EDITOR'S TABLE

IN THE GARDEN

"Bah! how very tiresome!" exclaimed the Editor, as he pushed aside his pile of manuscripts and started up from his arm-chair. "It is impossible to work in this hot room, with the insects beating their wings noisily against the window-panes. The shower has cleared. Perhaps I can find that which I am so earnestly seeking, in the garden.

The Editor left his sultry study for the rain-awakened fragrance of the out-door world. He strolled between the hedges of green, past masses of bloom and color, whose glowing tints the summer storm had deepened. He drew in long, luxurious breaths, full of the odor of dripping blossoms and wet earth. "Yes, perhaps I shall discover it here," he nodded. "Among the flowers it is easy to see what is true beauty and what false imitation. They shall teach me the secret of choice and of genuine distinction."

The Editor knelt down by a bed of pansies, and letting the warm, rich soil sift through his fingers, he took his first lesson from the flowers.

"Do you want one of us?" timidly pleaded the pansies, as they held up their soft, velvety faces to his gaze. "We are just little poems you know, not very long or lasting; and we lose our beauty if we are handled much, or picked to pieces. But our colors are pretty, don't you think so? and perhaps you will like us if you take one or two."

"Oho! don't look at those low things," called the tulips, in loud, angry voices from over the way. "Come and admire us in our gorgeous gowns of yellow and red. You can find us everywhere, us the clever flirtation stories, us at whom everybody gazes. O! how we love to have people stare and say, 'See the giddy things!'"

"You need not scream so," answered the Editor, stooping to the pansy-bed. "I do not like you, bold and glaring that you are; and I shall leave you to the weeds." Then he picked a purple blossom, and one with a glint of yellow on its white petals, and passed on to where a bed of dark earth was dotted by thick green shoots.

"Why! what is this?" cried the Editor in astonishment.

"Dig, dig deep down," came the muffled answer from the ground. He hastened to toss away the soil, and there, with its roots stretching in all directions, lay a large, white bulb. "I am the essay," it continued. "I believe you know me better as the Heavy. Many people don't care for me at all, for they find it too much trouble to pluck up my roots. But if you take me home and plant me, I promise you that many fragrant buds will spring up, not only for these few summer days, but returning in greater number year after year."

"Oh yes, I know you, but your kind is rare," the Editor replied, as he carefully extracted it from the ground; and then he hastened on to where a beautiful bush was calling for his admiration. It swayed and bent in the wind and kept crying, "Am I not wonderful! wonderful! Look at me! Am I not wonderful!"

"Truly, your blossom is lovely," he replied, "but what ugly leaves you have!" Then he looked closer, and tore a tendril away, and behold! it was a common vine that had twined itself about a rose-bush.

"I thought you would come and help me," whispered the rose that crowned the bush in solitary beauty. "I heard you wishing for me all the afternoon. For one brilliant ode', you sighed, and I hung here and waited for you."

"You have many thorns," he replied as he plucked her, "but what subtleness of odor and what wealth of crimson petals! No wonder so few blossom in a summer!"

"Come here and pick us, pick us!" the wind swept a host of shrill voices to the Editor, and there lay a rippling and tossing bed of bright nasturtiums. "We are the gay adventurers of the garden," they cried. "Ho! Ho! We're a company of heroes and villains and passionate lovers!" "I've tomahawked an Indian!" called one, and "I've poisoned a king!" nodded another, "And I've broken half-a-hundred hearts!" blustered a third. The Editor shook his head with a laugh, and left them

strutting and bowing in their gold and scarlet doublet and hose. The big crysanthemums-crude beauties, all-called to him as he passed. The fire-weed flaunted her tassels in his face, the dandelion-juice stained the ground at his feet. But he hastened on to a distant part of the garden, where a hoe had never sunk into the ground. He plucked the anemones-little character studies-and the blush-rose that whispered of courtships. Then he stood before a field where the daisies danced to the edge of the horizon.

"Come and play with us," they begged. "We are the children-stories," they laughed. "Come and pick us for a Mayqueen wreath "" But he could not stay. He plucked a few from the edge of the field and hurried on deep and deeper into the woods. There at last he came to the end of his search, where he knelt down at a ring of coarse green leaves. From out its depths came the faint ringing of airy chimes and fairy voices, singing, "Many, many pass us by, and dream not that we are here, hidden away. Happy is he who finds us, the flowers of inspiration!" The Editor parted the leaves, and seepure and snowy underneath nodded the lilies-of-the-valley!

"I have sought for you long," he cried in ecstacy. "You are what I have most desired," and they nodded back and murmured, "We are what most of you long for and would find. For the blossom of genius is delicate, and yet survives year after year, pouring into hearts its fragrance and purity."

The Editor bent down and plucked the one full-blown. When he walked home in the twilight stillness his hands were full with the treasures of the garden; but the lily was more beautiful than all the rest.

"Candida", Northampton, May 27. "Very interesting "I'm crazy about that!" "Well done!" These were a few of the characteristic comments in circulation as the curtain was rung down on this play a few weeks ago. Simplicity of costume and scenery in non-Shakespearian drama is always a pleasant change, as well as careful attention given to minor parts. Hot-tempered Prossy, the "frank" and Lexy with his innocent "De-ah me-ah", were both delightful. The part of the Rev. Morrell was taken with enough ability to win cordial dislike as a “prig"; and the difficult presentation of the poet was well carried through. If at times his voice jarred too

much on our auditory nerves, if we felt like saying soothingly, "There, there, you are very young. You will outgrow this soon", if Candida herself did not quite come up to our expectations, it was only at times, otherwise the play carried our interest enthusiastically along.

POEM

Alone :-be not a coward, speak it plain,

Thou art alone; deny it and the pain

And restless longing of thy soul shall tear

The mask away, and leave the truth more bare.

Thou art alone

And through the tall salt grasses

The east wind as it passes

Maketh moan;

The dull, gray rack o'erhead

Drags inland from the sea,

And sullen waves beat restlessly
Upon the drifting sand.

Courage: thou art alone;

But in the wind there is a rhythm
And in the sea

A pulse that beats mysteriously

With life, a greater life than thine

In storm-cloud, wind and sea, throbs the Divine.

And thou on this lone shore

Hearing the breakers o'er and o'er
Chant to the wind-swept land

Swayed by this mighty pulse shall be,

Till conscious of thine own divinity.

-The Vassar Miscellany.

NIGHT IN THE CATTLE COUNTRY

Give me a night on the open plains,
Under the open sky,

Where the milky-way is a glowing trail,
And the moon swings slowly by.

As I make my bed on the naked earth

I hear the wailing bark

Of the gaunt coyote in the distant hills,
As he calls to his mate in the dark.

-The Yale Literary Magazine.

ALUMNE DEPARTMENT

The first three articles in this department were contributed by the Boston

Association.

IN FAIRY LAND

In fairy land, in fairy land

The skies are always blue;
The maidens always lovely,

The heroes ever true.

Glints fair sunlight
On armor bright,

And skies are always blue.

In fairy land, in fairy land

The flowers bloom alway;

The woods are all enchanted,

The people all are gay.
In magic ring

They dance and sing,

While flowers bloom alway.

In fairy land, in fairy land

Your wishes all come true;

The world is full of wonders,

And everything is new.

There's only play

The whole bright day,

Your wishes all come true:

The flowers bloom and bloom alway,

And skies are ever blue.

MARGUERITE FELLOWS '01.

A few days more and the twenty-fifth class will be leaving Smith College. Although these girls now sever their bodily connection with the college, they can look forward to the opportunity which

Some Duties and Privileges they will have in the future by reason of their graduation to keep a still vital connection with their Alma Mater. Perhaps it is a good time for each alumna to remind herself that she too has a duty to the college, no matter when she graduated, a duty from which, even if she wishes it, she can never be free.