plain everything. There was a craze among some of the students about spirit-rappings and that sort of thing, and we went through with a good deal of nonsense and wasted a good deal of time in trying to ravel out mysteries and to explain things that no mortal man has ever yet understood. One night very late we were talking and grew much excited, and we promised each other solemnly that the one who died first would appear to the other, if such a thing were possible, and would at least warn him in a way that should be unmistakable of his death. We were half in fun and half in earnest. God forgive us! but we made that awful promise to each other. Then we went into the army and I don't remember thinking of it once until the very night before he was killed; we were sitting together under a tree, after a hard day's fight, and Dunster said to me laughing, 'Do you remember we promised each other that whoever died first would appear to the other and follow him?' I laughed; you know how reckless we were in those days when death and dying were so horribly familiar, and I said the same shell might kill us both, which would be a great pity. We were very merry and foolish, and I should have said Henry had been drinking, but there had been nothing to drink and hardly anything to eat-you remember we were cut off from our supplies and the men had very little in their haversacks. Next day the fight was hotter than ever and we were being driven back when I saw him toss up his hands and fall. He must have been trodden to death, at any rate. When we regained that little field beyond the woods some days afterward they had dragged off the wounded and buried the dead in shallow trenches. I knew Dunster was dead and I stood on picket near a trench which was just about where he fell, and I remember I cried like a girl. I loved Dunster; you know he was the only near relative I had in the world whom I cared anything for, and ours was n't a bonfire friendship. He had his faults; I know he wasn't liked in the class. He was a brilliant fellow, but I used to be afraid he might go to the bad. Do you remember that night, Ainslie? The men were so tired that they had dropped down anywhere in the mud to sleep, and there was some kind of a bird in the woods that gave a lonely, awful cry once in a while.” "I remember it," said my brother, moving uneasily in his chair, and this time I had to look behind me; there was no help for it. "I went to the hospital soon after that," Mr. Whiston said next. "I was not badly wounded at all, but the exposure in that rainy weather played the mischief with me and I was discharged, and before you were mustered out I went to South America, where a friend of mine wished me to go into business with him. I did capitally well, and I grew very strong; the climate suited me and I used to go on those long horseback rides into the interior among the plantations that I told you about last night. My partner disliked that branch of the business far more than I did, so he left it almost wholly to me. I did not think often about Henry, though I mourned so much over his death at first, and I never was less nervous in my life. "One evening I had just returned to Rio after an absence of several weeks, and I went to dine with some friends of mine. It was a terribly hot night and after dinner we went out in the harbor for a sail, as the moon would be up later. There was not much wind, however, and the two boatmen took the oars and we struck out farther hoping to catch a breeze beyond the shipping. It was very dark and suddenly there came by a large, beavy boat which nearly ran into us. Our men shouted angrily and the other sailors swore, but there was no accident after all. They seemed to be drunk and we were all in the shadow of a brig that was lying at anchor, but Ainslie! as that boat slid by-I was half lying in the stern of ours and so close that I could have touched it-I saw Henry Dunster's face as plainly as I see yours now. It turned me cold for a minute and gave me an awful shock. I told the men to give chase, and they, thinking I was angry at the carelessness, bent to their oars with a will and overhauled them. There were two men on board, And one a negro and the other an old gray haired if I can possibly help it. Could you be persailor not in the least like Henry. fectly sure that you did not see Dunster himself at first? You know he was counted among the missing only; there is no positive proof that he died, though I admit there was only a chance he was not killed outright. We never saw him buried," said Jack with unsympathetic persistence. "I'm sorry for you, but you must n't give way to this thing; you have thought about it until you can't forget it at all. Such cases are not uncommon, it's simply a hallucination. I'll give you proofs enough to-morrow. Have another cup of coffee, won't you?" spoke eagerly with the kindest tone and his guest could not help responding by a faint, dreary little smile. "Do you like music as much as ever? Suppose we go over into the parlor, and my sister will play for us, won't you Helen?" which was asking a great deal of me just then. I said I