snatched the Bishop, the conductor helped out Talboys, and half a dozen hands laid hold of Demming. He heard the wild cheer that greeted them; he heard another cheer for the men with the water, just in sight; but he heard no more, for as they pulled him down a dozen fiery pincers seemed tearing at his leg, and he fainted dead away.

The Bishop's daughter sat in her room, making a very pretty picture, with her white hands clasped on her knee and her soft eyes uplifted. She looked sad enough to please a pre-Raphaelite of sentiment. Yet her father, whom this morning she would have declared she loved better than any one in the world, had just been saved from a frightful death. She knew the story of his deliverance. At last she felt that most unexpected thrill of admiration for Talboys; but Talboys had vanished. He was gone, it was all ended, and she owned to herself that she was wretched. Her father was with Demming and the doctors. The poor vagabond must hobble through life on one leg, hence forward. "If he lived," the doctor had said, making even his existence as a cripple problematic. Poor Demming, who had flung away his life to save her father from suffering, a needless, useless sacrifice, as it proved, but touching Louise the more because of its very failure!

At this stage in her thoughts, she heard Sam, the waiter, knocking softly, outside. Her first question was about Demming. "The operation 's ovah, miss, an' Mr. Demming he 's sinkin'," answered Sam, giving the sick man a title he had never accorded him before, “an' he axes if you'd be so kin''s to step in an' speak to him; he 's powerful anxious to see you."

Silently Louise rose and followed the mulatto. They had carried Demming to the hotel: it was the nearest place, and the Bishop wished it. His wife had

been sent for, and was with him. Her timid, tear-stained face was the first object that met Louise's eye. She sat in a rocking-chair close to the bed, and, by sheer force of habit, was unconsciously rocking to and fro, while she brushed the tears from her eyes. Demming's white face and tangle of iron-gray hair lay on the pillow near her.

He smiled feebly, seeing Louise. She did not know anything better to do than to take his hand, the tears brightening her soft eyes. "Laws," said Demming, "don' do thet. I ain't wuth it. Look

a yere, I got sun'thin' ter say ter you. An' you must n't min', 'cause I mean well. You know 'bout - yes'day mahnin'. Mabbe you done what you done not knowin' yo' own min', - laws, thet's jes girls, an' I wants you ter know jes what kin' o' feller he is. You know he saved yo' pa, but you don' know, mabbe, thet he did n't know 't was the Bishop till he 'd jump down in thet thar flamin' pit o' hell, as 't were, an' fished him out. He done it jes 'cause he 'd thet pluck in him, an' - don' you go fer ter chippin' in, Cunnel. I'm a dyin' man, an' don' you forget it! Thar he is, miss, hidin' like behin' the bed."

Louise during this speech had grown red to the roots of her hair. She looked up into Talboys' face. He had stepped forward. His usual composure had quite left him, so that he made a pitiful picture of embarrassment, not helped by crumpled linen and a borrowed coat a world too large for him. "It's just a whim of his," he whispered hurriedly; "he wanted me to stay. I did n't know -I did n't understand! For God's sake, don't suppose I meant to take such an advantage of the situation! I am going directly. I shall leave Aiken tonight."

It was only the strain on her nerves, but Louise felt the oddest desire to laugh. The elegant Martin cut such a very droll figure as a hero. Then her eye fell on Demming's eager face, and a sud

den revulsion of feeling, a sudden keen realization of the tragedy that Martin had averted, brought the tears back to her eyes. Her beautiful head dropped. "Why do you go- now?" said she. "Hev you uns made it up, yet?" murmured Demming's faint voice.

"Yes," Talboys answered, "I think we have, and — I thank you, Demming." The vagabond waved his hand with a feeble assumption of his familiar gesture. "Yo' a square man, Cunnel. I allus set a heap by you, though I did n't let on. An' she's a right peart young lady. I'm glad yo' gwine ter be so happy. Laws, I kind o' wish I wuz to see it, even on a wooden leg". The woman at his side began to sob. “Thar, thar, Alwynda, don' take on so; cyan't be helped. You mus' 'scuse her, gen'lemen; she so petted on me she jes cyan't hole in!"

"Demming," said the Bishop, "my poor friend, the time is short; is there anything you want me to do?" Demming's dull eyes sparkled with a glimmer of the old humor.

"Well, Bishop, ef you don' min', I'd like you ter conduc' the fun'al services. Reckon they'll be a genuwine co'pse this yere time, fo' suah. An', Bishop, you'll kind o' look a'ter Alwynda; see she gets her coffee an' terbacco all right. An' I wants ter 'sure you all again thet them thar chickens wuz the fust an' ony thing I evah laid han's on t' want mine. Thet's the solemn truf; ain't it, Alwynda?"

The poor woman could only rock herself in the chair, and sob, "Yes, 't is. An' he's been a good husband to me. I've allus hed the bes' uv everything! Oh, Lordy, 'pears 's though I cyan't bear it, nohow!"

