what it is, and goes off among his vines in a state of painful unconcern. The boys run out to the brow of the hill, and come back in great excitement to announce that the whole town is thronging up toward the house. Then all, as if apprehending the nature of the visit, gather about their table again, that being the place where their visitors will expect to find them.

At length Sam Yates comes in sight around the corner of the mansion, followed closely by all the operatives of the mill, dressed in their holiday attire. Mrs. Dillingham has found her brother, and, with her hand upon his arm, she goes out to meet his visitors. They have come to crown the feast, and signalize the anniversary by bringing their congratulations to the proprietor and the beautiful lady who presides over his house. There is a great deal of awkwardness among the young men, and tittering and blushing among the young women, with side play of jest and coquetry, as they form themselves in a line, preparatory to something formal, which presently

appears.

Mr. Yates, the agent of the mill, who has consented to be the spokesman of the occasion, stands in front, and faces Mr. Benedict and Mrs. Dillingham.

"Mr. Benedict," says he, "this demonstration in your honor is not one originated by myself, but, in some way, these good people who serve you learned that you were to have a formal celebration of this anniversary, and they have asked me to assist them in expressing the honor in which they hold you, and the sympathy with which they enter into your rejoicing. We all know your history. Many of those who now stand before you remember your wrongs and your misfortunes; and there is not one who does not rejoice that you have received that which your own genius won in the hands of another. There is not one who does not rejoice that the evil influence of this house is departed, and that one now occupies it who thoroughly respects and honors the manhood and womanhood that labor in his service. We are glad to acknowledge you as our master, because we know that we can regard you as our friend. Your predecessor despised poverty-even the poverty into which he was born-and forgot, in the first moment of his success, that he had ever been poor, while your own bitter experiences have made you brotherly. On behalf of all those who now stand before you, let me thank you for your sympathy, for

your practical efforts to give us a share in the results of your prosperity, and for the purifying influences which go out from this dwelling into all our humble homes. We give you our congratulations on this anniversary, and hope for happy returns of the day, until, among the inevitable changes of the future, we all yield our places to those who are to succeed us."

Mr. Benedict's eyes are full of tears. He does not turn, however, to Mr. Balfour for help. The consciousness of power, and, more than this, the consciousness of universal sympathy, gave him self-possession and the power of expression.

"Mr. Yates," says Mr. Benedict, "when you call me master you give me pain. When you speak of me as your brother, and the brother of all those whom you represent, you pay me the most grateful compliment that I have ever received. It is impossible for me to regard myself as anything but the creature and the instrument of a loving Providence. It is by no power of my own, no skill of my own, no providence of my own, that I have been carried through the startling changes of my life. The power that has placed me where I am is the power in which, during all my years of adversity, I firmly trusted. It was that power which brought me my friends-friends to whose good-will and efficient service I owe my wealth and my ability to make life profitable and pleasant to you. Fully believing this, I can in no way regard myself as my own, or indulge in pride and vainglory. You are all my brothers and sisters, and the dear Father of us all has placed the power in my hands to do you good. In the patient and persistent execution of this stewardship lies the duty of my life. I thank you all for your good-will. I thank you all for this opportunity to meet you, and to say to you the words which have for five years been in my heart, waiting to be spoken. Come to me always with your troubles. Tell me always what I can do for you to make your way easier. Help me to make this village a prosperous, virtuous, and happy one-a model for all its neighbors. And now I wish to take you all by the hand, in pledge of our mutual friendship and of our devotion to each other."

Mr. Benedict steps forward with Mrs. Dillingham, and both shake hands with Mr. Yates. One after another-some shyly, some confidently-the operatives come up and repeat the process, until all have pressed the proprietor's hand, and have received a

pleasant greeting and a cordial word from his sister, of whom the girls are strangely afraid. There is a moment of awkward delay as they start on their homeward way, and then they gather in a group upon the brow of the hill, and the evening air resounds with "three cheers" for Mr. Benedict. The hum of voices begins again, the tramp of a hundred feet passes down the hill, and our little party are left to themselves.

