Bubbles of the Day.

Adapted for Recital.

Sir Phenix Clearcake. I come with a petition to you-a petition, not parliamentary, but charitable. We propose, my lord, a fancy fair in Guildhall; its object so benevolent, and more than that, so respectable.

Lord Skindeep. Benevolence and respectability! Of course, I'm with you. Well, the precise object?

Sir P. It is to remove a stain-a very great stain-from the city; to give an air of maiden beauty to a most venerable institution; to exercise a renovating taste at a most inconsiderable outlay; to call up, as it were, the snowy beauty of Greece in the coal-smoke atmosphere of London; in a word, my lord-but as yet 'tis a profound secret—it is to paint St. Paul's! To give it a virgin outside-to make it so truly respectable.

Lord S. A gigantic effort!

Sir P. The fancy fair will be on a most comprehensive and philanthropic scale. Every alderman takes a stall; and to give you an idea of the enthusiasm of the city-but this also is a secret-the Lady Mayoress has been up three nights making pincushions.

Lord S. But you don't want me to take a stall—to sell pincushions?

Sir P. Certainly not, my lord. And yet your philanthropic speeches in the House, my lord, convince me that, to obtain a certain good, you would sell anything.

Lord S. Well, well; command me in any way; benevolence is my foible. (Enter CAPT. SMOKE.)

Captain Smoke. We are about to start a company to take on lease Mount Vesuvius for the manufacture of lucifer matches.

Sir P. A stupendous speculation! I should say that, when its countless advantages are duly numbered, it will be found a certain wheel of fortune to the enlightened capitalist.

Smoke. Now, sir, if you would but take the chair at the first meeting-(Aside to Chatham: We shall make it all right about

the shares)-if you would but speak for two or three hours on the social improvement conferred by the lucifer-match, with the monopoly of sulphur secured to the company—a monopoly which will suffer no man, woman, or child to strike a light without our permission.

Chatham. Truly, sir, in such a cause, to such an auditoryI fear my eloquence.

Smoke. Sir, if you would speak well anywhere, there's nothing like first grinding your eloquence on a mixed meeting. Depend upon it, if you can only manage a little humbug with a mob, it gives you great confidence for another place.

Lord Skin. Smoke, never say humbug; it's coarse.

Sir P. And not respectable.

Smoke. Pardon me, my lord, it was coarse. But the fact is, humbug has received such high patronage, that now it's quite classic.

Chat. But why not embark his lordship in the lucifer question?

Smoke. I can't; I have his lordship in three companies already. Three. First, there's a company-half a million capital for extracting civet from assafoetida. The second is a company for a trip all round the world. We propose to hire a three-decker of the lords of the Admiralty, and fit her up with every accommodation for families. We've already advertised for nurses and maids-of-all-work.

Sir P. A magnificent project! And then the fittings up will be so respectable. A delightful billiard-table in the wardroom; with, for the humbler classes, skittles on the orlop-deck. Swings and archery for the ladies, trap-ball and cricket for the children, whilst the marine sportsman will find the stock of gulls unlimited. Weippert's quadrille band is engaged, and— Smoke. For the convenience of lovers, the ship will carry a parson.

Chat. And the object?

Smoke. Pleasure and education. At every new country we shall drop anchor for at least a week, that the children may go to school and learn the language. The trip must answer: 'twill occupy only three years, and we've forgotten nothing to make it delightful-nothing from hot rolls to cork jackets. Brown. And now, sir, the third venture?

Smoke. That, sir, is a company to buy the Serpentine River for a Grand Junction Temperance Cemetery.

Brown. What! so many watery graves?

Smoke. Yes, sir, with floating tombstones. Here's the prospectus. Look here; surmounted by a hyacinth-the very emblem of temperance-a hyacinth flowering in the limpid flood. Now, if you don't feel equal to the lucifers-I know his lordship's goodness-he'll give you up the cemetery. (Aside to Chatham: A family vault as a bonus to the chairman.)