Louise put her hand gently on the thin shoulder, saying, "I will see that she never wants anything we can give,

Demming; and we will try to comfort her."

The cracker looked wistfully from her fresh, young face to the worn face below. "She wuz 's peart an' purty 's you, miss, w'en I fust struck up with 'er," said he slowly. "Our little gal wuz her very image. Alwynda,” in a singularly soft, almost diffident tone, "don' take on so; mabbe I'm gwine fer ter see 'er again. 'T won't do no harm ter think so, onyhow," he added, with a glance at Talboys, as though sure there of comprehension.

Then the Bishop spoke, solemnly, though with sympathy, urging the dying man, whose worldly affairs were settled, to repent of his sins and prepare for eternity. "Shall I pray for you, Demming?" he said in conclusion.

"Jes as you please, Bishop," answered Demming, and he tried to wave his hand. "I ain't noways partickler. I reckon God a'mighty knows I'd be th' same ole Demming ef I could get up, an' I don' mean ter make no purtenses. But mabbe it'll cheer up th' ole 'ooman a bit. So you begin, an' I'll bring in an Amen whenever it's wanted!"

So speaking, Demming closed his eyes wearily, and the Bishop knelt by the bedside. Talboys and Louise left them, thus. After a while, the wife stretched forth her toil-worn hand and took her husband's. She thought she was aware of a weak pressure. But when the prayer ended there came no Amen. Demming was gone where prayer may only faintly follow; nor could the Bishop ever decide how far his vagabond had joined in his petitions. Such doubts, however, did not prevent his cherishing an assured hope that the man who died for him was safe, forever. The Bishop's theology, like that of most of us, yielded, sometimes, to the demands of the occasion.

Octave Thanet.

Ernest

WHEN the mortal remains of Ivan Turgénieff were about to be transported from Paris for interment in his own country, a short commemorative service was held at the Gare du Nord. Renan and Edmond About, standing beside the train in which his coffin had been placed, bade farewell in the name of the French people to the illustrious stranger who for so many years had been their honored and grateful guest. M. Renan made a beautiful speech, and M. About a very clever one, and each of them characterized with ingenuity the genius and the moral nature of the most touching of writers, the most lovable of men. "Turgénieff," said M. "Turgénieff,” said M. Renan, "received by the mysterious decree which marks out human vocations the gift which is noble beyond all others: he was born essentially impersonal." The passage is so eloquent that I shall repeat the whole of it: "His conscience was not that of an individual to whom nature had been more or less generous; it was in some sort the conscience of a people. Before he was born he had lived for thousands of years; infinite successions of reveries had amassed themselves in the bottom of his heart. No man has been as much as he the incarnation of a whole race; generations of ancestors, lost in the sleep of centuries, speechless, came through him to life and utterance."

I quote these lines for the pleasure of quoting them; for while I see what M. Renan means by calling Turgénieff impersonal, it has been my wish to devote to his delightful memory a few pages written under the impression of his personal character. He seems to us impersonal, because it is from his writings almost alone that we of English, French, and German speech have derived our notions even yet, I fear, rather meagre

and erroneous His genius for us is the Slav genius; his voice the voice of those vaguely imagined multitudes whom we think of more and more to-day as waiting their turn, in the arena of civilization, in the gray expanses of the North. There is much in his writings to encourage this view, and it is certain that he interpreted with wonderful vividness the temperament of his fellow-countrymen. Cosmopolite that he had become by the force of circumstances, his roots had never been loosened in his native soil. The ignorance with regard to Russia and the Russians which he found in abundance in the rest of Europe - and not least in the country he inhabited for ten years before his death-had indeed the effect, to a certain degree, to throw him back upon the deep feelings that so many of his companions were unable to share with him, the memories of his early years, the sense of wide Russian horizons, the joy and pride of his mothertongue. In the collection of short pieces, so deeply interesting, written during the last few years of his life, and translated into German under the name of Senilia, I find a passage it is the last in the little book — which illustrates perfectly this reversionary impulse: "In days of doubt, in days of anxious thought on the destiny of my native land, thou alone art my support and my staff, O great, powerful, Russian tongue, truthful and free! If it were not for thee, how should man not despair at the sight of what is going on at home? But it is inconceivable that such a language has not been given to a great people." This national, home-loving note pervades his productions, though it is between the lines, as it were, that we must listen for it. None the less does it remain true that he was a very definite individual.

of the Russian people.

