action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.

"Compose yourself," said I.

He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. At sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under control, "Have you a graduated glass?" he asked. I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him what he asked.

He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of the red tincture and added one of the powders. The mixture, which was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the crystals melted, to brighten in color, to effervesce audibly, and to throw off small fumes of vapor. Suddenly and at the same moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green. My visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye, smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.

"And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."

"Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."

"It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you remem ber your vows; what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors-behold!"

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change—he seemed to swell-his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and alter-and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the wall, my arm raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.

"O God!" I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there before my eyes-pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death-there stood Henry Jekyll.

What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to set on paper. I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer. My life is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror sits by me at all hours of the day and night; I feel that my days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die incredulous. As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me, even with tears of penitence, I cannot, even in memory, dwell on it without a start of horror. I will say, but one thing, Utterson, and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more than enough. The creature who crept into my house that night was, on Jekyll's own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted for in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

ONE of the youngest, and the most powerful of contemporary poets and prose writers was born in 1865 in India of English parents, and educated partly there and partly in England; though he is not a graduate of any university. Bombay was the city of his birth; his father, John Lockwood Kipling, was principal of the School of Industrial Art at Lahore. After some years of schooling in Devonshire, Rudyard, in 1880, returned to India, and worked as sub-editor of a newspaper in Lahore. Here he learned the art of writing the terse and telling prose which enables him at once to plunge into the heart of his subject, and to keep there throughout. His experience in this respect resembles that of Bret Harte, and the results are also similar; though Kipling is inevitably original-a strong and new force in literature. The subjects he treats are of his own discovering; and his insight into human nature is both broad and deep; he is earnest, straightforward and massive: there is in all he does a rank, masculine flavor, sometimes amounting to brutality, but often admitting the finest and tenderest touches. Nothing seems too high or too low for him to possess a sympathetic comprehension of it; he enters imaginatively even into wild animals in the jungle, and presents us with what we feel are true pictures of their thoughts and instincts. His His power of observation is as rapid as that of Dickens, and never betrays him into the exaggerations and caricature of the latter; his style and manner were from the first singularly mature; and the facility with which he familiarizes himself with the nature and details of new subjects is a constant source of surprise to his readers. He passed through America in 1889, writing descriptive letters as he went; and these contain more accurate observation and just comment than any cognate articles that have been published. His novel, Captains Courageous," deals with the life and character of the New England cod-fishermen, and shows a remarkable command of their character and speech, as well as of the industry in which they are engaged. He seems no less at

home with all forms of dialect, English and American, and with the brogue of Irishmen and the broken English of Germans and Frenchmen; and he represents these in his own way, from the testimony of his own senses. But signal though are these external and obvious merits, they are the least of Kipling's gifts as a writer. He goes to the centre of things; he knows what to say and what to leave unsaid; he always controls his theme; his imagination gene. rates forms which have the hues and substance of truth; his motives are vital and suggestive. In spite of the strength of his effects, he always gives the impression of keeping in reserve more than he has displayed; he never disappoints expectation, but often surpasses it; and nowhere in his work are to be found traces of carelessness or ignorance. His poems are quite as original and powerful as his prose. Such ballads as "Danny Deever," such lyrics as "The Recessional," are surpassed, if at all, only by the best products of the great masters of English song.

Kipling is better known as a writer of short tales than as a novelist; the former have hitherto been the more successful. It is too soon yet to determine whether he is capable of producing a long novel commensurate with his reputation in other directions. His books of Indian tales contain many masterpieces; the series of "Soldiers Three" has already entered into the language. The "Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney" and "The Taking of Lungtukpen" are as good as any of these; but it is impossible to select any as definitely the best. In spite of his frankness, there is a great deal of reticence in Kipling; we feel that what he withholds is, if possible, more significant than what he imparts; but the forbearing to impart it enhances the artistic effect of what is given. From the promise of what he has accomplished, there is almost nothing which we would not be justified in anticipating from him. Kipling married an American girl a few years ago, and for a time had a home in New England; but he is of a restless humor, and the world is his dwellingplace.

THE COURTING OF DINAH SHADD.

(Told by Private Mulvaney.)

WANST, bein' a fool, I went into the married lines, more for the sake av spakin' to our ould color-sergint Shadd than for any thruck wid wimmen-folk. I was a corp'ril thenrejuced aftherwards; but a corp'ril then. I've got a photograft av mesilf to prove ut. 'You'll take a cup av tay wid us?' sez he. 'I will that,' I sez; 'tho' tay is not my divarsion.' "Twud be better for you if ut were,' sez ould Mother Shadd. An' she had ought to know, for Shadd, in the ind av his service, dhrank bung-full each night.

'Wid that I tuk off my gloves-there was pipe-clay in thim so that they stud alone-an' pulled up my chair, lookin' round at the china ornamints an' bits av things in the Shadds' quarters. They were things that belonged to a woman, an' no camp kit, here to-day an' dishipated next. 'You're comfortable in this place, sergint,' sez I. "Tis the wife that did ut, boy,' sez he, pointin' the stem av his pipe to ould Mother Shadd, an' she smacked the top av his bald head apon the compliment. That manes you want money,' sez she.

"An' thin-an' thin whin the kettle was to be filled, Dinah came in-my Dinah-her sleeves rowled up to the elbow, an' her hair in a gowlden glory over her forehead, the big blue eyes beneath twinklin' like stars on a frosty night, an' the tread of her two feet lighter than waste paper from the colonel's basket in ord❜ly room when ut's emptied. Bein' but a shlip av a girl, she went pink at seein' me, an' I twisted me moustache an' looked at a picture forninst the wall. Never show a woman that ye care the snap av a finger for her, an' begad she'll come bleatin' to your boot heels."

"I suppose that's why you followed Annie Bragin till everybody in the married quarters laughed at you," said I, remembering that unhallowed wooing, and casting off the disguise of drowsiness.

"I'm layin' down the gin'ral theory av the attack," said Mulvaney, driving his foot into the dying fire. "If you read the Soldier's Pocket-Book,' which never any soldier reads,