all his literary work, temporarily. His constitution, never robust, and long since weakened by his life of almost ceaseless labor, gave way finally under the strain. He had an indomitable spirit, one which would not acknowledge the rôle that sensibility plays in human life; so he struggled on with a vigor that made him forget his diseased body, within which the spirit rose supreme, and voiced itself in some of his grandest works.

Out of his historical work on the Thirty Years' War, grew his plan for the tragedy of "Wallenstein. This play, which had cost him so much toil and pleasure for seven years, was, so far, his greatest achievement. In speaking of the culmination of the tragedy, the death of Wallenstein, Carlyle says that nothing except "Macbeth" and the conclusion to "Othello" can match it. Schiller's genius, he says, is narrower than Shakespeare's, but in the exciting of lofty, earnest, strong emotion, he admits of no superior.

Schiller's wonderful triumph in "Wallenstein" won for him world-wide fame. At this time he moved again to Weimar, where he thought his health would be better. Here he wrote his "Wilhelm Tell," perhaps the best known of his plays. The fresh atmosphere and delightful simplicity are but one of its charms. The characters are genuinely human, showing the art of genius but at the same time keeping their natural simplicity. Schiller, in Carlyle's estimation, has been the only man in literature capable of doing this. The play, it is true, shows a lack of unity of interest, but the fact that it appeals to human nature so strongly, more than compensates for this fault. This is the last of Schiller's works. The same trouble which had brought him so near to death some years before, attacked him again. His always delicate constitution was now still less able to offer any resistance, and his death came in the spring of eighteen hundred and five.

Linked with these highest of intellectual faculties, was a nature as fully developed in all its capacities. His work was the work of the heart and sympathy, as well as of the intellect, and in thinking of what Mr. Burroughs once said, "It's as true as any law in statics or hydraulics that a man's work can never rise above the level of his character," we would apply it to Schiller; for his was one of the noblest of characters and his life-work rose to the same height.

ANNIE HOLBROOK DUNCAN.

HAMLET

Like a strong swimmer, struggling in high surf,
Tho' drawn and beaten in the blinding swirl,
With racking chest and poor tormented eyes,
Still gaining ground, tho' less by his own will
Than by the sweeping waves, until he gains
At last the shore; and then, too weak to stand,
His goal quite reached, the undercurrent slow
Stretches strong hands, and trails him out to sea.
So Hamlet blindly reached at last his goal,
So struck, and then, confessed defeat and died.
FANNY HASTINGS.

BEAUTY

Beauty is everywhere; we see it budding
With the warm new-born leaves of early spring;
Sparkling in sun-kissed summer streams; and glowing
In meadows hushed with autumn's goldening wing.

In the still, mournful depths of winter wood-lands,
Where hopeless trees chant requiems, sad and low,
O'er their once restless, happy leaves, now deeply,
Peacefully sleeping underneath the snow.

Lying on the purple slopes of distant mountains,
Muffled in clouds, or outlined sharp and clear,

From which our thoughts, up to their summits climbing,
Leap to the heaven that seems to lie so near.

Rippling in the wind-swept wheat-fields of the prairies,
In the wild glory of the ocean, tempest-hissed,
Dancing in the sun-beams, falling with the rain-drops,
Floating in the clouds, and rising in the mist.

Even in the cities, where with smoky mantles
Men strive to veil the evil that is done,
Seeking to hide their sin and pain and folly
From the fierce countenance of the honest sun.

When day retires, shamed and heavy-hearted,
And the concealing shades of evening come,
Pitying stars send down sweet pleading voices,
Calling God's wandering, weary children home.

MARGARET HAMILTON WAGENHALS.

BLOTTED

"It's gone on about as long as I can stand it," said John Randall to himself, as he pushed a barrel full of smooth-cheeked Royals out toward the door of the apple-house. "It's gone on long enough. I'm sick and tired of bein' chief cook and bottlewasher; and what's more, I won't stand it any longer."

He went over to the other end of the apple-house, rolled out a new barrel, and began to fill it from a big bin of purple Gillyflowers.

"I'm sick of these things," he remarked, taking a big bite out of an especially fine apple, "I've had 'em baked, and I've had 'em stewed, and I've had 'em raw. I've had 'em peeled and unpeeled, and halved, and quartered. I've eat 'em hot for breakfast, and hotter for dinner, and warmed up for supper. I never used to get sick of 'em when Eliza Ann fixed 'em for me, but now" Here he stopped again and drew the sleeve of his coat across his eyes.

"Milk's another thing I've had," he went on, "milk, and water for a change, and then milk again. And then crackerseat 'em to get up an appetite for milk-and sometimes mush. Oh yes, and potatoes; and I've had store things. I feel as if I'd lived on sawdust since Eliza Ann died." He paused again in his soliloquy, sorting apples with a strange feverishness until the barrel was heaped high. Then, drawing a pipe and a tobacco-bag from his pocket, he filled the former, and began to smoke.

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Guess Eliza Ann's ghost would be pretty well shocked if it should come back home to-night," he thought, "I hain't washed the dishes this week, nor made my bed for days and days; and the floor hain't been swept since land knows when.

"Used to think I sh'd be happy if ever I could do as I was a mind to," he went on, puffing away in a faint attempt at comfort, "I s'posed that if I could put my things anywhere, and

not fuss to wipe my feet afore I went into the house, and never have no housecleanin', I'd be in Paradise. Fool! precious little Paradise about this kind of life."

He picked up a small knotty apple and gave it a vicious fling away out of the apple-house door. It gleamed a moment in the yellow Indian Summer light, and then was gone.

"And now," he began again, "now it's goin' to be put an end to. I'm a-goin' to get married, I be, so there!" And with this announcement, he moved on to another barrel and a bin of shiny red Baldwins.

"Ah, you!" he cried, shaking his fist at them, "twon't be you that 'll be eaten when I get my wife." And another apple went flying out into the sunlight. But suddenly his arm fell at his side.

"Good Lord!" he cried, "where'll I get the woman? Where will I get her?" He stopped short in blank amazement, and his forehead wrinkled. Taking the pipe from his mouth, he held it meditatively in his hand.

"I won't have a Williams nor a Shaw," he thought, “I wouldn't let a Miller into the house, and I wouldn't have Clarissa Johnson's cats; and 'Mandy Farnum's too particular. She said 'no' once, and I shan't ask her again, even if she has brought me two pies and a mess of doughnuts. It was ten years ago she told me I could mind my own business and not bother her any more 'till I gave up smokin' and tried to be particular' like other men. I hain't bothered her since, and I don't intend to, unless she-But she won't. No, there ain't nobody round. here I could marry even if I wanted to."

"But I'll get married," he said aloud, replacing the pipe in his mouth, "if I have to go to Becket for a wife."

"I can't go anywhere, though," he continued, despairingly, “I'm just chained down to this old hut. Oh, you apple! I hate you! You're going-nobody knows how far you'll go. Maybe you'll see a hundred women that 'ud be glad to come and live along o' me, if they only knew. Tell her I want her, do you hear? Tell her, I say!"

But the apple did not show a sign of being anything but a red-cheeked Baldwin, and John Randall dropped it despairingly into the barrel and resumed his work and his smoking in silence. Another barrel was half full when he spoke again.

"But the apples 'll go !" he exclaimed, and a slow light crept

over his brown face, and if-why, I could make them get me a wife!"

Overcome with the idea, he sat down on a wheelbarrow to think it over. Finally he got up, and hurriedly entered the unswept kitchen. Without taking off his hat, he sat down before an old secretary and opened it.

"Guess I'll use that paper Eliza Ann gave me," he decided, reaching out for a box, on the cover of which a boy in red was making love to a girl in yellow. As his fingers touched it, however, they left a dirty smirch. "Shaw!" he exclaimed, "'Course I ought to wash my hands first." After he had made them as red as he could with soap and water, he came back to the secretary laid his pipe down and opened the box.

"I wonder how I'd better begin," he thought, taking out a sheet of blue-lined paper. "I can't say "Dear,' 'cause I don't know her name; I can't say 'Madam,' 'cause a man might find it first; 'twouldn't look good to say nothin' for a beginnin'. Oh!" as his eyes fell on the drawer where he kept the deeds of his farm, "Of course! Why didn't I think of it before? To whom it may concern.' There, that's pretty good. Guess I better put Greeting next. "To whom it may concern, Greeting.' If she sh'd be rich that 'ud quite please her now, wouldn't it ?"

"I wonder which I ought to tell first; that I'm thirty-seven years old, or that I want to get married. I guess she'd rather know about me first, how I own these apples, and all that. This certifies that I, the man that packed these apples, am thirty-seven years old, and own a good farm."" He looked at it critically. "Guess I made that I too big; but then, I ain't very small, anyway, and she might as well get a notion of my size at the very first. Hang! there goes a blot. Now I've got to copy it."

When the second sheet lay before him, all neatly inscribed, he came to a halt. "Oh, Eliza Ann!" he cried, "Wish you'd tell me what to write next!" And as if Eliza Ann had heard his prayer and had consented to be his inspiring muse, his pen began to move across the paper: "If anyone would like to marry me, I wish she would let me know."

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"I ain't particular about whether she's a widow or not," he said, as he leaned back in his chair, " Perhaps I'd better tell her that, too, 'cause she might get discouraged, thinkin' I wouldn't