Drifted in :: :: University of Virginia Library

All day on the steel-clad road we sped,
The chill rails quivering 'neath our tread,
And snowflakes ever and yet again
Assailing our cars and coaches ten.
The bright-clad forests of weeks ago
Were waist-deep shivering in the snow:
Bare-armed, bare-headed, bare-shouldered stood
These sinless vagabonds of the wood,
Whom Nature each winter must condemn,
And bring their bleak white prisons to them.
The fields gave chilliness to the sight—
Great out-door rooms, with carpets of white,
And houses for furniture, pale with gloom,
As bare and desolate as a tomb,
Save when from a chimney-fountain broke
A lofty river of clear white smoke,
That climbed from the banks of a cloud-made sky,
And cozily greeted the careless eye,
And flaunted in eddy and current and wreath,
The cheer and comfort that dwelt beneath,
And made the wanderer wish that he
Within those cozier bounds might be,
While some one, maybe, in that same home,
Was “watching the train”, and longed to roam:

So easy it is to bewail our lot,
And ask the fates for what we have not.
The villages strung along the road
Had thatches of white on each abode,
And villagers, home by the frost-king sent,
To stay by their firesides seemed content,
Or, swaddled in furs, crept to and fro,
Like wanderers from the Esquimaux.
So, still through the waning hours we sped:
The day slow dying would soon be dead,
And all things dimmed to the failing sight,
As light crept into the arms of night.
How common and yet how queer a phase
Of twentieth century nights and days—
Inherited from the toil and strain
Of nineteenth century heart and brain!
Now full of people of varied worth,
Rush villages up and down the earth;
Each one with its one long swaying street,
On which the tribes of the nations meet.
This roving hamlet, where boor and belle
And pauper and prince in peace may dwell,
With real and imagined joys and ills,
Is nestled in valleys and perched on hills;
Townships an hundred our village may hold,
Ere even a winter's day is old—
It adds to many a city's numbers,
Ere yet its shifting populace slumbers.
At which—as you oft have been advised—
Your ancestors would have been surprised.
The night fell heavy; the storm increased,
With constant news from the far northeast,

And battered against our flying wains—
This ponderous ghost of the frozen rains.
Upon our windows great snow-flakes rushed,
By cruel hands of the breezes crushed;
And many a white fantastic wreath
Was maimed by the struggling wheels beneath.
Still on we sped! for the time-card said
That towns awaited us far ahead;
Where schemes by scores were depending on
The moments saved and the distance won.
A lover was yearning along the way,
To be a bridegroom before next day;
A father and husband hoped for showers
Of birthday gifts in the morning hours;
A capitalist, with eyes of steel,
Tomorrow or never would make “that deal”;
A famous physician was soon to gain
A princely fee from a bed of pain;
A lawyer “figured” how a half-wise
Half-foolish jury to hypnotize;
A pastor pondered with nervous shock,
Some new delinquency in his flock,
Or some uprisen financial care,
And knew he was needed then and there;
A bandit crouched in his cushioned seat,
And thought of the comrades he soon would meet,
And how they would add to their shifting wealth,
In borrowing others' goods by stealth;
A bride in her waning honeymoon
Was homesick to see her parents soon;
And, journeying toward bleak tombs afar,
A pale corse lay in the foremost car.

What risks the traveller has to run—
What new-made dangers to meet or shun!
A thousand events, with perils rife,
Reach up or downward, to grasp a life;
A thousand forces, in gleam or gloom,
Are maybe canvassing for the tomb.
The broken rail, or the shattered wheel,
The watchman's slumber, the bandit's zeal,
The traitor-switch, the signal astray,
The wrecker's dispute of the right of way,
All risked by the devotees of speed,
And oft, by God's mercy, escaped, indeed:
But often are seen, ere Death is paid,
These palaces into shambles made!
Now just as the eve was counting seven,
We halted a tiny village within:
And there seemed to come a note from Heaven
By way of a church-bell's silvery din.
Through drifting torrents and blades of air,
That bell was calling the world to prayer;
And mid our hurried and bustling stay,
These words in the song they seemed to say:

(SONG OF THE CHURCH-BELL.)

Come to me, come to me, you who are sad and lone,
You who knew sorrows of others, that now have become your own;
You who greet only by memory the friends you once have known,
You who are walking desolate, tortured by thorns of care,
Come to the house of prayer.

Come to me, come to me, you who in pleasures bright
Drown the gold hours of morning, or the sweet shades of night;
Oh, you will feel for my presence when trouble encumbers sight!
Joy is the mother of sorrow: pleasures can breed despair:
Then there is wailing and prayer.

Come to me—come to me—you who helpless-wise,
May be unable to come in the fragile body's guise:
It is the spirit that clambers into the towering skies.
So though bodies be prisoned, yet souls in Heaven may share:
Come to the house of prayer.

Come to me, come to me, you who can only agree
In the great lessons of Nature, with what yourselves can see;
Pray as you live—to the Unknown!—for all that is yet to be—
All that has been—has been given Mystery's garment to wear:
Mystery's even in prayer!

Come to me—come to me—you who diversely believe!
Many the doctrines and fancies that different natures weave;
Many the rafters to which their hopes of mercy cleave.
Heaven's great dome of splendor is reached by many a stair;
Come to the house of prayer!

Pray with me, pray with me, you who in toil are bowed,
You who are striving and grieving alone in a sneering crowd;
Maybe the lower they crush you, the higher the strength allowed.
Look to the sky above you—look to Heaven—it is there:
Come to the house of prayer!

Away again!—through the blinding storm,
Our train is pushing its massive form:
Through night—the beautiful wreck of day—
Our engine valiantly fights its way.
But still we could feel and could but know,
That time, unhindered by gale and snow,
Was star of the race, had won first place,
And we were weakening in the chase.
Our speed grew labored: we felt the strain
That clogged the engine; and all in vain
It strove to compass our journey's need,
And match with un-wintered days for speed.
The heave of its mighty breath we heard—
We felt the touch of its iron heart's throb;
Its hoarse voice sounding a warning word,
Seemed sometimes wavering like a sob;
But nought of a sound that the world appals
Came to us within our windowed walls.
The lights were gleaming as gaily as ever
In opulent city—'neath palace-domes
Whence thrifty courtiers, discreet and clever,
Make rich their tables and gild their homes;

Trained trainmen, loitering up and down,
Were ready to hail each coming town;
An old conductor, of oft-proved worth,
With stripes on his coat-sleeve three and five,
Had travelled the iron road back and forth
For forty years, and was still alive,
And answered, with look of droll despair,
The questions fired him from here and there;
Trim waiters with viands hove in sight—
Their faces black as their aprons white;
A dining-hall flung banners about,
As snowy as any field without;
With savory odors, half the night,
Olfactories aided the appetite;
In book-shelves swaying, the silent tongue
Of literature was deftly hung;
On our foundation of wheels there rose
A temple of vapor-clouds, where those
On worship of Nicotina bent,
Smoke-dried themselves to their hearts' content;
Well-curtained chambers provided place
For those who would dream through miles of space;
Good cushions waited the many there be
Who think that slumbering should be free;
And warm glad comfort was speeding through
As fierce a storm as the world oft knew.

Now riding along these desolate ways,
There rose a vision of summer days,
When green leaves fluttered in zephyred hours,
And roads were walled with the vines and flowers.
And thoughts from each other so diverse,
To join together for better or worse,

In moments of contemplation are,
That I sang

THE HONK OF THE RAILLESS CAR.

Away! away! in the morning's gray,
At the cockcrow's earliest din:
For many a mile we must make the while,
Ere ever the night rolls in.
No wonder we pray that the sun's best ray
Will follow the morning star:
For far and near must the echoes hear
The honk of the railless car!

Up hill and down through country and town,
Our roadbed ready we see:
Wherever we choose to frolic or muse,
A “station” for us shall be.
No frowns upon earth our honest mirth
Can ever dispel or bar:
We mingle with smiles and generous wiles,
The honk of the railless car.

Past the farmhouse old, and tales oft told
Of mingling of death and life—
Through villages quaint where sinner and saint
Are dwelling in peaceful strife,
Along the lake with mirrors that make
Our pictures that ripples mar,
We hurry along with jesting and song,
And the honk of the railless car.

And little we need in our headlong speed,
A welcome to ask or seek,

Save maybe some showers of children's flowers,
For the candies we brought last week;
E'en horses have learned to be unconcerned,
And eyes are no more ajar
With drivers' rage we can not assuage,
At the honk of the railless car.

Away, away, in the dawn of day,
In the forenoon smiling fair!
Let us be in tune with the strength of noon,
And the evening's soft sweet air.
Let us study the rights through days and nights,
Of those who our brothers are:
Till all the earth will welcome its worth,
And honk with the railless car!

And then I pondered how far and wide
Grow men and women who, malcontent
To use the gifts that the gods provide,
Must needs abuse them as soon as sent:
Who, if they were throned in the highest heavens,
Would soon have things at sixes and sevens,
And try a progress through that bright air,
As peacock-angels, to overbear
With wonder the people already there.
That process was tried by one who now
Would use Heaven's breezes to fan his brow,
If he could get them—instead of trying
To use them in spectacular flying.
As I so mused on that wintry night,
The following dream hove into sight:

(THE GOLDEN DEVIL.)

He built him a toy of the strongest steel
That lurks in lever or whirls in wheel;
He tricked it off with the finest gold
That clouds can flutter or caves can hold:
He gathered the lightning's magic juice,
To push it on to its fleetest use;
And then with a thought to grimly praise
This chariot-child of the modern days,
He called it the “Golden Devil.”

And through the city by night and day,
The prince of Juggernauts sped its way;
As if it were some demonic shape
Immersed in the process of escape.
'Twixt humblest hovels and loftiest roofs
The whispered tread of its rubber hoofs
Was drowned by the horn's loud tocsin tones,
And creak of its massive metal bones,
Which held the tidings of pain and dread,
But could not carry them far ahead.
'Twere best for the humbler human clay,
To mind its manners and clear the way!
What room for the poor plebeian feet,
When Wealth was frolicking down the street?
A boy was hurt—diminutive fact,
With several million boys intact!
An old man killed—he had years four-score,
And what did he need of any more?
A wife was crushed to the blood-stained ground—
But wives are many and easy-found;
Grim Justice—hurried along the track—
Was met by Money and motioned back;

And—skies a-sunny or skies a-fair—
The son of the son of a millionaire
Pursued his giddy revel.

Away to the country roads and lanes!
Where consternation rewards the pains
Of wealthy donkeys who, it appears,
Use surplus money to hide their ears,
And raise a public clatter and din
Their natural parts could never win.
On paths that seldom had heard the tread
Of modern traffic, the monster sped—
Through lengths of the dreamy village street,
Through country avenues, quickly cool;
It grazes the arching elm-tree's feet,
It pictures its length in the clear wide pool,
It greets the homes of the forest-elves,
Of nature's gardens that train themselves,
It skirts wide acres thrifty and trim,
And yonder the mountain's jagged rim,
And farther, above the peaks and fells,
The high cloud-domes with their thunder-bells;
But what is the blue and green and gold,
By Nature's liberal hand unrolled,
To him who, jealous of show and speed,
Is holding the rein of this rushing steed,
If miles will dwindle and people stare?
The son of the son of a millionaire
Is “running” the Golden Devil.

A girl with tresses of fine-spun gold,
Not more than three bright summers old,
A pattern of every guiltless wile,
A winsome bit of a toddling smile,

Is coming—a host of unconscious charms—
From her grandame's house to her mother's arms,
And bearing along, through sunny hours,
Herself, and another bouquet of flowers.
How little that sweet one could suppose
There was needed the place wherein she put
The faint impress of her tiny foot;
That her breath, as sweet as the freshest rose,
Her dainty form and her loving face—
Had not in God's wide-spread world a place
Each moment, wherein to live!—but no!
A flash and a yell and a scream—and lo,
A mangled form and a cold blank face
Are all that wait for a father's embrace,
Or a mother's kiss! Comes a backward cry—
“Bad accident—Sorry—Send bill—Good-bye!
“The chief of the Golden Devil.”

Now Satan, greedy of every word
From off this globe, of his namesake heard;
And followed the car of golden sheen,
And rode along by its side unseen.
Scant need to voice an evident truth—
He fell in love with the gilded youth;
And vowed, ere many a moon had flown,
He would have his soul for his very own.
So, shrewdly guessing that he could pay
A better homage outside the clay,
He deemed he should be a gilded wreck,
And took due measures to break his neck,
And give him his proper level.

Now when, in her dreary cradle of clay,
The little maiden was wept away,

The mother turned with a shattered brain
And vowed her vengeance: and not in vain
The devil whispered to her his plan
To speed his scheming and catch his man.
With maniac cunning and new-found knack,
She learned his comings and traced his track:
And, one dark night of a stormy day,
Unbridged a precipice in his way.
On rushed the toy to the breach!—whereat
It reared—and tumbled—and plunged: and that
Was the last of the Golden Devil.

Just now we stopped at a tiny town—
(For taking travelers up and down,
And, as one lady referred to it,
“Refreshing the engine a little bit”),
And just as our caravan's bulky form
Was braving again the desert of storm,
A thrifty husbandman climbed aboard,
With numerous cargoes of snowflakes stored;
And walking the car's short tilting street
With steps unwontedly insecure,
He tumbled his coat on a corner-seat—
An avalanche made in miniature—
And with my gesture and look complied,
And came and sat by my humble side.
Men always in wisdom talk, if so
Their words are guided 'mid things they know:
For wisdom is mostly what is learned
From matters again and again discerned.

And this plain man, with his sunburned face
Whose brandings winter could not efface,
And ancient hat that would not enhance
The beauty of humblest nail or shelf,
And clothes with a fit that would throw, perchance,
A city dude into fits himself,
And grammar at which, in pathetic plaint,
Poor Lindley Murray might “throw” a faint,
Was still with a wealth of facts endowed,
Of which a novelist might be proud.
And 'mid some others that one might name,
The following singular story came:

(AUTO AND SAINT.)

We called him The Saint: for a better mule
Has never been knowed sense time begun!
If any quadr'ped broke a rule
Concernin' kickin', he was the one.
Why bless my soul, you could stan' aroun'
An' hold him up, an' curry him down,
An' wag his tail for to make him smile,
An' tickle his heels a good long while,
An' pull his ears fur to wag his head,
An' open his mouth to inquire his age,
Or anything else on 'arth instead,
That will the reg'lar mule enrage,
An' cause it, maybe, with steam to spare,
To make a curvatoor in the air,
An' he would'nt show fur a single minnit,
He thought there was aught irreg'lar in it:
He'd just stan' still an' wink his eyes

With mebby a bit of mild surprise,
An' seem to say, “My thanks are due,
Which same I hope you will now receive,
For takin' the pains, with kindness true,
A mule's monotony to relieve.”
So of'n I said, when he asked—some fool did—
What sum would tempt me The Saint to part-with,
“No money'll buy him:—if ever a mule did,
He hed religion himself, to start-with!”

Well, be this matter as't may'nt or may,
I was ridin' The Saint to town one day,
An' noticin' how he minced along,
As 'fraid perhaps that he might step wrong,
Still piously gazin' here an' there,
As lookin' through Nature up somewhere:
An' I says, “If it warn't fur your ears, I'd swear
You warn't a mule!—but I still declare
A decent mule is better of course
Than any wild rantankerous horse.”

Wal, so we wended an' wended our way,
Together sojournin', as one might say—
Till up the turnpike a furlong or two,
An oughter mobillious came into view!
An' The Saint he halted as if he was shot,
An' stuffed, an' stood up at that same spot.
An' I says, “Git out o' here, mule alive!
Them fellers with oughters, they own the road!”
But he would not lead, an' he would not drive,
An' paid no heed to his livin' load.
An' the oughter it guv a sort of a bray,
An' they shouted hoarsely, “Get out of the way!”

An' I says “My friends, I'll try my best,
But you an' the mule must do the rest.
He never re'ly his whole life o'er,
Has seed an oughter mobillious before;
It's the first long stare that he ever took,
An' he probably wants a good straight look:
An' then he'll go on, demure and meek,
An' think of it all the rest the week.
However to start him now I strive,
He wull not lead, an' he wull not drive:
An' ef you can steer aroun' the beast,
An' tip yer mobillious the very least,
He'll jest inspect it as you pass by,
An' go 'long peacefully—him an' I.”

But the shafferer shouted “Look out fur paint!”
An' he run his machine right on to The Saint.
An' The Saint he turned, an' the off front wheel
Came scrapin' along on his handiest heel;
An' he give that tire a terrible whack
That started it several furlongs back
To'rds the rubber-tree on which it grew;
An' he guv the wheel his compliments, too,
An' he ses to the other one, “Git you hence!”
An' he put the shafferer through the fence,
An' he smashed the rudder with which they steer,
An' the little long basket that holds the beer,
An' he sent the lamps to the shinin' shore,
An' the whistle that brayed at him jest before;
An' he ripped the interior of that machine,
Till the clouds was drippin' with gasoline;
An' I tried through his morals to intercede,
But he wud not drive an' he wud not lead,

An' he seemed till then to hev kep' in store
The kicks he'd gathered five years or more.
An' I hollered “Git up!” an' I hollered “Whoa!”
But he wud not stop, an' he wud not go;
An' the oughter mobillious he pranced aroun',
As ef 'twas a sort o' a circus-groun',
An' with impartiality strict,
From ev'ry p'int o' the compass kicked.
He turned one “ex” to a letter s,
The other to two or three, I guess;
Divided the figgers behind 'em, too,
In a way the 'rethmetic could not do;
An' made things look in gen'ral as
No railroad-collision ever has.

