eel not, when they make
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.

--_Matthew Arnold_.

Apollo Belvedere[G]

_A Christmas Episode of the Plantation._

BY RUTH McENERY STUART.

[In the same volume which contains this story there are many
others that lend themselves to recitation. "Moriah's Mourning"
is one of the best pieces of humor which Mrs. Stuart has
written; "Christmas at the Trimbles" has proven itself a
never-failing success, and "The Second Mrs. Slimm" is an
excellent reading.]

He was a little yellow man, with a quizzical face and sloping shoulders,
and when he gave his full name, with somewhat of a flourish, as if it
might hold compensations for physical shortcomings, one could hardly
help smiling. And yet there was a pathos in the caricature that
dissipated the smile half-way.

"Yas, I'm named 'Pollo Belvedere, an' my marster gi'e me dat intitlemint
on account o' my shape," he would say, with a strut, as if he were
bantered. As Apollo would have told you himself, the fact that he had
never married was not because he couldn't get anybody to have him, but
simply that he hadn't himself been suited.

Lily Washington was a beauty in her own right, and she was the belle of
the plantation. She was an emotional creature, with a caustic tongue on
occasion, and when it pleased her mood to look over her shoulder at one
of her numerous admirers and to wither him with a look or a word, she
did not hesitate to do it. For instance, when Apollo first asked her to
marry him--it had been his habit to propose to her every day or so for a
year or two past--she glanced at him askance from head to foot, and then
she said: "Why, yas. Dat is, I s'pose, of co'se, you's de sample. I'd
order a full-size by you in a minute." This was cruel, and seeing the
pathetic look come into his face, she instantly repented of it, and
walked home from church with him, dismissing a handsome black fellow,
and saying only kind things to Apollo all the way.

Of course no one took Apollo seriously as Lily's suitor, much less the
chocolate maid herself. But there were other lovers. Indeed, there were
all the others, for that matter, but in point of eligibility the number
to be seriously regarded was reduced to about two. These were Pete
Peters, a handsome griff, with just enough Indian blood to give him an
air of distinction, and a F