cidedly not cultivated into the smooth calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regard as the sine qua non of good breeding. Their position is so assured that they do not need that lacquer of calmness of which we were speaking.

THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by those who live a great deal in American hotels? THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?

HERBERT. The last two are the same.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if a man has learned his society carriage of a dancing master. Well, you cannot always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitué of hotels or of Washington. But these are distinct from the perfect polish and politeness of indifferentism.

Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipates the idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions. Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some forest-trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees all winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants, cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of a dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its dazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost in the distant darkling spaces.

If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon gets an impression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothing else so powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. Nothing makes one feel at home like a great snow-storm. Our intelligent cat will quit the fire and sit for hours in the low window, watching the falling snow with a serious and contented air. His thoughts are his own, but he is in accord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; on such a day he is charged with enough electricity to run a telegraphic battery, if it could be utilized. The connection between thought and electricity has not been exactly determined, but the cat is mentally very alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere. Feasting his eyes on the beautiful out-doors does not prevent his attention to the slightest noise in the wainscot. And the snow-storm brings content, but not stupidity, to all the rest of the household.

I can see Mandeville now, rising from his arm-chair and

swinging his long arms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with "Well, I declare!" Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer's tract on the philosophy of style; but he loses much time in looking at the Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in her lap, one of her everlasting letters to one of her fifty everlasting friends. She is one of the female patriots who save the post-office department from being a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert is thinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, which legislation will probably never change, that leads a woman always to write letters on her lap and a man on a table, distinction which is commended to the notice of the antisuffragists.

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The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the room with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the picture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and is thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says the thermometer is 15°, and going down; that there is a snow-drift across the main church entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as if it had gone into winter quarters, religion and all. There were only ten persons at the conference meeting last night, and seven of those were women; he wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in the parish, anyhow.

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but it is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name about eleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears the Mistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write a lecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature. The Parson says that it is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, and asks why he does n't take a shovel and make a path to the gate. Mandeville says that, by George! he himself should like no better fun, but it would n't look well for a visitor to do it. The Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps on writing his wife's name.

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the soup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a present of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on Christmas, when she had n't coal enough in the house to heat her gruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six little children and three dogs, and he did n't believe that any of them had known what it was to be warm in three

weeks, and as to food, the woman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep the dogs alive.

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket with provisions and send it somewhere; and when the FireTender brought in a new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had been sitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.

MANDEVILLE. Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever notice how extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much like the sort of cultured persons we were talking of last night?

THE FIRE-TENDER. In what respect?

MANDEVILLE. Well, you take the North American Indian. He is never interested in anything, never surprised at anything. He has by nature that calmness and indifference which your people of culture have acquired. If he should go into literature as a critic, he would scalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he would do nothing else.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Then you think the red man is a born gentleman of the highest breeding?

MANDEVILLE. I think he is calm.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How is it about the war-path and all that?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may have malice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "little digs;" they know how to stick in the pinesplinters and set fire to them.

HERBERT. But there is more in Mandeville's idea. You bring a red man into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, or into a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he is apparently insensible to them all. Now I have seen country people, and by country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in the country, for everything is mixed in these days, some of the best people in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as the Indian would.

THE MISTRESS. Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I should say you were snobbish.

HERBERT. Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak of anything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautiful it may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion of etiquette. They are like the country

man who confessed afterwards that he could hardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill's entertainments.

THE YOUNG LADY. Do you remember those English people at our house in Flushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparent delight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored the rooms and looked at everything, and were so interested? suppose that Herbert's country relations, many of whom live in the city, would have thought it very ill-bred.

MANDEVILLE. It's just as I said. The English, the best of them, have become so civilized that they express themselves, in speech and action, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions.

THE PARSON. I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he had stayed at home. It's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sickness will do for a man's judgment and cultivation. He is prepared to pronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture. There is more nonsense talked about culture

than about anything else.

HERBERT. The Parson reminds me of an American country minister I once met walking through the Vatican. You could n't impose upon him with any rubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his native place, and there was little that could bear the test. He had the sly air of a man who could not be deceived, and he went about with his mouth in a pucker of incredulity. There is nothing so placid as rustic conceit. There was something very enjoyable about his calm superiority to all the treasures of art.

MANDEVILLE. And the Parson reminds me of another American minister, a consul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to have a thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind. Ministers seem to think that is their business. They serve it in such small pieces in order to make it go round.

THE PARSON. Mandeville is an infidel. Come, let's have some music; nothing else will keep him in good humor till lunch-time. . .

Mandeville settles himself in a chair and stretches his long legs nearly into the fire, remarking that music takes the tangles out of him.

After the piece is finished, lunch is announced. It is still snowing.

SUSAN WARNER.

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WARNER, SUSAN, an American novelist; born at New York, July 11, 1819; died at Highland Falls, near West Point, N. Y., March 17, 1885. Her first novel, "The Wide, Wide World," was published in 1851, under the pseudonym of "Elizabeth Wetherell." Her other works are Queechy" (1852); "The Law and the Testimony" (1853); "The Hills of the Shatemuc" (1856); "The Old Helmet" (1863); "Melbourne House "Melbourne House" (1864); "Daisy" (1868); "A Story of Small Beginnings " (1872); the "Say and Do" series (1875); "Diana" (1876); "My Desire" (1877); "The Broken Walls of Jerusalem" (1878); "The Kingdom of Judah" (1878); "The End of a Coil" (1880); "The Letter of Credit" (1881); "Stephen, M.D." (1883). In conjunction with her sister, Anna Warner, she wrote " Say and Seal" (1860); "Ellen Montgomery's Book-Shelf" (1863-69); "Books of Blessing," (1868); Wych-Hazel" (1876).

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AN UNPLEASANT MEETING.

(From "Queechy.")

MR. CARLETON went to Mme. Fouché's, who received most graciously, as any lady would, his apology for introducing himself unlooked-for, and begged that he would commit the same fault often. As soon as practicable he made his way to Charlton and invited him to breakfast with him the next morning.

Mrs. Carleton always said it never was known that Guy was refused anything he had a mind to ask. Charlton, though taken by surprise, and certainly not too much prepossessed in his favor, was won by an influence that where its owner chose to exert it was generally found irresistible; and not only accepted the invitation, but was conscious to himself of doing it with a good deal of pleasure. Even when Mr. Carleton made the further request that Capt. Rossitur would in the mean time see no one on business, of any kind, intimating that the reason would then be given, Charlton, though startling a little at this restraint upon