"

"Am I in the habit of imagining such nonsense?"

"You may think it nonsense," I answered, with the quiet fervor of
conviction, "but I am sure it is nothing but the real state of the
case."

"Bosh!" exclaimed Perry, throwing his boots into a corner; and therewith
the discussion closed.

About a week ago I had a letter from him, though, in which he recalled
this circumstance and acknowledged that I had been in the right. "They
are going to be married in the fall," he wrote. "I hope they may be
happy, and I suppose they will be; but I don't think Mrs. Herbert ought
to marry him unless she loves him; and I am fearful that she only thinks
to reward long years of faithful affection. George deserves more than
that." This was a good deal for Perry to manage to say. He usually keeps
as far away from such subjects as he well can,--which is partly the
reason, I think, that his opinion thereon is not greatly to be trusted.
As for me, I am sure George's wife will love him as much as he
deserves,--though this is almost an infinite amount,--and that she has
not been far from loving him from the beginning. I have bought a pair of
vases to send them; and I expect that Miss Lucretia Knowles will say,
when she learns how much they cost, that I was very extravagant. Not
that Lu is close or stingy at all; but she has promised to wait until I
have made a start in life, and is naturally impatient for me to get on
as rapidly as possible.

FRANK PARKE.

THE WOOD-THRUSH AT SUNSET.

Lover of solitude,
Poet and priest of nature's mysteries,
If but a step intrude,
Thy oracle is mute, thy music dies.

Oft have I lightly wooed
Sweet Poesy to give me pause of pain,
Oft in her singing mood
Sought to surprise her haunt, and sought in vain.

And thou art shy as she,
But mortal, or I had not found thy shrine,
To listen breathlessly
If I may make thy hoarded secret mine.

Thy tender mottled breast,
Dappled the color of our primal sod,
Now quick and song-possessed,
Doth seem to hold the very joy of God,--

Joy hid from mortal quest
Of bosky loves on silver-mooned eves,
And the high-hearted best
That swells thy throat with joy among the leaves.

Like the Muezzin's call
From some high minaret when day is done,
Among the beeches tall
Thy voice proclaims, "There is no God but one."

And but one Beauty, too,
Of whose sweet synthesis we ever fail:
She flies if we pursue,
Like thy swift wing