frolic, you lay upon the hay, and counted the dusty sunbeams, as they streamed through the crevices in the loose siding, and wondered how they got out again, and how many it took to make a day, and passed your fingers through them, to and fro, and marvelled that you felt nothing.

Many a time, you know, you crept through that same meadow with MARY GRAY—don't you remember Mary?—she lived in the house just over the hill-strawberrying. You picked in her basketdon't deny it—and you always felt happier than when you filled your own, though you never knew why. You had a queer feeling sometimes about the heart, though you never knew what. You have found it all out since, no doubt.

And MARY what has become of her ? Why, • There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,' that goes forth to the harvest in sweetest Spring and latest Autumn and deepest Winter as well, and Mary and Ellen and Jane were long ago bound up in “the same sure bundle of life !!!

Seven o'clock and a clear night! The shadows and the mists are rising in the valleys—the frogs have set up their chorus in the swamp—the fire-flies are showing a light off the marsh—the whip-poor-wills

יין

begin their melancholy song—a star blazes beauti fully over the top of the woods, and the fair beings that people our childhood, come about us in the twilight-the fair beings

“Who set as sets the morning star, that goes
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
Obscured amid the tempest of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven.”

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The Dead! Cold word is dead. What dumb is to voice, and deaf is to the daughters of music,' that, dead is to life.

Shall we know them again? Oh! question, a thousand times asked, and a thousand times answered, indeed and indeed!'

I would not, if I could, shake so sweet a faith, but beautiful souls, you and I have known, that dwelt in tents of Kedar; spirits express and admirable,' that looked, life-long, through dim and clouded eyes ; lips touched with a living coal from Inspiration's altar, that were never modelled from Cupid's silver bow.

There was 'old Jonah,' as every body called him, who ended his days in a cellar; an African and a pauper. Deformed, almost repulsive, old Jonah had a beautiful soul—that crazy, blackened tenement had a royal occupant.

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And when, in sunny days, the old man crept out, and sat by his cellar door, youth and age, and I have seen beauty too, often paused to catch a gleam and a glimpse of the light hidden in that dark lantern.

Said a friend to him, one day, · Wouldn't it be pleasant to die, some lovely summer morning, like this, Jonah ?

No, no, Massa, me die in night-better den.' • Why, Jonah ? · Cos Heaven right in sight—but little way to go.'

• Jonah,' playfully remarked some one, 'what a pity you are black !

Oh! no,' eagerly interrupted the old man, 'me'll be some body yet-me in disguise here. Much’sever you'll know me, when we bof git ober Jordan. You'll see a man a comin', so splendid and beau'ful, and you'll t’ink him some body bery great, and you'll talk with him long time, and den, he'll jes whisper 'Jonah' in your ear, for 't'll be me all time!

Old Jonah is dead and gone; and don't when the tent was struck, and the curtains were withdrawn from the windows, and there were no more sighing and dying for him, that he threw off the dis guise, he had worn so long? That the old man was

you think,

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right, when he said, 'much’sever you'll know me, when we bof git ober Jordan ?'

Surely it is not strange, either, that we should people the stars with those who have gone on before ; that we should fancy their gentle eyes bending upon us at twilight, 'cos, as the old man expressed it, · Heaven right in sight.'

But there blazes the star still, over the woods. 'Tis

The flag-star of Even.

SHE lieth just there in the offing of Heaven,
Awaiting the flag at the window of Even;
Lo! the signal of crimson and gold is unfurled,
And it flingeth a glory that flusheth the world!

No sound of artillery smiteth the ear-
So calm you can catch e'en the fall of a tear!-
That foot-print of grief, on the cheek that is wet
At thoughts of the past, we would never forget.
A moment, that banner is burning the sky,
A moment, its beauty is lighting the eye-
A moment-its glory and beauty depart,
Transferred to the sky in the west of the heart.

Behold now, far out in the harbor of Heaven,
A light like a star, from the Flag-ship of Even!
Her silver-fluked anchor, so steady and true,
As lightly is swinging and dripping with blue,
As swung o'er the sleeper the Bethel-bent beam
That trembled to earth in the Patriarch's dream!

Her cable of crystal, and spars of the day,
Beneath her dance doubles, and spangle her way!
Her sails of weft glory, her cordago of light!
Oh! bravely she rides on the billows of night!
Those billows that break on the shores of our earth-
The pulse of an infant awaking to birth.

As glimmers the moon through the rack of the storm,
So, hard by her helm, I can fancy a form;
The form of an Angel, with tremulous wings,
A look deep and tender a vision that brings
A pang to the heart and a tear to the eye,
For loved ones and lost ones that never can die!
Whose better and brighter e’en death cannot sever-
Enshrined in the soul, and enshrined there for ever!

Oh! child of my dreams—indweller of Heaven!
I see thee conducting the Flag-Star of Even!
Oh! Flag-Star of Even! I would it were mine,
To leave this dull port and become one of thine!

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Not a breath moves a streamer, or rattles a shroud;
On she comes like the morn, and still as a cloud!
On she comes through the clear azure sea of the ether,
From God's throne co-etern', to earth's cradle beneath her.
No crashing of wave, no thunder of billow-
Calm as a maiden's cheek pressed to her pillow !
As forms of bright clouds in the waters beneath,
As dim o'er the mirror just touched by a breath,
So silently on through the motionless Heaven,
To the gates of the west sweeps the Flag-Ship of Even-
O'er the heaven-bathed hills on the verge of the world,
O’er the tremulous woods, her sails but half furled,
She rides on the billows that break from the shore,
She comes--ah! she wavers, and nears us no more!