causes him to lift his leg with a howl, and, while he stands in this semi-defenseless position, you propel your foot with vigor toward the second button of his waistcoat. Do this without blenching, for your object is to double up the enemy, and open the way to another neat kick on the mouth or the bridge of the nose. The " savate comprises a series of twelve kicks, and, in the opinion of experts, half that number ought to do for a man. never tried either actively or passively; nevertheless, we should be sorry to back even a first-rate boxer against a savatier in hobnails. Seeing a "Grand Contest of Champion Savatiers" advertised among the attractions of a village-fair in the environs of Paris, we repaired to that village, and had no occasion to repent having wasted our time or our money.

We

The fair of itself was worth seeing, as what French fair is not? There were gaudy booths and still gaudier shows; whirligigs spurred round to the music of loud barrel-organs; Russian tram-mountains, down which bevies of screaming French girls were borne in company with their sweethearts or brothers; learned pigs, bicephalous calves, talking seals in wonted profusion, and, to animate all these goodly sights, a flow of that gayety which is not to be found outside France-a gayety which always hits the happy mean between dull decorum and boisterous horse-play. The village was called Fouilly-les-Oies, and the fair was held in honor of the crowning of a Rosière. Every year the municipal council of Fouilly met to lay hands, figuratively speaking, on the most immaculate damsel of the commune, to reward whose virtue some great lady of a by-gone age had bequeathed a legacy which annually yielded twenty pounds. As everybody is aware, the young lady designated by the councilors as being purer than all her fellows, is robed in white, led processionally to church with an escort of firemen, brass - bandsmen, parish beadles, etc., and solemnly crowned with a chaplet of white roses. Afterward follows a banquet, then a ball; but every commune which celebrates a yearly Rosière festival has some particular way of its own of adding lustre to these proceedings, and it was surely a delicate inspiration which had moved the Mayor of Fouilly-les-Oies to authorize a "Grand Contest of Savatiers." What, indeed, could be more appropriate than the tussle of strength after the tournament of virtue? Taken together, the two contests might be held to signify that so long as there are virtuous maidens in France there will be stout-legged lads to protect them.

Imagine now a ring of twenty feet in diameter, formed on a plat of grass in a corner of the fair, and girt with ropes and stakes. Tiers of wooden seats rise on two sides of it, and there is a reserved box for the mayor, the municipal council, the Rosière, and her nearest relatives. The Rosière, a trifle flushed from the good dinner at the Mairie which she has graced, takes her seat as Queen of Beauty to deliver the prize in the jousts. The champion is a stalwart lad of nearly six feet high. He stands smoking a cigarette on the outskirts of the ring, and modestly communicating to bystanders that he does not think there is a man in France who could hold a shoe to him. Gradually other savatiers troop up, and of a sudden, without preliminaries of any sort, the champion finds himself inside the ring and facing an antagonist about half his size, and with a slanting head like a rat's. There is nothing peculiar about the costumes of the kickers, who wear the ordinary pantaloons and shirts of every-day life; but, once in the ring, they are bidden to put on leather fencing

