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Meanwhile the old ship, without falter or trip,

Unwitting of love or love making,

Was fast speeding her way through the silvery spray,
And seas from her cutwater shaking.

She at last settled down at gay New Orleans town,
And folded her wings at the pier;

And they who had parted from Erin's warm-hearted,
Were hailed with kind hands and good cheer.

Tom and Will flew about to get Nora's traps out,
Her baubles and every fine notion;

And they tried to repeat all the blarney so sweet,
That had often expressed their devotion,

But Nora had turned where an anxious eye burned
In search of a form and a face,

That with beautiful truth had the dreamland of youth
Blest with visions of innocent grace.

From the taffrail there sprung a lithe form, and young, That dived through the groups on the deck;

Ah! yes-Nora was there, and Terence Adair

Felt a choking at fortune's kind beck.

She rushed to his arms with all her sweet charms-
The kisses were scores to the letter;

And 'twas plainly avowed by the cynical crowd,
None there could have managed them better.

Then he gathered his rose in her loveliest pose,
And bore her away in his ardor;

While she waved an adieu to the wild laughing crew,
With the love she ever did harbor.

THE SOLUTION.-JOHN W. RYAN.

To-day a cripple passed me on the way,
A hideous blot upon the summer day,
And, as he sidled by with idiot leer,

I said, “What earthly purpose serve you here?"

To-night beside a chasm's yawning lips,

Like star beam struggling through a cloud eclipse,
A hunchback swings a lantern far and wide-
A warning light that will not be denied.

TANTALUS: TEXAS.--Joaquin Miller.

The Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain (so called from the means taken by the Mexicans to mark a track for travelers), is a large table-land to the west of the State of Texas, and is without a stream in its extent.

"If I may trust your love," she cried,
"And you would have me for a bride,
Ride over yonder plain, and bring
Your flask full from the Mustang spring;
Fly, fast as western eagle's wing,

O'er the Llano Estacado!"

He heard, and bowed without a word,
His gallant steed he lightly spurred;
He turned his face, and rode away
Towards the grave of dying day,
And vanished with its parting ray
On the Llano Estacado.

Night came, and found him riding on,
Day came, and still he rode alone.
He spared not spur, he drew not rein,
Across that broad, unchanging plain,
Till he the Mustang spring might gain,
On the Llano Estacado.

A little rest, a little draught,

Hot from his hand, and quickly quaffed,
His flask was filled, and then he turned.
Once more his steed the maguey spurned
Once more the sky above him burned
On the Llano Estacado.

How hot the quivering landscape glowed!
His brain seemed boiling as he rode,-
Was it a dream, a drunken one,

Or was he really riding on?

Was that a skull that gleamed and shone
On the Llano Estacado?

"Brave steed of mine, brave steed!" he cried,
So often true, so often tried,

Bear up a little longer yet!"

His mouth was black with blood and sweat-
Heaven! how he longed his lips to wet!
On the Llano Estacado.

And still, within his breast, he held
The precious flask so lately filled.

Oh, for a drink! But well he knew
If empty it should meet her view,
Her scorn- But still his longing grew
On the Llano Estacado.

His horse went down. He wandered on,
Giddy, blind, beaten, and alone.
While upon cushioned couch you lie,
Oh, think how hard it is to die,
Beneath the cruel, unclouded sky,
On the Llano Estacado.

At last he staggered, stumbled, fell,
His day was done, he knew full well.
And raising to his lips the flask,

The end, the object of his task,

Drank to her, more she could not ask.
Ah! the Llano Estacado!

That night in the Presidio,

Beneath the torchlights' wavy glow,
She danced-and never thought of him,
The victim of a woman's whim.
Lying with face upturned and grim,
On the Llano Estacado.

THE WOMAN WHO LINGERS.

