Put on a sour, savage, snapping-turtle physiognomy; look daggers, and act out your feelings; this is the first great commandment with misery: Think you are the most forsaken mortal that misery ever held a mortgage on. Hate mankind; call 'em a'l lir, cheats, swindlers, villains. Look at everything on the wrong side. If it has no dark side, make one, just so to enjoy yourself looking at it. Take it for granted that everybody about is especially interested to torment you. Fight everybody and everything. You can't hit amiss. The world is all wrong. Everybody is a villain but yourself, and it is your duty to teach mankind manners. Go at 'em. You can't fail to be miserable.

THE YOUNG GRAY HEAD.-CAROLINE A. SOUTHEY.

I'm thinking that to-night, if not before,

There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton roar?
It's brewing up down westward; and look there!
One of those sea gulls! ay, there goes a pair;

And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on,

As threats, the water will be out anon.

That path by the ford is a nasty bit of way,—

Best let the young ones bide from school to-day.

The children join in this request; but the mother resolves that they shall set out, the two girls, Lizzy and Jenny, the one five, the other seven.

was law, so,

One last fond kiss,

As the dame's will

"God bless my little maids," the father said, And cheerily went his way to win their bread.

"Now, mind and bring

Jenny safe home," the mother said.

Don't stay

To pull a bough or berry by the way;
And when you come to cross the ford, hold fast
Your little sister's hand till you're quite past;

That plank is so crazy, and so slippery,

If not overflowed, the stepping-stones will be;
But you're good children,-steady as old folk,—
I'd trust ye anywhere." Then Lizzy's cloak,
A good gray duffle, lovingly she tied,
And amply little Jenny's lack supplied

With her own warmest shawl. "Be sure," said she,
"To wrap it round, and knot it carefully,

Like this, when you come home, just leaving free
One hand to hold by. Now, make haste away;
Good will to school, and then good right to play."

The mother watches them with foreboding, though she knows not why. In a little while the threatened storm sets in. Night comes, and with it comes the father from his daily toil;

There's a treasure hidden in his hat,

A plaything for his young ones; he had found
A dormouse nest; the living ball coiled round
For its long winter sleep; and all his thought,
As he trudged stoutly homeward, was of naught
But the glad wonderment in Jenny's eyes,
And graver Lizzy's quieter surprise,

When he should yield, by guess, and kiss, and prayer,
Hard won, the frozen captive to their care.

No little faces greet him as wont at the threshold; and to his hurried question,

"Are they come?" 'twas "no."

To throw his tools down, hastily unhook

The old cracked lantern from its dusty nook,

And, while he lit it, speak a cheering word

That almost choked him, and was scarcely heard,

Was but a moment's act, and he was gone

To where a fearful foresight led him on.

A neighbor goes with him, and the faithful dog follows the children's tracks.

"Hold the light

Low down, he's making for the water. Hark!

I know that whine; the old dog's found them, Mark;"

So speaking, breathlessly he hurried on

Toward the old crazy foot-bridge. It was gone!

And all his dull, contracted light could show,

Was the black void, and dark swollen stream below.
"Yet there's life somewhere, more than Tinker's whine,
That's sure," said Mark. "So, let the lantern shine
Down yonder. There's the dog,—and hark!”
And a low sob came faintly on the ear, "Oh, dear!”
Mocked by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought,
Into the stream leaped Ambrose, where he caught
Fast hold of something,-a dark, huddled heap,-
Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep

For a tall man, and half above it propped
By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopped,
Endways, the broken plank, when it gave way
With the two little ones, that luckless day.
"My babes, my lambkins!" was the father's cry;
One little voice made answer, "Here am I."

'Twas Lizzy's. There she crouched, with face as white, More ghastly, by the flickering lantern light,

Than sheeted corpse; the pale blue lips drawn tight,
Wide parted, showing all the pearly teeth,
And eyes on some dark object underneath,
Washed by the turbid water, fixed like stone;
One arm and hand stretched out, and rigid grown,
Grasping, as in the death-gripe, Jenny's frock.
There she lay, drowned.

*

*

They lifted her from out her watery bed;
Its covering gone, the lovely little head
Hung like a broken snowdrop all aside,

*

And one small hand; the mother's shawl was tied,
Leaving that free, about the child's small form,
As was her last injunction, "fast and warm;"
Too well obeyed,-too fast! A fatal hold
Affording to the scrag, by a thick fold,

That caught and pinned her to the river's bed;
While, through the reckless water overhead,
Her life breath bubbled up.

"She might have lived,

Struggling like Lizzy,” was the thought that rived

The wretched mother's heart when she heard all, "But for my foolishness about that shawl."

"Who says I forgot?

Mother, indeed, indeed I kept fast hold,

And tied the shawl quite close,-she can't be cold,
But she won't move. We slept, I don't know how,
But I held on, and I'm so weary now,

And it's so dark and cold! Oh dear! oh dear!-
And she won't move-if father were but here!"

All night long from side to side she turned,
Piteously plaining like a wounded dove,
With now and then the murmur, "She won't move;"
And lo! when morning, as in mockery, bright
Shone on that pillow,-passing strange the sight,-
The young head's raven hair was streaked with white!

THE PARTING HOUR.-EDWARD POLLOCK.

There's something in "the parting hour"
Will chill the warmest heart,-

Yet kindred, comrades, lovers, friends,
Are fated all to part;

But this I've seen,-and many a pang
Has pressed it on my mind,-
The one who goes is happier
Than those he leaves behind.

No matter what the journey be,-
Adventurous, dangerous, far

To the wild deep, or bleak frontier,

To solitude, or war,—

Still something cheers the heart that dares, In all of human kind;

And they who go are happier

Than those they leave behind.

The bride goes to the bridegroom's home
With doubtings and with tears,
But does not Hope her rainbow spread
Across her cloudy fears?

Alas! the mother who remains,

What comfort can she find

But this, the gone is happier

Than the one she leaves behind?

Have you a trusty comrade dear,—
An old and valued friend?

Be sure your term of sweet concourse
At length will have an end.

And when you part,-as part you will,—

Oh take it not unkind,

If he who goes is happier

Than you he leaves behind.

God wills it so, and so it is;

The pilgrims on their way,

Though weak and worn, more cheerful are

Than all the rest who stay.

And when, at last, poor man, subdued,

Lies down, to death resigned,

May he not still be happier far

Than those he leaves behind?

ADAMS AND JEFFERSON.-DANIEL WEBSTER.

Adams and Jefferson, I have said, are no more. As hu nan beings, indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as on subsequent periods, the head of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead.

But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their country they yet live, and live forever. They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphat ically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country, but throughout the civilized world.

A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man,-when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift,-is not a temporary flame, burning bright for a while, and then expiring, giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human mind: so that, when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows; but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit.

Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on, in the orbits which he saw and described for them, in the infinity of space.

No two men now live,-perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age,-who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed their own senti.