Before returning he went up to his partner's house. He asked for Miss Ffrench and was shown into the room where she sat writing letters. She neither looked pleased nor displeased when she saw him, but rose to greet him at once. She gave him a rather long look. "What is the matter?" she Suddenly he felt less bold. asked. The heat of The heat of his excitement failed to sustain him. He was all unstrung. "I've come to tell you not to go out," he said. "There's trouble afoot-in the trade. There's no knowing how it'll turn out. There's a lot of chaps in th' town who are not in th' mood to see aught that'll fret 'em. They're ready for mischief, and have got drink in 'em. Stay you here until we see which way th' thing's going." "Do you mean," she demanded, "that there are signs of a strike ?" "There's more than signs of it," he answered, sullenly. "Before night the whole place will be astir." She moved across the room and pulled the bell. A servant answered the summons instantly. "I want the carriage," she said. Then she turned to Haworth with a smile of actual triumph. "Nothing would keep me at home," she said. "I shall drive through the town and back again. Do you think I will let them fancy that I am afraid of them ?" "You're not afraid ?" he said, almost in a whisper. "I afraid?" she answered, “I?” "Wait here," she added. She left the room, and in less than ten minutes returned. He had never before seen in her the fire he saw then. There was a spark of light in her eyes, a color on her cheek. She had chosen her dress with distinct care for its luxurious richness. His exclamation, as she entered buttoning her long, delicate glove, was a repressed oath. He exulted in her. His fear for her was gone, and only this exultation remained. "You've made up your mind to that?" he said. He wanted to make her say more. "I am going to see your mother," she answered. "That will take me outside of the town, then I shall drive back again— slowly. They shall understand me at least." She let him lead her out to the carriage, which by this time was waiting. After she was seated in it, she bent forward and spoke to him. "Tell my father where I am going and why," she said. (To be continued.) THEOCRITUS. DAPHNIS is mute, and hidden nymphs complain, And mourning mingles with their fountains' song; Shepherds contend no more, as all day long, They watch their sheep on the wide, silent plain; The master-voice is silent, songs are vain; Blithe Pan is dead and tales of ancient wrong Done by the gods when gods and men were strong, Chanted to waxèd pipes, no prize can gain : O sweetest singer of the olden days, In dusty books your idyls rare seem dead, The gods are gone, but poets never die; Though men may turn their ears to newer lays, Sicilian nightingales enrapturèd Caught all your songs, and nightly thrill the sky. cient noble family of Poland, in which the crime of patriotism is hereditary. His wife His wife needed rest after many years of exciting work at a profession in which few excel. Charles Bozenta was glad to get away from the ignoble censorship of Russia; Helena Modjeska, from the worries of the Imperial theater of Warsaw. The proscribed exile, prisoner, and "shadowed" editor longed for rest in the broad bosom of the United States. The vexed and too noisily admired actress needed a holiday to recruit her health; she dreamed of the happiness of a farmer's life far across the sea. So it was that California awoke one morning with two new citizens, so far as applications for that honor could make them citizens,—with two Polish investors in real estate. What could be better than a rancheria in Southern California? Quick then! cattle for a dairy and creamy milk, fowls for new laid eggs, and, above all things, mustangs for wild rides across the bare stretches of the Western slope! Whoever has seen the entrance of a family of Germans upon that farm of Indiana which they at last have bought with their hardearned thalers will appreciate the humor of the situation. For these are settlers who neither sleep in a hut until a house is built, nor add one cow to another until the herd is formed. How can you expect it? They are children off for a grand holiday; not German immigrants. When they get finally settled and going they will write out to their friends in Warsaw, some of the editors and artists, noblemen and merchants, who frequented their house of old,—and these will come to build up a small free Poland in California. Madame Helena wants a pastoral life, but, of course, without drudgery. She longs for Arcadia and all its flocks, with the base particulars of murrain and wolves left out. And so, as a matter of course, the cows give no milk whatever; the fowls indeed will sometimes deign to lay an egg; but Madame's poodle finds it and the bull-dog of Monsieur devours it. Well, what does it matter? They are artists and Poles. Helena Benda, born in Cracow in 1844, married to G. S. Modjeski in 1860, and to Count Charles Bozenta Chlapowski in 1868, deprived the stage of Warsaw of its chief boast, when in 1876 she insisted on an indefinite leave of absence from the Imperial theater. She had been acting since 1861, when she made her first appearance in the small town of Bochnia. She traveled afterward with her brothers, both of them actors, and in 1863 performed at a theater of her own in Czerniowce, the capital of the Austrian Bukowina. The year 1865 found her the leading actress in Cracow, and in 1868 she made a triumphant entrée upon the Warsaw stage. The following year she was engaged for life to the Imperial theaters there, and began to introduce to the Poles the highest class of tragedy. Shakspere, Corneille, Molière, Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, Moreto-these were the authors she put on the stage. Coming of a family of actors, actresses and musicians, she was taught by Jasinski, a dramatic author of repute, who was also scenic manager in Cracow and Warsaw. But not only did she become the first actress of the land; she was personally beloved. On the night of her farewell performance, after having been called innumerable times before the curtain, she found the street from the theater to her house packed with enthusiastic fellow-countrymen. When she drove to the railway station the ways were again crowded. Their cries were "Niech zyge Modrzejewska !” ("Viva Modjeska!") "Pani Helena, wracaj do kraju!” (“Madame Helena, return to thy native land!") Among many cartoons in the illustrated papers there was one in which the popular idol is represented aboard ship. In the air a cloud of little winged hearts fly after her, and the legend underneath explains that all the hearts of her countrymen follow her. The poets and poetasters of Warsaw lament in graceful lines her departure. What wonder that after fifteen years of the feverish triumphs, worries and inevitable vexations of an actor's life, the very opposite extreme-to manage a rancheria of Southern Californiaseemed the best thing in the world? But what wonder, too, that Arcadia should soon begin to cloy? The stage is a candle that the actormoth cannot escape. The actress who has seen an amphitheater kindle with the excitement she herself has called forth and partly shares sooner or later must return to the boards. It is true that on the California farm the mustangs fully come up to expectation, but in the long run even the success of rides on horseback will not atone for the fiasco of milkless kine and eggless poultry. Alas, theatricals on a rancho are worse than private! Now San Francisco was not Warsaw; but it has a stage. Madame Modjeska gravitated naturally toward the nearest city which possessed a house of dramatic entertainment, that place of spells where pleasures and vexations succeed each other in equal force. In February she took it into her head to learn English, beginning with her A, B, C. She ac the same year she was offered a chief rôle in In June of a play in San Francisco,-why not accept it? To attempt English drama while yet so imperfect in the language was somewhat mad, but the whole journey was on a holiday basis, and a little craziness was only one item on the programme. If failure awaited her, who would hear of it? Few outside of Poland were acquainted with her name, because she spoke neither French nor German well enough to figure on the stage of Paris or Berlin. Being a still greater stranger in the United States, not even York would hear of a fiasco. New cepted, played "Adrienne Lecouvreur," made a success. At once came offers for star engagements through the States. Then it was that we first began to hear of a new actress with a strange name who had been heralded through none of the approved channels of theatrical report. to differences of language, but more to the Owing partly ignorance in which Europe is maintained concerning Russianized Poland, this newcomer missed the support which other artists gain from laurels previously won in Italy, France, England or Germany. Warsaw is but a minor city of the gigantic Russian commonwealth. 66 The handsome old town on the west bank of the Weichsel is guarded with unflinching vigilance by the powerful Alexander fort. Warsaw at the present day has a mixed population of Poles, Jews, Germans and Russians. In past centuries races were still more blended. Now it was the Swedes under Charles, now the Saxons and Poles, now the Russians, now the Prussians who stormed or took peaceable possession of Warsaw. While remaining with singular unanimity Polish in sentiment, the populace became much mixed with various strains of race. Cracow, the ancient capital of the early Polish princes, where Madame Modjeska was born, had almost as eventful a history. Bohemians, Mongols, Swedes and Russians captured it in turn. How much the same forces were at work before historical times no one knows. Madame Modjeska, at any rate, has some German and some Hungarian blood in her veins. Her husband is more purely Polish. His great-uncle was that General Chlapowski who was aide-de-camp to Napoleon and commanded a wing of the French army on the march to Moscow. His uncle conducted the Polish rising in 1830, when those royal cannibals, Russia, Prussia and Austria, strangled unhappy Poland and divided her up ments. 667 been incorporated with Austria. Since 1835 among themselves. Since 1846 Cracow has the Russian cannon in the Alexander fort grand-nephew of the Chlapowskis has made have kept Warsaw quiet, and the nephew and himself useful in various honorable employhas been interrupted by visits to Prussian His career as editor in various cities thought a dangerous person to governments, and Russian political prisons because he was gotten spoil be taken from them again. He uneasy, as all robbers must be, lest their illhas also been a manager of a company in Warsaw for insurance against fire; but his best fact that he brought to the United States so title to our respect and gratitude lies in the admirable an artist as his wife. particularly in Europe. Such points are the results of a life-time is compelled to play a number of dramas in |