come out to them to America, for she'd get grand wages. Nancy was for not letting her go, but Mary Jane she said she'd never be asy in a place like thon, and her own home only that wee piece off; so Nancy be to let her go. It's a quare journey thon for a girl to be taking her lones, but there's them that does it every day now; and Mary Jane knew she was going to the boys, and they was doing well.

"Nancy had the ass yet, and she used to gather dilsk1 and mussels and cockles and the like of that, and you'd see her selling them every fairday. Well, one day she came up here, maybe a month after Mary Jane sailed, and she had a letter with her; for Nancy she could neither read nor write, but Mary Jane was a grand scholar; and Nancy was looking Johnny to answer the letter for her. She had always a great notion of Johnny since he was a wee boy, for them Ramelton fellows had no decency, and they would be stoning the donkey; but Johnny had always a good word for her, and many's the handful of dilsk she gave him. So Johnny read the letter out to her and me-the priest it was read it for her first, but she couldn't trouble him to be writing-and Mary Jane said she was there safe, and living with Pat till she'd get a place, and she'd surely get one soon. So nothing would do Nancy but Johnny must sit down and write a letter to Mary Jane, for she was terrible taken up with thon girl.

"Well, that way she'd come onest a month, for Mary Jane she wrote regular on the first of every month, and very soon she had a place, and every month she'd be sending money from herself and the boys. Mick was doing no good and drinking all he got, and Pat he was no scholar and couldn't write for himself, but he was quare and good to Mary Jane, and Nancy wanted for nothing. Well, you'd think she might have got some one near hand; but nobody but Johnny would do her, and every month she'd come all the way from Creeslough round by hereit would mostly be the day afore the fairday in Ramelton she'd come-and 1 A sweet-tasting kind of seaweed.

you'd laugh to hear the things she'd make Johnny write. Pat died about a year after Mary Jane went out, and she took on greatly about that; but her whole talk was of Mary Jane. One morning she came up the bit of lane, and when I saw her coming I was wondering what could be the matter with her, for she was laughing to herself like. 'Och Maria,' says she, 'sure Mary Jane's going to be married; and she's after sending me a picture of her and her man.' An' a fine young man he was, with a grand collar on him. He was a tram driver in New York, Mary Jane said; and they were to be married the next month. Well, such a letter as Johnny had to write that day! And Mary Jane's man was getting good wages, and they used to send four dollars regular every month, and Nancy was quarely pleased. One day she came up fair crying, for Mary Jane had a son, and it was: 'Och Maria, if I could get a sight of the wean. Do you think now would I be too old to go out thonder? Well, it wasn't long after that that she came again; and she had a kind of look like a person that's not right in the head. So I sent for Johnny, and she gave him the letter. 'Read thon,' says she. There was the four dollars in it, in one of them orders, and it was as kind a letter as ever you heard, and all about the baby in it; but at the end she says: 'You mustn't be vexed if I can't be always sending you the money regular now, for George thinks bad this good while now of parting so much money, and when I came to him for it this time he gave me all sorts; but Mary Cassidy lent it me for the onest, and I'll maybe make it up every month unbeknownst to him.'

"Isn't it a shame of him?' says I, thinking to pleasure her, for ould Nancy was sitting there by the fire, and never a word out of her.

"Well, Master Stephen, she turned on me as sharp as if I'd struck her. 'It's no shame,' says she, 'but it's shame on you that says the like. Sure, what call has a man that has a wife and child to keep, to be sending money to a useless ould crathur that he never seen?' 'Sure, why wouldn't he let his wife help

her mother?' says I,-'isn't that nature? -for Pat's dead, and Mick's all one to you as if he were dead. It's Mary Jane that'll have the sore heart,' says I; 'and shouldn't a husband content his wife in reason?' 'An' do you think,' says she, 'that I'm for makin' trouble betwixt Mary Jane and her husband? Now, Johnny,' says she, turning round to him, 'this is the last time I'll be troubling you.'

