to leave a male heir, and that heir, known as Edward, Earl of Warwick, was beheaded in the Tower in 1499, where, fifty years later, the only daughter of the house, the aged and unfortunate Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, suffered the same penalty as her brother. In 1789 a fourth effort was made to resuscitate the title in the person of the third son of George III., afterwards William IV., who died without legitimate issue. In 1890, one hundred years later, the title was renewed for the last time in the person of the young prince, who died two years later, on the very eve of his marriage.

But the superstitious noted that the death of Prince Albert Victor on a Thursday broke a remarkable spell or curse which had hung over the present royal family of England for more than a century and three-quarters,-bringing about the death of all the prominent members of that family on Saturdays. William III. died Saturday, March 18, 1702; Queen Anne died Saturday, August 1, 1714; George I. died Saturday, June 10, 1727; George II. died Saturday, October 25, 1760; George III. died Saturday, January 29, 1820; George IV. died Saturday, June 26, 1830; the Duchess of Kent died Saturday, March 16, 1861; the Prince Consort, husband of Queen Victoria and grandfather of the recent deceased Prince Albert Victor, died Saturday, December 14, 1861; Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, Victoria's second daughter, and sister of Albert, died Saturday, December 14, 1878. shadows which overhung the late prince's life are said to have been darkened by a superstitious fear which caused him to keep close in-doors on Saturdays.

The

There is not a more curious coincidence than that concerning Richard Wagner, the composer, and his famous 13's. To begin with, it takes 13 letters to spell Richard Wagner. He was born in 1813. Add the figures together, thus, 1-8-1-3, and you have another 13. The letters in his name and the sum of the figures in the year of his birth equal twice 13. He composed exactly 13 great works, and always declared that he "set his head" on his after-career on the 13th of the month. "Tanhäuser" was completed on April 13, 1845; it was first performed at Paris, March 13, 1861. He left Bayreuth September 13, 1861. September is the ninth month; write 9-13 and add the three figures together, thus, 9-1-3, and you have 13. Finally, he died on February 13, 1883.

The attention of many earnest students has been directed towards collecting instances of famous men having died on the anniversary of their birth. First of all comes Moses, who, according to the Talmud, "died on the seventh day of Adar, the same day of the same month on which he was born, his age being exactly one hundred and twenty years." Shakespeare was born April 23, 1564, and died April 23, 1616. Raphael, the artist, was born on Good Friday, 1483, and died on Good Friday, 1520, aged thirty-seven. As Good Friday is a movable feast, it does not follow that the day of the month was identical in each case, but the coincidence has excited much astonishment. Sir Thomas Browne, author of "Religio Medici," was born October 19, 1605; died October 19, 1682. Timothy Swan, composer, was born July 23, 1758; died July 23, 1842. General McLean Taylor, a nephew of President Taylor, was born November 21, 1828; died November 21, 1875. St. John of God, one of the most eminent of the Portuguese saints, and founder of the Order of Charity, was born March 8, 1495; died March 8, 1550. John Sobieski, the king of Poland who delivered Vienna from the Turks, was born June 17, 1629; died June 17, 1696.

Attention has been drawn to the fact that M, which is the first letter of Melody and Music, is also the initial in the names of a great number of composers, ancient and modern: Marcello, Monsigny, Mehul, Mozart, Martini, Mercadante, Meyerbeer, Malibran, Mayseder, Mine, Musard, Mendelssohn, Moscheles, etc.

Cold Day. The humorous bit of self-appreciatory slang, "It's a cold day when I get left," meaning much the same thing as "You'll have to get up very early in the morning to get the best of me,"-this recent Americanism probably sprang from the game of "freeze-out" poker. Each player buys a certain stipulated amount of chips, and when he loses them can buy no more, but is "frozen," or, more idiomatically, "froze out," and so the game continues till one man has all the chips. The "froze-outs" would naturally be the subject of facetious inquiry as to the state of the thermometer, and the winner's glee would take some such form as this: "It may be a cold day for you fellows, but it would have to be a good deal colder before I get left." A correspondent of the American Notes and Queries, vol. ii. p. 213, strives, however, to give the phrase an old English origin. In the ballad of "Gil Morice" he finds these lines:

Yes, I will gae your blacke errand,

Though it be to your cost;

Sen ye by me will nae be warned,
In it ye sall find frost.

