cow, for she heard Mrs. Twiddler say yesterday that the cow was sick.

For four weeks I could get nothing out of that horn but blood-curdling groans; and, meantime, the people over the way moved to another house because our neighborhood was haunted, and three of our hired girls resigned successively for the same reason.

Finally, a man whom I consulted told me that "No One to Love" was an easy tune for beginners; and I made an effort to learn it.

After three weeks of arduous practice, during which Mrs. A. several times suggested that it was brutal that Twiddler didn't kill that suffering cow and put it out of its misery, I conquered the first three notes; but there I stuck. I could play “No One to and that was all. I performed "No One to sand times; and as it seemed unlikely that I would ever learn the whole tune, I determined to try the effect of part of it on Mrs. A. About ten o'clock one night I crept

over eight thou

out to the front of the house and struck up. First, "No One to -" about fifteen or twenty times, then a few of those groans, then more of the tune, and so forth. Then Butterwick set his dog on me, and I suddenly went into the house. Mrs. A. had the children in the back room and she was standing behind the door with my revolver in her hand. When I entered, she exclaimed, "Oh, I'm so glad you've come home! Somebody's been murdering a man in our yard. He uttered the most awful shrieks and cries I ever heard. I was dreadfully afraid the murderers would come into the house. It's perfectly fearful, isn't it?"

Then I took the revolver away from her-it was not loaded, and she had no idea that it would have to be cocked-and went to bed without mentioning the horn. I thought perhaps it would be better not to. I sold it the next day; and now if I want music I shall buy a good hand-organ. I know I can play on that.

LIGHT-WILLIAM PITT PALMER.

From the quickened womb of the primal gloom
The sun rolled black and bare,

Till I wove him a vest for his Ethiop breast
Of the threads of my golden hair;

And when the broad tent of the firmament
Arose on its airy spars,

I penciled the hue of its matchless blue,
And spangled it round with stars.

I painted the flowers of the Eden bowers,
And their leaves of living green,

And mine were the dyes in the sinless eyes
Of Eden's virgin queen ;

And when the fiend's art on her trustful heart
Had fastened its mortal spell,

In the silvery sphere of the first-born tear

To the trembling earth I fell.

When the waves that burst o'er a world accursed

Their work of wrath had sped,

And the ark's lone few, the tried and true,

Came forth among the dead;

With the wondrous gleams of my braided beams,

I bade their terrors cease,

As I wrote, on the roll of the storm's dark scroll,
God's covenant of peace!

Like a pall at rest on a senseless breast,

Night's funeral shadow slept,

Where shepherd swains on the Bethlehem plains
Their lonely vigils kept,

When I flashed on their sight the heralds bright
Of heaven's redeeming plan,

As they chanted the morn of a Saviour born-
Joy, joy to the outcast man.

Equal favor I show to the lofty and low,

On the just and unjust I descend;

E'en the blind, whose vain spheres roll in darkness and

tears,

Feel my smile, the blest smile of a friend.

Nay, the flower of the waste by my love is embraced,

As the rose in the garden of kings;

At the chrysalis bier of the worm I appear,
And lo! the gay butterfly's wings.

The desolate morn, like a mourner forlorn,
Conceals all the pride of her charms,

Till I bid the bright hours chase the night from her bowers
And lead the young day to her arms;

And when the gay rover seeks Eve for his lover,
And sinks to her balmy repose,

I wrap their soft rest by the zephyr-fanned west,
In curtains of amber and rose.

From my sentinel steep, by the night-brooded deep,
I gaze with unslumbering eye,

When the eynosure star of the mariner

Is blotted from out of the sky;

And guided by me through the merciless sea,
Though sped by the hurricane's wings,
His compassless bark, lone, weltering, dark,
To the haven-home, safely he brings.

I waken the flowers in their dew-spangled bowers,
The birds in their chambers of green,

And mountain and plain glow with beauty again
As they bask in my matinal sheen.

Oh, if such the glad worth of my presence to earth,
Though fitful and fleeting the while,

What glories must rest on the home of the blest,
Ever bright with the Deity's smile!

DIRGE.-CHARLES G. EASTMAN.

Softly! She is lying
With her lips apart.
Softly! She is dying
Of a broken heart.

Whisper! She is going
To her final rest.
Whisper! Life is growing
Dim within her breast.

Gently! She is sleeping;
She has breathed her last.
Gently! While you're weeping,
She to heaven has passed.

THE SNOW OF AGE.

No snow falls lighter than the snow of age; but none is heavier, for it never melts.

The figure is by no means novel, but the closing part of the sentence is new as well as emphatic. The Scriptures represent age by the almond-tree, which bears blossoms of the purest white. "The almond-tree shall flourish"-the head shall be hoary. Dickens says of one of his characters whose hair was turning gray, that it looked as if Time had lightly sprinkled his snows upon it in passing.

"It never melts"-no never. Age is inexorable. Its wheels must move onward-they know no retrograde movement. The old man may sit and sing, "I would I were a boy again"-but he grows older as he sings. He may read of the elixir of youth, but he cannot find it; he may sigh for the secrets of that alchemy which is able to make him young again, but sighing brings it not. may gaze backward with an eye of longing upon the rosy scenes of early years, as one who gazes on his home from the deck of a departing ship which every moment carries him farther and farther away. Poor old man! he has little more to do than die.

66

He

'It never melts." The snow of winter comes and sheds its white blessings upon the valley and the mountains, but soon the sweet spring comes and smiles it all away. Not so with that upon the brow of the tottering veteran. There is no spring whose warmth can penetrate its eternal frost. It came to stay. Its single flakes fell unnoticed-and now it is drilled there. We shall see it increase until we lay the old man in his grave. There it shall be absorbed by the eternal darkness-for there is no age in heaven.

Yet why speak of age in a mournful strain? It is beautiful, honorable, eloquent. Should we sigh at the proximity of death, when life and the world are so full of emptiness? Let the old exult because they are old. If any must weep, let it be the young, at the long succes

sion of cares that are before them. Welcome the snow, for it is the emblem of peace and of rest. It is but a temporal crown which shall fall at the gates of paradise, to be replaced by a brighter and a better.

THE PERVERSE HEN.

Once with an honest Dutchman walking,
About his troubles he was talking;
The most of which seemed to arise
From friends' and wife's perversities.
When he took breath his pipe to fill,
I ventured to suggest that will
Was oft the cause of human ill;
That life was full of self-denials,
And every man had his own trials.
""Tis not the will," he quick replied,
"But it's the won't by which I'm tried.
When people will, I'm always glad;
'Tis only when they won't I'm mad!
Contrary folks, are like mine hen,
Who lays a dozen eggs, and then
Instead of sitting down to hatch,
Runs off into mine garden patch!
I goes and catches her and brings her
And back into her nest I flings her;
But sit she won't, for all I say,
She's up again and runs away.
Then I was mad, as mad as fire,
But once again I thought I'd try her,
So after her I soon made chase,
And brings her back to the old place,
And then I snaps her a great deal,
And does my best to make her feel
That she must do as she was bid;
But not a bit of it she did.
She was the most contrariest bird
Of which I ever saw or heard;
Before I'd turn my back again,
Was running off that wilful hen.
Thinks I, I'm now a 'used up' man;
I must adopt some other plan;
I'll fix her now, for if I don't,