A CHANGE OF FORTUNE.

"Oh, the days when I was happy!" Sighed a pensive little Jappy, As the crystal tears rolled down and washed the color from his cheek. On the table in my study Sweetly smiling, round, and ruddy. Many years he had been standing in a china jar unique. Now, alas! his smile was faded. His expression worn and jaded. And his bursting heart found utterance in a woful lamentation: "Oh, that from my proud position, Highest goal of my ambition, I should ever stoop to suffer such a sad humiliation! "Once I was caressed and flattered, Rich or poor, it little mattered. Young and old, from babe to grandsire, every one must have a 'Jap.' And alike by tastes æsthetic, Grave or humorous or poetic, I was hailed, and all-triumphant, lived and throve in Fortune's lap. "Then—ah me!—the reigning fashion, Every artist had a passion For displaying me in pictures, and the studios were my own. Now, to claim their whole attention, One whom I am loath to mention Comes, an upstart, a usurper, and ascends my rightful throne. "Hard it is my grief to smother, Bitter thus to see another Wear my honors! Artists paint him, poets his perfections praise. Everywhere his visage hated Greets me. He is fondled, fêted. Worst of all, he rules the children as did I in other days. "Nevermore shall I be happy," Said the weeping little Jappy, "Nevermore my days be merry, and my slumbers soft and downy. I shall live, but all unheeded, Quite cut out and superseded By that precious, omnipresent pet and paragon, the Brownie!" Margaret Johnson.