Love that once we might have saved with but a single word; Thoughts conceived but not expressed - perishing unheard. Take the lesson to your heart, take, oh! hold it fast:

The mill will never grind again with the water that has passed.

TRANQUIL AND DESCRIPTIVE THOUGHT.

4.

[From "Memory." ―Jas. A. Garfield.]

'Tis beauteous night; the stars look brightly down
Upon the earth, decked in her robe of snow.
No light gleams at the windows, save my own,
Which gives its cheer to midnight and to me.
And now, with noiseless step, sweet memory comes
And leads me gently through her twilight realms.
What poet's tuneful lyre has ever sung,
Or delicatest pencil e'er portrayed

The enchanted, shadowy land where memory dwells?
It has its valleys, cheerless, lone, and drear,
Dark-shaded by the mournful cypress tree;
And yet its sunlit mountain tops are bathed
In Heaven's own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs,
Robed in the dreamy light of distant years,
Are clustered joys serene of other days.
Upon its gently sloping hill-sides bend
The weeping willows o'er the sacred dust
Of dear departed ones; yet in that land,
Where'er our footsteps fall upon the shore,
They that were sleeping rise from out the dust
Of death's long, silent years, and round us stand
As erst they did before the prison tomb

Received their clay within its voiceless halls.

The path of youth winds down through many a vale,
And on the brink of many a dread abyss,
From out whose darkness comes no ray of light,
Save that a phantom dances o'er the gulf
And beckons toward the verge. Again the path
Leads o'er the summit where the sunbeams fall;
And thus in light and shade, sunshine and gloom,
Sorrow and joy, this life-path leads along.

DIDACTIC AND DESCRIPTIVE.

5.

[From Portia's Speech on "Mercy.” — Shakespeare.] Por. The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed: It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The thronéd monarch better than his crown: His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the fear and dread of kings; But mercy is above the sceptered sway,

It is enthronéd in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice: therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,-
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy; I have spoke thus much,
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;

66

Which, if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.

DESCRIPTION.
6.

[From "Damascus.” — Mark Twain (S. L. Clemens).]

Damascus is the oldest city in the world. Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra is buried in the sands of the desert; Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the Tigris and Euphrates; Damascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham, a centre of trade and travel, an island of verdure in a desert, a predestined capital," with martial and sacred associations extending through more than thirty centuries. It was near Damascus that Saul of Tarsus saw the light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun. The street which is called Straight, in which it was said he prayed, still runs through the city. The caravan comes and goes as it did three thousand years ago; there are still the sheik, the ass, and the water wheel; the merchants of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean still " occupy these with the multitudes

of their wares.

The city which Mohammed surveyed from a neighboring height and was afraid to enter because it was given to have but one paradise, and for his part he was resolved not to have it in this world, is to this day what Julian called "the eye of the East," as it was in the time of Isaiah, “the head of Syria." From Damascus came the damson, or damascene, or blue plum, and the delicious apricot of Portugal, called the damasco; damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and silk, with vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground; the damask rose, introduced into England in the

time of Henry VIII.; the Damascus blade, so famous the world over for its keen edge and wonderful elasticity, the secret of whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane carried off the arts into Persia; and the beautiful art of inlaying wood and steel with silver and gold, a kind of Mosaic, engraving and sculpture united-called damaskeening with which boxes, swords, guns, and bureaus are ornamented.

It is still a city of flowers and bright waters; the "rivers of Damascus," the "streams from Lebanon," the "rivers of gold," still murmur and sparkle in the wilderness of "Syrian Gardone."

The early history of Damascus is shrouded in the hoary mists of antiquity. Leave the matters written of it in the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament out, and no recorded event had occurred in the whole to show that Damascus was in existence to receive it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the writings of every country for more than four thousand years, its name has been mentioned and its praises sung. To Damascus years are only moments: decades, only flitting trifles of time. She measures time not by days and months, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper, then crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw the foundation of Baalbec and Thebes and Ephesus laid; she saw them grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their grandeur, and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given to the owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise and flourish for two thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few hundred years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were to

grave old Damascus, only a scintillation hardly worth remembering. Damascus has seen all that has occurred on earth and still lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and she will live to see the tomb of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims the name, old Damascus is, by right, the Eternal City.

From the smoky night encampment bore the banner of the

Unicorn;

[rampant

And grummer, GRUMMER, GRUMMER rolled the roll of the

Through the morn!

Then with eyes to the front all,
And with guns horizontal,

Stood our sires;

And the balls whistled deadly,
And in streams flashing redly
Blazed the fires;

As the roar

On the shore,

[drummer