Eating his head off in my stables here,
When rents are low and provender is dear?
Let him go feed upon the public ways:
I want him only for the holidays."
So the old steed was turned into the heat
Of the long, lonely, silent, shadeless street;
And wandered in suburban lanes forlorn,
Barked at by dogs, and torn by briar and thorn.

One afternoon, as in that sultry clime
It is the custom in the summer-time,

With bolted doors and window-shutters closed,
The inhabitants of Atri slept or dozed;
When suddenly upon their senses fell
The loud alarum of the accusing bell!
The syndic started from his deep repose,

Turned on his couch, and listened, and then rose
And donned his robes, and with reluctant pace
Went panting forth into the market-place,
Where the great bell upon its cross-beam swung,
Reiterating with persistent tongue,

In half-articulate jargon, the old song,

"Some one hath done a wrong, hath done a wrong!"

But ere he reached the belfry's light arcade,
He saw, or thought he saw, beneath its shade,
No shape of human form of woman born,
But a poor steed dejected and forlorn,
Who with uplifted head and eager eye
Was tugging at the vines of briony.
"Domeneddio!" cried the syndic straight,
"This is the Knight of Atri's steed of state!
He calls for justice, being sore distressed,
And pleads his cause as loudly as the best."
Meanwhile from street and lane a noisy crowd
Had rolled together like a summer cloud,
And told the story of the wretched beast
In five-and-twenty different ways at least,
With much gesticulation and appeal
To heathen gods, in their excessive zeal.

The knight was called and questioned: in reply
Did not confess the fact, did not deny,

Treated the matter as a pleasant jest,

And set at naught the syndic and the rest,

Maintaining in an angry undertone,

That he should do what pleased him with his own.

And thereupon the syndic gravely read

The proclamation of the king; then said,

"Pride goeth forth on horseback grand and gay, But cometh back on foot, and begs its way: LLLL

Fame is the fragrance of heroic deeds,

Of flowers of chivalry and not of weeds!
These are familiar proverbs; but I fear
They never yet have reached your knightly ear.
What fair renown, what honor, what repute,
Can come to you from starving this poor brute?
He who serves well and speaks not, merits more
Than they who clamor loudest at the door.
Therefore, the law decrees that as this steed
Served you in youth, henceforth you shall take heed
To comfort his old age, and to provide
Shelter in stall, and food and field beside."

The knight withdrew abashed: the people all
Led home the steed in triumph to his stall.
The king heard and approved, and laughed in glee,
And cried aloud, " Right well it pleaseth me!
Church bells at best but ring us to the door,
But go not in to mass. My bell doth more:
It cometh into court, and pleads the cause
Of creatures dumb and unknown to the laws.
And this shall make, in every Christian clime,
The Bell of Atri famous for all time."

-Atlantic Monthly

TOO LATE FOR THE TRAIN.

When they reached the depot, Mr. Mann and his wife gazed in unspeakable disappointment at the receding train, which was just pulling away from the bridge switch at the rate of a mile a minute. Their first impulse was to run after it, but as the train was out of sight and whistling for Sagetown before they could act upon the impulse, they remained in the carriage and disconsolately turned their horses' heads homeward.

Mr. Mann broke the silence, very grimly: "It all comes of having to wait for a woman to get ready."

"I was ready before you were," replied his wife. "Great heavens," cried Mr. Mann, with great impatience, nearly jerking the horses' jaws out of place, "just listen to that! And I sat in the buggy ten minutes yelling at you to come along until the whole neighborhood heard me.”

"Yes," acquiesced Mrs. Mann with the provoking placidity which no one can assume but a woman," and every time I

started down stairs you sent me back for something you had forgotten."

Mr. Mann groaned. "This is too much to bear," he said, "when everybody knows that if I were going to Europe I would just rush into the house, put on a clean shirt, grab up my grip sack, and fly, while you would want at least six months for preliminary preparations, and then dawdle around the whole day of starting until every train had left town.".

Well, the upshot of the matter was that the Manns put off their visit to Aurora until the next week, and it was agreed that each one should get himself or herself ready and go down to the train and go, and the one who failed to get ready should be left. The day of the match came around in due time. The train was going at 10.30, and Mr. Mann, after attending to his business, went home at 9.45.

"Now, then," he shouted, “only three-quarters of an hour's time. Fly around; a fair field and no favors, you know."

