And the fruit, ah bitter fruit!
Woe the lips that it might suit,
Crying "More!"

It freighted hungry ships,
It has scorpions and whips

Stained with gore.

Like the winds that waft us death Was the poison of its breath

Everywhere;

All the Northland reeled in pain, While the cry of millions slain Was Despair!

Then the dread avenger came,
With his flashing eyes of flame,
And his frown,

Saying, "Curse of all the earth,
Is this tree of evil birth
Cut it down!"

FLOWERS IN SICKNESS.

O, Sweet, sweet ministry of flowers! My heart
That moved so sluggish in its course to-day,
So dull and Cumbrous with its weight of clay
Felt in their presence quickened pulses start
Till happy tears ran down my cheeks like rain;-
The bloom of summer brightened all its gloom,
And soaring song-birds, through the rifts of gloom,
Sent joyous thrills of wakened life again.
Oh sweet, sweet ministry of Love! for this,
From bud and rose the balmy wine I sip,
Till on the honeysuckle's moistened lip

I find Love's embassage the heart-warm kiss,—
Dear thoughtful Ruth. the angel thus to be
Of fragrant alms and tender sympathy.

YOUTH.

BECAUSE the May is chill we sigh and fret, While golden robins in their hammocks swing And fill the air with carolings of spring Whose shy, sweet blossoms in the dells are set; And so, dear poet friend, if I forget

What tender grace behind stern duty hides, Some burst of song my faithless spirit chides Some soul-sweet thoughts their lovely fragrance brings;

Sudden the sunshine darkens in the storm,

The lightning smites, it is the day of doom!
We wonder what can be from out that gloom,
If Life and Hope can ever again take form

And from the cloudy mists a shape evolves
Might, resolute and strong with high resolves.

MA

MARY CHACE PECKHAM,

487

ARY CHACE PECKHAM was born July 15th, 1839, on the Island of Nantucket, Mass. She was the child of Adriana Fisher and Charles Miller Peck. There was the very essence of freedom in her descent; for her great-grandfather on her mother's side fought his battles of the Divine Fatherhood against Calvinism, standing alone among his neighbors of Martha's Vineyard; while on the father's side there was the Quaker ancestry of which came philanthropists and humanitarians-the Chaces of Rhode Island. Early in the child's life her parents moved from the Island of Nantucket to Providence, R. I., where for many years Mr. Peck was known as a prominent merchant. Her earlier education was gained in the public schools of Providence. From the high school she was graduated with honors at the age of eighteen. From the age of nine she had shown her bent toward writing, and upon her graduation she became the poet of the High School Alumni Association, organized soon after her graduation. From the beginning her deep sense of moral conditions in society appeared. This sense of moral passion was intensified by work among the women of the State Prison in Rhode Island. This sense of responsibility manifested in all the relations of life in Mrs. Peckham was deepened by the keen interest awakened in her by the Civil War. Upon the close of the war in 1865, Mary was married to S. F. Peckham who had been one of the group of young volunteers in the civil conflict. They started immediately for Southern California, whither reports of the finding of rich deposits of petroleum had attracted Mr. Peckham who had already attained distinction as a chemical expert. The young couple settled down upon a ranch in Southern California where Mrs. Peckham's sensitive mind found fresh incentive in new scenes for new expressions in prose and verse. In 1866 Mrs. Peckham returned East with her husband and young child and soon afterward wrote a prize story "Father Gabrielle's Fairy," which was published by the American Unitarian Association. Her literary activity was at that time very great and she became a regular contributor to periodicals of stories and poems, until in 1873 she removed to Minneapolis where she began, in a more public and intense way, her work for the advancement of women. This work she carried on in its various departments both in the West and in Providence, to which city she returned in 1880; and in this work she was the trusted co-laborer of Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth

Chace, a noble band of workers. Mrs. Peckham was a singular instance of perfect intellectual freedom combined with entire spiritual reverence. Her freedom meant life, deeper, purer and larger. Her rare gifts of mind found their first serene expression in daily life and afterward in verse and prose. Her home in all its practical cares stood as the proof that motherhood and home are not only consistent with great intellectual gifts but proved an inspiration to their use and a grace in the using of them. Her quiet soul sang when it was stirred to sing and worked when there was work to do. She calmly went her way by common paths moved to most uncommon thoughts. Her volume of poems will reveal new beauties of mind to the friends who knew her best, and will suggest to those who did not know her a regret that this printed page must be forever to them a substitute for her winning personality. T. R. S.

