When

almost be said, elegance, of an expensive vase. the stately plant was transferred from the hideous box to its new receptacle it seemed to gain new dignity.

But our visit, like all pleasant things in this world, was coming to an end, and we had to cut short our decorative labors. When our kind hostess and the rest of the family saw what we had done, we had no end of praises, and they all declared, with one consent, that they should always thereafter look with respect on a heap of rubbish.

AFTER SUNSET.

AFTER sunset in the west,

Robes that clad the monarch Day, Golden crown and crimson vest,

All are spurned and cast away. Far along the purple sea

Fading splendors slowly die; Many a bird to many a tree Rustling flies, for night is nigh.

After sunset, gone the glow,

All the air with silence fills; After sunset, colder blow

Wailing winds from lonely hills. Ceased is labor, hushed is mirth,

Day has died on couch of gold; Twilight vails the weary earth,

Quiet broods o'er flock and fold.

After sunset, o'er the moor

Slowly flies the plover home; To the leafy cottage-door,

Sleepy-eyed, the children come; Watching how the great white moon Rises high o'er hill and plain; Silvery stars will sparkle soon, Peeping out and in again.

After sunset, melodies

All unheard in noisy day, Like a fragrant southern breeze Through the pensive spirit stray. Mem'ries lost, ah, me! so long, Floating round me dreamily, Like a dim-remembered song, Melt into a thought of thee!

THE STORY OF AN OLD HOME.

BY MALVOLIO.

God never gave a fairer sun to the world than the one shedding his farewell rays over the woods and fields of Maitland. He creeps to the stately trees and showers golden kisses on their feet; he glides up the long oak avenue and gilds the rusty pillars of the old colonnade with a glory that Solomon's temples could not have rivaled; his light lies upon the daffodils, that flaunt themselves airily, and seem saying to their master, "Go your way. You have made us in your image, and now we need you not."

Down in the valley a little stream croons like a child half sung to sleep. Beside it sits a girl, with plaits as yellow as the daffodils, and a head bowed, like to a rainfilled flower. Guilty Eve in the Garden of Eden could not have looked more dejected. The only sign of heart's blood in her exquisite face lies in the lips, which are as red as the rose lying in the lap of her white wool gown. Her great brown eyes are as sombre and dry as last year's dead leaves at her feet, and as she rests her chin wearily upon her clasped hands one word rings in her ears like a funeral knell-a magical, hopeful word to most young hearts-to-morrow!

Up at the house sewing-women are putting the finishing touches upon her wedding-wardrobe. A moment ago she asked if they were through with her, and upon receiving an affirmative answer, the tired slave of her slaves went out for a last look at the forest and meadows that had known her for the twenty years of her life.

"After all my girlish dreams, this is to be the end!" she cries, and the brook takes up the last word, seeming to sing it over and over.

Upon the hillside she sees her dog, a bright-eyed Irish setter, bounding toward her, and when he comes and licks her face and paws her hair in loving canine fashion, she puts her arms about him, and sobs out in irrepressible anguish :

"Oh, Val, Val, you didn't know I was to be married to-morrow!"

A voice behind hers answers, "Yes, I knew it."

She is white to the lips as she turns and sees the woful face above her, but she rises and speaks with quiet dignity, as only a brave soul can.

"How are you, Val ?" extending a cold, trembling hand. "Why did you come ?"

"Do you think I could keep from coming when I heard you were going to be married ?" he cries, vehemently. "Do you think I'm a man to let the only thing on earth I love leave my life without doing all I can to keep it ?"

"You've done everything on earth to prevent you from keeping it," she says, bitterly.

"I know I haven't been good," he replies, with passionate impatience; "but I've loved you with the one good part of me, and I've never loved any other woman. That ought to count for something. So many fellows have asked dozens of women to marry them. Oh! Margaret, think of it; I've loved you your whole life long. Can you throw it away? Can you forget me? Won't it seem a little hard, sometimes ?" he pleads, with his heart in his eyes and voice.

