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INCY AND

MINDATION

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birth and power; the poor man's attachment to the tenement he holds, which strangers have held before, and may to-morrow occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a purer soil. His household gods are of flesh and blood, with no alloy of silver,

Blest into mother, in the innocent look, Or even the piping cry of lips that brook No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook She sees her little bud put forth its leavesWhat may the fruit be yet? I know not-Cain was gold, or precious stones; he has no property but in Eve's.

But here youth offers to old age the food,
The milk of his own gift; it is her sire

To whom she renders back the debt of blood

Born with her birth. No! he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide

Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher
Than Egypt's river;-from that gentle side

Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven's realm holds
no such tide.

The starry fable of the milky-way
Has not thy story's purity; it is
A constellation of a sweeter ray,

And sacred Nature triumphs more in this
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss

Where sparkle distant worlds :-O, holiest nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source
With life, as our freed souls rejoin the universe.

LORD BYRON.

JOHN ANDERSON, MY JO.

OHN ANDERSON, my jo, John,

When we were first acquent,
Your locks were like the raven,
Your bonnie brow was brent;
But now your brow is beld, John,
Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
John Anderson, my jo.
John Anderson, my jo, John,

We clamb the hill thegither;
And monie a canty day, John,
We've had wi' ane anither.
Now we maun totter down, John,
But hand in hand we'll go:

And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo.

ROBERT BURNS.

AFFECTIONS OF HOME.

F ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home, may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth, are of the true metal, and bear the stamp of heaven. The man of high descent may love the halls and lands of his inheritance as a part of himself, as trophies of his

the affections of his own heart; and when they endear
bare floors and walls, despite of toil and scanty meals,
that man has his love of home from God, and his rude
hut becomes a solemn place.
CHARLES Dickens.

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SHALL leave the old house in the autumn
To traverse its threshold no more ;
Ah! how shall I sigh for the dear ones

That meet me each morn at the door!

I shall miss the "good nights" and the kisses,
And the gush of their innocent glee,
The group on its green, and the flowers
That are brought every morning to me.

I shall miss them at morn and at even,
Their song in the school and the street;
I shall miss the low hum of their voices,
And the tread of their delicate feet.
When the lessons of life are all ended,

And death says, “The school is dismissed!”
May the little ones gather around me,

To bid me good night and be kissed!
CHARLES M. DICKINSON

A PICTURE.

'HE farmer sat in his easy-chair,

Smoking his pipe of clay,

While his hale old wife, with busy care,
Was clearing the dinner away;

A sweet little girl, with fine blue eyes,
On her grandfather's knee was catching flies.

The old man laid his hand on her head,

With a tear on his wrinkled face;
He thought how often her mother, dead,
Had sat in the self-same place.

As the tear stole down from his half-shut eye,

"Don't smoke !" said the child; "how it makes you cry!"

The house-dog lay stretched out on the floor,
Where the shade after noon used to steal;
The busy old wife, by the open door,

Was turning the spinning-wheel;

And the old brass clock on the mantel-tree
Had plodded along to almost three.

Still the farmer sat in his easy-chair,
While close to his heaving breast
The moistened brow and the cheek so fair
Of his sweet grandchild were pressed;
His head, bent down, on her soft hair lay:
Fast asleep were they both, that summer day!
CHARLES GAMAGE EASTMAN.

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HOMESICK.

OME to me, O my Mother! come to ine,
Thine own son slowly dying far away!
Through the moist ways of the wide ocean.
blown

By great invisible winds, come stately ships
To this calm bay for quiet anchorage;
They come, they rest awhile, they go away,
But, O my Mother, never comest thou!

The snow is round thy dwelling, the white snow,
That cold soft revelation pure as light,

And the pine-spire is mystically fringed.

Why am I from thee, Mother, far from thee?

Far from the frost enchantment, and the woods
Jewelled from bough to bough? O home, my home!
O river in the valley of my home,
With mazy-winding motion intricate,
Twisting thy deathless music underneath
The polished ice-work—must I nevermore
Behold thee with familiar eyes, and watch
Thy beauty changing with the changeful day,
Thy beauty constant to the constant change?

DAVID GRAY.

MY WIFE'S A WINSOME WEE THING.

HE is a winsome wee thing,

She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife o' mine.

I never saw a fairer,

I never lo'ed a dearer,

And neist my heart I'll wear hei,

For fear my jewel tine.

She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife o' mine.

The warld's wrack we share o't,
The warstle and the care o't:

Wi' her I'll blythely bear it,

And think my lot divine.

ROBERT BURNS.

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! KNEW BY THE SMOKE THAT SO GRACE

FULLY CURLED

KNEW by the smoke that so gracefully curled

Above the green elms, that a cottage was near, And I said, "If there's peace to be found in the world,

A heart that is humble might hope for it here!"

it was noon, and on flowers that languished around In silence reposed the voluptuous bee; Every leaf was at rest, and I heard not a sound But the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech-tree. And "Here in this lone little wood," I exclaimed, "With a maid who was lovely to soul and to eye, Who would blush when I praised her, and weep if I blamed,

How blest could I live, and how calm could I die! "By the shade of yon sumach, whose red berry dips In the gush of the fountain, how sweet to recline, And to know that I sighed upon innocent lips, Which had never been sighed on by any but mine!" THOMAS Moore.

ADAM TO EVE.

FAIREST of creation, last and best

Of all God's works, creature in whom celled

A WISH.

INE be a cot beside the hill;

A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear;
A willowy brook that turns the mill,
With many a fall shall linger near.

The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch,
Shalt twitter from her clay-built nest;
Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch,
And share my meal, a welcome guest.
Around my ivied porch shall spring
Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew,
And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing
In russet gown and apron blue.

The village-church among the trees,
When first our marriage vows were given,
With merry peals shall swell the breeze
And point with taper spire to heaven.
SAMUEL ROGERS.

THE OLD LOG CABIN.

T is only shallow-minded pretenders who either make distinguished origin a matter of personal merit, or obscure origin a matter of personal re proach. Taunt and scoffing at the humble conex-dition of early life affect nobody in America but those who are foolish enough to indulge in them; and they

Whatever can to sight or thought be formed, are generally sufficiently punished by public rebuke.

Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!
How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,
Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!
Rather, how hast thou yielded to transgress
The strict forbiddance, how to violate

The sacred fruit forbidden! Some cursed fraud
Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die.

How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

However, I with thee have fixed my lot,
Certain to undergo like doom; if death
Consort with thee, death is to me as life;
So forcible within my heart I feel
The bond of nature draw me to my own,
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed, we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.
JOHN MILTON.

A man who is not ashamed of himself need not be ashamed of his early condition. It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin; but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a log cabin, raised among the snow-drifts of New Hampshire, at a period so early, that when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada.

Its remains still exist. I make to it an annual visit. I carry my children to it, to teach them the hardships endured by the generations which have gone before them. I love to dwell on the tender recollections, the kindred ties, the early affections, and the touching narratives and incidents which mingle with all I know of this primitive family abode. I weep to think that none of those who inhabited it are now among the living; and if ever I am ashamed of it, or if ever I fail in affectionate veneration for him who reared it, and defended it against savage violence and destruction, cherished all the domestic virtues beneath its roof, and, through the fire and blood of a seven years' revolutionary war, shrunk from no danger, no toil, no sacrifice, to serve his country, and to raise his children to a condition better than his own, may my name, and the name of my posterity, be blotted forever from the memory of mankind!

DANIEL Webster.

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