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"MABEL MARTIN, A Harvest Idyl," by John Greenleaf Whittier, is brought out this year as a holiday book by Messrs. James R. Osgood & Co., in the style of Longfellow's "Hanging of the Crane." The substance of the poem, under the

name of "The Witch's Daughter," was published some years ago in "Home Ballads." The story is itself a very simple one, and is told with all of Whittier's quiet and directness, with his gentle but genuine pathos, and with the nameless charm which belongs both to the author's character and

art.

It may be considered one of the advantages of the New England poets that they have a country. The various and varying communities, the widely differing climates and landscapes which we call the United States, or America, hardly answer the purposes of a country, in the view of the household poet, at least. It requires a pretty high pressure to reach an altitude where a poet can embrace in his ken the entire continent. The heroic poet, or a poet in the heroic mood, can do this. There are also, of course, relations, emotions, common to all mankind; and there is a landscape of the mind. But he who would move men in a deep and tender way, by the suggestion of familiar scenes and images, must have an audience to whom he can appeal with surety. In New England, we repeat, the poet has a country, he has fellow-countrymen, prevalent customs, cherished and familiar legends, a people grounded in the soil. He has an audience to which such a passage as this makes a close and touching appeal:

"It was the pleasant harvest-time,

When cellar-bins are closely stowed,
And garrets bend beneath their load,

"And the old swallow-haunted barns,

Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams
Through which the moted sunlight streams,

*And winds blow freshly in, to shake

The red plumes of the roosted cocks,
And the loose hay-mow's scented locks,—
"Are filled with summer's ripened stores,
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves,
From their low scaffolds to their eaves.

"On Esek Harden's oaken floor,

With many an autumn threshing worn,
Lay the heaped ears of unhusked corn.
"And thither came young men and maids,
Beneath a moon that, large and low,
Lit that sweet eve of long ago.

"They took their places; some by chance,
And others by a merry voice

Or sweet smile guided to their choice.

"How pleasantly the rising moon,

Between the shadow of the mows,

Looked on them through the great elm-boughs!

**On sturdy boyhood, sun-embrowned,

On girlhood with its solid curves

Of healthful strength and painless nerves!

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We are well aware that a description of any life, racy of the soil, sweet and human, no matter how distant, will always touch a responsive chord; but the attraction in such a case is different from that local one of which we have spoken.

lock and by Mr. Moran are, on the whole, better in "Mabel Martin" than in "The Hanging of the Crane." (They are certainly better printed.) It is well known to those who are used to seeing drawings on the wood, before the engraver has done his work, that it is a most fortunate accident when the impression from the engraving gives the spirit of the original design. Miss Hallock's drawings have just that delicate quality most apt to disappear somewhere among the processes of cutting, electrotyping, and printing. On the wood they are never so commonplace as some of those in "Mabel Martin appear to have been; and on the wood they always show a refinement and power which we have seldom seen any engraver successfully render. In this series, the grace of the drawing has sometimes degenerated into mere prettiness in the engraving, but sometimes, too, the great interest which Mr. Anthony (who stands among the very first in his profession) has evidently taken in the work under his charge, is rewarded by satisfactory and beautiful results. The line:

We think that the illustrations both by Miss Hal

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"Small leisure have the poor for grief,"

is accompanied by a little picture, very poetic in design, and of which the tone, both of figure and landscape, has been well preserved. There is a true suggestion of moonlight in the cut on page 29, and a sense of dignity and motion. The figure, on page 39, of Mabel kneeling, with bowed head and clasped hands, in her loneliness and gloom, communicates at once the peculiar sadness of the poem,-the sadness of pathos, but not of tragedy. On page 51 the story of the gossip is told in the design with firmness and subtlety; the attitudes of the teller and of the listener are well given. In the scene of the execution on page 36 there is a suggestion of a kind of strength which may not have been suspected by those who have seen only Miss Hallock's illustrative designs,-but there has been a smoothing out in the cutting that weakens the effect. Some of the cuts not mentioned here are doubtless more skillful, from a technical point of view, than some that are mentioned. We do not attempt a mere technical criticism of the engravings; but venture to give our impression as to their rendering of the designs of an artist whose figure subjects drawn on the wood are, after Mr. La Farge's, the best that are now being made in this country. Mr. Moran's pictures show his usual brilliancy of touch; the one most successful seems to be that on the

40th page. This design appears to be more carefully and sympathetically thought out than much of his work in this book. But both artists have evidently been hampered by the supposed laws of illustrated book-making.

