with regard to the time or circumstances of his death.* Another method of intercommunication, which was resorted to when knocking became for any reason impracticable, was that by means of library books. When a volume was returned by a prisoner after perusal, every page of it was scrutinized by a gendarme before it was replaced in the library, in order to guard against the possibility of communication by means of writing on the margins or fly-leaves. Notwithstanding this precaution, the prisoners managed to mark the books in such a way that the marks were not perceptible to the examining gendarme, but could be found by other prisoners into whose hands the volumes might subsequently come. This they accomplished by making shallow indentations with a splinter or a pin over selected letters of the print. The indentations were so faint that they were not noticeable when the leaf of the book made a right angle with the line of vision, but they clearly appeared when the page was held up to the light at an acute angle, with the eye of the reader near the lower margin. An indentation over the second letter from the beginning of a line indicated the figure 2, and another over the third letter from the end of the same line the figure 3, and the number 23 stood in the cipher square for the letter "h." In this way a message might be spelled out in cipher even in the presence of a gendarme, and there was hardly one chance in a hundred that the faint indentations would be discovered by an official examiner who had to look over three or four hundred pages in a few moments, and who often performed his duty in a formal and perfunctory manner. A WINGED MESSENGER. It would be thought that human ingenuity could go no further in the contrivance of schemes to relieve the monotony of solitary confinement by a secret interchange of ideas and emotions with other prisoners, but in the fortress there were occasionally practiced methods of intercommunication even more extraordinary than any of these. "One afternoon in the summer of 1881," said Doctor Melnikoff to me in the course of a conversation about his fortress life, "I was lying on the bed in my casemate, wondering how I should get through the rest of the day, *Official Stenographic Report of the Trial of the Regicides, p. 7. St. Petersburg, 1881. when there flew into the cell through the open port-hole in the door a large blue-bottle fly. In the stillness and loneliness of one of those casemates any trifle is enough to attract a man's attention, and the occasional visit of a fly is an important event in one's life. I lis tened with pleasure to the buzz of his wings, and followed him with my eyes as he flew back and forth across the cell until I suddenly noticed that there was something unnatural in the appearance of his body. He seemed to have something attached to him. I arose from the bed in order to get nearer to him, and soon satisfied myself that there was a bit of paper fastened to his body. How to catch him and secure that paper without attracting the attention of the guard in the corridor I hardly knew, as he was flying most of the time in the upper part of the cell beyond my reach. For ten or fifteen minutes I watched him without being able to think of any way to capture him; but at last he came down nearer to the floor, and as he passed me I succeeded in catching him in the hollow of my hands without injuring him. Attached to his body by a fine humans hair I found a small folded scrap of thin cige arette paper, upon which a man's name had been written with the burnt end of a match. It was not the name of any one whom I knew; but as it was evident that some strictly guarded prisoner hoped by this means to let his friends in the bastion know either that he had been arrested or that he was still alive, I fastened the paper again to the fly as well as I could and put him out into the corridor through the port-hole, saying 'S'Bogom' ["With God," or "Go with God". -a Russian expression commonly used in bidding a friend good-bye]. "Did you ever hear anything more of the fly," I inquired, "or find out who the prisoner. was?" "Never," he replied. "The fly disappeared. in the corridor, but whether the paper ever reached anybody who was acquainted with the prisoner, or not, I don't know probably not, for the chances were a thousand to one against it." If these pages should ever be seen by the political prisoner who wrote his name on that scrap of cigarette paper, and who, if alive, is now in Siberia, he will know that his little winged messenger did not wholly fail, but carried his name to another prisoner, who, although a stranger, thought of him often with sympathy and pity and remembers him still, even in Siberian exile. George Kennan. choristers. How it flows And grows! TR On its notes What triumph floats! The worker's golden hire, And the home he makes with it, And the peace he takes with it To wife and children, are reward as fair As soul can compass or as love can bear! O brothers all! come near And hear A bird's Melodious dreaming set to words, The spring's new leaves and tender buds among,. For very joy of life, and hope, and love, In a world made broad enough lefore it earth is gladdened and the sea is like For all God's creatures to be merry in, Around the world, With joyous clash and din, And yet too small For any greed at all! Lo! deep and sure Is cut this truth in heaven's book of gold: The lightning-bolts of man's best words to Upright and free in Freedom's favored land, No? Not so ? As I swing And sing, I hear a myriad voices answer mine, From the oak woods and the pine, From the seas and from the lakes, From the brakes, From the cities and the shops, From the mines and mountain-tops, From field and fold, God's promises are sure; As the starry sky Is your children's destiny; And giant-waved and tempest-bearing, like the sea, That shall soon come roaring, leaping, Over earth, and sweeping Out of hot Southern marsh and Northern The horses, chariots, hosts and hom, ban In some hovel mean and lone ners and citadel O king! O lord! O usurer! O rich man's heart that no heart's cry can What gold may bar the path Of the storm-flood and the whirlwind of God's wrath? What ships with iron mail, What steel-girt fortress, what hired armies Intrenched in wrong, With bristling guns and bayonets, shall Against the crushing missiles of God's venge Out of the raging, rent, and flaming frma It is sweet! sweet! sweet! (I hear a million voices in unison repeat) This vengeance that is coming on the world, When the lofty shall lie low, And the blood of kings shall flow In rivers round the thrones in fragments hurled! Such thoughts as these Set all their harshness hissing through my And do my voice irreparable wrong Blown clear, As glass through fire, Let breath of love grow sweeter year by year; The bugle-call of Hope still guide us on, The night be past, And, rushing to the zenith from the dawn, That the beasts would scorn to hold, Saying to those who in the caves and lonely "Come forth; I am thy God, and all is well!" Maurice Thompson. VOL. XXXV.-73. PICTORIAL ART ON THE STAGE N the age of Elizabeth, during the great epoch of dramatic achievement, no attempt was made at scenic illusion. The stage was almost bare; properties and costumes were few and simple; painted scenery was unknown; rushes strewed the floor; tapestry-covered screens marked the entrances and exits; locality was indicated by a placard bearing the name Rome, Venice, Illyria, as the case might be; a canopied seat, a bed, a table, with tankards and flagons, were all that was required to represent a throneroom, a chamber, or a tavern; the fixed wall at the back of the stage, a maid-of-all-work accessory, serving any and all occasions, stood for Juliet's balcony, the ramparts of Angers, or Brabantio's house. The court gallants, the rough sailors, and the townsfolk who crowded the Cockpit and the Globe did not need the aid of scene-painter and costumer to make the creations of their dramatists real and living. If the plays of Webster and Marlowe, Shakspere and Jonson, were given without painted scenery or historic costumes, are scenery and costumes not mere adjuncts, dividing the interest, distracting the attention, of the spectator? Why, then, do we in this age of wide reading, archæological studies, and foreign travel require them? To answer these questions we must pass to a consideration of the conditions of the audience. In the sixteenth century daily life had a splendid setting: religious and civic ceremonies, public sports, war even, were pageants. The citizen was himself an integral part of these splendors; he walked in the procession, knelt in the cathedral, wore a glittering costume to the wars. In the memories of these men were the bloody birth of the new faith and the bloodier death of the old; in their middle age they were blown to the four quarters of the seas, trading with Hawkins, fighting with Drake, roaming the flower forests of South America, hearing eye-witness tales of the golden civilizations of Mexico and Peru, scattered to the world's end, until the Armada loomed upon the horizon and called them together again. Drunk and dazzled between these enchantresses of the East and the West, Italy and the southern seas, such |