and could not have remained for one minute such as he was when he died; but as out of nothing he became a suckling, out of a suckling, a child, so from a child he would have become a school-boy, a youth, a young man, an adult, middle-aged and old. You do not know what he would have been had he remained alive. But I do know."

Behold! the mother sees in the private room of a restaurant glaringly lighted with electricity (once her husband had taken her to such a place) a table with the remains of supper, and she sees a stout, wrinkled, repulsive old man with up-curled moustaches, trying to make himself look young. He is seated deeply in a soft arm-chair and with drunken eyes voraciously staring at a depraved, painted woman with a fat bare neck, and in a drunken voice he keeps shouting out some indecent jest, evidently pleased at the approving laughter of another similar couple.

"It is not true, it is not he, it is not my Kostia!" exclaims the mother with horror looking at the nasty old man so horrible, precisely because in his gaze-in his lips-there is something peculiar reminding her of Kostia. It is well this is a dream, thinks she. Here is the true Kostia. And she sees the white little naked Kostia with his plump breast sitting in his bath roaring with laughter and kicking up his legs, she not only sees but feels him suddenly catching hold of her arm uncovered up to the elbow and kissing it and finally biting it, not knowing what more he can do with the arm so dear to him.

Yes, this is Kostia and not that dreadful old man," she says to herself. And with these words she awakes and with horror recognizes the reality from which there is no awakening.

She goes into the nursery. The nurse has already washed and dressed Kostia. With wax-like and shrunken little nose, with hollows by the nostrils, and with hair flattened down from the forehead he is lying on some elevation. Candles are burning around, and on a little table behind his head are standing white lilac and pink hyacinths. The nurse gets up from her chair and raising her brows and pursing her lips looks at the immovable stone-like little face turned upwards. From another door opposite the mother, Matryosha enters with her good-natured simple face and tear marked-eyes.

"How is it she told me one should not grieve and yet she

has herself been crying," thinks the mother, and she again turns her eyes to the body. For one moment she is struck and repelled by a dreadful resemblance between the little dead face and the face of the old man she saw in her dream, but she casts off this thought and crossing herself touches the cold little wax forehead with her warm lips, then she kisses the folded cold hands, and suddenly the smell of the hyacinths appears to tell her something new about his being no longer and never more to be, and she is choked with sobs, and once more kisses him on the forehead, and for the first time she weeps, she weeps not with hopeless, but with submissive and contrite tears. It hurts her, but she is no longer rebellious, does not complain, but knows that what has happened should have happened and is therefore good.

"It is a sin, lady, to weep," says the nurse, and approaching the little corpse she wipes with a folded handkerchief the mother's tears which had fallen on Kostia's waxen forehead. "Tears will oppress his little soul. He is happy. A sinless little angel. Had he lived, who knows what might have happened ?"

"That is so. That is so. But still it hurts, it hurts!" says

the mother.

SOURS AND SWEETS

Dulcia non meruit qui non gustavit amara.

How oft the lesson of our lives

This ancient saw repeats :

"He only who hath drunk the sours
Hath merited the sweets."

Thus children in stern Spartan homes
On stirabout are fed,

And not till then dare they aspire
To tea and jam-strewn bread.

And yet I fear in one respect

My illustration halts-

My jam of old was harder earned

By senna and by salts.

W. L.

WHERE BEAUTY BIDES

A LAND of singing waters
Looms ever on my sight
Whose opal-tinted dawnings

Break through the web of night.
The sound of linnets' piping
Makes rhythmical the air,
For all the swaying branches
Hold bird-musicians there.

Its cloudless sky is sapphire

With gold and crimson flecked,

And all its purple mountains

With heather blooms are decked.

The fair, bee-haunted valleys
With pearly dews are wet,
And thronged with fragrant odours
Of rose and violet.

I would that every mortal
Had magic like to this-
To see through gates of fancy
This land's unsullied bliss;
That ear of man might listen
To woodland idyls sweet,
And know the joy of feasting
On happiness complete.

