For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masquerade,

And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest make thyself another.

A maiden’s heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upward,

And it needed that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety;

He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure;

Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork.

Charles Stuart Calverley.

PEACE: A Study

HE stood, a worn-out City clerk—

Who’d toil’d, and seen no holiday,