of the bridges and ferry-boats that crossed the broad and swift waters which every now and then checked their progress? At four o'clock on the fourth day the goal began to heave in sight. The crematory furnaces of Asakusa came into view, and the gate of "the pleasure quarter" was passed; and on they passed through long, broad streets, lined with lofty houses, four and five stories high, filled with poor, wretched women whose souls had been barted for gold.

It was growing dark, and the dealers in women's souls were beginning to light their lamps, the better to display their wares. The "Wind Imp's" pace had been reduced to a trot, and Chōkichi ran on in front, crying out to the people to clear the way. Suddenly there was a crash and a shriek, and a confused heap of something human fell under the "Wind Imp's" feet, groaning and moaning, and writhing in agony. It was poor Chōkichi. Just as he reached a crossing, a jinrikisha, drawn by two men, and driving at a furious pace, had turned the corner, and struck him full in the chest. Weak and exhausted with his race against time as he was, he had been unable to get out of the way, and there he lay in the muddy roadway, struck down at the moment when victory seemed assured.

The occupant of the vehicle jumped out, and Chōkichi gave him a ghastly smile of recognition! It was Kentaro, escaped from the jaws of death in the Kuriles, and returned with enough money, his share of the proceeds of sea-otter and black-fox skins, to extricate them from all their difficulties, and leave enough for a glorious New-Years jollification-the old style New-Year, of course-besides. He was in the act of leaving the city for Yamazawa, knowing nothing, poor lad, of the dreadful events of the past month. In few words, Gilmour acquainted him with the sad truth, and turned to attend to Chōkichi. He was not to be seen; had crawled to his feet, some one said, and limped off, assisted by a woman; whither, no one seemed to know.

The woman was who do you think?

Dear, fat, pudding-faced, loyal Také! She had accompanied her unfortunate mistress to the capital, being enabled to do so, thanks to the eleven dollars she had so generously proffered, for the satisfying of the chikusho Musashiya. With a joyful shriek, she once more appeared on the scene, seizing Gilmour by the arm, and weeping with excess of joy.

"Hi-i-i-i! I knew he would come-the devil-foreigner-to save dear little Kiku! Come, come; I will lead you to her at once. She is expecting you; she said you would come!"

Pushing their way through the crowd, Gilmour and Kentaro followed their faithful guide, and soon reached the house of which they were in quest—a huge structure of five stories, of imposing exterior.

Mu

Leaping up the narrow stairway, Gilmour found his way into a large room on the second floor, guided by the cry of a female voice which he recognized as Kiku's. sashiya was endeavoring to drag her off to another apartment. Gilmour sprung on him like a tiger, and catching him by the throat and waistband, threw him bodily down the steep stairs. As luck would have it, a detachment of six constables, who had been sent to arrest the foreigner for creating a disturbance, were in the act of ascending the stairway, and the unfortunate wight fell on the top of the whole posse, and was promptly arrested and carried off to jail.

In the excitement, Chōkichi had been forgotten by everybody-except Také. He was found lying on the mats of a rear room below, his faithful head pillowed on the scullion's breast, and the life-blood welling out of his lips. A native physician had been called in, but said he could do nothing. The "Wind Imp's" hoofs had struck the lad in a vital place; he was doomed!

He smiled feebly, on beholding his master; a radiant smile of satisfaction and triumph.

"We did it, master; we saved the himé! We three-you, and the "Wind Imp," and I-Chōkichi, the swiftest runner on the Oshiu Kai-do!"

Také uttered a despairing cry, and threw

IN THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, Vol. I., No. 1 (July, 1868), in Mr. Harte's introductory editorial, occur the following words:

