persuade people of what one does not believe oneself!" In his character of ardent conservative, M. Nitchipoura demands the expulsion of all those foreigners on whom he lives. As a fierce patriot he abhors the Russians, who have compelled Japan to evacuate Corea, and taken the bread out of his mouth. He proposes one day to go and conquer Russia, and on M. Seippel's reminding him of the misadventure of Napoleon I. he replied, without the quiver of an eyelash: "Precisely. We shall avoid his mistake by going to Moscow in the summer." But no one is perfect, and even M. Nitchipoura has his weakness. He is too fond of rice brandy. A husband and father, he finds pleasure in the society of agreeable mousmés, and of gueschas, or dancing-girls, whose virtue is not of the sternest. He has a passion for play and understands how to repair his fortunes. Once when he had taken a little too much saki, he remarked with a fatuous smile, that he was really too good a player ever to need to cheat. But a man always finds his master sooner or later, and one fine day he lost his last sou to two players better than himself. He was not angry. He never is angry. He only regarded his spoilers with a kind of mournful admiration, and made them endless bows, while promising to resume their little entertainment at no distant day. Courteous even with men, M. Nitchipoura, who is both Shintoist and Bouddhist, is infinitely polite to all the gods. He never omits the smallest attention to those whose chapels he may chance to pass on the wayside or in the woods. He always carries in his pocket gummed labels, on which he inscribes brief prayers, and applies them after careful licking, to the faces of the gods of fountains, marriage, medicine, merchants, and thieves. What is it that he asks for? That is a secret between them and him. M. Seippel thinks that he adjures them, first to preserve him from cholera of which he has a mortal terror; then to grant him a good digestion, hard cash, the favor of the little gueschas, that of the Japanese Queen of Spades, and the extermination of all foreigners. "Sometimes," says M. Seippel, "I have found myself gazing fixedly and with a certain anxiety, at this little man, with his exaggerated expression of deference, ready apparently to break himself in two for me. And I have asked myself, 'What sort of a maggot is it, really? It seems to me that the more I see of him the less I know him. Oh, how I should like to open him and look inside!" But he quitted Japan without opening M. Nitchipoura and discovering his secret, and perhaps after all, there was no secret to discover. Japan, with its eternal smile, and Nitchipoura, cheating, boasting, perorating, praying, and incapable of tears, troubled the soul of M. Seippel. He was quieted, pacified, and reassured when he encountered at Cairo, in the Mussulman university attached to the flourishing or once flourishing-mosque of El Azhar, Islam personified in a certain aged sheik, grown grey in his professorate, sitting on his heels, with his back against a column and a beautiful turban on his head, holding the Koran in one hand, and caressing with the other the long waves of his flowing beard. This austere doctor, grave and gentle, was expounding the mysteries of the one Book, the source of all knowledge, to a circle of attentive youth, squatted about him on the stones of the sacred pavement and drinking in his instructions with the same concentration with which a camel drinks from a well in the East. The old man would read a verse, comment upon it learnedly, compare it with its context, quote authorities, review controversies, set forth objections, and dispose of them on the authority of the Prophet. Whenever he touched upon a delicate point, he would sink his voice almost to a whisper, while his eyes seemed to say: "Listen, for here we have the conclusion of the whole matter." And, "Oh, my aged master," says M. Seippel, "how can I ever thank you enough for the happy hours I have passed in listening to words of yours which I did not in the least understand, but of which the slow and solemn music lulled every anxious thought! From your voice, wise and righteous living, if he does not learn to distrust his own convictions, he will at least learn that indulgence for those of others, which is the first of social virtues. from your gestures, from your face, and absurdities subserve the cause of there breathed I know not what soothing suggestion of an impression, an impression of safety. Your European confrerès are not reassuring folk. They are never sure of what they say, or else they never tell you what you need to do in order to live in peace. They only teach you to repeat without ceasing, "What is truth?" But you-you hold it in your hands! It is all in your book!" Such are the varied impressions which a tourist capable of receiving them may glean abundantly