FOR LIFE.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN.

Dear wife! Oh, see the blessing
This warm spring-rain has brought!
Each flower, the gift confessing,

New life, new bloom has caught.
The distant storm is swelling
Along the misty blue;

And here love still is dwelling,

Here bliss is ever new.

Thou see'st those white doves, winging
Their path to that still grove,
Where mournful trees are flinging

Their shades o'er violets' love.
Together, thither stealing,

We sought Spring's flowery cup,
And there our first love-feeling
So mightily flamed up.
When, from the church returning,
The dear 'Yes' whispered low,
And cheeks with deep bliss burning,
The good priest saw us go,
New moons rejoiced in chorus,
Uprose another sun,
And we, the world before us,
A new life-course begun.
A thousand seals were fastened
Upon our bond of love,
As o'er the plain we hastened,
Or lingered in the grove;
On rocky summit tarried,
Reposed in bush or brake;
And in a reed Love carried
His fire upon the lake.
So moving on, contented,

A happy two were we-
But Providence dissented,
And chose to make us three;
And four-five-six-at table
Partook the daily bread;

And soon these shoots were able

To bend down o'er our head.

And there, from north winds shielded,
With willows girt about,

The mansion, newly builded,
How kindly it looks out!
Who built that handsome dwelling
Upon the hill above?
The passer by is telling:

Our Frederick, with his love.
Where, through the rocky hollow,
The river close hemmed in,
Which dark abysses swallow,
Is forced with clanging din,
They tell of bright-eyed lasses-
The pretty factory-girls
But one the whole surpasses-
Our child with her dark curls.

But where thick grasses only
Cling round the church-yard graves,
And that tall pine, so lonely,

Its sighing branches waves-
Our dead one there is sleeping,
Laid prematurely low,
To lead our eyes, when weeping,
To heaven from things below.
Arms glitter, cannons rattle,
Above the distant hill;
The army comes from battle,

Which saved our homes from ill.
Who moves in front so proudly,
With medals covered o'er !
"Your son," they all cry loudly-,
So comes our Charles once more.

Of all the guests the dearest,

He greets his happy bride;
The great feast-day-the nearest-
Will see their fates allied.

THE GHOST AND THE COUNTRY CLUB.

In all ages, persons of weak intellects have believed in apparitions; and in all relations of this kind, there is manifestly an endeavor to make the events as supernatural, wonderful, and as well attested as possible, to prevent the suspicion of trick, and to silence all objections which might be made to their credibility. In compliance with this custom, we will recount a story of a ghost, which seems to possess all the desired requisites.

At a town in the West of England, twenty-four persons were accustomed to assemble once a week, to drink, smoke tobacco and talk politics. Like the academy of Rubens, at Antwerp, each member had his peculiar chair, and the presi dent's was more elevated than the rest. As one of the members had been in a dying state for some time, his chair, while he was absent, remained vacant.

When the club met on the usual night, inquiries were naturally made after their associate. As he lived in the adjoining house, a particular friend went to inquire after him, and returned with the melancholy intelligence that he could not survive the night. This threw a gloom on the company, and all efforts to turn the conversation from the sad subject before them were ineffectual. About midnight the door opened, and the form, in white, of the dying or dead man, walked into the room, and took his seat in his accustomed chair. There he remained in silence, and in silence was he gazed at. The apparition continued a sufficient time in the chair to assure all who were present of the reality of the vision. At length he arose and stalked toward the door-which he opened as if living-went out, and shut the door after him. After a long pause, some one, at last, had the resolution to say, "If only one of us had seen this, he would not have been believed; but it is impossible that so many of us can have been deceived." The company, by degrees, recovered their speech, and the whole conversation, as may be imagined, was upon the dreadful object which had engaged their attention. They broke

up,

and

went home. In the morning, inquiry was made after their sick friend. It was answered by an accouut of his death, which happened nearly about the time of his appearance in the club-room. There could be little doubt before; but now, nothing could be more ceriain than he reality of the appari tion, which had been simultaneously seen by so many persons. It is unnecessary to say, that such a story spread over the country, and found credit even from infidels: for in this case, all reasoning became superfluous, when opposed to a plain fact, attested by three-and-twerty witnesses. To assert the doctrine of the fixed laws of nature was ridiculous, when there were so many people of credit to prove that they might be unfixed. Years rolled on, and the story was almost for gotten.

whose

One of the club was an apothecary. In the course of his practice he was called to an old woman, whose business it was to attend sick persons. She told him that she could leave the world with a quiet conscience, but for one thing, which lay upon her mind. "Do you not remember Mr.ghost has been so much talked of? I was his nurse. On the night of his death I left his room for something he wanted. I am sure I had not been absent long; but, at my return, I found the bed without my patient! He was delirious, and I feared that he had thrown himself out of the window. I was so frightened that I had no power to stir; but, after some time, to my great astonishment, he entered the room, shivering, and his teeth chattering, laid himself down on the bed, and died! Considering my negligence as the cause of his death, I kept this a secret, for fear of what might be done to me. Though I could have contradicted all the story of the ghost, I dared not to do it. I knew, by what had happened,

that it was he himself who had been in the club-room (perhaps recollecting it was the night of meeting); but I hope God and the poor gentleman's friends will forgive me, and I shall die contented."

HOPE'S BRIGHTER SHORE.

O'er the wild waste the Autumnal leaf careers,
Nor vale nor mountain now is ripe with flowers;
Nature's fair brow the snow, of winter sears,

And all but Hope hath fled her once green bowers-
Hope with her sunny hair.

And why thus lonely lingers she, when all

The glorious gifts of Summer are no more?
Her foot already treads Spring's leafy hall,
Her eyes see sunbeams gild the distant shore
Distant, yet still how fair!

So when the laugh of Childhood and the song
Are heard no longer, as in other days,
Hope, with her rainbow wand, still leads along

To where, all flush'd with Manhood's noontide rays,
Succeeds a prouder age.

Who loveth Fame? lo, where her temple stands!
Who mad Ambition? there the laurel waves!

All that the majesty of mind commands,
All that the heart of man insatiate craves,
Is found in Hope's bright page.

And yet the mighty majesty of mind-
Ambition, Fame, are mixed with earthly leaven.
What are their purest joys to the refined

And spotless ones, the promised ones of Heaven,
Joys that shall ne'er decay!

The tear of sorrow hath no dwelling there

Earth is its birth-place; why should angels weep? They know not Sorrow, as they know not Care, But, as Life's pilgrim climbs the rugged steep, They cheer him on his way.

Thrice happy he, whom, through each devious path, The Lamp of Faith conducts with steady light! His spirit quails not at the tempest's wrath;

He trembles not when low'rs the moonless night,
Nor fears the Ocean's roar.

Oh! life may have its sorrows and its cares,
Yet come they but from sin to purify;
While Death itself, the power that never spares,
Is but the soul-bark of Mortality,
Seeking a brighter shore.

THINGS UNFASHIONABLE.

As a periodical notice of the prevailing fashions comes within the sphere of an editor's duty, some service may be also done the State by telling what is not fashionable.

It is not fashionable to pay your promise' on demand. It is not fashionable to be out of debt with the world, especially with your tailor.

It is not fashionable to go and witness the performance of the legitimate drama, if there be a sagacious dog, a 'vonderful 'orse,' or a dancing monkey to be seen in the city.

It is not fashionable to pay your subscription to a newspaper when called on for it.

It is not fashionable to pass a lady in the street without staring her in the face.

It is not fashionable, among office-holders, to be scrupulously honest; among orators, to be extremely eloquent; or among lawyers to be overburthened with learned lore.

It is not fashionable for editors to be wealthy, or quacks to be modest and unpretending.

It is not fashionable for young swells to go to bed till morning, nor for ladies, who essay to look sentimental, to rise till

noon.

It is not fashionable to be charitable, without being at the same time ostentatious; or to be patriotic, unless swayed by self-interest.

It is not fashionable to live within your income, or to have your name out of the sheriff's books.

It is not fashionable, however you may laud republican principles, to adopt the plain, unsophisticated habits and man ners that characterised the Washingtons and Franklins, the fathers of those principles.

JOKES.

