Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case that the matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three-fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And ought not an English married pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of twenty-five years to legalize all that corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into possession since pronounced one flesh?--_Our Old Home_. THE POSTER GIRL The blessed Poster Girl leaned out From a pinky-purple heaven; One eye was red and one was green; Her bang was cut uneven; She had three fingers on her hand, And the hairs on her head were seven, Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No sunflowers did adorn; But a heavy Turkish portiere Was very neatly worn; And the hat that lay along her back Was yellow like canned corn. It was a kind of wobbly wave That she was standing on, And high aloft she flung a scarf That must have weighed a ton; And she was rather tall--at least She reached up to the sun. She curved and writhed, and then she said Less green of speech than blue: "Perhaps I _am_ absurd--perhaps I _don't_ appeal to you; But my artistic worth depends Upon the point of view." I saw her smile, although her eyes Were only smudgy smears; And then she swished her swirling arms, And wagged her gorgeous ears, She sobbed a blue-and-green-checked sob, And wept some purple tears. Carolyn Wells. James Gardner Sanderson THE CONUNDRUM OF THE GOLF LINKS (_With thanks to Kipling_) When the flush of the new-born sun fell first on Eden's gold and green, Our Father Adam sat under the Tree and shaved his driver clean, And joyously whirled it round his head and knocked the apples off, Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: "Well done--but is it golf?"