true picture. Conscious or unconscious perception of her limitations led Miss Jewett, I think, so generally either to cast her writings in the form of the sketch, or at least to reduce incident to a minimum of importance. It certainly was not lack of ability to write the story of plot. Those trig social comedies, Tom's Husband and Mr. Bruce, A Man of Business and The Two Browns show sufficiently that, had she cared to have it so, short stories of a French perfection of form might have flowed continuously from her pen. But the story of construction, not being pertinent to her mission as a writer, is scarce. On the other hand, the rural sketch, being exactly suited to her talents and her purpose, is plentiful.

It was not, however, until 1886, when she was thirty-seven years old, that a book appeared which showed unmistak

ably that she had reached full artistic maturity. The volumes which appeared between 1877, the date of Deephaven, and 1886, the date of A White Heron, all reveal some uncertainty of touch. Though all are readable, though all have charm and value, some, like Deephaven itself, are immature, some, like A Country Doctor and A Marsh Island, are experiments, and some of the volumes of short stories sound, if one listens carefully, as if the author were striking this note or that with the timidity of a performer not quite sure either of herself or of what tone she likes the best. These were the years in which she tested herself, thought out her problem, matured in mind and character, became master of a ripened art. Proof of how thoroughly this was accomplished lies in A White Heron, for the book contains two masterpieces, I use the word both in its old sense and in its new, the title story, namely, and The Dulham Ladies. I do not know what bird this white heron may be which comes so far north, and does not nest with others of its kind in a heronry, but neither do I care; it may be a fact or a fancy, an ideal or a symbol, anything or nothing as you please; for this is one of those exquisitely

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simple stories into which we are tempted to read all manner of elusive meanings, so prone are we to believe that neither fiction nor poetry can be meant to be as simple as it sounds. It is a haunting thing which becomes a part of your mind and heart, and which, chameleon-like, takes on the color of your mood. And The Dulham Ladies what is that? an account of two old women going to buy false hair! Yet the humor and pathos of decaying gentility were never more tenderly or more unerringly revealed. After eighteen years, the humor is as delicately refreshing as ever, the pathos quite as profound; and it seems impossible that the story should ever lose its savor. In each of the books that came thereafter, there is one story, or perhaps there are more, which, although they were perhaps less remarked because more expected, reached the same high level. Miss Tempy's Watchers, Going to Shrewsbury, A Native of Winby, The Flight of Betsy Lane, The Passing of Sister Barsett, The Hiltons' Holiday, The Courting of Sister Wisby, Law Lane, these are to me peculiarly delightful memories. And Miss Jewett crowned the list with a book perfect in its kind, a masterpiece made up masterpieces, the wholly satisfying Country of the Pointed Firs. It cannot, I think, fail to become a classic: it certainly marks the floodtide of her achievement. Unfortunately, the work overflows its covers, and the first and second stories of her next volume, The Queen's Twin, — the title story, and A Dunnet Shepherdess, stories which I hope I am not alone in liking best of all her writings, are in— tegral parts of the preceding volume and should be included in it. In these later volumes, Miss Jewett has incidentally completed her picture of the New England of her acquaintance with stories which, like Little French Mary and The Luck of the Bogans, add to the familiar Yankee the hardly less familiar Irishman and French Canadian.

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So far as she goes, she tells the absolute truth about New England. There are

sides of New England life from which, as a gentlewoman, she shrinks, and which, as an advocate, she finds no pleasure in relating. As an interpreter of the best in New England country character she leaves in shadow and unemphasized certain aspects of the life which she does describe. Hers is an idyllic picture, such as a good woman is apt to find life reflecting to her. Almost all of her characters would merit the Montyon prize for virtue, had we such a thing in America. I always think of her as of one who, hearing New

England accused of being a bleak land without beauty, passes confidently over the snow, and by the gray rock, and past the dark fir tree, to a southern bank, and there, brushing away the decayed leaves, triumphantly shows to the fault-finder a spray of the trailing arbutus. And I should like, for my own part, to add this: that the fragrant, retiring, exquisite flower, which I think she would say is the symbol of New England virtue, is the symbol also of her own modest and delightful art.

