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His first emotion was one of natural terror. But this passed as quickly as it came. Life had ceased to be so very precious to him; and if it were his fate to die at Julie's side, was not that the fulfilment of the desire which he had expressed to himself a hundred times that morning? What did it matter, a few years sooner or later? He must lay down the burden at last. Why not then? A pang of self-reproach fol-) lowed the thought. Could he so lightly throw aside the love that had bent over his cradle. The sacred name of mother rose involuntarily to his lips. Was it not cowardly to yield up without a struggle the life which he should guard for her sake? Was it not his duty to the living and the dead to face the difficulties of his position, and overcome them if it were within human power?

With an organization as delicate as a woman's, he had that spirit which, however sluggish in repose, can leap with a kind of exultation to measure its strength with disaster. The vague fear of the supernatural, that would affect most men in a similar situation, found no room in his heart. He was simply shut in a chamber from which it was necessary that he should obtain release within a given period. That this chamber contained the body of the woman he loved, so far from adding to the terror of the case, was a circumstance from which he drew consolation.

She

was a beautiful white statue now. Her soul was far hence; and if that pure spirit could return, would it not be to shield him with her love? It was impossible that the place should not engender some thought of the kind. He did not put the thought entirely from him as he rose to his feet and stretched out his hands in the darkness; but his mind was too healthy and practical to indulge long in such speculations.

Philip chanced to have in his pocket a box of wax-tapers which smokers use. After several ineffectual attempts, he succeeded in igniting one against the dank wall, and by its momentary glare perceived that the candle

had been left in the tomb. This would serve him in examining the fastenings of the vault. If he could force the inner door by any means, and reach the grating, of which he had an indistinct recollection, he might hope to make himself heard. But the oaken door was immovable, as solid as the wall itself, into which it fitted air-tight. Even if he had had the requisite tools, there were no fastenings to be removed: the hinges were set on the outside.

Having ascertained this, he replaced the candle on the floor, and leaned against the wall thoughtfully, watching the blue fan of flame that wavered to and fro, threatening to detach itself from the wick. "At all events," he thought, "the place is ventilated." Suddenly Philip sprang forward and extinguished the light. His existence depended on that candle!

He had read somewhere, in some account of shipwreck, how the survivors had lived for days upon a few candles which one of the passengers had insanely thrown into the long-boat. And here he had been burning away his very life.

By the transient illumination of one of the tapers, he looked at his watch. It had stopped at eleven, — but at eleven that day, or the preceding night? The funeral, he knew, had left the church at ten. How many hours had passed since then? Of what duration had been his swoon? Alas! it was no longer possible for him to measure those hours which crawl like snails by the wretched, and fly like swallows over the happy.

He picked up the candle, and seated himself on the stone steps. He was a sanguine man, this Wentworth, but, as he weighed the chances of escape, the prospect did not seem encouraging. Of course he would be missed. His disappearance under the circumstances would surely alarm his friends; they would instigate a search for him; but who would think of searching for a live man in the cemetery of Montmartre ? The Prefect of Police would set a hundred intelligences at work to find

him; the Seine might be dragged, les misérables turned over at the deadhouse; a minute description of him would be in every detective's pocket; and he—in M, Dorine's family tomb!

Yet, on the other hand, it was here he was last seen; from this point a keen detective would naturally work up the case. Then might not the undertaker return for the candlestick, probably not left by design? Or, again, might not M. Dorine send fresh wreaths of flowers, to take the place of those which now diffused a pungent, aromatic odor throughout the chamber? Ah! what unlikely chances! But if one of these things did not happen speedily, it had better never happen. How long could he keep life in himself?

With unaccelerated pulse, he quietly. cut the half-burned candle into four equal parts. "To-night," he meditated, "I will eat the first of these pieces; tomorrow, the second; to-morrow evening, the third; the next day, the fourth; and then then I'll wait!"

He had taken no breakfast that morning, unless a cup of coffee can be called a breakfast. He had never been very hungry before. He was ravenously hungry now. But he postponed the meal as long as practicable. It must have been near midnight, according to his calculation, when he determined to try the first of his four singular repasts. The bit of white-wax was tasteless; but it served its purpose.

His appetite for the time appeased, he found a new discomfort. The humidity of the walls, and the wind that crept through the unseen ventilator, chilled him to the bone. To keep walking was his only resource. A sort of drowsiness, too, occasionally came. over him. It took all his will to fight it off. To sleep, he felt, was to die; and he had made up his mind to live.

