For Menton is dead, poor fellow. Back to his native village he went, and the world forgot him. And Jean Ballieu-he sleeps too, Messieurs, in the church yard, not far from the old château. For he returned to Cleves once more, to die near her."

The fire still crackled in the grate, and still the autumn rain beat against the windows. We sat there without speaking a word, gazing thoughtfully into the glowing embers before us. H. M. P.

THE CHALICE OF CIRCE.

I.

In Circe's hall a dainty feast is spread,

Sweet music breathes thro' all the marble pile,
And myriad perfumed lights soft lustre shed
O'er many a rosy bower and winding aisle.
Lascivious, loose-robed girls with beck and smile
To banquet summon all who pass the gate,
And woe to him who heeds their tempting wile,

Nor prayers, nor tears, nor love, nor high estate,

Nor friend, nor child, nor wife, can save him from his fate.

II.

For there sits Circe, as a goddess fair,
Surrounded by her nymphs, a wanton band.
The morning sunbeams shimmer in her hair,
Her blue eyes gleam like stars in fairyland.
The opening rosebud, kissed by zephyrs bland,
May claim not half the sweetness of her lips;
A girdle clasps her waist, and in her hand

She holds a chalice that, once mortal sips,

Sheds ashes o'er his heart and o'er his soul eclipse.

III.

By magic spells and incantations wild,
Unto the cup is given a wondrous charm.
'Tis said 'twill turn a parent 'gainst his child,
Against a mother raise her offspring's arm;
Not e'en the loving spouse is safe from harm,
If once the husband drink of Circe's bowl.
Nor yet hath fever's fire nor war's alarm
Brought to our little earth such nameless dole
Or hurled to horrid Hell so many a helpless soul.

IV.

It taints the springs of genius and it breaks
The golden bond that friend to friend unites;
It fills the bones of youth with age's aches
And robs gray hairs of honor; it delights

In broken hearts and hearthstones; sleepless nights
And frenzied days are all its victims know;
The revel o'er, and dead the brilliant lights,
The morn comes down o'er sable wings of woe,

And weeps to find how man may fall the brute below.

It fills the heart with rancor, dulls the mind,
Sows seeds of sin in virtue's snowy breast.
The holiest vows it scatters to the wind,

The holiest things it treats with scorn and jest;
It nerves the arm to strike the friend loved best,
And whets th' assassin's steel; from pole to pole
Deserted homes and broken hearts attest

The baneful charm of Circe's maddening bowl,
And every drunkard's grave marks her poor victim's goal.

R. J. McH.

FRESHMAN MEMORIES '77-'78.

DEAR PURPLE:

With sweet insistence you will have reminiscences. You will take no refusal. Does your importunity arise from the embarrassment that goes with the editor's easy chair? I pity all penmen. I would really like to write, but are you not aware that "there is confusion in my powers?" My memory is faded. Can't always remember the names of old students now before me and am sometimes even put to making a name for myself. Anyhow, 'tis kind of you to want to give my memory a fair chance.

Perhaps your request for reminiscences doesn't mean a draft on my memory at all, but only a tax on my imagination. Not a few college men have, if any, only commonplace memories of college life. Old boys, it would appear, should be like the old prefects, have memories of no kind. There wasn't one of the one hundred and fifty students in my day that wouldn't swear that the prefects never knew and never found out what was going on around us. Mr. Chester, of course, knew the boys and could call their names the morning after they arrived from home; the "old man"-that was Fr. Logue-knew them by the end of the week; Mr. Quill at the end of the month and Mr. never knew them. As for escapades, prefects, to be sure, occasionally gave lines on surmise, but they never got down to

the true inwardness of things. Apropos, I remember a saddle-colored fellow from New Orleans who offered Mr. Fullerton a box of Havanas the first time he could make a square catch. By the way, all his schoolmates knew our generous friend from the South was off color. The prefects knew nothing of that, and they were supposed to be ignorant of everything else.

Now that I have pen in hand, I am minded that reminiscences call for a peculiar style of composition. When I was at Holy Cross I was not taught to write reminiscences. Were you? There was much ado about how to write a chapter of history, a poem, an oration, but never a word about the manner of writing reminiscences. Was it a lost art? Could I but lay hands on Sherman's Memoirs! I should have kept the reminiscences of Justin McCarthy by me-though I fear they are inimitable. "Fond memory brings back the light of other days around me." How to make that light shine clear in THE PURPLE atmosphere, that's the rub. In the last number of THE PURPLE, W. D. K. has found the proper mould for a reminiscence. Yes, reminiscences should be writ in rhyme and metre like those crystallized in the "Old Oaken Bucket" or "The Bells of Shandon."

'Oh, don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
And the master so kind and true,

And the little nook by the clear running brook,
Where we gathered the flowers as they grew.
On the master's grave grows the grass, Ben Bolt,
And the clear running brook is now dry,
And of all the friends who were classmates then
There remain, Ben, but you and I."