reef at the left, the breakwaters in the middle, and Pond's Point, white with summer cottages melting away to a blue haze on the extreme right. A tug was laboring by South End, and a small, low schooner lay inside the breakwater. The two came up to where he stood.

"Hullo!" said the stranger. Nifty raised his eyes to theirs. Then he swung himself around on the post with a low whistle and puffed a long puff on his pipe. The man leaned over the piles and then came around to Nifty again.

"My boat's gone!" he said. "I'm captain of a schooner in the harbor. Will you take us out to her?"

Nifty started, thought a moment, then nodded his head. He slipped from the post and hauled the "Slugger" a little nearer shore. As he drew the rope taut there was a sudden noise of scuffling, the door of the barrel shed swung open, and a man reeled out, his hands on his eyes. When he saw the young girl he staggered forward, catching her by the arm with an oath. She stepped back with a little cry. In an instant Nifty was at her side, his cap thrown off, his sleeves up, and had laid the loafer in a groaning heap at the other side of the dock.

When Nifty turned around the girl looked up at him and said, “Thank you." Nifty turned inquiringly. "Gob!" said he to himself, ramming his fists down into his pockets. He shuffled an unfortunate beetle into a crack of the wharf and blushed again.

There was a quick shout in the distance. Nifty looked up, his eyes gleaming with the cunning of a criminal. "Ther copper's comin'. He's after me for this-Damn him!" he yelled. "I'm gone for if I'm caught, jump in there! Quick now!" He swung the "Slugger" to the pier-side, and in a moment with his passengers was far out on the water, with the wind catching full in the sheets. When he looked back after five minutes he saw the wharf policeman standing over the prostrate form on the dockend, shaking his club at the departing sailboat, with men running towards him from the distance.

Nifty let the mainsail out and swept away before the breeze. He looked now and then with admiration at his

companions. The young girl sat with her red shawl fluttering in the breeze, her face toward Nifty, and her brown hair loose about her neck. Nifty glanced shyly at her out of the corners of his eye, and when he caught her gaze grew red and floundered with the tiller. He never had felt this way before. He knew very little about women anyway. Once indeed he had flirted with a cook on the New York steamer, and had even been known to take Miss Mary Maguire for a sail in the "Slugger." But Miss Maguire was champion "lady swimmer" of the docks, and for any other womanly attainment Nifty had profound contempt.

But this young stranger was like no one he had ever known before. She was still and gentle in her ways; her little hand lay on the side of the boat not far from Nifty, where he could see its beauty. She had a soft little laugh that rippled into Nifty's heart hardly had he heard it. He found himself blundering with the jib sail in a most unprecedented manner.

The few questions about himself she asked made his pride ebb out like the tide, and he felt a sudden sickening within him. He was flushed and angry with himself, but for all he could not help it. When he had gone on his second tack he was wavering. When she looked at him his heart began to pound like the derrick engine on Belle Dock, and when he caught her eye he foundered utterly.

The sound was very quiet round them; a sharpie drove before the wind off Savin Rock; the tug boat was puffing down the channel. Nifty came about for the last tack, his heart throbbing up into his throat. The girl changed her seat. The boom swung over them. His hand touched the soft one near him as they bent. They both looked up with a glance between them like the flash of flint on steel. He closed his eyes and seemed to blindly stretch his hands towards some fair visions that leaned down to touch him. All the nobleness of a man surged up within him. In her deep eyes there was a glimpse of love that he had never known before. He raised against the tiller and met her gaze with the appealing of his awakened manhood. Then

he looked out on the sound to the East shore, where the rowboat lay upon the sand, and his heart misgave him, for the memories it brought back. He felt as if his heart would burst with the wild tumult of his feelings.

The "Slugger" grated on the schooner's side, while the girl stood above him. He waited a little, his face uplifted to drink in all the sweetness of her own. He stood a moment thus. His cap was off; his heart welled up again; he almost raised his arms in supplication. Her smile lay on him like a revelation. He raised his eyes to hers in one long passion of sweet yearning. Then both eyes dropped, and when next she glanced up, he was looking toward the shore.

The evening was calm, the moon was just rising over the old Light House, lighting up the harbor, with its schooners anchored for the night, and touched with red and silver the masts and dark sails of one that was just about to weigh anchor. Nifty watched her with interest for a time, his legs dangling over into the stern of the Slugger." In a little while she slowly turned in her place and set sail for the open sound. He saw the little light flicker at the tiller.

46

Then he swung over into the hatchway of his boat, his feet kicking a large box beneath him.

"She's a good 'un," he said. "I don' go wid de gang this ev'nin'. Guess I'll 'stribute some of this tobaccy 'mong ther loafs to-night. Ther ain't many of 'em's had ez good luck ez me to-day."

Edwin Sidney Oviatt.

W

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

HEN James Russell Lowell accepted the editorship of the "Atlantic Monthly," he insisted that Dr. Holmes should be the principal contributor to its columns. In the very first number appeared "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," a conversational monologue, enlivened by delicate wit and the gayest sort of humor. The Autocrat" papers created a lively sensation. The critics, who must needs earn a living by their criticisms, good or bad, did not know what to make of them. Some thought them undignified. Others professed to be confirmed in their opinion that the author was only an inordinate egotist. The solemn purist lamented the propensity to slang, and while he admitted the brilliancy of the poems that were interspersed, he thought they showed as "ill as diamonds among the spangles of the court fool."

The early literary work of Dr. Holmes was distinctively poetry and it is rather in his poetry than in his prose that his limitations stand revealed. In his best poems there is much delicacy of feeling and literary ease, but his song seldom rises as high as that of poets born. The finest creation of his genius, "The Chambered Nautilus," is an exquisite poem, yet this lofty strain was unusual with him, and he very honestly admitted the infrequency of such outbursts, saying that "when he wrote it, he did better than he could." His poetry is like his humor, the overflow of a nervous, original, decidedly intellectual nature. But for all this, Dr. Holmes is a versifier rather than a poet in the true sense of the word. This appears in his personal consciousness of the mechanical side of rhymemaking-furnishing the topic of some of his most entertaining prose-and in his sympathetic fondness for the graceful but artificial manner of Pope. While Dr. Holmes is generally devoid of the higher poetic faculty, it must be recognized that many of his pieces gain a distinct value both from their clever execution and from the tender sentiment which is the key-note of his nature.

It is as a writer of humorous poetry that Holmes excels. Of the origin of many of his verses he aptly says—

"I'm a florist in verse, and what would people say,

If I came to a banquet without my bouquet."

The young poet had the aid of a favorable environment; life at Harvard was the very thing needed to develop his genius. There was nothing of the recluse in him; his temper was not reflective, nor moodily introspective,—it throve on fellowship, and he looked to his fellows for an audience as readily as they to him for a toast master. His humorous poems are idiomatic, pitched in a conversational key, full of bright fancies and rippling laughter. A great feature of all his versification is its neatness,-no slovenly rhymes, no slipshod metres. When the critic approaches his post-prandial and convivial poems, he will throw aside his pen, if he is wise, and abandon himself with others to the fun and riant humor of the moment.

The novel written " for a purpose " has in it the elements of a quick literary death. Dr. Holmes' skill in handling a story of this kind is shown by the interest his novels have for us to-day. He very judiciously keeps his abstract philosophy out of sight, treating us to a concrete story which is equally entertaining, whether it embodies a theory or not. This undoubtedly saves "Elsie Venner" and “The Guardian Angel" from the fate of other "medicated " novels which are gathering dust on the book-shelves of our libraries.

In the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" we undoubtedly have Dr. Holmes at his best. It appears that this work was planned in his youth; but we owe to his maturity the experience, drollery, proverbial humor, and suggestion that flow at ease through its pages. A kind of attenuated Franklin, he views things and people with less robustness, but with keener distinction and insight. His pertinent maxims are so frequent that it seems, as was said of Emerson, as if he had jotted them down from time to time, and here first brought them to application. To thinly disguise himself and then dogmatize on all matters temporal and spiritual, was a bold but happy idea. There