close application to her art and the steam heat in the alcoves. She must have rest.

The poor, tired, perplexed girl, badgered with conflicting emotions, but resolved at last to escape from temptation that she could not resist effectually, received this verdict eagerly. She would go home; and the doctor agreed that change of scene was what she wanted. Her life in town was too dull. Harry Lowder called that evening, but Henrietta had taken the precaution to be sick abed. At eight o'clock the next morning she was on the Harlem train.

"You see, I brought her home," said Periwinkle to her grandmother, in confidence. "I didn't like Cousin John's folks. They wasn't glad to see me; and I didn't like Henrietta's settin' up till midnight with a young man. He called me a dwoll little thing. I don't think he's nice. He ain't nice and polite like Wob Wiley."

But Henrietta, who had blossomed out into something quite different from the Henrietta of other times, made no explanation except that she was sick. For a week she took little interest in anything, ate but little, and went round in a dazed way, resuming her old cares and work about the house as though she had never given them up. Somehow she seemed a fine lady in the dignity of manner and self-possession that she had taken on with characteristic quickness of apprehension and imitation; and Mrs. Newton felt as though the housework were in some sort unsuited to her. Even her father looked at her with a sort of respect, and forbore to chide her as had been his wont.

But when a week had passed she suddenly got out her material and began to draw. Periwinkle was set up first for a model, then her father and mother, and then the. dog as he lay sleeping before the fire had his portrait taken, to Periwinkle's delight. So persistent was her ambitious industry that every living thing on the place came in for a sketch. But Periwinkle was the favorite. Rob Riley came home for July and August, the work in the yard being dull. He kept aloof from Henrietta and she nodded to him with a severe and almost disdainful air that made him wretched. After three

or four weeks of this coolness during which Henrietta got a reputation for pride in the whole country, Rob grew desperate. What did he care for the "stuck up" girl. He would have it out anyhow, the next time he had a chance. They met one day on the little bridge that crossed the brook near the school-house, Henrietta nodded a bare recognition.

"You didn't treat me that way once, Henrietta. What's the matter? Have I done anything wrong? Can't you be friendly?" 'Why don't you be friendly?" said the girl looking down.

66

"But you had other young men come to see you in town and-you know I couldn't." "I don't live in town now."

"What made you come home?"

"If I'd wanted to I might have staid there and had 'other young men' as you call them, coming to see me yet." Rob gasped but said nothing.

"Are you going over to Mr. Brown's?" asked Henrietta to break the awkward silence that ensued, at the same time moving toward home.

"Well-no," said Rob, "I think I'm going to your house, if you've no objection," and he laughed, a foolish little laugh.

"Periwinkle was asking about you this morning," said Henrietta evasively as they walked on toward Mr. Newton's.

Having once fallen into the old habit of going to Mr. Newton's, Rob could never get out of the way of walking down that lane. Just to see how Henrietta got on with her drawing, as he said, he went there every evening. He confided to Henrietta that he had shown such proficiency in "figures "

in the night school that he was to have a place in a civil engineer's office when he returned to the city, in the fall. It wasn't much of a place-the salary was very small, but it gave him opportunity to study and a chance of being something some day. And Rob resolved to be something some day.

And Henrietta went on with her drawing but without ever saying anything about a return to Cousin John's. And indeed she never did go back to Cousin John's from that day to this. She spent three years in Weston. If they were tedious years she said nothing about them. Rob came home on Christmas and for a week in summer. Once in a long time he would run up the Harlem road on Saturday evening. These were white Sundays when Rob was at home, for then he and Henrietta went to meeting together, and sat on the porch in the afternoons while Rob told her how he expected to be somebody some day.

But being somebody is hard work and slow for most of us, as Rob Riley found out. His salary was not increased very fast, but he made up for that by steadily increasing his knowledge and his value to the office. For being somebody means being something in oneself. You can't always hide a man under a bushel if he is a man with real light in him.

It wasn't till last year that Henrietta returned to the city. She is a student now in oil-painting. But she doesn't live at Cousin John's. Nor indeed does she dwell in a very fashionable street, if I must confess it. There are many old houses in New York that have been abandoned by their owners because of the up-town movement and the west-side movement of fashion. These houses are as quaint in their antique interiors as a bric-a-brac cabinet. In an upper. floor in one of these subdivided houses Rob Riley and his wife, Henrietta, have two oldfashioned rooms-the front room is large and airy with a carved mantel-piece, the back room small and cosy. The furniture is rather plain and scant for Rob has not

yet got to be a great engineer working on his own account. At present he is one of those little fish whom the big fish are made to eat-an obscure man whose brains are carried up to the credit of his chief. But he will be something some day. And for that matter, the rooms in the old Dutch mansion in De Witt Place are quite good enough for two stout-hearted young people who are happy. The walls are well ornamented with pictures from Henrietta's own brush and pencil. These are not framed but tacked up wherever the light is good. The best of them is a chubby little girl with a droll-serious air, clad in an old-fashioned hood and muffled in cloaks and shawls. It is a portrait of Periwinkle as she stood that night on Cousin John's steps when she had come down to see about Henrietta. The larger Periwinkle of to-day comes down to see about these people now and then, and when she comes there is always plenty of fun between her and Rob and the two kittens.

Henrietta is just finishing a picture called "The Culprit," which she hopes will be successful. It represents a girl in a country school arraigned for drawing pictures on a slate. Rob, at least, thinks it very fine, but he is not a harsh critic of anything that Henrietta makes.

Rob was talking one evening as usual about the time when he shall come to be somebody. But Henrietta said: "O! Rob, things are nice enough as they are. I don't believe we'd be any happier in a house as fine as Cousin John's. Let's have a good time as we go along and not mind about being somebody. But, Rob, I do wish somebody'd buy this picture and then we could have something to set off this room a little. Don't you think a sofa would be nice?"

And then she looked at him and said: "You dear, good old Rob, you!" though why she should call him old, or what connection this remark had with the previous conversation I do not know.

Edward Eggleston.

ONCE there was a book. It was a most wonderful book. It contained history, and biography, and poetry, and letters, and essays, and a drama-in short, it was many books in one. I think it was the greatest and best book that ever was written.

Scarcely had this book come into general notice, when a great conspiracy against its life was formed. This conspiracy involved men of various nationalities, and has extended through several centuries. Strange to say, the conspirators were mostly scholars, and large numbers of them were apparently upright and conscientious men, from whom you would have expected nothing but the fairest dealing toward their fellow men, or toward any theory or doctrine or publication, no matter how much they might be opposed to it, or how pernicious they might believe it to be.

A few of the more violent conspirators wanted to suppress the book by burning every copy of it that could be reached, and to some extent they carried out this plan. But that was a gross and ineffectually process, compared with the one adopted by the great majority. These, while professing to be friendly to the book, to hold it in the highest esteem, and to desire that all men should become acquainted with it, went to work to prevent the reading of it by making it unreadable. To this end they expended a vast amount of ingenuity, and the success which has attended their efforts is one of the saddest calamities that ever befell mankind. One of the conspirators went through the entire book, and broke it into little paragraphs, from one to ten lines long, often making the break where there was no more division than a comma; and then these little paragraphs were ostentatiously numbered, giving it, to an exaggerated degree, the repulsive appearance of a school-reader. With a very few recent exceptions, this preposterous arrangement has been perpetuated in every edition for three hundred years; and even in the exceptional ones it is indicated by figures in the margin, so strong is the power of precedent, though it be manifestly wrong.

The conspirators then caused a large number of the words, for no sufficient reason, to be printed in italics, so that nearly every page is spotted and defaced with them. Next they plowed a lane down through the middle of each page, and filled it with microscopic figures and abbreviations, and at the same time peppered the entire text with letters and figures, and daggers, and double daggers, and parallels, and section marks,—all referring to those little eyetrying affairs in the lane. Then they loaded down the noble old book with a ponderous mass of foot-notes, many of them valuable, but many of them the merest truisms; and this gave them an opportunity to pepper the text with more figures and letters, and daggers, and double-daggers, and parallels, and section-marks.

With all this, they passed an unwritten law that the book should always be printed in one volume-a law which has been transgressed in but few instances. But as it contains about as much matter as Macaulay's "History of England," which is generally printed in five volumes, this law makes it necessary either to have the book so large as to be unwieldy, or the type so small that it cannot be read with comfort.

The consequence is what might have been expected. Though more copies of this book have been circulated than of any other, comparatively few people read it so as to become familiar with it, except those who are paid for so doing. It contains some of the most important history ever written; yet there are eager readers of history who know almost nothing about it. One of its contributors was the finest philosophical essayist that ever put pen to paper; yet there are readers of Bacon and Lamb and Montaigne who are wofully ignorant of his writings. There are devourers of poetry who do not know what lyrics are buried here; and play-goers and students of Elizabethan literature who have never perused a page of a certain powerful drama, three thousand years old, because it is secured behind the typographical chevaux-de-frise which I have described. If this seems in

1 The terrific sounds of the dire conflict, being echoed

from the face of one hill to that of another, would produce an effect which might well be denominated rolling.

2 The character of Arthur is one which calls for the highest admiration. The reader can hardly fail to be struck by his bravery, his generosity, and his wisdom. We should all strive to imitate him.

3 The meaning here is, not that Bedivere was lowest in rank of all the knights, and therefore went in

last at dinner, nor that he was last to attach himself

to the cause and the person of Arthur, but that he was the last survivor; all the others were now dead. Happy fate, to die in such a service!

How many readers would Tennyson have, if we had printed his works like that? Nay, how many of those who are already familiar with him would ever look into the book again? No matter how much a book may be talked about, or how many copies of may be in existence, it is virtually dead if nobody reads it enough to be familiar with it.

it

But a greater loss has resulted from this conspiracy than the loss to literature. It happens that from the book which is the victim of it comes the highest instruc

tion to millions of people-their rule of conduct in life, and their hope in death

the history of the origin of our race, and the prophecy of its destiny - the promise of peace and contentment in this life, and of happiness in the hereafter.

Out of all who firmly believe this, those who examine the record for themselves are exceedingly few. They listen to fragmentary readings of the text, and learned disquisitions upon it by scholars and teachers who draw various and sometimes conflicting doctrines therefrom, and they adopt one or another of these without any adequate knowledge of its basis. From its conventional form, the book has come to have a different look to them from any other book. Not only are they unable to read it with pleasure, as they would any other history or essay or poetry, but when they do read it they find it impossible to appreciate it and judge of it as they would of any other printed matter. There is an atmosphere of taboo about it, which has preserved, through numberless editions, in the teeth of the unanimous testimony of scholars, the most manifest errors of copyists and translators.

If one book must be singled out and doomed never to receive decent typographical treatment, it should have been any other, rather than this. I should like to see what would be the effect of giving it a fair chance. I believe it would be read if it were made readable. We ought to have one edition of it without marginal references and without foot-notes-unless in the rare cases where these are absolutely necessary. Where the italicised words are necessary to a complete and idiomatic rendering they should be printed in plain Roman; where not this necessary, they should be dropped. Instead of verses we should have paragraphs, and all figures or other indications of the verses abolished. Conversation should be printed in broken paragraphs, with quotation marks, just as in a novel. Poetry should be printed as poetry. Instead of being crowded into one volume, the book should be in four or five moderate duodecimo volumes, with large type and good paper, so that it could be at once held without tiring the arm and