A

secretions and special organs of insects necessarily produced like results. Their field of performance is limited in direction but within their prescribed limits it is not unreasonable to suppose that they surpass man in the clearness of their perceptions. Within the field of their special activities they do not reason, they know. They reason only in emergencies.

This brings us to the final point and apparently vast distinction between the achievements of men and insects; and the arguments which apply here, will hold good in considering the special aptitudes of creatures in other classes. The insects have inherited aptitudes for performing their special tasks without experience or instruction, ergo, it is argued, they are automatic, instinctive.

First with regard to the term instinctive, let us repeat here, the impulses generated by their special secretions prompt in all cases to the voidance of these secretions, but they go no further; the application of the voided material or its mixture into mortar, as with the white ant and mud-wasp are the results of intelligent observation and experience.

But it has become automatic! Brain and manipulating organs fulfill their allotted task without experience and instruction!

Here the parallelism with man is certainly no longer perfect; there is a divergence, but a divergence due only to the same laws acting on two sets of modified conditions. Man has developed by radiation in ever-widening circles and is still in course of an all-round development. The insect has developed along a narrow line and has reached the limit of his capacity, but that limit surpasses man's utmost attainments, both in clearness of perception without intellectual effort, and in facility of execution. The knowledge and capacity of execution gained by observation and experience have become constitutional. Man, in spite of the great breadth of his intellectual range, does occasionally reach something like the inherited clearness of perception and facility of execution of the insect, at special points of the circle; as, for example, in the inherited musical powers of a Mozart and other born composers, who have been capable of composing as automatically as the bee makes its cell; and I assume for both a similar intellectual gratification in the exercise of their powers. Look again at the born arithmeticians and mathematicians; or, again, at the achievements of a Siemens. Does any one suppose that these involve the intellectual labor performed by the average tyro struggling to cross the asses' bridge? Great results have unquestionably been achieved by enforced attention and patient labor, but the greatest achievements arise by unconscious reflex action of the brain to the stimulus of inherited memories which evolves the idea before it even rises into consciousness. This clearness of perception and facility of execution, recognized as genius in man, are precisely what characterize the special labors of insects and other of the lower animals in their special narrow fields.

THE

CHIROGNOMY.

OTTO MORETUS.

Vom Fels zum Meer, Stuttgart, November.

I.

HE triumphs of natural science, of late years, have been nowhere more conspicuous than in magnetism, spiritism, hypnotism, thought-reading, and other departments of the veiled side of human knowledge. All these subjects, once the special domain of the charlatan, are now being studied, and with gratifying results, by careful scientific methods, and with these subjects are included chirognomy-the reading of the hand. This science, once held in high repute by the learned, has, during the past five hundred years, fallen into discredit, and been relegated to wandering gipsies; the subject, nevertheless, is deserving of the most careful investigation; it affords an abundance of visible, indisputable material to work upon which, carefully and systematically studied, should contribute materially to the determination of individual character.

Within the last two decades there has been a marked revival of the science in England, France, and America. In England

especially, it has made such headway that many intelligent parents consult the professional chirognomist in the selection of a pursuit for their sons and daughters, and the artistic lover turns his gaze from the eyes of his mistress to her hands, and very properly, for, although the eye reveals much, the hand reveals still more to him who can read its indications aright.

There are no two persons whose hands are exactly alike. and this although the hands of the several races of mankind display special race characteristics distinguishable through alb grades of society. Race characteristics are indicated in the hand precisely as individual characteristics are. Hand and brain are coördinated, so that every man's hand is, as it were, a reflection of his spiritual nature, modifiable, however, in detail by his life pursuits. Hence it is that great sculptors and artists find so much difficulty in reproducing the hands of their subjects. Great portrait painters have proved downright failures in this branch of their work; they have succeeded in making the soul speak through the countenance, but failed to impart the corresponding life and character to the hand. They produce only lifeless, characterless hands, such as are proper to diseased or enfeebled intellects. It is a very interesting fact, and one which alone would elevate chirognomy to the rank of a science, that any important change in the character of the spiritual life, such as may be induced by protracted mental anxiety or serious affection of the brain, betrays itself promptly in the hand. The hand has a physiognomy as distinct as that of the face, and is a more reliable index; the features may be molded to deceive, the hand never. We may, however, remark here, that the chiromancy of the ancients and of the Middle Ages had no scientific basis. The chiromancers of that period indicated certain elevations and depressions of the palm, as "Mountain of the Moon," Plain of Saturn," etc., ascribing honor to Jupiter, love of agriculture to Saturn, the commercial tendency to Mercury, etc., etc.

