the fact that the Emotions, which you have raised in my breast, are those which should point to Connubial Love and Affection rather than to simple Friendship. In short, Madam, I have the Honor to approach you with a Proposal, the acceptance of which will fill me with ecstatic Gratitude, and enable me to extend to you those Protecting Cares, which the Matrimonial Bond makes at once the Duty and the Privilege of him, who would, at no distant date, lead to the Hymenal Altar one whose charms and virtues should suffice to kindle its Flames, without extraneous Aid I remain, Dear Madam, Your Humble Servant and Ardent Adorer, J. Smith. The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she was wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last century Mr. Smith had found his form. Perhaps she was amazed at the results of his first attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something else, for there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth. But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown nervous, for presently another communication came along the line where the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read: If not understood will you mary me? The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote: Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window, and their faces met. CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND From EDWIN BOOTH Mr. Booth off the Stage OF Mr. Booth off the stage I can say only, Tantum vidi Virgilium. I saw him just once in his own person, within the next few years after his return from Germany. The precise year and month have escaped me, but the scene was Park Street in Boston; the time, a very cold and very bright winter morning. The street lay white under the sun, and the Common stretched white beyond. Doubtless there were other people about. I don't remember seeing any: I remember only that I caught sight of Booth at some distance, coming down the hill toward me. As he drew near, walking slow, I watched him intently; and even when we came face to face, it is to be feared that I still gazed. There was no harm Mr. Booth must long before have formed the habit of being stared at! And it was a reverential stare. Such was my deep respect for him and all he had done, that, not knowing then the fate of Charles Lamb's "merry friend," Jem White, I came near taking off my hat to a gentleman I had never "met." It is a question whether, at that moment, Booth would have perceived even such an attack, for he seemed to be looking in, not out, with the curious, introverted gaze of his own Hamlet. Let no one suppose that his expression was subdued to a professional melancholy, or that he had the consciously unconscious air which so often marks the celebrity in his walks abroad. But as he came toward me on that glittering, bitter day-stepping lightly though not quickly, his head a little bent and his hands in his pockets-he looked like Hamlet in a greatcoat. I thought then that I had never seen so sad a face, and I have never yet beheld a sadder one. Tribute to Dean Shaler Professor Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, Dean of the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, died in April, 1906. Many years before, he had founded the Summer School. In July, Professor Copeland, then lecturer on English Literature in the University, took occasion in the first of his general evening lectures to the Summer School to speak of Dean Shaler. He read a few pages from a book by Dean Shaler, entitled The Individual, in which the author condemned costly funerals and monuments, and suggested instead, as the best memorials, scholarships, charities, and such like, in the name of those who have gone before. Mr. Copeland said: GOOD general counsel this, and for the common man, the best memorial is some beneficent thing or function that shall bear his name. But in the case of Professor Shaler we shall be content with no remembrance short of so much of himself as can be put into a book. "It must not be one of those volumes ironically called 'lives' because they are so dead, but a true presentment of a man who was the very stuff of which biography is made. In the case of most men-even of most distinguished men-the record of their work is the record of them. When that is told, all is told; they have no overlapping personality. Not so with Mr. Shaler. Important, arduous and varied as was his work, what he was eclipsed what he did. "And what he was expressed itself constantly in what he said as well as in what he did. 'Give us plenty of anecdote,' cried Dr. Johnson, to an intending biographer. Wherever Shaler went, he bred anecdote. No man of parts that ever spent an hour in his company is without some generous impression of him, some pungent reminiscence. Let our biographer but announce his intention, and his study table will be heaped with anecdotes, in the broad Johnsonian sense, from all parts of this country and from all other countries that contain pupils and friends of Mr. Shaler. Invaluable correspondence, also, will be placed at his disposal. The world of Shaler's friends will form a sort of corporate Boswell. "Perhaps you do not all know how wide that world is. Statesmen, men of letters, eminent lawyers, doctors, farmers that he showed where to dig for water, miners that he told-in Bible phrase-where to dig for gold, sick men in hospitals where he has blown in like the west wind, changing foul weather to fair-with all of these he has brothered, and their minds are sown with memories of him. The biographer has but to reap and bind. "Of course a sad deal is lost. Mr. Shaler's presence was magnetic and heartening; his speech was wine; his laugh a cordial. These may be suggested in writing; they cannot be recaptured. A man is always better than a book. "Yet, though much is lost, consider how much remains-how much that must not be let perish. The true biographer-he must not be too old nor