ginner the task of getting along at all | This state of things was bound to end seems, at first, hopeless and heartbreak- badly, and the expression in my eyes, ing. He will make a slide forward A. said, was one of anguish, and boded with his right foot with fair success'; but imminent catastrophe. The next inhe is not so fortunate with his left, for stant both my feet were in the air, high the snowshoe proves to be one of those up, and my head in the snow, after circumstances over which he has no which I rolled the rest of the way down control. The tip of the left shoe goes the hill, a confused mass of legs, arms, crossways over the tip of the right, and and snowshoes, with occasional visions when he tries to take another step for- of a face bearing an expression of agony ward with his right foot that member and alarm quite uncalled for by the cirnaturally refuses to move, being tightly cumstances of the case. I believe this, held down by its fellow, with the re- too, to be a distortion of the facts; but sult that the would-be-snowshoe runner I admit that I did have a slight tumble bends rapidly forwards, and either buries while going down a hill. It is a very his nose incontinently in the snow in difficult feat to perform with grace, my front of him, or, if he recovers his bal- dear reader, and cost the writer of this ance, does so only to sit down violently article many a moment of terror and on the back part of his long shoes. My many a plunge head first into a deep plight on this occasion was pitiable, for snow bath before he acquired the art of this was almost my very first attempt to taking a hill successfully. But we have manipulate, or rather pedipulate those arrived at the ring now, and Gavril, slippery engines. Gavril and my friends finger to lip, is carefully placing his were, naturally, adepts in the, to me, guns, choosing the best available cover novel style of locomotion, and were up for each, and admonishing us in turn, and away, gliding with easy grace over by signs, to be as silent as the grave the smooth surface as if the thing were and as vigilant as hawks. as easy as walking. Anxious to keep up with them, and full of the sense of responsibility awakened by A.'s instructions as to absolute silence, I, too, endeavored to glide along with grace, but my efforts were only very partially successful. A. told me afterwards that whenever he looked round I was "just getting up." I believe this to be a gross misrepresentation of the facts of the case. I had a capital place behind a thick low pine of three or four years' growth, whose branches were so laden with snow that they formed a practically solid cover for me to crouch behind. Taking my stand here I loaded and cocked my gun as silently as the operation would permit, opened my cartridgepocket in case of a sudden demand for more ammunition, loosened my big But he added that on one occa- knife in its sheath, and waited. I had sion, on looking round to see how I a few moments to look around and adwas getting on, at the bottom of a little mire the exceeding beauty of the scene. hillock, he very nearly jeopardized the The sun was in his full February splensuccess of the battue by bursting into a dor. He gave no heat, but his rays roar of laughter, a catastrophe which he served to make beautiful every object only averted by stuffing the huge thumb on which they fell, and revealed the of his snowshoeing glove into his mouth. marvellous delicacy of the rime-covered He says that what he saw was too funny pines about me, which towered taperfor words. When he looked round I ing upwards in all heights and shapes, had just arrived breathless at the top of the topmost bough of each showing the hillock, and was evidently intending like the finest lace in the fairy-like delito stop and straighten my shoes before cacy of its tracery, each particle of attempting the descent. But my shoes greenery being picked out and glorified had no intention to stop even for a with its own tiny fringe of rime which moment, and started me down the slope caught and reflected the sunshine. It on their own account- one pointing was indeed a lovely spectacle, and filled south-west and the other north-east. the heart with gladness and almost awe. What a marvel, too, was the silence of agony of terror, while a whole colony it all! The only sound to be heard was of fieldfares flitted aimlessly about from the occasional thud caused by a lump of bush to bush, evidently wondering what snow falling from some bough which they had better do, and deciding in could bear its weight no longer, and, which direction safety lay. But I recrelieving itself of the burden, sprang ognize Gavril's voice amid the hubbub back to its own proper position until shouting something or other; probably the next snowstorm should load it with he has seen the wolves, and is trying new weights. I was growing quite to give us to understand the direction dreamy and sentimental over the beau- they are taking. Suddenly a shot on ties of the scene and the wonder of the my right hand sets my heart beating so silence and, indeed, it was wonderful loud that it seems to drown the noise when the fact was considered that there made by the beaters. But the shot were forty-five men and four wolves all excites these latter as well, and they present within a small circular space redouble, if this is possible, the already and my train of thought had led me far terrific noise they are making. I wonaway from the subject of wolves and der what A. has fired at. Suddenly I battues, when I was suddenly brought | hear A.'s voice : "Look out, F., in to myself with a jerk by a shrill sound front of you!" he bawls, loud enough which reverberated through the forest to overtop the beaters' yells. My heart with such suddenness that I gave a behaves idiotically, and renders breathviolent start and nearly dropped my ing almost an impossibility, and I raise gun. The whistle was instantly fol- my gun slowly and find that I am all of lowed by a noise which sounded as if a tremble. However, the gun is up, this beautiful fairyland over which I and if I catch sight of the wolves I shall had just been