ALEXIS.

BY JOHN READE.

HANK God for all that brings men's hearts together!

TH

Thank God for signs that tell of world-wide peace, When all mankind shall own a common Father,

And wars for ever cease!

Through travail sore, through sweat and strife and anguish,
We look from year to year for better days,
And, though with feverish pain we often languish,
Hope still our toil repays.

God sees the future; we see but the hour
That passes; we see but the lowly seed;
He sees the tree, the rich fruit and the flower
Ripe for His children's need.

So, as at first, beneath His forming fingers
Man rose in beauty from the flowery field,
Still His designs, though some may cry, "He lingers,"
Are, in their time, revealed.

He touches lips on which the smile of kindness
Long hovered, waking many a gentle deed-
They utter "War," and nations in their blindness
Rush forth to slay and bleed !

But lo! the fury past, they love each other
(Knowing each other) better than before,
And weep, as one, over each brave lost brother,
And meet as foes no more.

This now fair earth did once to wondering angel
Seem but a seething chaos, dark and wild;
So oft war's tumult dire is the evangel

Of peace serene and mild.

So from the stern defiance and brave meeting
Of stranger hosts by that far Euxine sea,

Came thy late presence here, and that warm greeting,
With which we welcomed thee.

For then we learned to prize in one another,

The manly virtues of a generous race— Just now we grasped thy hand as of a brother, And joyed to see thy face.

Thou wast to us a type of that great nation
Thy father rules-of what it is to be
In the fair future of our expectation,

Happy, and good, and free.

Thou wast thyself. Upon thy first appearing,
We saw a form, a face, that won our heart;
We heard thy simple, friendly words and, hearing,
Sorrowed that we must part.

Now thou art gone, following the path of duty—
God keep thee in it, wheresoe'er it lead !
And may'st thou ever prize the moral beauty
That makes the man indeed!

Long will we here in Canada remember
Thy manly grace lost to us far too soon;
Long will the poor recall that bleak December,
And the good Prince's boon.

And thou, O sailor-prince, when in mid-ocean
Thou lookest to the faithful northern star,
Memory may bear thee, not without emotion,
To Canada afar.

MONTREAL.

TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTIONS

THREE SUMMER STORIES.

(Translated for THE CANADIAN MONTHLY from the German of Theodor Storm.)

BY TINE HUTCHISON.

[IN publishing this story, which will be followed by others of the same kind, we throw down the gauntlet to the sensation school of novelists, of which these stories are the very opposites. Rush through “In the sunshine" as you would through a sensation novel, in haste to arrive at the murder scene, and you will be utterly disappointed: read it with attention and forms of beauty will appear. It appeals, like other stories of the same class, not to the nerves, but to the taste and feelings. The reader will be the better, not the worse, for its perusal.]

Oh, Captain!" she cried, stretching out her hand towards him. Her head was thrown back, and a pair of deep grey eyes were fixed upon him with what was intended to be a look of great indignation.

He plucked a leaf from the vine which covered the doorway, and carefully wiped her little fingers. She made no resistance, but as soon as it was done, took up her pen and resumed her occupation.

"But the firm, Francisca ?”

"I am my father's daughter." And she looked at him with her bright intelligent eyes.

At this moment a harsh voice, which sounded quite near, was heard proceeding from the upper story of the house. The starlings flew affrighted through the garden; involuntarily the officer drew the young maiden closer to him. "It is

"What is the matter?" she said. only the two old gentlemen who have finished their first game, and now they are standing at the window while papa arranges the weather for the coming week."

He looked through the open door over the sunlit garden. "Thou art mine !" he said. "Nothing shall part us.”

She shook her head slowly several times; then disengaging herself from his embrace, she "Go away, pushed him towards the door.

66

"Finish that some other time, Francisca," now," she said; you shall not have long to pleaded the young man.

She shook her head. 66 'Our books are to be made up to-morrow, and I must have this ready," she said, without pausing in her work. “You are the heroine of the pen."

"I am a merchant's daughter."

He laughed.

wait."

He took the sweet little face in both his hands and kissed it; then went slowly out of the door, and turned aside along by a privethedge, which separated the garden from the steep river bank. While his eyes watched the ever-flowing water, he came to an open space

Don't laugh. You know we have no great where a marble statue of Flora stood, surround

love for the military."

"We! Who are the we?"

"Well then, Constantine "—and the pen went on adding up the column from figure to figure —“ by we, I mean the whole firm."

"Thou too, Francisca ?"

“Ah, me !”—and she let the pen fall and threw herself upon his breast, raising a little cloud of powder around her head. Then she passed her hand caressingly over his bright black hair, and gazing with undisguised admiration in his handsome face, she said, "How vain you are!"