Are we ever to have "gift books" illustrated, or decorated, by a sort of natural outgrowth? Is it true that "the public" only want things that are like something else with which they are familiar? We suspect that there is not that invincible detestation of originality and freshness on the part of the people which many suppose. The failures possibly are owing to the fact that appeal is made to the public in behalf of new things which are not thoroughly good of their kind. If a thing is good, and also new, so much the better.

H. W. L.'s "Book of Sonnets." LAST Sunday evening as I wandered down The busiest street of all this busy place, I felt a strange, sweet stillness,-not a trace Of Saturday's wild turmoil in the town: Then as a gentle breeze doth move a gown,

Still almost motionless, or as the face

Of silence smiles, I heard the chimes of Grace Sound murmuring through the Autumn evening's brown.

To-day again I passed along Broadway

In the harsh tumult and mid-noise of noon, While 'neath my feet the solid pavement shook : When lo! it seemed that bells began to play, Upon a Sabbath eve, a silver tune,— For as I walked I read the poet's book.

Christmas Gifts.

HOME AND SOCIETY.

THERE are very few readers of SCRIBNER who just now are not contemplating the approach of Christmas and New Year's with a good deal of secret alarm under the usual pleasure. They always have made gifts in the genial gift-giving season; they mean to do it again; they never, somehow, knew half so many people to whom gifts would be acceptable, but. The dull counters of half the business houses in the cities throughout the fall and winter fully explain that "but," its cause and its

effects.

The only way to solve the difficulty is to meet it face to face. It is necessary for all of us to economize; but let the economy first be seen in the curtailment of our selfish gratifications—not in the expenditures of this season which ought to be a help to giver and receiver both spiritually and practically. Wear the fall hat through the winter, and let the parlor carpet serve another season, and so keep the Christmas purse as full as it was last year. In the employing of it, however, there should be a total change in the ordinary custom. Usually we have offered the cheap gift to our poorer neighbor, and the costly trifle to the wealthy friend, whose tastes we fancied were too luxurious to be satisfied with a❘ small outlay of money. On this Christmas let the weighty end of the purse be emptied where there is actual want. Beggars can be satisfied at any time; but every family knows of cases of suffering where help never will be asked, and is difficult to offer. The happy Christmas time opens a way of approach to the sternest of the self-respecting poor. The barrel of flour, ham, or turkey, the comfortable dress for the mother or flannel outfit for the baby, can be sent under cover of a Christmas greeting, and welcomed, which on another day would appear an insult. Let us spend what little money we have to spare in this practical, helpful direction, and give to our well-to-do friends and intimates something |

better than money—the careful thought and consideration which will discover a trifling gift especially suitable to each. The usual practice in choosing Christmas gifts is to start out with a full porte-monnaie and come home with it empty, having scoured a dozen book and print and curio shops meantime, to "find enough pretty things to go round." The gift sent to one friend might have been offered with equal propriety to a hundred others. Now everybody (worth remembering at all on Christmas day) has a fancy, or whim, or association, which a trifle will recall and gratify. Now that we have so little money, let us set our brains to work to remember these whims or hobbies, and to find the suggestive trifles, and, our word for it, we will startle our friends with a more real pleasure than if we had sent them the costliest unmeaning gift. There must be a nice discrimination, too, in assorting these trifles. There are certain folk whom we know to be sorely in need of articles for the wardrobe, and to whom we must therefore give utterly useless follies, because they know that we know it; and there are other and better folk in like condition, who will receive a collar or a pair of gloves with as hearty and sincere feeling as though the offering were a strain of Christmas music. There is one cousin whose gift must smell of the shops and the dollars paid for it, and another who, if we sent her our worn copy of George Herbert, or the little broken vase which has stood for years on the study table, would receive them with wet eyes, and find them fragrant with old memories. With genuine people of any sort the gift is valued, of course, in proportion to the personal care and thought bestowed upon it. The bit of embroidery by dear unskillful fingers assumes a worth which no priceless Point ever knew. Some women's fingers are not to be trained to hold the needle or pencil; for them the scroll-saw offers inexhaustible resources. There is literally no end to the pretty trifles which can be fashioned with one of these magic helps. One of the most successful Christmas gifts we ever

saw was a quire of thick white note-paper, on the corner of which was a monogram of tiniest ferns or autumn leaves. "She thought of me every day for months,” cried the happy recipient with tears in her eyes. Another was a little cheap photograph of a room dear to the giver and to him to whom it was sent. In short, it is not money which we want for our gifts, but the tender feeling and fine tact in its expression, which no rules or hints can supply if nature has denied it.

Country Kitchens.

