and had gotten as far as the double-span iron bridge over the Tench when the rotund gentleman asked abruptly,

"How far are you from a coal-field?"

The colonel lifted the point of his pen, adjusted his glasses, and punched a hole in the rumpled map within a hair's breadth of a black dot labelled "Cartersville."

"Right there, suh. Within a stone's throw of our locomotives."

Fitz looked into the hole with as much astonishment as if it were the open mouth of the mine itself.

"Hard or soft?" said the stout man.

"Soft, suh, and fairly good coal, I understand, although I have never used it, suh; my ancestors always burned wood."

Fitz heard the statement in undisguised wonder. In all his intercourse with the colonel he had never before known him to depart so much as a razor's edge from the truth.

The fat man communed with himself a moment, and then said suddenly, "I'll take the papers and give you an answer in a week," and hurried away.

"Do you really mean, Colonel," said Fitz, determined to pin him down," that there is a single pound of coal in Cartersville?" "Do I mean it, Fitz? Don't it crop out in half a dozen spots right on our own place? One haalf of my estate, suh, is a coalfield."

"You never told me a word about it." "I don't know that I did, Fitz. any use to me. Besides, suh, we never burn coal at Caarter Hall."

But it has never been of have plenty of wood. We

Fitz did not take that view of it. He went into an exhaustive cross-examination of the colonel on the coal question: who had tested it, the character of the soil, width of the vein, and dip of the land. This information he carefully recorded in a small book which he took from his inside pocket.

Loosened from Fitz's pinioning grasp, the colonel, entirely oblivious to his friend's sudden interest in the coal-field, and slightly impatient at the delay, bounded like a balloon with its anchors cut.

"An answer from the syndicate within a week! My dear Fitz, I see yo' drift. You have kept the Garden Spots for the foreign investors. That man is impressed, suh; I saw it in his eye."

The room began filling up with the various customers and loungers common to such offices: the debonair gentleman in

VOL. XVIII.-31

check trousers and silk hat, with a rose in his buttonhole, who dusts his trousers broadside with his cane short of one hundred shares with thirty per cent margin; the shabby old man with a solemn face who watches the ticker a moment and then wanders aimlessly out, looking more like an underpaid clerk in a law office than the president of a crosstown railroad-long of one thousand shares with no margin at all; the nervous man who stops the messenger boys and devours the sales' lists before they can be skewered on the files - not a dollar's interest either way; and, last of all, the brokers with little pads and nimble pencils.

The news that the great English syndicate was looking into the C. & W. A. L. R. R. was soon around the office, and each habitué had a bright word for the colonel, congratulating him on the favorable turn his affairs had taken.

All but old Klutchem, a broker in unlisted securities, who had been trying for weeks to get a Denver land scheme before the same syndicate, and had failed.

"Garden Spot bonds! Bosh! Road begins nowhere and ends nowhere. If any set of fools built it, the only freight it would get, outside of peanuts and sweet potatoes, would be razor-back hogs and niggers. I would n't give a yellow dog for enough of those securities to paper a church."

The colonel was on his feet in an instant.

"Mr. Klutchem, I cannot permit you, suh, to use such language in my presence unrebuked; you"

"Now, see here, old Garden Spot, you know"

The familiarity angered the colonel even more than the outburst.

"Caarter, suh,- George Fairfax Caarter," said the colonel with dignity.

"Well, Caarter, then," mimicking him, perhaps unconsciously. "You know".

The intonation was the last straw. The colonel lost all control of himself. No man had ever thus dared before.

"Stop, Mr. Klutchem! What I know, suh, I decline to discuss with you. Yo' statements are false, and yo' manner of expressin' them quite in keepin' with the evident vulgaʼity of yo' mind. If I can ascertain that you have ever had any claim to be considered a gentleman you will hear from me ag'in. If not, I shall rate you as rankin' with yo' yallar dog; and if you ever speak to me ag'in I will strike you, suh, with my cane."

And the colonel, his eyes flashing, strode into the private office with the air of a field marshal, and shut the door.

Klutchem looked around the room and into the startled faces of the clerks and bystanders, burst into a loud laugh, and left the office. On reaching the street he met Fitz coming in.

"Better look after old Garden Spot, Fitzpatrick. I poked holes in his road, and he wanted to swallow me alive."

GOLDWIN SMITH.

SMITH, GOLDWIN, an English essayist and historical writer; born at Reading, August 13, 1823. He was educated at Eton and Oxford; took his degree of B.A. at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1845; became Fellow and tutor; and was called to the bar in 1850. In 1856 he was made Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. In 1868 he came to the United States, having been elected Professor of Constitutional History in Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. In 1871 he became connected with the University of Toronto, where he has since lived. He has delivered numerous lectures upon social and political topics. Among his works are "The Study of History," delivered at Oxford (1861); "Irish History and Irish Character" (1861); "Three English Statesmen" (Pym, Cromwell, and Pitt); a "Course of Lectures on the Political History of England" (1867); "A Short History of England, down to the Reformation" (1869); "William Cowper" (1880); "Life of Jane Austen" (1890); “Canada and the Canadian Question" (1891); "The United States, 1492-1871" (1893); "Bay Leaves" (1893); "Essays on Questions of the Day" (1893); “Oxford and her Colleges" (1894); "Guesses at the Riddle of Existence" (1897).

JOHN PYM.

(From "Three English Statesmen.")

PYм was a Somersetshire gentleman of good family; and it was from good families — such families at least as do not produce Jacobins that most of the leaders of this revolution sprang. I note it, not to claim for principle the patronage of birth and wealth, but to show how strong that principle must have been which could thus move birth and wealth away from their natural bias. It is still true, not in the ascetic but in the moral sense, that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven; and when we see rich men entering into the kingdom of heaven, hazarding the enjoyment of wealth for the sake of principle, we may know that it is no common age.