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visits. He was not very much expected, to be sure, as they did not look for him before two or three weeks. But in that week, Mr. Desart received a telegram that demanded his immediate presence in New York. And in a few days this family, always prepared for such emergencies, were on their eastward way. Mr. Desart, as politeness demanded, wrote a note of explanation and apology to Mr. Westwood, whose address he intended to transcribe from the San Francisco directory. His intentions were good, but when they had left New York and were far out on the Atlantic, he discovered the still unaddressed note in one of his many pockets.

It is unnecessary to dwell on the disappointment and surprise of Mr. Westwood, when in high spirits he set out on the woodland path, only to find a deserted house at the end of it. He repeated the visit at odd intervals during the rest of the summer and fall, but always with the same result, till he finally gave up in despair, and came near to believing that he had never been lost in the redwoods, but had fallen asleep on an enchanted hill-side (as Grimm's people do) and dreamed the whole thing.

II.

It was late in September of the following year before John Westwood felt able to take his annual vacation from business cares. But the days grew so warm, that he determined to break away from the hot pavements and ceaseless noise of the city, for a week in the mountains. But where? There were mountains north of him, mountains east of him, mountains south of him. He had only to choose. The mountains to the north were the Marin County branch of the Coast Range, of which Tamalpais is the most prominent feature. But Tamalpais is visible from the city, so they wouldn't do. The same fault attached to the mountains to the east, that rise from the arid San Joaquin plains. Mount Diablo was their great feature, and his infernal majesty was plainly visible from the city. To the south were the Santa Cruz Mountains, in whose depths his short-lived VOL. VIII.-- 14.

It is

romance of a year ago was enacted. not strange that ignoring the charms of Mendocino redwoods, which necessitated a day or two of steamboat travel, and steeling his heart against Donner Lake and the snowy Sierras (which were rather far off into the bargain), he decided to seek the bracing mountain air in the Santa Cruz Range. F— was only a few hours distant from the city, and yet the place was a wild untrodden wilderness—a wilderness possessing the great advantage of accessibility. One had only to strike out from the station at F in any direction to lose himself-as he had once proved-in a virgin and primeval forest.

He had no hopes of meeting his quondam acquaintances again. If they had been down at all, he felt sure they had flown before that. He assured himself that he would not have wished to meet them, for they had treated him shabbily. It was a most contradictory impulse, then, that drew him the very first day of his arrival past the redwood cabin. If he had hoped for any sign of his will-o'-the-wisp friends, however, he was disappointed. No sign of life was about the place, and he avoided it in his future rambles.

The large streams that flowed through the forest were famous for trout, and to troutfishing he devoted himself, as offering fewer opportunities for getting lost than hunting the wary deer. So with rod and line, a plentiful supply of light literature, and a sportsman's lunch basket well filled, he would start out for the day.

He was impartial in his choice of streams, and often angled in the one that flowed near Hepsidam. He chose that one today, and made his way up the stream for a long distance by leaping from stone to stone, or by walking the mighty length of the redwood trees that lay, as they had fallen, in and across the stream in every direction, and by wading with his water-defying boots in the beautiful smooth stretches of water.

At last he reached a place he judged favorable alike for angling and for reading. It was a redwood trunk, soft with mossy growths, hid among mighty boulders; and from this shelter his line could play on a smooth peb

bly pool that promised lots of trout. Here he ensconced himself comfortably, baited his hook, flung his line carefully out into the stream, propped the pole up near at hand (which may not be a scientific way to fish, but was quite in the way of a lazy young man), stretched himself at full length on his broad divan, chose the most conversational novel his pockets bore, and was soon deep in its pages.

Behind him rose an absolutely perpendicular cliff, many feet in height, dotted from top to bottom with waving "five-finger" ferns. They were of such dense and large growth that no portion of the rocky wall was visible, and down through the tops of the redwoods, hundreds of feet above, and over the living green curtain, the sun sent his flickering rays. The trout were wary, and gave him plenty of time to get interested in his book, which, being a lively summer novel, caused him soon to forget the shyness of the denizens of the stream. So in turning a page it acted quite like a shock to his nervous system when he saw his pole bend, and suddenly show symptoms of falling headlong into the stream. He caught it with the mental ejaculation, "It must be a big one to pull like that!" and straightway his book was forgotten. He lifted the pole and carefully began to draw in the line, at the same time advancing to the edge of his nook to see his game.

