"I often see, adorned by lingual pomp,

That great word-' Manhood'-'Manhood's mighty tread;
Yet dying boyhood makes me weep and feel
That some will think my innocence has fed.
"When reading of the 'merry, romping boy,'
The 'youthful brow unfurrowed by a grief,'
How I'll recall the license of the 'lad,'

And how my tears will fall upon that leaf!
"We know 'tis man who chains the woman soul,
That years make sages out of boyish worth,
But oh, those trials that develop us!-

The gloomy wisdom that enclouds the earth!
"What joy I've had beside the woodland stream,
Watching the mill-wheel in the moonbeam's light;
Ah! then it wound the music of the rill,

But now, 'twill speak of time, its rapid flight.

"In rosy sunsets, I would view the sky,
Its mountain peaks and palaces of gold;
The panorama now will speak of change,
Departing splendor as we're growing old.
"Dear Kate, the language of the boy's bouquet
Was holy love without a mournful shade;
I fear the language of the man will say,

That, like the flowers, love and friendship fade.
"Two minutes more. Yet, Kate, I'm just the same,
As when the kiss would greet the glowing plan;
But now I'll miss the sanction of thy lips,

You'll blush and say: 'Remember, you're a man.

"I feel as youthful, sensitive and true,

As when a horseman on my father's knee; I'd ride to-day, but then the world would say: 'How doubly child, when man a child would be!' "True, I was wild, though not a vicious boy,

Sometimes, in wrong the impulse would engage; But now my head and heart must never err,― 'He should know better, for he is of age.'

"To-morrow eve, I'll hie to Willow Glen,

For social chat with good old Farmer Dunn; How sad I'll feel, when he with sigh repeats:

'How time flies onward, after twenty-one!'

"When next I hear the village pastor say:
'God waits to clean the souls of wicked men,'
I fear I'll think me worse than what I am,
Because a man, for I will be one then.

"And there's the law, such is required of man,
The State will seize me. Time, what hast thou done!
Oh, what a Scylla sixty seconds bring,

What change is coming with that twenty-one!

"One minute more. My youthful days, farewell. Time, take my youth, but let the boy remain : Oh, grant the soul my mother loves so well May never feel the burning brand of shame. "But thirty seconds! Grant that youth and age In close communing may forever dwell; Oh! grant that eighty with its palsied frame May never bid the youthful heart farewell. "Gone! I'm of age! I'm twenty-one, to-day Youth, shall I mourn thee in my race with men?" A nervous silence, here the lamp went out,

The wind was moaning, and the clock struck ten.

HOLD FAST TO THE DEAR OLD SABRATH.
GEORGE M. VICKERS.

Hold fast to the dear old Sabbath,
To the day of peaceful rest;
Look back to the days of childhood
That its tranquil glories blest;
Hold fast to its quiet pleasures,
All its sweet traditions save,
For the sake of the weary living,
And the memories of the grave.
Hold fast to the dear old Sabbath,
That is neared, like a verdant isle
On the week's dull sea of toiling,
With a thankful, happy smile.
One day give the Great Creator,
Be thy creed whate'er it may;
For the sake of human freedom
Keep the dear old Sabbath day.

whose injuries and usurpations threaten the destruction of our free Government. As did our fathers when they resolved to throw off the absolute tyranny of a bad king: so let us give certain facts to a candid world. This monster, sitting supreme in the politics of this country, has enacted laws authorizing him to open in all our towns and cities slaughter-houses of men, women and children, and of all virtue.

He has enacted laws permitting him to transform men into beasts.

He is the direct cause of nine-tenths of the woes and sorrows which blight and curse our people.

He, hiding his monstrous deformity under the forms of law enacted by his own vassals, over whose heads he cracks the slave-driver's lash in halls of legislation, maintains at our expense an army of miscreants who, at the very doors of our homes and in the shadows of our sanctuaries, prosecute the work of murder and death.

