Recitations for the Social Circle. Selected and Original
by unknown · English · Gutenberg #38579 · 417,592 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Recitations for the Social Circle. Selected and Original
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Recitations for the Social Circle. Selected and Original
Compiler: James Clarence Harvey
Release date: January 15, 2012 [eBook #38579]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38579
Credits: Produced by Charlene Taylor, Josephine Paolucci, Marilynda
Fraser-Cunliffe and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RECITATIONS FOR THE SOCIAL CIRCLE. SELECTED AND ORIGINAL ***
Produced by Charlene Taylor, Josephine Paolucci, Marilynda
Fraser-Cunliffe and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net.
RECITATIONS
FOR THE SOCIAL CIRCLE.
SELECTED AND ORIGINAL.
[Illustration]
BY
JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
PUBLISHED BY
THE CHRISTIAN HERALD.
LOUIS KLOPSCH, Proprietor,
BIBLE HOUSE, NEW YORK.
Copyright, 1896.
BY LOUIS KLOPSCH.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
In reading and recitation, the general tendency is to overdo. The quiet
reserve force, which can be made apparent in the voice, will reach the
heart and stir the soul when gesture and ranting fail. "Be bold! Be not too
bold" should be the watchwords of the reciter. Self-possession, with a
nervousness arising from an earnest desire to please, is the keynote to
success. Never gesticulate if you can help it. When a gesture asserts
itself to such an extent that you have made it before you realize it, be
sure it was effective and graceful.
It is a noble ambition to wish to sway the hearts and minds of others by
the subtle modulations of the voice, and only he who feels the force of
what he utters can hope to accomplish his end. The thought of the author
must be pursued and overtaken. The sentiments between the lines must be
enlisted before the voice will lend itself, in all its glorious power, to
the tones that thrill and the music that charms.
It is not always necessary to search for something your audience has never
heard. It is far better to reveal hidden thought and new life in selections
which are familiar. The hackneyed recitation, if rendered better than ever
before, will win more applause than a fresh bit carelessly studied.
Above all, use judgment in selection. The stout lady of fifty-two should
avoid "Marco Bozarris" and "The Elf Child," and the young lady just home
from boarding-school should not attempt the ponderous utterances of a Roman
gladiator.
Care in selection; fidelity in study; wisdom in the choice of occasion;
modesty in delivery; earnestness of manner and sincerity of feeling
throughout, must win at last. If you make failures, trace them to a lack in
some one or more of these requisites and, by experience, learn to avoid a
recurrence. Orators, like poets, are "born not made," but even the born
speaker will fail at times unless these laws are considered and observed.
Always render an author's lines as he wrote them. The chances are ten to
one that every word carries its burden of thought, even though you may not
have discerned it. Err on the conservative side if in doubt.
Over-enthusiasm is less easily pardoned.
Never select dialect verses or stories unless you have the unusual gift
necessary to give them the piquancy and zest which attends a good
imitation. Ask a dozen friends for an honest opinion on the subject and
draw an average from their criticisms to guide you in your choice of
selections. Don't lose your temper over a severe criticism. Search
carefully through your list of abilities and see if there is not, perhaps,
some foundation for kindly suggestion. It is often a great assistance, in
memorizing the work of another, to make a written copy, but attention
should be given to the making of a perfect copy, properly punctuated.
Use the eye in memorizing.
Oftentimes a mental picture of a page will recall a line which for an
instant seems about to escape you. Use the ear as well and study the effect
of various modulations of voice as you rehearse in private.
Above all, use the best of your intelligence, earnestly, in studying and
applying the thousand little nothings that in the aggregate make the
perfect reader.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
A Dream of the Universe. By Jean Paul Richter, 95
A Friend of the Fly, 173
After-Dinner Speech by a Frenchman, 287
America for God. By T. DeWitt Talmage, 74
An Affectionate Letter, 198
An Appeal for Liberty. By Joseph Story, 296
An Hour of Horror, 218
Annie and Willie's Prayer. By Sophia P. Snow, 275
Answered Prayers, By Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 175
An Unaccountable Mystery. By Paul Denton, 80
A Rainy Day, 260
A Reasonable Request, 194
At the Stage Door. By James Clarence Harvey, 16
At the Stamp Window, 110
Becalmed. By Samuel K. Cowan, 182
Banford's Burglar Alarm, 314
Behind Time. By Freeman Hunt, 77
Bessie Kendrick's Journey. By Mrs. Annie E. Preston, 253
Better Things, 319
Bicycle Ride. By James Clarence Harvey, 236
By Special Request. By Frank Castles, 47
Charity, 308
Cut Behind. By T. DeWitt Talmage, 14
Daughter of the Desert. By James Clarence Harvey, 65
De Pint Wid Ole Pete, 215
Destiny of Our Country. By R. C. Winthrop, 188
Eloquence, the Study of. By Cicero, 11
Emulation (Up to Date). By James Clarence Harvey, 187
Extract from Blaine's Oration on James A. Garfield, 208
Fashionable, 261
Fast Mail and the Stage. By John H. Yates, 230
Frenchman and the Landlord. Anonymous, 18
Gentle Alice Brown. By W. S. Gilbert, 149
Get Acquainted With Yourself. By R. J. Burdette, 119
God in the Constitution. By T. DeWitt Talmage, 176
Good Old Way, 207
Good Reading. By John S. Hart, L.L.D., 41
Go Vay, Becky Miller, Go Vay, 220
Guild's Signal. By Francis Bret Harte, 21
His Last Court, 104
Hornets. By Bill Nye, 70
How "Old Mose" Counted Eggs, 272
How Shall I Love You? By Will C. Ferril, 212
Imperfectus. By James Clarence Harvey, 83
In Arabia. By James Berry Bensel, 37
In the Bottom Drawer, 185
It is a Winter Night. By Richard Henry Stoddard, 221
I Wonder. By James Clarence Harvey, 159
Katrina's Visit to New York, 138
Keenan's Charge. By George P. Lathrop, 97
Kittens and Babies. By Lizzie M. Hadley, 80
Land of Our Birth. By Lillie E. Barr, 239
Legend of the Ivy. By James Clarence Harvey, 34
Let Us Give Thanks, 258
Literary Attractions of the Bible. By Dr. Hamilton, 88
Little Brown Curl, 213
Little Feet, 259
Little Jim. By George R. Sims, 118
Little White Hearse. By J. W. Riley, 121
Lullaby, 114
Maid of Orleans. By J. E. Sagebeer, 144
Mark Twain and the Interviewer, 22
Mother, Home and Heaven, 56
Mother's Doughnuts. By Charles F. Adams, 87
Mother's Fool, 217
Mr. Winkle Puts on Skates. By Charles Dickens, 281
Mutation. By James Clarence Harvey, 164
My Mother's Bible. By George P. Morris, 286
New Year Ledger. By Amelia E. Barr, 39
No Objection to Children, 309
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, 51
Old Uncle Jake, 298
Only a Song, 235
Our Own. By Margaret E. Sangster, 76
Our Heroes Shall Live. By Henry Ward Beecher, 113
Paul Revere's Ride. By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 43
Penning a Pig. By James A. Bailey, 115
Praying for Papa, 180
Praying for Shoes. By Paul Hamilton Hayne, 58
Puzzled Dutchman, 227
Queen Vashti. By T. DeWitt Talmage, 131
Rabbi and the Prince. By James Clarence Harvey, 143
Resignation. By Longfellow, 196
Resurgam. By Eben E. Rexford, 262
Roman Legend. By James Clarence Harvey, 170
Rum's Devastation and Destiny. By William Sullivan, 60
Serenade. By Thomas Hood, 129
She Cuts His Hair, 294
Shwate Kittie Kehoe. By James Clarence Harvey, 155
Since She Went Home. By R. J. Burdette, 72
Six Love Letters, 165
Speech of Patrick Henry, 160
Story of the Little Rid Hin. By Mrs. Whitney, 232
Supporting the Guns, 30
The American Union. By Daniel Webster, 52
The Black Horse and His Rider. By Charles Sheppard, 290
The Book Canvasser. By Max Adeler, 264
The Children. By Charles Dickens, 306
The Children We Keep, 73
The Christmas Baby. By Will Carleton, 92
The Country's Greatest Evil, 156
The Crowded Street. By William Cullen Bryant, 252
The Dead Doll. By Margaret Vandegrift, 108
The Doorstep. By E. C. Stedman, 270
The Enchanted Shirt. By John Hay, 177
The Fatal Glass. By Laura U. Case, 137
The Fault of the Age. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 263
The Hot Axle. By T. DeWitt Talmage, 303
The Minister's Grievances, 204
The Misnomer. By Josie C. Malott, 269
The Modern Belle, 226
The Nameless Guest. By James Clarence Harvey, 112
The Old Oaken Bucket. By Samuel Woodworth, 279
The Pilot. By John B. Gough, 135
The Poppy Land Limited Express. By Edgar Wade Abbot, 55
The Prime of Life. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 29
There is a Tongue in Every Leaf, 257
There'll Be Room in Heaven, 122
The Retort Dis-courteous. By James Clarence Harvey, 125
The Teacher's Diadem, 240
The United States. By Daniel Webster, 35
The Whirling Wheel. By Tudor Jenks, 288
The Whistling Regiment. By James Clarence Harvey, 199
Tobe's Monument. By Elizabeth Kilham, 243
Useful Precepts for Girls, 100
W'en de Darky am A-whis'lin'. By S. Q. Lapius, 134
We're Building Two a Day! By Rev. Alfred J. Hough, 224
What the Little Girl Said, 221
Widder Budd, 102
Wind and Sea. By Bayard Taylor, 13
Woman's Pocket. By James M. Bailey, 84
Women of Mumbles Head. By Clement Scott, 190
Young America, 153
Zenobia's Defence. By William Ware, 126
RECITATIONS FOR THE SOCIAL CIRCLE.
THE STUDY OF ELOQUENCE.
BY CICERO.
I cannot conceive anything more excellent, than to be able, by language, to
captivate the affections, to charm the understanding, and to impel or
restrain the will of whole assemblies, at pleasure. Among every free
people, especially in peaceful, settled governments, this single art has
always eminently flourished, and always exercised the greatest sway. For
what can be more surprising than that, amidst an infinite multitude, one
man should appear, who shall be the only, or almost the only man capable of
doing what Nature has put in every man's power? Or, can anything impart
such exquisite pleasure to the ear and to the intellect, as a speech in
which the wisdom and dignity of the sentiments are heightened by the utmost
force and beauty of expression?
Is there anything so commanding, so grand, as that the eloquence of one man
should direct the inclinations of the people, the consciences of judges,
and the majesty of senates? Nay, farther, can aught be esteemed so great,
so generous, so public-spirited, as to assist the suppliant, to rear the
prostrate, to communicate happiness, to avert danger, and to save a
fellow-citizen from exile? Can anything be so necessary, as to keep those
arms always in readiness, with which you may defend yourself, attack the
profligate, and redress your own, or your country's wrongs?
But let us consider this accomplishment as detached from public business,
and from its wonderful efficacy in popular assemblies, at the bar, and in
the senate; can anything be more agreeable, or more endearing in private
life, than elegant language? For the great characteristic of our nature,
and what eminently distinguishes us from brutes, is the faculty of social
conversation, the power of expressing our thoughts and sentiments by words.
To excel mankind, therefore, in the exercise of that very talent which
gives them the preference to the brute creation, is what everybody must not
only admire, but look upon as the just object of the most indefatigable
pursuit.
And now, to mention the chief point of all, what other power could have
been of sufficient efficacy to bring together the vagrant individuals of
the human race; to tame their savage manners, to reconcile them to social
life; and, after cities were founded, to mark out laws, forms, and
constitutions, for their government?--Let me, in a few words, sum up this
almost boundless subject. I lay it down as a maxim, that upon the wisdom
and abilities of an accomplished orator, not only his own dignity, but the
welfare of vast numbers of individuals, and even of the whole state, must
greatly depend.
THE WIND AND THE SEA.
BY BAYARD TAYLOR.
The Sea is a jovial comrade;
He laughs, wherever he goes,
And the merriment shines
In the dimpling lines
That wrinkle his hale repose.
He lays himself down at the feet of the sun
And shakes all over with glee,
And the broad-backed billows fall faint on the shore
In the mirth of the mighty sea.
But the wind is sad and restless,
And cursed with an inward pain;
You may hark as you will,
By valley or hill,
But you hear him still complain.
He wails on the barren mountain;
Shrieks on the wintry sea;
Sobs in the cedar and moans in the pine,
And shivers all over the aspen tree.
Welcome are both their voices,
And I know not which is best,
The laughter that slips
From the ocean's lips,
Or the comfortless wind's unrest.
There's a pang in all rejoicing,
A joy in the heart of pain,
And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens,
Are singing the self-same strain.
CUT BEHIND.
BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE.
The scene opens on a clear, crisp morning. Two boys are running to get on
the back of a carriage, whose wheels are spinning along the road. One of
the boys, with a quick spring, succeeds. The other leaps, but fails, and
falls on the part of the body where it is most appropriate to fall. No
sooner has he struck the ground than he shouts to the driver of the
carriage, "Cut behind!"
Human nature is the same in boy as in man--all running to gain the vehicle
of success. Some are spry, and gain that for which they strive. Others are
slow, and tumble down; they who fall crying out against those who mount,
"Cut behind!"
A political office rolls past. A multitude spring to their feet, and the
race is on. Only one of all the number reaches that for which he runs. No
sooner does he gain the prize, and begin to wipe the sweat from his brow,
and think how grand a thing it is to ride in popular preferment, than the
disappointed candidates cry out, "Incompetency! Stupidity! Fraud! Now let
the newspapers of the other political party 'cut behind.'"
There is a golden chariot of wealth rolling down the street. A thousand
people are trying to catch it. They run, they jostle; they tread on each
other. Push, and pull, and tug. Those talk most against riches who cannot
get there. Clear the track for the racers! One of the thousand reaches the
golden prize and mounts. Forthwith the air is full of cries, "Got it by
fraud! Shoddy! Petroleum aristocracy! His father was a rag-picker! His
mother was a washer-woman! I knew him when he blacked his own shoes! Pitch
him off the back part of the golden chariot! Cut behind! cut behind!"
In many eyes success is a crime. "I do not like you," said the snow-flake
to the snow-bird. "Why?" said the snow-bird. "Because," said the
snow-flake, "you are going _up_ and I am going _down_."
We have to state that the man in the carriage, on the crisp morning, though
he had a long lash-whip, with which he could have made the climbing boy
yell most lustily, did not _cut behind_. He heard the shout in the rear,
and said, "Good morning, my son. That is right; climb over and sit by me.
Here are the reins; take hold and drive; was a boy myself once, and know
what tickles youngsters."
Thank God, there are so many in the world that never "cut behind," but are
ready to give a fellow a ride whenever he wants it. There are hundreds of
people whose chief joy it is to help others on. Now it is a smile, now a
good word, now ten dollars. When such a kind man has ridden to the end of
the earthly road, it will be pleasant to hang up the whip with which he
drove the enterprises of a lifetime, and feel that with it he never "cut
behind" at those who were struggling.
AT THE STAGE DOOR.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
The curtain had fallen, the lights were dim,
The rain came down with a steady pour;
A white-haired man with a kindly face,
Peered through the panes of the old stage door.
"I'm getting too old to be drenched like that"
He muttered and turning met face to face,
The woman whose genius, an hour before,
Like a mighty power had filled the place.
"Yes, much too old," with a smile, she said,
And she laid her hand on his silver hair;
"You shall ride with me to your home to-night,
For that is my carriage standing there."
The old door-tender stood, doffing his hat
And holding the door, but she would not stir,
Though he said it was not for the "likes of him
To ride in a kerridge with such as her."
"Come, put out your lights," she said to him,
"I've something important I wish to say,
And I can't stand here in the draught you know--
I can tell you much better while on the way."
So into the carriage the old man crept,
Thanking her gratefully, o'er and o'er,
Till she bade him listen while she would tell
A story, concerning that old stage door.
"It was raining in torrents, ten years ago
This very night, and a friendless child
Stood, shivering there, by that old stage door,
Dreading her walk in a night so wild.
She was only one of the 'extra' girls,
But you gave her a nickle to take the car,
And said 'Heaven bless ye, my little one,
Ye can pay me back ef ye ever star.'
"So you cast your bread on the waters then,
And I pay you back, as my heart demands,
And we're even now--no! not quite," she said,
As she emptied her purse in his trembling hands.
"And if ever you're needy and want a friend,
You know where to come, for your little mite
Put hope in my heart and made me strive
To gain the success you have seen to-night."
Then the carriage stopped, at the old man's door,
And the gas-light shone on him, standing there:
And he stepped to the curb, as she rolled away,
While his thin lips murmured a fervent prayer.
He looked at the silver and bills and gold,
And he said: "She gives all this to me?
My bread has come back a thousandfold,
God bless her! God bless all such as she!"
THE FRENCHMAN AND THE LANDLORD.
ANONYMOUS.
A shrewd and wealthy old landlord, away down in Maine, is noted for driving
his "sharp bargains," by which he has amassed a large amount of property.
He is the owner of a large number of dwelling-houses, and it is said of him
that he is not over-scrupulous of his rental charges, whenever he can find
a customer whom he knows to be responsible. His object is to lease his
house for a term of years to the best tenants, and get the uttermost
farthing in the shape of rent.
A diminutive Frenchman called on him last winter, to hire a dwelling he
owned in Portland, and which had long remained empty. References were
given, and the landlord, ascertaining that the tenant was a man "after his
own heart," immediately commenced to "Jew" him. He found that the tenement
appeared to suit the Frenchman, and he placed an exorbitant price upon it;
the leases were drawn and duly executed, and the tenant removed into his
new quarters.
Upon kindling fires in the house, it was found that the chimneys wouldn't
"draw," and the building was filled with smoke. The window-sashes rattled
in the wind at night, and the cold air rushed through a hundred crevices
about the house until now unnoticed. The snow melted upon the roof, and the
attics were drenched from the leakage. The rain pelted, and our Frenchman
found a "natural" bathroom upon the second floor--but the lease was signed
and the landlord chuckled.
"I have been vat you sall call 'tuck in,' vis zis _maison_," muttered our
victim to himself a week afterwards, "but _n'importe_, ve sal se vat ve
_sal_ see."
Next morning he arose bright and early, and passing down he encountered the
landlord.
"Ah ha!--_Bon jour, monsieur_," said he in his happiest manner.
"Good day, sir. How do you like your house?"
"Ah monsieur--elegant, beautiful, magnificent. _Eh bien_, monsieur, I have
ze one regret!"
"Ah! What is that?"
"I sal live in zat house but tree little year."
"How so?"
"I have find by vot you call ze lease, zat you have give me ze house but
for tree year, and I ver mooch sorrow for zat."
"But you can have it longer if you wish--"
"Ah, monsieur, sal be ver mooch glad if I can have zat house _so long as I
please_--eh--monsieur?"
"Oh, certainly, certainly, sir."
"_Tres bien_, monsieur! I sal valk rite to your offees, and you sal give me
vot you call ze lease for that _maison jes so long as I sal vant the
house_. Eh, monsieur?"
"Certainly, sir. You can stay there your lifetime, if you like."
"Ah, monsieur--I have ver mooch tanks for zis accommodation."
The old lease was destroyed and a new one was delivered in form to the
French gentleman, giving him possession of the premises for "such a period
as the lessee may desire the same, he paying the rent promptly, etc."
