been displaced, and that something different, not so pretty, not so correct, is the only thing to wear? What was round has become elongated; what was small is enlarged; lines which ran transversely are now longitudinal. The word different contains the secret. The law-giver is the artiste in robes and bonnets. There must be activity, there must be business; there must be such variations this season that a last season’s dress or hat shall be instantly detected and known, and its wearer held up to well-merited ignominy. It does not matter to Madame Lucile or Mdlle. Henriette, whether ladies wear what is intrinsically better or more becoming to them, but they shall wear something that is different; and their steps must wear the staircase of Madame Lucile and Mdlle. Henriette. Hopeless, therefore, is the struggle after æsthetics in dress when the trade depend on violent changes. Happily the people at large—the masses, if you will—are not equally constrained. They too rapidly seize on what is new, and often retain what is really pretty. Some of the best of modern changes in dress are already adopted as national costume. What, for instance, can be more becoming than the prevailing dress of our female servants: the well-fitting dress, cotton, or dark material; the snowy apron; the round cap of lace, below which appears the knot of glossy, well kept hair; the close, short sleeve; the white stocking? Observe the female domestics of good houses, and it will be thought that they have hit a happy mean in dress, and have succeeded in combining in a remarkable manner the elegant and the modest.
HOW THOR WENT TO FISH FOR THE SERPENT MIDGARD.
A LEGEND FROM THE NORSE MYTHOLOGY.
Without his magic belt of power, or panoply of war,
Without his magic gauntlets, or brazen thunder car,
Over the rainbow bridge of heaven the son of Odin went,
Nor gods, nor men, nor dwarfs, nor elves, knew ought of his intent.
Seeking the haunts of fishermen along the sounding shore,
Where those who hunt the whale and shark dwelt in the times of yore,
He came unto a giant’s hut with feigned looks of shame,—
He seem’d a fair-hair’d stripling, as he shouted Hymir’s name.
******
At break of day the giant rose, and from a chalky cave
He dragg’d his boat, so huge and black, down to the heaving wave.
Then Thor besought him long and loud his toil to let him share;
But Hymir cried, “Thou puny boy, thine be a meaner care,—
“To sweep the floor, and tend the kine; thou canst not go with me.
I go to where the walrus dives far ’neath the frozen sea,
Where the sun glows at midnight, and where the storm-birds scream
In millions round the icy cliff, and bergs that float and gleam.”
“I fear no cold nor tempest,” exclaim’d the eager youth;
“I’ll serve thee, Hymir, as a serf, with honesty and truth,
I will not be the first to say, half tremblingly, ‘Put back,’
Though wind blow high, or ice close in, or tempest-cloud grow black.”
Hymir relented; then the lad ran to the nearest herd,
And from the mightiest bull its head wrung off without a word;
Then both leap’d swiftly in the boat, and thrust it off to sea,
And, bending to the massy oars, drove it on silently.
Three days and nights the stripling row’d, till Hymir bade him stay,
For they had reach’d the sunken sands beyond the walrus bay;
But Thor replied, that farther yet he knew of better shores;
And silently, with head Lent down, drove fiercer at the oars.
The fifth day Hymir, frowning, rose and seized the rower’s hand:
“Now stop,” he said, “thou stubborn youth, we’ve reach’d the frozen land;
Turn ere the serpent swallow us, or ice, with closing teeth,
Grind us in two, or our frail boat split on the reef beneath.”
Thor knew the day and hour had come; he straight uncoil’d the line,
Then thrust the flesh upon the hook, and, without word or sign,
To Hymir’s horror through the surf the stripling toss’d the head,
And down through fathoms of blue wave it sunk as it were lead.
Fast flew the boat, as flies the shark upon the scattering shoal,
It seem’d as if it breathed and strove to reach the distant goal;
Hymir, in vain, protesting, cried, “Turn, turn the boat to land;
The icebergs are around us now, below us the quicksand.
“The Midgard Serpent the nine world girdless as with a chain,
The All-Father threw him there to roam the unfathomable main;
That serpent, sprung from Loki’s race, rules in the ocean gloom.
Turn, boy, and draw not down on us the inevitable doom.”
Thor answer’d not, but stood erect, frowning at earth and sky,
And Hymir trembled when he saw the red light of his eye.
Far, far the ice-cliffs glittering shone, far the white cliffs stretch’d forth,
Until the blue mist rose and hid the boundaries of the North.
The moment that the gory bait dragg’d on the ocean bed,
The serpent, gluttonous and fierce, ran at the great bull’s head;
