He thought to strike the spectres dead,
  But he smites his brother man instead.

  O you that listen to stories told,
  When hearths are cheery and nights are cold,

  Weep no more at the tales you hear,
  The danger is close and the wolves are near.

  Shudder not at the murderer’s name,
  Marvel not at the maiden’s shame.

  Pass not by with averted eye
  The door where the stricken children cry.

  But when the beat of the unseen feet
  Sounds by night through the stormy street,

  Follow thou where the spectres glide;
  Stand like Hope by the mother’s side;

  And be thyself the angel sent
  To shield the hapless and innocent.

  He gives but little who gives his tears,
  He gives his best who aids and cheers.

  He does well in the forest wild
  Who slays the monster and saves the child;

  But he does better, and merits more,
  Who drives the wolf from the poor man’s door.

* * * * *

A STORY OF TO-DAY.

PART III.

Now that I have come to the love part of my story, I am suddenly conscious of dingy common colors on the palette with which I have been painting.  I wish I had some brilliant dyes.  I wish, with all my heart, I could take you back to that “Once upon a time” in which the souls of our grandmothers delighted,—­the time which Dr. Johnson sat up all night to read about in “Evelina,”—­the time when all the celestial virtues, all the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state to man through the blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman or Lord Mortimer.  None of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villains then!  It made your hair stand on end only to read of them,—­dyed at their birth clear through with Pluto’s blackest poison, going about perpetually seeking innocent maidens and unsophisticated old men to devour.  That was the time for holding up virtue and vice; no trouble then in seeing which were sheep and which were goats!  A person could write a story with a moral to it, then, I should hope!  People that were born in those days had no fancy for going through the world with half-and-half characters, such as we put up with; so Nature turned out complete specimens of each class, with all the appendages of dress, fortune, et cetera, chording decently.  At least, so those veracious histories say.  The heroine, for instance, glides into life full-charged with rank, virtues, a name three-syllabled, and a white dress that never needs washing, ready to sail through dangers dire into a triumphant haven of matrimony;—­all the aristocrats have high foreheads and cold blue eyes; all the peasants are old women, miraculously grateful, in neat check aprons, or sullen-browed insurgents planning revolts in caves.