ended, and he dropped his arms with a wild and breathless laugh, to which the child responded.

But how was it that, although both their tired bodies had grown still and relaxed, the sense of movement continued? Eastin felt a spasm of fear at his heart, and looking about him he discovered that they were far from the shore, and in the very center of the stream, whose current was bearing them rapidly onward, and every moment becoming stronger and swifter. He realized, in one awful instant, that they had been drifting for some time, and were quickly getting into the narrows. He looked ahead and could see the high cliffs of rocks on either side, which, for unknown ages of time, had been the impregnable bounds of that crowding torrent of waves and spray and bubbling foam that rushed onward to the falls below.

He reached for the little paddle, but he felt it would be useless. Every moment the motion was becoming stronger and more irresistible. He scarcely felt the thin planks between him and the seething stream below. He put out the paddle, but one blow from that bounding water knocked it from his hand and hurled it away, and he could see it tossed from wave to wave, with a sportive motion that seemed to mock him.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him, at which his heart gave a great bound, and a light, as it had been from heaven, overspread his face. He knew that rescue was impossible, and the idea that God had planned for him and for Rose-Jewel this release from the pain of earth and this entrance into the glory of heaven swept over him with a wave of joy. There were no words that he had ever said more devoutly than, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," and he knew Rose-Jewel was already a companion for the angels. The vision of a certain ecstacy and bliss shone all around about him. O the freedom of it, the rapture, the music! Even the dread of physical death was nothing to him. Rose-Jewel would be his companion, and the journey would be short!

His one care was that the child should not be frightened. She had always answered to his control, and he took up the violin now and began to play.

"Listen, darling, listen!" holding her eyes with his own,

and drowning in a flood of rich, keen melody the noise of the rushing water.

And Rose-Jewel answered to the insistence of those swelling sounds of music as unquestionably as she had ever done. She forgot everything; as she bent forward to listen. He leaned close to her, that she might not lose one sound. The beauty of the music that swelled out over those turbulent waters was entrancing, even to himself. He did not know what he was playing-something he had never heard before, but something fit to play in those choirs of heaven to which he was going so quickly. He could not wonder that the child was under the spell of it. It came to him without one interruption-an unbroken strain of divinest sweetness, such as he had never heard before. In the very midst of it, the ever-narrowing, ever-quickening current gave the little boat such a wrench, that the violin was knocked out of his hand into the sleeping

waters.

Then Rose-Jewel gave a little cry, and turned to look about her, but before she had faced the sight of those terrifying waves, he caught her in his arms. She felt her little golden head drawn down upon its sweet, familiar resting place, and the arms of her father folded close about her. Words of love and comfort and reassurance were whispered in her ear. She was being rocked into repose and rest quite naturally, as she had so often been before, upon her father's breast.

There was a sudden rush of something cold and strangea swish of sound-a lurch-a fall-and then, still holding each other in the dear fondness of that close embrace, the musician and his little child sank together into death, and their spirits. soared forth into infinite music.

[1866- 1

M. W. CONNOLLY

WALTER MALONE, the youngest of a family of twelve chil

dren, is a son of the late Dr. Franklin Jefferson Malone, and Mary Louisa (Hardin), his wife. He was born February 10, 1866, in De Soto County, Mississippi, about thirteen miles southeast of Memphis, Tennessee. His father, a surgeon in the Mexican War, and a member of the Mississippi Constitutional Convention in 1868, died January 24, 1873. The death of his father so soon after Walter's birth deprived him of many early advantages; but his mother, one of those women who rise equal to emergencies, managed to give her younger children such educational advantages as the country schools afforded.

Three miles across the line in Tennessee to the "old-field schoolhouse" young Malone trudged, and from the age of six to sixteen on these daily trips developed the faculty of thinking and of dreaming day-dreams. When not at school he was working in the corn and cotton fields, where he literally thought out his thoughts between the plow-handles. When the pictures which he had conjured up were firmly fixed in his mind, he made his first attempt, at the age of twelve years, to record them in verse. Always a severe critic of himself, he destroyed these productions as not to his liking.

However, the voice within him would not be stilled, and between the ages of thirteen and fourteen he wrote several articles which were published in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Thus encouraged, he began at the age of fourteen writing verse seriously, and continued up to 1882, when he was sixteen years old. Then appeared his first volume of Verses, 'Claribel, and Other Poems,' a book of three hundred pages, containing two long blank verse dramas, two long narrative poems in verse, and a number of short poems. This book was about such a production as a farmer's boy of latent genius and limited education might be expected to write if he were ambitious and fond of work. It was the largest book of verse ever printed by a boy under twenty-one, and it was much admired by many who liberally commended him for his achievements. No doubt he was proud of it, as he had a right to be; but in later years, with erring judgment, to be sure, he destroyed every copy he could lay hands on. In 1883, at the age of seventeen, he entered the Preparatory De

partment of the University of Mississippi, at Oxford. For this field. of effort he was but ill equipped. While he had been an omnivorous reader, his studies in the elementary text-books had been desultory, and his day-dreams between the plow-handles and his musings at night under the stars were hostile to concentration, definiteness of purpose, and efficient training. Getting in touch with collegiate work was, therefore, difficult. The professors often told him to read less. and study text-books more; but for the first two years he was sadly lagging in his studies. Mathematics, with the exception of geometry, he could never like nor learn; and, with many others, he wondered why an undesirable study was forced upon him. The last two years at college were eminently successful, and much progress was made. He won laurels in two college oratorical contests, and was for three years on the editorial staff of the college magazine-the last year serving as editor-in-chief.

In 1885, at the age of nineteen, he published a second volume of poems, entitled 'The Outcast, and Other Poems.' This book of three hundred and fifteen pages contained two blank verse dramas, two long narratives in verse, some lyrics, and a reprint of the lyrics in the first volume, though changed considerably. The second volume was a great improvement over the first, and its appearance elicited favorable comments in communications from Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Oliver Wendell Holmes; but because of its occasional crudities and immaturities, it, too, was consigned to the flames. Of this book, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote: "The book gives promise, but it is not what it would be were the author ten years older. Why, at thy age, I could not make a respectable rhyme." Fire, however, can no longer blot out the printed word. Recently a collector of rare books in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sent a copy of the first book, 'Claribel, and Other Poems,' with the request that the author inscribe something on the title-page. Mr. Malone, with characteristic modesty, complied by transcribing from Thackeray: "Be sure that if thou hast never been a fool, thou wilt never be a wise men." In later editions of his works Mr. Malone has included fragments and excerpts from his first two books, much altered and sometimes recast. The objection that Mr. Malone finds to his earlier writings is that they were produced when he knew nothing of the world, of nature, or of human nature. He had lived in a world of books, and all of his pictures were unreal, and obtained at second hand. A young Scotch poet on his deathbed at twenty-three bewailed the fact that his was not a life-" 'Twas but a shred of childhood thrown away"; but Mr. Malone's life was without childhood; he never was a child. He was a grown man in thought and action from early childhood. He had

no playmates and engaged in no childish sports. Youths of his age around him were beneath his social plane, and association with them was prohibited. He could play with the little negroes on the place, as was the custom, but he was seldom playfully inclined. He was always studious, always thoughtful and serious. His world was between written pages.

In 1887 graduation day came, and admission to the Bar at Oxford, Mississippi, shortly afterward. Moving to Memphis the same year, he formed a copartnership with his brother, the Honorable James H. Malone, now Mayor of Memphis (1908), and engaged in the practice of law. Law is a jealous mistress, and after sorrowfully reading Blackstone's "Farewell to His Muse" he set himself assiduously to work, and until the latter part of 1891 his pen was idle and his muse a "Leah the Forsaken."

The year 1892 saw the beginning of his best work. Narcissus, and Other Poems' appeared and attracted widespread attention. Two years later 'Songs of Dusk and Dawn' appeared. This book contained many new poems, and what was best in the volume of 1892, as well as what was best in the two juvenile books. In reviewing this book twelve years ago I wrote:

"His profusion of imagery, his reverence for the sublime and beautiful in nature, his felicity of expression and loftiness of sentiment, give him charter to undertake and power to execute tasks from which mere mediocrity would retire discomfited. His style is diversified and pleasing and his passion is pure, excepting when the exuberance of his fancy beguiles him into voluptuousness. Beginning to write poetry in early life, he has followed the avocation or diversion with care and patience. That he has not reached the meridian of his fame we may well agree without indulging too sanguine an expectation of his future success. A shifting of the scenes, a sharp bringing up against realities, the impact of adversity's missiles, or the ennobling and broadening influence of love and congenial association will dispel these clouds of misanthropy and give a brighter tinge and more cheerful tone to his lines."

In 1896 followed 'Songs of December and June,' a little volume of twenty lyrics, and 'The Coming of the King' (1897), a collection of eight short stories. This book received high praise from the press and from writers like Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Charles Dudley Warner, Edgar Fawcett, and others. In that year Mr. Malone retired from lucrative law practice and moved to New York, where he engaged in literary pursuits for three years, contributing to the leading magazines and weeklies of the metropolis. The Spanish War comir on, and the demand for such writing as he had to offer being limite