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ZULAIKHA'S FIRST DREAM

NIGHT it was sweet as the morning of life,

A Joy-augmenting like the days of youth!

Fish and fowl rested from motion,

Business drew its foot within the skirt of its garment.
Within this pleasure-house, full of varieties,

Naught remained open save the eye of the star.

Night, the thief, robbed the sentinel of his understanding;

The bell-ringer stilled the tongue of the bell;

The hound wound its tail round its neck like a collar,

And in that collar stifled its baying;

The bird of the night drew out its sword-like feathers,

And cut off its tuneful reed [i. e., its throat] from its morn

ing song;.

The watchman on the dome of the royal palace

Saw in imagination the drowsy poppy-head,

And no longer retained the power of wakefulness

The image of that poppy-head called him into slumber.

The drummer no longer beat his tymbal,

His hand could no longer hold the drumstick.

The Muessin from the Minaret no longer cried, "Allah! Allah! the

Ever-Living!

Roll up your mattresses, ye nightly dead, and neglect not prayer!"
Zulaikha, of the sugar lips, was enjoying the sweetest slumber
Which had fallen on her soft narcissus-like eyes;

Her head pressed the pillow with its hyacinthine locks,
And her body the couch with its roseate burthen.

The hyacinthine locks were parted on the pillow,

And painted the roseate cheeks with silken streaks;
The image-seeing eye was closed in slumber,

But another eye was open-that of the soul:

With that she saw suddenly enter a young man

Young man, do I say?- rather a spirit!

A blessed figure from the realms of light,

Beauteous as a Huri borne off from the Garden of the Seventh

Heaven,

And had robbed trait by trait of each beauty, excellence, and per

fection,

Copying one by one every alluring attraction.

His stature was that of the fresh box-tree;

[his;

The free-cypress in its freedom was a slave compared with

His hair from above hung down like a chain,

And fettered hand and foot even the judgment of the wise;

From his brow shot so resplendent a flash of light,

That sun and moon bent to the ground before him;

His eyebrows, which might have been a high altar for the

saintly,

Were an amber-scented canopy over the sleeper's eyes;

His face was as the moon's from its station in Paradise;
From his eyelashes darted arrows to pierce the heart;
The pearly teeth within the ruby lips

Were lightning flashing from a roseate evening sky;

The smiles of his ruby lips were as sweet as sugar-
When he laughed, his laugh was the lustre of the Pleiades;
The words of his mouth were sugar itself.

When this vision rose before the eye of Zulaikha,

At one glance happened that which needs must happen:

She beheld excellence beyond human limits,

Seen not in Peri, never heard of in Huri.

From the beauty of the image and the dream of its perfection, She became his captive, not with her one but with a hundred

hearts.

Fancy made his form the ideal of her mind,

And planted in her soul the young shoot of love.

Translation of S. Robinson.

SILENT SORROW

N THE morrow, when the raven of night had taken its upward flight,

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And the cock was crowing its morning carol,

And the nightingales had ceased their soul-moving chant,

And had withdrawn from the rose-bush the veil of the rose-bud,

And the violet was washing its fragrant locks,

And the jessamine was wiping the night dew from its face,

Zulaikha still lay sunk in sweetest slumber,

Her heart-look still fixed on her last night's altar;
Sleep it was not,- rather a delightful bewilderment,
A kind of insanity from her nocturnal passion!
Her waiting-maids impress the kisses on her feet,
Her damsels approach to give the hand-kiss;

Then she lifteth the veil from her dewy tulip cheeks,
And shaketh off the sleep from her love-languishing eyes;
She looketh around on every side, but seeth not a sign
Of the roseate image of her last night's dream.

Translation of S. Robinson.

THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER

(1849-)

ON AMERICAN writer with a charming touch, and a quick eye for picturesque features of the native life, is Thomas Allibone Janvier, a Philadelphian now in the prime of his power. Janvier first entered journalism, and then turned by a natural deflection to more distinctive literary work. His profession and his tastes brought him within the confines of the alluring land of Bohemia, and he reproduces this experience delightfully in some of his books, particularly in the short stories. In New York he has been a student of humanity, who has tempered the realism with which he depicts the characteristics of the French, Spanish, and other Romance foreign elements there commingled, with a kindly humor and a pleasant romanticism. His first book, Color Studies: Four Stories,' is made up of slight but clever and agreeable sketches of New York life with a flavor of the studio, carried even to the naming of the personages after the colors used by the painter,- Rose Madder, Gamboge, Mangan Brown, and the like. Mr. Janvier, however, did not confine himself to the American metropolis for his studies. He has made a thorough study of Mexico, and this knowledge is marked in his 'Mexican Guide (1886), an admirable book of its class; while the romantic novel The Aztec Treasure House: A Romance of Contemporaneous Antiquity' (1890), makes ingenious use of that locale by the motive of a buried treasure. In spite of its fantastic character, the novel has genuine romantic power and charm, is rich in detail, and of sustained narrative interest. 'An Embassy to Provence (1893)-graceful, happily touched travel sketches - gives another side of his interest in the Latin races. Janvier's humor comes pleasantly out in 'The Woman's Conquest of New York: By a Member of the Committee of Safety of 1908,' published anonymously in 1894. 'In Old New York,' dating the same year, is made up of sympathetic papers on bygone Gotham; the picturesqueness of the past even in the practical United States again appealing to him. Of

