"And have I seen this myself?" repeated our kind informant. "No, indeed; and I suppose if I were to ask the same question of the person who told me the story, he would reply, after the fashion of all ghost-story tellers, that his mother's first husband knew a gentleman whose aunt's next-door neighbor was reported to have seen it often. At any rate, one cannot easily watch for the spectre, because nobody knows the date of its annual appearance. 'And how in the world could a woman and her horse ever become so monstrously large as to form the peak of that great, big mountain?' Oh, that is easily answered. They did not become so. They always were so, for it all happened in the days of the giants."
Caspar Pischl.
Charles O'Conor.—"He went to Ireland and visited the seat of his ancestors at Belanagre, in Connaught, the result of which was that upon his return he changed the orthography of his name. Before that time he and his father had spelled Conor with two n's, but he then dropped one of the n's upon discovering that the family name was anciently spelled in that way. I was once asked if I knew why he had changed the spelling of his name from two n's to one, and I answered that he was descended from the Irish kings, and found, when he visited Ireland, that they spelled the name in that way, which information Mr. Nathaniel Jarvis, the witty Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, who was present, supplemented with the remark that he supposed that the Irish kings had always been so poor that they had never been able to make both n's meet."
Echoes from the Pines.
"——, This, nor gems, nor stores of gold,
Nor purple state, nor culture can bestow,
But God alone, when first His active Hand
Imprints the secret bias of the soul."
The palm, the laurel, and all the fountains of Pindus, Helicon and Parnassus, were sacred to the muses. The deep and dark pine woods of Maine, if not sacred to the muse of the author of "Echoes from the Pines," seem at times to have been a source of inspiration to her. We say "at times," and in a relative sense only, for assuredly, Margaret E. Jordan, the gifted author of the beautiful volume of poems, with the above title, sought her sources of inspiration at a higher fount than this, or any named in the pages of ancient mythology. Of her, indeed, it may be truly said,—
"His active hand
Imprints the secret bias of the soul."