Till the sudden shout of battle thundered upward from the farms, And they dropped their idle glasses, in a sudden rush to arms. Then together up the highlands surely, swiftly swept the lines, And the clang of war above them swelled with loud and louder signs, Till the loyal peaks of Lookout in the tempest seemed to throb, And the star-flag of our country soared in smoke o'er Orchard Knob. Day and night and day returning, ceaseless shock and ceaseless change, Still the furious mountain conflict burst and burned along the range; While with battle's cloud of sulphur mingled heaven's mist of rain, Till the ascending squadron vanished from the gazers on the plain. From the boats upon the river, from the tents upon the shore, From the roofs of yonder city, anxious eyes the clouds explore; But no rift amid the darkness shows them fathers, brothers, sons, Where they trace the viewless struggle by the echo of the guns. Upward! charge for God and country! up! aha, they rush, they rise, Till the faithful meet the faithless in the never-clouded skies, And the heaven is wild with shouting; fiery shot and bayonet keen They have conquered! God's own legions; well their foes might be dismayed, Standing in the mountain temple, 'gainst the terrors of His aid. And the clouds might fitly echo paan loud and parting gun, When, from upper light and glory, sank the traitor host undone They have conquered! Through the region where our brothers plucked the palm Rings the noise with which they won it with the sweetness of a psalm; And our wounded sick and dying hear it in their crowded wards, And they whisper, "Heaven is with us! lo, our battle is the Lord's!" And our famished captive heroes, locked in Richmond's prison-hells, List those guns of cloudland booming, glad as freedom's morning bells, Lift their haggard eyes, and, panting, with their cheeks against the bars, Feel God's breath of hope and see it playing with the Stripes and Stars. Tories safe in serpent treason startle as those airy cheers And that wild, ethereal war-drum falls like doom upon their ears; And that rush of cloud-borne armies rolling back a nation's shame Frights them with its sound of judgment, and the flash of angry flame. Widows weeping by their firesides, loyal sires despondent grown, Smile to hear their country's triumph from the gate of heaven blown; And the patriots' children wonder in their simple hearts to know In the land above the thunder our embattled champions go. O CASSY. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. NE morning, when the hands were mustered for the field, Tom noticed, with surprise, a new-comer among them, whose appearance excited his attention. It was a woman, tall and slenderly formed, with remarkably delicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and respectable garments. Where she came from, or who she was, Tom did not know. The first he did know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud in the dim gray of the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known, for there was much looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet apparent exultation among the miserable, ragged, half-starved creatures by whom she was surrounded. "Got to come to it at last; glad of it! said one. "Ha! he he!" said another; "you'll know how good it is, Missie!" "We'll see her work!" "Wonder if she'll get a cutting up, at night, like the rest of us!" "I'd be glad to see her down for a flogging, I'll be bound!" said another. The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same expression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing. Tom had always lived among refined and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively, from her air and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or why she could be fallen to those degrading circumstances he could not tell. The woman neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the field, she kept close to his side. In the course of the day Tom was working near the mulatto woman who had been bought in the same lot with himself. She was evidently in a condition of great suffering, and Tom often heard her praying, as she wavered and trembled, and seemed about to fall down. Tom silently, as he came near to her, transferred several handfuls of cotton from his own sack to hers. "Oh, don't, don't!" said the woman, looking surprised; "it'll get you into trouble." Just then Sambo came up. He seemed to have a special spite against this woman; and, flourishing his whip, said, in brutal, guttural tones, "What dis yer, Luce,-foolin'?" and, with the word, kicking the woman with his heavy cowhide shoe, he struck Tom across the face with his whip. Tom silently resumed his task; but the woman, before at the last point of exhaustion, fainted. "I'll bring her to!" said the driver, with a brutal grin. "I'll give her something better than camphire!" and taking a pin from his coat-sleeve he buried it to the head in her flesh. The woman groaned, and half rose. "Get up, you beast, and work, will yer, or I'll show yer a trick more!" The woman seemed stimulated, for a few moments, to an unnatural strength, and worked with desperate eagerness. "See that you keep to dat ar," said the man, "or yer'll wish yer's dead to-night, I reckin!" At the risk of all that he might suffer, Tom came forward again, and put all the cotton in his sack into the woman's. "Oh, you mustn't! you donno what they'll do to ye!" said the woman. "I can bar it!" said Tom, “better'n you," and he was at his place again. It passed in a moment. Suddenly the stranger woman, who had in the course of her work come near to Tom, said: "You know nothing about this place, or you wouldn't have done that. When you've been here a month, you'll be done helping anybody; you'll find it hard enough to take care of your own skin!" "The Lord forbid, Missis!" said Tom, using instinctively to his field companion the respectful form proper to the high-bred with whom he had lived. The Lord never visits these parts," said the woman, bitterly, as she went nimbly forward with her work; and again the scornful smile curled her lips. But the action of the woman had been seen by the driver across the field; and, flourishing his whip, he came up to her. "What! what!" he said to the woman, with an air of triumph, "you a-foolin'? Go along! yer under me now-mind yourself, or yer'll cotch it!" A glance like sheet-lightning suddenly flashed from those black eyes; and, facing about, with quivering lip and dilated nostrils, she drew herself up, and fixed a glance, blazing with scorn and rage, on the driver. "Dog!" she said, "touch me, if you dare! I've power enough yet to have you torn by the dogs, burnt alive, cut to inches! I've only to say the word!" "What de devil you here for, den?" said the man, evidently cowed, and sullenly retreating a step or two. "Didn't mean no harm, Missie Cassy." 66 Keep your distance, then!" said the woman. And, in truth, the man seemed greatly inclined to attend to something at the other end of the field, and started off in quick time. A SPOOL OF THREAD. SOPHIE E. EASTMAN. [The last battle of the war was at Brazos, Tex., May 13th, 1865, resulting in the surrender of the Texan army.] WELL, yes, I've lived in Texas, since the spring of '61; WELL And I'll relate the story, though I fear, sir, when 'tis done, "Twill be little worth your hearing, it was such a simple thing, Unheralded in rondeaus that the grander poets sing. There had come a guest unbidden, at the opening of the year, They had notified the General that he must yield to fate, Right royal was his purpose, but the foe divined his plan, |