An exclamation of pain greeted his effort to tauten his line, and there on a rock in the brook he beheld his catch. He gazed in consternation at the sight of a girl seated on the rock, and bending over a rosy bare foot, which bore in the pink ball of a tiny toe a cruel black fishhook. His effort to draw in the line must have caused her acute pain, and called forth the moan which smote on his ears. Her head was bent, and her hands were busy trying to draw out the ugly barb.

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He hardly knew how to offer his services -as he was evidently unobserved, it was awkward to break the silence. But of course it was only fair that he should help this damsel in distress. He was just essaying "Allow me," when she suddenly rose, without having extracted the hook, and attempted the feat of walking on her heel. Then raising her eyes, she saw him heipless and guilty before her.

"You!" she cried faintly, and let her skirts drop quickly over her feet, whereat the former became as wet as the latter.

"You!" he cried in rapture; for it was she! no strange pixie nor Lorelei, but his dryad of a year ago. "Can you ever forgive me?" he asked in deep contrition. "Let me take out that wretched hook."

She offered no resistance as he lifted her up on a mossy log, and then deftly and as gently as possible cut out the barb. Of course it was painful, but two or three little gasps were all the sign she gave, and they cut him to the heart. He tore up his handkerchief for a strip to wrap around the little bleeding toe.

"And now," he said, as gayly as he felt to be consistent with a bad conscience, "fishermen always carry their catch home, I believe, and you cannot walk."

She yielded to this arrangement, saying "It isn't far—I had just started out to wade up stream for ferns."

So Paul and Virginia wise, carefully over the stones and up the road he bore his sweet burden, to the door of Hepsidam, where many explanations were the order of the day.

Mr. Desart gave him the long deferred letter, and they all forgave him for capturing Amy so cruelly. But at his wedding, some months later, he confided to his friends at large that it was the finest catch he had ever made; and none who saw his lovely bride questioned the statement. And Amy declares no one can ever say that she "angled for a husband."

K. L. Carmarthen,

GLIMPSES OF THREE COASTS.1

A FRESH reminder of Mrs. Helen Jackson's as to what is fitted to the need of their auwonderful variety and copiousness as a mag- diences; for Mrs. Jackson's magazine sketchazine writer, comes in the shape of a volume es are not the work of great genius, nor, on of over four hundred pages, lengthened yet the other hand, is it certain that genius would more by small print and somewhat thin pa- always meet the requirements of "availabilper, upon whose title-page appears after the ity." But Mrs. Jackson's natural powers lay words "author of," a list of the fourteen prose exactly in the magazine field; she was sponbooks already between covers under her taneously a magazinist, as some men and name-travel, sketch, and essay, fiction, sta- women are journalists. She may almost be tistics, controversy. Add to this all her po- called the typical magazine writer of this etry, and then note that of the magazine magazine epoch-the one person to be pointsketches so recent as to be hitherto still ed out by the text books and essayists of the strays, this large book has been made; and future to illustrate the epoch. It is not inremember over how few years her literary frequently noticed and commented on that activity extended, and remember, also, her some people have what is called "the newshigh ideal of the writer's art, and her con- paper instinct," which means simply a pertempt for hasty or slipshod work, and some ception of what people wish to hear, and the realization will be had of what the industry way in which they wish to hear it; its posof her productive years must have been. session means sure success in newspaper work; and so well recognized is its existence and value, that it may almost be said to have a regular market price and fixed grades of excellence, like other commodities. The magazine instinct is a rarer and much less well understood thing. It is the same in nature, for it means simply the perception of what magazine audiences will like to hear, and in what manner, quantity, and distribution ; but it requires the additional discernment of seeing what sort of people constitute a magazine audience. It is easy to know who constitute a newspaper audience, for it consists of everybody; but while a great magazine has very many more readers than a great newspaper, the readers of the magazines all put together do not approximate in numbers the readers of the newspapers all put together; so that the magazine readers remain to a certain extent a "picked lot." How select, it is a nice question to determine; certainly not altogether the aristocracy of the reading world, neither the reverse-rather the bourgeois, the great middle class; and the magazine which succeeds in appealing most exactly to this class, makes the greatest

