"Of course I know," she said, in a different tone than she had used before-"I understand how comical it must seem to a young man to have to draw an old woman's picture; but it ain't comical to my husband. He wants it very much. He's the kindest man that ever lived, to me, caring for me all the time. He got me that organ-me that can't play a note, and never could-just because I love to hear music, and sometimes, if we have an instrument, the neighbors will come in, especially Hattie Knight, who used to know Kitty, and is a splendid performer; she comes and plays and sings.

It is a comfort to me. And though I guess you young folks can't understand it, it will be a comfort to him to have a picture of me. I mistrusted

ing, your feet and your heart feel so light. But they don't know what it is to need each other. It's when folks suffer together that they find out what loving is. I never knew what I felt towards my husband till I lost my first baby; and I'd wake up in the night and there'd be no cradle to rock - and he'd comfort me. Do you see that picture under the photograph of the cross?"

ous.

He's a pretty boy," said Somers. "Yes, sir. He was drownded in the river. A lot of boys in playing, you know, and one got too far, and Eddy, he swum out to help him. And he clumb up on Eddy, and the man on shore didn't git there in time. He was a real good boy, and liked to play home with me 'most as well as with the boys; and he'd tell me the things he was going to get me. He was the greatest hand to make up stories of what he would do. But only in fun; he never told us a lie in his life-and it come hard sometimes for him to own up, for he was mischievFather was proud as he could be of him, though he wouldn't let on. He was real bright, too; second in his class. I always felt he ought to have been head, but teacher said behavior counted too, and Eddy was mischievous. That cross was what his schoolmates sent; and teacher she cried when she told me how hard Eddy was trying to remember and mind and win the prize, to please his pa. Father and I went through that together. And we had to change all the things we used to talk of together, because Eddy was always in them; and we had to try not to let each other see how our hearts were breaking, and not shadder Kitty's life by letting her see how we missed him. Only once father broke down; it was when he give Kitty Eddy's colt." She stopped, for she could not go on.

"Don't-don't distress yourself," Somers begged, lamely. His cheeks were hot. "It don't distress me," she answered, "only jest for the minnit; I'm always thinking of Eddy, and of Kitty too. Sometimes I think it was harder for father when his girl went than anything else. And then my blindness and my rheumatism come; and it seemed like he was trying to make up to me for the daughter and the son I'd lost, and be all to once to me. He has been, too. And do you think that two old people that have grown old together, like us, and have been through

VOL. XCIV.-No. 564.-100

losses like that-do you think they 'ain't drawed closer and kinder and tenderer to each other, like the Lord to His Church? Why, I'm plain and old and blind and crooked-but he don't know it. Now, do you understand?”

Yes," said Somers, "I understand." "And you'll please excuse me for speaking so free; it was only so father's feelings shouldn't git hurt by noticing maybe a look like you wanted to laugh."

"God knows I don't want to laugh," Somers burst in. "But I'm glad you spoke. It-it will be a better picture. Now may I ask you something? I want you to let me dress you I mean put something about your neck, soft and white; and then I want to make two sketches of you— one, as Mr. Gates wishes, the head alone; the other, of you sitting in the rustic chair outside."

"But"-she looked troubled-" it will be so expensive; and I know it will be foolish. If you'd jest the same--"

"But I shouldn't; I want to do it. And it will not cost you anything. A hundred dollars will repay me well enough. I wish-I truly wish I could afford to do it all for nothing."

66

She gasped. A hundred dollars! Oh, it ain't right! That was why he wouldn't buy the new buggy. And jest for a picture of me." But suddenly she flushed like a girl and smiled.

At this instant the old man, immaculate in his heavy black suit and glossy white shirt, appeared in the doorway, bearing a tray.

"Father," said the old wife, "do you mean to tell me you are going to pay a hundred dollars jest for a picture of me?"

"Well, mother, you know there's no fool like an old fool," he replied, jocosely; but when the old wife turned her sightless face towards the old husband's voice and he looked at her, Somers bowed his head.

He spent the afternoon over his sketches. Riding away in the twilight, he knew that he had done better work than he had ever done in his life, slight as its form might be; nevertheless, he was not thinking of his work, he was not thinking of himself at all. He was trying to shape his own vague perception that the show of dainty thinking and the pomp of refinement are in truth amiable and lovely things, yet are they no more than the husks of life; not only under them, but

under ungracious and sordid conditions,

"A dream?" he murmured;

sang:

"In dreams she grows not older,

yes, per

The land of dreams among, Though all the world wax colder, Though all the songs be sung; In dreams shall he behold her, Still fair and kind and young."