The next morning our crafty landlord was passing the house just as the
French-man's last load of furniture was being started from the door; an
hour afterward, a messenger called on him with a legal tender, for the rent
for eight days, accompanied with a note as follows:
"Monsieur--I have been smoke--I have been drouned--I have been frees to
death, in ze house vat I av hire of you for ze period as I may desire. I
have stay in ze house _jes so long as I please_, and ze bearer of zis vill
give you ze key! _Bon jour_, monsieur."
It is needless to add that our landlord has never since been known to give
up "a bird in the hand for one in the bush."
GUILD'S SIGNAL.
BY FRANCIS BRET HARTE, 1839.
Two low whistles, quaint and clear,
That was the signal the engineer--
That was the signal that Guild, 'tis said--
Gave to his wife at Providence,
As through the sleeping town, and thence
Out in the night,
On to the light,
Down past the farms, lying white, he sped!
As a husband's greeting, scant, no doubt,
Yet to the woman looking out,
Watching and waiting, no serenade,
Love-song, or midnight roundelay
Said what that whistle seemed to say;
"To my trust true,
So love to you!
Working or waiting. Good night!" it said.
Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine,
Old commuters, along the line,
Brakesmen and porters, glanced ahead,
Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense,
Pierced through the shadows of Providence,--
"Nothing amiss--
Nothing!--it is
Only Guild calling his wife," they said.
Summer and winter, the old refrain
Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain,
Pierced through the budding boughs o'er head,
Flew down the track when the red leaves burned
Like living coals from the engine spurned!
Sang as it flew
"To our trust true.
First of all, duty! Good night!" it said.
And then, one night, it was heard no more
From Stonington over Rhode Island Shore,
And the folk in Providence smiled and said,
As they turned in their beds: "The engineer
Has once forgotten his midnight cheer."
_One_ only knew
To his trust true,
Guild lay under his engine, dead.
MARK TWAIN AND THE INTERVIEWER.
The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, and
said he was connected with "The Daily Thunderstorm," and added,--
"Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you."
"Come to what?"
"_Interview_ you."
"Ah! I see. Yes--yes. Um! Yes--yes."
I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bit under
a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had been looking six
or seven minutes, I found I was obliged to refer to the young man. I
said,--
"How do you spell it?"
"Spell what?"
"Interview."
"Oh, my goodness? What do you want to spell it for?"
"I don't want to spell it: I want to see what it means."
"Well, this is astonishing, I must say. _I_ can tell you what it means, if
you--if you"--
"Oh, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too."
"In, _in_, ter, _ter_, _inter_"--
"Then you spell it with an _I_?"
"Why, certainly!"
"Oh, that is what took me so long!"
"Why, my _dear_ sir, what did _you_ propose to spell it with?"
"Well, I--I--I hardly know. I had the Unabridged; and I was ciphering
around in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures. But
it's a very old edition."
"Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a _picture_ of it in even the latest
e---- My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world; but you
do not look as--as--intelligent as I had expected you would. No harm,--I
mean no harm at all."
"Oh, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who would not
flatter, and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quite
remarkable in that way. Yes--yes: they always speak of it with rapture."
"I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is the
custom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious."
"Indeed! I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. What do
you do it with?"
"Ah, well--well--well--this is disheartening. It _ought_ to be done with a
club, in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewer asking
questions, and the interviewed answering them. It is all the rage now. Will
you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring out the salient
points of your public and private history?"
"Oh, with pleasure,--with pleasure. I have a very bad memory; but I hope
you will not mind. That is to say, it is an irregular memory, singularly
irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and then again it will be as much
as a fortnight passing a given point. This is a great grief to me."
"Oh! it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can."
"I will! I will put my whole mind on it."
"Thanks! Are you ready to begin?"
"Ready."
_Question._ How old are you?
_Answer._ Nineteen in June.
_Q._ Indeed! I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where were
you born?
_A._ In Missouri.
_Q._ When did you begin to write?
_A._ In 1836.
_Q._ Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now?
_A._ I don't know. It does seem curious, somehow.
_Q._ It does indeed. Whom do you consider the most remarkable man you ever
met?
_A._ Aaron Burr.
_Q._ But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteen
years----
_A._ Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?
_Q._ Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more. How did you happen to
meet Burr?
_A._ Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day; and he asked me to make
less noise, and----
_Q._ But, good heavens! If you were at his funeral, he must have been dead;
and, if he was dead, how could he care whether you made a noise or not?
_A._ I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way.
_Q._ Still, I don't understand it at all. You say he spoke to you, and that
he was dead?
_A._ I didn't say he was dead.
_Q._ But wasn't he dead?
_A._ Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't.
_Q._ What do _you_ think?
_A._ Oh, it was none of my business! It wasn't any of my funeral.
_Q._ Did you--However we can never get this matter straight. Let me ask
about something else. What was the date of your birth?
_A._ Monday, October 31, 1693.
_Q._ What! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years old.
How do you account for that?
_A._ I don't account for it at all.
_Q._ But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you make
yourself out to be one hundred and eighty. It is an awful discrepancy.
_A._ Why, have you noticed that? (_Shaking hands._) Many a time it has
seemed to me like a discrepancy; but somehow I couldn't make up my mind.
How quick you notice a thing!
_Q._ Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or have you,
any brothers or sisters?
_A._ Eh! I--I--I think so,--yes--but I don't remember.
_Q._ Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard.
_A._ Why, what makes you think that?
_Q._ How could I think otherwise? Why, look here! Who is this a picture of
on the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours?
_A._ Oh, yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it, that _was_ a brother of
mine. That's William, _Bill_ we called him. Poor old Bill!
_Q._ Why, is he dead, then?
_A._ Ah, well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great mystery
about it.
_Q._ That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then?
_A._ Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him.
_Q._ _Buried_ him! Buried him without knowing whether he was dead or not?
_A._ Oh, no! Not that. He was dead enough.
_Q._ Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him, and
you knew he was dead----
_A._ No, no! We only thought he was.
_Q._ Oh, I see! He came to life again?
_A._ I bet he didn't.
_Q._ Well. I never heard anything like this. _Somebody_ was dead. Somebody
was buried. Now, where was the mystery?
_A._ Ah, that's just it! That's it exactly! You see we were twins,--defunct
and I; and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were only two weeks old, and
one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Some think it was Bill;
and some think it was me.
_Q._ Well, that _is_ remarkable. What do _you_ think?
_A._ Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this
awful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a
secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before. One of us
had a peculiar mark, a large mole on the back of his left hand; that was
_me_. _That child was the one that was drowned._
_Q._ Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it, after
all.
_A._ You don't; well, _I_ do. Anyway, I don't see how they could ever have
been such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, 'sh!
don't mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knows they have
heart-breaking troubles enough without adding this.
_Q._ Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present; and I am
very much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a good
deal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mind
telling me what peculiar circumstance it was that made you think Burr was
such a remarkable man?
_A._ Oh, it was a mere trifle! Not one man in fifty would have noticed it
at all. When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to start for
the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he said he
wanted to take a last look at the scenery; and so he _got up, and rode with
the driver_.
* * * * *
Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was very pleasant company; and I
was sorry to see him go.
THE PRIME OF LIFE.
BY ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
I read the sentence or heard it spoken--
A stalwart phrase and with meaning rife--
And I said: "Now I know, by youth's sweet token,
That this is the time called the 'prime of life.'
"For my hopes soar over the loftiest mountain,
And the future glows red, like a fair sunrise;
And my spirits gush forth, like a spring-fed fountain,
And never a grief in the heart of me lies."
Yet later on, when with blood and muscle
Equipped I plunged in the world's hard strife,
When I loved its danger, and laughed at the tussle,
"Why _this_," I said, "is the prime of life."
And then, when the tide in my veins ran slower,
And youth's first follies had passed away,
When the fervent fires in my heart burned lower,
And over my body my brain had sway,
I said: "It is when, through the veiled ideal
The vigorous reason thrusts a knife
And rends the illusion, and shows us the real,
Oh! this is the time called 'prime of life.'"
Hut now when brain and body are troubled
(For one is tired and one is ill,
Yet my soul soars up with a strength redoubled
And sits on the throne of my broken will),
Now when on the ear of my listening spirit,
That is turned away from the earth's harsh strife,
The river of death sounds murmuring near it--
I know that _this_ "is the prime of life."
SUPPORTING THE GUNS.
Did you ever see a battery take position?
It hasn't the thrill of a cavalry charge, nor the grimness of a line of
bayonets moving slowly and determinedly on, but there is peculiar
excitement about it that makes old veterans rise in the saddle and cheer.
We have been fighting at the edge of the woods. Every cartridge-box has
been emptied once and more, and a fourth of the brigade has melted away in
dead and wounded and missing. Not a cheer is heard in the whole brigade. We
know that we are being driven foot by foot, and that when we break back
once more, the line will go to pieces and the enemy will pour through the
gap.
Here comes help!
Down the crowded highway gallops a battery, withdrawn from some other
position to save ours. The field fence is scattered while you could count
thirty, and the guns rush for the hill behind us. Six horses to a piece,
three riders to each gun. Over dry ditches where a farmer could not drive
a wagon; through clumps of bushes, over logs a foot thick, every horse on
the gallop, every rider lashing his team and yelling,--the sight behind us
makes us forget the foe in front. The guns jump two feet high as the heavy
wheels strike rock or log, but not a horse slackens his pace, not a
cannoneer loses his seat. Six guns, six caissons, sixty horses, eighty men,
race for the brow of the hill as if he who reached it first was to be
knighted.
A moment ago the battery was a confused mob. We look again and the six guns
are in position, the detached horses hurrying away, the ammunition-chests
open, and along our line runs the command: "Give them one more volley and
fall back to support the guns!" We have scarcely obeyed when boom! boom!
boom! opens the battery, and jets of fire jump down and scorch the green
trees under which we fought and despaired.
The shattered old brigade has a chance to breathe for the first time in
three hours as we form a line of battle behind the guns and lie down. What
grim, cool fellows these cannoneers are. Every man is a perfect machine.
Bullets plash dust in their faces, but they do not wince. Bullets sing over
and around them, but they do not dodge. There goes one to the earth, shot
through the head as he sponged his gun. The machinery loses just one
beat,--misses just one cog in the wheel, and then works away again as
before.
Every gun is using short-fuse shell. The ground shakes and trembles--the
roar shuts out all sounds from a battle-line three miles long, and the
shells go shrieking into the swamp to cut trees short off--to mow great
gaps in the bushes--to hunt out and shatter and mangle men until their
corpses cannot be recognized as human. You would think a tornado was
howling through the forest, followed by billows of fire, and yet men live
through it--aye! press forward to capture the battery! We can hear their
shouts as they form for the rush.
Now the shells are changed for grape and canister, and the guns are served
so fast that all reports blend into one mighty roar. The shriek of a shell
is the wickedest sound in war, but nothing makes the flesh crawl like the
demoniac singing, purring, whistling grape-shot and the serpent-like hiss
of canister. Men's legs and arms are not shot through, but torn off. Heads
are torn from bodies and bodies cut in two. A round shot or shell takes two
men out of the ranks as it crashes through. Grape and canister mow a swath
and pile the dead on top of each other.
Through the smoke we see a swarm of men. It is not a battle-line, but a mob
of men desperate enough to bathe their bayonets in the flame of the guns.
The guns leap from the ground, almost, as they are depressed on the
foe--and shrieks and screams and shouts blend into one awful and steady
cry. Twenty men out of the battery are down, and the firing is interrupted.
The foe accept it as a sign of wavering, and come rushing on. They are not
ten feet away when the guns give them a last shot. That discharge picks
living men off their feet and throws them into the swamp, a blackened,
bloody mass.
Up now, as the enemy are among the guns! There is a silence of ten seconds,
and then the flash and roar of more than three thousand muskets, and a rush
forward with bayonets. For what? Neither on the right, nor left, nor in
front of us is a living foe! There are corpses around us which have been
struck by three, four and even six bullets, and nowhere on this acre of
ground is a wounded man! The wheels of the guns cannot move until the
blockade of dead is removed. Men cannot pass from caisson to gun without
climbing over winrows of dead. Every gun and wheel is smeared with blood,
every foot of grass has its horrible stain.
Historians write of the glory of war. Burial parties saw murder where
historians saw glory.
A LEGEND OF THE IVY.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
In a quiet village of Germany, once dwelt a fair-haired maiden,
Whose eyes were as blue as the summer sky and whose hair with
gold was laden;
Her lips were as red as a rose-bud sweet, with teeth, like pearls,
behind them,
Her smiles were like dreams of bliss, complete, and her waving curls
enshrined them.
Fond lovers thronged to the maiden's side, but of all the youth around her,
One only had asked her to be his bride, and a willing listener found her,
"Some time, we'll marry," she often said, then burst into song or laughter,
And tripped away, while the lover's head hung low as he followed after.
Impatient growing, at last he said, "The springtime birds are mating,
Pray whisper, sweet, our day to wed; warm hearts grow cold from waiting."
"Not yet," she smiled, with a fond caress; but he answered, "Now or never,
I start for the Holy War unless I may call thee mine forever."
"For the Holy War? Farewell!" she cried, with never a thought of grieving.
His wish so often had been denied, she could not help believing
His heart would wait till her budding life had blown to its
full completeness.
She did not know that a wedded wife holds a spell in her youthful sweetness.
But alas! for the "Yes" too long delayed, he fought and he bravely perished;
And alas! for the heart of the tender maid, and the love it
fondly cherished;
Her smile grew sad for all hope was gone; life's sands were
swiftly fleeting,
And just at the break of a wintry dawn, her broken heart ceased beating;
And when, on her grave, at the early spring, bright flowers her friends were
throwing,
They knelt and there, just blossoming, they saw a strange plant growing,
Its tender fingers, at first, just seen, crept on through the grass
and clover,
Till, at last, with a mound of perfect green, it covered
the whole grave over;
And often the village youth would stand by the vine-clad mound,
in the gloaming,
And holding a maiden's willing hand, would tell that the strange
plant roaming
Was the maiden's soul, which could not rest and with fruitless,
fond endeavor,
Went seeking the heart it loved the best, but sought in vain, forever.
THE UNITED STATES.
BY DANIEL WEBSTER.
And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility
of secession, instead of dwelling in these caverns of darkness, instead of
groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let
us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh air of Liberty
and Union; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote
ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our
action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of
the duties that devolve upon us; let our comprehension be as broad as the
country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny;
let us not be pigmies in a case that calls for men.
Never did there devolve on any generation of men higher trusts than now
devolve upon us, for the preservation of this constitution, and the harmony
and peace of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our
generation one of the strongest and brightest links in that golden chain,
which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the
states to this constitution, for ages to come.
We have a great, popular, constitutional government, guarded by law and by
judicature, and defended by the whole affections of the people. No
monarchical throne presses these states together; no iron chain of military
power encircles them; they live and stand upon a government popular in its
form, representative in its character, founded upon principles of equality,
and so constructed, we hope, as to last forever.
In all its history it has been beneficent: it has trodden down no man's
liberty; it has crushed no state. Its daily respiration is liberty and
patriotism; its yet youthful veins are full of enterprise, courage, and
honorable love of glory and renown. Large before, the country has now, by
recent events, becomes vastly larger.
This republic now extends, with a vast breadth, across the whole continent.
The two great seas of the world wash the one and the other shore. We
realize, on a mighty scale, the beautiful description of the ornamental
edging of the buckler of Achilles--
"Now the broad shield complete, the artist crowned
With his last hand, and poured the ocean round;
In living silver seemed the waves to roll,
And beat the buckler's verge, and bound the whole."
IN ARABIA.
BY JAMES BERRY BENSEL, 1856.
"Choose thou between!" and to his enemy
The Arab chief a brawny hand displayed,
Wherein, like moonlight on a sullen sea,
Gleamed the gray scimitar's enamelled blade.
"Choose thou between death at my hand and thine!
Close in my power, my vengeance I may wreak,
Yet hesitate to strike. A hate like mine
Is noble still. Thou hast thy choosing--speak!"
And Ackbar stood. About him all the band
That hailed his captor chieftain, with grave eyes
His answer waited, while that heavy hand
Stretched like a bar between him and the skies.
Straight in the face before him Ackbar sent
A sneer of scorn, and raised his noble head;
"Strike!" and the desert monarch, as content,
Rehung the weapon at his girdle red.
Then Ackbar nearer crept and lifted high
His arms toward the heaven so far and blue
Wherein the sunset rays began to die,
While o'er the band, a deeper silence grew.
"Strike! I am ready! Did'st thou think to see
A son of Gheva spill upon the dust
His noble blood? Did'st hope to have my knee
Bend at thy feet, and with one mighty thrust,
"The life thou hatest flee before thee here?
Shame on thee! on thy race! Art thou the one
Who hast so long his vengeance counted dear?
My hate is greater; I did strike thy son,
"Thy one son, Noumid, dead before my face;
And by the swiftest courser of my stud
Sent to thy door his corpse. And one might trace
Their flight across the desert by his blood.
"Strike! for my hate is greater than thy own!"
But with a frown the Arab moved away,
Walked to a distant palm and stood alone
With eyes that looked where purple mountains lay.
This for an instant; then he turned again
Toward the place where Ackbar waited still,
Walking as one benumbed with bitter pain,
Or with a hateful mission to fulfil.
"Strike! for I hate thee!" Ackbar cried once more,
"Nay, but my hate I cannot find!" said now
His enemy. "Thy freedom I restore,
Live, life were worse than death to such as thou."
So with his gift of life, the Bedouin slept
That night untroubled; but when dawn broke through
The purple East, and o'er his eyelids crept
The long, thin finger of the light, he drew
A heavy breath and woke. Above him shone
A lifted dagger--"Yea, he gave thee life,
But I give death!" came in fierce undertone,
And Ackbar died. It was dead Noumid's wife.
The New Year Ledger.
BY AMELIA E. BARR.
I said one year ago,
"I wonder, if I truly kept
A list of days when life burnt low,
Of days I smiled and days I wept,
If good or bad would highest mount
When I made up the year's account?"
I took a ledger fair and fine,
"And now," I said, "when days are glad,
I'll write with bright red ink the line,
And write with black when they are bad,
So that they'll stand before my sight
As clear apart as day and night.
"I will not heed the changing skies,
Nor if it shine nor if it rain;
But if there comes some sweet surprise,
Or friendship, love or honest gain,
Why, then it shall be understood
That day is written down as good.
"Or if to anyone I love
A blessing meets them on the way,
That will to me a pleasure prove:
So it shall be a happy day;
And if some day, I've cause to dread
Pass harmless by, I'll write it red.
"When hands and brain stand labor's test,
And I can do the thing I would,
Those days when I am at my best
Shall all be traced as very good.
And in 'red letter,' too, I'll write
Those rare, strong hours when right is might.
"When first I meet in some grand book
A noble soul that touches mine,
And with this vision I can look
Through some gate beautiful of time,
That day such happiness will shed
That golden-lined will seem the red.
"And when pure, holy thoughts have power
To touch my heart and dim my eyes,
And I in some diviner hour
Can hold sweet converse with the skies,
Ah! then my soul may safely write:
'This day has been most good and bright.'"
What do I see on looking back?
A red-lined book before me lies,
With here and there a thread of black,
That like a gloomy shadow flies,--
A shadow it must be confessed,
That often rose in my own breast.
And I have found it good to note
The blessing that is mine each day;
For happiness is vainly sought
In some dim future far away.
