standing aloof from its neighbors peculiar to private houses with black doors and brass plates.

Mr. Brandreth let himself in with a key. "There are only three families in our house, and it's like having a house of our own. It's so much easier living in a flat for your wife that I put my foot down, and wouldn't hear of a separate house."

They mounted the carpeted stairs through the twilight that prevails in such entries, and a sound of flying steps was heard within the door where Mr. Brandreth applied his latch-key again, and as he flung it open a long wail burst upon the ear.

"Hear that?" he asked, with a rapturous smile, as he turned to Ray for sympathy; and then he called gayly out in the direction that the wail came from: "Oh, hello, hello, hello! What's the matter, what's the matter? You sit down here," he said to Ray, leading the way forward into a pretty drawing - room. "Confound that nurse! She's always coming in here in spite of everything. I'll be with you in a moment. Heigh! What ails the little man?" he called out, and disappeared down the long narrow corridor, and he was gone a good while.

At moments Ray caught the sound of voices in hushed, but vehement dispute; a door slammed violently; there were murmurs of expostulation. At last Mr. Brandreth reappeared with his baby in his arms, and its nurse at his heels, twitching the infant's long robe into place.

"What do you think of that?" demanded the father, and Ray got to his feet and came near, so as to be able to see if he could think anything.

By an inspiration he was able to say, "Well, he is a great fellow!" and this apparently gave Mr. Brandreth perfect satisfaction. His son's downy little oblong skull wagged feebly on his weak neck; his arms waved vaguely before his face.

"Now give him your finger, and see if he won't do the infant Hercules act."

Ray promptly assumed the part of the serpent, but the infant Hercules would not open his tightly clinched, wandering fist.

"Try the other one," said his father; and Ray tried the other one with no more effect. "Well, he isn't in the humor; he'll do it for you some time. All right, little man!" He gave the baby, which had acquitted itself with so much distinc

tion, back into the arms of its nurse, and it was taken away.

"Sit down, sit down!" he said, cheerily. "Mrs. Chapley will be in directly. It's astonishing," he said, with a twist of his head in the direction the baby had been taken, but I believe those little things have their moods just like any of us. That fellow knows as well as you do, when he's wanted to show off, and if he isn't quite in the key for it, he won't do it. I wish I had tried him with my hat, and let you see how he notices."

Mr. Brandreth went on with anecdotes, theories, and moral reflections relating to the baby, and Ray answered with praiseful murmurs and perfunctory cries of wonder. He was rescued from a situation which he found more and more difficult by the advent of Mrs. Chapley, and not of Mrs. Chapley alone, but of Mrs. Brandreth. She greeted Ray with a certain severity, which he instinctively divined was not so much for him as for her husband. A like quality imparted itself, but not so authoritatively, from her mother; if Mr. Brandreth was not master in his house, at least his mother-in-law was not. Mrs. Brandreth went about the room and made some housekeeperly rearrangements of its furniture, which had the result of reducing it, as it were, to discipline. Then she sat down, and Ray, whom she waited to have speak first, had a feeling that she was sitting in judgment on him, and the wish, if possible, to justify himself. He began to praise the baby, its beauty, and great size, and the likeness he professed to find in it to its father.

Mrs. Brandreth relented slightly. She said, with magnanimous impartiality, "It's a very healthy child."

Her mother made the reservation, "But even healthy children are a great care,' and sighed.

The daughter must have found this intrusive. "Oh, I don't know that Percy is any great care as yet, mamma.”

"He pays his way," Mr. Brandreth suggested, with a radiant smile. "At least," he corrected himself, "we shouldn't know what to do without him."

His wife said, dryly, as if the remark were in bad taste, "It's hardly a question of that, I think. Have you been long in New York, Mr. Ray?" she asked, with an abrupt turn to him.

"Only a few weeks," Ray answered, inwardly wondering how he could render

the fact propitiatory. "Everything is very curious and interesting to me as a country person," he added, deciding to make this sacrifice of himself.

It evidently availed somewhat. "But you don't mean that you are really from the country?" Mrs. Brandreth asked.

"I'm from Midland; and I suppose that's the country, compared with New York."