The passengers scampered from side to side
In a manner very undignified;
They hollered “Whoa!” to that catapult,
The same's I did, with the same result;
They tried to shoot him in humane style—
He kicked their pistol the eighth of a mile!
An' a woman, pr'tty an' delicate-shaped
(She was one of the passengers that escaped)
Perched on a fence, with bewitchin' grin,
An' shouted “Teddy!—a trust! go in!”
An' the owner he muttered, after a spell,
“Three thousan' dollars gone straight to—sell
For junk, through a lack o' proper schools
To train the heels of refractory mules!”

An' I says “I done the best I could,
An' he's al'ays been pertic'lar good,
An' I think ef you look at his tracks you'll find
He gin ye yer half of the road at first,

An' if to the same you'd be'en resigned,
Things never'd hev gone from bad to worst.”

Then The Saint he winked his meekest eye,
As ef to say “We hed best proceed”:
An' biddin' the shipwrecked folks good bye,
I sojourned off on my humble steed.
“But who'll pay for this?” I heerd them cry.
“Silver an' gold hev I none,” says I,
“But I always practice the golden rule,
An' travel along on a level track;
An' ef you say so, I'll give ye the mule.”
“Not on his birthday!” they hollered back.

When once again in the shrieking night,
My late seat-partner was gone from sight,
I mused of a lately vanished week,
When some of the lands now white and bleak,
Were harvested not by ice-edged cold,
But blades that garnered the wheat's pure gold.
Could Nature a better instance give
Of contrasts helping our Earth to live?
For constant change makes fuller the breath,
But constant sameness savors of death.
'Twas meet perchance, while toiling along,
To sing in my mind a

HARVEST SONG.

Harvest of old! through gold mines of the peasant,
Delved thy forged sickle—a silvery crescent;

In the cool breeze or the thick sultry weather,
Toiled the strong lad and the maiden together.
Winsomeness into the Eden-curse bringing,
Oft did they charm sober toil with their singing;
Then when the harvest-moon rose in its splendor,
Homeward they fared, oft with words that were tender,
As through the silver-strown song's gallant measures,
Rumbled the wains with their rich golden treasures.

Harvest less old! still the memory lingers
Of thy broad blade with its tapering fingers;
How as it swung came the tremulous sighing
Of the trim grain-plants so suddenly dying!
How, a rude music that baffles forgetting,
Rang out the song of the scythe in its whetting!
How the glum toiler or jest-loving fellow
Lunched in a shade of their wide camps of yellow,
Gossiping e'en as does oft lovely woman—
Showing that both of the sexes are human!

Harvests today! through the grain-forest sweeping
Comes like a cyclone, an engine of reaping.
Reaper, and gleaner and old-fashioned peasant
Flee from this monster—grim child of the present;
Sickle and scythe, and the flail for the threshing
Fused into wheels, through the meadows go crashing.
All of the harvest-songs vanish before us,
Blended and lost in this grand metal chorus.
Such are the harvests these rushing days fling us:
What will the twentieth century bring us?

The night grew older: and such as chose
Sought curtained couches for their repose,

And, grouping in unacquainted pairs,
Some crept to beds unwontedly low,
Some clung to the steep step-ladder's stairs,
Themselves in flying garrets to stow;
And some went wandering in delight
Through gardens of bliss: some pain-pursued,
Were riding or ridden by mares of night,
According as stomachs were bad or good.
And slumbering silently sweet were some,
And others snoring the engine dumb.
And one, a dreamer e'en when awake,
Still followed his fancy to summer hours,
He thought of mountain, and sea and lake,
With all of their mid-year thorns and flowers;
So into his mind in measures came
A happening, five short months before,
In which one couple he would not name,
A night not quite monotonous bore:

(THE BABES AND THE BULL.)

Why grumble or sneer because those who aspire
To Fashion's gay vapors, wear garments of fire?
Hasn't Nature her colors?—There's many a flower
That flaunts out with red, both in sunshine and shower.
The poppies, the roses, the hollyhocks, dress
In goods that a love for the startling express;
The lightning's oft crimson that pierces and bruises;
The sun paints the firmament red, when he chooses;
So when by style, fancy, or phantasy led,
Why should not Humanity bloom out in red?

These thoughts hovered' round a young lady, one day,
As she walked through the fields in apparel so gay,

That Solomon's milliners glum would have sat,
And murmured, “We never can come up to that.”
It was a young maiden whose father had struck
Some cash-worthy kind of commercial good luck,
Some poison, or trap, or explosive, that rats kills;
And so they were posing a month in the Catskills,
And living in Wealth's costly glamor and clamor,
With fifty-odd times as much glitter as grammar.

And yielding to customs quite prevalent there,
This maid had a costume as red as her hair.
And with her an Englishman wandered; and he
Was searching a fortune this side of the sea
(Thus making of him a financial young “jingo”);
And he had a coat that would scare a flamingo.
Together this pair through the bypaths were wandering,
Two red human flames: and were vocally pondering
(Her name was Dolphina, and his was Adolph)
Of themes of importance connected with Golf,
And what profane search for the ball had her daddy,
One day when attempting to be his own caddy;
And how her poor mamma, with force to appal,
Hit the corn that was sorest instead of the ball;
And how a young lover grew softer and softer,
Until he didn't know a sand-box from a lofter;
And how a fat lady struck ghosts in the air,
And perched on a rock, with momentum to spare;
And how a good parson, with fury unstinted,
Drove his ball in the wall, with a word rarely printed.
And then with a dash—and of other small matters
That make up material for every-day chatters.
Now e'en while her maidenish eloquence bound him,
The Englishman took an uneasy glance 'round him,

And said, as if time were a thing he might squander,
“May I ausk what's that animal coming out yonder?”
The maiden a moment revolved her trim bright head:
“It's a bull!” she loud screeched, and then “ran like a whitehead.”
And the Englishman also: not swayed by fear's passion,
But simply determined to follow the fashion.
If she ran, then he ran; if she stopped, then he did;
That's fashion's rule, put in a nutshell when needed.

The bull was one fitted with Spaniards to battle:
A regular built roaring lion of cattle,
I may say, while our redbirds fly thick through the brambles:
His ancestors, mad from the blood of the shambles,
And knowing, howe'er gay their life-page began,
They would all of them some day be murdered by man,
Whene'er of the fact by blood's color reminded,
They rushed for the same, with their moral sense blinded;
And thus do they ever: though madly, sincerely
Regarding our species as cannibals, merely,
And that is “heredity”—drawn very nearly.

Thus onward he came, in his rage-livened folly:
Rushing down through the field like a car on the trolley;
His head bowing low as the fenders they bear,
And his tail like the wire-stick that drags through the air.
And his game—how they ran! not the crafty and cunning
Zoological firebrands that Samson set running
Through wheatfields of foes in his anger sublime,

Though more there were of them—could make better time.
The Englishman struggled o'er boulders and ditches,
And grieved at the thorns that were tearing his stitches
That kept on his red coat—still muttering low:
“This is very peculiar, indeed, don't you know!”
And the maid, like Dave Harum, exclaimed “Scat my cats!
I wish he had some of our ‘Beverage for Rats’!”
And then, like a red-squirrel, climbed to a tree;
And “you take that other one yonder!” screamed she.

“Thanks! I will!” said the Englishman: “just in good time!
It's quite opportune; but a beastly hard climb!
I hope you are comfortable there; and you're
Ah—what do you call it? stuck up, now, for sure!”

While the bull, with a rage his thick hide could not smother,
Would rush up at one tree, and then at the other,
And make all the grass and the pebbles and sand slide
In terrible ways that portended a landslide;
And writhed at the lightnings of anger that spurred him,
And thundered so half of the town might have heard him.

But none of it did, for a rain-cloud had come:
Not a giant of storms striking other sounds dumb,
But a slow droning drizzle, unaided by breeze,
That came by inquisitive drops through the trees,

And spattered these children of fashion and lucre,
And drove all their friends to bridge, gossip, and euchre,
And dancing and flirting—both agéd and young,
Unmindful of field-sports; so there the two hung,
Each one to a tree-limb; and still did the bull
Hang 'round them, of rage and celerity full.

And there stayed the three till the daylight had gone,
And there hung the three when the morning came on;
For while the two victims in terror sat nigh,
The bull lay and dreamed, with red blood in his eye;
While a party of search through the wide country groped
To find the young pair that so strangely eloped.

But when morning peeped on them tattered and jaded,
The red of their robes was so ragged and faded,
The bull saw no sight to be angry or glum for,
And went away wondering what he had come for.

Then having delivered this pair from night
And bovine bondage, the dreamer turned
A fascet, at which the electric light
That Franklin found for us, o'er him burned;
And delving in books more merry than deep,
Soon found himself in the cellars of sleep.
And something about the storm's fierce waves,
And train's roar, led him to dream that he
On rough shore-edges of liquid graves,
Was holding a

CONVERSE WITH THE SEA.

What hast thou in thy treasure-house, O Sea?—
A thousand rivers long and deep and wide,
Once rivulets upon the mountain-side,
That wandered through the fields and glens, to me.
So gathered they, as thrifty trav'lers do,
Somewhat of all the lands they journeyed through:
The cavern's roar, the valley's lisping song,
The dripping cliffs with thunder loud and long,
The man-made mills, the clatter and turmoil
Of wheels that yoked their dancing floods to toil:
They brought me them, and gave me them to keep,
Till sun or gale should rouse them from their sleep.

What hast thou in thy hands, O gentle Sea?—
Refreshing showers that shortly will arise,
Inveigled by the sun, to seek the skies—
Then from his passion-wooing strangely free,
Return unto the eager earth awhile,
To glad the blooms, and bid the forest smile.
For never tree or flower could love or live,
But for the strength my god-like missions give.
Cool zephyrs have I that 'mid summer heat,
Will fan the world, and bless whome'er they meet;
And gales that push their sharp blades everywhere,
And cut the poison from the withered air.

What hast thou in thy shifting tides, O Sea?—
A thousand storms, that peacefully could lie
In their cloud-hammocks 'twixt the earth and sky,
Forgetting that to drift is scarce to be.
And now in slumber, now in seeming mirth,
They floated idly o'er the dappled earth:

Until a messenger of strife there came,
That gathered all the air in flood and flame,
And brought the floating cannon's lordly sound,
And made the startled sky a battle-ground:
Till, tired of strife, they sought a needful rest,
And flung themselves upon my willing breast.

What hast thou on thy rugged floors, O Sea?—
A million ships, that ploughed my yielding spray,
All bearing hope for many a merry day:
A hope that had not learned of Fate's decree.
How little, when the shallops leave a place,
Can mind or soul their future moorings trace:
If they shall touch the ocean's edge once more,
Or, sinking, seek my underlying shore,
That has a myriad fleets that rot away—
Themselves their cumbrous anchors—day by day!
You wonder if their ghosts have skimmed the waves?—
It is not mine to answer:—ask their graves.

What hast thou that is firm, O tossing Sea?—
Fair refuge-islands—where you mortals find
A help to soothe the weary heart and mind;
To my protection, all the world may flee!
I toss as feathered toys upon my hands,
The ocean-birds that brood in all the lands,
But give them homes in many a rocky nest,
Where they in firm tranquillity can rest;
I nurture in my realms of drowning space,
The island-builders of the coral race:—
Where find you more of firmness than in me?
For God Himself doth walk upon the Sea.

And then—so many the different ways
Our minds are led, in the realm of dreams!
There rose a glimpse of the college days,
And reminiscence in sparkling streams,
E'en flooded the mind: and thus once more,
The following “doings” were acted o'er,
Which seem so small and frivolous now!
But looked so large and momentous then,
That fathers of students, with careworn brow,
Have thought it over and over again,
And hoped these children whose good they sought,
Would never in such affairs be—caught:

(THE GHOST-WALK.)

College commencements I sing!—where students, their long courses finished,
Meet for commencing another, with confidence slightly diminished;
Meet to go out in the great world with new competition quivering;
Stand on the warm college-threshold, and view the bleak prospect with shivering.
Ah! how they wish, then, their time had been garnered with better precision!
Memory looks at them edgewise, and smiles with good-natured derision.
Still she must pardon some slips, if inclined to be perfectly truthful:
God in His kindness decreed, that 'twas proper for youth to be youthful.

Flutters of flowers and of ribbons! how plainly the June college-measures

Bring back the dear adolescence, with all of its plagues and its pleasures!
How do the sunbeams of mid-June shine back to the days, when as students
Gaily we pranced through the sunlight, with boyhood's delicious imprudence!
How does the thrill hurry back, of midnight assemblings mysterious—
Where foolish pranks were concocted with business ability serious!
Think you, because you are agéd, and your circulation needs forcing,
Youth's irrepressible blood-cells no more like a racehorse are coursing?
Boys should be boyish, says Nature, as long as their boyhood stays by them:
Oftentimes, far in life's journey, their friskiness yet lingers nigh them.
Pranks most deliciously foolish sometimes help the system, most wisely;
Earth must have more or less nonsense, or else it would roll too precisely.
Still, when it comes to this hazing, that worries the colleges yearly,
None with mature sense of order, but always condemns it sincerely.

Why is the world full of hazing?—set sleuths the great mystery tracking.
Seldom a nook on this planet, where wholly the process is lacking.
Townsman is hazing his townsman; the brother oft hazes his brother:

Most of the people, in some way, are constantly hazing each other.
Wall Street its bulls and its bears makes friendly while some new arrival
Takes his “rough house” with shrewd patience, and grins at his hat's non-survival;
Shop-toilers perpetrate tricks on new mates, with amiable meanness;
Newest arrivals thus roasting, with view to correcting their greenness.
Gossips keep worrying the world, in language of various phrasing:
Surely, if “Life is a school”, part of the tuition is hazing.
(All of which facts the subscriber, though loving good fun rather dearly,
Must in the int'rests of order, condemn and regret most sincerely.)

Zadoch F. Jones was a student whose face for existence begged pardon;
Smooth as a well's placid surface, and fresh as the shrubs of a garden
Grown for domestic consumption: 'twas sad that such sacch'rine completeness
Ever should go where the sour world could mar its delectable sweetness;
Sad that such pure milk of kindness be soiled by the world's reckless fury!
(His habitatio prima was somewhere in farther Missouri.)

That this young man from Missouri be “shown” through the proper instruction,
Hazers to all of their antics took part in a prompt introduction.
Woke him at midnight for breakfast; compelled terpsichorean capers;
Sent him to church the first Sabbath, with hair done up neatly in papers;
Made him a night-muffled factor in property-rightings and wrongings;
Bade him take chickens to chapel secured from professors' belongings;
Hoisted him, tied on a ladder, in spite of intense objurgations,
Up to a window that sheltered a spinster of two generations;
Made him of bouquets and flowers the generous and happy possessor,
Which he in kindness should leave for the wife of a bach'lor professor;
Put him through sham 'nitiations, with “fraters” around him thick-thronging—
Taught him the clan “sign”—two thumbs and eight fingers his slim ears prolonging;
Swore him to always resist the behests of his stern Alma Mater,
Put him through blindfolded stunts, and enthroned him in tubs of cold water;
“Cut his throat” fiercely with ice, and then fed him an “angle-worm” diet,
Made out of hot macaroni; assessed him the money to buy it;

Placed him blindfolded in windows, with well-described “distances” under—
Pushed him out—safe on the floor—prepared to be riven in sunder;
(All of which antics are mentioned that they may be censured austerely,
And to affirm the stern statement that they should be punished severely.)

Smoked with him one pleasant evening—some dozen or two of the “knowing”,
Filled his small room with the vapors of all the worst weeds that were growing;
Till he to Saint Nicotina, while most of the company blessed her,
Gave up good shares of his meals that pertained to the current semester;
Till the name ribald folk give, to the men of Missouri's creation,
Had in this youthful exponent, an ultra-pronounced illustration.
So he lay down on his bed, as white as its pillowcase, nearly,
(Pitied, e'en now, by good people, who view such transactions austerely.)

Gave him a “ghost-walk”: there never was scholastic outrage committed,
Worse than that function of students for heavenly regions unfitted!
In “Handsome” Livingston's chamber—the finest our college then boasted,

It was decreed that “Missouri” by mythical spooks should be roasted.
Handsome were “Handsome's” apartments, with furnishings costly and splendid:
(Much more his father did for him, than governors usually then did:
Now the poor son of the rich man considers his parents too prudent,
If, plus expense, he's not given a salary for being a student.)
In “Handsome” Livingston's “study”, a few chosen comrades assembled,
Singing “Sweet Home”, till the picture of Livingston's home fairly trembled;
Whereat, “Missouri”, who, homesick, loved John Howard Payne's touching ditty,
Crept in and sung with the rest: a melodious object of pity.

Then was a ghost-song exploited; then stories of much-atoned killing,
Came, by each other suggested, well-fitted young blood to be chilling.
All the wide regions of spook-land were canvassed for uneasy tenants,
Making this earth the parade-ground of frequent pedestrian penance;
No one unhardened to shades, but would feel, in that case, very queerly:
Wherefore, all well-disposed folk, must condemn such proceedings, sincerely.

Stories were flourished of spirits that came far, without being wanted;

Every remark that was made, by some ghost of allusion was haunted.
Lowered somehow were the lights, then: and entered a white apparition—
Well it might chill all the young blood, to see it, in any condition!
Then came some more, that looked like him as near as a brother or cousin,
Till the deplorable number made inroads well up to a dozen.
Then, Oh supremest of horrors!—there sailed out of Sheol a shipment—
Satan himself!—with hoofs, horns, and much other Satanic equipment;
Then all these ghosts gathered round this young lad, his corpuscles congealing;
Ah! 'twas no wonder his red hair made efforts to fresco the ceiling!
(Pause I a moment, rejoicing that all who are reading this, nearly,
Such a transaction condemn, and would punish it very severely.)

