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"I've brought some friends home with me, Netta. They're standing all this while at the front door. I'll light up. See what you and Maggy can do in the way of supperwhere is Maggy?"

Maggy answered to her name. She came singing and swinging into the kitchen, fresh from a chat with Terry at the side gate.

"Ugh!" she said, with an exaggerated shiver; "it's turnin' foggy an' could."

anxiety to please, that Bartmore made no attempt to conceal his exultation.

"What do you think of my housekeeper, boys ?" he asked more than once.

No need for any such invitations to admiration.

"She wouldn't be your housekeeper, Tom, if I could have coaxed her to be mine." Ned Burwent said this. He was always "Ned" Burwent to his friends. A man

But Annetta was asking, “Supper for you, grown mellow in experience—fifty, if a day; Tom?" but wearing his gray worldliness as gayly as

"For seven of us, all as hungry as wolves," he wore his gray curled mustache. he answered, rushing away.

And immediately male voices were heard laughing and talking in the hall, Bartmore's louder than any. To his thinking, the expression of hospitable welcome was only possible in a high key and with force of lung.

Such seasons of unexpected entertaining were by no means unknown in the Bartmore house. Annetta did not mind, so long as she was able to provide well for her brother's guests. And to-night, seeing how relieved she felt to have Tom home again, and how much pleasanter company is than loneliness, she threw herself into the thick of the hasty preparations with even greater zeal than ordinary. Fortunately the cupboards were well stored, and she could count upon Maggy's cheerful assistance. Moreover, there stood Dan, his continuing presence a silent offer of service.

Maggy having rekindled the fire, Annetta rolled up her sleeves, and put her light heart into the daintiest of tea-biscuit. A little later she set the table, laying plates for eight, and bringing forth her best and brightest in damask, cut-glass, and majolica. Besides, there were two or three large pieces of silver, presents to her brother from as many lodges, and duly engraved. While the steaks broiled under Maggy's earnest supervision, Annetta ran to her room to put a few hasty touches to her toilet; then, roused by work and excitement, presented herself in the parlor.

It was quite nine o'clock when they all gathered with the gayest informality about the table. Annetta sat opposite her brother, doing her little part with so becoming an

Next him sat Tony Shaw, a rosy and engaging blonde youth of forty-five or so. He had deserted his eighteen-year-old bride, their honey-moon not yet over, for this convivial evening.

"A reg'lar ol'-timer, Miss Netta," he reiterated again and again, with thick-tongued jollity, during the progress of the meal. "Tom didn't shake me when he was married, an' I ain't goin' t'shake Tom!"

And as often as this declaration was made, Shaw's vis-a-vis would say glibly, "O no; Tony never shakes anything."

Why everybody should laugh at thisShaw even to tears-Annetta could not imagine, although she smiled contagiously.

Mr. Shaw's vis-a-vis was named Leavitt, also a blonde, but spare and wrinkled; a deep drinker, yet never seen of mortal eyes the worse for liquor. Frequently addressing women in language highly poetical, his manner was ever the briskest of prose.

Young Bell, her brother's clerk, or agent, sat upon Annetta's right; aged twenty-two, half delirious with the old wine of life drunk in his employer's jolly company, and madly in love with Annetta, whenever chance gave him an hour of her presence.

Opposite Bell, Dr. Bernard. Of a time. when this name had not been familiar in her ears, Annetta had no recollection. Pale as a delicate girl was he, with a drooping head, a low voice, large, fair, professional hands, and unobtrusive ways of making himself agreeable. There was the most touching gallantry, Annetta thought, in his fashion of passing tea-cups and the sugar-bowl, and of

seeing that her plate was well supplied, while all the rest were eagerly talking and eating.

The sixth guest Annetta had never before "My friend, Frank Treston "-so ran Bartmore's introduction, warmly fraternal in tone and in manner. Was he interesting? Perhaps, merely as a stranger whom Annetta wished to see at his ease. He was as pale, perhaps, as Dr. Bernard, but with a clearer pallor, and with a bolder cast of features. Were his eyes blue? Annetta found them turbid after studying those marvelously liquid orbs of Dan's.

This mental comparison occurred to her just as young Bell, taking the cream-pitcher from her hand, was silently imploring some interchange of sentiment. Her hand trembled. Bell acknowledged this show of feeling with adoring visual promptitude. Annetta smiled absently. Rodney Bell's love-making always amused her so. She turned her head away. She trembled still. She asked herself,

"What is the matter?" That sharp sense of uneasiness had surely come with Dan's name. A pause of reflection; then enlightenment. The letter-Dan's letter. Had he not begged permission to speak out what was in his heart?