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THOMAS A. JANVIER

After painting by Carroll Beckwith

late he has been interested especially in the Provençal land and literature: a long sojourn in Provence, and acquaintance with the bards Mistral and Gras and the Félibrige group of singers, has led him, with the aid of his wife, to introduce Gras's spirited 'The Reds of the Midi' to English readers, Mr. Janvier writing a preface to Mrs. Janvier's felicitous translation. But whether at home or abroad, Janvier's interest is plainly and increasingly in the picturesque exotic scenes and character types which are furnished by those sun-loving southern peoples, with their song, romance, and riant charm. been little touched by the realism of the day, except as his studies use the realistic method in reproducing the details of his pictures. But humor, sentiment, the touch of illusion, are always present, making him not only a pleasant but a wholesome writer.

He has

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THE EPISODE OF THE MARQUES DE VALDEFLORES
From Harper's Magazine. Copyright 1891, by Harper & Brothers

I

NTONIO HILARION DOMINGUEZ MEDRANO Y CORELLA, Marques de Valdeflores. When this brilliant name, with its pendent rubrica, was written by the nobleman to whom it pertained upon the register of the Casa Napoléon,-a modest hostelry, founded in the interest of the traveling Franco-Hispano public temporarily resident in the city of New York,- there ran through that establishment a thrill which may be said to have shaken it, figuratively speaking, from stem to stern.

As a rule the frequenters of the Casa Napoléon were not noblemen. The exceptions to this rule were sporadic French counts, whose costly patronage by no means was to be desired. Thanks to Madame's worldly wisdom,-sharpened to to a very fine edge by five-and-twenty years of hotel-keeping,- these selfconstituted members of the French nobility rarely got ahead of her. She "zized 'em up," as she expressed it, promptly; and as promptly they received their deserts: that is to say, they were requested to pay in advance or to move on. Then they moved on.

But a nobleman from Old Spain, a genuine nobleman, and so exalted a personage as a Marques, was quite another thing. This was a splendor the like of which was unknown in all the eighteen years during which the Casa Napoléon had run its somewhat checkered, but on the whole successful, career. Madame, though an Imperialist rather than a Legitimist in her political

creed, had a soulful respect for a title; which respect she manifested on this occasion by putting the silk coverlet on the bed in the best apartment, and by hurriedly removing the brown holland slips from the red-plush sofa and from the two red-plush armchairs. Don Anastasio-whose royalist tendencies had led him into a revolution in Mexico, that had ended in not leading him but in most violently projecting him out of it-rejoiced in the honor attendant upon entertaining so distinguished a representative of the principles for which, he was accustomed to declare, he had suffered martyrdom. That he might lift himself to the high plane of the situation, he lighted one of the choicest of his reserved stock of smuggled cigars, and smoked it to the health of the King of Spain. Telésforo, the Cuban negro who waited in the dining-room upon the Spanish-speaking patrons of the house, retired hurriedly to his den in the basement and put on his clean shirt; which was not due, in the natural order of things, until the ensuing Sunday. Even Jules-the one-eyed French waiter; a pronounced Red, who openly boasted that he had lost his eye while fighting in the Commune behind a barricade- so far yielded to the spirit of the hour as to put on the clean paper collar that (keeping it in the rarely used large soup tureen) he held in reserve for occasions of especial festivity. Marie, the trig chambermaid, stuck a bow of cherry-colored ribbon in her black hair. No more was required of her. Without any extra adornment, Marie at all times was as fresh and as blooming as the rose.

As it was with the proprietors and the retainers of the Casa Napoléon, so was it also with the habitués of that rather eccentric but most comfortable establishment. Colonel Withersby, who had not been wholly successful in his latest venture in tramway promotion in Nicaragua,- who had been compelled, in fact, to leave Nicaragua with such inconsiderate celerity that his exodus might with propriety be termed a flight,- was cheered by the hope that Heaven had thrown in his way an opportunity to promote a tramway in some city (any city, he was not particular) in Spain. Monsieur Duvent, the dealer in a very respectable French gambling establishment in South Fifth Avenue, stroked thoughtfully his respectable gray mustache, and made a few trifling mental calculations in regard to the relative values of current Spanish and American coins. Mrs. Myrtle Vane, who was connected with the press, perceived at least a society item in

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