"Behold this scanty carpet-bag! I started a month ago, With a dozen Saratoga trunks, hat-box, and portmanteau, But baggage-men along the route have brought me down so low. 'Be careful with this carpet-bag, kind sir,” said he to him. The baggage-man received it with a smile extremely grim, And softly whispered "Mother, may I go out to swim ?" Then fiercely jumped upon that bag in wild, sardonic spleen, And into countless fragments flew to his profound chagrin For that lank bag contained a pint of nitroglycerine. The stranger heaved a gentle sigh, and stroked his quivering chin, And then he winked with one sad eye, and said, with smile serene, "The stuff to check a baggage-man is nitroglycerine!" IGHT is the time for rest; NIGHT JAMES MONTGOMERY. How sweet, when labors close, To gather round an aching breast The curtain of repose, Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head Down on our own delightful bed! Night is the time for dreams: The gay romance of life, When truth that is, and truth that seems, Ah! visions, less beguiling far Night is the time for toil: To plough the classic field, Intent to find the buried spoil Its wealthy furrows yield; Night is the time to weep: To wet with unseen tears The joys of other years; Hopes, that were Angels at their birth, But died when young, like things of earth Night is the time to watch: O'er ocean's dark expanse, To hail the Pleiades, or catch The full moon's earliest glance, That brings into the homesick mind All we have loved and left behind. In all the world loves me; e'en the little dogs Caresses gently my tangled hair, run When I wander too near them; 'tis won drous to see, And a voice like the carol of some wild bird How everything shrinks from a beggar like Till my heart and spirits are all aflame; me! Perhaps 'tis a dream; but, sometimes, when And tells me of such unbounded love, N JOHN BUNYAN. OW just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold the city shone like the sun; the streets, also were paved with gold, and in them walked many men with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps, to sing praises withal. There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one another without intermission, saying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord." And after that they shut up the gates; which when I had seen, I wished myself among them. Now, while I was gazing upon all these things, I turned my head to look back, and saw Ignorance coming up to the river side; but he soon got over, and that without half the difficulty which the other two men met with. For it happened that there was then in that place one VainHope, a ferryman, that with his boat helped him over; so he, as the other, I saw, did ascend the hill, to come up to the gate, only he came alone; neither did any man meet him with the least encouragement. When he was coming up to the gate, he looked up to the writing that was above, and then began to knock, supposing that entrance should have been quickly administered to him: but he was asked by the men that looked over the top of the gate, "Whence come you, and what would you have?". . He answered, "I have eat and drank in the presence of the King, and he has taught in 304 THE SONG OF THE FORGE. our streets." Then they asked for his certificate, that they might go in and show it to the King; so he fumbled in his bosom for one, and found none. Then said they, You have none!" but the man answered never a word. So they told the King, but he would not come down to see him, but commanded the two shining ones that conducted Christian and Hope ful to the city to go out and take Ignorance, and bind him hand and foot and have him away. Then they took him up and carried him through the air to the door that I saw on the side of the hill, and put him in there. Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction. "So I awoke. It was a dream.' Clang, clang!-our coulter's course shall be When regal Autumn's bounteous nand A ruddy sea of living gold,- DAVID'S LAMENT FOR ABSALOM. 305 Clang, clang-again, my mates, what grows Anxious no more, the merchant sees Say on what sands these links shall sleep, Say, shall they feel the vessel reel, Hurrah-cling, clang!--once more, what Dark brothers of the forge, beneath The furnace's red breath? Clang, clang--a burning torrent, clear As our hammers forge the sword. Whenever for the truth and right DAVID'S LAMENT FOR ABSALOM. T N. P. WILLIS. HE waters slept. Night's silvery veil On Jordan's bosom, and the eddies Whose flowers the water, like a gentle nurs Their glassy rings beneath it, like By its light heed of human suffering, |