can give the author the privilege that he may claim from his English blood of indiscriminate grumbling, there is much to attract and please in the journeyings in the interior of Japan, where no white man may go without a special permit. Even when he treads more familiar ground, and takes us to Florence and Monte Carlo, there is little of the commonplace about Mr. Pearson's narrative. More congenial, however, than his chosen Japan or the gay haunts of Europe, is the subject of the last article in the book. Here, he is on ground that is at the same time famous and unknown, historic and forgotten. It is Nicæa, the stronghold of the early church, where Easter was instituted and the Christian creed of widest acceptance formulated. Here, during the Crusades, the fiercest struggles surged around the walls of the mighty city. Here, now, fever, and death, and desolation reign, and over the ruins of the vanished greatness brood the owl, the stork-and Mr. Pearson.- -The tendency of Christian thought in these days is mainly to the practical in work or in research, but The Transfiguration of Christ1 shows lit'tle trace of this modern influence, being an effort to explain the spiritual meanings of the transfiguration of Christ. It argues for Mount Hermon, instead of Mount Tabor, as the scene of this event; propounds the very questionable theory that, "In that solitude ended the education of Jesus, and in that loneliest moment, the ideal fact of his Deity became real to him"; and, accepting evolution in a general way, suggests that this event "is the glorification in Christ of man's earthly life." It is not clear whether by this last phrase is meant a step in evolution. The daughter of a Boston coffee merchant, just through with her college course, learned to speak Spanish for the purpose of acting as interpreter for her father on a coffee hunting journey through Guatemala and Mexico. In the book before us, she relates the story of their journeyings. Her style is simple and matter-of-fact, not to say common-place, and the chief interest of the book attaches to its description of Guatemala at the time of the ill-starred attempt of Barrios to establish a union of the Central American States. The little touches that show the Boston ideas of the authoress are often amusing, and yet her bravery in peculiar surroundings is admirable, as is her perfect willingness to trust in Providence everywhere, except in Colon.

-Old Salem is classic ground in American letters. Hawthorne found in it a subject worthy of his match

1 The Transfiguration of Christ. By F. W. Gunsaulas. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach.

2 A Winter in Central America. By Helen J. Sanborn. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

3 Old Salem. By Eleanor Putnam. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1886.

less skill; and even when lesser pens are set to this theme, they gain from it something of the master's charm. It is not difficult to see why this is so; for nowhere were the picturesque elements of the old New England life more highly developed. And nowhere were they more directly matched and contrasted with all the marvels of the sea and the treasures of foreign lands. Then, again, Salem is of the past, and there is the glamor thrown about her of quiet and retrospection, the charm that makes Melrose's ruined pile fairer, if sadder, than all the splendid shrines of today. Few American towns possess this element of literary availability, and none of them more than Salem. The book that calls up these reflections has an added touch of pathos in it, because it is the collection made by her husband of the work of a woman of much promise in the literary life, a promise left unfilled by her early death. The publication will add to the number of those that mourn for Eleanor Putnam.- -Down the West Branch is a story of boys camping and hunting in the woods of Maine. It has no literary style, and a little of sensational incident-a landslide, a red-hot meteor, a somewhat lurid conflict with counterfeiters, who murder lads with the greatest sang froid, and so forth; but it is innocent enough, and may impart a ttle knowledge of the Maine woods, and a little entertainment to lads who chance to be reading it instead of something better.

-Like most colleges, Berke

ley issues annually a students' catalogue, which records unofficial, undergraduate organizations, classunions, fraternities, literary societies, the programmes of speakers on public days, etc. It has become the custom at Berkeley to intersperse this matter with the jokes of the year, ballads, local descriptions and anecdotes, and a great deal of pictorial embellishment, most of it of a humorous cast. The Blue and Gold (for these publications are frequently named after the college colors), this year was an especially enterprising one, and has doubtless given its young editors a good deal of insight into book-making. It contains a very large amount of illustration and literary matter, much of which is entertaining. It is interesting to note that the drawings by the students themselves are almost invariably spirited and to the point, though shaky enough in technique; while of that which they had done by outside artists, part is much neater and much weaker, and part poorer in every respect. The publication has demanded some pluck on the part of the class, since it has twice lost material, by the Bancroft and Schmidt fires, the last just as it was on the verge of issuing.