jackets, and masks, and woolen shoes so thickly padded as to resemble those of a gouty man. One falls to doubting whether it be possible to deal a substantial kick with such shoes, but this question is settled in the very first bout when the champion sends his ratheaded adversary rolling right over the ropes. There is no saying whether the kick struck the brow, chest, or waist, or whether it was dealt backward or straight. The two enemies seemed to wriggle together like a pair of eels; their legs flashed; they uttered stifled groans; then there was a thud, and the man outside the ropes was heard yelling that the kick was not a fair one. No thrust, blow, or kick, which gets the better of a Frenchman, is ever a fair one! This is a rule invariable, but happily the protests of the worsted person are always received in silence or with philosophical shrugs. The champion's enemy is requested to retire, and another man steps into the ring. This time the champion has to do with a wiry antagonist, who puts on the preternaturally wise expression of the Frenchman who has a private plan of his own for doing what no other man ever did. He begins by executing a sort of jig, and is evidently bent on getting behind his adversary. The champion, slightly puzzled, breaks into a counterjig, but never loses sight of his adversary's eye. Suddenly the wiry man makes a run, passes the champion, and when to the left of him ducks down and whips up his leg skyward. But the champion is too quick for him. Grasping him firmly with the hand just above the ankle, he holds him up for a moment ignominiously like a turkey, and favors him with a series of kicks "all over." The wiry man wriggles, howls, and at last succeeds in disentangling himself; then there ensues a fight, which resembles the encounter of a pair of infuriated jackasses or zebras. The difference between boxing and the savate is that in the latter the spectator can discern nothing of what is taking place. Legs and arms, faces, hair, backs, and loins, seem inextricably intermingled. Roars, gasps, grinding of the teeth, form an accompaniment to the struggle, and in the end one of the parties sprawls on the back uttering disjointed exclamations of pain or fury. In this instance it is the wiry man who measures his length on the sward, and the Rosière raises little shrieks of distress, for the victim is swearing with all the remnants of breath in him that some day he will have the champion's blood. But be of good cheer, virtuous Rosière! Many similar oaths will be registered before the day is over, so that if the champion were to take account of all the anathemas hurled against him he would walk thenceforth through the land of his birth with a lowering brow. He stands in no peril, however. Before sunset he has won the prize for a second time, and he steps away with a nonchalant stride, well knowing that his enemies who now vow vengeance against him will in a day or two be the first to vaunt his superior skill. He uses his legs, indeed, with so much deftness,

"That 'tis a kind of heaven to be kicked by him."

A propos of the dedication of the statue to Chateaubriand at St.-Malo, the Spectator has a striking article on that famous littérateur, from which we quote the following paragraph:

In one respect, and whatever may happen, the influence of Chateaubriand in his native country will never diminish. He was in himself a literary era, and there is no French writ

er of eminence since his time who does not bear the traces of the impulse which he communicated, and indeed originated. With much in him of Bernadin de St.-Pierre and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and in spite of rhetoric, sentimentality, and egotism, there was in his very exaggerations a strength and genius, an incarnation, as it were, of the highest spirit of his age, the power of which over his generation and his successors can only be measured when we have compared the finest descriptions of such a writer as George Sand with the scenes portrayed in "René," "Atala," the "Natchez," the "Martyrs," the "Itinéraire," and the "Mémoires d'Outre-tombe." . . . Chateaubriand is the author of the "Génie du Christianisme," the apologist, special pleader, bard, and prophet of the Catholic reaction at the commencement of the present century. This is the foundation of his reputation, and never did reputation have its rise under circumstances or amid surroundings more propitious. There was a great part to be taken in 1800, after all those convulsions and devastations of society, after all those guillotinades and noyades, those excesses of the Terror and frivolities of the Directory, those vivacious assaults upon the old faith, and those endless failures to substitute a new one-and this part was that of "Poetical Advocate of Christianity," as Sainte-Beuve has so well expressed it. Chateaubriand felt himself strong enough to take it, and the "Génie du Christianisme," or, as he himself described it, "The moral and poetical beauties of the Christian religion, and its superiority over all the other worships of the earth," was the result of his conviction. At the same moment, Napoleon was planning the concordat with Rome, and on the very day which witnessed the solemn Te Deum in Notre-Dame for the restoration of religious worship in France, the official columns of the Moniteur announced, by the pen of Fontanes, the praises of the epochmaking work of "the young writer who dares to reestablish the authority of ancestors and the traditions of ages." Chateaubriand's ratiocination, his logic, his erudition, were the weakest part of the work, for in truth the world was weary of ratiocination, of logic, of erudition, of all that, under the name of "philosophy," stood in the place of a religion to the epoch of the encyclopedists and the Revolution. And, as a rule, Chateaubriand did not trouble himself or his readers with polemics. He was the greatest master of description, the first of landscape-painters in words whom the French language knew, and all that wealth of color, all that ravishing beauty of outline and form which dazzled and melted the public in his pastoral romances of innocence that was never insipid, and passions that were always pure-all this, and more, were now devoted to extolling the perfections of Christianity, or, as the theosophic Saint-Martin complained, of Catholicism, for, with Chateaubriand, Christianity and Catholicism were one. He tells us himself, in the opening chapter, the whole of his plan-not to prove that Christianity was excellent because it came from God, but that it came from God because it was excellent. There could be no more complete appreciation of what the social situation required. What though there were great faults, great gaps and hiatuses in the structure which Chateaubriand raised, much absurd rhetoric, much sickly sentimentality? The public of his time had got what it wanted, and the sons of the men who, from considering Christianity absurd, had come to proscribe it as noxious and frightful, were now prepared to accept it as sublimely wise, because they had been taught to see associated with it loveliness, and har

