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firmly, "Be quiet, Ashley-be quiet!" She repeated this several times. his eyes caught hers, and betrayed, not so much a look of recognition, as a confession of superior power. She exercised over him something of that mysterious influence which the voice and manner of Miss Dix, the philanthropist, have over the most violent maniac. In an hour he became much calmer, and by ten o'clock at night he slept fitfully, when she was with him alone.

Dr. Durham, as he left his patient for the night, said to Deacon Rowler, with a knowing glance, "This young lady's nursing will be of more value to Mr. Mulgrove than all my medicine. He seems better, but I dare not say he is. I will call at eight in the morning. Remember about the powders-one every two hours. Good-night."

Mrs. Rowler, though choking with rage, saw how silly it would be to treat Miss Mason rudely. Hester frankly said that she was betrothed to Mr. Mulgrove, that they were to be married in the spring, and she had come to take care of him. Her right to be with him could not therefore be questioned. She immediately wrote for his old doctor to come on, and he arrived the third day, just in time to prevent the attending physician from bleeding the patient a second time. It was sublime to see with what confidence and superior wisdom the senior doctor surveyed the sick-room.

Putting his hand on Dr. Durham's shoulder in a most patronizing way, gesticulating with his long, bony finger, and drawing up his tall, lank figure to its full height, while his thin gray hair, gathered in one lock on the crown of his bald pate, made him look like the picture of Time without the scythe, said he to the junior, who was full forty years old,

"Young man! that will never do. Bleeding is not the thing. I know this boy's case thoroughly. The trouble is here!" putting his forefinger on the centre of his own forehead. As if to verify this diagnosis, the sick man

raised up, and glaring at the doctor, exclaimed wildly, "There is Jacob! Let me slay my son! Don't hold my arm! Lord, let me strike!" Hester was by his side in a moment, and soon quieted him in the usual way.

"You see," continued the old doctor, with an air of ineffable wisdom, "I am right! Bleeding would be folly. Blood contains the recuperative force of the system. He has none too much of it, but it is distributed wrong. Too much concentrating on the brain-there is danger of lesion. Keep a cold compress on his head; let him have quiet, rest, nourishment. If we can make him sleep soundly, he will get on. I shall give him anodyne in the smallest doses-not enough to excite. I know his case exactly-have cured him twice before; but he is much worse now. He has been working his brain too much again, as he did at college. This is the result of writing two sermons a week-a practice, sir, that usually kills at both ends, or, what's the same, it generally paralyzes both pulpit and pew. Mr. Mulgrove, sir," said he, whispering to Dr. Durham, "is insane. Can we save him from the asylum? There is hope in the fact that over seventy per cent. of such cases are cured, if correctly treated the first three months. Let us make no mistakes, then, sir. Bleeding is out of the question."

From this time forth Dr. Durham only said ditto to his venerable senior.

For nine long weeks Hester took care of her sick lover, and performed the arduous and exhaustive duties of a faithful nurse. When she slept no one could tell, for she seemed always watching by his side. The persistent endurance of a woman is one of the mysteries of human nature. In toiling for those they love, the delicate nerves change to sinews of steel, weakness becomes strength, fear turns to fortitude!

At the end of the first week after his arrival, Dr. Bloupil, with his ponderous saddle-bags on his arm, exhaling all the complex odors of the apothecary-shop, took a stately leave of the Rowler family, and, bidding Hester the last adieu,

whispered something in her ear which made her blush and smile. They must have been words of hope.

One bright morning in the latter part of October, Miss Mason opened the window of the sick-room wider than usual, and the stream of fresh, bracing air came directly upon the patient's face. He seemed to catch the vitalizing power of Nature from the pure breeze, which stirred him like the spirit of health. His mind was again unsealed. Reason resumed her throne. Waking from a sweet slumber, he saw his guardianangel bending over him, her eyes beaming with a tenderness that sank deep into his soul. Without expressing any surprise, he said,

Hester, you have come to me. Will you kiss me?"

