But this is the significant thing about the appearance of these people in a Northern magazine: the old bitterness that had marked the work of the writers of defunct magazines of the South was gone. Gone, too, were the truculence, the provincial spirit, and much of the old sentimentalism that had from the first marked all the writers of what they themselves were wont to call "our beloved Southland." Welcomed by a Northern magazine, these new authors had met these advances with the characteristic courtesy and tact of the South, which ignore all differences of opinion between hosts and guests. Thus tacitly barred from any expression of the old hostility, and softened in spirit by gratitude, their literature blazed a new path in America-a path marked by the most pronounced local color, irradiated by humor and a tender romanticism. Cable had led, with his vividly picturesque background of old New Orleans as a setting, and with the love of that meeting-ground of clashing traditions as his main theme; and Richard Malcolm Johnston had flooded middle Georgia with the humor and naïve simplicity of his own gracious and lovable nature. The placid life of tide-water Virginia and Maryland, the primitive passions of the lonely mountains, had their chroniclers. It was natural that the old régime would figure largely in these stories, though not now to be touched with bitterness, but mainly with the tenderness with which we recall the things that have passed. The hospitable, patriarchal life; the new and picturesque dialect; the half-humorous clashes between master and man; the heroic devotion shown to "ol' Miss" and the children by faithful old servi

tors even at the moment of the dissolution of the bond that held them together-all these things the Northerner read with delight, and with a half-conscious softening of his former hostility. And the Southerner, awakened to hope, and thrilled by the success of his latest conquest, felt a new glow of fraternity. Justification seemed no longer necessary.

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Yet these were not the only great services that the new magazine was speedily to perform to the same end. It had brought, through the genius of Southern writers, local color into American fiction, and it had begun the task of reconciling North and South; but several placidly prosperous years were to intervene before its War Series completed its great work as a harmonizer of national differences. In this interval it had steadily strengthened its foundations. It was Mr. Drake, himself an engraver, who developed the idea of photographing upon the wood block the picture desired for engraving, making it possible to produce the original picture in any size. Previous to the change of method, artists had been compelled to draw their pictures backward upon the wood block, or draftsmen had simply copied the original. The good taste displayed by Mr. Gilder had always been an important factor in advancing the quality of the illustrations, and it was the happy good fortune of the magazine at this period that the native shrewdness of Mr. Roswell Smith proved of great practical value in furthering the reproduction of woodcuts. In ten years the whole process of woodcut engraving was revolutionized and made popular,

and it was to THE CENTURY that all the world looked for the highest expressions of the art.

Naturally, this superiority led the magazine to emphasize its artistic features. The life of Millet was printed as a serial, and for months the striking reproductions of the great artist's work appeared in its pages. In a way it had become the official organ of the Tile Club, that body of gifted young painters who made glorified sketching trips in regions not too remote from the city. Indeed, the magazine was for the time the center of the art aspirations of the younger men of the craft in America, and it was at Mr. Gilder's house that the first meeting of the Society of American Artists met in 1877 after the break with the National Academy.

From time to time in the earlier years an article that approached what we were afterward to think of as a "war story" had appeared in the magazine, and in November, 1878, Allen C. Redwood had begun his interesting recollections of life in the Confederate Army. They were charmingly illustrated by himself, touched with humor, and only remotely concerned with combats; but the series had left no disturbing ripples of suggestion in the editorial mind. In the spring of 1883, however, the "Recollections of the John Brown Raid, by a Virginian who witnessed the fight," and written by Alexander R. Boteler, was accepted at the office. The article had referred to another on the same subject that had been written by Frank B. Sanborn and published in "The Atlantic," and the suggestion was made by Mr. Clarence C. Buel, the assistant editor,

that it might be interesting to supplement the Boteler article with another by Sanborn. The suggestion was accepted, and the Boteler paper was published in THE CENTURY MAGAZINE for July, 1883, followed by a "Comment by a Radical Abolitionist," written by Sanborn. The magazine had, of course, reached the public in June, and the articles aroused much interest.

In July Mr. Buel had gone away on his vacation, and sitting one day under the chestnut-trees that bordered a stream in Chautauqua County, and with the John Brown articles in mind, the possibilities of a series of articles by the men who directed the battles of the Civil War suddenly came to him. He immediately outlined his suggestions in a letter to Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, the associate editor. The letter was written July 17, and Mr. Johnson, on receiving it, had forwarded it to Mr. Gilder, who returned it with his approval, subsequently committing the matter to the charge of Mr. Johnson, with Mr. Buel as his assistant.

