She roused herself from this state, and with signs of growing excitement asked:

'Who told you this?

'No matter who; you can easily prove whether I am telling a lie or not. Say to Hazell that you mean to marry me, and you will hear the truth.'

'I will go at once, but I shall not say that.'

'Very well, in twenty minutes you can be there. Your horses are all out, but I will harness Jim-don't be afraid,' he added. hastily, as she was about to interrupt, I will only drive you to the foot of the lane, and wait for you there.'

She made no further objection. In ten minutes, Jim, yoked in Polly's wagonette, was proving his pace to her along the dusty road which lay between the Meadow and Marshstead farms. Walton often tried to induce her to test the horse's powers, but he had never anticipated that she was to test them in a journey made for the purpose of discovering whether or not Jim's master was a liar.

(To be continued.)

412

Uiews from a German Spion.

BY BRET HARTE

OUTSIDE of my window, two narrow perpendicular mirrors, parallel with the casement, project into the street, yet with a certain unobtrusiveness of angle that enables them to reflect the people who pass without any reciprocal disclosure of their own. The men and women, hurrying by, not only do not know they are observed, but, what is worse, do not even see their own reflection in this hypocritical plane, and are consequently unable through its aid to correct any carelessness of garb, gait, or demeanour. At first this seems to be taking an unfair advantage of the human animal, who invariably assumes an attitude when he is conscious of being under human focus; but I observe that my neighbours' windows, right and left, have a similar apparatus, that this custom is evidently a local one, and the locality is German. Being an American stranger, I am quite willing to leave the morality of the transaction with the locality and adapt myself to the custom. Indeed, I had thought of offering it, figuratively, as an excuse for any unfairness of observation I might make in these pages; but my German mirrors reflect without prejudice, selection, or comment, and the American eye, I fear, is but mortal, and, like all mortal eyes, figuratively, as well as in that literal fact noted by an eminent scientific authority, infinitely inferior to the work of the best German opticians.

And this leads me to my first observation, namely, that a majority of those who pass my mirror have weak eyes, and have already invoked the aid of the optician. Why are these people, physically in all else so much stronger than my countrymen, deficient in eyesight? Or, to omit the passing testimony of my Spion, and take my own personal experience, why does my young friend Max-brightest of all schoolboys, who already wears the cap that denotes the highest class-why does he shock me by suddenly drawing forth a pair of spectacles, that upon his fresh, rosy face would be an obvious mocking imitation of the Herr Papa-if German children could ever, by any possibility, be irreverent? Or why does the Fräulein Marie, his sister, pink as Aurora, round as Hebe, suddenly veil her blue eyes with a golden lorgnette in the midst of our polyglot conversation? Is it to evade the direct, admiring glance of the impulsive American? Dare I say no? Dare I say

that that frank, clear, honest, earnest return of the eye, which has, on the Continent, most unfairly brought my fair countrywomen under criticism, is quite as common to her more carefully-guarded, tradition-hedged German sisters? No, it is not that! Is it anything in these emerald- and opal-tinted skies, which seem so unreal to the American eye, and for the first time explain what seemed the unreality of German Art ?-in these mysterious yet restful Rhine fogs which prolong the twilight and hang the curtain of romance even over midday? Surely not. Is it not rather, O Herr Professor, profound in analogy and philosophy-is it not rather this abominable black-letter-this elsewhere-discarded, uncouth, slowly decaying text known as the German Alphabet, that plucks out the bright eyes of youth and bristles the gateways of your language with a chevaux de frise of splintered rubbish? Why must I hesitate whether it is an accident of the printer's press or the poor quality of the paper that makes this letter a 'k' or a 't'? Why must I halt in an emotion or a thought because 's' and 'f' are so nearly alike? Is it not enough that I, an impulsive American, accustomed to do a thing first and reflect upon it afterwards, must grope my way through a blind alley of substantives and adjectives, only to find the verb of action in an obscure corner, without ruining my eyesight in the groping?

But I dismiss these abstract reflections for a fresh and active resentment. This is the fifth or sixth dog that has passed my Spion, harnessed to a small barrow-like cart, and tugging painfully at a burden so ludicrously disproportionate to his size, that it would seem a burlesque but for the poor dog's sad sincerity. Perhaps it is because I have the barbarian's fondness for dogs, and for their lawless, gentle, loving uselessness, that I rebel against this unnatural servitude. It seems as monstrous as if a child were put between the shafts and made to carry burdens; and I have come to regard those men and women who in the weakest perfunctory way affect to aid the poor brute, by laying idle hands on the barrow behind, as I would unnatural parents. Pegasus harnessed to the Thracian herdsman's plough was no more of a desecration. I fancy the poor dog seems to feel the monstrosity of the performance, and, in sheer shame for his master, forgivingly tries to assume it is play, and I have seen a little 'colley' running along, barking and endeavouring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load that anyone out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty. Nor do the older or more powerful dogs seem to become accustomed to it. When his cruel taskmaster halts with his wares, instantly the dog, either by sitting down in his harness, or crawling over the shafts, or by some unmistakable dog-like trick, utterly

scatters any such delusion of even the habit of servitude.