mony, and majesty, and peace, and poetry; the solemn chant of processions, the glorious roofs of grand cathedrals, the plenteousness of monastic hospitality, the valor of crusading heroes, the virtues of devoted missionaries; and not only these things, but, relieving them and illustrating them, the numberless charins of the animate and inanimate creation, the foliage of the forest, the odor of the rose and violet, the thunder of the cataract, the song of the nightingale, the music of running

streams.

FROM the third "Conversation in a Studio" (Blackwood), we quote the subjoined fragment:

Belton. Did it ever strike you how characteristic of each nation is its form of salutation?

The Italians say, "Come sta?" and "Come va?""How do you stand?" and "How do you go?"-because, naturally, when an Italian is well he stands easily and he moves easily. The French say, "Comment vous portezvous?""How do you carry yourself?"-for a Frenchman always wishes to make an appearance and an impression through his deportment. The English, who are essentially an active and doing people, engaged in business, and always at work, say, "How do you do?" While the German, who is generally wandering in a maze, and whose intellectual tendencies are vague and metaphysical, asks, "Wie befinden sie sich?"-" How do you find yourself?"

Mallett. Very characteristic, and particularly the last. The wonder is, how the speculative German ever does find himself.

Belton. There is another common form of speech which has struck me as characteristic and distinctive of the Latin and Catholic nations from the northern and Protestant nations. The Latins and Catholics always say "Credo ""I believe"-while the northern nations say "I think;" for the simple reason that the former take every thing on trust and as a matter of belief, while the latter refer it to their reason, and accept it as a matter of opinion. No Italian or Spaniard ever says "Penso"-"I think;" he believes so- be does not think so. He has been accustomed so long to having his thinking done for him by others, that he only accepts and believes. No Englishman ever believes any thing until he has thought it over.

Mallett. It is a curious fact which never occurred to me, but it seems to indicate the distinction you have stated. It is also singular how little either the Greeks or Romans seem to have used the simple form of assent as we do our "Yes," even if they had it, which, I confess, seems to me doubtful. "Nae" in Latin, which most nearly approximates to it, is but an adoption of the Greek "Nai," and has rather the character of an oath or absolute affirmation than our simple assent, and, besides, was rarely used in their writings. Their usual form of assent seems to have been by reaffirming the same proposition or statement. They certainly, if we may judge from their writings, had no word in common use corresponding to our "Yes." Neither of them could have said of his nation, as the Italians do of theirs, "Il bel paese dove si suona il si;" nor could it ever have been a joke with foreigners to say to them, "Nae," or "Nai," as it is to many a one now who makes the crowd laugh when an Englishman passes, by "Yas, yas!" Their Ita est" is almost as bad as the vulgar American, "That's so," which is a literal translation of it.

Belton. I do not believe they had any "Yes" corresponding to ours. They certainly had no

No," and I cannot understand how they got on in conversation without it. Think of a people who couldn't say "No" and stumbled over "Yes!"?

Mallett. Their conversation could never

have been, "Yea, yea," and " Nay, nay!” But then they were pagans. You could not expect it..

Belton. I wish we had some real specimens of their conversation. I hope for all their sakes they were not always on stilts and talking as they do in their books. The jokes they have recorded, and particularly Cicero's, are very flat to us, but they seem to have been extremely amused with them, which gives me a notion that they had very little esprit or humor in their talk.

Mallett. I will never believe Antony did not know how to talk. Ah! he was a man after my heart; he is the one of the old Romans I should have liked to know. I don't at all wonder that Cleopatra fell madly in love with him, nor, for the matter of that, that he fell madly in love with her. What a pair! What nights of revel, what days of splendor, they must have known!

