"No; I came alone and return alone." “Fasting and unprotected! Are you determined to take away the worst impression of us? Do not refuse me this favor." "As to fasting, I could not eat: and unprotected no woman is in England if she is a third-class traveler. That is my experience of the class; and I shall return among my natural protectors-the most unselfishly chivalrous to women in the whole world." He had set his heart on going with her, and he' attempted eloquence in pleading, but that exposed him to her humor; he was tripped. "It is not denied that you belong to the knightly class," she said; "and it is not necessary that you should wear armor and plumes to proclaim it; and your appearance would be ample protection from the drunken sailors traveling, you say, on this line; and I may be deplorably mistaken in imagining that I could tame them. But your knightliness is due elsewhere; and I commit myself to the fortune of war. It is a battle for women everywhere; under the most favorable conditions among my dear common English. I have not my maid with me, or else I should not dare.” She paid for a third-class ticket, amused by Dacier's look of entreaty and trouble. "Of course I obey," he murmured. "I have the habit of exacting it in matters concerning my independence," she said; and it arrested some rumbling notions in his head as to a piece of audacity on the starting of the train. They walked up and down the platform till the bell rang and the train came rounding beneath an arch. 66 Oh, by the way, may I ask?"-he said: ". was it your article in Whitmonby's journal on a speech of mine last week?" "The guilty writer is confessed." "Let me thank you." "Don't. But try to believe it written on public grounds-if the task is not too great." "I may call?” "You will be welcome." "To tell you of the funeral-the last of him!” "Do not fail to come." She could have laughed to see him jumping on the steps of the third-class carriages one after another to choose her company for her. In those pre-democratic, blissful days before the miry Deluge, the opinion of the requirements of poor English travelers entertained by the Seigneur Directors of the class above them was that they differed from cattle in stipulating for seats. With the exception of that provision to suit their weakness, the accommodation extended to them resembled pens, and the seats were emphatically seats of penitence, intended to grind the sitter for his mean pittance payment and absence of aspiration to a higher state. Hard angular wood, a low roof, a shabby square of window aloof, demanding of him to quit the seat he insisted on having, if he would indulge in views of the passing scenery, such was the furniture of dens where a refinement of castigation was practised on villain poverty by denying leathers to the windows, or else buttons to the leathers, so that the windows had either to be up or down, but refused to shelter and freshen simultaneously. Dacier selected a compartment occupied by two old women, a mother and babe and little maid, and a laboring man. There he installed her, with an eager look that she would not notice. "You will want the window down," he said. She applied to her fellow-travelers for the permission; and struggling to get the window down, he was irritated to animadvert on "these carriages " of the benevolent railway company. "Do not forget that the wealthy are well treated, or you may be unjust," said she, to pacify him. His mouth sharpened its line while he tried arts and energies on the refractory window. She told him to leave it. "You can't breathe this atmosphere!" he cried, and called to a porter, who did the work, remarking that it was rather stiff. The door was banged and fastened. Dacier had to hang on the step to see her in the farewell. From the platform he saw the top of her bonnet; and why she should have been guilty of this freak of riding in an unwholesome carriage, tasked his power of guessing. He was too English even to have taken the explanation, for he detested the distinguishing of the races in his country, and could not therefore have comprehended her peculiar tenacity of the sense of injury as long as enthusiasm did not arise to obliterate it. He required a course of lessons in Irish. Sauntering down the lane, he called at Simon Rofe's cottage, and spoke very kindly to the gamekeeper's wife. That might please Diana. It was all he could do at present. JOHN MILTON JOHN MILTON, born in London, England, 1608; died 1674. His, next to Shakespeare, is the greatest name in English literature. He was trained in a Puritan family, and became proficient in the art of music. His educational advantages were the best the age afforded. He was entered at Christ College, Cambridge, in 1725. After his college course he spent several years in classical and other congenial studies. In this period he began to impress the public with his powers as a poet. Among the productions of this time were "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," and the masques of "Arcades " and "Comus." Milton gave much of his middle life to polemical writing, directed against papers and the political systems of his day, probably the best remembered of this class of works was his plea for unlicensed printing. Finally Milton crowned his life work by giving to the world "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," which fixed his name forever as one of the world's greatest poets. ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S I HIS is the month, and this the happy morn, Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born, That He our deadly forfeit should release, II That glorious form, that light unsufferable, He laid aside; and here with us to be, Forsook the courts of everlasting day, And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay. III Say, heav'nly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain, Now while the heav'n, by the sun's team untrod, And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright? IV See how from far upon the eastern road Have thou the honor first thy Lord to greet, And join thy voice unto the Angel quire, From out His secret altar touch'd with hallow'd fire. FROM L'ALLEGRO HENCE, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born! In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, |