I found her crouching in the lonely street;
  Scarce six years’ old she was:  Her little feet
  Were worn with endless pacing, up and down,
  And round and round the cruel thoughtless town. 
  Her limbs were shrunk, and in her large round eyes
  The light of coming madness seemed to rise. 
  No word she spoke, but sat, a prey to scorn,
  Forsaken, friendless, feeble and forlorn.

    And, as I pondered on her sorry tale,
  One weird, unearthly, melancholy wail,
  Broke from her lips:—­a cry of agony,
  Of hopeless, mad, despairing misery: 
  Then grim starvation on her little head
  Laid his cold fingers, and she fell back dead!

    I raised her tenderly with pitying arms,
  And in a garden, far from Life’s alarms,
  I buried her, and left her all alone,
  And wrote this epitaph upon the stone:—­
  “Peace to her ashes, but not peace to those,
  Her erewhile friends, the cause of all her woes,
  Who fondled and caressed her for a space,
  Who loved to stroke her soft, confiding face,
  Who gave her food and shelter from her birth,
  Who joined in all her harmless youthful mirth;
  But, when they went for holidays to roam,
  Shut-to the door of what had been her home,
  And thoughtless left to die upon the mat,
  Their faithful but forgotten Tabby-cat.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “KNOCKED ’EM IN THE WEST-MIN-IS-TER ROAD.”

  “WHO’RE YER GOIN’ TO MEET, BILL? 
  ’AVE YER BOUGHT THE STREET, BILL?”]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  A SATISFACTORY PATIENT.

Family Doctor.  “WELL, MY LITTLE MAN, AND HOW ARE YOU THIS MORNING?”

Young Hopeful.  “OH, NURSEY SAYS I’M EVER SO MUCH NORMALLER TO-DAY!”]

* * * * *

ROBERT LOWE, VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE.

BORN, 1811.  DIED, JULY 27, 1892.

  Great fighter of lost causes, gone at last! 
  A meteoric course, by shade o’ercast
  Long ere its close, was thine.  A star that slips
  At brightest into shadow of eclipse,
  Leaves watchers waiting for its flaming forth
  In a renewed refulgence.  Wit and worth,
  Satire and sense, courage and judgment keen,
  Were thine.  What flaw of weakness or of spleen,
  What lack of patience or persistence, doomed
  Thee to too early darkness?  Seldom bloomed
  So sudden-swift a flower of fame as thine,
  When BRIGHT and GLADSTONE led the serried line
  Of resolute reformers to the attack,
  And dauntless DIZZY strove to hear them back. 
  Then rose “White-headed BOB,” and foined and smote,
  Setting his slashing steel against the throat
  Of his old friends, and wrung from them applause. 
  The champion was valiant, though the cause
  Was doomed to failure, and betrayal.  Yes!