Indianapolis Journal, Indianapolis, Marion County, 15 March 1885 — Page 9

From the La ly Gwendolen Ghiehester, St. Petersburg, ! to the Princess <li San Zenone, Coorat e Bysset. “My poor little dear, are you already begin-; ping to be miserable about what people will think? Then, indeed' your days of joy are numbered. If 1 were to write to you fifty times I could only repeat what I have already written, j You are not wise, and you are doing everything you ought not to do. Os two people who are j married, there is always one who has the delu- I Bion that he or she is necessary and delightful to ! the life of the other. The other generally thinks ‘ just the contrary. The result is not peace. This gay, charming, handsome son of Rome has be- I come your entire world, but don’t suppose for a ; moment, my child, that you will ever bo h : s. It : is not in reason, not in nature, that you should be. If you have the intelligence, the taco, and j the forbearance required, you may become his | friend and counsellor, but I fear yuu nev;r will have these. You fret, you weep, and you understand nothing of the masculine tem- i perament. T see snakes,’ as the Americans \ observe; and you wiil not have either the ; coolness or the wisdom required to scotch a j snake much less to kill it. Once for all, my i poor pot, go cheerfully to Paris, Trouville, and all the pleasure places in the world. Affect enjoyment if you feel it not; and try to remember, beyond everything, that affection is not to be retained or revived by cither coercion or lamentation. Once dead, it is not to be awakened by ' all the 'crooning of its mourner. It is a corpse, for ever an aye. Myself, I fail to see how you could expect a young Italian, who has all the habits of the great world and the memories of his vie de garcon, to be cheerful or contented in a wet June in an isolated English country house, with nobody to look at but yourself. Believe me, my dear child, it is the inordinate vanity of . a woman which makes her imagine that she can he sufficient for her husband. Nothing but vanity. The cleverer a woman is, the more fully she recognizes her own insufficiency for the amusemeut of a man, and the more carefully (if she be wise) does she take care that this deficiency in her shall never be forced upon his observation. Now, if you shut • a man up with you in a country house, with the j rain raining every day, as in Longfellow s poem, j yon do foree it upon him most conspicuously. If > you were not his wife I daresay he would not j lire of you, and he might even prefer a grey sky to a blue one. But as his wife!—oh, my dear! why, why don’t you try and understand what a terrible penalty-weight you carry in the race? Write and tell me all about it. I shall be anxious. lam so afraid, my sweet little sister, that you think Iqvq is all moonlight and kisses, and forget that there are clouds in the sky and quarrels on earth. May Heaven save you from both. P. S. -—Do remember that this same love requires just as delicate handling as a cobweb does. If a rough touch break the cobweb, all the artists in the world can't mend it. Tliero is a truth for you. If you prevent his going to Paris now, lie will go in six months’ time, and perhaps lie will go without you. Perhaps he would be happier at Lanciano than at Coombe, and he would have all his own people, but ho ( would want the petits theatres all the J Barao. You are not wise, my poor pet, you should make him feel that you are one with his pleasures, not that you and his pleasures are enemies. But it is no use to instill wisdom into you: you are very young, and very much in love. You look on all the natural distractions which he inclines to as so many rivals. So they may be, but we don t beat our rivals by abusing them. The really wise way is to tacitly show that, we cau be inoro attractive than they; if we cannot be so, we may sulk or sigh as wc will, wo shall be vanquished by them. You will think me very preachypreachy, and, perhaps, you will throw me in the fire unread; but I must say just this much more. I>ear. you are in love with Love, but underneath Love there is a real man, and real men are far from ideal creatures. Now, it is the real man that you want to consider, to humor, to study. If the real man be pleased, Lovo will takd ear© of himself; whereas if you bore the real man, Love will fly away. If you had been wise, my poor pet, I repeat, you would have found nothing so delightful as Judic and Chaumont, and you would have declared that the asphalte excelled all the Alps in the world. Ho does not j lovo you the less because he wants to be dans le : mouvement, to bear what other men are saying, i and to smoke his cigar amongst his fellowcreatures.” From the Dueliessa dell’ Aquila Fulva, Hotel des Roches Noire?, Trouville, Fiance, to the Principe di j Zenone, Coombe Bysset, Luton. Beds., England. “Poor flower, in your box of wet moss, what has become of you? Are you dead: and dried in your wife’s hortus siccus? She would be quite Bure of you then, and I daresay much happier than if you were set forth in anybody else's bou- ! quet I try in vaii to imagine you in that ‘per- . fectly proper,’ milieu; (is not that correct Eng- , lirii, ‘perfectly proper?') Will you be dreadfully | changed when one sees you again? There is a j French proverb which says that the 'years of i joy count double.’ The days of ennui certainly count for years, and give us grey hairs before we are five and twenty. But you know 1 cannot pity you. You would marry an English girl be- j cause she looked pretty sipping her tea. I told you beforehand that you would be miserable with her, once shut up in the country. The episode of Toniollo is enchanting. What people!