The present volume contains Mrs. Jack son's papers upon California and Oregon, three upon Scotland and England, and a half dozen upon Norway, Denmark, and Germany. All these papers are familiar already to magazine readers, who will none the less-perhaps rather the more-be glad to have them in this permanent form. Those that were published in the illustrated magazines will be, moreover, increased in interest to those readers who find the pictorial decoration rather an interruption than an aid to the literary purposes of most kinds of writing, by the omission of the pictures.

The eminent "availability" of Mrs. Jackson's work for magazine purposes is very noticeable in these articles. It was not the availability of the literary hack, nor of the practiced journalist, who has acquired the ability to "get up" any given subject with decent readability. Neither was it the commanding worthiness of great genius, overriding the minor calculations of magazines

1 Glimpses of Three Coasts. H.") Boston: Roberts Bros. co by Samuel Carson & Co.

By Helen Jackson ("H.
For sale in San Francis-

success," in the technical sense. Yet the danger of bidding down to the audience is far greater than of going over its head. Dr. Holland created his magazine deliberately and expressly for the great middle class of readers, and no man could have been better adapted to the enterprise, for he was eminently of that class himself; and his calculations were justified by the result. Yet when his magazine passed out of his hands, and under a more severely critical censorship, it gained, instead of losing, readers. Indeed, it is probably a fallacy to believe that magazines ever lose readers because they are "too good." They may easily be good in the wrong way, however. Margaret Fuller's "Dial" did not die because it was too good. If a magazine could be filled every month with fiction, humor, description, poetry, literature of travel and of human customs and experiences, and researches into economic and sociological facts, and the occurrences of the natural world, all of the very highest order the world has seen, that magazine would probably sell more copies than any other. But there is not enough great literature in these branches, the world over, to fill a single magazine, monthly, with the necessary variety, on the necessary topics; and while the manner of an article cannot be too good for the audience, it is very easy for the topic to be out of the range of their interest. Topics of common human interest, treated with all excellence that is possible to genius, is thus the ideal of magazine literature; the common human interest must be had in any event, and the excelle nce of treatment as far as possible. Now the main weight of all these discriminations and perceptions must, of course, fall upon the editor but he cannot create his magazine, as a journalist creates his paper; for the newspaper is made in its own office by its own staff, who have been selected and trained, and are daily supervised by their chief, while the magazine is dependent on outside contributions. If the contributors have not the magazine instinct, the editor is helpless. Now Mrs. Jackson was a contributor who did meet this need of editors admirably.

She knew what topics were of common human interest, and she never knowingly wrote down to her audience, nor put together madeto-sell work; she used her very best efforts according to good ideals; and while she had her failures, her best efforts usually produced what was good literature, and sometimes what was more than good. She was, therefore, one of the small group among the writers in the popular magazines who bring the most critical and thoughtful into their circle of readers, and keep them there, while at the same time she was highly acceptable to the uncritical-a combination of availabilities which meant certain success with editors.

In the collection of her travel-sketches now before us, those upon Southern California and Oregon have awakened most interest here; but in a literary way there is more permanent vaiue in some of the European ones. "The Katrina Saga," for instance, is a very happy study of Katrina and Norway ;. and the extracts from Katrina's version of "Frithiof and Ingeborg" are delightful. It might be suggested that Katrina, and not Mrs. Jackson, is the genius here; but it took genius to appreciate these renderings, and transcribe them for us with so delightful a record of Katrina's running comment. We find space for some part of this, which Mrs. Jackson prefaces with, "Could any good English be so good as this?"

