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For instance-look at the gaudy screen,
Which stands the bar and the street between,
To prevent Death's doings from being seen
By the passers-by on the paving:

Before it, Sobriety gravely goes

With its cheek of bloom, and its lip of rose;
Behind it, Drunkenness brews its woes,
Bodies and souls depraving.

Before and behind! behind and before!"
I heard a toper once muttering o'er
The words; and a rueful phiz he wore
As he chimed the syllables over;

Before I drank of the liquid flame,

I had health and wealth and a right good name,
I knew not sorrow, disease, and shame ;
In fact, I was living in clover.

Before the screen I'd a purse well lined—
A contented heart and a cheerful mind;
I had pleasures before I went behind,
Before-but ah! never after;

Behind it, my money went day by day,
My pleasures, like summer-birds, flew away;
Behind it I darkened the mental ray

And shrieked out my

mirthless laughter.

Behind, behind, and nothing before

But a prison cell or a workhouse door,

And a bundle of rags on a creaking floor,

In lieu of flock or of feather;

Behindhand with payments when bills were due; Behindhand with cash and with credit too;

Before no fire when the fingers were blue

In the keen December weather!

Before the bar but behind the times;
Behindhand when sounded the early chimes,

When Industry wakens, and toils, and climbs

Up the rugged ascent of Duty:

Behindhand when little ones cried for bread;
Behindhand with board, and bereft of bed;
But before me a Wife with a drooping head,
Whose anguish had marred her beauty.

Trouble and turmoil, and torture and gloom!
Behind, all light, and before, no bloom;
With no Angel sitting upon the tomb,
To rob it of half its terrors;

Behindhand, when Sabbath bells stirred the air;
Before no altar, to offer there

The incense of praise, and the voice of prayer,
For pardon of sins and errors.

Before the Judge; and before one knows,
Knocked down by the law's tremendous blows,
And behind the bars, which in dismal rows,
Stand in front of our human cages;
Behind the dismal curtain which hangs,
Where Remorse, the devil, infixes his fangs,
Inflicting on Earth infernal pangs,
As instalments of Satan's wages.

Behindhand always, and want before,
And a surly voice crying out "no more!"
For the Rumseller never chalks up a score,
When he knows the last cent's expended.

No eye to pity-no hand to save,

As the victim is tossed upon misery's wave,
Leaving nothing behind when he seeks the grave,
But the tale of a tragedy ended.

Behind his coffin no mourners go,
And when the clods on his corse they throw,
Folks cry-" I thought it would be just so

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Oh I never felt so behind before,

Said he, as he turned from the bar-room door;
And memory painted the smiles he wore

Before he had taken to drinking.

Behind-oh! the drink has left nothing behind,
But a breaking heart and a clouded mind,
And a serpent round all life's flowers entwined,
And a horrible shadow o'er me.

But I'll quit the cup, and no more be seen
Where the Rumseller plies his vocation mean,
And blinded no more behind the screen,
Have a sun-bright path before me.

We may wisdom learn from the simplest thing,
If Reason will only expand her wing,

E'en where Error lies coiled with its venomous sting,
And it's not very hard to find it;

A simple contrast like this may teach,
As well as an eloquent Temperance speech;
So before the screen let me beg and beseech
You never to go BEHIND it.

THE MILITIA GENERAL-THOMAS CORWIN.

SIR, we all know the military studies of this military gentleman before he was promoted. I take it to be beyond a reasonable doubt that he had perused with great care the titlepage of "Baron Steuben." Nay, I go further; I venture to assert, without vouching in the least from personal knowledge, that he has prosecuted his researches so far as to be able to know that the rear rank stands right behind the front. This, I think, is fairly inferable from what I understood him to say of the two lines of encampment at Tippecanoe. We all, in fancy, now see the gentleman in that most dangerous and glorious event in the life of a militia general on the peace establishment-a parade day! that day, for which all the other

days of his life seem to have been made. We can see the troops in motion-umbrellas, hoes and axe-handles, and other deadly implements of war, overshadowing all the field—when, lo! the leader of the host approaches! "Far off his coming shines." His plume, which, after the fashion of the great Bourbon, is of awful length, reads its doleful history in the bereaved necks and bosoms of forty neighboring hen-roosts. Like the great Suwaroff, he seems somewhat careless in forms or points of dress; hence his epaulets may be on his shoulders, back, or sides, but still gleaming, gloriously gleaming, in the sun. Mounted he is, too, let it not be forgotten. Need I describe to the colonels and generals of this honorable House the steed which heroes bestride on these occasions? No! I see the memory of other days is with you. You see before you the military gentleman mounted on his crop-eared, bushytailed mare, for height just fourteen hands, "all told;" yes, sir, there you see his "steed that laughs at the shaking of the spear," that is his war-horse, "whose neck is clothed with thunder." Mr. Speaker, we have glowing descriptions in history of Alexander the Great, and his war-horse Bucephalus, at the head of the invincible Macedonian phalanx; but, sir, such are the improvements of modern times, that every one must see that our militia general, with his crop-eared mare, with bushy tail, would totally frighten off a battle-field a hundred Alexanders. The general, thus mounted and equipped, is in the field, and ready for action. On the eve of some desperate enterprize, such as giving order to shoulder arms, it may be, there occurs a crisis, one of those accidents of war which no sagacity could foresee nor prevent. A cloud rises and passes over the sun. Here is an occasion for the display of that greatest of all traits in the history of a commander-the tact which enables him to seize upon and turn to good account unlooked-for events as they arise. Now for the caution wherewith the Roman Fabius foiled the skill and courage of Hannibal. A retreat is ordered, and troops and general, in a twinkling, are found safely bivouacked in a neighboring grocery. But even here, the general still has room for the execution of

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heroic deeds. Hot from the field, and chafed with the heroic events of the day, your general unsheaths his trenchant blade, eighteen inches in length, as you will remember, and with energy and remorseless fury he slices the water-melons that lie in heaps around him, and shares them with his surviving friends. Others of the sinews of war are not wanting here. Whiskey, Mr. Speaker, that great leveller of modern times, is here also, and the shells of the water-melons are filled to the brim. Here again, Mr. Speaker, is shown how the extremes of barbarism and civilization meet. As the Scandinavian heroes of old, after the fatigues of war, drank wine from the skulls of their slaughtered enemies, in Odin's halls, so now our militia general and his forces, from the skulls of the melons thus vanquished, in copious draughts of whiskey assuage the heroic fires of their souls, after a parade day.

THE BUTTERFLY'S BALL. ROSCOE.

COME, take up your hats, and away let us haste
To the butterfly's ball and the grasshopper's feast;
The trumpeter, gadfly, has summoned the crew,
And the revels are now only waiting for you.

On the smooth-shaven grass by the side of the wood,
Beneath a broad oak that for ages has stood,
See the children of earth and the tenants of air,
For an evening's amusement together repair.

And there came the beetle so blind and so black,
Who carried the emmet, his friend, on his back;
And there was the gnat, and the dragonfly too,
With all their relations, green, orange, and blue.

And there came the moth in his plumage of down,
And the hornet with jacket of yellow and brown,
Who with him the wasp, his companion, did bring;
But they promised that evening to lay by their sting.

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