Woo'd and married and a'!

Wi' havins and tocher sae sma'!
I think ye are very weel aff

To be woo'd and married at a'!"

'Toot, toot!" quo' her gray-headed faither,
She's less o' a bride than a bairn;
She's ta'en like a cout frae the heather,
Wi' sense and discretion to learn.
Half husband, I trow, and half daddy,
As humor inconstantly leans,

The chiel maun be patient and steady,
That yokes wi' a mate in her teens.

A kerchief sae douce and sae neat,
O'er her locks that the wind used to blaw!
I'm baith like to laugh and to greet,
When I think o' her married at a'!"

Then out spak' the wily bridegroom,

Weel waled were his wordies, I ween:'I'm rich, though my coffer be toom,

Wi' the blinks o' your bonny blue een. I'm prouder o' thee by my side,

Though thy ruffles or ribbons be few, Than if Kate o' the Croft were my bride, Wi' purfles and pearlins enow.

Dear and dearest of ony!

Ye're woo'd and buikit and a'!

And do ye think scorn o' your Johnny,
And grieve to be married at a'?”

She turn'd and she blush'd and she smil❜d,
And she looket sae bashfully down;

The pride o' her heart was beguil'd,

And she played wi' the sleeves o' her gown;

She twirled the tag o' her lace,
And she nippet her bodice sae blue,
Syne blinket sae sweet in his face,
And aff like a maukin she flew.
Woo'd and married and a'!
Wi' Johnny to roose her and a'!
She thinks hersel' very weel aff,

To be woo'd and married and a'!

I

IT WAS ON A MORN

T was on a morn, when we were thrang,
The kirn it crooned, the cheese was making,
And bannocks on the girdle baking,

When ane at the door chappt ìoud and lang.

Yet the auld gudewife and her mays sae tight, Of a' this bauld din took sma' notice, I ween; For a chap at the door in braid daylight

Is no like a chap that's heard at e'en.

But the docksy auld laird of the Warlock glen, Wha waited without, half blate, half cheery, And langed for a sight o' his winsome deary, Raised up the latch, and came crousely ben.

His coat it was new and his o'erlay was white,
His mittens and hose were cozie and bien;
But a wooer that comes in braid daylight
Is no like a wooer that comes at e'en.

He greeted the carline and lasses sae braw,
And his bare lyart pow sae smoothly he straikit
And he looket about, like a body half glaikit,
On bonny sweet Nanny, the youngest o' a'.

66

"Ha, laird!" quo' the carline, and look ye that

way?

Fye, let na' sic fancies bewilder you clean: An elderlin man, in the noon o' the day,

Should be wiser than youngsters that come at e'en.”

"Na, na," quo' the pawky auld wife, “I trow,
You'll no' fash your head wi' a youthfu' gilly,
As wild and as skeig as a muirland filly;
Black Madge is far better and fitter for you."

He hem'd and he haw'd, and he drew in his mouth,
And he squeezed the blue bannet his twa hands
between,

For a wooer that comes when the sun's i' the south
Is mair landward than wooers that come at e'en.

"Black Madge is sae carefu''

me?"

"What's that to

"She's sober and eydent, has sense in her noddle: She's douce and respeckit ”—“I care na' a bodle: Love winna be guided, and fancy 's free."

Madge tossed back her head wi' a saucy slight,
And Nanny, loud laughing, ran out to the green;
For a wooer that comes when the sun shines bright
Is no like a wooer that comes at e'en.

Then away flung the laird, and loud mutter'd he,
"A' the daughters of Eve, between Orkney and
Tweed, O!

Black or fair, young or auld, dame or damsel or
widow,

May gang in their pride to the de'il for me!"

But the auld gudewife and her mays sae tight
Cared little for a' his stour banning, I ween;
For a wooer that comes in braid daylight

ls no like a wooer that comes at e'en.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

HONORÉ DE BALZAC, the greatest of French novel ists, born at Tours in 1799; died in Paris in 1850. He began the writing of short stories when still in his teens, and at twenty-five had published about thirty. None were popular. In 1829 he published "Les Derniers Chouans," which established his reputation.

THE GREATNESS AND THE DECLINE OF CÉSAR BIROTTEAU

(Copyright by Little, Brown & Co., Miss Wormeley, translator)

WHEN

THEN César came to Paris, he could read, write, and cipher; his education stopped there; his laborious life had hindered him from ac quiring any ideas and knowledge foreign to the business of perfumery. Constantly mingling with people who were indifferent to science and letters, whose education did not go beyond specialties; having no time to devote to elevating studies, the perfumer became a practical man. He was forced to adopt the language, errors, opinions of the Parisian bourgeois -the class who admire Molière, Voltaire and Rousseau on faith, who purchase their works without reading them; who maintain that it is proper to say ormoire, because ladies lock up in those articles of furniture their or (gold) and their dresses which formerly were almost always made of moire, and that armoire is a corruption. Potier, Talma, Mademoiselle Mars, were, the bourgeois believes, millionaires ten times over, and did not live like other hu

man beings; the great tragedian ate man-flesh; Mademoiselle Mars sometimes made a fricassee of pearls, in imitation of a celebrated Egyptian actress. The Emperor had leather pockets in his waistcoats to enable him to take snuff by the handful, and rode at full gallop up the stairs of the orangery at Versailles. Authors and artists died in the hospital in consequence of their oddities; they were, besides, all atheists, whom it behooved people not to admit into their houses. Joseph Lebas cited, with a shudder, the history of his sister-in-law Augustine's marriage with the painter Sommervieux. Astronomers lived on spiders. These luminous specimens of their knowledge of the French language, of dramatic art, politics, literature, and science, indicate the scope of their intellects. A poet, who passes along the rue des Lombards, and inhales the prevailing perfumes, may dream of Asia there. Breathing the odor of vetyver in a green-house, he may behold the almées of the East. The splendors of cochineal remind him of the poems, the religion, the castes of the Brahmins. Coming in contact with inwrought ivory, he mounts, in imagination, upon the back of an elephant, and there, in a muslin pavilion, makes love like the king of Lahore. But the shop-keeper is ignorant whence come the articles in which he deals, and where they grow. Birotteau knew nothing whatever of natural history or chemistry. In regarding Vauquelin as a great man, he considered him as an exception; he resembled the retired grocer who thus shrewdly summed up a discussion on the way in which tea is brought to France: "Tea comes only in two ways, by caravan or by Havre." According to Birotteau, aloes and opium were to be found only in the rue des Lombards. The pretended rose-water of Constantinople was made, like cologne-water, at Paris. These names of places were shams, invented to please the French, who cannot endure the