One day, out in the meadow
With strangers from the town,
Some secret plan discussing,

The men walked up and down.
Yet, now and then seemed watching,
A strange uncertain gleam,

That looked like lances 'mid the trees, That stood below the stream.

At eve they all assembled,

All care and doubt were fled; With jovial laugh they feasted, The board was nobly spread.

The elder of the village

Rose up, his glass in hand,
And cried, "We drink the downfall
Of an accursed land!

"The night is growing darker,
Ere one more day is flown,
Bregenz, our foeman's stronghold,
Bregenz shall be our own!

The women shrank in terror

(Yet Pride, too, had her part),

But one poor Tyrol maiden

Felt death within her heart.

Before her, stood fair Bregenz,
Once more her towers arose;
What were the friends beside her?
Only her country's foes.
The faces of her kinsfolk,

The days of childhood flown,
The echoes of her mountains

Reclaimed her as their own!

Nothing she heard around her

(Though shouts rang forth again), Gone were the green Swiss valleys, The pasture and the plain; Before her eyes one vision, And in her heart one cry, That said, "Go forth, save Bregenz, And then, if need be, die!"

With trembling haste and breathless, With noiseless step she sped; Horses and weary cattle

Were standing in the shed;

She loosed the strong white charger

That fed from out her hand,

She mounted, and she turned his head Towards her native land.

"Faster!" she cries, "O faster!"
Eleven the church bells chime;
"O God," she cries, "help Bregenz,
And bring me there in time!"
But louder than bells' ringing
Or lowing of the kine,

Grows nearer in the midnight
The rushing of the Rhine.
She strives to pierce the darkness,
And looser throws the rein;

Her steed must breast the waters
That dash above his mane.

And if to deeds heroic

Should endless fame be paid, Bregenz does well to honor The noble Tyrol maid.

Three hundred years are vanished,
And yet upon the hill
An old stone gateway rises

To do her honor still.

And there, when Bregenz women
Sit spinning in the shade,
They see in quaint old carving
The charger and the maid.

And when, to guard old Bregenz
By gateway, street, and tower,
The warder paces all night long,
And calls each passing hour:
"Nine, ten, eleven," he cries aloud,
And then (O crown of Fame!)
When midnight pauses in the skies
He calls the maiden's name.

- ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.

PARABLES

ON PERSECUTION

1. AND it came to pass, after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent about the going down of the sun.

2. And behold a man, bowed with age, came from the way of the wilderness, leaning on a staff.

3. And Abraham rose and met him, and said, “Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise early in the morning and go on thy way."

4. But the man said, "Nay, for I will abide under this tree."

5. And Abraham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat.

6. And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, "Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, creator of heaven and earth?”

7. And the man answered and said, "I do not worship the God thou speakest of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth always in my house, and provideth me with all things."

8. And Abraham's zeal was kindled against the