ALL the nations of the earth praise liberty, and still they seem to be uneasy until they lose it. How can we ask others to think as we do, when tomorrow we probably shall think differently ourselves? WITH all her natural modesty, woman has less bashfulness than man. JUSTICE is every man's due, but would ruin most people. OPINIONS quite often are a mere compromise between what a inan does n't know and what he guesses at. THERE is nothing that has been praised or abused more than liberty. THOSE who live to be a century old are generally most remarkable for nothing else. To be a successful fool, a man must be more wise than foolish. A Confession. Uncle Esek. Do you remember, little wife, Do you recall in younger years Do you remember how we two Would stare into each other's eyes, Till all the earth grew heavenly blue And speech was lost in happy sighs? Do you another thing recall, That used to happen often then : How simply meeting in the hall, We 'd stop to smile and kiss again? Do you remember how I sat And, reading, held your hand in mine, Caressing it with gentle pat One pat for every blessed line? Do you recall how at the play Through hours of agony we tarried? The lovers' griefs brought us dismay; Oh! we rejoiced when they were married; And then walked homeward arm in arm, Ah me! 't was years and years ago Has slipped from olive slopes of spring. And now oh, nonsense! let us tell; W. J. Henderson. A Vis-à-Vis. ACROSS the street I look and see And through my window oftentimes, Her presence makes the laggard ink I never have to pause to think O charming Vis-à-Vis of mine, I would that you might draw the line Would willingly be taken; The tempting bait but makes him wish To leave his friends forsaken. Again across the street I look, Alas, you 've drawn the curtain, Until once more you come to give Frank Dempster Sherman. To a Poet in "Bric-à-Brac." WHEN we, the ungifted of our time, Who dare not up Parnassus climb, And cannot even make a rhyme "With pen and ink,' Take up THE CENTURY, fresh from press, To what page first-just try to guessTurn we with greatest eagerness? What do you think? Believe me, we completely slight The page we turn to is the last; So, though your muse is never seen Grieve not-more honored poets yet Of Bric-a-Brac. THE DE VINNE PRESS, FRINTERS, NEW YORK. Annie D. Hanks. HERE is an old park wall which follows the highway in all its turns with such fidelity of curve that for some two miles it seems as if the road had been fitted to the wall. Against it hawthorn bushes have grown up at intervals, and in the course of years their trunks have become almost timber. Ivy has risen round some of these, and, connecting them with the wall, gives them at a distance the appearance of green bastions. Large stems of ivy, too, have flattened themselves upon the wall, as if with arched back they were striving like athletes to overthrow it. Mosses, brown in summer, soft green in winter, cover it where there is shadow, and if pulled up take with them some of the substance of the stone or mortar like a crust. A dry, dusty fern may perhaps be found now and then on the low bank at the foot-a fern that would rather be within the park than thus open to the heated south with the wall reflecting the sunshine behind. On the other side of the road, over the thin hedge, there is a broad plain of cornfields. Coming from these the laborers have found out, or made, notches in the wall; so that, by putting the iron-plated toes of their boots in, and holding to the ivy, they Copyright, 1888, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. can scale it and shorten their long trudge home to the village. In the spring the larks, passing from the green corn to the pasture within, fluttering over with gently vibrating wings and singing as they daintily go, sometimes settle on the top. There too the yellow-hammers stay. In the crevices bluetits build deep inside passages that abruptly turn, and baffle egg-stealers. Partridges come over with a whir, but just clearing the top, gliding on extended wings, which to the eye look like a slight brown crescent. The wagoners who go by know that the great hawthorn bastions are favorite resorts of wood-pigeons and missel-thrushes. The haws are ripe in autumn and the ivy berries in spring, so that the bastions yield a double crop. A mallow the mauve petals of which even the dust of the road cannot impair flowers here and there on the dry bank below, and broad moon-daisies among the ripe and almost sapless grass of midsummer. If any one climbed the wall from the park and looked across at the plain of cornfields in early spring, everywhere there would be seen brown dots in the air-above the first slender green blades; above the freshly turned all unable to set forth their joy. Swift as is the vibration of their throats, they cannot pour the notes fast enough to express their eager welcome. As a shower falls from the sky, so falls the song of the larks. There is no end to them: they are everywhere; over every acre away across the plain to the downs, and up on the highest hill. Every crust of English bread has been sung over at its birth in the green blade by a lark. If one looked again in June, the clover itself, a treasure of beauty and sweetness, would be out, and the south wind would come over acres of flower-acres of clover, beans, tares, purple trifolium, far-away crimson saintfoin (brightest of all on the hills), scarlet poppies, pink dark furrows; above the distant plow, the share of which, polished like a silver mirror by friction with the clods, reflects the sunshine, flashing a heliograph message of plenty from the earth; everywhere brown dots, and each a breathing creature-larks ceaselessly singing, and convolvulus, yellow charlock, and green wheat coming into ear. In August, already squares would be cut into the wheat, and the sheaves rising, bound about the middle, hour-glass fashion; some breadths of wheat yellow, some golden-bronze; beside these, white barley and oats, and beans blackening. Turtle-doves would be in the stubble, for they love to be near the sheaves. The hills after or during rain look green and near; on sunny days, a far and faint blue. Sometimes the sunset is caught |