had periodic panics. They cared next to nothing for the ghost he let down into their midst. And so, finally, not to lose time, a new method of bringing them to doom was tried. A sort of movable wall of hemp was dragged up the madraga in the direction of the death chamber. As the tunny were urged nearer and nearer to the chamber the space gained was secured. And so, eventually, toward eleven o'clock, the rais waved his white handkerchief to inform us that all was ready. were put in the side boats to be out of the way, though we two were allowed to stay in the middle of one of the great barges, on one of the high transverse seats. The slaughterers stripped and clothed themselves afresh in white linen breeches and jacket. Then they took their weapons of destruction and looked at the rais, who was being tossed so furiously that we expected every moment to see him overturned into the midst of the tunny. The weapons were long poles with little iron The slaughterers stretched themselves and crooks at the end-not very deadly to look at, looked as if they were glad. but sufficiently so for the tunny, as they soon found to their cost. Half an hour later all things were ready. The two enormous barges (like canal-boats widened threefold) were well in position, facing each other. Lesser boats were lashed tightly at right angles to them, two or three deep. A clear space of water was thus left between the boats. In this space was the rais, and no one else. rowed to and fro, making sure that the barrier was strong in every part. He Then the word was given to begin to draw in the net, which was gathered into boats at each side as it came up. I suppose nearly an hour was spent in hauling the tunny near to the surface. It was rather monotonous work. The sun was blazing overhead. The weight of the net, though seventy or eighty pairs of hands were at work upon it, was tremendous. An inch or two at a haul was all we could gain from it. At length a fin flashed above the surface of the water to encourage us. We were getting to the end of this division of our labor. Again the men sobbed "issa-issa!" as they tugged and groaned with relief. In another two minutes a score of fish could be seen-beautiful silver-gray monsters, with black backs. They showed the utmost agitation-now dashing to the surface and bumping hard against the rais in his little boat, and the next moment speeding below again, only to be fetched up suddenly by the solid mass of their brethren, as dazed and frightened as themselves. It was really a remarkable sight. There were hundreds of tunny in a space about fifty feet square. The net had been brought so near to the surface that there was no escape for them. They lay in heaving heaps, the uppermost bounding about or shooting to and fro with electrical speed in the narrow pools of water. Again there was an interval. While the tunny bruised and enfeebled themselves in their vain. efforts to get free, the slaughterers proper now formed into position. The tramps and visitors The rais stood up in his little boat, cried a few words of customary invocation for the successful carrying through of the work now brought so happily to its last stage, and then shouted: "Kill!” At this signal the slaughterers, also with a shout, thrust their hooks into the bodies of the fishes nearest to them and dragged them one by one up the sides of the barges, into which they then slid heavily. Their efforts to get a firm hold on the tunny were by no means always successful. The fish would break away maddened with pain, and scurry up and down in the most frantic manner. But, as a rule, this was done successfully at a first effort. The smaller fish were not too heavy for one man to lift, but those weighing four, five and six hundredweight demanded co-operation. If the scene was wild before, it was extraordinary now. The rais continued to rock in the red sea. IIe had nothing much to do now, though. Only when he saw anything like a quarrel between any of the men did he continue to assert himself. Then, at a shout from him, the blood-stained dissentients became orderly again and renewed their attacks upon the tunny. For half an hour it was as engrossing a spectacle as one could have. The men were half frantic with excitement and the fish more than half. Five or six hundred tunny at least were in the net, and the barges were gradually sinking deep into the water. The dying fish slipped and floundered against each other in the boats, and looked extremely pathetic as they stared with their great eyes at their merciless executioners. For beauty of coloring methinks nothing can equal a dying tunny. Byron's line, "Parting day dies like a dolphin," acquired a significance I for one had never before seen in it. The bodies of the fish took tint after tint-pale crimson, gold, purple and steel gray, just for all the world like the sunset sky in low latitudes. whom they there and then began to cut up in a way that