not disdain even the unsuccessful suitors. I could put up with Master Tressilian, or Edward Glendinning, or Hector MacIntyre, or Darsie Latimer, or Lord Evandale.

In vain my governess, to whom I have confided these earlier lines, reminds me that the old order changeth, giving place to the new. If my brother Contributor turns up his nose at the morning procession of boarding-school girls, I misdoubt that he does it under spectacles which are like those of Major Pendennis, "artfully disguised as a double eyeglass." I do not wish to be personal, but I suspect that his may be the vulpine reason for pronouncing us so far inferior to the incomparable heroines (dowdy, little dunces, some of them) of the Waverley gallery.

This is not, however, what I set out to write when I suffered my just indignation to get the better of me. It was rather to note how little, as a rule, Sir Walter tells us of the feelings and inner life of these paragon damsels. Were we to try to pattern after them, we might find a rather vague outline. In several instances their perfections are simply taken for granted, and their whole part in the story consists in being made love to, and consenting, at the right time, to reward the fortunate wooer. In the majority of the novels the lady stands committed before she enters upon the stage. Julia Mannering, Lucy Bertram, Isabella Wardour, Edith Bellenden, Jeanie Deans, Edith Plantagenet, Amy Robsart, Rowena, Clara Mowbray, Alice Lee, make their début with the engagement diamond, so to speak, already on the proper finger. Of the rest, Die Vernon has no real choice. She must marry an Osbaldistone or take the veil, and Frank is the only possible parti in the lot. Isabella Vere and Rose Bradwardine are mere lay figures; Mary Avenel, Alice Bridgenorth, and Brenda Troil practically accept the fate which follows them from their infancy. This leaves, properly, but five, Catharine Seyton, Margaret Ramsay, Anne of Geierstein, Isabelle of Croye, and Catharine Glover, who seem to undergo a normally conducted love-making. Of these, Margaret Ramsay is hardly a model maiden, as even my brother Contributor will concede, and the countesses of Croye and Geierstein are little more than passive occasions for their lovers to distinguish themselves. Catharine

Seyton and Catharine Glover are almost the sole examples of womanly feeling in the development of the affection. Lilias Redgauntlet is indeed a very nice girl, but what we know of her is entirely through her brother. Alan Fairford and she meet only in the closing scenes, where the interest is entirely in another channel.

The modern novel is vastly different. Where it deals at all with the tender passion, it certainly gives the lady her full share of attention. Not infrequently it displays its best power in antagonizing. the complex and conflicting workings of a woman's heart and mind. Of course, we women are writing the best novels of to-day, and in this we show that we know what we are describing. To borrow a phrase from the other (and sporting) sex, we can give points to the best of them. Mr. James and Mr. Howells are acute observers, though swayed, naturally, by their masculine incapacity of fairness. Even Thackeray — whom no woman can forgive has not wholly missed the mark. Ethel Newcome, Beatrix Esmond, and, in spite of her prudery, Laura Pendennis are not absolutely disagreeable women. I do not like George Eliot's women; I should not care to have any one of them for my sister, still less for my sister-in-law; but they are women through and through. As for Miss Austen, I confess that I have read Emma and Pride and Prejudice once a year since I first made their acquaintance. To say how many times that is would be to betray a secret which only the Census Bureau has a right to ask.

But the point here made is that modern fiction deals less with the aspects of life than with the facts. It may view these facts through a distorted medium, or it may be moved to rebel against some prevailing conventionality. This only the more compels the nice drawing of character. Everything hinges on the point that it is one of ourselves, and not an imaginary impossibility, who is trying conclusions with some part of the decalogue. The question is, How, in view of the unprecedented, is a woman to act without forfeiting her womanliness? Like Rosalind and Viola, the doublet and hose are assumed only as disguise.

In the novel restricted to normal life the only escape from the commonplace is by the most thorough insight and the most dexterous handling. The greater number of

Scott's heroines are not works of high art. He showed what he could do in such characters as the Deans sisters, Minna Troil, Rebecca, Catharine Seyton, and Mary Queen of Scots; but as a rule he reserved his power for other personages in his storytelling. That which he alone did or could do was to make real the surroundings of all eras and times from the Crusades to the Stuart rebellion, so that we feel ourselves to be brought in touch with the actual life of the day.

tion.

Therefore, when my brother Contributor asks of us girls that we emulate these heroines of the past, we think we have a right to ask of him to restore that fairyland of Eld, not as it appears in history, but as it is glorified in the pages of Sir Walter. A Nice Ques- - The case concerns my friend, who is at present suffering too severely to discuss it himself. Indeed, he maintains that it is not a case for discussion at all. If I so much as breathe the word "casuistry," he retorts fiercely, "Common morality!" and then goes on mumbling something about possession being nine points of the law; at which I suspect him of getting off his own argumentative base. But I really think him nearer right when he is off than when he is on, and I am going to argue the matter from the point of view of long possession.

My friend kindly permits me to narrate his story, for which I thank him, as by this means the question can be better understood.

He wrote something, no matter what, - introducing a stanza from a Great Poet, one who not long ago joined the choir invisible. He knew his poem well, had known it from early childhood, and quoted it as he had learned it. The article comes out in print, when he discovers that he is made to appear guilty of a misquotation. He hastens to apprise all his acquaintance that the error is not his; he makes still greater haste to inform the editor of the ignorant carelessness of the 's proofreader. "I surely wrote so and so," says he. To which Mr. Editor responds, "Yes, you did, but the poet wrote thus and thus." Then does my friend, chagrined yet positive, seek his own familiar edition, to find himself in the right; but he is likewise in the wrong, for "the latest, revised and testamentary edition" reads just as the editor had said, "thus and thus." The early line

was rich, resonant, virile, perhaps even a trifle rough, but so harmonizing with the rude, strong music of the rest of the stanza, which is full of forceful consonantal combinations and open-mouthed vowels. The later line is weak, flat, thin, and, without a commentary, senseless.

But this is neither here nor there. Let us suppose that the revision is an improvement. There yet remains the question, Has a poet any right, after a certain period of years has gone by, and his words have become familiar quotations to a whole generation and part of another, has he any right to tamper with his own poems to the extent of altering well-known lines so that the peculiar melody which made them beloved shall be utterly destroyed?

My afflicted friend, in a tone more objectionable than profanity, says No; and, making every allowance for the temporary indisposition of his judgment, I must confess that I think he is correct.

Can there be a more ruthless proceeding than the destruction of a beloved association, particularly when it dates back to one's infancy? And this is what the favorite passages of our poets are to us. The very words and their cadences, apart from their meanings, come to have for us ein Klingen (if I knew a good English word for this, I would use it), which we hold dear as life-memories, and can no more submit to seeing changed than we could submit to a variation in the essential melody of The Last Rose of Summer.

What if Beethoven were to return, and insist upon rewriting the final bars of the Allegretto, eighth symphony, bringing it to a dead, formal stop on the tonic, before sailing forth on the smooth waters of the Minuet? What would the civilized musical world say? This is what it would say: "The eighth symphony is our property now, not yours. Hundreds of thousands of ears have been familiarized with the indeterminate, hemi- demi-semi-quaver flurry which finishes without finishing the eerie exquisiteness of this movement. None of us wish any improvement; we prefer to have it sound just the way it always has sounded."

Yet it would be a far less serious matter to change a musical composition than a poem, for the familiar quotations have passed into proverbs; they have become

ac

incorporated in all literature. Would we not now resent an attempt on the part of Shakespeare to mend his metaphors, anachronisms, or even his geography? We cannot give up that seaport in Bohemia; we have no desire that Lear and the Fool should talk as kings and fools talked cording to the extant records of that time - in the year 800 B. C.; we would favor no proposition to turn Sir Toby and his knightly companion into veritable Illyrians; and we feel that it is far better to take arms against a sea of troubles, difficult as the feat might prove, than to have our most precious possessions taken from us. And that is what it really amounts to when we look into "a latest, revised and testamentary edition" to find lines that were household words gone or altered past recognition. If this sort of thing is permitted, there is no telling where it may stop. We are pretty sure of the dead, the long since dead, though the Spiritualists give us a scare now and then; but it were well to keep a watch upon aged and declining bards. Suppose Lord Tennyson's views to have modified during the last years of his lordship's life, so that to him it should seem only good to be noble, coronets rising in his estimation as being superior to kind hearts. It is then conceivable that he might have sought to amend Lady Clara Vere de Vere in accordance with such views. From one standpoint he would have the right to do so; but would we, his lifelong readers, concede him that right? I trow not. Lesser men may do what they choose, but the Great Poet, by very reason of his greatness, has not this privilege. His words are gifts to mankind, and mankind resents " Indian giving."

But one says, "Would you then deny a poet all chance of bettering his verses? Must there be no revised editions?" "Certainly there must," says my friend, who, though still suffering, acknowledges to some abatement of the agony, "but not after the poems have stood untouched for half a century. By that time they have become the spiritual and æsthetic chyme and chyle of the age; you cannot root them out by reprinting them, any more than you can deprive a man of well-digested nourishment.' "But at least," continues the other, "you are at liberty to read your old edition." Yes," replies the Sufferer, "and so

66

I always mean to; you could n't hire me to read anything else. But if you concede to the Poet the right to alter his poems ad libitum, that permission robs the old editions of his sanction, and, to that extent, of their essential flavor. It is like calling the divine William by the name of Francis; he does not smell so sweet, argue as you may."

