Alas! the king was wroth. Before his face And, ere the rising of the morrow's sun My bitter doom was sealed, the deed was done. Scarce had two moons passed, when one dreary night When suddenly upon my presence stole A muffled form, whose shadow stirred my soul, I knew not wherefore. Ere my tongue could speak, Or with a cry the brooding silence break, A low voice murmured, " Vashti !" With a bound At the king's feet I fell. Pale and still, "What will the king?" I asked. No answer came. If this be sin, forgive me, Heaven, I pray!— Breathing her name sometimes with vain regret TEMPERANCE.-WENDELL PHILLIPS. Some men look upon this temperance cause as whining bigotry, narrow asceticism, or a vulgar sentimentality, fit for little minds, weak women, and weaker men. On the contrary, I regard it as second only to one or two others of the primary reforms of this age, and for this reason,-every race has its peculiar temptation; every clime has its specific sin. The tropics and tropical races are tempted to one form of YYYYY sensuality; the colder and temperate regions, and our Saxon blood, find their peculiar temptation in the stimulus of drink and food. In old times, our heaven was a drunken revel. We relieve ourselves from the over-weariness of constant and exhausting toil by intoxication. Science has brought a cheap means of drunkenness within the reach of every individual. National prosperity and free institutions have put into the hands of almost every workman the means of being drunk for a week, on the labor of two or three hours. With that blood and that temptation, we have adopted democratic institutions, where the law has no sanctions but the purpose and virtue of the masses. The statute-book rests not on bayonets, as in Europe, but on the hearts of the people. A drunken people can never be the basis of a free government. It is the corner-stone neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress. To us, therefore, the title deeds of whose estates, and the safety of whose lives, depend upon the tranquillity of the streets, upon the virtue of the masses, the presence of any vice which brutalizes the average mass of mankind and tends to make it more readily the tool of intriguing and corrupt leaders, is necessarily a stab at the very life of the nation. Against such a vice is marshaled the temperance reformation. That my sketch is no fancy picture, every one of you knows. Every one of you can glance back over your own path, and count many and many a one among those who started from the goal at your side, with equal energy, and perhaps greater promise, who has found a drunkard's grave long before this. The brightness of the bar, the ornament of the pulpit, the hope and blessing and stay of many a family-you know, every one of you who has reached middle life, how often on your path has been set up the warning, "Fallen before the temptations of the streets!" Hardly one house in this city, whether it be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or whether it find hard, cold maintenance by the most earnest economy, no matter which,-hardly a house that does not count among sons or nephews some victim of this vice. The skeleton of this warning sits at every board. The whole world is kindred in this suffering. The country mother launches her boy with trembling upon the temptations of city life. The father trusts his daughter anxiously to the young man she has chosen, knowing what a wreck intoxication may make of the house-tree they set up. Alas! how often are their worst forebodings more than fulfilled! I have known a case-probably many of you recall some almost equal to it-where one worthy woman could count father, brother, husband, and son-in-law, all drunkards, no man among her near kindred, except her son, who was not a victim of this vice. Like all other appetites, this finds resolution weak when set against the constant presence of temptation. PATIENT MERCY JONES.-JAMES T. FIELDS. Let us venerate the bones Of patient Mercy Jones, Who lies underneath these stones. This is her story as once told to me By him who still loved her, as all men might see,— A man of few words, but for her many tears. Darius and Mercy were born in Vermont; For weal or for woe, through all sorts of weather!" Well, they were married, and happier folk Never put both their heads in the same loving yoke. They were poor, they worked hard, but nothing could try She was patient with dogmas, where light never dawns, She was patient with phrases no husband should utter, They came and devoured, then complained they were slighted; She was patient with crows that got into the corn, And other dark deeds out of wantonness born; She was patient with lightning that burned up the hay, The neighboring husbands all envied the lot To bring o'er his sunshine an unpleasant spot. Let us pick it out, let us go and choose it, And we'll bet you a farm, when she comes for to use it, Darius was piqued, and he said, with a vum, It would not stand up, and it would not lie down; To look at such fuel was really a sin, For the chance was strabismus would surely set in. Darius said nothing to Mercy about it; It was crooked wood-even she could not doubt it; But never a harsh word escaped her sweet lips, Any more than if the old snags were smooth chips. She boiled with them, baked with them, washed with them, through The long winter months, and none ever knew But the wood was as straight as Mehitable Drew, Who was straight as a die, or a gun, or an arrow, And who made it her business all male hearts to harrow. When the pile was burned up, and they needed more wood, Sure, now," mused Darius, "I shall catch it good; She has kept her remarks all condensed for the spring, But Mercy, unruffled, was calm, like the stream I never had wood that I liked half so well Do see who has nice crooked fuel to sell; There's nothing that's better than wood full of knots, And washing and cooking are really like play When the sticks nestle close in so charming a way." -Harper's Magazine THE REASON WHY. Do you wish to know the reason |