And I vainly keep revolving

That long, jointed, endless name;
'Tis a riddle past my solving

Who he was, or whence he came.
Was he that brother home returned?
Was he some former lover spurned?
Or some family fiancé

That the lady did not fancy?
Was he any one of those?

Sabe Dios. Ah! God knows.

Sadly smoking my manilla,
Much I long to know
How fares the lady of the villa
That once charmed me so,
When I visited Sevilla

Years and years ago.
Has she married a Hidalgo?
Gone the way that ladies all go
In those drowsy Spanish cities,
Wasting life-a thousand pities-
Waking up for a fiesta

From an afternoon siesta,
To "Giralda" now repairing,
Or the Plaza for an airing;
At the shaded reja flirting,
At a bull-fight now disporting;
Does she walk at evenings ever
Through the gardens by the river?
Guarded by an old duenna
Fierce and sharp as a hyena,
With her goggles and her fan
Warning off each wicked man?
Is she dead, or is she living?
Is she for my absence grieving?
Is she wretched, is she happy?
Widow, wife, or maid? Quien sabe?

NEW ENGLAND WEATHER.

[At a New England dinner in New York, Mark Twain delivered the following speech, amidst frequent interruptions-of laughter and applause.]

I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw

apprentices in the Weather Clerk's factory, who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article and will take their custom elsewhere, if they don't get it.

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration-and regret. The weather is always doing something there, always attending strictly to business, always getting up new designs and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in the spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all climes. I said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day." I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came, and he made his collection in four days. As to variety; why, he confessed he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity; well, after he had picked out and discarded all that were blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; weather to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor.

The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing; but there are some things that they will not stand. Every year they kill off a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so, the first thing they know, the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by.

Old Probabilities has a mighty reputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. You take up the papers and observe how crisply and confidently he checks off what to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in the Middle States, in the Wis

consin region, see him sail along in the joy and pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then He doesn't know what the weather is to be in New England. He can't any more tell than he can tell how many Presidents of the United States there are going to be. Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out something like this: "Probable northeast to southwest winds, varying to the southward and westward and eastward and points between; high and low barometer, sweeping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drougnt, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, with thunder and lightning." Then he jots down this postscript from his wandering mind to cover accidents: "But it is possible that the programme may be wholly changed in the meantime."

Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There is only one thing certain about it, you are certain there is going to be plenty of weather. A perfect grand review; but you never can tell which end of the procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought; you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out with your sprinkling pot, and ten to one you get drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you stand from under and take hold of something to steady yourself, and the first thing you know you get struck by lightning. These are great disappointments; but they can't be helped. The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that behind for you to tell whether-well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there.

And the thunder. When the thunder commences merely to tune up, and scrape and saw and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, "Why, what awful thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raised and the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in the cellar, with his head in the ash barrel.

Now as to the size of the weather in New Englandlengthways I mean. It is utterly disproportionate to the size of that little country. Half the time when it is packed as full as it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking out bevond the edges and projecting

around hundreds and hundreds of miles over the neighboring States. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about, where she has strained herself trying to do it.

I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the New England weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hear rain on a tin roof, so I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eye to that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on the tin ? No, sir; skips it every time.

Mind, I have been trying merely to do honor to the New England weather; no language could do it justice. But after all there are at least one or two things about that weather (or, if you please, effects produced by it), which we residents would not like to part with. If we had not our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its vagaries-the ice storm-when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top-ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles, cold and white like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms, that glow and hum and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity, from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold; the tree becomes a sparkling fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels, and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence ! One cannot make the words too strong.

Month after month I lay up hate and grudge against the New England weather; but when the ice storm comes at last, I say, "There, I forgive you now; the books are square between us; you don't owe me a cent; go and sin no more; your little faults and foibles count for nothing; you are the most enchanting weather in the world.'

S. L. CLEMENS.

MONA'S WATERS.

[Great variety in expression-light to grand description. Avoid

monotony.]

Oh! Mona's waters are blue and bright

When the sun shines out like a gay young lover;

But Mona's waves are dark as night

When the face of heaven is clouded over.

The wild wind drives the crested foam

Far up the steep and rocky mountain,

And booming echoes drown the voice,
The silvery voice, of Mona's fountain.

Wild, wild against that mountain's side

The wrathful waves were up and beating,
When stern Glenvarloch's chieftain came;
With anxious brow and hurried greeting
He bade the widowed mother send

(While loud the tempest's voice was raging)
Her fair young son across the flood,

Where winds and waves their strife were waging.

And still that fearful mother prayed,

"Oh! yet delay, delay till morning,

For weak the hand that guides our bark,

Though brave his heart, all danger scorning."

Little did stern Glenvarloch heed:

"The safety of my fortress tower

Depends on tidings he must bring

From Fairlee bank, within the hour.

"See'st thou, across the sullen wave,

A blood-red banner wildly streaming?

That flag a message brings to me

Of which my foes are little dreaming.

The boy must put his boat across

(Gold shall repay his hour of danger),

And bring me back, with care and speed,
Three letters from the light-browed stranger."

The orphan boy leaped lightly in;

Bold was his eye and brow of beauty,
And bright his smile as thus he spoke :
"I do but pay a vassal's duty;
Fear not for me, O mother dear!

See how the boat the tide is spurning;
The storm will cease, the sky will clear,
And thou wilt watch me safe returning."