SCENE FROM SUBURBAN SKETCHES.

On that loveliest autumn morning, the swollen tide had spread over all the russet levels, and gleamed in the sunlight a mile away. As the contributor moved onward down the street, luminous on either hand with crimsoning and yellowing maples, he was so filled with the tender serenity of the scene, as not to be troubled by the spectacle of small Irish houses standing miserably about on the flats ankle deep, as it were, in little pools of the tide, or to be aware, at first, of a strange stir of people upon the streets: a fluttering to and fro and lively encounter and separation of groups of bareheaded women, a flying of children through the broken fences of the neighborhood, and across the vacant lots on which the insulted sign-boards forbade them to trespass; a sluggish movement of men through all, and a pause of different vehicles along the side-walks. When a sense of these facts had penetrated his enjoyment, he asked a matron whose snowy arms, freshly taken from the washtub, were folded across a mighty chest, "What is the matter?

"A girl drowned herself, sir-r-r, over there on the flats, last Saturday, and they're looking for her."

"It was the best thing she could do," said another matron grimly.

Upon this answer that literary soul fell at once to patching himself up a romantic story for the suicide, after the pitiful fashion of this fictionridden age, when we must relate everything we see to something we have read. He was the less to blame for it, because he could not help it; but certainly he is not to be praised for his associations with the tragic fact brought to his notice. Nothing could have been more trite or obvious, and he felt his intellectual poverty so keenly that he might almost have believed his discomfort a sympathy for the girl who had drowned herself last Saturday. But of course, this could not be, for he had but lately been thinking what a very tiresome figure to the imagination the Fallen Woman had become. As a fact of Christian civilization, she was a spectacle to wring one's heart, he owned; but he wished she were well out of the romances, and it really seemed a fatality that she should be the principal personage of this little scene. preparation for it, whatever it was to be, was so deliberate, and the reality had so slight relation to the French roofs and modern improvements of the comfortable Charlesbridge which he knew, that he could not consider himself other than as a spectator awaiting some entertainment, with a faint inclination to be critical.

The

In the meantime there passed through the motley crowd, not so much a cry as a sensation of They've found her, they 've found her!" and then the one terrible picturesque fact, "She was standing upright!

Upon this there was a wilder and wilder clamor among the people, dropping by degrees and almost dying away, before a flight of boys came down the street with the tidings, " They are bringing her bringing her in a wagon."

thing? To be sure he could imagine the Tovers, and how they first met, and where, and who he was that was doomed to work her shame and death; but here his fancy came upon something coarse and common: a man of her own race and grade, handsome after that manner of beauty which is so much more hateful than ugliness is; or, worse still, another kind of man whose deceit must have been subtler and wickeder; but whatever the person, a presence defiant of sympathy or even interest, and simply horrible. Then there were the details of the affair, in a great degree common to all love affairs, and not varying so widely in any condition of life; for the passion which is so rich and infinite to those within its charm, is apt to seem a little tedious and monotonous in its character, and poor in resources to the cold looker-on.

Then, finally, there was the crazy purpose and its fulfilment: the headlong plunge from bank or bridge; the eddy, and the bubbles on the current that calmed itself above the suicide; the tide that rose and stretched itself abroad in the sunshine, carrying hither and thither the burden with which it knew not what to do; the arrest, as by some ghastly caprice of fate, of the dead girl, in that upright posture, in which she should meet the quest for her, as it were defiantly.

And now they were bringing her in a wagon. Involuntarily all stood aside, and waited till the funeral car, which they saw, should come up toward them through the long vista of the mapleshaded street, a noiseless riot stirring the legs and arms of the boys into frantic demonstration, while the women remained quiet with arms folded or akimbo. Before and behind the wagon, driven slowly, went a guard of ragged urchins, while on the raised seat above sat two Americans, unperturbed by anything, and concerned merely with the business of the affair.

