And quickens truth. It is the breath of life
Within the nostrils of created things.
If love could fail, the universal flow

Of order through ten million, million worlds
Would cease. And for the deep enduring calm
Of steadfastness and truth would chaos come.
All things would die; perish to nothingness;
Resolve to elemental forces from which love,
Creative love hath formed them. Then
Would silence be and emptiness and void.
M. G. MCCLELLAND.

-New Jerusalem Magazine, August, 1888.

HER COMPANY.

WHEN ma died I wuz only jest
Fourteen, but older than the rest.
'Twuz new-year day she went away
An' left an achin' in my breast.
It seemed so cheerless like to me
Without my mother's company.

Says pa, "They's no one I kin get
Kin do as well as you, Janet."
So school an' fun fer me wuz done,
An' still I managed not to fret.

The young ones thrived, and as fer me,
I'd Jim and work fer company.

Poor Jim wuz lame, an' that wuz why
I always had him settin' by.
His lovin' ways made glad the days,
Till all at once he had to die.

The neighbors they wuz glad fer me-
But how I missed his company!

I worked along; the children dear,
They married off, from year to year.
An' one cold night, at candle-light,
Says pa, "It's purty lonesome here,
An' new-year you shall have," says he,
A nice, new ma fer company!"

He laughed an' set an' talked awhile;
But as fer me, I couldn't smile.
An' all night long my tears run down
As I lay rasslin' with my trial.
I wisht that I, like Jim, could be
In my dead mother's company.

It's odd how things turns out; next day
In walked our neighbor, Zenas Gray.
My eyes wuz red, an' Zenas said:
"Janet, ben cryin'? What's to pay?"
“Oh, nothin' much," says I. Says he,
I reckon you need company."

An' after that he ust to come
An' cheer me up if I was glum.
An' when he went I'd feel content,
An' work an' sing, or set an' hum.
The empty house, it seemed to me,
Wuz full of his good company.

An' every thought of ma an' Jim
Would somehow make me think of him.
It brought relief to bygone grief
An' filled my heart up to the brim,
Especial when he offered me
Himself for stiddy company.

An' now, with hope in by-an'-by,

As new-year time is drawin' nigh,
The tears I shed fer them that's dead
Ain't sech as when I ust to cry.

I only trust that they kin see

How I enjoy my company.

MRS. GEORGE Archibald.

-Judge, January 5, 1889.

THE RIVALS, AT FORTRESS MONROE.
OH, what shall I do with them both?
What a puzzle it is to decide,
Since I know that I really am loath
To send either away from my side!
If one were but ugly or small,

That one I would gladly resign;

But they both are so handsome and tall,
And the buttons of both - how they shine!

I met Tom at West Point in June,

The night of the graduates' ball.

Then there was Crow's Nest and the moon-
How well I remember it all!

We walked through those shadowy lands
As if in a dream or a spell;
And here he is, home from the plains,
Where, they say, he has done very well.

He has fought in an Indian fight,

And received a slight scratch on his hand; He has been "on a trail" day and night; He has grown very earnest and tanned. He doesn't like men of the sea,

Though the squadron is frequently here; And he's asking such questions of me! And he lives in a casemate-how queer!

But at Newport that very same year
I met Jack on the Richmond, and then

I forgot Tom, a little, I fear.
Brass buttons were gleaming again,

Then answered him the Lord of Heaven

"Son, how can this thing be? Are not My saints on earth? and they Had surely succored thee."

"Thy saints, O Lord," the beggar said "Live holy lives of prayer;

How shall they know of such as we! We perish unaware.

"They strive to save our wicked souls, And fit them for the sky;

Meanwhile, not having bread to eat, (Forgive!) our bodies die."

Then the Lord God spake out of Heaven In wrath and angry pain:

"O men, for whom my Son hath died, My Son hath lived in vain!"

'Twas very quaint, 'twas very strange,
Extremely strange, you must allow.
Dear me! how modes and customs change!
It could not happen now.

And as for him, that foolish lad,
He'd hardly close an eye,
And look so woe-begone and sad,
He'd make his mother cry.

"He goes," she'd say, "from bad to worse! My boy so blithe and brave,

Last night I found him writing verse

About a lonely grave!"

And lo! next day her nerves he'd shock
With laugh, and song, and caper;
And there! - she'd find a golden lock
Wrapped up in tissue paper.

Our boys are wiser now. FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE

The Woman's World.

ARTHUR SYMONS.

-Good Words.

IN BOHEMIA.

I CAME between the glad green hills,
Whereon the summer sunshine lay,
And all the world was young that day,
As when the Spring's soft laughter thrills
The pulses of the waking May:
You were alive; yet scarce I knew
The world was glad, because of you.

I came between the sad green hills,
Whereon the summer twilight lay,
And all the world was old that day,
And hoary age forgets the thrills

That woke the pulse of the May:
And you were dead - how well I knew
The world was sad because of you.
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON
-Scribner's Magazine, January, 1889.

A LYRIC.

IF any one can tell you
How my song is wrought
And my melodies are caught,

I will give, not sell you,
The secret, if there be one
(For I could never see one),
How my songs are wrought.
Like the blowing of the wind,
Or the flowing of the stream,
Is the music in my mind,

And the voice in my dream,—
Where many things appear,
The dimple, the tear,

I think, "A Brief Historic Glance
At Russia, Germany and France."
A glance, but to my best belief
'Twas almost anything but brief-
A wide survey, in which the earth
Was seen before mankind had birth;
Strange monsters basked them in the sun,
Behemoth, armored glyptodon,
And in the dawn's unpracticed ray
The transient dodo winged its way;
Then, by degrees, through slit and slough,
We reached Berlin- I don't know how.
The good professor's monotone
Had turned me into senseless stone
Instanter, but that near me sat
Hypatia in her new spring hat,
Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom
Lighted the heavy-curtained room.
Hypatia-ah, what lovely things
Are fashioned out of eighteen springs-
At first, in sums of this amount,
The eighteen winters do not count.
Just as my eyes were growing dim
With heaviness, I saw that slim,
Erect, elastic figure there,
Like a pond-lily taking air.

She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat,
So altogether crisp and sweet,

I quite forgot what Bismarck said,

And why the Emperor shook his head,
And how it was Von Moltke's frown
Cost France another frontier town.
The only facts I took away

From the Professor's theme that day
Were these: a forehead broad and low,
Such as the antique sculptures show;
A chin to Greek perfection true;
Eyes of Astarté's tender blue;
A high complexion without fleck
Or flaw, and curls about her neck.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
-Harper's Magazine, December, 1888.

MARTIN. In a letter to a friend Mr. Martin says: "During an autumn walk in South Wales, I no、 ticed a leafless thorn in a hedge by the roadside made gay with the berries of the briony, and I composed the little song during my walk. I wrote 'Apple Blossoms" with perhaps greater rapidity than any poem of mine. I was staying at a farm-house in Herefordshire in the spring, surrounded with apple-orchards. My hostess told me that in the previous spring her daughter had been married, and she described the freedom with which they used apple blossoms for the decoration and adornment of the bride and the bridesmaids the church and the wedding-table. I was greatly pleased, and thought it most fitting and proper in an apple county like Herefordshire. The next morning when I entered the breakfast room, I found the table decorated with apple blossoms, a large old-fashioned China punch-bowl standing in the centre piled up with the most delicious blossoms. The sun was shining into the room, the orchard, ablaze with color, could be seen in the distance; the subtle sweet odor surrounded me. I took a sheet of paper, and during my pleasant meal wrote the little poem as you find it, and my breakfast and it were finished together."

O'REILLY. Many of the "Songs of the Southern Seas," were republished in " 'Songs, Legends and Ballads."

ABBEY. The poems of Henry Abbey bear copyright 1866, 1869, 1872, 1879, 1880 and 1885. "Faith's Vista" is from a recent number of the American Magazine.

years of age, but both were inferior to the verses of Chatterton at eleven.

BLAKE. From a lack of early discipline to some extent may be ascribed the premature development of the marvelous imaginative faculty of Blake his somewhat powerful self-assertive spirit-and his early dalliance with the muses; for he was scarcely out of the years of infancy before he began to write verse. A Song" is one of the best lyrics of its kind in the English language. A. S.

POE. For airiness, brightness, and suggestiveness, we have only a very few lyrics like "A Song" by William Blake; but it is remarkable that one of those few was also produced by another ous boy" at about the same age.

44 marvel

A. S.

COOLBRITH. From The Century Magazine, December, 1885.

LAIGHTON. From The Atlantic Monthly, February,

1879.

BURROUGHS. "Waiting" is the only poem by John Burroughs in print. It was written in 1862, and printed in the old Knickerbocker Magazine during the brief revival under the management of a Mr. Cornwallis. The poem seems to have attracted no attention until Whittier put it in his collection of Songs of Three Centuries," since which time it has been included in many collections published in this country and in England.

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LATHROP. The authorship of A Woman's Answer to a Man's Question" is often attributed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and also to Adelaide Proctor. To a correspondent the author says: "I am surprised at the interest in my little poem written originally as a pat amusement to a real valentine, written to a real girl friend, by a real bachelor. All the parties are still alive, and that the poem is mine is beyond a chance of doubt. It was not written for publication, and it did not see the light for several years after its writing. It was first published in the Washington, Arkansas, Post, my brother, Colonel James Torrans, then being owner and editor of the paper. From that time it has often gone through the papers, rarely with proper credit. The title under which I published it was: A Woman's Answer to a Man's Question," not "A Woman's Question."

BRINE. "Somebody's Mother" was conceived while the author was riding on a Brooklyn streetcar one very snowy day, some few years ago, when she saw an old and poor woman at a street crossing. The woman was afraid to stir owing to the ice and the carts and crowd. A number of boys passing at the time laughed at her, and went on without offering to assist her. It was first published

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in Harper's Weekly, and has been since copied, by actual count of each appearance, over eight hundred times. Gus Williams, the actor, recited it during his presentation of “ The German Senator." It met with the usual fate of popular poems, and was claimed by several authors.

CRAWFORD. The song, "The Drunkard's Raggit Wean," is not a great poetical effort by any means, but it secured a favor with the public, which more elaborate works of art seldom achieve. It is curious to know that the song was composed inside a city U. P. Church one Sunday afternoon, in the September of 1855. It was certainly a daring act of the poet-this sacrifice of a Sunday sermon at the shrine of Poesy; but the words of the sermon very probably fell still-born from the pulpit, while the song, winged with music, has, for a quarter of a century, inculcated lessons of morality in thousands of human hearts, in view of which, the Recording Angel very probably has long since cancelled the poet's neglect of the parson's sermon, by a conclusive per contra of — Fully Paid! A. C. M.

BANKS. It was at Harrogate, over the breakfast table, that Mr. Banks wrote his celebrated poem, "What I Live For." It went into the Family Herald first, then into his next volume, Peals from the Belfry" (1853), and since has gone the world over. Dr. Guthrie, Dr. Raleigh, and others have tagged sermons and speeches with a stanza from it, the Chevalier de Chatelain published a French translation, and The Panama Star and Herald adopted the three concluding lines as its motto. E. B.

CHESTER. The Tapestry Weavers" was originally published in The Century Magazine. It has been set to music by Rev. T. B. Stephenson of London, England.