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he suspected, the insolvent state of theatre; Maurice was hardly surprised at his knowledge, for he had not yet sufficiently recovered from his amazement at Ariel's interference in his affairs to go through a similar emotion again. But he accepted Mr. Litton's offer to purchase part proprietorship of the theatre, and put immediate capital into it. Thus the crisis was averted, and none but Maurice knew to what a precipice edge it had driven him. Mr. Litton regarded his investment with some interest, for it seemed to him that purchasing part of a theatre at which Bopeep was engaged was like leasing a small portion of heaven. He accepted a stage box with great satisfaction, and went after dinner that evening to the theatre with SO much curiosity to hear Bopeep surpass herself as she had promised, that he quite forgot to rouge.

"What are you about, Mr. Litton," exclaimed Madonna, coming abruptly upon him in the greenroom, "that you look so extraordinarily happy?"-" and handsome," she was about to add, but hesitated, fearing to offend him.

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"I am trying to interpret some of your enigmas of yesterday morning," he answered. Trying to discover whether there is a fluid medium in which one can work-in short, whether it is possible to be an artist in life.'

"Oh, it is possible, I assure you," said Madonna. But what have you got there ?"

Only some flowers," he answered rather shamefacedly, "for Bopeep after her solo."

"And none for me?" asked the beautiful actress, gaily. "Well, I forgive you, for I would as soon be jealous of a seraph as of Bopeep. And, indeed, I mean to slip into a stage box, and fling her a bouquet myself. I rather fancy she may be drowned in flowers, for her

triumph last night has suggested the idea of bouquets to a good many gentlemen who daren't congratulate her in any other way. And Maurice has got a great basket of stephanotis which he means to have handed up to her over the footlights. By the way, what has come to Maurice? He is in such wild spirits to-night as I have not seen him in for months ?"

"Perhaps that is some of my artistic handiwork," said Mr. Litton; but Madonna did not hear him, for she had gone off abruptly with one of her numerous ad

mirers.

Mr. Litton went on into his box carrying with him the flowers which he had bought to-day, not only to gaze at for his own delight, but also for the delight of another life which had imparted some of its glow and glory to his own.

The

It seemed as though the very spirit of music had entered the theatre that night. To Bopeep it appeared as if Ariel had come in his strength and joy to shower sweetness through her happy hands upon the listening people. audience insisted upon an encore; and Bopeep, full of the radiant courage of her flower-crowned lover, did not hesitate to still the applause by again advancing. She wandered out of the music of the opera into a dim dream melody, intensely soft and sweet, which made Maurice's eyes grow clouded; for it sounded to him like the voice of that Ariel whose true vision had been his salvation. And when the last faint tremor of that music fell upon the ear of the crowded house, there was silence for a moment until the spell was loosed, and then, with the burst of applause, came at Bopeep's feet a shower of bouquets-a cloud of flowers. Her success was made an accepted fact this night, and it seemed as though the people knew

that the Spirit of Music loved the Flower Queen as only one essence of beauty can love another. Bopeep stood on that stage which she had won as her own, with her eyes not on the faces that leaned towards her, but on the flower-faces which fell at her feet. There were SO

many that she could not gather them, and when at last she went off the stage with flushed face and sparkling eyes, looking a very witch, Maurice noticed with a thrill of pleasure that she carried in her own hands only his basket of stephanotis.

MABEL COLLINS.

IN THE WRONG PLACE.

A RESPECTABLE man of plain habits, by the daily exercise of some avocation, succeeds in paying his way. Those terrible dogs of war, the butcher and baker, are held in leash at a respectful distance by a regular liquidation of their claims. Our friend finds that, after payment of his household expenses, the schooling of his children, the premium of his life insurance, he has by dint of carefulness a very slender margin to spare. Every duty performed, he at length allows himself to dream a little of the gratification of those higher tastes which the necessary routine of earning a livelihood leaves so little time even to contemplate. Some of the furniture of the house is showing signs of wear, but next year's earnings will meet that need in reasonable time; the small present surplus may be devoted to the purchase of a few long-wished-for books, a musical instrument, or a picture. Perhaps there will be a trifle left for a present for a friend or relation, or to go towards next year's holiday.

He takes up the newspaper to find the name of the publisher of a work he has decided to buy; his attention is suddenly caught by the heading of a column, "Awful destitution at the East End," or "The Poor of our large cities during a hard winter," and the little cup of bliss he was raising to his lips is rudely dashed to the ground. First, the thrill of pity, sympathy, commiseration, touches his heart, as it has often done

before; then he thinks regretfully of the pleasures to which, after some self-denial, he was about to treat himself. Such expressions as necessary play,"

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"recreation

a religious duty," occur to his mind, and he feels he must shut out from himself something of the suffering of the world, if he is to have the necessary peace of mind for the pursuit of culture or art, or the pleasure of imaginative thought.

In his train of ideas comes up the memory of poor's rates and taxes faithfully paid, and his first sense of pity changes to a grievance, that when a man has done his best at work, and paid up what has been demanded of him, he cannot be allowed to sit down in peace for a moment without being worried by cries of distress just outside. What business have people, he thinks to himself, to be so utterly uneconomical as to let themselves get into such a state of destitution? They knew winter would come; why did they not look out for work which would keep them in food and firing through it? When he him. self was out of employment for a time, he remembers, it was a period of hardship, but the keenness of the struggle sharpened his faculties in their effort to discover remunerative work. Why cannot these people look out for themselves? He complained to no one in his hard times. Our friend begins to grow angry, and what's the good of paying rates and taxes, he says to himself, if this pitiful state of things is

to go on just the same? The parish allowance is either enough to support life, and there are hospitals and infirmaries for the sick; or it is not enough to support life, and the Government and the parochial officers should see to it. What can a private individual do? The Government can take the best experience and advice, and it has the power to give effect to its plans; why should distress like this be ringing its cries at the door of a private individual who wants to be quiet? Our friend opens one of his old books to see if quiet people were bothered in such a way in former times, or to find a refuge from these modern perplexities; and he stumbles upon the fact that Solon had foreseen similar difficulties, and provided against them. Anyone failing to support his parents was counted infamous, and subject to disabilities; so was the spendthrift; the sluggard was liable to prosecution by anyone who chose to impeach him; a yearly inquiry was instituted into the manner in which each citizen maintained himself.

Then our friend turns to his newspaper again, and reads of thinly-clad barefooted people waiting several hours outside a soupkitchen in the hope of a dole of soup, and of the boiling not being sufficient to go round, and of hundreds being sent away hungry and cold as they came.

And now the man feels sickness of heart mingle with his anger, and he hates this modern life that is so full of contradictions. The wealthiest country in the world his thought works in this illjointed train-the power of steam practically utilised within a century, and supposed to add manifold to man's power of production -grain pouring in without stint from boundless areas of harvest all over the world-and yet in the

very centre of commerce this extremity of destitution! What is the meaning of it? says our friend to himself, and his evening's enjoyment of his books or music is spoiled by the fever of his brain and disturbance of his heart. Less oppressive to the sympathetic imagination, the sharp famine which carries away thousands at one fell swoop, than the incessant recurrence of the weary wail of destitution. He thinks one moment of the shop windows full of every fashionable luxury and novelty to tempt the rich; and he thanks heaven that he is a plain man. Then his mood changes, and he feels that his own love of beauty is not wicked in itself, and that it is only the frivolity and wastefulness of modern life that is reprehensible; for the purchase of articles of real beauty stimulates wholesome manufacture, which remunerates those engaged in it, while affording them an honest occupation and one which adds to the common good in every way. There is plenty of labour yet to spare, with the immense multiplication of its power which is due to machinery. Why is so little of it turned to the benefit of these starvelings who will wait hours for a bowl of rudely-made soup? These very hours of waiting for the soup suggest a thought to him had they nothing better to do than to wait? Was there nothing in which they could have been employing their time, and so earning a right to have the bowl of soup whenever they chose? Dirt is but matter in the wrong place; wherever a human being represents a residuum, or a surplus, or something that cannot be utilised, or of which the absence is preferred to the presence, he must surely be in the wrong place too. It is not the matter that is wrong, but the place; this logical conclusion sets our bothered friend on a fresh

track of thought, and he puts to himself a series of questions something after the simple manner of the ancient Mangnall.

What is a city? An aggregation of buildings for habitation, and for the manufacture and distribution of goods. What is the peculiarity of the area of a city as compared with a corresponding tract of country? That in the case of the city the ground is not to be seen, being covered with houses. Was this the case with the most ancient cities? No, their area was much larger in proportion to the population. What difference thus arises between ancient and modern cities as regards the mode of life within them? In ancient cities the bare necessaries of life could be provided within the walls; there were cattle to milk and to slay, fruits to be grown, grain to be reaped. The necessaries came, to a large extent at least, from within; luxuries and rarities were commodities that came by exchange, and from without. Into a modern city nearly all the necessaries must come from without: an ancient city was, so to speak, city and country too, and could support itself during the beleaguerment of years. A modern city would be reduced to tinnedmeats in a comparatively short time. But does not the improvement in the means of carriage altogether neutralise the disadvantage to a modern city of its absence of harvest? It does so, and more, to the rich, whom the modern system endows with powers far beyond the powers of the correspondingly wealthy of former times. But does not the poor man partake of these powers? Is it not cheaper for him, for instance, to make a journey by rail than to walk? No, for to walk uses up energy when it is to spare, and only as it is to spare. by rail absorbs a fixed and definite portion of the results of past

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energy, which may not be to spare at any given moment, for it may not have been possible to make the energy available for the result required.

The modern system can only accept specific energy from the dwellers in the city; did the ancient system afford room for the casual energy, even of the lowest class, being made remunerative? If the modern helot is starving, he must either discover definite employment which will remunerate him, or go on the parish, or must appeal to the benevolent, and agitate minds that prefer to remain tranquil, with a cry for soup. The ancient hind, bred up more hardly, could when in desperation pluck winter berries from the trees, or scratch a root out of the ground, or catch a fish, or snare small game, or beg a drink of milk from a farm, or the few grains that lie on a barn floor. The modern city starveling is aware that winter berries do not grow in his neighbourhood, but are only imported at a high price for the decoration of the houses of the wealthy. Roots, fish, wild game, are all obtainable only at so much a pound; milk and grain are in the hands of keen purveyors, not of homely farm servants. They have the value, not of the overflow from a profuse store close by, but of the added labour of their transit, from grower to rail, rail to ship, ship to port, port to rail, rail to merchant, merchant to middleman, middleman to shopkeeper, everyone taking his profit by the way for his highly valuable labour. All the activity shown has been good for trade, but the balance of the transaction is against the miserable creature who has not shared in the profits of the activity, and who is seeking to share in its results. The premium on the activity of others must first be paid, and in hard and definite coin.

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