From Korolenko's "The Blind Musician." (Copyright, 1890, by Little, Brown & Co.) ТА КОТОА ИЛ

RELEASING her shoulder from the boy's hand, she suddenly sprang to her feet and burst into a flood of tears. "What are you doing to me, you naughty boy?" she exclaimed angrily through her tears. "Why do you touch me? What have I done to you? Why?"

Confused as he was, he remained sitting on the same spot with drooping head, while a strange feeling of mingled anger and vexation filled his heart with burning pain. Now for the first time he felt the degradation of a cripple; for the first time he learned that his physical defect might inspire alarm as well as pity. Although he had no power to formulate the sense of heaviness that oppressed him, he suffered none the less because this feeling was dim and confused. A sense of burning pain and bitter resentment swelled the boy's throat; he threw himself down on the grass and wept. As the weeping increased, convulsive sobs shook his little frame-the more violently, because his innate pride made him struggle to repress this outburst.

The girl, who had scarcely reached the foot of the hill, hearing those stifled sobs turned in amazement. When she saw that odd new acquaintance of hers lying face downward on the ground, crying so bitterly, she felt a sympathy for him, and climbing the hill again she stood over the weeping boy.

"What is it?" she said. "Why are you crying? Perhaps you think that I shall complain? Don't cry! I shall not say a word to any one." These words of sympathy and the caressing voice excited a still more violent fit of sobbing. Then the girl, sitting down beside the boy, devoted herself to the task of comforting him.

ency, she raised his head and wiped the tears from his eyes, like a mother who tries to comfort her grieving child.

"There, there, I am no longer vexed," she said in the soothing tone of a grown-up woman. "I see you are sorry to have frightened me."

"I did not mean to frighten you," he replied, drawing a long breath in his efforts to repress his nervous sobs.

"Well, it is all right now. I am no longer angry. You will never do it again," she added, raising him from the ground and trying to make him sit down beside her.

Petrusya yielded. Again he sat facing the sunset, and when the girl saw his face lighted by the crimson rays, she was impressed by its unusual expression. The tears were still standing in the while his features were twitching convulsively boy's eyes, which were as before immovable, with childlike sobs-all the signs of a deep sorrow, such as a mature nature might feel, were evident.

"How queer you are-really!" she said with thoughtful sympathy.

"I am not queer," replied the boy with a pitiful look. "No, I am not queer! I am-blind!" "Bli-nd?" she repeated, prolonging the word in her surprise, while her voice trembled, as though that sad word, softly uttered by the boy, had given a heavy blow to her womanly little heart. "Blind?" she repeated again; her voice trembled still more, and then as though seeking a refuge from the uncontrollable sense of misery that had come over her, she suddenly threw her arms around the boy's neck and hid her face on his breast.

This sad discovery taking her entirely by surprise, had instantly changed the self-composed little woman to a grieved and helpless child, who in her turn wept bitterly and inconsolably. (Little, B.)-From Korolenko's "The Blind Musician."

V.

LOVE

From" The Blind Musician."

GIRLS AND WOMEN.

THE Riverside Library for Young People has received a valuable addition in its eighth volume by E. Chester, entitled "Girls and Women." The book contains sixteen chapters on practical subjects, each short and to the point. The opening chapter of itself would be an excellent guide to any young person just beginning to ponder the responsibilities of life. It teaches that the highest aim should be to live a divine life, to acquire a noble character, even if to win this one has to sacrifice some pet ambition, or special talent; then with this highest aim we should unite some minor aim which shall be definitely fixed and followed, remembering always it is best to aim at some work within our power, not at something we are unfitted for. The second chapter gives most excellent advice regarding health, A few rules are laid down which are essential to health. 44 "Breathe fresh air." Do not take cold." "Take plenty of exercise." Eat such food as you can thoroughly digest." "Work regularly with both body and mind." "Take the rest you need." Each of these rules is explained and enlarged upon in a very interesting and instructive manner, and special warning is given to guard against the dangerous tendency, so common in the past few years, of giving up to morbid and nervous diseases, which Miss Chester says, are, at the foundation, a refined selfishness." She quotes Dr. Weir Mitchell, who declares that "nervous diseases among women have destroyed the happiness of more families than intemperance." In following chapters Miss Chester treats of work in which she evidently is a thorough believer-work for the poor, work for the rich, work at home, and outside work. She lays stress upon the point that every woman, whether rich or poor, should learn practical things, and should know how to cook, to sew, to keep accounts; she should be able to read aloud well, and, if at all musical, to play or sing for the entertainment, at least, of her own family. She should not attempt too many things at once, but have the mind so trained and cultivated that at any age she can begin a new study. "It is a great mistake to think that all we are to learn must be begun before we are thirty." Suppose you have chosen history as the study for a lifetime, take as a companion study something new every year-first a science, then art, then literature, then mathematics, then a language, etc., etc., for the fruit of culture is to be and not to do, and what we are, intellectually at least, depends even more upon the breadth of knowledge which helps us to balance conflicting judgments than on special knowledge which gives us accurate judgment in details. See to it that one makes home pleasant. "A serene temper is one of the essentials of a happy home. Irritability will destroy the

understand what you are doing, and let the charity 'No home is genuine

AN ACTOR AT SEA.

