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And the other, who understood without any explanation, replied:

"Ah! vai, a note-book! Do you think I am going to let myself die like that American? Vite ! let us be off, come away."

"Impossible! At the first step we shall be carried away like straws and dashed into some chasm."

"But then we must shout; the inn is not far from here;" and Bompard, on his knees his head protruding from the serac, in the attitude of a cow lowing, shouted: "Help! Help!"

"Aux armes !" cried Tartarin in his turn, in his most sonorous voice, which the grotto echoed like thunder."

Bompard seized him by the arm. "Miserable man, the serac!" Positively the whole block trembled, another breath, and the mass of accumulated ice-blocks would fall upon them. They remained frozen, motionless, wrapped in a terrible silence, which was soon broken by a distant rumbling, which came nearer and nearer, increased, spread over the horizon, and finally died away underground in the gulfs of the ice. Their situation had become very critical; they did not dare to move in their ice-grotto, nor could they venture out in the storm.

To complete their terror of mind, from the valley now arose the baying of a dog-a death-wail. Suddenly Tartarin, with staring eyes and trembling lips, seized the hands of his companion, and looking at him, kindly, said:

"Forgive me, Gonzague, yes, yes, forgive me. I have often been unkind to you. I treated you as a liar-"

"Ah! vai, what does that matter?"

"I have as little right as any one to do so, for I have told many lies in my life, and at this supreme hour I feel the necessity to confess-to relieve my feelingsto publicly avow my impostures!"

"Impostures! You!"

"Listen to me, friend; in the first place, I never killed that lion !"

"That does not surprise me at all," replied Bompard quickly. "But why should you worry yourself about so little? It is the sun which causes it; we are born with the lying faculty. Ve! myself-have I ever told the truth since I came into the world? As soon as I open my mouth my Southern blood ascends. The people of whom I speak-well, I do not know them! and all this makes such a tissue of invention that I can't even unravel it myself!"

"It is imagination, pechere!" sighed Tartarin. "We are liars in imagination!"

While he was fulminating, the sky was clearing by degrees. The snow ceased, the wind dropped, blue rifts appeared above the grey of the clouds. Quickaway! They had re-tied themselves, when Tartarin, who had taken the lead as before, turned round and said, finger on his mouth:

"You know, Gonzague, all that has been said is quite between ourselves."

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SAVED BY A HAIR.

Five minutes later, the tunnel men of the Excelsior mine, a mile below, taking their luncheon on the rude platform of debris before their tunnel, were suddenly driven to shelter in the tunnel from an apparent rain of stones, rocks and pebbles from the cliffs above. Looking up, they were startled at seeing four round objects revolving and bounding in the dust of the slide, which eventually resolved themselves into three boys and a girl. For a moment the good men held their breath in helpless terror. Twice, one of the children had struck the outer edge of the bank and displaced stones that shot a thousand feet down into the dizzy depths of the valley! and now, one of them, the girl, had actually rolled out of the slide and was hanging over the chasm supported only by a clump of chimasal to which she clung!

"Hang on by your eyelids, Sis! but don't stir for heaven's sake!" shouted one of the men, as two others started on a hopeless ascent of the cliff above them.

But a light childish laugh from the clinging little figure above them seemed to mock them! Then two small heads appeared at the edge of the slide; then a diminutive figure, whose feet were apparently held by some invisible companion, was shoved over the brink, and stretched its tiny arms toward the girl. But in vain, the distance was too great. Another laugh of intense youthful enjoyment followed the failure, and a new insecurity was added to the situation by the unsteady hands and shoulders of the relieving party, who were apparently shaking with laughter. Then the extended figure was seen to detatch what looked like a small black rope from its shoulders and threw it to the girl. There was another little giggle. The faces of the men below paled in terror. Then Pollyfor it was she-hanging to the long pigtail of Wan Lee, was drawn with fits of laughter back in safety to the slide. Their childish treble of appreciation was answered by a ringing cheer from below.

"Darned ef ever I want to cut off a Chinaman's pig-tail again, boys," said one of the tunnel men, as he went back to dinner.

BRET HARTE,

in "The Queen of the Pirate Isle."

INTERVIEWING.

The business of the newspaper is to furnish private people with the public news, not to furnish the public with the news of private people.

A private conversation is as sacred as private correspondence. An interlocutorhas no more right to publish my private conversation than to ransack my draw. ers from private papers.

It must be taken for granted that a conversation is private unless it is distinctly understood to be meant for public use either by previous arrangement or by express permission afterward.

When so made public, it must not be printed until both parties to the conversation have agreed as to the accuracy of the report.

in New Princeton Review.

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Mr. Black's new book, upon which he has been writing some time, will be ready in two or three months.

S. Baring-Gould has written a serial story entitled The Gaverocks for the Cornhill Magazine.

An excellent portrait of Mrs. Henry Wood, author of East Lynne is contained in the January Argosy. Bret Harte's new story The Crusade of the Excelsior is just begun in the Harper's Weekly.

It is reported that Count Tolstoi will succeed M. de Giers as Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The next volume in the series of "English Worthies" will be Canning, Written by Mr. Frank H. Hill, the late editor of the London Daily News.

Under the title Lettre d'un Ami, one of the French magazines, gives a very pleasant translation of part of In Partnership, by H. C. Bunner.

Little Lord Fauntleroy was the text chosen by a well-known New York clergyman for a Christmas sermon of charity and love for the little ones.

Mr. Froude is about to make a tour of Cuba and the West Indies, in order to obtain thorough information for his new work on the wreck of The Empire of Spain.

Mr. Underwood, Bret Harte's successor at Glasgow, is writing a series of Personal recollections of American authors for Good Words.

Joaquin Miller's department of editorial comment in Golden Era is called "Bricks." Does it signify only heaviness, or solidity?

Mr. Björnstjerne Björnson, who has settled down in Paris again, is busy with the second part of his last play Over Evne.

J. S., of Dale, has written a novelette The Residuary Legatee for Scribner's Magazine, to begin in the February number.

Herbert Spencer's recent articles on the The Factors of Organic Evolution in the Nineteenth Century, will be revised and issued in book form,

James Russell Lowell will write a poem of six pages for the February Atlantic. The title will be "Credidimus Jovem Regnare."

Kathleen O'Meara, who introduced us so pleasantly to society of the salons of Paris some months ago, has a new story, Mabel Stanhope, which will be ready on January 15th.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson will write during the year a series of twelve articles on Literary Tendencies for the New York Independent.

The editor of the Crocker Papers, L. J. Jennings, has been collecting material for a political biography of Gladstone. The work will give the public career of the statesman in a brief as form as possible.

Richard Jefferies, the author of The Gamekeeper at Home, is writing a novel descriptive of the manners and customs of the rural population of England at the present time.

It is said that the Boston Home Journal has succeeded in obtaining a series of valuable Longfellow letters, covering the last fifty years of the poet's life, and to be published in the Journal's columns.

The many odd perversions and originalities of diction in the cheap translation of the Romance of a Poor Young Man, now on the market, led J. Henry Hager, whose work on Alette has been noted, to undertake a new translation which will soon be ready.

Gen. Lew Wallace is engaged in writing a romance of Constantinople, and among the graphic pictures in the book will be a battle, the description of which promises to rival in picturesqueness and strength the famous chariot-race scene in Ben Hur, which the author's reading has rendered familiar to so many.

William Sloane Kennedy, an American, has sent to England for publication, a work on Walt Whitman, entitled Walt Whitman, the Poet of Humanity. The English public seems to make rather a pet of Whitman, and though he denies any real poverty, he willingly accepts all the contributions they send him.

G. Garducci, the Italian poet and historian of literature, has just finished a remarkable work on the Popes as poets, which he intends to keep back for some months, as it contains a chapter of rather severe criticism upon the poems of Leo XIII., and he does not wish to appear to favor the anti-clericalists.

My Life is the title of the forthcoming autobiography of Lizst. It is reported that "he has delineated with considerable vigor the faults and foibles both of his enemies and of his friends. This book is full of portrait sketches of men of the time, but there is said to be not a breath of scandal in it."

Mr. Emile Granier, of Atlantic City, Wyoming, has prepared, after years of study and research, a chronological epitome of American politis. The administration of each president, with the act. of Congress for that period is given, and in parallel lumns, the records of the leaders, the parties in.. rested, the votes on each question, the reasons thereier, and the discussions on both sides, and at every decade important census extracts, showing at a glance full information on every political question. An ingenious genealogical tree shows the growth of politics from the early discoveries. Important statistics and documents are appended, so that every point on American politics is arranged so as to be instantly referred to.

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•Creation for Evolution, by George Ticknor Curtis, is now in press.

A new work from the Danish of P. Mariage, Tales of Hellas, is in preparation for early publication.

Harriet W. Preston's Year in Eden will be ready by the early part of February.

Georg Eber's latest romance, The Bride of the Nile, is announced for early issue.

Joseph Hatton's new novel, The Old House at Sandwich, will be published next month.

Edward A. Freeman is the editor of the new series of sketches of historic towns of England. London is the first volume, Exeter and Bristol are to follow shortly.

Dr. F. L. Oswald, who contributes frequently to the magazines on topics relating to health, has ready a new work which discusses the cause and cure of intemper

ance.

Twenty-four of Mr. Tennill's drawings from Alice in Wonderland, enlarged and colored under the superintendence of the artist will be issued as the Nursery Alice.

The Century's reprint of its war articles, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, will be ready early in the Spring. Many valuable papers hitherto unpublished will be added to those that have already appeared.

Letters from Heaven is just ready in England. If its success is as great as that of the correspondence from heaven's antipodes, there need be no fear for it. It is translated from the fourth German edition.

4

The Beer of the Bible will shortly be issued in London. The author, a consulting brewer, who has

A cheap popular edition of Morley's English Men of carefully studied the Egyptian leavens, discovers the Letters will be begun in January.

The Hungarian Stories of Karl Edler, edited by the Earl of Lytton, is announced for early issue.

W.H Bishop's Golden Justice, that ran as a serial in the Atlantic, is almost ready in book form.

Messrs. Scribner have in press a new novel, by Mr, John T. Wheelright, entitled A Child of the Century. A biography of Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the poet, by Edmund Lee, will be ready in January.

A new illustrated edition of Beautiful Snow and other poems, will speedly be issued.

The next issue in the No Name series will be A Question of Identity, a story of New England life of the day.

Peterson & Co., will shortly publish Twelve Years of my Life, an autobiography of B. Beaumont of Wood ville, Miss.

The Cossack's, a tale of the Caucasus in 1852 by Tolstoi, ranslated direct from the Russian by EugeneSchuyler is now in press.

Agatha and the Shadow. a story founded on early colonial history, will be the second volume of Roberts' Old Colonial series, to be ready in a few days.

Gen. C. C. Andrews, formerly U. S. Consul to Rio Janeiro, has prepared for the Appleton's, Brazil, its Condition and Prospects.

Common-Sense Science, by Grant Allen, being a collection of his recent magazine essays, will be published by Lothrop & Co.

The theosophic rage is responsible for Beyond the Golden Gates, which will explain how the bliss of a future life can be enjoyed in this.

ancient Hebrew beer to be only a sort of eatable fermented paste.

The tendency has been during the last two or three years to bring important studies before scholars at an earlier age than heretofore. A valuable book written with this in view is, A Primer of Botany, by Mrs. A. A. Knight, to be ready shortly.

Three hundred of the best sonnets, written during the last hunred years have been collected for a volume on Sonnets of this Century, by Wm. Sharp. There is an introductory essay on the sonnet, with ample biographical and bibliographical notes.

In the Emancipation of Massachussetts Mr. Brooks Adams proves that certain important aims and objects of the early settlers have been hitherto ignored or very inadequately recognized, and he shows the steps and agencies by which the State was emancipated from the bigotry and intolerance of the time.

The question as to how far an author's work is an index to mind and habits receives a fresh illustration in Skakespeare's Insomnia, a little work by which the author, quoting from the plays of the Bard of Avon, tries to prove that he did not rest well at night. Some of us who cannot equal him in dramatic power and ability, can console ourselves with the reflection that we can perhaps excel him in "not sleeping." Probably Shakespeare's insomnia really belonged to Bacon.

