a lover whether the outcome of the duel were life or death.

I had a lively time during the Crusades and the border wars, but later on I lived a much easier life. Wars and tourneys and courts were all eschewed and I lived in pastoral seclusion, the cherished darling of a select family circle.

I had skin like satin, cheeks like roses, teeth like pearls. I was sometimes twins, generally sisters, often cousins. One of us was small, fragile and fair as a lily; the other tall, stately and dark, but both were good as we were beautiful. We dressed in white with coloured sashes and wore roses in our hair. With arms entwined and ringlets mingling, we worked at our samplars or made pictures of wool on canvas, of Rebecca at the well or Daniel in the lion's den. We loved our home and parents dear, we adored each other, we would die if we were parted, we would never, never marry. We both always fall in love with the same man at first sight and he with only one of us. He generally loved the fair one, but, fearing his passion was not returned, he would successfully woo the brunette, and the lily maid would bear herself like the Spartan lad until the wedding morn, when she would always be found dead in some lonely corner. Then the bride, grief-stricken, gat her to a nunnery, leaving the young groom to console himself as best he pleased.

Sometimes it fell out otherwise. The hero occasionally loved the dark sister, but she, knowing the fair one loved him too, would not listen to his love, but with biting, bitter words, and a breaking heart, would drive him from her. Then he hied him away to foreign parts, and the maidens sat and worked at their samplars, and groaned inwardly, "he cometh not." News of his death would come while gallantly defending a pass, single-handed, against five hundred rebels, four hundred and ninety-one of whom he invariably slew. The fair maid would weep, the dark one would make no moan, but a deadly sickness would strike her down. At her burial

a scarred and battered soldier would appear, sore wounded, but alive. He would be nursed back to health, and they would live happy ever after.

The worst thing about those days was the ease with which I died. Even the rumoured unfaithfulness of a lover sent me to bed, and finished me without the aid of a doctor. And when my lovers were off to the wars, and news was long in coming, I began to mourn them for dead, even before a foreign mail was due, and always died of a broken heart the day before they returned victorious and well.

Later on I rather liked myself—I was so very young and so very, very pretty, and my innocence no child of to-day I would credit. I always fell in love with the very wickedest old man I could find. He was generally titled and rich (which was a consideration even in those days), and had a masterful way with him; but after the excitement of killing a couple of wives and desolating other happy homes, it seemed surprising how easily, but desperately he fell in love with a little thing like me. Sometimes he proved to be not so black as he was painted, rather a tame old fellow, in fact, after marriage, but generally the curtain fell at the altar, which was much the safer way.

I am always sorry when authors make me fall in love with vicious men, and when they are ugly and disagreeable as well I have reason to protest. I also dislike being painted as a tomboy romp, an impudent homely harumscarum hoyden, to whom the finest gentleman of the realm, generally first seeing up a tree or riding bare back, loses his heart and loves for ever after. I am pretty credulous where I myself am concerned, but this is too unnatural even for romance.

I really enjoyed the time when I was always grandly beautiful, coldly proud and high born, the last of a noble race. My life was always a poem, though sometimes in blank verse, and nothing short of princes of royal blood were good enough for me, and there were none of those to suit. I sometimes so far forgot my pride as to love a wan

Down through the ages I have often been cruelly maligned and misrepresented, but never until these latter days have such unnatural stories been told of me. I can depend upon nothing, not even of having an end. All is a tangle, an uncertain, intangible, unutterable muddle, when half the time I am a married woman with a husband who does not count, and the other half a sort of nightmare creature, not human, and neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. I have changed as all things change here. I know it. I am not now as particular as I used to be about my complexion or my deportment. I am not so helpless. I am

THERE

not so fond of dress-I ride a wheel, I wear thick soles, I play golf, and sometimes football and hockey. I fence, I row, I paddle, I skate, I shoot, I ride. I somtimes talk slang, I am not afraid to go out alone, though, as in ages past, I prefer company. I know my own mind and I speak it. I don't like work, but I can earn my own living if necessary. I am not always pretty, and I am not often good, but when I love I want to marry, the fear of being tied does not appall me, and I want to bind my hero safe and fast. I am not like "The Woman Who Did," I am not and never was like "A Daughter of To-day," I am as unlike as possible the wavering and contradictory beloved of "Jude the Obscure; " I am not a bit like "Tess of the D'Urbervilles;" the story of "An African Farm" is not my story; "A Yellow Aster" I would put far from me;" "Dodo," "Trilby," "A Superflous Woman," "The Heavenly Twins," and many more make of me an abomination, and I pronounce them gross distortions of my person and character. I have done much that was evil, much that was foolish since the world was young; I have changed with changing fashions, but I am still a woman. I can still be recognized as a daughter of Eve. Eve liked Eden, but she liked Adam better, and when he was driven out in disgrace she followed him, and made Eden for him elsewhere. And woman, now as then, will leave all, do all, bear all for Love!