had been half asleep and dreamed it was his face; but there was no mistaking him—it was the most vivid thing-it was the man himself I saw for that one horrible minute. And late the next night I was sit ting in my own sleeping room. I had reasoned myself out of the thing as well as I could and said I was tired and not as well as usual and all that, and I had thought of it as calmly as possible. I sat with my back toward the window, but I was facing a mirror and suddenly I had a strange feeling and looked up to see in the mirror Dunster's face at the window looking in. It was staring straight at me and I met the eyes, and that was the last I knew I lost my senses. Only a monkey could have climbed there. There was a frail vine that clung to the stone, and in the morning there was no trace of any creature. "And since then he follows me. I saw that haggard, wretched face of his last night when I sat here at the table, and I see him looking at me if I look among a crowd of people, and if I look back along a street he is always coming towards me, but when he gets near he vanishes, and sometimes at the theater he will be among the actors all the evening. Nobody sees him but me, but every month I see him oftener, and his face grows out of the darkness at night and sometimes when I talk with any one that face will fade out and Dunster's comes in its place. It is killing me, Ainslie. I have fought against it; I have wandered half over the world trying to get rid of it, but it is no use. For a few days in a strange place, sometimes for weeks, I did not see him at first, but I know he is always watching me now and I see him every day." I can give you no idea how thrilling it was to listen to this unhappy man, who seemed so pitifully cowed and broken, so helpless and hopeless. Whether there had been anything supernatural or whether it was merely the workings of a diseased brain, it was horribly real to him and his life had been spoiled. "Whiston, my dear fellow," said my brother, "I'm not going to believe in ghosts Jack And we apparently forgot all about Mr. Dunster for the rest of the evening, and when Jack asked Mr. Whiston if he remembered a song he used to sing in college, to my delight he went at once to the piano and sang it with a very pleasant tenor voice; and when he ended and my brother applauded, he struck some new chords and began to sing a little Florentine street song which was always a great favorite of mine, "Vaglio fore mea cassa fonda.” It is a sweet, piteous little song and it bewitched me then as much as it did the very first time I had heard some boys sing it, as they went under our windows at night when I was first in Florence years ago. He said no more about the ghost, but later that night when I happened to wake I wondered if the poor man was keeping his anxious watch, and listening in a strange house to hear the hours struck one by one. He went away soon after breakfast, and though he promised to come in again to say good-bye that was the last we saw of him, and we did not see his name on the steamer list either; so we were much puzzled, and we talked about him a great deal and told George Sheffield the story, which he wished he had heard himself. "Of course it is a hallucination," said Jack; "they are by no means uncommon. I can read you accounts of any number of such cases. There is a good deal about them in Griesinger's book, the chapter called Elementary Disorders in Mental Diseases,' Helen; if you care to look at it or any of those books on insanity. Didn't you have Dr. Elam's Physician's Problems' a while ago? He has an essay there which is very good." "I was reading his essay on 'Moral and Criminal Epidemics,"" said I, "that was all. It's a cheerful thing too!" "Isn't there such a thing as these visions coming before slight attacks of epilepsy?" said George, and my brother said yes, but Mr. Whiston had nothing of that kind, he had taken pains to find out. There was no hope of a cure, he feared; he was not wise in such cases, but the trouble had gone too far, these were bad symptoms, and he confesses he has hurt himself with opium during the last year or two. "He will not live long at any rate," said Jack, "and I think the sooner the end comes the better. He has a predisposition to mental disease, and he was always a frail, curious make-up. But I don't know; 'there are more things in heaven and earth,' George Sheffield, and I wish you had heard him tell his story." And we talked over some strange, unaccountable things, and each told stories which could neither be doubted nor explained. I had been readier to believe in such things since I was warned myself before the great est sorrow I had ever known. I was by the sea and one of my friends and I were walking slowly toward home one dark and windy evening when suddenly we both heard a terrible low cry of fear and horror close beside us. It was hardly a cry, it was no noise that either of us had ever heard before, and we stopped for an instant, because we were too frightened to move. And the noise came again. We were in an open place, and there was nothing to be seen, but we both felt there was something