Minutes filled with shadeless gladness,
Minutes just as brimmed with sadness,
Happy smiles and wailing cries,
Crows and laughs and tearful eyes,
Lights and shadows swifter born
Than on wind-swept Autumn corn,
Ever some new tiny notion
Making every limb all motion-
Catchings up of legs and arms,
Throwings back and small alarms,
Clutching fingers-straightening jerks,
Twining feet whose each toe works,
Kickings up and straining risings,
Mother's ever new surprisings,
Hands all wants and looks all wonder
At all things the heavens under,
Tiny scorns of smiled reprovings
That have more of love than lovings,
Mischiefs done with such a winning
Archness, that we prize such sinning,
Breakings dire of plates and glasses,
Graspings small at all that
passes,
Pullings off of all that's able
To be caught from tray or table;
Silences-small meditations
Deep as thoughts of cares for nations,
Breaking into wisest speeches
In a tongue that nothing teaches,
All the thoughts of whose possessing
Must be wooed to light by guessing;
Slumbers such sweet angel-seemings
That we'd ever have such dreamings,
Till from sleep we see thee breaking,
And we'd always have thee waking;
Wealth for which we know no measure,
Pleasure high above all pleasure,
Gladness brimming over gladness,
Joy in care-delight in sadness,
Loveliness beyond completeness,
Sweetness distancing all sweetness,
Beauty all that beauty may be,
That's May Bennett-that's my baby.
(By permission of the Author.)
REV. GEORGE ASPINALL, D.D.
THE man I deemed my uncle once,
Was a swarthy seaman old;
His hair was white, and his eye was kind,
And his heart was frank and bold.
The winds of night blew loud and wild,
And the sea was flecked with foam,
As we two sat by the fir-wood fire
Within our Cornwall home.
The old man sighed, as he smoked his pipe,
And listen'd to the roar
Of the waves that beat in cannonades,
Against the stricken shore.
While now and again the chimney-stacks
Fell in with a sudden crash;
And now and again our little room
Was lit with the lightning's flash.
At length he spake with a troublous voice,
And turning his face to me;
"This night is the fellow of a night, Long past and gone," quoth he.
"It is well nigh twenty years ago
Since I govern'd The Ocean Lord;
A trim-built vessel, to Asia bound,
With three passengers aboard.
"The one was a minister sent to preach,
To the heathen, the Word of Life ;
The second, a boy of some three years old;
And the third, a widow'd wife.
"The preacher had no domestic ties,
Nor wife, nor child, nor brother;
And the little lad was the widow's son,
The darling of his mother.
"A slight young thing that mother was,
A very girl in years,
Yet she knew what sorrow was, and her
Oft bore the trace of tears.
"But he, the prop of the widow's heart,
What language can paint that child;
His loving look and his laughing glance,
And his spirit so free and wild!
"One day when we long had lain becalm'd, When no wave or ripple stirred,
The boy, I remember, declared that he saw,
In the far-off sky, a bird.
"Thereat I scanned it through my glass,
And behold 'twas a cloud of lead;
In form like a vulture, whose flapping wings
The forehead of Heav'n o'erspread.
"And lo! the winds broke loose from it,
In a loud and furious gale;
Bending and breaking the yielding masts,
And tearing to shreds each sail.
"We sprang a leak, and the hungry waves
Rush'd in through every rip;
The boats were lowered, and the last of all,
Was I to leave the ship!
"The boat in which I leaped was small,
To defy that ocean wild;
And, 'mongst others, it held the minister,
And the widow and her child,
"I was the sixth, yet how that boat
Could live was strange to me;
But it must have been the hand of God
That sustained her on that sea!
"Through three days' storm we toss'd about,
And then the waters fell,
When on the fourth there appeared in sight
A sail; which we saw full well.
"We saw it like an archangel come
Nearer and yet more near:
O joy! what a Heaven is in the hope
That cometh after fear!
"The dear young mother, it so appear'd,
Had calmly sunk to rest,
And the little lad lay in childhood's sleep,
With his head upon her breast.
"By this the welcome ship had come
Close up, to give us aid;
So we lifted them up with a woman's care,
And bade them not be afraid.
"We thought that their weight seemed heavy then, But when the covering spread
Over both, for warmth, was removed away,
The mother, alas! was dead!"
"But the lad," I exclaim'd, "the cruel storm
Did not the child destroy?"
"Not so," my reputed uncle sobb'd,
"For you were that same boy."
At this I grasp'd his horny hand,
And cried "God's will be done!
An orphan am I, but yet to thee
I will be, old man, a son !"
And I trust that I truly kept my word,
For I cherished him until death;
And in after years 'twas within my arms
That he drew his latest breath.
(Copyright-Contributed.)
"Greater is he who ruleth his spirit than lie who taketh a city.”
"COME here, sir!" said a strong, athletic man, as he seized a delicate-looking lad by the shoulder. "You've been in the water again, sir! Haven't I forbidden it?" "Yes, father, but
"No buts;' haven't I forbidden it, eh?" "Yes, sir. I was
"No reply, sir!" and the blows fell like a hail-storm about the child's head and shoulders.
Not a tear started from Harry's eye, but his face was deadly pale and his lips firmly compressed, as he rose and looked at his father with an unflinching eye.
"Go to your room, sir, and stay there till you are sent for. I'll master that spirit of yours before you are many days older."
Ten minutes after, Harry's door opened, and his mother glided gently in. She was a fragile, delicate
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