BEFORE SEDAN.

"The dead hand clasped a letter."

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Hardly the worst of us

Here could have smiled!

Only the tremulous

Words of a child;

Prattle, that has for stops
Just a few ruddy drops.

Look. She is sad to miss,

Morning and night,

His her dead father's-kiss;

THE FORGOTTEN GRAVE.

A SKETCH IN A CEMETERY.

OUT from the City's dust and roar,

You wandered through the open door;

Paused at a plaything pail and spade

Across a tiny hillock laid;

Then noted on your dexter side

Some moneyed mourner's "love or pride"

And so, beyond a hawthorn-tree,

Showering its rain of rosy bloom

Alike on low and lofty tomb,

You came upon it

suddenly.

How strange! The very grasses' growth
Around it seemed forlorn and loath;
The very ivy seemed to turn

Askance that wreathed the neighbour urn.

The slab had sunk; the head declined,
And left the rails a wreck behind.

No name; you traced 66
a 6,"

a "7,"

Part of "affliction " and of "Heaven";
And then, in letters sharp and clear,

You read - O Irony austere !

"Tho' lost to Sight, to Mem'ry dear."

A

MY LANDLADY.

SMALL brisk woman, capped with many a

bow;

"Yes," so she says, "and younger, too, than

Who bids me, bustling, "God speed," when I go, And gives me, rustling, "Welcome," when I

come.

"Ay, sir, 'tis cold, and freezing hard, — they

say;

I'd like to give that hulking brute a hit — Beating his horse in such a shameful way! — Step here, sir, till your fire 's blazed up a bit."

A musky haunt of lavender and shells,
Quaint-figured Chinese monsters, toys, and
trays-

A life's collection - where each object tells
Of fashions gone and half-forgotten ways: -

A glossy screen, where wide-mouth dragons ramp; A vexed inscription in a sampler-frame;

A shade of beads upon a red-capped lamp;
A child's mug graven with a golden name;

A pictured ship, with full-blown canvas set;

A card, with sea-weed twisted to a wreath, Circling a silky curl as black as jet,

With yellow writing faded underneath.

Looking, I sink within the shrouded chair,
And note the objects slowly, one by one,
And light at last upon a portrait there, -
Wide-collared, raven-haired.

son! "

66

Yes, 'tis my

"Where is he?" "Ah, sir, he is dead - my boy!
Nigh ten long years ago-in 'sixty-three;
He's always living in my head - my boy!
He was left drowning in the Southern Sea.

"There were two souls washed overboard, they said,

And one the waves brought back; but he was

left.

They saw him place the life-buoy o'er his head; The sea was running wildly; — he was left.