"It falls to my lot at the very outset to answer, on behalf of the publishers, a few questions that have arisen in the progress of this venture. Why, for instance, is this magazine called THE OVERLAND MONTHLY? It would perhaps be easier to say why it was not called by some of the thousand other titles suggested. I might explain how "Pacific Monthly is hackneyed, mild in suggestion, and at best but a feeble echo of the Boston "Atlantic"; how the "West," ""Wide West," and "Western" are already threadbare, and suggest to Eastern readers only Chicago and the Lakes; how "Occidental" and "Chrysopolis" are but cheap pedantry, and "Sunset," "Sundown," "Hesper," etc., cheaper sentiment; how "California "-honest and direct enough —is yet too local to attract any but a small number of readers. I might prove that there was safety, at least, in the negative goodness of our present homely Anglo-Saxon title. But is there nothing more? Turn your eyes to this map made but a few years ago. Do you see this vast interior basin of the continent, on which the boundaries of States and Territories are less distinct than the names of wandering Indian tribes; do you see this broad zone reaching from Virginia City to St. Louis, as yet only dotted by telegraph stations, whose names are familiar, but of whose locality we are profoundly ignorant? Here creeps the railroad, each day drawing the West and East closer together. Do you think, O owner of Oakland and San Francisco lots, that the vast current soon to pour along this narrow channel will be always kept within the bounds you have made for it? Willnot this mighty Nilus overflow its banks and fertilize the surrounding desert? Can you ticket every passenger through to San Francisco, to Oakland, to Sacramento, even to Virginia City? Shall not the route be represented as well as the termini? And where our people travel, that is the highway of our thought. Will the trains be freighted only with merchandise, and shall we exchange nothing but goods? Will not our civilization gain by the subtle inflowing current of Eastern refinement? and shall we not, by the same channel, throw into Eastern exclusiveness something of our own breadth and liberality? And if so, what could be more appropriate for the title of a literary magazine than to call it after this broad highway?"

THE editorial department of the same issue closes with a comment on the rapidity of Pacific life, the changes that a returned Californian finds, and the

Never has any

now well-known poem, "Returned." other returned Californian had more reason to exclaim over changes than THE Overland MONTHLY. In looking back to its last sight of the coast, in December, 1875, it finds many and many a new thread to be picked up with the scattered many of old experience, and woven into the place of the lost ones; but still more, in looking back to its first arrival here-not fifteen years ago!-does the contrast between those two greetings, the change both in the greeter and the greeted, seem as greatand this to a magazine, compounded of many personalities, and endowed with potential immortality as it could ever seem to any single-lived human being. For it was after the foundation of THE OVERLAND in 1868, and before its suspension with the close of the year 1875, that the first volume of Pacific history-at least, as regards literary matterswas closed and shelved. The Granger demonstration of 1873 and 1874, not in itself of great importance in the intellectual history of our coast, was yet the visible sign and tide mark of a change in the character of our population that has worked a perfect revolution in all the conditions of the literary and educational problem here.

THE first trumpet of Californian immigration called to a remarkable class of young men-the bright, brave, and ardent of many professions, the flower of an older civilization, who came hither, not as most pioneers seek a new country, because of restlessness and the notion that the distant must be better than the near, but because the fine ideals of society that possess such young men seemed more possible of fulfillment on such a noble virgin soil as this than under the existing conditions of even the best eastern community. They came to look after the interests of education here, of religion, of literature. They found a stimulating climate, a generous people, ready to say, "You go ahead and give us the best schools"-or the best scientific survey, or whatever it might be "to be had, and send the bill to us." In those days, all the better classes of the community made common cause. There were struggles with the lawless class; but childhood's distinctions of "good" and "bad" would nearly have covered our lines of caste and clan. The college alumni of the coast came together almost by natural impulse, and the records of these "Associated Alumni" meetings are pleasant reading to us of later advent. Lawyers, preachers, teachers, merchants, all recognizing their training as a fraternal tie, all pulling together for the intellectual good of the State; a spirit of mutual liking and confidence, a sympathy as to ends sought, a unanimity as to means: it is

