swaying of the grasses set stirring a warm puff, which was like the opening of an oven. The sun seemed so near, and was trying so hard to be hot, that the daisies said they could see him spinning and panting as he stood above them; but that, I think, was only their fancy, although it is true that he was shining so exactly overhead that there was not a streak of shadow where one could creep for shelter from the sweltering heat. All the flowers were parched and drooping, and except for the passing buzz where a bee went drowsily by, or buried himself with a contented burr in the heart of a pansy, not a sound stirred the sultry silence. All at once there was a sudden scurry among the birds. A cat which had been basking and purring in the sunshine, opening and shutting an eye, every now and then, to make believe that she was not sleepy, had dropped off into a doze, and now she awakened yawning. This was the signal for a general stir. "Phew! but it is hot, to be sure!" exclaimed the butterfly, as he darted up for a stretch from the poppy-head on which he had been sitting, and went waltzing, anglewise, down the gravelled path of the garden, lacing the long, green lines of the boxwood with loops of crimson and gold. "I hope my weight won't inconvenience you," he said with airy politeness to the lily, dropping himself lazily, and without waiting for an answer, upon her delicate head, which drooped so feebly beneath this new burden that several scented petals fluttered fainting to the ground. "I am grieved to see you looking so sadly," he continued, after he had settled himself to his liking; "but what on earth, my good soul, makes you lean forward in that uncomfortable attitude? There is a charmingly shady spot under the shelter of the wall behind you. Why don't you lean in that direction? As it is, you are going out of your way to make yourself uncomfortable, besides which I should very much prefer to be out of the heat." "I should be glad to move into the shade," said the lily gently, "but my sweetheart, the rose, has fallen asleep by the border, and I am leaning over her to keep the sun from her buds." you know?" he went on, "though, of course, interesting. It is easy to see you are not a person of the world. When you have travelled about, and learnt as much as I have, you will come to look at such things in a different way." "Yes, you have travelled, and lived in the world, and seen a great deal," said the lily; "but I have loved; and it is by loving, as well as by living, that one learns." "Don't presume to lecture me!" was the impatient answer. "Fancy a flower finding fault with a butterfly! Don't you know that I am your superior in the scale of being! But, tell me, does this love of which you speak bring happiness?" "The greatest of all happiness," whispered the lily, almost to herself, and with infinite tenderness-her white bells seeming to light up and overflow, like human eyes, as she spoke. "To love truly, and to be loved, is indeed to be favoured of heaven. All the good things which this world contains are not worthy to be offered in exchange for the love of one faithful heart." "Then I must learn to love," said the butterfly decisively, "for happiness has always been my aim. Tell me how to begin." "You'll have to begin by unlearning," put in a big double-dahlia, that was standing by like a sentinel, and looking as stiff and stuck-up as if he had just been appointed flower-policeman to the garden. "Don't you be afraid that anyone's going to fall in love with you," was the spiteful rejoinder of the butterfly, edging himself round and round on a lily-bell as he spoke. "Your place, my good creature, is in the vegetable garden, along with the cauliflowers and the artichokes. There is something distinguished about a white chrysanthemum, and the single-dahlias are shapely, although they do stare so; but the double-dahlias!”and the butterfly affected a pretty shudder of horror which made the double-dahlia stiffen on his stem with rage. "How dare you speak slightingly of my family!" he said indignantly. "And as for those big chrysanthemums! why, they're just like tumbled heaps of worsted, or that shaggy-eyed skye-terrier dog that we see sometimes in the garden-untidy, shapeless, lumpy things I call them!" "How very charming you are!" lisped the butterfly languidly, and in a tone of polite The butterfly, who had been alternately contempt which seemed to imply, "And opening and shutting his wings, as if he what a fool!" thought the sight of such splendour was too "But your ideas are a little crude, don't dazzling to be borne continuously, but really because he knew that the sombre tinting out with startling distinctness on the grass. which they displayed when closed, height- A strange, sharp scent was in the air, and a ened, by contrast, their