It chanced I was ill the night of the mess,
Or I shouldn't now be here alive;
But thereafter the five-o'clock out express
Evening by evening I used to drive.

And I often saw her,-that lady I mean,
That I spoke of before. She often stood
A-top o' the bank: it was pretty high-
Say twenty feet, and backed by a wood.
She would pick the daisies out of the green
To fling down at us as we went by.
We had got to be friends, that girl and I,
Though I was a rugged, stalwart chap,
And she a lady! I'd lift my cap,
Evening by evening, when I'd spy

That she was there, in the summer air,
Watching the sun sink out of the sky.

Oh, I didn't see her every night:
Bless you! no; just now and then,

And not at all for a twelvemonth quite.
Then, one evening, I saw her again,
Alone, as ever, but deadly pale,

And down on the line, on the very rail,

While a light, as of hell. from our wild wheels broke, Tearing down the slope with their devilish clamors And deafening din, as of giant's hammers

That smote in a whirlwind of dust and smoke All the instant or so that we sped to meet her. Never, oh, never, had she seemed sweeter!

I let yell the whistle, reversing the stroke

Down that awful incline, and signaled the guard
To put on his brakes at once, and hard-

Though we couldn't have stopped. We tattered the rail
Into splinters and sparks, but without avail.

We couldn't stop; and she wouldn't stir,
Saving to turn us her eyes, and stretch
Her arms to us;-and the desperate wretch
I pitied, comprehending her.

So the brakes let off, and the steam full again,
Sprang down on the lady the terrible train-
She never flinched. We beat her down,

And ran on through the lighted length of the town
Before we could stop to see what was done.

Oh, I've run over more than one!

Dozens of 'em, to be sure, but none
That I pitied as I pitied her-

If I could have stopped, with all the spur
Of the train's weight on, and cannily-
But it wouldn't do with a lad like me
And she a lady - or had been-sir?
Who was she? Best say no more of her!
The world is hard; but I'm her friend.
Stanch, sir,-down to the world's end.
It is a curl of her sunny hair

Set in this locket that I wear.

I picked it off the big wheel there.
Time's up, Jack. Stand clear, sir. Yes;
We're going out with the express.

BRIGHT HOURS.- MARGARET HUSTED.

"I mark the hours that shine," so runs the legend graven Upon an old sun-dial in a garden by the sea;

In a fair Italian garden, where it long has told the story, That it tells to-day, O friend! for you and me.

When the sky is blue above it, and the golden sunbeams ft! Over all the pleasant garden, sweet with thyme, and gay

with flowers;

When the birds' glad carols echo songs of children at their play,

Silently the gnomon shadow marks the swiftly flying

hours.

And when song and play are ended, and the birds and children sleep,

And the garden all is silent in the moonbeams' silver

light,

Save for fountain waters falling with a sound of summer

rain,

Fainter shadows on the dial mark the flying hours of

night.

But when clouds and tempests gather o'er the garden by the

sea,

And the bees and birds and children all have left their

work and play,

And the winter rain is falling on dead leaves and withered flowers,

Then the dial marks no moment of the long and dreary

day.

Let us take to heart the lesson that the dial mutely gives Unto all who heed its teachings; let us count life's pleas

ant hours,

Count its many treasures given, count the blessings that it brings;

Gather all its golden harvests, gather all its wayside flow

ers.

And when shadows gather round us, and the summer days are fled;

When our hearts grow faint with longing for the friends we loved of yore,

And the wintry rain is falling on the graves of buried hope Let us leave the days uncounted till the sun shines out •

once more.

PENN'S MONUMENT.-R. J. BURDETTE.

Born in stormy times, William Penn walked amid troubled waters all his days. In an age of bitter persecution and unbridled wickedness, he never wronged his conscience. A favored member of a court where statesmanship was intrigue and trickery, where the highest morality was corruption, he never stained his hands with a bribe. Living under a government at war with the people, and educated in a school that taught the doctrine of passive obedience, his lifelong dream was of popular government, of a State where the people ruled.

In his early manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against the advice of his dearest friends, in opposition to stern paternal commands, against every dictate of worldly wisdom and human prudence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations of ambition, so alluring to the heart of a young man, he turned away from the broad fair highway to wealth, position, and distinction, that the hands of a king opened before him, and, casting his lot with the sect weakest and most unpopular in England, through paths that were tangled with trouble and lined with pitiless thorns of persecution, he walked into honor and fame, and the reverence of the world, such as roy alty could not promise, and could not give him.

In the land where he planted his model State, to-day,

no descendant bears his name. In the religious society for which he suffered banishment from home, persecution, and the prison, to-day, no child of his blood and name walks in Christian fellowship, nor stands covered in worship. His name has faded out of the living meetings of the Friends, out of the land that crowns his memory with sincerest reverence. Even the uncertain stone that would mark his grave stands doubtingly among the kindred ashes that hallow the ground where he sleeps.

But his monument, grander than storied column of granite, or poble shapes of bronze, is set in the glittering brilliants of mighty States between the seas. His noblest epitaph is written in the State that bears his honored name. The little town he planned to be his capital has become a city, larger in area than any European capital he knew. Beyond his fondest dreams has grown the State he planted in the wilderness by "deeds of peace." Out of the gloomy mines, that slept in rayless mystery beneath its mountains while he lived, the measureless wealth of his model State sparkles and glows on millions of hearthstones. From its forests of derricks and miles of creeping pipe lines, the world is lighted from the State of Penn with a radiance to which the sons of the founder's sons were blind. Roaring blast and smoky forge and ringing hammer are tearing and breaking the wealth of princes from his mines, that the founder never knew.

Clasping the continent from sea to sea, stretches a chain of States as free as his own. From sunrise to sunset reaches a land where the will of the people is the supreme law,- -a land that never felt the pressure of a throne, and never saw a sceptre. And in the heart of the city that was his capital, in old historic halls, still stands the bell that first, in the name of the doctrines he taught his colonists, proclaimed liberty throughout the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof. This is his monument, and every noble charity gracing this State is his epitaph.

THE HUSKIN'.--WILL F. MC SPARRAN.

Ole "Cross-roads Brown," he give a bee,
An' 'vited all the neighbors,
Until a rig'ment fought his corn,
With huskin'-pegs fur sabers.

The night was clear as Em Steele's eyes,
The moon as mild as Nancy's,

The stars was winkin's if they knowed All 'bout our loves and fancies.

The breeze was sharp an' braced a chap, Like Minnie Silvers' laughin';

The cider in the gallon jug

Was jes tip-top fur quaffin'.

The gals sung many a ole-time song,
Us boys a-jinin' chorus-

We'd no past shames to make us sad,
Nor dreaded ones afore us.

The shock was tumbled on the ground,
Each one its own direction,

An' ears was drappin' all around,
Like pennies at collection.

On one side o' the shock a boy,
His sweetheart on the other,

A kind o' timid like an' coy,
But not so very, nuther.

The fodder rustles dry and clean,
The husks like silver glisten,
The ears o' gold shine in between,
As if they try to listen.

An' when a red ear comes to light,

Like some strange boy a-blushin', The gal she gives a scream o' fright, An' jukes her pardner, rushin'

To git a kiss, the red ear's prize,

Till, conquered most completely,
She lifts her lips an' brightened eyes
An' gives him one so sweetly.

They hed a shock off from the rest-
Tom Fell an' Lizzie Beyer,