A smile replaced his thoughtful frown;

66

Ho, lads! yon stick we'll borrow; That Yankee pole shall serve King George Before this time to-morrow!"

Later he stood upon the green,
And, careless of resistance,

The townsfolk heard him broach his plans
With insolent insistance.
Foremost among the little crowd

That grew and gathered near him, Three school-girls stood with flashing eyes And crimson cheeks, to hear him.

And when, at last, they turned away,
Each fair young face was wearing
A look of stern resolve, while low
They whispered words of daring.
If in their homes that night the girls
Were chid for absent seeming,
None guessed what weighty secrets filled
The hearts unused to scheming.

'Twas midnight, and the little town
All tranquilly lay sleeping,

When through the silence and the gloom
Three slender forms went creeping.
Some breathless moments-they had gained
The flagstaff-then shone brightly
Their keen-edged axes, while their strokes
Fell fast and thick, if lightly.

Some words of cheer and hope they spake
To spur their strength so slender,
Then plied their hard, unwonted task,
Those heroines brave as tender.
Soon louder rang their strokes and words
Till tears with laughter blending,
They saw the shapely flag-staff fall,
Hewed, hacked, beyond all mending.

Then, for the dawn was breaking fast,
They fled, too happy-hearted,
To heed the sting of muscles strained,
Or palms that bled and smarted.
But one turned back to gather up
With almost reverent manner,
And kindling look, the flag she loved-
The striped and starry banner.

The morning sun displayed their workAmazed, the early risers

Looked on, and praised the ready thought
That baffled all surmisers.

Fierce was the English captain's wrath,
And bitter his reviling,

While half the town stood grouped around,
Nor cared to hide their smiling.

Their island held no other stick
Of timber for his using,

And so with merry scorn they met
His anger and abusing.

The youthful heroines of the day?
Their courage long was vaunted,
While friends and kinsfolk far and near
Their praises fondly chanted.

Alas, for fame! their very names

Have mouldered past retracing,

The time-worn record notes their deed,
Then stops-all else effacing.
Blazoned on no historic page,
They lack the patriot's glory,

Unless these humble lines may serve

To keep alive their story.

Corbett.

KING OF CANDY-LAND.

I had such a lovely dream last night, it was truly so fine and grand;

I thought I was king, all alone by myself, of a land called Candy-Land!

I dwelt in the great lemon cocoanut walls of a palace just to my taste ;

With its furniture made out of all things nice from taffy to jujube paste.

With rarest of candies at every turn, obedient slaves would wait,

And my throne was studded with peppermint drops. and carved out of chocolate,

And O, 'twas such fun as I wandered through those beautiful rooms alone,

To bite off a morsel of sofa or chair, or nibble a bit of throne.

Youths' Companion.

I LOVE, YOU LOVE.

Old Jones, the village pedagogue, the grammar lesson called one day,

Young Bess, a maid of sweet sixteen, began the wellknown words to say:

"First person I love," first she said, sly Tom beside her whispered, “me?"

"Second person you love," Bess went on, "aye, that I do," said Tom, "love thee."

"Third person he loves," still said Bess. Tom whispered, "Who's he?"

"Oh! Tom" said Bessie, pleading low," do hold your peace and let me be!"

"No whispering!" called the master loud, and frowned. upon the forward youth,

"First person we love," Bessie said. "By George," Tom whispered, "that's the truth."

The lesson o'er at last, poor Bess with cheeks all crimson took her seat,

While Tom, sly fellow, tried in vain the maiden's soft blue eyes to meet;

And when the recess hour was come, Tom begged a walk with coaxing tone,

And 'neath, the trees, Bess said again the lesson o'er-for him alone.

THE PROVINCE OF HISTORY.

The concluding paragraphs of a historical work may well be brief and simple. It is not permitted to the writer of history to moralize at length upon the events which are sketched by his pen. He is forbidden to conjecture, to imagine, to dream. He has learned, albeit against his will, to moderate his enthusiasm, to curb his fancy, to be humble in the pres ence of facts. To him the scenery on the shore of the stream that bears him onward-tall trees and giant rocks-must pass but half observed, and for him the sun and the south wind strive in vain to make enticing pictures on the playful eddies of human thought. None the less, he may occasionally pause to reflect; he may ever and anon throw out an honest deduction drawn from the events upon which his attention has been fixed. Particularly is this true when he has come to the end.

All of a sudden he anchors in the bay of the present, and realizes that his voyage is done. In such a moment there is a natural reversion of the thought from its long and devious track across the fields, valleys, and wastes of the past, and a strong disposition to educe some lesson from the events which he has recorded. The first and most general truth in history is that men ought to be free. If happiness is the end of human race, then freedom is its condition. And this freedom is not to be a kind of halfescape from thraldom and tyranny, but ample and absolute. The emancipation in order to be emanci

pation at all, must be complete. To the historian it must ever appear strange that men have been so distrustful of this central principle in the philosophy of human history. The greatest fallacy with which the human intellect has ever been beguiled, is that the present has conceded to men all the freedom which they are fit to enjoy. On the contrary, no age has done so. Every age has been a Czar, and every reformer is threatened with Siberia. Nevertheless, in the face of all this baleful opposition and fierce hostility to the forward and freedom-seeking movement of the race, the fact remains that to be free is the prime condition of all the greatness, wisdom, and happiness in the world. Whatever force, therefore, contributes to widen the limits which timid fear or selfish despotism has set as the thus-far of freedom is a civilizing force and deserves to be augmented by the individual will and personal endeavor of every lover of mankind; and on the other hand, every force which tends to fix around the teeming brains and restless activities of men one of those so called necessary barriers to their progress and ambition, is a force of barbarism and cruelty, meriting the relentless an tagonism of every well-wisher of his kind. Let it be remembered, then, that the battle is not yet ended, the victory not yet won. The present is relatively -not absolutely, thanks to the great warriors of humanity—as much the victim of the enslaving forces as was the past; and it is the duty of the philanthropist, the sage, the statesman, to give the best of his life and genius to the work of breaking down, and not imposing, those bulwarks and barriers which superstition and conservatism have reared as the ramparts of civilization, and for which an enlightened people have no more need than for the Chinese wall.

Of all things that are incidentally needed to usher in the promised democracy and brotherhood of manthe coming new era of enlightenment and peaceone of the most essential is toleration. It is a thing which the world has never yet enjoyed-is just now