Ir is a mistake to suppose that a kitchen must necessarily be uncomfortable, because it has not gas, hot and cold water, stationary wash-tubs, and an elevated range. "You can't expect city conveniences in a country place," is the formula. All these conveniences, with the exception of gas, can be put into country kitchens, if the builder chooses to have them. A man building his own house would willingly sacrifice a fanciful cornice somewhere, or have the parlors less ornamented, in order to have the kitchen made convenient and comfortable, if the idea were suggested to him. But usually he and the architect laying their heads together, with no woman's wisdom to guide them, arrive at the wise conclusion that there must be a kitchen somewhere; and, having determined in what place it will be least conspicuous, consider that part of the house disposed of.

If they studied the matter a little, they would, if possible, have two kitchens-the front, or winter kitchen, containing the range. With a cooking stove in the back kitchen for summer use, the house could be kept much cooler during the hot season. The stationary tubs should be in the back room. If there are no stationary tubs, the washing could be done in the room that was out of season, thus avoiding the necessity of the weekly slop and steam, and soiled clothes in the cooking-room. If this is too costly a plan, a small wash-room could be substituted for the back kitchen at no great expense.

But, supposing there is but one room for cooking, washing, and ironing, and that there has been no attempt to introduce into this the "modern conveniences" (which is the actual state of things in most country houses), there is no need for a sublime resignation to every imaginable kitchen discomfort and inconvenience.

A pump ought to be regarded as a necessity in a country kitchen. If the room has but one window, and neither outside door nor open fire-place, it is badly ventilated, and therefore uncomfortable. It

ing up like a jack-in-a-box. There is no need whatever for submitting to such discomforts as these.

The first consideration in a cooking-room is cleanliness. Tried by this test, papered walls are an abomination in such a place. You cannot darken this room through part of the day in summer, as you do others, and, consequently, fly specks will be numerous. These walls absorb the kitchen odors and steam, and the smoke rests lovingly upon them. If creeping things get into a house, they are sure to insinuate themselves into the paper on the walls. Hard-finished walls are really more cleanly, for they can be washed; but, unless the finishing is better done than in the kitchens we have seen, they soon look dirty, and this is the next worst thing to being so; for such finishing soon becomes discolored and "splotchy." There is nothing that will compare with the old-fashioned whitewash; not color wash, but whitewash, pure and simple. The color wash may give the walls a prettier tint, but it must be put on by a practiced hand, whereas whitewash can be applied by any one, whenever a dirty spot makes its appearance. It is true that unpracticed hands do not apply the brush as evenly as could be wished but a few streaks more or less don't matter, when we can all see that the streaks are white and clean.

Don't have the wood-work painted; don't have anything painted. Things in a kitchen will get soiled. It follows that they must be cleaned. Soap is a foe, before which paint invariably quits the field. Very soon the color will be off in spots, and nothing less than repainting the whole room will ever make it look clean again. It is still more objectionable to leave the wood in its native state. It requires hard and frequent scrubbing to keep this clean, and even this process will not suffice to keep all sorts of wood in good condition. Some woods seem actually to blacken under the scrubbing brush. But, if the native wood, even common pine, is well oiled and varnished lightly, the room will be the prettier for it; and, with very little washing, the wood-work can be kept sweet and clean.

The most cleanly kitchen floor is similarly treated-the native wood oiled. This oiling will have to be renewed on the floor at long intervals. If the boards are so roughly laid that they cannot be thus treated, it may, perhaps, be well to stain them instead with black walnut stain. This will have to be renewed every spring and fall at a cost of about fifty cents. Oil-cloth is a cleanly covering,

but it is costly, and will not retain its good looks very long, and it requires much washing at the expense of the servants' backs. Carpeting collects dust with marvelous rapidity, and gives it out very liberally under Biddy's broom. But, alas! in our climate Biddy's feet will get cold in winter if she habitually stands on bare floors or on oil-cloth. To prevent this, some people lay rugs in front of the tables and sink. If a carpet is laid in a kitchen, it should be tacked down as lightly as possible, or fastened with carpet rings slipped over smooth

is also unwholesome. Papered walls and a row of shelves, unenclosed, called, par complaisance, a dresser, are neither of them cleanly. Both uncomfortable, and uncleanly is the little pot closet; too shallow to admit of a proper disposition of the cooking utensils, so that the big pot, indignant at the pile of articles thrust upon him, bursts open the door at the most unexpected times, and astonishes the occupants of the kitchen with a vision of the fry-headed tacks, because it should be taken up freing-pan gyrating over the floor, or the gridiron leap

quently to be well shaken.

