that other hardness, born not only of our selfishness, but of our griefs and disappointments. And, therefore, let us turn to these little ones, and ask that they may soften and rejuvenate us, while we guard and shelter them. Be not too eager to dismiss them to the care of nursery maids and preceptors. They want the nurture of your unselfish love far more than they want any other nurture. The son of a man very eminent in one of the learned professions in England, was standing in a felon's dock, awaiting a sentence of transportation. Said the judge, who knew his parentage and his history: "Do you remember your father?" "Perfectly," said the youth; "whenever I entered his presence he said, 'Run away, my lad; don't trouble me.'' The great lawyer was thus enabled to complete his famous work on the law of trusts, and his son, in due time finished a practical commentary on the way in which his father had discharged that most sacred of all trusts committed to him, in the person of his own child. Finger Rings. From the time of the Egyptian woman to the present, the one who did not value her rings has yet to be found; for they have always represented love, association, and intrinsic beauty. Their use has not been confined to women; once every man had his jewels on his fingers, gave them to friends and hostages, received them in plight; they were a portion of the outfit of a gentleman; they were bequeathed in wills, and given away at funerals. In the time of the first large merchants and the beginnings of commerce and interchange, not only the nobles but the commons made use of them; every tradesman wore one, employed it for his signature and sealed his bales with it; and every nobleman used it where the impression of his coat-of-arms was required as a pledge of faith, of safe conduct, of identity. 66 The most beautiful rings, rare in workmanship and in design, came a few hundred years ago from Venice. Shakspeare's ring-a gold one, with his initials tied together by a cord and tassel-is preserved at Stratford; Luther's ring also is yet to be seen, with its motto, "O mors, ero mors tua." It was with his ring that Raleigh wrote on the glass, Fain would I climb, but fear I to fall," and it was with her signet that Elizabeth answered, "If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all." They, and others of a far greater antiquity, are all a part of the poetry of history, and bring one with a strange nearness to those that first wore them and designed them. My Old Kentucky Home. This song is the twentieth of Stephen C. Foster's " Plantation Melodies." I do not know that it is true, but I cannot help feeling that it was the intrinsic beauty and merit of these songs that lifted the Christy Minstrels from the low position usually occupied by such troupes to something like that of a respectable concert-room, both in this country and in England. Foster caught his idea of writing his, so-called, negro melodies from listening to the absurdities then in vogue with the burnt cork gentry. He walked home from one of their concerts in Baltimore, with the banjo strains ringing in his ears, and before he slept he had composed the ridiculous words and taking air called "Camptown Races," with its chorus of "Du-da, du-da, da." He passed from one finer tone to another, until he reached the perfection of simple pathos in "Old Folks at Home," "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground," "O, Boys, Carry Me 'Long," and "My old Kentucky Home." The music is his own. |