Just try my ledger for a year,
Then look with grateful wonder back,
And you will find, there is no fear,
The red days far exceed the black.
GOOD READING THE GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT.
BY JOHN S. HART, LL.D.
There is one accomplishment, in particular, which I would earnestly
recommend to you. Cultivate assiduously the ability to read well. I stop to
particularize this, because it is a thing so very much neglected, and
because it is such an elegant and charming accomplishment. Where one person
is really interested by music, twenty are pleased by good reading. Where
one person is capable of becoming a skillful musician, twenty may become
good readers. Where there is one occasion suitable for the exercise of
musical talent, there are twenty for that of good reading.
The culture of the voice necessary for reading well, gives a delightful
charm to the same voice in conversation. Good reading is the natural
exponent and vehicle of all good things. It is the most effective of all
commentaries upon the works of genius. It seems to bring dead authors to
life again, and makes us sit down familiarly with the great and good of all
ages.
Did you ever notice what life and power the Holy Scriptures have when well
read? Have you ever heard of the wonderful effects produced by Elizabeth
Fry on the criminals of Newgate, by simply reading to them the parable of
the Prodigal Son? Princes and peers of the realm, it is said, counted it a
privilege to stand in the dismal corridors, among felons and murderers,
merely to share with them the privilege of witnessing the marvelous pathos
which genius, taste, and culture could infuse into that simple story.
What a fascination there is in really good reading! What a power it gives
one! In the hospital, in the chamber of the invalid, in the nursery, in the
domestic and in the social circle, among chosen friends and companions, how
it enables you to minister to the amusement, to the comfort, the pleasure
of dear ones, as no other art or accomplishment can. No instrument of man's
devising can reach the heart as does that most wonderful instrument, the
human voice. It is God's special gift and endowment to his chosen
creatures. Fold it not away in a napkin.
If you would double the value of all your other acquisitions, if you would
add immeasurably to your own enjoyment and to your power of promoting the
enjoyment of others, cultivate, with incessant care, this divine gift. No
music below the skies is equal to that of pure, silvery speech from the
lips of a man or woman of high culture.
PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear,
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in seventy-five--
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year--
He said to his friend: "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light;
One, if by land, and two if by sea,
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
Then he said "Good-night," and, with muffled oar,
Silently row'd to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay
The "Somerset," British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile his friend, through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill.
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead,
For, suddenly, all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth
And turned and lighted his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched, with eager search,
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight,
A second lamp in the belfry burns.
A hurry of hoofs in the village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark,
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all; and yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He had left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides,
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town;
He heard the crowing of the cock
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river's fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock
When he came to the bridge in Concord town;
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.
You know the rest; in the books you have read,
How the British regulars fired and fled;
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields, to emerge again
Under the trees, at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere,
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,--
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the past,
Through all our history to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
BY SPECIAL REQUEST.
BY FRANK CASTLES.
_A Lady Standing with one Hand on a Chair in a Somewhat Amateurish
Attitude._
Our kind hostess has asked me to recite something, "by special request,"
but I really don't know what to do. I have only a very small _repertoire_,
and I'm afraid you know all my stock recitations. What shall I do?
(_Pause._) I have it; I'll give you something entirely original. I'll tell
you about my last experience of reciting, which really is the cause of my
being so nervous to-night. I began reciting about a year ago; I took
elocution lessons with Mr. ----; no, I won't tell you his name, I want to
keep him all to myself. I studied the usual things with him--the "Mercy"
speech from the "Merchant of Venice," and Juliet's "Balcony scene," but I
somehow never could imagine my fat, red-faced, snub-nosed old master
(there! I've told you who he was), I never could fancy him as an ideal
Romeo; he looked much more like Polonius, or the Ghost before he was a
ghost--I mean as he probably was in the flesh.
My elocution master told me that Shakespeare was not my forte, so I studied
some more modern pieces. He told me I was getting on very well--"one of my
most promising pupils," but I found that he said that to every one.
Well, it soon became known that I recited (one must have _some_ little
vices, you know, just to show up one's virtues). I received an invitation
from Lady Midas for a musical evening last Friday, and in a postscript, "We
hope you will favor us with a recitation." Very flattering, wasn't it?
I went there fully primed with three pieces--"The Lifeboat," by Sims, "The
Lost Soul," and Calverley's "Waiting." I thought that I had hit on a
perfectly original selection; but I was soon undeceived. There were a great
many people at Lady Midas', quite fifty, I should think, or perhaps two
hundred; but I'm very bad at guessing numbers. We had a lot of music. A
young man, with red hair and little twinkling light eyes, sang a song by De
Lara, but it did not sound as well as when I heard the composer sing it.
Then two girls played a banjo duet; then--no, we had another song first,
then a girl with big eyes and an ugly dress--brown nun's veiling with
yellow lace, and beads, and ribbons, and sham flowers and all sorts of
horrid things, so ugly, I'm sure it was made at home. Well--where was I?
Oh, yes!--she stood up and recited, what do you think? Why, "Calverley's
Waiting!" Oh! I was so cross when it came to the last verses; you remember
how they go (_imitating_)--
"'Hush! hark! I see a hovering form!
From the dim distance slowly rolled;
It rocks like lilies in a storm,
And oh! its hues are green and gold.
'It comes, it comes! Ah! rest is sweet,
And there is rest, my babe, for us!'
She ceased, as at her very feet
Stopped the St. John's Wood omnibus."
Well, when I heard that I felt inclined to cry. Just imagine how provoking;
one of the pieces I had been practicing for weeks past. Oh, it _was_
annoying! After that there was a violin solo, then another--no, then I had
an ice, such a nice young man, just up from Aldershot, _very_ young, but
_so_ amusing, and so full of somebody of "ours" who had won something, or
lost something, I could not quite make out which.
Then we came back to the drawing-room, and an elderly spinster, with curls,
sang, "Oh that we two were Maying," and the young man from Aldershot said,
"Thank goodness we aren't."
Afterward I had another ice, not because I wanted it, not a bit, but the
young man from Aldershot said he was _so_ thirsty.
Then I saw a youth with long hair and badly-fitting clothes. I thought he
was going to sing, but he wasn't; oh no! much worse! he recited. When I
heard the first words I thought I should faint (_imitating_):
"Been out in the lifeboat often? Aye, aye, sir, oft enough.
When it's rougher than this? Lor' bless you, this ain't what _we_ calls
rough."
How well I knew the lines! Wasn't it cruel? However, I had one hope
left--my "Lost Soul," a beautiful poem, serious and sentimental. The
aesthetic youth was so tedious that the young man from Aldershot asked me to
come into the conservatory, and really I was so vexed and disappointed that
I think I would have gone into the coal-cellar if he had asked me.
We went into the conservatory and had a nice long talk, all about----well,
it would take too long to tell you now, and besides it would not interest
_you_.
All at once mamma came in, and I felt rather frightened at first (I don't
know why), but she was laughing and smiling. "O, Mary," she said, "that
aesthetic young man has been so funny; they encored 'The Lifeboat,' so he
recited a very comic piece of poetry, that sent us all into fits of
laughter, it was called 'The Fried Sole,' a parody on 'The Lost Soul' that
you used to recite."
Alas! my last hope was wrecked; I could not read after that! I believe I
burst into tears. Anyhow, mamma hurried me off in a cab, and I cried all
the way home and--and--I forgot to say good-night to the young man from
Aldershot. Wasn't it a pity?
And you see that's why I don't like to recite anything to-night. (_Some one
from the audience comes up and whispers to her_). No! really, have I? How
stupid! I'm told that I've been reciting all this time. I am so sorry; will
you ever forgive me? I do beg pardon; I'll never do it again! (_Runs out._)
NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP.
[Found in the Knapsack of a Soldier of the Civil War
After He Had Been Slain in Battle.]
Near the camp-fire's flickering light,
In my blanket bed I lie,
Gazing through the shades of night
And the twinkling stars on high;
O'er me spirits in the air
Silent vigils seem to keep,
As I breathe my childhood's prayer,
"Now I lay me down to sleep."
Sadly sings the whip-poor-will
In the boughs of yonder tree;
Laughingly the dancing rill
Swells the midnight melody.
Foemen may be lurking near,
In the canyon dark and deep;
Low I breathe in Jesus' ear:
"I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep."
'Mid those stars one face I see--
One the Saviour turned away--
Mother, who in infancy
Taught my baby lips to pray;
Her sweet spirit hovers near
In this lonely mountain-brake.
Take me to her Saviour dear
"If I should die before I wake."
Fainter grows the flickering light,
As each ember slowly dies;
Plaintively the birds of night
Fill the air with sad'ning cries;
Over me they seem to cry:
"You may never more awake."
Low I lisp: "If I should die,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take."
Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.
THE AMERICAN UNION.
BY DANIEL WEBSTER.
I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the
prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our
Federal Union. It is to that union we owe our safety at home, and our
consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly
indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country.
That union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe
school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered
finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign
influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and
sprang forth with newness of life.
Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and
its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and
wider, and our population spread further and further, they have not outrun
its protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain
of national, social, and personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the union, to see what might
lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances
of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be
broken asunder.
I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see
whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below;
nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this
government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how
the union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the
condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.
While the union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread
out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate
the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise!
God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind!
When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in
heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of
a once glorious union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a
land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood!
Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous
ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still
full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original
lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured,
bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this
worth? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and
union afterward; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living
light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over
the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment,
dear to every true American heart, liberty and union now and forever, one
and inseparable!
THE POPPY LAND LIMITED EXPRESS.
BY EDGAR WADE ABBOT.
The first train leaves at six p. m.
For the land where the poppy blows;
The mother dear is the engineer,
And the passenger laughs and crows.
The palace car is the mother's arms;
The whistle, a low, sweet strain:
The passenger winks, and nods, and blinks,
And goes to sleep in the train!
At eight p. m. the next train starts
For the poppy land afar,
The summons clear falls on the ear:
"All aboard for the sleeping-car!"
But what is the fare to poppy land?
I hope it is not too dear.
The fare is this, a hug and a kiss,
And it's paid to the engineer!
So I ask of Him who children took
On His knee in kindness great,
"Take charge, I pray, of the trains each day,
That leave at six and eight.
"Keep watch of the passengers," thus I pray,
"For to me they are very dear,
And special ward, O gracious Lord,
O'er the gentle engineer."
MOTHER, HOME, AND HEAVEN.
Mother, Home, and Heaven, says a writer, are three of the most beautiful
words in the English language. And truly I think that they may be well
called so--what word strikes so forcibly upon the heart as mother? Coming
from childhood's sunny lips, it has a peculiar charm; for it speaks of one
to whom they look and trust for protection.
A mother is the truest friend we have; when trials heavy and sudden fall
upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends, who
rejoiced with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around
us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and
counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to
our hearts.
The kind voice of a mother has often been the means of reclaiming an erring
one from the path of wickedness to a life of happiness and prosperity.
The lonely convict, immured in his dreary cell, thinks of the innocent days
of his childhood, and feels that though other friends forsake him, he has
still a guardian angel watching over him; and that, however dark his sins
may have been, they have all been forgiven and forgotten by her.
Mother is indeed a sweet name, and her station is indeed a holy one; for in
her hands are placed minds, to be moulded almost at her will; aye, fitted
to shine--not much, it is true, on earth, compared, if taught aright, with
the dazzling splendor which awaits them in heaven.
Home! how often we hear persons speak of the home of their childhood. Their
minds seem to delight in dwelling upon the recollections of joyous days
spent beneath the parental roof, when their young and happy hearts were as
light and free as the birds who made the woods resound with the melody of
their cheerful voices. What a blessing it is, when weary with care, and
burdened with sorrow, to have a home to which we can go, and there, in the
midst of friends we love, forget our troubles and dwell in peace and
quietness.
Heaven! that land of quiet rest--toward which those, who, worn down and
tired with the toils of earth, direct their frail barks over the troubled
waters of life, and after a long and dangerous passage, find it--safe in
the haven of eternal bliss. Heaven is the home that awaits us beyond the
grave. There the friendships formed on earth, and which cruel death has
severed, are never more to be broken: and parted friends shall meet again,
never more to be separated.
It is an inspiring hope that, when we separate here on earth at the
summons of death's angel, and when a few more years have rolled over the
heads of those remaining, if "faithful unto death," we shall meet again in
Heaven, our eternal _home_, there to dwell in the presence of our Heavenly
Father, and go no more out forever.
PRAYING FOR SHOES.
BY PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.
_A True Incident._
On a dark November morning,
A lady walked slowly down
The thronged, tumultuous thoroughfare
Of an ancient seaport town.
Of a winning and gracious beauty,
The peace of her pure young face
Was soft as the gleam of an angel's dream
In the calms of a heavenly place.
Her eyes were fountains of pity,
And the sensitive mouth expressed
A longing to set the kind thoughts free
In music that filled her breast.
She met, by a bright shop window,
An urchin timid and thin,
Who, with limbs that shook and a yearning look,
Was mistily glancing in
At the rows and varied clusters
Of slippers and shoes outspread,
Some shimmering keen, but of sombre sheen,
Some purple and green and red.
His pale lips moved and murmured;
But of what, she could not hear.
And oft on his folded hands would fall
The round of a bitter tear.
"What troubles you, child?" she asked him,
In a voice like the May-wind sweet.
He turned, and while pointing dolefully
To his naked and bleeding feet,
"I was praying for shoes," he answered;
"Just look at the splendid show!
I was praying to God for a single pair,
The sharp stones hurt me so!"
She led him, in museful silence,
At once through the open door,
And his hope grew bright, like a fairy light,
That flickered and danced before!
And there he was washed and tended
And his small, brown feet were shod;
And he pondered there on his childish prayer,
And the marvelous answer of God.
Above them his keen gaze wandered,
How strangely from shop to shelf,
Till it almost seemed that he fondly dreamed
Of looking on God Himself.
The lady bent over, and whispered,
"Are you happier now, my lad?"
He started, and all his soul flashed forth
In a gratitude swift and glad.
"Happy?--Oh, yes!--I am happy!"
Then (wonder with reverence rife,
His eyes aglow, and his voice sunk low),
"Please tell me! Are you God's wife?"
RUM'S DEVASTATION AND DESTINY.
BY HON. WILLIAM SULLIVAN.
[In a discourse delivered before the Massachusetts
Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, on the
twenty-third of May, 1832, Hon. William Sullivan, one
of the vice-presidents of the society, gave an account
of the discovery of the art of distilling wine from
brandy, showing that it was made some five or six
hundred years ago, by an alchemist who was in search of
the means of acquiring "inexhaustible riches and
perpetual youth." After having spoken of the origin of
alcohol, the speaker imagines it to be "the office of
history to announce the future, instead of recording
the past," and assuming to stand beside the man who
made the discovery, delivered the following eloquent
address detailing the melancholy consequences of this
discovery, and forecasting the blessings which shall
result from the final overthrow of the rum fiend.]
In your researches after that which you should, at once, have known to be
impossible, by the laws of nature, you have opened a fountain of misery
which shall flow for ages. You have not contented yourself with pressing
out the juices of the fruits bestowed upon you, and converting these into
strong drink which you needed not,--but you have taken this strong drink,
and the harvest, which was given to you for food, and have drawn from these
a liquid which is not food and which will not nourish nor sustain your
earthly frame. This liquid shall be a curse upon you and your descendants.
It shall be known wherever the arts of civilization are known. You shall
call it the _elixir of life_. You shall believe it to be nutritious to the
body and gladdening to the soul. The love of it shall grow with the use of
it. It shall soothe the solitary hour and cheer the festive board. It shall
charm away your griefs, and be the cause of your rejoicings. It shall be
the inducement to communion and the bond of friendship. It shall be prized
alike by the high and the low. It shall be the joy of princes as well as of
the meanest of mortals. It shall be the stimulant to laborious toil, and
the reward for labor done. It shall be bought and sold, and make the dealer
therein rich. It shall yield abundant revenues to sovereignty. Hospitality
shall be dishonored in not offering it to the guest, and the guest shall be
disgraced in not receiving it at the hand of his host.
But----it shall visit your limbs with palsy; it shall extinguish the pride
of man; it shall make the husband hateful to the wife, and the wife
loathsome to the husband; it shall annihilate the love of offspring; it
shall make members of society a shame and a reproach to each other, and to
all among whom they dwell. It shall steal from the virtuous and the
honorable their good name, and shall make the strong and the vigorous to
totter along the streets of cities. It shall pervert the law of habit,
designed to strengthen you in the path of duty, and bind you in its iron
chain. It shall disgrace the judge upon the bench, the minister in the
sacred desk, and the senator in his exalted seat. It shall make your food
tasteless, your mouth to burn as with a fever, and your stomach to tremble
as with disease. It shall cause the besotted mother to overlay her newborn,
unconscious that it dies beneath the pressure of her weight; the natural
cravings of the infant shall make it strive to awaken her who has passed,
unheeded, to her last long sleep. The son shall hide his face that he may
not behold his father's depravity; and the father shall see the object of
his fondest hopes turn to a foul and bloated carcass, that hurries to the
grave. It shall turn the children of men into raving maniacs; and the
broken ties of blood and affection shall find no relief but in the friendly
coming of Death. As the seed which man commits to the earth comes forth
into that which he converts into spirit, so shall this product of his own
invention be as seed in his own heart, to bring forth violence, rapine and
murder. It shall cause man to shut up his fellow-man in the solitude of the
grated cell. The prisoner shall turn pale and tremble, in his loneliness,
at the presence of his own thoughts; he shall come forth to die, in cold
blood, by the hand of his fellow, with the spectacle of _religious homage
on a scaffold_, and amid the gaze of curious thousands. Poverty shall be
made squalid and odious, even so that Charity shall turn away her face in
disgust. It shall attract the pestilence that walks, even at noon-day, in
darkness, to the very vitals of the drunkard, as carrion invites the
far-sighted birds of prey. The consumer of spirit shall be found dead in
the highway, with the exhausted vessel by his side. Yea, the drunkard shall
kindle a fire in his own bosom which shall not depart from him till he is
turned to ashes. The dropsical drunkard shall die in his delirium, and the
fluid which has gathered in his brain shall smell like spirit, and like
spirit shall burn. A feeble frame, an imbecile mind, torturing pain and
incurable madness shall be of the inheritance which drunkards bequeath, to
run with their blood to innocent descendants.
The wise men, who assemble in the halls; of legislation, shall be blind to
this ruin, desolation, and misery. Nay, they shall license the sale of this
poison, and shall require of dignified magistrates to certify how much
thereof shall be sold for the "PUBLIC GOOD."
This minister of woe and wretchedness shall roam over the earth at
pleasure. It shall be found in every country of the Christian; it shall go
into every city, into every village, and into every house. But it shall not
visit the country of the heathen, nor spread woe and wretchedness among
them, but by the hands of Christians.
The light of reason shall at length break upon the benighted and afflicted
world. The truth shall be told. It shall be believed. The causes of
calamity shall be unveiled. The friends of the human race shall speak and
be respected. Rational man shall be ashamed of his follies and his crimes,
and humbled to the dust that he was so long ignorant of their origin.
Governments shall be ashamed that they so long tolerated and sustained the
most costly and cruel foe that man has ever encountered. Avarice itself
shall be conscience-stricken and penitent. It shall remain where nature
placed it for use; and it shall be odious in the sight of _Heaven_ and of
_Earth_ to convert the fruits of the soil into poison.
