splendor and the ravages of heathen warfare. He made one trip with Maxime du Camp through Southern Europe, Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, Cyprus, Rhodes. He burned with a fervor for the knowledge of old peoples. "Attacked by gendarmes, arrested by suspicious inhabitants, and hauled before justices, Flaubert continued his researches." He excavated at Mycenae before Dr. Schliemann. During the four years in direct preparation for "Salammbo" he left his library for the second time and made a special trip to Tunis and the ruins of Carthage,-the result was the resurrection of a dead civilization, of times about which we know nothing. He was attacked by the noted archeologist Frohner, "to find in no matter what author, Greek or Latin, a single example of the costumes or facts represented by him." In answer he overwhelmed his opponent with quotations and finally made the savant admit that either Herodotus, Strabon and Pliny were not Latins or Greeks, or that he had never read them. Despite this vast show of erudition, the book is fascinating. In absolute contradiction to "Madame Bovary" its pages are filled with exciting incidents and blood-thirsty descriptions. At times he is disgusting even to nausea. Hanno the leper with his loathsome disease is burned indelibly on the reader's mind, yet you can't skip a word of it. Its style is so good that M. Saintsbury tells us that on reading the eighth time, he enjoyed it more than the first, being no longer distracted by what he calls (Flaubert also) the "impression nerveuse"; a result of the author's unhealthy and morbid mental condition. But like most books it has its weak points. Flaubert, the most caustic critic of all, recognized it and writes, "The study of costume, of the external, makes me forget the soul. I would give half the quire notes I have written in the last five months and the ninety-eight (!) volumes I have read to be for three seconds really moved by the passions of my heroes." That is it;—as has been well said, Hanno, Hamilcar, Salammbo are Carthaginians, but not human. In handling a story so directly opposite to "Madame Bovary"

he lost his power of character-drawing. The book was not so well received as its predecessor, partly because it was not improper, which as several French critics admitted, hugely disappointed the multitude; partly because of the repulsive details that cover page after page (descriptions of crucified lions, cannibalism, tortures, hideous diseases), and partly on account of the lack of human interest in his men and women.

It may be seen from this slight account of one of each type of his books that Flaubert is not a writer for the multitude. As Shelley is a poet's poet, so he is a novelist for novelists. You must to a great extent get your pleasure out of appreciation for fine work, not out of the story. His melancholy, his pessimism, his gloomy imagination combine in leaving a first impression that prejudices the average, but not so those that glory as he did in "art for art's sake." On men of letters his influence has been tremendous. Tourgenieff was his friend and pupil. Guy de Maupassant, one of the best short story writers the world has ever produced, worked under his hand, writing, criticising, destroying, until fully developed he commenced to publish his incomparable tales. The De Goncourt brothers, Zola, one of the most popular writers of to-day, Daudet, and many lesser frey owe the inspiration of their manner to him. Among writers of English, Howells, Hardy, and Henry James, considered by some our foremost novelists, are his followers. The latter marks the day when he first read an extract from "Madame Bovary" as the great literary event of his life. So it seems as if this man, the battle ground of two opposing passions, writing eighteen hours a day to forget his overwhelming melancholy, misunderstood, pessimistic, passionate, discontented with himself and his work, yet pinning his faith to an unattainable ideal, had accomplished somewhat of good in his world, the world of letters.

Herbert L. Bodman.

PURGATORY.

PER

ERHAPS you have never heard of old Doctor Huberson, of San Francisco. He exists, nevertheless, in the shape of a little, dry, old man, with snow-white hair and kindly gray eyes, that twinkle and draw up at the corners when he delivers one of his droll witticisms that make you laugh even when you are ill enough to wish yourself long since dead and buried. He no longer has any practice, and because he and my father, who died when I was a lad, were chums in boyhood, I have grown up in his office, and into his place. Now they are only his old favorite patients, growing fewer and fewer as the years roll on, who call upon him in our unimposing bachelor domain to get a little tonic, or more often to sit around the fire, consuming his good tobacco, and telling each other the same old-time stories over which they chuckle and slap their thighs two or three times a year.

There are few bits of family history that get beyond the doctor, yet, now and then, when we are sitting there in the study all alone, he will bring out some letter, or old paper, and tell me a strange tale about people whom we rub up against every day, and who seem most commonplace.

It is a constant source of wonder to me that so many folk of all kinds and conditions confide their joys and troubles-principally troubles, I regret to say-to the old doctor. He is one of those personalities we read about so often and find so seldom, who possesses that spark of the divine sympathy which draws people instinctively to him.

One Spring evening we were smoking comfortably before the last log fire of the year, when the old gentleman pulled a thick envelope out of his pocket, and spread its contents on his knee. There was a letter of some length and two memoranda or diaries.

"Boy," he began he never dropped the pet name of our first years together "I had a rather sad letter to-day from up in the north woods."

I smoked on in sympathetic silence. These evenings of ours are usually more or less monologues by the doctor, and my part is that of a discreet and attentive listener.

"You may remember Robert Dale," he went on, "who left for Colorado seven years ago. It was quite hopeless-his lungs. He was a noble fellow too." The doctor's pipe lay neglected on the table, and he was staring reflectively into the fire. I could see by his eyes that he was more than ordinarily affected, and also I could guess pretty nearly as to the cause. I remembered Robert Dale well, as one of the most promising young fellows in the city, just finishing a successful career in college when the trouble with his lungs came, and he left for a rarer climate. I knew he had been a great friend and admirer of the doctor, but what had become of him since his departure I had no idea.

"It seems," he continued, "that he had wandered from place to place ever since he found he was doomed and could never return to the coast. I have his diary here and his last letter. He says he was trying to forget the old life and friends. Pretty hard on a young fellow, wasn't it? There was another thing I happen to know, that made it harder yet. He was desperately in love with a little girl I saw you with just the other day-Marion Morgan."

I thought of her as the most attractive, and withal the most unapproachable of the young ladies I knew.

"She was just as desperately in love with him. They both used to tell me about it." His eyes twinkled a moment. "And right there was where he showed how noble a boy he was. As soon as they told him he could never be well again, he gradually took himself out of her life, and he loved her all the time—there's proof of it here"-he struck the little book. "That's why we never heard from him. He wanted no death's head glowering over her!" The old man's eyes snapped. "He brought up finally somewhere in the lumber camps on the Columbia river-you know Marion Morgan's father has some property up there. Well, Dale's life ended in those camps a few days ago, and from there he wrote

his last letter to me, and to-morrow I must tell his family. To let you see how the poor lad passed his last year, I'll read you some bits from this diary he kept."

With delicate, almost caressing hands, he turned the leaves of the little book. "May 10th," he began.

"'Six years ago to-day I saw Dr. Huberson; a year from to-day is the time he told me I could expect to be delivered from this torture. The year past has gone slowly enough. I trust this one will not delay so. It is no use. I am tired. Even this lumbering, with its freedom, and life in the woods, wearies me beyond endurance. I am beyond the stage of railing and cursing at my destiny, but I would like to end it all to-night.' "May 11th. "To-day I may truthfully say has been more a Hell on earth to me than any other day of my existence. I had worked myself into quite a philosophical mood as to my lot in life; I was not so bitter that my reading or writing, such as it is, was utterly without consolation to me; in fact, because it was also a beautiful day, I was almost happy-when one sudden heartbreaking shock has destroyed the work of years. Why, in heaven's name, did I not discover that this camp belongs to Mr. Morgan-her father? At noon to-day the blow fell. In the mess-room, when we were all awaiting the arrival of the owner and some friends on a visit, who should enter but Mrs. Morgan, and behind her-Marion! The last person on earth that I could have wished to have seen. She did not recognize me. My beard, and the scar I got when the axe head slipped, saw to that very completely, and it is fortunate for me that it is so. I have fought it all out, and I know there is only one course for me to pursue. I would be cowardly to bring out this skeleton and dangle it before her for the sake of a few short days with her-besides, it would make it only harder for me to have a taste of the old, dear life, and then give it up again. It will be much better for all of us if I go quietly ahead, and let no one know. That is all I can do. Oh, God, wasn't my lot hard enough before without awakening again all these hopeless longings that I had almost conquered ?'”

I remembered the Morgans had made a visit the year before, with some friends of theirs, to the lumber regions of the Columbia. But they had said nothing of Dale.

"May 13th," went on the doctor.

'Until to-day things went fairly well, but this afternoon the crisis came. The foreman called me up suddenly to where they were all standing, and detailed me as a guide to show them about camp, while he and Mr. Morgan inspected the work. I kept the scar turned toward Marion, and she failed to recognize me. I imagine six years of this can make a great change even in a strong man. As luck would have it, when Mr. Morgan rejoined us, the rest of the party went on down to the river to see the rafts, while I was sent back to the camp alone