“LITTLE SONG, LOVE,” Then sing the song we loved, lovs, When all life seemed one song ; For life is uone too long, love, Al, love is none too long. And when above my grave, love, Some day the grass grows strong, Then sing that song we loved, love; Love, just that one sweet song. So when they bid you sing, love, And thrill the joyous throng, “Then sing the song we loved, love; Love, just that one sweet song. RSS MONA. “What a sad face Aunt Mona has, mamma! Her eyes are the sweetest I have ever seen, but they seem very wells of saddening thought. Has she suffered very much, mamma? and was t sorrow that turned her hair so white?” Mrs. Fanshaw allowed her eyes to wander out through the open window and linger a moment on her sister’s fig- ure, as it was outlined against the even- ing sky, before she answered. She noticed how frail it was, how dainty in its plain black robe, with white lace at neck and wrists, And a tender light went over her face, which was not simply the light of love, but had a touch of reverence added to it. “‘She is still beantiful, is she not, Le- ola? If she has met with much grief it has not entirely blasted a beauty about which a nation once nearly went wild, has it?” “Id a nation go wild over Aunt Mon?” Leola asked increduluosly. “She was the belle of Paris twenty years ago,” the elder lady answered. “Mamma, there 18 a romance in her life, Please tell it to me. I know Aunt Mona bad some reason for never marrying, and I don't see why you have not told me. Had she a [false lover, or a proud lover, who would not give his fine old name to a foreigner Oh. I do want to know what has kepta beautiful, educated, refined, womanly woman like Aunt Mona from becoming a wife. wife, mammal” “So a man thought, who laid heart and name and fortune—a large one— at her feet, a month after our arrival in the city, and when he had but seen ter half a dozen times,”’ Mrs. Fanshaw said slowly. “This gentleman—a Frenchman of good family and very handsome, very agreeable, very polished in his manners, and the heir to wealth—was named f.eopold Cartier, and fron the hour in which he first saw Mona he loved her with the unreasoning, passionate im- yetuous love of a thorongh Frenchman, sf pure love of admiration, rather led | | | { i i ! § : i { 4 near her. She was engaged for a dance to him, but he found it impossible to reach her to claim it, and at last he gave up trying and came to me, I saw how white his face was and how his eyes flashed, and I felt deeply for him. “Laying my hand on his arm, I whis- pered that I would speak to Mona, and at that unlucky moment both he and I looked toward her as she listened to the earnest conversation of the Marquis, a smile of girlish amusement on ber lips, and I felt them quiver upon it, Then he dropped it and turned away, leaving the ball, but his ine face was white as I spoke to Mona, but she only lifted her brows and laughed; and the Mar- quis was her escort to the carriage when we left in the small hours. As he put her in, the flowers fell from her hair and lay directly at hus feet. He lifted the crimson buds, which had commenced to wither, and pressed them to his lips, then, with very French empressement, asked if he might retain them. Mona lay back among the cushions, just where a flood of light reached her from the great ball and her beautiful face was serenely careless, “Now that you have kissed them I will not claim them Monsieur le Mar- quis,”’ she said, laughingly; and in the miadle of a very gallant expression of rapture on the part of the gentlemar, | we drove on, leaving him standing in all his blonde, graceful, well-dressed | manhood where the lights fell on him; | and I alone saw a figure stride out | from the shadows toward him, as we) were borne swiftly toward our hotel, | and I fancled, with a thrill of appre- | hension, that I recognized Leopold | Cartier, and that his face was ghastly. “The Marquis had made an engage- ment to call on us the following day, | and Mona sang a sweet, ringing melody she was being dressed to receive him, | I heard her from my room, and that | was the last gay song that ever lay upon her lips, “She was before her mirror still | when a letter was handed to her, and | with musical words yet ou her lips she | broke the seal. A smile came about | them as she read the first few lines. | Ere she had read the brief note to its | close they were white as death. “Oh, Heaven be merciful!’ cried ; and I wondered what news She | had | The | i { some toy. “She scarcely flirted with him, and 7et she did not at once discourage him; and wherever our party would ' | i ‘ollowed us as though he but lived in ation was to be excused, for Mona was in the flower of her youth—a dain- iy, lovely, dazzling girl, whose heart 1ad sparkles and flashes beyond the jewels with which papa loved to deck her. Mona was the youngest, and our father’s favorite, but we loved her too well to be jealous of her, in that or any- terrible grief came, it struck each of us heavily, because it was so far beyond our power to spare or save her from it.” “Then I was right mamma? Aunt Mona has suffered greatly?”’ ‘‘As few suffer, and all innocently, child; I will tell you. We had known Leopold about two months, and, al- though Mona had many suitors, none were 80 persistent as he, none less cared for by her; and then thers was a grand ball, given by one of the leaders of Par- isian society, to which we all went; I was a bride, and wore a pretty costume of rose-colored tissue, with white roses seattered over it; I remember that your papa kissed me as I went down, and told me I looked like a flower; but Mona! she was then in her twentieth year, and more than beautiful; she Is beautiful still, although 40, and with hair that has become white as silver, Her dress was a ftopaztinted satin, with frostings of white lace, snd she had put garnets in Ler ears, about hey throat, and on her white arms; and it was a unique combination of color, but her piquant beauty was enhanced by it; she wore a crimson flower—a fatal cluster of red buds—in her dark hair, 1 will never forget how my heart thrill od as she descended the stairs and 1 tooked up at her; I will never forget how fair she was, as we entered the ball-room, I on the arm of my husband, she on papa’s, and papa was so proud of her as he saw what a sensation she made—so proud of her when she bent her head in perfect composure on being presented to the young French Marquis, who was the lion of the evening. “For the Marquis, be was fascinated by her. He forgot everything and everyone for her, For the whole even- ing he was her cavalier, and she took his attentions as might a young Queen gracefully, carelessly, with light, girlish laughter. “Leopold was there, and I felt deeply for the poor fellow. He could not get cold and white, and I thought her | dead. An hour after and she was | lying on her couch, moaning and sob- | ving, her fair face convulsed, her | bands claspmg and unclasping, and it was long before she could tell us what | had happened. | The Marquis had wnitten her that | before keeping his appointment with her, he found himself obliged to fight a | duel with an insolent fellow, who had come up the moment her carriage had been driven off and tsken the buds | struck the insolent fellow before re- cognizing him; then he had seen that it There had been, of course, a cbal- lenge, which was accepted. The small his only regret; would she hold him | pardoned, and allow him to pay his res- | pects to her a fittle later than the hour | she had named for receiving ? s¢ ‘Horrible,’ 1 thougnt, unaccustom- ed to the customs then prevailing in | France, ‘how coldly he disposes of our poor Leopold!’ but there was nothing to be done but wait and hope they might not fatally injure each other, “The hours went on slowly as hours of waiting always do, and the sun was setting, when a card was brought Mona. She held out her hand for it, then drew it back and raised it above her eyes. I felt the tremor créep over my own heart as I teok it from the servant and dismissed her before daring to look at 1t; when I saw the name a sort of terror came to me, and I cried out ‘Mona, it is the Marquis Valliers | He has slain Leopold I’ “And Mons, without a single word, fell once more in a dead faint. “The Marquis was told that Mada- moiselle was ill, and that Madame could not leavé her, and we never saw his fair French face again ; for, when the papers of the following day gave an account of the affalr d'honneur, in which the Marquis had fatally woun- ded Monsieur Cartier, Mona went to where Leopold lay dying.” “Then she loved him, mamma ?” Leola asked “I have never been quite sure, But while the Marquis quistly took a trip beyond the French confines, she watch- ed him—Leopold—die. Then, when we bad seen him buried, we said fare well to France and returned to Ameri. ca. Mona was sadly changed. “Still beautiful, she seemed to have forgotton her old smiling gayety, and her eyes had caught that deep sadness, She had kept love from her life, and her youth had gone from her while she rémained here, In the home our father nad left her. Her hair, which was gilken and black as night, has turned to whiteness, It was white, as you know, before she was thirty. I was never sure that it was love for Leo pol that so changed her, or whether it § might not be the certainty that she had 4 » cost him his life through his great im- petuous love for her, which made her shrink from the love cf men. I know that the Marquis received our address, and sent her a number of letters, beg- ging her acceptance of his hand, his heart, his title ; and I know that she wrote him shudderingly that there was blood on the hand, murder in the heart, a stain on the title, “He has long been married, but Mona never will be a wife, and you know why ; she is silent in her sorrow, and we hardly comprehend, but we always respect it.”’ What Actresses Eat. Mrs. Coghlan the leading lady of Wallack’s Theatre, receives a liberal salary, about $300 a week, 1 believe, and she resides permanently in New York. She has no hotel or traveling expenses to encounter, and is enabled to run her establishment at au even ex- pense all the year around, She has a man cook, a coachman, a maid and a general servant, and her dinners are superb. She breakfasts about 11 and dines about 0, after her daily drive in the park. I never heard that she hada liking for any particular dish, but I distinctly remember the delight she evinced once when 1 was talking with her over the approach of the oyster season. “Sara Jewett is quite the opposite of She is very domestic in her tastes, lives quietly, is seldom to be seen in a public restaurant and sticks to the good old American dinner with patriotic allegiance. ‘Kate Forsythe, who also lives very quietly with her mother in a flat up town when she is in the city, eats late suppers, quite often at the restaurants, and has a fondness for nibbling candies and sweet meats at all hours, The same is true of Sadie Martinot, who, eater than Miss Forsythe, her very often at Delmonico’s and it 1s there when that actress is in New York. Modjeska's tendencies, however accessible, models for a dainty appetite. thoroughly devoted to her art than any other actress I know, seldom goes to public restaurants. rooms in a private boarding-house in Fourteenth street. Here she studies constantly, rehearses her people occa. aration for ber work on the stage. Her meals are plain and served with great regularity in her rooms, She seems to be entirely without the love of admira- ticn which actresses often evince in private life as well as on the stage.” “Are there any special dishes which of “About the only dish they are all sure of accepting,” said the manager smilingly. "is a glass, quite as grateful to an exhausted actress as it is to an athlete, It is a drink that is frequently given to men who are engaged 1n long athletic struggles, you know, as it refreshes without leav- ing any after effects of spirits, After an actress has gone through a hard night's work in an emotional play a down from the high-strung point.” nmin AI I S—— Extraordinary Comets. During the last four years some ex- traordinary comets have paid visits to the ruler of the solar system, and dis- played their dazzling trains to the ad- miration of his attendant worlds, markable for some unusual or unac- countable conduct. The big comet of into the northern hemisphere unan. nounced and unexpected, and surprised the astronomers at their pumps, The comet of 1852 amazed the world by suddenly appearing at broad noon close to the sun, where it soared like a flery bird with broad wings expanded; as it retreated from the solar system it ap- peared to be chased by a bevy of little comets to which it had apparently given birth during the terrors of its plunge’ through the sun. In 1883 the comet of 1812 reappeared. But the most extraordinary comet of all is the one which was discovered at the Vienna observatory about a month ago, It seems to have been clearly seen, for the observers carefully measured its position among the stars, and it was believed from its place and motions that it was one of the comets of 1858 returning. Bul after thus showing it. self the comet disappeared, and al- though a battery of telescopes has been brought to bear upon the spot where it appeared from nearly every observatory in Europe, not a glimpse of the myster- fous visitor from the realms of outer Beauties of Nature, Russia presents no beauties of nature except in the Ural mountains and on the Cancasus, The country along the great railroad lines is as mototonous as a western prairie, but less fertile. The cities of St, Petersburg, Moscow, War- saw, Kief and Odessa, especially the first two, contain all that is interesting to a traveler. Bt, Petersburg repre- sents new Russia, Moscow old Russia, The principal sights in both are palaces and fine churches, These are filled to overflowing with treasures of rilver and gold and precious jewels, The winter palace and hermitage at St, Petersburg, the summer palace at Peterhof, the palaces of the Kremlin in Moscow are treasures which unlimited power, have accumulated for centuries, The church- es, too. are over-loaded with precious and glittering gold. The finest churches are St. Isaac’s in St, Peters- memoration of the deliverance from the French in 1812, completed and con- secrated in 1883 at enormous cost. The churches are crowded atthe time of worship. ligious people in the observance of out- ward forms. holy images, bowing to the floor and over again. The worship of the Virgin Mary and of saints is carried fully as church. Holy images are found not only in the churches, but in houses on, public places, in railway stations and | passes them without bowing and ma- | king the sign of the cross. The chief service is the mass, which is performed | play than in the church of Rome. The | singing is beautiful, but confined to the | priests, deacons and trained choristers: | the people listen passively. The ever- repeated response, the Kyrie Eleison | or Loid, have mercy upon, us is exceed- | ingly touching and will long resound in | my memory. sesame AIA Locks and Keys, One of the liveliest examples of the | found in the generally evil and impish behavior of locks and keys. We do not, to be sure, in this country subject ourselves to such a tyranny of keys as | do our transatlantic neighbors. with us the indispensable accompani- have the tiny padlock on our silver sugarbowls, as is the case with a cer- tain thrifty baroness with thirty ser- vants under her control. We do, how- ever have keys for ceriain purposes ; that is to say, we have them unless they are lost. Keys are usually lost. There is about the very shape and ma- | terial of keys a peculiar elusiveness | and slippery faculty of hiding in un- | heard of places. The folds of gowns, the lining of muffs, bags and pockets, | in the floor and chinks of any and every of the slippery