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grave that had proved too small for her wandering restless spirit. On that day, cold. and with a drizzling, chilling rain, the small cortesze passed through the gate, a man walking behind, with head bent and eyes cast on the ground. his face calm, but chill Forty yen: had passed since the oaken door creaked on its hinges to admit the mas- ter and his fair young bride ; and a year 13- ter, it had closed on her as they bore her away to sleep in the churchyard. to the grave that had‘ proved too gmall for her In that old garden. paid the Villagers, a lady in a white mantle used to walk among the trees. and look with yearning glance to- wards the windows of the old house. There I have waited for her. but she never came ; for. through habit. I have fallen into he- lieving the stories I hear. Perhaps the sun- shine frightened her away; perhaps. from long living in the shades, her eyes had grown too weak to bear the light ; perhapi she cared not that strangers should share her grief, and wished to mourn there alone with the darkness for her friend and the winds sighing comfort to her among the trees. “Whatever the reason was, I never met her face to face in that gloomy hollow. Yet, although she was so fair and young, the older villagers could not tell her tale without ashudder ; and though the lads and lessee laughed aloud. yet it was a wavering uncertain laugh, which died on their lips, and left a silence all the more profound. Nor are my rambles unromantic, though the scenes are no longer strange. Every house and farm has become familiar to me. I have seen a generation or two of cow boys de- velop into ploughmen, wed themselves to rosy dairymaids, and go their ways. I have beguiled idle hours in weaving webs o fancy round their married lives, listening for. the merry laughter of children in their co:- tages, and watching tor the glad light of love on manya mother’s face. And as with men and women so with things. The old castle with its turreted walls and secret passages has furnished me much food {or thought. I have recalled in fancy the noble men and fair women who used to tread its halls, their omrtly, gallint ways, their feasts and tournaments : and as I stand in the chamb‘ ers, girt with gray stone and canopies by heaven. I can see the coats of ma.l still on the Walls, and hear through the mist ot years the voice of some gay warrior recount ing his triumphs in the field. And many a story, too, have I heard from the rustic people about the whole gray house which stands in the hollow among the trees. Y u see, I am old enough to pat the com. lv maidens on the shoulder without exciting the ire of their brawny 10mm, and to chat, too, with impunity to the buxom matrons in the cottages while their husbands sit smoking by the fireside. And thus it was that I heard the story of the Old House in the Hollow. 1 had often wondered if it did not contain a secret, so silent was it, so forbidding in as‘ peat, with its old porch black with age, and its windows stained and weather beaten. I: looked so grim, that I used to think it. too, must have witnessed deeds of blood, and taken the best way to avoid detection by standing for evermore in gloomy silence. It stood among thick lolisge, so thick, that even on a summer day but a stray sunbeam or two rested on its blackened walls, wa- vering and timorous, as if scared at their bravery in venturing so far. The (Millage road from the gate to the door had faded out of sight, and there was nothing around but grass neavy and dark-coloured, with the weeds that grew among it. The woman in the cottage not far off was glad enough togivs me the key of the rusty iron gate which admitted to the grounds, and there I used to Wander more from curiosity than pleasure. But Ialways felt morbid under the old trees ; and the grass, too, was thick and rank. that it was like walking over de- serted graves. Then think how charitable she is, how _Ilow to return an insult. how cheat-fully she been an affront. I often thinkâ€"though, of course, it is but the vagary of an all dream erâ€"that those who build up masses of brick sud mortar would be well repaid it nature left I sterile belt round their work. a belt gray.and cold as their own walls. But no .' She takes no such revenge as this. Long before the city smoke has mingled with the clouds, or the hum of city life died away, we come on ,patches of gnen, smiling us a. welcome ; on .rees. too, sprouting term in beauty, or draped with leave and flowers nodding to us in a. grave and stately way, as if to show that they at least has: no grudge, and are prepared to be mendly in spite of all rebufl's. Ruminating