So, with half unconscious sigh,
I sought my office desk again.
An hour or more my busy wits

Found work enough with book and pen.

But when the mantel clock struck five
I started with a sudden thought,
For there beside my hat and cloak

Lay those six papers I had bought.

Why, where's the boy, and where's the 'change'
He should have brought an hour ago?

Ah, well! ah, well! they're all alike!
I was a fool to tempt him so!

"Dishonest! Well, I might have known;
And yet his face seemed candid, too.
He would have earned the difference
If he had brought me what was due.

Just two days later, as I sat,

Half dozing in my office chair,
I heard a timid knock, and called,
In my brusque fashion, "Who's there?"

An urchin entered, barely seven

The same Scotch face, the same blue eyes And stood half doubting, at the door, Abashed at my forbidding guise.

"Sir, if you please, my brother Jim

The one you give the bill, you know

He couldn't bring the money, sir,
Because his back was hurted so.

"He didn't mean to keep the 'change,'
He got runned over up the street;
One wheel went right across his back,
And t'other fore-wheel mashed his feet.

"They stopped the horses just in time, And then they took him up for dead; And all that day and yesterday

He wasn't rightly in his head.

"They took him to the hospital

One of the newsboys knew 'twas JimAnd I went too, because, you see,

We two are brothers, I and him.

"He had that money in his hand,
And never saw it any more.
Indeed, he didn't mean to steal!
He never lost a cent before.

"He was afraid that you might think
He meant to keep it any way.
This morning, when they brought him to,
He cried because he couldn't pay.

"He made me fetch his jacket here; It's torn and dirtied pretty bad,

It's only fit to sell for rags,

But then you know it's all he had!

"When he gets well-it won't be long-
If you will call the money lent,
He says he'll work his fingers off
But what he'll pay you every cent."

And then he cast a rueful glance
At the soiled jacket, where it lay,
"No, no, my boy! Take back the coat.
Your brother's badly hurt, you say?

"Where did they take him? Just run out
And hail a cab, then wait for me.
Why, I would give a thousand coats,
And pounds, for such a boy as he!"

A half hour after this we stood
Together in the crowded wards,
And the nurse checked the hasty steps
That fell too loudly on the boards.

I thought him smiling in his sleep,
And scarce believed her when she said,
Smoothing away the tangled hair

From brow and cheek, "The boy is dead!"

Dead? Dead so soon? How fair he looked,
One streak of sunshine on his hair.
Poor lad! Well, it is warm in heaven;
No need of "change" and jackets there.

And something rising in my throat
Made it so hard for me to speak,
I turned away, and left a tear
Lying upon his sunburned cheek.

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

EVE

BEYOND THE MISSISSIPPI.

VERY spring hundreds of our countrymen go westward as inevitably as wild geese fly south on the approach of winter. We are, indeed, a bivouac rather than a nation-a grand army moving from Atlantic to Pacific and pitching tents by the way. It is not from accident or American restlessness, but law fixed inexorable as that compelling water to its level or the magnet to its pole.

In all ages and countries how uniform the course of civilization toward the setting sun-that Mecca which needs the memory of no prophet to draw thither its living pilgrims-that "land beyond the river," where Greek poet and American Indian alike place the abode of their dead. From the dim confines of Egypt and China has the spirit of progress, like the fabled one of Jewish legend, doomed to no respite from his wanderings, marched on by Greece, Rome, and Western Europe across the Atlantic, through Jamestown harbor, over Plymouth Rock-on, on, toward the serene Pacific. Ere long through the Golden Gate of San Francisco it will go out by the islands of the sea to that dreamy Orient where it was born. And then what?

RICHARDSON.

THE MAISTER AN' THE BAIRNS.

THE Maister sat in a wee cot house

To the Jordan's waters near,

And the fisher fowk crushed an' crooded roon'
The Maister's words to hear.

An' even the bairns frae the near-haun' streets

War mixin' in wi' the thrang,

Laddies an' lassies wi' wee bare feet

Jinkin' the crood amang.

An' ane o' the Twal' at the Maister's side

Raise up an' cried alood

"Come, come, bairns, this is nae place for you, Rin awa' hame oot the crood."

But the Maister said, as they turned awa, 66 Let the wee bairns come to me."

An' He gathered them roon' Him whar He sat,
An' He lifted ane up on His knee.

Ay, he gathered them roon' him whar he sat,
An' straikit their curley hair,

An' He said to the won'erin' fisher fowk
That croodit aroon' Him there-

"Sen'na the weans awa' frae me,
But rather this lesson learn-
That nane'll won in at heaven's yett
That isna as pure as a bairn!"

An' He that wisna oor kith an' kin,
But a Prince o' the Far Awa',
Gathered the wee anes in His airms,
And blessed them ane an' a'.

O Thou who watchest the ways o' men

Keep our feet in the heavenly airt, An' bring us at last to Thy hame abune As pure as the bairns in he'rt.

WILLIAM THOMSON.