For I thought of her grave below the hill,
Which the sentinel cypress-tree stands over:
And I thought, "Were she only living still,
How I could forgive her and love her!"

And I swear, as I thought of her thus, in that hour,
And of how, after all, old things are best,
That I smelt the smell of that jasmine flower
Which she used to wear in her breast.

It smelt so faint, and it smelt so sweet,

It made me creep, and it made me cold!
Like the scent that steals from the crumbling sheet
Where a mummy is half unrolled.

And I turned and looked she was sitting there,
In a dim box over the stage; and drest
In that muslin dress, with that full soft hair,
And that jasmine in her breast!

I was here, and she was there;

And the glittering horse-shoe curved between :From my bride betrothed, with her raven hair And her sumptuous, scornful mien,

To my early love with her eyes downcast,
And over her primrose face the shade,
(In short, from the future back to the past),
There was but a step to be made.

To my early love from my future bride

One moment I looked Then I stole to the door, I traversed the passage; and down at her side I was sitting, a moment more.

My thinking of her, or the music's strain,

Or something which never will be exprest, Had brought her back from the grave again, With the jasmine in her breast.

She is not dead, and she is not wed!

But she loves me now, and she loved me then; And the very first word that her sweet lips said, My heart grew youthful again.

The Marchioness there, of Carabas,

She is wealthy and young and handsome still; And but for her . . . . well, we'll let that pass; She may marry whomever she will.

But I will marry my own first love,

With her primrose face, for old things are best;
And the flower in her bosom, I prize it above
The brooch in my lady's breast.

The world is filled with folly and sin,

And love must cling where it can, I say:

For beauty is easy enough to win;

But one isn't loved every day.

And I think, in the lives of most women and men. There's a moment when all would go smooth and even,

If only the dead could find out when

To come back and be forgiven.

But oh, the smell of that jasmine flower!
And oh, that music! and oh, the way
That voice rang out from the donjon tower,
Non ti scordar di me,

Non ti scordar di me!

ROBERT BULWER LYTTON.

OH!

TOTAL ANNIHILATION.

H! he was a Bowery boot-black bold,
And his years they numbered nine.
Rough and unpolished was he, albeit,
He constantly aimed to shine.

As proud as a king on his box he sat,

Munching an apple red,

While the boys of his set looked wistfully on,
And, "Give me a bite!" they said.

But the boot-black smiled a lordly smile,
"No free bites here!" he cried.
And the boys, they sadly walked away,
Save one, who stood at his side.

"Bill, give us the core," he whispered low.
That boot-black smiled once more,

And a mischievous dimple grew in his cheek-
"There ain't goin' to be no core!"

MARY D. BAINE.

You

SHE CUT HIS HAIR.

can always tell a boy whose mother cuts his

hair. Not because the edges of it look as if it

had been chewed off by an absent-minded horse; but you can tell it by the way he stops on the street and

wriggles his shoulders: When a fond mother has to cut her boy's hair she is careful to guard against any annoyance and muss by laying a sheet on the carpet. It has never yet occurred to her to set him over a bare floor and put the sheet around his neck. Then she draws the front hair over his eyes, and leaves it there while she cuts that which is at the back; the hair which lies over his eyes appears to be surcharged with electric needles, and that which is silently drooping down over his shirtband appears to be on fire. She has unconsciously continued to push his head forward until his nose presses his breast, and is too busily engaged to notice the snuffling sound that is becoming alarmingly frequent. In the meantime he is seized with an irresistible desire to blow his nose, but recollects that his handkerchief is in the other room. Then a fly lights on his nose, and does it so unexpectedly that he involuntarily dodges and catches the points of the shears in his left ear. At this he commences to cry and wish he was a man. But his mother doesn't notice him. She merely hits him on the other ear to inspire him with confidence and goes on with the work. When she is through she holds his jacket-collar back from his neck, and with her mouth blows the short bits of hair from the top of his head down his back. He calls her attention to this fact, but she looks for a new place on his head and hits him there, and asks him why he didn't use his handkerchief. Then he takes his awfully disfigured head to the mirror and looks at it, and, young as he is, shudders as he thinks of what the boys on the street will say.

DANBURY NEWS.

LASCA.

I

WANT free life and I want fresh air;

And I sigh for the canter after the cattle,

The crack of the whips like shots in a battle,
The melley of horns and hoofs and heads
That wars and wrangles and scatters and spreads;
The green beneath and the blue above,
And dash and danger, and life and love.

And Lasca!

Lasca used to ride

On a mouse-gray mustang close to my side,
With blue serape and bright-belled spur;
I laughed with joy as I looked at her!
Little knew she of books or of creeds;
An Ave Maria sufficed her needs;
Little she cared, save to be by my side,
To ride with me, and ever to ride,
From San Saba's shore to Lavaca's tide.
She was as bold as the billows that beat,
She was as wild as the breezes that blow;
From her little head to her little feet
She was swayed in her suppleness to and fro
By each gust of passion; a sapling pine,
That grows on the edge of a Kansas bluff,

And wars with the wind when the weather is rough,

Is like this Lasca, this love of mine.

She would hunger that I might eat,

Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet;

But once, when I made her jealous for fun,
At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done,
One Sunday, in San Antonio,

To a glorious girl on the Alamo,