upon his treasury, Fechter determined to retire from the lesseeship of the Lyceum, and henceforth confine himself to his proper sphere of acting and stage direction. Behind the scenes Fechter is a master; before them he is, like most artists, a child. Wishing to close his theatre with éclat, he produced The Lady of Lyons, and created so great a furore in Claude Melnotte as to astonish even Bulwer. It ran seventy nights, the curtain falling last upon it on November 16, 1867. Then followed the great success at the Adelphi of No Thoroughfare, dramatized by Fechter, Dickens, and Wilkie Collins, and acted one hundred and fifty-one times. Fechter's powerful rendering of Obenreizer made the drama; and no sooner was it withdrawn than he went to Paris with Dickens to superintend the rehearsals of its French adaptation, L'Abîme. Returning to the Adelphi, Fechter won double laurels for one hundred nights in his clever drama of Monte Cristo, after which he appeared in Black and White, the joint work of himself and Wilkie Collins.

Not having visited the provinces since 1865, when his circuit had been limited to Glasgow, Birmingham, and Liverpool, Fechter gave eight months of last year to a tour through Great Britain and Ireland. Even Liverpool acknowledged his power. This city is not greatly given to legitimate drama, nevertheless Liverpool wanted to see Fechter in Hamlet. "Very well," said Fechter, "Black and White cannot be withdrawn, because it is filling the theatre; but if you like I will give you one act of Hamlet every night until finished, and you shall have it after the drama." The Liverpoolians readily assented to this arrangement, and, putting all his intensity into each act, Fechter never acted Hamlet as equally as on those five nights; Liverpool was an easy conquest, but not so Manchester. This good town had a grievance. Years before Manchester had commanded, had petitioned, had finally implored Fechter to come to them, but it was not until this season that he was able to re

spond to the prayer. Then Manchester arose in all her might to resent a prolonged absence, which she chose to consider a slight. Manchester hides neither her light nor her cutlery under a bushel. The world may think what it pleases of London as the heart and head of Great Britain, but Manchester has opinions of its own, pre-eminent among which is the religious conviction that Manchester is the centre of the solar system. Consequently when Fechter did appear at the Theatre Royal, it became incumbent upon a club clique to punish him for his previous indifference. So the clique decided that Fechter should play to empty benches until the production of Hamlet, when the entire solar system should shine upon the star. Feeling the injustice of such treatment, and determined to preserve his personal as well as professional dignity, Fechter held the cards in his own hands and won the game. Playing to audiences of three and four hundred, he never acted better in his life. For those who did come to see him he felt that he owed all that he could give; for those who childishly attempted to humiliate. him he inserted a card at the head of the play-bills, in which Mr. Fechter took great pleasure in announcing that his engagement would not be prolonged after the performances of Ruy Blas and Black and White! He was as good as his word, and the clubs of Manchester discovered that for once they had found their match.

Accepting an offer to visit this country, Fechter hurried back to London, and, after fourteen farewell performances at the Princess's of Ruy Blas, Lady of Lyons, and Hamlet, set sail for America, where he has found as ardent appreciation and as warm friends as in the older world. "Come back soon," said the Prince of Wales on that last of

farewell nights. "Remember that we cannot get on without you." Well might even flippant royalty confess as much, for it will be long ere England salutes the peer of that "French importation," Charles Albert Fechter. Kate Field.

IT'S T's pleasant faring down here on this Eastern Shore, with the air so soft it's a mere bliss to breathe it, all manner of sweet smells from the woods coming to me when the land breeze blows, and sometimes the southeast sweeping up the bay with the salt vigor on its wet wings that carries me back to the happy days when I used to make all the lights in Boston Bay, at once. I can see them now, as I used to sight them then, twenty miles out, the whole nine of them, sparkling up in that great dark horizon in their sudden and mysterious way, the Boston Light, Thatcher's Island and Baker's Island Lights, the Highland wading out to sea, far off on one hand the Plymouth lights, far off on the other the Eastern Point, and Minot's Ledge swinging its lantern over the waters, a ring of beauties, I've heard many an old salt say, tired of his rolling voyage.

Well, there are lights here on the Chesapeake; and I suppose there are men to whom they stand for all the others did to me; but they're no more like my old lights than the flare of this smoky pitch-pine knot is like the trail of a meteor; and sometimes I think if my scow could only float safely up the five hundred miles of coast that lie between, and in some night of still, starlit summer weather I could see the lights suddenly and silently as spirits spring up all about me once again, why, I'd lie down in the boat and die content.

a cabin here, and put old Milly and her man John in it; there is n't another human soul to be had till you come to the mainland. The birds build in the eaves and in the sods and all around everywhere; the deer come and drink at the door; I hear the quail piping out there in the reeds. See the ducks, with their backs green and gold in the sun! They mind me no more than if I were that old stump; and sometimes the wild pigeons perch on my shoulder. A man may live like a lord here, too, with the yams in the ground, the plums, the berries, the royal grapes, the fresh salads; with the crabs you see scuttling through the clear water; with the oyster-bed yonder that a king would covet. I come home every night loaded with my game, venison rich with all the juices of the woods, birds that have spiced themselves on the wild celery. But, for all that, the crack of my rifle is never heard on this side of the island; the great level floors of the snowy dogwood boughs in their season stretch away into the forest unstirred by the plunge of anything flying from me, the magnolia shakes down its scents through no rude motion of mine, and the ringdoves sit on the low cedar branches and coo as though I were nothing but a juniper myself.

Well, that's all very well for once in a way; the gentlemen who come over here hunting, and use me for a guide, think it's the picked place of the earth; but take it lonely, day after day and year after year, and you find it's not people. You find that it's enough to make a man go melancholy mad. When it gets beyond endurance, I take my float and go poking up the creeks and inlets and currents, and in among the shoals and shallows, and I find the measure of this and sound the depth of that, and set it all down in my chart, and compare my chart with those I bought in Baltimore, and by the time

the chart's done I shall have served what'll be as good as a seven years' apprenticeship and be ready, if I want it, for a commission as full pilot of the Chesapeake. It's hard on a man to have to serve two apprenticeships to the same trade, but it's my own fault, I reckon.

I had as jolly a service once, though, tumbling round Boston Bay, fair weather and foul, as ever any one had to remember his name by, - long years while I went from boy to boat-keeper, and from boat-keeper to captain, but happy as they were long. Little I cared for danger then, a wet jacket all my delight, all my ambition to run my boat alongside of a European steamer, in a sea too rough for boarding, and bring her up to the wharf when everything else in the harbor was holding for dear life on its cable. Still, there was plenty of sport ashore, off nights when we cruised round by the theatres, Wilbur and I, and days too down at the farm where Kate lived, and when we all went picking wild strawberries in the field together, and Wilbur and I grew madder with love for Kate over every berry we dropped in her basket. You would n't have wondered at that either, if you'd ever seen her; for she was nothing but a sunbeam. Such a rosy face, always blushing, always smiling, smiles and blushes and dimples one after another there, and all together; and eyes as blue as heaven; and hair, as yellow as the light, clustering in little rings round the white forehead; she was n't made to stay here any longer than the morning light is made to stay, and she went away alone on her long journey the year after she married Wilbur. For you see I stood no chance at all beside him, he a tall, proud, handsome fellow, with a way with him to win a woman's heart at the asking, quick to make the most of his chances; and he had her and was married to her, and had broken her heart, and buried her, before I-slow and stupid always as an owl in the daytime — fairly knew whether the world was upside down or not.

Perhaps I had loved her the better of the two, I don't know. We were neither of us full pilots yet, and Wilbur himself could n't have afforded to marry but for the rent of Kate's little farm that her mother left her. But that made no odds to him: he never felt nearer to anybody for the favors done him; he was the sort that cares for little but a pretty face, and tires soon of that; and, neglecting her till her soul was sore, if he did n't positively abuse her afterwards; yet the shrinking thing, all alive to any touch, took careless words and unkind ones from him, like blows; and when her child was born she had no heart to live any longer, and so slipped out of life.

