meet the great soldier again until he stands forth to answer to his name at roll-call on the morning of the last great reveille. At the reunions of this Society he was always a thrice-welcome guest. The same blood coursed in his veins as that which flows in yours. All hearts warmed to him with the glow of an abiding affection. He was a manysided man. He possessed all the characteristics of the successful soldier; bold in conception, vigorous in execution, and unshrinking under grave responsibilities. He was singularly self-reliant, demonstrating by all his acts that "much danger makes great hearts most resolute." He combined in his temperament the restlessness of a Hotspur with the patience of a Fabius. Under the magnetism of his presence his troops rushed to victory with all the dash of Cæsar's Tenth Legion. Opposing ranks went down before the fierceness of his onsets, never to rise again. He paused not till he saw the folds of his banners wave above the strongholds he had wrested from the foe.

While mankind will always appreciate the practical workings of the mind of the great strategist, they will also see in his marvelous career much which savors of romance as well as reality, appeals to the imagination and excites the fancy. They will picture him as a legendary knight moving at the head of conquering columns, whose marches were measured not by single miles, but by thousands; as a general who could make a Christmas gift to his President of a great seaboard city; as a chieftain whose field of military operations covered nearly half a continent; who had penetrated everglades and bayous; the inspiration of whose commands forged weaklings into giants; whose orders all spoke with the true bluntness of the soldier; who fought from valley's depth to mountain height, and marched from inland rivers to the sea. No one can rob him of his laurels; no man can lessen the measure of his fame. His friends will never cease to sing pæans in his honor, and even the wrath of his enemies may be counted in his praise.

MOTHER AND POET

By ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, Poet. Born in Durham, England, 1809; died in Florence, Italy, 1861.

(Turin-After news from Gæta, 1861.)

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea,
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast,
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!

Yet I was a poetess only last year,

And good at my art, for a woman, men said;
But this woman, this, who is agonized here,
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
Forever, instead.

What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed,
And I proud, by that test.

What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees

Both darlings; to feel all their arms round her throat

Cling, strangle a little; to sew by degrees

And broider the long clothes and neat little coat;

To dream and to doat!

To teach them. It stings there! I made them, indeed,

Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,

That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about

The tyrant cast out.

I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels

Of the guns, and denied not.

But then the surprise

When one sits quite alone! kneels!

Then one weeps, then one

-God, how the house feels!

At first happy news came,—in gay letters, moiled
With my kisses,-of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me; and, soon coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow

With their green laurel-bough.

Then was triumph at Turin.

Ancona was free!

And some one came out of the cheers in the street, With a face pale as stone, to say something to me: My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet, While they cheered in the street.

I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained

To be leaned on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.

And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand: I was not to faint,
One loved me for two,-would be with me ere long:
And, "Viva l'Italia! he died for, ‚—our saint,
Who forbids our complaint."

My Nannie would add; he was safe, and aware

Of a presence that turned off the balls, —was impressed It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,

And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed,

To live on for the rest.

On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line

Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta :-" Shot.

Tell his mother." Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother, not

mine;"

66

No voice says, My mother" again to me. What!

You think Guido forgot?

Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that Love and Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.

Oh Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of Thy Mother! consider, I pray,

How we common mothers stand desolate, mark

Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say.

Both boys dead? but that's out of nature.

We all

Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.

'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;

And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done
If we have not a son?

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?

When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death, crashing souls out of men? When the guns of Cavalli, with final retort,

Have cut the game short?

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,

When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,

When you have a country from mountain to sea,

And King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my dead)

What then? Do not mock me.

And burn your lights faintly!

Ah, ring your bells low, My country is there,

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow;

My Italy's there, with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair!

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this; and we sit on, forlorn,
When the man-child is born.

Dead!

One of them shot by the sea in the west,
And one of them shot in the east by the sea.
Both, both my boys! If, in keeping the feast,
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me!

FOREFATHERS' DAY

By JOHN DAVIS LONG, Lawyer, Author; Governor of Massachusetts, 1882-88; Secretary of the Navy, 1897-. Born in Buckfield, Maine, 1838.

From a speech at a banquet of the New England Society in the City of New York, Dec. 22, 1884.

Reprinted, by permission of the author, from "After Dinner and Other Speeches," published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. Copyright 1895, by John D. Long.

Never since Moses led the children of Israel toward the promised land has there been such an epic as the voyage of the Mayflower and the landing at Plymouth. . . . Ah, how narrowly and mistakenly we limit those men and women of the Mayflower when we shrivel them with the winter blast of a December day, harden them into the solemnity of ascetics, or think of them as refugees from personal annoyances.

While they were, as some one has said, “neither Puritans nor persecutors," they were, as is too rarely said, something far more-they were poets, they were idealists. They were