Type of the Priesthood with its Virgin Spouse, The Immaculate Church, our Mother ever fair! Since even to me God’s wondrous grace allows An office more than seraphim may share, I kneel to thee, most gentle Saint, and dare To choose thee patron of the trust. Oh! make My evermore fidelity thy care, And keep me Mary’s, for her own sweet sake! Her knight before, and poet, now her priest (Nor less her slave—a thousandfold the more), I glory in a bondage but increased, And kiss the chain her dear De Montfort wore, With “Omnia per Mariam” mottoed o’er: Which seals me her apostle, though the least. FEAST OF THE SEVEN DOLORS, March 31, 1871. Odd Stories. VI.—King Ruli. Once upon a time there was, on this side of the Hartz Mountains, a secret place, where, touching a hidden spring, you found yourself in a trice between immense walls of rock, whence a mysterious person, dressed in red from top to toe, took you into a great cavern, the first of a series of vast caves filled with hogsheads and tuns of wine and beer, and lighted up in such a manner that the brilliant stalactites with which it was hung sparkled and flashed like the most precious gems in a jeweller’s dream. The awe inspired by this scene hardly left you a moment to observe that the nose of your guide was even redder than his body, when you were ushered through another secret door into the domain of a grand old castle, the battlements of which, covered with moss, overlooked a pastoral valley and its white flocks, and seemed to rule the landscape, notwithstanding the presence of many other castles, as if it were the house of a monarch. And so it was. Here dwelt King Ruli, the patron of minnesingers and jolly cavaliers—that stalwart king whose brow, and beard, and port were the very signs of genial majesty. Pleasure ruled the board where he sat; and when the juice of the Weinberg warmed up in the blood of the lords and minstrels in Weinbergland, the ten noble companions of King Ruli swept the mystic chords of the harp, and with voices free sang in echoing strain their merry roundelay: We’re rovers all, we’re singers five And rhymers five; come round, come round; Ye five shall give us honest rhyme, And we shall give you sound. Let laurels crown his great gray head, A big arm‐chair his throne be made. Then sing: Ruli, King Ruli! And he shall be our king.