support for his kettle, building a fire between them, sometimes came to grief by one of the logs giving way, dashing the syrup onto the ground.

The acme of perfection in sugar-making was supposed to be reached when the big black kettles were relegated to the making of soft soap, and sheet-iron pans were used in their stead. Arches were made for these pans, and a substantial shed was built over all. Some especially enterprising makers attached pulleys to the roof of the shed and moved the pans about by means of ropes or chains, as they desired them over a hot fire or a slow one.

Before this time buckets had taken the place of the wooden troughs to catch the sap, and wooden spiles were bought to replace the home-made alder spiles. The yoke for carrying the buckets of sap gave way before the "stone-boat» (upon which was a barrel to receive the sap), drawn by oxen, as the sugar-bush was gradually cleared of underbrush, making possible the movements of the "stone-boat » and the clumsy beasts among the trees. The "stone-boat” and oxen were replaced in time by sleds and horses.

At the present time the trees are tapped by means of a bit; a galvanized iron spile is inserted; and upon the end of the spile is hung a pail, closely covered, except for an opening large enough to receive the drippings of sap. In some instances the sheet-iron pans are still used for boiling down the sap, but they are partitioned off, and the different pans are connected by gas-pipe couplings, the syrup making its journey from the storage tank to the warming pan, and passing to the front pan on the arch, on the same principle as an evaporator is operated. Most large orchards have evaporators and all appliances for rendering the making of maple-sugar rapid and easy. Substantial sugar-houses are built in the grove in which the boiling down is done.

When the sap reaches the syruping pan it is soon thick enough for use. As it becomes thick enough to weigh eleven pounds to the gallon it is drawn out of the syruping pan, carefully strained, and allowed to cool and settle, when it is ready to can and ship.

The great secret of making the finest quality of syrup lies in keeping everything perfectly clean and boiling down the sap as rapidly as possible. The best appliances boil down five barrels or more of sap

in an hour. A barrel of sap will make something less than an eleven-pound gallon of syrup. The average is about eighty gallons to the hundred barrels. The sap varies in its saccharine qualities, that produced by trees in a thick wood not being as sweet as that produced in an open grove. The opening of the sugar season varies greatly from year to year. Some years favorable sugar weather begins early in February, in other years the cold March winds begin to blow before the season opens. A sudden thaw followed by a sharp freeze is sure to bring work in the sugar camp, especially if the air is moist and rainy. A dry, continuous warm spell, with wind, after the trees are opened, dries up the sap rapidly, making a fresh tapping of the trees almost a necessity.

The old time "sugaring-off parties have almost passed away, partly because less sugar is made than syrup, but mainly owing to the greater commercial value attached to the product of the maple grove. The average price paid the manufacturer for maple syrup is fifty cents a gallon, and as an orchard of fifteen hundred trees will produce about twelve hundred gallons of syrup the farmer who owns a maple grove of any size makes a neat little sum from it during the season.

In spite of the fact that more attention is paid to the making of syrup than of sugar the output of sugar in 1894 was 7,633,306 lbs., of which Vermont furnished 5,000,000lbs. Other sugar-producing States are New York, Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, Maine, and New Hampshire. In 1898 one county alone in northern Ohio shipped 200,000 gallons of syrup; one township shipping 28,000 gallons of syrup and 2,500 lbs. of sugar. As Ohio is not the greatest producer it would seem that it would not be difficult to obtain a sample of genuine maple syrup for buckwheat cakes on a cold winter morning, but the fact is that the supply does not nearly equal the demand, and outside the sugar belts it is hard to obtain unadulterated maple syrup or sugar. Little if any adulterating is done in the sugar camps, but dealers who are able to obtain scarcely half the quantity demanded by their customers are apt to increase the bulk of the product by adding a certain proportion of granulated sugar. The best way to obtain pure maple syrup or sugar is to write direct to the source of supply and order at first hand. KENT, OHIO. EMMA SEEVERS JONES.

F THE European writers of the present day, none, perhaps, better illustrates the profound change in thought and life that is coming over the Old World at the end of the nineteenth century than Gerhart Hauptmann. Beginning his successful literary life as an ultrarealist, becoming the standard-bearer in the fight for the justification of its most repellent aspects, he has now turned his efforts to the poetical embodiment of the airiest and most delicate fancies of idealism. To trace his development, therefore, is, in a manner, to epitomize the psychological growth of Europe during the last decade. The importance of his works passes the bounds of pure literature; it extends to the general history of civilization.

