'Name the happy day, Rosannah!'

There was a little pause. Then a diffident small voice replied, 'I blush—but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness. Wouldwould you like to have it soon?'

"This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it be now!-this very night, this very moment!'

'Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle, a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service-nobody but him and his wife. I would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt Susan'

"Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah.'

'Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan-I am content to word it so, if it pleases you; I would so like to have them present.' 'So would I. Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan. How long would it take her to come?'

'The steamer leaves San Francisco the day after to-morrow. The passage is eight days. She would be here the thirty-first of March.'

6

Then name the first of April: do, Rosannah, dear.'

'Mercy! it would make us April fools, Alonzo!'

'So we be the happiest ones that that day's sun looks down upon in the whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the first of April, dear.'

Then the first of April it shall be, with all my heart!'

'Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah.'

'I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the morning do, Alonzo?'

'The loveliest hour in the day, since it will make you mine.'

There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if wool-lipped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah said, 'Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am calied to meet it.'

The young girl ran to a large parlour and took her place at a window which looked out upon a beautiful scene. To the left one could see far up the charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foot-hills clothed in the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over to their destruction, -a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for it was now smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window one could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the

right lay the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine.

Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue neck-tie and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced, 'Frisco haole!'

'Show him in,' said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to heel in dazzling snow-that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of Irish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, I am here, as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to your importunities, and said I would name the day. I name the first of April-eight in the morning. Now go!'

'Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a life-time '

'Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you, until that hour. No-no supplications; I will have it so.'

When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently she said, 'What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier-Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous monster! Oh, he shall repent his villany!'

Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be told. On the second of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser' contained this notice :

MARRIED. In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U.S., and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U.S. Mrs. Susan Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also present, but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage service. Captain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated, was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala.

The New York papers of the same date contained this notice :

MARRIED. In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays, of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and several friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health not admitting of a more extended journey.

Toward the close of that memorable day, Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: '0, Lonny, I forgot! I did what I said I would.'

'Did you, dear?

'Indeed I did. I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too! Ah, it was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a black dress suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, waiting to be married. You should have seen the look he gave when I whispered it in his ear! Ah! his wickedness cost me many a heartache and many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then. So the vengeful feeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I forgave him everything. But he wouldn't. He said he would live to be avenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us. But he can't, can he, dear?'

'Never in this world, my Rosannah!'

Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their Eastport parents are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so. Aunt Susan brought the bride from the Islands, accompanied her across our continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until that moment.

A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be sufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless artisan, who he fancied had done him some small offence, he fell into a cauldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished.

56

The Ballad of Imitation.

'C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux.'
ALFRED DE MUSSET.

Ir they hint, O Musician, the piece that you played
Is nought but a copy of Chopin or Spohr;

That the ballad you sing is but merely conveyed'

From the stock of the Arnes and the Purcells of yore; That there's nothing, in short, in the words or the score That is not as antique as the Wandering Jew;'

Make answer-Beethoven could scarcely do moreThat the man who plants cabbages imitates too!

6

If they tell you, Sir Artist, your light and your shade
Are simply adapted' from other men's lore;
That-plainly to speak of a 'spade' as a 'spade'—
You've stolen your grouping from three or from four;
That, however the writer the truth may deplore,
'Twas Gainsborough painted your 'Little Boy Blue;'
Smile only serenely--though cut to the core-
For the man who plants cabbages imitates too!

And you too, my Poet, be never dismayed

If they whisper your Epic-Sir Eperon d'Or '—

Is nothing but Tennyson thinly arrayed

In a tissue that's taken from Morris's store;
That no one, in fact, but a child could ignore
That you lift' or 'accommodate' all that you do;
Take heart-though your Pegasus' withers be sore-
For the man who plants cabbages imitates too!

POSTSCRIPTUM.-And you whom we all so adore,
Dear Critics, whose verdicts are always so new !-
One word in your ear. There were Critics before
And the man who plants cabbages imitates too!

AUSTIN DOBSON.

Travelling in Japan.

ONE of the greatest obstacles in the way of Europeans wishing to explore Japan and to observe the manners and customs of its inhabitants, is the difficulty of travelling rapidly and comfortably. Until the introduction of railways, steamboats, and wheeled vehicles, the natives were accustomed to toil along slowly and painfully, covering as much ground in a week as may now be traversed in a few hours, and even do so at the present time in all parts of their land to which Western civilisation has not yet reached. And this is the more remarkable when we are assured that the inland inhabitants of very few countries travel about so much as the Japanese. In every shire of England are to be found elderly people who have never explored beyond a twenty-mile radius from their own doors, much less paid a visit to the metropolis; but in Japan business, and above all religion, demands that all sorts and conditions of people should at certain times be travellers of no mean order. For instance, it is incumbent on every Japanese to make a pilgrimage at least once during his lifetime either to the holy mountain Futiyama, to Oyama, or to the sacred shrines of Isé; and with many families this pilgrimage becomes an annual dutyfailing which, misfortune is certain to happen. Moreover, as the Japanese are perhaps the most superstitious people in the world, their belief in the efficacy of certain mineral springs to cure diseases, in the virtues of certain shrines and temples, in the good results attendant on visits to certain festivals, takes them frequently from home, and enables them to see far more of the outside world than their homely manners and customs warrant the visitor in believing. Yet, although they are anything but a stay-at-home race, and although for centuries they have possessed a civilisation to which the civilisation of our Elizabethan age is a barbarous mist, there is scarcely a road in the Empire worthy of the name. Until quite recently, the Tocaido-the great artery communicating between the eastern capital Tokio (or Yedo) and the western capital Kiyoto— was utterly unfit for carriage traffic, and at certain points even for the passage of horses; and to this day carriages can only proceed for a certain length, beyond which recourse must be had to the primitive native modes of conveyance. At many places, indeed, this great road, along which the entire traffic of the southern part of the island must pass, becomes a mere rocky defile, consisting of huge boulders