tavern of the neighboring country, he was grudgingly paid a common farthing for three of those he brought, which he thus exchanged by way of trial. Then he inquired for the Black Fountain, and some children who were playing in the tavern straight ran screaming away. The host told him, not without a shudder, that this was an ill-famed spot, from which many evil spirits came out into the country, and which few people had actually seen. This he knew, however, that the approach to it was not far from here, being a cavern with two blasted cypresses before it ; and no one could miss the way who once went in; but God preserve him and all true Christians from that!

These words terrified Richard; but the venture must be made, and he set forth on his way. Already from far he saw the black and horrible cavern; the two cypresses seemed to have been blasted as if by terror of the ghastly abyss, which he saw, as he came nearer, held in its hollow a strange heap of rocks. They looked like distorted, long-bearded, goblin faces, some of which resembled that monstrous ape on the sea-shore; but when steadily regarded they became again only jagged and rifted fragments of rock. He entered tremblingly among these stone-phantoms. The bottle-imp in his pocket grew so heavy it seemed trying to pull him back; but that raised his courage; "for," thought he, "what it does not like is just what I must like." Deeper in the cavern the darkness became so intense that he could no longer see those frightful shapes, and had to feel carefully before him with a stick; but he found nothing save a smooth floor of fine moss, and, but for a strange whistling and croaking which passed at times through the cavern, he would have dismissed all fear.

At last he had passed through, and found himself in a desolate hollow, inclosed on all sides by the mountains. On one side he saw the great, terrible black horse, standing like an iron statue, unbound, with head held high, without grazing or stirring a limb. Opposite him gushed out of the rocks a spring, in which the horseman was washing his hands and

face; but the water was black as ink; and when the gigantic being turned round to Richard, his hideous face was of a negro blackness, frightfully contrasting with his gorgeous red attire.

"Don't tremble, young fellow," said he ; "this is one of the ceremonies I am com-pelled to perform. So, too, whenever I need a new dress, I have to mix its purple with a good number of drops from my own blood, whereby it gets that splendid color. In short, I am bound body and soul, beyond all chance of redemption. And what do you think I get for that? Only a hundred thousand pieces of gold a year. I can't make that do, so I want to buy your bottle-imp, and thus play the old miser a trick. And he began to laugh, so that the rocks resounded, and even the hitherto motionless black horse started.

"Well," he asked, turning again to Richard, "do you bring half-farthings, comrade ?"

"I am not your comrade," answered Richard, half confused, half testy, as he opened his bag.

66

O, we are proud, are we? but have a care, my fine gentleman! Who set the monster on the prince, that you might conquer it?"

"There was no need of all that jugglery," said Richard; and he related how the prince already struck not only halffarthings, but the third part of farthings. The red mañ appeared out of humor at having given himself the trouble for nothing. However, he changed one good farthing against three bad ones, gave Richard one of these, and received in return the bottle-imp, which felt very heavy coming out of his pocket, lying curled up sullen and sad, at the bottom of the phial. The rider again laughed violently.

"That won't help thee, Satan," cried he; "give me gold here, as much as my horse can carry ;" and forthwith the huge beast groaned under the burden of gold; yet he took his master up again, and like a fly crawling up the wall, stepped right up the perpendicular rock, but with such hideous movements and contortions that Richard fled back into the cavern that he might see no more of them.

When he had come out on the other side of the mountain, and run a good way beyond the abyss, then, for the first time, did the whole consciousness of his deliverance strike on his mind. Now at length he felt the evil spirit's hold over him gone, and the pressure of unspeakable misery removed, and a true penitence for his former wild and sinful life touched his heart. His joy at his release was tem

pered by that penitence, and sanctified by a firm determination to lead a new life; and in this determination, and the carrying on of it, his former cheerful heart returned. With all his renovated strength and spirit he bent himself to run a good, sober, and honorable course; and in this he succeeded so well that, after some years of honest labor, he was able to return as a well-to-do merchant to the dear German land, where he married; and where in his old age he frequently told his grandchildren, as a useful warning, the story of the Bottle-Imp.

CALIFORNIAN GIANTS.

LL the world has heard of the great

fore let us imagine ourselves to be in that quarter of the world where those great trees grow, say in Calaveras County. We follow the course of an affluent of the Stanislas, which winds serpent-like, and with many an eddy, along one of the valleys that penetrate the Sierra Nevada; and at about fifteen miles from Murphy's, we come to a circular basin sequestered among the hills. Its diameter may be a mile, and its elevation from four thousand to five thousand feet above the sea-level. Here we find ourselves in presence of the giants-real giants of the vegetable kingdom, such as we should never have expected to see in these post-diluvian days. Not without emotion, and a profound sense of admiration, do we gaze upon them. The wind blows cold, and the heights around are covered with snow; but we heed not the blast; the snow brings out the trees in better relief; the sight repays us for all our fatigue, and makes us forget the wearisome return-journey yet to be encountered. It is not an every-day occurrence to stand under the shadow of trees that began to grow about the time that Hannibal was marching victorious upon Rome, and were still in their infancy at the birth of Christianity. What changes have come over the world-how many empires have risen and fallen since first their branches waved in the breeze! There they stand, ninety of them, living witnesses of a past far more remote than the earliest dawn of American tradition.

The smallest of these giants is fifteen feet in diameter. They occupy an extent of about fifty acres in the basin above men

tioned, where they tower above all others of their species. The tall trees among the latter appear dwarfs in comparison. Long fringes and festoons of yellow moss and lichen hang around their proud trunks; and a parasite growing from their rootsa kind of hypopithys-shoots its graceful stems, adorned with bractea and rosecolored flowers, to a height of ten feet. The place has thus the double charm of beauty and magnificence.

It will be understood, of course, that the giants here spoken of are pine-trees. The tops of many are broken and mutilated by the weight of the snow which in winter accumulates on their terminal branches; and some have been injured at the base by the camp-fires of Indians. A

peated burning, that a whole family might lodge with all their household gear in the blackened excavations. The bark generally is marked by deep longitudinal furrows, presenting the appearance of pillars or fluted columns. One has been stripped of its bark to a height of one hundred feet; and a spiral row of pegs driven in, forms a not very safe means of ascent around the bare portion, yet the tree flourishes above as vigorously as ever.

The proprietor of the neighboring tavern conducts his guests to the site of these prodigies of vegetation, and tells their names-he in most instances having been sole sponsor. First he calls attention to the Big Tree, which is, or rather was, ninety-five feet in circumference, and three hundred feet high; for now it lies prostrate, a monarch pulled down by the hands of republicans. Five men were employed for twenty-five days in felling it. They drew a line all round seven feet from the ground, and along this they bored holes close together to the very center of the stem with an enormous auger, so that the tree, losing its equilibrium, at last fell with a shock that echoed like thunder among the hills. Three weeks more were spent in stripping off the bark for a length of fifty-two feet only and now the king of the forest has one side flattened to be used as a "bowling alley," at the end of which stands a small wooden house, where the players may quench their thirst with juleps and cocktails. To what base purposes may we not descend! To be told that a wagon and horses could travel easily along the overthrown stem, excites no surprise

when we know that its diameter at the thickest end is twenty-three feet seven inches, without reckoning the bark, which would be about three feet more. The stump has also been turned to account; its upper surface is smoothed and polished, and supports a pavilion, in which visitors may sit and contemplate the scene around. Having satisfied our curiosity with regard to the Big Tree, we are next conducted to the Miner's Cabin, which stands three hundred feet high, and is eighty feet in circumference; to the Old Bachelor, the same height, but twenty feet less in girth; the Hermit, so named from standing a little apart from the rest, a handsome fellow, with one side of his trunk scorched, containing, however, according to the calculation of a knowing" lumber merchant," seven hundred and twenty-five thousand feet of timber. Then we have the Husband and Wife, not more than two hundred and fifty feet high, leaning toward each other at the summit; and the Three Sisters, growing apparently from the same root― a remarkably fine group. They are all three hundred feet high, and ninety-two in girth; and the middle one has not a branch below two hundred feet. Further on, the Mother and Son attract attention, the lady being three hundred and twenty-five feet high, and the youth three hundred perhaps he has not done growing. In girth they are both alike, ninety-three feet. Then the Siamese Twins and their Guardian; the Old Maid, like the Bachelor, isolated; but her head is bald; and the Bride of California, the Beauty of the Forest, Mister Shelby, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. This latter has a hollow at the bottom of the trunk large enough to seat twenty-five persons, to which you enter through a gap ten feet high and two feet wide. The Horseback Ride is an old hollow trunk fallen down, in which visitors may ride on horseback.

