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household bright: now his example inspires a thousand households. Dear to his brothers and sisters, he is now brother to ĕvery generous youth in the land. Before he was narrowed, appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to all. He has died from the family, that he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgotten or neglected; and it shall by-and-by be confessed, as of an ancient herō, that he did more for his country by his death than by his whole life.

5. Neither are they less honored who shall bear through life the marks of wounds and sufferings. Neither ĕp'aulette nor badge is so honorable as wounds received in a good cause. Many a man shall envy him who henceforth limps. So strange is the transforming power of patriotic ardor, that men shall almost covet disfigurement. Crowds will give way to hobbling cripples, and uncover in the presence of feebleness and helplessness. And buoyant children shall pause in their noisy games, and with loving reverence honor them whose hands can work no more, and whose feet are no longer able to march except upon that journey which brings good men to honor and immortality.

6. O mother of lost children! set not in darkness nor sorrow whom a nation honors. O mourners of the early dead! they shall live again, and live forever. Your sorrows are our gladness. The nation lives, because you gave it men that loved it better than their own lives. And when a few more days shall have cleared the perils from around the nation's brow, and she shall sit in unsullied garments of liberty, with justice upon her forehead, love in her eyes, and truth upon her lips, she shall not forget those whose blood gave vital currents to her heart, and whose life, given to her, shall live with her life till time shall be no more.

7. Every mountain and hill shall have its treasured name, every river shall keep some solemn title, every valley and every lake shall cherish its honored register; and till the mountains are worn out, and the rivers forget to flow, till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs, and the springs forget to gush, and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept fresh with reverent honors, which are inscribed upon the book of National Remembrance! H. W. BEECHER.

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The holy dead. Why weep ye so

Above yon sable bier ?

Thrice blessed! they have done with woe,

The living claim the tear.

3. Go to their sleeping bowers,

Deck their low couch of clay

With earliest spring's soft breathing flowers;
And when they fade away,

Think of the amăranth'ĭne wreath,

The garlands never dim,

And tell me why thou fly'st from death,

Or hid'st thy friends from him.

4. We dream, but they ǎwake;

Dread visions mar our rest;

Through thorns and snares our way we take,
And yet we mourn the blest!

For spirits round the Eternal Throne

How vain the tears we shed!

They are the living, they alone,

Whom thus we call the dead.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY was born at Norwich, Connecticut, 1791. Her maiden name was Lydia Huntley. She was married to Charles Sigourney in 1819. She is one of the most voluminous of American female writers, and equally happy in prose and verse. Her rare and highly cultivated intellect, her fine sensibilities, and her noble heart, have enabled her, in all her works, to plead successfully the cause of humanity and religion. She died at Hartford, Ct., June 10th, 1865.

THE

IV.

132. DEATH OF THE OLD TRAPPER.

PART FIRST.

HE trapper was placed on a rude seat, which had been made with studied care, to support his frame in an upright and easy attitude. The first glance of the eye told his former friends that the old man was at length called upon to pay the last tribute of nature. His eye was glazed, and apparently as devoid of sight as of expression. His features were a little mōre sunken and strongly marked than formerly; but there, all change, so far as exterior was concerned, might be said to have ceased.

2. His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any positive disease, but had been a gradual and mild decay of the physical powers. Life, it is true, still lingered in his system; but it was as if at times entirely ready to depart, and then it would appear to reanimate the sinking form, reluctant to give up the possession of a tenement that had never been corrupted by vice or undermined by disease. It would have been no violent fancy to have imagined that the spirit fluttered about the plăcid lips of the old woodsman, reluctant to depart from a shell that had so long given it an honest and honorable shelter.

3. His body was placed so as to let the light of the setting sun fall full upon the solemn features. His head was bare, the long, thin locks of gray fluttering lightly in the evening breeze. His rifle lay upon his knee, and the other accouterments of the chase were placed at his side, within reach of his hand. Between his feet lay the figure of a hound, with its head crouching to the earth, as if it slumbered; and so perfectly easy and natural was its position, that a second glance was necessary to tell Middleton he saw only the skin of Hector, stuffed, by Indian tenderness and ingenuity, in a manner to represent the living animal.

