sonages of Boston (1876); Captain Nelson: a Romance of Colonial Days (1879); Around the Hub, a book for boys, and The Heart of the White Mountains (1881); New England Legends and Folk Lore (1883); Indian History for Young Folks (1884); and The Making of New England (1886); Decisive Events in American History (1889); Our Colonial Homes (1893); The Border Wars of New England (1897); and The Myths and Fables of Today (1900). Of his earlier works, The Nation, speaking of the Old Landmarks, says: "This is a valuable book. Boston is one of the few cities in America which are worth studying minutely." And of the Nooks and Corners the same authority remarks. that it is "crowded with description, narrative, and sentiment, and adorned with some three hundred wood engravings, of which not one is trivial or superfluous." Of the former of these two, Duyckinck says, in his American Literature, that "it has been characterized as one of the most entertaining books of the class to which it belongs, and has had a large sale."

A MOUNTAIN STREAM.

There is a fine cataract on the Ellis, known as Goodrich Falls. This is a mile and a half out of the village where the Conway road passes the Ellis by a bridge; and being directly upon the high-road, is one of the best known. The river here suddenly pours its whole volume over a precipice eighty feet high, making the earth tremble with the shock. I made my way down the steep bank to the bed of the river below the fall, from which I saw, first, the curling wave-large, regular, and glassy-of the dam, then three wild and foaming pitches of broken water, with detached cascades, gushing out from the rocks at the right—all falling heavily into the eddying pool below. Where the water was not white, or fil

liped into fine spray, it was the color of pale sherry, and opaque, gradually changing to amber gold as the light penetrated it and the descending sheet of the fall grew thinner. The full tide of the river showed the fall to the best possible advantage. But Spring is the season of cascades—the only season when one is sure of seeing them at all. One gets strongly attached to such a stream as the Ellis. If it has been his only comrade for weeks, as it has been mine, the liking grows stronger every day the sense of companionship is full and complete: the river is so voluble, so vivacious, so full of noisy chatter. If you are dull, it rouses and lifts you out of yourself; if gay, it is as gay as you. Besides, there is the paradox that, notwithstanding you may be going in different directions, it never leaves you for a single moment. One talks as it runs. One listens as he walks. A secret, an indefinable sympathy springs up. You are no longer alone.

Among other stories that the river told me was the following: Once, while on their way to Canada, through these mountains, a war-party of Indians, fresh from a successful foray on the sea-coast, halted with their prisoners on the banks of a stream whose waters stopped their way. For weeks these miserable captives had toiled through trackless forests, through swollen and angry torrents, sometimes climbing mountains on their hands and knees - they were so steep and at night stretching their aching limbs on the cold ground, with no other roof than the heavens. The captives were a mother, with her new-born babe, scarcely fourteen days old, her boy of six, her two daughters of fourteen and sixteen years, and her maid. Two of her little flock were missing. One little prattler was playing at her knee, and another in the orchard, when thirteen red devils burst in the door of their happy home. Two cruel strokes of the axe stretched them lifeless in their blood before her frenzied eyes. One was killed to intimidate, the other was dispatched because he was afraid,. and cried out to his mother. There was no time for tears none even for a parting kiss. Think of that, mothers of the nineteenth century! The tragedy fin

ished, the hapless survivors were hurried from the house into the woods. There was no resistance. The blow fell like a stroke of lightning from a clear sky.

This mother, whose eyes never left the embroidered belt of the chief where the scalps of her murdered babes hung; this mother, who had tasted the agony of death from hour to hour, and whose incomparable courage not only supported her own weak frame, but had so far miraculously preserved the lives of her little ones, now stood shivering on the shores of the swollen torrent with her babe in her arms, and holding her little boy by the hand. In rags, bleeding, and almost famished, her misery should have melted a heart of stone. But she well knew the mercy of her masters. When fainting, they had goaded her on with blows, or, making a gesture as if to snatch her little one from her arms, significantly grasped their tomahawks. Hope was gone; but the mother's instinct was not yet extinguished in that heroic breast. But at that moment of sorrow and despair, what was her amazement to hear the Indians accost her daughter Sarah, and command her to sing them a song. What mysterious chord had the wild flowing river touched in those savage breasts? The girl prepared to obey, and the Indians to listen. In the heart of these vast solitudes, which never before echoed to a human voice, the heroic English maiden chanted to the plaintiff refrain of the river the sublime words of the Psalmist:

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there, they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth."

As she sung, the poor girl's voice trembled and her eyes filled, but she never once looked toward her mother. When the last notes of the singer's voice died away, the bloodiest devil, he who had murdered the children, took the babe gently from the mother without a word, another

lifted her burden to his own shoulder; another, the little boy; when the whole company entered the river. Gentlemen, metaphysicians, explain that scene, if you please; it is no romance.- The Heart of the White Mountains.

D

RAPER, HENRY, an American astronomer; born in Prince Edward County, Va., March

7, 1837; died at New York, November 20, 1882. He was educated in the public schools and the University of New York from the medical department of which he graduated in 1858. Having served for a year on the medical staff of Bellevue Hospital, he became Professor of Physiology in the University of the City of New York, and in 1866 in the medical department of that institution. While young he turned his attention to microscopical photography. He built and equipped an astronomical observatory at Hastings-on-the-Hudson, and was the first to obtain a photograph of the lines in the spectra of fixed stars. In 1874 he was superintendent of the commission created to observe the transit of Venus. In 1878 he went again to the Rocky Mountains to photograph the eclipse of the sun. He published Discoveries of Oxygen in the Sun; A New Theory of the Solar Spectrum; Delusions in Medicine, and A Text Book on Chemistry.

OXYGEN IN THE SUN.

If it be conceded that there are bright lines in the spectrum of the solar disk, which seems to be the opinion of several physicists, and especially Lockyer, Cornu, and Hennessy, the question of their origin naturally atVOL. VIII.-19

tracts attention. It seems that there is a great probability, from general chemical reasons, that a number of the non-metals may exist in the Sun. The obvious continuation of this research is in that direction. But the subject is surrounded by exceedingly great obstacles, arising principally from the difficulty of matching the conditions as to temperature, pressure, etc., found in the Sun. Any one who has studied nitrogen, sulphur, or carbon, and has observed the manner in which the spectrum changes by variations of heat and pressure, will realize that it is well-nigh impossible to hit upon the exact conditions under which such bodies exist at the level of the photosphere. The fact that oxygen, within a certain range of variation, suffers less change than others of the non-metals has been the secret of its detection in the Sun. It appears to have a great stability of constitution,though Schuster has shown that its spectrum may be made to vary. . . On the whole, it does not seem improper for me to take the ground that, having shown by photographs that the bright lines of the oxygen-spark spectrum all fall opposite bright portions of the solar spectrum, I have established the probability of the existence of oxygen in the Sun. Causes that can modify in some measure the character of the bright bands of the solar spectrum obviously exist in the Sun, and these, it may be inferred, exert influence enough to account for such minor differences as may be detected. -The Solar Spectrum.

TALISMANS, AMULETS, AND CHARMS.

Talismans were natural objects, generally imagined to be marked like the signs of the planets or zodiac, but sometimes they were precious stones. They are confounded to a certain extent with amulets, which Arabic word signifies anything suspended. Charms, on the other hand, from the Latin carmen, a song, refer to written spells, collections of words often without sense, like the famous "Abracadabra." In the time of the Crusades, as so interestingly narrated by Scott in the Talisman, faith in the virtue of precious stones was universal,