"And I am a woman, and I suppose, therefore, a queen--at least a
possible queen," she muses--"a pretty queen!"

(_To be concluded._)

[1] Sesame and Lilies. By John Ruskin, LL.D. 1. Of King's Treasuries.
2. Of Queen's Gardens.

THE WEATHER AND HEALTH.

BY MEDICUS.

We have all heard tell of the "Clerk of the Weather." What a poor,
ill-used, roundly-rated, over-worked individual he must be! His whole
life must be spent in an impossible endeavour to please everybody. We
may imagine the poor man going of a morning towards his office with
languid steps and weary, wondering all the while to himself what sort of
weather he ought to give the public to-day.

Arrived in front of his desk, he must stagger back with dismay at the
piles on piles of letters heaped thereon. To read them all is out of the
question; so he sits down and draws one forth, just as you would draw a
card from the hand of someone who pretended to tell fortunes.

He opens the letter. It isn't a pleasant one by any means. There is a
tone of growling impatience in every line of it. How long, the writer,
who is an invalid, wants to know, are these horrible east winds going to
prevail down in Devonshire? She has come here for her health's sake; she
has been here for three weeks, and all that time it has never ceased to
blow, and she has never ceased to cough and ache.

The clerk throws this epistle into the Balaam box and listlessly draws
out another. "Don't you think," the writer says, "that a blink of
sunshine would be a blessing--and a drop or two of warm rain to bring
the fruit on, and the garden stuff? What is the good of having a Clerk
of the Weather at all if he cannot attend better to his duties?"

That letter is also pitched into the Balaam box, and a third drawn--a
delightful little cocked-hat of a letter, written on delicately-perfumed
paper, probably with a dove's quill. She--of course it is a she!--is
going to a garden-party on Tuesday week; would he, the Clerk of the
Weather, kindly see that not a drop of rain falls on that day? Only
bright sunshine, and occasional cloudlets to act as awnings and temper
its heat.

The Clerk with a smile places that letter aside for further
consideration, and goes on drawing. All and everyone of them either
demand impossibilities or merely write to abuse the poor Clerk for some
fancied dereliction of duty. One wants rain, another growls because
there has been too much wet. This one is grumbling at