The eyes and voice are indeed capable of containing a heart, for they are most deep, and soft, and pure; and the man is altogether a godlike specimen of beauty, for he is tall and perfectly formed; his head is nobly molded, and the expression of the clearcut Grecian features is intellectual, at times brilliant, and ever most innocent and boyish.

She looks upon him, noting tenderly every familiar curve of his face, and, forgetting for a moment all things save the knowledge of his dear presence, she gives words to an absurdly personal thought.

"Yes, you are just the same innocent, Sunday-schoollooking boy you were in short pants. If "-wistfully— "you just were a Sunday-school boy there'd be hope for the future."

"Well," smiling meagrely, "I'm not, you know, and you might not love me if I were. Good women don't love good men often."

"Because there are so few good men to love." "Then why can't you throw in your lot with the majority of women? Oh, Margie, try me again; I will be good, and give up drinking and gambling, and—and everything," blushing before her honest eyes.

"Didn't I try you for three years? Wasn't I patient? And what was my reward? Nothing but stories of your recklessness and dissipation constantly reaching me→ stories from a source I could not doubt. Do you think I wanted to give you up, when your love was the life of my life? My God!" she says, her face growing pinched and gray with suffering, "how I have prayed and hoped against hope for you-prayed for you hopelessly so long

me.

"But why are you going to do this terrible thing to ruin your life for ever? How can you go to one man when you love another ?"

"I am going to him as a refuge against you. I knew you'd be home again this Summer, and I was growing too weak to stand the old persuasions. John Waring loves me-has loved me for a long time. I shall be good and faithful, and I shall grow to love him after a while," she says, with plaintive hopefulness; then, in tremulous, beseeching tones: "Don't beg me any more. It won't do any good. It only makes me suffer, and I'm so tired."

In the old days she was domineering and independent -his mistress in very truth-and the knowledge of her love for him comes as a glorious revelation through her pleading tones. It seems harder now than ever to

give her up.

on

'Oh, darling, I wouldn't say any more, if I thought you would be happy," he cries, in tones of yearning tenderness; "but will marrying another man do any good? What leagues of land or sea, what power of God or man, can separate two hearts that love? Your life will be miserable without me. I know I'm unworthy, but what man earth is worthy of you? You don't know how you might help me. I never did have anybody to help What was my homelife? A reckless, dissipated father, and a mother-God help her, let her dust rest! When we were grown, and I fully realized how I loved you, I had commenced my life; I tried to do better, but a man has so many temptations, and wrongdoing seemed a cursed inheritance."

me.

She thinks of a reproachful condemnation, but the hopelessness of it occurs to her, and she turns to the regretful, pitying strain most natural in this last hour. 'If you just looked like a sinful man it wouldn't seem so hard, but you have such a heaven-born face! It seems to me that the angels must weep when they see you rushing into wickedness."

'Make yourself my guardian angel, and I will never cause you sorrow. Try me again. I will conquer all things with your help. My only faith in myself lies in my love for you-for you are the only woman I care for or believe in. If you marry another man, there will always be a regret. Wouldn't it be better to risk the regret with a man you loved ?"

"No, no; a thousand times no. The man I am going to marry could never make me suffer as you could. He hasn't the power. Sin is the one thing that brings heartbreaking sorrow to a woman. Do you think I could bear seeing you yielding daily more and more to temptation?

Her whole body is tremulous, and her heart throbs with pain. She feels that she must faint or cry out, and, grasping the tree upon which she has been leaning, she rises with the effort with which a woman lifts herself from the grave of her child.

At her feet lies her lover's beautiful head, bowed in hopeless supplication.

"I must go," she whispers. "It is almost dark. Get up. Don't look that way, for my sake."

"It is for your sake that I look this way," he answers, rising and stretching out his arms toward her. His very finger-tips seemed magnetized to draw her unto him. "Come to me just this once," he pleads. "You have not kissed me since you were a little girl. Leave me one happy memory, and I will say no

more.

This is the hardest time of all, but she shrinks, as if for protection, behind her dog, and, stretching her hand across this dumb friend, says, hoarsely: "I can't. Goodby."

He takes her hand, and looks down at the dog. "You'd better kill the beast," he says. "He has my name, and you will not care to call it now." "I shall always care to call it. Good-by. God bless you !"

"That's useless, since you can't do it," he replies, bitterly; then, turned tender by her face: "Thank you. I trust some good may come of that blessing, yet I doubt it; but pray for me still, and don't let me cause you to lose faith. It would always soothe me to know you said my name to God in heaven. I will not ask God to bless you, because He would not know my voice, but I will try to hope you may be happy with this man, if I can give up hating him long enough to do it. Good-by!"

He raises her hand to his lips, and kisses it as a dying man kisses his cross.

heaven-sweet to have her in his arms and, as he feels her heart against his own, a glad new strength and purity seem throbbing in his veins.

'You were glad I came back?" she asks, looking down, not daring to face the yearning fire of his eyes.

"Glad!" he says the word scornfully as though he hated it for being so poor. "If I were dying of thirst, would I be glad to have a cup of water? Oh darling, I can live a little longer just upon the memory of your lips!"

It has grown dark, and she, looking up, sees that the stars are out.

Margaret Maitland and Valentine Marsden had known each other from childhood. The Marsdens' home adjoined Maitland's, and the two families had been loyal friends for generations.

Valentine's father was the last of his race, and when he had finished his education in Europe he went to New Orleans to practice his profession; there he gained a reputation as a brilliant lawyer, and the fastest, most dissipated man in club-life. He married a pretty, frivolous woman who, in a short while, gave rise to some ugly scandal. She was an opium-eater, and, when she became utterly irresponsible, her husband sent her with her little boy to the seclusion of his old home in the village of G. There she led an existence supremely pleasing to herself, but most trying to her servants and child, to whom she was alternately fretful and peveishly lenient. The sight of her dazed degradation filled the boy with vague horrors, and he flew to the woods and fields as a refuge. His was a buoyant, merry nature, that threw sorrow off with seeming lightness, but he grew up with irreverence and disgust for the woman in whose purity and strength a man's salvation often depends; and he knew not the meaning of the word home.

When he was twelve years old, Margaret was a little scrap of a thing, and he carried her over the fields on his shoulders. She was his fairy princess, and the one sweet, fresh love in his life. In college, he was the laziest student and the most delightful companion in his class. There was about him everything good, save the God-sent quality of goodness. He sketched with the peu of a Du Maurier, sung divinely, and wrote brilliantly. Men and women adored him. The latter were but trying to reform him, and they ended by simply unreforming themselves. He went to New Orleans and entered journalism. There he led a gay life. He did everything bad, save lie and steal. He had an intense, passionate force over women, and used it relentlessly. Such a power is a curse in the hands of an unbridled

nature.

At twenty-five, Valentine came home to spend the Summer with his mother, and when he met Margaret Maitland he loved her with the one pure part of his nature. She had grown into a most beautiful and stately maiden, but her manner toward him was the same as in the old days, when she treated him with overbearing proprietorship. That she was honestly fond of him he knew, but she laughed and ridiculed the tender speeches that were wont to make other women blush and tremble; and he often said, with a tone of pique in his voice, that

he knew how to sympathize with the prophet about his country.

Before he left, however, he succeeded in making her promise to care for him, if he would do better; and she grew to love him with her whole heart, but he did no better. Though she acknowledged her love, she would never engage herself to him, feeling that no happiness could result from it. She was the one pure spot in his life. When all the rest was bad, is it a wonder there was no hope of redemption?

Margaret Maitland was the only child of her father's frail young second wife, who died at the baby's birth, and Mrs. Maitland had been dead some years. The estate was involved, and the old home was to be sold in October. Margaret and Miss Maitland, her half-sister, were its sole occupants now.

Forlorn and sad looks the old home to the eyes of the young girl as she drags herself wearily up the steps. Miss Maitland is a thoroughly addicted spinster—an ungentle gentlewoman, whose voice sounds as if it had just been taken from the refrigerator.

