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Well, a secret, then: Van Kull and Wemyss, too, are bored, and even Tony Duval finds it slow. For Flossie Gower I speak not; she has a great, stillfed, self-pride, and when that, too, grows stale she is too clever to let it bore her-she will leave it first; and Birmingham is saved by his British atmosphere and healthy, dormant brain. All this is why Charlie Townley-no,

Charlie fears rather that he may not always be rich enough to keep it up, and is making up to poor Mamie, in consequence. But that is why, or all these things are why, Van Kull walked off with Mrs. Hay, that night; and even Birmingham made overtures to Kitty Farnum ; and Charlie did propose to Mamie Livingstone; and Caryl Wemyss propotold Mrs. Gower that he loved her.

MID-SUMMER.

By Allan Simpson Botsford.

THERE was a quietude about the place
We never found elsewhere; the boulders gray
Hung heavily beneath the water's edge;
Below, the dam was sunny and chalk-white,
Where slept the tea-green water at repose;
No shim'ring ripple skimmed the surface smooth,
Save when a singing line cut into it-
Or a far snipe kissed it with downy breast.
Dim shadows, downward cast by the slow bird,
High circling in the heaven-came and went;
Queer savors of strange verdure filled the air-
The breath of ivy, and of hidden bloom,
And of wild pennyroyal and many mints.
No sound was there, but that of high delight!
The robin lent her music free as air,
The thrush sang in the underwood at hand,
While at uncertain intervals there came

From some deep field of yellow tangled wheat,
Shrill whistlings of a summer-smitten quail;
The cat-bird in the red haws near us tuned
His voice to many choruses, and sang

In mimicry of all the happy host.

It was a place where hours went their ways
As softly as sweet dreams go down the night,
Untroubled by the wisdom of the wise,
Or hampered by the dint of a desire.

The great good-hearted beeches over us,

Steeped the sweet grass in clever depths of shade,
Wherein our cloth was spread at the noon-hour;
And lazily as ancient kings we dined,

And smoked, and chatted, and there spent the day,
Tipping our bumpers, while in toasts arrayed,
Our happy souls triumphant over men,

Walked down the many splendid ways of fame,
Until our steps were lost-or strangely blurred—
As the red sun crept westward through the dusk.

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POPULAR AUTHORS.

By Robert Louis Stevenson.

HE scene is the deck of an Atlantic liner, close by the doors of the ashpit, where it is warm: the time, night: the persons, an emigrant of an inquiring turn of mind and a deck hand. "Now," says the emigrant, "is there not any book that gives a true picture of a sailor's life?"-"Well," returns the other, with great deliberation and emphasis, "there is one; that is just a sailor's life. You know all about it, if you know that."-" What do you call it?" asks the emigrant.-"They call it Tom Holt's Log," says the sailor. The emigrant entered the fact in his notebook: with a wondering query as to what sort of stuff this Tom Holt would prove to be and a double-headed prophecy that it would prove one of two things either a solid, dull, admirable piece of truth, or mere ink and banditti. Well, the emigrant was wrong: it was something more curious than either, for it was a work by STEPHENS HAYWARD.

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In this paper I propose to put the authors' names in capital letters; the most of them have not much hope of durable renown; their day is past, the poor dogs-they begin swiftly to be forgotten; and HAYWARD is of the number. Yet he was a popular writer; and what is really odd, he had a vein of harebrained merit. There never was a man of less pretension; the intoxicating presence of an ink-bottle, which was too

much for the strong head of Napoleon, left him sober and light-hearted; he had no shade of literary vanity; he was never at the trouble to be dull. His works fell out of date in the days of printing. They were the unhatched eggs of Arab tales; made for word-of-mouth recitation, certain (if thus told) to captivate an audience of boys or any simple people-certain, on the lips of a generation or two of public story-tellers, to take on new merit and become cherished lore. Such tales as a man, such rather as a boy, tells himself at night, not without smiling, as he drops asleep; such, with the same exhilarating range of incident and the same trifling ingenuities, with no more truth to experience and scarcely more cohesion, HAYWARD told. If we so consider The Diamond Necklace, or the Twenty Captains, which is what I remember best of HAYWARD, you will find that staggering narrative grow quite conceivable.

A gentleman (his name forgottenHAYWARD had no taste in names) puts an advertisement in the papers, inviting nineteen other gentlemen to join him in a likely enterprise. The nineteen appear promptly, nineteen, no more, no less see the ease of the recumbent story-teller, half-asleep, hanging on the verge of that country of dreams, where candles come alight and journeys are accomplished at the wishing! These twenty, all total strangers, are to put their money together and form an association of strict equality: hence its name-The Twenty Captains. And it is no doubt very pleasant to be equal to anybody, even in name; and mighty desirable (at least in the eyes of young gentlemen hearing this tale in the school dormi

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Such a

tory) to be called captain, even in pri- was something carried away upon the vate. But the deuce of it is, the founder engine. All eyes turn to see what it is: has no enterprise in view, and here you an integral part of the machinery! would think, the least wary capitalist There is now no means of reducing would leave his chair, and buy a broom speed; on thunders the engine, full and a crossing with his money, rather steam ahead, down this remarkable route than place it in the hands of this total to Dover; on speed the twenty captains, stranger, whose mind by his own confes- not very easy in their minds. Presently, sion was a blank, and whose real name the driver of the second special (the was probably Macaire. No such matter aristocrat's) looks behind him, sees an in the book. With the ease of dream- engine on his track, signals, signals in ing, the association is founded; and vain, finds himself being overhauled, again with the ease of dreaming (HAY- pokes up his fire and-full steam ahead WARD being now three parts asleep) the in flight. Presently after, the driver of enterprise, in the shape of a persecuted the first special (injured innocence's) heiress and a truly damnable and idiotic looks behind, sees a special on his track aristocrat, appears upon the scene. For and an engine on the track of the spesome time, our drowsy story-teller cial, signals, signals in vain, and he too dodges along upon the frontiers of in--full steam ahead in flight. coherence, hardly at the trouble to invent, never at the trouble to write literature; but suddenly his interest brightens up, he sees something in front of him, turns on the pillow, shakes off the tentacles of slumber, and puts his back into his tale. Injured innocence takes a special train to Dover; damnable idiot takes another and pursues; the twenty captains reach the station five minutes after, and demand a third. It is against the rules, they are told; not more than two specials (here is good news for the railway traveller) are allowed at the same time upon the line. Is injured innocence, with her diamond necklace, to lie at the mercy of an aristocrat? Forbid it, Heaven and the Cheap Press! The twenty captains slip unobserved into the engine-house, steal an engine, and forth upon the Dover line! As well as I can gather, there were no stations and no pointsmen on this route to Dover, which must in consequence be quick and safe. One thing it had in common with other and less simple railways, it had a line of telegraph wires; and these the twenty captains decided to destroy. One of them, you will not be surprised to learn, had a coil of rope-in his pocket, I suppose; another again I shall not surprise you-was an Irishman and given to blundering. One end of the line was made fast to a telegraph post; one (by the Irishman) to the engine: all aboard -full steam ahead-a double crash, and there was the telegraph post upon the ground, and here-mark my HAYWARD!

day on the Dover line! But at last the second special smashes into the first, and the engine into both; and for my part, I think there was an end of that romance. But HAYWARD was by this time fast asleep: not a life was lost; nor only that, but the various parties recovered consciousness and resumed their wild career (only now, of course, on foot and across country) in the precise original order: injured innocence leading by a length, damnable aristocrat with still more damnable valet (like one man) a good second, and the twenty captains (again like one man) a bad third; so that here was the story going on again just as before, and this appalling catastrophe on the Dover line reduced to the proportions of a morning call. The feelings of the company (it is true) are not dwelt upon.

Now, I do not mean that Tom Holt is quite such high-flying folly as The Twenty Captains; for it is no such thing, nor half so entertaining. Still it flowed from the same irresponsible brain; still it was the mere drowsy divagation of a man in bed, now tedious, now extravagant-always acutely untrue to life as it is, often pleasantly coincident with childish hopes of what life ought to be-as (for instance) in the matter of that little pleasure-boat, rigged, to every block and rope, as a full-rigged ship, in which Tom goes sailing-happy child! And this was the work that an actual tarry seaman recommended for a picture of his own existence !

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II.

It was once my fortune to have an interview with Mr. HAYWARD's publisher: a very affable gentleman in a very small office in a shady court off Fleet Street. We had some talk together of the works he issued and the authors who supplied them; and it was strange to hear him talk for all the world as one of our publishers might have talked of one of us, only with a more obliging frankness, so that the private life of these great men was more or less unveiled to me. So and so (he told me, among other things) had demanded an advance upon a novel, had laid out the sum (apparently on spirituous drinks) and refused to finish the work. "We had to put it in the hands of BRACEBRIDGE HEMMING," said the publisher with a chuckle : "he finished it." And then with conviction: A most reliable author, BRACEBRIDGE HEMMING." I have no doubt the name is new to the reader; it was not so to me. Among these great men of the dust, there is a touching ambition which punishes itself; not content with such glory as comes to them, they long for the glory of being bound-long to invade, between six boards, the homes of that aristocracy whose manners they so often find occasion to expose; and sometimes (once in a long lifetime) the gods give them this also, and they appear in the orthodox three volumes, and are fleered at in the critical press, and lie quite unread in circulating libraries. One such work came in my mind: The Bondage of Brandon, by BRACEBRIDGE HEMMING. I had not found much pleasure in the volumes; but I was the more glad to think that Mr. Hemming's name was quite a household word, and himself quoted for "a reliable author," in his own literary circles.

