is the real, sweet truth. As for his position, and the wonderful way in which he takes his place in the great world-these are mere accessories. It is the true-hearted man whom I adore -the man who would not lead me to the altar until his life lay before me as an open book, and the son who has never forgotten his parents, in spite of the vanities and glitter with which he has been surrounded.

Oh, mamma! but Miklós's parents are dear, good-looking old folks! I don't know how to describe them. Old Bándi may have been a little taller than Miklós in his young days, and is such a fine old man, just such as my Miklós will be. Though he is seventy years old, the old man's face is as red as a rose-not all over, but just in one spot, as if he had a little rose painted there.

"It is the family complexion," said the old man.

"Then why is not Miklós as rosy?" "Oh! that's another thing, menyemasszony. His face was just the same until he deserted us."

"The air of Pest, manyemasszony," explained the old dame, "it is that which has washed out his roses."

The old dame! I have not said anything yet about her; and I don't know which of them to begin with. She is all heart and sound sense. It is really marvellous, and what I never could have dreamt.

I shall never forget our arrival. Indeed, it was exactly as the old man had said. There was a band, and an archway, painted and wreathed, and the whole population waiting for us. His Reverence received us and made a beautiful speech.

Miklós stammered out something, but his voice was choked, and my eyes, too, were swimming. I could not see, I only felt that the women and girls were rushing to me and kissing my hands and dress. And yet, what good had I ever done them, poor things?

ming eyes, and a kind-looking old dame. I don't know whether it was old Bándi or Miklós who helped me down from the carriage. All I do know is that my head rested for a long time on the old dame's bosom, and that she had no voice to say more than "My sweet child!"

When I was released from her dear, kind arms, the old man, whose eyes were still shining, gently took my hand, and, putting his left tenderly on my shoulder, looked fixedly in my face and said just this, and no more: "Now I can believe that you married Miklós for love."

And then, whether we took the old people, or they us, I don't really know, but we stepped into the entry, and from thence into a room on the right-our room-which has been closed to strangers for years, and is just as Miklós described it.

The walls are white, with here a wreath of flowers, there one of wheatears, and there a picture, and so on, all round. The pictures are what the old dame has cut from the newspapers and had framed, but they are all the portraits of celebrities. There are wreaths over the beds, too, and all made by the old people. There is not superfluous furniture, but there is all that is necessary. The divan is covered with striped woollen stuff, spun and woven by the old dame. The coverlets on the beds, too-the old dame wove them all. As for the embroidered borders of the pillow-cases and the sewing-why, it is all a work of art! And how clean and neat everything is, in the house and out of it! A flaming red hollyhock pokes its head in at one of the two windows which look into the flower garden. A third window looks into the courtyard, and another, quite small, into the vegetable garden. This is the "spy-hole," from which anyámasszony (my mistress-mother) watches the fowls, to see whether they are scratching among her

Only fancy, mamma; yesterday, as I was looking out of the "spy-hole," I caught sight of an old hen scratching among the cabbages. I "shished" at

her over and over again, but to no purpose.

"Shish! shish! Don't you go scratching up anyámasszony's plants!" but she did not so much as turn round.

Nosza! Well, out I ran, caught up a birch-broom in the entry, and so out into the garden. The next moment Mistress Hen was scuttling "over hedges and ditches" with a terrible amount of clucking, I promise you.

Just as I turned round in stepped anyámasszony. She clapped her hands and cried out, "Oh, my sweet, goldenvoiced chicken!" in huge delight.

Old Bándi, too, came out all in a hurry, and Miklós with him.

"There now! said apámuram (my Mr. Papa), "there, wife! let us give up the management to the young folks; they would keep everything in fine order, and we could fold our hands and live on what is put ready for us."

"Oh! what ever are you talking of?" scolded the old dame.

"Let him talk," said I; "I like to hear him so much."

And apámuram is joking and telling stories all day long. He goes by the name of the "old hussar" here in the village. That is what anyámasszony calls him too. And he has such a number of interesting stories to tell of the time when he was in the army. He and his father, and grandfather too, were all hussars. Miklós's grandfather went "to foreign parts;" he was in France and saw Paris.

"Ay, but that is a large town," says the old hussar, repeating what he has heard from his father. "Pest is but a village to that."

He knows, though, that Pest has had time to grow a good deal since those days.

Anyámasszony is constantly telling him to be quiet. "Bless you! don't talk so much nonsense! Why, I'm sure you have told the menyemasszony that tale ten times over already!"

And she is quite right. Apámuram tells some of his favorite stories every day; but I listen quite gravely and attentively, and declare to anyámasszony's face that I have not heard this VOL. XIII. 632

LIVING AGE.

one before, and apámuram is so grateful to me for listening.

Miklós just smiles, presses my hand, and gazes in my face; he, too, is so grateful to me for listening to the old man's stories. And really, mamma, it is quite a pleasure to do so. He has seen so much, and-what I should not have believed he has read so much. Miklós has always sent him books and newspapers, and one can talk to him about everything except the theatre. That, he says, he does not understand. Every night Miklós puts me through an examination.

"Be honest, édesem (my sweet), would you like to go on somewhere else? Which of the baths shall I take you to?"

"I don't want to go anywhere," I protest; "I should like to spend the whole summer here with your old folks."

And it is no affectation, believe me. Wherever we might go it would be all one to me if Miklós were with me. But would anybody anywhere else be so delighted to have me as these good old souls are? I won't part them from their son as long as we can stay. Of course I have parted them, anyhow. In a week or two we shall go, and who knows whether they will ever see us, their most precious treasures, again? They have reared one child, and for whom? For me and no one else!

