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The following story is told of him: "In a certain neighbourhood he had a great many mistresses, some married and others not. Once upon a time, in the month of June he made a secret appointment with each of his lady-loves, the place and hour of meeting being the same for all; each was to meet him at the same hour beneath a mighty oak which stood in the midst of a forest glade.

"Ah," he cried, and would have folded her in his arms, but she evaded his onset and said with her dramatic intonation, "The knights of old won their lady-loves by brilliant deeds. If you are elected a member of Congress, you may come to claim me." Reflection served only to convince Selma of the wisdom of her decision to try matrimony once more.

"Ten buttons! These only have eight," she said, objecting to a present which her lover had just brought her. "If I had ten buttons, and the gloves to fit me, I'd cut my arm off and put it under a glass case. Lovers are sent out to do all possible and impossible things in order to deserve their lady-loves.

Alison Begbie becomes Mary Morison, and the sentiment, so elegantly turned in prose for her, is thus melodiously transmuted for the lady-loves of all languishing lovers "O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace Wha for thy sake would gladly dee, Or canst thou break that heart of his Wha's only faut is loving thee?

Serious as the subject was, this poem was not deficient in most wittily-turned phrases, particularly where it described the state of watchful anxiety in which lovers had to glide to their lady-loves, and how this mental strain necessarily destroyed all love-happiness, and nipped all adventures of "galanterie" in the very bud.

Long before he had reached manhood he counted his lady-loves by the score; and among them were at least three Royal Princesses, Mademoiselle de Charolais, and two of the Regent's own daughters, the Duchesse de Berry and Mademoiselle de Valois, later Duchess of Modena, who, in their jealousy, were ready to "tear each other's eyes out" for love of the Duc.

In the far field the bronze king of the woods found peace for a bit. The stunning reports in the covert not far away, and the thought that his companions of yesterday, his lady-loves of last spring, were even then being butchered by the hundred, made no difference to his digestion. He fed on with that imperturbability that must have come to him straight through his ancestors from the East Kismet!

This omnipotent selfishness has even crept into our loves. Men kiss the dainty finger tips of their lady-loves, to-day, with a passionate fondness that is proportionate to the bulk of lucre that dainty hand can hold.

It will be understood that in these circumstances Dirk and Brant, already liking each other, and being already connected by blood, were not slow in coming to a complete understanding and fellowship. There they sat in the window-place telling each other of their families, their hopes and fears, and even of their lady-loves.

Formerly the gayest and bravest gentlemen of the court, mounted on the best horses in the kingdom, went into the arena and defied the bull in the names of their lady-loves. Now the bull is baited and slain by hired artists, and the horses they mount are the sorriest hacks that ever went to the knacker.