THE

THE American who has visited England under the guidance of Mr. Cook -or, which is better, under his ownwho has seen the cathedrals, the lakes, the great towns, London, Parliament, the museums, the universities, and other sides of this myriad-sided life, is likely to think that he has seen England. If, in addition, he has found his way into some one or other of the many coteries which together compose what is called London society, or perchance has been presented at court, he may well enough persuade himself that he has touched the centre of her social life, and seen the English at home, and acquired a knowledge of their real home life. Yet in both cases he would be mistaken. He would have acquired a great deal of useful knowledge; his experiences would have been delightful; he would, perhaps, know more of England in some respects than many an Englishman of the cultivated classes ever learned. I will go so far as to suppose that he has met some of the best English men and English women otherwise than in the crush of a drawing-room; dined with them and talked with them, and so by degrees become sensible to the charm of that intercourse which London at its best has to offer. It has still to be said that he has something yet to learn of what is most characteristic and most delightful in English life, and that this will never disclose itself to him till he has visited, not once or twice, but often, in English or Scottish country houses.

only. I know of no writer who has treated the subject other than incidentally, interesting and curious as it is, and curious as the travelled and untravelled American often shows himself about it. In earlier days Mr. N. P. Willis was supposed to know something of the matter, but very little is to be gathered from his book. Fenimore Cooper, in his Letters, can hardly be called an authority. Longfellow rather avoided the topic. Hawthorne, admirable as Our Old Home is in many points, was in the mood of caricature. Emerson, whose English Traits remains the most penetrating and luminous account of what is vital in England, has less to say on this than on other subjects. Mr. Grant White's England Without and Within will explain to you how his host's servant turned his socks inside out, and he has described with precision the ornamentation of the hot-water cans with coronets. Mr. Rush's is a book rather of indiscretions than of illuminations. A good deal may be learned from Mr. Motley's published letters. He, like Mr. Sumner and Mr. Lowell, knew England, and was a welcome guest. Mr. Sumner's letters, so far as they have been published in Mr. Pierce's biography, give details rather than pictures. Mr. Lowell's most intimate sketches have never been published, but every word in such letters as Professor Norton does give is descriptive He knew these charming interiors as well as anybody. On the whole, there is prob ably nothing which throws more light on them than those parts of Mr. Henry James's novels where the country house is the theatre in which his characters move. Like Mr. Lowell, his acquaintance with this form of life is wide, and a novel leaves him free to use the results of it He knows not only the things the Eng

lish in these circumstances do and say, but also and the knowledge is at least as important as the other-what they do not say or do. You will recall the scene in which the son makes that or a similar remark to his American father long resident in England. There is no truer touch among thousands of true ones.

The English themselves seldom excel in the kind of literature in which this form of existence is reproduced. Thackeray did some of the most admirable pages of that incomparable master are social. In Mrs. Humphry Ward's David Grieve may be found descriptions of two houses so judiciously confused that it is impossible to accuse her of opening the doors of either to the public. There are excellent scenes also in an author now undeservedly neglected, Anthony Trollope, for whose photographic studies of his time posterity will be grateful. It is of little use turning to the French, whether ancient or modern. Voltaire's Letters tell you little or nothing; Heine nothing. Esquiros, whose book is of value, dealt with higher matters, and in Louis Blanc's ten volumes on England the social studies are socialistic. Taine, in his Notes sur Angleterre, touches all points, and you will find him in admiring ecstasy over the arrangements of his bedroom and the number of clean towels supplied to him. But that is not very informing; still less so is M. de St.-Genest's narrative of the stratagems by which he pretended to take a bath and did not. The truth is that the subject is a very delicate one to handle. If you do it with fulness, you may violate some of those unwritten and therefore stringent obligations which hospitality imposes. If you do it meagrely, you will probably omit almost everything your reader wants to know. One can but try to steer between these two courses. The experiment is worth making, because English hospitality is unique.

England is the country of country houses. Nowhere else is there quite the same apparatus for entertainment; perhaps nowhere else, except in America, are there quite such open hearts. You may visit a great nobleman in Hungary, who will give you shooting on a great scale, and lodge you in an immense castle of which the domestic arrangements seem to have been settled in the Middle Ages. France may offer you, in one or another of her châteaus, a refined and sometimes

brilliant example of French life, but the examples are comparatively infrequent, and you are apt to feel that a special effort is made. What attracts you most of all in an English house is that you are at home; a guest in the midst of a family circle; the ordering of the household just what it would be if you were not there. You fit into this complicated yet almost always smoothly working machine. You become for the time being a part of the establishment. There are certain rules to which you will conform. They vary in different houses. If it is your first visit you will find them out yourself or ask a friend or a servant. Tact and your eyes open are two indispensable conditions of success if you care to repeat your visit. There is a story of a certain guest at Strathfieldsaye, in the time of the late Duke of Wellington, who consulted Mr. George Payne on the often doubtful point of how much to give the gamekeeper.

