er than all
men, all will hate him; I would do better to pluck and eat the third,
the shrivelled apple!"

And so he did; and the old man laughed a toothless laugh and said: "Oh,
most wise youth! Thou hast chosen the good part!--What use hast thou for
the white apple? Thou art wiser than Solomon as thou art.--And neither
dost thou need the red apple.... Even without it thou shalt be rich.
Only no one will be envious of thy wealth."

"Inform me, old man," said Giaffar, with a start, "where the respected
mother of our God-saved Caliph dwelleth?"

The old man bowed to the earth, and pointed out the road to the youth.

Who in Bagdad doth not know the sun of the universe, the great, the
celebrated Giaffar?

April, 1878.

TWO FOUR-LINE STANZAS

There existed once a city whose inhabitants were so passionately fond of
poetry that if several weeks passed and no beautiful new verses had made
their appearance they regarded that poetical dearth as a public
calamity.

At such times they donned their worst garments, sprinkled ashes on their
heads, and gathering in throngs on the public squares, they shed tears,
and murmured bitterly against the Muse for having abandoned them.

On one such disastrous day the young poet Junius, presented himself on
the square, filled to overflowing with the sorrowing populace.

With swift steps he ascended a specially-constructed tribune and made a
sign that he wished to recite a poem.

The lictors immediately brandished their staves. "Silence! Attention!"
they shouted in stentorian tones.

"Friends! Comrades!" began Junius, in a loud, but not altogether firm
voice:

"Friends! Comrades! Ye lovers of verses!
Admirers of all that is graceful and fair!
Be not cast down by a moment of dark sadness!
The longed-for instant will come ... and light
will disperse the gloom!"[70]

Junius ceased speaking ... and in reply to him, from all points of the
square, clamour, whistling, and laughter arose.

All the faces turned toward him flamed with indignation, all eyes
flashed with wrath, all hands were uplifted, menaced, were clenched into
fists.

"A pretty thing he has thought to surprise us with!" roared angry
voices. "Away from the tribune with the talentless rhymster! Away with
the fool! Hurl rotten apples, bad eggs, at the empty-pated idiot! Give
us stones! Fetch stones!"

Junius tumbled headlong from the tribune ... but before he had succeeded
in fleeing t