because it also furnishes you with more reading matter than was promised you when you subscribed for HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE. A CHANGE OF FORTUNE. "Oh, the days when I was happy!" Sighed a pensive little Jappy, As the crystal tears rolled down and washed the color from his cheek. On the table in my study Sweetly smiling, round, and ruddy. Many years he had been standing in a china jar unique. Now, alas! his smile was faded. His expression worn and jaded. And his bursting heart found utterance in a woful lamentation: "Oh, that from my proud position, Highest goal of my ambition, I should ever stoop to suffer such a sad humiliation! "Once I was caressed and flattered, Rich or poor, it little mattered. Young and old, from babe to grandsire, every one must have a 'Jap.' And alike by tastes æsthetic, Grave or humorous or poetic, I was hailed, and all-triumphant, lived and throve in Fortune's lap. "Then--ah me!--the reigning fashion, Every artist had a passion For displaying me in pictures, and the studios were my own. Now, to claim their whole attention, One whom I am loath to mention Comes, an upstart, a usurper, and ascends my rightful throne. "Hard it is my grief to smother, Bitter thus to see another Wear my honors! Artists paint him, poets his perfections praise. Everywhere his visage hated Greets me. He is fondled, fêted. Worst of all, he rules the children as did I in other days. "Nevermore shall I be happy," Said the weeping little Jappy, "Nevermore my days be merry, and my slumbers soft and downy. I shall live, but all unheeded, Quite cut out and superseded By that precious, omnipresent pet and paragon, _the Brownie_!" MARGARET JOHNSON. OFF WITH THE MERBOY. BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS. CHAPTER II. THE START. [Illustration: Decorative J] immieboy grabbed up his blue suit and in a very few minutes was arrayed in it, but on his return to the aquarium to join the goldfish he found it empty. "Dear me!" he cried, "I wonder if he can have gone off without me." "No, he hasn't," came a silvery voice from behind him. Jimmieboy turned sharply about, and there, sitting upon the sofa arrayed in his red bathing-suit, sat a beautiful boy of about his own age and size, with great masses of golden hair falling over his shoulders. "Hullo!" said Jimmieboy, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise. "Who are you?" "I am your goldfish," laughed the boy. "Or, rather, I was. I am now my true self. I am a merboy, as, in fact, all goldfish are. See?" he added, holding up what Jimmieboy had taken for feet. "I have a tail like a fish instead of feet." Jimmieboy was delighted. He had heard all about mermen and mermaids, but merboys were something new.