Office Boy. "O, just feet shoes. There's some mistake, we all wear boots." The Reader. "The boy needs a lesson or two in hero-worship." The Contributor. "He will do." And the good man's shoes were hushed while the gentleman with the bill for same stamped defiantly down the hall. THE Contributor. "I had rather plead guilty to being a hero-worshiper than to being a member of a mutual admiration society." The shot told. An Eastern newspaper had said editorially but the day before, marked copies being kindly sent us by several thoughtful friends, that we were a lot of pedantic busy-bodies rattling around in Bret Harte's old chair. Surely we are not busy bodies, in the vulgar rendering of the term, and as for our first editor's old chair it has gone the way of all furniture years ago. In fact literary folk and literary things have no right to expect any such fostering care in sunny California as that chair would necessarily have had to have eked out an existence of twentyeight years. In any case, alive or dead, that chair belonged to Anton Roman and not Bret Harte. Had Mr. Roman never been born Mr. Harte might never have been heard of, and the present circle would have been strangers to one another and to their villifiers. So may Roman bear the blame as well as the glory. However, as individuals and as a body, we have to confess with no hidden feelings of condescension that we do not pretend to be a whit better than the outside world. The confession is a forced one, or it would never have occurred to us that it was worth making. Possibly this present humility may wear off in time. When the Contributor publishes his "Reminiscences," and the Poet his "Echoes of the Golden Gate," and the Parson gets his D. D., then the Artist and the rest of us may set up a mutual admiration society as the big authors do in New York,- or better still, found a publication like "The Critic" to sound our praises. It is a strange and awesome thing, this custom among writers to tell each other and the world what great lights the others are. Mr. Gilder asks Mr. Zangwill to write an article for the Critic, relating all the remarkable and fearsome peculiarities of his friend Mr. Hall Caine or Du Maurier. Mr. Gilder in return prints a picture on the next page of Mr Zangwill and bids the multitude come forth and do obeisance. The following week Mr. Zangwill or Mr. Caine tells an interviewer that Mr. G. is one of America's sweetest singers, whereupon a brother editor's magazine publishes five or six or seven or eight pictures of the "singer" on one page. It is a marvelous system but it pays as it sells their books. So I say it was unkind of our contemporary to gibe us. If he only knew how timidly and modestly we from month to month send our little argosy out as a burden on the desert of the sea, getting few hails from passing boats and not a dip of the flag from the great three-masters of commerce, he would neither call us pedantic nor throw the ghost of Bret Harte's old chair at our heads. The Reader. "I wish the Contributor would fill Bret Harte's chair or any The squeaking of his Trilbys is becoming too self-conscious." The Office Boy. "Proof." THE GREEK CHURCH ON THE PACIFIC. HEN their eager desire for valuable pelts was beginning to draw Russian traders and adventurers from Siberia to the shores of America, the Aleutian Islands were naturally among their earliest discoveries. The commander of the first Russian vessel to touch at one of the group was Stephen Glottof, who spent the winter of 1759-1760 at Oumnak. He and his companions erected there a large cross, on the site of which a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas was afterwards erected. They lived in harmony with the wild natives, and finally persuaded their chief to be baptized, and to permit his son to go to Kamchatka to be edu cated. The boy was taken to Petropaulovsk, and returned after some years familiar with the language and manners of the Russians. This first convert to Christianity became a head chief among his countrymen, and contributed greatly to the spread of religion among them. For some time after Glottof's visit to Oumnak the Russians in the Oonalashka district did not baptize any more Aleuts, being chiefly occupied in fighting with and nearly exterminating them. In 1780 they began to turn their attention again to religious matters, their anxiety to convert the natives arising, however, rather from prudential and commercial than from any more creditable motives. The influence of religion made the natives more pacific and easy to deal with, and converts gave their trade exclusively to their religious preceptors. Thus rough hunters and shrewd traders were the first teachers of the rudiments of Christianity to the Aleuts and Kadiakers, and paved the way for the coming of the missionaries. In 1785 Shelikof, a Siberian merchant, one of the partners in a trading company, and the real founder of the Russian colonies in America, opened at Three Saints, on Kadiak Island, the first school in Russian America. There he taught his own language, the elements of arithmetic, and the rudiments of Christianity. He was very enthusiastic, and professed to have made forty converts among the natives of Kadiak; but though he asserted that the converts began to preach Christianity to their fellow countrymen, it is hardly to be believed that Shelikof did more than teach them to make the sign of the cross and repeat a few words of the creed. For several years Shelikof continued in his reports to urge the Russian government to send priests and missionaries to the colonies to spread the peaceful doctrines of Christianity. Nor was he wholly disinterested; for the astute merchant perceived that his anxiety for the spread of Christianity would produce a favorable impression upon the commission appointed to examine the application of the Shelikof Company for exclusive trading privileges in the colonies. At last by a ukase dated June 30, 1793, the Empress Catherine II. ordered the Metropolitan Gabriel to select men fitted for missionary work, Shelikof having promised to convey the missionaries to America and to maintain them at the expense of himself and his partners. Watkins, I ho:o. RUSSIAN CHURCH, UNION SQUARE, SAN FRANCISCO. were treated, saying that in some cases they had to work for their living. The hunters, too, did not like the priests, because they rebuked them for their intercourse with native women. The head of the mission, the Archimandrite loassaf, was respectfully treated, as the agents of the company took case to check their subordinates in his case. But even he wrote letters to Shelikof containing the bitterest denunciations of Baranof, and complaining that he could not get a church built. The first winter at St. Paul's, Kadiak, was, doubtless, one of considerable discomfort and some privation for the priests, who had sailed for America already imbued with strong prejudices against the colonies, and ready to view everything in its worst light. The missionaries even asserted that they had to pick up food on the beach, while Baranof and his associates feasted, but this statement does not find support in the accounts given by naval officers and other visitors to the settlements. In 1795 Father Juvenal opened a school at Three Saints, Kadiak, the first since that of Shelikof. Teachers and taught were on mutually good terms, and the school was getting on pretty well, when in June, 1796, instructions came from the Bishop at Irkutsk, in whose diocese Russian America was, that Juvenal should go to the trading station at Ilyamna. Next day he celebrated service for the last time at Three Saints, and was particularly impressed by the fervor with which Baranof joined the singing and re in sponses. In July he set sail on the ship Catherine, on which he met with rude treatment, poor fare, and a rough passage. The latter part of his voyage was both tedious and dangerous, being made from island to island in bidarkas, or native canoes. Reaching the Kenai River, he found a trading-station of the Lebedeff Company, where he held services and baptized several persons. With much difficulty he pursued his journey to Ilyamna, where the chief received him in a friendly manner, gave him a native boy who knew some Russian as a servant, and promised to build a house for him. The chief professed to be a convert, and in company with one of his wives and two servants, was baptized in the presence of his tribe. But when Juvenal began to tell the natives that they must put away all their wives but one, and must marry her, the chief and others became hostile to him. Most |