The Conquered Banner (April, 1865.) BY ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN. (Father Ryan was a chaplain in the Confederate Army.) Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary, For there's not a man to wave it, Take the Banner down! 'tis tattered; Oh, 'tis hard for us to fold it, Hard to think there's none to hold it, Furl that Banner-furl it sadly; Swore it should forever wave- O'er their freedom, or their grave. Furl it! For the hands that grasped it, For though conquered, they adore it— Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory, Though its folds are in the dust! Furl its folds though now we must! Furl that Banner, softly, slowly; For it droops above the dead; Decoration Day: A Vision of War BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. The past rises before me like a dream. Again we are in the great struggle for national life. We hear the sounds of preparation-the music of boisterous drums-the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see the thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men; and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more. We are with them when they enlist in the great army of freedom. We see them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with the maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses; divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the doorway with the babe in her arms-standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves she answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone, and for ever. We see them all as they march proudly away under the flaunting flags, keeping time to the grand, wild music of war -marching down the streets of the great cities-through the towns and across the prairies-down to the fields of glory, to do and to die for the eternal right. We go with them one and all. We are by their side on all the gory fields in all the hospitals of pain-on all the weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood-in the furrows of old fields. We are with them between contending hosts, unable to move, wild with thirst, the life ebbing slowly away among the withered leaves. We see them pierced by balls and torn with shells,-in the trenches, by the forts, and in the whirlwind of the charge, where men become iron, with nerves of steel. We are with them in the prisons of hatred and famine; but human speech can never tell what they endured. The past rises before us, and we see four millions of human beings governed by the lash! We see them bound hand and foot; we hear the strokes of the cruel whips; we see the hounds tracking women through the tangled swamps; we see babes sold from the breasts of mothers. Cruelty unspeakable! Outrage infinite! Four million bodies in chains-four million souls in fetAll the sacred relations of wife, mother, father, and child trampled beneath the brutal feet of might. And all this was done under our own beautiful banner of the free. The past rises before us. We hear the roar and shriek of the bursting shells. The broken fetters fall. These heroes died. Instead of slaves we see men and women and children. The wand of progress touches the auction block, the slave pen, the whipping-post, and we see We look. homes and firesides and schools and books, and where all was want and crime and cruelty and fear, we see the faces of the free. These heroes are dead. They died for liberty-they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars-they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for the soldiers living and dead: Cheers for the living; tears for the dead. The Old Boys in the Dance* BY FRANK L. STANTON. It sorter sets me thinkin' that I've got another chance— An' see 'em swing the old girls, I jest holler out “Hooray!" I clean fergit I'm sixty-I want to jine the crowd I want to be one actor in that halleluia show, An' swing once more the sweetheart that I danced with long ago! To think I'm still a youngster in the reel-roun' with the girls Fergit the gray hair glimmerin', feel the kiss of golden curls! Then I'm dancin' down my troubles-then I'm laughin' 'em away, An' old December's singin' of a love song to the May! Oh, thar's life still in the old boys!-jest tune the fiddle right, An' they'll all stay by the music till the pale stars say " Goodnight," An' the big Sun says "Good-mornin'!"-Oh, it's then I want a chance To swing the old-time sweethearts, with the old boys, in the dance! *From the Saturday Evening Post. At the Turn of the Road (A Christmas Story.) BY SUSAN KEATING GLASPELL. T HE rain poured uncompromisingly down and down, and the State Street crowd swarmed unceasingly on. The girl in the waterproof raglan and the small red turban looked from the hollytrimmed windows to the bundle-laden people swarming along outside them, and kept saying to herself that it was Christmas time, and that she surely was feeling very light-hearted and festive. But the water was dripping inside her collar, and her heart was taking on something of the sogginess of her feet. The feeling of desolation was creeping so overpoweringly upon her that she threw back her head and said to herself, "Some day I shall be famous-some day my pictures will be hung in the great galleries of the world, and then I shall look back to this, and say it was very funny." Usually that anticipation of future triumphs went a long way in the mitigation of present discomforts, but to-day, though she said the words with stern stoutness, the idea was without its charm. All about her were people-people-people, and she was the only one in the great throng to whom Christmas would mean nothing. She went as far as the Library Building, and there something made her stop. She could go up to the reading room and find the paper from home; it would tell her how her friends who were not ambitious—were spending Christmas. It would moderate the dreariness to see familiar names on the printed page, and to be made sure that somewhere in the world a Christmas was waiting for her, if the pictures of the future would but permit her to go and take it. The big room was almost empty-Chicago had little time for the reading of newspapers on the day before Christmas. She walked down the long aisle toward the alcove where she knew the Des Moines paper was to be found. A man was standing before it a man past middle years, and he was reading intently. He looked up and saw the girl in the wet raglan and turban, and saying, “I have just finished," pushed the paper toward her. It was the paper she had read in other days-the paper which the people whom she |