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THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW.

ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

RING

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler mdes of life,
And sweeter manners, p irer laws.

Ring out false pride in place and blood
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring in the valiant and the free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land;

Ring in the Christ that is to be.-TENNYSON.

HAMLET'S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS

SPEAK

PEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,-trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spake my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags,-to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant: it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word; the word to the action; with this special observance-that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to nature;-to show vi.tue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now this, overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theater of others. Oh!

there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well,-they imitated humanity so abominably!—SHAKSPEARE

THE BOYS.

This selection is a poem addressed to the class of 1829, in Harvard College, some thirty years after their graduation. The author, who retains, in a high degree, the freshness and joyousness of youth, addresses his classmates as "boys."

AS there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?

HAS

If there has, take him out, without making a noise. Hang the almanac's cheat and the catalogue's spite! Old Time is a liar! we're twenty to-night!

We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more? He's tipsy, young jackanapes!-show him the door!

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Gray temples at twenty ?"-Yes! white if we please; Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!

Was it snowing I spoke of? Excuse the mistake!
Look close, you will see not a sign of a flake!
We want some new garlands for those we have shed,
And these are white roses in place of the red.

We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told
Of talking (in public) as if we were old;
That boy we call "Doctor," and this we call "Judge;"
It's a neat little fiction, of course it's all fudge.

That fellow's the "Speaker," the one on the right,
"Mr. Mayor," my young one, how are you to-night?
That's our "Member of Congress," we say when we chaft;
There's the "Reverend "-what's his name?-don't make
me laugh.

That boy with the grave mathematical look
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the Royal Society thought it was true!
So they chose him right in,-a good joke it was too.

There's a boy, we pretend, with a three-decker brain,
That could harness a team with a logical chain;
When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
We called him "The Justice," but now he's the "Squire."

And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith;
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith;
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,—
Just read on his medal, "My country," "of thee !"

You hear that boy laughing? You think he's all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!
Yes, we're boys, always playing with tongue or with pen;
And I sometimes have asked, shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of Thy children, THE BOYS!
O W. HOLMES

MARL

SCROOGE AND MARLEY.

ARLEY was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.

Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterward, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping,scraping,clutch

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