sun. trial substances when made self-luminous; bodies. The writer must be content with consequently the vapors of these substances the hope that he may have attained not too must exist in the atmosphere of the sun, and imperfectly his single purpose, to retrace the in all probability in the central body of the long and delicate path of discovery, which step by step has led up to the chemical analysis of our great luminary, noting only those discoveries which are of fundamental importance. The illustrations, which have so materially aided in the presentation of the history, are from Appleton's edition of Dr. Schellen's excellent treatise on Spectrum Analysis. It is impossible to pursue the subject further to enlarge upon the astounding revelations of the spectroscope in the field of solar physic, touching the nature of sun-spots, the chromosphere, and so on; much less to speak of the knowledge it gives of the nature and constitution of the rest of the heavenly COVERT. ONE day, when sunny fields lay warm and still, Sudden, almost beneath my footsteps' weight, Their sound, from a low bush which scarcely stirred A twig at lightening of its hidden freight, Flew, frightened from her nest, the small brown mate "Ah, Heart," I said, "when days are warm and sweet, And every sense feels subtle, languid thrill Of voiceless memory's renewing heat, Fly not at sound of strangers' aimless feet! Of thy love's loving song drink all thy fill! Thy hiding-place is safe. Glad heart, keep still. BORROWING AS A SOCIAL SCIENCE. apprenticeship to the nefarious trade, he does with deliberation what, in the beginning, he would have believed himself incapable of under any circumstances. He comes to consider what he has managed to borrow in the past as his rightful income in the future. THAT one-half the world does not know | the careless or the credulous. After a certain how the other half lives is a trite maxim, and it may be added, that it does not care. This lack of knowledge is said to have been recently supplied by the discovery that the one-half subsists by borrowing of the other. There is a broad foundation for this opinion, as residents of large cities, notably New York, must ere this have found. This Republic is the Oceana of borrowers, and the Metropolis, in their regard, is as the Floating Isles of Morelli. In the Old World, customs and positions are so established, the social lines so clearly drawn, that these are seldom crossed, and those seldom infringed. On this side of the Atlantic, communities are as yet somewhat chaotic, and individuality is so strong that it contemns conventionality, and trenches upon all prerogative. Here, more than elsewhere, he is the best man who wins, and hav ing clearly reached the upper part of the ladder, there is little heed of the manner of his climbing. All the conditions of the country, especially in its commercial centers, being formative and fluent, extraordinary facilities are furnished for pretenders, charlatans and adventurers of every conceivable variety. Money-borrowers embrace all these, and indeed represent as many characters as Shakespeare's page. Their vocation long since developed to a profession, yea, an art-the falsest of professions and the vilest of arts. It was an aphorism among the Latins, now worn threadbare, that no one was ever utterly base of a sudden; nor was any man, it may be inferred, a money-borrower from the start. (By the term is meant exactly what it conveys -a fellow who always borrows, but never returns, and has no intention of returning.) He may be self-indulgent and inconsiderate; but he is, if not honest, at least not positively dishonest at the outset. He seeks, at first, temporary accommodation, and, though willing others should take the risk of their loans, his purpose is to pay on an early occasion, or at least when convenient. He does return what he borrows for a while; but he finds, ere long, that he cannot redeem his promises, and that it is, moreover, so much easier to deceive and lie, so much pleasanter (to him) to get money than to pay it back, that the pernicious habit becomes fixed. He steadily goes from indirection and prevarication to unblushing falsehood and premeditated swindling. His moral consciousness grows more and more blunted as he continues to prey upon Nothing can be more degrading than this practice, for any time continued. It fastens itself upon, becomes a part of the character not to be cured, not to be expelled, not to be alleviated by any power resident in the brain or conscience. Albeit not so debasing outwardly, nor so hurtful to the mind as intemperance, it is more insidious and more tenacious. Habitual intoxication is such an alarming extremity, there is likely to be some reaction from it, and there is a persistent effort on the part of relatives and friends to drag a drunkard out of the slough into which he has fallen. Instances of reformed inebriates are very common, as they are of reformed rakes, reformed gamblers, reformed rogues of divers sorts; but the examples of professional money-borrowers who have abandoned their calling, while there was a penny to be had by ingenious knavery, are too infrequent for citation. Money-borrowing becomes by long indulgence a passion that destroys the moral perceptions; extinguishes the quality of industry; obliterates every notion of individual right and personal property. On this last rest all government, law and civilization, in sooth; hence, he