quite idyllic from the point of view of 1875 or 1883. There came other men later, as good as the best of these pioneers, but never such a group of them; and, meanwhile, with the opening of the railroad and the advent of many of the good things of older communities came the great perplexity of these older communities-a large, miscellaneous population. Not only did the "old guard" of education and literature lose in numerical proportion to the rest of the community; it lost in actual numbers, as one after another reached the bound of life: and with the breaking down of barriers that had shut its members in to each other, it lost in power to draw to it and weld into a fighting phalanx with itself the new arrivals. When Harvard men were in easy communication with Harvard men the world over, and Yale men with Yale men, and Princeton men with Princeton men, they no longer turned to each other for companionship and helping hands; social and party lines increased; sects grew stronger within themselves, and pulled together less. The later immigrants, who came by rail, never shared the blind enthusiasm for California of their predecessors: they had not left father and mother and cloven to her only, and they were not prepared to believe that everything that was Californian was best, or resolved that everything that was best should be Californian. Those who had been unfortunate in "early days," but cheerfully believed that their turn must soon come—since this was California, the land of success -had found their faith worn out after twenty-five years. The time came, too, for the close of the mining "boom," and the entrance of this coast into the world's family of business communities, subject to the working of universal economic laws, and no longer able to follow risky ways of its own that brought sudden fortunes, and reverses that perhaps might change to successes in a year; and it is only human nature that the necessity of safe ways of business has preceded the habit.

It was, as we have said, in the Granger movement of 1873 and 1874 that the first conspicuous demonstra tion was made of these changes in the make-up and spirit of our population. Later, it was the co-operation of this same respectable, law-abiding, blundering element with the dangerous class of the cities that gave weight to the Kearney episode, and passed the new Constitution. They were feeling on their own shoulders the pressure of difficulties that came from economic causes more complex and far-reaching than they could guess; and they were just waking with dismay and anger from their dream that in California fortune would drop into every one's hands: and the sight of the great and quickly amassed wealth that was before their eyes in the same community was an irritation that made the uneducated among them sore and jealous beyond the ordinary jealousy of the uneducated classes toward all that seemed to belong to more favored men-toward the higher edu

cation, toward literary pursuits, toward the learned professions. One need only read the country papers of the summer months of 1874 to see how easily they were instigated into a frantic clamor against the University that would be most ludicrous if it had not been fruitful of evil; and, though that clamor died of its own farcical absurdity, the same spirit lingers in a widespread sullenness and dislike toward the College-that college that in the earlier days was the joy and boast of the Californian heart, and was almost regarded as the best thing of the sort in the world.

Of the political and industrial aspects of the past and future we have nothing to say in this connection, except as we have touched on them in speaking of the complex chain of causes that puts into our hands so different a problem from that laid before a magazine in 1868. In politics, in business, in education, and in literature, the early days are over; we are no longer a kingdom in ourselves, and we must do as other people do, working for what we get, struggling with the problems of society, and the complexities of a large population: the golden age is over, and the iron age begun; the child has grown up, and the time of romance is past, and the difficulties, the perplexities, and work-day realities of other grownup communities are upon him. The sooner we realize this, the better. No good ever comes of clinging to the skirts of the vanishing old: still less, of trying to pretend that it is not vanishing. However affectionately THE OVERLAND may linger and look back to its former sojourn here, its real hold is on the future. It must live for the Pacific coast of to-day and to-morrow; not for that of yesterday. It numbers among its contributors enough of the old corps to insure continuity; but if we should present here a list of the contributors of 1868-1875, duly marked with deaths, the reader's eye would follow down a perfect constellation of asterisks. Others, who wrote as ardent young people, now sober, middle-aged men and women, have lost the habit or desire of handling the long-unused pen; others are old, infirm, and done with work; others have filled their hearts and time with new interests. It is to the yet unknown writers that we must owe our future. Somewhere, East or West, in schools and colleges, on farms, in offices, are the great novelists and essayists and poets and scholars of the next generation; at any moment one may step out into the magazine lists, and—according to the habit of geniuses in real life--he will come handling his weapons feebly, not quite aware of their power or how to use them, and the critics will have their doubts of him. we who, like Arthur, look to the young knights for the Lancelots of the future, and know that at the first tournament Galahad may not handle his weapons so much better than the many for whom no greatness waits, bespeak for immature possibilities that will be fulfilled and immature possibilities

But

that will prove delusive, the sympathy and interest of the Lancelots and Bediveres, whose well-known shields appear in the same lists.

