And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe,
Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased,-
"Forever-never!
Never-forever!"

There groups of merry children played;
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
Oh, precious hours! oh, golden prime
And affluence of love and time!

Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient timepiece told,—

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night;
There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay, in his shroud of snow;

And, in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair,-

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

All are scattered, now, and fled,—
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
"Ah! when shall they all meet again?"
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply,
"Forever never!
Never-forever!"

Never here, forever there,

Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time, shall disappear,-
Forever there, but never here!

The horologe of Eternity

Sayeth this incessantly,

"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

II. W. Longfellow.

IF WE KNEW.

If we knew the woe and heartache
Waiting for us down the road,
If our lips could taste the wormwood,
If our backs could feel the load;
Would we waste the day in wishing
For a time that ne'er can be?
Would we wait with such impatience
For our ships to come from sea?

If we knew the baby fingers,

Pressed against the window pane,
Would be cold and stiff to-morrow,-
Never trouble us again;

Would the bright eyes of our darling
Catch the frown upon our brow?
Would the print of rosy fingers
Vex us then as they do now?

Ah, these little ice-cold fingers!

How they point our memories back

To the hasty words and actions
Strewn along our backward track!
How these little hands remind us,
As in snowy grace they lie,
Not to scatter thorns, but roses,
For our reaping by and by.

Strange we never prize the music

Till the sweet-voiced bird has flown; Strange that we should slight the violets Till the lovely flowers are gone; Strange that summer skies and sunshine Never seem one-half so fair

As when winter's snowy pinions

Shake their white down in the air.

Lips from which the seal of silence
None but God can roll away,
Never blossomed in such beauty
As adorns the mouth to-day;

And sweet words that freight our memory
With their beautiful perfume,

Come to us in sweeter accents

Through the portals of the tomb.

Let us gather up the sunbeams,
Lying all around our path;
Let us keep the wheat and roses,
Casting out the thorns and chaff;
Let us find our sweetest comfort
In the blessings of to-day;
With the patient hand removing
All the briars from our way.

THE BALLOT BOX.

I am aware that the ballot box is not everywhere a consistent symbol; but to a large degree it is so. I know what miserable associations cluster around this instrument of popular power. I know that the arena in which it stands is trodden into mire by the feet of reckless ambition and selfish greed. The wire-pulling and the bribing, the pitiful truckling and the grotesque compromises, the exaggeration and the detraction, the melo-dramatic issues and the sham patriotism, the party watchwords and the party nicknames, the schemes of the few paraded as the will of the many, the elevation of men whose only worth is in the votes they command,-vile men, whose hands you would not grasp in friendship, whose presence you would not tolerate by your fireside,-incompetent men, whose fitness is not in their capacity as functionaries, or legislators, but as organ pipes;-the snatching at the slices and offal of office, the intemperance and the violence, the finesse and the falsehood, the gin and the glory; these are indeed but too closely identified with that political agitation which circles around the ballot

box.

But, after all, they are not essential to it. They are only the masks of a genuine grandeur and importance. For it is a grand thing,-something which involves profound doctrines of right,-something which has cost ages of effort and sacrifice, it is a grand thing that here, at last, each voter has just the weight of one man; no more, no less; and the weakest, by virtue of his recognized

manhood, is as strong as the mightiest. And consider, for a moment, what it is to cast a vote. It is the token of inestimable privileges, and involves the responsibilities of an hereditary trust. It has passed into your hands as a right, reaped from fields of suffering and blood. The grandeur of history is represented in your art. Men have wrought with pen and tongue, and pined in dungeons, and died on scaffolds, that you might obtain this symbol of freedom, and enjoy this consciousness of a sacred indi viduality. To the ballot have been transmitted, as it were, the dignity of the sceptre and the potency of the sword.

And that which is so potent as a right, is also preg nant as a duty; a duty for the present and for the future. If you will, that folded leaf becomes a tongue of justice, a voice of order, a force of imperial law; securing rights, abolishing abuses, erecting new institutions of truth and love. And, however you will, it is the expression of a solemn responsibility, the exercise of an immeasurable power for good or for evil, now and hereafter. It is the medium through which you act upon your country,-the organic nerve which incorporates you with its life and welfare. There is no agent with which the possibilities of the republic are more intimately involved, none upon which we can fall back with more confidence than the E. H. Chapin.

ballot box.

THE RAZOR SELLER.

A fellow in a market town,

Most musical, cried razors up and down,
And offered twelve for eighteenpence;
Which certainly seemed wondrous cheap,
And for the money quite a heap,

As every man would buy, with cash and sense.

A country bumpkin the great offer heard:
Poor Hodge, who suffered by a broad black beard,

That seemed a shoe-brush stuck beneath his nose.

With cheerfulness the eighteenpence he paid,
And proudly to himself, in whispers, said,
"This rascal stole the razors, I suppose.

"No matter if the fellow be a knave,
Provided that the razors shave;

It certainly will be a monstrous prize."
So home the clown, with his good fortune, went,
Smiling, in heart and soul content,

And quickly soaped himself to ears and eyes.

Being well lathered from a dish or tub,
Hodge how began with grinning pain to grub,
Just like a hedger cutting furze:

'Twas a vile razor,-then the rest he tried,—
All were impostors: "Ah!" Hodge sighed,

"I wish my eighteenpence were in my purse."

In vain to chase his beard, and bring the graces,

He cut, and dug, and winced, and stamped, and swore,

Brought blood, and danced, blasphemed, and made wry faces, And cursed each razor's body o'er and o'er:

Ilis muzzle, formed of opposition stuff,

Firm as a Foxite, would not loose its ruff;
So kept it,-laughing at the steel and suds:
Hodge, in a passion, stretched his angry jaws,
Vowing the direst vengeance, with clenched claws,
On the vile cheat that sold the goods:
"Razors! a mean, confounded dog,
Not fit to scrape a hog!"

Hodge sought the fellow,—found him,—and begun:
"P'rhaps, Master Razor rogue, to you 'tis fun,
That people flay themselves out of their lives:
You rascal for an hour have I been grubbing,
Giving my crying whiskers here a scrubbing,
With razors just like oyster knives.
Sirrah! I tell you, you're a knave,

To cry up razors that can't shave."

"Friend," quoth the razor man, "I'm not a knave:

As for the razors you have bought,

Upon my soul I never thought

That they would shave."

"Not think they'd shave!" quoth Hodge, with wondering eyes, And voice not much unlike an Indian yell;

"What were they made for, then, you dog?" he cries;

"Made!" quoth the fellow, with a smile-"to sell."

Peter Pindar.