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a feather that originally came from Burns' cottage. The celebrations of the Club were always held annually, the scenes of the festivities being Scobie's Union Hotel, James Smith's Metropolitan Hotel, the Commercial Hotel, and some other favorite resorts of those times.

Thanks to Mr. Peter Kinnear and a few other gentlemen, the Club has been reorganized, and is now in a prosperous condition.

Bard of Scotland.

BY OLIVER DAVIE.

BARD of Scotland! thou who sings
Bin Scotia's minstrel choir,

Thy harp was of a thousand strings
And tuned by heavenly fire.

In Poverty's dark, barren vale,
Where misty visions fly,

Thy meteor light shone in the night
And 'lumined all the sky.

What tho' the theme's of lowly birth?
There's magic in thy reason;

Thy daisy blooms o'er all the earth,
In every clime and season.

'Twas Nature bade thee sing her songs
In measured, tuneful rhyme;
She bade thee write thy name upon
The granite walls of Time.

For in thy hymnal thou dost give
Songs for the great and humble—
O, yes, sweet Burns, thy name will live
Until those walls shall crumble!

A

Burns' Birthday.

From " The Bailie."

INCE mair it is yer birthday, Rab!

Sae, roon the frien'ly board we'll gaither, An' hae a sang, or quate confab,

Obleevious o' the wintry weather.

'Twas in a bitin' Januar'

That ye cam' doon, a new hame seekin', Frae some wee far awa' bricht star,

Whase mither-een kept waukrife keekin’.

A braw bit steerin' wean were ye,

An' then a wild, rampagin' laddie; A blither callan cudna be,

Though aft a heart-break to yer daddie.

A strappin' ploughman neist ye grew,

Wi' een jist like the stars (yer mither's), Een, whase bricht flashes to them drew Warm luve-glints back frae ilka ithers.

A ploughman, honest, simple, kind,

Wi' heart owre saft tae tramp the gowan;

A heart to a' things guid inclined,

And ne'er to rank an' fortune bowin'.

A heart that suffered wi' the hare,

An' panted loud to see it rinnin';

That saw ilk wee field-moosie there
Aneath the "rig" ye were beginnin'.

That lo'ed yer "auld mare, Maggie," weel,
In fact, that lo'ed the hale creation;

(Ay, Rab! a caulder heart atweel

Had aiblins been yer best salvation!)

But, whisht! it's no' for us to speak,

Puir feckless, fushionless bit craturs; It's easy to be mild and meek

For folk wi' wishy-washy naturs.

We thank ye, frien', for ilka sang,

For "Logan Braes" an' "Afton Water;" Auld Scotia's lips ha'e lo'ed them lang,

The sweetest music ye hae taught her.

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We thank ye for "Ye Banks and Braes," 'The Jolly Beggars," "Tam o' Shanter," For a' yer rousin' lilts and lays,

Ye roguish rascal, "Rab the Ranter."

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For "Scots wha hae" an' "Auld Langsyne," For "Bonnie Jean" an' "Bonnie Annie,' An' a' the ither names we min',

(Though, losh, their number isna canny!)

For "Mary, dear departed shade,"

For "Corn and barley rigs arc bonnie; "

For a' the rhyme ye ever made

We wadna, Rab, dispense wi' ony.

Sae here we sit, an' speak o' ye,

As "frien'," although ye never kent us;

May a' oor lives as fruitfu' be,

For mony a gran' thocht ye hae sent us.

Burns as a Freemason.

THE members of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning, No. 2, met in their historic lodge-room, St. John's Chapel, Edinburgh, to commemorate the anniversary of the birthdays of Robert Burns and James Hogg, who were members and successive Poets-Laureate of the lodge. The lodge-room was decorated with evergreens in honor of the occasion, and a bust of Burns, crowned with laurels, occupied a prominent position. The chair was occupied by the R. W. M., Brother George Crawford, who referred to Burns' visit to their ancient lodge-room in 1786, when he was surrounded by such Freemasons as the Earl of Glencairn, Henry Mackenzie ("The Man of Feeling"), Lord Monboddo, Dugald Stewart and Alex. Naismyth. On the 1st of March, 1787, Burns was elected PoetLaureate of the lodge, and in 1835 he was followed in that post by the Ettrick Shepherd.

Mr. Wallace Bruce, United States Consul, in proposing the memories of Burns and Hogg, paid a warm tribute to the former as the poet of humanity, and vindicated the right of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning to claim him as its Poet-Laureate. He had touched every chord, sounded every emotion, and filled in his own being every throb in humanity. had enjoyed life in a greater degree than any of them, and he had suffered in a deeper and more intense degree than they could either here or hereafter. His heart was attuned to the universal truths, not

He

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only of humanity, but of the greater sphere which spoke of God as the creator of all honesty and of every principle of rectitude. He could picture Burns standing in St. Andrew's Lodge, when his health was proposed as Caledonia's Bard." He could see him about two weeks later in that room affiliated as a member of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning. The brief minute in their books on that occasion ran something like this:-That Robert Burns, a man who had acquired some reputation as a poet, and whose volumes of poetry had been well received, should be made an honorary member of Lodge Canongate Kilwinning. It was said by some worthy men that the crowning of Burns as Poet-Laureate never took place. There was a picture on their walls representing the ceremony in question. None of them supposed that the picture was a photograph or an exact reproduction of the scene in the lodge. They had seen pictures of Wellington and his staff-officers, and of Shakespeare and his friends, which were not strictly accurate, but for that reason were they not to believe that there had been a battle of Waterloo, or that Shakespeare lived in London at the time of Ben Jonson? There was much in tradition, and many of the incidents in Burns' life were known only by tradition. Half of the history of the great families of Scotland were to-day unwritten, and that history among those families was truer than the history that had been put upon paper. A man in a quiet chamber might make characters that resem

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