could reach; but rare incense on her altars, having a grateful scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward to the seventh heaven of Fame.

Once or twice, when there was a pause, Martin asked such questions as naturally occurred to him, being a stranger, about the national poets, the theater, literature, and the arts. But the information which these gentlemen were in a condition to give him on such topics did not extend beyond the effusions of such master spirits of the time as Colonel Diver, Mr. Jefferson Brick, and others, renowned, as it appeared, for excellence in the achievement of a peculiar style of broadside essay called

"We are a busy people, sir," said one of the captains, who was from the West, "and have no time for reading mere notions. We don't mind 'em if they come to us in newspapers along with almighty strong stuff of another sort, but darn your books."

Here the general, who appeared to grow quite faint at the bare thought of reading anything which was neither mercantile nor political, and was not in a newspaper, inquired "if any gentleman would drink some?" Most of the company, considering this a very choice and seasonable idea, lounged out, one by one, to the barroom in the next block. Thence they probably went to their stores and counting houses; thence to the barroom again, to talk once more of dollars, and enlarge their minds with the perusal and discussion of screamers; and thence each man to snore in the bosom of his own family.

"Which would seem," said Martin, pursuing the current of his own thoughts, "to be the principal recreation they enjoy in common." With that, he fell a musing again on dollars, demagogues, and barrooms, debating within himself whether busy people of this class were really as busy as they claimed to be,, or only had an inaptitude for social and domestic pleasure.

It was a difficult question to solve; and the mere fact of its being strongly presented to his mind by all that he had seen and heard, was not encouraging. He sat down at the deserted board, and becoming more and more despondent, as he thought of all the uncertainties and difficulties of his precarious situation, sighed heavily.

Now, there had been at the dinner table a middle-aged man with a dark eye and a sunburnt face, who had attracted Martin's attention by having something very engaging and honest

in the expression of his features; but of whom he could learn nothing from either of his neighbors, who seemed to consider him quite beneath their notice. He had taken no part in the conversation round the stove, nor had he gone forth with the rest; and now, when he heard Martin sigh for the third or fourth time, he interposed with some casual remark, as if he desired, without obtruding himself upon a stranger's notice, to engage him in cheerful conversation if he could. His motive was so obvious, and yet so delicately expressed, that Martin felt really grateful to him, and showed him so, in the manner of his reply.

"I will not ask you," said this gentleman with a smile, as he rose and moved towards him, "how you like my country, for I can quite anticipate your feeling on that point. But, as I am an American, and consequently bound to begin with a question, I'll ask you how you like the colonel?"

"You are so very frank," returned Martin, "that I have no hesitation in saying I don't like him at all. Though I must add that I am beholden to him for his civility in bringing me here and arranging for my stay, on pretty reasonable terms, by the way," he added-remembering that the colonel had whispered him to that effect, before going out.

"Not much beholden," said the stranger, dryly. "The colonel occasionally boards packet ships, I have heard, to glean the latest information for his journal; and he occasionally brings strangers to board here, I believe, with a view to the little percentage which attaches to those good offices; and which the hostess deducts from his weekly bill. I don't offend you, I hope?" he added, seeing that Martin reddened.

66

My dear sir," returned Martin, as they shook hands, "how is this possible! to tell you the truth, I-am-——”

am·

"Yes?" said the gentleman, sitting down beside him.

"I am rather at a loss, since I must speak plainly," said Martin, getting the better of his hesitation, "to know how this colonel escapes being beaten."

"Well, he has been beaten once or twice," remarked the gentleman, quietly. "He is one of a class of men, in whom our own Franklin, so long ago as ten years before the close of the last century, foresaw our danger and disgrace. Perhaps you don't know that Franklin, in very severe terms, published his opinion that those who were slandered by such fellows as this colonel, having no sufficient remedy in the administration of

this country's laws or in the decent and right-minded feeling of its people, were justified in retorting on such public nuisances by means of a stout cudgel?"

"I was not aware of that," said Martin, "but I am very glad to know it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially" here he hesitated again.

"Go on," said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in Martin's throat.

"Especially," pursued Martin, "as I can already understand that it may have required great courage, even in his time, to write freely on any question which was not a party one in this free country."

"Some courage, no doubt," returned his new friend. you think it would require any to do so, now?"

tin.

