Too late! a stranger filled it.  Looking round,
    Amazed, he could discern no face he knew. 
    The abbot’s self had changed; his wonder grew,
  When, after the familiar chant, he found
    These crazy monks held him for crazy too.

  They gathered round with curious, eager eyes. 
   “What cloister’s this?” he asked.  They named its name: 
    The one he left that morning was the same. 
  His name he gave; with many a wild surmise
    They guessed who he might be and whence he came.

  He asked them where the abbot was at last,
    From whom he parted but the night before. 
   “He hath been dead three hundred years and more!”
  They answered with a single voice, aghast. 
    Then spake a friar versed in monkish lore: 

  “Brethren, a miracle!  This man I know: 
   ’Tis Aloysius, who, as I have read,
    Beset with doubts, forth from this convent fled,
  And vanished, some three hundred years ago,
    And all the world hath counted him as dead.”

  Then Aloysius felt the blessed tears
    Fulfill his eyes, whence dropped the scales away. 
    Kneeling, he cried, “Oh, brethren, let us pray. 
  One day is with the Lord a thousand years,
    A thousand years with Him are as a day.”

EMMA LAZARUS.

A FEW HOURS IN BOHEMIA.

The beauty of this country is that no turbulent sea confines its borders, nor are martello-towers needed to guard its coast:  no jealous neighbor threatens its frontier, no army oppresses its citizens, and no king can usurp its throne.  Its locality is hard to define:  like the Fata Morgana, it is here to-day and gone to-morrow, for its territory is the mind of men, and in extent it is as boundless as thought.  Natives of every clime are enrolled among its freemen, and all lands contain its representatives, but it is in the picturesque streets of the older continental cities of Europe, where rambling lodgings and cheap apartments are many, that the invisible mother-country founds her colonies.  I will tell you how I went and what I saw there.

Afra was a cosmopolite, and consequently knew Bohemia, its byways and thoroughfares.  If any one could fill the office of guide thereto, Afra could, and when one evening she rushed into my room saying, “Come along if you want to go to Bohemia,” I did not hesitate a moment, but made ready for the journey, with the simple precaution of putting on my bonnet and shawl.

“A cab?” I asked as we moved from the door.

“Who ever heard of entering Bohemia in a cab?” laughed Afra dryly.  “People have been known to drive out in their own carriages, but they always make their first appearance there on foot, or at best in an omnibus.”

“As you please,” I replied, trying to keep pace with her rapid step, which showed constant practice.

“I wonder you did not propose a balloon,” she continued pettishly.  “The gods don’t give everything to one person:  now, they give us brains, and they give other people—­money.”