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History shows us that the association of men in various nations is made subservient to the gradual advance of the whole human race; and that all nations work together towards one grand result. So, to the philosophic eye, the race is but a vast caravan forever moving, but seeming often to encamp for centuries at some green oasis of ease, where luxury lures away heroism, as soft Capua enervated the hosts of Hannibal.

But still the march proceeds,-slowly, slowly over mountains, through valleys, along plains, marking its course with monumental splendors, with wars, plagues, crime,—advancing still, decorated with all the pomp of nature, lit by the constellations, cheered by the future, warned by the past. In that vast march, the van forgets the rear; the individual is lost; and yet the multitude is but many individuals. He faints, and falls, and dies; man is forgotten; but still mankind moves on, still worlds revolve, and the will of God is done in earth and heaven.

We of America, with our soil sanctified and our symbol glorified by the great ideas of liberty and religion,—love of freedom and love of God,-are in the foremost vanguard of this great caravan of humanity. To us rulers look, and learn justice, while they tremble; to us the nations look, and learn to hope, while they rejoice. Our heritage is all the love and heroism of liberty in the past; and all the great of the "Old World" are our teachers.

Our faith is in God and the right; and God himself is, we believe, our Guide and Leader. Though darkness sometimes shadows our national sky, though confusion comes from error, and success breeds corruption, yet will the storm pass in God's good time, and in clearer sky and purer atmosphere our national life grow stronger and nobler, sanctified more and more, consecrated to God and liberty by the martyrs who fall in the strife for the just and true.

And so with our individual hearts, strong in love for our principles, strong in faith in our God, shall the nation leave to coming generations a heritage of freedom, and law, and religion, and truth, more glorious than the world has known before; and our American banner be planted first and highest on heights as yet unwon in the great march of humanity.

84*

THE MODERN BELLE.

The daughter sits in the parlor,
And rocks in her easy-chair;
She is dressed in silks and satins,
And jewels are in her hair;
She winks, and giggles, and simpers,
And simpers, and giggles, and winks;
And though she talks but little,

It's vastly more than she thinks.

Her father goes clad in russet-
All brown and seedy at that;

His coat is out at the elbows,

And he wears a shocking bad hat.
He is hoarding and saving his dollars,
So carefully, day by day,

While she on her whims and fancies
Is squandering them all away.

She lies in bed of a morning

Until the hour of noon,

Then comes down, snapping and snarling Because she's called too soon.

Her hair is still in papers,

Her cheeks still bedaubed with paint

Remains of last night's blushes

Before she attempted to faint.

Her feet are so very little,
Her hands are so very white,

Her jewels so very heavy,

And her head so very light; Her color is made of cosmeticsThough this she'll never own; Her body is mostly cotton,

And her heart is whoily stone.

She falls in love with a fellow

Who swells with a foreign air; He marries her for her money, She marries him for his hairOne of the very best matches; Both are well mated in life; She's got a fool for a husband,

And he's got a fool for a wife.

CONDUCTOR BRADLEY.-JOHN G. WHITTIER.

Conductor Bradley (always may his name

Be said with reverence!) as the swift doom came,
Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled frame,

Sank with the brake he grasped just where he stood
To do the utmost that a brave man could,

And die, if needful, as a true man should.

Men stooped above him; women dropped their tears
On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or fears,
Lost in the strength and glory of his years.

What heard they? Lo! the ghastly lips of pain,
Dead to all thought save duty's, moved again:
"Put out the signals for the other train!"

No nobler utterance since the world began
From lips of saint or martyr ever ran,
Electric, through the sympathies of man.

Ah, me! how poor and noteless seem to this
The sick-bed drama of self-consciousness,-
Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of bliss!

Oh, grand, supreme endeavor! Not in vain
That last brave act of failing tongue and brain!
Freighted with life, the downward-rushing train,
Following the wrecked one as wave follows wave,
Obeyed the warning which the dead lips gave.
Others he saved, himself he could not save!

Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not dead
Who in his record still the earth shall tread
With God's clear aureole shining round his head.
We bow as in the dust, with all our pride
Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside.
God give us grace to live as Bradley died!

THE GUARD'S STORY.

We were on picket, sir, he and I,
Under the blue of a midnight sky

In the wilderness, where the night bird's song
Gives back an echo all night long.

Where the silver stars as they come and pass
Leave stars of dew on the tangled grass,
And the rivers sing in the silent hours
Their sweetest songs to the list'ning flowers.

He'd a slender form and a girlish face,
That seemed in the army out of place,
Though he smiled as I told him so that day,-
Aye, smiled and flushed in a girlish way
That 'minded me of a face I knew,

In a distant village, 'neath the blue;

When our army marched, at the meadow bars, She met and kissed me 'neath the stars.

Before us the river silent ran,

And we'd been placed to guard the ford;
A dangerous place, and we'd jump and start
Whenever a leaf by the wind was stirred.
Behind us the army lay encamped,

Their camp-fires burned into the night,
Like bonfires built upon the hills,
And set by demon hands alight.

Somehow, whenever I looked that way,
I seemed to see her face again,
Kind o' hazy like, as you've seen a star
A peepin' out through a misty rain!
And once, believe, as I thought of her,

I thought aloud, and I called him Bess, When he started quick, and smiling, said, "You dream of some one at home, I guess."

'Twas just in the flush of the morning light, We stopped for a chat at the end of our beat, When a rifle flashed at the river's bank,

And bathed in blood he sank at my feet; All of a sudden I knew her then,

And kneeling, I kissed the girlish face;
And raised her head from the tangled grass,
To find on my breast its resting place.

When the corporal came to change the guard,
At six in the morning, he found me there,
With Bessie's dead form clasped in my arms,
And hid in my heart her dying prayer.
They buried her under the moaning pines,
And never a man in the army knew
That Willie Searles and my girl were one.
You're the first I've told-the story's new.

GOD'S ANVIL.-JULIUS STURM.

Pain's furnace-heat within me quivers,
God's breath upon the fire doth blow,
And all my heart in anguish shivers,
And trembles at the fiery glow;
And yet I whisper, "As God will!"
And in His hottest fire hold still.

He comes, and lays my heart, all heated,
On the hard anvil, minded so

Into His own fair shape to beat it,

With his great hammer, blow on blow;
And yet I whisper, "As God will!"
And at His heaviest blows hold still.

He takes my softened heart, and beats it;
The sparks fly off at every blow;
He turns it o'er and o'er, and heats it,
And lets it cool, and makes it glow:
And yet I whisper, “As God will!"
And in His mighty hand hold still.
Why should I murmur? for the sorrow
Thus only longer-lived would be ;
Its end may come, and will, to-morrow,
When God has done His work in me;
So I say, trusting, “As God will!"
And, trusting to the end, hold still.
He kindles, for my profit purely,
Affliction's glowing, fiery brand;
And all His heaviest blows are surely
Inflicted by a master-hand:
So I say, praying, "As God will!"
And hope in Him, and suffer still.

JERE LLOYD ON "PHRENOLOGY."

I remarked, on a former occasion, that I had an abiding faith in phrenology. Well, I'm not so enthusiastic now. I have a kind of vague idea that it doesn't do the right thing by a fellow. I took a little. I had gazed admiringly upon the picture of a subject with his head all laid out in eligible lots, duly numbered and classified, and feeling convinced I had a like number of vacant sites, it occurred to me to have

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