was also extremely "affecting" to us. They were hard at work disemboweling the yet living tunny, while the steam tug was again attached and pulled the two huge loads toward the tonnara or manufactory. They wanted us to go on shore and see the final proceedings, in which the fish were dissected wholesale, cut up and pickled or potted. But we had had quite enough pleasure for one day. It was at this stage of the day that my friend The island at close quarters smelt much worse began to turn pale. "Don't you think," he murmured, glancing down his blanched nose at the red slaughterers and the crimsoned heap in the barges, "that this smell under the sun is a little "I do," I replied, anticipating him. It certainly was. I do not know what he meant to say, but it was something indicative of badness; and it could hardly be too bad. If you can imagine the southern noonday sun in midsummer glaring upon such a scene, you also may imagine that we were not in the midst of sweet odors. The infliction, in fact, grew momentarily worse. My friend was the first to succumb. In his hurried movement to the offside of the barge, what must he do but trip and tumble into the midst of the dying and the dead fish. He said afterward that it was a horrid sensation; the creatures felt so slippery and their dying sobs were grievous to hear at close quarters. But he contrived to climb from them on to the seat again, and thence he testified amply to the discomfort of our position, thus insulated in the midst of congealing gore. I must confess that I was not long in following his painful example. It was some consolation-though not muchto see that certain of the young ladies who had started in the morning with songs and merry moods were also as we were. Only the rais, the slaughterers, the tramps and other boatmen could contain their inward agita tion. In less than an hour all was over. Not a living tunny was left in the net. This was quickly let down afresh, in readiness for the next slaughter, which happened in twenty-four hours. Then the red men plunged into the sea to wash themselves, finally changing into their workaday clothes. Afterward they sat in the midst of their victims, than the slaughterers in their blood-soaked garments. You see, the ground here during the tunny season absorbs hogsheads of blood every day or two, and the perfume thereof stays with it; not to mention the incredible heaps of fish garbage which are inevitable after these wholesale butcheries, and the natural odors of Billingsgate which cling to the factory and its precincts. One of the Genoese proprietors of the factory was kind enough to ask us to stay and dine on the island. "There will be fresh tunny," said the gentleman who bore us the invitation. "Does that attract you, R-?" I asked my friend. He did not reply. He merely writhed and turned away. "I do not think, for my part, I said, "that I care for any fresh tunny just now." In fact, our chief concern was to depart for Carloforte with the utmost speed. But, in spite of ourselves, there was fifty-six pounds of fresh tunny in the bows of the boat which eventually took us away. Both R and I kept our eyes sternly fixed on the beauties of nature while we made the passage. As it happened, the tunny was for us, a muchesteemed present. In old times they gave the visitor a whole fish on such occasions. We did not take the cube of tunny away with us the next day; nor did our landlord make any allowance for it in the bill, though I suppose it was worth at least four or five dollars. A slaughter of tunny is like a bullfight— something to see once, and only once. There is nothing I know that I would not rather smell for a punishment than this particular Sarde tunny factory. Sewage farms, soap works, chemical and bone manure works are jointly and collectively feeble in comparison. CHRISTMAS. BY IRVING ALLEN, "WE have reached the season of the year when, with a little variation as to the precise day, growing out of the differences between the old and new style, Christians of almost every name commemorate the birthday of their common Master. "On Christmas Day, beginning at Jerusalem, in the Church of the Sepulchre of our Lord, the Christmas anthem has traveled with the star that stood above His cradle, from region to region, from communion to communion, and from tongue to tongue, till it has compassed the land and the sea, and returned to melt away upon the sides of Mount Zion.” In these eloquent words the Christmastide of 1860-thirty-five years ago-was welcomed by Edward Everett, most marvelous orator of his land and time. So recently as fifty years ago, almost the sole exception to that general observance of Christmas of which Mr. Everett wrote, was found in his own New England, a remnant of the old Puritan prejudice which still hung darkly over the land of Winthrop, John Endicott and the Mathers the witch and pope-hating Cotton and Increase. Able writers maintain that the