se little finger-joint is worth all the body of this
blackbird prince, dropping down from Lord knows where to fly off with
the sweetest bit of flesh in Verona. Marry, come up!"

But this was only a ripple on the stream that flowed so smoothly. Now
and then, indeed, Hamlet felt called upon playfully to chide Juliet for
her extravagance of language, as when, for instance, she prayed that
when he died he might be cut out in little stars to deck the face of
night. Hamlet objected, under any circumstances, to being cut out
in little stars for any illuminating purposes whatsoever. Once she
suggested to her lover that he should come to the garden after the
family retired, and she would speak with him a moment from the balcony.
Now, as there was no obstacle to their seeing each other whenever they
pleased, and as Hamlet was of a nice sense of honor, and since his
engagement a most exquisite practicer of propriety, he did not encourage
Juliet in her thoughtlessness.

"What!" he cried, lifting his finger at her reprovingly, "romantic
again!"

This was their nearest approach to a lovers' quarrel. The next day
Hamlet brought her, as peace-offering, a slender gold flask curiously
wrought in niello, which he had had filled with a costly odor at an
apothecary's as he came along.

"I never saw so lean a thing as that same culler of simples," said
Hamlet, laughing; "a matter of ribs and shanks, a mere skeleton painted
black. It is a rare essence, though. He told me its barbaric botanical
name, but it escapes me."

"That which we call a rose," said Juliet, holding the perfumery to her
nostrils and inclining herself prettily towards him, "would smell as
sweet by any other name."

O Youth and Love! O fortunate Time!

There was a banquet almost every night at the Capulets', and the
Montagues, up the street, kept their blinds drawn down, and Lady
Montague, who had four marriageable, tawny daughters on her hands, was
livid with envy at her neighbor's success. She would rather have had two
or three Montagues prodded through the body than that the prince should
have gone to the rival house.

Happy Prince!

If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Laertes, and the rest of the dismal
people at Elsinore, could have seen him now, they would not have known
him. Where were his wan looks and biting speeches? His eyes were no
longer filled with mournful speculation. He went in glad apparel, and
took the sunshine as his natural inheritance. If he