"In the fair Rhine land, where the red rose blooms, And the violet scents the breeze,

Where the dark fir's bending, swaying plumes

Rise o'er the nodding trees,

A cottage clad in the gray woodbine,

In jasmine buds and the arbute vine,

Gleamed bright in the Rhine land's summer shine.

"The Blue Rhine's water's fled swift along,

A glittering, sheeny thread,

And rippled aloud a woodland song,
Over their pebbly bed,

And the cottage was nestled by its side,

Where the fallow deer and the hare could hide,
By the blue Rhine's sheeny, lapping tide.

"The rumble of war swelled over the land,
The roll of the stirring drum,

And the shrill fife pealed from cliff to strand,
And died in a solemn hum!

The din of the battle-jar in the air,

And the torch of Mars, with its crimson flare,
Were heard and seen in the cottage there.

"A stripling boy, his mother's lone pride,
Hearkened to the war-note's jar;

And he belted a saber by his side,
Steel stained in an ancient war.
He heard the thrilling battle-call,
He felt the shrouding, funeral pall,

And he strode away from his home-from all!

"On Gravelotte's hill at sunset's glow,

Where the war-shouts rang so loud,

Breasting the battle tide's sanguine flow,

His youthful form was bowed!

And far from home, from the blue Rhine's prattle,
From his vine-clad cot there mid the rattle

Of guns, he died on the field of battle!

"And the sonless mother in the fair Rhine land, Weeps silent day by day,

Where the blue stream with its silvery sand

Glints by the cottage way.

Ah! that mother doth wait, and pray for the hour,
In her cot at the foot of the moss-grown tower,

To meet with her boy in the Aidenn bower!

179

"Then stranger, pause, should you see that mound,
So grim in the fir tree's shade,

For your feet would tread upon sacred ground
There in that Gallic glade,

For there, far from the blue Rhine's prattle,
Where once rang loud the rifle's rattle,
My darling lies dead on the field of battle."

Yes, this was the tale the old dame told

To me that night in the quaint old town,
There mid the blasts and the winter's cold,

There 'neath the gray moon's gibbous frown--
But she reeled away. And with heart bowed down,
At last I entered the "Kaiser's Crown."

THE SHOEMAKER'S DAUGHTER.

THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH.

Yesternight, as I sat with an old friend of mine,
In his library, cozily over our wine,

Looking out on the guests in the parlor, I said,
Of a lady whose shoe showed some ripping of thread:
"Frank, she looks like a shoemaker's daughter."

"Yes," said Frank, "yes; her shoe has a rip to the side,The mishap of the moment-the lady's a bride.

That reminds me of something; and here as we sit,

If you'll listen with patience, I'll spin you a bit

Of a yarn of a shoemaker's daughter.

"When I was a boy, half a century since

How one's frame as one numbers the years, seems to wince! A dear little girl went to school with me then

As I sit in my arm-chair I see her again,

Kitty Mallet, the shoemaker's daughter.

"Whence the wonderful ease in her manner she had,
Not from termagant mother, nor hard-working dad.
Yet, no doubt that, besides a most beautiful face,
The child had decorum, refinement and grace,
Not at all like a shoemaker's daughter.

"Her dress was of six-penny print, but 'twas clean;
Her shoes, like all shoemakers' childrens' were mean;

Her bonnet, a wreck, but, whatever she wore,
The air of a damsel of breeding she bore-

Not that of a shoemaker's daughter.

"The girls of the school, when she entered the piace, Pinched each other, then tittered and stared in her face. She heeded no insult, no notice she took;

But quietly settled herself to her book

She meant business, that shoemaker's daughter.

"Still jeered at by idler, and dullhead, and fool,

A hermitess she in the crowd of the school:

There was wonder indeed when it soon came to pass
That 'Calico Kitty' was head of the class.

What! Kitty! That shoemaker's daughter!'

"Still wearing the same faded calico dress, And calm, as before, in the pride of success;

Her manner the same, easy, soft and refined,

'Twas she seemed an heiress, while each left behind
In the race was a shoemaker's daughter.
"Bit by bit all her schoolmates she won to her side,
To rejoice in her triumph, be proud in her pride,
And I with the rest. I felt elderly then,

For I was sixteen, while the lass was but ten;
So I petted the shoemaker's daughter.

