height. In the centre of the hospital square are the dispensary and the office-buildings, where the statistics of the settlement are kept, and the leper governor holds his leper court for all the officials, even to the doctor and the chaplain, are the victims of the disease. The rations of food are ample, and the contributions of the benevolent suffice to provide little luxuries and extras, such as tobacco, pipes, knives, toys, books, pictures, and working implements and materials for amusement; for the lepers become pauperized when they are sent into exile, and no longer have any claim on their property.

The sensibilities of the visitor are shocked when he sees the throngs of active-looking exiles, who shrink away from the proffered hand, as if abased at the thought of what they are. But what shall be said of the awful spectacles in the hospitals, wherein every thing is pervaded with the sickening odor of the grave; where all around, crouched on their mats and shivering with despair, are seen the yet breathing corpses of the poor wretches who

leer for a moment out of

their ghoul-like eyes, and then shrink into themselves again, caricatures of life, masses of rotting flesh with but little semblance of humanity! Though the mystery of death which hangs over the valley of Molokai discloses some of the more woful features of the curse, it is pleasant to know that the poor outcasts are as kindly cared for as the resources of the government will permit. The most strenuous efforts are being made to stamp out the disease and provide for the comfort of those who are isolated. Let us turn from this picture of woe and despair to pleasanter scenes. Miss Bird, shortly after her visit to the leper island, which she passed en route from the minor isl

ands to beautiful Hilo in Hawaii, had an opportunity of ascending Mauna-Loa, and visiting the summit-crater of the great fire-mountain in company with a scientific gentleman well known on the island. The mountain had for some time been active at both of its huge craters, and no little fear was aroused at some impending catastrophe; for those who live under its shadow do so as under the sword of Damocles. The adventurous sight

seers first visited Kilauea, described in a former paper. They found the lake agitated with convulsions of indescribable beauty and splendor, lurid, gory, raging masses of red, half-molten rock playing in the great central whirlpool, which sent up waves forty feet high. The sublimity was enhanced by the fact that the visible was only the twentieth part of the fearfulness of the unseen, while sulphurous masses of smoke, thunderings and crashings, beat on the eyes and ears.

A FOREST-STREAM IN KAUAI.

smoking pit in the midst of a dreary waste of desert-land. Let us record our author's own account of the impressions made by the spectacle on the summit-crater of Mauna-Loa, reached after long and tedious toil over lavaprecipices, a vision no less striking than, but in many respects a contrast to, the phenomena of Kilauea :

"We rode as far as a deep fissure filled with frozen snow, threw ourselves from our mules, jumped the fissure, and more than

eight hundred feet below yawned the inaccessible blackness and horror of the crater of Mokuaweoweo, six miles in circumference, eleven thousand feet long by eight thousand wide. The mystery was solved; for at one end of the crater, in a deep gorge of its own above the level of the rest of the area, was the lonely fire, the reflection of which shone one hundred miles at sea for more than six months. Near

ly opposite us, unlike the gory gleam of Kilauea, a perfect fountain of pure yellow fire was regularly playing in united jets, throwing up its glorious incandescence some six hundred feet in height. The sunset gold could not be purer. Distance robbed it of awfulness, and made it all a thing of beauty. In the distance there had only been a vibrating roar. At the crater's edge it was a majestic sound, the roar of

an angry sea mingled with the hollow boom of surf echoing in sea-caves, murmuring on, rising and falling like the thunder-music of Windward Hawaii.... "This area, over two miles long and a mile and a half wide, with precipitous sides eight hundred feet deep, and a broad second shelf about three hundred feet below the one we occupied, at that time appeared a darkgray, tolerably-level lake, with great black blotches, and yellow and white stains, the whole much

