ing themselves past with a flirt and a wink, just as if I had been no lord of creation at all. I had disdained to shoot them when at rest; for there seemed to be some ancient compact between us, by which they were to have their chance and I mine. But when one came and planted himself on a little jut thirty yards to my right, and mocked me with a look of patronage, seeming to regard me as the weaker party and to incline to my side, I broke the pact, and, masking my hurt conceit under some virtuous indignation against him as a deserter and traitor, turned and smote him under the fifth rib.

And now it came upon me that I must secure that bird. To shoot without obtaining were mere wantonness. Yes, I would have him, and justify myself to myself. To do it was difficult, even in Labradorian boy-eyes. Between me and the auk the upper half of the cliff made a deep recess, terminating in a right angle, with a platform of granite some seventy-five feet below. Along both faces of this recess, nearly on a level with myself, ran a shelf not more than six inches wide, with vertical wall above and beneath; and on this I must go. I began, therefore, working along this, proceeding with care, observing my footing, and clutching with my hands whatever knob or crevice I could find. But when near the angle, I found that the shelf terminated some two feet short of its apex, and began again at about the same distance beyond. Seeking about cautiously for finger-hold, I reached out my left foot, and planted it on the opposite side, but could not stretch far enough to make a place for the right foot when I should withdraw it. I began debating with myself, whether, in case I should swing across and rest on the left foot alone, I could work this along and make room for the right. I knew that the process would have to be repeated on my return; so I must estimate two chances at once.

And now for the first time, as I stood thus, some faint misgiving arose in me, some faint question whether I was not doing one unjustifiable thing to avoid

doing another. It occurred to me that there was another personage, - not a bird-seeking boy, like this one here, but a grave man, with whom I had an important connection, and who cherished serious purposes and had many hopes of worthy labor yet to fulfil. Was I doing the fair thing by him? He was not here, to be sure; I had left him somewhere between Worcester and Labrador, with due pledge of reunion; but even in his absence he was to be considered. Besides, he was my master, and though he had permitted me to go gambolling off by myself, on my promise to bring him back a more serviceable spine, yet his claim remained, and I should be dishonorable to ignore it.

At first, indeed, these considerations seemed vague, far-fetched, little better than affectations. The clear thing to be done was to get that bird. This done, I could consider the rest. To admit any other thought militated in some way against the singleness and compactness of my being. Wise or unwise, what had I to do with far-off matters of that sort? My business was to succeed in a certain task, not to be sage and so forth. I actually felt a kind of shame to be debating any other than the all-important question, Can I get my right foot over here beside the left? Nor was it till certain faces pictured themselves to my mind, that the heart took part with reason, and the tangential left foot returned, rounding itself once more into the proper orbit of my life. I had been standing there perhaps a minute.

It was an invaluable experience. It carried me farther into the heart of the boy-world than I had gone for twentyfive years and more. And as the boyworld is the big world, the life of too many being but another and less attractive phase of boyhood, it supplied a gloss to the book of daily observation, which I could on no account part with. The inconceivable indifference of most men to considerations of speculative truth became conceivable. The way in which the axioms of sages slip off from multitudes, as mere vague "glittering

generalities," good enough for cherishers of the "intuitions" to lisp of by moonlight, but sheer fiddle-dee-dee to firmly built men, - the commentary of the able lawyer upon Emerson's lecture, "I don't understand it, but my girls do!"—all this appears in a new light. Are not most men working along some cliff, financial or other, after a bird? And do they not honestly regard it as mere nonsense to be thinking about being sage and so forth, when the real question is how to get the right foot across here beside the left?

I had gone back to my perch, where a rueful, puerile remorse tugged now and then at my elbow, and said, "But that bird! You have n't given up that bird?" when the Professor appeared on the apex of the island above, shouting, "Here's a❞—hawk, I thought he said, and caught up my gun. But what? Fox? Yes, "blue fox." Now, then, up the cliff! Creep, crawl, wriggle, slide, clamber, scramble, clutch, climb, here jumping — actually jumping, I !—over a crevice, then drawing myself round an insuperable jut by two honest sturdy weeds - many thanks to them! which had the consideration to be there and to plant themselves firmly in the rock; at last I reached the height, puffing like a high-pressure steam-engine..

"H-h-h-where-ff! ff! - h-is-ee?" "Right over here. I've been chasing him this last half-hour. Finally, the audacious little rascal would stick up his head over a rock, and bark at me."

I soon had him ; and was again struck with the vivacity which may be exhibited by a creature whose life is really ended. As I fired, the animal gave a loud "whish!" and sped away like the wind, disappearing behind a jut of rock five or six rods farther away; but five feet from that point I found it dead. This post mortem activity, they told me, was made possible by the small size of the shot. Perhaps, then, a creature slain with a missile sufficiently subtile might go an indefinite time without finding it out, supposing itself alive and

well. Institutions and politicians, we have all known, possess this power of ignoring their own decease. Judaism has been dead these eighteen hundred years; yet here are Jew synagogues in New York and Boston. Were the like true of individuals, it might explain to us some lives which seem inexplicable on any other hypothesis. I think, for example, of some editors, who are evidently post-dating their decease; and when these go on writing leading articles, and being sweet upon our brethren of the South," one does not say, "Disloyal," but only, "So long in learning what has happened!"

My prize was the white fox, a year old, and not quite in adult costume. How it got upon this island were matter for conjecture. Probably on the ice.

Another skip, and here we are upon another of these summits surrounded by sea. The home of Puffins this is. The puffin is an odd little fellow, smaller than the auk, but of the same general hue, with a short neck and a queer bill. This is very thin from side to side, twice as wide up and down as it is long, strongly marked with concentric scarlet ridges, and altogether agrees so little with this plain-looking bird, that one can scarcely regard it as belonging naturally to him, and fancies that he must lay it aside at night, as people do false teeth. It is an easy bird to take flying; for, on seeing you, it peaks its wings downward in a manner indescribably prim and prudish, and scales past, turning its stubby neck, and inspecting you with an air of comical, muddy gravity and curiosity. My comrade, Ph- —, got two dozen to my eight; but I was consoled with a large Arctic falcon, which had been dining at fashionable hours on a full-grown puffin, having set its table in a deep gorge between vertical walls. It was of the kind called by Audubon Falco Labradora, concerning which Professor Baird, of the Smithsonian Institute, who has had the kindness to write to me, doubts whether it may not be an immature stage of Falco Candicans, one of the two undoubted species of Arctic fal

cons. Captain Handy, however, a very observant and intelligent man, was sure, from the feeling of the bones, that it must be an old bird.

Once more only I will ask the reader to accompany me. We had gone ashore in a place called Stag Bay, not to hunt stags, but to seek a bear, to whose acquaintance we seemed to have obtained a preliminary introduction by trustworthy informations. Bruin, however, positively declined the smallest approach to intimacy, refusing even to look at our cards, and sending out the most hopeless "Not at home." Separating, therefore, we strolled on the beach, for a beach there actually was at this place, and observing some Piping Plovers, tiny waders, I made for them. One of them stood as sentinel on a rock, and, thinking the ornithologist might like him for a specimen, I fired. The large shot scattered around him, the distance being considerable, without injury; but I insisted on his being dead, and searched as if enough of searching would in some way cause him to be so. It would n't, however; and I was about turning away, when, a rod or two off, I saw him evidently desperately wounded. "Ah! there is my bird, after all," I muttered, and started with a leisurely step to pick it up. Terrified at my approach, the little wretch began to hobble and flutter away, keeping about his original distance. I quickened my pace; he exerted his broken strength still more, and made out to mend his. I walked as rapidly as I could; but new terror lent the poor thing new wings, and it contrived — I could not for my life conjecture how to keep a little beyond my reach. It would not do to leave him suffering thus; and I coaxed myself into a quick run, when up the little hypocrite sprang, and scudded away like a bee! Not the faintest suspicion of its being otherwise

than at death's door had entered my mind until that moment, though I had seen this trick less skilfully performed before.