SOME persons, most persons it may be, would set down as crazy any man who should declare that an ordinary box freight car is a more pleasant conveyance than the best appointed "Pullman.” And yet this is the thesis which I am prepared to maintain. What is it that makes railroad traveling exhaustive to the nervous system? It is not the jarring of the train. Modern roadbeds are so well ballasted, tracks are so smoothly laid, car-springs so cunningly tempered, that passengers not only read but write, and even have their beards shaved with comfort. Fifty miles an hour with a razor at your throat, and no harm done; that is one of the triumphs of modern ingenuity. No; it is the close, bad air that makes the traveler dull and headachy; and the more costly the train, as, for example, a "vestibule" train, the worse the ventilation.

Traveling in a passenger car means a horrible community of unwholesomeness. Mentally, you can ignore your fellow sufferers. You can treat them with a silent contempt bordering upon insult; but what does that avail so long as you are obliged to pool your physical condition with their physical condition? Their faVOL. XCIV - NO. DLXIV

tigue becomes your fatigue; their germs of disease become your germs. A recent writer in the London Lancet states the case as follows:

"The business man is more liable than the agricultural laborer to become run down, not so much because he works harder and more monotonously, and therefore personally manufactures more waste products, but because his tissues are more liable to become saturated with the waste products of himself and others, derived from the confined atmosphere which he habitually breathes. We all know how tiring to most of us is a long railway journey, more especially if the compartment is crowded and the windows are closed. . . . The effect is due to the saturation of the tissues with waste products taken in through the lungs."

Is it luxury to become "saturated with waste products," even though your seat be comfortable, and you are surrounded with triumphs of the upholsterer's art? Give me, rather, the unadorned freight car with the winds of heaven blowing through it. If they blow too hard, you can shut the door, make everything snug, wrap yourself in an ulster, and lie down

on a good bed of hay. To be sure, your feet may become cold, but if they do, there is no law against getting up and walking about for a while. You have the whole car at your disposal.

Another advantage of the freight car is that it contains fewer objects to fatigue the eye and brain. This, in a lesser de

is also the advantage of the drawing-room car, but the latter, with all its luxuries, is an over-heated apartment occupied by persons reading "society" papers or bad novels, and haunted by a mercenary black man. For real privacy the freight car is preeminent. It is even superior in this respect to those private cars, so called, which are owned and used by a favored few, commonly described as "magnates." The magnate lacks absolute privacy. Custom obliges him to share his car with servants. Conductors and brakemen have a right of way through it. But in a freight train the only method of communication is by the overhead route; and no one is entitled to poke his nose inside of your car. Tramps sometimes attempt to force themselves in, but if you prevent them with a carriage wrench it is not murder nor even manslaughter.

What the modern world needs as much as anything is to revise its notions of luxury. A luxury may be described as a superfluous good, mental or physical. It is something not absolutely necessary to health and happiness, but conducive to both. The same thing, therefore, may be, according to circumstances, a luxury or the very opposite, for it may be detrimental to health and happiness. A fur coat is a luxury to a stage-driver in northern New England, but not to a young man in the city. An electric car is a luxury if by its means you are enabled to live in the country, but it is the opposite of a luxury if you employ it to deprive yourself of needed exercise. A horse is a luxury if you bestride him; a carriage is a luxury to those who are too infirm to ride in the saddle. But when, as often happens, we see a stout man being conveyed in a cab from his house to his office on a

rainy morning, we behold a terrible sight,

that of a fellow being deluded by false notions of luxury. Calling once upon a rich old gentleman, I noticed on a table in the front hall five high hats, and, in front of each hat, neatly folded, a pair of kid gloves. Hats and gloves were all about alike, and the superfluity of them impressed me so strongly, having always been accustomed to what are called "moderate circumstances," that I could not help making some allusion to it by way of discovering how the matter lay in the owner's mind. "Ah, yes,” he said, with a sigh of satisfaction, “I am a very lux-u-ri-ous man.” But the old gentle

man's ideas of luxury were confused. A superfluous hat is not a luxury any more than two meals are a luxury for the man who can eat but one.

