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cline of dramatic literature during Garrick's management to the yet lower position than the low one it had previously occupied, is to be found in the general character of the great player's genius. Before his time the manageinent had been in the hands either of some one individual not himself upon the stage, or of several actors all equally concerned in the character of the pieces performed at their theatre, but differing in the direction of their own talents for the stage. Wilkes, Cibber, and Dogget, and Wilkes, Cibber, and Booth, were a junto of this kind. Garrick was supreme at Drury Lane, both as actor and manager, and had the power to exercise a fatal influence. If he had by a happy chance been a fine critic, he might have contrived to gratify his vanity without injuring Shakespeare, and without dictating his imaginary stage necessities to the playwriters, among whom he gradually alienated the most respectable. It is an evidence of the force of the great tragedian that Garrick's audiences, consisting in great part of literary men, made no protest against his barbarous dealings with our greatest poet or his encouragement of our meanest scribblers. Satisfied with the passion he roused, they did not question the instruments he used. His despotism was accepted. That a fine actor has considerable dominion over the authors he represents is indisputable, yet it must be remembered, somewhat to diminish the marvel of Garrick's proceedings, that his own bad taste was but an exaggerated growth of his period, and that Johnson, the oracle of that age, has left us many criticisms to laugh at.

At the end of the Garrick epoch the literature of the stage was completely debased; a great quantity of new plays were produced every season, which only existed by their novelty, and were not for a moment supposed to have any other principle of vitality in them; the consequence was that when Mrs. Siddons and her brother John Kemble appeared upon the scene they found no author worthy to write for them.

Lady Pollock (who the reader will recollect is wife of Sir Frederick Pollock, editor of Macready's "Diaries and Reminiscences," recently published) proceeds in her entertaining paper to give her views upon Fechter and Henry Irving:

He

In the worst period of literary stagnation, some ten years after Macready's retirement, M. Fechter, a clever French actor, came to London to wake the echoes of Shakespeare's music with a foreign accent. In the character of Hamlet, partly by the surprise which was excited by his attempt, and partly by his real merit, he met with considerable success. was a skillful artist, but he made frequent mistakes of emphasis, and he was deficient in sustained force. He was good in a flash of passion, or a graceful movement; but he had no depth of feeling, and there were deficiencies of heart as well as of language when he sought to interpret the highest passion. His representation of Othello deserves to be recorded as a proof of the player's influence on the poet. The actor, being incapable of any great poetical conception, substituted paltry devices and petty elaborations of action for the majestic movement of passion; the play was for the time vulgarized, and all its richness of sound and vastness of imagination were cramped into such mean dimensions that it seemed no better than a prosaic Parisian drama of the Dumas school. It was so little liked that

M. Fechter produced no more Shakespearean plays.

Twenty-four years have passed since the day of Macready's retirement, and now for the first time an English actor has appeared whose genius gives us reason to expect the restoration of poetical drama to our stage. Mr. Henry Irving brings to whatever character he undertakes fine thought and vivid emotion; these qualities have been evident in all his representations, but the complex character of Hamlet has given him the freest scope for the use of his powers. Out of solitary contemplation he has drawn his inspiration, for he came upon an empty stage, where there was no departing or reigning greatness to kindle or to guide him. His fervent imagination imparts life, the first requisite in acting, to his personation; a life taken from the poet's heart into the depths of his own. He is the impressionable, flexible Hamlet: tender by nature, stung into bitterness by an intolerable sense of wrong, but never strong and resolute. Fitful, moody; alternately meditative and impetuous; passionate in imagination, and too subtile in thought for a persistent course of action, he is carried to the verge of frenzy by the unequal conflict of the inner man with the circumstances which surround him. But his fury is short-lived, and his spirits instantly fall back into that profound dejection which makes the young prince weary of his life. Such is the interpretation to which Mr. Irving's swift emotions and fine intellectual perceptions give a singular vitality and interest. He delivers what may be termed the set speeches, somewhat tarnished by frequent handling, as if he were thinking them out for the first time, and gives back to them the full freshness of a new impulse. Mr. Irving's attributes are essentially poetical, and therefore it is not to be feared that, as a disciple of the natural school of acting, he will mar its excellence by exaggeration. He has too delicate an appreciation of beauty to let slip in a slovenly utterance the melody of a poet's thought; he has too true a dramatic instinct to suffer a grand towering passion to sink into the tone of a drawing-room platitude for the gratification of certain spectators who hold that Nature is best served by depriving her of all nobility and all grace. His taste will reject that evil fashion of his time; nor is he likely to yield to those temptations which have been described as haunting the onward path of the favorite tragedian.

