could appreciate; the presence of spectators made it much more difficult.  And the lookers-on were a good deal more excited than the girl.  The artist had his book ready, and when the little figure was half-way down, clinging in a position at once artistic and painful, he began.  “Work fast,” said the girl.  “It’s hard hanging on.”  But the pencil wouldn’t work.  The artist made a lot of wild marks.  He would have given the world to sketch in that exquisite figure, but every time he cast his eye upward the peril was so evident that his hand shook.  It was no use.  The danger increased as she descended, and with it the excitement of the spectators.  All the young gentlemen declared they would catch her if she fell, and some of them seemed to hope she might drop into their arms.  Swing off she certainly must when the lowest limb was reached.  But that was ten feet above the ground and the alighting-place was sharp rock and broken bowlders.  The artist kept up a pretense of drawing.  He felt every movement of her supple figure and the strain upon the slender arms, but this could not be transferred to the book.  It was nervous work.  The girl was evidently getting weary, but not losing her pluck.  The young fellows were very anxious that the artist should keep at his work; they would catch her.  There was a pause; the girl had come to the last limb; she was warily meditating a slide or a leap; the young men were quite ready to sacrifice themselves; but somehow, no one could tell exactly how, the girl swung low, held herself suspended by her hands for an instant, and then dropped into the right place—­trust a woman for that; and the artist, his face flushed, set her down upon the nearest flat rock.  Chorus from the party, “She is saved!”

“And my sketch is gone up again.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Forbes.”  The girl looked full of innocent regret.  “But when I was up there I had to come down that tree.  I couldn’t help it, really.”

IV

NEWPORT

On the Fourth of July, at five o’clock in the morning, the porters called the sleepers out of their berths at Wickford Junction.  Modern civilization offers no such test to the temper and to personal appearance as this early preparation to meet the inspection of society after a night in the stuffy and luxuriously upholstered tombs of a sleeping-car.  To get into them at night one must sacrifice dignity; to get out of them in the morning, clad for the day, gives the proprietors a hard rub.  It is wonderful, however, considering the twisting and scrambling in the berth and the miscellaneous and ludicrous presentation of humanity in the washroom at the end of the car, how presentable people make themselves in a short space of time.  One realizes the debt of the ordinary man to clothes, and how fortunate it is for society that commonly people do not see each other in the morning until art has done its best for them.  To meet the public eye, cross and tousled and disarranged, requires either indifference or courage.  It is disenchanting to some of our cherished ideals.  Even the trig, irreproachable commercial drummer actually looks banged-up, and nothing of a man; but after a few moments, boot-blacked and paper-collared, he comes out as fresh as a daisy, and all ready to drum.