The vehicle was a grocer's cart which had perhaps been pressed into the service; and inevitably the contributor thought of Zenobia, and of Miles Coverdale's belief that if she could have foreboded all the post-mortem ugliness and grotesqueness of suicide, she never would have drowned herself. This girl, too, had doubtless had her own ideas of the effect that her death was to make, her conviction that it was to wring one heart, at least, and to strike awe and pity to every other; and her woman's soul must have been shocked from death could she have known in what a ghastly comedy the body she put off was to play a part.

In the bottom of the cart lay something long and straight and terrible, covered with a red shawl that drooped over the end of the wagon; and on this thing were piled the baskets in which the grocers had delivered their orders for sugar and flour, and coffee and tea. As the cart jolted through their lines, the boys could no longer be restrained; they broke out with wild yells, and danced madly about it, while the red shawl hanging from the rigid feet nodded to their frantic mirth; and the sun dropped its light through the maples and shone bright upon the flooded flats.

** WILLIAM WINTER,

was ten years old, when his education was resumed at Cambridge, and he graduated at its High School at the age of sixteen. In 1854, he published his first volume at Boston, entitled The Convent, and Other Poems (16mo., pp. 143); and four years later, The Queen's Domain, and Other Poems (12mo., pp. 144), both of which books are now out of print and inaccessible. The former was dedicated to Mr. H. W. Longfellow, an early and helpful friend.

Mr. Winter began the study of law in 1852, and was graduated from the law school at Harvard College. He was admitted to the bar at Boston, but never practiced, choosing rather to lecture to lyceums for a season. He removed to New York city in the autumn of 1859, and has ever since been connected with its city press, a faithful student and hard worker in his specialties. He entered on the staff of the Saturday Press, as literary critic, in January, 1860, and was married the December following to Miss Campbell, a young lady of Scottish birth. From December 1861, to June 1866, he was dramatic critic of the New York Albion, under the pen-name of "Mercutio," as well as book reviewer. He was connected with the New York Weekly Review, as managing editor and critic, from July 1865 to June 1871. Vanity Fair, The Round Table, The Atlantic and other magazines have contained many of his contributions, while he has been attached to the Tribune as dramatic critic from 1865 to the present time. Two volumes of the poems of his friend, the late George Arnold, were edited by him in 1866-7. His residence, since April, 1871, has been on Fort Hill, at New Brighton, Staten Island.

His third volume of poems, My Witness; A Book of Verse (pp. 128), was published by J. R. Osgood & Co., in September, 1871; and it was followed three months later by the Life of Edwin Booth. The former was dedicated "To my Wife: the inspiration of whatever is gentle and cheerful in the spirit of this book." It contained The World's Martyr, an allegory in varying metres, spoken before the literary societies of Brown University; a series of choice imaginative poems on varying phases of Love-its Ideal, Choice, Question, Triumph, and Queen; a delicately outlined picture of the war, After All; a glowing, sensuous dream of Beauty, and a grouping of minor pieces under the title of Spray.

**LOVE'S IDEA.

Her young face is good and fair,
Lily-white and rosy-red;
And the brown and silken hair
Hovers, mist-like, round her head.

And her voice is soft and low,

Clear as music and as sweet; Hearing it, you hardly know

Where the sound and silence meet.

All the magic who can tell

Of her laughter and her sighs? Or what heavenly meanings dwell In her kind, confiding eyes? Pretty lips, as rubies bright,

Scarcely hide the tiny pearls; Little wandering stars of light Love to nestle in her curls.

All her ways are winning ways,

Full of tenderness and grace; And a witching sweetness plays Fondly o'er her gentle face. True and pure her soul within, — Breathing a celestial air!

Evil and the shame of sin

Could not dwell one moment there. Is it but a vision, this?

Fond creation of the brain ? Phantom of a fancied bliss?

Type of beauty void and vain? No! the tides of being roll

Toward a heaven that's yet to be, Where this idol of my soul

Waits and longs for love and me!