"VALE ET APPLAUDITE."

Ан! me, my mates, why need the poet sing
When life and death make poets of us all?
Beside our babies' beds immortal Love
Chants through our lips her early matin call;
Her lulling even song we hear above
Our answering hearts, when all our journeying
Has brought us to a half remembered shore,-
A half remembered harmony whose stress
The poet's harp doth half confess

And whose refrain is "ever" and "no more."

Forever have we known remorseless Fate

And ever too that time shall be no more
And that the heart is stung with stings of fire
From whence the meanest of us all do pour

Passion and pain, and hatred and desire,
The epic of the soul; or soon or late,
As enter some weird bard in Celtic hall

Trembling with prophecy, enwrapt, away
Lets run the magic of his fiery lay
Of tragic battle, or the liegman's call.

Then, if I sing, or haply I forbear,

Still will ye know, my mates, the haunting chord,
Whither triumphant manhood swell the tone
Or on the sweetness of its first accord,
Soon fallen, the plaintive minor makes its

moan.

Still will ye feel delight, the lift from care,
The dancing Hours will pipe you if I fail.

For some, Young Loves will hymn the marriage

morn;

For some, the reapers sing amid the corn, For some, the war song swell its loud "All hail!"

FROM MYTH TO MATERIALISM. I THOUGHT of the lore of sages, All that their wisdom saith Of the folly of human endeavor, And the shortness of human breath, And of how the long procession Has gone o'er the hills of death.

Some to the dim Nirvana,

Some to Elysian Fields, Some to the fierce Valhalla

Borne on their dripping shields, And some to the Christian's heaven That the tree of healing yields:

And I said, "Oh! God of our fathers,
What fables Thy chrildren tell
At last, as in ancient Jewry,
The Sadducee befell,

So now, in the name of Science,
We have learned his lesson well.

Out of primeval firemist,

Or the protoplasmic cell,

These creatures of thine have fashioned Another heaven and hell;

A drearier Nirvana

Than the ancient bards fortell.

For numberless gravitations

These vanishing earth-worms draw, Our Living and Dying and Loving, All bound by remorseless law, A great necessity, sterner

Than the vision Plato saw.

Not truer is the instinct

Of the needle to the pole, Than we to our place in nature,

The dead to their destinted goal. And who may decide if matter Have as yet envolved a soul?

The engineer who elected

To die to save his train, The priest among his lepers

Disdainful of death and pain, Oh! spirit that ever derideth, Answer your riddle again.

THE WOOD-THUSH AT SUNSET. LOVER of solitude, Poet and priest of nature's mysteries, If but a step intrude, Thy oracle is mute, thy music dies.

Oft have I lightly wooed

Sweet Poesy to give me pause of pain,

Oft in her singing mood

Sought to surprise her haunt, and sought in vain.

And thou art shy as she,

But mortal, or I had not found thy shrine To listen breathlessly

If I may make thy hoarded secret mine.

Thy tender mottled breast, Dappled the color of our primal sod,

Now quick and song-possessed,

Doth seem to hold the very joy of God.

Joy hid from mortal quest

Of bosky loves on silver-moonéd eves,
And the high-headed hest

That swells thy throat with joy among the leaves.

Like the Muezzin's call

From some high minaret when the day is done,
Among the beeches tall

Thy voice proclaims, "There is no God but one."

Eternity is light about

The feet that on His errands go;

Such God's diviner undertow

Sweeps heavenward when the tide goes out.

ATHENE.

489

How shall we choose thee, goddess chaste and calm?

