Then Sir Peveril, with an agony he vainly seeks to smother, Says: "Your silence I interpret now! You are no longer free!

But are plighted to another, and regard me ‘as a brother,’-Which I can't pretend to care about-is there no hope for me?

"Still this silence? Then I leave you. Though you care not to be my mate,

Though you do not hold me worth the boon of e'en a brief good bye,

Should the cannibals sometime eat me in Afric's sultry climate,

I may earn a posthumous regard entombed within a pie!" Thus he leaves her; down the corridor his heavy footstep echoes

While his parting words are ringing in her singing ears a knell.

And 'tis hers to feel for evermore-her life its dismal wreck

Owes

To immoderate indulgence in the tempting caramel!

[This is the legitimate and only really artistic finale, but if experience teaches you that your recitation of these stanzas throws too heavy a gloom upon your audience, or damps them beyond their powers of recuperation, you may substitute the following stanza for the one immediately above:]

Then the caramel relents at last! You find the phrase fantastic?

But it melts (although from motives unintentionally kind), And she manages to masticate the morsel so elastic,

As she murmurs: 'Though I've been so dumb-need you have been so blind?"

Part Thirtieth.

Each of the Four Numbers of

"100 Choice Selections" contained

in this volume is paged separately, and the Index is made to corres

pond therewith. See EXPLANATION on first page of Contents.

The entire book contains nearly

1000 pages.

100

CHOICE SELECTIONS

No. 30.

THE MAN FOR THE HOUR.-A. R. ROBINSON.

Tradition says that when of old
Great Cadmus needed men,

he sowed upon the new-turned mould
The dragon's teeth, and then

Uprose a host with arms be light,
Prepared to strive in instant fight.

All day the doubtful contest raged
With spear and bow and shield;
And when war had his thirst assuaged,
There stood upon the field

A chosen few, who built the walls
Of Thebes, and graced her civic halls.

And still, if unto earth there come
A call for earnest men,

There is no need of trump or drum
To rouse them up, for then
The cold clods quickly stir with life,
And men are born for instant strife.

For, as the ages come and go,
The leaders of the van

Are proof that this is ever so-
The hour begets the man;

He's Nature's heir, and he alone
Has right and title to her throne.

Then Sir Peveril, with an agony he vainly seeks to smother, Says: "Your silence I interpret now! You are no longer free!

But are plighted to another, and regard me ' as a brother,'-Which I can't pretend to care about-is there no hope for me?

"Still this silence? Then I leave you. Though you care not to be my mate,

Though you do not hold me worth the boon of e'en a brief good bye,

Should the cannibals sometime eat me in Afric's sultry climate,

I may earn a posthumous regard entombed within a pie!" Thus he leaves her; down the corridor his heavy footstep echoes

While his parting words are ringing in her singing ears a knell.

And 'tis hers to feel for evermore-her life its dismal wreck

Owes

To immoderate indulgence in the tempting caramel!

[This is the legitimate and only really artistic finale, but if experience teaches you that your recitation of these stanzas throws too heavy a gloom upon your audience, or damps them beyond their powers of recuperation, you may substitute the following stanza for the one immediately above:]

Then the caramel relents at last! You find the phrase fantastic?

But it melts (although from motives unintentionally kind), And she manages to masticate the morsel so elastic,

As she murmurs: "Though I've been so dumb-need you have been so blind?"

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