ONE day, a long time ago, an olive-browed, gypsy-looking youth might be seen walking along the crowded Toledo, a great thoroughfare in the gay City of Naples. By his general appearance you would have guessed he was a traveling tinker, and you were made sure of the fact when you noticed the well-blackened bit of ironmongery which he swung to and fro in his hand.

There was something, however, in the young tinker which seemed to savor of a soul above kettle-mending, useful as that art is. He looked sad and disappointed, and held the old pan as if he would gladly have thrown it away.

Soon the gathering anger broke forth.

"Plague take these pots and pans !" said he ; "but my time is up in a year, and then we'll see. Ah, here is what suits me!"

So saying, the tinker stopped at the window of a shop where paint-brushes and colors were sold. A picture or two showed the passers-by what delightful effects could be produced when those paint-brushes fell into clever artist hands.

"Ah!" sighed the gypsy; "how long will it be ere I can paint like that? Those trees-they are real; that water-I could drink it; those mountains behind which the sun is setting-I have seen them. I cannot think I shall ever be a painter good enough for a picture like that. But the prize is worth labor. Cheer up, Antonio." So saying, the tinker moved on, singing a blithe Italian air, and wondering how soon Hope could make the desert Future look green.

A year passed away, during which Antonio continued to work for his master. All his spare time, however, was

spent in drawing and painting. Now and then he would go and stand near a certain house where an artist named Colantonio dwelt. Sometimes Antonio would see a maiden come and look out of a window, and then his heart would beat more quickly, and he would feel a flush upon his face; or she would come out, leaning upon her father's arm; but, though Antonio knew them both, and longed to join them in their walk, he dared not.

Never more was he to enter into that house-not one word was he to speak to the artist or his daughter, until he could call himself an artist, and a good one, too.

It was a hard condition, but Antonio felt there was some justice in it. It did not seem proper that a mender of ngly oid pots should mate with one who lived all the days of her life among things of beauty.

It was not generous or lover-like to drag down Theresa to a grimy workshop from a saloon full of elegance; so Antonio put a brave heart upon it, and resolved to rise to fame in the road pointed out to him.

Many times he might have spoken to Theresa, had he chosen-many times was he tempted to do so; but he was too honorable to break a promise or disobey a father. He went home on one occasion, after he had seen her looking more sweet than ever, to dream of her on a high precipice, and of himself hewing out steps in the rock on which she stood. He counted and the steps were nine. "Must it, then, be nine years ere I can paint as well as Colantonio del Fiore? Nine years! What a time! But, wait a bit-perhaps the steps mean months? No; that won't do. Nine months, indeed! I've been six months already trying to draw my mother, and she laughs at my pictures, and says I make her squint like the old applewoman in our street; and my horses, she says, could not walk if they were alive. I fear I shall never be an artist.

I'll go

to Bologna. Pietro will take care of mother, and I'll send her half my earnings. My time is out next week, and then I'll go and see Theresa no more until I can paint as well as Colantonio del Fiore."

Bologna is some way from Naples, but what will not a steadfast purpose do? In a short time after Antonio was delivered from the pots he stood in that learned city. His cousin, who was a silk-manufacturer, received him most kindly, and promised to introduce him to Lippo Dalmasio, the great Madonna painter. Michele, the silkspinner, had saved Lippo's life or limbs in a street row, and Lippo had never forgotten his preserver. When, therefore, Michele took Antonio to Lippo's studio, the great artist readily promised to find out Antonio's powers, and to encourage them if they seemed worth encouraging.

When Antonio returned to his cousin's house in the evening his face was radiant with joy-Lippo had given him something to copy, and he had done the task wellso well that Lippo had praised him.

Lippo was a painter of religious subjects, and bad got the name of Lippo del Madonne, from his many pictures of the Virgin Mary. One of his pictures may yet be seer in the Church of St. Procolo, and a great painter named Guido Reni, who lived long after him, used to say that no man in his time could draw so holy a face as that.

Under the kind and patient Lippo our honest and painstaking gypsy friend made progress-slow at first, of course, but no less sure. His dream of the nine steps was rather a slight thing to build upon; but Antonio lived in a superstitious age, and was not coming back to Naples to be defeated.

He would not return until he could fairly astonish Colantonio; and his mother and Pietro could come to Bologna and live with him.

Very frugal and quiet was Antonio. Gay and spirited are the citizens of Bologna, and noisy in their merriment. Pure is the mountain air, and bright are those Italian skies; but Antonio's heart was in Naples, and his time was spent in prayer and work.

Daily he rose in Lippo's esteem; and at length, nine years having come to an end, he bade his good cousin and his dear master farewell, and went southward by Florence and Rome.

One day, soon after, an artist, unknown by name, craved permission to present a picture to the Queen of Naples. No one knew who he was or whence he came. He called himself Antonio de Solario, and was our old friend the tinker.

