"Fie, fie!" cried the Judge. "Keep the money. She's a noble girl, after all,-too good for a rogue like you!"

"I know it!" said Cephas, humbly, with tears in his eyes; for recollections of a somewhat wild and wayward youth, mingling with the conscious possession of so much love and happiness, melted his heart with unspeakable contrition and gratitude.

BABY BELL.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

[The author of the beautiful selection which we give below was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1836. His life has been spent in literary pursuits, he having been editorially connected with several newspapers and having contributed largely to the magazines. His poetry has not been great in quantity, but is exquisite in quality, every verse being worked into form with the care which a gem-cutter expends upon a precious stone. To Mr. Aldrich we are indebted for some of the choicest bits of lyric poetry in the language. He has also written several prose works, of which "The Story of a Bad Boy" became at once a favorite with the reading public.]

HAVE you not heard the poets tell
How came the dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours?
The gates of heaven were left ajar:
With folded hands and dreamy eyes,

Wandering out of Paradise,

She saw this planet, like a star,

Hung in the glistening depths of even,-

Its bridges, running to and fro,

O'er which the white-winged Angels go,

Bearing the holy Dead to heaven.

She touched a bridge of flowers,-those feet,

So light they did not bend the bells

Of the celestial asphodels,

They fell like dew upon the flowers:

Then all the air grew strangely sweet!
And thus came dainty Baby Bell
Into this world of ours.

She came and brought delicious May.
The swallows built beneath the eaves;
Like sunlight, in and out the leaves
The robins went, the livelong day;
The lily swung its noiseless bell;

And o'er the porch the trembling vine
Seemed bursting with its veins of wine.

How sweetly, softly, twilight fell!
Oh, earth was full of singing birds
And opening springtide flowers,

When the dainty Baby Bell

Came to this world of ours!

Oh, Baby, dainty Baby Bell,
How fair she grew from day to day!
What woman-nature filled her eyes,
What poetry within them lay,-
Those deep and tender twilight eyes,
So full of meaning, pure and bright
As if she yet stood in the light
Of those oped gates of Paradise.
And so we loved her more and more:
Ah, never in our hearts before

Was love so lovely born!
We felt we had a link between
This real world and that unseen,——
The land beyond the morn;

And for the love of those dear eyes,
For love of her whom God led forth
(The mother's being ceased on earth
When Baby came from Paradise),-
For love of Him who smote our lives
And woke the chords of joy and pain,
We said, Dear Christ!—our hearts bent down
Like violets after rain.

And now the orchards, which were white
And red with blossoms when she came,
Were rich in autumn's mellow prime:
The clustered apples burnt like flame,
The soft-cheeked peaches blushed and fell,
The folded chestnut burst its shell,

The grapes hung purpling in the grange;
And time wrought just as rich a change
In little Baby Bell.

Her lissome form more perfect grew,

And in her features we could trace,
In softened curves, her mother's face.
Her angel-nature ripened too:
We thought her lovely when she came,
But she was holy, saintly now:
Around her pale angelic brow
We saw a slender ring of flame!

God's hand had taken away the seal
That held the portals of her speech;
And oft she said a few strange words
Whose meaning lay beyond our reach.
She never was a child to us,

We never held her being's key;
We could not teach her holy things:
She was Christ's self in purity.

It came upon us by degrees,

We saw its shadow ere it fell,—
The knowledge that our God had sent
His messenger for Baby Bell.

We shuddered with unlanguaged pain,
And all our hopes were changed to fears,
And all our thoughts ran into tears
Like sunshine into rain.
We cried aloud in our belief,
"Oh, smite us gently, gently, God!
Teach us to bend and kiss the rod,
And perfect grow through grief."
Ah! how we loved her, God can tell;
Her heart was folded deep in ours.
Our hearts are broken, Baby Bell!

At last he came, the messenger,

The messenger from unseen lands: And what did dainty Baby Bell? She only crossed her little hands, She only looked more meek and fair! We parted back her silken hair, We wove the roses round her brow,White buds, the summer's drifted snow,Wrapt her from head to foot in flowers. . And thus went dainty Baby Bell

Out of this world of ours!

ASCENDING KTAADN.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

[A devoted lover of nature, with whom he lived in close and ardent intimacy, Thoreau avoided man with a seeming eccentricity, which arose less from actual dislike to human companionship than from a greater attraction to the study of nature in her most secret haunts and recesses. For two years he lived a hermit life on the shores of Lake Walden, near Concord, his native town. The result of his communion with nature we have in "Walden," in which the finer aspects of the woods, the fields, and the skies are delineated with wonderful truth and delicacy of appreciation. In the words of Hawthorne, " Mr. Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills, and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading Americans and to people over the sea. . . . While he used in his writings a certain petulance of remark in reference to churches and churchmen, he was a person of rare, tender, and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation." It is said that he never went to church, never voted, and never paid a tax to the State,- -a form of eccentricity that is certainly not to be commended. Thoreau was well versed in classical and Oriental literature, but lived a sort of vagrant life, without profession or declared aim in existence. In the following selection, taken from his " Maine Woods," are clearly displayed the workings of an original mind, which occupies the position of an envoy from nature to man, rather than that of one from man to nature. He was born in 1817, and died in 1862.]

AT length we reached an elevation sufficiently bare to afford a view of the summit, still distant and blue, almost as if retreating from us. A torrent, which proved to be the same we had crossed, was seen tumbling down in front, literally from out of the clouds. But this glimpse at our whereabouts was soon lost, and we were buried in the woods again. The wood was chiefly yellow birch, spruce, fir, mountain-ash, or round-wood, as the Maine