did not mean to be officious. The | the freshness of the air, and nothing words were spoken before I was aware to threaten the freedom of the moof them." ment.

She passed into the salon, where she found a quiet corner for herself, and read some of the newspapers. No one took the slightest notice of her; not a word was spoken to her; but when she relieved the company of her presence, her impertinence was commented

These

"I am sorry that she heard what I said," remarked Miss Blake. "But she does not seem to mind. young Women who go out into the world lose the edge of their sensitiveness and femininity. I have always observed that."

"How much they are spared then !" answered some one.

"Is it not good to live ?" he cried. "Yes, indeed it is, if we know how to enjoy."

They had come upon some haymakers, and the little girl hastened up to help them. There she was in the midst of them, laughing and talking to the women, and helping them to pile up the hay on the shoulders of a broadbacked man, who then conveyed his burden to a pear-shaped stack. Oswald Everard watched his companion for a moment, and then, quite forgetting his dignity as an amateur tenor singer, he too lent his aid, and did not leave off until his companion sank exhausted on the ground.

"Oh," she laughed, "what delightMeanwhile the little girl slept soundly. ful work for a very short time! Come She had merry dreams, and finally woke along; let us go into that brown châlet up laughing. She hurried over her yonder and ask for some milk. I am breakfast, and then stood ready to go simply parched with thirst. Thank for a butterfly-hunt. She looked thor-you, but I prefer to carry my own oughly happy, and evidently had found, flowers." and was holding tightly the key to, life's enjoyment.

Oswald Everard was waiting on the balcony, and he reminded her that he intended to go with her.

"Come along, then," she answered; "we must not lose a moment."

"What an independent little lady you " he said.

are,"

"It is quite necessary in our profession, I can assure you," she said, with a tone of mischief in her voice. "That reminds me that my profession is evidently not looked upon with any favor by the visitors of the hotel.

I am

They caught butterflies, they picked flowers, they ran; they lingered by the heartbroken to think that I have not wayside, they sang; they climbed, and won the esteem of that lady in the he marvelled at her easy speed. Noth-billy-cock hat. What will she say to ing seemed to tire her, and everything you for coming out with me? And seemed to delight her, the flowers, what will she say to me for allowing the birds, the clouds, the grasses, and you to come? I wonder whether she the fragrance of the pine woods. will say, 'How unfeminine!' I wish I could hear her!"

"Is it not good to live ?" she cried. "Is it not splendid to take in this scented air? Draw in as many long breaths as you can. Isn't it good? Don't you feel now as though you were ready to I do. move mountains? What a dear old nurse Nature is! How she pets us, and gives us the best of her treasures!"

Her happiness invaded Oswald Everard's soul, and he felt like a schoolboy once more, rejoicing in a fine day, and his liberty; with nothing to spoil

"I don't suppose you care," he said. "You seem to be a wild little bird."

"I don't care what a person of that description says," replied his companion.

"What on earth made you contradict the major at dinner last night?" he asked. "I was not at the table, but some one told me of the incident; and I felt very sorry about it. What could you know of Miss Thyra Flowerdew?" Well, considering that she is in my

66

profession, of course I know something | the old dame said.
about her," said the little girl.
Perhaps you can tell."

"Confound it all!" he said rather rudely. "Surely there is some difference between the bellows-blower and the organist."

"Absolutely none," she answered "merely a variation of the original theme !"

As she spoke she knocked at the door of the châlet, and asked the old dame to give them some milk. They sat in the Stube, and the little girl looked about, and admired the spinning-wheel, and the quaint chairs, and the queer old jugs, and the pictures on the wall.

"I don't know.

The little girl sat down to the piano, and struck a few chords.

"Yes," she said. "It is badly out of tune. Give me the tuning-hammer. I am sorry," she added, smiling at Oswald Everard, "but I cannot neglect my duty. Don't wait for me."

"I will wait for you," he said sullenly; and he went into the balcony and smoked his pipe, and tried to possess his soul in patience.

When she had faithfully done her work, she played a few simple melodies, such as she knew the old woman would love and understand; and she turned away when she saw that the

Ah, but you shall see the other room," the old peasant woman said, and she led them into a small apart-listener's eyes were moist. ment, which was evidently intended "Play once again," the old woman for a study. It bore evidences of unu- whispered. "I am dreaming of beausual taste and care, and one could see tiful things." that some loving hand had been trying to make it a real sanctum of refinement. There was even a small piano. A carved book-rack was fastened to the wall.

The old dame did not speak at first; she gave her guests time to recover from the astonishment which she felt they must be experiencing; then she pointed proudly to the piano.

"I bought that for my daughters," she said, with a strange mixture of sadness and triumph. "I wanted to keep them at home with me, and I saved and saved and got enough money to buy the piano. They had always wanted to have one, and I thought they would then stay with me. They liked music and books, and I knew they would be glad to have a room of their own where they might read and play and study; and so I gave them this corner."

"Well, mother," asked the little girl, "and where are they this after

So the little tuner touched the keys again with all the tenderness of an angel.

