nion,
whether we choose to accept their conclusions or not, be hailed as
benefactors. It is in the ranks of these that Alexander Kielland has
taken his place, and now occupies a conspicuous position.

HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN.

NEW YORK, May 15, 1891.

PHARAOH.

She had mounted the shining marble steps with without mishap, without
labor, sustained by her great beauty and her fine nature alone. She had
taken her place in the salons of the rich and great without laying for
her admittance with her honor or her good name. Yet no one could say
whence she came, though people whispered that it was from the depths.

As a waif of a Parisian faubourg, she had starved through her childhood
among surroundings of vice and poverty, such as those only can conceive
who know them by experience. Those of us who get our knowledge from
books and from hearsay have to strain our imagination in order to form
an idea of the hereditary misery of a great city, and yet our most
terrible imaginings are apt to pale before the reality.

It had been only a question of time when vice should get its clutches
upon her, as a cog-wheel seizes whoever comes too near the machine.
After whirling her around through a short life of shame and degradation,
it would, with mechanical punctuality, have cast her off into some
corner, there to drag out to the end, in sordid obscurity, her
caricature of an existence.

But it happened, as it does sometimes happen, that she was "discovered"
by a man of wealth and position, one day when, a child of fourteen, she
happened to cross one of the better streets. She was on her way to a
dark back room in the Rue des Quatre Vents, where she worked with a
woman who made artificial flowers.

It was not only her extraordinary beauty that attracted her patron;
her movements, her whole bearing, and the expression of her half-formed
features, all seemed to him to show that here was an originally fine
nature struggling against incipient corruption. Moved by one of the
incalculable whims of the very wealthy, he determined to try to rescue
the unhappy child.

It was not difficult to obtain control of her, as she belonged to no
one. He gave her a name, and placed her in one of the best convent
schools. Before long her benefactor had the satisfaction of observing
that the seeds of evil died away and disappeared. She developed an
amiable, rather indolent character, correct and quiet manners, and a
rare beauty.

When she