We felt anxious. Would the fluffy neck be clawed to ravelings? Would insanity set in? Suddenly Fur-Cat reappeared, bounding lightly and gayly, scarcely touching earth. He came on, with little whirls and pirouettings, toying daintily with his tail; he leaped into the air to paw at some creature of his fancy, he chased imaginary worsted balls about over the grass and the piazzas. Finally, in a burst of enthusiasm born purely of his own mood, he shot up a tree and poised himself, in beautiful ease, on an upper branch.

We laughed, and we marveled a little too. Fur-Cat was not young, the days of his kittenhood lay in a dim past. Yet now the kitten in him had reasserted itself nay, more than reasserted, for in his antics there had been not only all the gay and whimsical impulses of youth, but all the power of maturity. It was a complete, a satisfying, a deeply artistic expression of cat-nature in all its possibilities.

'If this is what a bell-collar can do,' we said, 'let us give all cats bellcollars.'

But why stop at cats?

For the incident set me wondering how a bell-collar could be provided for this or that friend of mine - picturing what the effect would be.

I fancy that most of us need to have worked in us just the change that the bell-collar brought about in Fur-Cat. Not that I desire to see every lady of my acquaintance bounding lightly about her lawn, or posturing in the tree-tops, or toying with fancied images of the air. These things were right in Fur-Cat because he was Fur-Cat. They were the expression of his nature and therefore beautiful. It is a correspondingly complete and satisfying expression of their inherent nature that I long for in the good ladies, and good gentlemen, of whom I am thinking.

It is, perhaps, a habit of the North

ern races to repress extreme impulses. It is certainly a habit of the New Englander. Do we not know many and many a character whose natural colors are veiled - are overlaid indeed with the deep gray of reserve or the pale gray of hesitation? These are they whom I want to draw to me for a moment, slip on the bell-collar, — and then see!

Sometimes I have watched this very thing happen. There is, for instance, a young man who in ordinary life is bound hand and foot by his own selfconsciousness. Eye and tongue are held in slavery to it, and he walks as one compelled, looking neither to the right nor to the left. He sits, as it were, always on the edge of his chair. But give him a rag or two of costume, and a song to sing, and a miracle is wrought. He grows taller, his step is firm and elastic, his bearing has the grace of complete ease, he looks the world gayly in the eye, he not only sings his song and acts his part, but he flings out extempore witticisms and meets unforeseen emergencies with blithe unconcern. On a wave of sympathy and success he is carried, not out of himself but into himself. He enters into possession of his own personality.

And when the bell-collar is off, is the spell over? Not quite. Something remains. Each time the transformation is effected it leaves behind it traces. Some day, I believe, he will no longer need the material bell-collar. He will carry one, as Rosalind did not carry her doublet and hose, in his disposition.

There are many to whom the bit of rag and the song, or the speech, bring a similar emancipation. But there are more for whom these would never break chains, but rather fasten them tighter. Fortunately, there are other bell-collars, and not the least among them is raiment. Undoubtedly clothes are abused, yet they have their uses,

aside from those of protection. Look at Cinderella! Does any one suppose she would have come into her own place without the help of those gorgeous gowns and those little glass slippers? Does any one fancy her manners were the same, her eyes as bright, her wit as ready, when she sat among the cinders in her dingy rags? No indeed! The slippers and the gowns and the golden coach were an enfranchisement; they were her bell-collar. The Prince was never so dull as to fall in love with a thing of satin and glass. What charmed him was the adorable spirit within, which these had served to release.

Would that we had each of us a fairy godmother to fasten on us, at the right moment, just the right, the magic collar!

The world, out of fairy books, is chary in furnishing its fairy godmothers, yet most of us have friends at whose touch we become more truly and happily ourselves than at other times. They seem able to endow us, through some magic of their own, with the beauteous vestments and the glass slippers that free the spirit. These are our fairy godmothers. We do well to love them and pay them good heed, for through them we may enter into such possession of the precious gifts that we need have no dread of the striking hour. This, we must suppose, is what Cophetua did for his beggar-maid. At his glance, the queen in her blossomed, which later all the world could see.

Some there are, indeed, who are able to play the beneficent part, not to one alone, or to two or three, but to all whom they meet. They go among people flinging bell-collars to right and left. I have seen such a person come into a room, and instantly every one in it grew more vivid, more truly and happily individual. These fairy godmothers themselves are never quite

aware of the spell they exert; they think, perhaps, that the room was the same before they entered it. They see people, inevitably, with their bellcollars on, and to them the world never looks as it often does to the rest of us a little colorless, a little dull, a little unresponsive.

