"Take another glass of brandy, lieutenant.-Leave the city, must I? But if I tell you that I am on the eve of being married, and-"

"That's precisely it!" stammered the lieutenant. "You shall not marry-at least, you shall not marry my Emma !"

"Oh, ho! now it begins to dawn upon me! You love Fräulein Fabricius, then?" "More than my life!"

"And does Emma know it ?"

"Knows it, and returns my love."

"You may be right; but the mother is not too timid.”

"The old tyrant! It's all her fault. You are rich, while I have only a modest competence, and then you know how to manage the old woman, perhaps; I don't, for I hate her!"

Leopold took a moment for reflection. The lieutenant sipped his coffee, and seemed somewhat more composed.

"Then you love Fräulein Fabricius sincerely, do you?" asked Leopold.

"With my whole heart!" protested the lieutenant.

"And you will engage to make her happy if I, after due deliberation-"

"How?" cried Otto, so loud that he was startled by the sound of his own voice. "Is it possible?"

"Let me finish.

You see, lieutenant, I am of opinion that the stupidest thing a man can do is to marry a woman who loves another, if he knows it."

"On my soul, a truth that cannot be controverted!"

The weather could not have been more favorable for a drive than it was the following morning, and Leopold was prompt in keeping his appointment with Madame von Ustendorff.

"What, are you going to drive yourself?" she asked, in a tone of genuine surprise, when she saw the elegant tilbury at the door.

"Certainly. Handling horses is one of the few things I think myself skilled in."

The beautiful young widow changed color very perceptibly, but she cleverly turned attention from herself by expressing her admiration for the beautiful roadster that pawed the ground in his impatience to be off.

In five minutes they were in the open country, when Leopold brought his horse down to a slow trot.

"A glorious morning," said Louise. "The most glorious of my life," replied Leopold.

"How beautiful is the deep green of the meadows!"

"And the lovely red of my companion's cheeks!"

"None of that, doctor-please."
"Pardon me, madame, for thinking so

loud."

"Think of something else. What a loveview we have of the old castle yonder from this point!"

"It reminds me of the old castle near D- Do you remember how the count locked us all in the chapel, where we were compelled to remain for two whole hours? Who all was there, in that party? There were you, Henriette, poor Reinhold, whom she afterward jilted, my sister, and two or three others. Oh, those were the happiest hours of my life! I could have fallen at your feet

have to propose."

"I am all attention. Himmelschockmillionendonnerwetter! I cannot realize it. You will excuse the oath, but I must give vent to my feelings in some way."

"If my memory serves me, we talked of very indifferent things."

"Ah, Louise, my mind was not on what I was saying. I thought of nothing but yousaw nothing but your glorious eyes. For an hour I thought you were not wholly indifferent to me. Then came the bitter, bitter reality. During all the rest of the day you did not deign even to look at me, but jested so gayly and laughed so immoderately with that disagreeable, stupid Von Serbingen-"

"I never thought Herr von Serbingen any more agreeable than other people did."

"How? Everybody supposed you did."

Appearances are often deceptive." "But I cannot understand—”

"You are a bad psychologist, my dear doctor. We can now be frank with each other. I was prompted to favor Serbingen by caprice just to show you that I was indifferent to your homage."

"But, in Heaven's name, madame, what had I done to make you dislike me so? It was not till I became thoroughly convinced that all my endeavors would be fruitless-not till Henriette told me you had a deep-seated aversion for me-"

"What! Did she tell you that? The little liar!"

"Louise! is it possible? Were we both deceived? Then you never disliked me?"

"I told you last evening that you were in error. On the contrary, at first I had a greater liking for you than I was willing to confess. It was not till Henriette assured me-"

"The little traitress! The perfidious little wretch! She willfully destroyed the happiness of my life. O Louise! why must I lose you before you were mine?"

"For Heaven's sake! You will make me regret that I accepted your invitation."

"O Louise, I love you, if possible, more than ever!"

"Do you want to make me jump out?" "Let me look in your eyes."

"Look in the eyes of your Emma."

"Listen to me. I have long been resigned to my fate-to most things I am comparatively indifferent; but I have one burning desire. Will you gratify it?"

"Listen to me. Will you drive me from you a second time? I love you, and you alone."

"I have not deserved this," she sobbed. "Take me home!"

"Not yet. Dry your eyes, and know that since last evening Emma is the betrothed of another. Me she never loved. She is as happy as I am. And now be calm and rational, and tell me if you will consent to repair the errors of the past. Will you be my loving and beloved wife?"

The tilbury entered a little wood. The horse kept the road without the guidance of his master. Right and left towered silent old firs, and Louise laid her head trustingly against the breast of her first and only love.

Meanwhile, the hot headed lieutenant waited under the big linden. He was at the appointed place an hour ahead of time. After walking restlessly to and fro for what seemed to him an age, he looked at his watch and murmured:

"A quarter after ten. Three-quarters of an hour more, even if he is punctual."

His monologue was interrupted by the sound of an approaching vehicle. He hastened to the road, and behold! there was his generous friend of the previous evening with his cousin Louise at his side. What astonished him, however, more than this tête-à-tête in a tilbury, was the fact that at this moment they turned round; evidently having suddenly decided to return to town. This, as can be easily imagined, was in obedience to Louise's wishes.

The lieutenant lost no time, but rushed into the middle of the road, and cried out at the top of his voice:

"Louise! Cousin Louise! Hold! Doctor! Hold on!"

Leopold and Louise looked around with evident surprise.

"Why, there is Cousin Otto!" cried the latter.

"Your cousin ? "

"Turn round! turn round! Where are you going?" cried the lieutenant, at the very top of his voice.

"Well, let's turn round. I am curious to hear what he has to say to us," said Louise.

As yet Leopold had found no time to tell Louise of his last night's adventure. He now took in the situation in all its details at a glance. His plans assumed form and shape with equal celerity. Louise being the lieutenant's cousin, her presence at the Fabricius Villa could not be looked upon as being extraordinary. Besides, he believed he possessed sufficient presence of mind and tact to be equal to every situation that could arise. The idea of presenting his own and Emma's fiancé to Mamma Fabricius, at the same time, had something in it so piquant that he determined to use all his powers of persuasion to induce Louise to second his plan.

At first he introduced the two cousins to each other in this wise:

"Lieutenant, I have the honor of present

At this moment the door opened and Emma entered the room. She wore a lovely,

Here some minutes were given to questions and explanations. Louise reproached her cousin for attempting to carry out his murderous designs on the very same evening he had promised her to act like a man of sense for a week at least. Otto pleaded the happy results of his hot-headed folly. After congratulating one another over and again, came finally the unavoidable "What now?"

Leopold immediately unfolded his plan with all the rhetoric at his command, and answered Louise's objections with so much success, that she finally yielded. Otto was all "fire and flame" for Leopold's project as soon as it was proposed, so they now prepared for the attack. Louise shook her handsome head as a last expression of her disapproval, and then, the lieutenant having found an uncomfortable seat in the tilbury, they drove at a sharp trot for the villa, which was but a short distance farther on. "Have you the photograph with you?" Leopold asked Otto, as they alighted.

The poor girl cried out as though she had received a dagger-thrust.

"What does that mean?" asked Madame Fabricius; and the old lady's eyes looked as though they would leave their sockets.

"That means that Otto is beloved by Emma, who gives him ten thousand kisses. It's very clear, it seems to me."

"Are you mad, my dear doctor?"

"I don't think I am. My name is Leopold. Otto, the dearly-beloved, sits over there, trembling more than he would, I am sure, if he were about to lead a forlorn-hope." "But, in Heaven's name-"

"Listen to me calmly, my dear madame. Fräulein Emma is one of the most charming

"With pleasure."

"Now, then, forward!"

Madame Fabricius was not a little surprised when the maid announced the three callers, and she seemed little less than stupefied when she saw the lieutenant, whom for the last four weeks she had persistently refused to admit.

"I have taken the liberty to bring some relations with me," said Leopold.

"They are very welcome. Pray be seated," replied Mamma Fabricius.

Louise and Otto accepted this invitation with an alacrity that intimated clearly enough that they did not feel altogether comfortable, and hoped to find relief in a change of posture. The lieutenant's heart beat most insubordinately, and all of Louise's accustomed self-possession seemed to have left her.

"And Emma?" asked Leopold.

Otto started as though a pin had been stuck into him.

"Oh, Emma is very busy," replied Madame Fabricius, with a smile.

Ay, ay, with her outfit; but nevertheless she will honor us for a few minutes, I trust." Madame Fabricius rang.

single exception, there is not a woman in the whole German Empire who would make me a more lovely bride, were it not for one unpardonable requisite-"

"Sir!"