"Well, Master Stephen, nothing would do her but Johnny must write to Mary Jane and tell her-what do you think now?-that ould Nancy was dead. Johnny and me we joined on her, and Johnny he said he wouldn't put his hand to the like of that. 'Sure it would be a lie,' says he, ‘and a black lie.' 'By the will of God it might be true soon enough,' says she-an' there was an awful look on the face of her-an' if I can't be dead, sure I'd better be all as one as if I were dead than hurting Mary Jane. And, if you won't do it for me, and me after coming a day s journey from Creeslough, there's them that'll do it for money, if there's none'll do it for kindness.'

"I was for stopping Johnny, but he told me afterwards that he was a feard some bad person might write and get the money sent to them, and neither Mary Jane nor Nancy be the better for their sorrow. For, Master Stephen, there's no telling the wickedness that's in the world. So Johnny he wrote the letter, and then says I to her, 'How are you going to live now, anyway, without the money? You surely aren't going into the poor-house?'

she, 'Sure that had to come to her soon or late, and now it's over and there'll be no ill will with her husband. Ay, and you'll see,' says she, 'now the ould woman's gone, she'll be thinking long no more;' for in all her letters Mary Jane would be saying how it was a grand town she was in, but she would rather have yellow-meal brochans in Creeslough nor ham and wine in New York. Ay, Mary Jane was quare and fond of her mother too. But mind you, Master Stephen, that's two year ago and more, and Nancy's living yet. She sold the ass, for she be to, and she'll hardly speak to a body now; and whiles Johnny goes up to her in the fair, but the most he ever says to her is just buying a couple of pennorth of dilsk. There's no one dares name Mary Jane to her; and she sits there, all dazed like, and the wee boys steal the disk off her stall, and half the time she never minds them. But an odd time she'll rise and scream and curse at them, that it would frighten you; and they say the doctor was talking about putting her in the asylum. But Johnny says the heart's dead in her this two years, and it's her grave would fit her better nor a madhouse."

I saw Johnny that afternoon. "Why didn't you write to some one else, and get word of Mary Jane, and give it her?" I asked him. "To tell you the truth, Master Stephen, I was afraid," he said. "By what I judged of Mary Jane's man you couldn't tell how he'd turn out on her; and I was afraid to hear I had that lie on me for nothing, if Mary Jane wasn't happy for all Nancy did. And whatever I knew that I had to tell; for there's no man, knowing what I knew, could have gone to that old woman with a lie on his lips."

STEPHEN GWYNN.

NOTE. This story belongs really to Mr. Manning, a well-known Dublin journalist, who prefers

ondhand from a friend, and after some months wrote my version. But in the mean time Mr. Edmund Downey had also heard the tale and told it in print. If any one likes to compare "Silver Sand," in Mr. Downey's book "Pinches of Salt," with my story, he will find a pretty illustration of the game they call Russian Scandal.-S. G.

THE LATEST FEAR. Time was, I said, I tear not Death, For Death is but the endDarkness, a pang, a failing breath

That heals what Love can't mend.

My God! I cried, it is this Life,

Not Death, my soul doth fear

"The midmost heaven," she cried, "is mine!

The midmost heaven and half the earth. A million joys I bring to birth, Upon a million lovers shine!

"I paint the grape, I gild the corn, I float the lilies on the lake,

I set athrill in field and brake

"Ah, it is sweet," she said, and passed,
Exulting still, down the sneer slope
Of afternoon. Her heart of hope
Went with her, dauntless, till, at last,
Upon the far low-lying range

Of hills, she spread a crimson cloud; From the pale mists she tore a shroud, And, sinking, faint with sense of change, She seemed to see a face bend o'er

With kind, familiar eyes. She said: "Can it be you I left for dead? Can it be Night?" and spoke no more. Night wrapped her in his mantle grey; He kissed the quivering lips that slept; He bowed his silver head and wept"How could she know, my love, my Day?" SOPHIE JEwett.

HY-BRASAIL.