Kilauea is different from European volcanoes, | fissured. No steam or smoke proceeded which send lava and stones into the air in fierce, sudden spasms, and then subside. Ever changing, now resting, the force which stirs it rages continually with the strength and fierceness of the ocean. Its labors unfinished, and possibly never to be ended, its very unexpectedness adds to its sublimity; for you reach the very terminal wall of the crater before it appears any thing else than a

from any part of the level surface, and it had the unnaturally dead look which follows the action of fire. A ledge, or false beach, which must mark at once a higher level of the lava, skirts the lake, at an elevation of thirty feet, probably, and this fringed the area with various signs of present volcanic action, steaming sulphur-banks, and heavy jets of smoke. The other side, above

the crater, has a ridgy, broken look, giving the false impression of a mountainous region beyond. At this time the luminous fountain, and the red cracks in the river of lava which proceeded from it, were the only fires visible in the great area of blackness. In former days people have descended to the floor of the crater, but, owing to the breaking away of the accessible part of the precipice, a descent now is not feasible, though I doubt not that a man might even now get down, if he went up with suitable tackle and sufficient assistance.

"When the sun had set, and the brief red glow of the tropics had vanished, a new world came into being, and wonder after wonder flashed forth from the previously lifeless crater. Everywhere through its vast expanse appeared glints of fire-fires bright and steady, burning in rows like blast-furnaces; fires lone and isolated, unwinking like planets, or twinkling like stars; rows of little fires marking the margin of the lowest level of the crater; fire molten in deep crevasses; fire in wavy lines; fire, calm, stationary, and restful-an incandescent lake two miles in length beneath a deceptive crust of darkness, and whose depth one dare not fathom, even in thought. Broad in the glare, giving light enough to read by at a distance of threequarters of a mile, making the moon look as blue as an ordinary English sky, its golden gleam changed to a vivid rose-color, lighting up the whole of the vast precipices of that part of the crater with a rosy red, bringing

Here every thing in Nature is profuse, fervid, passionate, vivified, and pervaded by sunshine. The earth is restless in her productiveness, and constantly repeats the miracle of Jonah's gourd. All decay is quickly concealed, and through the glowing year flower, bud, and fruit, watch each other side by side on the same tree. Ferns are always uncurling their fronds, bananas unfolding their shining leaves, and Spring continually blends her promise with the maturity of Summer. Is it wonderful, then, that the native pines and dies when away from his Pacific home, and that even the foreigner who has once tasted its delicious life looks back with longing to Hawaii ?

A MASTER-STROKE OF BUSINESS.

I.

out every detail here, throwing cliffs and THE Long-Branch season was

heights into huge black masses there, rising, falling, never intermitting, leaping in lofty jets with glorious shapes like wheat-sheaves, coruscating, reddening, the most glorious thing beneath the moon was the fire-fountain of Mokuaweoweo."

It is possible that the whole interior of the huge mountain is fluid, and that the mountain-sides give way as unable to bear the pressure from within, thus allowing the fiery contents to escape. In 1855 one of the sides split open, and the lava gushed forth for thirteen months in a stream which ran for sixty miles, and flooded Hawaii for three hundred square miles!

Hawaii is, indeed, of all places on earth, a land of beauty, and for those who seek them of magnificence and terror. One can readily understand how words fail to describe such scenes as are opened to him that looks into the awful volcano-depths, and how no less language is hardly adequate to paint the tropical languor and loveliness of the summer-lands by the sea. We cannot farther pursue our author's adventures in detail, but enough has been given to convey some impression of one of the paradises of the earth. Here winds are things almost unknown, except the trade-winds, which blow ever gently and steadily with a breath of balm and heal- | ing. Low breezes whisper softly morning and evening, rain drops with the softest of touches, and the murmur of drowsy surges alone breaks the stillness. The great expanse of ocean is disturbed by little more than mere ripples. The skies are rose in the cool morning, gold in the cool evening, while sails come

