wide fame perhaps returns to look after his belongings. Such a pleasure was ours last October when Dr. and Mrs. Alden (Pansy) and their little daughter stopped for a day or two in order to put their cottage in shape before leaving for a prolonged stay in the west. The day or two lengthened into a week, and happy indeed were we who were fortunate enough to be under the same roof with them. They were very busy packing books and sorting papers and manuscripts. The dear doctor would come in at night utterly weary, but with a big basketful to be looked over during the evening. They were obliged to stop and eat, and were tired enough at meal time to be glad of a little rest; and so three times a day our food was spiced with anecdotes and stories, wise and pithy sayings, and with the jokes that had been perpetrated upon old Chautauquans by the inimitable Frank Beard. The bright and sparkling style that has made Mrs. Alden's books so attractive is hers outside of book-covers, and her sweet and winning ways won all the hearts of the household. When at the close of their visit we parted with them and realized that it might be long before we could again have her kindly sympathy, or feel the warm pressure of his hand and see the merry twinkle of his eye, the delight that the pleasure of this visit had given us was tinged with sadness and we were loath to let them go. But Chautauquans come and go, and so do Chautauqua days. Some morning we rise to find that winter is upon us and everything is covered with snow. A feeling of contentment steals over us as we realize that warmth and shelter and comfort are ours, no matter how old Boreas may rage and howl outside. As soon as the storm ceases and the snowplow has been around we hurry out, anxious to see what metamorphoses have been accomplished in old familiar spots. What is this open, pillared temple with roof piled high with snow? Ah, sure enough! it is the Hall of Philosophy. We are obliged to shut our eyes to bring back the sweet vesper hour, and the voice of our beloved and long absent bishop as he reads the familiar service and pronounces his favorite benediction," The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace." In February the fishing for muscallonge excites much enthusiasm. For five weeks beginning the first Monday of that month, twice each week, fishing through the ice with a spear is allowed. Until this year Chautauqua has been the only lake in the state in which this kind of fishing was lawful. It is very interesting and unique and deserves a chapter to itself. We are asked sometimes, "How do you kill time here in the winter?" We answer, "Quite as people kill time in other places, thank you." We have a flourishing Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle which meets every week, and a live, energetic Society of the Hall in the Grove meeting monthly. The little local Methodist Episcopal church has its regular pastor and takes in all denominations and creeds evangelical, assimilating them into one hardworking society. Missionary, W. C. T. U., and Epworth League meetings fill up about fantastic shapes. All the scene is beautiful all the evenings, and it is with a sigh of relief beyond description. that we settle down by our own firesides on an "off" night when there is nothing to call us out. There is fine skating on the lake early in the winter and the young people make the most of it. Skating by moonlight is considered rare sport, but hardly second to it is the delight of the bonfire nights when all the old rubbish left over from election time is gathered into a huge heap just off shore, near the best skating ground. The blaze illuminates the ice for long distances and weird shadows fall upon the faces and figures of the skaters, as they glide to and fro in graceful motion or indulge in the game of snap the whip." Many and merry are the skating parties and almost equally so the coasting ones. The long hills afford unprecedented facilities for the latter sport. Bobs have been run down South avenue from the extreme top, away out upon the lake. Many and complete are the changes wrought upon all sides. Evergreens groan beneath the weight of their lovely burden. Ordinary objects are turned into the most 66 AMPHITHEATRE WITH SNOW BANKED UP UNDER THE EAVES. A small local library is very helpful to the reading public, and some of us have been praying that Mr. Carnegie's eye may light upon it and he, seeing its needs, may be prompted to supply them. I would like to say, in closing, that in all our northern climate I believe there is no healthier place to spend the winter than Chautauqua. The lake freezes over early in December, so there is no dampness from it; and the high altitude produces a crisp, uniform temperature that is very beneficial. Pulmonary and throat difficulties are much less common than in other localities. I know many who have been greatly benefited by a winter here. THE SMALLEST GEM IN THE KAISER'S CROWN. BY VINCENT VAN MARTER BEEDE. "Green is the land, } These are the colors of Heligoland." N shape Heligoland has been compared to a grand piano or a lamb chop. The second comparison, though the less pleasing, is the more exact, because the rock of this islet is distinctly red. By way of contrast, it should be added that "The Holy Island" also goes by the name of "The Gem of the North Sea"-for twelve years now a precious stone (rather, rock), "lost" to Great Britain; or, as the Germans joyfully remarked after the gift came into their eager hands, it was "the last jewel in the Kaiser's crown.' "" Heligoland today is very different from the Heligoland of forty-five years ago, when Richard Mansfield was born there, or even during the last English governorship, a period delightfully described by Mrs. Fanny A. Barkly, wife of the late governor, in "From the Tropics to the North Sea." Now there is an ultra-modern "lift," a railroad tunnel, and an electric light plant all on an island a mile long. It lies fortysix miles off the Elbe, one hundred miles from Hamburg, or two and a half hours' sail from Cuxhaven. The untamed Baltic often churns the happily expectant passenger into sodden misery during his short voyage, so that all he asks on landing is a bed and a closed door. If he chances to be a veteran of Norway trips by sea, then gayly-colored Heligoland will delight him as much as the red-white-and-green postage stamps delight his small boy. The island itself, indeed, is not much more than a triangular postage stamp for the sea to lick. The traveler will never have a better opportunity than Heligoland affords to look upon, to feel, to taste the sea. Brighton has her beach, Baltimore her lobsters, Heligoland both to perfection, with many fascinating things beside. 6 Like Cæsar's Gaul, all Heligoland is divided into three parts the Unterland, the Oberland, and the Düne. This is a convenient arrangement by Schoolma'am Nature. We ought to be appreciative of her generosity in leaving us even a lamb chop of the original domain. Someone has said that "when Tacitus wrote his Germania,' it was an extensive island, as large as one of our minor English counties, inhabited by a numerous population, and extending completely across the mouth of the Elbe, which flowed round its two arms." But to return. The Unterland is the low, sandy end of the island, where steamers approach, but cannot make fast because there is no harbor. The Oberland is a rock two hundred feet high connected with the Unterland by a staircase (the Treppe) and the "lift." The "silversanded" Düne, where the Badegast (" bathing guest") makes merry, is a mile from the larger island, and can be reached only by boats. As late as 1720," de waal," a causeway of chalk formation, joined the Unterland to the Düne. On the Unterland, a bathing basin for stormy weather, shops, dwellings, and hotels crowd together along immaculate streets. The Oberland is the home of the governor. Here also are the lighthouse, the church, and the forts. The concentrated patriotism of a country that may be circumnavigated in an hour is expressed by the prominence of the redwhite-and-green. The dwelling houses, many of them, are painted white, with red roofs and green blinds; the fisherman lounging over the wall of the Falm, or main road, at the head of the Treppe, almost invariably wears a tri-colored boutonnière, and the very bathing suits display those stripes which Americans associate so intimately with Neapolitan ice-cream. Heligoland has changed masters several times, but there is not a more patriotic community the world over. When the Heligolander rents his house, he rents thoroughly. For a reasonable sum he will make over to you his entire dwelling except the cellar, which he is quite content to occupy. The Heligolandish shopkeeper is more than likely to be a native of Hamburg or Bremen. The genuine lobster-catching native, a descendant of the Frisian pirates, is tall, well-made, sunburnt, handsome, with all his murderous instincts smoothed away by the action of the sea. He loves that sea, and he knows it well. Let him take you out in a rowboat when the Kraken is lashing his tail, and then you will discover whether or not his ancestors were capable of handling a corsair's open boat. No visitor is permitted to go out in a boat without experienced sailors aboard. After After a day among the lobster pots the fisherman is not too tired to dance and drink beer for hours in a tavern where the fee is thirty pfennig (seven and a half cents). Since there are only two thousand three hundred inhabitants, every young man knows every young maiden, and no introductions are required. The national dance is the "Sling mien Moderken," or "intertwined swinging." In summer time the floating population often amounts to fifteen thousand. There are few English or American visitors. The governor's house is a square, comfortable building with a tennis court attached. Here the English officials had a healthful, if lonely time of it during the winter, when the salt spray was blown over the roof by the tooting wind. In Badergast season they were constantly annoyed by the dance-loving natures of their servant maids, whom neither threats nor persuasions could keep away from the " Sling mien Moderken." Over two hundred kinds of flowering plants have been identified on this Baltic islet. It is said that at sight of the first horse imported from the mainland an old woman dropped senseless. It is only since the German occupancy that horses have been in use. In the old days a few cows were confined in a cellar on the Oberland. The milk was sold in small quantities at the apothecary's, principally for the use of in-valids. There are not so many cabbage. gardens and potato patches as there used to be, but no doubt the natives continue to drink the milk of sheep and goats, and to consider sea-gull an appetizing dish. The theater presents excellent plays by actors from the mainland, and an orchestra. plays Wagner at the Conversation House. In August there is a pretty carnival. The grottoes under the red cliffs are illuminated