In royal crypt he bade the twain
Be laid; and there a vine,
O'er which the murderous scythe was vain,
Sprang up the graves to twine,
Defying death with its green breath:
True plant of seed divine!
Mary B. Dodge.
MISS MISANTHROPE.
By Justin McCarthy.
CHAPTER I.
MISS MISANTHROPE.
The little town of Dukes-Keeton, in one of the more northern of the midland counties, had in its older days two great claims to consideration. One was a park, the other a sweetmeat. The noble family whose name had passed through many generations of residence at the place had always left their great park so freely open to every one, that it came to be like the common property of the public, and the town had grown into fame by the manufacture of the sweetmeat which bore its name almost everywhere in the track of the meteor-flag of England. But as time went on other places took to manufacturing the sweetmeat so much better, and selling it so much more successfully than "Keeton," as the town was commonly called, could do, that "Keeton" itself had long since retired from the business, and was content to import the delicacy which still bore its own name in consignments of canisters from Manchester or London. During many years the heir of the noble family had deserted the park, and absolutely never came near it or near England even, and everything that gave the town a distinct reason for existence seemed to be passing rapidly into tradition. It had lain out of the track of the railway system for a long time, and when the railway system at length enclosed it in its arms, the attention seemed to have come too late. All the heat of life appeared to have chilled out of Dukes-Keeton in the mean time, and it lay now between two railways almost as inanimate and hopeless a lump as the child to whom the Erl-king's touch is fatal in his father's arms.
The park, with its huge palace-like, barrack-like house, not a castle, and too great to be called merely a hall, lies almost immediately outside the town. From streets and shops the visitor passes straightway through the gates of the great enclosure. Every stranger who has seen the house is taken at once to see another object of interest.