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and many have profited thereby. But when I saw it first it was new and stood alone, the first of its class; and that it was true, the numbers that followed it and went beyond it soon showed. I have passed this house many times since, and to me it is as good a piece of work to-day as when I first saw it.

But Mr. McKim was not the only one. Mr. Bassett Jones, fresh from the studio and influence of Norman Shaw, had built one or two lovely cottages on Staten Island. Mr. William Ralph Emerson had done likewise about Boston and at Bar Harbor. Mr. Jones's work was inspired by the Queen Anne revival then starting up in England, but so modified and adapted under his skilful treatment as to be distinctively his own. Mr. Emerson's work was more distinctive still, and went farther than either Mr. McKim's or Mr. Jones's in its individuality. While Mr. McKim, Mr. Jones, and others clothed their frame buildings with clap-boards to the height of the first story and shingled them the rest of the way up, Mr. Emerson started his shingles over the entire house at the water-table, and gained a step in repose that the other houses had not reached.

But the Queen Anne revival in England, from which all this work started, was so different in its motives, both in the use of materials and disposition of the plan, that the American cousin soon lost all family resemblance. One of the best examples of this English work, built from designs of Norman Shaw, is shown in the illustration of an English suburban house on p. 15. It is delightful in composition, is essentially a home, and meets exactly the English idea of one; raise it from the ground, put a veranda around it, and transplant it to New York, and its congruity is destroyed.

Under such conditions and aided in his work by the increasing knowledge and higher cultivation of our intelligent people in all matters pertaining to art, the American architect of to-day finds his great opportunity to found an American style. That the American countryhouse has become distinctive in becoming suited to our economies and habits of life is clear. Our wants call for new

forms in plan and masses; our materials for new lines and textures in elevations; and with our national inventiveness fostered by the problem, our work becomes more and more national. All these conditions demand original thought and hard study; and bending the mind and talents to answering them must produce distinctive results.

The feeling of the old may survive, but the style of the prototype has been bent to the homes we live in, and in bending yields to a new form. The new form, begun in a friendly school, will often borrow from a sympathetic type, and the result, while neither of the two, yet is true to both; true to its new conditions and good withal. And so the American architect is passing into his incipient Renaissance, copying less from the masters he has studied and reveres, and dropping the word style from his practice. How that word rises up; a frowning spectre to some, a safeguard to many! How can the American practitioner be true to it? Will his client have a replica from Italy, from France, or even from England? Will he build and live in a Scotch fastness, with high, draughty halls, ill lit from narrow windows, flood his moat, haul up his bridge, and lower his portcullis with the chiming of the vesper bells? Will he plant his roof-tree upon the walls of a French manoir, give up his ground floor to carriage-drive and flunkies' quarters and live above stairs? Will he give up his shady porches, his wide verandas, his broad piazzas, and take the style he asks for in the literal truth of its examples? There are none of these, as he knows and needs them, in the great schools from which he would borrow a name for his cottage. True there are verandas in Italy, and loggias, too, in both Italy and France that lend ideas-and beautifully they have been used. But American life could not thrive-could not exist, indeed-housed in any of the buildings upon which these are found. American country life has marked out its current-broad, clear, well defined. It has its source in a thousand wellsprings deep down in the national character. Hampered with no traditions, with a quick perception of his wants,

an innate love of the beautiful, independent and practical, the American must inevitably show his national traits in his home. Scattered apart or grouped together, upon the hills, in valleys, and along the streams that wander through them to the ocean, or perched upon the bluffs and beaches that mark its boundaries, for encircling miles about our great cities, have sprung up, and are still rising, the true homes of the American of to-day. From them and to them a great tide ebbs and flows, and pours over the ferries, by the cars, and along the great water-ways every day. Never ceasing, this torrent pours in and pours out, stronger and greater year by year,

giving to the life of the day one of its most distinctive features. In all the rush, in the marvellous phases that have marked the growth and progress of our wonderful epoch, there is nothing so impressive in the city's life as this daily coming and going throng. It is a vivid expression of that American trait which inspires every man, no matter how subordinate his position in the business world, to assert his individuality and independence by owning a home which is the outgrowth of his special tastes and needs. Amid the pretences and shams of which American life is often accused, this at least has the instinct of truth, and an honest purpose.

HORACE, BOOK III., ODE XIII.

TO THE FOUNT BANDUSIA.

[O fons Bandusiæ.]

Austin Dobson's Translation in Rondeau Form.-Reprinted by permission with Mr. Weguelin's drawing [frontispiece].

