MANHATTAN ISLAND IN THE QUATERNARY AGE-THE MASTODON.

the dissipation of energy, will have none of that. Lord Kelvin, in particular, has urged that in the periods of our earth's infancy and adolescence its developmental changes must have been, like those of any other infant organism, vastly more rapid and pronounced than those of a later day; and to every clear thinker this truth also must now seem axiomatic.

Whoever thinks of the earth as a cooling globe can hardly doubt that its crust, when thinner, may have heaved under strain of the moon's tidal pull-whether or not that body was nearer-into great billows, daily rising and falling, like waves of the present seas vastly magnified.

Under stress of that same lateral pressure from contraction which now produces the slow depression of the Jersey coast, the slow rise of Sweden, the occasional belching of an insignificant volcano, the jetting of a geyser, or the trembling of an earthquake, once large areas were rent in twain, and vast floods of lava flowed over thousands of square miles of the earth's surface perhaps at a single jet; and, for aught we know to the contrary, gigantic mountains may have heaped up their contorted heads in cataclysms as spasmodic as even the most ardent catastrophist of the elder day of geology could have imagined.

The atmosphere of that early day, filled with vast volumes of carbon, oxygen, and other chemicals that have since been stored in beds of coal, limestone, and granites, may have worn down the rocks, on the one hand, and built up organic

forms on the other, with a rapidity that would now seem hardly conceivable.

And yet while all these anomalous things went on, the same laws held that now are operative; and a true doctrine of uniformitarianism would make no unwonted concession in conceding them all

though most of the embittered geological controversies of the middle of our century were due to the failure of both parties to realize that simple fact.

And as of the past and present, so of the future. The same forces will continue to operate; and under operation of these unchanging forces each day will differ from every one that has preceded it. If it be true, as every physicist believes, that the earth is a cooling globe, then, whatever its present stage of refrigeration, the time must come when its surface contour will assume a rigidity of level not yet attained. Then, just as surely, the slow action of the elements will continue to wear away the land surfaces, particle by particle, and transport them to the ocean, as it does today, until, compensation no longer being afforded by the upheaval of the continents, the last foot of dry land will sink for the last time beneath the water, the last mountain - peak melting away, and our globe, lapsing like any other organism into its second childhood, will be on the surface-as presumably it was before the first continent rose-one vast "waste of waters." As puny man conceives time and things, an awful cycle will have lapsed; in the sweep of the cosmic life, a pulse-beat will have throbbed.

OMERS rode slowly over the low Iowa

Andrew Lang's dainty verses. Presently, being quite alone on the country road, he began to sing:

"Who wins his love shall lose her;
Who loses her shall gain;
For still the spirit wooes her,

A soul without a stain;
And mem'ry still pursues her,
With longings not in vain.

"He loses her who gains her,

Who watches day by day
The dust of time that stains her,
The griefs that leave her gray,
The flesh that yet enchains her,

Whose grace hath passed away.

"Oh, happier he who gains not
The Love some seem to gain;
The joy that custom stains not
Shall still with him remain,
The loveliness that wanes not,

The love that ne'er can wane.

"In dreams she grows not older,
The land of dreams among,
Though all the world wax colder,
Though all the songs be sung;
In dreams doth he behold her,

Still fair and kind and young."

The gentle strain of melancholy and baffled desire faded into silence, but the young man's thoughts pursued it. A memory of his own that sometimes stung him, sometimes plaintively caressed him,

stirred in his heart. "I am afraid you hit it, Andy," he muttered, "and I should have found it only a dream had I won.'

At thirty Somers fancied himself mighty cynical. He consorted with daring critics, and believed the worst both of art and of letters. He was making campaign cartoons for a daily journal instead of painting the picture of the future; the panic of '93 had stripped him of his little fortune, and his sweetheart had refused to marry him. Therefore he said, incessantly, in the language of Job, "I do well to be angry." The rubber tires revolved more slowly as his eye turned from the wayside to the smiling hills. The corn ears were sheathed in silvery yellow, but the afternoon sun jewelled the green pastures, fresh as in May (for rain had fallen in the morning), and maples, oaks, and elms blended exquisite gradations of color and shade here and there among the open fields. Long rows of poplars recalled France to Somers, and he sighed. "These houses are all comfortable and all ugly," thought the artist. "I never saw anything less picturesque. The life hasn't even the dismal interest of poverty

and revolt, for they are all beastly prosperous; and one of the farmers has offered me a hundred dollars and my expenses to come here and make a pastel of his wife. And I have taken the offer, because I want to pay my board bill and buy a second-hand bicycle. The chances are he is after something like a colored photograph, something slick and smooth, and every hair painted-oh Lord! But I have to have the money; and I won't sign the cursed thing! What does he want it for, though? I wonder, did he ever know love's young dream? Dream? It's all a dream--a mirage of the senses or the fancy. Confound it! why need I be harking back to it? I must be near his house. House near the corner, they said, where the roads cross-maybe this is it. Ugh! how it jumps at the eyes!"

