fluttering in her breast. "Old Monsieur more violently. What was coming next? Caron (your new tenant, you know) was Not poor old Dan Meagher's name, she talking to me. He says that Madame-his hoped and prayed. 'poor little one' he calls her"-with a laugh not purely spontaneous "is very ill again. And he says his windmill is broken, and he begs you will have it mended." Neither did Bartmore give the slightest heed to these hasty sentences. Annetta had laid one round arm along his shoulders, and was nervously picking at his thick, short curls. He rose as if utterly oblivious of any embrace. He squared himself on his strong legs, either hand in either pocket, and studied her with glances momentarily harder. The muscles, twitching at the corners of his mouth, gradually dragged his lips upward, causing the tips of a thick, reddishbrown mustache to bristle. "You've been out at the front gate, eh?" These words were uttered less as a query than as a conclusion. Then turning his back upon her as upon a temptation to a quick outburst of temper yet unripe, Bartmore paced down the room. Annetta gave herself heavily, for so buoyant a creature, to the chair her brother had just vacated. Bartmore could not restrain his tongue to the end of his appointed track. He twisted about suddenly, and facing his sister as he strode, "More than that," said he, "it seems to be a custom of yours to plant yourself at the gate between six and seven of mornings." "For heaven's sake, Tom!" cried Annetta, somewhat relieved by so trivial seeming an accusation, "even were what you say true, need you stare at me, and sneer in this cruel fashion?" After the manner of splenetic folk, Bartmore first carped at Annetta's phraseology. "O, yes!" he ejaculated, "sneer and stare, stare and sneer. Then why the devil" -bringing out the objectionable word with a criticism-defying force-"don't you confess that you are gone-dead gone on one of my-my hired men. I tell you it's no secret." Annetta's heart began to flutter again, and "O Tom, Tom!"-she cried within herself, the question she dared not put aloud. “Can I never, never interest myself in anybody but you instantly see something wrong in it?” Did Dan silently adore her? Even the faintest suspicion of such a state of affairs brought exhilaration to a life that at best was very lonely. She always thought of him as "poor old Dan." Yet a mere boy, barely twenty-two, Dan was unique in her eyes. So strong, so simple, so patient. She had been drawn toward him when Johnny died. She had written the sorrowful news home for him to old Ireland. Better than any one else she realized his terrible loneliness. To divert his mind, to waken wholesome ambition in him, she had begun to teach him of long evenings when Tom was away. But Bartmore had almost immediately continued: "Confess that you plant yourself at the front gate every morning-and at noon and at night, for aught I know—just to advertise your damned predilection. Dan Meagher, indeed!" And Dan Meagher in the garden that very instant by Annetta's open invitation! "O Tom!" She gasped this mechanically. Her mind was shaping actions, not words. "I've heard what makes me want to cut his dirty heart out." "You must tell me what you have heard, Tom." Then with uplifted finger, "Wasn't that the door-bell?" Bartmore vouchsafing no answer, Annetta was willing apparently to consider herself mistaken. She whirled half about on the office-chair, her right hand toward the desk. whereon were scattered business blanks, with "Thomas Bartmore, Street Contractor," printed across the top. Of these blanks several had been irregularly scribbled over, the terms and figures used hinting at the making up of a bid for street-work. "After all the favor I have shown the scoundrel"- -so Bartmore-"paying him his day's wages again and again for twaddling his time away in your garden!" Annetta was toying with a lead-pencil. "I'll tell you this-" Bartmore began. He was staring at Annetta as if barely conscious of her identity. that first mooted in his mind, his sister's accountability. "You must have given the 'boys' some reason to gossip?"-searching her through with a pained glance. "How dare they gossip about me?" "That bell did ring, Tom!" she inter- a disagreeable recollection stinging him rupted emphatically. She was twisting a corner torn from one of the scattered blanks in her trembling fingers. "you were at Flynn's last night?" "I spent last evening at Flynn's, nursing little Joe." "That you went is quite enough for me. "I must call Maggy-no; she is probably And you asked Dan to walk with you?" dishing up breakfast." She herself ran, dreading to hear Tom following. The front-door key moved obstinately in the lock. The door stuck. It seemed an age before she could pull it open, yet thrusting forth her head, there was Dan still weeding the border. His back was towards her. She dared not go to him. She dared not utter his name, though never so softly. She called, "Refugio!" No quicker of ear than of eye, the old Mexicano neither heard nor answered. But Dan glanced sharply around. Annetta threw the twisted bit of paper at him, and then, pale as a ghost, pointed to it lying in the walk. Getting back to the office, she found her brother just where she had left him, staring still, but ready to say, with flaring nostrils: A less guarded listener might have been betrayed into an inconsiderate assent. I Annetta answered with an explicit air: "You know how lonely the road is. asked Dan to walk behind me." "And that low-lived dog took advantage of the lonely road