JACQUES DUFOUR.

STROLLING in the cool of evening, drinking in the balmy air,

I met a strange wayfaring man bowed down with grief and care.

Eighty years had left their foot-prints on his gaunt and ashen cheek,

And his hands were gray and shrunken, and his voice was thin and weak:

But his eyes, while he was speaking, kindled with a misty glow,

'Mid their whitened brows and lashes, like a crater in the snow.

And this aged Frenchman told me (his name was Jacques Dufour),

The story of the faded shred of ribbon that he

wore:

Just a scrap of scarlet ribbon pinned upon his shrunken breast,

But to him more rich and beautiful than rubies of the East.

'Twas in eighteen-twelve he won it, in that terrible campaign

When the French invaded Russia, but invaded her in vain;

And the starved and freezing Frenchmen had begun that sad retreat

Through the snow that proved for most of them both grave and winding-sheet.

There had been a bloody skirmish 'twixt the rearguard and the foe,

And among the sorely wounded, whom the chance of fight laid low,

Was a gallant Polish Colonel, Marshal Davoust's favorite aide,

And the Marshal, kneeling o'er him, turned about, and sharply said:

Halt, Company of Grenadiers, and see this wounded Pole!

He loves the French; he hates the Russ, with all his fiery soul:

Will you let him fall a prisoner to his bloodyminded foe?"

And the Company of Grenadiers cried out as one man, No!

"Then lift him," said the Marshal. "You soldiers must have learned

That our wagons we've abandoned, and our baggage has been burned:

Make a litter; you must bear him; I trust him to your love;

He will burden, will impede you, but I know that you will prove

That you do your duty ever, and will guard this wounded man

As you guard your sacred colors when they lead the battle's van."

So they made the hasty litter, and the wounded man they bore

(Of the youngest and the cheeriest, was Sergeant Jacques Dufour).

And day by day they fought their way, through deserts bleak and wild,

Guarding the crippled Colonel, as a woman guards her child.

But the work of love delayed them, and they slowly fell behind,

Yet not one of all that Company of Grenadiers repined.

Still they fought the cold and Cossacks; still they held their rugged way,

Falling back, but never fleeing: retreating, yet at bay.

But the foe was fell and agile, and the cold it waxed amain,

And so one by one they perished-some were frozen, some were slain,

Till the nineteenth day of marching came, and there were only five

Of that Company of Grenadiers who still remained alive.

Then spoke the wounded Colonel: "Oh, my comrades, it is vain:

I can surely never live to see my native land again ; You are squandering your lives for nought, lives it were sweet to save

For France and future glory; so leave me, comrades brave."

"Peste!" said Jacques Dufour, "my Colonel, we take leave to answer Nay.

We have orders to deliver you at Wilna,-we obey!"

So they lift again the litter, and they struggle on their way,

Till the western clouds are lighted with the gleams of dying day :

And as they watch the glory, against those golden skies,

The towers and walls of Wilna in welcome outline rise!

But too great the stress of feeling for those overburdened men:

Too swift the refluent flood of hope that swelled their hearts again :

Far too weak their feeble bodies for this beatific

sight:

Two fell dying on the left hand, two fell dying on the right;

And, as faded in the frozen air their last convulsive moan,

Lo! of all that noble Company, Dufour was left alone!

Did he falter?

No! He lifted in his arms the

wounded man,

And with wild and desperate shouting towards the nearest outpost ran;

And the pickets came with succor, and the sun had just gone down

When they bore the Sergeant and his charge in safety to the town.

Then Dufour sent up a message to headquarters, quaint and short,

That "the Company of Grenadiers desired to report."

"Granted," said the bluff old Marshal, "let them do it here and now."

And Jacques Dufour came marching in and made his stiffest bow.

"Where is my wounded Colonel?" "Safe in the hospital,

Where you ordered us to place him, Monsieur le Marechal."

"Where is the Company? They too have come in safety all?"

"The Company is present, Monsieur le Marechal."

"Where is the Company, I repeat, the Company?”

once more.

"The Company is present," said Sergeant Jacques Dufour.

"But your comrades-there were ninety or a hundred men, you know."

"Ah, mon Marechal, my comrades lie buried in the snow!"

Then up rose the stout old Marshal, with his eyes brimful of tears,

Dashed aside the barriers of rank, the cold reserve of

years:

Caught the stripling to his bosom, gave him a reverent kiss,

And the ribbon which Dufour has worn from

that far day to this.

William W. Howe.

THE SIRENS.

SWEETLY they sang in the days of old,

Till the mariners heard them far at sea, And, lured by that music, the brave and bold, Buffeting billows wild and free,