Fearing a sentence to Tophet by this undesirable jury,
Kneeling and gazing toward Heaven, the frightened young man from Missouri
Prayed to be “shown” the right way—and apparently soon had instruction:
For he accosted the ghosts, with a strikingly short introduction.

First at the devil he plunged: and soon, with good Orthodox passion,

Knocked the fiend out of himself, in a regular Sullivan fashion;
Tore off his horns, and then used them for violent sudden abrasion,
Even as Sampson a jaw-bone on one great historic occasion.
Did what he pleased with the phantoms, with all their weird trimmings encumbered;
Piled them in heaps, till the room with débris of the next world was lumbered.
Took no excuse from their comrades in trying to shield or befriend them;
Broke “Handsome” Livingston's nose when he manfully sought to defend them;
Ground up the bricabrac promptly, with all these gyrations extensive;
Smashed two fine mirrors that “Handsome” had quoted as ultra-expensive;
Capsized an inkstand of silver that held something less than a barrel,
Draping the carpet in mourning, and spoiling some yards of apparel;
Knocked the whole room into wreckage; then stood, with red hair in dishevel,
High on the ruins, and waving the horns of the disabled devil,
Shouted, “Ye minions of darkness, go back to the red flames that fry you!
Here in the strength of high Heaven, in the name of the Lord I defy you!”
Then for his room he departed, with manner contented and cheerly:

After which ghosts, as a rule, let Missouri alone most severely.

The sleep grew heavy, amid the noise
(Like that which traffic on iron employs),
That might have wakened one, if it broke
Upon him in stillness:—like a stroke,
That very stillness the sleeper woke.
The train had halted: the storm, at least
For some few minutes, at last had ceased;
There through the window serene and high,
The great blue citadel of the sky,
Its ceiling showed: and stars I knew
So well! were glimmering to the view.
How oft I had studied, with happy brow,
Those orbs of splendor, with some who now,
Cold trammels of earth given back to her,
And souls with freedom's new life astir,
Perchance, in loftily-builded cars,
Are traveling 'mongst those selfsame stars!
Away north-east, in the goat-herd's camp,
Capella has trimmed his cold white lamp;
Toward south-lands farther the fond eye sees
The bevy of laughing Pleiades,
And following them at a fervid pace,
Aldebaran carries his blushing face.
Then hangs from his belt with star-gems stored,
Orion's diamond-hilted sword:
These all, as if proud of their Bible names,
Lit that cold night with flickering flames.

Now, coming, higher and yet more high,
Gleamed Sirius—king of the farther sky.
O heart that I loved, and who loved that star,
You told me once, that when days were done
That held us in worlds where mortals are,
You would meet me in yonder midnight sun!
More quickly you did your work than I—
The tasks of my days are incomplete;
But you will be waiting bye and bye,
Where once we promised again to meet!
On yonder hill, over snowy plains,
I find, through the frosted window-panes,
A sad lone oak: and it seems to me
I hear the plaint of

THE HERMIT TREE.

Within a meadow's green-clad zone,
I stand upon the hill alone,
And far and near a name is known
That clings to me:
With branches vaulting proudly high,
And finger pointing at the sky,
A landmark to the world am I:
The Hermit Tree!

And trav'lers from the woodlands, gaze
Through summer suns and snowy days,
To where my flags a signal raise
That all may see:
Ah many a loftier one doth bide
(With comrades round on every side),

That falls beneath, in fame and pride,
The Hermit Tree!

No sun-burned cattle pass me by:
But dreamily they stand or lie
Within the shade that hovers nigh
My towering form;
Fair maids accost me with a smile,
And 'mid my branches hours beguile,
Or bid me shelter them awhile
From sun or storm;

The birds will haste with spring-time zest,
Each eager that she build her nest
Upon my branch she loves the best;
And in his flight,
Full oft a feathered trav'ler may
Go somewhat from his nearest way,
For nothing but that he can stay
With me a night.

And it doth oft the memory rouse,
That lovers 'neath my trusted boughs
Have pledged their sweetly solemn vows,
In night's dim noon;
While, sailing through the mists above,
As if a silent-flying dove,
Peers 'twixt my leaves that queen of love,
The changing moon.

No word of hate! no rival near!
No enemy to face or fear!
What life of better, grander cheer—
From trouble free?

As flits the swiftly gliding day,
On my deep-rooted throne I stay,
A king to all who pass that way;
Glad Hermit Tree!

But often, when the world has gone to rest,
The sun is sailing far behind the west,
And darkness all the landscape has possessed,
Then I alone
Stand brooding o'er the days that once I knew,
When comrades all around me smiled and grew,
And some of them their arms in friendship threw
Across my own.

We whispered words no mortals understood,
And gossiped of their goings bad and good,
And of our neighbor-comrades of the wood;
And to us crept
Oft, news of forests that were far away,
And what their tribes of trees would do and say;
And seldom closed our converse, night or day,
Save as we slept.

When storms were leaping through the angry sky,
And fiercely pealed the lightning's battle-cry,
And the swift gale's shrill monologue reply
Came to us near,
With loyalty's assembled hardihood,
Shoulder to shoulder 'gainst the storm we stood,
The tall undaunted giants of the wood!
And laughed at fear.

And there was one sweet one I loved o'er-well,
And to her heart love's legends oft would tell:
But oh the fearful fate that her befel—
Too winsome, she!
O'er-soon, in hands of men more wise than strong,
The gleaming axes sang her funeral song;
And with a scream of sorrow loud and long,
She passed from me.

Thus one by one my friends were swept away:
As cunning was the woodman's hand to slay
With victims that men needed, day by day,
To fill their needs,
As is the busy hand of Death to fell
Mortals, who some time, prince and boor as well,
Must fall before the viewless axe, to quell
Earth's constant greeds.

“O come to me, and hover to me nigh,
My comrades true!” is oft my silent cry,
“Or help me do—as you have done—to die,
And with you be!”
So, with all earth around me but My Own,
I learn full often that the word Alone
Is not a sound of triumph, but a moan:
Sad Hermit Tree!

Once more—the drifts that had bade us stay
Being swept from the track, we made shift to go,
But still, as we trundled along the way,
It seemed that the pace was waxing slow.

When once again by a silence deep
Roused from the delicious death called sleep,
There peeped through windows the morning gray:
Our world had been given another day.
But sounds of the engine's steam-whirled mill
Came not to my couch; the wheels below
That had shaken car and track, were still,
And nought except footsteps to and fro
The lengths of the curtained aisle, was heard,
With now and then an impatient word,
Less welcome than e'en the loudest din—
Informing us we were “drifted in”!
The storm was raging again, and here
Had blocked our pathway in front and rear,
And the grim locomotive's toil,
And gallons of water in rage might boil,
But met more water in frozen form—
Sarcastic gift of the surly storm;
Which, any effort prepared to meet,
Forbade our advancing or retreat.
So there, in a vale of cruel snow
Our village stood: and we did not know
What township locally waved a hand
Of stern authority o'er the land.
If man, made desperate by despair,
Should murder his brother then and there,
We knew not the county whose lot 'twould be
To make him fruit of a gallows-tree,
Or bid him seek for his fatal lair,
The depths of the harsh electric chair.
We knew the city we last had left,

We knew the city we next should gain,
And half a hundred of wan miles cleft
These toilers' and idlers' homes in twain.
But where was our desolate home today,
Was more than the wisest ones could say.
What walkings and runnings to and fro,
What asking of questions, what fury and fuming
To think these flying mountains of snow
Could ever with us be so presuming!
But here we were, in a prison all
Mid wonderful crystals, hewed with care
By Nature's chisel:—though ultra-small,
Geometry's wonders all were there.
But prisons are prisons, however decked
Their walls with beauty: and little recked
Our throng in thralldom as to the hoard
Of jewelled wonders around them stored.
So louder and louder the clamor rose,
And lawlessness covert and overt
Began appearing: and sundry foes
Of order were ready to sting and hurt.
The great majority of our throng
Believed in order; but bye and bye
One Satan-commissioned apostle of wrong
A cinder may be, in the public eye.
And lawlessness has contagions of soul,
Like any disease, when stern control
Grows fragile.—Our conductor and crew,
Brim-full of “authority” when they knew
That help from the next town was their lot,
Grew milder and meeker when 'twas not,

And offered as pretext (partly true)
That they had enough elsewise to do,
In toiling to bring relief in sight,
And delve us out of our awkward plight.

So hour by hour did the tumult grow:
The petty marauders ran to and fro,
And, nerved by submission ill-advised,
The half of the party terrorized.
They robbed the train-boy—plaintive to tell—
Of little nothings he had to sell;
They gambled openly as they chose,
'Gainst rules card-larceny to oppose;
They thrust attentions on woman and man,
Until free fighting well nigh began;
And fists were doubled that long had been
Unused in the gentle arts that win.

Confusion was king!—but now appeared
A leader that could be loved, and feared
(And that is the only kind, indeed,
That really very long can lead),
One who had listened and spoke no word,
Through all the clamor: but now was heard
So clearly, there came a sudden hush,
To mind his sayings—and then a rush
From other coaches to this:—he stood
As one in gentle-defiant mood,
And spoke, in a voice with velvet sheath
Enclosing claws that were just beneath.

An old sea-captain wrinkled and gray;
A ruler of ships: who in his day

Had sped o'er ocean and lake and stream,
And foaming gulf; and had heard the scream
Of many a storm, and had answer made
With all the defiances of his trade;
And thwarted the efforts of those sprites
Of fearful days and fearfuller nights,
When storms are abroad in savage gloom,
And say to mortals, “We need the room!
Go down in the ocean's depths to stay,
And rest forever with kindred clay!”

This Captain had fought 'gainst many a gale,
With strong propeller and facile sail,
Knew half the world, as he would a town,
In which he had journeyed up and down;
He knew the science how not to bind
A wreck of matter, to wreck of mind.
So different from the rest was he,
Of those who were in that company,
He held them not “with his glittering eye”,
But his whole body and soul stood by,
And floated each word o'er that abysm,
With cleanly resolute magnetism.
And as he stood there, modestly bold,
This tale to the listening throng he told:

(THE CAPTAIN'S STORY.)

The ship was steerin' nor'-nor'-east; the weather hailed us fair;
The cherub that looks out for Jack was flyin' through the air.

An' Davy Jones his locker shut, an' laid him down to rest,
An' says there won't be no arrives for forty hours at best!
When all to once a han'-breadth cloud growed black an' deep an' wide,
An' scowled at our barometer, an' told it that it lied.

We moaned the Flyin' Dutchman's fate three days an' nights or more,
An' fellers asked supplies from Heaven that never prayed before;
Their larboard knees an' starboard knees was both in good demand,
With Heaven or that 'ere other place their only point to land.
But in one hour the weather smiled an' looks of sweetness bore,
An' we approached a little isle few ever seen before.

An' jest as soon as peril fled, these fellers that hed prayed,
Become agnostics quick ag'in, of neither world afraid;
An' when the shattered ship went down as soon as we had moved
It's val'ables unto the shore, their courage still improved,
An' “Law and Order's had its trip,” their conduct seemed to say,
“An' we will run this thing ourselves—our own pertic'ler way.”

The first that died was little James: opinion he had foun',
That woman owned no rights, when wrong had strength to crush her down.
An' Cap. addressed his faculties, an' vainly tried to show'm
That such a plan could never live 'mongst men who'd wives at home.
He would not list, and 'twas not long before he sank to sleep:
His grave for any woman waits, who wishes there to weep.

The next that died was Prowlin' Sam: he by th' opinion came,
That others' property was his, ef he could steal the same.
The Captain tried to caution him that competition's brisk,
An' predatory animals must carry lots of risk:
He could not learn it soon enough his graspin' life to save:
He owns a han'some little plot beside the ocean wave.

The next that died was Highbred Tom: he hailed his mates to tell'm
He meant to be the muck-a-muck of that small island realm.
The Captain told him muck-a-mucks should work up by degrees:—
He tried to steer a mutiny the gov'ment for to seize.
He lost his standin' an' was soon a-swingin' to an' fro:

You'll find him bloomin' near a tree—provided he should grow.

The next that died was John McJohn—the meanest of the lot—
But one that had a pile of sense where better men have not:
He knew a rock if that the same should frown within his sight—
He knowed men hev a prejudice that other men do right.
He tacked these matters up an' down the searoom in his head,
An' died a few years afterwards—quite comf'ble, in his bed.

What influence, in due time and place
Short-stories have had upon our race!
Who for cold logic may lack the sense,
Still lists to the logic of strange events.
A Sultan learned of marital rights,
Through story-spangled Arabian Nights;
Scheherezade thus gathered fame
As saver of life in days long gone,
Boccaccio won a philosopher's name,
With wise and foolish Decamerone;
Grim Rabelais made good-natured sneers
To sharp-edged scalpels and bright rapiers;
Cervantes furnished a story-cure
For sundry dudes of literature;
“Abe” Lincoln pointed his precepts well,
With stories we might and might not tell;

The politician wraps new and old
Bad sophistries up, in tales well told,
Which, counting for rather more than half,
If not the argument—gets the laugh;
The preacher the truth of heaven oft brings,
Done up in tales of secular things;
In What Has Been, we can always see
A half-formed image of What May Be.
This simple story the Captain told,
Ere yet it was half a minute old,
And unassuming in verbal style,
But hitting the point of the case meanwhile,
Tranquillity brought and order saved;
All now were quiet and well behaved,
And matters went on, through gleam and gloam,
As if in some well-conducted home.
And like the head of a family,
The Captain roamed through each narrow hall,
And smilingly praised, with tempered glee,
The spirit of peace pervading all.
Such things were done as could now be done,
For aid and comfort to every one:
An inventory of food-supplies,
Was taken under the Captain's eyes;
And rations issued in proper form
To all our prisoners of the storm.
Those who were feeble were given the best,
Of that which our interned train possessed;
And all were cozy as could be planned
In frigid deserts with snow for sand,
And simooms sweeping above:—for still
The storm was working its wretched will.

Two Arctic heroes of tropic soul,
Who once had courted the long-sought Pole,
Climbed up to the highest vantage-ground,
And distant roofs of a farm-house found,
Whose chimneys' banners would seem to vie
In color with snow-clouds 'gainst the sky.
And 'neath this temple of toil, 'twas thought,
Was useful produce that might be bought,
At sheer starvation prices, perchance,
Or terms that gratitude would enhance,
Ere our providings—too good to last—
Had joined the memories of the past.
So all things prosperous-ward seemed turned,
As far as the body might be concerned.
But 'tis not enough for life enjoyed,
That only the body be employed,
And clad and nourished: from minds close pent,
Grow dangerous weeds of discontent.
When filled were cavities anatomic
Mid multiform gestures gastronomic,
A grave Judge rose, with the same mild air
Yet firm, that followed him everywhere,
And said, “My friends, we are here today,
Heaven knows, I suppose, how long to stay;
And each of us all should work his best
The others to rest and interest.
Each tell a story be't short or long,
Or dance, or whistle, or sing a song,
Or listen and cheer (for that, 'tis true,
Is something that every one can do,
And, trimmed with sufficient vim and art,
Will thrill through the entertainer's heart)

And make this anchorage as heaven meant,
A prosperous voyage of mind-content.”
So one by one were the stories told,
With due good nature by young and old;
From authors that now are but a name—
From many that still have need of fame;
And if the writer of this same book
The other writers should overlook,
And give such things as were gathered then
From his imperfect though willing pen,
Who blames him?—he does not care to fight
Suits for infringement of copyright.
There was a maiden with flower-like face,
And manners full of unconscious grace,
Encouraged to air her modest worth
By that One Woman that gave her birth,
And with naivête 'tis a joy to state,
Recited to us

THE OLD FRONT GATE.

Standin' in this city garden, there is other things I see,
There is folks that wanders 'long here, lookin' reg'lar like at me;
But I keep my balance steady; and perhaps as frisky feel
As my cousins in the parlor—our old clock and spinnin'-wheel.
Swingin' back and swingin' forward—for to name my title straight—
I am known throughout the family, as the Old Front Gate.

An' it's quite a good long spell, now, if my mem'ry serves me clear,
Since I guarded our old homestead—sev'ral hundred miles from here;
There was comin'—there was goin'—for the latchstring dangled free,
But they could not reach the door-yard, till they first shook hands with me!
An' I always looked them over—likin' some of them first rate—
An' some others wasn't welcome, to the old Front Gate.

There was neighbors came to visit, undesignin'ly an' square;
There was neighbors came to borrow anything we had to spare;
There was folks that 'twasn't easy for no common heights to match—
There was pretty little children—such as couldn't reach the latch;
There was lovers fondly lingerin' perseverin'ly an' late—
Till they sagged the j'ints an' hinges of the Old Front Gate!

Fellows comin' there o' evenin's makin' most too long a stay;
Fellows comin' there with preachers, for to take our gals away;
Fellows comin' there with fiddles, for to thrill the dance's tread—

Fellows drivin' up with coffins, for to bear away our dead.
Swingin' back an' swingin' forward like a pendulum of fate,
I've done sad an' mournful duty, as the Old Front Gate!

There was one good-lookin' couple, jolly-hearted like, and free,
Talked a heap o' nonsense-wisdom, with their elbows onto me;
An' they married, as they ought to: for their hearts became one heart,
But they moved off to the city, an' then kind o' worked apart;
They grew rich an' full o' fashion, an' their souls forgot to mate,
An' they lost the tie that bound 'em by the Old Front Gate.