At this point my friend walked suddenly away, as if unable longer to dwell upon the painful subject. I watched him enter a bookstore, and followed him. He was buying a certain "latest, revised and testamentary edition."

Color Language.

-I gladly respond to the invitation extended to the "friends of the Club" to "tell their experience respecting color language.

From early childhood I have been impressed with the imaginary colors existing in words, whether spoken or written or printed. In my case it is not only the vowels which sound and show color: each letter of the alphabet has its own hue, so that all the books I read are "illuminated to my eye and mind. The alphabet looks and sounds to me as follows: a, pale yellow; b, dark blue; c, orange; d, black; e, bright red; f, yellow; g, blue; h, dark red; i, blue; j, dark blue; k, dark red; l, sky blue; m, yellow; n, pale yellow; o, white; p, red; q, gray; r, brown; s, yellow; t, blue; u, pale blue; v, red; w, gray; x, black; y, pale yellow; z, red.

The numerals also offer the same suggestions. 1 is black; 2, dark red; 3, pink ; 4, pale yellow; 5, orange; 6, bright red ; 7, purple; 8, gray; 9, dark blue; 0, white. These colors remain the same in all combinations of numbers. Green is not suggested by any letter or figure.

Words, when read rapidly, usually take the color of the first letter, especially if that letter be a capital; but the other letters modify the shade, and upon examination each hue asserts itself fully. Thus, for instance, Charles and Caroline are both yellow words; but Charles is a much deeper yellow than Caroline, because its second letter is dark, while in the other name the second letter is very pale.

With me, words possess not only imaginary color, but also imaginary form, suggesting things quite different from the ideas comprised in their real meaning. Thus, the name Arthur presents a beautiful boy with

long yellow curls; the word teach, in all its modifications, shows an ugly face with conspicuous teeth; technical is a cross-eyed person; biography, an exceedingly corpulent man, etc. Truth is a face with a harelip; study, a face with a very large, rounded nose; instruction, a man walking in a pompous manner. These last three words, taken at random from a printed page now lying open before me, give a clue to the association of ideas which produces the impression. The word truth suggests a lisp, and a harelip always causes indistinct speech; the letter u in study is the middle letter, and is not unlike a nose in shape, especially if it be a capital u. Instruction contains the word

street.

A German poetess told me, recently, that the vowels have color to her, while the consonants have form, some suggesting a camel, others an elephant, others a giraffe, etc.

The Popular Science Monthly for February, 1893, contains an elaborate article on Number Forms which bears upon this subject, such demonstrations being therein considered as affording useful data for further psychic discoveries.

In my opinion, this tendency, which seems in every case to show itself in early childhood, is merely an indication of the artistic temperament (active imagination and creative power), and it probably exists in various degrees in the minds of many persons who either are not in the habit of examining their mental processes, or do not think it worth while to record and publish these apparently motiveless intuitions.

Judging from my own experience, I am disposed to look upon such fancies as the immature products of an exuberant imagination which has not yet been trained for perfected work. The habit once formed may continue through life; but it is less heeded as thought expands, and in many recorded instances is entirely laid aside in mature years.

I still retain my childish idea respecting printed characters; but I do not stop to think about it, now that I can gratify my intense love of color and form in the practice of artistic painting.

Beside the I am sitting upon the upland Marsh. bank of a narrow winding creek. Before me is a sea of grass, brown and green of many shades. To the north the marsh is bounded by live-oak woods, a

line with numberless indentations, -beyond which runs the Matanzas River, as I know by the passing and repassing of sails behind the trees. Eastward are sand-hills, dazzling white in the sun, with a ragged green fringe along their tops. Then comes a stretch of the open sea, and then, more to the south, St. Anastasia Island, with its tall black-and-white lighthouse and the cluster of lower buildings at its base. Small sailboats, and now and then a tiny steamer, pass up and down the river to and from St. Augustine.

A delicious south wind is blowing (it is the 15th of February), and I sit in the shade of a cedar-tree and enjoy the air and the scene. A contrast, this, to a man fresh from the depths of a Massachusetts winter. .

As I approached the creek, a single spotted sandpiper was teetering along the edge of the water, and the next moment a big blue heron rose just beyond him and went flapping away to the middle of the marsh. Now, an hour afterward, he is still standing there, towering above the tall grass. Once when I turned that way I saw, as I thought, a stake, and then something moved upon it, a bird of some kind. And what an enormous beak! I raised my field-glass. It was the heron. His body was the post, and his head was the bird. Meanwhile, the sandpiper has stolen away, I know not when or where. He must have omitted the tweet, tweet, with which ordinarily he signalizes his flight. He is the first of his kind that I have seen during my brief stay in these parts.

