touched in with half a dozen strokes, lives and breathes. Moses Loplolly we have dickered with. All the Vales, except Eirene, once lived near us in the country. Even Mrs. Mallane we have seen, and Paul, with a minus sign or two and a plus sign or two, equals a not uncommon type of young man. But of these persons Mrs. Ames is not specially fond. Her heart goes out to goodness and truth, to pure manliness and dutifulness. She gives them form, the fairest she can conceive, and calls them a woman. She scorns pettiness, meanness, selfishness, deceit. She clothes these too with a body, and calls them a woman, and the one creation seems to us as impossible as the other. And De Peyster, on whom much loving labor has been expended, is a shadow of shadows. Again, the local coloring of Hilltop and Busydale could hardly be better. The whole episode of Harper's Ferry is thoroughly admirable, and we make no doubt that Mrs. Ames knew all these by heart. While we do not hesitate to say that in the observation of a long life in and near Boston we have seen nothing like the representative Beacon street drawingroom, nor the representative Maynards and Prescotts who inhabit it.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of the book is the episode of Harper's Ferry to which we have referred. Without doubt the most dramatic period of our national history is that comprised within the decade between 1859 and 1869. Neither novelist, poet, painter, nor dramatist can afford to ignore it. On the other hand, so to use it that it shall not deepen horror, hate, vindictiveness, the deep division between North and South which the war left, requires both marvelous skill and marvelous charity. These Mrs. Ames has brought to the task. Loyal in every fiber of her being and loving the Union, apparently, next to her God, she has yet told her story with such sweetness and pathos and large humanity that we cannot imagine blue coat or gray coat reading it without some access of pity and allowance for the other. Mrs. Ames never commits fine writing. occasional carelessness, her style is idiomatic, graceful, and clear. Her nature seems grave rather than joyous, and there are few touches of humor in her book. But those are so delightful that they make her niggardliness in this respect seem miserliness rather than poverty. Finally, we seldom come upon an American novel which is worth finding fault with. The sum of offense with most of them is that they exist at all. But Eirene has so much thorough excellence, aims so high and so nearly reaches its aim, is so healthful and vigorous, that we can pay it the high compliment of candid criticism. We could wish that it might be read by every young girl whom we know.

"An American Girl Abroad."

Save an

lady, who, being in London, felt a strong desire to see the famous reading-room of the British Museum. The friends with whom she was staying assured her that it could not be done, as the Museum was closed for a week, while her visit would last but three days. Thereupon she went off at once to the Museum, alone, unintroduced, and presented herself to the stern porter as an American lady with but few hours in London, when the gates flew open before her and she saw all that she desired.

Miss Trafton's sparkling little book makes this legend altogether probable, and even suggests her as the heroine thereof. At least she did fifty things quite as extraordinary and apparently as futile, with equally happy results. And the sign by which she too conquered was the Declaration of Independence. The adjective which qualifies the title-line seems to us clearly one of supererogation. Who but an American girl would propose to make the Grand Tour in three months or so, without male friend or courier to clear the way for her; ay, and do it, too, with inexhaustible enjoyment and much profit?

The route over which our American Girl passed was worn with travel as the steps to shrines. Not one new object, not one new face, not one phenomenal appearance did she encounter anywhere. And yet the book is as fresh as if it concerned the land of the lotus-caters, and much more lively. For however old the object of contemplation, this keen young Western mind thinks its own shrewd thoughts about it, and tells them with a child-like simplicity that is delightful.

Not speaking any continental tongue, she arrives in strange cities at midnight with a serene confidence that she shall somehow "manage," which of course she does. And it is evidently this good-natured reliance on the good-nature of the world which made it so agreeably civil to her. Her bright laugh rings out with such heartiness against her own ridiculousnesses, that it is quite impossible to join it. On the contrary, you so wholly approve of her whimsical walks and ways, that you close the book in the settled conviction that the only really satisfactory way to travel in Europe is in the character of the "Unprotected Female" who knows no language but her own.

Nannie and Our Boys (Congregational Publishing Society) does not escape all the vices of its class, but has so many redeeming virtues-among which are a sprightly style and a wholesome preachment of "pluck"-that we hope to see still better books from the same young and promising author.

A NEW edition, in one volume, royal Svo, has just appeared of Dr. Ezra M. Hunt's Bible Notes for Daily Readers (Scribner, Armstrong & Co.). This work has been found very useful by those in need of a concise yet comprehensive commentary, not polemical but containing "the pith and marrow of Biblical criticism." In its new form, it will be still better adapted to the purpose for which it was intended.

No. 2.

"Up in the morning's no' for me-up in the morning airly!'" chants the Jolly Man, as we roll from out the shadows of Harrisburg across the long bridge over the Susquehanna. "But I'm inclined to think it would be, if Dame Aurora (is that her name ?) would only make a habit of breaking the day in this glorious fashion."

"Perhaps she does," some one suggests. "Possibly; but I doubt it. Still, to tell the truth, I really can't say positively what her custom is. There's not much to encourage a sleepy man to leave a comfortable bed to see the sun rise over a lot of tin VOL. IV.-9

The entire party has crowded into the open section of the car to drink in the clear frosty morning air, and to see how the day promises; and everybody appears to be too intent on his personal sensations to give heed to the Jolly Man's inquiry.

"I saw some magnificent sunrises in Switzerland," the Traveled Man asserts at last. as though unwilling to be thought absolutely unfamiliar with the phenomenon now receiving our unaccustomed homage.

FAIRVIEW NAIL WORKS.

The sun, still lingering behind the eastern hills, sends his skirmishers,

"The red streamers that herald the dawn," slanting upward over the valley, touching with crimson the tops of the gray smokewreaths sent up by the early fires of the city, and flooding with warm light the summit of Kittatinny just risen into the day.

Down the river, where the sunbeams strike a lower level, the misty shores and islands seem floating in a sea of shimmering radiance, tinged with the faintest tint of rosecolor. The water is very low, and the stream, wasted in a vain endeavor to cover the broad channel it overflows in more abundant seasons, is less a river than a tissue of braiding streamlets woven around innumerable spaces of mud-stained rock. Between the level lines of the long railroadbridges, the ancient weather-beaten postbridge fords the river on rambling arches, pursuing the uneven tenor of its way with a delightful disregard of straight lines and all the other niceties of modern engineering. Beyond, the river, half hid by rising vapor and broken by numerous islands, stretches northward to where it pierces the double wall of Blue Ridge, and passes out of sight beyond the second sharp-cut mountain gap.

The moment the man of Alpine experience breaks the silence of our admiration, the rest take courage to speak, and at least a dozen sunrise reminiscences are immediately forthcoming. Not one but has seen the sun rise in beauty time and again; yet all agree that the present manifestation is peculiarly lovely, and possible only under a rare combination of circumstances.

A thousand conditions, visible and invisi

ble, conspire to make this morning unique to us-scenery, season, air, sky, easy mo tion, genial company, and, more than all else, a happy frame of mind; for after all Nature is what we make it, or as Coleridge says:

"We receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live."

We have set out determined to enjoy everything, and enjoyment follows as a matter of course. Still, absolute truth compels the admission that we are not all supremely satisfied. The Junior is a trifle sad. He has been a week from home. Our sudden change of programme upset his epistolary arrangements; and for three whole days he has not had a word from his wife.

"Letter for Junior," flashed over the wires as we passed through Harrisburg night before last.

"Forward it," was the eager response: but alas! it was forwarded to Philadelphia, and we left before its arrival.

"Send my letter to Harrisburg," was Junior's parting injunction on leaving the City of Brotherly Love. "It will come by the night mail," he said, "and I'll get it in the morning, sure."

Our early start has cheated him again. His joyful anticipations are blighted, and all the Quiet Man's sympathy, with the assurance that the precious missive will be brought on by the conductor of the early express, is insufficient to assuage his disappointment.

Slowly the country rises as we speed along; or, as it seems to us, the upper sea of light descends, creeping down the mountain sides and lighting up the valley, until it floods river and island, city and farm land with all the rich hues of Indian summer morning.

"Fairview Nail Works," the Executive announces as we rumble over the crooked Conodogwinet. No matter how charming the scenery-and the view here is well named fair-the Executive never suffers the attractions of nature to blind him to the work of man.

"This is one of the largest establishments of the kind in the country," he continues, finding an interested listener in the Traveled Man; and for the next five miles their conversation is loaded with figures and technicalities, and abounding in praise of those enterprising men who are planting centers of productive industry like this in every nook and corner of the State.

But the most inveterate worshiper of enterprise could not talk business in the face of the scene that bursts upon us as we halt on the fire-proof section of Dauphin bridge and look down the river. For once the Artist is forced to admit that a railroad bridge may be beautiful-even exquisitely beautiful.

Skirting the western shore of the river we have entered the Gap, crossed the gorge-like valley that separates Blue from Cove Mountain, or, as they are called on the other side, First and Second Mountain, and have struck diagonally across the stream in the face of the overhanging front of the latter.

Midway we stop and look out from the shadow into the morning land beyond the mountains. Just at the portal of the twilight region the slender bridge of the Pennsylvania Central, half enveloped and wholly glorified by swimming, sun-lit vapor, joins the dusky shore on the east with the illuminated western bluff. Like a web of golden gossamer it seems to float and flicker over the misty water, lifted up by the refracted sunbeams and suffused with glowing color. We know that it is made of massive timbers bolted with iron and sternly useful; but no effort of reason can straighten its waving lines or put strength into its lace-like beams and braces. It is transformed, transfigured, shorn of reality, unsubstantial as the mythic bridge of souls which spans the unseen gulf between the barbarian's gloomy present and the shining land of the hereafter.

Beneath us the river quarrels with its rocky bed, impatient of the obstructions which keep it back from the broad, bright valley to which it is hastening. Up stream the river, crowded with islands, makes a

sharp curve westward to where it breaks through the wall of Peter's mountain,-the fourth of the terrestrial waves arrested in their surge against the flank of the higher Alleghanies.

The scenery in the curious trough-like valley which we enter on passing Dauphin, is peculiarly interesting, and, to those unfamiliar with mountain scenery, grand. Toward the north-east we look up attenuated grooves between the ridges which the river crosses nearly at right angles. Through each of these grooves-too narrow to be called valleys, too softly curved to be ravines-runs a slender, branchless stream; and now and then, as between the ridges numbered two and three, a line of railroad serves as an outlet to the wealth of the coal-fields among the mountains. West of the river is the cove, a curious cul de sac inclosed by an angle of the mountain ridge-one of those singular flexures which give the characteristic zig-zag line to the western edge of this portion of the Pennsylvania mountain system. The river is so shallow and clear that we can easily trace the colored lines of sandstone and shale connecting the strata that form the opposing bluffs.

As we are rounding the point of Peter's Mountain, from whose foot has been carved a passage-way for the railroad and the Pennsylvania canal, the Executive points out the extensive Duncannon iron-works, whose smoke-clouds curl up from under the picturesque wall of the opposite shore. Beyond we see the Juniata, crossed by the piers of a ruined bridge. A still longer bridge joins our shore with Duncan's Island, lying at the junction of the two streams.