And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith;
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,—
Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee!"

You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!

Yes, we're boys,—always playing with tongue or with pen;
And I sometimes have asked, Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, THE BOYS!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,

His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His days are marching on.

I have read the fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel,

Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat;
O, be swift, my soul, to answer him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

JULIA WARD HOWE,

THE MARINER'S DREAM.

[This favorite poem should be read in a simple unaffected manner until the sixth verse, when the voice should be more animated and impassioned, rising to a high pitch; toward the end it should sink into a low, mournful tone.]

In slumbers of midnight the sailor-boy lay;

His hammock swung loose at the sport of the wind;
But watch-worn and weary, his cares flew away,
And visions of happiness danced o'er his mind.

He dreamt of his home, of his dear native bowers,
And pleasures that waited on life's merry morn;
While memory stood sideways half covered with flowers,
And restored every rose, but secreted its thorn.

Then Fancy her magical pinions spread wide,
And bade the young dreamer in ecstasy rise;
Now far, far behind him the green waters glide,
And the cot of his forefathers blesses his eyes.

The jessamine clambers in flowers o'er the thatch,
And the swallow chirps sweet from her nest in the wall;
All trembling with transport he raises the latch,
And the voices of loved ones reply to his call.

A father bends o'er him with looks of delight;
His cheek is impearled with a mother's warm tear;

And the lips of the boy in a love-kiss unite

With the lips of the maid whom his bosom holds dear.

The heart of the sleeper beats high in his breast;

Joy quickens his pulses,—his hardships seem o'er; And a murmur of happiness steals through his rest,— "O God! thou hast blest me,-I ask for no more."

Ah! whence is that flame which now bursts on his eye? Ah! what is that sound which now 'larms on his ear? 'Tis the lightning's red gleam, painting hell on the sky! 'T is the crashing of thunders, the groan of the sphere!

He springs from his hammock, he flies to the deck;

Amazement confronts him with images dire;
Wild winds and mad waves drive the vessel a wreck;
The masts fly in splinters; the shrouds are on fire.

Like mountains the billows tremendously swell;

In vain the lost wretch calls on mercy to save; Unseen hands of spirits are ringing his knell,

And the death-angel flaps his broad wings o'er the wave!

O sailor-boy, woe to thy dream of delight!

In darkness dissolves the gay frost-work of bliss. Where now is the picture that fancy touched bright,-Thy parents' fond pressure, and love's honeyed kiss?

O sailor-boy! sailor-boy! never again

Shall home, love, or kindred thy wishes repay; Unblessed and unhonored, down deep in the main, Full many a fathom, thy frame shall decay.

No tomb shall e'er plead to remembrance for thee,
Or redeem form or fame from the merciless surge,
But the white foam of waves shall thy winding-sheet be,
And winds in the midnight of winter thy dirge!

On a bed of green sea-flowers thy limbs shall be laid,—
Around thy white bones the red coral shall grow;

Of thy fair yellow locks threads of amber be made,
And every part suit to thy mansion below.

Days, months, years. and ages shall circle away,
And still the vast waters above thee shall roll;
Earth loses thy pattern forever and aye,—

O sailor-boy! sailor-boy! peace to thy soul!

WILLIAM DIMOND.

BEAUTY.

The poets are quite right in decking their mistresses with the spoils of the landscape, flower gardens, gems, rainbows, flushes of morning and stars of night, since all beauty points at identity, and whatsoever thing does not express to me the sea and sky, day and night, is somewhat forbiddden and wrong. Into every beautiful object there enters somewhat immeasurable and divine, and just as much bounded by outlines, like mountains on the horizon, as into tones of music or depth of space. Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color, or form, or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.

The laws of this translation we do not know, or why one feature or gesture enchants, why one word or syllable intoxicates, but the fact is familiar that the fine touch of the eye, or a grace of manner, or a phrase of poetry, plants wings at our shoulders; as if the Divinity, in his approaches, lifts away mountains of obstruction, and designs to draw a truer line, which the mind knows and owns. This is that haughty force of beauty, vis superba formæ, which the poets praise— under calm and precise outline, the immeasurable and divine-beauty hiding all wisdom and power in its calm sky.

All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus, and the beauty ever in proportion to the depth of thought. Gross and impure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot choose but obey, and the woman who has shared with us

the moral sentiments—her locks must appear to us sublime. Thus, there is a climbing scale of culture, from the first agreeable sensation which a sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords the eye, up through fair outlines and details of the landscape, features of the human face and form, signs and tokens of thought and character in manners, up to the ineffable mysteries of the human intellect. Wherever we begin, thither our steps tend; an ascent from the joy of a horse in his

trappings up to the perception of Newton, that the globe on which we ride is only a larger apple falling from a larger tree; up to the perception of Plato, that globe and universe are rude and early expression of an all-dissolving unity-the first stair on the scale to the temple of the mind.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

A few months ago a daughter of a Nassau man, who had grown comfortably well-off in a small grocery line, was sent away to a