Three little prayers we have taught her, Oh, you should listen my daughter Kitty ah, how my heart blesses Chary of all she bestows. Kitty loves quietest places, Whispers sweet sermons to chairs, And, with the gravest of faces, Matronly, motherly creature! Nought must come near it to wake it; Kitty is shy of a caller, But when alone in the parlor, Talks to herself like a bird. Kitty is contrary, rather, And, with a comical smile, Mutters, "I won't," to her father Eyeing him slyly the while. Loving one more than the other Is n't the thing, I confess; And I observe that their mother Makes no distinction in dress. Preference must be improper A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH ONE morning last April, as I was passing through Boston Common, which lies pleasantly between my residence and my office, I met a gentleman lounging along the Mall. I am generally preoccupied when walking, and often thrid my way through crowded streets without distinctly observing a single soul. But this man's face forced itself upon me, and a very singular face it was. His eyes were faded, and his hair, which he wore long, was flecked with gray. His hair and eyes, if I may say so, were seventy years old, the rest of him not thirty. The youthfulness of his figure, the elasticity of his gait, and the venerable appearance of his head, were incongruities that drew more than one pair of curious eyes toward him. He was evidently an American, the New England cut of countenance is unmistakable,- evidently a man who had seen something of the world; but strangely old and young. Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had taken up the thread of thought which he had unconsciously broken; yet throughout the day this old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and silvered locks, glided in like a phantom between me and my duties. The next morning I again encountered him on the Mall. He was resting lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which two ragged ship owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond. The vessels lay becalmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners on shore. As the gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came into his faded eyes, then died out, leaving them drearier than before. I wondered if he, too, in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and drifted and never came to port; and if these poor toys were to him types of his own losses. "I would like to know that man's story," I said, half aloud, halting in one of those winding paths which branch off from the quietness of the Pond, and end in the rush and tumult of Tremont Street. “Would you?” replied a voice at my side. I turned and faced Mr. H, a neighbor of mine, who laughed heartily at finding me talking to myself. "Well,” he added reflectingly, "I can tell you this man's story; and if you will match the narrative with anything as curious, I shall be glad to hear it.” "You know him, then?" "Yes, and no. I happened to be in Paris when he was buried." "Buried!" "Well, strictly speaking, not buried; but something quite like it. If you've a spare half-hour," continued my interlocutor, "we'll sit on this bench, and I will tell you all I know of an affair that made some noise in Paris a couple of years ago. The gentleman himself, standing yonder, will serve as a sort of frontispiece to the romance a full-page illustration, as it were." The following pages contain the story that Mr. Hrelated to me. While he was telling it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched owners flew from point to point, as the deceptive breeze promised to waft the barks to either shore; the early robins trilled now and then from the newly fringed elms; and the old young man leaned on the rail in the sunshine, wearily, little dreaming that two gossips were discussing his affairs within twenty yards of him. Three people were sitting in a chamber whose one large window overlooked the Place Vendôme. M. Dorine, with back half turned on the other two occupants of the apartment, was reading the "Moniteur," pausing from time to time to wipe his glasses, and taking scrupulous pains not to glance towards the lounge at his right, on which were seated Mademoiselle Dorine and a young American gentleman, whose handsome face rather frankly told his position in the family. There was not a happier man in Paris that afternoon than Philip Wentworth. Life had become so delicious to him that he shrunk from looking beyond to-day. What could the future add to his full heart? what might it not take away? In certain natures the deepest joy has always something of melancholy in it, a presentiment, a fleeting sadness, a feeling without a name. Wentworth was conscious of this subtile shadow, that night, when he rose from the lounge, and thoughtfully held Julie's hand to his lip for a moment before parting. A careless observer would not have thought him, as he was, the happiest man in Paris. M. Dorine laid down his paper and came forward. "If the house," he said, "is such as M. Martin describes |