ceive of "The Atlantic" as a middleaged spinster of the best Boston traditions graciously guiding the conversation at her tea-table on a Sunday evening; but of "Harper's" as a dour, hard-working housewife bringing up coal from the cellar-another person's cellar. She borrowed it because it gave out more heat than the native firewood, she would complacently explain.

It would be pleasant to say that into the company of these drabclothed sisters of the magazine world THE CENTURY (born "Scribner's") came like a bride. It was certainly more interesting at the first hasty glance, for its type was larger and better than that of either, and its illustrations were less casual than those of "Harper's."

It had opened with an illustrated seventeen-page poem called "Jeremy Train-His Drive," written, as the table of contents disclosed, by "An Old Fellow," though the reader must have guessed from the first that Dr. Holland himself was the author. It had his flowing narrative style and his ready application of the belief in the good that comes from a thwarted evil. An illustrated article on "The Bottom of the Sea" had followed, and this in turn was succeeded by another illustrated contribution entitled, "A Day with Dr. Brooks," an account of the New York Juvenile Asylum. THE CENTURY has never called itself a strictly literary magazine, and this, its first entrance into welfare work, was an earnest of the wide interest it was later to take in that field. Typical, too, was the next serious article, the first of a two-part criticism of "The Bondage of the Pulpit." A short appreciation of "The Writings of George Macdonald" by Samuel W. Duffield

served as an introduction to Macdonald's serial story that began in the same number; for despite the new magazine's avowed Americanism, it had apparently been compelled to call upon the Scotchman for its first novel. The first instalment of a colorless threepart serial by Rebecca Harding Davis, a short story by I. I. Hayes, and two short poems completed the contributed portion. "Topics of the Time," "Books and Authors Abroad," and "Books and Authors at Home" made up the editorial departments. The fiction was colorless, and all that can be said of the verse is that it was less lugubrious than that of "Harper's" and less sentimental than that of "The Atlantic."

One cannot escape the impression that in the attitude of "The Topics of the Time" there was a conscious feeling of being about to form public opinion. It was probably sincere, though it was equally obvious that the mold was already in the minds of the possible readers, that large body of Americans whose attention had been arrested by "Bitter-Sweet," "The Mistress of the Manse," and "The Timothy Titcomb" papers, and who had filled the audience-rooms whereever Dr. Holland had lectured. Indeed, "The Topics" were alive with the spirit of popular beliefs, somewhat truculent, perhaps, but truculent with the militant morality of the great body of the people of the period. For instance, there was a short editorial on the dogma of the infallibility of the pope, then newly promulgated, that must have set the heads of thousands of deacons and elders nodding in emphatic approval of its bitter antiRomanism. One wonders if the magazine had been hurried to the press

without careful editorial supervision, for four pages later, in the chatty department, "Books and Authors Abroad," the writer is permitted to say:

"When you run out of subjects,' said an old divine to a young one, 'just attack the Romanists,' and many an exhausted writer has been helped to a subject by the dogma."

Popular, too, at that period, when all America was wildly pro-German, must have been another editorial on "Republicanism in Europe," in which Dr. Holland declared:

any country, but it is true, that there is not enough intelligence, principle, and virtue in France to sustain a republic. A French peasant, who does not know a letter of the alphabet, and who takes his law from his priest, is a very different person from the American farmer or mechanic, who takes his newspaper and magazine, and reads and judges for himself. In America men trust each other; in France, there is no faith in men; and none, for that matter, in women. Without this faith, a republic is not possible."

Blessed be the names of the goodly

0:

M

RS. WIMPOLE was in the bedroom laying out clothes for her husband. Her figure, bending over the blue afghan on the bed, was soft and unemotional, her face was rosy and patient; but as she arranged Mr. Wimpole's white shirt, her strong heavy hands moved flutteringly. She placed a pair of congress boots by Mr. Wimpole's chair. She glanced at his bureau, but found that he had left the articles on it, as always, in their correct geometrical design. There was nothing more to be done.

Still, she did not leave the room. There was nothing more to be done, indeed, for Samuel Wimpole, so careful, so precise, so self-sufficient, there was never much to be done. She should have rejoiced in a husband whose neat, unvarying domestic habits gave her so little labor, so many hours of freedom. But instead she felt held prisoner by a thin, yet tenacious, enchantment a mathematical enchantment of some learned, soulless wizard. The room was exactly square, and she was in the exact center of it, just like the chandelier. On one side her golden-oak bureau balanced his, and on the other, the walnut scrollwork bed stood in its perfectly calculated position. Above it hung two steel engravings, framed alike, of the "Infant Samuel" and the "Stag at Bay." Half-way between them a motto, "Home is where the heart lies," was encircled by sprigs

of lily of the valley done in their correct natural colors. She stood as if paralyzed by vague, yet potent forces, the dreadful forces, petty in detail, but irresistible in total effect, of absolute precision. She could wander, swinging in her little orbit, but at any time those forces could draw her back to fix her at the center of Mr. Wimpole's web. She had better not stand there too long. She breathed hard and moved to the window.

Down the street stretched the row of houses, all alike and all like hers, each a square of bilious brown, each with two staring windows up-stairs, and below them a porch, protruding like a proud and stupid upper lip. The fronts were all decorously dead, but from the backs came sounds of scuttling, slovenly life. There dwelt the hen-women of the neighborhood.

