superior condition. Yet here there is no standing army, no police, no spies, no inquisition.. Let the tourists who rove Europe in search of something rare witness a holiday at Ponte Tresa, where, notwithstanding the vivacity of the Italians, they will find that they know how to enjoy themselves quietly without requiring the help of police sergeants or gendarmes.' I ordered the eel to be fried for dinner. The attentive waiter, in placing the fish upon the table, 'hoped the eel was done properly,' as he had never seen one dressed before; and a better or sweeter eel I never tasted-fried with his skin on. Here, then, I got a lesson, and I am sure that henceforth cooks and kitchen maids will bless the day on which I learned it, for if their masters and mistresses will take my advice, they will for the future save their servants the trouble of skinning the eels (the painful but proverbial usage of being skinned alive), and order them, after being nicely washed and prepared, to be fried with their skins on, for thus they are infinitely better." BRIDGET, THE IRISH ORANGE GIRL. Few of our city readers are unfamiliar with the honest face of Bridget, the Irish orange girl, who is the subject of our accompanying sketch. Always neatly and cleanly dressed, with her basket of fruit on her arm, and a pleasant, cheerful smile on her face, she makes her daily rounds in winter, visiting the different public offices and countingrooms, always welcome to clerks perplexed with figures, and traders weary with speculations. The juvenile portion of the population are familiar with her face. Never importunate or obtrusive, she obtains customers without solicitation. In the summer season her calling is not a very onerous one. or sitting in the shade of the lime-trees, on the She may then be seen in the malls, Common-generally knitting when at rest, for she is a great economizer of time. In winter, of course, her life is harder, for she is out in all weathers-her trade being rather the more profitable when people are obliged to keep within doors. How many weary miles are plodded by her patient feet! We know nothing of her histions for their daily bread, and honestly suptory. Very likely she is not alone in the world, ported by her labor. If the secret history of but has helpless relatives dependent on her exermany of these peripatetic traders were written, ample of heroic devotion and self-sacrifice. The we should find among them many a garb, unnoticed, unchronicled. It is a pleasant bright extrue heroines of life are often found in humble task to rescue even one from oblivion, and preserve her features in a record of the times. belong to women. As a general thing, the business of selling fruit in the streets and offices seems legitimately to [ORIGINAL] THE QUEEN OF ALL HEARTS. www BY J. HOWARD WERT. Let dire Bellona's raging wrath, And Atreus' hidden ire, A moment cease to sway my verse, That I may tune my lyre, To sing of themes more grateful; A health to her, the beautiful; A health to thee, Cecilia! And mayst thou ever be As happy as the snow-kissed waves Upon a palm-clad lea, That leap upon the pearly shore, And dance upon the sea, And bound from out their choral caves, To kiss the cocoa-tree. [ORIGINAL.] THE BOTTOMLESS POND. BY GIACOMO 8. CAMPANA. AMONG all the vague, mysterious terrors of childhood, the most appalling to me was the Bottomless pond. Even to this day, the recollection of its still and gloomy waters, never ruffled by the breath of heaven, has a chilling effect upon me. Though less than a mile from the village in which I lived, this pool was situated in one of the wildest and loneliest portions of our secluded valley. As I have already said, no wind ever blew upon its surface, nor did the sun ever shine upon it, or a drop of rain ever fall into it, for it lay in the gloomiest recess of a sombre cavern, and more than half of its extent was shrouded in perpetual darkness. It was very deep, so deep that no one had ever been able to sound it, and we children, and all the negroes, and a good many grown white people, too, believed most religiously that it had no bottom. There was in the centre of it an❘ eddy, a perpetual whirlpool, and it was another article of our creed that all objects thrown into the pond were sooner or later drawn into this vortex and sucked down to the fathomless abyss, never more to be seen in this upper world. I speak now of the days of my childhood. At a later period, events occurred which gave a new interest to the spot and all its adjuncts, and it is of these events that I propose to give such a history as my memory will supply. Though the sombre subterranean pool had certainly a weird and melancholy aspect, the cave upon the whole, was by no means a repulsive-looking place. It was not large, but up to the margin of the pond it was dry, and the floor tolerably smooth. That far, too, it was, on clear days, tolerably well lighted, there being just obscurity enough to give effect to the strange-looking, fantastic figures which overhung the lakelet, and lined a portion of its