Then it grew when she begged me to reach her

A dressing-case under the seat; She was “really so tiny a creature

That she needed a stool for her feet!"
Which was promptly arranged to her order

With a care that was even minute,
And a glimpse-of an open-work border,

And a glance-of the fairyest boot.

Then it drooped, and revived at some hovels

"Were they houses for men or for pigs?” Then it shifted to muscular novels,

With a little digression on prigs : She thought “Wives and Daughters” “SO

jolly !”

“Had I read it?” She knew when I had, Like the rest, I should dote upon “ Molly;"

And “poor Mrs. Gaskell—how sad !” “Like Browning ?” “But so-so.”

“But so-so." His proof lay Too deep for her frivolous mood,

That preferred your mere metrical souffle

To the stronger poetical food;
Yet at times he was good—“as a tonic;"

Was Tennyson writing just now?
And was this new poet Byronic,

And clever, and naughty, or how? Then we trified with concerts and cro

quet, Then she daintily dusted her face; Then she sprinkled herself with “Ess Bou

quet,” Fished out from the foregoing case; And we chattered of Gassier and Grisi,

And voted Aunt Sally a bore; Discussed if the tight rope were easy,

Or Chopin much harder than Spohr.

And oh! the odd things that she quoted,

With the prettiest possible look,
And the price of two buns that she noted

In the prettiest possible book,

While her talk like a musical rillet

Flashed on with the hours that flew; And the carriage, her smile seemed to fill it

With just enough summer-for Two. Till at last in her corner, peeping

From a nest of rugs and of furs, With the white shut eyelids sleeping

On those dangerous looks of hers,
She seemed like a snowdrop breaking,

Not wholly alive nor dead,
But with one blind impulse making

To the sounds of the spring overhead; And I watched in the lamplight's swerving

The shade of the down-dropped lid, And the lip-line's delicate curving,

Where a slumbering smile lay hid, Till I longed that, rather than sever,

The train should shriek into space, And carry us onward-forever

Me and that beautiful face.

But she suddenly woke in a fidget,

With fears she was “nearly at home,” And talked of a certain Aunt Bridget, Whom I mentally wished — well, at

Rome;
Got out at the very next station,

Looking back with a merry Bon Soir,
Adding, too, to my utter vexation,

A surplus, unkind Au Revoir.

So left me to muse on her graces,

To doze and to muse, till I dreamed That we sailed through the sunniest places

In a glorified galley, it seemed;
But the cabin was made of a carriage,

And the ocean was Eau-de-Cologne,
And we split on a rock labeled MAR-

RIAGE,
And I woke-as cold as a stone.

And that's how I lost her-a jewel

Incognita-one in a crowd,

Not prudent enough to be cruel,

Not worldly enough to be proud.
It was just a shut lid and its lashes,

Just a few hours in a train,
And I sorrow in sackcloth and ashes,
Longing to see her again!

AUSTIN DOBSON,

DORA versus ROSE.

“ The case is proceeding."

From the tragic-est novels at Mudie's

At least, on a practical planTo the tales of mere Hodges and Judys,

One love is enough for a man.
But no case that I ever yet met is

Like mine: I am equally fond
Of Rose, who a charming brunette is,

And Dora, a blonde.