I Prithee, ARAMINTA, hear
    What FREDERIC HARRISON has said: 
  Don’t read for College honours, dear,
    And put a towel round your head. 
  Don’t sully what should surely be
    An unstained soul, with tricks of trade;
  Leave stern official work to me,
    While you remain a simple maid.

  Don’t prate of woman’s function, sweet,
    Your only duty is to charm;
  Leave platform spouting, as is meet,
    To men; it cannot do them harm. 
  Your influence comes from gracious ways,
    Your glory in the home doth lie;
  The guardian angel of our days,
    Until you bless us when we die.

  Don’t enter on ignoble strife
    With man, ’tis yours to soar above—­
  To all the higher things of life,
    Divine compassion, and pure love. 
  ’Tis yours to stimulate, refine,
    To win men by a kindly heart;
  Not grovel with us where the sign
    Of Mammon hangs above the mart.

  Thine is the task to reign supreme
    Within the sacred sphere of home;
  To make our life one happy dream,
    Thine own as spotless as the foam. 
  To trade, to toil, to head the feast,
    To seek the politician’s gain,
  Were hateful:—­ay, as though the priest
    Took usury, within the fane!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

[Illustration]

BARON DE BOOK-WORMS owns to being easily affected by a pathetic episode.  He well remembers how years ago in the course of a discussion among literary men about books and their writers, the Baron acknowledged that in spite of his having been told how the pathos of DICKENS was all a trick, and how the sentiment of that great novelist was for the most part false, he still felt a choking sensation in his throat and a natural inclination to blow his nose strenuously whenever he re-read the death of Little Paul, the death of Dora, and some passages about Tiny Tim.  There was no dissentient voice as to the death of Colonel Newcome; all admitted the recurrence of that peculiar choking sensation, read they their THACKERAY never so often.  Now the Baron differs from Josh Sedley in, as he thinks, many respects, but he is almost as “easily moved to tears” as was that stout hero.  Wherefore this preface?  Well, ’tis because the Baron owns to having “snivelled,” if you will, when reading a delightful story, published by MACMILLAN in one volume ("bless all good stories in one vol., clearly printed!” says the Baron, parenthetically), entitled simply, Tim.  No relation to Tiny Tim already mentioned; quite another child.  The Baron strongly recommends this story, and especially to Etonians past and present, as giving a life-like picture which the latter will recognise, of the career at that great public school of a fragile little chap entirely unfitted by nature for the rough and tumble of such a life.  The