Chapter II: Part 2

Mr. Edgerton followed on horseback. The sun had not risen when I had been awakened, and the morning chill was in the air; a mist hung low over the marshes, and the waters of the bay looked dull and cold. I had begun to shiver, and the kind physician threw a heavy cape around me, and tucked me in carefully beside him.

We had not spoken, except for a morning's greeting, but now he began a fire of questions, and I could not answer even the simplest. I had never heard that my mother was a widow before her marriage to the man whose name I bore; I did not know her maiden name, nor where she came from; and if I was not born at the plantation on the Gunpowder, my birthplace was a mystery to me; for, as I have said, my first recollection was the warm day on the beach.

My mother had told me nothing from which I could formulate a suggestion or give a reply that would throw any light upon my family history. What was to become of me I did not know. Apparently my mother had left no will, and my appearance upon the day of her conversation with Mr. Edgerton had interrupted, probably, any disclosures which she had intended making.

The lawyer had ridden alongside of the chaise as we slowly ascended a slight hill.

"Know you anything, Master Hurdiss, of a large iron-bound chest in a room on the second story of Marshwood House?" (I have forgotten to say that the estate upon which we lived was known in the neighborhood as the "Marshwood plantation," whether from the name of a previous owner or its location, I have never been able to ascertain.)

To the lawyer's question I could only reply that I had often seen the box and had once caught a glimpse of the interior, that it was full of papers, and I had noticed it must have contained some money, for I saw my mother take some gold pieces from a heavy leather bag that she had afterwards replaced.

"Never mind; we will solve it all," continued the man of law, "so soon as we get there. I have the keys. Come, doctor, press ahead!"

The horses lurched forward into a trot--we had now reached the top of the hill--and tired and sleepy, I leaned back on my kind friend's shoulder and fell asleep.

When I awakened the sun was high, but the chill was yet in the air, and a damp breeze had sprung up from the eastward that presaged rain. Aloft against the heavy clouds a V-shaped line of wild-geese were winging their way to the south; their coarse honking fell down to us. The sound caused me to look upward, and I followed the steady flight. I have always been well versed in the signs of nature, and there is nothing so sure to judge by as the flight of wild-fowl.

"We are going to have cold weather," I remarked to the doctor.

"Yes, the old gander is setting a pace for them as if the snow were after him," he replied.

To my surprise, as I gazed about near to hand, I saw that we were almost at the cross-roads, where it was our intention to stop and procure something to eat, as we had had nothing since the gray of morning.

Two or three new houses had been added to the group that lined the road-side, and a new sign-post waved its arms at the corner. A number of negroes hurried out and took the horses.

As we entered the low-ceilinged front room of the tavern I overheard the talk that the doctor and lawyer were having together. "It was certainly most careless to leave such property unguarded," the latter was saying. This made me listen.

"But no one would suspect anything in the way of treasure, and they are honest people hereabouts," returned the doctor reassuringly.

For some reason I could scarcely swallow a mouthful of the meal that was served for us, although it smelt most savory. As a special honor the landlord himself insisted upon waiting upon the table, and I shrewdly suspect, putting things together, that he was of a curious nature, and longed for a chance to listen to the conversation; but if this was his desire, it was not gratified, as the doctor and the lawyer were most reserved in his presence.

At last, however, we were on the move again, a fresh horse having been placed in the shafts of the old rattle-trap (upon the possession of which, by-the-way, I found that the doctor prided himself most mightily). Well, off we went at a tremendous pace, the new horse charging down the road in a clumsy, heedless fashion, and the chaise rocking behind him fit to capsize us.

The doctor at last succeeded in pulling the nag down to a steadier gait, and Mr. Edgerton, coughing and choking, came trotting up beside us through the trailing cloud of dust that, despite the damp, hung in our wake. For two miles we drove on in silence, and then turned from the main road into the lane that led to Marshwood. The old-fields on either hand were grown breast-high with brambles, and the lane wheel-rucks were almost hidden in the tall grass that swished softly and quietly under the box of the chaise.

Marshwood House was built partly of brick and partly of wood. The brick had come from England at the time when the colonies, because of the tax on industries mayhap, brought even their building material from over the water. It had once been very handsome, but during the Revolution the outbuildings had been destroyed, and the right wing of the house had fallen into sad decay. By the expenditure of some not inconsiderable sum, however, the whole estate could have been restored to the beauty it must once have possessed (but alas! that never has or never will happen, I suppose). Now, at the time of which I speak, ruin was writ on everything.

When the horses had been tied to two rusty staples driven into the trunk of an oak-tree that stood before the door, we all stepped up on to the piazza. The boards were sagged so badly that they had fallen away from the body of the house, and even the stone-work had crumbled along the foundations.

It appeared like the old place, and yet it was not; but there was the same hornets' nest that I had watched building up (ages and ages ago, it seemed to me); and there, hanging on a nail, was a fishing-rod with a rusty iron hook dangling from a bit of rotten fish-line. I had stood on tiptoe and put it there; now I could touch it with my elbow.

The lawyer had some difficulty in opening the door. However, at last he succeeded, and gave a sigh of relief as he saw that there were no traces of any one having preceded him.

"Come in, doctor," he said, cheerily, his voice echoing oddly down the empty hallway.

"Come on, John, my son," reiterated the physician to me.

I turned, before I crossed the threshold, and looked out over the sloping meadow and the stretch of yellow marsh to the blue-gray waters of the Chesapeake. The rain that had been threatening all the morning had begun to fall with that depressing, sun-filtered drizzle that promises hours of it.

It was on such a day that I used to lie with my head in my mother's lap while she read to me. I remembered this with a certain calmness, for there had settled upon me a firmly assured belief that I should never be happy again, and I accepted the feeling with a stoicism that now I wonder at. But my pen runs from the main task of putting facts on paper. To return:

I entered the house, and insensibly caught the doctor's great hand in mine.

There was a musty, locked-up odor greeting us that checked full breathing. The big room on the right smelt like a cellar, dank and unhealthy.

The doctor drew aside a chair, and, opening a window and the shutters, admitted some light. Dust was all about, everywhere; the heavy oak centre table was littered with dead, starved flies; the whole place was so chill and unhomelike that I shuddered. The doctor closed the window.

"By Jove, it grows cold!" he said.

The lawyer, who had deposited a pair of large empty saddle-bags on the floor, stamped his feet.

"Heigho!" he cried, "let's cheer things up a bit. Here's a fire all ready for the lighting; that's a godsend."

In the wide fireplace were some good-sized logs and a handful of fat-wood. Drawing a flint and steel, he struck a light, and soon a tiny blaze crept up the old chimney, and broadened with a burst of flame at last into a cheerful, roaring, warming glow. It cleared the room of its unhealthiness, and all three of us spread our hands out to it as if it had been winter.

"I think the look of things has made us exaggerate the weather," said the doctor, with an attempt at a laugh. "Come, let's set to work."

The lawyer drew from his pocket a small bunch of keys. "We will have to try for it--they're not numbered," he replied, thrusting one into the keyhole of the desk in the chimney-corner.

He tried them all before he found one that would fit. Then he turned the bolt with a sharp click, and lowered the lid. I began to feel excited, and I could see that the others were and did not conceal it.

"Ah, no one has been here, that's evident!" exclaimed the doctor.

Plain to view in a neat pile were some French coins, a shining little tower of gold. The lawyer opened one of the drawers on the left. It was empty. Then another, with the same result. In the bottom one, on the right hand, however, was a paper and a miniature on ivory. I remembered the last--the side face of a large, heavy man in a white wig. His nose was very prominent, and despite the massive jowl he had an air that suggested the effect of a noble presence. His costume was magnificent. From beneath a broad sash that crossed his breast peeped a great diamond star, and lace and jewels decked him.

"An excellent likeness, I judge," said the doctor, looking at the portrait with one eye shut.

"I should know it across the room," replied the lawyer.

"Who is it?" I asked, for I had seen it once in my mother's hands.

"It is the French King who lost his head by the guillotine," answered the doctor--"Louis the Sixteenth."

"Did your mother never speak to you about this portrait?" asked the lawyer, who was untying the ribbon with which the paper had been fastened.

"Once I saw her looking at it," I replied, "and I asked her. But I never did so again, because she began to talk so fast and in such strange words that I could not follow. Then she began to weep, and her hair fell down all about her. Aunt Sheba came running in and held her in her arms. It was a long time before she grew calm again. She never told me who it was."

By this the lawyer had spread the document on his knee. He gave a grunt of vexation.

"This is Greek to me," he muttered. "See what you can make out of it."

He handed the paper to the doctor. The latter wrinkled his brows and shrugged his shoulders.

"I give it up," he replied, half smiling.

I peeped beneath his elbow.

"Why, it's French," I said, "and my mother's writing, sir!"

"Can you read it?" asked the doctor, spreading it out on the desk lid.

In reply I began without hesitation:

"'_To Monsieur Henri Amedee Laralle de Brienne._

"'DEAR BROTHER,--Although I have not written you and have received
no word from you, I am writing these lines, trusting and intending
that they will meet your eye should you survive me. My husband,
whose memory I cherish, is dead--lost at sea. Despite the
injustice with which you have treated him, and me also since my
second marriage, I recommend to you my son, who bears the name of
his step-father.'"

I started and read the last words over twice.

"Go on!" interjected the lawyer, rapping the mantelpiece sharply with his knuckles.