4 Down the West Branch. By Capt. Charles A. J. Farrar. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Strickland & Pierson.

5 The Blue and Gold. Berkeley: Class of '87. 1886. For sale by the Blue and Gold Committee, Berkeley, Cal.

SUCH a queer, tumble-down place as it was, so aged and weather-beaten, so ragged and utterly neglected and forsaken. Years ago it bore the name of Keya Paha, after a murdered Indian, whose grave was on the top of a neighboring mountain, and the mountain itself was called the same; but the name does not appear on the maps now, and scarcely in the memory of those who once lived there. It had sprung up in the heart of the mountains, and, until the mines that surrounded it gave out, was a thriving place. But now it was dead, too dead to ever hope for resurrection.

There was but one person left in all the town, but one human inhabitant, and that was a woman—a strange creature, with flaxen hair and blue eyes. Every feature of the face was marked with sorrow; every movement was that of a person in deep distress -not physical, but mental agony. The woman was mad; not a raving maniac, but mildly, hopelessly mad. She seemed to disregard her situation utterly, and went about the town peering in at the broken windows, pulling the weeds from the doors, and propping up the tottering houses with poles and pieces of rock. Sometimes she would be heard to moan and cry piteously, then pray,

then burst out in wild frenzy; but, for the most part, she bore her sufferings-whatever they were-mutely. And another thing, she seemed unconscious of the presence of anybody; would answer no questions, respond to no salutations, talk to nobody. The rough people of the mountains all seemed to. know her, although she had nothing to say to them; not a week passed that some bonest miner did not leave food at her door, and look after her little cabin, and see that she did not suffer for anything.

I can not tell you how beautiful she seemed, even in her wild sorrow; how white her face, and beseeching and tender; how wonderfully beautiful her hair, how blue her eyes. Above her the rugged mountains and the brazen hills; at her feet the river running by like mad; desolation all around her, rocks, trees, hills, and abandoned mines, and, more than all else, abandoned houses, and deserted, weed-grown streets. picture of loneliness, relieved only by the presence of this beautiful woman, and yet a loneliness made more apparent by her very presence.

It was a

"I knew her three years ago; she was that very way then; five years ago she was just as sane as you are, or myself, or anybody else; she got that way in a hurry. A beautiful woman, for all she is crazy. Don't you think so?"

Once only, and then but for a moment, were we near enough to note her features closely; and, as I have said before, sad as the face was, and pale and careworn, it was strangely beautiful. The eyes so mildly blue, the mouth so sensitive, the hair so silken; there was something unnatural, almost unearthly, in the wild loveliness of this strange

woman.

"Yes, she is beautiful," I said. "You seem to know her; why do you not speak to her?"

He shook his head, and turned his face away from her. He had been with me a month-this miner friend—and, other than this, was as much a stranger to me as the woman herself. I had employed him to guide me over the mountains, and to help. me in some geological researches, and until now had never noted anything strange about him. He had seemed quiet, unobtrusive fellow, with a fair amount of intelligence, and without any particular history. But now he seemed different in my eyes. The sight of this crazy, but beautiful inhabitant of the abandoned town of Keya Paha seemed to agitate him beyond measure.

I reckon it wouldn't be proper for me to speak to her," he said; "she wouldn't know me, likely, although she was tolerably acquainted with me once. You see, she has been in this sort of a plight nigh on to five years, and although I knew she had lost her reason, I didn't know she was living here until three years ago; had been away; used to live in Keya Paha myself, and when I got 'round here again, after being away two years, found her here. She didn't know me, or didn't want to know me, one or the other, so I don't have anything to say to her. Once in a while, I come here on the sly, and see that her cabin don't go to ruin-see that she's got plenty of wood, bring her a little clothing, now and then, and provisions, and

other things needful. I don't want her to suffer; for why? She was my partner's wife. It isn't because I am so powerful good, and honest, and generous, but it's a square deal; it's a duty that a man owes to his partner."

