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effort made to that effect. Children love pleasant places; they love lively scenes and joyful times; their native element is mirth and music, happiness and hope. Then why not surround our homes and firesides with such means and objects as will gratify and administer to their tastes and inclinations, to a degree harmless and beneficial. Music in the home circle is a great attraction to the young; or music anywhere. Boys will leave their noisy, rude play in the street any time, if the melodious notes of a neighboring piano come wafted to them on the breeze, and stealing softly up to the gate, will listen in silent, subdued admiration; their finer sensibilities are touched, and the native music of the young soul responds through the sparkling or pensive eye. The noisy play seems distasteful, annoying now, and they wish, so much, they had some music at home. With music, interesting books, pleasant stories, and fireside games, in which both young and old can participate, and with all, and above all, a dear, smiling mother, home can be made very attractive and a "Sweet Home indeed. The boys would not start for the street or shops the moment supper was over, to waste, or worse than waste, the long.evening hours, the sweetest and best to the family circle of all the twenty-four; for their father is at home; the elder brothers and sisters are there from their daily avocations or schools; there's a fire in the sitting-room, and mother is at leisure and in her favorite corner; the piano or melodeon is open, and there's some new sheet-music upon the rack, inviting the nimble fingers to try it; there is the latest magazine or paper upon the table, with its chapter or stories for the young, and everything is ready for the evening entertainment. All is harmony, peace, and love in such a home.

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Let those who doubt try these things, and endeavor to make home the dearest place on earth to their children, and we doubt not but the richest fruits will be their reward; and when age shall silver their locks and enfeeble their steps they can look with pride upon their noble, intelligent sons and lovely, womanly

daughters, and feel that it is all owing to home attractions and the fireside influences of childhood. St. Anthony, Minn.

A BACHELOR'S OFFERING.

By H. J. L.

I CANNOT tell thee all I dreamed
When thou wert by my side,
When brightly o'er my spirit gleamed
The hope that since hath died;

I called thee with a voiceless breath,
My life, my love, my bride,
My star of hope in life or death,

My blessing and my pride.

The whispering leaves above us hung,
The birds came warbling nigh,
The breeze its softest music sung,

Beneath that tranquil sky;
We heard the waters in their flow;

The bees went humming by ;
The hope that then diffused its glow
I thought too fair to die.

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'Tis vanished all; I dream no more,
Love's last farewell is said;
Hope's ashes strew my pathway o'er ;
Life's promised flowers are dead;
And thou dost dwell in peace afar,

Where ne'er my feet shall tread,
And o'er thee hangs love's favoring star,
While darkness veils my head.

I fold no listless hands above

The heart so hushed to rest,
The rest not born of happy love,

Nor by its influence blessed :
The trysting-place is green with moss,
By light and shade caressed,
Where found I life's most heavy cross

Laid on my quivering breast.

Oh, let not pity touch the wound
I hide with jealous care,
Rather where song and mirth abound,
And perfume loads the air,

I will the mark of joyous youth
In mockery sometimes wear,
Till none shall deem the bitter truth
Is found in my despair.

BUT little good is derived from the company of a highly intellectual wolf or a moral bear.

Editor's Table.

first invaded Britain, and it speaks well for its popularity, as well as for their fond adherence to ancient rites, that at this day in many parts of England, the peasantry still dance around the May-pole on the first day of the month.

WHEN Our last "Editor's Table" was penned, little of that beautiful aspect of nature which fills us with love for sweet spring was developed. The grass was becoming green, it is true; the catkins hung warm and downy on hazle and willow, and the first sweet offerings of the year-spring beauties, anemones, and trailing arbutus - lifted up their smiling faces like beauty in adversity, from the cold, water-before the windows of the prison and join their soaked earth; but the true spring,

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In Italy they celebrate this day in a manner very touching and beautiful. The children, wives, and mothers of prisoners assemble

unhappy relations in songs of hope and freedom. They sympathize in the misery of the prisoners who cannot join them in the celebration of the day, and the scene usually ends with a repast in which the prisoners have a

was not yet, and we waited patiently as we share, as their relatives, on this one day in the might. But now

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We do not in this country make half enough of May. But perhaps the thousand observances which have marked its appearance in olden times and in other lands are, as the age becomes more utilitarian, even there dying out. The ancient Gauls commenced all their great military enterprises in this month, so full of import did it seem to them; and the adventures of a knight-errant were entered upon on Mayday.

