From all Kookoo could gather, he must have been telling her the very story just recounted. She had dropped quite to the floor, hiding her face in her hands, and was saying between her sobs, "I cannot go, Papa George; oh, Papa George, I cannot go !"

Just then 'Sieur George, having kept a good resolution thus far, was encouraged by the orphan's pitiful tones to contemplate the most senseless act he ever attempted to commit. He said to the sobbing girl that she was not of his blood; that she was nothing to him by natural ties; that his covenant was with her grandsire to care for his offspring; and though it had been poorly kept, it might be breaking it worse than ever to turn her out upon ever so kind a world.

"I have tried to be good to you all these years. When I took you, a wee little baby, I took you for better or worse. I intended to do well by you all your childhood-days, and to do best at last. I thought surely we should be living well by this time, and you could choose from a world full of homes and a world full of friends.

"I thought that education, far better than Mother Nativity has given you, should have afforded your sweet charms a noble setting; that good mothers and sisters would be wanting to count you into their families, and that the blossom of a happy womanhood would open perfect and full of sweetness.

"I would have given my life for it. I did give it, such as it was; but it was a very poor concern, I know-my life-and not enough to buy any good thing.

"I have had a thought of something, but I'm afraid to tell it. It didn't come to me today or yesterday; it has beset me a long time."

The girl gazed into the embers, listening intensely.

"And oh dearie, if I could only get you to think the same way, you might stay with me then."

She uttered a wail of anguish, and, gliding swiftly into her room, for the first time in her sweet young life turned the key between them.

saw that they had been looking into the little trunk. The lid was up, but the back was toward the door, and he could see no more than if it had been closed.

He stooped and stared into the aperture until his dry old knees were ready to crack. It seemed as if 'Sieur George was stone, only stone couldn't weep like that.

Every separate bone in his neck was hot with pain. He would have given ten dollars -ten sweet dollars!-to have seen 'Sieur George get up and turn that trunk around. There! 'Sieur George rose up-oh, what a face!

He started toward the bed, and as he came to the trunk he paused, looked at it, muttered something about "ruin," and adding audibly, "What a fortune is in you!" kicked the lid down and threw himself across the bed.

Small profit to old Kookoo that he went to his own couch; sleep was not for the little landlord. For well-nigh half a century he had suspected his tenant of having a treasure hidden in his house, and to-night he had heard his own admission that in the little trunk was a fortune. Kookoo had never felt so poor in all his days before. He felt a Frenchman's anger, too, that a tenant should be the holder of wealth while his landlord suffered poverty.

And he knew very well, too, did Kookoo, what the tenant would do. If he did not 'know what he kept in the trunk, he knew what he kept behind it, and he knew he would take enough of it to-night to make him sleep soundly.

No one would ever have supposed Kookoo capable of a crime. He was too fearfully impressed with the extra-hazardous risks of dishonesty; he was old, too, and weak, and, besides all, intensely a coward. Nevertheless, while it was yet two or three hours before daybreak, the sleep forsaken little mar arose, shuffled into his garments, and in his stocking-feet sought the corridor leading to 'Sieur George's apartment. The night, as u often does in that region, had grown warra and clear; the stars were sparkling like da monds pendent in the deep blue heavens and at every window and lattice and cranny the broad, bright moon poured down 15 glittering beams upon the hoary-headed thie as he crept, like a prowling dog, along the mouldering galleries and down the ancer! corridor that led to 'Sieur George's charber

tered the moon-lit apartment. The tenant, lying as if he had not moved, was sleeping heavily. And now the poor coward trembled so, that to kneel before the trunk, without falling, he did not know how. Twice, thrice, he was near tumbling headlong. He be came as cold as ice. But the sleeper stirred, and the thought of losing his opportunity strung his nerves up in an instant. He went softly down upon his knees, laid his hands upon the lid, lifted it, and let in the intense moonlight. The trunk was full, full, crowded down and running over full, of the tickets of the Havana Lottery!

A little after daybreak, Kookoo from his window saw the orphan, pausing on the corner. She stood for a moment, and then dove into the dense fog which had floated in from the river, and disappeared. her again.

He never saw

'Sieur George is houseless. He cannot find the orphan. And she, her Lord is taking care of her. Once only she has seen 'Sieur George. She had been in the belvedere of the house which she now calls home, looking down upon the outspread city. Far

away southward and westward the great river glistened in the sunset. Along its sweeping bends the chimneys of a smoking commerce, the magazines of surplus wealth, the gardens of the opulent, the steeples of a hundred sanctuaries and thousands on thousands of mansions and hovels covered the fertile birthright arpents which 'Sieur George, in his fifty years' stay, had seen tricked away from dull colonial Esaus by their blue-eyed brethren of the North. Nearer by she looked upon the forlornly silent region of lowly dwellings, neglected by legislation and shunned by all lovers of comfort, that once had been the smiling fields of her own grandsire's broad plantation; and but a little way off, trudging across the marshy commons, her eye caught sight of 'Sieur George following the sunset out upon the prairies to find a night's rest in the high grass.

She turned at once, gathered the skirt of her pink calico uniform, and, watching her steps through her tears, descended the steep winding-stair to her frequent kneeling-place under the fragrant candles of the chapel-altar in Mother Nativity's asylum.

The Gentleman in Politics. WE do not doubt that many thousand readers of SCRIBNER have shared with us the pleasure of reading Mr. Whitelaw Reid's Dartmouth address, on "The Scholar in Politics," published complete in our September number. The programme of active influence which he spreads before the American scholar is sufficiently extensive, and the arguments by which he commends it for adoption sufficiently strong and sound. Yet the question has occurred to us whether, after all, Mr. Carlyle's "Able Man," and Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Thinker," and Mr. Reid's "Scholar," who are one and the same person, are quite sufficient for the just and satisfactory handling of the matters which this address spreads before us in detail. "How are you going to punish crime?" We do not quite see what scholarship has to do with the settlement of that question, or what the scholar has to do with it, specially, beyond other men. "How are you going to stop official stealing?" The question may interest the scholar, and he ought, indeed, to assist in settling it aright, but as a scholar, specially, we do not see what he can do, or may be expected to do, beyond other

men.

"How are you going to control your corporations?" Here cultivated brains may help us to do something to contrive something; yet, after all, what we want is not the way to control corporations, but corporations that do not need to be controlled. "What shall be the relations between capital and labor?" The scholar ought to be able to help us here. "What shall be done with our Indians?" "How may we best appoint our civil officers?" These questions, with others relating to universal suffrage and the un

limited annexation of inferior races, make up Mr. Reid's very solid and serious catalogue.

There is work enough, legitimate work, for the American scholar, in the study and intelligent handling of these questions; but the fact that there is a considerable number of American scholars mixed up with every scheme of iniquity in the country leads us to suspect that the country is not to be saved by scholarship alone. There are two sides to the matter, as there are to most matters. In our late civil war, it was West Point pitted against West Point, each side being actuated by its own independent ideas of duty and patriotism. Military scholarship had a very important office to perform in settling the question between the two sections of the country, but it had to struggle with military scholarship in order to do it. We do not know why we are not quite as likely to find the scholar on the wrong side as on the right side of politics. Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Everett were neighbors once. They represented the height of scholarly culture, and the two extremes of political opinion. They certainly assisted in making respectable whatever was bad in the party to which they respectively belonged, whatever else they did or failed to do. All that we wish to say, in dissent from Mr. Reid, or rather, in addition to him, is that scholarship does not necessarily lead to any common good conclusion in politics, and that it may be, or may become, as base as any other element.

What we really want is gentlemen in politics. If our political men were only gentlemen, even if they were no more than ordinarily intelligent, we should find our political affairs in a good condition, and the

great questions that stand before us in a fair way of being properly adjusted. A gentleman is a person who knows something of the world, who possesses dignity and self-respect, who recognizes the rights of others and the duties he owes to society in all his relations, who would as soon commit suicide as stain his palm with a bribe, who would not degrade himself by intrigues. There are various types of gentlemen, too, and the higher the type the better the politician. If his character and conduct are based on sound moral principle-if he is governed by the rule of right-that is better than mere pride of character or gentlemanly instinct. If, beyond all, he is a man of faith aud religion—a Christian gentleman—he is the highest type of a gentleman; and in his hands the questions which Mr. Reid has proposed to the scholar would have the fairest handling that men are capable of giving them. The more the Christian gentleman knows, the better politician he will make, and in him, and in him only, will scholarship come to its finest issues in politics. We do not think that the worst feature of our politics is lack of intelligence in our politicians. There is a great deal of cultivated brain in Congress. Public questions are understood and intelligently discussed there. Even there, it is not always that scholarship shows superior ability. Men who show their capacity to manage affairs are quite as apt to come from the plainly educated as from the ranks of scholarship. Congress does not suffer from lack of knowledge and culture half as much as it does from lack of principle. It is the men who push personal and party purposes that poison legislation. If Congress were composed of gentlemen, we could even dispense with what scholars we have, and be better off than we are to-day.

In the government of our cities, we could very well afford to get along without scholars, if we could have only modestly educated gentlemen. If the heavyjawed, florid-faced, full-bellied, diamond-brooched bully who now typifies the city politician were put to his appropriate work of railroad-building, or superintending gangs of ignorant workmen, and there could be put in his place good, quiet business men, of gentlemanly instincts and of sound moral principle, we could get along very comfortably without the scholar, though there would not be the slightest objection to him. In brief, we want better men than we have, a great deal more than we want brighter or better educated men. Scholarship is a secondary, rather than a primary consideration: the gentleman first, the scholar, if he is a gentleman, and not otherwise. If Christian gentlemen were in power, many of the questions that appeal to us for settlement would settle themselves. We should not be called upon, for instance, to stop official stealing. Instead of trying to ascertain how we shall punish murder, we should dry up the fountains of murder. Instead of seeking a mode of controlling corporations, we should only need to find some mode of putting only gentlemen into corporations. Our laws are good enough in the main: we want them executed, and in order that they may be executed, we need a

judiciary of Christian gentlemen, with executive officers, loyal to the law. As long as notorious scamps, scholarly or otherwise, are in power, not much headway can be made in politics. Until we demand something more and something better in our politicians than knowledge or scholarship, until we demand that they shall be gentlemen, we shall take no step forward. George Washington got along very well as a politician on a limited capital of culture, and a very large one of patriotism and personal dignity. Aaron Burr was a scholar, whose lack of principle spoiled him for any good end in politics, and made his name a stench in the nostrils of his country.

Moderate Prices.

It seems to be admitted, on all sides, that the past season was not a prosperous one for the summer hotels. Various reasons are assigned for the factamong others, that multitudes of those who usually frequent them went to Europe in the spring. Still, if this be true, the question remains undecided whether they did not go to Europe in order to get more pleasure and profit out of the same amount of money that they would be obliged to spend here,-nay, whether they did not go to save money. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the lack of patronage at the hotels, and the enormous deportation of our wealthy popula tion, are both owing to the high prices demanded at our watering-places for genteel fare and accommodation. If a man can have the benefit of a sea-voyage and a delightful summer in Switzerland, for what it would cost him to make a tour of our principal watering-places, he will be very apt to pack his trunks for the foreign trip; and we must honor his good taste and good judgment in the matter.

While the mammoth hotels and the high-priced places have mourned over their slender patronage, the secondclass houses have very generally been full. At Saratoga, the small hotels and boarding-houses have had guests in plenty. The boarding-houses and farmhouses in all directions about the country have had an abundance of summer visitors. The truth is, we suppose, that business has not been good, money has been scarce, and the people have studied economy. The expensive hotels can only be supported during periods of easy and large money-making, and the moment there comes a pinch, they feel it. They are keyed too high, even for the average American high life. They never make too much money in the best seasons; and when the bad seasons come, they either make none at all, or lose. Who it is that goes on building from year to year these expensive establishments, we do not know, for nearly everybody who meddles with them loses by them. They cost immense sums, they burn up, or they fail to pay rent and dividends.

The permanent hotels of the great cities are built and furnished at the cost of millions, in which families pay from five thousand to ten thousand dollars a year