gave bare assistance to the pull. The wheels, axle deep in the soft mud, were hauled round spoke by spoke, heaved and yo-hoed forward inches at a time.

When at last all were over, the teams had to be allowed a brief rest-brief because the guns must be in position and under cover before daylight came -and stood dejectedly with hanging ears, heaving flanks, and trembling legs. The gunners dropped prone or squatted almost at the point of exhaustion in the mud. But they struggled up, and the teams strained forward into the breast collars again when the word was given, and the weary procession trailed on at a jerky snail's pace once more.

As they at last approached the new position the gun flashes on the horizon were turning from orange to primrose, and although there was no visible lightening of the Eastern sky, the drivers were sensible of a faintly recovering use of their eyes, could see the dim shapes of the riders just ahead of them, the black shadows of the holes, and the wet shine of the mud under their horses' feet.

The hint of dawn set the guns on both sides to work with trebled energy. The new position was one of many others so closely set that the blazing flames from the gun muzzles seemed to run out to right and left in a spouting wall of fire that leaped and vanished, leaped and vanished without ceasing, while the loud ear-splitting claps from the nearer guns merged and ran out to the flanks in a deep drum roll of echoing thunder. noise was so great and continuous that it drowned even the roar of the German shells passing overhead, the smash and crump of their fall and burst.

The

But the line of flashes sparkling up and down across the front beyond the line of our own guns told a plain

enough tale of the German guns' work. The Sergeant-Major, plodding along beside the Battery Commander, grunted an exclamation.

"Boche is getting busy," said the Battery Commander.

"Putting a pretty solid barrage down, isn't he, sir?” said the SergeantMajor. "Can we get the teams through that?"

"Not much hope," said the Battery Commander, "but, thank Heaven, we don't have to try, if he keeps barraging there. It is beyond our position. There are the gun-pits just off to the left."

But, although the barrage was out in front of the position, there were a good many long-ranged shells coming beyond it to fall spouting fire and smoke and earth-clods on and behind the line of guns. The teams were flogged and lifted and spurred into a last desperate effort, wrenched the guns forward the last hundred yards and halted. Instantly they were unhooked, turned round, and started stumbling wearily back towards the rear; the gunners, reinforced by others scarcely less dead-beat than themselves by their night of digging in heavy wet soil, seized the guns and wagons, flung their last ounce of strength and energy into man-handling them up and into the pits. Two unlucky shells at that moment added heavily to the night's casualty list, one falling beside the retiring teams and knocking out half a dozen horses and two men, another dropping within a score of yards of the gun-pits, killing three and wounding four gunners. Later, at intervals, two more gunners were wounded by flying splinters from chance shells that continued to drop near the pits as the guns were laboriously dragged through the quagmire into their positions. But none of the casualties, none of the falls and screamings of the high-explosive shells,

interrupted or delayed the work, and without rest or pause the men struggled and toiled on until the last gun was safely housed in its pit.

Then the battery cooks served out warm tea, and the men drank greedily, and then, too worn out to be hungry or to eat the biscuit and cheese ration issued, flung themselves down in the pits under and round their guns and slept there in the trampled mud.

The Sergeant-Major was the last to lie down. Only after everyone else had ceased work, and he had visited each gun in turn and satisfied himself that all was correct, and made his report to the Battery Commander, did he seek his own rest. Then he crawled into one of the pits, and before he slept had a few words with the "Number One" there, his old friend Duncan. The Sergeant-Major, feeling in his pockets for a match to light a cigarette, found the note which the Battery Commander had sent The Cornhill Magazine.

back and which had been passed on to him. He turned his torch light on it and read it through to Duncan"Bring up the guns and firing battery wagons and then chuckled a little. "Bring up the guns.

...

Remember that picture we saw before we joined, Duncan? And we fancied then we'd be bringing 'em up same fashion. And, good Lord, think of tonight."

"Yes," grunted Duncan, "sad slump from our anticipations. There was some fun in that picture style of doing the job-some sort of dash and honor and glory. No honor and glory about 'Bring up the guns' these days. Na poo tonight anyway."

The Sergeant-Major, sleepily sucking his damp cigarette, wrapped in his sopping British Warm, curling up in a corner on the wet cold earth, utterly spent with the night's work, cordially agreed.

