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THE HES
LITERARY.
IN THE CRUEL COLD.
The lost sunflower stalk is burned,
The last of the bread is gone,
And cold across the snow-swept plain
Comes grey tho aching dawn.
Tho thin grass rustics by tho door,
Tho wi ndows jar and cry, pane.
Tho white drift sifts through tho broken
And tho ceaseless snotf throngs by,
Hush, sleep, my iittlo one, soon enough
Tho long sleep soothes thy pain.
Ah, 1 could sloop, for tho dull cold
Burns numb into my brain.
Tho shuddering coyote whin63 and cries,
And howls to God for food,
Tho great gray wolves troop down arow,
And pause and sniff for blood.
OGod. who feodst tho whining boast,
Send moat to those that pray,
Thou God, that givst tho bird his foast,
Be thou our help to day.
In th i breathless, cruel cold give help,
And bring tho spring again,
And ridgo the long hills with tho great
Green horitago of grain,
Herbert Bates.
04tM"
HALLOWEEN AND CALCULUS.
DERRICK VAN LOSST was a st.-dent
at the university. His grandfather
f$!swas Pennsylvania Dutch but Derrick
prided himself that he had thrown off all
Dutch taint except, he could not but admit,
his name.
"Derrick is always a strange lad," his
grandfather was vont to say, "not a Van
Losst at all, only a Sumner. He dreams when
be should work and works when he should
rest, and rests only when he must."
But the old man was proud and excited, in
a mild way, when Derrick went to the uni
versity and wrote home so wildly enthusiastic
about his studies. First he wrote about all
his studies, his history and his languages, and
his literature, but at last he wrote only about
his best study, his mathematics. It seemed
as if everything else was nothing. He did
tell them once in a while, as a kind of side
affair, of his- room, a dark room at the tcp of
a house in the old part of town, a room mea
gerlyfurnishedbut large and quiet. "Icould
stay in my room a week at a time, or 'out of it
PERI AN. 7,
either, and no one would notice. For I take
my meals further down atacheap restaurant,"
he wrote once. Then ha went on to explain
how well he could study calculus in this room.
Of evenings he would sit there and hug his
fire and study his lessons, the common ones
first and then his mathematics, far into the
night till his fire went out and he crept chil
led to bed.
"On Halloween he had poured over his cal
culus till his eyes ached. It was not really
cold but he had built a fire so it would be
cheerful. But he was not entirely at ease
even with the fire. He felt his cheeks burn
strangely once in a while. The fire would
blaze up suddenly and then die down. The .
air was heavy; he could feel it on his eyes,
and the light from the lamp .vas dim as if it
were far away. But he forced himself to
study and soon forgot everything in his ma
thematics. He did not notice that suddenly
his fire went out as if it were snuffed out like
a candle. Shadows flickered above the lamp
on the ceiling but he did not look, nor did he
see that strange shapes appeared and disap
peared behind him in the dark.
But he was roused at twelve o'clock when
a skeleton hand was thrust over his shoulder
to run along the lines of his book. He did
not start, he could not. The skeleton's sharp
forearm rested heavily on his shoulder and
he felt that above him, in their bony sockets,
fiery eyes were following the lines as the
bones moved across the pages. Derrick sat
immovable till the hand traced to the end of
the chapter. Then a voice spoko in his ear,
not the ghostly voice that he had expected
but a dry rattling whisper pierced with sting
ing regret.
"The isochronism of cycloidal oscillations,"
it read off, "now I never had a chance to
study that, but," the whisper became more
hopeful, "I will learn tonight." A deep
sigh seemed to quiver through the room.
Derrick tried to look around but could not,
something seemed to be holding . him firmly.
But in a moment the restraint was taken
away and he felt himself whirled giddily
around in his chair. Where was the skele
ton? He could see nothing but one long,
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