Valley, hillside, prairie, and plain, stretched away from the spectator's feet in varying lines and curves, while down the center rolled the grand old river. It seemed like a second Canaan, waiting for the coming of the chosen people, its soil ready to be waked by the share of the settler's plow, when crops would come forth as if touched by the magician's wand. From "ON GROWING OLD." By NEAL BROWN. Read before the Phantom Club, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, April 15, 1913. ... Growing old has many stages. You can remember the time when, in reading your favorite author, you were disgusted to find that he had made his hero forty years old, and you wondered how he could be guilty of imputing romance to such an unconscionable age. By and by, even though you found forty years to be the old age of youth, you were solaced by the thought that it was the youth of old age, and still later you will wonder where youth ends and old age begins. In many assemblages you once found yourself the youngest man, or among the youngest. But with swift-flying years, you finally found yourself equal in age to most of those in all assemblies; but the time comes when only younger men are crowding around you. And when you try to evade the thought that you are growing old, along comes some kindly friend with the greeting, "How young you are looking." You grow to regard as babes, wild, young blades of forty or fifty. You may comfort yourself with the thought expressed by Holmes. He says that he could feel fairly immune from death as long as older men whom he knew, still remained, especially if they were of a much greater age than himself. They were farther out on the skirmish line, and must be taken first. MY ALLEGIANCE. By CORA KELLEY WHEELER, Marshfield, Wisconsin. Copyright, 1896, The Editor Publishing Company. FROM "MY LADY ELEANOR," pp. 119-20. I was wounded at Acre. My strong right arm will never strike another blow for the glory of the Cross. I started sadly out, in spite of our victory, for my western home. I thought to look in Eleanor's face once more, and see if the years had brought any tender thoughts of me into her heart. If not, I should never trouble her with any claim of mine. I knew she passed her time in works of charity, and that the house of Savoy had never held the love and reverence of the people before as it held it today, under the rule of my Lady Eleanor. We reached Savoy. In the old days I carried to the lady of my heart a reprieve from death; but to me she brought now a reprieve that took all the grief and sorrow out of my life, as she laid her sweet face on my breast and whispered, "I have loved you ever since the night you brought me home; why did you ever leave me?" With the love of the Duchess of Savoy began a new life; but to me she will ever be, as when I loved her first, "My Lady Eleanor." OTHER WISCONSIN WRITERS AND THEIR WORKS. ALBERTINE W. MOORE, Echoes from Mistland, Norway Music Album.