thus. many a lesson have I learned 0n charity and forgiveness. Yes: I am old now, and obilly sometimes at night when the fire gets low, wearing a. great cant even on the summer days, and shivering often when the zephyrs fan my face. But I am kept young by my love ior nature; I Woo her as amorously as ever maid was wooed by swam, and she is not afraid to pressher rosy lips to mine, yellow Ind withered as they are, and to twine her lovely arms round my neck. I 10ve her for her hopefulness. for her inexhaustible store of cum. Everywhere with love she re buzes poor mortals for sitting down sad with folded hands, and with is glad voice bids them be up and doing. She Is irrepressible. You may crush her down with stony hand and plaster over every vestige of her beauty, and then say to yourself. in pride of heart. ‘I have made a city, a place for commerce and traffic, and plessure and sorrow ; ” and, yet, turn your back for an instant, lo I a little blade of grass comes up betwaen the stones of the causeway and laughs in your very face. We may build our houses up story upon story, with the dingy attic at the top, for women‘s hearts to break in, and the squalid court beneath in which little children may get their first taint of sin; but a gleam oI sunshine will day after day work its way down to the very centre of the filth and squalidness. and a rose will bud and bloom In some poor man‘s window. :blushing back with pleasure into the face of its kindly keeper. I have a. leisure hour to spend now and then, and I spend it in rambling round the the city where I dwell. Perhaps some of you may think this is poor enjoyment, but it does not seem so to me. True. wereI onng and rich, I might seek my pleasures uther afieldâ€"on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean, or in the gay gardens of France. 1 might bask more m the smile of gentle demes. forgetting .my loneliness, as one forgets in the sunshine that only a mo- ment before the sky hung black with clouds. But I am neither young nor rich ; and even if I were, it seems to me that no rises in the world could ever be so dear as those hues and meadows I love so Well A NAMELESS ROMANCE, wouli be thrown outside power. Every one of th enter the orbit of the a; course, return tomâ€"[PI If, about 200 years ago, a witness had s‘ated that he had seen a witch at midnight riding through the air on a hroomstick, he would have been believed ,- but if he had stated that he had heard a loud explosion, and found a large hole in the ground. and, upon thrusting his hand in, he had found a atoms which was warm, his veracity would have been doubted. Meteors must have tall. en in olden times, but it is only in letter days that those cases have been reported, Until 1749 it was the belief that meteors were visitations from God. A Danish as- !ronomer was the first to write on the sub- ject. Pallas found a meteor which the form- er exsmined, and recognized its true char scter.being a comp isition of iron and nickel. I] 1883 a large snowcr fell in Normandy. which was of meteoric origin. A Hindoo claimed that a meteor followed him for two hours before it tell to the earth. The most celebrated one fell in 1492. in Alsace, and it has hung for three centuries in a cathedral. It weighed 230 pounds, and fell with the sound of a slap o‘ thunder. It penetrated the earth six feet The best known meteor is one of 1874,whioh fel' in Wolverhampton, Eng. A inrmer saw a hole in the ground, and an examination showed the earth to be warm, and a. meteor was finally unearthed which Weighed abJut 700 pounds. Being polished, it resembles solid iron. and is now stored in the British Museum. In falling, meteors start rrom above the atmosphere, where there is little resistance, and come down with a velocity twenty times greater than that of a bullet. Com3ng in Contact with the atmosphere great heat is generated and the meteor is broken in pieces. The most common meteors are stones, and can- not be found because they resemble stones, on the earth’s surface. In S beria and South America the most are found. Where they come from has caused much discussion. One theory is that meteors originally came from he earth, and were due to stupendous volcanic eruptions of ages gone, when the meteors were thrown beyond the attract‘on of the earth, and sent revolving Laround the sun, \Vhen the earth in its orbit comes near one of there wandering meteors it at tracts it, and it plunges Into the earth. Any stone thrown at the rate of six milesaseuoud woul'i be thrown outside of its attractive Thus quietly as the gliding ofa. river did her spirit depart, or rather was ahead, as a cloud (an hide the silver moon from us for a. time. And so they tell me. she can be seen at times in the old garden, just as, when the clouds grow faint, the Weicoma shafts of light come down to assure us than thezr mo mer orb still lives. I‘he shadow sprehd slowly over the house, up the staircases, into the nooks and corners of the rooms. laying its black hand now On this and now on that, but nowhere so strong- ly as on the heart of the young mistress. Her rippling laughter changed to sighs, her bright smi12s Were replaced by downcast looks; she passed from summer to winter with no mellowing autumn days to make the change less sad. It was not that the women who had come so strangely, sought the love of her husband, or in any other way ab tempted to diepl the sunshine of her life ; she simply owelt with them, nay, was friendly enough at times ; but the dark dress which she were, and the masses of dark hair which at times she would let fall about her shoul lers. seemed indicative of the mo- rslcloud which was slowly gathering over their lives. The lily drooped day by day for wantof sunlight. She became morbid, nervous,full 0‘ strange and wayward fancies. She thought the l)ve of her husband was dead; and she took to dressing herself in her wedding garb, to try if by that strange way she might make it live again. Cla‘d in the 1 soft lustrous satinsâ€"in which as a happy hride she had Ilished and smiled in the l‘ttle English church but a Iew months he loreâ€"she would pace her room for hours. and stand, too. longingl y before the glans peering wistfully to see if aught of her, cbarrn were gone. In this garb, too, she i would walk among the old trees, and deck i her bosom With the snowdrops of spring : but they seemed to wither away 3.: her touch and hanglistless and dead. Thus it was one day she was found sitting among the trees on the fresh spring grass, some faded snowdrops in her lifeless hand, her golden hair surm )unting a. face darkened with some mysterio 2s presence. A pile gleam of spring sunlight had crept down and settled on her brow; but it was out of place, and timid as the sunbeams which I have seen playing on the old house itself. mrse, return 1 )ston audience With the drunkard life is real ‘ One year had sufficed to derien the ‘ brightness of that fair young life. Did it ever strike you, reader, that some men and women seem to have had a sunlight both be fore entering this woull, so destined are they to make everything around them pure and good ; while others. waited from the regions of gloom, cast all around them the shadow of death? Into this baleful darkness had the young bride fallen, and in it her spirit had been quenched. She loved her husband truly. that tell, bronzad man, who had come from the Indies to woo her in the sunny lanes of her own England. Right glad too. had she been to become mistress of his old home. For months. no spot had come on thesr home picture. He was happy in his treasure : she, too, in her simple life in the village, where, from her kindness, she al- ready was receiving the homage due to a. queen. But one day. when thesnow was on the ground and the fliwers were dead. a woman came to the Old House in the H01- low. She was dark, and radiantly beautnul with the bemty that blasso us under west- ern skies She neither asked nor received leave to stay a! a member of the family circle in the old house, but there was no one to oppose her action. The master was her cousin, she said ; and even 3.; she spoke. the glram in her eyes gave her words the lie, Yet he said nothing. {or suddenly be had grown silent and eild, avoiding even the wistful. questioning glances of his wife. and grayas the sky. And if the curious one had turned his eyes on the house he would have seen, at an upper window, a woman‘s figure, clad in mourning. with head bent, intently watching the all bearers as they wound al'mg the mu dy road. Had the curious one cn‘ed to look closer, he might have seen the gleam of triumph in her eyes â€"dark, flashing, coal-black eyesâ€"as she watched the tall bent figure walk behind with such a weary, listless step But man nturn in the road hid the company from view, and the windowyas empty agiin. Where Meteors Come From. the earth in its Jere Wandering II it plunges into th at the rate of six I ‘ roi 31' B11 muss m “m The plumber may not ba he Often plays on the pipes faile‘ shall Brief, however. was his reign. Soon a cowboy entering the long hall,threw a. lessee over his shoullers ; a second and third followed. and the great angry brute was dragged into the street. Then a livelvskir- mish followed. causing a general stampede of the crowd, the three cowboys endeavoriug to mount their plunging,bucking,frightened ponies, who evidently did not like his bear- ship. The feat was accomplished, however, and then came the “ tug of war"â€"the harassed brute, fairly at bay, lunged to the right and left, while the ponies, with feet spread, bracing sturdily against the tremen- dous strains of the lariats wound about the saddle horns, were with their riders dragged hither and thither over the hard, smooth ground. A girth snapped, and a saddle Went spinning over the horse’s head, leaving the nimble rider estride the neck of the snnrting equine. But the war was unequal. and Bruin at length, utterly spent, sun-«ndered, and sulienly allowed himself to I): led cfl'tow’lrds the Zoo in the park. Crossing the Lane ‘17 up. . A pirty of hunters returning from a trip on the p1 iins captured, elsven miles from Colorado City, Texas, a huge blazk bear, weighing. in bi; half~lamlshed condition, about 300 pounds. For days he would neither eat nor sleep, and kept the curious at respectful distance, as he paced uneasily to and fro the length of his chain. rolling his blood-shot eyes and giving vent to his rage and tear in snarling, menacing growls. On Sunday morning as thechurch balls were calling the children from all directions to Sabbath School, bruiu waxed desperate, and, with a powerful tug, snapped the chain that held him, and was ofi on a. cluimy gallop through town. A great hue and cry was raised, and pursuit made. Bruin. thus hard beset, and having long fasted, made a. break for a large paced window in the dining-room of the Rendrabrook Hotel. linding with a crash in the midst of the as- tonished guests. who “stood not upon the order of thei rigoing, but went at once.” Amid the clang and clatter bruin placed himself at bay in a. corner, unconsiously, but undeni- ably, “ monarch of all he sulveyed.” W111 not be home again. K’sa Howard for me. Six years ago ADDIB Fegley lived with her parrnns in PothviJla. Hare she first met Jesse Logan. 5 man conunderably her semor. They were married, She was then 24 years old. They came to Philadelphi ;, where Mrs. Logan’s lxttle fortune was soon spent. Then the husband began to neglect her, and finally he left them apparently foreve rt On the toilowiug day Mr». Logan received a postal card. The husband's bxi 3f message was this : I have lived as long as I could bear it, for these two weeks I have lived in misery, but. before that I wasâ€"- Here the writing wavered and stopped in the mvddla of a sheet. other world, ior I forgive him and still love him. and hope our litila boy will. Howarl will be three years 011 the Sub day of next Much. Please bury him in my arms Dear brothers, forgive me. Take one of my trunk and bury ma whereever you wish to. Good-bye to all and every one and to our dear ptpa. 1‘0 him Howard said the last word. DEAR BROTHERS AND SISTERS : My dear husband has forsaken me and his dear little boy that thought there was no one like his papa, and was looking for him every day. 1 hope he will often think of the best friend he has bad for the Int six years. I gave up b“ for him, and I will die for him. I hope he will forgive me for what I have done, and I hope we Will soon meet each other in the Mas. SEIFERT: You will let my brothers know It as soon as possible. Tne eldest. Jerome Fegley, lives at 2 418 Reece street, between Fifth and Sxxth streets. Thomas Fegley, 28l6 Poplrr, street, is fireman at Twenty-third and Race streets, wrth Nortn & Brother. In the other message, written closely upon five pages. the trembling hand had confessed the motives that had prompted to murder and suicide. The letter was addressed to her tamily. It read : all A cup on the washstand WM partly filled with laudanum, and a. teaspoon redolent with tincture of opium lay upon the floor Where Annie Loyan had thrown it aimi- giving her child a fatal dose anl draining the drag-i htrself. The forsaken wife had also twvsted and knotted a towel ab me her throat to hasten the work of anflocation On the bureau were a few rumpled and tear stained leaves hattin tun from a, memoran- dum book. They contained the story of the Womansshattered life, or as much of the story As the heart-bwken wife chose to make public on the night of her death. The first note, hastily written with a pencil found beside it, was addressed to her land- ladv. It rend: The door was forced open. The body of Annie Lngan was en the d. She had un- dressed for the night. r careworn face was almost as peaceful a4 though she slept. One arm was outsnrenched upon the pillow and the other clamped in a tight embrace the body of her baby boy. Howard. The bed- room waa scrupulously meat. The clothing of mother and child had been carefully packed away In a trunk. together wuh some little trinkets. 