d scarcely
breathe. That is the excuse for what happened.

One day Romeo Augustus came home from school. Mephibosheth's pen was
empty. Mephibosheth's pen would be empty for evermore. That is a gentle
way of telling the story. In vain it was explained to Romeo Augustus
that Mephibosheth's life had become a burden; that common humanity
demanded his departure. In vain Philemon offered three fish-hooks and a
jackknife by way of solace. In vain Solomon was sure his father would
present a calf to the mourner for a pet.

Elias was the only one who gave the least comfort.

"We will make a tombstone, and I will write an epitaph," said he.

Soon he brought a board, on which were drawn an urn and a couple of
consumptive weeping-willows (for Elias was an artist as well as a poet),
and underneath were these lines, which being written partly in old
English spelling, were so much the more consoling:

Sacred to the Memorie
of
MEPHIBOSHETH.

Kinde Reader, pause and drop a teare,
Y^e Pig his bodie lieth here;
Y^e Auguste third of fiftie-nine
Was when his sun dyd cease to shine.
He broke two legs, which gave him wo;
He doctored was by Romeo,
Who cherished him from yeare to yeare,
As by this notice doth appeare.
He fed him till he waxed soe big
He was obliged to hop the twig.
Y^e friends do sadly raise their waile,
And fondly eke preserve his tayle.

"And here's his tail," said Elias, presenting the pathetic memento.

"The only trouble is in the line, 'Y^e Pig his bodie lieth here,'"
sobbed Romeo Augustus. "It doesn't lie here. He's been sold to a
butcher."

"It's Elias who '_lieth_ here,'" remarked Isaac.

That was a heartless joke. No one was so low as to laugh at it.

"They often have monuments without the--the--the body," said Elias, with
great delicacy.

Romeo Augustus was content.

He is a grown man now, but to this very day he keeps Mephibosheth's
monument. It is nailed on the wall of his chamber. He sometimes smiles
when he looks at it, but he does not take it down.

[Illustration: HAVING A LITTLE FUN.]

THE TAILOR AND THE WOLVES.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN.

Ever so long ago there lived a tailor's apprentice, a merry,
light-hearted fellow, but with a large hump, so that he always looked
like a country-woman going to market on a Saturday, carrying her goods
on her back.

One night, as he was returning from some festivity in the town, he had
to go through a