s of these sons of Africa,
and gently, nay, almost humbly, received the pressure of their black,
toil-hardened hands as they passed out! They had taught him a great
lesson, the lesson of a failure.

The schoolmaster went home, and sat far into the night, with his head
bowed upon his hands. "Poor worm!" he thought--"poor worm! who even went
so far as to dream of saying, 'Here am I, Lord, and these brethren whom
thou hast given me!'"

The day came for him to go; he shouldered his bag and started away. At a
turn in the road, some one was waiting for him; it was dull-faced Esther
with a bunch of flowers, the common flowers of her small garden-bed.
"Good-by, Esther," said the master, touched almost to tears by the sight
of the solitary little offering.

"Good-by, mars," said Esther. But she was not moved; she had come out
into the woods from a sort of instinct, as a dog follows a little way
down the road to look after a departing carriage.

* * * * *

"David King has come back home again, and taken the district school,"
said one village gossip to another.

"Has he, now? Didn't find the blacks what he expected, I guess."

UP IN THE BLUE RIDGE.

"Every rose, you sang, has its thorn;
But this has none, I know."
She clasped my rival's rose
Over her breast of snow.

I bowed to hide my pain,
With a man's unskillful art;
I moved my lips, and could not say
The thorn was in my heart.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

I.

"Instead of going through the whole book, you can read this abstract,
Miss Honor."

The speaker drew forth five or six sheets of paper, closely covered with
fine, small handwriting. The letters were not in the least beautiful, or
even straight, if you examined them closely, for they carried themselves
crookedly, and never twice alike; but, owing to their extreme smallness,
and the careful way in which they stood on the line, rigidly particular
as to their feet, although their spines were misshapen, they looked not
unlike a regiment of little humpbacked men, marching with extreme
precision, and daring you to say that they were crooked. Stephen
Wainwright had partly taught himself this hand, and partly it was due to
temperament. He despised a clerkly script; yet he could not wander down
a page, or blur his words, any more than he could wander down a street,
or blur his chance remarks; in spite of himself, he always knew exactly