“I have a letter,” he said, “from the Russian ambassador, a part of which I am unable to translate.  A Russian lady is to play the piano there this evening, and I shall ask her to help me out.”  Mr. Plagemann could not go, and, as so often before, Mr. Mickley started out alone.  Just before reaching the house of Mr. Hopkinson he was taken suddenly ill, and, chancing to be close by the residence of his physician, Dr. Meigs, he stopped there and rang the bell.  As the door opened, he said in husky tones, “I am suffocating.”  He walked in and ascended the stairs without assistance.  Then he said, “Take me to a window.”  As this was being done, he fell back insensible into the arms of the attendants, and, a few minutes later, breathed his last.

Thus, on the very western edge of fourscore years, ended this long and industrious, this peaceful and beautiful life.  In our land of busy and constant action there have been few like it,—­surely none happier.  Serene at the close as it was placid in its course, its lot had been cast ever between quiet shores, which it enriched on either hand with its accumulated gifts of knowledge and of taste.  And at the close of it all there could be no happier eulogy than the one modestly yet comprehensively delivered by his old and congenial friend William E. Dubois, himself since summoned to take the same mysterious journey.  “In fine,” says he, “Mr. Mickley seemed superior to any meanness; free from vulgar passions and habits, from pride and vanity, from evil speaking and harsh judging.  He was eminently sincere, affable, kind, and gentle:  in the best sense of the word he was a gentleman.”

J. BUNTING.

* * * * *

ROSE ROMANCE.

Two roses, freshly sweet and rare,
  Bloomed in the dewy morning
On neighboring bushes green and fair,
  One garden-bed adorning. 
“Ah!” sighed the pair, “what joy, what pride. 
  If on one branch together
We two were growing side by side
  Through all this golden weather!”

There came a youth who roughly tore
  The roses from their bowers,
And to his sweetheart proudly bore
  The two fair, fragrant flowers. 
Upon her bosom with delight
  They bloomed,—­but not forever: 
They faded—­ah! but, rapture bright,
  They faded there together.

ADA NICHOLS.

* * * * *

THE WHITE WHATERS.

“Down with her!  Hard!” came hoarsely through the mist.

An oil-skinned figure threw himself heavily upon the oar; the little craft rounded tremblingly up into the wind, hurling clouds of spray and foam aloft that were borne far away by the whistling breeze.  For a moment the sail beat furiously, as if in protest at this infringement upon its privileges, then a second oil-skin—­the cause of all this commotion—­raised his arms, a steel spear flashed, a willowy pole trembled in the air, a quick movement, a roar of rushing waters, a shower of spray that drenched the craft, a sound of escaping steam or hissing rope, and a white whale had been struck by Captain Sol Gillis, of Bic.