All this is trifling, a verdict which we hold applies equally to the determination of character by the lines of the hand. We do not believe, for example, that the head-line which rises between the thumb and index finger and crosses the palm obliquely, indicates ability and shrewdness when it is united with the neighboring strong "line of life" at the beginning, and weakness and carelessness when no such union exists; that the head-line, when even and long, indicates genius, etc. Nor do we lay much stress on the triple division of the lines of the hand into the material, the natural, and the spiritual. All this is palmistry, which bears the same relation to modern chirognomy that the alchemy of the Middle Ages bears to modern chemistry.

For the purposes of chirognomy the hand is divided into the palm or trunk, and the five fingers.

If we place together the hand of a man of a rude, vigorous nature in whom material desires predominate, and the hand of a person of refined, unimpassioned, gentle nature, the first will appear very broad, and the palm smooth, firm, and thick, while the latter will have the palm thin, soft, and small. The majority of hands are a mixture of these two extremes, and the proportion in any given hand is a reliable indication of the force of character and of some other characteristics. Is the palm, or more properly, the trunk, of the hand flexible, of harmonious size and thickness, and duly proportioned to the body and to the fingers, it indicates a person of normal intellectual development, quick, versatile, and with a healthy imagination, all exhibited in active life. Such hands are rarer than might be supposed. If the hand is soft, with little fleshy balls inside the tips of the fingers, it is safe to conclude that the possessor is tender-hearted and sensitive, while in unfeeling persons these balls are hard, or wholly wanting. As a general rule, soft hands signify indolence, tenderness in love, with little depth of feeling, and although labor may make the skin hard it cannot alter the character. Every infant has its individual type of hand, with its own inherent law of develop

ment. Habits may modify the character within the type; they cannot change the type.

The trunk of the hand is the index to the temperament, the elementary, the physical, the passions, the sentiments, the energy, the strength of will, while the formation of the fingers is indicative of the intellect and talents. The fingers are of prime importance in the determination of character, affording, as they do, in conjunction with the trunk of the hand, the key to the individual characters of their possessors. The genial modern specialist in this department, the French Captain D'Arpentigny, distinguishes three prime types of fingers, viz.: I. The spatula-shaped fingers, i. e., those which are broader at the extremities than at the joints.

2. The angular fingers, z. e., those which are of like breadth throughout.

3. The conical fingers, in which the extreme joints are coneshaped with more or less rounded tips.

The first indicates a practical, materialistic character, the second a scientific and philosophic tendency, while the third class indicates the artistic temperament with the character thereto pertaining.

Pursuing his subject, D'Arpentigny, after assigning special characters to special types of fingers and trunks, laid down seven fundamental forms of hand-types as the basis of a scientific system of chirognomy. These hand-types are: 1. The primitive (elementary broad-shaped).

2. The shovel-shaped (spatula-shaped).

3. The artistic (cone-shaped).

4. The practical (angular).

5. The philosophical (intellectual).

6. The spiritual (psychical).

7. The mixed.

IN

RELIGIOUS.

THE INFLUENCE OF PAGANISM UPON
CHRISTIANITY,

ARCHDEACON FARRAR, D.D.
Sunday Magazine, London, November.

N the Apostolic Age there was the sharpest possible line of demarcation between the Church and the world. "The world lay in the wicked one;" he was "the god of this world." The condition of Gentile society under the Empire was unspeakably corrupt. The truly frightful stigmas branded upon its forehead by Saint Paul in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, are burned into it no less indelibly by its own poets, romancers, satirists, and philosophic teachers. The writings of Juvenal, Persius, Petronius, Apuleius, Suetonius, and Martial, have been called by a great French writer the pièces justificatives of Christianity; but the terrible indictment of Saint Paul is proved to the letter, and in every particular, not only by these, but in the graver pages of Tacitus, Seneca, and Pliny.

