"AH! THEY CALL THE TENEMENT 'SHAW'S FOLLY,' DO THEY?" anything but a bushel of potatoes and a canary-bird. Did hear that he'd gone back to Germany. The police were waiting for the owner to put in an appearThey hadn't bothered themselves much over the matter; it had rather ance. amused them; but then "Shaw's Folly" had always amused the neighborhood. "Ah! They call the tenement 'Shaw's Folly,' do they?" and Mr. Shaw, paying no heed to the clerk's answer, muttered, "I shouldn't wonder if it was!" In listening to the drug-clerk's offhand discourse Mr. Shaw had run through a whole gamut of emotions. The "philanthropic freak" had brought a faint smile to his lips, but the characterization of The Maria Home as a "shebeen" made him wince. He was by turns pained, mortified, and indignant. Was it not a high-handed proceeding on the part of the authorities to evict his tenants and shut up the house? Then he had to admit that the circumstances justified the step. What else could they have done? Thanking the clerk for his obliging information, Mr. Shaw walked thoughtfully down the street. At the police station Mr. Shaw obtained the keys after some delay, and retraced his steps to The Maria Home. The interior of the house was in keeping with the dilapidated outside. The mystery of the missing window-blinds was explained by the absence of the balusters and the baluster-rails of all the staircases. They had probably been used for firewood during the winter. In some places even the mop-boards were stripped off. Everywhere were dust, rubbish, and confusion. The musty air of the silent rooms, whence the huddled life had so lately departed, seemed palpitant with ghosts. Mr. Shaw looked round him with a rueful smile. "Swartz has kept his word. He told me I shouldn't have any non-paying tenants when I got back!" Mr. Shaw locked the front door and slowly descended the stone steps, which were littered with handbills and dried scraps of orange peel. Reaching the sidewalk, he lingered an instant, glanced up at the looming red-brick façade, and then turned his back on The Maria Home. It was a failure, but it was one of those failures in which lie the seeds of success. That same afternoon old Mr. Elijah Shaw dropped down from Vermont as if on purpose to say: "I told you so! I knew that Augustus would tumble into some sort of foolishness sooner or later. There's an abandoned farm up in New Hampshire waiting for Augustus." This article, by M. Constant, the celebrated painter, is intended as a brief introduction to the extensive collection of Victor Hugo's original drawings and paintings. Those who know the works of this master-poet and novelist will be surprised by the power and wealth of his imaginative production in another field, and it gives us pleasure to lay before our readers some remarkable examples from the vast collection placed at our command. M. Constant's article is comprehensive in its scope, and thus refers to many exSome of these will amples of Victor Hugo's artistic work not presented in this number. appear in a later issue, with comment by M. Paul Meurice, the chief custodian of Victor Hugo memorabilia. In the mean time several drawings are here reproduced not directly mentioned by M. Constant.-THE EDITOR. T HE word artist is not usually regarded as descriptive of Victor Hugo in its technical sense, that is to say, in relation to his imaginative sketches, executed during the evenings and the wakeful hours of his long nights in Guernsey. It is commonly applied to that crown of art, that stamp of peculiar beauty, which distinguishes the thought of every man of genius, whether its expression be written, spoken, or drawn. In this general sense Victor Hugo was a great artist; but he was an artist in a special sense as well, when he took up his pen deliberately, and abandoned himself with heart-felt enjoyment to portraying poetic landscapes, or to making weird silhouettes of feudal castles, with strokes of the pen. And when ink seemed to him too feeble for his original conceptions, he heightened his imaginations, as some one has said, by the use of café au lait. He availed himself of all means for the expression of his descriptive thought, for the presentment of his dreams. No instruction was needed to enable him to represent a tree, a house by the way-side, or a prospect of distant hills encompassed with clouds. It is no stretch of imagination to say that these sketches or souvenirs of nature recall the little etchings of Rembrandt; certain faces, very roughly drawn, remind us of Callot and of Goya; and the larger compositions in the style of "Burg de la Croix" might bear, not unworthily, the signature of Turner. To be convinced of what I say it is only ne |