He could not cast himself on God. In vain
With tears he strove desired release to gain
From the sore burden that his life had been,
From toil and care and cross as well as sin.

And as the seventh day went darkly down,
And all his brother monks were housed, poor John
Came stumbling in the night, seeking the door
He left with highest hope one week before.

66

He knocked. The abbot heard within and cried,
"Who knocks?" 'Tis I-'tis John," a voice replied
"Nay," said the abbot, "John no more with men
Hath part or lot. He comes not here again
From his high company. With shining throngs
Of angels now he walks,―to them belongs."

The door was shut. Nor earth nor man had place,
Angels nor God, for one who had not grace
To serve the Lord with patience. Down John fell
Along the threshold weeping. The strong swell
Of his sore spirit shook him. Long he cried
For the forgiveness of the crucified,
The suffering Christ who, patient, bore the cross
That men for Him might count all gain but loss.
And then the angels came to John; while he
Essayed no more as angels are to be,

Nor sought them, lo, they came to him; and peace,
New-found, poured through his soul its blessedness

And in the morning, when the door stood wide,
John took his place close at the abbot's side,
And said, "Forgive me that I went astray.
Forget my foolish weakness. As I lay
Last night without, the pitying Master came;
He spoke me tenderly, called me by name,
And said to me, 'Serve me content as man.
For man, not angel, was the gospel plan,

Give me a patient human love. Obey

My rule; for my sake bear the cross; then may
The angels see and wonder at, above,

The beauty of a soul renewed by love.""

And thenceforth John, until the day he died,
Served in his place with patience; mortified
The flesh, and as a true repentant man,
Gave Christ the service that no angel can.

A CLEAR CASE.*-WADE WHIPPLE.

Dr. Liverwort stepped quietly from the sick chamber and followed the patient's wife into the tidy drawingroom. The professional gravity of the doctor's face seemed to depart to a three-ply veneer as he turned to await the expected query of the anxious little woman.

"Doctor," said she, in a voice whose utterance was as reeble as its tone of anguish was marked, "Doctor! will you be good enough to tell me the exact condition of the sufferer this morning? I think I ought to know the worst, that I might be prepared for it." The doctor coughed away a few ounces of the ostentation that appeared to have coagulated in his bronchia, and as he planed the vapor from his eye-glasses with the tail of his linen duster, he replied:

"To be sure, madam, to be sure! It is your prerogative to be made cognizant of the veritable status of the patient, and I cannot object to fortifying you with such information as the diagnosis interprets."

"Oh, thank you, doctor! I shall be so very glad to know the real condition and the chances of recovery."

"Well, then, my good lady, you must know that my first impression was that the subclavian vein had penetrated the vena cava descendens, and by androgynous dissemination of the venous overflow had wrought a nephitic condition of the rufescent corpuscles, and rendered phlebotomy imperative."

"Great heavens, doctor! Don't tell me—”

"Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself. You forget my remark that such was my first impression. Further investigations proved that the vena cava descendens had not undergone a lusus nature, but was continuing, en regle, to perform its functions. The real disturbance appeared then to be a momentous oppilation of the thoracic duct, and a collateral hebetation of the arteria innominata."

*From St. Jacob's Oil Family Calendar, 1885, by permission.

"Oh, spare me, spare me, doctor! Then he is lost, indeed!"

"Please control yourself, madam, and follow the progress of my investigation more closely. I remarked, if you will recall, that such appeared to be the case; but, progressing with my articulations, I found, by the coaduvancy of that anatomical sentience that our fraternity inherits, that the denaturalization of the patient's status was due to no amorphus condition of the subcutaneous vesicles, but was merely an ustulation of some of the lesser penetralia of the cutis vera-a form of urticariaaggravated by co-existent evidences of mania a potu.” "Is that all, doctor?"

A

"Nothing more, I assure you, my good woman. mere deflagration, so to speak, of the percalatory conduits of the tegumenta, rendered doubly morbitic by the concomitant excitation of dipsomania."

"Merely that, doctor? Heaven bless you for that assurance. And you really think he is no worse than he is?"

"And that, unless he breaks down again, he will continue to improve?"

"All things favoring, yes ma'am! To be sure, certain methods of edulcoration must be maintained, and care should be taken that the constituents of his menu should be non-calefactious and, in part, of a gelatinous naturepabulum-that will sublimate, as it were, the deterioration of the anatomic functions. Watchful in these rogards, and enjoining all indulgence in frumentaceous liquefactions, I think we may predicate an expeditious restoration to a normal sanitary condition."

"Thank you, doctor! You don't know what a load of anguish you have relieved me of."

"I have but done my professional duty, madam. I will look in on the patient again in the morning. Good-day!” "Good-day, doctor!"

THE ENGINE DRIVER'S STORY.-W. WILKING

We were driving the down express

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!
Flying along, tearing along!

Thunderbolt engine, swift and strong,
Fifty tons she was, whole and sole!
I had been promoted to the express:
I warrant you I was proud and gay.
It was the evening that ended May,
And the sky was a glory of tenderness.
We were thundering down to a midland town;
It makes no matter about the name-

For we never stopped there, or anywhere

For a dozen of miles on either side:

So it's all the same

Just there you slide,

With your steam shut off, and your brakes in hand
Down the steepest and longest grade in the land
At a pace that I promise you is grand.
We were just there with the express,
When I caught sight of a muslin dress
On the bank ahead; and as we passed-
You have no notion of how fast-

A girl shrank back from our baleful blast.

We were going a mile and a quarter a minute With vans and carriages down the incline,

But I saw her face, and the sunshine in it, I looked in her eyes, and she looked in mine As the train went by, like a shot from a mortar, A roaring hell-breath of dust and smoke; And I mused for a minute, and then awoke, And she was behind us-a mile and a quarter. And the years went on, and the express Leaped in her black resistlessness,

Evening by evening, England through. Will-God rest him!-was found, a mash Of bleeding rags, in a fearful smash

He made with a Christmas train at Crewe.

It chanced I was ill the night of the mess,
Or I shouldn't now be here alive;
But thereafter the five-o'clock out express
Evening by evening I used to drive.

And I often saw her,-that lady I mean,
That I spoke of before. She often stood
A-top o' the bank: it was pretty high-
Say twenty feet, and backed by a wood.

She would pick the daisies out of the green
To fling down at us as we went by.
We had got to be friends, that girl and I,
Though I was a rugged, stalwart chap,
And she a lady! I'd lift my cap,
Evening by evening, when I'd spy

That she was there, in the summer air,
Watching the sun sink out of the sky.

Oh, I didn't see her every night:
Bless you! no; just now and then,

And not at all for a twelvemonth quite.
Then, one evening, I saw her again,
Alone, as ever, but deadly pale,

And down on the line, on the very rail,

While a light, as of hell, from our wild wheels broke, Tearing down the slope with their devilish clamors And deafening din, as of giant's hammers

That smote in a whirlwind of dust and smoke All the instant or so that we sped to meet her. Never, oh, never, had she seemed sweeter!

I let yell the whistle, reversing the stroke

Down that awful incline, and signaled the guard
To put on his brakes at once, and hard-

Though we couldn't have stopped. We tattered the rail
Into splinters and sparks, but without avail.

We couldn't stop; and she wouldn't stir,
Saving to turn us her eyes, and stretch
Her arms to us;-and the desperate wretch
I pitied, comprehending her.

So the brakes let off, and the steam full again,
Sprang down on the lady the terrible train-
She never flinched. We beat her down,

And ran on through the lighted length of the town
Before we could stop to see what was done.