A CHRISTMAS-EVE REDEMPTION.

HAMILTON AIDE.

WAS Christmas eve.

'TWA

The frost lay on the road,

And moonlight smote with silver all the fields

Around the gable-ends of an old house

That stood alone beyond the village street;

Alone, unvisited by priest, or friend,

Shunn'd as plague stricken, while its casements flashed From their blue diamonds not one welcoming light

To the wayfarer. All was dark within;

Dark without hope,-save that the clear, white moon
Shone, like God's truth, upon the good and ill
That the room held, wherein a sinful man
Lay dying. On one side his bed, there stood
A woman, who had journeyed here in haste,
Flush'd, as the marble statue may be flush'd
By wrathful torchlight. On the other knelt
A creature, shaken in her dumb despair,

Crush'd, tear-stain'd. He had been untrue to both,-
Untrue to vows he pledged unto the one

Before the altar,-pledged for weight of gold

Untrue to honor, lying, while he loved

The other one, betrayed.

The impartial moon

Lit the thin outline of the unloved wife,

Hard, upright, just, and touched the head, bow'd low

Of her who knelt; and made a halo round

A gold-hair'd child, who played upon the floor,

With strings of daisies. O'er the wasted face

Of him who lay a-dying, it fell full,

As on an open book wherein was writ
Remorse; no coward dread of punishment
For self, but a great fear for those

He left behind, whose ruin he had wrought.

Then spake the wife to her who knelt, "Go forth!
My place is here, beside my dying lord-
Whom God hath join'd, let no man put asunder.”
The woman gave an inarticulate cry;

The child, unconscious, wove its chain of stars.
"Oh, pardon,—pardon!" moaned the hapless one.
"I wronged you-yes! but knew not all the wrong.
I ask your mercy, as I ask for Christ's.

He who forgave a sinner once, like me,
Perhaps He will not shut me out!"

The wife replied.

"I do,'

"We cannot both stay here.

The house is mine. You took my husband's love.

His soul-his body-all belong to you.

My home made desolate-my reverence lost,

My faith destroy'd in man.

Loveless, alone,

No baby-blossom at my breast, have I

Toiled on.

Your deed! Living, he was all yours;
Dead, he is mine. Mine now the right to close
The eyes that never yet have look'd with joy
Into mine eyes, as they have into yours!
Why do I claim that right? Why am I come?
Because I would redeem him yet,-save him
From passing hence, with unrepented sin."

Then gasped the dying man, "I do repent
The more, because I see her agony.
Mine, only mine, the sin-not hers-not hers!
She knew not I was wed. She gave her life-
She, a mere child—into my keeping.

It is in yours.

Be merciful to her.

Now,

Thrust her not out. You, blameless, holy, pure,
Since all is past, and sin outlives not life,

Will you not stoop to lift the fallen up ?"
"Sin doth outlive life," she, in haste, replied.

"There is the child-not mine, but hers. And yet, I would not harm it, nor its mother.

So,

If poor lip-pardon that can never reach
The inner heart of wrongs suffice to soothe
Your dying hour, 'tis yours,-'tis hers. But let
Her presence here no more distract your thoughts
From Heaven, nor outrage me, your wife."

At once,

That frail young creature, white as drifted snow, Trembling, arose. "The right is yours." She bowed Her head. "O love! loved only here too well,

We part, but not for long-stricken unto death

Am I, and shall not linger far behind.

Only "and here her voice broke down-"the child-
To leave him motherless,-without a friend!"
Suddenly, voices from the village choir,
Singing from house to house their Christmas song,
Rose in the frosty night, exultant, clear,
As those the Shepherds heard in Bethlehem.

"Hark! The herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King!
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled ?"

It seemed to her who stood beside that bed--
The embittered wife who never had known peace-
A message straight from Him. And she beheld
The heavens open, and she saw His face

Fill'd with divine compassion for the sins
And suffering of His creatures; and she heard
A voice like music, "Inasmuch as ye
Have done it unto one, the least of Mine,
Ye did it unto Me.”

Then all the ice

Frozen by winters on her heart seemed broke,
And pity welled up, as she took the babe
In her wide-open arms, and said, "So be it.
When both are gone, your child shall be as mine,

I take this sacred charge; and if it please
The Lord, the void of love in my lone life
May be refilled.”

Then the glazed eyes of him
Who heard her sought, with tenderness unknown
Before, his wife's eyes. The cold fingers pressed
Her hand. That touch healed all the wounded past,
For, as she stooped to catch the last faint breath,
"Kiss me!" he whispered-and so passed away.

EGYPTIAN SLIPPERS.

EDWIN ARNOLD.

INY slippers of gold and green,

a

Tied with a mouldering, golden cord!
What pretty feet they must have been
When Cæsar Augustus was Egypt's lord!
Somebody graceful and fair you were.
Not many girls could dance in these!
When did your shoemaker make you, dear,
Such a nice pair of Egyptian "threes ? "

Where were you measured? In Sais, or On,
Memphis, or Thebes, or Pelusium ?
Fitting them featly your brown toes upon,
Lacing them deftly with finger and thumb,
I seem to see you!—so long ago,

Twenty-one centuries, less or more,

And here are your sandals; yet none of us know
What name, or fortune, or face you bore.

Your lips would have laughed with a rosy scorn

If the merchant, or slave-girl had mockingly said, "The feet will pass, but the shoes they have worn, Two thousand years onward, Time's road shall tread,

And still be foot-gear as good as new!"

To think that calf-skin, gilded and stitched,
Should Rome and the Pharaohs outlive-and you
Be gone like a dream from the world you bewitched.

Not that we mourn you. 'Twere too absurd;
You have been such a very long while away.
Your dry spiced dust would not value one word
Of the soft regrets that my verse could say.
Sorrow and pleasure, and love and hate,
If you ever felt them, have vaporized hence
To this odor-so subtle and delicate--

Of myrrh, and cassia, and frankincense.

Of course, they embalmed you! Yet not so sweet
Were aloes and nard, as the youthful glow
Which Amenti stole when the small, dark feet
Wearied of treading our world below.
Look! it was flood-time in valley of Nile,

Or a very wet day in the Delta, dear,

When the slippers tripped lightly their latest mile—
The mud on the soles renders that fact clear.

You knew Cleopatra, no doubt! You saw
Antony's galleys from Actium come.
But there! if questions could answers draw
From lips so many a long age dumb,

I would not tease you with history,

Nor vex your

heart for the men which were. The one point to learn that fascinates me

Is, Where and what are you to-day, my dear?

You died, believing in Horus and Pasht,

Isis, Osiris, and priestly lore,

And found, of course, such theories smashed
By actual fact on the heavenly shore.

What next did you do? Did you transmigrate ?
Have we seen you since, all modern and fresh ?