IN NATURE'S WAGGISH MOOD.1

BY PAUL HEYSE.

cotton, opposite it a small bureau inlaid with mother-of-pearl. All the other furniture was proportionately small.

Lieber Cohen. PART II.

The next morning was cold and windy, but the autumn sun cleared the pavements of snow, and that evening when the moon appeared there was not even a cloudlet to interpose between it and the doings of men. Still the night was bitterly cold and again the watchmen preferred the cosy warmth of beer houses to the nipping embraces of the wind, and again could Mr. Magnus stalk unmolested under friendly houseshadows; for the occasional guardians of the peace who stared in amazement at the gigantic apparition had received no instructions for such a case, and when they made their reports gave such confused and contradictory statements that suspicion raised her head and insinuated that they had fallen asleep in the discharge of their duty.

When the dwarf's door had been reached there was a pleasant "good evening," in a childish treble, from an open window in the mansard, followed by the request that the visitor would wait just a minute; and very soon indeed the tiny door was opened and Mr. Theodore Hinze reached out the large house-key which Mr. Magnus was requested to use, and enter. Within doors the guest was cordially welcomed, and then the host, lantern in hand, preceded him up the stairs, paused at the top landing and throwing open a door, bade

him walk in.

The large man's head had to be kept

well down between the shoulders, for

square

standing erect was an utter impossibility. What the room lacked in height, however, was made good by length and breadth. Through two low windows streamed the moonlight unhindered by the white muslin curtains. In the middle of the chamber stood a low table, about it some small chairs; against the wall was a diminutive tester-bed, draped in gayly-flowered

1 Copyright by The Living Age Company.

wood cuts, and everything about the apartment was as clean and bright as a doll's house the night before Christmas. There was but one article suit

able for the use of the ordinary individual and that was a heavy oak table. Upon it were blocks, chisels, gouges and other tools of the wood engraver's craft. Over it hopped a canary in a large cage and, ignoring the fact that it was close on to midnight, greeted the lantern light with a merry burst of song.

"I have been waiting for you here in the moonlight," said the owner of the little nest, "the garden over there is a perfect picture on such a brilliant night as this, but I will light the lamp now. You must take a look at this puppethouse of mine. Do sit down. You are bending over so that I am afraid if you should lift your shoulders we should see star-light through the roof."

Magnus glanced at a chair-it would have held a child; at the bed-more suitable for a doll; at the tiny sofa in

a

corner by the stove; then, very quietly he dropped down on the deerskin before the bed, leaned his back

against the bedside and stretched his long legs out in front of him. "You need have no concern as to my being comfortable," he said, "I am not accustomed to tufted furniture, and I like this position very well. You are quite luxuriously fixed here.”

The little man had lighted a small

lamp on the centre-table and placed the

lantern on the bureau. At the implied compliment he glanced about the room with a self-complacent smile, then down at his own wee self, quite fantastically attired in a gay Turkish dressing-gown lined in red. A red Turkish fez sat jauntily on his well-shaped head.

"I am afraid you will take me for a coxcomb," he said with a smile. "But habit is second nature. My good mother bought me this coat and thought it became me mightily. Now

I take a sip of it at times when my spirits are none too good. Here are some biscuit that the tailor's wife baked herself. Drink out of the bottle if the glass is too small."

"I

"Thank you," growled Magnus. never touch spirituous liquor. From the time that my father drowned his sorrows in drink and I saw to what a depth it brought him, I have never drunk anything but water."

