boys with the steel hawser were in the water; the gangplank was run out, and the black soldiers and wood boys, with their knives, were dancing about the hippo and hacking at his tail. Their idea was to make him the more quickly bleed to death.

I ran to the cabin for more cartridges. It seemed an absurd precaution. I was as sure I had the head of that hippo as I was sure that my own was still on my neck. My only difficulty was whether to hang the head in the front hall or in the dining-room. It might be rather too large for the dining-room. That was all that troubled me. After three minutes, when I was back on deck, the hippo still lay immovable. Certainly twenty men were standing about him; three were sawing off his tail, and the women were chanting triumphantly a song they used to sing in the days when the men were allowed to hunt, and had returned successful with food.

On the bridge was Anfossi with his camera. Before the men had surrounded the hippo he had had time to snap one picture of it. I had just started after my camera, when from the blacks there was a yell of alarm, of rage, and amazement. The hippo had opened his eyes and raised his head. I shoved the boys out of the way, and, putting the gun close to his head, fired point blank. I wanted to put him out of pain. I need not have distressed myself. The bullet affected him no more than a

quinine pill. What seemed chiefly to concern him, what apparently had brought him back to life was the hacking at his tail. That was an indignity he could not brook.

His expression, and he had a perfectly human expression, was one of extreme annoyance and of some slight alarm, as though he were muttering: "This is no place for me," and, without more ado, he began to roll toward the river. Without killing some one, I could not again. use the rifle. The boys were close upon him, prying him back with the gangplank, beating him with sticks of firewood, trying to rope him with the steel hawser. Everybody shoved and pushed and beat at the great bulk, and the great bulk rolled steadily on. We might as well have tried to budge the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

He reached the bank, he crushed it beneath him, and like a. suspension bridge, splashed into the water. Even then, we who watched him thought he would stick fast between the boat and the bank, that the hawser would hold him. But he sank like a submarine, and we stood gaping at the muddy water and saw him no more. When I recovered from my first rage I was glad he was still alive to float in the sun and puff and blow and open his great jaws in a luxurious yawn. I could imagine his joining his friends after his meeting with us, and remarking in reference to our bullets: "I find the mosquitoes are quite bad this morning."

SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE

SIDNEY LANIER

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,

I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

All down the hills of Habersham,

All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried Abide, abide,
The willful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,

The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay,
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,

Here in the valleys of Hall.

High o'er the hills of Habersham,

Veiling the valleys of Hall,
The hickory told me manifold

Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold,
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the pine,
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and sign,
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold

Deep shades of the hills of Habersham,
These glades in the valleys of Hall.

And oft in the hills of Habersham,
And oft in the valleys of Hall,

The white quartz shone, and the smooth brook-stone
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl,
And many a luminous jewel lone

-Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist,

Ruby, garnet and amethyst

Made lures with the lights of streaming stone
In the clefts of the hills of, Habersham,
In the beds of the valleys of Hall.

But oh, not the hills of Habersham,

And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail I am fain for to water the plain.

Downward the voices of Duty call

Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main,
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn,
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn,

And the lordly main from beyond the plain
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham,

Calls through the valleys of Hall.

AN OLD-TIME VIRGINIA MANSION

GEORGE W. BAGBY

The habitation of the old Virginia gentleman-house is too short a word to express it-always large enough, however small it might be, was sometimes stately, like the great square house of "Rosewell," and others I might name. As a rule, to which, indeed, there were many exceptions, it was neither planned nor built-it grew and that was its great charm. To be sure, the main structure or body of it had been put up with an eye not to convenience but to elbow-room and breathing space-without which no Virginian can live. But in course of time, as the children came along, as the family connections increased, and as the desire, the necessity in fact, of keeping a free hotel grew upon him, the old gentleman kept adding a wing here and tacking a shed room there until