and eagerly gives up secrets and secret desires and aspirations, which are as eagerly received. You thought you knew your friend in town-you knew only the semblance of the man until that new spirit of comradeship was born between you, after you had broken bread together at God's table, and smoked the peace-pipe beside the camp-fire. Nay, you did not even know yourself. For you, too, have

become a poet and interpreter of nature. You learn the philosophy of the woodman. You feel yourself, no longer an isolated individual, battling for life in the stern struggle of exi. tence, grumbling and complaining when things go contrariwise, as though the world owed you a duty. All care falls from you, and vou learn the real secret of living, that man is but a small, if the best part, of nature. The gift of life becomes a priceless blessing when shared with your brothers the trees and the wild things of the forest.

And how pleasant are those rare meeting with other wanderers, who pass along the trail, or camp at nightfall at the edge of the lake before carrying their canoes to the next navigable stream! How fine the privilege of exchanging thoughts and tobacco with one's fellow

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fare to the Great North Words, to dwell in some of the thousand abandoned cabins there, where nature supplies fish and a dozen edible fruits and berries. He will learn a new lesson from life-how to live, the greatest of life's lessons; returning with fresh zest to take up the routine of his daily toil again.

WAYSIDE TELEPHONE USES.

WHEN trains get the start of the tele

graph, and are in danger of colliding with others, people who have telephones along the way are sometimes asked to stop them: ..nd this process has several times saved lives.

A rogue who had boarded a train, and meant to jump off and escape while the cars were slacking speed at the next town, was arrested by full telephonic information being given to a constable on the way, who flagged the train and secured his man.

There are a thousand and one other ways in which telephones are helping humanity, and the inventor of the device should some day have a very large and high monument indeed.

JOHNNY HAD HIS REASONS.

how powerful are those impulses of good in every heart-how noble even the meanest of men may be, or aspire to be. Is it not amazing that men will be content to live together, 50 weeks in the year, crowding by thousands orto a few roods of land, breatning smoke-tainted and phthisis-polluted air, and then to take their holidays at some "summer-resort", eating and drinking and crowding one upon the other by day, and sleeping in little, foul wooden boxes of rooms by night? Even the poorest can afford the

you come to school for?" Johnny-"Sure! Me father said if I came every day he'd buy me a billygoat."-[Chicago News.]

DESCENDANTS OF THE REVOLUTION.

SOME of the towns are reckoning up

the number of women who by reason of descent are entitled to belong to the Daughters of the American Revolution. One city of 5,000 inhabitants has found 80, and hopes to run up the list to something like 100.

AFTER the war was over, Whitman

entered the Attorney General's office at Washington, as a clerk: for the straight unvarnished purpose of "making a living". He had expended a great deal of vital energy in the war, had been poorly paid for it, so far as money was concerned, and, financially speaking, was anything but wealthy.

In fact, Walt Whitman was always on the brink of destitution, so far as money was concerned. He apparently had none of the financial instincts that actuate thrifty men: he was a natural Bohemian of the cleaner type, and thought, perhaps, that if he took care of the poetic impulses, "the dollars would take care of themselves". Letters of his are extant, where, in trying to use the mark that generally stands at the head of Federal currency, he used a hieroglyphic such as has never been seen before or since. Dollars to him were merely incidents-forgotten as soon as they were gone, and referred to only when more were needed.

But he had to earn a living: and so he sat at his desk day after day and week after week-instead of spending long stretches of time in the open air, as he had done all his life. The inevitable followed, and in 1873, he was stricken down by paralysis.

"I gave up my desk," he says, "and migrated to Camden, New Jersey, where I lived during '74 and '75, quite unwellbut after that began to grow better; commenced going for weeks at a time, even

for months, down in the country, to a charmingly recluse and rural spot along Timber Creek, twelve or thirteen miles from where it enters the Delaware River.

"Domiciled at the farm-house of my friends, the Staffords, near by, I lived half the time along this creek and its adjacent fields and lanes. And it is to my life here that I, perhaps, owe partial recovery (a sort of second-wind, or semirenewal of the lease of life) from the prostration of 1874-5."

He called himself a "semi-paralytic", in those days, and "reverently blessed the Lord it was no worse." "The trick is, I find," he says, "to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.

"After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wearwhat remains ?"

"Nature remains: to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons—the sun by day, and the stars of heaven by night.

"Dear, soothing, restoration-hoursafter those confining years of paralysisafter the long strain of the war, and its wounds and death."

Here, half-idle, half-industrious, he gathered material which was to find expression in such lines as these:

GIFFORD was listlessly watching a

party of maskers, who were posturing for the benefit of some unseen ladies of the Vice-Lieutenant-Governor's household in the courtyard of the apartment in which he was nominally a prisoner. Suddenly his attention was attracted by the pit-a-pat of a small-footed lady in the adjacent corridor.

