the sincere thing. I am describing the impression left upon me by Mr.
Howells's blank-verse sketch called "Father and Mother: A Mystery"--a
strangely touching and imaginative piece of work, not unlike in effect
to some of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As I read on, I seemed to be
standing in a shadow cast by some half-remembered experience of my own
in a previous state of existence. When I went to bed that night I had to
lie awake and think it over as an event that had actually befallen me.
I should call the effect _weird_, if the word had not lately been worked
to death. The gloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthorne touch cold
finger-tips in those three or four pages.

FOR a character-study--a man made up entirely of limitations. His
conservatism and negative qualities to be represented as causing him to
attain success where men of conviction and real ability fail of it.

A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me at table on board the steamer.
During the entire run from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he addressed no
one at meal-times excepting his table steward. Seated next to him, on
the right, was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano in the play,
spoke "an infinite deal of nothing." He made persistent and pathetic
attempts to lure his silent neighbor (we had christened him "William
the Silent") into conversation, but a monosyllable was always the poor
result--until one day. It was the last day of the voyage. We had stopped
at the entrance to Queenstown harbor to deliver the mails, and some fish
had been brought aboard. The vivacious gentleman was in a high state of
excitement that morning at table. "Fresh fish!" he exclaimed; "actually
fresh! They seem quite different from ours. Irish fish, of course. Can
you tell me, sir," he inquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, "what
_kind_ of fish these are?" "Cork soles," said the saturnine man, in a
deep voice, and then went on with his breakfast.