Everywhere in the early ages, rural sports and festivals marked the presence of May, while the Romans sacrificed in its honor. The May-pole is of Roman origin, and was, without doubt, introduced into England with many less beautiful symbols, when that people

year, are permitted to supply them with meat and wine.

In our own country there is a May-day custom more beautiful than any practised in other lands. In many of our ladies' schools it is customary for the scholars to select a favorite and beloved schoolmate, whom they crown with a coronet of flowers and create "Queen of May," addressing her in some pleasant remarks significant of their love and respect, and their expectation of her happy reign as priestess of the holiday. Long may this beautiful. custom continue.

There is something inexpressibly pleasing to the heart as well as the imagination in the simple festivals of our ancestors. "Thanksgivingday," so dear to the New Englander wherever he may be, is one of these. The sweet mystery of great antiquity is indeed wanting; but there is enough that breathes of the spirit of the past in its observance to minister to our natural love of what our forefathers loved before us. This holiday and that of New Year and Christmas are almost our only ones. Why have we not more festive rites coming down from the far-off past? So much bald reality stifles our fancies and compels imagination to lie dormant and cold. Everything in these days must have a solid mathematical basis of actuality and utility, and we bid the dreamer who indulges in reveries of the imagination, "go spin!" We have lost faith in fairies and other "good peo

ple," and forgotten how our grandmothers paid tribute to the mysterious ghosts which haunted ruined houses. We no longer hear mystic warnings in the creaking of frost-bound timber, or see them in untimely blossoms on the fruit-trees. Alas, for the sweet, childlike dreams that invested the commonest things with the golden hues of romance and vagueness! They are left to simpler ones than we of this wise, intellectual age; but we doubt in our over-wisdom whether we have not clipped the wings of a very pleasant and lovable angel, and left her but a poor, moping dowdy for our pains. Well, let it be so! Yet, like the reformed inebriate, who would take just one more drink, "just to treat resolution," we beg to lay before ourselves and you one of the sweetest of poems, treading on this forbidden ground, a gem from the "Atlantic Monthly," called

THE VANISHERS.

Sweetest of all childlike dreams

In the simple Indian lore, Still to me the legend seems Of the elves who flit before.

Flitting, passing; seen, and gone,

Never reached nor found at rest, Baffling search, but beckoning on To the sunset of the blest.

From the clefts of mountain rocks,
Through the dark of lowland firs,
Flash the eyes and flow the locks
Of the mystic Vanishers.

And the fisher in his skiff,

And the hunter on the moss, Hear their call from cape and cliff, See their hands the birch-leaves toss.

Wistful, longing, through the green
Twilight of the clustered pines,
In their faces rarely seen

Beauty more than mortal shines.

Fringed with gold their mantles flow
On the slopes of westering knolls;
In the wind they whisper low
Of the Sunset Land of souls.

Doubt who may, O friend of mine! Thou and I have seen them too ;On before with beck and sign,

Still they glide and we pursue.

More than clouds of purple trail, In the gold of setting day;

More than gleams of wing or sail, Beckon from the sea-mist gray.

Glimpses of immortal youth, Gleams and glories seen and lost, Far-heard voices sweet with truth, As the tongues of Pentecost,

Beauty that eludes our grasp,

Sweetness that transcends our taste, Loving hands we may not clasp, Shining Teet that mock our haste, Gentle eyes we closed below, Tender voices heard once more, Smile and call us, as they go,

On and onward, still before.

Guided thus, O friend of mine! Let us walk our little way, Knowing by each beckoning sign That we are not quite astray.

Chase we still, with baffled feet,.

Smiling eye and waving hand, Sought and seeker soon shall meet Lost and found in Sunset Land,

BEFORE this page is before you, reader mine, June will have glided in with her robes of green and gold, and summer will be at our door. We, however, must for a little turn back to, and make the amende honorable to, a gentle complainant whom we humbly acknowledge to have this once, just this once, a little traduced. We offer our hand in all amity and love, and right gladly enter in our "Table" the

PROTEST OF APRIL.

