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BASCOMB'S BABY.

She brought it over to our house, Mrs. Bascomb did. It was their first-a wee little red-faced, red-headed, pug-nosed, howling infant. It was one of the hottest days in July, but she had it wrapped up in three shawls and a bedquilt, and was in agony every moment for fear it would sneeze.

"Do see his darling, darling little face!" she said to me, as she unwound him about forty times, and looked to see which end his feet were on.

I looked.

I have been the father of eleven just such howling little wopsies, and I didn't see anything remarkable about Bascomb's baby.

"See those eyes--that firmness of mouth, that temper in his look!" she went on.

I saw them.

The little scoundrel began to get red in the face and beat the air, and his mother shouted:

"He's being murdered by a pin!'

She turned him wrong end up, laid him on his face, then on his back, loosened his bands, rubbed the soles of his feet, and the tears stood in her eyes as she solemnly remarked: "I know he won't live-he's too smart!"

The child recovered, and as he lay on his back across her knees and surveyed the ceiling, she went on :

"Such a head! Why, every one who sees him says that he is going to be a Lincoln, a Greeley, or a Bismarck; do you notice that high forehead?"

I did.

I thought he was all forehead, as his hair didn't com mence to grow until the back of his neck was reached, but she assured me that I was mistaken.

“Wouldn't I just heft him once?"

I hefted him.

I told her I never saw a child of his weight weigh so much, and she smiled like an angel; she said that she was afraid 【 didn't appreciate children, but now she knew I did.

"Wouldn't I just look at his darling little feet-his little red feet and cunning toes?"

Yes, I would.

She rolled him over on his face and unwound his feet, and triumphantly held them up to my gaze. I contemplated the hundreds of little wrinkles running lengthwise and crosswise, the big toes and the little toes, and I agreed with her that so far as I could judge from the feet and the toes and the wrinkles, a future of unexampled brilliancy lay before that pug-nosed imp.

He began to kick and howl, and she stood him on end, set him up, laid him down and trotted him until she bounced the wind-colic into the middle of September.

"Who did he look like?"

I bent over the scarlet-faced rascal, pushed his nose one side, chucked him under the chin, and didn't answer without due deliberation. I told her that there was a faint resemblance to George Washington around the mouth, but the eyes reminded me of Daniel Webster, while the general features had made me think of the poet Milton ever since she entered the house.

That was just her view exactly, only she hadn't said anything about it before.

“Did I think he was too smart to live?”

I felt of his ears, rubbed his head, put my fingers down the back of his neck, and I told her that in my humble opinion he wasn't, though he had had a narrow escape. If his nose had been set a little more to one side, or his ears had appeared in the place of his eyes, Bascomb could have purchased a weed for his hat without delay. No; the child would live; there wasn't the least doubt about it, and any man or woman who said he wouldn't grow up to make the world thunder with his fame would steal the wool off a lost lamb in January.

She felt so happy that she rolled the imp up in his fortynine bandages, shook him to straighten his legs and take the kinks out of his neck, and then carried him home under her arm, while my wife made me go along with an umbrella, for fear the sun would peel his little nose.

NUMBER ELEVEN.

THE IVY GREEN.-CHARLES DICKENS.

Oh! a dainty plant is the ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!

Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.

The wall must be crumbled, the stones decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim;

And the mouldering dust that years have made, Is a merry meal for him.

Creeping where no life is seen,

A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a staunch old heart has he;

How closely he twineth, how tight he clings,
To his friend the huge oak tree!
And slyly he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,

As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mould of dead men's graves.

Creeping where grim death has been,
A rare old plant is the ivy green.

Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old ivy shall never fade
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant in its lonely days
Shall fatten upon the past:

For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the ivy's food at last.

Creeping on where time has been,
A rare old plant is the ivy green.

LOVE AND AGE.

I played with you 'mid cowslips growing,
When I was six and you were four;

When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,

Were pleasures soon to please no more;

Through groves and meads, o'er grass and heather,

With little playmates, to and fro,

We wandered hand in hand together;

But that was sixty years ago.

You grew a lovely, roseate maiden,

And still our early love was strong;

Still with no cares our days were laden,
They glided joyously along;

And I did love you very dearly,

How dearly, words want power to show;
I thought your heart was touched as nearly;
But that was fifty years ago.

Then other lovers came around you;
Your beauty grew from year to year,
And many a splendid circle found you
The centre of its glittering sphere.
I saw you then, first vows forsaking,
On rank and wealth your hand bestow;
Oh, then I thought my heart was breaking!
But that was forty years ago.

And I lived on to wed another;

No cause she gave me to repine;
And when I heard you were a mother,
I did not wish the children mine.
My own young flock, in fair progression,
Made up a pleasant Christinas row;
My joy in them was past expression;—
But that was thirty years ago.

You grew a matron, plump and comely,
You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze;
My earthly lot was far more homely,
But I, too, had my festal days.

No merrier eyes have ever glistened
Around the hearthstone's wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christened;-
But that was twenty years ago.

Time passed. My oldest girl was married,
And now I am a grandsire gray;

One pet of four years old I carried

Among the wild-flowered meads to play,

In those same fields of childish pleasure,
Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,-
She fills her casket's ample measure,
And that is not ten years ago.

But though first love's impassioned blindness
Has passed away in colder night,

I still have thought of you with kindness,
And shall do till our last good-night.

The ever-rolling, silent hours

Will bring a time we shall not know, When our young days of gathering flowers Will be--a hundred years ago.

SUBLIMITY OF THE BIBLE.-L. J. HALSEY.

The Bible is not only the revealer of the unknown God to man, but His grand interpreter as the God of nature. In revealing God, it has given us the key that unlocks the profoundest mysteries of creation, the clew by which to thread the labyrinth of the universe, the glass through which to look "from nature up to nature's God.”

It is only when we stand and gaze upon nature, with the Bible in our hands, and its idea of God in our understandings, that nature is capable of rising to her highest majesty, and kindling in our souls the highest emotions of moral beauty and sublimity. Without the all-pervading spiritual God of the Bible in our thoughts, nature's sweetest music would lose its charm, the universe its highest significance and glory.

Go, and stand with your open Bible upon the Areopagus of Athens, where Paul stood so long ago! In thoughtful silence, look around upon the site of all that ancient greatness; look upward to those still glorious skies of Greece, and what conceptions of wisdom and power will all those memorable scenes of nature and art convey to your mind, now, more than they did to an ancient worshipper of Jupiter or Apollo? They will tell of Him who made the worlds, "by whom, and through whom, and for whom, are all things." To you, that landscape of exceeding beauty, so rich in the monuments of departed genius, with its distant classic mountains, its deep blue sea, and its bright bending skies, will be telling a tale of glory the Grecian never learned; for it will speak to you no more of its thirty thousand petty contending deities, but of the one living and everlasting God.

Go, stand with David and Isaiah under the star-spangled canopy of the night; and, as you look away to the "range of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres wheeling unshaken through the void immense," take up the mighty questionings of inspiration!

Go, stand upon the heights at Niagara, and listen in awestruck silence to that boldest, most earnest, and eloquent of all nature's orators! And what is Niagara, with its plunging waters and its mighty roar, but the oracle of God, the whis

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