distributed from a central point, so that each household has at command, at all times of the day and night, such heat as it requires for comfort or domestic purposes, without the waste of labor and material that the individual system requires. The same system for the distribution of power will doubtless be eventually put in practice, so that the dwellers in a town shall not be subject to the annoyance inevitable from the presence of a steam machine in the immediate vicinity of a resi- | dence intended for repose and quiet. The possibilities of national association promise eventually to furnish the unlimited power nature provides for men competent to the task of making use of it. Possibly one of the first practical steps to be taken in this direction, in connection with the general welfare of citizens, would be the institution in cities of societies for the study of this subject, and the investigation of the results reached else- | where in certain departments of the necessary business of life, toward the attainment of the comfort, the cleanliness, the ease, and the security from annoyance which are so sadly wanting in city life at present. No one, for example, can walk through any street in New York without having his sense of neatness offended by the sight of the garbage barrels on the sidewalk, while he is sure at some portion of his journey to have the ashes collector, in the pursuit of his business, distribute most liberally in his eyes and nostrils a considerable share of the contents of the barrels he empties into his cart. The only ⚫ consolation to the sufferer in such a case lies in the knowledge that he has, if he is himself a resident of that city, of the utter nuisance the disposal of his own ashes and garbage is to every individual householder in the city. the quiet of thousands. The noise is most easily prevented by simply tying the ends of the rods together with a rope or a bag. Yet the writer has repeatedly been driven out of a street he was walking in, or, when that was impossible, has followed such a cart half a mile or more, suffering from the discordant pandemonium of sound it made, passing policeman after policeman, not one of whom appeared to conceive that it was a part of his duty to prevent this infraction of the good order and quiet of those he was paid to protect. If such a society as is here proposed should really enter with enthusiasm and devotion upon the work suggested, it would be astonished to find out how much has been done in isolated cases to organize a system for the prevention of the discomforts of city life. There is a little town in Holland in the streets of which no horse is ever allowed to come. Its cleanliness may be imagined, and its quiet repose. The keeping of horses in a city renders necessary the existence of stables in confined quarters, where the ventilation and the disinfection which the atmosphere and the ground offer abundantly in the country can be had only at an expense so great as to be beyond the average means of the keepers. The results upon the health of the residents can not be pecuniarily estimated. But there is no doubt that the deterioration of the clothes of the inhabitants of towns caused by the dirt resulting from the presence of horses bears no small proportion to the value of the horses. Bad as has been the economic organization of the system of elevated rapid transit, yet its introduction shows that horses are not needed in a city for purposes of transportation. Some time they will disappear, as have the pigs in the streets, by It is said that Leech, the artist, who in means of which New York disposed of its Punch has done so much to cheer, amuse, garbage only a lifetime ago. With the reinstruct, and enliven the entire English-moval of the horses, there would be ample speaking population of the world, had his life shortened by the annoyance the organ-grinders of London caused him. He fled everywhere to escape them, but they followed him with their relentless attacks upon his quiet. space in the streets for rapid transit. In its researches our society would find that the cleaning of the streets and the use of gas are in Paris a source of revenue instead of an expense. In Philadelphia the city makes its own gas. It is not an uncommon thing in New In Gothenburg, Sweden, for the last ten York for a driver with a load of iron rods or twelve years, a system has been in opto pass for miles along the cobble-paved eration by which that city assumes the streets, the ends of his load of rods clash-control of all the retail traffic in intoxicaing together, and making an outrageous-ting drinks, and by eliminating the sale ly discordant noise, to the disturbance of of liquor from the domain of private trade, has decreased drunkenness about fifty per cent. The system has been so successful that Stockholm has adopted it, and the council of Birmingham, England, has voted to introduce it, while a special committee of the British Parliament has reported in favor of it, after a careful examination of its workings. These are but examples of what our society would find to have been already done in the way of improving the general welfare of the dwellers in cities. Undoubtedly a more thorough investigation would do much to remove the opinion expressed by Professor F. W. Newman, in a recent article in the Contemporary Review, on the "Barbarisms of Civilization," to the effect that large towns are in themselves a monstrous evil-an evil continually growing through wrongful laws and customs." Possibly a discovery might be made of the laws which regulate a city's growth, if a general and intelligent interest were taken in this matter, and also of the "wrongful laws and customs" which unnaturally stimulate it, and a public opinion might be created which would abolish them or counteract their effects. Certainly there is nothing else which will do so, if to do so be desirable. In the same article Mr. Newman says: "A town of 20,000 inhabitants is large enough for every good and desirable object. Even where this number is not exceeded, careful regulation is needful to secure healthful air and water without unreasonable expense." Upon what grounds he limits the desirability of a city's increase to 