e.

And so it smiles to itself all day,
Where it stands alone by the mountain way,
Hearing the merry young leaves at play;
And soft on the stones its smile is cast,
And it laughs with the wind as it saunters past,
The fresh, young wind of May:
And happily thus it lives its life
Till the woods with sounds of summer are rife,
When it silently passes away.

And once again to the hills we go,
When the sun shines warm on the fields below
Where the midsummer lilies are all aglow,
When shadows are thicker, and scarcely the breeze
Stirs a leaf on the gleaming poplar trees,
And low are the streamlet's tones;
For the bright Azalea we look in vain,
And long for its smile to gladden again
Our hearts and the old gray stones.

A PAIR OF STOCKINGS.

FROM THE ARMY.

Kate was sitting by the window. I was sitting beside her. It may be well
to state here that Kate was a young lady, and that I am a young
gentleman. Kate had large, lustrous dark eyes, which just then were
covered with fringed, drooping eyelashes. She had braids of dark hair
wreathed around her head, a soft pink color in her cheeks, and a rosebud
mouth, womanly, fresh, and lovely. Kate was clad in a pink muslin dress,
with a tiny white ruffle around her white throat. She was armed with
four steely needles, which were so many bright arrows that pierced my
heart through and through. Over her fingers glided a small blue thread,
which proceeded from the ball of yarn I held in my hand.

Kate was knitting a stocking, and surely, irrevocably she was taking me
captive; already I felt myself entangled by those small threads.

We were the inmates of a boarding house. Kate was a new boarder. I had
known her but a few weeks.

The evening was warm, and I took up a palm-leaf fan, and fanned her. She
thanked me. I looked at her white hands, gliding in and out under the
blue yarn; there were no rings on those fingers. I thought how nicely
one would look upon that ring finger--a tiny gold circlet, with two
hearts joined upon it, and on the inside two names written--hers and
mine. Then I thought of Kate as my wife, always clad in a pink muslin
dress, always with her hair in just such glossy braids, and knitting
stockings to the end of time.

'Kate shall be my wife,' I said to myself, in rash pride, as I fanned
her more energetically. I did not know that the way to a woman's heart
was more intricate than a labyrinth; but I ha