Miss Caroline, however, was our model, and I believe the Fire-Fly worshipped her in some blind way, till she found herself soaring miles off, in a world of sentiment and passion that Caroline Masten could never apprehend.

It so chanced that Harry Rogers, who was Commodore Masten's nephew, was spending a few days in the country when Margret Sinclair went out, but no one thought of him as a "danger ahead" for

dark, she had irregular features, but she | ly tinctured with what passes for religion had eyes that lit up her face and kindled-not a faith by any means, not even a a fire in others-eyes that looked into un- sentiment, but a routine that answered for known depths, and then skimmed the ver- both. She could never be troubled with iest surfaces; glittering like any bead, till any doubts as to her future well-being, of a sudden some feeling came into them, here and hereafter, while she went to and the bead was the window of a soul. church every Sunday morning, and beYes, Margret Sinclair in those days had haved like a lady. The Fire-Fly said once, a soul, though she knew as little of it as in the midst of a tedious sermon, she would the rest of us, and the possession, whether like "to get on the back of the seat and we recognized it or not, made her in some whistle." And yet she was not altogethsort "uncanny." At times we could not er irreverent. understand her, and I know she did not understand herself. A fully developed heart and soul in an undeveloped girl of sixteen does not naturally adjust itself to conventionalities. It makes its own path, and Margret Sinclair made hers early. While "we," her school-girl companions, were curiously peeping at life through the experiences of our elder sisters, envying, enjoying, or criticising, Margret Sinclair met her fate. There came to Washington an officer of the navy whom we called | her. She was "a child" going into the "the Apollo," and invested with every country for a holiday, and as a child in glorious attribute. In reality he had her school-girl dress she drove out to meet many noble qualities, and one overpower- her fate. At that time she was more full ing vice. He was already, at twenty-eight, of life, had more enjoyment in it, than any the victim of intemperance. As yet his person I have ever seen. She did as she magnificent physique told no tales, and pleased, and said what she pleased, withHarry Rogers would have been the lion of in the limits of a refined, airy gracefulness that season if he could have been caught all her own. The Fire-Fly was her apand held. How often I have heard my propriate name. She sparkled in just that sister and her friends, the belles of the fitful way, and again with just that steady hour, seriously and jokingly devising glow. She laughed, she sang, she danced plans to entrap him, to fascinate him, to-above all she danced. Dancing was a pique him; but Harry Rogers evaded them kind of intoxication with her, and I never all, with a smile that added to his desir- | ableness, giving us younger ones but a poor opinion of their resources. "We" would do so and so, and yet when our time came we had profited nothing. Each one commenced anew, and learned her own lesson in her own way and for her own self. Margret Sinclair was no exception, exceptional as she was in all else. With her (if there was not an overruling fate in it) it all turned upon a visit she made, quite accidentally, to Caroline Masten, a daugh-gether like "one of us." ter of Commodore Masten, who lived some four miles from town. The Sinclairs and Mastens were intimate, and Caroline, though several years older than Margret, was fond of the Fire-Fly in the patronizing way that became her greater experience and knowledge of the world. Caroline Masten was a practical girl, with enough common-sense on common matters; a "good" girl, in being æsthetical

knew her hear a waltz that she did not spin round, as if in obedience to some law of rhythmic movement she could not resist. It was the only expressive dancing I ever saw, and yet I could never tell in what the expression consisted, but I felt a difference I could not see. She knew her dancing was a power, and when she floated round in the only large ball-room she had ever been in, dressed in white, with the "angel sleeves" then worn, she did not look alto

But I am in advance of my story. I did not think it would take so long to tell, or perhaps I love to linger over that time of my girlhood, when, if we were not all Fire-Flies, we aspired to be. Margret Sinclair, then, went out to Commodore Masten's to spend Sunday, and as she was not a "young lady," Harry Rogers did not as usual desert the field. He did not think her of sufficient importance at first,

hummed, sang, and danced for weeks aft- | their own comprehensive way, that aderward. The refrain,

"Those angel sleeves, those angel sleeves, I'll follow still where'er they leadThose angel sleeves," etc., etc.;

and one verse I now recall, which we thought quite equal to anything in Byron:

"If to heaven I'd chance to go,
Or if to darker shades below,

One glimpse of those dear angel sleeves
Will make me all the joys forego,
Or all the pains as little know-

Those angel sleeves," etc., etc.

That ball decided the heads of the respective families to put an effectual stop to the whole affair by having Harry Rogers sent to a distant station. Their influence being great, the "order," in official parlance, was peremptory, and admitted of no delay. Harry Rogers was seen no more in Washington.

mitted not a doubt, that Cousin Harry had
made a good escape. They did every-
thing they could to make her forget Har-
ry Rogers, but when most successful were
most disappointed, and left her to wander
at her own sweet will. It was her will
at her own sweet will.
to wander alone daily, and to remain out
for hours.

To

If any of Margret Sinclair's school-girl set had been there, they would have known the Fire-Fly better; but there is nothing more unaccountable than the ignorance older girls have about younger ones. the average young lady "in society" all life is summed up in her own personality, and it is not until her experiences deepen that she consents, or perhaps is able, to enlarge the boundaries of her observations and sympathies. She is selfish because she is ignorant, and ignorant because she is selfish. It may almost be said that a woman's heart is her only thinking apparatus. We know that without it she fares badly in the competitive examinations of this world.

It was not in Caroline Masten to love blindly, and therefore it was a fancy in

Margret Sinclair abandoned herself to her grief as to her love. Poor child that she was, she did not know how to conceal or control it, and the older, wiser heads, being quite certain such folly would soon exhaust itself, let nature for once have its own way. She refused to be comforted, and when she went out again to the Mas-others-a morning dew that the sun or tens' it was only because it was easier to a warm day must necessarily dissipate. go than to resist. The Commodore said it Whether the Fire-Fly was above or bebrought the tears to his old eyes to see the low this sort of reasoning is a question child so woe-begone, but "daughter Caro- every one must settle for himself, and one line says she will soon be as gay as ever, that Caroline Masten had occasion to ponand Caroline is a sensible girl." At first der deeply over. She bethought herself there was no rousing Margret: if she got one bright morning of following Margret, up, she did not want to lie down; if she lay in an idle sort of way, with book in hand. down, she did not want to get up. Life Caroline Masten "posed" on all occasions, for her seemed to have stopped, and she and I can see her now gracefully saunterlooked more like a shade than a human ing toward the lake, some half-mile from being, like something that had strayed the house. I have no doubt she was into an atmosphere not conditioned to it: thinking more of her own mild flirtations so necessary is happiness to some few of than of Margret Sinclair. It was not God's creatures. The majority go through easy for Caroline Masten to divert her life accepting some poor substitute, and thoughts from this all-important subject. are content. The only trouble is, they in- It was a part of her religion to believe sist upon their capacity to judge as to half a dozen men in love with her, and what ought to constitute happiness for she had a way of confounding divine and others. human love that made for her a most satisfactory form of worship. It was a part of her belief in a future state that she was predestined to select the most wealthy of her admirers, and she never looked more heavenly than when cogitating most deeply on this "article" of her faith. She had that cast of features that so easily lends itself to a saint-like expression.

Margret Sinclair was persuaded, one day-no one knew how or by whom-to take a walk, and came back so radiant, so like herself, that Caroline and Mrs. Masten decided she should walk every day. Exercise and fresh air would soon make her forget "poor dear Harry."

Soon afterward they heard her singing like a bird for very joy, and without more ado, and no questioning, concluded, in

Practical Caroline Masten lived in a great deal more of a dream than did the

Fire-Fly, only her dreams would have been nightmares to Margret Sinclair. Arriving at the lake in this placid frame of mind, she saw, to her consternation, Harry Rogers with Margret Sinclair, and was so far touched æsthetically as to say she had never seen "such a pretty picture." If perfect happiness makes a "pretty picture," it was before her. This world never knew a happier being than Margret Sinclair at that time. She had no thought for past or future. Harry Rogers was with her, her head rested confidingly on his shoulder, and the story was told. At sight of Caroline Masten there was no attempt on the part of the lovers to change their position, but Harry Rogers, looking up, said, coolly, "Poor Cousin Carrie, and did you think I would not give up a thousand commissions for the sake of this little girl?"

dressed in white, with the "angel sleeves." There had been a terrible snow-storm raging all day, and she looked the incarnation of it. Not a particle more color in her face than in her dress; but she danced as one possessed, and when midnight came, I saw her float out of the room to the music of the "Angel-sleeve Waltz." It was stopped instantly, and as if by one consent, but she had gone; and the next time I saw Margret Sinclair she lay in her coffin, looking not whiter or colder than when she drifted out of that ball-room.

She went home with her parents very quietly. They noticed nothing unusual, and it was not until the next morning it was discovered she was not in the house. Search was made far and wide; the snow had effectually concealed her path, and the day wore on without any traces of her. Some one suggested the cemetery, and it Caroline Masten's sense of propriety seemed strange it had not been thought of never deserted her, and she found herself before. There they found her, on Harry quite equal to indignant remonstrances, Rogers's grave, the snow covering her enat which the Fire-Fly laughed. It was tirely, except that one "angel sleeve" flutnot in her to feel danger or dismay with tered feebly over the mound. Harry her hand in Harry Rogers's hand. For Rogers had promised to leave all plealife or for death she was ready. Caro-sures and pains for those "angel sleeves," line, however, finally consented not to and she impotently called on him to fulbetray them, promised most solemnly not to tell any one she had seen Harry Rogers, and went straight back to the house and told her father.

The old Commodore, in a fit of passion,

fill it.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF CHARLES
JAMES FOX.

THE town has been in a great bustle,"

and before he had seen Harry, reported "THE

him to his superior officers, informed the wrote Horace Walpole on the 29th Sinclairs, and all Washington soon knew of May, 1744, "about a private match, but a court-martial was ordered on Harry which, by the ingenuity of the ministry, Rogers. No one saw Margret Sinclair for has been made politics. Mr. Fox fell in weeks. During this time it began to be love with Lady Caroline Lenox, asked, whispered, and then known, that Harry was refused, and stole her. His father Rogers could not stand up against these was a footman; her great-grandfather a accumulated troubles. He fell. He pass-king; hinc illæ lacrima: all the blood ed his days and nights in unconsciousness, royal have been up in arms." and when dismissed from the navy, he never realized it. What kind of a blow this was to Margret Sinclair no one ever knew. She came amongst us again, to all appearances having forgotten Harry Rogers, but we knew it would not be safe to disparage him to her; and when he died from mania a potu, soon after, no one cared to tell her. I can not at this time understand any better than I did then the mistaken kindness which allowed her to go to a ball the very night of the day on which Harry Rogers was buried, nor can I ever forget the shock it was to the giddiest of us to see her come into the room,

The Mr. Fox here alluded to by the most famous and entertaining gossip of his age as the son of a footman was the father of Charles James Fox. The lady who consented to elope with him after her parents had rejected his suit was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond, great-granddaughter of Charles II. of England, and great-great-granddaughter of Henry IV. of France. One of her sisters married a son of the Duke of Leinster, and another was the mother of Admiral Sir Charles Napier.

The advantages which attach to the accidents both of noble and of humble ex

traction were never probably more com- | children by his first wife having no depletely combined than in this marriage, scendants, he in his seventy-sixth year nor, humanly speaking, with happier re- took a second, by whom he had two sons sults. The rare talents and Parliamentary-Stephen, who became Earl of Ilchester, importance of the footman's grandson, and Henry, who became the first Lord re-enforced by the birth of a child, soon Holland, son-in-law to the Duke of Richreconciled the families, and healed what mond, and father of one of the three most threatened to be an incurable wound so famous Parliamentary orators that Engeffectually that it left not a scar behind. land has produced. Though during most of his married life Henry Fox was one of the most unpopular-and perhaps deservedly unpopularmen in England, the home of Henry and Lady Caroline Fox presented, says his latest, his best-informed, and by far most eloquent biographer,* "a beautiful picture of undoubting and undoubted affection, of perfect similarity in tastes and pursuits, of mutual appreciation, which thorough knowledge of the world and the strong sense inherent in the Fox character never allowed to degenerate into mutual adulation...... They lived together more than thirty years, and the wife survived the husband not quite so many days. Neither of them ever knew content except in the possession or immediate expectation of the other's company, and their correspondence continued to be that of lovers until their long honey-moon was finally over."

Genealogists have not thought it worth while to trace the Fox family farther back than to the footman Stephen Fox; but this low-born father of the first Lord Holland possessed many of the qualities for success in life which any nobleman in England might have envied. At an early age he had established for himself such a reputation as a manager that Lord Clarendon recommended Prince Charles, then a refugee on the Continent, to place his financial affairs unreservedly in his hands. The advice was taken, and its wisdom was thoroughly vindicated by the results. When Charles came to the throne, Stephen's services were gratefully remembered. In due process of time he was made paymaster of all his Majesty's forces in England, Master of the Horse, and one of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. He was a favorite with four successive monarchs and twelve successive Parliaments. His places were all lucrative, and he died leaving a handsome estate. The

* The Early History of Charles James Fox. By GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN. New York: Harper and Brothers. London: Longmans, Green, and Company. 1880.

Henry inherited his father's talent for getting on in the world, but not that for retaining to the same degree its esteem. During the Seven Years' War, on the whole the least inglorious foreign war that England ever waged, Henry Fox also held the post of Paymaster of the Forces, in which his father had laid the foundations of his ample fortune. It is not to be disguised that the desire of accumulating wealth absorbed all other aspirations, and greatly circumscribed the influence of Henry Fox, who, says Earl Stanhope, "might have filled a great part in the history of his country had his character borne any proportion to his talents." The emoluments which Fox derived from his office could not have been less than £600,000, and they served till long after his retirement from public life* as a popular fountain of invective. In a city address written by Wilkes he was styled "the public defaulter of unaccounted millions." Another corporate body denounced him at the foot of the throne as the worst of peculators, and in a tone of vehement remonstrance demanded the sequestration of his wealth, and the removal of his name from the list of the King's confidential advisers.

There is no good reason for believing that Henry Fox acquired his wealth by any methods not common, and fully authorized by the usages of his time, so far as usage could sanction them; but either the English world was raising its standard of public virtue, or Fox must have been most unfortunate in his mode of plucking the public goose, to have made it so very noisy. But even his scandalous greed might have been soon forgotten had he not allowed himself to enter the Bute cabinet, and act the leading part in reconciling Parliament, by fair means and foul, but mostly foul, to the termina

* Lord Macaulay styled Henry Fox "a political adventurer"; and Lord Chesterfield, a contemporary and an intelligent observer, says that "he had not the least notion of or regard for the public good or the constitution, but despised those objects as the cares of narrow minds."