Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      The crowd blended into a pulp of color. I fainted.

      I lingered about the city all that night, searching in vain for a lethean draught at the haunts where consolation is retailed at two hundred per cent profit. I did not find the nepenthe I sought for anywhere on draught, so I went home in disgust.

      Ethel received me in her usually effusive manner. She knows I object to being hugged at all hours of the day, yet I have never been able to cure her of that affection-garroting process so much in vogue with young wives of the gushing order.

      "What do you think?" she chirped, when I had staggered to a chair in a half-strangled condition. "Dear mother has just sent us the most beautiful present – "

      "Oh, I suppose so," I sneer savagely. "She generally does present us with something beautifully useless. Perhaps this time it's a dancing-bear, or a tame codfish" – with a wild laugh.

      "Oh, how can you talk so!" lifting a dab of cambric to her nose with a preliminary sniff that is generally the signal of tears, according to our matrimonial barometer. "You know dear mother is so fond of you."

      "Well, it's a case of misplaced affection," I growl, lounging out of the room just in time to avoid the rising storm.

      I dash upstairs and smoke a cigar in my own room. Then I feel better, and stroll into Ethel's boudoir, resolved to pitch her mother's present in the fire if it doesn't suit me. She ought to be suppressed in this particular. "Wha – what! No – yes, it is!" The bureau, Bella's bureau, stands in the chaste confines of Ethel's satin-lined nest. I fling myself upon it, tear the little drawer open – hurl the bundle of letters into the grate with a cackling laugh.

      Ethel enters timidly just then, and looks first at me and then at the burning papers with doubt and wonderment in her blue eyes.

      "I have been paying some old debts," I say, with an uneasy laugh. "These are some of the I.O.U.'s you see burning."

      She lays a soft little arm around my neck and a curly head on my immaculate shirt-front. Oh, spotless mask for such a darksome heart! I wonder she cannot catch the sound of its wicked beating.

      "I have been worried about you lately, dear," she whispers, with a tender tremor in her voice. "I thought perhaps you might – you might – have become entangled with some other – other – " Then she burst into tears.

      "How often must I tell you, darling," patting her cheek softly, "that you are the only woman I ever loved?"

      "Oh, Jack!"

Ernest De Lancey Pierson.

      A SHOT ON THE MOUNTAIN

      An eagle drifting to the skies

      To gild her wing in sunset dies,

      To float into the golden,

      To swing and sway in broad-winged might,

      To toss and heel in free-born right,

      High o'er the gray crags olden.

      A dark bird reaching on aloft,

      Till far adown her rugged croft

      Lies limned in misty tracing —

      Till, riding on in easy pride,

      Her cloud-wet wings are ruby pied,

      Are meshed in amber lacing.

      An eagle dropping to her cave

      On dizzy wing through riven air,

      A bolt from heaven slanted;

      A startled mother, arrow-winged,

      A mountain copestone, vapor-ringed,

      An eyry danger-haunted.

      An eagle slanting from the skies

      To stain her breast in crimson dyes

      Beneath the gilt and golden;

      A shred of smoke – the gray lead's might —

      A folded wing – the dead bird's right —

      Abreast the gray crags olden.

      The blush light fades along the west,

      The night mist rolls to crag, to crest,

      To cowl the ghostly mountain;

      Black shadows hush the eyry's calls;

      Below, a broad brown pinion falls —

      The last light from the fountain.

J. W. Rumple.

      EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

      PURIFYING THE POLLS BY LAW

      The edifying efforts made by Congress to throw guards about the ballot would be encouraging were they based on a little knowledge of the fact, and the reason for it. As it is, the be-it-enacted agreed on is little better than a solemn protest. Our learned law-makers would enjoy greater progress if they would remember that we have had for a century all the law necessary to punish such corruption, and that the trouble lies in our inability to enforce its provisions.

      What is really wanted is a tribunal to try and enforce the stringent enactments already in existence. This does not now exist. When a candidate for Congress corruptly purchases enough votes to secure his return to either House, he knows that such Chamber, being the judge of such applicant's qualifications, forms a court without a judge to give the law or an impartial jury to render a verdict. The Committee on Elections in either House is made up of the Democratic or Republican party, and so the jury is packed in advance.

      This is not, however, the only evil feature in the business. There is probably no organized body so ill-fitted for adjudication upon any subject as Congress. Returned to place by parties, the members are necessarily partisans. Their tenure of office is so brief that they have no time in which to learn their legitimate duties through experience, and these duties are so numerous, to say nothing of being encroached upon by services entirely foreign to their positions, that they have no opportunities for study. The consideration then of any subject from a judicial point of view is simply impossible. It is "touch and go" with them, and the touch is feeble, and the go hurried. It seems that a case of purely judicial sort has no place in Congress; and yet we have seen an instance – for example, in the New Idria contention – where the courts had been exhausted, from an Alcalde to the Supreme Court of the United States, and yet the complainant, worsted in every one of these tribunals, came through the lobby into Congress, and for over ten years kept that body in a tumult. Of course this was kept alive by the corrupt use of stock to the extent of ten millions, based on the credit of a company that would be such when Congress gave its illegal approval. This fact alone proves the dangerous and uncertain character of a legislative body that takes on judicial functions.

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