3. They vitiate the motives for study, and thus degrade the two noblest of human pursuits, viz., teaching and learning.

4. They strain injuriously the health of growing young men and women.

5. They fail after all in their main object, viz., the selection of the best men.

If these charges are true, we sacrifice the nation's noblest trust -its culture-for an end much inferior, and which after all is not attained. If the editor contests these allegations, it is incumbent on him to disprove them.

To summarise: The editor's own paper proves nothing, except his incapacity to deal with the question. Of the three witnesses he calls in for his support, one, whose interest jumps with his own contention, agrees with him; another gives him very cold support; and the evidence of the third and weightiest witness is dead against him. Nevertheless, the editor is to be congratulated; he, the newcomer, has entered the lists against a doughty old champion, and, though worsted, the victor may console him with these words:

"Per tua gloria basti, che contra me combattesti."

A. SONNENSCHEIN.

4

N. S. I.

"THE SECRET OF THE SECRETARY."

By AGNES FARLEY MILLAR.

WITHIN a stone's-throw of the fortifications, their big windows turned to catch the northern light which lingers long on the level flatnesses of Clichy Levallois and Asnières, to finally die among the chimney-pots of St. Denis, stands a block of buildings, divided into studios for artists-cheap studios, very different from those of the Boulevard Malesherbes, or the Avenue de Villiers; they are so out of the way a few more yards would place them beyond the Octroi, and they are in a most undesirable neighbourhood.

In the big trenches, and on the scraps of waste land outside the city, lurk gipsies, tinkers, and beggars, who crawl thence to display their hideous deformities to piteous passers-by; and all day long from the barracks comes the sound of the tooting horn and the tap-tapping of the drum.

As regards these studios, the old rule "The higher you go, the more you pay," has a certain show of reason, for on the fifth and sixth stories day lasts a good half-hour longer than on the flights below.

But in July the most industrious painter must lay aside his brush before the sun sets, and Dennett Shaw was not in the ranks of the indefatigable.

For more than an hour he had been smoking and dreaming in his rocking-chair, his thoughts touching lightly on this topic and on that; now it was six o'clock, time to go home to dinner.

It was a half-hour's walk to his home; the shortest way lay through narrow unsavoury streets which run to and round a big market, streets where many people lived on a few francs weekly, and where even the shops seemed too dispirited and indifferent to make the best of their poor contents.

At the corner of one street was a second-hand furniture dealer's,

a number of whose goods were displayed upon the pavement. They were common-looking objects; but among the stained and painted chairs and tables stood out one thing-an old secretary, of the severely would-be-classic style, which came into vogue immediately after the Great Revolution.

It was not a handsome piece of furniture; made of cherry wood, and with a somewhat skimped narrowness which suggested economy of material. Around each drawer and down the legs ran gilt mouldings, and these Shaw noticed were rather finely chased-they had probably been taken from something of an earlier period; the top was covered with a marble slab; withal there was a certain dignity about the simple lines, increased, no doubt, by the vulgarity of its surroundings.

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Dennett Shaw stopped some minutes examining it; the bric-àbrac disease had fastened on him, so that he was always after good things," and never felt the smallness of his means so much as when compelled to relinquish some absolute bargain. In this instance his desire to possess was reasonable; he was in need of a desk of some sort.

It was very hot that night. When he opened his home door the little ante-room struck him as stuffier than ever; and after dinner not a breath of air seemed to reach the balcony, where he sat to smoke his pipe.

When the children were in bed his wife came and took her usual seat, an arm-chair just inside the window. Perhaps it was the moonlight made her look more than ordinarily pale. She did not talk much; she seemed very tired, and somehow this irritated him she was always tired now; and before they were married she was such a lively girl-so pretty, so fascinating with her charming manners, half French half English, and the slightly foreign accent that gave such a quaint turn to her phrases now and then.

Sometimes he would think, with manly impatience, that she might be better if she would, that she had got into a habit of complaining, and fancied her head ached when it only required an effort to shake the uneasiness off; then he would remember that after all the hardships of their married life had fallen more on her than on him. It was a trying life for her, three children to wash and dress and care for, to drag up and down five flights

of stairs for daily exercise; and then the cooking, sewing, and household affairs generally fell all on her, for they had no regular bonne, only a femme de ménage for a few hours in the morning.

The great heat this year had told upon her. He wished he could have arranged for her to spend the summer in the country; but it was impossible; the two rents-that of the apartment and the studio-swallowed up so large a portion of their income, there was only just enough left for bare necessities.

She was leaning back in her chair now with her eyes closed; he hoped she was sleeping. How pretty she looked when sleeping! He was glad he had married her, and not the Newport heiress; yes, glad from the very bottom of his heart, for after all they had been and they were happy. She was such a splendid manager, that with all their poverty they owed no one a cent., and what merry little dinners they had, what smart little dinners! Renée laid the table herself, and it was always fresh and dainty; she never had much of an appetite, and would plead that she had eaten at the children's tea.

By-and-by the entrance of some friends disturbed her: they rarely spent an evening by themselves, for others besides Dennett Shaw had found his wife was charming; she had an indescribable way with her, which won the hearts of all who came near her. Casually, in the course of conversation, Dennett mentioned the old secretary.

"It was in the Rue Torrine," he said, " at that old junt shop at the corner. I'd half a mind to buy it: it would be just the thing for the studio; but I suppose it would be a piece of extravagance, though it is only forty francs,-that is a large sum in these hard times."

"Ah!" laughed one of his friends; "you hesitate and you are lost. This time next week you will be the proud possessor of a genuine empire--or consulate, which ever it is-escritoire."

In the night Dennett had a dream, a curious, intermittent dream that came and went in disconnected fragments. In it he was always in the presence of a great danger: now he was swimming, holding Renée against a strong current, striving with all his might to reach the opposite bank, and being perpetually swept from it; now he was running-running so fast-from a shapeless horror that was pursuing him in the dark; now he was

still, paralysed in all his limbs, unable to move, and conscious of a dread something drawing nearer and nearer to crush him with its dead weight, and through it all was the haunting presence of the old secretary, sometimes as he had seen it at the street corner, sometimes grotesquely twisted or enlarged to colossal size, but always before him as an object to be desired.

"Damn the thing!" were his waking words; "it has tormented me all night. If I were rich, I would buy it just to chop it up for firewood." The fever of work was strong on him that day: he was rubbing in a big picture, the one intended for the next salon, and he never noticed how the hours fled; he was in that happy state of exaltation known only to the artist, oblivious to everything, careless of everything, but the inspiration of the moment. Thoughts of all kinds on all subjects, poured through his brain; but he was hardly conscious of what he was thinking of until, acting in obedience to an impulse too strong to be resisted, he threw aside his palette to measure-some object in his composition?-a small recess in the wall, to see if it were big enough to hold the secretary!

For eight days after leaving the studio he took the longer road home; he would not go down the Rue Torrine. His wife teased him a little at first, saying it was a case of hypnotism; but he was touchy on the subject.

On the ninth day he yielded to his desire, and, pleading in selfexcuse that he only wished to see if it were still there, he started for the Rue Torrine. He walked slowly, keeping his mind on other things; but as he turned the corner of the street his heart began to beat; it was absurd, ridiculous, yet he quickened his steps, and reached the shop with a brightened colour.

It was not there-yes, it was there, only inside now, half hidden beneath a mattress and some bedding. He was glad it was inside; there was less chance of its being sold. So every morning now and every night he passed the shop to reassure himself that it was there.

Following the excellent custom of many American husbands, he gave his wife charge of his money, reserving only a little for his menus plaisirs. He never had forty francs at a time, or surely he would have bought it; as it was, he felt shy of asking Renée, for he knew how little, at the most, she had to dispose of.