They seemed like the sombre spirits, cry; O, the women! So haggard, and bent, and black, And the pitiful little children, Ah! when did their childhood leave them, And the burden of life begin? And after the rest came trooping The girls with the cymbals and tamborines, And the village rabble crowded On the heels of this human woe, And they seemed to me all less human 1 A blot on God's sweet sunlight; A blackened, noisome stain; Then I thought of the Babe in the manger, "In His image and likeness He formed him,"- Was there somewhere in God's great Heaven, Then I looked at my little daughter, In her apron, clean and white, With her soft brushed curls, and her forehead As pure as Heaven's own light. But the tender eyes were clouded, With an anxious, questioning air, "O Mamma, are these God's children? Does our Father in Heaven care? "Can they never go to Heaven? It's only clean folks, you know, Can enter the shining city In garments as white as snow! I'm so sorry, The great tears trembled and fell, O shame to my righteous doubting! What is a child's compassion To the great wide Heaven of love? "Yes, Bessie, these are God's children, Christ Himself will gather them in, Then the dear little face grew brighter, SARA M. CHATFIELD. A CULPRIT. From the Century. THE HE maiden aunt, in her straight-backed chair, With a flush on her pale and wrinkled cheek, And a horrified, mortified, mystified air, Was just about to speak. And the maiden niece-a nice little maid Stood meekly twirling her thumbs about, With a half-triumphant, half-afraid, And wholly bewitching pout. Said the maiden aunt: "Will you please explain, What your heads were doing so close together? You could easily, I assure you, Jane, Have knocked me down with a feather! "When I think of your bringing up—my care, My scrupulous care-and it's come to this! you Appeared to be sitting calmly there, And letting a young man kiss you! "Now tell me at once just what he said, This is quite a trial, And what you replied "If I catch you once more in such a fix, Though you are eighteen, I can tell you, Jane, "Are you going to tell me what he said, And what you said? I'll not stand this trifling. So look at me, Jane! Lift up your head! Don't go as if you were stifling!" Her voice was shaken, of course, with fear. “He said—he said, ' Will you have me, Jane?' And I said I would. But, indeed, aunt, dear, We'll never do so again." MARGARET VANDEGRIFT. THE MISERIES OF WAR. HE stoutest heart in this assembly would recoil were THE he, who owns it, to behold the destruction of a single individual by some deed of violence. Were the man who, at this moment, stands before you, in the full play and energy of health, to be, in another moment, laid, by some deadly aim, a lifeless corpse at your feet, there is not one of you who would not prove how strong are the relentings of nature at a spectacle so hideous as death. There are some of you who would be haunted for whole days by the image of horror you had witnessed ; who would feel the weight of a most oppressive sensation upon your heart, which nothing but time could wear away; who would be so pursued by it as to be unfit for business or for enjoyment; who would think of it through the day, and it would spread a gloomy disquietude over your waking moments; who would dream of it at night, and it would turn that bed, which you courted as a retreat from the torments of an ever-med dling memory, into a scene of restlessness. Oh, tell me, if there be any relentings of pity in your bosom, how could you endure it to behold the agonies of the dying man, as, goaded by pain, he grasps the cold ground in convulsive energy; or, faint with the loss of blood, his pulse ebbs low, and the gathering paleness spreads itself over his countenance; or, wrapping himself round in despair, he can only mark, by a few feeble quiverings, that life still lurks and lingers in his lacerated body; or, lifting up a faded eye he casts on you a look of imploring helplessness for that succor which no sympathy can yield him? It may be painful to dwell thus, in imagination, on the distressing picture of one individual, but multiply it ten thousand times; say how much of all this distress has been heaped together on a single field; give us the arithmetic of this accumulated wretchedness, and lay it before us, with all the accuracy of an official computation, and, strange to tell, not one sigh is lifted |