groggery has flowered out into the gilded saloon. The scurvy miscreant, once despised but patronized, has become the acknowledged gentleman of fashion. He has moved from his obscure quarters into the streets where decent citizens live, and is toasted and fêted by well-bred men and women. He has formed an ostentatious league, and banks millions to defend his disreputable profession. He calls conventions, and sits, with parade, in deliberation of his rights and immunities, and the public press busies itself with reports of his proceedings and speaks of him with respect. Moderation? No! Who talks of moderation in the coils of a boa-constrictor? We have temporized too long. It is time we talk and act like men. A murderer, cold, heartless, cruel, is among us. Not the assassin of one or of a family. His victims count by millions. His butcheries are progressing daily and nightly within sight of our dwellings. The screams of his victims, if we would but listen, would chase away sleep from our eyes. He knows the fact; we know it. His sole and only business for which he lives, and by which he lives, is first to debauch youth and innocence, and then to hurry the dishonored hulk away into a drunkard's grave, and pamper himself and his family upon the price of his villainies. The teocalli of the Aztec war-god, upon which the quivering hearts of thousands were laid, is a shrine of beauty compared with the horrors of this modern demon of destruction,-the rum-hole. We men stand by and see it and raise no hand; nay, worse yet, vote the right, and take the assassin of virtue and life by the hand and treat him as our equal. The annals of human history furnish no parallel of stupidity and monstrosity. Moderation? No, no! There is but one way; it is plain and simple. Treat the criminal as he deserves; let criminal law do its function; put him in the culprit's dock, which is the only place to which he is entitled; carry him from the dock, by sentence of law, to the felon's cell or to the

gang of striped convicts, who are his only fit associates. Let the process be the most summary possible; let the law take hold of the factor on simple evidence of his business; let the evidence of criminal intent be the presence of the article; put it under ban of right of search when its presence is suspected. Deal with it precisely as we deal with theft, murder, abduction, and classes of crime which grade with it, but are far below it in atrocity. In a nation whose legislation is controlled by universal suffrage and direct vote, if half the voters have not sunk below the level of men, it cannot be long until we are delivered from this insufferable shame.

WHEN GREEK MET GREEK.

Stranger here? Yes, come from Varmount,
Rutland county. You've hern tell
Mebbe of the town of Granville?

You born there? No! sho! Well, well!
You was born at Granville, was you"

Then you know Elisha Brown,

Him as runs the old meat market

At the lower end of town!

Well! well! well! Born down in Granville!
And out here, so far away!
Stranger, I'm homesick already,
Though it's but a week to-day
Since I left my good wife standin'
Out there at the kitchen door,
Sayin' she'd ask God to keep me;
And her eyes were runnin' o'er!
You must know ole Albert Withers,
Henry Bell and Ambrose Cole?
Know them all? And born in Granville!
Well! well! well! Why, bless my soul!
Sho! You're not old Isaac's nephew!
Isaac Green, down on the flat!
Isaac's oldest nephew,-Henry?
Well, I'd never thought of that!
Have I got a hundred dollars

I could loan you for a minute,

Till you buy a horse at Marcy's?

There's my wallet! Just that in it!
Hold on though! You have ten, mebbe,
You could let me keep; you see

I might chance to need a little

Betwixt now and half past three!
Ten. That's it; you'll owe me ninety;
Bring it round to the hotel.

So you're old friend Isaac's nephew?
Born in Granville! Sho! Well, well!

What! policeman, did you call me?
That a rascal going there?

Well, sir; do you know I thought so,
And I played him pretty fair;
Hundred-dollar bill I gave him-
Counterfeit and got this ten!
Ten ahead. No! you don't tell me!
This bad, too? Sho! Sold again!

THE PESSIMISTIC PHILOSOPHER.

In building up natur' he thought the Creator
Had blundered unspeakably queer,

And he said he and Darwin and Billy McVarren
Could prove the whole thing out of gear.

He said the whole pattern from Neptune to Saturn
Was cut by a bungling design,

And that no particular was plumb perpendicular,
And exact every time to the line.

He said that no critic, with brain analytic,
Could tolerate things that he saw.

He said he would suffer if any old duffer
Couldn't pick out a blemish or flaw.

Any man with a cranium as big's a geranium
Could see the whole thing was a botch,

See where natur' had blundered in points by the hundred
In the space of five ticks of his watch.

And so day and night he advised the Almighty
With advice he believed of great worth,

And his wife took in sewing to keep life a-going
While he superintended the earth.

ABIGAIL BECKER.*-AMANDA T. JONES.

OFF LONG POINT ISLAND, CANADA, NOVEMBER 24, 1854.

The noble heroism of Abigail Becker is in nowise exaggerated, and justly entitles her to rank with Grace Darling and Ida Lewis. In fact, the men saved were accustomed to say that "no one could possibly tell the story as big as it really was."

The wind, the wind where Erie plunged,

Blew, blew nor'-east from land to land;
The wandering schooner dipped and lunged,-
Long Point was close at hand.

Long Point, a swampy island-slant,
Where, busy in their grassy homes,
Woodcock and snipe the hollows haunt,
And musk-rats build their domes;

Where gulls and eagles rest at need,
Where either side, by lake or sound,
Kingfishers, cranes, and divers feed,
And mallard ducks abound.

The lowering night shut out the sight:

Careened the vessel, pitched and veered,—
Raved, raved the wind with main and might;
The sunken reef she neared.

She pounded over, lurched and sank:
Between two sand-bars settling fast,

Her leaky hull the waters drank,
And she had sailed her last.

Into the rigging, quick as thought,
Captain and mate and sailors sprung,
Clambered for life, some vantage caught,
And there all night they swung.

And it was cold—oh, it was cold!
The pinching cold was like a vise:
Spoondrift flew freezing,-fold on fold
It coated them with ice.

Now when the dawn began to break,

Light up the sand-path drenched and brown,

To fill her bucket from the lake,

Came Mother Becker down.

*From "The Century," by permission.

From where her cabin crowned the bank
Came Abigail Becker tall and strong;
She dipped, and lo! a broken plank
Came rocking close along!

She poised her glass with anxious ken:
The schooner's top she spied from far,
And there she counted seven men
That clung to mast and spar.

And oh, the gale! the rout and roar !
The blinding drift, the mounting wave;
A good half-mile from wreck to shore,
With seven men to save!

Sped Mother Becker: "Children! wake!
A ship's gone down! they're needing me!
Your father's off on shore; the lake
Is just a raging sea!

"Get wood, cook fish, make ready all."

She snatched her stores, she fled with haste,
In cotton gown and tattered shawl,
Barefoot across the waste,

Through sinking sands, through quaggy lands,
And nearer, nearer, full in view,
Went shouting through her hollowed hands:
"Courage! we'll get you through!"

Ran to and fro, made cheery signs,
Her bonfire lighted, steeped her tea,
Brought driftwood, watched Canadian lines
Her husband's boat to see.

Cold, cold it was-oh, it was cold!

The bitter cold made watching vain: With ice the channel laboring rolled,No skiff could stand the strain.

On all that isle, from outer swell

To strait between the landings shut, Was never place where man might dwell, Save trapper Becker's hut.

And it was twelve and one and two,

And it was three o'clock and more.

She called: "Come on! there's nought to do, But leap and swim ashore !"