VI.

I wish to repudiate the suggestion, the origin of which I cannot recall, that the services of public and amateur Readers and Elocutionists should be used as a punishment to criminals in our State prisons. These delightful entertainments are for those who can afford to pay for them, or who are influenced by friendship or charity voluntarily to enjoy them. The punishment of criminals is strictly statutory. They volunteer nothing. nothing. They pay for nothing. We go certainly to the sentimental limit of the statutes when we hand them over on holidays to amateur glee - clubs and the magic lantern. Crime, with most of them, is a

business, as regular an occupation as any of us have. They take their chances under the law. This also enters into their scheme of life-occasionally a turn at prison labor and plain fare. They have not agreed to take on other things. As we conduct affairs we cannot expect them to change their careers. And so long as we pursue our present course in manufacturing them, we have no right to impose anything further on them. We who have not sinned and are unsophisticated love Readings and Elocutionary Recitations. We like to be thrilled. But what right have we to thrill a criminal whose life is full of thrills already?

POLITICAL.

UR Record is closed January 11, 1897.

Our leader of the Cuban insurgents,

was asserted on December 13 to have been beguiled into approaching the Spanish lines under a flag of truce and treacherously assassinated. The assertion was denied by Spain. Later advices from Cuba, which in turn were denied, asserted that Maceo, though badly wounded, was not dead. His official successor was Garcia, but his successor in command in Pinar del Rio was Rivera. General Weyler's campaign in Cuba apparently lacked vigor and decision. On January 11 it was reported that the insurgents had taken and burned the town of Arroyo Naranjo, seven miles from Havana.

On December 18 the Senate committee on foreign relations ordered a favorable report on the Cameron resolution recognizing the independence of the Republic of Cuba. On December 19 Secretary Olney, in a statement on the Cameron resolution, declared that such resolution was not constitutionally binding on the President, and might be ignored, even though passed by a two-thirds

vote.

An unusual number of bank failures was reported, chiefly in the Middle West, which began December 21 with the failure of the Illinois National Bank of Chicago. As these were explained as an aftermath of the previous financial depression, confidence, though weakened, was not destroyed.

A building catastrophe occurred at Xeres, Spain, on December 11, burying 110 persons.

The Dawes commission made a treaty with the Choctaw Indians on December 18 for the allotment of lands and the relinquishment of tribal govern

ment.

The Greater Republic of Central America was formally recognized by President Cleveland on December 23, and diplomatic relations were begun.

The arbitration agreement concerning the Venezuelan boundary dispute having been accepted by the Venezuelan government, the State Department announced on December 28 that the intervention of the United States had been successful.

The Royal Commission appointed by Gladstone in 1893 to inquire into the financial relations between England and Ireland having reported that Ireland has been overtaxed in comparison with England to the extent of £2,750,000 a year, all parties in Ireland joined together for the first time in fifteen years, and in December and January vigor

ously demanded redress.

The Most Reverend Doctor Temple was enthroned Archbishop of Canterbury on January 8.

A general arbitration treaty between the United States and England was signed by Secretary Olney and Sir Julian Pauncefote, and transmitted to the Senate by the President.

OBITUARY.

December 15.-At Florence, Alexander Salvini, actor, and son of the celebrated tragedian Tomasso Salvini, aged thirty-five years.

December 18.-At Paris, Paul Auguste Arène, the French littérateur, aged fifty-three years.

December 26.-At Brighton, Sir John Brown, one of the first British advocates of plating war-ships with armor.

December 27.-At Paris, General John Meredith Reed, the American diplomatist, aged fifty-nine

years.

January 3.—Cardinal di Acquarella, Archbishop of Naples, aged sixty-two years.

January 5.-Count de Mas Latrie, the celebrated French paleographist, aged eighty-one years.—General Francis A. Walker, political economist, and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aged fifty-six years.

