VAIN FREEDOM.
So I am free whom Love held thrall so long!
Now will I flaunt my colors on the air,
And with triumphal music scale heaven's stair,
Till all those shining choirs shall hush their song,
And hark in silent wonder to the strong,
Compelling harmonies that boldly dare
Their holy ears, and make the blest aware
That, free like them, I stand their ranks among.
Nay! but my triumph mocks me,—chills the day:
Bound would I be, and suffer, and be sad,
Rather than free, and with no heart to ache.
Strong God of Love, still hold me in thy sway!
Give back my human pain; let me go mad
With the old dreams, old tortures, for Love's sake.
Louise Chandler Moulton.
A TALK OVER AUTOGRAPHS.
THIRD PAPER.
For many years I was a regular contributor to the Saturday Review, the "Superfine Review" of Thackeray, the "Great Saturday Reviler" of John Bright. With the political part of that journal I had nothing whatever to do. Its politics, the editor told me, were Liberal with a small I. The I was so small that I never discovered it. In religious matters the Saturday Review was a pillar of the old-fashioned Church and State party. If the first editor was orthodox, he must nevertheless have been a somewhat strange prop for a church, for he swore like a trooper. There was, I was told, only one man in the office who could stand up against his volley of oaths, and that was the manager, a quiet-looking old gentleman, whose name of David Jones, pleasant as it looked at the bottom of his quarterly checks, was in itself somewhat suggestive of marine profanity. He was so religious a man that he would not have submitted to be damned even by a prince without rebuke. The proprietor of the paper, Mr. Beresford Hope, one of the two members of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, used every year to give the contributors a grand dinner at Greenwich. How oppressive was the bill of fare! What courses had to be struggled through, courses each with its own appropriate wine! One year I chanced to sit by one of the first physicians of London. When he saw me pass over course after course, and reject wine after wine, he broke out into indignant remonstrances. My delicate state of health, I said, forced me to be abstemious. "My dear sir," he replied, "you should have done as I always do on such occasions. For the last three days I have carefully prepared myself for this dinner, and you can easily