A LONDON writer discusses the influence of the doctrines of Swedenborg on litera

ture:

The influence of Swedenborg on imaginative literature is nowhere so obvious as in the novels of Balzac. There are traces of his theory of Correspondences in a place where they might not have been looked for, in the "Fleurs

du Mal" of Charles Baudelaire. The poet, in

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a mystic strain of verse," sings how colors and sounds and scents mingle and blend in the world, and produce an inaudible harmony, a color invisible, to the eyes and ears of the uninitiated. In the pretty tale of "Spirite," too, a masterpiece of Théophile Gautier, it is Swedenborg's theories of conjugal love that are travestied, and it is a Swedenborgian mystic who unlocks to the lover of Spirite the gate of the spiritual world. But the gross, sensuous Balzac-Balzac whose ideas of la vis conjugale are so frankly material-really felt, more than any other man of literary genius, the attraction of these new regions of which Swedenborg was the Columbus. Balzac's "Louis Lambert" is partly autobiographical, a sketch of his own sufferings when, as a school-boy in Vendôme, he neglected his Latin exercises to pore over such works as "Heaven and Hell revealed." Lambert in the novel is a secluded and unappreciated genius, whose life is an attempt to develop the true, the angelic nature that is hidden within our frames. Even as a boy, Lambert is second-sighted, beholds places in vision, and recognizes them later in fact, as Swedenborg saw the fire of Stockholm three hundred miles off, and as Shelley used oceasionally to do, or say he did. The dream of his life is to meet an angel-woman, and meet her he does, like other people, at last. Unfortunately, he falls just before his marriage into a state which may be beatific contemplation, or may be idiotcy, and when he opens his lips after months of silence it is only to say, The angels are white." In his more lucid intervals he would make such profound remarks as, "The Abstract thinks, the Instinctive acts." In this failure and decay of the mystic vision, when it seemed on the point of solving the secrets of the universe, Balzac probably symbolized his own mature views as to the mysticism that always attracted him. To him the system of Swedenborg is like his own mysterious Séraphitus Séraphita, a brilliant, sexless creature of strange birth, tantalizing, alluring, fading at last out of human view among the glittering snows and glacial peaks of the mountains round the Stromford. Séraphitus Séraphita allures her lovers to heights where the breath is caught by the sharp air, where the sight grows dim, and the brain reels. She vanishes from those who love her, leaving only a memory and a hope the sense of having seen wonderful sights with eyes waking or dreaming, the trust that these marvels have a meaning and a promise, and the certainty that, after all, the life of earth and not the visions of the Alpine summits, i the only life for men. Perhaps this is no un common result of the reading of Swedenborg very voluminous writings, which are not, how ever, destitute of humor, if the seer is correc ly reported to have said that the English a hang together, and see few foreigners, in som circle of the invisible world.

Notices.

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SCIENTIFIC BOOKS.-Send 10 cents for General Catalogue of Works on Archite ture, Astronomy, Chemistry, Engineering, Mechanics, Geology, Mathematics, etc. D. VAN NOSTRAN Publisher, 23 Murray Street, New York.

MONTHLY PARTS OF APPLETONS' JOURNAL-APPLETONS' JOURNAL put up in Monthly Parts, sewed and trimmed. Two out of every three parts contain four weekly numbers; third contains five weekly numbers. Price of parts containing four weekly numbers, 40 cents; of those contain five numbers, 50 cents. Subscription price per annum, $4.50. For sale by all booksellers and newsdeale D. APPLETON & Co., Publishers, 549 & 551 Broadway, New York.

