This strange Chinese picture has a meaning, and is not a mere muddle, as our grandmothers may have thought. On the right of the plate is a lordly mandarin's country house, in the garden by the side of a river. The house is two stories high, and has a tea pavilion in front, all of which shows the rank and wealth of the mandarin. In the garden is a tree with mulberries on it, and another full of oranges, to show what a fruitful garden it is.

Around the estate is a bamboo fence, and spanning the river is a bridge. Behind the house is a little gardener's cottage, to show how poor and humble the gardener is. In another poor house, on an island in the river, lives the young gardener's mother. On the bridge is the gardener and the mandarin's daughter, and behind them comes the mandarin himself with a long whip. Last of all, there is the mournful willow tree, and in the air a pair of turtle-doves with joined beaks. The story connecting all these figures is as follows:

Long ago, when the moon was young, there lived an illustrious mandarin, who had an only daughter, named Li-Chi, more beautiful than all the stars of heaven. Her father intended her to marry some great and rich noble like himself, and kept her shut up in his country palace in the midst of a beautiful garden, walled in with a high bamboo fence. The gardener was a young man named Chang, who was so handsome, with his almond-shaped eyes, his shin

ing skin, and his slender pigtail, that the fair Li-Chi, peeping through her bamboo lattice and seeing him at work, straightway fell in love with him.

So one day, when he was training some roses near her window, she looked out and slyly dropped at his feet a choice sweetmeat, in return for which he climbed the lattice and stuck a rose through the slats. That night when he went to see his mother, who lived on an island in the river, he told her of his adventures, and bewailed his ill luck because, as a humble gardener, he could never hope to marry the lordly mandarin's beautiful daughter. But the mother, who was a shrewd woman, told him to pluck up courage, for Li-Chi might even yet be his wife.

Now his mother reared silk-worms on her little island, and spun silk for the mandarin's daughter. The next time that she carried this silk to the fair lady, she told her quietly that the gardener worshipped her shadow and kissed the very tracks which her little feet had left on the garden walks.

And so in time a plan was arranged whereby Li-Chi was on a certain night to run away with her lover - being sure to bring with her a box full of her father's gold and jewels, in order that they might all live together in comfort. The mother would hide the maiden and the money in her hut on the island, where none would ever dream of looking for them; and the mandarin should be

made to believe that a robber had stolen the money, and that his daughter had drowned herself.

This plan was so far carried out that the lovers succeeded in escaping unseen through the garden and to the bridge, bearing between them, suspended on a stout bamboo pole, a casket full of gold and jewels. But it happened that just as they stepped upon the bridge, at the other end of which Chang's mother awaited them, the illustrious mandarin awakened from his sleep.

He turned his face to the open doorway, and saw his only daughter running away with the gardener and his own box of money! Seizing a stout whip, the mandarin rushed after the couple, and, overtaking them on the bridge, grasped Chang by his pigtail, twisted it around his throat, beat him until he was senseless, and ended by throwing him off the bridge into the river, where he immediately sank.

When poor Li-Chi saw her lover's cruel fate, she at once sprang into the water after him, and was drowned with him. Strange to say, the bodies could never be found; but near the spot where they sank, a beautiful willow tree sprang up by magic. It stretched its drooping arms above the water, and sighed night and day a mournful dirge for the departed lovers. In its branches, after a few days, a couple of turtle-doves appeared, and built a nest, and there they would bill and coo the

livelong day. For the souls of the unfortunate lovers had taken the shape of doves (so the fable tells), and thus found the happiness they had longed for

but lost.

por'ce lain, a fine kind of earthenware | in ter spersed', having things set or

or china.

cha ot'ic, confused; mingled in disorder.

scattered here and there among other things.

man da rin', a Chinese nobleman.

THE CHILD1

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

He owns the bird-songs of the hills-
The laughter of the April rills;
And his are all the diamonds set
In Morning's dewy coronet,

And his the Dusk's first minted stars
That twinkle through the pasture bars,
And litter all the skies at night

With glittering scraps of silver light; -
The rainbow's bar, from rim to rim,
In beaten gold, belongs to him.

cor'o net, a crown, worn by those of mint'ed here means formed or fashlower rank than kings.

ioned.

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY was born in Indiana in 1852. Many of his best poems are upon childhood and nature.

1 From Riley's "Child Rhymes,” by permission of the Bobbs-Merrill Co.

TWO STORIES FROM THE RABBIS

ABRAM S. ISAACS

I

GREAT was the alarm in the palace of Rome, which soon spread throughout the entire city. The Empress had lost her costly diadem, and it could not be found. They searched in every direction, but it was all in vain. Half distracted, for the mishap boded no good to her or her house, the Empress redoubled her exertions to regain her precious possession, but without result.

As a last resource it was proclaimed in the public streets: "The Empress has lost a priceless diadem. Whoever restores it within thirty days shall receive a princely reward. But he who delays, and brings it after thirty days, shall lose his head."

In those times men of all nations flocked toward Rome; all classes and creeds could be met in its stately halls and crowded streets. Among the rest was a rabbi, a learned sage from the East, who loved goodness, and lived a righteous life, in the stir and turmoil of the western world.

It chanced one night as he was strolling up and down, in busy meditation, beneath the clear, moonlit sky, he saw the diadem sparkling at his feet. He seized it quickly, brought it to his dwelling, where he guarded it carefully until the thirty days