And away they flew. Mr. Mann bulged into this room and flew through that one, and dived into one closet after another with inconceivable rapidity, chuckling under his · breath all the time to think how cheap Mrs. Mann would feel when he started off alone. He stopped on his way up stairs to pull off his heavy boots to save time. For the same reason he pulled off his coat as he ran through the dining room and hung it on a corner of the silver closet. Then he jerked off his vest as he rushed through the hall and tossed it on the hat-rack hook, and by the time he had reached his own room he was ready to plunge into his clean clothes. He pulled out a bureau drawer and began to paw at the things like a Scotch terrier after a rat.

"Eleanor," he shrieked," where are my shirts?"

66 In your bureau drawer," calmly replied Mrs. Mann, who was standing before a glass calmly and deliberately coaxing a refractory crimp into place.

"Well, but they ain't!" shouted Mr. Mann, a little annoyed. "I've emptied everything out of the drawer, and there isn't a thing in it I ever saw before."

Mrs. Mann stepped back a few paces, held her head on one side, and after satisfying herself that the crimp would do, replied: "These things scattered around on the floor are

all mine. Probably you haven't been looking into your own drawer."

"I don't see," testily observed Mr. Mann, why you couldn't have put my things out for me when you had nothing else to do all the morning."

"Because," said Mrs. Mann, setting herself into an additional article of raiment with awful deliberation, " nobody put mine out for me. A fair field and no favors, my dear." Mr. Mann plunged into his shirt like a bull at a red flag. "Foul!" he shouted in malicious triumph, "No buttons on the neck!"

"Because," said Mrs. Mann, sweetly, after a deliberate stare at the fidgeting, impatient man, during which she buttoned her dress and put eleven pins where they would do the most good," because you have got the shirt on wrong side out."

When Mr. Mann slid out of the shirt he began to sweat. He dropped the shirt three times before he got it on, and while it was over his head he heard the clock strike ten. When his head came through he saw Mrs. Mann coaxing the ends and bows of her necktie.

"Where are my shirt studs ?" he cried.

Mrs. Mann went out into another room and presently came back with gloves and hat, and saw Mr. Mann emptying all the boxes he could find in and around the bureau. Then she said, "In the shirt you just pulled off."

Mrs. Mann put on her gloves while Mr. Mann hunted up and down the room for his cuff-buttons.

"Eleanor," he snarled, at last, "I believe you must know where those cuff-buttons are."

"I haven't seen them," said the lady settling her hat; "didn't you lay them down on the window sill in the sitting-room last night?"

Mr. Mann remembered, and he went down stairs on the run. He stepped on one of his boots and was immediately landed in the hall at the foot of the stairs with neatness and dispatch, attended in the transmission with more bumps than he could count with Webb's Adder, and landed with a bang like the Hell Gate explosion.

"Are you nearly ready, Algernon ?" sweetly asked the wife of his bosom, leaning over the banisters.

The unhappy man groaned. "Can't you throw me down the other boot?" he asked.

Mrs. Mann, pityingly, kicked it down to him.

My valise?" he inquired, as he tugged at the boot.

Up in your dressing-room," she answered.

"Packed?"

"I do not know; unless you packed it yourself, probably not," she replied, with her hand on the door knob; "I had barely time to pack my own."

She was passing out of the gate when the door opened, and he shouted, "Where in the name of goodness did you put my vest? It has all my money in it!"

"You threw it on the hat rack," she called. "Good-bye, dear."

Before she got to the corner of the street she was hailed gain.

"Eleanor! Eleanor! Eleanor Mann! Did you wear off my coat?"

She paused and turned, after signaling the street car to stop, and cried, "You threw it in the silver closet."

The street car engulfed her graceful form and she was seen no more. But the neighbors say that they heard Mr. Mann charging up and down the house, rushing out of the front door every now and then, shrieking after the unconscious Mrs. Mann, to know where his hat was, and where she put the valise key, and if she had his clean socks and undershirts, and that there wasn't a linen collar in the house. And when he went away at last, he left the kitchen door, the side door and the front door, all the down stairs windows and the front gate, wide open.

The loungers around the depot were somewhat amused, Just as the train was pulling out of sight down in the yards, to see a flushed, enterprising man, with his hat on sideways, his vest unbuttoned and necktie flying, and his grip sack flapping open and shut like a demented shutter on a March night, and a door key in his hand, dash wildly across the platform and halt in the middle of the track, glaring in dejected, impotent, wrathful mortification at the departing train, and shaking his fist at a pretty woman who was throwing kisses at him from the rear platform of the last car.