olves pursued.

Fierce the father and grim with want,
His heart is gnawed by the spectres gaunt.

Frenzied stealing forth by night,
With whetted knife, to the desperate fight,

He thought to strike the spectres dead,
But he smites his brother man instead.

O you that listen to stories told,
When hearths are cheery and nights are cold,

Weep no more at the tales you hear,
The danger is close and the wolves are near.

Shudder not at the murderer's name,
Marvel not at the maiden's shame.

Pass not by with averted eye
The door where the stricken children cry.

But when the beat of the unseen feet
Sounds by night through the stormy street,

Follow thou where the spectres glide;
Stand like Hope by the mother's side;

And be thyself the angel sent
To shield the hapless and innocent.

He gives but little who gives his tears,
He gives his best who aids and cheers.

He does well in the forest wild
Who slays the monster and saves the child;

But he does better, and merits more,
Who drives the wolf from the poor man's door.

* * * * *

A STORY OF TO-DAY.

PART III.

Now that I have come to the love part of my story, I am suddenly
conscious of dingy common colors on the palette with which I have been
painting. I wish I had some brilliant dyes. I wish, with all my heart, I
could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which the souls of our
grandmothers delighted,--the time which Dr. Johnson sat up all night to
read about in "Evelina,"--the time when all the celestial virtues, all
the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state to man through the
blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman or Lord Mortimer.
None of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villains then! It made your
hair stand on end only to read of them,--dyed at their birth clear
through with Pluto's blackest poison, going about perpetually seeking
innocent maidens and unsophisticated old men to devour. That was the
time for holding up virtue and vice; no trouble then in seeing which
were sheep and which were goats! A person could write a story with a
moral to it, then, I should hope! People that were born in those days
had no fancy for going through the world with half-and-half characters,
such as we put up with; so Nature turned out complete specimens of each
class, with all the appendages of dress, fortune, _et cetera_, chording
dece