THE DAUGHTER OF THE DESERT.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
An opulent lord of Ispahan,
In luxury, lolled on a silk divan,
Dreaming the idle hours away
In a cloud of smoke from his nargile.
Weary with nothing to do in life,
He thought, as he watched the smoky whirls,
"'Twill be diversion to choose a wife
From my peerless bevy of dancing-girls.
There are beauties fair from every land--
Lustrous eyes from Samarcand,
Dusky forms from the upper Nile,
Teeth that glisten when red lips smile,
Gypsy faces of olive hue,
Stolen from some wild wandering clan,
Fair complexions and eyes of blue,
From the sunny isles of Cardachan,
Regal beauties of queenly grace
And sinuous sirens of unknown race;
Some one among them will surely bless
Hours that grow heavy with idleness."
Then the slave that waited his lightest need,
Fell on his knee, by the silk divan,
And the swarthy, listening ear gave heed
To the will of the lord of Ispahan.
"Send hither my dancing-girls," he said,
"And set me a feast to please the eye
And tempt the palate, for this shall be
A wedding breakfast before us spread,
If the charm of beauty can satisfy
And one of their number pleaseth me.
I will wed no maiden of high degree
With the tips of her fingers henna-stained
And the dew of youth from her life-blood drained,
But a child of nature wild and free."
Then the slave bent low and said: "O Sire,
A woman lingers beside the gate;
Her eyes are aglow like coals of fire
And she mourns as one disconsolate;
And when we bid her to cease and go,
Each eye grows bright, like an evening star,
And she sayeth: 'The master will hear my woe,
For I come from the deserts of Khandakar.'"
"Bid her to enter," the master said,
And the frown from his forehead swiftly fled.
The hasty word on his lip way stayed
As he thought of his youth, in the land afar,
And the peerless eyes of a Bedouin maid,
In the desert places of Khandakar.
The woman entered and swift unwound
The veil that mantled her face around,
And in matchless beauty, she stood arrayed,
In the scant attire of a Bedouin maid.
The indolent lord of Ispahan
Started back on the silk divan,
For in form and feature, in very truth,
It seemed the love of his early youth.
The almond eyes and the midnight hair,
The rosebud mouth and the rounded chin--
Time had not touched them; they still were fair,
And the passion of yore grew strong within.
Then she made him the secret Bedouin sign,
Which only dishonor can fail to heed;
The solemn pact of the races nine,
To help each other in time of need.
But her eyes beheld no answering sign,
Though a crimson tide to his forehead ran,
And the trembling maiden could not divine
The will of the lord of Ispahan.
With the sound of a rippling mountain brook,
The voice of the woman her lips forsook;
And thus her tale of despair began
In the lordly palace of Ispahan:
"On a stallion black as the midnight skies,
From a desert I come, where my lover lies
At death's dark verge; and the hostile clan
That struck him down, are in Ispahan
With slaves to sell, in the open street;
And only because my steed was fleet
Am I now free; but here I bide,
For this morning the hard-rid stallion died.
Out of your opulence, one swift steed
Only a drop from the sea will be;
A grain of sand on the shore, to my need;
But the wealth of the whole, wide world to me.
My soul to the soul of my loved one cries,
At dawn or in darkness, whate'er betide,
And the pain of longing all peace denies,
To the heart that strains to my lover's side."
"You shall mourn no more, but sit with me
And rejoice in a scene of revelry;
For the pleasures of life are the rights of man,"
Said the indolent lord of Ispahan.
The curtains parted and noiseless feet
Of dusky slaves stole over the floor.
Their strong arms laden with burden sweet
Of fruits and flowers a goodly store.
Luscious peaches and apricots,
Plucked from the sunniest garden spots;
Syrian apples and cordials rare;
Succulent grapes that filled the air
With heavy sweetness, while rivers ran,
From beakers of wine from Astrakhan;
Cooling salvers of colored ice;
Almonds powdered with fragrant spice;
Smoking viands, on plates of gold,
And carven vessels of price untold,
Kindling the appetite afresh
For dainty morsels of fowl and flesh.
The musical notes of the mellow flute,
From a source remote, rose higher and higher,
With the quivering sounds from a hidden lute,
The plaintive sweep of the tender lyre.
Then a whirlwind of color filled the air--
A misty vapor of filmy lace,
With gleams of silk and of round arms bare,
In a mazy whirl of infinite grace;
And the lustrous glow of tresses blent
With the shimmer of pearls, from the Orient.
The half-sobbed, breathless, sweet refrain,
A swelling burst of sensuous sound,
Sank lower to swell and sink again,
Then died in silence most profound.
The panting beauties with cheeks aglow,
Scattered about on the rug-strewn floor,
Like bright-hued leaves when the chill winds blow,
Or tinted sea-shells along the shore.
But the lord of the palace turned and cried;
"Heavy and languid these maidens are."
And he said, to the Bedouin at his side:
"Teach them the dances of Khandakar."
Her dark eyes lit with the flash of fire,
And she said: "You will pity my need most dire?
You will give me steed to fly afar,
To my love in the deserts of Khandakar?"
"Half that I own shall be yours," he said,
"If the love of my youth that was under ban
Comes back to me like a soul from the dead
Bringing joy to the palace of Ispahan."
She sprang to the floor with an agile bound.
The music broke in a swirl of sound,
Her hair from its fillet became unbound.
And the dancing-girls that stood apart,
Gazed rapt and speechless, with hand to heart,
At the wild, untrammelled curves of grace
Of the dancing-girl from the desert race.
Not one of them half so fair to see;
Not one as lithe in the sinuous twist
Of twirling body and bending knee,
Of supple ankle and curving wrist.
The wilder the music, the wilder she;
It seemed like the song of a bird set free
To thrill in the heart of a cloud of mist
And live on its own mad ecstasy.
Spellbound and mute, on the silk divan,
Sat the lord of the palace of Ispahan.
But the thoughts of the master were drifting far
To his youth in the deserts of Khandakar;
To the time when another had danced as well,
And listened with tenderness in her eyes,
To the burning words his lips might tell,
With kisses freighting her soft replies.
And he had thought that her smile would bless
His roving life, in the land afar,
And cheer him in hours of loneliness,
In the tents of the deserts of Khandakar.
But the tribe had chosen the maid to wed
With the powerful chief of a hostile clan,
And the flattered woman had turned and fled
From the pleading voice of a stricken man;
Then out of the desert the lover sped,
To become a great lord of Ispahan.
And now this child, with the subtle grace
Of the mother that bore her, had come to him
With the desert's breath upon her face,
Rousing within him a purpose grim.
"By the beard of the Prophet! but you shall be
The light and the joy of my life to me!
As your mother was, you are to-day.
Your lover, perchance, hath lived his span;
You shall dry your maidenly tears and stay
As the wife of the lord of Ispahan."
That night, when the dusky shadows crept
Across the tiles of the banquet-room,
They found the form of a man who slept
On a silk divan, in the gathering gloom.
The window screens were wide to the air,
And the hedge, where the fragrant roses grew,
Was cleft and trodden to earth, just where
A frightened fugitive might pass through.
And the groom of the stables, heavy with wine,
Wakened not at the prancing tread
Of the milk-white steed and made no sign,
As the Bedouin maid from the palace fled.
And the indolent lord of Ispahan
Seemed resting still, on the silk divan;
But his heart was beating with love no more,
In his eyes no light of passion gleamed;
His listless fingers touched the floor,
Where the crimson tide of his life-blood streamed,
And he slept the last, long, dreamless sleep;
For the end had come to life's brief span;
And his jewelled dagger was handle deep,
In the heart of the lord of Ispahan.
HORNETS.
BY BILL NYE.
Last fall I desired to add to my rare collection a large hornet's nest. I
had an embalmed tarantula and her porcelain-lined nest, and I desired to
add to these the gray and airy house of the hornet. I procured one of the
large size, after cold weather, and hung it in my cabinet by a string. I
forgot about it until spring. When warm weather came something reminded me
of it; I think it was a hornet. He jogged my memory in some way, and called
my attention to it. Memory is not located where I thought it was. It seemed
as though when ever he touched me he awakened a memory,--a warm memory,
with a red place all around it.
Then some more hornets came, and began to rake up old personalities. I
remember that one of them lit on my upper lip. He thought it was a rosebud.
When he went away it looked like a gladiolus bulb. I wrapped a wet sheet
around it to take out the warmth and reduce the swelling, so that I could
go through the folding doors, and tell my wife about it. Hornets lit all
over me, and walked around on my person. I did not dare to scrape them off,
because they were so sensitive. You have to be very guarded in your conduct
toward a hornet.
I remember once while I was watching the busy little hornet gathering honey
and June-bugs from the bosom of a rose, years ago, I stirred him up with a
club, more as a practical joke than anything, and he came and lit in my
sunny hair;--that was when I wore my own hair--and he walked around through
my gleaming tresses quite a while, making tracks as large as a water-melon
all over my head. If he hadn't run out of tracks my head would have looked
like a load of summer squashes. I remember I had to thump my head against
the smoke-house in order to smash him; and I had to comb him out with a
fine comb, and wear a waste-paper basket two weeks for a hat. Much has
been said of the hornet; but he has an odd, quaint way after all, that is
forever new.
SINCE SHE WENT HOME.
BY R. J. BURDETTE.
Since she went home--
The evening shadows linger longer here,
The winter days fill so much of the year,
And even summer winds are chill and drear,
Since she went home.
Since she went home--
The robin's note has touched a minor strain,
The old glad songs breathe but a sad refrain,
And laughter sobs with hidden, bitter pain,
Since she went home.
Since she went home--
How still the empty room her presence blessed;
Untouched the pillow that her dear head pressed;
My lonely heart has nowhere for its rest,
Since she went home.
Since she went home--
The long, long days have crept away like years,
The sunlight has been dimmed with doubts and fears,
And the dark nights have rained in lonely tears,
Since she went home.
THE CHILDREN WE KEEP.
The children kept coming, one by one,
Till the boys were five and the girls were three,
And the big brown house was alive with fun
From the basement floor to the old roof-tree.
Like garden flowers the little ones grew,
Nurtured and trained with the tenderest care;
Warmed by love's sunshine, bathed in its dew,
They bloomed into beauty, like roses rare.
But one of the boys grew weary one day,
And leaning his head on his mother's breast,
He said, "I'm tired and cannot play;
Let me sit awhile on your knee and rest."
She cradled him close in her fond embrace,
She hushed him to sleep with her sweetest song,
And rapturous love still lighted his face
When his spirit had joined the heavenly throng.
Then the eldest girl, with her thoughtful eyes,
Who stood where the "brook and the river meet,"
Stole softly away into paradise
Ere "the river" had reached her slender feet.
While the father's eyes on the grave are bent,
The mother looked upward beyond the skies;
"Our treasures," she whispered, "were only lent,
Our darlings were angels in earth's disguise."
The years flew by and the children began
With longing to think of the world outside;
And as each, in his turn, became a man,
The boys proudly went from the father's side.
The girls were women so gentle and fair
That lovers were speedy to woo and win;
And with orange blossoms in braided hair,
The old home was left, the new home to begin.
So, one by one, the children have gone,--
The boys were five and the girls were three;
And the big brown house is gloomy and lone,
With but two old folks for its company.
They talk to each other about the past,
As they sit together in eventide,
And say, "All the children we keep at last
Are the boy and the girl who in childhood died."
AMERICA FOR GOD.
BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE.
But now what are the weapons by which, under our Omnipotent Leader, the
real obstacles in the way of our country's evangelization, the ten thousand
mile Sebastopols, are to be leveled? The first columbiad, with range enough
to sweep from eternity to eternity, is the Bible, millions of its copies
going out, millions on millions. Then there are all the Gospel batteries,
manned by seventy thousand pastors and home missionaries, over the head of
each one of whom is the shield of Divine protection, and in the right hand
of each one the gleaming, two-edged sword of the Infinite Spirit! Hundreds
of thousands of private soldiers for Christ, marching under the
one-starred, blood-striped flag of Emanuel! On our side, the great and
mighty theologians of the land the heavy artillery, and the hundreds of
thousands of Christian children the infantry. They are marching on!
Episcopacy, with the sublime roll of its liturgies; Methodism, with its
battle-cry of "The sword of the Lord and John Wesley;" the Baptist Church,
with its glorious navy sailing up our Oregons and Sacramentos and
Mississippis; and Presbyterians, moving on with the battle-cry of "The
sword of the Lord and John Knox." And then, after awhile will come the
great tides of revival, sweeping over the land, the five hundred thousand
conversions in 1857 eclipsed by the salvation of millions in a day, and the
four American armies of the Lord's host marching toward each other, the
Eastern army marching west, the Western army marching east, the Northern
army marching south, the Southern army marching north; shoulder to
shoulder! Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! until they meet mid-continent, having taken
America for God!
The thunder of the bombardment is already in the air, and when the last
bridge of opposition is taken, and the last portcullis of Satan is lifted,
and the last gun spiked, and the last tower dismantled, and the last
charger of iniquity shall have been hurled back upon its haunches, what a
time of rejoicing!
OUR OWN.
BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER.
If I had known, in the morning,
How wearily all the day
The words unkind would trouble my mind
That I said when you went away,
I had been more careful, darling,
Nor given you needless pain;
But--we vex our own with look and tone
We might never take back again.
For though in the quiet evening
You may give me the kiss of peace,
Yet it well might be that never for me
The pain of the heart should cease;
How many go forth at morning
Who never come home at night,
And hearts have broken for harsh words spoken
That sorrow can ne'er set right.
We have careful thought for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But oft for our own the bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best.
Ah, lip with the curve impatient,
Ah, brow with the shade of scorn,
'T were a cruel fate were the night too late
To undue the work of morn.
BEHIND TIME.
BY FREEMAN HUNT.
A railroad train was rushing along at almost lightning speed. A curve was
just ahead, and beyond it was a station, at which the cars usually passed
each other. The conductor was late, so late that the period during which
the down train was to wait had nearly elapsed; but he hoped yet to pass the
curve safely. Suddenly a locomotive dashed into sight right ahead. In an
instant there was a collision. A shriek, a shock, and fifty souls were in
eternity; and all because an engineer had been _behind time_.
A great battle was going on. Column after column had been precipitated for
eight mortal hours on the enemy posted along the ridge of a hill. The
summer sun was sinking to the west; re-inforcements for the obstinate
defenders were already in sight; it was necessary to carry the position
with one final charge, or everything would be lost. A powerful corps had
been summoned from across the country, and if it came up in season all
would yet be well. The great conqueror, confident in its arrival, formed
his reserve into an attacking column, and ordered them to charge the enemy.
The whole world knows the result. Grouchy failed to appear; the imperial
guard was beaten back; Waterloo was lost. Napoleon died a prisoner at St.
Helena because one of his marshals was _behind time_.
A leading firm in commercial circles had long struggled against bankruptcy.
As it had enormous assets in California, it expected remittances by a
certain day; and, if the sums promised arrived, its credit, its honor, and
its future prosperity would be preserved. But week after week elapsed
without bringing the gold. At last came the fatal day on which the firm had
bills maturing to enormous amounts. The steamer was telegraphed at
daybreak; but it was found, on inquiry, that she brought no funds, and the
house failed. The next arrival brought nearly half a million to the
insolvents, but it was too late; they were ruined because their agent, in
remitting, had been _behind time_.
A condemned man was led out for execution. He had taken human life, but
under circumstances of the greatest provocation, and public sympathy was
active in his behalf. Thousands had signed petitions for a reprieve; a
favorable answer had been expected the night before; and, though it had not
come, even the sheriff felt confident that it would yet arrive in season.
Thus the morning passed without the appearance of the messenger. The last
moment had come. The prisoner took his place on the drop, the cap was drawn
over his eyes, the bolt was drawn, and a lifeless body swung revolving in
the wind. Just at that moment a horse-man came into sight, galloping down
hill, his steed covered with foam. He carried a packet in his right hand,
which he waved rapidly to the crowd. He was the express rider with the
reprieve. But he had come too late. A comparatively innocent man had died
an ignominious death, because a watch had been five minutes too slow,
making its bearer arrive _behind time_.
It is continually so in life. The best-laid plans, the most important
affairs, the fortunes of individuals, the weal of nations, honor,
happiness, life itself, are daily sacrificed because somebody is "behind
time." There are men who always fail in whatever they undertake, simply
because they are "behind time." There are others who put off reformation
year by year, till death seizes them, and they perish unrepentant, because
forever "_behind time_."
Five minutes in a crisis is worth years. It is but a little period, yet it
has often saved a fortune or redeemed a people. If there is one virtue that
should be cultivated more than another by him who would succeed in life, it
is punctuality; if there is one error that should be avoided, it is being
_behind time_.
KITTENS AND BABIES.
BY LIZZIE M. HADLEY.
There were two kittens, a black and a gray,
And grandmamma said, with a frown,
"It never will do to keep them both,
The black one we'd better drown."
"Don't cry, my dear," to tiny Bess,
"One kitten's enough to keep;
Now run to nurse, for 'tis growing late
And time you were fast asleep."
The morrow dawned, and rosy and sweet
Came little Bess from her nap.
The nurse said, "Go into mamma's room
And look in grandma's lap."
"Come here," said grandma, with a smile,
From the rocking-chair where she sat,
"God has sent you two little sisters;
Now! what do you think of that?"
Bess looked at the babies a moment,
With their wee heads, yellow and brown,
And then to grandma soberly said,
"_Which one are you going to drown_?"
AN UNACCOUNTABLE MYSTERY.
BY PAUL DENTON.
Intemperance is the strangest and most unaccountable mystery with which we
have to deal. Why, as a rule, the human soul is passionately jealous of its
own happiness, and tirelessly selfish as to its own interest. It delights
to seek the sunshine and the flowers this side the grave: ardently hopes
for heaven in the life to come. It flashes its penetrating thought through
the dark chambers of the earth; or lighted by the lurid flames of
smouldering, volcanic fires, wings them through buried ovens. It lights up
the ocean's bed, melting its mysteries into solution, detecting its coral
richness, and causing its buried pearls, which have rested for long
centuries beneath the black waves, to glow with their long-hoarded beauty.
It holds converse with the glittering planets of the skies and compels them
to tell it of their mountain ranges, their landscapes, and their utility.
It toys with the mad lightnings which break from the darkness, and guides
death and destruction through the earth, until it allures the impetuous
element into docility and subserviency. It bids the panting waters breathe
their hot, heavy breath upon the piston-rod and make the locomotive a
beautiful thing of life, majestically thundering its way over continents,
screaming forth the music of civilization in the midst of wild forests and
the heat of burning deserts, beneath scorching, torrid suns. It leaps over
burning plains and scalding streams; restless and daring, it lights its
casket over arctic zones and seas; and perhaps tiring of such incumbrance,
deserts it in the cold shade of the ice mountain and speeds on untrammeled
and alone. Franklin followed the beckonings of his tireless spirit until
worn out and weary, his body laid down on the cold ice and slept. Kane
coaxed himself home to the old churchyard, and then bade his spirit drop
the machine it had so sadly wrenched and fly through earth or the
eternities, as God might will. Livingstone marched through the jungles and
cheerless forests of uninviting Africa, but his limbs were too feeble to
keep up with his hungry soul, which tore itself from its burden and left it
to crumble beneath the burning sun. And thus the soul flies from zone to
zone and from world to world, sipping the sweets of wisdom, as the bee
sucks honey from the flowers; reading lessons from the leaflet on the tree,
studying the language of the soft whispering zephyr, and of the hurricane
which springs from nothing into devastating power; and it is ever restless
in its researches, for it seeks its own happiness and improvement in its
new discoveries, and in a better knowledge of God's creation. Speak to the
human soul of liberty, and swell it with gratitude, and, beaming with
smiles, it will follow whereever you lead. Speak to it of its immortality
and of the divine grandeur of its faculties, and, warmed by your
appreciation, it will strive harder for a fuller development and brighter
existence. Lead it among the roses, and it will seldom fail to light your
pathway with smiles and to remind you of its gratitude. It loves to be
noticed; loves to be assisted; loves to be made happy; loves to be warned
of danger, and yet, with reference to that which pierces it with the most
bleeding wounds, which more than anything else bars from it the sunlight
and robs it of happiness--Intemperance--IT IS AS HEEDLESS AS THE STONE.
