t
crowd of marauders; and the king had not even the poor choice whether
he would be the vassal of the Chaldean or of the Egyptian. To us,
this is only a ghostly show of monarchs and conquerors stalking
across vast historic spaces. It was no doubt a vulgar enough scene
of war and plunder. The great captains of that age went about to
harry each other's territories and spoil each other's cities very
much as we do nowadays, and for similar reasons;--Napoleon the Great
in Moscow, Napoleon the Small in Italy, Kaiser William in Paris,
Great Scott in Mexico! Men have not changed much.

--The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-garden in the third month; there
was a fire on the hearth burning before him. He cut the leaves of
"Scribner's Monthly" with his penknife, and thought of Jehoiakim.

That seems as real as the other. In the garden, which is a room of
the house, the tall callas, rooted in the ground, stand about the
fountain; the sun, streaming through the glass, illumines the
many-hued flowers. I wonder what Jehoiakim did with the mealy-bug on
his passion-vine, and if he had any way of removing the scale-bug
from his African acacia? One would like to know, too, how he treated
the red spider on the Le Marque rose. The record is silent. I do
not doubt he had all these insects in his winter-garden, and the
aphidae besides; and he could not smoke them out with tobacco, for
the world had not yet fallen into its second stage of the knowledge
of good and evil by eating the forbidden tobacco-plant.

I confess that this little picture of a fire on the hearth so many
centuries ago helps to make real and interesting to me that somewhat
misty past. No doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the Nile grew
in that winter-house, and perhaps Jehoiakim attempted--the most
difficult thing in the world the cultivation of the wild flowers from
Lebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim was interested also, as I am through this
ancient fireplace,--which is a sort of domestic window into the
ancient world,--in the loves of Bernice and Abaces at the court of
the Pharaohs. I see that it is the same thing as the sentiment
--perhaps it is the shrinking which every soul that is a soul has,
sooner or later, from isolation--which grew up between Herbert and
the Young Lady Staying With Us. Jeremiah used to come in to that
fireside very much as the Parson does to ours. The Parson, to be
sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in the
play that sings the e