As for me, I had n't loved Kate after that fashion, at any rate. If I had married her, homely and awkward and uncouth as I might have been, I'd have died but I'd have made her happy. But I never had told her, or had hinted to her, that I cared for her, though Wilbur knew it well enough; for I had confided in him, and he had said nothing, but had just stepped in before me. It would n't have made any difference though, if he had n't; Kate never could have cared for me. But I never saw her, from the day I heard she was to marry him till the day I went and looked at her lying in her coffin, the little white, pinched face so worn and weary for a year's wife, oh, so sad! And I glanced up at Wilbur, and our eyes met, and he knew I hated him. "I killed her," was what his guilty eyes said; "and I mean to kill you," must have been what mine replied.

So we each went back to our life in the boat, day by day and night by night, side by side, as we had been for years; Wilbur always meaning to be transferred, but always delaying about it, full of an indistinct notion, as I've since thought, that I meant to do him an evil turn, going ashore but little, and seldom trusting himself alone with me when he could help it. For my part I never noticed that; after that first pang I had no idea of any re

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venge upon him. Kate had loved him, - how could I harm him? I used to envy him, to envy and to wonder at him, thinking of the child's voice I heard crying that last time I looked on her face, remembering that it was hers, that he had it to go home to and never did. One day I can't say what made me, I'm sure I did n't think of it till I found myself on the spot - I stole up that way and went in to see that baby myself, - a great blueeyed, happy boy he was, who held up his mouth like a bud and came to me on the minute; and my heart closed round him, all at once, the way my arms had done.

I don't know as you'll believe me, but, as much as I had cared for Kate, from that day I began to care for this child more, and, much as once I longed to make her mine, I longed now to get possession of the child. It seemed to me that Wilbur set no value on him; and I began to torment myself with the thought that possibly I might have him. Whether I might or not I wanted him, and the want got hold of me like an insanity, and that's a fact. After a while, when I made sure that Wilbur never went, I used to go and see him whenever I was on shore, and carry toys to him first, and toys and sweetmeats afterwards, and bribes to the nurse where he was boarded out in Gasket Lane, a woman who resented his father's lack of feeling for him like an insult to herself. Perhaps it was wrong, but, right or wrong, I meant the child should love me; perhaps because I knew well that no one else in all the world ever would, for now I should never marry, and there was not a soul alive in whose veins my blood ran. I never could tell why I cared so much about him; it might have been a freak at first, and then the affection grew with the indulgence; it might have been because he was a part of her, because I could not remember Wilbur's share in him; but care I did, and every time I saw him I felt his little grasp tighten round my heartstrings. Before his first year was out he knew me, and would

crow and dance when he saw me coming, and babble my name, and hold out his chubby arms to be taken and kissed and dandled; and I'm telling the truth when I say that by that time he was dearer to me than my lifeblood.

So the days went on, one like another, and little Ben was two years old, the moment he could stand alone walking off like a man, the moment he could walk taking things at a run, tumbling and rolling and laughing and up again, a wholesome little red-cheeked chap who had never had a tear in his eye and who had a heart full of love for all the world. And in the mean time I was Ben's visible Providence, as you might say; I brought him his lollipops, his woolly horse, his red balloon, his flying ball; I stole him and the nurse away for a day in the country, and took him in my arms long walks over the strawberry-fields, or dipped him in the roller down on Chelsea Beach; sometimes I sang him to sleep with the sea-songs that many a night his mother and Wilbur and I had sung together in our boat down the harbor, and that now my voice trembled over, and he would turn and rub his face all over mine with great wet kisses before he went to sleep,- Lord, I never wiped them off! and my heart would beat like a triphammer when I watched him and thought, if he was all this to me now, what it might have been had he been really mine; but those were thoughts I had no right to think.

One wintry afternoon, having some spare hours on my hands, I went over to see the boy again; I never could keep away! And I had a ginger-snap, and a gibralter, and a jumping-jack in my pockets, for him to hunt after and find in a frolic over each pocket; and at last, after a good game of romps, he dropped asleep on my arm, tired out. He was a handsome little rascal then, the damp curls round his rosy face, and his lips parted over the split pearls of his teeth, while he still kept smiling even in his sleep; and as I was looking at him and admiring him, it crossed me, all of a sudden, that he