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weet of
When I should be her lover forever and a
day,
And she my faithful sweetheart till the
golden hair was gray;
And we should be so happy that when either’s
lips were dumb
They should not smile in • till the
other’s kiss had come.
But, ah, my dream is broken i>y a step upon
the stair,
And the door is softly opened, and my wife
is standing there;
Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions
I resign
To meet the living presence of that old
sweetheart of mine.
—James Riley, in Boston Pilot.
SEVILLE'S BLUNDERS,
BY BERTHA BEItTON.
A scrawl, of “not available,” across
the top of a prim looking sheet of manu
script, and it was refolded and passed to
the left hand of the table, with an air
that bespoke its final disposal; then the
young editor gave his attention to a more
interesting That subject.
should literary men, especially editors,
have time to devote to sentiment
and love making, would hardly be sup¬
posed, when one takes into consideration
their arduous duties, and as Herman
Seville sat in his cosy sanctum with a
formidable pile of bulky packages before
him, while at his side, and gaping like a
and hungry young robin, stood the capacious
would suggestive waste basket, no one
have suspected that he was pen¬
ning a tender little note, most carefully
worded, and literally brimming with
sentiment and fervor.
Incredible, it would have seemed, yet,
so it was; and he had sandwiched it in
as a sort of relish among less delectable
business.
Twice he read it over to see that he
had said exactly what he meant to,say,
to see that he had used flowery rhetoric,
impassioned and eloquent language. Yes,
as he carefully folded the note and laid
it by itself upon the table, he felt that
he had left nothing unsaid; ana well
satisfied with the effort, calmly confident
of its effect, he proceeded to the busi¬
ness of the morning, which was the con¬
sideration of the vast accumulation of
manuscripts before mentioned that
awaited his verdict of approval or dis¬
approval. There they lay in various shapes and
sizes, according to the fancy and con¬
venience of their respective -writers, and
through that long summer morning Her¬
man Seville read and criticised and
crossed out redundant words and
phrases, and into the hungry basket
dropped rejected articles. accepted
A few marked were pushed
to his right hand, but those were for-
ly, on atiy sub ect, in any styie of verse,
and of any desired length.
“It was so easy for her to rhyme,” she
said, and she threw back the folds of
vivid green that had concealed her face,
and revealed the thin, lank visage of a
maiden of forty-five summers.
c, , ^ad , ,, U° , . , her
a sa w comp exion,
. black small and glit
piercing eyes were
tering, and about her temples she wore
short, corkscrew curls that bobbed up
and down in her earnestness.
Her gaze was fixed upon the editor’s
face, and he seemed quite mystified re¬
garding her meaning; but when at last
she paused thoughts. for breath, he gave utterance
to his
“My dear madame,” he said, concilia
tingly, as the elderly aspirant for poetic
fame stepped there expectantly be mistake.” forward, “I
think must a
How, or where the mistake had been
made he was still at a loss to determine.
“A mistake!” exclaimed the woman,
in a high-pitched needn’t deny tone. that “How can it
be? You you wrote
this; your own name .is signed to it; ”
and she held before him the note which
he had written to Millie McKay, the ac¬
ceptance of her sketch, the request that
she should become a regular contributor.
Yes, there at the bottom of the page
was his name, but the address on the
envelope was to Mehitable Smith.
“The dickens! What have I done?”
Herman Seville ejaculated, and he drew
from his breast pocket the note which he
had been so impatient to read; the pre¬
cious note that was to explain why Ethel
Vinton had refused to attend the opera
in his company. The wrapper only
closed his own note to Ethel, but inside
of it instead of the tender sentiments
which he had written, was Mehitable
Smith’s poem, the “not available,” and
he passed it to the indignant lady.
“You see I have made a b under,” he
went on, apologetically. “This, madam,
was desigaed for you, and I sincerely re¬
gret that I should have raised any false
hopes regarding your poem; but really
we have more articles of that kind on
hand than we shall be able to use for a
long time.”