to-kiss you, eh?" Annetta was instantly on her feet, raging with a silent indignation that became her mightily. Bartmore could not but be pleased. He began to laugh, at first delicately, then with deepening and broadening good humor. What more complete denial could he desire than the quick scorn of those red lips? Annetta deigned none. She turned her back upon him, and stamped out of the room. Standing in the middle of the floor, his head held high to show the curve of a fine "I intend to search this matter down to white throat, his whole nature pouring itself bed-rock." "You must, indeed!" assented Annetta. She was listening intently for some sound from without. "There's been a darn sight of pretty free talk in 'camp'? Let me find that Dan's concerned in it, and I'll—” "You'll give him the punishment he will richly deserve," said Annetta, her utterance slow and thick. Suddenly the color rushed into her cheeks. Her spirit sprung up like a flame. She had heard the side gate slam. forth in rich, hearty chuckles, Tom Bartmore was an undeniably handsome fellow. Nor was he less engaging when he followed his sister with an unconcealed intention of making up with her. He found her gazing out of a window having no prospect worth gazing at, her attitude eloquent of a desire fierily to redress all wrong. Kissing her cheek, he dragged her gayly to the breakfast table. One ignorant of Bartmore's peculiarities might now have fancied the obnoxious topic of the morning tacitly dropped, or even for"Am I not to know what has been said, gotten. Annetta knew better. The meal Tom?" ended and her brother gone, she approached This query brought Bartmore back to Maggy cautiously, then confidentially. "No, Miss Bairtmore!" exclaimed Maggy, bearing the "Miss Annetta" of less seous occasions. "I'll be to gi' ivery wan fair y an' shpake the trewt. I niver hear ortal man nor spicter breathin' a bad rrud anent yez." And the evening and the morning were the Post day of Annetta Bartmore's latest trouble. Shortly before six o'clock the whiz of t, reckless wheels around the corner of house told her that Tom was near at d. With him rising early to breakfast, returning home promptly to dinner, a order of things seemed begun. Whether greater freedom or added restraint, ther for joy or sorrow, who could tell? Seated at the piano, Annetta was filling the parlor with the crispest, gayest notes, when all of a sudden there was Maggy's face hot from the kitchen. The girl had run in hurriedly to whisper: "The boss!" An accompanying laugh, good-humored yet deprecatory, Annetta understood too well. So Tom had come home out of sorts. She found him already seated at table. He ate his dinner silently, with the air of a man hard pressed for time. His third cup of tea emptied, he rose. Annetta's troubled glance was with him, silently questioning his intentions. "Annetta," he said curtly, when he had taken his hat, "light up the office and sit there." He had never before given her just such an order. Obeying, she wondered what he had on his mind. Was there going to be any trouble? Nothing serious, surely; for Tom's first outburst of rage was all she really dreaded. And his first outburst of rage over this affair was safely past. Swinging softly in her brother's chair, the bright dress she wore glowing under the concentrated rays of the shaded drop-light, Annetta grew pensive rather than fearful. She scouted the merest mental suggestion that Dan had said anything presumptuous. But alas! this broil would be quite effectual in one way. Her enjoyable efforts on Dan's behalf were surely ended. That she had made such would inevitably come out, and Tom would peremptorily forbid their continuance. Thinking thus, the circumstances of her life were unhappily present to Annetta, as to the caged bird, between two liquid bursts of song, the bars that imprison. Her reverie was broken off by a knocking at the outer door. No instinct warned her whom to expect when she called, "Come in!" The cheeks above Dan's full black beard were as pale as her own had been that morning while fearing her brother would find Dan in the garden. He stood dejectedly before her, saying in a muffled voice: "The boss has sent me, for you know what." Annetta did not know. She could not ask. She looked at Dan with a visible shrinking away from him. She motioned him to a seat. She found herself forced to believe that he had been using her name lightly. "Dan, Dan!" she hazarded presently, driven to speech by the torture of this thought, and a terror of Tom's wrath. "How could you?" Dan's chin dropped slowly to his breast. "It's not safe for the likes o' yez, miss," said he, "to shpake to the likes o' me." Evelyn M. Ludlum. [CONTINUED IN NEXT NUMBER.] as now presented to us, the actual Harte who broke upon us so suddenly but little more than fourteen years ago? A FEW American authors have sprung to immediate popularity. With each of these The shallow intellect of popular sentiis linked some association of aptness or strik- ment judges blindly of that which pleases ing originality, some instance of felicitous it; the voice of popular sentiment is lifted characterization, by which he holds atten- to indiscriminate praise or blame of everytion and forces our special approval. The thing by which it is moved. Day by day leap of none among these few has been the judgments grow more blind, the uttermore sudden and expansive than that of ances are more colored with eulogy or conFrancis Bret Harte. But as I now set him demnation. The threads that first snared in this class, and