Success to their magic wands! It is through them, if at all, that the boulevards of the world grow rich with golden coaches, and the assemblies of the world grow bright with the gleaming robes and crystal slippers of spiritual enfranchisement.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF TEA-CAKES

THERE is a fine art in choosing the food that shall be served with afternoon tea. Although the true lover of the cup concedes that no sort of blunder can wholly destroy his exaltation, yet he admits that his joys may be inexpressibly enhanced by a wise discrimination in what is set before him.

Of muffins and tea we have heard much, and who is there to deny the succulent ecstasy thereof? Toast, well buttered and even jammed or marmaladed, has, too, its own unassailable propriety when taken with The Beverage. Of all kindred dishes one needs not much to speak. No voice can justly be raised against them; yet they are of the tea-room, the dining-room, the A.B.C.; not of the drawing-room, where one holds his cup and chats, refills, and chats again.

Anyone who serves wafers with tea is lacking in gastronomic imagination. Drinking tea and eating a wafer is like having a picnic in the wood-shed, or wearing an Easter hat with goloshes. It is a hueless compromise where there might be a vivid delight. Many otherwise excellent hostesses fail to perceive the relation between afternoon tea and its edible accompaniments. They will

serve you a hard obstinate biscuit that you break, red-faced, on the rim of your saucer, sending as likely as not, your cup bouncing over the other edge, and your tea splashing into your neighbor's lap; or they generously provide you with a huge, gelatinous cube of cake that adheres to your saucer, and renders you temporarily web-fingered, the while you attempt to formulate an epigram on Henry James, or discourse glibly as to why women like men. There is yet another type of hostess who passes with your tea a dribbling sandwich, oozing salad-dressing at every pore and containing, half concealed, a malicious, indivisible lettuce leaf. People who thus fail of maintaining the fitness of things at the tea-hour have no genuine appreciation of the drink which they dispense.

A friend of mine divides the human race into two classes, - those who eat 'Nabiscos' with tea, and those who do not. For myself, I see nothing invidious in a liking for the frail, tasteless little slabs; they are neat and innocent to the eye, they leave no sticky crumbs, and they create no havoc with white kid gloves. If they are a trifle lacking in distinction, why, so are no end of estimable articles and persons in the world. I should, however, be inclined to place more stress upon a taste for caraway cookies. To me, a caraway cooky is a delectable tid-bit, losing nothing if eaten by itself, but gaining incalculably if nibbled with afternoon tea. Those who do not regard it with joy puzzle me a little, I confess. In what spirit, I ask sadly, do they look upon existence, if a caraway cooky fails to stimulate within them a pious gratitude for the privilege of living?

Some of the Chinese dainties are not bad but that is the best that an Occidental can say of them. The flat rice-cookies derive their interest from the temples and grottoes and running

streams cameoed palely upon their discs. One eats them gingerly, conscious of the fact that he is sweeping away a country-side at a bite, and demolishing a whole landscape at one crunch of the teeth. They are, after all, ephemeral insipidities, quite incapable of pleasing the palate, though they may afford a moment's languid pleasure to the eye. There are, too, the Chinese cakes that come in blocks, like a quart of brick ice-cream, and peel off in layers, after the manner of a writing tablet; a red swastika appears smugly in the centre of every slice, guaranteeing good luck in the eating and no undue qualms afterward. These dainties are anæmic confections enough, that tease the tongue and distract the mind, but make not for that beatific blending of sense and spirit which is the consummate prerogative of afternoon tea.

The discerning tea-drinker finds nothing, perhaps, more appropriate to his mood than some variety of the oldfashioned pound cake. It has a delicate persuasiveness of its own when it appears upon the drawing-room horizon-smooth, golden, firm yet melting, topped with a deep brown crust, and scattered through with red sultanas or translucent parings of citron. Pound-cake in slices not too thick, piled upon a jade-colored Sedgi plate or one of blue-and-white Canton is a little hill of gold ingots, more seductive than Spanish bullion because less evanescent in its blessings. Still more satisfying to the demands of the occasion is the light sponge-cake baked with a rose geranium leaf in the bottom of the tin,enchanting stuff, exhaling an aroma that puts it with the foods of high romance not the dull substantials of every-day existence. And who would ask for substantials at afternoon tea? It is not a meal but a rite, founded in the hallowed past by if not the Fathers, then one may justly say

the Mothers, and preserved by an unbroken apostolic succession of devotees. We dare not say that the food of the flesh in the hour of sacrifice is beneath the nicest consideration. Surely the Greek thought not when he brought forward to the altar his cakes of poppyseed and honey.

It is fitting, then, that one select with judicious finger the viands that

one spreads before her guests when the tea-cup circulates at the dropping of twilight. There should be no too, too solid, over-unctuous, or deadly commonplace comestibles to destroy the perfect harmony of meat and drink. For with perfect harmony the gods are pleased, and thus in their beneficence they slip a gracious charm into all the recurring monotonies of human life.

