AUTUMN TOILETS.

THE

FIRST FIGURE.-Double skirt of Bismark faye; the first skirt, round and without a train, is finished with a trimming of loops and ends of velvet ribbon, set on at short distances round the bottom; the second skirt, in the Empire style. is cut in dents all round the bottom, and is trimmed on the front breadth with two velvet loops, and ends to match those on the first skirt. Sleeves tight. Bonnet of white Imperial velvet, bordered by a broad bias of Bismark velvet. Strings of No. 7 velvet tied behind. Figured white barbes edged with blond.

SECOND FIGURE--Double skirt; the first skirt of dark grey silk, forming a train. Body of the same, high, without sleeves. Second skirt, of the same tissue but lighter in colour, is made in the redingote style. Sleeves tight, ornamented at top and bottom with bias-pieces of the same tint as the first skirt, that is to say darker than the other. I must not forget to mention that the bottom of the first skirt is finished with a broad-plaited ruffle, and that the second is trimmed round the bottom and at the sides with two bias-pieces of the darkest shade of the material. The second body, which is open to the waist, is trimmed in a similar way.

The Empress is decidedly in favour of short dresses-a fashion in which she is supported by all the small-footed, slight-ankled portion of her sex. But for evening or reception-toilets the elegant flowing robes à quene, as they are here called, with trains often five feet in length, are the most graceful and stylish dress. These are made plain in front, but are generally laid in plaits behind to admit of the bustle, which is again in vogue. Two shades of the same colour, the one very much lighter or darker than the other, is much used in dresses with double, or simulated double skirts. Dresses of neutral shades are also trimmed with some trenchant contrast, as grey or stone-colour with magenta. Bismark in various shades is much worn; and a warm dark-brown is greatly in favour. Short jackets continue to be worn as wraps, and the circular

mantles we mentioned last month are decidedly in fashion. Both velvet and cloth wraps, whether paletots or sacques (for both are equally in vogue), are very much trimmed with silkcrochet lace, beads, fringe, or passementerie.

Bands of ribbon or velvet, or satin studded with jet-beads, make a very effective trimming, and are much worn. The corset-like body, fitting tight over the hips, has a very good ef fect on a fine figure; but short waists, with belts, are still worn; and the long, loose, flowing sleeve is in as good taste as the tight-fitting, which is, however, in the ascendant: in brief, there never was a time when greater freedom prevailed, without doing violence to the mandates of fashion. Everything that is pretty, bizarre, or becoming, is à-la-mode; and it must be a woman's own fault if, with this wide latitude in style and trimming, she does not dress herself agreeably.

is

I have just seen a very elegant evening dress of arsenic green silk, trimmed at the bottom of the skirt with three puffings of white silk. The over-skirt is of white crepe, dotted with green and trimmed with quillings of green silk, and a flounce of white lace. The corsage made with a deep basque, trimmed with a flounce of lace headed by a green quilling. The sleeve is merely a puff of white silk, veiled by the lace berthe. The hair is worn in as diverse styles as are the dresses; sometimes simply turned back off the face in front, and caught up at the back in a puffed chignon, clasped by a fancy comb; sometimes waved, and the chignon surrounded by a heavy plait; at other times we see the chignon accompanied with a long curl or curls on one or both sides.

Satin continues to be worn both in evening dress and as a trimming. Bodies fitting tight over the hips are greatly in request for evening toilets: they are usually trimmed at the bottom with a fringe of flowers, grasses, and foliage. Bodies may be cut as high or as low as taste may dictate: when low they are generally finished with a berthe of flowers.

SLATER KNAPP.

BY VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND.

"A great rascal!" said Uncle Kerr, sauntering to the window, and looking out on somebody

beneath, whom he was disposing of in this laconic fashion. "Cut right out after the old man's pattern. Blood tells !"

