your love? Can the heart of the deaf thrill at the glad tones of your voice, or conceive of music?

Weakly, most faintly can I utter, and that with tears as I feel my weakness, what cannot be fully comprehended. How could one, save in soul-language, tell of the soul-life? Or how, with the types and figures of the dull insensate, can be made known the surpassing majesty of that intellectual, that unfading?

I made my journey thought rapid,' with a consciousness of freedom that was ecstacy itself. I had sought clairvoyance in a vague hope of being for a moment released from the sorrows which haunted me, even in my dreams. My last thought on earth had been of struggle and weariness, of disappointment and want. In the hard labor for daily bread I was exhausted. I no longer revelled in the idea of a better day. The exultation and defiance with which I had pressed on in the path of exertion was over; the strong will had become paralyzed by incessant reverses and rebuffs.

The awakening from despair, by the communication of glad tidings which overwhelm the troubled one with tumultuous joy, may afford an idea, most shadowy, it is true, but still an idea, of the exultation with which I went forth to my mother-to my home. If ever you have known such moments of sudden, unexpected bliss, you will remember how, when the wild joy had calmed into a blissful certainty, you cradled yourself in an intoxicating kind of rest; you will have a conception of the steady and buoyant and blessed peace which continued with me as I went my way. But when I entered the world of the preexistent, I was conscious that a change, a wondrous and awful change, had been wrought in me since I had, years before, gone thence to the earth. As I moved through the stainless and the undefiled, I knew that I was no longer of them. In amazement they looked on me; none knew, none recognized; yet I knew them. I dared not offer them tokens of friendship and acquaintance; sin and evil had marked my soul; I was as Cain among them; the brand of guilt was upon me; I was of the earth. Oh, with what horror and shame did I confess this to myself! How desperately I strove to hide me from those inquiring glances! With what agony then did I go on my way, seeking for my mother! and with what fear was that search continued! Would she recognize, would she still love, would she hear me?

I saw her coming up from the far distance; the beautiful, the peerless, embodied in perfection. With her was another, purely bright as a sunbeam. What a fount of holy recollection opened as I saw those two together thus! So had I stood beside her; so had I listened to her teachings; so had I looked upon her with a boundless love and veneration.

She was speaking, my mother, to the child-soul with her, in that pe-culiar, touching manner, which I remembered well had been shown toward me that day when she sent me to the mortal state, and I felt that it must be so; she was about to give another of the untried, to battle with the clutching waves of sin.'

Inexpressibly grievous was the thought of my earth-home thus forced upon me; and in that moment all that I wished was to save my beauti

ful, innocent soul-sister from contamination such as I had felt. I wished her never to know the agony of mortality. And it was therefore to save her, rather than with the joy of a reunion, that I stood forth from the obscurity which I had sought; it was therefore that for the first time speaking, I cried eagerly, sorrowfully: My mother, my mother, crucify her not!'

She looked upon me-she knew me! Of all who had forgotten, of all who had glanced on my soul with horror, she alone remembered. The dreaded climax, her forgetfulness and want of power to recognize, was spared she knew, she loved me!

Then guided she the tempted, the tried, the tempest-tossed, to our home of the dear olden time; then stood we, mother and child, together as one; then looked we face to face; then spoke we one with the other.

'Thou art come back, my child, though the hour appointed has not arrived; yet it is well, for now shalt thou be the guardian of this other child, who is going forth to the earth.'

'O forbear! forbear!' I cried, interrupting her. Send her not, mother; she is not strong to combat, she is not brave to bear. Keep her under the shelter of thine eye, O mother!'

Nay, it is written she shall go forth. Tell her now what is the earth, that she may know; tell her of the home which awaits her.'

of

'It is a desolate desert where there is no water; a parched and burning desert, without any shade-trees; a mighty desert, where the birds prey build their nests where the simoons rage. Wo to thee, sister, if thy feet falter by the way! the caravan will go on and forsake thee. Wo to thee if thou makest known the grief of thy heart; they will mock and laugh at thee, and scorn thee for thy weakness! Wo to thee if thou comest to want or need; no hand will be lifted to aid thee! There is sin, there is folly, there is monstrous guilt among the people; there is fraud, and envy, and slander; there is murder and blasphemy; there is destruction and corruption in earth!'

'How hast thou met all this?' exclaimed my mother.

'It has broken my heart.'

'Thou weak one!' and she turned away from me. Then she said to the young soul, my sister, Child, wilt thou dare go into such a world?' 'Mother, yes!' answered the untried one, suddenly and decidedly. I looked upon her with wonder. I said: Thou dost not understand; thou canst not know. Treachery and coldness from those thou hast most trusted, misunderstanding, doubt - these are the least of the evils which will afflict thee. Child! I feel I cannot explain, nor can you comprehend, what slavery, and vice, and calumny, and poverty, and unjust scorn of thy fellows, and the torturing of conscience and self-mistrust mean! Every mortal has to learn. Make her not a mortal, my mother!'