WE start at ebb-tide: perhaps that is all the better, for when the tide turns we shall go up with it instead of down, as befell the old OVERLAND. The transition between "early days" and the new dispensation in California will be fairly accomplished before many years; and this period of conflicting tendencies and uncertain possibilities of good or evil is just the time that a voice is most needed among us for literature and education, for calm and non-partisan public action, for civilizing and refining pursuits; just the time that it is well young people should have an opportunity to find whether literary ability is in them, and take themselves from the quarreling many to quieter pursuits; that there should be some public expression of the best thought and most intelligent sort of life in the State to represent us fairly in the East; that there should be a common ground of intellectual interest to make a bond between the various castes and clans and cliques of people now pulling in different ways or forgetting each other's existence, in the various branches of the struggle toward the highest civilization. None the less, it is just the time that a magazine enterprise has the heaviest odds to work against, in the abstracted condition of the public interest, and the irritated or despondent condition of the public temper. THE OVERLAND succumbed once in part to these conditions; "The Californian" was begun and continued under them; and the revived OVERLAND still has to meet the same odds. The fact that it does so, shows how profound is the conviction in the minds of its friends that the magazine is necessary to the best good of the coast; how tenacious the resolution to have it succeed. There is often more hope of success for an enterprise that starts against the odds than for one that starts with them; for it argues that there was great reason for the undertaking, great courage, and much determination. We may as well say at the outset, that our aim for THE OVERLAND is that it shall be as good as the best magazine in America, and that we do not propose to hamper our aspirations by any pretense-to ourselves or the public-that it is so until it is. We do not expect or wish to make a great financial success of it: "the development of the country" is the end for which it exists; we strive for only as much financial success as is a necessary means to that end. And with the hope of recurring to the subject of our magazine and its prospects in congratulatory tones a year from now, we wish to all our readers a happy New-Year, and ask of them the same wish for THE OVerland.

THE "tidal wave," as the newspapers figuratively style the great success of the Democrats in the elections of November 7th, has most certainly dazed the VOL. I.-7.

active politicians. If it had been confined to this State alone, they might have been content to put it down to the "machine" in the Republican convention, or to the Sunday-law plank, or to both together. But when, on the same day, Massachusetts elects such an unsavory renegade from the Republican party as General Butler, and New York changes from a Republican majority in 1880 of 44,000 to a Democratic majority of nearly 200,000; when the Stalwarts and Independents are both beaten in Pennsylvania; when even in such Republican strongholds as Michigan, Kansas, and Colorado Democratic governors are elected; and, in addition, New Jersey, Indiana, and our own State change front-it becomes necessary to look deeper than mere local irritation for the causes of the revolution.

Probably the most infallible sign of decrepitude in a party is when the best it can offer the voters is a recapitulation of its past achievements. Unfortunately for the Republicans, this was almost entirely their claim for popular support during the campaign just gone by. The average voter, upon whom party ties in peaceful times sit lightly, asked for a distinctive policy for the future. He was answered with the "record" of the party during the war, and the stormy years immediately after its close. It is forgotten that since Fort Sumter was fired upon a whole generation of voters has been born, and are now beginning to take an active part in public affairs; to whom, when you speak of the war, you suggest the idea of remoteness, of something distinctively past. These new men, it is true, are not likely to have, as yet, clearly defined demands; they are apt to fall in with the party leanings of their families, or neighborhoods, or associates; still they have a strong inclination for the new, and especially want a fresh battle-cry. Add to these the large number who, though born before the war, have only begun to take an active interest in politics during the past ten years, and there is a vast body of men who, if not openly, are yet secretly longing for something fresh in policy and action.

It has been evident since 1874, when the country so decidedly expressed its dissatisfaction with the Grant régime, that the great body of Republicans have only been held to their party by the undefined dread that their opponents had no more cut loose from the past than their own leaders. And certainly, the Democrats have not shown that they have either learned or forgotten.

"BOSSISM" in part, with its unblushing resort to forgery in New York, and to reckless trading and frauds at the primaries in this State and elsewhere; in part the thinly disguised jobbing in appropriations-disgusted Republicans. The advocacy of a Sunday law in this State had a certain, but by no means a controlling, influence; the Chinese question absolutely none at all. Both parties were equally loud in their denunciation of railroad methods and