Transfigured, then, in sudden light,
The slave stood sacred in his sight!

Thereafter in the Brahmin's breast
Abode God's peace, and he was blest.

THE CRISIS.

BY JOHN G. WHITTIER.

THE crisis presses on us; face to face with us

it stands,

With solemn lips of question, like the Sphinx in Egypt's sands!

This day we fashion Destiny, our web of fate we

spin;

This day for all hereafter choose we holiness or sin; Even now from starry Gerizim, or Ebal's cloudy

crown,

We call the dews of blessing, or the bolts of cursing down!

By all for which the martyrs bore their agony and

shame;

By all the warning words of truth with which the prophets came;

By the future which awaits us; by all the hopes

which cast

Their faint and trembling beams across the blackness of the past,

And in the awful name of Him who for earth's freedom died;

O ye people, O my brothers! let us choose the righteous side!

So shall the Northern pioneer go joyfully on his

way,

To wed Penobscot's waters to San Francisco's

bay;

To make the rugged places smooth, and sow the vales with grain,

And bear, with Liberty and Law, the Bible in his

train;

The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea,

And mountain unto mountain call: PRAISE GOD, FOR WE ARE FREE!

A FABLE FOR SOME PROFESSING UNIONISTS.

A MAIDEN lady kept for sport

A tabby of the rarest sort;

She loved to see his arched back,
A tail triumphant, tipped with black;
When his stomachic flattering purr
Proved his allegiance true to her;
Which, courtier-like, he would express
By softly rubbing 'gainst her dress.
To present cat-hood from a kitten,

Oft had he dozed and watched her knitting,
And Jemima's faith, howe'er ill-founded,
In him, her favorite, was unbounded.

She loved but one thing more than tabby-
Not having husband or a baby-
It hung in palace light and airy,
Her own, her darling, sweet canary.
Jemima once came home from tea,
Horror on horrors piled! to see

The seed, which once so sprightly tinkled,

Upon the carpet all besprinkled;

And water, too, the floor bespattered,

From out the bird-cage, smashed and battered;

'Mid broken flower-pot and geranium,

There lay in death, with fractured cranium,
All specked with red his breast of yellow,
Silent and stark, the little fellow.
Fancy the maiden's dumb surprise!
What Notes and Queries in her eyes!
With tears of anguish and vexation,
She looked at Tom for explanation.
Now Tom, a lawyer of his kind,
A ready answer soon could find;
A moment more, his thoughts to rally by,
He'd clear himself on proof of alibi;
But taken rather by surprise,

He opened wide his opal eyes;

Th' exordium framed to turn attention,
Of former mousings he made mention;
A modest statement of his merit,
Slightly disparaged dog and ferret.
The case went on with that acumen
Oft seen in practice purely human,
For he described the lost one singing,
There by the window gently swinging;
None could replace his dear, dead brother,
E'en should his mistress buy another!
Tom spoke of music and its power
To soothe the saddest, heaviest hour-
A perfume for the soul to drink of-

And every fine thing he could think of.
Whether 'twas change from the pathetic,
Or tickling, acting like emetic,

Our cat, declaiming, like Lord Chatham,
Was choked with feathers and out spat 'em.
About to resume-" "Tis quite enough, sir;
Your protestation is all stuff, sir!

Nor can I think that cat is truthful

WHOSE WORDS COME FORTH WITH SUCH A

MOUTHFUL."

-Baltimore American.

THE UNIVERSAL COTTON-GIN.

By the Author of "Cotton States." HE journeyed all creation through, A pedler's wagon trotting in;

A haggard man of sallow hue, Upon his nose the goggles blue, And in his cart a model Universal nigger-cotton-ginniversal nigger-cotton-gin.

His seedy garb was sad to view—

Hard seemed the strait he'd gotten in;