there, and that the cry had some awful meaning. And it was not many days before I had reason to remember that cry, for the trouble came. I do not know what it might have been that I heard, but I knew it had the saddest meaning. Two or three weeks after we saw Mr. Whiston my brother came in one afternoon, and I saw he could hardly wait for some friends to go away who were paying me a call. "I have found poor Whiston," said he when I joined him in the library at last; "he is at the Carney hospital. It seems he was ill for a few days at his hotel and the servant who was very kind to him advised him to go there. He insists that he is very comfortable and that he has money enough. I wished to bring him over here at first, but I saw it was no use, and I asked him why he did n't let me know; but he is completely wrecked. I doubt if he lives more than a day or two-he was wandering half the time I was there. He said he should be very glad if you would come to see him, and I told him I was sure you would." I went to see him with my brother the next day, and I saw that Jack was shocked at the change that had come already. There was that peculiar, worried, anxious look in his face that one only sees in people who are very near death, and his fingers were picking at the blanket. I do not believe he knew me, but he smiled-he had a most beautiful smile and I gave him some grapes and wished I could make him a little more comfortable. The sister came just afterward on her round and gave him his medicine and raised him with a strong arm while she turned his pillow in a business-like way, and I thought what a lonely place it was to be ill and die in, and I was more glad than ever that Jack and I had a home and were always to be together. I left Jack to stay the night, and as I came away I had more and more compassion for the man who was dying; yet I was glad to think so sad a life was almost over with. His days had been all winter days in this world, it seemed to me, and I hoped some wonderful, blessed spring was waiting for him in the next. When I went over in the morning it was cheerless enough. The rain was falling fast and the snow melting in the streets. My brother was watching for me and came out at once. "Poor Whiston is dead," said he as he shut the carriage door. "He wished me to thank you for your kindness to him," and I saw the tears in Jack's eyes. "There's rear. He had nearly died from the effects of another star for the catalogue-how small his wounds, and it was evident that he had the class is growing! Poor fellow, I did n't been very intemperate. He had drifted to know he had gone, I thought he was asleep. New Orleans and led a most wretched life We were talking together only a few minutes there, and at times he had gone to sea. My before; he was not at all bewildered, as you brother asked him if he was ever in Rio, and saw him yesterday." at first he denied it and afterward confessed that he was there once and had seen Whiston in a boat and had dropped over the side in the dark to evade him. And when Jack questioned him about being at the window he denied it utterly; he said his ship sailed the next day. It might have been that he meant to commit a robbery, or that he really told the truth and that it was the first of poor Whiston's illusions. Of course it was possible that Dunster might have swung himself down from the flat roof by a rope, and they might have really met at other times-it was not unlikely; but one can hardly conceive of Mr. Whiston's perfect certainty in such a case that the glimpse he had of his cousin's face was a supernatural vision. I heard this case talked over more than once by my brother and one or two professional friends of his who came often to the house. Nobody was ready to believe that Mr Whiston had seen an apparition, but the truth always remained that the man's nerves were so shocked by what he believed to be the appearance of a ghost that he had become the prey of a monomania, and had by little and little grown incapable of distinguishing between real things and the creations and projections of his own unsteady brain-Il s'écoutant vivre, as the French phrase has it; and having nothing to live for but this it was well that life was over for him. I suppose the acute disease of which he died met with little resistance, for he looked so ill when we first saw him, but it would have been sadder if he had lingered a few more years so miserable as he was hardly fit either for the inside of an asylum or the outside-to die at last without money or friends to give him the last of this world's comforts, perhaps without mind enough left to miss them. Strangely enough some months after this, when it was spring, my brother found Dunster at the Marine hospital in Chelsea, where he had gone with another surgeon to see a curious operation in which he felt a great interest. He was walking through the accident ward when somebody called him from one of the cots--a wretched looking vagabond whom at first he did not recognize. But it was Dunster, and he tried to put on something of his old manner, which made him seem like a wretched copy of his former