John.
Aunt Maria, he said, was very
feeble, unable to attend to her work.
Rachel was at school, and the house was
in a sorry condition. They had a good
dairywoman, but the housemaid was a
poor hand without her mistress to oversee
her work. If they had help enough, he
should want Marion to come and stay
awhile to cheer them up. Aunt Maria
needed cheerful company much. Marion
answered her uncle's letter immediately.
She had learned something about house-
keeping since she was there, and if they
would accept her, she would come and
take care of Aunt Maria and oversee the
housework, — perhaps learn to make but-
ter and cheese. Uncle John was delight-

and division at the North to help them. This state of things must be remedied, or we shall perish as a nation. God is against slavery and all other wickedness. And now I come to the point. It is to the education of the children that we must look for the future safety of our country, even after the blood of our martyrs on Southern soil has washed out the stain of slavery. And the mothers are the educators of these children. They may prepare themselves for the holy task, and watch over them with unwearied vigilance and prayerful solicitude, or they may leave them to all the evil influences of the world, without any safeguard or protection. The last course will bring about our ruin; the first willed, and three weeks after, when he met make us the saviours of the nation. Which will you be, Marion, -a blessing or curse to your country?"

Marion was silent. She was thinking of Frank Anvern's words. He said she would do for the idle life of a millionnaire; that was equivalent to saying she was not fitted for a useful life. Well, she was not. Why should she blame him? Yet it was not her fault, as she told Mary.

"True," replied Mary, "our mothers brought us up in showy idleness, but it was through mistaken kindness in them, or rather a pride which claimed as high a place in society for their children as there was; and in the present false state of things, I do not wonder at them. But we know now what is right, and it is for us to inaugurate a reform. You will join me, Marion?"

her at Centreville depot, he kissed her with tears in his eyes, and said she was her father's girl and would make a smart woman yet. Aunt Maria gained rapidly under Marion's cheerful influence, and when she got able to visit the kitchen, she praised the order and neatness to her heart's content. Mary and Marion had entered upon their new life with the motto that "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well;" and Marion's first attempt at housekeeping for her uncle proved that she had not failed in that department. Her aunt herself, setting aside her long experience, could not have done better.

The summer passed rapidly. Hal had kept up a correspondence with Frank ever since he enlisted, and after Marion came, his letters glowed with wonderful accounts of her housekeeping abilities, her kind care of his mother, etc., and that now she was taking lessons in making butter and cheese.

JEAN INGELOW'S POEMS.

By E. A. M.

SEVEN TIMES ONE.

66

"There's no dew left on the daisies and clover,

There's no rain left in heaven;

I've said my 'seven times' over and over,

Seven times one are seven.

so old I can write a letter; "I am so old, My birthday lessons are done; The lambs play always; they know no better; They are only one times one.

Ah, I am not to be tempted into telling the story of "The Letter L." Songs I HAVE supped with the gods on am-tiful and touching. It is in seven parts; of Seven" is unique, and strangely beaubrosia and nectar! My heart hath been here is "Part First." made to laugh and my face to shine. I have felt the divinity stirred within me. Or, to speak in the language of soberness and strict veracity, I have read Jean Ingelow's Poems, and I have wondered, Mistress Editor, that you have not treated your readers to a goblet of this rare vintage. There is one drawback certainly, the poems with a few exceptions are quite long. That, in Edgar A. Poe's estimation, would have been deemed a fault; but even he, exigeant critic as he was, would have been troubled to find flaws in this volume. Miss Ingelow is peculiarly happy in her nomenclature. A sweet surprise lurks in ambuscade behind Reflections," and "Light and Shade " is quite as deftly handled. I am not one of those who think "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." I think I hope if you have you will soon be forgiven, there is something in a name. And "The Letter L" took my fancy captive at once.

What can it be about?"" Why should it be the letter L rather than the letter A, B, or C?" Here is a taste of "The Letter L," a leaf plucked at random:

"And oh, the buttercups! that field

O' the cloth of gold, where pennons swam, Where France sat up his lilied shield,

His oriflamb,

And Henry's lion-standard rolled,—
What was it to their matchless sheen,
Their million, million drops of gold
Among the green'''

And this a girl sits weaving a crown
"Of orchis spires and daisies rank,

And ferny plumes but half uncurled;" "Weave on,' he said; and as she wove,

We told how currents in the deep,
With branches from a lemon grove,
Blue bergs will sweep.

"And messages from shipwrecked folk
Will navigate the moon-led main;
And painted boards of splintered oak
Their port regain.”