20,000 does not appear. Most probably this number was selected at hap-hazard. At least, if he has any rule, or set of rules, for deciding concerning the advantage of such a limit, he does not allude to them. It is not at all utopian to believe that the application of the same interest and determined spirit of investigation which has, within about this century, given us the sciences of analytic and constructive chemistry, will, if applied by an equal variety of minds to the study of sociology, or the laws which regulate the social and other relations of men, give us an understanding of the laws underlying city life, of which we now have as little comprehension as the world had of the laws of chemistry before they had been discovered. In 1860 the Central Park was first open ed to the public, and in the twenty years that have passed, parks, which used to be considered wholly superfluous luxuries to cities, and far beyond their power to croate, are now considered a necessity, and easy of creation if only there is a resolute desire to have them. Within a very recent period the public library, the museum, the art gallery, the free reading-room, the music hall, have each been introduced, and have also become necessities. The wonderful growth of modern commerce, based upon the improved methods of transportation, has built up our cities without consideration for the comfort and the lives of the majority of their dwellers, as the bonanza farmers of the West, taking advantage of the improved machinery for agriculture, have turned farming into speculation for the benefit of the few. The process is slower in the city, and being more complex, has not been as immediately observed, but it is by no means less destructive to all the best interests of the State, because it is destructive of the virtue of the people. THE LUCKY HORSESHOE. Next spring a great drought baked the sod, And nothing of the useful kind One morn, demoralized with grief, While thus dismayed o'er matters wrong The farmer turned the horseshoe round, LOOKING BACK, SUMMER is old and sere. Upon the dusty green of village ways, The weary year, that keeps Its crown of fading roses and its smile The weary year, grown gray Mourning a glorious summer dying fast, A happy prime and promise overpast, A finished June and May. On many a russet tree And russet blade is set the autumn's sign; On plain and hill the summer seems to pine Into a memory. Ah, poor pathetic year, That has not yet begun to mimic youth With autumn's gold and hazes, but has ruth For former charms more dear! How many summers die, As passionate, as beautiful, as yours! How often fate, unkind, Casts over lives the shadow of a tomb, Ah, waning year! what art Can tell the gladness of those gladdest days That waned and passed and died from off our ways, The summers of the heart? What art can find again The smiles, the tones, the scenes, of former time, That weirdly live in retrospect and rhyme, Dim ghosts of what hath been? Can skill, or toil, or prayer, Recall the glow that over life was cast, Along the village street The children shout just as they used in spring, In tree and thicket still the late birds sing Their music wild and sweet. My heart alone complains Like the dun year. Life's freshness all is fled As from yon grasses, that will soon be dead, Sodden with autumn rains. From out the earth and sky Something is gone that made the world seem glad. Something? I count it, rather, all I hadThat with it all things die. It is no longer morn. Something more dear than life-beyond its scope Something akin to life-the gift of hopeHas perished with the dawn. IT XXX. afterward, and it served her (though nev T was almost the last outbreak of pas-er as much as she supposed) from the first. sion of her life; at least, she never in- On this occasion Doctor Sloper was rather dulged in another that the world knew talkative. He told a great many stories anything about. But this one was long about a wonderful poodle that he had seen and terrible; she flung herself on the sofa, at the house of an old lady whom he visand gave herself up to her grief. She ited professionally. Catherine not only hardly knew what had happened; ostensi- tried to appear to listen to the anecdotes bly she had only had a difference with her of the poodle, but she endeavored to interlover, as other girls had had before, and est herself in them, so as not to think of the thing was not only not a rupture, but her scene with Morris. That perhaps was she was under no obligation to regard it a hallucination; he was mistaken, she was even as a menace. Nevertheless, she felt jealous; people didn't change like that a wound, even if he had not dealt it; it from one day to another. Then she knew seemed to her that a mask had suddenly that she had had doubts before-strange fallen from his face. He had wished to suspicions, that were at once vague and get away from her; he had been angry acute-and that he had been different ever and cruel, and said strange things, with since her return from Europe: whereupon strange looks. She was smothered and she tried again to listen to her father, who stunned; she buried her head in the cush- told a story so remarkably well. Afterions, sobbing and talking to herself. But ward she went straight to her own room; at last she raised herself, with the fear that it was beyond her strength to undertake either her father or Mrs. Penniman would to spend the evening with her aunt. All come in; and then she sat there, staring the evening, alone, she questioned herself. before her, while the room grew darker. Her trouble was terrible; but was it a She said to herself that perhaps he would thing of her imagination, engendered by come back to tell her he had not meant an extravagant sensibility, or did it reprewhat he said; and she listened for his ring sent a clear-cut reality, and had the worst at the door, trying to believe that this was that was possible actually come to pass ? probable. A long time passed, but Morris Mrs. Penniman, with a degree of tact that remained absent; the shadows gathered; was as unusual as it was commendable, the evening settled down on the meagre took the line of leaving her alone. The elegance of the light, clear-colored room; truth is, that her suspicions having been the fire went out. When it had grown aroused, she indulged a desire, natural to dark, Catherine went to the window and a timid person, that the explosion should looked out; she stood there for half an be localized. So long as the air still vihour, on the mere chance that he would brated, she kept out of the way. come up the steps. At last she turned away, for she saw her father come in. He had seen her at the window looking out, and he stopped a moment at the bottom of the white steps, and gravely, with an air of exaggerated courtesy, lifted his hat to her. The gesture was so incongruous to the condition she was in, this stately trib-erine was sitting up, and had a book that ute of respect to a poor girl despised and forsaken was so out of place, that the thing gave her a kind of horror, and she hurried away to her room. It seemed to her that she had given Morris up. She had to show herself half an hour later, and she was sustained at table by the immensity of her desire that her father should not perceive that anything had happened. This was a great help to her Copyright, 1880, by HENRY JAMES, Jun. VOL LXIL-No. 367.-9 She passed and repassed Catherine's door several times in the course of the evening, as if she expected to hear a plaintive moan behind it. But the room remained perfectly still; and accordingly, the last thing before retiring to her own couch, she applied for admittance. Cath she pretended to be reading. She had no wish to go to bed, for she had no expectation of sleeping. After Mrs. Penniman had left her she sat up half the night, and she offered her visitor no inducement to remain. Her aunt came stealing in very gently, and approached her with great solemnity. "I am afraid you are in trouble, my dear. Can I do anything to help you?" "I am not in any trouble whatever, and do not need any help," said Catherine, fib bing roundly, and proving thereby that not only our faults, but our most involuntary misfortunes, tend to corrupt our morals. "Has nothing happened to you?" "And can I really do nothing for you?" "Nothing, aunt, but kindly leave me alone," said Catherine. Mrs. Penniman, though she had been afraid of too warm a welcome before, was now disappointed at so cold a one; and in relating afterward, as she did to many persons, and with considerable variations of detail, the history of the termination of her niece's engagement, she was usually careful to mention that the young lady, on a certain occasion, had "hustled" her out of the room. It was characteristic of Mrs. Penniman that she related this fact, not in the least out of malignity to Catherine, whom she very sufficiently pitied, but simply from a natural disposition to embellish any subject that she touched. Catherine, as I have said, sat up half the night, as if she still expected to hear Morris Townsend ring at the door. On the morrow this expectation was less unreasonable; but it was not gratified by the re-appearance of the young man. Neither had he written; there was not a word of explanation or re-assurance. Fortunately for Catherine she could take refuge from her excitement, which had now become intense, in her determination that her father should see nothing of it. How well she deceived her father we shall have occasion to learn; but her innocent arts were of little avail before a person of the rare perspicacity of Mrs. Penniman. This lady easily saw that she was agitated, and if there was any agitation going forward, Mrs. Penniman was not a person to forfeit her natural share in it. She returned to the charge the next evening, and requested her niece to confide in her-to unburden her heart. Perhaps she should be able to explain certain things that now seemed dark, and that she knew more about than Catherine supposed. If Catherine had been frigid the night before, today she was haughty. "You are completely mistaken, and I have not the least idea what you mean. I don't know what you are trying to fasten on me, and I have never had less need of any one's explanations in my life." In this way the girl delivered herself, and from hour to hour kept her aunt at bay. From hour to hour Mrs. Penniman's curiosity grew. She would have given her little finger to know what Morris had said and done, what tone he had taken, what pretext he had found. She wrote to him, naturally, to request an interview; but she received, as naturally, no answer to her petition. Morris was not in a writing mood; for Catherine had addressed him two short notes, which met with no acknowledgment. These notes were so brief that I may give them entire. "Won't you give me some sign that you didn't mean to be so cruel as you seemed on Tuesday ?"-that was the first; the other was a little longer. "If I was unreasonable or suspicious on Tuesday-if I annoyed you or troubled you in any way—I beg your forgiveness, and I promise never again to be so foolish. I am punished enough, and I don't understand. Dear Morris, you are killing me." These notes were dispatched on the Friday and Saturday, but Saturday and Sunday passed without bringing the poor girl the satisfaction she desired. Her punishment accumulated; she continued to bear it, however, with a good deal of superficial fortitude. On Saturday morning the Doctor, who had been watching in silence, spoke to his sister Lavinia. "The thing has happened-the scoundrel has backed out." "Never!" cried Mrs. Penniman, who had bethought herself what she should say to Catherine, but was not provided with a line of defense against her brother, so that indignant negation was the only weapon in her hands. "He has begged for a reprieve, then, if you like that better." "It seems to make you very happy that your daughter's affections have been trifled with." "It does," said the Doctor; "for I had foretold it. It's a great pleasure to be in the right." "Your pleasures make one shudder," his sister exclaimed. Catherine went rigidly through her usual occupations; that is, up to the point of going with her aunt to church on Sunday morning. She generally went to afternoon service as well; but on this occasion her courage faltered, and she begged of Mrs. Penniman to go without her. "I am sure you have a secret," said |