The other day there was a little girl, scarce 16 years of age, who started away for the first time from home and mother. She was brave and gay in a new suit, new boots and a new hat with a feather the color of a linnet's wing. She carried a bunch of the loveliest sweet peas at her dainty waist and on her face there played a sunburst of smiles. She had not been five hours in the place appointed her to visit when her mother received the following letter:

"My Precious Mamma: I am writing this in my room before I am called to breakfast. None but God can know what I suffer! Not until I am in your arms once more will you know what I am going through! If you love me let me come home. Don't tell anyone, but let me come if you love me! Don't send the shoes—I shall not need them—but let me come home! Think what I must suffer so far away from you. I shall sell my ring and buy a ticket if you do not telegraph that I may come!"

And as I read the pathetic letter between my smiles and tears I thought to myself, is there anything on earth so hard to bear as homesickness—first homesickness, when the heart is new to sorrow? I would rather have any disease the laboratory of evil keeps in stock than one pang of what that little girl was suffering when she penciled that letter.

Around in a picture store on one of the avenues I chanced upon a painting that attracted not only myself, but a crowd of people from the street. It represented a lion's cage barred with heavy barriers of iron. On the floor of the den is the figure of a beautiful girl stretched in a deathlike swoon. There are orange blossoms in her hair, and the flush on her cheek has had no time to fade. Crouched by her side, one great paw on her breast and another at her waist, is a wrathful lion whose evident intention is to tear his victim into bonbon fragments. I wish somebody would explain that picture to me. I am tired conjecturing how the bride strayed into the lion's quarters, and where her husband was that he shouldn't be taking better care of her, and why there was nobody on hand to help at this critical moment portrayed on the canvas. Young married women are not supposed to be visiting zoological gardens when they ought to be changing their white satin favors for their traveling gowns. The picture seems a puzzler to all who watch it, and as the crowd is great the confusion of wits is catching.

THE TRYST.

Where a woodland path, like a silver line,
Winds by a woodland river,
And half in shadow, and half in shine,
The alders lean and shiver,
Where a forest bird has built him a nest
Low in the springing grasses,
And all the day long, with her wings at rest,
His mate the slow time passes;
Where a flood of gold through the forest dim
Tells when the noon is strongest,
And a purple fringe on the forest's rim
Proclaims when the shades are longest;
Where the dawn is only known from the night
By the birds that sing their sweetest,
And the twilight hush from the morning light
By the peace that is then completest;
Where only the flood of silvery haze
Shall tell that the moon is risen,
When down from the sky, like a meteor blaze,
Shall flutter her snow-white ribbon,—
I will meet you there, my lady love sweet,
When the weary world is sleeping,
And the frets of the day, that tireless beat,
Are hushed in the night's close keeping;
Not missing the world—by the world unmissed—
We two shall wander together,
And whether we chided, or whether we kissed,
There'll be none to forget or remember;
And when at the last asleep you shall fall,
By the shore of the musical river,
Of the crimson leaves I will weave you a pall,
And kiss you good-by, love, forever.
But the stars up above, and the waters below,
Shall sing of us, over and over;
Of the tryst that we kept in the years long ago,
In the woods by the beautiful river.