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found Flora under an elm-tree reading to her small favorite, John Hampton. At Uncle Billy's request they all went on together for a look at the garden. A turn in the path brought into sight a wide reach of the river flowing silently toward the sunset between thickly wooded hills. Far along it a great sturgeon leaped high into the air and fell back in a shower of foam.

"How beautiful this is!" said Flora. "Why are any of us content to live in cities?"

"You like the country, then," said Mr. Martingale.

"That word is not strong enough," she answered. "I have learned to love it while I am here, to long for it persistently while I am away."

Mr. Martingale made no reply, and they walked on for some time in silence. Then, apropos of nothing, she asked if he knew that Captain Wise was to be married.

"Yes," said he; "I am disappointed in him."

"Disappointed; why?" "Because I thought I could not help thinking that

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'Did you think that I should change my mind?"

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"She went back to the house, my boy. Let us sit down for a minute or two. What book are you reading?"

"I can't read myself. It was Aunt Flora who was reading.'

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The book opened at some verses, and in their second line Uncle Billy's glance fell upon two words which Flora had that moment used. He read on, went back to the beginning, and when he came to the end, laughing as though the fable had for him some hidden application, he read it through once more.

"There was a man in our town,

And he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble-bush,
And scratched out both his eyes.
But when he saw his eyes were out,
With all his might and main,
He jumped into another bush,

And scratched them in again."

"Uncle Billy, what are you laughing at?" asked the child.

"At this funny book of yours. Has Aunt Flora really gone? Then let us go too."

With an invalid's privilege she kept her room that night, and he saw her neither then nor in the early morning, which was stormy, as he had predicted. He retired to his study, for what purpose was not apparent; since he only paced it aimlessly, sighing from time to time or shaking his head over some grave doubt that occupied his mind. All at once he stopped short before the window in utter astonishment.

"Upon my soul, it has come true!" he cried.

What he saw was a light flurry of snow, melting as it fell, to be sure, but still snow-most unseasonable, even in that northern latitude. With a loud laugh he rushed to his desk and took up a book-his almanac; but as he opened it a sharp knock at the door interrupted him. "Come in," he called; and Flora, all excitement, burst into the room.

"The snow, the snow! Uncle Billy, do you see?"

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"Don't tell me that you never found it in the almanac-the snow in June."

"On the contrary, I found nothing else. And I should have murdered the printer in cold blood if he hadn't shown it to me in my own handwriting. It was a strange blunder. Who could have ventured to hope the fiend would lie like truth?"

It was now Flora's turn to laugh until the tears came. "Oh, Uncle Billy, you are blind! Your own handwriting! I forged it, and you never knew!"

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You? Is it possible? Here it is in the book, almost to a day. It was written, then, that you should be my guardian angel."

She laughed no longer, but looked out at the snow which was still falling. "It is the strangest thing in all this world," said she.

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What does the Shekh Abdallah do

In the long dull time of the Ramadan?
Why, when the cloying feast is o'er,
Dancers foot it along the floor;

Night-long to the sound of lute and viol

There is wine-mad mirth and the lilt of song,
And loving looks that brook no denial

From a radiant, rapturous throng.

"Morn calls to prayers, now away with cares ! "

He cries (this faithful and holy man !),

The Shekh Abdallah-praise be to Allah!

In the long dull time of the Ramadan.

INTRODUCTORY.

FIRST PAPER.

By N. S. Shaler.

HE advance which has been made in natural science during the last century has led to a great change in our conception as to the relations of mankind to the earth. Of old, men looked upon themselves as accidents upon this sphere. In the light of modern science, we regard our species as the product of terrestrial conditions. We conceive man as the summit and crown of the longcontinued progressive changes which have led his bodily structure up from the dust to its present elevated estate.

In the progress of organic advance which has led through inconceivably numerous stages of existence from the primal base of life to the estate of man, the dependence of beings on the conditions which surrounded them has always been very close. The lowliest organism is influenced by the temperature in air or water, by the conditions of the soil or sea-bottom, or the circumstances which serve to bring it the needful food. With each advance of intellectual power the dependence on environment becomes more and more intimate, for with that intelligence the creature seeks beyond itself for opportunities to gratify its desires. It chases its prey, flees from pursuers, herds with its kind, and is thereby educated to a sympathetic life.

When the human state is attained, when the progressive desires of man are aroused, the relations of life to the geography and other conditions of environment increase in a wonderfully rapid way. When the tool-making stage is won, the savage must become, in a certain way, a geologist. He learns perforce to seek for particular kinds of stone with which he may point his arrows and spears, to make the mortars

and pestles with which to grind his corn or the clay of his pottery. The next stage, that of agriculture, yet further increases the measure of dependence on the character of the earth. As soon as the rude combats of the earlier man develop into the military art, the work of attack and defence leads to a close relation of the developing savage to the topographic conditions which he encounters. When commerce arises, the dependence of man on the shape of the earth becomes yet more intimate. With the growth of each of these elements of civilization, the arts of the household, of war, and of trade, the chains which bind men to the earth about them is manifolded.

It is impossible to depict in an adequate way the measure of dependence of our modern civilized man upon the world about him. All the functions of his body and mind depend curiously on objects from the ends of the earth. Thus our meals commonly mean many thousand miles of transit to bring the food together; the clothing of our bodies brings the wool of Australia, the cotton of the Carolinas, the silk of Italy or China, the gold of California, the leather of Paraguay, the arts of hands and brains in a dozen different peoples together. Our daily thoughts take hold on the ends of the earth.

The relation of our modern states upon the conditions of the earth is inconceivably greater than that of the ancient tribe. In the wonderful state of Britain the national life functions with reference to the topography of high Asia, the climate and surface of Africa, and other countries, until almost every storm and every drought reacts upon the national life. Ministers, and with them the purposes of the state, are changed by the chance of some battlefield at the antipodes. A drought in the plains of the upper Mississippi means dear bread in England, fewer marriages, and shorter lives; in other words, it

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