"Is that man string-haltered?" My friend began to sweat, and moved toward the door. I appointed myself a committee of one to withdraw from the room. Amid the cheering yells of the father, the sweet notes of the boy, and the melodious shrieks of the mother, we took our departure. We stopped at the next house. A boy met us at the door; pulling off three-fourths of a hat, he told us to come in. The two little girls sat quietly by the window. The mother smiled pleasantly, and everything was in good order. Now, what made the noticeable difference? Simply one household was continually fretting and whining. The peculiar characteristic of some people is whining. They whine because they are poor, and they whine because they are sick and can not enjoy their riches; they whine because they are out of employment, and no sensible man will give them employment because they whine; they fret until they take the headache, and of course take the headache on account of fretting; they whine because they are ugly, and they are painfully ugly because they whine. I would have such persons taken out and whipped until they laugh. --J. V. C. BILL AND I. The moon had just gone down, sir. All was still in tent and town, sir, It was our turn at picket, To the music of the cricket Oh, we kept a sharp lookout, sir, And we watched the brook a-brawlin', Bill and I. And says he, "Won't it be glorious We hear our sweethearts cry, 'Welcome back!"" A step! Who goes there? THE TRANSPORTATION OF MITCHELL. There is a black ship upon the southern sea this night. Far from his own, old land-far from the sea, and soil, and sky, which, standing here, he used to claim for you with all the pride of a true Irish princefar from that circle of fresh, young hearts, in whose light, and joyousness, and warmth, his own drank in each evening new life and vigor-far from that young wife, in whose heart the kind hand of heaven has kindled a gentle heroism-sustained by which she looks with serenity and pride upon her widowed house, and in the children that girdle her with beauty, beholds but the inheritors of a name, which, to their last breath, will secure to them the love, the honor, the blessing of their country-far from these scenes and joys, clothed and fettered as a felen, he is borne to an island, whereon the rich, and brilliant, and rapacious power of which he was the foe, has doomed him to a dark existence. That sentence must be reversed-reversed by the decree of a nation, arrayed in arms and in glory! Think! oh, think! of how, with throbbing heart and kindling eye, he will look out across the waters that imprison him, searching in the eastern sky for the flag that will announce to him his liberty, and the triumph of sedition! Think! oh, think! of that day, when thousands and tens of thousands will rush down to the water's edge, as a distant gun proclaims his return-mark the ship as it dashes through the waves and nears the shorebehold him standing there upon the deck-the same calm, intrepid, noble heart-his clear, quick eye runs along the shore, and fills with the light which flashes from the bayonets of the people-a moment's pause, and then, amid the roar of the cannon, the fluttering of a thousand flags, the pealing of the cathedral bells, the triumphant felon sets his foot once more upon his native soil-hailed, and blessed, and worshiped as the first citizen of our free and sovereign state! -T. F. Meagher. WORKINGMEN'S SONG. Whom do we call our heroes? CHORUS. Then, honor to our workingmen, Who spans the earth with iron? It is the patient toiler: All honor to him, then; The true wealth of the nation For many barren ages Earth hid her treasures deep And all her giant forces Seemed bound as in a sleep; Then Labor's anvil chorus Broke on the startled air, 'Tis toil that over nature Gives man his proud control; It purifies and hallows The temple of the soul; It scatters foul diseases, With all their ghastly train; Puts iron in the muscle, The great Almighty builder In every angel flower That blossoms from the sod, -Henry Clay Preuss. THE GRAVE. The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal; every other affliction, to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open. This affliction we cherish, and brood over in solitude. Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that has perished like a blossom from her arms, though every recollection is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget a tender parent, though to remember be but to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he mourns. No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection; when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved, is softened away into pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may, sometimes, throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet, who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song. There is a remembrance of the dead to which we would turn even from the charms of the living. Oh, the grave! the grave! It buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies moldering before him? But the grave of those we loved-what a place for meditation! There it is, that we call up, in long review, the |