Good night, then, lost darlings of mine

I never shall see you again:

Ah, never in shadow or shine, .

Ah, never in dew or in rain.

SARA M. B. PIATT.

SELF-COMFORTED

The ragged child has received sixpence from the little smart one. Her poor little envy finds a strange little

comfort!

THE ragged child across the street
Stared at the child that looked so sweet.

"I'll have a whiter dress than you,
And wear some prettier rosebuds, too;

"And not be proud a bit," she said,
"I thank you, miss-when I am dead."

SARA M. B. PIATT.

INDIAN FEVERS

(On the author's discovery of the cause and cure of Malaria.)

The poet, a great scientific discoverer, prays for help to find the germ that causes these fevers. His is a noble need, and the thanksgiving, in triumph, that follows the granting of his prayer, is even nobler and greater. What happiness, and what humility!

THE PETITION

IN this, O Nature, yield, I pray, to me.
I pace and pace, and think, and think, and take
The fever's hands, and note down all I see,
That some dim distant light may haply break.

The painful faces ask, Can we not cure?

We answer, No, not yet we seek the laws. O God, reveal through all this thing obscure The unseen, small but million-murdering cause. BANGALORE, 1890-3.

THE REPLY

THIS day, relenting God

Has placed within my hand
A wondrous thing: and God
Be praised. At His 'command,

Seeking His secret deeds

With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,
O million-murdering Death.

I know this little thing

A myriad men will save:
O Death, where is thy sting?
Thy victory, O grave?

SIR RONALD Ross.

THE JOYS OF THE ROAD

What a list of good things-the landscape, the friend, the good hunger and thirst, and-best of all—“the striding heart"!

Now the joys of the road are chiefly these:
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees;

A vagrant's morning wide and blue,
In early fall, when the wind walks, too;

A shadowy highway cool and brown
Alluring up and enticing down :

From rippled water to dappled swamp,
From purple glory to scarlet pomp;

The outward eye, the quiet will,

And the striding heart from hill to hill;

The tempter apple over the fence;

The cobweb bloom on the yellow quince;

The palish asters along the wood-
A lyric touch of the solitude;

An open hand, an easy shoe,

And a hope to make the day go through

Another to sleep with, and a third

To wake me up at the voice of a bird;

The resonant far-listening morn,

And the hoarse whisper of the corn;

The crickets mourning their comrades lost,
In the night's retreat from the gathering frost ;

(Or is it their slogan, plaintive and shrill,
As they beat on their corselets, valiant still ?)

A hunger fit for the kings of the sea,
And a loaf of bread for Dickon and me;

A thirst like that of the Thirsty sword,
And a jug of cider on the board;

An idle moon, a bubbling spring,
The sea in the pine-tops murmuring;

A scrap of gossip at the ferry ;
A comrade neither glum nor merry,

Asking nothing, revealing naught,

But minting his words from a fund of thought,

A keeper of silence eloquent,

Needy, yet royally well content,

Of the mettled breed, yet abhorring strife,
And full of the mellow juice of life,

A taster of wine, with an eye for a maid,
Never too bold and never afraid,

Never heart-whole, never heart-sick,
(These are the things I worship in Dick),

No fidget and no reformer, just
A calm observer of ought and must,

A lover of books but a reader of men
No cynic and no charlatan,

Who never defers and never demands,
But, smiling, takes the world in his hands-

Seeing it good as when God first saw
And gave it the weight of His will for law.

And O the joy that is never won,
But follows and follows the journeying sun,

By marsh and tide, by meadow and stream,
A will-o'-the-wind, a light-o'-dream,

Delusion afar, delight anear,

From morrow to morrow, from year to year.

A jack-o'-lantern, a fairy fire,

A dare, a bliss, and a desire!

The racy smell of the forest loam,

When the stealthy, sad-heart leaves go home;

(O leaves, O leaves, I am one with you,

Of the mould and the sun and the wind and the

dew!)