Eliza Green had heard the conversation, and when Mr. Crosby had gone she turned severely to the other girl.

'Do you realise what you are doing?' she asked, with more excitement than she had ever shown. 'As long as you bear a man's name you have no right to lay it in the dust.'

But Charlotte stared at her with utterly childish wonder. 'What do you mean, Eliza?' said she. Then she coughed. 'She means that you mustn't flirt with one man till you're quit of another,' said Maud Lockwood clearly, and laughed.

'I am not going to,' Charlotte replied simply between her coughs; but she blushed guiltily, for she had an under-motive which no one suspected.

Charlotte did not get over her cold as she should, perhaps from her continuing to do her washing in her room and wearing poorly aired linen, and perhaps because she did not buy the medicine ordered by her doctor.

Mr. Crosby

On pleasant People did not

After a while she could not be in the store at all. used to send delicacies and sometimes call on her. days he took her to drive in an easy carriage. know whether to talk pityingly or reproachfully. Maud Lockwood defended her stoutly. But neither she nor any one dreamed for a moment of her real aim and motive, which was ridiculous to grotesqueness-she wanted to get that fifteen dollars. She alone knew by what childish wiles and cunning, planned in her sleepless nights while she lay coughing, drenched with the sweat of exhaustion, she brought it about; but Crosby one day brought her something which he had been made to know would please her -a real turquoise brooch set with pearls. The girl's eyes flashed when she saw it. She fairly laughed.

‘What a tonic a bit of jewellery is to a woman!' Crosby said, laughing in return.

'Thank, oh, thank you!' cried Charlotte. 'Is it mine to do just what I want to with? Do you mean that?'

'Of course I do,' replied Crosby wonderingly.

That evening after dusk Charlotte stole out of the house, though she had been forbidden the night air. When she returned, stifling her cough on the stairs, lest her landlady should hear her, Crosby's turquoise brooch had been sold, and the fifteen dollars' worth of provisions ordered sent to John Woodsum's.

The next day when John Woodsum returned from work he found the parcels heaped on his porch.

He was looking at them in a bewildered way when he heard a cough, and saw Charlotte shrinking back in the corner. John had heard some of the talk about Crosby, and his heart was bitter. He was about to turn away when he caught sight of her face. 'Are you sick?' he asked, almost roughly.

'I guess so,' she returned, shrinkingly.

Then she made a weak little run to him, and he put an arm around her.

'That is every bit as much as I used, every bit as much,' she said, pointing to the parcels.

'What do you mean?'

Charlotte told him incoherently, and he listened.

'Oh, my God!' cried he. Come into the house, poor child.' The next day Crosby's turquoise brooch was returned to him. John carried it to his boarding-place, and the two men had a talk, at first with angry voices. At last they shook hands. The next day Crosby sent some white roses, and John himself put them in a vase beside Charlotte's bed.

'He's been real good,' said she, 'and if it hadn't been for him I don't know as I ever could have come home.'

Charlotte lived only two months after her return. There was consumption in her mother's family. Then, too, her willingness to yield to forces was a fatal element in this case.

It was only the day before she died when Eliza Green came in to see her, bringing some jelly. Eliza looked unusually well; her face was clear and good; her voice was calm and pleasant. Charlotte's nurse was not very tidy.

Eliza moved softly about the room, setting things to rights. She covered up a dish, lest the flies should get into it; she put a cork in a bottle. Charlotte watched her with a wise regard in her hollow blue eyes.

That night she said to John:

'John, do you like Eliza ?'

'Well enough; why?'

'Nothing,' replied Charlotte. 'Only-she is a good girl, and she is very neat and orderly, and I don't believe she would ever waste anything. John

Oh, hush, darling!' cried John, in an agony.

But Charlotte smiled. At the last she had learned her little lesson of obedience and thrift against all her instincts, and all her waste of life was over.

MARY E. WILKINS.

EXAMINATIONS IN FICTION.

BY ANDREW LANG.

PERHAPS they have a school of fiction in some American universities. A friend of mine, visiting one of these academies, met a lady professor of English literature. She was lecturing on Mr. William Watson, and probably has now advanced as far as Mr. Stephen Phillips. Where did she begin, one asks, if she had already ventured so far down the stream of English poesy? Probably she did not, as the ram in the fairy-tale advises, 'commence at the commencement.' The object clearly was to be up to date. Thus a school of fiction might study nothing earlier than Mr. Thomas Hardy, and pass-men would not be expected to take up authors more archaic than Mr. Kipling.

In 1855 mankind was less advanced. In that year, however, was published 'The Student's Guide to the School of Literæ Fictitiæ,' put forth from the press of Vincent at Oxford. The statute founding the school was in Latin, a language now understanded by few. It set forth that the young naturally abhor dry studies, as of mental and moral philosophy, physical science, and history. They prefer works of imagination. These, the statute innocently observes, avoid all danger of scepticism or free-thinking, such as always besets students of history, science, and philosophy. Apparently novels were not easy guides to emancipation in 1855. A school of fiction, the statute adds, will suit ladies who profess principia quæ vocant Bloomeriana-the ideas of the late Miss Bloomer, the reformer of feminine costume. For these excellent reasons the school is instituted, and lists of books, with examination papers, are issued. The subjects are partly quite old-fashioned, partly were up to date in 1855.

