in the world, and incapable of flattery. No sooner did the images therein reflected meet Polly's eye than she shrieked, shrank from the stranger's side, gazed at him for a moment in the wildest dismay, and sank insensible upon the floor. Feathertop, likewise, had looked toward the mirror and there beheld, not the glittering mockery of his outside show, but a picture of the sordid patchwork of his real composition stripped of all witchcraft.

The wretched simulacrum ! We almost pity him. He threw up his arms with an expression of despair that went farther than any of his previous manifestations toward vindicating his claims to be reckoned human. For perchance the only time since this so often empty and deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully recognized itself.

Mother Rigby was seated by her kitchen hearth in the twilight of this eventful day, and had just shaken the ashes out of a new pipe, when she heard a hurried tramp along the road. Yet it did not seem so much the tramp of human footsteps as the clatter of sticks or the rattling of dry bones.

"Ha!" thought the old witch; "what step is that? Whose skeleton is out of its grave now, I wonder?"

It was

A figure burst headlong into the cottage door. Feathertop. His pipe was still alight, the star still flamed upon his breast, the embroidery still glowed upon his garments, nor had he lost in any degree or manner that could be estimated the aspect that assimilated him with our mortal brotherhood. But yet, in some indescribable way (as is the case with all that has deluded us when once found out), the poor reality was felt beneath the cunning artifice.

"What has gone wrong?" demanded the witch. "Did yonder sniffing hypocrite thrust my darling from his door? The villain! I'll set twenty fiends to torture him till he offer thee his daughter on his bended knees!"

66

No, mother," said Feathertop, despondingly; "it was not that."

"I'll

"Did the girl scorn my precious one?" asked Mother Rigby, her fierce eyes glowing like two coals of Tophet. cover her face with pimples! Her nose shall be as red as the coal in thy pipe! Her front teeth shall drop out! In a week hence she shall not be worth thy having."

"Let her alone, mother," answered poor Feathertop. "The

girl was half won, and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me altogether human. But," he added, after a brief pause and then a howl of self-contempt, "I've seen myself, mother! I've seen myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am. I'll exist no longer."

Snatching the pipe from his mouth, he flung it with all his might against the chimney, and at the same instant sank upon the floor, a medley of straw and tattered garments, with some sticks protruding from the heap and a shriveled pumpkin in the midst. The eyeholes were now lusterless, but the rudely carved gap that just before had been a mouth still seemed to twist itself into a despairing grin, and was so far human.

"Poor fellow!" quoth Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance. "My poor dear pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world made up of just such a jumble of worn-out, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was, yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?"

While thus muttering the witch had filled a fresh pipe of tobacco, and held the stem between her fingers, as doubtful whether to thrust it into her own mouth or Feathertop's.

"Poor Feathertop!" she continued. "I could easily give him another chance, and send him forth again to-morrow. But no! His feelings are too tender- his sensibilities too deep. He seems to have too much heart to bustle for his own advantage in such an empty and heartless world. Well, well! I'll make a scarecrow of him, after all. 'Tis an innocent and useful vocation, and will suit my darling well; and if each of his human brethren had as fit a one, 'twould be the better for mankind. And, as for this pipe of tobacco, I need it more than he."

So saying, Mother Rigby put the stem between her lips. "Dickon,” cried she, in her high, sharp tone, “another coal for my pipe!"

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX, AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

R

FROM "ALICE IN WONDERLAND."

BY LEWIS CARROLL.

[LEWIS CARROLL, pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: An English mathematician and humorous writer; born in 1832, died in January, 1898. He graduated at Christ Church, Oxford, 1854, and was a tutor and mathematical lecturer there most of his life. In 1865 he published the immortal "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." This was succeeded by "Phantasmagoria, and Other Poems,' ," "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871), a continuation of " Alice," "The Hunting of the Snark," "Sylvie and Bruno," "Rhyme and Reason," "A Tangled Tale." He also published a number of mathematical textbooks.]