"We are fellow-sufferers in this instance as well," said the good Samaritan, as he replaced the bottle and glass on the shelf. "I cannot recall any one single evidence of affection on my father's part. I suppose he was scarcely to be blamed for feeling no pride in such a scion as my puny self. You must know that although he was a small man-rather, perhaps, because of that fact-he had a wonderful fondness for tall people, especially tall women. His trade brought him in contact with many well-grown, finely developed women whom he adored in secret. He was nothing better nor worse than a hair-dresser. Fancy the misfortune; he fell desperately in love with my mother who was fully a head shorter than himself. That he fell in love with her in spite of all his predilections I can understand, for she had the sweetest face in the world and hair like spun gold, the one thing I inherit from her, or rather did inherit as a boy, for I have very little hair left. Well, he married her and taught her his business. Her original trade was making flowers of hair-they were fashionable in those days-and she was a mistress of the art I can tell you. Over there on the wall in that gilt frame, is a wreath made from the hair of all her little family, but that will only give you a faint idea of what she could do. So, as I say, he married her and as she was a good, sensible little woman and knew how to govern her husband right wisely, he was happy enough with her. The two girls with whom she presented him were of a very good size for their sex; they both found husbands for themselves. But my father's greatest desire was to have a son, and when at last

this human miniature saw the light, heaven knows why, I was the tiniest atom imaginable. My first bed was some cotton in a pasteboard box in which my father kept his curling papers. The wonder was they did not lose such a pitiable little grasshopper as I was. I would shoot up over both of their heads said my mother to father in way of comfort, and so she watched over me with double care and tenderness. I was a good-natured little puppet, had everything I wanted, and tried to grow big and tall for my mother's sake. When I was four I had a severe attack of illness and was obliged to lie in one position for months. My growth was stopped and my father's hopes were dashed to the ground. From that time, he simply ignored me; he never asked after me, never mentioned my name, and if I entered the room where he was, he would look over my head as though I embodied a personal reproach and in his magnanimity he would take as little notice of it as possible.

In

"You can fancy how all this distressed my poor mother and how she tried to shield me as far as lay in her power. Then as time passed and I did not grow and relatives and friends looked at me as though I were a toy and joked about me in a rather brutal way, my mother grew bitter against this cruel, shameless, heartless world that measured my qualities by the foot, and the dear soul vowed that henceforth she would let no one see me. her eyes I was much too good to be stared at as a natural wonder. She knew that I carried a brave heart and a clear understanding in my little body. During the day I was kept in the little back room; into it no one dared enter save our old servant in whose estimation I was as perfect a creature as one would wish to see-she saw through my mother's spectacles. These two good women brought me up, made my clothes, embroidered my slippers, and at night when wags and scoffers were not abroad, took me out walking that I might breathe some fresh air into my little lungs. You see I have depended

on the night air from a very early period of my existence. Of what happened in the world I knew absolutely nothing. I had no playmates, no teachers, no schoolboy loves. My mother taught me all she knew, which was little more than reading, writing and religion. I could not be confirmedfancy the sensation in the church were such a Hop o' my Thumb to walk up to the holy table. This distressed my good mother greatly until finally a kind-hearted clergyman, to whom she confided her trouble, performed the ceremony for me in our own little room. Taking all things into consideration, it seemed to her that it was doing me no harm to look at the world through an opera glass-she had had one made for me and many an idle hour did I gaze through it, from my sunny prison, down upon the street below. My father died, my sisters married and in all these intimate family trials and sorrows I might not participate. Thus it might have chanced as badly with me as with you-for to show himself too rarely is as unfortunate for a man and as great a bar to his worldly prosperity, as to be forced to show himself too much,-but a happy fate so disposed it that a wood engraver rented a couple of rooms which my widowed mother did not require, and that into those rooms I stole whenever the master was out. I had always been very ready at copying designs or drawings, a taste I inherited from my artistic mother, and so I tried my hand at wood engraving, and-as you see, I suit my art as well as my art suits

me.

"Well then, as I would not be denied, our lodger was forced to take me as a pupil, and the result of it was that when I was left alone in the world I was enabled to earn my crust of bread -aye, and more than a crust. What would have become of me in my desolate condition had I had no congenial work to occupy my time! I suppose I should have handed myself over to a public museum for embalmment, for, since I could have been of no possible

use to myself I might thus at least have served the cause of science."

He rose as he uttered these last words, walked lightly to the cupboard, pulled out a large box and dragged it— it was very heavy-over to his guest. "See," he cried enthusiastically, "here are all my works, the collection of twelve years, in clean first impressions on cardboard. You see I have not been idle. There are some pretty things among them from celebrated works. Will you look over them?"

