: The Galaxy May 1877 Vol. XXIII.—May 1877.—No. 5. by Various - American literature Periodicals The Galaxy

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y take them!) he is to be put in the kindergarten at Geneva, and left there for some years. It's a consolation to think that he can't be anywhere more desolate than he's sure to be at home.

Meanwhile, work for papa and mamma, and bouts of colic for him, poor little chap!

The father's part was to try and present an available surface for the dabbing, which he did by drawing out first an arm, then a leg of the child at full length, just as one pulls an elastic cord to find how far it will stretch, letting it go with a snap when at full tension--as he dropped arm or leg when little Malaise resented such unwarrantable experiments on his ductility by a sudden, louder-than-usual roar. It was piteous! But to see that father and mother--he lanky, spectacled, grave as an owl, she serious, abstracted, revolving doubtless some scheme of work, mechanically getting through this piece of business, recognized as necessary by their conscientiousness, but perplexing in its nature, and unaccountable as having fallen to their lot--no propriety, no indignant sympathy for the baby, could quite withstand the drollery of the scene.

But nothing could pacify nurse! "The idiots!" she almost screamed. "The child will die, and I hope it will, for she's not fit to have it. I hope it will die!"

BIEBRICH, 21st.

I have kept this open, thinking I could tell you definitely when we shall get into our quarters at Schwalbach, but nothing is settled yet, and we've been pottering about in these river towns. As Schlangenbad and Wiesbaden are very full, I counsel my lord to stop here where we are well off; for this is a very comfortable hotel, and I don't want to do any more unpacking till we are finally bestowed in our rooms at the Villa Auth?s.

There is an abandoned palace of the Grand Duke of Nassau here--one of the ruins in King William's track of '66. It is so melancholy to see these ruined principalities. Union's a very nice word, but forced union, matrimonial or political, is not comfortable either to see or endure. However, here's the palace, with its lovely neglected gardens, grass uncut, wild flowers flaunting where should be trim velvet turf only, fountains plashing in weedy ponds--and an admirable resort we find the shaded avenues and deserted parterres for ourselves and our small queen. We could scarce be better provided for.

To-day, watching from our windows the steamer coming down the river, we spied, on its deck, our travelling companions again--Mr. and Mrs. Malise--and, sure enough, the little gray parcel on the bench not far from mamma! Going at last, I hope, toward that nurse on the Moselle. Poor little Malaise!

Address your next as last year. And with fond love to the whole household,

Your Lil.

At last I've seen my "poor little Malaise" again. Your questions would have kept him in my memory if there had been a chance of my forgetting the woful baby; and so soon as we were warmly settled into house, home habits, and friendly circle again --and to go back to my first-page sentence, I set forth one morning to hunt up the little man. I found my people easily enough--a good house in a good street--"A large house, that must require much thought and care," I said to Mrs. Malise; whereupon she told me the care did not fall upon her, as the house was, after an imperfect fashion, conducted as a co?perative boarding-house--a germ, she hoped, of a co?perative hotel or family club. Half a dozen or so of their friends occupied the house with them, and they paid an admirable housekeeper to manage for them. It was only a make-shift--not what one liked to mention when speaking of future possibilities of confederated homes--had I read the article in a late number of the "Victoria Magazine" containing a magnificent picture of co?perative living?--but better than dreary lodgings or isolated homes, especially when a woman devoted her life to other than household duties. I replied that I believed every ardent spirit at some time or another was discontented with the beaten way, and dreamed of glorious possibilities of associate life and labor, wherein all selfishness should be suppressed, justice and all the beatitudes reign, and souls develop all their capabilities scarce conscious of even the body's hampering; but that practically the only successful lay experiment in communism I had ever heard of was that early one of the Indians in Paraguay under the care of the Jesuit missionaries--Phalansterians who wore their rosaries around their necks because they had no pockets in which to carry them!

And I thought that people without bonds of kinship or close sympathy would not happily bear being forced into incessant, intimate companionship unless they were either saints or prodigies of imperturbable courtesy.

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