76
Kansas University Weekly.
agreed to pass off Tom's absence unconcernedly with the plausible excuse of tooth-ache as the cause.
Alas! Poor Tom did not realize that he would be so besieged with friends that he would have to lie on his couch for two hours at a time with his head bound up after the fashion of sufferers of tooth-ache and mumps. He tried to impress upon his room-mate how self-sacrificing he had been to keep the deplorable condition of his face a profound secret so that, as he said, Jack would not be involved in any trouble. Although he had Jack's word of honor that his catastrophe was a profound secret he could not help feeling a little nervous about it. When he returned to his classes again he could not keep his face from turning to the hue of a boiled lobster for, as he passed a group of girls he was certain, as he afterwards confided to Jack, that he heard snatches of whispered conversation about mustaches and nitrate of silver. IDA M. CASE.
--on its bark, yet the trees to me at seven remained " mine " and not " us."
The Oak and the Birch.
I remember a small hill-side, carpeted from brow above to ravine below with short wild grasses, with here and there, as if placed with careless elegance, a rug of clover or wild strawberry vine. From the foot of the hill where murmured the stream, to me a torrent beaten in vain for trout, to the quivering glow of the sandy roll at the top over which the bumblebees went and the butterflies came, I was the tallest thing that lived and grew. Yet too, my castles were taller than I, but they did not seem to grow. I was then but seven years old and three feet nine and my house a gigantic oak and a skeleton birch. To me, then, these trees were the strongholds of my imaginary realms, or a city, or a fort just as my fancy suggested. They were so vast to me that an idea of personality being given to them was beyond my conception. The stones and flowers, the ants and the birds, were my friends but the oak and the birch were my prosperity. True a goblin dwelt in a hole near the top of the oak and the birch dropped me tiny notes
But lately I have seen them again and in vain did I seek to construe their uneven shapes into castles with moat or current. They nodded to me like old friends as I crossed the bridge over the brook and then and forever a personality entered their lives and a spirit breathed from out their leaves.
A forest had once covered this hill-side and these alone of all the wood had long since escaped the axe and flames. Half way up the hill they stand so near together that the midday sun mingles their shades. A hundred years of age the oak still stands in the very bloom of youth. So honest and sturdy and with such dignity does it stand that the moss along its northern side adds but beauty without a hint of age. The wind moves through its boughs and its leaves sing answering notes to those of the brook, or roar defiance to the storm. In summer its shade is cool and inviting and the birds build nests among its branches. Its only bitterness, its acorns, are welcomed by the small world below, the ants and worms.
But the birch, once the lady of the wood, in its life had grown rapidly, and now while probably not as old as the oak stands a decrepid, aged tree. Its once silver bark is whitened and is scarred and furrowed with deep rough black clefts. Its small leaves when shaken by the wind seem to shiver and cough. Many of its once long, flexible branches are dead and yellow and held together only by their toughened bark. Curious knots and tufts like bird's nests are visible in the forks, but no bird but the crow alights among its dead branches. There it stands, once the beauty of a forest, now like a monument to a misspent life, only awaiting the blast of some last storm to send it crashing to the ground and if allowed to remain, to lay rotting inside, its bark untouched by time, beneath the shades of the companion of its youth. R.E.E.
There are meters of accent,
There are meters of tone;
But the best of all meters
Is to meet her alone. -Ex.