along his pathway. Whatever he may pretend, M. Seippel is delighted to have been round the world; and if he affects to depreciate the tourists' calling, it is only that he may keep its advantages all to himself. He spits into the dish for the mere purpose of disgusting others therewith. It is not only people of inquiring minds, like his, who would do well to embrace this calling. Distant peregrinations are also to be recommended to idle folk, who will be stirred up by exercise, to mouldy brains which it will enliven, and to those men of routine, to whom unaccustomed things may minister a wholesome astonishment. I do not see that there is any one, except the immediate sceptic, who has nothing to gain by becoming a globetrotter. The diversity of manners, customs and principles of conduct, the spectacle of human contradictions tends to ameliorate a man's malignity. will come back with a few additional doubts, and if he has not already mice enough in his granary, those which he brings from among the yellow races, will make short work of the little corn he has left. On the other hand, the bigot will find that it is an excellent thing to have seen the other side of the globe. When he has made the acquaintance both of the Shintoist Bonza in the garden of Bouddha, and the white-headed sheik in the Mosque of El Azhar, he will perceive that both have bowed their lofty reason, to what he himself considers a ridiculous chimera. But when he has also perceived that, in the perfect assurance of their faith they have made their errors Translated for THE LIVING AGE from the French of G. Valbert. From Macmillan's Magazine. THAT AWKWARD BOY. The air was very still and laden with the perfume of innumerable flowers in the straight downpour of sunshine. The steaming sweetness of the earth rose in a vapor of light and heat, and the pungent scent of bloom fading in the sun, an infinity of light and color, of hot, heavy fragrance and ceaseless shining of all that makes up the glory of white noon in a southern garden. And in the radiant midst of it all, a small, grey figure wandered restlessly from bush to bush, from the bed of large, pale violets to the tufts of windflowers, from the orange-trees to the riotous tangle of tiny golden roses. "Herr Baby! Oh, Herr Baby! You have broken that chair this time!" said Frau Horn. "And knocked over my table,-and my work,-oh, do be careful, you very He awkward boy! Can't you learn to remember that your feet are about a mile away from the rest of you?" added the little baroness with a twinkle; but he was out of hearing, for he had seen Peggie going round the garden to say good-bye to the flowers she loved so well, and he had flung himself out of the window to have the chance of a last talk with her. He arrived upon his hands and face instead of upon his feet reasonably; but every one was used to the big Dutchman's clumsiness and no one more than himself, so he took such incidents as a matter of course, unconcernedly. He had been big, inconveniently, undesirably big-all his life, he said, though to be sure that was not such a very long time. But nobody would in the world can be; and having chosen the latter, she had developed into a very exquisite morsel of humanity indeed. And she had set herself to pet and spoil Peggie with all her might, seeing, in her sweet, shrewd wisdom, that the girl had pined for the want of it throughout her dreary young life; and since Hendrik, the big Dutchman, had been adopted as the other baby, the little baroness had petted him too, though with a hesitating familiarity, much as one pats a great awkward dog that is apt to sweep the table with his responsive tail. have thought he was so young; even his awkwardness, which was colossal, as Frau Horn said plaintively, was not of a juvenile kind, and his huge limbs and spreading shoulders had something of the aged and ungainly look which is the birthright of an elepuant. Then he had big, uneven features, that were built together in a studied irregularity, and a rough mane of red hair which never settled itself in less than two or three directions. Altogether, as his old Dutch nurse had said of him when he was (relatively) a small boy, "Hendrik isn't handsome, and there's so much of him that one never has a chance of forgetting it." He had a way, moreover, of looking so ponderously solemn, even in his most frivolous moments, that the very idea of youth seemed ridiculous in connection with him. There had, in fact, been a shout of laughter when it was discovered one night that he was only Peggie's elder by a few weeks; and she, who had hitherto been made mucn of as the baby of the Pension, transferred to him maliciously half her proprietary interest in the title. Ever since that he had been called among them Herr Baby, to replace the difficult gutturals that made up his name by right; as she had long been