h a kind embrace;--
"Good sir, I do not recollect your face,"
Quoth Garrick. "No?" replied the man of rags;
"The boards of Drury you and I have trod
Full many a time together, I am sure."
"When?" with an oath, cried Garrick, "for, by G--d,
I never saw that face of yours before!
What characters, I pray,
Did you and I together play?"
"Lord!" quoth the fellow, "think not that I mock--
When you played Hamlet, sir, I played the cock!"

_John Wolcot._

THE LOST SPECTACLES

A country curate, visiting his flock,
At old Rebecca's cottage gave a knock.
"Good morrow, dame, I mean not any libel,
But in your dwelling have you got a Bible?"
"A Bible, sir?" exclaimed she in a rage,
"D'ye think I've turned a Pagan in my age?
Here, Judith, and run upstairs, my dear,
'Tis in the drawer, be quick and bring it here."
The girl return'd with Bible in a minute,
Not dreaming for a moment what was in it;
When lo! on opening it at parlor door,
Down fell her spectacles upon the floor.
Amaz'd she stared, was for a moment dumb,
But quick exclaim'd, "Dear sir, I'm glad you're come.
'Tis six years since these glasses first were lost,
And I have miss'd 'em to my poor eyes' cost!"
Then as the glasses to her nose she raised,
She closed the Bible--saying, "God be praised!"

_Unknown._

THAT TEXAN CATTLE MAN

We rode the tawny Texan hills,
A bearded cattle man and I;
Below us laughed the blossomed rills,
Above the dappled clouds blew by.
We talked. The topic? Guess. Why, sir,
Three-fourths of man's whole time he keeps
To talk, to think, to _be_ of |HER|;
The other fourth he sleeps.

To learn what he might know of love,
I laughed all constancy to scorn.
"Behold yon happy, changeful dove!
Behold this day, all storm at morn,
Yet now 't is changed to cloud and sun.
Yea, all things change--the heart, the head,
Behold on earth there is not one
That changeth not," I said.

He drew a glass as if to scan
The plain for steers; raised it and sighed.
He craned his neck, this cattle man,
Then drove the cork home and replied:
"For twenty years (forgive these tears)--
For twenty years no word of strife--
I have not known for twenty years
One folly from my wife."

I looked that Texan in the face--
That dark-browed, bearded cattle man,
He pulled his beard, then dropped in place
A broad right hand, all s