Mrs. Chapley asked him if he knew the Mayquays there. He tried to think of some people of that name; in the mean time she recollected that the Mayquays were from Gitcheegumee, Michigan. They talked some irrelevancies, and then she said, "Mr. Brandreth tells me you have met my husband," as if they had been talking of him.

"Yes; I had that pleasure even before I met Mr. Brandreth," said Ray. And you know Mr. Kane?" "Oh, yes.

He was the first acquaintance I made in New York."

66

Mr. Brandreth told me." Mrs. Chapley made a show of laughing at the notion of Kane, as a harmless eccentric, and she had the effect of extending her kindly derision to Hughes in saying, "And you've been taken to sit at the feet of his prophet already, Mr. Brandreth tells me that strange Mr. Hughes."

"I shouldn't have said he was Mr. Kane's prophet exactly," said Ray with a smile of sympathy. "Mr. Kane doesn't seem to need a prophet; but I've certainly seen Mr. Hughes. And heard him, for that matter." He smiled, recollecting his dismay when he heard Hughes calling upon him in meeting. He had a notion to describe his experience, and she gave him the chance.

"Yes?" she said, with veiled anxiety. "Do tell me about him!"

At the end of Ray's willing compliance, she drew a deep breath, and said, 66 Then he is not a follower of Tolstoi?"

"Quite the contrary, I should say."

Mrs. Chapley laughed more easily. "I didn't know but he made shoes that nobody could wear. I couldn't imagine what other attraction he could have for my husband. I believe he would really like to go into the country and work in the fields." Mrs. Chapley laughed away a latent anxiety, apparently, in making this joke about her husband, and seemed to feel much better acquainted with Ray. "How are they living over there? What sort of family has Mr. Hughes? I mean, besides the daughter we know of?"

Ray told, as well as he could, and he said they were living in an apartment. "Oh!" said Mrs. Chapley, "I fancied a sort of tenement."

"By-the-way," said Mr. Brandreth, "wouldn't you like to see our apartment, Mr. Ray"-his wife quelled him with a glance, and he added-"some time?"

Ray said he should, very much. Mrs. Brandreth, like her mother, had been growing more and more clement, and now she said, "Won't you stay and take a family dinner with us, Mr. Ray?"

Ray looked at her husband, and saw that he had not told her of the invitation he had already given. He did not do so now, and Ray rose and seized his opportunity. He thanked Mrs. Brandreth very earnestly, and said he was so sorry he had an appointment to keep, and he got himself away at once.

Mrs. Chapley hospitably claimed him for her Thursdays, at parting; and Mrs. Brandreth said he must let Mr. Brandreth bring him some other day; they would always be glad to see him.

Mr. Brandreth went down to the outer door with him, to make sure that he found the way, and said, "Then you will come some time?" and gratefully wrung his hand. "I saw how anxious you were about those opinions!"

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

comes in 1892, right alongside of the fourth centennial of the discovery of America. Congress is to blame for that. But, even a contrast with the tremendous achievement of the incomparable Colum

first interior commonwealth.

Its very beginning was unique. The rise of a State and the establishment of the magnificent empire of the West were decreed when, on the 7th of June, 1769,

Daniel Boone looked out upon the beautiful level of Kentucky," which so impressed him with the abundance and splendid development of its animal life, with the astonishing fertility of its virgin soil, and the lavishness of its natural gifts, still clothed with all the charms of primeval freshness, that he afterwards described it as "a second paradise."

Kentucky, in the manner of her founding, illustrated the new era that had just dawned upon the world. Unlike any of the States of the old Confederation, she had never actually experienced the dominion of a foreign power, nor felt the authority of a royal master. She was born free. Boone brought with him into the depths of the Western wild a coal of that sacred fire which burned so brightly upon the banks of the Yadkin, and in the same month of May, 1775, when the heroic North Carolinians adopted the immortal declaration of Mecklenburg, the pioneers of Kentucky gathered in solemn conclave under a mighty elm in the now famous blue-grass region, and they also virtually proclaimed their independence of Great Britain. For this alone could be the meaning of the attempted establishment of the colony of Transylvania upon no other authority than that of occupancy and of a deed from the Cherokees, and with the bold announcement specifically and deliberately made that "all power is originally in the people."

