The Archaeopteryx was feeling pretty gloomy, for at that morning’s meeting of the Amalgamated Association of Enaliosaurians he had been blackballed. He was looked down upon by the Pterodactyl and the Ichthyosaurus deigned not to notice him. Cast out by the Reptilia, and Aves not being thought of, he became a wanderer upon the face of the earth. “Alas!” sighed the poor Archaeopteryx, “this world is no place for me.” And he laid him down and died; and became imbedded in the rock. And ages afterward a featherless biped, called man, dug him up, and marvelled at him, crying, “Lo, the original Avis and fountain-head of all our feathered flocks!” And they placed him with great reverence in a case, and his name became a by-word in the land. But the Archaeopteryx knew it not. And the descendant for whom he had suffered and died strutted proudly about the barn-yard, crowing lustily cock-a-doodle-do! S. P. CARRICK, JR. THE WAIL OF THE HACK WRITER. Ah, dreary is the toil for dull And shallow thought--the chaff-choked grain, That comes from just beneath the skull, Not from the brain within the brain. But all the dull, chaff-nourished tribe Must have its favorite food of bran, And he who writes must let the scribe Murder the poet in the man. Oft must he stem the tides that roll From thought’s interior deep, and, dead To their far voices, sell his soul-- No, not for gold, for bread. And he must leave the heights that shine And hasten down their arduous steeps To feed the million-throated swine, That gulps its garbage and then sleeps. SAM WALTER FOSS. ADONIS IN TATTERS. A PARABLE ON THE POWER OF BEAUTY.