TO DAFFODILS. Fair daffodils, we weep to see Until the hasting day But to the even-song; We have short time to stay as you! As quick a growth to meet decay, We die, As your hours do; and dry Away Like the summer's rain, Or as the pearls of morning-dew, Ne'er to be found again. CHERRY RIPE. Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, Full and fair ones come and buy! If so be you ask me where They do grow?—I answer: There, When I lie within my bed, Sick in heart, and sick in head, When the house doth sigh and weep, When the passing-bell doth toll, When the tapers now burn blue, When the priest his last has prayed Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When God knows I'm tossed about, When the Tempter me pursueth, When the flames and hellish cries Fright mine ears, and fright mine eyes, And all terrors me surprise, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When the judgment is revealed, ERRICK, ROBERT WELCH, an American novelist; born at Cambridge, Mass., April 26, 1868. He was graduated from Harvard in 1890, and in 1895 became Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Chicago. His published works include The Man Who Wins (1895); Literary Love Letters and Other Stories (1896); Love's Dilemma (1898); Composition and Rhetoric (1899); The Webb of Life (1900); The Common Lot (1904), and Memoirs of an American Citizen (1905). In reviewing The Common Lot, the New York Times dwells particularly upon the fact that it is a Chicago novel of Chicago life. The review is of more than passing interest. THE COMMON LOT." It seems to be the general tendency of the Chicago novelist and the Chicago novel to avoid idealities in order to deal in a startlingly realistic manner with the current and, for the most part, unpleasant, conditions of life in that great city, and The Common Lot, by Robert Herrick, is by no means an exception to this rule. This is not the first time that Prof. Herrick has given the public the benefit of his exceptionally keen observation and comprehension of people and things in his own town, but the special phase of commercial crookedness which he here. holds up to merciless analysis will perhaps prove more widely interesting than any of his previous work. It is the human quality in books that is the gauge of their attractiveness, and there is plenty of this in The Common Lot. Though all the happenings of this story are ascribed to Chicago, slightly modified, they are as regrettably true of many other cities east and west of it, and the people who take part in them are typical enough of the common run of people the world over to make one's neighbors, if not one's self, easily recognizable on every page. The story is a vivid and powerful portrayal of the career of a young architect, who, after four years at Cornell, three at a technical school in the East, and another three at the Paris Beaux Arts-all paid for by a rich and eccentric old uncle - found himself cut off with a little more than a shilling - a paltry $10,000 — in the uncle's will and stranded amid the fierce practicalities of Chicago, with his living to earn and his fame to make. The old uncle had been wont to say: "Get all ready before you start; get all ready-then let us have results," and it proved to mean, not that his nephew was getting ready to be his uncle's heir, but to fight the world on his own account just as Powers Jackson had fought it and won. At first the shock of the changed aspect of things was stunning, but the architect had some good stuff in him - enough pride, at any rate, to fire him with determination to succeed somehow in spite of his uncle's unexpected bequests to charity, and enough good sense to begin by marrying Helen Spellman, whose fine perceptions and moral strength proved finally to be the balance wheel of her husband's life. With his natural love for his profession, his splendid training, and a promising position in the most prominent firm of architects in the city, the outlook for success in Jackson Hart's case was as bright as a young man's could well be, and that success would have surely, if slowly, come to him if he had not been seized with that most dangerous of all modern maladies - the desire to get away from "the common lot," the day-by-day struggle for existence, to gain a place among the seemingly enviable class of mortals who have unlimited leisure for frivolities. In order to become rich and climb quickly into society," Mr. Herrick's architect allows himself to be persuaded into unprofessional methods of work that grew from bad to worse with the undeviating certainty that has been observed in connection with evil deeds, since the time of Virgil, until winking at the cheating of contractors, the incompetency of inspectors, and the dishonesty of about all men with favors to ask, very nearly brought the too ambitious young man into the clutches of the criminal law. He escaped, but with the loss of reputation, self-respect, and about everything that really counts in the long run, and considered himself lucky to be able to go back to the ranks and begin over again.— New York Times. ERSCHEL, SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM, an William Herschel; born at Slough, near Windsor, March 7, 1792; died at Collingwood, near Hawkhurst, Kent, May 11, 1871. He was educated at Eton and at St. Joseph's College, Cambridge. In 1820 he produced a work on the differential calculus, and other branches of mathematical science. He also contributed two or three memoirs to the Royal Society upon the applications of mathematical analysis. In 1820 he completed, with his father's assistance, a reflecting telescope eighteen inches in diameter and twenty feet in focal length, with which he made his great astronomical observations. Before the end of 1833 he had re-examined all his father's discoveries of double stars and nebulæ, and had added many of his own. In November of the same year he set sail for the Cape of Good Hope, with the resolution of exploring the heavens of the southern hemisphere —" to |