Evening Star Newspaper, November 18, 1893, Page 18

18 THE EVENING STAR: WASHINGTON, D. C., SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1893-TWENTY PAGES PICTORIAL POSTERS. A High Grade of Art Used in This Work. HOW THEY SHINE FROM DEAD WALLS, Paris Loves the Dainty in Her Ad- vertisements. WHE INFLUENCE OF ONE MAN. @recial Correspondence of The Evening Star PARIS, Novemter 7, 1893. TRAWS SHOW which way the wind blows. ‘The pictorial posters of Paris, shin- ing from dead walls in glorious color- splashes and chic cut- lines, tell the story of the city’s light and ticklish gayety. The simple black and white which repro- duces them can never even indicate their ralabow tints and Baring tricks of contrast—geraniu:n red, a {midnight blue, a lemon yellow, with seas of a fainter blue and lakes of fair Wile | aoe They shine upon the stranger as he alks the Paris strects—these marvelous Bffiches—and they swell his heart with glad- hess even when they recommend a soap or purgative or some dread tonic fer the aged. “The Elixir of Pere Montfort!” “Regenerate yourself with -he Sircp Vin- ent!” For every poster nas a female tire to oax or tease, to smile upon you with a fmeaning which you try in vain to read. If the railway company ef Paris-Lyon- Midi wishes to allure you to the sunny shores of Nice and Monte Carlo or to the Springs of Vichy in Auvergne, it knows no etter way than to set up a squirming, smil- img lady. She is in the foreground, the chief figure, riding mayhap on a donxey. She flirts a shimmering white or golden POUR NETTOYER SANS BRULER NI RAYER. LES TABLES PARQUETS- BOISERIES’ | LES EVIERS-ETAINS-MARBRES GLACES ARGENTERIES -VAISSELLES, MAINS SALIES PAR LE TRAVAI eet onan os nee 1 to make a nalo for her fluffy bair. Recent you see the sky, a glorious biue, Weep, sensuous, intoxicating, a biue of that Nice and Monte carlo never ew. Hills, sea, a towa, a curving bay, @re splashed in fainter <ints and ovtlines fore alluring from thei- very faintncss. Or one great daub wf brillizat cherry-red that runs from black to blush-rose fading fato white will make a hackground for the Bnigmatic lady of the tantalizing sinile. It is always there, the lady—the chief fig- mre in these Paris posters. The English advertise a brand of soap by spreading far and wide the picture of a leering monkey Sliding down a balustrade in evening elothes. A Frenchman makes a soap which glso won't wash clothes. The prettiest name he can think of for it is the “Savon de geannette.” It is Jeannette the soubrette— ® heavenly blonde parlor maid from out the comic operas, in a starched and crin- kled muslin cap with flowing strings, a gown of satin stripes with high-puffed shoulders and no sleeves. The soap of deannette is “indispensable for cleaning, §thout scalding, streaking or scratching, fables, floors, woodwork, mirrors, marbles and silver ware and hands that have been soiled by work.” And Jeannette, in red and white against a blue-stained background, stands smiling down upon ou over her left shoulder. These splendid advertising posters—splen- @id always in their colors and, from. the Standpoint of a Frenchman, splendid also in their outlines—show themselves on every Paris wall which is availzble. One artist, Cheret, leads the others ia designing them. Since 1867 he has produced more than 400 of these posters for circuses, concerts, balls, soap manufacturers, charity fetes, patent Durgatives, theaters, illuminating oils, Rewspapers and publishers and powders for the face. In each of them he has not failed to place his delicate and fin de siecle lady, mow doing her unfathomable smile, now on the point of exploding with some inward foy, now mocking, sometimes with a look of conscious silliness, but still adorable. There is always the slanting or the pucker- ed eye and kissing mouth. How otherwise Would Frenchmen look at them? Different Kinds of Ads. ‘These posters naturally fall in classes: @.) Advertisements of commodites. The few French companies which have hereto- fore monopolized refined petroleum in France have also been great patrons of the admirable Cheret. Under such names as Oriflamme, Luciline, and Saxoleine, a set of more or less gummy, yellow-burning compounds has been for years supplying the French with drawing room shadows, better adapted to the purposes of this im- Pressionistic art than to brightening up the family circle. Mluminating gas they hard- ly know at all, except for economical cook- ing. The stearine candle is still the gre enlightener of the lower middle classes. ~ so, the graceful affiches of Cher- though they only glorify petro- suggest the thought of pro- show always the same type—a Fipeish-looking married lady under thirty years of age, holding with an air of triumph Some lamp of rare design. She holds it at @ proper angie to cast a flood of light upon her hair, her face and her shoulders—a er was on sea or land, but isements of shops. I have in my collection one of Cheret’s of a year ago, puffing up a magazine for hats. A young mother and her little daughter are each in ecstacy as they try on the new “creations,” all the way from three francs sixty up. So much joy for a dollar and a half—how could the husband and the father deny it them! @.) Railroad advertisements of summer d_winter resorts. The “Rapide.” the lightning express from Paris to the Riviera, is personified by a pink nymph with flying drapery and tresses in mid air. saris | A if she were its genius leading on, there come into view the somber outlines and the flashing headlight of a sawed-off Euro- pean locomotive, belching forth white smoke into a black-blue sky. (4) Dance halls, cafes-concerts, circuses and variety shows. G.} Spectal theatrical events. 6.) Balls, expositions and charity fetes. Amusement Posters Lead Them All. The dance halls, circuses, variety shows and cafes-concerts lead all the others. The fact is significant. It shows the new, still changing life of Paris. Great places of amusement refuse, in their dignity, to put out picture posters at all—the Opera, the Opera Comique, the Theater Francais, the Palais Royale, the Gymnase, the Vaude- ville, the Varieties. Even places like the Gaite and Porte-Saint-Martin and the Cha- telet, which make a specialty of spectacular LOST RECRUIT. JANE BARLOW IN PALL MALL MAGAZINE. HEN MICK DOHER- ty heard that there was to be route marching next day in the neighborhood of Kilmacrone, he deter- mined upon going off for a long “stravade” coastwards over the bog, where there were no roads worth men- tioning, and no risks of an encounter with the military. In this he acted differently from all his neighbors, most of whom, upon learning the news, began to speculate and plan how they might see and hear as much as Possible of their unwonted visitors. Opin- ions were chiefly divided as to whether the Murghadeen cross roads would “be the best Station to take up, or the fork of the lane at Berrisbawn House. People who, for one reason or another, could not go far afield consoled themselves by reflecting that the band, at