The picture-dealer addressed himself to her, turning his back on the doctor. "I went back to the funeral, to the mountains. The niece told me that before he died he smiled suddenly on them all and said: 'I have had a happy life,' I had taken a palm to lay on his coffin, and after I had looked long at his dead face, I put aside the palm. I felt that if he had lived I could never have spoken to him---could never have told him." The old Jew looked down at the decorations on his breast, and around at the picture-covered walls. He made a sweeping gesture. "What had I to offer him?" he said. WHO ELSE HEARD IT? A lady walking through the square With steamship tickets in her hand, To spend her summer in the Alps, Her winter in the Holy Land, Heard (or else dreamed), as she passed by The Orphan Home across the way, A small and clear and wondering voice From out a dormer window say, "And would you really rather climb Mont Blanc alone, than walk with me Out hunting Mayflowers in the woods Of Westerburn and Cloverlea? "Alas! And would you rather hear Cathedral choirs in cities far Than one at bedtime, on your lap, Say 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star'?" "A lonely Christmas would you spend By Galilee or Jordan's tide When a child's stocking you might fill And hang it by your own fireside?" A DROP IN THE BUCKET There is no need to describe in detail the heroine of this tale, because she represents a type familiar to all readers of the conventional New-England-village dialect story. She was for a long time the sole inhabitant of Hillsboro, who came up to the expectations of our visiting friends from the city, on the lookout for Mary Wilkins characters. We always used to take such people directly to see Cousin Tryphena, as dwellers in an Italian city always take their foreign friends to see their one bit of ruined city wall or the heap of stones which was once an Inquisitorial torture chamber, never to see the new water-works or the modern, sanitary hospital. On the way to the other end of the street, where Cousin Tryphena's tiny, two-roomed house stood, we always laid bare the secrets of her somnolent, respectable, unprofitable life; we always informed our visitors that she lived and kept up a social position on two hundred and fifteen dollars a year, and that she had never been further from home than to the next village. We always drew attention to her one treasure, the fine Sheraton sideboard that had belonged to her great-grandfather, old Priest Perkins; and, when we walked away from the orderly and empty house, we were sure that our friends from the city would always exclaim with great insight into character, "What a charmingly picturesque life! Isn't she perfectly delicious!"