Don't let them feel you've no more need
Of their love and counsel wise,
For the heart grows strangely sensitive
When age has dimmed the eyes.
It might be well to let them believe
You never forgot them quite-

That you deemed it a pleasure, when far away,

Long letters home to write.

Write them a letter to-night.

Then

Don't think that the young and giddy friends
Who make your pastime gay

Have half the anxious thoughts for you

The old folks have to-day.

For the sad old folks at home,

With locks fast turning white,

Are longing to hear of the absent one-
O, write them a letter to-night.

།ས

THOUGHTS FOR YOUNG MEN.

N this country, most young men are poor. Time is the rock from which they are to hew out their fortunes; and health, enterprise, and integrity the instruments with which to do it. For this, diligence in business, abstinence from pleasures, privation even of everything that does not endanger health, are to be joyfully welcomed and borne. When we look around us, and see how much of the wickedness of the world springs from poverty, it seems to sanctify

all honest efforts for the acquisition of an independence; but when an independence is acquired, then comes the moral crisis, then comes an Ithuriel test, which shows whether a man is higher than a common man, or lower than a common reptile. In the duty of accumulation-and I call it a duty, in the most strict and literal signification of that wordall below a competence is most valuable, and its acquisition most laudable; but all above a fortune is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to him who amasses it; for it is a voluntary continuance in the harness of a beast of burden, when the soul should enfranchise and lift itself up into a higher region oí pursuits and pleasures. It is a persistence in the work of providing goods for the body after the body has already been provided for; and it is a denial of the higher demands of the soul, after the time has arrived and the means are possessed of fulfilling those demands. . . . Because the lower service was once necessary, and has therefore been performed, it is a mighty wrong when, without being longer necessary, it usurps the sacred rights of the higher.

HORACE MANN.

THE PARABLE OF THE WRECKS.

N a desolate, storm-beaten island,

ON

A mariner watched the sea

That aye, with a dull and sullen plash
Fretted the shore in a ceaseless dash,
Murmuring mournfully;

And ever the mocking water

Tossed bits of wrecks on the land;

Tangled cordage and planks and spars
And timbers, dinted with storm-given scars,
Lay scattered along the strand.

They were memories, they, of the ocean-
All that the grim sea keeps―

Stories of many a bitter strife;

Tales of the fathomless death-in-life

That under its bosom sleeps.

With a listless and weary footstep

The mariner paced his way,

And the relics of ruin seem to scan

With the eye of a lost and shipwrecked manMore of a wreck than they.

But there came a wind o'er the water—

A wind that seemed to speak

And every murmuring, mocking wave,
Unto the mind an echo gave,

And a flush rose into his cheek,

And the human wreck went to the others,
The waifs of wind and wave,

And unto the toys of storms and gales,
The planks and spars and tattered sails,
His hands a new form gave.

On the shore of the desolate island,
With the rocks on either side,

The form of a vessel, strong and new Out of the fragments slowly grew Till he launced it forth on the tide.

And the rough waves mocked no longer,
But, one bright sunny day,

He left the lonely and wreck-strewn sand,
Steering his bark with a master hand
For a fair land far away.

WM. O. STODDARD.

THE STUDY OF ASTRONOMY.

ASTRONOMY is no feast of fancy with music and

poetry, with eloquence and art to enchain the mind. Music is here; but it is the deep and solemn harmony of the spheres. Poetry is here; but it must be read in the characters of light written on the sable garments of night. Architecture is here; but it is the colossal structure of sun and system, of cluster and universe. Eloquence is here; but there is neither speech nor language. Its voice is not heard; yet its resistless sweep comes over us in the mighty periods of revolving worlds.

Shall we not listen to this music, because it is deep and solemn? Shall we not read this poetry, because its letters are the stars of heaven? Shall we refuse to contemplate this architecture, because its "architraves, its archways seem ghostly from infinitude"? No: the mind is ever inquisitive, ever ready to attempt to scale the most rugged steeps.

Go with me in imagination and join in the nightly vigils of the astronomer; and while his mind, with powerful energy, struggles with difficulty, join your own sympathetic efforts with his; hope with his hope; trembie with his fears; rejoice with his triumphs.

The astronomer has ever lived and never dies. The sentinel upon the watch-tower is relieved from duty, but another takes his place, and the vigil is unbroken. No: the astronomer never dies. He commences his investigation on the hill-tops of Eden; he studies the stars through the long centuries of antediluvian life. The deluge sweeps from the earth its inhabitants, their cities, and their monuments; but when the storm is hushed and the heavens shine forth in beauty, from the summit of Mt Ararat the astronomer resumes his endless vigils. The plains of Shinar, the temples of India, the pyramids of Egypt are equally his watching places. When science fled to Greece, her home was in the schools of her philosophers; and when darkness covered the earth for a thousand years, he pursued his neverending task from amidst the burning deserts of Arabia. When science dawned on Europe, the astonomer was there, toiling with Copernicus, watching with Tycho, suffering with Galileo, triumphing with Kepler.

Six thousand years have rolled away since the grand investigation commenced. Midway between the past and the future we sweep backward and witness the first rude effort to explain the celestial phe