"An unpardonable requisite, I say-her heart belongs to another."

"Who says so? Who says her affections are another's?"

It was now the lieutenant's turn to speak. "O madame!" he sighed from the depth of his bosom, "do not refuse your consent to our union. Emma loves me as I love herdevotedly, passionately. It was obedience to the wishes of a beloved mother only that ever induced her-"

"Oh, what's the use of making so many words about it?" interrupted Leopold.-" You understand, madame, that I relinquish all my rights to the hand of your daughter—that is, if I can relinquish what I have never had. Her real fiancé stands there.-Fräulein Emma, come here, please-you, too, lieutenant. Madame Fabricius consents with pleasure to your union. Give me your hands."

As he was about to place Emma's hand in the lieutenant's, the astonished and infuriated mamma sprang between them.

"Stand back!" she cried. "I will dispose of the hand of my daughter, not you, sir!"

"My dear madame, what's done cannot be undone. And then think of the consequences! An abandoned daughter, abandoned three weeks before the time set for the wedding! What would people say? The world would be ignorant of the reason? And then the outfit that has cost so much money and labor. Shall it all be thrown away? Other suitors will present themselves, you will answer.

That is possible; but then I am sure Fräulein Emma would rather die than consent, a second time, to marry one whom her heart had not chosen. And what fault have you to find with the lieutenant here? He not only loves your daughter devotedly, madly, but he entertains for you a respect and a veneration which, under the circumstances, are very remarkable. Not a word of complaint or reproach has passed his lips. You will have in him one of the most devoted of sons. Can a woman of your intelligence and strength of character- a woman in whom genuine dignity is united with such gentleness-refuse her consent, when the happiness of two innocent young people, the honor of your family, and the interests of justice, are at stake?"

It began to dawn upon Mamma Fabricius that she was defeated. A moment given to reflection convinced her that the wisest thing to do was to put a good face on what seemed to her a bad business. Forcing her broadest smile into her hard features, and her kindliest tone into her unsympathetic voice, she asked:

"Are you, then, really so very fond of each other, my children?"

"Yes, mamma," murmured the gentle Emma.

Well, then, have your own way! I see it's useless to contend against the intrigues of youth."

"Bravo! Two pearls in one net! This is the happiest day of my life!" cried Leopold.

"I do not understand you, my dear doctor," replied Madame Fabricius, drawing her. self up to her maximum height.

"Allow us to remain to luncheon, madame, and you shall be made acquainted with every detail."

Before her guests took leave, Madame Fabricius became doubly convinced that the desires of young hearts are not easily thwarted by the projects of old heads.

POSSIBLE UTOPIAS.

THAT would be a desirable Utopia, where

one could remember at the proper time and place the good things which occur to the mind after the time of saying them has passed.

The French sum up this species of regret by the happy phrase, "L'esprit d'escalier "the wit of the staircase-the thoughts which come to you as you are going up for your hat and coat, and which you wish had come to you before. The puns which we have not made, the happy historical allusions which we have not remembered, the felicitous retorts which we have not fired off, but which come afterward to haunt us, are among the severe pin-pricks which will always belong to our imperfect humanity.

There are a happy few who can always command their wits. Their minds are obedient handmaidens who bring them every thing they want, and these fortunate, quick-witted people are so by a gift of Nature; it cannot be acquired. People of the most solid knowledge are not the ones who are most apt to bring it forth at a moment's warning. They

to tell the butler to mention to the housekeeper that the key to the blue-room is wanted, and she will please search among her bunches for it. The quick-witted have the blue-room unlocked and all its treasures displayed before the key is missed or asked for.

A certain learned man in England, on being congratulated on his talent for small talk, said: "It has cost me more effort and study to achieve small talk than to conquer the higher mathematics, but I felt the desperate want of it, and went at it as a study." He was fortunate to have been able to conquer it.

Theodore Hook was an instance of the power of readiness. He had the talent of an improvisatore, and could make verses to order, and was of course a very original wit; but it was all owing to the instantaneous action of his mind. Once he was asked what was the chief objection to dining alone.

