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riod. From a strong, robust man, I wasted away to a mere skeleton, and, at the end of a month, I was well-nigh broken in spirit as well as in body. Had it not been for my boy friend, the son of the king, I certainly would have given up. My daily allowance of food and drink was a pint bowl filled with rice and water; but the boy would frequently steal up in the night and bring me food that seemed a feast.

was

Gen. Edward Forester.

From Scribner's Magazine.

BETWEEN CURRAN AND MASK.

they asked testily, but even now he could not tell. He had wanted a Scotch word that would signify how many people were in church, and it was on the tip of his tongue but would come no farther. Puckle was nearly the word, but it did not mean so many people as he meant. The hour had gone by just like winking; he had forgotten all about time while searching his mind for the word.

For after all-how to tell it! Tommy ignominiously beaten, making such a beggarly show that the judges thought it unnecessary to take the essays home with them for leisurely consideration before pronouncing Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan winner. There was quite a commotion in the schoolroom. At the end of the allotted time the two competitors had been told to hand in their essays, and how Mr. McLauchlan was sniggering is not worth recording, so dumbfounded, confused and raging was Tommy. He clung to his papers, crying fiercely that the two hours could not be up yet, and Lauchlan having tried to keep the laugh in too long, it exploded in his mouth, whereupon he said, with a guffaw, "He hasna written a word for near an hour!"

"What! It was you I heard!" cried Mr. Ogilvy, gleaming, while the unhappy Cathro tore the essay from Tommy's hands. Essay! It was no more an essay than a twig is a tree, for the

When Mr. Ogilvy heard this he seemed to be much impressed, repeatedly he nodded his head as some beat time to music, and he muttered to himself, "The right word-yes, that's everything," and "the time went by like winking'-exactly, precisely," and he would have liked to examine Tommy's bumps, but did not, nor said a word aloud, for was he not there in McLauchlan's interest?

The other five were furious, even Mr. Lorrimer, though his man had won, could not smile in face of such imbecility. "You little tattie doolie," Cathro roared, "were there not a dozen words to wile from if you had an ill-will to puckle? What ailed you at manzy,

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"That's how I did," said the proud McLauchlan, who now leader of a party in the church, and a figure in of May. "that

gowk had stuck in the middle of his Edinburgh during the ning a

second page. Yes, stuck is the right expression, as his chagrined teacher had to admit when the boy was crossexamined. He had not been "up to some of his tricks," he had stuck, and his explanation, as you will admit, merely emphasized his incapacity.

He had brought himself to public scorn for lack of a word. What word?

"I see," interposed Mr. McLauchlan speaks of there mask of people in the church. a fine Scotch word."

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Mash

is

"Admirable," assented Mr. Disharin "I thought of mask," whimning. Tommy, "but that would mean thwhich was crammed, and I just meant t with middling full."

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"Flow would have done," suggested Mr. Lorrimer

"Flow's but a handful," said Tommy.
"Curran, then, you jackanapes!"
"Curran's no enough."

Mr. Lorrimer flung up his hands in despair.

"I wanted something between curran and mask," said Tommy, dogged, yet almost at the crying.

Mr. Ogilvy, who had been hiding his admiration with difficulty, spread a net for him. "You said you wanted a word that meant middling full. Well, why did you not say middling full-or fell mask?"

"Yes, why not?" demanded the ministers, unconsciously caught in the net. "I wanted one word," replied Tommy, unconsciously avoiding it.

"You jewel!" muttered Mr. Ogilvy under his breath, but Mr. Cathro would have banged the boy's head had not the ministers interfered.

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The door closed with a victorious bang, just in time to prevent Cathro—

"Oh, the sumph!" exclaimed Mr. Lauchlan McLauchlan, "as if it mattered what the word is now!"

And said Mr. Dishart, "Cathro, you had better tell Aaron Latta that the sooner he sends this nincompoop to the herding the better."