0le a few aruoles of the child’s clothing were in sight‘ Thesa had been carefully used to seal cracks about the door and window frames. Under the dnor was tightly wedged a piece of carpet. Tue gas jet was turned on, A Distracted Wife's Last Message to the Man who llad Deserted liar. In a humble room upon the second floor of & Csllowhill street. Philedelphie, boarding house, a mother and child lay down recently and dxed in each other’s arms. Upon the head of Jesse Logan, the recreant. hubband and (um r. rests the moral responsibimy for the double tragedy. When Mrs. Theo- dore Seifen, the mistress of the bCBl‘dng house, arose in the morning enl went: nboub her duties, she wondered why her lodgers in the back room slept so lake. Sue did not go to their room unuil nearly noon. Then she knocked violently and called. but the room was quiet. She put her face to the keyhole. It was stopped with a. wad 0‘ paper, but she detected the odcr of escaping 33:. KILLING HER CHILD AND HERSELF‘ A Sunday Scene in Texas. may not be a. musicim, but u<->” 1D 10m: t utterly n in the “Ifâ€"a passenger happens to get served with a. hunk of transfer pia he has to piy regular passenger rates] on 2’" “ Correct again." “ Suppose the transfer pYes should run out and the passenger pies had to be served to the railroad employes, what rite would they y" There is a great deal of dash literature coming over the wires nowadays, yet no one attempt; to suppress it. “I notice that this piece of pie is below the regulation size." " Well." was the reply. “the factii, I am a. little short on pies this morning, and I had to make a draft on the transfer pies. The truth of the matter is, I sell a piece of pie is) a. railriad employe or transfer hand for 5 cents and I charge passengers 10 cents. I out a. passenger pie into three pieces and get thereby 30 cents for a pie. The trans- fer pies are cut into four pieces, and I get 20 cents for the pie tram the transfer hands. You jus‘: ate a piece of transfer pie. Ten cents. please ” The other day a newspaper mm. en route from Columbus to his home in Cmcianetti in search of a clean shirt, might have been seen munching a piece of Die at the lunch counter 01 the depot at Xaniu. The pie- eater observed to the luncbmuu : In his “Scrambles Among the High Alps" Leslie Stephen tells the story of a. guide who while drunk fell over a prespice so deep that a. fall over it seemed almost certain death. and yet sus‘aiaed little lnj fly. Stephen accordingly gives his readers the advice either not to fell over a precigice fit to get thoroughly drunk befors doing so I myself once saw a man who had thrown himself while drunk over the Dsan briige, in E lin- burgh, a height of about 200 feet, on to the rocky bed of the strgam below. A sober man would probable have been instantly killed, but thii individual though he had broken both of his thigh bones, quickly re- covered. The rsasou at this immunity pro- bably is that the nervu centers. which regu- late the heart and vessels, are so much pars- lized in the drunken man as not to be affect- ed by the fall, which in a sober man would have acted on thsm so violently as to stop the heart, arrest circulation and cause in- stant death. Many people suppose that b‘liiard balls are turned by means of some exquisitely ad- justed machinery in order to secure chair spherical perfection. The exquisite mach- inery in the eye and hand of the artisan. The writer saw a gray-baked wo-kman turn sev- eral billiard halls, and the only tool he used was an ordinary turner'e chisel. His eye was his gauge. cuts with amazing rapidity‘. S)on the shape- lass block begins to assume the rough out- lines of the object intended. The lathe is then stopped, wnich requires but an instant and another, probably a smaller wheel. is substituted In this way a. dozen wheels may be used before the final finish is given with a delicatediscfi littla larger than a gln's head ; but when the work leaves the deft fingers, ol the skilful worker a. perfect mini- ature of the royal native of the jungle is seen. The only remaining thing to be done polishing, which is accomplishei by means of canvas belts with pumice upon them: and finally, by canton flinnel belts or wheels. When it. Is desired to produce any object in bone or iv0ry, an umbrella handle with a crouched tiger upon ltfor instance, the car- ver takes a. piece of the material of anltable size. and preases it; upon one of the wheels descxibefi above. At the point 0‘ contact it All the curiously carved handles which are so fashionable. and the quainter that are sought after, are shaped upon aeeries of rapidly revolving wheels, ranginv from an eighth to three inches in diameter, and