The powers of evil, which could not prevent the triumph of Christianity, did their uttermost to render it ineffectual. They wrought to weaken the spirituality of the Church, and to poison the inner springs of her life, in exact proportion as she won the political dominance. "The religion of Constantine," says Gibbon, with perfect truth, "achieved in less than a century the final conquest of the Roman Empire; but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals." The nominal members of the Church more and more sank back into the seductions of the world, as the Church was more and more able to set at defiance the hatred, contempt, and persecution which had done their utmost to destroy her existence. It may not be uninstructive to touch on one or more of the directions in which the Devil tried to reduce to unreality and impotence the victory which had overcome the world. Of the corruption of theology I do not here speak.

The early presbyters and bishops of Christianity (the two

words were originally interchangeable) were often men of humble rank, and since they were placed by their position in the forefront of the battle, and were the first to perish by the sword, the stake, or the wild beasts in early persecutions, there was little to tempt avarice or ambition in their spiritual dignity. It is said that almost all the early bishops of Rome perished one after another by martyrdom. When, however, Constantine had laid his somewhat tainted hand upon the Cross, and the position of a bishop become one of

Status, entourage, worldly circumstance,

a shocking change for the worse took place. Christian bishops lived in splendor and luxury and no longer abstained from joining in the turbulent intrigues of politicians and partisans. They began to flaunt in superb ecclesiastical vestments broidered with gold and enriched with gems. They reveled in such artificial and inflating titles as Your Beatitude and "Your Sanctity," and when they went abroad they appeared in magnificent apparel, lolling in lofty chariots.

"

2. Like priests, like people. If worldliness, avarice, and ambition so successfully invaded the ranks of the episcopate, we are hardly surprised to find them triumphant among the Christian laity. There is enough to shock us beyond measure in the picture of the state of Christianity at Rome itself which is given us by Saint Jerome, who came to it as to a very ark in the world's deluge, and found it an intolerable Babylon, seething with immorality, intrigue, lust, scandal, and spite.

3. Another sign of evil Pagan influence was the growing irreverence in worship. The accounts of the early assemblies tell us of deep and rapturous devotion'; of responses which sounded like the voice of many waters; of the AMEN rolling its sounds afar like thunder. Already, in Origen's time, much of this solemnity had vanished. It had been destroyed by deadening familiarity and unreal adhesion to the cause of Christ. Christians, as Saint Chrysostom tells us, would adjourn from their church to Pagan shows: they pushed and jostled each other to get first to the Holy Table; they turned the great festival into scenes of intemperance and excess; they broke out into tumults of applause at the rhetoric of their preacher, but paid no attention to the spiritual truth; forgot the application, and absented themselves from the prayers.

4. But the worship itself—which was a most serious evil— had been in various directions assimilated to Paganism. If the heathen had their idols, the Christians after a time began to have their images and pictures. Faustus, Manichee though he was, had some grounds for the charges he made against the orthodox.

(a) He made a charge of idolatry and semi-idolatry. At first Christianity was utterly opposed to pictures and images in churches, but they have become universal. Beausobre speaks of what he calls the “ Christian idolatry," which was thus gradually introduced.

(b) The charge of paganized religious gatherings is also abundantly proved by the regretful admission of contemporary saints.

(c) It is needless to touch on the groveling relic-worship and cross-worship which earned for Christians from the Pagans the nicknames of ash-adorers (cinerarii) and idolaters.

5. The pernicious influence of Paganism showed itself in two other directions-in literature and government. The writings of the Apostolic Fathers are gentle and dignified. In time, however, as in the case of Saint Jerome, controversy was conducted with rabid abuse, in which words and epithets were used, disgraceful even on the lips of an ordinary gentleman and trebly disgraceful to a Christian. Writers called each other names, sometimes too coarse for translation, and to this day, I deeply regret to say, their vile example is followed in the columns of what are called religious and semi-religious newspapers.

6. We can hardly be surprised that when to call a man

monster," and a scorpion," and "a grunter," and "an impure demon," is regarded as a ferociously eloquent way of saying that you disagree with him, actual persecution and cruel violence should speedily be resorted to for the enforcement of religious opinion.

It would be quite possible to point out other directions in which the Church suffered grievous harm from her contact with the world. These, however, are sufficient, and they furnish abundant warning that the Church must never relax her vigilance, or forget that even a nominally Christian world may still be essentually of the world worldly.

L

PIETISM.

S. K. SORENSEN.

Danskeren, Vejen, November.

1

AURA KIELER has recently published a book: "In the Garb of An Angel of Light," in which she presents many characteristics of Pietism. She delineates Pietism as it hides among the Fjelds of Norway, itself heavy as a Fjeld, pressing man and all ideal longings to the ground, while, at the same time, it hides tremendous volcanic fires. The path of Pietism through history has been like a prairie-fire. It scorches all human pleasure and burns away all the fine points of human emotions and lays the human soul waste, but it cannot destroy the beasts of passion and the creeping forms of self-gratification. One of the leading characters of the book defines Pietism as devil-worship rather than God-worship. The dogma of eternal punishments became in its hands scorpions with which it flogs souls to God. The Pietists stand near the Pessimists; both degrade the soul. The latter call it "the beast," the former "Sin." Neither of them knows anything about the ́ ́ divine image.’ These are hard words, but they are true as regards the System; individual pietistic men and women may be and are no doubt better than the System. In Laura Kieler's book the main personage is crushed to death by the iron yoke of Pietism. The old Pastor Baer spends his life in trying to banish all memory of his late wife; every time a thought of her rises in his mind he thinks he is tempted by the Evil One. As if by irony his human nature asserts itself in his dying moments. His last word is a call for his wife. With outstretched arms he raised himself and called out with joy: Karin. His home is barren and empty because he thinks it a sin to have any comforts. He is continually singing, praying, and confessing his sins. The children have been under that influence so long that they have become spiritually deformed creatures. Laura Kieler has not overdrawn the facts; such, at present, is Pietism is the northern countries. These people do not love Christ, they are enamored of Him. All their talking about Christ is only disguised sensuality, and so is their "brotherly kissing, hand-shakings, and embraces. It is a psychological law that if men cannot get the true love, they seek and find the false one. Extremes meet. Those people have driven all love for literature, art, and culture out of their minds and hearts; their emotions, therefore, find an outlet in forbidden paths. Having no true understanding of, and love for God, their sensual imaginations rise to untrue proportions, and assume a control not intended. Pietism is a temple built by the senses, and it is not love that sounds in their perpetual question, "Do you love Jesus? it is passion, impurity, and degrading thoughts. It may be not so regarded by many Pietists, but it is a fact nevertheless. The psychological workings of the human heart and mind are according to law.

About twenty years ago one of my best friends was a vigorous Pietist, and he brought up his children as Pastor Baer does his in Laura Kieler's story. At that time I asked him if he did not think that so much singing, praying, and confession of sin would make the children tired of God and loathe religion. He stopped my further remarks by Bible citations by the hundreds. After a number of years I passed by his house and stopped to ask him what had become of his children. "They are gone," he said, with tears in his eyes. 'They are of the world. I held flesh before my arms. I was too severe; I brought them up too rigorously, and now the world has taken them and may never return them." Such is the natural reaction. Dam up a river and try to force it into a too-narrow channel or an artificial bed, and some day, when the rain has been heavy, it breaks through all barriers and floods the country, bringing disaster and woe.

66

NON-SECTARIAN CHARITIES.

M. A. SELBY.

American Ecclesiastical Review, Philadelphia, December.
HE

such benevolent institutions as are usually classed under the head of non-sectarian charities, is a delicate one; yet it is impossible to ignore it, or evade its solution, since it confronts us daily in the most familiar walks of life.

The practical working of the principle in America applies to Catholic support of charities essentially without sectarian bias, but, as a matter of fact, exclusively under Protestant control. That many Catholics do contribute, consciously or unconsciously to the success of these institutions, not by money alone, but by personal exertions and influence, is beyond question. There are many motives ramifying from the central one of philanthropy which compel them to do so. The desire to promote good feeling and preserve friendly social relations with their neighbors is one, and not an unworthy one; the wish to acknowledge in kind the generosity shown to Catholic institutions may be another, and the yearning that many noble souls feel to meet their bretheren who lack the faith, on some higher ground than the dead level of that species of materialism which furnishes the ordinary basis of intercourse is a third.