Such was the spirit of the men who laid the foundation of Kentucky, and built upon it under circumstances that seemed a defiance of the impossible itself. They did this in a land which they found devoid of every product of human art, and while cut off from civilization and from human aid by hundreds of miles and by ranks of mountains. It was one of the most remarkable feats of the Anglo-Saxon race, and in some respects is without a parallel. It opened the way for results the importance of which is already beyond all calculation.

But swallowed up as they were in this vast solitude, the pioneers were not too remote for savage vengeance, nor too far away to bear a glorious part in the war of the Revolution. Few minor events of American history are more thrilling or more widely known than the successes of "the Hunters of Kentucky" over the British and the Indians at the sieges of Boonsborough and of Bryant's Station,

their massacre at the deadly ambuscade of the Blue Licks, and the swift and wonderful campaigns of George Rogers Clark, the Stonewall Jackson of the early West.

It was in 1780, in the very midst of the harassments and distractions of this war, that Virginia, to her everlasting credit, took time to perfect a bill and make a donation for education in Kentucky that resulted in the founding of Transylvania University. Jefferson, whose broad culture was second only to his superb statesmanship, was then at the helm in the Old Dominion, and he had linked his enduring name with that of Kentucky long before he had penned "the Resolutions of '98."

To fully appreciate the situation of the Kentucky pioneers, it must be remembered that while the close of the Revolution meant peace to the seaboard States, it did not mean peace to them. Savage depredations and burnings and slaughters continued through all the years from the surrender of Yorktown until the British gave up the military posts in the Northwest, and to these aggravations, from which the old government could not protect them, must be added the trying vexations through which they went before they could secure the separation of the district from Virginia, and its admission into the Union. It was during these unsettled times that General Wilkinson, the soldier of fortune who afterwards became the commander-in-chief of the American army, cut such a figure; that the Spanish conspiracy and the question of the free navigation of the Mississippi so agitated the people; and that the jealousy of the North and the South over the balance of power had an early demonstration in the long-delayed reception of Kentucky with her slaves as a member of the Union.

The old Confederation had ample time to crumble leisurely to pieces, and Kentucky to consume years in holding separation conventions before the object she so patiently sought was gained. It was not until the 4th of February, 1791, that Congress passed the bill admitting her into the Union, but the event was put off for more than a year, for the bill stipulated that it was not to occur until the 1st of June, 1792. This act was the first of its kind ever adopted by the Congress of the United States, and was signed by Washington when New York city was the capital of the country, and when the present Federal government was only three years

old. An eloquent evidence of the patriotic feeling existing in Kentucky at this time, in spite of her neglect by the government, is seen in the date of the adoption of her first Constitution-the 19th of April, 1792—the anniversary of the battle of Lexington. This document, which was evidently modelled after the then new Constitution of the United States, seems to have been for the most part the work of George Nicholas, an associate of Madison and Patrick Henry, a student of the backwoods who would have done credit to the Middle Temple, and the leading legal light of his day in the district. It was a College of Electors, as required by this Constitution, which convened shortly after its adoption, and in regular national style made choice of Isaac Shelby as Governor.

And it came to pass that Friday, the 1st of June, 1792, rolled around, and on that day, a hundred years ago, Kentucky became a member of the Union, with Lexington, the most central of her settlements, as the capital of the new-born State.

It is curious that "Lexington," the title of a British Lord, should have become the slogan of the American Revolution, but not more curious than the fact that the first spot of ground on this continent named to commemorate the opening battle of that struggle should have been located beyond the confines of civilization, and in the heart of the far-distant wilderness of Kentucky. Lexington, the metropolis of the blue-grass region, is to-day the oldest public monument in existence to the first dead of the war of independence, and she was toasted as the first namesake of Lexington, Massachusetts, at the centennial celebration of that battle. The beautiful incident of the naming of Lexington, Kentucky, which occurred early in June, 1775, was witnessed by Simon Kenton and other noted pioneers. Longfellow was urged to make it the subject of a poem, and corresponded with the writer in regard to it, but he died, unfortunately, too soon for the story to be embalmed by him in immortal verse.

