WHEN I AWAKE, I AM STILL WITH THEE. S BY MRS. H. B. STOWE. TILL, still with thee, when purple morning breaketh, Fairer than morning, lovelier than the daylight, Alone with thee, amid the mystic shadows, As in the dawning o'er the waveless ocean Thine image in the waters of my breast. Still, still with thee! as to each new-born morning Breathe, each day, nearness unto thee and heaven. When sinks the soul, subdued by toil, to slumber, So shall it be at last, in that bright morning Shall rise the glorious thought, I am with thee! LAUGHTER. BY JULIUS CHARLES HARE. I HAVE seen faces which, so long as you let them lie in their sleepy torpor, unshaken and unstirred, have a creamy softness and smoothness, and might beguile you into suspecting their owners of being gentle: but, if they catch the sound of a laugh, it acts on them like thunder, and they also turn sour. Nay, strange as it may seem, there have been such incarnate paradoxes as would rather see their fellow-creatures cry than smile. But is not this in exact accordance with the spirit which pronounces a blessing on the weeper, and a woe on the laugher? Not in the persons I have in view. That blessing and woe are pronounced in the knowledge how apt the course of this world is to run counter to the kingdom of God. They who weep are declared to be blessed, not because they weep, but because they shall laugh: and the woe threatened to the laughers is in like manner, that they shall mourn and weep. Therefore they who have this spirit in them will endeavor to forward the blessing, and to avert the woe. They will try to comfort the mourner, so as to lead him to rejoice and they will warn the laugher, that he may be preserved from the mourning and weeping, and may exchange his passing for lasting joy. But there are many who merely indulge in the antipathy, without opening their |