I have a hundred, and you have fifty"; or, "I have a thousand and you have two. I must have as many as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and thought to myself, What a false dream that is, of children. The child is the father wiser. Children never of the man; and 66 do such foolish things. Only men do." JOHN RUSKIN. THE CHOIR INVISIBLE Он may I join the choir invisible OH Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls Whose music is the gladness of the world. GEORGE ELIOT. THE WAR HORSE AND THE SEVEN KINGS ONCE upon a time, when horses could talk as well as men, the king was presented with a noble steed, the bravest and most beautiful in the world. So the king fed the horse from a golden dish, and kept him in a golden stall, which was hung about with crimson curtains. And on the walls were wreaths of fragrant flowers, and a lamp was kept forever burning, fed with scented oil. Now it came to pass that seven neighboring kings came up to battle, and the king who owned the horse sent for a knight and offered him the command of all his hosts. "You are to go out," he said, “and fight with seven kings." Gladly will I go," the knight replied, "if I may ride upon your horse." And the king consented, and so the battle began. On the first day, the knight on the king's horse broke through the ranks of the first king and took him alive a prisoner. On the second day, he served the second king in like manner. But on the sixth day, in capturing the sixth king, the horse was wounded. Then the knight prepared to mount another horse. The wounded steed opened his eyes and saw the knight's intention, and he said to himself, "No other horse can carry him in safety. If he mounts another, the seventh king will kill him. Wounded as I am, he must take me." And he said this to the knight. Accordingly the knight bound up the horse's wounds, and into the seventh battle he went, and gained the victory as before, capturing the seventh king. But as he led the captive king into his master's court, the horse fell and died. He had given his life to make the victory complete. Retold from "The Jātaka." THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY PHILIP NOLAN was as fine a young officer as there was in the "Legion of the West," as the western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some dinnerparty, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him, took him a day or two's voyage in his flatboat, and, in short, fascinated him. At the end of a year poor Nolan was enlisted body and soul in Burr's cause. From that time, though he did not yet know it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, one and another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the list, little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence enough, |