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in the woods, and moonlight boat rides when "mamma" didn't like the water and waited on shore—then catching a glimpse of my image in the mirror opposite me I noted with a smile of satisfaction that I was still young and not half bad looking.
The season having hardly begun when I reached beach I discovered that the hotel was as yet almost deserted. Why had I come so blamed early? There was nothing to see, nothing to do! In a mood not altogether pleasant I shut myself up in my room. When the dinner hour arrived my humor was unchanged, and, stalking indignantly through the nearly empty dining room, I seated myself at a small table in an obscure corner. I had been sitting for some time inwardly cursing my abominable luck when a peal of childish laughter called me from my reverie.
Glancing up, I saw at a table not far from me a woman, an ethereal looking creature clad in black. Her head was turned from me so that I noted only the long, dark lashes, the delicate transparency of the skin, and the wealth of golden hair. At her side was the child who had attracted my attention. She was a chubby little mite of about four, with golden curls like her mother's. Being unusually fond of children she won my heart at once, and I determined to make her acquaintance. I could see at a glance that the woman was a widow and my sympathy went out to the fatherless child. As I watched them a gentleman approached the table, bowed elaborately, familiarly pinched the little girl's cheek, and seated himself beside the mother. He was tall and thin with yellow whiskers, a typical English dude, even to the eye glass. Disgusting Englishman! his insolence made me furious; and when the widow lifted her sad, dark eyes confidingly to his repulsive face my blood fairly boiled.
The next morning I found the child alone on the veranda and soon we were quite well acquainted. She was sitting on my knee prating innocently when a sad, sweet voice called, "Dorothy, come here!" I knew, without turning my head, from whom that voice had come.
The little girl slipped off my lap and hurried to her mother, and I heard that same voice say very gently, "Dorothy, has mamma not told you not to talk to strangers?" and I felt the dark eyes resting on my face. "Why, mamma," returned the child wonderingly, "He not a stranger, he love you baby girl." I offered my humblest apologies for my seeming rudeness and felt at once that I was forgiven.
From that time Dorothy and I were the best of friends. Often the mother joined us on our strolls; she could not endure to be separated from her child. Soon the large hotel filled with guests, but the widow in her solitude preferred the quite moonlight lake with Dorothy and me to the brilliant ball room, thronged with the gay crowds from the city. Thus the summer passed away all too quickly.
One day as Dorothy and I were returning from an unusually long stroll we found her mother awaiting us. She sat leaning against a huge rock, gazing out at sea, with a sad far away look on her beautiful face. I seated myself beside her, the little girl on my knee, and for several minutes neither spoke. What a picture she made against the white rock! It seemed to me, on that August morning, that she looked paler than usual.
"I leave Newport tomorrow," I said at last, "and you have no idea how I shall miss little Dorothy. She has become very dear to me." "Dorothy will miss you too," she answered, still gazing out at sea. I laid my hand gently on the small white one. "Let me take Dorothy with me," I pleaded. Her great dark eyes met mine as she softly murmured, "Where Dorothy goes, there I must go also."
This was many years ago, but often as I sit alone in my bachelor apartments there comes to me the memory of a still morning by the sea—golden hair and black draperies outlined against the white back-ground of a huge rock. PAULINE LEWELLING.
He entered the editor's sanctum,
And vended his views unsought:
And next day was hanged as a bandit,
For wrecking a train of thought.—Ex.