"Do you see that old lady with calm placid face:
Time touches her beauty, but leaves all her grace:
Do you notice the murmurs that hush when she stirs,
And the honor and homage so pointedly hers?
That's my wife, sir, the shoemaker's daughter."

AN UNACCOUNTABLE MYSTERY.
PAUL DENTON.

Intemperance is the strangest and most unaccountable mystery with which we have to deal. Why, as a rule, the human soul is passionately jealous of its own happiness, and tirelessly selfish as to its own interest. It delights to seek the sunshine and the flowers this side the grave: ardently hopes for heaven in the life to come. It flashes its penetrating thought through the dark chambers of the earth; or lighted by the lurid flames of smoulder

ing, volcanic fires, wings them through buried ovens. It lights up the ocean's bed, melting its mysteries into solution, detecting its coral richness, and causing its buried pearls, which have rested for long centuries beneath the black waves, to glow with their long-hoarded beauty. It holds converse with the glittering planets of the skies and compels them to tell it of their mountain ranges, their landscapes, and their utility. It toys with the mad lightnings which break from the darkness, and guides death and destruction through the earth, until it allures the impetuous element into docility and subserviency. It bids the panting waters breathe their hot, heavy breath upon the piston-rod and make the locomotive a beautiful thing of life, majestically thundering its way over continents, screaming forth the music of civilization in the midst of wild forests and the heat of burning deserts, beneath scorching, torrid suns. It leaps over burning plains and scalding streams; restless and daring, it lights its casket over arctic zones and seas; and perhaps tiring of such incumbrance, deserts it in the cold shade of the ice mountain and speeds on untrammeled and alone. Franklin followed the beckonings of his tireless spirit until worn out and weary, his body laid down on the cold ice and slept. Kane coaxed himself home to the old church-yard, and then bade his spirit drop the machine it had so sadly wrenched and fly through earth or the eternities, as God might will. Livingstone marched through the jungles and cheerless forests of uninviting Africa, but his limbs were too feeble to keep up with his hungry soul, which tore itself from its burden and left it to crumble beneath the burning sun. And thus the soul flies from zone to zone and from world to world, sipping the sweets of wisdom, as the bee sucks honey from the flowers; reading lessons from the leaflet on the tree, studying the language of the soft whispering zephyr, and of the hurricane which springs from nothing into devastating power; and it is ever restless in its researches, for i,

seeks its own happiness and improvement in its new discoveries, and in a better knowledge of God's creation. Speak to the human soul of liberty, and swell it with gratitude, and, beaming with smiles, it will follow whereever you lead. Speak to it of its immortality and of the divine grandeur of its faculties, and, warmed by your appreciation, it will strive harder for a fuller development and brighter existence. Lead it among the roses, and it will seldom fail to light your pathway with smiles and to remind you of its gratitude. It loves to be noticed; loves to be assisted; loves to be made happy; loves to be warned of danger; and yet, with reference to that which pierces it with the most bleeding wounds, which more than any thing else bars from it the sunlight and robs it of happiness-Intemperance-IT IS AS HEEDLESS

AS THE STONE.

NOT GUILTY(?)—J. W. HATTON.

“Do you call that manners, Jacob? is that the way to bowTugging at your hat brim with strength to pull a plow? You seem to be embarrassed; you act like von were dazed; Let go your hat and answer me: Why look you so amazed?”

"Nuffin wrong, sah, nuffin! 'fore God I do declar'! 'Ceptin' I war tinkin' as how you'd cuss an' swar

'Cause de pigs hab not been fed, de horses curried down; 'Pears when tings ar' gwine wrong you're sho to hap'n roun."

"I thought I heard a chicken, Jake, behind the cabin wall; At first a lively cackle, and then a doleful squall.

I may have been mistaken, but I hardly think I was,
And chickens never squall you know, unless they have a

cause

"Yes, sah-no, sah! dat ol' chicken-hawk-ah-he don' com' agin

Mi! da hab de hardes' fight, him an' de speckle' hen.
At firs' de hawk war master, but dat ol' hen am wise,
She flop him crazy wid her wings an' peck him in de eyes:
If dat ol' hen ain't game, boss, den dis ol' nigger lies."