all right; but of course that word was never spoken.

Well! The Olympians are all past and gone. Somehow the sun does
not seem to shine so brightly as it used; the trackless meadows
of old time have shrunk and dwindled away to a few poor acres. A
saddening doubt, a dull suspicion, creeps over me. Et in
Arcadia ego,--I certainly did once inhabit Arcady. Can it be I
too have become an Olympian?




A HOLIDAY.

The masterful wind was up and out, shouting and chasing, the lord
of the morning. Poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish;
dead leaves sprang aloft, and whirled into space; and all the
clear-swept heaven seemed to thrill with sound like a great harp.

It was one of the first awakenings of the year. The earth
stretched herself, smiling in her sleep; and everything leapt and
pulsed to the stir of the giant's movement. With us it was a
whole holiday; the occasion a birthday--it matters not whose.
Some one of us had had presents, and pretty conventional
speeches, and had glowed with that sense of heroism which is no
less sweet that nothing has been done to deserve it. But the
holiday was for all, the rapture of awakening Nature for all, the
various outdoor joys of puddles and sun and hedge-breaking for
all. Colt-like I ran through the meadows, frisking happy
heels in the face of Nature laughing responsive. Above, the sky