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Is the soul confused? Why not, when the divine Spirit, rolling clear across the aerial ocean, breaks upon the heart's shore with all the mystery of heaven? Is it strange that uncertain lights dim the eye, if above the head of him that truly loves hover clouds of saintly spirits? Why should not the tongue stammer and refuse its accustomed offices, when all the world-skies, trees, plains, hills, atmosphere, and the solid earth-springs forth in new colors, with strange meanings, and seems to chant for the soul the glory of that mystic Law with which God has bound to himself his infinite realm, -the law of Love? Then, for the first time, when one so loves that love is sacrifice, death to self, resurrection, and glory, is man brought into harmony with the whole universe; and, like him who beheld the seventh heaven, hears things unlawful to be uttered.

The great elm-trees sighed as the fitful breeze swept their tops. The soft shadows flitted back and forth beneath the walker's feet, fell upon them in light and dark, ran over the ground, quivered and shook, until sober Cathcart thought that his heart was throwing its shifting network of hope and fear along the ground before him.

How strangely his voice sounded to him, as, at length, all his emotions could only say, “Rachel,-how did you like the sermon?"

Quietly she answered,

"I liked the text."

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"A new commandment I write unto you, that ye love one another.' Rachel, will you help me keep it?"

At first she looked down and lost a little color; then, raising her face, she turned upon him her large eyes, with a look both clear and tender. It was as if some painful restraint had given way, and her eyes blossomed into full beauty.

Not another word was spoken. They walked home hand in hand. He neither smiled nor exulted. He saw neither the trees, nor the long level rays of sunlight that were slanting across the fielas. His soul was overshadowed with a cloud as if God were drawing near. He had never felt so solemn. This woman's life had been intrusted to him!

Long years, the whole length of life,-the eternal years beyond, seemed in an indistinct way to rise up in his imagi

nation. All that he could say, as he left her at the door, was,

"Rachel, this is forever-forever."

She again said nothing, but turned to him with a clear and open face, in which joy and trust wrought beauty. It seemed to him as if a light fell upon him from her eyes. There was a look that descended and covered him as with in atmosphere; and all the way home he was as one walking in a luminous cloud. He had never felt such personal dignity as now. He that wins such love is crowned, and may call himself king. He did not feel the earth under his feet. As he drew near Itis lodgings, the sun went down. The children began to pour forth, no longer restrained. Abiah turned to his evening chores. No animal that night but had reason to bless him. The children found him unusilly good and tender. And Aunt Keziah said to her sis

ter,

"Abiah's been goin' to meetin' very regular for some weeks, and I shouldn't wonder, by the way he looks, if he had got a hope. I trust he ain't deceivin' himself."

He had a hope, and he was not deceived; for in a few months, at the close of the service one Sunday morning, the minister read from the pulpit: “Marriage is intended between Abiah Cathcart and Rachel Liscomb, both of this town, and this is the first publishing of the banns."

LOST MR. BLAKE.-W. S. GILBERT.

Mr. Blake was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner,
Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to speak.
He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking a
glass of grog on Sunday after dinner,

And seldom thought of going to church more than twice or-if Good Friday or Christmas Day happened to com in it-three times a week.

He was quite indifferent as to the special kinds of dresses That the clergyman wore at the church where he used to go to pray,

And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chap's distresses,

He always did in a sneaking, underhanded, hole-and-corner sort of way.

I have known him indulge in profane, ungentlemanly emphatics,

When the Protestant Church has been divided on the subject of the proper width of a chasuble's hem;

I have even known him to sneer at albs-and as for dalmatics,

Words can't convey an idea of the contempt he expressed for them.

He didn't believe in persons who, not being well off themselves, are obliged to confine their charitable exertions to collecting money from wealthier people,

And looked upon individuals of the former class as ecclesiastical hawks;

He used to say that he would no more think of interfering with his priest's robes than with his church or his steeple,

And that he did not consider his soul imperilled because somebody over whom he had no influence whatever, chose to dress himself up like an exaggerated Guy Fawkes.

This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably shameless That he actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middle-aged sister, by the name of Biggs. She was a rather attractive widow, whose life as such had always been particularly blameless;

Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate com petence, owing to some fortunate speculations in the matter of figs.

She was an excellent person in every way-and won the re spect even of Mrs. Grundy,

She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn't have wasted a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor. She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of Sun day,

And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she took all the old bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends, (when she had quite done with them,) and made them into an excellent soup for the deserving poor.

I am sorry to say that she rather took to Blake-that outcast of society,

And when respectable brothers who were fond of her be gan to look dubious and to cough,

She would say, "Oh, my friends, its because I hope to bring this poor benighted soul back to virtue and propriety, And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults was uncommonly well off.

And when Mr. Blake's dissipated friends called his attention to the frown or the pout of her,

Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savor of an unmentionable place,

He would say she would be a very decent old girl when all that nonsense was knocked out of her,

And his method of knocking it out of her is one that cov. ered him with disgrace.

She was fond of going to church services four times every Sunday, and four or five times in the week, and nevei seemed to pall of them,

So he hunted out all the churches within a convenient distance that had services at different hours, so to speak; And when he had married her he positively insisted upon their going to all of them,

So they contrived to do about twelve churches every Sunday, and, if they had luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in the course of the week.

She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously into the plate, and she liked to see them stand out rather conspicuously against the commonplace half-crowns and shillings,

So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by any extraordinary chance there wasn't a charity sermon anywhere, he would drop a couple of sovereigns (one for him and one for her,) into the poor-box at the door;

And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity from the housekeeping money, and the money he allowed her for her bonnets and frillings,

She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it to interfere with your personal luxuries, becomes an intolerable bore.

On Sundays she was always melancholy and anything but good society,

For that day in her household was a day of sighings and sobbings and wringing of hands and shaking of heads;

She wouldn't hear of a button being sewn on a glove, because it was a work neither of necessity nor of piety, And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the parlor dinner, waiting generally on the family, and making the beds.

But Blake went even further than that, and said that people should do their own works of necessity, and not deiegate them to persons in a menial situation,

So he wouldn't allow his servants to do so much as even answer a bell.

Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath to the second floor, much against her inclination,— And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates these ballads has put him in a cocked hat is more than I can tell.

After about three months of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with the rough of it,

(Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was not her notion of connubial bliss,)

Mrs. Blake began to find that she had pretty nearly had enough of it,

And came, in course of time, to think that Blake's own original line of conduct wasn't so much amiss.

And now that wicked person-that detestable sinner (“Belial Blake" his friends and well-wishers call him for his atrocities,)

And his poor deluded victim, whom all her Christian brothers dislike and pity so,

Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoon and occasionally on a week-day, and spend their evenings in connubial fondlings and affectionate reciprocities,

And I should like to know where in the world (or rather, out of it) they expect to go.

SHALL THE BABY STAY?

In a little brown house,

With scarce room for a mouse,

Came with morning's first ray,
One remarkable day,

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