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When I had nightmares at night the Arc | self in a court of the Tuileries, the fairy de Triomphe with its writhing figures was ox having been brought thither for the always mixed up with them. One day the benefit of the king, and I was hustled to guardian in his brass buttons, being in a the front of a crowd and stood between good humor, allowed us all to climb up my two protectors, looking up at a winwithout paying, to the flat terrace on the dow. Then comes an outcry of cheering, top. There were easy steps inside the and a venerable, curly-headed old gentlewalls and slits for light at intervals; and man, Louis Philippe himself, just like all when we reached the summit we saw the his pictures, appears for an instant behind great view, the domes and the pinnacles the glass, and then the people shout again and the weathercocks of the lovely city and again, and the window opens and the all spreading before us, and the winding kings steps out on to the balcony handing river, and the people looking like grains out an old lady in a bonnet and frizzed of sand blown by the wind, and the car-white curls, and, yes, the little boy is riages crawling like insects, and the palace there too. Hurrah, hurrah for all the of the Tuileries in its lovely old gardens kings and queens! And somebody is shining like a toy. But somehow the squeezing me up against the basket, but I world from a monumental height is quite am now an Orleanist and ready to suffer different from what it seems from a curb- tortures for the kind old grandpapa and stone, where much more human impres- the little boy. Now that I am a middlesions are to be found; and that disem-aged woman I feel as if I could still stand bodied Paris, spreading like a vision, never appeared to me to be the same place as the noisy, cheerful, beloved city of my early childish recollections.

I cannot clearly remember when I became an Orleanist, but I think I must have been about eight years old at the time, standing on tiptoe on the aforementioned curbstone. My grandmother had changed her cook, and I had happened to hear my grandfather say that Napoleon was a rascal who had not been betrayed by the English. Then came a day-shall I ever forget it?when a yellow carriage jingled by with a beautiful little smiling boy at the window, a fair-haired, blue-eyed prince. It was the little Comte de Paris, who would be a king some day they told me, and who was smiling and looking so charming that then and there I deserted my colors and went over to the camp of the Orleans. Alas! that the lilies of France should have been smirched and soiled by base and vulgar intrigues, and that my little prince should have stepped down unabashed, as a grey-haired veteran, from the dignified shrine of his youth. I remember once hearing my father say of the Duc d'Aumale, "He has everything in his favor, good looks, fine manners, intellect, riches, and above all misfortune; and with all of these I invested the image of my own particular little prince.

in the crowd and cry hurrah for honest men who, with old Louis Philippe, would rather give up their crowns than let their subjects be fired upon; and if my little prince, instead of shabbily intriguing with adventurers, had kept to his grandfather's peaceful philosophy I could have cried hurrah for him still with all my heart. But as it is, some well-known saying of Shakespeare's about lilies comes into my head.

As I sit writing, trying to disentangle the various processions and impressions which necessarily go sweeping through all our minds when we turn our faces to the past, I am suddenly recalled to this actual October morning, by a volley of guns on the common just beyond our gate. I was so absorbed in my own childhood that I had disregarded the distant music and shouts of the children of the present, but the sudden outburst of guns and of dazzling sunshine is irresistible. The common is bright with beautiful weather, the open spaces are swept by life and sound under the high, triumphal arch of blue. Some one comes in from golfing saying that the show is delightful. The Guards are storming the butts, the enemy lies hidden somewhere beyond Roehampton, and all the respectable ladies and the "nursemaids from the many villas round about, hearing the news and the volleys and the strains of martial music, come rushing to the call of the clarion. We issue from our doorways, hastily tying our bonnet strings as we go. In company with many perambulators and peaceful spectators we see an unexpected battle. We listen to the roll of the firing from the heights, watch the soft white smoke drifting on the morning wind. Then suddenly

One micarême, on that mysterious pagan feast of the butchers, when the fat ox covered with garlands and with gilded horns is led to sacrifice through the streets of Paris, I also to my great satisfaction was brought forth to join the procession by a couple of maids, one of whom carried a basket. I remember finding my small

