poetic,
I was hailed, and all-triumphant, lived and throve in Fortune's lap.

"Then--ah me!--the reigning fashion,
Every artist had a passion
For displaying me in pictures, and the studios were my own.
Now, to claim their whole attention,
One whom I am loath to mention
Comes, an upstart, a usurper, and ascends my rightful throne.

"Hard it is my grief to smother,
Bitter thus to see another
Wear my honors! Artists paint him, poets his perfections praise.
Everywhere his visage hated
Greets me. He is fondled, feted.
Worst of all, he rules the children as did I in other days.

"Nevermore shall I be happy,"
Said the weeping little Jappy,
"Nevermore my days be merry, and my slumbers soft and downy.
I shall live, but all unheeded,
Quite cut out and superseded
By that precious, omnipresent pet and paragon, _the Brownie_!"

MARGARET JOHNSON.

OFF WITH THE MERBOY.

BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.

CHAPTER II.

THE START.

[Illustration: Decorative J]

immieboy grabbed up his blue suit and in a very few minutes was arrayed
in it, but on his return to the aquarium to join the goldfish he found
it empty.

"Dear me!" he cried, "I wonder if he can have gone off without me."

"No, he hasn't," came a silvery voice from behind him.

Jimmieboy turned sharply about, and there, sitting upon the sofa arrayed
in his red bathing-suit, sat a beautiful boy of about his own age and
size, with great masses of golden hair falling over his shoulders.

"Hullo!" said Jimmieboy, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise.
"Who are you?"

"I am your goldfish," laughed the boy. "Or, rather, I was. I am now my
true self. I am a merboy, as, in fact, all goldfish are. See?" he added,
holding up what Jimmieboy had taken for feet. "I have a tail like a fish
instead of feet."

Jimmieboy was delighted. He had heard all about mermen and mermaids, but
merboys were something new.

"Now," said the merboy, as a tremendous lashing of something in the
aquarium began to ruffle up the water therein, "come along. Get into my
carriage and we shall start."

[Illustration: STARTING OFF.]

Mute with astonishment, Jimmieboy could do nothing but obey, and
entering a huge vehicle that floated upon the surface of the water in
the aquarium--which had, singularly enough, taken on tremendous
proportions--the merboy