But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his struggling breath of pain,

And she raised the cooling water to his parching lips again.

11. Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled:

Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child?

All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied;

With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!" murmured he, and died!

12. "A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee forth,

From some gentle sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely in the North!"

Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him with her dead,

And turned to soothe the living, and bind the wounds which bled.

13. Sink, oh Night, among thy mountains! Let thy cool gray shadows fall.

Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all !

Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled,

In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.

14. But the noble Mexic women still their holy task pursued,

Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and faint and lacking food.

Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender care they hung,

And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange and Northern tongue.

15. Not wholly lost, oh Father! is this evil world of ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers;

From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send
their prayer,

And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in
JOHN G. WHITTIER.

our air.

THE snow had begun in the gloaming,

THE

Tand busily all the night,

Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

2. Every pine, and fir, and hemlock,
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree

Was ridged inch-deep with pearl.

3. From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came chanticleer's muffled crow;

The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down,
And still fluttered down the snow.

4. I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,

And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

5. I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;

How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

6. Up spoke our own little Mabel,

Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?"
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.

7. Again I looked at the snow-fall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.

8. I remembered the gradual patience

That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe.

9. And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!"

10. Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.

claring, commanding, or prohibiting something; a positive law.

Är'ehives, public records, or

the place in which public records are kept.

De-ferred', put off; delayed. Fôr'feit, a fine; a penalty; that which is or may be lost by crime, offence, or n glect of duty.

OW far, O Catiline, wilt thou abuse our patience? How long shalt thou baffle justice in thy mad career? To what extreme wilt thou carry thy audacity? Art thou nothing daunted by the assembling of the Senate in this fortified place, nothing by the averted looks of all here present? Seest thou not that all thy plots are exposed? that thy wretched conspiracy is laid bare to the knowledge of every senator? What is there that thou didst last night,-what the night before,— where is it that thou wast,-who was there that thou summonedst to meet thee,-what design against the peace of the republic was adopted by thee, with which thou thinkest that any one of us was unacquainted?

2. Oh, the times! Oh, the morals of the times! The Senate understand all this. The Consul sees it. And yet the traitor lives. Lives? Ay, truly, and dares to confront us here in council, and to mark out each man of us for slaughter. Long since, O Catiline, ought the Consul to have ordered thee to execution, and brought upon thy own head the destruction thou hast been plotting against others.

3. But think not, because we are forbearing, that we are powerless. We have a statute-though it rests among our archives like a sword in the scabbard-a statute which makes thy life the forfeit of thy crimes; and, should I order thee to be instantly seized and put to death, I do not doubt that all good men would say that the punishment, instead of being too cruel, had been only too long deferred.

4. But, for sufficient reasons, I will a while postpone the blow. While there is one man who ventures to defend thee, live! But thou shalt live so beset, so hemmed in, so watched by the vigilant guards I have placed around thee, that thou shalt not stir a foot against the republic without my knowledge.

5. Proceed, plot, conspire, as thou wilt; there is nothing thou canst contrive, propose, attempt, which I shall not be promptly made aware of. The darkness of night shall not cover thy treason; the walls of privacy shall not stifle its voice. Thou shalt find that, in providing for the preservation of the republic, I am even more active than thou in plotting its ruin.