Now a multitude of crows pass over; fish crows, I think they must be, from their small size and their strange, ridiculous voices. And now a second great blue heron comes in sight, and keeps on over the marsh and over the live-oak wood, on his way to the San Sebastian marshes, or some point still more remote. A fine show he makes, with his wide expanse of wing, and his feet drawn up and standing out behind him. Next a marsh hawk in brown plumage comes skimming over the grass. This way and that he swerves in ever graceful lines. For one to whom ease and grace come by nature, even the chase of meadow mice is an act of beauty, while another goes awkwardly though in pursuit of a goddess.

Several times I have noticed a kingfisher hovering above the grass (so it looks, but

no doubt he is over an arm of the creek), striking the air with quick strokes, and keeping his head pointed downward, after the manner of a tern. Then he disappeared while I was looking at something else. Now I remark him sitting motionless upon the top of a post in the midst of the marsh.

A third blue heron appears, and he too flies over without stopping. Number One still keeps his place; through the glass I can see him dressing his feathers with his clumsy beak. The lively strain of a whiteeyed vireo, pertest of songsters, comes to me from somewhere on my right, and the chipping of myrtle warblers is all but incessant. I look up from my paper to see a turkey buzzard sailing majestically northwård. I watch him till he fades in the distance. Not once does he flap his wings, but sails and sails, going with the wind, yet turning again and again to rise against it, and passing onward all the while in beautiful circles. He too, scavenger though he is, has a genius for being graceful. One might almost be willing to be a buzzard, to fly like that!

The kingfisher and the heron are still at their posts. An exquisite yellow butterfly, of a sort strange to my Yankee eyes, flits past, followed by a red admiral. The marsh hawk is on the wing again, and while looking at him I descry a second hawk, too far away to be made out. Now the air behind me is dark with crows, - a hundred or two, at least, circling over the low cedars. Some motive they have for all their clamor, but it passes my owlish wisdom to guess what it can be. A fourth blue heron appears, and drops into the grass out of sight. Between my feet is a single blossom of the yellow oxalis, the only flower to be seen; and very pretty it is, each petal with an orange spot at the base.

The

Another buzzard, another marsh hawk, another yellow butterfly, and then a smaller one, darker, almost orange. It passes too quickly over the creek and away. marsh hawk comes nearer, and I see the strong yellow tinge of his plumage, especially underneath. He will grow handsomer as he grows older. A pity the same could not be true of men.

Behind me are sharp cries of titlarks. From the direction of the river come frequent reports of guns. Somebody is doing his best to be happy! All at once I prick up my ears. From the grass

just across the creek rises the brief, hurried song of a long-billed marsh wren. So he is in Florida, is he? Already I have heard confused noises which I feel sure are the work of rails of some kind. No doubt there is abundant life concealed in those acres on acres of close grass.

The heron and the kingfisher are still quiet. Their morning hunt was successful, and for to-day Fate cannot harm them. A buzzard, with nervous, rustling beats, goes directly above the low cedar under which I am resting.

At last, after a siesta of two hours, the heron has changed his place. I looked up just in season to see him sweeping over the grass, into which he dropped the next instant. The tide is falling. The distant sand-hills are winking in the heat, but the breeze is deliciously cool, the very perfection of temperature, if a man is to sit still in the shade. It is eleven o'clock. I have a mile to go in the hot sun, and turn away. But first I sweep the line once more with my glass. Yonder to the south are two more blue herons standing in the grass. Perhaps there are more still. I sweep the line. Yes, far, far away I can see four heads in a row. Heads and necks rise above the grass. But so far away! Are they birds, or only posts made alive by my imagination? I look again. I believe I was deceived. They are nothing but stakes. See how in a row they stand. I smile at myself. Just then one of them moves, and another is pulled down suddenly into the grass. I smile again. "Ten great blue herons," I say to myself.

All this has detained me, and meantime the kingfisher has taken wing and gone noisily up the creek. The marsh hawk appears once more. A killdeer's sharp, rasping note -a familiar sound in St. Augustine comes from I know not where. procession of more than twenty black vultures passes over my head. I can see their feet drawn up under them. My own I must use in plodding homeward.

Idols of the Tribe.

A

Prominent among the fallacies "having their foundation in human nature itself" is the belief that, when any uncommon event has happened, a recurrence of it becomes more remote or improbable. A man has two narrow escapes from being struck by lightning; forthwith he imagines that he is in less danger than his neighbors from thunder