**BEAUTY.

I had a dream, one glorious summer night,
In the rich bosom of imperial June,
Languid I lay, upon an odorous couch,
Golden with amber, festooned wildly o'er
With crimson roses, and the longing stars
Wept tears of love upon their clustered leaves.
Above me soared the azure vault of heaven,
Whereby, perchance, the sea-born Venus found
Vast and majestic; cinctured with that path
Her way to higher spheres; that path which

seems

A coronet of silver, gemmed with stars,
And bound upon the forehead of young night.
There, as I lay, the musical south-wind
Shook all the roses into murmurous life,
And poured their fragrance o'er me in a shower
Of crimson mist; and softly, through the mist,
Came a low, sweet, enchanting melody,
A far-off echo from a land of dreams,
Which with delicious languor filled the air,
And steeped in bliss the senses and the soul.
Then rose a shape, a dim and ghostly shape,
Whereto no feature was, nor settled form,
A shadowy splendor, seeming as it came
A pearly summer cloud shot through and through
With faintest rays of sunset; yet within
A spirit dwelt; and, floating from within,
A murmur trembled sweetly into words:
I am the ghost of a most lovely dream,
Which haunted, in old days, a poet's mind.
And long he sought for, wept, and prayed for me;
And searched through all the chambers of his
soul,

And searched the secret places of the earth,
The lonely forest and the lonely shore,
And listened to the voices of the sea,
What time the stars shone out, and midnight cold
Slept on the dark waves whispering at his feet;
And sought the mystery in a human form,
Amid the baunts of men, and found it not;
And looked in woman's fond, bewildering eyes,
And mirrored there his own, and saw no sign:
But only in his sleep I came to him,
And gave him fitful glimpses of my face,
Whereof he after sang in sweetest words;
Then died, and came to me. But evermore,
Through lonely days and wakeful, haunted nights,
A life of star-lit gloom, do poets seek
To snatch the mystic veil that covers me,
And evermore they grasp the empty air.
For only in their dreams I come to them,
And give them fitful glimpses of my face,
And lull them, siren-like, with words of hope
That promise, some time, to their ravished eyes,

Beauty, the secret of the universe,

God's thought, that gives the soul eternal peace.
Then the voice ceased, and only on my ears
The shaken roses murmured, and the wind.

**AFTER ALL.

The apples are ripe in the orchard,
The work of the reaper is done,
And the golden woodlands redden
In the blood of the dying sun.
At the cottage door the grandsire
Sits, pale, in his easy-chair,
While a gentle wind of twilight
Plays with his silver hair.

;

A woman is kneeling beside him
A fair young head is prest,
In the first wild passion of sorrow,
Against his aged breast.

And far from over the distance
The faltering echoes come,

Of the flying blast of trumpet
And the rattling roll of drum.
Then the grandsire speaks, in a whisper,
"The end no man can see;
But we give him to his country.
And we give our prayers to Thee.".

The violets star the meadows,

The rose-buds fringe the door,

And over the grassy orchard

The pink-white blossoms pour.

But the grandsire's chair is empty,
The cottage is dark and still,
There's a nameless grave on the battle-field,
And a new one under the hill.

And a pallid, tearless woman

By the cold hearth sits, alone; And the old clock in the corner Ticks on with a steady drone.

** MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE, A LADY novelist whose peculiar mission is the depiction of home-life, its every-day joys, sorrows, and labors, has published all her works under the nom de plume of "Marion Harland.” She is the daughter of Samuel P. Hawes, a native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, who subsequently became a merchant in Virginia; and

Marion Harland

she was born in Amelia county of that State. On her mother's side she is directly descended from the brother of the notable Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas memory. The old Smith coat of arms is still retained in the family. Her father was of old Puritan stock, and a near relative of the late President Franklin Pierce. The ancestral home built in 1630, ten years after the landing of the Pilgrims, is still standing on Dorchester Heights, and is now occupied by a branch of the family. "From her Puritan blood," states a late issue of a New Jersey paper, "Marion Harland' received her rich mental endowments and her remarkable energy of character. Born and reared amid the

'peculiar institutions' of the Old Dominion, in a locality made famous by great historical incidents, and associating with the 'First Families,' while she acquired perhaps a more intimate knowledge of the 'negro lingo' than any other American authoress, and became familiar with the traditionary lore of that locality celebrated for its illustrious men, her Puritan blood asserted itself in her uniform hatred of slavery. We may add that when the rebellion broke out, though the home of her childhood and a considerable portion of her property were within the lines of the Confederacy, no woman in the country was more devotedly loyal to the Union.”