Imagine the whirl of images which must have rushed through his brain before he got to that idea! The whole Pacific; those lonely islands; the dusky monarch and his bride; the royal savage pageantry of an island funeral, with its palm-branches and monotonous chants; the half-naked tropical inhabitants meeting death, as savages always do, with superstitious dread and unlawful rites; the sea, making a dirge on the shelly shore of Honolulu-all was quickly contrasted with the trig serving-man in a London chop-house, and the king of terrors transformed into a customer, of sober British mien, who demands the conventional sandwich! It is the perfection of wit, the height of contrast, "the sudden juxtaposition of contradictory ideas," as Dr. Johnson defines it.

The late John Van Buren, one of the wittiest of men, had this very ready response. He was master of repartee. Once, in making | a speech, he drew a picture of the evil effects of a certain measure, which would be sure to defeat the candidate.

Some antagonistic politician who was listening said, "Who did that in 1848 ?"

John Van Buren remembered instantaneously that his illustrious father had done that very thing, but his quick wit saved him.

"I don't remember the gentleman's name," said he, “but I think it lost him his election!"

A splendid piece of memory like this being able to forget one's own father's name-was not to be ignored. The crowd laughed and applauded such wonderful readiness.

what could be said to a traveler-say a man

from Chicago or St. Louis-who wanted a drink, at this absurd and unpopular arrangement, immediately responded:

"You might say to him what the Abbé Edgeworth said to Louis XVI. at the foot of the scaffold, Fils de St.-Louis, montez en haut!'" Here was another magnificent instance of the contrariety of images: any thing so remote as the Parker House and the Place Royale, the learned, pious abbé and the gentlemanly clerk," not to speak of the unlikeness of the dusty, thirsty traveler from St. Louis, Missouri, to the royal Louis who was going so bravely to his miserable fate, can scarcely be imagined. It was too good to be immediately appreciated. It takes a long process of reasoning in an ordinary mind to follow the lightning-flash of quick wit which flew through this unusually brilliant brain, producing such a series of pict

ures.

Accident sometimes brings about a very good and unusual pun. A lady was sitting in a drawing-room playing with a kitten; a gentleman entered with a print of Correggio's picture of the " Magdalen with the Skull." The lady said:

"See, she has the same attitude as my kitten."

"Yes," said he, "and, like her, she is thinking over her fore- paws" (faux-pas). Here was a remarkable piece of good luck in the possibility of bringing a kitten and the Magdalen into juxtaposition.

Another bit of quick wit occurred at a New York dinner-party (where many good things are struck off in the electric air of luxury, excitement, flowers, music, fair women, and good wine), where some one spoke of a very large and powerful man, who had crooked legs. "But his head," said she, "and his figure, otherwise, are after the antique.” Probably after the Farnese Hercules," said a listener.

This is quite as good as the story of Madame de Staël's large feet. She went to a fancy ball as Minerva.

"How shall you know your goddess?" said one of her admirers to another.

"Par le pied-de-Staël," was the ready response. This is another piece of good luck, for, had she gone otherwise than as a goddess, she would not have needed a pedestal.

After General Scott's famous "plate of soup," some wit dubbed him "Marshal Tureen."

One witticism often brings on another. When a famous and very obnoxious criminal was being executed, or had just been executed, in New York, a gentleman quoted Charles Lamb's witty letter to a friend, d propos of just such another event.

"Now, he has about reached Sirius," Lamb says, in the imagined flight of the culprit's soul.

"Yes," said another, "and he had better stop there to get accustomed to the country and the climate."

hated cold weather, made a contrary applica tion of this familiar joke. "It is one of the many inducements to lead a bad life," said he, "that the dreadful place is always so comfortably heated.”

This ready wit, this quick action of the brain, is also repeated in that more useful and uncommon gift of being able to remember a date, a poetical quotation, or a conversation, when you wish to. Some people can quote so well and so readily, that it is as good as original wit. Many familiar lines of poetry can be thus pressed into new and witty use; as, when some artists and architects were talking together about their orders, and one of the latter said he had an order for one church, but he wished he had two, an artist quickly answered, "Insatiate architect, will not one suffice?"- the use of "architect" for "archer" being near enough to euphony if quickly spoken.

But this ready wit is not the property of us all; if it were, every dinner-party would be a Utopia, every lonely country-house would become a charming theatre, in which comedy of the highest order would be constantly enacted; ennui would entirely cease; a rainy day would not be dreaded. Happy was that London gentleman into whose house Theodore Hook intruded with Mr. Terry, on a wager, and, after dining and making the company ache with laughter, sat. down and sang an improvised song, ending with the words

"We are very much pleased with our fare,
Your cellar is as good as your cook;
My friend is Mr. Terry, the player,
And I'm Mr. Theodore Hook."

How gladly should we welcome such an intrusion !

That would be a Utopia where there should be no more argument on the "Man in the Iron Mask; "the authorship of Junius; the Roger-Tichborne case; the Beecher - Tilton trial; or whether there are more leaves on the trees this summer than there were last; whether it is warmer, colder, or wetter, or drier, than it was last summer; no more arguments (with attempts to convince) on the subjects of religion, politics, beauty, the arts, or the "character of the late Horace Greeley."

No one is ever convinced by argument, as it is usually conducted, but every one rises after a wordy battle much more convinced of his own opinion. Arguments on the propriety of certain phrases, the use of words, the propounding of certain revolutions in well-established customs, leading to angry debate, are very tiresome. So long as such discussions merely lead to short conversations, they are amusing; so long as they are treated dispassionately, they are useful; but the moment they become long, angry disputes, as argument among the illogical is apt to do, they are tedious. It is no Utopia to live with two such disputants, or with one or many. Some hungry argufiers snap you up if you advance an opinion, as a dog does a bone. "I defy you to prove this," says one, and you are launched on an argument. "The allegation is false and the allegator knows it," said one such conversational shark. "I did not know that alligators knew any thing," said his opponent.

There is another Utopia which many people sigh for and never attain, and that isthe power to express their feelings. There are certain natures shut up in an iron case of reserve; an icy chill seems to surround them; the more they feel the less they can say; such people are very much to be pitied. One lady complained that all her life she was surrounded by a shroud of reserve which she could not break, and which she must always wear, whether she liked it or not. Coleridge refers to this sort of mind in his striking

verse:

"A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet of relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear!"

Utopia of a good climate remains as yet unconquered. Our American climate is a thing to be wondered at as a possible place for human beings to live in its sudden changes, its almost fatal cold, its unendurable heat, its dryness at times, making the skin crack; its highly-charged electricity, the enormous preponderance of oxygen, rendering the most nervous, irritable, and go-ahead people in the world subject beyond all other nations to neuralgic, rheumatic, and nervous diseases, giving birth to one distressing malady not known to other nations, the "rose cold," or "peach catarrh," whose miraculous periodici-ty and unexampled sufferings entirely baffle: the whole medical learning of the universe— such are some of the features of an American

climate, making it very far from Utopia.

How many a person has gone through life sealed up in such a terrible coffin as this! It is a living death, the most dreadful forming, of being buried alive.

Then, again, another Utopia to be sighed for is that reasonable atmosphere in which people do not express their feelings too much; the "very gushing" are to be avoided. People whose hearts are on their sleeve, who have a universal need of a confidant, are very tiresome. Very few of our emotions are so dignified and graceful as to deserve universal airing. We always like those people whose eyes fill with tears at the sound of martial music, or at the recital of some deed of unusual self-sacrifice or generosity; we love the music of a voice that breaks in reading an unexpectedly good line of poetry; we like to see the cheek blush with a generous emotion: but these things must be very spontaneous, and instantly repressed as manifestations, or we grow suspicious of them.

That would be a Utopia, indeed, where one never had to ask for money; not to have to beg for charitable purposes; not to have to demand of an already depleted exchequer the necessary medium for paying a bill! It is a very astonishing, and it would seem to be unnecessary, cruelty to the human race that so much more money is always needed than is ever forthcoming.

Another Utopia would be a world in which a man's occupation did not affect in any way his social position. We talk a great deal of nonsense on this subject; we quote the

"Rank is but the guineas' stamp,

The man's the man for a' that,"

with a genuine Scottish accent and a great air of believing it; but we do not. We are all under the slavery of old ideas on this subject, and respect certain trades and guilds more than we do other trades and guilds. It is not long since the trade of literature was among the ignoble trades, and meant Grub Street, and all that sort of thing. It has risen within a few years to its present proud and honorable position; but we are still very suspicious and very snobbish about other equally honorable professions.

All tasks, all professions, are honorable, so long as they are virtuously and honestly pursued, so we say; but so we do not act. That remains among the possible Utopias, when we shall live up to our ideas on this subject.

The long-sought-for and never- reached

The English climate is said to be depressinclining one to that disease known as the "dismal dumps," but it is far better than ours, as witness the contented, rosy faces of the average English person as compared with our knitted brows and anxious, unhappy faces,

as a race.

Some find Some love

Therefore the Utopia for all men would be that power to travel which would enable every man to find his own climate. There is a climate somewhere for all of us. it at Nice, some at Baden-Baden. the sea, others hug the mountains; but by a certain sarcasm of Destiny those who love the sea are obliged to live in the mountains, and those who sigh for the mountains are chained to the oar, and must live near the sea. The most perfect climate for all would seem to be that soft, mild coolness of Switzerland, where the glaciers temper the summer heats, but do not keep the flowers from blossoming at their very feet. Northern Italy has a very lovely climate. That of Rome is seductive, yet dangerous. Our American June, and September, and October, are very Utopian, but there we stop. Nothing can safely be predicted of the other months, except change and direful disappointment, although we occasionally have a better and a nobler sky than we had hoped for, and perhaps deserved.

That would, again, be a long-dreamed-of and deferred Utopia wherein we should learn how to educate the young of our human race to the best advantage. We think, we work, we aim at great things, in this particular; but how few happy, and useful, and well-edu. cated people we produce! There are no colleges, no schools, to which we can send a boy with the certainty that we are doing the best thing for those faculties which have been sent to him. Nay, worse, we make dreadful mistakes. We take a blank sheet of paper, and we fill it with certain characters. The result, we hope, will be good; but very often we read wretch, scoundrel, thief, murderer, where we had written Christian, hero, saint, and warrior. Again, we may not turn out the criminal, but we may make a crippled nonentity, which is almost as bad, because we have not understood the boy. To be sure, we have to contend with that greatest of all mysteries, original sin; but our own mistakes are dreadful. The greatest failures of the human race are the failure to preserve peace on earth; the awkward, and expensive, and wasteful business of war, as a means of set

tling vexed questions; and that other and perhaps radical failure in not yet having learned how to take care of and rear our children, not to have learned the great secrets of education.

It may be, it probably is, reserved for a higher period of our development, a possible Utopia which we may expect several yearssay centuries-hence, this knowledge of how to keep the peace among nations, and how to educate our young, so that there shall be no failures.

which should tempt an appetite which needed an impetus. The hungry Goth could eat raw meat, or at least endure it after smoking it over his camp-fire, with his spear for a spit. The softer Italian or Frenchman whom he conquered needed the refinements of the pâté de foie gras, or the filet de bœuf aux champignons, or the choux-fleurs au parmesan, to tempt his less Gothic digestion.

Those gods of the north, Thor with his hammer, or even the Norse maiden, would have failed to appreciate these nicer distinctions. Cookery improves as it gets nearer the sun.

Finally and lastly, a Utopia remains to be dreamed of in which there will not be too much thumping on piano-fortes by inexperienced hands, not too much tooting on trombones or blowing of flutes by those who are achieving those instruments. Oh, the suffer

That would be a desirable Utopia where good cookery prevailed. Imagine a journey through America, and a possibility of stopping always at a Massasoit House! A lovely Utopian beefsteak, with all its natural juices preserved by being broiled over a wood-fire, pitchers of genuine cream, bread which has the lightness and whiteness of a summer cloud, and coffee of the clearness of wine-ings of the slave Fine Ear in this world of such should be your inevitable good fortune. The frying-pan, that dreadful underminer of our national good temper, should be sent to Nuremberg to be hung up with the instruments of torture used in the dark ages; and we should afterward travel through a landscape in which there were no rough spots, on railroad-cars which never met with an accident or admitted any dust, to reach one of these hotels in Utopia, where there were never any indifferent beds or any bad cookery. Such, and really better than all this imagination, are the hotels in Switzerland; beautifully ornamented with flowers in the court-yards, well conducted, and with admirable service, they are as well worth going to visit for a longBuffering American as are the picturesque views the dashing water-falls, the snowy mountains, and the silent glaciers. Such hotels are to be found in England; and the beautiful Lake Derwentwater, in the lake district, where Wordsworth, and Southey, and De Quincey, made Nature doubly famous, is blessed with such a one. It is at Keswick, and has, besides good cookery, a pretty and well-mannered landlady, who helps you out of your carriage with her own neat hand.

France is the land of good cookery. It is astonishing why the dark-eyed Celts should be such good cooks, and the blue-eyed Saxons not. The Italians, too, are admirable cooks. In all the world there is not such a nest of gifted mortals who can cook as those peasants about the little lake of Orta, near Maggiore, in Northern Italy. They go all over Europe, and are highly prized even in the cafés of Paris. The successful family of the Delmonicos come from some place near Orta, on the Italian side of the Alps. They have contributed not a little to our possible Utopia by their faultless cooking and the admirably-managed restaurants which bear their name.

Nor must the colored race be forgotten. They are great natural cooks. A sense of flavor seems to exist in them which is like a talent for music. Perhaps it exists with color. While the blue-eyed Goths were engaged in conquering the world, and by their feats of arms gaining an appetite, the softer and darker children of the sun (that great cooking-stove for the fruits and grains) were calmly getting dinner and were creating dishes

discord! What a ceaseless vigil he keeps up! He never rests, even in sleep. The eye is closed, the busy brain sleeps, but this warder on the watch-tower is always awake. He hears the stealthy step of the burglar, he hears the hand trifling with the key, he hears the watch tick. He never rests; and, in a crowded city, what a suffering martyrdom is his! Every hand-organ, every rattling cart, every dismal church-bell, adds to his trouble. The nose is as great a tyrant as Heliogabalus, and will only sniff when it pleases, but the delicate ear works all the time. Even in the country the birds begin at four o'clock to twitter for his edification, and there, too, he must attend to that practising upon unknown horns and pipes which forms the recreation of rustic Strephons and Philanders. The bagpipe, dreadful creation of Scotch solitudes, miserable successor of Pan's pipes, imprisoned zephyrs protesting against their homely dungeon-this is added to the suffering of Fine Ear in the country.

Only in Venice, sweetest daughter of quiet and silence, can he rest. There, on soft waters, does the noiseless gondola convey you to your destination without a sound save the musical dip of an oar. There can Fine Ear take a short and delightful rest. This practising on musical instruments in colleges and boarding-houses, and in hotels, should be put a stop to. The sufferings of a patient student in a close college-room, with a trombone over his head, are fearful. He is tempted to paraphrase Madame Roland and say:

"O Music, what crimes are committed in thy name!"

One can almost imagine that Collins thought of this side of human misery when he wrote his "Ode to the Passions."

The possible Utopia, then, is a place inhabited by people of infinite wit, good temper, and a disposition to agree with the last speaker, supposing that person to be yourself. The Utopian House must be large and well ventilated, furnished with simplicity and excellent taste; your income must be just a little more than you can spend, and no one must, on any account, practise on musical instruments in your hearing. You must travel until you find a perfect climate, one where

RUNNING over the July numbers of AP

PLETONS' JOURNAL recently, I fell upon

certain editorial comments on an article of mine entitled "The Strangest Things in Life," and then turned back and read the article itself, by way of coming to some conclusion as to their justice. Through an error of my own, overlooked in reading and correcting the manuscript, and again overlooked in reading the proof-sheets, I find that the final sentence of the article is a little misleading as to the actual position I intended to take, and as to my real opinions on the important question discussed. The sentence, commencing, "The day has come to stop babbling about nervous centres," and going on to urge a more thorough study of the internal culture and forces of nervous tissue, is defective in this: that the word exclusively should have followed the word babbling. What I intended to urge was that study of the nervous centres was only competent to the explanation of the modes under which nervous influence operates, and constitutes merely the analytic part of psychology; while, on the other hand, for a rational explanation of the phenomena called spiritual the laws and constitution of the nervous life must be carefully investigated. With this correction I will let the article stand as it is. But I should be very sorry to put myself on the record as depreciating the value of studies in nervous anatomy and structure, within their legitimate province. This one remark, however, I must be permitted, and I think most anatomists will concede its justice — namely, that, the more thorough one's mastery of nervous anatomy and function, the less the inclination to materialistic views of mental action, and the more absolute the conviction that life is associated with a series of unknown and possibly unknowable forces, and that in its relation to these forces it presents a series of problems that physiological formularies are incompetent to solve. The phenomena of spiritualism, so far from dipping into this higher series of relations, seem to me to be purely morbid nervous phenomena, always associated with the epileptic predisposition, and having no value whatever except as curious facts appertaining to that department of psychology designated as medical.

How strikingly this view is illustrated in the biographies of acting spiritual mediums, and how minutely and invariably the facts verify it, are points that can only be appre