And the hollow skiff like a child's toy lies on the ledge, This side of the roaring foam,

And up from the valley of death, from the grave's dread edge,

Like ghosts of men they come.

O sweetly, sweetly, shines the sinking sun,

And the storm is swept away;

Piled high in the east are the cloud-heaps purple and dun,

And peacefully dies the day.

But a sweeter peace falls soft on the grateful souls
In the lonely isle that dwell,

And the whisper and rush of every wave that rolls
Seems murmuring, "All is well."

CELIA THAXTER

THE NEW SLATE.

SEE my slate. I dot it new,

Cos I b'oke the other,

Put my 'ittle foot right froo,
Runnin' after mother.

I tan make you lots o' sings,
Fass as you tan tell 'em,
T's and B's and big O rings,
Only 1 can't spell 'em.

I tan make a funny pig,
Wid a turly tail-y,

'Ittle eyes and snout so big

Pokin' in a pail-y.

I tan make a elephant,
Wid his trunk a hangin';
An' a boy-who says I tan't?
Wid his dun a bangin'.

Ar the smoke a tummin' out; (Wid my t'umb I do it, Rubbin' all the white about,) Sparks a flying froo it.

I tan make a pretty house
Wid a tree behind it,
And a 'ittle mousy-mouse
Runnin' round to find it.

I tan put my hand out flat
On the slate and draw it;
(Ticklin' is the worst of that!)
Did you ever saw it?

Now, then, s'all I make a tree

Wid a birdie on it?
All my pictures you s'all see
If you'll wait a minute.

No, I dess I'll make a man
Juss like Uncle Rolly.
See tummin', fass it tan!

Bet my slate is jolly!

THE PROSPECTS OF THE REPUBLIC.

THIS

HIS, then, is the theatre on which the intellect of America is to appear, and such the motives to its exertion such the mass to be influenced by its energies, such the crowd to witness its efforts, such the glory to crown its success. If I err in this happy vision of my country's fortunes, I thank God for an error so animating. If this be false, may I never know the truth. Never may you, my friends, be under any other feeling than that a great, a growing, an immeasurably expanding country is calling upon you for your best services.

The most powerful motives call on us for those efforts which our common country demands of all her children. Most of us are of that class who owe whatever of knowledge has shone into our minds, to the free and popular institutions of our native land. There are few of us, who may not be permitted to boast, that we have been reared in an honest poverty or a frugal competence, and owe everything to those means of education which are equally open to all.

We are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in Providence to make, and the grandeur of the theatre on which it is to be performed. When the Old World afforded no longer any hope, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun, and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant prospects; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society, to settle, and that forever, that momentous question-whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system?

One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good of all places and times are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us; that they who lavished their treasures and their blood of old, who labored and suffered, who spake and wrote, who fought and perished, in the one great cause of freedom and truth, are now hanging from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity.

As I have wandered over the spots, once the scene of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages; from the sepulchers of the nations, which died before the sight. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our

trust.

They implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity, by the blessed memory of the departed; by the dear faith, which has been plighted by pure hands, to the holy cause of truth and man; by the awful secrets of the prison houses, where the sons of freedom have been immured; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block; by the wrecks of time, by the eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us, by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us, in the mute persuasion of her nangled Tully.

EDWARD EVERETT.

THE FRONT GATE.

N old and crippled gate am I,

ΑΝ

And twenty years have passed Since I was swung up high and dry

Betwixt these posts so fast;

But now I've grown so powerful weak--
Despised by man and beast-
I'm scarcely strong enough to squeak,
Although I'm never greased.

"Twas twenty years ago, I say, When Mr. Enos White

Came kinder hanging 'round my way

'Most every other night.
He hung upon my starboard side
And she upon the tother,
Till Susan Smith became his bride,
And in due time a mother.

I groaned intensely when I heard—
Despite I am no churl—

My doom breathed in a single word:
The baby was a girl!

And as she grew and grew

and

I loud bemoaned my fate; For she was very fair to view, And I-I was the gate!

Then, in due time, a lover came,
Betokening my ruin,

grew,

A dapper fellow, Brown by name,
The grown up baby wooin'!