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Frank Allen tried his foot upon every crum-
bling brick and uncertain step that came in
his way. He felt that the hour was an ef
fervescence. A moment he found himself
alone, as it happened, with those two, out-
side the tower, up whose leaning side wound
a flight of worn and broken stones already
gone to ruin.
Without waiting for thought
ne sprang at them, jumping over spaces, and
laringly trusting his safety to the bits of
dobe that broke once or twice under pres-
sure. He looked down as he neared the
op, and thought how like a pale flower and
I pink flower the two faces looked upturned
o him so, and he laughed for nothing at all.
Then the next he knew he had fallen, and lay
it a little distance from them on the ground,
with a wrenching pain in his shoulder.

sunk down in a heap upon the old stone stair. As he lived, she was crying!

"Why, Frank," he said tenderly, "don't. I never thought of you as nervous; I thought you were the doctor. How I have wronged you!"

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Wronged me?" she replied in surprise. "And did you slight me in your mind for one instant because you thought that? I couldn't respect you if I knew it. I glory in little Sadie."

Yet after all, how glad he was! He would have been glad to have her anything-but what she was! The thought smote in upon him ominously. Oh! had the coils of her hair shone less softly, had her eyes been a shade less beautiful and luminous, had face and mind and soul been not just quite as he would have wished! Was he fit for his ideal? Her very perfectness was a thorn to

The two ran to him, both now concerned nd pale. "You are hurt, and where?" cried Frank, him, and yet his heart could not find fault s if pained herself.

"Not much, I guess. Let me get up and ee," he tried to answer cheerfully, but his oice, like himself, was a bit shaken. "Whatver it is, it's in my left shoulder." He 1ought of his "medical student" and smiled, inking here was an emergency for her "Oh, Sadie!" she cried breathlessly; "I ave had such faith. I have believed in you ). Prove yourself now."

Pink, blonde, and banged little Sadie ance grew somewhat redder in excitement; en closed her parasol, removed her gloves, nd thrust her hands within his coat upon is shoulder.

"It is my first case," she said. "I have 1st received my diploma. Are you willing > trust me? Your shoulder has received a ad strain, but it is not disjointed and it is ot broken. Go down to the Mexican's ouse below and get some hot water, which ou will bind on, renewing frequently. I will beak to one of the gentlemen"; and she ipped away, half laughing, half pleased at er opportunity to be professional.

So Sadie was the " woman doctor "-that tle thing with her hair banged and so many ilet articles about her! Then, who was rank? He looked toward her, and she had

with the loveliness of the rose it grew.. Humble enough to fling himself at her feet, he turned his face away, oppressed into possitive pain by the eloquent silence which bridged with possibilities the current sweeping between. Crying! and for him! Gods! there were no heights to which he would not aspire!

Then the thread-like tones of Dr. Sadie coming around the corner disturbed the electric air, and a moment later Mr. Allen went down to the Mexicans as bidden, and in half an hour had so far recovered himself of his several hurts as to take up his journey with the rest, and to be amused as well at having treatment of "a woman doctor." Next morning his shoulder was sharply painful, and placing Sadie Vance upon a pedestal deferentially inscribed, "lady physican," he made haste to consult her. But though the sun was up-buoyed several hours beyond the horizon, that one tent door was closed like a resolute eye; moreover, the shells and stones and seaweed upon the little stoop were disordered and kicked about, and it was not long till the scene was climaxed by a stolid attendant upon the grounds, who opened the sacred door with his keys and passed in. Presently he came out and load

ed the bedding upon his hand-cart; then wheeled it away while he whistled. How he could whistle under the circumstances seemed a marvel to the onlooker. Plainly, the two young ladies were gone; they must have taken the morning train. And why? Without a word, too. Yet that tender hour among the pines and then her tears! If he could not forget, then, at least, she must remember; and if but faintly, the memory must have its spark of fire which could be fanned to flame. He was feverish, earnest, eager, and followed that day in the train for home. No matter how or where he met her again, he must find himself close to her heart at mention of that hour among the pines.