I continued, with my face burning and my lips atremble:

"'For the sake of the name _that he might claim_, and all that it
may mean, you may receive him. I have told him little of the past.
In my judgment it was not needed, nor could it now produce anything
to his favor. If circumstances should alter, you may divulge the
secret; but I pray you not to do so unless this happens. This I
beseech you for the sake of her whom you have loved. My son will
bear with him the chest that contains the papers that I brought
from the château at A. They will be unopened and addressed to you.
There is enough money in the two bags to pay for my Jean's
education. I have never been able to bring myself to talk about the
dreadful happenings. I cannot even think of them, or I should go
mad. Somehow it has appeared that silence has been the better part;
but to your discretion I leave this, and to you I intrust my son's
future. May God watch over him and direct you! It is evident to me
from your letter that you were uncertain which one of your sisters
was writing to you. I am _H. de B._, who inscribes here what will
be carved upon her tombstone, "_Madam John Hurdiss_, widow of
Captain John Hurdiss, merchant and trader, of Cornwall, England."'"

This was all the letter contained. It did not seem to lessen any mystery that existed, and for some minutes neither the doctor nor Mr. Edgerton spoke a word. Suddenly the latter kicked back one of the logs in the fireplace with his foot.

"Confound the fire, it smokes like a smudge!" he grumbled. "So we are not to open the papers, after all! But there may be something lying loose. Let us up."

All at once the doctor raised his hand. "Hark! What noise is that?" he exclaimed.

A roaring crackling sound came from overhead. Something fell heavily on the floor of the hallway outside. The two men sprang to the door and pulled it open. The hall and the other rooms were filled with stifling smoke. The old portrait (the one with the long brown curls) had fallen, and a blazing bit of wainscoting burned through the canvas that had smouldered to the frame.

"The strong-box!" shrieked the lawyer, and he plunged up the stairs.

"It's in the room on the right!" I cried, as the doctor and I followed him, feeling our way with the aid of the banisters.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

TYPICAL ENGLISH SCHOOLS.

BY JOHN CORBIN.

WINCHESTER.

The English public schools are not what we should call public schools at all--that is, they are not kept up at the public expense, and you can't go to them without paying. What we call public schools the English call free schools, and only poor children go to them. The kind of schools I am going to write about are attended by the sons of the richer people and of the nobility. They are not unlike the big American schools which prepare fellows for college--Exeter, Andover, St. Paul's, St. Mark's, Groton, and others--though they are all much older, and have many quaint and interesting customs inherited from the Middle Ages. I shall give an article to each of three of these schools--Winchester, Eton, and Rugby--and then shall add an article on athletics at public schools in general.

The oldest of all the schools is Winchester. Fellows at Andover sometimes tell you that their fathers and grandfathers went there before them. At Winchester this is a common case; and since the quadrangles of the college were built, there has been time not for one grandfather but for fifteen in a line. The prim and charming buildings look every day as old as they are; but if you were to go into the dormitories and see the rows of little iron bedsteads, each with a boy sleeping in it, you would find it hard to realize that grandfathers of these boys have slept at Winchester for five hundred years back, and that all our grandfathers began by being young and small enough to sleep in these cots.

The founder of the school was William of Wykeham, Bishop of the See of Winchester, who was not only a great bishop and a great statesman, but one of the greatest builders of the Middle Ages. His purpose in founding a school was to prepare boys to enter a college he had just founded at Oxford--New College, as it was called, and is still called after more than five hundred years. At both Winchester and New College the scholars are proud to call themselves Wykehamists; and when a fellow has been through both he is apt to tell you that he is a Wykehamist of the Wykehamists--which means more than you can ever understand until you hear and see a man say it. The first result of preparing boys to enter the university was to make them too far advanced for the teaching they found when they got there. To carry on their education Wykeham had to have a special body of tutors at New College. This was the beginning of the English custom of having a complete set of teachers at each of the score of colleges that make up a university. Thus Winchester is not only the father of all preparatory schools, but of the English university system of instruction by colleges.

Wykeham intended that all his scholars should be too poor to pay for their own education, and left funds to support them. Within the last generation, however, the masters have changed this. In order to get the cleverest possible pupils, they examine all boys between twelve and fourteen, and admit the best ones each year. About eight usually fail for one who gets in. The boys who succeed are, of course, those who have had the best training; and thus the fellows who get the benefit of Wykeham's money are usually sons of university graduates, and are often rich. Many people object strongly to this, and with good reason; yet the method has one great virtue. Fellows get almost as much credit in school for being studious and able, as for playing football; so that many of the richest fellows study hardest. In our schools, and even in our universities, there is still a stupid prejudice against being a first-rate scholar.

Within the school also there is keen competition. The five or six best students each year get scholarships at New College, which enable them to go through the university without expense to themselves. This is called "getting New," and is perhaps the greatest achievement of a Wykehamist. That such has been the case for at least two hundred years may be seen in the epitaph of a boy who died in 1676 from being hit by a stone, "In this school he stood first, and we hope he is not the last in heaven, where he went, instead of Oxford." When such is the case, there would seem to be little need of the motto on the wall of the old school, which Wykehamists translate, "Work, walk, or be wopped."

Beside the members of the "college" Wykeham founded, another kind of pupils has grown up, called commoners, who pay for lodging, board, and tuition--about $700 a year. These, at first few and unimportant, have increased so greatly of late that they are usually regarded as the characteristic kind of school-boy. They live in nine communities, or houses, of about thirty-five each, under separate masters. The life of the commoners is almost exactly the same as that of the collegians; but the division into those who are and those who are not supported by the college is worth remembering, for a similar distinction exists not only in all public schools, but in the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. It does not happen everywhere, however, that the best scholars all live together; and many Wykehamists maintain that both scholars and commoners would gain by being mingled. Before many years the old college will doubtless be broken up, and the "scholars" proportioned among the various "houses."

The discipline is not so strict as at many public schools, yet quite strict enough, according to American standards. The boys--or _men_, as they are always called--are not allowed to enter the town, and have to get special "leave out" to go far into the country. The school day begins at seven o'clock, and bed-time comes at nine or ten. Constant attendance at prayers is required, morning and night; and there are four services on Sunday. For breaches of discipline the boys are still flogged. One is tempted to say that such a system is not modern; but as a matter of fact, it did not exist, among the commoners, at least, until the present century; and no true Wykehamist would think of changing it. Even the boys like it sincerely, in spite of some few breaches of discipline. Certainly the strictness has no more faults than the great freedom granted by certain of our large preparatory schools; and though we should hardly want to live just as English boys do, we can learn a great deal from them.

The main idea of the discipline of an English school is that as much of it as possible shall be carried on by the boys themselves. At Winchester it was ordained from the beginning that eighteen of the older boys should, in Wykeham's own words, "oversee their fellows, and from time to time certify the masters of their behavior and progress in study." These eighteen are called Prefects, and are chosen from the men who stand highest in studies. To an American boy, I am afraid, it wouldn't seem much fun to have to take care of his schoolmates' behavior. He would probably look upon himself more or less as a spy. Yet everything I saw at Winchester went to prove that to be a Prefect was almost as great an honor as to be an athlete. Five of the Prefects have special titles, such as Prefect of Chapel, Prefect of Hall, etc. These are generally chosen from the five best scholars. The Prefect of Hall has charge not only of his special duties, but of the other Prefects. If any disturbance takes place, he quells it. If the boys have any favors to ask, he is their spokesman. He is thus the head of the whole school, and a far more important person, I should say, than the Captain of the cricket team.

An incident occurred in 1838 which well illustrates the power of a Prefect. A peddler insisted on bringing various contraband articles, among them liquor, to sell to the boys on their recreation-grounds. The Prefects remonstrated time and again, with no effect. At last five of them seized him and threw him, basket and all, into the river. The peddler had the Prefects arrested and tried for assault with intent to kill, and the magistrate fined them fifty dollars each. This fine the college paid willingly, complimenting the Prefects for their zeal and common-sense. The spirit which prompted both masters and pupils exists to-day, not only at Winchester, but at all public schools. The result is that not only is order maintained without ill feeling between masters and pupils, but the eighteen Prefects of each year learn to fill posts requiring unusual tact, common-sense, and courage.

The duty of a Prefect which an American would least envy is that of inflicting bodily punishment--"tunding," as it is called in Winchester slang. This consists in beating the culprit across the back of his waistcoat with a ground-ash the size of one's finger. The art of "tunding," an old Prefect of Hall informed me, was to catch the edge of the shoulder-blade with the rod, and strike in the same spot everytime. In this way, he said, it was possible to cut the back of a waistcoat into strips. In the early part of the century flogging was of more than daily occurrence. An old Wykehamist states that on the day of his arrival at school there were 198 boys in residence and 279 names reported for punishment. Nowadays, however, only a score or so of cases occur each year; and many boys go through the school without being tunded.

A characteristic case occurred during my stay at Winchester. A party of small boys had been invited to a strawberry feast in the rooms of one of the dons, and seeing a group of Prefects in the court below, had been unable to resist the temptation. First a rotten strawberry splashed on the flint at the feet of the Prefects, and then a storm descended. This was too much for Prefectorial dignity to bear. The good don's strawberry feast ended in a general tunding. The Prefect of Hall described this to me next day with quiet satisfaction; and, later, the don spoke of the case as characteristic of the best effects of the Prefectorial system. As host, he said, he had not been able to interfere; and except for school-boy discipline, the culprits would have escaped. The wife of one of the masters, however, said it was a brutal shame, and that if she had her way with those Prefects, she would throw strawberries at them.

Such a system leaves little for the masters to do, yet a boy sometimes carries his case to the higher court, though he does it at the risk of great unpopularity. Some years ago two Seniors, having a grudge against another boy, employed two Juniors, at ninepence a head, to give him a beating. The Prefects very naturally objected to this method of doing one's dirty work, and ordered all four to be tunded. One of the Senior culprits lost courage when he found how hard it was going with his companion, and appealed to the master on the plea that the ground-ash was too large. The master declared that the ground-ashes were "proper good ground-ashes," and proceeded to wear them out on him.