They do not linger long. The Snows take their leave. Mr. and Mrs. Yates retire with a lingering "good-night," but the Balfours and the Fentons are guests of the house. They go in and the lamps are lighted, while the "little feller-Paul B. by name" is carried on his happy father's shoulder to his bed upstairs.

Finally, Jim comes down, having seen his pet asleep, and finds the company talking about Talbot. He and his pretty, worldly wife, finding themselves somewhat too intimately associated with the bad fame of Robert Belcher, had retired to a country seat on the Hudson-a nest which they feathered well with the profits of the old connection.

And now, as they take leave of one another for the night, and shake hands in token of their good-will, and their satisfaction with the pleasures of the evening, Jim says: "Mr. Benedict, that was a good speech o' yourn. It struck me favorble an' s'prised me some considable. I'd no idee

ye could spread so afore folks. I shouldn't wonder if ye was right about Proverdence. It seems kind o' queer that somebody or somethin' should be takin' keer o' you an' me, but I vow I don't see how it's all ben did, if so be as nobody nor nothin' has took keer o' me an' you too. It seems reasomble that somethin's ben to work all the time that I hain't seed. The trouble with me is that I can't understand how a bein' as turns out worlds as if they was nothin' more nor snow-balls would think o' stoppin' to pay 'tention to sech a feller as Jim Fenton."

"You are larger than a sparrow, Jim," says Mr. Benedict, with a smile. "That's so."

Larger than a hair.”

Jim puts up his hand, brushes down the stiff crop that crowns his head, and responds with a comical smile:

"I don' know 'bout that."

Then Jim pauses as if about to make some further remark, thinks better of it, and then, putting his big arm around his little wife, leads her off, upstairs.

The lights of the great house go out one after another, the cataracts sing the inmates to sleep, the summer moon witches with the mist, the great, sweet heaven bends over the dreaming town, and there we leave our friends at rest, to take up the burden of their lives again upon the happy morrow, beyond our feeble following, but still under the loving eye and guiding hand to which we confidently and gratefully commit them.

BROTHERS, I greet you! wond'ring at the call
Which bids me lift my voice within this hall.
Was there such dearth of singers in the land
That you must seek for one in gown and band?
Misled Committee! what induced your dream
That verse like preaching could be done by steam?
Why bid me rhyme, when everybody knows
The Parson's ancient vested right to prose?
Is not his Pegasus a stable hack,
Equally poor for saddle, road or track?
Does shepherd's pipe pertain to Pastor's crook?
Lisps he in numbers (save the Pentateuch)?
Shall he attempt to wake the living lyre
With Sternhold's pathos and with Hopkins' fire?

*This poem was delivered in the Chapel of Harvard University, Thursday, July 1, 1875, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

What could you look for save a sermon song, Dull as a Dudleian, and twice as long?

Yet, since you bade me, at the call I come
To beat the old ecclesiastic drum.

I feel the mantle of my Pilgrim sires
(N. B.—All Quakers cooked at Pilgrim fires)
Descend upon me.-Cotton Mather, aid!
Materialize, and cease to be a shade;
Add to the wonders of New England's shore
In me, thy medium, one last marvel more!
So may my hour 'mid shouts of glee expire,
Each minute winged with wit that does not tire.
And you, oblivious of the boiled and roast!
Of crisp oration, and of crackling toast,
May bid me, as the good old custom was,
"Turn up the sand, and take another glass."

But since the wished afflatus don't display
It's operation in the normal way,-

(To quote a line which critics failed to mend )——
"Innoculation, heavenly maid, descend!"
Let me, as skillful cooks a banquet make
From one poor cantle of tough equine steak,
By condiments, adroitly from their shelves
Mixed till the viands hardly know themselves-
So, by judicious and adaptive art,
Let me from many minstrels take a part-
Beg, borrow, steal (the wise “convey" it call)
Some unconsidered trifle from them all.

