eyes. All her life my friend had been a Christian believer,
with an unwavering faith in a life beyond this, and for her sake a
bitter grief came upon me because, so far as I could see, there were
no grounds for that belief. I thought I could more easily let her go
out into the unknown if I could but feel that her hope would be
realized, and I put into words this feeling. I pleaded that if there
were any of her own departed ones present at this supreme moment could
they not and would they not give me some least sign that such was the
fact, and I would be content. Slowly over the dying one's face spread
a mellow radiant mist--I know no other way to describe it. In a few
moments it covered the dying face as with a veil, and spread in a
circle of about a foot beyond, over the pillow, the strange
yellowish-white light all the more distinct from the partial darkness
of the room. Then from the centre of this, immediately over the hidden
face, appeared an apparently living face with smiling eyes which
looked directly into mine, gazing at me with a look so full of
comforting assurance that I could scarcely feel frightened. But it was
so real and so strange that I wondered if I were temporarily crazed,
and as it disappeared I called a watcher from another room, and went
out into the open air for a few moments to recover myself under the
midnight stars. When I was sure of myself I returned and took my place
again alone. Then I asked that, if that appearance were real and not
an hallucination, would it be made once more manifest to me; and again
the phenomenon was repeated, and the kind, smiling face looked up at
me--a face new to me yet wondrously familiar. Afterwards I recalled my
friend's frequent description of her dead father whom she dearly
loved, but whom I had never seen, and I could not help the impression
that it was his face I saw the hour that his daughter died.

A DECADE OF RETROGRESSION.

BY FLORENCE KELLEY WISCHNEWETZKY.

During the ten years which ended with 1889, the great metropolis of
the western continent added to the assessed valuation of its taxable
property almost half a billion dollars.

In all other essential respects save one, the decade was a period of
retrogression for New York City. Crime, pauperism, insanity, and
suicide increased; repression by brute force personified in an armed
police was fostered, while the education of the children of the masses
ebbed lower and lower. The standing arm