marked, "a little dispiriting for ordinary occasions, but dreadful capable in emergencies. The country suffered a great loss when she died, for there don't seem to be no one to replace her. Sarah Lombard might do as well if she was as reliable. We always knew when we sent for Ann that she'd come if she could crawl and wasn't helping some other afflicted family. But Sarah is peculiar. She has spells when she won't stir out for nobody; 'wants to realize she's got a home of her own and isn't beholden to nobody,' she says. I hope to goodness she hasn't got one of them attacks to-day; for if she has, the promise she made a week ago to help Emma out while I'm in Dover won't count for nothing!"

"Oh, well, I guess there's no cause for you to worry over that," said Mr. Brisbane soothingly. He had noticed the tone of alarm in the woman's voice. "I saw Sarah yesterday at the Corner post office, and she seemed real smart and chipper. She never has them cranky notions except when she's a little under the weather."

Mrs. Morse was too much crushed by the fear of such a catastrophe added suddenly to the burden of homesickness that was weighing more heavily each moment to make any reply to this attempt at reassurance. She acknowledged to herself that it was absurd to let the thought of Sarah's occasional whims alarm her now that she was actually started on her pleasure trip, while in the week since the agreement had been made she had felt no uneasiness. When she was in the midst of her preparations for this visit, if it had been suggested that Sarah might fail her, the knowledge that her daughter was quite capable of managing the household affairs unaided would have prevented any change in her plans. She had said more than once, "It isn't really necessary to have any one come to help Emma. I shall leave things so the work won't be much, and if

anybody should be took sick Emma has lots of common sense,- -as much as Sarah has, I honestly believe, and the neighbors are all so kind they'd help her out till I could get home."

The hill that rose above the watering-place was long and steep; the road zigzagged up its wooded sides, increasing the distance, but lightening the labor of the ascent. The stage horses, accustomed to occasional halts during the long pull, today needed particular attention_to keep them steadily at their work. The time lost in blackberrying must be made up here, or the postmistress at East Fairlee would be wondering and exclaiming over the tardy appearance of the mail carrier; and there was danger even of a late arrival at the end of the route in Dover.

The progress was so slow that Mr. Brisbane's fund of patience ran very low; but to the woman sitting behind him the trees and bushes beside the road were rushing past with unexampled swiftness. Every step placed between her and Fairlee village to her excited fancy seemed at the very least a mile. She had ceased to think and to reason with herself, she simply endured; her misery was too intense for conscious thought. As they neared the crest of the hill she began to gather her bundles into a compact pile at the end of her seat; the big black valise that held the more bulky of her belongings she wedged securely among the mail bags upon the floor of the wagon. She hardly knew what she was planning to do, but she felt the absolute necessity for some action that would bring relief.

The horses pulled their load over the last water-bar, and on the summit were at last allowed to stop for a brief rest. Mr. Brisbane turned himself about and pointed with his whip in the direction from which they had

come.

"There is the last we shall see of Fairlee to-day. When we go down this hill it shuts out everything behind it. It's the hardest hill on mv

line; and I always feel as if I was most through to Dover when I get to the top here. I always said Fairlee was the prettiest village in this part of the state. Makes a regular picture, don't it? It's a good three miles off, but it don't look that far."

Mrs. Morse gazed at the distant village as if she thought it her last earthly glimpse of home. There was not much to see,-two church spires, a mass of trees, and a roof or two visible through rifts in the greenery. Then she rose from her seat and before the bewildered eyes of the stage driver clambered painfully over the wagon box to the wheel and dropped heavily to the ground. Without a word of explanation she reached up and gathered into her arms the bundles she had piled together on the end of the wagon seat,, and would have started on her return journey in this speechless manner; but the man found his voice to call after her before she had taken many steps.

"Well, for the land's sake, Mrs. Morse, whatever are you going to do! I should most think you was crazy if I didn't know you had a good head on vour shoulders."

"I'm going back home," she declared. "I'm frightened most to death for fear Sarah Lombard's got one of her spells to-dav. Anyway I feel it borne in on me that something dreadful is going to happen unless I can get home. I never felt that way before, and I'm not going to fly in the face of Providence when I'm warned so powerfully. I'll carry my small

traps, and you can bring back my bag when you come through Fairlee."

The day was very warm, and Mrs. Morse was a woman of ponderous frame. She was not accustomed to outdoor exercise; a few steps along the village street ordinarily rendered. her breathless; but she set out on the three miles' tramp through the deep sand of the country road as happily as if it were purely a pleasure excursion.-as, in fact, it was.

The suffocating load of misery was gone, now that she was started for Fairlee. Her spirits were as light as air and her body had lost the weariness that age and an overbundance of flesh had given it. She did not care in the least for the astonishment of her family when they should see her plodding back ignominiously, nor for the teasing she would have to endure for the rest of her life from her husband, who might be relied upon to make the most of this opportunity for laughing at his sensible wife. The one thing in all the world which she wanted she would attain before nightfall; she would be once more in the Morse kitchen. She trudged cheerfully along, and Mr. Brisbane sat and watched her, too completely dazed to protest, expostulate or even exclaim. She went around a turn in the road, and only a thin cloud of dust curling above the roadside bushes marked her heavy-footed progress. Then the stage driver pursed up his lips as if for a whistle, though no sound came. gathered up the reins, and continued his journey to Dover.

To meet the mist;

HOUGH my personal acquaintance with Francis Parkman only began in the autumn of 1869, I had known him some years earlier by correspondence, he having asked me to secure for him some data regarding the Acadians of New Brunswick. We met at the inauguration of Charles W. Eliot as president of Harvard University, on the nineteenth of October. The function had attracted many of the most distinguished literary and scientific men of this country. Among the strong personalities present, none, to my mind, was more striking than that of the historian of France in the New World. His figure, tall and commanding, was spare. Lameness, which often interrupted his walks, had given him a slight stoop. face was clean shaven and intellectual, and no one could look upon his brow without feeling impressed by its high mental character and energy. He was somewhat shy, and his natural reserve, which strangers sometimes

His

mistook for hauteur, disappeared as acquaintance ripened. He lived in summer at his beautiful home on the shore of Jamaica Pond, where he had a study, and cultivated to perfection the rose and the lily, in which occupation he took keen delight. His estate was within easy distance of the Motley mansion, while his winter home was in Chestnut Street, Boston, not far from the residence of Prescott, on Beacon Street. Here he lived with his sister.

Francis Parkman could boast of a long line of ancestors distinguished in scholarship and social position. His great-grandfather was the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, a Congregational minister of eminence in his day, and a Harvard man whose name stood high on the rolls of the college, from which hall of learning he was graduated in 1754. His grandfather, Samuel Parkman, was a famous merchant of Boston, and his father, the Rev. Francis Parkman, was a Unitarian minister of prominence, an author of repute, and the founder of the Parkman Professorship in the Cambridge Theological

School. On his mother's side he was descended from the Rev. John Cotton. Young Parkman was born in Boston on the twenty-third of September, 1823. He was carefully educated, and went to Harvard in 1840. His relatives designed him for the law, and he took up that study for two years, but, tiring of it, he sought recreation in travel. From his youth he was a fond lover of nature and outdoor life. He read much about the Indian tribes of the great West, whose lives proved such a fascination for him that he resolved to live among them for a time, and so become acquainted with their customs and methods. Physically he was frail, and a fall in the gymnasium obliged him to relinquish his studies for a while. He was sent to Europe, where he visited Gibraltar and Malta and other points along the Mediterranean, but returned home in season to be present at the closing exercises of his college class.

time,

In 1846 Parkman joined his cousin, Quincy Adams Shaw, and the two friends started off on their memorable journey across the plains, the story of which is so well set down in the picturesque "Oregon Trail," dedicated to his kinsman, "the comrade of a summer, the friend of a lifetime." This was our author's first book, and its success encouraged him to plan out his brilliant series of historical works, which began with "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," and closed with "A HalfCentury of Conflict." The "Oregon Trail" was first published as a series. of papers of travel, in the old Knickerbocker Magazine, then in the skilful hands of Lewis Gaylord Clark. The author and his friend lived among the red men of the prairie and Rocky Mountains, hunted with them, feasted with them at their great feasts, and experienced the same hardships and trials which their hosts endured. All these things were undergone that Parkman might familiarize himself with the habits and characteristics of the people whom he meant to present as they really existed, with

the pen of one who had formed part of their inner life and movement. He saw the Sioux when they still killed their game with the bow and arrow, and tells of the terrific force of that weapon, when he witnessed the flight of an arrow clean through a buffalo. Some of the Ogillallah warriors had begun to use guns, but not all the tribes had yet been armed with them.

