“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
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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-