to teach the unwilling, dirty, half-breed and Spanish children that formed the convent school.

He had arrived in California in the midst of the autumn, when the brown, almost naked country presented the most forlorn contrast to the cheerful green fields and forests of his native Franconia; the harvests stacked in the midst of boundless acres, the wide ranges where the sheep and cattle seemed to him to starve on naked hills, carried an impression of solitude that was well calculated to deepen the feelings of homesickness which he found waiting to seize him. He had, however, one great creature comfort: it was his violin, and in his lonesome little room he fed his longings for his fatherland, and stirred up his sensibilities, by the plaintive, familiar airs of home.

It was unfortunate for a young man in this sensitive condition of feeling to be thrown upon the compassion of a beautiful young woman: it was especially unfortunate for the youth who was just about to abjure forever the thoughts and the society of woman; but he felt his heart melt the moment Prudence spoke to him in his mother tongue. Suddenly the one woman he had hitherto worshiped, and as he thought loved, his blessed madonna, became a cold abstraction. A beautiful girl, with bright hair and clear eyes, and a musical voice full of kindness speaking his native language in broken accents, possessed all his thoughts. Suddenly he had arrived at the consciousness of human longings that had never before been awakened. The life about him grew all at once dreary, empty, and hopeless; the goal of his ambition, the priesthood, and his approaching consecration seemed like a dreadful abyss, into which he was about to throw all his hopes of earthly happiness. His saints, on whom he called to be delivered from temptation, all seemed far off and helpless; but the mocking figures of devils, of which there were not a few in the grotesque and hideous pictures in the chapel, seemed very near.

He sat day after day, in the dull, ill-smelling school-room, surrounded by a score of dirty, evil-eyed boys, who ridiculed his

broken English, and irritated his sensitiveness. He asked for out-door toil, and found a little rest for his feelings in drawing stones from the river's bed to build up the broken walls of the garden, and in trimming the shrubbery in readiness for the approaching winter. But when night came, within the empty walls of the little room there came a piteous struggle. The vows of the church and the expectation of his friends, the threatenings of the future unseen world, all swept over him, and in turn were swept away by the image of a young girl, and a longing to be loved. The confessional gave him no comfort-he could not confess a sin he could not forsake. Only his violin gave him any peace, and that, he felt quite sure, did not set him back towards his duty, but ministered to his longings. Poor Hermann! He did penance in the dark hours of the night, he doubled his diligence in all the duties and prescriptions of the church, but he thought of nothing so much as the possibility of again seeing the being who had made him wretched.

A rain, the first of the season, had occurred soon after the visit of the cousins to the Mission, and it was a fortnight before they again found themselves on the well-known road. The dust was well laid, and the landscape had all the fascination of early spring. The faint green of the "filaree" had spread on the low hills, the fields were covered with young grass, and echoed to the songs of early larks and rain-birds.

Our travelers, keenly alive to these new aspects of the place they were already so much in love with, galloped over the road in great exhilaration. Prudence had not thought of the young priest, as she would have called him, for many days; but as she neared the Mission, she became conscious of an uneasy wish that she might not see him again. Cousin Lawrence was much at her side but little in her thoughts; for, fancy-free, she lived in an enjoyment of the present, and a vague expectation of future happiness, which demanded very little of any one in particular.

Father Geronimo took his guests into his

private room, where they spent an hour in turning over shelves full of Indian pottery, and fossil and recent shells-curios that were a good deal more interesting to their collector than to the visitors, although they were able to find considerable pleasure in them; for it was a rich collection of shells from many seas, the fruit of a great many years of labor, and the gratification of one of many tastes with which this priest had consoled his years of isolation. Suddenly the wail of a violin struck their ears.

"It is Fra Hermann," said the Padre; "poor fellow! he has the heimweh badly." "Who is Hermann ?" asked Fanny. Prudence began to wonder what she should do to turn this conversation.