He was not a simple conduit or mouthpiece; the inspiration was his own as well as the voice. He was a person, in other words, of the most substantial kind, and those who had the happiness to know him have no difficulty to-day in thinking of him as a detached and responsible figure. This pleasure, for the writer of these lines, was as great as the pleasure of reading the admirable tales into which he put such a world of life and feeling; it was perhaps even greater, for it was not only with the pen that nature had given Turgénieff the power to express himself. He was the richest, the most delightful, of talkers, and his face, his person, his temper, the thoroughness with which he had been equipped for human intercourse, make in the memory of his friends an image which is completed, but not thrown into the shade, by his literary distinction. The whole image is touched with sadness: partly because the element of melancholy in his nature was deep and constant readers of his novels have no need to be told of that; and partly because, during the last years of his life, he had been condemned to suffer atrociously. Intolerable pain had been his portion for many months before he died; his end was not serene and propitious, but dark and almost violent. But of brightness, of the faculty of enjoyment, he had also the large allowance usually made to first-rate men, and he was a singularly complete human being. I had greatly admired his writings before I had the fortune to make his acquaintance, and this privilege, when it presented itself, was highly illuminating. The man and the writer together occupied from that moment a very high place in my affections. Some time before knowing him I committed to print certain reflections which his tales had led me to make; and I may perhaps, therefore, without impropriety give them a supplement which shall have a more vivifying reference. It is almost irresistible to

attempt to say, from one's own point of view, what manner of man he was.

It was in consequence of the article I just mentioned that I found reason to meet him, in Paris, where he was then living, in 1875. I shall never forget the impression he made upon me at that first interview. I found him adorable; I could scarcely believe that he would prove that any man could prove on nearer acquaintance as delightful as that. Nearer acquaintance only confirmed my hope, and he remained the most approachable, the most practicable, the least precarious, man of genius it has been my fortune to meet. He was so simple, so natural, so modest, so destitute of personal pretension and of what is called the consciousness of powers, that one almost doubted at moments whether he were a man of genius, after all. Everything good and fruitful lay near to him; he was interested in everything; and he was absolutely without that eagerness of self-reference which sometimes accompanies great, and even small, reputations. He had not a particle of vanity; nothing whatever of the air of having a part to play, or a reputation to keep up. His humor exercised itself as freely upon himself as upon other subjects, and he told stories at his own expense with a sweetness of hilarity which made his peculiarities really sacred in the eyes of a friend. I remember vividly the smile and tone of voice with which he once repeated to me a figurative epithet which Gustave Flaubert (of whom he was extremely fond) had applied to him—an epithet intended to characterize a certain expansive softness, a comprehensive indecision, which pervaded his nature, just as it pervades so many of the characters he has described. He enjoyed Flaubert's use of this term, good-naturedly opprobrious, more even than Flaubert himself, and recognized perfectly the element of truth in it. He was natural to an extraordinary degree; I

do not think I have ever seen his match in this respect, certainly not among people who bear, as he did, at the same time the stamp of the highest cultivation. Like all men of a large pattern, he was composed of many different elements; and what was always striking in him was the mixture of simplicity with the fruit of the most various observation. In the little article in which I had attempted to express my admiration for his works, I had been moved to say of him that he had the aristocratic temperament; a remark which, in the light of further knowledge, seemed to me singularly inane. He was not subject to any definition of that sort, and to say that he was democratic would be (though his political ideal was a democracy) to give an equally superficial account of him. He felt and understood the opposite sides of life; he was imaginative, humorous, ironical. He had not in his mind a grain of prejudice as large as the point of a needle, and people (there are many) who think this a defect would have missed it immensely in Ivan Sergeïevitch. Our Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, moralistic, conventional standards were far away from him, and he judged things with a freedom and spontaneity in which I found a perpetual refreshment. His sense of beauty, his love of truth and right, were the foundation of his nature; but half the charm of conversation with him was that one breathed an air in which cant phrases and arbitrary measurements simply sounded ridiculous.

I may add that it was not because I had written a laudatory article about his books that he gave me a friendly welcome; for in the first place my article could have very little importance for him, and in the second it had never been either his habit or his hope to bask in the light of criticism. Supremely mod est as he was, I think he attached no great weight to what might happen to be said about him; for he felt that he

was destined to encounter a very small amount of intelligent appreciation, especially in foreign countries. I never heard him even allude to any judgment which might have been passed upon his productions in England. In France he knew that he was read very moderately; the "demand" for his volumes was small, and he had no illusions whatever on the subject of his popularity. He had heard with pleasure that several different persons in the United States were impatient for everything that might come from his pen; but I think he was never convinced, as one or two of the more zealous of these persons had endeavored to convince him, that he could boast of a "public" in America. He gave me the impression of thinking of criticism as most serious workers think of it-that it is the amusement, the exercise, the subsistence, of the critic (and, so far as this goes, of immense use); but that, though it may often concern other readers, it does not much concern the artist himself. In comparison with all those things which the production of a considered work forces the artist little by little to say to himself, the remarks of the critic are vague and of the moment; and yet, owing to the large publicity of the proceeding, they have a power to irritate or discourage which is quite out of proportion to their use to the person criticised. It was not, moreover (this is a very frank allusion), on account of any esteem which he accorded to my own productions (I used regularly to send them to him) that I found him so agreeable, for to the best of my belief he was unable to read them. As regards one of the first that I had offered him, he wrote me a little note, to tell me that a distinguished friend, who was his constant companion, had read three or four chapters aloud to him the evening before, and that one of them was written de main de maître ! This gave me great pleasure, but it was my first and last pleasure of the kind.