IMPERFECTUS.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
I wonder if ever a song was sung,
But the singer's heart sang sweeter!
I wonder if ever a rhyme was rung,
But the thought surpassed the meter!
I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought,
Till the cold stone echoed his ardent thought!
Or if ever a painter, with light and shade,
The dream of his inmost heart portrayed!
I wonder if ever a rose was found,
And there might not be a fairer!
Or if ever a glittering gem was ground,
And we dreamed not of a rarer!
Ah! never on earth do we find the best,
But it waits for us in a Land of Rest,
And a perfect thing we shall never behold,
Till we pass the portals of shining gold.
A WOMAN'S POCKET.
BY JAMES M. BAILEY.
The most difficult thing to reach is a woman's pocket. This is especially
the case if the dress is hung up in a closet, and the man is in a hurry. We
think we are safe in saying that he always is in a hurry on such an
occasion. The owner of the dress is in the sitting room serenely engrossed
in a book. Having told him that the article which he is in quest of is in
her dress pocket in the closet she has discharged her whole duty in the
matter and can afford to feel serene. He goes at the task with a dim
consciousness that he has been there before, but says nothing. On opening
the closet door and finding himself confronted with a number of dresses,
all turned inside out and presenting a most formidable front, he hastens
back to ask "Which dress?" and being told the brown one, and also asked if
_she_ has so _many_ dresses that there need be any great effort to find the
right one, he returns to the closet with alacrity, and soon has his hands
on the brown dress. It is inside out like the rest,--a fact he does not
notice, however, until he has made several ineffectual attempts to get his
hand into it. Then he turns it around very carefully and passes over the
pocket several times without knowing it. A nervous movement of his hands,
and an appearance of perspiration on his forehead are perceptible. He now
dives one hand in at the back, and feeling around, finds a place, and
proceeds to explore it, when he discovers that he is following up the
inside of a lining. The nervousness increases, also the perspiration. He
twitches the dress on the hook, and suddenly the pocket, white, plump and
exasperating, comes to view. Then he sighs the relief he feels and is
mentally grateful he did not allow himself to use any offensive
expressions. It is all right now. There is the pocket in plain view--not
the inside but the outside--and all he has to do is to put his hand right
around in the inside and take out the article. That is all. He can't help
but smile to think how near he was to getting mad. Then he puts his hand
around to the other side. He does not feel the opening. He pushes a little
further--now he has got it; he shoves the hand down, and is very much
surprised to see it appear opposite his knees. He had made a mistake. He
tries again; again he feels the entrance and glides down it only to appear
again as before. This makes him open his eyes and straighten his face. He
feels of the outside of the pocket, pinches it curiously, lifts it up,
shakes it, and, after peering closely about the roots of it, he says, "How
funny!" and commences again. He does it calmly this time, because hurrying
only makes matters worse. He holds up breadth after breadth, goes over them
carefully, gets his hand first into a lining, then into the air again
(where it always surprises him when it appears), and finally into a pocket,
and is about to cry out with triumph, when he discovers that it is the
pocket to another dress. He is mad now; the closet air almost stifles him;
he is so nervous he can hardly contain himself, and the pocket looks at him
so exasperatingly that he cannot help but "plug" it with his clenched fist,
and immediately does it. Being somewhat relieved by this performance he has
a chance to look about him, and sees that he has put his foot through a
band-box and into the crown of his wife's bonnet; has broken the brim of
his Panama hat which was hanging in the same closet, and torn about a yard
of bugle trimming from a new cloak. All this trouble is due directly to his
wife's infatuation in hanging up her dresses inside out, so he immediately
starts after her, and impetuously urging her to the closet, excitedly and
almost profanely intimates his doubts of their being a pocket in the dress,
anyway. The cause of the unhappy disaster quietly inserts her hand inside
the robe, and directly brings it forth with the sought for article in its
clasp. He doesn't know why, but this makes him madder than anything else.
MOTHER'S DOUGHNUTS.
BY CHARLES F. ADAMS.
_El Dorado, 1851._
I've just been down ter Thompson's, boys,
'N feelin' kind o' blue,
I thought I'd look in at "The Ranch,"
Ter find out what wuz new;
When I seed this sign a-hangin'
On a shanty by the lake:
"Here's whar yer get your doughnuts
Like yer mother used ter make."
I've seen a grizzly show his teeth,
I've seen Kentucky Pete
Draw out his shooter, 'n advise
A "tenderfoot" ter treat;
But nuthin' ever tuk me down,
'N made my benders shake,
Like that sign about the doughnuts
That my mother used ter make.
A sort o' mist shut out the ranch,
'N standin' thar instead,
I seen an old, white farm-house,
With its doors all painted red.
A whiff came through the open door--
Wuz I sleepin' or awake?
The smell wuz that of doughnuts
Like my mother used ter make.
The bees wuz hummin' round the porch
Whar honeysuckles grew;
A yellow dish of apple-sass
Wuz settin' thar in view.
'N on the table, by the stove,
An old-time "Johnny-cake,"
'N a platter full of doughnuts
Like my mother used ter make.
A patient form I seemed ter see,
In tidy dress of black,
I almost thought I heard the words,
"When will my boy come back?"
'N then--the old sign creaked:
But now it was the boss who spake:
'Here's whar yer gets yer doughnuts
Like yer mother used ter make.
Well, boys, that kind o' broke me up,
'N ez I've "struck pay gravel,"
I ruther think I'll pack my kit,
Vamoose the ranch, 'n travel.
I'll make the old folks jubilant,
'N if I don't mistake,
I'll try some o' them doughnuts
Like my mother used ter make.
LITERARY ATTRACTIONS OF THE BIBLE.
BY DR. HAMILTON.
God made the present earth as the Home of Man; but had he meant it as a
mere lodging, a world less beautiful would have served the purpose. There
was no need for the carpet of verdure, or the ceiling of blue; no need for
the mountains, and cataracts, and forests; no need for the rainbow, no need
for the flowers. A big, round island, half of it arable, and half of it
pasture, with a clump of trees in one corner, and a magazine of fuel in
another, might have held and fed ten millions of people; and a hundred
islands, all made in the same pattern, big and round, might have held and
fed the population of the globe.
But man is something more than the animal which wants lodging and food. He
has a spiritual nature, full of keen perceptions and deep sympathies. He
has an eye for the sublime and the beautiful, and his kind Creator has
provided man's abode with affluent materials for these nobler tastes. He
has built Mont Blanc, and molten the lake in which its image sleeps. He has
intoned Niagara's thunder, and has breathed the zephyr which sweeps its
spray. He has shagged the steep with its cedars, and be-sprent the meadow
with its king-cups and daisies. He has made it a world of fragrance and
music,--a world of brightness and symmetry,--a world where the grand and
the graceful, the awful and lovely, rejoice together. In fashioning the
Home of Man, the Creator had an eye to something more than convenience, and
built, not a barrack, but a palace--not a Union work-house, but an
Alhambra; something which should not only be very comfortable, but very
splendid and very fair; something which should inspire the soul of its
inhabitant, and even draw forth the "very good" of complacent Deity.
God also made the Bible as the guide and oracle of man; but had He meant it
as the mere lesson-book of duty, a volume less various and less attractive
would have answered every end. But in giving that Bible, its divine Author
had regard to the mind of man. He knew that man has more curiosity than
piety, more taste than sanctity; and that more persons are anxious to hear
some new, or read some beauteous thing, than to read or hear about God and
the great salvation. He knew that few would ever ask, "What must I do to be
saved?" till they came in contact with the Bible itself; and, therefore, He
made the Bible not only an instructive book, but an attractive one,--not
only true, but enticing. He filled it with marvelous incident and engaging
history; with sunny pictures from Old World scenery, and affecting
anecdotes from the patriarch times. He replenished it with stately argument
and thrilling verse, and sprinkled it over with sententious wisdom and
proverbial pungency. He made it a book of lofty thoughts and noble
images,--a book of heavenly doctrine, but withal of earthly adaptation. In
preparing a guide to immortality, Infinite Wisdom gave, not a dictionary,
nor a grammar, but a Bible--a book which, in trying to reach the heart of
man, should captivate his taste; and which, in transforming his affection,
should also expand his intellect. The pearl is of great price; but even the
casket is of exquisite beauty. The sword is of ethereal temper, and nothing
cuts so keen as its double edge; but there are jewels on the hilt, an
exquisite inlaying on the scabbard. The shekels are of the purest ore; but
even the scrip which contains them is of a texture more curious than any
which the artists of earth can fashion. The apples are gold; but even the
basket is silver.
The Bible contains no ornamental passages, nothing written for mere
display; its steadfast purpose is, "Glory to God in the highest," and the
truest blessedness of man; it abounds in passages of the purest beauty and
stateliest grandeur, all the grander and all the more beautiful because
they are casual and unsought. The fire which flashes from the iron hoof of
the Tartar steed as he scours the midnight path is grander than the
artificial firework; for it is the casual effect of speed and power. The
clang of ocean as he booms his billows on the rock, and the echoing caves
give chorus, is more soul-filling and sublime than all the music of the
orchestra, for it is the music of that main so mighty that there is a
grandeur in all it does,--in its sleep a melody, and in its march a stately
psalm. And in the bow which paints the melting cloud there is a beauty
which the stained glass or gorgeous drapery emulates in vain; for it is the
glory which gilds beneficence, the brightness which bespeaks a double boon,
the flush which cannot but come forth when both the sun and shower are
there. The style of Scripture has all this glory. It has the gracefulness
of a high utility; it has the majesty of intrinsic power; it has the charm
of its own sanctity: it never labors, never strives, but, instinct with
great realities and bent on blessed ends, it has all the translucent beauty
and unstudied power which you might expect from its lofty object and
all-wise Author.
THE CHRISTMAS BABY.
BY WILL CARLETON.
"Tha'rt welcome, little bonny brid.
But shouldn't ha' come just when tha' did:
Teimes are bad."
_English Ballad._
Hoot! ye little rascal! ye come it on me this way,
Crowdin' yerself amongst us this blusterin' winter's day,
Knowin' that we already have three of ye, an' seven,
An' tryin' to make yerself out a Christmas present o' Heaven?
Ten of ye have we now, Sir, for this world to abuse;
An' Bobbie he have no waistcoat, an' Nellie she have no shoes,
An' Sammie he have no shirt, Sir (I tell it to his shame),
An' the one that was just before ye we ain't had time to name!
An, all o' the banks be smashin', an' on us poor folk fall;
An' Boss he whittles the wages when work's to be had at all;
An' Tom he have cut his foot off, an' lies in a woful plight,
An' all of us wonders at mornin' as what we shall eat at night;
An' but for your father an' Sandy a-findin' somewhat to do,
An' but for the preacher's woman, who often helps us through,
An' but for your poor dear mother a-doin' twice her part,
Ye'd 'a seen us all in heaven afore _ye_ was ready to start!
An' now _ye_ have come, ye rascal! so healthy an' fat an' sound,
A-weighin', I'll wager a dollar, the full of a dozen pound!
With yer mother's eyes a flashin', yer father's flesh an' build,
An' a big mouth an' stomach all ready for to be filled!
No, no! don't cry, my baby! hush up, my pretty one!
Don't get my chaff in yer eye, boy--I only was just in fun.
Ye'll like us when ye know us, although we're cur'us folks;
But we don't get much victual, and half our livin' is jokes!
Why, boy, did ye take me in earnest? come, sit upon my knee;
I'll tell ye a secret, youngster, I'll name ye after me.
Ye shall have all yer brothers an' sisters with ye to play,
An' ye shall have yer carriage, an' ride out every day!
Why, boy, do ye think ye'll suffer? I'm gettin' a trifle old,
But it'll be many years yet before I lose my hold;
An' if I should fall on the road, boy, still, them's yer brothers, there,
An' not a rogue of 'em ever would see ye harmed a hair!
Say! when ye come from heaven, my little name-sake dear,
Did ye see, 'mongst the little girls there, a face like this one here?
That was yer little sister--she died a year ago,
An' all of us cried like babies when they laid her under the snow!
Hang it! if all the rich men I ever see or knew
Came here with all their traps, boy, an' offered 'em for you,
I'd show 'em to the door, Sir, so quick they'd think it odd,
Before I'd sell to another my Christmas gift from God!
A DREAM OF THE UNIVERSE.
BY JEAN PAUL RICHTER.
Into the great vestibule of heaven, God called up a man from dreams,
saying, "Come thou hither, and see the glory of my house." And, to the
servants that stood around His throne, He said, "Take him, and undress him
from his robes of flesh; cleanse his vision, and put a new breath into his
nostrils; only touch not with any change his human heart,--the heart that
weeps and trembles."
It was done; and, with a mighty angel for his guide, the man stood ready
for his infinite voyage; and from the terraces of heaven, without sound or
farewell, at once they wheeled away into endless space. Sometimes, with
solemn flight of angel wings, they fled through Saharas of
darkness,--through wildernesses of death, that divided the world of life;
sometimes they swept over frontiers that were quickening under the
prophetic motions from God.
Then, from a distance that is counted only in heaven, light dawned for a
time through a sleepy film; by unutterable pace the light swept to them;
they by unutterable pace to the light. In a moment, the rushing of planets
was upon them; in a moment, the blazing of suns was around them.
Then came eternities of twilight, that revealed, but were not revealed. On
the right hand and on the left, towered mighty constellations, that by
self-repetition and answers from afar, that by counter-positions, built up
triumphal gates, whose architraves, whose archways--horizontal,
upright--rested, rose--at altitudes by spans that seemed ghostly from
infinitude. Without measure were the architraves, past number were the
archways, beyond memory the gates.
Within were stairs that scaled the eternities below; above was
below,--below was above, to the man stripped of gravitating body; depth was
swallowed up in height insurmountable; height was swallowed up in depth
unfathomable. Suddenly, as thus they rode from infinite to infinite;
suddenly, as thus they tilted over abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose that
systems more mysterious, that worlds more billowy, other heights and other
depths, were coming--were nearing--were at hand.
Then the man sighed, and stopped, and shuddered, and wept. His overladen
heart uttered itself in tears; and he said, "Angel, I will go no farther;
for the spirit of man acheth with this infinity. Insufferable is the glory
of God. Let me lie down in the grave, and hide me from the persecutions of
the Infinite; for end, I see, there is none."
And from all the listening stars that shone around, issued a choral cry,
"The man speaks truly; end there is none that ever yet we heard of." "End
is there none?" the angel solemnly demanded: "Is there indeed no end, and
is this the sorrow that kills you?" But no voice answered that he might
answer himself. Then the angel threw up his glorious hands toward the
heaven of heavens, saying, "End is there none to the universe of God! Lo,
also there is no beginning!"
KEENAN'S CHARGE.
BY GEORGE P. LATHROP.
(_Chancellorsville, May, 1863._)
The sun had set;
The leaves with dew were wet;
Down fell a bloody dusk
On the woods, that second of May,
Where Stonewall's corps, like a beast of prey,
Tore through, with angry tusk.
"They've trapped us, boys!"--
Rose from our flank a voice.
With a rush of steel and smoke
On came the Rebels straight,
Eager as love and wild as hate:
And our line reeled and broke;
Broke and fled.
No one staid--but the dead!
With curses, shrieks and cries,
Horses and wagons and men
Tumbled back through the shuddering glen,
And above us the fading skies.
There's one hope, still,--
Those batteries parked on the hill!
"Battery, wheel!" (mid the roar)
"Pass pieces; fix prolonge to fire
Retiring. Trot!" In the panic dire
A bugle rings "Trot"--and no more.
The horses plunged,
The cannon lurched and lunged,
To join the hopeless rout.
But suddenly rode a form
Calmly in front of the human storm,
With a stern, commanding shout:
"Align those guns!"
(We knew it was Pleasonton's)
The cannoneers bent to obey,
And worked with a will, at his word:
And the black guns moved as if _they_ had heard.
But ah, the dread delay!
"To wait is crime;
O God, for ten minutes' time!"
The general looked around.
There Keenan sat, like a stone,
With his three hundred horse alone--
Less shaken than the ground.
"Major, your men?"
"Are soldiers, General." "Then,
Charge, Major! Do your best:
Hold the enemy back, at all cost,
Till my guns are placed;--else the army is lost.
You die to save the rest!"
By the shrouded gleam of the western skies,
Brave Keenan looked in Pleasonton's eyes
For an instant,--clear, and cool, and still;
Then, with a smile, he said: "I will."
"Cavalry, charge!" Not a man of them shrank.
Their sharp, full cheer, from rank on rank,
Rose joyously, with a willing breath,
Rose like a greeting hail to death.
Then forward they sprang, and spurred and clashed;
Shouted the officers, crimson-sashed;
Rode well the men, each brave as his fellow,
In their faded coats of the blue and yellow;
And above in the air with an instinct true,
Like a bird of war their pennon flew.
With clank of scabbards and thunder of steeds,
And blades that shine like sunlit reeds,
And strong brown faces bravely pale
For fear their proud attempt shall fail,
Three hundred Pennsylvanians close
On twice ten thousand gallant foes.
Line after line the troopers came
To the edge of the wood that was ringed with flame;
Rode in and sabered and shot--and fell;
Nor came one back his wounds to tell.
And full in the midst rose Keenan, tall
In the gloom, like a martyr awaiting his fall,
While the circle-stroke of his saber, swung
Round his head like a halo there, luminous hung.
Line after line, ay, whole platoons,
Struck dead in their saddles, of brave dragoons
By the maddened horses were onward borne
And into the vortex flung, trampled and torn;
As Keenan fought with his men, side by side.
So they rode, till there were no more to ride.
But over them, lying there, shattered and mute,
What deep echo rolls?--'Tis a death-salute
From the cannon in place; for heroes, you braved
Your fate not in vain: the army was saved!
Over them now,--year following year,
Over their graves the pine-cones fall,
And the whip-poor-will chants his spectre-call;
But they stir not again; they raise no cheer:
They have ceased. But their glory shall never cease,
Nor their light be quenched in the light of peace.
The rush of their charge is resounding still
That saved the army at Chancellorsville.
USEFUL PRECEPTS FOR GIRLS.
First catch your lover.
Hold him when you have him.
Don't let go of him to catch every new one that comes along.
Try to get very well acquainted with him before you take him for life.
Unless you intend to support him, find out whether he earns enough to
support you.
Don't make up your mind he is an angel. Don't palm yourself off on him for
one either.
Don't let him spend his salary on you; that right should be reserved until
after marriage.
