vote pulled back and forth between Democrats and Republicans till midnight, every man who had not been there during the day and who was dragged there at night taking up the affair where he found it, just as hay fever patients returning from Europe enter into exactly that stage of the disease in which all those who have staid at home and taken it are when the vessel arrives.

There had now been seven or eight ballots, and there seemed no nearer prospect of electing a representative than when the man in charge first pulled the bell-rope twelve hours before. The three principal candidates now held a small meeting in front of the hall, and joined in begging their fellow-townsmen to go home, and not put themselves to any further trouble on their account. They were very much obliged for all the confidence which had been shown in them, but it was too bad to stay any longer. Accordingly, all the people went quietly home to bed, and ev

erything was as though it had not been. For the third or fourth time, this town goes without a representative for the next two years, and everybody is perfectly satisfied. As my friend the stage-driver expressed it, "Everybody in town is well pleased and the candidates are well pleased, because if, after they had had so much excitement, anybody had been elected, there would have been kind of hard feelings, don't you know; but now they all went home in good shape and feeling well." Like gen

And so ended the election. uine New-Englanders, every man had had his say and had stuck to his opinion, and they were quite content not to have any one to speak for them. After all, when we send a representative to the State Capitol, or perchance to Washington, there is sometimes doubt as to what he will do or say after he gets there, and so there may be reason in the security and satisfaction of the good people.

I-THE WHITE DEATH.

HE White Death is a naked, gleaming, shifting flood of sand, moving ever inland from the ocean shore, inch by inch, foot by foot, in huge white waves of glistening grit, inexorable as fate, silent as the grave, swallowing and destroying everything that lies before it in its way. The wind blows the shifting surface the crest of each towering wave up and over the edge in a sparkling mist. Beyond the crest the dry mist falls, and so the wave moves steadily, resistlessly forward, enveloping all things in a universal white.

tance. Here and there the flat is lush and green, where shallow lakes, blooming with white lilies and blue arrow-heads, bathe the arid soil; here and there it is burned yellow and brown, where the hot smooth sand, stretching in from the ocean shore, drinks up water and life, and leaves all dead. That level flat, reaching far away into the distance, is like the plane of life one has to travel; the black streak of a gloomy pine woods is the Valley of Shadows, and the white waving line of sand is a likeness of Death; and as in real life, so here-neither death nor its shadow looks sinister seen from such a distance.

O travel across the level flat is a mimic image of the journey of life. The lakes, so pretty in the distance,

حرب

TANDING at the edge of a marshy flat, the eye looks far away across the level of coarse sedge-grass to the white line of the sand hills and the black line of pine woods in the dis

are muddy, and smell rank and dank to the nostrils; they are full of tadpoles and lizards and crawling things. Here and there little deserts of arid sand are passed; they burn the soles of the feet,

IRST come the hot black shadowsthe shadows of the pines and then the foot-hills as it were of Death. All is breathless silence, except for the shrieking of the fish-hawk high in the air, and the strange mysterious whispering of the ceaselessly moving and shifting sand. Here and there a stark gray tree trunk, already dead in the clutch of the oncoming death, reaches helpless skeleton arms up into the air. Each is an empty hollow shell of bark; each is soulless and void of life, excepting, perhaps, for a nest of woodpeckers or of mice-a squalid metempsychosis of the spirit of the pine-tree.

less curtain of silence stretches between the glare of the sky above and the whispering whiteness beneath. The sliding feet sink deep into the shifting surface, and the traveller stands face to face with Israfael in simile.

O the Gates of Death are passed, and the journey is ended.

Then suddenly, as the head rises above the crest of the last white wave, all

The last hill

is instantly transformed. is climbed with panting breath, and then Death itself is left behind.

Before the eye there stretches away the eternal ocean, a glorious purple sparkling with dancing white-caps and dotted with shining sails. The ceaseless surf shouts jubilantly on the beach, and the cool pure air rushes upward, bathing the hot face like the breath of a newer and a purer life. The ocean, the sails, the rushing breeze all tell of something vast and limitless that lies beyond.

Behind was left the limited plain, bounded by the black shadows and the White Death. Before is an image of limitless immensity.

II.-BACK OF THE CAPES.

APE HENLOPEN is a level hook of sand covered with scrub bushes. Within the hook lies the perfect curve of a sheltered harbor. The ocean lies without, and into it, north and east and south, long cruel bars and shoals stretch out their fingers under the water. Scores and hundreds of vessels that have weathered many a bitter storm die here within the very sight of the goal. The level point of the cape is strewn thick with the bleaching ribs and broken bones of the poor lost things.

dry and still, but dense jungles and tangled wildernesses; and hidden gloomy swamps of stagnant water inhabited by wild strange creatures; and here and there lonely little lakes of fresh water, blooming, in the midst of all the grotesque dark

surroundings, with fields of white lilies.

There is one such little lake that lies in the very clutch of the fatal sand--a round bowl of warm crystal, a perfect garden of lilies that fairly burdens the hot air with the fragrance of its sweetness. There is a bushy dingle here and a leafy tangle there, where birds nestle and sing. Tall slender bulrushes and cat-tails flick and flirt in the light wind at the edge of each little bank. A rank wet woodland leans over the water at one side, and all is cool and fresh and pleasant.

But around it circle the hot livid arms. As the sand creeps forward inch by inch,