Yet Æsop warns the poet who presumes
Like fabled daw to strut in pilfered plumes,
That fate may force him in the critic strife
To drop his quills and scamper for his life.
Taught by such risks, I copy not the crow,
Of whom the hunchback prattled long ago;
But fain would emulate a wiser fowl,

Bird of the night (I do not mean the owl).
No; let my theme be with approval heard-
Type of my country's muse— -THE MOCKING-BIRD-

Subdued in plumage, sensitive of ear,

Gliding through thickets when there's danger near.
He does not prink, true poets never do;
He leaves such fopperies to the cockatoo,
The parrot tribe, whose ear-offending notes
Betray their breeding when they ope their throats.
Graceful in motion, elegant though shy,
His is the style we judge not by the eye.
Fine feathers mark the finch of gilded wing;
The bird of genius calmly waits to sing.
Ah, then the magic of his art is shown
In twenty voices, none of them his own;
Now thrush, now robin,—then to hear, you think
The sweet bravura of the bobolink,

The blackbird's lilting call, the bluebird's sharp
Staccato chiming with the March wind's harp.
The round he runs of each familiar strain,
We scarce catch one before he's off again-
With the hawk's scream, the frighten'd hen deceives;
Twitters like sparrows underneath the eaves;
Trills till the vexed canary in his cage
Sulks on his perch in jealous, baffled rage;
Yelps like the puppy-like the kitten mews,
The lazy pigeon on the barn outcoos,

And crowns the whole with one triumphant note
Of joyous laughter from the human throat.
But when in midnight's hush the full moon's beam
Flings the black shadows on Pilatka's stream,
Silv'ring the summits of the moss-hung pines,
And decks with diamond dews the tangled vines,
Then, when all else is hushed, hear him repeat
His native love-notes, witching, wild and sweet.

Then take the slender fancy I pursue,
It shall be varied, if it is not new.
Hear first the legend of the youth of Lynn,
The sad, sad story of what might have been.

Sam Silsbee on Commencement Day
Saw the Governor's escort fill the way.

Beneath his drab vest ran a thrill
As the band struck up at Dana Hill,
And unfriendlike yearnings drew his eyes
To the vain parade with a shy surprise.
He followed on where the elms between
The steeple-house o'ertopped the green.

He slipped by the men with the staves of red
Guarding the door, and, hat on head;

Stared at the stage where, row by row,
Sate the goodly professional show.

He heard with awe the stately swell
With which the Salutatory fell

From practiced lips, whose accents free
Were all of them sounded to "issime:"
Then listened with feelings of relief
To vernacular disquisitions brief;

Drank in with delight the oration bold,
Which American scholarship's mission told.
"And oh," thought he, "if I might dare
Some day to stand at that antique chair,
"And bow the neck that has never bent
In response to that gray old President,
"And hear, ere I took my proud A. B.,
'Oratio expectatur' from me.

"Thereafter," thought he, "I might come to sport
My lore in the great and general court;

"Or, clad in the sable garment trim,
Give out from a pulpit a sounding hymn;
"Or rise to plead in the cause of Doe
The wrongs inflicted by Richard Roe;
"Or, fingering pulses ill at case,
Coin from their throbbing golden fees;
"Or, best of all, in a silken gown
Sit 'mid those grave professors down."
But September's sun with dusty ray
Made hot the noon of that autumn day,

And Samuel turned from the arched door,
And went back to his native Lynn once more;

To the "thee" and "thou" and the ceaseless din
Of pegs on the lapstone hammered in ;

To Woolman's journal and Barclay quaint,
Untinctured by pagan learning's taint;

To the ways of Friends, precise and calm,
Unvexed by sermon and metric psalm.

Yet oft on a "First-day" afternoon,
In the dreamy days of leafy June,

He gazed the marshy levels o'er
To the hooded turrets of Gothic Gore,

That rose above the elm trees fair,
And his heart grew hot with a secret care

As he thought of the books in those alcoves dim,
All sealed volumes unto him;

And he sighed "O Fox, thy 'inward light'
Is outer darkness upon my sight.

"And I would that mantle drab of thine
Had fallen on other shoulders than mine."

