ed and alone,
Yet shall the great God turn thy fate,
And bring thee back into thy monarch's state
And majesty immaculate;
So, through hot waverings of the August morn,
A vision of great treasuries of corn
Thou bearest in thy vasty sides forlorn,
For largesse to some future bolder heart
That manfully shall take thy part,
And tend thee,
And defend thee,
With antique sinew and with modern art.

SIDNEY LANIER.

GENTLEMAN DICK.

They had, all of them, nicknames themselves, for in a Colorado
mining-community it was not difficult to acquire a title, and they
called him Gentleman Dick. It was rather an odd name, to be sure, but it
was very expressive, and conveyed much of the prevailing opinion and
estimate of its owner. They laughed when he expressed a desire to join
the party in Denver, and Old Platte looked at his long, delicate hands,
so like a woman's, with a smile of rough, good-humored pity, mingled,
perhaps, with a shade of contempt for the habits and occupation that had
engendered such apparent effeminacy. But he pleaded so earnestly and
talked with such quiet energy and confidence of what he could and would
do, and moreover had about him so much of that spirit of subdued
_bonhomie_ that always captivates the roughest of the rough, that
they relented, took his money and put it in the "pot," and informed him
that he was one of them. Their decision was not altogether unconnected
with the fact that he had given evidence of considerable surgical skill
in his treatment of Mr. Woods, more familiarly known as "Short-card
William," who had been shot a week or so previously over a game of poker
by an independent bull-whacker whom he had attempted to defraud. The
sense of the community had sustained the act; and while the exhibition
of his skill in dealing was universally condemned as having been
indiscreet under the circumstances, still he was accounted a live man
among them, and the discovery of a surgeon to dress his wound was hailed
with a somewhat general feeling of relief. Had it not been for the fact
that the sobriquet of Gentleman Dick was already conferred and accepted
universally as his name, he certainly would not have escaped that of
"Doctor," and as it was, Mr. Woods, who was profuse as well as profane
in his gratitude, insisted upon so calling him. A doctor, or anything
bearing even a resemblance to a member of that sadly-represented
profession,