And life will be never the same life after.
Oh, that the caller might go on calling,
Oh, that the music might go on falling
Like a shower of silver spray,

While we whirled on to the vast Forever,
Where no hearts break, and no ties sever,
And no one goes away."

A clamor, a crash, and the band was still,
'Twas the end of the dream, and the end of the measure,
The last low notes of that waltz-quadrille
Seemed like a dirge o'er the death of Pleasure.
You said good-night, and the spell was over-
Too warm for a friend, and too cold for a lover-
There was nothing else to say;

But the lights looked dim, and the dancers weary,
And the music was sad, and the hall was dreary,
After you went away.

THE CREED.

Whoever was begotten by pure love,
And came desired and welcome into life,
Is of immaculate conception. He

Whose heart is full of tenderness and truth,
Who loves mankind more than he loves Himself,
And cannot find room in his heart for hate,
May be another Christ. We all may be
The Saviours of the world, if we believe
In the Divinity which dwells in us
And worship it, and nail our grosser selves,
Our tempers, greeds, and our unworthy aims,
Upon the cross. Who giveth love to all,
Pays kindness for unkindness, smiles for frowns,
And lends new courage to each fainting heart,
And strengthens hope and scatters joy abroad,
He, too, is a Redeemer, Son of God.

THE BEAUTIFUL LAND OF NOD.

Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,
Your head like the golden-rod,

And we will go sailing away from here

To the beautiful Land of Nod.

Away from life's hurry, and flurry, and worry,
Away from earth's shadows and gloom,

To a world of fair weather we'll float off together
Where roses are always in bloom.

Just shut up your eyes, and fold your hands,
Your hands like the leaves of a rose,
And we will go sailing to those fair lands

That never an atlas shows.

On the North and the West they are bounded by rest, On the South and the East by dreams;

'Tis the country ideal, where nothing is real,

But everything only seems.

Just drop down the curtains of

your dear eyes,

Those eyes like a bright blue-bell,

And we will sail out under starlit skies,

To the land where the fairies dwell.

Down the river of sleep, our barque shall sweep,

Till it reaches that mystical Isle

Which no man hath seen, but where all have been,

And there we will pause awhile.

I will croon you a song as we float along,

To the shore that is blessed of God,

Then ho! for that fair land, we're off for that rare land,

That beautiful Land of Nod.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

DGAR ALLAN POE, in some respects the most remarkable, and certainly the most erratic genius of his generation, was born in Boston on the 19th February, 1809. His father was a distinguished officer in the Revolutionary army; he was destined to an early but romantic end. He fell in love with a beautiful English actress and married her, and went himself also on the stage. But the profession of the sock and buskin made great demands upon their strength, and in a very little while consumption set in, and the youthful couple ended life's brief drama almost together, leaving behind them as a legacy to fate three young children wholly unprovided for, Edgar was the second of these ill-fated children. Mr. John Allan adopted him and the orphan boy was now transported from his native town to England. In 1816 we find him at school at Stoke, Newington, then a suburb of London. Five years afterward he returned to America, and his education was continued at an academy at Richmond, Virginia. In 1826 he entered the University of Charlottesville, where he was a very efficient student, and where also he began to develop those tastes which cast a shadow over all his life. Gambling became a passion with him, and while it is not desirable to call up painful memories of the dead, yet it is worse than folly for the living, and especially the young to be blind to the lessons such careers teach. There is no excuse for gambling. It is dishonest in the very heart of it, and is as mean as it is dishonest. Edgar Allan Poe's history teaches with profound and terrible force the truth that gambling will not only destroy the gentle

man in a man, but will not cease until it has torn the crown from the brow and unmanned its victim of his manhood.

Poe's first volume of poems was published in the year 1829, under the title of "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems."

About this time he desired to enter the army, and his faithful friend Mr. Allan secured him a cadet-ship in the Military Academy of West Point. In March, 1831, he left, not with flying colors, but with broad marks of disgrace. He was in turn ejected from the house of Mr. Allan, whose patience it would seem was strained to the very uttermost.

In 1833 brighter days seemed to dawn on the young poet. Poe won a prize offered by the publisher of a magazine in Baltimore. This led to a friendship with Mr. John P. Kennedy through whose kindly offices Poe procured employment on the "Southern Literary Magazine" at Richmond. Here the poet married Virginia Clemm, a beautiful and saintly creature who only lived a little while, and became as some think the saintly and "lost Lenore" of his wild poetic dreams, and specially of that inexplicable and remarkable poem, "The Raven." Poe was a terrific worker when the fit was on, and it is perfectly astonishing how much work he got through. His published works, which are voluminous enough, are by no means a complete collection of the manifold literary toils of his strange, sad life. From the year 1837 to the year 1849, he was working spasmodically and often with wonderful success. In 1848 he published "The Raven," that marvelous combination of mystic words. The autumn of 1849 saw the sunset of a life as rich in promise and as wonderful in certain kinds of performance as America had ever seen. He died on the 5th of October, 1849. It is impossible to arrive at anything very satisfactory concerning his life, as will be seen by Poe's evident desire to mislead his friends as to facts.

In a sketch of his own life by Hirst, for which he was responsible, there was a misstatemeut of the date of his birth, besides numerous other inaccuracies, including an entirely fabulous story of a youthful journey to St. Petersburg; and

later, when Lowell wished to write a sketch of his life, Poe furnished him with this very biography, with the statement that it was, "in the main," correct. In this connection his latest biographer says: "Poe circulated, and as far as he could practically, accredited falsehoods concerning himself; moreover, he approved the report of his wildness in youth, and he took no pains to explain the questionable incidents of his career. This failing casts suspicion upon all unsupported assertions by him that directly affect himself." Mr. Woodberry, his biographer, has carefully collected the evidence upon every point in dispute, and cleared away the confusion that has characterized all previous accounts of Poe's life. This is very valuable work, and represents an immense amount of research, for which he deserves the thanks of all students of literature, although its result has been to make the present volume an unsatisfactory one in some respects. There are so many of these disputed points, that one gets the impression that Poe's life was nothing but a succession of literary squabbles, and questionable acts which need an apologist. The tone of Woodberry's biography is so different from that of Poe's life, that we feel the contradiction at every step, and when we read some letter, or some passage by Poe inserted in the text, we wonder if this can be the work of the man we have just been reading about. But a book about Poe, the larger portion of whose pages "consists of wholly new information, or of old statements so radically corrected as to become new," cannot fail to be interesting.

In the young literary commonwealth of our country, Poe's hand was almost literally against every man, and it is but natural that the hands of many should have been upraised against him in return. He did a much needed-work, and his influence. did much to raise our literary standard, but he had to suffer for it during life, and his memory still more after death. The critical warfare which he waged against the mediocre and the bad literature as long as he lived, may be said to have been fairly inaugurated when, in 1835, he published his review of Fay's