sentimentalizing were be sure of getting it off. I stand thus suddenly converted into a pandemonium a full minute in the very flood-tide of and given into the hands of legions of evil spirits. Shrieks and yells, rattles, old iron pots and pans beaten together, every conceivable species of noise very suddenly and simultaneously assailed the ear and filled the forest with disturbance and unrest. Thoughts poetic took wing and fled away with the silence which had engendered them, and in a moment I was all a sportsman and watching with a hawk's eye every visible spot of open space before me, and listening with a lynx's ear for every sound of a padded footfall upon the snow. Several hares scudded by me in a moment and went on their way, wondering, doubtless, why the party with "Shall I 'pot' him, or give him a the gun had not made the usual explo- | chance to run?" I asked myself. "Let sive sound as they passed him. A him run," replied all my sporting incouple of lovely ptarmigan flew close stincts, backed up by my British ideas over my head, followed by several old of fair play. "Run he shall then," I black-cock, while a riabchick, or tree decided, and waited. I was not repartridge, settled on a tall pine on my warded for my generosity, however, for left and stayed to see what all the noise at that instant the wolf turned towards meant. A frightened squirrel above me, saw the glint of my gun-barrel, and my head was taking wildly impossible - was gone. jumps from tree to tree, first in one He had vanished like a flash of lightdirection and then in another in anning. I need scarcely say that if my excitement-my nerves all of a tingle, wrath and vexation could have brought | him back, in spite of all his snarls and him back to the same spot he would growls, into the ring. have reappeared, and all the sportsmanlike considerations in the world should not have availed him again; but, alas! my chance of shooting this particular wolf- and he the father and flower of the flock was gone forever. The next moment a shot from C. on my left gave me to understand that he had struck where I had spared! Lost in remorseful reflections I stood and watched. There were other wolves still in the ring. Oh, I vowed, if another member of the family comes and looks about him anywhere near me, his blood shall assuredly dye the snow! No more generosity for me, not if I know it! I shall take my chance where I find it. It was as though Fate said, 66 Have, then, thy wish!" for at the instant a fine wolf, but not nearly so large as the first, cantered by me, thirty yards away, followed by another, his exact counterpart. "Now or never, if I want a wolfskin to take home," I thought, as I sighted the leader and fired. As the shot rang out, the wolf bounded into the air and fell over. I shifted the barrel as quickly as possible a couple of yards to the right, expecting to find wolf No. 2 still available; but it was as though no such creature existed-he had vanished, like his father, now deceased, into thin air. With his escape the battue was over, and we assembled to view the results. Close to A.'s ambuscade lay dead the mother of the family, a rakish-looking creature, somewhat mangy, and with a ferocious expression of face which told us plainly that if she had not been shot dead the coup de grâce would have been attended with some personal risk to the giver. My victim was the next rendezvous. He was alive, and at our approach tried to get up, snarling and snapping viciously as we came near. A dig with the big knife soon put the poor animal out of his misery, and the meeting adjourned to the spot where fell the father and guide of this interesting family. A gigantic fellow he was indeed, and an awkward customer to meet in the dark. There he lay dead, but terrible in death, his great fangs gleaming white from the midst of the mingled blood and froth which oozed out of his mouth. C.'s shot had hit him fair, and knocked his fierce life out of him on the instant. Now that I had placed one of the family to my credit I felt that I no longer regretted having refrained from taking a mean advantage of the splendid animal. told me, however, that my compunction had been quite misplaced, and that I deserved to lose him, "for," he said, "in shooting wolves and foxes you must swallow your sportsman's code and shoot when and how you can. Neither animal will ever give you a second chance if you do not seize the first." Perhaps A. was right. A. A furious shouting and screeching of all the bad names in the vocabulary from the direction of the beaters soon gave me to understand that wolf No. 2 was endeavoring to break through. He did not succeed immediately, however, So ended the battue. But there was but reappeared at intervals during the a spectacle worth seeing when the beatnext ten minutes, giving each of us one ers came upon the scene. At sight of or more long shots. Whether he was the dead wolves men, women, and boys hit or not I never found out-probably danced and shouted with delight, and, not, for slugs spread hopelessly wide at standing round the defunct creatures, long distances but in any case he vied with one another in their selection eventually escaped through the beaters of bad language appropriate to the occaand got safely away, though the men, sion. It was enough to shock even a and women too, did their very utmost, wolf, and it was as well for those poor, most pluckily, to defeat his intentions, stiffening corpses that they were spared placing themselves over and over again this public declaration of the people's in his way as he rushed by, and turning | unanimous opinion as to their charac ters. A vedro of vodka appearing on and play for an hour or so over the tops the scene, however, the thoughts of of the trees whereon they intended to keepers and beaters alike took a new lodge, probably by way of laying in a direction, and we left the field of battle, supply of caloric with the exercise suffinow converted into a banqueting hall, cient to last them through the long, to the merrymakers. It was nearly cruel hours of the bitter February night. two o'clock, and the hunger which pos- | Blackcock were