mantic illusions respecting the restoration of Greece, and after a multitude of vicissitudes encountered, difficulties overcome, and intrigues baffled, the long-suffering and faithful twain become one. Mr. McCarthy has invested the actors in his drama with a degree of individuality that is very striking-less so, perhaps, in the case of the chief actors than in that of those who fill a subordinate part. Among these, several are depicted with consummate skill and a rare insight of character-notably Mrs. Rosaire, the beautiful mother of the heroine, who conceals a hard and selfish nature behind a deceptive veil of feminine delicacy and softness; Mr. Pollen, a type of the conventional vulgar, toadying, purse-proud, and yet not altogether ignoble British tradesman, and his apparently equally coarse and vulgar, but really proud and passionately sensitive wife; Steenie Vale, in whose fresh, eager, fearless, and stanchly loyal nature the best qualities of the genuine English boy are reflected; the bland, worldly, astute, and self-worshipping old diplomate, Sir Thomas Vale, Steenie's father; the rough and not overscrupulous, but at bottom manly and downright veteran and free lance, Colonel Gillow; the absorbed, thoughtful, and dreamy enthusiast, Paul Hathaway, under whose fragile physique glowed the fire of the apostle whose name he bore, and the spirit of a martyr; the sweetly willful English maid, Nellie Lance, buoyant as the air till the concealment of her untold and unrequited love fed "on her damask cheek" like "a worm i' the bud"; and the grand old Greek Vlachos, worthy representative of his nation and people at their best estate. The tale also gives a series of close and graphic sketches of the Athens of to-day, its surroundings, associations, historic and artistic remains, and present condition, and of the manners and customs of its people.

SEVERAL of the remaining novels of the month are unusually racy and readable. Among

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these are Guenn," a Breton tale of great pathos and crude power, by Miss Howard, author of One Summer and Aunt Serena; Judith,” a vigorous, and, at times, weirdly picturesque, story by Mrs. Terhune (Marion Harland), based upon and reviving some pictures and memories of rural and plantation life in the Old Dominion in ante bellum times; The Jewel in the Lotos,24 a brilliant and richly imaginative romance of Italian life and manners, by Miss Tincker, author of Signor Monaldini's Niece; Ione Stewart,25 an impassioned story by E. Lynn Linton, exhibiting man's inconstancy and woman's constancy and devotion; and two strong but sensational love tales, A Great Heiress,26 by R. E. Francillon, and Jenifer," by Mrs. Pender Cudlip. Inferior to these in artistic workmanship and interest, but still wholesome and moderately entertaining reading, are Adrian Bright,28 by Mrs. Caddy; Kathleen," by Agnes Giberne; An Ambitious Woman,3° by Edgar Fawcett; and Wearyholme," by Emily Sarah Holt.

22 Guenn: A Wave on the Breton Coast. By BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD. 12mo, pp. 439. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co.

23 Judith: A Chronicle of Old Virginia. By MARION HARLAND. 16mo, pp. 391. Philadephia: Our Continent Publishing Co.

24 The Jewel in the Lotos. A Novel. By MARY AGNES TINCKER. 12mo, pp. 338. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co.

25 Ione Stewart. A Novel. By E. LYNN LINTON. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 72. New York: Harper and Brothers.

26 A Great Heiress: A Fortune in Seven Checks. By R. E. FRANCILLON. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 27. New York: Harper and Brothers.

27 Jenifer. A Novel. By ANNIE THOMAS (Mrs. PENDER CUDLIP). "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 52. New York: Harper and Brothers.

28 Adrian Bright. A Novel. By Mrs. CADDY. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 106. New York: Harper and Brothers.

29 Kathleen: The Story of a Home. By AGNES GIBERNE. 16mo, pp. 324, New York: Robert Carter and Brothers. 30 An Ambitious Woman. A Novel. By EDGAR FAWCETT. 12mo, pp. 444. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co.

By EMILY SARAH HOLT. 16mo, pp. 384. New York:
Robert Carter and Brothers.

31 Wearyholme. A Tale of the English Restoration.

Editor's Bistorical Record.

UR Record is closed on the 18th of De- | favors government supervision of inter-State cember.

The first session of the Forty-eighth Congress began December 3. There are 325 members in the House, or 32 more than in the Forty-seventh. The Democrats have a majority of 76. Several new Senators were sworn in. Mr. Carlisle, of Kentucky, was elected Speaker of the House by a vote of 191 to 112 for Mr. Keiffer, and 10 scattering.

corporations. He advises the abolition of the fee system in attorneys' and marshals' offices, the giving of Federal aid to primary education, and the establishment of regular government in Alaska. As to polygamy in Utah, he would have it attacked with the stoutest weapons constitutional legislation can fashion, beginning with the abolition of the present Territorial government, and the placing of enPresident Arthur's annual Message was sent tire control of the Territory in the hands of in December 4. Among other things the Pre-Congress. The preservation of forests and the sident advises improvement of sea-coast and Presidential succession are urged upon the atharbor defenses, encouragement of the militia, tention of Congress as demanding immediate reconstruction of the navy, and reduction of action, good progress in civil service reform is local letter postage rates to one cent per half-reported, extension of the veto power is adounce. He disapproves postal telegraphy, but vised, and approval is promised to legislation

looking to enforcement of the civil rights of the negro race.