"O bird irreverent! O unblushing bard!
Knowest thou not that what is mocked is marred?”
I hear you murmur. Bear with me awhile-
I do but ask a recognizing smile.
Forgive me, then-if imitation be,
As saith the proverb, truest flattery,

I cannot flatter,-scarce find fitting praise
For him who charmed me in my school-boy days.
And earnest admiration gives the art

To catch the trick of verses known by heart.

Who next? 'Tis one whose master-hand defies
The cruder copy which the tyro tries.

A dab of yellow tinged with rays of white
Stands for a daisy to the poorest sight.
But who can match with subtle workmanship
The azure fringing of the gentian's lip?
Or, when the pencil on the page has set
The tender veinings of the violet,

Can bid the mimic petals breathe the breath
Of ling'ring odors, loveliest in death?

Here is the spot,-stand still and mark
The old Plantation's site,

Once trimmer than an English park,
A garden of delight.

The wild-weed springs from mold'ring heaps,
Where once the portal wide

Echoed the tread of him who sleeps
By blue Potomac's side.

Here was the sunny garden spot, The planter's special joy,

Where, unrebuked and fearing not, Disported oft the boy.

Sole relic of that by-gone time,
Ghost-like there meeteth me,

In shadowy semblance of its prime,
A solitary tree.

The gum incrusts its wrinkled bark,
Of limb and leaf bereft;

You scarce can trace one moss-grown mark
A hostile steel hath left.

Was it the tomahawk that bit

That deeply graven scar?

Oh, no-upon yon page is writ A nobler record far.

And now before my dreaming eye
Unfolds the storied past,

When of a manhood, chaste and high,
The horoscope was cast.

Rebukingly the senior stands
Inquiring of the deed,

And, ranged around, the sable bands
Await with anxious heed.

Unquailingly and firm, the boy
Confronts the father's glance,
As when he saw at York deploy
The Briton's proud advance.

Serene, as when, like ambushed stag,
Brave Braddock bled in vain,
When flew the Bourbon's lilied flag
Above the Fort Duquesne;

Or when he rallied wasting ranks
Against the troops of George,
Beside the Brandywine's red bank
And snows of Valley Forge.

And to his sire in accents low,
But firm, bursts the reply:
"Father, my hatchet struck the blow,
I cannot tell a lie."

Pardon presumption, which perhaps in vain
Once more essays the imitative strain.
A monarch sees, unvexed, his jester try
To wear the crown he carelessly put by.
Laughs first and loudest at the regal ape
Wrapping the ermine round his motley shape,

And can afford with lenient eye to look
On tricks which one less royal might not brook.
Sure he is monarch, who can find no peer,
"Long" must we look to find his "fellow" here.

Change we the note, and call upon the stand
New England's Plato from Lake Walden's strand.
Wordsworth in nature worship, Keats in art
Of classic culture, but indeed in heart
Fresh and unhackneyed as the breeze that sweeps
The granite ledges of Monadnoc's steeps;
For whom in place of laurels we must twine
A wreath of May-flower, woven with ground pine.
Then from our Western Wordsworth let me catch
The mystic meaning of THE SPELLING MATCH.

Blushing and giggling maidens throng

The school-house knife-scarred desks along,
Ranged in row the rivals stand,
Equally counted band by band.

Rustic youths in Sunday clothes,
Conscious of their thumbs and toes;
Serious urchins, quick of ear,

Waifs of thought's unfathomed sphere,
Prompt to meet the coming trial,
Stubborn against Fate's denial;
Scions of the old pine tree,
Chips of pilgrim ancestry.

Head of one band, the Parson dark,
Orthographic hierarch;

Trained to answer to the call

Of discourse hebdomadal,

Wherein the Saxon's rugged strength

Gives place to phrase of classic length,
Till his pen, polysyllabic,

Latin, Greek, and Mozarabic,
Equally in turn distills,

As the brooklet from the hills,
Swollen with the winter's snow,
Irrigates the plain below.

So from his pulpit falls the shock
Of Sunday deluge on his flock.

