Trusting the strength of the rope which bound the bullock, Flint, with Don Quixotic chivalry, ventured into the corral in quest of the truant hat, resplendent in its trimmings of brilliant poppies. At sight of the intruder the enraged beast, giving a mighty tug, burst the defective bonds as though they had been made of twine. Head lowered, he charged the defenceless man, tossing him high in the air, whence he descended a limp and bleeding mass. With a roar that sounded in the ears of the semi-conscious victim like death's clarion, the brute again prepared to hurl its prey into eternity. Mary trembled in an agony of suspense before the spectre Death. Instinct whispered to her. Seizing a lasso which was tied to a post of the corral, her slender arm swung it high over the corral. Gyrating above the head of the maddened animal, the sinuous noose fell about his neck and held him prisoner, just as he was about to gore the rancher a second time. But Death still hovered over the corral. The grass was being dyed crimson by blood flowing gash in Flint's forehead. With Homeric from a courage Mary crept within the enclosure, in the face of the peril, and staunched the flow. Then femininity asserted itself and she fainted in the corral, where the cowboys, summoned by the steer's bellowing, found rescued and rescuer. IV. "A few lines, eh? before the mail goes? said " Cyrus Flint, as he stood at the post-office door, and looked at an envelope with two stamps on it, which he held in his hand. He had taken the mail not only for himself but for his neighbors-this time for himself and one neighbor. He had just read his own letter, and we may read it, too. The other was addressed to Miss Mary Somers, and it was not the first letter he had delivered as he passed her house during the years since his escape from death. His letter ran: DEAR FATHER: I shall need a larger check than usual this time, as this will be my last letter before Commencement. I shall expect you and Mary. Please excuse this short letter. I have only time for a few lines to Mary before the mail goes. SAM. When the Commencement was over and Sam once more waited for an answer, there was no amazement or pique in the voice which said, "Nothing is impossible to him who strives." JAMES D. C. MURRAY, '05. IF I WERE ONLY KING. O! Transitory joys are mine- I'd free old Ireland, Patrick's Isle, I'd make the Czar of Russia quail, I'd "Hoch der Kaiser!" right out loud Albeit old, I'm fond of strife, So I'd look 'round to find a wife, If I were only king. I'd rouse the Shah, who worships fire, If I were only king. My life would be one glad sweet song, ROBERT B. MASTERSON, '07. Under the Rose. Oh, who will tell me all the tales That live where'er the wild wind blows? Oh, who will sing me all the songs That rose leaves sing beneath the rose ? A Message. Long before the first red-feathered robin whistles his shrill, piercing note of song, long before the melting snows of winter disappear from the awakening earth, long before the flooded streams receive their final impetus, there is a truth flashed upon the soul that a spring will come. It is not a vain imagining, a yearning, nor a vague, natural preknowledge, but an intangible, subtle though sure message from a future time that so mysteriously binds the now and the to be. One experiences such a feeling in the throb of awakened aims, when the lethargy of stilled activity imperceptibly wears away, and the freedom of eternal hope lives in the heart. It is presaged by the impatient desire of the soul to free itself from the trammels of the body, and to fulfill the Platonic ideal of separate existence. It dwells in the blue sky, in the clear, cold air, in the rays of the sun, in the white field stretching out like a big cloud in the sky, in the forests of pine and of hemlock,-everywhere is the pervading first breath of a life that is to be. What a marvellous thing is this that men call nature! Valentine's Day. To one who has made a study of ethics it is not a new theory that social life is natural to man. To one who has practiced the same branch of philosophy it is an axiom. Is it altogether wonderful, then, that certain days should come down to us through the years dedicated in a unique way to the joy of living? In a category of such occasions, per haps, we can justly include Valentine's Day, the day when tender missives seek reception at the doors of cottage and hall, the day on which missives, not so tender, awake the suspicious wrath of offended innocence. Truly Tennyson's lines are altogether apropos and epitomize the festal day, Vanitas. "Where all day long you sit between Joy and woe, and whisper each." How gratifying to vanity it is when, in reading the latest novel, the reader thinks he has caught the precise significance of the author's words! The discovery plunges him into a state of self-sufficiency, and he, vain, egotistic mortal, imagines that only he has detected the pretty turn and play of words, only he has viewed from the proper angle the shading and coloring deftly Wrought and intermingled by the author-artist. Perhaps it is true that the subjective element of a poem or of a composition in prose is as multi |