An' they both was blue about it; for they both was some to blame—
An' they got so one was missin' places where the other came;
An' her mother—sweet old lady but eternal cunnin', too—
Saw that things was runnin' dang'rous, an' decided what to do;
So she wrote a secret letter to her cousin, “Do not wait,
Till you straightway box and send to me, the Old Front Gate!”

Then she hung me in the garden, an' betwixt two twilight hours,
Once she coaxed them out together, for to view some blossomin' flowers.
An' they came there, kind o' listless, as to what they was to see,
An' in turnin' round a corner, spat they run up onto me!
An' they knew me in a minute; an' their hearts began to date
Back to where they used to linger, by the Old Front Gate.

An' they clasped each other closely, as their memory hurried back,
An' the good old lady switched off—havin' set them on the track;
An' I also had experience that I never had before,
For my lady bent above me, an' caressed me, o'er and o'er!
Swingin' back an' swingin' forward, I am very glad to state,
That that pair re-entered Heaven, through the Old Front Gate.

And next a lad of ambitious mien
And tremors he strove to cage unseen,
And manners acting the well-known page
Of “you'd scarce expect one of my age”
Discoursing, with stiff-necked rhythmic ease,
Of Cicero and Demosthenes,

And mentioning many oaks that grow
From acorns buried in tombs below,
Told what once, humming in songs o'erhead,
'Twas fancied the telegraph had said:

(SONG OF THE WIRES.)

See the wires, the slender wires, hanging on their forest spires!
They are swinging, they are clinging to the weird electric fires.
Little did the rustling trees think to bear such fruits as these;
Little did they mean to hand views and news from land to land.
See them swinging, hear them singing, through the night and through the day!
And this is part of what they say:

There is a wedding in the town—
The bride—how fair to see!
As ne'er before—as ne'er again
In loveliness is she.

A hundred men have digged the earth
To find these jewels rare;
They dived within the ocean depths
For pearls to strew her hair.

They spilled their blood on battle-fields—
'Tis dripping even now—
To find the crown of diamonds
That decks her queenly brow.

The seamstress bit a bloodless lip
And struggled 'gainst her dreams,
To shape that star-strewn wedding-gown,
And clench its costly seams.

Yon man is cursing him who walks
In triumph at her side;
A maiden here in secret weeps
That she is not the bride.

Their gift-room is a palace-nook
Of baubles strangely fair,
As bright and treasure-strewn as if
Aladdin conjured there.

O wedded ones, if you have love,
May it be deep and strong:
It will be tested; for I soon
Must sing your funeral song!

See the wires, the serpent-wires, bearing mandates and desires!
They are swinging, they are clinging to the weird electric fires;
Hear them singing, night and day!
And this is part of what they say:

Send far and wide the mournful news—
A millionaire is dead!
On rustling tablets through the land
The tidings shall be read.

With tiptoe-step his servants flit
Along the velvet floor;

And darkly scowling coils of crape
Are clinging to the door.

A richly vestured priest will quote
A list of virtues long;
The city's leading vocalist
Will sell her sweetest song:

Then they will drag him from his home
With horses sleek and fleet;
And you shall see a black-plumed grave
Go skurrying up the street.

Perchance the temple's gilded hall
An hour of him may win;
Still, open yawns the grave-yard gate,
And he must enter in.

Ye million dead, edge close, and give
The silk-clad pauper room!—
A marble brow and marble heart
Within a marble tomb.

Hear them sing of trade and battle; hear the gold-coin chink and rattle!
Hear the feverish stammering ticker: stocks are up! and stocks are down!
There's rejoicing, there is wailing, there is ruin in the town.
He who was a prince at morning is a beggar of the night;
She who held the world in scorning now may wither in its sight.

Ah! a battle now is on! tell the news and who has won!
Hear the bullets ringing, stinging—through the wires' spasmodic singing—
Chanting through the blood-dimmed day?—
And this is what they say:

Hot cannon herd upon the hills
And rifles in the glen;
Oh, all the world will listen, now:
For men are murdering men!

Not hunting God's four-footed beasts
Or feathered clans, they came:
A nation is their hunting-ground,
And other men their game.

He was a glittering general
With thousands at his nod:
He is a fragment of the turf:
A clod beneath the clod.

He was a sunny-hearted boy—
A hope, but even now:
He is a specter in the home,
With blood upon its brow.

She was a proud and winsome wife
The world could not assail:
She walks the street a ghost in black
Beneath a widow's veil.

She was a mother, fond and proud,
When morning's gems were strown:

She is a wrecked old woman, now,
And writhes and sobs alone.

Throng round the staring bulletin—
Look—listen—one and all:
For with the swaying battle-line,
Your stocks must rise and fall!

Then rose a motherly looking dame—
One who no doubt the cradle had rocked
That “rocks the world”; with laurels of fame
Her gray hair never had been enlocked;
But what is that, on this planet-ball
That men can compass ere they read all
The novel they opened the morn they sailed?
And think of more planets—each one an earth—
And the “fixed” stars—through ether trailed—
All suns, with planets of varied worth—
And tell me, you who would give your eyes
For this earth's fame—are you really wise?
This very woman perhaps has done
Her womanly-duty, in her small way,
In her small town: she may not be known
Outside the burdens that crush her down,
But all through her life, discreetly good,
She faithfully “hath done what she could”,
And though not lauded through trumpets of clay,
Perhaps is famous in Heaven today.
And, whether or not, we will let her weave
A story of Christmas morn and eve:

(WHAT SANTA CLAUS WAS LIKE.)

“Now what is he like, do you believe?”
Said Margerie, Jean, and Joe,
Three tots that sat, one Christmas eve,
In the fireside's frolicsome glow:
“Is he tall, or short? Is he stout, or slim?
Pictures so many we've seen of him—
All different, too, you know:
Lie we awake tonight—us three—
And watch till he comes—and then we'll see,
And tell it, to all our friends' delight,
At the Christmas party tomorrow night.”

The wind was high, and the gales flew by,
With their dappled wings of snow:
They tapped in vain at the window-pane—
They onward still must go.
“He will have a fine old stormy night”,
Said the sturdy little Joe:
“He will be a sight, in his coat of white”,
Said Marge, with her eyes aglow:
“We must have him a cup of coffee here,
And give him a bite, and a word of cheer”,
Said Jean, with her eyes bent low.

And the mother smiled, as their talk she heard,
And measured and treasured every word,
As she did of the other child, that lay
Far out in the field, in its cot of clay,
'Neath many a frozen tear of love—
The chill winds rocking the branches above.

She covered and cuddled, with heart astir,
The three sweet ones that were left to her,
And shut them into their cozy beds,
And kissed the raven and golden heads,
And kissed them again for her husband's sake,
And said, “Yes, dears, you may lie awake,
(If you can) and watch, to see, and tell
Of the Santa Claus that you love so well.”

“Now what do you think was Santa Claus like?”
Said Margerie, Jean, and Joe,
Each other asking, as brightly basking
Safe in the fireside's glow,
They hugged the toys they had found next morning,
Sweetly their stockings' depths adorning:
“Which of us ought to know?”
And each one spoke from the seeing purely—
(All of them thought they had seen him, surely—
Margerie, Jean, and Joe.)

“Oh, he was a stylish and smart old man,
And stayed here quite a while,
And down to his knees a white beard ran,”
Said Margerie, with a smile:
“He sang me a nice and queer old song,
And told of his journeys strange and long,
And all the children he went to see,
And some of them looked, he said, like me;
And he drove a reindeer right in here,
With gold-plate harness pretty and queer;
And I held my hand to the pet to kiss:
But all at once he jumped—like this—

And away they went, with chimney for door,
And deer and driver I saw no more.”

“Oh Margerie, that was a great big dream,”
Said Joe, “if you speak for true:
I saw him myself and he didn't seem
At all as he did to you!
He was dressed like a general spick and trim,
With great big medals all over him;
And a sword of steel, as bright as you please,
And boots that climbed up over his knees;
He was like Napoleon in the book,
But twice as big, with a kinder look;
And he said “When 'tisn't Christmas, I'm
A big brave general, all the time;
And if you are good, and do as you should,
I'll bring you some fireworks, bye-and-bye,
To burn on the Fourth of next July.”

“Why, both of you dreamed you saw him: how queer!”
Said Jean, with her simple grace:
“I saw him myself: he was just a dear
Old man with a sweet sad face;
He smilingly threw a kiss at me:
“Is that your brother and sister?” said he.
“I will wake them,” said I, “from their slumber deep:
They wanted to see you, but fell asleep.”
“No, no, my dear: let them sleep who can!
Good bye, little girl!” said the dear old man,
And was off—and left me alone with you,
Wishing that you could have seen him too.”

And the mother said, 'mid smiles and tears,
“I think that you all have seen him, dears.”

A roly-poly uncouth old man,
With gray beard growing on its own plan,
And gray eyes twinkling through all he said,
And gray hair fringing a bright bald head,
And gray clothes seldom the brushes knew
(Indeed there was dust in its primal hue),
And gray voice, also, as one might say,
Here told some news of one Christmas day.
(I know not whether it be a crime,
To mar his story with rhythm and rhyme:)

(THE STARLINGS' CHRISTMAS TREE.)

Recollect the old man Starling, half a mile from Bennett's Corners,
Just a milkman's trip or two east of Aminadab Warner's?
Didn't he have a grip aroun' coins of low denomination?—
Money when it reached his pocket, knowed it had a long vacation.
An' he wore peculiar pockets—of his own express designin',
With iron buckles at the top, an' hog-leather for their linin'.

How he used to shrink his livin'! sold the best an' e't the leanest:
Cattle went an' cattle came—but of all he stood the meanest.

Sold his childr'n colts for pennies, long before they even named 'em:
But when they would grow up hosses, then the old man always claimed 'em;
Made 'em borrow half their books, an' their other school-utensils—
Even sent 'em to the quarries for to dig off splinter-pencils!

Never spent a single cent for to make his home more pleasant;
Never crowned a Chris'mas mornin' with one blesséd Chris'mas present;
Oft his childr'n fell to cryin' 'cause they had to go without 'em—
Till the sewin'-circle clubs used to sit an' talk about 'em!
So we thought, one prosp'rous year, when the crops took on expansion,
There should be one Chris'mas tree, in the old man Starling's mansion.

So we started out to fix it: an' we canvassed 'mongst the neighbors,
Takin' up a town-collection, on the sly, 'twixt other labors;
Workin' on some people's pity, an' on some's imagination,
An' on some's amused desire for to see the celebration;
An' we gathered quite a fund, with a “don't you tell it” warnin',

'Nough to make the Starling childr'n happy one whole Chris'mas mornin'.

Mercy! how them childr'n acted, when the door was opened, fin'lly,
An' revealed to them the presents—lookin', doubtless, most divinely!
Whole thing didn't cost ten dollars: but 'twas heaven-like bewild'rin',
An' worth more'n a hundred thousan', to them hungry-hearted childr'n!
Every close-earned cent I planted in that job, I state sincerely,
Never yet has failed to draw reg'lar compound interest yearly.

How we wrapped the Chris'mas spirit 'round them thirteen ragged darlings!
(Childr'n was the only things that wasn't scarce, at ol' man Starling's)
How the small gals hugged their dolls! till it raised the vital question
If the stirred-up sawdust in 'em wouldn't produce an indigestion!
How the small boys whipped their drums! till the whole estate seemed wearing
Echoes something like a boiler in the process of repairing!

How the mother of the house watched the new administration—
Hardly knowin' which to feel—pleasure or humiliation!

How the big boys yelled with joy, 'round among their presents hopping,
When they come home from the woods, where their dad had kept them chopping!
How we wondered if a storm in the old man's head was brewin',
An' if wrathful shame would rise, when he see what we was doin'!

Not a shame!—he stood an' grinned, sayin' “Ain't this new an' funny!
Thank you, neighbors: these here trinkets ought to fetch a sight of money.
But you've made a small mistake—or a big omission, rather:
I don't find no present here for the fam'ly's sufferin' father!”
Then Mose Griggs, a half-growed giant, with consid'ble fun behind it,
Says, “You turn around a minute, an' I'll see if I can find it.”

So old Starling turned around, something for himself expectin',
An' received a gift that long mingled with his recollection.
He was in the sittin'-room, when the gift to him was handed,
He was in the dinin'-room, when upon his back he landed.
“If you use these presents here in the way your talk discloses,
I'll give you another trip—to'rds the sittin-room,” says Moses.

Mad enough he was, to fight! but our laughter interceded,
An' convinced the man at last, that he'd got the gift he needed.
An' next year, at Chris'mas-time, he took some expense an' bother,
An' the childr'n all got presents from their stingy rich ol' father.
Meanwhile he embraced religion, which same caused it, some supposes:
But I al'ays set great store on the gift he got from Moses.

Uprose a person a stranger would
Find hard to study: his garb was good,
His manners civil, his conduct fair,
And yet there was somewhat in his air,
That made one think of the men who roam
At large, with peripatetic home,
Each lodging where he can climb or creep,
To give the world and himself a sleep;
Each dining where he can coax his way,
And eat the most for the least of pay.
This man, half modest and yet half bold,
The following singular story told,
And vowed 'twas true to the core—the while
His wife sat near with quizzical smile:

(THREE CHRISTMASSES.)

Yes, I'm a tramp! and perhaps you'd know it
Without my saying a word: I show it
By something that won't down, once in a while;

It's hard to be wandering mile on mile,
And keep the distances out of your style;
To bar the world from an interference
Along of your personal appearance;
To keep from becoming, day by day,
A live cyclometer, one might say,
And storing the thousands of miles away.
And I have been over land enough,
Wooded and prairied and smooth and rough,
To make a world of itself; though I
Should hope for a somewhat clearer sky,
And less of hurly-burly and sin:
Another world from the kind we're in.

No! I couldn't tell you the roads I've travelled,
Mudded, and sanded, and ironed, and gravelled,
Creeping along by the hedge's side,
Or climbing the trains and cribbing a ride,
Or packing myself 'mongst boxes and jars,
Or stringing a hammock under the cars,
And other methods of beating my way
That tramps discover from day to day—
Since once . . . in a sweet and dainty dwelling . . .
There happened something that wouldn't bear telling,
For many a moon—though now I may
Tell it before I am through today.
But it made me a hater of homes, you see,
Although not quite of a low degree,
And I said, “I'm a tramp and shall always be.”

'Twas Christmas morning, some years ago,
For a year I had wandered to and fro;

I was down on my luck that day; and so
Of course sweet Memory took a start,
And gave me an extra stab in the heart,
And set me to thinking, again and again,
Of “things that might,” but could not “have been.”
And just as I crawled out, helter-skelter,
From the stack-hotel that gave me shelter,
I heard in the morning bright and fair,
Some bells that rang through the distant air;
And things couldn't have been more handy, you see,
To bring my homelessness home to me;
And I wondered how long a soul could last,
And be alone; and my heart quick passed
Back to that Christmas I found my wife
Kissing a stranger—then wrenched my life
Away from her own; and, leaving, swore
Never again to pass that door.

While thinking of all these things, and more,
I saw three horses beside the road,
With never harness or collar or load;
And two of them seemed to be talking together,
There in that spring-like winter weather,
As if each one to the other would say,
“What is there for us in this Christmas day?”
And one of them 'neath a tree alone,
As if to the others he was not known,
Seemed to be having some thoughts of his own.
Now fodder was terribly scarce and dear,
And horses cheaper than cats, that year;
And each of their necks bore a placard, which read,

“Whoever will see that this horse is fed
Three times per day, can have him free.”

And the odd horse walked up nearer to me,
As if to give me a chance to con
The curious motto that he had on,
And something or other in his way
Brought back a horse that we lost one day
When I was a boy, and had to cry;
And something or other in his eye
Made me suspect that perhaps the scamp
Was really born to become a tramp;
And also it seemed as if he'd been waiting
For me to come; and without debating
If I was able a horse to keep,
I felt in my pockets long and deep,
And found some twine; and slipped it round
The horse's nose; and with a bound,
Was on his back; and we skipped away
Through the brightening dawn of that Christmas day.
The horse seemed willing and glad to go;
And appeared from the very first to know
That he was my big though humble brother,
And we were company for each other.
And I'd have worked my fingers to bone,
Before again I'd have traveled alone.

Now I am a tramp that never steals,
From man or horse, and he had three meals
Whether I did or not; and often
I fancied I saw his black eyes soften
And maybe a bit with tear-drops dim,
While he munched the food that I earned for him.
(But that was imagination, I guess;
For I never noticed him eat the less.)
And after awhile it happened that he
Could earn a dinner sometimes for me;
And once, when feeling of work a lack,
I hired for a week a license and hack,
From a man whose horse had been driven dead,
And I laid up a dollar or two ahead.
But Nicholas (my nag's name, because
Of the Christmas present he really was)
Like a true tramp grew sad of face,
At living too long in a single place.
And so, through different roads and weather,
We started off, once more, together.

And several times the fellow showed
That he had blood that could keep the road
From seeing much more than his shadow; and once
A sheriff, a stupid, ambitious dunce,
Got it put into his shallow head
That I was a horse-thief, and found, as I sped,
That I was a racing-man instead,
And could go along my chosen route,
Faster than he could ride or shoot.
And once, in a half-hour brilliant and brief,
I helped a constable catch a thief.
So, Nicholas came at last to be
Almost everything to me;

And I thought, with a feeling half-inhuman,
“A horse is faithfuller than a woman.”

Well, two or three Christmasses passed away,
And finally one found us astray
In Southern mountains; whose peaks of blue
Were smiling and scowling the whole week through
And sudden we heard a rumbling sound;
And halting a minute, and looking around,
I saw in the distance, coming fast,
A coach and six horses; and they swept past
With tourists chatting in loud shrill speech,
Of the Christmas dinner they soon should reach;
When a broken strap set their leaders a-fright,
And soon the six, with a whirlwind's might,
Were coursing the mountain's rough-roaded side,
With dropped reins fluttering far and wide;
For the driver was dazed and stupefied.
While loud shrieks born of sudden fears,
Came back in a crowd to my startled ears.