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and restful old town.* We have been admitted within the sacred precincts of more than one historic mansion, have held mystical converse with their departed inhabitants, and have, in turning away, mused on the lessons of their lives. There is much in these associations which, if we are not quite able to analyze, we yet feel the full force of. Stupid people may laugh, if they please, and accuse us of a sickly sentimentality, but we feel that it is good for us to cultivate a sentiment that leads us to honor the memory of the great and good who have lived before us.

Close by the sea, where you can scent its full flavor and inhale its invigorating gales, is the ancient Quincy Mansion-less antique, perhaps, than other roofs scattered about the town, but a good specimen of colonial architecture a hundred years ago. It is placed on a gentle swell of ground at the extremity of the noblest private estate in New England. Its five hundred broad acres of meadow and woodland give the idea that you have suddenly dropped into an English park come down since the Conquest by entail. A broad and leafy avenue a quarter of a mile long leads from the high-road to the mansion. There are delicious glimpses of the sea, of Boston Harbor and its islands, and of the countless white sails continually winging their way into port.

The house was built in 1770, by Colonel Josiah Quincy, of Braintree,t on ground purchased of the local Indian sagamore, as early as 1635, by Edmund Quincy, of England. | The estate has ever since remained unalienated.

When I happened to be rambling in the neighborhood, I found hospitable welcome at the old mansion from the daughters of Josiah Quincy, President of Harvard College. In four successive generations a son has borne the name of Josiah, and, as two of the Quincys were mayors of Boston, while all of them have been more or less distinguished in political life, the patronymic becomes a little perplexing. Beyond question, there may be, to a genealogist at least, many good arguments against the continued use of the same Christian name by a family.

When I was fairly within the house, which is furnished as houses were furnished a century ago-where antique-dressed portraits looked down from the walls, and where sedan-chairs in cool corridors invited to postprandial naps-I felt that modern life had little right to intrude itself into such a place. Every visitor, I would suggest, should be required to don a powdered periwig, laced coat, and silk stockings, in order that the prevailing idea may not be disturbed. The fragrance of the old life and manners still liugered about those wainscoted apartments, and a half-hour's visit converted the imaginary into the real.

How quaint are those entries in John Adams's diary: "Drank tea at Grandfather Quincy's," or, "Spent the evening at Colonel Quincy's with Colonel Lincoln !" The men

*See JOURNALS of April 25, and September 26, 1874.

+ Braintree was the ancient name of Quincy. It was incorporated under its present name in honor of the Quincy family, 1792.

talked politics, and the ladies talked about
the fashions by the last London packet. Both
the Adamses, father and son, frequented this
house. Here Hull after destroying the Guer-
rière, and here Decatur, were entertained.

The four Quincys who bore the name of
Josiah should not be confounded the one
with the other. Colonel Josiah Quincy, who
built this house, and occupied it during
Washington's investment of Boston, is easily
identified by his military title. He used to
ride to camp with projects to drive the Brit-
ish fleet to sea or sink it to the bottom of the
harbor. He scratched on the window-pane
with a diamond the date when that fleet
finally stood out of the bay under a press of
sail, while the Continental drums were beat-
ing "Yankee Doodle" in Boston streets.
The grim satisfaction with which the old colo-
nel watched the enemy's ships was dashed
with bitterness: for one son was an exiled
royalist, and of course his father's political
enemy. The name of this son, however, was
Samuel, and not Josiah.

Colonel Quincy had another son, the Josiah Quincy, Jr., of the early Revolutionary period, whose memoirs, first written by his son Josiah, have lately been revised by his granddaughter, Eliza Susan Quincy, in a manner every way worthy the subject. Josiah Quincy, Jr., as he is still styled, from havind died in the lifetime of his father, had a great mind imprisoned in a feeble body. He was admitted to the bar in 1766, when barmeetings were held in the coffee-houses, and the barristers took punch or flip while questioning a candidate. It provokes a smile to note how John Adams groans in spirit at the admission of Quincy and other young men into a profession he then thought to be overcrowded.

