n-side. Matteo
said the carriage tilted, and she, being asleep, fell out before he
could prevent. Her temple struck a sharp rock, and Claudio missed his
bride.

He had to keep quiet about it, though. What could he prove? what could
any one prove? Where knives are sharp and people mind their own
business, or express their opinions only by a shrug of the shoulders and
a grimace, how is a poor boy, how is even a rich man or a rich woman, to
come at the truth in such a case? Besides, the truth would not have
brought her back, poor little Silvia!

MARY AGNES TINCKER.

A SPANISH STORY-TELLER

In these days of pessimism in literature, when Tourgueneff and
Sacher-Masoch represent man as the victim of blind Chance and
annihilation his greatest happiness, it is pleasant to turn to a writer
who still believes in God, his country and the family, and recognizes an
overruling Providence that directs the world. It is not strange that
these old-fashioned ideas should be found in Spain, where, in spite of
much ignorance and superstition, the lower classes are deeply religious
in the best sense of the word, and distinguished for their patriotism
and intense love for their homes.

Antonio de Trueba, the subject of this sketch, was born in 1821 at
Montellano, a little village in Biscay. He thus describes the home of
his childhood in the preface to his collected poems: "On the brow of one
of the mountains that surround a valley of Biscay there are four little
houses, white as four doves, hidden in a grove of chestnut and walnut
trees--four houses that can only be seen at a distance when the autumn
has removed the leaves from the trees. There I spent the first fifteen
years of my life. In the bottom of the valley there is a church whose
belfry pierces the arch of foliage and rises majestic above the ash and
walnut trees, as if to signify that the voice of God rises above
Nature; and in that church two masses were said on Sunday--one at
sunrise and the other two hours later. We children rose with the song of
the birds and went down to the first mass, singing and leaping through
the shady oak-groves, while our elders came down later to high mass.
While our parents and grand-parents were attending it I sat down beneath
some cherry trees that were opposite my father's house--for from that
spot could be seen the whole valley that ended in the sea--and shortly
after four or five young girls came to seek me, red as the cherries that