His curiosity being excited, he turned from the window and peered down the passage, but, seeing that it was empty, he thought no more of the circumstance, and, throwing himself upon the matted couch, began to ponder over his position. Gifford had been dispatched by his Chicago house to their Chinese agents in Fokien, with orders to buy up every picul of the new crop of black teas harvested in that district. His chop, or passport, directed all officials to see that he was not delayed by magistrates of the localities he passed through, or molested by turbulent spirits; yet His Excellency Kee Foo, Vice-LieutenantGovernor of Min Shau-u, had taken the responsibility of placing him under friendly arrest, and had confined him in one of the rooms of his palace, ostensibly under the pretext of protecting him from rioters.

It is true that the Chinese are somewhat demonstrative during the period of their New-Year festivities, but Gifford suspected that a rival house had dispatched an agent with a heavy bribe to the worthy Vice-Lieutenant-Governor, and that gentleman was aware that by detaining him for a few days his competitor would be enabled to buy up every

picul of tea in the district. In vain he wrote to the official that his orders were to proceed without delay. "Impossible; the people are in arms, and I am responsible for your head", came back the answer; and Gifford, chafing at the delay, was forced to submit.

However, his imprisonment was mitigated by the comfort which surrounded him. The ladies of the Vice-LieutenantGovernor's household were evidently interested in his presence, judging from the presents of fruit and flowers which he received morning and evening: but since the moment that he was introduced to his prison he had seen only one person, the servant who waited on himand he was a deaf-mute.

Opposite to the wing in which his room was situated was a portion of the palace that was always kept closely screened. From the tone of the voices which proceeded from this part of the Ya-mun whenever the maskers did anything particularly amusing, he concluded that the ladies' apartments were situated there, and his surmise proved to be cor

rect.

He was wishing that some cne would take pity upon him and pay him a visit, when he again heard the pattering noise in the corridor. Cautiously rising, he crept to the open door, when he beheld a sight which at once astonished and delighted him, for there, laughing like a wayward child, just escaped from its nurse, stood a lovely girl about sixteen years old.

She was of medium height, slender as a bamboo shoot, with an exquisitely

formed oval face, straight nose, rosebud mouth, and dark, full, liquid eyes, that pierced to the heart with their innocent earnestness; her charming features being crowned with a profusion of long, raven hair worn en queue. Her lower dresses were of colored satin, each garment shorter than the one beneath, the outer being profusely embroidered with golden chrysanthemums; and her upper robes, of soft tinted crepe, were covered by a long jacket of pale blue brocade, so thickly embroidered as to almost hide. the beautiful fabric. The nails of her tiny, dimpled hands were each three inches in length, and cased in jeweled sheaths, while her doll-like shoes shone from beneath her robes like golden footnotes on an illuminated muscript.

Instead of screaming or fainting, this charming vision, with imperturbable. comic seriousness and grace, opened her coral lips and inquired, in Chinese:

"Are you the honorable Fanwei?"

As this meant, "Are you the foreign white devil?" Gifford felt exceedingly amused, and could hardly retain his selfpossession as he replied:

"Beautiful lady, I am that humble, never-to-be-too-much-execrated animal!"

Advancing, at first somewhat timidly, yet gradually assured by his respectful manner, and growing more cor.fident as she neared him, she gazed innocently into his eyes and faltered:

"Tell me all about-yourself!"

This was said so naively that Gifford was completely conquered, and, although he knew that it was totally contrary to Chinese etiquette, he placed his arm around her lithe form and drew her toward him. Instead of repelling these advances she nestled closer, and, looking archly into his face, said:

"There was a rent in the mat which

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covers our window, and, my mother being below amusing herself by looking at the maskers-I-I came here! Now tell me about yourself. Do you eat human flesh?-no?"

"Certainly not! We are not tigers, as they represent us to you, nor do we treat our ladies as your men do theirs. In my country, America, women rule everything, and we almost worship them when they are as pretty as yourself."

"Worship them!" she queried; "how is that possible?"

"Yes, we are their slaves, and do their bidding! Tell me your name, fair one." Opening her bright eyes, and laughing with them, she shyly answered:

"Why should I tell you my name? When you go back to Mee-lee-kee you forget it!"

"Never", he protested. "Jewel of Shau-u, you shine more brightly than the fairest in my own country."

"Am I then fairer than the ladies of Mee-lee-kee?" she inquired archly. "O honorable Fanwei, I would like to go to Mee-lee-kee."

The look and the proximity of her cherry lips completed it, and he whispered, in English-for they never use the salute in China, and consequently have no word to express the action.

"Kiss me, lotus-flower."
"Ke-e-es?" she queried.

"Yes-kiss me!" he cried, suiting the action to the word.

She sprang from his arms like a frightened child and ran from the apartment. Fearing that he had offended her, he was about to follow and endeavor to explain her mistake, but she stole softly back into the 100m, and, standing before him, gently clicked her lips, as though she had partaken of something delicious.