His blood ran high, as a day or two after he asked of a society lady who knew every thing:

"Do you know a Miss Frank Allen?"

He remembers yet the little breath of the heliotrope in his button-hole, and the shaft of sunshine lying like a bar of gold across the carpet, as he asked the question.

She

"Oh yes!" answered the lady lightly, meshing her wools with slender, lazy fingers, "the daughter of an ex-governor and present heiress to countless thousands. comes from 'way down in Maine." The speaker looked at her questioner suspiciously from habit.

"I met her at Monterey -" he began to explain and stopped. Embarrassment crept through his veins and ran in chills down his back bone.

"Oh!" said the lady by and by, in a dry tone of enlightenment; and then he hated himself and her, too.

It was at "an evening out" that he saw Frank again. Another time, with the cool enthusiasm of a critic, he would have noted her well-bred air, her shimmering dress, the pale beauty of her face; but now he passed these by and saw only his beloved. How his heart leaped again to behold her, the one woman of his soul!

He made his way to where she sat, by and by. Could he have read her eyes, he would have seen their expression gleaming a golden surprise, gradually shading away into

slight shame, so darkening off into terr his appearance, and then lighting up w faint but positive welcome.

Bending above her he took her fan an flowers as a master might, and she did resent it. It was his moment-his only ment-and she would let him have it. "You left so suddenly," he murmur She did not pretend to misunders neither could possibly just then speak i igma to the other.

"It was best," she replied.

"On my account?" he whispered blingly. His moment was passing he from existence.

She turned her face over her shoulde looked at him. "Yes," she whispered turn. His moment was gone, and his seemed to toll and clang as it went.

"Mine?" he asked again humbly. "And mine!" she said in his own "And another fellow's," she added in ghost of a voice.

"Then there are two of us fellows said. "Who is number two?"

"Excuse me," said she, "you are nu two. The other is number one." "Will you marry number one?" he a gravely.

"Yes," she returned.

"If it had not been for him you have married me?" he asked.

She held her breath an instant, and head drooped over the flowers that had en from his hand to her lap again. no-was it yes?

By heaven! it was yes! "Good bye," he whispered lingeri "God bless you, Frank!"

"God bless you, Frank!" she repe mechanically, and then he made excuses adieux and went home.

This was an episode of five years ago, Mr. Frank Allen still enjoys the reputa of a non-marrying man. But yesterday met Dr. Sadie Vance, and stopped her ch just beyond a crossing.

"Frank's coming out again," she rem ed, after greetings.

"En famille?" he inquired.

The Doctor looked at him sharply. Frank's lover died; Frank has never mared," she replied. "Very sad, wasn't it." "Oh! very!" he answered.

To-day he is strangely exhilarated, yet he ells himself that the fire is black on the earth, and dead coals will not kindle. hall he-will he-oh! can he? he asks him

self breathlessly, a hundred times through the restless day.

Meantime a scent of roses is finding strength in the day, the faintest flush of pink pervades the air, a slight murmur as of half-caught voices singing a strain floats as in a hazy dream-Ah, yes-she is coming back!

Kate Heath.

A STUDY OF BROWNING.

In the history of literature there is comonly a period of great originality followed y a period of more critical labor-by a thorugh assimilation and incorporation of what as gone before; whereupon the literary mind ready for fresh departures. Now the tenency of civilization is to merge the one kind f epoch into the other. The period repreented by Wordsworth and Keats may be escribed as ardently imaginative, but permeed by a certain critical spirit; our own imediate times, as an eminently critical period ermeated by vital imagination. An ideal ate of things should see criticism and creive imagination go hand in hand. Robert rowning is an excellent illustration of this odern combination. Not only is he a reat and many-sided genius, but also he is, believe, actually the representative poet of is age, as uniting in the highest and broadst sense its two prominent tendencies: on e one hand, the critical, as shown in his nalytical and philosophical study of the ast-of what, as it were, has already been onventionalized; and on the other, the creave, as shown in his vigorous imaginative ovement outside of all conventions.