Returning, I went to the top of the beach and began examining the coarse grass which grew there, thinking that the nests must be hereabout, and desirous of a peep at the eggs. I had hardly pushed my foot in this grass a few times, when another wounded bird appeared but a few feet off. The emergency being uncommon, it put forth all its histrionic power, and never Booth or Siddons did so well. With breast ploughing in the sand, head falling helplessly from side to side, feet kicking out spasmodically and yet feebly behind, and wings fluttering and beating brokenly on the beach, it seemed the very symbol of fear, pain, and weakness. I made a sudden spring forward, — off it went, but immediately returned when I pushed my foot again toward the grass, renewing its speaking pantomime. I could not represent suffering so well, if I really felt it. With a convulsive kick, its poor little helpless head went under, and it tumbled over on the side; then it swooned, was dying; the wings flattened out on the sand, quivering, but quivering less and less; it gasped with open mouth and closing eye, but the gasps grew fainter and fainter; at last it lay still, dead; but when I poked once more in the grass, it revived to' endure another spasm of agony, and die again. "Dear, witty little Garrick," I said, "had you a thousand lives and ten thousand eggs, I would not for a kingdom touch one of them!" and I wished he could show me some enemy to his peace, that I might make war upon the felon forthwith.

And in this becoming frame of mind I ended my chapter of "Boy's Play in Labrador."

ment of that excellent man and his estimable wife supplied the calm contentment and seraphic peace, such as might have been the dream of the poet and the hope of the man. Honored be the name and reverenced the memory of this true friend! He died on the 1st of June, 1837, having arranged to publish a life of Coleridge, of which he produced but the first volume.*

Coleridge's habit of taking opium was no secret. In 1816 it must have reached a fearful pitch. It had produced "during many years an accumulation of bodily suffering that wasted the frame, poisoned the sources of enjoyment, and entailed an intolerable mental load that scarcely knew cessation"; the poet himself called it "the accursed drug." In 1814 Cottle wrote him a strong protest against this terrible and ruinous habit, entreating him to renounce it. Coleridge said in reply, "You have poured oil into the raw and festering wound of an old friend, Cottle, but it is oil of vitriol!" He accounts for the "accursed habit" by stating that he had taken to it first to obtain relief from intense bodily suffering; and he seriously contemplated entering a private insane asylum as the surest means of its removal. His remorse was terrible and perpetual; he was "rolling rudderless," "the wreck of what he once was,' ," "wretched, helpless, and hopeless." He revealed this "dominion" to De Quincey "with a deep expression of horror at the hideous bondage." It was this "conspiracy of himself against himself" that was the poison of his life. He describes it with frantic pathos as "the scourge, the curse, the one almighty blight, which had desolated his life," the thief

"to steal

From my own nature all the natural man."

Gillman published but one volume of a Life of Coleridge. The volume he gave me contains his corrections for another edition. De Quincey says of it that "it is a thing deader than a door-nail, - which is waiting vainly, and for thousands of years is doomed to wait, for its sister volume, namely, Volume Second." It must be ever regretted, that of the poet's later life, of which he knew so much, he wrote nothing; but the world was justified in expecting in

The habit was, it would seem, commenced in 1802; and if Mr. Cottle is to be credited, in 1814 he had been long accustomed to take "from two quarts of laudanum in a week to a pint a day." He did, however, ultimately conquer it.

It was during his residence with Mr. Gillman that I knew Coleridge. He had arranged to write for "The Amulet"; and circumstances warranted my often seeing him,—a privilege of which I gladly availed myself. In this home at Highgate, where all even of his whims were studied with affectionate and attentive care, he preferred the quiet of home influences to the excitements of society; and although I more than once met there his friend Charles Lamb, and other noteworthy men, I usually found him, to my delight, alone. There he cultivated flowers, fed his pensioners, the birds, and wooed the little children who gambolled on the heath, where he took his daily walks.

It is a beautiful view, such as can be rarely seen out of England, — that which the poet had from the window of his bed-chamber. Underneath, a valley, rich in "Patrician trees," divides the hill of Highgate from that of Hampstead; the tower of the old church at Hampstead rises above a thick wood,

a dense forest it seems, although here and there a graceful villa stands out from among the dark green drapery that infolds it. It was easy to imagine the poet often contrasting this scene with that of "Brockan's sov'ran height," where no "finer influence of friend or child" had greeted him, and exclaiming,

"O thou Queen!

Thou delegated Deity of Earth,
O dear, dear England!"

And what a wonderful change there is in the scene, when the pilgrim to this shrine at Highgate leaves the garden and walks a few steps beyond the elm avenue that still fronts the house!

Forty years have brought houses all about the heath, and shut in the prospect; but from any ascent you may see

it did not get.

end on the other, -twenty miles of view,