which are a cross between a file and a. saw upon their cutting surface. Ivory and bone are carved in precie 1y Jthe same manner, the only difference in the handling of the two being that bone has to be bailed a long while to“ free it from Waiiifial mat?» before it goes to the carver, while ivory is 0191.13 and_ purarfrom the start characters forming the holy phrase may pa=s in proper order before the person turning. and as all Oriental books are read from the right ide of each page to the left, the birrel is turned in the same (ii action. For the earn a reason the Thlbetan walks in this direc- tion round the great terraces and other building'sI on which the holy words are inscribad, in order that his eyes may rest on the words in due course. which can only be the case when he keeps his left hand toward the object round which he is walking. Hap- pily this produces a doubly satisfactorily re suit. for in Esstern lands, as wall as in our own West, it has ever been accounted lucky andvmeritori ms to walk rouud sacred obj acts or places in this sunwise courseâ€"an not of homage to the sun which I have seen ren- dered in many lands. Just es our British ancestors contvnzed thus to circumumbulate their churches long after they had nominally abandoned all paganism. so th roughout the world We find eurwva's of the old homage. ~[The Contemporary Review. The Pie-Eater and the Lunchmnn. I first met with prayer barrels 01 the borders of Tiiibet, when Yravell rig the narrow paihi which wird along the face of m‘ijestic pie. ipitous Himalayan crane. we met native travel rs from still further north â€"tra.dei-s driving flocks of laden in ass. wom n Wlt'l quaint headdreises of lumps of amber hnn large, ciarse \nrquuises fastened on bands of dirty cloth, uni here and there a. man holding in his hanl a. small bronze or brass cylin "er which he twirled mechanically all the this he was jmrneving. It Was some time before I svemeded in getting hold of one of these tor a. closer exsmination, as the uwners are nervously afraid to trust their treasures in the hands of one who. albeit in ignorance. might irrewrently turn them the wrong way. and so undue much of the merit acquired by perpetual twirling in the opposite direction. For, as we event- ually mscovered. not only is the sacred six- syllabled charm embossed on the metal cylindir, but the same mystic words were written over ani over again on very lengthy strips of cloth or papyrus. which are bound round the spindle on which the cylinder r0- ‘atesfind one end of which forms the handle. It is therefore necessary to turn this little earn 1 of prayers in such a. direction that the The Drunkard’s Toughness. Carving Ivory and Bone 368 your train The Prayer Barrel. All that I have said regarding the unpro- greseiveness of Odessa might as justly be retorted by 0 lanes upon us, for just at pre- sent our progress has come to a standstill altogether. My draft upon the Oiesse bank. f)! some mysterious reason quite be- yond the comprehension of any benighted gentile who has not graduated upon the stock exchange, cannot be cashed without some further commercial hoous-poous, which I have just telegraphed to St. Petersburg to obtain. anwhile we wera stranded hereI with the satisfacti m of seeing the steamer that should have carried us to Sebastspol going quietly ofi' without us. Nor is this all. Ovnr total wealth in the currency of the realm being exactly ‘25 Russian kopscks, (about 15 cents.) we may well feel like em- bodied frauds in one of the best hotels in Olessa. Every dish that I order makes me feel as if I. had picked some one’s pocket, and the mere presence of a waiter acts upon my nerves very much as that of a detective might act upon those of a suspected burglar or mur ierer. sol ii ed 111 the palace. and every chility given him to master his subject. He has returned to France with a great number of designs and sketches to be worked up into a grant battle piece hereafter. ltis an unspeakble relief to find oue's self once more, after so many days :among the unintelligible dialects of Hungary, Transylvania and Roummiav in a country where one can understand every word that is said When I first heard Russian spoken efew days ago as the frontier station of Umgheni, it was like the first glimpse of the minnrets of Bagrle'l to a. traveller on the plains of Mesuponamis. But to any one who does not understand it, the grand old Slavonian tongue must have a. somewhat startling sound. The Russian word for “Thank you " i1 pronounced exactly like “Bleckgunrd are you," while the phrase for “Piss me the salt ”â€"-â€"viz : “Dii myne sol," is, as any one will see who pronounces it quickly, suggestive of