BY CARLOTTA PERRY.

‘Twas the height of the gay season, and I cannot tell the reason,

But at a dinner party given by Mrs. Major Thwing

It became my pleasant duty to take out a famous beauty—

The prettiest woman present. I was happy as a king.

Her dress beyond a question was an artist’s best creation;

A miracle of loveliness was she from crown to toe.

Her smile was sweet as could be, her voice just as it should be—

Not high, and sharp, and wiry, but musical and low.

Her hair was soft and flossy, golden, plentiful and glossy;

Her eyes, so blue and sunny, shone with every inward grace;

I could see that every fellow in the room was really yellow

With jealousy, and wished himself that moment in my place.

As the turtle soup we tasted, like a gallant man I hasted

To pay some pretty tribute to this muslin, silk, and gauze;

But she turned and softly asked me—and I own the question tasked me—

What were my fixed opinions on the present Suffrage laws.

I admired a lovely blossom resting on her gentle bosom;

The remark I thought a safe one—I could hardly made a worse;

With a smile like any Venus, she gave me its name and genus,

And opened very calmly a botanical discourse.

But I speedily recovered. As her taper fingers hovered,

Like a tender benediction, in a little bit of fish,

Further to impair digestion, she brought up the Eastern Question.

By that time I fully echoed that other fellow’s wish.

And, as sure as I’m a sinner, right on through that endless dinner

Did she talk of moral science, of politics and law,

Of natural selection, of Free Trade and Protection,

Till I came to look upon her with a sort of solemn awe.

Just to hear the lovely woman, looking more divine than human,

Talk with such discrimination of Ingersoll and Cook,

With such a childish, sweet smile, quoting Huxley, Mill, and Carlyle—

It was quite a revelation—it was better than a book.

Chemistry and mathematics, agriculture and chromatics,

Music, painting, sculpture—she knew all the tricks of speech;

Bas-relief and chiaroscuro, and at last the Indian Bureau—

She discussed it quite serenely, as she trifled with a peach.

I have seen some dreadful creatures, with vinegary features,

With their fearful store of learning set me sadly in eclipse;

But I’m ready quite to swear if I have ever heard the Tariff

Or the Eastern Question settled by such a pair of lips.

Never saw I a dainty maiden so remarkably o’erladen

From lip to tip of finger with the love of books and men;

Quite in confidence I say it, and I trust you’ll not betray it,

But I pray to gracious heaven that I never may again.

—_Chicago Tribune._

THE BALLAD OF CASSANDRA BROWN.

BY HELEN GRAY CONE.

Though I met her in the summer, when one’s heart lies ‘round at ease,

As it were in tennis costume, and a man’s not hard to please;

Yet I think at any season to have met her was to love,

While her tones, unspoiled, unstudied, had the softness of the dove.

At request she read us poems, in a nook among the pines,

And her artless voice lent music to the least melodious lines;

Though she lowered her shadowing lashes, in an earnest reader’s wise,

Yet we caught blue gracious glimpses of the heavens that were her eyes.

As in Paradise I listened. Ah, I did not understand

That a little cloud, no larger than the average human hand,

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