A dresser is one of the things absolutely necessary. It may be well for the housekeeper to insist upon the fact that a set of open shelves is no more a dresser than twenty yards of silk is a dress. If you have a dresser made under your own direction, the best form is to have two wide closets below, and three narrower ones above, with a row of drawers at the top of the lower closets. The upper closets should be far enough above the lower to allow the top of the latter to be used as a table. These lower closets are intended for the cooking utensils, and should be, at least, two feet deep. The upper closets may be a few inches less in depth, and it is a good arrangement to have two of these provided with shelves; a small one as a place of temporary deposit for meats, vegetables, and things taken from the store-room to be presently cooked, instead of having them standing about on the kitchen tables. This closet should, of course, be nearest the range or cooking stove, and in it the pepper, salt, and other condiments will be near at hand. The middle and largest closet contains the kitchen crockery and tins that are not to be hung. The third one, without shelves, is for tins and other things that must be hung up. It might be well to have a shelf or two at the top of this closet, on which the flat-irons, soap, starch, bluing, and silver-cleaning articles could be kept. By this arrangement everything is inclosed from the dust and flies.

Shades, made of fine wooden slats, are very suitable for kitchen windows, as they soften the light without darkening the room. They are inexpensive, only costing about seventy-five cents a yard, and "fixtures" are very simple.

Then, the lighting of the room is to be considered. A lamp that has to be carried from place to place is not a kitchen comfort. If it could be managed, a hanging fixture to hold a lamp, not too far from the range, would be best, for it is very desirable to have the light fall from above upon your work. Even two lamps would not give too brilliant a light for such a particularly nice job as cooking ought to be. The very best oil would only cost a cent or two a night for the extra lamp. But we know it is often impossible to hang a lamp in a kitchen with safety; and the next best thing, perhaps, is to have the lamps in brackets at each end of the room or at the sides. The shape of the kitchen must determine where the light is to be placed; only so dispose it that the room shall be well illuminated.

These remarks may rouse the ambition of some country housekeepers, and stir them up to revolutionize their cooking abodes of discomfort. They can, doubtless, improve upon the plans offered here, and devise many a "convenience."

Politeness and Punctilio.

WE have but a low opinion of etiquette books. The politeness that is dealt out by weight and measure seems to us of a very poor quality. Yet we know that there are many very good people to whom written laws of etiquette are as sacred as the Ten Commandments. Their only source of disquiet

in regard to them is that there does not seem to be any one generally recognized set of commandments in regard to the daily recurring trifles most of which involve an etiquette of a more complex kind than that which decrees that we shall not eat with our knives, or lean our elbows upon the dinnertable.

Visiting and calling etiquette is one of these things. Each social clique has its own unchangeable ideas in regard to what is or is not etiquette in the matter of calls; and many have been the heart-burn- . ings and jealousies caused by misunderstandings of these conflicting codes. Especially is this the case in those smaller towns which it is just now our republican affectation to call provincial. Mrs. Jones takes with her into some small Western city the notions of etiquette which she learned in some small Eastern city. She acts strictly upon her own code, severely disregarding that of the place into which she has come. Her new neighbors, with an equal degree of righteous inflexibility, adhere to their code. Politeness-which Lord Chatham well defined to be "benevolence in trifles"-withdraws her flag of truce, indignant at the ill-usage she receives at the hands of the two conflicting etiquettes, and discord reigns supreme.

The family of Mrs. Jones (in addition to certain male beings who, considered in this relation, do not count for much) consists of herself, her unmarried sister, and their mother. Their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Clarke, promptly upon the advent of the Joneses, calls upon them, asking at the door only for Mrs. Jones; as she, Mrs. Clarke, has been educated in the belief that a call upon the female head of a family implies a similar courtesy to all of its female members. Mistaken Mrs. Clarke! She has mortally offended not only the ladies, for whom she omitted to directly inquire, but also Mrs. Jones, who resents the supposed affront to her relatives, and the before-mentioned male beings who must, perforce of gallantry, espouse the cause of the ladies of their family. Mrs. Jones feels herself, in etiquette, bound to return the call of Mrs. Clarke; but, "to sustain her dignity," does so only by dropping an icicle of a visiting card at the latter's door. In due time Mrs. Clarke, in her turn, affronted by the cool reception of her proffered cordiality, returns the icicle, and with such periodical exchanges the social intercourse of the Joneses and Clarkes begins and ends.

As the belief of Mrs. Clarke, that a call by a lady upon the female head of a family implies one upon all of its female members and guests who are ready or willing to receive her, is shared by all of her townspeople, it being one of the ten or twenty etiquette commandments to whose sacred observance they were all educated, Mrs. Jones soon finds herself left in a socially very cool place. If she is sure she never saw so ill-bred and disagreeable a set of people" as her new neighbors, she is probably as correct as the same neighbors when they declare that they "never met so vulgar and altogether disagreeable a family as those Joneses."

