Let not your soul be saddened by dread of darksome death; Immortal life depends not upon the mortal breath. Behold this worm; no creature more helpless can be found, Yet this, too, has a future, by death upraised, unbound. It crawls its brief existence till Summer’s sun has fled; Then lies in cocoon shrouded and, as a worm, is dead. But when the warmth of Spring-time breaks through its silent tomb, On radiant wings it floats on air, and sips the flower’s perfume. And yet the self-same spirit that moved the creeping thing, Now flutters in this moth’s light form and on its rainbow-wing. ... Out of the acorn’s foulness that now lies here decayed, Shall rise the giant oak-tree, with broadly spreading shade: And every seed that’s buried and seems to rot away, But proves that death is doorway unto a higher day; But proves that death is needful to loose the spirit’s wings, And that all life is only the germ of better things. ALEXANDER JEFFREY. SIDE TALKS WITH THE PHILISTINES: BEING SOUL EASEMENT AND WISDOM INCIDENTALLY. I observe that the New Woman still sharpens her lead pencil with the scissors. * * * * * The Chicago _Times-Herald_, realizing that owing to emanations from the Stock Yards, the Pierian Spring might need a drainage canal, is making an effort to dam the obnoxious flow, by offering prizes for the very best machine-made prose and verse. The literary editor who was selected to do the damning has recently, in a marked manner, proved his competency for the “job.” He awarded the prize for the best original poem on the romantic subject, “Chicago,” to a young lady from Indianapolis who sent him a copy of B. F. Taylor’s _Fort Dearborn_, which was an original and a favorite twenty years ago. When the editor’s attention was called to the prehistoric flavor of the prize poem, he treated the matter with fine scorn, admitting that it was true, that there had been a “writer of some local reputation named Taylor who had originally written the poem.” He then intimated that any plumber’s daughter from Indianapolis, who would thus attempt to deceive a guileless Chicago editor, ought to be well spanked. And straightway he impaled her on the turnspit of public opinion and “roasted” her like an articled literary chef, and in fact the girl deserved it for wasting her time in copying poetry when she could have employed it more profitably in making out her father’s bills. The literary editor handled this matter so diplomatically that the proprietors of the journal rewarded him with an order on McClurg for a copy of B. F. Taylor’s _Old Time Pictures_ which contains the poem. * * * * *