* NOTES OF A READER.

While these three persons are comfortably seated at the tea-table, enjoying their waffles, cold tongue, and canned peaches, and asking and answering questions helter-skelter in the delightful confusion of reunion after long separation, let us briefly inform the reader who and what they are.

And the patient reader, too long snow-bound, must be liberated also.

Masculine reader, attend to the moral of this tale: Skate well, be a hero, bravely deserve the fair, prove your deserts by your deeds, find your "perfect woman nobly planned to warm, to comfort, and command," catch her when found, and you are Blest.

Reader of the gentler sex, likewise attend: All the essential blessings of life accompany a true heart and a good complexion.

There are many things which are not brought home to the reader by such statistics.

Thus, Sainte-Beuve in the "Moniteur," De Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, Philarète Chasles, Prévost-Paradol in the "Journal des Débats," not to mention the numerous writers of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," the "Européenne," and the "Nationale," vie with each other in extracting from all that appears what is most acceptable to the general reader.

It must seem strange to many a reader that the very man who in early life could utter such sweet flattery, who long was the foremost to bear incense, should now consider it his duty "to seek the foot of clay beneath the splendid drapery, and to replace about the statue the aromas of the sanctuary by the perfumes of the boudoir."

To the general reader it may be of value as characterizing with fidelity some of the tendencies of French thought.

When the publication of the entire text is completed it is intended to print, by way of a commentary thereon, a companion volume containing a series of explanatory notes upon the text, a glossary and whatsoever supplementary material may be deemed to be of use to the student or to the general reader.

Good literature was a passion with her, and while never an omnivorous reader, she had a natural instinct for the best in language.

Nor are we here to dwell on those biographical details which belong to the pen rather than the voice; to the book and the reader rather than the address and the hearer.

" The reader will bear me witness that I had met my first rebuff with humility.

I leave the Reader to his own Opinion thereon.]

It is hoped that they will be found sufficient to explain every allusion that might otherwise be unintelligible to the English reader.

" We have reproduced these observations by a distinguished French astronomer, in order to show the reader what was the nature, and how great was the importance, of Herschel's labours, and in how remarkable and comprehensive a manner he conducted his survey of the celestial phenomena.

His style in this valuable manual of information has a charm of its own, and entices the reader into the consideration of subjects apparently abstruse.

But we must no longer delay the reader by our gossip.

For a long discussion between myself and Mr. Sidney Hartland, involving minute detail, I may refer the reader to Folk-Lore, the last number of 1898 and the first of 1899, and to the Introduction to the new edition of my 'Myth, Ritual, and Religion' (1899).

When Dr. Englehart was gonefor so I still choose to call him for some reasons, although I give my reader credit for still more astuteness than I possessed myself, and believe that he has long ago recognized, through this cloud of mystery and travesty thrown about him, an old acquaintancethe child Ernie rose from the bed on which he had lain tremulous and observant, with his small hands clinched, his eyes on fire.

On the back of this well-worn letter was a pencil-scrawl, which, although I read it last, I present first to my reader, that he may trace link by link the chain of villainy that bound together my two oppressors.

This, her longest and most successful inspiration, I now lay before the reader: SABRA'S SPERITUAL.

Hope revived, but in a form that promised no fruition, and which later will be made plainer to the reader.

I had heard of Bertie in the interval as a successful débutante as a reader of Shakespeare, and had received her sparse and sparkling letters confirming report, truly "angel visits, few and far between.

Four years more, and we heard of Bertie in England, as the rarely-gifted and beautiful American reader, "Lavinia La Vigne."