A WRITER in an English journal is not in the least more bitter upon whistling, in the subjoined, than the practice deserves:

Popular songs may be nice, so is champagne, so is flirting, but the consequences! Of the first we can speak feelingly and strangely, of the second we have heard a great deal, of the third we may read in the Madras Times. How I have wished my friends would go bounding through upland, and woodland, and vale, and pitied any one who accepted the invitation to live with me [not me] and be my love! A precious lot of pleasures they would have to prove. I could wish that some of Annie Laurie's admirers would lay down and dee. After all, there is an end to these echoes. The dabblers themselves get tired of being among the barley, or repeating confessions of inability to sing the old song. But some of them never can surmount the habit of whistling. It amounts to a disease, which has not obtained sufficient attention from the medical faculty. Whistlers differ as stars differ from one another, but we never heard one who

could whistle equal to three piceworths of bamboo or a pennyworth of perforated tin. It is said that people whose habitat has been elevated, often scratch their heads when the necessity for doing so no longer exists, and so we presume that men whistle inadvertently long after they know that whistling, except during the period of tubbing, is not in accordance with one's duty to one's neighbor. W6 have heard of men who considered whistling a fine art, and would accompany their labiopneumatic efforts on a piano. Generally speaking, we should have preferred their being accompanied out of the room. During the oncepopular mess chorus to "There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell" we have, in our haste, wished the whistlers where the farmer wished his wife. These bands-playing in an evening are responsible for any amount of whistling which we should be afraid to estimate. They put snatches of melody into the hollows of the heads of well-meaning men, who not only persist in blowing them through their lips, but asking you what it was they blew. They blow and they blow until the phrase is distorted out of all pretension to melody or scale. Considering the vast annoyance caused to men and women by the prevalent vice of whistling, we may well ponder on the question, why do men whistle? Women do not, although we could well tolerate any thing from their lips but determined refusals. What impulse leads a man to inclose a circular space with his lips, then by sheer pneumatic force make the noise called whistling? If the lips looked more elegant in this form there would be a plea for whistling. But this is very rarely the case. Granted a moderatesized mouth, with the upper-lip rather small, the personal appearance of the whistler may be tolerated. But granted a big mouth and a pent-roof upper lip, and the whistler presents to you a fac-simile of the extremity of an elephant's trunk. Strange to say, the latter class of whistlers are by far the more prevalent, and if whistling be a fine art, and not one of the ills that flesh is heir to, the big-mouthed are the most inefficient though the most persevering performers. We could read with greater comfort and interest between two large saws that were being sharpened than near an inveterate whistler.

are seated in the piazza. One comes forward, and, when Eric says, "Can you take us in for the night?" answers, with a doubtful glance at our number, "Well, I reckin so."

We do not wait for the slow assent to spring out and take refuge in the piazza. Then we utter a long sigh of relief. After all, it is pleasant to have a roof over one's head! Our host leads us into a large, barnlike room, with several smaller ones opening from it. "I'll kindle some fire in a minute for you to dry yourselves," he says.

We certainly stand in need of drying. Mermaids could scarcely be more wet. Wherever we stand or sit, a pool of water soon settles. We take off our water-proofs and shawls, and stretch them on chairs, laughing the while at our plight. Aunt Markham plainly thinks this mirth very ill-timed. She looks round with a shudder as she sits, majestic and dripping, in the middle of the

room

- but she says nothing. Words are too weak to express her feelings.

Presently a fire is roaring up the great chimney, and, by the time the gentlemen come to inquire how we have fared, we are restored to our normal condition of dryness and warmth. Nevertheless, flasks are produced, and potations insisted upon. "It is the only way to keep from taking cold," says Eric, imperatively.

"Your wishes are gratified, Miss Sylvia," says Ralph Lanier, with rather an air of reproach. "You were desiring adventureshere they are."

"Do you consider me the Jonah who has brought all this ill-luck?" she asks, laughing. "In that case I ought to be thrown overboard-ought I not? The river is convenient for any thing of that kind."

