taken from me, I would be alone in the world and there would be none to mourn my loss when the sod should be laid upon my pulseless breast." His eyes were dark and deep, usually as calm as a summer sea, but now their depths were stirred with a soft expression of feeling and his lips trembled with a seeming pain. I was very young, very unused to the world's usages, and my untutored heart was ever full of pity for suffering. With an irresistible impulse of sympathy, I said: "Richard, our mothers are the most de how wildly it wails, how madly it raves, how full of majesty it is! "The voice of the breeze, it soundeth Through the grand old silver pines, Where the hopes of boyhood slumber, From the grave of many years. "What thoughts does it bring to your mind, little sister?" asked Richard. "It tells me of other times," I answered, voted of friends; neither of us are blessed" when I spent my life alone here with no with other kindred than those guardians of our lives; will you not be my brother? Claim me as a sister, always." voice but its wild notes to rouse me from meditation. It is a memory to me." "Ah! it is more the symbol of hope to me. He turned quickly and cast a searching I would that all men might be as free in glance into my face. "My sister! and will you choose to be my sister, Nettie? Bear in mind all that name implies; what perfect trust in me and in all that concerns my welfare Remember you must feel for and sympathize with me in all things. I have sometimes thought if kind Heaven had blessed me with a gentle sister's sweet protecting love it might have shielded me from many errors of my life. Have you, Nettie, dwelt well upon the costs of this new relationship?" "I have ever regretted my lonely condition in having neither brother nor sister, and shall be happier in claiming you as my adopted brother." "Then, Nettie Carlton, you are my little sister, always to love and cherish me, as cnly pure and gentle woman can." The warm wind of the mid-summer eve blew wild and strong, shaking the green boughs and bearing with it the perfume of flowers. Sweeping madly over hill and dale it came from the distance, seemingly exulting in its freedom, wailing in the lofty pines, whispering to the magnolias, stooping gently to kiss the slumbering flowers, and then hastening on to frolic among the gaunt trees on the mountain-top. We had been walking in the forest and we paused to look back where the great trees rocked and moaned, and to watch the heavy clouds lowering across the leaden sky. "The voice of the wind is grand music— VOL. IV.-17. thought and action as wind; yes, as free in conscience, too-" There was a bitterness in his tones that almost startled me. The lengthy visit of our welcome guests came to an end, after having been prolonged into months instead of weeks. The brief space had wrought great changes in our country home-it had taught me the secret of my own heart, which in my innocence I at first was unconscious of. The hour of the departure of the Cliffords had come, but the parting was almost as joyous as sad, for in a few brief months Richard Clifford was to return to claim the heiress of Carlton Hall as his bride. Our winters were to be spent in my sunny home, our summers amid the cooler shades of his. The arrangement met with the approbation of our mothers, who rejoiced at the prospect of spending their remaining days beneath one roof, witnessing the mutual happiness of their children. Ah, youth thou art, in thy guilelessness, ever free from doubt and fear. Thou art ture's beauty in all its loveliest forms before born under cloudless skies and nurtured in me. Mountains succeeded hills until their sunshine. The gloomy fears and torments blue tops stretched far to the northeast, of older hearts and wiser heads would be melting away in the distance. Clouds, the death of bright young lives whose cur- white as robes of baptismal innocence, rent flows pure and strong in their inno- sometimes bordered with darkness, somecence. It is well thou hast such joys as times fringed with purple or amber, floated come to me on that sunny eve, without cruel above them like the airy palaces of sojournwarnings to remind me of past sorrows, ing angels. I watched the magnificent without pain or suspicion to trouble the landscape until I could no longer discern it heart, without dark hours of trial to humble in the gathering gloom, and then I joined human pride, with naught but promises and my mother in the dining-room, where we blessings, of which I, in my childlike confi- both spent hours arranging plans for the dence, thanked the Great Giver of all good. future-that future, we, in our presumption, As I stood on the cool veranda, gazing dared to call ours. after the departing carriage which conveyed our guests to the railway station, I saw na [TO BE CONTINUED.] A MORNING DREAM. BY WILLIAM GEOGHEGAN. I, far removed from meadows green, From tranquil shade or woodland lawns, And dream the while the morning dawns." About my brain there flit, like birds, Thoughts of a past surpassing fair; Old odors, olden songs, perhaps- I know I'm dreaming, if I wake And petty cares, which grudge and take My daily labor, hard and stern, Gives me so little, takes so much; Gives me such wages as I earn, But chills my life with icy touch. There's nothing left. Vainly I think This is my happiest hour, this time, 'Tis then I smell the lilies white, Whose tall stalks swayed in that still place, Half garden, half a desert bright, Where last I saw you face to face. I see you as you stood, I hear Your voice that mingled with the birds', And all the sounds far off and near, Making a prelude to your words. I look beyond, across the wold, To where the windmill stood, and hurl'd I see the pigeons wheeling high Above our heads; the golden bees, Treasured with honey-laden thigh, Like winged insect argosies. I see it all; it fades and dies Into the gray of waking hours, As rainbows fade in summer skies, Oh weary light! that comes to glad A hundred hearts, no smile you bring Oh fields! where never more my feet And see the corn-flowers sway and blow. HIDE AND SEEK. Semper ego auditor tantum ? Nunquamne reponam? Juv. S. 1. BY J. B. A man's work is part of himself. lives in it as a cause in its effect. one wishes to disparage his own work. Whoever did