Then I said to Nicholas, “We will see
What mettle there is in you and me.”
And off in a moment's time we flew,
Chasing the flying wreck! and drew
Nearer and nearer; though 'twas a race
In which we had started second place.
Swift as a bullet my good horse made
His course past the swinging cavalcade,
That glutted the roadbed here and there,
With hardly the width of a horse to spare;
And on we rushed, and the lead we sought;
Till at last a horse's bridle I caught,

And, as like a storm we onward strode,
I kept the whole of them in the road.
And coming to where a hill upbore
For full the half of a mile or more,
They tired and halted, as horses will,
And soon I had soothed them, and made them still.

As out of the coach the passengers climbed,
Their thanks and praise in my hearing chimed;
But I saw only two: and one was the man
From whom my wanderings began
On that fatal Christmas; the other was she—
The wife who had made a tramp of me.

I glared at them both with fierce ungrace;
But my wife spoke up with laughing face—
How could she, I thought!—“So we've found you at last
Or you have us—and we'll hold you fast,
After hunting and hunting and hunting for you
Some eight or ten times the country through,
'Mid all of the heats and colds and damps,
And nearly ourselves becoming tramps.
This if you please is my brother here
Come back from India, with a mere
Eighty or ninety thousand a year,—
A brother I can't afford to lose;
I shall kiss him, sir, just as much as I choose,
And he shall me, to his heart's content,
And should, if he wasn't worth a cent.
I like your horse's looks and ways:
He shall be my own for the rest of his days.
And you—you good-for-nothing fine
Rough sweet dear cross old husband of mine,

Turn over another leaf in life:
Shake hands with your brother and kiss your wife.”

Now, Nicholas has no use for me,
But follows her round, meek as can be;
And more things happen, from day to day,
Which lead me again and again to say,
Of God's strange creatures—great and small—
“A woman's faithfullest of them all.”

During the early part of the nineties, many farmers reluctantly offered to give away horses to any one who would take good care of them, as their keeping through the winter would cost more than they were worth. Horses decked with labels similar to the one above mentioned were seen along highways in several of the Western States

And now arose in the courteous stare,
A dear old lady, as sweet and fair
As damask roses; her four-score years
Had not been burdens of smileless tears,
Or tearless smiles: she had used as aids
The joys and griefs of her four decades.
Each birthday chime to her form and face
Had brought some newly unconscious grace;
Life's luxuries all had striven in vain
To harden her heart or clog her brain;
Prosperity decked her life with blooms,
Gems could new lustre from her receive;
Her gowns were woven in costliest looms,
Her laces such as the fairies weave;
Rich diamonds centuries old, astir
With new magnificence, greeted her;
The rich sea-oyster had covered oft
The mote that vexed it, with velvets soft,
So it might harden and beam—a pearl—
To smile with this never-ageing girl.
How thus did this woman garner youth?—
She studied and travelled the roads of truth;

She scanned the body and mind each day,
That both be given the right of way;
She opened the sky-lights of her soul,
And asked for the Great Real World's control;
And having plotted the best one could,
As God and Nature had meant she should,
Then waited and prayed, with modest zest,
For God and Nature to do the rest.
But not in idleness waited she:
Her deeds of mercy full oft unknown
In records such as the mortals see,
Were sculptured on the eternal throne.
The pleasure of others she could employ,
To breed for herself the purest joy.
And who could but list, as with cadence sweet,
She read these lines with unconscious art—
And honest applause they would never meet,
If voiced from a less delightful heart?

(CHRISTMAS IN THE HOSPITAL.)

Lay an old man 'mid the darkness of a rudely furnished room,
While the Christmas bells were searching through the early morning's gloom.
Not in costly vestments lay he, such as o'er him once might fall;
Not with comforts at his bidding, or with servants at his call;
Not with gold and silver pleading that the hungry eyes rejoice;

Not with silken banknotes whisp'ring to the magic of his voice;
Not with loving kin around him, eager, in the morning light,
With fond gifts demurely hidden, all the more to glad his sight;
No: in pain-environed precincts of a hospital he lay,
With gaunt poverty around him—waiting for the dawn of day.

Then the glad bells ceased their ringing, and the old man, sad and lone,
Felt the torture of the absence of the hearts that were his own;
And his thoughts ran back to mornings when he hailed with joy that day:
When a Christmas meant a triumph, and the world was sweet and gay.
“O my peerless Christ!” he murmured: “you whose justice never flags!
Is't because I strove to serve you, that I lie today in rags?

“All the bright years that I prospered, never once I thought of gain,
But to make my earth-mates happy, and to ease them of their pain.
All these long years hard I labored—with each waking breath I drew,
Not for friend and neighbor only, but for every one I knew!
Toiled I not alone for even those that near me did abide—

But for those whose needs were calling from the ocean's farther side;
Toiled I not alone for mortals who into my friendship came,
But for those who wrecked my fortunes—and who plotted for my shame.
Toiled I not alone 'mid riches: but with nought to call mine own,
Still I strove with mind and heart-throbs, for the sufferings I have known.

“Do not think, O Christ! that boasting I would call upon thy name:
Do not think, O blameless martyr! that I come to thee with blame!
Do not think, O Prince imprisoned in a world of endless strife,
That I have not conned the lessons of thy grand unselfish life;
I have suffered, I will suffer, any torture from thy hand.
I just tell thee—as my teacher—that I do not understand.”

Thus in misery and in sorrow, and in meditation deep,
With his woe and pain exhausted, sank the sufferer into sleep:
Sleep as deep and full of mercy as a mortal e'er can find—
Walking in the stillest regions of the ocean of the mind;

Sleep that maybe guides to regions that so flooded are with light,
That the very sun above us seems a spectre of the night;
Sleep that maybe shuts from hearing every human sound and word,
So that angels venture nearer, and can whisper and be heard.
Dearest Sleep! that smooths to velvet all the roughness of the ways—
Dearest Sleep! the star-gemmed cushion 'twixt the jostling of the days!

What is this! a dream—a vision—that his senses overpowers?
Or are those but dreams and visions, that we call the waking hours?
Does the absence of the clamor of the daylight oft reveal
That the things we know are shadows, and the unknown is the real?

He was in a stately mansion: with unnumbered gilded halls,
And a thousand splendid pictures flashing from the stately walls.
'Neath his feet were gorgeous carpets never known to earthly loom,
Round him lamps of softened splendor smiled their cheer throughout the room;
Mirrors framed with skill and cunning made the palace-splendors more,

And repeated all its treasures to the glad eye o'er and o'er;
Out of lofty little mansions floated music sweetly clear,
Such as never yet was mortal on this earth allowed to hear.

And alone but for a moment did this wondering pilgrim stand;
Came his wife and came his children: and they clung unto his hand.
Came a thousand friends and neighbors whose loved names were covered o'er
By the moss of many summers, on the green grave's marble door;
Came a father with a smile that now was rested and serene;
And upon his arm a mother whom he ne'er before had seen;
Came a thousand, shining brighter for the dark of Death's eclipse,
With the simple words “You helped me” on their true and grateful lips.

Then came Christ, and said, “Not longer much, your good brave life endures:
Then this mansion and these hand-clasps all forever-more are yours.”

Nurses wondered on the morrow, why the look of pain and woe
Had departed from the patient that had grieved and suffered so;

But he knew: and with rejoicing oft he murmured o'er and o'er,
“My next Christmas casts not shadows, but a blesséd light, before!”

There was a singer upon the train,
Who—words half useless! had toiled in vain
An inland city to reach that night,
Where placards staring in letters bright,
Had told his admirers, day by day,
That melody soon would come that way.
A song we asked from this prince of song:
But he, unwilling to do what long
He'd done as a task, would rather try
To do some thing that he did not do
Except for pleasure; and bye and bye
He told this story, which may be true:

(THE WAIF'S THANKSGIVING.)

Way up in the loft, with cadence soft,
The silvery chimes were ringing,
And through the glare of the Autumn air,
Thanksgiving-hymns were singing:
Golden chimes that brought the rhymes,
The sacred songs, of good old times
Back to the worldling's wakened ear,
And drew some quaint old church more near,
That maybe had crumbled many a year.

And coachmen laced and stolid-faced
Drove up to the church's portal;

And men once more passed through the door
To thank the King Immortal,
And hear the music that decked the day,
And look at the altar's new display:
For such is ever the human way.

Now out in the street, with half-clad feet,
And garments shabbily clinging,
A child there stood in a dreamy mood,
And harked to the church-bells' ringing,
With thin hand pressed against her breast,
As if the harmony gave her rest;
As if each note, as it softly stole
Out of its swinging brazen bowl,
Was a morsel of food to her hungry soul.

But when like a band from unseen land
That with the world rejoices,
The organ hurled to the outside world
A hundred silver voices,
Into the eyes of the child there came
A torch as lit by a sudden flame;
And through her memory seemed to flow
Something she still must come to know,
And yet had forgotten long ago.

And none the less for her ragged dress
She sped to the door—unfearing;
And through she went, her soul intent
On the strains of music hearing.
Her great sad eyes bedecked with dew,
She passed along with the others through,
And seated herself in a velvet pew!

The sexton gazed with an eye amazed,
Upon this odd intrusion:
And his laundried sheen and placid mien
Were canopied with confusion.
Out of the door he quickly led
The little maid; and brusquely said,
“There are churches enough for you instead.”

But still the sound of the organ drowned
The noise of her heart's complaining;
Now with echoes choice of the human voice,
And a queen-soprano reigning!
She crept to the hall—nor lingered there;
But climbed to the gallery's utmost stair,
And with her changing eyes on fire
With new ambition and old desire,
She gazed at the organ and the choir.

The chief of the song, with baton long,
Was numbering each bright measure,
But looking around the child he found,
And scowled his dark displeasure;
His eyes and his lip and his baton dropped,
And well that the music had not stopped!
He never had known a guest like that:
There came from his mouth a hissing “Skat!”—
She skurried away like a frightened cat.

And out in the street once more her feet
On the flinty curb were falling,
And still from within the delicious din
Of music's voice was calling,

And still for a place to hear in search,
She walked the length of the palace-church,
And finding an open vestry door,
Crept into the stately house once more,
And started this region to explore.

A passage in haste the child yet traced,
And then to her consternation
On the platform high stood in the eye
Of the wondering congregation!
The ragged girl in the stylish place
Made smiles go leaping from face to face.
The pastor turned and saw her near:
A man that the people loved to hear,
At several thousand dollars a year;

But with each day he toiled his way
With requisite fear and trembling,
And with no tone addressed the throne,
Of boldness or dissembling.
Striving God's heart and a child's to please,
On the sofa he seated the girl at ease:
Saying “‘Unless we become as the least of these.’”

The whole hour long, to sermon and song,
With eyes that fitfully glistened
And cheeks that burned with joy new-learned,
The tiny maiden listened.
And now that a few more years are fled,
The waif is a singer of songs instead;
Aglow with that suddenly kindled flame,

She treads the heights of a splendid fame:
You would know her well, did I tell her name.

The storm was resting: the clouds once more
Had given our sky an open door,
And like a friend that we long since knew,
Back came the sun. Then our Captain drew
A watch of sturdy and tarnished form,
That calmly had ticked through many a storm,
In scenes with deadlier danger blent,
And much less stable environment.
He saw that its two hands that agreed
Just twice each day—the longer brother
(As—speaking exactly—there was need)
Else always criticizing the other,
Were soon to be pointing toward the sky,
Both joining together their persons and power,
As if to solemnly testify
That noon's high twelve was the reigning hour.
From his belongings a sextant came,
Which knowledge drew from the sun's gold flame.
Our latitude and our longitude
He solved from the studies he had pursued
In Ocean's great University,
Where libraries all about there be,
Whose books have the clouds and stars for shelves,
And rustling leaflets that turn themselves.
And with maps spread about him there,
He held the point of a penknife where
In sturdily builded hardihood,
Our half luxurious prison stood.

The passengers filed about the chart
With curiosity naively shown,
To view the place where we lay apart
In town to us heretofore unknown—
And from this happening came discourse
Of strange adventures: we who perforce
Were fixed immovable, here to stay,
Sailed oceans thousands of miles away,
As our bronzed seaman strange tales rehearsed;
And we in his wizardry were immersed,
When all at once, to this listening-tide,
Came fierce disruption: A BABY CRIED!
What hubbub followed!—the audience rushed
To watch the diminutive monster's gaze,
And strove that his outcries might be hushed
In possible and impossible ways;
With everything, from nostrum to toy,
A baby could or could not enjoy.
“My voyage is over”!—our Captain said,
With smiling visage but drooping head,
And folded his map and laid it by.
Nought can compete with an infant's cry!
For Nature has given that callow voice
The rasp of an uncloaked sorrow: 'tis why,
Whoever may or may not stand by,
It leaves most mortals but little choice.
That wail of helplessness, kings obey:
It will forever be given its way.
Now half an hour of the public time
Went soothing this athlete who'd flown or crept
So lately from heaven:—no wonder he wept,

Just out of the palaces sublime,
At being held in such strange duress
Fast in the snow and this fast express!
No wonder the sacred cry of dole
Aroused the whole of our motley crew!
No wonder the chant of this young sad soul
Gained pity from all hearts sound and true!
And those that were not, still courted peace,
And, anxious to have the tumult cease,
As often happens, did what they could—
(For their own sake) for the public good.
When quiet caressed the thankful throng,
Rose one with a patriarchal grace,
And told this story—though somewhat long,
Not inappropriate to the case:

(OUR MESSENGER OUT OF THE SKY.)

My son and his wife and his mother, and I, at the crest of a hill,
Dwelt always in peace with each other, as seldom such families will:
For no one was tyrant or menial, and none had a talent for blame,
And all of our hearts were congenial, and most of our views were the same.
Our lives, to the uttermost border, were full of unspecified order,
And honest and generous tact:
And yet, day by day, as we lived on our way,
There was something or other we lacked.

Our health and our wealth were sufficient to keep us good friends with our kin,
The aid of the Father Omniscient we pleaded each morning to win;
We laughed and we danced with our neighbors, when sons or when daughters were wed,
We gave them a lift with their labors, and helped them to bury their dead.
What better with earth can endear you, than love from the ones that are near you?—
I joyed in the glittering fact:
And yet I still felt, when we worked or we knelt,
There was something or other we lacked.

My son and his wife and his mother, and I, ever strove to be fair,
Rememb'ring each man was our brother, and needed some sort of a care;
Rememb'ring the being called Woman was mother and wife of the race—
Rememb'ring that all who were human might some time look God in the face.
So had we that peace in our living, that comes from the profit of giving,
And eases the burden of gain:
But still in our joy was mysterious alloy,
A secret unknowable pain.

Ah!—one day there came to our dwelling a soft, gentle word from on high,
By one who first wept in its telling—a messenger out of the sky!

By one with the natural graces with which Heaven had sent him away—
By one that soon smiled in our faces, and strove in our bosoms to stay.
And now, in the glorified slaving that had to be wrought in his saving,
And in the new care that he cost,
Our hungry souls grew, and we very soon knew,
What we, by not having, had lost.

Our sympathies needed expansion akin to the ages to be;
The silences chained in our mansion were jaded, and longed to be free.
The silks and the gems and the laces were yearning for younger commands,
The lines of our decorous faces grew soft in a baby's warm hands.
Some books needed smirching and tearing—some clothes wanted juvenile wearing—
The furniture palled with its worth—
Till the child to us given from the regions of Heaven,
Raised—mischief with things upon earth.

So now, with this troublesome linking with futures not wholly our own,
We presently found ourselves drinking new pleasures we never had known;
The ceaseless anxieties brought us a needed and exquisite rest—
The baby's wise ignorance taught us that he who is simplest is best.

Our little Columbus discovered new regions that o'er us had hovered
Long years, without being descried:
We knew not aright how to walk through the light,
Till Heaven sent this innocent guide.

O God! give us wisdom to steer him again toward the land whence he came!
Let never the tempter crouch near him, with smiles of destruction and shame;
Let not needless harshness embroil him with memories fierce and unkind:
Let not our love weaken and spoil him with reckless indulgence and blind.
Let manhood's best bravery betide him, let woman's best influence guide him;
While thou, in thine infinite love,
Shalt smile on his track, and at death take him back
To thy beautiful mansions above!

Next rose, the occasion to assist,
A “promising elocutionist.”
(His rivals averred, with jealousy warmed,
He promised much more than he performed;
But seldom artist-sister and -brother
See half the excellence of each other.)
What is there not in the human voice,
To make humanity's nerves rejoice,
Or grieve, as its master may make the choice?
What has not gesture and facial art
Achieved with the human mind and heart?
In every country and every realm,
The voice can flatter or overwhelm;

George Whitefield made men tremble and weep,
Or laugh or in abject terror creep,
Just by the way (from his friends' accounts)
He “Mesopotamia” could pronounce.
The politicians their fences bound
With sound discourse and discourse of sound;
And even the social words are sped
More thriftily, when in soft tones said.
And this our elocutionist courted
The graces of speech that had been taught him,
And through the advantages cavorted
That comely body and features brought him;
And from his lips a pæan there rolled,
To match the tale that had just been told:

(THE COMING OF THE KING.)

Ring the farm-bell—toot the boat-horn—stir the country round;
Telephone to all the neighbors what we folks have found!
Raid the cellar to a famine—make the kitchen gleam,
Pile the tables full of victuals, till the dishes steam!
An' if a tramp comes to the door, we'll feed him full an' right,
An' tell him of the little tramp that come to us tonight:
With not a sin to worry him, or cloud his wonderin' eye;
As innocent as angels is that never leave the sky.

