The stockings (so lately St. Nicholas' care)
Were emptied of all that was eatable there;
The darlings had duly been tucked in their beds,
With very full stomachs and pains in their heads.
I was dozing away in my new cotton cap,

And Nancy was rather far gone

in a nap,

When out in the nursery there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my sleep, crying, "What is the matter?
I flew to each bedside, still half in a doze,

Tore open the curtains and threw off the clothes,
While the light of a candle served clearly to show
The piteous plight of the objects below;
For what to the father's fond eye should appear
But the little pale face of each sick little dear,
For each pet that had crammed itself as full as a tick
I knew in a moment now felt like Old Nick.
Their pulses were rapid, their breathings the same;
What their stomachs rejected I'll mention by name;
Now turkey, now stuffing, plum-pudding of course,
And custards, and crullers, and cranberry sauce.
Before outraged Nature all went to the wall-
Yes; lollypops, flapdoodle, dinner and all.
Like pellets which urchins from pop-guns let fly,
Went figs, nuts and raisins, jams, jelly and pie,
Till each error of diet was brought to my view,
To the shame of mamma and Santa Claus, too.

I turned from the sight, to my bed-room stepped back,
And brought out a vial marked "Pure Ipecac,"
When my Nancy exclaimed, for their sufferings shocked

her,

"Don't you think you had better, love, go for the doctor?"

I went, and was scarcely back under my roof,

When I heard the sharp clatter of old "Jalap's" hoof;

I might say that I hardly had turned myself round,
When the doctor came into the room with a bound.
He was covered with mud from his head to his foot,
And the suit he had on was his very best suit;
Ile hardly had time to put that on his back,

And he looked like a Falstaff half-fuddled with sack.
His eyes, how they twinkled! Had the doctor got merry!
His cheeks looked like Port and his breath smelt like

Sherry;

He hadn't been shaved for a fortnight or so,

And his beard nor his skin was n't as "white as the

snow;"

But inspecting their tongues, in spite of their teeth,
And drawing his watch from his waistcoat beneath,

He felt each pulse, saying, "Each little fellow

Must get rid "-here he laughed-" of the rest of that jelly."

I gazed on each chubby, plump, sick little elf,
And groaned, when he said so, in spite of myself;
But a wink of his eye, when he physicked our Fred,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He did n't prescribe, but he went straight to his work,
And dosed all the rest, gave his trousers a jerk,
And adding directions, while blowing his nose,
He buttoned his coat, from his chair he arose.
Then jumped in his gig, gave old "Jalap" a whistle,
And "Jalap" dashed off as though pricked by a thistle;
But the doctor exclaimed, as he drove out of sight,
"They'll be all well to-morrow. Good-night, Jones!
Good-night!"

A PARODY.

THE boy stood on the back-yard fence, whence all but

The flames that lit his father's barn shone just above the shed.

One bunch of crackers in his hand, two others in his hat, With piteous accents loud he cried, "I never thought of that!"

A bunch of crackers to the tail of one small dog he'd

tied;

The dog in anguish sought the barn, and 'mid its ruins

died.

The sparks flew wide and red and hot, they lit upon that

brat;

They fired the crackers in his hand, and e'en those in

his hat.

Then came a burst of rattling sound-the boy! Where was he gone?

Ask of the winds that far around strewed bits of meat and bone,

And scraps of clothes, and balls, and tops, and nails, and hooks, and yarn

The relics of that dreadful boy that burned his father's barn.

THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS.

ΚΙ

IND was my friend who, in the Eastern land, Remembered me with such a gracious hand, And sent this Moorish Crescent, which has been Worn on the haughty bosom of a queen.

No more it sinks and rises in unrest

To the soft music of her heathen breast;

No barbarous chief shall bow before it more,
No turban'd slave shall envy and adore.

I place beside this relic of the Sun

A Cross cf cedar brought from Lebanon,

Once borne, perchance, by some pale monk who tro
The desert to Jerusalem-and his God!

Here do they lie, two symbols of two creeds,
Each meaning something to our human needs;
Both stained with blood, and sacred made by faith,
By tears and prayers, and martyrdom and death.

That for the Moslem is, but this for me!
The waning Crescent lacks divinity:

It gives me dreams of battles, and the woes
Of women shut in dim seraglios.

But when this Cross of simple wood I see,
The Star of Bethlehem shines again for me,
And glorious visions break upon my gloom-
The patient Christ, and Mary at the tomb.

T. B. ALDRICH.

REFLECTIONS ON WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

HE last beams of day were faintly streaming through

THE

the painted windows in the high vaults above me; the lower parts of the abbey were already wrapped in the obscurity of twilight. The chapels and aisles grew darker and darker. The effigies of the kings faded into shadows; the marble figures of the monuments assumed strange shapes in the uncertain light; the evening breeze

crept through the aisles like the cold breath of the grave; and even the distant footfall of a verger, traversing the Poets' Corner, had something strange and dreary in its sound. I slowly retraced my morning's walk, and as I passed out at the portal of the cloisters, the door, closing with a jarring noise behind me, filled the whole. building with echoes.

I endeavored to form some arrangement in my mind of the objects I had been contemplating, but found they were already fallen into indistinctness and confusion. Names, inscriptions, trophies had all become confounded in my recollection, though I had scarcely taken my foot from off the threshold. What, thought I, is this vast assemblage of sepulchres but a treasury of humiliation, a huge pile of reiterated homilies on the emptiness of renown, and the certainty of oblivion! It is, indeed, the empire of Death; his great shadowy palace, where he sits in state, mocking at the relics of human glory, and spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of princes. How idle a boast, after all, is the immortality of a name! Time is ever silently turning over his pages; we are too much engrossed by the story of the present to think of the characters and anecdotes that gave interest to the past; and each age is a volume thrown aside to be speedily forgotten. The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection, and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow. “Our fathers," says Sir Thomas Browne, "find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors."

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet; the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand, and