Annetta remembered nothing but work and bustle after Tom's entrance. Where was Dan's letter now, exposed to whose eye, to what sure misinterpretation? Should Maggy find and read-Maggy could read— the camp would be mad with gossip to-morrow.

That might mean another and inconceivably more trying scene with Tom. But now Tom was robustly claiming her immediate attention, calling :

Sis, these are, without exception, the finest thing in biscuits I ever ate." And Tony Shaw, oozing smiling assent from every pore, was crying:

"I won' go home t'night, Miss Netta, till you write out the rec'pe for my wife, Mrs. Tony Shaw!"

Evelyn M. Ludlum.

VOL. I.-19.

BEAUTY.

I THOUGHT I knew what beauty was,
When I had watched it in the withering rose,
And seen a sunset; and, betimes, I'd oft
Passed comment on a face--"tis beautiful!"
And painted roses with a vain presumption,
Daring to revel in their glowing color.

When we are young we're apt to be presumptuous,
And think ourselves born with the laurel-wreath
The sage is crowned with when his work is done.
I thought that beauty meant a pleasing form,
Blue, red, and yellow in a combination;

And strove for tones and shades upon my palette.

One day, while leaning o'er a garden wall,
To study the nasturtiums in the shadow,

I heard a song-two voices joined—

A passionate farewell to life and love,

That made the glowing flowers pale and dim,
And all the air aquiver with the cry.

At night, upon the darkened, silent hills,
I saw a mother clasp her dying babe,
And sing a little nursery rhyme, the while
Her heart was breaking, and the blinding tears
Rolled from her swollen eyelids as she smiled.

I walked upon the tide-swept, sandy shore,
And saw them draw up from the ocean depths
A draggled corpse, and watched its cold pale face,
Studying the expression fading from its lips.

And when the red sun set, and the wracked clouds,
Torn by the wind, shadowed across the waters,
I raised my head, and silent gazed around me;
Crushed at my insignificance of passion,
Wondering that I'd never heard before
Nature's great heart-throb in the vast expanse,
And ne'er before knew what was beautiful.

I read a lesson from those pallid faces

I, who shunned sorrow when I searched for beauty.
And when again returned unto my labor,
Each color glowed with new-found, subtle meaning.
I sought no more for unique combination;
Longed but for sympathy with human nature;
Now feeling with that ancient spirit painter
Who prayed and painted kneeling at his canvas.

All that comes from the heart is beautiful,
Though for expression many different tones.
It speaks in to the reverent, kneeling student:
Sorrow and joy, art, tragedy, and song,
Depend not on a superabundant color.

The flower that's passion-crushed, the faded wreath
Withered by kisses in the silent night,

Outvie the rose, the queen of the rose-garden.

The beauty that for us is unattainable,

And but the striving for the beautiful,

Defies the sapient world's analysis,

And draws our heart-beats-while we, awe-struck,
Stand shuddering on the threshold of a temple.

Edmund Warren Russell.

OXFORD UNIVERSITY, AND THE HUMANIST MOVEMENT OF 1498.

THE central fact of Medieval history is the ecclesiastical dominion of Rome, and the consequences, social, scholastic, and political, of that varied and fluctuating supremacy. About this fact, many sided and perpetually interesting, all we can discover regarding politics, literature, and sociology must be clustered. The dark soil of the Middle Ages will reveal precious gems and living roots to the patient seeker. These preparatory centuries were of vital importance, in their crusades, chivalries, and feudalisms, their asceticisms and superstitions, their plagues from the pilgrim hordes of Asia, their peasant uprisings under bundschuh banners, their burgher cities leagued for defense and commerce, their inarticulate aspirations given form in solemn cathedrals and in saintly Madonnas looking down on still worshipers; not least of all in their renaissances, like sun-bursts, of the ancient but deathless classic spirit, long trampled in its birthlands, but finding new homes in Italy, England, and Germany.