"If I were you," said Payne, "I should give him nothing."

"But do you give nothing?"

"Oh, I shall give him a five-pound note! But then I shall be asked here again, and you never will."

I have somewhat rashly approached the burning question of tips at the beginning, whereas it belongs at the end; but I pass on. This unlucky guest had simply failed to make himself acceptable or interesting, or to contribute his share to the general fund of good feeling or good society or good-fellowship.

The penalty of his failure was being dropped. He was a novice. If he had been an old hand and his position secure, he might have committed worse crimes and yet escaped. But even the old hand must not presume too much. The old hand would at least have known how far he could go, and would have taken good care not to go beyond. Men may do or say very daring things if they are done or said in the right way. In a certain Scotch house there was among the guests, many years ago, a foreigner who went out partridge-shooting with the rest. He was rather a good shot, very keen, and unduly ambitious, with the result that he continually got ahead of the line and brought down other men's birds. They bore it stoically for a time, but finally one of them turned to the offender and said, gravely, “Mr. A., this is not a walkingmatch." It was severe but sufficient, and said in a way which made it impossible

for A. either to take offence or neglect the rebuke. The whole party were grateful to the speaker, who was thought to have shown not only tact but courage.

Rather early in my English life I came to know a lady of great social celebrity, who had a reputation for spending the whole interval between the end of one London season and the beginning of another in her friends' houses in the country. She knew all the best people, she was everywhere a favorite, her company was sought; there was seldom or never a vacant date on her visiting-list. I refer to her as an instance of those qualities which insure social success. She seldom read, she had no literature whatever, little or no general knowledge, no real interest in art, no mental range, no accomplishments in the ordinary sense of the word, no political influence, and not much money. Rank she had, and a perfect acquaintance with all the gossip of society and with all the people who compose it, and could tell you instantly whether Lady Sophia Smith was first cousin to the Earl of Manchester or only first cousin once removed. On her own ground she was an oracle; off it she was helpless. She had, however, character, which is more than anything else great force of character and something which, if not exactly charm, produced nearly the same effect.

In a

word, everybody liked her, and her spirits were unfailing. She knew also the exact thing to be said to each person of the company, and the right moment to say it, and how it ought to be said. In any company she was at home. If the conversation went beyond her-to tell the truth, it seldom did--she knew how to be silent, and as much at her ease as if she were talking; in itself a difficult art. I do not mean to imply that her limitations were a source, or a main source, of her social popularity. They were perhaps one source, because people who themselves do not stray beyond the strict bounds of easy chat on current topics like sometimes to be sure that their neighbors are no more adventurous than themselves. She was safe, and they themselves felt safe against any demand on their mental resources.

Still, it would be true to say that she won her social ascendency in spite of her limitations, and not because of them. It was the positive and not the negative qualities which prevailed. If I have not dwelt too much on the negative, I present

her to you as a type of the person to whom country-house life has offered a career; as a pattern to copy, if your ambition lie in that direction; as an individuality whose immense social vogue illuminates the interiors which she frequents and make the secret of the country house more intelligible to the novice than almost any other one celebrity of whom I can think. I cannot do better than to repeat what I have often heard her lay down as the maxim most essential to success in the existence she led. It was, "Never take a liberty." It may seem superfluous. It is not superfluous, because the very freedom and friendliness which surround you, the atmosphere of ease and equality and indifference which you breathe, may well tempt the unwary or the inexperienced to take liberties, and the foreigner most of all. An Englishman born and bred, and used to this form of intercourse from his youth upward, would make no such mistake. The American not used to it, though equally well bred, easily might. Nor will you appreciate the full significance either of the maxim or of its author until you hear the comment which came from one of her intimate friends, in whose hearing it was repeated: "It is a good rule, but I know nobody who violates it so often and so frequently as B herself." That is but another way of saying that she knew just how far she could transgress. The rule was for those whose position was not established. For them it was golden. For her, with forty years of unchallenged popularity behind her, it was a rule to be broken when circumstances required, and sometimes when they did not. To the last she was not above learning, or above owning to a mistake if she made one. Staying once at a house where she was expected, I was shown a telegram from her, naming the day and hour of her arrival, and asking that a closed carriage might be sent to the station to meet her, and an omnibus for the servants and luggage. The station was nine miles distant, in a town where cabs were abundant. The roads were hard, and her host a man solicitous about the legs of his horses. He sent the carriage and omnibus, but I think his guest in some way perceived that her request was thought to be slightly unreasonable. The house was not one of those where she had visited often. From the moment of her discovery, if discovery it