at its height when Esmond Drury strayed there for a month's excitement. The drives were crowded with splendid equipages and the huge hotels overflowed with people. But where Esmond Drury looked for excitement he found worse than loneliness. Where all the ladies talked of fashion and all the men of stocks, there was nothing for him but boredom. His dreamy, poetic temperament, as his father called it, could not live in such a turmoil of pleasure-seekers. Two days had been enough for him. He packed his trunk on the afternoon of the second, and asked when the next train would leave for New York. At 5.07. It was then just two. Could he exist three hours longer in that place? He paid his bill, ordered his trunk down from room No. 42, and ordered a seat in the omnibus for him at 5.07. In the mean time, he would take a walk among the cottages. No. The sun was hot and the white sand of the road glared with the heat. He would look in at the Ocean Hotel. No, nor that. It was a long walk to that immense caravansary, where the turmoil was even worse than here, and he'd remain on the piazza of the West End. Then he strolled into the summer-house, and watched a few dripping, drizzly, uncomfortable bathers. The surf was rolling high, and seemed so cool and inviting in the hot August sun, that he thought he'd bathe. No, it was too much trouble. He smoked.

Two trim figures, in trim blue bathingsuits, ran hand-in-hand down the shining sands and plunged into the rolling surf-the trimmest, tidiest figures he had ever seen;

two young girls they were. Usually, women looked so wretchedly damp and misshapen in bathing-suits. These were wonderful exceptions, and Esmond Drury felt a very perceptible spark of interest. He thought he'd watch them. They plunged boldly out to meet the battling breakers, and disdained the heavy buoy-rope to which most of their sex clung, limiting their bath usually to two feet of water and ankle-deep of sand. These tidy bathers absolutely dived under the heavy surges and swam outward, even turning on their backs and swimming that way, and venturing in their boldness to wrestle one another in the waves. Esmond Drury suddenly found his cigar unlighted and himself at the bath-keeper's, bargaining for an extra-handsome bathing-costume.

"Not an old woolen concern half worn away," said he. "Give me something that does not dissipate all semblance of the human form."

The old man who acted as bath-keeper was slow of speech and disposed to reminis

cences.

"I hain't any very becoming, that I must say," said he, sententiously. "You can't make bathing suits to fit. It ain't in Nature-"

"Oh, come," said Esmond, impatiently; "what has Nature to do with it?"

"The intention of bathing-suits, I think, is to be loose. I remember when old Jedge Magruder, of Boontown, used to bathe here, he always said that no man or woman could afford to have a bathin'-suit that fitted. Be you from New York?"

"Yes, yes!" If the old man did not hurry up, those beautiful bathers would be out of the water before Esmond got in. And what if they were? Surely he did not propose to go in simply because they were there. Then, on sober, second thought, he concluded that he would not care to go in if they were not there. Why?-he gave that up.

"Then you likely didn't know Jedge Magruder? A funny thing he said to me oncet. 'Why,' says he, when these 'ere new special bathing-suits came in fashion, says he, 'there's no use putting on airs in a bathing suit. You can't tell an Eve from a Medusey in 'em, and there's no use trying.'"

Esmond suddenly glanced at the bathers again. Far out in the sea were two white faces, rising and falling with the swelling waves. They were his Eves. The Medusas still clung to the buoy-rope. The judge was wrong. There was an immense difference. He finally got his bathing-suit, and in five minutes was buffeting the waves with the rest. With long, easy strokes he left the shallows, and sought the deep - green fields where the two Eves disported. Beyond the wall of waves which intervened between them and him, he could occasionally hear their merry laughter. Then he heard in the midst of this merry laughter a low, breathless cry:

"Nora, what's the matter?"

He instinctively quickened his stroke.
"Nora! Good Heavens! Nora!" Then

a sudden shriek, half stifled by the splash of
the waves.
Then-

"Help!"

Esmond rose upon another outgoing wave, and from this height could see the trim bathers, whom he had noticed from the shore, seemingly battling with each other. The face of one wore a terribly pale and frightened look, over which the unrelenting waves broke with every surf, while her arms weakly sought to clutch the form of the other. That other's face wore a look of such sharp anguish that Esmond's heart was lacerated even in that dreadful moment at sight of it. Her two hands were desperately seeking to sustain the sinking figure at her side, and desperately beating the remorseless waves.

"Slowly and steadily," he said to her. "Don't exhaust your strength. Nora is safe."

