should have
grown to. . . . See how profoundly shameless I am become when, with
such an audience, I take refuge in the pitiful base argument of my own
weakness! But, my dear, I want you so that nothing else in the world
means anything to me. I want you! and all my life I have wanted you."

"Boy, boy----!" she answered, and her fine hands had come to Wycherley,
as white birds flutter homeward. But even then she had to deliberate
the matter--since the habits of many years are not put aside like
outworn gloves,--and for innumerable centuries, it seemed to him, her
foot tapped on that wetted ledge.

Presently her lashes lifted. "I suppose it would be lacking in
reverence to keep a clergyman waiting longer than was absolutely
necessary?" she hazarded.

A BROWN WOMAN

"_A critical age called for symmetry, and exquisite finish had to be
studied as much as nobility of thought. . . . POPE aimed to take first
place as a writer of polished verse. Any knowledge he gained of the
world, or any suggestion that came to him from his intercourse with
society, was utilized to accomplish his main purpose. To put his
thoughts into choice language was not enough. Each idea had to be put
in its neatest and most epigrammatic form._"

Why did I write? what sin to me unknown
Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own?
As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
The muse but served to ease some friend, not wife,
To help me through this long disease, my life.

* * * * * *

Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,
He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew;
Destroy his fib or sophistry in vain,
The creature's at his foolish work again,
Throned in the centre of his thin designs,
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!

ALEXANDER POPE.--_Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.

A BROWN WOMAN

"But I must be hurrying home now," the girl said, "for it is high time
I were back in the hayfields."

"Fair shepherdess," he implored, "for heaven's sake, let us not cut
short the _pastorelle_ thus abruptly."

"And what manner of beast may that be, pray?"

"'Tis a conventional form of verse, my dear, which we at present
strikingly illustrate. The plan of a _pastorelle_ is simplicity's
self: a gentleman, which I may fairly claim to be, in some fair rural
scene--such as this--comes suddenly upon a rustic maiden of surpassing