Señor Sagasta was elected President of the Spanish Chamber of Deputies, December 17.

The Egyptian forces in the Soudan under Hicks Pasha were annihilated by El Mahdi, the False Prophet. Their leader was slain on the third day of the battle. On December 2 another body of Egyptians was cut to pieces near Suakin.

In the report of the Treasury Department, Secretary Folger gives the receipts of the government for the year ending June 30 as $398,287,581, the expenditures $265,408,137, and the amount applied for redemption $134,178,756. General Walter Q. Gresham, of Indiana, was confirmed as Postmaster-General December 11. The centennial of the evacuation of New November 19.-Eighteen men drowned while York by the British was celebrated Novem-crossing the river at Douarnenez, France. ber 26, by a grand parade and steamboat procession.

The Prussian Diet was opened by the Minister of the Interior November 20. The speech from the throne declared that the financial situation had improved, and that the working of the railways had resulted in the accumulation of a considerable surplus.

The difficulty between France and China has not yet been adjusted. The Chinese memorandum stated that the French had imposed upon the government of Anam an unjust treaty, and had ignored the rights of China; France had invaded Anam, and had manifested an intention to take Bac-Ninh, the key to the Chinese Empire. China desired, nevertheless, to maintain pacific relations with France, but the Chinese troops would be compelled to resist any aggression. To avert bloodshed China appealed to the traditions of honor and loyalty cherished by France, and expressed the regret it would feel if events forced China to make her rights respected. The French reply declared that France had no wish to annex Anam or Tonquin; that the sole object of the | Hué treaty was to define the terms of the treaty of 1874; that in order to consolidate the protectorate of Tonquin, France considered it expedient to occupy Bac-Ninh and Sontay, but there was nothing to prevent an equitable arrangement of the question on these bases, from which France had never swerved, and which were indicated in the treaty of 1874.-On November 17, 3000 Chinese troops attacked HaiDzuong, but were repulsed. On December 10 they made a night attack on Haiphong, and were again driven off.-The King of Anam was poisoned December 7, at Hué, it is suspected by the Anti-French party.

IT

DISASTERS.

November 21.-News of loss at sea, October 30, of French brig Rocaberg, with eighty-eight of the passengers and crew.-Propeller Manistee, from Duluth, November 10, given up for lost, with all on board-twenty-five.

November 29.-Six vessels of the Gloucester fishing fleet given up for lost, with seventyfive men.-Eighteen passengers killed in a railway collision at Saint-Méen, France.

December 3.-New York pilot-boat Columbia, No. 8, run down and sunk off Fire Island by steamer Alaska. All the crew drowned. December 11.-Terrific storm in Great Britain. Many lives lost, vessels wrecked, and much property destroyed.-Steamer Auk, from Liverpool for Rotterdam, sunk at sea, and twenty-one lives lost.

December 12.-Twenty lives lost by sinking of schooner Mary Ann Hurlbert on Lake Superior.

OBITUARY.

November 19.-At Mecca, Arabia, Sheik Obeidullah, aged fifty-one years.

November 20.-At Burlington, Iowa, General A. C. Dodge, ex-United States Senator, aged seventy-two years.

November 26.-At Battle Creek, Michigan, Sojourner Truth, aged one hundred and eight years.

December 2.-In Vienna, Julins Payer, the Austrian arctic explorer, aged forty-one years. December 11.-In Rome, Signor Mario, Conte di Candia, aged seventy-one years.-In London, England, Richard Doyle, artist.

December 14.-In Paris, France, Henri Martin, historian, in his seventy-fourth year.

December 16.-In Washington, D. C., Hon. D. C. Haskell, Representative in Congress from Kansas, in his forty-second year.

Editor's Drawer.

