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Then just as we reached whar the poor creetur lay,
He grabbed a tight hold of her arm,

An' raised her right up so's to throw her one side
Out o' reach of danger an' harm.

But somehow he slipped an' fell with his head
On the rail as he throw'd the young lass,
An' the pilot in strikin' him, ground up his face
In a frightful and horrible mass !

"As soon as we stopped I backed up the train
To that spot where the poor fellow lay,
An' there sot the gal with his head in her lap
An' wipin' the warm blood away.

The tears rolled in torrents right down from her eyes,

While she sobbed like her heart war all broke

I tell you, my friend, such a sight as that ar'
Would move the tough heart of an oak!

"We put Jim aboard an' run back to town,
Whar for week arter week the boy lay
A hovern' right in the shadder o' death,
An' that gal by his bed every day.

But nursin' an' doctorin' brought him around-
Kinder snatched him right outer the grave-
His face ain't so han'some as 'twar, but his heart
Remains just as noble an' brave.

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"Of course thar's a sequel-as story books say—

He fell dead in love, did this Jim;

But he hadn't the heart to ax her to have

Sich a batter'd-up rooster as him.

She know'd how he felt, and last New Year's day
War the fust o' leap year as you know,

So she jist cornered Jim an' proposed on the spot,
An' you bet he didn't say no.

"He's building a house up thar on the hill,
An' has laid up a snug pile o' cash,

The weddin's to be on the first o' next May-
Jist a year from the day o' the mash-

The gal says he risked his dear life to save hers,
An' she'll just turn the tables about,

An' give him the life that he saved-thar's the bell.
Good day, sir, we're goin' to pull out."

IKE'S COMPOSITION ON THE HORSE.

B. P. SHILLABER.

The horse is a quadruped with four legs-two behind, and two before. He has a tail that grows on to the hind part of his body, that nature has furnished him, with which to drive the flies away. His head is situated on the other end, opposite his tail, and is used principally to fasten a bridle to, to drive him by, and to put into a basket to eat oats with. Horses are very useful animals, and people couldn't get along very well without them-especially truckmen and onimbus-drivers, who don't seem to be half grateful enough because they've got 'em. They are very convenient animals in the country in vacation time, and go very fast over the country roads when boys stick pins into 'em, a species of cruelty that I wouldn't encourage. Horses are generally covered with red hair, though some are white, and others are gray and black. Nobody ever saw a blue horse, which is considered very strange by eminent naturalists. The horse is quite an intelligent animal, and can sleep standing up, which is a very convenient gift, especially where there is a crowd and it is difficult to get a chance to lay down. There is a great variety of horses-fast horses and slow horses, clothes'-horses, horsemackerel, saw-horses, horse-flies, horse-chestnuts, and horseradish. The clothes'-horse is a very quiet animal to have round a house, and is never known to kick, though very apt to raise a row when it gets capsized. The same may be said of the saw-horse, which will stand without tieing. Horse-flies is

a very vicious beast, and very annoying in the summer, when a fellow is in swimming.

Horse-mackerel I don't know anything about, only that they swim in the water, and are a species of fish. Horse-chestnuts is prime to pelt Mickeys with, and horse-radish is a mighty smart horse, but bad to have standing round where there's small children.

The horse is found in all countries, principally in liverystables, where they may be hired to run by the mile, considered by them as can get money a great luxury, especially in the sleighing season. In South America they grow wild, and the Indians catch them with nooses, that they throw over the horses' heads, which must be thought, by the horses, a great

noosance.

THE BACKWOODSMEN.

A. BURLINGAME.

The great spirit of the backwoods has been felt in our country's destiny. We have heard its manly eloquence in Congress, where it has sometimes seized with rude hand the sceptre of power. Give it a more cultivated intelligence, impress it with a higher morality, and it will breathe its thoughts round the world in language worthy of Milton, Chatham and Shakespeare.

I have spoken warmly of the backwoodsmen, for I could do no otherwise. Their strong arms shielded my boyhood, and my memory is full of their wild border tales. The bold lines of their character are fast fading out. They themselves are falling like autumn leaves. In a few more years "the places which now know them shall know them no more forever." Already the sound of the settler's axe and the hunter's rifle grows fainter in the forest. The " voyageur's" songs have died away from our western waters. Gone, too, are the "rangers of the woods," with their bright eyes and irrepressible spirits; and the poor Indians, those down-trodden children of nature, are pressing with their flying feet the leaves of a still more distant wilderness.

The railroad track has obliterated the Indian trail, and the iron horse awakens new echoes in the forest. Upon the broad foundations laid by the hardy woodsmen in the midst of unutterable sorrows, and along the huge paths beaten by buffaloes' hoofs before the courage of man struggled with the wilderness, there has sprung up a civilization, which, for energy and magnificence, is without a parallel in the world's history. It outruns the imagination of the poet, who tells us

"A thousand years scarce serve to form a state."

In our time, states are born of the wild wood in a day, with rights the Romans never knew, and clothed with more than the thunders of Olympian Jove. O little thought Boone and a few straggling hunters, as they passed through the gap of the Alleghanies, long ago, and hid themselves in the reeds fringing the great rivers of the West, that they were the van of a mighty empire. Little thought Dr. Cutler, when he went forth from Beverly, in Massachusetts, and first settled in Ohio, that the first spot where his feet should find rest would become the home of commerce, and the birth-place of ships swifter and grander than those which went forth annually from his early home to the land of the Orient. Little thought the brave men who filled the valleys of the Muskingum, the Maumee, the Wabash, and the Kaskaskias, that ere the grass would grow green upon their graves, mighty cities would spring up where the wolf howled; that the Christian's shining cross would stand where the Indian told his love and breathed his prayer to the offended Manito; that the lakes, so calm, so still, more beautiful than the blue sea beyond the pillars of Hercules, would whiten with sails, and literally murmur with the rush of keels; that the rivers upon which they gazed in silent wonder, whose sources were away in hills beyond the regions of their imaginations, would bear on their bosoms the rich argosies of ten millions of people; and that steamboats, not then born in the brain of their inventor, would go roaring down their waters with a thousand men on their decks. These things they have seen,we have seen. They are more like magic, or the dream of some fairy tale, than like reality. Yet still the mighty stream of

emigration pours westward. "At first a little rivulet, winding its way through some beautiful valley, now fed by a thousand springs welling up by the wayside, anon increased by other rills mingling with its smiling waters, it has flowed on, and rolled onward, widening and deepening its channel, until now it laves with its rising flood the base of the stony mountains." Ay, it has overleaped them, and this day pours its wild torrents of living, breathing humanity upon the far-off shores of the peaceful Pacific. The star of empire has passed the Atlantic slope, and now stands glittering above the summit of the Alleghanies. In a few more years it will have sped its way to the regions of the setting sun; for true is it now, as in the days of Bishop Berke. ley, that

"Westward the course of empire takes its way."

THE IRISH PICKET.

ORPHEUS C. KERR.

I'm shtandin' in the mud, Biddy,

Wid not a sintry near,

An' silence spacheless as the grave

Is all the sound I hear.

Me gun is at a shouldher arms,

I'm wetted to the bone,

An' whin I'm afther shpakin' out,

I find mesilf alone.

This Southern climate's quare, Biddy,

A quare and bastely thing,

Wid winter absent all the year

And summer in the spring.

Ye mind the hot place down below,
And may ye niver fear

I'd dhraw comparisons-but then

It's awful warrum here.

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