Reaches his side, and whispers low, "God's promises are sure;

For every grievous wound, my son, He sends a ready cure."

The father clasps her hand in his, and quickly turns aside,

The heaving chest, the rising sigh, the coming tear, to hide;

I'se here, papa; I isn't lost!" and on his Folds to his heart those loving ones, and kisfather's knee ses o'er and o'er

He lays his sunny head to rest, that baby- That noble wife whose faithful heart he little boy of three.

"And if we get too poor to live," says little

Rose," you know

There is a better place, papa, a heaven where we can go.

knew before.

May God forgive me! What is wealth to these more precious things,

Whose rich affection round my heart a ceaseless odor flings?

"And God will come and take us there, dear I think He knew my sordid soul was getting father, if we pray,

proud and cold,

We need'nt fear the road, papa, He surely And thus to save me, gave me these, and took

priceless love remain,

Totters across the parlor floor, by aid of I am not poor while these bright links of kindly hands, Counting in every little face, her life's declin- And, Heaven helping, never

more shall

ing sands;

blindness hide the chain."

TRUTH.

T

JOHN MILTON.

RUTH, indeed, came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the god Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time, ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and

down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have、 not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; he shall bring together every joint and member, and mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection.

THE DEATH-BED.

THOMAS HOOD.

E watched her breathing through | Our weary hopes belied our fears,

the night,—

Her breathing soft and low,

As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.

So silently we seemed to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers,
To eke her living out.

Our fears our hopes belied,

We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.

For when the morn came, dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed;-she had
Another morn than ours.

A

THE MILKMAID.

JEFFERYS TAYLOR.

MILKMAID, who poised a full pail | Of these some may die,-we'll suppose sevenon her head,

teen,

Thus mused on her prospects in life, Seventeen! not so many,-say ten at the most, Which will leave fifty chickens to boil or to roast.

it is said:

"Let me see,-I should think that
this milk will procure

One hundred good eggs, or fourscore, to be

sure.

"Well then,-stop a bit,-it must not be forgotten,

Some of these may be broken, and some may

be rotten;

But if twenty for accident should be detached, It will leave me just sixty sound eggs to be hatched.

"Well, sixty sound eggs,-no, sound chickens, I mean:

Fifty times three-and-sixpence I'll ask Thirty geese, and two turkeys,-eight pigs

The sickle never more will reap the yellow Alas! the good we might have done, all gone

RAMP, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching; how many of them? Sixty thousand! Sixty full regiments, every man of which will, before twelve months shall have completed their course, lie down in the grave of a drunkard! Every year during the past decade has witnessed the same sacrifice; and sixty regiments stand behind this army ready to take its place. It is to be recruited from our children. and our children's children. Tramp, tramp, tramp-the sounds come to us in the echoes of the army just expired; tramp, tramp, tramp the earth shakes with the tread of the host now passing; tramp, tramp, tramp-comes to us from the camp of the recruits. A great tide of life flows resistlessly to its death. What in God's name are they fighting for? The privilege of pleasing an appetite, of conforming to a social usage, of filling sixty thousand homes with shame and sorrow, of loading the public with the burden of pauperism, of crowding our prison-houses with felons, of detracting from the productive industries of the country, of ruining for

202

TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP.

tunes and breaking hopes, of breeding disease and wretchedness, of destroying both body and soul in hell before their time.

The prosperity of the liquor interest, covering every department of it, depends entirely on the maintenance of this army. It cannot live without it. It never did live without it. So long as the liquor interest maintains its present prosperous condition, it will cost America the sacrifice of sixty thousand men every year. The effect is inseparable from the cause. The cost to the country of the liquor traffic is a sum so stupendous that any figures which we should dare to give would convict. us of trifling. The amount of life absolutely destroyed, the amount of industry sacrificed, the amount of bread transformed into poison, the shame, the unavailing sorrow, the crime, the poverty, the pauperism, the brutality, the wild waste of vital and financial resources, make an aggregate so vast-so incalculably vast,-that the only wonder is that the American people do not rise as one man and declare that this great curse shall exist no longer.

A hue-and-cry is raised about woman-suffrage, as if any wrong which may be involved in woman's lack of the suffrage could be compared to the wrongs attached to the liquor interest.

Does any sane woman doubt that women are suffering a thousand times more from rum than from any political disability?

The truth is that there is no question before the American people to-day that begins to match in importance the temperance question. The question of American slavery was never anything but a baby by the side of this; and we prophesy that within ten years, if not within five, the whole country will be awake to it, and divided upon it. The organizations of the liquor interest, the vast funds at its command, the universal feeling among those whose business is pitted against the national prosperity and the public morals- these are enough to show that, upon one side of this matter, at least, the present condition of things and the social and political questions that lie in the immediate future are apprehended. The liquor interest knows there is to be a great struggle and is preparing to meet it. People both in this country and in Great Britain are beginning to see the enormity of this business-are beginning to realize that Christian civilization is actually poisoned at its fountain, and that there can be no purification of it until the source of the poison is dried up.

Temperance laws are being passed by the various Legislatures, which they must sustain, or go over, soul and body, to the liquor interest and influence. Steps are being taken on behalf of the public health, morals, and prosperity, which they must approve by voice and act, or they must