Very strange fancies flitted through his head as he groped up and down the stone floor of the dungeon, feeling his way along the wall to avoid the sepulchres. Voices that had long been silent spoke words that had long been

forgotten; faces he had known in childhood grew palpable against the dark. His whole life in detail was unrolled before him like a panorama; the changes of a year, with its burden of love and death, its sweets and its bitternesses, were epitomized in a single second. The desire to sleep had left him. But the keen hunger came again.

It must be near morning now, he mused; perhaps the sun is just gilding the pinnacles and domes of the city; or, may be, a dull, drizzling rain is beating on Paris, sobbing on these mounds above me. Paris! it seems like a dream. Did I ever walk in its gay streets in the golden air? O the delight and pain and passion of that sweet human life!

Philip became conscious that the gloom, the silence, and the cold were gradually conquering him. The feverish activity of his brain brought on a reaction. He grew lethargic, he sunk down on the steps, and thought of nothing. His hand fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle; he grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This revived him. "How strange," he thought, "that I am not thirsty. Is it possible that the dampness of the walls, which I must inhale with every breath, has supplied the need of water? Not a drop has passed my lips for two days, and still I experience no thirst. That drowsiness, thank Heaven, has gone. I think I was never wide awake until this hour. It would be an anodyne like poison that could weigh down my eyelids. No doubt the dread of sleep has something to do with this."

The minutes were like hours. Now he walked as briskly as he dared up and down the tomb; now he rested against the door. More than once he was tempted to throw himself upon the stone coffin that held Julie, and make no further struggle for his life.

Only one piece of candle remained. He had eaten the third portion, not to satisfy hunger, but from a precautionary motive. He had taken it as a man takes some disagreeable drug upon the

result of which hangs safety. The time was rapidly approaching when even this poor substitute for nourishment would be exhausted. He delayed that moment. He gave himself a long fast this time. The half-inch of candle which he held in his hand was a sacred thing to him. It was his last defence against death.

At length, with such a sinking at heart as he had not known before, he raised it to his lips. Then he paused, then he hurled the fragment across the tomb, then the oaken door was flung open, and Philip, with dazzled eyes, saw M. Dorine's form sharply defined against the blue sky.

When they led him out, half blinded, into the broad daylight, M. Dorine noticed that Philip's hair, which a short time since was as black as a crow's wing, had actually turned gray in places. The man's eyes, too, had faded; the darkness had spoiled their lustre.

"And how long was he really confined in the tomb?" I asked, as Mr. H- concluded the story.

"Just one hour and twenty minutes!" replied Mr. H, smiling blandly.

As he spoke, the little sloops, with their sails all blown out like white roses, came floating bravely into port, and Philip Wentworth lounged by us, wearily, in the pleasant April sunshine.

Mr. H's narrative made a deep impression on me. Here was a man who had undergone a strange ordeal. Here was a man whose sufferings were unique. His was no threadbare experience. Eighty minutes had seemed like two days to him! If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my point of view, would have lost its tragic element.

After this it was but natural I should

regard Mr. Wentworth with deepened interest. As I met him from day to day, passing through the Common with that same abstracted air, there was something in his loneliness which touched me. I wondered that I had not before read in his pale meditative face some such sad history as Mr. H-had confided to me. I formed the resolution of speaking to him, though with what purpose was not very clear to my mind. One May morning we met at the intersection of two paths. He courteously halted to allow me the precedence.

"Mr. Wentworth," I began, "I—” He interrupted me.

"My name, sir," he said, in an offhand manner, "is Jones."

"Jo-Jo-Jones!" I gasped.

"Not Jo Jones;" he returned coldly, "Frederick."

Mr. Jones, or whatever his name is, will never know, unless he reads these pages, why a man accosted him one morning as "Mr. Wentworth," and then abruptly rushed down the nearest path, and disappeared in the crowd.

The fact is, I had been duped by Mr. H- Mr. H occasionally contributes a story to the magazines. He had actually tried the effect of one of his romances on me!

My hero, as I subsequently learned, is no hero at all, but a commonplace young man who has some connection with the building of that pretty granite bridge which will shortly span the crooked little lake in the Public Garden.

When I think of the cool ingenuity and readiness with which Mr. H built up his airy fabric on my credulity, I am half inclined to laugh; though I feel not slightly irritated at having been the unresisting victim of his Black Art.

62

FREEDOM IN BRAZIL.

WITH clearer light, Cross of the South, shine forth

In blue Brazilian skies;

And thou, O river, cleaving half the earth

From sunset to sunrise,

From the great mountains to the Atlantic waves

Thy joy's long anthem pour.

Yet a few days (God make them less!) and slaves
Shall shame thy pride no more.

