ow, and it was for her I
purchased in Messina the matron's robes for which you asked, Semestre."

"For her?" murmured the old woman. "There is a blue one among them too,
which will be becoming, for she has light brown hair very slightly mixed
with gray. But she is cheerful, active, and clever, and will aid Phaon
and Xanthe in their young house-keeping with many a piece of good
advice."

"I shall go to my daughter in Agrigentum," said Semestre, positively.

"Go," replied Lysander, kindly, "and enjoy yourself in your old age on
the money you have saved."

"Which my father," added Leonax, "will increase by the sum of a thousand
drachmae.

"My Alciphron has a heart!" cried the house-keeper.

"You shall receive from me, on the day of your departure, the same sum
and a matron's blue robe," said Lysander.

Shortly after the marriage of Xanthe and Phaon, Semestre went to live
with her daughter.

The dike by the sea was splendidly repaired without any dispute, for the
estate once more belonged to the two brothers in common, and Xanthe found
in Praxilla a new, kind mother.

The marble seat, on which the young people's fate was decided, was called
by the grandchildren of the wedded pair, who lived to old age in love and
harmony, "the bench of the question."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Absence of suffering is not happiness
Laughing before sunrise causes tears at evening
People see what they want to see
Seems most charming at the time we are obliged to resign it
Wrath has two eyes--one blind, the other keener than a falcon's

THE ELIXIR.

By Georg Ebers

Every Leipziger knows well the tall gabled house in the Katherinenstrasse
which I have in mind. It stands not far from the Market Place, and is
particularly dear to the writer of this true story because it has been in
the possession of his family for a long time. Many curious things have
happened there worthy of being rescued from oblivion, and though my
relatives would now like to relieve me of this task, because I have found
it necessary to point out to certain ingenuous ones among them the truth
which they were endeavoring to conceal, I rejoice that I have sufficient
leisure to chronicle for future generations of Ueberhells the wonderful
life and doings of their progenitor as I learned them from my grandmother
and other good people.

So here, then, begins my story.

Of old, the aforementioned house was known as "The Th