Then he passed through the ventilator, to the driver, some crackers and sherry. After he had closed it, and put away the bottle, box, and glasses, we both mused a long time, the halo-painter completely lost in reverie, and I thinking of the undying love of such a man--a man who could love but one, and for whom no other eyes or voice could ever mean so much. With him love was an all-absorbing passion. He had given his heart without reserve, and for him no other love could ever bloom again. I thought of him sitting, night after night, in his solitary vehicle working at the halo--a new halo which should surround the head of her he loved. I thought of him in the lonely early morning hours, working at a nimbus which was far to outshine in beauty and delicacy any painted or dreamed of by God-fearing saint-painters of old. He opened the shutters, and the light from the lamp began to grow dimmer as the early morning light shone faintly through the windows. I noticed the deep furrows of care and sorrow which marked his strong, pathetic face, purified by suffering and lighted by divine hope--the face of one who lived in another world, and for whom all of life was centered in his ideal--one who was in the world, but not of it. As he bade me good-by, his face beamed in the early Christmas morning light with indescribable tenderness; and as the little wagon with its faithful old black driver disappeared through the snow, I thought again and again of the beautiful, touching love of the man who would sit night after night trying to realize his dream of beauty, to clothe in the garb of a saint the form of her he loved. --Alexander W. Drake. =The Spyglass of the Past= It is possible for a man to have two hobbies. Dr. Aukirt demonstrated the fact. No one would have thought that the quiet man, who was so often poring over the Egyptian cases at the British Museum, was an optician; but then the truth is apt to be unsuspected. He used to say that it was all a mistake--that he was an explorer pure and simple, but that he explored the past and the heavens instead of the forest and rivers. At any rate, an archeologist he was, and a noted one too, or the British government would not have put him at the head of the expedition to excavate the ruins of Karnac, that greatest of all temples.