This last motive is worthy of all reverence; but the Catholic who attempts to join with his non-Catholic friends in a work of charity, ordinarily finds himself at a disadvantage from the beginning. He discovers that while the management may be an amalgamation of the members of the different sects, or no sects at all, the atmosphere is distinctly Protestant. On no other ground is the Catholic so compelled to acknowledge, and in a measure condone, the existence of heresy, as in a voluntary organization with associations such as we have alluded to. He sees that he must pursue the humiliating policy of pocketing his faith, and avoid the slightest evidence of it, if he would preserve peace and concord, and he realizes that, though the term “non-sectarian " may insure the admission of infidel or Jew, Pagan or Christian to the councils and benefits of the charity, it implies no relaxation of a determined war on every manifestation of a Catholic spirit. If any religious forms are observed in these institutions, they are Protestant, as a matter of course, and the Catholic who has given aid to what he believed to be a meritorious work of mercy is often obliged to stand helplessly by and see Catholic beneficiaries forced to the issue of joining in these exercises, at least outwardly, or else of losing the shelter which their necessity demands. He sees children, whether Catholic by baptism or not, educated on Protestant lines, and dependent for particular religious training on the opinions or the whims of superintendents and matrons, and, by the fact of his contributions, becomes accessory to these things.

This spirit of conciliation and compromise, this tendency to meet unbelief half-way and patch up a truce, can only end by becoming a menace to the preservation of the faith in America. We have nothing to gain, and all to lose in pursuing a policy that seeks to level away all religious distinctións, and lower the lines that divide faith from infidelity.

But to return to the subject of charities. It is scarcely creditable that any Catholic who contributes to a non-sectarian charity, does so because he believes it more worthy of support than our own Catholic charities, those radiant jewels in the diadem of the Church, but there is reason for mooting the question because there is room, probably everywhere in our mixed community, for improvement in the way of extending a more active sympathy to our own undertakings. No more powerful argument against a philanthropy that attempts to dispense with the necessity for a paramount religious influence could be adduced than a careful and intelligent study of parallel institutions, Catholic and non-Catholic. Examples might be multiplied indefinitely, and all would go to prove how little real benefit (if by the word we mean eternal rather than temporal interests) is imparted by a charity divorced from faith.

THER

MISCELLANEOUS.

A GOSSIP ABOUT EELS.

THOMAS SOUTHWELL.

Longman's Magazine, London, November. HERE are, according to Günther, some twenty-five species of eel (Anguilla), and "they are known from the fresh water and coasts of the temperate and tropical zones; none have been found in South America, or on the west coast of North America and West Africa." The common eel of British waters is found spread over Europe to 64°30′ N. latitude and all round the Mediterranean area, but the same authority states that it is not found in either the Danube, the Black or the Caspian Seas, and that it extends across the Atlantic to North America. In England it is by far the most important of fresh-water food fishes, and the home production falls short of the denrand.

The brain and nervous system of the eel are highly developed, and it is possessed of a certain amount of intelligence, apparently recognizing those who are accustomed to feed it, and responding to the signal which announces the presence of its benefactor. Yarrell, quoting from Ellis's Polynesian Researches, mentions that a species of eel found in Otaheite is a great favorite with the natives, who keep it as a pet; the author had several times, he declares, been with a young chief when he summoned his favorite eel by a shrill whistle, and has seen it come to the surface of the water and feed with confidence out of its master's hand. Owing to the small opening of the gill covers, these delicate organs are shielded from exposure to the air, and long retain sufficient moisture to enable them to perform their function. The body, too, is abundantly covered with a mucous secretion which protects it from the drying influence of the atmosphere. Consequently, if not absolutely exposed to the sun, the eel is very tenacious of life, and can exist for a long time out of its natural element.

Such a highly organized animal, as may be imagined, is very sensitive to heat and cold, as well as to taste and touch, and one shudders to think of the cruelties to which it is subjected by thoughtless persons. In the fen district of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, and perhaps other parts, eels are offered for sale in given quantities, strung on willow twigs, which are passed in at the gill opening and out at the mouth. We all knew, moreover, of the cruel practice of skinning eels alive, which has given rise to a common, aphorism. Both we and the eels ought, therefore, to feel grateful to Dr. Roots, who informs us that, difficult as it is to destroy life in these animals, under most circumstances he found immersion in water at the temperature of 120° "speedily annihilated the vital spark."

In these very prosaic times it is needless to mention that pieces of horsehair placed in water no longer make in course of time excellent eels, or that two pieces of sod cut while covered with May dew, placed together with the grass side. towards each other, and aided by the genial heat of the sun, will not " soon generate eels by the dozen." Still further, I need not say, that eels are not bred in smelts, as the writer was gravely informed is the case, and in proof of the assertion they were pointed out issuing from the month of their dead host. Unfortunately my informant had not learned enough to discriminate between a baby eel and a parasitic worm.

It is also equally impossible to accept the Cambridgeshire legend which attributes the abundance of these fish at Ely to the disobedience of the married priests, who, when ordered by the Pope to put away their partners for life, allowed their natural affection for their wives and little ones to outweigh their obedience to the sovereign Pontiff, and as an awful example they and their wives and children were transformed into cels.

The eel first becomes known to us in the "elver" stage of its existence. In the early summer, these tiny creatures may be seen ascending our rivers in dense columns, containing count

less hosts of individuals. These are known as eel-fare," of which, indeed, the word "elver " is believed to be a corruption,. and in some rivers they are said to be so abundant that, after being taken by means of canvas bags, they are "boiled and pressed into cakes, which are cut into slices and fried, making delicious food." On their passage up stream, obstacles, apparently insuperable, are overcome.

Arrived at these resting-places the eels grow apace, but at the approach of cold weather they bury themselves in the mud, often in "bunches" rolled together in a ball, until the warmth of spring calls them into action. Although impatient. of cold and often falling victims if exposed to frost, they have been known to endure a very low temperature without suffering any apparent injury; but it is in the warm summer weather,. particularly at night, that the eel lives and thrives. Then its appetite is insatiable, and scarcely anything comes amiss to it in the way of food. At such times the angler, while pursuing his gentle craft, will frequently hear a soft, sibilant sound, as of oft-repeated kisses wafted from the water-nymph's home among the lilies. It is the eel probably basking at the surface or greedily devouring the fish-spawn deposited on the aquatic vegetation. The quantity of spawn thus destroyed is enormous, and the eels have been found so distended with their delicate food as to be utterly helpless. It thus thrives immensely and many enormous individuals are on record. Daniel, in his Field Sports, mentions one which weighed 40 lbs.; and it is stated in Land and Water of October 28, 1867, that on the 22d of that month an eel was taken in the River Ouse at Denver Sluice 5 ft. 8 in. long, 174 in. in girth, and weighing 36 lbs.!

MOST

MARINELLI, THE SERPENT-MAN.
Nordstjernen, Copenhagen, October.

OST of us know the so-called gutta-percha man, or, a the "artists" would call themselves, contortionists. Nowadays such are usually "billed" as serpent-men or mansnakes. The most prominent among these phenomenal beings is Marinelli. He owes his place to his grace of movement and the ease of his "corkscrew" contortions. Twice he has been examined by the highest scientific authorities-in 1886, by Professor Virchow, in Berlin; and in 1889, by Professor Billroth, in Vienna. Both have delivered lectures before specialists on him. Both examinations have proved that there is nothing abnormal in Marinelli's bone system, and that he has never been subjected to any operation in order to attain his remarkable abilities. The "virtuoso" is wonderful and unique on account of his muscle system, which, naturally existing in fine proportions, has been developed by exercise and a strong will. The peculiarity with Marinelli is that the muscles have been developed in preference to the bone system. He is really a mass of muscles under a soft and elastic skin. It was, therefore, impossible for the scientists to locate his muscles and inner organs while he was in his contorted positions. Along his back the muscles are so developed that Marinelli can cross his shoulder blades.

Prof. Virchow shows that contortions like those of Marinelli are natural to childhood, particularly among uncivilized peoples. He has proved that by experiments on a twelve-yearsold Kalahari girl. When she was laid flat on the ground, face down, he could gradually bend the back so that the head touched the buttocks. It is this really normal, natural faculty which contortionists develop from early childhood. Not all attain equal perfection and elegance of movement. Marinelli is phenomenal.

Marinelli does not diet in any peculiar way. He lives sensibly, and has for six years maintained a weight of 120 pounds. He eats twice a day, 10 A.M. and 5 P.M. When he comes upon the stage, which usually is about 9 or 10 P.M., he is neither full of food nor hungry. Of late years he does not train. He is 28 years of age.

Books.

IN GOLD AND SILVER. THE GOLDEN RUG OF KERMANSHAH; Warders oF THE WOODS; A SHADOW UPON THE POOL; THE SILVER FOX AT HUnt's HOLLOW. By George H. Ellwanger. Illustrated. 16m0, pp. 156. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1892.

[In two delightful books, "The Garden-Story" and "The Story of My House,"* Mr. Ellwanger has demonstrated how keenly he appreciates Oriental rugs and tapestries as well as nature and out-of-door sports. Another expression of these admirable tastes of his is found in this latest product of his pen. In the "Golden Rug" he tells us how he made a journey from Algiers to Persia to get a precious rug of which he had heard. Of the three other papers, "The Warders" and "A Shadow" are enthusiastically and even poetically described fishing-excursions. In the Silver Fox" we have a hunting-scene, told with equal zest, enthusiasm, and poetry. All the papers are colored by his fine imagination and are full of picturesque description. Some thirty-three illustrations are worthy of the pages they illustrate. Two of the illustrators, W. Hamilton Gibson in outdoor scenes and objects, and A. B. Wenzell in figure pieces, have done their best and worked apparently con amore. The book is beautifully made; paper, presswork, broad margins, leaving nothing to be desired; and the publishers do not exaggerate in the least in calling the dainty volume one of the best examples of fine bookmaking produced in recent years." We give the portrait of the "Silver Fox."]

MY

Y acquaintance with "Old Silver"-for such was the name by which he was most familiarly known-occurred while grouseshooting with a companion in one of the fox's favorite retreats-a dense, large wood at Hunt's Hollow, near the High Banks of the Genesee. It was while partaking of the lunch in a chosen spot, in a glade through which a trout-stream flows, that we caught the baying of a hound remote to the northward. A light breeze was blowing toward us, sifting down the many-colored leaves, when, as the sound gradually drew nearer, suddenly a silver form sprang upon a log in the stream below.

Pausing to reveal his exquisite contour, and turning his head backward and sideward to hearken for the approach of his pursuer, he seemed a component part of the sylvan landscape, free and buoyant as the October air itself. Without him, no doubt the scene would have appeared as fair and perfect as many another pageant when the pomp of autumn floods the vales and hill-sides with its glory; with him it possessed a life and movement that nothing, save the glamour of his presence, might convey. For he was the picture; the landscape, but the frame. Could Baryé have beheld him as we beheld him, and as I beheld him many a time afterward in the triumph of his flight, it were needless for me to dwell upon his beauty; he would be immortalized in bronze, and stand in place of the Jaguar devouring a Hare, as the type of ferine grace. A few moments after landing from his spring, he trotted leisurely up-stream on the shallows for several rods, leaped up the bank at a bound, and once more took to the stream for a short distance; when, resuming his course on the opposite shore, he disappeared on an easy canter into the thick beech undergrowth.

A gleam of late autumnal gold fell upon his form, as he passed noiselessly from the sun-flecked glade—upon the symmetry of his clean-cut haunches, his lustrous silvern hair, his sharp-pointed, nervous ears, and his long, broad, feathery, silver brush. He might have been the incorporate spirit of the Indian summer which was brooding upon the silent woods; lovely, fleeting, and impalpable as the last lingering October sunbeam-so light, so airy, so imponderable, the rustling autumn breeze, rather than any volition of his own, seemed to impel him on his way.

So unexpected was his presence, so fascinating the grace of his every movement, and so brief the time consumed by his manœuvres, that, even had our guns been within reach, I doubt if it would have availed us. To be confronted unexpectedly by a silver fox and retain one's presence of mind, is not for the novice in vulpine warfare. He was an unusually large dog-fox, his coat a brilliant, glossy black, tipped with gray, that radiated a metallic sheen in the sun. Apparently he was in the prime of life, and was robed in the full vesture of his winter furs. About ten minutes after his disappearance a hound, who gave evidences of a hard chase, in direct contrast to the object of his pursuit, followed upon his trail, and, after considerable delay in recovering the scent on the banks of the stream, took up the trail again where the fox broke for the cover.

Later, I discovered we were the first to meet with Old Silver since the previous autumn, when he had mysteriously disappeared after his famous run with the Brooks' Grove hounds. His arrival in no less measure than his departure was an enigma. By many he was said to have deserted Livingston for the adjoining county of Allegany, where a price was not set upon his head, and he would not remain in constant * See THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. II., p. 299.

dread of his pursuers. As if he cared for the hounds! Had he not baffled them for years! His last run attested conclusively the soundness of his wind and the fleetness of his stifles. To assert, as some did, that he had exhausted his resources, was equally absurd: could he not turn his foes from the scent at will? Additional age would not impair, but enhance his cunning. His return, therefore, was welcomed by every one who knew him, was still a puzzle to all, and countless were the surmises as to the true cause of his reappearance.

Not that the presence of a silver fox was a rarity, by any means, in the Livingston wilds. Others of his kindred, fleet of foot and skilled in strategy, had made their harbor in the same locality, and for many years had led the chase with varying success. But none of his brethren had haunted the covers with the persistency of Old Silver, whose immunity from capture had passed into a proverb among the inhabitants of the upper Genesee. Like all beautiful things that are difficult to attain, he was the more coveted from the apparent inutility of pursuit; while naturally alert and cautious to an extreme degree, continued persecution had increased his innate craft, until now he was believed to possess a life inviolable. It was indeed asserted by some that he had roved the Livingston covers since the days of the Indians, by whom he was venerated as the tutelary genius of the groves-disappearing latterly at certain intervals, to resume his abode in his ancestral realms and bid defiance to his foes. Whether verily he possessed à life beyond the power of mortal to assail, and whether his allotted span, like the marvelous measure of his cunning, transcended that of his predaceous brethren, it were premature to disclose. Rather let the whisper of his advancing and the rustle of his retreating footsteps, so far as I may trace his mystic outline, voice their own interpretation.

KIN-DA-SHON'S WIFE; An Alaskan Story. By Mrs. Eugene S. Willard. New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Company.

[This story, the writer tells us, is true in every particular essential to history: the history of the leading character who gives the title to the book is taken from Kin-da-shion's own lips. As regards its presentation of Kling-get character, life, and customs, the author has lived amongst the Kling-gets eleven years in the capacity of minister, teacher, physician, and friend, has familiarized herself with their language, won their confidence, and grown into entire sympathy with them. Her Kling-get men display all the elements of true manhood, and her Kling-get girls are described as charming in person and portrayed with all the attributes of refined, though unsophisticated, womanhood. As for the Kling-get fiend, the Icht, or medicine-man, the antagonist of the missionary in his work of conversion, the author demands of those in authority nothing less than his extermination. The medicine-man is evidently the "thorn in the flesh" of the Alaskan missionary. Kin-da-shon's wife is a " story pure and simple, dramatically wrought out, tender, pathetic, and with no more reference to mission work than was necessary to the proper construction of the story as such. In fact, it is a story of antemission days, of the Kling-gets and other Chilkat tribes in the last years preceding their subjection to the two great opposing influences of civilization, the mis sionary with his Bible, and the trader with his firewater. In the days that have since past, the Chilkats have passed through the fire. As a people they are now being brought into prominence as "wholly villainous"; but this, the author tells us, is only another consequence of our " century of dishonor," carrying ruin among a people powerful in character and in numbers, who might have been to-day the sinew of our nation, as educated, Christianized men and women. Nevertheless, to the question, "Are the missions of Alaska a success? the author answers in her introduction-Yes, emphatically yes. The following is a slender outline of the plot.]

KAH-SHAH is one of a party to which we are introduced as they

come in sight of their home, at the close of a trading journey into the interior. His two children, Kasko and Tasheka, are on the shore when the canoe approaches; the older people sit at a distance and make no sign. Kasko plunges into the water, and seizes the prow of the canoe, which, with the assistance of the boatman, is run up high and dry. Between Kasko and his father not a word is spoken. The boy drags his father's pack from the boat, and, throwing himself down, adjusts the strap to his forehead. His attempt to rise with the pack is successful only when, unperceived by him, his father, who looks on with affectionate pride, helps him to raise it. Tasheka walks beside her father, thoroughly enjoying the triumphal procession. Reaching the house called "Ours," all the people follow them in to partake of the good things prepared for the home-comers. Tasheka keeps close by her father during supper, his arm encircling her as she leans against him. Often she lifts her eyes to his, and is fondly petted in answer to her look of affection.

At the close of the meal-without looking up-she asks in a low tone: "Were you well, my father?"