though it has not yet obtained great success, the immigrants being naturally attracted towards the United States by the prospect of easy work and large pay. Ignoring the true situation of Mexico, they fear the hardships of the climate, the difficulties of living, the dangers of a new country. What is needed most are workmen, tillers of the soil; most of the foreigners are tradespeople or engineers. The Spanish and American colonists are naturally the most important: the first, taking advantage of the sameness of language, of customs, and of religion, have prospered considerably and control the retail business, especially groceries. The Americans have brought in large capital, and hold enormous interests in mines, banks, and railways. The English prefer the management of mines, while the Germans go in for hardware. As for the French colony, very much liked and respected, it has the monopoly of the sale of stuffs and fashions. The Chinese, quite a large number of them, furnish the hand labor; they work in the mines, in railways, do the menial work, while the Japanese, the Mormons, and especially the Italians, are interested in agriculture. And yet, where could one find a wider field for laborious and intelligent energies than this country where there is every climate, a luxuriant growth, a rich and fertile earth, a propitious temperature, where there are millions of acres which give two harvests a year? The country is divided into large plantations which belong either to the State, to private individuals, or to corporations. The management of these "haciendas" demands a very large number of workers, overseers, and directors. The servants of all sorts have quarters of their own in small houses or cabins; the master lives in a special building, generally very large, and often beautiful. All around are grouped shops, stables, schools, a church, and the "tienda," which is a store where are sold the foodstuffs and the clothing necessary to the working population. In certain plantations the household may consist of three thou sand persons. These workers almost all belong to the soil, and receive, besides their salary, the privilege of cultivating a few acres for themselves. The foreigners are beginning to interest themselves in agriculture; formerly they paid more attention to mining, which constitutes the greater part of the wealth of Mexico. And the Government has taken all necessary measures to facilitate these enterprises and to give to capital two advantages essential for success--freedom and security. Many pessimists believe that General Diaz is the indispensable pivot of the Mexican Republic, and that if he should die the Government would go to pieces. Everything seems, on the contrary, to show that Mexico has a great future before it. The excellence of the present institutions has been proved, the country has become more wise, perfectly quiet; every guarantee is given to investors. Revolutions are no longer to be feared; they would be too dangerous for the country, and would necessitate American intervention. But the Americans have no interest in wishing for this revolution. Too great an empire always tends towards decadence, and it is preferable to have as a neighbor a peaceful and happy country than to dominate over a discontened and turbulent one. MY PICTURES BY MERIBAH ABBOTT Some one gave me a picture— Rhythm of wave, and gleam of sand, Some one gave me a picture— A bit of a country lane, Tangle of flower and fern and vines Under the shade of the purple pines: Oh, to be there again! There, where the ground-thrush hides her nest, So, pain-bound and helpless, I lie and dream all day; God is good, and the world is wide, These are mine, and the skies of June WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAMILTON W. MABIE N his short stories of mystery and terror Poe stands almost unrivaled; for while it is easy to indicate his affiliations with Hoffmann, it remains true that in "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Ligeia," and "The Mask of the Red Death," Poe's power of invention and exquisite sensitiveness to the descriptive value of words to convey the shadowy but definite and terrifying spell which he intends to cast over his reader are unique in the subtle use which he makes of them to detach the mind from actual surroundings and to convey it, as worshipers were led in the Egyptian temples, through long passages until the outer world had become a dim memory. It is in this power of banishing all other impressions from the mind and putting it into the possession of impossible figures and incredible situations that Poe shows his masterly artistic skill. These stories are all essentially unreal. The Lady Madeline and Ligeia are phantoms who never for a moment deceive us by any breath of the living soul. Nevertheless, we are so skillfully taken into their presence, and we live with them in an atmosphere so compounded of the things that deceive, enthrall, and impress, that even in our skepticism we shudder and feel ourselves bound by the same mysterious and awful fate that binds them. "The Pit and the Pendulum " lacks the beauty of diction and the spell of imagination which characterize the stories of Usher and Ligeia; but in its cumulative energy of imagination and its analysis of the sensations of terror passing into torture it is a masterpiece, and fully deserves a place in this series of twelve short stories selected for their permanent value. With a passion for beauty which, next to his love for his wife, was the deepest devotion of Poe, he united an interest in morbid temperaments and situations of mystery and terror that sometimes led him into grave artistic blunders. He has in more than one instance brought vividly before the mind situations or incidents that cannot be described without creating a feeling of revulsion; and this writer, who never sinned in any word or line against purity, sinned at times against sound feeling by touching too closely and handling too freely what is essentially repulsive. "The Pit and the Pendulum" lacks the richness of style of the stories of "Usher" and "Ligeia," the splendor of color of "The Cask of Amontillado " and "The Assignation;" but in the skill with which the materials are used so as steadily to increase the sense of horror, and in the vividness with which the entire scene is realized, it deserves a very high place among Poe's stories. In this story, as in many others, he masters the art of the short story as he himself has defined it, by securing "a certain unique or single effect," toward which every incident and word makes a definite contribution. A marvelous craftsman, who suffered from his lack of deep human insight and sympathy with his kind, Poe remains a magician in his ability to evoke scenes of terror and pictures of despair. Crime, insanity, disordered fantasy, lay always within the empire of his magical pencil. His work stands, as Mr. Bliss Perry has admirably said, "like some lightning-blasted tree, charred and blanched, lifting itself in slender, scornful strength above the undergrowth. No bird rests there save the hawk, restless-eyed; there is peace for no man in its shadow. But it is fine-grained to the very heart of it, and ax and fire may sweep the hillside again and again, yet it will not fall." Impia tortorum longas hic turba furores Quatrain composed for the gates of a market WAS sick-sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence-the dread sentence of death-was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I no more. H. W. M. saw the lips of the black-robed judges. deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fiber in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless specters, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the uni verse. I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber-no! In delirium-no! In a swoon-no! In death-no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages: first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual, secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet, after a long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention. Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember, amid earnest struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down— down-still down-till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart, on account of that heart's unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun in their descent the limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is mad ness-the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things. Very suddenly there came back to ny soul motion and sound-the tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound. and motion, and touch—a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence without thought-a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed: of all that a later day and much earnest |