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NORTH AND SOUTH.1

BY NORA PERRY.

[NORA PERRY, American poet and author, was born in Webster, Mass., in 1841, and spent her girlhood in Providence, R.I. She began to write verse for the magazines at the age of eighteen, and was in later life Boston correspondent of the Chicago Tribune and the Providence Journal. She wrote: "After the Ball, and other Poems" and "New Songs and Ballads"; and the popular juvenile books “A Flock of Girls,” “A Rosebud Garden of Girls," and "Hope Benham." Miss Perry died at Dudley, Mass., May 13, 1896.]

FORT ADAMS.

I. 1860.

SHE leaped up, laughing, all alone
Upon the rampart's sodden stone,

And, laughing, hid behind the mouth
Of the great cannon, facing south.

"Ah! will he find me here?" she said,
Then hushed her laugh and shook her head.

"Nay, will he miss me from the rest,
And, missing, care to come in quest?"

But dancing eyes deride the doubt,
The deprecating lips breathe out,

And waiting, waiting all alone,
Upon the rampart's sodden stone,

She looks across the cannon's mouth,
The silent cannon facing south;

Across the great ships riding down
In stately silence to the town;

Across the sea just where the mist
Melts all the blue to amethyst,

From whence the wind o'er all the sails
Blew soft that day its southern gales.

1 By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

But white-sailed ships that rode the sea,
Nor dusky cannon's mouth saw she,

With those young eyes whose wistful gaze
Went dreaming thwart the purple haze;

Instead, beyond the white-sailed ships,
Beyond the cannon's dusky lips,

Beyond the sea just where the mist.
Melts all the blue to amethyst,

The tall palmettoes darkly rise
Before her dream-enchanted eyes,

And waiting, waiting all alone
Upon the rampart's sodden stone,

In dreams she stands beneath the shade
Of southern palms,—this little maid,

Whose morning face and tender eyes
Took all their hue from Northern skies.

And standing thus enchanted there,
Within her castle of the air,

The rippling tide, that sinks and swells,
Comes to her ear like wedding bells;

And through her castle's airy halls,
From room to room a low voice calls,

And calling, calling, near, so near,
That half in dream and half in fear

She turns, and swift her vision flies.
Before the vision of her eyes;

For some one scales the rampart mound,

And some one laughs: "Ah, truant, found!"

And face to face she meets him there,

Her fairy castle's lordly heir!

So, North and South, the pine and palm,
United, in that summer calm

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NIHILIST CIRCLES IN RUSSIA.1

BY GEORG BRANDES.

(From "Impressions of Russia": translated by Samuel C. Eastman.)

[GEORG BRANDES is one of the most eminent of Scandinavian critics. He was born of Jewish parentage in Copenhagen, Denmark, February 4, 1842, and after graduating at the university in that city, traveled and lectured in all parts of Europe. In 1883 he returned to Denmark, his fellow-countrymen having guaranteed him an income of four thousand crowns for ten years, with the single stipulation that he should deliver public lectures on literature. The most important of his publications, over thirty in number, are: "Esthetic Studies," "Criticisms and Portraits," "Principal Tendencies in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century," "Danish Poets," "Impressions of Russia,” “ Benjamin D'Israeli," and "William Shakespeare."]

Two thousand women annually, of their own accord, accompany the exiles to Siberia, frequently to hard labor. In this way a lady of high rank, Baroness Rehbinder, some years ago went with the celebrated physician, Dr. Weimar, who was implicated in the trials for the attempts at assassination.

It can generally be said of those who "go out among the people," that when the home life is oppression or obstruction, they seek emancipation from it at any cost. It was in this view that what at the time was called sham marriage was invented, though it has nearly gone out of use. The young girl found a comrade of the same views of life as herself, who consented to marry her pro forma, but who neither had nor claimed any control over her, and by whose aid she escaped from the surveillance of her family. Sometimes it happens that the two (as in Mrs. Gyllembourg's "Light Nights"), after having become better acquainted, actually marry; in other cases the man is said to have abused the rights formally conferred upon him and a separation is the result. Generally the newly married couple have separated from each other immediately after the wedding, each being free and independent. As is well known, in "Virgin Soil" Turgenief has described a kindred case, the relation of brother and sister in the case of Nezhdanof and Marianne, after he carried away the young girl.

1 By permission of T. Y. Crowell & Co., New York, and Walter Scott, Ltd. (Cr. 8vo. Price 28. 6d.)

However much these young women feel themselves drawn towards the common people, it very seldom happens that they fall in love or marry out of their own rank; and, if it does happen, it usually brings its own punishment. The following is an instance from my own circle of acquaintance: A young girl loved a man of her own, the higher, classes. They were both exiled by the administrative process, but were sent to the opposite ends of Siberia and could never learn the least thing about each other. In the country town where the young girl was, after the lapse of a few years, she became acquainted with a young workman exiled for the same political reasons she was. She met him daily. He fell passionately in love with her; they had a child. Other exiles, on the way home, came to the town. Among them was a young man of the same class in society as the young girl, who knew something about her lover. She was never wearied of asking him questions, and sat and talked with him through the whole night. At daybreak, as she was sitting with the child at her breast, the workman killed her in a fit of jealous frenzy. He thought that in her face he read regret for having stooped down to him. Two years after, the child was brought to St. Petersburg, to her parents.

Very significant and instructive is an unprinted and prohibited novel of Korolenko, the title of which is "Strange," and the plot as follows:

A woman has been sent in exile to a distant province. One of the gendarmes who has accompanied the young lady is the narrator. She has not been able in advance to find out where she is to be sent to, and is thus, by two gendarmes, taken almost through the whole of Siberia. One of the gendarmes, an uncultivated but fine fellow, feels so deeply affected by her youth and charms that he actually falls in love with her, and cannot obey his orders. He tells her the name of the town which is selected for her abode. "Good!" she says; "there are several of ours there." Immediately on her arrival, she goes to a young man, whose name she knows, but whom she has never seen, and takes lodgings in his house. She falls ill of a lung disease.

A month later the gendarme comes again through the town, seeks her out, and finds the young man by her bedside, and with astonishment hears them still using the formal "you" to each other. It is impossible for him to understand what kind of

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