ame very
handsome young lady I had seen him walking with on the side-walk before
the swell-fronts and south-exposures. As Professor Langdon seemed to be
very much taken up with his companion, and both of them looked as if
they were enjoying themselves, I determined not to make my presence
known to my young friend, and to withdraw quietly after feasting my eyes
with the sight of them for a few minutes.

"It looks as if something might come of it," I said to myself.

At that moment the young lady lifted her arm accidentally, in such a way
that the light fell upon the clasp of a chain which encircled her wrist.
My eyes filled with tears as I read upon the clasp, in sharp-cut Italic
letters, _E.V._ They were tears at once of sad remembrance and of joyous
anticipation; for the ornament on which I looked was the double
pledge of a dead sorrow and a living affection. It was the golden
bracelet,--the parting-gift of Elsie Venner.

* * * * *

BUBBLES.

I.

I stood on the brink in childhood,
And watched the bubbles go
From the rock-fretted sunny ripple
To the smoother lymph below;

And over the white creek-bottom,
Under them every one,
Went golden stars in the water,
All luminous with the sun.

But the bubbles brake on the surface,
And under, the stars of gold
Brake, and the hurrying water
Flowed onward, swift and cold.

II.

I stood on the brink in manhood,
And it came to my weary heart,--
In my breast so dull and heavy,
After the years of smart,--

That every hollowest bubble
Which over my life had passed
Still into its deeper current
Some sky-sweet gleam had cast;

That, however I mocked it gayly,
And guessed at its hollowness,
Still shone, with each bursting bubble,
One star in my soul the less.

CITIES AND PARKS:

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE NEW YORK CENTRAL PARK.

The first murderer was the first city-builder; and a good deal of
murdering has been carried on in the interest of city-building ever
since Cain's day. Narrow and crooked streets, want of proper sewerage
and ventilation, the absence of forethought in providing open spaces for
the recreation of the people, the allowance of intramural burials,
and of fetid nuisances, such as slaughter-houses and manufactories of
offensive stuffs, have converted cities into pestilential inclosures,
and kept Jefferson's saying--"Great cities are great sores"--tr