This is ingenious, but has no other merit.

The sun is the great source of light and heat for our earth. If the sun were to go somewhere for a few weeks for relaxation and rest, it would be a cold day for us. The moon, too, would be useless, for she is largely dependent on the sun. Animal life would soon cease, and real estate would become depressed in price.-BILL NYE: Remarks.

Cold Shoulder, To turn the, to treat one with hauteur, to cut. The phrase seems to have been first used in "The Antiquary" (1816), ch. xxxiii. : "The countess's dislike didna gang farther at first than just showing o' the cauld shoulder." In the glossary Scott explains it as meaning "to appear cold and reserved." In an appreciative article on this subject the Saturday Review says, "The graceful use of the cold shoulder fairly deserves to be ranked among the fine arts; while, on the contrary, nothing could be more ungainly than its awkward application. When a tactless man meets the object of his detestation he looks nervously self-conscious, and seems undecided whether to cut or merely slight his enemy. After blushing in a foolish manner, he gives an awkward bow, which, intended to be graceful, is in reality ludicrously clumsy. A casual observer might attribute his singular behavior to shyness rather than hatred. The most successful hand at cold-shouldering is the heartless and listless man, who can put his victim completely out of his mind, and forget his presence, if not his existence, as soon as he has accorded him the coldest of recognitions. Without insinuating that women are more heartless and listless than men, we may observe that they are far greater adepts in this art than the opposite Most men seem more or less ill at ease when they know that they are giving pain to others, but this is by no means invariably the case with women. We might even go so far as to say that ladies sometimes too evidently derive satisfaction from the annoyance of others. They understand the secret of freezing others while preserving their own caloric; but men cannot obtain a like result without first becoming icicles themselves. The lords of the creation, moreover, when wishing to appear dignified, are apt to assume an air of vacant stupidity. They are, in fact, bad actors, and when a man would like to knock another down, he finds it an effort to treat him with cold politeness."-November 16, 1878.

sex.

Collaboration, partnership in literature, the coming together of two or more minds in the production of a single work. The thing is at least as old as the Elizabethan drama, when nearly all the leaders worked more or less in partnership, and Shakespeare himself did not disdain to revamp the work of an inferior hand to fit it for the stage. Racine, Corneille, and Molière in France, Cervantes, Calderon, and Lope de Vega in Spain, all had partners

in some one or more of their numerous productions. Beaumont and Fletcher's is the earliest instance of a partnership that endured for a lengthy period and during all that period produced notable work. One cannot say that conglomerate authorship has usually been a success. It might, indeed, appear

that a richer orchestration would result from an harmonious union of several good instruments; but experience seems to teach that the French journalist was right who said that collaboration was never successful save when it was not collaboration. What he meant was that one of the collaborators should do all the work, the other only listen and advise. Two friends live together and pass their evenings side by side in front of a common hearth, a cup of coffee beside them, a cigar between their teeth. One has a fertile_imagination, the other has made a study of the stage and stage business. Conversation falls upon the subject of a drama. One composes and writes, the other commends or blames, corrects, gives ideas, throws new light on the subject. That is the ideal collaboration.

Take the case of Labiche. He is a farmer who takes more pride in his carefully-husbanded crops than in the wild oats he has sown on the stage. His happiest hours are spent on his farm at La Solange, where he practises patriarchal hospitality. When he determines to write a vaudeville, his collaborator is summoned to this rural paradise. For several evenings the plot of the proposed play is discussed at table. The art of the collaborator consists in making Labiche talk, in exciting him, in goading him on. Occasionally, of course, he must edge in a reply, furnish a metaphorical spring-board for his wit, his invention, his esprit. Labiche abandons himself to his natural genius. He invents scenes and incidents; he makes bons-mots. Scene first is complete before the appearance of the entrées. When the cheese arrives the act is finished. The collaborator goes up-stairs to his room, writes down all he has heard, and arranges it in orderly sequence. Next day, just before dinner, perhaps with the preparatory glass of absinthe, he reads it all over. Labiche suggests improvements. After soup has been served, he begins again. In a few days the vaudeville is practically finished: the authors leave to the friction of rehearsals the smoothing of all rough edges.

Or there is Alexandre Dumas fils. He has no ostensible collaborator. But it is said of him that in very fact he has as many collaborators as he has friends. When a comedy is on the stocks, he takes twenty or thirty people into his confidence, makes them familiar with the scene that embarrasses him, the situation which seems inextricable, leads everybody he meets to talk about it, listens to fresh ideas, and turns them to account.

Not unlike this method is the one proposed by Mr. Besant, the surviving partner of the famous firm of Besant and Rice. He recommends it very strongly to every young literary workman.

I would advise him to find among his friends-cousins, sisters-a girl, intelligent, sympathetic, and quick; a girl who will lend him her ear, listen to his plot, and discuss his characters. She should be a girl of quick imagination, who does not, or cannot, write: there are many such girls. When he has confided to her his characters all in the rough, with the part they have to play all in the rough, he may reckon on presently getting all back again, but advanced. Woman does not create, but she receives, moulds, and develops. The figures will go back to their creator distinct and clear, no longer shivering unclothed, but made up and dressed for the stage. Merely by talking with this girl, everything that was chaotic has fallen into order; the characters, dim and shapeless, have become alive, full-grown, articulate. As in every-day life, so in imaginative work, woman is man's best partner,-the most generous, the least exacting, the most certain never to quarrel over her share of the work, her share of the glory, her share of the pay.

It is noteworthy that Bulwer Lytton recommends substantially the same plan, only he advises that the woman should be several years older than the man, to preclude the possibility of their falling in love. Love he evidently looks upon as the death of collaboration.

Now, as Mr. Besant was himself a member of a successful partnership, his opinions are worth listening to. Let us hear further from him. He believes that, the presentment of the story must seem to be by one man. No one would listen to two men telling it together. "We must hear, or think we hear, one voice." Therefore one man must finally revise, or even write, the whole work. And he conceives that the rock on which literary partnership gets wrecked is that each member conceives he must write as much as the other.

For instance, there was sent to me the other day a manuscript novel written in partnership, with the usual request that I would read it and give an opinion on it,-in other words, sacrifice a whole day to the task of making two life-long enemies. The authors of this work (which has not yet seen the light) had arranged their fable and their characters. But unfortunately they made the great mistake of writing it in alternate chapters. Now, the style of one was not in the least like the style of the other; the effect was that of two men taking turns to tell the same story, each in his own way and from his own point of view. Nothing could have been more grotesque, nothing more ineffective. Any one of the characters talked with two voices and two brains; the thing was a horrid nightmare.

One of the two, then, I repeat, not necessarily always the same one,-must have the revision of the work or the writing of the work.

Can, then, the other man, who has contributed only rough draughts here and there, or even perhaps nothing at all in writing, be called a collaborator? Most certainly he can. Indeed, Mr. Besant explodes into hearty laughter at the general notion of collaboration,-that it is carried on by each man contributing every other word, every other page, or every other chapter.

Doctors disagree, why not literary men? Mr. Justin McCarthy and Mrs. Campbell Praed use precisely the method scorned by Mr. Besant. Mrs. Praed has herself told how this is done: "We talk the matter over first, and make a scheme. Then we sketch out chapter by chapter. I write the bones of the chapters I think I can do the most easily, and Mr. McCarthy does the same. Every sentence is joint work. I really don't know which is which, and now I wouldn't work in any other way. You see, our lives are so entirely different that we look at things differently." Mr. McCarthy has always believed that two heads were better than one in novel-writing, provided the two heads represented the two sexes. There's a man's point of view and a woman's point of view, and, in studying humanity, he contends that, to get at nature, both views should be taken.

