be seen beside. It is indeed a marvelous picture, and its terrible reality impresses one most painfully.

Gladly we turn from it, and entering another room stop to look at a bright and charming little painting a Lady of the Court of Louis XI. The lady, who has a wonderfully lovely face, is sauntering through the woods of Fontainebleau. The grand old trees form a protecting arch above her head. Her costume is extraordinary, quite wonderful to behold; an elegant pink silk gown, with square bodice, and puffed sleeves of bronzebrown silk. Upon her head she wears an inverted cornucopia, quite high, of bright scarlet, from which depends a delicate, gauzy veil, short in front, and flowing in long folds behind.. Yet this strange dress, this singular combination of colors, which one would think very objectionable in reality, looks not inharmonious, but really beautiful, in the picture. A fine feature of the subject is a noble, large hound, who walks beside his mistress, his graceful head pressed closely and lovingly against her. The artist is Comte. Nothing can exceed the perfect and exquisite finish of this picture. One cannot discover the slightest roughness even upon a close examination. In an inner room are two pictures, which have been thus described by a correspondent of the Christian Register:

"Mount Adams, by Bierstadt, and the Moun tain of the Holy Cross, by Thomas Moran, in all their rich beauty, are before us. I like Bierstadt's picture better than any of his that I have seen. There is real sublimity in that sky-pointing

6

peak,' which, glorified by the sunshine, soars up into the blue. At the foot is a lake, whose dark, still waters, undisturbed by the threadlike stream which flows down the mountain side, have a very soothing effect. The foreground, a wooded bank, with deer straying under the trees, is beautiful in its wildness. The Mountain of the Holy Cross1 represents a peak of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, near the summit of which is a deep cleft, in the exact form of a cross, which is always filled with snow. The mountain is not high enough, compared with those around it, to be very imposing, or to make the snowy cross as conspicuous as it would otherwise be. The great beauty and charm of the picture seem to me to lie in the foreground, which represents a mountain torrent dashing over rocks. The rushing, foaming water, the richly-toned brown and gray rocks, some moss-grown, and with delicate vines trailing over them, are simply perfect. One seems to hear the rare music of that rushing stream. solitary bird, soaring up among the clouds, adds to the wildness of the scene."

A

As the afternoon was waning fast, our party, after viewing the two pictures above named, returned to the hotel, remarking that they had never met a more captivating or thoroughly refreshing picture than the last with which to beguile the warm hours of a midsummer day, or to bear away in one's memory from the pleasant receptacle of the works of creative genius.

1 A fine illustration of the Mountain of the Holy Cross will be found on page 327, Vol. XI., of POTTER'S AMERICAN MONTHLY.

HARK to the voice of the bells! How they clamor and clang in the frosty air, Tossing their music now here-now there; Like revelers mad with the blood-red wine Shouting their joy till its echoes twine Over the hills, through the ice-clad glen Till the snow-sprites whisper it back again; Telling with quivering joy of the birth Of a glad New Year to the waiting earth; Hark, how their silvery cadence swells; The beautiful, beautiful bells!

Ring loud, oh beautiful bells!

Ring out for the New Year crowned with flowers;
Born from the dust of our dear, dead hours,-
Raised from the tomb of the buried year-
Bringing faint chill from the old man's bier,
But smothering it deftly with odors sweet
Pressed from Hope's flowers by his coming feet;
Like a conquering king, in his train he brings
Bountiful stores of all precious things;

Ring out for his coming, oh bells!
Ye beautiful, beautiful bells!

BLOW, blow, thou winter wind; Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude.

Either Shakspeare never experienced such a "winter wind" as is blowing this frosty December night, or he considered “man's ingratitude" extremely, inexpressibly cruel. Fiercely blustering, the wind sweeps down Fifth Avenue a cold, icy blast from the north. Sharp and cutting it comes in stinging gusts against my already aching face, benumbing my now nearly frozen nose and ears, and transforming my breath into stiff, white crystals before it has had time to escape through my mustache. I am snugly wrapped in a greatcoat that defies the cold, and though my face is suffering sadly, my body is quite warm. On either side of the avenue the gloomy brownstone walls of the long rows of dwellings rise monotonously dark and dreary. The streets, covered with a recently-fallen sheet of snow, crisp and white, lit far up and far down by a hundred gas-lamps, coldly flickering the drafts that force themselves under the glass globes-look like all things else to-night, superlatively, disagreeably frigid. Even the stars seems like illuminated icicles pointing downward from the great black roof above. Heat has forsaken the earth; cold is reigning supreme. The stages, on the boxes of which the drivers sit muffled up to the chin, their whole thought and attention given to how best to avoid freezing, rattle harshly by. Nevertheless I prefer walking to riding. It is just twelve blocks from my boarding-house to the Grand Central Depot, whither I am bound, and that distance I am firmly resolved I will traverse without the aid of stage, hack, or coupé. Before I have walked as far as Thirtyfifth street, my face has grown so cold, I verily believe that by the time I reach the depot it will be quite frozen, and yet I stolidly adhere to my purpose and refuse to enter any conveyance; I am not willing to have my feet benumbed as well as my nose, so of the two evils I choose the least and plod determinedly onward, beating against the wind that blows more fiercely, more coldly the further north I go.