I will first discuss Browning's genius, thus ying the foundation for an attempt at show1g his position among the poets of his time. The most obvious and distinctive characristic of Browning's genius is his analytical ower. This is shown philosophically in his udies founded on art, ethics, etc., and arstically in his marvellous psychological anlyses. In his critical studies, such as we

find in his "Men and Women," we perceive his power of bringing together, digesting, analyzing, and presenting under the conserving and glorifying form of poetry the best that the past offers. Thus he is enabled to embody different sides of the artistic nature. Abt Vogler and Fra Lippo Lippi are artists. pure; each is contentedly absorbed in art. Abt Vogler, the earnest, spiritual, musical composer, finds his content in doing for God's praise; his art is a chain, all the links of which, winding about his heart, draw him nearer to God. Fra Lippo Lippi, the joyous, sensuous painter, finds his happiness in making art link him more closely to his fellow men, and in being in very deed one of them. In the two men the ends are different, but the manner of reaching their ends is the same, i. e., by sole devotion to art. Compare with these men Cleon, a Greek artist of the first century, A. D. He forces to the last extremity the Greek ideal of art and human development. In early Greek times the ideal was the perfect and happy development of man, the means being nat ural enjoyment and association with one's fellow men. Later, Epicurean philosophy narrows down and formulates the ideal. Happiness is the end, self-culture the means. Cleon is an over-cultured man, who vaguely longs after something higher. This he supposes to be perfect happiness. In too eagerly seeking happiness, he loses it. For his energies turn continually inward upon himself, instead of outward upon others. He cannot attain his ideal, because, not being

strong enough to embrace and rule his manifold art, he is engulfed by it; and having no religion, he has no God to steady his soul while he is working out his ideal. In art simple and passionate there is happiness and content; in art cultured and philosophical or full of yearning after something better there is unhappiness and oftentimes error, but the tendency is toward a higher plane. The poem shows the inadequacy of Greek art to satisfy a restless spirit which is yearning upward, and therefore, the ultimate failure of that art. One of the lyrics, "Old Pictures in Florence," gives the essence of Browning's views upon art. It shows that there is a development in art, as in other things, from one plane to another and higher; that this progression is necessary to the life of art, and that therefore, to content one's self with imitating more perfect but lower forms of art is useless. Throughout, Browning shows his love even of what is crude, if only it contain germs of promise. In accordance with the real spirit of modern times, he places duty, the good, and the useful before beauty; yet he has a most vivid appreciation of the latter.

Browning has the same large, noble views in ethics as in art. "Let youth strive thro' uncouth effort," he says, "but repose belongs to age alone. Real success lies in earnest striving. 'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would Do." Often what the world considers failures are anything but failures, for the world judges coarsely by what we do; God, by what we are and what we try to do, since every thought and vague aspiration is interwoven into our immortal lives. Perfection is often stagnation, and in imperfection are often found the germs of progress. Such sentiments occur again and again in his poetry. The "Death in the Desert" gives the grounds of belief in God and the truth of Christ's doctrine. The central idea is, that God does not "spoon-feed" us with revelation; that the latter is only sufficient to give us a basis for our own independent reasoning; and again, that it is foolish for minds to refuse belief in the doctrine of Christ, on the ground that we have not suffi

cient evidence as to whether there wa historical and at the same time divine C -not observing that the real proof lie the essential truth and power of the trine.

Saul is a magnificent ethico-religious po It is divided mainly into three parts: Physical growth, and influence of sens pleasures on man; 2nd, Human growth, influence of man upon man; 3rd, Gr of man Godward, and divine influenc God upon man. David, under the influ of religious and poetic fervor, endeavor extend out infinitely his own love for a low-man, and his willingness to suffer in o to raise him; and thereby conceives Go Christ with all his infinite love and infi willingness to suffer for men, thus raising th and showing them the true way of life. N nificent, too, in its intensity, is the last pa the homeward walk of the boy, who is fu solemn gladness, and yet of a kind of static bewilderment at the sudden glor in upon his mind. From that mon wherein he caught a glimpse into the light of things, nature takes on to him a aspect. Does there not come a day to e human being when nature appears of a den lovelier and more significant a hund fold?

Let us now illustrate Browning's powe psychological analysis. In this respe think he is surpassed by no other poet. deed, his analyses are wonderful for stren truth, and subtlety. In nearly all his poe however, the psychological analysis over and combines with that other kind of an sis, which, for the sake of convenience have called merely critical; both are for united in "Paracelsus," which offers, howe especially fine illustrations of the purely cological.

It is often dangerous for a poet at a v early age to be as mature as Browning m have been when he wrote Paracelsus. is apt to exhaust himself, and afterwa to sink into mediocrity. Browning's gent was certainly made of stuff too strong to come exhausted; still we cannot help feeli that the early ripening of his powers

ome influence in making his peculiarities toward God. Compare this with the sugrow later into faults.

The notion of a transcendentalist on a igantic scale is as old as human history; we see it in the old myths of Adam and Eve, of the building of the tower of Babel, of the Titans and their attempt to scale the wall of heaven; and later, we find the notion emodied in art, notably in Goethe's Faust. But Browning presents it not only in a new ight, but in a far more elaborate and analytcal way. In Paracelsus and Aprile he repesents two very different phases of trancendentalism—the philosophic on the one and, and the poetic or artistic on the ther. Every one is in a greater or less legree a transcendentalist, and every transendentalist inclines either to the transendentalism of Paracelsus or to that of Aprile. So these two embodiments may be considered as extreme types or symbols of Progressive humanity. Festus serves as a oil to the other two, and represents the negtive or conservative element in our nature. But the poem is mainly occupied with the oul-development of Paracelsus. We recogize our humbler and lowlier in his loftier nd more daring aims-our hopes and fears 1 his ecstacies and despair—our little vanies in his all-consuming pride. Pride of nowledge is Paracelsus's evil genius. He vill look only upon one half of the truth, ot perceiving that the way of true knowldge consists in gradually, humbly, painfully, naking the outer correspond with the inner ruth; he simply seeks within his own bosom or an Open Sesame, and, of course, fails to nd any. On meeting Aprile, Paracelsus ad recognized and attempted to remedy he main defect in his method-the total lisregard of love. But it is not until his eath-bed that he perceives the inadequacy f the method itself; and hence follows his heerful frame of mind, as contrasted with is former gloomy despair. And he pereives, now even in his very failure, an unoped-for success; and that progress is, in act, built up on failures. His last speech, which is deeply thoughtful, describes the endency of nature toward man, and of man

gestions in Saul of a sort of psychological evolution in man from the mere sensuous pleasures of living, through the intellectual up to God in man or Christ.

Browning's psychological analysis, which plays so large a part in his Paracelsus, and which seems to have been held somewhat in check in his later dramas to the improvement of their form, becomes as he grows older ultra subtle. "James Lee's Wife" is an example of analysis that is almost histological: one must enter very thoroughly into the Browning spirit before it can be appreciated. The piece contains a realistic embodiment of an intensely subjective, highly imaginative woman. Even in the first lyrical rapture of satisfied love, we have the dim, unformed beginning of a suspicion, the growth and effects of which are traced with the utmost minuteness. The woman's exquisitely sensitive soul takes on the impression of surrounding scenes, making nature interpret her moods. Her despair reaches a climax in the poem on the Wind; and her death-like agony wrings out from her the description of the dying nun, which is almost too powerfully realistic. One shrinks here from looking upon the innermost part of this soul laid open to the air, quivering and bleeding. The crisis past, she gives up all hope of ever getting from her husband the kind of love that she had hoped for. Her innate nobility of nature then gains the mastery; she gives up yearning after an unattainable ideal, and allows the higher law of love to rule her life; finding at last the ideal through the realbeauty and happiness in usefulness and rightliving.

Browning's imagination is striking for its freshness, concentration, power, and daring. He has noble impatience of all those poetical conventions which are so constantly followed even among the best of his contemporaries. His imaginative passages, you feel, spring from a live, throbbing human brain. The very essence of spring is in that fine poem, beginning:

"O to be in England
Now that spring is there!"

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