A CAUGHNAWAGA Paraphrased by Maurice Francis Egan WORLD in agony breathes its last sigh! Gaze on the remnants of an ancient race,- You'll talk of ambuscades and treacherous chase. Can history or sight a traitor be? Where are the red men of the rolling plains? With English tang in speech of Normandy! LOUISIANA Paraphrased from 'Les Feuilles Volantes,' by Maurice Francis Egan L AND of the Sun! where Fancy free Weaveth her woof beneath a sky of gold, Another Andalusia, thee I see; Thy charming memories my heart-strings hold, In thy fresh groves, where scented orange glows, In concert weird take up their sombre part, 'Neath thy green domes, where the lianas cling, With arteries afire till morn-birds sing; More than old Werthier, in new love's surprise, Son of the North, I, of the realm of snows,- 5970 THE DREAM OF LIFE TO MY SON Paraphrased from 'Les Feuilles Volantes,' by Maurice Francis Egan A T TWENTY years, a poet lone, I, when the rosy season came, Walked in the woodland, to make moan For some fair dame; And when the breezes brought to me The lilac spent in fragrant stream, I wove her infidelity In love's young dream. A lover of illusions, I! Soon other dreams quite filled my heart, And other loves as suddenly Took old love's part. One Glory, a deceitful fay, Who flies before a man can stir, But now that I have grown so old, Another life before us glows, Casts on all faithful souls its gleam: 5971 M HAROLD FREDERIC (1856-) R. FREDERIC was born in Utica, New York, August 19th, 1856. He spent his boyhood in that neighborhood, and was educated in its schools. The rural Central New York of a halfcentury ago was a region of rich farms, of conservative ideas, and of strong indigenous types of character. These undoubtedly offered unconscious studies to the future novelist. Like many of his guild he began writing on a newspaper, rising by degrees from the position of reporter to that of editor. The drill and discipline taught him to make the most of time and opportunity, and he contrived leisure enough to write two or three long stories. Working at journalism in Utica, Albany, and New York, in 1884 he became chief foreign correspondent of the New York Times, making his headquarters in London, where he has since lived. Mr. Frederic's reputation rests on journalistic correspondence of the higher class, and on his novels, of which he has published six. His stories are distinctively American. He has caught up contrasting elements of local life in the eastern part of the United States, and grouped them with ingenuity and power. HAROLD FREDERIC His first important story was 'Seth's Brother's Wife,' originally appearing as a serial in Scribner's Magazine. Following this came The Lawton Girl,' a study of rustic life; 'In the Valley,' a semi-historical novel, turning on aspects of colonial times along the Mohawk River; 'The Copperhead,' a tale of the Civil War; 'Mukena and Other Stories,' graphic character sketches, displaying humor and insight; 'The Damnation of Theron Ware,' the most serious and carefully studied of his books; and 'March Hares,' a sketch of contemporary society. A student of the life about him, possessing a dramatic sense and a saving grace of humor, Mr. Frederic in his fiction is often photographic and minute in detail, while he does not forget the importance of the mass which the detail is to explain or embellish. He likes to deal with types of that mixed population peculiar to the 5972 farming valleys of Central New York,-German, Irish, and American, - bringing out by contrast their marked social and individual traits. Not a disciple of realism, his books are emphatically "human documents." There is always moreover a definite plot, often a dramatic development. But it is the attrition of character against character that really interests him. 'Seth's Brother's Wife' and 'The Lawton Girl' leave a definite ethical intention. In the 'Damnation of Theron Ware' is depicted the tragedy of a weak and crude character suddenly put in touch with a higher intellectual and emotional life, which it is too meagre and too untrained to adopt, and through which it suffers shipwreck. In 'In the Valley' the gayety and seriousness of homely life stand out against a savage and martial background. Mr. Frederic profoundly respects his art, is never careless, and never unconscientious. Of his constructive instinct a distinguished English critic has said that it "ignores nothing that is significant; makes use of nothing that is not significant; and binds every element of character and every incident together in a consistent, coherent, dramatic whole." THE LAST RITE From The Damnation of Theron Ware. Copyright 1896, by Stone & Kimball ALKING homeward briskly now, with his eyes on the side W walk, and his mind all aglow with crowding suggestions for the new work and impatience to be at it, Theron Ware came abruptly upon a group of men and boys who occupied the whole path, and were moving forward so noiselessly that he had not heard them coming. He almost ran into the leader of this little procession, and began a stammering apology, the final words of which were left unspoken, so solemnly heedless of him and his talk were all the faces he saw. In the centre of the group were four workingmen, bearing between them an extemporized litter of two poles and a blanket hastily secured across them with spikes. Most of what this litter held was covered by another blanket, rounded in coarse folds over a shapeless bulk. From beneath its farther end protruded a big broom-like black beard, thrown upward at such an angle. as to hide everything beyond those in front. The tall young minister, stepping aside and standing tiptoe, could see sloping 5973 downward, behind this hedge of beard, a pinched and chalk-like face, with wide-open, staring eyes. Its lips, of a dull lilac hue, were moving ceaselessly, and made a dry, clicking sound. Theron instinctively joined himself to those who followed the litter, a motley dozen of street idlers, chiefly boys. One of these in whispers explained to him that the man was one of Jerry Madden's workmen in the wagon-shops, who had been deployed to trim an elm-tree in front of his employer's house, and being unused to such work, had fallen from the top and broken all his bones. They would have cared for him at Madden's house, but he insisted upon being taken home. His name was MacEvoy, and he was Joey MacEvoy's father, and likewise Jim's and Hughey's and Martin's. After a pause, the lad, a brighteyed, freckled, barefooted wee Irishman, volunteered the further information that his big brother had run to bring "Father Forbess," on the chance that he might be in time to administer "extry munction." The way of the silent little procession led through back streets, - where women hanging up clothes in the yards hurried to the gates, their aprons full of clothes-pins, to stare open-mouthed at the passers-by,- and came to a halt at last in an irregular and muddy lane, before one of a half-dozen shanties reared among the ash-heaps and débris of the town's most bedraggled outskirts. A stout, middle-aged, red-armed woman, already warned by some messenger of calamity, stood waiting on the roadside bank. There were whimpering children clinging to her skirts, and a surrounding cluster of women of the neighborhood; some of the more elderly of whom, shriveled little crones in tidy caps, and with their aprons to their eyes, were beginning in a lowmurmured minor the wail which presently should rise into the keen of death. Mrs. MacEvoy herself made no moan, and her broad ruddy face was stern in expression rather than sorrowful. When the litter stopped beside her, she laid a hand for an instant on her husband's wet brow, and looked-one could have sworn impassively-into his staring eyes. Then, still without a word, she waved the bearers toward the door, and led the way herself. Theron, somewhat wonderingly, found himself a minute later inside a dark and ill-smelling room, the air of which was humid with the steam from a boiler of clothes on the stove, and not in other ways improved by the presence of a jostling score of women, all straining their gaze upon the open door of the only |