anchor still held, but she had listed her cargo, careened, and so

lay helpless.

"There are men on it!" cried some one. "Three menyou see them? The water goes over them every time!"

don't

"Sure enough! I wonder if they are going to let them drown, here in the harbor!"

Rose grew numb with horror. On the rounded side of the floating hulk three men were clinging, looking like pegs of tops. They could only be seen at intervals, for the water broke clear over their heads. It was only when one of them began to move to and fro that the mighty crowd became certainly aware of life still clinging to the hull. It was an awful thing to stand helplessly by and see those brave men battle, but no life-boat or tug could live out there. In the station, men wept and imprecated in their despair; twice they tried to go to the rescue of the beleaguered men, but .could not reach them.

Suddenly a flare of yellow spread out on the wave.

arose:

"She's breaking up!"

Rose seized Mason's arm in a frenzy of horror.

"O God! can't somebody help them ?"

A cry

"They're out of reach!" said Mason solemnly. And then the throng was silent.

"They are building a raft!" shouted a man with a glass, speaking at intervals for the information of all. "One man is tying a rope to planks; .. he is helping the other men;

has his little raft nearly ready; him-»

he

"Oh, see them!" exclaimed Rose. "Oh, the brave men! There! they are gone-the vessel has broken up."

On the wave nothing now lived but a yellow spread of lum.

ber; the glass revealed no living thing.

Mason turned to Rose with a grave and tender look. "You have seen human beings engulfed like flies->

"No! no! There they are!" shouted a hundred voices, as if in answer to Mason's thought.

Thereafter the whole great city seemed to be watching those specks of human life, drifting toward almost certain death upon the breakwater of the south shore. For miles the beach was clustered black with people. They stood there, it seemed for hours, watching the slow approach of that tiny raft. Again and again

the waves swept over it, and each time that indomitable man rose from the flood and was seen to pull his companions aboard.

Other vessels drifted upon the rocks. Other steamers rolled heavily around the long breakwater, but nothing now distracted the gaze of the multitude from this appalling and amazing struggle against death. Nothing? No; once and only once did the onlookers shift their intent gaze, and that was when a vessel passed the breakwater and went sailing toward the south through the fleet of anchored, straining, agonized ships. At first no one paid much attention to this late-comer till Mason lifted his voice.

"By Heaven, the man is sailing!"

It was true; steady, swift, undeviating, the vessel headed through the fleet. She did not drift nor wander nor hesitate. She sailed as if the helmsman, with set teeth, were saying:

"By God! If I must die on the rocks, I'll go to my death the captain of my vessel!"

And so with wheel in his hand and epic oaths in his mouth, he sailed directly into the long row of spiles, over which the waves ran like hell-hounds; where half a score of wrecks lay already churning into fragments in the awful tumult.

The sailing vessel seemed not to waver, nor seek nor dodge - seemed rather to choose the most deadly battle-place of waves and wall.

"God! but that's magnificent of him!" Mason said to himself. Rose held her breath, her face white and set with horror. "Oh, must he die ? »

«< There is no hope for him. She will strike in a momentshe strikes!she is gone!"

The vessel entered the gray confusion of the breakers and struck the piles like a battering-ram; the waves buried her from sight; then the recoil flung her back; for the first time she swung broadside to the storm. The work of the helmsman was over. She reeled - resisted an instant, then submitted to her fate, crumbled against the pitiless wall like paper, and thereafter was lost to sight.

An

This dramatic and terrible scene had held the attention of the onlookers-once more they searched for the tiny raft. It was nearing the lake wall at another furious point of contact. innumerable crowd spread like a black robe over the shore, waiting to see the tiny float strike.

A hush fell over every voice. Each soul was solemn as if facing the Maker of the world. Out on the point, just where the doomed sailors seemed like to strike, there was a little commotion. A tiny figure was seen perched on one of the spiles. Each wave, as it towered above him, seemed ready to sweep him away, but each time he bowed his head and seemed to sweep through the gray wall. He was a negro, and he held a rope in his hands.

As they comprehended his danger the crowd cheered him, but in the thunder of the surf no human voice could avail. The bold negro could not cry out, he could only motion; but the brave man on the raft saw his purpose-he was alone with the shipwrecked ones.

In they came, lifted and hurled by a prodigious swell. They struck the wall just beneath the negro and disappeared beneath the waves.

All seemed over, and some of the spectators fell weeping; others turned away.

Suddenly the indomitable commander of the raft rose, then his companions, and then it was perceived that he had bound them all to the raft.

