its, and Algæ, with lime and silex, building up great continents, and not so much as the sound of a hammer is heard! Even the immense systen of worlds, moving with inconceivable velocities about and among each other, and not so much as a vibration is felt by our senses. The "music of the spheres" may be all about us, but we cannot hear it. Well, then, may we, each one, soliloquize in the words of Bryant's "Forest Hymn:" "My heart is awed within me when I think Lo! all grow old and die; but see again, C. L. ANDERSON. OLD HUNKS'S CHRISTMAS PRESENT. Pacific Street held high carnival; in fact, all Barbary Coast was in a blaze of glory. Christmas Eve was being celebrated-save the mark! -in the gin-mills. From every door, as one passed along the street, burst out sounds of music and hilarity. Down in the cellars men were sitting at tables drinking to the accompaniment of orchestrions. Overhead-for, as though it were not enough that saloons should be placed side by side, they were piled one over the other-overhead, boisterous raffles were going on for Christmas turkeys, and there was more blaze of gaslight, and more men were drinking in the thick, smoky atmosphere; while women, passing to and fro in gaudy costumes, laughed in metallic and joyless tones at jokes of as questionable character as themselves. Sailors from all parts of the world, men and women of every nation, oaths and jests in every language! Block after block-saloon after saloon! Up on the hill yonder the stately mother smiled on her children as they gathered around the tree in eager anticipation, and the father looked over his broad expanse of waistcoat with a smile of serene content. But how was it on Barbary Coast? Some of the "respectable" saloons had wooden screens inside in front of the doors to shut off the view from the street. At these places the music was louder, the laughter more continuous, the numbers greater, the smoke thicker, the confusion and glare more bewildering. Larger groups of children were here gathered on the sidewalk, and occasionally one more daring than the rest would creep around the corner of the screen and gaze upon the feverish and noisy scene with admiration. From little back rooms came the clink of coin, and, child as he was, the boy at the screen knew what it meant. Indeed, as he stood there, with a cigar stump in his little mouth, which he occasionally removed to pay his respects with unerring precision to the nearest spittoon, he was different from those about him only in size. Give him time, and the difference will disappear. On this particular Christmas evening there was suddenly a shout among the urchins on the outside. The boy by the screen was on the sidewalk in an instant. "What's up?" "There comes Old Hunks." Slowly up the street, muttering to himself, came an old, stoop-shouldered man, who glanced apprehensively at the group of boys. His appearance was shabby in the extreme. His hair was unkempt, his eyebrows were shaggy, his beard was tangled and uncombed, and his small, nervous gray eyes shone like balls of fire. To a stranger the old man might have appeared to be in the depths of destitution. But the residents of this neighborhood knew better. Many of them paid rent to him, for he owned many of the buildings that were illumin In little knots on the sidewalks, lured with a fatal curiosity nearer and nearer until angrily ordered away by the bar-tenders, were children, ten, twelve, fourteen years of age, with little pinched old faces; children unduly wise, who laughed and jested at drunkenness, to whom the light and the hilarity had a resistless fascination; human shrubs whose dwarfed and distorted lives were destined never to bear flowers or fruitage. Some of them were smoking, some were munching oranges that the fruit-ed to-night with such a fateful glare. His ten venders had rejected and thrown into the street; but the most of them were peering with admiration into the saloons in defiance of the occasional efforts made to drive them away. ants hated him. They said he was a miser, that he was hard-hearted, that he granted no delays, that he had no soul. What use could a miser have for a soul? The boys heard this talk at home. "Hello, Hunksy," said one, with a box slung over his shoulder. "Have a shine? I'll take yer note for it.” No one knew the old man's name. Probably it appeared somewhere on musty old titledeeds. He signed his rent receipts, always, "O. H.;" and when some wag― for they have a grim humor on Barbary Coast-suggested that the letters stood for "Old Hunks," the name stuck to him. "What yer goin' to give me for Chris'mus?" queried a cross-eyed gamin with a freckled face. "Lemme a bit, will yer, Hunksy?" asked another. "I'll pay yer out er my divvydends." "He wouldn't len' a feller a stable to be born in, he wouldn't," replied a third, "not without yer spouted yer watch with him.” mingled from a dozen different apartments. There was no light, save that one of the rooms on the first floor boasted a stained transom, thick with venerable dust, through which a few rays struggled from a candle inside. It was sufficient to enable him to feel his way up the creaky stairs. As he finished the third flight, and stopped to catch his breath, he heard a woman's sobs, interrupted by those of two children. "They heard me coming," muttered Old Hunks to himself, "and they're getting a good ready." The old man knocked at the door. There was no response. He waited a moment, then knocked a second time. Still the sound of sobs within, but no answer. Putting his hand upon the knob, he opened The old man grabbed the last speaker, and the door and went in. The room was cold and administered a couple of sound cuffs. "Who yer hittin'?" angrily demanded the urchin, although there seemed little room for doubt on that question. But before he could get an answer, the miser had turned into a side-street, and the boys went back to the saloon door, not without some jeers at their crestfallen companion. Old Hunks evidently was out of humor. Some of his tenants had not paid him to-day. Several were overdue a considerable time. There was Digby, for instance, who lived with his wife and four children in the two back rooms over the last saloon. Digby was more than a week behind, and it was Digby's boy whom he had cuffed. The father was in the saloon, drinking, as the old man probably knew. Four or five others were behind from one to two weeks, something Old Hunks had never permitted before. They pleaded hard times. They said they couldn't get work. What had he to do with hard times? It wasn't his fault if they couldn't get work. They didn't want to work. They wouldn't work if you'd give them a chance. Work, indeed-nonsense. But the worst case was that of the sick woman with the two little children, who lived in the tenement house on this side-street. "Three months now," growled Old Hunks to himself as he shuffled along the narrow sidewalk, from which the tired-looking, hard-faced women withdrew into their doors with their children to let him pass. "Three months now, and not a cent. That's what I get for showing a little kindness to these people, and letting the rent run." He turned in at the door of the tenement house, and climbed slowly up the narrow staircase. The air was musty, and rank with the smell of the afternoon's cooking, which had bare. The wind came in at a broken pane in spite of the effort some one had made to check it with a piece of newspaper. There was one chair, with the rounds missing, one small table, and a bed. Upon the latter, in the corner of the room, lay a woman, sobbing, and evidently very sick. By her side were two small children, a boy about five years of age, and a girl about three. The children also were crying. They were so occupied that they did not see the new comer. Old Hunks did not look at the group, but fixed his face in a hard, set way, toward the vacant wall. "I have come for my money," he said stonily, advancing a step or two. His voice, and the sound of his feet upon the bare floor, attracted the attention of the sick woman. Turning with evident difficulty and pain, she looked in his direction, drawing one arm in instinctive fear about her children. Old Hunks saw the movement, although he avoided her face. "I have come for my money," he repeated. "I have been put off long enough." The woman put her hand to her head, as if trying to realize what was going on. She uttered a moan of pain, which she seemed too weak to stifle. At last she broke down completely, and commenced to sob. "My children! Oh, my poor children!" Old Hunks shifted position uneasily, but still held doggedly to his declaration, in a sterner manner. "I have come for my money. What do you expect to do? I can't keep you along forever." The woman straightened up in her bed. A sudden power seemed to have seized her. She rose with desperate resolution, and, walking unsteadily across the floor, caught the miser by the sleeve. The pallor of death was in her | around the corner Barbary Coast was still face. The clutch of death was in her fingers. Her white garments hung about her like a shroud, and her luminous eyes burned with an unearthly light. "For the love of God, sir, do not let my children starve. If you hope for mercy-oh, my poor children !—do not—” The exertion was too much. She staggered, and fell to the floor. The old man, with some effort, lifted her upon the bed. He chafed her hands nervously for a few moments. He spoke to her, but she did not answer. At last he saw that she lay very still, that the nostrils did not appear to move. Her eyes had a glassy look, and the children, who had huddled together frightened, began to cry. And well they might, for outside was the merciless world, and here, in this silent room, was merciless Death. ablaze, though the boys were no longer seen on "Poor things," said one of the ladies, "what would have become of them!" The echoes of the cathedral clock had scarcely died upon the midnight air when a carriage drew up in front of the tenement house. Two ladies and a gentleman alighted, and the three The little boy dropped something from his passed up the narrow stairs. At the third hand. It fell at the feet of the miser, who pick-flight they stopped, and, after a moment's hesied it up and looked at it, then took it to the tation, opened the door facing the staircase. light, and held it there some time. It was a The children were still sleeping. small locket, and contained the picture of a young girl apparently about eighteen years of age. The locket was gold. It had a small chain, long enough to go about the neck, also gold. He examined both chain and locket closely, then put them upon the table. He picked up his hat, and moved toward the door. He hesitated at the threshold, tame back, put the locket and chain in his pocket, and went out, closing the door behind him. Who can tell his thoughts as he shuffled, muttering to himself, down the rickety stairs and into the narrow street? Was it not enough to lose his money? What right had a woman to die and leave her children for others to feed? It was not to be tolerated. Other women would be doing the same thing. People must pay their honest debts, and support their children. Little they would care for Old Hunks if he were to die! What if he did have a little moneythere wasn't so much after all-but what of it? Didn't he get it honestly? Didn't he pay his debts-that was the question-did he ever die and leave both debts and children behind? Whatever Old Hunks's thoughts may have been, he went slowly down the stairs and out into the night. And the helpless children were left alone with their dead-so helpless that they thought it was sleep, so innocent that they fondled her dead face and wondered why she answered not, and so tired with their sobbing that they finally crept up beside her and went to sleep upon her bosom. Two hours passed, and still they slept. The clock on St. Mary's tolled the hour of midnight. The narrow