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The sun rose high, and its beaming ray
Into the miser's room found way,

It moved from the foot till it lit the head
Of the miser's low uncurtained bed;

And it seemed to say to him, "Sluggard, awake;
Thou hast a thousand dollars to make!
Up, man, up! How still was the place,
As the bright ray fell on the miser's face!
Ha! the old miser at last is dead.
Dreaming of gold, his spirit fled,

And he left behind but an earthly clod
Akin to the dross that he made his god.

What now avails the chinking chimes
Of dimes and dollars! dollars and dimes!
Men of the times! men of the times!
Content may not rest with dollars and dimes.
Use them well, and their use sublimes
The mineral dross of the dollars and dimes.
Use them ill, and a thousand crimes

Spring from a coffer of dollars and dimes.
Men of the times! men of the times!

Let Charity dwell with your dollars and dimes.

ETERNAL JUSTICE.-CHARLES MACKAY.

The man is thought a knave or fool,

Or bigot, plotting crime,

Who, for the advancement of his kind,
Is wiser than his time.

For him the hemlock shall distil; ·
For him the axe be bared;

For him the gibbet shall be built;

For him the stake prepared:

Him shall the scorn and wrath of men
Pursue with deadly aim;

And malice, envy, spite and lies,

Shall desecrate his name.

But truth shall conquer at the last,

For round and round we run,

And ever the right comes uppermost,

And ever is justice done.

Pace through thy cell, old Socrates,

Cheerily to and fro;

Trust to the impulse of thy soul

And let the poison flow.

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They may shatter to earth the lamp of clay
That holds a light divine,

But they cannot quench the fire of thought
By any such deadly wine;

They cannot blot thy spoken words
From the memory of man,
By all the poison ever was brewed
Since time its course began.

To-day abhorred, to-morrow adored,

So round and round we run,

And ever the truth comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done.

Plod in thy cave, gray anchorite:
Be wiser than thy peers;

Augment the range of human power,

And trust to coming years.

They may call thee wizard, and monk accursed,
And load thee with dispraise:

Thou wert born five hundred years too soon
For the comfort of thy days.

But not too soon for human kind:
Time hath reward in store;

And the demons of our sires become

The saints that we adore.

The blind can see, the slave is lord;

So round and round we run,

And ever the wrong is proved to be wrong,

And ever is justice done.

Keep, Galileo, to thy thought,

And nerve thy soul to bear;

They may gloat o'er the senseless words they wring

From the pangs of thy despair:

They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide

The sun's meridian glow;

The heel of a priest may tread thee down,

And a tyrant work thee woe;

But never a truth has been destroyed:
They may curse it and call it crime;
Pervert and betray, or slander and slay
Its teachers for a time.

But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run,

And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.

And live there now such men as these

With thoughts like the great of old?

Many have died in their misery,

And left their thought untold;

And many live, and are ranked as mad,
And placed in the cold world's ban,
For sending their bright far-seeing souls
Three centuries in the van.

They toil in penury and grief,

Unknown, if not maligned;
Forlorn, forlorn, bearing the scorn
Of the meanest of mankind,

But yet the world goes round and round,
And the genial seasons run,

And ever the truth comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done.

THE FAST MAIL AND THE STAGE.-JOHN H. YATES.

Lay by the weekly, Betsey, it's old like you and I,
And read the morning's daily, with its pages scarcely dry.
While you and I were sleepin', they were printing them to-
day,

In the city by the ocean, several hundred miles away.

How'd I get it?" Bless you Betsey, you needn't doubt and laugh;

It didn't drop down from the clouds nor come by telegraph; I got it by the lightning mail we've read about you know, The mail that Jonathan got up about a month ago.

We farmers livin' 'round the hill went to the town to-day To see the fast mail catch the bags that hung beside the way; Quick as a flash from thundering clouds, whose tempest swept the sky,

The bags were caught on board the train as it went roarin' by.

We are seein' many changes in our fast declinin' years; Strange rumors now are soundin' in our hard-of-hearin' ears. Ere the sleep that knows no wakin' comes to waft us o'er the stream,

Some great power may be takin' all the self-conceit from

steam.

Well do we remember, Betsey, when the post-man carried mails,

Ridin' horseback through the forest 'long the lonely Indian trails,

How impatiently we waited-we were earnest lovers thenFor our letters comin' slowly, many miles through wood and glen.

Many times, you know, we missed them-for the post-man

never came

Then, not knowin' what had happened, we did each the other blame;

Long those lover quarrels lasted, but the God who melts the proud

Brought our strayin' hearts together and let sunshine through the cloud.

Then at last the tidings reached us that the faithful postman fell

Before the forest savage with his wild terrific yell,

And your letters lay and moldered, while the sweet birds sang above,

And I was sayin' bitter things about a woman's love.

Long and tedious were the journeys-few and far between, the mails,

In the days when we were courtin'-when we thrashed with wooden flails;

Now the white winged cars are flyin' 'long the shores of in land seas,

And younger lovers read their letters 'mid luxury and ease.

We have witnessed many changes in our three-score years and ten;

We no longer sit and wonder at the discoveries of men ;
In the shadow of life's evenin' we rejoice that our boys
Are not cailed to meet the hardships that embittered half
our joys.

Like the old mail through the forest, youthful years go slowly by ;

Like the fast mail of the present, manhood's years how swift they fly;

We are sitting in the shadows; soon shall break life's brittle cord

Soon shall come the welcome summons by the fast mail of the Lord.

HOW WE HUNTED A MOUSE.-JOSHUA JENKINS.

I was dozing comfortably in my easy chair, and dreaming of the good times which I hope are coming, when there fell upon my ears a most startling scream. It was the voice of

my Maria Ann in agony. The voice came from the kitchen, and to the kitchen I rushed. The idolized form of my Maria was perched on a chair, and she was flourishing an iron spoon in all directions, and shouting "shoo,” in a general manner at everything in the room. To my anxious inquiries as to what was the matter, she screamed, "O Joshua! a mouse, shoo-wha-shoo-a great-ya, shoohorrid mouse, and-she-ew-it ran right out of the cupboard-shoo-go way-Oh mercy!-Joshua-shoo-kill it, oh, my-shoo."

All that fuss, you see, about one little, harmless mouse. Some women are so afraid of mice. Maria is. I got the poker and set myself to poke that mouse, and my wife jumped down and ran off into another room. I found the mouse in a corner under the sink. The first time I hit it I didn't poke it any on account of getting the poker all tangled up in a lot of dishes in the sink; and I did not hit it any more because the mouse would not stay still. It ran right toward me, and I naturally jumped, as anybody would, but I am not afraid of mice, and when the horrid thing ran up inside the leg of my pantaloons, I yelled to Maria because I was afraid it would gnaw a hole in my garment. There is something real disagreeable about having a mouse inside the leg of one's pantaloons, especially if there is nothing between you and the mouse. Its toes are cold, and its nails are scratchy, and its fur tickles, and its tail feels crawly, and there is nothing pleasant about it, and you are all the time afraid it will try to gnaw out, and begin on you instead of on the cloth. That mouse was next to me. I could feel its every motion with startling and suggestive distinctness. For these reasons I yelled to Maria, and as the case seemed urgent to me I may have yelled with a certain degree of vigor; but I deny that I yelled fire, and if I catch the boy who thought that I did, I shall inflict punishment on his person. I did not lose my presence of mind for an instant. I caught the mouse just as it was clambering over my knee, and by pressing firmly on the outside of the cloth, I kept the animal a prisoner on the inside. I kept jumping around with all my might to confuse it, so that it would not think about biting, and I yelled so that the mice would not hear its

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