SCENE.-A small, neat room.

In a high Voltaire chair sits a white-haired old

gentleman.

MONSIEUR VIEUXBOIS.-Babette.

M. VIEUXBOIS (turning querulously).

Day of my life! Where can she get?
BABETTE! I say! BABETTE! BABETTE!

BABETTE (entering hurriedly).

Coming, M'sieu'! If M'sieu' speaks

So loud he won't be well for weeks!

M. VIEUXBOIS.

Where have you been?

BABETTE.

Why, M'sieu' knows:

April!... Ville-d'Avray!... Ma'am'selle ROSE!

་

M. VIEUXBOIS.

Ah! I am old,—and I forget.

Was the place growing green, BABETTE?

ВАВЕТТЕ.

But of a greenness !-yes, M'sieu'!
And then the sky so blue!—so blue!
And when I dropped my immortelle,
How the birds sang!

(Lifting her apron to her eyes.)
This poor Ma'am'selle!

M. VIEUXBOIS.

You're a good girl, BABETTE, but she,

She was an Angel, verily.

Sometimes I think I see her yet

Stand smiling by the cabinet;

And once, I know, she peeped and laughed

Betwixt the curtains . . .

Where's the draught?

(She gives him a cup.)

Now I shall sleep, I think, BABETTE;—
Sing me your Norman chansonnette.

BABETTE (sings).

"Once at the Angelus

(Ere I was dead),

Angels all glorious

Came to my Bed;

Angels in blue and white

Crowned on the Head."

M. VIEUXBOIS (drowsily).

She was an Angel" . . . "Once she laughed".

What, was I dreaming?

Where's the draught?

BABETTE (showing the empty cup).

The draught, M'sieu'?

M. VIEUXBOIS.

How I forget!

I am so old! But sing, BABETTE!

And ROSE!... And O! "the sky so blue!"

BABETTE (sings).

One had my Mother's eyes,

Wistful and mild;

One had my Father's face;

One was a Child:

All of them bent to me,—

Bent down and smiled!"

(He is asleep!)

M. VIEUXBOIS (almost inaudibly).

"How I forget!"

"I am so old". . . "Good night, BABETTE!"

À

A DEAD LETTER.

coeur blessé-l'ombre et le silence.'-H. DE BALzac.

I.

I drew it from its china tomb;

It came out stained and dusky, Still haunted by some thin perfume That years ago was musky.

An old, old letter,-folded still!
To read with due composure
I sought the sun-lit window-sill
Above the gray enclosure,

That glimmering in the sultry haze
Faint-flowered, dimly shaded,

Slumbered like Goldsmith's Madam Blaize,
Bedizened and brocaded.

A queer old place! you'd surely say
Some tea-board garden-maker
Had planned it in Dutch William's day
To please some florist Quaker.

So trim it was, the yew-trees still
With pious care perverted,

Grew in the same grim shapes; and still
The lipless dolphin spurted.

Still in his wonted state abode
The broken-nosed Apollo;
And still the cypress-arbor showed

The same umbrageous hollow.

66

4

Only,—as fresh young beauty gleams

From coffee-colored laces,

So peeped from its old-fashioned dreams
The fresher modern traces;

For idle mallet, hoop, and ball
Upon the lawn were lying;
A magazine, a tumbled shawl,

Round which the swifts were flying;

And tossed beside the Guelder Rose
A heap of rainbow knitting,
Where blinking in her pleased repose,
A Persian cat was sitting.

A place to live in,-live, for aye,
If we too like Tithonus,

Could find some God to stretch the gray
Scant life the Fates have thrown us;

But now by steam we run our race
With buttoned heart and pocket;
Our love's a gilded surplus grace,—
Just like an empty locket.

The time is out of joint. Who will,
May strive to make it better;
For me this warm old window-sill

And this old dusty letter.

II.

'Dear John (the letter ran), it can't, can't be,
For Father's gone to Chorley Fair with Sam,
And Mother's storing apples,-Prue and me
Up to our elbows making Damson Jam :

But we shall meet before a week is gone,—

'Tis a long lane that has no turning,' John!