Hauptmann, early destined by his own inclinations and the wishes of his wealthy parents to an artistic career, received his first practical training in Rome as a sculptor. Turning to literature, he produced a poem, "Promethidenlos," in which he transfigures his early struggles, but which did not attract any attention. Seeing that the great literary reputations were being made in realism, and feeling a desire to sink his nature in the thorough study of his actual social environment, he began, upon his return to Germany, to study the life about him. Gifted with a rare power of observation, and having mastered the technique of literary expression, he produced works that immediately brought him into public notice. He studied and represented the life among peasants and the poor as well as in bourgeois society; the latter in the plays "Lonesome People" and "Colleague Crampton "; the former in "Dawn," "The Beaver Coat," and "The Weavers." All these works are dramas that have been presented with marked success on the German-speaking stage.

In "Dawn" he depicts the revolting details of life in a peasant family afflicted with the hereditary vice of drink. A temperance lecturer who happens in the vicinity falls in love with the daughter of the family, its only untainted member, but when he is told of the family history he promptly withdraws from the scene of action, bringing about the catastrophe of the play. In "The Beaver Coat " he gives

us a very humorous study of Prussian officialism, and he has there created a character who fairly rivals the delicious Dogberry. Prussia, of course, offers a multitude of such characters, but they have never been turned to such good use before.

"The Weavers » is perhaps the greatest popular play produced by German realism. It is a succession of stage pictures, presenting in the most life-like colors the harrowing details of the suffering of Silesian weavers. There is here no preaching of social reform. The mute agony of a hopeless social existence which finally bursts out into the flames of revolution is most truthfully portrayed. The personal experience of the author, whose ancestors had themselves been weavers, and who in his early youth had become familiar with the dread sufferings of the inhabitants of the many villages about his home, has been supplemented by detailed documentary studies concerning the historical occurrences represented in the play, so that a literary masterpiece of rare truthfulness has been produced.

Turning now to his representations of bourgeois life in "Lonesome People" and "Colleague Crampton," we can trace the influence of Ibsen, whose sharp, logical plot-construction often contradicts the descriptive idea of realism. The leading characters in both of these plays are men utterly destitute of will-power or force of character. In the case of the art-teacher, Crampton, whose existence comes near being ruined by his over-indulgence in liquid food, the utter absence of all moral stamina is at least made endurable by a good heart and personal attractiveness. In the second play we have a querulous, unpractical, vacillating, and heartless man. of learning, who destroys the happiness of his family by a platonic attachment to a young Russian student who shares his intellectual interests. This friendship is misinterpreted by his bourgeois surroundings, and Johannes, not having strength enough to attempt to carry out his ideals, commits suicide. This character bears strong resemblances to the pedant in "Hedda Gabler," although he may be given a little more credit for human feeling than that thoroughly despicable rep

resentative of modern European scholasticism.

In all of these plays, whether indicating the influence of Ibsen or of the more purely realistic writers, we find marvellously truthful delineations of character and life. Unlike Ibsen, who hopes by his fierce criticism to reform society, and unlike Sudermann, who capitulates to the difficulties of modern life and teaches the doctrine of unselfish patience in suffering, Hauptmann looks upon all the terrible effects of European civilization with the coolness of a disinterested observer, to whom the whole heart-rending drama is interesting only as material for art.

These plays had established the position of Hauptmann as a literary force to be counted with, and although but thirty years of age he was acknowledged almost universally to be the greatest realist of Germany. But Hauptmann felt himself driven to other fields. He may have been impelled by the spirit.of the times to make these first painful studies, but the results did not satisfy him, and he strove for higher fields of activity. Having trained himself in the rigid school of observation of contemporary life, he now attempted to vie with the greatest poets of Germany in historic drama. For this purpose he selected the period of the mediæval peasant uprisings in southern Germany, and after detailed historical investigations he produced the play, "Florian Geyer." The subject, of course, is similar to that treated in "The Weavers," —a popular revolution. Florian is the hero only in name. The play is also a succession of realistic pictures. It is an attempt to apply realistic methods to historical drama, but the attempt was not successful. Having given the products of his best powers in the earlier play, a climax in the treatment was not possible, and the success of this venture, which he so much hoped for, was denied him.

At this point in his career Hauptmann definitely turned his back on pure realism. The historical field having proved ungrateful, the purest forms of idealistic literature were now attempted. In his first idealistic play, "The Ascension of Hannele » («Hanneles Himmelfahrt»), there is a queer mixture of almost incongruous elements. It is as striking an example of transition style as we have in literature. The poor child Hannele, having endeavored to follow her mother,

who had drowned herself in the village pond, is rescued by the teacher and brought to the poorhouse, where we are introduced to all the sordid selfishness of

pauper existence. The child has a high fever, and a succession of weird but distinct fancies passes before her mind. The persons who surround her are transformed into spiritual beings, and she sees in the teacher the Lord Jesus Christ, whom she has been instructed to reverence and love. A strange mixture of human fondness for the man and of spiritual reverence for the God possesses her soul. Her mind is terrified by the horrid apparition of her drunken father, but is again soothed by the dark Angel of Peace. Her soul finally revels in dreams of Paradise, into which, after the eternal manner of human kind, she transfers the things she has hoped and longed for in her paltry existence. The play necessarily lacks unity. The machinery by which dream figures are introduced on the stage runs counter to dramatic experience and has been severely criticised. But, for all that, the play is most powerful and seizes the hearts of the beholders with tremendous force. We find again in the poorhouse scenes the realism of "The Weavers," but in the dream language of Hannele there is a new strange note of beauty,- the new idealism. This poetry may also be criticised. It sometimes consists of brilliant shreds which do not compose a harmonious picture. It reminds us of the poetry of Francis Thompson. It contains elements from all spheres of thought and feeling, but it is this very composite character, this striving away from sordid reality, this groping after an ideal, which makes the piece so strangely effective. It is the mind of Europe, frightened at the cruel facts of social existence, dreaming of better things to

come.

Contemporary fame of the first order became the share of Hauptmann after the presentation of his last play, "The Sunken Bell" ("Die Versunkene Glocke"). All di rect realism is here abandoned, and the former artistic bias of the author survives only in the realness which he gives to the creations of his imagination. We are in the atmosphere of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," of Endymion. A fairy being, the fay Rautendelein, the most lithesome creation of recent art, immediately leads us captive into her

realm. As the French Cyrano found a matchless impersonator in Coquelin, so this rôle, to the good fortune of Hauptmann, was created by the greatest actress of Germany, Agnes Sorma, and the success of the play is beyond anything that can be remembered by living critics. It is the highest ambition of German actresses to appear in this wonderful part, and criticism is silenced for the time being by the universal, unmistakable success of the play.

The hero of the play, Henry, the bellfounder, has finished a bell of wondrous sound, which is to be placed in a forest chapel high up on the mountain side. As the bell is being drawn up the steep roadway, the forest sprites succeed in overturning the wagon on the verge of a high precipice. The bell, sending forth sounds of pain as it strikes the rocks, rolls into the forest depths below, and is sunk in the lake of the water-men. Evening is already approaching, and Henry, while searching for his bell, makes a misstep, and is himself precipitated into the valley. There he is found by Rautendelein and the old forest woman. When his friends later find him and take him home, Rautendelein follows to nurse him, and the strange, beautiful being takes such a hold on his heart that when he recovers they leave his human friends, to live on the heights together. There he works at a great chime of bells which is to realize his highest ideal of art. Men come to call him back to his duty; he refuses, and is told that some time the sound of his sunken bell will summon him back. His little children come to him, bearing ewers with the tears of their mother, who has died of despair. At last the sunken bell chimes forth its plaintive note from the bottom of the lake, and a harmonious existence on the ideal height is no longer possible. His soul is crushed in the conflict of the ideal with the real.

In this play the influence of Nietzsche is unmistakable. Henry is trying to live the life of an "over-man.' He leaves behind human existence with its petty cares and triumphs, and is endeavoring to attune his personality to a higher harmony; reality, however, does not relax its hold on him, but summons him with the sound that means death to his soul. It has also been said that Hauptmann has here idealized his own experience with "Florian Geyer." That play was still of

good human quality, but he could not hang his bell in the tower for which he had destined it, and so he has turned away from realism and seeks a higher and more satisfying form of existence. The play has all the suggestive charm of an indefinite but alluring idea, and the struggle enacts itself in marvellously poetical surroundings. The poetry, like that of "Hannele," may be criticised in detail, but the whole conception is certainly of the highest order. The outward incongruousness of the former piece has disappeared, although the inner harmony between the highest striving and actual existence is not reached.

The instantaneous and marvellous popularity of this drama cannot be ascribed solely to the art of the author. He has been truly reading the soul of Europe. The Old World yearns away from the psychological refinements of Ibsen, from the brutal realism of Zola and the earlier Hauptmann; the freshness and originality of this newest poetry, its great wealth drawn from the painful experience of the last decades, its daring combinations of old forms, are challenging the admiration or at least claiming the attention of the literary world. There is a tremendous striving for a new social ideal which shall not be socialistic. This accounts for the great vogue of Nietzsche and of Hauptmann. Henry, the bell-founder, may also be considered a picture of the great philosopher whose brilliant mind was wrecked in a gigantic struggle with the contradictions of modern existence; and the "Sunken Bell" may perhaps be as remarkable a monument to Nietzsche as is the unique biography written by his sister.

As we glance over the career of Hauptmann, extending over the brief space of ten years, and look at him now, at the early age of thirty-five the most renowned literary man of Germany and the leader of the new idealism, we marvel at the rapidity with which changes take place in intellectual civilization. But there is no surer indication that there is still strength in the Old World to struggle away from the cynical despair which the teachings of Schopenhauer and the art of the realists had made the intellectual attitude of Europe. And the strength of this longing for deliverance is shown by the unprecedented success of Rostand in France and Hauptmann in Germany. PAUL S. REINSCH.

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

A

THWART the gloom of Lent shines a

day once observed by Christians as a great festival, and still accorded, by some religious bodies, the dignity of a feast. That the celebration of Annunciation Day has been a custom for many centuries is undoubted. There is a tradition that among the sermons of St. Augustine, who died in 430, are two relating to this day and its proper observance, and that St. Athanasius also left on record his views with regard to it.

The date of its observance, in common with those of Easter and Christmas, was for several centuries a matter of controversy. The Laodicean Council (51st Canon) ordered, circ. 363, that neither holy days nor the festivals of martyrs should be observed during the penitential season. The Council of Toledo, in 656, in order to obey the letter of this ruling, ordered the transference of this feast to the week preceding Christmas. A few of the Eastern churches still follow that decree, but the Trullan Council, in 692, ordered that this festival should be excepted from the prohibition. The date for Christmas having been fixed as December 25, Annunciation was assigned to its logical date,- March 25,-which it retains to-day in the calendar of the Latin Church. When the date falls within the Easter fortnight, the observance of Annunciation is deferred until the second Monday following the Resurrection festival. The Syrians celebrate Annunciation on December 1, and the Armenians on January 5.

The tale of the great mystery of the Incarnation has never been better told than by the Evangelist who was both painter and physician, and, from the sublimity and strength of his language, a poet as well. He was a native and citizen of Antioch, and familiar with the fact that, more than any other of the ancient peoples, had the "chosen" race cherished the dignity and purity of womanhood. The expectancy of the Messiah was the beacon

that dispelled the shadows of many centuries of Hebrew motherhood, no woman knowing, yet each at some time secretly hoping, that she had been divinely chosen to be the mother of the Redeemer of His people.

Moreover, the world, after nearly nineteen centuries of chance and change, of persecution and progress, has not wearied of the story as related by St. Luke. Told in sentences few and short, it comprehends time, eternity, earth, and heaven; it has inspired volumes of exposition from pontiffs and theologians; it has been the subject of more representations from the hands of the great masters than any other event in the world's history, except the Nativity and the Crucifixion.

Adeline's "Art Dictionary" says on this point:

"This event in the life of the Virgin is frequently treated in Christian art. As a mystical subject it almost always formed part of an altarpiece. . . . As an event the Annunciation is a frequent subject of the early painters. The scene is laid in a house or porch, and the accessories are a pot of lilies, a basket of work, or distaff. The angel is represented as descending to earth, and generally carries a lily or a sceptre, the latter being surmounted by a cross.»

Perhaps the greatest number of paintings of this subject, both on canvas and in fresco, have been the work of the Italian School, which may be considered as having flourished between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. Of the many artists of this school who have depicted the Annunciation may be mentioned Giotto di Bondone (1276–1336), Simone de Martini (1283-1344), Fra Angelico (1387-1455), Fra Lippo Lippi (1412-1469), Antonio Vivarini (circ. 1440-1470), Sandro Botticelli (1447– 1515), Francesco Francia (1450-1517), Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Andrea del Sarto (1488-1530), Salvi Sassoferrato (1605– 1685). The conception of this subject by the Italian master, Guido Reni (1575-1642), is shown in the engraving on p. 25.

Hans Holbein the elder (1460–1524), a