Upsot, dead beat—but of little Gabe
Nor hide nor hair was found.

And here all hope soured on me,
Of my fellow-critter's aid—

I jest flopped down on my marrow-bones,
Crotch-deep in the snow, and prayed.

By this, the torches was played out,
And me and Isrul Parr

Went off for some wood to a sheepfold
That he said was somewhar thar,

We found it at last, and a little shed Where they shut up the lambs at night. We looked in and seen them huddled thar, So warm and sleepy and white;

And THAR Sot Little Breeches, and chirped, As peart as ever you see,

"I want a chaw of terbacker,

And that's what's the matter of me."

How did he git thar? Angels.

He could never have walked in that storm, They jest scooped down and toted him.

To whar it was safe and warm. And I think that saving a little child, And bringing him to his own,

Is a derned sight better business

Than loafing around The Throne.

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM.

BY W. D. HOWELLS.

I can

"OUR acquaintance has the charm of novelty every time we meet," she said once, when pressed hard by Mrs. Ellison. "We are growing better strangers, Mr. Arbuton and I. By and by, some morning, we shall not know each other by sight. barely recognize him now, though I thought I knew him pretty well once. I want you to understand that I speak as an unbiased spectator, Fanny."

"Oh, Kitty! how can you accuse me of trying to pry into your affairs?" cries injured Mrs. Ellison, and settles herself in a more comfortable posture for listening.

"I don't accuse you of anything. I'm sure you've a right to know everything about me. Only, I want you really to

know."

"Yes, dear," says the matron, with hypocritical meekness. "Well," resumes Kitty, "there are things that puzzle me more and more about him-things that used to amuse me at first, because I didn't actually believe that they could be, and that I felt like defying afterwards. But now I can't bear up against them. They frighten me, and seem to deny me the right to be what I believe I am."

"I don't understand you, Kitty."

"Why, you've seen how it is with us at home, and how Uncle Jack has brought us up. We never had a rule for anything, except to do what was right, and to be careful of the rights of others."

"Well! "

"Well, Mr. Arbuton seems to have lived in a world where everything is regulated by some rigid law that it would be death to break. Then, you know, at home we are always talking abcut people, and discussing them; but we always talk of each person for what he is in himself, and I always thought a person could refine himself if he tried, and was sincere, and not conceited. But he seems to judge people according to their origin and locality and calling, and to believe that all refinement must come from just such training and circumstances as his own. Without

exactly saying so, he puts everything else quite out of the question. He doesn't appear to dream that there can be any different opinion. He tramples upon all that I have been taught to believe; and though I cling the closer to my idols, I can't help, now and then, trying myself by his criterions; and then I find myself wanting in every civilized trait, and my whole life coarse and poor, and all my associations hopelessly degraded. I think his ideas are hard and narrow, and I believe that even my little experience would prove them false; but then, they are his, and I can't reconcile them with what I see is good in him."

Kitty spoke with half-averted face where she sat beside one of the front windows, looking absently out on the distant line of violet hills beyond Charlesbourg, and now and then lifting her glove from her lap and letting it drop again.

"Kitty," said Mrs. Ellison in reply to her difficulties, "you oughtn't to sit against a light like that. It makes your profile quite black to any one back in the room."

"Oh well, Fanny, I'm not black in reality."

"Yes, but a young lady ought always to think how she is looking. Suppose some one was to come in."

"Dick's the only one likely to come in just now, and he wouldn't mind it. But if you like it better, I'll come and sit by you," said Kitty, and took her place beside the sofa.

Her hat was in her hand, her sacque on her arm; the fatigue of a recent walk gave her a soft pallor, and languor of face and attitude. Mrs. Ellison admired her pretty looks, with a generous regret that they should be wasted on herself, and then asked, "Where were you this afternoon?"

"Oh, we went to the Hotel Dieu, for one thing, and afterwards we looked into the courtyard of the convent; and there another of his pleasant little traits came out a way he has of always putting you in the wrong, even when it's a matter of no consequence any way, and there needn't be any right or wrong about it. I remembered the place because Mrs. March, you know, showed us a rose that one of the nuns in the hospital gave her, and I tried to tell Mr. Arbuton about it, and he graciously took it as if poor Mrs. March had made an advance towards his acquaintance. I do wish you could see what a lovely place that courtyard is, Fanny. It's so strange that such a thing should be right there, in the heart of this crowded city; but there it was

with its peasant cottage on one side, and its long low barns on the other, and those wide-horned Canadian cows munching at the racks of hay outside, and pigeons and chickens all about among their feet"

"Yes, yes; never mind all that, Kitty. You know I hate Go on about Mr. Arbuton," said Mrs. Ellison, who did not mean a sarcasm.

nature.

"It looked like a farmyard in a picture, far out in the country

THE ARTIST.

somewhere," resumed Kitty;" and Mr. Arbuton did it the honor to say it was just like Normandy."

"Kitty!"

"He did, indeed, Fanny; and the cows didn't go down on their knees out of gratitude either. Well, off on the right were the hospital buildings climbing up, you know, with their stone walls and steep roofs, and windows dropped about over them, like our convent here; and there was an artist there, sketching it all; he had such a brown, pleasant face, with a little black mustache and imperial, and such gay black eyes, that

nobody could help falling in love with him; and he was talking in such a free-and-easy way with the lazy workmen and women overlooking him. He jotted down a little image of the Virgin in a niche on the wall, and one of the people called out-Mr. Arbuton was translating- Look there! with one touch he's made our Blessed Lady.' 'Oh,' says the painter, 'that's nothing,

with three touches I can make the entire Holy Family.' And they all laughed; and that little joke, you know, won my heart, -I don't hear many jokes from Mr. Arbuton-and so I said what a blessed life a painter's must be, for it would give you a right to be a vagrant, and you could wander through the world, seeing everything that was lovely and funny, and nobody could blame you; and I wondered everybody who had the chance didn't learn to sketch. Mr. Arbuton took it seriously, and said people had to have something more than the chance to learn before they could sketch, and that most of them were an affliction with their sketch-books, and he had seen too much of the sad effects of drawing from casts. And he put me in the wrong, as he always does. Don't you see? I didn't want to learn drawing; I wanted to be a painter, and go about sketching beautiful old convents, and sit on camp-stools on pleasant afternoons, and joke with people. Of course, he couldn't understand that. But I know the artist could. Oh, Fanny, if it had only been the painter whose arm I took that first day on the boat, instead of Mr. Arbuton! But the worst of it is, he is making a hypocrite. of me, and a cowardly, unnatural girl. I wanted to go nearer and look at the painter's sketch: but I was ashamed to say I'd never seen a real artist's sketch before, and I'm getting to be ashamed, or to seem ashamed, of a great many innocent things. He has a way of not seeming to think it possible that any one he associates with can differ from him. And I do differ from him. I differ from him as much as my whole past life differs from his; I know I'm just the kind of production he disapproves of, and that I'm altogether irregular and unauthorized and unjustifiable; and though it's funny to have him talking to me as if I must have the sympathy of a rich girl with his ideas, it's provoking, too, and it's very bad for me. Up to the present moment, Fanny, if you want to know, that's the principal effect of Mr. Arbuton on I'm being gradually snubbed and scared into treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

me.

Mrs. Ellison did not find all this so very grievous, for she was one of those women who like a snub from the superior sex, if it does not involve a slight to their beauty or their power of pleasing. But she thought it best not to enter into the question, and merely said, "But surely, Kitty, there are a great many things in Mr. Arbuton that you must respect."