too young-will qualify his narrative in just proportions with Shaler's racy wit (not watering it down to placate the squeamish), with his unforced humor, his homely shrewdness, his persuasive wisdom, and the poetic feeling with which so much of what he said and wrote was tinctured. This true biographer will know men and be a master of language, for his task will be to transmit a personality, one of the most brilliant, winning, conquering personalities of our time. "Greatheart is dead. The magnanimous teacher has been borne on the shoulders of his young men to the place where is no teaching, nor work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom; yet he will not all die— this friendly helper of the race, this minister to young men, settled forty years over the parish of Harvard-he will not die so long as there is a man alive that knew him. Let us in piety cherish the loyal hope that he may live for other generations in pages wisely planned and faithfully wrought." OWEN WISTER From THE SEVEN AGES OF WASHINGTON Immortality Go, when the day is fine, down the river to Mount Vernon. There, following the path up from the shore among the trees, you will slowly come to where his tomb is, the simple vault half up the hill, which vines partly cover, built according to his directions. From this you will still ascend among grass and trees, and pass up by old buildings, old barns, an old coach-house with the coach in it, and so come to the level green upon which the house gives with its connecting side offices at either flank. Inside the house, all through the rooms of bygone comfort so comfortable still, so mellowed with the long sense of home, you will feel the memory of his presence strangely, and how much his house is like him. He seems to come from his battles and his austere fame, and to be here by the fireplace. Here are some of his very books on the shelves, here the stairs he went up and down, here in the hall his swords, and the key of the Bastille that Lafayette sent to him. Upstairs is the room he died in, and the bed; still above this chamber, the little room where Martha Washington lived her last years after his death, with its window looking out upon the tomb where he was first laid. Everything, every object, every corner and step, seems to bring him close, not in the way of speaking of him or breathing of him, as some memorial places seem to speak and breathe their significance; a silence fills these passages and rooms, a particular motionlessness, that is not changed or disturbed by the constant moving back and forth of the visitors. What they do, their voices, their stopping and bending to look at this or that, does not seem to affect, or even to reach, the strange influence that surrounds them. It is an exquisite and friendly serenity which bathes one's sense, that brings him so near, that seems to be charged all through with some meaning of beneficence and reassurance, but nothing that could be put into words. And then, not staying too long in the house, stroll out upon the grounds. Look away to the woods and fields, whence he rode home from hunting with Lord Fairfax, over which his maturer gaze roved as he watched his crops and his fences, and to which his majestic figure came back with pleasure and relief from the burdens and the admiration of the world. Turn into his garden and look at the walls and the walks he planned, the box hedges, the trees, the flower-beds, the great order and the great sweetness everywhere. And among all this, still the visitors are moving, looking, speaking, the men, women, and children from every corner of the country, some plain and rustic enough, some laughing and talking louder than need be, but all drawn here to see it, to remember it, to take it home with them, to be in their own ways and according to their several lights touched by it, and no more disturbing the lovely peace of it than they disturbed the house. For again, as in the house, only if possible more marvellously still, there comes from the trees, the box hedges, the glimpses of the river, that serenity with its message of beneficence and reassurance, that cannot be put into words. It seems to lay a hand upon all and make them, for a moment, one. You may spend an hour, you may spend a day, wandering, sitting, feeling this gentle power of the place; you may come back another time, it meets you, you cannot dispel it by familiarity. Then go down the hill again, past the old buildings, past the tomb, among the trees to the shore. As you recede from the shore, you watch the place grow into the compactness of distance, and then it seems to speak: "I am still here, my countrymen, to do you what good I can." And as you think of this, and bless the devotion of those whose piety and care treasure the place, and keep it sacred and beautiful, you turn and look up the expanding river. From behind a wooded point, silent and far, the Nation's roof-tree, the dome of the Capitol, moves into sight. A turn of the river, and it moves behind the point again; but now, on the other side of the wide water distance, rises that shaft built to his. memory, almost seeming to grow from the stream itself; presently, shaft and dome stand out against the sky, with the Federal City that he prophesied, Union's hearth-stone and high-seat, stretching between them. From ULYSSES S. GRANT Lee's Surrender Ar dark on April 5 word came from Sheridan to Grant: "I wish you were here. I see no escape for General Lee." Grant called for his horse, and rode through the night to Sheridan and Meade. And on the next day at Sailor's Creek the clouds sank lower round Lee. Again Grant's actions reveal his thoughts. On Friday, April 7, he wrote Lee: "The last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance. I regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of the army of Northern Virginia." The unsuccessful battles, the dwindling regiments, the starvation, the retreat cut off,-all this was plainly the |