There are other trees and other names, but those we have enumerated will perhaps suffice, without our repeating any that betray the disposition to vulgarity that prevails in remote parts of the state. The Family Group, however, must not be passed over in silence; it comprises twenty-six trees, among which are seen father, mother, and twenty-four children. The father lost his perpendicular years ago, and fell down, and yet he is one hundred and ten feet in circumference at

his base; he was, as is supposed, when in his prime, four hundred and fifty feet high. The portion which remains is hollow throughout, and partly buried in the soil, while from underneath bursts a perennial spring, which it covered in its fall. The mother is three hundred and twenty-seven feet high, and ninety-one in girth; the children are not quite so large. These fifty acres of trees are called the Mammoth Grove.

The wood is of a reddish color, and appears to be more elastic than any other yet known. It has, moreover, the property of not splitting in the sun, and is but little liable to decay; the branches are short, and the foliage similar to that of the juniper. It is considered remarkable that so large a tree should bear such small spines, and cones no bigger than a hen's egg.

Why these trees should be confined to this particular spot, is a question often asked; but the fact is, they are found in other parts of the Sierra Nevada, particularly in the pass leading to Carson Valley, though not in such numbers or of so great dimensions. The difference is charged to the destructive propensities of the Indians.

BABY'S SHOES.

O THOSE little, those little blue shoes!
Those shoes that no little feet use!

the price were high, that those shoes would buy,

Those little blue unused shoes!

For they hold the small shape of feet

That no more their mother's eyes meet, That, by God's good will, years since grew still, And ceased from their totter so sweet!

And O, since that baby slept,

So hush'd! how that mother has kept,
With a tearful pleasure, that little dear treasure,
And o'er them thought and wept!

For they mind her for evermore
Of a patter along the floor,

And blue eyes she sees, looking up from her knees,

With the look that in life they wore.

As they lie before her there,

There babbles from chair to chair, A little sweet face, that's a gleam in the place, With its little gold curls of hair.

Then O wonder not that her heart From all else would rather part, Than those tiny blue shoes, that no little feet

IN

THE BLIND.

N the instruction of children endowed with sight, reading and writing necessarily form the basis of all education, and they are consequently taught, even in the primary department of the public schools. With the blind, on the contrary, a large portion of the instruction conveyed to them must be oral; and in many cases where instruction is not commenced until the pupil has attained to adult age, the tactile sensibility is so imperfect, that the ability to read the raised letters is not acquired.

In regard to writing, there is another difficulty. The blind may be taught to write with pencil or pen, but they cannot read what they have written, and, of course, if they have committed any error, they cannot correct it. These difficulties render such writing irksome to them, and they rarely practice it voluntarily. It has, however, its advantages. As the sentence once written cannot be corrected, they acquire the habit of perfecting what they wish to write in their minds, before committing it to paper.

There must, of necessity, be some provision made, in writing in this way, to enable them to follow a line, and to preserve the proper distance between the words; various methods have been adopted to effect these ends; the most common apparatus is a sheet of pasteboard, on which strips of the same material, half an inch wide, have been pasted, half an inch apart; this is fitted to a frame something like that of a double slate, and a sheet of paper being laid upon the pasteboard, is held in its place by shutting the upper half of the frame upon it. The writing is usually done with a pencil or crayon, the raised edge of pasteboard serving as a line, and the spaces below steadying the little finger; the space between the words is determined by placing the point of the little finger of the left hand at the end of a word, and commencing the next at the other side of it. Another method is to use, in place of the pasteboard, a frame with horizontal wires, like the numeral frame without the balls. Either plan answers a very good purpose, but neither enables the blind to communicate with

or others have written.

To accomplish this object has been a desideratum with all teachers of the blind, and the ingenuity of inventors has been tasked to overcome the difficulties which prevented its execution. Writing with tangible inks was proposed, and tried, but with indifferent success; for if the ink was so thick as to be tangible when dried, it was very difficult to write with it; an earlier process, the earliest, indeed, which was attempted, and which has remained in use to the present day, was the use of what are called pin-types; small slips of wood having a letter in relief at one end, and at the other the same letter made with steel or iron points set in the wood. They are used in this way the letters being arranged in a frame somewhat like a printer's case, the blind person picks them up, type after type, and pricks the letters through a sheet of paper from right to left; when completed the sheet is reversed, and the raised or burred surface of the letters can be read by the writer himself, or by any other blind person who can read the ordinary raised letters. Something like this process was adopted by Mademoiselle de Paradis in corresponding with her friends, and was communicated to Hauy by her in 1784.

