Just two days later, as I sat, Half dozing, in my office chair, I heard a timid knock, and called, In my brusque fashion, "Who is there?" An urchin entered, barely seven The same Scotch face, the same blue eyes— And stood, half doubtful, at the door, Abashed at my forbidding guise. "Sir, if you please, my brother Jim- "He didn't mean to keep the ‘change;' He wasn't rightly in his head. "They took him to the hospital- "He had that money in his hand, "He was afraid that you might think "He made me fetch his jacket here; It's only fit to sell for rags, But then, you know, it's all he had! He says he'll work his fingers off And then he cast a rueful glance "Where did they take him? Just run out A half hour after this we stood Together in the crowded wards, I thought him smiling in his sleep, From brow and cheek, "The boy is dead." Dead? dead so soon? How fair he looked! And something rising in my throat I turned away, and left a tear TAKING UP CARPETS. The annual ceremony of taking up and whipping and putting down carpets is upon us. It is one of the evils which flesh is heir to, and cannot be avoided. You go home some pleasant spring day, at peace with the world, and find the baby with a clean face, and get your favorite pudding for dinner. Then your wife tells you how much younger you are looking, and says she really hopes she can turn that walking-dress she wore last fall and save the expense of a new suit, and then she asks you if you can't just help her about taking up the carpet. Then she gets a saucer for the tacks and stands and holds it, and you get the claw and go down on your knees and begin to help her. You feel quite economical about the first three tacks, and take them out carefully and put them in the saucer. Your wife is good about holding the saucer, and beguiles you with an interesting story about how your neighbor's little boy is not expected to live till morning. Then you come to the tack with a crooked head, and you get the claw under, and the head comes off, and the leather comes off, and the carpet comes off, and as it won't do to leave the tack in the floor, because it will tear the carpet when it is put down, you go to work and skin your knuckle, and get a sliver under the thumb nail, and tell your wife to shut up about that everlasting boy, and make up your mind that it does not make any difference about that tack; and so you begin on the corner where the carpet is doubled two or three times and has been nailed down with a shingle nail. You don't care a continental about saving the nail, because you find that it is not a good time for the practice of economy; but you do feel a little hurt when both claws break off from the claw, and the nail does not budge a peg. Then your manhood asserts itself, and you arise in your might and throw the carpet claw at the dog, and get hold of the carpet with both hands, and the air is full of dust and flying tacks, and there is a fringe of carpet yarn all along by the mop board, and the baby cries, and the cat goes anywhere-anywhere out of the world, and your wife says you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk so,-but that carpet comes up. Then you lift one side of the stove, and your wife tries to get the carpet from under it, but can't because you are standing on it. So you try a new hold; and just after your back breaks the carpet is clear. You are not through yet. Your wife don't tell you any more little stories, but she gets your old coat and hangs it on you, and smothers you with the carpet, and opens the back door and shoves you out, and intimates that the carpet needs whipping. When you hang the tormenting thing across the clothesline the wrong way, and get it righted, and have it slide off into the mud, and hang it up again, and get half a pint of dust and three broken tacks snapped out of the northwest corner into your mouth by the wind, you make some observation which you neglected to mention while in the house. Then you hunt up a stick and go for that carpet. The first blow hides the sun and all the fair face of nature behind a cloud with the wind square in your face, no matter how you stand. You wield that cudgel until both hands are blistered, and the milk of human kindness curdles in your bosom. You can whip the carpet a longer or shorter period, according to the size of your mad; it don't make any difference to the carpet; it is just as dusty and as fuzzy, and generally disagreeable after you have whipped it two hours as it was when you commenced. Then you bundle it up, with one corner dragging, and stumble into the house, and have more trouble with the stove, and fail to find any way of using the carpet stretcher while you stand on the carpet, and fail to find any place to stand off from the carpet, and you get on your knees once more, while your wife holds the saucer, and with blind confidence hands you broken tacks, crooked tacks, tacks with no points, tacks with no heads, tacks with no leathers, tacks with the biggest end at the point. Finally the carpet is down, and the baby comes back, and the cat comes back, and the dog comes back, and your wife smiles sweetly, and says she is glad the job is off her hands. BATTLE OF HOHENLINDEN, 1800.-THOMAS CAMPBELL. But Linden saw another sight, By torch and trumpet fast arrayed, Then shook the hills with thunder riven, And redder yet those fires shall glow Of Iser rolling rapidly. 'Tis morn; but scarce yon lurid sun While furious Frank and fiery Hun Shout in their sulphurous canopy. And charge with all thy chivalry! Ah! few shall part where many meet; Shall be a soldier's sepulchre. UNCLE REMUS'S REVIVAL HYMN. Oh! whar shall we go w'en de great day comes, No use fer to wait 'twell to-morrer? De sun musn't set on yo' sorrer. O Lord! fetch the mo'ners up higher! W'en de nashuns uv de earf is a stannin' all aroun', De time is right now an' dis here's de place- De sun mus'n't set on yo' sorrer. -Atlanta Constitution. |