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So tarre, so fast, the eygre drave,
The heart had hardly time to beat
Before a shallow seething wave

Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet:
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee,—
And all the world was in the sea.

Upon the roofe we sate that night;

The noise of bells went sweeping by;

I marked the lofty beacon light

Stream from the church tower, red and high,—

A lurid mark, and dread to see;

And awsome bells they were to mee,
That in the dark rang Enderby.

They rang the sailor lads to guide,

From roofe to roofe who fearless rowed;

And I, my sonne was at my side,

And yet the ruddy beacon glowed;

And yet he moaned beneath his breath, "O, come in life, or come in death!

O lost! my love, Elizabeth!"

And didst thou visit him no more?

Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare, The waters laid thee at his doore

Ere yet the early dawn was clear!
Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,
The lifted sun shone on thy face,
Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.

That flow strewed wrecks about the grass,
That ebbe swept out the flocks to sea,-
A fatal ebbe and flow, alas!

To manye more than myne and mee;
But each will mourne his own (she sayth),
And sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.

I shall never hear her more

By the reedy Lindis shore, "Cusha! Cusha! Cusha!" calling, Ere the early dews be falling;

I shall never hear her song,
"Cusha! Cusha!" all along,
Where the sunny Lindis floweth,
Goeth, floweth,

From the meads where melick groweth,
Where the water winding down,
Onward floweth to the town.

I shall never see her more,

Where the reeds and rushes quiver,
Shiver, quiver,

Stand beside the sobbing river,-
Sobbing, throbbing, in its falling
To the sandy lonesome shore.

Jean Ingelow.

HER FIRST APPEARANCE.

It was the first night of "The Sultana," and every member of the Lester Comic Opera Company, from Lester himself down to the wardrobe woman's son, who would have had to work if his mother lost her place, was sick. with anxiety.

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As Van Bibber passed the stage door, Lester came off the stage and beckoned to him violently. "Come here,' he said, "you ought to see this; the children are doing their turn. You want to hear them. They're great!"

There were over a dozen children before the footlights, with the prima donna in the center. They seemed entirely too much at home and too self-conscious to please Van Bibber, but there was one exception. The one exception was the smallest of them, a very, very little girl, with long auburn hair and black eyes; such a very little girl that every one in the house looked at her first, and then looked at no one else. She had big gentle eyes and two wonderful dimples, and in the excitement of the dancing and the singing, her eyes laughed and flashed, and the dimples deepened and disappeared and reappeared again. She was as happy and innocent looking as though it were nine in the morning and she were playing school at some kindergarten. From all over the house the women were murmuring their delight, and the men were laughing and

pulling their mustaches, and nudging each other to "look at the littlest one.

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There was a roar from the house that went to Lester's head like wine. There were four encores, and then the children came off jubilant and happy, with the littlest girl's arms full of flowers.

Van Bibber hunted up the wardrobe woman, and told her he wanted to meet the littlest girl.

"This is the little girl, sir. Her name is Madeline. Speak to the gentleman, Madeline; he wants to tell you. what a great big hit youse made.'

The little girl was seated on one of the cushions of a double throne, so high from the ground that the young woman who was pulling off the child's silk stockings and putting woolen ones on in their place did so without stooping.

Van Bibber took the littlest girl's small hand in his and shook it solemnly and said, "I am very glad to know you. Can I sit up here beside you, or do you rule alone?"

"Yes, ma'am—yes, sir."

He did not know exactly what to say next, and yet he wanted to talk to the child very much. There was a doll lying on the top of a chest near them, and he picked this up and surveyed it critically. "Is this your doll?"

"No, it's 'at 'ittle durl's; my doll he 's dead." "Dear me!" said Van Bibber, "that 's very sad. dead dolls do come to life again.

But

But Madeline yawned a very polite and sleepy yawn, closed her eyes, and let her curly head fall on his elbow and rest there.

Van Bibber was looking a long way ahead at what the future was to bring to the confiding little being at his side, and of the evil knowledge and temptations that would mar the beauty of her quaintly sweet face, and its strange mark of gentleness and refinement.