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Both parties have totally forgotten that etiquette

is not an end, but a means, and that the end sought is the very simple one of giving and getting as much happiness as possible during our little stay together in this world; in other words, carrying into practice the Golden Rule.

Etiquette is assuredly a useful thing in some places and situations. Doubtless the King of Dahomey would find it impossible to derive much benefit from being King of Dahomey-would not, perhaps, even know that he held that exalted position, if it were not for the rigid etiquette of his court. It is by this requiring, upon pain of death, that various genuflexions and sundry prostrations shall be paid to his dusky majesty, that majesty becomes conscious of itself, and is happy. Even in more civilized and less royal society we are willing to admit that etiquette has its uses. Especially is it convenient when one wishes to drop a troublesome or a stupid acquaintance. Then some trifling breach of its laws, real or fancied, on the part of the acquaintance, may become a strong wall of defense, behind which we may securely intrench ourselves. But, aside from similar cases, we are inclined to consider an inflexible adherence to strict rules of etiquette in social intercourse as a relic of barbarism, and one which would render politeness, in the sense of Lord Chatham's definition, an impossible virtue.

Second-hand Furniture.

"IT costs but a trifle," says some housekeeper, who has kept house long enough to learn the value of money. "The upholsterers ask fifty dollars for just such a chair, and I get this at Jones's auction for fifteen." But her self-complacency may give place to mortification before many days are past, for the cost of a fifty dollar chair is not reduced to fifteen out of pure benevolence. It may have a distressing lurch to one side, or an ungraceful pitch forward, or rickety joints; or, what is worse (and very frequently happens), this admirable chair may long have been the chosen abode of those disagreeable insects known to the scientific under the name of cimex lectularius.

But the purchaser does not take the lesson to heart; these "managing" housekeepers never do. They cannot resist the temptation of "getting a bargain." So she goes on filling her house with unsightly, inconvenient furniture, because it is more economical to buy second-hand. "Your new furniture soon looks second-hand," she says; "so where is the difference?"

If she were to reckon up the small sums she has spent in having her dismal stuff put in order and

made usable (nothing can make it pretty), she would probably find she had spent quite as much money as would have sufficed to furnish her house with new well-made articles of beautiful design, though, possibly, not of so costly a finish as her second-hand furniture was originally. And then the time she has spent at auction stores, and at forced sales at private houses! It is evident that she does not consider time to be money.

On the other hand, a young housekeeper generally shuns these places. If she fancies some article of furniture, and is told it is second-hand, she turns from it in contempt, and buys something new, not half so good, at double the price. To purchase second-hand furniture scems to her a confession of poverty; and, besides, she has a dislike to having things in her house that have been used by any one else; they only seem half her own. The cheapness of the article has no especial attraction for her, for she has not yet learned the value of money.

And yet, if she has but a moderate income, it might be well for her, in many instances, to purchase the second-hand table or sideboard, for she may get a much better article 'for the same money; and the feeling that it has once been the property of some one else will probably soon wear off. The rule in buying second-hand furniture is, Don't buy anything whatever merely because it is cheap. If you don't need it, don't buy it at all. If you do need it, buy either the new or the second-hand, whichever, upon examination, appears to be the best. All things being equal, of course one would naturally give the preference to the article that costs the least.

use common sense.

If a lady can procure second-hand furniture without too great an expenditure of time at auctions and the like; if the draft made upon her patience and temper is not too strong, and if she makes no sacrifice of refinement to economy; if the furniture has been well kept, and is tolerably fresh and reasonably good-looking, and if a proper reduction is made in the price, it is a decided advantage to buy it.

If you are so fortunate as to be able to purchase the furniture you desire from some friend, you may buy without fear; but otherwise there are certain articles that cannot be bought without running great risks. Indeed, we might almost say they should never be bought at auctions, or from the regular dealers in second-hand ware. These articles are bedding, bedsteads, carpets, oil-cloths, and upholstered furniture.

The above remarks only apply to ordinary housefurnishing with comparatively modern articles, and have, of course, no reference to antique furniture.

CULTURE AND PROGRESS.

Stedman's "Victorian Poets." * WHEN the essay on "Tennyson and Theocritus," which forms the sixth chapter of this work, first

* Victorian Poets. By Edmund Clarence Stedman. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

VOL. XI.-19.

appeared in print, some five years ago, it was a welcome surprise even to those friends of Mr. Stedman who were most familiar with the fine and symmetrical qualities of his intellect. That pure poetic insight which is the vital spirit of criticism is often

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