—to put him in prison for a little bit of chiasso like that! \ou should never have taken bis bright eyes and his mandoline to that doleful and damp land of precisians. What will they do with him? And what can you do without him? The weather here is admirable. There are numbers of people one knows. It is really v< ry amusing. I go and dance every night, and then we play—usually ‘bac’or roulette. Everybody is verry merry. We all talk often of you. and say the l)e Profundus over you, my dear Piero. Why did your cruel destiny make you see a Saint Nitouche drinking tea under a lime tree? I suppose Sainte Nitouche would not permit it; else why not exchange Uio humid greenness of your matrimonial prison for the Rue des Planches and the Casino r K.-orn the 'Mik-s di San Zenone.Coomb? Bysset, to the PucltE-u <:i Aqud*. ful.a, Trouville. “Cariss.ma Mia—l have set light to the fuse! J have frankly declared that if 1 do net go out of this watery atmosphere and verdant Bastiie, I shall perish of sheer inanition and exhaustion. The effect of the declaration was for the moment such that I hoped, actually hom’d, that the was going to go into a puwsion. It would lave been so refresh: ngt

After twenty six days of dnmb acquiescence and silent tears, it would have been positively delightful to have had a storm. But, no! —for an ipstant she looked at me with unspeakable reproach; the next, her dove’s eyes filled, she sighed, she left the room. Do they not say that feather beds offer an admirable defense against bullets? I feel like the bullet which has been fired into the feather bed. The feather bed i3 victorious. I see the Rue des Planches through the perspective of the watery atmosphere; the Casino seems to smile at me from the end of the interminable lime tree avenue, which is one of the chief beauties of this house: but, alas, they are both as far off as if Trouville were in the moon. What could they do to me if I came alone. Do you know what they could do? I have not the remotest idea, but I imagine something frightful. They shut up their public houses by foice, and their dancing places. Perhaps they would shut up me. In England, they have a great belief in creating virtue by act of Parliament. . In myself this enforced virtue creates such a revolt that I shall tirer sur le mors, and fly before very long. The admired excellence of this beautiful estate is that it lies in a ring-fence. I feel that I shall take a leap over that ringfence. Do not mistake me, cara mia Teresina, lam exceedingly fond of my wife. I think her quite lovely, simple, saintly, and truly womanlike. She i3 exquisitely pretty and entirely without vanity; and I am certain she is immeasurcably my superior morally, and possibly mentally, too. But there is always such a long and melancholy ‘but’ attached to marriage—she does not amuse ms in the least, fche is always the same. She is shocked at nearly everything that ia natural or diverting. Sho thinks me unmanly because I dislike rain. She buttons aboift her a hideous, straight, waterproof garment, and walks out in a deluge. She blushes if I try to make her laugh at Figaro, and she goes out of the room when I mention Trouville. What am Ito do with a woman like this? It is an admirable type, no doubt. Possibly, if she had not shut me up in a country house in a wet June, with the thermometer at 10 R, and the barometer fixed at the word “rainy,” I might have been always charmed with this St. Doro-thea-like attitute, and never have found out the monotony of it. But as it is—l yawn till I dislocate my neck. She thinks me a heathen already. lam convinced that very soon she will think me a brute. And I am neither. I ouly want to get out, liko the bird in the cage. It is a worn simile, but it is such a true one.” Frcun the Duchessa di Aquila Fulva, Roches Noires, Trouville, to Prince di San Zenone. Coombe Bysset. “Piero Mio —In marriage the male bird is always wanting to get out, when the female bird does not want him to get out; also, she is forever tightening the wires over his head, and declaring that nothing can be more delightful than the perch which she sits on herself. Come to us here. There are any quantities of birds here who ought to be in their cages, but are not and manage to enjoy themselves quaud meme. If only you had married Nicoletta! She might have torn your hair occasionally, but sho would never have bored you. There is only one supremo art necessary for a woman: it is to thoroughly understand that she must never be a seccatura. A woman may-be beautiful, admirable, a paragon of virtue, a marvel of intellect, but if she be a seccatura —addio! Whereas, she may be plain, small, nothing to look at in any way, and a very monster of sins, big and little, but if she know how to amuse your dull sex she is mistress of you all. It is evident that this great art is not studied at Coombe Bysset.” From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe Byss et to, the Lady Gwendolen, Ohicester, St. Petersburg. “Oil, my Dear Gwen —It is too dreadful, and lam so utterly wretched. I cannot tell you what I feel. Ho is quite determined to go to Trouville by Paris at once, and just now it is such exquisite weather. It has only raiued three times this week, and the whole place is literally‘a bower of roses of every kind. He has been very restless the last few days, and at last, , yesterday, after dinner, he said straight out that he had had enough of Coombe, and he thought we might be seen at Romburg or Trouville next week. And he pretended to want every kind of thing that is to bo bought at Paris and nowhere else. Paris—when we havo been together just twenty-nine days to day! Paris—l dont know why, but I feel as if it would be the end of everything. Paris —we shall diuo at restaurants, we shall stay at the Windsor; we shall go to theaters; he will be at his club, he belongs to the Petit Cercle and the Mirilton; we shall be just like anybody else; like all the million and-one married people who are always in a crowd. To take one’s new-born happiness to a hotel! It is as prolane as to say your prayers on the top of a drag. To mo it is quite horrible. And it will be put in Galignini directly, of course, that the ‘Prince and Princess £an Zenone have arrived at the Hotel Bristol. 