this good fellow is the last man to wish to offend us, I propose that we permit him to enjoy his little peculiarity. Let him have his shout." They received my suggestion with great amiability, and soon became so inured to his in

The effect on a congregation of rustics may be conceived. A universal titter ran through the church, as much excited, I suspect, by witnessing my undignified but irrepressible jump of nervous surprise, as by the unusual and indecent demonstration itself. As soon as I had recovered my equanimity, fearing that, if I uttered a rebuke, I might receive a retort and bring on a brawl, I "looked daggers" at the culprit, but spake none, and warded off, during the remainder of my discourse, a repetition of so flagrant an indecorum by a tamer delivery. On expostulating with the man after service on the impropriety of which he had been guilty, he defended his " applause" by referring me to the first verse of the fortyseventh Psalm, which tells "all men to clap their hands," and justified his "shouting" by assuring me, with perfect civility, and, I now believe, with perfect sincerity, that "his spirit was stirred within him," and that he would not "quench the Spirit" for any earthly consideration. The next day I made further inquiry as to his character, and I learned that he was by nature a silent, reserved, inoffensive creature, patient under trial, contented with his lot, working at half-wages on the farm of one of my tenants, almost beyond his strength (his age and the curvature of his spine considered), but that he was a Primitive Methodist. However, I heard so much that was to his credit, that I could not help feeling well disposed to him. I sought him out, and reasoned with him mildly on the impropriety of continuing to indulge in such outbursts of fanatical enthusiasm. Failing, however, to make any impression on him, I told him plainly that, glad as I should have been to have numbered him among the members of my flock, I could not permit his eccentricities in the house of God; and that if he were obstinately resolved to indulge in such manifestations, I must beg him to confine his attendance to the meeting-house. With this alternative he was more than satisfied, for, said he, "I AM a Primitive, and I thank God that I am one. A Primitive I shall live, a Primitive I shall die. Glory! glory! glory!"

The fact was, his first religious convictions had been derived from the Primitive Methodists, and he felt attached to them in consequence. And though he had imbibed from their teaching tenets which were absurd, yet his walk and conversation were so consistent and exemplary that he inspired his neighbors with respect for him; and it speaks well both for him and them, that, though ungainly in aspect, unattractive in manner, bent into the shape of the letter C, and standing little more than four feet from his mother earth, and therefore fair game for mischievous boys, he yet could pass through the village at all hours without molestation.

I remember once calling with my elder daughter on the family in whose humble cot he lodged. It was nearly one o'clock. I did not know, when I entered, that it was so near the dinner-hour, or I should not have intruded on them; but, on their assuring me that they never sat down to meals till their lodger had joined them, I was prevailed upon to stay. Soon he passed the little latticed window. As I wished my girl to make his acquaintance, I lingered on, hoping every minute he would enter. Finding he did not, I expressed to the woman of the house my fear that our presence was the cause of his protracted absence. "Oh dear, no, sir!" she replied; "he is only gone to our wood-house. He always goes there before meals and after (before returning to work), to pray, because it is private, and he gets no interruption there." Just as we were going, in he came, and I introduced him to my daughter. She said something to him which pleased him, on which he favored her with one of his customary Halleluiahs! It was great fun to me, who had been quizzed for being so easily startled, to see the instantaneous flush which dyed my girl's cheek, and told of the quickened pulsation of her heart.

My gardener, a man of high character, had permission to shoot rabbits in the early mornings before coming to work. He assured me that often as early as four o'clock, when stealthily walking under hedges in remote places, he had come upon Johnny Parker (for that was his name) on his knees in prayer; and that he was so impressed by so unusual a sight, that he always walked away at once, lest he should disturb him.

A year or two after the events I have alluded to, I was one evening returning from a long ride, on a very nervous and high-couraged horse, when I overtook my friend returning homeward from his work. I drew up by his side and entered into conversation with him. After discussing the weather, the crops, and the quality of the turnips which he had been hoeing, I said to him:

yond the present; but I wish you would give up that very singular habit of yours-of clapping and bawling in the house of prayer." "Why should I, sir?"

"Because, my good fellow, it is irrational, indefensible, and unscriptural."

"How do you make that out, sir?"

Why, thus: Do not you believe God to be everywhere present?"

"I do."

"Do not you believe him to be about your path and about your bed?"

"I do."

"Do not you believe him to have a hearing ear?"

"I do."

"Then why do you bellow out to him 'as if his ear were heavy that it could not hear?' Recollect what St. Paul's advice to the Ephesians was: 'Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.""

"I tell you what, sir," was his answer, "there's noise enough in heaven among the angels-you may depend on't-when they see one sinner that has repented."

Whereupon, standing close under my horse's nose, and looking up at me, he fell to clapping and shouting so violently that the animal reared upright, and in doing so hit him in the back with his knee, with sufficient force to send him spinning into a neighboring ditch full of nettles and mud, in which he lay floundering for some seconds on his stomach, kicking his legs about and trying to clap his hands, and screaming out in a tone of exultation, and with the air of a martyr glorying in his humiliation, "Glory! glory! glory! glory forever! I say forever!-forever! Amen."

"GERMAN HOME-LIFE," by the Countess von Bothmer, is continued in Fraser, the last paper being devoted to dress and amusements. The writer's strictures on the German toilet are sharp and amusing, but whether just or not we do not say:

We like to believe of beauty that it would be as beautiful in the desert, for the sun and the sand and the sky, as it is in the ballroom, where by one consent it is crowned "belle." A German lady understands nothing of such wild theories; she does not even appreciate the "sweet civility" that lies in the fact of a woman coming to her husband's or father's breakfast-table trim, fresh, and fragrant; on the contrary, she issues from her bedroom in a loose wrapper, carpet or felt slippers, and with what, in your haste, you will call a nightcap. Courtesy demands that it shall be spoken of as a Morgenhaube, and, in the sense that the nightcap proper has been taken off and replaced by a tumbled edition, we may accede to the term; otherwise it has no pretension to be dignified by any finer name than you have given it. With hair undressed, and stuffed away in plaits or curls under the muslin topknot, in the most uncompromising of déskabilles, the lady presides over the scene of sloppy slovenliness to which allusion has been made in a former chapter. If you have seen her en toilette the night before, meeting her now you will scarcely recognize the fairy vision of your dreams. The elaborate frisure, where great masses of hair lay piled, Junolike, above the brow, or rippled in sunny curls lovingly over the uncovered shoulders; the sweeping silks, the charming coquetries, have all disappeared, vice a singularly unattractive and ungraceful style of apparel promoted. At first you will imagine you have stumbled upon the house-keeper, who, suffering from dolorous tic, has arisen to a hasty performance of her morning duties and donned this surreptitious costume; but (fortunately for German women) hospitality as we understand it the hospitality of spare-rooms, that is is a thing unknown, and the occasions when a stranger can gaze upon the Hausfrau déguisée en papillotes are necessarily very restricted. There is only the husband, and the husband knows no better; he would be star

economy? To buy without giving an equivalent in specie is, if we may tell him so, only another name for stealing. This also was the opinion of the worthy magistrate. Mr. da Silva is now in prison."

This solemn banter soon gets very fatiguing to a foreigner, but it seems to have a great charm for native readers, if one may judge from its frequent occurrence.

The weather, in the dearth of more stirring topics, is a fertile theme. There happened to be a day or two of rather stormy weather, and this is how copy was made out of the fact:

"THE WEATHER. For the last two days we have undergone the unchained fury of the most rigorous winter. Wind, rain, lightning, and hail, have combined to make the most astounding atmospheric disturbance and so on for half a column, ringing the changes upon the very tallest adjectives, and only telling the reader what he knew very well by the report of his own senses.

... "

Perhaps the most singular of the contents of the Portuguese newspapers are the obituary notices. Written in a style so exquisitely pompous and stilted as to make the foreign reader incline at first to think them ironical, these long eulogies on the dead are paid for as advertisements, and are generally signed with the name of one of the relatives of the deceased person. A few extracts will suffice to show how false emotion and a false style can desecrate feelings which it is only commonly decent to hold back from observation:

"It is now seventy-two hours since the pious Mr. A. B- ceased to exist!

"It is now seventy-two hours since the most severe affliction has stricken the hearts of his bereaved relations in their most tender fibres !

"It is now seventy-two hours since he died in the summer of his life, as also in the height and summer of his virtues !

"It is now seventy-two hours since this great man, great in his intelligence and in his practice of all the Christian virtues . .

and so on through a long list of paragraphs, beginning with the same minute chronological calculation, and all full of the same rhetorical foolishness.

Another similar and very curious development of Portuguese journalism is the insertion of paid eulogies of literary productions. I use the expression "curious" only because the payment is avowed and open, being honestly signed with the name of the friendly critic, and placed in a column set apart for advertisements. It is impossible altogether to disapprove of this practice. It is odd that it has not yet occurred to Portuguese critics to enhance the value of their approval by occasional dispraise. I have never seen an unfriendly literary critique in a Portuguese journal.

A WRITER in an English journal, upon "Impertinence," discourses of its feminine manifestations as follows:

When women wish to insult, but cannot do so by open force, they take their stand behind a barrier of quiet impertinence, which makes gesture, look, and accent, do the work for them. And how can the man resent? The old simile of fighting with clouds holds preeminently good here, and the lord is fain to accept the portion dealt out to him by the lady, and to hide his displeasure at its bitterness. This art of covert impertinence is one in which all women of the world are adepts. It is, in fact, part of the education taught by that world

which holds clever concealment of the real feelings one of the honors of its training. And, to do the women justice, they are neither slow in learning nor backward in applying this first lesson of their calling-how to wound with a hidden weapon and insult by an intangible and impalpable method. It is a coarse and clumsy kind of thing when you show your meaning so openly that it can be taken up and turned against you in accusation of your insolence. The value of every art is its perfectness in detail, its possibilities of suggestiveness, and the art of covert impertinence follows the same rule. Any one can say bluntly, "I do not believe you." That is a downright blow with a bludgeon, requiring nothing but the brutal quality of strength and a direct aim. But it takes a long training to be able to accept a statement with a smile and a gracious inclination of the head, while conveying at the same moment by the curl of the lip or the expression of the eyes the most convincing assurance of doubt and disbelief. There is no art required in using large words and flinging about broad accusations. We can all read our dictionaries, and we all know a few peppery nouns and adjectives. But to be able to insinuate pepper and acid in substance under the guise of sugar, is not given to every one, and only those who have toiled and labored for this power of moral transmutation know how difficult it is to attain. Even sympathy can be made to do the work of impertinence, and, "My dear Miss Amanda,

fear

you are ill to-day, you are so black under your eyes, and so pale!" though said in the most gracious and sympathetic voice at command, is a shaft that strikes poor Amanda to the heart, as it was intended to do, with her doubtful prize not yet fully on her hook. Indeed, there is not a sentiment, not an action, which may not be made the medium for impertinence, if it is so willed, and the best impulses of humanity may be turned into weapons of offense, like food transformed into poison-bread steeped in ratsbane, and milk full of the germs of typhoid fever. The clever in such matters are not afraid of a little extra cruelty; and, if the mother's milk would seethe the kid a turn better than any other unrelated Nanny's, why, they would take it by the panful, and think themselves justified when they sat at table.

THE British Quarterly Review draws the following suggestive comparison between Poe and Hawthorne:

And we may note here that Poe radically differs from Hawthorne. Hawthorne, along with his wistful, dreamy far-sightedness, had

the sagacious patience with fact, the discerning shrewdness and quiet observation that enabled him constantly to seek and to enjoy the verification and correction of his own impressions from new stand-points, and to make canny, humorous note of the disparities of the world and humanity. Hawthorne is no dreamer in the sense we mean when we say that Poe is so. He delighted to recover his normal relations, if we may speak so, after his art-work. Those wonderfully realistic sketches, especially that prefixed to "The Scarlet Letter," no less than his note-books, abundantly attest this. The necessity was never so much as felt by Poe. It is in this sense that he is void of conscience, as a man, so far, and not as an artist.

Then, again, the totally different ways in which the two men view the spiritual world would of itself be conclusive when once pointed out. Who that has ever read that passage in Hawthorne's note-book where he relieves a besetting doubt by the conviction that in the next world we shall be able freely to communicate ourselves-where the "Babel of words" will not stand between soul and soul-can forget it? And where in the range of all Poe's writings can you find trace of the expression of such a healthy human religious faith? Poe seems to draw no satisfaction from the thought -if he ever entertains it-of the freedom that shall come to the enfranchised spirit, or from the compensations of Providence and of spiritual relation; he falls back, for fleeting satisfaction rather, on his individual dreams, or, if he escapes from them at all, it is only to seek a momentary suggestion from elements of sensuous beauty. Hawthorne, in a word, had faith-faith in men, faith in a future-Poe had not; and the remorse and hopelessness of his prose as well as of his poetry-qualities radical and essential to them-at once and decidedly differentiate his art from that of Hawthorne, in spite of some superficial points of external resemblance.

Another very noticeable point is that, whereas Poe suffered almost chronically from "low spirits ""blue devils," as his friend Mr. White graphically called them-and was hurried by reaction from joy to sorrow, from despondency to ecstasy, Hawthorne, on his own confession, lived a life of equable content, seldom visited by low spirits. And, in spite of the problems with which he occupied himself, this is not so surprising when we reflect how he kept himself en rapport with life, eschewed solitude, and regarded nothing as more healthful for a literary man than to have much to do with those who could not sympathize with his peculiar views and employ

ments.

“I

CHAPTER I.

"Mountains that like giants stand,
To sentinel enchanted land."

WANT you all to remember," says Eric, decidedly, "that I do not advise you to go."

"I don't know how you can say that, Eric," replies Aunt Markham, "when you have talked incessantly of the beauty of the mountains, and said that everybody ought to go to see them."

"He meant appreciative people," says Sylvia. "We are not appreciative; therefore his remarks do not apply to us."

"He wants to go alone with a gun and a microscope," says Charley; "and has no faney for playing cavalier-of-all-work to a trio of ladies."

"He need not fear any thing of that kind," I remark, " for you are going, and Rupert also. We shall, therefore, be well provided with cavaliers."

Scene: a family party on a veranda at sunset, Aunt Markham lying back in a large chair, fanning as if her existence depends on keeping cool-as perhaps it does, poor woman! since she weighs at least fourteen stone; Sylvia reclining in a smaller chair, with her filmy dress falling around her to the floor, her pretty face flushed with heat, her gray eyes slightly languid; Eric on the steps with his back against a jasmine-twined pillar, and a cigar, which he does not light, between his fingers; Charley Kenyon stretched on the grass just below the steps; Rupert hovering to and fro; I established in the hall-door, for the sake

of a through-draught-the month being July, and the thermometer standing at eighty-five.

We have been discussing where we shall spend the months of August and September, and we have finally decided to turn our faces westward, and, crossing the Blue Ridge, ex

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by D. APPLETON & Co,, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

then you will blame me! So I accept no responsibility, but simply repeat what I have said before, that if you want fresh air and glorious scenery-the grandest this side of the Yosemite-you must go to Western North Carolina to find them."

plore as far as possible the comparatively unknown country which lies beyond-a country so elevated that its valleys lie more than two thousand feet above sea-level. The person by whose recommendation we decide on this programme is my cousin Eric Markham-a great hunter, a great lover of Nature, though outwardly the most unenthusiastic of human-Sylvia is my sister, and we are Aunt Markbeings, a person whom his mother has never been able to drag to fashionable watering

THE CONSULTATION.

places in her train, but who has spent summer after summer among the fair, wild, Carolina mountains, until his attachment to them is a family proverb.

"We want just those things," says Sylvia

ham's orphan nieces-"I am tired of dancing and flirting and toilets! What a comfort it

will be to put on a linen travelingdress and a pair of thick - soled shoes, such as Nora wore in 'Quits,' and set forth with an alpenstock to climb mountains."

"A great comfort indeed," says Charley, lazily.-Charley is Eric's cousin, but not ours; and he and Sylvia have been quarreling and making love and tormenting each other ever since their childhood.

"You will wish for your silk dresses before you have been gone three days. Eric talks as if you were going into the wilderness, but that country has been a resort for fifty years, perhaps longer, and Asheville is decidedly a civilized place. I was there last summer, and I had the pleasure of seeing a great deal of fashion."

"Then we must take our trunks," says Sylvia, alive to the importance of appearing as fashionable as her neighbors. "I thought we were only going to explore the mountains, but if we are likely to meet people-"

"Of course you must take your trunks, my dear," says Aunt Markham, decidedly. "One meets exceedingly nice people. Besides, it is always well to be prepared for emergencies."

"I shall take my gun," says Rupert, following Charley's example and flinging his long and rather awkward length of limb on the grass. It is impossible for any one not to be awkward who is six feet high and only seventeen years old.

"The reason why I don't advise you to go," he says, when our comments have ceased, "is because I have no doubt you will be bored and disgusted. You will find no fashionable hotels, no bands of music; andAy.'

"And is it definitely settled, then, that we will go to Western Carolina?" asks Sylvia. "All in favor of the motion please say Very well," as a rather languid but

'Impossible," says Charley. "The railroad takes you to Swannanoa."

A fig for the railroad! We can go in our carriage, like the grandees of thirty years ago. Which is the finest gap, Swannanoa or Hickory-Nut?"

"There is no comparison," says Eric. "Hickory-Nut is infinitely finer."

"Then we must see it," says Sylvia, decidedly. She is of a nature easily roused to enthusiasm, and it is evident that this enthusiasm is beginning to wake in the interest of the long-neglected beauty lying within our own borders. "Listen!" she says, sitting upright in her chair, “why can we not go by the railroad to Swannanoa Gap, and take the stage-coach from there to Asheville, leaving the carriage to follow us to the same place, so that we can travel where we like in the mountains, and finally return by HickoryNut Gap? Is not that a good plan, Eric?" "Only open to the objection that the carriage will be likely to be broken to pieces," says Eric.

Why, I have heard you say that the roads beyond the Blue Ridge are excellent."

"The turnpikes are generally excellent, but I humbly submit that all roads are not turnpikes; and, furthermore, that to reach the country beyond the Blue Ridge it is necessary to cross the mountains-to do which is no joke."

"I don't know a more serious matter," says Charley. "You are jolted, and bumped, and thumped, until you do not care for any prospect that can be shown to you."

"Pray speak for yourself," says Sylvia. "I am quite sure that no one else would think of putting a few jolts and thumps in comparison with the grandest scenery—"

"In the Atlantic States!" says Charley. "I have heard that from Eric several times. I contemplated this scenery on many occasions, and from many different places, with no great degree of satisfaction; but the troutfishing that is something which warrants enthusiasm!"

"But we are more than enough to fill the carriage," says Eric.

"Take two saddle-horses, also," cries Sylvia, with a bright light springing into her eyes. "One for you, and one for me-how delightful!"

"And how economical!"

She makes a gesture signifying that this consideration is not worth a moment's atten

tion.

"People expect to spend money when they are traveling," she says, "and the cost of the whole expedition will be less than a month at a fashionable watering-place."

"And I'll take the horses along with the carriage," cries Rupert, eagerly. "The rest of you may go on the railroad if you like, but give me a horse forever!"

"Jackson will drive the carriage, and you can ride Cecil and lead Bonnibelle," says Sylvia, with the air of a general issuing orders for a campaign.

"Eric, what do you say?" asks Aunt Markham, turning to her eldest son, who is autocrat of the household.

"What is left for me to say?" responds Eric, lighting his cigar. "The matter is apparently settled. I only desire that it may be clearly understood that I am not accountable for consequences. If the carriage is upset and Bonnibelle breaks her own legs and Sylvia's neck, nobody is to blame me."

"Nobody will think of blaming you," says Sylvia. "You accompany us under protestand such trifles as broken legs and necks are to be exclusively our own affair."

The next two weeks are devoted to preparing wardrobes and studying maps. Then, on a particularly warm Monday in August, we set forth on our journey. Rupert and Jackson, with the carriage and horses, started the day before for Asheville, via Hickory - Nut Gap. We take the railroad, and turn our faces toward Swannanoa.

Our railroad-journey is uneventful, as railroad-journeys-unless varied by an accident-generally are. The cars are filled with the usual number of thirsty men and dusty women, of invalids, sight-seers, and pleasureseekers. During the long pauses at the stations, we learn where most of these travelers are bound, and receive a great deal of interesting information about their social and domestic affairs. Few things strike one more forcibly in traveling than the general garrulity and egotism of human nature. This is entertaining for a time, but finally-taken in connection with a choking amount of dust, and a simmering degree of heat-it becomes almost intolerable. At last over the blazing noonday a grateful shadow steals, and, for the first time since early morning, we lift our window-blinds and look out. We are between the villages of Morganton and Marion, and fairly among the mountains. Already there is a greenness over the land, in striking contrast to the parched brownness of the lowcountry which we left behind; great hills roll up on all sides, and on our right the magnificent dark blue masses of Table - Rock and Short Off Mountain stand clearly defined against a lurid thunder-cloud. The road just here follows the lovely valley of the Cataw ba, and we see the river in the foreground,

with its level meadow-lands, over which suddenly a white rain comes driving in a quick, sharp shower.

"I am sorry this gust has come up just now," says Eric. "I wanted to take you on the rear-platform of the car, and show you a very pretty view of the river-valley, with a glimpse of the Blue Ridge."

But we are not sorry, for the rain is delightful. It dashes in spray against our windows, peals of thunder sound above the clatter of the train, and flashes of lightning dart hither and thither to frighten nervous trav elers. It does not continue very long, however. As suddenly as it began, the vehemence of the storm abates, the thunder rolls away, the cloud is evidently passing. A minute later a ray of sunshine falls on the scene, and lo! the earth is enchanted. The shower, which is still falling, is lighted up with pris matic radiance; away in the south dark clouds are piled, but around us all is freshness and beauty. Mists rise, like the white smoke of incense, from the gorges, and when we lift our windows a rush of odor enters-a hundred sweet scents of growing things mingled and exhaled by the dampness.

After this the run to Old Fort is very pleasant. The dust is laid, the heat is tem pered, the sunshine is still partly obscured by clouds that dapple the changing landscape with soft shadows, and now and then we have a glimpse of blue heights far away. We pass beautiful valleys glittering with the late rain; we glide by grassy meadows, and streams where old-fashioned mills stand embowered in trees. There is a shimmer over every thing-a mingling of mist and brilliance pe culiar to a mountain-scene.

Presently our leisurely rate of speed abates, and we find ourselves at the end of our railroad journey-Old Fort. This place which takes its name from an old fort that is sup posed to have existed in the days of Indian warfare has only risen to comparative im portance since the railroad abruptly and unexpectedly ended here. At least the railroad track ends here, but for many miles beyond the road-bed is graded, and a great deal of heavy work in the way of bridging and tunneling is done, the sight of which moves one to fierce and futile indignation against the plunderers who have worked the people such grievous wrong.

"Is Old Fort a town?" asks Sylvia, looking round as we descend from the train.

"It is before you," says Charley. “Judge for yourself."

What is before us is an hotel perched on a hill. A few other houses are scattered widely and wildly around. Great wooded mountains rise in the background. The hotel piazza seems crowded as we approach-Aunt Markham and Eric in front, Charley escorting Sylvia and myself. We are the last of the straggling procession of passengers, and receive the concentrated stares of all the languid ladies with yellow-backed novels in their hands and sundowns on their heads, all the open-eyed children, and lounging men.

"Why on earth do these people stay here?" asks Sylvia, struggling with a vei which she is trying to draw down. "D looks like a very uninteresting place."