She answered, "Be calm, Ashley. God has answered my prayers; " and she kissed his parched lips with a grateful fervor, which thrilled him with a new life.

From that moment his recovery was rapid. Each day he could reckon his added strength. He sat up in bed, then in a chair; he tried his legs, then he rode out, then he walked. He emerged from sickness into health.

One day, when he was quite strong, Hester explained to him the mystery of her sudden appearance at the house of Deacon Rowler. On the Sunday night when he had been taken with the brainfever, she had a painful dream, in which she saw her lover falling from a fearful precipice, and as he struck the rocks below, he cried out, "Hester, come to me!" At this point she awoke, overcome by terror. The clock struck four. She was no spiritualist, or believer in the pretensions of clairvoyants, but this vivid dream, coupled with the circumstance that her last two letters had not been answered, so strongly impressed her with the belief that Ashley was ill, that she took the first train for Gold

'burgh. Whether she actually heard her lover's pleading cry, or whether the two events were merely coincident, is left for the reader to decide. The writer is content to state the simple facts.

The remainder of this episode in a clergyman's life can be condensed into a paragraph. The Rev. Ashley Mulgrove did not continue his pastorate in Goldburgh. Dr. Bloupil, whose wisdom we dare not dispute, said that overwork had nearly driven him into the grave, or a lunatic asylum, and that his constitution required at least a year of comparative rest to recuperate.

On the tenth day of the following June, Ashley and Hester were quietly married in the Widow Mason's little parlor, where they stood side by side a year and a half before.

The Rev. Ashley Mulgrove was next settled over a prosperous society in the city of C- (this stands for both Chicago and Cincinnati), and has fulfilled his early promise of being one of the most earnest, eloquent, and successful preachers in the land. He took his D. D. at thirty, and his salary since his first pastorate has always been entirely adequate for himself and family. Hester proved a model minister's wife, and has been just the balance-wheel needed in her husband's theological machinery. He don't now think, in his most morbid moments, that celibacy or self-imposed penance would prepare him any better for work in his Master's vineyard. His theory of duty is like St. Paul's— that a minister should be "a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate. Happy is he also if he be the husband of one wife, having faithful children."

All these conditions he has most fortunately secured.

But what about Alice? Ah, yes! the sweet little soul, we left her fainting. She only loved the young clergyman in a reverent, sisterly, platonic way, that gave her no pain to have him marry another. In fact, before Hester had been in her father's house a week, Alice was her confidential friend. Mrs. Rowler is the only one whose feelings were deeply hurt; and though the Rev. Ashley Mulgrove, D. D., is not her sonin-law, we hope the excellent lady will not lose faith in that Providence whose ways are past finding out.

HELLAS.

THE rocky coast of Greece has no finer approach than at Patras, where the scenery is boldly mountainous. The rock Kakiscala, the ancient Taphiassus, on the opposite Etolian coast, rises in a stupendous mass, huge and sombre, from the deep waters of the bay. Shadowed by the mountains, this majestic bay, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, forms a grand gateway to what lies beyond, letting one in, by a rocky portal, at once to the very heart of the old Greek land.

Having procured a guide at Patras, I went on by steamer to Vostizza, which stands on the same southern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, upon the side of Egium. Opposite Vostizza, across the Gulf, and seemingly quite near, rise the rugged, barren mountains of the Locri Ozola and of Phocis, culminating in Parnassus, whose summit, in spite of the poet's fiction, I saw unveiled. At Vostizza I passed the night in miserable quarters, hardly affording a shelter from a violent tempest of rain, hail, and thunder, for which kind of electrical display Greece is still famous. Some showily-dressed natives looked in upon me, and in quite a friendly way tried to dissuade me from taking a horseback journey through Greece at that time, on account of the brigands (the old story), who were then unusually numerous: indeed, a small band of cavalry arrived that night, with two or three desperadoes in charge, heavily chained; and they almost shook down our auberge with their thundering knocks for admittance.

