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Napoleon's Parents.

The family of Bonapartes were of pure
Italian race; there was not a drop of
French blood in any of them. Their
ancestors had come from the mainland
in the early history of Corsica and their
names are found in the remote annals of
Ajaccio. Carlo Bonaparte was a poor
gentleman of eccellent breeding and
character who married in his youth a
young and romantic girl named Letizia
Ramolino who followed him in his campaigns
up to the moment of the birth of
Napoleon. It is impossible to say how
much the history of Europe owes to the
high heart and indomitable spirit of
this soldierly woman. She never relinquished
her authority in her family.
When all her children were princes and
potentates she was still the sever stern
Madame Mere. The beatufy and grace
of Josephine Beauharnais never conquered
her; the sweet Tyrolese prettiness
of Maria Louisa won from her only
a sort of contemptuous indulgence.
When her mighty son ruld the continent
she was the only human being
whose chidings he regarded or endured.
She was faithful in her rebukes while the
sun shone and when calamity came her
undaunted spirit was still true and devoted
to the fallen. Her provincial habit
of economy stood her in good stead in
her vigorous old age; she was rich when
the empire had passed away and her
grandchildren needed her aid. It must
have been from her that Napoleon took
his extraordinary character for Carlo
Bonaparte though a brave soldier and
an ardent patriot in his youth was of an
easy and genial temper inclined to take
the world as he found it and not to insist
too much on having it go in his especial
way. After the cause of Corsican
liberty was lost by the success of the
French arms he accepted the situation
without regret and becoming intimate
with the conquerors he places as many
of his family as possible on the rench
pension list. His sons Napoleon and
Louis were given scholarships at Brienne
and at Autun and his eldest daughter
Elise entered the royal institution
at St. Cyr. While yet in the prime of
life he died of the same deadly disease
which was the finish Napoleons days at
St. Helena; and the heroic mother her
responsibilites becoming still heavier
by this blow lived for eight years longer
amid the confusion and civil tumult
which had become chronic in Corsica;
and then after the capture of the island
by the English in 1793 she made her
escape with her children to Marseilles
where she lived several years in great
penury. - Harper's Magazine

HOW IT IS BORNE
It is strange how differently a deep trouble
shall affect different persons. One cries aloud
for sympathy with outstretched hands of
anguish. Another clasps the hands tightly over
the poisoned arrow to conceal it from all eyes
and silently dies of the pain. Another affects
jollity and rushes wildly from one excitement
to another hoping for nothing caring for
nothing save never to be left one moment
alone with his misery. Which of all these is
the greater sufferer God and his own soul only
knoweth. To fly is not always to shun. He
who placing a chair for Misery accepts him for
an inevitable guest and goes on with his ordinary
employments all the same as if he wer enot
there stands the surest chance to be rid of him
or grow indifferent to his unwelcome presence.
To all however it is not given to do this; but
at least even for them there cometh an end to all things.
FANNY FERN.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON

It is something for a woman to leave a perfume
in literary history as did Madame De Recamier
for instance but it is more to quicken the
moral sentiment of a nation; and the poet novelist
and essayist who is known to readers as
H.H. and who died in San Francisco on the
12th of August in her fifty-fifth year deserves
such praise as this. Trained in the best traditions
of a New England home the daughter of
a professor in a New England college and the
graduate of a young ladies' seminary in New
England H.H. was a proselytizer on principle;
married when young to an accomplished engineer
officer Captain E.B. Hunt of the United States
army and for more than ten years the companion
of his journeys and his studies she widened
the range of her intellectual horizon and tempered
her moral enthusiasm with a wholesome
dash of worldly wisdom. Bereft successively of
three or four charming children and of her devoted
husband she found in literary work the solace
of expression and gave to the world from
her retirement at Newport or from her much-needed
diversion in various European cities the
volume of Verses the Bits of Foreign Travel and
the story of Mercy Philbricks Choice. But additional
affliction was requisite to the development
of her profoundest nature and the illness
that drove her to Colorado in search of health
gave H.H. the opportunity of learning what
she believed to be the oppression of the Indians
by the United States government and of applying
to the great work of righting their wrongs
the acute moral purpose of a typical New England
woman the worldly wisdom of an army officers
wife and the literary culture that had blossomed
from her ned to earn a living and to divert
herself from the contemplation of a manifold
and deeply rooted sorrow. By her luminous
historical sketch A Century of Dishonor by her
artistically conceived and executed novel Ramona
and by her able official report as Commissioner
of the United States government on the
condition and needs of the Mission Indians of
California H.H. became the foremost champion
of the red man's rights and the most statesman-like
of American women. You have never
fully realized she wrote on her death-bed to a
friend how for the last four years my whole
heart has been full of the Indian cause - how I
have felt as the Quakers say a concern to work
for it.

Some of her acquaintances it must be confessed
never quite understood H.H. as a personality.
Possessed of a wealth of ideas that was
almost German and of an enthusiasm for applying
them that was almost French she sometimes
struck those who did not know her well as oppressively

omniscient; endowed with an almost
masculine force resolution and execution she
sometimes struck those who did not know her
well as positively discourteous. On one occasion
while calling at the office of a New York newspaper
for the purpose of seeing a member of the
staff who happened to be absent she was met by
the editor-in-chief who instead of sending a boy
to announce the fact that the person she had asked
for was out of town had gallantly gone out of
his way to communicate the intelligence himself.
She looked him steadily in the face for the space of
ten seconds and then letting fly the arrow I did
not come to see you sir walked out of the room.
But the amenity and even gayety of her disposition
were a delight to her friends although they
too well knew that she held in reserve the talent
of making herself feared.

Of her literary style it may be said that it was
not a style of crotchets or grotesqueness. It was
cultivated and spontaneous and it was her own.
Poetry was less to her than prose for in prose she
championed the cause for which she had a concern
to work; but her melodies were fresh and
sweet. Pervaded by the modern spirit her art
was nevertheless Semitic in tone appealing not to
the dainty aesthetes but to serious persons and in
profound sympathy with the moral life of the nation.

SAVED THE RECESSIONAL.

Mrs. Kipling Rescued It from the Wastebasket.

One of the newspaper men who interviewed
Rudyard Kipling during his recent
visit to South Africa writes of him
in the Cape Times: -

He takes his work hard. He is tremendously
in earnest about it; anxious
to give of his best; often dissatisfied with
his best. He is quite comically dissatisfied
with success; quite tragically haunted
by the fear that this or that piece of
work felt intensely by himself in writing
and applauded even by high and
mighty critics is in reality cheap and
shoddy in execution and will be cast
in damages before the higher court of
posterity. When Rudyard Kipling had
written The Recessional he was depressed
by its shortcomings of his private
conception tha the threw the rough
copy in the wastepaper basket. Thence
Mrs. Kipling rescued it. But for Mrs.
Kipling we should have had no Recessional!
For his best patriotic poems he
has declined to accept pay.

RECESSIONAL

God of our fathers known of old -
Lord of our far-flung battle-line
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine -
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies -
The captains and the kings depart.
Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away -
On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations spare us yet
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If drunk with sight of power we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe -
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law -
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard-
All valient dust that builds on dust
And guarding calls not Thee to guard-
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy Mercy on Thy People Lord!
Amen.