Would it not be heartless of me to grudge them a few weeks? Why should I not make their last days golden, when by so doing I please not only them and not only God, but myself besides?

Oh, mamma dearest! if you could see the tender, anxious love with which these simple folk surround me! They give themselves no airs to any one, and they make no parade of their happiness. And what care they take never to be in the way of us foolish young lovers!

We often go out in the meadows and rye-fields, and in the wood close by; we visit all the places which Miklós cares for, because he remembers them from his childhood. I always call the old folks to come too, and I see from their

eyes how much they would like to come -indeed, they would toddle with us to the world's end-but come they never will, no not for all the treasures of the earth. They have always some excuse. "They are not up to going on foot nowadays."

"And going for walks is not for such plain folks as they."

"You just go by yourselves, my dear children, you go. The chimney-corner is the place for the old folks."

"Ay, so it is, so it is!"

But they accompany us as far as the gate. And they don't take their eyes off us as long as we are in sight. We turn round again and again to nod our farewells, and they nod too; and I seem to hear the old dame's voice saying, "Oh, my sweet golden chicken!" (that is I) and the old man muttering, “A fine

couple, that they are, a fine couple!"

They stand looking after us a long, long time, even after we have turned down another road, and they gaze and gaze into the distance on the chance of our reappearing somewhere.

No, I will write no more, dearest mamma. I am so infinitely happy that I tremble for fear it should not last.

I have everything here but yourselves, I miss nothing but you.

I'll tell you what, my own good mamma: Come down here. You and apuska (little papa) take us by surprise. You will find a fly at the station. Get in and tell the coachman to drive to Baczon. Then, when you reach the village, there is no need to ask any one where old Bándi János lives. Just let the coachman drive straight on till he comes to a gate ornamented with the device of a dovecot, on the right side of the way.

"But there may be other 'dovecotgates' besides," you say. And so there are. But apámuram's gate bears the following inscription:

This house was built, God helping them, by Bándi Huszár János, and his wife, Nagy Borbála. A blessing on those who come in

Peace to those who go out! When you have found this gate, drive

We too were born in Arcadia.

Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor. Our own particular Arcady is of such small acreage that you can go through the length and breadth of it in one afternoon; but a thousand and one afternoons would not exhaust its interests. Those interests are of many

kinds; there is the scenery, wood and is the wild life of hedgerow and field; hill and a little brawling brook; there there are the things which antiquarians love, a ruined abbey, a little lonely church; and, lastly, there is the human interest. The population is indeed scanty, and yet there is, or we fondly think there is, more individuality among our few Arcadians than in a whole urban street; certainly through their eyes one sees further into the backward of time.

Let us then attempt to gather together some of our recollections of its old folks, putting them into the form of an afternoon's walk; an imaginary afternoon, indeed, and yet made up of many little scraps, as it were, which are not imaginary at all.

In the field beyond the lane stands old Francis's cottage. The lane is steep; the limestone rock shows all about it, and the channels which the rain of centuries has worn in it are filled with loose stones. To-day, after a wet night, sparkling little streams are running among them; and the great hill opposite is patterned with streams too, but we cannot see them, for the fog is creeping down and blotting out the distance from us. The hedge on each side of the lane is made

no

The cottage stands in the field, reached only by a foot-path. Along that foot-path Francis has trudged for more than half a century, his limbs moving slowlier with the gathering years; and now he is so bent, he moves so stiffly, that the field seems very long to him. The cottage is whitewashed outside; within there is plaster, only more whitewash which does not conceal the unevenness of the stones and mortar. The fastenings of the door, the wooden handle to pull it to, the latch lifted by a leather thong. are Homeric. "She went forth on her way from her room, and pulled to the door with the silver handle and drew home the bar with the thong." A dresser, almost devoid of crockery, a deal table, a few hard chairs,-that is all the furniture. There are no pictures on the white walls, only an almanack from the village shop which absorbs Francis's weekly bit of money. Seventy years of hard work have brought the old man no more of this world's goods than this house and these few poor things.

He is sitting by the fire when we go in, dressed in a corduroy suit, a linen shirt, home-made as you may see by the uneven work in the collar; around

his neck is a colored cotton kerchief tied into a strange bow by his poor, stiff old hands. Mrs. Francis is slowly busy, polishing the grate. She must once have been pretty, and indeed her faded, weary blue eyes are picturesque still as they gleam at you from a faded, weary face. She can hardly "reach to do anything" she tells you; and Francis, coming in tired from his work, turns his hand to most household duties, and before he goes out in the morning it is he who lights the fire and boils the kettle for her breakfast and his own.

The conversation begins of course with the weather. It is an all-imporlong walks, their long hours of hedgtant subject to countrymen with their ing and ditching and of ploughing across heavy fields. Francis says he thought we'd have falling weather since he saw Noah's Ark in the sky o' Monday; Noah's Ark, let us say parenthetically, being some kind of raincloud for which the learned have doubtless some other and perhaps less descriptive name.

Then a leading question is put, and the conversation slides away to old days at once. The stocks,-can Francis remember them?

men

Yes, he can tell us the spot on which they stood, in the churchyard where the road goes by, plain for all folk to see; our ancestors did not think this was a world to hide vices in. But their day was over when Francis was a boy, and he had only heard speak of those who had been in them. Only the hands of the prisoner were confined; no provision was made for their feet, as seems to have been the more usual plan. And the stocks led him to a more thrilling recollection.

"They did hang people in chains in my mother's time," he went on. "There was a man as murdered his wife, poisoned her in a cup of broth. As they took him off to the Assizes, he did laugh and say he'd be up-side of his accusers yet. But he was upside o' them on the top of a gibbet when they brought 'un back. He was hung up like a sign-board outside a