1 And then all the pretty women who tried to flirt with him before will langh, and say. 'There, you see, she has bored him already!’ Everybody will say so, for they all know I wished to spend the whole summer at Coombe. If he would only go to his own country I would not say a word. I am really longing to see his people, and his palaces, and the wonderful gardens with their statues, and their ilex woods, and the temples that are as old as the days of Augustus, and the fire-flies, and the magnolia groves, and the peasants who are always singing. But lie wont go there. Ho says it is a seccatuva. Everything is a seccatura. He only likes places where he can meet all the world. ‘Paris will be a solitude, too, never fear,’ he said, very petulantly; 'for there will be all the petits theatres and the open-air concerts, and we can dine in the Bois, and down the river, and we can run to Trouville. It will be better than rain, rain, rain; and nothing to look at except your amiable aunt’s big horses and big trees. 1 adore horses, and trees are not bad if they are planted away from the house, but viewed as eternal companions, one may have too much of them.’ And 1 .am his eternal companion, but it seems already I don’t count! I have not said anything. I know one oughtn’t But Piero saw how it vexed me, and it made him cross. 'Cara mia,’ he said, ‘why did you not tell me before we married that you intended mo to be buried forever in a box under wet leaves, like a rose that is being sent to the market? I should have known what to export, and 1 do not liko wet leaves.’ i could not help reminding him that he had been ever, ever so anxious to come to Combe. Then he laughed, but he was very cross, too. ‘Could I tell, auiraa mia,’ he cried, ‘that Coombe was situated in a succession of lagoons, contains not one single French novel, is fifteen miles asunder from its own railway station, and is blessed with a population of day laborers? What mau have I seen since I have been here except your parish priest, who mumbles, wears spectacles, and tines to givo me a tact against the Holy Father? In this country ' you do not know what it is to be warm. You do j not know what sunshine is like. You take an ! umbrella when you go in the garden. You put : on ft waterproof to go nnd hear one littlo shiver ing nightingale sing in a wet older bush. I tell you 1 am tired of your country, absolutely tired. You are an angel. No doubt you are*an angel; but you cannot console me for the intolerable emptiness of this intolerable life, wherp there is nothing on earth to do but to eat, drink and sleep, and drive in a dog cart.’ All this be said in one breath, in a flash of forked lightning as it were. Now that I write it dcAvn, it docs not seem so very dreadful, but as he, with the most fiery scorn, the most contemptuous passion, said it, I assure you it was terrible. It

THE INDIANAPOLIS JOURNAL, SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 1555. I

revealed, just as the flash of lightning would show a gravel pit, how fearfully bored he has been all the time I thought he was happy!” From the La<iy Gwendolen Chicnester, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset. “Men are very easily bored, my dear, if they have any brains; it is only the dull ones who are not.” From the Prince*-* di San Zenone to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester. “If I believed what your cymieal letter says, I should leave him to-morrow. I would never live through a succession of disillusions and of insults.” From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester to the Princess -<li San Zenone. “Where are your principles? Where are your duties? My dear littlo girl, you have married him; you must submit to him as he is. 31arriages wouldn’t last two (lavs if, just because the man yawned, the woman . ran away. Men always yawn. Hitherto, all San Zenone's faults appear to consist in the very pardonable fact that, being an Italian, he is not alive to the charms of bucolic England in rainy weather, and that, being a young man, he wants to see his Paris again. Neither of these seem to me irreparable crimes. Go to Paris and try to enjoy yourself. After all, if his profile be so beautiful you ought to be sufficiently happy in gazing at it from tho back of a baignoir. I grant that it is not the highest amatory ideal —to rush about the boulevards in a daument, and eat delicious little dinners in the cases, and laugh bi Judic or Chaumont afterwards; but l’amour peut so nicher anywhere. And Love won't be any the worse for having his digestion studied by good cooks, and his possible ennui exorcised by good playors. You seo for yourself that the great passion yawns after a time. Turn back to what you call my cynical letter, and re-read my remarks upon Nature. By the way, I entirely deny that they are cynical. On tho contrary, I inculcate on you patience, sweetness of temper, and adaptability to circumstances; three most amiable qualities. If I were a cynic, I should say to you that Marriage is a Mistake, and* two capital letters could hardly emphasize this melancholy truth sufficiently. But as there are men and women, and, a3 I before observed, property, in the world, nothing better for the consolidation of rents and freeholds has, as yet, been discovered. I daresay Krapotkine in his prison could devise something better, but they are afraid of him; so we all jog on in the old routine, vaguely conscious that we are all blunderers, but indisposed for such a drastic remedy as would alone cure us. Just you remark to any lawyer that marriage is a mistake, as i have said before, and seo what answer you will get. He will certainly reply to yoti that there is no other way of securing the transmission of property safely. I confess that this view of wealth makes me, for one, a most desperate Radical. Only think, if there were no property we should all be frisking about in our happy valleys as free and as merry as littie kids. I shouldn’t now bo obliged to put on all ray war paint and beads like a savage, and go out to a dreadful court dinner, four hours long, because George has a “career,” and thinks my suffering advances it. Oh, you happy child, to have nothing worse to do than to rattle down the Bois in a milord, and sup off a matelote by tho lake with your Romeo!” From tfie Princess di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg. “We are to leave for Paris and Trouville tomorrow. I have yielded—as you and mamma seemed to think it my duty to do. But my life is over. 1 shall say farewell to all happiness when the gates of Coombe Bysset close upon me. Henceforth wo shall bo like everybody else. However, you cannot reproach me any longer with being selfish; nor can he. There is a great friend of his, the Duchess of Aquila Fulva. at Trouville. She writes to him very often, I know. Ho never offers to show me her letters. I believe the choice of Trouville is her doing. Write to me at Paris, at the Windsor.” From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester. St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Hotel Windsor, Paris. “My poor child! —Has the green-eyed monster already invaded your gentle soul because he doesn’t show yon his own letters? My dear, no man who was not born a cur would show a woman's letters to his wife. Surely you wish your hero to know the A B C of gentle manners? I am delighted you are going iuto the world; but if you only go as *a duty,’ I am afraid the results won’t be sunshiny. ‘Duty’ is such a very disagreeable thing. It always rolls itself up like a hedgehog, with all its prickles out, turning for ever round and round on the axle of its own self admiration. If you goto Trouville, and wherever else you do go, en martyr, my dear, you will give the mischievous duchess, if she be mischievous, a terrible advantage over you at starting. If you mean to be silent, unpleasant, and enwrapped in a gloomy contemplation of your own merits and wrongs, don't biame* him if he spend his time at the Casino with his friend —or somebody vvorso. I am quite sure you mean to be unselfish, and you fancy you are so, and all tho rest of it, quite honestly; but in real truth, as I told you before, you are only an egotist. You would rather keep this unhappy Pierro on thorns beside you, than see him enjoy himself with other people. Now, I cali that shockingly selfish; and if you go in that spirit to Trouville, he will soon begin to wish, my dear child, that he had never had a fancy to come over to a London season. I can see you so exactly! —too dignified to be cross, too offended to be companionable, silent, reproachful, terrible!” From the Lady Mary Bruton, Roches Noires. Trouville, to Mrs. d’Arcy, British Embassy, Berlin. “July 15th. “ * * * * Amongst the new arrivals here are the San Zenone. Y"ou remember my telling you of their marriage some six weeks ago. It was quite tho marriage of the season. They were really immensely in love with eacli other, but that stupid month down in the country has done its usual work. In a rainy June, too! Os course, any poor Amorino would emerge from his captivity bo-draggled, dripping, and disenchanted. She is really very pretty, quite lovely indeed; but she looks fretful and dull; her handsome husband, on the contrary, is as gay as a lark which has found the door of its cage wide open one morning. There is here a great friend of his, a Duchessa dell’ Aquila Fulva. She is very gay, too, she is always perfectly dressed, and chattering from morning to night in shrill Italian or voluble French. She is the cynosure of all eyes as she goes to swim in a rose-coloured maillot, w ith an orange and gold eastern burnous flung about her artistically. She has that wonderful Venetian coloring which can stand a contrast and glow of color which would simply kill any other woman. She is very tall and magnificently made, and yet uncommonly graceful. Last night she was persuaded to dance a salterello with San Zenone at the Maison Persane, and it was marvelous. They are both such handsome people, and threw* such wonderful brio, as they would call it, into the affair. The poor little pretty princess, looking as fair and as dull as a primrose in a shower, sat looking on dismally—stupid little thing!— as if that would do her any good! A few days ago Lord Hampstfire arrived off here in his yacht. Ho was present at the salterello, and as 1 saw him out in tho gardens afterward with the neglected one, sitting beside her in the moonlight, I presume he was offering her sympathy and consolation. He is a heavy young fellow, hut exceedingly good lnimorod and kind hearted. He would have been in heaven in the wet June at Croombe Bysset—but sho refused him, silly little tiling! I am quite angry with her: she has had her own way, and she won’t make the best of that. I met her and her rejected admirer riding together this morning towards Villerville, while the beautiful prince was splashing about in the water with his Venetian friend I see a great many eventual complications ahead. Well! —they wiil ail be the fault of that Rainy June!” Tenth Thought Wit. Buffalo Express. It is owing to hard, sluggish work, rather than to any spontaneity of genius, that Mark Twain makes the world laugh. His best after-dinner speech, the one about New England weather, was in its delivery tho perfection of drawling, careless, impromptu speaking; and it began with an intimation that he had but a few minntes before been apprised that ho would be called upon to respond to the weather toast. Duplicate copies of his ensuing witticism were already in the hands of the newspaper reporters, and *he had been over a. week at the composition. He is similarly industrious and painstaking in the matter of interviews. He usually will not talk off hand for publication, but will provide the neatly-writ-ten copy, it’ the applicant chooses to wait until it cau be prepared.

A TRIAD OF POEMS. Reverie. The drowsy fire talked in its sleep As fires do, and said to me; — “How jong is life that you should be Wasting your coin,—wading the deep, Dark bottom of old books to find Naught, save a name, the reckless wind And time toy with alternately?” The old clock on the mantle-shelf Woke then!—and with unearthly might Wedged through the middle of the night And*down it fell the hour of twelve Like a shot bird! With heavy brain I read and took the pen again And wrote with infinite delight. “Weep not, dear friends who trail the pen, When its touch stings - your finger tips,— For o’er its path the fevered lips Os all earth's children breathe ‘Amen;’ Weep not, but sing yet while you may, And as you dream your soul away God’s mercy through your slumber drips.” * “Weep not, caged minstrels that you are, For o’er the fields your sweet notes run, And scarce before your songs are done, Their echoes reach you from afar, — Weep not, but sing yet while you may, And as you dream your soul away, Die like a goldfinch in the sun.” An Imitation. When the twilight kisses her castle-gates. And the white of her lions begins to fade, A lady lingers, and waits, and waits, For fire coming night and the coming tide That will bring her lover to her side. Her hands they are white, and her face it is fair, A red moon blossoms in the skies, And the flowers that smile in her silken hair, Quiver with love at the words she-wud, And the passionate gleam of her dark, dark eyes! * -V k k k k k Did her lover come to her castle-gates? Go ask the water, go ask the wind; I only know that she waits and waits, — In the gloomy folds of her long rich gown, That she looks to tho west, when the sun is down, But the moon cannot flush her pale, pale face —Till the night-bird’s notes through the balmy air Have died away,—does she keep her place, With never a lily, that you may find, Asleep in the meshes of her hair! Night. O fertile, fruitful Night! Ye ever stand, With clusters of ripe thought clasped in yo hand, Whose wine, crushed from the plurap brains that they hold Grows richer, as it still grows red and old! 0 matchless mine, of matchless treasure-trove Holding all that the gods of wisdom lovo, Could my lips find a word to open thee, And thine be mine, by some strange sesame! Blest sanctuary, where may not intrude The noisy babblings of the multitude! The child of science on thy murky breast Moistened his lips,—and ye taught him the rest! Down through thy mystic depths, no subtle wind Disturbs the falling fancies of the mind. Nor sweeps away, before they steep the page, The dewed philosophies of any age. I fain would scan thy depths, blind-eyed, but O, I see only a blank face down below, Whose shallow features shame the ones they greet And drive away each puny, weak, conceit! O fertile, fruitful field of plenteous brain! God garners your each teeming rood of grain, And piles 3*our golden bundles, with delight O’er half a sphere—his harvest of tho night. —Allan Bottsford. A Ballade of Day-Birth. When the East is fed with the roseate flush of day, And the heel of day treads on the brow of night; When odors sweet, from the trackless sea-wind's way, Wend o’er the valley and over the sunlit height When tho sweet sky-lark warbles in his flight, And thrush and robin sing piens unto morn, — Ah! sweet each song and beautiful each sight, That tells to us another day is born! When tender buds burst out, like ocean spray, Midst the green leaves that glimmer in the light; When rose-buds ope to the warm, sweet breath of May, And blush, like maids, when love is plead aright. When lilacs bend and and whisper low love’s plight To violets hiding from the poppies’ scorn, — Ah! sweet each sound and beautiful each sight That tells to us 1 another day :‘s born! When thoughts of loved ones in the far away Jar Thalia's lyre by love and time made tight, Where lips of children bend o’er us and say The prayers we taught them by our knee at night, When mother’s eyes gaze at us in delight, And father’s face our deepest prayers adorn,— Aid sweet each dream ami beautiful each sight, That tolls to us another day is born! ENVOY. Love! awake thy morning ever bright; We fear thy night, we dread thy hateful storm, Ah! sweet each thought and beautiful each sight, That tolls to us another day is born! —Will Robert Williams. Voices of tho Wind. How sings the night-wind through the bosky arms Os yon thick neighborhood of forest trees, Full of low groans and laughs alternative, But mainly chants, withal, and pleasingly*, A melancholy strain of deep lament. Lament, e’en now* ,th verge into remorse. Remorse for all the noble-timbered hulks, And their shrill-shrieking habitants, that it, Within fiorco moments of prodigious rage Strewed ’neath the gttlfy and o’erwhelming seo. It seems the inconstant melody doth take The variable tunc and tenor of our lives L T pon this rounded earth. Fate moulded harps, Each stringed with’s several passions, live we here, By wrenching blown fiercely tentative, Or mildly-creeping and refreshing gusts? By gladness, grief, adversity or weal? By one of these are we all wrought upon, And our life-song deliver to the world. —Howard Wydman. When Spring: Comes. Along the yellow roads the grass Shall softly creep with noiseless feet, A thousand odors, subtly sweet, Shall breath where o r the south winds pass. The first pale blossoms shall unfold Beside the ling’ring drift?; es snow, The dandelion wake and glow Ere fades the croeus, white and gold. The swallow on his airy wing Shall soar whore skies are softly blue; In thickets wet at noon with dew, The hermit thrush shall lurk and sing. But who shall care for these, alas, If from a grave the flowers shall .grow, And warm rains only met the enow To hide the dead beneath the grass. —Mary H. Krout, CItAWFORDSViLLE, March 5. On Reading the Poems of Kdith Thomas* Then will I. tasting, say— This is arbnstus' gift. Reached from the leafy drift On a glistening April day. —Wiid Honey. Arbutus’ gift, in very truth, I deem These gathered, golden songs that keep the gleam Os early sunlight through tine awakened wood; Tee vernal spirits of the sisterhood There cloistered, rosy-cool and vesta*-shy, Are in these lucent colls enforced to lie; Here bides the baffling fragrance, here the chorra. Henceforth l fear not frosty liioms’ harm. Though all his bluff besiegers he should bring; Behold, my book shelf lodges Ver, the Spriag! —Helen Gray Done, in Tbc Critic.