[MR. BRADFORD'S 'Portraits' in the Atlantic have stirred many readers to express their likes and dislikes with freedom. On account of their intrinsic interest we print two or three from as many hundred. - THE EDITORS.]

DEAR MR. BRADFORD,

It has always been a pleasure to read your articles in the Atlantic Monthly; in fact, it has well-nigh become a habit. So, anticipating my usual pleasurable half hour I read the article on Judah P. Benjamin which appeared in the last number of that excellent magazine.

That your point of view of Mr. Benjamin's life-activity should differ from mine is your prerogative. That in the course of your article you should have cast a slur upon his people, my people too, - I cannot but feel to be outrageous and improper. Writing of his having made good a large note which he indorsed for a friend, you say that it was noteworthy for a Jew; such a remark is certainly aside from the supposed object of the article, and a gratuitous reflection upon a group in American life, whose commercial standing and integrity is at least up to that of

their Gentile neighbors and competitors, if not at times a little above it.

I feel certain that if you would take the trouble to look into the matter you might learn some mighty interesting things about the commercial morality of the Jew. I should like you to inquire into the Nipissing incident, in which the Guggenheims- now so prominent in public denunciations - showed a standard of commerical integrity rare in Wall Street or in any other financial quarter. I could tell you of an incident here in this city of an old Jewish money-broker who sacrificed a quarter of a million dollars to his sense of loyalty to a firm in difficulties, who at one time had been trusted clients. I might add several personal experiences, not least of which was the act of a small tailor, whose son I have the honor to be, who paid out the small yet to him princely sum-of five thousand dollars rather than allow paper to be dishonored which bore his name as guarantor. And I am sure this list could be extended indefinitely.

I feel certain that, with the general prejudice prevailing even in such minds as yours against the Jew, had he not

treated his customers and clients in the business and financial world honorably he never would have attained the position he holds in those circles to-day. Jacob Schiff is still spoken of as the White Man of Wall Street, and in European circles Rothschild is synonymous with honor and steadfastness. What Mr. Benjamin did in this case was what every other Jewish or Christian gentleman would have done under the same circumstances; and surely no rogue, be he Christian or Jew, would have felt in honor bound to respond to the claim.

Why in God's name and in the name of truth, honesty, and justice, cannot gentlemen like yourself write a straight account of an historical character without dragging in perforce such asides as the one to which I have the honor of calling your attention in these lines? Very respectfully yours,

MARTIN A. MEYER. [Rabbi Temple Emanu-el, San Francisco.]

DEAR MR. BRADFORD,

Will you permit me to tell you how very much I have enjoyed reading your Lee the American? I had already seen some of the chapters, but I reperused them with the same pleasure with which I read the others. The book from beginning to end is scholarly, fair, and delightful, and I am glad, as a Harvard man myself, that Mr. Adams and yourself have been the means of showing Lee's character not only to the people of the North, but to us of the South as well. I am also immensely proud, as a Southerner and a great admirer of Lee, that two Massachusetts men see him in the same light that I do.

I wonder whether you have read Stuart's Cavalry, by John S. Mosby? It occurs to me that it throws some light on General Lee's anxiety at Gettysburg.

The fight there was brought on prematurely by Generals A. P. Hill and Heth, but General Lee accepted it, and found a little later that he had stumbled into a hornet's nest. No wonder he was anxious. It may be that this is the real reason of his statement that the battle and its result was all his fault. I think we should not place much confidence in General Longstreet's book. It was written when he was old and peevish, and his peculiar relation to the people of Georgia on account of his politics, the difference in the way he and Gordon were treated by them, etc., made the old gentleman very sore. He used General Lee's splendidly magnanimous letters to him after the war in a way he should not, and altogether he is not to be taken too seriously. As you of course know, his argument about Gettysburg is absurd, amounting to this, that he did not approve of Lee's plans, and General Lee knew it; therefore he should have ordered some other general to carry them out; therefore Longstreet is to be exonerated from blame in being so terribly slow on two occasions that the fate of the battle was possibly changed by it! Just or unjust, the opinion of practically all the men at Gettysburg is that Longstreet was to blame for the merely partial victory on the second day and the defeat on the third day. The late Major Weston, of the 26th N. C., once said to me with flashing eyes, 'If Stonewall Jackson had been at Gettysburg he'd have had Longstreet shot on the field for disobedience of orders.'

Splendid warrior as he was, General Longstreet was notoriously obstinate, ridiculously so. When he was besieging Knoxville, an old farmer went to him and told him that the Federals were receiving supplies by means of flatboats from the loyal Union people in the N. C. mountains, and that if the