Two trees growed bold and silent: never before the north never seen such beauties; they growed nicely in the garden.

The one growed up with the strongth of the oak, and the stem was as the handle of the spear, but the

crown shaked in the wind like the top on the helmet.

But the other one growed like a rose-like a rose when the winter just is going away; but the spring what stands in its buds still in dreams childly is smiling.

So they growed in joy and play; and Frithiof was the young oak, but the rose in the green walley was named Ingeborg, the Beauty.

If you seen dem two in the daylight, you would think of Freya's dwelling, where many a little pair is swinging with yellow hair, and vings like roses.

But if you saw dem in the moonlight, dancing easy around, you would tink to see an erl-king pair dancing among the wreaths of the walley. How he was glad

"Dem's the nicest vairses, I tink." -how he was glad, how it was dear to him, when he got to write the first letter of her name, and afterwards to learn his Ingeborg, that was to Frithiof more than the king's honor. . . .

But if he in the winter evening, with his soul fierce, by the fire's beam was reading of bright Walhalla, a song, a song of the gods

"Vell, dat's the mans; vat's the vomen's?" "Goddesses?"

"Vell, dat's it."

-a song of the gods and goddesses' joy, he was tinking, Yellow is the hair of Freya. My Ingeborg"Vat's a big field called when it is all over ripe?"

"Yellow?"

"No," a shake of the head.

-is like the fields when easy waves the summer wind a golden net round all the flower bundles. . .

But the king's daughter sat and sung a hero song, and weaved glad into the stuff all things the hero have done, the blue sea, the green walley, and rockrifts.

There growed out in snow-white vool the shining shields of

"Ain't there a word you say spinned?" -spinned gold; red as the lightning flew the lances of the war, and stiff of silver was every armor.

But as she quickly is weaving and nicely, she gets the heroes Frithiof's shape, and as she comes farther into the weave, she gets red, but still she sees them with joy.

But Frithiof did cut in walley and field many an I and F in the bark of

"He cut all round. Wherever he come, he cut them two."

-the trees.

These Runes is healed with happy and joy, just like the young hearts together. When the daylight stands in its emerald[Here we had a long halt, Katrina insisting on saying "smaragd," and declaring that that was an English word; she had seen it often, and "it could not be pronounced in any other way"; she had seen it in "Lady Montaig in Turkey," "she had loads of smaragds and all such things." Her contrition, when she discovered her mistake, was inimitable.]

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY.1

MR. SCHUYLER, lately United States minister to Greece, Roumania, and Serbia, and perhaps still more generally known as former consul and secretary of legation in Russia, delivered in 1885 a course of lectures at Johns Hopkins' University, and at Cornell, upon our consular and diplomatic service; and later in the same year, another course upon the uses of our diplomacy to commerce and navigation. These two courses of lectures are now published as a book, under the title of American Diplomacy.

The chapters which evidently composed the first course are "The Department of State," "Our Consular System," and "Diplomatic Officials." The first of these chapters opens with a suggestive statement of the position of the Secretary of State, which secures interest from the outset: "If we were to put ourselves," says Mr. Schuyler, "in the place of an intelligent foreign diplomatist, anxious to discover for his own purposes

1 American Diplomacy. By Eugene Schuyler. New

who were the real depositaries of power in the United States; if we could lay aside for awhile the 'literary theory' of our constitution and of its workings, which has been taught to us from childhood, and look only at the practice of our representative institutions, as they have been modified, and, as it were, solidified during the last twenty-five years; if we should study the facts alone, as if there were no written constitution, we should find that in the last analysis, the government of the United States, in ordinary peaceful and uneventful times, is a nearly irresponsible despotism, composed of five or six men, working under and through constitutional forms, and subject only to the penalty which is always exacted for very grave mistakes. These six men are the President of the United States, who is, it is true, elected by the people, but only from two or three candidates proposed by partisan conventions, as the result of intrigue or the failure of intrigue; the Secretary of State

York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1886. For sale in San and the Secretary of the Treasury, named

Francisco by A. L. Bancroft & Co.

by the President as his colleagues and asso

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