"N%

O, sir, I don't think so. I'm judgin' 'em by my own feelin's. If I was to keep climbin' up to a third story to find a meal, and be poked down to the street just as I got a nibble, I'd be too discouraged to do anything but set on the curb-stone and starve. I shorely would. That's jest the way I think these pertater-bugs feel. Kill 'em? No, I know I ain't doin' that, but I certainly am discouragin' 'em. Yes, killin' would be more final like, I suppose, but then I'd have to lug the water and cans and poison-stuff 'way from the house down here. It ain't hardly worth while, an' it's kinder cruel anyhow. Every farmer has his own way o' doin' things."

Martin Pope stood leaning on the garden fence, watching Farmer Esip at his arduous labors. The old man was dressed like a retired preacher from his waist up, wearing a long solemn-looking black coat and an old stove-pipe hat, but on his legs were a pair of farmer's overalls, worn to an artistic pale blue. He held a little stick in his hand, and moved with lazy patience from plant to plant discouraging the potato-beetles. This was Peachey's father. Martin had wished to ask his permission before making open love to his daughter, which he meant to do within that hour, but somehow Mr. Esip's occupation and costume did not strike Martin's artistic sense as exactly suitable for such an occasion. Therefore he only said:

"You ought to use a longer stick, Mr. Esip. Then you wouldn't have to bend your back like that. Take mine. I've done with it."

"It's more trouble to hold your back up, seems to me," said Mr. Esip, after using the long stick on several plants. "Guess I'll go back to my old way. Where's my little stick?" Martin found it for him, and with grave delight watched his efforts toward extermination. There was nothing Martin Pope would not do to enjoy new experiences and a new sensation. His bohemianism was a true strain that in verity knew no law. It had led him into this wilderness, held him loitering in the farm-house, and made him now look on this prospective father-in-law as to costume and character with no more serious feelings than delightful amusement.

"Father! Father!"

It was Peachey's voice. She was standing looking at her sire with a face that expressed more than her indignant tone. Mr. Esip jumped, and then was plainly angry with himself for doing so.

"I wisht you wouldn't walk so soft," he said, testily. "I've been working to knock

VOL. XCIV.-No. 562.-72

Mr. Esip moved on to another swarming plant. “I calculate to sometimes," he said, with calm obstinacy.

Martin laughed alond. Peachey flushed an offended pink that in Martin's fond eyes glorified the whole garden, not excluding Mr. Esip.

Father," said the daughter, slowly, "you go to the house and take off those overalls and put on your broadcloth trousers, or take off that coat and hat and put on your workingblouse. I don't care which you do, but it's got to be one or the other. I won't have you going about looking like this."

Mr. Esip nodded his head sidewise rapidly and angrily. "I actually-I actually believe you think you run this house!"

"I do run it," said Peachey, firmly.

Mr. Esip took off his silk hat with one hand, and with the other scrubbed his hair over his head, as if perplexed between what ought to be and what was not. "Well, I guess you do," he admitted, pleasantly, and trudged off to his house-his in name only.

"Peachey," said Martin, leaning far over the fence, and half whispering —“Peachey, I've brought home your geese. Here they are, and Peachey, do you love me?"

Peachey ran to the fence, in her eagerness leaning out as far as her lover had leaned in. She was very close to him. Martin could see every little curling golden hair on her neck and temples. Lydia wore her dark hair off her brow, showing the bluest veins in her temples. It was a shock of pure joy to Martin to know in that moment that he preferred the golden tendrils to the blue veins.

"Are they all there?" cried Peachey.

Martin began to laugh. "I'll tell you," he said. "Come sit in the old arbor with me, and I'll tell you just how I know I love you. You see, my mother once gave me a receipt for knowing. An old maid that got married somehow told her how she found out she loved, and it was a good enough test for anybody's use. This was the way she knew: Tilly Pope,' she said that was my mother's name - -Tilly Pope, when I look up in the sky, Nicholas Gray is there; when I walk out in the woods, Nicholas Gray is there; when I look out in the dark, Nicholas Gray is there. In fact, Tilly Pope, Nicholas Gray is perfectly identified with me'” Martin flung back his head and langhed until the arbor rang. Then he grew suddenly serious. "It is a good test, though, and I ought to know, because that's exactly the way I am about you, Peachey. When I look-"

But,

what you want, ices and cake, or locusts and wild-honey, or some such things. I always did hate to decide; it takes me forever. dear, really this time I have chosen. I can't say I don't want the ices and cake, for that man isn't born who could say he didn't want Lydia. But I know I want the locusts and wild-honey most. Isn't that enough ?"

