The truest liberty, the captive's chain.

Cruel, you say? Alas! I've only prayed
Such fate for you as everywhere, above
All others, women wish,--that unafraid
They clasp in eager arms. So, little dove,
I give you to the hawk. Nay, nay, upbraid
Me not. Have you not longed for love?

CARLOTTA PERRY.




LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES READE.


I knew Charles Reade in England far back in "the days that are no more,"
and dined with him at the Garrick Club on the evening before I left
London for New York in 1860, when he gave me parting words of good
advice and asked me to write to him often. Then he added, "I am very
sorry you are going away, my dear boy; but perhaps you are doing a good
thing for yourself in getting out of this God-forsaken country. If I
were twenty years younger, and enjoyed the sea as you do, I might go
with you; but, if travel puts vitality into some men and kills others, I
should be one of the killed. What is one man's food is another's
poison."

He was my senior by more than twenty years, and no man that I have known
well was more calculated to inspire love and respect among his friends.