shores. When the further shore of the pond was lit up by torches, hundreds of grotesque shapes were brought to view, some of them appearing to rise out of the water and dance in the flickering rays which streamed from the blazing lightwood. The place was usually known as the Red Rock Cave from the color of its roof, near the entrance. In my childish imagination, this natural curiosity was always in some way associated with the wonders of the Arabian Nights, and I was firmly of the opinion that it ought somehow or other, to have a place in the pages of that interesting and veracious history. But the cave did not absorb the whole of my juvenile faculty of admiration. It had a rival in my imagination, and a powerful one, and of the two I never could quite determine which was the more unique and in every way admirable. This natural curiosity number two was a young lady, Miss Linda Walden by name. I will not attempt to describe her. It is enough to say that I thought her very nearly if not quite as wonderful as the Bottomless Poud, and that all the young gentlemen of our valley were of the same opinion, only more so. Diminutive and insignificant as I was, I can well remember that I was ridiculous enough to feel absolutely jealous of Charley Hyde, when he came home from the University of Virginia, and everybody said what a fine young fellow he had grown to be, and what a handsome couple he and Linda Walden would make, for they were sure to be married before long. He was going to Alabama, it was said, and would carry off Linda with him as a matter of course. Carry off Linda? The idea was preposterous. They might as well talk of his carrying off the cave, and the pond with it. The cave was a natural curiosity, the wonder of the valley, and so was Linda. How dare Charley Hyde interfere with either of them? But Linda was not carried off, just then at least. Charley returned to Charlottesville, and everything went on as before, and after a while THE BOTTOMLESS POND. he came back for good; but even then he didn't The next spring one of Charley Hyde's col- Charley himself did not seem to be afraid of The fact is that Linda was more disquieted than Charley. There was a strange report, about this time, about a very beautiful young lady, whom nobody knew, who had been seen by various persons in various places, and it was remarked that whenever she was seen, Charles Hyde was sure not to be far off. At last these rumors came to Linda's ears, and she spoke to Charley about them. He laughed at her for putting any faith in such ridiculous stories, and declared that he did not believe this mysterious lady had any existence except in the imaginations of those who talked about her. He would say the same thing when his young companions joked with him on the subject. Many people, however, thought that Charley knew more about the lady than he wished to acknowledge, for there could be no doubt of the fact of her existence, and of her having been seen in the neighborhood of the Red Rock Cave, when Charley had been seen about the same hour of the same day, coming from the same quarter. On one occasion, a young man attempted to follow her, so as to find out who she was and where she came from; but he only succeeded in tracing her to a horse which she had hitched among the pines. She leaped upon his back, and in a few minutes was out of sight. That the strange lady was not a myth, as many seemed to think, I could testify, of my own knowledge. I saw her, one day, not far from the cave, | riding a black horse. Will Connor was with me. We knew her by the black ostrich plume she always wore in her hat. We only saw her at a distance, riding very fast, but we could see that she was very pretty, almost as pretty as Linda Walden. Will thought, however, that she didn't ride as and not much used to it. She galloped away, well as Linda. He said she must be a city lady, though, very fast, and soon left us far behind. place between Linda Walden and Ernest Overton, you mean. know that I love you, more than I do my own "There is this excuse, Miss Walden. You life, and you cannot wonder that I should find it obstinately persist in throwing yourself away difficult to conceal my chagrin at seeing you so upon one who is wholly unworthy of you. And yet, if I speak out and tell the whole truth, you will attribute my conduct to improper motives, and refuse to believe me.' " you ask me to believe Charles Hyde to be a false "You ask a great deal, Mr. Overton, when and perjured villain, and you cannot expect me to distrust him as long as hints and innuendoes to shake my confidence. I have nothing but have heard many such of late; but nothing but the clearest and most substantial proof will ever induce me to believe that there is any real foundation for what I have heard from you or others." "I am ready and anxious, for your own sake, proof' possible of Charles Hyde's falsehood; to give you the clearest and most substantial but I fear you will be unwilling to adopt the only means by which this conclusive evidence can be elicited." "I am willing to adopt