But Mr. Ogilvy giving his Lauchlan a push that nearly sent him sprawling, said in an ecstasy to himself, "He had to think of it till he got it—and he got it. The lad is a genius!" They were about to tear up Tommy's essay, but he snatched it from them and put it in his oxter pocket. "I am a collector of curiosities," he explained, "and this paper

"It is so easy, too, to find the right may be worth money yet." word," said Mr. Gloag.

"It's no; it's as difficult as to hit a squirrel," cried Tommy, and again Mr. Ogilvy nodded approval.

But the ministers were only pained. "The lad is merely a numskull," said Mr. Dishart kindly.

"And no teacher could have turned him into anything else," said Mr. Duthie.

"And so, Cathro, you need not feel sore over your defeat," added Mr. Gloag; but nevertheless Cathro took Tommy by the neck and ran him out of the parish school of Thrums. When he returned to the others he found the ministers congratulating McLauchlan, whose nose was in the air, and complimenting Mr. Ogilvy, who listened to their formal phrases solemnly and accepted their hand-shakes with a dry chuckle.

"Ay, grin away, sir," the mortified dominie of Thrums said to him sourly. "the joke is on your side."

"You are right, sir," replied Mr. bee. Ogilvie, mysteriously, "the joke is on the my side, and the best of it is that not my ane of you knows what the joke is!"

well a And then the odd thing happened. As

"Well," said Cathro savagely, "I have one satisfaction; I ran him out of my school."

"Who knows," replied Mr. Ogilvy, "but what you may be proud to dust a chair for him when he comes back?" From "Sentimental Tommy." By J. M. Barrie.

From McClure's Magazine. THE MORAL ELEMENT IN FICTION. Since art implies the truthful and conscientious study of life as it is, we contend that to be a radically defective view of art which would preclude from it the ruling constituents of life. Moral character is to human life what air is to the natural world-it is elemental.

There was more than literary science in Matthew Arnold's arithmetic when he called "conduct three-fourths of life." Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists; but if he had done so, we can scarcely imagine that he could have offered anything much better in the way of material, even though one look

the moral element squarely in the face and abide by the fact of its tremendous proportion in the scheme of things. The moral element, it cannot be denied, predominates enormously in the human drama. The moral struggle, the creation of character, the moral ideal, failure and success in reaching it, anguish and ecstasy in missing or gaining it, the instinct to extend the appreciation of moral beauty and to worship its Eternal Source-these exist wherever human being does. The whole magnificent play of the moral nature sweeps over the human stage with a force, a splendor, and a diversity of effect which no artist can deny if he would, which the greatest artist never tries to withstand, and against which the smallest will protest in vain.

Strike "ethicism" out of life, good friends, before you shake it out of story! Fear less to seem "Puritan" than to be inadequate. Fear more to be superficial than to seem "deep." Fear less to point your moral than to miss your opportunity. It is for us to remind you, since it seems to us that you overlook the fact, that in any highly formed or fully formed creative power the "ethical" as well as the "æsthetical sense is developed. Where "the taste" is developed at the expense of "the conscience" the artist is incomplete. He is, in this case, at least as incomplete as he is where the ethical sense is developed at the expense of the æsthetic. Specialism in literary art, as in science, has its uses, but it is not symmetry; and this is not a law intended to work only one way.

It is an ancient and honorable rule of rhetoric, that he is the greatest writer who, other things being equal, has the greatest subject. He is, let us say, the largest artist who, other things being equal, holds the largest view of human life. The largest view of human life, we contend, is that which recognizes it in the greatest way.

In a word, the province of the artist is to portray life as it is, and life is moral responsibility. Life is several other things, we do not deny. It is beauty, it is joy, it is tragedy, it is

comedy, it is psychical and physical pleasure, it is the interplay of a thousand rude or delicate motions and emotions, it is the grimmest and the merriest motley of phantasmagoria that could appeal to the gravest or the maddest brush ever put to palette; but it is steadily and sturdily and always moral responsibility. An artist can no more fling off the moral sense from his work than he can oust it from his private life. A great artist (let me repeat) is too great to try to do so. With one or two familiar exceptions, of which more might be said, the greatest have laid in the moral values of their pictures just as life lays them in; and in life they are not to be evaded. There is a squeamishness against "ethicism" which is quite as much to be avoided as any squeamishness about "the moral nude in art" or other debatable question. The great way is to go grandly in, as the Creator did when he made the models which we are fain to copy. After all, the Great Artist is not a poor master; all His foregrounds stand out against the perspective of the moral nature. Why go tiptoeing about the easel to avoid it?

By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

From The Century Magazine.
AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
1895-1896.
I.

Hast thou forgot the breasts that gave us suck,

And whence our likeness to our fathers came,

Though from our arms twice stooping with the same

Great blow that Runnymede and Naseby struck?

Out of thy heart the imperial spark we pluck

Which in our blood is breaking into flame;

Oh, of one honor make not double shame;

Give not the English race to wanton luck!

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Or from the great Capes to the utter- Thy sea-flown brood, and bulwarked

most

Parts of the North like ocean meteors

glide?

states hath wrought

Far as the loneliest wave of ocean

foams.

Thy children's love with

brought

veneration

into oblivion, though it was faintly remembered when William Gordon and

Shall warm thy hearthstone from their John Pickering made the inquiry which million homes.

By G. E. Woodberry.

From The New England Magazine. THE FIRST "CAUCUS." The finance debate of the forties, when the Land Bank tried a hand at the issue of paper money, occasioned the word caucus, which has become a part of the English language. To express confidence in the bills of the Land Bank,

The me

they report. Both were competent students; both found that the caucus had something to do with the calkers; and the advertisement of the calkers' trust in 1740-41 appears to complete the chain of evidence. The Boston Gazette of May 5 and 12, 1760, uses the term in its modern sense. The etymology suggested by J. H. Trumbull is not tenable; in fact it is not supported by history. To associate the caucus with mediæval Latin seems more daring than to identify the town pump with

and Honorables. Meanwhile the Boston word has passed into the statutes of Massachusetts, and figures in the politics of our kin beyond sea.

From "Words Coined in Boston." By C.W.Ernst.

Sam Adams, the father of the patriot, the matchless pomp of the Ancients organized a labor meeting. chanics of those days were generally paid in what we call store orders. To get their wages in money, if only in paper bills, seemed attractive. So the calkers formed a labor union and trust -the word trust is theirs-binding themselves "under a penalty for the performance of their agreement," which was to the effect that they would take wages in merchandise or money only, money to include the notes of the Land Bank.

This novel trust was perfected on Sunday, February 8, 1740, old style, and duly announced in the papers of the time. The effect may be imagined. A labor union was a novelty in Boston; a labor trust occasioned something like consternation, particularly as it undertook to sustain the ominous Land Bank. Under British law, such trust was a crime. To get rid of the Land Bank, which was at the bottom of all this offending, the Boston merchants appealed to Parliament for relief, and obtained it. Yet the calkers held together, and their cast-iron agreement became a by-word for any agreement from which there was no receding. The phrase "calkers' agreement" was carried into politics, and in 1760 we read of "the old and true Corcas," meaning the mechanics; also of "the new and grand Corcas," meaning a committee of merchants who had adopted the method of the calkers. By 1763 we find the present spelling of caucus, the origin of the term falling

From The St. Nicholas. THE FAILURE OF THE RUSSIAN OVERLAND.

I

On the evening of May 31, 1867, as I sat trying to draw a map in the little one-story log-house which served as the headquarters of the Siberian division, I was interrupted by the sudden and hasty entrance of my friend and comrade, Lewis, who rushed into the room, crying excitedly, "Oh, Mr. Kennan! Did you hear the cannon?" had not heard it, but I understood instantly the significance of the inquiry. A cannon-shot meant that there was a ship in sight from the beacon-tower at the mouth of the river. We were accustomed every spring to get our earliest news from the civilized world through American whaling-vessels, which resort at that season of the year to the Okhotsk Sea. About the middle of May, therefore, we generally sent a couple of Cossacks to the harbor at the mouth of the river, with instructions to keep a sharp lookout from the log beacon-tower on the bluff, and fire three cannon-shots the moment they should see a whaler or other vessel cruising in the Gulf.

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