loveliness of form and feather are not. For her, while the babbling stream may make mysterious music, its dimpled waves and winding reaches and verdant banks do not exist.

How vividly bitter all this as the lady opened the little hand and shut within it the thornless stem of the rose, now bearing a tear on its petals

And there were other swimming eyes in the car.

Utica, N. Y., Tribune.

THE RETURNED BATTLE FLAGS.

Framed and displayed in the rotunda of the State Capitol at Augusta, Me. Written by Moses Owen; born at Bath, Me., July 21, 1838, died at Augusta, Me., Nov. 11, 1878. He was a graduate of Bowdoin College, class of 1861, a lawyer and also a soldier in a Maine regiment during the war for the preservation of the Union.

Nothing but flags, but simple flags,

Tattered and torn and hanging in rags;

And we walk beneath them with careless tread,
Nor think of the hosts of the mighty dead
That have marched beneath them in days gone by,
With a burning cheek and a kindling eye,
And have bathed their folds with their life's young tide,
And dying, blessed them, and blessing, died.

Nothing but flags; yet, methinks, at night
They tell each other their tale of fight;
And dim spectres come, and their thin arms twine
Round each standard torn, as they stand in line,
As the word is given-they charge, they form,
And the dim hall rings with the battle's storm;
And once again, through smoke and strife,
These colors lead to a nation's life.

144

Nothing but flags; yet they're bathed with tears;
They tell of triumphs, of hopes, of fears,
Of a mother's prayers, of a boy away,
Of a serpent crushed; of the coming day.
Silent they speak, and the tear will start
As we stand beneath them with throbbing heart,
And think of those who are ne'er forgot-
Their flags come home, why come they not?

Nothing but flags; yet we hold our breath,
And gaze with awe at those types of death;
Nothing but flags; yet the thought will come,
The heart must pray, though the lips be dumb;
They are sacred, pure, and we see no stain
Of those dear loved flags, come home again;
Baptized in blood, our purest, best,

Tattered and torn, they're now at rest.

Moses Owen.

THE RAINY DAY.

The day is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;

My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

H. W. Longfellow.

TO MY MOTHER.

Deal gently with her, Time: these many years
Of life have brought more smiles with them than tears.
Lay not thy hand too harshly on her now,

But trace decline so slowly on her brow
That (like a sunset of the Northern clime,
Where twilight lingers in the summer-time,
And fades at last into the silent night,
Ere one may note the passing of the light)
may she pass-since 't is the common lot—
As one who, resting, sleeps and knows it not.

So

TODAY!

John Allen Wyeth.

With every rising of the sun

Think of your life as just begun.

The Past has cancelled and buried deep
All yesterdays. There let them sleep.

Concern yourself with but Today.

Grasp it, and teach it to obey

Your will and plan. Since time began
Today has been the friend of man.

I thank Thee, Lord, that I am straight and strong,
With wit to work and hope to keep me brave;
That two score years, unfathomed, still belong
To the allotted life Thy bounty gave.

I thank Thee that the sight of sunlit lands
And dipping hills, the breath of evening grass-
That wet, dark rocks and flowers in my hands
Can give me daily gladness as I pass.

I thank Thee that I love the things of earth-
Ripe fruits and laughter lying down to sleep,
The shine of lighted towns, the graver worth

Of beating human hearts that laugh and weep.

I thank Thee that as yet I need not know,

Yet need not fear, the mystery of end;

But more than all, and though all these should go

Dear Lord, this on my knees!--I thank Thee for my friend. Juliet Wilbor Tompkins.

MOTHERS.

Mothers are the queerest things!
'Member when John went away,
All but mother cried and cried
When they said good-by that day.
She just talked, and seemed to be
Not the slightest bit upset-
Was the only one who smiled!
Others' eyes were streaming wet.

But when John come back again
On a furlough, safe and sound,
With a medal for his deeds

And without a single wound,
While the rest of us hurrahed,

Laughed and joked and danced about,

Mother kissed him, then she cried

Cried and cried like all git out!

Edwin L. Sabin.

WEBSTER'S REPLY TO HAYNE.

"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' Nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and