The few of his race who do not work in this ducal city seem to have lost their democratic canine sympathies, and look upon him with something of that indifferent calm with which yonder officer eyes the road-mender in the ditch below him. He loses even the characteristics of species-the common cur and mastiff look alike in harness-the burden levels all distinctions. I have said that he was generally sincere in his efforts. I recall but one instance to the contrary. I remember a young colley, who first attracted my attention by his persistent barking. Whether he did this, as the ploughboy whistled, for want of thought,' or whether it was a running protest against his occupation, I could not determine, until one day I noticed that in barking he slightly threw up his neck and shoulders, and that the two-wheeled barrow-like vehicle behind him, having its weight evenly poised on the wheels by the trucks in the hands of its driver, enabled him by this movement to cunningly throw the centre of gravity and the greater weight on the man—a fact which that less sagacious brute never discerned. Perhaps I am using a strong expression regarding his driver; it may be that the purely animal wants of the dog, in the way of food, care, and shelter, are more bountifully supplied in servitude than in freedom; becoming a valuable and useful property, he may be cared for and protected as such-an odd recollection that this argument had been used forcibly in regard to human slavery in my own country strikes me here-but his picturesqueness and poetry are gone, and I cannot help thinking that the people who have lost this gentle, sympathetic, characteristic figure from their domestic life and surroundings have not acquired an equal gain through his harsh labours.

To the American eye there is throughout the length and breadth of this foreign city no more notable and striking object than the average German house servant! It is not that she has passed my Spion a dozen times within the last hour-for here she is messenger, porter, and commissionnaire as well as housemaid and cook-but that she is always a phenomenon to the American stranger, accustomed to be abused in his own country by his foreign Irish handmaiden. Her presence is as refreshing and grateful as the morning light, and as inevitable and regular. When I add that with the novelty of being well served is combined the satisfaction of knowing that you have in your household an intelligent being, who reads and writes with fluency, and yet does not abstract your books nor criticise your literary composition; who is cleanly clad, and neat in her person, without the suspicion of having borrowed her mistress's dresses; who may be good-looking with

out the least imputation of coquetry or addition to her followers; who is obedient without servility, polite without flattery, willing and replete with supererogatory performance, without the expectation of immediate pecuniary return, what wonder that the American householder translated into German life feels himself in a new Eden of domestic possibilities unrealised in any other country, and begins to believe in a present and future of domestic happiness! What wonder that the American bachelor living in German lodgings feels half the terrors of the conjugal future removed, and rushes madly into love-and housekeeping! What wonder that I, a long-suffering and patient master, who have been served by the reticent but too imitative Chinaman; who have been Massa' to the childlike but untruthful negro; who have been the recipient of the brotherly but uncertain ministrations of the South Sea Islander, and have been proudly disregarded by the American Aborigine, only in due time to meet the fate of my countrymen at the hands of Bridget the Celt-what wonder that I gladly seize this opportunity to sing the praises of my German handmaid! Honour to thee, Lenchen, wherever thou goest! Heaven bless thee in thy walks abroad, whether with that tightly booted cavalryman in thy Sunday gown and best, or in blue polka-dotted apron and bare head as thou trottest nimbly on mine errands errands which Bridget O'Flaherty would scorn to undertake, or undertaking would hopelessly blunder in! Heaven bless thee, child, in thy early risings and in thy later sittings, at thy festive board, overflowing with Essig and Fett, in the mysteries of thy Kuchen, in the fullness of thy Bier, and in thy nightly suffocations beneath mountainous and multitudinous feathers! Good, honest, simple-minded, cheerful, duty-loving Lenchen! Have not thy brothers, strong and dutiful as thou, lent their gravity and earnestness to sweeten and strengthen the fierce youth of the Republic beyond the seas, and shall not thy children inherit the broad prairies that still wait for them, and discover the fatness thereof, and send a portion transmuted in glittering shekels back to thee!

Almost as notable are the children whose round faces have as frequently been reflected in my Spion. Whether it is only a fancy of mine that the average German retains longer than any other race his childish simplicity and unconsciousness, or whether it is because I am more accustomed to the extreme self-assertion and early maturity of American children, I know not; but I am inclined to believe that among no other people is childhood as perennial, and to be studied in such characteristic and quaint and simple phases as here. The picturesqueness of Spanish and Italian childhood has a faint suspicion of the pantomime and the conscious