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Was I born for this? Will the old folks know?
I can see them now on the old home-place;
His gait is feeble, his step is slow,

There's a settled grief in his furrowed face;
While she goes wearily groping about

In a sort of dream, so bent, so sad!
But this won't do! I must sing and shout,
And forget myself, or else go mad.

I won't be foolish; although for a minute
I was there in my little room once more.
What wouldn't I give just now to be in it?
The bed is yonder, and there is the door;
The Bible is here on the neat white stand;
The summer sweets are ripening now;
In the flickering light I reach my hand

From the window, and pluck them from the bough.

When I was a child, (Oh, well for me

And them if I had never been older!)

When he told me stories on his knee,

And tossed me, and carried me on his shoulder; When she knelt down and heard my prayer,

And gave me, in my bed, my good-night kissDid they ever think that all their care

For an only son could come to this?

Foolish again! No sense in tears

And gnashing the teeth; and yet, somehow,
I haven't thought of them so for years;
I never knew them, I think, till now.
How fondly, how blindly, they trusted me!
When I should have been in my bed asleep,
I slipped from the window, and down the tree,
And sowed for the harvest which now I reap.
And Jennie-how could I bear to leave her?
If I had but wished-but I was a fool!
My heart was filled with a thirst and a fever,
Which no sweet airs of heaven could cool.
I can hear her asking: "Have you heard?"
But mother falters and shakes her head;
"O Jennie! Jennie! never a word!

What can it mean? He must be dead!"

Light-hearted, a proud, ambitious lad,

I left my home that morning in May;
What visions, what hopes, what plans I had!
And what have I-where are they all-to-day?
Wild fellows, and wine, and debts, and gaming,
Disgrace, and the loss of place and friend;

And I was an outlaw, past reclaiming ;

Arrest and sentence, and-this is the end! Five years! Shall ever I quit this prison? Homeless, an outcast, where shall I go? Return to them, like one arisen

From the grave, that was buried long ago? All is still; 'tis the close of the week;

I slink through the garden, I stop by the well, I see him totter, I hear her shriek

What sort of a tale will I have to tell?

But here I am! What's the use of grieving?
Five years-will it be too late to begin?
Can sober thinking and honest living

Still make me the man I might have been? I'll sleep:-Oh, would I could wake to-morrow In that old room, to find, at last,

That all my trouble and all their sorrow
Are only a dream of the night that is past.

ROOM FOR YOU.-GEORGE R. HOWARTH.

Who shall sweep away the errors
Crowding on us from the past?
Who shall clear the mists and shadows
That the future overcast?

Soon we busy teeming millions
Will have ended all this strife;
And the myriads crowding on us
Must take up the task of life.

Ah! the workers in the vineyard
Are too faint and all too few,
And the field of honest effort

Ever waits, young friends, for you.

Room for boyhood, strong and sturdy-
Boyhood manly, brave, and true;
Room for honest, lusty vigor-

Room, my young friends-room for you.

Room for every sweet-voiced singer

That can thrill the heart with song;

Room for thoughts, and words, and actions,
That will drive the world along.

Statesmen, warriors, men of science,
Once, my friends, were boys like you;

And the grandest deeds of history

Are the ones that you may do.

MANSIE WAUCH'S FIRST AND LAST PLAY.

D. M. MOIR.

Mony a time and often had I heard of play acting, and of players making themselves kings and queens, and saying a great many wonderful things; but I had never before an opportunity of making myself a witness to the truth of these hearsays. So, Maister Glen, being as fu' of nonsense, and as fain to have his curiosity gratified, we took upon us the stout resolution to gang ower thegither, he offering to treat me, and I determined to run the risk of Maister Wiggie, our minister's, rebuke for the transgression, hoping it would make na lasting impression on his mind, being for the first and only time. Folks shouldna at a' times be ower scrupulous.

After paying our money at the door, never, while I live and breathe, will I forget what we saw and heard that night; it just looks to me, by a' the world, when I think on't, like a fairy dream. The place was crowded to the e'e, Maister Glen and me having nearly got our ribs dung in before we fand a seat, and them behint were obliged to mount the back benches to get a sight. Right to the fore hand of us was a large green curtain, some five or six ells wide, a gude deal the waur of the wear, having seen service through two or three simmers, and just in the front of it were eight or ten penny candles, stuck in a board fastened to the ground, to let us see the players' feet like, when they came on the stage, and even before they came on the stage, for, the curtain being scrimpit in length, we saw legs and feet moving behind the scenes very neatly, while twa blind fiddlers they had brought with them played the bonniest ye ever heard. Odd, the very music was worth a sixpence of itsel'.

The place, as I said before, was choke full, just to excess, so that ane could scarcely breathe. Indeed I never saw ony pairt sae crowded, not even at a tent preaching, when Mr. Roarer was giving his discourses on the building of Solomon's Temple. We were obligated to have the windows opened for a mouthful of fresh air, the barn being as close as a baker's oven, my neighbor and me fanning our red faces with our hats to keep us cool; and, though all were half

stewed, we had the worst o't, the toddy we had ta’en having fomented the blood of our bodies into a perfect fever.

Just at the time that the twa blind fiddlers were playing the "Downfall of Paris," a hand-bell rang, and up goes the green curtain, being hauled to the ceiling, as I observed wi' the tail o' my e'e, by a birkie at the side, that had haud o' a rope. So, on the music stopping, and all becoming as still as that you might have heard a pin fall, in comes a decent old gentleman, at his leisure, weel powdered, wi' an auldfashioned coat, and waistcoat wi' flap pockets, brown breeches with buckles at the knees, and silk stockings with red gushets on a blue ground. I never saw a man in sic distress; he stampit about, and better stampit about, dadding the end of his staff on the ground, and imploring all the powers of heaven and yearth to help him to find out his runawa' daughter, that had decampit wi' some ne'er-do-well loon of a half-pay captain, that keppit her in his arms frae her bedroom window, up twa pair o' stairs. Every father and head of a family maun ha'e felt for a man in his situation, thus to be robbit of his dear bairn, and an only daughter, too, as he tel't us ower and ower again, as the saut, saut tears ran gushing down his withered face, and he aye blew his nose on his clean calendered pocket napkin. But, ye ken, the thing was absurd to suppose that we should ken onything about the matter, having never seen either him or his daughter between the een afore, and no kenning them by head mark; so though we sympathized with him, as folks ought to do with a fellow-creature in affliction, we thought it best to haud our tongues, to see what might cast up better than he expected. So out he gaed stamping at the ither side, determined, he said, to find them out, though he should follow them to the world's end, Johnny Groat's house, or something to that effect.

Hardly was his back turned, and amaist before ye couid cry Jack Robison, in comes the birkie and the very young leddy the auld gentleman described, arm-in-arm thegither, smoodging and lauching like daft. Dog on it, it was a shameless piece of business. As true as death, before all the crowd of folk, he put his arm round her waist, and caad her his sweetheart, and love, and dearie, and darling, and every

thing that is sweet.

If they had been courting in a close thegither, on a Friday night, they couldna ha'e said mair to ane anither, or gane greater lengths. I thought sic shame to be an e'ewitness to sic on-goings, that I was obliged at last to haud up my hat afore my face and look down, though, for a' that, the young lad, to be sic a blackguard as his conduct showed, was weel enough faured and had a guid coat on his back, wi' double-gilt buttons, and fashionable lapels, to say little o' a very weel-made pair o' buckskins, a little the waur o' the wear to be sure, but which, if they had been cleaned, would ha'e looked amaist as good as new. How they had come we never could learn, as we neither saw chaise nor gig; but, from his having spurs on his boots, it is mair than likely that they had alighted at the back door of the barn frae a horse, she riding on a pad behint him, maybe, with her hand round his waist.

The faither lookit to be a rich auld bool, baith from his manner of speaking and the rewards he seemed to offer for the apprehension of his daughter; but, to be sure, when so many of us were present that had an equal right to the spulzie, it wadna be a great deal, a thousand pounds when divided, still it was worth the looking after; so we just bidit

a wee.

Things were brought to a bearing, howsoever, sooner than either themsel's, I daur say, or onybody else present seemed to ha'e the least glimpse of; for, just in the middle of their ine going-on, the sound of a coming fit was heard, and the lassie taking guilt to her, cried out,-" Hide me, hide me, for the sake of gudeness, for yonder comes my auld faither!" Nae sooner said than done. In he stappit her into a loset; and, after shutting the door on her, he sat down apon a chair, pretending to be asleep in a moment. The auld faither came bouncing in, and seeing the fellow as sound as a tap, he ran forrit, and gied him sic a shake, as if he wad ha'e shooken him a' sundry, which sune made him open his een as fast as he had steekit them. After blackguarding the chield at no allowance, cursing him up hill and down dale, and caaing him every name but a gentleman, he haddit his staff ower his crown, and gripping him by the cuff o' the neck, askit him what he had made

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