Peachey turned away her head, but she left her hand in Martin's grasp.

"I don't understand you. Why don't you talk like other people?" she asked.

"Because I can't. Peachey, do you love me? I'm not sure I understand about the locusts myself, but I do know wild-honey when I see it; and as for the taste of it—” He thought he had her hand at his lips, but Peachey was gone. Martin followed her out into the garden, and caught up with her at the potatopatch, where she lingered a little, looking down, frowning at the stripped stalks and riddled leaves of the potato plants.

"How's a man to prove anything to you if you won't sit still? I say these modern days are hard," urged Martin. "Here am I, Martin Pope, pining to prove my love for a woman, and the only thing I've been able to do for her is to herd geese! Now if I could rid you of a dragon or so, Peachey, you'd believe I loved you, wouldn't you?"

Peachey was still looking down, disconsolately. "I'd a good deal rather you'd rid me of potato-beetles. Just look at this patch! I declare, it makes me heart-sick."

Martin stood gazing from the potato plants to Peachey and back again. It seemed to him that his brain worked like fire.

66

Peachey," he burst ont, "I'll make a bargain with you. I can't kill a dragon for yon, because I can't find one, but if I rid you of these potato- bugs, and do it in two days' time, will you marry me?”

Peachey flushed to the roots of her hair. “How can you be so absurd? You couldn't do it, in the first place. Nobody could."

"All the more glory if I do-and the less risk for you. Is it a bargain?"

"Of course not. It's too ridiculous to think of; and then father's awfully tender-hearted. He won't have anything on this farm poisoned."

“I don't care," said Martin, obstinately; "if you'll take the risk of marrying me, I will take the risk of losing you. We'll call it a final test. I'll rid you of the potato-bugs or-or Martin Pope by the mid-day after to-morrow night, and I won't use poison either. a bargain?"

Is it

Peachey laid her finger ponderingly on her lips. They were half ponting, half laughing, and she was evidently half angry, half disquieted. "How dare you mix up love and potato-bugs!"

"That's all right," said Martin, radiantly. "If that's all that bothers you, you haven't any case at all; for, you see, you don't marry me unless I kill off the bugs, and that disposes

of them before the love comes, doesn't it? Peachey, don't be stiff-necked about it. Can't you see?-it gives you a chance to yield gracefully, if you find you want to. And look here, dear, just in a whisper between you and me and the beetles: if I lay every beetle dead at your feet, and then you find you don't want me, you can kick me away, and I won't say a word. Only, if I am to be kicked, my dear, I shall wish to Heaven that the foot doing it wasn't so extremely tiny. I always did dote on a small foot, and yours is the very smallest No, no, Peachey. Oh, no, no! Of course you know it. Then why have you called on me to tie your shoestring three times this day?" and so on and so on, until the potato - beetles seemed

wholly forgotten; but in the end Martin had his way, and they were finally made the pivot on which was to hang his fate as a bachelor.

On the day set for Martin's experiment, the potato-patch was a most remarkable-looking field. In the first place, about its not very large area ran a wall made of a bolt of unbleached muslin. One end of the muslin was tacked neatly to the trunk of a flowering plum-tree, and the other end to a twin brother of the tree that grew but a few feet away. Stakes driven in the soft earth at intervals supported the muslin walls beyond the trees. The narrow space between the two trunks was a natural door. Inside this enclosure lay rows and rows of prostrate potato plants, each

stalk pinned firmly to the earth by innumerable hair-pins-supplied under protest by Peachey. Furthermore, with the sweat of unwonted labor on his brow, Martin had by entreaties and exhortations so wrought upon Peachey's mind that she had actually lent him not only hair-pins, but the services of Joey, the hired man; and lastly, when Martin, so absorbed in his work that he seemingly forgot what was the prize he worked for, rushed into the house imploring, nay, demanding Peachey's added assistance, she really hesitated to remind him of the delicacy of her position, and hastily followed him into the potato enclosure. There, unquestioningly, and for no possible purpose that her imagination could conceive, she feverishly helped him and Joey pin down potato stalks, running a race with the summer light, and beating it by half a row of potatoes.