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sweeps a rushing sound all round about | were cafés and resting places all about, us, with a trampling and outcry of voices; and people enjoying themselves after their the wild shouts of the non-commissioned day's work, and laughing and singing. officers rend the air; along the ridge lies When I was a child wild flowers were still a white, living line, it advances quickly growing at the upper end of the Champs and more quickly descends the slope and Elysées on a green mound called the seems to dash against the butts where the Pelouse. In 1848, when we walked out spectators are crowding. You see officers with our grandparents, the, Pelouse had galloping in wide circles on horseback, you been dug up and levelled, I think to give see people flying before the onslaught, you work to the starving people. It was a see the line breaking into a sort of foam; year of catastrophes and revolutions and then suddenly, amid all the yells and sort of "General Post" among kings and shouts and the roll of guns and of smoke, governments. Many of the promenaders rings a brilliant flourish of trumpets; and used to wear little tricolor rosettes to lo! in one moment the mighty sweep is show their sympathies with the republic. arrested, the shouts die away, the battle Shall I ever forget the sight of the enthuis over. A peaceful and bloodless battle, siastic crowds lining the road, and the all joy and strength and triumph for the president entering Paris in a cocked hat moment, but with a foretaste of the battles on a curveting Arabian steed at the head to be as yet hidden behind the sunshine of his troops; to be followed in a year or which dazzles us to-day. And then, the two by the still more splendid apparition battle over, I find myself somehow stand- of Napoleon III. riding into Paris along ing in the shadow of the old arch once the road the great emperor's hearse had more. I have come back to my corner, taken - a new emperor, glittering and put on my pinafore, and become eight alive once more, on a horse so beautiful years old again. and majestic that to look upon it was a martial education! The pomp and circumstance of war were awakened again, and troops came marching up the avenue as before, and, what is even more vivid to my mind, a charming empress rose before us, winning all hearts by her grace and her beautiful toilettes. My sister and I stood by the roadside on her wedding day and watched her carriage rolling past the arch to St. Cloud; the morning had been full of spring sunshine, but the afternoon was bleak and drear, and I remember how we shivered as we stood. Some years later, when we were no longer little girls, but young ladies in crinolines, we counted the guns fired for the birth of the prince imperial at the Tuileries. Our father was away in America, and we were living once more with our grandparents.

I suppose we have most of us, in and out of our pinafores, stood by triumphal archways put up by other people and moralized a little bit before proceeding to amuse ourselves with our own adventures further on. As I have said, the Arc de Triomphe seems mixed up with all my early life. I remember looking up at it on my way to my first school in an adjoining street, crossing the open space demurely with my nurse, instead of stopping to pick up shells as usual, and casting, I dare say, a complaisant glance of superiority at the gods of war in their stony chariots who, after all, never had much education. I was nicely dressed in a plaid frock, and wore two tails of hair tied with ribbons, a black apron, and two little black pantalettes from the knees. It was the admired costume of all the young ladies of the school We were children no longer, but it will to which I was bound. On this occasion be seen that our education was of a fitful the stony gods witnessed my elation and and backward description. Macaulay's subsequent discomfiture unmoved; the" Essays," the crusaders out of "Ivantriumphal arch was certainly not intended for my return, crestfallen and crushed by my inferiority to all the other young ladies in black pinafores and pantalettes.

But the images round about the old arch are not all of funerals and discomfitures and terrible things; there are also fairs and merry-makings to be remembered, and the Siamese twins who, in company with various wild Arabs, set up their booths close by; there are summer evenings with countless wheels rolling away into the west. In those days there

hoe" and "The Talisman," Herodotus, Milman's "History of the Jews," and one or two stray troubadours of whom I have already made mention, represented our historical studies. Then came a vast and hopeless lapse, reaching as far back as the times of Charlemagne and Clovis, and Bertha with the long foot, and Fredegonde who was always plunging her dagger into somebody's back. The early Merovingians will for me ever be associated with a faint smell of snuff and a plaid linen pocket-handkerchief carefully folded, with

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houses at the top of the Faubourg, just behind the arch. We used to find her sitting in a little, crowded room, with a tiny ante-room and a tiny kitchen, and an alcove for her bed. There she lived with her poodle, Bibi, among the faded treasures and ancient boxes and books and portraits and silhouettes of a lifetime; grim effigies of a grim past somewhat softened by dust and time. In the midst of all the chaos one lovely miniature used to hang, shining like a star through the clouds of present loneliness and the spiders' webs and age and poverty. This was the portrait of the lovely lady Almeria Carpenter, the friend of Sir Joshua, to whom in some mysterious, romantic way madame was connected. Another equally valued relic was a needlebook which had been used by the Duchesse de Praslin on the day when her husband murdered her. Madame's sister had been governess there for many years, and had loved the duchess dearly and been valued by her, and many and mysterious were the confidences poured into my grandmother's ear concerning this sad tragedy. Our cheery, emphatic, mysterious old lady was very popular among us all. One of her kindest friends was my father's cousin, Miss R., who had lived in Paris all her life, and whose visiting-list comprised any one in trouble or poor or lonely and afflicted. I think if it had not been for her help and that of my grandmother our good old friend would have often gone through sore trials. When my father himself came to Paris to fetch us away, he was interested in the accounts he heard of the old lady from his mother and cousin. And madame is the heroine of a little story which I have seen

a little, old, short, stumpy figure, in a black cap and dressed in a scanty black skirt. The figure is that of my professor of history. An old, old lady, very short, very dignified, uttering little grunts at intervals, and holding a pair of spectacles in one hand and a little old black fat book in the other, from which with many fumblings and snuff-takings, the good soul would proceed to read to us of murder, battle, rapine, and sudden death, of kings, crowns, dynasties, and knights in armor, while we girls listened, trying not to laugh when she turned two pages at once- or when she read the same page twice over with great seriousness. My dear grandmother, who was always inventing ways of helping people, and who firmly believed in all her protégées, having visited our madame once or twice and found her absorbed in the said history book, had arranged that a series of historical lectures, with five franc tickets of admission to the course, should be given by her during the winter months; and that after the lecture (which used to take place in our schoolroom, and which was attended by a certain number of ladies) we should all adjourn for tea to the blue drawing-room, where the major meanwhile had been able to enjoy his after-dinner nap in quiet. He refused to attend the course, saying, after the first lecture, that he found it difficult to follow the drift of madame's arguments. There used to be a class of four girls, my sister and myself, our cousin Amy, and Laura C., a friend of my own age- and then the various ladies in bonnets from up-stairs and down-stairs, and next door. The lecture lasted an hour by the clock; then the meeting suddenly adjourned, and by the time the golden flower-vase pen-in print somewhere, and which I know to dule in the drawing-room struck ten be true, for was I not sent one day to everybody was already walking down the search for a certain pill-box, of which my shiny staircase and starting for home. father proceeded to empty the contents Paris streets at night may be dark and into the fireplace, and then drawing a neat muddy, or freezing cold, but they never banker's roll from his pocket, he filled up give one that chill, vault-like feeling which the little cube with a certain number of London streets are apt to produce when new napoleons, packing them in closely one turns out from a warm fireside into up to the brim, after which, the cover the raw night. The ladies thought noth-being restored, he wrote the following ing of crossing the road and walking along prescription in his beautiful even handa boulevard till they reached their own doors. Good old madame used to walk off with those of her pupils who lived her way; they generally left her at the bright chemist's shop round the corner, where Madame Marlen, the chemist's wife, would administer an evening dose of pep. permint-water to keep out the cold so we used to be told by madame. The old lady lived in one of the tall, shabby

writing: "Mme. P. To be taken occasionally when required. Signed Dr. W. M. T." Which medicine my grandmother, greatly pleased, promised to administer to her old friend after his departure.

The remembrance of this pill-box and of my father's kind hands packing up the napoleons came to me again at a time when misfortunes of every kind had

fallen upon the familiar friends and places | week; the sunshine of it all, the smoking of our early youth, when the glare of burn- | ruins, the piteous histories, the strange ing Paris seemed to reach us far away rebound of life even in the midst of its in our English homes, and we almost ashes. Even the arch itself was wrapped thought we could hear the thunders break-in sackcloth to preserve the impassive ing on the unhappy city. We thought of gods from the injuries of war. One of our poor old lady, alone with her dear my first questions was for madame. "She Bibi, in the midst of all this terror and is particularly well," said my cousin, smildestruction. As we sat down to our legs ing. "She has added many thrilling hisof mutton we pictured the horrible salmis tories to her répertoire, Madame Martin's and fricandeaus of rats and mice to which escape from the obus, Bibi's horror of the our neighbors were reduced, the suffer-Prussians you must come and see her, ings so heroically borne. Every memory and hear it all for yourself." "I particuof the past rose up to incite us to make larly want to see her," said I. I was in a some effort to come to the assistance of self-satisfied and not unnatural frame of our poor old friend; and at last it oc- mind, picturing my old lady's pleasure at curred to me to ask Baroness Mayer de the meeting, her eloquent emotion and Rothschild, who was always ready with satisfaction at the trouble I had taken on good help for others, whether it would be her behalf. I hoped to have saved her possible to communicate with my be- life; at all events I felt that she must owe sieged old lady. many little comforts to my exertions, and that her grateful benediction awaited me!