"Marion Harland began to write for a weekly city journal at the age of fourteen; and two years later she contributed a sketch to Godey's Lady's Book, entitled, "Marrying through Prudential Motives." The latter had a checkered and wonderful career. It was printed in England, translated for a French journal retranslated for an English magazine, and then reproduced in this country as an English tale. Her first book, Alone; A Tale of Southern Life and Manners, was published at Richmond in 1854. It was followed by The Hidden Path, 1855; Moss Side, 1857; Miriam; Nemesis, 1860; Husks, 1863; Husbands and Homes, a series of magazine stories, 1865; Sunnybank, 1867; The Christmas Holly, 1867; Ruby's Husband, 1868; Phemie's Temptation, 1869; At Last, 1870; Helen Gardner's Wedding-Day, 1870; The Empty Heart, 1871, and Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery, 1871.

In 1856 she was married to the Rev. E. P. Terhune, then pastor of a congregation in Virginia. Three years later, her husband was called to the First Reformed Church, at Newark, New Jersey; and they have since resided in that city. An intimate friend pays this tribute to her estimable literary and social life:

Marion Harland bears testimony on almost every page of her works to a thorough womanliness. The blue-stocking' slander finds in her a notable refutation. A true mother, assuming in her person the education of her children; the wife of a clergyman, sharing heartily with him in all the requirements of an extensive parish; at the head of worthy public charities, and at the same time the model housekeeper, so experienced as to furnish a guide-book in domestic economy to her fellow-women, her example presents a striking contradiction to the adage jack of all trades,' and proves the capabilities of a fully trained mind for excellence in many departments. Her literary works and success are such as might be predicated of this quality of nature. Joined to a marvellously keen power of analysis of character and motive, she displays upon every page a full, glorious humanity; such sympathy with her kind in the aims and struggles of the lowliest, who yet unconsciously dignify human nature by battling with evil and reaching after good; such indignant compassion for the oppressed, tenderness for the weak, and lofty contempt for shams and littleness of whatever kind; such hopeful faith in her fellows, such trust in the guidance of a Higher Power, as must stir the hearts of her readers. That Marion Harland has learned the secret of success in her chosen profession, is demonstrated by the immense sale of

her works, at home and broad. Alone, her first book, although published nearly twenty years ago, still sells steadily, as do all of the ten volumes she has written since. In fact, they have quietly taken their place as standards in family libraries, and new editions go to press every month."

** D. G. BRINTON.

DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON, a writer on medical science and on Indian antiquities, is a native of Chester county, Pennsylvania. Ile was born May 13, 1837, and was educated in early life chiefly by private tutors. He entered Yale College at the age of seventeen, and was graduated in 1858. The following year he commenced the study of medicine at Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia. After he received his diploma, in 1860, he went abroad to continue his professional and general studies in Germany and France. At the outbreak of the civil war, he returned to this country, and shortly afterward entered the army on the medical staff, as Surgeon U. S. Volunteers. He served in the field as Medical Director of the Eleventh Army Corps during 1863-4, and was then assigned on various hospital duties till he returned to his native State at the close of the war.

MG Brinin

Dr. Brinton published, in 1859, Notes on the Floridian Peninsula, its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities, the result of a winter's sojourn in that region. This was followed in 1868 by The Myths of the New World: an Essay on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America. The author, who regards the religious sense as almost the only faculty peculiar to man, and the key to his origin and destiny, thus outlines the field of his research: "What are man's earliest ideas of a soul and a God, and of his own origin and destiny? Why do we find certain myths, such as of a creation, a flood, an after-world; certain symbols, as the bird, the serpent, the cross; certain numbers, as the three, the four, the seven-intimately associated with these ideas by every race? What are the laws of growth of natural religions? How do they acquire such an influence, and is this influence for good or evil? Such are some of the universally interesting questions which I attempt to solve by an analysis of the simple faiths of a savage race." This work received the endorsement of such authorities as the North American Review and The Nation at home, with that of Professor Steinthal and other able critics in Europe. In 1872, he prepared A Guide-Book of Florida and the South.

