tried to sketch it both as a city with a
past and a city with a future. Could we have selected one for
illustration that would be a better or sharper concentration of all that
is good in American life?

MARIE FAMETTE AND HER LOVERS.

I.

Marie Famette is the prettiest girl in the market-place of Aubette. Her
eyes are of such a sweet, soft blue, deeply shaded by long black lashes:
her eyebrows are not black, but they are of a much darker tint than her
hair, which (so much of it as can be seen under her full white
cap-border) is a golden yellow. But it is not her eyes and her hair that
make Marie so attractive: she has charmed young and old alike ever since
she came, a toddling damsel of two years, and took her place beside her
mother in the market-place of Aubette.

Madame Famette's was the best fruit-stall of the market. No one else
could show such baskets of peaches and hampers of pears; and as to the
citrouilles and potirons, their reputation was so established that by
ten o'clock there was little to be seen of them among the glowing
vegetables which decked the stall. Such radishes were not to be seen
elsewhere--white and purple, as thick as carrots; and the carrots
themselves like lumps of red gold, lying nestling beneath their
feathered tops or setting off the creamy whiteness of the cauliflowers
ranged in a formal row in front of them.

But Marie had always eclipsed all other beauty in the stall, and now
that she had grown too big to be patted on the cheek and kissed by
grown-up admirers, she had a host of victims in the sturdy young
countrymen who came in to Aubette--either to bring mothers and sisters
with their produce or to purchase for themselves.

Madame Famette has weak health, and lately Marie comes often to the
market by herself, and is able to flirt to her heart's content,
unchecked by her mother's presence. She is so bright, so arch, so ready
with a sparkling answer, that it is no wonder her stall is always
thronged and that her fruit and her vegetables disappear so rapidly.

There is an extra buzz in the market to-day. It is September, the epoch
of the Mascaret, for the dreaded flood-tide seldom visits the Seine more
than twice a year, and always draws dwellers in the neighboring towns to
see its autumn fury. There is an influx of strange faces in the little
place beneath the richly-sculptured spire of Notre Dame--the cathedral
of Aubette, as strangers call it, although it is only the pa