appearance, preceded by their Speaker, and rushing and pushing ahead to get to the front ranks. The Speaker delivered his address, which recounted the doings of the Session, and closed by offering for her royal assent the supply bill. A clerk about midway between the Speaker and the Queen then rose, and making a profound obeisance to her Majesty, read aloud the title of the bill. Another clerk abreast of the first then rose and made a like salutation. Victoria did not move a muscle, unless she was guilty of the indignity of winking, which I did not see. The clerk, acting on the principle that silence gives consent, turned to the Commons and communicated the result to them in Norman French after this fashion:

"Sa Magesté remercie ses sujets loyales, accepte lour bénévolence et aussi le veut."

The same process was gone through with about a score more bills, except the process was shortened to "La reine le veut," and in conclusion the clerk said: "Soit il comme il est desiné."

How wedded are these people to old customs to keep up this Norman French in the nineteenth century! Sir Alex Villiers, Minister to Madrid, Strangeways, UnderSecretary of State, and others in my little enclosure seemed as much surprised at this as I. After this the Lord Chancellor, standing on the right of the Queen, knelt on one knee and handed her a written speech, which she read in a beautifully sweet and clear voice and with the utmost distinctness. I heard every letter of it. There is no royal flattery in what is said of the Queen's voice -its tones are really delicious. Her selfpossession, too, is perfect-incredible. I am told that Queen Anne had the same peculiarity of voice and utterance.

After the speech was finished she whispered to the Lord Chancellor, who immediately said: "It is her Majesty's royal will and pleasure that this Parliament be prorogued till (I forget when) and it is accordingly so prorogued."

All then rose, the Queen retired as she had entered, and after a chat with Mrs. Lister, I escorted Lady William Bentinck into the Queen's robing-room to wait for her coach. Her little Majesty has a wellarranged dressing-room, fitted with all sorts of looking-glasses, brushes, etc. It is in the House of Lords building. They were just packing up her robe as we entered.

Lady William's carriage was soon announced, and, after handing her into it, I made the best of my way home. I ought to mention that as I was leaving Murray's rooms, in the right wing of the palace, earlier in the day I met her State Coach coming round to take her up. There were three richly ornamented coaches with six horses. each, and her own State Coach, an extremely gorgeous but rather tawdry affair, looking most like huge masses of gold, twisted into all sorts of fantastic shapes, lions, etc., with nothing like wood or panel work about it, and drawn by eight creamcolored horses, richly caparisoned, the two leaders led by men on foot. With the help of these four coaches and twenty-six horses, a girl of nineteen, with a few attendants, manages to get from Buckingham Palace to the House of Lords, some quarter of a mile, to read a few lines and hear the Lord Chancellor prorogue Parliament.

Well, it is no affair of mine, and if the people like to pay for it, it must be very pleasant to her.

MY DEAR FATHER,

September 4th.

I sent you by the Great Western a sort of rambling journal which you may read as much or as little of as you like, or can. Having travelled about with me it is very shabbily blotted and illegible. It will serve to show you how kindly the people here have treated me and how I am passing my time.

I have left Long's Hotel and gone into cheaper and better quarters. The expenses in London during June, July and part of August, exceed all descriptions or conjecture. The furnace of English extortion, always hot, seemed seven times heated for the Coronation. I managed with the help of great hospitality to get through the season and pay all my bills with the money I brought. My bills show that I only dined at the hotel six times in eight weeks. And I never dined elsewhere except on an invitation and to keep up a respectable appearance. I am now, however, hard aground, being kept here longer than I anticipated. I have therefore been compelled to draw on you for $1000, which will take me home in October. You will not pay the draft with more reluctance than I drew it.

I did hope to have been able to have made a tour in either Ireland or Scotland, but cannot leave this. I had even fixed on a

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day. Luckily somebody put my departure in the paper and I am now as quiet here as one could wish. I shall be ready to come home on the Great Western on the 27th of October. I do not see how I can get home sooner, for no vessel that leaves here after the first will beat the Great Western home, that is, there is no certainty of it. What a man Blair is to edit a paper! could forgive him his onslaught upon the Navy, his remarks on the cobblers and tinkers, but what am I to think of a man who empties into his paper a mass of foreign news which he never could have read and amongst which I find reference to myself, saying, "John goes here and John goes there, does this, says that, etc." These

things would hurt me very much if they were seen here, and will bother me not a little at home when I get there.

I was delighted with the reception you met with in Virginia, and have no doubt your visit there will be of service. The opposition, I see, admired your manner very much and you admired the scenery. Political acrimony seems to have been laid at rest, which is all encouraging. I have no fears for the South and great hopes for Maine, Pennsylvania and New York. At any rate you are clearly at the head of the Republican party proper, and will fare as well as your friends, which is all an honest man could wish. Yours truly, J. V. B.

