my burden, the price
of life, and I must bear it. God bless you and give you all happiness!

"ROBERT SHIRLEY:"

When she had read it all she bowed her head and wept again, and the face
that had grown more and more beautiful with the years of waiting was
radiant. Who can fathom the depths of a woman's love? Who can follow the
subtle workings of a woman's thought? Who can comprehend a woman's
boundless faith? Her course was clear. If misfortune had befallen him,
if he were maimed, disfigured, crazed, even if he were loathsome to her
eyes, she loved him, and she must see him: she would see him and speak
to him, and love him still, even if she could not be his wife. What
would she have done if she could have guessed the truth? As it was, she
wrote upon her card, "If you love me, come to me," and sent it to him.
And in answer to the summons he stood before her--not disfigured, not
maimed, not crazed, not loathsome in any way, yet irrevocably separated
from her for Dr. Fournier's experiment had succeeded, and Robert Shirley
was a mulatto!

CORNELIUS DEWEES.

A VISIT TO THE KING OF AURORA.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)

On the Oregon and California Railroad, twenty-eight miles south of the
city of Portland in Oregon, lies the German colony of Aurora, a
communist settlement under the direction of Doctor William Keil. In
September, 1871, I made a second journey from San Francisco to Oregon,
on which occasion I found both time and opportunity to carry out a
long-cherished desire to visit this colony, already famous throughout
all Oregon, and to make the acquaintance of the still more famous
doctor, the so-called "king of Aurora." During the years in which I had
formerly resided in Oregon, and especially on this last journey thither,
I had frequently heard this settlement and its autocrat spoken of, and
had been told the strangest stories as to the government of its
self-made potentate. All reports agreed in stating that "Dutchtown," the
generic appellation of German colonies among Americans, was an example
to all settlements, and was distinguished above any other place in
Oregon for order and prosperity. The hotel of "Dutchtown," which stands
on the old Overland stage-route, and is now a station on the Oregon and
California Railroad, has attained an enviable reputation, and is
regarded by all travelers as the best in the State; and as to the colony
itself, I heard nothing but praise. On the other hand,