4 4 Lou mny spare your regrets,” Miss
Smith exclaimed, indignantly, as her
small black eyes flashed fire. “Men are
false, all of them, and I might have
known that your word could not be de¬
pended upon ;” then drawing the green
veil over her sallow visage, she dashed
from the room, and Herman Seville be¬
gan to pace the floor.
It was an unfortunate mistake, but
he would call at Mr. Vinton’s in the
morning and Ethel would laugh at the
ludicrousness of the affair.
But he was not through with trouble;
for although he slept that night, his vi¬
sions were haunted with elderly maidens,
maidens with piercing eyes and huge
bundles of poems, and he arose an hour
earlier than usual and aided his digestion
by a morning walk.
eca a *
not available, he wa 3 aureole was not to
i blame; (was man ever known to be since
Adam’s day?) and of one thing he was
certain he had secured a fine writer for
j the paper,
She was a very agreeable girl, too;
, she would be a pleasant acquaintance,
j an( j g 0 gj^ p ‘ rove( j j n time, more than
acqua 1 j Dtance or even friend, for Millie
I McKay finally the became the editor’s
wife and was not obliged to write
1 sketches for a living.
And thus the mishaps that were caused
by Mehitable Smith’s unavailable poem,
resulted, also, in bringing to Herman
Blade. Seville true love and happiness.— YanJcei
Why a Baseball Curve.-).
Lovers of baseball may find it con-
1 venient to keep in mind this explanation
0 f the pitcher’s curve from* advancing Mr. R. A.
I proctor: If the ball is with¬
out spin, or is spinning on an axis lying
along its course, the cushion of com
i pressed air rather carried conoidal—and forward by it is coni
cal—or therefore
resists the progress of the ball equally on
all sides, affecting only the velocity. But
in the case of the curve, where the ball
is spinning on an axis square to its
course, the air in front of the advancing
side of the spinning surface cannot es¬
cape so readily as if there were no spin,
and escapes more readily on the other
side. Hence the resisting cushion of air
is thrown toward that side of the ball
where the spin is forward and removed
from the other side, and the ball is de¬
fleeted from the region of greatest re¬
sistance.
An Indian and a Panther.
A short time since a bloody fight oc¬
curred between an Indian and a panther
twenty miles south of Mercer, Texas. A
party of Indians from a neighboring vil¬
lage were out hunting wild turkeys.
One of the party who had strayed away
from his companions met a large panther
and shot at it, wounding the beast and
greatly infuriating it. The panther was
in close quarters and rushed upon the
Indian before he could reload, and a
bloody fight ensued. The Indian drew
his knife and when the panther sprang
upon him cut the beast’s throat from ear
to ear, but at the same time the animal
fastened its fangs in the throat of the
Indian, and a death struggle com¬
menced. When the other Indians reached
the combatants both the Indian and the
panther were dead.— Globe-Democrat,
Whenever a distinguished p - .j
visits Senator Palmer’s Michigan farm a
tree is planted in his honor. General A thrifty
basswood commemorates Sher¬
man’s visit, a mulberry tells of Senator
Jones’s call, and Senator EdmuDds’i
visit is brought to mind by a beautiful
beech. ,
t IJLJl.. bled aniriiclmirably kept
walks, passi through several minor
gates, each beautiful and grand, till we
came to the great gate of all—Yomci
Man—the name of which means “stand
all day and look upward.” Every part
of the gate is gorgeous in gold, and lac
quer, and bronze, and rich, elaborate
carving, and all so beautifully wrought
and harmonized that the eye revels in
the delight of color and carving run
riot. Day after day I went and looked
upward for lives hours in at this marvel of
beauty. It my soul now as the
most beautiful work of man that I ever
saw. I will not except any.
Passing through this when we came to one
of the temple3, and I describe one
I describe all; for all are magnificent and
regal. The steps to the temple are cov¬
ered with hand wrought plates of bronze.
We took off our shoes and put on great
slippers that were allowed us, and en¬
tered. We were first shown the various
rooms set apart for the use of the Mikado
when he comes here, the priests, and such
guests as General Grant, who was here
accorded the highest honors. These
rooms were approximately fifteen feet
square, and marvels of grand decoration.
The walls were painted, giving various
views of Japan, all sorts of tree shapes
and adornments of blossoms and flow¬
ers, and the whole lacquered with the
richeat gold lacquer.
The decorations were over two hun¬
dred years oid, and yet the gold and
colors were as brilliant as -when first put
on. The entrances were hung with the
most heavy and rich brocaded and em¬
broidered silx curtains which Japan
could produce. rich The carved ceilings flowers were
paneled with and
birds, golden bird, pheasant being the pre¬
dominant When they wanted to
introduce a sombre hue, they put in a
peacock or bird of paradise, and yet all
this magnificence of color and gold and
carving was in perfect good taste, and
the general effect was quiet rather than
loud.
Passing through these rooms we
entered the great room of the temple,
and here my powers of with description give
out; the floor matted fine soft mat¬
ting, the walls gold lacquer, the im¬
mense wooden pillars lacquered so that
they looked like columns of burnished
gold, carving everywhere, bronze worth*
a king’s ransom before the altars or
shrines, immense curtains of silk and
gold—my mind wearies as I attempt to
write about this magnificence, which at
the time delighted my very soul as I be¬
held it, and left a calm and soothed im¬
pression throughout my very being.
Those were grand old men who built the
temples at ISikko.
Alter leaving the temple we ascended
tke granite stairs up the mountain,two
hundred and sixty steps to the tomb of
the Shogun. These stairs are massive
blocks of granite set in the hill side,
moss covered with two centuries of
^r.
1 ouri, the other , a col¬
ored man was sold into servitude for six
months for the offence of vagrancy.
He was knocked down for six dollars
and a half.
Lawrence, Jesse and Thomas Ilam
mond, brothers all, of Greecastle, Ind • »
are exactly 71 years old—the only in¬
stance known where triplets have at
tained to that age.
In pumping out the stomach of a
would-be suicide iu Des Moines, Iowa,
the other day the doctors brought up a
three-cent piece, two buttons, forty
cherry stones and a marble. He was an
ostrich tramp.
When Philip Cassiday, of Omaha,
Neb., was buried the other day, his pet
goat ran along beside the hearse, bleat¬
ing piteously, and was with di ficulty
kept outside the cemetery while the
burial went on.
The albatross is the most devoted lover
and mate. Even when the female is on
the nest he will stand by and go through
the most extravagant motions, and ut¬
tering curious shrieks, which sound like
j laughter, in return for which the female
gently caresses him with her bill.
The King of Siam has conferred the
order of Chulachonclao on his dentist, a
Frenchman. The decoration is the least
important of the four orders of Siam,
and it involves the wearing of a cone
shaped hat of great weight on all public
occasions. Recipients of the honor are,
therefore, not always as grateful as they
might be.
A farmer in the neigliborhod of
Corinth, Me., having been annoyed by a
number of hawks and crows which made
their headquarters in one of his trees,
set a trap on the end of a long pole,
which he fastened to the tree in such a
manner that the trap was a little higher
than the topmost branch. The result, at
last reports, was the capture of nine
hawks, three owls and one crow.
Riding in the Pope’s Carriage.
Once when I was in Rome I found my
wap, or rather lost my way, into the
Vatican stables. There were hundreds
of carriages about, it seemed to me, be
longingto priests and cardinals and high
dignitaries generally, and on# great
scarlet and gilt equipage, with a canopied
golden roof, and bore upon it the arm*
of the church, and in this carriage no one
ever rides but the Pope of Home. No¬
body was in sight a few hostlers a block
away busily cleaning a trim little
cardinal’s coupe, and so, with my heart
in my mouth, I opened the door and
popped ip. I flounced around on thoye
sacred seats just as I have seen children
flounce around on the seats of the idle
carriages in the stables back of town, and
by-aDd-by, when I could, I slipped away.
Nobody ever knew about it, but to my
dying day I shall remember with delight
my “dry” ride in the Pope’s carri igc.—
New Orleans Picayune.