who disregards right and property habitually is a self-declared outlaw, an enemy, in the craftiest, and, therefore, the most dangerous form, of the whole body of society. Many borrowers are made, and continue to be such, from vicious courses; but, even when these are surrendered, the borrowing, which was a consequence, goes on as an independent cause, producing new and still worse effects. To owe money that the ower might pay if he would, leaves a taint in the blood, an obliquity in the mind that neither medicine nor ethics can reach. The borrower soon finds his indebtedness so far beyond his present and prospective means of liquidation that he sinks to a state of financial despera tion, and henceforward is reckless and shameless in his confidential plundering. The main mischief is that he does not take from those who can afford to lose, nor from those who have gotten easily the sums they lend. If the borrower could, by his adroit trickery, cajole wealthy hunkses and prospe rous corruptionists, while his dishonesty would not be less, the harm he did would be. Howbeit such persons cannot be duped. They would not usually lend money to their grandmothers without taking mortgage on the old ladies' souls. They turn away from prayers upon famishing lips, and from the most plaintive voice of suffering. They are not likely to be caught by chaff, such old birds as they. The trained borrower would as soon seek charity from a corporation as strive to get a dollar from those animated ironclads. He goes to the warm-hearted possessing slender purses; for his experience has taught him that the hand gives quickest that holds the least. He appeals and robs by sacred words, and, worse than all, commits a crime against nature by ruining the faith of his victims in their fellows. Afterward, when besought by worthiness and desert, when kindness would be a benison, they remember how they have been beguiled by pretenses just as fair, and they withhold the grace that would have crowned the act, and made courtesy a precious memory. He is the Mephistopheles of society; substituting evil for good, and stabbing sweetest truth with the two-edged poniard of mistrust and unbelief. His profession renders him pitiless; going from one victim to another, he recks not of the pain and desolation he has wrought. He is absorbed by that abnormal venality which wheedles and worms out of others the substance it squanders on itself. The Politeness is said to come from the East; to flourish most where liberty is least. facility to borrow money is greatest in the West. He who would get cash without collaterals should follow the course of the sun. Naturally, social centers provide the most fertile field for cozeners. In Smyrna and Constantinople, borrowers, in our sense, scarcely exist. In Naples and Vienna there are not many; in Paris and London they have. increased, and on this side of the sea they are rife. Boston has few compared with Chicago, and in San Francisco they are quadruple what they are in Chicago. This city, however, exceeds, as I have said, all other cities in such financial fungi, because it is cosmopolitan, shifting, heedless, the rendezvous of the Republic, the camp of the Continent. All roads lead to Rome all sharpers and adventurers gravitate to the metropolis. There are two persons who can find you in New York--the woman who loves you, and the man who wants to borrow money of you. The former may be disheartened; the latter never can be. He will hunt you to the top of Trinity spire, and catch you têteà-tête in the cave of Central Park. Duns are pronounced the abhorred of gods and men; but borrowers should be tenfold detested. Those ask only for their own; these demand, and take, the property of others. Wall Street is the clearing house of the Western Hemisphere, and Broadway is regarded as the nation's purse, from which every cunning hand is privileged to filch what it may. The New-Yorker of experience who is not out at elbows, or bulletined as a vaga bond, feels conscious there are always a hundred men, at least, in different quarters of the country with eye or mind fixed upon him in order to negotiate a loan. Constantly streaming into town, they never think of him until, having scattered their fund in their fun, they look for him to replenish their purse. If a careful observer, he recognizes them at once; detects in their appearance and manner the amount they want, and makes up his mind, before they ask, how much he can spare, or, in other words, afford to lose. Should he be monetarily easy, also liberal and polite, he will assume to believe their story as well as their promise to pay. He will hand them the amount with a smile, absolutely certain that the day on which the debt will be refunded will be beyond the Day of Judgment. Something less than a thousand such experiences will wear off the novelty of being transparently swindled, and the once careless Gothamite will wax so sordid and so heartless as to decline making any further life-long investments without interest in diaphanous scoundrels. Repeated imposition seals the sources of sympathy like continued prosperity. You need not live here very long to get the gauge of borrowers, and to give them a certain classification. You can tell by the character of their application the length of time they have been in the business, as the rattles of a rattlesnake are vulgarly thought to indicate the years of its age. The borrower generally begins with wanting five hundred dollars, and adheres to this sum for a twelvemonth. During that period he drains the market, and then drops down to two hundred dollars. Six months later he can be prevailed upon to accept one hundred dollars, to be returned positively the following day. His complexion changes with the waning weeks, and he who must have one hundred dollars or nothing in September, will be grateful in November for a temporary accommodation of fifty. The descent of Avernus is easy. Even fifty dollars is not a fixed color: it will fade into forty, thirty, twenty ere the winter has gone, and with the returning May-to such a state are the prints of unsuccessful aspiration and haughty poverty reduced-the remaining hue will not be higher than ten, or even five. There are degenerate souls so oblivious of their early ambition that they will ultimately consent to solicit the loan of a dollar or its fractions. They often get it from sheer commiseration; and yet so lost are they to sense of manly dignity, so ignorant of the laws of political economy, that they refuse to invest a dime in arsenic at the corner drug-store. always full to overflowing, and masterly ad vances are constantly making on the foe, who is hoodwinked by the pretext that he is a friend. The foe is any gull or generous fellow who hates to say no, or gives to his persecutor the benefit of the doubt. The foe can win little glory by resistance; his wisest course is retreat, and he is apt to do so finally, though not before his porte-monnaie bears many humiliating scars. It is lamentable to think how many borrowers there are, growing more and more professional, who would yet be deeply hurt if told that they are not honorable. Outside of business, the rules of which are enforced by certain penalties, the proportion of men who borrow and pay is startlingly small. Ask those of large experience, and they will inform you that not more than one out of fifty persons asking without some just claim of intimacy or circumstance, for pecuniary accom turn what he has borrowed. It is safe to say that any loan made to any mere acquaintance, except under extraordinary circumstances, will render him, in quite another than the courteous meaning, a lasting debtor. You can count upon your fingers, I venture to assert, all the members of your social circle to whom you can lend money on their word, with any certainty of its prompt or promised return. It would seem as if the city had been districted by borrowers, each district having its infesters. The leading hotels, or rather their patrons, are laid under contribution by these financial pests, who take their position at stated hours, and ply their trade persever-modation, will offer, of his own volition, to reingly from season to season. These are the fellows who, having exhausted the metropolitan mine, are following the stronger lode. They are better acquainted with the arrivals in town than the drummers themselves. They scan the registers as antiquarians would a mouldering inscription, and greet with fulsome flattery and cordial handshaking every provincialist they have ever encountered. Their accidents are chronic; their misfortunes unvarying. They have always lost their pocket-book, or left it at home; they have been suddenly called out of town, or have received a dispatch requiring immediate answer. They have failed to receive an expected remittance; their wife is very ill, or their child has just died; they must have money or go mad. (It may be noted here that they rarely go half so mad as the credulous creatures do after lending them.) A gentleman blessed with a good memory, and cursed with frequent approaches of petitioners for call-loans, declares that one of these tricksters has been bereaved during the past six months of offspring to the number of ninety-eight, and has become a widower not less than sixty times. Who can regard without profoundest pity a mortal struggling under such an accumulation of sorrows, and not respond pecuniarily? Like rhetorical questions are put by the borrower. He who answers them with his pocket-book may charge its contents perpetually to Profit and Loss. New York has thousands of regular borrowers, and volunteers are entering the strategic army daily and hourly. The ranks are It seems vulgar to esteem character as based in any way upon money; and yet that it is so based daily observation teaches. It is very little for anybody to pay his debts-it is one of the first and most patent obligations to ourselves and others—but it is very much not to pay them. The man who neglects, or is careless of, what he owes materially, is equally neglectful or careless of what he owes spiritually. Debt of any kind undermines, debases, debauches. Many creatures of common clay make it a rule to discharge all dues: they are simply just, and nothing more. But you cannot produce a man following the opposite course, in whose nature there is not an irremediable flaw. He may be kindhearted, spasmodically self-sacrificing, may have noble instincts; but he must be weak and shuffling, without principle, barren of the spirit of fidelity and rectitude. He slips on the sand; he is not built on the rock. Cir cumstances have made, and circumstances may mar him. He shines by reflected hues: he has no color of his own. No strength of purpose, no element of power is in him. The edifice that is reared on a frail foundation may be graceful and attractive, but it is |