audience; exposed the canvas in the best light, you. Oh, you are my life, my all. I worship and asked five hundred dollars for it. "It is worth it," confessed Mr. Moineau. "Only there is no name. If you would put your name to it, Mr. Stanley?" "Mine! I am only a portrait-painter." 'Yes, but you are known. It would sell the picture." "Gif him the name," interposed Ernst, with the eagerness of a beggar grasping at alms. "It's a downright swindle," said the generous American. "I couldn't do such a group to save my life. I won't take the credit of it." "Both names?" suggested the dealer in genius. It was agreed to; the picture went on the market as the joint production of Stanley and Hartmann. The latter, perfectly satisfied, and indeed overjoyed, pocketed the five hundred dollars; the former, in spite of his private disclaimers, pocketed something considerable in the way of glory. At Ernst's request Janet Holcum had kept a strict account of her expenses in his behalf; and although he had used sharp economy, the balance against him amounted to four hundred and thirty dollars. On reaching home he went to her room, gave her a smile of child-like joy in response to her smile of anxiety, and tossed the sum of his earnings into her lap. Instead of hailing his good fortune with gladness, she seemed to shrink from the money, laid it coldly on a table, rose to her feet with a pale face, and said in a strange voice, "Well-you are free." "No, my tear Chanet," he replied, "I am your slave." "That is not what I want," she stammered, trembling visibly. "I cannot submit to any such understanding. Mr. Hartmann, it is my duty to tender you your liberty." "My tarling Chanet, what does this mean?" asked Ernst, putting his arm around her waist and drawing her to him. My self-respect impels me to it," she said, beginning to cry. "I fear that you proposed to me out of a sense of obligation. The obligation is now cancelled. It was weak in me to accept you. I must make amends for it. Indeed, indeed, I must-you are free." The gentlest caresses, the sweetest protestations answered her and overwhelmed her fainting resolution. After a minute, and a very little minute it was too, she could not help letting her head go on his shoulder and sobbing out, "Oh! can I believe you? You make ine so perfectly happy that I must believe you." For a week or more this sunshine of confidence and joy shone through an unclouded heart. She loved her man-her first man, remember-gathered late in her maying-with a sort of double affection-the love of a betrothed and of a mother. And because he returned it, or rather because she believed that he did, she felt that she owed him a life of gratitude, adoration, obedience, every sweet sentiment and every good work. She was amazingly influenced by him; one might almost say, revolutionized. A teetotaller, believing that the wine recommended by Paul to Timothy was not intoxicating, and that all drinkers of ale and cider deserved the names of tipplers and guzzlers, she found nothing hateful now in the smell of lager. A hater of tobacco, she filled Ernst's pipe. An admirer of Johnsonian diction, she talked to him like a little child. There is no knowing whither this youth might not have carried this mature woman. She was infatuated. From one point of view, it was laughable; from another, it was beautiful and pathetic. It is not in the nature of things that a woman of thirty-eight, who is engaged to a handsome man of twenty-five, should remain always calmly sure of her conquest. An event was approaching which was destined to cast upon this happy heart a shadow of uneasiness. Janet sat, one holiday afternoon, beside her Ernst, watching the growth of meaning and beauty under his pencil, she said to him abruptly, "My little cousin will be here soon. As think it so queer. And then it may never come to anything-we are so poor. At least it may be a long time first. Well, until our way is a little more clear before us, I would rather the engagement should be kept a secret. You are not annoyed, are you, Ernst?" "No," replied Ernst calmly, not understanding too well, and not caring quite enough. Well," continued the shy and fastidious Janet, "then it shall be so. We will be just good friends in the eyes of Nellie until-until it shall seem best to let her know On the morrow arrived Nellie Fisher, a plump, lively, laughing little blonde, with eyes of a deep turquoise blue, hair of the lightest and flossiest flaxen, a face somewhat broad and nose somewhat short, beautiful in the German peasant style, but undeniably beautiful. Ernst, who was present at the meeting of the two cousins, glanced at the visitor so frequently and with an expression so full of mysterious meaning, that Janet's interest was aroused. At the first chance for an aside she said to him, "Well, what do you think of her?" "She looks like the