with fireworks in the presence of all Heligoland afloat. Once upon a time these caves were popular with the smugglers. There is no mud in Heligoland, and there is practically no crime among the natives. It is related that years ago a Heligolander who had quarreled overmuch carried out his own sentence by presenting himself before the jailer with a request for a dungeon, much as one would ask for a room at the hotel. The average death-age is sixty-three, and epidemics are unknown. So invigorating is the air that one goes to bed late and gets up early with no sense of exhaustion. The people of this tiny "fast-anchored isle" are sincere lovers of the Sabbath. There is no dancing on Saturday night, and the band does not play on Sunday morning. The church is a curio built by the Danes to satisfy the tastes of a seafaring folk. The windows are not unlike port-holes, and the model of a ship hangs from the rafters. A few years ago and it may be so to this day-the roof was conspicuous for its emblazonment of the Danebrog, a white cross on a red field. This symbol the natives did not choose to remove even after the departure of the Danes in 1807. The graveyard is strangely depressed, a condition appealing with peculiar pathos to a charming chronicler of the island, Mr. George William Black, who regrets that these sea-rovers should lie just out of sight of their gray Baltic. Over on the Düne there is a no less melancholy resting-place for bodies washed in from wrecks. The front panels of the gallery filling three sides of the church are devoted to a series of grotesque scriptural paintings by Amelink, an artist unknown to fame. One scene, Christ Tempted of the Devil," is not easily forgotten, because the devil's legendary lameness is here emphasized by a neatly turned wooden leg, knob, and all. The fame of the pin-leg has produced a proverb in Schleswig: " In Heligoland the devil goes on crutches." Three hundred marks (about seventy-five dollars) were all Amelink required for his labor and it was a quite sufficient amount. The pews, or "sittings," which one would naturally expect to be of age-stained oak, are painted blue, pale green, pink, or yellow, according to the fancy of the proprietor, whose name plainly appears on the woodwork in black lettering. The typical dory is green; why not a fisher's pew? The sitting for the families of the governor and the pastor are 'boxes" on either side the communion table, enclosed in blue glass! It is unnecessary to state that these unusual stained windows were put in prior to the fad for cure under blue rays. 66 The massive crucifix was presented by Gustavus Adolphus when Heligoland was his. Behind the altar there is a collection of antiques, among them a set of sermon hourglasses. It is doubtful whether the smaller sizes were ever brought into requisition. A choir of children in the gallery sings psalms to" drawling" old German airs, and when a parishioner comes in late, the choirmaster is kind enough to place in a bracket the number of the stanza being sung. The congregation dwindles during Badegast season, not because the summer solstice enervates the religious life of the Heligolander, but because the worldly strangers must be waited upon. Once a month the pastor, in white ruffles and black gown, used to preach an English sermon at the High Church Lutheran service. The ceremony of baptism is a pretty one in Heligoland. Children pass in procession through the side door of the church. Each child empties a cup of water into the font, thus contributing to the baptism of the baby friend. Old Heligolanders tell of a church lying under the waves between the Rocky Island and the Düne; certainly there are remains of an earlier building under the present one. "The Bed Making" is an important prelude to marriage in Heligoland. The prospective bride adorns her bed with the finest of linen and the best of lace, then keeps open house to the women folk. These she greets at the door with a spoonful of warm wine. On the morning of the marriage the bisetters with the bride and the karkjungers with the groom meet at his house, march to the house of the bride, and from there to the church. In the old time it was customary for the father to speak unkindly of his daughter before her lover. After the service the guests return to the bride's house for the awmbolk-wedding-cake. The matron who has baked it enters the room with a bit of her chemise which she insists she has burned in baking the cake. The guests are always bound to commiserate the afflicted housewife to the extent of filling a cup half full of salt with coins to the brim. The marriage day closes with a procession. around the entire island by couples arm-inarm. The laws of Heligoland are seldom disputed. If a man dies without making a will the sons share equally, each daughter receiving a portion equal to half the share of a son. Married people have goods in common. A man comes into his majority at twenty, a woman at twenty-one. Heligoland is a free port, the only duties being laid on petroleum and spirits. Bathing guests pay a kur tax of four marks a week. One is not charged for bathing less than three days nor more than five weeks, and practieing physicians and their families are exempt from taxation. "Snake Jim Hollunder" is the startling title of a Heligolandish phrase-book arranged for a German, an English, or a French reader. One learns that "twittletwattle " is "gossip," to "pen down" "to write down," and that a "steam-boot" is a “steamer.' That many Heligolandish |