Scribe's method, as explained to Herr von Pulitz in an interview, was a combination of all the others. Here is how a partnership vaudeville is produced: "One author brings the idea, and the scaffolding of the piece (charpente) is then built up by the authors in common, after which the various scenes are distributed among them according to their special qualifications. Often the whole play is written by one author, who afterwards makes alterations in it according to the suggestions of his collaborator. It also frequently happens that the songs in the piece are written by a third man, who has nothing to do with the plot or the dialogue." It is much more difficult, Scribe went on to explain, for two or more authors to join in writing a longer piece. In such cases they have to consult together about the whole of the play, down to the smallest details. When an agreement is arrived at, the execution of the idea comparatively easy, although it often happens that in the writing of a play things occur which render it necessary to alter the whole plan of the piece. This was the case in writing the "Contes de la Reine de Navarre." 'My idea was to make the piece a graceful comedy; but my assistant, Legouvé, up a very serious tone in the second act, and in writing the fifth act he gave the play a tragical catastrophe, which was quite contrary to our agreement. I protested, but we could not agree. We then decided each to write a fifth act and read them to the actors, who would determine by a majority of votes which of the two should be accepted. The actors voted almost unani

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mously in my favor, and my friend Legouvé, far from showing any ill humor at the decision, readily assisted me in completing the piece."

Scribe was reproached unfairly-for most of his best plays were written alone-with an inability to stand without help, and when he was received into the French Academy a malicious wit suggested, when he took his seat, that the thirty-nine other chairs ought to be given up to his collaborators. But Scribe was proud of his partnerships, and dedicated the collected edition of his plays to his collaborators.

Among French novelists the most successful instance of a long-continued partnership is that between Erckmann and Chatrian,-a partnership which lasted more than thirty years, and then, just before the death of M. Chatrian, was suddenly and sadly ruptured. They worked much on the plan advocated by Mr. Besant. An outline was arranged. Each was permitted to write all that he thought or felt; but his companion afterwards struck out and rewrote at will. Although the first collaborator was then given an opportunity for further correction or change, he was to some extent bound not to introduce again those things which had been rejected from the first draught.

The most successful single novel ever produced by collaboration was "La Croix de Berny," in which Madame de Girardin, Gautier, Sandeau, and Joseph Méry all took a hand. individuality of each, called for its distinct expression. For the story is cast Their plan was one which, instead of merging the in the form of letters between the four characters. Each character was

assumed by some one writer. Gautier and Madame de Girardin, as might be expected, bore off the honors, but the other rôles were well carried out, and the whole affair, while unfolding a situation of strong interest and passion, never loses the engaging element of personality. A similar experiment made in England by nine Englishwomen, including Charlotte M. Yonge, Frances M. Peard, and Christabel Roe Coleridge, proved a failure. Here, also, the novel was cast in epistolary form, and the nineteen characters were divided among the nine authors. But the result is only that we meet with nineteen very dull people.

In placing the Erckmann-Chatrian firm at the head of all French partnerships for the production of fiction, we have not forgotten the Goncourts, who were almost their equals, nor the great establishment founded by Alexander Dumas the elder. But Dumas's shop was, properly speaking, not a firm. He had no partners, but only clerks and assistants. He might not have been able to carry on the immense business he transacted without the aid of these auxiliaries, but the creative hand and brain are always his. Jules Janin, a severe critic on other points, acknowledges so much. "show the mark of the lion's paw, and, good, bad, and indifferent, bear "Dumas's books," says Janin, unmistakable evidences of having issued from the smoky flame of Alexander Dumas." Who does not remember Thackeray's charming defence of his favorite novelist ?

They say that all the works bearing Dumas's name are not written by him. Well? Does not the chief cook have aides under him? Had not Lawrence assistants for his backgrounds? For myself, being also du métier, I conDid not Rubens's pupils paint on his canvases? fess I would often like to have a competent, respectable, and rapid clerk for the business part of my novels; and on his arrival, at eleven o'clock, would say, the Archbishop must die this morning in about five pages. Turn to article Dropsy' (or what you will) in Encyclopædia. Take care there are no medical blunders in his death. "Mr. Jones, if you please, Group his daughters, physicians, and chaplains round him. In Wales's 'London,' letter B, third shelf, you will find an account of Lambeth, and some prints of the place. Color in with local coloring. The daughter will come down, and speak to her lover in his wherry at Lambeth stairs," etc., etc. Jones (an intelligent young man) examines the medical, historical, topographical books necessary; his chief points out to him in Jeremy Taylor (fol., London, MDCLV.) a few remarks, such as might befit a dear old archbishop departing this life. When I come back to dress for dinner, the Archbishop is dead on my table in five pages; medicine, topography, theology, all right; and Jones has gone home to his family some hours. Sir Chris