accepted as things which are because he is. It goes without saying that the Philistine is an egotist. He is not beset by the questionings, and longings, and humilities of introspection. He believes in himself without a doubt. And if the apologist of the Philistine avouches that it is his social atmosphere or his early disadvantages that make him what he is, do not listen, for it is not true. The nameless, subtle essence of mind and spirit, of beauty and taste, of norality and feeling, no outward circumstance can ouch. It springs into life with the first breath; it grows with the growth of the visible presence; it gives wings to a clod of clay. There are half a hunIred names for this intangible gift, but after all none of them exactly describe it. It is impossible to set a worldly value on a thing which one man calls gold nd another dross. If the every-day world were filled with idealists, it would soon cease to be a fit abiding lace for the flesh. If the Philistines held it alone, would become unpardonably dreary, even to the 'hilistines themselves. Pending the decision of which would be kept in the survival of the fittest, let us be haritable enough to confess that the Philistine is not ithout his uses; and bear with his " coarseness," is "vulgarity," and his "unintelligence" as best we K. M. B.

ay.

'I wish it distinctly understood," said Mrs. Dunas she stepped into the buggy, "that I am to e the selecting of this Chinaman myself."

All right," assented her liege lord; "we'll see t you can do, I'm not overly anxious after the

farm situated several miles from the nearest town; and it was to this town that they were now repairing early one sunny morning in June.

"Yes," continued the lady, you don't seem to show a particle of discrimination when you go to get help for me. Now, I can tell at a glance whether I am going to like any servant or not, and especially a Chinaman. Anybody can tell that has half an eye about them."

"Well, all right," assented the liege lord again. "If all the Chinamen I've brought home in the last six months won't do you, I guess you'd better try girls."

"I won't have a girl around the house," said she, with promptness that showed she had already given the matter a due amount of attention.

"All right," assented Mr. Dunster again. "I don't care.

A few hours after this conversation took place, the couple were again seen journeying along the highway; this time with the horse's head turned in the direction of home. Great waves of dust poured from the wheels as they went round, and the backs of the two occupants of the only seat were liberally piled therewith. Just behind them, on a pile of grocery boxes, sat a small object enveloped in a blue cotton cloak of Celestial fashion, an American hat, and a cloud of dust. This object responded to the name of Ti Lung.

"How you likee the dust, Lung?" said Mrs. Dunster, turning round with the benevolent intention of saying something kind to the lonely stranger. From her remark it must not be rashly inferred that Mrs. Dunster had suddenly forgotten the ordinary construction of the English language. O, no; she was simply laboring under the delusion common to English-speaking folks in general, that she was making herself intelligible to the poor heathen.

"Me no likee no much; me go back blime by

soon.

"O, you mustn't get discouraged so soon"; then, recollecting herself, she said:

"You mus' no get homesick, Lung; we get there belly soon, now."

When the preparations for supper had been made with her own hands, and that meal disposed of, Mrs. Dunster found on entering the kitchen that Ti Lung had by that time finished his ablutions, and had arrived on the scene of his labors "vested all in white," with the exception of his trowsers, and black, shining braid of hair.

After giving him some general instructions, she went inside to rest after the day's exertions, leaving Lung to eat his supper and "do the work all up nice and clean."

Coming out an hour later to see that things had been properly put away, she found Lung, with the work completed, on the point of seeking his own

room.

"Well, Lung, how you get along?"

way. The lower part consisted of two legs encased in black trowsers, and the upper half was composed of a branching mass of green interspersed with clusters of red. It stood still for a moment and then came forward to the kitchen table. There the two distinct parts divided, and on the table lay a pile of currant bushes covered with fruit, and from their depths came forth the gentle form of Ti Lung, clean and spotless, and repaired to the sink with a pleased smile hovering around his face as of one who knows he has done his complete duty and will receive his

A vacant look from Lung.

"The cream-cleam, that that was left you know, about half a pitcherful. What you do with him, Lung?"

"O, cleam," said he with a superior air of being bothered with trifles, "I put down sink-hole."

"O, Lung!" exclaimed the poor housewife reproachfully. "You must never do that again. You should always put the cream in the cupboard."

