Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-40.djvu/119

Rh and nice comfortable chats, which you may be sure are liberally patronized between the dances. The floor is like glass, and as the fairy feet glide in such perfect time over its smooth surface in response to the strains of those beautiful waltzes, we think it must all be a dream, and that we will surely have to go through with the same old routine to-morrow.

The ball breaks up about daybreak, and on the early train depart most of those who have participated in it. Those last hand-shakes and farewell words make us realize for the first time that in all probability we shall not see these familiar faces back next year, but shall have to make new friends and lose them again just as we are doing now.

Next year will be very much the same sunlight and shadow as this has been, just as much work and as little fun, or, as it seems to us from our present stand-point, just as much fun and as little work.

E came alone, the pale singer,
 * 'Long the dusty road to the town:

His feet were worn and his heart was torn,
 * His eyes were wide and brown.

He paused in the street of the city,
 * And hope sprang up amain:

To the surging throng that hurried along
 * He sang a plaintive strain.

But some had to buy in the market,
 * And others to sell in the shop,

And many to play, and a few to pray,
 * And none had time to stop.

So they did not hear the music,
 * They did not turn to look,

Save a woman worn, and a lover lorn,
 * And a student over his book.