the Yankee woman I must express my surprised dissent. I have not only read, but heard their intelligence and social qualities rated much higher than that of their sisters in England. Fair countrywomen, heed not this flattery. It is not true. The typical Englishwoman of the upper and upper middle class has in strength of mind and in information no type counterpart in "America." She may not know Latin, and she may, and get little good by it; she may not be brilliant, or quick, or self-adaptive, and she generally is not; but she is well informed both as to the past and the present; she shows the effect rather of true education than of school cramming, of culture inherited and slowly acquired, and of intercourse with able, highly educated, and cultivated men. She generally has some accomplishment which she has acquired in no mere showy boarding-school fashion, but with a respectable thoroughness. England is full of ladies who paint well in water colors, or who are musicians, not mere piano players, or who are botanists, or who write well, and who add one or more of such acquirements to a solid general education, a considerable knowledge of affairs, and the ability to manage a large household.