[Musical Department-under the care of Prof. J. A. GETZE, Philadelphia.] "KISS THE LITTLE ONES FOR ME!” SONG. COMPOSED BY E. LINWOOD. Furnished for THE LADY'S FRIEND, by Messrs. LEE & WALKER, 722 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. [Entered according to Act of Congress, A. D. 1867, by LEE & WALKER, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.] The air was heavy with the scent of freshlycut hay stretching in long windrows down the level meadow, across which the whippoorwills called briskly to one another, and the nighthawk circled and swooped with piercing shrieks, and in whose fragrant gloom the fire-flies flashed and sparkled, and the katydids blew their shrill notes without rests or variations. In the golden heart of the west, Venus blossomed out like a gorgeous tropical flower, soft, and resplendent, and tremulous with passion; in the steel-blue zenith hung the moon like a pearl, pure, cold, and serene; out of the shadowy east Jupiter was riding up on the horn of Capricornus, his brilliant eye glowing brighter and brighter, as he rose in view of his beautiful vis-à-vis-Queen of Love and the West. so tenderly and beautifully expressed. She inclined the sheet again towards the crimson west, and read over the closing passages; read them slowly, carefully, as if they were new and strange to her, as if she did not know with entire certainty what word, what sentence was coming next. "Dearest of girls, (said the letter) you are not absent from my thoughts a single moment. I think and dream of you perpetually. Whether I sleep or wake, your image is always present with me. Heart of my heart, I love you so! What would life be worth without you? Oh, my angel, existence would have no charms at all if I were deprived of your precious love! May kind Fate hasten the day that shall bring us nearer together. I only live truly and completely in your sweet, sweet presence. If it were in my power, I would annihilate time and space to be again beside you Of this quite enough, says the indifferent reader, though for Lettice such delicious words multiplied ad infinitum would not have been too sweet, or too extravagant to believe. But then Lettice was seventeen, and too strong an emphasis cannot be put on anything when one is seventeen. With her arms resting on the meadow bars, and her face aflush with the unquiet happiness that thrilled her heart, Lettice Browne stood reading, lingering by the dim light that stole through the stained windows of the sky, a letter which she had studied so thoroughly that she could repeat it from "My dearest, dearest, darling love," to "Thy adoring Algernon," without the slightest mistake; but she so dearly loved to trace the characters in which it was written, dwelling upon every flowing line and graceful curvature, until, with her eyes closed, she could see every peculiarity of the dashing calligraphy--the top down, read it from the bottom up, read bold, free, extravagant, with as many super- it in detached sentences, read it from left to fluous flourishes to compass a word as there were right, and from right to left, with her eyes open, superfluous words to convey a single thought. and with her eyes shut, dropped a few blissful But Lettice did not observe that. Never was tears upon it, prayed over it a little, kissed it a any handwriting so beautiful-never was love great deal, and finally folded it up with soft, And so she read, and re-read the profusely and sentimentally worded epistle-read it from reverent touch, and put it blushingly in her bosom, just as dear, foolish, romantic maids in story-books do. I charge you not to make a scornful lip over this record of delightful folly in my little Lettice. In all the years of her life, perhaps-nay, surely-she would never feel again just that delicious certainty of happiness, present and eternal, which she felt standing there under the purple heavens with the tender burden of her lover's letter rising and falling with the unsteady beat of her heart. Such simple, whole-souled, unquestioning faith in another, such firm reliance on a carelessly uttered word, such blindness to the faults of the deified one, such a want of appreciation of the ludicrous in highly wrought expressions of love, may only exist in that bright spring season of life when every thing is believed to be exactly what it appears when nothing seems, but all things are--when the mournful words of the Preacher-" Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"-find no echo in the fresh, young heart, but strike a graveyard chill like those solemnly uttered ones through which one hears the rustle of wind in the yews, and the rattle of the earth upon the coffin lid-" Dust to dust, ashes to ashes." There may be will be, later trusts; but none with that perfect abandon-that entire casting away of every other prop; later loves there will be, deeper, stronger, truer; but none so blind, so passionately tender, so thrillingly. sweet; and happiness, too, will come again; but after sorrow it will seem to have lost its immortal nature, and she will dwell in it uncertainly, looking always for the creeping shadow of dissolution; she will do her share of castlebuilding, too, but her dreams will draw closer and closer on the verge of waking, and her castles will tower less magnificently and fall sooner to ruin, as she rises out of the dewy, joyous morning, into the heat and glare of the day, when the great earnest purpose of life shall burst fully upon her-poor dreamer-and grim necessity pull her out of her cloud-palaces into the dusty, sweltering fields of work. So, then, it would seem a kind of wickedness in you to jeer at Lettice's Love Dream-you who, from having dreamed such, know just how sweet it was, and just how brief it was, might feel for her a little tender sympathy; but then you have forgotten that youthful folly of yours, no doubt. And so, I suppose, Lettice, with her locks turning gray, and her children growing up around her, will forget too; or remembering, will wonder if she can be the same person who stood by the meadow bars that night in the hay harvest, building airy temples to her god of clay, until Venus dropped to the earth like a blossom cut from its stem, and Berenice's hair sprinkled the west with gold, and Bootes came out with Asterion and Chara, and Cygnus sailed beautifully down the milky-way, and Lyra led the starry choirs in upper heaven. Maybe she will remember as a more actual thing the prosaic sore throat she had next morning; but that was a kind of penalty she had paid before, and counted it light in comparison with the pleasure of a moonlight talk with her lover in person or in spirit; for Lettice, you may know, held that very satisfying faith, which is one of the chief articles in the religion of lovers, that each thinks of the other at precisely the same moment, and the wish of either for the other's presence brings them into instant communication. Alack! I fear the telegraphic line between hearts is oftener out of repair than is imagined, and many a signal is sent that is only answered in fancy. Following, if we could, the magnetic chain through the invisible world where it runs, I think we would have found somewhere a link broken by wicked sprite bent on mischief, cutting short, or rendering imperfectly the tender spiritmessages sent to the heart of Algernon Lane that fair midsummer evening. Or was it at his own door, by the demons he had entertained right hospitably of late, that the connection was severed, and the pure whisperings of guileless love balked in their mission? In the very hour that little Lettice was dreaming of her god-like Algernon, and setting his thrilling name in short ejaculatory prayers that one could fancy soaring upwards like flocks of snow-white birds, that adorable gentleman in his private lodgings, with feet elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, and supported there by the back of a chair, was puffing away industriously at his meerschaum, drowning in sickening tobacco fumes the delicate flower-scents that breathed from the sheet, with its dainty, vinelike tracery, which he held unfolded in his hand-Lettice's letter, and, as it chanced, the reply to the one that we scan her poring over, as a nun over sacred missal, there in God's vast cathedral, with windows of violet, rose and orange, and walls of hills echoing softly the sweet, holy vespers of hermit thrushes. A tender, artless letter it was, without concealment of any sort, breathing in every word the pure passion and perfect trust that its writer felt-a |