T is an odd confusion of ideas to conceive that we can remember, and it is possible that that because Adams and Jefferson made people can remember it and then be obliged more memorable the Fourth of July by dying to give a second thought to the reason for its on it, it is a happy coincidence that George distinction, and so come round in that dull, Washington should have been born on "Wash- unimaginative way that some people have of ington's Birthday,” the 22d of February. It is "admiring to think" (as they do in Athens) not so unreasonable as it seems, however, for that Washington should have been born on it. the 22d of February has come to have an iden- The incident gives a distinction to an othertity of its own as a national holiday, so that it wise insignificant month, a month ill-defined is possible to think of it as a holiday independ- | as to length, a fallow month in our Northern ent of its cause. It is one of the few dates | year, a month of simply waiting for the spring,

York on Evacuation-day. It may suggest to the critic, however, one of the limitations of Washington. He was not an artist. He had an unequalled capacity for being the Father of his Country, but no one supposes that Washington could have made as good a statue of Ward as Ward has made of Washington; and Ward, whose fame as a sculptor is only equalled by his modesty as a man, would be the last person in the world to claim that he himself was born on the 22d of February. That is a distinction which nobody, even if he be born out of due time, can take away from George Washington.

IN an interesting contribution to this number of the Magazine General Benjamin Alvord gives some reminiscences of his military experiences in the Northwest. The custom which he found prevailing among the Oregous-that of killing their doctors when the latter failed to cure their patients-appears to have been one of ancient date. General Alvord sends us the following note, which came too late to be printed with his article:

and getting ready to exchange the German for | figure of Washington Taking the Oath as First Lent. It was fortunate that Washington was | President, by Quincy Ward, which was set up born in this slack time; he has it all to him- on the steps of the Treasury Building in New self, for no other event on this side the water comes in competition with it. If Washing- | ton's greatness were not pretty well settled as a matter of national belief, it would be settled in the minds of the skeptical by the fact that he is the only American who has a national birthday. It requires no centennial suggestion to revive it; it goes on year after year in an independent manner. Once in a century we may remember that Jefferson was born on the 2d of April, and that Franklin was born on the 17th of January, just as once in four hundred years we dig up and magnify the name and birthday of Martin Luther, but these dates make no impression on the public mind, although it is true of Franklin that his greatness looms up in more world-wide proportions as the years go by, until we are beginning to see him in a perspective that places him among the few wise men in that short list of original characters which contains the names of Socrates and Solomon. Franklin is in some respects a more interesting character than Washington; but if the Drawer could use slang, which it can not, it would say that Washington has "got the drop" on Franklin in the matter of a birthday. And Washington is not only the one American who has a birthday that is universally accepted in the United States as a holiday, but he is the only human historical character who has one anywhere; and it is not unlikely, as the American influence grows in the world, that the 22d of February may be imposed upon other peoples, for the conception of it is already spreading wherever we have a diplomatic representative. It is true that the Canadians drink hot Scotch and other liquors on the birthday of her Majesty Queen Victoria, but they will probably change their hilarity to some other day when that gracious sovereign joins her father the Duke of Kent.

Washington was a great man, aside from the fact that he was born on the 22d of February. This is not the place to discuss his greatness, nor its limitations, which some people are fond of pointing out, as that he knew nothing of keramics, and had no taste for any bric-a-brac except the key of the Bastile which hung in his hall; we may admit his limitations with pity for those who point them out, while we ask them to account for the fact that he alone of all of human birth has a birthday distinguished as is the 22d of February. He can have no monument like that, nor does he need other, though the one on the bank of the Potomac would keep on growing like a tree (slowly), and attain a height to defy the rivalry of the tower of the Public Building in Philadelphia, if its foundations were as solid as the foundations of Washington's memory in the hearts of the people. Yet we shall no doubt multiply representations of him. We trust they will all be as worthy of him as the heroic

There is a recent article in the Saturday Review on "The Expediency of Killing Eminent Men." Though it is written largely in a vein of the richest irony, it is much more serious as a matter of history than would be supposed on first reading the startling title. It ex

plains customs and ideas of the Chinese and other Oriental nations of killing those sacred and prominent dignitaries who were half worshipped during their lifetime, and that as a part of their religion. It says, "The Hazaras were wont to kill and bury any stranger who was so injudicious as to perform a miracle, or to display any remarkable sanctity among them." Killing of so-called witches occurs to the present day in Russia-a custom the authorities endeavor to suppress.

It is not always an enviable thing to be the hostess who "entertained a distinguished company last night," and figures perennially in the papers. The Twostars are parvenus, who have made a great fortune, and set up a grand establishment-in Greenland, say—and this done, madame sat down before the fortress, Society, determined to hang her banners on the outer wall, and fly her flag over the citadel. She was, if not a lady, a cleverly veneered imitation of one; she had ambition and tact and brains, but, alas! a hot temper. Toward the close of her second season, during which she had entertained like a fairy priucess, she determined to give a grand bali. Hundreds of invitations were sent ont and accepted. An orchestra of eighty picked men was secured. A supper worthy of Soyer or Vatel was ordered. An army of flunkies, tous of flowers, banting, Chinese lanterns, etc., floors that were waxed to perfection, electric lights, gas, wax lights, produced a brilliant ensemble, and madame, in her Worth dress and all her diamonds, was a chandelier.