"We've done it," shouted Martin, rising, sunburnt and weary, from the last plant. "Peachey, we've as good as won- No, I'veno-well, it doesn't matter." He looked hard at Peachey, and his eyes suddenly began to twinkle.

Peachey made no reply. She walked into the house in silence, and Martin did not see her again until the next morning. That crncial day found Martin an excited and very tired man. He had told Peachey that he wished, for the furtherance of his plans, to have in his hands the control of the whole farm for the time being, and to this she consented the more easily because there was no control to hand over. Farmer Esip, as he said, had his own ways of farming. He did not know of the change of dictatorship, because a county fair had required all his attention from noon to night the previous day; but on the fateful morning, after early breakfast, from which Martin was absent, he sought Peachey, hidden in the cool recesses of the dairy, and announced, from the open door:

"Honey, maybe you don't hold it cruel to starve dumb folks, but I do. I don't say it wasn't smart, but I do say it was bitter hard on the fowls, and hard on the beetles too. There's nothin' that's more a lesson to me than pertater - bugs-busy as yallerjackets all the time, eatin', breedin', workin', trudgin' all the way from Colorado to here, and nobody wantin' 'em there or here or anywhere. There's such a thing as bein' entirely too enterprisin'. All the way from Colorado to here to be eat up by ducks and geese and hens and keats and turkeys! There won't be a bug in that field by noon."

"Peachey!" It was Martin's voice at the doorway. A great pan of milk slipped from Peachey's hands, and a white wave splashed across the floor to Martin's feet.

"My soul, honey!" said Mr. Esip, and Peachey sat down on the milk-bench and burst into mingled tears and laughter. "What's a pan o' milk?" said her father, wondering.

"Cept for the trouble o' wipin' it up. It's nasty to clean up, milk is. I guess you've been in this dark hole too long, honey; I'll tend to this moppin'. Take her to the pertater-patch, Mr. Pope, and show her what's goin' on. It's a murderous sight, but it's mighty interestin'. I don't know how you ever thought o' such a thing."

Peachey stood between the two flowering plum-trees and looked into the enclosure. There, scrambling from prostrate viue to vine, cackling, crowing, gobbling, quacking, hissing, but eating beetles all the time as if life depended on hurry, was every beaked creature on the farm, a great flock, including the jacketed geese. The noise was deafening.

"They've had nothing to eat, nothing at all, for twenty-four hours," said Martin, complacently. "You see, I remembered that there were more fowls on this farm than anything else, including potato vines. It was a simple question in arithmetic and hunger."

Peachey stood staring for a moment, then she suddenly began to laugh; she laughed until the tears ran down her face, and she had to lean against the trunk of the plumtree for support. Martin regarded her anxiously.

"It's nothing," gasped Peachey, wiping her eyes, "only it's so absurd. Don't you know how to be anything else?"

"I must have worked you too hard yesterday," said Martin, tenderly. He spread his coat under one of the plum-trees and insisted that Peachey should rest upon it, while he lay at her feet, resting also. Joey, his eyes popped with amazement, stood in the plum-tree doorway.

beetles.

Thus they watched the murder of the

Mr. Esip was right; before the clock struck twelve those beetles were no more; or, rather, so few remained in the patch that it would have been hypercritical to mention their existence. At Martin's word, Joey drove the replete fowls from the enclosure and away to the barn-yard, while Martin himself rolled up the muslin. It was a long white bundle when he brought it back to Peachey, now standing under the plum-tree, and laid it at her feet.

"Here is the shroud of the beetles," he said, significantly, as he bent one knee on the muslin and bowed his head, waiting.

"Can't you be sensible for once?" said Peachey. There was something wistful in her tone, though she was laughing.

"No, I can't. This is the way I am made; and if you like me at all, you ought to like what I am."

"Well, I don't," said Peachey. Martin looked up quickly. For a brief moment his face was as serious as could have been asked. Then he saw Peachey's irrepressible blushes and dimples against the white blossoms above her. Martin's gaze was fixed upward admiringly.