She heard and obeyed. She conquered her terror. Soon she was pulling long, leisurely strokes shoreward with all the ease that she had first exhibited. She looked back occasionally to see that all was going well. And thus the three made their way toward the shore and safety.

Soon they were in shallow water, and a group of more discreet bathers were splashing water about them, unconscious of any scene of peril so recently imminent. Consciousness was returning to the rescued girl, and as she finally stood on her feet, and reached forth her hand to her sister, Esmond, with a sudden impulse, plunged again into the sea, and was soon buffeting once more the outer breakers. An occasional glance toward the beach showed him the two trim figures, one leaning on the other, slowly taking their way, seemingly unnoticed, among the crowd of bath-seekers, and presently disappearing in the shackly row of bath houses. Then Esmond leisurely buffeted his way to shore again, and soon resumed his ordinary dress.

had seen it for the few moments that her head rested on his shoulder, although under circumstances rather inopportune for observing beauty-her face was unusually lovely. True, her mouth was tightly closed, so that he could not define its outlines, and her eyes were shut, so that he had really been unable to see the soul of her beauty, but her face was plainly of a soft, oval shape, with a white, almost bluish-white complexion, owing, probably, to her uncomfortable immersion; her forehead was low and well shaped, her nose was archly chiseled, while her dark hair clustered in long, heavy masses far down her back. She was, undoubtedly, very handsome even without her eyes and teeth-so to speak -and Esmond's interested soul scorned any suggestion that these undoubted essentials to a perfect beauty would not prove to correspond with the rest of the face. She was also petite-he had noticed the slight, trim form as she had tripped so lightly to the bath, and by the same light he had discovered what high, arched, and handsome feet she had. Upon these observations, Esmond Drury, impressed with the necessity of pursuing his romance to the end, built himself an image of girlish beauty, which he expected at any moment to encounter on Ocean Avenue, on the piazza, the supper-room of the hotel, or the ballroom. With that expectation already fully developed in his mind he seated himself in the summer-house again, lit a fresh cigar, and tranquilly prepared to welcome his lady-love at her first approach.

As Esmond ruminated with every new thought of the lovely unknown whom he had rescued from the sea, a deeper interest in her seized upon him, and those emotions which are said to lead to love sensibly assailed him. Pity for the terrible danger that almost overwhelmed her was succeeded by an intense sorrow for the terror that must have seized upon her when she found herself hopelessly in old Ocean's grasp, and this was succeeded in turn by that sentiment akin to paternal love, which one feels for something lying helpless in his arms-something whose life has depended on his strength, whose closed eyes have opened again only at his bidding, whose pale-blue lips have regained the ruddy color of life and hope at his will. There seemed to him to be here an ineradicable bond, binding the unknown Nora forever to himself -a bond which could not be sundered by any after-act, whether he ever or never met his Nora again. And with this romantic bond arose a sense of loyalty to his unknown that seemed to bind him in return.

II.

As Esmond arrived at these romantic conclusions, he discovered that his cigar was out. The Drive was full and gay, as usual of the late afternoons, and the sun in the west was already casting a long, black streak of shadow up the beach. Two young ladies, richly dressed, both fair and tall, one slight

taller than the other, were painfully toiling up the wooden staircase from the beach. The smaller one stopped at the top to help the other up. The latter looked pale and wearied. Esmond remained seated in his summer-house as they slowly went by.

"Never again, Nelly dear," said the younger, passionately pressing the hand of the other. "It was too terrible!"

"What would papa think?" said the other, in a low voice. "We dare not tell him, Mamie."

"We won't tell him. It was too terrible!"

"No, no! not for the world."

"O Nelly, Nelly-"

The rest was lost to Esmond's somewhat inattentive ears, and the two passed by, and glided gracefully across the lawn to the hotel.

Esmond gazed after them involuntarily.

"That taller one, now!" he thought"what a handsome mien she has! I wonder who she is? But I forget. I must think of nobody but my own unknown Nora. It is due to well, it's due to romance that I should be loyal to Nora. Let me see, by-theway, if there are any Noras on the hotel-register. A happy suggestion!"

He crossed the lawn to the hotel, entered the large room where the clerk's desk stood, turned over the register for several days back, and looked for Noras. It was evidently a scant time for Noras, for there was not one on the list. Nearly all the ladies were Mrs. or Miss, and had no Christian name visible.

"She's an elder daughter, doubtless," whispered Hope to the young man.

It was now half-past five o'clock. He must prepare for dinner.

"Give me the key to room 42," said he to the clerk.

That individual had just completed the test of a diamond ring on his finger by looking at it in a dark niche formed by the hollow of his hand, but, in reply to Esmond's polite request, he raised his head, and bent one ear inquiringly toward the guest.

"The key to 42, if you please."

A passing acquaintance at a distance attracted the attention of the gentlemanly clerk at that moment, and he made a languid bow over Esmond's shoulder, and weariedly showed his white teeth in smiling recognition. "52?" he inquired.

"What the deuce can any one be doing in my room?" he thought. Chambermaids, probably, cleaning up."

The key was in the door. He turned the knob and entered. Two steps from the door he stopped. These were not chambermaids cleaning up.

The room was a large one facing the sea, and the western sunlight, slanting in at the open windows, softly lit up the scene before him: two women, one kneeling by the Turkish chair on which the other sat, her hands clasped, her face upraised, her lips trembling, her hair disheveled; the other, with her arm

about the kneeling girl's neck and her head bent down until her lips touched the kneeling girl's cheek; a crushed sea-side hat near them, a rumpled newspaper, a shawl thrown idly on a footstool, a parasol lying on the floor. No wonder that Esmond stopped, and the angry frown on his face gave way to an expression of unqualified amazement. He was about retreating when the kneeling girl sprang to her feet.

"Nelly!" she said.

The other raised her head, and saw with wonder this unexpected intruder. She rose majestically to her full height at once, and made one step toward him.

"What do you want, sir?" she said, with a voice in which there was but the faintest tremor.

"Nothing whatever, ladies," replied Esmond, with a bow, and taking off his hat; "but this is my room."

"Your room? Impossible!" replied the young lady. "You have mistaken the number."

Esmond glanced quickly at the door. No. 42 was there as plain as day.

"I beg your pardon, ladies, but I am not mistaken. This is my number."

The young lady suddenly clasped her hand to her breast.

"Can we possibly have made a mistake?"

"I fear so," replied Esmond, as pleasantly as possible. "This is No. 42. Probably your number sounds similarly."

"Ladies," said Esmond, "I will leave the room to you, as mistakes often occur. But I cannot consent that I should labor under the odium of having intruded here. I know that it is my room. I left it three hours ago merely to bathe. But I cheerfully give it now to you, with the simple request that you ring the bell, and have the servant inquire for you at the office if room No. 42 is not occupied by Mr. Drury. When the answer comes you will see that it is you who have made the mistake, not I; and I hope you will remember at that moment that the mistake, which I fear has been very annoying to you, is not at all so to me. Pray, ring the bell."

And with that Mr. Drury bowed himself out, taking another good look at the number on the door as he went, and descended to the clerk's desk again. And, as he went, he had thought for further rumination.

The two girls in room No. 42 were the same who had passed by him in the summer-house, and the one who had replied to him in the room was the tall one whose figure he had involuntarily noticed there. Strange that he should thus meet these two girls twice within two hours! If they were only the true Nora and her sister, he could understand it. Then it would be Romance and Poetic Justice advancing his suit. But neither of them would answer for Nora. They were both too tall to begin with, and they were both fair with light hair. Of two things he was sure: Nora's hair was dark-say, a dark brownand Nora was not tall. Then, besides, he had heard these young ladies call each other Nel

ly and Mamie, and he could not see that either Nelly or Mamie could be Nora.

He was in a somewhat abstracted mood, with all these thoughts crowding him, when he reached the clerk's desk. The same languid gentleman waited behind it, as steadily inert and lifeless as before. Esmond felt a sort of malicious pleasure in compelling this artistic individual to exert himself a little. "A mistake has occurred, sir," said Esmond.

The lay figure bent its pink eyes wonderingly on him.

"You have put two ladies in a room which belongs to me."

The lay figure slowly shook his head. "Please look on your register and see who occupies room No. 42."

The languid gentleman glanced absently up and down the oblong board, covered with slips of paper, usually seen in hotel-offices, and said, languidly:

"Two Misses Darcy."
"What!" cried Esmond.

The lay figure calmly reverted to the pleasing duty of cleaning his nails, and cast a half-glance of wondering disdain at this disregarder of majesty.

"Do you mean to tell me," said Esmond, quite angrily, "that you have vacated my room and given it to some one else without a word to me?"

The languid gentleman' positively opened his eyes at this astonishing statement. He closed his penknife, and brushed an atom from his shirt-bosom.

It took half a dozen turns round the veranda to enable Drury to recover himself after this cruel blow. He remembered now that he had paid his bill and ordered his trunk checked on the 5.07 train, and, therefore, he had vacated the room, and the young ladies were in rightful possession, and he had intruded upon them, and he remembered, with a shudder, with what confidence, what impertinent assurance, he had informed them that they were mistaken and he was not. It was a cruel humiliation! It was almost more than he could bear. Had he not better take the very next train and flee from the' presence of these fair witnesses of his degrada tion? His loyalty toward Nora intervened between this proposition and himself, and then the remembrance that the young ladies knew his name put an effectual estoppel on its consideration. They would be interested enough in hearing the rest of the story to inquire all about him, and if he fled now he would remain forever under the imputation of being an impertinent intruder. He had better face the difficulty. It was a very commendable characteristic of Esmond that he faced all difficulties at once.

He returned to the clerk's desk, obtained another room, telegraphed to Sandy Hook for his trunk, and then sent the following note by a hall-boy to the young ladies in room 42:

"Esmond Drury presents his regrets to the Misses Darcy for his mistake as to room 42, and requests the privilege of assuring them personally that he was not an intentional intruder."

When this note reached the Misses Darcy, their father, Manton Darcy, of 7- Exchange Place, was in room No. 42 with them, having arrived from the city on the 6.80 train, and being now somewhat nervously and abstractedly trying to master the contents of a fourth edition, varying his efforts frequently by a savage stride across the room, or a frequent and always eager consultation of a telegraphic dispatch which he kept clutched in his hand. The daughters of Mr. Darcy knew this state of mind on the part of their father too well to disturb it. Stocks had often given him such a turn as this, and he had always come out all right. Nevertheless, Miss Nelly, the elder, more than once looked toward him with an anxious glance. When the hall-boy brought in this note on the customary silver platter, Mr. Darcy happened to be near the door in one of his turns, and he took it.

་

"Why, girls," he said, suddenly, "what the devil does this mean? His mistake as to room 42.' 'Not an intentional intruder.' What sort of a transaction is this?"

The girls were unusually demure this evening, Mr. Darcy had observed. They had been whispering together in a shy way ever since he had arrived, and he had not failed to notice, amid all his business perturbation, that there was some girls' secret between them. But he did not bother himself much about it. It was some little surprise that they were preparing for him doubtless, as they had prepared many before, and it would be a cruelty for him to interfere. He had vaguely hoped that there was no money to be expended in it. That was the main thing just now, especially with this unexpected rise in stocks. When this note came he connected it at once with the supposed secret, and in that connection the secret looked bigger than he had expected.

"What does all this mean, Eleanor?" he asked, in dismay. "We must allow of no impertinence on the part of adventurers here, you know."

Well, really, papa," said the elder, quiet"the gentleman seemed to be in real earnest."

15.

"And so much of a gentleman, too," added the other.

"Bother!" said Mr. Darcy, sharply. "How do you know he was a gentleman? These scapegraces can put on the most innocent air in the world when they mean the infernalest villainy."

"But he was really distressed."

"All put on," said Darcy, impatiently. "It's all a game. Some of these disreputable people would stick at nothing to secure a speaking acquaintance, and compromise you in some way-when you've got money, you understand!"