Mr. Buel's original suggestion had been for a series of eight or ten articles on the decisive battles of the war, to be written by the opposing generals in command. The elaboration of the plan, the task of securing contributors, and the editing of the series were shared by the two editors, Mr. Johnson directing the main part of the work during the organization, and Mr. Buel having entire charge of the editing for nearly the whole of the second year.

For, beginning in November, 1884, the series did not close until November, 1887. In the tremendous success of the enterprise the original plan

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SHUAIA, with a population of a few hundred or a thousand souls, stands in the shadow of the penitentiary that sustains it. From the barred windows of the prison a thousand men look out, during their months and years and lifetimes of confinement, over the gray, cold, wind-swept waters and bleak islands of the South, over a desolation of tin roofs and fire-devastated hills, at mountain barriers more terrible than prison walls. Yet the austerity of the visible world, far from imposing its gloom upon the people of the prison and the town, makes the confinement and the narrow comforts of their lives appear as blessings wrung from the vast and pitiless desolation of the universe. Ushuaia, because of its isolation, is a cheerful, friendly place.

Into this town we two had tramped, ragged, dirty, and tired, with all the goods we owned upon our backs, and our pockets empty; and had the people stared and laughed and locked us up for mad, one would have wondered less than that, perceiving our madness, they caught its spirit from us. To all who asked where we were bound we cried, "Cape Horn!" "Crazy!" they exclaimed laughingly; "but good for you!" Cape Horn, but how?

Among the craft of various kinds and occupations that lay at anchor in the harbor was an auxiliary sloop of about ten tons, without a thing to do. It belonged to a Dalmatian,-or "Austreacho," as this numerous race is termed in South America,-one Fortunato Beban. Beban was a tall, spare

man of sixty-five, of forceful and distinguished appearance. His face was weather-beaten and tanned, and from the shadow of his yachting-cap his pale blue eyes gleamed shrewdly, like the eyes of a New-Englander, to their own undoing. He considered. Yes, he 'd rent the boat; the terms he 'd have to think about. And my heart sank.

We had to wait, and waiting was a pleasure. We enjoyed again such delicious refinements of civilization as clean sheets and comfortable chairs and dainty food, for we were guests at the house of Martin Lawrence, the first citizen of the town. How pleasantly they live in Ushuaia!

The summer day was long. At evening we would stroll, my host and I, along the hilly streets up to the outskirts of the town, and, in the silence that the hour imposed, look over the broad bay and channel, the white mountains of Hoste Island, and the hills of Navarin, all in the breathless calm that there prevailed at sundown. Then at twilight, while the massed clouds hung flaming over the darkening steel-blue mountain-peaks, we'd enter some quiet, comfortable drinking-place and sit conversing for an hour. And Lawrence opened up the past, and told of Ooshooia and his boyhood there before the town was built, when the flag of England waved above the little mission, when the Indians, still uncorrupted by disease and virtue, peopled the island shores in thousands, adding the menace of their savagery to the wild terrors of that region. What might have been the Yahgans' fate, if Christian charity had not disarmed them, no one can tell.

I needed a hair-cut. The house of Don Julio, the barber, was one of the

most attractive and pretentious in the town. It stood upon a little hill and overlooked the bay. I mounted the imposing stairway at the front and rang the bell. A little man of maybe fifty, pallid, sensitive, with large, dark, mournful eyes, opened the door-Don Julio. He greeted me with the sweetest courtesy and, conversing in French, explained that he had been at work in his garden when the bell had rung. His house, in which he lived alone, was beautifully neat, and revealed in the little conveniences for housekeeping of the owner's contriving, in the hideous collection of pictures and souvenirs disposed so lovingly about, an active personal attachment to the place that made its ugliness delightful.

But his own bedroom was one of the world's great wonders. An ornate double bedstead, a miracle in lacquered brass, stood in the central space; an ancient counterpane of yellow satin, wrought in silk and gold with twining morning-glory vines, covered the bed. Over the lace-edged pillow-slips were pinned embroidered satin shams; and, shadowing these, velvet curtains hung from a gilded canopy. Upon the flower-papered walls hung, pitching forward, gilt-framed colored pictures of the love and hate scenes from Italian opera. On stands and scrollwork bracket-shelves wonders of porcelain and painted shell rivaled the splendor of the festooned tidies that they stood upon. A crimson-flowered carpet was on the floor, and crimson gold-edged portières darkened the still too garish daylight of the lace-curtained window.

"It's wonderful!" I whispered, and, going to the window, drew the lace aside and looked out at the world. It was blue daylight, hard and clear; over a few tin roofs stood the concrete walls