worm, the rust, the grass,
    Protested ne’er again ’twould come to pass
    Such troops of ills his labors should harass;
  Politely swallowed searching questions rude,
  And kissed the dust to melt his Dives’s mood. 
  At last, small loans by pledges great renewed,
    He issues smiling from the fatal door,
    And buys with lavish hand his yearly store
    Till his small borrowings will yield no more. 
  Aye, as each year declined,
  With bitter heart and ever-brooding mind
  He mourned his fate unkind. 
    In dust, in rain, with might and main,
    He nursed his cotton, cursed his grain,
    Fretted for news that made him fret again,
  Snatched at each telegram of Future Sale,
  And thrilled with Bulls’ or Bears’ alternate wail—­
  In hope or fear alike for ever pale. 
    And thus from year to year, through hope and fear,
    With many a curse and many a secret tear,
    Striving in vain his cloud of debt to clear,
                  At last
  He woke to find his foolish dreaming past,
    Beheld his best-of-life the easy prey
    Of quacks and scamps, and all the vile array
          That line the way,
  From thieving statesman down to petty knave;
  Yea, saw himself, for all his bragging brave,
  A gamester’s catspaw and a banker’s slave. 
    Then, worn and gray, and sick with deep unrest,
    He fled away into the oblivious West,
          Unmourned, unblest.

  Old hill! old hill! thou gashed and hairy Lear
  Whom the divine Cordelia of the year,
  E’en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer—­
    King, but too poor for any man to own,
    Discrowned, undaughtered and alone,
  Yet shall the great God turn thy fate,
  And bring thee back into thy monarch’s state
        And majesty immaculate;
    So, through hot waverings of the August morn,
    A vision of great treasuries of corn
    Thou bearest in thy vasty sides forlorn,
  For largesse to some future bolder heart
  That manfully shall take thy part,
          And tend thee,
          And defend thee,
  With antique sinew and with modern art.

     SIDNEY LANIER.

GENTLEMAN DICK.

They had, all of them, nicknames themselves, for in a Colorado mining-community it was not difficult to acquire a title, and they called him Gentleman Dick.  It was rather an odd name, to be sure, but it was very expressive, and conveyed much of the prevailing opinion and estimate of its owner.  They laughed when he expressed a desire to join the party in Denver, and Old Platte looked at his long, delicate hands, so like a woman’s, with a smile of rough, good-humored pity, mingled, perhaps, with a shade of contempt for the habits and occupation that had engendered such apparent effeminacy.  But he pleaded so earnestly and talked with such quiet energy and confidence of what he could and would do, and moreover had about