The Exchange

188 IMPKOVEMEN'I ERA.

of adventure, and Antony Hope of love and adventure, mixed; that no father or mother need fear to place in their children's hands stories written by Mrs. Alcott.

"The prose story," says a recent writer, "comes close to the heart of the world, gets into the pulses of the people, lounges in the slippered ease of the drawing room, swings in the summer hammock, circulates in the brain of the day, airs its opinions, its theories and philosophies through human lips in a hundred lands, and is read, read, read!"

Yes, the world reads fiction. If one has a message to deliver, he puts it in a novel, into a living, breathing thing. The Latter-day Saints have a great message to the world. What a field is here for the pen of the novelist. As Tennyson says:

"Truth in closest words shall fail, When truth embodied in a tale, Shall enter in at lowly doors."

THE EXCHANGE.

We pledgediour hearts, my love and I- I in my arms the maiden clasping;

I could not tell the reason why, But, oh! I trembled like an aspen.

Her father's love she bade me gain;

I went and shook like any reed! I strove to act the man — in vain!

We had exchanged our hearts indeed.

S. T. Coleridge.