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I do not know by what means perhaps if I knew, I ought not to say how commu- Dear old madame was sitting with her nications had been established between poodle on her knees in the same little dark the English Rothschilds and those who and crowded chamber. She put down her were still in Paris. Some trusty and de- spectacles, shut up her book-I do bevoted retainer, some Porthos belonging to lieve it was still the little black "History the house, had been able to get into Paris of France." She did not look in the least carrying letters and messages and food, surprised to see me walk in. The room and he was, so the baroness now told me, smelt of snuff just as usual; Bibi leapt about to return again. By this means I up from her lap, barking furiously. "Ah! was told that I might send my letters, and my dear child,” said the old lady calmly, a draft on the bank in Paris so that poor how do you do? Ah, my dear Miss R., madame could obtain a little help of which I am delighted to see you again! Only she must be in cruel need; and this being this day I said to Madame Martin, I think accomplished, the letter written and the Miss R. will be sure to call this afternoon, money sent off, I was able with an easier it is some day since she come.' Then mind to enjoy my own share of the good turning to me, "Well, my dear A., and things of life. Time passed, the siege how do you, and how do you all? Are was raised, and then came a day when, you come to stay in our poor Paris? urged by circumstances, and perhaps also Mr. and Mrs. S. with you? Oh! oh! by a certain curiosity, I found myself Oh, those Prussians! those abominable starting for Paris with a friend, under the monsters! My poor Bibi, he was ready escort of Mr. Cook, arriving after a night's to tear them to pieces; he and I could journey through strange and never-to-be- not sleep for the guns. Madame Martin, forgotten experiences at the Gare du Nord she say to me, Oh! madame, can you a deserted station among streets all believe such wickedness?' I say to her, empty and silent. Carriages were noIt is abominable.' Oh, there is no word longer to be seen, every figure was dressed for it!" in black, and the women's sad faces and long, floating crape veils seemed strangely symbolical and visionary, as I walked along to the house of my father's cousin, Charlotte R., who had been my friend and elder companion ever since I could remember. She was expecting me in her home to which she had only been able to return a few days before. It is not my purpose here to describe the strange and pathetic experiences and the sights we saw together during that most eventful

All this was oddly familiar, and yet strangely thrilling and unreal like all the rest. There is no adequate expression for the strange waking nightmare which seems to seize one when by chance one meets a whole country suffering from one overpowering idea, and when one hears the story of each individual experience in turn repeated and repeated.

At last, my own personal interests rising up again, I said, not without some curiosity: "And now I want to ask you,

did you get my letter, madame, and did you receive the money safely from Messrs. Rothschilds' bank?"

"I thank you, my dear child. I received it - I was about to mention the subject I knew you would not forget your old friend," said madame solemnly. "I needed the money very much," with a shake of the head. "I was all the more grateful that it came at the time it did. You will be gratified, I know, to learn the use to which I put it. They had come round to every house in the street only that morning. Madame Martin was with Here madame took a pinch of snuff very seriously. "She go to the banker's for me, and she took the money at once and inscribed my name on the list."

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From The Gentleman's Magazine. THE DEPRAVATION OF WORDS. THERE are few more interesting and absorbing subjects of study than the growth and evolution of language. A language still spoken and written is a living organism, and its vital processes resemble those which are constantly presented to the observation of the student of natural phenomena. A language grows by accre. tion, by development in some special direction, like a tree putting forth a fresh branch, and by absorption or adoption from the vocabulary of other tongues. Simultaneously with the process of growth or development, there is continually going on decay and removal. Here a word or phrase is sloughed off, so to speak; there are shed a whole group of words or terms rendered obsolete by the advance of science, by alterations in personal and in national habits and customs, and by a variety of other causes.

But apart from the words that have become obsolete, and those that are still live and active elements of the language, there is a considerable number in which the process of decay has been carried to a certain extent, and has then been arrested, or, to abandon metaphor, words which Laving once been standard or literary English, have slipt from one cause or another

out of literary use, but still retain a certain vogue either as provincialisms or as members of the great body of slang and colloquial expressions. These are the words that have completely undergone the process of what may be termed depravation. Another section consists of those terms which have developed a downward tendency, but whose fate is not yet fixed. These are the words and phrases which are so often used colloquially and loosely in a non-natural sense, in a depraved extension and widening of their proper significations.

Changes of this kind have always been taking place in the spoken language, but it is only in comparatively recent times that, owing chiefly to the hasty writings of journalists and slovenly book-makers, such depravation has proceeded at an accelerated pace, and has largely affected our written English. The loose construction, the twisted or inverted meaning, the slangy word or phrase crops up in current talk no one knows how; it soon appears in print in hasty article, smart leader, or in slipshod fiction, and forthwith it is transferred to the columns of the latest thing in the way of big dictionaries. If after this it is challenged, reference is made to the latest dictionary; its authority shelters the new coinage or new attribution, and the vicious circle is complete. A few months ago an able and popular journalist, writing in the pages of a new review on the undress of the soul, as exhibited in Marie Bashkirtseff's" 'Journal," remarked, with figurative meaning, of the author of that remarkable book, that "above all, she never really leaves go of her dressing-gown." To "leave go" of a dressing-gown, or of anything else, is an expression that haste may explain, but which cannot in any way be justified. The same writer, in an earlier number of his periodical, declared that "the papistical power is messing everything in Canada." It is quite within the bounds of possibility that both to "leave go," and

to mess," in this slangy sense, may appear in the pages of some too comprehensive dictionary with these sentences of the review given as authorities. There are many other degraded uses of words which, although not unfamiliar to the ear, have hardly yet appeared in print without the guarding inverted commas. The commas, however, are but a frail defence, and the transition to ordinary print without any such marks of protest is easy and very often rapid. The depraved applica tions of such words as "awful" and

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