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CHARLES J. O'MALLEY.

HARLES J. O'MALLEY was born in an humble log-cabin in Union County, Kentucky, February 9, 1857. His father was a hardworking Irish farmer, a man of strong mind, and closely related to the poet-priest Father Ryan. His mother, who is still living, is of Spanish descent. During his childhood young O'Malley was much alone. When eight years old he could read well, and for want of other associates he pored over such books as his home afforded. These were principally works on ecclesiastical history, together with Chapman's translation of Homer, and a translation of "Telemaque." Between the ages of eight and twelve he had finished his reading of ecclesiastical history, had made himself familiar with Plutarch's "Lives" and Grimshaw's "Greece," and had wandered through many pages of the Bible. He had also read some poetry at this time. At the age of twelve O'Malley was snatched out of his land of dreams and sent to a public school. Here the first real trial of his life began. He was shy, sensitive, and while learned in things far beyond his years, he was painfully conscious of his lack of rudimentary knowledge, especially in arithmetic. He had been at school but a short time when his father

lost heavily by security debts. The family left the state, and spent about two years in wandering from place to place. Nothing was gained financially by this move, and they returned to the old life again. Young O'Malley was weak-lunged but he took hold of the plow with the sturdy determination of one bound by ties of affection and duty to help his father. They began to prosper once more, and about this time he employed his leisure moments in hard study. He became proficient in Latin under a competent teacher. He also made some progress in French and German. Probably the turning point in the young poet's life hinged upon his father's desire to have him enter the priesthood. He was nominated for St. Thomas Theological Seminary by Bishop, now Cardinal McCloskey. From there he was to have gone to Lourain, and thence, if he showed very unusual talent, to the Propaganda at Rome. For some reason best known to himself he turned his back upon the priesthood, and went resolutely forth to grapple with life outside the walls. He says that all this while "the habit of writing verses still clung to me." He was encouraged in this habit by a veteran Kentucky editor, Ben Harrison. His father died in 1881. In October, 1882, he was married to Miss Sallie M. Hill, of Calhoun, Missouri, herself a poet, and a lady of great firmness of will, with a clear, spiritual mind. She has encouraged her husband by her devotion to, and belief in him.

Mr. O'Malley first attracted attention as a contributor to The Current. Step by step he gained footing, his poems appearing in high-grade periodicals. Some of his poems have been widely copied," Worthiness" especially.

Mr. O'Malley has a comfortable living from his farm, the old homestead, and is content in a modest frame house, over the porches of which vines love to clamber, and around which lilacs and altheas cluster. A stately line of cedars stretches along the roadside in front of the house, and from them the place derives its name, having long been known as "The Cedars." Here surrounded by his family (he has several children) Mr. O'Malley leads the quiet life of a farmer, finding in close communion with Nature the inspiration of his songs. That he is a true singer, all who listen attentively to his songs will admit. That he is a true man all who know him can testify. I. C.

THE IDEALIST.

LET him alone. He would make pure the world,
And ye try not; therefore he wars with you.
His faith is but a staff wherewith he beats
The hungry shadows from before his face.
What is he but a poet void of words—
A high-preast of white spaces and thin clouds?
The concourse of the ages pass by him
And, where he sits, dawns break about his head,
Limitless noons, and splendors of far suns;
And he hears music sung of days To Be,
Which ye hear not, and he would have ye hear.

Let him alone. He only sits and shapes
Serener Mornings for the race of men;
We only dream. He, from the topmost cliffs,
Shoots downward Dawnward with his clanging

bow,

And then runs on. Sometime when we advance
Unto the light, we shall find, here and there,
White arrows sticking all along the path
By him shot Eastward from the heights above
Ages ago, to guide the feet to come.
Then shall we hear his clanging bow far on,
And bless him for the arrows shot for us.

WORTHINESS.

WHATEVER lacks purpose is evil: a pool without

pebbles breeds slime;

Not any one step hath chance fashioned on the infinite stairway of Time:

Nor ever came good without labor, in Toil, or in Science or Art;

It must be wrought out thro' the muscles-born out of the soul and the heart.

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IN TIME OF DROUTH.

THE yellow flags that grow beside the road,
Covered with dust and bowed in the wide heat,
Gasp the hot air in breathless misery;
Scarce doth the butterfly his slow wings beat
On the pale rose, and mournfully the bee
Homeward returns without his fragrant load;
The pilgrim ant goes forth with weary feet
Seeking and finds not, and the homeless toad
Pants in the waterless brook most piteously;
Dead is the grasshopper and, white and bleak,
Loiter the clouds on heaven's windless peak.
God hath a furnace built to the blue sky,
Walled to the brim, whence blocks of flame o'erfly,
And all but Shadrach and his kind must die.

HIS BIRDS.

I.

How doth He shelter them, His birds

That call among the brakes and fens

At twilight when snowy herds

Stray down within the hollow glens?
Ah, whither do they rest
When, from the stormy west,
Fierce-blown the flakes are hurled
Like ashes across the world,
Covering the earth and every helpless thing?
Do they cower with piteous wing

Under the leaves that rattle in the sleet?
Or grasp, with cold, bare feet,
The swaying branches of the forest trees
That all night moan regretful threnodies?—
Snowy and bent is every leaf and stem:
Where doth He shelter them?

How doth He shelter them, His birds?
Lo, now it is the night!

The woods are spongy white;

The twilight crofts are still; Frozen the little stream below the hill, That sang thro' summer all His poet-words; Stark-stiff the marsh-pool lies Gazing with icy eyes

Up to the hurrying clouds that ride in troops; Lost in the blinding snow

The shelterless cattle low

Over the bleak, bare fields in shivering groups;
Nature her gates hath shut on Day's vast brim,
And the great Night sits perched on Dusk's blue
rim-
Where doth He shelter them?