The woman did not see us, evidently. She slowly walked away from us, and finally seated herself on a rock that overlooked the rapid-flowing river and the valley beyond. Then, as she rocked herself to and fro, we could hear her moan softly and piteously.

It was a sad sight, and a strange one; this woman, friendless and alone, the sole inhabitant of an abandoned mountain village, herself abandoned, perhaps; anyway, she was alone, terribly alone-companionless.

"Don't know that she's so awfully alone either," said my miner friend, suddenly. "There's a man here she's been looking after pretty considerably of late. A woman ain't alone so long as there's a man with her."

"A man! Why, I thought you told me she was all alone."

"Jist so; I did tell you that, and, in a manner, it is so, and then again it ain't so. Leastwise, it don't seem exactly right to say she's alone, when there's a man with her all the while; I reckon not, anyhow."

"A man, you say?" I repeated; "I don't understand you. A man?" "Yes, a man." "Who is he?" "Her husband." "Where is he?" "He's dead." "Dead!"

His words startled me, and involuntarily I caught him by the arm and pulled him towards me. Quickly he disengaged himself, and, with an expression of pain on his face, said :

"Don't do that again-don't. My shoulder ain't over strong; got it out of joint 'bout five years ago, and it hasn't been right since; reckon it'll never be perfectly well. But about this man-he's her husband, and he's dead."

He glanced over his shoulder at the wo

"Yes, he's dead," he went on--" tolerably dead, I reckon ; leastwise, he was planted five years ago, over there in his grave. I tell you, Judge, she keeps it mighty nicethis woman. It's all trimmed up like a flower garden. If a feller could only be sure of a grave like that, it would be worth while to die."

The grave was near the cabin in which the woman lived; so near that she could watch and protect it at all hours of the day. In a rough mining town, where little consideration is given either the living or the dead, a well-kept grave is very seldom seen. In this case the ground had been nicely leveled off around it, the weeds were kept down, and a profusion of many-colored flowers covered the mound from foot to head-stone. The latter was a very simple affair, and was characteristic of the rough people of the mountains. It was a plain board, which had once been part of the box of a wagon; it had been painted white, but the wind and rain had streaked it, and taken the life out of it, so that it looked dingy and old. Some one had undertaken to carve the figure of a dove in the board, but it was a bad job, and looked more like an owl. Then an effort had been made to scratch it out, but the eyes of an owl and the wings of a dove were still plainly to be seen. The lettering was better. It had been done with a knife, and was as perfect as the inscription on many another head-stone. It ran thus:

PERHAPS So.

Died June 12, 1865.

Aged 36 years.

"The boys fixed it up for her," said my friend, by way of explanation. "I wasn't here then, but I know they fixed it up for her. The handwriting is that of Slimy Bill, the gambler, who was also a painter and engraver. Briggs, and Hank Smith, and Joe Adams, and perhaps Miser John, helped throw in the dirt, for they were always great friends of Perhaps So. It wasn't then as it is now, you know. Keya Paha was considerable of a town, and things were lively, and

"But Perhaps So and the woman?" I

said.

"Oh, yes; Perhaps So and the woman. Well, as I was jist saying, Keya Paha was considerable of a town five years ago It petered out all of a sudden. First the diggin's gave out, then everything else kind-e sort-er went to pieces. You see that pile of red sandstone? Well, that was the court house, which was a jail also, and a schoolhouse, and a concert saloon; and that tumble-down shanty over there by the river was the 'Traveler's Rest,' a sort of tavern, with a bar in front, and a billiard hall in the rear, and a gambling room overhead. That's where Johnson was killed, and Peters, and Sam Jones, and Alkali Dick, and several others. It was a lively town then, and quite civilized, for there was a big scattering of women folks and pious sort of people in and about the place. There was even a place for the ungodly to get their sins repaired-" "And Perhaps So—”

"Yes, yes; strange that I should forget Perhaps So and the woman. I knew them both well. I was Perhaps So's partner. I lived here when he died. He was a son-of-agun.”