to be seen here and sessed us was wolfish. It was as though there sitting by scores on the tops of the departed spirits of our fallen victims the highest trees. They would have had passed into us, the result of this preferred to be comfortably housed metempsychosis being that the Irish under the surface of the snow, more stew which we had brought with us in suo; but the surface was far too hard the very stewpan wherein it was en- to admit of the headlong plunge into it gendered, and which had been heated which these beautiful birds make when up for us during the battue, tasted as the snow is soft enough. Gradually no other Irish stew has ever tasted be- the sun sinks and disappears; the fore or since, and disappeared so rapidly ponies are getting a little fagged now, that the transmigrated spirits had clearly and the pace is not so good; yet with lost nothing by their change of abode. sledge-bells ringing merrily and the Then came the paying of the beaters, little ponies steaming, A. and I glided now returned happy and noisy from gaily into the town, each of us richer their bacchanalian orgy. Three or four by a wolfskin, and one of us also richer rows of ten beaters in each were placed by a far more valuable acquisitionin line to receive the small packets experience, the memory of which, like containing the stipulated sum, with a thing of beauty, is a joy forever. fifteen copecks extra added for three wolves killed, at five copecks each wolf. FRED WHISHAW. an From The Gentleman's Magazine. THE SWAN-SONGS OF THE POETS. I noticed that in spite of their excitement and happiness each person man, woman, or boy- carefully counted his little pile of silver before tendering his "God give you health," which NOTHING was more remarkable in stands for thanks in the moujik's vocab-connection with the press notices of the ulary. This fact led me to the con- death of the late laureate, than the clusion that the Russian peasant is a unanimity with which the critics seized cannier person than I had previously supposed. Then came the delightful drive home, with the added joy which the feeling of success gave us. The ponies were as fresh as ever, having been treated to an unaccustomed banquet of oats, and we flew along homewards no whit slower than we had come. The sun was still bright, but the shadows were longer, the short day was closing in, and the cold was intenser than ever. Not a soul was stirring in the villages as we galloped through them, only the usual uproarious shouts came from the direction of the village kabák that blot upon Russian progress and prosperity; the crows, grey-hooded fellows as well as their black brethren, were already winging slowly homewards, to circle an upon his last published poem as appropriate expression of the thoughts and feelings which animated the great singer in view of his approaching end. "Crossing the Bar" seems, indeed, written in view of eternity; and what could more fitly express that Christian faith and hope, which it has been the laureate's life-work to clothe with beautiful forms, than these lines? Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and The flood may bear me far, When I have crost the bar. Last things are proverbially precious. | To quote the words of Moore : Taking into consideration everything connected with these verses, the last tender aspirations of a loving spirit which they breathe, the self-devotion to a noble cause which they so nobly express, and that consciousness of a near grave gleaming sadly through the whole, there is perhaps no production within the range of mere human composition round which the circumstances and feelings in which it was written cast so touching an interest." They are often cherished merely on account of their associations, and invested with a charm which bears no relation to their intrinsic value. But the last messages of the poets are surely worthy of being cherished, for the poets are seers as well as singers; and it is surely no mere fancy to suppose that, when approaching the close of their earthly career, and consciously or unconsciously drawing near to the realities of Eternity, they became the subjects of some special inspiration, so that in their last utterances they breathed forth in deathless strains the very essence of their creed, of the spirit that had animated their lives, and of the message they had to give to the world. Shelley's last great poem, "The Triumph of Life," written as he drifted in his boat near Casa Magni, over the blue waters of that bay in which he was so soon to find a grave, was left unfinished, the fragment closing abruptly with these words: "Then what is life? I cried; 99 a sentence which has been well said to be of profound significance when we remember that the questioner was about to seek its answer in the halls of death. The whole poem may be taken as symbolical of Shelley's own short and troubled life an unanswered question, an unsolved riddle of the uni verse. If we turn to Shelley's great contemporary, Byron, we find his last poem no less significant. It was written on the morning of January 22, 1824 - his last birthday at the fever-haunted Missolonghi, whither he had gone to take up the forlorn hope of liberty in Greece, with a presentiment that he would never return. The poem is too well known to need quotation; its most characteristic lines are these: My days are in the yellow leaf, The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The hope, the fear, the jealous care, Not less remarkable in its way is the "swan-song" of a minor poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, written in November, 1861, as he lay in his last illness at Florence, where he was so soon to find a grave beside the last resting-place of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Life was for him a struggle; his early faith was clouded by doubt; but his last words are full of faith in the victory of truth. The poem is so little known that we may be pardoned for quoting it in full. Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labor and the wounds are vain, And as things have been they remain. And not by eastern windows only, |