"O, yes. I will show you, to your satisfaction, that it does so, if you will follow me to some secret quiet place," says the old man, glancing about and half-drawing a parchment roll from the bosom of his robes. "Secret! No, no-no secrets for me. If she turns I won't stop her. But secretsthat means business before the inquisidor. Good day, Gali. Ahem!- -a very good day." And you would have gone by on the other side, leaving "correct" opinion in the hands of moral highwaymen; but now, after the struggle, the cost, and the battle is past, you roll, bask, revel, and swagger in the warm light cast against historic walls, where never more may come the moldy, pulpy shadow of old Dogma.

Men tell me about hari-kari in Japan. This is a method by which a high official Japanese confesses he has been false to his country. Adopted in the United States, harikari would be a boundless blessing. Next to hari-kari in the disemboweling process, is the support of an honest opinion. Thousands of men in America have gone, spreadeagle fashion, upon that blade, turned suddenly pale, and perished in their prime. And yet, correct opinion, like the storied car of Juggernaut, finds yearly numerous new vic. tims prostrate before its oncoming. How shall we account for such follies? The impractical, improvident, boldly intellectual scum of each rising generation must be made way with, to give room for the many easy. going fools to be fleeced by the cunning of the non-committal few. Thus the world wags, has wagged, and will wag so long as the manner of things is so much mightier among men than the matter thereof.

J. W. GALLY.

Art Appreciation.

It is not generally known that Keith's recent and most satisfactory art production, entitled "Morning on the Upper Merced," was painted to the order of O. J. Wilson, the noted educational publisher of Cincinnati, Ohio. This gentleman, while on a pleasuretrip to our coast during the past summer, met Muir and Keith in the high Sierra, and

ment for each in his special study-the first as a scientist and the latter as an artist. Mr. Wilson's letter, acknowledging the receipt of the picture, is full of warm and generous ap preciation—a true, heart - felt, honest appreciation. On the day the package arrived (we begged the privilege to copy portions of this letter, because the expressions are so rare) he writes: "I have not yet had the box opened, but presume the picture came safely. I shall arrange to-day for having it stretched and framed, after which I will again write you as to our impressions concerning it. I do not doubt, judging from the two large landscapes of yours I saw when in San Francisco, that it will realize our expectations." And then he closes in the following modest but substantial manner: "In naming the price of the picture you put it at $2,500, not specifying whether gold or greenbacks. I was about to procure a check for the latter, when it occurred to me that our money is not yours. I therefore inclose a gold check for $2,500, payable to your order. If I am in error, you can rectify it." It gives us great pleasure to place the above on record, and we hope the example will be followed by the money-princes of our own community, and so give the lie to the old prov erb that a prophet, etc.

As Near as I know.

"Was ever I in love?" you ask. Ah! that I scarce can tell.

I've been married twenty years, or so, And like that pretty well.

But I've had curious feelings, In the spring-time of my life: On days before I married her, And since I had my wife.

Though I don't have them now so much, Still, even at forty-six,

Some ill-defined nonsensicals

Play me their old-time tricks.

I used to think, for months and years,
That all the world to me

Was in a woman's smiles and tears,
And all was naught but she.

If that is love, I've had it-bad,
And sometimes have it yet;
And when it leaves me I'm not glad-
Nay, rather I regret.

But I don't rave on flowers and rings
Which her hand may have pressed,
Or dote on curls, hair-pins, and things,
And gloat on how she's dressed.

I don't now feel Sahara's blight
When she has left the room,

Nor wake from visions in the night
And babble in the gloom.

Those were the days of hope and fear,
With anxious fierce desire;

But they have passed this many a year-
Love's fuel to the fire.

And though there 're ashes on the hearth,
And little graves we know,
There still are embers-steady heat-
To keep two hearts aglow.

Though power has gone out from us,
Through old affection's door,

To those who live and those who died-
Still craves the tide the shore.

Ah! yes, I guess I've been in love.
I must have been! else how
Could I have lived in such a state?-
If I'm not in it now.

J. W. GALLY.

A Note from Abroad.

We are permitted to extract the following paragraph from a private letter of our valued and esteemed contributor, Charles W. Stoddard:

"MUNICH, October 19th:

Birch,

Strong, and I are living together. The boys take coffee about 7 A. M., and then go off to

their art-schools. I doze an hour or two, and rise with the idea of accomplishing a vast deal of writing, but it usually ends by my dipping into a book until I get tired, when I loaf down to Rosenthal's studio and talk with him hour after hour. He talks well, and we get on charmingly together. The whole story of 'Elaine' (the picture), as he tells it, is very interesting. So many things happened to it before he finally sent it to California. He says he feels as if the success that has follow. ed was sent by Providence to compensate him for two years of sorrowful experience during the progress of the picture. Some times we go down to a beer- hall and see gymnastics and hear English songs from the lips of English girls who drift over here some. how or other and astonish the Germans with

a cockney accent and a pair of lively eyes. I have been to hear Wagner's operas, and here in Munich they are magnificently produced. The king is mad on the subject of music, and Wagner is, in his eyes, little less than an archangel, so he gives him vast sums of money to produce his operas in the best style."

A Pacific Day.

We can not refrain from publishing the following beautiful thoughts, taken from a private letter addressed to us :

"To-day and yesterday have been (or are, for who shall say that a day is dead?) the prettiest days I have seen in nearly a year of sojourn in California-days almost worthy of the high-arching wide - canopied horizon of Nevada. Ah! there have been, and I hope will be, days in Nevada which gleam and glitter like priceless diamonds upon the breast of Time-days so clear, so still and pure, that night comes brilliantly upon them only as the shadow of a deeper stillness, in which the full round moon orbs out upon the scene, with endless hosts of glinting stars far back and upward in the boundless depth of stainless air. I grieve to add that through all the beauty of this weather I have been boxing up apples and talking ruptured English to emotionless apple-pickers from Hongkong, when I had far rather sit in the sunlight and watch the spider - threads float dreamily among the yellow shower of au

tumn leaves."

Juvenile Books.

We have received a number of very fine juvenile books, which space will not allow us to review at length, as we intended, but which we would bring to the attention of heads of families in particular, and others in general, at this holiday season of the year. A. L. Bancroft & Co. have sent us Jack's Ward, Herbert Carter's Legacy, The PeepShow, Little Wide-awake for 1876, History of the Robins, The Children's Pastime, and Nine Little Goslings. From A. Roman & Co. we have received The Big Brother and Herbert Carter's Legacy.

pleased with the simple adoration which finds utterance in the offering of a flower or fruit; now harrowed by one of unparalleled bloodshed; all relieved at last by the picture of Elysian bliss in the bright sun-house. The fourth volume does not offer the excit ing allurements of strange customs and pleasing myths, but in devoting it to the deeper subject of antiquities, and the sober student, the author has not overlooked the claims of the general reader. He has on the contrary rendered it attractive, even to them, by the addition of copious illustrations. The study of man must begin with the study of his works. The stately ruin, the musty relic, speak in mute yet incontrovertible terms of a by-gone race, lifting in part the veil that hides their life, and forming a guide to the traditions and records presented to us in the fifth volume.

The history naturally includes as a part of it an account of the origin of the people, but we find that it was thought best to make this a separate division, and justly so, considering the number of statements and speculations brought to bear upon it; yet the subject, from its peculiar character and consequent treatment, can only be of secondary importance as compared with the history. At the time that America was discovered, the bigoted policy of the church had impressed its stamp upon all minds, by education or by decree. Opposed to science as incompatible with its pretensions, it allowed no speculations outside the limits marked by itself; hence, the then attempted solutions of the problem of origin all ran in the channel of Biblical simplicity, "where the riddle must fit the answer, if the answer should not fit the riddle;" and if some heretical observations were ventured upon, they were drowned in a deluge of bare condemnations, based on Holy Writ. Adam and Eve in the traditional paradise of Asia Minor, or Noah with his ark, are the starting-points; for a separate creation for America was heterodox. The strongest support of the Noah theory is evidently in the flood-myths which have been built up everywhere upon some general or local inundation, or upon deposits of shells and other marine relics. Nor has the fertile imagination of the padres failed to find traditions of Noahs, of Babels, of confusion of tongues,

which, however, have failed to pass the muster of late researches. The difficulties presented by the existence of wild and poisonous animals which could not have been transported by man, some have surmounted by a passage over now submerged land, others by letting them swim across!

The culture-heroes presented by the tradi tions of so many people have generally been seized upon by the orthodox as Messiah-or, rather, St. Thomas the apostle, who in his far-and-wide wanderings must naturally have stumbled upon America. To whom could the intricate emblem of the cross otherwise have been owing? The bulk of the theories referring the origin to a particular people turn to Asia, and innumerable actual or fancied resemblances are brought in to support them, some presenting the important testimony that the Americans and the people in question were equally despicable, idle, boastful, and dirty, or that they bathed frequently. Among these the Behring Strait people have evidence of actual intercourse or contact, while the Japanese are supported by wrecks found on our coast. The Jewish origin theory, supported among others by Lord Kingsborough and Adair, has been discussed with more minuteness than any other, based as it is upon the Bible tradition of the wanderings of the ten lost tribes in an easterly direction. It derives additional interest from the fact of being connected with the Mormon Bible. Next to the east-Asiatic theory, the Scandinavians are shown by Mr. Bancroft to possess respectable proofs, in their Sagas, of at least a pre-Columbian intercourse with our eastern coast, and Abbé Brasseur even traces some Central American tribes to this source. One of the most interesting theories is that connected with the ancient Atlantis, indirectly supported by those who advocate a former connection between the Old and New World. The story of its disappearance beneath the waves of the Atlantic some 10,000 years ago, with all its great kingdoms, as told by Plato, is connected with a tradition of a similar cataclysm in America, to which the imaginative Brasseur has devoted a whole volume; but the author of the Native Races points out the changeable and confused character of his subject, and does not seem inclined to ac

cord it much credit. It is, perhaps, to be much regretted that Mr. Bancroft should have left the reader so entirely to his own judgment with regard to the probability of the respective theories. In concluding, he remarks, however, that "no theory of a foreign origin has been proved, or even fairly sustained. The particulars in which the Americans are shown to resemble any given people of the Old World are insignificant in number and importance when compared with the particulars in which they do not resemble that people." He admits the possibility of stray ships having been cast upon the coast, and survivors left to impart some of the resemblances noticed, although it is just as probable that they are mere coincidences. Hence it is "not unreasonable to assume that the Americans are autochthones, until there is some good ground given for believing them to be of exotic origin."

Turning to the subject of history, we are glad to note that it is handled with greater freedom. In discoursing on the value and character of the sources from which the material is taken, he does not omit to deplore the bigotry of Spanish writers, which led them not only to misrepresent the ample records at their disposal, but with fanatic zeal to destroy the great bulk of them. He divides the subject into four great periodspre-Toltec, Toltec, Chichimec, and Aztec and devotes the last chapters to nations outside of the central plateau. He proceeds to show that all conclusions drawn from the previous volumes overthrow the once accepted theory of a southward migration to and from Mexico, for neither the customs, language, mythology, nor the antiquities of Mexico and Central America find analogies in the north; while the ruins in the south are older than those of Mexico, and could not have been built by the Toltecs, who are as sumed to have migrated southward. The resemblances between the institutions of the two great branches of Mayas and Nahuas he accounts for by supposing that they may have been one people in remote times. Mr. Bancroft proceeds to prove these conclusions by a mass of evidence, connected by a chain of ingenious arguments, which, if only from the research indicated by them, must receive the respectful attention of historians.

Following the road thus marked out by previous investigations, the author proceeds to the myths of the "Sacred Book of the Quichés." The story of the creation; of the adventures of certain heroes, who, like Hercules, had a number of tasks set them, but failed to perform them from the want of the godlike nature or aid given to him; of the deeds of their sons to avenge their fate; of subsequent wanderings and struggles, are all given in approved fairy-tale style, but followed by a solution which tends to convert them into valuable historic evidence. Nahua traditions, of a similar character, are then introduced, and comparisons instituted which indicate their common origin with those of the Quiché or Maya. The cultureheroes of the representative people are also identified, and link by link the chain of evidence is welded in support of the assertion that in the Usumacinta region flourished what he calls the great Votanic empire; that this was the most ancient home to which American civilization can be traced, and whence it spread north and north-east. This is further proved by the many stately ruins in this region, abandoned already at the Spanish conquest, without even a trace of their builders.

Turning to Anahuac, which next rose into prominence, the author pronounces the generally accepted migrations of its different tribes to be merely their successive rise into prominence; that each tribe "preserved a somewhat vague traditional memory of its past history, which took the form, in every case, of a long migration from a distant land. In each of these records there is probably an allusion to the original southern empire; but most of the events relate apparently to the movements of particular tribes in and about Anahuac at periods long subsequent to the original migration, and immediately subsequent to the final establishment of each tribe."

This ends the pre-Toltec period, and brings us more within the domain of recorded history, which opens with the immigration of the Toltecs-a name since synonymous with all higher culture-their rise, progress, fall, and exodus. The deserted lands are occupied by Chichimecs, and we are told how this rude race gradually submitted to the culture of Toltec remnants; how an insignificant tribe