regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay-to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neglected. "Tommy," who was supposed to spend his whole existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling which had gained the camp its infelicitous title were not permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers, or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D-n the luck!" and "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquillizing quality, and one song, sung by "Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor, from her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, On b-o-o-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,-it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end, the lullaby generally had the desired effect. . .

On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch, from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket spread over pine-boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the ditches below. Latterly, there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably put aside for "The Luck." It was wonderful how many treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for Tommy." would do for Tommy." Surrounded by

playthings such as never child out of fairy-land had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be securely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his "corral," a hedge of tassellated pine-boughs, which surrounded his bed,-he dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of superstition. "I crep' up the bank just now," said Kentuck one day, in a breathless state of excitement, "and dern my skin if he wasn't a talking to a jay-bird as was a sittin' on his lap. There they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, a jawin' at each other just like two cherry-bums." Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine-boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gums; to him the tall red-woods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumble-bees buzzed, and the rocks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.

Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush times,"-and the Luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp was jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly pre-empted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The expressman-their only connecting link with the surrounding world-sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He would say, "They 've a street up there in 'Roaring,' that would lay over any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses, and they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby."

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

ALDRICH has been an editor, novelist, and writer of travels, but is properly classed as a poet. In spite of his dainty verse and mildly humorous prose, he has not attained popularity, though his tender "Ballad of Babie Bell" and his short story of "Marjorie Daw," have been widely circulated.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1837. He removed to New York at the age of seventeen, and while employed in a publishing house began to write for newspapers and magazines. In 1866 he was called to Boston to become editor of Every Saturday, which position he held for eight years. After a year of travel in Europe he returned to Boston, but later fixed his residence at Ponkapog in the vicinity. From 1881 to 1890 he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly.

Aldrich's poems are usually short and carefully wrought, subdued in tone and suggestive, rather than strongly picturesque. They exhibit a single phase or contrast of life, yet sometimes they run on in longer varied course, as in "Babie Bell," which relates sympathetically the advent and death of a child. In some of his pieces he describes aspects of his native New England, while others seem to belong to the remote East or realms of pure fancy. He has occasionally used blank verse, as in "Judith," and has even written a drama in prose. His short stories have been more successful than his novels, and his "Story of a Bad Boy," to some extent autobiographical, has been widely accepted as a fair picture of an average American boy.

UNGUARDED GATES.

(From "Unguarded Gates and Other Poems," Copyright, 1894, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Used here by special permission of the Publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)

WIDE open and unguarded stand our gates,

Named of the four winds, North, South, East, and West;

Portals that lead to an enchanted land

Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,

Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow,

Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past

The Arab's date-palm and the Norseman's pine

A realm wherein are fruits of every zone,
Airs of all climes, for lo! throughout the year
The red rose blossoms somewhere-a rich land,
A later Eden planted in the wilds,

With not an inch of earth within its bound
But if a slave's foot press it sets him free.
Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage,
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stand level with the highest in the law.
Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed,
And with the vision brightening in their eyes
Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword.

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them presses a wild motley throng-
Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav,
Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,
Accents of menace alien to our air,

Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,
Lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome,
And where the temples of the Cæsars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

No one can deny to Mr. Howells some of the most attractive literary graces. Long since the critic, E. P. Whipple, declared: "He has no rival in half-tints, in modulations, in subtle phrases that touch the edge of an assertion and yet stop short of it. He is like a skater who executes a hundred graceful curves within the limits of a pool a few yards square." Mr. Howells himsel has stated that his principle is to look away from the great passions and to study and report the commonplace. "As in literature," he says, "the true artist will shun the use even of real events if they are of an improbable character, so the sincere observer of man will not desire to look upon his heroic or occasional phases, but will seek him in his habitual moods of vacancy and tiresomeness." It must be admitted that he has made the commonplace entertaining by his great charm of style, and that occasionally in some of his best work he has transgressed his own

canon.

William Dean Howells was born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, on March 1, 1837. He learned to set type when a boy, and helped his father in issuing a country paper. The contributions of the younger Howells attracted some attention, and he was made news editor of the State Journal, at Columbus, Ohio. Upon the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, Howells wrote a campaign biography, and later received the appointment of Consul at Venice, where he resided from 1861 to 1865. "Venetian Life" and "Italian Journeys" are fruits of this residence abroad. After his return he was connected with the New York Tribune and the Atlantic Monthly, being editor of the latter from 1872 to 1881. He has since resided in New York, where, aside from other literary work, he has conducted a critical department in Harper's Magazine.