THE POOR.

"Slight not the one of honest worth,
Because no star adorns his breast:
The lark soars highest from the earth,
Yet ever leaves the lowest nest.

Scorn not the poor! for poor was He
Who had no place to lay His head;
The heir of heaven, yet Poverty

Around His path her thin hands spread.

No gold is theirs in shining heaps;

No thieves break through their cots to steal; No gems to guard, the poor man sleeps, While Toil's brown hands his eyelids seal.

His gold is in the sunset skies,

The yellow leaves that Nature paints;

The glittering sands where ocean lies,
And marks the hours with figures quaint.

No cook with epicurean skill

Stuffs, seasons, garnishes with care;

His appetite o'er field and hill

Is borne upon the morning air.

No dressed-up puppets round the streets
By ignorant menials led abroad,
His children, clothed in garments meet,

Roam through the fields, roll on the sod.

From no decayed, ancestral stock
His stalwart, sinewy frame has sprung,
As hardy as the mountain rock,

Or sturdy oak the hills among.

Yet poverty, though no disgrace,
Is inconvenient oft to bear;
It meets too oft th' averted face,

And shrinks from the contemptuous air.

Scorn not the poor ! for poor was He
Who had no place to lay his head;

The heir of heaven, yet Poverty

Around His path her thin hands spread.

LINES ON THE FAVORED SCHOLAR.
[A beautiful statuette, by Rogers.]

The tale once told in Eden, here again
Told by the brush, the pencil and the pen

How many times—and yet forever new

As when the first dove from the heart's Ark flew.

As told in Eden! Earth grows old and gray,

Yet flowers repeat it still beside the way,

"Trees twine their arms and kiss from hill to hill,"
Bright insects pipe it by the grassy rill;
And now the stones by cunning hand and true,
Bring Love's young dream how deftly into view;
The Favored Scholar in fresh girlhood's bloom,

Sees touched by fairy wand the dark school-room, And books, slates, charts and forms together fadeAnd Earth, old Earth, once more an Eden made!

ABOU BEN BANKRUPT.

Abou Ben Bankrupt (may his tribe decrease!)
One night was sitting talking with his niece.
It was his niece as we have often heard
And not his wife the good, old man preferred.
Abou was troubled sorely in his mind,
For his affairs in such a knot did wind,

How he might save his houses, horses, wealth,
And pay his debts and not defraud-himself!
"Now, niece," said Abou," how d'ye think 'twill do
To deed my houses, stocks and bonds to you!
But to appear well to my fellow men,

You'll have to sell them to my wife again. I
Then suddenly there came a sweet perfume
From Abou's choice segar and filled the room.
For Abou smoked the best, though times were hard,
And now he found exceeding sweet reward,
The weed made Abou passing honest then.
"Methinks I something owe my fellow men. "
Then lifting up his voice like one inspired,
He prayed as if with sudden fervor fired,
"O Lord, we need but little here below,
And this, O Lord, my creditors must know,
And Lord, we do not need that little long,

And if I give them that it can't be wrong."
Then Abou comes to sublunary things,

As wiping dust from off his knees he springs.
Then turning to his niece he said, "I see
Most plainly what belongs to them and me;
Little is needed for the life below,
I'll call it twenty-five and let them go.

I shall need seventy-five, I'm getting old!
If soon the Lord shall call me to his fold—
I'll need the rest for my posterity.

If some among my creditors are poor—
Why they must learn to suffer and endure.
Must learn within their incomes strict to live
And not repine for what the Lord don't give !
Then Abou rocked in crimson-velvet chair,
Solace tobacco wreathed his flowing hair;
His eyes were resting on his favorite niece-
Abou Ben Bankrupt dreamed sweet dreams of peace.
Now with defaulters, swindlers, east and west,

Abou Ben Bankrupt's name leads all the rest.

TEARS.

Gems in the azure eye

Of Childhood, melting at its first found grief;
Like glitt❜ring rain-drops in an April sky,

Their stay as brief!

Pledge, in the Sinner's eye,

Within the heart one tender spot is found;
A place where holy feelings still may lie;
Grace yet abound.

Token of thrilling joy

When the full heart must vent itself in thee;
Of pain intense, which the wrung nerves employ
In agony !

Life's sad purifiers,

Cleansing the soul with sorrow day by day.
By God, when love of sin through them expires,
Are wiped away!

THE FROZEN BRAKEMAN.

FROZEN TO DEATH.-Two brakemen of the Oil Creek Railroad were frozen to death the other night, one of whom rolled off the car, and the other was found at his post, his hand frozen to the brake wheel! Do not these brief words express a story of heroism and devotion to duty as noble as many that have nerved our hearts as we read them in Roman chronicles?-Pittsburg Chronicle, Dec. 15th.

Cold was the night and bitter was the blast,

Holding their breath in silence lake and river; The mighty forest moaning like a child,

Flung out its helpless arms with wail and shiver.

Swiftly the cars through storm and darkness flew,

As though man's will, the outward strife defying,