revealed thrown across her on the lounge a rare India shawl, a gem full a hundred years old, as was told by the delicate color and antique pattern; " Made when men loved art for art's sake," wrote the donor, an elderly gentleman, an entire stranger, who begged its acceptance as some recognition of the pleasure he had received in reading "Louisiana." When I read aloud his beautiful letter, in which he modestly claimed some soul kinship with the pathetic old father in the mountains of North Carolina, "Tho' a little more polish had been given me some forty years ago," she was deeply touched, and said, "That repays me many times for days of labor and hours of discouragement."

Graceful recognition of pleasure received and much grateful expression come to the successful story-teller, yet I doubt if ever an offering went more directly to her heart. She receives countless confidences, particularly from young women who indulge in literary aspirations, with enclosed manuscript for criticism. Daily applications for autographs come, and letters of inquiry and approval. To all this, as far as time or strength permit, she has conscientiously endeavored to send answers; not failing to encourage, if it be possible, young writers well remembering the worth of such kindness. Her capacity for work must be illustrated by a plain statement. In little more than seven years she has given the world five novels, a large number of short stories, several children's stories, and the dramatization of "Esmeralda." During this time there were often months in which she was seriously indisposed with nervous prostration. Meantime domestic and social duties were not disregarded. There is nothing, by the way, in which she can accomplish so much as working, unless it be playing- upon which she enters with a zest that is charming. This, a happy heritage, is often the blessing given to true genius, a blessing which renews the strength and keeps the heart young.

Although of English birth, the work of Mrs. Burnett has so identified her with and endeared her to the country of her adoption that she may be proudly claimed by the New

World.

In physique she is decidedly of English type, well-formed, graceful - usually she rejoices in excellent health. She is a blonde of rich tint, with dark bluish-gray eyes, that are full of varying expression, so intense do they sometimes become that they have been described as black. Her head is shapely and well poised; nose straight and finely cut, nostrils thin and sensitive, while the firm chin and decisive mouth are full of character. In manner she is utterly free from affectation, though sometimes forgetful and abstracted. She has a fund of small talk for an idle hour, and of humor an abundant supply, with most happy appreciation of it in others. While in writing her pathos is so touching as to overshadow the vein of humor threading her pages, in conversation humor predominates. She is endowed with a large degree of magnetism, and above all she has charms for her own sex. The highest eulogy that may be pronounced on a woman is when it can be said " Women love her," and this can with truth be said of Mrs. Burnett. Those who know her well have much reason to love her. In temper she is delightfully amiable and ready in sympathy. I have endeavored not needlessly to intrude upon the sacred precincts of home, but if I had yielded to the temptation and related incidents known to me, this brave-hearted woman of genius would indeed appear what she is a heroine in real life. A life so loving in all its ties, so exalted in duty, so full of good work, so responsive to every call, so replete in wide-reaching sympathy, she with all her power of characterization has never presented in romance.

CHAPTER VIII.

ROSE TERRY COOKE.

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.

Rose Terry Cooke's Ancestry-Her Description of an Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving-Scenes in Her Childhood-A Picture of Old New England Life-Her Deep Love of Nature-Passion for Flowers-School-life - Reading at the Age of Three-Inimitable Skill in Depicting NewEngland Life and Character- Her Bright Humor and Keen Sense of the Ridiculous-Beginning Her Literary Career-Opening of Her Genius -A Novel Incident in Plymouth Church - The Story of an Opal RingHow a Little Slave-Child was made Free-A Romantic Story - Odd Experiences with Impostors and Counterfeiters-Mrs. Cooke's Power of Mimicry-Her Home and Domestic Life-A Woman of Rare Genius.