Now and then I meet a pedestrian coming down, the hurricane at his back aiding him as much as it is hindering me. These venturesome individuals who, like myself, are daring old Winter to do his worst, are invariably men. Women are not apt to indulge in promenades when the thermometer is at zero and a gale blowing at the rate of sixty miles an hour. I have just crossed Fortieth street, am passing along by the massive graystone reservoir, the Egyptian architecture of which seems strangely out of place in this arctic atmosphere. The climbing vines clinging to its sloping wall are coated with ice and snow which sparkles in the unsteady gas-light.

Suddenly I am jostled by a black figure that I, with my head well down in the teeth of the gale, do not notice until it comes roughly against me. Looking up I discover, notwithstanding my idea that the gentler sex does not "walk abroad" at such seasons, it is a woman. I see that she is rather tall, dressed in black, shabbily, I think, and am about to pass on, concluding she is the worse for liquor, as, alas! too many women often are in these days, and has staggered against me, when I am surprised by a voice, sounding sweet and ladylike even in this rough blast, begging my pardon.

"Excuse me, sir," she says. That is all; but there is an indefinable charm in the tired voice, the accent and tone of which is so pure and gentle. Involuntarily I draw my hand from my pocket and raise my hat in acknowledgment.

I cannot resist the impulse to turn and look after her; and it is well that I do. Before she has gone three steps she staggers again, and is about falling. Stepping quickly to her side I am just in time to prevent her. It is only a momentary faintness, for she is quite herself again in an instant. My suspicions as to her soberness are obliterated. There is not the slightest odor of malt or spirits about her, and I am fully aware that no one in the condition I supposed was hers can apologize in a voice so convincingly sober and so sweetly polite.

"You are ill!" I say, with one arm still about

her to support her trembling figure. "Will you allow me to assist you to where you are going?" Boreas catches my words, and carries them with him down the avenue. I repeat them in a voice that in a drawing-room would seem little less than

a roar.

swer.

"You are very kind," she says. "I don't live far from here; if you'll kindly walk with me I shall be greatly obliged."

It is the same low, sweet voice that a moment ago begged my pardon, and yet, as she takes my proffered arm, I am guilty of wondering-how apt we are to judge the weak and unprotected!— whether she is not one of those against whom Solomon warned us when he said: "For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honey-comb, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword."

Nevertheless her lips drop no more honey until we have together wended our way slowly, for she seems very weak, at least four blocks from where we met at the reservoir, and have stopped before a dingy house with a very high stoop, with clumsy cast-iron railings at each side.

I help her up the steps and ask her if I shall ring the bell. She nods her head, and I do as I am bid. As she stands there, the wind sweeping around the corner playing rudely with her scanty shawl and thin dress, I see that she is shivering. Her face is veiled, and as yet I have not had a glimpse of her features. Whether she is pretty or homely, fair-skinned or pock-marked, blonde or brunette, I know not. That she is young her voice has already told me. For fully two long minutes we stand on the stoop in the biting night air; then the door is opened, and a dim light from the hall gas-pendant shows a tall, thin, oldmaidish woman, standing in the passage with her hand upon the door-knob. She has a little square shawl wrapped tightly across her breast to protect her from the cold which she knew she must face, and which is now rushing into her house as a besieging army that has suddenly gained admission to a besieged city.

"O, it's you!" says the woman, sharply, as she discovers my companion; "come in quick, before the house gets like an ice-box."

The girl steps into the doorway, and as she does so a gust of wind catches her veil and lifts

see, is light, and her complexion quite soft and fair. All this I take in in the instant her face is uncovered. Then she hastily pulls her veil back to its place, and turning her back to the light I can see only the outline of her darkly draped figure.

"I thank you very kindly," she says, and there is even more of thanks in her tone than in her words. "I do not know how I should have got home without you. And now I bid you goodevening."

That is all. I raise my hat, and running down the steps hear the hall door closed behind me. Now as I walk toward the depot, I have quite forgotten my benumbed nose and ears in the excitement of this episode. I thoroughly despise myself for having had even the least distrust of this fair girl, and acknowledge that we are far too prone to suspect faults rather than virtues. At the first street lamp I stop, and poking my hand beneath the thicknesses of my greatcoat and my shootingjacket, I draw out my watch. It is just two minutes of eight; the train starts at 8.05. Unmindful of the cold, which fifteen minutes ago filled my mind, I hurry on.

