some verses to a Boston paper which were printed. She wrote nothing more until two years after the death of her husband, when she sent a number of poems to New York papers which were signed H. H. and they attracted wide and favorable criticism. These poems were collected and published under the title of "Verses from H. H." (1870). After the death of her children she decided to devote herself to literature, and from that time to the close of her life-twelve years later-her books came in rapid succession and she gained wide distinction as a writer of prose and verse. Both her poetry and prose works are characterized by deep thoughtfulness and a rare grace and beauty of diction.

In 1873 Mrs. Hunt removed to Colorado for the benefit of her health, and in 1875 became the wife of Wm. S. Jackson, a merchant of Colorado Springs; and it was in this beautiful little city, nestling at the foot of Pike's Peak, with the perpetual snow on its summit always in sight, that she made her home for the remainder of her life, though she spent considerable time in traveling in New Mexico, California and the Eastern States gathering material for her books.

Briefly catalogued, the works of Helen Hunt Jackson are: "Verses by H. H." (1870); "Bits of Travel" (1873); “Bits of Talk About Home Matters" (1873); "Sonnets and Lyrics" (1876); "Mercy Philbrick's Choice" (1876); “Hettie's Strange History" (1877); "A Century of Dishonor" (1881); "Ramona" (1884). Besides the above, Mrs. Jackson wrote several juvenile books and two novels in the "No Name" series; and that powerful series of stories, published under the penname of "Saxe Holme," has also been attributed to her, although there is no absolute proof that she wrote them. "A Century of Dishonor" made its author more famous than anything she produced up to that time, but critics now generally agree that "Ramona," her last book, is her most powerful work, both as a novel and in its beneficent influence. It was the result of a most profound and exhaustive study of the Indian problem, to which she devoted the last and best years of her life. It was her most conscientious and sympathetic work. It was through Helen Hunt Jackson's influence that the government instituted important reforms in the treatment of the red men.

In June, 1884, Mrs. Jackson met with a painful accident, receiving a bad fracture of her leg. She was taken to California while convalescing and there contracted malaria, and at the same time developed cancer. The complication of her ailments resulted in death, which occurred August 12, 1885. Her remains were carried back to Colorado, and, in accordance with her expressed wish, buried on the peak looking down into the Cheyenne Canyon. The spot was dear to her. The cabin below had been built for her as a quiet retreat, where, when she so desired, she could retire with one or two friends, and write undisturbed, alone with the primeval forest and the voices which whispered through nature, and the pure, cool mountain-air.

CHRISTMAS NIGHT AT SAINT PETER'S.

OW on the marble floor I lie:
I am alone:

Though friendly voices whisper nigh,
And foreign crowds are passing by,

I am alone.

Great hymns float through
The shadowed aisles. I hear a slow
Refrain, "Forgive them, for they know

Not what they do!"

dow was full of artificial flowers, of the cheapest sort, but of very gay colors. Here and there a knot of ribbon or a bit of lace had been tastefully added, and the whole effect was really remarkably gay and pretty. Tap, tap, tap, went the small hand against the window-pane; and with every tap the unconscious little creature murmured, in a half-whispering, half-singing voice, "I choose that color." "I choose that color." "I choose that color."

It was a very rainy day. The pavement of the sidewalks on this street is so sunken and irregular that in wet weather, unless one walks with very great care, he steps continually into small wells of water. Up to her ankles in one of these wells stood I stood motionless. I could not see her face; the little girl, apparently as unconscious as if she but there was in her whole attitude and tone the were high and dry before a fire. It was a very cold heartiest content and delight. I moved a little to day too. I was hurrying along, wrapped in furs, and the right, hoping to see her face, without her seeing not quite warm enough even so. The child was but me; but the slight movement caught her ear, and in thinly clothed. She wore an old plaid shawl and a a second she had sprung aside and turned toward me. ragged knit hood of scarlet worsted. One little red The spell was broken. She was no longer the queen ear stood out unprotected by the hood, and drops of of an air-castle, decking herself in all the rainbow water trickled down over it from her hair. She hues which pleased her eye. She was a poor beggar seemed to be pointing with her finger at articles in child, out in the rain, and a little frightened at the the window, and talking to some one inside. I approach of a stranger. She did not move away, watched her for several moments, and then crossed however; but stood eyeing me irresolutely, with that the street to see what it all meant. I stole noiselessly pathetic mixture of interrogation and defiance in her up behind her, and she did not hear me. The win-face which is so often seen in the prematurely devel