one in Chermany," he replied, lost in meditation, his eyes both tender and sombre, his soul in other years and lands. Janet turned pale. Does the reader divine what she foresaw? Ernst's heart was empty. Janet did not inhabit it; had not even entered into it. The unnamed girl whom he had loved in Prussia had by heroic efforts been so far expelled from it, that he did not desire ever again to see her. But her former residence there had so moulded the abode, that any one who resembled her could seize upon it, occupy it, and fill it. What now happened to the young man was apparently love at first sight, but was really no more than the transferring of an old love to a new object. A week after he first met Nellie Fisher the thought of her could fill him with delicious reveries, while the thought of his troth-plight to Janet Holcum was sufficient to make him meditate once more upon suicide. And the girl? He and she met every day, and two or three times a day. In spite of his conscientious efforts to control himself, there was in his manner toward her a tenderness, which, reinforced by his beauty, his graceful address, and the glamour of his artistic ability, could not but move the heart of a child of nineteen who had never hoped for so fine an admirer. In a little while Nellie began to flutter at sight of him, and to pet him in spite of her flutterings. "Isn't he charming?" she said to her cousin. "What does she mean?" queried Nellie, marvelling at this dryness and brevity. “Oh, I suppose I know. He is poor, and I am poor, and we mustn't-flirt. Well-I suppose wemustn't." She went to the glass, looked at her lily skin, wished her nose were longer, arranged her flaxen hair, and wondered whether he liked her. "Do you know how you could flatter me?" she said before long to Ernst. "How?" he asked coolly, for she tempted him in a distressing manner, and he felt that he must allow himself no expansion. "Oh! you don't want to do it," she replied. with a little sunny pout which she had, and which was irresistible. "I am sure I wish to unable to bear her pout. blease you," he said. "How can I flatter you?" "You could put me into one of your pic tures." "I should be charmed to do it," admitted the over-tempted artist. The next day the two women beheld Nellie's bewitching face, drawn and coloured with all the fervour of an art which loves, smiling from Ernst's canvas. The younger blushed and bridled with joy to see herself there and so beautiful; the elder wore a fixed, mechanical smile, and said repeatedly, "What an excellent likeness!" He had never put Janet's face into his creations. She did not blame him for that; she believed that he could do nothing agreeable with it; she surveyed herself in the glass and sighed, "I am so ugly!" But to see Nellie on that easel, painted by his hand, and painted so well, it was driving a dagger into her beating heart. That very day Ernst, in a fit of noble remorse and self-sacrifice, said to Janet in private. "I wish you would let me inform Nellie of our troth-plight. I think it would pe petter." She grew so faint under the terrible revelation which he had unintentionally made, that for a moment she could not answer him; and even when she spoke it was only to ask for delay. "Stop!" she said, pressing her hands upon her eyes. "Let me think. I must consider this." He offered to slide his arm around her waist in his usual caressing style; but she gently Is it possible that she gomprehends me?" thought Ernst, folding his arms and shaking his head with the air of a man who is trying to stand firm against himself. He appreciated fully the self-abnegation and heroism of Janet's character; he knew that if he once confessed to her that he did not love her she would instantly free him from his engagement; and there was the image of Nellie pleading with him for his sake, if not for hers also, to make the confession. He shook his head and set his teeth until he had faced down the temptation, and had decided that, whether Janet permitted it or not, he would inform her cousin of the betrothal. But during the day, while superintending her classes with her usual conscientious thoroughness, Miss Holeum also came to a decision. On reaching home in the afternoon she sent Nellie out on some distant errand, and then walked slowly up to Ernst's room. "My tear Chanet! I am so glad to see you!" he said, coming towards her with extended hands and his sweetest smile. "My poor child, you look tired," he added, glancing pityingly at her unusually pale face. "There, sit down, and take some rebose. Do you see my bicture? I have made some changes." Raising her patient eyes to the canvas, Janet perceived that the portrait of Nellie had been 80 altered as to be no longer recognizable. Throbbing with admiration for this man, who could divine her heart so perfectly, and who could do what must have been hateful to him at the mere bidding of his sensitive conscience, she rose up with suddenly flushed cheeks, seized both his hands, printed one hot kiss on his smooth, white forehead, and then drew back, holding him at arm's-length, in order to worship him. "Ernst, I know what you have done," she said, firmly. "I thank you for your noble intentions. But sacrifice for sacrifice. It is my turn now. Ernst, my own darling, we must separate. I was born for you, were not born for me. We must end this engagement. I must end it, or despise myself. I do end it. I break it. You are free. There." but you Shetore herself away from him and attempted to rush out of the room. "Chanet! Chanet!" he called, springing after her and seizing her in his arms. "It VOL IV. must not pe so. You are the noplest woman Do you on earth. I worship you. I cannot lose you." "Oh! don't!" implored Janet, looking up at him in despair, for he was taxing her almost beyond her strength. After a moment, rallying all the power of her soul, she added, "See here, Ernst! let us speak the truth. love me better than you love any one else?" How could he have the seeming cruelty to answer her "No?" He did what most gentlehearted men would have done-he told her a pitying, self-sacrificing falsehood. He said, "I do." She had been leaning away from him. She now turned, with the revulsion of a billow, threw her arms around his neck, covered his face with kisses and tears, and then once more leaned back from him to look at him. "That is the end of all between us," she said, in a hoarse, deep voice, totally unlike her usual utterance. "Henceforward I shall do my duty, and you must help me do it. One thing-never tell Nellie of this; it would darken her happiness. And now-good-bye." She dragged herself away from him, ran downstairs, and locked herself in her room. least in human ears. ceived by Miss Fisher, the elder cousin excus- | despair that was uttered by this martyr, at ing herself on pretence of business, illness, &c. One can easily see that all this had to end in a second troth-plight, and that the parties to it could not be other than Ernst and Nellie. It was "petter;" youth must have youth; love must have love. In these bargains mere respect and gratitude are not a fair exchange for the unreasoning, instinctive, potent impulse of the heart. When Stanley heard of Miss Holeum's proposed departure, he said to Ernst, in surprise, "I thought she was to be your missionary. What! have you taken the mitten! Oh, you clever dog! You know the difference be tween an old maid and a new one." "See here," said the German, with solemnity. "I do not want you, one of my pest vriends, Holeum as she ought to be resbected. I will dell you everything, und you must dell no one." Before he had half finished his story of the broken engagement, Stanley rose from his seat, dropped his cigar, and walked up and down the room, rubbing his eyes with his hands, jast like an affected boy. Almost the first use that Nellie made of her to desbise me; und I want you to resbect Miss betrothal was to run down to Ernst's studio,, entirely, as she declared, to look at the new picture, but mainly, no doubt, to look at the artist. She too, like Janet before her, observed a change in the personages of the little drama. She had never known that her like ness had been obliterated, and she did not discover it now, for it had been restored in all its beauty. But in the face of one of the principal female figures-a face which, though not absolutely handsome, was sublime with an expression of noble and tender resignationin this face, which looked up to heaven as if it had descended from thither, Nellie recognized the countenance of Janet Holeum. Why! you have got in Cousin Jennie too," exclaimed the delighted girl. "Oh, you creature! you have made her finer than me." "I wanted to tignify the bainting," said Ernst simply, "with the bortrait of the pest woman in the world." Isn't she!" replied Nellie, pressing her face gratefully against his shoulder. "I am so glad you do her justice. I owe everything to her. Oh! I wouldn't cause her a grief for the world." The picture having been sold to Moineau for the large sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars, it was decided that Ernst's prospects of success were good enough to justify marriage, and Janet ruled that Nellie must go home for that purpose to the residence of an old aunt in Connecticut. The girl having departed, Janet felt able to have one interview with Hartmann, not with the object of indulging in any weak reproaches or bemoanings, but to bid him a last farewell. She was going to Ceylon, she informed him, as English teacher in one of the schools of the "American Board of Foreign Missions." "Oh! it is too far!" implored the young man. "If you must go away, let it pe still in this gountry. There is the Freedmen's Bureau schools in the South." "People return from the South," she replied. "I must go whence I shall never return." It was the only complaint, the only cry of "By Jove!" he exclaimed, when the narrator had ceased. "If she wasn't in love with you, I'd be tempted to marry her myself. She's not a chicken, and she's not a beauty, but she's pure gold." "She's a berfeet lady und a grand gentleman in one," said Ernst. The urgencies of the Board sent Janet off to Ceylon before the marriage. Hartmann and Stanley accompanied her as far as the Narrows, and then, from the deck of the tug, watched her as she leaned over the taffrail, waving farewell to friends and native land. As the lonely figure of this loving, selfsacrificing, heroic, sublime martyr faded from their sight, the American said, "God bless her!" And the German added, with his eyes full of tears, "Sancta Chanet, ora pro nobis,” PAN'S SONG OF SYRINX. Pan's Syrinx was a girl indeed, JOHN LYLY. AUTUMN LEAVES. Philippians iii. 21. [Rev. John Keble, born 25th April, 1792; died 29th March, 1866. Educated at Oxford, and from 1831 until 1841 he occupied the chair of poetry in that university. He was vicar of Hursley, Hampshire; and the author of various works which have had considerable influence apon modern religious thought. He wrote one of the famous Oxford Tracts for the Times; but his most popular works are: The Christian Year: thoughts in verse for the Sundays and holidays throughout the year; The Child's Christian Year; Lyra Innocentium: being thoughts in verse on children, their ways and their privileges; Sermons, Academical and Occasional; &c. The Christian Year first appeared in 1827, and has passed through more than seven hundred editions. The Quarterly Rerice said of it: "In this volume Old Herbert would have recognized a kindred spirit, and Walton would have gone on a pilgrimage to make acquaintance with the author."] Red o'er the forest peers the setting sun, Now the tir'd hunter winds a parting note, And Echo bids good-night from every glade; Yet wait awhile, and see the calm leaves float Each to his rest beneath their parent shade. How like decaying life they seem to glide! But where they fall, forgotten to abide Is all their portion, and they ask no more. Soon o'er their heads blithe April airs shall sing, Unconscious they in waste oblivion lie, Man's portion is to die and rise again Yet he complains, while these unmurmuring part With their sweet lives, as pure from sin and stain, As his when Eden held his virgin heart. And haply half unblam'd his murmuring voice For dreary were this earth, if earth were all, Tho' brighten'd oft by dear affection's kiss;Who for the spangles wears the funeral pall? But catch a gleam beyond it, and 'tis bliss. Heavy and dull this frame of limbs and heart, Whether slow creeping on cold earth, or borne On lofty steed, or loftier prow, we dart O'er wave or field: yet breezes laugh to scorn Our puny speed, and birds, and clouds in heaven, And fish, like living shafts that pierce the main, And stars that shoot through freezing air at evenWho but would follow, might he break his chain? And thou shalt break it soon; the grovelling worm When from the grave He sprang at dawn of morn, And led through boundless air thy conquering road, Leaving a glorious track, where saints, new-born, Might fearless follow to their blest abode. But first, by many a stern and fiery blast The world's rude furnace must thy blood refine, And many a gale of keenest woe be pass'd Till every pulse beat true to airs divine, Till every limb obey the mounting soul, MY FARE. [George Manville Fenn, born in Pimlico, London, 3d January, 1831. Novelist and miscellaneous writer. His principal novels are: Bent, not Broken; Webs in the Way; Mad; By Birth a Lady; Sapphire Cross; A Little World. He has also produced four volumes of Original Penny Readings, and has contributed to our chief magazines. He is now (1873) editor of Cassell's Magazine. Of his short tales one critic says: "The characters are real personages, and their narratives display a hundred touches of almost microscopic truth; while the power with which Mr. Fenn reproduces the surroundings, the characteristics, the very atmosphere of his stories, is photographic in its minuteness, and beyond all praise."] Don't you make a mistake now, and think I'm not a working-man, because I am. Don't you run away with the idea that because I go of a morning and find my horse and cab waiting ready cleaned for me, and I jumps up and drives off, as I don't work as hard as any mechanic, because I do; and I used to work harder, for it used to be Sunday and weekdays, till the missus and me laid our heads together, and said if we couldn't live on six days' work a week at cabbing, we'd try something else; so now I am only a six days' man -Hansom cab, V.R., licensed to carry two persons. |