Head of the other, see the Master,
Pledged to redeem the day's disaster.
Something he would attempt as well,
Ponderous decasyllable;

Word lurking in the darkest nook
Of the dog-eared spelling book-
Term borrowed from the technic arts,
Familiar to the city marts;
Catch-word, involute, or quaint,
Seldom-heard name of Hebrew saint.
Each and all the Master dares,
While Gershom grins and Silas stares.

Dropping 'neath the steady fire,
One and another must retire.
Hard is the unlooked-for fate,
Twenty-four reduced to eight.
Three to left and five to right
Manfully maintain the fight.
Though the combat seem unequal,
No seer can surmise the sequel.
Between cup and lip,

There is capacity of slip.

Into the unknown, who can read? Haste ill-timed is doubtful speed.

Two go down on the Parson's side;
One of the Master's three must hide
Face suffused behind her fan,
Vowel-vanquished Cynthia Ann.
Reuben, Peleg Bissel's son,
Stumbles at Iguanodon;"
And the last of the Sorosis

Trips upon metempsychosis."

One after another slain,
Church and State alone remain.
Parson and Master stand alone,
Rival mastiffs o'er a bone.

Loth that either now should yield,
Ajax or Hector quit the field,

The umpire filings his truncheon down,
Ruler of mahogany brown,
Ordering the match as drawn,
Lest the conflict last till dawn,
And unquiet solution shame

Our New England's Isthmian game.

Enough!" you say. Then let your fancy fly Across the seas to greet another sky.

A wreath of vine-leaves, blended with the gray
Of dusty olive boughs, should crown his lay
Who knows to wield with perfect mastership
The Tuscan language on the Roman lip,
And with Italian artifice has wrought

The sturdy common sense of English thought!

Roberto, called Brunino of the Borg,
Guardian of certain droves by Thrasymene,
Which find cool plashy pastures near the lake,
Fell into doubt upon a point of law,
Which, being minded to steal counsel on,
He to the notary, Gian Battista, went,
And, tramping up the leng, white, dusty road,
Beneath the massy walls the One-eyed built,
Was busy in his fine Italian brain
Weighing the pros and cons, until he came
To the cool piazetta's shade, where, robed
In black, trimming his quills, Battista sate.
Good, now, you mark the sequence, shall he tell
His case at once, and, looking blankly out
Of his two eyes, discharged of meaning quite,
Demand his answer, "is it thus, or so?"
Or, putting the Campagna cunning forth
Against the city shrewdness, fence awhile
Like one that plays at morra-flashing out
Well practiced fingers, uno, cinque, sei,"
Reading the other's purpose on his lip?
"Who softly goes, goes safely," quoth the saw.
Therefore, with brief preamble, he began:
"Signor, you know my Brindle-if it please
"You, Eccelenza, to take heed of beasts-
"Corpo di Baccho-plague upon the brute,
"A quarrelsome, ill-tempered, ugly thing.
"I think his mother must have lowered herself
"Into forbidden wedlock-buffaloes-

"Or the mal' occhio crossed him when a calf. "Your oxen, now, Signore, gentle, yet

"Pure-bred Toscani, mouse-colored, with soft, Deep, dreamy eyes, like the Madonna's own. Sicuro, Signor Avocato-they

"Could ne'er have done my bull an injury. My bull, I say-for, mark me, I'm a plain "Man of the people, quite unskilled to put "Learn'd suppositions from the civil law, "As Caius thus and so, and Manlius thus"But seek to tell the plain, unvarnished tale,

Just as it happened. Well, my bull, I say,

Did gore your ox-the one, you know; the plump, "Brown-backed one; he with just a thought of dark "On his fore-shoulder. Or-you do not know, Having less care of oxen than of courts.

Well, as I said, this maladetto bull

Of mine hath hurt your ox, and so I come, Supposing I am bound to pay the cost, Having some certain scudi ready here. "And now, 'celenza, tell me am I right: "Or must I bring my neighbors in to prove "The damage, and seek judgment in the court?"