This was many years ago, in the youthful time, when the chance of meeting a picturesque Klepht, armed to the teeth, and of being made a temporary captive in some gloomy grot, rather added to the pleasure. I was, more than all, smitten with the love of the

old Greek land, and hoped to find that something of the antique charm might still linger about it-captivated by the beauty of the world, and art, and poetry, and not yet disciplined in that "gymnasium" of life concerning which Paul the Apostle to the Greeks writes, who lived once in Corinth, and saw the Isthmean games, which haunted his imagination, so that in the very last words he wrote, he spoke of the glorious contest of the race he had finished.*

Though this Greek ideal has faded, yet now and then it returns with something of its old light, and I see again the land where Beauty was born.

The red, verdureless mountains bordering the Gulf of Corinth, the bright, blue, lonely waters, without a sign of life, and the shining twin-peaked Parnassus rising above all, come back to me vividly. I recall, especially, that night when, in a little Greek craft, anchored within the very shadows of Parnassus, I lay on deck, wrapped in iny capote, and watched, far into the midnight, the stars glittering like a diadem over the head of the ancient Mount of Song.

President Felton's "Philhellenism" is of a very noble and taking sort, and he certainly makes a strong case of it, looked at in the light of scholarly enthusiasm. And a strong case can be made of it, looked at in the most sober light. A nation, which, since the revolution of 1821-27, has done so much; which has made such marked improvements in agriculture, in the cultivation of the vine, currant, olive, and cereals; which has built up its ruined seaports, cut extensive roads, even one through the terrible "Scirrhonian Rocks," built bridges, and established a submarine telegraph; which has organized a com

The ȧy@va is not "fight," but evidently "footrace," as the тòv dpóμov of the next sentence indicates.

merce that now dominates in the Eastern Mediterranean and reaches every part of the world; which has even established domestic manufactures; and which, above all, has done more, in proportion to its means and population, for the cause of national education, than almost any country in the world, having a complete system of graded schools and gymnasia, culminating in the University of Athens ;-such a nation, with all its faults and weaknesses, deserves our strongest sympathy. It demands the restoration of the territory that rightfully belongs to it, the annexation of Crete, and the freeing of the Greek populations in the empire of European Turkey, consisting of 12,000,000 to but 5,500,000 Mussulmen.* At the same time, I do not, for one, anticipate a very speedy building-up of a Greek empire, or, as some fondly hope, republic,-not, certainly, until the Turks are driven out of Europe, which, amid the jealousies of the great European powers, who care more for the consolidation of their own power than for Greek freedom, ancient or modern, does not look very near at hand. And the foundations of such a state must have something more solid in them than the Greek religion seems capable of; it is only a truly free and pure Christianity which could rear up a civilization that would at all equal or surpass the old Greek civilization on its own soil.

My interest in Greece, I must candidly confess, has been chiefly of an æsthetic nature; for this land is a free republic of mind which neither Turk nor Bavarian can possess; and it belongs to all who have any claim, even the feeblest, to be considered educated men, men of culture, by such, the words which another has applied in a different way, might, with far greater force, be applied to Greece: "Her ineffable charm keeps ever calling us near to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection-to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side." †

* "Greece," by Alex. Risa Rangabé. † Matthew Arnold.

I will now go on with my personal narrative, claiming the right, always granted to one who has been up Parnassus, to indulge in a reasonable amount of poetic and classic enthusiasm.

The next day, after having walked about Vostizza and seen what was to be seen, and plucked a leaf from an enormous plane-tree, said to have been planted by Plutarch,—and that is not at all impossible,-I embarked in a small sloop for Salona, or Scala, on the opposite shore of the Gulf. It was a sunshiny, sultry day, with little or no wind, so that we did not make much progress that day, and the sun went down magnificently with all its richest pomp of colors.

Before night, however, had fairly set in, the fine colors of the sunset-sky, the deep orange, purple, and violet, blended and deepened into one uniform lurid crimson light, which shone on the stern rocks of the northern coast of the Gulf, while the rest of the scene was bathed in the shadows of a tempest gathering menacingly over Parnassus. The sails, the faces of the crew, all objects on board the vessel, were tinged with this strange and ominous light. Soon the rain began to fall in big drops, and fierce puffs of wind careened our little craft on her side, and threw the white foam over the deck. All on board supposed that a tempest, such as had raged the night before, was to fall upon us, and the skipper cast an anxious eye upward and around, while my Patras guide lost a little of the manly depth of his voice.

But we were agreeably mistaken; for after a while the moon broke through the clouds with an apparently tranquillizing influence, and the sky was soon cleared entirely of clouds, and the stars came crowding out; and then it was, that, drawing in towards shore, we anchored, and I passed most of the night -so beautiful was it-watching the

stars.

The next morning found us complete ly becalmed, and we were obliged to take in sail and to toil at the oars, until

about noon we landed at Scala, at the head of the Bay of Salona. Here, on the shore, were a few wooden houses, two small ships on the stocks building, and some lean camels stalking about, relics of the Egyptian army at the time of the invasion of Greece, or descendants of camels then left behind. Directly beyond and above rose, in abrupt slopes, the bare red mountains that stood about Delphi, with the little town of Crissa halfway up the mountainous ascent. Somewhere here on the coast, perhaps on the other side of the Bay of Salona, was once the ancient Cirrha, the port of Delphi, and the nearest landing-place to those who visited the oracle. We were, in fact, here on the most direct route to Delphi, the one travelled by innumerable multitudes on their way to the central shrine of the classic pagan world.

Having here obtained mules, and piled carpets and cloaks upon them for saddles, we started for Delphi; first passing through a noble olive-grove extending for miles, and the largest one that I saw in Greece, with the exception of the groves in the plain of Attica. The pale-green leaf of the olive gives a very characteristic coloring to the Greek landscape, especially in the neighborhood of Athens; and it is as different from any other tint of green as possible, toning down the landscape to quiet and sober colors. With the dull-red or gray barren rock and the delicate tints of the sky, it may have done something (or is it a mere fancy ?) to form the exquisite taste and moderation of the Greek mind, which so disliked strong contrasts and rude abruptness. Emerging from the olive-grove, we traversed what must have been the Cirrhean or Crissean plains, which were once so rich a portion of the possessions of the temple of Delphi, until, a little way up the foot of the mountain which really forms the lowest base of Mt. Parnassus, commanding a view of the ancient Vale of Amphissa, now the Vale of Salona, we came to the village of Chrisso, which stands nearly upon the site of ancient Crissa. Here I drank of a spring once

famous, and explored some remains of the wall of the old city. Just at this time it is interesting to think that this city of Crissa, which is mentioned by Homer, and is one of the oldest places in Greece, was originally a colony from Crete, whence its name; and the name, too, of Delphi itself, was derived-such is the tradition-from the legend of the dolphin that guided these Cretan colonists hither back again to Greece thus establishing pretty ancient relationships between Crete and Greece. It is, in fact, the old Doric blood, the same blood that ran at Thermopyla, which still runs in the veins of the inhabitants of Crete, originally a Dorian colony, and who from the earliest times have been noted for their hard, unconquerable nature. It is doubtless this Doric iron in their blood which enables a handful of mountaineers in that beautiful island to resist successfully the whole force that the Turkish empire is able to send against them. Freedom is an ineradicable element of race. Nothing more strongly proves that the Greeks are not Orientals, as some have argued, than this spirit of freedom which has always showed in the Greek nature, whether cultivated or wild. I confess that I have no sympathy with the fanciful theories which ascribe an Asiatic origin to the Greeks; and I contend that though they have received important influences from the East, yet that the old Grecian stock has lived on these mountains and in these valleys of Hellas far beyond the time of authentic history, and that it differs morally, intellectually, and physically, heaven-wide, from the Asiatic and Aryan nations. The Hellenic and Oriental cultures acted upon and played into each other, but they never became mingled, even after Alexander's conquest, which infused a new civilization into Asia; and still there is going on the same conflict between the two races as of old, and will not end until the free spirit of Greece has driven the absolutistic and servile Oriental out of Europe, back into Central Asia, whence he came.

After a much steeper and more toil

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