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his duty. Later he wrote on "The Convict Lease System" at the South, and showed many things that belong to a barbarous age rather than to the Christian civilization of the nineteenth century. These articles have been published in book-form by Scribners, under the title "The Silent South."

Recently he has written for the "Century" three able stories, "Grande Pointe," "Carancro," and "Au Large," the scenes laid among the Acadians of Louisiana. "Caranero" is especially beautiful. The search of Bonaventure for "Thanase is pathetic indeed, and the result, in finding that his first love Zosiphine, who becomes the wife of another, is unsuited to him, and that as the years go by, he has outgrown her, is true to life. Mr. Cable believes in the "eternal fitness of things," as when he puts into the mouth of the Curé these words: "God is a very practical God, and so, when He gave us natures like his, He gave men, not wives only, but brethren and sisters and companions and strangers in order that benevolence—yes, and even self-sacrifice, mistakenly so calledmight have no lack of direction and occupation, and then bound the whole human family together by putting every one's happiness into some other one's hands." Nobody could make Mr. Cable believe that all his tender care of his family from boyhood has been "self-sacrifice.” It has, of course, broadened and beautified his character and his life. Would he have come to eminence sooner

with a college education and without poverty ? Perhaps not. The great are those who master circumstances.

Mr. Cable has been a most successful lecturer for the past two or three seasons, drawing crowded houses to hear him read from his own works. He has also organized several culture clubs for home reading, nine of which have been formed in Northampton. Each Sunday he teaches a large Bible class in the Opera House in Northampton, which he started at the request of leading citizens, designed especially to reach non-churchgoers, or those who do not regard the Bible as the Word of God. He has spoken repeatedly before missionary associations and societies for prison reform.

Though a young man, only forty-two, he has received the degree of Doctor of Letters from the Washington and Lee University, Virginia, and that of A. M. from Yale College. If his life and health. are spared, he is only in the beginning of a useful and valuable career, upright, earnest, genuine, without self-conceit or affectation; - there is "a man behind the book."

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SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS.

(MARK TWAIN.)

"WITHIN the past-half century, he has done

more than any other man to lengthen the lives of his contemporaries by making them merrier." Thus says the "Critic." But he has done vastly more than this.

Mr. Howells well says, "I cannot remember that in Mr. Clemens' books I have ever been asked to join him in laughing at any good or really fine thing. He has not only added more in bulk to the style of harmless pleasures than any other humorist, but more in the spirit that is easily and wholly enjoyable. . . . There is always the touch of nature, the presence of a sincere and frank manliness in what he says, the companionship of a spirit which is at once delightfully open and deliciously shrewd. . . . I can think of no writer living who has in higher degree the art of interesting his reader from the first word." Mr. Clemens never forgets to speak in favor of the oppressed, as the Chinese on the Pacific Coast. He holds up to view some of the customs of the time in no uncertain words, as when, in "Roughing It," he says of

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