He opened the box, placed the lamp so that it would throw a good light upon the cuts and then held the topmost one up for critical observation. His guest shook his head gloomily, pushed away the picture with the back of his hand and said huskily:

"Pray do not take it ill of me, but I understand nothing at all about sucn artistic matters. I understand only this much, that you are a happy man and I a miserable one. But do not think I envy you. You see, I am ill at ease in your work shop; you would not wonder at it, if you saw mine. So it were better I said good-night and went my way."

"Mr. Magnus," said the little man, as he gently pushed the box under the bed, "you invited me yester-night to pay you a visit. If you are still of the same mind, what say you to my returning your call to-night. It is a fine night, the wind down and the moon high in the heavens. Who knows, perhaps tomorrow it may storm again. If you are agreed, I can be ready in two minutes. I only have to change my coat."

"As you will," returned Magnus, his eyes still on the ground. "You will find a cold, cheerless hole and none of the pretty things about with which you have decorated your nest; but only a rogue gives more than he has."

He rose slowly, went with bent head to the window and looked out into the moonlight. A church clock struck one. The bird moved uneasily on its perch. Hinze whistled softly as he exchanged his slippers for his boots, put on his overcoat, buttoned it and armed him

cling.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

From The Fortnightly Review. TWENTY YEARS OF CYCLING. We have cycled for twenty years. How old we are, and how many adventures we have had! For fifteen years the world laughed at us. How much the world has lost-and lost it forever! Now it pretends to imitate us. For fifteen years it said, "Oh, yes, you ride cycles, don't you?" Now there is scarce a healthy monarch in Europe with independence enough not to follow the example we set him. We hardly mentioned, if we could help it, the name of cycle. Now the talk of every prim "Mees Old Maid" at the pension table d'hôte, of every decorous dowager at afternoon tea, of every immaculate "masher," is all of gears and of treads, of weights and of tyres; subjects which we, in common with all real riders, had a way of treating with profound indifference. Though we have just come from a thousand miles tour, we could not tell you to what our machines are geared, what they weigh, or who made the lamps and the bells. On the other hand, we have always demonstrated practically that cycling is the most delightful manner of getting about and seeing a country, of taking a holiday. Perhaps you may remember Stevenson's bargee on the Seine and Oise Canal-though it is now the thing to try to forget Stevenson-the bargee who understood better than the majority of men what helps to make life worth living: "to see about one in the world, il n'y a que ça-there's nothing else worth while. A man, look you, who sticks in his own village like a bear, very well, he sees nothing. And then death is the end of all. And he has seen nothing." There spoke one who would not have

But to cycle you must enjoy cycling; how you must learn to ride, and scarcely any one does nowadays! This is a detail of which the cycler who likes to journey with a wheel in the railway train or on top of a cab is, and always must be, completely ignorant. But then, we sometimes think the cycle has only replaced the tub as an article of luggage and virtue.

We

Fifteen years ago, our imitators of today sneered, even lashed at us from drags and from dog-carts; in the meanwhile allowing us to ride as pioneers all over Europe and America-that is, all over those parts which are beautiful and where the roads are good. never attempted to compete with Mr. Thomas Stevens, who first went round the world on a tall bicycle, a machine now unknown, save as a curiosity, to the so-called cycler; our ambition rather was to visit, on the wheel, places that we wished to see. We never ventured to invade unridable continents, or even counties, if we could help it; we preferred to explore countries where our machines would carry us-not where we should have to carry them— and where there were civilized beds and food and comfort. But we did this at a time when people only thought us fools for our pains. However, it was by persisting in our folly that we met with adventures and gained experiences which may never again be enjoyed by the most humble of our followers. And agitating adventures they often were. We never set out on a journey that friends did not line the way for us with brigands, and there were moments and places when we shared their fears; when night overtook us in the long lonely Tyrolean thal, and stealthy steps and whispering voices in the enclosing wood went with us all the way; when, belated in the lonelier mountain pass over the Apennines, we came upon the gypsy camp, and had no other arms of defence against the threatening figures that sprang up in front of us but our wheels and our legs; when, on the desolate Carpathian plain,