On my way westward from this interview, I was aware of a first floor in Fleet Street rigged up with wire windowblinds, brass straps, and gilt lettering: Office for the sale of the works of PIERCE EGAN. "Ay, Mr. EGAN," thought I, "and have you an office all to yourself!" And then remembered that he too had once revelled in three volumes: The Flower of the Flock the book was called, not without pathos for the considerate

mind; but even the flower of Egan's flock was not good enough for the critics or the circulating libraries, so that I purchased my own copy, quite unread, for three shillings at a railway bookstall. Poor dogs, I thought, what ails you, that you should have the desire of this fictitious upper popularity, made by hack journalists and countersigned by yawning girls? Yours is the more true. Your butcher, the landlady at your seaside lodgings-if you can afford that indulgence, the barmaid whom you doubtless court, even the Rates and Taxes that besiege your door, have actually read your tales and actually know your names. There was a waiter once (or so the story goes) who knew not the name of Tennyson: that of HEMMING perhaps had brought the light into his eyes, or VILES perhaps, or ERRYM, or the great J. F. SMITH, or the unutterable Reynolds, to whom even here I must deny his capitals.-Fancy, if you can (thought I), that I languish under the reverse of your complaint; and being an upper-class author, bound and criticised, long for the penny number and the weekly woodcut!

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Well, I know that glory now. I have tried and on the whole I have failed: just as EGAN and HEMMING failed in the circulating libraries. It is my consolation that Charles Reade nearly wrecked that valuable property the London Journal, which must instantly fall back on Mr. Egan; and the king of us all, George Meredith, once staggered the circulation of a weekly newspaper. servant-maid used to come and boast when she had read another chapter of Treasure Island: that any pleasure should attend the exercise never crossed her thoughts. The same tale, in a penny paper of a high class, was mighty coldly looked upon; by the delicate test of the correspondence column, I could see I was far to leeward; and there was one giant on the staff (a man with some talent, when he chose to use it) with whom I very early perceived it was in vain to rival. Yet I was thought well of on my penny paper for two reasons: one that the publisher was bent on raising the standard-a difficult enterprise in which he has to a great extent succeeded; the other, because (like Bracebridge

Hemming) I was "a reliable author." For our great men of the dust are apt to be behind with copy.

III.

How I came to be such a student of our penny press, demands perhaps some explanation. I was brought up on Cassell's Family Paper; but the lady who was kind enough to read the tales aloud to me was subject to sharp attacks of conscience. She took the Family Paper on confidence; the tales it contained being Family Tales, not novels. But every now and then, something would occur to alarm her finer sense; she would express a well-grounded fear that the current fiction was "going to turn out a Regular Novel;" and the family paper, with my pious approval, would be dropped. Yet neither she nor I were wholly stoical; and when Saturday came round, we would study the windows of the stationer and try to fish out of subsequent woodcuts and their legends the further adventures of our favorites. Many points are here suggested for the casuist; definitions of the Regular Novel and the Family Tale are to be desired; and quite a paper might be written on the relative merit of reading a fiction outright and lusting after it at the stationer's window. The experience at least had a great effect upon my childhood. This inexpensive pleasure mastered me. Each new Saturday I would go from one newsvender's window to another's, till I was master of the weekly gallery and had thoroughly digested The Baronet Unmasked," "So and so approaching the Mysterious House," "The Discovery of the Dead Body in the Blue Marl Pit," "Dr. Vargas Removing the Senseless Body of Fair Lilias," and whatever other snatch of unknown story and glimpse of unknown characters that gallery afforded. I do not know that I ever enjoyed fiction more; those books that we have (in such a way) avoided reading, are all so excellently written! And in early years, we take a book for its material, and act as our own artists, keenly realizing that which pleases us, leaving the rest aside. I never supposed that a book was to command me until, one disastrous day of

storm, the heaven full of turbulent vapors, the streets full of the squalling of the gale, the windows resounding under bucketfuls of rain, my mother read aloud to me Macbeth. I cannot say I thought the experience agreeable; I far preferred the ditch-water stories that a child could dip and skip and doze over, stealing at times materials for play; it was something new and shocking to be thus ravished by a giant, and I shrank under the brutal grasp. But the spot in memory is still sensitive; nor do I ever read that tragedy but I hear the gale howling up the valley of the Leith.

All this while, I would never buy upon my own account; pence were scarce, conscience busy; and I would study the pictures and dip into the exposed columns, but not buy. My fall was brought about by a truly romantic incident. Perhaps the reader knows Neidpath Castle, where it stands, bosomed in hills, on a green promontory; Tweed at its base running through all the gamut of a busy river, from the pouring shallow to the brown pool. In the days when I was thereabout, and that part of the earth was made a heaven to me by many things now lost, by boats, and bathing, and the fascination of streams, and the delights of comradeship, and those (surely the prettiest and simplest) of a boy and a girl romance-in those days of Arcady there dwelt in the upper story of the castle one whom I believe to have been gamekeeper on the estate. rest of the place stood open to incursive urchins; and there, in a deserted chamber, we found some half-a-dozen numbers of Black Bess, or the Knight of the Road, a work by EDWARD VILES. So far as we were aware, no one had visited that chamber (which was in a turret) since Lambert blew in the doors of the fortress with contumelious English cannon. Yet it could hardly have been Lambert (in whatever hurry of military operations) who had left these samples of romance; and the idea that the gamekeeper had anything to do with them was one that we discouraged. the offence is now covered by prescription; we took them away; and in the shade of a contiguous fir-wood, lying on blaeberries, I made my first acquaintance with the art of Mr. Viles. From

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