THE ISLE OF THE BLEST. 'Neath the pale moon's tranquil beam, And the myriad stars that gleam

On the Atlantic's shining breast,
Glides our boat, to voice of song
(While the sweet hours steal along)
To the island of the blest.
Swift and free our good oars play
On the blue, moon-lighted bay,

Looking to the fateful west;
To the sunset blows the gale,
To the sunset lies Brasail,

The dim island of the blest.
All things fair and lovely here
Fade, while falls the mortal tear;

But, in that dear land of rest,
Life is long and gay and sweet,
And our fathers we shall meet
The dim island of the blest.
Row beneath propitious star,
To the sunset land afar-

We must ne'er resign our quest There the brave and great and free, Ruled by love, live merrily,

In the island of the blest.

Chambers' Journal.

WILLIAM COWAN.

From The Nineteenth Century. THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY.

A REMINISCENCE.1

The "personal equation" is often an element very necessary to the true interpretation of a great writer's words. Of the many thousands in England and America who have eagerly read their "Huxley" few have known the man. They are familiar, perhaps, with his essay on the "Gadarene pig affair" and the "Noachian deluge;" and they have in all probability-as the present writer once had a one-sided impression of the intention and animus of such sallies. And a similar difference between the writer and the man extends to many other subjects. If this be so, it may be worth while for those who knew Mr. Huxley in later life to record personal traits which have interpreted for them much of his writing. Doubtless such sketches are necessarily themselves made from a special point of view. But what Huxley was to all his acquaintance can only be learnt by knowing what he was to each. And conscious

though I am how imperfectly I shall express recollections which are very vivid, I make the attempt with the less scruple, as it was suggested to me by one whose wishes in the matter should be paramount.

My first direct intercourse with Mr. Huxley was accidentally such as to confirm my original impression of him as a somewhat uncompromising and unapproachable man of war. I was collecting materials about the year 1885 for some account of the old Metaphysical Society, to be published in the biography of my father, W. G. Ward, who was at one time its chairman. I wrote to several prominent members of the society, and received kind answers and contributions from all of them except Mr. Huxley, who did not reply to my letter at all. I remember thinking that I had made a mistake in writing to him, and that probably his antagonism

1 I am indebted to the kindness of Mrs. Huxley and Mr. Leonard Huxley for permission to print the letters from the late Professor Huxley which appear in the present paper.

to my father in the debates made him unwilling to say anything on the subject.

I was therefore the more pleasantly surprised when, in the year 1890, a common friend of mine and Mr. Hux

ley's (Sir M. E. Grant Duff) brought me a friendly message, expressing great contrition in the matter of the unanswered letter, explaining that it had arrived at a time of total prostration through ill health, and offering to write for my book an account of my father's share in the debates of the society. I gladly accepted the offer; and the paper came, which, though brief, was very characteristic of Mr. Huxley himself, both in its matter and in its manner. As moreover the account it gives will serve to show that side of Huxley which made him and myself afterwards, to use his own words, "the friendliest of foes," I here insert it:

It was at one of the early meetings of the Metaphysical Society that I first saw Dr. Ward. I forget whether he or I was the late comer; at any rate we were not I well recollect wondering introduced. what chance had led the unknown member, who looked so like a jovial country our galley-that squire, to embark in singular rudderless ship, the stalwart oarsmen of which were mostly engaged in pulling as hard as they could against one

another, and which consequently performed only circular voyages all the years it was in commission.

But when a few remarks on the subject under discussion fell from the lips of that beaming countenance, it dawned upon my mind that a physiognomy quite as gentle of aspect as that of Thomas Aquinas (if the bust on the Pincian Hill is any authority) might possibly be the façade of a head of like quality. As time went on, and Dr. Ward took a leading part in our deliberations, my suspicions were fully confirmed. As a quick-witted dialectician, thoroughly acquainted with all the weak points of his antagonist's case, I have not met with Dr. Ward's match. And it all seemed to come so easily to him; searching questions, incisive, not to say pungent,

2 My father was known in the Society as "Dr." Ward, from his Papal degree of Doctor in Philosophy.