From the distant town came a faint sound of military music. The eyes of the young soldier brightened.

"That is my regiment," he said, and held the maiden tighter in his arms.

She bent herself away from him, still smiling. But it is all in vain," she said.

"Then what is to come of it?"

She raised herself up to him on tip-toe and whispered, "A wedding!"

ed by trimly-clipped box-borders. Fragments of porcelain and strings of glass beads glistened from among the green foliage; a strong aroma filled the air, mingled with the perfume of the Provence roses, which grew here by the wall at the end of the foot-path. In the corner, between the wall and the privet-hedge, was an arbour overgrown with luxuriant honey-suckle. The young officer unbuckled his sword and seated himself upon the little bench; then he began to draw one letter after another with the point of his cane upon the ground, always, however, carefully obliterating them to the last stroke, as though fearful they might betray his secret. This went on for some time, till his eyes fell on the shadow of a branch of honeysuckle, at the end of which he could clearly distinguish the delicate tubes of the blossoms. As he gazed he observed something slowly crawling up the stem. He looked on for a time, then rose, and sought among the clumps of honey-suckle above him, that he might find the cluster and rescue it from the impending

danger, but the brilliant sunbeams breaking
through the branches, dazzled him so that he
was forced to turn away his eyes. When he
had seated himself again, he saw the leafy
stem as before, clearly outlined upon the sunny
ground, but now a dark mass lay among the
tender shadow flowers, and by spasmodic move-
ments betrayed that it was at its deadly work.
He knew not why it affected him so strangely;
he struck at the writhing clump with his cane,
but the summer wind passed through the
thicket of branches overhead and the shadows'
swept together and eluded him. He had al-
ready raised his cane for another blow, when
the point of a little silken slipper came in view.

He looked up; Francisca stood before him;
the feather of the quill behind her ear stood off
from her powdered hair like the outspread
wing of a white dove. She laughed; at first
inaudibly, you could only see it. He leaned
back and gazed upon her with delight; she
laughed so joyously, so easily; it rippled all over
her like a breeze passing over a lake, nobody
else laughed as she did.

"What are you doing?" she cried at last.
"Only nonsense, Francisca; I am fighting
with shadows."

"You may leave that alone."

He sought to take hold of her hands, but at this moment she chanced to look towards the wall, and taking a pen-knife out of her pocket she began to cut the full blown roses from off the bushes.

"I shall make pot-pourri this evening," she said, as she carefully gathered the roses in a little heap on the ground. He looked on patiently; he knew it was useless to seek to interrupt her.

"Francisca !" he murmured half to himself. "Constantine!"

And, as if surprised after the long stillness by her voice, and discovering a fresh charm it its sound, he said, "You should sing, Francisca!" She shook her head. "You know that is not for a burgher's daughter."

He did not speak for a moment; then, taking hold of her hand, he said: "Don't talk in that way, not even in jest. You know you had once lessons from the organist; what do you mean ?"

She looked at him gravely, but soon a bright glance flashed from her eyes. "Oh!" she cried, "don't look so serious! I'll tell you what it is-I am too clever at book-keeping."

He laughed, and she joined with him. "Are you not too clever for me, Francisca?"

66

Perhaps you don't know how !" And as she spoke a different and deeper tone came into her voice. "When you were first quartered here," she continued, "and lived with my brother Fritz, I was quite a little school-girl. Often when I came home in the afternoon, I would steal into the hall and stand near when you practised your fencing. But you never took the least notice of me; indeed, once, when your foil struck my pinafore, you said: 'Go and sit in the window, child! Oh, you don't know what hard words these were ! Then I began to fall on all sorts of plans, and when companions came to play with me, I would try to get one of the other girls-I could never do it myself-to ask you to join in our games; and then, when you stood amongst us-"

"And now?" he asked, as she shut the knife white dress." and slipped it into her pocket again.

"Now, Constantine !-to listen together to the passing hours." And so it was. In the great pear tree in front of them the bull-finches flew to and fro; deep among the foliage they heard the chirping of the nestlings; at intervals the murmur of the flowing stream fell on their half-conscious ears; stray blossoms sank now and again at their feet; the Dutch musical clock over in the house played its chime at every quarter. Gradually silence fell upon both. But at length a desire to hear the beloved name uttered aloud, overcame him.

She had become crimson. He laid his fingers between hers and held them tightly clasped. After a pause she looked up timidly into his face and asked: "Did you never notice anything of it?"

Oh, yes; at last!" said he, "you know you grew up at last."

"And then-tell me how it all happened?" He looked full at her, as if seeking to read in her face whether he durst speak. "Who knows,” said he, “if it would ever have come to anything? But the burgomaster's wife once said "