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Does she come of professional people?" Van Bibber asked of the wardrobe woman.

"Yes."

"Are-are you her mother?” "No."

"Who is her mother?"

The woman looked at the sleeping child and then up at him, almost defiantly. "Ida Clare was her mother.'

Van Bibber's protecting hand left the child as suddenly as though something had burned it, and he drew back so quickly that her head slipped from his arm, and she awoke and raised her eyes and looked up at him questioningly. He looked back at her with a glance of the strangest concern and of the deepest pity. Then he stooped. and drew her towards him very tenderly, put her head back in the corner of his arm, and watched her in silence while she smiled drowsily and went to sleep again. "And who takes care of her now?" he asked.

"I do," she said.

"After the divorce Ida came to me; I used to be in her company when she was doing 'Aladdin,' and then when I left the stage and started to keep an actors' boarding-house, she came to me. She lived on with us a year, until she died, and she made me the guardian of the child. I train children for the stage, you know, me and my sister, Ada Dyer. You've heard of her, I guess. I'm expecting to get what I spent on her from what she makes on the stage. She's great, she is; she 'll be just as good as her mother was.

Van Bibber winced visibly, but turned it off into a cough. "And her father,—does he-"

"Her father," said the woman, tossing back her head, "he looks after himself, he does. We do n't ask no favors of him. She 'll get along without him or his folks, thank you. Call him a gentleman? Nice gentleman he is! But perhaps he's a friend of yourn?"

"I just know him.'

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Van Bibber sat for several minutes thinking, and then looked up quickly, dropped his eyes again as quickly, and said, with an effort to speak quietly and unconcernedly: "If the little girl is not on in this act, would you mind if I took her home? I have a cab at the stage door, and she's so sleepy it seems a pity to keep her up. The sister you spoke of or some one could put her to bed." "Yes," the woman said doubtfully, "Ada's home. Yes, you can take her around, if you want to."

He stepped into the cab at the stage entrance, and after looking about to see that no one was near enough to hear him, said to the driver: "To the Berkeley Flats, on Fifth avenue." The hall-boy at the Berkeley said, Yes, Mr. Caruthers was in, and the young English servant who opened the hall door to Mr. Caruthers's apartment

watched Van Bibber with alarm as he laid the child on the divan in the hall, and pulled a covert coat from the rack to throw over her.

Mr. Caruthers was standing by the mantel over the empty fireplace, wrapped in a long, loose dressing-gown, which he was tying around him as Van Bibber entered. "Excuse my costume, will you?" he said. "I turned in rather early to-night, it was so hot."

"Yes, it is hot. I was at the first night of 'The Sul tana' this evening.'

"Oh, yes, Lester's new piece. Was it any good?"

"I don't know-yes, I think it was. I did n't see it from the front. There were a lot of children in it-little ones; they danced and sang, and made a great hit. One of them had never been on the stage before. It was her first appearance.

"It seems to me that it is a great pity-I say, it seems a pity that a child like that should be allowed to go on in that business. A grown woman can go into it with her eyes open, or a girl who has had decent training can, too. But it's different with a child. She has no choice in the matter; they do n't ask her permission, and she is n't old enough to know what it means; and she gets used to it and fond of it before she grows to know what the danger is. And then it 's too late. It seemed to me that if there was any one who had the right to stop it, it would be a very good thing to let that person know about her—about this child, I mean; the one who made the hit-before it was too late. It seems to me a responsibility I would n't care to take myself. I would n't care to think that I had the chance to stop it, and had let the chance go by. You know what the life is and what the temptations a woman —I mean we all know—every man knows."

Mr. Caruthers was looking at him with his lips pressed closely together, and his eyebrows drawn into the shape of the letter V. He leaned forward and looked at Van Bibber intently.

"What is all this about? Did you come here, Mr. Van Bibber, simply to tell me this? Why did you come?" "Because of your child."

Young Van Bibber was quite prepared for an outbreak of some sort, and mentally braced himself to receive it. In consequence he was quite unprepared for what fol

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