every unorthodox remark indeed. The formidable length of some of the words, too, reminds one of the king of Kambojn's title,which required three men and a boy to recite it. But however morally backward she may be, the great empire has visibly advanced in a materval sense since the day when I saw all Moscow mourning for “the good czarina” four years ago. If rail ways are indeed, as the well-known saying declares, the “true eiVilizus of mankind," she has constructed enough of them lately. Apart from the famous militarv railroad from the eastern shore of the Cispian eastward acroas the Khiva. desertâ€"which has jus: ,received a iresh exten‘ion whereofl shall have more to say befeve long, the whole southeast of European Russia is now being opened up in all directions. The prolongation of the Poti-Tiflis, railroad to Bakua and the new petroleum fields has at last connected the Black Sea with the Isolated Caspian. Along the northern slope of the Caucasus. another line, running southrastward from the point where the Don pours into the sea of Azof, is already open as far as Vladkavkaz, at the: foot of the great central ridge and working its way slowly among the mighty precipices of the Dariel Pass and Mount Kasbek to Jon the trans Caucasian track at- Tiflls, and link the harder provinces with the in herior of Russia. From the Penti Tif‘ lis line a branch has been run out to Rus- sia. s new port. Batoum, ceded by Turkey in 1878 and a "Caspian coast railroad " is now being p‘ojacted, which is to run southward into Persia along the Western share of the great lake, although Persia herself seems in no special hurry to accept the benefit. But this universal unprugressiveuess is marelv the nntur ll and inevitable result of the peculiar temperament which character- izes the Slavonian race. Paradoxtcal as the assertion may appear. there is not enough dircmtent in Russia. There is, indeed, misery enough. and far too much; but, in- stead of being thereby acaded into advanc- ing, the sole idea. of the sufl'ering masses: is to endure doggedly until the evil day is passed. and then to j)g on in the old ruts after the old fashion. The Finn s'ill inhab- its the same log hut, wears the same shoes of twisted bark, feeds upon the same dried. bread and fish mixed with sawdust, which servtd his forefathers in the days of Peter the Great. The Russian peasant, in an age of railways and telegraphs, is still the same careless, hospitable, thievish, drunken, good humorsd savage that he was two centuries ago. The Tartars of the Crimea. burrowing like rabbits amid the ruins of Chersonesus or in the caverns of the Inkerman valley, Will tell you. as they told Mr. fKinglake, in Oitober 1854‘ that they are content because they lived happily under the czars for three generations. It is not from such material as this that great nations are wrought. The sheep-skin frocked philosopher of the steppes, a conservative by nature end a. fatalist by creed. accepts without a murmur the coarse fare and log-built hovel which served his ancestors in the middle ages, content to remain as his father was before him. and as his son will be after him. To offer civilization to such a race is like read- in& poetry to an oyster. M u__-_v VV --_~.uv;vu :- blessing in disguise, a! trniing to break. if even onlv for a time, its derdly uniformity. but eVen setting it on fire did it no perma‘ nent good. The streets are just as straight; the butter-colored house just as yellow, the dust clouds just as stifling, the surroundings just as outrageously modern as when I was last here in 1873. One change. indeed is apparent, viz : That the names of the prin- ciprl streets. formerly written in Rnsian and Italian, now appear in Russian alone. But in a‘l other points Odessa is Odessa still, The statues "after the antique " are so long after it tint it has forgotten all about them. The gaunt. scraggy church to were look like overgrown cofl'ee pots, and all the larger buildings are so exactly (alike that I am in hourly expectation of seeing a. newly-arrived tourist swagger into the town hall or the public library, instead of his hotel. shouting to the astounded custodian to “tro: out the bill of fare." A commerciat Mart on the Black Sea anti us Chuaoterlstlo Features. There are some towns. as there are some faces, upon which the lapse (f years seem to leave no trace, and the area: corn port of Rxasin is one of them. Its bombardment by the combined fleets of Emma and Eng- land in 1854 Knight almost be considered a. RUSSIA’S GREAT CORN/{’1'er Eiouard DataiIIe, the painter, who has been haractsriitic types of at the recent manoeuvre well-known studying the the Rush]: ‘3 at Krasno. mllv favored wore