If you have any conscientious scruples about marrying a man with a mother,
say so in time that he may either get rid of her to oblige you, or get rid
of you to oblige her, as he thinks best.
If you object to secret societies and tobacco, it is better to come with
your objections now than to reserve them for curtain lectures hereafter.
If your adorer happens to fancy a certain shade of hair, don't color bleach
yours to oblige him. Remember your hair belongs to you and he doesn't.
Be very sure it is the man you are in love with, and not the clothes he
wears. Fortune and fashion are both so fickle it is foolish to take a
stylish suit for better or worse.
If you intend to keep three servants after marriage, settle the matter
beforehand. The man who is making love to you may expect you to do your own
washing.
Don't try to hurry up a proposal by carrying on a flirtation with some
other fellow. Different men are made of different material, and the one you
want might go off in a fit of jealousy and forget to come back.
If you have a love letter to write, do not copy it out of a "letter
writer." If your young man ever happened to consult the same book he would
know your sentiments were borrowed.
Don't marry a man to oblige any third person in existence. It is your right
to suit yourself in the matter. But remember at the same time that love is
blind, and a little friendly advice from one whose advice is worth having
may insure you a lifetime of happiness, or prevent one of misery.
In love affairs always keep your eyes wide open, so that when the right man
comes along you may see him.
When you see him you will recognize him and the recognition will be mutual.
If you have no fault to find with him personally, financially,
conscientiously, socially, morally, politically, religiously, or in any
other way, he is probably perfect enough to suit you, and you can afford
to--
Believe in him; hope in him; love him; marry him!
WIDDER BUDD.
I'm fifty, I'm fair, and without a gray hair,
An' I feel just ez young as a girl.
When I think o' Zerubbabel Lee, I declare
It sets me all into a whirl.
Last night he waz here, an' I told him to "clear"--
An' my! How supprised he did look:
Perhaps I wuz rash, but he's after my _cash_--
I see through his plans like a book.
Some offers I've had that I cannot call bad;
There was Deacon Philander Breezee;
I'd a sartin sed _Yes_, when he wanted a kiss,
Ef he hadn't so flustrated me.
It took me so quick that it felt like a kick--
I flew all to pieces at once;
Sez I, "You kin go--I'm not wanting a beau;"
I acted, I know, like a dunce.
Sez he, ez he rose, "I hev come to propose."
I stopped him afore he began:
Sez I, "You kin go, an' see Hepzibah Stow--
_I won't be tied down to a man_."
"Mariar," ses he, "Widder Tompkins an' me
Kin strike up a bargain, I know;
An', seein' ez we can't decide to agree,
I guess that I hed better go."
He picked up his hat from the chair where it sat,
An' solemnly started away.
Sez I, with a look that I'm _sure_ he mistook,
"You're perfectly welcome to stay."
My face got ez red ez our old waggin-shed--
I thought for the land I should melt.
Sez he, "I am done. Good night, leetle one,"
I _wish_ he'd a known how I felt.
To-day, Isaac Beers, with his snickers and sneers,
Whose face is ez ugly ez sin,
Dropped in just to see about buyin' my steers,
An' tickled the mole on my chin.
Sez I, "You jest quit; I don't like you a bit;
You can't come your sawder on me.
You'd better behave till Jane's cold in her grave,
Your manners is ruther too free."
When dear David died (sniff--sniff), ez I sot by his side (sniff--sniff);
He ketched up my hand in his own (sniff--sniff);
He squeezed it awhile (sniff--sniff), an' he sez with a smile
(sniff--sniff),
"You'll soon be a widder alone (sniff--sniff--sniff),
An' when I am gone (sniff--sniff) don't you fuss an' take on (sniff--sniff)
Like old Widder Dorothy Day (sniff--sniff).
Look out for your tin (sniff--sniff) if you marry agin (sniff--sniff),
Nor throw your affections away (sniff--sniff--sniff)."
My children hev grown, an' have homes o' their own--
They're doin' ez well ez they can (_wipes her eyes and nose_):
An' I'm gettin' sick o' this livin' alone--
I wouldn't mind havin' a man.
Fur David hez gone to the mansion above--
His body is cold in the ground,
Ef you know of a man who would marry for love,
Jest find him an' send him around.
HIS LAST COURT.
Old Judge Grepson, a justice of the peace, was never known to smile. He
came to Arkansas years ago, and year after year, by the will of the voters,
he held his place as magistrate. The lawyers who practiced in his court
never joked with him, because every one soon learned that the old man never
engaged in levity. Every morning, no matter how bad the weather might be,
the old man took his place behind the bar which, with his own hands, he had
made, and every evening, just at a certain time, he closed his books and
went home. No one ever engaged him in private conversation, because he
would talk to no one. No one ever went to his home, a little cottage among
the trees in the city's outskirts, because he had never shown a disposition
to make welcome the visits of those who even lived in the immediate
vicinity. His office was not given him through the influence of
"electioneering," because he never asked any man for his vote. He was first
elected because, having been once summoned in a case of arbitration, he
exhibited the executive side of such a legal mind that the people nominated
and elected him. He soon gained the name of the "hard justice," and every
lawyer in Arkansas referred to his decision. His rulings were never
reversed by the higher courts. He showed no sentiment in decision. He stood
upon the platform of a law which he made a study, and no one disputed him.
One day, a woman, charged with misdemeanor, was arraigned before him. "The
old man seems more than ever unsteady," remarked a lawyer as the magistrate
took his seat. "I don't see how a man so old can stand the vexation of a
court much longer."
"I am not well to-day," said the Judge, turning to the lawyers, "and any
cases that you may have you will please dispatch them to the best, and let
me add, quickest of your ability."
Every one saw that the old man was unusually feeble, and no one thought of
a scheme to prolong a discussion, for all the lawyers had learned to
reverence him.
"Is this the woman?" asked the Judge. "Who is defending her?"
"I have no defence, your Honor," the woman replied. "In fact, I do not
think I need any, for I am here to confess my guilt. No man can defend me,"
and she looked at the magistrate with a curious gaze. "I have been arrested
on a charge of disturbing the peace, and I am willing to submit my case. I
am dying of consumption, Judge, and I know that any ruling made by the law
can have but little effect on me;" and she coughed a hollow, hacking cough,
and drew around her an old black shawl that she wore. The expression on the
face of the magistrate remained unchanged, but his eyelids dropped and he
did not raise them when the woman continued:
"As I say, no man can defend me. I am too near that awful separation of
soul and body. Years ago I was a child of brightest promise. I lived with
my parents in Kentucky. Wayward and light-hearted, I was admired by all the
gay society known in the neighborhood. A man came and professed his love
for me. I don't say this, Judge, to excite your sympathy. I have many and
many a time been drawn before courts, but I never before spoke of my past
life."
She coughed again and caught a flow of blood on a handkerchief which she
pressed to her lips. "I speak of it now because I know that this is the
last court on earth before which I will be arraigned. I was fifteen years
old when I fell in love with the man. My father said he was bad, but I
loved him. He came again and again, and when my father said that he should
come no more I ran away and married him. My father said I should never come
home again. I had always been his pride and had loved him dearly, but he
said that I must never again come to his home,--my home, the home of my
youth and happiness. How I longed to see him. How I yearned to put my head
on his breast. My husband became addicted to drink. He abused me. I wrote
to my father, asking him to let me come home, but the answer that came was
'I don't know you!' My husband died--yes, cursed God and died! Homeless and
wretched, and with my little boy I went out into the world. My child died,
and I bowed down and wept over a pauper's grave. I wrote to my father
again, but he answered: 'I know not those who disobey my commandments!' I
turned away from that letter, hardened. I spurned my teachings. Now I am
here."
Several lawyers rushed forward. A crimson stream flowed from her lips. They
leaned her lifeless head back against the chair. The old magistrate had not
raised his eyes; "Great God!" said a lawyer, "he is dead!"
The woman was his daughter.
THE DEAD DOLL.
BY MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.
You needn't be trying to comfort me--I tell you my dolly is dead!
There's no use in saying she isn't with a crack like that in her head;
It's just like you said it wouldn't hurt much to have my tooth out,
that day,
And then, when the man 'most pulled my head off, you hadn't a word to say.
And I guess you must think I'm a baby, when you say you can mend it
with glue,
As if I didn't know better than that! Why, just suppose it was you?
You might make her look all mended--but what do I care for looks?
Why glue's for chairs and tables, and toys, and the backs of books!
My dolly! my own little daughter! Oh, but it's the awfullest crack!
It just makes me sick to think of the sound when her poor head went whack
Against that horrible brass thing that holds up that little shelf.
Now, Nursey, what makes you remind me? I know that I did it myself?
I think you must be crazy--you'll get her another head!
What good would forty heads do her? I tell you my dolly is dead!
And to think I hadn't quite finished her elegant new Spring hat!
And I took a sweet ribbon of her's last night to tie on that horrid cat!
When my mamma gave me that ribbon--I was playing out in the yard--
She said to me most expressly, "Here's a ribbon for Hildegarde."
And I went and put it on Tabby, and Hildegarde saw me do it;
But I said to myself, "Oh, never mind, I don't believe she knew it!"
But I know that she knew it now, and I just believe I do,
That her poor little heart was broken, and so her head broke too.
Oh, my baby! my little baby! I wish my head had been hit!
For I've hit it over and over, and it hasn't cracked a bit.
But since the darling is dead, she'll want to be buried, of course;
We will take my little wagon, Nurse, and you shall be the horse;
And I'll walk behind and cry; and we'll put her in this, you see--
This dear little box--and we'll bury her there out under the maple tree.
And papa will make me a tombstone, like the one he made for my bird;
And he'll put what I tell him on it--yes, every single word!
I shall say, "Here lies Hildegarde, a beautiful doll, who is dead;
She died of a broken heart, and a dreadful crack in her head."
AT THE STAMP WINDOW.
Just before twelve o'clock yesterday fore-noon there were thirteen men and
one woman at the stamp window of the post-office. Most of the men had
letters to post for the out-going trains. The woman had something tied up
in a blue match-box. She got there first, and she held the position with
her head in the window and both elbows on the shelf.
"Is there such a place in this country as Cleveland?" she began.
"Oh, yes."
"Do you send mail there?"
"Yes."
"Well, a woman living next door asked me to mail this box for her. I guess
it's directed all right. She said it ought to go for a cent."
"Takes two cents," said the clerk, after weighing it. "If there is writing
inside it will be twelve cents."
"Mercy on me, but how you do charge!"
Here the thirteen men began to push up and hustle around and talk about one
old match-box delaying two dozen business letters, but the woman had lots
of time.
"Then it will be two cents, eh?"
"If there is no writing inside."
"Well, there may be. I know she is a great hand to write. She's sending
some flower seeds to her sister, and I presume she has told her how to
plant 'm."
"Two threes!" called out one of the crowd, as he tried to get to the
window.
"Hurry up!" cried another.
"There ought to be a separate window here for women," growled a third.
"Then it will take twelve cents?" she calmly queried, as she fumbled around
for her purse.
"Yes."
"Well, I'd better pay it, I guess."
From one pocket she took two coppers. From her reticule she took a three
cent piece. From her purse she fished out a nickel; and it was only after a
hunt of eighty seconds that she got the twelve cents together. She then
consumed four minutes in licking on the stamps, asking where to post the
box, and wondering if there really was any writing inside,--but woman
proposes and man disposes. Twenty thousand dollars' worth of business was
being detained by a twelve-cent woman, and a tidal wave suddenly took her
away from the window. In sixty seconds the thirteen men had been waited on
and gone their ways, and the woman returned to the window, handed in the
box, and said:
"Them stamps are licked on kind o' crooked, but it won't make any
difference, will it?"
THE NAMELESS GUEST.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
I wonder if ever the Angel of Death
Comes down from the great Unknown,
And soars away, on the wings of night,
Unburdened and alone!
I wonder if ever the angels' eyes,
Are filled with pitying tears,
As they grant to the souls, unfit for flight,
A few more weary years!
For it seems, at times, when the world is still,
And the soft night winds are whist,
As though some spirit were hovering near,
In folds of dream-like mist,
And I feel, though mortals are nowhere near,
That I am not quite alone,
And, with dreary thoughts of dying and death,
My heart grows cold as stone.
But whether 'tis death that hovers near,
And knocks at the door of my heart,
Or whether 'tis some bright angel, come
To be of my life a part,
I cannot tell, and I long in vain,
The secret strange to know,
While the moments of mirth and grief and pain,
Move on in their ceaseless flow.
And at night, when I kneel to a Higher Power
And ask His tender care,
One yearning cry of a wayward life
Is the burden of my prayer,
That I may bend, with willing lips,
To kiss the chastening rod,
And learn the way, through the golden gate,
To the great white throne of God.
OUR HEROES SHALL LIVE.
BY HENRY WARD BEECHER.
This brief extract from a splendid oration should be spoken in clear,
defined tones, rather high pitch, the utterance slow, with a rather long
pause after each question:
Oh, tell me not that they are dead--that generous host, that airy army of
invisible heroes. They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this nation. Are
they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal
language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon
society, and inspire the people with nobler motives, and more heroic
patriotism?
Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. It _was_ your son, but
now he is the nation's. He made your household bright: now his example
inspires a thousand households. Dear to his brothers and sisters, he is now
brother to every generous youth in the land. Before, he was narrowed,
appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to
all. Before he was yours: he _is_ ours. He has died from the family, that
he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgotten or neglected:
and it shall by and by be confessed of our modern heroes, as it is of an
ancient hero, that he did more for his country by his death than by his
whole life.
LULLABY.
"Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green;
Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen."
Rockaby, lullaby, all the day long,
Down to the land of the lullaby song.
Babyland never again will be thine,
Land of all mystery, holy, divine,
Motherland, otherland,
Wonderland, underland,
Land of a time ne'er again to be seen;
Flowerland, bowerland,
Airyland, fairyland,
Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green.
Rockaby, baby, thy mother will keep
Gentle watch over thine azure-eyed sleep;
Baby can't feel what the mother-heart knows,
Throbbing its fear o'er your quiet repose.
Mother-heart knows how baby must fight
Wearily on through the fast coming night;
Battle unending,
Honor defending,
Baby must wage with the power unseen.
Sleep now, O baby, dear!
God and thy mother near;
Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green.
Rockaby, baby, the days will grow long;
Silent the voice of the mother-love song,
Bowed with sore burdens the man-life must own,
Sorrows that baby must bear all alone.
Wonderland never can come back again;
Thought will come soon--and with reason comes pain,
Sorrowland, motherland,
Drearyland, wearyland,
Baby and heavenland lying between.
Smile, then, in motherland,
Dream in the otherland,
Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green.
PENNING A PIG.
JAMES M. BAILEY.
Two families in Slawson had a somewhat singular experience several weeks
ago. These families live in a double house, and each had a pen with two
pigs. Last Friday the woman in one part discovered that her two pigs were
free from their pen, and looking after geological specimens at the foot of
the yard. She also discovered at the same time that the gate to a cabbage
yard adjoining was open, and that the pigs might at any moment become
ravished by a view of the glories within.
Her husband being away she hurriedly secured the gate, and then set about
to return the truants by the following ingenious plan: Taking a shovelful
of corn, she approached as close to the animals as possible, and, holding
the tempting morsel near enough for them to learn its inviting character,
she screwed her face into an expression of winning sweetness, and backed
slowly toward the pen.
It was a beautiful illustration of woman's faith, and we regret to write
that it did not work. The pigs took one snuff at the contents of the
shovel, just to show that they took some interest in the matter, and, being
convinced thereby that there was nothing injurious in the experiment, fell
to rooting about again with renewed fervor.
The nearer the woman came to the pen the straighter her face grew, and
presently lost every vestige of solicitude, and assumed instead an
expression of medium ferocity. What she may have done will never be known,
as at this juncture her husband made his appearance on the back stoop, and,
her eye resting upon him, she commenced to apostrophize him in the language
married people alone are adepts at.
After requesting somebody to show him the idiot who had left those hogs out
that he might punch his head, he drove straight at the truants, and missed
them, of course. Then he drove at them again with a clothes pole, and
missed them again, although he made another pole by hitting that on a
stone. Any one who has helped to drive one or two pigs will readily
understand the number of articles that passed through the air, and the
style of conversation the man kept up during the chase.
Finally, he got one of the animals in a corner, and, being by this time
utterly regardless of personal appearance or consequences, threw himself
upon the brute, neatly scraping the fence with the top of his head, and
falling upon the pig in such a way as to hold in abeyance every one of its
muscles except those in the throat. These were at once put into active
operation, and the man for a moment thought he had captured a planing-mill.
Then he raised slowly, keeping a tight hold of the animal, and getting on
his feet with a pig in his arms, struck out for the pen, preceded by his
wife and the other woman, and closely and anxiously observed by all the
neighbors for a half-mile around.
In this way the procession laboriously moved. The pig, having worked its
head within two inches of the man's ear, was pouring therein a tale of
unparalleled distress, which, if not calculated to melt the stoutest heart,
actually threatened to split open the stoutest head. The man was utterly
powerless to remedy the horror, having both hands engaged, and could only
twist his ear a little out of range, and scream at the top of his voice his
plans for the future of "them hogs."
On reaching the pen, and while in the act of dumping the howling viper over
the side, the woman next door made an unfortunate discovery. _His_ hogs
were in the pen; the truants were _hers_. The man, who was still holding
the pig, and might have, with reason, taken a prominent part in the debate,
contented himself by merely expressing a hope that he might be blessed, and
then trudged around to the other pen, where he arrived after much unlooked
for tribulation, and again hoisted the howling monster up to the top, when
the woman next door made another and still more remarkable discovery. Her
pigs were in their pen.
"What's that?" screamed the man, who was so fixed he could not very well
see into the pen, and was obliged to lift his voice to make himself heard
above the din.
"Them ain't my pigs," screamed the woman.
"Why ain't they?" he yelled.
"Cause my pigs are here," she shrieked back.
It is needless to say that the strange animals were urged out of that
garden without the use of subterfuge.
LITTLE JIM.
BY GEORGE R. SIMS.
Our little Jim
Was such a limb
His mother scarce could manage him.
His eyes were blue,
And looked you through,
And seemed to say,
"I'll have my way!"
His age was six,
His saucy tricks
But made you smile,
Though all the while
You said, "You limb,
You wicked Jim,
Be quiet, do!"
Poor little Jim!
Our eyes are dim
When soft and low we speak of him.
No clattering shoe
Goes running through
The silent room,
Now wrapped in gloom.
So still he lies,
With fast-shut eyes,
No need to say,
Alas! to-day,
"You little limb,
You baby Jim,
Be quiet, do!"
GET ACQUAINTED WITH YOURSELF.
BY R. J. BURDETTE.
Telemachus, it will do you ever so much good if every once in a while you
will go away by yourself for an hour or two and get real well acquainted
with yourself. As a man thinketh, so he is. And you will never "know
thyself" thoroughly unless now and then you get alone and sit down and talk
to yourself, cross-examine yourself; learn what you know; what are your
ambitions, your aims, your hopes,--what is your real character; because, my
dear boy, your reputation may be one thing and your character quite
another. Sometimes it does happen, in this faulty old world, that a really
good man, a man whose character is above reproach, may bear the reputation
of a rascal; and once in a while--two or three times in a while, in fact--a
rascal wears the stolen reputation of an honest man. Go away now and then,
my boy, and sit down all by yourself and think. Think of nothing under the
sun only yourself. Yes, I know, my son, there are men who never think of
anything else, and God never made more useless men; but that is because
they do all their thinking about themselves publicly and loud. They never
think alone.