gnome called key. That or upolstered chair is particularly dear to the heart of a key as a place of con- cealment,and many are the keys, big and little, which have found their Nirvana in these useful depths, For'the true and holy delight of a key is undoubtedly to be able to lose itself totally and hope- Jessly, and yet all the while to lie perdu so near the outer world that it can listen with fendish joy to the agomazed search for itself, and shake its shoulders with glee at the vanity of the quest. It was the wife of the keeper of an | orthodox boarding house in the West who was kneeling at morning famuly prayers with her head devotedly bent { upon a lounge, and at the instant that her worthy husband’s ‘‘amen' was pronounced sprang to her feet, exclaim- ing vivaciously. “There, Mr. Brown, theve is the key of the cellor door. I knew I lost it somewhere about this lounge.” Fancy the genuine disappointment of that xey, which had been lying chuckling while the family sought it mn vain, at being thus ignominiously brought to light, and that, too, by the hand of the housewife, who should have been thinking of other thingsthan searching the crack of a lounge. Keys, however, although usually, are not always lost, Sometimes one really does keep a key and then myriad Indeed are the bewildering combinations of vexation which can be produced by a lock and key which are really giving their minds to it. A favorite trick is for one's ordinary, every day lock, the lock of a desk or drawer in constant use, to suddenly become intractable. One can put in the key, but the lock refuses to turn; then the key refuses to come out of the kevhole; one twists and turns and wrenches ; one tries a drop of oil, a soupcon of profanity, all to no pur- pose ; suddenly with an alarming soap the key consents to turn in the lock; nay, more, it will keep on turning in- definitely round and round without the effect as far as unlocking Is concerned. One turns it furiously, one pushes it in slowly, one tries to draw it out with a sudden jerk, ome breaks one's nails picking at it. At last the key comes out with a suddenness which sends one violently backwards. Then thefamily is summoned. “Do come and see if you can doany- thing with this abominable lock. It must surely be broken.” The doubting member of the family smiles incredulously and takes the key. It fits into the key-hole and the lock gives way without a murmur. “I thought there was nothing the matter with the key,’’ says the doubt ing member, throwing an unpleasing emphasis on “key.” Itis quite useless to insist that it did refuse to turn; no- body believes it, and the key quivers with delight and the lock thrills with a joy known only to the successful prac- tical joker, Again, who does not know the awful | vagaries of which a trunk lock is capa- able? The refusal wo catch when the | trunk is packed ; the refusal to tum when one stands by impatiently wait- ing the inspection of the government official, Once more, who ever locked with es- | pecially caution a door or box against i some intruder that he was not himself | invarably was without the key ? Latch-keys and locks, too, are sub- | The key-hole of a latch-key has been known late at night to slip up and down | the door with a rapidity calculated to | gain admittance to his home, {of the iniquity which is capable of | dwelling in locks and keys only prove | what may have been before stated, that an impish and tricky soul dwells in each lock and key, and these two are never { in evil combination, they are able suc. cessfully to vex a frail human being so { that “every part of him quivers, ol A i Lucifer Matches. According to a German paper, the 1833, within the walls of a State prison. Eammerer was a native of Ludwigs- burg, and | months’ imprisonment at Hohenaspeg, he was fortunate enough to attract the notice and gain the favor of on old officer in charge of the prison, who jowed him to arrange a small laboratory in his cell. Kammerer bad been en. gaged in researches with a view of im- proving the steeping system, accord- ing to which splinters of wood. with sulphur at the ends, were dipped into a chemical fluid in order to produce a flame. If the fluid was fresh the re- sult was satisfactory, but as it lost its virtue after a time, there was no gen- eral disposition to continue the old-fash- ioned system of using flint and steel After many failures, Kammerer began to experiment with phosphorus, and had almost completed his term of im- prisonment when he discovered the right mixture and kindled a malch by rubbing it against the walls of his cell. On coming out of prison he commenced the manufacture of matches, tunately, the absence of a patent law prevented his rights from being secured, | analyzing the composition, imitations | speedily made their appearance. In 1835 the German States prolubited the | use of these matches, considering them | dangerous. When they were made in | England and sent to the Continent | these regulations were withdrawn, but | too late to be of any benefit to the in- | ventor, who died in the poor house of | hus native town in 1857, c— —— The American's Endurance of Cold, 3 Lieutenant Greely is of the opinion that his men, if well provisioned, conld not have continued to live at Fort Conger more than five years, The constitution of the average American is not capable of prolonged continuous adjustment to more than zero cold, and such acclimatization could only come about after a series of generations where the law of survival of the fittest should operate, and in correspondence with a radical change in organization, in which nutritive and muscular development should predominate over cerebral devel- opment: In other words, nature bas shown us in the meatally dwarfed but physically hardy Esquimaux, the types of organization best fitted for iving in those septentrional latitudes, It, however, is no less a matter of fact that the inhabitants of meridional climes admirably adapt themselves temporarily to the most extreme cold. In the retreat from Moscow, in 1812, the Italian regiments stood the oid from whom the facts are taken, re- marks that the aptitude to resist in. clement temperature is soquired and lost in turn; that people nurtured in tem. perate or cold climates, who go to the torrid zone to live, are much less sensi. tive to the cold for a time after their return to their pative country, though this lessened susceptibilty disappears after a year or two, ee —— Poassut Costumes fu Kugland, . To enlighten the mind of a question have recently sent letters to the editor. One writer says: ** When I was a boy the peasant costumes in Durham and Northumberland were quite distinct from the modern dress, The ekirt was one garment, the jacket another, gen- erally made of a different material. 80 in Lancashire, the linsey-woolsey petticoat and the bel-gown of cotton print were never joined together, but were distinct garments, The custom of wearing a shaw! or handkerchief on | the head 1nstead of a eap or bonnet was | also usual.” | From a second contributor we quote: | “The smock-frock is the only distinc. | tive dress of the male peassnt, so far as | 1 know; ana where it survives, its color | and the pattern of its worked threads { show the neighborhood it belongs to. | Some neighborhocds wear green. some purple, some grey, some white. But | within my own area of observation, at | least, the smock-frock is disappearing. | In diaries of fifteen or twenty years | ago I find it often mentioned that at {such a village or in such a country | ehurch most of the men wore smocks | and now in those very villges, 1 seldom | see a smock. “So much for the men. As to the | woman, things are not quite so bad. I know of my own knowledge at least nine different and widely distant aeigh- | borhoods in England, and at least twe in Wales, where the peasant womer | and girls wear a distinct dress; and | wear the same dress whether they be young or old. It is true that in every | instance the costume is a working drest | and is more or less laid aside on Sun | days. Still, it is ajdistinctive dress ; and | in five out of the eleven cases it dis | tinguishes the women of a given village { from all other women. In the other | six, the local dress has a wider area of | usage. Even in London there are | women who dally wear a distinctive peasent dress, and women whose drest | bewrays them that they come from | Blankshire. And mn the country, 1 | have had it said to me over a hedge. | “Do ye want any Blackacre women?’ And I knew by her dress that the | speaker was herself a Blackacre wom- |an, It is superfluous to add that in every case the local dress is far more | picturesque and serviceable than that which may be prescribed by fashion. | As to one garment, indeed-—namely, the hood bonnet of buff or white or lilac cotton— it is still, thank goodness, | the characteristic wear of country women all over England. I have never seen 1t abroad, except in the Rhineland, near Strasbourg. English peasant girls, foolish and imntative as they often are, have perhaps had the wit to see that this is the most charming head dress in existence,” A third correspondent remarks: “The question asked brought to mind at once the recollection of a well-known char- acter of an old home in Ilminster, somerset, Molly Bonning wore a gown of blue print, plain skirt, with elbow sleeves : a low body, with kerchief tuck. ed inside; a round eared cap, without any border, and a black silk lat, with a low crown and large round flat bor- der, which was pinned on her head. A red cloak and long staff completed her | attire. When sent, as a girl, by my | mother, with some gift, I found the old | woman seated in her high-backed chair | and receiving her visitors with a stately | courtesy that is scarcely met with ex- | cept among the highest rank. In her | younger days she had wedded at Dilling- ton Park, close to Ilminster, in the time of Lord North, who married Miss Speke, She was, unfortunately, per- suaded in her later years to give up her picturesque costume and adopt the ordinary unmeaning dress of the poor- er classes.” EE — of —— Suppression of Freedom. Russia seems to be making long strides towards the suppression of all freedom. No one can complain great. ly that in a country such as that, with the sad experience of the effects of Ni- hilistic teachings through which it has passed, books and pamphlets teaching socialist theories should be suppressed ; but when the Government goes so far waler ; when it closes the University of Kieff, and arrests 200 of its students, the pol-
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers