Endurance. How mneh the heart inay boar anil yet no break, How much the fleeh may sudor and not die! I quration much if any pain or ache Ol soul or liotly bringe our end more nigh. Death chosen his own time, till that has oomo All evils may be Ixmic. We shrink and shudder at tho surgeon's knite Kncli nerve recoiling irom the cruel steel W hose edge seetns searching for the quivering lile; Vet to our sense the bitter pangs reveal Hint still, although the trotnlding flesh be torn, " This, also, can be borne. We see a sorrow rising in our way, And try to flee Irom tho approaching ill; We seek some small escape, wo weep and pray, But when the blow talis, then onr hearts are still— Not that the painisol itssharpnossshorn, But yet it can be borne. We wind our lile about another life; We hold it closer, dearer than our own Anon it faints and tails in deadly strife, Leaving us stunned, and stricken and alone; But, oh, we do not die with those wo mourn; This, also can be borne. Behold, we live through all things, tamine, thirst, Bereavement, pain, all griei and misery, All woe and sorrow; life infliote its worst On sould nnd body, but we cannot die, Though we be sick and tired and tiaint and worn; Lo, ali things can be lairne. Elizabeth Akert Allen. THE SECRET. I wish I could tell you—l do wish I could! I hate to nave a secret; it burns, like money in my pocket. It's an unnatural tiling, anyway. One wants sympathy; if it's a gloomy secret, somebody to be gloomy with; and if it's a glad one, somebody to be glad with; somebody to talk it over with, 19 make much or little of it with, to conjecture concerning it, its beginning and its end, to dwell upon it and gloat over it; how in the world is one going to epjoy any thing all by one's self! If I'm eating a peach, I want somebody to have part of it, to know how luscious it is; and I wouldn't give a sixpence for a coach and four unless there were somebody by to see me riding. So i say to myself, what's the use of knowing it if you're not to speak or look, or wink, if you're to be no wiser than other people, and let no body see that you are? And as for me, I ant always blushing, and my tongue is tripping, 'and I'm sure to be on the point of betraying the whole thing by something I say, and clapping my hand on my mouth like a silly child. Still, although it's nervous and anx ious work, I can keep a secret if I try. or else when he—l mean she—at least I mean I shouldn't have been trusted with it if I couldn't. Some people are so im portant with a secret, and go about as if they knew enough to hang the rest of the world. But I never am; I only long to tell it; and I do so want to tell you this one. But there—l promised I wouldn't breathe it, and a promise is a promise, you know. I suppose I wouldn't care half so much to tell if it were only a common place affair, if there were no romance about it all. But there is. Some people arc so fond of romance—our Romaine is; and I don't believe that nnything could have pleased her half so much that happened in the regular, expected way. Our Romaine always was so full of fancies and ideals, and when there's anything romantic going, it always falls to her lot. Don't you think she's a beauty? I do; so tall, so beautifully made, so gracious, suclt hair—such sort fragrant hair—such eyes like jewels, ana her skin so like a tea-rose! I don't believe any of those famous beauties that you read about can hold a candle to her—that I don't! I always wondered why she didn't take some one of her lovers, although I knew, too, or thought I did; for she was just as lovely ten years ago, when she came home front school at seventeen—the very day those dreadful soliders came, you recollect — as she is to-day. She had been gone so long—four years—that everything about the place was just as sweet and strange to her as if it were a kingdom ste had just come into; and she was going round, looking at this and exclaiming at that, caressing the creatures which knew her, every one of them, even to the parrots—just rejoicing in every thing; and I, a little six-year-okl wor shiper, was following hpr in adora tion, with the peacock followibg me: when ail at once the lawn was crowded with soldiers, and the yard was full of foragers, and the horses, Romaine's own Gulr.are, and mamma's, were bring led away, and all tRe cows were lowing, and the pigs were squeal* ing, and tlie fowl were cackling, as those wretches took possession; and some were building fires In the yard, and the rest were swarming into the house. And they were in the china closet, ravaging the store-room, were in the bedrooms, in the wardrobes, and a parcel of them bad poor ntamma in a corner, and had torn away her shawl and one was flourishing her cap on the point of his bayonet, nnd Romaine Lad sprung into the midst of them, threaten ing them with a wild fury, when sud denly a voice rang over the uproar, a terrible common-ling voice, somebody strode through the throng, and seizing by the shoulder first one nnd then an other of the men who had cornered mamma and Romaine, flung them on this side and on that, and in one mo ment silence fell, and man by man they slunk away, and presently they were tumbling down the stairs, and march ing out of the hall by files: and the offi cer who had wrought the change— a tall, slender young fellow of whom one could see little but the eyes blazing like wild fire, for the torn and dropping visor of his cap, and for the brown beard cover ing bis brown fare, and the smears of smokennd powder—put mamma's shawl about Iter shoulders, bowed low to Romaine, and took me in his arms a mo ment and looked at me, and set me down again, and was passing out, when Ro maine ran forward and caught his hand, ana began to pour out a torrent of thanks. He turned and smiled. "I de serve no thanks." he said. And then, half hesitating a single in stant, he raised Romaine's hand, that ■fill forgetfully held his, and pressed it to his lips, nnd was gone. And a curl ous old silver-set diamond on his hand, whose stones made a tiry crest, took my babyeyo, ao that I always remembered it. But as I turned to Romaine— oh, how she looked then! I've never seen anything so beautiful sinoe, she blushed such a rosy red, and her eyea lighted, and her smile grew dazzling, and I've thought, as I remeinhered it, that just so Eve might have looked when she woke and looked upon the world before her. And he turned in the door and saw her, and then he ran down the stairs, and mounted his horse; and pres ently we heard the lastoi them trooping over the hill. They took Gulnare and Ali with them, though, for all of tire voung officer; but the very next day Gulnare came into the yard by herself, and neighed for her onta. Well, now, do you know, I believe that from that very moment Komaino made that young officer her hero and her ideal. She didn't know his name, she didn't know his regiment, she didn't know his rank, she had hardly seen his face; but, for all that, she just resolved— very likely without putting it in so many words to herself—that it she couldn't marry him, she would never marry any body, and she would keep herself and ah her thoughts sacred to this hero. And she did. And that Is what has given her this air of remoteness, almost s she be longed to a superior race, you know. She didn't know whether her hero was alive or dead; there were skirmishes in the neighborhood, and before long a great battle farther off; but there were no means of learning anything, of course, and he nover came back. Somehow I think she felt that if he were alive he would, and I thing she began to look upon him as dead, and herself as—well, don't you laugh—as something like a widow; at any rate, as vowed to him. She was only seven teen then, know. Oh. yes, I know I'm only sixteen myself, and a terrible chatterbox too, Pnul says; but I know that things get fixed in one's mind at seventeen that even seventeen more years won't undo, and Romaine has only ten years more. But Romaine has the poetical temperament. W ell, in a year or two Uncle Paul died, and left mamma a comfortable fortune. As the fkrm really belonged to Paul, when he reached home mamma decided to come to the city for our win ters, and to build this little villa for the summers, and sometimes Paul comes to us, and sometimes we go to him. A year ago nearly I came back from sehooi, Mamma said I was very pretty, but very unformed, and she wondered what my teachers had been about to leave all this trouble for her, and she doubted what sort of a match I would make. I said how could 1 make any with Romaine still hanging on her hands? Whereupon mamma said Romaine was the most pre posterous girl alive; she had just let millions slip through her fin gers, and she didn't believe the Archanglc Michael would make any im gression on her. 80 I began to watch ioniaine, and I found an old brass but ton was one of her treasures, and I learned what sort of people it was in in whom she felt an interest; I ob served the care she took of Gulnare, al though Gulnare was twenty years old; and I discovered, hv accident again, put away with a lock of Mrs. Brown ing's hair and a leaf from Shelley's tomb, that brass button and an old torn visor of a soldier's cap. Again, onoe when we were all recounting old times, and mamma was telling of the fright she had when the soldier was flourish ing her capon a bayonet,and the grati tude she felt to her deliverer, who, she always did feel, came straight from heaven to help her, and, for all she knew, went straight bark again, I happened to be looking at Romaine in the glass, whereupon she turned as red as a reef rose, then all at once grew white as a white rose, was faint, and had to get out of the room. I made up my mind about Romaine. I was sorry, too; for some of Paul's people who used to come mooning round her were mighty nice. There was Col onel Rice -I don't know what he was colonel of, some fancy-fair or sidewalk regiment—l'm sure he'd never smclled powder except when shooting pigeons: but he had the littlest foot and nnnd.ann oceans of money, and a drag. And he did send Romaine such flowers! and it she had but thrown Iter handkerchief, there was nothing he wouldn't have given her—cashmere shawls to walk on, and diamonds hrightenough to read by. And there was an English earl's son just back from buffalo hunting, who wouid have made a countess of her. only give him time enough; and goodness knows how many more of Paul's chums, and Senator Catchpenny, and the regu lation swells. and Cousin Nicholas. And Rumaine disdained them all — every one of Paul's chums of course, and Cousin Nicholas on account of the old family lud that had always kept us apart; he was a hundred-thousandth ousin or so. And when the English man was round she just out-Amcricaned the Americans; and nothing hut the drend of a scene with mamma could get her behind Colonel Rice's horses, al though I should have been glad of the chance; and that is the way it had been with one or another for nine or ten years, mamma said : and Romaine was undoubtedly a fixture. " Idon't know about your having the right to hold yoursell so inaccessible," said mamma to her one day, as the wind ing up of a ta'king-to that sent Romaine out of the room crying. " What is there about you that no man in America, or Europe either, that I can sec, is fit to marry you, I should like to know?" Romnine was dancing that night with Cousin Nicholas at Mrs. Glance's ball. The delicious waltz music made my feet just tingle. Mamma let me go to a ball now and then, to show people what she bad in reserve, Romaine said. But there was Romaine, so listless, so lovely, so indifferent, and Nicholas looking down at bet so eager, so intent, nnd then leiding her out into the moonlight, ns if he would take her away from all these people, and into another world. " It's no use, Cousin Nicholas," I said, when he happened to think of me, half an hour afterward, and If ought me an ice; "she wouldn't marry you if you were made of gold. She wouldn't marry any body but a soldier anyway " (all at once Nicholas' face lighted up), "and him only if he iiad been nearly shot to pieces; and only one soldier out of all of them, I do believe," I made haste to add, for I didn't want to encourage him. " How much must a man do to earn his esse?" said Nicholas, in his slow lanquid way. which always did seem to make him tailor and more broad-should ered than ever. He was a hnndome fel low, with bis fresh color, his white forehead, bis grizzled curling hair in tight rings like that of an old Greek head, his teeth gleaming from under the dark mustache when he smiled. I didn't see how she could help being at- traded to him, being—being in love with him, yon know. " How many scars must he show?" lie drawled. "Does she want you to wdaryour uniform and your bandages nil thetlmcP" And then his eyes flashed, he thrust his fingers through the gray rings, and I snw whore a bullet ha