unlocked it, opened a secret drawer, placed within it the contents of his pockets and his frightful mask. The father approached softly, looked over his shoulder, and saw in the drawer the pocket-book embroidered with his friend's name. Meanwhile, the son took out his pistols, uncocked them cautiously, and was about to secrete them when his father arrested his arm.

"Robber, the use of these is yet to come!" The son's knees knocked together. An exclamation for mercy burst from his lips, but when he perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a father's hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows fear only from a bodily cause-none from the sense of shame-returned to him.

"Tush, sir," he said, "waste not time in reproaches, for I fear the gens-d'armes are on my track. It is well that you are here. You can swear that I have spent the night at home. Unhand me, old man, I have these witnesses still to secrete." And he pointed to the garments wet and bedabbled with the mud of the road. He had scarcely spoken when the walls shook. There was the heavy clatter of hoofs on the ringing pavement below.

66

They come!" cried the son. "Off, dotard; save your son from the galleys."

There was a loud knocking at the gate. The gensd'armes surrounded the house.

Open, in the name of the law!"

No answer came. No door was opened. From the window of the son's room the father saw the sudden blaze of torches, and the shadowy forms of the manhunters. He heard the clatter of arms as they swung themselves from their horses. He heard a voice cry, "Yes, this is the robber's horse. See, it still reeks with sweat." And behind and in front, at either door, again. came the knocking, and again the shout, "Open, in the name of the law!

Suddenly, within there was heard the report of a firearm, and a minute or so afterwards the front door was opened, and the soldier appeared.

"Enter," he said to the gens-d'armes. What would you?"

"We seek a robber who is within your walls."

"I know it. Mount and find him. I will lead the way." He ascended the stairs. He threw open his son's room. The officers of justice poured in, and on the floor lay the robber's corpse.

"Take what is left you," said the father; "take the dead man rescued from the galleys. Take the living man on whose hands rests the dead man's blood."

I was present at my friend's trial. The facts had become known beforehand. He stood there, with his grey hair, and his mutilated limbs, and the deep scaur on his visage, and the cross of the Legion of Honour on his breast, and when he had told his tale, he ended with these words:

"I have saved the son whom I reared for France from the doom which would have spared the life to brand it with disgrace. Is this a crime? I give you my life in exchange for my son's disgrace. Does my country need a victim? I have lived for my country's glory, and can die contented to satisfy its laws, sure that though you blame me you will not despise, sure that the hands that give me to the hangman will scatter flowers on my grave. Thus I confess all. I, a soldier, look round amongst a nation of soldiers, and in the name of the star that glitters on my breast, I dare the fathers of France to condemn me."

They acquitted him. A shout rose in the Court which no ceremonial voice could still. The crowd would have borne him in triumph to his house, but his look repelled them. To his house he returned indeed; and the day after they found him dead beside the cradle over which his prayer had been uttered over his sinless child.

From "The Caxtons."

THE CHIMPANZOR AND THE CHIMPANZEE.
BY EDWIN HAMILTON.

ONE Balaam Vermicelli Lepidoptera Fitz Ape
(Zoological Professor in a College at the Cape),
As a competent authority is quoted even now,
As the Royal Zoological Society allow.

Without ever introducing any element of chance,
He could tell an armadillo from a spider at a glance;
A beetle from a buffalo, a lobster from a leech,
And he knew the scientific terminology for each.
And he hesitated rarely to pronounce upon the spot,
Whether any given object was an animal or not;
He was clever at comparative anatomy-he knew
The aurora borealis from the common cockatoo.
He studied perseveringly, and had, so people said,
For a work on entomology, material in his head;
But he left it there to germinate, and hopefully began
To investigate the question of the origin of man.

Humanity descended, as he confidently showed,

From the ape, the sloth, the otter, the chameleon and the toad;

And the latter from a tadpole, which was only head and tail,

And whose parents were respectively a minnow and a snail. Those who noted his appearance were contented to agree That such, for anything they knew, was his ancestral tree; His claim to such progenitors they scrupled to condemn, But the Adam and the Eve descent was good enough for them.

Ile said, “The use of weapons is depriving man of nails; For, the element of Artificiality prevails.

The nails of men-no longer claws-grow softer every

day;

And even those of women have a tendency that way.

"Abnormally hirsute myself, I think it only fair

To publish the humiliating theory that hair

Is a remnant of the monkey-as the Mannikin' is called:
And men of real intellect are generally bald."

He started for the central parts of Africa, and he
Found the hairier inhabitants the further from the sea;
Till, finally, he came upon a most undoubted ape,
Which resembled him remarkably in feature and in shape.

It possessed the human instincts in a marvellous degree;
It could readily distinguish between alcohol and tea,
And developed such a fancy for the former of the two,
That it followed him to Capetown, where he put it in the
Zoo.

He delivered then a lecture to the savants of the place,
And they said it served to illustrate his theory of race.
He dressed it up in clothes of his, which seemed to make
it proud,

And it smoked, and drank, and chattered, and attracted quite a crowd.

The two were seldom separate the Doctor and his prize

And the latter soon was looking preternaturally wise; For the sake of wearing glasses, it had feigned its sight was dim;

For in everything conceivable it imitated him.

"Observe this cultured creature," said Fitz Ape, "and, if you can,

Discriminate at sight between the monkey and the man." But as they looked from it to him, and then from him to it, They declared themselves unable to discriminate a bit.

"I now shall bring it home," he said, "to stay with me a week;

And, before that time is over, I'll have taught it how to speak.

I've had a cage constructed in my study, though indeed For such coercive measures there's no longer any need." The Professor and his protégé were sitting, after tea, Enjoying some Havannahs and liqueurs of eau de vie, When, the animal was seized with such ungovernable rage,

That the man suspected violence, and got into the cage.

But, further disconcerting the distinguished refugee,
The monkey calmly locked the cage and pocketed the

key;

It took the flask of brandy and a bundle of cigars,
And scornfully regarded the Professor through the bars.
It seized its patron's hat and cane, umbrellas, overcoats,
A purse or two of sovereigns, a roll or so of notes;
Then-consulting the barometer-a Mackintosh or two,
And, bowing to him more or less respectfully, withdrew.
His friends next morning found him in a pitiable plight;
He said, "Pray let me out of this, I've been locked up all
night.

That most inhuman monkey has incarcarated me;
Run after him, and force him to deliver up the key."

Then one of them remarked: "I heard our good Pro-
fessor tell,

That a monkey might articulate, and this one does it
well."

Another said, "Fitz Ape is gone to travel north again,
I met him muffled up last night, and making for the train."

In vain the Doctor pleaded: It was all of no avail.
He said, "the real monkey had a little bit of tail."

But “No,” they said, "your friend has gone to bring you
home a mate,

And, pending his arrival, you will only have to wait."

MORAL.

In starting a menagerie, you safely may assume
That a cage is less commodious than an ordinary room.
So, harbour no phenomenon too like yourself in shape,
Like Balaam Vermicelli Lepidoptera Fitz Ape.

From "The Moderate Man and other Poems," by kind permission
of Messrs. Ward & Downey.

HOW UNCLE PODGER HUNG A PICTURE.

BY JEROME K. JEROME.

You never saw such a commotion up and down a house, in all your life, as when my Uncle Podger undertook to do a job. A picture would have come home from the