The details of daily life at Winchester are not easy to understand. The "college," as, in fact, each of the "houses," is divided into chambers or "shops," as the boys call them. In each of these lives a community of say a dozen boys, over which three Prefects preside. The sleeping-rooms are locked up, except at night. In the study-room each boy has a desk, which he calls his "horse-box." The Prefects have tables, placed in commanding positions. These are called "washing-stools." In the college there are seven chambers, occupying "Chamber Court," the main quadrangle; and all about are ranged the domestic buildings belonging to the college--the slaughter-house, the bake-house, the kitchen, and the brew-house. In Chamber Court also are the rooms occupied by the masters and their families, and the magnificent college dining-hall and chapel. All these buildings stand to-day almost precisely as they were built five hundred years ago--that is, a hundred years before Columbus discovered America--with this difference, that the flint walls are so stained by time that they reflect the sunshine in many subdued and mellow shades.

There are, however, a few relics of dead customs. At one side of the court you will find the remains of the ancient conduit. Here, on the stone pavement and in the open air, five centuries of boys have taken their morning baths, summer and winter. Bathing could not always, however, be as regular as in these days when travelling Englishmen pack their clothes in leather-covered bath-tubs instead of in a trunk. A dozen years ago bath-rooms were fitted up within-doors, in rooms formerly occupied by learned Fellows of the College. On a wall is the painting of the "Trusty Servant," with its verses.

The old lavatory of the college was called "Moab," while the shoe-blacking place was called "Edom." I wonder how many American school-boys are as familiar as those old English boys must have been with the Psalm that says "Moab is my wash-pot; over Edom will I cast out my shoe." The ancient brew-house in outer court is still used, but when I took luncheon in Hall with the Prefects they rather sniffed at the beer made in it. Under King William, however, it inspired this song:

Now let us all, both great and small,
With voice both loud and clear,
Right merrily sing, Live Billy our King!
For 'bating the tax upon beer.
For I likes my drop of good beer;
For I likes my drop of good beer.
So whene'er I goes out I carries about
My little pint bottle of beer.

To my taste the beer was very good, and not too strong. Perhaps it is a sign of the good sense of Wykehamists that they preferred water or milk.

One might also class fagging, with which all readers of _Tom Brown_ are familiar, with the dead and dying customs. It is limited to a few simple offices. A Senior still sends small boys on errands, and sometimes makes him cook and wash bottles at private feasts in chambers. Every evening, too, when the post comes in, the porter of the college brings it to Chambers Court, and at a signal the junior of each chamber to get what belongs to his fellows. In olden times, in order to accustom the fags to handling hot dishes, the Seniors would sometimes score their hands with glowing fagots. This provided them with "tin gloves." A more amusing bit of barbarity was the "toe fittee," pronounced _tofy-tie_. This consisted in tying a string about a boy's great toe while he lay asleep. Then the string was violently pulled, and the boy was drawn out of his bed to his tormentor's side. Sometimes two or three would be brought from different parts of a chamber to the same point. In America I have often known a boy to tie a string about his own toe, and hang it out of the window so that a friend might wake him up to go out fishing; but that is a different thing.

For pure ingenuity the so-called "scheme" bears the palm. It was always the duty of a certain luckless Junior to wake the Prefect at an early hour every morning, and if he overslept he was of course tunded. Noticing that the night candle always burned to a certain point at this hour, some nameless fag invented the plan of hanging a hat-box over his head by a string, and connecting the string with this point of the candle by a rude fuse. He thus made sure that the hat-box would fall on his head at the required hour. Under this sword of Damocles he could, of course, sleep in peace without fear of flogging.

The terrible stories of flogging and fagging, however, really belong to the past. Unless I am very much mistaken, life at Winchester, in spite of an occasional tunding, is much pleasanter and better regulated than in most of our schools. The fact that the Prefects enforce most of the discipline makes it possible for the masters to get very near to the hearts of their pupils; and, above all, the English boys are fortunate in the fact that the wives and daughters of the Masters live with them in the same quadrangle. To speak of Winchester without telling about the wife of the second Head Master, and how fond of her big boys and little boys, good boys and bad boys are, would be to leave the part of Hamlet out of the play. Many are the gawky boys whom she has put at ease among people, and many the bad boys whom she has set right. One of the pleasantest things I saw at Winchester was a lot of Oxford men who had come back to her during vacation just to hear her call them Smith, Brown, and Robinson.

The stamp of men Winchester produces is as distinct from all others as a St. Paul's man is different from one from Exeter. The ideal toward which the school is working was well expressed by one of the Head Masters. "I consider that those boys who issue from the top of the school--_i.e._, those upon whom the highest influences of the school have been brought to bear--are boys who ... carry into life a stamp, not of a very showy kind, but distinguished by a self-reliance, a modesty, a practical good sense, and strong religious feeling--that religious feeling being of a very moderate traditional and sober kind which, in my judgment, is beyond all price."

HOW TO USE A PIANO.

BY W. J. HENDERSON.

"As we journey through life, let us live by the way," is a very old saying to which many interpretations have been given. To me its pleasantest significance is that we should try to make life a constant delight. There is nothing better for this purpose than kindly intercourse with friends, but as we grow older we find that a circle of agreeable acquaintances cannot be maintained simply on a conversational basis. We must offer our friends inducements to come and see us; in other words, we must entertain in some form. Most boys and many girls are alarmed by the word "entertain." The girls are less afraid of it than the boys, because they have an inborn desire and a natural talent for social pleasures. But they are often puzzled as to the best means of arranging entertainments. Everything seems so difficult for a girl to undertake without a great deal of assistance from her mother, and frequently that assistance robs her of all feeling of personal proprietorship in the entertainment.

"It was called my party," she says, "but really mamma did everything."

Now I wish to offer a suggestion or two to girls about a form of entertainment which is easily arranged. There are very few homes in this civilized land which do not contain pianos, and there are very few girls who cannot play a little. Even if you cannot play difficult music you can give a musical, and make it a really artistic and enjoyable entertainment. In the first place, then, let us talk about the piano. Two or three days before your musical is to take place you should have the instrument tuned, for you cannot make music agreeable to your guests if the piano is out of tune. And here let me offer a few suggestions about keeping it in tune. The most important requirement is equality of temperature. Therefore your piano should not stand where the heat of a grate or a steam radiator will affect one end of it more than the other, nor should it be so situated that a draught from a leaky window will blow on one end. It ought to be placed so that it will be affected only by the general temperature of the room, and that ought not to have an extreme range. If you hear loud cracks coming from your piano at times, as if something had snapped, lookout; the chances are that the sounding-board is warping, or something equally undesirable is happening, and it is probably due to the influence of temperature. If you wish to keep a piano in the very best order, do not pile books or music or any other heavy objects on its lid.

When preparing for your musical, bear these suggestions in mind. You will in all likelihood be obliged to move your piano out of its customary position, for nine times out of ten that is one which would make you sit with your back squarely to your audience. You should not do this; but when you move the instrument, do not put it where it will be injured. In giving a musical, bear in mind that the player is to be the centre on which all eyes are focussed. If the piano is a grand, place it so that its right side will be toward the audience, but running a little obliquely, so that the keyboard will be visible, or partly so, to those on the right side of the room. The position of a square or an upright should be similar, but you may with advantage turn an upright so that the keyboard is more in view. If the room is very large, you may raise the lid of a grand half-way. Do not raise it all the way just because you have seen concert performers do so. That is necessary only in a large public hall. If your drawing-room is small, do not raise the lid at all.

Now you must have light for your music. The prettiest way is to set a tall standing-lamp a little to your left and a little behind you. Never place it on your right, because that would be between you and the audience. If you have not a standing-lamp, a pedestal or a table with an ordinary lamp will do quite as well. Do not set a light on the piano. It does not look well, in the first place, and in the second it is likely to rattle. It will add much to the effect of the picture if you surround the base of your lamp with roses and smilax, and it is also pretty to have some smilax twined around the scroll-work of the music-stand. In arranging the seats for your guests, you will naturally have to be guided by consideration of the number you expect. I should advise you not to have too many, for that would make it look too much like a public performance. In placing the seats, try to avoid all appearance of stiffness, yet endeavor to arrange them so that as many as possible of your guests will be in front of the piano--by which I mean facing its right side. But whatever you do, do not set chairs in rows as if it were a public hall. It looks badly, and it prevents freedom of movement among your friends between the selections.

And this leads me to another important suggestion. Whatever your programme may be, it should be short, and it should have at least one intermission. Two would be better. In those intermissions you should encourage conversation, and try to induce your guests to move about and change their seats. You might have lemonade served in one intermission. Let the boys pass it around. That starts both movement and conversation. I suppose I need hardly suggest that, if the words of your friends are too complimentary to your playing, you can lead them to comment on the beauty of the music. But I do believe that the girls will forgive me if I say "dress plainly." A musician should never do anything to attract attention to his person at the expense of his art. Wear a simple gown, and avoid all mannerisms or affectations in playing.

But now I hear some girl saying, "I can't play well enough to give a musical." That depends on what you regard as good playing. If you think it means performing difficult and showy pieces, you are mistaken. That kind of playing may astonish your friends, but it will not give them such genuine pleasure as the performance of a few comparatively easy compositions of real beauty in a sympathetic manner. Here the majority of girls will meet with their greatest difficulty, for I am sorry to say that many music-teachers ignore the easy pieces of the great masters, and give their pupils as studies the cheap rubbish which litters the counters of the average music-store. It is a mistake to suppose that the immortals among composers never wrote anything easy. There are compositions by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and others which can be performed by players of very moderate ability, and there are easy and attractive compositions by less ambitious composers, even such as Johann Strauss, which have much more merit than the brilliant runs and arpeggios of Sidney Smith, H. A. Wollenhaupt, and that class.

There are several ways in which you can make a programme so as to give it a special interest beyond that of the music alone, and I should advise you to adopt some one of these plans. If you are not a brilliant player, all the more reason for adding interesting features to your entertainment. If you are an accomplished performer, your musical will still gain in artistic dignity by an intelligent arrangement of the programme. Of course there is one thing always to be borne in mind: you must compose your list of selections so that there will be constant variety. Do not, for instance, put three or four slow and plaintive pieces one after the other. As a rule, too, it is well to avoid a succession of compositions in the same form, such as sonatas, nocturnes, or valses. Eminent artists make mistakes in these matters. One of the most distinguished conductors in this country once gave an orchestral concert consisting of nine overtures. The effect was very bad indeed, for in spite of the fact that they were all by different composers, they were not sufficiently dissimilar in form to produce variety.

Keeping in mind, then, the necessity of variety, you can arrange your programme chronologically--that is, beginning with a very early writer and coming down to the most recent. Secondly, you can arrange it by schools, taking some pieces from the polyphonic, some from the classic, and some from the romantic. Thirdly, you may arrange it according to nations, giving examples of German, Russian, French, Italian, English, and American. Fourthly, you may make it representative of one nation; and fifthly, representative of one composer. The last-named way is not advisable for any except accomplished performers, because you will find it practically impossible to make up even a short list of good pieces by one composer and have them all easy. A programme representative of one nation may also be chronological, and if you intend to give more than one musical--say a series of three--this will probably be the most attractive way. But undoubtedly the neatest way for a single recital would be the arrangement according to nations, for you will have no trouble at all in finding a single composition from each country that is pretty and easy to play. In making out the programme, be careful to give the full title and, if possible, opus number of the composition, and I think it always adds to the interest of a programme for young people to put in the dates of the births and deaths of the composers. If you will permit me, I will now submit a sample programme on the plan of representation of nations just to show you how attractive it looks:

GERMAN.

1. Sonata No. 33 E-flat (composed when
eleven years old) _Beethoven_ (1770-1827).

RUSSIAN.

2. Melody in F _Rubinstein_ (1829-1894).

POLISH.

3. "Chant du Voyage" _Paderewski_ (1860----).

FRENCH.

4. "Funeral March of a Marionette" _Gounod_ (1818-1893).

ITALIAN.

5. Gavotte (from violin sonata in F) _Corelli_ (1653-1713).

ENGLISH.

6. Nocturne in E-flat _J. Field_ (1782-1837).

AMERICAN.

7. "Wood Idyl," from Opus 19 _MacDowell_ (1861----).

I wish to submit for your consideration one more programme, representing the great schools of music, simply to show you that such a list can be made of pieces well within the powers of an amateur of ordinary technical ability.

POLYPHONIC SCHOOL (1500-1750).

1. Canzona in seto tono _Girolamo Frescobaldi_ (1588-1645).

2. Prelude No 1 from the
"Well-tempered Clavichord" _J. S. Bach_ (1685-1750).

CLASSIC SCHOOL (1750-1827).

3. Andante and Finale from
Sonata No. 1 _W. A. Mozart_ (1756-1791).

4. Sonata No. 37 _L. van Beethoven_ (1770-1827).

ROMANTIC SCHOOL (1821 to the present).

5. Slow Waltz (from
"Album Leaves") _R. Schumann_ (1810-1856).

6. "Marche Hongroise" _Franz Schubert_ (1797-1828).

The compositions embraced in this programme are well within the power of an amateur of moderate ability.

If, however, you can play more difficult music, your choice will be extended. Nevertheless, I adhere to my first assertion that it is not at all troublesome to make up a programme of compositions which may be classed as easy. And here let me give you some final advice. Select for a musical at which you are to be the performer music somewhat easier than that which you are accustomed to study under your teacher. The reason for doing this is so plain that it is hardly necessary to mention it. If you are unaccustomed to formal piano-playing before an audience, you will undoubtedly be nervous. Now if you go to the piano knowing that the music before you is going to tax your utmost powers, you will be still more nervous, and the probabilities are that you will not only not play the music effectively, but that you will play it badly and make many technical slips. The more you make, the more nervous you will become, till it would not be surprising if you should break down altogether. On the other hand, if you are conscious that the music is well within your powers--that you have technical facility enough and to spare--you will not be harassed by fears of making blunders, but will lose all your nervousness as soon as you begin to play and to realize how easy your work is. Thus instead of being constantly on the watch for fear of making mistakes, you will be able to devote your entire attention to giving every phrase the right expression. If you have carefully studied the musical beauties of each composition, you will no doubt surprise yourself as well as your friends by the intelligence and sentiment of your playing. Bear in mind the fact that such great artists as Paderewski frequently charm and move an audience more by the amount of color and expression which they throw into easy compositions like Chopin's E-flat nocturne, while in their more brilliant playing, as in one of Liszt's Hungarian rhapsodies, they gain applause rather as the result of amazement at their conquest of technical difficulties than as the demonstration of sincere delight in the music itself. And now I shall leave the rest to the girls. I am sure that among the readers of this paper there must be hundreds and hundreds of girls who can play the piano well enough to get up such musicals as I have suggested.

THE MARINE DEMONSTRATION IN NEW YORK HARBOR.

