There was a new official there, a sixfoot Irishman, with red whiskers, who looked up from his papers in wonder, as this thin, hollow-eyed man, with straggling, grizzled hair, came in and greeted him. He was inclined, from his looks, to think him "a shingle short."

This belief was strengthened when his visitor, without any preamble, rushed into the statement of a murder committed by him some two months back. His account was clear enough, certainly; he gave facts, dates and names without a shadow of hesitation, and yet the Irishman scratched his head in the manner of one sorely puzzled.

"Now see here, me boy," he began at length, "wan of us two must be mad, and, faith, I'm thinking that one's not me. You say it was Bill Harris fwhat you knocked on the head, afore iver I came to the place. Now that may be; but, faith, it was Bill Harris and me were havin' a cup of thay togither no longer ago than the last night. So fwhat in the livin' wide world div ye mean by sayin' ye've killed him? Or ilse, fwhat, in the creation of cats, does he mane by comin' aloive agin? Tell me that, me son!"

Jack tottered to the one chair the office contained, and sank down in it, his breath coming hard and hoarse. He tried to speak, but his dry lips uttered no sound. The Irishman being a goodhearted fellow, got him a glass of water and held it to his lips while he drank.

"Now, see here, me sonny," he continued, soothingly, "I'll jist tell ye fwhat it all is. You and this man hey quarrelled, and ye've got dhrink-and infernal bad dhrink it is here, me son Longman's Magazine.

-and thin ye've had bad drames. Praise the Virgin! We all hev our bad drames at toimes, and come out av 'em agin. Bill Harris, belave me, has had his own drames, too. He drames himself into fallin' an the edge av his own saw that he was carryin' wan day, afore iver I came here, and sez he to me, sez he, 'Pat Malony, sorra anither such dhrink as that will I take in all my born days, for ut's cost me a sore head, and a sore heart into the bargain.' For he sez he was blind with dhrink, and run his head down on his own tools. So kape your heart up, me bhoy, for divil a word of this story do I belave."

Still like one in a dream, Jack mumbled out a few words of thanks, clapped on his hat and tottered out again. The Irishman watched him setting off at a half run down the street, and determined to follow him. "For by the livin' jingo," he said to himself, "whoever he is, he's a shingle short, and I wouldn't hev harm come av ut."

So, locking his door, and putting the key in his pocket, he followed at a respectful distance, and saw his man make straight for the sawmill. Scratching his head harder than ever, he followed. And then a wonderful thing happened. He saw Bill Harris come out, and stand gazing as if petrified. Then he heard his man cry "Bill!"

"Why, Jack, Jack, old man!" was the answer, and then and there the two men flew into each other's arms, "jist for all the wurruld loike a pair of swate schoolgirls," said the onlooker to himself. Then he turned back.

"Be jabers," was his inward comment; "but I never saw the loike! And nivir will agin, unless I live to the age of Methuselah, and thin I'll be too bhlind to enjiy it."

L. E. Smith.

As special correspondent he had seen two wars; he had been wrecked; he had written eleven books, two still in MS., and when he died last Wednesday his years did not number thirty. He was the type of the nervous, nimble-minded American, slight in figure, shy and kind in manner, speaking little, with a great power of work, a fine memory, and an imagination of astonishing psychological insight. Latterly his health had been bad, partly constitutional, and partly through malarial fever contracted in the Cuban campaign. The last two years of his life were spent in the old, huge, fascinating house in Sussex, Brede Place, which he made his home. There he lived, many miles from the nearest railway station, a quiet domesticated life, welcoming his friends, and writing-always writing. He battled bravely against ill-health; but the disease gained ground, and a few weeks ago he was ordered to the Black Forest. It was a forlorn hope, and, although many days were given to the journey, he succumbed at the end to exhaustion. "The Red Badge of Courage" published when he was twenty-five. This study of the psychological side of war, of its effect on a private soldier, justly won for him immediate recognition. Critics of all schools united in praise of that remarkable book, and the more wonderful did the performance appear when it became known that he had never seen a battle, that the whole was evolved from his imagination, fed by a long and minute study of military history. It is said that when he returned from the Græco-Turkish war he remarked to a friend: "The Red Badge is all right." It was all right.

was

The same swift and unerring char

acterization, the same keen vision into the springs of motives, the same vivid phrasing, marked "George's Mother." Here, as in most of his other stories, and in all his episodes, the environment grows round the characters. He takes them at some period of emotional or physical stress, and, working from within outwards, with quick, firm touches, vivifies them into life. Nowhere is this more evident than in the short sketches and studies that were, probably, after "The Red Badge of Courage," the real expression of his genius. His longer novels, though not wanting in passages that show him at his best, suggest that in time he would have returned to the earlier instinct that prompted him to work on a small

canvas.

