THOMAS MORRIS.'"
"Very good, my boy," said Mr. Gay to Tom, whose scarlet face had betrayed the authorship of this profound essay long before his name was read; "adhere to that moral, and, mark my words, you will—never be President of the United States."
Tom's embarrassment checked the smiles of the audience, and Hugh took up another paper. "Ah!" he said with enthusiasm, "this seems to be a poem in earnest, breathing the real afflatus, written with the pen of Melpomene! With your permission, ladies and gentlemen, I will refresh myself with a glass of water before I begin:—
'A JUNE LYRIC.
After all, not to labor only,—
But to breathe in the essence of vivified sheen,
The fragrance of rarefied thoughts as they surge to and
fro,
Heaving the unknown depths up to mountains of night.
Crystalline, luminous, rare, opalescently rare,—
This,—this is June!
GRAHAM MARR'"
"Ah, blank verse," said Sibyl to her companion, with admiring interest. He bowed and stroked his moustache with a dreamy air.
"Very blank, I should say," murmured Bessie to Mr. Gay.
"It seems to me as though I had heard the beginning of it before, somewhere," answered the Boston bachelor in the same tone.
"The next contribution consists of a series of illustrations," said Hugh, unfastening some loose sheets of drawing paper; "the following introduction is appended:—