HA

THE FIRE BRIGADE.

ARK! high o'er the rattle and clamor and clatter Of traffic-filled streets, do you hear that loud noise?

And pushing and rushing to see what's the matter, Like herds of wild cattle, go pell mell the boys.

There's a fire in the city! the engines are coming! The bold bells are clanging, "Make way in the street!"

The wheels of the hose-cart are spinning and humming

In time to the music of galloping feet.

Make way there! make way there! the horses are flying,

The sparks from their swift hoofs shoot higher

and higher,

The crowds are increasing-the gamins are crying: "Hooray, boys!" "Hooray, boys!" "Come on to the fire!"

With clanging and banging and clatter and rattle, The long ladders follow the engine and hose.

The men are all ready to dash into battle;

But will they come out again? God only knows,

At windows and doorways crowd questioning faces; There's something about it that quickens one's breath.

How proudly the brave fellows sit in their places— And speed to the conflict that may be their death.

Still faster and faster and faster and faster

The grand horses thunder and leap on their way. The red foe is yonder and may prove the master; Turn out there, bold traffic-turn out there,

I say!

For once the loud truckman knows oaths will not

matter,

And reins in his horses and yields to his fate. The engines are coming! let pleasure crowds scatter, Let street car and truckman and mail wagon wait.

They speed like a comet-they pass in a minute,
The boys follow on like a tail to a kite;

The commonplace street has but traffic now in it,

The great fire engines have swept out of sight.

IN

PROGRESS.

N its giving and its getting, in its smiling and its fretting,

In its peaceful years of toiling and its awful days

of war,

Ever on the world is moving and all human life is proving

It is reaching toward the purpose that the great

God meant it for.

Through its laughing and its weeping, through its losing and its keeping,

Through its follies and its labors, weaving in and out of sight

To the end from the beginning, through all virtue and all sinning

Reeled from God's great spool of Progress, runs

the golden thread of Right.

All the darkness and the errors, all the sorrows and the terrors

Time has painted in the background on the

canvas of the World,

All the beauty of life's story he will do in tones of

glory

When these final blots of shadows from his

brushes have been hurled.

B

THE TIDES.

E careful what rubbish you toss in the tide. On outgoing billows it drifts from your sight, But back on the incoming waves it may ride

And land at your threshold again before night. Be careful what rubbish you toss in the tide.

Be careful what follies you toss in life's sea.

On bright dancing billows they drift far away, But back on the Nemesis tides they may be

Thrown down at your threshold unwelcome day. Be careful what follies you toss in youth's sea.

THAT DAY.

HEART of mine, through all those perfect

days,

Whether of white Decembers or green Mays,
There runs a dark thought like a creeping snake,
Or like a black thread which by some mistake
Life has strung through the pearls of happy years,
A thought which borders all my joy with tears.

Some day, some day, or you, or I, alone,
Must look upon the scenes we two have known,
Must tread the selfsame paths we two have trod,
And cry in vain to one who is with God,

To lean down from the Silent Realms and say:
"I love you" in the old familiar way.

Some day-and each day, beauteous though it be,
Brings closer that dread hour for you or me.
Fleet-footed joy, who hurries time along,
Is yet a secret foe who does us wrong;
Speeding us gayly, though he well doth know
Of yonder pathway where but one may go.

Ay, one will go. To go is sweet, I wis-
Yet God must needs invent some special bliss
To make his Paradise seem very dear