My childhood's earliest thoughts are linked with thee; The sight of thee calls back the robin's song,

Who, from the dark old tree

Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listened as if I heard an angel sing

With news from heaven, which he could bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of God's book.

Abridged.

There is an oriental legend that every man carries two packs, one in front, the other behind, and each pack is full of faults. The one in front holds the faults of others, and is always in direct range of the man's eyes. The other pack holds his own faults, and is so strapped upon his back that it is impossible for him to see it; hence, he often forgets its very existence.

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

describes him.

He was a

Holmes was the humorist in the Cambridge group of writers. "Genial" is the word that best very "boyish boy," the life of the gambrel-roofed Massachusetts house, though he loved also to browse over the books in his father's study. At the dame's school where he learned his letters he recalls the teacher's long willow rod reaching entirely across the school-room, used as a reminder, however, rather than in punishment. In Harvard University Holmes was the leader of his class in all enterprises of spirit and he wrote the class poem. Later he be

came professor of medicine in this same university but found time to write novels, poems and charmingly informal essays. He named The Atlantic Monthly and much of his work first appeared there. When Dickens visited America and was entertained in Boston, Holmes wrote the song of welcome. His life was chiefly divided between the "cloistered quiet" of Cambridge and the more worldly atmosphere of Boston, where, from his "airy oriel on the river shore", he saw a wide and pleasant prospect. Whatever he said and did was sweetened with kindness and spiced with humor. Lowell wrote,

His are just the fine hands to weave you a lyric
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric,
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes
That are trodden upon are your own or your foe's.

Bret Harte received his first encouragement to write from Holmes, to whom he had sent some verses. A birthday breakfast, at which were present, with many lesser writers, Emerson, Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe, was given to Holmes on his seventieth birthday. At the close of his last lecture, amid a storm of applause, his students gave him a silver loving-cup.

[Born in 1809-died in 1894]

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way

It ran a hundred years to a day,

And then, of a sudden, it-ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,

Frightening people out of their wits,-
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five,
Georgius Secundus was then alive,—
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,—

In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,

In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,-lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will,—
Above or below, or within or without,-

And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou,")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';

It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:
"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain
That the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,

Is only jest

T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,—
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;

The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;

The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"-
Last of its timber,-they couldn't sell 'em,
Never an ax had seen their chips,

And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.

That was the way he "put her through." "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"

Do! I tell you, I rather guess

She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,

Children and grandchildren-where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;-it came and found
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten;-
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came;--
Running as usual; much the same.