A lazy log has just turned over,

The mill is full of a thousand things,
They tramp with feet and they hum with wings-
A troop has halted awhile to feed,
Old Pan has come with his drowsy reed.
Hark! Bees abroad from a field of clover!
A flock of grouse with a frightened whirr !
A Scotch brigade with a Tweedside burr !
Two wheels lay hold with their iron teeth
And turn a shaft that is hung beneath,
With a jumbling thump of the tumbling bolt,
Like the awkward trot of a bare-foot colt.
In swaying glide are the leathern bands;
The hoppers jar with their palsied hands,
Forever spilling the grists of grain
In rattling showers like frozen rain,
While face to face with its gritty mate

The mill-stone whirls with a grinding grate.
What might be laid in a castle's wall
Is twirled as light as a parasol !
And out from the rock, as once of old,
A streamlet flows in its white or gold!
Busy as bees when the buckwheat blows
Are the little buckets that run in rows
Up stairs and down with a sparrow's weight,
With a tiny drift of the dainty freight.

The place is thrilled with a rumbling tread,
The air is gray with the ghost of bread!
Dizzy and busy, above, below,
Lydian river and flowery flow-
Corn in the gold and wheat in the snow.

IV.

The old gray mill is yet murmuring on,
The brook brawls down through the limestone
street,

The girls that blossomed around the door
And hid and sought 'till the grist-snowed floor
Was printed off with their merry feet

Like notes of music-the girls are gone!
The miller said that he always heard

The slender song of the outside bird

Through the grumbling roll of the whirling mill,
He never heard when the wheels were still.
Perhaps why not?-through the anthem grand
He helps to chant in the Better Land,
The mill's old murmuring monotone
May now steal up to his ear alone,
Bringing a breath of the Savior's Prayer-
Droning the base to the angels' air-
Hum of the Mill in the golden choir !

WE must reckon that column small in which stand together the men and women who have written equally admirable prose and verse. Possibly not a few who have believed their verses immortal will be impatient that the world seems to prefer their prose. And we all know one or two men who can never cease repining at the perversity with which a generation of readers cling lovingly to their few precious poems, and let go a mass of story-writing that was very dear to the soul which gave it birth.

Among the writers who have done much to refine and elevate American literature, Thomas Bailey Aldrich should have the brightest place of one who has wrought equally well in prose and poetry. Out of a considerable volume of his works posterity will rescue a few shining bits of verse, and a few charming stories. It is not ungracious to say that the rest will be forgotten. The world has a trick of forgetting things that seem worthy of perennial fame.

Born by the sea, at Portsmouth, N. H., Aldrich came fairly into a heritage of rich and quickening associations. The quaint old city is peopled with the shadowy shapes of many generations. Like all old towns

ALDRICH.

in New England, it has its queer people, its romantic and eccentric traditions, and that antique flavor of aristocratic "better days," in comparison with which the smug briskness of a modern town seems cheap and mean. Around lie the woody hills and emerald meadows, through which the broad river goes brimming to the sea. At the decaying wharves, now and then, rest the sea-worn hulks, which seem to bring with them the spicy odors of Ceylon, and all the charmed associations of the far-off regions beyond the tropic seas. Thither drift the song and story, tradition and adventure, terror and romance, of the men who "plough the raging main." And into the substantial homes of such a city by the shore come the magical airs and undefinable fascination that ever breathe up from the hollow-sounding and mysterious sea.

From such surroundings have always come imaginative writers. Those whose childhood has been passed near the sea, and under the influence of so much antique story as our new American life can boast, must needs have a sense of odor, atmosphere and wide venturousness, which is forever denied to those from whose less fortunate youth these associations were ex

(for such we must consider it) Aldrich has told the story of his boyhood with unconscious grace and candor. It stands to reason that the author of The Story of a Bad Boy would be a poet and a charming writer of fiction. Portsmouth, duly celebrated as Rivermouth, is a bulky volume of good stories. Its legends, air, and landscape are all poetry.

Here young Aldrich grew up, fought his boyish fights, suffered his pangs of boyish and unrequited love, cut up his juvenile pranks, and absorbed, with the sea air and

literary perceptions found exercise in the position of "reader." From this work he gradually drifted into what we call "general literature," thereby meaning a great deal more than can be explained. Anybody who has earned his living with the precarious pen in a large city, knows what general literature is. Aldrich, a free citizen in the great republic of letters, produced everything which the demand of the hour and the promptings of fertile fancy led him to write. Poems, tales, sketches and the unremembered things that please and perish in the hour, flowed from his pen. After leaving Derby & Jackson, he took an editorial position on The Home Journal; next, he transferred his labors to The Saturday Press. And in these and other changes he kept himself busy with contributions to the pages of Putnam's Magazine, The Knickerbocker Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and divers new publications of less note and shorter life.

During this time, Aldrich published several volumes of prose and verse, the compilations of an industrious and fruitful career in general literature. The earliest of these was The Bells, a volume of somewhat adolescent verse, published by Derby & Jackson, in 1854. These poems were only remarkable for the promise which later works have so generously redeemed. Daisy's Necklace, a prose story, was published two years later; and in 1858 appeared two volumes-Baby Bell and other Poems, and The Course of True Love. The first-named book contained some verses which are still reckoned among the best American poetry. They met with something of the popular favor which they deserved. Pampina and other Poems was published in 1861. The volume contained a careful selection of the poetical works of the author; and when another edition of the book was published in the "Blue and Gold" series of Ticknor, Fields & Co. in 1865, the author's best poetical works were gathered in one shining sheaf.

Meantime, Aldrich had not neglected prose fiction, and the well-known story of Out of his Head, a tale told by a maniac who is almost sure he is crazy, attracted attention, and made for its author some reputation. This work was published in 1862.

In 1866, Aldrich went to Boston to take charge of Every Saturday, then published by Fields, Osgood & Co. Since that time he has been on the editorial staff of The

Atlantic Monthly, as well as the conductor of the above-mentioned journal. In The Atlantic have appeared some of his later and best-known stories; of these "Marjorie Daw" has enjoyed a wider popularity than any other, having been translated into French, Spanish, German and Danish. It is an ingenious trick in story-writing, and owes its charm to the deft grace with which the reader is beguiled into forgetting that the cunning artist may place a fiction inside a fiction. A more important and possibly more enduring work is Prudence Palfrey, just issued from the press, and originally published in The Atlantic Monthly. In this story Mr. Aldrich has employed some of his finest powers. In delicacy of humor, purity of atmosphere and absolute truthfulness, it far excels any previous work by the same pen. Two or three of the characters, notably the heroine and the Rev. Wibird Hawkins, are types which are perfect in their kind. The plot, as a plot, good as it is, has no special ingenuity, but the color and motive of the story are without stain or flaw. "Miss Mehetable's Son" is charged with local color, and is a delicious bit of humor. Two or three other sketches in the volume to which "Marjorie Daw" furnishes the title, turn on the same sort of whimsical caprice which made that story so attractive. Aldrich's prose is clear, vigorous and full of light. His pictures are all genre; they remind one of Eastman Johnson and A. F. Bellows together.

In poetry, Aldrich has spent too much time, perhaps, with subjects in which his public can have little sympathy. His oriental poems, though rich in color and luxurious with perfumes, pearl and gold, do not long arrest the fancy nor kindle the feelings. He is more at home, or he makes his reader feel that he is, with themes drawn from every-day life and natural scenery. What can be more charming than this simple picture?—

BEFORE THE RAIN.

We knew it would rain, for all the morn,
A spirit on slender ropes of mist
Was lowering its golden buckets down
Into the vapory amethyst

Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens,-
Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers,
Dipping the jewels out of the sea,

To sprinkle them over the land in showers.

We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed
The white of their leaves, the amber grain
Shrunk in the wind,-and the lightning now
Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!

This is the genuine poetry that seems not like art, it is so real in its imagery, so imaginative in its close description. Thus, in "Sea-drift," where

flights. His verse contains no echoes of the older schools. He charms most because his rhythm is not more perfect than his naturalness and simplicity. His shorter poems are of the rare sort which mature with them, to be read alone, as one plucks men and women fold up and carry about and smiles into a simple blossom in a weary landscape.

Mr. Aldrich lives at Elmwood, Cam

The stealthy morn advances; And the heavy sea-fog straggles back Before those bristling lances!"

We do not need to be told that this is a study from nature; the whole poem is pervaded with the half-tints and vague unrest of the sea. Aldrich's muse essays no ambitious

thirty-eight years old, having been born. Nov. 11, 1836. Speaking after the manner of men, therefore, we may say that he has before him many happy and industrious years, in which to enrich the literature of his native land, and fulfill, even more amply, the abundant promise of a vigorous youth.

PENCROFF's first care, after unloading the raft, was to make the cave habitable by stopping up all the holes which made it draughty. Sand, stones, twisted branches, wet clay, closed up the galleries open to the south winds. One narrow and winding opening at the side was kept to lead out the smoke and to make the fire draw. The cave was thus divided into three or four rooms, if such dark dens, with which an animal would scarcely be contented, deserved the name. But they were dry, and there was space to stand upright, at least in the principal room, which occupied the center. The floor was covered with fine sand, and, taking it all in all, they were well pleased with it for want of a better.

"Perhaps," said Harbert, while he and Pencroff were working, "our companions. have found a superior place to ours."

"Very likely," replied the seaman; "but as we don't know, we must work all the same. Better to have two strings to one's bow than no string at all!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Harbert, "how jolly it would be if they found Captain Smith and brought him back with them!"

"Yes, indeed!" said Pencroff, "that was a man of the right sort."

"Was!" exclaimed, Harbert, "do you despair of ever seeing him again?"

66

God forbid !" replied the sailor. Their work was soon done, and Pencroff declared himself very well satisfied.

"Now," said he, our friends can come back when they like. They will find a good-enough shelter."

They now had only to make a fire-place and to prepare the supper-an easy task. Large flat stones were placed on the ground at the opening of the narrow passage which had been kept. This, if the smoke did not take the heat out with it, would be enough to maintain an equal temperature inside. Their wood was stowed away in one of the rooms, and the sailor laid some logs and brushwood in the fire-place. The seaman was busy with this, when Harbert asked him if he had any matches.

"Certainly," replied Pencroff, "and I may say happily, for without matches or tinder we should be in a fix."

"Still we might get fire as the savages do," replied Harbert, "by rubbing two bits of dry stick one against the other."

"All right; try, my boy, and let's see if you can do anything besides breaking your