nence, and carried his fame across the Atlantic. So popular did he become in England, that in 1871 and 1872, two London book-sellers republished his works and placed them.

on sale.

His most popular writings are East and West, That Heathen Chinee, Truthful James, Luck of Roaring Camp, and a prose work, Condensed Novels, being a travesty of some popular works of fiction. Later, in 1876, appeared Gabriel Conroy, his first complete novel, in the regular three-volume shape.

Critics find greater faults in this than in his earlier sketches. His great reputation was won by his poems and sketches descriptive of life among the California miners. These are mostly in the peculiar dialect of the miners, and they show the romance and the roughness, the crime and the tenderness, of the peculiar phase of American life in the mines

of the west.

His sketches command universal admiration, and by common consent he is ranked among the most popular of living writers. At present he resides in New York.

Entertaining Her Big Sister's Beau.

Y sister'll be down in a minute, and says you're to

wait, if you please,

And says I might stay till she came if I'd promise her never

to tease,

Nor speak till you spoke to me first. But that's nonsense, for how would you know

What she told me to say if I didn't? Don't you really and truly think so?

"And then you'd feel strange here alone! And you wouldn't know just where to sit;

For that chair isn't strong on its legs, and we never use it a

bit.

We keep it to match with the sofa. But Jack says it would be

like you

To flop yourself right down upon it and knock out the very

last screw.

"S'pose you try! I won't tell. You're afraid to-Oh, you're afraid

they would think it was mean?

Well, then, there's the album-that's pretty, if you're sure that your fingers are clean.

For sister says sometimes I daub it, but she only says that when she's cross.

There's her picture. You know it! It's like her; but she aint as good-looking, of course!

"This is ME. It's the best of 'm all. Now, tell me, you'd never have thought

That once I was little as that? It's the only one that could be

bought

For that was the message to pa from the photograph man

where I sat

That he wouldn't print off any more till he first got his money

for that.

"What? Maybe you're tired of waiting? Why, often she's longer

than this;

There's all her back hair to do up, and all of her front curls to

friz.

But it's nice to be sitting here talking like grown people, just you and me;

Do you think you'll be coming here often? Oh, do! But don't

come like Tom Lee.

"Tom Lee? Her last beau. Why, my goodness! He used to be here day and night,

Till the folks thought he'd be her husband; and Jack says that gave him a fright.