It is not Paris but the woman race

Will ask thy worth and judge thee face to face. Above the city, violet-crowned, thy arm Sheltered the Greek, and dropped ambrosial balm On sage and poet, but thou had'st no grace For wife or daughter in the enchanted place:

The gynecæum sealed with Learning's charm, Only the courtezan might dare and know. But womanhood and these were not akin; When mad Orestes sought thee in his woe Thou did'st deny thy mother, and his sin. Change thou! or ere we change the old decree Oh! come again and bring a heart with thee.

TWO TIDES.

TO-DAY the tide came in once more,
(God's solemn tides that come and go
For death or birth with ebb and flow)
And left a baby at our door.

A thing that might not lisp its past,
Whose rose-leaf hands with close shut palms
Might seem to tell of endless calms,
But keep their folded secret fast.

Down drifted from some sphere of day,
Or struck from matter uncreate,
Like earth in its primeval state,
A soul of fire encased in clay.

We know not what thou may'st have been,
Or if, above the soul He made,
"Let there be light," the Father said,
We only know-the tide came in.

But at the last we will not doubt;

We will not say when life for thee Ebbs to the great eternity, We only know the tide goes out.

If truth shall lighten in thy wake,

If deed and dream, so long at war, Round in thy life to perfect law, And manhood broaden for thy sake.

PHRYNE.

SHE stood before her judges, rosy, fair,
Like Aphrodite, sure of Paris's eye,
No girdle bound her waist, just symmetry;
Her sunny tresses on her shoulders bare
She laughing shook (the fragrant rippling hair-
Crowned with the golden grasshopper,) for why
Should "earth-born" men such beauteous grace
deny

Or measure justice when she choose to snare?
Ah! beauty-loving Greek, to whom the curve
Of rosy flesh itself was all divine!
The impious one thy justice may not swerve
For Zeus shall punish and the doom assign.
She saw her bosom's veil aside she swept,
Showed the white breast, and outraged justice
slept.

FORTUNE.

Sweetheart, if Fortune (balky jade)
Refuse your gold to carry

She can not throw you for you know
'Tis not for gold you marry.
There's an old fashioned dowry dear,
A heart, they used to call it,
Let fools go by who fain would try

To match it with a wallet.

BETRAYAL.

And one was lost like that fair star we miss, Lost, for she clasped a baby, a tiny thing, And yet her finger showed no wedding ring. Uncrowned she stood, she had dissolved her pearl In wine of worthless love, and could not wear Her glowing jewel like a happier girl;

That dread libation left her forehead bare And pale, as God had touched her brow and lips And whitened all her life into eclipse.

M

-Easter Lilies.

MRS. ALFRED A. McKAY.

RS. MCKAY'S birthplace is near the picturesque and recently become historic town of Luray, Va. The very hills and mountains and river she pictures in the bit of scenery "An Old Virginia Landscape," are nature's environments to a place every foot of which is dear to the authoress. Mrs. McKay, when a girl, nearly twenty years ago, wrote and published a number of stories and short poems. Upon her marriage she abandoned literary work. She has recently taken up her pen. She published last year "A Latter-Day Saint," a novel, and has ready another novel, “Do You Know Her?" I. A. K.

AN OLD VIRGINIA LANDSCAPE.
NEAR hills of tender green

Along the distant azure mountains lie,
With soft gray tints between,

A bunch of sun-crowned trees against a lucent sky;
Trees, slim-trunked, plume-crested and clustered

high

Upon a clean-cropped knoll;

And basking there in rich content white flocks of sheep.

Where slopes the hill into the mead
A wide-roofed cottage broods; and swallows speed,
And skim through space, and circle back
And dip beneath the eaves. Out in the old, old
orchard,

Where all the glory of the day seems to abide,
The spring trees spread their white wings wide
Into the blissful ether.

Far down beside the mill

A stately poplar stands, erect and still,
And spirelike, points heavenward;
And drooping beech and tufted sycamore
Make dreamy haunts of bosk and bower
Around the miller's lowly door.