so would stand convicted of inconsistency or folly in his past or present self; for he has changed. If a knowledge of the truth, not such as writer inveighs against writers, he may serves for a cloak of malice; knowledge, well be suspected of insincerity. He but the knowledge of duty first. He is does not include himself. If humanity, wise who knows his duty, virtuous who not pride, directed his pen, he would ac- does it. Knowledge is good, but charity cuse himself, and throw the mantle of is better. The one puffeth up, and the charity over his neighbors. For writers other edifieth. What is puffed up is are our neighbors. Not to writers, then, hollow, empty and vain; what is edifybut to the gentle reader would I exclaiming is solid and real. The lie vanisheth, in the words of Themistocles: Pataxon but the truth endures. Charity includes men, akouson de. Indeed, the cacoethes knowledge, but knowledge may exist scribendi cannot be cured by any homo- without charity. And he is truly great opathic appliance, nor yet, I fear, by the who is great in charity. resources of allopathy. It must be allowed to take its course. You might as well attempt to turn back the Hudson as to stop the flood of light from pouring forth from teeming minds. All that can reasonably be done is to warn persons of sound understanding to take sanatory precautions against contagion, and keep within doors during the rainy season, fortunate if they have built upon the rock of truth and so be proof against the inundation. He No; but the advocate of order. I would No have working while it is day—" for the night cometh when no man can work "— but not the works of darkness; learning, but not such as never attains to the What! again a lay sermon? a free lecture? Anything you please, if it only emit the splendor of truth; for to this stronghold I will betake myself on every critical occasion: Some blame the avaricious For bartering all for gold; Is knowledge evil then? No; nor good either. But eagerness in the pursuit of one or the other may, and often But what am I driving at all this time? does, break in upon that harmony of a At that apothegm of Sir Thomas More: well-ordered life which constitutes vir "Inordinate appetite of knowledge is a tue, perfects man and leads to happiness. means of driving many a man out of his This disorder is culpable, and must suffer paradise, as it did Adam and Eve of the penalty of every violation of the old." What! the advocate of ignorance? supreme law that lights us to our destiWould you have the nineteenth century ny. This penalty is unhappiness, the return to the night of the Middle Age? constant attendant of imperfection. If the eye were continually on the alert, examining and scrutinizing in all directions to find out what was good for the body, but, as soon as the hand was stretched out for any of the good things some new good it fancied it could come upon, and without allowing the hand time to take the first good, would call upon the feet to run to the last that pre But what is not the search after Beauty ever ancient and ever new. Were knowledge a means of perfecting the the search after truth to be our happihighest faculty in man-the intellect? Is ness, it should also be our end, for our not truth the proper object of the intel-end is happiness. This, however, cannot lect and activity of the essence of mind? be; for we search for something only to Yes; but man is not all intellect. He become more happy in the possession has a heart as well as a head. His will thereof. If, then, not the possession of must be trained to direct the kingdom truth, but the search for it constitutes over which it rules according to the happiness, where is the motive for seeketernal laws of order manifested in the ing it? There is none. Searching is Divine will revealed. Man's happiness the means, it cannot, therefore, be the does not consist, as Sir William Hamilton end. And yet man acts not without a would have it, in the search after truth. motive. The aphorism of Seneca is more 'shrewd' than true: "Sordet cognita veritas." The truth which, "once known, falls into comparative insignificance," had but the garb of truth, or else the mind possessing it must be strangely disordered. Truth discovered, the eye was off again after is not "now prized, less on its own account than as opening up new ways to new activity, new suspense, new hopes, new discoveries, new self-gratulation." It is not better to declare with Lessing, sented itself, you would say a man that if truth were offered him with one would be foolish to support such eyes. hand, and error with the other, he would It is what some would have us do in prefer error that he might have the pleas- using the light of the mind. Each man ure of seeking after truth; nor with must be a Tantalus. He may put his Richter: "It is not the goal, but the parched lips as near as he will to the course, which makes us happy." But fountain of truth, but must not touch it, enough of these defamers of truth. If If indeed they will admit that the mind beauty be the "splendor of truth," belongs to the man, and not insist that according to Plato, we might imagine it the man belongs to the mind; so strangecrying out "Tu quoque Brute!" Beauty ly do mental philosophers c'aim absolute surely would have expected other treat- independence for every faculty of the ment at the hands of knighthood. But mind! But it is certain that, in this St. Paul has sufficiently vindicated truth kingdom no less than in all others, there against those who are "always learning, and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth." "Their folly shall be manifest to all." When truth is reached the search must end, if truth is to be sought for its own sake, and not chiefly as affording mental gymnastics. But it is to be sought for its own sake, since the true and the good are identical. God being the Eternal Truth, the Supreme Good, the must be some supreme governing power to which all will be subordinate, and that this power must be vested in one who can enforce obedience to the laws, and so maintain order. This power resides in the will. And should it prove recreant to its sacred trust, and be weak enough to connive at disorder, the thoughts would soon become "vagabonds, still outward bound to cruise for pleas |