distinguished daughter this religious meditation, this unintermitting spiritual aspiration, is embodied and wrought into practical application to men and things, and to the minutest duties of human life.

Mary Clemmer has ennobled journalism by her profound conviction of its moral significance. Measuring her work by an ideal standard, she has always written up and not down to the mentality of the hour. The action and reaction of human life in its special phases in national statesmanship has been subtly analyzed and ably revealed by her. In the world, though not of it, the poetry of her nature has saved her from the allurements of fashionable frivolities. Her work, be it poetry or politics, has always in it the inspirational element. She has the divining instinct of the poetic temperament, the kindling of its fervor, the vividness of its imagery.

Mrs. Clemmer's home on Capitol Hill, in Washington, is a large, hospitable brick mansion, book-lined and picture-hung; with its souvenirs of friendship from names honored among men, its dainty elegance, its sweetness of repose. It is cosmopolitan in its atmosphere. It could not be otherwise when presided over by this fair, blue-eyed poet woman, whose sympathies and interests radiate like a star to all points of individual and national interests. Years ago Mrs. Clemmer purchased this house, and with her parents entered it to make a home. In this household the father and the mother were the honored guests, the treasured counsellors, the beloved ones to whose comfort and happiness, first of all, the household arrangements were subservient. In the winter of 1881 the aged father passed away, cheered to the last by the unfailing tenderness of his daughter. The mother still graces and brightens this home with her gentle presence, that falls as a benediction on the stranger or the guest.

Into this home come the tributes of respect and of love. Through the discipline of waiting, through rich and varied experiences, Mrs. Clemmer is garnering material and forces for her future literary work.

While Mrs. Clemmer has never been an active advocate in special reforms, she has been a potent force in general advancement. By nature and temperament she is distinctively the artist, the writer, and she has not the aggressive inclination to tilt a lance on all occasions, yet when the occasion appeals to her moral power she has the full courage of her convictions. Those who are leading the cause of the political enfranchisement of women; those who are consecrating their lives to temperance, to philanthropy, find in Mary Clemmer not alone the sympathizer and the helper, but the inspirer. Women go to her home as on a pilgrimage to seek the sweetness and light that never fails them there. Many an "Independent" letter has been sacrificed; many an artistic expression has been left unwrought, to meet the claims of humanity. To Mary Clemmer, truly, the life is more than meat; the need of one humble human heart is more to her than the fame or applause of the world.

The story of a life! Who may presume to tell it? And who, while that life is a part of the present forces of humanity, may dare reveal its deepest meanings, its romance, its invisible yet potent dreams? Let those who would forecast the horoscope of Mary Clemmer read, in her "Poems of Life and Nature," three sonnets: "Recognition," "The Friend," "The Lover." If the reader will he may read a story between the lines.

Little dreamed this young girl of the great world on whose threshold she stood when she crossed that unseen line of fate and went to New York. The reader of her novel "Eirene" may fancy that something of her own experience is reflected in this paragraph regarding her heroine :

"She had reached that crisis in life when a woman of opposite nature, disappointed and wounded in her affections, turns toward the prizes of intellect and ambition, and sallies forth into the great world in search of a crown. It never occurred to this girl that such a thing was possible to her. Of the rich endowments of her mind as personal possessions she had no

consciousness, much less that it might be possible for her to use them to build up a splendid fate for herself in the world. The realm of letters, the realm of art she knew were both in this vast world into which she was going; both in a dim and distant way had a charm for her; she had read of and worshipped the queens of women who had reigned therein. How remote and inaccessible seemed these realms. . . . She did not think at all that this enchanted world, in which the beautiful, the gifted, and the prosperous dwell, could be for her."

CHAPTER XII.

MARY MAPES DODGE.

BY LUCIA GILBERT RUNKLE.

New York Society Forty Years Ago - Prof. James J. Mapes - An Ideal Home - Genuine Hospitality - Mary Mapes Dodge - Her Two BoysWhat First Turned Her Attention to Writing - First Workshop-A Cosy "Den"-Birthday Feasts for Jamie and Harry - A Birthday Poem -Red-Letter Days- How "Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates," came to be Written-Merited Reward - Mrs. Dodge's Remarkable Editorial Capacity-Her Clear Insight and Sound Judgment- Editing "St. Nicholas "A Model Magazine for Children-Who and What Makes it So-The Care and Labor Bestowed upon Each Number - Mrs. Dodge's Home Life and Happy Surroundings.

ORTY years ago, or so, New York still kept something of her earlier simplicity of manners. Her best society had passed the toil of poverty, without yet having entered upon the toil of wealth. The great fortunes of to-day were undreamed of, as the ostentation which vaunts them was unknown. Hospitality was not expressed in monumental dinners and balls, but in more intimate visiting. Strangers, bringing letters of introduction to well-known citizens, were invited to their houses in a friendly way, and contributed whatever brightness they possessed to the general household pleasure, as they received the best which the household could bestow.

Ceremony is a necessary defence in large communities, and the great city long since outgrew this period of grace. But it was the good fortune of the subject of this sketch to be born into one of the most hospitable homes upon the island, at a time when hospitality meant much. Professor James J.

Mapes was not only a scholar of distinction, an eminent scientist, and an inventor of note, but a man of wide social accomplishments, a brilliant talker, and famous wit. His wife, accustomed in her father's house to entertain a wide circle, was a graceful and gracious hostess, unconsciously anticipating Emerson's precept: "Certainly, let the board be spread, and let the bed be dressed, but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things.”

In this household the children heard high affairs discussed in a high way. Men of science, poets, painters, musicians, statesmen, philosophers, journalists, were familiar friends. The talk was of scientific achievements, of music, painting, and the drama; of great philanthropic and benevolent movements all over the world; of contemporary history, as the news of the morning journal recorded it; of projected laws and the reasons for them. The petty gossip and small personalities which, in so many families, do duty as conversation never intruded their impertinent heads.

It was a great thing for bright children thus to have the round world rolled daily to their door. And this liberal education was balanced by a rigorous training in those disciplinary studies which teach the mind exactness.

It was a theory of Professor Mapes - a theory which his distinguished daughter has done so much to make a popular article of faith that children instinctively like good reading if they are fortunate enough to find it. And, at a time when juvenile books represented a waste land of dreary facts and drearier morals, with only an occasional oasis of fancy or freshness, he taught his own flock to find a genuine delight in the old ballads, in Shakspeare, and in Walter Scott. To her thorough knowledge of English literature, and her love of it, Mrs. Dodge owes the excellence of her style; and this love and knowledge she owes to the influence of her father. Of the four daughters of the house, the eldest and youngest showed remarkable musical ability, and became accomplished musicians. The third had a talent for painting, studying diligently at home and abroad, and choosing the artist's pro