om resting on her gentle bosom;
The remark I thought a safe one--I could hardly made a worse;
With a smile like any Venus, she gave me its name and genus,
And opened very calmly a botanical discourse.

But I speedily recovered. As her taper fingers hovered,
Like a tender benediction, in a little bit of fish,
Further to impair digestion, she brought up the Eastern Question.
By that time I fully echoed that other fellow's wish.

And, as sure as I'm a sinner, right on through that endless dinner
Did she talk of moral science, of politics and law,
Of natural selection, of Free Trade and Protection,
Till I came to look upon her with a sort of solemn awe.

Just to hear the lovely woman, looking more divine than human,
Talk with such discrimination of Ingersoll and Cook,
With such a childish, sweet smile, quoting Huxley, Mill, and Carlyle--
It was quite a revelation--it was better than a book.

Chemistry and mathematics, agriculture and chromatics,
Music, painting, sculpture--she knew all the tricks of speech;
Bas-relief and chiaroscuro, and at last the Indian Bureau--
She discussed it quite serenely, as she trifled with a peach.

I have seen some dreadful creatures, with vinegary features,
With their fearful store of learning set me sadly in eclipse;
But I'm ready quite to swear if I have ever heard the Tariff
Or the Eastern Question settled by such a pair of lips.

Never saw I a dainty maiden so remarkably o'erladen
From lip to tip of finger with the love of books and men;
Quite in confidence I say it, and I trust you'll not betray it,
But I pray to gracious heaven that I never may again.

--_Chicago Tribune._

THE BALLAD OF CASSANDRA BROWN.

BY HELEN GRAY CONE.

Though I met her in the summer, when one's heart lies 'round at ease,
As it were in tennis costume, and a man's not hard to please;
Yet I think at any season to have met her was to love,
While her tones, unspoiled, unstudied, had the softness of the dove.

At request she read us poems, in a nook among the pines,
And her artless voice lent music to the least melodious lines;
Though she lowered her shadowing lashes, in an earnest reader's wise,
Yet we caught blue gracious glimpses of the heavens that were her eyes.

As in Paradise I listened. Ah, I did n