the lover had prepared a fine speech for the lady, which he had
indeed already rehearsed many times to his friends with great
applause; but when it came to utter it to the lady a great and awful
fear fell on him, the words vanished--vanished from his memory, and
he was dumb as a dead ass. Then his friend poking him in the ribs,
whispered in his ear, 'But say _something_, man, no matter what!'

"So with a gasp he brought out at last, 'Signora, I would fain be
your humble servant.'

"To which the lady, smiling, replied, 'Well, I have already in my
house plenty of humble servants, and indeed only too many to sweep
the rooms and wash the dishes, and there is really no place for
another. . . .'

"And the young man turned aside with sickness in his heart. His
wooing for that holiday was o'er."

This may be matched with the story of a bashful New England lover of the
olden time, for there are none such now-a-days:--

"I don't know how I ever got courage to do it; but one evening I went
courting Miss Almira Chapin.

"And when she came in, I sat for half-an-hour, and dared not say a
word. At last I made a desperate dash and got out, 'Things are
looking very green out of doors, Miss Almira.'

"And she answered, 'Seems to me they're looking a great deal greener
_in_ doors this evening.'

"That extinguished me, and I retreated. And when I was outside I
burst into tears."

LA FORTUNA
A LEGEND OF THE VIA DE' CERCHI

"One day Good Luck came to my home,
I begged of her to stay.
'There's no one loves you more than I,
Oh, rest with me for aye,'
'It may not be; it may not be,
I rest with no one long,' said she."

--"_Witch Ballads_," by C. G. LELAND.

The manner in which many of the gods in exile still live in Italy is very
fully illustrated by the following story:

"It is a hard thing sometimes now-a-days for a family to pass for noble
if they are poor, or only poor relations. But it was easy in the old
time, Signore Carlo, easy as drinking good Chianti. A signore had only
to put his shield with something carved on it over his window, and he was
all right. He was noble _senza dubbio_.

"Now the nobles had their own noble stories as to what these noble
pictures in stone meant, but the ignoble people often had another story
just as good. Coarse woolle