FOE THE LITTLE FOLKS. Evening Prayer. Jesus, Savior, wash away all that has been wrong totlay; iielp me every day to be good and gentle, more like Thee; Thou my best and kindest Friend, Thou wilt love me to the end! Let rao love Thee more and more. Always better than before! —Francis Ridley llavergal. What Is His Other Name? Now Orleans Picayune, Little children ask queer questions sometimes. A bright little boy about three and a half years old, to whom his mother had on several occasions repeated the Lord's Prayer, surprised her by asking, one day: "Mamma, what is God's other name? Is it God Hallowed'” This same little fellow wants to know "if the birds take off their feathers when they go to bed?” The Story Didn’t Go Right. San Francisco Inglceiile. Deacon Bucrag addressed the Sunday-school as follows: "I will tell you a story, dear children. Little Harry was a real good little boy, but his brothers Tom and George were bad and thoughtless. One day, while passing the house of a poor widow, Tom and George began to throw stones at her cat. Little Harry reminded them that this was very wrong, and remonstrated so earnestly that presently they stopped throwing stones at the cat, and now, dear children, what do you think Tom and George then did?*’ "Began to throw stones at little Harry,” was the general shout. A Glass-Eating Dog. Livingston (Ala.) Journal. Wo have often heard of the wonderful glasseating dog Carlo, hut always believed it a hum-, bug; but he was called into the office of the Artesian House, this afternoon, andin the presence of five gentlemen and one drummer he ate all the window-glass they would give him. The glass was broken in small pieces, and he devoured it greedily, licking up all the pieces that fell out of his mouth. The dog is the property of Col. Thomas Whetraore, of this place, and has been eating glass since he was a puppy. He is a pointer and a fine bird dog, keeps fat and healthy and tho glass does not seem to hurt him in the least. The Little Boy Obeyed Orders. Salem Gazette. I will tell yon a funny little story, which I solemnly assure you is true. At tho Christmas dinner given by a well-known charity organization, a young lady, who was on tho reception committee, had, among her other duties, to attend to the removal and earn; of the outside clothing of the children. In the bustle of several arrivals she hastly welcomed one small hoy and told him to take off his things. In a few minutes, hearing a shout of laughter, she turned around and found he had completely undressed and stood as*naked as when he was born. Her friends considerately refrain from asking her if that small hoy obeyed orders. A Clever Cat. Manchester Times. A member of the Zoological Society says: "I once had a cat who always sat up to the dinner tablo with me, and had his napkin round his neck, and his plate and some fish. He used his paw, of course, but he was very particular, and behaved with extraordinary decorum. When he had finished his fish I sometimes gave him apiece of mine. "One day he was not to he found when the dinner bell rang, so we began without him. Just as the plates were put round for the entree, puss came rushing up-stairs and sprang into his chair, with two mice in his mouth. Before he could bo stopped he dropped a mouse on to his own plate, and then one onto mine. He divided his dinner with mo, as I had divided mine with him.” Two Parrot Stories. London Saturday Review. While Dean Stanley was canon of Canterbury, a gentleman, who was invited to brerfkfast, found all the servants assembled in the garden gazing up at a laburnum in which a parrot was at, large. At that moment tho canon came out. The parrot looked dowh'at him and said in a low, hut distinct voice, exactly like .Stanley's: "Let us pray!” He was captured by the help of a fishing rod. A gray parrot was stationed in a nursery, where his greatest delight was to see the baby bathed. An infantile complaint seized the child, and the parrot was removed to the kitchen, There, after af time, he set up a terrible cry, "Tho baby! The dear baby!” All tho family rushed down to find the parrot in tho wildest excitement, watching tho roasting of a sucking A Boy’s Novel. Youth’s Companion. Wo find in an exchange a boy’s novel, written by a hoy who is rather more eager to become i writer than he is to learn to spell. Chapter three is dramatic aud ambitious, as follows: Ho ran for the woodo, and as lie was going he met a friend of his named John*Smith. "Hallo, John,” said he. "Hallo!” "Where are you going.” "Banning away.” "Wheir from?*! "Jail.” "Well, Jou had hotter hurry up, because their come the police.” "Wheir will I go?” "For the river.” "Is their any boat their?” "Yes. ” "Gude hi.” And away he ran for the river, with tho police behind —he soon rceehed the river and sprang into a boate. We are compelled to hid "gude hi” to tho reader at this thrilling point The Printer Boy. About, the 3'ear 172.") an American boy. somo nineteen years old, found himself in London, where he was under the necessity of earning his bread. He was not like many young men in these days, who wander around seeking work, and who are "willing to do anything,” because they know how to do nothing; hut he had learned how to do something, and know just where to go to fiud something to do; so he went straight to a printing oflico, and inquired if ho could get employment. "Where are you from?” inquired tho foreman. "America,” was the answer. "Ah,” said the foreman, "from Amorica! A lad from America seeking employment as a printer! Well, do you really understand the art of printing? Can you set typo?” The young man stepped to one of the cases, and in a brief space set up the following passage from the first chapter of John: "Nathaniel said unto him. Can thero any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.” It was done so quickly, so accurately, and administered a delicate reproof so appropriate and powerful, that it at once gave him influence and standing with all in the office. He worked diligently at his trade, refused to drink beer and strong drink, saved his money, returned to America, became a printer, publisher, author, Postmaster-general, member of Congress, signor of the Declaration of Independence, embassador to royal courts, and finally died in Philadelphia, April 17, 1790, at the age of eighty-four, full of years and honors; and there are now more than a hundred and fifty counties, towns, and villages in America named after the same printer boy, Benjamin Franklin, the author of “Poor Richard's Almanac.” A Japanese Baby. M. <'. Griffis, in St. Nicholas. When Kine, the little Japanese baby, was one hundred days old, she was carried to tho temple, just as some American parents take their little children to the church to have them christened, though Kine’s parents do not know or worship the true God. The priest wrote a prayer on a piece of paper and put it into the prayer bag, which was small and made of red crape, embroidered in white flowers and drawn together by silk cords. This hag containing the prayer was the "guard from evil,” and is devoutly believed by all Japanese to have ’ the power of keepiug children from evil spirits, from delusion by foxes-for the poople think that foxes can cheat or enchant people—and from all dangers. This litilo red hag was attached to tho girdle behind. After bestowing a gift in money upon the priest, the parents and relatives returned home with the little girl and held a great feast in her honor. Kino was carefully nursed ami carried on the

back of a faithful servant, who fastened her thero by a long string or bandage drawn around the waist and legs of the child, and crossed over the neck and ehoulders of the maid. Her littla head and bright eyes would bob on every side as her nurse walked or ran, and here she would go soundly to sleep, or play as any baby would. She was never carried in any person's arms. Japanese babies seldom are. When Kine’s aunts or cousins wished to coax her away from her nnrse or mother they would hold their hacks invitingly, and she would put out her little arms and go to one or another, as she chose. Clasping tightly the neck of th favored one, and held there by tho foot or legs, she would he as happy as if cuddled up in the arms. As the baby grew and began to walk, lifctle sandals made of straw were put on her feet. These were fastened on by putting the great too through a loop. When she was a year old her hair, which had been shaved, was allowed to grow a little, and then tied on the top in a very funny fashion. Every year it was worn differently. A Little Boy’s Bravery and Patience. Youth’s Companion. Perhaps not more than one newspaper had the story. It was headed, "A little boy of seven run over by a street-car and badly mangled*' Perhaps scarcely one of the readers of that one paper paused to think about this trifle, in the busy rush and whirl of holiday time; and yei how much it meant to ono small household! llow their hearts ached when the poor little fellow Avas brought in and laid on his poor little bed! His mother’s eyes were so full of tears sho could scarcely see to tend him, but she kept back from her quivering lips tho cry that would ha\*e hurt the ears, and if her hands trembled, they were yok firm enough to do what was ►needed. But the most wonderful thing of all was tho bravery and patience of tho hoy himself, so crushed and wounded that it broke othor people's hearts to see him, and yet so gentle and uncomplaining that it made his elders ashamed of every complaint they had ever uttered over lesser pains. The doctor, though used to beds of pain, grew very pitiful when he found, after tA\o operations had been performed under the influence of other, that still another was necessary. "I do hate to use so much ether,” ho said, ••'and yet it’s too much to expect him to bear tho operation without.” Tho poor mite, himself, caugnt the words and understood them, and his sweet, childish voice, conquering with its sweetness fear and pain alike, said earnsttly: "I'll hold still, oh, so still, and not cry once, if mamma will sing a song, and if sho won't let the tears come into her eyes. ’ And then the mother sang—and only the pitying Father in heaven who helped her knew I'.oav sho kept back the springing tears —sar.g and sang, and the boy listened with his patient eyes fixed upon lior face; and. meanwhile, tbo doctor took out piece after piece of hone from the poor mangled hand, and never one cry or groan came from the childish lips. Ah. Avhat a lesson it was for grown-up people, who cry out in their pain, and are not willing to bear the probing hand of the Great Physician! Said ono of the old saints, "There are no tears in tho eyes of God!” No, because He Knows the end from the beginning, and wounds us but to heal. * Eskimo Baby-Life. St. Nicholas. When a baby Eskimo’s mother makes the hood l'or her reindeer suit, she stretches it into a long sack or hag, that hangs down bohind and is supported hv her shoulders, and this hag of reindeer's skin is his cradle and home, where he lives until he knows how to walk, when he gets His own first suit of clothing. This, however, is while tho baby Eskimo is out-of-doors or his mother is making a social visit. When at his oi\ T n homo, in order not to trouble his mother while she is solving or cooking or doing such other work, the little baby is allowed to roll around almost without clothing, among tho reindeer skins that make the bed, where it amuses itself with anything it can lay its hands on, from a hatchet to a snow-stick. You doubtless think little Boreas should have a nice time rolling around to Iris heart's content on the soft, warm reindeer skins. But when I toll you more about his little home, you may not then think so. For his winter home is built of snow. "But won't the snoiv melt and the house tumble in?” you will ask. Os course it will if you get it warmer than just the coldness at which water freezes. But during a greater part of tho year it is so cold that tbo snow will not melt, even when tho Eskimo burn arcs in their stone lamps inside these snow houses. So. by closely regulating tho amount of fire, they can just keep the snow from melting. In short, it must always he cold enough in their l omo to freeze. So you can see that the little Eskimo cannot have such a very nico time, and you can’t see how in the world he can ho almost naked nearly all day long when it is so cold. But such is the fact. Y"et, in spite of all this, tho little fellow really enjoys himsolf. Ho gets used to iho cold, and has great fun frolicking around on the reindeer skins and playing with his toys; and when I have told you somo other stories about tho cold these littlo folks can endure, you can understand how they can enjoy themselves in the snoiv lints, or igloos, as they call them, when it is only a little colder than freezing. At times, tho lire ivill got too warm in the snow house, and then the ceiling ivill commence melting—for you all perhaps have learned at school that when a room becomes warmed it is warmer at the ceiling and cooler near the floor. So with the hut of snoiv; it commences melting at the top because it is warmer there- -and ivkcn two or three drops of cold water have fallen on the baby’s shoulders, his father or mother finds that it is getting too warm, and cuts down the fire. When the water commences dropping, the mother will otten take a snoiv-ball from the floor, where it is colder than freezing, and stick it against the point ivhere tho ivater is dripping. Thero it freezes fast and soaks up the ivater just like a sponge until it becomes full, aud then she removes it and puts on another, as soon ns it commences to drip again. Sometimes she will forget to remove it, and when it gets soaked and heavy with water and warm enough to lose its freezing hold, down it comes! perhaps right on the baby’s bare back, where it flattens out liko a slushy pancake—or into his face, as it once served mo. Sleep. When to soft sleep we give ourselves away, And in a dream as in a faii’y bark Drift on and on through the enchanted dark To purple daybreak, little thought we pay To that sweet bitter world iva know by day. We arc clean quit of it, as is a lark * So high in heaven no human eve may mark The thin, swift pinion cleaving through the gray. Till we awake ill fate can do no ill. The resting heart shall not take up a*rain The heavy load that yet must make it bleed; For this brief space the loud world’s voice is still. No faintest echo of it brings U3 pain. llow will it be when we shall sleep indeed? —Thomas Dailey Aid rich. General Bartlett’s Commission. Cooperstowu Republican, March 11. General Joseph J. Bartlett went out as a captain in the Twenty-seventh New York. Tho General was made a brigadier by President Lincoln, and Congress adjourned without confirming the appointment. One day while tho troops were in camp at White Oak* Church the writer recalls the incident of General Bartlett’s reappointment. The brigade which he commanded was drawn up at General Slocum’s headquarter’s, who was then our division commander, to hid good-bye to General Bartlett Before this was done General Slocum appeared with General Bartlett and*their respective staffs, the former saying a telegram had jut been placed iu his hands which he would read. It was as follows: Executive Mansion, Washington, D. O. General Slocum; Tell General Bartlett to put on hUold clothes again. I have reappointed him brigadier-general. Abkaham Lincoln. A Few Thoughts. Shaw. Silence is one of tho hardest arjutr.caij to refute. George Eliot: Affectiorf is tho broadest \\*ig of good in life. Thomas Carlyle: The greatest of faults i be conscious of none. Tibullus: While thy early spring tirno blooming use it; it slips away with o°rlow foot. Bacon: No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast as love can do oiU* only a siiuio thread.