street grew quiet, but Carefully lifting them one by one, still sleeping, the gentleman carried them down stairs and handed them tenderly to some person in the carriage. He then returned up stairs, and the carriage drove rapidly away. Pacific Street awoke sluggishly the next day. On the side-street few were stirring early in the morning. The fumes of Chrismas Eve still polluted the pure morning air of Christmas Day. Mrs. Dennis Regan, who had rooms on the third floor of the tenement house, having heard unusual noises in the next apartment during the night, peered out of her room about eight o'clock. The door opposite was open, and she saw three persons, two ladies and a gentlemen, watching there. "The sick woman's dead," she said to herself, "and her rich friends have come to watch wid her. It wouldn't have hurt 'em to have looked afther her a bit when she needed it more than she does now, poor sowl.” The news of the death, and the interest taken by the "rich friends," soon flew through the street, which straightway began to be mollified in its usual bitter feelings toward well to do people. But at ten o'clock an event occurred which roused the popular indignation to the highest pitch. The undertaker arrived, accompanied by a man muffled in a great coat, under whose directions the body was soon taken away. But Mrs. Dennis Regan, happening to come up the narrow stairs as the muffled man, who seemed desirous of avoiding observation, was going down, recognized him as the much detested miser, "Old Hunks." The theory of the "rich friends" was immediately abandoned by the street. "The old skinflint, bad cess to him," abjured Mrs. Dennis Regan, "has garnisheed the dead woman for the rint." "The Lord save them pore childers!" shuddered her neighbor, as she listened with breathless interest to the story of the miser's heartless action. "To think of me takin' that deperty sheriff fer a gintleman, and them two brazen-faced things fer ladies," exclaimed Mrs. Regan. The one he had taken from the box contained the picture of a young, and, withal, handsome man, and bore the inscription: "O. H. TO A. M." The one he took from his pocket contained the face of a young girl, and in similar lettering was inscribed: "A. M. To O. H." The two letters in the box were yellow and discolored with age. "Twenty years!" he said, bitterly, to himself. "Twenty years! And we both threw our lives away for a momentary spite-she to become the wife of one she did not love, and I to become the miserable thing that I am. And I hunted her to the death! O my God! If I had only suspected it!" That Christmas afternoon, Old Hunks climbed up to his little room on the fourth floor of one of his own buildings-a room for which no one would pay rent, and which he had accordingly occupied for many years. Do you know what manner of place a miser's home is? It is'nt a very inviting spot, to be sure. It has a barren and desolate look, like the life of the miser himself. But some how or other, the old man had become attached to this room through all the years that he had lived there. They were weary years as he looked back on them; years rich in gold, but oh, how poor in human sympathy and companionship! There was lit-idol, of the pursuit of a repulsive object not as tle pleasure that he could remember in them. He had given himself wholly over to moneygetting, and his soul had shrunk, and shrunk, until the room had not appeared small and mean to him. That is the worst of a sordid passion; we lose our finer sense of the perspective and relation of things. On this afternoon, somehow, the room seemed cramped and oppressive. He sat down by the table, and leaned his head upon his hand. He was buried in deep thought. The hard expression was relaxed, and there were fine lines in his face. Observed closely, he did not appear so old as his white hair would indicate. He was evidently much distressed, and a nature capable of entire devotion to one object, even though a sordid one, is capable, also, of intense feeling. At last an expression of pain escaped him: "O my God! And I never suspected it." Rising after a while, and, going to an old trunk in the corner, he unlocked it and took out a strong tin box, which he brought back to the table and placed thereon. Producing a small key from his pocket he opened it. On the top were some deeds and mortgages. Removing these, he came to a small parcel, carefully tied in a piece of oil-silk. He undid this parcel slowly, and as though every movement was painful to him. It contained two old letters, and a small gold locket with a chain. He took from his pockets the trinket which he had taken from the little boy. In outward appearance the lockets and chains were exactly similar. Vol. III.-6. He paced the floor in agitation. The past rose before him like a hideous specter, grinning in horrible triumph. Even the sweet face in the locket was turned to him sadly, with a reproachful look. A strong nature, capable of utter selfabnegation, of the demolition of every ideal and a matter of choice but of will, is susceptible, upon occasion, of the most bitter and intense remorse. There was no thought in his mind of the contrast between the promise of his youth and the barren and dreary fulfillment of his manhood-only the haunting suggestion of the wrong to another, of the contrast between the sweet face which looked up to him from yonder table and the agonized face which had implored him with dying eyes the night before. "Heaven is my witness that I never suspected it. I cannot- "" It was too much. His head burned, and he felt a heavy, oppressive pain at his heart which startled him. He went to the table, took a sheet of paper, and commenced to write. After a few lines he tore it up and selected another sheet. Upon this he wrote a few short sentences, then signed his name and affixed the date. Weak and exhausted, he went to the bed and lay his head upon the pillows. The afternoon sunlight came in at the little window and shone upon his tired face. The rays seemed warmer and more rosy than usual. Looking out through the panes, the west was aflame with a glory of color. And through this radiance of the heavens the sun was sinking slowly into the waters of the limitless sea. Early the next morning, Digby, still out of work, and still in arrears for his rent, mounted the stairs leading to the miser's room, to beg for a further delay. Digby considered himself wronged, in some indefinite way, by every one who had wealth, and by his landlord in particular. It had so happened that, on a certain day of the week before, Digby had been possessed of the money to pay his rent. But the landlord, not knowing this fact, failed to call upon him, having done so without success several previous days in succession. As a consequence, the money went into the coffers of the saloon situated immediately under the Digby residence, and that worthy, by some irrelevancy of logic, considered Old Hunks principally to blame for this result. Hence it was, as he climbed the stairs, that he looked upon his errand as largely in the nature of a humiliation; and it was a little vindictively, perhaps, that he knocked with such unnecessary distinctness. Hearing no answer, with the usual directness of his class, he applied his hand to the knob, and opened the door. He stood a moment irresolute. There is one presence which unnerves the strongest. Digby was not a bad man at heart. He took his hat from his head instinctively, and said, below his breath: "God forgive me for the hard things I've said about him." A doctor was soon brought, but human skill is powerless in the presence of the awful mystery of death. He pronounced it heart disease. He never knew with what unconscious truth he spoke. Upon the table they found a holographic will, penned, signed, and dated in the well known characters. It lay, still open, where it had been written. They took it up, curious to read the will of a miser. After the appointment of an executor, it contained these words: "I forgive and release all persons in my debt the amounts to which they are severally indebted. To my said executor, I give one-half of all my property, real and personal, in trust, to be invested by him, and the income to be applied to the relief of worthy people in distress in the city of San Francisco. All the residue and remainder of my property I give, share and share alike, to the two children of my deceased friend Alice Benton, formerly Alice Marshall. And, with trust in His eternal goodness, I commit my soul unto Him who knoweth and forgiveth." CHAS. H. PHELPS. NOTE BOOK. THE CIVIL SERVICE REFORM ASSOCIATION is the name of an organization having its headquarters in New York City, and having in view the accomplishment of the following objects, as declared in the second clause of its constitution: "The object of the Association shall be to establish a system of appointment, promotion, and removal in the Civil Service founded upon the principle that public office is a public trust, admission to which should depend upon proved fitness. To this end the Association will demand that appointments to subordinate executive offices, with such exceptions not inconsistent with the principle already mentioned, as may be expedient, shall be made from persons whose fitness has been ascertained by competitive examinations open to all applicants properly qualified; and that removals shall be made for legitimate causes only, such as dishonesty, negligence, or inefficiency, but not for political opinion or for refusal to render party service; and the Association will advocate all other appropriate measures for securing intelligence, integrity, good order, and due discipline in the Civil Service." Mr. George William Curtis is President of the Association, and the high character of those who are engaged in promoting it is a sufficient guaranty of its purpose and aims. It is probable that this organization may be productive of great good if its influence be not dissipated in the attempt to bring about inconsequential "reforms" with which the people are not in sympathy. In other words, the progress of civil service reform so far has been retarded by the attempted enforcement of irritating, petty regulations as to the individual conduct of office holders, regulations which in some instances went so far as to abridge the freedom of one in office to participate with his fellow-citizens in the privileges of American citizenship. It is safe to say that the people have never been and will not be in sympathy with any such efforts. Now, the essential point in reforming the civil service is to introduce a tenure of office during life or good behavior. So long as the petty offices shall be bestowed in payment for party zeal, so long will those who desire to possess or retain those offices be mere retainers of the party "leaders," so long will the "leaders" use their power to perpetuate their rule, and so long will the reform be delayed. On the other hand, let the tenure for life or good behavior be introduced, there will be every incentive for the honest performance of duty, and none whatever for its neglect. Public officials will look forward to a long and honorable life in the Government employ, and these positions will grow in respectability and general esteem. There is no good reason why a change of administration should affect the position of any officer of the Government, except, possibly, the Cabinet. But how is this to be brought about. It is not to be expected that Senators and Representatives in Congress will lend their aid to any scheme which shall deprive them of the patronage by which they perpetuate their power. In fact, experience has proved that they will stand like a solid phalanx in the way of any such measure. And if one Congress could be persuaded into the passage of an adequate law, the same would be subject to the amendment, repeal, or practical nullification of every succeeding Congress. It is clear that any pro 1 |