The violence of the rain abates before very long, and we go out on the piazza to look around. The prospect is cheerless in the extreme. The house has a dispirited air of decay, and rose-trees have grown to a tangled thicket in front. At the end of the piazza two young men are talking to our host. Charley says that they are from South Carolina, and are on a walking-tour through the mountains.

"They came from the Springs to-day," he adds, "and crossed Laurel in a canoe. We met them, if you remember, just before our break-down."

As the rain abates, our spirits sink. Let it abate ever so much, we have still the certainty of an aimless afternoon and comfortless night before us. No hope of crossing Laurel before the next day, no possible chance of returning to Alexander's. Suddenly, however, a cry is raised that somewhat cheers us: "The stage is coming!"

"By Jove!" says Mr. Lanier, "I felt sure that fellow was deceiving us about Laurel."

"That fellow" has also arrived by this time, and, in a very damp condition, is seated near. It is a chance whether or not he hears this grateful speech. Fortunately, the attention of every one is fastened on the stage, which comes into sight-empty! We salute the driver with a cry.

"Are you going over Laurel ? ”
Driver. "Mean to try." Then he nods

to the man who warned us: George?"

"How are you,

George shakes his head. "You can't cross," he says. "I'll take the mail to the banks any way," responds the other, driving on.

"If you find that you can cross, please come back for us," cries Sylvia, eagerly. "He's not likely to cross," say the men at the other end of the piazza.

Lanier shrugs his shoulders impatiently. "There's no relying on a word these people say," he remarks. "But the bridge should have been rebuilt long ago. It is infamous for travelers to be delayed in this manner. What a place this is for ladies to spend the night!"

"Don't trouble yourself about us," replies Sylvia, nonchalantly. "We do not mind a little hardship; but I am afraid you have made a grave mistake. Had you not better turn round even yet and go to the White Sulphur and Saratoga?

The young man colors.

"I was not thinking of myself," he says. "Of course it does not matter to me—at least not very much."

"Has anybody brought a pack of cards along?" asks Charley, sauntering up. 'Let us have a game of euchre."

In the midst of this, and just as Sylvia is playing an exciting "lone hand," there is another cry: "Here comes a man who has crossed Laurel!"

Up we spring, and rush to the edge of the piazza. A man driving two horses in a jersey wagon is stopped by a storm of tumultuous questions.

the man who lives five miles from the mouth of Laurel.

"Is that craft of which you are all talking a dug-out?" he asks.

"Yes, it's a dug-out-hollowed from the trunk of a tree," is the reply.

"The tree must surely have grown in California," says Sylvia.

"I can

"No, madam," is the answer. find plenty of chestnuts ten feet in diameter on the Walnut Mountains just below here, and I'm almost sure I could find walnuts of the same size."

"There was a dug-out on the river here," says our host, chiming in, "that I saw one day hold five men and a mule-and could a' held more."

"There is no doubt of one thing," says Eric "this is one of the most splendidlytimbered countries on the face of the globe."

"You don't know what it is until you go out on the mountains," says Mr. George. "There's hardly a known tree that doesn't grow here and grow to the finest size. You'd not believe me if I were to tell you of what height and diameter I have seen the white pine." "We

"Yes, we would," says Charley. are prepared to be enlightened, and ready to believe any thing."

A few more tree-stories are told, and then we ask the cause of the fishing mania which has seized all the population of the French Broad.

"Those were not more than the pickets and outposts that you saw," says our informant. "The main body of the fishing army is below here. I passed at least twenty

"Forded the river?" asks the incredulous chorus.

"No-ferried it in a canoe. I've been water-bound on the other side three days, and I couldn't stand it any longer, so I took my wagon-body off the wheels, slipped it on the canoe, and swam the horses over."

"Eureka!" cries Eric, striking one hand on the other; "that is an idea for us! What has been done can be done again. If Laurel is still up to-morrow, I'll take the carriages over in that way."

"You'll run a great risk if you do," says Mr. Lanier, who evidently does not know what reckless thing may be proposed or executed next.