Then Gian Battista, turning sidewise round His parrot-beak of nose, and fingering at A score of tape-tied parchments on his desk, Turned and replied: "Sicuro, if the case "Be as you say, and if it were your bull "That hurt my ox. I have a bull, I think, "Not sweetly tempered; but I keep him penned. "No oxen that I wot of-if, I say,

"The damage be a damage, which the law

Rightly takes count of-then if it be shown

"I kept my oxen to their proper bound,

"And that your bull was negligently watched, "Mio Roberto, I am loth to think "I Brunonino careless in his craft. "Cortona knows his merit-if, I say, "This doth appear, by witnesses of trust, "Sworn on the Gospel-not your country louts, "Who scarce can tell their right hand from their left; "Or some birbone of the market-place,

"Who for a paul would swear that black were white, "But like Tommaso yonder, or yourself,

Why, then I should consider that the suit "Was one, which, bating needful steps of law, Circuitous, may be, for justice' sake,

Might come before the judges in a year, "Madonna helping-after which, you know, "Who seeks to eat his cake, must tarry still, "Until the meal be bolted.' But we hope! "Meanwhile,-and this advice I give you in "Three colonati pays your present cost.

"I think you said you had the coin in hand, "Meanwhile, in case my ox were like to die. "Were he killed quickly, I might save his meat. "Franzino pays ciuque centesimi

"Per pound for such, too little; but we know

Beggars must not be choosers-vain to cry

"For milk when pails o'erturn; what must be, must. "And, mi' Roberto, when you next essay

"To lead a lawyer to convict himself,

66

Relying on the trick of sop's age,

"Remember that, now, 'Abbiamo Noi

"Tutto reverso'-we have changed all that."

Who follows? One whose varied gifts are such,
'Tis hard to put his merits to the touch.
Unwittingly his perfect ear retains
Remembered music from all rival strains.
Just lingers in his thoughts some trick of art
From the last verse he loved and learned by heart.

But, as the fabled philosophic stone
Transmuted what it touched and made its own,
So, in his pure alembic, fused and fined,
The dross departs, the gold remains behind.
With him the children's nursery trick I'll try;
"Play I was he, and play that he was I."
And take these lines as coming from his hand,
Writ on myself-of course you understand.

There's a poet whose fortunate culture combines
The fresh growth of the fields with the toil of the mines,
Who can catch the rude accents of primitive speech
. From the men of the furrow and men of the beach:
While at home, in the pages of Marlowe and Drayton,
Ford, Fletcher, and Webster, and Taylor and Leighton,
Old English and New English equally known,
And used with a grace that is simply his own.
When the bird sings outside of his library sill,
And the poet just dreams to its jubilant trill,
'Mid the blossoming scents of the lilacs in June,
When the breeze and the sunlight with both are in tune,
The verse from his pen and the bird's warbled strain
Are twined in one lyric's melodious chain,
Till bird-song with bird-song so lovingly blends,
No critic can tell which begins and which ends.

Then his wit lights each line with a vibrating spark,
Like a linden with fire-flies aglow in the dark.
For the natural flow of his Helicon runs
In a radiant ripple of laughter and puns,
Till paronomasia expands to a science,
Which sets the hard angles of speech at defiance;
And the pure ores of feeling through every word gleam,
Like the gold-flakes beneath California's stream.
What at first appears rubbish-unless I o'erpraise,
The longer you "pan it," the better it pays.
If a bard be a prophet, of old called a seer,
We count in the canon the prophet Hosea,
The author of papers, whose title we spell
With a big L O W-E-double L.

Once more across the waters-yet once more,
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
Which knows its rider. He who runs may read
The latest name that honors England's shore
In the quaint dance revived, which tracked the green
When Robin Hood was king-Maid Marian queen.
Gunhild of Bathstead,-daughter of Gudarm,
King Eric's Bonder, of the upland farm-
Numbered ten summers since the hawthorn spray
Made white the church-yard on her christ'ning day.
What time an eight days' infant to the font
They bore her, as was ancient use and wont