Everybody is to be viva-voce'd in 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and Adams's Allegories,' for which Nonconformists are allowed to substitute tales by Mrs. Hannah More. "The Fairchild Family' might well have been added. For class-men 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' Tales of my Landlord,' four of Dickens's novels, and three of Thackeray's are the minimum. In the classical division are 'Gil Blas,' 'Don Quixote,' 'Tristram Shandy,' 'The Sentimental Journey,' three of Fielding's, two of Smollett's, with

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'Clarissa Harlowe,' Grandison,' and 'Pamela'-a stiff list. In the modern division are Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, Fanny Burney (two), Charlotte Brontë, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' Lytton, Mrs. Gaskell, and Miss Yonge's Heir of Redclyffe' and 'Heartsease.'

In composition the pass-men's papers appear difficult, and (what is very unfair) they demand a knowledge of books that are

'Poetry's unnat❜ral. No man ever talked in poetry 'cept a beadle on Boxin' Day, or Warren's Blackin', or Rowland's Oil, or some o' them low fellows. Never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.'

Can a pass-man be expected to do this question with any measure of success? I give my own feeble attempt at a reply. It will be seen that Dr. Johnson greatly expands the succinct and simple style of the elder Mr. Weller:

That poetry is natural and produced by untutored minds, "according to nature," is the contention of the Stagyrite. Men commenced poets, he would have us believe, by way of spontaneous improvisation—an idea which common-sense rejects and all experience repudiates. Despite the boast of Pope, no infant ever "lisped in numbers." The report is the figment of the vanity of a mother or the interested invention of a nurse.

'No man ever talked in poetry, unless the alcoholic excitation of the Christmas festival may have prompted a parish officer to declaim in rhyme such matters as, when sober, he would have been ashamed to pronounce in prose. The mercenaries who would extol the merits of such compositions as profess to give to shoes and boots the lustre and hue of ebony may spontaneously celebrate their patrons' wares in doggerel couplets; and the venal applause of the unguents of Macassar may utter itself in the style of the Oriental Eclogues of Collins. Such improvisations, I admit, may exude from the levity of the degraded, and may attract the attention of the frivolous. But, were I to assume the moralist and dictate to the young and the aspiring, I would urge on them the lesson of abstaining, in their conversation, from the insensate attempt to speak in a style in which few can attain any degree of merit, even while penning their fancies in the seclusion of the closet or breathing forth their passions in the solitude of inanimate nature.'

This rendering may only be worthy of a minus first, but it is beyond the powers of a pass-man, who, of course, cannot be

expected to have read Dr. Johnson. A class-man's task is to write

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an elegy or epitaph on Little Nell, in the style of Pope.' I doubt if this will do!

Wayfarer, pause! beneath yon mossy stone
Alone she sleeps, who often waked alone!
Impatient of slow trade and tardy gain,
Her sire had ventured on a bolder train,
Impelled his wealth in modish ways to seek,
At Basset, Ombre, Lanterloo, or Gleek;
The follies thus and foibles of the great,
Sink to the poor, and poison half the State!
Vainly he gamed; for still the slender purse

More slender grew, and bad was changed for worse!
"Twas then the maid controlled the eager sire,
"Twas she that drew him from the city's mire,

And strove to soothe him in the rural shade,

Where only rustic needs usurp the spade;

Where hearts are pure; and though rude swains may drub,
No man imputes his ruin to a club.

Wandering they went the ways of labouring men,

By moor and marsh, by village, field, and fen,
Content, where puppets yield a blameless sport,
To dwell with Codlin, or to sup with Short,

Or point, amid the waxwork's mimic ring,
To staring shapes of lady, fop, or king.
Wearied, at length, within this peaceful vale,
She died-to make an ending of a tale!
And many a gentle bosom long may swell,
When taught the history of Little Nell.

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The class questions in general can only be answered in essays of some length; for, indeed, the very questions are not short. I confess that, not having read expressly for this school, I do not even know who certain persons of importance were. I cannot compare the political careers and characters of Lord Oldborough and Dudley Egerton, and give a succinct (or any other) account of the Lansmere election.' Where do we read of Lady Davenant and Rowland Lester? Perhaps these people occur in Miss Edgeworth's novels, or are they in Lytton's? This is dreadful ignorance, but I would wager that few readers know where the following passage occurs: 'Deer Creeter,-As you are the animable hopjack of my contemplayshins, your aydear is infernally skimming before my kymmerical fansee,' with what follows in the loveletter of Clayrender.'

Turning back for relaxation to the pass papers, we note that Oxford is ever in advance of the Other Shop.' Calverley's Cambridge paper on 'Pickwick' is famous: I believe that Sir