gorgeous colouring singular stillness was abroad. when open, was nothing if not well-bred, so There was no going" in the trees, nor he simply pretended to stifle a yawn in the bough-swing among the branches, but all dahlia's face, and to make believe that he had stood rigid and motionless as if intently not heard what was said. listening. "After all," he said, turning his back pointedly upon the dahlia, and shutting up his wings with a final snap-just as a fine lady closes a fan-"after all, my dear lily, I don't know whether it's worth my while to learn to love; for, by this time next year, you and I will be dead, and it will be all the same then to us as if we had never loved, or even lived at all." "I know nothing about death," replied the lily, "but no one who loves can doubt immortality, and if the rose and I are not already immortal, I believe that our love will make us so." "What is this immortality?" said the butterfly. "I have heard the word used a great deal in my wanderings, but I never quite knew the meaning of it." "It is the finding again after death of those we have loved and lost; and the loving and living with them for ever, I think," answered his companion. "I don't believe you know anything about it," said the butterfly decisively. "All the men and women I've met--and they ought to know-used ever so much longer words." "Perhaps you are right,” replied the lily quietly, bending forward to shield a stray rose-bud from the burning sun, "but to be for ever with those I love would be immortality enough for me. And I heard the maiden who walks in the garden, speaking yesterday, and I remember that she said it was more godlike to love one little child purely and unselfishly than to have a heart filled with a thousand vast vague aspirations after things we cannot understand." How strangely still it was in the garden! Summer had gone, and October was nearly over, but the day had been so bright and warm that everyone said the winter must be a very long way off. But since sunset, the air had been getting more and more chilly, and the stars were glittering like cold steel, and the moon looked so bright and large, that the flowers, which had awakened with an icy pain at their heart, could scarcely believe that it was night and not day, for every tiny grass-blade and buttercup stood "Perhaps they are listening for the first footfall of the winter-the winter which is coming to kill us," said the lily sadly, bending down, as she spoke, to twine herself protectingly around the rose. "Perhaps we are dead already," said the rose, with a shudder, "and are but ghostflowers in a ghostly garden. How cold and wan my rosy petals look in this pallid light! And is this gray place-blanched and silent and still as death-our sweet-scented and sunny garden, that glowed with warm colour and was astir with life?" Just then, and before the lily could answer, they heard a sudden cry of pain. It was the butterfly which had fallen, half dead with cold, from a sycamore bough, and now lay shelterless and shivering on the frozen path. 'Creep up upon my leaves, dear butterfly," said the lily tenderly, as she bent towards him, "and I will try and find a warm place for you near my heart." "Oh, I'm so frightened! I'm so frightened!" he sobbed. "The world is dying; even now the trees seem still and dead. Soon the stars will fall out of the sky into the garden. Shall we be left in darkness when the moon is dead? Already her face is deadly pale, although she shines so brightly. And what has come to the trees? On every bough there sparkle a thousand lights. Are they stars which have dropped from the sky?” the pain has reached my heart; already I den, until the sunflower's shadow lay like begin to die." ebony upon silver along the grass; colder and more steely glittered the stars, and closer crept the pain to the heart of the dying flowers. All the long night through the silent trees stood rigid and motionless, but Everything now they listened no longer, for winter was come indeed, and on every branch the frostcrystals glinted and sparkled. 'Everything but love, dearest, and where love is, all is. At least we shall die together." And when morning dawned, the butterfly lay dead for ever, but the lily and the rose were the fairest flowers a-bloom in the Icier and more icy grew the air; brighter and whiter shone the moonlight on the gar- | Garden of God. MARY COSTELLO. [Miss Costello was born at Kilkenny. She has written several novels, the best known of which is perhaps Addie's Husband, because she has chosen to be known as "the Author of Addie's Husband". She has contributed to many magazines, including The Cornhill, The Gentleman's, &c., &c. She is also a well-known dramatic writer; and two of her plays, The Plebeian and A Bad Quarter of an Hour, have attained great