a-bustin' out singin' over my ironin', I was so crazy glad to think I'd found some one else in the world with jest my queer freaky thoughts, and that laughed and cried all in a breath same as me, and didn't mind a pile o' dirty dishes in the sink them blue days in spring that jest seem to kinder witch yer out o' doors, with all the treetops beckonin'. If it ain't a miracle o' grace; you born over to Germany, and your folks so fine, and you leavin' 'em and bein' an opery singer till you lost your voice; and your face like a pictur', and your hands soft as pussy willows, and me a lopsided figur'-o'-fun no man would look at twict, and yit no sooner did we two look deep into each other's eyes than somethin' speaks up loud in both on us, sayin', 'You 're bone o' my bone and flesh o' my flesh!"" "I love you!" said the doctor's wife. By this time they had reached the tiny front yard, blue with trailing periwinkle and sweet with lilac and flowering currant, and, it being too golden a day to waste indoors, Ann M'ria seated herself on the worn kitchen sill and drew the friend of her bosom down beside her. "I s'pose livin' here and livin' over to Germany or Italy's somethin' like the difference between Ann M'ria and Anna Mareea; and Mis' Smith, that folks hev to call you now, don't sound half so pretty as what you used to be called, Alma von Engelberg-angel-mountain you said that meant? - but then there's doctor; I don't suppose they could beat doctor easy over there." The doctor's wife shook her head and flung out both expressive hands. "There's not one of them over there fit to clasp the latchet of his shoes! Then she drooped against Ann M'ria's shoulder. "That makes it all the worse," she sighed. hate the sewing society and the 'sociables.' Gott, do you know how to be 'sociable,' you New Englanders? and then, the meeting-house, so cold, so bare, so hideous! Oh, don't think I complain to my husband; I have grace enough not to do that, but, oh, Anna Maria, it grows worse instead of better, this restlessness. What shall I do? What shall I do?" The shrewd old eyes rested for an instant on the languid figure nestled against her own. "Mebbe it's jest the spring feelin', dear, and mebbe – You talk to doctor; don't you fret all alone; you tell everythin' to doctor." "The hills! They shut me in; I can't breathe! Oh, to push them away ; there are cities beyond; something doing; not utter stagnation. Though what should I want of cities and crowds; I had sorrow enough out in the world, and when my voice failed, all I asked for was to forget the world and be forgotten, and so I crept to this quiet corner to end my days in what peace I might." The doorway of the solitary little house, fronting sunset and mountain, commanded the windings of the osiered river that leads the eye on and on, till, companioned by the narrowing valley, the glinting waters slip behind a foothill. Then the eye, baffled, falls back yearning to know what lies beyond. "Yes," said Ann M'ria slowly, her wistful gaze riveted on the furrowed and forest-dark flanks of Chillion, majestic even in the all-revealing midday glare, "yes, you've hed your fling; you've seen it all, but here I've ben seventy years, girl and woman, eatin' my heart out for jest one peep t'other side o' them mountains." The doctor's wife caught at her friend's hand. "What! You have never been beyond!" "How should I git there? Walk, with my hitchin' gait? And I ain't never hed no team nor extry pennies to hire." "Your neighbors ?" "Oh, I've good neighbors; but you don't tell everythin' to your neighbors." "Anna Maria! Seventy years! Such a little wish." The doctor's wife had slipped to her knees by Ann M'ria's side; she was fondling her friend's hands, pressing them to her soft cheek wet with tears. The old woman looked down at her with chiding love. "There, there, you're all flushed up, and you've forgot all about your own sorror, thinkin' o' mine. That's why folks love you so; that's why all the folks to the village set sech store by ye, and you a furriner." "Do they like me?" "Now don't you go pertendin' you did n't know it. "Taint only that you 've got the feelin' heart, but you know how to show it so pretty. Now what you jumpin' up to so fast for?" Alma had started to her feet, and was pointing eagerly down the road where a swaying buggy top was emerging from the beech wood. "It's my husband. He said perhaps he could be free this afternoon. Oh, Anna Maria, it is early yet; to-day, this very day you shall have the desire of your heart." Ann M'ria stood as if rooted to the door sill. "To-day! The mountain! To-day?" The sturdy white horse and the broadshouldered