Yet such is habit—howsoe’er we try—
The other day I fell to wondering why
In Yankee taverns they serve cheese with pie.
Henry W. Austin.
AN ACCIDENTAL ROMANCE.
By Matthew White, Jr.
His friends called Radnor Hunt a cynic. He laughed lightly when accused of being cold and unresponsive, and declared that he must have imbibed the trait unconsciously from the nature of his work, for winter landscapes were his specialty. But now and then when he was alone, in the little studio over the stable in Fifty Fifth Street, where he worked by day and slept by night, he would look at himself in the mirror over his dressing case and—laugh again, such a hard, bitter laugh, that sometimes he shuddered on hearing it, and glanced fearfully around him as if dreading to see the author of the sound.
“I, a cynic, a woman hater!” he would mutter, putting his hand above his eyebrows and leaning forward to peer more closely at himself in the glass. “Bah! how blind the world is! Who would believe from this what rages here?”
And with a quick motion he would sweep his hand across his face and place it for an instant over his heart. Then, as if in utter disgust with himself, he would hastily turn out the light, fling himself on his bed, just as he was, and sleep thus till morning.