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Then Thomas fainted. Soon the guard
Spake tenderly as one who has a hard
Task, questioning: "Whom shall I say?"
The other answered-" William Gray."
He wrote and passed. When Thomas came
Unto himself he asked what name
Was given. His friend could not reply,
But others told him. Then his cry
Arose against it. Gray must live-
He would not have it. They must give
Him the black ball-all too late,
His swoon had sealed his comrade's fate.

Gray soothed him, and they sat till dawn
Talking over the times long gone
And then of Bertha. "Tell her, you,"
Gray said, "my heart beat ever true,
And that I died for you and her,
Remembering the days that were
Ere battle called us. Now, good-bye;
Love makes it easier to die."

Thus passed away that fearful night;
The morning came and brought the men
Who were to seal the fate of ten
Brave soldiers. 'Twas a solemn sight.
Gray stood there in the morning light
Silent and calm. His brow was bare;
The morning breeze played with his hair,
Which curled above a forehead fair
And beautiful. The clear brown eyes
Were lifted prayerfully towards the skies;
No tremor shook that youthful frame
From which so soon his soul of flame
Was to soar heavenward. There, grim
But with moist eyes that looked at him,
Stood the armed soldiers. Behind, lay

The brown-stained coffin. There were birds
Singing their tend'rest songs that day,
And from the jail not far away

Came the low hum of muffled words, As men spake of the glorious gift Which he had given, that he might lift One, with blue eyes and golden hair, Out of the dark depths of despair

And save a comrade. On the hills
The warm sun lay and kissed the rills.
Nature her sweetest smile put on,
Uncaring that ere day was gone,
Beneath her sunlight there should be
A most stupendous tragedy.

"Kneel,” came the word. He bent his knees;
And now approaching him he sees
An officer to blind-fold him. "Nay!
I need that not. Let my eyes stay
Free to the sunlight of God's day.
One moment more for thought and prayer,
Another breath of God's pure air."

He clasped his hands and lowered his brow
A moment's space; then faced them. "Now!"
"Fire!" cried the chief. The flames leaped out;
From all the crowd arose a shout

Of hate and horror. Down the vale
The echoes poured to tell the tale
How man had died for fellow man;
But one who knelt upon a knee
And felt his pulse and took his hand,
Heard, murmured like a dying breeze
That sighs in autumn through the trees,
"Bertha, beloved, I die for thee."

Nine widows mourn nine husbands dead;
War's cloud rolls past and far away;
Soldiers come back with stately tread,
And Thomas Wright weds Bertha Ray.

A weeping willow's shade is thrown
Over a stately shaft of stone
Which rises white o'er yonder bay;
It bears the name of William Gray;
And carved upon it you can see
These simple words: “He died for me."

LULLABY.

"Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green;
Father's a nobleman, mother's a queen.”
Rockaby, lullaby, all the day long,
Down to the land of the lullaby song.

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Babyland never again will be thine,
Land of all mystery, holy, divine,
Motherland, otherland,

Wonderland, underland,

Land of a time ne'er again to be seen;
Flowerland, bowerland,

Airyland, fairyland,

Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green.
Rockaby, baby, thy mother will keep
Gentle watch over thine azure-eyed sleep;
Baby can't feel what the mother-heart knows,
Throbbing its fear o'er your quiet repose.
Mother-heart knows how baby must fight
Wearily on through the fast coming night;
Battle unending,

Honor defending,

Baby must wage with the power unseen.
Sleep now, O baby, dear!

God and thy mother near;

Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green.

Rockaby, baby, the days will grow long;

Silent the voice of the mother-love song,

Bowed with sore burdens the man-life must own,

Sorrows that baby must bear all alone.

Wonderland never can come back again;

Thought will come soon--and with reason comes pain,
Sorrowland, motherland,
Drearyland, wearyland,

Baby and heavenland lying between.

Smile, then, in motherland,
Dream in the otherland,
Rockaby, baby, thy cradle is green.

S'POSIN'.

A man hobbled into the colonel's office upon crutches. Proceeding to a chair and making a cushion of some newspapers, he sat down very gingerly, placed a bandaged leg upon another chair, and said:

"Col. Coffin, my name is Briggs. I want to get your opinion about a little point of law. Now, colonel, 'posin' you lived up the pike here a half a mile, next

door to a man named Johnson. And s'posin' you and Johnson was to get into an argument about the human intellect, and you was to say to Johnson that a splendid illustration of the superiority of the human intellect was to be found in the power of the human eye to restrain the ferocity of a wild animal. And s'posin' Johnson was to remark that that was all bosh, because nobody could hold a wild animal with the human eye, and you should declare that you could hold the savagest beast that was ever born if you could once fix your gaze on him.

"Well, then, s'posin' Johnson was to say he'd bet a hundred dollars he could bring a tame animal that you couldn't hold with your eye, and you was to take him up on it, and Johnson was to ask you to come down to his place to settle the bet. You'd go, we'll say, and Johnson'd wander round to the back of the house and pretty soon come front again with a dog bigger'n any four decent dogs ought to be. And then s'posin' Johnson'd let go of that dog and set him on you, and he'd come at you like a sixteen-inch shell out of a howitzer, and you'd get scary about it and try to hold the dog with your eye, and couldn't. And s'posin' you'd suddenly conclude that maybe your kind of an eye wasn't calculated to hold that kind of a dog, and you'd conclude to run for a plum tree in order to have a chance to collect your thoughts and to try to reflect what sort of an eye would be best calculated to mollify that sort of a dog. You ketch my idea, of course?

"Very well, then; s'posin' you'd take your eye off of that dog,―Johnson, mind you, all the time hissing him on and laughing, and you'd turn and rush for the tree, and begin to swarm up as fast as you could. Well, sir, s'posin' just as you got three feet from the ground Johnson's dog would grab you by the leg and hold on like a vise, shaking you until you nearly lost your hold. And s'posin' Johnson was to stand there and holloa, 'Fix your

eye on him, Briggs! Why don't you manifest the power of the human intellect?' and so on, howling out ironical remarks like those; and s'posin' he kept that dog on that leg until he made you swear to pay the bet, and then at last had to pry the dog off with a hot poker, bringing away at the same time some of your flesh in the dog's mouth, so that you had to be carried home on a stretcher, and to hire several doctors to keep you from dying with lockjaw.

"S'posin' this, what I want to know is, couldn't you sue Johnson for damages and make him pay heavily for what that dog did? That's what I want to get at."

The colonel thought for a minute, and then said: "Well, Mr. Briggs, I don't think I could. If I agreed to let Johnson set the dog at me, I should be a party to the transaction, and I could not recover."

"Do you mean to say that the law won't make that infernal scoundrel Johnson suffer for letting his dog eat me up?"

"I think not, if you state the case properly."

"It won't, hey?" exclaimed Mr. Briggs, hysterically. “Oh, very well, very well! I s'pose if that dog had chewed me all up it'd 've been all the same to this constitutional republic. But hang me if I don't have satisfaction. I'll kill Johnson, poison his dog, and emigrate to some country where the rights of citizens are protected!"

Then Mr. Briggs got on his crutches and hobbled out. He is still a citizen, and will vote at the next election.

OVERCOMETH !- MARGARET E. SANGSTER.

To him that overcometh,

O word divinely strong,

The victor's palm, the fadeless wreath

The grand immortal song.

And his the hidden manna,

And his the polished stone,

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