the club, of optimism. Take your book and go forth and get into the purest life and surest company. Only he who knows goodness sees badness with a genuine insight and energetic movement. With endless difficulties around us, let us not let our arms drop and be idle. We think that this end of the century is leading into something beyond. It is not that we see some bright light; but there is something in the air, in the souls of men, that makes us hope. In nearing the end of the tunnel, something in the sound of the train without a ray of light, something in

the rails under the train, tells us that we are nearing the end of the tunnel; so I think we are hearing a different sound and will see a new light; and when we shall have entered into full light, we shall know that God was not wrong and that we have not hoped in vain.

As Christ made the world better for those who were to come after him, we may not only enter into that salvation, but add something to the full development and manifestation of it ourselves. Let us go our way, saying to our own souls, "Christ has overcome."

Τ

HE Puritan element in American

life, coming so naturally and insistently to mind at this Thanksgiving season, has never been more accurately set forth than in the pictures of Mr. George Henry Boughton. On the following pages two reproductions of his work may be found.

There is always an answering thrill when we read, see, or hear a proper presentment of that, old-time life. Books, family pictures, and family traditions have told us much, of course, but, with the best kind of history-telling, like Mr. Boughton's, for example, the Puritan epoch becomes almost a contemporary existence; it is an old force ever new; it re-enters the heart of our national life, a life inherited from our fathers, no matter how much the necessities of a new age compel its transformation.

Americans are apt to think of Mr. Boughton as an American-born g nre painter. So large a number of his many pictures are so illustrative of New England history that we instinctively ascribe their source to a New England

man.

The early, educative, formative environment of their painter was, indeed, American, though not of New England. Mr. Boughton was born in 1834 near Ipswich, England, but when only three. years old came with his parents to this country. They settled at Albany, where, with the exception of a sketching trip in the British Isles when he was nineteen, the boy played, studied, drew, and painted until 1858. He was self-taught, selfmade.

When he was twenty-four, he went to New York and remained two years. He first exhibited at the National Academy of Design. Then he went to Paris for a year, and then to London, where he has been ever since. In 1871 he was elected into our National Academy; eight years later into the London Royal Academy, and again, eight years later, into the Royal Institute of Painters in WaterColors.

Mr. Boughton's works have always enjoyed an immense popularity, much of which was gained on account of their

historical rather than on account of their artistic appeal. The artist struck a true note at once, and has never since swerved from concert-pitch. From "Passing into the Shade" and "The Last of the Mayflower," painted in the sixties, to his "Winter Nightfall," exhibited the other day in London, the succession has been gratifying alike to the painter and his public.

Mr. Boughton's composition is both skillful and restful. His drawing, however, does not seem to have been done with much impulsive spontaneity. Perhaps this impression is unjust, but one fancies his lines somewhat thought-out felt-out, studied. We must acknowledge, nevertheless, that he succeeds well in the extremely difficult task of combining severity and daintiness in figure-drawing, a combination particularly noticeable, of course, in the figures of Puritan women.

Such an effect is doubled by Mr. Boughton's delicacy of color, especially in grays, pearl shades, and neutral tones, even if at times they verge on a seeming monotony. Some of his canvases were evidently painted with but half a dozen tints on his palette. However, any apparent color monotony is frequently atoned for by Mr. Boughton's luminous light and breathable atmosphere.

Though interesting in technique, these genre pictures are more interesting from the standpoint of human drama. Not only the serious student of art and history, but the veriest tyro is attracted by the appeal made to his heart as well as to his mind through the medium of Mr. Boughton's pictures. Hence we find their reproduction in engraving, etching, and photographic processes in all sorts of homes. So great has been the demand for these Puritan scenes that the men and women represented therein have become somewhat stereotyped. In general, however, it may be said that Mr. Boughton's are no puppet figures. Never descending to mawkish sentiment, they are at once simple and sincere. The best are not unworthy as incorporations of elemental forces, of the love of man for woman and of woman for man, of the devotion to country, of the reverence for religion.

R

UTH loved the ocean. She loved it when it was ruffled by bland spring breezes; when it dimpled beneath fervid summer suns; when it calmly reflected the pale autumnal moon light; she loved it when winter winds shrieked, and there was no world save this Island of Nantucket shut in by a tempestuous watery motion which borrowed its hue from leaden skies and lashed itself to the fury of white surf. She could not tell in what mood she loved it best, for her happy heart made all environment beautiful. On this smooth beach she and her brother Nathaniel had played with waveworn pebbles and delicately tinted shells; here she had kissed him good-by when he took boat for the ship which should carry him to China; here she had loitered time after time in the radiance of the sun's setting to look across the leagues of water and wish him home again; and here she was walking through the cloudy chill of a waning November day when she heard her father's voice:

"Little maid! little maid!"

His own most tender name for her! She turned and ran toward him, her fair curls flying from the hood of her scarlet cloak, her fair face dimpling in its curl halo like some rare sea-anemone. The keen eyes under Nathaniel Starbuck's cocked hat softened as she sped along the beach, for dearly did be love this only

remaining one of his daughters. Six graves in the island burial-place marked where the others lay-six little graves, for all had been chilled to early death by the sea winds on which this most fragile bud had bloomed to maidenhood. The softening in his eyes grew to an embracing fatherliness when she caught his arm, for Ruth had no fear of the stern magistrate before whom culprits trembled, and whom even her brother Nathaniel invariably addressed as "Sir." Now he smiled down at her, and lapsed into the Quaker speech which he never used save with his

own.

"Thou lookedst like a gull winging alongshore, little maid."

At which she laughed aloud, shaking back her curls.

"A red sea-gull, father! Who ever heard tell of a red gull? But what have you in your hand? A letter, and in Nathaniel's writing! Oh, father, comes he home soon? And for how long?"

"What a maid! Can I answer two questions at once? But, yea-I have broke the seal, and read enough to know that he keeps Thanksgiving feast with us-God willing."

"Nathaniel home at Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving almost here!" she cried. "Hasten then, father, for I cannot wait to tell mother the good news-neither can I leave you behind. So hasten !"