that it was on so humble a scale; there must have been such sacrifices made all along to keep up appearances. It was of a woman, who had kept a little fancy store and died gradually of consumption. As I looked at her, in her coffin, I felt that her whole nature had been slowly starved out. She lay in state, in a hall, her husband belonging to some association that owned it, and this was supposed to give a kind of dignity to her funeral; but the image of starvation was so impressed upon her that the majesty and peace of death, which I had never before seen wholly wanting on the face of any dead person, did not appear at all. A cheap undertaker had dressed her with artificial flowers. Her husband was a lame man. At a signal from the undertaker he limped forward, to take leave of her, as part of the ceremony. He touched his lips lightly to hers, and stepped aside. I noticed the flash of a false diamond on his bosom, and wondered if it represented what he had within. After all was over, he turned to a friend, and asked if he thought due honor had been done his wife, and remarked that his son had won a bet at a gaming-table; and that was the last news they had told her, though it was something, he said, she never seemed much pleased to hear.

I felt as if I could.not let this woman be buried, at least I could not bury the thought of her, until I had extorted for myself some comfort in regard to her. I was confident that somewhere, in the deepest recesses of her being, known perhaps only to God and her, was something true; but I should have felt more sure of it, and that she had had something of her share of the joy of life, if she had only lived in the country. The city is so hard in every way upon the poor, so soul-destroying. The country is kind to all. I think no one can ever be wholly insensible to its sweet influences. Everything that is real is whole some, bitter or sweet; but the desire to

appear what we are not is a worm that guaws at the heart of things. How genuine all things seem in our out-door life! I lay my head upon the earth, and feel that I am not expected to be anything but what is natural to me. It suits the customs of society better that every one should wear a mask: but the sturdy pitch-pine is not trying to turn into a white-pine, though the white-pine is a more elegant tree; it is a stout pitchpine, full of lusty health. It is so comfortable to be what one was made to be, and everything becomes so easy if one is only so fortunate as to slip into the right place.

Sometimes we climbed to the top of an immense rock that overlooked the trees. We could never be tired of watching them swaying in the wind, so slender and graceful, and yet so strong. How far from all care and trouble that rock seemed, an island in the green sea! One day, as I lay on the top of it, a bird flew close above me. He sang a few notes, as he passed, as if he would like to speak to me, if I could only understand. On the ledges about us grew the pretty rock fern. Here and there one sat, like a little householder, at the door of a tiny cavern. Each likes to have a house of its own, and a little roof over it; then it shows its satisfaction by growing in perfect and beautiful whorls, otherwise sending up only a few ragged shoots.

We could hardly look in any direction without seeing something from which it was hard to turn away our eyes. The rock upon which we sat, when broken into fragments, revealed beautiful little landscapes painted upon it. The vegetation was fern-like; sometimes defined with the utmost distinctness, then veiled in purple mist. The backgrounds were of rich Egyptian colors, orange and brown; occasionally of a cold, hard gray, looking like a frozen region, a fine feathery vegetation, growing up closely together like little

forests; or perhaps in tufts, crowning rocky heights, or drooping over them. It was like the frostwork on the windows, with the addition of the coloring. We took some pieces of it to a mineralogist, to inquire about it. He said the impressions were made by infiltrations of water, containing oxide of iron and manganese; but what disposed it to assume those beautiful forms he could not tell.

After the height of the season was over, we saw with pleasure that the few bright stragglers left appeared to take some notice of us, as if their curiosity was at length awakened to know who we were, and why we were stopping there. Perhaps the slight chill in the air, or the little barren look that began to appear, woke up some social feeling in them, as it is so apt to do in us. The dragon-fly, in July far too airy and fleet for us to approach him, in September settled down upon us as readily as upon the asters or golden-rod. We tried to make acquaintance with our tiny neighbors, and soon became convinced that the definition of instinct which we had learned in our school-books (the knowledge of a few unvarying facts, impressed upon creatures at birth) was an error. As soon as we begin to observe even insects we see that they meet emergencies in ways that show individual peculiarities and character. as the caterpillar we brought home to watch through the chrysalis stage, one of the kind called “wooly bears,” large, strong, and shaggy, who, instead of coiling himself up quietly, after a little languid exploration, as all our others had done, made a determined resistance to confinement, and rushed constantly to and fro with a furious air; a miniature wild beast, searching in all directions for a possibility of outlet. We had put a glass over him, on the side of which the former occupant had made a cocoon, securely fastened, half-way up, with myriad silken threads. After spending all day, and as

far as we could tell all night, in frantic efforts that were not visibly connected with any plan, all at once it became evident that an idea had popped into his little horny head. His whole manner changed, and he set about his work with the calm energy of one who knows what he is doing. It had occurred to him that the door of his prison, which for thirtysix hours he had constantly sought, was obstructed by the cocoon. He knew now what was to be done, though not yet how to do it. He nudged and thrust at the cocoon, but for a long time it held firm; finally, he hooked the end of his body round it, and with a great jerk he and the cocoon came down together. I could not face his despair when he saw that it was all in vain; that the prison absolutely had no door. I released this energetic little lover of freedom, though I lost the chance of seeing what a fine creature he might some day have become, when his wanderings were all ended.

What we called our summer sittingroom had been formerly the bed of a swamp. As autumn drew near, we moved to our upland parlor, with its russet carpet of dried pine. There we sat and listened to the soft rising and falling of the wind, and watched the glistening films of light that floated in the air and rested on the grass and the bushes. The sumach hung out her crimson streamers, and the poplar dropped little showers of gold. Here and there a single branch of maple flamed in the sunlight, while the hills, covered with oaks, were slowly deepening and brightening in color. I used to think of the maple as the glory of the autumn woods, but here there were hardly any maples, and it seemed as if the whole depth and richness of the forest lay in the oaks, here blended and there contrasted with the dark green of the pines. Every little weed about our feet was in festive array, tipped and spotted with red. It was like the red Tamáhnous we saw among

the Indians, when every one was freshly painted and wrapped in a bright blanket, to celebrate the Feast of Love.

There were dark, still places in the woods into which the full daylight never entered. One day I sat down to rest in one. There was neither sound nor sunbeam, absolute quiet everywhere. A faint green light appeared to come from the trees. There was an infinite depth of rest there, and I did not feel as if I were alone, although I saw no

one. What is it in these beautiful, solitary places that seems so near to us? I cannot tell how there gradually stole upon me such a satisfying assurance of good will from some deep, secret source; but somehow, in the silence, I became conscious of it. All about the human world, so chaotic and incomprehensible, lies the world of nature, strong, serene, beautiful, and harmonious, still rejoicing, undisturbed by our disasters, as if knowing them to be ephemeral and unreal. Caroline E. Leighton.

In our last review of current American fiction we found the three most noticeable books to have been written by men, and to have a certain common ground on which they met. It chances that the most noticeable novels which have since appeared are also three in number, but from the hands of women. It would not be hard to find points of comparison and contrast in the two sets of books. To begin with, these three women have devoted themselves to American themes, and not a foreigner, we believe, appears on the stage. Now -but we spare the reader the fine generalization which we were about to make. It is only reviewers who read books by pairs or threes, and it is more to the point to inquire into the individual characteristics of the novels in question.

Mrs. Foote enjoys the doubtful advantage of being able to present her characters both to the eye and to the mind. Her excellent reputation for figure drawing makes one take up The Led Horse Claim with some curiosity to know how far the persons described in the pictures correspond with the persons

1 The Led Horse Claim. A Romance of a Mining Camp. By MARY HALLOCK FOOTE. Illus

characterized in the text. Ordinarily the author and artist are different beings, and when the author invests his characters with great dignity or charm we cannot hold him responsible for the interpretation which the artist may put upon his words. Mrs. Foote, however, either repeats herself in the two forms of representation, or gives the reader a chance to test one form by the other. The handsomeness of Mr. Hilgard, in this story, is not given to the reader to take on faith. He may know from Mrs. Foote's pictures just how Mr. Hilgard looked, even at the very critical moment when he was parting from Miss Conrath. Miss Conrath's beauty, again, is placed under a high light in the frontispiece; and as both the manly and the womanly beauty are important elements in the story, one must at least admire Mrs. Foote's courage in furnishing the reader with cartes de visite, so to speak, of her principal characters.

It may be straining a point, but we cannot help thinking that Mrs. Foote's success in her pictures prophesies the success in her writing. The best of her illustrations is the one entitled "She trated by the Author. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1883.

doubted long," and the best of her writing is in the characterization of the sentiment of this doubting girl. It is not the masculine scenes in the story which impress us most, but the fine yet strong lines of a woman to whom suffering has come at once with love. The story is a simple one. In a mining camp in California two mines are engaged in a struggle for victory. Mr. George Hilgard is the superintendent of the Led Horse mine, and when the story opens is in the midst of a legal warfare with the rival Shoshone, which adjoins it and is suspected to have encroached upon it. The superintendent of the Shoshone is a dissipated young fellow, Henry Conrath, whose sister Cecil has come to the camp from the East, to make her home with him. Cecil and Hilgard meet suddenly, and the story of Romeo and Juliet begins. In the progress of affairs a fight occurs in the mine, in which Hilgard kills Conrath, and the situation becomes at once tragic. The task of the novelist is to perfect the union of Cecil and Hilgard, notwithstanding this terrible cause of separation.

What we like in the treatment of the story is the dependence of the author upon the great movements of human nature, and her indifference to excessive refinement upon these movements. Her lovers love at first sight, and they love with an honest warmth, which the reader accepts without requiring a close analysis of their motives. They are kept apart by the feud between the two houses, but love surmounts the feud. They are separated again by the tragedy, but time reinforces love, and pity takes a part, and at length the two young hearts find their content. We repeat that it is a pleasure to find honest sentiment so victorious.

The trouble of the young girl is a genuine one, and it is allowed a full and sensible development. The doubting long, through which she went, was the action of a pure and honorable maiden;

but the doubt in this healthy soul must needs give way before the certainty of love. We respect Mrs. Foote and her art, because she has not tortured us with imaginary and subtle difficulties in the case, but has told an entirely probable story as nature would have told it. There is in the handling of the novel a certain lack of confidence now and then, which betrays an unpracticed hand, and a disposition, we think, to rely a little upon second-hand information in some of the interior scenes, where the figures are men only. The whole circumstance of the story, however, at least in the larger part, is of rough Californian life, and we recognize the womanly hand which has touched it. The slight tendency to an excess of sentiment which characterizes Mrs. Foote's work is well counteracted by the rudeness of the material in which she has here wrought.

We took up Miss Woolson's little book with special interest, from a desire to know what effect Anne had had upon her. The reaction of a novel upon its writer has not always sufficiently been considered, and we suspect that in her new and brief story Miss Woolson has written with some sense of relief from the entanglements of her long, three-jointed novel. She has at any rate chosen an entirely different theme, and one which allows her the greatest freedom from the task of describing a love adventure. Love—that is, the love of a young man and young woman scarcely considered in For the Major; it is indeed too slightly treated for the perfection of the story, since in real life the relations of Miss Carroll and Mr. Owen would have had a more important effect upon the development of events. Now that we have read the story through, and know that there is no more, we feel so slightly acquainted with the persons just mentioned that

is

1 For the Major. By CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1883.

We do, however, feel very well acquainted with Mrs. Carroll and the Major, who are the chief personages of the book; and an acquaintance with Mrs. Carroll is, as Miss Woolson intended it to be, a cumulative one, and one which has distinct processes in it. A good deal of ingenuity has been expended upon Mrs. Carroll, for the obvious reason that she expended a good deal on herself. She was the stepmother of Sara Carroll, but when the story opens the two women had for several years seen little of each other: the daughter being absent for educational reasons; the mother devoting herself to Major Carroll, with whom she is living in a mountain village, presumably in North or South Carolina. The geographical boundaries of the story are not very clearly marked, and we feel, therefore, a stronger, perhaps unworthy, suspicion that the locality and its society are highly imaginary. It would almost seem as if Miss Woolson invented Far Edgerly and its neighborhood in order to make it fit the highly invented character of Mrs. Carroll. For to spoil the story for any reader who may chance now to take it up for the first time, Mrs. Carroll is a woman well on in years, who masquerades as a young and childlike wife. She is helped by her figure and general air, but more by the extreme attention which she has given to the subject. Her husband has been all along under a delusion with regard to her, and her stepdaughter and all her neighbors share it. He has built up an imaginary Mrs. Carroll, with most respectable antecedents; and as he has become enfeebled in mind, it is not very difficult for his wife to support the character, which she does with great adroit

ness.

The reader might imagine that her disguise was to be stripped from her finally, and that she was to be turned out of the story in her true character,

The story is a very ingenious one, and skillfully managed. The reader, at the critical moment when he would naturally turn impatiently away from this very artificial woman, is drawn to her by the revelation of her redeeming quality. In fact, the reader and the stepdaughter are in much the same category, only that the daughter is in the secret before the reader is. It is, however, the ingenuity of the story which makes the strongest impression upon the mind, and thus one is led to doubt if the whole conception be not too artificial to be thoroughly good art. We noticed in Anne something of the same tendency in Miss Woolson to make too much of the machinery of her stories, and we hope that it will not increase in her work. With a good story, built upon the large lines of nature, Miss Woolson would have more leisure to give to the realization of her characters, and the reality would be more enduring because more natural. Mrs. Foote has not Miss Woolson's skill, and her story is not so original, but on the whole it seems better worth telling.

Mrs. Foote did not shrink from carrying her heroine into a miner's camp in California, and by her own refinement and womanly sensibility invested that masculine field with a somewhat feminine property; Miss Woolson is more faintly American in her scenes from a Carolinian no-man's land, and is feminine chiefly in her elaborate con