It requires some management to present anything to a crowned head, for " divinity doth hedge a king "; but Antonio was not one to be easily daunted.

And his picture was worthy of any monarch's acceptance; it represented the Holy Child Jesus crowned by angels.

Used as the Italians are to beautiful pictures, the Queen was breathless with pleasure when Antonio's lovely work appeared.

"What a wonderful picture " said she. "What expression in those heads! How rich the colors! What a charm in every part!"

Antonio bowed low at such praise, and again he bowed when the Queen requested him to paint a portrait of herself.

This was success, indeed! The portrait was painted and exhibited to the public of Naples, together with the sacred picture of the "Coronation."

Theresa, "is Antonio de Solario. I left Naples ten years ago, because an artist named Colantonio "-here Colantonio looked in amazement at Antonio, who now faced him with his honest, fearless eye-"because an artist named Colantonio would not let me love his daughter unless I could paint as well as he. For ten long years has Antonio been working. Has he succeeded, Colantonio, or not ?"

The astonishment of Colantonio and the happiness of Theresa formed a picture worth painting. The old man embraced Antonio, and vowed he had made him the happiest man alive.

Long had he regretted sending Antonio away, for he found it had preyed on his daughter's spirits; and often had he made inquiries among his painter friends, in Sienna, Umbria, Padua, Venice, and elsewhere, about the missing youth, but nothing had come of it; and now, when he was drooping, and thought he had doomed his daughter to live and die unprotected, her faithful Antonio appeared, to throw his manly arms about her, and be her protector-a worthy one, too!

As an article of food their flesh is much superior to that of the sea-duck, or our common domesticated bird-being less oily than either of these.

In almost any region a tolerable hunter can bag twenty birds in a morning or evening shoot, while, if one cares to make a business of hunting them, he can secure a very large number.

Let me recite an experience of mine during a single week in the Autumn of 1880.

Several of us had been on a hunting excursion in the vicinity of the Dismal River, and hd been driven back by an untimely snowstorm, known in those regions as a "blizzard." Snow fell in the middle of October to a depth of about eighteen inches, and the temperature was so low that the rivers were frozen sufficiently hard to bear up our teams.

As we returned to the settlements, our route lay along the Elkhorn River, and we found that duck had gathered at the occasional open places in the stream in unheard of numbers. When within forty miles of the point whence we set out on the hunt, two of us determined to go back up the river for a few days' shooting.

We stopped over night with a settler who lived near the river, and next day amused ourselves with shooting duck and hanging them up in his house, to be used by

DUCK-SHOOTING IN NEBRASKA.

BY ORVILLE Deane.

LET him doubt it who will, and yet I affirm, on my honor as a man, that what I am about to relate is a plain, unvarnished statement of facts. I know very well that the story will seem like an exaggeration to those who have never hunted in the Far West.

Before I went there I often heard such things related, but I always supposed that the stories were very highly colored. I have now learned, however, that in these matters exaggeration is scarcely possible, and that most stories told of the great numbers of birds seen are, in fact, but very moderate statements.

I do not know how many we killed, but I know we left a large number. It was easy, in the light snow, to creep up to a bend in the stream, and shoot into a flock as they rose, and we kept at it nearly all day.

Toward night I resolved to go further up the stream, and I arranged with my companion to meet me at the place where we were then stopping some three or four days later.

Mounting my broncho pony, I started up the stream. My saddle was arranged with straps attached at every possible place for carrying game, and I threw a grainsack across the pony's back, with a little corn in one end and a large number of loaded cartridges in the other.

I was not long in securing as many birds as I could conveniently carry about the saddle. Wherever there was an open place in the river the water was fairly covered with ducks.

Fastening my pony a little distance off on the prairie, I crept up to the stream and shot into a large flock time and again. The birds were singularly easy of approach.

no difficulty in choosing my position, from which I fired one barrel as they rested on the water, and then gave them another as they rose.

In this way I killed a great many. But what gave me an especial advantage was the fact that, after I had fired into the flocks on the water, and again as they rose, the

themselves to my fire again, so that, in many instances, I

And I found it even as he had said. Ducks fly there in flocks of thousands-I do not know but by tens of thousands.

During the Summer they live in the Far North, where they breed, and they spend their Winters in the South; but every Autumn they alight on the rivers and lakes and sloughs of the Western States, where they remain till the waters are frozen over.

They feed on the grain-fields of the great wheat-growing regions, and on a certain native product called "wild rice," which grows in abundance about the sloughs and watercourses.

In one instance, when I was distant from my pony, and had used up all except one of my shells, I fired into a flock and killed eleven birds with one barrel.

I distinctly remember that, as I came to McClure's ranch, where I stopped that night, I left a saddle-load of birds for the use of his family.

I further recall that, when I started out the next morning on my journey up the river, I soon had another saddle-load, which I sent back to Mr. McClure by one of his herdsmen, whom I met; that soon after I left another load at a herder's camp; that at Graves's ranch, where I