erina Cornaro's fountain, the very one where we first met, as it strangely happens. She was interested in it because we had read together Bembo's poem and it was the cause of my coming to Asolo, for I wanted to see how the original was placed. And finding how easy it will be to reproduce this old garden I have decided to do so. I shall restore the water by piping, and the brook will tumble again down its old natural bed until it reaches my sister's garden where it will supply the fountain and form a pool for waterlilies. The fountain is the very thing which Glen Allen lacks, a satisfying goal toward which the garden path tends!" His enthusiasm was contagious. "It will be very beautiful, Fiammetta replied, "and time will give its added charm as the years go by." "I shall not be obliged to wait for time," Allen replied, "for I shall not allow the fountain to be restored or scraped or furbished up in any way but shall have it set exactly as it is." A sudden transformation was wrought in the girl; he had seen her angry face before, but her eyes had never blazed like this. "You cannot mean," she said, "that you intend to have this fountain removed; that is impossible." "Not at all. I had the opportunity to purchase this very fountain, and it is mine." "You vandal!" The words struck him like a blow in the face. "Signorina Floriano!" he cried, "what have I done to merit your indignation? The right to remove the fountain was offered me.” "You never could have the moral right to take one of these marbles away," she retorted, "for they belong to Italy. Have you no conscience? Can you not see that it would be as truly a theft as any of the acts of spoliation committed by the barbarian invaders? Napoleon carried away the bronze horses of St. Mark's, but France was forced to restore them. Have you pictured to yourself what this garden would be without its fountain?" "What, indeed?" thought Allen; and as the devastation which his acquisition would create was revealed to him he stood before his accuser silent and confused. Fiammetta realized her advantage and pursued it. "And what would the fountain be," she asked, "without the garden? For though it is a beautiful object in itself it owes the major part of its attractiveness to its setting. Its very dilapidation is appropriate and harmonious here. Its crumbling fragments are lovingly held together by binding vines. Its mutilated carvings are concealed under caressing mosses. Think of it stripped of these adornments, as well as of its associations, and expatriated, pitiable, dilapidated, like the flotsam and jetsam of the auctionroom, brought into cruel comparison with the ostentatious perfection of modern objects!" "It could never be entirely stripped of its associations could it?" Allen asked apologetically. "It would always be the actual fountain around whose basin that merry party sat and held their disquisitions so long ago. It has other associations also for me. Pardon me, Signorina, if I presumed too much, but I fancied from my own love for this fountain and all for which it stands, that possibly if it found a fitting home with me, you also—" but his voice broke, for she had turned from him abruptly, shocked and offended, as he thought, by the revelation of his love. "If She faced him a moment later, her face ablaze with intense feeling. you care, as you say, for what this fountain represents, why do you not preserve it and the spot which its associations make glorious for Italy?" "Not for Italy," he cried, "but for you, if you will say the word. Can you not see that I care nothing for what this fountain represents unless it represents you, nothing for dead and gone queens and courts of love-they were but pretexts, a meeting ground of common interest THE READING HABIT IN THE UNITED STATES By GUSTAVE MICHAUD WHATEVER be the cause of a human migration, its effects are not unlike those of geological erosion: new social strata are built up at the expense of old ones and far away from them. Moreover, a sorting of the human sediments takes place; those which are left in situ differ from those which are carried away. Such differences may be physical; in the majority of cases they are mainly, if not exclusively, mental. Two classes of individuals who profess radically opposite opinions on a vital issue will be found to differ somewhat in their average tastes, inclinations, temperaments. When a long and dangerous voyage to a strange land is contemplated, if the cause of the migration be tyranny at home, there will be many more independent, more independent, liberty-loving people among those who leave than among those who choose to remain. There will be many more patient, timid individuals, more of those who are strongly attached to earthly goods or to kith and kin, among those who remain than among those who go. If the cause of emigration is an inducement to improve one's position through the buying of cheap, untilled soil, those who depart will be found, on the whole, to be more enterprising, more active, more indifferent to those advantages offered by a cultured society than those who remain. If the discovery of gold placers is the attraction, the average emigrant will be found to be somewhat credulous, imaginative, reckless, and, when trying to become rich, more inclined to resort to gambling methods than to monotonous and steady work. Hence partial migrations, through the sifting power they exert, and the transmissibility to offspring of the inherited characteristics thus concentrated into a community, are one of the most potential factors in the creation of new mental varieties of the human race. No ethnic factor has had more influence in the genesis of the American people. ican people. Natural selection exerted by environment has, of course, acted through the killing of the unfit and the decrease of their posterity, but that factor has not been at work long enough to determine conspicuous racial changes. It is probably true that, through the premature death, for half a dozen generations, of those Southern people who were more liable than others to malaria, dysentery, or yellow fever, the Southerner is to-day immune to a higher degree than the Northerner from those diseases. One may admit that a mountain race is being formed in the south central Appalachian region out of the Baltic people who settled in places so little adapted to their racial qualities, for it is evident that poverty, ignorance, the consequent neglect of children, and their greater mortality constantly eliminate from the "poor mountain whites" those less able to earn a living at the expense of the mountain, and many similar examples could be given, yet none of the variations thus induced belong to the class of those which can be readily perceived. Mental changes brought about by the migration across the sea, followed by inland westward migrations, are, on the contrary, strongly marked in many parts of our land, and the greatest contrast appears when New England is compared with those. Western States into which it has poured thousands of its sons. Settled mainly by high-thinking idealists, who abandoned comfort and part of their earthly possessions in order to enjoy religious freedom, New England sent forth afterwards |