any lawful and honor- Rock Cave with me, to-morrow evening at about feelings in poor Linda's bosom before she yielded even to her own heart. And then the expedition itself was of course distasteful and disagreeable in the extreme. But there was too much at stake for her to hesitate long about minor considerations, and she at length signified her intention to go. There was a poor woman, a Mrs. Smith, who lived, with her two sons, near the cave. She had heard that Mrs. Smith was sick, and had intended to pay her a visit. She would do so the next day, and Overton would call and accompany her back to the village, and they would so manage it as to reach the cave at the appointed time. The shadows of the mountains were already giving place to the deeper gloom of twilight, when Linda and her companion reached the mouth of the cave, and stationed themselves be- | hind a screen of rocks and shrubbery, where they would have been invisible even in broad daylight, though no one could enter or leave the cavern without passing in sight of them, and at a very short distance. Linda seated herself upon a rock, and her companion stood beside her. In this position they remained, silent and motionless, while the twilight deepened into darkness, and darkness gave place to the light of the moon, which was near its full maturity. It rose very soon after the sunlight departed, filling the valley with its mellow radiance, and tipping with silver a thousand rocky crags and gently-swaying treetops. "Let us go home, Mr. Overton," said Linda, at length. We will surely see no one here tonight." 'Stay but ten minutes longer, and— Hist, I hear a footstep now." Overton stepped stealthily forward into the bushes, manifesting the greatest eagerness to see who was coming. The noise drew nearer, and soon the figure of a man was visible, within a few yards of the spot. Linda knew him at a glance-it was Charles Hyde. He stopped in full view of her, looked round inquisitively, took his watch from his pocket and turned it up to the moonlight, and then took out his pockethandkerchief and hung it upon a bush; then, after another glance around him, he disappeared within the cave. Poor Linda sat with bated breath and eyes intently fixed upon a narrow strip of moonlight which her lover had just crossed. In a few minutes, the shadow of a second figure was thrown upon it. She saw at a glance that it was the figure of a woman, and even by that imperfect light it was easy to perceive that the face was an unusually handsome one. It was overshadowed | by the black ostrich feather which she had always been told was the unvarying headdress of her mysterious rival. The new comer looked around as Hyde had done, saw the handkerchief, snatched it from the bush, pressed it passionately to a pair of full, red lips and darted into the cave. The agonized watcher bowed her head upon her hands, and her whole frame shook as if she had a fit of ague. While she was still in this posture, there issued from the cave a piercing cry, a shriek as of some one in mortal agony, screaming, "Murder, murder !" The word was half pronounced a third time, but the voice seemed to have been abruptly stifled, and while its echoes were still vibrating along the vaulted roof of the cavern, there came the noise of some heavy body plunged into the Bottomless Pond-and all was still. Linda's face still bowed upon her hands, and her hands upon her lap, her whole frame motionless, and almost lifeless. The sound of a hurried step first broke the death-like silence, and roused the wretched girl from the torpor into which she had fallen. Her very soul had been stunned for a time, but she recovered soon enough to see Charles Hyde coming out of the cave, alone, and evidently much agitated. He looked back into the cave, listened a moment, and then fled rapidly from the spot. "Will you go home?" said Ernest Overton, in a whisper. "O, yes, at once," murmured Linda. "I hardly know what to do," replied Overton. "I don't like to leave the place without ascertaining the cause of that fearful outcry. The woman who went into the cave has not come out again. She must be there still, dead or alive, and an inquiry ought at once to be-" At this moment a boisterous laugh was heard, at some distance, followed by the sound of voices, which seemed to be drawing nearer. A loud halloo from Overton soon brought to the spot a party of three young men. He told them what he and his companion, who were returning from Mrs. Smith's, had seen and heard, and that he and Miss Walden were both so near the mouth of the cave that the lady could not possibly have come out again without their knowledge. In faint voice Linda corroborated his statements. She told them she was positively certain that the lady was still in the cavern, and begged them to search for her without a moment's delay. Overton suggested that they should get a billet of lightwood, and let two of them explore the place, while the third watched at the entrance. With this advice he left them, to escort the half-fainting girl to her father's house. |