THE season has been opening very rapidly within the last ten days, and now I am sure it is thoroughly opened. Hammocks and loungingchairs and moving figures occupy the piazzas of the cottages and the hotels. Instead of spending so much time gazing outward at Minot's Light, we now sit a good deal at the other side of our tent, and look through our glasses at the gayety which we can see, but not hear. I fear that we do not now think so much of the grandness of the ocean as we did formerly, albeit that grandeur is more striking than ever, now that it contrasts so forcibly with the superficialness of mere human beings. It is very evident that those fine men and women yonder did not come to look at the sea, or at this magnificent rocky coast, but to ogle each other. At least, this is the way it seems to us who are outside specta

tors.

As I write these words there is a sound of treble and baritone talk below the cliff on the side of which our tent stands. Small shrieks and giggles come up to me, and manly laughter; and at this moment I am aware that the top of our habitation has been seen, for a girl's voice cries out :

"Oh, what is that up there?"

"A tent! I thought so. Oh, how lovely! Can't we get up there any way? I suppose some horrid men live there though. Marion, just see, that wave wet my new boots. They'll never look fit to be seen again! Isn't there any way to get up to that tent? Are they hunting and fishing up there, or what? No, sir, thank you, I'll carry my parasol myself. What do those men do up there, any way? Do you think it would be proper to call on them, just to call on them, just to peep at them, you know? How do we get up there? How the sun does glare on the water! Marion, if I looked as well in colored glasses as you do, I'd wear them all the time. Why doesn't somebody tell me if I can call on those men in that tent? Men always have the best places; I should think they might have a good time."

The speaker was evidently a very sprightly young lady; one of that kind who always has a male attendant, and who appears to be made up on a plan which does not require brains.

"Somebody told me they were not men in the tent," said another feminine tone, not quite so full of conscious power of captivation as had been that of the first speaker.

Mexico-Picturesque.

From advance sheets of Blake and Sullivan's “Mexico.” (Lee & Shepard.)

ACROSS the low, green, rolling foothills the mountains still keep their dusky heights stained with mineral dyes; mines rich in copper, iron, and silver honeycomb the entire country; fine, fertile valleys fill every atom of space that has the blessed luxury of water; and even this is being brought extensively at present, through the

medium of artesian wells and springs, from the hills. When one remembers the ditches and flumes extending thirty and forty miles in the California districts, it seems an easy matter to convey it here, from so much nearer sources.

At one or two points the train stopped to let us load the cars with flowers. A tall cluster of bare rods, each tipped with a vivid scarlet blossom, fine white and purple bells that were found at the root of mesquite bushes, bright little yellow cups like small jasmine buds, and quantities of delicate green soon made our rooms like a travelling greenhouse, and we revelled in bloom and insects until we tired of both. Soon after leaving San Juan de Guadeloupe, flat, table-topped mountains began to make a change in the landscape. They looked not unlike the old Aztec Teocalli, and might, perhaps, have served the sun worshippers with the idea of their temples. Lofty, terraced sides and level summits extended far enough to allow room for the imposing ceremonial of their worship.

Sometimes for hours, fields green with springing corn, or the soft verdure of young wheat, lined each side of the road; sometimes a herd of sheep gathered about the rare water-courses, or were grouped under great roofs of thatch, held up by forked poles without any side coverings.

Nine miles below the city of Zacatecas, the railroad begins to rise, by a triumph of magnificent engineering, up a grade of one hundred and seventy-five feet to the mile, making on the passage some of the most abrupt curves conceivable. It recalled the old Colorado cañons, only that here we went around the hillside instead of plunging over precipices and bridging gorges with trestles. The powerful engine panted like some hard-pressed animal, and the train of heavy cars dragged wearily up after it. We forgot fatigue, forgot fear, forgot-what is harder to forget than either-supper, and crowded the narrow platforms with an excitement almost painful. At last, with one mighty, final effort, we turned the last sharp mountain spur, and with the Büfa rising high on the left, its enormous crest of rock above like the dorsal fin of some fossil monster, with a glow of red gold over all the western sky, and the evening star shining palely in the east, we rested on the crest of the hill above the dark, little, sleeping town, with only three faint points of light to indicate its location or give any sign of life.

Roger and His Cousin.

From Helen Campbell's "Roger Berkeley's Probation." (Roberts.)

ROGER was there almost as quickly as she; drew in the smaller boat, and examined it carefully, and then placed Connie in it and pushed off. Five minutes of his long, steady strokes brought them to the open lake, where a light wind blew and they seemed to dance over the

They shot into the little cove at last, and

Roger sprang to the shore and drew the boat up, Connie like a baby, he helped her up the bluff, winding the rope about a stump; and lifting out and then lifted the curtain of wild grapevine that flung itself recklessly over the old apple-treelong ago, and offering its yearly tribute of althe chance growth of some seed dropped here ways smaller and knottier fruit to such squirrels supplies. Two or three of them were there now; but they hardly left their post, knowing well that these visitors had never hostile intentions, and might even be depended upon for a bit of bread, or some festive addition to their usual bill of fare. They chattered and scolded; at last, as moved by well-considered degrees to the end of a they sat there motionless, one of the boldest branch, so near Roger and Connie that they could have touched it, and there began a series of remonstrances, more and more active as no attention was paid.

as had discovered this additional source of winter

Connie had settled comfortably on the thick white moss, and Roger threw himself down and put his head in her lap. It was a bit of the old quiet times before trouble began, and she sat there silent and quite happy, her little hands wandering through Roger's thick waves of hair. He had laughed aloud finally, as the squirrels gave a last round of chatter and bark, and retreated indignantly; and then he sat up, as if surprised that anything had power to make him light-hearted even for a moment.

