I think I'll use the straight old-fashioned way.

He taught that grand old prayer to us, you know-
'Twas more than eighteen hundred years ago;
And if its words were any way amiss.

He'd probably have told us long ere this.
Leastways, He's heard me so far in that style,
And I'll hang to it yet a little while.
Ah me! this matter's just like all the rest:
Old ways for old men mostly are the best.

But whatsoever changes I can name,
One institution always keeps the same,

And soon or late enacts its noble part,

And that's the grand and glorious human heart,
Perhaps it lurks in wretchedness and slime,

Is dragged by passion through the waves of crime;
Or indolence around its couch may creep,
And lull it for a season into sleep;

Or selfishness may ravage all about,

Eat its supplies and well-nigh starve it out;
But when it can the body's grossness shed,
The god-like human heart comes out ahead!

No, Maggie, do not go away from me,

But turn your eyes round here where I can see; They show me that there's much that earth can give

Designed to coax an old man yet to live.

The tender, true heart you have always shown
In brightening up my dim life with your own,
The way you've treated me-with as much grace

As if I owned three-quarters of this place,
While you and all your folks are well aware
My purse is full of poverty to spare-
Show, in the sandy shifting of life's ways,
That love's first fashion still among us stays;
And that young fellow coming down the lane
Will help to make my meaning doubly plain.

Little Golden Hair.

ITTLE Golden Hair was watching, in the window broad

and high,

For the coming of her father, who had gone the foe to fight; He had left her in the morning, and had told her not to cry, But to have a kiss all ready when he came to her at night.

She had wondered, all the day,

In her simple, childish way,
And had asked, as time went on,

Where her father could have gone.

She had heard the muskets firing, she had counted every one, Till the number grew so many that it was too great a load;

Then the evening fell upon her, clear of sound of shout or gun, And she gazed with wistful waiting down the dusty Concord

road.

Little Golden Hair had listened, not a single week before,
While the heavy sand was falling on her mother's coffin-lid ;
And she loved her father better for the loss that then she bore,
And thought of him and mourned for him, whatever else she

did.

So she wondered all the day

What could make her father stay,

And she cried a little, too,

As he'd told her not to do;

And the sun sunk slowly downward and went grandly out of

sight,

And she had the kiss all ready on his lips to be bestowed; But the shadows made one shadow, and the twilight grew to

night,

And she looked, and looked, and listened, down the dusty
Concord road.

Then the night grew light and lighter, and the moon

and round,

rose full

In the little sad face peering, looking piteously and mild;

Still

upon

the walks of gravel there was heard no welcome sound, And no father came there, eager for the kisses of his child

Long and sadly did she wait,
Listening at the cottage gate;
Then she felt a quick alarm,

Lest he might have come to harm.

With no bonnet but her tresses, no companion but her fears, And no guide except the moonbeams that the pathway dimly

showed,

With a little sob of sorrow, quick she threw away her tears, And alone she bravely started down the dusty Concord road;

And for many a mile she struggled, full of weariness and pain, Calling loudly for her father, that her voice he might not

miss;

Till at last among a number of the wounded and the slain, Was the white face of the soldier waiting for his daughter's kiss.

And

Softly to his lips she crept,

Not to wake him as he slept;

Then with her young heart at rest,

Laid her head upon his breast.

upon the dead face smiling, with the living one near by, All the night a golden streamlet of the moonbeams gently

flowed;

One to live, a lonely orphan, one beneath the sod to lie

They found them in the morning on the dusty Concord road.

No Sects in Heaven.

ALKING of sects till late one eve,

Of the various doctrines the saints believe, That night I stood, in a troubled dream, By the side of a darkly flowing stream.

And a "Churchman" down to the river came;
When I heard a strange voice call his name:
"Good father, stop; when you cross this tide,
You must leave your robes on the other side."

But the aged father did not mind,
And his long gown floated out behind,
As down to the stream his way he took,
His pale hands clasping a gilt-edged book.

"I'm bound for heaven; and when I'm there,
Shall want my Book of Common Prayer;
And, though I put on a starry crown,
I should feel quite lost without my gown."

Then he fixed his eyes on the shining track,
But his gown was heavy and held him back;
And the poor old father tried in vain,
A single step in the flood to gain.