oped faces of poverty-stricken children. "Aren't the | Interpreter, Teacher! I will remember you all my colors pretty?" I said. She brightened instantly. life."

I.

"Yes'm. I'd like a goon av thit blue."

Why should days ever be dark, life ever be color

"But you will take cold standing in the wet," said less? There is always sun; there are always blue "Won't you come under my umbrella?" and scarlet and yellow and purple. We cannot reach She looked down at her wet dress suddenly, as if them, perhaps, but we can see them, if it is only it had not occurred to her before that it was raining." through a glass, and "darkly,"-still we can see Then she drew first one little foot and then the other them. We can "choose" our colors. It rains, perout of the muddy puddle in which she had been standing, and, moving a little closer to the window, said, "I'm not jist goin' home, mem. I'd like to stop here a bit.”

So I left her. But, after I had gone a few blocks, the impulse seized me to return by a cross street, and see if she were still there. Tears sprang to my eyes as I first caught sight of the upright little figure, standing in the same spot, still pointing with the rhythmic finger to the blues and reds and yellows, and half chanting under her breath, as before, "I choose that color." "I choose that color." "I choose that color."

I went quietly on my way, without disturbing her again. But I said in my heart, "Little Messenger,

haps; and we are standing in the cold. Never mind. If we look earnestly enough at the brightness which is on the other side of the glass, we shall forget the wet and not feel the cold. And now and then a passer-by, who has rolled himself up in furs to keep out the cold, but shivers nevertheless, who has money in his purse to buy many colors, if he likes, but, nevertheless, goes grumbling because some colors are too dear for him,-such a passer-by, chancing to hear our voice, and see the atmosphere of our content, may learn a wondrous secret,-that pennilessness is not poverty, and ownership is not possession; that to be without is not always to lack, and to reach is not to attain; that sunlight is for all eyes that look up, and color for those who "choose.”

F Mrs. Burnett were not a native of England, she might be called a typical American woman. As all Americans, however, are descended at very few removes from foreign ancestors, it may, nevertheless, be said of the young English girl, who crossed the ocean with her widowed mother at the age of sixteen, that she has shown all the pluck, energy and perseverance usually thought of as belonging to Americans. She settled with her mother and sisters on a Tennessee farm; but soon began to write short stories, the first of which was published in a Philadelphia magazine in 1867. Her first story to achieve popularity was "That Lass o' Lowrie's," published in "Scribner's Magazine" in 1877. It is a story of a daughter of a miner, the father a vicious character, whose neglect and abuse render all the more remarkable the virtue and real refinement of the daughter. Mrs. Burnett delights in heroes and heroines whose characters contrast strongly with their circumstances, and in some of her stories, especially in "A Lady of Quality," published in 1895, she even verges on the sensational.

In 1873 Miss Hodgson was married to Doctor Burnett, of Knoxville, Tennessee. After a two years' tour in Europe, they took up their residence in the city of Washington, where they have since lived.

