"MERELY ANNOYED"!

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strangled, a violent cough shook me, and out came the steel tip of the instrument and fell on the floor. It had been lodged in the larynx and had remained there. Both doctors agreed that the muscles had been so strengthened by long use in acting that they were able to hold the piece of steel, which, if it had entered the windpipe, would have caused my death." I asked Irving whether he had felt alarmed during all the time of this perilous experience. "No," he answered, "not in the least; I was merely annoyed."

AMERICAN FESTIVALS.

Many festivals in honor of Irving occurred in American cities, in the course of his several tours of this country. One of the most significant and interesting of them happened, April 6, 1885, at Delmonico's (the Twenty-sixth Street house), on which occasion William Maxwell Evarts presided and the principal speaker was Henry Ward Beecher. Irving was about to sail for England, and it was not then believed that he would revisit America. I had the honor

of participating in the tribute to him then offered, and I delivered the poem which follows:

Now fades across the glimmering deep, now darkly drifts away,

The royal monarch of our hearts, the glory of our day; The pale stars shine, the night wind sighs, the sad sea makes its moan,

And we, bereft, are standing here, in silence and alone.

Gone every shape of power and dread his magic touch could paint;

Gone haunted Aram's spectral face, and England's martyred saint;

Gone Mathias, of the frenzied soul, and Louis' sceptred

guile,

The gentle head of poor Lesurques, and Hamlet's holy

smile.

No more in gray Messina's halls shall love and revel

twine;

No more on Portia's midnight bowers the moon of summer shine ;

No golden barge on Hampton's stream salute the per

fumed shore;

No ghost on Denmark's rampart cliff affright our pulses more!

POETIC INCENSE

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The morning star of art, he rose across the eastern sea To wake the slumbering harp and set the frozen fountain free;

Now, wrapt in glory's mist, he seeks his orient skies

again;

And tender thoughts in sorrowing hearts are all that must remain. .

Slow fade, across a drearier sea, beneath a darker sky, The dreams that cheer, the lights that lure, the baffled hopes that die ;

Youth's trust, love's bliss, ambition's pride-the white wings all are flown,

And Memory walks the lonely shore, indifferent and alone.

Yet sometimes o'er that shadowy deep, by wandering breezes blown,

Float odors from Hesperian isles, with music's organ

tone,

And something stirs within the breast, a secret, name

less thrill,

To say, though worn and sear and sad, our hearts are human still: