of letters, and are nearly useless from being spread over too much ground. Everett's weapons are ever kept in good order, and shine well in the sun, but they are little calculated for warfare, and rarely kill when they strike. Webster's words are thunder-bolts, which sometimes miss the Titans at whom they are hurled, but always leave enduring marks when they strike.

Hazlitt's verbal army is sometimes drunk and surly, sometimes foaming with passion, sometimes cool and malignant; but, drunk or sober, are ever dangerous to cope with. Some of Tom Moore's words are shining dirt, which he flings with excellent aim. This list might be indefinitely extended, and arranged with more regard to merit and chronology. My own words, in this connection, might be compared to ragged, undisciplined militia, which could be easily routed by a charge of horse, and which are apt to fire into each other's faces.

WASTED COUNSEL.

R. W. EASTERBROOKS.

So, John, you're a goin' to be married, I hear.
Eh? take some tobacco! well, women is queer,
And pesky provokin' sometimes; but I find,
In the long run of life, men are seldom behind.

Now there's my old woman-that's her-Polly Drake;
I thought her an angel dropped here by mistake,
Until I'd been married a month, when, I swan,
I wished she'd been dropped a few rods further on!

How was it? Wall, little by little, you see,
I come to know Polly and she to know me,
And neither was pleased with the other. The light
So perfect in courtship, with marriage grows bright

And shows up the flaws in our pictures so plain
That we long to return them to shadows again.
But the gallery's bolted, and husband and wife,
Alone with each other, are out, and for life.

Well, it ain't because either is wuss than they were,
That she haggles with him and he imitates her,
But only that both are themselves, and appear
As humans, not latter-day Jobs. Now come here

And I'll tell you a secret worth knowin': you see
We've jogged along pleasant like, Polly and me,
For forty odd year-and, deny it who may-
In times like the present, that's su'thing to say.

The way that I fixed it was this: when at first
I found that my angel was comin' to dust,
I raved (a bad habit I've tried to correct),

And Polly got flustered-what could you expect?

And the way she pitched into me then (with her tongue)
Was cur'us to witness: "Now, John, you are young,
But remember this fact, and then heed it with sense,
The tongue is a woman's sole means of defence."

And of course she has learn't how to use it; but then
It is easily stopped with a kiss. Well! and when
She finally quit with a snob and a sneeze,

I slunk to the barn-yard as meek as you please

And thought the thing over; sez I, "Eben Drake,
You've shown yourself simpleton now-no mistake."
For I measured myself, and I found that for me
To scold at the woman that Polly could be

Was wuss than the toad's finding fault with the hare,
And this is the bargain I made then and there:
"I'll leave her alone till I see, plain and true,
That I am the wisest and best of the two."

So, as every one knows, we're a peaceable pair,
And the rock all young fellers like you should beware

Is that of forgetting that women, like men,
Is likely to falter, and drop now and then.
Now Ruth is as good as the average. Pshaw!
Don't look so disgusted! 'tis true as the law

That some time you'll find she is human, and mourn
-Of course-now I've got to the sermon-he's gone.

TOO LATE.

FITZ HUGH LUDLOW.

"Ah! si la jeunesse savait―si la vieillesse pouvait !” THERE sat an old man on a rock

And unceasing bewailed him of Fate

That concern where we all must take stock
Though our vote has no hearing nor weight:
And the old man sang him an old, old song-
Never sang voice so clear and strong

That it could drown the old man's long,
For he sang the song "Too late! too late!"

"When we want, we have for our pains
The promise that if we but wait

Till the want has burned out of our brains
Every means shall be present to state;

While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold,
While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old,
When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold,
And everything comes too late-too late!

"When strawberries seemed like red heavens-
Terrapin stew a wild dream—

When my brain was at sixes and sevens
If my mother had 'folks' and ice cream,
Then I gazed with a lickerish hunger
At the restaurant man and fruit-monger-
But oh! how I wished I were younger

When the goodies all came in a stream-in a stream!

“I've a splendid blood horse and a liver
That it jars into torture to trot;
My row-boat's the gem of the river—
Gout makes every knuckle a knot!

86

I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome,
But no palate for menus-no eyes for a dome—
Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home
When no home but an attic he'd got-he'd got.

How I longed in that lonest of garrets,

Where the tiles baked my brains all July,
For ground to grow two pecks of carrots,
Two pigs of my own in a sty.

A rose-bush-a little thatched cottage-
Two spoons-love-a basin of pottage:
Now in freestone I sit-and my dotage-

With a woman's chair empty close by-close by!

"Ah! now, though I sit on a rock,

I have shared one seat with the Great;

I have sat, knowing naught of the clock,

On Love's high throne of state;

But the lips that kissed and the arms that caressed
To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed,
And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed
Had they only not come too late! too late!

WALTER SCOTT.

JOHN W. CHADWICK.

Scorr's temple of fortune was already tottering to its base when the publication of "Waverley" in 1814 signalized a success so splendid that publisher and author banished every doubt and entered on a new career. It is terrible to think how different Scott's impression on the world would have been if he had not discovered the mine of

fiction in himself after he had exhausted the mine of poetry. "Rokeby and the Bride of Triermain" and the "Lord of the Isles" were decidedly inferior to their predecessors, and made a much fainter appeal to the public, first on account of their intrinsic inferiority, and second because they had gone with Childe Harold on his pilgrimage. "Byron beats me in poetry," said Scott. Would he had gone on writing with this consciousness of being beaten! This is not likely. But what a happy fortune was that which, when his poetic vein was running low and the public was turning from him to a new favorite, sent him one day to hunt for fishing-tackle, and so mixed up with it the first chapter of the novel which he had begun. nine years before and broken off! There was in it the corner stone of such a temple of creative art as no writer of prose fiction up to that time had dreamed of building, not soaring high but wide extended, spacious, full of light and air for the most part, but not without mysterious crypts and dark recesses, and simply infinite in the variety and quaintness of its details of ornament. And oh, the multitude that have gathered neath this temple's roof, upon its floor where every step is on some hero's name, and found life better worth the living because of such a fair retreat, and thanked God for such a name as Walter Scott!

The wonderful success of the Waverleys on their first appearance, the wonderful rapidity with which they were brought out, the wonderful mystery that attended their publication-these things are commonplace to every one who knows the rudiments of English literature. There has been much discussion as to why Scott remained anonymous so long. It is probable that he published Waverley anonymously because he did not wish to compromise his general literary reputation with a questionable success.