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HENRY ABBEY.

LADDIN selling the dishes of the genii's banquet while the wonderful lamp rested unused in his closet, may stand as a prophetic image of a poet put to business. Imagination, however, does not disqualify a man for practical work, and the subject of this study, Mr. Henry Abbey, has probably been as successful in business as if the gods had not made him poetical. He is at present a flour and grain dealer at Rondout, New York, is vice-president of a bank at Kingston, and a mem. ber of the Produce Exchange, of New York City.

Mr. Abbey was born at Rondout, New York, July 11, 1842. He is the eldest son of Stephen Abbey and Caroline Vail. His great-grandmother was Lucy Knox, for whom is claimed a lineal descent from John Knox the great Scotch Reformer. Mr. Abbey's grandfather came when a boy into New York state from Connecticut. Caroline Vail was a descendant of one of three brother Vails who came over in the Mayflower and whose names are engraved in the monument at Plymouth. It is said that one of the brothers married a daughter of Massasoit and a geneological tree shows that Caroline Vail was a descendant of this marriage.

Mr. Abbey received his education at several institutes in Kingston and the neighborhood. While preparing for college the panic of 1857 brought financial embarrassment to his father and he was compelled to forego his studies. Probably his training was more an affair of libraries than of schools, his determination towards letters being strong enough to survive the deprivation of college. His first book of verse was published in 1862. This and other early work he regards merely as evidence of an intuitive groping for expression. Soon after the publication of his first work, Mr. Abbey became assistant editor of the Rondout Courier. He did not serve many months in that capacity, however, as he left Rondout and went to New York. Here he wrote verses for the New York Leader and enjoyed the acquaintance of Henry Clapp, Jr., George Arnold, Fitzhugh Ludlow and other literary people of the time. From New York he went to Orange, New Jersey, and started the Orange Spectator, which paper, however, was soon discontinued. In 1864 Mr. Abbey returned to Rondout. He was married in 1865 to Mary Louise du Bois daughter of Mr. Elijah du Bois a member of the Holland Society.

In 1872 was published Mr. Abbey's "Ballads of Good Deeds." Most of the poems in this collection had previously appeared in various periodicals— Harper's Magazine, Appleton's Journal, The Galaxy, Chambers' Journal, and others. This volume, under the same name, but somewhat enlarged, was published in London in 1876 and attracted some

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THE AGE OF GOOD.

I HAD a vision of mankind to be:
I saw no grated windows, heard no roar
From iron mouths of war on land and sea;
Ambition broke the sway of peace no more.
Out of the chaos of ill-will had come
Cosmos, the Age of Good, Millennium!
The lowly hero had of praise his meed,
And loving-kindnesses joined roof to roof.
The poor were few, and to their daily need
Abundance ministered: men bore reproof;
On crags of self-denial sought to cull
Rare flowers to deck their doors hospitable.
The very bells rang out the Golden Rule,
For hearts were,loath to give their fellows pain.
The man was chosen chief who, brave and cool,
Was king in act and thought: wise power is
plain

And likes not pomp and show; he seemed to be
The least in all that true democracy.

O Thou, the Christ, the Sower of the seed,
Pluck out the narrowness, the greed for pelf:
Pluck out all tares; the time let come, and speed,

When each will love his neighbor as himself! The hopes of man, our dreams of higher good, Are based on Thee; we are Thy brotherhood.

THE DRAWBRIDGE KEEPER. DRECKER, a drawbridge keeper, opened wide The dangerous gate to let the vessel through; His little son was standing by his side, Above Passaic River deep and blue, While in the distance, like a moan of pain, Was heard the whistle of the coming train.

At once brave Drecker worked to swing it back,
The gate-like bridge that seems a gate of death;
Nearer and nearer, on the slender track,
Came the swift engine, puffing its white breath.
Then, with a shriek, the loving father saw
His darling boy fall headlong from the draw!

Either at once down in the stream to spring
And save his son, and let the living freight
Rush on to death, or to his work to cling,
And leave his boy unhelped to meet his fate
Which should he do? Were you as he was tried,
Would not your love outweigh all else beside?

And yet the child to him was full as dear
As yours may be to you- the light of eyes,
A presence like a brighter atmosphere,
The household star that shone in love's mild skies-
Yet, side by side with duty stern and grim,
Even his child became as naught to him.

For Drecker, being great of soul and true,
Held to his work and did not aid his boy,
Who, in the deep, dark water, sank from view.
Then from the father's life went forth all joy;
But, as he fell back pallid from his pain,
Across the bridge in safety shot the train.

And yet the man was poor, and in his breast
Flowed no ancestral blood of king or lord;
True greatness needs no title and no crest
To win from men just honor and reward!
Nobility is not of rank, but mind,
And is inborn and common in our kind.

He is most noble whose humanity
Is least corrupted: to be just and good
The birthright of the lowest born may be.
Say what we can, we are one brotherhood,
And, rich or poor, or famous or unknown,
True hearts are noble, and true hearts alone.

STORM.

THE pale day died in the rain to-night,

And its hurrying ghost, the wind, goes by: The mountains loom in their silent might, And darkly frown at the sea and sky.

The petrel wings close to his surging home,

And stabs with a shriek the shuddering night: The mad wave beckons with hands of foam Dipped in the blood of the sea-tower's light.

So, in my heart, is a storm to-night,

Storm and tumult that will not cease; And my soul, in bitterness, longs for the light, For the waking bird and the dawn of peace.

THE SINGER'S ALMS.

IN Lyons, in the mart of that French town,
Years since, a woman, leading a fair child,
Craved a small alms of one who, walking down
The thoroughfare, caught the child's glance, and
smiled

To see, behind its eyes, a noble soul.

He paused, but found he had no coin to dole.

His guardian angel warned him not to lose
This chance of pearl to do another good;
So as he waited, sorry to refuse
The asked-for penny, there aside he stood,
And with his hat held as by limb the nest
He covered his kind face, and sang his best.

The sky was blue above, and all the lane

Of commerce where the singer stood was filled,
And many paused, and, listening, paused again,
To hear the voice that through and through them
thrilled.

I think the guardian angel helped along
That cry for pity woven in a song.

The singer stood between the beggars there,
Before a church, and, overhead, the spire,
A slim, perpetual finger in the air

Held toward heaven, land of the heart's desire,
As if an angel, pointing up, had said,
"Yonder a crown awaits this singer's head."

The hat of its stamped brood was emptied soon Into the woman's lap, who drenched with tears Her kiss upon the hand of help: 't was noon, And noon in her glad heart drove forth her fears. The singer, pleased, passed on, and softly thought, "Men will not know by whom this deed was wrought."

But when at night he came upon the stage,
Cheer after cheer went up from that wide throng,
And flowers rained on him: naught could assuage
The tumult of the welcome, save the song
That he had sweetly sung, with covered face,
For the two beggars in the market-place.

FAITH'S VISTA.

WHEN from the vaulted wonder of the sky
The curtain of the light is drawn aside,
And I behold the stars in all their wide
Significance and glorious mystery,
Assured that those more distant orbs are suns
Round which innumerable worlds revolve,
My faith grows strong, my day-born doubts dis-
solve,

And death, that dread annulment which life shuns,
Or fain would shun, becomes to life the way,

The thoroughfare to greater worlds on high, The bridge from star to star. Seek how we may, There is no other road across the sky;

And, looking up, I hear star-voices say:

"You could not reach us if you did not die."

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