EXERCISES IN EMPHASIS.

1. We are still rich in each other and our children.

2.

'What can you do, poor things?" said he.

3. We shall work and make you rich again.

4. Let no one suffer through us, and we may be happy. 5. We were none of us happy when we were rich.

TH

LXXVIII. OUR COUNTRY.

HERE is a land, of every land the pride,
Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside;
Where brighter suns dispense serener light,
And milder moons emparadise the night;
A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth.

2. The wandering mariner, whose eye explores
The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores,
Views not a realm so bountiful and fair,
Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air;
In every clime, the magnet of his soul,
Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole;

3. For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace,
The heritage of Nature's noblest race,
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside
His sword and scepter, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend.

4. Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife, Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life;

In the clear heaven of her delightful eye,
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;

5. Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet.
Where shall that land-that spot of earth be found?
Art thou a man?—a patriot ?—look around;
Oh! thou shalt find, howe'er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home.
James Montgomery.

LXXIX. THE ALARM.

ARKNESS closed upon the country and upon

DARKNESS closed

the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the warmessage from hand to hand, till village repeated it to village; the sea to the backwoods; the plains to the highlands; and it was never suffered to droop till it had been borne North, and South, and East, and West, throughout the land.

2. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot. Its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and, ringing like bugle-notes from peak to peak, overleapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean river, till the responses were echoed from the cliffs of Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale.

3. As the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York; in one more at Philadelphia; the next it lighted a watchfire at Baltimore; thence it waked an answer at Annapolis. Crossing the

Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward without a halt to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emigrants to North Carolina.

4. It moved onwards and still onwards, through boundless groves of evergreen, to Newbern and to Wilmington. "For God's sake, forward it by night and by day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border, and dispatched it to Charleston, and through pines, and palmettos, and moss-clad live oaks, further to the South, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond the Savannah.

5. Hillsborough and the Mecklenburg district of North Carolina rose in triumph, now that their wearisome uncertainty had its end. The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers that the "loud call" might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga, and the French Broad.

6. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky; so that hunters who made their halt in the matchless valley of the Elkhorn, commemorated the nineteenth day of April by naming their encampment LEXING

TON.

7. With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms: with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other, "to be ready for the extreme event." With one heart, the continent cried, "Liberty or death.”

George Bancroft.

LXXX.-EVERY DAY.

H, trifling tasks so often done,

OH

Yet ever to be done anew!

Oh, cares which come with every sun,
Morn after morn, the long years through
We shrink beneath their paltry sway,-
The irksome calls of every day.

2. The restless sense of wasted power,

The tiresome round of little things,
Are hard to bear, as hour by hour
Its tedious iteration brings;
Who shall evade or who delay
The small demands of every day?

3. The bowlder in the torrent's course
By tide and tempest lashed in vain,
Obeys the wave-whirled pebble's force,
And yields its substance grain by grain;
So crumble strongest lives away
Beneath the wear of every day.

4. Who finds the lion in his lair,

Who tracks the tiger for his life,
May wound them ere they are aware,

Or conquer them in desperate strife;
Yet powerless he to scathe or slay
The vexing gnats of every day.

5. The steady strain that never stops
Is mightier than the fiercest shock;
The constant fall of water drops
Will groove the adamantine rock;

We feel our noblest powers decay,
In feeble wars with every day.

6. We rise to meet a heavy blow-
Our souls a sudden bravery fills—
But we endure not always so

The drop-by-drop of little ills;
We still deplore and still obey
The hard behests of every day.

7. The heart which boldly faces death
Upon the battle-field, and dares
Cannon and bayonets, faints beneath
The needle-points of frets and cares;
The stoutest spirits they dismay—
The tiny stings of every day.

8. And even saints of holy fame,

Whose souls by faith have overcome,
Who wore amid the cruel flame
The molten crown of martyrdom,
Bore not without complaint alway
The petty pains of every day.

9. Ah, more than martyr's aureole,

And more than hero's heart of fire, We need the humble strength of soul Which daily toils and ills require;Sweet Patience! grant us, if you may, An added grace for every day!

Elizabeth Akers Allen.