way.

"More stones!" cried the men. " More mortar!' But the answer came: "There is no more!" "Then," cried the engineer, "take off your clothes and with them stop the holes in the wall."

And so, in the chill and darkness and surf, it was done, and with the workmen's apparel the openings in the wall were partially filled. But still the tide rose, and still the ocean reared itself for more awful strokes, and for the overwhelming of thousands of lives in the villages.

"Now we have done all we can," said the engineer; "down on your knees, my men, and pray to God for help." And on the trembling and parting dykes they prayed till the wind changed and the sea subsided, and the vil lages below were gloriously saved.

Now, what we want in the work of walling back the oceans of poverty and drunkenness and impurity and sin is the help of more womanly and manly hands. Oh, how the tides come in! Atlantic surge of sorrow after Atlantic surge of sorrow, and the tempests of human hate and Satanic fury are in full cry. Oh, woman of many troubles, what are all the feasts of worldly delight, if they were offered you, compared with the opportunity of helping build and support barriers which sometimes seem giving way through man's treachery and the world's assault? Oh, woman, to the dykes! Bring prayer, bring tears, bring cheerful words! Help! Help! And having done all, kneel with us on the quaking wall until the God of the wind and the sea shall hush the one and silence the other. To the dykes! Sisters, mothers, wives, daughters of America, to the dykes!

CADWALADER FRY AND HIS THEORY.*
ROBERT C. V. MEYERS.

Cadwalader Fry had a mind to try

Every experiment foul or fair

Which might let him explore the wonders in store
In the realms of the upper air.

*Written expressly for this Collection.

Cadwalader Fry he had an eye

Suggestive of boiling thoughts within;

He considered it frivolous to smile,

And idiotic to grin,

Although when he preached of the wonders within
The solid realms of the upper air,

Many would smile, if they failed to grin,

And everybody would stare.

For Cadwalader had a theory new
Concerning the laws of gravity;
He said past the ether we think is blue
And say 'tis the sky we see,

Was a denser air, a solider base,

A mid-sphere where there certainly was
Much to be known which should startle the gaze
And upset gravity's laws.

He said there were worlds to discover there,
And battlefields for victories new;

He'd be a Columbus of the air,

Though his fight prove our Waterloo.

When asked why it was no aeronaut

Had ever reported these worlds, he'd scoff
In superior fashion, and say he thought
They'd never gone high enough.

He said, as the Northern voyager stops
This side of the ice, while beyond flow fair
Warm rivers past flowery shores, so drops
The balloon from the solider air.

He had tried balloons and flying machines,
But they told him very little, because
They went as gradual as growing beans
Up through gravity's laws.

He said there must be a shock, a rush
Past these films of ether and

The attraction of earth, and then we might push
Our way through the airy land.

He studied few books, he was wiser than they;

But he marveled and planned, and dreamed and thought:

And his eves boiled more, and his face grew gray

As the lower air he fought.

He'd queer inventions that cleaved the air
Late at night, and people complained,
But he said Columbus had been treated unfair,—
In the end, though, a world he gained.

At last, one night, a shriek was heard

In his little house. When they ran to see
The matter, Cadwalader, gay as a bird,
Was laughing in great glee.

He laughed and he laughed, he bellowed, he roared,
He hopped, he skipped, he sang, he pranced;
Though over him buckets of water were poured,
In a drizzly manner he danced.

He said, at last a vision had come,-

In his mind he'd discovered a sudden stair That should take him to his longed-for home In the realms of the upper air.

That's all he said--he would say no more;

But he promised we all should come and see
The last of him on this earth ere he tore
Up the laws of gravity.

For a week he slept not; he put up a stage
Sixty feet tall on his bit of ground:
He invited the people of every age
For several miles around.

There he was, with a great stout pipe

Fixed in the stage and a funnel in that;
He looked half napping, stooping to wipe
The nap of his black high hat.

Said he, calling down, "My friends, farewell!
I shall not see you again, so fare

You well. I explore the wonders and more
In the realms of the upper air.

"Here in this pipe is an innocent mass-
I'll tell you no name for it, 'tis new here,
But its power of propulsion is such, alas!
As to take me from you, I fear.

"But farewell! I go,-if I do not return

Think of me as onward and upward I fare From town to town in the world I'll be shown In the realms of the upper air.

"Now deep in this funnel Ï seat me-so.

This fuse I touch to this pipe-" At that
Each of us on his head got a blow

That stretched every one of us flat.

The stage fell in fragments, the earth was ploughed deep,
The roar in the air was awful to hear,

And then all was silence! We rose in a heap,
Thinking Cadwalader near,—

Thinking Cadwalader near, that we

Might explain a few things to him there and then, And teach him the laws of gravity

In the hands and the feet of us men.

But Cadwalader Fry was nowhere nigh,

He and his theory they were not.

We hunted and found not a hint, not a sound,

Not a tittle, nor yet a jot.

They must have gone up, for they hadn't come down,
And we had to confess it was only fair

To think of Cad going from town to town
In the realms of the upper air.

ONLY A WOMAN.-TOM MASSON.

Her name was quite familiar to the Hottentots and Zulus, And the Comanches and Apaches and Sioux knew all about her;

She had furnished Chinese toddlers with the different kind of tulus,

And the great unwashed of Java said they couldn't do without her.

She figured as the patron of a patent incubator,

And her name was spread out broadcast by the chickens as they speeded

From the frozen fields of Lapland to the lands of the equator;

She supplied a waiting public with the very things it needed.

As a sewing-circle leader she achieved a reputation,

And her name was like a tocsin in the dry-goods stores around her;

She was known in every millinery art association,

And an army of dressmakers sent up thanks that they had found her.

But she was a total stranger to the art of domesticity,

As all matters appertaining to the same were much below her;

She could write up tracts by thousands on the home and its felicity

For the heathen of all nations. But her husband didn't know her.

ON THE RAPPAHANNOCK.*-CHARLES H. TIFFANY. The unfinished love-song quoted here was found on the body of a young sol dier of the Army of the Potomac, who was killed in battle.

The calm Rappahannock flowed on to the sea,

By the armies that lay in the stillness of sleep;
The roar of the battle had died on the lea,

And the silence of night reigned, majestic and deep.
At the front of the lines which the Federals held,
A soldier stood guard by the river that night;
Though footsore and weary, no trials had quelled

His love for his country, for freedom and right.
Yet there burned in his bosom, more tenderly dear,
A love that made sweet all the dangers he faced,—
A love that made perilous duty appear

Like a path to the heaven her sweet presence graced.
Inspired by his thought, as the light zephyrs move
With sweetness and harmony, rhythmic and free,
He sang to the stars of his far-away love,

And the calm Rappahannock flowed on to the sea.
"Art thou thinking of me in my absence, love!
Art thou thinking of me as I roam?

Is there naught in the innocent joys of life
That can cheer thee, as when I'm at home?

"I would fain think my presence was needed, love,
To make full thy sweet measure of bliss;
Yet I'd not have thy heart know a sorrow or care
That I could not by kindness dismiss.

"Art thou thinking of me in my absence, love?

Art thou dreaming of joys yet to be,

When fate shall have ceased its unkindness to us,
And returned me, rejoicing, to thee?

*From the "New England Magazine" by permission.