He

"What do you mean by that?" I asked. "Jist what I say. I have seen lots of queer men in my day, but none half so queer as Perhaps So. He was a son of a gun. came in on us one morning and said he was from somewhere in the East. He didn't look like a miner, but more like a schoolteacher, or some sort of philosopher. He wasn't a bad looking man, only awkward and seedy-a gangling sort of fellow, whose face was so darned honest that it was jist absolutely amusing. He was a mild mannered man, too, with nothing to say for or against anything or anybody. I reckon he hadn't much of an opinion of his own; any

how, he took care never to express it. But he was a good man, if ever there lived one. I reckon he had more square religion to the yard than half the preachers in the country. It was jist a whole circus to hear him discuss sich things, and pray. He was a son-of-a-gun, Judge, for a fact.

"Of course you don't understand that Perhaps So was his real name-of course not. I never knew what they called him in the East; I only know what he was called at Keya Paha. He got the name because he was so confoundedly doubtful about everything; he decided everything by saying 'perhaps so,' and was so quiet about it, and lug ged it in so frequently, that we jist called him that for amusement, and it stuck to him. But he was a son-of-a-gun to work; he worked night and day, and soon got something ahead, a cabin and a trifle of gold dust. Then he breathed easier-I could see it; then he wrote a long letter to somebody living somewhere, and two months thereafter there was a woman come, which was Perhaps So's wife. I'll tell you more about her directly; she was a son-of a-gun too. You see her as she is now, but it ain't like what she was then; she has changed mightily. Then she was a dashing woman, full of all sorts of capers, and as frolicsome as a young doe. I reckon she wasn't the best woman in the world, I reckon not. She had queer ways and was slightly unsettled and flighty. One thing, she didn't treat Perhaps So very well. She was cross to him and complaining, and didn't try to make him happy; on the contrary, she tried to worry the life out of him.

He was a good man, was Perhaps So, gentle and kind-like; we all thought a heap of him; but his wife-well, she was queer; Judge, she was a son of-a-gun.

"The woman could not have been over twenty three years old, and they had a little girl that was just beginning to talk, a bright little thing, and as pretty as a picture. I reckon her mother didn't care for her much, but her father did; well, he thought a heap of her. I was his partner, and I know. They called her Gipsy; she had eyes like her father, black as jet, and large and shin

ing, and hair the same color. But about Perhaps So's wife; she bothered the life out of him almost. She was the most outrageous flirt I ever knew. It was this man and that man, flying about here and there, in short, raising the very devil all the while, and poor Perhaps So standing back as forlorn and neglected as a sunflower in the back yard. I was really sorry for him. He didn't seem to be able to do anything with her, and she kept growing worse and worse every day. It got so bad after a while that the boys used to twit him of it, and then he would look at 'em with his big, sad, tearless eyes, in a way that gave proof that his heart was full of agony. Finally he got to talking to me about it--being as how I was his partner-and told me that he didn't know what to do with her. 'Why don't you send her back to her people?' was the question I often asked him. "Why don't I?' he would repeat. 'Perhaps I will-perhaps so.'

666

"Then he would tell me, if I pressed him, that he loved her, and didn't like to send her away; kind o' doted on her, like, as men will, you know, sometimes, on their wives. He kind o' hated to part with her.

"But she is unkind to you,' I said. "Perhaps she is,' he replied, 'perhaps It don't matter, though; I can't help it, and I can't help loving her, either. I reckon I'm a fool.'

So.

"It went on in this way for several months, when a calamity overtook the household of Perhaps So, that staggered the whole town. The little girl, Gipsy, took sick and died. It was awful sudden. I seed her at night, and in the morning she was dead. It was membraneous croup, I reckon. The next day she was buried, and over there on the side of that hill is her grave. Judge, I thought Perhaps So never would get over it; but he didn't shed a tear—he wasn't the crying kind; but his eyes got big and staring, and his face turned pale, and every now and then he seemed to choke up, like, and couldn't do anything but stare. The woman felt bad too, tolerably, and for a little while she braced up, and I thought she was going to behave herself from that time on.