Feed the horses—stuff the cattle, till they're doubly dumb;
Make 'em eat a royal banquet, now the king has come!
In his eyes are costly jewels, velvets in his hand;
In his voice are strains of music, sweeter than the band.
We had a grown republic here, for many seasons past,
But now it's just a monarchy—the king has come at last!
My wife an' I, my son, his wife, forehanded one might call:
But here's a little millionaire that re'lly owns us all!

Did you ever see a lan'scape pleasant in the face,
All the hills an' trees an' valleys in their proper place:
But there's somethin' lackin'—lackin'! still you often said:
Life is there, but 'tain't alive! kep' runnin' in your head?
An' then the clouds they cleared away, an' showed you to the sky,
An' then you heard the robins sing, and see the bluebirds fly;
An' then come out the great glad sun, a-makin' extra cheer,
An' that's the very same complaint we're laborin' under here.

Spile him?—yes, I s'pose we'll spile him, to a small degree;
He will want the world to play with, just like you an' me;
He shall hev it, for a season; but he'll soon be taught
That there's nothin' worth the havin', till it's fairly bought.
An' then he'll grow to be a man, an' pay off all his debt,
A Gov'nor or a President, or somethin' grander yet;
But I'll be suited well enough, if he'll do well's he can,
An' straighten up, an' grow to be a good ol'-fashioned man.

A college teacher sat in our throng,
Whose chair was one that did not belong
O'er frequent, if ever before, in camps
Alight with the midnight study-lamps,
Or wassailing-glims that oft we see:
“Professor of Ancient Mounds” was he.
'Twas his to study that voiceless past
That makes our own antiquity vast
Beyond computing: as yet no word
From those far vanished tribes is heard,
For even their tombs are voiceless now.
They long had lived, ere Columbus' prow
Cut swift through the West Atlantic's wave,
And dug, as it went, the Indian's grave.

This strange professorship, was, 'twas said,
Endowed by an old man long since dead,
Whose farm had mounds: and who long had dreamed
Of their dust tenants, until it seemed
To him almost that those hosts might be
A part of his own ancestral tree.
And in his visions he “stocked” that farm
With city splendors of ancient date:
The warrior's valor, the virgin's charm,
The emperor, sitting in gilded state;
And, digging and digging within a mound
Where he strange traces of them had found,
And sinking shafts long distances more,
Their possible cellarage to explore,
Thus hoping there yet might records be
That now America first should see,
He struck—not records, but oil! that old
Yet newly discovered liquid gold
Came spouting, as if those spirit-strays
From mound-men—history's castaways—
Had brought him a gift. It came—to spare!
In lake-fulls—calling the thrifty there,
By scores and hundreds. He urged them back,
And strove to cumber their eager track:
But what can hinder the headlong rush
Of money for money? 'twill blight and crush
The loveliest view that the fancy feeds.
Brain cannot cope with primitive needs.
His phantom city, 'mid this turmoil,
Was inundated with modern oil;
This haunt of the knights and armored hosts
Was now a camp of prosperity,

With derricks standing like wooden ghosts,
In unimpeachable verity.
So, spite of himself, our peasant there,
Became twice over a millionaire,
But lost his great grand city. His dreams
Of ancient splendor, soaked through with streams
Of modern oleaginous thrift,
Were now on the seas of wealth adrift,
And he was drear and unsatisfied:
And, weary and poor, this Crœsus died.
His will a professorship endowed,
With a “large” college, in his name,
To teach Moundology, as the proud
Astronomer Watson, wreathed with fame,
Left money forever to be employed
In tracing the route of each asteroid
He had discovered.—Our millionaire
Put into this paid professor's care
The mounds of our country; and willed that he
Their champion and historian be,
And lecture to students, upon the ways
Of men of the unrecorded days.
It goes without saying, this teacher's task
Was such as no easy man would ask:
'Twas hard the material to procure,
Without the aid of literature—
That coral reef of the clambering mind.
This hard-worked man, who could only find
A few scant relics his eyes could see,
And some conjectures that disagree,
Used all that his eager hands could reach:
But teachers must teach what others teach.

So pumping away at an unprimed brain,
His ample salary to retain,
(He had an expensive family,
Who nothing in ancient mounds could see)
He feared that he yet might go insane.
And this short poem would seem to tell
The mental famine that him befell,
As he arose and in plaintive tone,
Vouchsafed to the throng this rhythmic moan.

(TO THE MOUND-BUILDERS.)

Long have I dreamed o'er your clay-covered dwellings—
Spectres of yore:
Heroes of histories vanished, whose telling,
E'en, is no more!
Oft will the grave, with its monuments singing
Praise, e'en through silence be heard:
Yours, to the depths of Oblivion clinging,
Scorns us, and deigns not a word.
Not through the long fickle centuries faring,
Blest and unblest,
Even the names you were weary of wearing,
Now are at rest.

Yet do you tell me, though mayhap unwilling,
Deeds you have done:
You had the clouds of the earth, and the thrilling
Fire of the sun;
You had the keeping of Love's kingly treasure,
Chained with the mortgage of doubt and of care;
You had of Hate's mingled torture and pleasure,

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Heavens full of hope, and the hells of despair.
Forests now dead heard the songs of your dancing,
In the gay hour,
Then o'er the plains blood-stained legions advancing,
Crushed every flower.

When our Today, with its shout and its gleaming,
Lies cold and dead,
Still will the child of the future be dreaming
Round your grim bed.
Here the ambitious, whatever his choosing
Proudly immortal to be,
Can, by this lack of a record perusing,
Learn his bleak future from thee.
Nought born of earth but on earth has to perish,
New life to give;
Only the soul Heav'n finds worthy to cherish
Has long to live.

This sad lament was given, when o'er,
(Perhaps satirical) an encore:
And then he arose again, to tell
In softer accents, with feeling rife,
How a chief, by students he loved o'er well
Was borne to the bed of vanished life:

(THE HEARSE OF HANDS.)

Slowly the Teacher wends his way
Through the paths of a summer day;
'Mid the balm of the June's sweet breath,
Into the campus owned by Death.

101

Silence there in the gateway stands,
Ready to clasp his faded hands;
Mounds of grasses and headstones dim
Long have waited to welcome him.

He will not knock at a stranger's door:
Teachers and preachers have gone before.
Bugle-voices the lands have heard,
Welcome him with no welcome-word.

Not in a hearse, with plumes of black,
Gliding along the well-worn track,
Comes this moulder of brain and will,
Now so newly and strangely still:

Not in a lofty funeral-car,
Borne to rest, as the warriors are:
Not with an empty-saddled horse,
Rides to its rest this hero-corse.

Eight strong students, with measured tread,
Silently bear the silent dead;
Eight more students with loving face,
Ever are waiting the honored place.

Thus do the minds this master taught
Garland his road with tender thought;
Thus does each student, loving much,
Wait for the thrill of his casket's touch.

Thus by the ones he has served and blessed,
Slowly the Teacher is borne to rest:

102

Grander honor could never be
Paid to the kings of land or sea.

In other coaches, by young and old,
The following measures meanwhile were told:

(UP-TRAIN AND DOWN-TRAIN.)

One eve I stepped from the up-train to the station platform strong;
And just that minute the down-train happened to come along.

Till once more started the up-train, I had nothing else to do
But watch the halted down-train, as I stood betwixt the two.

Gazing there at the down-train—its sheltered and cushioned throng—
There with my back to the other track, I solemnly sang this song:

“O passengers on the down-train, how little your ways you heed!
You shut your eyes and know nowise what 'tis you want or need!”

And never a passenger looked at me, or nodded or shook his head;
And with a smile, “Thus for awhile philosophers fare”, I said.

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But still with my back to the up-train (where all my luggage lay),
Just out of its view, betwixt the two, I silently had my say:

“O you who are on the down-train, you fidget and stretch and yawn;
Ere scarce the train a station gain, you are anxious to be gone!

“When, part of a mighty cyclone, you rush through the shrieking air,
You yawn and mope, and fret and hope, and wish that you were ‘there’!

“Yes, passengers on the down-train, you wander to and fro;
You laugh and weep, you wake and sleep, but wist not where you go!

“Now, I am upon the up-train, with reason for a guide;
My plans I make and seldom break, whatever may betide.”

But never a passenger looked at me, or nodded or shook his head;
And with a laugh, “'Tis thus we quaff the cup of neglect! I said.

Thus I talked to the down-train, till, through with its business stay,
It deemed it well to ring its bell, and quietly steal away.

104

And then I turned to my up-train, but lo! it had also flown,
And I with my good sound precepts, stood on the platform all alone!

And no one cared on either train if I were I living or dead;
And, laughing anew, “'Tis thus your true philosopher fares”, I said.

(AWAY FROM OUR HOMES.)

I was walking the edge of a village street—
A village I never had known before—
Where two highways of our commerce meet,
And clasp iron fingers, and meet no more.—
While soothing an hour as might be best
'Twixt weary journeys to north and west,
And lingering over gardens wide
Of cottages drowsing side by side,
And glancing into the green-walled rooms
Of porches sheltered by buds and blooms,
And musing, amid the hourlets still,
“How well it might be from trouble free—
This human rill by the grove-thatched hill,
So far from my city's moaning sea!”—
There came to the startled ear a brief
But sad and tremulous sob of grief.

'Twas a tiny boy, in golden hair
That wooed his neck with a kiss of curls,
And eyes that brightened the big tears there,

105

And cheeks as sweet as the cheeks of girls.
'Twas easy enough to see how brave
The battle had been, his pride to save;
What hosts of courage were doomed to drown
In tears he fought, but that would not down:
The strife that the world within had made,
Ere asking the world without, for aid.

'Twas easy enough the tot to lift,
And cuddle him high on a tree's low limb,
And ask him what was the doleful gift
That fate in its fury had handed him.
And quick did the answer come to me:
“I—don'—know—where that I live!” sobbed he.

'Twas little to bribe a passing boy
To steer the unconscious truant right,
And soon, to the little sinner's joy,
His plump legs toddled him out of sight;
But still he stayed by my side and cried—
His tremulous lip I yet could see:
And still did his words in my heart abide:
“I don't know where that I live!” said he.

The steam's white river sprung up afar,
From boiling springs; and along the road
Came booming the jar of the wheel-winged car,
With bodies and souls for a costly load;
The world a minute, with smile and frown,
Invaded my little peaceful town,
Then off!—still spinning, with scowls and smiles,
The fleecy distance to threads of miles.

106

As I joined the rushing cavalcade,
And found a soft seat, cozy and wide,
A phantom-urchin followed and stayed
On a phantom-perch by my friendly side.
And through the distances blue and gray,
For miles an hundred we clove our way;
And still with that look of childish dread,
“I—don'—know—where that I live!” he said.

I looked to the left: a man sat there,
With leaden visage and silver hair,
His back to the goal at which he sped;
And carrying words in his face that said,
“I toil, I laugh, I grieve, I play:
But know not where is my home today.”

I looked to the right: on a dreary road,
An old tramp bearing his heavy load—
That load, himself (the idlest eye
Might catch the story, as we sped by):
Said, “Where is my home?—I do not know:
I lost it many a year ago.”

I looked behind me: a woman fair,
With wealth encompassed from foot to hair,
With silks that whispered her as they hung,
And gems that laughed as they clung and swung
Wherever a jewel had room to stay,
Looked puzzled and sad: and I felt her say,
As sure as a voice the truth could free:
“The home where I live is no home to me!”

Two lovers were whiling the time away,
With nought but each other: no need had day

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To furnish them sun, for, blindly wise,
They lived in the light of each other's eyes.
I read, in their murmured words of cheer,
“Home?—with us we carry it: Home is here!”

I glanced at myself within:—“When I
Have done what my brothers call ‘to die’,
May I not stand in the dawn or gloam,
And sob for a guide to take me home?”

THE MERRY TENNIS GIRL.

Let others sound the praise of golf, and wander up and down
O'er rugged field and jagged ditch, and meadows green or brown;
I like to hear the many tales of their achievements grand,
And maybe when I get the time, I'll also take a hand;
But 'tisn't the game that always sets my eager blood awhirl;
And so, whatever comes, I'm still the jolly tennis girl—
The striking, skipping, jumping, screaming, merry tennis girl!

Let others wield the mallet in the sober, sad croquet.
And bend their backs and twist their arms the good old-fashioned way;
It's well a little while to tread the mazes of the arch,
And stoop around the sodded ground with slow and jerky march;

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But nought to me the flag of glee can e'er so far unfurl
As just to take my racket out, and be a tennis girl—
A twisting, romping, dodging, leaping, merry tennis girl!

As swift as thought the facile ball goes leaping to and fro—
There is no time for partners wise to tell you “where to go”;
And “vantage in” and “vantage out” are easy things to change,
And long disputes in mid career are very rare and strange;
And so, as long as I a ball can with my fingers twirl,
I'm going to keep my racket-hand, and be a tennis girl—
A patient, watchful, agile, docile, screaming tennis girl!

THE OAK-TREE'S PROPHECY.

When first the maiden Spring tripped out of sight,
And Summer donned her ribbons fresh and bright,
And smiled along her emerald-shaded leas,
There ran a thrill though all the forest trees.

A vet'ran oak—tall prophet of the wood,
That for a hundred years unscathed had stood,

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Had mused long nights o'er forest tragedies,
Had glared reproach at weak frivolities,
Now spoke portentous words—soon whispered round
With the first zephyr that the forest found.

“Beware, O burghers of the woodland range,”
This prophet said: “eftsoon there comes a change.
We who have lived so blithely, soon must roam
In forms diverse! This sweetly-quiet home,
Where we have prospered many a changing year,
Must now, my omens tell me, disappear.
This city, whence our commerce, day by day,
Has through the air-ship-birds pursued its way,
And by our wingéd messengers of seeds,
Filled and had filled a score of diverse needs,
Must soon beneath Destruction's foot be cast,
And shrink amid the wreckage of the past.”

Then spoke a lady elm, “O father, pray
Decline the loan of trouble: let today
Care for today—tomorrow for itself:
Anticipation is a tricksy elf.
The noon is strong, the midnight shades are sweet,
The twilight treads our halls with gentle feet,
And what has been will be from day to day;
So let us live, and love our years away!”

A rough-clad hickory, on each opening morn,
Gazed at the prophet, with a sneer of scorn.
“Now, prophet, let me prophesy!” he said:
“Forests will live long after men are dead.
The sun will rise and plough the skies, and sleep,
The rain will from its leaden chariots leap,

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And we still live—the same blithe forest folk—
In spite of all your omens, father Oak.
Fling deep your roots and breakfast well and fair;
Spread out your leaves and drink the morning air.
Be ‘up to date’, and join us with your best
To make these doleful prophecies a jest!
For many years to come, when time is long,
Your words shall form the theme of jocund song.”

But still the Oak dispensed his warning bold:
“Prepare, O comrades of the future wold,
For sudden change, and other forms of life
Amid creation's varied peace and strife!
Pray that you next be flowers, or trees once more,
If you would live as you have lived before;
Or beg that you may bloom as spirit-trees,
In fairer climes and happier lands than these.
Pray for fair life in lives that soon befall:
For earthly death is hovering o'er us all!
The sun is setting; soon shall close the day:
O heedless forest, bow your heads and pray!”

A trembling vine, whose leaves had scarcely stirred,
Caught the sad summons, and believed the word,
And hung her graceful head, devout and still,
To these unwelcome prophecies of ill.
A willow wept; a pine did not forget
Its whispered prayer; the birch turned paler yet;
But the great forest lived and laughed its ways
Through the long reaches of the summer days,
And cared not for the oak's deep solemn word:
A thoughtful warning thoughtlessly unheard.

More days went by, and still the forest laughed,

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But now the dew with eagerness it quaffed,
And said, “In thy soft flight o'er hill and plain,
O dew, didst see thy king, the blesséd rain?”
But burning hours and days and nights went by,
And ne'er a storm-cloud on the gleaming sky.

Now did the tall trees thirst with fruitless pain;
Long had they sucked the densely-rooted plain;
Now did their messengers magnetic go
To stream and spring—if they that way might flow;
Now did they envy trees of meaner rank,
That clung along the river's moistened bank;
Now did green leaves to scrolls of parchment wane;
And forests prayed—not for their sins—but rain.

And still the dry trees hoped a better fate;
And still they, waiting, were but doomed to wait.
The air—sweet breath of best-created things,
The light, God's messenger with golden wings,
Both hovered round: but that great king and slave,
Life's comrade, Water—came not near to save.
The prophet Oak, chief of the tangled grove,
A natural stylite, stood, and, patient, strove
With his own fearful thirst; but sore oppressed,
He suffered for the sufferings of the rest,
And prayed for them: how much availed his prayer,
We cannot tell: for answers are God's care.

One day, a huntsman dropped a flame-tipped seed
Of the fire-plant, when it had filled his need,
And careless went his way, nor mischief knew.—
The yellow kernel slowly, slowly grew,
Timid in new life, lest it might be put

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To death forever, crushed by hand or foot;
Then growing stronger, its dull gleaming eyes
Grew lurid with a signal of surprise;
With new-discovered power it sprang upright,
Straight at the trees' dry throats, and clutched them tight.

Then came the wild wind with unnumbered aids;
Then glared with flame the forests' deepest shades;
Then a volcano not of lower birth,
Strewed its red lava o'er the shrinking earth;
Then blossoms—such as seldom trees may bear—
Gleamed from a million branches trembling there;
Then a great moan ran all the forest through;
And the trees found their prophet's words were true.

(THE GHOST OF SABLE ISLAND.)

When the storm flies, with its black wings waving,
And dropping their quills of fire in the surf at Sable Island,
When the air and sea and the black shore are raving,
And the cloud-mountains shake from valley to highland,
When the petrel a duet with the mad gale is singing,
When all the drum-corps of the sky their thunder-clubs are swinging,
Or every wave is a torch by Phosphor's flame ignited,
And even the sunless sky with blazing water is lighted,

Then whirling keys of billows open the sand-hill doors,

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And out of their gloomy halls come skeletons bleached and gray,
Of men and women who voyaged from smiling, green-dressed shores,
Out to the hurricane-country—straight to the death-strewn bay.

Look!—in the sea again, this good ship is sailing!
Not with banners of canvas, and flags on the breezes trailing;
But one by one its timbers are into the foam alighting;
The angry waves each other with wrecks of a wreck are fighting.

See!—on the drowning beach, a ghost comes drearily walking—
Pacing on sand or sea full many a desolate rod:
Eastward a moment he gazes; now the white lips are talking!
He looks straight into the tempest and tells his story to God.

He says, “The King loved my wife, in an unkingly fashion;
What was our heart-caress, to his mad, bestial passion?
He had but to raise his finger, and I was a felon at best,
And she a creature of shame, with heart torn out of her breast.

“He threw me toward this sunset—a dreary island's slave—

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With a band of robbers and thieves, into this wave-drenched cell;
Told me, if I must love, to fall in love with the grave;
Cast me out of Heaven, into a wave-washed hell.
Her spirit flung its arms—its white arms—to me;
I heard her crying at night, above the sobs of the sea.
‘Help!’ it cried: ‘help!’ but what could that mean,
With all the ocean's width, and a king's lust, between?

“I knew what day she died; for her pure spirit came,
Womanly every gesture—sweet and angel-faced;
It loved me and caressed me—then shrunk, with a look of shame,
And fled toward where the body lay ruined and disgraced.
‘Help!’ through the distance she cried: ‘husband, avenge my wrong!’—
But what could I do, O God! my ocean-fetters were strong.
What can bodies do, 'gainst earth, and air, and sky,
And enemies in triumph?—they can do one thing: they can die.

“But Death was not a release: for through the groaning water,
A peasant's spirit swam, like the ghost of a shark, to me:
‘Curses on you,’ he cried: ‘you slayer of my daughter!
Back, you hound, to your kennel by the edge of the treacherous sea!
You an avenger of virtue!—creep to your slimy hole!

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The King killed your wife's body—you killed my daughter's soul!
Woman is woman, whether the kin of lords or churls;
Crime is but crime in Ghost-land—Death has nor dukes nor earls!’

“Then my sins weighed like iron—and they crushed me back—
Crushed me back, O God, as my body was crushed in life;
And the King's ghost—I cannot, I dare not, follow its track;
I cannot harass my foe, or haste to comfort my wife.
And her soft wail, it travels through sun or stormy weather;
We are more than oceans apart—O bring us, once, God, together!
For long I have walked this black beach, and heard the ocean tell
That Heaven is never defrauded, and sin itself is Hell.”

(CHAIN-ROOTED AND FLEET-FOOTED.)

River and tree-top and hill
Fell talking, as neighbors oft will.
“O would you could see”, said the tree,
“The many brave things that I see!
Fond lovers, the moments beguiling;
Fair homes, with their weeping and smiling;
The clouds in their nearness and distance,

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The stars in their stately existence;
The woodland, the grainland, the lea:
O would you might see what I see!”

As neighbors with neighbors when chaffing,
The hill said, in tones that were laughing,
“Climb on my broad shoulder, O tree,
And see the great things that I see!
Swift commerce the vastnesses riding,
Great cities in splendor abiding,
Steam chariots with lanterns ne'er dimming,
Iron fish through the ocean-waves swimming:
O river, rise grandly to me,
And see all the things that I see!”

The river its whisp'ring and sighing
Forgot, for a moment, replying:
“O tree-top and hill-top chain-rooted,
Tower not o'er the swift many-footed!
In haunts you must know but in seeing—
My soul has had knowledge by being;
I march, with my ne'er ceasing motion,
Through earth and through air and through ocean.
You never can see what I see,
O chain-footed hill-top and tree!”

(THE PAUPER SOLDIER.)

(Suggested by a Recent Happening.)

They carried the man to a soldier's rest,
The drum was muffled, the fife sang low;
A blade of battle was on his breast,
A tattered banner that knew the foe.

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There sprang, from the roof of his earthy tent,
A peal of thunder and flash of flame;
With glory's plaudits the air was rent;
(He died in the poorhouse, all the same.)

A chaplain stood by the coffin-side,
And preached a story of long ago;
This frozen visage would flush with pride,
If just but the dead could hear and know!
Again with young and vigorous hand,
He climbed the ladder of early fame,
And pawned a life for his native land,
(And died in a poorhouse, all the same.)

O proud Columbia! well 'tis said,
If ever an insult you may meet,
A million heroes, victory-led,
Will lay their lives at your very feet!
But strip the flags from the shining domes,
And bow your beautiful head in shame,
If men who fought for the palace-homes
Must die in a poorhouse all the same!

(THE BALLAD OF SIR TOM.)

Away! away! said the stout Sir Tom;
Away to a western shore!
There's a glittering cup I would gather up,
And bring to my land once more!
And bright was the air, and the wind was fair,
And whistled a merry lay;
And soon beside a western tide,
The fluttering Shamrock lay.

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Alack! alack; said the stout sea men:
Defeat we scarce may miss;
Of hull or of spar that came from far,
There was never aught like this!
And the air grew dark, but the slender bark
Then shone with a glad new light;
For the brave Sir Tom, in storm or calm,
Had soul that was cheery and bright.

Woe's me! woe's me! said the silver cup,
I lived in the westernland
So many a year, 'twere sad and drear
To sail to another strand!
Be cheery and calm! said the brave Sir Tom:
They fight with a friendly foe;
You never with me shall cross the sea
Unless you are proud to go!

'Tis sad! 'tis sad! said the weather-gods;
For surely enough we know
That soon as a gale can find a sail
The Briton will come to woe!
And seven long days there was fog and haze
Or sun in a summer calm;
“I will tarry and try till the thick snow fly”,
Said merry and brave Sir Tom.

Alack! alack! they have beaten us sore!
The hardy skipper said:
“Have never a qualm!” cried brave Sir Tom:
“But look to the days ahead!”
We have broken our mast; our day is past!
The hardy skipper said;

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We are yet alive: it is three in five!
The cheerier answer sped.

Alack! alack! we are beaten again!
The hardy skipper cried;
The Yankees float the prettier boat,
Sir Tom with a wince replied.
Now honor you Columbia's crew,
My merry generous tars;
We have come once more from English shore,
To honor the stripes and stars.

Away! away! said the brave Sir Tom,
And crossed the billowing sea;
He carried the wile of his winning smile,
And never a cup had he.
But all of the throng that lingered long,
To see the guest depart,
Said never defeat had chance to meet
A braver and truer heart!

(FIGHTING FOR PEACE.)

By the rough edge of our nation,
Where the shore fights with the waves,
Foreigners lofty of station
Fought 'gainst the conquest of graves.
Breezes were sparring around them,
Fierce-beating sunbeams had found them,
Agents of constant aggression
Strove for increase of possession:
Seabirds the snow-clouds surviving,
'Gainst the hot tempests were striving,

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Creatures our free air would smother,
Warred in the waves with each other,
Even the pines in the distance,
Strove 'gainst each other's existence,
Even the flowerets' sweet growing
Campaigns of conquest was knowing.—
Not from this world are we learning
Lessons of love and of peace:
Nature, the quietudes spurning,
Never from warfare may cease.

When the iced rivulet hardens,
Growing too splendid to sing,
When in the trees' lofty gardens
Camp the brave blossoms of Spring,
When dimpled zephyrs are creeping
Over our waking or sleeping,
When in its cyclonic rushing
God's air God's children is crushing,
When from the harvest-sun glowing,
Life-streams and death-streams are flowing,
When, the black thunder-clouds bright'ning,
Dart the gold spears of the lightning,
All is a war, to our senses!—
Even Love's delicate thrill
Has its attacks and defences,
Either to cherish or kill.

When, the east vestibule lighting,
Swings the sun's lantern on high,
Rays with the darkness are fighting,
On the blue fields of the sky.
As through the measureless arches,
In their ne'er bivouacked marches

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Pass 'mid rich Ether's possessions
Stars in ne'er-halting processions,
In each bright mile of their courses,
Forces are struggling with forces,
Thus the safe balances keeping,
While through the universe sweeping.
Not from the stars we are learning
Lessons of peace for our souls:
Only by strifes in their turning,
Order can keep its controls.

On the rough edge of our nation,
Long did the foreigners dwell,
Waiting for heaven's ministration,
Or the redoubling of hell.
Whence came their peaceful desiring—
What their decision inspiring?—
Not from this world, or from near it,
Grows the beneficent spirit:
E'en as this war was arrested,
Earthquakes in fury protested!
Not from the world's savage teaching,
Peace has the power to arise;
You who for that are beseeching,
Look to the realms of the skies!

See there the death of confusion;
See the true order of life;
Joy on no joy claims intrusion—
Peace is not purchased with strife.
Gold is not hoarded and treasured—
Boundary-lines are unmeasured;
Never in words—but suggestion—
Rises the swift-answered question—

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Not “Who with man shall be greater?”
But “Who with man's blest Creator?”
Thence, where all love has beginning,
Thence, where all order finds birth,
Must, 'mid our strifes and our sinning,
Come all the peace of the earth.

(THE SACK OF FLOUR.)

Guilty, Judge, and I own the crime—
I slipped away with a sack of flour:
They nabbed me just in the nick of time—
I'd have had it home in half an hour.
Only, the constable on the hill,
Knew that I must have jumped the bill;
Knew as well as he could, that I
Hadn't the money with which to buy.

“Larceny”? that's the proper word;
There's never a crime but Law can name.
Only, I wonder if Law has heard
That any one but the thief's to blame?
Say: did the constable on the hill
Tell you about the closed-up mill?
Tell you of men that must beg or steal,
To give their babies and wives a meal?

Yes, I have begged—and I'll tell you how:
I walked the roads and the fields and lanes,
And asked for work with a pleading brow,
And came back empty for all my pains!

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Say: did the constable on the hill
Tell you the wheels of trade were still?
Tell you, when work was dull or dead,
The wife and the child might go unfed?

Guilty, Judge—let the law be paid;
But if you had children four or five,
As pretty as God has ever made,
And lacked the food to keep them alive,
Lacked the method but not the will,
Their cries of hunger to stop and still—
And then saw oceans of food in view—
For God's sake tell me, what would you do?

Say! if you had a wife whose heart
Had fed your own for a score of years,
And never a moment walked apart
From all of your griefs and hopes and fears,
And now in that faithful bosom had grown
A little life that was part your own,
And hunger harrowed them through and through,
For God's sake tell me, what would you do?

Dollars by thousands stacked away—
Harvests rotting in barn and shed—
Silks and ribbons and fine display—
And children crying for lack of bread!
Wealth and Famine are hand in hand,
Making the tour of a heart-sick land;
Half of the country's future weal
Crushed by the Present's selfish heel!

Guilty, Judge—and I own the crime;
Put me in prison without delay—

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Only—please work me double time,
And send my family half the pay!
And tell my loved ones, if ever they ask
That I was working my gloomy task,
Not for pleasure or money or gem—
But just for the love that I had for them.

While these recitals were “on the hooks”,
There would, of course, in the varied nooks
That different parts of a train afford,
Be certain ones of our race aboard,
Who did not care if the world be righted
Or wronged, by rhythmical lines recited
And they were dealing, one might suppose,
In some original bits of prose,
Discussions of stocks and politics,
And human nature's unnumbered tricks,
Of church and state: and a deacon old
This tale to some listening sinners told:

(FARMER STEBBINS AT THE RUMMAGE-SALE.)

Our members of the Union Church felt money's constant needs,
To hold their reg'lar services, an' voice their mingled creeds;
An' so, as every other source of earnin' had been tried,
Till all the fat was squeezed from them, with some still unsupplied,

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A sister of the church, or some enthusiastic male,
Suggested that we search our homes, an' have a “rummage-sale.”

An' so my wife spooked round the house, with steps that seldom ceased,
A-findin' things we didn't want, or thought we didn't, at least;
Until the cellar seemed a cave with Poverty struck dumb,
An' all the garret wondered if the judgment day had come.
An' e'en the other rooms was scant an' newly full of space;
But “Never mind,” she says: “we'll buy some more things in their place.”

An' so they worked an' fussed an' tugged, a busy week or more,
An' changed the sacred vestry to a small department store:
An' even Thursday-meetin'-night we had to sit an' pray
'Mongst all the various goods an' ills that set there in the way;
An' as twixt prayers my eye went 'round on many silent hunts,
It seemed like visiting in all the neighbors' homes at once.

'Twas worth a dime or two to see—though very hard to tell:—
I didn't suppose my townsmen had so many things to sell!

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Old duds that hadn't seen the light for years, was hustled out,
An' looked like they was wond'rin' what the show was all about;
An' Rip Van Winkle, when he woke with wildness in his eyes,
Could not hev carried in his face more genuine straight surprise.

An' when the day appeared at last these hard-found things to sell,
The people wildly flocked to buy, an' done their duty well:
An' hotcakes on a winter day, in maple-syrup style,
Was nothin' to the way them things went off, for quite a while.
At least, that's what my good old wife reported unto me,
Though, rummagin' for livelihood, I couldn't go an' see;

Till Saturday at eve I went, an' viewed the landscape o'er,
Includin' some addition'l things I hadn't seen before:
An' bought some articles to speed the good an' true an' right,
An' took 'em back unto my wife, who stayed at home that night;
An' laid my purchases in shape for her to feel an' see:
An' then she looked the things all through, an' then she looked at me.

“My goodness what a lot of truck they've put on you!” she said:

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“What do I want of these old shams from Mrs. Brady's bed?
Who's goin' to wear a moth-eat shawl, an' two last-winter hats—
What can I do with this old rug, half gnawed in two by rats?
An' here's a book with which the Higgins babes have been amused,
An' done some teethin' while the same they thoughtfully perused;

“An' these here laces, ribbons, gloves, an' other things to wear,
Would make asylums crazy twice, if I should take 'em there:
Them curtain-poles might do for barns, but in a home are lost—
I wouldn't keep 'em in the house for ten times what they cost.
An' this here crock'ry—ef you'd know how eatin' on it feels,
Just go an' see the folks it left, when they are at their meals.

“An' honest silver'd be ashamed of such half-plated ware,
An' any one you want to kill, can take this crippled chair;
An' here's a candle-stick—of course the Joneses will not cease
To say it's of a classic build—no doubt it came from grease;
An' this red gown—I've seen it years on Julia Doozler fade:

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Perhaps I'll wear the measly clothes cast off by that old maid!

“An' these here pants—my goodness sakes! I thought it—now I know—
Was bought new by yourself, old man, five years or less ago!
I give 'em to 'em, rather than to patch 'em where they lack—
An' now them minxes over there coaxed you to buy them back!
An' I believe,”, she says, with force an' emphasis to spare,
“They'd sold you back your house an' farm, if I'd have took 'em there!”

Then, tryin' hard to glean from off my blunder what 'twas worth,
I mused, “This rummage-craze is like most everything on earth:
It has delusions, mixed with good—it makes folks buy an' give
That wouldn't, if 'twasn't for novelty: an' helps the causes live.
But what I give the Lord henceforth, I'll give it to Him straight
An' not tramp round a hundred miles to walk through my own gate.”

There was in our varied company one
Who knew great Lincoln before the sun
Of fame had gilded his manhood-name,
And the whole path up which he came.

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(Things common now and familiar-nigh,
The world will be worshiping, bye-and-bye!)
'Twas nothing more than appropriate
This friend of the old time should relate
Some stories of one whose boyhood-strife
With fortune, in humble, toilsome life,
Had not through the earth or wave foretold
That he would a nation's ruling hold.
And telling of Doric hardships he
By fate beneficent came to see,
'Twas thought that it might not prove unmeet,
The following stanzas to repeat:

('TWIXT WAVE AND STAR.)

The river to the gulf went floating down,
The night fell fast along the shores of brown,
The lights came twinkling from a distant town,
And dipped their slender shadows in the wave;
Upon the laden deck, in humble guise,
There crouched a lad with smiling, thoughtful eyes,
A rugged face half merry and half wise,
A manner that was timid and yet brave.

Afar into the regions of the dark,
Was heard the hidden watchdog's sullen bark,
And now and then the voyager could mark
Perhaps a muffled cry of pain or joy;
And never yet had Loneliness, perchance,
Espied a pathway better to advance,
And throw her ofttime cold and dreary glance
Into the nature of a homesick boy.

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'Twixt speeding wavelets and unmoving sky,
The summer clouds went journeying free and high,
But one the boyish traveler could descry,
Was black, as if a thunder-storm were near;
There came a steamer up the wounded stream,
With brazen voice, and headlights all agleam,
And merry passengers, that did not dream
The nation's future hope was hov'ring here.

The moon rose from a forest, full and brave,
Unto the land a smile of beauty gave,
And threw her silver in the leaden wave,
But bore somewhat of sadness in her smile;
A thousand stars came marching into view,
And watched the voyager, as if they knew
Their silent prophesies would soon come true,
That were but jests, if voiced on earth the while.

As toward the river's birthplace and its grave,
The rugged flatboat cleaved the whispering wave,
What were the visions to the boy they gave?—
We do not know: his lips have never told.
Were great assemblies cheering at his word,
In sounds prophetic by his senses heard?
Or into thoughtful silence were they stirred—
His silver speech transmuted into gold?

