Perhaps something very different from suppressed laughter helps to produce that choking sensation, for there is something strangely pathetic in the disappointed gaze of the eyes that meet yours. The grizzly beard and long, matted hair, both of a dirty gray, cannot conceal the fine intelligence of the face; the high, broad forehead and fine blue-gray eyes are still there to tell their tale, and now and then you may catch a glimpse of a mouth that is proud and sensitive, yet full of generosity and affection.

Can it be? Can it be that this hermit is proud, sensitive, generous, affectionate? Everything about his clothing and his mean habitation seems to say he is not. You are curious; you would speak to him if you dared. You own to yourself that you are a little afraid of him. Yet your

dog trots quietly to his side and

pokes her nose up into his face. She is not thrust aside, but gently patted. You are encouraged, and approaching, address him.

- Is

he fond of dogs?—Yes, he is. -Why does he not keep one? -- It costs too much. You drift from one subject to another, but you find him prepared to discuss all topics. You are beginning to think him a scholar, when two boys come crashing through the willow branches, and before long the old man is solving geometrical problems for them or translating long passages into Latin.

Feeling that you are now intruding, you depart and endeavor to gather some information about the old hermit. From no one, however, can you learn more than that he is poor, lives in the willows alone, and supports himself by catching frogs and selling them in the city. He never rides either to or from the city, and never buys anything but salt and flour, and occasionally gunpowder and shot. He never speaks unless spoken to, and then rarely or never of himself. Surely this is an "eccentric," yet you respect him, and perhaps even wish he were not. For a long time, perhaps for years after, you will never hear of the willows without hearing of the old hermit and seeing his great blue eyes with their sad, disappointed gaze.

L. M. R.

EXERCISE XXXIV.

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION. IDEAL.

My Hero.

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Subjects:

A Dream Incarnate.

A Knight of the Nineteenth Century." The Character of Jesus. "A Perfect Woman, Nobly Planned."

The painter strives to put on canvas, the sculptor strives to fashion out of marble, his ideal. Why should not the literary artist strive to do the same thing with his pen? No one of them will get nearer to the heart and soul of another person, real or ideal, than their outward manifestations. But note that while the painter and sculptor are limited to color and form, the literary artist has both these and other resources at his command. Words and actions respond more constantly and quickly to the impulses within, and are therefore the more reliable indications of the character behind them. These words and actions the writer may use freely.

Now ideals are not made of nothing. The Venus of Milo is only a combination of the most perfect features which the sculptor found in a dozen or a hundred human beings. It is a sort of composite photograph with all the distinctness of a simple one, because instead of all the features of all the models being taken, only certain ones are taken from each. It is evident that one man's ideal may sometimes be very nearly realized in a single person, though it is perhaps too much to

hope from nature, human or otherwise, that it may be entirely so.

You must have formed an ideal of what a great and good character should be. If not, it will do no harm to attempt to form one now. Physical features need not be disregarded here any more than in the last exercise, though naturally they will exact a minor share of your attention.

Do not leave the character shadowy merely because it is ideal. Assume that it exists; give it a name and a vocation if you like; make a living man or woman of it, and then treat that man or woman as if you knew him or her intimately. Do not say he would have such and such qualities-say explicitly that he has them. Nothing detracts from interest so much as distant, indirect treatment.

In this exercise you will have perfect liberty to make use of all the descriptive materials at your command. One suggestion only: Remember still that the imagination can be said to create only in a certain sense - it can construct and combine. It puts the head and arms

of a man on the body of a horse and we have a centaur; it makes a similar combination of a woman and a fish and we have a mermaid. But when these combinations do such violence to all our preconceived ideas of congruity as to take on the character of monstrosities, not every taste will tolerate them. There is plenty of scope for the imagination without going so far. You may picture to yourself a spot more purely Arcadian than any Arcadia on earth and yet have in it nothing unnatural. You may conceive of beings more beautiful, more noble, more lovable, than any you have ever known, without in the least transcending the bounds of possibility.

Imaginative work played a great part in the beginnings of literature: witness the Song of Solomon, Hesiod's Theogony, the Nibelungenlied. It plays a large part yet in the literary reading of children: witness the Arabian Nights, the Fairy Tales of Perrault, the Grimm brothers, and Andersen, and the folk-lore of any people. Read George Macdonald's At the Back of the North Wind, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's Gates Ajar and Beyond the Gates. Nathaniel Hawthorne loved to dwell in these realms of the imagination, as many of his shorter tales show; read The Hall of Fantasy in Mosses from an Old Manse. And Jules Verne, allowing his imagination to run riot in the field of modern science, has given us a score of very readable and even instructive books, of which A Trip to the Moon is a fair sample.

Write a fairy story, or an addition to the Arabian Nights' Tales. For anyone of a lively imagination this will prove a real pastime as well as means of literary culture.