As a rule, the possession of wealth tends as much to diminish as to increase real luxuries. A servant is a luxury, if he saves one from mere drudgery, but quite otherwise if his employment deprives the master of healthful exercise or pleasant adventure.

Let us suppose, then, that the reader, desiring to transport his carriage or saddle horse, or, better yet, his pair, for horses like to travel in company, to his summer home, and not being blessed or cursed with an English coachman, decides to go with them himself. He will not be quite alone, for the family dogs agree to accompany him. The familiar horrors of that last day in town need not be dwelt upon here. A thousand things should be done, and you try to accomplish a few of them. It is a day of rushing about, of nervous fatigue, of a wilted collar. At last, however, about five o'clock, you renounce the devil and all his works, and call at the stable for your horses. They are quickly harnessed with the halters on beneath the bridles; and you take a hasty inventory of your outfit, which should include blankets of various weights for the horses, oats, hay, a pail for watering, a lantern freshly filled, with a new wick, and plenty of straw, sawdust, or

other material, for the horses to stand upon. This not only prevents them from slipping, but forms a cushion which mitigates the jar of the freight train.

For yourself, you need only an overcoat, a box of provisions, a drinking cup, a bottle of water or tea, some matches and plenty of cigars not too good to give away. Railroad men are great smokers, and tobacco administered in proper doses, especially to engineers and firemen, has a wonderful effect upon the operation of brakes and levers. A skillful engineer, when he backs down to make a coupling, or when he starts his train, can do so as gently as if he were cracking eggshells, or he can do it with a jerk which throws your horses to the floor; and the gift of a cigar will sometimes make all the difference between the two methods.

A suitable car, that is to say a clean one, with a high roof and good springs, has been bespoken, we will assume, and the horses are coaxed into it with many fears and misgivings on their part. The dogs, on the other hand, are the first to enter, and having thoroughly inspected the car, their tails wagging with curiosity, they sit down in an appropriate corner, and fix their eyes upon their master, prepared for anything so long as they are not separated from him. The horses are placed side by side in the rear of the car, facing toward its centre, and are strongly fastened to a rope stretched across the car in front of them. As a precaution against injury from kicking, their hind shoes may be removed, or a pole placed between them. Great care should be taken to secure the separate parts of the carriage and all other movable objects, for the motion of the car has an astonishing effect in setting even heavy things afloat. Nails are driven here and there for hanging harness or other matters, and the lantern is safely suspended from the centre of the roof. At last everything is stowed away, and we are ready to start. It has been a hot piece of work, and the horses, worried by their strange surroundings, and alarmed by the noise of a

"shifter" which puffs back and forth upon a neighboring track, sweat profusely, paw and stamp, and glance about with frightened eyes. One door, that on the side where trains will pass, is closed and fastened. The other door is left open, and you can regulate it according to the weather and other circumstances.

But now it is time to take a seat on the hay, or you will be thrown off your legs, for the shifter is backing down upon us. "Here she comes!" cries the foreman of the freight house; and bang! she strikes us with the force of a small collision. The shifter, as doubtless the reader knows, is a little but powerful locomotive, very fussy, jerky, and irritable in its movements, and much given to snorting and panting. In the days when locomotives bore names, and not simply numbers, there was an especially nervous shifter to which some railroad man who knew his Dickens had given the appropriate name of "Pancks." The shifter and the shifter's crew of brakemen "make up" the train, collecting the cars from the various freight houses, and leaving them in one long line, ready to be hauled away by another locomotive.

