as were ever known on the Rhine. Schlettstadt is some distance back from the railroad, and was fortified by Vauban in the highest style of engineering art. There are outer works and inner works; two gates, with moats and portcullis and bridges, and at the exit the omnipresent Pickelhaube, surmounting a light, bright-faced stripling of twenty, whose heart is most certainly on the Rhine, and who seems to look enviously at the straggling line of shouting vine-harvesters who come home laden with grapes ready for the vintage. We discover, in proper fashion, that our stripling soldier is a native of Wurtemberg; but his work and discipline evidently do not permit of useful conversation, nor is he disposed to give us his views upon the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. So we drift into the town, which should have ten thousand people, and perhaps more (for you can never tell, they pack families so closely in these queer, quaint old houses). The town seems so dead-so dead! The only life we see is in the swiftly running stream of water which takes its evening sanitary course along the gutters. Here is a building large enough for a dozen stores, that may have been a granary in its time. Every window and door is closed, and a placard informs you, in the French tongue, that if you want to buy it, you have only to accept the price and pay your money. Well, in time we come to the center of the town. We take it to be the center, for here is an open space, where three or four roads meet, and some ingenious town authority has arrayed the white paving-stones in the shape of a gigantic five-cornered star, a witch's pentagram, it would seem, and intended, among other things, to bring the town good luck. But the stony incantation has failed, for here we stand in the heart of the old town, and all is silence. Two thirds of the stores seem to be shut. There is one store modestly open, where you can buy a rosary, or certain works upon the Blessed Heart of Jesus, should you be so inclined. A little distance away is the necessary boucherie, with toothsome shoulders of mutton appealing to your appetite. We discover the tavern, in the hope that there will be an index of life. The tavern-keeper is a middle-aged Alsatian matron, who looks at

us sharply, and seeing us to be strangers, and Germans no doubt, gives expression to her feelings by the additional vigor with which she cuts her loaf of bread. In one corner is a pretty maiden of eight or nine, with brown hair, ironing a pair of cuffs with an iron that seems too heavy for her strength. The maiden smiles in answer to some cheery word of encouragement, and presses on in her work.

Well, even the town tavern, that never-failing fountain-head of town life, is dead. Madame willingly gives us a glass of yellow beer-quite willingly and with an eager bustle in her manner for she has discovered that we are not Germans, and not new arrivals from Berlin with instructions to see that the taxes are collected and that the school-masters teach only the German tongue. We look around the room. In one corner is a half-dozing peddler, from Jewry no doubt—the honest man with his wares on table, unsold and unsalable-dreaming, "Let us trust for better days and higher prices." In another is a Prussian soldier drinking his beer and crunching his biscuit in a business-like way, meaning to eat and drink and be off to duty. He is looking calmly, contemptuously perhaps, at the two persons in the middle of the room trying to sing. One is a peasant in his blouse, who is moderately drunk and immoderately happy, for he has found an Alsatian brother, a soldier in the uniform, yes, the very uniform of France-blue coat and red trousers and they are celebrating their loves in drink and song. This soldier of France, we learn, came here from his station at Avignon. He had business in Alsace in the matter of his option, and is now waiting for the train to carry him to his post. And if we find him seriously under the influence of liquor, who can blame him, or the blue-bloused peasants who are plying him with drinks? For to them-drunk or sober— he is a living type of France, of her glory and her shame, and one day he may come again behind conquering banners and deliver his dear Alsace. Are these really their thoughts? Certainly there are no words spoken to that effect, nor would it be productive of good, with that wide-lipped Prussian, all eyes and ears, calmly looking on and drinking his beer. So certainly

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madame thinks, for when the soldier and peasant have a fraternal embrace, and, as it were, unwittingly break out into a strain of the "Marseillaise," madame rushes to him and demands peace as she pats him on the back. "Peace, oh! peace and silence, friends," she says in the plainest speech that eyes can speak; "peace and silence, for I am a poor woman with my tavern, and there is the conqueror, and what will come of your song of revenge?" It was a trifling incident, and went before

the eyes in a flash, and yet how much it meant, and what a color it gave to the events now passing into history, and how truly it expressed the struggle in Alsace and Lorraine!-the little tavern tableau of a French soldier fraternizing with peasants, and madame striving for peace, and Hans from over the Rhine ready to put his hard hand upon them all if one word is spoken or one deed done against the peace and power of the "Most All-Gracious" Kaiser of Deutschland. The soldier was evidently a proper person in his way, when free from liquor,

and had not a drinking look, but an honest, light-bearded Alsatian face, with steadiness and candor about him, and sure of his morning headache, as all temperance tipplers are said to be. He told us in a little snatch of talk that he was from Avignon, and was going home that night. His speech was discreet. "I would rather," he said, in a rollicking way, "be half-starved over there," pointing to France, "than to live like a lord here."

Well, we pass along into the byways of the sleeping town

is it sleeping or is it dead, I wonder? and come to the church-a large, square church of the eleventh or twelfth century, black with six centuries

of tempest and rain. And having a fancy for churches of the olden time, and knowing a few strains of music, as well as what Goethe calls the frozen music of architecture, especially the Gothic work of the Middle Ages, we enter, softly pushing back the black, greasy gate. It is very dark and cold. The eye soon adapts itself to the gloom, and we see in the shadow the gilding and curtains that surround the altar, and a figure of the Virgin that must have given peace to many genera

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tions of believing men and women. She is black and begrimed. We are sorry to say she looks unbecoming in this new-braided brocaded gown. On the walls are inscriptions, which we only read with an effort through the shadows, and know that here human beings have rested for centuries in peace and expectation. But how still-how awful is its stillness! No life, no sound, no spoken, whispered word, no movement of any living, creeping thing-nothing but the intense, painful silence—and no speech except what the fancy may gather from the high, swerving, curving arches, and groined columns and fantastic groupings and carvings. Surely we shall find in a corner some trembling grandmother muttering over her beads; or some fair maiden, with burning, blushing face, at the feet of the Virgin, the sanctity of whose modest prayers it would be irreverent to divine, only we hope he may prove true to you in the end and a blessing to your life, poor child; or some proud, hopeful mother, in the triumphant fullness of satisfied love, giving back to the Madonna, who has blessed her life with so perfect an answer to her hopes and prayers, the performance of the promised vow. The writer of these lines has been in many cathedrals, from those in the far North, where the sons of Odin worshiped, to the prodigious piles in sunny Spain, where the soldiers of Castile gave thanks for victories over the Moors, and never until to-day have we seen these divine emblems without a suppliant. Surely some curse must have fallen upon this unhappy land, we think, as we kneel on one of the praying-stools-partly for devotion, partly to obtain a better view of the stained glass behind the sanctuary— surely some curse must have fallen upon this unhappy land, when even in their misery the people forget to pray! Thus in thinking we pass to the transept door, and suddenly, as though it were in a vision, we come upon a group of sisters of some religious order deep in prayer. Five in all, nestled together in silent prayer, heads bent, their white caps looking very white in the darkness, so silent and motionless that they might be statues. We move out on tiptoe not to disturb the devotions, and learn that the good sisters have instituted a