The house before him was yellow, with pea-green blinds; the great barns were Indian-red; and a white fence glittered in front of an old-fashioned garden ariot with scarlet salvias and crimson coxcomb. Two men were talking, hidden to the waist by a thicket of marigolds, out of which the sun struck orange spangles.

One of the men smote the palm of his left hand with his right fist as he talkednot vehemently, but with a dogged air. His checked shirt and brown overalls were as coarse and soiled as the other man's, yet even a stranger could perceive that he was the master. There was a composure about the rugged gray face, a look of control and care, that belongs to the ruler, whether of large affairs or small.

He made an end of the talk by turning on his heel, whereupon the other flung an ugly word after the sturdy old back and slunk off. At the gate he was joined by a companion. They passed Somers, who caught a single sentence: "Nit. I told you he wouldn't give no more. He's close as the bark of a tree."

Somers wheeled by, up to the gate and the old man, who was now leaning on the fence. He asked where Mr. Gates lived.

"Here," said the old man, not removing his elbows from the fence bar.

"And may I ask, are you Mr. Gates?" said Somers, bringing his wheel to a halt, with one foot on the curb-stone.

"Yes, sir. But if you're the young man was round selling Mother Home and Heaven, and going to call again to see if we liked it, we don't want it; you needn't git off. My wife can't read, and I'm taking a Chicago paper now, and 'ain't got any time."

Somers smiled, and dismounted. "I'm not selling anything but pictures," said he, and I believe you want me to make one for you."

**Are you Mr. Somers? F. J. S.?" cried the farmer, his face lightening in a surprising manner. "Well, I'm glad to see you, sir. My wife said you'd come this afternoon, and I wouldn't believe her: I'm always caught when I don't believe my wife. Come right in. Oh, got your tools with you?"

Somers, having released his hand from a mighty grasp, was unstrapping a package on the under side of his saddle.

I see. Handy little fixing. Ever in Ioway before?"

"Never," said Somers. "Finest corn State in the Union; and second in production of flax. And lowest percentage of illiteracy. Hope they treated you well in town?"

Very well indeed, thank you." Generally do treat strangers well. We try to, anyhow. What do you think of our city?"

"Very pretty town."

"I'm glad you like it. Say, can't you stay overnight here and let me drive you round a little? We've got some of the prettiest brick pavements in the country, and our system of water-works can't be beat; and the largest arsenal in the world is on the Island—”

"You are awfully good," protested Somers, deceitfully, "but I must leave for Chicago to-night; I'm not a free man, you know. The paper-"

"Say! that paper is smart enough. I like it. I took it jest to please my wife, so's to have something to read her in the evenings, and now I'd be lost without it. The man that writes them editorials, I tell you he's sound on the money question; he rakes them well. But I don't know but the best thing yet is your picters. You know that Columbia?” Somers nodded, and put the released portfolio under his arm, awaiting his host's pleasure.

66

Well, the minnit I saw that drawing -the first one-I said, 'Mother, if that feller had you to set to him, he wouldn't have made it much more like.' About the same height, too, only fatter; but so like the way she looked when we was courting, it give me a start. I've been seeking somebody to paint a picter for me of her for a long spell. The minnit I seen that, I says, There's my man.' I drawed the money out of bank this morning; it's all ready. Guess you best take your bike along. Come right in and set down, and I'll git you a glass of buttermilk off the ice. We churned to-day. Paper says that you wheelmen are great on buttermilk."

He guided Somers into the house, and into a room so dark that he stumbled.

"There's the sofy; set down," said Gates, who seemed full of hospitable cheer. "I'll git a blind open. Girl's gone to the fair, and mother's setting out on the back piazza, listening to the noises on the road. She's all ready. Make yourself to home. Pastel like them picters on the wall's what I want. My daughter done them.” His tone changed on the last sentence, but Somers did not notice it; he was drinking in the details of the room to describe them afterwards to his sympathizing friends in Chicago. He smiled vaguely; he said, "Yes, certainly "; and the host went away, well content.

"What a chamber of horrors!" he thought; "and one can see he is proud