The day after the wedding, Johnny Wilson was favored with a large consignment of wedding-cake; and in after life, when, through Ada’s means, he had risen in station and fortune, he was heard to declare that he had marked with a white stone the day on which he had been nearly crushed to death by the horses of Mrs. James Darrington Stanley. * * * * * NARCISSOS. BY HENRY B. HIRST. THERE is a flower which haunts the banks of streams, That blossoms only in the path of Spring, Lovingly bending where the water gleams. Its fragrant perfumes fill the azure air, As, gazing always in the limpid brook, It seems to watch the Naiades braid their hair, Or sport, in naked beauty, caroling hymns Of siren sweetness to poetic Spring, While gliding, here and there, on milky limbs. All day it gazes: day by day its eye Searches the stainless crystal of the stream, Watching those faultless, fairy forms float by. Day after day it watches, hour on hour, Like love above the grave of that it loved— More like a mortal than a simple flower. When night descends—when darkness, like the grave’s, Falls on the stream—when moss and fern and grass Are lost in gloom—when naught is heard but waves That roll and ripple through the restless reeds, It droops its head and sinks in dreamless sleep, Couched, like a jewel, among worthless weeds. But sometimes, when the argent moon awakes The Naiades to midnight mirth and song, The blossom from its mournful slumber breaks, And breathes again its sweet, unanswered sighs; And all the stars that gild the glassy stream Shine on its heavy gloom like pitying eyes. Day after day it watches—hour on hour— Love weeping by the grave of what it loved, More like a mortal than a simple flower. And day by day it pales and wanes away Until it lays its form along the stream, And slowly sinks to silence and decay. . . . . . . . There is a legend told in classic Greece— A myth, so musical of the olden time, That none who hears can bid the singer “Peace!” PAUSANIUS tells it! In its rhythmic flow We find how fair Narcissos, young in years, Passionate beyond his age, so long ago As when the gods came down and walked with men, Had a sweet sister—would that sister’s name Had ever have fallen within the poet’s ken— A young, twin sister, lovely as the light Of twilight in her own delicious land— Lovely as Venus was at birth of Night. Narcissos was as fair, albeit his mould Had all the attributes that mark his sex; And men were deities in the Age of Gold.