stated income as a newspaper poet and jester, and had to
furnish his score of "Sharps and Flats" with more or less regularity.
For all this, he certainly has left pieces, compact of the rarer
elements, sufficient in number to preserve for him a unique place among
America's most original characters, scholarly wits, and poets of
brightest fancy. Yorick is no more! But his genius will need no
chance upturning of his grave-turf for its remembrance. When all is
sifted, its fame is more likely to strengthen than to decline.

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

[Originally contributed to the "Souvenir Book" of the N.Y. Hebrew Fair,
December, 1895.]

Contents

THE HOLY CROSS

THE ROSE AND THE THRUSH

THE PAGAN SEAL-WIFE

FLAIL, TRASK, AND BISLAND

THE TOUCH IN THE HEART

DANIEL AND THE DEVIL

METHUSELAH

FELICE AND PETIT-POULAIN

THE RIVER

FRANZ ABT

MISTRESS MERCILESS

THE PLATONIC BASSOON

HAWAIIAN FOLK TALES

LUTE BAKER AND HIS WIFE EM

JOEL'S TALK WITH SANTA CLAUS

THE LONESOME LITTLE SHOE

THE HOLY CROSS

Whilst the noble Don Esclevador and his little band of venturesome
followers explored the neighboring fastnesses in quest for gold, the
Father Miguel tarried at the shrine which in sweet piety they had hewn
out of the stubborn rock in that strangely desolate spot. Here, upon
that serene August morning, the holy Father held communion with the
saints, beseeching them, in all humility, to intercede with our beloved
Mother for the safe guidance of the fugitive Cortes to his native
shores, and for the divine protection of the little host, which,
separated from the Spanish army, had wandered leagues to the northward,
and had sought refuge in the noble mountains of an unknown land. The
Father's devotions were, upon a sudden, interrupted by the approach of
an aged man who toiled along the mountain-side path,--a man so aged and
so bowed and so feeble that he seemed to have been brought down into
that place, by means of some necromantic art, out of distant centuries.
His face was yellow and wrinkled like ancient parchment, and a beard
whiter than Samite streamed upon his breast, whilst about his withered
body and shrunken legs hung faded raiment which the elements had
corroded and the thorns had grievously rent. And as he toiled along,
the aged man continually groaned, and continually wrung his palsied
hands, as if a sorrow, no lighter than his years, afflicted him.

"In whose name c