Young Quincy espoused the patriot cause with the zeal of an ardent spirit and the eloquence of an orator by birth. His voice rang through the aisles of the Old South Meeting-house, which the land-speculators want to pull down and the nation wishes to keep untouched. In 1774 Mr. Quincy was in London, and wrote to his friend Joseph Reed, of Philadelphia: "My heart is with you, and, wherever my countrymen command, my person shall be also." While in London, Josiah Quincy, Jr., with his friend Franklin, had the honor of being distinguished by the censure of Lord Hillsborough, who said in the House of Lords that there were three men walking in the streets of London who ought to be in Newgate or Tyburn. While returning from England the gifted and patriotic Quincy died within sight of his native shores. Mrs. Sigourney dedicated some impassioned lines to his memory.

Nothing is easier than to write the biography of the third Josiah Quincy. Wherever you walk in Boston you are certain to meet with evidences of the breadth and genius of his enterprises, and the vigor of his execution of them. The Quincy Market-house and the long ranges of granite warehouses standing on land that he reclaimed from the filthy basins into which the tide had flowed, are among his monuments; and he deserves unstinted praise, the more, for having met and overcome the full power of that vis inertia for

which the Boston of his day was remark. able. Mr. Cotting and Mr. Quincy prostrated old-fogydom with the magical word "Progress."

Mr. Quincy was a representative in Con gress during the exciting sessions of the War of 1812. He was, as his constituents expect ed, a strong anti-war man, and made some pretty incisive speeches against Mr. Madison's war policy. A man of his pronounced character very soon exasperated the fire-eating portion of the lower chamber, and it is said he once narrowly missed having a duel on his hands. He became the subject of party caricature, and was openly denounced as a British partisan.

After serving as the second Mayor of Boston, Mr. Quincy became, in 1829, Presi dent of Harvard University. In executive ability, and in the short, sharp, and decisive method of dealing with questions perplexing or difficult, there could scarcely be a greater contrast than between Josiah Quincy and Edward Everett, his successor. If a trifle despotic, the former was able to control ele ments of discord which overwhelmed the lat ter. If the students found a master in Mr. Quincy, the college also found a benefactor. He never touched any thing upon which he did not leave a permanent record of himself. Gore Hall, the beautiful depository of the li brary, was his work.

The fourth Josiah Quincy, who is now liv ing, also became Mayor of Boston. It wa during his incumbency that the Cochituate water replaced the irregular and insufficien supplies from the Jamaica-Pond Aqueduct o the old town-pumps or wells. At the age o seventy-three Mr. Quincy still takes an activ interest in whatever affects the prosperity o Boston. Another son of President Quincy, Edmund, is widely known as a political an miscellaneous author. His memoir of his ft ther is a fitting supplement to the work mer tioned, as written by that father in memor of a parent. Miss E. S. Quincy, sister of E mund, is also an authoress, having, in add tion to the revision of the memoir of h grandfather, assisted her father in his cor pilation of the valuable "History of Harva University," and in 1861 prepared, for p vate distribution, the memoir of her mother a most interesting book of personal remin cence. A nephew of President Quincy p formed a soldier's part in the Civil War 1861, and has of late been usefully associal with the government of his native city. SAMUEL A. DRA

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and elbow as the excited crowd worked in and out, The click of the telegraph-instrument was heard continually in one corner, and the crowd, choosing this as the scene of greatest interest, encroached upon the table fth and leaned over the operator. A book-stand adjoining had also been appropriated, and the men of the street had ensconced themselves behind it among magazines, and dimenovels, and unsold dailies. Above the telegraph-operator was a bulletin-board, on which the stock quotations, forwarded by the telebar graphic stock-indicator, were written from time to time by the operator's messengerboy-a proceeding that was always marked by a profound silence in the crowd as the and figures began, and by an unwontedly noisy discussion as they closed. Along that portion of the veranda near the main hall, or office, equally excited crowds were gathered, and quiet agitations were even in progress on the grassy plots and graveled walks in front.

