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used to tell him of Miller Hansen's grandfather, of Devil Hansen's buck, and of his own loss of his barns in the summer of '71, when he had drank at the "Golden Tree on Palm Sunday instead of coming to church to mass; if the fire was not exactly lightning. yet it might have been, he reflects sagely, and therefore he carefully preserves his palms, this time, for they protect against lightning and flood. Meanwhile the procession is disappearing again, in the choir behind the altar-the Archbishop in a purple gown, the priests in red, and the altar-boys in white long surplices.

The Archbishop and priests carry real, tropic palm-leaves, but not always with dignity or solemnity; some of the elder priests shoulder theirs like soldiers with guns off drill.

A curious custom exists in some villages in the mountains, of the sacristan shutting the door before the face of the bishop and beginning a confab with him. But this rough detail, that embodied one of the difficulties made to Christ's entrance into Jerusalem, is expunged from the ceremony of town and city churches.

The countryman, meanwhile, leaves the church with the reflection that it will be well to walk over his fields on Green Thursday afternoon while the holy water is fresh upon him; it makes the meadows green, and protects the crops.

At this same time the children expect the Easter hare in the fields and outlying woods. He has sat in effigy for a long time in the show window of the grocer in the town, and on Green Thursday afternoon they make their first hunt for him and his red-egg nests in his real resorts out-of-doors. There is no end to the wonder of seeing how each and every class of the population, in fact, has found its own way for expressing its satisfaction, its new hopefulness and gladness.

The farmer whose heart is in his fields and cattle turns his thoughts to these, as we have seen. The good wife, in both country and town, turns hers to baking. The advent of Easter would alone be recognizable in Silesia by the sight of the multitudes of maids and houseboys who hurry along to and from the bakers' with yard-square trays of Streuzel Kuchen-the Easter cake.

Towards evening on the day before Easter Sunday the rustic youths leave off their chore work in court and stable, and, from a custom sanctioned by hoary age, gather dry brush

wood in the fields or upon the hill-tops, and set it burning.

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A row of fresh aprons on buxom figures turns up before the eyes of the mistress of the manor-house, and the ancient "Please, your Grace, may we now go out to Calvary?" is intoned, and her ladyship answers, "Yes." They mean a neighboring familiar hill by Calvary," which is either natural or has been thrown up artificially and given this name. Every town possesses one. In old Catholic times it was surmounted by a crucifix, and the devout population of the place crept, with rosary in hand, past the seven "stations" of our Lord's passion, one by one, mumbling countless aves, to the awful top. But now the mount is occupied generally by a restaurant, placed in the midst of white birchtrees, with wooden tables and benches around in the open. Hitherwards the maids repair, and hither come lads from field and workshop. They stroll about together, drink coffee, chat, and make the night air ring with laughter.

The townsman sees the moving figures in the white grave on the hill, and the flag once more on the long-closed restaurant, and cries to himself," "Tis Easter." And by morning all the small world of those parts, the humble, the well-to-do, and the fashionable, are exclaiming the same, and every bell in every steeple, far and near, is ringing in the Easter dawn, and every heart going wild at the sound from joy.

Do you ask me why? The explanation, I think, has been hinted at. It is because all these people have suffered intensely from the gloom and the length of their winter, and Easter signifies release.

You see it is not the possession of anything, but privation, which accounts for wild holidays. Great festivals are like works of great art, the product of painful experience. Just as the sadness of poets seeks an outlet in song, so does the misery of peoples in holiday. making.

Out of the depths, O Lord, out of the depths! This is the essence of festival rejoicing, the cry that vibrates down the years, and, knocking against the breasts of men, moves them to jubilation. Political holidays—the old English Guy Fawkes Day, Sedan Tag in Germany, the September fête of the Italians, and the American Fourth-are they not all alike commemorations of tragic events which at the same time were deliverances ?

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T

Getting About New York'

By Ernest Ingersoll

HE most active of all New York's "activities" is certainly the way we go to and fro upon her streets and up and down therein. Nothing could be found better illustrating the word quoted above than the ceaseless rapid march along Broadway, the morning and evening racing to ferries, the scramble up and down "L" stairways, the athletic scrimmaging at the big bridge, the clever dodging of trolley-cars in Brooklyn, the frantic grip with fingers and toes as you are swung around corners and kicked to goal along a cable-car route by a rib-loosening series of impulses and checks. If these are not activities, what are they?

New York had not always the benefit of these daily gymnastics. Look back threequarters of a century and you will see pictures of the city in which here and there a great covered vehicle stands drawn up conveniently by the curbstonc, a wide door hangs open at the side, and elegant ladies and gentlemen are bowing one another in. Those were leisurely days; but then the newspapers I did not contain an almost daily account of persons maimed or killed by public conveyances. When these roomy, low-hung old carriages disappeared, into their place came the rumbling white omnibuses which many of us remember, and all the advantages of the change seem to have been on the side of the owners. They would hold more persons, but they encumbered the roadways, were awkward to climb into and out of, were jolting, noisy, and discomfortable to such a degree that it is marvelous they held their place so long. But regard to comfort in travel, either on the part of traffic agents or by passengers, is a modern idea; at any rate, the lumbering old Broadway stages did not vanish until 1886, when they and the Boodle Aldermen went into limbo together, and the street-car company came in-heir of all the stages.

Meanwhile John Stephenson had caught

This article forms one of the series relating to the municipal activities of the new City of New York, which began with ex-Commissioner Sheffield's article on "The New York Fireman" in our March Magazine Number. Articles will follow on the New York Post-Office System, by Mr. A. E. Palmer, on the Police System, by Mr. J. A. Kiis, and on the Park System, by ex-Superintendent Samuel Parsons, Jr.

an idea from his namesake, and laid along the Bowery and Fourth Avenue, in 1831, a line of flat iron straps bolted upon timber to form the first street railway. He placed upon it "an omnibus car, with flanged wheels, and built in three compartments, entered from the side and each holding ten persons, and with seats on the roof for thirty more passengers." This was drawn by horses-how many I do not know-but it proved a failure financially, and nothing more was heard of a tramway until 1845, when the same road was revived with cars of the present form, entered at the ends and having no classified compartments. This succeeded, yet ten years elapsed before the Third Avenue, Sixth Avenue, and other prominent old-time lines were put into operation. The growth of the demand for local transportation was not then at the rate of twenty million fares a year, as it is said to be at present, only half a century later.

The Harlem people in those days had a pleasanter means of going and coming between the city and their suburban homes than this, however, in the steamboats which used to skurry up and down East Riverdashing little craft which had amazing power of wriggling through a maze of vessels and avoiding the tidal whirlpools of that vexed waterway. None ever ran on North River, because the population at the upper end of the island on that side has always been too scanty to make it pay; but some day we shall enjoy a line of boats from Staten Island and South Brooklyn to Yonkers, stopping at the various fine landings which will then exist along the North River front, and it will be a delight to travelers.

The building of the elevated roads, however, put an end to the Harlem steamboats, and struck a spur into the hitherto impenetrable hides of the horse-car managers-who needed it! Why is it that working long with horses tends to brutalize a person, making cabmen and truckmen and car-drivers the greatest bullies humanity can show? And why is it that of all enterprises depending upon general public patronage, that of managing street-cars is likely to be the most niggardly and reckless in return for the patron's money? Think of the jolting track, roughly

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