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O. C. AURINGER.

BADIAH CYRUS AURINGER was born at Glens Falls, New York, on the fourth of June, He is of both German and French stocks. His propensity for verse showed itself before he knew the alphabet. His school education was acquired in his native town, but by far the most important part of his education he has won by solitary study of a wide range of subjects. Like most boys of imagination he chafed under the narrow restraint of country life, and he left the farm to which his family had removed, to engage in various employments on railroads and in cities, the people at home, I dare say, regarding him as one who was "unsteady" and who could not "settle down." In 1871 his wandering spirit carried him into the navy. This was his university. On the flag ship Worcester" he encountered men of every nationality both among his shipmates and in the various West Indian countries visited during his four years and two months of service. Nothing could have ⚫ been better for an undeveloped poet born in northern New York than this experience of the sea, this knowledge of men, of various life-pictures, this acquaintance with the luxuriance of Nature in the tropics. During his period of naval service Mr. Auringer was at New Orleans for a considerable time. While there his verse-making tendency broke out in a series of anonymous poems contributed to the Picayune and Times of that city, verses criticising certain actions of the naval authorities. In 1875 he quitted the sea and came back to the beautiful if provincial country in which he was born. His wander-year was over; he had done with the pleasures of roving. He married Miss Eva Hendryx, an old acquaintance, and settled quietly down to a farmer's life, cultivating strawberries, writing poetry and reading with an omnivorous book-hunger. He published a volume of sea poems in 1877 entitled "The Voice of a Shell." The work was immature but promising. Meantime he modestly sent verses to the village paper, some of which certainly deserved a better vehicle. One of these poems, on the death of George Eliot, impressed me deeply. In 1882 his muse almost suddenly seemed to take a loftier range, and he began to seek a larger public. He published poems in the Springfield Republican, the Century Magazine, the Manhattan, Outing, the Christian Union, the Independent, the Critic and other wellknown periodicals. In March, 1887, was published a volume of his poetry under the title "Scythe and Sword," which has made a very favorable impression.

In his private life Mr. Auringer is much esteemed; he is an elder in the Presbyterian Church, a superintendent of the Sunday-school and fond of theological study He is a rather handsome man,

slight, of medium height, flowing auburn sidewhiskers, and of modest and pleasing address. He is much liked by his neighbors and for myself those are red letter Sundays when he comes and sits by my library fire, or if the weather is fine strolls over the woods with me and talks of books He is, I believe, engaged now on two or three extended poems, one of them devoted to the Jane McCrea incident which has taken so strong a hold on the local imagination in this part of the country for more than a century. E. E.

A WIND SONG.

BLOW, freely blow,

Over the snow, O wind!

As merrily blow o'er the hills of snow
As if never a man had sinned,
As if never a woman had wept,

Or a delicate child grown pale,
Or a maiden's warm tears crept
To hallow a faithless tale!

Blow, stoutly blow,

Strong in thy heathen joy! Sorrow thou surely canst not know, For thine is the heart of a boy! For thine is the freedom and strength Of a rover careless and gay, Over the fair land's length Joyfully wandering away!

Blow, bravely blow,

Out of the fields of air!
Till we see thy garments' airy flow,

And the gleam of thy flying hair;
Till the light of thy broad bright wing
And thy glad eyes set us free,
And we feel in our hearts the spring
Of a joy that was wont to be!

GLEN LAKE AT TWILIGHT.

How still she lies!

A bride in all her wedding splendor dressed, After the day's sweet tumult and surprise Laid in soft rest.

Ere yet the hour

Has come that brings the bridegroom to her arms, In that mysterious pause 'twixt bud and flower Of royal charms.

With dearest eyes

Closed over dreams of glorious substance wrought,
Placid as peace, in all content she lies,
And still as thought.

The tender flush

Of twilight lingering warm on brow and cheek, Upturned in perfect slumber 'mid the hush, Serene and meek.

Scarcely a gem

Is shaken 'midst the clusters on her breast, Nor trembles there the red rose on its stem, So deep her rest.

No faintest stir

Of zephyrs playing unseen round her bed, Disturbs the folds of the bright robe round her In wealth outspread.

'Twixt low hills peaked

Hangs the bepainted couch on which she lies, Pillowed with mist and curtained by the streaked, Delightful skies.

All life around

Gives worship in a silence delicate,

Soothed by the vision and the charm profound Of peace so great.

In white undress,

The moon, with two shy children at her side, Looks down on her in matron tenderness, Regret, and pride.

Tranquil and fair,

Untroubled by a thought of all the earth She sleeps, secure in kindly nature's care As at her birth.

From thee, still lake,

Passes the shadow of a peace unguessed
By all the dreamless world, substance to take
In this sure breast.

Thy corn-land and thy wine-land is its mould: 'T is here, 't is here God's land lies, the divine, America, thy heart's true home and mine!

II.

All lands are God's lands; yet is this indeed
The home express of His divinity;

His visible hand redeemed it from the sea,
And sowed its fields with freedom's deathless seed.
He succored it most swiftly in its need;

In field and council men with awe did see
His arm made manifest almightily,
Scarce veiled in instruments of mortal breed.
He laid a way here for the feet that bleed,
A space for souls ayearn for liberty
To grow immortal in,- - no more to plead

With nature for their portion which should be. 'T is here, O friend! the land lies that shall grow The vine of sacred brotherhood below.

EMERSON-CARLYLE.

ONE stood upon the morning hills and saw
The heavens revealed in symbol and in sign;
He read their mystic meanings, line by line,
And taught in light the reign of rhythmic law.
One in the twilight valleys, pierced with awe,
Beheld wan Hope amid great darkness shine,-
Saw gloom and glory blent without design,
And cried against a world of blot and flaw.
Sunrise and sunset poise the perfect day;
One was the prince of morning fair and free,
And one the lord of darkness was, and they
Made day and night one round of harmony,
For they were kings and brothers, and their sway
One law,— one new divine philosophy.

GOD'S COUNTRY.

I.

Dost thou not know God's country, where it lies? That land long dreamed of, more desired than gold,

Which noble souls, by dauntless hope made bold, Have searched the future for with longing eyes! Hast thou not seen in heaven its hills arise?

Hast thou not viewed its glories manifold,
'Midst sky-wide scenery splendidly unrolled,
Ripe for hearts' trust and godlike enterprise?
Yes, thou hast known it in familiar guise,

Its soil thy feet are keeping with fast hold;
And thou dost love its songs, its flowers dost prize;

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HAV

JEAN INGELOW.

AVING greatly admired Jean Ingelow's poetry with its beautiful kinship with nature and its warm, human sympathy, it was a pleasure to meet her in her own home during a year or more spent in London. She is in middle life, with a fine, womanly face, friendly manner, open, frank heart, and cultivated mind. She is familiar with our literature, and our national questions, and is able to talk about them as an educated woman should be. Her first work in life seemed to be the making of home happy for her two brothers, (one of whom has since died). She generally spends her forenoons in writing. As she is never in perfect health, she gives little time to society, passing her winters usually in Southern France or Italy. She lives in Kensington, a suburb of London, in a two-storyand-a-half stone house, cream-colored, with tasteful lawn in front, and a great garden in the rear, bordered with flowers and rich in conservatories. The house seems a bower fit for a poet, so filled is it with azalias, primroses, forget-me-nots, and other blossoms in their season.

Jean Ingelow was born in the quaint old city of Boston, England, in 1830; the child of a wellto-do banker, and a cultivated mother of Scotch descent, and reared in the midst of clever brothers and sisters. She writes to a friend concerning her childhood: "I was uncommonly like other children. I remember seeing a star, and that my mother told me of God who lived up there and made the star. This was on a summer evening. It was my first hearing of God, and made a great impression on my mind. I remember better than anything that certain ecstatic sensations of joy used to get hold of me, and that I used to creep into corners to think out my thoughts by myself. I have suffered much from a feeling of shyness and reserve all my life, and I have not been able to do things by trying to do them. What comes to me comes of its own accord, and almost in spite of me; and I have hardly any power when verses are once written to make them any better."

Miss Ingelow's first book, "A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings," was published in 1850, when she was twenty, and a novel, "Allerton and Dreux" in 1851; nine years later, her " Tales of Orris." But her fame came at thirty-three, when her first full book of "Poems" was published in 1863. In this she had a message to the world of earnest purpose, of hope, of cheerfulness, of love; Still humanity grows dearer, Being learned the more."

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She could say, with George Eliot, "Human nature is lovable, and the way I have learned something of its deep pathos, its sublime mysteries, has been by living a great deal among people more or less commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would

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