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Esmond had strolled several times around the veranda before he had become aware of the excited state of the crowd. His own romantic thoughts had been unreasonably busy amid this Babel-mart. He was trying to take a loyal sense of pleasure in the weird picture which he had drawn of his unknown Nora, and it was with a feeling half of resentment that he found his thoughts intent rather upon Nelly. It seemed a sacrilegious invasion of the rights of romance that Nora should not Occupy the sole thought of his heart. Do not think, gentle reader, that Mr. Drury's 10 tenderness was of an exaggerated kind. The world will always cling to those who owe it gratitude. There arises a vague sense of being a grand hero in the eyes of one whom we have saved from imminent peril which average human nature will not complacently forego, and the love outgrowing from so romantic a beginning seems removed to a higher and more delicious plane than that of more commonplace origin. To replace his romanitic passion for the unknown by a plain matter-of-fact love for another, about which clung none of the glamour of this grateful theworship, seemed likely to be the fate of even Ho romantic a lover as Esmond, and it was pre therefore with a feeling partly of regret and

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in the listless circles of the waltz on the ballroom floor, and several elderly ladies sat rigidly against the wall, like silent venders of the ware they exhibited on the carpet.

Esmond strolled along the veranda leisurely, hoping to see the Misses Darcy, but he saw them not in the few promenaders whom he met, and it was not until he had reached a far corner of the piazza, where the great mass seldom strayed, and where the noise of the stock contention had not reached, that he found them. The cavaliers had deserted even them for the stirring strife about the bulletin-board, and they sat alone, with their India shawls about them, in the shadow of one of the huge columns of the veranda.

"Here is Mr. Drury!" cried Mamie, as he emerged from the numerous shadows of the piazza, and the broad moonlight just rising beyond the sea struck full on his face. And the impulsive girl sprang from her campchair, and, rushing to him, grasped him by the band with a remarkably unfashionable heartiness that for a moment startled Esmond. "Here are Nelly and I," she said, “without an escort-completely deserted for the more fascinating stocks, and your apparition is a vision of joy."

"Can it be possible that watering-place beaux are so dull?" he said, lightly.

Watering-place beaux that are in stocks," replied Mamie, leading him to the little circle of camp-chairs that surrounded Nelly, beasts."

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"Bulls and bears," said Esmond, laugh. ingly, as he bowed to Miss Darcy, and took a seat. "And they are very rampant just now in the lobby."

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Really, he's a very valuable acquaintance," replied Esmond, dryly. "I suppose I'll have to inquire of him who my unknown Nora is?"

A sudden silence fell on the gleeful sisters, and Mamie nervously twitched her chair nearer to Nelly's.

"Don't you know who your unknown Nora is?" asked Mamie, presently, in a voice that sounded slightly tremulous even to Esmond's uncritical ears.

"I haven't the remotest idea," he said, carelessly, "except that she's short and dark -and is called Nora."

"Short?" said Mamie, in such unmistakable astonishment that Esmond turned his head sharply in her direction.

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The impulsive Mamie was upon the point of bursting upon Esmond with a flood of gratitude, and telling him all. But a sharp pressure of the hand of the cooler Nelly restrained her. A strong sense of propriety urged both the young ladies to preserve the secret from Esmond. His frequently - expressed interest in the unknown whom he had rescued, his hearty expression of a hope to meet her again and to pursue the acquaint"I know it is for papa," said Nelly. "He ance, the very fact that he had seen Nelly cannot enjoy himself in any other way than and not recognized her as the heroine of his by discussing stocks, even after he gets home romance, and, more than all, the perturbing from that horrid stock-exchange." intimations of their father as to Mr. Drury's "That is what you would call being liter- eligibility, all combined to impress upon them ally in stocks." the impropriety of admitting now Nelly's identity with Nora. Mamie's impulsive temperament and hearty sense of gratitude toward Esmond had almost carried her beyond these barriers, and the pressure of Nelly's hand came just in time. But she had hesitated, and Esmond was convinced that she knew something of his Nora.

