“Would you like to be a missionary, little spring?” Aurora asked, bending toward it.  “Many will call you blessed, and the image of your Master will forever look down upon you.”

The artist looked at her in surprise and smiling admiration.  He had found her a very dignified lady, and this unexpected turn reminded him that she was a poetess as well as a duchess.

“What does it say?” D’Rubiera asked.

She took his arm, smiled into his face, but made no answer.

They went back to the carriage, took leave of their artist, and drove slowly to the town.

“I hope that mamma likes the idea of the fountain,” the duchess said thoughtfully.

MARY AGNES TINCKER.

[THE END.]

* * * * *

EPITAPH WRITTEN IN THE SAND ON A BUTTERFLY DROWNED IN THE SEA.

  Poor Psyche, to a Power supernal wed,
    How strong a fate on this thy frailness fell! 
  What strange ironic word shall here be read? 
    Dead sign of immortality, farewell!

  I sigh not that the summer fields have lost
    One flying flower:  who counts the butterflies? 
  I sigh not that thy sunny hour was crossed: 
    The self-same Shadow surely waits mine eyes,

  Thy piteous terror of the appointed end,
    For this I sigh!  The billow, poised above,
  Fell on thee like a beast that leaps to rend: 
    Thou couldst not know thy bridegroom Death was Love!

  How otherwise thy sister, yea, the Soul,
    Bent brooding o’er these broken wings of thine! 
  Through all her house of mystery once she stole
    To the inmost room, and found a Face benign.

  Now whirl her where ye must, ye waves of Law,—­
    Ay, tear her vans, her painted hopes, apart! 
  She cannot fear, remembering what she saw: 
    Dark bridegroom Death, she knows thee who thou art!

HELEN GRAY CONE.

* * * * *

THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST.

TWO PAPERS.—­I.

It is related of Daniel Boone that when (in 1764) he climbed to the summit of the Alleghanies and looked down upon the vast herds of deer and buffalo that were grazing at his feet, he said to his companion Callaway, “I am richer than the man in Scripture who owned the cattle on a thousand hills:  I own the wild beasts in a thousand valleys.”

It may be questioned if Boone had an adequate conception of the stupendous possessions of the “man in Scripture,” but he was certainly justified in boasting of the wide magnificence of this domain which, by right of discovery, he claimed as his own.  An Indian might have told him that it would require “three moons, two paddles, and two stout braves” to skirt its southern and western boundaries and reach its northern limit on the Ohio; but no phraseology