"Don't you think you might have pneumonia, staying out in the dew so late ?" she questions.

"Maybe so; it doesn't matter," replies the girl. Miss Maitland glances at her, and it vaguely dawns upon this frigid female that her young sister is not a jubilant-looking bride.

"But then," she reflects, "most girls are not madly in love. Their one object is to get married, and that accomplished, they are supposed to be happy. The girl couldn't earn her own living, and marriage is the only thing for her." And the girl" is standing in the presence of another immortal soul as cold and comfortless as if she were alone in Iceland.”

66

Supper is finished some way, and Margaret, glad to plead weariness, says good-night, and walks wearily up the cranky old stairs, shuddering with the old childish terror as she passes the garret-door on the landing. The moon has arisen, and is sending long rays of ghost-like light into her airy bedroom, with its ten little windows. Down in the garden banks of roses and honeysuckle are offering up their incense. Beneath her window shines a long line of white poppies, and as she looks down upon them they seem like a row of tall, white maidens.

"They are all decked for my funeral to-morrow. Would to God I were lying out there dead among them!" she cries.

"Little mistis," says her mammy, in the doorway, "Mars John down-stairs an' says he wan' see you." "Tell him I'm sorry, Dinah, but I can't see him tonight. Say I was sick and had gone to bed." The old soul gives a curious look, and goes with the excuse. She returns in a moment, carrying a package in her hands.

"He say he mighty sorry, an' dat he come to bring yo' dis."

Margaret opens the gold plush case, and a flood of light leaps forth from a diamond necklace.

"You gracious chile! ain' dey pretty ?" cries Dinah. "Yes; a beautiful chain of tears, Dinah." "Oh! my baby, what makes yo' talk like dat?" questions the old nurse, distressedly.

"Why, tears are beautiful. Don't you know there are happy tears that outshine diamonds ?"

"Dat is so, an' happy tears I'se seed on weddin'-days; but dey comes like April sunshine from a smilin' sky; an', my chile, yo' face is pale an' gray like de sky fo’a storm, an' dere ain' no happy tears comin' from dem eyes to-morrow."

"Nor tears of any kind. Don't worry over me, mammy. I'm sad over leaving the old home, that's all."

Yes, I knows, mistis, but love don' keer 'bout homes, kase love lives in folks' hearts. Did yo' know Marse Val done come ?" she asks, abruptly.

"Yes," coldly; but the old soul calmly continues : "Ah! he were a handsom' lad, an' so good and purefaced. How I'mines me uf de time yo' used to walk in de woods togeder. 'Fore Gord! if yo' hadn't had on no cloes I'd er 'clared yo' was Adam and Ebe afore de sarpent cum, for yo' bofe had de faces ub new-born angels." She smiles faintly at this speech, then the thought of him opens the floodgates at last, and her form sways with passionate sobs. The black woman takes the girl in her arms, soothing her with the comforting words and caresses of her babyhood. Her bright hair has come down to cover the stricken form in a shining shroud-the sme old story of gilded pain. Her tears have done her a world of good, and she is quiet now.

"I think I can go to sleep if you will leave me now, mammy,” she says. "I was overwrought, but I feel better."

The old woman departs reluctantly, and goes down the stairs with a heart as dark as the face above it. Sleep is far from the eyes of the girl who sits at her window thinking, thinking. Is all this misery really true? she wonders, or is it a dream she has dreamed? Why had Valentine come back? and why, oh, why had her heart been made to love him when it was all to end in anguish? Yet, her thoughts ran on, she will be a good wife to this other man; she will try to love him. He has promised to buy Maitland for her, and if he gives her back her old home she will be obliged to love him. Before her arises a vision of the two men, standing side by side. One, broad, thickset, with large hands and feet and features; large, white teeth; stiff, black hair standing up straight as Hamlet's was oft wont to do; truly a goodly, honest, healthy-looking man-so aggressively healthy-looking as to make a delicate woman positively irritated to look upon. Then she turns to her love-for she must call him so in her heart-a patrician in every curve of form and face; gentle, unassuming, yet possessed of an irresistible, subtle power of attraction. She recalis each beloved feature; the broad, white forehead, with its straight, dark brows; the mouth, whose gentle curves betray no sign of evil. Ah! what a tender, noble face! What a miraculously innocent face!

As morning dawns she undresses, and lies with wide, burning eyes until Dinah comes with her bath.

Happy weddings are the only ones that should be told of fully. As the carriage rolls out of the gates of Maitland, on its way to the station, Margaret thinks of the "Golden Gates" in "Mill on the Floss."

She and her husband have no tiffs upon their weddingjourney. He is deeply in love, and she passively indifferent. When they return, and the days grow into months, she commences to find some unsuspected qualities in her husband. He is, what she terms to herself, "peculiar about money." He requires her to keep an account of all she spends for his minute inspection, and when a gift to another is recorded, he looks a little uupleasant about the mouth. One day he asked what had become of a dress he had not seen her wear in some time. Upon being told she had given it tó Dinah, he frowned and said:

It seems to me that I should be consulted about your generosity, as I furnish the means. You can sell your old dresses, and I prefer your doing so."

Her answer was a look of utter contempt as she walked out of the room. He did not mean to be unkind, and he was willing to lavish every expensive luxury upon her. His ideas seemed perfectly just and sensible. He had worked hard for every dime of his money, and overestimated its value.

Maitland was her refuge in trouble, and she went there when she left him. She felt that the old trees would understand the disgust in her heart, for had they not looked upon lordly generosity for many generations?

When women marry men deeply in love with them they never dream of finding unpleasant qualities in their husbands, and Margaret Waring was unprepared for rough places in her married life. She wondered that day if there were not some other faults in men as unpleasant and difficult to endure as dissipation.

A few days after this, John Waring, upon coming home to dinner, shows a face beaming with triumphant satisfaction, as he kisses Margaret and tells her he has bought Maitland.

"Oh! John, have you?" she cries, her face full of joy. "You have made me very, very happy !" and sho gives him the first kiss her lips have ever volunteered. "I thought you'd be glad," he says, in a business-like voice. "You see it's a good investment all round. I will build our new home in the east corner, where the cld orchard lies; then clear up the grove and build cottages to rent there. I can get paid back for the whole place in two years if I carry out this plan. Capital thing it

But she interrupts, her eyes blazing so furiously that he shrinks in awed astonishment 'neath their indignant fury.

"You are a brute and a coward !" she cries. "A brute to me to sit there calmly and tell me something you know is cutting my very heartstrings. You would cut down the trees that mothered my motherless childhood' You are a coward; they can't defend themselves; these lordly giants can't stay one stroke of your ax; but I—] will go and lay my body against them, and you can cut that, too. That would be a kindly, generous act at least."

His tragical tirade about something perfectly incomprehensible to him makes him sullenly angry.

"I don't understand your nonsense," he says; "but 1 must say I've enjoyed seeing how you've taken the pleasant surprise I expected to give you. I can't afford to keep up the whole place, or to tear down the old house. I thought you'd like to have a handsome house on a corner of the old lot."

"A handsome house! What would the handsomest house in the world be to me if it overlooked the devastation of my old home! I don't want to live in any new house. I want to go back to the old home."

She feels she is not doing justice to this man's nature, and she throws anger aside and puts one hand pleadingly upon his shoulder.

"Do this for my sake, dear," she says, gently. "1 know you don't understand the feeling in my heart, but you said you would buy the old home for my sake, and it will only cause me misery for you to treat it this way. It will kill me to see my trees cut down."

"I can't afford to carry out the plan you propose," he replied, stubbornly. "The old house is a rat-trap, ard I'm not going to live in it. It will take all my spare capital to build a handsome new house. Your sentiment may be very fine, but it isn't common sense. I shall build the house, as I said. The workmen will commence in a month."