He rakes the coals, throws on a fresh log, and I tell him this story. When I come to that touch of Paul's having no ways," even with the Blessed Lord, his father starts up, out of the room, up the stairs, and as he rushes into Paul's room overhead, I hear him call out:

"Paul! Paul, my boy! are you awake? We are going for your goat to-morrow, you and I. We'll take a holiday, and go right after breakfast, and it will go hard with us if we don't find a perfect beauty before sundown."

ANNE BORDEN.

NIX'S MATE.*

"THE tide runs strong, and the sea grows dark,

Hark ye, Pilot! (Cling, clang, cling!)

The night wind freshens and drives the bark;

(Cling!)

The sluggish fog-horns fill the air,

And fitful is the beacon's glare,

And near us lies an island bare.

86

Hark ye, hark ye!"

(Cling-clang-cling!)

Quiet, lad, 'tis the bell-buoy tolls
As the heavy sea beneath it rolls.

The lights are bright on the long sea-wall,
I know the reefs where the breakers fall,
And I know where there are no rocks at all."

* A black rock in Boston harbor has this legend.

"But the isle is black, without shoals or sands, Hark ye! hark ye! (Cling, clang, cling!) And black on the rock the beacon stands.

(Cling!)

And the bell-buoy's voice has a warning tone,
And flares the light on the pile of stone.
What makes the isle so black and lone?

Hark ye, hark ye!"

(Cling-clang-cling!)

"That island, boy, was once fresh and green, The fairest isle in the harbor seen,

'Tis the ghost of an isle that you yonder see,

Now the bell strikes one, now the bell strikes three, And the night shade falls, and the wind blows free.

"The trees are gone, the fields, the shore,
And the heron comes to the reef no more,
No sea-gull's wings to the rock dips down,
Nor petrel white nor sea-mew brown,
Nor boat stops there from port or town."

"Do you know the rocks of the reft sea-wall?—
Hark ye, Pilot!" (Cling, clang, cling!)
"I know where there are no rocks at all."

(Cling!)

"Then, Pilot, we're safe, so tell to me

The tale of this isle on the haunted sea,

While the bell strikes one, and the bell strikes three;

Hark ye, hark ye!"

(Cling-clang-cling!)

"Listen, boy, the tide runs fast

Where the green isle lay in the years long past.
There once a gibbet the moon shone through,
And its iron frames the high winds blew-
There the crimes of the sea received their due.

"Old Nix was a captain, hard and bold,
And he reaped the sea and gathered gold;
He gathered gold, but one windy night
They found him dead 'neath the gunwale light,
And his mate stood near him, dumb and white.

"And his mate they seized—a young sailor he―
And charged him with murder upon the sea.
And they brought him here where the island lay,
Where the gibbet rose o'er the windy bay;
'Twas more than a hundred years to-day."

"O Pilot! Pilot! how dark it grows!

Hark ye, hark ye! (Cling, clang, cling!) Across the bay the fog wind blows.

(Cling!)

The beacons turn in the fog clouds drear,
And
my head is dulled with nameless fear
They did not hang that sailor here?

Hark ye, hark ye!"

(Cling-clang-cling!)

"Here lay the ship, and the island there,
And the sun on the summer oaks shone fair,
And they took him there 'mid the chains to die,
And he gazed on the green shores far and nigh,
Then turned his face to the open sky,

"And he said, 'Great Heaven, receive my prayer;

The shores are green and the isle is fair;

To my guiltless life my witness be;

Let the green isle die 'mid the sobbing sea,
And the sailors see it and pity me.

"In her old thatched cottage my mother will spin,
And dream of her boy on the coast of Lynn,
Or watch from her door 'neath the linden tree;
O Heaven! just Heaven, my witness be,

Let the island beneath sink into the sea.

"Let it waste, let it waste in the moaning waves,
With its withered oaks and its pirates' graves,
Till it lie on the waters black and bare,
The ghost of an isle 'mid the islands fair,
Where bell shall toll and beacons glare l'

"He died, and the island shrank each year,
The green trees withered, the grass grew sere,

And the rock itself turned black and bare
And lurid beacons rose in air,

And the bell-buoy rings forever there.

"The bell-buoy rings in the moaning sea,

And it now strikes one, and it now strikes three!" HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.

I

DER COMING MAN.

VANT some invormashun, shust so quickly vot I can,

How I shall pring mine Yawcob oup to been der coming man,

For efery day id seem to me de brosbect look der

harder

To make dot coming man imbrove upon dot going

fadder.

'Tvas beddher he vas more like me, a Deutcher blain und rude,

As to been abofe hees peesnis und grown out to been a dude.

I don'd oxshbect dot poy off mine a Vashington to

be,

Und schop mit hadchets all aroundt ubon mine abble

dree

So he can let der coundtry know he schmardter vas as

I,

Und got scheap adverdising dot he don't could dell a

lie:

Mine Yawcob lets der drees alone undil der fruit dhey

bear,

Und dhen dot feller he looks oudt und gets der lion's share.

Some say 'tvas beddher dot you teach der young ideas to shoot;

Vell, I dink dis aboudt id: dot advice id vas no goot! Dot poy vonce dook hees broder oudt und dhey blay Villiam Tell,