Such bliss on earth to crave?)
That all the girls be chaste and fair,
The boys all wise and brave.

I want a warm and faithful friend
To cheer the adverse hour;
Who ne'er to flattery will descend,
Nor bend the knee to power;

A friend to chide me when I'm wrong,
My inmost soul to see;

And that my friendship prove as strong
For him, as his for me.

I want the seals of power and place,
The ensigns of command;
Charged by the people's unbought grace
To rule my native land.
Nor crown nor scepter would I ask
But from my country's will,
By day, by night, to ply the task,
Her cup of bliss to fill.

I want the voice of honest praise
To follow me behind,

And to be thought in future days
The friend of human kind,
That after ages as they rise,
Exulting may proclaim,
In choral union to the skies,

Their blessings on my name.

These are the Wants of mortal man,

I cannot want them long,
For life itself is but a span,

And earthly bliss, a song.
My last great want, absorbing all,

Is, when beneath the sod,
And summoned to my final call,

The Mercy of my God.

THE DEATH OF GARFIELD

JAMES G. BLAINE

It was in political rather than literary fields that Blaine won his reputation, though his "Twenty Years

He

in Congress' is a work of much interest, and had a large sale. Mr. Blaine was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1830. moved to Maine and became editor of the Kennebec Journal, and, later, the Portland Advertiser. For fourteen years he was member of the House of Representatives and three times Speaker. He was a member of the United States Senate, candidate for the presidency in 1884, and Secretary of State under Garfield, and later held the same position under Harrison. He died in 1893.

BLAINE

URELY, if happiness can ever come from the honors

SUR

No

or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man.

foreboding of evil haunted him; no slightest premonition

of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully before him; the next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence, and the grave.

Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interests, from its hopes, its inspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death, and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which stunned and dazed he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear, bright, and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes whose lips may tell! What brilliant broken plans! What baffled high ambitions! What sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendships ! What bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him, a proud expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager rejoicing power to meet all demands. Before him, desolation and darkness, and his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant profound and universal

sympathy. Though masterful in his mortal weakness, enshrined in the prayers of a world, all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet With supple resignation he

he heard the voice of God.

bowed to the Divine decree.

As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its oppressive stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices.

With wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its fair sails whitening in the morning light; on its restless waves rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning.

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

ALFRED TENNYSON

BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold, gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.

Oh, well for the fisherman's boy

That he shouts with his sister at play! Oh, well for the sailor lad

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on,

To their haven under the hill;

But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still !

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.

LADY CLARE

ALFRED TENNYSON

T was the time when lilies blow,

IT

And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his cousin, Lady Clare.