To the Editor of the Ladies Repository:—

Having carefully read and duly considered your remarks concerning me in the last number of the "Repository," I feel moved, in justice to myself, and out of regard to those of your readers who may be misled thereby, to ask that this solemn protest may be duly served up on your table editorial.

That I am capricious and full of changes has often been charged against me; and seeing that I was nécessarily so, and that my utility in bursting buds, expanding leaves and blossoms, and giving freshest verdure and richest perfumes, depends on my alternating sunshine and showers, I have borne the charge in silence.

But when the faults of a most inhospitable climate, like that of Central and Northern New York, where is "seven months of winter and

five of cold weather" to the year (as good Baron Steuben characterized it), are ascribed to me as peculiarly and universally mine, I reject the imputation as indignantly as you would the imputation of Adam's sin to yourself and your beloved off-pring! Am I to blame because your climate froze over the lakes during the winter with unheard-of severity, and thus chilled their waters and the surrounding air beyond the power of the sun to warm all through the reign of my predecessor, March, and even through my own more genial rule?

Is it my fault that the physical conformation of your Northern lands and lakes, and their vicinage to the source of peculiar Arctic storms and aerial convulsions, should deluge you with feet of piled-up snow and depths of frost, so that the thermometer went down far below zero even in the middle of March, rendering it impossible to overcome, even had I possessed the unvarying fervor of July suns?

or, if that is inconsistent with editorial dignity, I ask that you permit my protest and defence to be "entered on the journal " by your APRIL. printer.

Washington, D. C.

Tho Ladye April has returned her protest to a not unwilling listener. That she has, in a sort, fairly" put us down," we acknowledge; but we do most humbly, notwithstanding, venture to suggest that, according to her own showing, she understands only one side of the question; for does she not send up her appeal from the sunny streets of the capital, where, if anywhere, in these stirring times, she should put on all her most attractive and earliest garniture; while we write from the breezy hills of the "North countrie," with the memory of the hugest of snow-drifts and the wildest of winds to color our picture? In sooth, it is our own private opinion that My Ladye April has laid herself out in smiles and fair robes and charming flowers for the benefit of those who congregate in that noble centre of our land, quite forgetting that we claim that her favors should be impartial, and if anything, lean a little towards But let us be just. She sent us showers whose soft streams woke up the flowers and leaves of May, and now

us.

"To-day the blue-birds trill their gayest song ;
The robins whistle to their young just flown;
The soft south wind sighs with a tender tone;
The crystal brooklets murmur all day long.

"The stately laurels droop amid their leaves;
The honeysuckle bends its graceful head;
Field strawberries are ripening rich and red,
And gauzy webs the treacherous spider weaves.”

Certainly no, no! And as proof that the blame rests not on me, I refer to my reign almost everywhere else; to "the sunny South," the broad prairies of the middle West, and this medium region of the East. While you were complaining of the snow-drifts (which were not mine, but the accumulations of your borear, if not hyperborean, climate during long winter months), here the hills and the valleys were putting on my bright green mantles spangled with wild-flowers of varied hues. While your noses were red and blue with damp, biting blasts from your hills and lakes, here similar facial protuberances were inhaling the scents of the magnolia and lilac blossoms, and all eyes were admiring more beautiful reds and blues in the hyacinth and tulip. And while the leafless trees of your wretched climate spoke only of winter's desolation, elsewhere I had pendanted them with the catkin and the tender leaf, and enwrapped the twigs of the peach and the plum with my most beautiful chenille of pink and white blossoms. In short, wood and field, garden and even market-place, all through this properly-behaved and attempered region," where each season has its own proper share of "the rolling year," and refuses to encroach on its neighbor, all gave evidence that your long list of charges against me were unfounded in well understood facts, and unjust, because the accuser mistook my usurpers and encroachers for myself.

Having thus, as I confidently trust, shown the cause of your errors, and vindicated my innocence, I hope you will retract your charges,

While touching the subject of flowers we are tempted to transplant to the ever-receptive "Table" an account given us by a friend of the love of those fair children of nature which distinguished a good old German Pennsylvania farmer, known by the general cognomen of Uncle Philip." And this title stamps his character. He who is "uncle" to all the neighborhood has something genial in his character, rely upon it, a rule borne out by the good farmer in question.

