Two little urchins at her knee

You must paint, sir: one like me,

The other with a clearer brow,

And the light of his adventurous eyes
Flashing with boldest enterprise:
At ten years old he went to sea,-

God knoweth if he be living now,

He sailed in the good ship Commodore,-
Nobody ever crossed her track

To bring us news, and she never came back.
Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more

Since that old ship went out of the bay

With my great-hearted brother on her deck;
I watched him till he shrank to a speck,
And his face was toward me all the way.
Bright his hair was, a golden brown,

The time we stood at our mother's knee:
That beauteous head, if it did go down,
Carried sunshine into the sea!

Out in the fields one summer night
We were together, half afraid

Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade

Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,— Loitering till after the low little light

Of the candle shone through the open door, And over the haystack's pointed top,

All of a tremble, and ready to drop,

The first half-hour, the great yellow star That we with staring, ignorant eyes,

Had often and often watched to see

Propped and held in its place in the skies By the fork of a tall, red mulberry-tree,

Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,— Dead at the top,-just one branch full

Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool, From which it tenderly shook the dew

Over our heads, when we came to play

In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day:-
Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore

A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,—
The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat:

The berries we gave her she would n't eat,

But cried and cried, till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.

At last we stood at our mother's knee.
Do you think, sir, if you try,
You can paint the look of a lie?
If you can, pray have the grace
To put it solely in the face
Of the urchin that is likest me:

I think 'twas solely mine, indeed:
But that's no matter,-paint it so;

The eyes of our mother—(take good heed)—
Looking not on the nestful of eggs,

Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs,
But straight through our faces down to our lies,
And O, with such injured, reproachful surprise!

I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though
A sharp blade struck through it.

You, sir, know,

That you on the canvas are to repeat

Things that are fairest, things most sweet,

Woods and cornfields and mulberry tree,—

The mother, the lads, with their bird, at her knee:
But, O, that look of reproachful woe!

High as the heavens your name I'll shout,
*If you paint me the picture, and leave that out.

Alice Cary.

JOHN BURNS OF GETTYSBURG.

Have you heard the story the gossips tell
Of Burns of Gettysburg?-No? Ah, well
Brief is the glory that hero earns,
Briefer the story of poor John Burns;
He was the fellow who won renown-
The only man who did n't back down

When the rebels rode through his native town;
But held his own in the fight next day,

When all his townsfolk ran away.
That was in July, sixty-three,—
The very day that General Lee,
The flower of Southern chivalry,

Baffled and beaten, backward reeled

From a stubborn Meade and a barren field.

I might tell how, but the day before,
John Burns stood at his cottage-door,
Looking down the village street,

Where, in the shade of his peaceful vine,
He heard the low of his gathered kine,
And felt their breath with incense sweet;
Or, I might say, when the sunset burned
The old farm gable, he thought it turned
The milk that fell in a babbling flood
Into the milk-pail, red as blood;
Or, how he fancied the hum of bees
Were bullets buzzing among the trees.
But all such fanciful thoughts as these
Were strange to a practical man like Burns,
Who minded only his own concerns,
Troubled no more by fancies fine

Than one of his calm-eyed, long-tailed kine— Quite old-fashioned, and matter-of-fact,

Slow to argue, but quick to act.

That was the reason, as some folks say,
He fought so well on that terrible day.

Raged for hours the heavy fight,

Thundered the battery's double bass-
Difficult music for men to face;

While on the left-where now the graves
Undulate like the living waves
That all the day unceasing swept

Up to the pits the rebels kept

Round shot plowed the upland glades,
Sown with bullets, reaped with blades;
Shattered fences here and there
Tossed their splinters in the air,
The very trees were stripped and bare;
The barns that once held yellow grain
Were heaped with harvests of the slain;
The cattle bellowed on the plain,

The turkeys screamed with might and main,
And brooding barn-fowl left their rest
With strange shells bursting in each nest.

Just where the tide of battle turns,
Erect and lonely, stood old John Burns.

How do you think the man was dressed?
He wore an ancient, long buff vest,
Yellow as saffron-but his best;

And, buttoned over his manly breast
Was a bright blue coat with a rolling collar,
And large gilt buttons-size of a dollar—
With tails that country-folk called "swaller.'
He wore a broad-brimmed, bell-crowned hat,
White as the locks on which it sat.

Never had such a sight been seen
For forty years on the village-green,
Since old John Burns was a country beau,
And went to the "quilting" long ago.

Close at his elbows, all that day
Veterans of the Peninsula,

Sunburnt and bearded, charged away,
And striplings, downy of lip and chin,-
Clerks that the Home Guard mustered in-
Glanced as they passed at the hat he wore,
Then at the rifle his right hand bore,
And hailed him from out their youthful lore,
With scraps of a slangy répertoire :

"How are you, White Hat?" "Put her through!"
"Your head's level!" and, "Bully for you!"
Called him "Daddy"—and begged he 'd disclose
The name of the tailor who made his clothes,
And what was the value he set on those;
While Burns, unmindful of jeers and scoff,
Stood there picking the rebels off—

With his long, brown rifle and bell-crown hạt,
And the swallow-tails they were laughing at.

'Twas but a moment, for that respect
Which clothes all courage their voices checked;
And something the wildest could understand.
Spake in the old man's strong right hand,
And his corded throat, and the lurking frown
Of his eyebrows under his old bell-crown;

Until, as they gazed, there crept an awe

Through the ranks in whispers, and some men saw, In the antique vestments and long white hair

The Past of the Nation in battle there.

And some of the soldiers since declare

That the gleam of his old white hat afar,

Like the crested plume of the brave Navarre,
That day was their oriflamme of war.
Thus raged the battle. You know the rest:
How the rebels beaten, and backward pressed,
Broke at the final charge and ran.

At which John Burns-a practical man
Shouldered his rifle, unbent his brows,
And then went back to his bees and cows.

That is the story of old John Burns;
This is the moral the reader learns:

In fighting the battle, the question's whether
You'll show a hat that's white, or a feather.

HANNAH JANE.

Bret Harte.

She is n't half so handsome as when twenty years agone, At her old home in Piketon, Parson Avery made us one: The great house crowded full of guests of every degree, The girls all envying Hannah Jane, the boys all envying

me.

Her fingers then were taper, and her skin as white as milk, Her brown hair-what a mess it was! and soft and fine as

silk;

No wind-moved willow by a brook had ever such a grace, The form of Aphrodite, with a pure Madonna face.

She had but meager schooling: her little notes to me, Were full of crooked pothooks, and the worst orthography:

Her "dear" she spelled with double e and "kiss" with but

one s:

But when one's crazed with passion, what's a letter more or less?

She blundered in her writing, and she blundered when she spoke,

And every rule of syntax that old Murray made, she

broke;

But she was beautiful and fresh, and I-well, I was young; Her form and face o'erbalanced all the blunders of her

tongue.