"A fig for the risk!" says Charley. "I'd quite as soon cross that way as another." "And I would rather cross that way!" cries Sylvia, "What fun it will be!"

Mr. Lanier looks grave. Crossing swollen streams in a canoe is not his idea of fun. "Let us hope the stream may be down by to-morrow," he says.

We return to our game of euchre, but I cannot forget the width and general appearance of the wagon which was said to have been brought over on a canoe.

"Eric," I say, "these people must be talking about a boat-a constructed boat. They can't possibly mean a dug-out."

"Our friend here will tell us," says

Eric.

Then he turns to our first acquaintance

sat up fishing all night, and I know three men who only caught two fish among 'emand those were cats."

"What's the idea?"

"Oh, well, it's too wet to do any thing else, and they think the fish will bite better because the river's muddy."

By the aid of conversation and cards the afternoon and evening drag through. One shower succeeds another in the most rapid and disheartening succession, so that it is impossible to leave the house even for a short walk, and no one is sanguine enough to speak of " clearing off."

"We might as well go back to Asheville," says Aunt Markham, who regards our prospects in the darkest manner.

"Not without an effort to do otherwise," says Eric. "I don't choose to be baffled by Fate and the Laurel."

The day has been fatiguing, and we all retire early. Of the lodging and fare which we find at this wayside house it is best to say no more than that the people gave us their best, and seemed bonestly anxious to do all in their power to please us.

About nine o'clock the stage passes back and reports Laurel still rising. We are, therefore, cheered when, on waking the next morning, we hear the rain coming down "in bucketfuls," as Sylvia despondently remarks.

"We shall have to stay here all day," she says. "I feel sure of it. We cannot even go back to Alexander's, for the creeks are up between here and there. Oh, dear!

Were ever people out for a pleasure-trip more badly treated by the weather?"

When we leave our room, Charley is the first person to meet us, with the pleasant sunshine of his face undimmed by the gloomy outlook. Surely an equable temperament is one of the greatest blessings in the worldespecially in a traveling-companion.

"Not for gold or precious stones would I leave my mountain home," "

he sings, gayly. "I hope you are in better spirits than Lanier is this morning, Sylvia. If matters go on at the present rate, I am afraid he will commit suicide or go melancholy mad. It is a pity to see a man have so little philosophy. Can't you cheer him a little?"

I haven't the least disposition to try," says Sylvia. "Do any of us like the delay ? -is it anybody's fault? I am disgusted with Mr. Lanier, and I wish he had gone to a watering-place where he might dance the German to his heart's content, instead of joining our party."

"Who is accountable for his joining it?" says Charley. But I do not think he is illpleased by the young lady's petulance.

We go out on the piazza. The sky is a leaden curtain, the rain is pouring in torrents, the road is black mud and water, the river is a turbid flood. There is a sheer wall of cliff and forest opposite, along the base of which the impetuous current sweeps.

"What are you going to do, Eric?" we ask, as that gentleman comes up.

"Nothing, at present," he answers. "What can a man do in the face of such a downpour as this? By nine o'clock there will, probably, be some signs of clearing. Then I will go to Laurel and see what the chances are for our getting across."

By nine o'clock there are some signs of clearing. A few faint gleams of sunshine appear, and the mists begin to rise from the mountains. Horses are brought out, and the gentlemen, with the exception of Mr. Lanier, start for the banks of Laurel, which is said to be all the more dangerous-to have all the more force in its current-because it is higher than the French Broad, into which it empties.

The morning passes in very dull fashion. Aunt Markham settles herself to a novel. Sylvia and I go out and stroll-wade, perhaps, would give a more correct idea of the road-along the river-bank, attended by Mr. Lanier. I soon grow tired of playing the part of "third wheel to the cart," as the Germans say, and return to the house, leaving the others established in a cool, damp nook under some large trees that sweep the river with their bending boughs. An hour or two pass. No sign of the return of the horsemen; Aunt Markham grows uneasy, and suggests that they may have been drowned. Sylvia does not stir from her seat by the river; Mr. Lanier is talking earnestly-so earnestly that I feel a malicious inclination to go and break up the tête-à-tête. I have taken an unaccountable dislike to this young gentleman, despite his good looks and his well-filled purse. 66 Wae's me for Prince Charley," I think-and then I see Prince Charley coming at a canter along the road.