Though the "Conspiracy of Pontiac" is Parkman's first contribution to the history of the Indians and halfbreeds of the West, the series proper, which deals with the wars of the English and French and red men, and treats of France and England in North America, begins with "The Pioneers of France in the New World." "Pontiac," which came first, may be read as a sequel to the collection.

To the preparation of his histories, which are marked by an eloquent and graceful style and strict faithfulness to facts, Parkman devoted an industry, care and thoroughness which leave unquestioned the statements put forward. We know of the vastness of his task, and the difficulties under which he worked for many years. He neglected nothing. He visited all the scenes which his luminous pen so admirably describes, not once or twice, but many times. The archives of France, England, Russia and Canada. vielded their treasures to him. Every known letter, journal, report and despatch which bore, even in the remotest way, upon his subject were copied and sent to him, until at the end of his work he found himself possessed of no fewer than 3,400 manuscript pages, which he had bound up in several large volumes. Of course, all printed books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, maps, plans and engravings which could throw light on his theme passed the ordeal of his industrious scrutiny. It has been said that his Puritanism was strong; but he never allowed any spirit of prejudice to warp his judgment, or to destroy the value

of his conclusions. He has his critics, prominent among whom is the Abbé Casgrain, whose notes are entitled to respect; but, as Parkman remarks in a letter to the present writer, the learned Abbé, albeit a scholarly and estimable man, is by nature too excitable and effeminate to discuss in soberness the cold facts of history, particularly when his feelings, nationality and religion are concerned. He adds in a letter now before me, of August 21, 1874: "I am afraid my Canadian

friends will not like the new book ("The Old Régime'). In writing. I put out of mind all considerations but the evidence before me, which in this case is not always favorable to Canadian society in the old time." He was right; the book produced much comment and attack, and several old friendships among the French-Canadians were estranged. But Parkman, true to his spirit of fairness and independence as a historian, preferred to lose a friend or two rather than pervert facts and present opinions which were erroneous and misleading. Perhaps his thoroughness in getting at the truth cannot be better shown than by quoting from his letters. On the twentieth of January, 1870, he wrote to the writer, then living in St. John, New Brunswick: "I have determined to write, as the next volume of my series, an account of La Tour and d'Aunay, postponing Count Frontenac to another time. So my subject is strictly Acadian, at least, if we adopt the broader signification of the name Acadia. You spoke of documents relating to La Tour. Of what nature are they, and where are they preserved? I have a score or more letters, patents, reports, etc., relating to him, found in the French archives (some of which are among the copies made for the Canadian government). There are also some in the State House here (Boston). Besides these, there are those printed in the Memoirs des Commissairies, together with those in Harvard and Hutchinson, and the statements of Winthrop, Denys, Hub

bard, etc. Now there ought to be more at Annapolis and at St. John. Can you give me any information about them?"

I at once set about making inquiries in all directions, and in my reply named some printed books which bore on the subject then in Mr. Parkman's mind. On the twenty-fourth of February, he wrote from Boston: "I have all the published books you mention; but the volume of manuscripts entitled 'Acadia' may contain something very much to the purpose. It probably will not be necessary to copy all in them relating to La Tour and d'Aunay, as many of the papers may prove to be duplicates of those which I have already. The best way will be to have a list, with titles and dates, of such letters and documents as touch the subject, made by some competent person. All papers on Acadia between the years 1628 and 1660 may be included in the list. This will simplify the work. Please have this done at my expense, and the list sent to me. I will then check off such papers as I do not possess, and request you to get them copied. This plan will save both trouble and expense.

"It seems more than likely that Mr. Calnek* is on the track of something valuable. I am well aware that La Tour had no establishment at Port Royal, but d'Aunay had; in fact, his headquarters were there, but, for the reason mentioned in my last, I do not think that anything will turn up there. I shall look with great interest for the results of an inquiry among the descendants of La Tour. One of them, I believe it was one of the d'Entrements, had formerly in his possession a very curious paper, the marriage contract between La Tour and d'Aunay's widow. This has been published by the Quebec Literary and Historical Society, but there may be more, and I should like especially to get a copy of that will. Let me. in conclusion, thank you most cordially for your verv

*W. Arthur Calnek, of Nova Scotia, author of several historical sketches, notably "Port Roval, Its Graves," in Stewart's Quarterly, St. John, N. B., 1871-2.