ainted with a squirt.)

Of books but few,--some fifty score
For daily use, and bound for wear;
The rest upon an upper floor;--
Some _little_ luxury _there_
Of red morocco's gilded gleam,
And vellum rich as country cream.

Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these,
Which others often show for pride,
_I_ value for their power to please,
And selfish churls deride;--
_One_ Stradivarius, I confess,
_Two_ Meerschaums, I would fain possess.

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;--
Shall not carved tables serve my turn,
But _all_ must be of buhl?
Give grasping pomp its double share,--
I ask but _one_ recumbent chair.

Thus humble let me live and die,
Nor long for Midas' golden touch;
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them _much_,--
Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content!

TOM'S MONEY

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD

Mrs. Laughton had found what she had been looking for all her life--the
man under her bed.

Every night of her nearly thirty years of existence this pretty little
person had stooped on her knees, before saying her prayers, and had
investigated the space beneath her bed, a light brass affair, hung with
a chintz valance; had then peered beneath the dark recess of the
dressing-case, and having looked in the deep drawer of the bureau and
into the closet, she fastened her door and felt as secure as a snail in
a shell. As she never, in this particular business, seemed to have any
confidence in Mr. Laughton, in spite of the fact that she admired him
and adored him, neither his presence nor his absence ever made any
variation in the performance. She had gone through the motions, however,
for so long a time that they had come to be in a manner perfunctory, and
the start she received on this night of which I speak made her prayers
quite impossible.

What was she to do? She, a coward _par eminence_, known to be the most
timorous of the whole family; her tremors at all sorts of imagined
dangers affording laughter to the flock of sisters and brothers. Should
she stay on her knees after having seen that dark shape, as if going on
with her prayers, while revolving some plan of procedure? That was out
of the question. Scream? She couldn't have screamed to save her life.
Run? She could no more have set one foot before the other, than if her
body had me