For him that died the death on Carrisbool?

It was not that; nor was it, by the way,

1 A Shrawn is a pure Gaelic noise, something like a groan, more like a shriek, and most like a sigh of longing.

2 Eire was daughter of Carne, King of Connaught. Her lover, Murdh of the Open Hand, was captured by Greatcoat Mackintosh, King of Ulster, on the Plain of Carrisbool, and made into soup. Eire's grief on this sad occasion has become proverbial..

3 Garnim was second cousin to Manannan

MacLir. His sons were always sad about something. There were twenty-two of them, and they were all unfortunate in love at the same time, just like a chorus at the opera. "Blitherin' their drool" is about the same as "dreeing their weird."

The Shee (or "Sidhe," as I should properly spell it if you were not so ignorant) were, as everybody knows, the regular, stand-pat, organization fairies of Erin. The Crowdie was their annual convention, at which they made

The Sons of Garnim3 blitherin' their
drool;

Nor was it any Crowdie of the Shee,4
Or Itt, or Himm, nor wail of
Barryhoos

For Barrywhich that stilled the tongue
of me.

'T was but my own heart cryin' out
for you,

Magraw! Bulleen, Shinnanigan, Boru,
Aroon, Machree, Aboo!7

melancholy sounds. The Itt and Himm were the irregular or insurgent fairies. They never got any offices or patronage. See MacAlester, "Polity of the Sidhe of West Meath," page 985. 5 The Barryhoo is an ancient Celtic bird about the size of a Mavis, with lavender eyes and a black-crape tail. It continually mourns its mate (Barrywhich, feminine form), which has an hereditary predisposition to an early and tragic demise and invariably dies first.

6 Magraw, a Gaelic term of endearment, often heard on the base-ball fields of Donnybrook.

7 These last six words are all that tradition has preserved of the original incantation by means of which Irish rats were rhymed to death. Thereby hangs a good Celtic tale, which I should be glad to tell you in this note; but the editor says that being prosed to death is as bad as being rhymed to death, and that his readers won't stand for any more.

ON Lethra's edge, I pause to ponder Vast. . . . Cataclyzed. . . Alone. Templed in fancy by the fabled few, Who in th' Illyrian tempest shed

For him their lives . . Lost, and yet not. ;.; Why lost,

When God's sun tips these Speaking rocks Blood-color in their memory?

On Lethra's edge:-and then I fall
(In fancy only) to the shades

Pale pink and haunted in the void
beneath.

A TRUE friend ought to be a buried

treasure that you can dig up hurriedly when you need it. I found Sam true when I had to excavate for him, but deep. How thankful I am!

This is how it all happened, beginning before it really began. Sam's mother and my mother decided to take the old rockaway and drive down Providence Road ten miles into Cherry Valley to see Sam's Great-aunt Daphne Berry, and they took me for company for Sam, because he had to drive and did n't want to do it. Not many fifteen-year-old boys would have considered an eleven-year-old child company, especially if she was a girl, but Sam has always been kind to me. Up to that time and after, he was the only friend I had in the wide world, and it was hard on him; but Sam was that freckle-faced, widemouthed, strong kind of boy that could stand responsibilities like tagging girls. Sam is remarkable.

Sam's Aunt Daphne is a most beautiful and romantic spinster lady over whom I had been dreaming ever since I had first heard about the Letter, that very spring. It was written to her mother by the great American Lover, and she had always kept it in a brocade case, and everybody says she has refused to marry

on account of nobody, in her mind, reaching the standard of the Letter. He had danced with her mother, Sam's greatgrandmother, in Louisville, on his way to Louisiana, and had written her that he was going to stop as he came back, "to drink again from the cup of your stargemmed eyes and-" That was all the Letter I got, on account of the skunk, and I have thirsted for more ever since. My young heart pitifully idealized that beautiful great-grandmother, but I still wish. she had n't married Sam's ancestor and had nine children, even if, on that account, I should have had to run the risk of Sam's being somebody else.

"Yes, I will show the Letter to Margaret, for I see in her eyes the soul to reverence it," said Miss Daphne, who was so stately and wonderful that I held my breath with worshipful awe of her.

"Margaret is a good child, and always has clean hands if she has been separated from Sam for half an hour," said Sam's mother, with a laugh, as she took out her lace crocheting and began to teach my mother a new stitch.

"I wish her legs would fill out a little," answered my mother as she began to count stitches. "She runs them thin after Sam, I'm afraid." Then they both laughed.

How could I tell

They were cruel. them that I ran Sam's bidding because he was the only person in the wide world who did n't laugh at what they all called my "mooning"? He hardly ever paid any attention to beautiful thoughts I expressed to him, but sometimes he 'd kindly say "Bully!" about a gorgeous sunset that we faced coming home from some of his business in the north woods lot. Once he let me read to him all about "Ah, Sir Launcelot, there thou liest," and his face got white and worked deliciously. He never would let me do it again. However, I feel sure that one time did incalculable good.

"Now, sit here in the library window and don't let a breeze even flutter It. Remember how old and frail It is," said Miss Daphne as she handed me the soft brocaded case that looked and smelled like a bunch of faded roses; and with a wonderful sympathy for me in her old eyes, which still held a spark in them, she left me alone with the Letter. I felt as if all the outdoors June came tiptoeing in the window to hover softly about me and peep as I drew the thin, yellow slip out of the case, and with beating heart and trembling fingers opened It against my knee. It began:

Gracious and Most Lovely Lady:

Greetings! It is well nigh certain that I return through Transylvania to drink again from the cup of your star-gemmed eyes and

exterior, we both had to have terrible things done to us to remove the odor. I can never forget it, and it still makes me fearfully ill.

I told Miss Daphne, as she stood over the negro woman in the woodshed who was doing the things to me and my clothes, that the Letter was on the window-sill in the library, and she went hurriedly to get It. She never knew that I had n't read It. I was thankful for that, because suppose she had offered to read It to me the next day, when I was still sick from the kerosene smell in my hair and faint remaining traces of that terrible animal! Only Sam knew of my great disappointment, because he found me weeping bitterly out under the old white lilacbush, with my face pressed into one of its fragrant, low branches that seemed to bend down to comfort me with its beautiful odor.

When I sobbed out how I felt about not reading the rest of It, he got red, so that his freckles stood out worse than usual, and begged me to forgive him. I did. Then I asked him never to mention it to me again, and he never has—that is, the skunk part.

He spent the dollar Miss Daphne gave him buying me a beautiful box with a cake of sweet soap and two bottles of lilac perfume in it. I still think that was a sympathetic and tactful present at fifteen, but Sam gets angry if I mention it now. Also, I shall always like lilac soap.

Several years then flew by me on dream wings through misty, golden, and adventurous months. My mother still crocheted and laughed when I let escape any of the mysterious things that seemed to fill my days and me full of an excitement that partook of both sorrows and happinesses, especially if she found one of my emotions expressed in the form of a poem. Through it all Sam's mother advised her about such things as when to let down my dresses, and it was she, with her own hair-pins, who tucked up my hair the first time it ever happened.

"Is n't she going to be a lovely dear? Look at her, Sam!" she said as she stood away from me, with her arms raised, holding up her own hair, and smiling widely at us both. Sam gets his mouth from his mother.

"Shoo, Fly!" said Sam, rudely, as he