"What's matter with you? What for you no put cleam in cubber? Too muchee talk, talk!"

"Well, Lung"-palliatively-"you won't do that any more, now that's a good boy. Now you can go to bed, Lung."

The next morning Ti Lung appeared on the scene of action, freshly arrayed in clean, white upper garments. A gentle smile played round his countenance, and amiability seemed to have settled in his heart.

"Now, Lung," said his mistress, after having revolved the matter well in her mind to consider what was the most diplomatic course for her to pursue, "you won't have anything to do this morning about the dinner; but just wash up the breakfast dishes and then get the vegetables ready."

A cloud shaded the beauty of Lung's forehead for a time, for it was against his principles to be told of two things to do before one was completed. But the morning work was duly done, and as Lung was preparing a hasty exit, Mrs. Dunster interposed:

"Lung, I want you to go out now and pick me some nice, ripe currants. You see where they grow, right up there by that fence."

Lung said nothing, but his soul was troubled. He had not expected this and was not prepared to calmly submit. But he kept his thoughts locked within his own bosom and walked slowly out in the direction of the currant bushes, the bright, red berries of which could be seen from the window.

An hour passed away, and by and by Mr. Dunster came in to see about the progress of dinner. "Well, has your Chinaman got up yet," he asked of his wife as he saw no Lung about the place.

"Got up yet! He has got everything all ready for dinner, and I am expecting him in every minute with some currants. Got up yet! At that moment something appeared in the door

Mrs. Dunster stood dumbfounded.
Mr. Dunster stood dumbfounded.

"What do you mean, sir?" ejaculated the latter, scowling on the calm and innocent face of the heath

en.

"O," interposed Mrs. Dunster. "He didn't know what I wanted. What a ridiculous mistake he did make!"

Flora De Wolfe.

Life's Twilight Hour.

(FOR AN EIGHTY-THIRD BIRTHDAY.)

As children, when the day is done
And twilight deepens, one by one
Around the evening fireside run

With happy faces;
Brightening the home with quiet cheer,
And drawing every heart more near
In perfected affection's dear

And fond embraces :

So may sweet memories come to you; And whispering the old love anew May thoughts of those long lost to view Around you cluster;

May their fond greetings so delight, That you forget the gathering night, While earth's horizon grows more bright With heavenly luster.

Without a thought of vain regret,
Then may these latter days be set
In joy's completed coronet,

Heaven's richest dower;

May they with blessings be replete,
And be in Love's reunion sweet
A season when loved memories meet,-
Life's twilight hour.
James T. White

Three of One Name.

[R. L. T.] I.

THERE was a dawn-time in the world's young days
When Nature, eager in her new estate,
Found gleefully each hour some unknown grace
And straightway wrought it into form and life.
Thus fashioned she Rebecca, sweet as draughts
Deep drawn from out that Mesopotamian well.

II.

But, in the lapse of ages, Nature tired,
Her work grew careless, and the Poet then,
Impassioned, dreaming of diviner types,
Wrought with a fervid master-skill, and lo!
Rebecca, peerless, stood by Ivanhoe.

III.

Ah, vain that men should measure with the gods!
Arachne, weaving still, will never win;
And poets' visions are but Nature's moods,
Half-guessings at surprises still in store.
Roused by their passing semblance of her skill,

The very hour they fine their burnished gold
She dowers a wealth of beauty yet unknown
And shames their art by such a form as thine.
For see, no sculptor's marble ever held

A shape divinely clad in grace as thou,
No music, breathing far faint melody,
Made such harmonious sound as thy low voice,
Nor ever mortal man's imaginings

Saw light serene as thy clear lambent eyes;
And had'st thou flitted through the singer's dream,
Or, fresh as morning, stood beside the well,
The poet would have broke his feeble pen,
The youth, enraptured, would have died for thee.
Charles H. Phelps.

Recent Fiction.

Of the novels of the last two or three months, Beatrix Randolph1 is easily the best; not so much hat it is extremely good, as that it comes into comparison with none that are at all above the mediore. Nevertheless, if not extremely good, Beatrix Randolph is good, and above the average of a writer one of whose stories ever fails of some quality of riginality or strength that lifts it out of commonlaceness. In the first place, Julian Hawthorne uses he English language well, without awkwardness or ffectation; in the second place, he is never dull, but n the contrary manages narrative, description, and Il with the genuine skill of the story-teller; and in he third place his plots-and in a less degree, his aracters are original and interesting. In short, ore than any other writer we know, he possesses 1 the outfit that is needed to make a great novelist cept greatness. That he will never have that st vital spark is fairly evident by this time. Whethit is emotional coldness or intellectual mediocrity at thus limits a writer who has long seemed always the verge of doing something first-rate, it would hard to say; perhaps it is both. It is to be noted en the slight unusualness that characterizes all his rk is attained by bizarre plots, which all the clevess of handling sometimes fails to save from bestrained and sensational. The novel at present ler review is like the rest in having an eccentric I well-nigh impossible plot; but it is so tranquilly eloped that the reader accepts it willingly; it has n a pleasant air of intentional romancing, someig like Mr. Hale's stories. It contains no tragedy, morbid psychology, and some very agreeable soy. To the present reviewer, the pleasantest thing he book is one of the secondary characters-Wallie Dinsmore-whose repose and sanity and dness are something delightful. fact

The very

Beatrix Randolph. By Julian Hawthorne. Boston: es R. Osgood & Co. 1884.

that he is a secondary character and has not received much of his creator's attention is to his advantage; for Julian Hawthorne's outlines are always better than his finished work. All the characters in line, being very simple and composed of one or two the present book, however, are a good deal in outleading traits, in good old-fashioned style, and are all the more vigorous for it. We quote a few sentences from the brief and felicitous description that introduces our friend Dinsmore: "He was a gentleman of medium size, plain exterior, and remarkable quietness of speech and demeanor. He was like the heart of peace in the midst of the fashionable social whirlwind; the undemonstrative centre of all demonstrations, the reposeful culmination of all activities. To say that he knew everybody and everything, not only that everybody else knew, but that everybody else would like to know, but imperfectly expressed his accomplishments. He lived in New York; but he was at home in all countries and in all societies, and occasionally was met with in all. He was about forty-two years of age, but looked younger, having light hair and a subdued reddish complexion; and he seemed, when you considered his experience and serenity, indefinitely or in fact infinitely older. had unexceptionable manners, was genial, kindly, gently humorous, and insensibly entertaining. He never was detected making an effort, and he never forbore an effort to be obliging *** He smiled easily, but always as if he could not help it; his laugh was a low, contagious chuckle, and seemed to suggest an unexpected charm and drollery in life. There was a manly, masculine look and quality about his plain face and ordinary figure, and in the tone and utterance of his voice; you felt that there was substance in him, when required *** that, when everything else had been eliminated from him, a gentleman would remain. Meanwhile, his most prominent traits (if anything in such a character can be termed prominent) were composure and sanity. He was so sane as to lead some friend of his to con

He

*

jecture that, were he to walk through the Ward's Island Lunatic Hospital, in at one door and out at the other, the patients would all straightway regain their reason * He was a great favorite with women and with children, and his relations with the former were just as cordial and simple as with the latter." Floyd Grandon's Honor1 is a comfortable and wellbred story, as long, as conventional, as mildly entertaining as the typical English society novel. It has absolutely no reason for existence-from a high art point of view-neither is there any special reason why it should not exist. In fact, leaving the high art point of view, we think it does constitute a certain reason for the being of novels of this sort, that they are easier reading in hours of mental fatigue and vacuity than even the lightest of first-rate writing. One does not have to make the least effort to read and enjoy -say, Mr. Howell's comedies-however fatigued; but nevertheless, the appreciation of them, spontaneously though it comes, is a mental activity; whereas the class of novel in question can be depended upon as a narcotic to even such activity.