He has despoiled labor, burdened property with excessive taxation, impoverished whole communities, hindered education, corrupted morals, fostered crimes, aided all classes of vice and wrong, and plunged his unhappy victims into shame and degradation.

He would have us transmit to our children a heritage of distilleries, breweries and saloons, and chain to the weary backs of society increasing burdens of paupers, criminals, idiots and insane.

He seizes and debauches innocent children, tears sons from the arms of sorrowing mothers, and bears them away to dishonored graves.

He wrings hot tears from the eyes of widows whose husbands he has sacrificed at the shrine of the drunkards' Moloch.

He sits supreme in the national Congress and makes laws in the country's capital.

He governs Courts of Justice, and makes ministers of the law and legislatures his lackeys.

He silences the preacher in his pulpit and muzzles the editor at his desk.

He wastes, directly and indirectly, in his revels annually more than a thousand millions of our dollars, and marshals in his staggering procession to death and hell a half-million of our people.

He is a cold, heartless, cruel murderer and assassin of the deepest dye.

He counts his victims by millions. His butcheries go on daily and nightly within sight of the portals of our homes. We can hear the shrieks of his victims and the wail of the bereaved.

He is the howling, prowling, destroying wolf, with scorching, fierce breath, descending upon every fold, slaying and devouring our best loved.

Let us rise in our united might as did our ancestors in Old Windham at the call of Israel Putnam on Pomfret Heights in the last century. Let us hunt this wolf to his den and shoot him.

The time would fail me to tell the thousandth part of the evils, multiplying and destructive, that flow out of the infamous liquor traffic. Have we the courage this day to issue, and thereto affix our signatures in the pronounced handwriting of John Hancock, our new Declaration of Independence; and with a firm reliance on Divine Providence, pledge our lives and fortune and our sacred honor that from this day henceforth no word or act of ours may be construed into allegiance to this felon King? He must be driven from his places of power and utterly overthrown. The conflict is upon us. It is a life-and-death struggle. Oh, for an uprising of righteous indignation, for an aroused American conscience, for patriotic devotion to home and country like that which gave inspiration and faith to Jonas Parker and his neighbors when they reddened the village-green of Lexington with their blood on that glorious morning a century and more ago, when the old Revolution burst into magnificent blossoms as the shot was fired that echoed round the world; for an enlightened public opinion, the mightiest advocate of any question; for the combined forces of

Christian home, Christian Church and Christian commonwealth in battle array against the traffic in theft and murder, until it shall be thundered from every political Sinai, national and State, "Thou shalt not, and there shall be no legalized saloon where floats the starry flag of the free." Not until then will the infamous business cease; not until then will we be delivered from its Satanic sorceries. Temporizing policies are a failure. Under all systems of license-regulation or tax, the work of ruin and death goes on. Myriads of homes are poisoned, the prosperity of the nation is undermined, the strength of our race wasted, millions are hurried to early and dishonored graves, and a lurid shadow is cast upon the life beyond. The prohibition of the liquor traffic is the demand of the people, and politicians and statesmen who fail to heed it are treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. Prohibition is in the air. The nation's heart is beginning to throb to its music. Its coming is whispered on every breeze. The rising tide breaks all along the shore and each succeeding white-fringed billow washes further up the strand.

"Tis weary watching wave on wave,

And yet the tide heaves onward;
We build; like corals, grave on grave,
But pave a pathway sunward.
We're beaten back in many a fray,

But newer strength we borrow;
And where the vanguard rests to-day
The rear shall camp to-morrow."

Nothing can resist the onward march of a genuine reform. Every such movement enters into and becomes a part of the Messianic purpose to set judgment in the earth. Agitation on this question is the duty of the hour. Let it go on from press, platform and pulpit, in the prayermeetings and at the ballot-box, until every patriot who, loves his country, every Christian who loves his God, every philanthropist who loves his race, every father who loves his child, every son of the Kepublic will, a marshaled host, uplift the Constitution as a banner of