MARGERY GREY.

A LEGEND OF VERMONT.

AIR the cabin walls were | And when lengthening shadows warned him that the sun was in the west,

But when he had reached the clearing of their friend, a mile away,

old stood the young wife Neither wife nor child was waiting there to

Then she smiled a cheerful answer ere she With a murmured prayer, a shudder and a

Thus they parted. Strong and sturdy, all Torches flared and fires were kindled, and day long he labored on,

Spading up the fertile acres from the stub- While the startled echoes answered to the born forest won;

But in vain their sad endeavor, night by Morning came, and with the sunbeams hope night and day by day, and courage rose once more: For no sign nor token found they of the child Surely ere another nightfall her long wanor Margery Grey.

Woe, woe for pretty Margery! With her baby on her arm

On her homeward way she started, fearing nothing that could harm;

derings would be o'er;

So she soothed the wailing baby, and when faint from want of food

Ate the wintergreens and acorns that she found within the wood.

With a lip and brow untroubled and a heart Oh, the days so long and dreary! Oh, the in utter rest nights more dreary still!

Through the dim woods she went singing to More than once she heard the sounding of the darling at her breast.

But, in sudden terror pausing, gazed she round in blank dismay:

Where were all the white-scarred hemlocks

pointing out the lonely way?

the horn from hill to hill ;

More than once a smouldering fire in some sheltered nook she found,

And she knew her husband's footprints close beside it on the ground.

God of mercies! She had wandered from Dawned the fourth relentless morning, and

the pathway; not a tree,

the sun's unpitying eye

Giving mute but kindly warning, could her Looked upon the haggard mother-looked straining vision see.

Twilight deepened into darkness and the stars came out on high;

All was silent in the forest save the owl's

low boding cry ;

to see the baby die;

All day long its plaintive moanings wrung the heart of Margery Grey,

All night long her bosom cradled it, a pallid thing of clay.

Round about her in the midnight stealthy Three days more she bore it with her on her shadows softly crept, rough and toilsome way, And the babe upon her bosom closed its Till across its marble beauty stole the plaguetimid eyes and slept.

Hark! a shout! and in the distance she could see a torch's gleam,

But, alas! she could not reach it, and it vanished like a dream;

spot of decay;

Then she knew that she must leave it in the wilderness to sleep,

Where the prowling wild beasts only watch above its grave should keep.

Then another shout-another; but she Dumb with grief she sat beside it. Ah! shrieked and sobbed in vain, how long she never knew!

Rushing wildly toward the presence she Were the tales her mother taught her of the could never, never gain.

dear All-Father true,

When the skies were brass above her and Wondering glances fell upon her; women

the earth was cold and dim, And when all her tears and pleadings brought no answer down from him?

But at last stern Life, the tyrant, bade her take her burden up,

To her lips so pale and shrunken pressed again the bitter cup;

veiled their modest eyes

Ere they slowly ventured near her, drawn

by pitying surprise.

"'Tis some crazy one," they whispered.
Back her tangled hair she tossed:
Oh, kind hearts, take pity on me, for I am
not mad, but lost."

Up she rose, still tramping onward through Then she told her piteous story in a vague, the forest far and wide

Till the May-flowers bloomed and perished and the sweet June roses died;

Till July and August brought her fruits and berries from their store;

Till the goldenrod and aster said that sum

mer was no more;

disjointed way,

And with cold white lips she murmured,
"Take me home to Robert Grey."
"But the river?" said they, pondering.
"We are on the eastern side:
How crossed you its rapid waters? Deep
the channel is, and wide."

Till the maples and the birches donned their But she said she had not crossed it. In her robes of red and gold; strange, erratic course

Till the birds were hasting southward and She had wandered far to northward till she the days were growing cold.

Was she doomed to roam for ever o'er the desolated earth,

She the last and only being in those wilds of

human birth?

reached its fountain-source

In the dark Canadian forests, and then, blind

Sometimes from her dreary pathway wolf or Oh, the joy-bells! sweet their ringing on the black bear turned away,

frosty autumn air;

But not once did human presence bless the Oh, the boats across the waters! how they sight of Margery Grey.

One chill morning in October, when the
woods were brown and bare,
Through the streets of ancient Charlestown,

with a strange, bewildered air,
Walked a gaunt and pallid woman whose
dishevelled locks of brown

O'er her naked breast and shoulders in the wind were streaming down.

leaped the tale to bear!

Oh, the wondrous golden sunset of the blest
October day

When that weary wife was folded to the heart
of Robert Grey !

JULIA C. R. DORR.

THE man who pauses on his honesty
Wants little of the villain.

MARTYN.

PEACE AND WAR.

FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT LLANDUDNO, WALES, NOVEMBER 22, 1876.

T is to me astonishing when I look back and see what has been the error and the folly into which the people of this country have been led in time past upon the question of war. We live in two considerable islands-Great Britain and Ireland. We are separated from the Continent by a seapassage which in itself is a great defence, and we have been for about three hundred years unassailed, and believe, with our population and our wealth and our means and our freedom, we are practically more unassailable than almost any other kingdom in the world. And yet, notwithstanding all that, we have spent, probably, in a period that does not go back beyond the lifetime of persons now living, two thousand millions of money in warall of which, I believe, might with honor have been avoided-and in needless or excessive armaments in preparing for war. Lord Russell said that he doubted whether there had been any war during the last hundred years that might not have been avoided, without any sacrifice of the interests or honor of this country, by those reasonable concessions which we are constantly making amongst each other as individuals, and which would be in no degree injurious or dishonorable if made or dishonorable if made between nations.

A hundred years ago--just a hundred years ago this very year-this country was

engaged in a war with the colonies now forming the United States of America. What happened when that war was over? A change of opinion extraordinary. No, not extraordinary-for it always takes placebut a change of opinion very remarkable. Whilst the war was going on people in many parts of the country were in favor of it, and the king and his ministers were doggedly determined to continue the war. But a few years after it was over everybody condemned it, and now, probably, there is no single man in this country, of any political party, however benighted, however ignorant, however positive, however unteachable, who would not condemn the folly and wickedness of that war with the American colonies. Well, but that war was supposed to have cost this country close upon one hundred millions of money, and it left between the inhabitants of these colonies-grown now to be a great nation, even greater in numbers than this, so far as the population of Great Britain and Ireland may be counted-it left feelings of anger and bitterness which are now only slowly passing away from amongst us.

But after the American war was over only a few years we engaged in another and still greater and more prolonged struggle with the republic of France, and the reason we went into war with France was because France was a republic and held opinions supposed to be dangerous to the monarchy and aristocracy of this country; and that war was continued afterward for the overthrow of the emperor