Great Writers is the title of a new series of popular critical biographies, at a low price, to be issued monthly in London. The subjects will be the noted writers of England and America, as well as the best known names in the literature of other countries, and each will be accompanied by an ample bibliography of about 20 pages, carefully compiled by J. P. Anderson, of the British Museum. The early volumes will be Longfellow, Coleridge, Dickens and Rossetti.

MAGAZINE BRIEFS.

Grant Allen has written an article on the White Mountains for the January Longman's.

Mrs. Barr, author of Jan Vedder's Wife, will contribute The Lone House to the attractions of the Leisure Hour for the new year.

Cassell's Family Magazine offers a prize of $25 for the best practical paper on the domestic service difflculty in America, with suggestions for its solution.

The Swiss Cross has been started to meet the wants of a large class of persons interested in the study of nature as shown by the popularity of Agassiz Association as reported in St. Nicholas.

The prospectus of a new Austrian geographical periodical to be called Geographische Abhandlungen has been issued. The frequency of publication has not yet been stated.

Higher mathematics in the applications to social problems is the subject dealt with in a new Vienna journal Die Controle, which is edited by the mathematician Dr, Grossman. In an appendix, questions of national economy are treated on a mathematical basis.

The Sunday at Home will, with its January issue, open for its readers a vote on the hundred best hymns. The lists will afterwards be made the basis of a series of papers on hymnody by the Rev. Dr. S. G. Green of London.

Walford's Antiquarian has been enlarged to sixtyeight pages. America has no magazine covering this field, and this should be more extensively read here than it is. An article on "The Literature of Almanacs " is promised for the January number.

The Hour Glass, the new English magazine, is said to be intended particularly for railway travellers. R. H. Stoddard says, that judging from the name, it is bound to run down. Better run down than “go up," as many periodicals do after their first number.

The Presbyterian Board of Publication will commence in January a new monthly periodical to be called The Church, to be devoted to the benevolent work of the Presbyterian Church at home and abroad, not omitting however information on Christian work in other denominations.

The Art Review for December contains one etching and three full page photogravure illustrations by Thomas Moran, Edw. R. Thaxter, Alex. Harrison, and Herbert Denman. For a second issue of an art publication the result is an excellent one, surprising in general style and finish.

Under the title "A Group of Pre-Revolutionary Editors," Hon. S. G. W. Benjamin writes an excellent article on the beginnings of journalism in America in the Magazine of American History. Fac-similes of the quaint papers of a century ago, with portraits of the journalists ofthe time, make the article a valuable contribution to the history of the first days of the American press.

The Overland will present during the coming year a number of papers specially concerning the Pacific Coast, and prepared by writers competent to speak with authority on the respective subjects. Among these topics are such as the Chinese and the labor questions, the trade situation in San Francisco and throughout the coast; the subjects of irrigation, the fruit industry, grape growing, mining, protection of California forests, and, in short, practical studies of all the leading industries of the coast.

Taking his text from Grant's Personal Memoirs, Matthew Arnold writes for the new Murray's a critique of the work, which is a condensed biography as well. From the first installment of his review we cannot accuse Mr. Arnold of any intense hero-worship of Grant. He finds him a man with " no magical personality, touched by no divine light, and giving ont none." To him Lee was the hero of the Civil War, and the words of favor to Grant seem like begrudged crumbs of approval, that a conscientious writer bestows when he tries hard to be just and scrupulously offsets a touch of evil with a shade of good.

"Mutual Inflation" is the very telling term that Mr. J. Clayton Adams applies to the literary cliques in which each member deifies his fellow in the thought that his own turn may come next, and that the puffing then given may raise his little balloon of a reputation up into the realm of glory. In this article on literary log-rolling, in the Forum, are some tight pinches, that pain because they are just. The position taken by a number of periodicals in abetting this sham fame, is fearlessly discussed. This deception is only temporary, "for a Shakespeare, a Milton, will inevitably take his true place, without the aid of newspapers, or magazines, or subsidized puffers."

NEW SERIALS.

The following comprises the serials begun in the magazines for America and England for the month. Unless otherwise specified the following are novels.

DECEMBER 1886.

Barty, the Little Vagabond. By Ann Abbott....Lend a Hand.
Bible Trades and the Lessons They Teach. By the Rev. J.
Hiles Hitchens, D. D., (Religious)...
Quiver.

