him over. He then thought the game was up, unless he could make his dogs, which were scouring the forest around, hear him. He called loud. and sharp after them, and soon one-a young hound-sprung into view: but no sooner did he see the condition of his master than he turned in affright, and, with his tail between his legs, fled into the woods. But at this critical moment the other hound burst with a shrill, savage cry, and a wild bound, upon the struggling group. Sinking his teeth to the jawbone in the wolf, he tore her fiercely from his master. Turning to grapple with this new foe, she gave Cheney opportunity to gather himself up and fight to better advantage. At length, by a well-directed blow, he crushed in the skull, which finished the work. After this he got his pistol made.

You know that a bear always sleeps through the winter. Curled up in a cavern, or under a fallen tree, in some warm place, he composes himself to rest, and, Rip Van Winkle-like, snoozes away the season. True, he is somewhat thin when he thaws out in the spring, and looks voracious about the jaws, making it rather dangerous to come in contact with him. Cheney told me that one day, while hunting on snow-shoes, he suddenly broke through the crust, and came upon a bear taking his winter's nap. The spot this fellow had chosen was the cavity made by the roots of an upturned tree. It was a warm, snug place; and the snow, having fallen several feet deep over him, protected him from frosts and winds. The unceremonious thrust of Cheney's leg against his carcass roused up Bruin, and, with a growl that made the hunter withdraw his foot somewhat hastily, he leaped forth on the snow. Cheney had just given his knife to his companion, who had gone to the other side of the mountain to meet him farther on, and hence had nothing but his pistol to defend himself with. He had barely time to get ready before the huge creature was close upon him. Unterrified, however, he took deliberate aim right between the fellow's eyes, and pulled the trigger; but the cap exploded without discharging the pistol. He had no time to put on another cap; so, seizing his pistol by the muzzle, he aimed a tremendous blow at the creature's head. But the bear caught it on his paw with a cuff that sent it ten yards from Cheney's hand, and the next moment was rolling over Cheney himself in the snow. His knife being gone, it became simply a contest of physical strength, and in hugging and wrestling the bear evidently had the advantage, and the hunter's life seemed not worth asking for. But, just then, his dog came up, and seizing the animal from behind, made him loosen his hold and turn and defend himself. Cheney then sprang to his feet, and began to look around for his pistol. By good luck he saw the breech just peeping out of the snow. Drawing it forth, and hastily putting on a fresh cap, and refastening his snow-shoes, which had become loosened in the struggle,

he made after the bear. When he and the dog closed, both fell, and began to roll, one over the other, down the side-hill, locked in the embrace of death. The bear, however, was too much for the dog, and, at length, shook him off, leaving the latter dreadfully lacerated-"torn," as Cheney said, "all to pieces." "But," he added, "I never saw such pluck in a dog before. As soon as he found I was ready for a fight he was furious, bleeding as he was, to be after the bear. I told him we would have the rascal, if we died for it; and away he jumped, leaving his blood on the snow as he went. 'Hold on,' said I, and he held on till I came up. I took aim at his head, meaning to put the ball in the centre of his brain; but it struck below, and only tore his jaw to pieces. I loaded up again, and fired, but did not kill him, though the ball went through his head. The third time I fetched him; and he was a bouncer, I tell you." "But the dog, Cheney," said I: "what became of the poor, noble dog?" "Oh, he was dreadfully mangled. I took him up, and carried him home, and nursed him. He got well, but was never good for much afterwards; that fight broke him down."

He was once hunting alone by a little lake, when his dogs brought a noble buck into the water. Cocking his gun, and laying it in the bottom of the boat, he pulled after the deer, which was swimming boldly for his life. In the eagerness of pursuit, he hit his rifle either with his paddle or foot, when it went off, sending the ball directly through one of his ankles. He stopped, and looking at his benumbed limb, saw where the bullet had come out of his boot. The first thought was to return to the shore; "the next was," said he, "I may need that venison before I get out of these woods"; so, without waiting to examine the wound, he pulled on after the deer. Coming up with him, he beat him to death with his paddles, and, pulling him into the boat, rowed ashore. Cutting off his boot, he found his leg was badly mangled and useless. Bandaging it up, however, as well as he could, he cut a couple of crotched sticks for crutches, and with these walked fourteen miles to the nearest clearing. There he got help, and was carried slowly out of the woods. How a border life sharpens a man's wits. Especially in an emergency does he show to what strict discipline he has subjected his mind. His resources are almost exhaustless, and his presence of mind equal to that of one who has been in a hundred battles. Wounded, perhaps mortally, it nevertheless flashed on this hunter's thoughts, that he might be so crippled that he could not stir for days and weeks, but starve to deati there in the woods. "I may need that venison before I get out," said he; and so, with a mangled bleeding limb, he pursued and killed a deer, on which he might feed in the last extremity.

