thers, who
recognize the highest possible cultivation of the mental faculties and
unsullied purity of life as the noblest ends of our being, he will ever
occupy a position shared by few of mortal race.

* * * * *

ZELMA'S VOW.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART FIRST. HOW IT WAS MADE.

Who does not remember his first play?--the proudly concealed impatience
which seemed seething in the very blood,--the provoking coolness of old
play-goers,--the music that rather excited than soothed the fever
of expectation,--the mystery of mimic life that throbbed behind the
curtain,--the welcome tinkle of the prompter's bell,--the capricious
swaying to and fro of that mighty painted scroll,--its slow uplift,
revealing for an instant, perhaps, the twinkle of flying dancers' feet
and the shuffle of belated buskins? And then, the unveiled wonders
of that strange, new world of canvas and pasteboard and
trap-doors,--people, Nature, Art, and architecture, never before beheld,
and but faintly conceived of,--the magic of shifting scenes,--the
suddenness and awfulness of subterranean and aerial descents and
ascents,--the solemn stage-walk of the heroine,--the majestic strut
of the hero,--the princely sweep of velvet,--the illusive sparkle of
paste,--the rattle of Brobdignagian pearls,--the saucy tossing of pages'
plumes,--the smiles, the wiles, the astonishing bounds and bewildering
pirouettes of the dancing Houries,--the great sobs and small shrieks
of persecuted beauty,--the blighting smile of the villain,--the lofty
indifference of supernumeraries!

It was the first play of our heroine, Zelma Burleigh, and of her Cousin
Bessie. The morning before, a fragrant May morning, scores of summers
ago, Roger Burleigh, a stout Northumbrian Squire, had rolled himself,
in his ponderous way, into the snug family-parlor at the Grange, and
addressed his worthy dame with a bluff--

"Well, good wife, wouldn't like to go see the players to-night?"

Ere the good lady could collect herself to reply with the decorous
deliberateness becoming her years and station, an embroidery-frame at
her side was overturned, and there sprang eagerly forward a comely
young damsel of the pure Saxon stock, with eyes like England's
violets,--clear, dewy, and wide-awake,--cheeks and lips like its
rose-bloom, and hair which held tangled in close, golden folds its
fickle and flying sunshine.

"Ay, father!" she cried, "that we would! Zelma and I have