Desperate Davy. By Henry Frith...........Every Boy's Mag.
Ensevelis, Les. By G. de Peyre brune...(Nov. 6) Revue Bleue.
Fairy Folk All. By Louise Imogen Guiney...
.....Wide Awake.
Heroes of European History. (Biog.)...

..Every Boy's Mag.

Wide Awake. .Eng. Ill. Mag. ..Cassell's. Time.

In War-Times,at La Rose Blanche.
Jacquette. By S. Baring-Gould....
Life's Fitful Fever. By Arabella M. Hopkinson..
Love's a Tyrant. By Annie Thomas..
Montezuma's Gold Mines. By F. A. Ober....... Wide Awake.
Mr. Brown. A Comedy of Errors. By H. P. Stephens.. Time.
Mr. Tangier's Vacation. By E. E. Hale........Lend a Hand.
Northwestern Conspiracy. T. H. Hines, (Hist.).. South. Biv.
Romulus and Remus. By Chas. R. Talbot......Wide Awake.
Signor Jo. By Salvatore Farina...
Step in the Dark, A. By Kate Eyre..
Taffy and Bustǝr. Jessie B. Fremont..
Through the Snowdrifts. By Mme. De Witt..Every Boy's Mag.
Young Prince of Commerce. S. R. Hopkins.... Wide Awake.

Cosmopolitan. Cassell's. Wide Awake.

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"Since brevity's the soul of wit,

I will be brief."-HAMLET.,

TO THE READER.

The books given under this heading comprise the principal books published during December. In the note, the idea has been to tell what the book is about, and the style in which it is written, rather than to give any criticism upon its merits. These brief, chatty outlines are in every instance the result of a careful reading and examination of each book by the editors of Book CHAT, and are not copied from other papers or reprinted from publishers' notices.

Any book on this list sent postpaid on receipt of price, by Brentano Bros., 5 Union Square, New York.

ABOUT MONEY AND OTHER THINGS. By the author of "John Halifax, Gentleman."-Ten short essays and stories reprinted that they may give, "to a few more, a laugh-which is good; a tear-which is sometimes better; a serious thought or two-which is best of all." The papers are sincere, direct and sensible discussions and suggestions on money, life, genius, sisterhoods and the Irish question, given in a tone of healthy appreciation of the depth and noble possibilities in the topics touched upon.-Harper's, .90

AFTER THE BALL. By Nora Perry.-A new and revised edition of the dainty, pretty verses of Miss Perry's, that have met with favor in the magazines and in papers wherever found. Graceful, light, and easy, they are happily sympathetic and in the spirit of the themes.-Ticknor & Co., 1.75

AGNES SURRIAGE. By Edwin Lassetter Bynner.-Author of "Nimport."-In this tale of Marblehead and Boston, the author has taken the history of Frankland and Agnes Serriage, and touched up the picture in occasional romantic lights and colors. Agnes, the ignorant, yet beautiful daughter of a fisherman, is brought to town by a wealthy gentleman to be educated. Becoming infatuated with her beauty, he proposes marriage to her, but in a self-sacrificing moment she refuses on the ground that it would injure his prospects. The incidents are dramatic and the motive well sustained.-Ticknor & Co.

AMERICANS IN ROME. By Ray Aster.-Paul Errington, a brilliant student, a hard worker, to whom the profession of law held forth dazzling prospects, left all for the church to which he was attached. Even then he wandered from one sect to another till Romanism seemed the only help for him, and he journeys to Rome to complete his education. All the historical data are said to be taken from standard authorities and the life in the Eternal City is given with the utmost precision.-Burnett & Co., 1.50

THE AZTECS. By Lucien Bart.-A picture of life in Mexico in the time of the Aztecs made real and graphic by a presentation of the worship, education, justice, military institutions, agriculture, language, idols, sacrifices and government. The author has availed himself of all that has been written on the subject by historians who have made a special study of ancient Mexico. It is a thoroughly interesting volume giving valuable notes on American archaeology.-McClurg & Co., 2.00

BAKER'S READINGS, No. 17.-The current number of Baker's, containing for the most part selections not found in other books, but two or three of the regular pieces being given. If there be one single thing that the soul of the elocutionist yearns persistently for, and that causes a thrill of joy, it is a new

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