NOWHERE is a mirth-provoking individual more fully appreciated than at sea, where people are thrown entirely upon their own resources for amusement. Any one fertile in expedients for raising a laugh is set upon a pinnacle far above his less inventive companions; but the ship oracle's preëminence is short-lived.

The actor who sits near us at table, nick-named "Liddly Push," is the most entertaining man on board, although so mercurial in his temperament that he gives way at times to fits of great depression. He is a big burly man, with a large, smooth, elastic face, which he wrinkles up at will, till be appears a decrepit nonogenarian; shortly after, he is a simpering maiden fair, afraid to help himself to bread without an appealing "May I, please?" His instantaneous changes of facial expressions are marvellous, and keep the young ladies in a continual ripple of laughter. It is not so much what he says, as his irresistibly comic manner, which renders him so diverting. His leave-takings when, as he expresses it, he is "off for the Contignong," are most absurd. He then appears in a shabby and loose-fitting old coat, ridiculously demoralized standing collar, huge slouch hat, patched trousers turned up at the bottom, shoes several sizes too large for him, with strings tied around the ankles, and a most dilapidated umbrella and carpet-bag in hand. His make-up is capital, and as he, with imperturbable gravity, visits the different rooms to say adieu, shouts of merriment follow him.

To anticipate a little, at Christmas-time his bon-bon motto contained a flaring old woman's Mother Hubbard cap, with long cloak. Attired in these, the strings of the cap tied neatly under

the chin, he was truly feminine in appearance, and pursing up his mouth in a perfectly comical way, he seated himself on the piano-stool just under the mistletoe and offered yearly tickets to those who wished to “kiss me quick." Then he announced that as a great pressure had been put upon him, and business was so brisk, he would sell season tickets, and afterward he offered, as the slack season approached, monthly subscription tickets. He thinks water is good to sail upon, and for certain household purposes, but not to drink. He can always prove to his own satisfaction, in Richard Carstair style, that if he spends a pound less than he expected to upon a certain luxury, as compensation for his prudence he is immediately entitled to expend five pounds upon some other superfluity. He gives out as the result of mature reflection upon what his observation on this voyage has taught him, that "if he had twelve daughters to marry off he would feel that he had given them every opportunity of settling themselves in life by sending them on a long sea voyage—the longer the better." (Putnam. $1.)-From Douglass' "A Romance at the Antipodes."

NELSON'S GREATNESS.

THERE is nothing in words to deal with such a character as this of Nelson. The enumeration of his qualities is the best eloquence that can express them. To say that he was the greatest seaofficer Britain had ever produced; to repeat, in the language of his own sailors, that he had the heart of the lion and the gentleness of the lamb ; to declare that he was as good as a man as he was great as an ocean warrior, affectionate, bountiful, without further selfishness than is to be witnessed in a thirst for earthly distinction, always a sailor first of all, yet of a sagacity that was not to be paralleled by the intelligence of the ablest politician of his times; clear and instant.in his perceptions, daring and dominating in his actions, unerring and triumphant beyond anything that history can tell of other men in his achievements; to say this is to say what? Yet the heart must speak the rest. "I have him now before me," wrote Scott to Lady Hamilton, referring to Nelson, whose body the chaplain was then watching; here lies Bayard—but Bayard victorioussans peur et sans reproche. . . . So help me God, as I think he was a true knight and worthy the age of chivalry-one may say-lui même fait le siècle—for where shall we see another? When I think, setting aside his heroism, what an affectionate, fascinating little fellow he was, how dignified and pure his mind, how kind and condescending his manners, I become stupid with grief for F what I have lost." Thus were all men thinking and saying. It is eighty-four years since he died; yet still is his name the one of all earthly names

to work most magically in the thoughts of Englishmen. His example as a strategist is of no use now; it would be the idlest waste of time to enter, in this iron-armored age, into a discourse upon his proceedings: how superior he was as an ocean-leader of men to Jervis, as Jervis was to Howe, as Howe was to that earlier race of admirals who may be traced back through the dim pages of Campbell and Burchett, fighting most valiantly yet with circumspection off the coast of the English Channel and down amongst the shoaling waters of the Dutch shore. It can profit us nothing, in a material sense, to know that his great theory of warfare consisted in swiftness of resolution, in dashing at the enemy, in getting alongside of him as close as channels or yardarms would permit, and in firing until he struck or was annihilated. There are no longer channels; there are no longer yardarms; lines ahead may be formed, but if they are to be broken no hints of the manoeuvres to be employed are likely to be found in the most voluminous and minute accounts of the Nelsonian victories. But if his genius as an admiral of the days of tacks and sheets can no longer be serviceable in suggestion to a posterity whose hopes are lodged in steel plates of twenty inches in thickness, in engines of ten thousand horse-power, in ordnance big enough to berth the crew of a brig of Nelson's day, his example as an English sailor must, whilst there remains a British keel afloat, be as potent in all seafaring aspirations and resolutions as ever it was at any moment in his devoted and glorious life. (Putnam. $1.75; $1.50.) -From Clark Russell's "Nelson."

