And her master urged, till his breath grew short,
With a word and a gentle blow;

But the snow was deep, and the tugs were tight
His hands were numb, and had lost their might;
So he struggled back again to his sleigh,
And strove to shelter himself till day,
With his coat and the buffalo.

He has given the last faint jerk of the rein,
To rouse up his dying steed;

And the poor dog howls to the blast in vain
For help in his master's need.

For awhile he strives with a wistful cry
To catch the glance of his drowsy eye;
And wags his tail when the rude winds flap
The skirts of his coat across his lap,
And whines that he takes no heed.

The wind goes down, the storm is o'er;
'Tis the hour of midnight past;
The forest writhes and bends no more,
In the rush of the sweeping blast.
The moon looks out with a silver light

On the high old hills, with the snow all white;
And the giant shadow of Camel's Hump,
Of ledge and tree, and ghostly stump,
On the silent plain are cast.

But cold and dead, by the hidden log,
Are they who came from the town:
The man in the sleigh, the faithful dog,
And the beautiful Morgan brown!
He sits in his sleigh; with steady grasp
He holds the reins in his icy clasp;

The dog with his nose on his master's feet,

And the mare half seen through the crusted sleet Where she lay when she floundered down.

EBERS, GEORG, a German orientalist and novelist, born at Berlin, March 1, 1837, after his father's death. He received his early education from his mother, studied in Fröbel's school at Keilhau, and afterward in the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin, giving the preference to oriental, philosophical, and archæological studies. He then visited the principal museums of Egyptian antiquities in Europe, and in 1865 established himself at Jena as a private tutor in the Egyptian language and antiquities. In the previous year he had published An Egyptian Princess, an historical romance giving a description of life in Egypt about the time of the Persian conquest (340 B.C.). His works, Egypt and the Books of Moses and A Scientific Journey to Egypt, published in 1869-70, led to his appointment in the latter year to a professorship at Leipsic. While travelling in Egypt in 1872-73 he discovered an important papyrus, which he described in a treatise, and which was named in his honor the Papyrus Ebers. He also published in 1872 a work entitled Through Goshen to Sinai. A severe attack of paralysis in 1876 rendered him unable to walk. He sought recreation in imaginative writing, and in 1877 published Uarda, a Romance of Ancient Egypt, a book which has been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe. It was followed by Egypt-Descriptive,

Historical, and Picturesque (1878); Homo Sum, a novel (1878); The Sisters, a romance (1880); Palestine (1881), a work written in collaboration with Guthe; The Burgomaster's Wife: a Tale of the Siege of Leyden (1882); Serapis (1885); Die Nilbraut (1887); Joshua (1889); Margery (1889); Coptic Art (1892); Per Aspera (1892). He has also contributed many articles to periodicals on the Egyptian language and antiquities.

THE HAPPINESS OF A KING.

Amasis listened attentively, drawing figures the while in the sand with the golden flower on his staff. At last he spoke: "Verily, Croesus, I 'the great God,' the 'sun of righteousness,' 'the sun of Neith,'' the lord of warlike glory,' as the Egyptians call me, am tempted to envy thee, dethroned and plundered as thou art. I have been as happy as thou art now. Once I was known through all Egypt, though only the poor son of a captain, for my light heart, happy temper, fun and high spirits. The common soldiers would do anything for me, my superior officers could have found much fault, but in the mad Amasis, as they called me, all was overlooked, and among my equals (the other under-officers), there could be no fun or merry-making unless I took a share in it. My predecessor, King Hophra, sent us against Cyrene. Seized with thirst in the desert, we refused to go on; and a suspicion that the king intended to sacrifice us to the Greek mercenaries drove the army to open mutiny. In my usual joking manner I called out to my friends: 'You can never get on without a king, take me for your ruler; a merrier you will never find!' The soldiers caught the words. 'Amasis will be our king,' ran through the ranks from man to man, and in a few hours more they came to me with shouts and acclamations of The good, jovial Amasis for our king!' One of my boon companions set a field-marshal's helmet on my head: I made the joke earnest, and we defeated Hophra at Momemphis. The people joined in the con

spiracy, I ascended the throne, and men pronounced me fortunate. Up to that time I had been every Egyptian's friend, and now I was the enemy of the best men in the nation.

"The priests swore allegiance to me, and accepted me as a member of their caste, but only in the hope of guiding me at their will. My former superiors in command either envied me, or wished to remain on the same terms of intercourse as formerly. One day, therefore, when the officers of the host were at one of my banquets, and attempting, as usual, to maintain their old convivial footing, I showed them the golden basin. in which their feet had been washed before sitting down to meat; five days later, as they were again drinking at one of my revels, I caused a golden image of the great god Ra to be placed upon the richly ornamented banqueting-table. On perceiving it, they fell down to worship. As they rose from their knees, I took the sceptre, and holding it up on high with much solemnity, exclaimed: 'In five days an artificer has transformed the despised vessel into which ye spat and in which men washed your feet, into this divine image. Such a vessel was I, but the Deity which can fashion better and more quickly than a goldsmith has made me your king. Bow down, then, before me, and worship. He who henceforth refuses to obey, or who is unmindful of the reverence due to the king, is guilty of death!'

"They fell down before me, every one, and I saved my authority, but lost my friends. As I now stood in need of some other prop, I fixed on the Hellenes, knowing that in all military qualifications one Greek is worth more than five Egyptians, and that with this assistance I should be able to carry out those measures which I thought beneficial. I kept the Greek mercenaries always round me, I learnt their language, and it was they who brought me the noblest human being I ever met, Pythagoras. I endeavored to introduce Greek art and manners among ourselves, seeing what folly lay in a selfwilled assurance to that which has been handed down to us, when it is itself bad and unworthy, while the good seed lay on our Egyptian soil, only waiting to be sown. I portioned out the whole land to suit my purposes, ap

pointed the best police in the world, and accomplished much; but my highest aim-namely, to infuse into this country at once so gay and so gloomy, the spirit and intellect of the Greeks, their sense of beauty in form, their love of life and joy in it-this all was shivered on the same rock which threatens me with overthrow and ruin whenever I attempt to accomplish anything new. The priests are my opponents, my masters, they hang like a dead weight upon me. Clinging with superstitious awe to all that is old and traditionary, abominating everything foreign, and regarding every stranger as the natural enemy of their authority and their teaching, they can lead the most devout and religious of all nations with a power that has scarcely any limits. For this I am forced to sacrifice all my plans; for this I see my life passing away in bondage to their severe ordinances, this will rob my death-bed of peace, and I cannot be secure that this host of proud mediators between god and man will allow me to rest even in my grave. Those very boys of whom thou speakest are the greatest torment of my life. They perform for me the service of slaves, and obey my slightest nod. Each of these youths is my keeper, my spy. They watch my smallest actions and report them at once to the priests. But every position has its duties, and as the king of a people who venerate tradition as the highest divinity, I must submit, at least in the main, to the ceremonies handed down through thousands of years. Were I to burst these fetters, I know positively that at my death my body would remain unburied; for I know that the priests sit in judgment on every corpse, and deprive the condemned of rest, even in the grave.' -An Egyptian Princess.

THEBES AND ITS CITY OF THE DEAD.

99

By the walls of Thebes-the old city of a hundred gates-the Nile spreads to a broad river; the heights, which follow the stream on both sides here take a more decided outline; solitary, almost cone-shaped peaks stand out sharply from the level background of the many-colored limestone hills, on which no palm-tree