man driving him were drawing steadily nearer. They had passed the last farm and pink-flushed orchard, and were turning into the lane that led up over the pastures. Ann M'ria clutched Alma's sleeve. "Not to-day, dear; not to-day." She was visibly trembling. "Why not to-day?" "Seventy years I've waited." Ann M'ria fingered her calico dress distressfully, and her eyes sought her friend's in solemn appeal. "I could n't go in these old duds." "There is time to change your dress." "I'd always kinder thought— if ever the time come-I'd like to wear my black silk that was mother's." 66 "By all means, the black silk." "Oh yes, the best bonnet." Ann M'ria made one step toward the bedroom, then turned with working face. "You think it better be to-day?" she asked with the submissive questioning of a child. "Yes, yes, to-day. Go and make ready, Anna Maria, while I tell my husband." Outside the low paling the white horse had come to a halt, and in a moment more, Alma, her vivid face raised to the doctor's, had poured out her tale. He nodded once or twice, but it was evident his thoughts were more engaged with his wife than with the story she was rehearsing so dramatically. Touching her flushed cheek with a practiced hand, he told her to ask Ann M'ria for a glass of milk before they started, and to bring along bread and doughnuts or whatever the larder might afford. Despite previous tremors, despite the glories of the black silk dress, the best "bunnit," and the golden heirloom clasping her wrinkled throat, who gayer after the start than Ann M'ria. In the capacious seat her slight figure was easily tucked away between her friends, and now her hand clasped Alma's, now rested on the doctor's knee, now for pure joy waved in the air. "Hear the song sparrers trillin'! There war'n't never sech a hand as me for lovin' singin' in bird or human creeter. Seems 's if I could set and hear singin' They was a "Then why put it off an hour? The till my soul melted away. time has come." hymn they used to sing." And in a quavering treble Ann M'ria shrilled it pin' wet in the dew. Go in and soak out, "There's a land that is fairer than day.' And then there's the singin' of the kittle, and even cake, when you draw it out of the oven and put your ear down to it, there 't is chirrupin' away to itself. Yes, I was always a great hand for singin', and I guess that's why I always hated my name so; seemed so harsh soundin', and why I jest love to hear you say Anna Mareea, same as if you was puttin' it to music. Say it again, Mis' Smith." "Anna Maria, dear, dear Anna Maria." con "I guess I'm two folks; Ann M'ria and Anna Mareea. Ann M'ria's the one most folks see, twisted and homely's a root, and Anna Mareea's the insides of me that when folks git a peep of they think's queer and flighty. I've days of bein' jest plain Ann M'ria and dustin' and bakin' and sortin' herbs as tented as a rabbit in a clover field, but them other days, when the sight of a dishcloth turns my stomach, and somethin' seems to be prickin' in me like cider fermentin', and I don't understand what I do want no more than I was talkin' a furrin language, then I guess I'm Anna Mareea. Don't you let on to Dick, doctor, there's two of me he's got to draw up the mountain road, he 'll git discouraged. or "Last night I run out before bedtime, and it was all so still and clean washed, sort of, and the stars so solemn, and I set me down by the well, and little by little they was all around me, father and mother and my three sisters that died before I was born, and I hed n't a fear, and my soul seemed swellin' in me, and I guess I set a full hour thinkin' how beautiful 't was, and I would n't never bother no more about earthly things, when all of a suddin somethin' in me spoke up, commonplace as you please, and says, 'That'll do, Ann M'ria, you 've hed all you can stand. And your shoes are sop your feet and git to bed.' And I done it. We ain't nothin' but pint pots, after all!" The road which the doctor had chosen struck across the valley and then wound up to the high gap between the shoulder of Chillion and a lesser neighbor. Undaunted, though with drooping head, the white horse toiled steadily on, his master to ease him striding alongside. Half the valley, unrolled below them, lay in shadow, but back on the opposite slopes the mellow light yet lingered, and Ann M'ria's cottage, catching the sun on its panes, flashed recognition. The doctor pointed toward it with his whip, and the old woman nodded solemnly. Silence had fallen upon her. Her hands clasped in her lap, she rode toward the supreme moment of her life. A moment more, and from the crest of the