Sir P. What a beautiful subject for a speech! Water-lilies and aquatic plants gemming the translucent crystal, shells of rainbow brightness, a constant supply of gold and silver fish, with the right of angling secured to shareholders. The extent of the river being necessarily limited, will render lying there so select, so very respectable.

NARRATIVE (POETRY).

Little Golden-Hair.

Little Golden-hair was watching, in the window broad and high, For the coming of her father, who had gone the foe to fight: He had left her in the morning, and had told her not to cry, But to have a kiss all ready when he came to her at night. She had wandered all the day,

In her simple childish way,

And had asked, as time went on,

Where her father could have gone :

She had heard the muskets firing, she had counted every one, Till the number grew so many that it was too great a load; Then the evening fell upon her, clear of sound of shot or gun, And she gazed with wistful waiting down the dusty Concord road.

Little Golden-hair had listened, not a single week before, While the heavy sand was falling on her mother's coffin-lid; And she loved her father better for the loss that then she bore, And thought of him, and yearned for him, whatever else she

did.

II

So she wondered all the day
What could make her father stay,
And she cried a little too,

As he told her not to do;

And the sun sank slowly downward, and went grandly out of sight,

And she had the kiss all ready on his lips to be bestowed ; But the shadows made one shadow, and the twilight grew to night,

And she looked, and looked, and listened, down the dusty Concord road.

Then the night grew lighter and lighter, and the moon rose full and round,

In the little sad face peering, looking piteously and mild; Still upon the walks of gravel there was heard no welcome

sound,

And no father came there, eager for the kisses of his child.

Long and sadly did she wait,
Listening at the cottage gate;
Then she felt a quick alarm,

Lest he might have come to harm.

With no bonnet but her tresses, no companion but her fears, And no guide except the moonbeams that the pathway dimly showed,

With a little sob of sorrow, quick she threw away her tears,

And alone she bravely started down the dusty Concord road.

And for many a mile she struggled, full of weariness and pain, Calling loudly for her father, that her voice he might not.

miss;

Till at last, among a number of the wounded and the slain, Was the white face of the soldier, waiting for his daughter's kiss.

Softly to his lips she crept,

Not to wake him as he slept;

Then, with her young heart at rest,
Laid her head upon his breast.

And upon the dead face smiling, with the living one near by, All the night a golden streamlet of the moonbeams gently

flowed;

One to live a lonely orphan, one beneath the sod to lieThey found them in the morning on the dusty Concord road.

A Legend of Bregenz.

(Verse printed as Prose.)

Girt round with rugged mountains the fair Lake Constance lies; in her blue heart reflected, shine back the starry skies. Midnight is there; and Silence, enthroned in heaven, looks down upon her own calm mirror, upon a sleeping town: for Bregenz, that quaint city upon the Tyrol shore, has stood above Lake Constance a thousand years and more.

Far

Mountain and lake and valley a sacred legend know of how the town was saved one night three hundred years ago. from her home and kindred a Tyrol maid had fled, to serve in the Swiss valleys, and toil for daily bread; and every year that fleeted so silently and fast, seemed to bear farther from her the memory of the past. And so she dwelt: the valley more peaceful year by year; when suddenly strange portents of some great deed seemed near.

At

One day, out in the meadow, with strangers from the town some secret plan discussing, the men walked up and down. eve they all assembled; then care and doubt were fled; with jovial laugh they feasted; the board was nobly spread. The elder of the village rose up, his glass in hand, and cried, 'We drink the downfall of an accursed land! The night is growing darker; ere one more day is flown, Bregenz, our foeman's stronghold, Bregenz, shall be our own!'

The women shrank in terror (yet pride, too, had her part), but one poor Tyrol maiden felt death within her heart. Nothing she heard around her (though shouts rang forth again); gone were the green Swiss valleys, the pasture and the plain; before her eyes one vision, and in her heart one cry that said, 'Go forth! save Bregenz, and then, if need be, die!' With trembling haste and breathless, with noiseless step, she sped;