LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.

In varied pink. The partridge evergreen,

Hanging its fragrant wax-work on each stem,

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And studding the green sod with scarlet berries— —Did you see all those flowers? I marked them not. -O many more, whose names I have not learned. And then to see the light blue butterfly

Roaming about, like an enchanted thing,

From flower to flower, and the bright honey-bee-
And there, too, was the fountain, overhung
With bush and tree, draped by the graceful vine,
Where the white blossoms of the dogwood, met
The crimson red-bud, and the sweet birds sang
Their madrigals; while the fresh springing waters,
Just stirring the green fern that bathed within them,
Leaped joyful o'er their fairy mound of rock,
And fell in music-then passed prattling on,
Between the flowery banks that bent to kiss them.
-I dreamed not of these sights or sounds.
Then just

Beyond the brook there lay a narrow strip,

Like a rich riband, of enamelled meadow,

Girt by a pretty precipice, whose top

Was crowned with rose-bay. Half-way down there stood

Sylphlike, the light fantastic columbine,

As ready to leap down unto her lover

Harlequin Bartsia, in his painted vest
Of green and crimson.

Tut! enough, enough,

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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.

Your madcap fancy runs too riot, girl.

We must shut up your books of Botany,
And give you graver studies.

-Will you shut

The book of nature, too? for it is that
I love and study. Do not take me back
To the cold, heartless city, with its forms
And dull routine; its artificial manners
And arbitrary rules; its cheerless pleasures
And mirthless masquing. Yet a little longer
O let me hold communion here with Nature.
-Well, well, we'll see. But we neglect our lecture
Upon this picture-

Poor Red Riding Hood!

We had forgotten her; yet mark, dear madam,
How patiently the poor thing waits our leisure.
And now the hidden moral.

Thus it is:

Mere children read such stories literally,
But the more elderly and wise, deduce

A moral from the fiction. In a word,

The wolf that you must guard against is-LOVE.
-I thought love was an infant; "toujours enfant."
— The world and love were young together, child,
And innocent—alas! time changes all things.
—True, I remember, love is now a man.
And, the song says, "a very saucy one'
But how a wolf?.

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.

-In ravenous appetite,

Unpitying and unsparing, passion is oft

A beast of prey. As the wolf to the lamb,

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LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.

-Nor, in my grandam's cottage, nor elsewhere, Will I e'er lift the latch for him myself,

Or bid him pull the bobbin.

Well, my dear,

You've learned your lesson.

THE WITHERED ROSEBUD,

BY J K. MITCHELL.

Ан, why does this rose-bud more beautiful seem,
Than when gracing the stem where it grew;
All withered and pale, of a flower but the dream?
'Tis because it was given by you—

'Tis because the sweet floweret had lingered awhile On the bosom of beauty and youth,

Had borrowed her lustre, had stolen her smile,

And came to me breathing her truth.

And now, though its leaflets are gone to decay,
And mournfully drooping its stem,

And tints from the rainbow are fading away,

"Twill still be of roses the gem.

Like its fragrance, still lingering, fond memory the while,

Will couple this blossom with thee,

And soothe by recalling the look and the smile

That came with the rose-bud to me.