She told, their son was lost or dead, their hearts' delight and

pride;

"Neath yonder yew-tree," said the maid, "they're sleeping side by side."

He asked her of his boyhood's love; a joyous answer came,"Thou knowest all my friends," she cried; "that was my moth. er's name!"

The soldier's face was fraught with grief she could not under

stand;

Yet, with a child's quick sympathy, she placed in his her hand,

"Come home," she said; but with a kiss, quoth he, "That may

not be;

I soon shall reach the only home now left on earth for me." She was his last remaining friend; and thus, life's journey

done,

He gave her all he had to give the cross, too dearly won!

Bethought the maid, he needs repose, as he has come from far; So prayed that he would tell, some day, the story of the war. "We two will rest a little while, for I am tired," she said; "Where daisies grow, beneath the tree, come now and rest thy head."

She led him gently to the spot; and sleeping calmly there,
The mother found them, hand in hand. How different the

pair!

He was at peace; but in that rest where sorrow ne'er may

come.

Ah, may the soldier then have gained, in heaven, a better home!

Hannah Jane.

HE isn't half so handsome as when, twenty years agone,
At her old home in Piketon, Parson Avery made us one;
The great house crowded full of guests of every degree,
The girls all envying Hannah Jane, the boys all envying me.

Her fingers then were taper, and her skin as white as milk,
Her brown hair, what a mass it was! and soft and fine as silk;
No wind-moved willow by a brook had ever such a grace,
Her form of Aphrodite, with a pure Madonna face.

She had but meager schooling; her little notes to me
Were full of little pot-hooks, and the worst orthography;

Her "dear" she spelled with double e, and "kiss" with but one s;
But when one's crazed with passion what's a letter more or less?

She blundered in her writing, and she blundered when she spoke,
And every rule of syntax, that old Murray made, she broke;
But she was beautiful and fresh, and I-well, I was young;
Her form and face o'erbalanced all the blunders of her tongue.

I was but little better. True, I'd longer been at school;

My tongue and pen were run, perhaps, a little more by rule;

But that was all, the neighbors round who both of us well

knew,

Said, which I believed-she was the better of the two.

H

All's changed; the light of seventeen's no longer in her eyes; Her wavy hair is gone-that loss the coiffeur's art supplies; Her form is thin and angular; she slightly forward bends; Her fingers once so shapely, now are stumpy at the ends.

She knows but very little, and in little are we one;

The beauty rare, that more than hid that great defect, is gone. My parvenu relations now deride my homely wife,

And pity me that I am tied to such a clod for life.

I know there is a difference; at reception and levee

The brightest, wittiest, and most famed of women smile on me;
And everywhere I hold my place among the greatest men;
And sometimes sigh, with Whittier's judge, "Alas! it might have

been."

When they all crowd around me, stately dames and brilliant

belles,

And yield to me the homage that all great success compels,
Discussing art and statecraft, and literature as well,
From Homer down to Thackeray, and Swedenborg on "hell,"

I can't forget that from these streams my wife has never quaffed, Has never with Ophelia wept, nor with Jack Falstaff laughed; Of authors, actors, artists-why, she hardly knows the names; She slept while I was speaking on the Alabama claims.

I can't forget just at this point another form appears-
The wife I wedded as she was before my prosperous years;
I travel o'er the dreary road we traveled side by side,
And wonder what my share would be if Justice should divide!

She had four hundred dollars left her from the old estate;
On that we married, and, thus poorly armored, faced our fate.
I wrestled with my books; her task was harder far than mine,-
'Twas how to make two hundred dollars do the work of nine.

a score;

At last I was admitted, then I had my legal lore,
An office with a stove and desk, of books perhaps
She had her beauty and her youth, and some
And love for me and faith in me, and back of that a

housewifely skill;

I had no friends behind me-no influence to aid;

will.

I worked and fought for every little inch of ground I made.
And how she fought beside me! never woman lived on less;
In two long years she never spent a single cent for dress.

was won,

Ah! how she cried for joy when my first legal fight
When our eclipse passed partly by and we stood in the sun;
The fee was fifty dollars-'twas the work of half a year-
First captive, lean and scraggy, of my legal bow and

I well remember when my coat (the only one I had,)

spear.

Was seedy grown and threadbare, and in fact, most "shocking

bad,"

The tailor's stern remark when I a modest order made:
"Cash is the basis, sir, on which we tailors do our trade!"

Her winter cloak was in his shop by noon that very day;
She wrought on hickory shirts at night that tailor's skill to pay;
I got a coat, and wore it; but alas, poor Hannah Jane
Ne'er went to church or lecture till warm weather came

again.

Our second season she refused a cloak of any sort,

That I might have a decent suit in which t' appear in court; She made her last year's bonnet do, that I might have a hat; Talk of the old-time flame-enveloped martyrs after that!

No negro ever worked so hard, a servant's pay to save,
She made herself most willingly a household drudge and slave.
What wonder that she never read a magazine or book,
Combining as she did in one, nurse, housemaid, seamstress, cook!

What wonder that the beauty fled that I once so adored!
Her beautiful complexion my fierce kitchen fire devoured;

Her plump, fair, soft, rounded arm was once too fair to be concealed;

Hard work for me that softness into sinewy strength congealed.

I was her altar, and her love the sacrificial flame:

Oh! with what pure devotion she to that altar came,

And tearful flung thereon-alas! I did not know it then

All that she was, and more than that, all that she might have

been;

At last I won success. Ah! then our lives were wider parted;
I was far up the rising road; she, poor girl! where we started.
I had tried my speed and mettle, and gained strength in every

race;

I was far up the heights of life-she drudging at the base.

She made me take each Fall the stump; she said 'twas my ca

reer;

The wild applause of list'ning crowds was music to my ear.