As a writer he was very modern. He troubled himself little about style or literary art. But-rare gift-he saw for himself, and, Иke Mr. Steevens, he knew in a flash just what was essential to bring the picture vividly to the reader. His books are full of images and similes that not only fulfil their purpose of the moment, but live in the memory afterwards. A super-refined literary taste might object to some of his phrases-to such a sentence as this, for example: "By the very last star of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen than it was to change seats in the dingey," to his colloquialisms, to the slang with which he peppers the talk of his men-but that was the man, who looked at things with his own eyes, and was unafraid of his prepossessions.

His gift of presenting the critical or dramatic moments in the lives of men and women was supreme. We could give a hundred examples, and though

the sketch we take the liberty of quoting is not by any means the best of its kind, it is complete in itself, and show's how neat, how to the point, how sym. pathetic without being sentimental, his work was. It is called "A Detail," and is included in the volume of stories and sketches called "The Open Boat" (Heinemann), the title of that remarkable account of the escape of himself and three companions from the wreck of the steamer Commodore:

The tiny old lady in the black dress and curious little black bonnet had at first seemed alarmed at the sound made by her feet upon the stone pavements. But later she forgot about it, for she suddenly came into the tempest of the Sixth Avenue shopping district, where from the streams of people and vehicles went up a roar like that from headlong mountain torrents.

She seemed then like a chip that catches, recoils, turns and wheels, a reluctant thing in the clutch of the impetuous river. She hesitated, faltered, debated with herself. Frequently she seemed about to address people; then of a sudden she would evidently lose her courage. Meanwhile the torrent jostled her, swung her this and that way.

At last, however, she saw two young women gazing in at a shop-window. They were well-dressed girls; they wore gowns with enormous sleeves that made them look like full-rigged ships with all sails set. They seemed to have plenty of time; they leisurely scanned the goods in the window. Other people had made the tiny old woman much afraid because obviously they were speeding to keep such tremendously important engagements. She went close to the girls and peered in at the same window. She watched them furtively for a time. Then finally she said: "Excuse me!"

The girls looked down at this old face with its two large eyes turned toward them.

"Excuse me, can you tell me where I can get any work?"

For an instant the two girls stared. Then they seemed about to exchange a The Academy.

smile, but at the last moment they checked it. The tiny old lady's eyes were upon them. She was quaintly serious, silently expectant. She made one marvel that in that face the wrinkles showed no trace of experience, knowledge; they were simply little, soft innocent creases. As for her glance, it had the trustfulness of ignorance and the candor of babyhood.

"I want to get something to do, because I need the money," she continued, since in their astonishment they had not replied to her first question. "Of course I'm not strong and I couldn't do very much, but I can sew well; and in a house where there was a good many men folks I could do all the mending. Do you know any place where they would like me to come?"

The young women did then exchange a smile, but it was a subtle, tender smile, the edge of personal grief.

"Well, no, madame," hesitatingly said one of them at last; "I don't think I know anyone."

A shade passed over the tiny old lady's face, a shadow of the wing of disappointment.

"Don't you?" she said, with a little struggle to be brave in her voice.

Then the girl hastily continued: "But if you will give me your address, I may find someone, and if I do. I will surely let you know of it."

The tiny old lady dictated her address, bending over to watch the girl write on a visiting card with a little silver pencil. Then she said.

"I thank you very much." She bowed to them, smiling, and went on down the

avenue.

As for the two girls, they walked to the curb and watched this aged figure, small and frail, in its black gown and curious black bonnet. At last the crowd, the innumerable wagons, intermingling and changing with uproar and riot, suddenly engulfed it.

This youth wandered much over the world in his brief, brilliant life. As we write his last journey is beginning. He is being taken to his home in America.

The question of preserving all provincial newspapers at the British Museum suggests certain obvious and uncomfortable questions. My own life, like that of many, has been recently a struggle against the masses of printed matter which threaten to submerge any moderate household. They can be treated by very summary domestic methods; and one is tempted to wonder whether the same system might not be applied to the great public reservoir for such things. Would the world be any the worse if the Eatanswill Gazette passed once for all out of existence? If my own opinion were in favor of summary destruction, I should not venture to utter it; I might be torn in pieces by bold antiquaries. The bare contemplation of such a possibility is regarded as wicked and condemned in the name of sound scholarship and scientific research. Moreover, I can admit some force in the case for universal preservation. Dryasdust, though Carlyle writhed under his dominion, is, after all, one of the most harmless of human beings.

