CIVIL WAR-AN EPISODE OF THE COMMUNE

VICTOR HUGO.

The mob was fierce and furious. They cried:
"Kill him!" the while they pressed from every side
Around a man, haughty, unmoved, and brave,
Too pitiless himself to pity crave.

"Down with the wretch!" on all sides rose the cry.

The captive found it natural to die,

The game is lost-he's on the weaker side,
Life too is lost, and so must fate decide.

From out his home they drag him to the street,
With fiercely clenching hands and hurrying feet,
And shouts of, "Death to him!" The crimson stain
Of recent carnage on his garb showed plain.

This man was one of those who blindly slay
At a king's bidding. He'd shot men all day,
Killing he knew not whom, he scarce knew why,
Now marching forth impassible to die,
Incapable of mercy or of fear,

Letting his powder-blackened hands appear.

A woman clutched his collar with a frown, "He's a policeman-he has shot us down!"

"That's true," the man said. "Kill him!" "Shoot!" "Kill." 66 No, at the Arsenal”—“The Bastile!" "Where you will," The captive answered. And with fiercest breath, Loading their guns, his captors still cried, "Death!" "We'll shoot him like a wolf!" "A wolf am I? Then you're the dogs," he calmly made reply. "Hark, he insults us!" And from every side Clenched fists were shaken, angry voices cried, Ferocious threats were muttered, deep and low. With gall upon his lips, gloom on his brow, And in his eyes a gleam of baffled hate, He went, pursued by howlings, to his fate, Treading with wearied and supreme disdain

Midst forms of dead men he perchance had slain.

*Translated by Mrs. Lucy H. Hooper for the New York Home Journal, and used here by permission. This selection has been recited with great success, in Paris, by the well-known actor and reader, Dupont Vernon, of the Comedie Française.

Dread is that human storm, an angry crowd;
He braved its wrath with head erect and proud,
He was not taken, but walled in with foes,

He hated them with hate the vanquished knows,
He would have shot them all had he the power.
"Kill him-he's fired upon us for an hour!"
"Down with the murderer-down with the spy!"
And suddenly a small voice made reply,
"No-no, he is my father!" And a ray
Like to a sunbeam seemed to light the day.

A child appeared, a boy with golden hair,
His arms upraised in menace or in prayer.

All shouted, "Shoot the bandit, fell the spy!"
The little fellow clasped him with a cry
Of, "Papa, papa, they'll not hurt you now!"
The light baptismal shone upon his brow.

From out the captive's home had come the child.
Meanwhile the shrieks of, “Kill him—Death!" rose wild.

The cannon to the tocsin's voice replied,
Sinister men thronged close on every side,
And in the street, ferocious shouts increased

Of, "Slay each spy-each minister-each priest―
We'll kill them all!"

The little boy replied:
"I tell you this is papa." One girl cried,
"A pretty fellow-see his curly head!"
"How old are you, my boy?" another said.

"Do not kill papa!" only he replies.
A soulful lustre lights his streaming eyes.

Some glances from his gaze are turned away,
And the rude hands less fiercely grasp their prey.

Then one of the most
Get you home, boy."
Go to your mother."

pitiless says, “ Go—

Where-why?" ""Don't you know? Then the father said,

"He has no mother." "What-his mother's dead?

Then you are all he has?" "That matters not,"
The captive answers, losing not a jot

Of his composure as he closely pressed

The little hands to warm them in his breast,

And says, "Our neighbor Catherine, you know,

Go to her." "You'll come too?" "Not yet." "No, no.

Then I'll not leave you." Why?"

"These men, I fear, Will hurt you, papa, when I am not here."

The father to the chieftain of the band
Says softly," Loose your grasp and take my hand,
I'll tell the child to-morrow we shall meet,
Then you can shoot me in the nearest street,
Or farther off, just as you like." ""Tis well!"
The words from those rough lips reluctant fell.
And, half unclasped, the hands less fierce appear.
The father says, " You see, we're all friends here,
I'm going with these gentlemen to walk;
Go home. Be good. I have no time to talk."
The little fellow, reassured and gay,

Kisses his father and then runs away.

"Now he is gone, and we are at our ease,

And you can kill me where and how you please,"
The father says. "Where is it I must go?"

Then through the crowd a long thrill seems to flow.
The lips, so late with cruel wrath afoam,
Relentingly and roughly cry, "Go home!"

THE MAGIC WAND.-GEORGE R. SIMS

Horrible dens, sir, aren't they?
This is one of my daily rounds;
It's here, in these awful places,
That child-life most abounds.
We ferret from roof to basement
In search of our tiny prey;
We're down on their homes directly
If they happen to stop away.

Knock at the door? Pooh, nonsense!

They wouldn't know what it meant.

Come in and look about you;

They'll think you're a School Board gent.
Did you ever see such hovels ?

Dirty, and damp, and small.
Look at the rotten flooring,
Look at the filthy wall.

That's lucky-the place is empty,
The whole of the family's out.
This is one of my fav'rite cases:
Just give a glance about.

There's a father and four young children.
And Sally the eldest's eight;

They're horribly poor-half-starving-
And they live in a shocking state.

The father gets drunk and beats them,
The mother she died last year:
There's a story about her dying
I fancy you'd like to hear.
She was one of our backward pupils,
Was Sally, the eldest child;
A poor little London blossom
The alley had not defiled.

She was on at the Lane last winter-
She played in the pantomime;
A lot of our School Board children
Get on at the Christmas time.

She was one of a group of fairies,

And her wand was the wand up there,There, in the filthy corner

Behind the broken chair.

Her mother was ill that winter,
Her father, the drunken sot,
Was spending his weekly earnings
And all that the fairy got.
The woman lay sick and moaning,
Dying by slow degrees

Of a cruel and wasting fever
That rages in dens like these.

But night after night went Sally,

Half starved, to the splendid scene
Where she waved a wand of magic

As a Liliput fairy queen.
She stood in the "Land of Shadows"
Where a demon worked his spell,
At a wave of her wand he vanished,
And the scene was changed as well.

She'd a couple of lines to utter,
Which bade the gloom give way
To "The Golden Home of Blisses
In the Land of Shining Day."
She gazed on the limelit splendors
That grew as she waved her wand,

And she thought of the cheerless cellar
Old Drury's walls beyond.

And when, in her ragged garments,

No longer a potent fay,

She knelt by the wretched pallet

Where her dying mother lay,

She thought, as she stooped and kissed her,
And looked in the ghastly face,

Of the wand that could change a dungeon
To a sweet and lovely place.

She was only a wretched outcast,
A waif of the London slums;
It's little of truth and knowledge

To the ears of such children comes.
She fancied her wand was truly
Possessed of a magic charm,
That it punished the wicked people,
And shielded the good from harm.

Her mother grew slowly weaker,
The depth of the winter came,
And the teeth of the biting weather
Seized on the wasted frame.

And Sally, who saw her sinking,

Came home from the Lane one night
With her shawl wrapped over something,
And her face a ghostly white.

She had hidden the wand and brought it,
The wand that could do so much;

She crept to the sleeping woman,
Who moved not at her touch;
She stooped to hear her breathing,
It was, oh, so faint and low;

Then, raising her wand, she waved it,
Like a fairy, to and fro.

Her well-known lines she uttered,
That bade the gloom give way

To "The Golden Home of Blisses
In the Land of Shining Day."

She murmured, "O mother, dearest,

You shall look on the splendid scene!" While a man from the playhouse watched her, Who'd followed the fairy queen.