-

But what have "blue bergs" and "lemon branches" to do with "The Letter L"?

"O moon! in the night I have seen you sailing,
And shining so round and low:
You were bright! ah, bright! but your light is
failing,

You are nothing now but a bow.

"You moon, have you done something wrong in heaven,

That God has hidden your face?

And shine again in your place.

"O velvet bee, you're a dusty fellow,

You've powdered your legs with gold!
O brave marsh-mary buds, rich and yellow,
Give me your money to hold!

"O columbine! open your folded wrapper,
Where two twin turtle-doves dwell!
O cuckoo-pint, toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell!

"And show me your nest with the young ones

in it;

I will not steal them away;

I am old! you may trust me, linnet, linnet-
I am seven times one to-day!"

There, is it not exquisite? I have given it entire. I had not the heart to cut into the sweet, tender thing. I would like to pluck a posy from the first poem in the book, called "Divided," but it is too long to give in full, and as each verse is sweeter than the other, I should grow gray before deciding what to take and what to leave. "Goldilocks" and the songs in "Supper at the Mill" are fresher than May and sweeter than honey-clover. And some of the lines in "The High Tide" sing through my head of

themselves, while reading it. I have
quite fallen in love with my own name.

"A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth."
"Oh, come in life, or come in death!
Oh, lost, my love, Elizabeth!"

"And didst thou visit him no more?
Thou didst, thou didst my daughter deare;
The waters laid thee at his doore,

Ere yet the early dawn was clear.
Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace,
The lifted sun shone on thy face,
Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place."

"A Dead Year" and "Requiescat in Pace" are the most purely imaginative pieces in the volume. The dream in the latter is weird. A girl at the seaside

dreams out the fate of an absent loved

one.

"I looked up at the lighthouse all roofless and

storm-broken,

friend at home. A cluster of violets, a few white daisies, a sprig of mignonette knotted with ribbon-grass. At least I have pushed open the garden-gate, and those who like the glimpse of the enclosure thus seen may enter and gather each for himself.

Pittsburg, Pa.

MELANCHOLY DAYS.

By Mrs. H. L. Bostwick.

"THE melancholy days are come," wrote Bryant, long ago, of the "autumn time," and his words have found an annual echo in thousands of hearts. But

there is also a spring melancholy, which, though of shorter duration it may be, and less morbid in character, allows few, I believe, entirely to escape its visitations.

In some old poetic legend I have read, this is accounted for by supposing that the spirit of Beauty and Melody returning to earth after a winter's absence, and taking her customary possession of inanimate nature, sometimes mistakenly Unto somewhat which was sailing in a skiff the knocks for admission at the door of hubird had spoken, man bosoms, and that the heart, un

A great white bird sat on it with neck stretched out to sea.

And a trembling seized my spirit, for they able from its manifold imperfections to

talked of me."

The thing in the skiff holds a conver

sation with the white bird.

"I said, "That thing is hooded;' I could hear

but that floweth

The great hood below its mouth; then the bird made reply,

'If they know not more's the pity; for the lit tle shrewmouse knoweth,

give entrance or audience to the invisible unconsciously mourns the departure of pleader, grows restless and sorrowful, and the beautiful spirit, for whose accommodation it had, alas! made no provision.

This is touching and poetical, far more so than the theories by which physiologists and lecturers on dietetics might seek to account for the dim sense of oppression and foreboding that so often

And the kite knows, and the eagle, and the creeps over the spirit at the approach of warm weather.

glead, and pye.'

It was never kept a secret; waters bring it and winds blow it;

Poetry aside, it is undoubtedly true that attention to certain sanitary cautions respecting diet, exercise, etc., at this relaxing season, cannot safely be dispensed with, if one would keep vigor of body and tone of mind unimpaired. And if it be not susceptible of proof that the power of

And he met it on the mountain; why then make memory and association is most active at

ado?"

Glancing over what I have written, I feel regret, as one might on leaving a rare garden, who can carry away but one little bouquet in his hand, to the dear

this period, there is no question that our disturbed physical condition makes us more susceptible to their influence.

I have been led to this train of thought by a day of "spring sadness," a haunted day, -haunted not by the scent of May

Ah, how often is it thus! How often by the grave of Love, some half-forgotten Then spread the white canvas! the part in sight, neglect or unkindness comes back to our hearts, a barbed arrow that we must carry for many days without relief. How often we are fain to cry with full eyes and trembling lips, "God forgive us!