4. The old man was reaping the rewards of a life remarkable for temperance and activity, in a tranquil and plăcid death. His vigor, in a manner, endured to the very last. Decay, when it did occur, was rapid, but free from pain. He had hunted with the tribe in the spring, and even throughout most of the

summer; when his limbs suddenly refused to perform their customary offices. A sympathizing weakness took possession of all his faculties; and the Pawnees believed they were going to lose, in this unexpected manner, a sage and counsellor whom they had begun both to love and respect.

5. But, as we have already said, the immortal occupant seemed unwilling to desert its tenement. The lamp of life flickered, without becoming extinguished. On the morning of the day on which Middleton arrived, there was a general reviving of the powers of the whōle man. His tongue was again heard in wholesome maxims, and his eye from time to time recognized the persons of his friends. It merely proved to be a brief and final intercourse with the world, on the part of one who had already been considered, as to mental communion, to have taken its leave of it forever.

5. When he had placed his guests in front of the dying man, Hard-Heart, after a pause, that proceeded as much from sorrow as decorum, leaned a little forward, and demanded—“Does my father hear the words of his son ?" Speak," returned the trapper, in tones that issued from his chest, but which were rendered awfully distinct by the stillness that reigned in the place. "I am about to depart from the village of the Loups, and shortly shall be beyond the reach of your voice.”

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7. "Let the wise chief have no cares for his journey," continued Hard-Heart, with an earnest solicitude that led him to forget, for the moment, that others were waiting to address his adopted parent; "a hundred Loups shall clear his path from briers." 'Pawnee, I die, as I have lived, a Christian man!" resumed the trapper, with a fōrce of voice that had the same startling effect on his hearers as is produced by the trumpet, when its blast rises suddenly and freely on the air, after its obstructed sounds have been heard struggling in the distance : "as I came unto life so will I leave it. Horses and arms are not needed to stand in the presence of the Great Spirit of my people. He knows my color, and according to my gifts will he judge my deeds."

8. "My father will tell my young men how many Mingoes he has struck, and what acts of valor and justice he has done, that they may know how to imitate him." "A boastful tongue is not heard in the heaven of a white man!" solemnly returned

the old man. His eyes are alway open. That which has been well done will He remember; wherein I have been wrong will He not forget to chastise, though He will do the same in mercy. No, my son, a pale-face may not sing his own praises, and hope to have them acceptable before his God!"

"What I have done He has seen.

9. A little disappointed, the young partisan stepped modestly back, making way for the recent comers to approach. Middleton took one of the meager hands of the trapper, and struggling to command his voice, he succeeded in announcing his presence. The old man listened like one whose thoughts were dwelling on a věry different subject; but when the other had succeeded in making him understand that he was present, an expression of joyful recognition passed over his faded features. "I hope you have not so soon forgotten those whom you so materially served!" Middleton concluded. "It would pain me to think my hold on your memory was so light."

10. "Little that I have ever seen is forgotten," returned the trapper: "I am at the close of many weary days, but there is not one among them all that I could wish to overlook. I remember you, with the whole of your company; ay, and your gran❜ther, that went before you. I am glad that you have come back upon these plains; for I had need of one who speaks the English, since little faith can be put in the traders of these regions. Will you do a favor to an old and dying man?” "Name it," said Middleton; "it shall be done." "It is a far journey to send such trifles," resumed the old man, who spoke at short intervals, as strength and breath permitted; "a far and weary journey is the same; but kindnèssès and friendships are things not to be forgotten. There is a settlement among the Otsego hills”

11. "I know the place," interrupted Middleton, observing that he spoke with increasing difficulty; "proceed to tell me what you would have done." "Take this rifle, and pouch, and horn, and send them to the person whose name is graven on the plates of the stock,-a trader cut the letters with his knife,—for it is long that I have intended to send him such a token of my love!" "It shall be so. Is there more that you could wish ?” "Little else have I to bestow. My traps I give to my Indian son; for honestly and kindly has he kept his faith. Let him

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