You must have known, too, why. It was not kind of you, mademoiselle. No, it was not kind!'

'Yet I am glad that I came,' said Pamela. 'I came, thinking of myself, it is true-my need is so very great; but now I see your need is as great as mine. I ask you to rise up and help me.' 'No, leave me alone!' he cried. And she answered, gently, 'I will not.'

M. Giraud grew quiet. He pressed his handkerchief to his eyes, and stood up.

'Forgive me!' he said. 'I have behaved like a child; but you would forgive me if you knew how I have waited and waited for you to come back. But you never did. Each summer I said: "She will return in the winter! And the winter came, and I said: "She will come in the spring." But neither in the winter nor in the spring did you return to Roquebrune. I have needed you so badly all these years.'

'I am sorry,' replied Pamela; 'I am very sorry.'

She did not reproach herself at all. She could not see, indeed, that she was to blame. But she was none the less distressed. Giraud's exhibition of grief was so utterly unfamiliar to her that she felt awkward and helpless in face of it. He was yet further disfigured now by the traces of weeping; his eyes were swollen and red. There was something grotesque in the aspect of this drinkswollen face, all convulsed with sorrow. Nothing could well be less in sympathy with Pamela's nature than Giraud's outburst and display of tears; for she was herself reticent and proud. She held her head high as she walked through the world, mistress alike of her sorrows and her joys. But Mr. Mudge had spoken the truth when he had called upon her in Leicestershire. Imagination had come to her of late. She was able to understand the other point of view-to appreciate that there were other characters than hers which must needs fulfil themselves in ways which were not hers. She put herself now in M. Giraud's place. She imagined him waiting and waiting at Roquebrune, with his one window on the outside world closed and shuttered-a man in a darkened room who most passionately desired the air without. She said, with a trace of hesitation:

'You say you have needed me very much? '

'Oh, have I not?' exclaimed Giraud; and the very weariness of his voice would have convinced her, had she needed conviction.

It seemed to express the dilatory passage of the years during which he had looked for her coming, and had looked in vain.

'Well, then, listen to me,' she went on. 'I was once told that to be needed by those whom one needs is a great comfort. I thought of the saying at the time, and I thought that it was a true one. Afterwards'-she began to speak slowly, carefully selecting her words -'it happened that in my own experience I proved it to be true, at all events for me. Is it true for you, also? Think well. If it is not true I will go away as you bade me at the beginning; but if it is true-why, then I may be of some little help to you, and you will be certainly a great help to me; for I need you very surely.'

M. Giraud looked at her in silence for a little while. Then he answered her with simplicity, and so, for the first time during this interview, wore the proper dignity of a man.

'Yes, I will help you,' he said. 'What can I do?

She held out the letter which she had written to Lionel Callon. She bade him carry it with the best speed he could to its destination.

'Lose no time!' she implored. 'I am not sure but it may be that one man's life, and the happiness of a man and a woman besides, all hang upon its quick receipt.'

M. Giraud took his hat from the wall and went to the door. At the door he paused, and standing thus, with an averted face, he said in a whisper, recalling the words she had lately spoken:

'There is one, then, whom you need? You are no longer lonely in your thoughts? I should like to know.'

'Yes,' Pamela answered, gently; 'I am no longer lonely in my thoughts.'

'And you are happy?' he continued. 'You were not happy when you were at Roquebrune last. I should like to know that you, at all events, are happy now.'

'Yes,' said Pamela. In the presence of his distress she rather shrank from acknowledging the change which had come over her. It seemed cruel; yet he clearly wished to know. He clearly would be the happier for knowing. 'Yes,' she said; 'I am happy.'

'I am very glad,' said M. Giraud, in a low voice; 'I am very glad.' And he went rather quickly out by the door.

(To be continued.)

453

WASHINGTON, LINCOLN, AND GRANT.

BY GENERAL JAMES GRANT WILSON, D.C.L.

By the general judgment of the English-speaking world, Washington, Lincoln, and Grant are accepted as the three greatest Americans -Washington the founder, Lincoln the liberator, and Grant the saviour of our country. With the pater patriæ I enjoyed agreeable associations in early youth through intimacy with several of those who were nearest and dearest to him; with the martyr-President it was my privilege to be well acquainted during a period of six years; and with the illustrious soldier I was on terms of close friendship for almost a quarter of a century. While many persons have known Lincoln and Grant, and a few were acquainted with Washington and Lincoln, so far as I am aware but one person was ever born into this world who knew the triumvirate of uncrowned American kings. That individual was Horace Binney, leader of the Philadelphia Bar, and among the foremost leaders of the profession throughout the land, with whom I spent a memorable hour in the year 1874. During that delightful interview he stated that when a youth his home was near President Washington's Philadelphia residence, that he had met him almost daily for several years, and that he frequently held conversations with the General. Mr. Binney also mentioned the interesting fact that he had been acquainted with every President of the United States up to the time of Grant, during whose second Administration he passed away at the great age of ninety-five.

In the victory that was won at Saratoga in October 1777, the hero of the battle-in its results one of the decisive engagements of the world—was not the American commander, but Benedict Arnold. A few weeks after that great event, the Commander-in-Chief complimented Arnold upon his gallantry, and said to him in his stately manner: I understand, sir, that in the Battle of Saratoga, where you rendered such valuable service to your country, you lost your sleeve-links. Will you do me the honour to accept this pair, which I have worn several months, and of which I have duplicates?' When General Arnold became a traitor to his native land, and Washington, with righteous indignation, had denounced his base

treachery in bitter and burning words, he no longer found pleasure in the possession of the sleeve-links, and so he presented them to Colonel Tarleton, the only British officer who had treated him with any degree of courtesy. When Tarleton returned with the British Army to the Old World, he gave Washington's gift to his military secretary, an American Loyalist, and when he died they were left to his only son, Fitz-Greene Halleck. When the poet passed away, he bequeathed them to a young army friend who later became his biographer, and also the author of this article, who is the proud possessor of the beautiful gold sleeve-links.

Several years before the commencement of the American Civil War there was a house party in a spacious Virginia mansion on the banks of the Potomac, assembled together for the purpose of celebrating the anniversary of Washington's birth. The host was Washington's adopted son, the hostess his only daughter, Mary, wife of Robert E. Lee, then Lieutenant-Colonel of the Second United States Cavalry. The day was devoted chiefly to listening to charming recollections of Mr. Custis, who had lived with his father, as he called Washington, for eighteen years; to looking at Washington's letters, his books, his swords, his canes, his jewellery, and, in short, to innumerable articles hallowed by associations with him. was a red-letter day-in the words of Carlyle, ‘A day never to be forgotten in this world.' Alas! of all that happy house party, the Richmond beauties, the Baltimore belles, the young Virginians, and the two college students from the North, the writer is the only survivor. The place of that memorable meeting was Arlington, now a national cemetery. There rests that beau sabreur, gallant Phil Sheridan, and around him are buried several thousand of those roughriders who followed him on many a well-fought field.

It

A few days later the present writer was the guest, in the city of Washington, of a venerable lady whose hair was silvered by the snows of ninety-six winters. In early life she and my godmother, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, were taught in Albany, New York, by the same governess. They parted at the age of thirteen, and never met again. The broad Atlantic rolled between them, but they continued to correspond for three score and ten years. Elizabeth Schuyler, at the age of eighteen, spent the winter with General and Mrs. Washington, when the army was quartered at Morristown, New Jersey. Among her many admirers was a young captain of artillery to whom she gave her heart and hand, and they were married in her father's (General Philip Schuyler) house in Albany,

124 years ago. At the time of my visit she had been separated by death from her young captain for more than half a century, but she still loved to speak of him and of his great chief, with whom he was a staff officer later on, with the rank of colonel. She described Washington as the most majestic and magnificent of men, and the finest horseman of his age. Mounted on one of his fiery chargers, he was always an inspiration to his troops. When I bade this venerable woman a final farewell, she said to me, 'My dear young friend, you may be glad to remember hereafter that the same hand that your lips have just pressed was often pressed by the lips of Washington.' A year later I saw her placed by the side of her young captain under the shadows of Trinity Church, New York. That young captain's fame as the most brilliant of American statesmen has flown to the four quarters of the globe. His name was Alexander Hamilton.

A few years after the Civil War was closed by Grant at Appomattox, the writer was a guest in one of England's great houses. The estate of between 6,000 and 7,000 acres was purchased by the British Government at a cost of 300,000l., and, together with a dukedom and 10,000l. a year, was presented to a successful soldier for a day's work at Waterloo. Another equally important battle was won at Gettysburg by General Meade—a battle not surpassed in importance by any fought since Saxon Harold fell at Hastings 800 years ago, but I never heard that he received an estate of any kind or an accession of rank or emolument from our Republican Government. When I entered the Strathfieldsaye drawing-room for the first time with the Duke of Wellington's eldest son and heir, I was surprised and delighted to see one of Gilbert Stuart's noble portraits of Washington occupying the place of honour in the handsome apartment. Where did you find that fine picture?' asked the American. 'Oh,' said the second Duke, 'my father hung it there almost half a century ago.' I then inquired, 'Did your father admire Washington?' 'My father,' was the Duke's reply, deemed Washington the purest and noblest character of modern time-possibly of all time, and considering the raw troops with which he had to oppose the trained and veteran soldiers of England, also a great general.'

Another interesting statement which the second Duke made to me was that when his father was assigned to the command of an expedition to be sent out against the city of Washington and New Orleans in 1814, he declined the command chiefly on the ground