Cease: I had rather thou never camest into my presence than hear such words from thee. What hast thou done in the world? The doing much, the doing good, the constant labor, saves one from such thoughts as thou hast.'

'I have labored, and toiled, and borne the burden and the heat of the day, and have reaped in a harvest of nothingness. My work has

been done for naught; my hopes have proved themselves altogether vanity. Oh, I have toiled! Do not add to my cup of bitterness by doubting that assurance.'

'Now, how shall I give into thy hands the care of this dear soul? I would that thou hadst never come here, daughter. Yet it is as well. She will not now grow up in the world, cherishing fancies, and thoughts, and hopes, that must all in turn wither. She will live a fuller and a nobler life, because prepared for all that awaits. But you have taken from her the sweet blessing of youth; you have robbed her existence of all romance. Little one, dost thou dare go?'

Oh, yesa thousand times yes! What is that slavery, and that horrible wrong; that coldness, and treachery, and poverty? I will give myself to laboring, that it may be done away. I will fight against that sin! Sister, surely thou hast so labored?'

I looked upon her conscience-struck, awed, and half afraid, and I was forced to answer No!'

My reader, God save you the anguish of being compelled to answer in such a manner when that question shall be asked you. Go back, and rejoice then that there is time,' my mother said. When you come again, then will you be satisfied with your work, my child. I give to you a holy work. I make you an apostle. Speak out among your fellows, and with no whispered words, of that which you do know. Smile thou never on sin: if it stands before thee clothed in the purple, scorn it! Countenance thou never the works of oppression; believe thou in the eternity of truth, and in the immutability of God's justice. When the time cometh for thee to speak, fail thou not to rebuke vice in its million hideous forms. Behold, I give to thee another work! When this, thy sister, shall appear on earth, thou shalt know her. Lead her in the paths which she should tread; guide her; teach her the everlasting truths; establish her in the eternal hope. And, my children, be ye faithful over the few things given to your care; so ye shall come again in joy, bearing the precious sheaves with you.'

I HAVE heard a child's voice on this earth which I recognize. There is a soul tabernacle in the flesh, which our mother gave to my guidance, though others of this world claim her. The time is not yet come for the dispelling of the early joy. Sorrow has not yet pressed the little one to her heart. What do I say? That time was before she ever came into this world. I read it in the wondering look with which she turns away from every temptation, from the voices of sin, of dissension and wrath; in the trembling tones with which she reads of the sway of almost universal evil; in the pure love with which she clings to the human, exalting and ennobling all with whom she comes in contact. They who look upon her think to see the day when she will need that comfort which her words afford them now; but they will look in vain that time can never come.

I foresee the day when she shall arise and declare what the weary and fainting mortals will rejoice to know. I see, in shadow, a form

that shall move a very angel through the harvest-field of our MASTER; I hear in echo a voice as of a voice heard in a dream-gentle tones and wise utterances, which shall be proved powerful to rebuke, and convince, and restore, and save; I have prophetic hearing of a song of joy and thanksgiving that shall float upward from the bondmen of sin, whose chains she shall loosen a song that shall be borne through the far-distance to the blessed soul-land, to OUR MOTHER; and beyond the soul-land to HIM!

O mother! the weak and the weary, the tempted and the falling, shall learn of and shall bless thee for that little child!

STANZAS: A DREAM.

BY E. PLURIBUS UNUM, ZAQ.

I DREAMED I stood upon a rock, that reared
Its solitary peak from out an ocean
Whose broad expanse no sunbeam ever cheered,
But a dim twilight veiled its wild commotion;
And 'gainst that rock the foaming surges broke,
Which trembled to its base at every stroke.

And round about me was no living thing;

No sea-bird flapped the gloom on weary pinion;
Upon the watery waste no ship's white wing

Could be discerned, to tell of man's dominion:
But all did seem like Nature's primal sleep,
When darkness veiled the void and formless deep.

All, save the chilly wind that fiercely blew,

And a strange light that, from the billows streaming,
Just served to make them visible, and threw
Upon that lonely rock a fitful gleaming;

But overhead primeval darkness hung,

Through which not even a star its radiance flung.

And now, dear reader, p'r'aps you think I'm going
To tell of things than these still more prodigious,
Which in my dream I saw, and end by showing
Their moral and their tendency religious;

But dreams are mostly very transitory,
And end right in the middle of the story.

And so it was with mine: for as I stood
Gazing upon the hell of waters' round,
Methought I slipped, and fell into the flood!
Shrieking with horror I awoke, and found
That I had in my sleep fallen out of bed,
And very badly bumped my dreaming head!