STOCKBRIDGE IN THE PAST. BUT it is in the springtime that New England puts on her robe of beauty: when, after the long sleep of winter, the life of nature returns, as our little friends the robins come back; the tender grass begins to appear, and the trees put forth their leaves; the apple-blossoms fill the air with fragrance; and the verdure from the meadows along the river's banks creeps up the hillsides, till the foliage of the oaks and the birches and the chestnuts, mingled with the evergreen of the pines and the hemlocks, makes the full glory of the forest, and the mountains shake like Leba

non.

In these green valleys and under the shadow of these mountains have sprung up villages of a peculiar type-not centering in some lordly pile, as an English village gathers round a nobleman's castle-with no great mansions, but a general air of comfort and modest beauty. If I were to take one village as a sample of many, it would be the one I know best, that in which I was born, in Western Massachusetts, in the Berkshire HillsStockbridge-a village not laid out in the English

style, nor the French style, nor in any other "style," except the good old-fashioned New England style; having one broad street lined with elms, whose giant branches, reaching high in air and drooping towards each other, form an arch like that of a cathedral, which, when lighted up by the setting sun, is more glorious than the nave of Westminster Abbey.

Along this street, under these elms, are scattered homes, not pretentious in any way, but each with its smooth-shaven lawn, its grass and its flowers without, and its books and pictures with in, which show it to be the home of taste and refinement.

If there were time to dwell on these home pictures, I might take you over the town, to the farm-houses, with capacious barns, and other signs of abundance, in front of which the spacious foreground is overhung by trees, and graced by "The moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well." Next to the homes of the New England village are its institutions, around which its life gathers. Of these there are two, the church and the school. You see the little school-house at the foot of the hill, or it may be under the shade of an elm: how modest it looks! But in many a New England village that was the only " institution of learning." Yet out of that humble door have gone the men that have led your armies, that have fought your battles and ruled your government. The schoolhouses of New England have made its people the equal in intelligence of any other on the face of the globe.

Yet the school-house would not have amounted to so much, if it had not been for the motherly old "meeting-house," that stood on the village green, which was the educator of the people in moral and religious truth, as the school taught them the rudiments of knowledge. What an awe fell upon my childish heart as I looked up at the steeple from which the bell called us to the place of prayer! As a boy I often wandered about the old graveyard, where

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep; " and if at that moment the old sexton struck the bell for some approaching funeral, that solemn toll struck upon my heart as if it were a warning sound from eternity itself.

Within the old meeting-house our associations are of a mingled character: grave and solemn, with observations of manners and customs that were quaint and curious, some of which may even provoke a smile. The high pulpit was at one end of the church, and the gallery at the other, in which the choir stood facing the minister, as if determined to keep up their end of the house, and do their full part in public worship. In those days we did not have a fashionable quartette, but pure home talent, in which the " spruce" young

men of the village showed themselves beside the comely maidens. In our village church, in the centre of the choir stood a man six feet high (I say six; it might have been seven or eight-to my childish imagination he seemed to be ten or twelve), whose "front view" was made still more striking by a tremendous nose. As he rose in hisifull proportions, he lifted up with him a bass viol as big as himself, out of which he ground unearthly music. The sight was so awe-inspiring, that I had to turn aside my eyes to rest them on the gentle Priscillas at his side. The Lord will forgive me in the circumstances. In truth I did not look upon those faces as I might if I had seen them on the street, lighted up with smiles. I regarded them only with what President Edwards calls "the love of complacency," which he approves and commends as "a very sweet affection" (he is certainly right in that), and also very pure and holy, if it be not indeed the essence of all virtue! (Scribner. $1.50.)-From "Bright Skies and Dark Shadows."

CASTING A STATUE.

ONE evening, Cormorto and Angelica made an excursion outside of the gate of San Giovanni to the metal foundry. It was an old mediaval house of reddish bricks transformed into a great high hall with a sort of underground gallery. Very curious it was to see, in that solitary place, just in the middle of the immense sadness of the Roman plain, this old-looking house, with a new chimney at the top smoking all the time, and resounding with Ively noise of machinery and voices of men, in that dead waste. They were received by Origlio with great effusion.

"Just in time; step in," said the sculptor.

In the hall there was a little group assembled. The fair sex was represented by Miss Lowell and her mother, and by Angelica; then there were about a dozen men, Signor Claretti, some prominent artists, and Giacomo, Origlio's old model. They were gathered around a large oven which had two lateral holes opened and one shut in front.

Down in a big opening under the ground floor there lay Origlio's statue cast in wax and covered with mud. Three men were watching the fire.

"You see," Origlio said to Miss Lowell, "it takes so much time to make a statue, and it runs so many risks before being thoroughly finished. I had to model my Dante in clay first, and then I had it cast in plaster, and then from plaster I had to get a waxen cast, and then cover this with this particular mud; and now that I have gone through all this, if the fusion does not come out well I must begin over again from the cast in plaster. Now, my dear, my dearest," he said in a lower tone, "" we are going to be famous if this comes out well."