Epes Sargent.

BORN in Gloucester, Mass., 1813. DIED in Boston, Mass., 1880.

A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE.

[Harper's Cyclopædia of British and American Poetry. Edited by Epes Sargent. 1882.]

THO

HOU sayest, my friend, 'twould strike thee with dismay
To be assured that life would not end here;

Since utter death is less a thing to fear

In thy esteem than life in clearer day:

For life, continuous life, thou wouldst not pray;

And even reunion with the loved and near
Is not to thee a prospect that could cheer,
Or shed a glory on thy earthward way.

O power of thought perverse and morbid mood,
Conspiring thus to numb and blind the heart!
The universe gives back what we impart,-
As we elect, gives poison or pure food:
Mock-silence-the soul's whisper,-and Despair
Becomes to man than Hope itself more fair!

IT

John Sullivan Dwight.

BORN in Boston, Mass., 1813.

A DEFINITION OF MUSIC.

[The Intellectual Influence of Music. The Atlantic Monthly. `1870.]

T by no means covers the whole significance of music to call it the language of feeling; though, rightly understood, there might not be a higher definition. The poet truly sings,

"Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought."

But then he means the feeling which is "deep," and which relates us to the highest universal ends of being. Now, musical art, to be sure, does not describe objects, nor narrate histories, nor unfold cosmogonies and systems of philosophy and ethics, as some imaginative expounders of "Ninth Symphonies" would have us think. It does not express ideas, except of the kind technically known as musical ideas, pregnant little germs of melody, capable of logical development in a way analogous to the development of thoughts. And here, by way of caution, lest we be misunderstood in claiming that music is intellectual and has meaning, we would take occasion once for all to wash our hands of all responsi bility for that kind of musical interpretation which seeks to trace a story, a mythology, a thread of doctrine, throughout such or such a symphony, sonata, or "tone-poem"; and to express our conviction that music stoops from its proper, higher mission when it undertakes to describe scenes or imitate sounds in nature; and that it is never less intellectual, or more regardless of its own chaste integrity, than when it takes the form of "programme music," not trusting its own proper element, but borrowing chances of effect ab extra, and dividing the attention as if to cover its own insufficiency. Music must be sufficient in itself. The highest kind of music is pure music, that which lives and moves in purely musical ideas. Yet nothing is more natural than to try

to describe the effect upon you of a piece of music by calling up such images, associations, trains of thought, analogous effects in other spheres, as it may have awakened in your mind. You clutch at all these feeble helps in your enthusiastic, vain endeavors to describe the witching thing. This you may do legitimately, so long as you profess no more, and do not try to reverse the order, and make it appear that the music waз written to describe your thought. For here we find the true relation between thought and feeling in the sphere of music. Music in one sense describes, by awakening the feelings with which objects, thoughts, experiences, are inevitably associated; every such feeling may of course awaken many images and many memories in many minds; but there will be, at least, some vague analogy, affinity between them; so that music, even of the most pure and abstract sort (such as a stringed quartette by Mozart), is always heard to best advantage on the fit occasion. If it be wedded to words, as in a song, an opera, an oratorio, these in a measure must determine its expression, though it bring out new meanings such as the words alone could hardly have conveyed. Yet take the words away, the music could not be translated into them, would not enable you to find them, though it would put you in a state of mind. and feeling in which those or kindred thoughts and words might offer themselves most aptly.

This brings us to the heart of the matter. Leaving objections, we come back to positive statement. The highest definition of music, its full significance and worth, is to be sought mainly in the highest kind of music; that is to say, pure music, dealing in purely musical ideas, conscious of no outward purpose, content in its own world, preoccupied with its own peculiar mission, which is too divine to need the justification of any end to serve. This, indeed, is the first principle of truth in art of any kind.

In this we find the intellectuality of music. For music, in this view, is the most abstract, pure embodiment and type of universal law and movement. It is a key to the divine method throughout all the ordered distribution of the worlds of matter and of spirit. It is the most fluid, free expression of form, in the becoming (what the Germans call das Werden); form developing according to intrinsic and divine necessity. There is nothing arbitrary in music; no acquiring any power in it except by patient, reverent study and mastering of divine proportions and the eternal laws of fitness. Goethe says: "The worth of art appears most eminent in music, since it requires no material, no subject-matter, whose effect must be deducted; it is wholly form and power, and it raises and ennobles whatever it expresses."

Hence the study of the laws of fugue and counterpoint, the subtile art of what is called the polyphonic interweaving of the parts in harmony, the