any rate, would be likely to come through the village, and would no doubt strike up a tune while passing, as it had done a couple of years ago, the last time the red-coats had appeared in Kilmacrone. And, och, but that was the grand playin’ intirely! It done your heart good just to be hearin’ the sound of it, bedad it did so. Old Mrs, Geoghegan said it was liker the sort of thunderstorms they might be apt to have in heaven above than aught else she could think of, might goodness forgive her for sayin’ such a thing; and Molly Joyce said she'd as lief as not have sat down and cried and fairy pieces, with much ballet, ordina- rily content themselves with posters with- out pictures. Their simple announcements in large letters contain only the piece, the east, the hour, the prices and the theater's location. This was the old way. But all the old ways are changing rapidly in Paris. The Cafe Riche, with its tarnished elegance— real elegance nevertheless, where quietnes: courtesy and good taste still hold sway—is in a lingering state, half dead. Half a block below, the Taverne Pousset can scarcely hold its crowds of custome: It is new, gaudy with imitation tiling on its walls, with papier mache imitation of carv- ed wood, bursting with electric lights, loud in its laughter, flown with insolence and beer and perfumed in its every nook with sauerkraut, ham and small crabs boiled in savory soup. So with the theaters. For two years the Paris papers have been occupied | with what they call the “krach”—a real theatrical decline. It 1s a decline in patron- age. The people will not sit out five or even three acts—they want to drink and smoke and walk about, and rub against the per- | fumes, lace and ribbands of the promenoir. A walk along the Paris streets, in study- |ing their pictorial affiches of amusement halls, will show all this; for enterprise and capital are more quickly sensitive to chang- es than the theorizing minds of critics. The Olympia Music Hall, the Nouveau Cirque, the Scala Cafe-Concert, the Folies- | Bergere, where Loie Fuller has begun to “dance” again, the Summer Circus, the Cafes des Ambassadeurs, the Concert of the Eiffel Tower and the stage and dance floor of the Jardin de Paris—these are the | places, whose proprietors pay out their thousands of francs for a single new afliche. A Little Venice. The Nouveau Cirque has a ring whose floor is made to sink and let in tons of water. Then all the artistes have to swim out, and ducks and drakes, swans and geese perform to military music. Kam- Hill sings pretentiously his jingling ditties “up to date” in black satin knickerbockers and a scarlet dress coat, riding gloriously around the ring astride a stallion. Some girl does Loie Fuller's “serpentine” upon a holder was so situated that he could imagine when "twas passed beyond her listenin’, it | went that delightful, thumpety-thump, wid the tune flyin’ up over it. The military authorities at Fortbrack were not {gnorant of this popular sentiment, and had considered it in the order of that day. For experience had shown that a progress of troops through the surrounding country districts generally conduced to the appear- ance before the recruiting officer of sundry long-limbed, loose-jointed Pats, Micks and Joes; and a recent scarcity of this raw ma- terial made it seem expedient ‘to bring such an influence to bear upon the new ground of remote Kiimacrone. Certain brigades and squadrons were accordingly directed to move thitherward, under the general idea that an invading force from the southeast had occupied Ballybeg Allan, while in pur- suance of another general idea, really more to the purpose, though not officially an- nounced, the accompanying band received instructions to be liberai and lively in its performances by the way. All along their route through the wide brown land the soldiers might be sure of drawing as much sympathetic attention as that lonesome west country could concen- trate on any given line. Probably there would be no one disposed like Mick Doherty to get out of the way, unless some *ery small child roared and ran, if of a size to have acquired the latter accomplishment, at the sound of the booming drums. To the great majority of these onlookers the spec- tacle would be a rare and gorgeous pageant, a memory resplendent across twilight-hued time tracts as a vision of scarlet and golden gleams, and proudly pacing horses, and music that made you feel you had never known how much life there was in you all the while. Some toll, it is true, had to be paid for this enjoyment. When it had pass- ed by things suddenly grew very flat and colorless, and there was a tendency to feel more or less vaguely aggrieved because you could not go a-soldiering yourself. In cases, however, where circumstances rendered that obviously impossible, as when people were too old or infirm, or were women or girls, this thrill of discontent, seldom very acute, soon subsided, by virtue of the self-preserv- ing instinct which forbids us to persist in knocking our heads hard against our stone walls. But it was different where the be- himself riding or striding after the raptur- ous mareh music to fields of peril and valor and glory, without diminishing the vivid- ness of the picture by simultaneously sup- posing himself some quite other person. The gleam in young Felix McGuinness’ | stump.” eyes, as he watched the red files dwindle and twinkle out of sight, was to the bright- ening up beneath his grandfather's shaggy brows as the forked flash is to the shimmer- ing sheet lightnings, that are but a harmless reflection from far-off storms. And there indeed pleasure paid a ruinous duty. If those who were liable to it did not imitate Mick Doherty’s prudence and hold aloof, the reason may have been that they had not fortitude enough to turn away from excite- ment offered on any terms, or that their position was less desperately tantalizing than his; and the latter explanation is the more probable one, since few lads in and about Kilmacrone can have had their mar- t | ters is a fine art, ahd well-known artists do bare-back steed, which yallops round and round. And Mademoiselle Bob-Walter is under training to do the same dance in a den of four Algerian lions. ‘These are the people who are seen in the expensive affiches, and not Coquelin or Sarah Bern- hardt. When Brunin, whose chief recom- mendation is that he can twine his boa- constrictor-like arms around his cadaverous body and so scratch himself, re-enters the Ambassadeurs, a new afficne comes out. It is the same when the *olies-Bergere h: When ihe Nouveau Theater—a theater of end-of-the-century pantomime run in connection with a dance hall devoted to high kicking—brought out “The Rope Dancer,” all Paris was spattered over with a girl in golden hair and crimson tights. The Influence of One Man. The predominance of Cheret in all this lithographic art has so far been overpow- ering. He appears to have but one type— that of the tantalizing lady with the slant- ing, squinting or wide-popping eyes and bursting smile or kissing mouth. He Is all extravagance and all “go.” A newer set of types is slowly coming in. Six months ago the new tendency might easily have been declared to be the Japanese-like remi- niscences of such men as Ibels and Lau- trec. The latter did the celebrated poster of the Moulin Rouge, which is now already rare and much sought after by collectors. Ibels’ affiche for Mevisto, a popular song- singer, is a complete example of this ten- dency. But the furore for that change in ladies’ dress, which came up so suddenly, veered and has not yet settled down, brought out another mode. The mingled simplicity and extravagance, dating back, say, to the year 1830, have worked changes in the dressing of the hair and shoulders and skirts and, I would almost say, in the ideal of female beauty. The artist Forain, who has recently made a tour of the United States under the directing patronage of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, made an affiche full a year and a half ago which foreshad- owed this change. 