The negro flung his rope and one man caught at it, but it was swept out of reach on a backward-leaping billow. Again they came in, their white, strained, set faces and wild eyes turned to the intrepid rescuer. Again they struck, and this time. the negro caught and held one of the sailors, held him while the foam fell away, and the succeeding wave swept him over the spiles to safety. Again the resolute man flung his noose and caught the second sailor, whose rope was cut by the leader, the captain, who was last to be saved.

As the negro came back, dragging his third man over the wall, a mighty cry went up, a strange, faint, multitudinous cry, and the negro was swallowed up in the multitude.

.

Mason turned to Rose and spoke: "Sometimes men seem to be worth while!"

ELIZABETH STEVENSON GASKELL

(1810-1865)

RITICS agree in placing the novels of Mrs. Gaskell on a level with the works of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronté. It is

more than probable that future generations will turn to her stories for correct pictures of simple every-day life that must fade in the swift succession of years. She has been compared to a naturalist who knows intimately the flora and fauna of his native heath.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born in Chelsea, England, September 29th, 1810, the daughter of William Stevenson, a literary man, who was keeper of the records of the TreasShe lived with her aunt at Knutsford

ury.

in Cheshire, was sent to a private school in Stratford-on-Avon, and visited London and Edinburgh, where her beauty was much admired. In 1832 she was married to the Rev. William Gaskell, minister of a Unitarian chapel in Manchester. Mrs. Gaskell did not begin to write until she had reached middle age, and then chiefly to distract her thoughts after the death of their only son in 1844. Her first book, 'Mary Barton,' published anonymously in 1848, achieved

extraordinary success. This was a "novel ELIZABETH S. GASKELL with a purpose," for Mrs. Gaskell believed

that the hostility between employers and employed, which constantly disturbed the manufacturing beehive of Manchester, was caused by mutual ignorance. She therefore set herself the task of depicting faithfully the lives of the people around her. It must be remembered, too, that the social types chosen by her were at that moment peculiarly interesting to a public weary of the novel of fashionable high life. The story provoked much public discussion; and among other critics, the social economist Mr. W. R. Greg, in his 'Essay on Mary Barton,' published in 1849, took the part of the manufacturer. 'Mary Barton' has been translated into French, German, and other languages, including Hungarian and Finnish. The story has for its central theme the gradual degeneration of John Barton, a workman who has a passionate hatred of the classes above him, and who, embittered by poverty and the death of his son and wife, joins the

law-breakers of the town, and finally murders Henry Corson, a master manufacturer. 'North and South,' published in 1855, was written from the point of view of the masters, an admirable contrast to Barton being found in Thornton, the hero of this novel.

In 1850, when Dickens was about to establish Household Words, he invited Mrs. Gaskell to contribute. This magazine contained her story 'Lizzie Leigh' and those immortal pictures of village life known as 'Cranford.' Mrs. Gaskell's other novels are: 'Ruth,' the tragi cal story of a pretty young milliner's apprentice; Sylvia's Lovers,' whose scene is Monkhaven (Whitby), at the end of the last century; 'Cousin Phillis, a simple story of a farmer's daughter, which appeared first in the Cornhill Magazine in 1863-64; and Wives and Daughters,' also contributed to the Cornhill, and left unfinished by her death in Manchester, November 12th, 1865. By many persons the last novel is considered her best work, owing to its strength of characterization. Molly Gibson, the heroine; Cynthia, a heartless coquette; Squire Hamley and his sons Roger and Osborne, of Hamley Hall; and the Earl of Cumnor and his family at the Towers,—all are treated with impartial skill. Her famous 'Life of Charlotte Bronté' appeared in 1857. She became acquainted with Miss Bronté in 1850, and they were friends at once.

A collected edition of Mrs. Gaskell's works, published in seven volumes in 1873, includes the short stories The Grey Woman,' 'Morton Hall,' 'Mr. Harrison's Confessions,' 'A Dark Night's Work,' 'The Moorland Cottage,' 'Round the Sofa,' 'The Old Nurse's Story,' 'The Well of Pen-Morfa,' 'The Sexton's Hero,' 'Lois the Witch,' and ́others. Cranford is identified as the town of Knutsford. Its population consists of widows and maiden ladies, in bonds to their ancient gentility. With deft touch Mrs. Gaskell brings out the humor and pathos of these quaint characters, her finest creation being Miss Matty Jenkyns,

OUR SOCIETY

From Cranford>

IN

THE first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighboring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad.