waiting I just glanced at the things with which the table was littered. There were a number of foreign newspapers, but in what language they were printed I could not make out; there was a package of officiallooking documents tied with a string, a great blue envelope addressed in French to the Prince Michel Zaroguine and post-marked Washington, and back of all, in a frame, the photograph of a man." For some minutes previous Mr. Fairbanks had been speaking quite composedly, though Jones, with the observant eye of his class, had noticed that near the ears his cheeks and his forehead as well were wet with perspiration. But now abruptly he grew unaccountably excited and his speech displayed a feverish animation. His face had lost its scarlet; it had grown very white, and it seemed to the novelist that in some manner which he could not explain to himself it had taken on a not unfamiliar aspect. "H'm!" he reflected, "it's odd. I know I never saw the man before, and I am sure that I do not particularly care ever to see him again. Leigh ought to have more sense than to bring an orang-outang even into such a club as the Smallpox. Besides, what does he mean by boring every one to death? By gad, I believe he has put Leigh to sleep. It's worse than a play." But still he made no effort to move. In spite of himself, he felt vaguely fascinated, and, though he declined to admit it, a trifle ill at case. "I took up the photograph," Mr. Fairbanks continued, "and while I was examining it the Russian came back. In his hand he held a check-book. That's the grand duke himself,' he said. He will stop in here presently on his way out. There will be two or three members of the suite with him; and, that you may recognize his Highness at once, take a good look at the picture. When he comes in you must do this way: button your coat, please; thanks: now stand anywhere you like and make a low bow. Let me see you make one. Bravo! that is splendid. Only,-how shall I say?-do not let your arms hang in that fashion. The grand duke might think you had dropped something and were stooping to pick it up. However, that is a minor matter. It may be that he won't see you at all. But of all things remember this: under no circumstances must you speak to him unless he first addresses you, and then you must merely answer his question. In other words, do not, I pray you, try to engage him in conversation.' 'Does he speak English?' I asked. I couldn't help it. I was getting nervous. Now let us have the rubies,' he said. I took the box out of my breast-pocket and handed it to him. He opened it, drew the cotton aside, and ran his fingers lovingly over the gems. Yes,' he said, 'they will do.' Then he closed the box again, and put it in the drawer of the table at which he had taken a seat. If,' he continued, his Highness is satisfied, I will draw a draft for you, and Count Béziatnikoff will sign it. The count,' he went on to say, 'is the keeper of the Privy Purse. The draft itself is on the London Rothschilds, but they will cash it at Belmont's.' I did not quite like that arrangement: it did not seem entirely business-like. Your Excellency,' I said, it is the custom here to have checks for large amounts certified before they are offered in payment.' But I had to explain what certification meant before he understood me. "That is nothing,' he said, 'that is nothing. If his VOL. XLI.-9 Highness is pleased, we will go to Belmont's together, or, if you prefer, we will sit here over a Sam Ward and let one of the hotel-clerks go to the bank in our stead.' There seemed to me nothing objectionable in that suggestion; for, after all, I could not exact of any one, however grand-ducal he might be, to go about with a hundred and ten thousand dollars in his waistcoat." "Or in his trousers either.” "Or in his trousers either, as you very properly put it. Now, Mr. Jones- Mr. Leigh, look at me; Colonel Barker,-colonel,—I am coming to the point. Where's that waiter? Where's that waiter? Gentlemen, see here; watch that man there,-watch Jones. Don't take your eyes off Mr. Jones, but listen, all of you, to what I say. Mr. Leigh, you are looking at me look at your friend, colonel, I insist. Mr. Jones, you, if you care to, can look at me. Now, gentlemen, now" 66 'Have you got a camera concealed about your person "No, I have not, but I have something that came from one. You wait a minute, and I'll show it to you. I'll show it to you all. Where did I leave off?" "In his waistcoat-pocket." "Thank you: so I did. Well, gentlemen, we sat there talking as pleasantly as you please. The Russian joked a bit, and said that he wanted a certified check from me,-the check for his commission, you remember, and presently he got up and said he would see what was delaying his Highness. So I sat awhile, twirling my thumbs. Five minutes passed, ten minutes passed. I looked at my watch: it was almost half-past two. That draft, I told myself, won't be cashed today. I went to the window and looked out. I went to the door: there was no one in the hall but a chambermaid. I went back to my seat, and then, moved by my own uneasiness, I opened the drawer of the table. The box was gone! I took the drawer out. It was one that extended the entire width of the table; the further end of it had been cut off. I looked down and in through the place from which I had taken it. I could see into the next room! I pulled the table to one side, and there, just where the drawer had touched the door against which it had stood, was an oblong opening cut through the wood-work of the door itself. I was down-stairs in an instant. Gentlemen, the grand duke had gone to Philadelphia that very morning. No such person as Prince Zaroguine lodged in the hotel. The clerk came upstairs with me. 'That room,' he said, 'is occupied by a Frenchman, and the adjoining room belongs to a man who registered from Boston. Why, that's his picture there!' he exclaimed, pointing to the picture of the grand duke. I did not even know that they were acquainted. But they will be back; they have left their things; they haven't even paid their bills.' I did not wait for their return: if I had I might be waiting still. But I took the photograph, and down to Inspector Byrnes I posted. That,' said he, that is the picture of one of the 'cutest rogues in the land. He has as many names as the Czar of Russia himself.' And the original of that picture- Gentlemen, here, Mr. Leigh, here,-colonel, here is the picture itself. I have kept it with me ever since. The original of that picture sits before you. Hold on to him, colonel. Jones, if you move I'll put a bullet through you. Mr. Leigh, do you ring for the police. Hold him, colonel. Disgorge, you scoundrel, disgorge! I have got you at last!" And then, before the astonished gaze of Alphabet Jones, Colonel Barker faded in a mist, Mr. Fairbanks lost his rotundity, his black coat changed to a blue swallow-tail with brass buttons, he grew twenty years younger, and, so far from being violent, he seemed rather apologetic than otherwise. "It's six o'clock, sir," he said. the bar closes ?" "Will you order anything before Alphabet blinked his eyes. He was lying in a cramped position on the sofa. He was uncomfortable and very hot. He pulled himself together and looked around. Save for the waiter and himself, the room was deserted. "Is there any baccarat going on up-stairs?" he asked. "No, sir; the gentlemen are just going away." Well, well," he mused, "that was vivid. H'm! I'll work it up as an actual occurrence and send it on to the Interstate: it will be good for the two hundred and fifty which I meant to make at baccarat.—I say, waiter, get me a Remsen cooler, please." Edgar Saltus. TO MY FACE IN THE GLASS. EYE YES, ye are sad; lips, ye are sadder still. Big with the April rains, the thirsty mere Drinks deep of floods that fall not from the sky. Amélie Rives. OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [The Monthly Gossip will henceforth be an editorial department in which information will be volunteered upon any literary, scientific, or miscellaneous topic of general interest, and queries on such topics will be answered. Queries from all sources are invited, and every effort will be made to answer them fully and entertainingly. But it is requested that correspondents will refrain from sending queries to which sufficient answers may be found in such familiar books of reference as Brower's "Reader's Handbook," Brewer's Phrase and Fable," Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations," Wheeler's "Noted Names of Fiction," Lippincott's 'Biographical Dictionary," Chambers's and other Encyclopædias, Classical Dictionaries, etc. All queries received before the 24th of December will be answered in the February number, and so on.] A GREAT deal has recently been said about the genesis of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and, as might be expected, continual charges of plagiarism have been exploited in this, that, and the other journal. Mr. Stevenson himself explained to a reporter of the New York Examiner the origin of the story, as follows: "On one occasion I was very hard up for money, and I felt that I had to do something. I thought and thought, and tried hard to find a subject to write about. At night I dreamed the story, not precisely as it is written, for of course there are always stupidities in dreams, but practically it came to me as a gift, and what makes it appear more odd is that I am quite in the habit of dreaming stories. . . . Even when fast asleep I know that it is I who am inventing, and when I cry out it is with gratification to know that the story is so good. So soon as I awake, and it always awakens me when I get on a good thing, I set to work and put it together. For instance, all I dreamed about Dr. Jekyll was that one man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being. I awoke and said at once that I had found the missing link for which I had been looking so long, and before I went to sleep almost every detail of the story, as it stands, was clear to me. Of course, writing it was another thing." This is very interesting. Nevertheless, if the story came to Mr. Stevenson not so much as a gift but rather as an inheritance from a long line of former possessors, there is still no flaw in his title. Absolute originality of incident is nowadays out of the question: the few possible germinal conceptions were long ago seized and appropriated by the early masters in fiction. The possible combinations and methods of treatment are infinite, however; and we are right in calling a story original where the ideas are treated and combined in a novel and striking manner. The germinal idea of the story that came to Mr. Stevenson in a dream is that of the double, the doppelgänger, an idea which may have originated with the first dream of the first man. When our savage ancestor found that his body could be asleep and quiescent while his soul was abroad, he naturally conceived of an alter ego, which through some curious association of ideas he came in time to confuse with his shadow and his mirrored reflection,—those mysterious non-egos which mocked and mimicked his more substantial self. Comparative mythologists are fond of tracing to this germ the popular superstition in ghosts. As man's conscience developed he also grew to recognize the existence of a higher and a lower nature within himself. In the combination of all these ideas "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" became possible to the highly-civilized, artistic thinker of to-day. But these ideas can be traced back through the successive stages of their evolution in myth and literature. The folk-lore of all nations recognizes the double, frequently refining it into an embodied conscience, which haunts and dogs the sinner, thus differentiating the higher and the lower self of man into separate identities. The Greek woman's appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober is only another variation upon this thought, as are also the Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar's insanity which turned him into a beast, and the classic legend of men ensnared by the lecherous wiles of Circe and transformed into swine. In folklore this germinal idea may be found in all that cycle of stories of which "Beauty and the Beast" is the type. In literature it has been treated with the most ingenious variety of detail, especially by the writers of the last century or so, -by Fouqué in "Sintram and his Companions," by Andersen in "The Shadow," by Mrs. Browning in "The Romaunt of Margret," by Gautier in "Le Chevalier double," by E. E. Hale in "My Double and How He Undid Me," by Poe in "William Wilson." The last has been seized upon by most of Stevenson's detractors as the obvious original of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Yet "William Wilson" is itself a very close paraphrase of an old Spanish drama called “El Embozado, ó el Encapotado." It is extremely unlikely that Poe ever read this drama, but it is wellnigh certain that he did come across the following passage in one of Byron's letters and did profit by it: "Shelley has been reading a strange drama entitled 'El Embozado.' It is so scarce that Washington Irving told me he had sought for it without success in several of the public libraries of Spain. The story is that a kind of Cipriano or Faust is through life thwarted in all his plans for the acquisition of wealth, honor, or happiness by a masked stranger, who stands in his way like some Alastor or evil spirit. He is at length in love: the day is fixed for his marriage, when the unknown contrived to sow dissension between him and his betrothed and to break off the match. Infuriate with his wrongs, he breathes nothing but revenge; but all his endeavors to discover his mysterious foe prove abortive: at length his persecutor appears of his own accord. When about to fight, the Embozado unmasks, and discovers the phantasm of himself, saying, 'Are you satisfied?' The hero dies with horror." This reads almost like an abstract of "William Wilson." Yet we are none the less grateful to Poe for giving us that weird and ominous tale. An obvious point of departure between Stevenson's story and all the others we have mentioned is that Mr. Hyde bears no outward resemblance to Dr. Jekyll, but is his exact opposite in appearance,-a repulsive monster in whom are concentrated all the evil qualities of the individual who in the attractive personality of Dr. Jekyll retains merely his own virtues. A hint of this idea had, indeed, found artistic expression in Hawthorne's "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." In one of the preliminary studies to this work, found among Hawthorne's papers and appended to the last edition, the author's purpose in the spider which is Grimshawe's famulus is thus set forth: "The great spider shall be an emblem of the doctor himself; it shall be his craft and wickedness coming into this shape outside of him; and his demon; and I think a great deal may be made out of it." Much, indeed, might have been made out of it had the great romancer lived to perfect this book,-as much, |