ceful and exquisite it was! When it swung to and fro
with the summer wind, in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if little
Anglice were standing there in the garden!

The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot, wondering what
sort of blossom it would unfold, white, or scarlet, or golden. One
Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten face like a sailor's,
leaned over the garden-rail, and said to him,--

"What a fine young date-palm you have there, Sir!"

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried Pere Antoine, "and is it a palm?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the man. "I had no idea the tree would flourish
in this climate."

"_Mon Dieu!_" was all the priest could say.

If Pere Antoine loved the tree before, he worshipped it now. He watered
it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his arms. Here were
Emile and Anglice and the child, all in one!

The years flew by, and the date-palm and the priest grew together,--only
one became vigorous and the other feeble. Pere Antoine had long passed
the meridian of life. The tree was in its youth. It no longer stood in
an isolated garden; for homely brick and wooden houses had clustered
about Antoine's cottage. They looked down scowling on the humble
thatched roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd him off his land.
But he clung to it, and wouldn't sell. Speculators piled gold on his
door-step, and he laughed at them. Sometimes he was hungry, but he
laughed none the less.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" said the old priest's smile.

Pere Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit
under the pliant, caressing leaves of his tree, and there he sat until
the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even in death Pere Antoine
was faithful to his trust. The owner of that land loses it, if he harms
the date-tree.

And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy
stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the
incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. A precious boon is she
to the wretched city; and when loyal men again walk those streets, may
the hand wither that touches her ungently!

"Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice," said Miss Badeau,
tenderly.

* * * * *

"SOLID OPERATIONS IN VIRGINIA":

OR, 'T IS EIGHTY YEARS SINCE.

I have never had many personal interviews with Princes. Setting aside a
few with different Excellencies of the Commonwea