It would sti about protoWe named our You see the rib

"Tell me about protoplasm. I know I should adore it.” "Deed you would. It's just too sweet to live. You know it's about how things get started, or something of that kind. You ought to hear Mr. Emerson tell about it. your very soul. The first time he explained plasm there wasn't a dry eye in the house. hats after him. This is an Emerson hat. bon is drawn over the crown and caught with a buckle and a bunch of flowers. Then you turn up the side with a spray of forget-me-nots. Ain't it just too sweet? All the girls in the school have them."

'How exquisitely lovely! Tell me some more science." "Oh, I almost forgot about differentiation. I am really and truly positively in love with differentiation. It's different from molecules and protoplasm, but it's every bit as nice. And Mr. Cook! You should hear him go on about it. I really believe he's perfectly bound up in it. This scarf is the Cook scarf. All the girls wear them, and we named them after him, just on account of the interest he takes in differentiation."

"What is it, anyway?"

"This is mull, trimmed with Languedoc lace-"

"I don't mean that,-that other."

"Oh, differentiation! Ain't it sweet? It's got something to do with species. It's the way you tell one hat from another, so you'll know which is becoming. And we learn all about ascidians too. They are the divinest things! I'm absolutely enraptured with ascidians. If I only had an ascid jan of my own I wouldn't ask anything else in the world." "What do they look like, dear? Did you ever see one?" asked the Brooklyn girl, deeply interested.

"Oh, no; nobody ever saw one except Mr. Cook and Mr. Emerson; but they are something like an oyster with a reticule hung on its belt. I think they are just heavenly.” "Do you learn anything else besides ?"

"Oh, yes. We learn about common philosophy and logic, and those common things like metaphysics; but the girls don't care anything about those. We are just in ecstasies over differentiations and molecules, and Mr. Cook and protoplasms, and ascidians and Mr. Emerson, and I really don't

see why they put in those vulgar branches. If anybody beside Mr. Cook and Mr. Emerson had done it, we should have told him to his face that he was too terribly, awfully mean." And the Brooklyn girl went to bed that night in the dumps, because fortune had not vouchsafed her the advantages enjoyed by her friend.

PATIENCE WITH LOVE.-GEORGE KLINGLE.

They are such tiny feet:

They have gone such a little way to meet

The years which are required to break

Their steps to evenness, and make

They are such little hands:

Be kind. Things are so new, and life but stands
A step beyond the doorway. All around

New day has found

Such tempting things to shine upon, and so
The hands are tempted hard, you know.

They are such new, young lives:

Surely their newness shrives

Them well of many sins. They see so much

That, being mortal, they would touch,

That if they reach

We must not chide, but teach.

They are such fond, clear eyes

That open wide to surprise

At every turn; they are so often held
To suns or showers,-showers soon dispelled

By looking in our face.

Love asks, for such, much grace.

They are such fair, frail gifts;
Uncertain as the rifts

Of light that lie along the sky-
They may not be here by and by;
Give them not love, but more—above
And harder-patience with the love.

THE ARCHBISHOP AND GIL BLAS.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

I don't think I feel much older; I'm aware I'm rather gray, But so are many young folks; I meet 'em every day.

I confess I'm more particular in what I eat and drink, But one's taste improves with culture; that is all it means, think.

"Can you read as once you used to?" Well, the printing is so bad,

No young folks' eyes can read it like the books that once we had.

"Are you quite as quick at hearing?" Please to say that once

again.

“Don't I use plain words, your Reverence?" Yes, I often use a cane,

But it's not because I need it,-no, I always liked a stick ; And as one might lean upon it, 'tis as well it should be thick; Oh, I'm smart, I'm spry, I'm lively, I can walk, yes, that I

can,

On the days I feel like walking, just as well as you, young man!

"Don't you get a little sleepy after dinner every day?"

Well, I doze, a little, sometimes, but that always was my way. "Don't you cry a little easier than some twenty years ago?" Well, my heart is very tender, but I think 'twas always so.

"Don't you find it sometimes happens that you can't recall a name?"

Yes, I know such lots of people,-but my memory's not to blame.

What! you think my memory's failing! Why it's just as bright and clear

I remember my great-grandma! She's been dead these sixty year!

"Is your voice a little trembly?" Well, it may be, now and then,

But I write as well as ever with a good old-fashioned pen; It's the Gillotts make the trouble,-not at all my finger

ends,

That is why my hand looks shaky when I sign for dividends, "Don't you stoop a little, walking?" It's a way I always had

I have always been round-shouldered ever since I was a lad

"Don't you hate to tie your shoe-strings?" Yes, I own itthat is true.

K

'Don't you

tell old stories over?" I am not aware I do.

Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat

In a corner by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?

Don't you wear warm fleecy flannels? Don't you muffle up your throat?

Don't you like to have one help you when you're putting on your coat?

"Don't you like old books you've dog's-eared, you can't remember when?

Don't you call it late at nine o'clock and go to bed at ten? How many cronies can you count of all you used to know That called you by your Christian name some fifty years ago? "How look the prizes to you that used to fire your brain? You've reared your mound-how high is it above the level plain?

You've drained the brimming golden cup that made your fancy reel,

You've slept the giddy potion off,-now tell us how you feel?

"You've watched the harvest ripening till every stem was cropped,

You've seen the rose of beauty fade till every petal dropped, You've told your thought, you've done your task, you've tracked your dial round,”

-I backing down! Thank Heaven, not yet! I'm hale and brisk and sound,

And good for many a tussle, as you shall live to see;

My shoes are not quite ready yet-don't think you're rid

of me!

Old Parr was in his lusty prime when he was older far, And where will you be if I live to beat old Thomas Parr?

"Ah well,-I know,-at every age life has a certain charmYou're going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you'll take my arm."

I take your arm! Why take your arm? I'd thank you to be told;

I'm old enough to walk alone, but not so very old!

DAMASCUS.-SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.

Damascus is the oldest city in the world. Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra is buried in the sands of the desert; Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the Tigris and Euphrates; Damascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham,-a centre of trade and travel, an island of verdure in a desert, “a predestined capital," with martial and sacred associations extending through more than thirty centuries. It was near Damascus that Saul of Tarsus saw the light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun. The street which is called Straight, in which it was said he prayed, still runs through the city. The caravan comes and goes as it did three thousand years ago; there are still the sheik, the ass, and the waterwheel; the merchants of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean still "occupy these with the multitudes of their waters."

The city which Mohammed surveyed from a neighboring height and was afraid to enter because it was given to have but one paradise, and for his part he was resolved not to have it in this world, is to this day what Julian called "the eye of the East," as it was in the time of Isaiah," the head of Syria." From Damascus came the damson, or damascene, or blue plum, and the delicious apricot of Portugal, called the damasco; damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and silk, with vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground; the damask rose, introduced into England in the time of Henry VIII.; the Damascus blade, so famous the world over for its keen edge and wonderful elasticity, the secret of whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane carried off the arts into Persia; and the beautiful art of inlaying wood and steel with silver and gold, a kind of Mosaic, engraving and sculpture united-called damaskeening-with which boxes, swords, guns, and bureaus are ornamented.

It is still a city of flowers and bright waters; the "rivers of Damascus," the "streams from Lebanon," the "rivers of gold," still murmur and sparkle in the wilderness of "Syrian Gardone."