EVENING.

The evening comes, the fields are still.
The tinkle of the thirsty rill,
Unheard all day, ascends again;
Deserted is the half-mown plain,
Silent the swaths! the ringing wain,
The mower's cry, the dog's alarms,
All housed within the sleeping farms!
The business of the day is done,
The last-left haymaker is gone.
And from the thyme upon the height
And from the elder-blossom white
And pale dog-roses in the hedge,
And from the mint-plant in the sedge,
In puffs of balm the night air blows
The perfume which the day foregoes.
And on the pure horizon far,

See, pulsing with the first-born star,
The liquid sky above the hill!
The evening comes, the fields are still.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

NOBODY'S CHILD.

Only a newsboy, under the light

Of the lamp post plying his trade in vain; Men are too busy to stop to-night,

Hurrying home through the sleet and rain. Never since dark a paper sold;

Where shall he sleep, or how be fed ? He thinks, as he shivers there in the cold, While happy children are safe in bed.

Is it strange if he turns about

With angry words, then comes to blows, When his little neighbor, just sold out,

Tossing his pennies, past him goes? "Stop!" - some one looks at him, sweet and mild, And the voice that speaks is a tender one: "You should not strike such a little child,

And

you should not use such words, my son!"

Is it his anger or his fears

That have hushed his voice and stopped his arm? "Don't tremble," these are the words he hears;

"Do you think that I would do you harm?" "It isn't that," and the hand drops down;

"I wouldn't care for kicks and blows; But nobody ever called me son,

Because I'm nobody's child, I s'pose."

O men! as ye careless pass along,

Remember the love that has cared for you; And blush for the awful shame and wrong

Of a world where such a thing could be true! Think what the child at your knee had been

If thus on life's lonely billows tossed; And who shall bear the weight of the sin, If one of these "little ones" be lost!

A LILY'S WORD.

"My delicate lily, — Blossom of fragrant snow,

PHOEBE CARY.

Breathing on me from the garden,
How does your beauty grow?

Tell me what blessing the kind heavens give?
How do you find it so sweet to live?"

"One loving smile of the sun

Charms me out of the mold:

One tender tear of the rain
Makes my full heart unfold. —
Welcome whatever the kind heavens give,
And you shall find it as sweet to live."

LUCY LARCOM.

Brabant

peasant

Scheldt

Rhine

burden

BÉBÉE'S BIRTHDAY.

radiant

starling

almonds

ribbon

crutches

Laeken

benediction

sympathy

embossed

baptism

Bébée was a hard-working Brabant peasant girl; up while the birds twittered in the dark; to bed when the red sun sank beyond the far blue line of the plains.

She hoed, and dug, and watered, and planted her little plot; she kept her cabin as clean as a freshblossomed primrose; she milked her goat, and swept her floor.

She sat, all the warm days, in the town, selling her flowers, and in the winter time, when her garden yielded her nothing, she strained her sight over lacemaking in the city to get the small bit of food that stood between her and that hunger which to the poor means death.

Now when she woke to the full sense of her wonderful sixteen years - Bébée, standing barefoot on the mud floor, was as pretty a sight as was to be seen betwixt Scheldt and Rhine.

This wondrous morning, with the bright burden of her sixteen years upon her, she dressed herself quickly and fed her fowls, and, as happy as a bird, went to sit on her little wooden stool in the doorway.