A NICE CORRESPONDENT

There's a whisper of hearts you are breaking,

Dear Fred, I believe it, I do!

Small marvel that Fashion is making
Her idol of you.

Alas for the world, and its dearly

Bought triumph, its fugitive bliss;
Sometimes I half wish I were merely
A plain or a penniless miss;

But, perhaps, one is best "with a measure
Of pelf," and I'm not sorry, too,
That I'm pretty, because 't is a pleasure,
My darling, to you!

Your whim is for frolic and fashion,

Your taste is for letters and art;

This rhyme is the commonplace passion
That glows in a fond woman's heart:
Lay it by in a dainty deposit

Love, some day they'll print it, because it

Was written to you.

FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON

DICTUM SAPIENTI

AT 't is well to be off with the old love Before one is on with the new

s somehow passed into a proverbBut I never have found it true.

› love can be quite like the old love,
Whate'er may be said for the new
nd if you dismiss me, my darling,
You may come to this thinking, too.

Were the proverb not wiser if mended,
And the fickle and wavering told
To be sure they're on with the new love
Before they are off with the old?

CHARLES HENRY WEBB

WHAT SHE SAID ABOUT IT

LYRICS to Ines and Jane,

Dolores and Ethel and May; Señoritas distant as Spain,

And damsels just over the way!

It is not that I'm jealous, not that,
Of either Dolores and Jane,

Of some girl in an opposite flat,
Or in one of his castles in Spain.

But it is that salable prose

Put aside for this profitless strain,
I sit the day darning his hose —
And he sings of Dolores and Jane.

Though the winged-horse must caracole

free

With the pretty, when "spurning the

plain,"

WHAT SHE SAID ABOUT IT

d the team-work fall wholly on me, ile he soars with Dolores and Jane?

! am neither Dolores nor Jane, But to lighten a little my life

Might the poet not spare me a strain

Although I am only his wife!

CHARLES HENRY WEBB

FROM the tragic-est novels at Mudie's
At least, on a practical plan —
To the tales of mere Hodges and Judys,
One love is enough for a man.

But no case that I ever yet met is
Like mine: I am equally fond
Of Rose, who a charming brunette is,
And Dora, a blonde.

Each rivals the other in powers

Each waltzes, each warbles, each paints — Miss Rose, chiefly tumble-down towers;

Miss Do., perpendicular saints.

In short, to distinguish is folly;

"Twixt the pair I am come to the pass Of Macheath, between Lucy and Polly. Or Buridan's ass.

If it happens that Rosa I've singled
For a soft celebration in rhyme,