him, kicked away the ladder, which fell on the grass, and clapping his hands, shouted, —

"Hurrah for General Lafayette!" This explosion over, he said, "Boys, you are in my house."

Gavroche was, in fact, at home. Unexpected utility of the useless! This huge moldering monument had become a shelter for a street boy. Many who passed by the Elephant of the Bastille would cast at it a contemptuous glance and say, "Of what use is this great ugly thing?" That great thing had its use. It served to save from cold, from frost, from rain, to preserve from sleeping in the mud and the snow, a little fatherless, motherless boy, without bread or shelter.

[Translated and adapted

by M. C. Pyle.]

THE RAINY DAY.

VICTOR HUGO.

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary ;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

We found our boat in the dawn just as we had left it, and as if waiting for us, there on the shore, in autumn, all cool and dripping with dew, and our tracks still fresh in the wet sand around it, the fairies all gone or concealed.

Before five o'clock we pushed it into the fog, and leaping in, at one shove we were out of sight of the

shores, and began to sweep downward with the rushing river, keeping a sharp lookout for rocks.

We could see only the yellow gurgling water, and a solid bank of fog on every side forming a small yard around us.

• We soon passed the mouth of the Souhegan and the village of Merrimac, and as the mist gradually rolled away, we were relieved from the trouble of watching for rocks. And we saw by the flitting clouds, by the

first russet tinge on the hills, by the rushing river, by the cottages on the shore itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later in the day, by the hue of the grapevine, the goldfinch on the willow, and the flickers flying in flocks, we saw that the Fall had

commenced.

The cottages looked more snug and comfortable, and their inhabitants were seen only for a moment, and then went quietly in and shut the door, retreating inward to the haunts of summer.

"And now the cold autumnal dews are seen

To cobweb every green;

And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear
The fast declining year."

We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and even the water had acquired a grayer hue. Sumach, grape, and maple were already changed, and the milkweed had turned to a deep, rich yellow.

In all the woods the leaves were fast ripening for their fall. Their full veins and lively gloss mark the ripe leaf, and not the seared ones of the poets; and we knew that the maples, stripped of their leaves among the earliest, would soon stand like a wreath of smoke along the edges of the meadows.

Already the cattle were heard to low wildly in their pastures and along the highways, restlessly running

to and fro, as if in apprehension of the withering grass and of the approach of winter.

Our thoughts, too, began to rustle.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

EVENING.

The evening comes, the fields are still.
The tinkle of the thirsty rill,
Unheard all day, ascends again;
Deserted is the half-mown plain,
Silent the swaths! the ringing wain,
The mower's cry, the dog's alarms,
All housed within the sleeping farms!
The business of the day is done,
The last-left haymaker is gone.
And from the thyme upon the height
And from the elder-blossom white
. And pale dog-roses in the hedge,
And from the mint-plant in the sedge,
In puffs of balm the night air blows
The perfume which the day foregoes.
And on the pure horizon far,
See, pulsing with the first-born star,
The liquid sky above the hill!

The evening comes, the fields are still.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.