167

"Joke, a jest; something not serious," says Johnson. Common sense is said to be a rarer quality than genius, but a good joke is rarer still. Rogers, the poet, remarked that the best joke he ever heard was an acknowledgment in the newspapers from the commissioners of the Sinking Fund, that they had received six pounds sterling from some patrictic individuals toward the liquidation of the national debt! The disproportion between the means and the end is entirely ludicrous enough, and rivals the egregious vanity of old Dennis the critic, ('Mad Dennis,' as Swift called him,) who imagined the French were going to invade Great Brittain, because he had written a tragedy reflecting on the French character. As an instance of the strange association of ideas in some minds, we may mention, that when a gentleman remarked on the morning that intelligence was received of Lord Byron's death -"So, Byron is gone!" An individual present rejoined, "Yes; and do you know, Mr. Cooper, our neighbor, is not expected to live?"

Scarcely less rich was the remark of a cockney citizen"I like Young's acting better than his Night Thoughts," confounding the poetical divine, long since gathered to his fathers, with the tragedian then flourishing on the stage.

We have heard that when a Scotch duchess, once the admired of all observers,' was questioning the children at one of her charity schools, the teacher asked, "What is the wife of a king called?"

"A queen," bawled out the little philosophers. "The wife of an emperor ?"

"An empress," was replied with equal readiness. "Then what is the wife of a duke called?"

"A drake," exclaimed several voices, mistaking the title duke for the biped duck, which they pronounced the same.

At a meeting of a turnpike board one day, a farmer objected to some decision, when the clerk asked upon what ground he objected.

66

Upon the ground of Sawtry," replied the rustic, alluding to the name of the parish.

A similar joke occurs in Shakspere between the gravedigger and Hamlet, but the coincidence, being perfectly undesigned, only bears testimony to the truth and verisimilitude of the poet's conceptions.

One slight ovation more, and we have done. Scotchmen are famous for nationality, and one night we remember a popular living author, in the midst of a joyous group in London, reciting with great enthusiasm, from memory, Burns's Address to the Deil. He repeated the lines

'I've heard any reverend granny say,

In lonely glens ye like to stray;'

66

when a genuine borderer bust out, D'ye think the auld chield has any notion of Scotch scenery? O I wish I was wi' him!" This was the climax of nationality.

In the Letters from the Highlands, written about 1720 by one of General Wade's engineers, there occurs a good practical joke with respect to the tailors of Inverness. To prevent cabbaging, an ingenious process was adopted.

"I shall give you a notable instance of precaution used by some of the men against the tailor's purloining. This is to buy every thing that goes to the making of a suit of clothes, even to the staytape and thread; and when they are to be delivered out, they are altogether weighed before the tailor's face. And when he brings home the suit, it is again put into the scale with the shreds of every sort, and it is expected the whole shall answer the original weight."

Men dying make their wills, why cannot wives? Because wives have their wills during their lives. R. Hugman, 1628. Tommy, have you got the ducks in?” "Yes, sir." "All of them?" "Yes, sir." "Did you count them ?" "Yes, sir." "How many was there?" "One." "That's right, my boy." A man desired his wife to make some apple dumplings for

him. She made seventeen;' and after he had eaten sixteen and a half, his son placed his hand on his father's knee and looked up with longing eyes. The affectionate father gazed for a moment on his face, as he swallowed the last moiety, and observed, "Go away, dear, Papa's sick.

A young lady asked a gentleman the meaning of the word surrogate. "It is," he replied, "a gate through which all parties have to pass on their way to get married."-" Then I suppose," said the lady, "that it is a corruption of sorrowgate."

An exchange paper inquires "What was the color of the winds and waves during the late gale?" An exchange very sagely replies " the winds blue and the waves rose.'

Wit is a feather, Pope has said,

And females never doubt it;

For those who've least within their head,
Display the most without it.

THE RETORT COURTEOUS.-A very eminent surgeon of the metropolis was called suddenly a few days ago to visit a person in St. James's square, London. When he arrived in the square, he found that his carriage could not be driven up to the house, in consequence of a heap of stones lying in the way irritated at the circumstance, he leaned out of the window, and with a volley of oaths asked an Irish laborer, who stood near, why those stones were not removed? "Where can I move 'em to?" Move them any where-move them to h-." "I think," rejoined Paddy, "they 'd be more out of your honor's way if I moved 'em to heaven."

VAIN MEN.-Dr. Parr and Lord Erskine are said to have been the veinest men of their times. At a dinner some years since, Dr. Parr, in ecstacies with the conversational powers of Lord Erskine, called out to him, through his junior, "My Lord, I mean to write your epitaph." "Dr. Parr," replied the noble lawyer, "it is a temptation to commit suicide."The lines of Swift are not impertinent:

'T is an old maxim in the schools,
That vanity 's the food of fools;

Yet, now and then your men of wit, Will condescend to take a bit. HOSPITALITY.-Jack Bannister, praising the hospitalities of the Irish, after his return from one of his trips to the sister kingdom, was asked if he had ever been at Cork. .“No,' replied the wit, "but I have seen a great many drawings of it."

A SEA CHAPLAIN'S RELIGION.-When the Earl of Clancarty was captain of a man of war, and was cruising on the coast of Guinea, he happened to lose his chaplain, who was carried off by a fever; on which the lientenant, a Scotchman, gave him notice of it, saying, at the same time," that he was sorry to inform him that he died a Roman Catholic." Well,

so much the better," said his lordship. "Oot awa, my lord,

how can you say so of a British clergyman?" "Why," said his lordship, "because I believe I am the first captain of a man of war that can boast of having a chaplain who had any religion at all."

CREBILLON, THE FRENCH POET.-Poor Crebillon was most unfortunate in his family and pursuits. His wife was

suspected of infidelity; his son was a licentious writer and a libertine; and his enemies gave out that his plays were written by his brother, a clergyman. He observed one day in company, in the presence of his son, I have been the author of two things in my life which I shall always repent." "And yet, sir," said the reprobate, "there are many persons who affirm that you are the author of neither."

LORD BROUGHAM'S EPITAPH.-The following witty lines were written on the occasion of Brougham's declaration, that he wished for no other epitaph than "Here lies the enemy of William Pitt."

Brougham, on his tomb stone would have writ,
"Here lies the enemy of Pitt;"
And half the line at least applies-

For every one admits "he lies."

A SPECIMEN OF MODERN HONOR.-The London Argus tells the story of a gentleman who, while watching a couple of ecarte players, saw that one was cheating the other. Feeling the discovery to be a delicate one, he crossed the room to a sporting friend, and asked him what he should do? "Do?" replied the friend, who was a man of experience. "Do? Why, go and back him as high as you can; pile it up strong!" A FIREMAN'S TOAST.-At a late festival by the firemen of Detroit City, an engineer, Pierce Yeller, gave the following toast:

The Ladies-The only incendiaries who kindle a flame which water will not extinguish.

TACITURNITY OF GENIUS.-In conversation Dante was taciturn or satirical; Butler was silent or caustic; Gray and Alfieri seldom talked or smiled. Descartes, whose avocations formed him for meditation and solitude, was silent. Rousseau was remarkably trite in conversation-not a werd of fancy or eloquence warmed him. Milton was unsocial, and dison and Moliere were only observers in society; and Dryeven irritable when much pressed by the talk of others. Adden has very honestly told us: My conversation is dull and slow, my humor saturnine and reserved; in short, I am bet one of those who endeavor to break jests in company, or make repartees."

THE ABSENT PHILOSOPHER AT HOME.-The following anecdote is related of Lessing, the German author, who, in his old age, was subject to extraordinary fits of abstraction. On his return home one evening, after he had knocked at the door, a servant looked out of the window to see who was there. Not recognizing his master, and mistaking him for a stranger, he called out, "The professor is not at home." "O, very well," replied Lessing, "I will call another time;" and so saying he walked composedly away..

A TOPER'S IDEA OF TEMPERANCE.-Temperance is a great virtue: therefore, always be moderate in the use of ardent spirits. Six glasses of sling before breakfast are as much as any one man ought to take unless he is extraordinary thirsty, and did n't drink enough on going to bed. But even in that case he should not exceed twelve, no how.

Why do we weep on coming into the world, and weep on going out of it?

Why are riches honored more than merit?

Why is that which is ugliness at Paris beauty at Pekin? Why have we all two eyes, one. nose, one mouth, and yet never meet with two people exactly alike?

knaves in carriages? Why do so many worthy people go on foot, and so many

Why do young ladies, who have received a good education, dance so well and talk so ill?

Why are booksellers richer than authors?

Why was Socrates ugly, Horace clumsy, Sappho diminu tive, Cleopatra red-haired, Cicero deformed, Pelisson hideous, and Queen Christina barbarous ?