Only an Incident2 is a novelette of considerable vigor, feeling, and perception of character. It caricatures in its description of the village society-a cheap device for producing humorous effect in a book that pretends to be, on the whole, a true reproduction of life, and one increasingly discarded by good novelists. It has, also, an unnecessarily sad outcome. It is probably a perfectly safe rule that tragedy is only permissible in connection with greatness; no light novelette can carry the weight of it. The characters must be strong enough, and the tone of the whole book serious enough, to make misery and disappointment seem congruous and endurable; it is simply gratuitous cruelty to fetch out all the engines of war to crush cheerful, everyday people, in the midst of cheerful, everyday surroundings. It may be said that life shows no such fine artistic discrimination in the distribution of misery. We suspect it does to a certain extent, by a simple selfregulating process: the one ill-adapted to tragedy generally does not make tragedy out of the misfortune that befalls him; if disappointment in love, for instance, he finds another girl in due course of time. No doubt there are exceptions; but there is no more need of putting them in print than of recording the details of railroad accidents in order to be true to life. A third and fourth volume of Topelius's Surgeon's Stories-Times of Charles XII.8 and Times of Frederick I. are now added to those already translated from the original Swedish. Like the others, the 1 Floyd Grandon's Honor. By Amanda M. Douglas.

Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1884.

2 Only an Incident. By Grace Denis Litchfield. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1884. For sale by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

three stories that constitute one of these "cycles" and the two that constitute the other are very well written, but rather dull, because they demand for full understanding far more knowledge of Swedish history than even the educated English reader is likely to be able to bring to bear on them. Times of Charles XII. covers in three episodes the time from the accession to the death of Charles, and brings down the Bertelskold family one generation more. The view taken of Charles XII. is on the whole more admiring than that of most foreign writers: though the estimate of his character is at bottom much the same.

The author intimates that had he lived he would probably have still retrieved his for tunes. The picture given of the exhaustion, destitu tion, and misery of his country, while he was on his fool's errands abroad, is appalling. It is probably the most perfect illustration history has ever given of Jingoism carried to its extreme-more so, perhaps, than even Napoleon Bonaparte's life. It ends, appropriately enough, with the wholesale death of the remnant of the Finnish army, about three thousand five hundred men, by freezing and starvation, lost in the snow on the Norwegian mountains.— Times of Frederick I. begins with the Peace of Nystad, and, in two parts, carries on the history to 1870, covering the period of peace and internal recovery. Into this period falls the growth of the burgher power, and the establishment, under the management of Arvid Horn, of constitutional rights.

Three Books of Verse.

A very pretty little volume of verse—and, it may be also said, a volume of very pretty verse, comes to us under the title of A Rosary of Rhyme. The poems are exclusively Californian; not merely writ ten in California or on Californian subjects, but by a native Californian. They are pleasant first-fruits of our Pacific tree. Like most other native poems, as shown by the pages of the journals, they have no tendency to the bold, the original, and striking, bat rather to a gentle and contemplative tone. They are, in fact, a graceful little ripple of song, never de ficient in melody yet never rising to actual lyric beauty; full of feeling for the lovely in nature and the pathetic in life, yet never crossing the threshold of that intenser region of feeling that we call inspir ation. While exclusively Californian in subject, it is only natural that the poems of a native Californian should be less characteristically local than those f poets who, sojourning among us, have rhymed of skies and hills; since he has not the advantage of seeing their salient traits vividly by comparison with others. Nevertheless, in pure description these poems are at their best; in sentiment, they are some what dilute and trite. We quote a stanza from "C fornia in June," as a fair sample of the descriptive

poems:

5 A Rosary of Rhyme. By Clarence T. Urmy, S Francisco: 1884. Published by the Author.

"Hints of new-mown hay float down the hillside,
Sweet wild roses light the thickest gloom,
Wind waves sweep with swift and fairy lightness
O'er the tranquil fields of emerald bloom;
Up the cool ravines the wild dove's cooing
Mingles with the sighing of the breeze,
Far across the plain the landscape glimmers
Through the leafy vistas of the trees."

It is probably to be attributed to the oversight of a printer that "the low green tents whose curtains never outward swing," is without quotation points.

A volume entitled Poems, by Augustine L. Taveau, consists chiefly of the first part of an epic called Montezuma. The argument is to the effect that Montezuma, warned to desist from the human sacrifices practiced by the Aztecs, and return to the purer and milder worship of the ancient Toltecs, fails to heed the warning, and in consequence, by just retribution, becomes the prey of the Spaniard. One feels like speaking with all respect of seventeen hundred lines (completing two cantos-the rest still to come), in faultless iambic pentameter couplets, expressed in language of perfect propriety and of a conventially poetic stamp, and showing in text and notes much painstaking study; but the fact remains that it is extremely difficult reading, and as absolutely devoid of poetry as it is possible for verse to be without becoming doggerel. Not that this approaches doggerel, for the language is, as we have said, conventionally poetic. What it is and what it is not, may be fairly illustrated by opening anywhere and quoting a few lines:

"Uprising, sternly, in his Priestly might,

First speaks Zimatlan, with a High-Priest's right, As from the portals to the nave on high, His deep invectives censure heresy. And, while his eyeballs fiery lightnings flash, That speak the coming of the thunder's crash, There, towering grandly with religious hate, High o'er th'assembly in his robes of state, Out from his bosom that defies control, Unfettered angers, thus, in thunders roll." And so on, for page after page. The series of ove-songs appended to the unfinished epic are of recisely the same quality, though of course not in eroic couplets.

In turning from these two books of verse to The City of Success 2 one's lungs expand with a pleasing ense of reaching a wider air. Here is real poetry— mited, to be sure, and by no means great poetry; ut the reader is conscious that verse was sought

ɔt as an end but as the natural vehicle of ideas that

emanded it. The two long poems,

"The City of access,” and “The City of Decay," are allegorical; ese, with nine shorter poems make up the book. 1 Poems. By Augustine L. Taveau. Vol. I. New

ork: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1884.

2 The City of Success, and Other Poems. By Henry obey. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1884. For le by James T. White & Co.

They are all quaint mixtures of bold imagery and bald literalness; the allegorical ones especially alternate narrative of childlike simplicity with snatches of so lavish imagery that they would seem forced and loaded with ornament, were it not for a certain air of spontaneity, a free, careless movement, which gives the impression that the writer has poured all this quaint and often far-fetched imagery into his Some lines merely because it came into his head. critic of previous poems of Mr. Abbey's says that he has "no sense of humor." It may seem at first sight as if sense of humor were hardly an element to be found or missed in serious poetry; but the criticism is good. The lack of this same sense of humor betrays a poet into droll absurdities, anti-climaxes, solemn figures that have unintentional ludicrous suggestions. Mrs. Browning-who had plenty of wit but little humor-is a standing illustration of this; and it is perhaps partly because he shares this defect, that Mr. Abbey suggests Mrs. Browning There is an echo of the same careless lavishness of imagery, the same vivid vision of the things he describes (even over-vivid, for the poet's vision should merely strike upon the points appropriate to his purpose, and leave all incongruous details in shadow), making them quaintly concrete, a little of the same easy freedom of versification-though his rhythm is infinitely more simple and crude. He takes no such liberties with rhyme as Mrs. Browning did, but on the other hand, his defective sense of humor betrays him into far balder bits of prose amid his verse than she was capable of. For instance:

"If to see the race you care,

And a drive with me will share,

I will call for you in season, while the clocks are beating nine:

He replied that he would go,

And, to streets spread out below, They loitered down a laurel path before the fane divine."

Perhaps this is rather an aggravated instance, but the poetry is full of others nearly as bad. Yet we do not find them altogether drawbacks to enjoyment; on the contrary, they seem evidences of a freer spirit than is now common in poetry-an indifference to form that gives a fresh, Arcadian air to the verse. Nevertheless, the one poem that is free from these faults is the best by far in the book: "The King and the Naiad "--the one poem of them all that really can be called of high quality; of the others, to summarize, it can only be said that they have a charming freshness in spirit and versification, and imagery good more by vividness than by appropriateness. We may add that the spirit of all the poems is lofty and

earnest. We will find room for a few stanzas from "The Naiad and the King." Soüs, King of Sparta, besieged in a stronghold without water, made a compact with the besiegers, urged by his men, that he would yield his conquests if he and all his soldiers should drink at a spring outside the stronghold: