III. Even before the return of Matilda from her institute it had become clear to her household, as it had to John Detmold, that there was nothing for him to do, having done everything else for the girl so far, but to marry her. In his matterof-course way he in due time did that duty also, at the same sober gait with which he did everything; and they went to housekeeping in a modest house upon the bank of the river, and not so far from the Power House but that the husband could hear above the tongue of his wife every puff of the escaping and scoffing

steam.

Marriage made merely this difference, that Matilda had more perfect possession of the engineer for purposes peculiar to her from infancy. If John had not read her letters, none the less had she written them, and that had developed fearfully what had always been within her a lurking disease. If her intellect was narrow and not too vigorous, at least she had not burdened it with learning too heavy. A frail spark at best, she had so heaped upon it the chaff of the lightest of literature, there had been so very much of such fuel also, that the flame, if she was not to suffocate, must find outlet. Not only must she sing, must she talk, it was essential to her that she should write also-write prose and verse in all their, in her hands, innumerable varieties. Nor had she sufficiently expressed herself until she had read to John what she had written. He was a muscular man, having faculty of unlimited endurance, and he adjusted himself to listening, as he had done to the duties of the Power House. As a woman she was simply a pale, thin, very fragile, exceedingly voluble, little girl drawn out, as one does a spy-glass, to her full length. She loved her husband sincerely. During his absence she hastened every day through her mending and housekeeping with nervous speed that she might have uninterrupted opportunity to write a little before he got back, at least to entertain him when he had done so.

wildering sense of having partaken of abundant fare, and yet of being weaker upon his legs than he could have wished. So especially of his evenings. No wife could have done more to interest her husband, and, none the less, when he got to bed at last he was almost too tired to sleep.

Not because of the incessant clatter of

his wife. Little she imagined it, poor thing, but her empty noise was merely as that of the mountain stream, the millwheel, the clattering stones, while the grist which was the result of it all was the invention going on in the mind of her husband whereby he could hold and harness that portion of the force which had escaped him for so many years. How many a model had he tinkered together in the privacy of his engine-room when his fireman had gone home, or lay sleeping sweetly with smutted face beside his heaps of fuel! But he was growing old, if not hopeless, and he could not keep awake if it were not for his wife and her music and poetry. While she played, sung, talked, read to him, his mind was stimulated thereby to work steadily along toward the invention, revising, correcting, experimenting, contriving. The force could be caught. Tons of dollars as well as coal were wasted over the world in creating steam, which at last barely touched the piston with the tips of its fingers as it shirked its way through the machinery, to sneak out of it at the end a gigantic yet disreputable loafer, a disgrace to its creators. Some man would catch and control the darned thing," and make it pay back, to the last ounce of its strength, every cent it cost to generate and direct it. Millions would be made by the patentee; but it was not the money John looked at, any more than it was the fame. He cared no more for that than he did for the skin of the rabbit when, as a country lad, he went through the snow to look at his traps set overnight. What he wanted then was the rabbit itself; what he wanted, would have, was the force itself-the cunning force escaping otherwise like a wild thing into the clouds.

towering castles lifting pinnacles in the thin air of her imagination, and her husband, smoking as steadily as his own tall chimney, his eyes fastened upon her, would listen intently to-his own inward

contrivings, stimulated thereto precisely up to the measure of the force put by her into her performance. There is not a soul of us but must confess with shame to something of the same kind in our own case. When listening decorously to powerful sermons we are building a ship or a sonnet, driving a bargain or a spirited horse, securing a verdict or managing a bank, the gifted preacher little supposing the directions in which his pathos, persuasion, logic, were really compelling us. So when listening to music, to conversation. Could our friend but know how and whither he or she was impelling us when we seemed to be hearkening so intently!

One day Mrs. Detmold was possessed of a new and brilliant idea when she arose in the morning. It was of a story in which the hero was to do deeds more daring than man ever conceived of before. As he was to be the handsomest of men, the heroine was to surpass all women in loveliness, devotion, desperate daring. After John had gone to the Power House, and she had hurried through her housekeeping, the beloved of the Muses seized her pen, took the blotted old atlas upon her lap, spread her paper thereon, and wrote with greater vehemence than ever before. Her ideas poured upon her; the words came fast-long words, strong words. When she had got hero and heroine through whirlwinds of tribulation, and married them at last, enormously rich, universally beloved by their happy peasantry, with strong likelihood of their ascending the throne of their own land, the gifted writer was all of a tremble; so much so that she was glad John had taken his dinner to the Power House with him that day; and lying down, she slept almost the afternoon through, rising in time to get supper, greatly refreshed.

Her husband had never been as hopeless of accomplishing his end as when he came home to supper. But he saw something in the thin face of his spare and scrawny wife which told him of what was coming. She gave him his slippers and pipe when supper was ended, cleared the things away, placed the old lamp on the mantel.

"Why don't you sit down to it, "Tilda?" John asked, as she stood, manuscript in hand, beside the mantel-piece.

"Not to-night. You'll see why, John," she said, and began to read. As she began, her husband took up his latest

scheme, and began to examine it over once more. She became more interested; so did he in his contrivance. Her tones grew deeper, more tragic, as she went on; valves, pivots, pistons, worked more readily, too, in John's mental manipulation. The story deepened in interest, became thrilling; John actually took his pipe from his lips, his eye brightened as it fastened itself apparently upon the pallid face of his inspired wife-really upon his new device. Mrs. Detmold, quivering with excitement, led her hero and heroine through their last, most terrible trial, brought them out, married them, hurried in the shouting peasantry. Conscious all along of the rapt attention of her husband, she let her hand fall, the manuscript in it, as she ended, exhausted.

"It is splendid," said John--" splendid! It is grand!" He had risen to his feet; his pipe was lying upon the floor; his eyes were sparkling.

“Oh, John!" and she threw herself weeping into his arms. "I am so glad you like it!"

Her husband drew his arms about her, kissed her. "It is the grandest sort of grand!" he said. "Why, "Tilda, it is worth ten thousand dollars in cash!"

"Do you think so, dear?" she said. "Then we'll buy a house of our own."

It was not from gentlemanly delicacy her husband refrained from explaining that he had not heard a word of her poem, that it was of his perfected invention that he spoke.

Nor did he ever explain. The poem did not bring the amount mentioned, but the invention did, and a good deal more, only it took some time and a lawsuit or two before it was reached. But there was something of his triumphant valve in the lips of John Detmold also, for he never set his wife right upon the subject.

The new home was bought, but John clung to the Power House the more closely after he had applied his invention. There was steady satisfaction renewed with every gasp of the now thoroughly mastered and apparently overtaxed rascal of a Force. Nero himself never gloated over a fallen foe as the engineer did over his. The most malignant of the Philistines had no such feeling toward their grinding captive as John had in the Samson he had caught at last, although the Delilah in this case was the more unconscious, as well as innocent, of the two.

ains plashing in the midst; bath-rooms of marble, with great furnaces underneath to heat the whole floor; and you will be astonished at the vast number of windows opening upon all conceivable vistas. The theory of Turkish builders seems to be to provide these encaged beauties of the harem with abundant facilities for observing the outside world. Hence they break the walls of their houses into many salient and re-entering angles, carry the upper floors on brackets three or four feet beyond the lower walls, and then open as many windows as the stability of the edifice will permit. Every room is thus made to command some view of the street on which it fronts.

Within the rooms, the floors are covered with Egyptian matting, and carpeted with heavily napped rugs. There are numerous wide divans, on which the ladies may lounge, or curl up their feet under them as they sit; there are curious octagonal stands inlaid with mother-of-pearl; there are carved wooden boxes, and French clocks endowed with odd tricks of producing singing birds, or dancing puppets, or moving landscapes; there are embroideries to turn one's head with their beauty, and heavy moresque hangings at the doors, and damask curtains at the windows. But you will not find a bedstead, nor a chair, nor a table, in the house.

The Turks cling to the customs of their nomad ancestors. As if emigration were always imminent, every man's bed is a roll which he may take with him upon his back.

The ladies of the harem have never heard of spring mattresses, and they sleep upon improvised bedding, produced at night from cavernous cupboards, and spread upon the floor. They have no tables, because they always sit on the floor to eat, and when they write, they hold the paper on the palms of their hands. They have no chairs, for it is torture to them to sit upright. It is true that in these modern degenerate times the harems do often possess tables of gilt, and gilded chairs upholstered in red velvet or yellow satin. But these are mere imitations of European furniture, stiffly arranged around the walls of the room, to be regarded with an awful admiration, but never touched lest they fall to pieces.

In early years she

woman of the world. has been oppressed by the boys among her associates, and petted by all the men she has met. She thus learns when to yield her will, and when it is safe to assert it. She therefore may be obstinate to the last degree. She has never been taught self-denial, and is selfish upon principle, believing that every one is an enemy who has not interested motives for friendship. Still, she may be an agreeable though garrulous acquaintance, and she is perfectly contented with herself and her position in society.

The Turkish woman is a fanatical conservative. The world in which she lives is unmoved by the practical facts of the nineteenth century which make life a burden to her husband. No Chinaman was ever more impervious to ideas of improvement. She is fiercely intolerant in matters of religious belief. The teachings of the Koran have reached her by word of mouth, and surrounded by a perfect Talmud of tradition, and these teachings shape her view of the outside world. In obedience to them, she commonly hates foreigners with passion. As she passes you on the street she will pray with audible fervor that your eyes may become blind, or that God may curse you.

She is superstitious in the extreme. In sickness she will use the saliva of an old woman who has never been divorced, or will inhale the fetid breath of an odoriferous and saintly dervish, in preference to the choicest prescriptions of an educated physician. She is assured that Satan in person teaches Americans their skill in mechanical arts. She believes in charms. She will not live an hour bereft of her three-cornered bit of leather which incloses the mystic phrase that is potent to ward off the evil-eye. She distrusts Tuesday as the mother of ill luck, and will not celebrate the birthday anniversaries of her children, nor even record the date, lest some magician use it to cast a spell against the child.