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I think God's mercy findeth many ways
To comfort us when least we would expect;
And even the rocks whereon our hopes are wrecked,
When we look back across the years, shall stand
Like hallowed altars reared by angel's hand.
For life tends on and upward. By mistakes
We learn. The hand which crushed our idols takes
Our own, and leads us to new shrines; whose light
Shines but the brighter for past error's night.
All sin and sorrows, shame, disgrace and pain,
Are made His ministers. From loss comes gain.
Out of all ill it must be He will make

Some good to come, for His dear Mercy's sake;
That we may find an angel in the place
Of the gaunt skeleton with grisly face.

-Told in a Parable.

SARAH KNOWLES BOLTON.

HE first time I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton, I was impressed with her sweet but strong face, her gentle dignity, refinement of manner, and deep sympathy, which spoke in every act and look. As the months flew by, and our meetings became more frequent, I was so delighted with the genial and charming lady that I could not help loving her. Mrs. Bolton's father, John S. Knowles, was well called a gentleman of the "old school," from his fine manners and love of culture. Her mother, descended from the Stanleys, a prominent family of Hartford, Connecticut, was a woman of unusual force of character and sterling common sense. At fifteen she became a member of the family of her uncle, Colonel H. L. Miller, a lawyer of Hartford, whose extensive library was a delight, and whose house was a center for those who loved scholarship and refinement. The aunt, a descendant of Noah Webster, was a person of wide reading, exquisite tastes, and social prominence. Here the young girl saw Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. Sigourney, and others like them, whose lives to her were a constant inspiration. Sarah became a practical and brilliant scholar, and graduated from the seminary founded by Catherine Beecher, one of the most thorough schools of the times. A small book of her poems was now published by the Appletons, and a serial novel in a New England paper. Soon after she married Mr. Charles E. Bolton, a graduate of Amherst College, and they removed to Cleveland, Ohio. In that city, remarkable for its benevolences, she became the first secretary of the Woman's Christian Association, using much of her time in visiting the poor.

When, in 1874, she assisted in the first temperance crusade in Northern Ohio, with scarcely an exception, her gentleness and Christian spirit paved the way for earnest conversation and blessed results. She was soon appointed assistant corresponding secretary of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union and as such was very successful. She was at one time one of the editors of the Congregationalist, and while in Boston proved herself an able journalist.

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SHE lay like a rose-leaf on his cup;

He scarcely knew she was there at all,
Until, like the leaves of early fall,

For their precious hue, she was gathered up.

He knew too late that the flower was gone;
No fragrance left in the cup for him:
Alas! that he did not clasp the brim
With tender hands in the early dawn
Of love, and save to himself the leaf.
To own is often to lose the prize:
We stumble along with blinded eyes,
And wake to losses and bitter grief.

SUNSET AT ABO, FINLAND. QUAINT city on the Finnish sea,

Old when America was new; How restful are thy rocks to me;

Thy quiet streets, this ocean view.

The great red sun gilds tree and dome, And kingly prison, cold and gray, And lingers on the churchly home

Where lovely Catharine came to lay

HER CREED.

SHE stood before a chosen few,
With modest air, and eyes of blue;
A gentle creature, in whose face
Were mingled tenderness and grace.

"You wish to join our fold," they said; "Do you believe in all that's read From ritual and written creed, Essential to our human need?"

A troubled look was in her eyes;
She answered, as in vague surprise,
As though the sense to her were dim;
"I only strive to follow Him."

They knew her life; how, oft she stood,
Sweet in her guileless maidenhood,
By dying bed, in hovel lone,
Whose sorrow she had made her own.

Oft had her voice in prayer been heard,
Sweet as the voice of singing bird;
Her hand been open in distress;
Her joy to brighten and to bless.

Yet still she answered, when they sought
To know her inmost earnest thought,
With look as of the seraphim,
"I only strive to follow Him."

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Creeds change as ages come and go; We see by faith, but little know: Perchance the sense was not so dim, To her who "strove to follow Him."

RIGHT.

The hours are growing shorter for the millions who are toiling,

And the homes are growing better for the millions yet to be;

And the poor shall learn the lesson, how that waste and sin are spoiling

The fairest and the finest of a grand humanity. It is coming! it is coming! and men's thoughts are growing deeper;

They are giving of their millions as they never gave before;

They are learning the new Gospel; man must be his brother's keeper,

And right, not might, shall triumph, and the selfish rule no more.

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RICHARD CRASHAW.

ICHARD CRASHAW, now nearly two and a half centuries dead, was scarcely known to general readers of poetry until the middle of the present century, when in a few anthologies he was appreciatively, but inadequately, represented. His poems ran through several editions during his lifetime, and were reprinted in 1652 and 1670, after which no issue appeared until they were included in the bulky collections of Chalmers and Anderson (1793-1810), with the exception of the selection made by Peregrine Phillips, published in 1785. Dr. Johnson did not include Crashaw in his " Lives of the Poets," though he included the lives of much inferior poets in that work. Pope appreciated Crashaw, but his higher qualities seem to have, been unperceived or ignored by the author of "The Dunciad." He said of him that he was none of the worst versificators;" and considered his best

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pieces to be " 'the paraphrase of Psalm xxiii, On Lessius, Epitaph on Mr. Ashton, Wishes to his supposed Mistress, and Dies Ira." What can be said of such judgment in the face of such glorious poems as 'Music's Duel," "Sospetto d' Herode," To the Name above every name, Hymn to St. Teresa,' ""Psalm cxxxvii," "To the Morning," etc.? Crashaw's verse is marked by some of the highest qualities of poetry. He has strong affinities to two of our great nineteenth-century poets; he has the rich imagination and sensuousness of Keats, and the subtlety of thought and exquisite lyrical flow of Shelley.

Crashaw is essentially a sacred poet, and, compared with George Herbert, is his superior, judged from the purely poetic standpoint. Herbert is, in a limited degree, a popular poet; Crashaw is not, and has never been so. One of the reasons for this is (probably) the taste for artificial poetry of the school of Waller, Dryden, Pope, etc., during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fact of his being a Catholic would also deter many readers from studying his works; but, poetical thought now being wider, and religious intolerance almost a thing of the past, it may be hoped that Crashaw will soon receive the recognition which is his due.

The text of the following selections follows that adopted and amended from original sources by Rev. A. B. Grosart in his complete edition of Crashaw's Works in "The Fuller Worthies' Library," but the spelling has been modernized. J. R. T.

MUSIC'S DUEL.

Now Westward Sol had spent the richest beams Of Noon's high glory, when hard by the streams

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