The heart repeats it over day by day,
    And fancies how and when the words will fall—­
  What answering smile upon the face will play,
    What tender light will linger over all.

  But eager eyes that watch for one alone
    May grow reluctant; for the open gate
  Lets in, with him, perchance a guest unknown,
    On whom slow words of courtesy must wait.

  Or when the presence waited for has come,
    It may be dull or cold, too sad or light: 
  A look that shows the heart away from home
    Can often put the dearest words to flight.

  Perhaps the time of meeting, or the form,
    May chill or wither what we’ve longed to say: 
  What fits the sunshine will not fit the storm—­
    What blends with twilight, jars with noon of day.

  Again, when all things seem our wish to serve,
    Full opportunity may strike us dumb—­
  May sink our precious thoughts in deep reserve,
    And to the surface bid the lightest come.

  And often ere our friend is out of sight,
    We start:  the thing can scarce be credited—­
  We have been silent, or our words been trite,
    And here’s the dearest thing of all unsaid!

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

LAURENTINUM.

If anybody ever could have enjoyed living in heathen times, it must have been Pliny the Younger.  A friend of ours calls him the gentlemanly letter writer, and so he was.  He wrote letters which must have been treats to his correspondents.  It is well that some of his notes did not require answers, for, as the letters of “the parties of the second part” are irretrievably lost, the annoyance one feels over a one-sided record is somewhat abated.  Only the imperial replies are preserved.  But, as we have said, Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (nephew to the ponderously fat and still more ponderously learned C. Plinius Secundus, who, like Leibnitz in latter times, sat, wrote, was read to, slept, and ate in his arm-chair for days together) must have enjoyed living.  If he had not had so gentle a disposition and so loving a recollection of his uncle, we might have fancied him terribly bored by that worthy; for the elder Pliny was a heluo miraculorum, believing in and jotting down everything he heard, saw or read, like the immortal Mr. Pickwick.  A book or a reader was ever at his elbow—­a tablet or parchment ever within reach.  And all this was undertaken or done for his nephew’s advantage.  There could have been but little pleasure in having such a guardian, though the nephew’s easy, loving temper and delicate constitution caused him to be petted a good deal.  A lucky dyspepsia (the Romans must have had the dyspepsia from eating the messes their Greek cooks put upon their tables) spared him from continuous attendance upon his uncle’s studies.  Then, too, Pliny was under his uncle’s charge only for a few years, for Pliny the Elder lost