of mirth came into his gloomy eyes. He
bent over the young man, and said in a hoarse, chuckling whisper:

"But I got even after all!"

"How?"

"He's tied up to that lying little she-devil, hard and fast!"

[Illustration: IDLERS]

THE MODERN BABYLON.

BY CYNICUS.

[Illustration: THE MODERN PHAETON]

The day is done for honest thriving
Through Speculation's reckless driving.

[Illustration: THE SCAPEGOAT]

[Illustration: LAW & JUSTICE]

Your distance Madam, for you see
You dare not, unless I agree

[Illustration: SAMSON AGONISTES]

[Illustration: MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN.]

MY FIRST BOOKS.

"UNDERTONES" AND "IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF INVERBURN."

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE HUTCHINSON.

(PHOTOGRAPHS BY MESSRS. FRADELLE AND YOUNG.)

My first serious effort in Literature was what I may call a
double-barrelled one; in other words, I was seriously engaged upon Two
Books at the same time, and it was by the merest accident that they did
not appear simultaneously. As it was, only a few months divided one from
the other, and they are always, in my own mind, inseparable, or Siamese,
twins. The book of poems called _Undertones_ was the one; the book of
poems called _Idyls and Legends of Inverburn_ was the other. They were
published nearly thirty years ago, when I was still a boy, and as they
happened to bring me into connection, more or less intimately, with some
of the leading spirits of the age, a few notes concerning them may be of
interest.

[Illustration: MR. BUCHANAN'S HOUSE.]

A word, first, as to my literary beginnings. I can scarcely remember the
time when the idea of winning fame as an author had not occurred to me,
and so I determined very early to adopt the literary profession, a
determination which I unfortunately carried out, to my own life-long
discomfort, and the annoyance of a large portion of the reading public.
When a boy in Glasgow, I made the acquaintance of David Gray, who was
fired with a similar ambition to fly incontinently to London--

The terrible City whose neglect is Death,
Whose smile is Fame!

and to take it by storm. It seemed so easy! "Westminster Abbey," wrote
my friend to a correspondent; "if I live, I shall be buried there--so
help me God!" "I mean, after Tennyson's death," I myself wrote to Philip
Hamerton, "to be Poet-laureate!" From these samples of our callow
speech, the modesty of our ambition may be inferred. Wel