"Uncle Philip," says my friend, "lived five miles from any village and some seven miles from the nearest large town or borough. He cultivated a large garden at no little expense, devoting to it all his leisure hours, and not a few that some neighbors thought should have

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been given to his farm. But his garden lay nearest his heart. His monster shapely tufts of box I have never seen excelled. His dwarf fruit trees stood in circular hedges of box at the intersections of the principal garden-walks. | I remember well some large, golden-hued apples as they bent down the yard-high trees that bore them. His was the first great flowering aloe- then sixty years old - I ever saw. A small tree or large shrub never seen elsewhere, when its leaves were wet with rain or dew, looked like foliage of glittering silver. His pinks and tulips, and other (then) rarities, were imported for his own use and his neighbors' admiration. The sweet-scented shrub, Calycanthus Floridus, whose chocolate-colored flowers are now so common in Pennsylvania gardens, and whose rich, sweet perfume is unequalled by any I ever knew, was first import ed by him from Holland, though, strangely enough, it is now found to be a native in our own South. It was called Ead-beeren blume (strawberry flower), from a resemblance in its odor to the scent of ripe strawberries. And many more rich and rare flowers and shrubs, imported and improved by this plain old German farmer, yet survive in the gardens of that section, and in other sections whither emigration has carried them, as mementoes of the old home.

"But all this only prefaces the strongest evidence I have to adduce of his love for the sweet and the beautiful. He sacrificed for it more than time, labor, and occasional expenditures of money.

"Two wealthy Englishmen in quest of a country home visited his neighborhood, and were captivated by Uncle Philip's farm, or, rather, garden and its surroundings. They resolved to purchase. Uncle Philip named his price, and chaffering commenced, to induce him to take less. Finally, the Englishmen approached to offers within a few dollars of his price when dinner was announced. As they passed from the garden, the principal guest plucked a rare flower, the only one in the garden, if not in the country. A dark cloud crept over Uncle Philip's face; but no remark was uttered. Dinner despatched with a relish, and the bargaining was resumed by the guests. But Uncle Philip bluntly declined selling.

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gard for flowers than to pluck one so rare as that shall never own my garden.'

"Apology, persuasion, entreaty, even, all were vain. He died in possession of his beloved garden more than half a century ago.

"But Uncle Philip was unfortunate in selecting the heir who was to possess his garden. The son who inherited the homestead felt compelled to give more attention to the farm than the garden. The clusters of rare plants in the windows were duly attended to by the women. They, too, gave what attention they could to grape arbors and to garden. But for want of a presiding genius, the latter gradually declined, until in a score or two of years it ranked only among the better class of common country gardens.

"This was sad to all who loved its former glories; for Uncle Philip had two sons at least who were positive if not superlative lovers of flowers and beautiful plants. But one was a country mechanic, whose business compelled him to limit his garden to a half-acre, and to occupy much of that with the homely edibles. But who that ever saw the rest will forget its neatness and its beauty, and the multitude of his pet birds !

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"The other became a merchant in Litiz, under circumstances that compelled dry, goods, hardware, and groceries to keep the upper hand in his mind for many years, over all the beautiful creations of nature and art. But as soon as the purse was filled blood began to show itself' in the largest carnations, the rarest flowers, and the tallest, biggest, richest dahlias, the wonder of passing travellers, and the remembered ne plus ultras in the memories of his neighbors; for he himself has gone long since to where never-withering flowers bloom in everlasting fragrance and unfading beauty.

"Before I close this rambling gossip, permit me to show in what respect he had not degenerated from the temper of his sire.

"A city lady who had children in the celebrated Moravian schools of Litiz visited the place, and was delighted with the rare beauty and neatness of Uncle Samuel's' garden. She called in the store, and mentioning the garden, found the affable and pleased proprietor willing to parade his pets before her. After passing from rarity to rarity, and beauty to beauty, she said, - probably deeming some tribute to the utilitarianism of her German conductor necessary, 'All this is very beautiful indeed ; but how much more valuable it would be if

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