nothing other than Ma'amselle Baby even to the French chambermaids. For it takes so little to make one laugh in the midst of sunshine and flowers, and the uplifted mountains that shut out of sight the grey face of winter, and, perhaps, that other shrouded phantom from the fear of which one has for a little while got free. The nickname was the little baroness's doing in the first instance. She had made a pet of Peggie for the sake of her bright ways and laughing face, though, if it came to that, no one could be more elfinly merry and lovable than the little old lady herself. But then, if one has been crippled all one's life, in the course of time one arrives at being either a very detestable person, or just such a fairy god-mother as only a tiny old woman with the merriest wit There had perhaps been a good deal of jealousy between Hendrik and Peggie (though, to be sure, it was all on one side) when the little old lady first began to divide her favors; but when you are only nineteen and wholesomely unsentimental, it is so much easier to be good friends, especially when the one is a pretty, mischievous little girl, and the other a huge, good-natured, companionable boy. And after all, his very awkwardness had only been another excuse for laughter, and they were so ready to laugh in this safe little corner of the hills where it seemed so easy not to be ill; and Hendrik and Peggie had been the best of friends,— till, on a sudden, the end had come, and the news of her uncle's illness had summoned her home. Peggie was wandering about the garden, feeling very miserable. She had been so happy here, where every one had been kind to her, and the sense of being a petted child among them had been so unfamiliar and so sweet. And it was hard to go back to that dark, silent house where she was SO little wanted, away from the sunshine and the large air and the flowers; even here she shivered when she thought of the gloomy street, all the more dull and lonely that London lay close outside of it. And she would be shut into it again, as she had been before, till all the old tired feelings came back, and the headaches and the pale cheeks that the sun had driven away. Yes, she was very unhappy; and yet when Hendrik picked himself up from the rose slouched towards her, she met him with laughter. bed into which he had tumbled, and "I had much rather go to London than home to Holland," he said with gloom. "And I hate this place now. What shall we do without you? What will Signor Baruca do? What will the little baroness do? And what shall I do, good Heavens! without Ma'amselle Baby?" "Oh," she cried, "Herr Baby, if you could only see yourself! Your face is covered with scratches, and you look 80,-and besides, you'll spoil the roses, and it's such a pity!" He shook his red head solemnly. "I know," he said, in his guttural North-Dutch voice, "I know; I've spoiled them already. Bother! What does it matter? You are going away, and there's no one eise that cares about them. And it can't make me any uglier than I am already." Peggie surveyed him thoughtfully. "Oh, but I think it does," she said with an idea of consolation that was well meant; "yes, really it does. Besides, it makes you look as if you had been fighting, and that isn't respectable. you know, for a person of your age. Oh, Herr Baby, it's all very well laugh, but isn't it dreadful that I must go away?" Hendrik growled gutturally. to "It's all very well for you," she went on, with tears in her eyes; "you need not go for another month yet, and you can come back next winter. I hate of rich people that can do all sorts things, when I can't. And you needn't pretend you come here for any reason except that you like it; nobody could be ill that had such great wide shoulders, I'm sure. Oh, you may cough, if you like, but that's nothing. When I was sent here, I had been ill, really ill, only uncle said he couldn't afford such useless expense again, and this time I had better just d-die. And then you are going to Holland, you horrid boy, to nice picturesque Holland, that I'd give anything to see. And I,-I must go back to that disgusting old street." Peggie was more than half crying, and the words tumbled out unrestrainedly. She looked very small and very childish, standing in the midst of the blaze of sunshine, with her eyes tearful and shining under the shadow of her hat. Hendrik objected to that big hat; so often, in regarding her, he could see nothing but the top of it. "You!" she answered, laughing through her tears; "you will break some more furniture and,-and I'm afraid you will let the little baroness tumble. I don't think you really ought to try to help her about; and I hate that you should take my place." "She wouldn't let me help her; and I could never take your place even if I tried. There isn't any one that could do things as, as you do them. But when your uncle