No fettered feet thy shaded margins press;
But all men shall walk free

Where thou, the high-priest of the wilderness,
Hast wedded sea to sea.

And thou, great-hearted ruler, through whose mouth

The word of God is said,

Once more, "Let there be light!" Son of the South,
Lift up thy honored head,

Wear unashamed a crown by thy desert

More than by birth thy own,

Careless of watch and ward; thou art begirt

By grateful hearts alone.

The moated wall and battle-ship may fail,

But safe shall justice prove;

Stronger than greaves of brass or iron mail

The panoply of love.

Crowned doubly by man's blessing and God's grace,

Thy future is secure;

Who frees a people makes his statue's place

In Time's Valhalla sure.

Lo! from his Neva's banks the Scythian Czar

Stretches to thee his hand

Who, with the pencil of the Northern star,

Wrote freedom on his land.

And he whose grave is holy by our calm

And prairied Sangamon,

From his gaunt hand shall drop the martyr's palm

To greet thee with "Well done!"

And thou, O Earth, with smiles thy face make sweet,

And let thy wail be stilled,

To hear the Muse of prophecy repeat

Her promise half fulfilled.

The Voice that spake at Nazareth speaks still,

No sound thereof hath died;

Alike thy hope and Heaven's eternal will

Shall yet be satisfied.

The years are slow, the vision tarrieth long,

And far the end may be ;

But, one by one, the fiends of ancient wrong

Go out and leave thee free.

IT

MY VISIT TO SYBARIS.

T is a great while since I first took an interest in Sybaris. Sybarites have a bad name. But before I had heard of them anywhere else, I had painfully looked out the words in the three or four precious anecdotes about Sybaris in the old Greek Reader; and I had made up my boy's mind about the Sybarites. When I came to know the name they had got elsewhere, I could not but say that the world had been very unjust to them!

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O dear! I can see it now, the old Latin school-room, where we used to sit, and hammer over that Greek, after the small boys had gone. They went at eleven; we-because we were twelve years old stayed till twelve. From eleven to twelve we sat, with only those small boys who had been "kept" for their sins, and Mr. Dillaway. The room was long and narrow; how long and how narrow, you may see, if you will go and examine M. Duchesne's model of "Boston as it was," and pay twentyfive cents to the Richmond schools. For all this is of the past; and in the same spot in space where once a month the Examiner Club now meets at Parker's, and discusses the difference between religion and superstition, the folly of copyright, and the origin of things, the boys who did not then belong to the Examiner Club, say Fox and Clarke and Furness and Waldo Emerson, thumbed their Greek Readers in "Boston as it was," and learned the truth about Sybaris! A long, narrow room, I say, whose walls, when I knew them first, were of that tawny orange wash which is appropriated to kitchens. But by a master stroke of Mr. Dillaway's these walls were made lilac or purple one summer vacation. We sat, to recite, on long settees, peagreen in color, which would teeter slightly on the well-worn floor. There, for an hour daily, while brighter boys than I recited, I sat an hour musing, looking at the immense Jacobs's Greek Read

If

er, and waiting my turn to come. you did not look off your book much, no harm came to you. So, in the hour, you got fifty-three minutes and a few odd seconds of day-dream, for six minutes and two thirds of reciting, unless, which was unusual, some fellow above you broke down, and a question passed along of a sudden recalled you to modern life. I have been sitting on that old green settee, and at the same time riding on horseback in Virginia, through an open wooded country, with one of Lord Fairfax's grandsons and two pretty cousins of his, and a fallow deer has just appeared in the distance, when, by the failure of Hutchinson or Wheeler, just above me, poor Mr. Dillaway has had to ask me, "Ingham, what verbs omit the reduplication?" Talk of war! Where is versatility, otherwise called presence of mind, so needed as in recitation at a public school?

Well, there, I say, I made acquaintance with Sybaris. Nay, strictly speaking, my first visits to Sybaris were made there and then. What the Greek Reader tells of Sybaris is in three or four anecdotes, woven into that strange, incoherent patchwork of "Geography." In that place are patched together a statement of Strabo and one of Athenæus about two things in Sybaris which may have belonged some eight hundred years apart. But what of that to a school-boy! Will your descendants, dear reader, in the year 3579 A. D., be much troubled, if, in the English Reader of their day, Queen Victoria shall be made to drink Spartan black broth with William the Conqueror out of a conch-shell in New Zealand?

With regard to Sybaris, then, the old Jacobs's Greek Reader tells the following stories: "The Sybarites were distinguished for luxury. They did not permit the trades which made à loud noise, such as those of brass-workers, carpenters, and the like, to be carried

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