y the bamboo stem.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

PUNISHED BY CONSCIENCE.--A writer in the Boston _Transcript_ calls
attention to the fact that a man may escape the law, and yet be held by
his conscience. He says:

Many years ago, a young man in this city was guilty of an offence
against the law, an offence which brought social ruin upon himself and
his family. The span and his offence are forgotten by the public, yet he
lives, and lives here in Boston. But from the day his offence was
discovered,--although, having escaped the law, he is free to come and go
as he pleases,--he has never been seen outside of his own home in the
daytime.

Sometimes, under the cover of night, he walks abroad to take an airing
and note the changes that thirty years have wrought, but an ever-active
conscience makes him shun the light of day and the faces of men, and he
walks apart, a stranger in the midst of those among whom he has always
lived.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

NO QUOTATION MARKS.

A writer in the Boston _Transcript_ notices the fact that even men
eminent in literature are not above borrowing from each other, and
sometimes display the borrowed article as their own:

When Tennyson's "In Memoriam" appeared, a certain poet was standing in
the Old Corner Bookstore, turning over the leaves of the freshly-printed
volume, when up stepped a literary friend, of rare taste and learning in
poetry, saying to the poet,---

"Have you read it?"

"Indeed I have!" was the answer; "and do you know it seems to me that,
in this delightful book, Tennyson has done for friendship what Petrarch
did for love."

This was too neat a _mot_ for the literary friend to forget. That
afternoon, he called upon a lady on Beacon Hill, and noticing a copy of
"In Memoriam" on her table, saw his opportunity.

After the usual greetings, he took up the book. "Have you read it?" he
asked.

"Yes," said the lady, "and I have enjoyed it greatly."

"So have I," said her visitor, "and do you know that it seems to me that
in this charming poem Tennyson has done for friendship what Petrarch did
for love."

"Indeed," rejoined the lady, adding, with a mischievous smile, "Mr.
------" (naming a well-known essayist and critic) "called this morning,
_and said the same thing_."

Who it was that originated the apt comparison remains an unsolved
mystery to this day.

* * * * * * * *