"What," I asked a friend, who had been on a delicious country excursion, "did you see that best pleased you?"

66

My friend has cultivated her love of moral more than her perception of physical beauty, and I was not surprised when, after replying, she went on to say, My cousin took me to see a man who had been a clergyman in the Methodist connection. He had suffered from a nervous rheumatism, and from a complication of diseases, aggravated by · ignorant drugging. Every muscle in his body, except those which move his eyes and tongue, is paralyzed. His body has become as rigid as iron. His limbs have lost the human form. He has not lain on a bed for seven years. He suffers acute pain. He has invented a chair which affords him some alleviation. His feelings are fresh and kindly, and his mind is unimpaired. He reads constantly. His book is fixed in a frame before him, and he manages to turn the leaves with an instrument which he moves with his tongue. He has an income of thirty dollars! This pittance, by the vigilant economy of his wife, and some aid from his kind rustic neighbors, bring the year round. His wife is the most gentle, patient, and devoted of loving nurses. She never has too much to do to do all well; no wish or thought goes beyond the unvarying circle of her conabounding as his

jugal duty. Her love is as

wants her cheerfulness as sure as the rising

sun.

She has not for years slept two hours consecutively.

"I did not know which most to reverence, his patience or hers; and so 1 said to them. 'Ah,' said the good man, with a serene smile, life is still sweet to me; how can it but be so with such a wife?'"

And surely life is sweet to her who feels every hour of the day the truth of this gracious acknowledgment.

O, ye who live amidst alternate sunshine and showers of plenty, to whom night brings sleep and daylight freshness ye murmurers and complainers who fret in the harness of life till it gall you to the bone-who recoil at the lightest burden, and shrink from a passing cloud-consider the magnanimous sufferer my friend described, and learn the divine art that can distil sweetness from the bitterest cup!

Miss CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK.

My dark-eyed darling, don't you know,
If you were homely, cold, or stupid,
Unbent for you were Slander's bow?
Her shafts but follow those of Cupid.
Dear child of genius, strike the lyre,
And drown with melody delicious,
Soft answering to your touch of fire,
The envious hint, the sneer malicious.

Remember it is music's law,

Each pure, true note, though low you sound it,

Is heard through discord's wildest war

Of rage and madness storming round it.

Serenely go your glorious way,

Secure that every footstep onward
Will lead you from their haunts away,
Since you go up, and they go

downward.

MRS. OSGOOD.

I know that slander loves a lofty mark;
It saw her soar a flight above her fellows,
And hurled its arrow to her glorious height,
To reach as high, and bring her to the ground.

MISS H. MORE.

HELIOTROPE.

Heliotropium.

LANGUAGE-DEVOTION.

You took me, William, when a girl,
Unto your home and heart,
To bear in all your after fate
A fond and faithful part:
And tell me, have I ever tried
That duty to forego?

Or was there ever joy for me

When you were sunk in woe?

No: I would rather share your tear

Than any other's glee;

For though you're nothing to the world,

You're ALL THE WORLD TO ME.

Nay, do not ask entreat not no,

ANON.

Through life in death my soul to thine

Shall cleave as first it clave;

Thy home, thy people shall be mine,

Thy God my God, thy grave my grave.

R. H. WILD.

Adah. Alas! thou sinnest now, my Cain; thy words

Sound impious in mine ears.

Cain. Then leave me !

Adah. Never,

Though thy God left thee.

BYRON'S CAIN.