1t was for that exposi- tion of women’s arts which went almost en bloc to the Chicago fair. A lady is seen drawing a portiere aside, to disclose the words of the advertisement. In expression, pose and dress, especially in the smooth, piain dressing of the hair, curving from forehead down to ear front’after the fash- ion of our grandmothers, this new ailiche contrasted strongly with the scatter-brained cocottes of Cheret and his followers. These always seemed half tipsy with champagne. Two things are certain. First, in Paris the designing of pictorial advertising Ppos- not hesitate to sign their names to designs for which they get so high a price. Such advertising is on the increase in lavishness and merit. In the second place, this art has its schools and movements intimately con- nected with the current taste in literature, art, decoratipn and fashion. If that be true, which a friend of mine has theorized about—a scientific man who has written it all out—that the mere per- sistence of a widely-spread advertisement will actually hypnotize the public mind, then how lucky the Parisians must b Hourly they are hypnotized into good tast STERLING HEILIG. —————+o-+—___ Not Necessary. From Truth. | Eleanor—“Did Mrs. Badchild tell you she | had never touched her boy with a switch in her life, Gladys?” | Gladys—“No, dear; she didn’t need to.” a} lad’s daily labor sometimes seemed mainly on the day before, scattered like poppy beds of his own banned wish. opening given to him. tial aspirations balked by an impediment so flimsy and yet so effectual. ‘There was nothing in the world to hinder Mick from enlisting except just the unrea- sonableness of his mother, and that was an unreasonableness so unreasonable as to verge upon what her neighbors would have éalled “‘quare ould conthrariness.” For though a widow woman, and therefore en- titled to occupy a pathetic position, its priv- ileges were defined by the opinion that “she was not so badly off intirely as she might ha’ been.” Mick’s departure need not have left her desolate, since she had another son and daughter at home, besides Essie mas- ried in the village, and Brian settled down at Murghadeen, where he was doing well, and times and again asking her to come and live with him. Then Mick would have been able to help her out of his pay much more efficaciously than he could do by his earn- ings at Kilmacrone, where work was slack and its wage low, so that the result of a the putting of a fine edge on a superfluous appetite. All these points were most clearly seen by Mick in the light of a fiercely burn- ing desire; but that availed him nothing un- less he could set them as plainly before some one else who was not thus illuminated, And not far from two years back he had resolved that he would attempt to do so no more. The soldiers had been about in the district over the bog, and signaling and firing till the misty October air tingled with excite- ment. When you have lived your life among wide-bounded solitudes, where the silence is oftenest broken by the plover's pipe, or the croak of some heavily flapping bird, you will know the meaning of a bugle call. Mick and his conter8poraries had acted as camp followers from early till late with ever-intensifying ardor; one outcome whereof was that he heard his especial crony, Paddy Joyce, definitely decide to go and enlist at Fortbrack next Monday,which gave a turn or more to the pinching screw It was with a con- certed scheme for ascertaining whether there were any chance of bringing his mother round to a rational view of the matter that he and his friend dropped into her cabin next morning, on the way to carry up a load of turf. Mrs. Doherty was washing her couple of blue-checked aprons in an old brown butter crock, and Mick thought he had introduced the subject rather happily when he told her “she had a right to be takin’ her hands out of the suds, and dippin’ the finest curtsey she could con- thrive, and she wid the commander in gin- eral of the army forces steppin’ in to pay her a visit.” Of course this statement re- quired, as it was intended to require, eluci- dation, so Mick proceeded to announce: “It's himself's off to Fortbrack a Monday, ‘listin’ he'll be in the Edenderry Light In- fantry; so the next time we set eyes on him it's blazin’ along the street we'll see him, like the boys we had here yisterday. “Ah! sure now, thatll be grand Mrs. Doherty, unwarily complaisant; “ all be proud to behold him that way. a fine thing for any young man who's got a fancy to take up wid it.” “Och, then, bedad it is so!” said Mick with emphasis, promptly making for the “Bedad it is,” said Paddy. “There's nothin’ like it," said Mick. “Ah, nothin’ at all," said Paddy. Mrs. Doherty made no remark as she twisted a dripping apron into a sausage- shaped roll to wring the water out. “How much was it you were sayin’ you'd have in the week, Paddy, just to put in your pocket for your divarsion like?” in- quired Mick, with a convenient lapse of memory. “Och, seven or eight shillin’s anyway,” said Paddy, in the tone of one to whom shillings had already become trivial coins, “and that, mind you, after you’ve ped for the best of aitin’ and dhzinkin’, and your kit free, and no call to be spendin’ another penny unless you plase. Sure, Long Mur- phy was tellin’ me he was up in the town a while ago, on a day when they were just after gettin’ their pay, and he said the post office was that thick wid the soldier lads sendin’ home the money to their friends he couldn't get speech of a clerk to buy his stamp be no manner of manes, not if he'd wrecked the place. ‘Twas the Sidmouth Fusiliers was in it that time; they're off to Limerick now. “But that’s a grand regulation they have,” said Mick, “wid the short service nowadays. Where's the hardship in it when @ man can quit at the ind of three year, if he's so plased? Three year’s no time to speak of.” “Sure, not at all; you'd scarce notice it passin’ by. Like Barney Bralligan’s song that finished before it begun—isn’t that the way of it, ma’am?” “It’s a goodish len’th of a while,” said Mrs. Doherty. “But thin there’s the lave: don’t be for- gettin’ the lave, Paddy man. Supposin’ <a “Tub be sure, there’s the lave. Why, it’s skytin’ home on lave they do be most con- tinlal. And the Edenderry is movin’ no fur- ther than just to Athlone; that’s as handy a place as you could get.” “You'd not thravel from this to Athlone in the inside of a week, if it was iver so handy,” said Mrs. Doherty. “Is it a week? Och! blathershins, Mrs. Doherty, ma'am, you're mistook intirely. Sure, onst you've stepped into the town yonder, the train’ll take you there in a flash. And the trains do be uncommon con- venient.” “Free passes!” prompted Mick. “Ah, bedad, and free passes they'll give to any souldier takin’ his furlough; so sorra the expense "twould be supposin’ Mick here had a notion to slip home of an odd day and see you.” “Mick!” said Mrs. Doherty. “Och, well, I was just supposin’. But I’m tould”—the many remarkable facts which Paddy had been tould lost nothing in repe- tition—“that they'll sometimes have out a special train for a man in the army, if he wants to go anywhere partic’lar in a hur- ry—there's iligance for you. And as for pro- motion, it’s that plinty you'll scarce git time to remimber your rank from one day to the next, whether it’s a full private you are, or a lance corporal, or maybe somethin’ greater. Troth, there’s nothin’ a man mayh’t rise to. And then, Mrs. Doherty, it’s the proud woman you'd be—anybody’d be—that they hadn't stood in the way of it. And pensions—he might be pensioned off wid as much as a couple of shillin’s a day.” “Not this long while yet, plase the pigs,” broke out Mick, squaring his shoulders, as if time were a visible antagonist, and mo- mentarily forgetting the matter immediate- ly in hand. “But there’s chances in it— splendid—och, it’s somethin’ you may call livin’.”" “And,” said his friend, “the rations I'm tould is surprisin’ these times. The top of everythin’ that’s to be got, uncooked, wid- out bone.” Paddy and Mick discoursed for a good while in this strain about the dignities and | amenities of a military life, and Mrs. Do- herty had not much to say on the subject. During the conversation, however, she con- tinued to rinse one of her aprons, and | wring it dry very carefully, and drop it | back into the water, like a machine slightly out of gear, which goes on repeating some process ineffectually, The two friends read in her silence an omen of acquiescent con- viction, and congratulated one another upon it with furtive nods and winks. Mick went off to the bog in high feather, believing that the interview had been a great suc- cess, and that his mother was, as Paddy put It, “comin’ round to the notion gradual, like an ould goat grazin’ round its tetherin’ His hopes, indeed, were so com- pletely in the ascendant that he summed up his most serious uneasiness when he said to himself: “She'll do right enough, no fear, or I'd niver think of it, if Thady was just somethin’ steadier. But sure he might happen to git a thrifle more wit yet; he’s no great age to spake of.” But when he came home about sunsetting, his mother was feeding her few hens ou side their cabin, the end one of a mossy- roofed row, with its door turned at right angles to the others. looking out across the purple-brown of the bogland to the far-off hills, faint, like a blue mist with a waved pattern in it, against the horizon. Mick, brought up short by the group, woke out of kis walking dream, in which he had been perfoming acts of valor to the tune of the “Soldier's Chorus’’ in Gounod’s Faust, the last thing the band had played yes- terday; and he noticed a diminution in the select circle of fowls, who crooned and crawked and pecked round the broken dish of scraps. “I see the specklety pullet’s after strayin’ on vou agin,” he said, “herself’s the con- thrary little bein’; I must take a look about for her prisintly.” “Ah, sure she’s sold,” said his mother, “i's too many I had altogether. I was tor- minted thryin’ to git feedin’ for them. So I sold her this mornin’ to Mrs. Dunne at Loughmore, that gave me a fine price for her. "Deed she'd have took her off of me this while back, on’y I'd just a sort of no- tion agin partin’ from the crathur. But be comin’ in to your supper, child alive; it's ready waitin’ this good while. Molly's by low at her sister's, and I dunn wh Thady’s off to, so there's on'y you and me in it tonight.” In the room the more familiar odor of turf smoke was overborne by a crisp smell of baking, and Mrs. Doherty picked up a steaming plate which had been keeping warm on the hearth. “Isn't that some- thin’ Ike now?" she said, setting it on the table triumphantly. “Rale grand they turn- ed out this time,niver a scorch on the whole of them. I was afeard me hand might may- be ha’ got out o’ mixin’ them, ’tis so long since I had e’er a one for you, but sure I bought a half stone of seconds wid the price of the little hin, and that'll make a good few, so it will, jewel “avic, and then we must see after some more. Take one of the thick bits, honey.” Probably most of us have had experience of the unceremonious methods which fate often chooses when communicating to us important arrangements. We have seen by what a little-seeming triviality of an incident she may intimate that our cher- ished hope has been struck dead, or that the execution of some other decree has turned the current of our life away. It is sometimes as if she contemptuously sent us a grotesque and dwarfish messenger, who makes grimaces at us while telling us the bad news, which is ungenerous and scarcely dignified. So we need not won- der if Mick Doherty had to read the death- warrant of his darling ambition in a pile of three-cornered griddle cakes. At any rate, he did read it there swiftly as clearly. Most likely he knew it all before the plate was set on the table, and his heart had already gone down with a run when he re- plied to his mother’s commendations that they Icoked first-rate. As he indorsed this praise with what appetite he could, being, indeed, mechanically hungry, the’ upper- most thought in his mind was how he should at once let his mother understand that she had got the price she noped for her pet hen; and after considering for a while, he said: “Did you ever notice the quare sort of lane over the turf stack out there’s takin’ on it? I question hadn't we done righter to have took a leveler bit of ground for under it. But I was thinkin’ this mornin’ "—of what a different subject he had been thinking—“that next year I'd thry buildin’ it agin the back o’ th’ ould shed, where there does be ne'er a slant at all.’ “Ay, sure that ‘ud be grand,” said Mrs. Doherty, much more elated than if she had heard of a large fortune; “you couldn't find an iliganter place for it in the width of this world. She felt quite satisfied that her craftily-timed treat had dispelled the dread- ed danger, which actually was the case in a way. But if Mick would stay at home with her, she was perfectly content to sup- pose that she came after a griddlecake in his estimation. Her relief made her unu- sually talkative, but Mick was reflecting between his answers how he must now tell Paddy Joyce that they were never to be comrades after all. He went out on this mission immediately after supper. The sun had gone down and the cold clearness left showed things plain- ly, yet was not light. In front of the cabin rows the small children of the place were screeching over their final romp and quar- rel, as they did every evening; fowls and goats and pigs were settling down for the night with the squawks and bleats and squeals which also took place every even- ing; on the brown hollowed grass bank be- tween Colgan’s and O'Reilly’s old Morissy, the blind fiddler, was feebly scraping and twangling, according to his custom every evening, and, for that matter, all day long. Even the wisps of straw and scraps of pa- per blowing down the middle of the wige roadway seemed to have whirled over and over and caught in the rough patches of stone, just so, as often as the sun had set. Close to the Joyces Mick met Peter Maclean driving home a brood of ducklings. A broad and burly man, who says “‘shoo-shoo” to a high-piping cluster of tiny yellow ducks, and flourishes a long willow wand to keep them from straggling out of their compact- ed trot, does undoubtedly present rather an absurd appearance; yet I cannot explain why the sight should have seemed to prick like a sting through the wide weary disgust which Mick experienced as he stood in the twilit_boreen waiting for Paddy to come out. He had scarcely a grunt to exchange for Peter's cheerful ‘Fine evenin’.”. What does it signify in a universal desert whether evenings be fine or foul? Altogether, it was a bad time; and Mick acted wisely in taking precautions against its recurrence, especial- ly as the obstacles which had confronted him nearly two years back were now more hope baffling than ever. For the interven- ing months had not brought the desirable “tarie more wit’ to his unsteady brotner ‘naay, wno, on the contrary,.was deveiop- ing into one of those peopie whose gooa- Tor-nothingness is taken a8 a matter of course, even by themselves; and a bolt was thus, so to speak, drawn across Mick’s locked door. He set oif betimes on his long ramble, It was a cloudless July morning—the noon of summer by air and light, as well as by the calendar, Even the barest tracts of the bogland, which vary their aspect a litue as may be from shifting season to season,were flecked with golden furze blossom, and whitened with streaming tufts of fairy cot- ton, and sun-warmed herbs were fragrant under foot. Mick rather hurried over this Stage of his “‘stravade,” partiy because he foresaw a blazing hot day, and he wished to be among more broken ground, where there are sheltered hollows scooped in the *“‘knockawns,” and cool patches under their bushes and boulders. He entered the region of these things before his shadow had shrunk to its briefest; for not so very far beyond Kilmacrone the smooth floor of the big bog crumples itself into crusts and ridges, as if it had caught the trick from its bounding ocean; and the nearer it comes to the shore the higher it heayes itself, until at last it is cut short by a sheer cliff wall, with storm-stunted brambles and furzes cowering along the edge, fathoms above a base line of exuberant weed and foam. The long sea frontage of this rock rampart is fissured by only a few narrow clefts. On the left hand, facing oceanward, the coast is a labyrinth of mountain fiords, straits and bays, where you may see great craggy shoulders and domed summits waver in their crystal calm at the flick of a gull’s dipping wing, or add to the terror of th tempest as they siart out black and un. moved behind rifts of swirling mists. On the right there is the same fretwork of land and water, but wrought in less high relief. A tract of lonely strands, where shells and daisies whiten ‘the grass, and pink-belled creepers trail entangled with tawny-podded wrack across the shingle. You are apt thereabouts to happen on clattering pebble banks and curling foam, when you are ap- parenuy deep among meadows and corn jand, or to come on sturdy green potato drills round some corner where you had contidently supposed the unstable furrows of the sea. And the intricate ground plan of the district must be long studied bezore you can always teei sure whether the low- shelving swarded edges by which you are walking frame salt or fresh water. Mick was bound eventually for one of those ravines which cleave the cliffs’ pre- clpitous wall and give access to the shore, senerally by a deep-sunken sandy boreen. +tere, under a tall bank, there are a couple of cabins, besides another, which, having lost its roof, may be reckoned as a half; so that Tullykillagin is not a large place, even as places go in its neighborhood. He knew, however, that he could count upon getting something to eat at either of the two cab- ins first mentioned, and, indeed, at the bare-raftered one also if, as often chanced, it was occupied by Tim Fottrel, the gath- eremup; and this prospect served for an in- centive, feeble enough, though it strength- ened a little as the hours wore on. So lan- guid, in fact, was his resolution that at one moment he thought he would just sthreel home again without going any further; if he went aisy everybody would have cleared out of Kilmacrone before he got back. But at this time he was sitting among some broom bushes, under which last year's with- ered b&ck pods were strewn, and he deter- mined that if there were an odd number of seeds in the first one he opened he would go on to Tullykillagin. There were nine in it, and he logically continued to loiter sea- ward, He dawdled so much that when he came to the cliff the sun already hung low over the water, and as he walked along the edge his shadow stretched away far inland acros the dappled pale and dark green of the furze-fretted ward. The sea unrolled a ceaseless scroll of faint wild-hyacinth color, on which invisible breeze wafts in- scribed and erased mysterious curves and strokes like hieroglyphics. Here and there it showed deep purple stains, for a flight of little snowflake clouds were fluttering in from the --..antic, followed at leisure by deep-folded, glistering drifts, now massed on the horizon rim to muffle the descending sun. Yet that tide, with all its smoothness, showed a broad band of foam wherever it touched the pebbles, which lay dry before its sliding—for it was on its way in. It had nearly reached the cliffs foot in most places, but Mick presently came to a point where he looked down on a small field of very green grass, set as an oasis between the waves and the walling rock, with a miniature chaos of heaped-up boulders to left and right. A few of them were scat- tered over it, and even the highest of these wore a scarf of leathery flat sea ribbon, in token of occasional submergence, but among them grew hawthorn and sloe bush- es and