"Tell your daughters," she said, as she rose to say good-bye, "that the piano is now in good tune. Then they will play to you the next time they come. ""

"I shall always remember you, mademoiselle," the old woman said; and, almost unconsciously, she too took the childish face and kissed it.

Oswald Everard was waiting for his companion in the hay-field; and when she apologized to him for this little professional intermezzo, as she called it, he recovered from his sulkiness and readjusted his nerves, which the noise of the tuning had somewhat disturbed.

"It was very good of you to tune the old dame's piano," he said, looking at her with renewed interest.

"Some one had to do it, of course," she answered brightly, "and I am glad the chance fell to me. What a comfort it is to think that the next time those daughters come to see her, they will play to her, and make her very happy - poor old dear!"

"You puzzle me greatly," he said. "I cannot for the life of me think what made you choose your calling. You must have many gifts -any one who

talks with you must see that at once; | sion and pathos and wildness and longand you play quite nicely too."

ing had found an inspired interpreter ; and those who listened to her were held by the magic which was her own secret, and which had won for her such honor as comes only to the few. She understood Schumann's music, and was at her best with him.

"I am sorry that my profession sticks in your throat," she answered. "Do be thankful that I am nothing worse than a tuner. For I might be something worse a snob, for instance." And, so speaking, she dashed after a butterfly, and left him to recover from Had she, perhaps, chosen to play his her words. He was conscious of hav-music this evening because she wished ing deserved a reproof; and when at to be at her best? or was she merely last he overtook her, he said as much, and asked for her kind indulgence. "I forgive you," she said, laughing. "You and I are not looking at things from the same point of view; but we have had a splendid morning together, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. And to-morrow I go on my way."

"And to-morrow you go," he repeated. "Can it not be the day after to-morrow?"

"I am a bird of passage," she said, shaking her head. "You must not seek to detain me. I have taken my rest, and off I go to other climes."

They had arrived at the hotel, and Oswald Everard saw no more of his companion until the evening, when she came down rather late for table d'hôte. She hurried over her dinner and went into the salon. She closed the door and sat down to the piano, and lingered there without touching the keys; once or twice she raised her hands, and then she let them rest on the notes, and half unconsciously they began to move and make sweet music, and then they drifted into Schumann's "Abendlied," and then the little girl played some of his "Kinderscenen, " and some of his "Fantasie Stücke," and some of his songs.

Her touch and feeling were exquisite. and her phrasing betrayed the true musician. The strains of music reached the dining-room, and one by one the guests came creeping in, moved by the music and anxious to see the musician. The little girl did not look up; she was in a Schumann mood that evening, and only the players of Schumann know what enthralling possession he takes of their very spirit. All the pas

being impelled by an overwhelming force within her? Perhaps it was something of both.

Was she wishing to humiliate these people who had received her so coldly? This little girl was only human; perhaps there was something of that feeling too. Who can tell? But she played as she had never played in London, or Paris, or Berlin, or New York, or Philadelphia.

At last she arrived at the "Carneval," and those who heard her declared afterwards that they had never listened to a more magnificent rendering. The tenderness was so restrained; the vigor was so refined. When the last notes of that spirited "Marche des Davidsbündler contre des Philistins" had died away, she glanced at Oswald Everard, who was standing near her, almost dazed.

"And now my favorite piece of all," she said, and she at once began the second novellette, the finest of the eight, but seldom played in public.

What can one say of the wild rush of the leading theme, and the pathetic longing of the intermezzo?

The murmuring dying notes

that fall as soft as snow on the sea;

and

The passionate strain that deeply going, refines the bosom it trembles through. What can one say of those vague aspirations and finest thoughts which possess the very dullest amongst us when such music as that which the little girl had chosen, catches us and keeps us, if only for a passing moment, but that moment of the rarest worth and loveliness in our unlovely lives?

What can one say of the highest

The little girl ceased playing. There was not a sound to be heard; the magic was still holding her listeners. When at last they had freed themselves with a sigh, they pressed forward to greet her.

music, except that, like death, it is the | verification. A very superficial invesgreat leveller; it gathers us all to its tigation suffices to demonstrate what tender keeping—and we rest. closer study renders more evident and striking, so that the presence of any natural capacity in plant, animal, or man becomes the certain assurance that there is something in the environment to meet the demand of which. directly or indirectly, it has been the predisposing cause; and the search for this something in cases where it does not at once present itself to our obser vation would be regarded as a reason able employment of our intellectua

"There is only one person who can play like that," cried the major, with sudden inspiration - "she is Miss Thyra Flowerdew."

The little girl smiled.

"That is my name," she said sim-powers. ply; and she slipped out of the room.

Most frequently, however the response of each special faculty to that part of the environment to which it is adapted is immediately percepti The existence of a breathing

The next morning, at an early hour, the Bird of Passage took her flight on-ble. wards, but she was not destined to go apparatus presupposes air to breathed off unobserved. Oswald Everard saw the little figure swinging along the road, and he overtook her.

"You little wild bird!" he said; "and so this was your great idea; to have your fun out of us all, and then play to us and make us feel, I don't know how - and then to go."

"You said the company wanted stirring up," she answered; "and I rather fancy I have stirred them up."

"And what do you suppose you have done for me?" he asked.