"An' ye think I'd best leave 'em hev it?" "I don't see what harm can come of it. Not that I expect any good will come of it; I wouldn't count on that."

"Don't fear, Jerry; my days uv stakin' on a a mine's past. Ef I'd never heerd tell uv a mine

I'd a hed my John alive to-day." "Perhaps you might and perhaps you mightn't; no one can tell. It doesn't do any good to think of such things," he answered, coldly. Elizabeth looked at him with her dull, pathetic eyes, but made no comment.

pause.

I don't see why you mightn't as well give them a lease," he remarked, after a "You'll never do anything with the claim yourself."

"Thet's mighty cert'n," she said, emphatically.

66 These fellows are enthusiastic and bound to dig somewhere, so I suppose they might as well burn up a little of their powder on this claim as anywhere."

"Poor men!" said Elizabeth, with pity. "Poor men, indeed! Poor foolish men," echoed Ellen.

men

"Poor nonsense!" said Jerold, with contempt. "I'm getting tired wasting sympathy on who will stick to mining in the face of experience and figures. Statistics show that about one in eight hundred strikes it rich in a mine; yet every man rushing in here expects to be that eight hundredth. Such self-delusion is beyond the range of sympathy."

"Thet's why I pity 'em so much," said Elizabeth; "ther chance's so slim. Do them men know 'bout the Eucher?" she asked, timidly, of Jerold.

"Know it! Woman alive! Of course they do. Everybody in the camp knows that." He checked the smile at her simplicity, and she hung her head and was silent.

"I thought mebbe, p'rhaps," she said, at last, "they'd be discour'ged from tryin' ef they knowed our 'sper'ence."

ure!"

"A leaser discouraged by another man's failAnd he laughed loudly at the idea. Why, other men's failures are the basis of his hope. If they had succeeded the ore would be left for him, would it? while now it lies waiting only his coming. Besides, the Eucher experiment narrows down the possible lines in which the lead can lie; that increases the chances for these fellows by just so much. Oh, there's no discouraging a leaser."

"I'm sorry," she answered, "sorry to see any man stake a hope on what's got so little show; an' sorry fer any woman thet's got to live th' life uv waitin' and worryin' I did."

"You can set your mind easy about the woman," said Jerold, "for they are all bachelors. Most prospectors are too wise to load themselves

up with a wife; you can't shoulder her like your pick, for a trip of a few hundred miles into the mountains. I tell you in these mining countries most women are an encumbrance."

"And Heaven deliver us all," struck in Ellen, "from a country where women are an incumbrance."

Jerold laughed, the old hearty, boyish laugh. It softened the cynical curve that had begun to linger in the corners of his faultless mouth, and restored the frank, genial nature that had surreptitiously made its way into the heart of every man and woman in the camp.

"I'll declare, Ellen, I didn't know you had so much fire left in you," he said, gaily, but she only smiled in reply.

"I had the lease drawn up," he remarked, "when I found the men turning to Elizabeth,

I've

were all right. You may as well sign it. given the usual terms-one-quarter to you-and left the time short-six months. Is it satisfactory?"

Yes, ef you say it's right. I don't know nothin' 'bout sech thin's."

He spread the document on the table before

From Shorthouse's" A Teacher of the Violin." (Macmillan.)

NOISE, especially if continued on one note, deadens and destroys the soul, the life of the mind within the brain. The constant reiteration of one note will drive a man mad, just as the continual fall of a drop of water upon the same spot of the head will cause madness and death. You may prove this on the violin. Whereas if you laid your head down in the meadow by the river on the long grass, there came to you in the whispering wind something like the sea-murmurs that live within the shell-tidings of a delicate life, news of a world beyond the thought of those who merely haunt the palaces of earth.

These two, the murmur of the wind through grass and the whisper within the shell, are perhaps the most delicate sounds that Nature can produce; was it possible that I should find in art something more perfect still? In this passion for sound, in which I lived as in a paradise, it may be asked, Where did music find a place? The music that I heard in my childhood was not of the best class; and perhaps this might be the reason that musical sound rather than music seemed to haunt those hours of childhood, for among the untutored sounds of Nature there are, now and again, musical notes of surpassing beauty. Among the wailing sounds of the wind that haunted the high-pitched roof above the boarded ceiling of our bedroom, there was one perfect and regular note. It never varied, except in loudness according to the force of the wind. This note, in its monotony, had an enthralling effect upon my imagination. I had once associated certain thoughts with its message; no doubt the continued association of recollected imagery would explain the rest.