JIM DOTY'S SADDLE-HORSE. "HE was a middle-sized man, with black hair, and one o' these here musstashes that curled up at both ends," said Mr. Milo Bush. Home-made curl, I took it. Said his name was Williams; and he was from the East, but of course he wasn't to blame fer that. We was all willing to do what we could to help him to forget it and make a man of him. This here coming from New York or Boston is a drawback-it's a drag on any man-but he can live it down if he really wants to. You may doubt it, but I've seen it done.

"Well, we was helpful to the feller-never asked him what he had to leave the East fer, and planned to try to learn him our ways. We decided that it was our first dooty to learn him to ride. Jim Doty had a bronco named Walking-Beam which we had used on sev'ral occasions before for instructing the Eastern pilgrim. In fact, Walking-Beam wa'n't used fer anything else, since he was a little too tough fer even the boys to enjoy riding. We made it a rule never to give a tenderfoot a les son on Walking - Beam without at least two doctors right on the ground; and even then sometimes they didn't get the feller put back together right, though they had been there and seen him shook to pieces and scattered around. Walking-Beam was just the buckingest hoss that ever riz and fell. Why, you might turn him out loose, and s'pose a fly lit on his back. Did he switch his tail or wag around his head? Not much; he just bucked that fly off. All the flies in town got so they knowed him, and fit shy of him. Riding him was just like-why, there wa'n't no such thing as riding him-there was getting on and getting off-mounting and dismounting, and that's all. Riding that hoss consisted in climbing on and regaining consciousness.

It

"Well, the second morning says Jim to the feller, 'Stranger, might I ask if you're fond of equestrianeous exercise - hossback riding, as we say here?' 'Ye-as,' says Williams, slow like; I've rid some. But I understand that you have these here buckers?' We do,' says Jim, turning his honest bloo eyes straight on the feller. Many of 'em, I regret to say. comes through ignorance -they ain't broke right, Mr. Williams. Now I've got a hoss I call Feather Bed. He's a saddle-hoss-that's what he is. You can depend on him. He's always the same. His gait-now, see here, I ain't no hand to brag, and I won't say a word about that hoss's gait. But if you would like to take him and have a look at our bootiful country this morning, you're more'n welcome. There ain't no better hoss west o' the Missouri River fer looking over the country with,' and he winked at us, meaning, of course, that you got throwed so high that yon had a good view. "The feller seemed pleased, and said he'd be glad of the chance; so Jim went down and saddled up the Beam and led him out. He never had no objections to a saddle when

there was a prospect that a man was going to get on it, so he come along, 'pearing sleepy like. Jim says: Here you be, Mr. Williams. If he don't travel just to suit you, speak to him.' All right, Mr. Doty,' says Williams, walking up. The doctors pushed to the front, there being a passel of about a hundred of us idjits, and the feller put his foot into the sturrup and swung up on him easy and graceful. I'd saw Walking-Beam in a state of eruption before, but I must say I never seen him make such a savage start as he did this time. When his back went up it was like the explosion of a powder-mill. And that feller-well, there wa'n't no way of measuring how high he did go, but if anybody had had their watch out they might of timed his fall. But inmejitly after he did get down you could of knocked us all over with a mint-julep straw. That feller lit on his feet-and where? On the hoss's back! Lit there like a bird. Folded his arms and stood there like a statute. Smiled, and done as he had been told-spoke to that living yearthquake-Steady, there, boy, steady'-just like that. Well, at first we thought Walking Beam was too dumfounded to move again; but he wa'n't. He looked up and seen that smiling image on his back, then he just unlimbered and made the effort of his life. For ten minutes his motions just simply jarred the winders in the whole town. And all the time that feller loafing around on his bare back, the saddle having gone up at the first h'ist, and not, so fur as I know, having come down yet. And not satisfied with standing there, but he must dance a little, and turn a couple o' haudsprings, and stand on his head. And then he took out some tobacker and rolled a cigarette, and lit it, and begun to smoke, and to blow rings--you may pizen me with ice water if he didn't. And when the hoss at last fell down from being exhausted, he steps off, and says he to Jim: 'Mr. Doty, that's a fine beast you've got there. Sort of a lady's hoss, I take it. Make a good fambly nag;' and he walks over to the hotel.

ever since he answered "Adsum" to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master, so many years ago, is now appearing in the Introductions to the "Biographical Edition of Thackeray," as contributed by his daughter, Mrs. Ritchie, to the several volumes. We found many pleasant glimpses, last month, of the author of "Vanity Fair," not only as a writer but as a man; this month we are shown the author of Pendennis, as a son, as a schoolboy in the Charter-House, and as an undergraduate in the University of Cambridge. Mrs. Ritchie, quite unconsciously, perhaps, is telling the story which her father, in his self-effacing reserve, half hoped would never be told; and she is telling it from his mother's recollections, from his children's memories of his own talk, and from his own letters, in the only way in which he, himself, would have liked the telling of it.

Those who are fond of "Pen" and of his friend will enjoy the following extract from Mrs. Ritchie's Memoir. "There were Pendenmises and Warringtons, too, at Cambridge, in the year 1829 [When Thackeray was there]. Dobbin was there also, in another colored coat. Although they did not become intimate until after they left college, my father's relations to Edward Fitz Gerald had, perhaps, some resemblance to those of Pendennis and Warrington; and yet my father was not Pendeunis any more than the other was Warrington." This, somehow, is a disappointment to certain lovers of Thackeray and Pendennis, who have always had an undefined suspicion that their creator put something of himself in this particular creation. And if there was no intimate association between them, how are we to understand Thackeray's peculiar affection for the mother of Pendennis? "I can remember the morning Helen died," writes Mrs. Ritchie. "My father was in his study in Young Street, Kensington, [in 1850, when Miss Anne Thackeray, afterwards Mrs. Ritchie, could not have been very old in years] sitting at the table at which he wrote. It stood in the middle of the room, and he used to sit facing the door. I was going into the room, but he motioned me away. An hour afterwards he came into our school-room, half-laughing and half-ashamed, aud said to us: 'I do not know what James can have thought of me

The History of Pendennis. His Fortunes and Misfortunes, his Friends, and his Greatest Enemy. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. Biographical Edition Edited, with an Introduction, by Mrs. ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE. Illustrated, Crown 8vo, Cloth, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top. $150. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

you left, and me

Helen Pendeunis's death!" She passed away, you will remember, in her son's arms, with a blessing on her lips; a happy ending for a widowed mother, happy in her son. We all know how Dickens wept over the loss of Little Nell, and we are not surprised at any expression of visible emotion on Dickens's part; but there must have been some closer tie than that of mere creative fiction between Thackeray and the woman he "blubbered over," even in a half-ashamed, half-laughing way.

There are in Mrs. Ritchie's Introduction to "Pendennis" many touches as tender and as sympathetic as these, not only in what she says, but in what she quotes Thackeray as saying. "I have made a fool of myself," he wrote to his mother in 1829; "I have rendered myself a public character; I have exposed myself. I spouted at the Union. I don't know what evil star reigns to-day, or what malignant demon could prompt me to such an act of folly; but, however, up I got, and blustered, and blundered, and retracted, and stuttered upon the character of Napoleon .... I stuck in the midst of the first footstep, and then in endeavoring to extricate myself I went deeper and deeper still:...until I rushed out of the quagmire into which I had so foolishly plunged myself, and stood down, like Lucifer, never to rise again with open mouth in that august assembly." This was the same Thackeray, who wrote for all times, but who was to flounder and to blunder, so successfully and so delightfully, upon every occasion when, in later years, he attempted to open his mouth in public, without carefully written preparation.

With one brief picture of Thackeray's university life this note upon "Pendennis" must close.

"I do not know," says Mrs. Ritchie, "whether young men are still arranged in alphabetical order at college examinations. I have been told by a friend that when my father went up to Cambridge to matriculate he sat next Dr. Thompson, the future Master of Trinity.... Once, long years after, Dr. Thompson spoke to me of those early days, when he used to see my father and the Tennysons following each other into the hall."

Picture it. Think of it; worshippers of heroes! Dr. Thompson often saw the Tennysons and Thackeray, following each other into the hall!

AN unnamed writer, in a late number of "Scribner's Magazine," giving his Point of View concerning the Decay of Personality in contemporary fiction, said that "One feels a

kind of chill at the end of a modern novel, where two intellectual convictions meet to go hand in hand down the long discussion named life, or separate to wander forever along different lines of thought." He asks why heroes and heroines are so unreal; why small measure of life is granted them; why, when we look for human beings we find nothing but mental attitudes? And he lays the blame upon "the women who have personified discussion in The Heavenly Twins'; who have dramatized 'The Westminster Shorter Catechism' in 'John Ward'; and who have made dogmatic doubt incarnate, in 'Robert Elsmere.'"

No one has ever discovered the Decay of Personality in the heroes and heroines of" Pendennis," or that their mental attitudes are not in entire harmony with the fact that they are every-day human beings, most delightfully portrayed. The only other romance of the month, lying now on the present Editor's Table, although it is far removed from "Pendennis" in time, in scene, in style, and in action, is equally loaded with Personality. It has no heroine, unless Madame Chiffard may be so regarded; but it has a quartette of heroes, aud one exceedingly villanous villain, who are made to appear very real, who are granted large measures of life, and who personify mental and physical activity, entirely free from doubtful dogmatism or dramatic disease.

It is a present-day, sort of Captain Kidd, story of Treasure Trove, and it is called Four for a Fortune, written for the Young Persons who read "The Round Table," but not without interest to those older persons who read to be entertained and amused. It is more serious and more trenchant than its author's first work "Tommy Toddles," which was very promising as coming from a 'prentice hand; and it shows that Mr. Albert Lee, as he says of one of his characters, "got printer's ink on his fingers in his college days; and printer's ink is a bacillus which, when once inoculated into the blood, can never be purged from the system." If Mr. Lee's future work is to be as good as that which has gone before, he need make no serious efforts to purge his blood of the printer's ink with which it has been impregnated.

IN the notice of "Peter Ibbetson," contained in these columus in the month of December, 1891, George du Maurier was quoted as saying, in reply to the question if he considered himself the successor of John Leech, that their styles of work were very different. "Leech," he answered, "is undoubtedly the founder, as it were, of the system I carry out. He was the son of Cruikshank, and Cruikshank was the son of Hogarth. In a different way, I try to follow in their footsteps. I endeavor, faith

2 Four for a Fortune. A Tale. By ALBERT LEE. IIInstrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

fully, to depict Society as it is.... And I got my cue from Mark Lemon, who was the editor of 'Punch' when I joined; [at the time of Leech's death in 1864, when du Maurier was thirty years of age.] 'Don't do funny things' he told me; do the graceful side of life!"

It is hardly possible to speak of du Maurier's Social Pictorial Satire,3 a volume devoted particularly to the study of Leech and Charles Keene, without applying many of du Maurier's own words concerning the founder of his system of work, to du Maurier himself. "Other men have drawn better; deeper, grander, nobler, more poetical themes have employed more accomplished pencils, even in black and white," he wrote of Leech; "but for making one glad I can think of no one to beat him." That was Leech the artist. Of Leech the man, he wrote:-"Thackeray and Sir John Millais, not bad judges, and men with many friends, have both said that they personally loved John Leech better than any man they ever knew.... He was the most sympathetic, engaging, and attractive person I [du Maurier] ever met; not funny at all in conversation, or even wishing to be-except now and then, for a capital story, which he told in perfection. The keynote of his character, socially, seemed to be self-effacement, high-bred courtesy, never failing consideration for others." Few men who have been brought into anything like familiar intercourse with him have failed to find these same qualities of mind and manner in du Maurier,-- who spelled his name with the little du," by-the-way, and was rather sensitive on the subject; although printers, in general, insist upon putting him down with the big "D," which he so much disliked.

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Very touching and tender is his account of Leech's funeral in Kensal Green. The grave is very close to Thackeray's; Canon Hole read the service; Dickens and many others were present; "and when the coffin was lowered into the grave, John Millais burst into tears and loud sobs, setting an example that was followed all round; we all forgot our manhood, and cried like women."

Notwithstanding the great influence of Leech upon du Maurier, their friendship was very limited, in point of time. They had met casually as early as 1860, but it was not until the summer of 1864 that they were to see much of each other, at Whitby, where they "used to forgather, every day, and have long walks and talks," of which the younger man made the most. And Leech died at the end of October, in the same year.

Of Charles Keene, nearer his own age, and spared until 1-91, du Maurier, naturally, saw much more. He had a high regard for the man, and a great respect for his powers as an artist. "He was one of the most singularly

Social Pictorial Satire. Reminiscences and Appreciations of English Illustrators of the Past Generation. By GEORGE DU MAURIER. Illustrated. Post Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.