HE Reverend Daniel Scroggs had been for six years a missionary to the heathen of the West Coast of Africa. He had been sent to Boango, a small station some thirty miles from the coast, by a local American missionary society, which, after he had labored six long years, and undergone four attacks of fever, permitted him to return to his native land for a brief visit. He left his little flock of converts in charge of a native preacher, who was his prize convert, and he trusted that all would go well during his absence. He had grown to love his people, and the sadness and mystery of the Dark Continent fascinated him. His little frame house stood near the edge of the illimitable forest but it seemed infinitely distant from the log house on the edge of the Wisconsin forest, in which he had lived when a child. That Western forest he understood. He knew its speech, its ways, its rages of fire and hurricane. It was a familiar friend, and with it he was always at home. But the vast, dense, dark African forest was another thing. He could never become intimate with it. It would never be friends with him. It filled him with a vague fear. While it

fascinated him it also repelled him. It was kin to the unknown, the infinite, the eternal. His own American forest had seemed full of the breath of life; but this one, constantly brought to his mind death, and vastness and mystery that lie beyond.

The converts whom he had slowly gathered together were fairly good specimens of the converted West Coast negro. They were enthusiastic in their enjoyment of the simple religious services which their pastor provided for them. They were honest in most things, and sober, except when they went down to the coast and met with trade rum. They professed to love the missionary who had brought the Gospel to them, and clothed them in the cast-off clothes of Wisconsin, and in their love the lonely man found compensation for his years of exile. When he left them they wept, and promised to follow strictly all his counsels. But the missionary had many misgivings as to what might happen at his station during his absence, and before his three months of leave were at an end he was longing for the day when he should see the black faces of his people again and listen to the low, secretive breathing of the night wind in the African forest.

When Mr. Scroggs once more entered his African village on his return from America he was unspeakably astonished at the sight of a new meeting-house. It was larger than his own; it had a real steeple, and to his horror the steeple bore on its apex a gilded cross. Even at that moment a bell tinkled, and he saw the natives gathering around the door of the new church in numbers larger than those who had been accustomed to assemble at his own meeting-house. What had happened needed no further explanation. While he was absent a Roman Catholic missionary had arrived in the village, and had dared to set up his false tabernacle on ground that by right of six years of labor belonged, so Mr. Scroggs felt, exclusively to him. What made the matter worse was the patent fact that the interloper had already made many converts, and Mr. Scroggs's heart burned with indignation as he reflected that in all probability some of his own people had been misled by the emissary of the scarlet woman. The native preacher whom Mr. Scroggs had left in charge of his mission was still true to him, but he reported that the Roman Catholic missionary was a very good man, and that the natives greatly liked him and his new religion. About one-third of Mr. Scroggs's converts had gone over to the Roman Catholic mission, and the priest had baptized more heathen during the preceding two months than Mr. Scroggs had baptized during the previous year.

This was not the home-coming of which the American missionary had dreamed, and he was filled with righteous indignation, which, in the case of good men like himself, is the sufficient substitute for the anger which seizes upon worldly men. Here on the spot where with infinite pains he had gathered his little congregation and taught them the only true doctrines, this emissary of a rival faith had come to mislead the poor heathen and to pervert those who had been led into the right path. Mr. Scroggs assured the native preacher that the new missionary was a wicked man, and a teacher of false doctrine, and he exhorted him to tell his fellow-Africans that if they valued their souls they must have nothing to do with the priest, and must never enter the building with a cross on its steeple. Then he went to his house and shut himself up alone to meditate on the terrible misfortune which had befallen Boango.

That evening-it was Saturday night— Mr. Scroggs sat down with a heavy heart to prepare his sermon for the morrow. He had intended to preach of the joy of reunion with his people, and of the blessing of a pure and peaceful spirit, but he now felt that the subject would not be a timely one, and he was searching the Old Testament for some strong and bitter text, when there was a knock at the door and the priest entered.

He was an evident Englishman. Mr. Scroggs had assumed as a matter of course that a Roman Catholic missionary must be either a Portuguese or a Frenchman. That an Englishman should be a priest seemed to him no less than a deliberate crime. There might be some allowance made for the inherited Romanism of an ignorant Portuguese, or naturally perverse-minded Frenchman, but for the Englishman born in a Protestant land who unblushingly entered the priesthood there could be no possible excuse. Still, Mr. Scroggs could not fail to perceive that his visitor was a gentleman; and that his face, though serious and even sad in its habitual expression, was nevertheless a pleasant one. He was tall and thin, with a slight stoop of the shoulders and an habitual lowering of the head, which Mr. Scroggs promptly interpreted as a sign of false humility and hypocrisy. But with this exception Mr. Scroggs, to his disappointment, could find nothing in the appearance of the priest to which he could take exception.

"May I introduce myself," said the visitor, "as your fellow-missionary? We do not belong to the same regiment, but we fol low the same leader."

"Sit down," said the American gruffly. "You are of course a Romanist?"