Mrs. Burnett's longest novel, "Through One Administration," is a story of the political and social life of the Capital. "Pretty Polly Pemberton," "Esmeralda," "Louisiana," "A Fair Barbarian," and "Haworth's" are, after those already mentioned, her most popular stories. "That Lass o' Lowrie's" has been dramatized. Mrs. Hodgson is most widely known, however, by her Children Stories, the most famous of which, "Little Lord Fauntleroy," appeared as a serial in "St. Nicholas " in 1886, and has since been dramatized and played in both England and America. Since 1885 her health has not permitted her to write so voluminously as she had previously done, but she has, nevertheless, been a frequent contributor to periodicals. Some of her articles have been of an auto-biographical nature, and her story "The One I Knew Best of All" is an account of her life. She is very fond of society and holds a high place in the social world. Her alert imagination and her gift of expression have enabled her to use her somewhat limited opportunity of observation to the greatest advantage, as is shown in her successful interpretation of the Lancashire dialect and the founding of the story of Joan Lowrie on a casual glimpse, during a visit to a mining village, of a beautiful young woman followed by a cursing and abusive father.

PRETTY POLLY P.*

66
FROM PRETTY POLLY PEMBERTON."

RAMLEIGH," ventured little Popham, "you haven't spoken for half an hour, by Jupiter!" Framleigh-Captain Gaston Framleigh, of the Guards-did not move. He had been sitting for some time before the window, in a position more noticeable for ease than elegance, with his arms folded upon the back of his chair; and he did not disturb himself, when he condescended to reply to his youthful admirer and ally.

"Half an hour?" he said, with a tranquil halfdrawl, which had a touch of affectation in its coolness, and yet was scarcely pronounced enough to be disagreeable, or even unpleasant. "Haven't I?"

He was so evidently excited that Framleigh looked up with a touch of interest, though he was scarcely a man of enthusiasm himself.

'Pretty Polly P.!" he repeated. "Rather familiar mode of speech, isn't it? Who is pretty Polly P.?” Popham, a good-natured, sensitive little fellow, actually colored.

"Well," he admitted, somewhat confusedly, "I dare say it does sound rather odd, to people who don't know her; but I can assure you. Framleigh, though it is the name all our fellows seem to give her with one accord, I am sure there is not one of them who means it to appear disrespectful, or or even cheeky," resorting, in desperation, to slang. She is not the sort of a girl a fellow would ever be "I disrespectful to, even though she is such a girl-so jolly and innocent. For my part, you know, I'd face Fact a good deal, and give up a good deal any day. for pretty Polly P.; and I'm only one of a many.'

No, you have not," returned Popham, encouraged by the negative amiability of his manner. am sure it is half an hour. What's up?"

"Up?" still half-abstractedly. "Nothing! is, I believe I have been watching a girl!"

Little Popham sprang down, for he had been sitting on the table, and advanced toward the window, hurriedly, holding his cigar in his hand.

A girl!" he exclaimed. "Where? What sort of a girl?"

"As to sort," returned Framleigh, "I don't know the species. A sort of girl I never saw before. But, if you wait. you may judge for yourself. She will soon be out there in the garden again. She has been darting in and out of the house for the last twenty minutes."

"Out of the house?" said Popham, eagerly," Do you mean the house opposite?"

"Yes."

By Jupiter!" employing his usual mild expletive. "look here, old fellow, had she a white dress on, and geranium-colored bows, and-"

"Yes," said Framleigh. "And she is rather tall for such a girl; and her hair is cut, on her round white forehead, Sir Peter Lely fashion (they call it banging, I believe), and she gives you the impression, at first, of being all eyes, great dark eyes, with-" "Long, curly, black lashes," interpolated Popham, with enthusiasm. "By Jupiter! I thought so! It's pretty Polly P."

་་

Pemberton!" echoed Framleigh, with an intonation almost savoring of disgust. "You don't mean to say she is that Irish fellow's daughter?"

"She is his niece," was the answer. " and that amounts to the same thing, in her case. She has lived with old Pemberton ever since she was four years old, and she is as fond of him as if he was a woman, and her mother; and he is as fond of her as if she was his daughter; but he couldn't help that. Every one is fond of her."

"Ah!" said Framleigh. "I see. As you say, She is the sort of girl.''

"There she is, again!" exclaimed Popham, suddenly.

*Copyright, T. B. Peterson & Bros.