A lifetime of narrow and thrifty living has almost entirely unfitted us for a life of luxury, and chilled and benumbed our imaginations. There must be other persons of severe and simple tastes who have happened to strike ten, and want to live up to it, and to such my “Lucky Richard’s Manual” will appeal as a sort of moral salvation. It will be indispensable and invaluable, and it will be sold at a price that will put it within the reach of persons of modest means as well as of those who have struck ten. Everybody in America has his own scheme for making and spending a million, and mine will be sure to be of comparative interest and value, for I have only been rich in dreams. Like the “Proverbial Philosophy,” “Lucky Richard” will find a million readers. WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE. * * * * * To Ten-Strikers and others: The first chapters of this important Manual will be published at an early date, when the author has made some opportunities for gaining experience and knowledge of this abstruse branch of Economics. REWARD. What shadow winnowed through the skies And paused on Earth’s grey rim? The stars ran to their windows To catch a glimpse of Him. One in his haste fell foremost, A sudden splash of flame-- Ah! eager little Asteroid Thy folly was thy aim! Oh! ye who stretch forth sturdy hands To stay Art’s toppling Ark, Though you have saved the cherubim, Receive your meed of Dark. EUGENE R. WHITE. LIFE AND DEATH. In the bedroom was a cradle; in the adjoining room, dimly lighted and kept cool, was a coffin loaded with flowers. There was the awful presence of life and death. The infant turned its head and cried as a young woman bent over it, one hand pressing her breast as if she was restraining her breath, and touched its fair skin caressingly. The child’s tiny fist struck blindly at the air, and getting fairly awake he cried aloud. She drew back, pressing her hands to her face, sighing in her heart. The child blinked its blue eyes, and dozed off again. The woman went into the other room, where a man was praying at the coffin. “Oh, God! Oh, God! not this! Not this, Oh, God!” She sat down, away from the man, her elbows on her spread knees, pressing her fingers into her cheeks, gazing at him, at the coffin, at the blurred mist of all this unreal reality. The man moaned, “Oh, God! Oh, my God!” She smiled bitterly, making a gesture partly of impatience, and with something of scorn. “Have you no prayers--for the dead?” “No.” “Dead! Oh, my God, dead!” “Hush, hush! Pray for the living.” “The living! The living? It is the fruit of death.” “What is death?” “My wife.” “Your child--lives.” “My life is dead.” “It is but born.” The woman looked at the pinched, faded face of the corpse. “The child is the soul of my death, and my death lives.” He stood beside her at the coffin. “This is death.”