Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher’s
pate
A text which says that heaven’s
gate
Opes to the rich at as easy
rate
As the needle’s eye
takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West,
North and South,
To offer the Piper, by word
of mouth,
Wherever it was man’s
lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart’s
content,
If he’d only return
the way he went,
And bring the children behind
him.
But when they saw ’twas
a lost endeavor,
And Piper and dancers were
gone forever,
They made a decree that lawyers
never
Should think their records
dated duly
If, after the day of the month
and year,
These words did not as well
appear:
“And so long after what
happened here
On the twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six:”
And the better in memory to
fix
The place of the children’s
last retreat,
They called it the Pied Piper’s
Street—
Where any one playing on pipe
or tabor
Was sure for the future to
lose his labor.
Nor suffered they hostelry
or tavern
To shock with mirth a street
so solemn;
But opposite the place of
the cavern
They wrote the story on a
column,
And on the great church-window
painted
The same, to make the world
acquainted
How their children were stolen
away,
And there it stands to this
very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there’s
a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbors lay
such stress,
To their fathers and mothers
having risen
Out of some subterraneous
prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty
band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick
land,
But how or why, they don’t
understand.
XV.
So, Willy, let me and you
be wipers
Of scores out with all men—especially
pipers!
And, whether they pipe us
free from rats or from mice,
If we’ve promised them
aught, let us keep our promise!
A Girl Graduate.
BY CYNTHIA BARNARD.
I.
It was examination week at Mount Seward College, but most of the work was over, and the students were waiting in the usual fever of anxiety to learn the verdict on their papers, representing so much toil and pains. Some of the girls were nearly as much concerned about their graduating gowns as about their diplomas, but as independence was in the air at Mount Seward, these rather frivolous girls were in the minority. During term time most of the students wore the regulation cap and gown, and partly owing to the fact that Mount Seward was a college with traditions of plain living and high thinking behind it, and partly because the youngest and best-loved professor was a woman of rare and noble characteristics, a woman who had set her own stamp on her pupils, and furnished them an ideal, dress and fashion were secondary considerations here. There were no low emulations at Mount Seward.