"I hope I have proved to you that the bellows-blower and the organist are sometimes identical,” she answered.

But he shook his head.

"Little wild bird," he said, "you have given me a great idea, and I will tell you what it is to tame you. So good-bye for the present."

that of the eye presupposes light, that
of the human intellect subject-matte
whereon to exercise it, and in every
case the response made constitutes &
veritable revelation to the sentient be
ing whose capacity in that special direc
tion is met and satisfied. The exten
of the revelation must depend, of
course, on the extent of the capacitye
Thus, the revelation of light to the eye
of a bat and the eye of an eagle ia
widely different indeed, yet in each
case the capacity is for light, and the
response made is by light. In the pres
ent paper it is proposed to trace thi
universal sequence of capacity and re
sponse to capacity in a region fron
which Agnostic thought has exclude
it in other words to show that a rev
elation of the divine to the human i
as reasonable and as much to be ex

66 Good-bye,"
" she said. "But wild pected as the revelation of light to the

birds are not so easily tamed."

Then she waved her hand over her head, and went on her way singing. BEATRICE HARRADEN.

From The Contemporary Review. THE DIVINE RESPONSE TO HUMAN CAPACITY.

THE adaptation of organisms to their environments is not a fact which needs prolonged scientific research for its

eye, because there is as true a capacit and response to capacity in the on case as in the other.

To say that there lies in the humai a capacity for the divine, is to say tha there lies in the finite a capacity fo the infinite, and here we at once fin ourselves at issue with the philosoph which categorically denies any suc possibility, because of the limitation c the finite and whose ultimate dictum i contained in the words : 66 By continu ally seeking to know, and continuall

being thrown back on the impossibility | extent of that capacity, know the inof knowing, we may keep alive the finite. Our first care must, therefore, consciousness that it is alike our high- be to enquire whether any such capacest wisdom and our highest duty to ity indeed exists. regard that through which all things The fact which immediately presents erist as the unknowable."1 The anal- itself for examination is one whose ogy already suggested of light and the familiarity is apt to make us overlook ere may serve to show the untenability its importance, viz., man's consciousof this assertion of our necessary igno- ness of his own limitations. He knows rance, for every student of physics is that he is finite; and just as we are well aware that considered, not as the "near waking when we dream that we sensation given rise to in the brain by dream," so we are near to the infinite an external agent, but as that agent when we perceive the finitude of the itself, the range of light, i.e., of ethe- finite. Nay, we are more than near to, real vibrations, is indefinitely more ex- we are in touch with it; for how else tended than that of the human eye, could we account for the transcending whose limits are those of the visible of our own limitations which a percepspectrum and whose powers can be tion of them implies? This thought is destroyed by too intense an action of forcibly insisted on in Professor Caird's that to which they exist to respond." Evolution of Religion," from which Yet we do not imagine that because the following passages are selected as the range of the ethereal vibrations is illustrations: almost infinitely greater than that of The effort to escape from the limits of the human eye, the latter is, therefore, the finite is possible only to a thought rendered unable to respond to any of which in some way apprehends that which them; or, if we did so imagine, experi- is not finite. ence would soon correct the error. be striving against them, would be imposFor, as a matter of fact, we are cou-sible if the infinite we sought were not in scious of light, and this of itself is some way present to us; nor could we ever sufficient to show that the eye responds be conscious of the "world's constraint to a small number of those ethereal on our aspirant souls," if we were really ribrations which, were its capacity suf- (Vol. i., p. 101.) and entirely confined to our prison-house. iciently increased, it would perceive as ight through the whole of their mighty ange; its inadequacy is a proof of Imitation, but not of total blindness.2 in the same manner the inadequacy of uy finite capacity for the infinite is no eason for denying its existence, but imply for acknowledging its limitation. If we have an eye at all, however parial our knowledge may be, we can yet know light. If we have any capacity e for the infinite at all, we can, to the

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First Principles, xxxi., p. 113.

It is interesting and suggestive to observe in
connection that, notwithstanding the limited

spouse which the eye is capable of making to the thereal vibrations, those to which it does respond ce to reveal not only our earth itself in inatest detail with all its teeming variety of life, but also the existence of the multitudinous worlds and suns which fill the expanse of heaven. Thus, like manner, however small our capacity of reponse to the divine may-nay, must be, yet the velation so straitly limited unveils not only the yestiny of man but the eternal majesty of God.

of

13

1

To know our limits and to

How could we have an idea of the infinite

which enabled us to see the defect of the finite without enabling us to see anything more? A consciousness which apprehends a limit must reach beyond it; it cannot be shut out from the positive knowledge of that which gives it the power to detect and look down upon its own finitude. (Vol. i., p. 108.)

To be striving against limits is an essentially human experience, nor can we conceive of any human being as. better pleased that the limits should be retained than removed. He is a smaller, narrower self with them than he would be without them. They impede his self-realization, restrict the

Archbishop Benson has finely pointed out in his "Communings of a Day" that much which we regard as limitation may be only a method of drawing out higher capabilities; but this does not invalidate the argument in the text-nay, rather strengthens it for we use our limitations in order to transcend them.