now would pass judgment attention are made the warp through which on the man and his works, the query at the sympathetic, the wise, the thoughtless, once arises, Is the author, as now estimated, the foolish, weaves each his own passion or 1 Bret Harte's Complete Works. Five-volume Edition. Boston Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1882. San Francisco: Billings, Harbourne & Co. for the job; and nobody has the headacheor will have, till Bret Harte reads the article. What the emotions of that gifted being may be when he ascertains that Poe, Lowell, and himself are one and the same person may, perhaps, best be left to conjecture. One thing is sure. He will reverence Cheney. A PACIFIC GENIUS. a Macaulay died it was generally felt the English-reading world had lost its ascinating essayist, its. most subtle, Since , and eloquent literary critic. -as they say, every week or two, in the ectus for starting a new theatrical paper the want has long been felt" of such a wer; of a writer who should combine, as d, the learning of Bentley with even more the brilliancy of Sheridan. At last, howthat want has been supplied. Our new ulay bursts forth upon the Pacific slope, he name of him is Warren Cheney. 3 new Macaulay, to be sure, differs from ld one. He is great-but his greatness na special direction. He has a field of owu. His illustrious prototype was creand had the faculty of writing out of wn head. Cheney's way is simpler and more expeditious; he writes out of the s of others. This is the age of the mag-as c telegraph, and Cheney has no time to The old way in literature, like the old in everything else, must go to the wall. memoration Ode, and "The Heathen 1 Bacon worked very hard to write on The original Ma- career and complex mind of this poet, indeed, e essays of his. ay,-who died at fifty-nine, exhausted were never fully understood till now. Who toil,-was surely a prodigious worker. could imagine, when Lowell was writing much easier and better,-if you want liter- "The Fall of the House of Usher" for Thompreputation, and the power of doing good son's Overland Southern Monthly Literary Biesthe world with your pen,-to tear out one senger, that Bret Harte would live to contribhe old essays, put your name to the end of ute the "Biglow Papers" to Burton's Magand publish it as your magazine article! zine, and Poe wind up his career as American dead author won't miss it, and, ten to one, Minister to the Court of St. James! living reader won't know it, even by sight. tune hath freaks, but n ne so strange as that." eney is not quite up to this yet. He still GAY & WOLF, Photograph Albums, tes a little time. But Cheney is young, Berlin and Boston. has room to grow. Mr. Stedman's essay on Poe appeared in Scribner's Monthly, for May, 1880; his essay on Lowell, in The Century, for May, 1882. Cheney goes a-Maying for them in The Overland Monthly for January, 1883, and some extracts are reprinted from his production on another page. It is a perfectly clear case, and it will make Cheney famous. He ought to be. Such men are rare, and they should not be allowed to work in obscurity. We have read Cheney's essay with great edification; and we can testify that it not only discloses a splendid method for making every man his own magazinist, but will adjust every literary student's impressions spiritual qualities that underlie Lowell's wonderful poem of Raven," magnificent Poe's droll Chinee." The great t present the method of this new Macaulay araphrase, and his genius shines forth in The erland Monthly, of San Francisco. The Over1 Monthly is a magazine started in that city 1868, subsequently put to bed, and just now ised, after a long sleep. The Editor says "he" has picked up the thread which had to the Bret Harte's "The Com verses "For BENZIGER BROS., Catholic Coode New Venom FLAGRANT PLAGIARISM. A MODERN METHOD OF ESSAY-WRITING. The article on Bret Harte by Warren Cheney, in The Overland Monthly for January, 1883, has evidently been paraphrased from articles by Mr. E. C. Stedman on Poe and Lowell, the former printed in Scribner's Monthly for May, 1880, and the latter in The Century for May, 1882. The extracts be low will show the methods of composition adopted From Mr. Stedman's Essay on From Warren Cheney's Essay te dropped, and hopes to weave it into some donht he got his money · in Upon the roll of American A few American authors authors a few names are uave sprung to immediate With each of written apart from the rest. popularity. With each of these is asso- these is linked some associated some accident of conciation of aptness or strik ofing originality, some original or eccentric genius, stance of elicitous charac through which it arrests at-terizatiou by which he holds our attention and forces our tention and claims approval. The Becial wonder. The light special of none among these few has leap of none of these few been more tervid and recur-has been more sudden and rent than that of Edgar Al-expansive than that of FranBut as I lan Poe. But as I in turn cis Bret Harte. pronounce his name, and in set him in this class, and my turn would estimate the now would pass judgmeut man and his writings, 1 am on the man and his works, at once confronted by the the query at once arises: Is question: Is this poet, as the author, as how estinow remembered, as now mated, as now presented to portrayed to us, the reallus, the actual Harie who who lived and sung an broke upon us so suddenly suffered, and who died but but little more than fourlittle more than a quarter teen years ago 1 century ago1 |