a clump of scarlet-tasseled fuchsia. To heighten the incongruity of its aspect, this pasture was inhabited py a large strawberry cow, who seemed to be enjoying the alternate mouthfuls of seaweed and Woodbine, which she munched off a thickly wreathed boulder, untroubled by the fact that the meal bade fair to be her last, since the rising spring tide had already all but cut off access on either hand and would still flow for some hours. “Musha, now I'll be skivered,” said Mick standing still, “if that’s not Joe McEvoy's ould cow. You'll be apt to experience a dampin’, ould woman, if you don’t quit out of there. Whethen, it's a quare man he is to lave the baste sthrayin’ about permis- cuous in the welther of the tide.” He peered over the edge of the cliff, evi- dently mistrusting its smooth face, and then he threw several stones and clods at the cow, with shouts of “Hi! out of that, and “Shoo along!” but his missles fell short of their mark, and if his voice reach- ed her she treated it with the placid disre- gard of which her kind are mistress on such occasions, and never raised her crum- ple-horned head. “Have it your own way, then,” said Mick cynicall; It's nothin’ to me if you've a mind to thry a taste of swimmin’ under wather.”” He had not, however, strolled much farther, when he met with somebody who was vastly more concerned about the ani- mal's impending fate. This was old Joe McEvoy himself, who, out of the mouth of a steep sandy boreen, sprang up sudden- ly, like a Jack-in-the-box—one of the shock- wigged, saturine-complexioned pattern. But no Jack-in-the-box could have looked so flurriedly distracted or have muttered to itself such queer execrations as he did, hob- bling along. “A year’s loadin’ of bad luck to the whoule of thim!” he was saying with gasps when Mick approached; “‘there’s not one of thim but ‘ud do desthruction on herself sooner than lose a chanst to be annoyin’ anybody if she could conthrive it no other way.” “If its th’ ould cow you're cursin’,” said Mick, “she’s down below yonde “Och, tell me somethin’ I dunno, you gom- eral, not but what I’m nigh as big a one meself as can be to go thrust her wid that little imp of mischief. Bad scran to it; I must give me stiff leg a rest, and she'll be up here blatherin’ after me before you can look round, you may bet your brogues she will.” ‘Gomeral yourself and save your penny,” said Mick, whose temper was not at its best after his long day of hungry discon- tent. “And the divil a call you have to be onaisy about the crather follyin’ you any- wheres. Stayin’ where she is she’s apt to be until she gets the chanst of goin’ out to say wid the turn of the tide, and that’s like enough to happen her.” “And who at all was talkin’ of the cow follyin'? It’s ould Biddy Dugfan down be- low that niver has her tongue off of me, nageglin’ at me for lettin’ the poor crathur pick her bit along the beach, and it’s a strip of the finest grass in the townland when it's above wather, just goin’ to loss. A cou- ple of pints differ extry it does be makin’ in the milkin’ of a day she’s grazed there. But it’s threatenin’ dhrownin’ and dis- thruction over it th’ ould banshee is this great while, and plased she'll be, rael plas- ed and sot up. Sure that’s what goes agin me, to be so far gratifyin’ her, and her- self as mischievious, harm-hopin’ an ould toad as iver I hated the sight of—Och be- jabers, didn’t I tell you so? It's herself comin’ gabble-gobblin’” u As he spoke a very small, meager, ragged old woman emerged swiftly from the lane, accompanied by one younger and stouter and less nimble of foot, her temporary neighbor, Mrs. Gatheremup. Mrs, Duggan seemed to bear out Joe's character of her, for now, like Spencer's hag, “ever as she went her tongue did walk, and the path she took was not one of peace. Maybe, after this happenin’, some she could name might have the wit to believe what other people tould them, who knew bitter than to be thinkin’ to feed a misfort- nit crathur of an ould cow on sand and say- weed as if she was a sayl or a saygull, and it a scandal to the place to behould her foostherin’ along down there wid the waves’ edges slitherin’ up to her nose, and she sthrivin’ to graze, and the slippery stones fit to break her neck. Such was the purport of Mrs. Duggan’s remarks, which were punctuated by Joe McEvoy's peremp- tory requests that she would lave gabbin’ and givin’ impidence, and his appeals to the others to inform him whether they weren't all to be pitied for havin’ to put up wid the ould screech owl's foolish talk. “Sure, that’s the way they do be keepin’ it up continial, Micky lad,” Mrs. Fottrel called to him, shrilly, as if athwart gusts of high wind. “I'll pass you me word the two of them ‘ill stand at their doors of an evenin’ and give bad langwidge to aich other across the breadth of the road till they have us all fairly moidhered wid the bawls of them, and I on’y wonder the thatch doesn’t take and ould heads. “Belike lave of the likes of you I ought to be axin’ where I'm to git grazin’ for me own cattle?” a growl of sarcastic thunder was just then observing, to which flashed a scathing response: “And bedad, then, it’s lave you had a right to be axin’ afore you sent off me poor son Hughey’s bit of a Pat, to be wastin’ his time mind- in’ your ould scarecrow and gettin’ him- self dhrownded in the tide. It’s no thanks to you if the innicent child isn’t as like as not loyin’ this minute under six fut of could wather instead of fetchin’ me in the full of me kettle that I'm roarin’ to him for this half hour, and ne'er a livin’ sin- ner widin sight or—” ip down on their “Saints above! Is little Pat strayin’ alo! wid the cow?” said Mrs. Fottrel, much aghast. “I was Roticin’ I didn’t see him anywheres this evenin’. What's to become of him down there, and it risin’ beyond the heighth of iverythin’ as fast as it an flow? satya pe agin the wi back of our place, - ly. het it.” s seh “Why didn’t you tell me the chil below?” said Mick. “ra lep mang sr and fetch him up aisy enough: on'y there Was no mortial use goin’ after the cow, for ne'er a crathur that took its stand on four hoofs ‘ud git its own len’th up the cliff, unless it might be some little divil of @ goat. And the wather’ dhrowndin’-deep along- ane eae now.” “Musha, good gracious, sure all I done was to bid the spalpeen be keepin’ an eye on her now and agin while he would be playin’ about there,” said Joe: twinty chances if iver he did at Trapesed off wid himself somewheres; be right enough be this time. ‘Tisn’t the likes of him to go to loss, it’s the quare five-poun’ note he'd fetch at Athenry fair. “He might ha’ broke his legs climbin’ disp'rit on the rocks,” said Mrs. Fottrel, unconvinced by the arguments from un- salability, “and be lyin’ there now wait- in’ for the say-waves to wash the Ife out of him. Heaven pity the crathur!” “Sure, I'll step down and see what's gone wid him,” said Mick, The descent of the cliff, though not risk- less, was no great feat for an active youth, and Mick accomplished it safely, but to little purpose, he thought at first, since the irreclaimable cow appeared to be the sole denizen of the shrinking beach. However, when he had shouted and scram- bled for some time without result, he came abruptly upon a nook among the piled-up rocks, where a very small black-headed boy in tattered petticoats was digging the san- dy floor with a razor-shell. “Och, it’s there you are,” said Mick, stepping down from a weedy ledge; “and what have you in it at all that you didn’t hear me bawlin’ to you?” “Throops,” said Pat, gloatingly, almost too absorbed to glance off his work; “it’s Ballyclavvy, the way it did be in the school readin’-book at Duffclane. There's the Roossian guns,”—he pointed to a row of black-mouthed mussel-shells, mounted on periwinkle carriages—“and here's the sides of the valley I’m makin’: long and narrer it was. Just step round and look at it from where I am, Micky, but don’t thera geal your fut on the French cav- alry. “The divil’s in it all,” said Mick, with a sudden bitter vehemence, which he ac- counted for to himself by adding, as he pointed towards the seething white line: ;‘D'you see where that’s come to, you little bosthoon? And you sittin’ grubbin’ away here as if you were pitaty-diggin’ a dozen mile inland.” Pat looked in the desired direction, but misapprehended the object to be the wes. tern sky, where an overblown fiery rose seemed to have scattered all its petals broadcast. “Sure, that’s on’y the sun set- explained indifferently, tin’ red like,” he and would have resumed his excavations if he had not been seized and hustled half Way up the cliff before he could disengage his mind from his les and batteries. Both heads soon bobbed up over the edge without accident; for Pat climbed like a monkey when once he grasped the situa- tion. His grandmother's attitude towards Joe McEvoy constrained her to receive him effusively a: prey snatched from the foaming jaws of death: but it was out of Mrs. Fottrel’s pocket that a peppermint =p came to sweetly seal his new lease of life. “And what are you after now, Mick?" she said, observing that, instead of drawing himself up bd level ground, he stood poised on an uncomfortable perch, and lgoked back os mg bid he had come. ... Tm thinkin’ to slip down agin,” he said, “and see if be any manner of manes I could huroosha th’ ould baste round the rocks yonder. The wather mightn’t be altogether ed aed ane a = all evints she’s be- wee! e divil an e di where is te it’s just a chanst" aad ss “Sorra a much,” said Joe disconsolatel: q “scarce worth breakin’ your bones after, anyway.” Sure, there's no in the matter,” true enough, if he had minded what he w. about; but then he did not. So far from it he was saying to himself: “One ‘ud ha’ thought now she might ha’ took a sort of pride in it,” when the bottom of the world Seemed to drop away from under his feet, and his irrelevant meditations ended in a shattering thud down on the rocky pave- ment a long way below. He never heard the shouts and shrieks which the incident oc- ) casioned above his head. Once only he be- came dimly conscious of a quivering net- work of prismatic flashes, which he could not see through, and a boomin, throb it which made = otmad him murmur dazedly: "d got beyond the hearin’ ~ = moment: e said, with a_start. But the depths he sank among remain al. ways dark and silent. Next day messengers told Mrs. Doherty that the Lord had took her son Mick, and that “he had one cut to say wid the tide, before they could get anybody to him, and there was no tellin’ where he might be swep’ up, if over he came to shore at al “And the quarest from Tullykillagin Part of it was that Joe McEvoy’s ould cow that he went after had legged herself up somehow on the roc out of reach, and niver a harm on her wh they found her in the mornin’. But she'd been ali of a could quiver ever since, ana himself doubted if she'd rightly cit over ’ might the divil mend rer, and she after be the death of a fine young man. Sure, every sowl up at Tullykillagin was rael aLnoyed about it. Even ould Biddy Duggan, that was as cross tempered as a weasel, did ve frettin’ for the lad; and Joe McEvoy was sittin’ crooched like an ould wet hen, over his fire block out, that he na‘n’t the heart to be lightin’.”” Mrs. Doherty said she didn't know what talk they had of the Lord ani the say and the ould cow; but she'd known well enough the way it was when Mick niver come home last night. He'd just took off after the souldiers, as he'd a creat notion one ume. She was, as may have been observed, rather a dull-witted woman, and proportion- ately hard to convince against her will. “A great notion intirely,” said she; “on'y she'd scarce have thought he'd go do such @ thing on her in arnest. And I runnin’ away indoors yisterday out of the heighth of the divarsion, when the band music was @ thrate to be hearin’, just to see his bit of ipper wouldn't be fe on him. And the grand little pitaty cake I had for him; I may be throwin’ it to the hins now, unless Molly might fancy a bit; for we'll’ not be apt to set eyes on him this three year. Och wirra! and he that contint at home, and ne'er a word out of him about the souldier- in’ this long while. If it had been poor Thady itself, 'twould ha’ been diff'rint: but Mick—I'd scarce ha’ thought it of him: for he'd a dale of good nature, Mrs. Geoghegan, ma’am.” “He had so, tub-be sure, dear, said Mrs. Geoghegan, “or he might be sit- tin’ warm in here this minnit.”” “The back of me hand to thim blamed ould throopers,” said Mrs. Doherty, “that sets the lads wild wid their thrampin’ around.” “Poor Mick would be better wid them than where he is now—God have mercy on his soul,” said a neighbor solemnly. But Mick’s mother continued to bewail herself: “And I missin’ the best of all the tunes they played, so Molly was tellin’ me, for ‘fraid he'd be kep’ waitin’ for his supper. and he camin’ home to me hungry; and now—. There's a terrible len’th of time in three year. I wouldn't ha’ believed he'd ha’ done it on me.” Convenient. Mother—“Why, Ivy! What have you done with the doll's eyes?” Ivy—“Took them out, mamma; so she TRAVELING sPIDEeRs. One Species That B Make Jo From the Toronto World. There is a certain species of spider which is moved by instinct at certain seasons of the year to travel, and to travel distances that no one would suspect him desirous of covering. What, then, is their method? The spider selects the right kind of a day, one on which there is almost a calm in the air, or rather one when there is just the ld Balloons and ers. He crawls up a@ tree or a flagstaff or a bulrush or anything that will give him @ free position. He then begins to emit the free end of a web from his filament bag, and this is so light and fresh that it floats away in the air and is carried along by the light breeze. He may emit 100 or 200 yards, and every now and then he tries whether there is enough out and floating to buoy him if he lets go his grip on the tree or other eleva- tion. By a nice system of calculation he @scertains just what will buoy him, and then, letting go his hold, the filament is borne off by the wind, and he himself at the end of it, and in this way he can travel miles and miles, It he finds himself coming near the water he pays out more of his cable, and in that way he obtains more floating filament to bear him up. If, on the contrary. he finds Rimself going too high he draws in his jescends of floating tilament. OT sates you anchor a pole in a body of water, leaving the pole above the surface. and put f,cpider upon it, he will exhibit marvelous intelligence by his plans to escap?. At first he will spin a web several inches k attempts, points of the compass have been tried. e But neither the resources not Power of the spider have been ined. He Climbs to the top of the pole and energeti- cally goes to work to construct a silken bal- — As ed oe air with which to in- ate ut he the pow Buoyant Power of making it hen he gets his balloon finished does not go off on the mere supposition that it will carry him as men often do, but he fastens it to a guy rope, the other end of Which he attaches to the island pole upon which he is a prisoner. He then gets into his aerial vehicle while it is made fast and tests it to see whether its dimensions are capable of bearing him away. He often finds that he has made it too small, in which case he hauls down, takes it all apart and constructs it on a larger and better plan. A spider has been seen to make three different balloons before he — ror with the experiment. en he will snap guy rope and, suspend- ed from a filament, will sail away to land as gracefully and as supremely independent of his surroundings as could be imagined. — AN OPEN POLAR SEA. That steamers can pass through the Are- tic ocean in certain years is the opinion of Capt. A. H. McGregor, based upon his ex- perience in the polar region. Capt. Me Gregor has seen twenty-three years’ serv- ice !n the Arctic, and coramands the steam- er Orca,owned by the Pacific Whaling Com- pany of San Francisco. He was at the Ho- tel Perkins a few days last week and talked of his experience. “Last year,” hé said, “nine of the Pacifie Whaling Company's steamers and ships reached Cape Bathhurst, the furthest point north and east ever reached by a vessél of any kind. We had been whaling in Bering sea, and, having finished what is termed the outside catch in July, we started for the Arctic to finish the season. We passed along the east shore, rounded Point Barrow and then made the journey to the cape, which is near the Mackenzie river. We cast ancher and whaled there the rest of the sason. The natives were somewhat surprised 2t our appearance, but as they had seen white men before they soon over- came whatever fear they might have felt and became very friendly. They did not differ in the least from other Esquimaux. We sounded the ocean near the Mackenzie and found that a boat drawing more than four feet of water could not approach with- in thirty miles of the river. The land on both sides was mountainous and covered with snow. The oldest native told us that it was many winters since white men came by boat, which led me to believe that no boat had reached the cape since Capt. Col- linson was there in 1555. Capt. Collinson and his party visited the place in small boats when they were making a survey of the British possessions, but they were compelled to remain there three years be- fore they could return. Sir John Franklin Passed the cape in small boats on his fa- mous expedition, and came as far west as Franklin, or Return Reef. There he evi- dently became discouraged and disheart- ened, and started on his return trip. Had he known that he had a clear sea before him he doubtless would have continued on his way and lived to tell future generations of the hardships connected with Arctic ex- plorations. He could have made what is called the northeast passage and come out on the Pacific ocean and forever settled the question whether a vessel could reach Alas- ka from Greenland through the Arctic. But he saw nothing but a monotonous stretch of land and what appeared to be a closed sea ahead of him. He had kept in sight of shore during his entire expedition, and see- ing nothing ahead but bly thought it was endless. When Return Reef was reached he turned back, and that is the last known of him. “We could have made the trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic last year if we had so desired, but our business was whall not exploring. Natives at the cape whom questioned told me that the ocean was fair ly open three years out of four, and that there was a ‘great big sea’ am inclined to the belief that both Frank- lin and Collinson entered the ocean when it was ‘open.’”” —+o-_____ Honor to a Noble From the Courier-Journal. If the words of the scoffer who said “The first citizen of Kentucky is a horse” were wholly true, the flags on our public build- ings would be at half-mast today. For Longfellow is dead. The news will set many men to dreaming. They will recall the days of more than twenty years ago, when uncouth John Har- per’s big brown colt was the pride of the west. They will remember how the rising fame of a younger rival caused Longfel- low’s owner to break his resolve that the victor over the greatest racers of the east should run no more, and will see with mem- ory’s eye the car traveling from Kentucky to the seaboard bearing the legend, “Long- fellow goes to meet his friend Harry Bas- sett.” The famous race mre ngin' defeat to Longfellow, but with it such glory as no other horse ever gained from victory. The superb courage he showed when, crippled past all remedy, he raced to the end and almost won, may explain the love for the thoroughbred that lies deep in the heart of every true Kentuckian. That love beyond a doubt exists. It may not be moved by the pigmy struggles of today. But let giants like Longfellow meet in battle, and once more nerves will tingle, and across the blue grass will ring out cheers that come from the very soul. The days of Longfellow were the brightest of American racing. The turf and trickery were not then correlative terms. Honor as well as money was the aim. Longfellow, in all his races, won less than undeveloped colts now receive for a few seconds’ scam- per, but he gained what none of these can do—fame that will not die as long as horses and men exist. To his descendants he has imparted his own great qualities, and there was not much exaggeration in the para- phrase praising him es “first as a race horse, first as a sire and first in the hearts of his countrymen Let no one ridicule Kentuckians for hon- oring a horse. Remember that he once stood for Kentucky against all comers. Nor will he be forgotten now that the third side of olf John Harper's monument will be filled, and under the Mue crass three will Ne torether—Harper, Ten Groeck and Longfellow. 0+ The only objection to the » is that fn so iy cases he has failed te % dark | put himself together so as to work noise couldn’t see that she had to sleep in a i ea room.”