(_The modern youth, we are told, is content to hymn his Lady in the amorous diction of other bards._) It is not mine, Aminta, to commend you According to your merits. Miles above My puny lyre were this; I therefore send you, For reference, "The Classic Gems of Love." Would I approve your tresses? See p. 7, L. 2, for what I frankly think of them; Your lips? p. 8; your dimples, p. 11; Your teeth and ears and ankles? _ibidem._ Your kisses? _vide_ JONSON, B., "To Celia;" See "Annie Laurie" for the way I greet Your neck and voice and eyes (the song has really a Trustworthy picture also of your feet). But nay! It ill behoves the ardent lover To turn your gaze to any single spot, In every line, from cover unto cover, My passion finds an echo. Read the lot. * * * * * "SIR BAT-EARS." Sir Bat-ears was a dog of birth And bred in Aberdeen, But he favoured not his noble kin And so his lot is mean, And Sir Bat-ears sits by the almshouses On the stones with grass between. Under the ancient archway His pleasure is to wait Between the two stone pineapples That flank the weathered gate; And old, old alms-persons go by, All rusty, bent and black, "Good day, good day, Sir Bat-ears!" They say and stroke his back. And old, old alms-persons go by, Shaking and well-nigh dead, "Good night, good night, Sir Bat-ears!" They say and pat his head. So courted and considered He sits out hour by hour, Benignant in the sunshine And prudent in the shower. (Nay, stoutly can he stand a storm And stiffly breast the rain, That rising when the cloud is gone He leaves a circle of dry stone Whereon to sit again.) A dozen little door-steps Under the arch are seen, A dozen aged alms-persons To keep them bright and clean; Two wrinkled hands to scour each step With a square of yellow stone-- But print-marks of Sir Bat-ears' paws Bespeckle every one. And little eats an alms-person, But, though his board be bare, There never lacks a bone of the best To be Sir Bat-ears' share. Mendicant muzzle and shrewd nose, He quests from door to door; Their grace they say--his shadow gray Is instant on the floor, Humblest of all the dogs there be, A pensioner of the poor. * * * * * Illustration: _Harold (who has had the worst of an argument with his father)._ "ALL RIGHT, THEN, YOU DON'T GET THOSE SIX STROKES I WAS GOING TO GIVE YOU THIS AFTERNOON." * * * * * OUR PERSONAL COLUMN. (_The New Indigence._)