The city of New York has one of the finest harbors in the world, and it invariably invokes a burst of admiration from the observer when he first sails up through its land-locked entrance, passing the low-lying hills of Staten Island on his left and Long Island on his right; then past Governors Island, with its old fort, and the Statue of Liberty, to approach the densely populated Manhattan Island with its innumerable tall buildings that testify to the admirable skill of the city's architects and engineers. The forest of masts that fringe the water's edge, the saucy puffing tugs towing huge vessels, steamboats, flat-boats, barges, etc., here and there, and the stately steamships gliding along, make a very impressive picture.

On the night of October 24 some two hundred of these vessels assisted in a marine demonstration that took place in the harbor, turning its waters into a fairy scene that will ever remain in the memory of those that witnessed it. The men identified with the shipping interests of the country determined to show their enthusiastic support in the late campaign for sound money, and to do so, adopted the idea of having a monster marine parade. Every steam-craft that could be spared was pressed into service, and on the night of the parade threaded its way up the Hudson River as far as Grant's Tomb--where the procession started--and fell into line. Along the river front the piers were brilliantly lighted up and decorated, and thousands of people gathered to view the unique spectacle. With a roar of steam-whistles, amidst the soaring of sky-rockets, and fireworks of every description, the boom of cannon, and the hoarse cheering of the crowds lining the river's banks, the parade started, proceeding down the stream in stately procession, a thing of unusual beauty. Each vessel vied with the others in illuminating its masts, smoke-stacks, and decks with countless electric lights and colored lamps. A steady stream of fire trailed from some, while others set off fireworks. Powerful search-lights from the tall buildings of the cities threw their strong beams on the fleet. Music sounded faintly through the blasts of steam-whistles, and the river and harbor resolved itself into a field of colored fire. The huge office buildings were brilliantly lighted, and from the windows people watched the scene.

Arriving off the Battery, the vessels gathered around some floats anchored there, and completely blocked the harbor as a crowd might a street. Suddenly these floats became fringed with beautiful colored fire, and a busy little tug industriously hustled around to various smaller floats stationed here and there, and lighted a compound on them that produced a high-leaping flame. Sky-rockets soared from the larger floats in an incessant stream, bursting high overhead in showers of exquisitely colored sparks, and streams of bombs shot skyward only to explode in a downpour of fire. Some flew up to burst and whirl around, producing an effect of a huge umbrella of sparks.

For an hour the sky rained a stream of gorgeous colored fire in which even the powerful glare of the search-lights was lost. The bombs exploded overhead like the rattle of musketry, and through it all the steam-whistles kept up a steady roar that must have made the farmers far out in the rural districts uneasy in their sleep. Loudly as the crowds packed on the decks of the gathered vessels yelled their enthusiasm, their shouts were completely lost in the screech of whistles. Then came the prettiest spectacle of the pyrotechnic display. Without any warning, hundreds of feet overhead, suspended in mid-air between the Battery and Governors Island, Old Glory floated, a huge flag of red, white, and blue fire.

H. E.

SAWDUST WILL TELL.

BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.

I ne'er could understand just how the trouble came about,
But two of Mollie's dolls one day had quite a falling out.
They were not ordinary dolls, with dresses and all that,
But boy dolls both, and one was tall, the other short and fat.
The way the story comes to me, the rumpus that arose,
Came from the short doll's stepping on the taller fellow's nose;
And when he said, "I'm sorry, and regret the episode,"
The tall doll he retorted: "Oh, your sorriness be blowed!
Keep both your feet where they belong, and let my nose alone!
I feel as if I had been hit upon it with a stone;
And if you'd had a bit of sense, it's plain beyond a doubt,
The horrible catastrophe could not have come about."
This made the short doll angry. He apologized, and yet
The taller would not take a bit of stock in his regret;
And so he lost his temper, and retorted, very mad,
"To step upon your nose again I'd really be quite glad."
The answer was a pair of cuffs upon the short doll's ear.
The short doll he retorted, without any sign of fear.
He whacked the tall doll on the eye--I do not claim 'twas right--
And then there started up a really fearful sort of fight.
And all the toys were very sure the short doll would be licked,
He was so very fat, you know; but, oh, how they were tricked!
The tall one was not in it for a second, and in three
The short was crowned with laurel, for he'd won the victory.
And then the secret came out. When they looked about they saw
The tall one'd never had a chance by any natural law.
They both were stuffed with sawdust, as are dolls of yours and mine;
The short was oaken sawdust, and the tall was Georgia pine!
And in doll-land, as in our land, 'tis always safe to say
The stronger wins the laurels, he will always wear the bay.
We say that blood will tell; and in this world of dolls we see
The sawdust that is best of all will win the victory!

The Hartford High-School suffered its worst defeat of the season at the hands of the Hotchkiss School eleven two weeks ago Saturday. Not only did the Hartford men fail to score against 50 points made by their opponents, but in the first few moments of play Bush and Strong were injured so that they were unable to continue in the game. Bush was the more seriously injured of the two, and will probably not be able to appear again this season.