O BABBLING Spring, than glass more clear,

Worthy of wreath and cup sincere,

To-morrow shall a kid be thine

With swelled and sprouting brows for sign,

Sure sign-of loves and battles near.

Child of the race that butt and rear!

Not less, alas! his life-blood dear

Must tinge thy cold wave crystalline,
O babbling Spring!

Thee Sirius knows not. Thou dost cheer
With pleasant cool the plough-worn steer,-

The wandering flock. This verse of mine
Will rank thee one with founts divine;
Men shall thy rock and tree revere,

O babbling Spring!

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CHAPTER VII.

JERRY.

PART FIRST (CONTINUED).

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A

LONG, low, frame house, unpainted, and weather-beaten, standing a little back from the road that at this point turned, and became the one street of Durden's. A house without the very smallest attempt at beauty that fulfilled but one end-a shelter.

The main shed, extending straight down from the apex of the roof, takes under its protection a broad piazza, in whose shadowy depths the doors and windows of the house open.

The windows are glazed, which is a luxury in the town of Durden's; but the doors and blinds are simply battened, like the rest of the houses.

Three chimneys come from the roof, one from either end and one from the middle; wonderfully square and ugly, but softened to the view on this cool September day by slender plumes of smoke. A thin rail extends round the piazza save where a clear space is left for the steps, at the corner of which stands a hitching-post for horses. The reddishbrown soil of the yard is baked to the consistency of brick, rising and falling in mimic ravines and hills as the rain is pleased to wash it. No sign of a fence -no sign of paint or whitewash anywhere no vestige of any attempt at

flower, or shrub, or grass-an ugly, barren, neglected place.

In a high-backed, splint-bottomed rocking-chair, with his feet on the handrail that goes about the piazza, a boy sits reading; delicately made and fair, and with a finish in his dress and bearing that shows familiarity with localities very different from Durden's. Indeed, he looks entirely out of place in this rough environment, and seems perfectly to realize the unfitness of things.

Evidently he is very tired; but only of himself and his book, for no work can ever have soiled his white hands nor hardened his delicate muscles; yet he yawns and stretches very wearily, clasping his hands behind his head.

"A beastly hole," he muttered. "I shall be cross-eyed if I read any more," but yet, for lack of other interest, he takes up his book again. The shapely head bends forward, the long lashes shade the girlish cheeks where a little flush has come from the exertion of the last yawn, and the boy is beautiful. No other word would describe him; indeed one would not be tempted to fit any other adjective to him.

And the doctor, riding up and tying his horse, thinks how different this face is from the other he left up on the mountain side.

The boy rises.

"At last!" he says, coming forward, "I thought you might possibly spend the night."

"Scarcely; I waited only to watch the

case."

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And how is the case?" yawning

again.

"Progressing favorably."

"Unlike your humble servant," turning to follow the doctor indoors. The doctor paused to hang up his saddle-bags and hat, then turned to look at the boy.

"You look in good case," he said. "My face is my fortune,'" looking up with a smile that made this same face brilliant, "but really, I am nearly dead of loneliness; and at noon a letter from mamma; a letter a month old, but telling of the most enchanting things; really, you know!" with an earnest, regretful look in his beautiful eyes.

The doctor listened quietly, watching the boy's face, that seemed to charm him against his will.

"It is very unfortunate," he said, gravely, then went into a fire-lighted room, where a table was laid for two, and a servant in waiting.

"Dinner at once," he said, "and a fire in the study;" then sitting down in the great arm-chair he turned to the boy, who stood near a window. "Is there any news, Paul?" he asked.

"Nothing, except no end of balls, and lunches, and lovely art exhibitions, and operas, and concerts, and everything that can make a fellow long to go home; and I go everywhere with mamma, don't you know; I wish you knew her," the boy added, slowly.

66

"Yes," and the doctor leaned his head back as if this precocious child worried him.

"Yes," Paul went on, drawing a letter from his pocket—" and she sends you a message.'

The creamy paper rustled in the boy's hands; a faint perfume floated on the air, and the words came softly-"I miss you more than I can say, and long for you with a longing that I hope you may never realize. Would it not be possible to persuade your guardian to come home with you some time this winter, so that I can see you?" pausing and looking steadfastly at the doctor; but there was no movement, and he read on-" "Thank him for me for all his care of you; I know he will do whatever is best for you, and, in the highest sense of the word, make a man of you,'"-the boy stopped, folding the letter slowly.

"Thank you," came coldly from the

doctor, and he passed his hands wearily over his eyes.

"Did you ever know her?" the boy asked, hesitatingly, after a moment's silence.

"Yes."

Then the dinner and lights came in, and the conversation ceased.

The meal was rather silent, and afterward the evening in the book-lined study seemed rather cold and still. The lessons went on without much heart, dragging heavily; with cold patience on the doctor's part; with undisguised weariness on the boy's part, until the tasks were done.

"Now I will fly back with delight to my novel, of which I was so weary," and the boy rose and stretched himself; “to think I should be thankful to my lessons for anything," he went on; "to think that I should fall so low that one dulness is a boon because it makes the next dulness seem less dull."

"I am reading," the doctor said, not looking up.

"I beg pardon," hurriedly, and the boy, with the color burning in his cheeks, subsided with his book into an armchair.

But he did not read; instead, he watched furtively the man before him, wondering what was the point of his life. Why did he live in this lonely fashion, away off in these wilds; why study so diligently; why spend his time and his money on the poor creatures, the scum of the country, who gathered out in this region? Like to-day, spending hours over one little waif who was of no earthly use to anyone. Was he altogether right in his mind? He must be, Paul concluded, for he remembered quite distinctly his father's dying words about him-"I give him Paul as unconditionally as such a thing can be done, and charge him to be all to him that he would be to his own son." Paul remembered it all quite distinctly, and the last talk his father had given him. After that the long months when his mother pleaded not to give him up-the lawyer's protest, and the letters from this guardian, that had made his mother so ill; then his journey to this far Western region, his reception, and wonder at his surroundings. It was very strange; and with all

his precocious, shallow knowledge of the world, he could make nothing of these facts that met him on every hand.

Now he found that there had been some acquaintance between his mother and his guardian; a new piece of knowledge that deserved much thought. Why not ask about this new puzzle? Why not, indeed! After that last snub, he would rather put his hand in the fire than say a word. No really harsh word had ever been said to him by this man, yet Paul would sooner have attempted to strike him, than positively to disregard one wish of his. He shirked his duty sometimes, when in a particularly rebellious frame of mind, and when his guardian was not at hand to look him over after a cool, calm way he had. Some times he longed to see him angry, to hear him curse and swear and storm as he had heard other men do; he thought it would be almost refreshing. This intense calm; this controlled stillness that nothing seemed to disturb, was frightfully monotonous, and the man must surely be devoid of feeling. And yet he helped all the poor and sick, and got no pay for it; certainly a strange

man.

And this strange man sat in the brilliant circle of lamplight reading on and on; turning page after page as if nothing existed for him save that book. All day long he had been resting with no eye to scan his features-no keen curiosity to probe his self-control-all day he had been resting with only the wild

creatures about him.

So they sat until the word came of a miner who had fallen and injured himself; then the doctor closed his book and ordered his horse, and telling the boy not to wait for him, rode away in the darkness to spend the hours of the night among the lowest of mankindwatching the death-struggles of the strong the misery and desolation of the weak.

Aye, what did life seem to him? what use in all its toil and striving? what comfort for all its sorrow and suffering? As well as he could he eased the agony of body, and comforted the heart for he knelt and prayed for the passing soul-this strange man whose life had no visible point.

And riding homeward in the wild dawn he whispered once again : "If God will ever forgive me!"

CHAPTER VIII.

And with no language but a cry.

JERRY sat in the low doorway very much as he had done on the spring morning before he left his home, with the sun shining all about him, finding out all the hollows in his small face, and showing the grave eyes grown larger and more wistful. His hopes had all failed him; the only object he had ever had was seemingly an illusion; a blankness had come to him that was strange and unaccountable, and he realized thoroughly but one thing-that he was sorry he had ever wakened from his sleep on the trail. He felt more lonely now that there was nothing to remind him of his past save his little bundle. His clothes were all new and warm; Joe had brought them from Eureka, whatever or wherever that might be. Red flannel shirts and thick trousers, and a thing Jerry had never known before in his short life-a pair of boots! In his recollection his father had possessed one pair; but further than that he did not know boots. Now he sat in the sunshine, thinking, as far as his half-awakened faculties could think. Heretofore his life had been but a dull routine, never reaching beyond the old railfence, of helping his mother with the scant crop, or picking berries that his father took away to "peddle "-which meant to Jerry that his father would return with a small store of provisions, but always whiskey. So his life had passed in ignorance and silence, with pain and hunger for variety. With his mother's disappearance came the first change and excitement. She had talked to him of the "Golding Gates," and then for the first time he had heard that there were such things as peace and plenty. After that his journey-the excitement-the failure-the long sleep and slow awakening to kindness and rest, and this strange blankness for which he could not account, for he

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