There are few amusements in which a man can indulge with less injury to his fellow-creatures than the investigation of the vast "rubbishheaps" and waste "lumber mountains" over which his victim plodded with sonorous groans. If we are willing to preserve waste spaces for the amusement of golf-players, we ought not to grudge an accumulation of waste paper where people of a different taste may find a recreation, to them equally fascinating. It is true that they don't often find much that is of the least interest to others. It may be doubted whether all the labor bestowed upon Shakesperian details has made anybody understand Hamlet or Othello one

bit better than before. Still it has given immense pleasure and pride to the laborers, and it cannot be denied that here and there some really illuminative spark has been struck out. Carlyle certainly succeeded in here and there eliciting brilliant flashes, and putting life into the dead bones. He complained, not of the preservation of the materials, but of the totally chaotic and unsifted condition in which they had been left.

Nobody doubts, indeed, that the older records should be religiously preserved. The more ambitious historian will tell us that they enable him to discover facts of primary importance for the right understanding of political institutions; and will add that our ancestors would have been incapable of foreseeing which were the really significant documents. As we, however, much wiser, are yet not quite infalli.ble, we must keep everything, that we may be sure of not destroying just what our posterity will desire. Some things are to us so familiar to one generation that the necessity of recording them does not suggest itself and yet a following generation may see that they were of critical importance. The argument may be fully admitted with one reservation. Historians seem at times to confuse the two very different propositions. Because any fact may be important, they speak as if every fact must be interesting. A single observation may clear up a scientific difficulty. Millions of years ago an insect happened to be stuck in a clod of earth. Its "mortal remains" when dug up may give a decisive solution of some problem of evolution. The one specimen was priceless. But if we afterwards found a whole stratum composed of similar remains they might

tell us nothing more. A single locust would be as instructive as a countless swarm. So a single ancient document found in a mummy may reveal something of deep interest as to the remotest civilization. If similar documents were discovered their value would decline in a rapidly accelerating ratio. They would only repeat what we knew already. The enormous majority of ascertainable facts become after all worthless, and merely correspond to repetitions for the millionth time of perfectly familiar truths. Historians sometimes seem to overlook this very obvious distinction, and act like the directors of a museum who, instead of collecting specimens of all known varieties, should collect all the specimens of any given variety. They lose the sense of proportion and become infected with a mania for communicating tacts simply as facts. Historians of an earlier period were superficial and did not care to burrow into original sources. Their hasty surveys required to be compared with facts; but one result seems to be a superstitious regard for even irrelevant details, if they rest upon first-hand evidence.

This tendency may no doubt correspond to a necessary stage and be at worst the exaggeration of a sound principle. But it suggests one other remark. The danger of losing really important information seems to be greatly exaggerated. The important facts are the common facts; the facts which are illustrated in innumerable relations of life. Dip anywhere into the great ocean of history and you will bring up plenty of specimens. What is required is less to add to the accumulated knowledge than to arrange the knowledge already acquired in the significant order. Considering the vast masses of records of every kind which are sure of preservation, it is hard to suppose that there is any really important historical research which will be

in want of ample illustration. It is highly probable no doubt that posterity may discover the interest of some processes to which we pay little attention. The symptoms of great changes may be still obscure; but, though we may not understand their significance, they can hardly fail to be on record. The great difficulty of the coming philosophers who unravel the play of the political forces will not be to get materials, but to disengage the really important facts from the masses of irrelevant matter in which they are imbedded. The historian of this century is pretty certain to shudder when he contemplates the vast masses of material. If he thinks it necessary to know all the evidence for any one series of events-to know, as a specialist is supposed to know, all that has been said upon his own familiar province of inquiry-he will have to devote a lifetime to getting up the history of a year. But, whatever his province, I cannot imagine that he will ever find reason to complain of any deficiency of essential materials.

I do not propose to simplify the labors of posterity by suppressing anything. We might, no doubt, make mistakes, and we may leave the future philosopher to find his own methods of dealing with a problem daily becoming more difficult. My only moral is of a different kind. The demand for the preservation of the material should be accompanied by a demand for its organization. Our huge storehouses should be arranged with a view to their accessibility. Carlyle complains piteously that Dryasdust had rarely even troubled himself to make an index. The index maker is, I hope, becoming more active. The plan for an extensive index of scientific papers is a natural corollary from the demand for preserving vast accumulations of material. The Dictionary of National Biography, which has a certain personal