Motion travels slowly; and everybody has observed how, when a heavy train starts, the mysterious force is communicated by slow degrees to the different sets of wheels, accompanied by a succession of rattles and crashes, as one car after another begins to move. The horses learn the meaning of this sound with astonishing quickness; and you can see them, when they hear it, bracing themselves to withstand the anticipated shock. These are trying moments, but at last the through freight is made up, and our car is attached to it with "live stock" chalked on the outside, in token that we are to be sent forward as speedily as possible.

And now comes a brief respite. Six o'clock has struck; the shifters are stabled in the roundhouse; the freight houses. are closed, and tranquillity settles down upon the yard. Men are going home in twos and threes; and presently the crew which is to take us on the first stage of

our long journey appear, pipe in mouth. These men are as different from the shifting crew as the shifting locomotive is different from the long-distance one. They are heavier in build, more stolid and more taciturn, somewhat rough and brusque in manner, but almost always good-natured and obliging. You are apt to begin by quarreling with them, and to end by liking them. Railroad men are, to use an expressive Americanism, “very accommodating."

At last the huge black locomotive which hauls the night freight on its first stage looms into view, and slowly backing down upon us, sends a shiver through the whole train. Then comes a brief pause. The long, dark train lies motionless on the rails, like a snake, with the engine for its head, and the headlight for its big, single eye. Nothing so dead, so absolutely quiescent as a train of loaded cars standing on the track, — but how fearful its momentum when in motion! It is astonishing that the poetry of the railroad has been felt so little. There is Turner's magnificent painting called Rain, Mist and Steam, and there are some stories and verses of Kipling's; but the field is as yet almost unworked. Perhaps our poets travel too much in sleeping-cars.

But hark! Three warning whistles come from the monster which has us in tow, and the engineer, puffing at the good cigar which you have given him, gently turns on the steam, and we are off with only the slightest of shocks. Vacation has begun, and a thrill of pleasure seems to run through the train. Once clear of the city and its suburbs, the railroad for some distance almost touches the water; and, standing at the open door of your car, you watch the sun, an immense red ball, sink into the ocean. Cool, salty, and invigorating is the air which the tide brings in from the sea, and it acts like magic upon your fretted nerves. Now you begin to appreciate the luxury of traveling by freight. What has become of those professional or business cares which were worrying you no longer than a single hour

before? Even the horses seem to feel the spell. They are less excited; their heads droop, and you can safely loosen the rope, so as to give them more freedom.

Smoothly the night freight wends its way across the marshes, and thunders over crossings where the gate - tender stands with his hand on the crank, and his evening pipe in his mouth, a reposeful sight; and presently, in a lonely spot, we stop, and back on to a siding, where we are to remain until a certain passenger train has gone past. Here is an opportunity to alight, and perhaps to have a little talk with the "con," as tramps call the conductor, who strolls up in his shirtsleeves, with way-bills bulging in his hippocket. Some inside facts about railroading crop out in these chance conversations.

Soon, however, the express train for which we were waiting has rattled disdainfully past; the conductor waves his arm, the engineer responds with three toots of the whistle, we scramble aboard, and the huge train is in motion again. We are now approaching a large town or city, and in the gathering twilight it is pleasant to observe family groups enjoying the cool of the day on their doorsteps. Electric lights begin to multiply, and in a few minutes, with an agreeable sense of superiority, for we also are an express,

our train rumbles and clanks through the principal station without stopping, and we catch for a brief moment the wondering eyes of persons standing on the platform who have discovered with astonishment that one of the freight cars is inhabited.

We are soon out in the open country again, and as night falls we light the lantern, recline on our couch of hay, and pulling a horse blanket over our feet, settle ourselves for supper, with the dogs in very close attendance. In cold weather carminative food is to be recommended, for the want of hot victuals and drink is keenly felt, and may partly be supplied by gingerbread and alcohol in some form. The writer remembers one trip in mid