At

It is liable to many objections, from its slowness, the liability to lose a portion of the type, and the expense of the apparatus, which, though not very great, is yet beyond the means of many of the blind. tempts have been made to accomplish the object by a machine analogous to that of House's printing telegraph; but although speed, neatness, and legibility are attained by this, the necessary expense of the machine is too great for it to be adopted, except in institutions, or among the rich. M. Hirzel, the Director of the Institution for the Blind at Lausanne, Switzerland, has contrived an apparatus which answers a tolerable purpose, printing, he says, thirty-seven letters a minute; but his description is unaccompanied with a plate, and is not sufficiently definite to be readily understood without it. It evidently bears some analogy to the House telegraph machine, and would be liable to objection on the ground of expense.

The best system of writing for the blind

Braille, invented, or rather improved from

that of M. Ch. Barbier, in 1829. M. Barbier, in 1825, invented a method of writing by points, using the points to represent sounds rather than letters. As a phonetic system, his invention was very faulty, omitting many recognized sounds, and inserting some not recognized. As a method of writing it was objectionable, because very few letters were represented by less than six points, and some even by ten, eleven, and twelve. It was, however, an advance upon the pin-type. Subsequently he modified it with a view to make it more

compact, but in so doing rendered it much less simple. At this point, M. Braille, a blind man from birth, and then, as now, a teacher in the Institute for Blind Youth, at Paris, took up the invention, and by a complete modification, making it, in fact, a new invention, produced a system at once simple, easy to write and to read, and capable of extensive application.

As the basis of his system, M. Braille adopts ten characters, which he terms fundamental signs. They are the following:

All the other signs or characters are formed from these by placing one or two points in a line below them. Thus the second series are made by placing one point under the left side of each fundamental sign. The third series are formed by two points placed under each fundamental sign. The fourth series have one point under the right side of the fundamental signs. Three supplementary signs give us ì ò œ.

The punctuation marks are the fundamental signs themselves, placed two lines below; thus the first represents the comma, the second the semicolon, etc. The fundamental signs also serve to represent the nine digits and cipher.

The application of these signs to the writing of music has rendered that process easier for the blind than for those who can see. M. Braille represents the seven notes by the last seven of the fundamental signs, and each of these notes may be written in seven different octaves by prefixing a sign peculiar to the octave; and thus he avoids the necessity of designating the particular key of each musical sentence. The mode of writing is very simple; the apparatus consists of a board in a frame like a double slate, the surface of which is grooved horizontally and vertically, by lines one eighth of an inch apart; the paper for writing is placed on this and fastened by shutting down the upper frame. A piece of tin perforated with six holes like é in the third series, and an awl or bodkin.

As the sheet must be reversed to be read, the writing should be from right to left, that it may be read from left to right. By this process several copies may be

made at the same time.* M. Braille's system has now been in use in France twenty-seven years, and is regarded there as an invention of almost as much value as that of raised letters. The Institute has had a number of books printed in points. It is also adopted in the Dutch and Belgian schools, and has recently been introduced into the New York Institution for the Blind.

The only objections of importance to it are, that it is slower than the ordinary penmanship of the seeing, and that not being legible by those who are not blind, (without instruction,) it tends to isolate the blind, and make them a distinct class. We do not regard this last objection as very important, when weighed against the facility which it gives the blind for committing their thoughts to paper. Still, as M. Hirzel has well said, “the problem (of writing for the blind) is not yet fully resolved."

In regard to the other apparatus for teaching the blind, little need be said; the substitute for a slate generally used is a thick plate of zinc, perforated with cells, in which are placed types having the figures or conventional characters representing them, in relief; geography is taught by maps and globes, the former printed in relief, the latter made with a surface of papier maché, representing the hills and mountains in relief, the valleys, lakes, rivers, etc., depressed. Geometrical figures are printed in relief.

Would it not be possible to adapt the simple and ingenious instrument of the Morse telegraph to the execution of this method of writing? If tate the instruction of the blind, and diminish it could be accomplished it would greatly facilithe necessity for books in the raised letter.