ridge the new world would burst upon her sight. you "No, no, Mis' Smith, I ain't sick. I know it seems dretful of me after you 've hauled me so fur, and doctor he won't never understand it mebbe, but you will, you will, won't you, dear?" The old woman in her limp black silk was clambering nervously out of the buggy, and turned a pathetically pleading face toward the friend of her bosom. "Everythin' I've made believe all my life was behind the mountain; all the things I've hed to do without. It's too late; my eyes are too old; I could n't see it as I've made believe all my life; I'd rather go on makin' believe and seein' it as I always hev; all shinin' so beautiful; a land flowin' with milk and honey; great gleamin' rivers and mountains clear up to the sky with snow on 'em, and marble cities with church towers with angels carved on to 'em like I've read, and somewhere among 'em all a little white farmhouse under some elms with a pass❜l of children runnin' in and out, not favorin' me exactly, but favorin' what I might hev looked like if the Lord hed n't made me on an off day. Don't make me go up to the top of the ridge, dear; don't make me go!" "Dear Anna Maria, no one shall." "You go up with doctor and hev your look off, and I'll set here and mind Dick. It's a dretful pretty evenin' to be set tin' out with the trees so still they jest seem to be holdin' on to themselves so 's not to stir and wake the baby birds. Take your time, dear, take your time." It must indeed have been a sight of the Promised Land their own or Ann M'ria's-that met the eyes of the doctor and his wife from the crest of the ridge road, for when they returned, hand in hand, the witness of the glory still shone transfiguring in their eyes. The old woman read it there, and started exultant from the low stone wall where she had been sitting. "Then it's all true," she cried, "it's true! You seen it! My! but it must 'a' ben beautiful to make your eyes shine like that!" Esther B. Tiffany. THE DERELICT. BEYOND the rim of waters vast She vanished out of human ken, But heaven alone knows where or when Her desolation came. The crew, that manned and banned her, now Nor calms nor tempests vex; The pirate billows board her bow Only the wild winds strike her bells, Upflung against relentless skies Or downward dragged amain, Heaven heedeth not her agonies, Or heedeth them in vain. Shunned by her kin and kind, though still She bides her time to work her will While leven-brands forbear to strike, Until Despair's appalling call, Shall urge her o'er its verge to crawl What high hopes perished in her clutch The snarl untangle with a touch And break the fatal spell. Edward N. Pomeroy. OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION IN MUSIC. NERO, it is said, believed that music, unheard by others than the performer, was valueless; that appreciation and receptivity were much less important than execution. Our public education in music proceeds along the same lines, inculcating performance and creation in music from first to last, and scarcely recognizing the non-performer as a factor in art at all. In the primary school classes, all are taught to join in singing, and this choral activity is continued as the chief element of public musical instruction until the end of the high school or academy work. In the college, if any change is made, it is generally in the direction of harmony, counterpoint, and composition. Yet it may be taken as an axiom that nine tenths of the graduates from all classes of educational institutions, excepting conservatories of music, will not be actively musical in subsequent life; they will enjoy music, so far as they are able, from the passive side. Surely these sub merged nine tenths have some rights in the domain of music and some claims for an education fitted to their needs; classes in musical appreciation are a more crying necessity than the omnipresent classes in singing. In some of the large colleges and universities a study of fine arts is recognized as a necessary part of the curriculum. In Harvard, for example, Professor Charles Eliot Norton has broadened the culture of many hundreds, possibly thousands, by teaching how to understand the subtleties of painting, the influence of one school upon another, the characteristics of each school, the outcome of each theory. He has never attempted to teach a single student how to mix colors or how to handle the brush; he has taught the comprehension of the art, not the practice of it. Something of this kind is needed in the musical department of our schools. We cannot make a nation of musicians (even if it were desirable to do so), but we can |