self. Jack made him give an account of himself. It seemed that he had been thrown among the dead in that battle when he was supposed to have been killed, but he had recovered his senses and crawled from the place where he had fallen farther into the enemy's lines, and he had been sent to the My brother said: "I did not tell him what wreck and ruin he had made unconsciously of Whiston's life, at least the part he had played in it; it would do no good, and indeed he is hardly sane, I think. It would be curious if they had both inherited from their common ancestry the mental weakness which shows itself so differently in the two lives. Whiston's so cowardly and shrinking and weak, and Dunster's so horribly low and brutal. There is not much the matter with him-he had a fall on board ship. The nurse told me he was very troublesome, and had fairly insulted the chaplain who had said a kind word to him. It is a pity that shot had not killed him—and I suppose most of the class who ever think of him will say he was a hero and died on the field of honor." And my brother and I talked gravely about the two men. God help us! what sin and crime may be charged to any of us who take the wrong way in life! The possibilities of wickedness and goodness in us are both unlimited. I said how many lives must be like these which seemed such wretched failures and imperfections. One cannot help having a great pity for such men, in whom common courage and the power of resistance and the ordinary amount of will seem to have been wanting. Warped and incapable, or brutal and shameful, one cannot pity them enough. It is like the 'gnarled and worthless fruit that grows among the fair and well-rounded-the use less growth that is despised and thrown away scornfully. But God must always know what blighted and hindered any life or growth of His, and let us believe that He sometimes saves and pities what we have scorned and blamed. Sarah O. Jewett. HEBREW WOMEN. The position of woman has always been of importance as effecting the character and education of man, but especially at the present time does the subject of the rights and duties of women occupy the minds of unprejudiced thinkers. As moral force has taken the place of physical strength in the government of the world, women have gradually been more and more freed from the narrow circle of life assigned to them, until at length fully realizing their own undeveloped powers, they have stepped forth into a new but no less womanly sphere. America, in opening to women every avenue of progress, has set an example which other countries have not been slow to follow. The history of the past has shown noble and virtuous, brave and independent women, and such, it will be proved, were not wanting among the Hebrews; but as the Jewish nation has long been stripped of its national prerogatives, it was not possible, nor would it have been fit, that rights for the Jewish women should have been persistently asked of other denominations. Thus the nature and capabilities of Hebrew women are known to few, and as a clear understanding of the characteristics of all classes and sects is essential to the fulfilment of religious and social duties, a brief description of Jewish women as viewed in the truthful light of science, may not be without its outcome of usefulness. Hebrew women have no reason to be dissatisfied with their past or present position. A Jewess to-day looks back upon her female ancestors with reverence and love. When the Hebrew mother gives the Sabbath bless ing to her daughter in these words, "May God make thee as Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel," it is not because these were perfect characters, but because they possessed the virtues which every woman should cultivate purity, strong affections and piety. The Episcopal marriage service exhorts those about to wed "to live together as did Isaac and Rebekah;" if Christianity thus honors the Hebrew woman of old, how tenderly is the latter thought of by her direct descendants! The Jewish Law of Sinai in considering woman the equal of man at once established her standing for all time. Grace Aguilar, an accomplished Hebrew scholar, says: "Were not woman an equally responsible agent in the sight of God, were He not in His infinite mercy tenderly careful of her innocence, her honor, her well-doing, her protection by man, no laws for her in particular need have been issued, nor such especial care taken to cleanse her from impurity and guilt, to free her from false charges, and an unjust husband, to permit and sanctify her singular vow, and give her every incentive for a chaste, virtuous and modest life." In the ages of fierce persecution, when toleration for Israelites was a thing unknown, the supreme justice of the Law and the promises therein contained were the stay of the Jewess and her household. The pure domestic life of the Jews has at all times preserved them fresh and vigorous," writes an eminent Hebrew, and the statement cannot be gainsayed. The soldier who placed himself at the side 1 Women of Israel. Vol. I., p. 206. * Dr. Abraham Geiger. Judaism and its History. Vol. I., p. 68. |