Milton's without the Puritanic stoop, and with the stately grace of a cavalier. AURELIA AS A GRANDMOTHER (From "Prue and I." Copyright, 1856, by Harper & Brothers) THE HERE will be a time when you will no longer go out to dinner; or only very quietly, in the family. I shall be gone then; but other old bookkeepers in white cravats will inherit my tastes, and saunter on summer afternoons to see what I love to see. They will not pause, I fear, in buying apples, to look at the old lady in venerable cap who is rolling by in the carriage. They will worship another Aurelia. You will not wear diamonds or opals any more, only one pearl upon your blue-veined finger,your engagement ring. Grave clergymen and antiquated beaux will hand you down to dinner, and the group of polished youth who gather around the yet unborn Aurelia of that day will look at you, sitting quietly upon the sofa, and say softly, "She must have been very handsome in her time." All this must be; for consider how few years since it was your grandmother who was the belle, by whose side the handsome young men longed to sit and pass expressive mottoes. Your grandmother was the Aurelia of a half-century ago, although you cannot fancy her young. She is indissolubly associated in your mind with caps and dark dresses. You can believe Mary Queen of Scots, or Nell Gwyn, or Cleopatra, to have been young and blooming, although they belonged to old and dead centuries; but not your grandmother. Think of those who shall believe the same of you-you, who to-day are the very flower of youth. Might I plead with you, Aurelia,-I, who would be too happy to receive one of those graciously beaming bows that I see you bestow upon young men, in passing, I would ask you to bear that thought with you always, not to sadden your sunny smile, but to give it a more subtle grace. Wear in your summer garland this little leaf of rue. It will not be the skull at the feast, it will rather be the tender thoughtfulness in the face of the young Madonna. For the years pass, like summer clouds, Aurelia, and the children of yesterday are the wives and mothers of to-day. Even I do sometimes discover the mild eyes of my Prue fixed pensively upon my face, as if searching for the bloom which she remembers there in the days, long ago, when we were young. She will never see it there again, any more than the flowers she held in her hand, in our old spring rambles. Yet the tear that slowly gathers as she gazes is not grief that the bloom has faded from my cheek, but the sweet consciousness that it can never fade from my heart; and as her eyes fall upon her work again, or the children climb her lap to hear the old fairy-tales they already know by heart, my wife Prue is dearer to me than the sweetheart of those days long ago. RICHARD HENRY DANA RICHARD HENRY DANA, the elder, an American poet, born at Cambridge, Mass., 1787; died there 1879. He was bred to the law, but gave it up for literature. He wrote both in verse and prose. For a while he was associate editor of The North American Review. THE LITTLE BEACH BIRD HOU little bird, thou dweller by the sea, T Why takest thou its melancholy voice And with that boding cry O! rather, Bird, with me Through the fair land rejoice! Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, Thy cry is weak and scared, As if thy mates had shared The doom of us: Thy wail- Thou call'st along the sand, and haunt'st the surge, Restless and sad; as if, in strange accord With the motion and the roar Of waves that drive to shore, One spirit did ye urge The Mystery-The Word. Of thousands, thou, both sepulchre and pall, A tale of mourning tells- Then turn thee, little bird, and take thy flight Come, quit with me the shore For gladness and the light Where birds of summer sing. HEA CHILDREN EAVEN lies about us in our infancy," says Wordsworth. And who of us that is not too good to be conscious of his own vices, who has not felt rebuked and humbled under the clear and open countenance of a child?-who that has not felt his impurities foul upon him in the presence of a sinless child? These feelings make the best lesson that can be taught a man, and tell him a way, which all else he has read or heard never could, how paltry is all the show of intellect compared with a pure and good heart. He that will humble himself and go to a child for instruction, will came away a wiser man. If children can make us wiser, they surely can make us better. There is no one more to be envied than a good-natured man watching the workings of children's minds, or overlooking their play. Their eagerness, curious about everything, making out by a quick imagination what they see but a part of— their fanciful combinations and magic inventions, creating out of ordinary circumstances and the com mon things which surround them strange events and little ideal worlds, and these all working in mystery to form matured thought, is study enough for the most acute minds, and should teach us, also, not too officiously to regulate what we so little understand. The still musing and deep abstraction in which they sometimes sit, affect us as a playful mockery of older heads. These little philosophers have no foolish system, with all its pride and jargon, confusing their brains. Theirs is the natural movement of the soul, intense with new life and busy after truth, working to some purpose, though without a noise. When children are lying about seemingly idle and dull, we, who have become case-hardened by time and satiety, forget that they are all sensation, that their outstretched bodies are drinking in from the common sun and air, that every sound is taken note of by the ear, that every floating shadow and passing $ form come and touch at the sleepy eye, and that 0 the little circumstances and the material world about ot them make their best school, and will be the instructors and formers of their characters for life. d S And it is delightful to look on and see how busily $ the whole acts, with its countless parts fitted to each other, and moving in harmony. There are none of e us who have stolen softly behind a child when laboring in a sunny corner digging a lilliputian well, or fencing in a six-inch barn-yard, and listened to his soliloquies and his dialogues with some imaginary eing, without our hearts being touched by it. Nor have we observed the flush which crossed his face when finding himself betrayed, without seeing in it the delicacy and propriety of the after man. A man may have many vices upon him, and have walked long in a bad course, yet if he has a love of children, and can take pleasure in their talk and splay, there is something still left in him to act upon -something which can love simplicity and truth. I |