Dr. Brinton is one of the authors of the Eclectic Series of Geographies, and has made a number of contributions to medical literature. Since 1868, he has edited the Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia, the Half-Yearly Compendium of Medical Science, etc.

In linguistic subjects, Dr. Brinton has given especial attention to the aboriginal tongues of

America. Under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society, he edited in 1870 the Rev. Mr. Byington's Grammar of the Choctaw Language; and published: Contributions to a Grammar of the Muskokee Language, 1870; The Natural Legends of the Chahta-Muskokee Tribes; The Ancient Phonetic Alphabet of Yucatan; The Affinities of the Natchez Language; and The Arawack Language of Guiana in its Linguistic and Ethnological Relations, 1871.

** CHARLES HENRY HART,

THE present historiographer of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, was born in that city February 4, 1847. He received a classical and scientific education, and at the age of eighteen commenced the study of the law in the office of the Hon. Samuel H. Perkins. He was admitted to the bar in 1868, and in the year following he received the degree of Bachelor of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania.

Early in life Mr. Hart showed evidences of a literary turn of mind. His first noticeable article, written before his sixteenth year, was a memoir of Margaret of Anjou. It was the precursor of many contributions to the interesting and important department of biography. In December, 1865, Mr. Hart was elected corresponding secretary of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, and three years later its historiographer. It was in connection with this association, which, instituted in 1858, was the first organization for the furtherance of Numismatic science in America, that most of his contributions to literature have been made. In its published volume of Proceedings from May 4, 1865, to December 31, 1866, are contained his biographical notices of Lewis Cass, particularly reviewing his literary life; of the eloquent and gifted Francis Lister Hawks, D. D.; and of Robert W. Gibbes, M. D., of South Carolina, all deceased members of the Society; besides two papers, subsequently reprinted as pamphlets: "Remarks on Tabasco, Mexico, occasioned by the reported discovery of remains of ancient cities being found in that locality;" and "Historical Sketch of the National Medals issued pursuant to Resolutions of Congress 17761815." In the latter, he called the attention of the Society to the unmeaning devices on our coinage and their utter worthlessness as monuments of history, and urged that steps be taken for their correction, "so that our coinage may become the repository of the country's history."

To the New England Historical and Genealogical Register for July, 1868, Mr. Hart contributed a Memoir of William Hickling Prescott, which was republished as a pamphlet.

In 1865, upon the death of President Lincoln, when the press throughout the country was groaning under the effusions of the pulpit and the rostrum, called forth by the mournful occasion, Mr. Hart conceived the idea of preparing a bibliographical work on the subject. This was completed, and published by Joel Munsell of Albany, the Pickering of America, in 1870, under the title of Bibliographia Lincolniana : an Account of the Publications occasioned by the Death of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President

of the United States; With Notes and an Introduction. This compact volume is a monument to its author's industry, as twelve hundred letters were written and about eight hundred letters and pamphlets received in its preparation. Ile had earned the right to quote the quaint words of Anthony à Wood in the preface to his History of Oxford: "A painfull work it is, I'll assure you, and more than difficult, wherein what toyle hath been taken as no man thinketh so no man believeth, lest he hath made the triall." The introduction was subsequently reprinted as a Biographical Sketch of Mr. Lincoln, and was received with favor by such authorities as his old law partner, Hon. William H. Herndon of Springfield, Illinois; and by Charles Francis Adams, Richard H. Dana, Jr.,

etc.

In May, 1870, Mr. Hart delivered a Discourse on the Life and Services of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, LL. D., which was printed in New York by special request. In the same year appeared biographical sketches of Hon. William Willis of Portland, Maine, and Judge Richard Stockton Field, of New Jersey. His last publication was a Memoir of George Ticknor, the Historian of Spanish Literature, who died in Boston, January 26, 1871, in his eighty-first year. This work has been welcomed by competent authorities.