II.

As one who from a lighted chamber goes

Suddenly out, seeth nought but darkness quite, Later beholds across the lifting snows,

All things take shape in a serener light:
So when the heart walks outward from base
glare,

Into a purer air

Shot is the arrowy Soul thro' planes of vaster height,
And things before unseen themselves to us disclose.

How doth He shelter them? Behold,
Housed 'neath its roof the brook with life sings

warm,

Under its ice, shut from the whirling storm;
The timid rabbit, trembling with the cold,
At twilight creeps into his nest of weeds;
Under his thatch of reeds
And warm marsh-grasses steals the shivering hare;
The sleek, brown field-mouse silent doth repair
Under the grass-tufts and the hillocks bare;
Yule-nuts the squirrel cracks within his oak,
Like a rough yeoman with his jest and joke
By the last embers of the smouldering year
Sitting a-gossip with his nuts and beer,

Drunk with the music of the dripping eaves. Nothing of His deth He leave shelterless,

None whom His pity seeks not and relieves;
Behold,

Out of the storm and cold,

The warm-fleeced sheep are gathered in a fold
Under His beechen boughs; in quietness
The patient kine lie sheltered in a croft,
While the thick snows aloft

Are whirled in gusts to the adjacent hill,
Where now the garments of the dusk hang chill
And dim in the pale splendor of a day
Poured from the peaks of morn on twilight's vest-
ments gray.

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Nothing of His does He leave shelterless;
Even the toads have holes wherein to bide;
By nooks and crofts in the white wilderness
He spreadeth couches on the bare hill-side

Where His wild flocks may lie;

Shall then His pitying eye
Unseeing pass those humblest watchers by
Who trust and wait His coming patiently
When the white feet of Light

With slow steps walk the hill-tops silently,
And from the mournful north
The sexton winds start forth
Plowing black graves thro' the swart sands of
Night!

III.

Nothing so low but His care reacheth it,

Mild as a day-flush on eve's twilight rim.
Groping in darkness, stained of soul, unfit

Oft clasp we hands unknowingly with Him,
And He doth lead us in

Out of the snow-gusts to His shepherd tents

That lowly rise 'yond the high domes of Sin, Unseen at dusk by our thick eyes of Sense:

In reverence knock; the Master waits within,
O Soul! my Sonl! go out in thy distress
And seek His tents, and rest in lowliness!

Beneath thick clouds that overhang the plain,
Between white gusts that seek the broken pane
In yon poor hut where shivering Poverty
Stirs his last coals, I look and see again

Visions of warmth, such as they fail to see Whose bleeding feet touch not life's high Gethse

mane:

Under the warm ricks and the byres That lie a-field, white with the frost's keen fires, In hedges, hay-mows, fodder-shocks that stand Like ghosts thick-dotted on the broad, white land, Or housed in barns beneath the roof's great boards, Robins and linnets, birds of snow in hordes, Or warm in grass-tufts where the snows fall dim, Fill they those homes which He hath ordered them, Thatched with His care which shields night's bitter cold:

Thus doth His Love enfold

All things of His that life hath upon earth.

TRUTH.

CAST first the World and then appeal to Him,
For since His coming each is his own Christ
Casting out devils by his truth of soul.
Who sings one Truth our Lord remembereth;
And, though his heart be dust, his Soul shall live.

REBECCA RUTER SPRINGER.

[NDIANAPOLIS was the birthplace of Mrs. Re

Mrs.

becca Ruter Springer, wife of the Hon. William M. Springer, of Illinois, the distinguished Member of Congress who for many years has ably represented the district which once sent Abraham Lincoln to the National House, and whose name will go to the future crowned with honor, as he was the author and manager of the bill by which the two Dakotas, Montana and Washington were admitted to statehood-a parliamentary triumph without a precedent. Springer has genius and culture as a birth-right, for her father, the Rev. Calvin Ruter, and his brother, the Rev. Dr. Martin Ruter, were among the most highly educated, laborious, useful and eminent ministers of the Methodist Church, who, at an early day wrought, with such fidelity to lay the broad and sure foundations of civil and religious liberty and progress in the valley of the Mississippi. Her earliest years were divided between New Albany and Indianapolis, and her later academic studies were carried on at the Wesleyan College for girls in Cincinnati. Like Pope, "she lisped in numbers;" and the earliest efforts of her pen were dedicated to the Muses; but her love of verse, which grew with her years, was nourished as a secret passion, and no one ever saw or heard a line of her metrical composition until she had nearly reached womanhood and was about to be graduated by her Alma Mater. By accident one of her teachers discovered her gift of song, and she was induced to read one of her poems at a school exhibition. It was received with enthusiasm. The judgment then expressed has since received additional weight of authority from such competent judges as George D. Prentice, John G. Whittier, Henry W. Longfellow, and others of the divine craft, into whose hands some of Mrs. Springer's poems have fallen. Although a volume of her poems has not yet seen the light,- for the extreme modesty as to her productions which characterized Mrs. Springer in her earlier years has continued to make her coy with the public,— a piece of her verse has now and then taken the wings of the morning and found lodgment in many a heart and memory. The House of Representatives at Washington has not often in late years been hushed and thrilled as it was not long ago, when Mr. S. S. Cox, of New York, pleading for the Life Saving Service, quoted an affecting passage from "The Wreck on the Strand." More than once have I known strong men moved to tears by the reading of some bit of pathos from her songs.

Time, with its experience of marriage, mother. hood, broken health, a long residence abroad, large and intimate intercourse with the best

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