"What could I do, señor? What would you do if your own wife had been so insulted? See how lovely she is!" And he kissed her on both cheeks. What would I have done? What would you have done, my friend, with that startled shriek in your ears, and that frightened face appealing to you, her great eyes wet with tears, her white arms held out to you? My hair is not quite so brown as it was, and the blood no longer surges through my veins. I am cooler and calmer, and even phlegmatic at times; and yet had Florita been mine, I would have broken a carafe over every head in Cordova. While he was calming her fears, kissing her cheeks, and patting her hands, the whole story came out. Day after day he had hoped that his father would relent. One word from him, and then I need never have known how the dainty feet of his pretty young wife had helped them both to live. This is why he had kept it from me. That night a painter, with a pretty Spanish cousin, and a servant carrying his coat and traps, occupied a first-class carriage for Toledo. The painter left the train at the first station out of Cordova, shouldered his trap and coat himself, and took the night express back to his lonely lodgings. The servant and the señorita went on alone. When the train reached Toledo an old Spaniard with white head and mustache pushed his way through the crowd, took the servant in his arms, and kissed the pretty cousin on both cheeks. Then a high-springed old coach swallowed them up. MASKS. F. Hopkinson Smith. CERTAIN friend of mine whose daily praise By what he said when I, like all the rest, To render weight for weight, yet grudge the coin My soul the nesting-place for divers sins, I tell thee, there are times I hear a voice Whose common title with the world was "saint." Richard E. Burton. REWHILE I sang the praise of them whose lustrous names Flashed in war's dreadful flames; Who rose in glory, and in splendor, and in might To fame's sequestered height. II. Honor to all, for each his honors meekly carried, All honor, for they sought alone to serve the state- III. Yes, while the glorious past our grateful memory craves, Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, the peerless four, IV. Shall shine the eternal stars of stern and loyal love, All other stars above; The imperial nation they made one, at last, and free, V. Ah yes! but ne'er may we forget the praise to sound Of the brave souls that found Death in the myriad ranks, 'mid blood, and groans, and stenches- VI. Comrades, to-day a tear-wet garland I would bring, But one song let me sing, For one sole hero of my heart and desolate home; Come with me, Comrades, come! VII. Bring your glad flowers, your flags, for this one humble grave; For, Soldiers, he was brave! Though fell not he before the cannon's thunderous breath, Yet noble was his death. 1 The chaplain referred to lost his life through taking upon himself the visitation of the army smallpox hospital near the camp of his regiment, the 40th N. Y. Volunteers, at Brandy Station, Virginia, April, 1864. THE AUTHOR. HE author turned on his couch uneasily as he was dictating the final paragraphs of his story. His wife sat writing at a table by the window. In the little square far down below them there were signs of spring; the first touch of warmer weather had been felt, and the trees were beginning to bud out timidly. The afternoon sun fell aslant the floor in long lines of feeble light. The invalid looked out towards the west and caught a glimpse of the floating clouds reddening as the day waned. He gazed at them as though anxious to borrow their golden hues to color his words. His wife finished setting on paper the last sentence he had dictated. She waited silently for the next, but in a moment she looked up. "What is it, dear?" she asked, when she saw the look on his face. "We shall have another glorious sunset today," he answered. "How lucky it is that we live so high up in the air that we can see them." "Shall I raise you up?" she inquired hastily. "Not yet," he responded; "I must finish the story first. Where was I?" She took up the sheets of manuscript which lay before her and replied, "I had just written this: In morals, as in geometry, the straight 6 line is the shortest distance between two points; and John Strang never swerved from the swift path. He was alone, but a true hero needs no other witness than his own conscience-""} "I know, I know," the author interrupted; "a couple of hundred words more and the work is done. I 'm going to wind it up short and sharp, and give the reader a real surprise. 'He strode forward fearlessly. Out of the darkness there came to meet him-'" Having begun again to dictate, the sick man with an obvious effort braced himself as he lay, and continued until he reached the end of the tale, pausing but for an instant now and again to find the fit word, at once simple and strong, to carry his meaning. The last few sentences fell from his lips swiftly, tumbling one over another in the haste of their maker to be at the goal of his desires; and his amanuensis had to let her pen speed over the paper to keep pace with her husband's rapid speech. At last the story-teller concluded, "So it came to pass that John Strang conquered himself, and thus he was spared the knowledge that the saddest of all joys is a satisfied vengeance." The tension of his task relaxed all at once, the author fell back on his pillow, and the westering sun cast a rosy light on his pale, thin face, with its eager eyes and its determined mouth. He watched his wife while she wrote this final sentence, and then he said, "That is all." She numbered the page she had just completed, and laid it on top of the others. His eyes followed her movements wistfully, and then he looked anxiously into her face, as though waiting for her judgment on his labor. When he found that she was intent on sorting the pages in order and did not speak, he broke the silence himself. "I'm afraid it is not very good?" he said tentatively. She looked up and smiled at him proudly. "It is one of the best things you have ever done," she declared. The color on his cheeks deepened a little, but perhaps the sun was responsible for this, and the light came back to his eye. "I'm afraid that it is not very new," he returned doubtfully. "It is the old, old story," she rejoined firmly, "and that is always new and always true; and it always will be as long as there is an honest man and woman in the world.” "The whole thing is so fresh to me now," he said, with a hint of rising confidence in his weary voice," that I don't know anything at all about it. By to-morrow I shall be ready to call it poor stuff, I suppose. If it is good for anything, I shall not find it out until I get the proof from the magazine." "Where are you going to send it?" asked his wife. "To The Metropolis,' I think," he responded. "They read there more promptly than anywhere else, and they pay better, too." "They did n't give you much for that last story of yours they took," she rejoined. "Well, they didn't like that story very much, and perhaps they were right," he said. "After it had been out a month or so I went in and looked over the scrap-book of newspaper notices, and hardly one of them said a word about my story." "What does a newspaper man know about literature?" asked the author's wife, indignantly. "You know that they spoke to me about writing a serial for them; that shows that they like my work," said the author," and perhaps this story will please them better. I think the fight ought to be popular; I tried to make it a good fight" "And you did," she interrupted; "I got so excited over it I could hardly write." "I wished to have it a good fight in itself," he continued, "and at the same time typical of the eternal strife of good and evil. Yet I don't know whether I really want anybody to suspect the allegory or not. I think I like stories best when the moral is quite concealed." "You have n't flaunted your moral in the reader's face, if that's what you mean," she returned. "But it's there all the same; and I don't doubt it'll do good too. I like the man; he's a gentleman and a man at the same time. And I could fall in love with the heroine; she's lovely, and noble, and womanly, and feminine, too!" He looked her full in the face, and there was a touching sweetness in his voice as he said, "How can I ever draw any other kind of woman when I have so fine a model before me?" She rose from the little table by the window and crossed over to his couch. He held out his hand,-a long, delicately modeled hand,and she clasped it. Then she bent over and kissed him. The author smiled up at her again, though a sudden twist of pain stiffened the lines of his face, and beads of chill perspiration began to form on his brow. She knew the signs of coming suffering, and her heart sank; but she still smiled at him with her mouth and her eyes as she moved away to prepare the medicine it was now time for him to take. THE EDITOR. THE ample offices of "The Metropolis," an illustrated monthly magazine, filled a floor of a broad building in Broadway. The publisher, with his assistants and with half a score of bookkeepers and clerks, occupied the front of the loft, and the editorial rooms and the art department were crowded together in the rear of the building. The private office of the editorin-chief was to be reached only by passing through the rooms in which sat his associates, and he was thus in a measure protected from the intrusion of the bores and the cranks. One Monday morning towards the latter part of May, two or three weeks after the author had made an end of dictating the story to his wife as he lay on his customary couch of pain, the editor sat in this inner office in consultation with his principal assistant. "Have you got the schedule for the midsummer number there?" asked the editor. His assistant, whose duty it was to "make up" the magazine, handed the editor a sheet of paper strangely ruled and half covered with penciled notes. "I want to see if we can't make room for this story," said the editor, taking a folded manuscript from the little hand-bag he always carried to and from his own house, where he absented himself often that he might read the more important contributions at leisure. "How long is it?" asked the assistant. "Between eight and nine thousand words," the editor answered. "It is a breezy, outdoor thing, well suited to a summer number, and there's a fight in it that will be a relief to the quietness of the serial. In fact, this story will help to balance the midsummer fiction in a way I like." "Well," responded the subordinate, "we can get it in, if you insist, although it will be a tight |