Then he pulled her gently to the board which made a seat in front of him, and the skiff slid uneasily into the water. He marveled at the new strength in him as he beat his oars vigorously with the water's swell. The demands of the last few hours had routed the ague from his bones as if by magic, and as he zigzagged his boat toward the Morning County bank he knew that he had come back into his own. He tried with an ever-increasing earnestness, and with his thought bent always toward the girl at his side, to follow in the ferry's wake and to gain constantly a little here and a little there toward the Morning County hills; but big boat and little boat had gone three miles down the river without making much headway across when darkness began to fall. Very soon after that it became impossible to follow the larger boat, and they were swept on alone. It grew cool, and they could hear little but the urgent suck of the water beneath them, the faint whinny of horses, and the yelp of frenzied house-dogs. Great trees, roots up, passed them, and drowning cows went struggling by.

"Do you 'laow all yer corn 'll go, Wade?" she asked softly by and by.

"It's my calkerlation the water 's kneedeep all over my corn right naow," he answered. Yesterday it would have been quite impossible for him to say that: it would have meant too much for him. Yet here he was forecasting his own doom lightly, as though, if his corn did go, he would still have reserve fields of rye, oats, wheat, and if the rye, oats, and wheat went, he would still have vaster possessions than he could count.

"Don't seem to be very worrisome to you no more, Wade."

"No, 't ain't," blithely answered the man with malaria. He was a thousand miles from the sodden bumpkin who had shaken and ached and resented on his lounge yesterday. "I don't go lessen you go!"" Whether the water got his corn or not was an infinitesimal thing.

Where air we naow?"

"Way daown pas' Penangton. Closin' in on Snipe Jut. See Pete Cramby's light?"

Silence again, the stars cutting warmly through the cold sky, the black, wild water, and the fright of the drowning animals.

She was a little wistful when she spoke again.

"We go a long way daown, but we don't git much further acrosst, Wade." “Oh, we 'll git acrosst all right." He knew how safe they were, how powerful he had become, how certain of attainment. "We 'll git acrosst; don't you fret."

"I won't fret; don't you worry," she laughed, and then shrank back speechless before the look on his face.

"Thah's a tree comin' like god-ermighty!" he screamed; and even as his voice cut the air the big black roots snarled along the sides of the skiff, reached under, and rattled along the bottom; then, as the tree turned in savage resistance to the current, the skiff was drawn with the roots up and over. The boat shot into the air, the man stretched out his arms, and the girl lurched into them.

"WON'T you let me go?" she asked once. "You cand save yourself. Won't you let me go?

"When we git acrosst," he answered.

"I DON'T go lessen you go!"" A mighty choir was singing it through the willows as he splashed with his senseless burden through the mud toward the light in a cabin beyond the railroad levee on the Penangton side. "I don't go lessen you go! "The cabin walls fell back before the piercing music of it, the light inside flamed red and gold and gorgeous with it.

It was the first thing her lips formed when, a little later on, she revived in the warmth and comfort of the cabin. He was already able to see and hear again, and he got up from his chair and staggered toward the bed where she lay.

"Look, Berry; here I am, an' thah you are, corn or no corn, pianner or no pianner."

A bright new feeling of life caught them. both as they faced each other, and made his thought leap gaily ahead and establish them on the Penangton hills in a long, safe future. "We'll hang up here, ef you say so, Berry. You cand keep a pianner dry over here," he hurried on more and more tremulously. "You cand have a pianner, a' norgan, an' a jews'-harp. Dang ef I don't think a brass ban' would come in right handy, too."

N the spring of 1879 I was a third time brought into the diplomatic service, and in a way which surprised me. The President of the United States at that period was Mr. Hayes of Ohio. I had met him once at Cornell University, and had an interesting conversation with him, but never any other communication, directly or indirectly. Great, then, was my astonishment when, upon the death of Bayard Taylor just at the beginning of his career as minister in Germany, there came to me an offer of the position thus made vacant.

My first duty after accepting it was to visit Washington and receive instructions. Calling upon the Secretary of State, Mr. Evarts, and finding his rooms filled with people, I said: "Mr. Secretary, you are evidently very busy; I can come at any other time you may name." Thereupon he answered: "Come in, come in; there are just two rules at the State Department: one is that no business is ever done out of office hours, and the other is that no business is ever done in office hours." It was soon evident that this was a phrase to put me at ease rather than an exact statement of fact, and, after my conference with him,

several days were given to familiarizing myself with the correspondence of my immediate predecessors and with the views of the department on questions then pending between the two countries.