QUARTER of a century ago, most of us can recall the joyous pride with which the birth of the "Atlantic Monthly" was hailed, and the eagerness with which each number was anticipated. Into what charming company it took us! There the Autocrat of the Breakfast-table held his genial sway; Motley fought over the "Battle of Lepanto"; Colonel Higginson led us into the woods of "April Days" and among the

"Water-Lilies" of August in his series of wondrous out-door studies; Anne Whitney came with poems of a loftier reach and fuller grasp than any other woman has ever given the world; the "Minister's Wooing" took up its placid way; that brilliant tale, the "Queen of the Red Chessmen," delighted the fancy and promised a new type of fiction; the "Man without a Country" deceived a wilderness of readers into tears; Emerson sang of " Brahma," Longfellow of "Sandalphon," and Whittier sang the "Swan-song of Parson Avery"; Frank Underwood stretched his kind hand to the unknown; and James Russell Lowell's genius welded the varying elements into a harmonious whole.

In this gracious company, too, came Rose Terry, with the leading story of the first number; and as story followed story, each better than the other, she kindled the ambition and had the felicitation of every other young woman who turned the pages throughout the country,- for most of us felt as if all girlhood were honored in her who carried her light before men with such proud strength and beauty.

We knew but little about her in those days, for personalities had not grown to rule us. We only knew that she lived in Connecticut, and had already published a story, in the palmy days of "Putnam's Monthly," called "The Mormon's Wife," which dealt powerfully with the leprosy of Mormonism, and wrung from the heart tears dried only by the heat of indignation. Any one who now reads that old story will be as much moved by it as its first readers were,will comprehend that stronger yet more delicate argument was never made against the iniquity which would undermine that whole foundation of civilization, the family,-tearing the hearts of women and debasing the souls of men, and must needs ask how so young a person knew the deep springs of feeling that play there, unless it is true that the experience of years teaches less than the intuitions of genius.

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It is genius that informs every line Rose Terry has ever written, a pure and lofty genius that burned with a white flame in such subtle metaphysical reveries as "My Tenants," and "Did I?" and showed its many-colored light in brief bits of poetic romance, and in a succession of stories of New England life. One marvels how such a genius became the ultimate expression of generations of hard Puritan ancestry, as one marvels to see after silent flowerless years some dry and prickly cactus-stem burst out into its sudden flaming flower.

Rose Terry Cooke came of undoubted and undiluted Puritan blood, which is to be found nowhere bluer than in Connecticut. Her mother was Anne Wright Hurlbut, the daughter of John Hurlbut of Wethersfield, Connecticut, the first New England shipmaster who sailed round the world, and a man

who subsequently lost his life caring for the sick during an epidemic. He left his daughter an orphan in her ninth year; and she grew up beautiful, tender, delicate, shrinking, undemonstrative from principle, and with a morbid conscience. She married Henry Wadsworth Terry, the son of Nathaniel Terry, president of a Hartford Bank, and for some time a member of Congress.

Henry Wadsworth Terry was a man of great information, a social favorite, sensitive, generous, and open-hearted. On his mother's side he belonged to the old Wadsworth stock, from which the poet Longfellow descended, his immediate ancestor in this country having been the Hon. William Wadsworth, dated at Cambridge, 1632, and at Hartford, 1636; and his uncle, several times removed, having been that Joseph Wadsworth who stole the Charter and ennobled the oak-tree for all time to come, and who had a descendant of his own. spirit in General Terry of Fort Fisher and Pulaski fame, the cousin of Rose.

Rose was born on the 17th of February, 1827, on a farm, where her father and mother then lived, a half-dozen miles from Hartford, to which city, when the child had reached her sixth year, they removed, taking up their residence in a large brick mansion built in 1799 by Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth for his daughter, and at that time the best house in Hartford, except another just like it which he built for his son.

It is of the life and manners in this house that she speaks in a little sketch, faithful as a Flemish picture, in which she narrates to a child of the family the old-fashioned Thanksgiving doings in her grandmother's kitchen, with the green knotty glass of its window-panes through which she watched the pigeons and the cats, and with its immense fireplace:

"It was very wide indeed, so wide you could sit in each corner and look up the chimney to the sky. The fire was in the middle, and was made of big logs piled up on great iron andirons. Over it was an iron thing called a crane, a flat, strong bar that swung off and on, so you could put on the