Mr. Hart has prepared a number of biographical sketches, which remain in manuscript, and has contributed communications on various subjects to periodicals and the publications of learned societies. These articles and his other fugitive writings he contemplates collecting into a volume. He resides in Philadelphia, engaged in the active practice of the law; and in order to liquidate that debt which Coke says every lawyer owes to his profession, he has in preparation a Treatise on the Doctrine of Equitable Conversion, based upon the English work of Leigh and Dalzell, published nearly a-half century ago.

** WHITELAW REID,

A FACILE and enterprising journalist, who, at the age of thirty-five, attained the honor of succeeding his late chief, Horace Greeley, as Editor of the New York Tribune, was born at Xenia, Ohio, in 1837. His father, Robert Charlton Reid, an elder of the Cameronian Covenanters, emigrated from his birthplace in Fayette county, Kentucky, and became one of the founders of Xenia, which signifies hospitality. His mother came from a Scotch colony of Covenanters in Vermont.

Mr. Whitelaw Reid was prepared at the Xenia Academy to enter the Miami University, from which he graduated in 1856 with high honors, taking as the subject of his last address the "Noble Traitors" of the past, and especially referring to the contest of opinions then convulsing Kansas. He at once actively entered into the profession of his life, by assuming charge of the leading county paper, the Xenia News; and he conducted it with such ability as to be speedily called to the staff of the Cincinnati Gazette. His after career has been sketched in Harper's Weekly, from which we extract:

"He represented this journal in Columbus during a session of the legislature, and his letters from that city made his signature, Agate,' well known throughout the Northwest. His strong, racy English, his courage and energy, his fine faculties of observation, marked him as a model correspondent, and at the first outbreak of the war he was designated to accompany the Ohio troops in their march upon Western Virginia. He served as a volunteer aid upon the staff of General Morris at Carrick's Ford, where the rebel General Garnett was killed, and later in the campaign he was with Rosecrans in the same capacity at the affair of Carnifex Ferry. Returning to Cincinnati, he began to write editorials for the Gazette, and continued for some time in that employment, with occasional interruptions of field work when there was anything especially worth reporting. He was present at Fort Donelson, and went up the Tennessee River to Pittsburg Landing with our advance. He was the only correspondent on the field in that terrible scene of slaughter, to report which he rose from a sickbed. He passed the fearful night between the two days of battle among the private soldiers on the bluff, and slept the next night on the victorious

field in the tent of General Lew Wallace.

"With the prestige of his Western achievements in journalism, Mr. Reid came to Washington, and took charge of the Gazette Bureau in that city. He distinguished himself at once by his bold, incisive, and energetic correspondence. Among all the pens that made and unmade reputations in Newspaper Row in those stirring days, there was none more dreaded and more courted than his. From a certain ascetic habit of thought, which may, perhaps, be derived from his severe and conscientious ancestry, he was always more ready to criticise than to praise, always more eager in attack than in defence. Yet his attachments, if few, were very powerful, and there are not many finer passages of eulogy in our periodical literature than those in which he has expressed his admiration of his friends, such as Henry Winter Davis, and those eminent citizens of his own State, Chase and Wade and Schenck. The routine work of his Washington life was varied by occasional resumptions of the note-book and saddle. He saw and vividly reported the battle of Fredericksburg, the second Bull Run, and Gettysburg. His political services and his scholarly tastes were at once recognized by an appointment as librarian of the House of Representatives.

"When the war ended, Mr. Reid, whose health had become somewhat impaired by unremitting labor, and who was one of those who believed in the possibility of a genuine peace, and in the complete restoration of the South, gave evidence of his faith by removing to Louisiana, and engaging, in company with General Herron, of Iowa, in the culture of cotton. They planted 2500 acres of land; embracing three farms, and employing 300

The year of 1865 was a disastrous one for planters, but in spite of this the two young Northerners managed their affairs with such skill and

prudence that they closed their operations with

out loss." *

Mr. Reid returned to the old homestead near Xenia, where he spent two years in literary labors, and became a co-proprietor of the Cincinnati Gazette. At the invitation of Horace

Harper's Weekly, July 1, 1871, p. 597-8.