Through all these years there has been but one Vatican, as there can be but one Athens, one Venice. But it is not least among the gifts of England to the world that her oldest university has for nearly a thousand years represented, formulated, and expressed great religious thoughts. Next to the ecclesiastical influence of Rome, there is nothing at all comparable to the ecclesiastical influence of Oxford. It is not merely that since the revolt from Rome, and the establishment of the Anglican church, Oxford has produced famous divines and theologians. Unlike Rome, she has done more than to be merely the forefront of one tidal wave. Long before the days of Wyclif, and in each century since, some of the greatest religious movements of England grew from seeds sown in the halls of Oxford; an Oxonian became the statesman of the society of Friends, and founded Pennsylvania;

three other Oxonians were organizers and guiding spirits of the Methodist Church; in the early part of the century the Evangelical movement spread largely from Oxford; there Keble Pusey and Newman's Tractarian and High Church revival began; from thence came much of the inspiration of the later Broad Church doctrines of Arnold, Maurice, Jowett, and Dean Stanley. Viewed from any aspect we choose, stately and reverend Oxford fills a place in history that no other university has kept, and one feels tempted to add, no other university has deserved. The disputants of Paris, Louvain, and Cologne perished with the sacredness of Scotus, Occam, and Aquinas; but Oxford owes its strongest influence to causes entirely disconnected from the "church and state doctrine," and must gain in spiritual dominion as she loses in temporal power. Oxford, Westminster, and the English Parliament are hereditary forces in the lives of the descendants of Englishmen. One represents religion, one law, one the triumph of the people.

It is foolish and useless to consider the aims, methods, and results of the Oxford Humanists of 1498, without understanding the university in which their labors began. Then we shall be prepared to trace to its sources their inspiration, and follow to its culmination their influence. It is a noble story, eloquent with the eloquence of thought and action. English history has no more characteristic and truly national episodes than those connected with the intellectual and religious movements under consideration.

At Oxford Grocyn and Latimer taught Greek, and Wyclif theology, Colet lectured, More and Erasmus found their dearest friends. Let us examine a few leaves from its early history, so as to realize plainly why and how it happened that, though the Pope ruled everywhere, his rule in England at the close of the fifteenth century allowed re

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formers to preach in Oxford with greater impunity than elsewhere. Oxford then had been a part of the national life for over six hundred years. It was in 1872 that University College celebrated its millennial. anniversary, representing, as there seems considerable reason to believe, a school founded by King Alfred. Saxon Oxford may have drawn students from the continent even before the Norman Conquest. Its prosperity is mentioned in documents of the year 1149. In 1201 a statute of King John calls it a "University." Titled ladies, princes, prelates, and royalty itself assisted the growth of Oxford, and established one after another its famous colleges. Beautifully situated in a broad plain of southern England, and protected by streams and extensive marshes, Oxford soon epitomized every national impulse; it was the island-heart of England's island world. It became a vital organism, it breathed and moved, and had a sturdy life from the first. It early showed a reaction from the Paris system, and decidedly led the age in its support of realism and tendencies towards science. By the year 1250 there were, it is said, thirty thousand students there, but this number probably includes the servitors. This sank to fifteen thousand in the reign of Henry III., and to four thousand about the year 1450. After the Reformation five thousand students were enrolled at Oxford.

During the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the records of the colleges of Oxford show that the atmosphere was one of almost continual riot and tumult. Corporate rights were gained by the sheer pluck and desperate hand-to-hand fighting of an academic mob. School fought school, college fought college, Scots and English were literally at swords' points, the students were always ready to unite against the townsmen. But this ferocity (for often men were killed) had a deep political significance. The controversies at work in the University were at work throughout England. Oxford, by force of circumstances, had become a battle ground, and it was so recognized. An old monkish rhyme says:

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The rival parties at Oxford in the days of King John, and for almost two centuries afterwards, nominally represented the North and the South. Sturdy Scot and brawny Northumbrian were the chief strength of the one, as the gentry of Kent and Devon were of the other. The party of the North was finally driven out, and established Edinburgh University. Numbers of times before this, however, it exercised control at Oxford. Of these great parties in Oxford University, one, judging from its acts and leaders, might perhaps be taken as a type of the German or the Saxon mind, the other as a type of the classic, or the Norman mind. The first adopted realism, was inclined towards religious reform, became in after days Lollards, Puritans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers, Dissenters of every sort; in politics they sided with the people; they were to become Whigs, Liberals, Radicals, Socialists, and Free-thinkers. The second were nominalistic and aristocratic, conservative in matters of religion, Catholic till the days of Henry VIII., and Anglican thereafter; in war they were to be cavaliers, in politics tories, conservatists. Of course the line was not sharply drawn. Catholics were in the North, as Dissenters were in the South; but as the resultant of a number of forces, temperament, early training, and associates, nearly every student at Oxford took sides, and carried his alliances and antipathies into his after life, to a degree that is hard for modern graduates of universities to realize. From all these causes the doings of the Oxonians often had a national significance. In 1209 a Papal interdict was laid on the University, because of the uprising of that year, and thousands of students removed to

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