You will be honest with yourself when you are alone, my boy. A man is apt
to be honest with himself in the dark. He does not pose in heroic postures
when he has no audience. When he stands face to face with himself, with no
human eye to watch him, and no human ear to listen to his confession, and
only his Maker, who knows every secret motive and thought of his life to
see and to listen, a man has to be honest. How could he be a hypocrite
then?
Get away from the crowd a little while every day, my boy. Stand one side
and let the world run by, while you get acquainted with yourself, and see
what kind of a fellow you are. Ask yourself hard questions about yourself.
Find out all you can about yourself. Ascertain from original sources if you
are really the manner of man people say you are. Find out if you are
always honest; if you always tell the square, perfect truth in business
deals; if your life is as good and upright at eleven o'clock at night as it
is at noon; if you are as sound a temperance man on a fishing expedition as
you are at a Sabbath-school picnic; if you are as good a boy when you go to
Chicago as you are at home; if, in short, you really are the manner of
young man your father hopes you are, your mother says you are, and your
sweetheart believes you are. Get on intimate terms with yourself, my boy,
and, believe me, every time you come out from one of those private
interviews you will be a better, stronger, purer man. Don't forget this,
Telemachus, and it will do you good.
THE LITTLE WHITE HEARSE.
BY J. W. RILEY.
As the little white hearse went glimmering by--
The man on the coal cart jerked his lines,
And smutted the lid of either eye,
And turned and stared at the business signs;
And the street-car driver stopped and beat
His hands on his shoulders and gazed up street
Till his eye on the long track reached the sky--
As the little white hearse went glimmering by.
As the little white hearse went glimmering by--
A stranger petted a ragged child
In the crowded walk, and she knew not why,
But he gave her a coin for the way she smiled;
And a bootblack thrilled with a pleasure strange
As a customer put back his change
With a kindly hand and a grateful sigh--
As the little white hearse went glimmering by.
As the little white hearse went glimmering by--
A man looked out of a window dim,
And his cheeks were wet and his heart was dry--
For a dead child even were dear to him!
And he thought of his empty life and said:
"Loveless alive and loveless dead,
Nor wife nor child in earth or sky!"--
As the little white hearse went glimmering by.
THERE'LL BE ROOM IN HEAVEN.
She was a little old woman, very plainly dressed in black bombazine that
had seen much careful wear; her bonnet was very old-fashioned, and people
stared at her tottering up the aisle of the church, evidently bent on
securing one of the best seats, for a great man preached that day. The
house was filled with splendidly dressed people who had heard of the fame
of the preacher, of his learning, his intellect and goodness, and they
wondered at the presumption of the poor old woman. She must have been in
her dotage, for she picked out the pew of the richest and proudest member
of the church and took a seat. The three ladies who were seated there
beckoned to the sexton, who bent over the intruder and whispered something,
but she was hard of hearing, and smiled a little withered smile, as she
said, gently: "Oh, I'm quite comfortable here, quite comfortable."
"But you are not wanted here," said the sexton, pompously; "there is not
room. Come with me, my good woman; I will see that you have a seat."
"Not room," said the old woman, looking at her shrunken proportions, and
then at the fine ladies. "Why, I'm not crowded a bit. I rode ten miles to
hear the sermon to-day, because--"
But here the sexton took her by the arm, shook her roughly in a polite
underhand way, and then she took the hint. Her faded old eyes filled with
tears, her chin quivered; but she rose meekly and left the pew. Turning
quietly to the ladies, who were spreading their rich dresses over the space
she left vacant, she said gently: "I hope, my dears, there'll be room in
heaven for us all." Then she followed the pompous sexton to the rear of the
church where, in the last pew, she was seated between a threadbare girl and
a shabby old man.
"She must be crazy," said one of the ladies in the pew which she had first
occupied. "What can an ignorant old woman like her want to hear Dr. ----
preach for? She would not be able to understand a word he said."
"Those people are so persistent! The idea of her forcing herself into our
pew! Isn't that voluntary lovely? There's Dr. ---- coming out of the
vestry. Is he not grand?"
"Splendid! What a stately man! You know he has promised to dine with us
while he is here."
He was a commanding looking man, and as the organ voluntary stopped, and he
looked over the great crowd of worshipers gathered in the vast church, he
seemed to scan every face. His hand was on the Bible when suddenly he
leaned over the reading desk and beckoned to the sexton, who obsequiously
mounted the steps to receive a mysterious message. And then the three
ladies in the grand pew were electrified to see him take his way the whole
length of the church to return with the old woman, when he placed her in
the front pew of all, its other occupants making willing room for her. The
great preacher looked at her with a smile of recognition, and then the
services proceeded, and he preached a sermon that struck fire from every
heart.
"Who was she?" asked the ladies who could not make room for her, as they
passed the sexton at the door.
"The preacher's mother," was the reply.
THE RETORT DIS-COURTEOUS.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
Mr. Michael McGlynn, of Dublin town,
And Dinny O'Doyle, of Kildare,
Through the streets of the city, went up and down,
A remarkably guileless pair.
Said Michael to Dinny: "Me darlin' bhoy,
Since the roise o' the mornin' sun,
Niver a dhrop or a boite have Oi,
Oi think I could ate a bun."
Said Dinny to Michael: "Av coorse: av coorse!
To ate is the woise man's part;
Oi have a sinsation loike that mesilf,
Oi think Oi could touch a tart."
So the kindred souls of this guileless pair,
An eating house speedily found,
And before them a jar on the table sat,
Full of horseradish, freshly ground.
With a tablespoon, Mr. Michael McGlynn
Took all that his mouth would hold,
Then gasped for breath, while his head turned hot
And his spine turned icy cold.
The tears on his cheeks came rolling down,
But he had no breath to swear,
So he simply clutched at the tablecloth,
And tore at his red, red hair.
Amazed and surprised, Mr. Dinny O'Doyle
Said: "Michael, me darlin' bhoy,
Phwat's troublin' yer sowl? Phwat's wrong wid ye now?
Phwat's the raison ye've tears in yer oi?"
"Oh, nothin," said Michael; "my grandfather doid
Some twenty-foive years ago,
Oi chanced to remember the fine owld man,
An' Oi couldn't help croiyin', ye know.
"But, Dinny O'Doyle, doant mind it at all;
How wake an' how choildish Oi same,"
Then he passed the horseradish and spoon and all;
"Have some of this nice oice crame!"
So Dinny dipped into the treacherous jar,
And the tears quickly sprang to his eyes,
While Michael McGlynn, who had got back his breath,
Affected a strange surprise.
"Phy, Dinny, me bhoy, ye're croiyin' yersilf,"
He said with a chuckle and grin;
"Phwat's troublin' _yer_ sowl? Phwat's wrong wid _ye_ now?
Is it wapin' ye are for a sin?"
"Is it askin' ye are, phwat's makin' me croiy?"
Said Dinny, "Oi'll spake as Oi'm bid,
Oi'm croiyin' bekase Mr. Michael McGlynn,
Didn't doi when his grandfather did."
ZENOBIA'S DEFENCE.
BY WILLIAM WARE.
[Zenobia became Queen of Palmyra A. D. 267, after the
murder of her husband, Odenatus. She was a woman of
great energy and assumed the title of Queen of the
East. She was deprived of her dominion by Aurelian A.
D. 272, and died in retirement near Rome.]
I am charged with pride and ambition. The charge is true, and I glory in
its truth. Whoever achieved anything great in letters, arts, or arms, who
was not ambitious? Caesar was not more ambitious than Cicero. It was but in
another way. All greatness is born of ambition. Let the ambition be a noble
one, and who shall blame it? I confess I did once aspire to be queen, not
only of Palmyra, but of the East. That I am. I now aspire to remain so. Is
it not an honorable ambition? Does it not become a descendant of the
Ptolemies and of Cleopatra? I am applauded by you all for what I have
already done. You would not it should have been less.
But why pause here? Is _so_ much ambition praiseworthy, and _more_
criminal? Is it fixed in nature that the limits of this empire should be
Egypt on the one hand, the Hellespont and the Euxine on the other? Were not
Suez and Armenia more natural limits? Or hath empire no natural limit, but
is broad as the genius that can devise, and the power that can win? Rome
has the West. Let Palmyra possess the East. Not that nature prescribes this
and no more. The gods prospering, I mean that the Mediterranean shall not
hem me in upon the west, or Persia on the east. Longinus is right,--I would
that the world were mine. I feel, within, the will and the power to bless
it, were it so.
Are not my people happy? I look upon the past and the present, upon my
nearer and remoter subjects, and ask, nor fear the answer, Whom have I
wronged? What province have I oppressed, what city pillaged, what region
drained with taxes? Whose life have I unjustly taken, or whose estates have
I coveted or robbed? Whose honor have I wantonly assailed? Whose rights,
though of the weakest and poorest, have I violated? I dwell, where I would
ever dwell, in the hearts of my people. It is written in your faces, that I
reign not more over you than within you. The foundation of my throne is not
more power than love.
Suppose, now, my ambition should add another province to our realm. Would
that be an evil? The kingdoms already bound to us by the joint acts of
ourselves and the late royal Odenatus, we found discordant and at war. They
are now united and at peace. One harmonious whole has grown out of hostile
and sundered parts. At my hands they receive a common justice and equal
benefits. The channels of their commerce have I opened, and dug them deep
and sure. Prosperity and plenty are in all their borders. The streets of
our capital bear testimony to the distant and various industry which here
seeks its market.
This is no vain boasting: receive it not so, good friends. It is but the
truth. He who traduces himself sins in the same way as he who traduces
another. He who is unjust to himself, or less than just, breaks a law, as
well as he who hurts his neighbor. I tell you what I am, and what I have
done, that your trust for the future may not rest upon ignorant grounds. If
I am more than just to myself, rebuke me. If I have over-stepped the
modesty that became me, I am open to your censure, and I will bear it.
But I have spoken that you may know your queen, not only by her acts, but
by her admitted principles. I tell you, then, that I am ambitious, that I
crave dominion, and while I live will reign. Sprung from a line of kings, a
throne is my natural seat. I love it. But I strive, too--you can bear me
witness that I do--that it shall be, while I sit upon it, an honored,
unpolluted seat. If I can, I will hang a yet brighter glory around it.
A SERENADE.[1]
BY THOMAS HOOD.
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!"
Thus I heard a father cry.
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
The brat will never shut an eye;
Hither come, some power divine!
Close his lids or open mine!
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
What the mischief makes him cry?
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Still he stares--I wonder why;
Why are not the sons of earth
Blind, like puppies, from their birth?
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!"
Thus I heard the father cry;
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Mary, you must come and try!
Hush, oh, hush, for mercy's sake--
The more I sing, the more you wake!
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Fie, you little creature, fie!
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Is no poppy-syrup nigh?
Give him some, or give him all,
I am nodding to his fall!
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Two such nights and I shall die!
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
He'll be bruised, and so shall I--
How can I from bedposts keep,
When I'm walking in my sleep?
"Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Sleep his very looks deny;
Lullaby, oh, lullaby!
Nature soon will stupefy--
My nerves relax--my eyes grow dim--
Who's that fallen, me or him?"
FOOTNOTES:
[1] This poem can be made very effective as a humorous recitation by the
performer imitating a sleepy father vainly endeavoring to quiet a restless
child. A doll, or something to represent one, should be held in the arms.
QUEEN VASHTI.
BY T. DEWITT TALMAGE.
We stand amid the palaces of Shushan. The pinnacles are aflame with the
morning light. The columns rise festooned and wreathed, the wealth of
empires flashing from the grooves; the ceilings adorned with images of bird
and beast, and scenes of prowess and conquest. The walls are hung with
shields, and emblazoned until it seems that the whole round of splendors is
exhausted. Each arch is a mighty leap of architectural achievement,--golden
stars, shining down on glowing arabesque; hangings of embroidered work, in
which mingle the blueness of the sky, the greenness of the grass and the
whiteness of the sea foam; tapestries hung on silver rings, wedding
together the pillars of marble. Pavilions reach out in every
direction,--these for repose, filled with luxuriant couches, in which weary
limbs sink until all fatigue is submerged; these for carousal, where kings
drink down a kingdom at one swallow.
Amazing spectacle! Light of silver dripping down over stairs of ivory on
shields of gold; floors of stained marble, sunset red and night black, and
inlaid with gleaming pearl. Why, it seems as if a heavenly vision of
amethyst, and jacinth, and topaz, and chrysoprasus had descended and
alighted upon Shushan. It seems as if a billow of celestial glory had
dashed clear over heaven's battlements upon this metropolis of Persia.
In connection with this palace there is a garden, where the mighty men of
foreign lands are seated at a banquet. Under the spread of oak, and linden,
and acacia, the tables are arranged. The breath of honey-suckle and
frankincense fills the air. Fountains leap up into the light, the spray
struck through with rainbows falling in crystalline baptism upon flowering
shrubs--then rolling down through channels of marble, and widening out here
and there into pools swirling with the finny tribes of foreign aquariums,
bordered with scarlet anemones, hypericums, and many colored ranunculus;
meats of rarest bird and beast smoking up amid wreaths of aromatics; the
vases filled with apricots and almonds; the basket piled up with apricots,
and dates, and figs, and oranges, and pomegranates; melons tastefully
twined with leaves of acacia; the bright waters of Eulaeus filling the urns,
and sweating outside the rim in flashing beads amid the traceries; wine
from the royal vats of Ispahan and Shiraz, in bottles of tinged shell, and
lily-shaped cups of silver, and flagons and tankards of solid gold.
The music rises higher, and the revelry breaks out into wilder transport,
and the wine has flushed the cheek and touched the brain, and louder than
all other voices are the hiccough of the inebriates, the gabble of fools,
and the song of the drunkards.
In another part of the palace Queen Vashti is entertaining the princesses
of Persia at a banquet. Drunken Ahasuerus says to his servants: "Go out and
fetch Vashti from that banquet with the women, and bring her to this
banquet with the men, and let me display her beauty." The servants
immediately start to obey the king's command, but there was a rule in
Oriental society that no woman might appear in public without having her
face veiled. Yet here was a mandate that no one dare dispute, demanding
that Vashti come in unveiled before the multitude. However, there was in
Vashti's soul a principle more regal than Ahasuerus, more brilliant than
the gold of Shushan, of more wealth than the revenue of Persia, which
commanded her to disobey the order of the King; and so all the
righteousness and holiness and modesty of her nature rises up into one
sublime refusal. She says: "I will not go into the banquet unveiled." Of
course, Ahasuerus was infuriated; and Vashti, robbed of her position and
her estate, is driven forth in poverty and ruin to suffer the scorn of a
nation, and yet to receive the applause of after generations, who shall
rise up to admire this martyr to kingly insolence.
The last vestige of that feast is gone; the last garland has faded; the
last arch has fallen; the last tankard has been destroyed, and Shushan is a
ruin; but as long as the world stands there will be multitudes of men and
women, familiar with the Bible, who will come into this picture-gallery of
God and admire the divine portrait of Vashti, the Queen; Vashti, the
veiled; Vashti, the sacrifice; Vashti, the silent.
W'EN DE DARKY AM A-WHIS'LIN' IN DE CO'N.
BY S. Q. LAPIUS.
W'en de jewdraps 'gins to glisten,
An' de east am growin' red,
An' de catbird am a-singin' in de trees;
W'en de swallers an' de martins
Am a-quar'lin' in de shed,
An' de hollyhocks am callin' to de bees;
W'en de gray mule 'gins to whinny
An' de porker 'gins to squeal,
Den it's time to be a-wo'kin' in de mo'n,
Kase de sun am climbin' higher
An' de han's am in de field--
An' de darky am a whis'lin' in de c'on.
W'en de fog hab lef' de valley,
An' de blue am in de sky,
An' de bees am wo'kin' in de medder lot;
W'en de hollyhocks am drowsin',
An' de sun am ridin' high,
An' de dusty country road am blazin' hot;
Den de darky 'gins to listen--
As de catbird quits his song--
Fo' de soundin' ob de welcome dinner-ho'n,
Kase his knees am growin' wabbly,
An' de rows am growin' long--
An' he's hoin' an' a-whis'lin' in de co'n!
W'en de fiery sun am smilin'
An' a-sinkin' in de wes',
An' de shadders creep along de dusty road;
W'en de martins am a-chatter'n'
An' dey hurry home to res',
An' de longes' row ob all am nea'ly hoed;
W'en de bullfrog 'gins to holler,
An' de cowbell down de lane
'Gins to tinkle in a way dat's mos' fo'lo'n,
Den amid de gloomy echoes
Comes dat soul-refreshin' strain--
Ob de darky as he whis'les in de co'n!
THE PILOT.
BY JOHN B. GOUGH.
John Maynard was well known in the lake district as a God-fearing, honest,
and intelligent man. He was pilot on a steamboat from Detroit to Buffalo.
One summer afternoon--at that time those steamers seldom carried
boats--smoke was seen ascending from below; and the captain called out,
"Simpson, go below and see what the matter is down there."
Simpson came up with his face as pale as ashes, and said, "Captain, the
ship is on fire!"
Then "Fire! fire! fire!" on shipboard.
All hands were called up; buckets of water were dashed on the fire, but in
vain. There were large quantities of rosin and tar on board, and it was
found useless to attempt to save the ship. The passengers rushed forward
and inquired of the pilot, "How far are we from Buffalo?"
"Seven miles."
"How long before we can reach there?"
"Three-quarters of an hour at our present rate of steam."
"Is there any danger?"
"Danger! Here, see the smoke bursting out!--go forward, if you would save
your lives!"
Passengers and crew--men, women and children--crowded the forward part of
the ship. John Maynard stood at the helm. The flames burst forth in a sheet
of fire; clouds of smoke arose.
The captain cried out through his trumpet, "John Maynard!"
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Are you at the helm?"
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"How does she head?"
"Southeast by east, sir."
"Head her southeast and run her on shore," said the captain. Nearer,
nearer, yet nearer she approached the shore. Again the captain cried out,
"John Maynard!"
The response came feebly this time, "Ay, ay, sir!"
"Can you hold on five minutes longer, John?" he said.
"By God's help, I will!"
The old man's hair was scorched from the scalp; one hand was disabled; his
knee upon the stanchion, his teeth set, his other hand upon the wheel, he
stood firm as a rock. He beached the ship; every man, woman, and child was
saved, as John Maynard dropped, and his spirit took its flight to God.
THE FATAL GLASS.
BY LAURA U. CASE.
He raised the cup to his pure, sweet lips--
Lips fresh from a mother's kisses;
Merry the banquet hall that night,
For youth and beauty were there, and bright
The glittering lamps shone o'er them;
And one had sung with a voice divine,
A song in praise of the ruby wine,
That graced the feast before them.
Little he dreamed as he lightly quaffed
The sparkling wine, that the first rare draught
Was a link in the chain to bind him,
And drag his soul, like a servile slave,
Down slippery steps to a shameful grave,
From a throne where love enshrined him.
She raised the cup to her tainted lips--
Lips foul with the vilest curses--
In a loathsome haunt of sin and shame,
Where Christian charity seldom came,
With its holy words to teach them
Of the pastures green and waters sweet--
Of her who wept at the Master's feet,
Whose boundless love could reach them.
Is love so dear, and life so cheap,
That one poor soul, like a wandering sheep,
Alone on the bleak, cold mountain,
Should gladly turn from a life accursed,
To drown the past and quench the thirst
In draughts from a poisonous fountain?
