"Zuli," I asked, "what is the meaning of this dim recognition? Have I seen you in my dreams?"

"Do not ask me," she said. "It is not given to me to fold aside the veil that perplexes you. Hear all I have to tell you.

"Next to the great Supreme Being, we Aztecs worshipped Tezca, the god of all beauty and beneficence. Every year the priests chose from the thousands of captives one of perfect physical beauty to represent this Tezca. He was clothed in magnificent apparel; stately palaces and gardens were at his disposal, and the king, nobles, and merchants honored and feasted him as if he were the god himself.

"At the end of eleven months a bride was chosen for him, always a maiden of high birth and loveliness; for it was esteemed a distinguished honor for a family to have one of its daughters wedded to this representative of the god.

I have told you of the beautiful Nacetl. Upon him fell the fatal choice of the priests.

"Often at banquets and festivals we met, and soon tender words and glances passed between us. Admiration for his beauty and pity for his fate had deepened into unutterable love. And one heavenly night, when we two were alone in the palace gardens, we exchanged our vows of constancy.

"The moonlight fell upon a thousand flowers, whose perfume filled the air. The soft plashing of fountains mingled with the tinkling of distant music, and down below the terrace and far away to Huitlapan rippled the waters of Tezcuco."

Again Zuli paused. Again I met the trembling radiance of her eyes; and far away in some forgotten century, on some forgotten shore, I seemed to stand with that moonlit lake before me. I heard the plashing fountains and distant music, and the faint ecstasy of a passion long dead seemed to mingle with the perfume of tropical flowers for a moment, and then, as if it were a flash from some unremembered dream, the scene vanished away.

Zuli continued: "After that imagine what joy it was to us when the priests proclaimed that I was to be Nacetl's bride!-and I blessed my beauty, which before had been but little prized by me.

"All this time my lover was unconscious of the fate that awaited him. Immediate death would have been the punishment of any one who informed him of it. So during that golden month nothing marred his happiness but the thought of distant home and people; while I paid for every moment of joy with an agony of fear.

"So the wine of life kept oozing drop by drop, the leaves kept dropping one by one,' until the dawning of the day of doom.

"We were standing on the parapet of the palace, looking down upon the hurrying throng pressing towards the lake and across it on their way to the temple of Tezca, to witness the sacrifice.

"Nearer and nearer drew the procession of priests coming to lead Nacetl to the barge which should bear him away from me forever; and louder and louder sounded their songs and the music of the instruments.

"With a sudden determination to die with him, I turned, and,

throwing my arms about his neck, told him, with tears of anguish, the fate that lay before us both. And as the priests approached, with one last passionate kiss I unclasped his arms from about me and declared to them that I had revealed their sacred secret.

"Side by side we were led to the lake. Once more we were rocked together upon its trembling breast, and then, leaving it behind us, we began the ascent of the pyramid.

"My parents had been informed of my fate, which their wealth and powerful position could not prevent, and, heart-broken, they were forced to bid me farewell.

"Ah! it was hard to part from them whose love had surrounded all my life, but it would have been harder still to see Nacetl go alone to the sacrificial stone.

"Higher and higher up the side of the pyramid wound our sad procession, until at last the summit was reached, and six black-robed priests received us.

"Nacetl was bound and laid upon the great jasper stone, and in an instant his heart lay at the feet of the god to whom he and the temple were dedicated.

"One awful moment of agony, and the same knife which had pierced the bosom of my Tlascalan lover sought my heart too; and out upon the great sea of silence floated the souls of Zuli and Nacetl."

When she paused, my thoughts were for a little while filled with the story I had heard. And then I asked, "In the spirit-world, Zuli, are you and Nacetl always together?"

"I may not tell you of the spirit-world," she replied, "but through all changes it is given me to sometimes look again into the eyes of my beloved." And for one moment through those windows of the soul our spirits seemed to meet face to face. Then the firelight still flickered on the hearth, and the wintry wind rattled at the casement, but I was alone.

THE SEQUEL.

As I laid down the paper from which I had been reading, Brownell relieved his mind by a long whistle.

"I say, Meredith, did you ever notice anything queer about 'the god' before all this?" he asked.

"Never," I replied. "He was as level-headed a fellow as I ever knew. He sent this to me from Mexico, whither he went early in the winter. After his return he painted a picture of the Indian girl, which attracted a good deal of attention, but he refused to sell it.

"He changed sadly in the next few months. He was no longer the bon camarade of old. And in the studios it began to be whispered that Almy was going mad.

One night I entered his room, and found him standing before the picture, grasping the fragments of that broken cup.

"I asked him to go out with me; but he only replied, 'Let me alone, Meredith. I am trying to solve the problem of existence.

Good-night, dear friend.'-'Good-night, my boy,' I said; and, with an uncomfortable feeling that I was the third in that room, I closed the door and came away.

"The next day none of us saw anything of Almy, and, becoming alarmed, we entered his studio and found him lifeless upon the floor before the picture of Zuli. On the table was a package addressed to me. It contained the volume of Persian quatrains. Between the leaves was a note, which ran thus:

"I am convinced that just out of reach of my hand-just beyond the portal of this tent which we call life-is waiting for me one who has been my companion spirit since the foundation of time. Before you read these words, old friend, I shall have pushed aside the flimsy barrier that divides me from my beloved.