HERE are some words that indicate a positive genius on the part of man for language. Girl is one of these. You repeat the word slowly and it remains unique and inseparable, -girl, a perfectly inexplicable but quite satisfactory definition of what she is. The dialect-mongers call her "gal," but that means nothing. A gal may be conceived of as a slip-shod nonenity of roughened aspect, incap

Kate Westlake Yeigh.

able of disturbing the equilibrium of the universe. But girl, what may not a girl accomplish in time? A straight, avengeful, feminine possibility, with the real length of her hair still apparent, she yields no hostages to fortune on that account or on any other. She does not hesitate, consequently she is never lost so long as she does not desire to escape from her own peculiar position; occupying that, where no one

may conflict with her, she is immovable.

How much of its fitness the word owes to the magic combination of the letters "g" and "i" it is hard to say. Girl, gig, gimlet, there is a certain clearing of the decks for action and what one might call a sharpness of procedure about them all that induces a contemplative mind to withdraw to the position of a spectator and approve of the activity, but not to interfere with it.

No one can understand what being a girl means until one has relinquished the sensation. And then suddenly one is an on-looker for good,-a privileged spectator who occupies a seat in the front row and has the keenest appreciation of the play, but after all only a spectator. The quivers, thrills, resentments, delusions, enchantments, manias, are never quite possible again.

There is a vast difference between girl in the family and girl in the aggregate. In the family no one may criticise the girl, no one may analyse her. There she is, and there she will remain, the joy, the sensation, the climax of that brief period of adjustment during which the family is growing up. If there is another side to this question, where, from some misapprehension of her true character, a mystified resentment is cherished against the girl, the writer is wholly incapable of assuming it, and must prattle away with a certain glorified conception of her own inability.

But no one can say this of girl in the aggregate. Those who know her best, perhaps, are her numerous instructors who receive her in a complicated rotatory succession, and round out their little day with a more or less vague realization of the limited effect they have upon her. Some of these instructors are women, some are men, and she thrives upon them both with a fearful avidity that is not entirely reciprocated. In the hands of the born teacher, girl, even in the aggregate, is as gentle as a lamb, and passes through and away from that classroom in a chanting procession of dis

creet paces and smiling looks. But let us leave the perfect instructor, for there is a certain inattraction about the heavenly side of a girl's character, considered by and large. When she has a name of her own, with a definite colour to her hair and a special variety of nose, when, in fact, girl is in the family, one may wax heroic in her treatment. But in the aggregate, girl is more interesting as we have known her.

Women may not be able to do much with girl, but at least they have a perception of what may exist beneath the surface, having once been what they no longer are, and they maintain a cautious reserve as to what she really thinks. But man is delivered into the hand of the girl, and, although he frequently does her good, she makes a continual drama of his conception of her. Does he think she is good, or does he think she is bad, or, possibly, does he like her too well for his own peace of mind? To a man who is teaching with a high ideal of girl united to a keen perception of actual details, what a sad thing life is! There is at times a bread and buttery character to a girl's outlook that cannot co-exist with idealism. The absorption of a slate pencil may be a reversion to type, but it produces a kind of mental anæsthesia in the sentimental beholder. It was doubtless with the remembrance of such an occasion cold upon him that Walter Besant's French instructor exclaimed, "I adore woman, but I hate girl !"

It is a state that involves its own compensations, which seem to grow more fair as they recede. The real girl makes a world of her own and lives in it every hour of the day. In that atmosphere there are all sorts of strange crises, climaxes, and dangers. that are imperceptible to dull-eyed maturity. No one but herself could number the conspiracies from which she escapes, the romances that begin and never end, the judgments that she passes on half the comprehensible universe. Next to being a girl again it is good to remember the attractions of

CHANG

fenceless condition and transparent garrulity, neither of which are so great as they seem. She is bound to be amused at your expense, no matter in what guise you make your approach, and it is better to cultivate her acquaintance humbly, not forgetting to leave open a way of retreat if she seems to find you too disagreeable. Marjory MacMurchy

HANGED, did you say, Alice? Ah! yes dear, seven years have sadly changed my face, but have not changed my love for you. This dear old place fills me with memories of the past-the sweet, the happy past, when we were school girls. How gentle and true you always were, Alice, and how I loved you. Your brother-but Alice,

the perfume of those roses thrills me. Ah yes, we gathered roses from this bush that happy evening so many weary years ago; that evening when Fred told me of his love. You loved your brother, Alice, but not as I loved him. Then why was I parted from him and from the home of my childhood, from you and from all that was dear to me on earth? What had Fred done to merit my father's disfavour? He hadn't riches. He had only intellect, ambition and love to offer-and Clifford Dean was wealthy.

When father told me that Fred could never be my husband a strange feeling took possession of me. My heart began to break. But Alice, at nineteen a girl does not fully realize the meaning of heart throbs, and sleepless nights, and weary days. You tried to comfort me, Alice, but I lived on in a strange, wakeful dream. You remember the morning I left for the University. We kissed good-bye in this garden and tried to smile through our tears as each said to the other, "I shall always love you." The memory

of that parting has been very dear to

me.

We did not meet again until the day of my marriage in the little church yonder, three years afterwards. Oh, Alice! Why did Fred come to that ceremony, and who brought roses to the church? I would have no flowers but lilies. Still it was dreary and delightful to forget all the painful present in the perfume of those roses, and to live again for a few short moments in the happy past. My eye slowly wandered over the church on the smiling faces of the friends who thought me happy; then I must have started violently, for I remember my lilies falling from my trembling hands. I had looked on Fred's pale face and read the pain and anguish there. How often that look has haunted me! I can see it now and hear the solemn words of the ceremony that made me the wife of Clifford Dean. Stutue-like I received the good wishes of my friends, and statue-like I entered the carriage with my husband-my husband, Alice! The man whose gold had bought me from my father! The inan whom I had wronged so deeply! O, foolish, foolish girl that I was!

There is little else to tell, Alice. My home in that far off city was elegant, my husband was esteemed by all who knew him, and every luxury that gold could give was mine. But what did I care for riches or power? The

scent of a rose gave me moments that I would not exchange for all the wealth of earth-moments that brought memories of love's sweet dream.

And, Alice, I have come home to die. God knows I have suffered much, and have tried to be a loving wife; and He has promised rest to all the heavy laden who come unto Him.

Fred will soon return from across the sea. He will go with you often to my grave in the churchyard. Some

glad day we will meet beyond. Be kind to my father, Alice-my poor, dear father. He does not know that my heart is broken. And my husband I will be here to-morrow. They say I will be well again, but they cannot understand.

Kiss me good night, dear Alice. How beautiful the moonlight is! How sweet the summer air and the perfume of the roses! I shall soon be dreaming-dreaming. Annie Lang.

THEN the history of this generation comes to be investigated and written, the figure of Prince Bismarck will fill a great place in the record. The outstanding features in European history during the century are not many, but they are vivid and of far-reaching consequence: the gradual decline of France, the growth of Russia, the expansion of the British Empire, and the re-creation of a powerful central state in Europe the German Empire. The man who mainly constructed and solidified modern Germany must always, therefore, be a study of profound interest to all who come after him. In these days of a free press and much writing the public careers of the prominent men of the time are pretty familiar to

us.

But the secrets of the council chamber and the domestic circle are not all told. When the veil is lifted from these, light is often thrown upon the intentions of statesmen, and the real trend of public policy, which cannot be derived from the most assiduous study of official documents and acts.

This is eminently true of Bismarck, and "the secret pages of his history," which have just come from the pen of Dr. Moritz Busch*, not merely gratify curiosity, but add considerably to the evidence and knowledge we possess regarding European politics during the last twenty-five years.

*Bismarck, some secret pages of his history. By Moritz Busch; 2 vols., with portraits, $7.50. The Copp, Clark Co., Limited, Toronto.

Dr. Busch's "sharp ear and attentive memory" incorporated in a diary, which he kept for over twenty years, the fullest information relative to Bismarck's conversations. Never had Johnson a more obsequious and faithful Boswell, than had the German Chancellor in this zealous, half-adoring, and always listening friend and functionary. We are not called upon to discuss the good taste, or even the morality of this conduct of the good Busch who heard a great many things and wrote them all down. We must be content to accept them for what they apparently are-a full revelation of Bismarck's private opinions and private proceedings during many years, recorded with the Chancellor's knowledge and permission, and with his full approval of their being given, after his death, to the world.

It is frequently said that no man is a hero to his own valet. And it may well be doubted if an exact record of any great person's hasty, frank opinions, uttered often without reflection, not seldom in anger, and always without thought of their being literally transcribed, can do much to impress him favourably upon posterity. Dr. Busch seems to have been a kind of human phonograph, who gave Bismarck occasional twinges of uneasiness, and on one occasion, at least, a decided fright. But Bismarck knew that the work of German unity was his, that he had achieved it in despite