She stands on the corner, with a squad of female friends, and smiles at the car driver, at the same time signaling him with her parasol. As soon as he begins to slacken his pace, she opens out in a conversation with her friends. The car stops, and the conductor waits. She glances around at him, steps down from the curbstone, and branches off into a fresh lot of talk. The conductor looks mad. He requests her to hurry up. She rushes at the car, seizes the iron hand-rail to make sure that she has got that car all safe and certain, and then determines that she will have her talk out or perish on the flag-stones then and there. She has more last words than the Indian chief who refused to die and go to the happy hunting-grounds until he had said the Ten Commandments and the Constitution of the United States, including the Fifteenth Amendment backwards three times in his native tongue. She holds on to that rail grimly, plants one foot

on the step, and yells out, "Give my love to Maria! Tell Arabella she owes me a call! Don't forget to bring William Henry and the children up to tea on Tuesday night! And tell Aunt Sarah I'd have that bombazine dyed black and trimmed with bugles!" Conductor looks like a man who would commit unjustifiable homicide upon slight provocation. In wrath he pulls the bell; the woman mounts the step, smiles at her friends, waves her parasol at them, and when she has sailed about a hundred yards up the street she calls out, "Be sure to tell Arabella, and don't let Georgie suck the yellow paint off of his mouth organ!" When she is seated, the conductor waits awhile, and then he asks for her fare. She feels in her pocket. Good gracious! she hopes she hasn't lost her purse! She dives into her satchel; it isn't there! Perhaps the tickets are under her glove; she removes it slowly; but they can't be found! She tries her pocket again, and finds the purse there after all. Conductor looks as indignantly melancholy as an aristocratic undertaker at a funeral at which there are only four carriages and a yellow pine coffin. The woman unfolds a bundle of notes slowly; but as she doesn't find the one she wants, she puts them all back, and hunts around in her satchel for five minutes for a ten cent piece. Conductor gives her back four cents change and goes out on the platform, when he tears his hair, kicks a small newsboy off the step, and tells his sorrowful tale to a passenger who is smoking a cigar. Meanwhile the woman has found an acquaintance, to whom she is talking as briskly as if this was the first chance she had since last summer. She wants to get out at Twentieth street. Conductor stops the car; but the woman, half rising, continues her able remarks to her acquaintance. Conductor says, "Please hurry up, madam!" and she jumps to her feet, shakes hands with her friend, saying, "Oh! I forgot to ask after John!" John is well, but the woman thinks it necessary to offer some extended sanitary suggestions in reference to John's health, and to declare that she will be abjectly miserable unless Mary Jane brings the twins up to spend the day. More objurgations on the part of the degraded outcast on the back platform. The woman at last starts for the door, and is about to step off,

when she misses her purse. She goes back into the car to look for it, moves all the passengers, overturns all the hay, at last finds the purse in her pocket, says "Good-by; come up to see me" again to her friend, and gets out. Conductor rattles a volley of imprecations down the street after her, pulls the strap savagely, and transfers twenty-five cents worth of fares from his business pocket into his private exchequer as a balm to soothe his lacerated feelings.

SONG OF THE MYSTIC.-FATHER RYAN.

I walk down the valley of silence,-
Down the dim voiceless valley,-alone;
And I hear not the fall of a footstep

Around me-save God's and my own,
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hours when angels have flown!
Long ago, was I weary of voices

Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago, I was weary of noises

That fretted my soul with their din.

Long ago, was I weary of places

Where I met but the human-and sin.

I walked through the world with the worldly,
I craved what the world never gave,
And I said: "In the world each ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is tossed on the shore of the real,

And sleeps like a dream in a grave."

And still did I pine for the perfect,
And still found the false with the true;
I sought not the human for heaven,

But caught a mere glimpse of the blue.
And I wept when the clouds of the mortal
Veiled even that glimpse from my view.
And I toiled on, heart-tired of the human,
And I mourned not the mazes of men;
Till I knelt long ago at an aitar,

And heard a voice call me; since then
I walk down the valley of silence

That lies far beyond mortal ken.

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