As I enter the waiting-room of the Hudson River Railroad, the clock tells me that I have just one minute to spare. There are several others like myself, as there always are, who arrive at the last moment, and who make a rush for the ticketoffice together, all joining their voices in demand for tickets, each for a different station, making such a Babel that the ticket agent is unable to understand them, and so gives the Yonkers man a ticket for Tarrytown, and the Tarrytown man a ticket for Riverdale. At last, however, after thirty seconds I succeed in making him understand that I wish to go to Traddington, and am given a ticket therefor. The gong strikes its final warning note. The brakesman on the platform of the last car pulls a rope that tinkles a bell in the engineer's cab, then there is a short, sharp whistle from the engine, and I, rushing madly. through the door, followed by my fellow-belated

travellers, spring on the back platform just as the train is beginning to move. On entering the smoking car, which is quite warm and tobaccoscented, and therefore comfortable and pleasant, I see that it is not more than half full, and so have no trouble whatever in finding an unoccupied seat. I sit down and peer out of the window. The train is rushing on now quite rapidly, far more rapidly than it should within the built-up portions of the city. Suddenly, with a shriek, it dashes into the tunnel; and now, as nothing is to be seen without, save now and then, when a lantern gives a momentary gleam as we dart past, a glimpse of the damp, dripping walls, I turn my attention to the interior, settle myself down snugly in one corner of the seat, and for the next half-hour devote myself to a fragrant Havana, and allow my thoughts to take what turn they will. I am still marvelling on that Shakspearian couplet which came to my mind as I was beating against the fierce wind on my way to the depot. I have been very strongly tempted to ingratitude lately, "unkind ingratitude," as the English bard aptly calls it; but I have, with much self-sacrifice, got the better of the temptation, and am now on my way to be "grateful" and to be bored. My disposition is of that unsociable type that has no desire for the making of new friends. Old ones I have in abundance, quite enough, I fancy, for all purposes, and so I am not anxious to be thrown among a houseful of people entirely unknown to me, with whom it will be my duty to be on good terms, and to whom I shall be expected to be as agreeable as I know how. Such, however, is the fate in store for me, and for the sake of gratitude I am accepting it calmly, heroically.

John Scarborough is an Englishman; a wealthy, gentlemanly, patriotic, and somewhat prejudiced native of Great Britain, with as kindly, generous a nature as any man, in times ancient or times modern, of whatsoever nationality under the sun, has ever possessed. Full well I know this generosity.

I am thinking now of how less than a year ago it was he that saved my name and my fortune from going the way so many names and such large fortunes went. It was his check, given freely when I was in sore distress, that was my salvation; and now, when he invites me to spend the Christmas holidays at his house, asks me as a favor to come and see his place and make the ac

quaintance of his wife, must not I be ungrateful to refuse?

When he came to America, two years ago last September, he invested quite largely in stocks, and I, having the good fortune to be selected his broker, thus made his acquaintance; an acquaint ance that soon grew into a friendship which bids fair to be firm and lasting.

It is a quarter past nine when the train, just twelve minutes behind time, slows down at Traddington station. As I step off on to the platform, exchanging the snug warmness of the car for the bleak coldness of the open country, I find that it is a platform, and little more. There is an apology for a ticket-office and waiting-room, to be sure, but then it is nothing to compare with what such a corporation as the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company should have.

"Please, sir," says a diminutive specimen of the genus groom, in a long overcoat and shining brass buttons, stepping up to me, with his forefinger raised to his cockaded hat, "is this Mr. Bowclarc?" with a tremendous emphasis on the first syllable.

"Yes, I am Mr. Beauclerc," I respond, pronouncing my name, of which I am rather proud, as correctly as it is possible for an American to utter the least bit of French.

"The dog cart from Scarborough House is waiting for you, sir," and then, pointing to my portmanteau, which is just discernible a few steps away, "is that your luggage, sir? If you'll give me your check I'll have it taken up."

After fumbling in my pockets for a second or two I bring forth a check, which I give to the obsequious man servant, and then step across the platform around the waiting room to where I see the dog cart lamps shedding their impartial radiance alike over the mean bare-of-paint boards of the station and the noble trunks of a row of tall, kingly poplars across the road. The driver is sitting up straight and stiff, as becomes a wellconducted person of his profession, while the horse, a fine, large gray, with check-rein well tightened, in a manner that would bring down kind, gentle, humane Mr. Bergh's wrath in a torrent were he here, is impatiently pawing the hard earth and saying, as well as a horse can, poor beast, "Let us be off!"

As I take my seat beside the driver, with an