--Henry Fielding. "Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon." =Birds Divulge Army Secrets= During the night, before the battle of Sadowa, an Austrian division commanded by the archduke, retreating before the Prussian army, had bivouacked near a town in Bohemia, facing north, says Sir Evelyn Wood, in the _London Gazette_. At midnight the archduke, when resting in a peasant's cottage, was awakened by the arrival of a gypsy, having come to report the advance of the enemy. The archduke, who spoke Romany fluently, asked: "How do you know? Our outposts have not reported any movement." "That, your highness, is because the enemy is some way off." "Then how do you know?" The gypsy, pointing to the dark sky, lighted by the moon, observed: "You see those birds flying over the woods from north to south?" "Yes; what of them?" "Those birds do not fly by night unless disturbed, and the direction of their flight indicates that the enemy is coming this way." The archduke put his division under arms and reinforced the outposts, which in two hours' time were heavily attacked. =An Incident Related In a Letter= 7:20 P. M.--I must tell you a thing I saw to-day. I was going down to Portobello in the train, when there came into the next compartment (third-class) an artisan, strongly marked with smallpox, and with sunken, heavy eyes--a face hard and unkind, and without anything lovely. There was a woman on the platform seeing him off. At first sight, with her one eye blind and the whole cast of her features strongly plebeian, and even vicious, she seemed as unpleasant as the man; but there was something beautifully soft, a sort of light of tenderness, as on some Dutch Madonna, that came over her face when she looked at the man. They talked for a while together through the window; the man seemed to have been asking for money. "Ye ken the last time," she said, "I gave ye two shillings for your lodgin', and ye said--"it died off in a whisper. Plainly Falstaff and Dame Quickly over again. The man laughed unpleasantly, even cruelly, and said something; and the woman turned her back on the carriage and stood a long while so, and, do what I might, I could catch no glimpse of her expression, although I thought I saw the heave of a sob in her shoulders. At last, after the train was already in motion, she turned and put two shillings into his hand. I saw her stand and look after us with a perfect heaven of love on her face--this poor one-eyed Madonna--until the train was out of sight; but the man, sordidly happy with his gains, did not put himself to the inconvenience of one glance to thank her for her ill-deserved kindness. --Robert Louis Stevenson. In letter to Mrs. Stillwell, Sept. 16, 1873. =A Hero Dead=