only books in the room are Congressional Records. Mr. RANDALL cares nothing for the classics or essays, or for novel-writers or dramatists, ancient or modern, or, in fact, for anything else than hard work and public business. The only reading that Mr. RANDALL can have done outside of that," says one of his friends, "is a little bit of local history. I don't know that I ever heard him mention a novel or a play or anything that savored of pleasant literature. He probably knows nothing about it, and cares less." -Miss NELLIE. COOK was the Democratic nominee for School Commissioner in Wayne County, New York. She is said to possess youth, beauty, and wealth. Miss Cook went into the business of canvassing like a man, having organized campaign clubs, and made speeches at the latter at the rate of two a day. -The largest, or perhaps the best known, shop in Paris, Au Bon Marché, is kept by a woman, Madame BOUCICAULT, who has recently been decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honor. Madame BOUCICAULT is as generous as she is wealthy. She has bestowed $1,000,000 on her employés as a pension fund for the sick and superannuated, besides library and readingroom funds, and she gives them all shares in the profits of her business. In her native town she give people a more direct road to market, and has built a $200,000 bridge across the Saone to she has distributed more than $1,500,000 to relieve the sufferers from the phylloxera plague. -Miss VARINA DAVIS, "the daughter of the Confederacy," has just returned to Beauvoir after a round of social festivities through the Southern cities. Miss DAVIS is about twentyfive years of age, fair, and vivacious. She is usually described as pretty, but this is due more to her youth and vivacity than to any regularity of feature. Her popularity in the South is something like that of Mrs. CLEVELAND in the North. -The statistician has been figuring upon the probable amount of money put into circulation by Mrs. JAMES BROWN POTTER'S début before a New York audience, and foots it up at about $40,000. The receipts of the house were a little over $13,000. Of the 2500 people 700 came to the theatre in hired carriages at $5 each, making $3500 additional. More than half of these went to the Brunswick or Delmonico's afterward, at an expenditure of $7500. Fully $5000 more, he thinks, were spent by inen between the acts. -Mrs. WHITNEY, the wife of the Secretary of the Navy, is discussing the advisability of establishing a school in New York for the training of domestic servants. She thinks that $100,000 will be enough to establish the enterprise. If the school accomplishes its object, it will be worth a great deal more money than that, and every house-keeper in the city would gladly contribute toward its establishment. There is nothing more needed than such a training school, conducted upon a common-sense, practical plan. -HARRY SMITH, the librettist of The Begum, Colonel MCCAUL'S new comic opera, is a Chicago journalist, who has written sketches and "topical songs" for a number of years. He was editor of the Rambler, a Chicago weekly, and has worked ou in the natural course toward his present goal. -HENRY LABOUCHERE, member of Parliament and journalist, is rather below the average size, and wears a short-cut, somewhat grizzly beard. His dress is unstudied, not to say careless, and he sits around his piazza in easy-fitting shoes, smoking cigarettes, all the time he is not at work in his office or at the House of Parliament. Mr. LABOUCHERE lives in Pope's Villa, Strawberry Hill, just outside of London, and his clock tower may be seen by excursionists on the Thames. -Rev. Dr. HoWARD CROSBY has been the pastor of the Fourth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, for twenty-five years. Dr. CROSBY comes of an old and wealthy Knickerbocker family, and was born in New York sixty-one years ago. He began his professional life as a Professor of Greek, and was one of the founders of the New York Greek Club. There is no more public-spirited citizen than Dr. CROSBY, and none who has more enemies or more friends. He is an active member of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, and is a champion of the temperance, but not the prohibition, movement. In appearance Dr. CROSBY looks the scholar that he is. His forehead is strikingly high and full, and the expression of his eyes that of intelligence and benevolence. He wears his face clean-shaven save for a pair of mutton-chop side whiskers. Dr. CROSBY is particularly fond of the sun, and no day seems too warm for him. He may be seen in July walking on the sunny side of the street with his hat off, fairly revelling in the tropical heat. In the winter Dr. CROSBY lives in New York, but in the summer he goes to Pine Hill, in the Catskills, where he has recently bought a house. -Mr. HENRY IRVING brought to Mr. GEORGE W. CHILDS a bottle of "honest water" from the fountain the latter presented to the town of Stratford-on-Avon, and sent it to him by the hand of his "faithful carrier" BRAM STOKER, with a graceful and courteous letter, which is now going the rounds of the press. -A monument of polished Scotch granite has been erected in Walnut Hill Cemetery, Brookline, with the following inscription: JENNIE COLLINS, the Working-Girl's Friend, and Founder of Boffin's Bower.' Died July 20th, 1887, aged 59 Years." -Miss ANNIE WHITNEY, the sculptor, has won high praise for her bronze statue of LEIF ERIKSON, recently unveiled in Boston. ERIKSON, bythe-way, is credited with being the first civilized man to set foot on American soil. -Mrs. EDWARD GRAY, of Boston, is said to be the best woman rider of the Myopia Hunt. She takes her thirteen or more miles 'cross country with the men, and she sits her horse as tirelessly at the finish as at the start. -Mrs. A. J. CASSATT has the reputation of being the finest horsewoman in Philadelphia. She is just now at Pau, in France, where she frequently enjoys a run with the hounds. Mrs. CASSATT is very fond of all out-of-door sports, and swims and rows as well as she rides. The Misses DREXEL, daughters of the late F. A. DREXEL, are also fine riders, and may be seen any morning by the early risers at Torresdale, Pennsylvania, where they have their country home, taking a spin across country before breakfast. They have, by-the-way, lately returned from a visit to the Roman Catholic missions among the Indians, and were so pleased with the work that they gave $100,000 toward carrying it on. EMBROIDERY IN AMERICA. BY MRS. CANDACE WHEELER. See illustrations on page 832. LTHOUGH the number of contributions to this exhibition from different American cities is limited, enough has been brought together, and of sufficient excellence, to interest every lover of applied art. From the Boston Society of Decorative Art comes a fine piece of color and stitching in laid-work. This is a method common to both Spanish and Italian embroidery since the early centuries. Old Spanish and Italian and even modern Chinese laid-work have, however, quite a different effect, owing to the different quality of silk used in its manufacture. It is Eastern floss of the finest and most lustrous quality, and is stretched quite flat and thin upon the Modern laid-work is more often done in filoselle, which is softer Miss Hannah Weld, of Boston, has sent a portière of ivory white chestnut in leaf and fruit. The forms are heavily outlined and framed with gold thread, thrown out by a closely darned background of delicate color which melts into the tint of plush used as a border. The skilful carrying over of border color and its distribution upon this canvas is shown at the top of the curtain, where the band is finished with a deep net-work of the same color over the ivory white, ending in a fringe. Through the Boston Society also we have some embroidery upon morocco, which recalls Turkish embroidery upon leather, but is far more harmonious in color and ingenious in technique. One piece, intended for a chair back, has a beautiful design of deeply serrated. leaves springing from a boss or ornament at the centre. It is richly and veined with burnished gold fillustration, dat de orizon the base go carried a solid band of thick, soft, yellow morocco, while the background is covered with plush of a deeper tint, and at the top is a similar band of well- closely and regularly interwoven threads of silk of a darker shade of greenish-yellow. The threads of silk are so heavy as to make The girl put her arms softly about the bereaved mother; her tears fell fast on that weary breast, but in the mother's eyes they only gathered and stood, burning the aching eyeballs, as the tears of age and agony do burn. Not one scalding drop left its source or sparkled on Florinda's sunny head. That box held another five dollars, so Florinda's purse was over-full for her needs. The Monday before Thanksgiving-indeed all that week-was a busy one for Florinda,and Dency Mills, the faithful old servant, who had come with the doctor's young wife when she was married. A jar of fresh sweet lard, rolls of yellow butter, a great pail of wheat flour, were made into pie crust, and set away in the back pantry till Wednesday; squashes were split and boiled and strained; apples stewed and strained; cranberries picked over and stewed; turkeys picked, dressed, and hung up by an open window, by Lame Jim, whose delight was immoderate. He chanted Mother Goose all the time, except when he whistled, and if no other face in that pitiful assemblage had been bright, his alone would have rewarded Florinda for her efforts. But a genial atmosphere pervaded all the farm-house; savory and spicy odors made the old men straighten up and smile, and the women recall their own early experiences of the time when they too prepared for their families this Thanksgiving feast. Tuesday the chickens were parboiled, the oven wood sawed and split, the great loaves of raised cake baked and frosted, for Florinda meant to make her observance thorough; but Wednesday was literally the "tug of war." Then the great oven was heated by sunrise, and Dency's deft hands rolled out crust, filled and covered pies, put them into that glowing cavern, and took them out crisp, flaky, and golden brown, till their very smell made the poor people smack their lips; then she concocted the great baked Indian pudding and watched it till after tea, filling its golden depths again and again with cold milk, and stirring it up from the bottom, till it was ready to emerge, a mass of rich jelly, redolent of spice and sweetness, all prepared to reheat the next day. For on Thursday the chicken-pie and the turkeys would fill and refill that big oven. Just as Dency took out the pudding that Wednesday night there was a sort of outcry in the yard-a sound of running feet, that inexpressible general confusion that the ear cannot resolve into its details, but which carries its tale of dismay, of terror, without words. She was not to be moved from her pudding, however. She carried it with the justest care and equilibrium into the further pantry, and set it on the shelf. It was time for her to go home, but she must know what all this fuss meant first. Before she could tie on her hood, however, Aunt Polly hastily opened the kitchen door, her whole aspect disturbed, and her placid face red as the moon just rising now above the Bolton Hills. "Oh, say, Dency, there's the awfulest job! Be you a-goin' home? Well, send the doctor over here a-flyin'. There's a feller throwed off his horse jest nigh about the yard gate, and is took up for dead. They've fetched him upstairs to the spare chamber, but they want Dr. Allen right off." Dency made good speed homeward, and found the doctor had just come in; so he turned back from the steps to his shackling buggy, and was soon at his patient's side. Aunt Polly's tale was all true, but Lame Jim was innocently at the bottom of the disaster. He had found a pumpkin in the road the day before, which had rolled off some overflowing load, and in the delight of his heart resolved to make a "jack-o'-lantern." Having properly emptied it of seeds and scraped it thin, he cut out on one round side a great grinning mouth and teeth, eyes to match, and a triangle for a nose, and begging Aunt Polly for a tallow candle, had set the horrid mask on top of one of the square gate posts by way of experiment. His idea was to illuminate the yard by it on Thanksgiving night. So, lest it should be prematurely seen, he turned the face toward the road, and was gravely examining it at a little distance, with a view to possible improvements, as a sculptor might eye his statue, when a tramp of horse's feet made him step aside. The rider came fast, but the horse, seeing that fearful gleaming visage, suddenly shied, and his master was thrown sharply over his head. The terrified beast galloped down the road, and Jim, running to the man's side, found him entirely insensible. Nor did he show any signs of life when Dr. Allen arrived; but on examination it was found that his leg was broken and there was a slight concussion of the brain; only, slight, for as the doctor cut away the clothing from his leg, he stirred, opened his eyes, and tried to speak. "Don't talk," said the doctor, curtly; "don't say a word. You're hurt, and we'll take care of ye. Here, Jim, take off his clothes while I lift him. Gingerly, now; there, there." And having gotten his patient into position, he proceeded to set the broken bones. "Now, then, you'll do for to-night. Swallow this." He poured out an opiate into the spoon Aunt Polly had brought, and set it to the man's lips. "Now, Aunt Polly, don't you let him talk; he won't want to for a while; but if he wrastles round give him twenty more drops out of the vial. Somebody 'll have to set with him to-night." "I will, and so'll Jim," promptly answered Aunt Polly. So the doctor went home, and the two took up their watch. It was a young man, tall and handsome, who (Continued on page 838.) |