"He is a young scholastic, who was sent to us a month ago from the Seminary of Tübingen. He will take the full orders of priest next week, and a great addition he will be to our brotherhood, for he is a devout, learned young man. But he pines for his native land; and no one here can speak with him, for he knows neither English nor Spanish."

"Prudence, you might give him a word of comfort in German, if Father Geronimo would permit it. I have always thought," Fanny continued, speaking to the priest, "that one of the chief pleasures of knowing a foreign language is the opportunity it affords of speaking to an exile in his own tongue." "Yours, daughter, is the true spirit of the mother church; and is your sister of your mind?"

Prudence started inwardly, as she foresaw the probability of another interview with the blushing friar; for an instant she resolved not to allow it; then she felt this was too absurd, and she allowed the conversation to drift on.

"Prudence, here is a chance to begin Sister of Mercy," replied Fanny. "My sister speaks German pretty well," she continued to the Father, "and I dare say she would like to talk to your poor young priest."

"Not priest yet, but he soon will be. Let me call him; you shall minister to the peace of his soul."

Prudence could not refuse to agree to this proposal without betraying a feeling which she did not want suspected; and another thought occurred to her: was the priest spreading a little Romish net to entangle her? She resolved to say as little as possible, and decided, at the same time, that visits to the Mission were not as romantic as they had once seemed, and she should come no more. As they spoke, the gray frock of Hermann appeared upon the veranda, and the priest called him:

"Here is a young lady who can talk about the land you are sighing for, Brother Hermann." He had forgotten apparently that this introduction had taken place once before; how it had affected the "peace of his soul," he was far from guessing.

Fra Hermann recognized Prudence with a momentary confusion, but instantly there was a change in his manner that quite reassured her. He stepped into the otherwise empty school-room, the scene of his daily toil, and seating himself beside her, they were soon launched upon a full tide of eager conversation about Germany. He had seen but little beyond his native village and the town in which his seminary life was passed; she had made the tour of both highways and byways; and there was not a great deal of common ground; but she asked him questions about his home and friends, the most natural, but in his frame of mind the most dangerous, topic. He was all ready to enlarge upon his personal experience.

"My mother and father and brothers and sisters live still in the town of Hochingen, and I have cousins all over the Neckar valley. Many years ago, while I was yet but a little boy, my mother settled that I should go into the church, and I myself have dreamed of nothing else. But now it is all changed. I have renounced the church; I will never be a priest."

Prudence grew alarmed, but commanded herself. Hurrying passionately on, he continued: "For I love you, lady! Since I saw you in this place two weeks ago, I have thought of nothing but you. You are now to me more than everything on earth or in

heaven. I will follow you into the world if you will give me leave to love you. can never enter again into the bondage I have renounced. I can never serve the church. I will fly far from this convent, and be happy if I can be allowed to love you."

"O, hush," cried Prudence, as soon as she could speak; "this is dreadful: it is wicked; I could never have supposed you would feel so."

"No," he answered bitterly; "you think that I am only a priest. I cannot seem to you, in this frock, like another man. I will throw it aside, and if I cannot love you, I am ruined."

Prudence started up in distress. "O don't, don't talk so; I must go, and you must forget me! Of course you are just the same as a priest, and you will have to act like one."

"Will you not let me love you? I will be a Protestant clergyman; my education fits me for many things; I will take you to the beautiful Neckar valley, and live for you."

You don't know what you are saying; it is all impossible. You would be very wretched, even if I could care for you, after you have been what you are." She grew more and more distressed, and rose to go.

As she stooped to gather up her ridingdress, he suddenly caught the hand she dropped, kissed it passionately, and then turned abruptly away, and she saw him no more. She could have cried with pity and vexation.

"What misery I have caused! Why did I ever come here again? Why did that stupid Padre bring him to me? it was positively cruel. Poor fellow! how can I ever forgive myself?" In such a tumult of thought and feeling she walked to her horse, and prepared to escape from the place.

In a few moments her sister and cousin joined her. She took refuge in a swift canter, in which she soon distanced them; but upon reaching a broad oak that made a landmark on the homeward road, she paused and waited. She had recovered herself sufficiently to meet their questions; but she trusted that Lawrence, at least, would never guess what had happened.

The painful romance haunted her for a few weeks with a kind of remorse. She took no more rides to the Mission, and, to the gratification of her cousin, was always ready for his company whenever she rode. The fear of meeting Hermann disturbed the remaining weeks of her stay in Las Flores, but they fortunately were few. Fanny's health was so little improved that they left early in January for the Sandwich Islands.

A few weeks after, the brotherhood at the San Felipe Mission were astonished one morning to find that the melancholy young German novice had abandoned the order. Another Sunday, and the archbishop would have administered the irrevocable vows of a a priest; Father Geronimo mourned the loss of a learned and spiritual young helper; but no one at the Mission knew that Hermann had followed a woman into the wide world, and left the church forever.

J. G. Oakley.

In the summer of 1868, for occupation and diversion, I determined to visit Mexico, a country that had always interested me greatly, and for whose success I was much concerned. On the 2nd of September I took the Juniatta for Havana, thence to continue to Vera Cruz on a

Spanish steamer. The annoyance of the custom-house at Havana, in transhipping baggage, makes a through line desirable in case the passenger has no wish to stop more than two or three days at Havana. Passengers were not permitted to tranship baggage from one vessel to another without taking

it ashore to the custom-house and having it examined with what object it is impossible to understand, for no matter what one has, if he has no intention of landing it, it does not seem to be possible that the customhouse can be interested. They probably knew what they were about if I did not; at least, it is to be hoped they did—even if they had no other object than to annoy passengers. We were only three going through to Mexico; the other passengers were principally machinists and mechanics, going to work on sugar plantations in Cuba. We arrived at two o'clock on the 8th, and were fortunate to find the Spanish steamer still in port, and to sail at five. The interval of three hours was taken up in getting from

steamer to the other, through the custom-house.

We found the Spanish steamer smaller than the American, but cleaner and with a better table, in the Spanish style, savoring strongly of garlic, onions, and red pepper. The officers wore a uniform, and kept much aloof from the passengers, none of whom seemed to be distinguished. They were mostly Mexican, two or three Spaniards, two Chinamen, a dirty old priest, and but two ladies, one of them an emigrant from Spain, with her husband, and a little boy two years old, in a semi-nude state, and of excellent good nature. The other was a young lady just out of the convent school in Havana, and on her way to her home in Tampico. A young Mexican from Laguna, Tobasco, just returning from two years at school in England, to follow his forefather's business of exporting logwood, was to us the most interesting passenger, because he could speak English. My two companions from the Juniatta, were Americans, on business for houses in Philadelphia, and their destination was the same as mine, the City of Mexico.

We dropped anchor in the harbor of Vera Cruz on the morning of the 13th, and left on the same afternoon at half-past one o'clock, on the train for Paso del Macho. Vera Cruz is admirably constructed for the cultivation and perpetuation of pestilential

diseases. With about two hundred acres of densely built houses, inhabited by from ten to twenty thousand people; with very narrow streets, and a surface drainage in which the filth of the city wends its way so slowly into the Gulf that it has abundance of time to send forth all its poisoning properties upon the heated air-of which you are made fully aware in every nook and corner of the city by the reeking odors which offend your nostrils, and from which you only partially escape in case your bed-chamber is on the second or third floor-can it be wondered that Vera Cruz is so terribly unhealthy?

One of the Philadelphians had been in Mexico before. He was a warm advocate of the Juarez Government, and had taken part with the Liberals against Maximilian; he had labored hard to persuade his companion and myself that travel in Mexico was safer than in the United States; that the accounts of robbing and murders were exaggerations. I had, however, noticed that he was well provided with a Winchester rifle and a self-cocking revolver, with an abundance of ammunition, and that he had induced his companion to provide himself in the same way. He was the first to inquire about the state of the roads, and was unremitting in his cautions to us about the care of the baggage, which he would not permit to be left without one of us to watch it, for a moment even. At Paso del Macho he suggested that we stop one day, for the reason that the robbers generally robbed the stage that connected with the steamer. In paying for our tickets to Paso del Macho, we received a receipt for seventyfive cents for "public security," over and above the passage-money, which seemed also significant.

The railroad extended but forty-seven miles to Paso del Macho, and was in a wretched condition. Some of the passengers would not ride over the bridge at Soledad, but walked over from the station. The train went very slowly, and stopped from fifteen to twenty minutes at each of the stations, which are about six to ten miles apart.

It was about six o'clock when we stopped at the end of this wonderful evidence of Mexican enterprise. An old gentleman told me that thirty years before he traveled three miles on this road, which was then the extent to which it was completed. At Paso del Macho the road was still six miles from the mountains. We were told that eighty-seven miles were completed at the other end, from the City of Mexico to Apizaco. What financial management could have conceived the idea of hauling the rails and rolling stock from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico on wagons, to build a railroad from Vera Cruz to that city? The road was said to have cost already more than it should have cost to complete the whole, and yet barely more than one-third of it was completed.

Paso del Macho proved to be a miserable village that has grown into existence since the railroad reached there. The rainy season not being yet at an end, we had abundance of the most penetrating moisture in the two nights that we spent at this terminus. The streets of the town were fearfully muddy; the moisture penetrated everything; our beds were more like a pack in a watercure establishment. Our discomforts, how ever, were greatly augmented when we entered the stage, which is one of those ancient vehicles that used to travel over the Alleghanies, on the National Road, before the steam-car; it is called in Mexico a diligencia. These vehicles have usually nine or ten mules or horses hitched to them, and are certainly well driven, if not otherwise a credit to the country. We were crowded to the full capacity of the stage. A Mexican woman with three children and a nurse had the back seat; the head of this family, an old man, with two fellow-passengers of the steamer, had the middle seat; and my two friends and I, with our backs towards Mexico, had the front seat. The middle pas senger of the middle seat was the Spanish woman with the semi-nude boy. She was very timid, and in constant alarm about robbers and fearing the stage would upset. Whenever we reached a rapid descent, she would let go of her child in her fear and seize

the straps on the back of her seat, and the little fellow would be left to tumble about on the laps of the six passengers that sat facing each other on the front and middle seats. He was wonderfully good natured, and took it all in good part, and seldom joined in the chorus that either one or the other, and sometimes all, of the three children on the back seat saw fit to keep up nearly all the time. Three or four passengers rode on top; among them the father of the good-natured child, the husband of the timid mother. As we set off at five o'clock in the morning, with an escort of five or six men of the rural guard of the country, miserably armed and equipped, we discussed the gallant defense we should be able to make in case we should be attacked by robbers, crowded as we were with women and children, and with such an escort. I think we each mentally commended ourselves to blind fortune, and hoped we should not be tried as to what we would do if attacked. The seventy-five cents we paid for securi de publico is a local tax to assist in keeping up the home-guard escort that accompanied us. I should have felt quite as safe if I had had the money and no escort, for the seventyfive cents would help to buy off the robbers and save me from abuse, which one is sure to get in case he has no money, as was my case.

The trip was certainly a very trying one, and our relative capacity for endurance displayed itself constantly on the journey. The greatest stoic of the party was the old man with the large family on the back seat; he left the care of the children to his wife, and no matter how much they cried or how much she worried, it did not disturb him in the least. The most unhappy man in the stage was a young Spaniard who was taken by us for an actor, from the fact that he was fond of declaiming in Spanish, on the passage from Havana, and reading aloud to such. as were disposed to listen to him. He was of no use to himself, and a great annoyance to every one in the stage. He was incapable even of taking care of his hat, which he carried in a paper hat-box, and which