"Good news!" he says, as he draws up his horse. "Laurel is falling, and will be low enough by the afternoon for you to be ferried over in a canoe. Eric has made all the arrangements. I've seen the boat, and there is not the least danger."

"Are you sure of that?" asks Aunt Markham, tremulously. She is divided between her dislike to staying where she is and her terror of crossing in a canoe. "I never was in a dug-out," she says, "but I've seen them often. They rock horribly, and will upset at a touch."

"Not this one," says Charley. "Though a dug-out, it is two feet and a half wide."

The sun by this time is shining brilliantly, and with great heat. We take dinner; then the carriages are brought out, and the almost endless business of stowing away our luggage begins. Besides the trunks there are satchels and baskets, boxes of grasses, books of ferns, and an unlimited number of wraps. Aunt Markham declines to allow the last to be strapped together. "It is useless," she says. "We shall need them before we have gone a mile."

Despite this foreboding prophecy, the afternoon remains clear, and we see the wild beauty of the gorge for the first time to advantage. The air is like crystal, and a glory of sunlight streams on the river with its masses of rock, and the mountains that overshadow it. In the five miles that lie between our place of lodging and the banks of Laurel, the picturesque loveliness changes and deepens constantly. The river grows more and more tumultuous, and its waves wear caps of foam like the breakers of the ocean, as they plunge in stormy rapids over its hidden rocks. Rugged cliffs hang over us, fringed with ferns and mosses; verdure-clad mountains rise from the other bank; leaping cascades tumble down the rocky glens and dash across our way-there are pictures on every side that would repay the lover of Nature or the artist for any hardship or fatigue that could possibly be encountered in reaching this land of almost unknown beauty.

Presently we see a broad, green stream flowing in front of us, and the horses are drawn up on the banks of Laurel. Notwithstanding the late heavy rains, there is no tinge of mud in the clear water of this mountain-river, and we appreciate the strength of its current when we see that it sweeps directly across the French Broad before the latter river can change its course. Even then it takes half of the channel, and the clear and the turbid current flow onward side by side.

The bridge which was swept away crossed the stream near its mouth; but the ford is a little higher, and to this we drive. There is a cabin on the other side, from which, in answer to several halloas, the ferryman issues. The canoe in which we are to make the passage is moored on the other side, and at this Aunt Markham gazes doubtfully.

John," she says to her coachman, whom she considers less likely to run dangerous risks than Eric, in whose vocabulary fear is a word unknown-"John, do you think that boat is safe? I suppose we can cross in it, but how about the carriages and the horses?

ain't no danger at all ef we takes the carriages off the wheels," he replies. "We can hold 'em steady on the boat, and the horses can swim easy enough."

"Oh, it will all be easy," says Eric, coming to the carriage-door. "There is no reason to be nervous, mother. I am sorry that it is necessary you should alight.-Every thing must be taken out of here, John-luggage, cushions, every thing."

"This is dreadful!" says Aunt Markham, with a gasp, after she has been deposited on the road-side in the blazing heat of the sun, with satchels, novels, and baskets, strewed around in wild confusion.

"I call it jolly," says Rupert, who is prancing about on Cecil, and getting as much as possible in everybody's way.

"Don't ride that horse over me, Rupert," cries Aunt Markham, retreating in terror, and making convulsive efforts to scramble up the steep hill behind her.

"I must say that I consider this a very great risk," observed Mr. Lanier, climbing to where I have perched on the hill-side, under the shade of a large walnut. "I shall not be surprised if Markham loses one or both of his carriages, and gets some of the horses drowned, In my opinion the river is still too high and too swift to be crossed with safety in any way."

'Suppose you stay on this side, then?" I cannot resist saying. "Yonder comes the ferryman. He seems to have no difficulty about bringing the boat over."

"What a pleasant way of crossing!" says Sylvia's voice below. She is standing with Charley on the bank of the stream, while Eric, who lends a hand to every thing, is assisting Harrison to take off the trunks, and