Dining at the White House next day, I heard Mr. Evarts withstand the President on a question which has always interested me: the admission of cabinet ministers to take part in the debates of Congress. Mr. Hayes presented the case in favor of their admission cogently; but the Secretary of State overmatched his chief. This greatly pleased me; for I had been long convinced that, next to the power given the Supreme Court, the best thing in the Constitution of the United States is that complete separation of the executive from the legislative power which prevents every congressional session becoming a perpetual gladiatorial combat or, say rather, a permanent game of foot-ball. Again and again I have heard European statesmen lament that their constitution-makers had adopted, in this respect, the British rather than the American system. What it is in France, with cabals organized to oust every new minister as soon as he is appointed, and to provide for a "new deal" from the first instant of

latures generally are just about as bad. Indeed, in some respects the Italian Parliament is worse. The British system would certainly have excluded such admirable Secretaries of State as Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton Fish, and John Hay; possibly even such as Quincy Adams and Seward.

placency upon such men as those above named in the State Department, and such as Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, Stanton, and Gage in other departments, sitting quietly in their offices, giving calm thought to government business, and allowing the heathen to rage at their own sweet will in

both houses of Congress. Under the other system our republic would probably soon become as delectable as Venezuela, with its hundred and four revolutions in seventy years.1

On the day following I dined with the Secretary of State, and found him in his usual pleasant mood. Noting on his dinnerservice the words, "Facta non verba," I called his attention to them as a singular motto for an eminent lawyer and orator; whereupon he said that, two old members of Congress dining with him recently, one of them asked the other what those words meant, to which the reply was given: "They mean, 'Victuals, not talk.'

On the way to my post I stopped in London, and was taken to various interesting places. At the house of my old friend and Yale classmate George Washburn Smalley I met a number of very interesting people, and among these was especially impressed by Mr. Meredith Townshend, whose knowledge of American affairs seemed amazingly extensive and preternaturally accurate. At the house of Sir William Harcourt I met Lord Ripon, about that time Viceroy of India, whose views on dealings with Orientals interested me much. At the Royal Institution an old acquaintance was renewed with Tyndall and Huxley, and during an evening with the eminent painter Mr. Alma-Tadema, at his house in the suburbs, and especially when returning from it, I made a very pleasant acquaintance with the poet Browning. As his carriage did not arrive, I offered to take him home in mine; but hardly had we started when we found ourselves in a dense fog, and shortly it became evident that our driver had lost his way. dered about for perhaps an hour, hoping to find some indication of it, Browning's conversation was very agreeable. It ran at first on current questions, then on travel, and finally on art-all very simply and naturally, with not a trace of posing or paradox. Remembering the obscurity of his verse, I was surprised at the lucidity of his talk. But at last, both of us becoming somewhat anxious, we called a halt and questioned the driver, who confessed that he had no idea where he was. As good, or ill, luck would have it, there just then emerged from the fog an empty hansom-cab, and finding that its driver knew 1 See Lord Lansdowne's

As he wan

more than ours, I engaged him as a pilot, first to Browning's house, and then to my

own.

One old friend, to whom I was especially indebted, was Sir Charles Reed, who had been my fellow-commissioner at the Paris and Philadelphia expositions. Thanks to him, I was invited to the dinner of the Lord Mayor at Guildhall, and it was gor geous. As we lingered in the library, before going to the table, opportunity was given to study the various eminent guests with some care. First came Cairns, the Lord Chancellor, in all the glory of official robes and wig; then Lord Derby; then Lord Salisbury, who, if I remember rightly, was Minister of Foreign Affairs; then, after several other distinguished personages, most interesting of all, Lord Beaconsfield, the Prime Minister. He was the last to arrive, and immediately after his coming he presented his arm to the Lady Mayoress, and the procession took its way toward the great hall. From my seat, which was but a little way from the high table, I had a good opportunity to observe these men and to hear their speeches.

All was magnificent. Nothing of its kind could be more splendid than the massive gold and silver plate piled upon the Lord Mayor's table and behind it, nothing more sumptuous than the dinner, nothing more quaint than the ceremonial. Near the Lord Mayor, who was arrayed in his robes, chain, and all the glories of his office, stood the toast-master, who announced the toasts in a manner fit to make an American think himself dreaming; something, in fact, after this sort, in a queer, singsong way, with comical cadences, brought up at the end with a sharp snap: "Me Lawds, La-a-a-dies and Gentleme-e-e-n: by commawnd of the Right Honorable the Lawrd Marr, I cha-a-a-wrge you fill your glawse-e-e-s and drink to the health of the Right Honorable the Ur-r-r-ll of Beck'nsfield."

A main feature of the ceremony was the loving-cup. Down each long table a large silver tankard containing a pleasing beverage, of which the foundation seemed to be claret, was passed, and, as it came, each of us in turn arose, and, having received it solemnly from his neighbor, who drank to his health, drank in return, and then, turning to his next neighbor, drank to him; the speech, December, 1902.

LXVI.-73