unction, sweet,
Your only duty is to charm;
Leave platform spouting, as is meet,
To men; it cannot do them harm.
Your influence comes from gracious ways,
Your glory in the home doth lie;
The guardian angel of our days,
Until you bless us when we die.

Don't enter on ignoble strife
With man, 'tis yours to soar above--
To all the higher things of life,
Divine compassion, and pure love.
'Tis yours to stimulate, refine,
To win men by a kindly heart;
Not grovel with us where the sign
Of Mammon hangs above the mart.

Thine is the task to reign supreme
Within the sacred sphere of home;
To make our life one happy dream,
Thine own as spotless as the foam.
To trade, to toil, to head the feast,
To seek the politician's gain,
Were hateful:--ay, as though the priest
Took usury, within the fane!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

[Illustration]

BARON DE BOOK-WORMS owns to being easily affected by a pathetic
episode. He well remembers how years ago in the course of a
discussion among literary men about books and their writers, the Baron
acknowledged that in spite of his having been told how the pathos of
DICKENS was all a trick, and how the sentiment of that great novelist
was for the most part false, he still felt a choking sensation in his
throat and a natural inclination to blow his nose strenuously whenever
he re-read the death of _Little Paul_, the death of _Dora_, and some
passages about _Tiny Tim_. There was no dissentient voice as to
the death of _Colonel Newcome_; all admitted the recurrence of that
peculiar choking sensation, read they their THACKERAY never so often.
Now the Baron differs from _Josh Sedley_ in, as he thinks, many
respects, but he is almost as "easily moved to tears" as was that
stout hero. Wherefore this preface? Well, 'tis because the Baron owns
to having "snivelled," if you will, when reading a delightful story,
published by MACMILLAN in one volume ("bless all good stories in _one_
vol., clearly printed!" says the Baron, parenthetically), entitled
simply, _Tim_. No relation to _Tiny Tim_ already mentioned; quite
another child. The Baron strongly recommends _this_ story, and
especially to Etonians past and present, as giving a life-like picture
which the latter will recognise, of the career at that great public
school of a fragile little chap entirely unfitted by nature for the
rough and tum