popularity. She has collaborated with Dr. R. Y. Tyrrell in a dramatization of Esmond.] JANE: A SKETCH FROM DUBLIN LIFE.1 Jane Corcoran is her name. She wishes it was Gladys Carruthers, Evelyn Boscawen, or Doreen Featherstonhaugh. Now and then among her intimes she makes a wistful effort to glide into "Janet", which, as everyone knows, is a perennial bloom among romance-mongers; but she is chronically ineffective, so the homely monosyllable by which she was individualized in Westland Row Chapel twenty-six years ago remains hers to the end. After working-hours Jane is a familiar figure of the city. She is to be met strolling through the streets in a large, looselystitched hat, generally supported by two or 1 By kind permission of the author. three members of her sex, on whose dress, gait, and general mannerisms she models her own. The initiative is not her line, but she is a daring follower of fashion and has a generous eye for colour. She favours cheap sequin trimmings, large chiffon bows, blouses cut low in the neck, glittering waistbands, and cotton-velvet corselets. She wears a terrible peaked fringe, popular in Whitechapel as the "Princess M'y", and though her arms rattle with bangles, and she has suède gloves that reach to the elbow, there are generally slits in the sides of her boots, and her stockings . . . She is not made in proportion. Her feet are large and flat; yet she takes small sixes in gloves, and is very proud of her pale lady-like hands, damp and boneless to the touch. She walks with a mincing slouch and a little toss of the head. But what is there characteristic in such a sketch? may be asked. Surely that picture of slovenly fashion and swagger is one now as common as the lamp-posts in every street of the British Empire. Dublin has no monopoly of such baggage; she is the daughter of our democratic day. The answer is that Dublin has a monopoly of Jane, that her outward view is no index to the character of her mind. It is but the clothes and the street-strolling habits which she has in common with Lizer 'Unt and the coster's 'Arriet. The eyes that meet yours from under the Whitechapel head-dress are those of a gentle, modest, and timid woman; the face when free of its terrible fringe is refined, delicate, giving her birth, and during various stages prettyish, and incapable. of her early girlhood her father, two sisters, and a brother had been carried off in "cold sweats". Jane's intellect is bounded by the novelette, and the keynote of her being is one of enervating expectancy. She is always waiting for something to happen; with empty heart and straining ears, waiting for the prince who does not come. Every morning she awakes with the misty hope that before the close of the day she is at last to sample one of those thrilling, romantic, delightful, or even awful experiences, which punctuate the life of the average heroine of cheap fiction. Yet once or twice, when the breath of adventure had stirred her stagnant air, poor Jane had found herself unequipped for the emergency; for instance, had fled in terror when her acquaintance was insidiously claimed in the streets by a mysterious being with fiery eyes, who in every way answered to the fascinating stock villain of romance, the brilliant Italian count or wicked Colonel of the Guards in pursuit of daisy and lily innocence. Her conduct on a promising occasion of this kind is so abject as to awake a lifelong contempt in the breast of her cousin, Kate Fagan, a sturdy little dressmaker's apprentice of sixteen. Kate is short, squat, common-looking, without literary tastes or genteel aspirations; but she has "a way with her", a touch of 'Arriet's robust gaminerie, and so gets value out of youth. She does not belong to Jane's set, and is generally to be seen in the society of lowsized youths, a little above the corner-boy class. Kate's set start company-keeping at fourteen; they remain attired as growing girls, that is, with short skirts and flowing tresses, until they marry or reach the threshold of middle age. Jane never walks out with a young man at all. "Isn't it time you were thinking of getting settled, my dear?" Mrs. Fagan remarks periodically to her niece. "The years is gettin' on, you know; and faith, after thirty women can't pick up husbands on every bush. Why, girl alive, what's the matter with ye, that you haven't a young man?-You that nicelookin', and with nearly every penny you earns goin' on yer back?" Jane is an orphan. Her mother died in She lives with her aunt, Mrs. Fagan, and works as a skirt hand in a cheap drapery establishment off George's Street. Her business hours are from nine to seven in the evening, and to half-past eight on Saturday; and her wages are 7s. 6d. a week, which does not include board of any kind, not even a cup of tea to relieve the long, dreary day. The custom of the establishment is that each young lady brings her lunch or dinner, as she may term the repast, and consumes it as neatly and as unobtrusively as she can. Jane, who is gentility personified, nibbles a pulpy slice of bread-and-butter, while her eyes devour the close pages of the novelette, which is always to be seen bulging out of her pocket or peeping from the folds of her work. She is, no doubt, sloppy minded; how could it be otherwise? Slops are the staple diet of her body and brain. She lives on tea, and what her aunt calls "cheap snacks". Seven-and-sixpence a week allows no margin for butchers' meat when a girl has to keep herself fit to be seen in the streets, and has, moreover, an appetite for weekly numbers which must be appeased. Jane's day is one of long, monotonous toil. She lives in a hideous tenement house in Werburgh Street, sharing a bed with two, sometimes three, of her aunt's children. Mrs. Fagan is a young and healthy woman, and there is a new baby in the cradle every year. The wail of sickly or peevish childhood is never out of the girl's ears; discomfort, dirt, evil smells, harsh sounds, and squalor hem her round; and, knowing there is one road away from them all, she can no more pass the news-shop of a Saturday night than a drunkard with a full pocket can pass a public-house. The poor little penny dram is potent always. It makes a sweet, pulpy muddle of everything. Drowns the discord in the heroic clash of armour, the music of lovers' vows; brings the breath c hot-house flowers, of orange groves, of brine-washed cliffs into the greasy night. Jane cannot give up her "numbers", or be laughed out of her sentimental gentility. She is held cheaply in the family circle, and is looked upon generally as a failure, which no doubt she is. For her nature is made up of those fine things which lead to selfish, generous, and her gratitude is always no worldly prosperity. absurdly out of proportion to the benefits She is tender-hearted, gentle, patient, un-received. WILLIAM WILKINS. [William Wilkins, the eldest son of a regimental surgeon, was born in 1852 at Zante, on the coast of Greece, which was then an English garrison. His family was Irish, and was said to have sprung from a Flemish follower of Strongbow, who left his name to the village of Wilkinstown, near Wexford. Mr. Wilkins was educated at Dundalk Grammar School under Dr. Flynn, and in 1878 graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, with the best degree of his year in mathematics and also in modern literature, an unusual combination. The following year he became headmaster of the High School, Dublin, which has grown under him to notable success, producing many distinguished scholars and literary men. In 1881 Mr. Wilkins published a volume of poems entitled Songs of Study, being mainly verse of actual or possible studentlife at Trinity College, Dublin, to which institution as well as to the memory of a fellow-student the volume was dedicated. The longest poem, Acteon, became a favourite with Lord Tennyson, and In the Engine-Shed, which he wrote at the age of nineteen, has attained considerable vogue as a recitation. These and many of the lyrics had previously appeared in Kottabos, the Trinity College miscellany, to which Mr. Wilkins continues to contribute.] IN THE ENGINE-SHED.1 Through air made heavy with vapours murk, Burly and bluff as a bag of coals; With a thick gold chain where he bulged the most, Whenever he harnessed his steed of mettle:The shovel-fed monster that could not tire, With limbs of steel and entrails of fire; Above us it sang like a tea-time kettle. He came to his salamander toils suffer In what seemed a devil's cast-off suit, All charred, and discoloured with rain and oils, And smeared and sooted from muffler to boot. Some wiping-it struck him-his paws might With a wisp of threads he found on the buffer (The improvement effected was not very great); Then he spat, and passed his pipe to his mate. And his whole face laughed with an honest mirth, As any extant on this grimy earth, Welcoming me to his murky region; And had you known him, I tell you thisThough your bright hair shiver and shrink at its roots, O piano-fingering fellow-collegian— You would have returned no cold salutes To the cheery greeting of hearty Chris, But locked your hand in the vice of his. For at night when the sleet-storm shatters and And a beard like a brush, and a face like a toast, We were driving the down express; And a hat half-eaten by fire and frost; And a diamond pin in the folded dirt Of the shawl that served him for collar and shirt. 1 By kind permission of the author. Will at the steam, I at the coal: Over the valleys and villages, Over the marshes and coppices, Over the river, deep and broad; Through the mountain, under the road, |