is better, can't you come back?" "No," she said sorrowfully; "you see he only sent me here because the doctor ordered it, and I had a few pounds of my own to pay for the journey. He told me he wouldn't do it again, so I needn't fall ill on purpose. He is not very kind, you see, and perhaps he is not very rich, or at least, he thinks he ought to spend his money on himself. And as it is, he has to dress and feed me, and I dare say I cost him a great deal. And he thinks I ought to stay at home; he says all this fancy for change of air is nonsense. I wouldn't mind so much if he wanted me, or if there were anything for me to do. But as it is" "There may be other people that want you," Hendrik remarked, with his eyes on the ground. "There isn't any one else," she said with a sigh; "I have no one in the world that belongs to me but my uncle. That is why I have been so happy here, it has only been a holiday to you; but to me it was home-a great deal more homelike than anything I have ever seen." "You, you wouldn't marry me, I suppose?" he said suddenly, without looking at her. and oh, how funny to think of marrying you, you queer big boy!" She broke into candid laughter, while Hendrik dug holes in the gravel with his foot. Peggie regarded him heartlessly; the scratches on his face made him really look so absurd; and how cross he was, to be sure,-any one would have thought that he was in earnest. But of course it was all nonsense. She put her hand through his arm, and stood on tip-toe to see him better. "Now, Herr Baby," she said, "you know you don't mean it. Why, you never even thought of it till just this minute! And suppose I had taken you at your word, where would you have been then? Only I'm not so foolish, and we have been such good fricuds, that it seems a pity that you should have spoiled it all at the last. But it sha'n't be spoiled; we'll forget it altogether; till some day, if ever we meet again, you will be ready to laugh at it with me, won't you?" Hendrik looked away, over the top of her head. "I don't know that I want to forget about it," he said slowly; "and I think I would like you to remember too. I wish you would think over it a little, when you are away from bere; and if it should happen that you changed your mind must not say such things," she exclaimed, "in my hearing. We have been good friends, and I will not allow my friends to be ill-spoken of, even by themselves. And besides, it is not true." "Even the little baroness always calls me a clumsy boy." "So do I, often. That's nothing; that's only a pet name; what you said was much worse. And if you had been the handsomest man in the world, it would have been all the same. I never thought of marrying anybody, and I don't think I want to. I want to amuse myself; I want to have flowers, and sunshine, and people to be kind to me. I don't mean to be married at all." "You'll change your mind some day." "I sha'n't," and she stamped her foot impatiently. "Herr Baby, I hate to be contradicted! And you are making me waste my time, when I ought to be getting ready. It's quite late, already--oh, dear, dear, how sorry I am to go away!" She turned to go in, and he followed her lugubriously, tripping over her dress and his own feet, and decorated with a network of angry red scratches down one side of his face. Herr Baby was certainly not handsome. There was a bad half hour to be gone through before Peggie, and most "But I am sure I sha'n't," she mur- of the able-bodied residents at the Penmured. "If you should," he went on patiently, "I would like you to write and tell me so. . Or at least, write, and I'll know what it means, whatever you say. I want you to promise me that, Ma'amselle Baby." sion, arrived at the station. Frau Horn broke down helplessly in saying good-bye, and carried away her amiable foolish face and latest Parisian fashions to weep in private; and the little baroness had at last to be forcibly removed from Peggie's arms, which were very loth indeed to let her go. Old Signor Baruca (who had a heart, as he explained ambiguously) was so ferociously ill-tempered that the rest of them wondered how Peggie dared to hug him with such irreverence; Mr. Lawley-Green, who had tried to take refuge in a quite foreign facetiousness, had actually to wipe real tears from his own elderly eyes with the huge bandanna which he had brought out only to make them laugh. Ah! It "You had taken so little to make them laugh, It was a long speech for him, and Peggie stared at him in a growing uneasiness. "Oh, yes," she said with a little hesitation, "I'll promise if you like. It would be a dreadful thing to do, you know, only there is not the least chance of it; please understand that. I-oh dear, I never even thought of such a thing at all!" "Of course you didn't. That comes of being such an ugly awkward brute as I am." She checked him indignantly. and |