touched a morsel myself, she gently pats my hand, her dilated eyes are eagerly turned upon mine, and a rich melodious purr expresses her pleasurable anticipations. If I snatch a mouthful or two for myself before attending to her ladyship's wants, Tabitha exchanges the touchings for absolute goadings, and that not with one paw, but with both alternately, the claws coming very far out, not with the intention of wounding me, but apparently irrepressible in their owner's state of excitement.

Last week she exhibited jealousy in a way which is worth chronicling. She was sitting in the usual place near my saucer, when another cat came along the floor and solicited 5 alms. I gave her a little bit of meat, and afterwards some bread-and-butter, then another scrap of mutton. Tabitha all this time had remained as motionless as a stone. Just, however, as I sat up after reaching down the meat to the cat, Tabitha rose in her wrath, and lifting her right paw struck me a smart blow on the back of the hand, accompanying the assault with a peculiar growl which I shall never forget. Rage, reproach, jealousy, despair, were all strangely commingled in that wonderful growl. When she struck me I felt that her little frame was quivering with passion. I went to work at once to calm down this maddening emotion. I gave over feeding her hated rival and drove it away, called Tabitha by the most endearing names, gently scratched her head, stroked her under the chin, put my finger between her teeth and rubbed the roof of her mouth, pressed her tongue between my thumb and forefinger, and then

presented her with a rabbit's kidney, a delicacy for which she evinces a remarkable predilection." These manifestations of penitence and enduring affection had the desired effect, and in a moment or two Tabitha was again unmistakably the happiest of cats.

Let me add that the inestimable importance of the human hand to its possessor, so eloquently dwelt on by Sir Charles Bell, is often brought to my mind while observing the efforts made by Tabitha to secure bits of meat over which I have purposely spread out my fingers. She darts her' paw in, and often contrives to bring the coveted morsel flying towards her. Sometimes, however, she fetches it, or a portion of it, out on her claw, and then, like a monkey or human being, raises it to her mouth, licking the paw afterwards that nothing may be lost.

From The Leisure Hour (by kind permission of R.T.S.).

XII.

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE.1

NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,

Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,

With his martial

cloak around him,

Few and short were the prayers we said,

And we spoke not a word of sorrow;

But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,

And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed

And smoothed down his lonely pillow,

That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him-
But little he'll reck,5 if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done

When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame, fresh and gory;" We carved not a line, and we raised not a stoneBut we left him alone with his glory.

C. Wolfe.

XIII.

THE HARDY TIN SOLDIER.1

THERE were once five and twenty tin soldiers; they were all brothers, for they had all been born of one old tin spoon. They shouldered their muskets, and looked straight before them; their uniform was red and blue, and very splendid. The first thing they had heard in the world, when the lid was taken off their box, had been the words "Tin Soldiers!" These words were uttered by a little boy, clapping his hands; the soldiers had been given to him, for it was his birthday, and now he put them upon the table. Each soldier was exactly like the rest, but one of them had been cast 1 last of all and there had not been enough tin to finish him; but he stood as firmly upon his one leg as the others on their two; and it was just this soldier who became remarkable.

On the table on which they had been placed stood many other playthings, but the toy that attracted most attention was a neat castle of cardboard. Through the little windows one could see straight into the hall. Before the castle some little trees were placed round a little looking-glass which was to represent a clear lake. Waxen swans swam on this lake, and were mirrored in it. This was all very pretty; but the prettiest of all was a little lady who stood at the open door of the castle: she was also cut out in paper, but she had a dress of

1 By kind permission of Messrs. George Routledge & Sons.

the clearest gauze, and a little narrow blue ribbon over her shoulders that looked like a scarf, and in the middle of this ribbon was a shining tinsel 2 rose as big as her whole face. The little lady stretched out both her arms, for she was a dancer; and then she lifted one leg so high that the tin soldier could not see it at all, and thought that, like himself, she had but one leg.

"That would be the wife for me," thought he; "but she is very grand. She lives in a castle, and I have only a box, and there are five and twenty of us in that. It is no place for her; but I must try to make acquaintance with her."

And then he lay down at full length behind a snuff-box which was on the table; there he could easily watch the little dainty lady, who continued to stand on one leg without losing her balance.

When the evening came, all the other tin soldiers were put into their box, and the people in the house went to bed. Now the toys began to play at "visiting," and at "war," and "giving balls." The tin soldiers rattled in their box, for they wanted to join, but could not lift the lid. The nutcracker threw somersaults, and the pencil amused itself on the table; there was so much noise that the canary woke up and began to speak too, and even in verse. The only two who did not stir from their places were the tin soldier and the dancing lady: she stood straight up on the point of one of her toes, and stretched out both her arms; and he was just as enduring on his one leg, and he never turned his eyes away from her.