For day and night unending

Soft strains of harpings rise
Above the flowery meadows
Whose glamour never dies.
There no complainings enter,
No whispers of regret-
To him who feels its beauty,

Whose soul to song is set.

WILLIAM O'NEILL.

ANOTHER CONTRIBUTOR ON HOBBIES

TH

HE pleasant article on the above topic, in the November issue of this magazine, has set me thinking of four familiar hobbies, quite after the manner recommended in the text.

Beyond a doubt, the hobby that is also a duty is the most satisfactory steed of all, one's conscience trots along with it so willingly. It carries one through very pleasant country too, the scenery of which grows more interesting at every turn, with unexpected beauties developing in all directions. However, as time goes on, "the old order changeth giving place to new;" and it behoves one to look about for other interests to fill the later days. None can be found more fascinating than the cultivation of flowers. Not the splendid orchids or gloxinias, with their conservatories and professional attendants; but the sturdy, out-door kinds, that yield their best results to one's own personal labour. To enjoy this hobby to the full, one must go forth in strong boots and gloves, with stout old garments and reliable tools, and work at the garden oneself. If the friendly "handy-man" does the rough trenching and preparation of the ground, it is enough; unless indeed he gathers up the fallen leaves in autumn, and heaps them together, with an occasional turn-over during winter. Then, by planting-time, one has ideal feeding for one's favourites.

Amongst the simple, strong subjects, that one can grow from earliest infancy in the seed-pan, and make personal friends of as they develop, let me mention two that never fail the wallflower and the polyanthus. There is a splendid bronze variety of the former, and an equally fine dark crimson a well-grown bed of either in the spring time does one's heart good to see, when perhaps one is lonely for a former hobby and is grateful to the cheery comforter. The polyanthus at its best is lovelier still, and is not perhaps so often seen in full perfection. Get good seed, dear reader (the big "invincible giants"), sow them thinly in the month of May, and prick them out with kindly care-seeds crowded together in their

early days will never flourish; they grow up pale and weak and anky, like poor children in the slums.

The present writer takes up the little seedlings with a teaspoon, and planting each one firmly in new quarters, she follows it home with the said tea-spoon full of water, and it never knows that it has been disturbed. If thus attended to, the two perennials above mentioned will give you an April garden, that for colour and fragrance cannot be excelled. In summer time the flowers are legion: if you possess a green-house, even a cold one, to store them during winter, the ivy-leaf geraniums will cover your beds with every shade of rose, from palest pink to richest crimson, and will blossom steadily from June to the November frosts.

Garden-literature is rather fashionable now, the Poet Laureate leading the way. In a clever book just issued, there appears a bright old lady, a lover of horticulture, who declares that a good seed catalogue is better company than the most exciting novel! I can bear witness to that. When the new year opens and the catalogues come in, how full they are of wonderful surprises! It is simply delightful to peep into them, to examine the illustrations (sometimes rather flattering, Mr. Seedsman!) to turn to one's favourites upon the list, and look up any novelties that may have made their appearance. Then comes the selection for the next year's sowing, and the grave decision whether to put down the good old seeds we know," or fly to others that we know not of." Consequent failures and successes are full of interest, and it is most true that the loneliest house in company with a garden need not be ever dreary.

For the intellectual hobby or "literary recreation," there comes at once to mind a good old comrade of the early seventies, in whose company I can still spend many a pleasant hour-Anthony Trollope. I have been on friendly terms with Trollope ever since my first introduction to him in the Cornhill, along with Thackeray and George Eliot. The story of his life (from his own pen) is full of interesting details. His father was an unsuccessful, conscientious, disagreeable man, who considered it his duty to allow himself no peace, and to give no peace to others. "From my very babyhood," says Trollope, "I had to take my place alongside of him as he shaved at six o'clock in the morning, and say my early rules from the Latin