"Do

"Indeed I think it would; and not a little," said Mar

"You are right. So very right, that I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us to-morrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. In some cases I could name to you, where a native writer has ventured on the most harmless and good-humored illustrations of our vices or defects, it has been found necessary to announce that in a second edition the passage has been expunged, or altered, or explained away, or patched into praise.'

"And how has this been brought about?" asked Martin, in dismay.

"Think of what you have seen and heard to-day, beginning with the colonel," said his friend, "and ask yourself. How they came about, is another question. Heaven forbid that they should be samples of the intelligence and virtue of America, but they come uppermost, and in great numbers, and too often represent it. Will you walk?"

There was a cordial candor in his manner, and an engaging confidence that it would not be abused; a manly bearing on his own part, and a simple reliance on the manly faith of a stranger, which Martin had never seen before. He linked his

arm readily in that of the American gentleman, and they walked out together.

It was perhaps to men like this, his new companion, that a traveler of honored name, who trod those shores now nearly forty years ago, and woke upon that soil, as many have done since, to blots and stains upon its high pretensions, which in the brightness of his distant dreams were lost to view, appealed in these words: :

Oh but for such, Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quickened without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,

Her fruits would fall before her spring were o'er!

AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON.1

BY SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN.

A VISIT TO OXFORD.

I HAD heard so much from English sources of the precocity and forwardness of very young people in America, that I was quite prepared to find a commendably opposite state of things in England, and I must say that, generally speaking, I was not disappointed. The extent to which young ladies and gentlemen under twenty-two can sit up straight and refrain from conversation here, impressed me as much as anything I have seen in society. I have not observed any of this shyness in married ladies or older gentlemen; and that struck me oddly, too, for in America it is only with advancing years that we become conscious of our manners.

I have no doubt that, if the Eights had been in America where they would probably be called the Octoplets — and Mr. Sanders Horton had been a Harvard Sophomore, and Lord Symonds' father had made his fortune out of a patent shoe lace tag, and we had all been enjoying ourselves over there, we might have noticed a difference both in the appearance and the behavior of these young gentlemen. They would certainly have been older for their years, and more elaborately dressed. Their complexions would probably not have been so fresh, nor their shoulders so broad, and the penciling on Mr. Horton's upper lip, and the delicate, fair marking on Lord Symonds',

1 Copyright, 1892, by D. Appleton & Co.

would assuredly have deepened into a mustache. Their manners would not have been so negatively good as they were in Oxford, where they struck me as expressing an ideal, above all things, to avoid doing those things which they ought not to do. Their politeness would have been more effusive, and not the least bit nervous; though I hope neither Mr. Horton nor Lord Symonds will mind my implying that in Oxford they were nervous. People can't possibly help the way they have been brought up, and to me our host's nervousness was interesting, like his English accent, and the scout and the quad. Personally, I liked the feeling of superinducing bashfulness in two nice boys like those-it was novel and amusing-though I have no doubt they were much more afraid of Lady Torquilin than of me. I never saw a boy, however, from twelve to twenty-three-which strikes me as the span of boyhood in England that was not Lady Torquilin's attached slave after twenty minutes' conversation with her. She did not humor them, or flatter them, or talk to them upon their particular subjects; she was simply what they called "jolly" to them, and their appreciation was always prompt and lively. Lady Torquilin got on splendidly with both Mr. Sanders Horton and Lord Symonds. The only reason why Mr. Horton's lunch was not an unqualifiedly brilliant success was that, whenever she talked to one of our hosts, the other one was left for me to talk to, which was usually distressing for both of us.

It was an extremely nice lunch, served with anxious deference by the respectable-looking little man who had come upstairs, and nervously commanded by Mr. Horton at one end with the cold joint, and Lord Symonds at the other with the fowl. It began, I remember, with bouillon. Lady Torquilin partook of bouillon, so did I; but the respectable scout did not even offer it to the young gentlemen. I caught a rapid, inquiring glance from Lady Torquilin. Could it be that there was not bouillon enough? The thought checked any utterance upon the subject, and we finished our soup with careful indifference, while Lord Symonds covered the awkwardness of the situation by explaining to me demonstratively the nature of a Bump. I did not understand Bumps then, nor did I succeed during the course of the afternoon in picking up enough infor mation to write intelligently about them. But this was because Lord Symonds had no bouillon. Under the circumstances, it was impossible for me to put my mind to it.