abhorrence of the festivals of Christmas and Easter was but the natural result of certain tendencies in the English Church in the days of the Puritans to honor with undue and unscriptural observance the well-nigh innumerable saints' days in the Church's calendar. There was little enough in the poetic hopes and memories that cluster around these sacred seasons that appealed to the iron and granite of the Puritan character. A noteworthy exception to the rule appears in the immortal author of the grand "Hymn on the Nativity"—the Puritan poet, John Milton. It is only within very recent years that the anniversary of the Saviour's birth has attained to anything approaching general reverence and honor in the ancient home of the founders of New England. Within my own memory the day was scarcely regarded in the New England capital as worthy of especial notice. The Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches were, of course, open for the celebration of the appointed services for the day, and here and there some devout Catholic or churchman closed his office or place of business, but it was by no means then, as now, a legal or general holiday; nor was it even, as a rule, the happy occasion for the interchange of tokens of love and friendship, the season for that in my youthful days being the first of January-New Year's. In the neighborhood of Boston then the public schools were closed on the latter holiday and on the now obsolete festival, May Day, but never on Christmas, unless the day happened to fall on Sunday or within the period of a semi-annual or quarterly vacation. Significant and happy indeed is the change! Not that it is at all the case that the New England of our fathers is in process of conversion— or, as they would have called it, perversion-to the doctrines or practices of ritualistic communions; it is rather the natural and wholesome rebound from hereditary and cultivated prejudice into a region of healthier and more tolerant thought and action. One of the most singular among the numerous puritanic antipathies-happily dissipated long before our day-was always an especial marvel to me-viz., the abhorrence of our saintly forbears for the succulent, though indigestible, mince pie and the now obsolete English dainty known as plum porridge. The Puritans, says Hudibras : "Quarrel with mince pie and disparage Their best and dearest friend, plum porridge." Referring to this couplet, Dr. Johnson-a sincere hater of puritanism and all its works and ways-remarks: "We have never been witness of the animosities excited by their use, nor seen with what abhorrence those who could eat them at all other times of the year would shrink from them in December. An old Puritan who was alive in my childhood, being at one of the feasts of the Church invited by a neighbor to partake of his cheer, told him that if he would treat him at an ale-house with beer brewed for all times. and seasons he would accept his kindness, but would have none of his superstitious meats and drinks." In a number of The World—an ancient and once popular English periodical occurs this reference to the same venerable and pious prejudice: "How greatly ought we to regret the neglect of mince-pies, which, besides the ideas of merrymaking inseparable from them, were almost con sidered as the text of schismatics! How zealously were they swallowed by the orthodox to the utter confusion of all fanatical recusants! If any country gentleman should be so unfortunate in this age [1755] as to lie under the suspicion of heresy, where will he find so easy a method of acquitting himself as by the ordeal of plumporridge?" Among the few Christmas viands of "Merry England," which seem never to have fallen under the special ban of puritanic proscription, were the "baron of beef," consisting of two sirloins (a baron being, as an old writer tells us, "twice the dignity of a knight"), and that lordly dish, precious in the eyes and fragrant in the nostrils of our fathers-the boar's head. That worthy old chronicler, Dugdale, describing ancient Christmas customs, says: "Service in the church ended, the gentlemen presently repair into the hall to breakfast with brawn, mustard and Malmsey. At dinner, at the first course, is served a fair and large boar's head upon a silver platter, with minstrelsy." A later writer tells us that "Among the earliest books published in England was a collection of carols prepared to be sung as an accompaniment to the grand entrée of the boar's head." It is a melancholy truth that, in parting with ancient superstitions, we have also lost much that was beautiful and poetic. It was assuredly a superstition-albeit there was in it a quaint element of poetry-that ascribed a sentiment of reverence to the very cattle at Christmastide. Even near the beginning of the present century the belief was prevalent in certain sections of Devonshire that at precisely midnight on Christmas Eve, the oxen in their stalls