Perhaps, and anyhow one hopes, some people will think they were wrong. Boyd Cable.

"go-ahead" species, but its opposite. pole), animated by that energetic, yet calm spirit of innovation, that practical as well as theoretic independence of formulæ, which is peculiar to some of the finer American minds. The writer tells us . . . how he built his house; how he earned the necessaries of his simple life by cultivating a bit of ground. He tells his system of diet, his studies, his reflections, and his observations of natural phenomena. These last are not only made by a keen eye, but have their interest enhanced by passing through the medium of a deep poetic sensibility; and indeed, we feel throughout the book the presence of a refined as well as a hardy mind.

The next notice appeared in Chambers's Journal, 1857, a writer reviewing

the same book, unconsciously indicating the special characteristic that constitutes the charm and much of the value of this book, namely, the egotism displayed by the use of the pronoun I, which he says "stands like an obelisk in the midst of a level, though by no means barren expanse." That I represented personal experience, the value of which cannot be over-estimated in a work devoted to Nature outof-doors, where "limpidness, sweetness, and freshness," together with "vitality, sincerity, and genuineness," are, according to John Burroughs, absolute essentials. Thoreau's vindication of the personal pronoun in the opening paragraphs of "Walden" is very ingenious, at once arresting the reader's attention, assuring him that he is entering upon a book written with deliberation and from the life.

In

Thoreau's first book, "A Week on the Concord," published in 1849, was unnoticed in the British press. America it was a failure, only 219 copies being sold in four years.

This book is still regarded by many as a good Nature book spoiled by the interpolation of moral, religious, and literary dissertations; the great awakening to freedom of thought inaugurated by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and others, had in marvelous fashion linked the noblest aspirations of religion to the ever extending revelations of Nature. Nature in all her varied aspects and moods was being impressed into the spiritual service of man; but not without opposition. The gentle Emerson had been the subject of gross calumny and misrepresentation, because he had dared in Puritan Boston to claim a place for Nature in man's spiritual development. The narrowminded in religion were rebelling against what they regarded as an intrusion into their special domain, and Thoreau in the Week not only magnifies

the function of Nature, but challenges those who would enforce doctrines and dogmas: "What right," he says, "have you to hold up this obstacle to my understanding you, to your understanding me? . . . The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not a cobweb against the heavens. It is clear sky."

Who, then, was this man who had the temerity to print a thousand copies of his first book at his own expense, and the audacity to preface his second with, "I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, -standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up"?

Henry David Thoreau was born at Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12th, 1817. John Thoreau, Henry's father, was the only son of another John Thoreau, who, at the age of nineteen, in the year 1773, emigrated to New England from St. Helier, Isle of Jersey. Henry's father, at the time of his birth, was in charge of the small farm on the Virginia Road, occupied by his wife's mother. He was the third child of the family: his sister Helen, and his brother John, one five years, the other three years his senior; a second sister, Sophia, was added two years later.

When Henry was eight months old the family went to Chemlsford, thence to Boston, where he received his first schooling. In 1823 they returned to Concord, where his education was continued at the village schools. In 1833 he went to Cambridge, and graduated there in 1837. On leaving Harvard, he undertook scholastic duties in his native village, but being in advance of his time was not altogether successful. In 1841 he became an inmate of Emerson's household, where he remained two years. It was while residing here that his beloved brother

John died. Sixteen days after the death of John, Emerson's little Waldo passed away in his sixth year. These events must have drawn the two friends into a close and loving sympathy, for theirs was a common loss.

From 1845 to 1847 Thoreau dwelt in his hut by Walden Pond. Then for another year he was the man of Emerson's house, while Emerson made his second visit to Europe. On Emerson's return, Thoreau went back to pencil-making with his father, to surveying and to the various odd jobs his fellow-townsmen found him willing to undertake. Much of his time, however, was devoted to the study of Nature, and to writing. In 1860 serious lung trouble developed, partly due to the inhalation of plumbago dust, and to want of care in exposing himself to wet and cold. Of this trouble he passed away on May 6th, 1862, having as Emerson said at his funeral, "in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world."

Thoreau was a philosopher, a poet, and a naturalist. Ellery Channing was inspired when he combined the two last into Poet-Naturalist, for it was with a poet's eye he surveyed the landscape, examined the trees and flowers; with poet's ear listened to the music of the wild; and with a poet's soul fraternized with the birds and animals. Moreover, it was, for the most part, in poetic language he described his numerous observations of Nature and her ways.

Thoreau as a naturalist has received but scant attention; in fact, as such, he has been frequently misrepresented. Van Doren, in his "Critical Study of Thoreau," 1916, says, "Emerson, who knew him best, cannot always be relied on to give a fair account of the man, because Emerson's interest in him was the interest of a philosophic father in a philosophic son; he spoke

of him as 'my Henry Thoreau'; he commended Thoreau the naturalist only because he practised (or so Emerson believed) what Emerson the philosopher preached." This sentence, assuming as it does a knowledge of Emerson's mind impossible for Van Doren to possess, is a flagrant misrepresentation, not to give it a stronger name. Van Doren wants perspective.

Lowell in his "Essay on Thoreau" is possibly worse, for he says: "It is curious, considering what Thoreau afterwards became, that he was not by nature an observer." He further states that: "He discovered nothing. He thought everything a discovery of his own."

Thoreau, however, did make discoveries, among which may be mentioned several new fish, a mouse, more than one tortoise; new facts concerning the habits of birds; and many new plants were added to the flora of New England by reason of his close and careful observations.

An old-time naturalist has but to glance through the pages of Thoreau's "Journals" to be assured that he was collecting material for a work on Natural History, possibly of Concord. A sentence in his last letter, dictated by him to his sister Sophia just six weeks before his death, suggests some such intention. "I have not been engaged in any particular work on Botany, or the like, though, if I were to live, I should have much to report on Natural History generally." To this end he sought to comprehend the points wherein species differed; to know the habitats of plants and animals, but above all, to record their habits and to understand, in some degree at least, the motive of those habits; to understand the amount of protection given to animals by their color markings, etc.

His description of a chestnut burr

and its contents is more complete and far more interesting than can be found in any textbook of Botany, for by his deft comparisons, right inferences, and simple language, he not only secures the reader's interest, but makes specially easy the retention of the facts. Here, as elsewhere, he fulfils his own demands, that "we require that the reporter be very permanently planted before the facts which he observes, not a mere passerby; hence the facts cannot be too homely." The fact is, that Thoreau's observations of Nature were so carefully made that they did possess a real scientific value. His descriptions are accurate, well drawn, and charmingly written. His account of the struggle of the wild appletree with its environment is unsurpassed for its accuracy and grace of telling.

He did not, however, pursue his study of Nature entirely from a desire to advance the cause of science; he saw deeper into things; he desired to penetrate the symbolic meaning he believed to lie hidden in her every manifestation: whether it were in a blade of grass, in the morning mist, or in the soughing of the wind in the pines. To him, as to Emerson, every

The Bookman.

aster was loaded with a thought, to him also, there

Wandering voices in the air,
And murmurs in the wold.

It may be true that "the scientific study of Nature tends to correct and ennoble the intellectual conceptions of man." Yet it is equally true, as Thoreau says, that "our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies." Nature to Thoreau was twain; the reality and man's apprehension of it. That which did not recognize moral action as conjoined with a study of Nature was not science.

Yes, Emerson was right, when at the funeral of his friend he said: "The country knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task which none else can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he should depart out of nature before yet he has been shown to his peers for what he is. But he at least is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty he will find a home." Walter T. Haydon.

"That is quite right now, Madam," said a photographer to a lady sitter, "quite right as to attitude, Madam, but do not let the mind recede from the face." The exhortation calls up many pictures. Some beautiful faces are enchanting to look at even when the mind recedes, and some plain people look better in the dullest repose than in animation. Speaking generally, however, men and women look their best when they are what is called "paying attention." A crowd which is amused or interested offers a delightful study in physiognomy; a

crowd of tired faces is, except to the born student of character, a very dull sight. The present writer has often watched a number of ordinary people listening to music, and he believes that music has some extraordinary effect in composing the lines of the face and bringing out what is characteristic in it. Acting reflects itself on the countenances of the audience, and eloquence and the drama are both apt to transform those engaged by them and make them look unlike themselves. The face takes an impress from without and is not controlled