of mist that forever haunts the vast shallows of Newfoundland. Boldly they made it; and, plunging in, its pliant wreaths wrapped them about. They shall never emerge. The last sunlight has flashed from that deck. The last voyage is done to ship and passengers. At noon there came, noiselessly stealing from the north, that fated instrument of destruction. In that mysterious shroud, that vast atmosphere of mist, two steamers were holding their way with rushing prow and roaring wheels, but invisible.

At a league's distance unconscious, and at nearer approach unwarned; within hail, and bearing right towards each other, unseen, unfelt, till, in a moment more, emerging from the gray mists, the ill-omened Vesta dealt her deadly stroke to the Arctic.

The death blow was scarcely felt along the mighty hull. She neither reeled nor shivered. Neither commander nor officer deemed that they had suffered harm.

Prompt upon humanity, the Arctic's commander, the brave Luce (Let his name be ever spoken with admiration and respect,) ordered away his boat, with first officer, Gourley, to inquire if the stranger had suffered harm. As Gourley went over the ship's side, oh, that some good angel had called to the brave commander, in the words of Paul on a like occasion, "Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved!"

They departed, and with them the hope of the ship; for now the waters, gaining upon the hold, and rising up upon the fires, revealed the mortal blow. Oh, had now that stern, brave mate, Gourley, been on deck, whom the sailors were wont to obey; had he stood to execute efficiently the commander's will, we may believe that we

should not have had to blush for the cowardice and recreancy of the crew, nor weep for the untimely dead. But apparently each subordinate officer lost all presence of mind, then courage, and so honor. In a wild scramble, that ignoble mob of firemen, engineers, waiters, and crew rushed for the boats, and abandoned the helpless women, children, and men to the mercy of the deep. Four hours there were from the catastrophe of the collision to the catastrophe of sinking!

Oh, what a burial was here! Not as when one is borne from his home, among weeping throngs, and gently carried to the green fields, and laid peacefully beneath the turf and flowers. No priest stood to pronounce a burial service. It was an ocean grave. The mists alone shrouded the burial place. No spade prepared the grave, nor sexton filled up the hollowed earth.

Down, down, they sank; and the quick-returning waters smoothed out every ripple, and left the sea as placid as before.

THE

THE FIRST SNOWFALL

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

HE snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm tree

Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window
That noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;

How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.

Up spoke our own little Mabel,

Saying, "Father, who makes it snow?" And I told of the good All-Father Who cares for us here below.

Again I looked at the snowfall,
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o'er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.

I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloudlike snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding

The scar on our deep-plunged woe.

And again to the child I whispered,
"The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall."

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.

PAN IN WALL STREET

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

Edmund Clarence Stedman was born at Hartford, Conn., in 1833 and died in 1908. He engaged in journalism and afterwards became a banker. He wrote much poetry, and made many compilations.

JUST where the Treasury's marble front

Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations;
Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont
To throng for trade and last quotations;
Where, hour by hour, the rates of gold
Outrival, in the ears of people,
The quarter chimes, serenely tolled
From Trinity's undaunted steeple, –

Even there I heard a strange, wild strain
Sound high above the modern clamor,
Above the cries of greed and gain,

The curbstone war, the auction's hammer;
And swift, on music's misty ways,

It led, from all this strife for millions,
To ancient sweet do-nothing days
Among the kirtle-robed Sicilians.

And as it stilled the multitude,

And yet more joyous rose, and shriller,
I saw the minstrel where he stood

At ease against a Doric pillar:

One hand a droning organ played,

The other held a Pan's pipe (fashioned
Like those of old) to lips that made

The reeds give out that strain impassioned.

'Twas Pan1 himself had wandered there

A-strolling through this sordid city,
And piping to the civic ear

The prelude of some pastoral ditty!
The demigod had crossed the seas,

From haunts of shepherd, nymph, and satyr,
And Syracusan times, to these

Far shores and twenty centuries later.

A ragged cap was on his head;

But hidden thus there was no doubting.

That, all with crispy locks o'erspread,

His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting;
His club feet, cased in rusty shoes,

Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them,
And trousers, patched of divers hues,

Concealed his crooked shanks beneath them.

He filled the quivering reeds with sound,
And o'er his mouth their changes shifted,
And with his goat's eyes looked around
Where'er the passing current drifted;
And soon, as on Trinacrian hills

The nymphs and herdsmen ran to hear him,
Even now the tradesmen from their tills,

With clerks and porters, crowded near him.

1 Pan: A God of Grecian mythology, who played a wind instrument known as a pipe.