In trophied urn the holy ashes heap
Of his loved Atys. And, that fame should keep
Unperish'd, all the prince's early glory,
Large tablets wrought he rough with this sad story.

But when the solemn-footed funeral,
With martial music, from the marble wall
Flow'd off, and fell asunder in far fields;
When silenced was the clang of jostling shields,
And the sonorous-throated trumpet mute,
And mute the shrill-voiced melancholy flute;
What time Orion in the west began
Over the thin edge of the ocean
To set a shining foot, and dark night fell;
Then, judging life to be intolerable,
The son of Gordius sharply made short end
Of long mischance: and calling death his friend,
He, self condemn'd to darkness, in the gloom
And stillness, slew himself upon the tomb.
This to Adrastus was the end of tears.

But Crœsus mourn'd for Atys many years.

IN JEOPARDY.

I'M a bricklayer, I am; and, what's more,
down in the country, where people ain't so
particular about keeping trades distinct as they
are in the great towns. This may be seen any
day in a general shop, where, as one might
say, you can get anything, from half a quartern
of butter up to a horn lantern; and down
again to a hundred of short-cut brads—well,
down in the country I've done a bit of a
job now and then as a mason; and not so badly
neither, I should suppose, for I got pretty well
paid considering, and didn't hear more than the
usual amount of growlin' arter it was done—
which is saying a deal. Ours ain't the most
agreeable of lives, and if it warn't for recollecting
a little about the dignity of labour, and such-like,
one would often grumble more than one does.

Some time ago, it don't matter to you, nor
me, nor yet anybody else, just when it was,
work was precious slack down our way—all
things considered, I ain't a-going to tell you
where our way is. A day's work a week had
been all I'd been able to get for quite two
months; so Mary, that's my wife, used to
pinch and screw, and screw and pinch, and
keep on squeezing shilling arter shilling out of
the long stocking, till at last it got so light,
that one morning she lets it fall upon the table,
where, instead of coming down with a good
hearty spang, it fell softy and jest like a piece
of cotton that was empty. And then, poor
lass, she hangs on to my neck, and burst out
a-crying that pitiful, that I'm blest if I didn't
want my nose blowing about every quarter of
a minute. I hadn't minded the screwing and
pinching; not a bit of it. First week we went
without our puddings. Well, that wasn't much.
Second week we stopped my half-pints o' beer.
Third week I put my pipe out. Mary kep' on
saying that things must look up soon, and then
I should have an ounce of the best to make up
for it. But things didn't look up; and, in spite
of all the screwing, we got down to the bottom
of the stocking, as I said jest now.

I hadn't much cared for the pinching, but it
was my poor lass as got pinched the most, and
she was a-getting paler and thinner every day,
till I couldn't abear to see it. I run out o' the
house, and down to Jenkins's yard, where I'd
been at work last. I soon found Jenkins; and
I says to him, "Governor," I says, "this won't
do, you know; a man can't live upon wind."

"True for you, Bill Stock," he says.

"And a man can't keep his wife upon wind,"
I says.

"Right you are, Bill," he says; and he went
on and spoke as fair as a man could speak; and
said he hadn't a job he could put me on, or he
would have done it in a minute. "I'm werry
sorry, Bill," he says, "but if times don't mend,
I tell you what I'm a-going to do."

"What's that?" I says.

"Go up to London," he says; "and if I was
a young man like you, I wouldn't stop starving
down here, when they're giving first-class wages
up there, and when there's building going on all
round, as thick as thick, and good big jobs
too: hotels, and railways, and bridges, and all
sorts."

I faces round sharp, and walks off home; for
when a feller's hungry and close up, it lays hold
on his temper as well as his stummick, more
especially when there's somebody belonging to him in
the same fix. So I walks off home, where I finds
Mary a-lookin' werry red-eyed; and I makes no
more ado but I gets my pipe, and empties the bit
o' dust there was in the bottom o' the jar into it,
lights up, and sits down aside of Mary, and puts
my arm round her, jest as I used in old courting
times; and then begins smoking an' thinking.
Werry slow as to the fust, and werry fast as to
the second; as smokin' costs money, and the
dust was dry; whereas thinking came cheap jest
then—and it's sur-prising how yer can think on
a empty inside. I suppose it is because there's
plenty o' room for the thoughts to work in.

Well, I hadn't been settin' above a minute
like this, when my lass lays her head on my
shoulder, and though she wouldn't let me see it,
I knowed she was a-giving way; but I didn't
take no notice. Perhaps I held her a little bit
tighter; and there I sat thinking and watching
the thin smoke, till I could see buildings, and
scaffolds, and heaps o' bricks, and blocks o' stone,
and could almost hear the ring o' the trowels,
and the "sar-jar" o' the big stone saws, and
there was the men a-running up and down the
ladders, and the gangers a-giving their orders,
and all seemed so plain, that I began to grow
warm. And I keeps on smoking till it seemed
as though I was one of a great crowd o' men
standing round a little square wooden office
place, and being called in one at a time; and
there I could see them a-takin' their six-and-
thirty shillings and two pounds apiece, as fast
as a clerk could book it. And then all at
once it seemed to fade away like a fog in the
sun; and I kep' on drawing, but nothing come,
and I found as my pipe was out, and there
was nothing left to light agen. So I knocks
the ashes out—what there was on 'em—and then