corn.

Simeon is taken to prison as a hostage, and the others have their sacks filled. We see Simeon in prison, and then Jacob and Benjamin, on the arrival of the brethren, who relate their adventures, and arrange to take Benjamin back with them, Judah undertaking to be responsible for his safe return. On their re-appearing before Joseph, Simeon is brought in and released, and Benjamin is recognised by the former. When they have gone the steward is sent after them, and brings them back. The sacks are searched, and the cup found in Benjamin's. Joseph then makes himself known to his brethren. They return to their father, Judah giving him a letter from his long-lost son. (By the way, were cream-laid note-paper and envelopes the usual media of communication among the Ancient Egyptians ?) Jacob determines to go down into Egypt, and the drama closes with his reception by Joseph, in the midst of which Pharaoh enters and adds his congratulations.

As may be seen from this brief outline of the piece, the narrative, as it stands in their Scriptures, is in the main adhered to. But in more than one instance it is directly contradicted, and there are very numerous additions thereto. I, Heuschrecke, junior, am not sufficiently well up in the Rabbinical writings to say whether any justification for these deviations is to be found therein, but all my enquiries among the Jewish community have failed to elicit any hypothesis, probable or improbable, to account for the appearance of that very remarkable little beast. The beast himself seems to regard his quadrupedal efforts in a comic light, and the audience are evidently disposed to agree with him. In the absence of scenery, or even a curtain, the scenes are run into one another in a most confusing manner, so that one is often in doubt for a few minutes as to which country one is supposed to be in. But I, Heuschrecke, junior, protest against the introduction

between some of the scenes of what I presume to be intended for comic songs, and the incorporation of some so-called "comic business," even in the play itself. Notwithstanding certain gross absurdities, some of the acting is very fair-notably that of Jacob and Joseph. The latter especially strikes me in his pathetic, but never cringing, appeals to his brethren, and in the scene at his mother's grave, the conscious dignity of the great man in Egypt afterwards being in wellmarked contrast.

The costumes are very remarkable. Jacob wears a long black gaberdine and fur cap; the brethren squaretopped lancer helmets, tunics, mostly striped with various colours, long yellow knickerbockers, and white stockings, bound across with red. Joseph is conspicuous as being the one who has not a coat of many colors, his dress being of two shades of red only, with a gold lace cap (as has also Benjamin), and long flowing black hair. Some three or four of the characters are in ordinary dress, (Potiphar for one, who acts very badly, or rather does not act at all), which much interferes with the effect. Some of the peculiarities of costume are due, I believe, to their Polish origin. The language used is Polish German, and the music partly adapted from Polish and Hebrew melodies, simple, but very pleasing to the ear, and according well with the words assigned to them. The camels and other properties with which rumour has been busy do not put in an appearance; but in justice to the performers in a very long piece be it noted that they all thoroughly know their parts, and that the whole passes off without a single hitch. It is after midnight when it is over, and I, Heuschrecke, junior, find myself left trainless, 'busless, and cabless to make my way to a more aristocratic neighborhood as best I may.

Ada Morse.

BY EDWARD B. AVELING, D.Sc., F.L.S.

CHAPTER I.

N the most beautiful region of the Highlands of Scotland, that are beloved by all the world, lived Ada Morse. Hard by her home, from where the heather-clad mountains and the heavens kiss one another in the love that mortals know not of, a stream, born of that love, came tumbling down, and struggling over rocks and massive smooth-worn boulders with restless tossings and chafings, and foam-scattering leaps and wrestlings, fell with a ceaseless crash some ninety feet. A yard or two from the place where it fell the stream was a deep, silent pool, calm, impassive, terrible, as the eternal rocks that rose in a solemn stillness on each side of it. That stream was an emblem of the young life of Ada Morse.

As a child she had been the veriest child. Brought up in that beautiful land, she had been as wild, as free, as enchanting as the scenery she lived amongst. The only child of a widow, she had grown to look upon the bills and the heather as her best playmates, and with them as companions she had wandered many a long hour, many a long mile. Dyking rabbits, with the aid of her terrier, Lou, and the occasional co-operation of some of the village-folks' children, clambering breakneck places after flowers, diving into spongy dells for ferns, straying away for half a day among the pine trees and the mountains, returning with torn clothes and dirty hands-these had been the childhood pastimes of Ada Morse. No remonstrances, no threats, no cajolements could keep her from this nomad life, and when, at last, her mother, in sheer desperation, sent her to the

strictest, properest, stupidest school in Inverness, the state of affairs was no better. In Ada's own wordsshe was a veritable pickle. In those of Miss De Portment," there was, by no means, that conformity to discipline that was desirable in a young lady in Miss Morse's position."

And now, at about the age of fourteen, this wild Tomboy, this Hoyden, had subsided into the quietest, When the change came,

most dignified little woman. nobody could exactly tell—Ada, perhaps, least of all: but it was there. Whence it came was still less easy to say. You remember how Byron woke up one morning to find himself famous. So some boys, I believe, wake up at some definite instant to the knowledge that there is work to be done in the world. So some girls awaken, with the soft suddenness of a ripple on the Mediterranean, stirred by an unknown wind, to the consciousness that they are women.

She only stayed at school one term after this, and during that term she was the pattern "young lady," as certain school-madams will still call a girl. All her work was done with irreproachable, almost exasperating exactness. No marks were lost for unladylike behaviour or slang expressions. Ada was held up to her fellowscholars as a model, to parents as a specimen, and bore it as a convict, whose ticket-of-leave is at hand, bears being pointed out as the "most orderly and well-conducted person in the place." But, at the end of that term, she roundly declared, with something of her old wayward impetuosity, that she would return to Miss De Portment's no more. She knew all she could be taught there-which was not far from the truth. She would study for herself at home, which was the absolute truth.

She came back to her Highland home and her weak, fond mother, and took to reading strange out-of-theway books, whereon she spent all her pocket-money. Darwin's, Mills', George Eliot's, Herbert Spencer's

works-these, and such as these, she read. She devoured them, without, of course, understanding onehalf of their meaning, but they moved her inmost soul, and set her thinking that best of all thoughts—that there is a great mind-world outside the daily routine of life, and all men and women are not quite as our governesses and our mothers in their loving, short-seeing care paint them.

Whence did she hear of all these books, you ask? Anywhence. The flower that loves, and is pining for life-giving light, will struggle towards the narrowest chink, whereat the light steals in. Where to blinder mortals there is but a darkness, to it there is a glimpse of Heaven, whitherwards it grows. From passing hints, in conversations or in lessons, at Miss De Portment's, from references in newspapers, from reviews, came rays of light to Ada Morse, telling her of intellect-planets that, sweeping in their orbit, determine the nature of the movement of this world. Vaguest of guides these, Ada herself knew. She would have given much to have had some mind to lean upon. She yearned for guidance, feeling that she was only groping in the dark, but, groping, she felt sure onwards. After all, it is better to be omnivorous, even if one fails to digest everything, than to take no food at all.

Mrs. Morse was not of much help to Ada in her struggles. She, good easy lady, cared for little, if only her medicine and her meals were regularly supplied by old Deborah, their sole servant. If Ada ventured to refer at lunch or at dinner to any of the authors she had been reading, Mrs. Morse spoke, with a sigh, of them as "the good gentlemen," and hoped "there was nothing improper in their writings." As to that same old Deborah, she was glad enough to see her young mistress take delight in anything that did not involve torn dresses and mud-covered clothing generally. Still, the good old servant was hardly capable of directing or