"Yes," said Mamie, "and I think papa's stocks are as severe a punishment as the stocks down in Delaware."

"When we consider the matter," said Esmond, philosophically, "shop and shoptalk are naturally more engaging to a true business - - man than any ordinary subjects. Household matters are to him unknown, and dress, and balls, and parties, and operas, do not interest him."

"" 'Mamie," ," said Nelly, slyly, "I think Mr. Drury ought to know our friend Mr. Roseblossom.”

Mamie responded with a hearty laugh. ' Yes," ," she said, "you should know him by all means, Mr. Drury. He is my especial beau, 'special beau for all of us, in fact. He can talk of matters that are near and dear to our hearts, and he's a thorough businessman, too-the most delightful shop-walker you ever saw!"

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Esmond had to join in the hearty laugh Noras are not rescued from drowning in vast that accompanied this sketch, numbers every day, nor are they so plentiful

that you are likely to have a great number of them among your acquaintances. If you know a Nora who was in bathing to-day and lost her presence of mind, and allowed herself to be towed ashore by a very enthusiastic young man, I am convinced that is my Nora."

"But my Nora," said Mamie, "does not answer your description at all. She is taller than I am, and I am not petite by any means, and she is rather fair, and has brownish hair, and so she does not answer to your description at all, you see."

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should we take pleasure in such peppery doses? I mean, why is excitement pleasure to us? Fishing on a sleepy lake is the true model of pleasure. Some such quiet, lazy method of passing time is my ideal of a true existence."

"I fear Long Branch is the worst place you could have come to to put your system into practice."

"If the stock-exchange is to be transferred here, I shall fear so, too. Why, for a sensation, Miss Darcy, just hear the kind of talk which entertains these men, and by men, you must understand, I mean the grand old definition-one made in God's own image."

"North Atlantic's rising so high," said a gray-haired gentleman, leaning against a column, to a knot of younger ones eagerly gathered about him, "that there's bound to be a smash among the operators. The corner was devilish well conceived."

"South Minnie's rising, too, you know." “T’leder-Wab'sch, and 'Laukee-Sinpaul are all running up same way."

"How earnest they are!" said Esmond. "What object is there in life to them at the present moment except stocks! Do you remember, Miss Darcy, the story of that broker Meyer, who bought gold during the Black Friday corner at 150 and 160 and 62 and 64, steadily paying the rising price and loading himself with liabilities, in the confident assurance that the corner was sound, and that the manipulators would run all the gold in Wall Street, and could ask any price for it -do you remember it?"

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Yes," said Nelly, nervously, I remember it. I think I remember all the great stock transactions, for they were all father could discuss when he came home."

Ar this moment a little man, dress-coated and gloved, carrying his hat in his hand and disclosing a very bald head, presented himself as suddenly as a harlequin in the midst of the party, and greeted with the utmost ef fusion everybody present by name, including Esmond, who was positive he had never seen the gentleman before. This was Mr. Roseblossom, the universal scandal encyclopædia of the summer resorts, who knew the personnel and history of everybody who was anybody, although he was entitled to shake few of them by the hand-and of whom Nelly had just spoken. He plunged at once into a "Yes? Well, the most dramatic picture descriptive list of fashionables, not at Long that I have ever seen or read of was the sudBranch alone, but at Newport and Saratoga, den fall of that man. The government sudwith such avidity, directing his remarks es- denly sold gold to break the corner, and it pecially at Mamie, that Esmond felt a senti- fell, like a house of cards, from 64 to 38, ment of high dudgeon. He coolly excused and the fall crazed that broker's brain. He himself for interrupting the gentleman in the stood in the gold-room, long after the rest midst of his list, and asked Miss Nelly if she had accepted their losses, and shrieked out would not like a stroll around the verandas,164,' for the gold that was now at 138, and and, leaving the unselfish Mamie to bear the brunt of the gossip's companionship, he drew Nelly's arm beneath his own and leisurely began the promenade of the broad veranda. The waltzers were still whirling their tireless round, and the venders sleeplessly pinned their heads to the wall, but the miniature stock-exchange, which had confined its limits to the lobby and the veranda immediately fronting it, had overflowed, and leaning against the veranda columns in both directions, and even sitting in the windows of the ballroom, were knots of men excitedly discussing the corner in North Atlantic.