As lights and shadows with each other grew,
As his rough shallop clove the waters through,
Did marble halls arise unto his view—
And he their most supremely-honored guest?
Along the lonely river's rippling flow,
Did messages on wings of lightning go,

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And glittering armies hurry to and fro,
And he by all the world their chief confessed?

Did star-flecked banners flash aloft his name,
Did trumpets many-voiced his rank proclaim,
Did cannon greet him with their tongues of flame?—
We do not know: the river cannot tell.
Did nations glorify his care-worn face,
And in the halls of honor give him place,
As one who tore the shackles from a race?—
The shore's long walls have kept their secret well.

Did all the world his honest shrewdness prize?
Did monuments unto his name arise,
As claiming homage from the very skies?—
The mind hath oft its memories concealed.
Did he, to whom no sorrow called in vain,
Who pitied e'en the bitterest foeman slain,
Feel now the bullet crashing through his brain?
We cannot know, till all things are revealed.

Frowned on us the storm's white face once more,
With sterner menaces than before;
(Thus—to his sorrow—a punster sinned:
“It's merely getting its second wind!”)
But one great comfort was strewn about:
We had good news from the world without!
A servant of the electric spark,
(Who modestly thus far in the dark
Had lurked) in the oratory's pause,
Came to the front in immense applause.
Genius in overalls was he:

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A company's trusted employe.
Some Morse machinery he was transferring
From office to office up the line;
And in the snow he had delved his way,
Amid the chill of that frigid day,
And a wire dug out, buzzing and purring,
And captured, with theft in his design.
(A theft of tidings was his brave scheme.)
Soon through this channel began to stream
Some scraps of news and some news of scraps
(A justifiable word, perhaps,
Since slang is ever inclined to creep
In languages, lest they go to sleep,
And words tabooed by the purist-sages,
Swarm into the dictionary's pages
And try—succeeding better or worse,
With older residents to converse,
Which put on airs—although they may
Have entered, at first, the selfsame way).
So learned we what in the outside world
Had happened, since we were last night whirled
Alive—unharmed—to a deathless grave
(Minds always, that had prophetic touch,
Have known and said that all graves were such)!
We heard that efforts prolonged and brave,
Were being employed to bring again
Our hermit-throng to the hearts of men;
We heard that the big world had progressed,
Though of our assistance dispossessed;
That people had lived and thrived the same
As ever before: and soon there came
Gay greetings from cronies up and down,

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Addressed to our “newly settled town”,
With messages both to cheer and chafe,
That hoped we were “happy as well as safe.”
They wired us of coming banquet-fare,
And hoped we would hurry and get our share;
Smart jests that were new or of long ago,
Were tickingly banded to and fro,
And though the weather was surely not,
The exhumed wire was each moment “hot.”
And when, this novelty past, the day
Grew weary again as it wore away,
An old microscopist in our band,
Drew forth from his baggage, with cautious hand,
An instrument which, as sight unbars,
Turns atoms to giants, and motes to stars.
He made us clearly to understand,
We dwelt that day in a wonderland:
His strange exhibits gave us to know
The palaced crystals of ice and snow:
How some of these children of stress and storm
Were gems of exact and dainty form;
How flowers that press—not wholly in vain—
Their fair cold cheeks to the window-pane,
Have brothers and sisters that repose
In wide-spread gardens of drifting snows;
(Not in the midst of the summer sheen
Are all of the flowers that “blush unseen”!)
We learned from him that we dwelt that day
Not in a prison of frozen clay;
Not in long jail-cells sojourning,
But one of the palaces of the King!
Yet as night gathered around us there,

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Swept through it a breath of torrid air;
And we were reminded that this storm
Of frozen rain that had locked us in,
Was the fag end of the winter's form,
And Spring was eager the field to win.
Came ominous rumbles more heavy than loud,
From many a far-off thunder-cloud;
Then sprites of the weather seemed to brood
Above and around us, in melting mood.
The storms from the valleys, hills, and plains
Were now refashioned to drenching rains;
The sky turned into an ocean dark;
Our railroad-refuge was now an ark—
Not tossing amid the floating wrack,
But stolidly standing upon its track.
'Twas “lucky” for us that we met that shock,
With road and roadbed as firm as rock!
For swiftly the snow where we were pent,
Was turned to the fourth-named element.
Came through the air, in its fiercest form,
Our curio-winter thunder-storm;
This weeping, moaning brunette of nights
Wore jewels of weird electric lights,
That dug themselves from the regions high—
Great diamond-fields of the boundless sky;
The plateaux of snow that had amassed
Were turned to rivers swift sweeping past;
Which need not stop, we were made to know,
But leaped a precipice miles below,
Invaded a gorge, and, fiercely free,
Set off for home, the unbounded sea
('Twas feared, if our moorings proved not strong,
We might have offers to go along).

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And they were lighted along their path,
With watchfires kindled by Nature's wrath.
In hot pursuit of the flying flame,
Now cannon-peals of the thunder came;
And in the midst of the crash of sound,
Were screams from women clustering round,
And even men, with their teeth close-set,
Were shivering at what might come yet,
And nerves were shaken that would not yield
If tested upon the battle-field.
The old sea-captain, astir once more,
Seemed happier than all day before;
And certain tidings his manner lent,
That now he was in his element.
Our hardihood through the storm he steered;
He comforted those who weakly feared;
He sang this song—which a contrast bore
To his grim story some hours before:

(SONG OF DANGER.)

Trust in Him, trust in Him, you who are dreading pain:
God has his roads through troubles, with none of them built in vain;
Never a hope of comfort, but brings us a future gain,
Never a living creature but rises from its fall:
Trust in the Ruler of All.

Trust in Him, trust in Him—you who are dreading to go
Out in the world of mystery, where the dark waters flow;

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All will appear so simple, you'll wonder you did not know!
Nothing within our universe our universe need appal:
Trust the Protector of All.

Trust in Him, trust in Him—you who are heavy of heart
Lest the dear ones you are loving may feel bereavement's smart:
Souls that adore each other not long are kept apart.
Wherever in the Universe, Love can hear Love's call:
Trust in the Lover of All.

Trust in Him, trust in Him, whether on land or sea,
Whether on mountain or river, always the same is He:
Sorrows He will not give us that joy from us cannot free;
Thinner betwixt the two worlds grows ever the cloud-built wall:
He is the Helper of All.

The morning broke with a cloudless sun,
And all was merry to our glad sight:
The mountains of drifted snow had gone
Enough to release us from our plight.
There came two rescuing engines near:
The storm was over—the track was clear!

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AFTER-WORDS.

Why Prefaces are Skipped.

Often, the “prefaces” and “forewords” are well enough written, but not so often read as they might be, if more interesting. The reason that they do not immediately engage the attention of the reader is, perhaps, that interest in the subject of the book has not yet been sufficiently aroused in his mind.

When the doing of a thing has been resolved upon, there are two ways of accomplishing it: to explain and then do it, or to do and then explain it. The latter seems to me generally the better of the two: and is adopted in this case.

A few remarks explanatory of preceding lines, may not be unacceptable to the reader.

Title and Plan of Book.

In the course of a number of weeks' travel each year up and down the country, in the intervals of other work, lecturing, reading, “orating,” etc., I have several times been “drifted in” on trains; and have in such cases seen some very instructive and diverting phases of human nature. The environment of railroad-life has a character of its own, full of interest: for The World Away from Home is in many respects different from what it is within the precincts of its local bounds. Especially is this the case under abnormal conditions, as of a train being “stalled” for a few hours, or, as sometimes occurs, for days at a time.

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Church-Bells Near Stations.

On page 10 occurs the line

“That bell was calling the world to prayer.”

Those who in one of the short intervals between trips at some small village, have heard during the sudden stillness a church-bell in the town calling people to prayer, will understand these lines. It rouses such a new train of thought—so entirely different from what they have probably just been entertaining! and has made more than one traveler wish he had time to alight and attend the simple and perhaps elevating service.

On this particular occasion the function is not to be understood as having been a Sunday evening one: but presumably, one of the week-day evening prayer-meetings.

Stripes on Conductors' Arms.

Line 4 on page 13 is explained by the fact, known to some, perhaps unknown to more, that certain railroad-companies bestow golden stripes on the coat-sleeve of conductors, one for every five years of continuous service. Some of these faithful employes are justly proud of the display.

Automobiles—Pro and and Con.

On page 14 commences a trio of poems involving that great vehicular feature of travel—the automobile. This machine certainly marks a new era in the world's life and progress, and one that must produce a vast difference in the condition of things—both for weal and for woe. It will make even war a vastly different affair: for the heavy cannon and the machine-guns will now be hurried from place to place, not by the aid of horses, but by steam, gasoline, or electricity.

The Biblical prophecy that the swift chariots shall “rage in the streets”, is now literally fulfilled, without the help of railroad-trains. Mother Shipton's statement that “Carriages without horses shall go, and accidents fill the

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world with woe,” is now most literally and vividly confirmed by the “horseless wagon.”

In the three automobile-poems here introduced, both phases of the subject—the pleasant and the unpleasant— are brought to the fore. There are those who know how to make of this most useful machine a blessing, and, naturally, those who can turn it into a curse—both to themselves and others.

The Evolution of Grain-Gathering.

On page 24, three phases of harvesting are depicted. That connected with the sickle, maybe within the memory of some; and the crooked little saw-toothed blade, no doubt used yet, in some isolated cases. The second phase was the superannuated but often-used “cradle”—a scythe with several long tapering fingers to catch the grainstalks as they fell. The implement was named, no doubt, from the rocking, cradle-like motion of harvesters, as they went swinging and crashing through the standing grain—often several of them together, or, rather, in slightly diverging Indian file.

The third and latest method of harvesting grain with machiner, is too familiar to the present generation, to need description here.

College Hazing.

On page 33 some college reminiscences are fused into a story—founded, not only “upon fact”, but upon any amount of facts. Those who have had the joyful and joyless experiences of a college course, would not trade its memories for a good large fortune.

Dear, delightful old college days!—in which some of the most godly of students did some of the most ungodly of things. I know more than one exemplary and irreproachable clergyman, who, when a theological student, would go a long way to despoil a melon-patch or lighten the clustering burdens of a grape-vineyard, or transport something incongruous to places inconsistent with conventional ideas of order. These “stunts”, as they might

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be called now, were done with a great big boyish innocence that really wished to harm nobody, but enjoyed the ludicrous discomposure of those who were thus “hazed”, with a keenness not to be resisted.

Hazing, like every thing else, can be overdone, and fool-done: and it is refreshing to see the hazer hazed.

The Lower Berth.

Page 41 will bring to many railroad-travellers the pleasure of lying in the lower berth of a sleeping-car, and with the window-curtain raised, sinking gradually to sleep amid the glories of a moonlit landscape, or a star-flecked sky with all its diversified grandeurs.

Whoever has not studied at least the spectacular parts of astronomy, has thus far missed one of the most accessible and fascinating of pleasures. Those grand orbs— older than history, and yet ever new—have in them a joy for their students and followers, that never grows less. Especially are the constellation of Orion, and the regions round about it, full of the most picturesque as well as historical interest.

The Ancient Mariners.

The sea-captain mentioned on page 48, who seems to have been taking a land-cruise, is of a not unusual type: full of helpfulness in any unexpected situation. He can be wonderfully fierce and inexorable when such is the need, and as tender as a woman when the humane part of his nature is roused. Perhaps some of my readers can remember, as can I, an old captain who could swear like a whole crew of pirates in a storm, and could lead devotional exercises on Sunday in the cabin with wonderful sweetness and propriety.

Church-Snobbishness.

The disinclination of some church people to admitting humble and ill-dressed people to their seasons of worship, is alluded-to on page 84. Of course they do not know that they are sometimes thus given an opportunity

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of “entertaining angels unaware”: but such is often the case. No doubt some of the members of that same aristocratic congregation lived to listen with eagerness to the little prima donna, and to covet her acquaintance.

A Legacy to Stars.

On page 98, is a reference to Professor Watson, once astronomer of the Michigan State University at Ann Arbor. Having discovered twentytwo asteroids, or “minor planets”, he was anxious to have their movements traced, from year to year, and recorded in the annals of astronomy. For this purpose, he left at his death a sum of money in keeping of the National Academy of Sciences, to bear the expenses of the work.

Ultra-Ancient Cities.

On page 99, is a mention of mound-builders a race of whom there is not so much as a scrap of history, but whose existence is as sure as ours. Their mounds were often in the shape of the octagon, the square, the circle, and other exact mathematical figures; such as the Indian never could have made. Their work has been traced from the regions of our Northern lakes, all the way through what is now United States, into Mexico and Central America.

All about the city of Chicago have been discovered the traces of mounds in abundance: showing that a great city existed there long before the first settlement of the present one—or any city that now exists on this continent.

All the way down the Mississippi River, and in the lower valley of the Missouri, were scores and hundreds of cities and villages erected by the mound-builders.

Not only Chicago, but St. Louis, is evidently built upon the site of a mound-city. Mounds were found there and in the immediate vicinity, and numbered by the hundred. Between St. Louis and Alton was the great mound of Cahokia, as it was called—stated by moundologists to be the monarch of everything they have found in the whole

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country. It has now been swept away by modern improvements; but when it was first discovered, “it rose up,” says a competent authority, “in the form of a parallelogram with sides at the base, respectively 500 and 700 feet in length, to the height of 90 feet. On the southwest there was a terrace 160 feet by 300 feet, which was reached by a graded way, and the summit was truncated, affording a platform 200 by 450 feet. From this rose a small conical mound about ten feet high, which, upon examination, yielded human bones, funeral-vases, and various implements of stone.”

No doubt that here was one of the greatest mound-builders' temples on this continent: maybe it was the largest. Perhaps pilgrims came from all over the country, as Mohammedans go to Mecca.

There was for some years a great mound in the very streets of St. Louis, which it was necessary to remove, in the interests of modern traffic. Many relics were found in it.

The most impressive fact about these mounds is, that while utensils, ornaments, pipes, water-jugs, statuettes, vases, drinking-cups, kettles, pottery, spear- and arrow-heads, chisels, axes, daggers, etc., etc., have been discovered in plenty, there has not been found a single record or inscription that has the least claim to authenticity. When appealed-to for their history, the mounds are not only deaf, but dumb.

It will be understood and believed that our Professor of Moundology had a hard time of it to arouse interest.

True Meaning of Peace.

On page 119 will be found the theory that peace is not stagnation, but the equable and comfortable balancing of forces that bear against each other. The idea of this poem was suggested to the author at Portsmouth, N. H., when ambassadors from Russia and Japan were conducting a treaty of peace. The line

“Earthquakes in fury protested”

is in allusion to the fact that at about the time the treaty

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was concluded, a perceptible shock of earthquake ran up and down the Maine and New Hampshire coasts.

Statesmen That Were Poor When Boys.

The simple and poverty-stricken boyhood days of many of our American statesmen, as contrasted with the splendor of their subsequent careers, must always form a most interesting study. Several of our national presidents have been born in log cabins: but the histories of none of them are more impressive than that of Abraham Lincoln. The story of his sailing down the Mississippi River, on a rude flatboat, carrying produce to New Orleans, will always be a most interesting one. If a “straw vote” could have been taken as to who in that whole stretch of miles was most likely to some time be the chief magistrate of the nation, young Lincoln would of course not have been even upon the list. Probably some of the brilliant young men on board the steamer passing him, might have received a number of votes: but Lincoln—not one! (See page 129.)

Sudden Storms.

The sudden appearance of a “blizzard” in this country— even in one of the Spring months—and its as-sudden disappearance, are not unusual occurrences. The greatest snow-storm that America experienced for two decades, came toward the middle of a March, did all sorts of harm during the few hours it lasted—and disappeared, leaving the brightest of Spring weather to follow it. The metamorphose of our particular snowbanks into water may be rather sudden, but is not impossible or even improbable. Thunder-storms in winter frequently occur, and add evidence to the fact that not only man, but everything in nature, is “fearfully and wonderfully made”—and often as suddenly unmade. (See page 133.)

Snow-Wonders.

On page 133 a reference is made to the wonderful splendors that surround us when Snow is King. The

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literature of this white, cold covering that nature throws upon the earth is extensive, and would fill volumes.

Snowflakes are not all alike: there have been hundreds —almost thousands of different shapes and forms depicted. They come in prisms, in tiny pyramids, in fern-leaves, in rosettes, stars, stars within stars, and filagree open-work.

The mathematical part of the “proposition” is well worthy to arouse a thrill of wonder. “Snow nature” says a competent authority, “is bound by a law of sixes. The sides of every prism and pyramid meet at one angle— that of sixty degrees, or its multiples; every vein upon those little fern-leaves joins its stem at that one angle, or its products. The stars are all six-rayed or rarely twelve; the centres all hexagonal.

“Climb Chimborazo, go to the Pole, or even make your mimic snow-storm for yourself inside a chemist's bottle —never will you find a finished snow-star or ice-star with five rays or with seven, or with that law of the angles broken. The rays themselves are broken, but never that creative law. Bruised, shattered, huddled together, the snowflakes reach us: but through all bruise and shatter, that law of sixes lies plain upon them. By that they are born and live and die.”

The Captain's Song.

It will be noticed that the sea-captain's song on page 135, was delivered in somewhat more correct language, than was his story, told on a preceding page. This peculiarity is quite noticeable in other cases: when they learn the words and recite or sing them, they are much more likely to have them correct.

Dialect is often out-dialected. Writers seem to think that if any one speaks at all ungrammatically, or with words clipped of final consonants, he must do so in every case. But this is not true: part of one's speech may be in dialect, and the other part perfectly proper.