When Lexington became the capital of Kentucky in 1792, she had a thousand inhabitants, and was the largest and most important town in the State, in spite of mud roads and of thieving Indians, who carried off the settlers' negroes and sold them at Detroit for whiskey. Her stores

were filled with heavy stocks of goods; manufactories flourished, and especially powder-mills, as one might naturally imagine, considering the exposed condition of her customers; her sales of pack-horses were large and constant; her schools were growing; traders were coming and going all the time; and altogether she was a busy town, furnishing an immense area of the Western country, including Cincinnati, with supplies of every kind.

Such was the settlement, crowded with strangers, where on Monday the 4th of June, 1792, commenced the first session of the Kentucky Legislature, and the organization of the State government. On that day Governor Shelby arrived from Danville, where all the conventions had been held, and as he came on horseback down the hill which overlooked the little capital, the citizens made the valley of the Elkhorn resound with the cracking of their flint-lock rifles, and with the roar of an old six-pounder which the explosive and emphatic Mad Anthony Wayne requested the use of a short time after. The Governor, provided with leggins, saddlebags, and holsters, was halted with his escort at the intersection of the two principal streets of the village, where he was received with military honors by the largest and most picturesque procession that the Western country had ever seen. There, with all the formality and punctiliousness that Sir Charles Grandison himself could have desired, he was presented with a written address of welcome in behalf of Lexington by Mr. John Bradford, or "Old Wisdom," as he was admiringly called, the chairman of the town Board of Trustees, the editor of the only newspaper in the commonwealth, and a gentleman of substantial scientific attainments. The oath of office was then administered to the Governor, who, after more salutes had been indulged in, took his place in the procession, which immediately began to move, and to the sound of drum and fife and ten village bells, he was escorted through the main street, past the printing-office, the site of the old block-house, the prosperous-looking stores, and the liberty pole, the pillory, and the stocks, the court-house yard, where the settlers hitched their horses, and on to the Sheaf of Wheat inn, where he "lighted" from his tired nag and lodged. The "Light Infantry" and the "Troop of Horse" then paraded the

unpaved public square, where the inaugural ceremonies were concluded by the firing of fifteen rounds-one for each of the States then in the Union-and a general discharge of rifles in honor of the new Governor.

The General Assembly met in the State House, a gloomy but substantial two-story log building of the regular old pioneer type, above whose gabled roof on Main Street floated the American flag. It met, however, mainly to elect officers, after which it adjourned, and the rest of the day was spent in rejoicings, in the announcement of appointments by the Governor, and in the interchange of courte sies between the citizens and their guests. On the 6th of June, after the Legislature had been fully organized, the members of both Houses assembled in the Senate Chamber of the State House to formally receive the Governor's message, which was delivered in person, after the elaborate Federal style of the day, which was followed in Kentucky up to the time of Governor Scott, when it was changed to the present simple one in accordance with a precedent established by President Jefferson. Exactly at noon the Governor entered the plain and unpretentious room attended by the Secretary of State, and was immediately conducted to a position on the right of the Speaker of the Senate, when, after respectfully addressing first the Senate and then the House, he proceeded to read the communication he had prepared. At the close of the address he delivered to each Speaker a copy of the manuscript, and retired

as solemnly and as formally as he had entered. The two Houses then separated, and after gravely voting an address in reply to that of his Excellency, adjourned. It was a curious sight, that first session of the Kentucky Legislature, where an imitation of a kingly custom of Great Britain appeared in such striking contrast to the natural and unaffected ways of early Western life: the pomp of the House of Lords in a log cabin; the royal ermine and the republican 'coon-skin.

Kentucky literally fought her way to Statehood through seventeen such years as mark the calendar of no other American common wealth. She had never known the fostering care of the general government, which, even as late as 1792, had accomplished nothing in the way of opening the Mississippi to her trade, nor had done anything to free her from that serious obstacle to her progress, the retention of the Northwestern posts by England. The presence of British troops encouraged the Indians to violence; and the State was admitted to the Union during the murdering and marauding that followed St. Clair's defeat. But the selfmade commonwealth remained true to the government which so many of her sons had fought and suffered to establish. The very motto of the State seal is a reminder of the patriotic sentiments which animated Kentucky a hundred years ago. It was suggested by a couplet from a popular air that was sung by the Sons of Liberty during the Revolution:

"Come, join hand in hand, Americans all;
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall."

grim and stout.