"Oh, molecules! They are little wee things, and it takes ever so many of them. They are splendid things. Do you know, there ain't anything but what's got molecules in it. And Mr. Cook is just as sweet as he can be, and Mr. Emerson too. They explain everything so beautifully."

"How I'd like to go there!" said the Brooklyn girl, enviously.

"You'd enjoy it ever so much. They teach protoplasm, too, and if there is one thing perfectly heavenly it's protoplasm. I really don't know which I like best, protoplasm or molecules."

"Tell me about protoplasm.

adore it."

I know I should

'Deed you would. It's just too sweet to live. You know it's about how things get started, or something of that kind. You ought to hear Mr. Emerson tell about it. It would stir your very soul. The first time he explained about protoplasm there wasn't a dry eye in the house. We named our hats after him. This is an Emerson hat. You see the ribbon is drawn over the crown and caught with a buckle and a bunch of flowers. Then you turn up the side with a spray of forget-me-nots. Ain't it just too sweet? All the girls in

the school have them.'

"How exquisitely lovely! Tell me some more science."

"Oh, I almost forgot about differentiation! I am really and truly positively in love with differentiation. It's different from molecules and protoplasm, but it's every bit as nice. And Mr. Cook! You should hear him go on about it. I really believe he's perfectly bound up in it. This scarf is the Cook scarf. All the girls wear them, and we named them after him just on account of the interest he takes in differentiation."

"What is it, anyway?"

"This is mull, trimmed with Languedoc lace-❞ "I don't mean that-that other."

"Oh, differentiation! Ain't it sweet? It's got something to do with species. It's the way you tell one hat from another, so you'll know which is becoming. And

we learn all about ascidians too. They are the divinest things! I'm absolutely enraptured with ascidians. If I only had an ascidian of my own! I wouldn't ask anything else in the world."

"What do they look like, dear? Did you ever see one?" asked the Brooklyn girl, deeply interested.

"Oh no; nobody ever saw one, except Mr. Cook and Mr. Emerson, but they are something like an oyster with a reticule hung on its belt. I think they are just heavenly."

"Do you learn anything else besides?"

"Oh, yes. We learn about common philosophy and logic, and those common things like metaphysics; but the girls don't care anything about those. We are just in ecstasies over differentiations and molecules, and Mr. Cook and protoplasms, and ascidians and Mr. Emerson, and I really don't see why they put in those vulgar branches. If anybody besides Mr. Cook and Mr. Emerson had done it, we should have told him to his face that he was too terribly awfully mean." And the Brooklyn girl went to bed that night in the dumps, because fortune had not vouchsafed her the advantages enjoyed by her friend.

THE OWL CRITIC.

JAMES T. Field.

"WHO stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in the shop;

The barber was busy and he couldn't stop;

The customers, waiting their turn, were all reading
The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding

The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;

And the barber kept on shaving.

"Don't you see, Mister Brown,"
Cried the youth, with a frown,
"How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is,

How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is,

In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis ! I make no apology;

I've learned owl eology.

I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections

Arising from unskilful fingers that fail

To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown

Do take that bird down,

Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"I've studied owls, and other night fowls,
And I tell you what I know to be true;

An owl cannot roost with his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted, ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed into that attitude.
He can't do it, because 'tis against all bird laws.
Anatomy teaches, ornithology preaches,
An owl has a toe that can't turn out so!

I've made the white owl my study for years,

And to see such a job almost moves me to tears. Mister Brown, I'm amazed you should be so gone crazed As to put up a bird in that posture absurd!

To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;

The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!" And the barber kept on shaving.

"Examine tnose eyes, I'm filled with surprise Taxidermists should pass off on you such poor glass; So unnatural they seem they'd make Audubon scream, And John Burroughs laugh to encounter such chaff. Do take that bird down; have him stuffed again, Brown!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"With some sawdust and bark I could stuff in the dark
An owl better than that, I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff, like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."
Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch.
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
"Your learning's at fault this time, anyway;
Don't waste it again on a live bird I pray.

I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-day!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"GOOD NIGHT, SWEETHEART."

"Good night, sweetheart!" he softly said,
And held her tight.

Upon his breast she bowed her head
And sighed: "Good night!"

He clasped her close:

"Good night!" said he

In tender tones.

"Good night!" once more responded she,
'My love! my own!"

And then:

"Good night, my own dear love!"

Again said he.

More softly than a cooing dove,

"Good night!" said she.

But whether he said so again
I cannot say.

For I got tired of listening then,
And came away.

MR. PICKWICK'S ROMANTIC ADVENTURE WITH A MIDDLE-AGED LADY.

CHARLES DICKENS.

"Dear me, it's time to go to bed. It will never do, sitting here. I shall be pale to-morrow, Mr. Pickwick.'

At the bare notion of such a calamity, Mr. Peter Magnus tang the bell for the chambermaid; and the striped bag, the red bag, the leather hat-box, and the brown-paper parcel, having been conveyed to his bedroom, he retired in company with a japanned candlestick to one side of the house, while Mr. Pickwick and another japanned candle-stick were conducted through a multitude of tortuous windings to another.

"This is your room, sir," said the chambermaid.

"Very well," replied Mr. Pickwick, looking around him. It was a tolerably large double-bedded room, with a fire; upon the whole, a more comfortable-looking apartment than Mr. Pickwick's short experience of the accommodations of the Great White Horse had led him to expect.

"Nobody sleeps in the other bed, of course," said Mr. Pickwick.

"Oh, no, sir."

"Very good. Tell my servant to bring me up some hot water at half-past eight in the morning, and that I shall not want him any more to-night."

"Yes sir." And bidding Mr. Pickwick good-night, the chambermaid retired, and left him alone.

Mr. Pickwick sat himself down in a chair before the fire, and fell into a train of rambling meditations. First he thought of his friends, and wondered when they would join him; then his mind reverted to Mrs. Martha Bardell; and from that lady it wandered, by a natural process, to the dingy counting house of Dodson and Fogg. From Dodson and Fogg's it flew off at a tangent to the very centre of the history of the queer client; and then it came back to the Great White Horse