assumed the attitude of devotion; a droll outcome of this tradition was the belief that since the adoption of the modern style of reckoning, the devout animals continued to prostrate themselves only on the eve of Old Christmas Day! Brand, the author of "Popular Antiquities," tells us that "an honest countryman living on the edge of St. Stephen's, down near Launceston, in Cornwall, informed me that he once, with some others, made a trial of the truth of this. Once watching several oxen in their stalls at twelve o'clock at night, they observed the oldest oxen only fall upon their knees, and, as he expressed it, make a cruel moan like Christian creatures." The writings of Sir Walter Scott abound in charming descriptions of old-time Christmas keeping in England and Scotland. The honored friend of Scott-our own Washington Irving-is one of the most delightful of Christmas writers. In all our literature there is scarcely a more thoroughly enjoyable book than "Bracebridge Hall." Edward Everett-the common friend of Scott and Irving-in a paper wherein he refers at length, and with exceeding interest, to the Christmas sketches of those great authors, thus writes: "Although the ancient superstitions connected with Christmas, and the fantastic revels with which it was celebrated, are now almost forgotten, it is still observed in the old country, and as we learn from Scott and our own Geoffrey Crayon, with no little cordiality and fervor. The church is decorated with evergreens, and the hall adorned with mistletoe. It is a holiday for the children and a season of good-fellowship for young and old. "The scattered members of the family are reassembled; the descendants of the house are gathered with patriarchal hospitality under the roof of its head, and while genial festivity prevails within doors bountiful supplies of clothing and food are sent to the neighboring poor. . . . May this hallowed and gracious time' diffuse its innocent cheer through every family circle, and scatter its bounty largely among the children of want." THE POETRY OF CHRISTMAS. Much of the traditional delight and glory of the Christmas time is due to the poets of our "Old Home" and to the divine singers of our own land. "Christmas," a poem by George Wither, the author of the still familiar lines : Herrick's jingling Christmas verse of which this is a stanza: "Come bring with a noise, My merry, merry boys, The Christmas log to the firing; While my good dame, she And drink to your hearts' desiring." No reference to the poetry of the sacred season would be complete without a word concerning the Christmas Carols. Within the last thirty years our own country, as well as England, has witnessed a revival of interest in the old custom of carol singing at Easter and Christmas. Who does not recall that homely favorite of ancient times, beginning thus: "God rest you, merry gentlemen, Dickens in the immortal "Carol" puts this old rhyme into the mouth of Scrooge's unlucky caller on Christmas Eve, who, the reader will remember, had a narrow escape from the mahogany ruler in the hands of the irate old miser. It is still sung in England by choruses of men and boys on their annual rounds in the evening and far into the night before the great holiday. There is not much holiday poetry in the writings of Wordsworth, but a poem of his entitled "Pictures of Christmas Eve" is so beautiful that I cannot refrain from quoting a few stanzas. It is addressed to his brother, Dr. Wordsworth, later an eminent English bishop: "The minstrels played their Christmas tunes Th' encircling laurels, thick with leaves, John Milton's great poem, of which I have spoken above, was written at the age of twentyone. "When," says an eminent critic, "it is recollected that this piece was produced at that early age, all deep thinkers of fancy and sensibility must pore over it with delighted wonder." I should be glad to quote the entire poem; but every reader is familiar with its sublime and stately numbers. It is surely one of the best illustrations of the genius of the great minstrel addressed by Tennyson as England's "mightymouthed inventor of harmonies, Milton-a name to resound for ages." Tennyson himself-justly termed by one of our own most brilliant singers "the noblest poet that ever lived"-has celebrated the Nativity in sweet and lofty measures. There is in English song little that is finer and more sweetly pathetic than this; little that more tenderly touches and unseals the fountains of sacred grief: Again at Christmas did we weave The holly round the Christmas hearth; No wing of wind the region swept, Here is a specimen of the Laureate's verse of a different, perhaps even more characteristic, tenor; it is from "The Epic"-the introduction in later editions of the poet's works to Morte d'Arthur: "At Francis Allen's, on the Christmas Eve-- In sleep I seemed To sail with Arthur under looming shores, That with the sound I woke and heard, indeed, |