examinations on the poem from half-scoffing friends, sometimes of the
masculine persuasion. Each to his own; and what Shakespeare or the
Latin Fathers might have done for some other impressionable girl, Mrs.
Browning--forever bless her strong and gentle name!--did for me.

I owe to her, distinctly, the first visible aspiration (ambition is
too low a word) to do some honest, hard work of my own, in the World
Beautiful, and for it.

It is April, and it is the year 1861. It is a dull morning at school.
The sky is gray. The girls are not in spirits--no one knows just
why. The morning mail is late, and the Boston papers are tardily
distributed. The older girls get them, and are reading the head-lines
lazily, as girls do; not, in truth, caring much about a newspaper, but
aware that one must be well-informed.

Suddenly, in the recitation room, where I am refreshing my
accomplishments in some threatening lesson, I hear low murmurs and
exclamations. Then a girl, very young and very pretty, catches the
paper and whirls it overhead. With a laugh which tinkles through my
ears to this day, she dances through the room and cries:

"War's begun! _War's begun!_"

An older girl utters a cry of horror, and puts her hand upon the
little creature's thoughtless lips.

"Oh, how _can_ you?" so I hear the older
girl. "Hush, hush, _hush_!"

THE TOUCHSTONE.

BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

The King was a man that stood well before the world; his smile was
sweet as clover, but his soul withinsides was as little as a pea. He
had two sons; and the younger son was a boy after his heart, but the
elder was one whom he feared. It befell one morning that the drum
sounded in the dun before it was yet day; and the King rode with his
two sons, and a brave army behind them. They rode two hours, and came
to the foot of a brown mountain that was very steep.

"Where do we ride?" said the elder son.

"Across this brown mountain," said the King, and smiled to himself.

"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.

And they rode two hours more, and came to the sides of a black river
that was wondrous deep.

"And where do we ride?" asked the elder son.

"Over this black river," said the King, and smiled to himself.

"My father knows what he is doing," said the younger son.

And they rode all that day, and about the time of the sun-setting came
to the side of a lake, where was a great dun.

"It is here we ride," said the King