ventor, Gutenberg, inspects the first proof of the now famous "Gutenberg Bible" as it is handed him by his assistant. The scene of the seventh picture is laid in America, and supposes a printing room, in which two men, dressed in the costume of Colonial times, are operating what is known. as the "Franklin Press," an improvement on the old-time machines of Gutenberg and his contemporaries. In front of the low, broad window at the back of the room, is seated a man at a table correcting proof, and in the foreground lies a pile of books. The eighth and last picture deals entirely with that part of bookmaking which may be, and indeed often does, amount to a fine art in itself. But the dress of most modern books is put on amid the buzzing of wheels and the clicking of machinery. Such bindery is here represented as far as the artist's necessities would permit realistic representation. Shafts, pulleys and belts, steam and electricity, would hardly seem hopeful materials from which to build a decorative composition, but a careful adjustment of tones and arrangement of line, together with its pictorial illustration of the subject, "A Book Bindery, 1895," bring it into harmony with its neghbors and make it a fitting ending to the series. A simple, quiet harmony pervades the whole, giving the effect as if the dome had grown up-pictures and architecture together being a unit in their appeal for recognition to the sense of beauty in the beholder. In the intervals between the arches are medallion portraits of New England authors: Mrs. Stowe, Longfellow, Holmes, Hawthorne, Lowell, Whittier, Bryant and Emerson. The dome pictures and the portraits are of great artistic merit, and are the work of Oliver Dennitt Grover, who also painted the decorations in the dome of the Blackstone Library at Chicago. An interesting feature of the hall is the solid marble staircase. This is monumental in character and built self-supporting, on the arch principle, after the manner of the ancients. Descending this circular stairway, we come to the lecture room, entrance hall and the two side entrances of the building. Continuing down, we reach the basement, with its lavatories, gymnasium, boilers and pumps, gas machines, electric switches, heat-regulating apparatus, etc. The lecture-hall, a room 40 feet by 50 feet, is the only portion of the building finished in wood throughout. out. Its carved oak pilasters and wainscoting run up to the arched and paneled ceiling, and their emblematical carving, while not profuse, is enough to give an air of richness to the whole. The cost of the building was $285,000. I Hermit Thrushes By GRACE LATHROP COLLIN T was the first Thursday in the month, the appointed day that Regina Billings should spend with Rhoda. As she drew near her sister's domicile she might have fancied that in her journey through. the town she had circumnavigated the globe, and that the house she had left behind her was now risen up before her, so close was the similarity between the two dwellings. Each was painted a gray, with white outlines, not unlike the gray gingham with white braid edging which Regina wore. Behind the house was a trig gray barn, with a barnyard proportionate to a small Jersey cow, even as the porch seemed adapted to the kitten curled at the head of the steps. Across the road ran a little brook, where a flock of gray and white geese were disporting themselves, part in the water, part, owing to the limited accommodations, waiting their turn on the bank. Rhoda, with beaming face, appeared in the door. "You know how I've been looking forward to your coming," said she. Sure you aren't tired with your walk? Then suppose I finish splitting those kindlings." They turned the corner to the scrupulous square of grass forming the back yard. It was bordered with petunias, and on the clothes-line a row of towels was snapping briskly. Rhoda took her place before the chopping block and with apparently no greater expenditure of energy than if she were knitting, split the yellow sticks, which Regina bore off to the dark inner wall of the woodshed. In amiable taciturnity they continued this modified form of "Anvil Chorus," until Regina gave the conclusive whack to a stick cleft upon the axe. She brushed the chips into a pan, while Rhoda hung the axe in its place. Then the sisters turned to the house, and without comment fell into the customarily agreed division of the labor of preparing dinner in the shining kitchen, and of setting the table in the bluepainted dining room. After the meal, in the same social abstraction, they set the rooms "to rights," spread the table with white netting, and with wildly crackling besoms of split paper, drove out an intrusive bumble bee. The final chord of the duet was the lowering of the shades, introducing a cool gloom that in "I'll stack," offered Regina, loosen- tensified the perfume from a vase of ing her bonnet strings. "That will be real sociable. Here, I'll hang up your bonnet. We were smart, weren't we, to start off shopping by ourselves, and out of all the head-gears in Putnam, to come home, each of us, with a black straw with red berries." heliotrope. "And now what?" Regina inquired. "What would you say to blueberrying? There's an extra sunbonnet right on the nail there." Each woman took in her shapely, tanned hand a bright tin pail, whose foolish inadequacy made manifest the constant disparity between their daily tasks and their daily vigor. In preparation for the childish errand, there was a Roman directness of purpose, and the gingham skirts were gathered into a peplus-like effect. They might have been on their way to the amphitheatre, as they strode off in single file across the warm soil. Their path was discernible in its perspective, but under foot lost itself in a tangle of purplish white bayberries, polished scrub-oak, twin leaves of wintergreen and low huckleberry bushes. Beyond stretched the open hillside, where cream-colored grasses, interspersed with crimson clover-heads, rose and reclined with the breeze. At the sky-line were stationed three elms, in shape like upright morning. glory blossoms, outlined against a sky streaked with the pale rays of "the sun drawing water." From somewhere came the cawing of crows, not a marauding sound,— rather the tranquility of enough and to spare. Rhoda swung round on her heel, and with an inclusive gesture, extended her arm statuesquely toward the landscape. Regina, dowered with a similar silence, nodded appreciatively. The two expressed themselves further only by the sound of blueberries bobbing against pail bottoms. Not until this sound had been dulled by successive layers of berries did Rhoda speak. "Seems to me I never could have endured to pick those berries without someone to talk to. But I reckon we have enough now. Let's sit down for a spell in the way Nature intended, instead of hunching ourselves over those diddling little bushes." She turned to a clump of birches behind them, with tremulous leaves and smooth, speckled trunks silvered in the sunlight. "The day's getting on, and there are ever so many more matters I feel I'd like to turn over with you." Conversation when indulged in at all between the Billings sisters was no idle chatter. It had the form and substance of dialogue. As was their custom, they proceeded to review their own situation, which would then serve as vantage point from which to survey surrounding affairs. "I've never regretted that we spoke to Lee that very first night. Of course, he and his wife expected that we'd go right on in the front bedroom that we'd had since we were girls." "Ida said she was disappointed." "And Lee said he'd build us a house.' "Being our brother, he didn't mean to show it, but he was surprised when we said each of us wanted a house." "Ida asked if we weren't afraid we'd be lonely." "We said we'd never had a chance before to be lonely. And if for a few minutes now and then we should feel a mite solitary, we shouldn't blare anybody.' "From the time mother used to buy full dress-patterns and cut them in two for us little girls, and take two of the hats with crowns stuck into each other from the pile at the milliner's, we've never known what it was not to have enough of anything. But we'd never known what it was to have all there was of anything." "We'd always divided things,— the hooks in the big closet, the four poster, the high-boy, the sweet-pea bed. At our age, one would think we might try a change." "Some people thought, when we |