before I forget. (Stops writing.) Did Miss Brown tell There was the apple Wil

you any more—oh, I know!

liam Tell shot from his son's head.

Ellen. Yes, but we must not put that in yet. Miss Brown said we must tell about the apples a girl named Atlanta had. It was a very pretty story, but I began to wonder if the girl was named after Atlanta, and then I saw some June apples in a garden near by, and I wanted some so bad. And then she told us about some apples of Gomorrah-no, that is not right, but it sounded like some name in the Bible. Then there were some sort of golden apples that it was very hard to get, and there was the apple George Washington found in a dumpling.

Mary (rising from her seat, and Ellen rising at the same time, both stand). Well, Ellen, I must thank you for telling me so much. You know if I have a talent for anything, it is for writing compositions; and with the outline you have given, I think I can make a very respectable essay. If you wish any help in arranging yours, it will give me pleasure to assist you. (Turns as if about to leave.)

Ellen. O Mary, stop, wait! we must not put in exactly the same things, for then Miss Brown will think we helped each other, and I want that about Discord and William Tell for mine.

Mary (angrily). No, indeed! I thought of William Tell myself, and I mean to put him in my essay, too. Ellen. Then you are just too mean and sneaking to associate with-after all my trouble in helping you, too. I hope you will never speak to me again!

Mary. Indeed, miss, I am very happy in ending our acquaintance, for I am sure there can be neither pleas ure nor profit in it. Wishing you may receive a hundred on your brilliant production, I bid you good-evening. (Bows very low.)

Ellen. And the same to you. (Both continue to bow until they reach the ends of stage.)

FRA FONTI.-ROBERT C. V. MEYERS.*

Written expressly for this collection.

A noted criminal was to die,-to hang,

And the town-heart throbbed pleasurably fast. "We'll take our grapes and eat them on the way; We'll see the sight-the first shall not be last."

Fra Fonti came to me that day. "Signor,
You deem it odd a priest should go to see
A very thief and murderer die, and yet
Be drawn at most by curiosity?

Listen! I hurry; confessions claim my time

Till Angelus. Listen! and condemn me then! I and a brother were the only sons

Of well-born parents-rest their souls! and when We were grown men our love an adage made; Together we on all occasions-e'en

When he was ill, why I was ill; when joy

Was mine his joy was like yon jasmine, keen, Perfumed with health. One day I loved. Just then My brother left me,—the day I knew I loved. I missed him less now that my fond love

For him had merged in fonder.

Tanta moved

My soul beyond its duty, strength, and will;

I was her slave, she'd have it so that not
A thought of mine should stray beyond herself-
All but herself and my great love forgot.
Then all too soon across my blissful sky

Dark shadows passed,-I feared her heart estranged;
And yet she laughed and clung to me, and called
Me jealous without cause. My love had changed.

Oh, well! the story's long; of women's wiles
And fickleness, the signor knows. This one,
The epitome of all, dragged me, drove me, killed
Me, then complained I was so soon undone.
Then my love died, as all had died from me

For her sake,-brother, friends, e'en God, it seemed;
But when I knew she'd married the unknown,
The hated one, the one who sudden gleamed

A wily snake across my path, there sprang
From out my soul a deadlier thing to doom

*See Note on page 100.

The snake-red vengeance that should slake not till Before my foe death swung the scythe of gloom.

To shorten still the story, let me say

To keep my two hands white, I sought the aid Of mother-church-hatred drove me here

To pray for pardon for my hatred. Laid Aside were all the nonsense and the thrall

Of love for woman-I never thought of her! But fight I daily did the devil, who

With one thought of my wrong my soul could stir. For years 'twas thus-for twenty years, no less.

I rarely left the cloister, would not hear

A word of him or her; their lives I dared not

Think of, the devil and his wiles were much too near To trust the smallest firebrand.

The enemy

I thought that I had conquered. But this spring There was a murder; an angered man had wrung

The lifeblood from his wife as one would wring The dew from out a kerchief. You guess they were The man and wife I knew. Yes! Then there came

A vast joy to me,-the devil I long had put

To rout I could in safety name, and laughing name The death I coveted for the hated man.

And so the law, that is no murderer,

Could do more than I dared, could kill the man
Who'd killed my love, yet bid me not to stir
To avenge my slaughtered self-could prove that I
Was nothing to myself, while that wife, who
Was nothing to the law, when she was dead
And nothing was the most alive, and through
Her wordless lips cried out for law's revenge.
I think I laughed when he was sentenced. Now
I had my vengeance-for the man was proud,
And your gibbet is a leveler. You'll allow
The man is in the priest when I say to you
I had permission just to go this morn
And--hush!-offer consolation unto him

Who'd ended little Tanta, she whose scorn
I had not thought of while my much of thought
Went out to him who'd bred it in her breast.
Signor, I go 'tis late, the culprit waits

My office. To heaven I send him. Aye, 'tis like a jest!"

Fra Fonti left my room, a saint like smile
Upon his lips, his cowl drawn so you could
Not catch the glitter of his eye nor see
The moisture on his cheeks.

In gloomy mood
How long I sat there frowning o'er his tale,

I know not. Sudden smiting through the gloom
Of jasmine-boughs that made the casement dark,
I saw a face,-Fra Fonti in the room.
No more the smile lay on his ashen lips,

No more the hell-light made his eyes like coal;
The man was quenched, pallid, and more than weak-
As though he stood there just a naked soul
That ne'er had fleshed before, just out of birth
And feeble as a babe whose one instinct
Is cries for that it needs, by instinct led

To find the font of life. His hands were linked
Together. "Signor," in a hollow voice

He whispered, "would you care to hear the rest
Of the strange tale I told you? Well!-he is dead
I hated! Henceforth my prayers are for him!-Best
To tell you all-I faint-support me!-See,

I cannot stand!-Air! air!-more air!-I smother!

The man-I hated-who married her I loved,

Who murdered her-and hanged!-- He was my brother!"

THE QUARREL OF THE WHEELS.-T. D. ENGLISH.
I sat within my wagon on a heated summer day,
And watched my horse's flinging feet devour the dusty way,
When suddenly a voice below shrieked out, it seemed to me:
"You're bigger, but you cannot go one-half so fast as we!"
I looked around, but no one there my straining vision caught;
We were alone upon the road; I must have dreamed, I
thought;

Then almost at my feet I heard, distinct, a voice's sound:
"You'll never overtake us, though you twice go o'er the
ground!"

It puzzled me at first; but soon the fact upon me broke, The fore-wheels of the wagon had thus to the hind-wheels

spoke.

I listened for the answer, and it came in accents low: "You're no further now before us than you were an hour ago!"

I waited the rejoinder, but no further answer came;
The fore-wheels were too busy, and the hind-wheels were

the same;

And though I strained my hearing much, depressing well

my head,

By fore-wheels or by hind-wheels, not another word was said.
The matter set me thinking how in life one often knows
Of bitter controversies with the words absurd as those;
How many claim as merit what is after all but fate,
With success that others make for them exultingly elate.
Your wise and mighty statesman just before his fellow set,
Strives, as fore-wheel in the wagon, further from the hind
to get;

Rolls along in his complacence, as he thinks, to name and fame,

To find, the journey ended, his position just the same.

The patient toiler struggles, but no inch beyond is gained; And he grumbles that, despite him, one position is maintained,

Not reflecting that the Owner, who can everything control,
Bade him ever as the hindmost for a fitting purpose roli.

Still speeds along the wagon o'er the steady roadway drawn,
Till ends the weary journey, and the light of day has gone;
And all the rivalries of men, the quiet thinker feels,
Are idle as the quarrels of the fore and hinder wheels.

A WORD FOR CRANKS.

Cranks, my son? The world is full of them. What would we do were it not for the cranks? How slowly the tired old world would move, did not the cranks keep it rushing along! Columbus was a crank on the subject of American discovery and circumnavigation, and at last he met the fate of most cranks,-was thrown into prison, and died in poverty and disgrace. Greatly venerated now ? Oh, yes, Telemachus, we usually esteem a crank most profoundly after we starve him to death. Harvey was a crank on the subject of the circulation of the blood; Galileo was an astronomical crank; Fulton was a crank on the subject of steam navigation; Morse was