He raised the cup to his trembling lips--
Lips wrinkled by age and hunger;
The meagre pittance he'd begged for food,
Brightened the palm of the man who stood
At his bar with his wines around him.
He drank, and turned on tottering feet
To the bitter storm and the cold, dark street,
Where a corpse in the morn they found him.
And oh! could those speechless lips have told
Of the want and sorrow, hunger and cold
He had known, or the answer given,
When his trembling soul for entrance plead
At the crystal gates, where One has said,
"No drunkard shall enter Heaven!"
KATRINA'S VISIT TO NEW YORK.
Vell, von morning I says to Hans (Hans vos mein husband): "Hans, I tinks I
goes down to New York, und see some sights in dot village."
Und Hans he say: "Vell Katrina, you vork hard pooty mooch, I tinks it vould
petter be dot you goes und rest yourself some." So I gets meinself ready
righd avay quick und in two days I vos de shteam cars on vistling avay for
New York. Ve vent so fast I tinks mein head vould shplit sometimes. De
poles for dot delegraph vires goes by like dey vos mad und running a races
demselves mit to see vich could go de fastest mit de oder. De engine
vistled like sometimes it vos hurt bad, und screeched mit de pain, und de
horses by dem fields vould run as dey vas scared.
I vas pooty mooch as ten hours ven ve rushed into some houses so big enough
as all our village, und de cars begin to shtop vith so many leetle jerks I
dinks me I shall lose all de dinner vot I eat vile I vas coming all de vay
apoudt.
Vell, ven dem cars got shtopped, de peoples all got oudt und I picked mein
traps oup und got oudt too. I had shust shtepped de blatform on, ven so
mooch as ein hundert men, mit vips in dere hands, und dere fingers all in
de air oup, asked me all at vonce, "Vere I go?" Und every one of dem
fellers vanted me to go mit him to his hotel. But I tells em I guess not; I
vas going mit my brudder-mit-law, vot keeps ein pakeshop on de Powery, vere
it didn't cost me notings. So I got me in dot shtreet cars, und pays de man
mit brass buttons on his coat to let me oudt mit de shtreet vere dot Yawcup
Schneider leeves. Oh, my! vot lots of houses! De shtreets vos all ofer
filled mit dem. Und so many peoples I tinks me dere must be a fire, or a
barade, or some oxcitement vot gets de whole city in von blaces. It dakes
me so mooch time to look at everytings I forgot me ven to got oudt und
rides apast de blaces I vants to shtop to, und has to valk again pack mit
dree or four shquares. But I vind me dot brudder-mit-law who vos make me so
velcome as nefer vos.
Vell, dot vos Saturday mit de afternoon. I vas tired mit dot day's travel
und I goes me pooty quick to bed und ven I vakes in de morning de sun vas
high oup in de shky. But I gets me oup und puts on mein new silk vrock und
tinks me I shall go to some fine churches und hear ein grosse breacher. Der
pells vas ringing so schveet I dinks I nefer pefore hear such music. Ven I
got de shtreet on de beoples vos all going quiet und nice to dere blaces
mit worship, und I makes oup my mind to go in von of dem churches so soon
as von comes along. Pooty soon I comes to de von mit ein shteeples high oup
in de shky und I goes in mit de beoples und sits me down on ein seat all
covered mit a leetle mattress. De big organ vas blaying so soft it seemed
likes as if some angels must be dere to make dot music.
Pooty soon de breacher man shtood in de bulbit oup und read de hymn oudt,
und all de beoples sing until de churches vos filled mit de shweetness.
Den de breacher man pray, und read de Pible, und den he say dot de bulbit
would be occupied by de Rev. Villiam R. Shtover mit Leavenworth, Kansas.
Den dot man gommence to breach und he read mit his dext, "Und Simon's
vife's mudder lay sick mit a fever." He talks for so mooch as ein half hour
already ven de beoples sings again und goes homes. I tells mein
brudder-mit-law it vos so nice I tinks me I goes again mit some oder
churches. So vot you tinks? I goes mit anoder churches dot afternoon und
dot same Villiam R. Shtover vos dere und breach dot same sermon ofer again
mit dot same dext, "Und Simon's vife's mudder lay sick mit a fever." I
tinks to my ownself--dot vos too bad, und I goes home und dells Yawcup, und
he says, "Nefer mind, Katrina, to-night ve goes somevhere else to
churches." So ven de night vas come und de lamps vos all lighted mit de
shtreets, me und mein brudder-mit-law, ve goes over to dot Brooklyn town to
hear dot Heinrich Vard Peecher.
My but dot vos ein grosse church, und so many beobles vas dere, ve vas
crowded mit de vall back. Ven de singing vas all done, a man vot vos
sitting mit a leetle chair got oup und say dot de Rev. Heinrich Vard
Peecher vas to de Vhite Mountains gone mit dot hay fever, but dot de
bulbit vould be occupied on this occasion by de Rev. Villiam R. Shtover mit
Leavenworth, Kansas. Und dot Villiam R. Shtover he gots mit dot bulbit oup
und breaches dot same sermon mit dot same dext, "Und Simon's vife's mudder
lay sick mit a fever."
Dot vos too bad again und I gets mad. I vos so mad I vish dot he got dot
fever himself.
Vell, von dot man vas troo Yawcup says to me, "Come, Katrina, ve'll go down
to dot ferry und take de boat vot goes to New York!" Ven ve vas on dot boat
de fog vas so tick dot you couldn't see your hands pehind your pack. De
vistles vas plowing, und dem pells vos ringing, und von man shtepped up mit
Yawcup und say "Vot vor dem pells pe ringing so mooch?"
Und ven I looked around dere shtood dot Villiam R. Shtover mit Leavenworth,
Kansas--und I said pooty quick: "Vot vor dem pells vas ringing? Vy for
Simon's vife's mudder, vot must be died, for I hear dree times to-day
already dot she vas sick mit ein fever."
THE RABBI AND THE PRINCE.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
_Versified from the Talmud._
A monarch sat in serious thought, alone,
But little reck'd he of his robe and throne;
Naught valuing the glory of control,
He sought to solve the future of his soul.
"Why should I bow the proud, imperious knee,
To mighty powers no mortal eye can see?"
So mused he long and turned this question o'er,
Then, with impatient tread, he paced the floor,
Till maddened by conflicting trains of thought
And speculation vague, which came to naught,
With feverish haste he clutched a tasseled cord
As desperate hands, in battle, clutch a sword.
"Summon Jehoshua," the monarch cried.
The white-haired Rabbi soon was at his side.
*....*....*....*
"I bow no more to powers I cannot see;
Thy faith and learning shall be naught to me,
Unless, before the setting of the sun,
Mine eyes behold the uncreated one."
*....*....*....*
The Rabbi led him to the open air.
The oriental sun with furious glare
Sent down its rays, like beams of molten gold.
The aged teacher, pointing, said: "Behold."
"I cannot," said the Prince, "my dazzled eyes
Refuse their service, turned upon the skies."
*....*....*....*
"Son of the dust," the Rabbi gently said
And bowed, with reverence, his hoary head,
"This one creation, thou canst not behold,
Though by thy lofty state and pride made bold.
How canst thou then behold the God of Light,
Before whose face the sunbeams are as night?
Thine eyes before this trifling labor fall,
Canst gaze on him who hath created all?
Son of the dust, repentance can atone;
Return and worship God, who rules alone."
THE MAID OF ORLEANS.
BY J. E. SAGEBEER.
It was just at the dawn of day, when the first rays of morning were
breaking over Europe and dispelling the darkness of the Middle Ages. France
and England were engaged in a desperate struggle, the one for existence,
the other for a throne. All the western part of France had avowed the
English cause, and the English king had been proclaimed at Paris, at Rouen
and at Bordeaux, while the strongly fortified city of Orleans, the key to
the French possessions, was besieged. The thunder and lightning of the
battlefield are bad enough, but the starvation and pestilence of a besieged
city are infinitely worse. The supplies of Orleans were exhausted; the
garrison was reduced to a few desperate men, and the women and children had
been abandoned to the English. But far away on the border of Germany, in
the little village of Domremy, the Nazareth of France, God was raising up
a deliverer for Orleans, a savior for the nation.
The out-door life of a peasant girl had given to Joan of Arc a
well-developed form, while the beauties of her soul and the spiritual
tendencies of her nature must have given to her face that womanly beauty
that never fails to win respect and love. Her standard was a banner of
snowy silk; her weapon a sword, that from the day she first drew it from
its scabbard until she finally laid it down upon the grave of St. Denis,
was never stained with blood; and her inspiration was a self-sacrificing
devotion to the will of God, to the rights of France and her king. Without
a single opposing shot she passed under the very battlements of the
besieging English, and entered Orleans with soldiers for empty forts and
food for starving people.
It needed no eloquent speech to incite the men of Orleans to deeds of valor
and of vengeance. The ruins of their homes choked the streets; the
desolated city was one open sepulchre, while the cries of half-starved
children and the wails of heartbroken mothers, stirred them to such a mad
frenzy of enthusiasm, that now, since a leader had come, they would have
rushed headlong and thoughtlessly against the English forts as into a trap
of death.
And now the attack was planned and the lines were formed; and then as the
crumbling walls of the city echoed back the wild shouts of the Orleanites,
the maid of Domremy, waving her sword aloft and followed by her snowy
banner, led her Frenchmen on to slaughter and to victory. Then from the
English archers came flight after flight of swift-winged arrows, while the
wild catapults threw clouds of death-laden stones crashing among the
French. Broadsword and battle-axe clashed on shield and helmet, while the
wild horses, mad with rage and pain, rushed with fierce yells upon the foe;
but ever above the din and noise of battle, above death shouts and saber
strokes, though the dust and smoke obscured her banner, ever could be heard
the clear, ringing voice of their leader, shouting for victory and for
France. An arrow pierced her bosom, but drawing it out with her own hand
and throwing it aside, she showed the French her blood-stained corselet,
and once more urged them on. As when the Archangel Michael, leading the
heavenly cohorts, forced the rebellious angels to the very brink of hell,
then hurled them over and so saved the throne of heaven, so did the maid of
Orleans, leading on frenzied Frenchmen, press back the English step by
step, and slaughtered rank by rank, till the whole army turned and fled,
and Orleans was free and France was safe.
And now her work was done. Would that some kindly voice had bade her now
go home to tend the sheep and roll their white wool on her distaff! But she
who had raised the siege of Orleans and led the way to Rheims, could not
escape a jealous fate. The Duke of Burgundy had laid siege to Compiegne.
Joan of Arc went to the rescue and was repulsed, and while bravely fighting
in the rear of her retreating troops, fell prisoner to the recreant French
and was sold by them to the English. For one long year she languished in
her prison tower. Her keepers insulted her and called her a witch; and when
in desperation she sprang from the tower and was taken up insensible, they
loaded her poor body with chains, and two guards stayed in her cell day and
night.
Her trial came, but her doom was already sealed. The Bishop of Beauvais,
with a hundred doctors of theology, were her judges. Without a particle of
evidence against her, they convicted her of sorcery and sentenced her to be
burnt at the stake. A howl of fiendish joy went up from the blood-thirsty
court of Paris,--a howl of fiendish joy that made its way to every
battlefield where she had fought; it rang against the rescued walls of
Orleans and was echoed to the royal court at Rheims; it reached to the
bottomless pit and made the imps of Satan dance with glee; it echoed
through the halls of heaven and made the angels weep; but there was no
rescuer for the helpless girl. Even the gladiator, forced into the fight,
against his will, when fallen in the arena, his sword broken and the
enemy's knee upon his breast, might yet hope for "thumbs down," and mercy
from the hard-hearted Roman spectators. But not a single hand was raised to
save the maid of Domremy, the saviour of Orleans.
Had she not faithfully done her work? Had she not bled for them? Had she
not saved the kingdom? And in all chivalrous France was there not a
champion to take up the gauntlet in defence of a helpless girl? When she
led their armies, their spears blazed in heaven's sunlight; now they would
quench them in her blood. With scarcely time to think of death, she was
hurried away to the public square and chained to the stake, and when the
fagots were fired, more painful than the circling flames, she heard the
mocking laugh of the angry crowd. Higher and higher rose the flames, until,
pressing the cross to her heart, her unconscious head sank upon her bosom,
and her pure spirit went up amid the smoke and soared away to heaven.
GENTLE ALICE BROWN.
BY W. S. GILBERT.
[This is one of the Bab-Ballads, on which the very
successful comic opera "Pinafore" was founded.]
It was a robber's daughter, and her name was Alice Brown,
Her father was the terror of a small Italian town;
Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing;
But it isn't of her parents that I'm going for to sing.
As Alice was a sitting at her window-sill one day,
A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way;
She cast her eyes upon, and he looked so good and true,
That she thought: "I could be happy with a gentleman like you!"
And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen,
She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten;
A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road
(The Custom-house was fifteen minutes' walk from her abode).
But Alice was a pious girl, who knew it wasn't wise
To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes;
So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed,
The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.
"Oh, holy father," Alice said, "'twould grieve you, would it not,
To discover that I was a most disreputable lot?
Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one!"
The padre said: "Whatever have you been and gone and done?"
"I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad,
I've assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad,
I've planned a little burglary and forged a little check,
And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!"
The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear,
And said: "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear;
It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece;
But sins like these one expiates at half a crown apiece.
"Girls will be girls--you're very young, and flighty in your mind;
Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find:
We mustn't be too hard upon these little girlish tricks--
Let's see--five crimes at half-a-crown--exactly twelve-and-six."
"Oh, father!" little Alice cried, "your kindness makes me weep,
You do these little things for me so singularly cheap--
Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget;
But, oh! there is another crime I haven't mentioned yet!
"A pleasant looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,
I've noticed at my window, as I've sat acatching flies;
He passes by it every day as certain as can be--
I blush to say I've winked at him, and he has winked at me!"
"For shame!" said father Paul, "my erring daughter! On my word
This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard.
Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand
To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!
"This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parent so!
They are the most remunerative customers I know;
For many, many years they've kept starvation from my doors;
I never knew so criminal a family as yours!
"The common country folk in this insipid neighborhood
Have nothing to confess, they're so ridiculously good;
And if you marry any one respectable at all.
Why, you'll reform, and what will then become of Father Paul?"
The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown,
And started off in haste to tell the news to Robber Brown--
To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit,
Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.
Good Robber Brown he muffled up his anger pretty well;
He said: "I have a notion, and that notion I will tell;
I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits,
And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.
"I've studied human nature, and I know a thing or two:
Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do--
A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall
When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small."
He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square;
He watched his opportunity, and seized him unaware;
He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head,
And Mrs. Brown dissected him before she went to bed.
And pretty little Alice grew more settled in her mind,
She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind,
Until at length good Robber Brown bestowed her pretty hand
On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.
YOUNG AMERICA.
The central figure was a bareheaded woman with a broom in her hand. She
stood on the back step, and was crying:
"George!"
There was no response, but anybody who had been on the other side of the
close-boarded fence at the foot of the garden might have observed two boys
intently engaged in building a mud pie.
"That's your mother hollerin' Georgie," said one of the two, placing his
eye to a knothole and glancing through to the stoop.
"I don't care," said the other.
"Ain't you going in?"
"No!"
"Georgie!" came another call, short and sharp; "do you hear me?"
There was no answer.
"Where is she now?" inquired Georgie, putting in the filling of the pie.
"On the stoop," replied his friend at the knothole.
"What's she doin'?"
"Ain't doin' nothin'."
"George Augustus!"
Still no answer.
"You needn't think you can hide from me, young man, for I can see you, and
if you don't come in here at once, I'll come out there in a way that you'll
know it."
Now this was an eminently natural statement, but hardly plausible as her
eyes would have had to pierce an inch board fence to see Georgie; and even
were this possible, it would have required a glance in that special
direction, and not over the top of a pear tree in an almost opposite way.
Even the boy at the knothole could hardly repress a smile.
"What's she doin' now?" inquired Georgie.
"She stands there yet."
"I won't speak to you again, George Augustus," came the voice. "Your father
will be home in a few minutes, and I shall tell him all about what you have
done."
Still no answer.
"Ain't you afraid?" asked the conscientious young man, drawing his eye from
the knothole to rest it.
"No! she won't tell pa; she never does, she only says it to scare me."
Thus enlightened and reassured, the guard covered the knothole again.
"Ain't you acoming in here, young man?" again demanded the woman, "or do
you want me to come out there to you with a stick? I won't speak to you
again, sir!"
"Is she comin'?" asked the baker.
"No."
"Which way is she lookin'?"
"She's lookin' over in the other yard."
"Do you hear me, I say?" came the call again.
No answer.
"George Augustus! do you hear your mother?"
Still no answer.
"Oh, you just wait, young man, till your father comes home, and he'll make
you hear, I'll warrant ye."
"She's gone in now," announced the faithful sentinel, withdrawing from his
post.
"All right! take hold of this crust and pull it down on that side, and
that'll be another pie done," said the remorse-stricken George Augustus.
SHWATE KITTIE KEHOE.
BY JAMES CLARENCE HARVEY.
Shwate Kittie Kehoe,
Can ye tell, I do' know.
Phwat the mischief's about ye that bothers me so?
For there's that in yer eye.
That I wish I may die
If it doesn't pursue me wherever I go.
Och hone!
Shwate Kitty Kehoe.
It's a livin' disgrace
That yer shwate purty face
Should be dhrivin' me sinses all over the place!
I go this way an' that,
Loike a man fur a hat,
Wid the wind up an alley-way, runnin' a race.
Och hone!
Shwate Kittie Kehoe.
Oh! Faith, but I'm sad,
Fur to know that I'm mad,
That only intinsifies all that is bad;
But phwat can I do,
Whin a shwate smile from you
Turns everythin' rosy and makes me sowl glad?
Och hone!
Shwate Kittie Kehoe.
Shwate Kittie Kehoe,
I beg of ye, go
To the outermost inds of the earth, I do' know;
If ye'll only do this,
Jist lave me wan kiss,
An' I'll die whin yer sthartin', Shwate Kittie Kehoe.
Och hone! Och hone!
Shwate Kittie Kehoe.
THE COUNTRY'S GREATEST EVIL.
[A short speech by Vice-President Henry Wilson,
delivered at the National Temperance Convention, in
Chicago, June, 1875.]
Forty years of experience and observation have taught me that the greatest
evil of our country, next, at any rate, to the one that has gone down in
fire and blood to rise no more, is the evil of intemperance. Every day's
experience, every hour of reflection, teaches me that it is the duty of
patriotism, the duty of humanity, the duty of Christianity, to live
Christian lives, and to exert temperance influence among the people.
There was a time, when I was younger than I am now, when I hoped to live
long enough to see the cause which my heart loves and my judgment approves
stronger than it is to-day. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the
present is a rather dark and troubled night for that cause, and it is
because it so seems to me that I believe it to be the duty of every honest,
conscientious, self-sacrificing man of our country to speak and to work for
the cause in every legitimate and proper way. And my reliance for the
advancement of the cause of temperance is the same reliance which I have
for the spread of the Gospel of our Divine Lord and Master.
The heart, the conscience and the reason must be appealed to continually;
and Christian men and women must remember that the heart of Christianity is
temperance. If it costs a sacrifice, give it. What is sacrifice to doing
good and lifting toward heaven our fellow-men? We have got to rely on
appeals and addresses made to
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/38579