With all that is lovable in the man-with all his noble, generous qualities of mind and heart, and all his pure and lofty ideals of life and cha

racter, there is a little vein of sharpness, and severity that often develops into satire, bound up in Uncle Kerr's nature.

His brief, terse sentences cut sometimes clear through a deed or a person without much mercy; and though I know his strong sense of right and justice, to say nothing of the real benevolence of his heart, would make him revolt from a conscious wrong, or injustice to the worst or weakest of his fellow men, still, as I say, he has a summary fashion of disposing of them sometimes.

Aunt Agnes is just the opposite of this. wonder if anybody ever lived for whom she would not put in her soft voiced plea of charity, her little excuse, or palliative when it came to the worst!

Uncle Kerr's speech took us both to the window; and there, on the opposite side of the street, sauntering slowly past the druggist's, we saw the subject of these obnoxious remarks, a youth, a little past the middle of his teens, with a slender, well-knit figure, with his hands in his pockets, and a slow, rather indolent gait, as though there was nothing in the world worth hurrying for, and a large Newfoundland dog following close at his heels; all this at once concentrated our gaze.

"Now, Kerr," commenced Aunt Agnes, "you know that remark of yours about blood is to be received with great limitations on every side. I know there is much general truth in it. I know also, that in its practical application we shall fall very wide of the mark, if we make this rule of birth our touchstone of character. The world owes some of its largest debts to men who have had indifferent fathers and mothers."

"Granted, as a general fact, but that doesn't upset this particular one," resuming his seat and his newspaper.

I put in my "small oar" here, as Uncle Kerr playfully calls it, whenever I take part in the talk.

"What do you know about that young man's father, Uncle Kerr?"

66

That he is a bad man, coarse, dissipated, vulgar. A man without principle or honour of any sort. He's made a large fortune in various speculations, and he's arrogant and purse-proud, as that class of coarse-fibred men usually are over their money."

A good, true man to the core, you see, and despite the little native flash of severity, the soft and kindly heart was sure to come out at last.

After this I never met Slater Knapp sauntering, up and down the old rambling, sleepy streets of our country town, but I thought of what Aunt Agnes had said, and wondered what "salt there was in him ;" and I used to look at him, with his young, slight figure, his indolent gait, his hands in his pockets, and his great shaggy Newfoundland, like a black cloud of fate close behind him, with some new interest and curiosity, for I had passed him a thousand times before in the same way, without a thought.

That is just the way in life. Some chord is struck-some sudden revelation is made, and we wake up to a new thought and interest in people towards whom our feelings and thoughts have been locked up in absolute indifference before.

One afternoon I came upon him in the old fashion, and it seemed to me that any one gifted with a swift penetration into human character would have comprehended something of this youth and his antecedents—a coarse, rich man's son-nothing in the world to make of life but to have a good time" out of it generally. It was a November afternoon, bending towards night, a dismal, hopeless sky overhead, the air charged with mist, full of a raw, pervading chill, and the beauty and brightness blotted and burrred out of everything.

I was hurrying home with a little shiver of cold all through me, that would have been a sure prophesy of stiffness and rheumatism to older bones than mine, when suddenly I came, as I said, upon Slater Knapp, with his hands in his pockets, his lounging gait, whistling a tune, and the huge black shadow close behind him.

At that moment there came betwixt him and me, ona sharp run, a small, half breathless figure, which did not look as though its life had stretched into ten years-a boy's figure, with a thin, meagre, pinched face, and threadbare clothes which suited the face, and told their own story of poverty, a crop of coarse brown hair over his forehead, and crying a loud, dreary, sobbing cry, that sounds so dismally from a little child.

Slater Knapp stopped, so did I, and the black Newfoundland pushed his nose around the bare feet.

"What's the matter, I say?" he asked-the voice not unkindly.

"The wind blew my hat into the river, and when I leaned over to catch it, I lost the loaf of bread mother sent me to get, and we shan't have any supper to-night."

Slater Knapp looked at me and I looked at him; then we both looked at the boy.

"That's only a fresh dodge to get money. Come on, Nero," and he whistled to the dog. There it was-the atmosphere in which Slater Knapp had been brought up, stifling all generous feeling, all sweet and human sympathies-there spoke out the hard, coarse shrewd quality of the father. I thought of all this as I followed the youth with my eyes, and then I thought of Aunt Agnes' prayer, and then I turned towards the small, shivering figure. It was hard to decide what to do. The clouds lowered with angry threats of rain overhead, home was a mile off at the nearest-my money was all spent, yet I could not leave the child there, carrying away in my thought the dismal, dreary sobbing.

A quick sound of returning footsteps, a dog pushing his nose around the bare feet, and I heard a voice muttering in an undertone, as though unconscious any one could catch it.

'You'll just make a fool of yourself, Slater Knapp!"

I looked up, and there he stood. "Now, boy," he said, his words going right to the core of the thing, "I wonder if you've been telling me the truth?"

"I think his face answers for him, sir," I said, while the boy looked up in a swift amazement which was partly fright, for the tone, more than the words, had some inflection of a threat in

them.

I do not think that Slater Knapp had been conscious of my presence before; or, if he had, he thought I was a mere child, idly watching the scene out of mere curiosity, for every one says I am small for my years, and they are only thirteen. He darted now a quick, surprised glance into my face, and then all over me.

"That's a fact," he said, at last, that can't lie," turning to the boy.

a face like

"Come along with me, little fellow," the tones smoothed now into a little more softness; though quick and abrupt still, you could see it was his habit.

"What for?" the child asked, shrinking back in a little fear.

"Don't be afraid, my little man. I wont do you any harm, I promise. Go with me down the street there, and we'll stop at the first shop, and you shall have a nice new cap and a pair of shoes to boot, for those little blue toes, and then we'll go further on to the baker's, and I miss my guess if you don't have something better than a loaf of bread for supper to-night! Come now, I've got plenty of money, and I've taken a whim to throw away a little of it on you."

He held out his hand, and the child slipped it-into the youth's, and they went on down the his-the long, soiled, ragged sleeve half covering street together, and the dog followed. And in thick in my eyes, and I kept thinking "Aunt Agnes' prayer! Aunt Agnes' prayer!"

a little while I went on too, but the tears were

As soon as I reached home I rushed into the room where the family was, and related what I had just witnessed. I think my eyes were not When I the only ones which held tears then. was silent Uncle Kerr said—

"Well, Agnes, you were right. Despite his father and his education, there is hope for the boy."

help feeling that Aunt Agnes' prayer might be And I said, here, "But all the time I couldn't after he had left the little child." the one thing that made Slater Knapp turn back

And Uncle Kerr answered

"And I am herein taught again that faith and prayer are deeper than all philosophies and theories of men."

PROSE received, but not yet read." The Village | Shop;" "Jetty" (no stamp enclosed as stated); "The Lecturer's Family" (the obscure state of this MS. renders it almost impossible for us to form an opinion of it); "The Fruits and Flowers of Palestine" (we have read this interesting paper, but fear we shall not be able to make use of it).

NEW MUSIC." Beautiful England," and "I'll be all smiles to-night." These songs, unfortunately delayed at the office till too late for notice this month, shall receive due attention in our next number.

Accepted."A Colloquy" (the writer is respectfully informed that we cannot comply with her re

quest); "An Amateur" will also please to accept this

answer.

"C. M., Cork."-We could only find two of the poems asked for, which were duly posted for her. We will endeavour to procure the others.

MSS. declined, with thanks.-"The Ambassador's Daughter;" "The Picture and its Story;" "To be told in the Dark" (we have an idea that we have seen this tale in print-the title, at all events, is very near a plagiarism); "The Protester, a tale of Bonner's days" (unsuited, from its tone, to our pages); "Padmore Heath and its privileges;" "Miss Catterton's

Favourite."