Keeping to his course star-lighted, Cushing finds the fleet at last.

There's the morning star appearing, as the picket boats are passed.

Straightway pulling for the flag-ship, hails the watch and

past him pushing

"I'M THE BEARER OF DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT, LIEUTENANT CUSHING!"

The crew came rushing to the deck

With "Blast my eyes! "Tis surely he!"
No orders could their movements check-
They'd not believe, each one must see.
The captain grasps his hand with tears,
No oaths now heard, no growl or snarl;
While Cushing tells amid their cheers
The story of the Albemarle.

THERE ARE NONE.-I. EDGAR JONES.

There are no infidels. All unbelief
Dissolves like mist in tears of joy or grief.
The skeptic, when his daily toil is done,
Looks forward to the morrow's rising sun;

His doubts are dim; his sneers a shapeless wraith,
His work is for a future; and his faith

Is strong that other days shall come and go,
And Time's swift shuttle still dart to and fro.
He knows that good brings joy, and ill its grief,
And in that faith belies his unbelief.

He knows the golden grain in summer grows,
That every farmer reaps but that he sows;

That piercing wounds produce their pangs of pain,
That tides which ebb must kiss the sands again,
That every plume of grass and tinted flower

Is born to bloom at its appointed hour;

That greenest glories rise from out the ground,
That wonders in the sea and sky are found;
While every planet in its circle turns,
And every sun its lamp of living burns;
In every act his faith becomes his chief;
There is no infidel, no unbelief.

He who believes the flower shall deck the sod,
Believes in life, and in the power of God;
The man who tunes his lyre at close of day
And lists for echoes answering far away,
Believes in consequences and in cause,
And bows obedient to the Master's laws;
He may be scornful, and his glances, dim,
Be doubt-distorted, self deceiving him,
And seeing but his own reflection, keep
His searching glance from that which lieth deep;
But if he look for love where love be sent,
And shape his plans to meet some sure event,
His hollow doubtings lead from grace to grief;
His actions say, "There is no unbelief."

THE CURTAIN FIXTURE-JAMES M. BAILEY.

The most exquisite article of domestic torture is the modern window-curtain fixture. Years ago, before the desecrating hand of inventive genius was reared, the window covering was either a green shade hung by hooks, or a simple piece of muslin nailed firmly to the upper casing. Now the curtain is uniformly of cloth, with a flat stick at the bottom and a round stick at the top and a complicated lot of brass cogs and ratchets at the ends.

It isn't much trouble to fit in the flat stick, because that can be measured the right length on the floor, but it is getting the proper length of the round sticks or rollers that plays the mischief with a man's temper. We are not quite certain but that it could be done without much bluster were a man's wife to go off to the other end of the town and stay there until the operation is She doesn't, however. She keeps right close to him, and enlivens the performance with such observations as her judgment and experiences teach her are the best calculated to turn his head.

over.

The window-curtain is generally put up in the evening. This is partly because the man has then more time, and

partly attributable to his desire to put off the evil job until the last moment. The first thing to be done is to separate the parcels and borrow a saw. Every family keeps its own screw-driver (point broken) and hammer (handle loose).

You instinctively saw the flat pieces first, because that is the easiest, and afterward fit the rollers, which is more difficult. Then the curtain is tacked to the roller, which keeps turning over and breaking the tacks, and catching your fingers under the hammer. This done, you are ready to plant your feet on the best cane-bottom chair in the house and put up the fixtures. Here your wife says: "Well, if I ever saw anything quite so idiotic as." You then get right down, while she starts for a wooden article, and by way of showing that you have no feeling in the matter, you kick the cane-seat into the middle of the room.

Once mounted on the wooden chair, the brackets are put up. To do this requires that you extend your arms the full length, and while in this condition, with a couple of screws and a screw-driver in your mouth, the hammer in one hand, the other hanging to the fixtures, and the curtain with the unwieldy roller across your shoulder, you make the sickening discovery that you have got nothing with which to punch the hole for the screw. Then you get down to the floor again to remedy the defect, and find there is nothing for that purpose but the advice of your wife to drive the screw till it sets. You mount again. She holds the lamp so she can see if the woman has cleaned the corners of the glass, and as you have your mouth too full of hardware to articulate with any freedom, you find yourself obliged to kick her elbow to indicate that you actually demand some of the flame to set the screw. The artifice is lost upon her, however, for, likely as not, she will set down the lamp to rub her arm, and ask you what you mean.

No one has yet set a bracket to a curtain fixture with

out either dropping some of the implements or a remark well calculated to engross the attention of the party holding the lamp. The awful strain on the arms, the wonderful vacillating humors of the screws, the incomprehensible imbecility of the screw-driver, the obstinacy of the roller, and the astonishing perverseness of your wife, who will persist in moving the lamp at the wrong time, make putting up a modern curtain fixture the most subtle of domestic grievances.

And when the curtain is finally up, and secured so it won't fall on your head when you touch the string, and you take hold to draw it up, the experience as it waltzes off to one side, and tries to stand on its drunken head, and failing in that, settles right where it is, and obstinately refuses to budge either way, has never been truly analyzed. Weeks after, when you are leaning back in your chair engrossed in memories of the dead past, that curtain will suddenly come thundering down upon you, causing you to spring out into the air and lifting your very hair almost free from the scalp.

TOO ZEALOUS BY HALF.

In a quaint German town, rich in legend and ruin,
There dwelt in a very hermitical way

An eccentric old fellow named Johnson Bethuen,
Whose only companion (so people all say)

Was a frolicsome, innocent, infantile bruin.

'Twixt master and beast there existed a feeling
Intense as the love between parent and child,
Which sentiment fond neither thought of concealing,
And many an hour this strange duo beguiled,

With many an act their affection revealing.

One morning the villagers missed from their number
This quiet old hermit, and bruin mischievous;
But thinking, perhaps, they protracted their slumber,
(Not dreaming could happen an accident grievous,)
Their mind with misgiving they did not encumber.

But as night grew apace, and no sight of the hermit,
The people remarked: "There's no doubt that he's dead!"
And one of their number, 'thout waiting for permit,

Burst open the door; and if fear there existed,
The scene they beheld was enough to confirm it.

There, prone on the bare floor, the hermit lay dying.
The blood spurted forth from a wound in his forehead;
And bruin, dejected, close by him was lying,

A-guashing his teeth, and a-growling quite horrid,
And brushing his tears off, as though he'd been crying.
It seems that the master, o'ercome by a potion,

Lay down to sleep off the effects of his drain,
And bruin conceived the commendable notion
Of shooting the flies from the slumbering man-
By keeping his paws in continual motion.
But one little blue-bottle son of his mother,
Returning too oft, so excited his ire,

That bruin no longer his feelings could smother,
And burning all up with zealotical fire,
Ile waited the coming again of the other.

The fly approached slowly, then fast, and then faster,
And settled at last on the slumberer's jaw,
But bruin was ready-ne'er dreaming disaster;
With all of its weight fell his ponderous paw;
The fly was a "goner”—but so was the master!
The moral of which is respectfully shown:-
In service of patron, of neighbor or friend,
Be not over zealous, and candidly own

That judgment is useful, whatever the end,
And zeal is a fool when it "goes it alone."

GOOD BYE, OLD HOUSE.-MILLIE C. POMEROY.
Good bye, old house! the hurry and the bustle
Smothered till now all thought of leaving you;
But the last load has gone, and I've a moment,
All by myself, to say a last adieu.

Good bye, old house! I shall not soon forget you,
The witness of so much eventful time-
And walls have ears they say, I beg you cherish
Each secret that you may have heard of mine.