Mrs. Wimpole's face had been graven to passiveness by the years of marriage, but in her hands she sometimes showed a faint and rapid flash of wistfulness and passion. She knew that this did not escape the henwomen, forever scratching in one another's back yards in search of grubs and offal. They guessed her suffering and knew its cause. It was because she had no child, a judgment, they agreed, by God, the head of the Baptist Church.

She twined her hands distractedly. If only she had one! What had she

done to be punished? A little baby, only one. What a God! What a life! What a husband! She looked up, startled. The bald and traitorous thought struck her for the first time with all its unspent force. Never till this moment had her mind ventured anything in respect to Mr. Wimpole but acquiescence. Now she said aloud, "What a husband!" and walked slowly toward the glass. She was just the same despite her new knowledge of the truth. With a little pat of her hair, she turned away and stood frowning anxiously. She looked curiously about her with the detachment and at the same time the interest of a woman who at last saw Samuel Wimpole and herself as they really were. But there was no freedom in the new insight.

If she had a baby, it would all be different. They were They were so cunning, always needing something. Samuel Wimpole never needed anything; he arranged for everything. Had he been like that when he was a baby, or had he never been a baby?

Outside she heard his neat footfall on the porch. The front door opened and closed with soft precision, and an umbrella was deftly slipped into the stand. The sun was setting splendidly, but the morning had been slightly overcast.

82

She felt that she must do something impulsive, rapid; if only she could rush out the back door toward the golden light and run forever or even rush down to greet him. But either would have been equally incomprehensible to Mr. Wimpole. She went to the head of the stairs and said:

"Is that you, Samuel?"
"Yes, my dear."

He ascended, and kissed her accurately; then he passed into the bedroom and inspected her preparations to see that all was correct. He took off his decorous coat, his black tie and stand-up collar, and put them away, preoccupied with each detail. He noticed that she still lingered, and he turned his stout, petty face toward her.

"The thermometer seems to be rising," he observed. "It is sixty. I noticed it as I came in. Perhaps it would be well to shut the damper in the furnace."

"I have," she said, but she left the

room.

Down-stairs she sat in the kitchen lacing and unlacing her fingers. What was it? He was better than most husbands and he loved her, whatever that might mean. There was nothing against him. She had proved his virtues to herself a thousand times. But she could n't stand it any longer. How inexplicable to the hen-women, shooting forward their thin necks and small agitated heads over one another's fences! Perhaps they were right, and there was something wrong about her. But what difference did that make? She was afraid to look at the sunset; it made her feel enchained. How she could run when she was a girl! Faster than the boys. The stew was boiling

over.

He came down, and she heard him descending to the furnace to make sure the draft was right.

It was the girl's night out, and he helped her set the table. He was very deft and competent; he was a master of all minor affairs.

They sat down, and he launched into an even, dogged narrative of a mistake which the junior partner had

made that morning. It seemed that, with the rashness of youth, the junior partner had attempted to file his own correspondence instead of intrusting it to the department of the chief clerk, Mr. Wimpole. There could, of course, be only one result of such temerity. A circular from the Eureka Buggy Co. had been filed under E, not cross-indexed in the subject-card catalogue under B. It is true they already had such a circular on file, properly indexed; but there you were.

"I don't see what difference it makes, then," said Mrs. Wimpole. "I guess Mr. Swinger knew you had one to start with."

"As a matter of fact, he did. My point is that if a thing is done at all, it should be done right. That is certainly clear. And I think he saw by the way I acted that something was wrong. He tried to explain, and I just looked at him."

Mr. Wimpole, in illustration, gave his wife a pale, smug stare.

"I think Mr. Swinger 's very nice," she said. "He's got such a loud voice and swears without meaning anything."

At this remark Mr. Wimpole looked at her as before.

She felt her sight turn black with anger. All was a black haze except that pudgy, old-maidish face across the table, standing out naked in all its small precision and self-sufficiency. She twined her hands furiously beneath the table.

"I'll clear away the things," she muttered. "You go into the sittingroom."

"Oh, no; I'll help. In fact, I've noticed that, in clearing away, you make unnecessary work for yourself. I'll show you. There's the most

"For God's sake: let me alone!" she cried, and ran out of the room.

Incredibly, he came paddling after. She heard him say:

"Why, Emma, this is most unusual. We have always gotten on so pleasantly. Perhaps Dr. Bromkin—"

She did not strike him, but she turned on him with the force of a thousand blows.

"Dr. Bromkin! You fool! you fool!" She stumbled to her room. He did not follow.

Once in the night his footfalls stopped outside her locked door. He listened, tapped indecisively. She stood motionless, like the stag at bay, till she heard him retreating down the stairs. The moment while she waited as he tapped and listened at the door decided her. She must break through to freedom. But not yet, he was still awake. She heard him methodically making up his bed on the parlor sofa. Would he never finish? His steps kept moving first to one side of the sofa, then the other. She could picture him fussily, interminably, adjusting the comforter.

Silence fell; she wrote a note: "I am going away to Aunt Margaret's. If you come for me, I will run. Just let me alone." She listened till she was sure, turned the lock, noiseless, well oiled by Mr. Wimpole, crept down the back way, out the kitchen walk, and

ran.

She found her Aunt Margaret, small and brown, living alone, but sustained and heartened by the memories of her husband, the late Joe Twilliger. This source of comfort surprised Mrs. Wimpole, who had girlhood recollections of her aunt's ill advised mar