"Bury this broken cup with me. This picture, so precious to me, I leave to you, my faithful friend.

"ALMY.'

"Two wavering strokes of a pencil on the enfolding page marked the lines,

"The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter. And the Bird is on the wing."

"Meredith," said Brownell, after I had ceased speaking, "you have let me into a psychological problem, to-night, that I would give a good deal to see through. Truly enough, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. Poor Almy! Come on, old fellow: I must get out into the air and walk off this queer feeling. When I met you this evening I thought I was thirty-six, but now, by Jove! I half believe I am as old as Time himself. Come on!" And, lighting our cigars, we tried to forget our friend's fate, and strolled out into the brilliant streets of Paris.

Virginia Bioren Harrison.

"MADELAINE."

EST as thou art,

RE

Just as thou art this bright October morn,
For nothing purer since the world was born,
Purer nor fairer, to the earth was given.

Rest as thou art!

Robed in the graces of thy fourteen years,

Enriched with all that nature can bestow;
Cling to thy mother's arms, and calm her fears,—
Fears that a mother's dread alone can know;
Lie like a tranquil thought upon her breast,-
A gift from heaven,-

And let thy lashes drink the bappy tears

That well up from her soul, and make thy nest
Deep in the heart of her who loves thee best.
Sweet child, so rest!

As flowers in winter to the senses bring
Brightness and joy to dissipate the cold,
Do thou remain, an emblem of the Spring;
Rest as thou art, and let the years grow old!

Remain, sweet maid,

The perfect flower for which thy mother prayed;
Her prize is won;

She would not wish thee other than as now ;—
Then stay thou changeless, while the seasons grow,
A rose-bud blushing at the amorous sun,

Not knowing why

Such tremors should be wafted from the sky.
So unbeguiled,

So near to womanhood, yet still a child!
When thou art nigh,

The leaves, in wonder at thy loveliness,
Are fain to stay, and never let thee pass,
And, battling with the breeze for thy caress,
Crimson, and die in rapture at thy feet.
Ah, coy coquette ! to sink upon the grass,
While girlish pleasure in thy bosom heaves,
To know thyself so innocently sweet,
A lily nestling in the autumn leaves!

Why shouldst thou change?

When angels lent their features to the earth,
And Raphael's hand transfixed them as they fell,
The world, in wonderment at this new birth,
Prayed to be lifted where the seraphs dwell.
Those heavenly tints remain with us to-day
Undimmed by time:

Surely the angels bore thee here to stay:
Then let all merely earthly things decay,
But thou, remain,

Rest as thou art,-and sure, from every clime,
Whether from ocean shore or mountain range,
Pilgrims shall come o'er desert, sea, and plain,
To worship at the shrine of Madelaine.

Weak as we are,

We shall but gather strength from thy behavior,
And all behold in thee, the while we pray,

Another star

To lead man's footsteps once more to his Saviour.

Barton Hill.

HANDWRITING AND WRITERS.

THAT do you think of my becoming an author and relying for support upon my pen?" says Nathaniel Hawthorne, in a letter written when he was a student in Bowdoin College. "Indeed, I think the illegibility of my handwriting is very author-like." That illegibility he retained all his life, and after his death several of his manuscripts remained long unpublished because no one was able to decipher their intricacies.

But there may be some question as to his adjective of "author-like." Many writers have been even worse scribes than Hawthorne himself, but, on the other hand, there are many whose penmanship is remarkable for neatness and beauty. Among living authors, Howells, Holmes, Bret Harte, Andrew Lang, William Norris, Frederick Locker, and George Macdonald write hands that are plain and legible and often beautiful, without any strongly distinctive characteristics. Among the authors of the past, Gray, Moore, Leigh Hunt, Walter Scott, and Buchanan Read possessed a pleasing running hand which also failed to express any decided individuality. Longfellow's handwriting was a bold, frank back-hand. Bryant's was aggressive and pleasing to the eye, but had no poetical characteristics; and Keats's was rather too clerical for the most dainty of modern poets.

Thackeray's penmanship was marvellously neat, but so small that it could not always be read with comfort by any but microscopic eyes. He is reported to have said that if all other methods of livelihood were to fail him he would undertake to write the Lord's Prayer on his thumb-nail. Charles Dickens's writing was much less beautiful, but almost equally minute, and his habit of writing with blue ink upon blue paper, with frequent interlineations and cross-lines, made his copy a burden alike to compositor and proof-reader. Douglas Jerrold was an offender of the same sort. He jotted down his jokes upon little slips of blue paper in letters smaller than the type in which they were presently to be set. Captain Marryat's handwriting was so fine that whenever the copyist rested from his labors he was obliged to stick a pin where he left off, in order to find the place again. Charlotte Bronté's handwriting appeared to have been traced with a needle. Other experts in microscopic penmanship are the English novelists R. D. Blackmore and William Black, who write tiny characters that are almost undecipherable at first sight, and the Americans George Cable and Julian Hawthorne. The latter forms his letters with care and precision, but they are almost infinitesimal in size.

Nothing is more noticeable than the difference between the hands of those who seem satisfied with their words, who seem to find pleasure in the rapidity with which they express their thoughts, and the hands of those who are dissatisfied with their words and are disposed to torture language until it expresses something more or something less. Mathematicians, as a rule, write untidy, scrambling hands, because