"See how business-men pursue pleasure," said Esmond. "In ages to come, when New York shall have become old and rich and leisurely, we will probably have a wateringplace where people will go for rest."

kept shrieking it out as if in defiance of Fate until the gold-brokers turned away sick at the scene, or remained only to laugh at his mad antics. There was a lesson in that scene-"

Drury's own name, mentioned in a group near, attracted the attention of both of them. "Drury made a deuced big haul on North Atlantic."

"Oh, he's running the corner."
"Yes, him and Capsheaf."

"I observe," said Esmond, "that my honored father has been exercising his business talent in the general display-making some less fortunate operator suffer, no doubt."

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"It sounds very puerile and hollow," said Esmond, huskily. "Strange, is it not, | Miss Darcy, that Nature goes on her way complacently, while the affairs of men are in such a crisis? The moon dances on the water there, the waves lap the shore, and murmur their unceasing hymn, all the same, unTrue," said Esmond. "Why, by-the-way, moved, while pitiful man, whose whole sum

“A consummation devoutly to be wished," said Eleanor. "A watering-place, too, where women will not dance away the summer nights in the heated light of ballrooms as they do here."

of life could be sponged forever off the slate by one of that great ocean's bubbles, stands here excited and desperate over a rise of one per cent. on his favorite stock! Come, let us drop the 'shop,' and talk of nobler things."

He glanced downward into his companion's face. It was pale, and there was an anxious expression about it, for which he could not account. She looked up at him quietly, however, and said, in low tones, "I am listening."

"Do you notice," said he, softly, "what a magnificent effect these tall columns of the veranda produce? Look at them now with the moonlight beyond. They remind one of some of the long corridors in the old Alhambra-"

A voice in a group near them said: "I'm told Darcy has lost to Drury like the devil."

Nelly instinctively grasped Esmond's arm and halted.

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See," said Esmond, without a change of tone, quietly drawing her forward as he spoke, "how effective is the long vista with its black shadows and its silver streaks, and the interminable stretch of dancing blue and gold beyond-"

"And I hear," said another voice in the group, "that he's trying desperately to hedge to-night. He's been offering 95 for 30,000 of North Atlantic."

Then the group laughed.

In a larger group, gathered on the grassy plot at the corner of the veranda where the promenaders now were, a sudden commotion ensued. A hand filled with papers was raised above the heads of the others, and a thin, shrill, excited voice, the sound of which made Nelly cower, shrieked out:

“I'll give 95 for 30,000 of North Atlantic -95, who'll take it?"

And that group laughed.

As Esmond felt the shiver that agitated Nelly Darcy's frame, and felt her grasp tighten and her weight increase upon his arm, and saw her head droop and presently rest un. conscious against his breast, he put his arm about her waist, and quietly drew her to one of the many vacant chairs that were scattered all over the veranda.

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Courage, Miss Darcy!" he whispered. "Take courage; all is well."

As he murmured these words in her ear, he felt within himself again that sudden glow of love for helpless beauty that had so strongly assailed him when the drowning Nora clung to him for help.

Mamie sat with her gossiping companior but a few yards away. Esmond beckoned to her, as he caught her glance turned in his di rection, and she hurried toward him withou even excusing herself to her companion, wh was just at that moment telling, with th deepest interest, how Miss Mackintosh ha dressed herself for the great ball at Saratog all in diamonds, and her father had su pended that very day.

"It is merely a faint," said Esmond, a he pointed to Nelly. "The crowd was of pressive. I will go for water."

As he turned away, he heard the voice Nelly returning to consciousness:

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