Guests poured in, and the rooms were soon

491

filled; but, in spite of all her precautions, the | much store by the "conventionalities," and evwomen somewhat outnumbered the men, who erything was done on the plainest basis of evgrouped themselves about the doors, and look-ery-day fact, as the story will illustrate.

ed blandly on at the rows of girls in pink and girls in blue that lined the walls, and the dancing, which was going on in a feeble way. Madame saw that this would not do. She approached the gentlemen.

"Let me introduce you to Miss Blank, that pretty girl in green over there. She dances beautifully," she said to one of them.

Elder Brown was calmly sawing wood in his front door yard, arrayed, not in apostolic lawn, but in the primitive shirt sleeves of a pioneer "V. D. M." (which signifieth, as one of that worthy brotherhood boastingly averred, "Vermont Democratic Minister"). To the fence rode up a long, lank, slab-sided specimen of the genus bumpkin, on horseback, with a fair maiden of the same degree seated on a pillion behind him, with her brown arms confidingly clasping his waist. The elder divined at once the nature of their errand. Laying aside the ministerial buck-saw, he advanced to the fence, and resting his arms upon the top rail, gravely inquired, "Want to git married ?" "Ya'as."

"Thanks, but I am not by way of dancing to-night," he replied. "It is so awfully hot." A second declined her proposal to go and have an ice, on the ground that it was "so awfully cold." A third was "not making any acquaintances," and would not be presented to any of the ladies. A fourth had "seen the decorations upstairs" and declined to budge. A fifth "never ate anything after dinner." "They all began with one accord to make ex-'ere woman to be yeour wedded wife?" cuse," like the guests of the Biblical feast, but madame, instead of taking the same revenge, grew furiously angry, and stamping her foot, cried, "Then what the devil did you come here for?"

This effected more than all her entreaties. The men burst into a hearty laugh, and protested their entire willingness to do whatever she pleased, were introduced, talked, supped, danced, made themselves agreeable, and the ball a success. But the story was an open secret; in twelve hours everybody was talking of it, Society was shocked beyond expression, and madame went abroad.

"Wa'al, then, John Henry, do yeou take this

"Ya'as."

"Sophronia Jane, do yeou take this man to be yeour wedded husband?" "Ya'as."

"Wa'al, then, drive on."

And they drove on, a good deal more married than they would be in the Connecticut of today by the most elaborate ceremonial.

UNCLE BILLY (writes a Virginia correspondent), when a boy, had belonged to General Meade, an officer of the Revolutionary war, and his delight was to give us accounts of "dem days," and the stirring scenes in which he was an actor. We would read in school some event of that period, and go at recess to Uncle Billy's house to learn from an eye-witness (for he had seen everything) the truth of the story.

myself."

"How came it, Uncle Billy, that you got so far from home?”

"You see, General Meade always teck me

MR. M was once on a time a member of the Baptist church in R, and one of those irrepressible worthies who "think more highly than they ought to think" of their ability to "Yars, chillem, I 'members," he told us one "speak in meeting," and conscientiously improve every opportunity to display their gift-day, "all 'bout Bunker Hill, 'cause I was dyar or the lack of it. But his acquaintance with "dictionary English" was of a sort that occasionally led to errors in the use of words a good deal more amusing than edifying. Thus on one occasion he sought to encourage his hear-long wid him when he was gwine to fight; ers to a more intimate acquaintance with the Deity by saying, "Brethren, we ought not to think of God as some great big infinitesimal being." At another time he made the frivolous giggle and the judicious grieve by announcing that "there are two forces in nature -the centrifugal and the centrifugal forces." This was too much even for the patience of the long-suffering pastor, and Brother Mwas thereupon admonished to "bear the cross of silence" from that time on.

THE following incident was related to the writer by his grandfather, an old Vermonter, as having occurred within his own observation:

In the pioneer days of the Green Mountain State, society in the rural districts was in a decidedly primitive condition. Nobody set

an' dat day General Washin'ton had sen' for him p'intly to meet him at Bunker Hill. Me an' him sot out jes' 'fore light, an' we got dyar in de evenin' 'bout two hours b' sun, an' General Washin'ton was settin' on he horse waitin' for us.

He jump off soon as he seed us comin', an' gin me de bridle o' he horse to hol', an' he an' General Meade went up de hill together, an' fit till arter dark. Dat was de bloodies' fight ob de war, for bofe un 'em kill between five an' six apiece, an' de folk hear de shootin' smack in Richmon' an' Petersbu'g, 'cause Bunker Hill, you know, is jes' half-way between 'em."

"General Meade was a mighty good master, I tell you. Ev'ry Sunday mornin', reg'lar as sunrise, he used to call all de nigger chillem together to git de buttermilk. Dyar was gre't

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