Remember but two, can they? Names of what? Why, of all that weight and height of fame and love, and hope and fear, and thought and passion.

And two words-two breaths of air-two murmurs, are all that is left of what once was a man, a

woman.

Years elapse, and Age is talking again: 'There was-was-I cannot remember the name now-well, well, it's what we are all coming to,' and the old man sighs sadly.

The last syllable of all, has died on the lip, is erased from memory, ripples not the still and listening air-is lost; not a murmur of it lingers in the fearful hollow' of a human ear! 'Pah! how the dust flies! Dust, do you say? Listen, and we will whisper just a word: that dust was warm once, loved once, beauty once.

'Imperious Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:

Oh! that the earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw!"

What more significant comment upon the vanity of royalty could be given, than Hamlet's next words? There is a meaning in them beyond speech:

'But soft! but soft aside: Here comes the KING.' That dust again! There goes a King, may be.

A Voice from the Past.

WALKING up the road' by the woods, the other evening, the music of the choir in the old Schoolhouse, came floating out into the darkness around me, and they were all new tunes and strange tunes, but one. And that one-it was not sung as I have heard it, but it awakened a train of long-buried

memories, that rose to me even as they were, ere the cemetery of the soul had a tomb in it.

It was sweet old Corinth they were singing-strains I have seldom heard, since the rose-color of life was blanched; and I was, in a moment, back again to the old village church, and it was a summer afternoon, and the yellow sunbeams were streaming through the west windows, and the silver hair of the old Deacon who sat near the pulpit, was turned to gold in its light, and the minister, who, we used to think, could never die, so good was he, had concluded 'application' and 'exhortation,' and the village choir were singing the last hymn, and the tune was CORINTH.

It is years we dare not think how many-since

then, and the prayers of David the son of Jesse, are ended,' and the choir is scattered and gone. The girl with blue eyes that sang alto, and the girl with black eyes that sang air; the eyes of the one, were like a clear June Heaven at night, and those of the other, like the same Heaven at noon. They both became wives, and both mothers, and they both died. Who shall say they are not singing Corinth still, where Sabbaths never wane, and congregations never break up? There they sat, Sabbath after Sabbath, by the square column at the right of the 'leader,' and to our young eyes, they were passing beautiful, and to our young ears, their tones were the very 'soul of music.' That column bears still, their pencilled names as they wrote them in those days in life's June, 183-, ere dreams of change had o'ercome their spirits like a summer cloud.

Alas! that with the old Singers, most of the sweet old tunes have died upon the air; but they linger in memory, and they shall yet be sung again, in the sweet re-union of song that shall take place by and by, in a hall whose columns are beams of morning light, whose ceiling is pure pearl, whose floors are all gold, and where hair never turns silvery, and hearts

never grow old. Then she that sang alto, and she that sang air, will be in their places once more, for what could the choir do without them?

Taiting.

PATIENT reader, did you ever wait? Are you any way related to the patriarch of Uz, and did you wait, meekly, quietly, resignedly? Longfellow hit it once, 'palpably,' when he enjoined upon all his readers,

'Learn to labor and to wait.'

Laboring and waiting compose the great business of life. Any sinner can do the former, but as for the latter, it takes a saint.

Wait? We are forever waiting. Don't you remember when you were waiting to throw off the

rifle-dress,' for pantaloons, and the red stubby shoes for regular boots, just like father's, or uncle's, or some body's? You are a lady?' Beg pardon. Well, ladies never get beyond thirty-five, and you can remember how you waited till you could wear your hair done up behind,' with a comb, and sport-a— well, what politicians like to make-a bustle. And

don't you remember how you waited for a beau or a belle, or to be eighteen or twenty-one? Every body waits. School-children wait for the last day' and vacation; undergraduates wait for commencement and college honors; poets wait for fame, and like their funeral trains, if they have any, it is posthumous; agriculturists wait from seed-time till harvest; politicians wait from campaign to campaign; preachers wait for the moving of the waters;' watchers wait for morning; the weary wait for evening, and the old and friendless wait for dying.

Sad are they who have no body to keep them company. There is a waiting Angel, and her name is HOPE, for what is Hope but a happy waiting? Religion has made her an arch-angel, and christened her Faith. The former looks into the future of this world, and the latter looks into the future of that. Maybe you call this transcendental, Germanic; maybe you call it nonsense. Be it so; it is a nonsense that will pass under the guise of wisdom by and by, when the masquerade of life is ended, and things are what they seem.'

So, Hope and Faith together, are for ever singing a little song, whose burden is