"I am a Catholic," replied the priest, "but I am not here to make proselytes of your converts."

"What I can't get over," said Mr. Scroggs, rising and rapidly pacing the floor, "is that you should take advantage of my absence to come here and interfere with my work. I've been here six years, and preached the Gospel to the best of my ability and built up a church. And then all of a sudden you come to mislead these poor natives, and to undo all my work. I don't call it Christian. I don't call it just. I don't call it decently civii."

"I was sent here by my bishop," replied

the priest gently, "and I had nothing to do but to obey. I did not even know that there was a missionary here. Had I known it, and had I been at liberty to choose, I should have selected entirely new ground. I have already said that I am not here to try to take your converts away from you. On the contrary, as your native teacher can tell you, have discouraged those who have come to me from your fold. I could not refuse to VOL. XL.-78

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receive them, but I should have preferred to have them remain with you."

"That's all very well," said Mr. Scroggs bitterly, "but when you want me to believe that a Roman Catholic priest don't want to make pervert, it's a pretty big order."

"Brother," said the priest without noticing the other's remark, "we are two Christian white men, alone in this wild place. We are both, I trust, servants of God. Let us

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be friends. The field is wide enough for both. Do not let us show these poor people the spectacle of Christian teachers dwelling in enmity."

"I can't be friends with a teacher of false doctrine," answered the American sternly. "Of course, I will not quarrel with you, but we can't be friends. I can't forget who you are and what you have done. The less we see of each other the better."

The priest sighed and rose to take his leave. "I had hoped for better things," he said sadly, "but I cannot force my friendship on you. But please remember that if at any time you should change your mind, I shall always be ready to meet you half-way." The following Sunday morning Mr. Scroggs preached a vigorous sermon from the text "Cursed be he who removeth his neighbor's landmarks." He told his hearers that there were false religions that were even worse than heathenism, and warned them against those who might come to them in sheep's clothing. It so happened that a native wearing a sheepskin, and belonging to some distant and unknown tribe, had been seen near Boango, and Mr. Scroggs's parishioners promptly assumed that this stranger was the wicked man clad in sheep's clothing against whom their beloved teacher had warned them. So they instantly decided to hunt down the man and kill him without further delay, as proof of their regard for their pastor's instructions, and their own attachment to the Baptist faith.

The weeks passed on. The rival missionaries kept carefully aloof from one another, bowing coldly and silently when they happened to meet. Both labored zealously to make converts, and both were measurably successful. Mr. Scroggs had infused new energy into his preaching, and to his desire to convert the heathen from the error of their ways was now added the additional stimulus of anxiety to surpass his competitor. "I'll beat him yet," said Mr. Scroggs to himself, "spite of all his idolatrous in cense, and his bowing down to images. I'll show him that the pure Gospel can knock his miserable heresies silly." And the American's courage rose steadily as he strove to make good his words.

Meanwhile the novelty of the Roman Catholic service unquestionably pleased the natives, especially those who had failed to respond to the efforts of the Protestant mis

sionary. The bell of the little Roman Catholic chapel seemed to have a charm for them. Mr. Scroggs's church had no bell, and it suffered from this disadvantage. Oddly enough the Roman Catholic bell, the sound of which had so greatly exasperated Mr. Scroggs when he first returned to Boango, had gradually grown to sound rather pleasant to his ears. It was, as he told himself, because it reminded him of the church-bells in America, though in point of fact it was little better than a tinkling cow-bell. One day he actually found himself walking toward the door of the Roman Catholic church as the bell rang for vespers. He smiled at this curious instance of absence of mind, and it was the first time he had smiled since his return from America.

That very night a negro came to him in great haste, saying that the father was dying. Mr. Scroggs, who had some little knowledge of medicine, and much experience in African fever, did not for an instant dream of disregarding this plain call of duty. He took his little medicine chest and his "Family Practitioner," and hastened to the sick man. He found him suffering from an attack of fever accompanied by delirium. He gave him the remedies that he believed to be appropriate to the case, and sat all night by his bedside. He noticed that the priest was thinner than ever, and that his face, though flushed with the fever, bore deeper lines of care than when the two had first met. As Mr. Scroggs listened to the incoherent mutterings of the sick man, and the night wind among the forest trees, his heart began to smite him. After all, a priest was a man, and all men were brothers. Perhaps he had done wrong in rejecting the priest's overtures of friendship. It was well to be severe and inflexible in upholding the truth, but certainly St. Paul had pleaded for charity toward all men.

In the morning the patient was conscious and Mr. Scroggs assured him that he was on the road towards recovery. The priest earnestly thanked him for his kindness, and expressed his sorrow that the American should have had the care of a sick man thrust upon him.

"That's all right," replied Mr. Scroggs. "You're on the mend now, but you've got to be middling careful of yourself. Just you stay in bed till I tell you to get up, and just you keep on taking my medicines, and