True, too true. Yet hold, dear friend;
Evermore doth the lot depend

On Him who loved, and loved to the end:

Blind to our eyes, the fiat goes,-
Who'll be taken, no mortal knows,
But only love will the lot dispose.

Only love, with his wiser sight;
Love alone, in his infinite might;
Love, who dwells in eternal light.

Now are the fifty fingers gone

To play some new play under the sun-
The childish fancy is past and gone.

So let our boding prophecies go

As childish, for do we not surely know
The dear God holdeth our lot below?

GODIVA.-ALFRED TENNYSON.

Not only we the latest seed of time,
New men, that in the flying of a wheel
Cry down the past; not only we, that prate
Of rights and wrongs, have loved the people well
And loathed to see them overtaxed; but she
Did more, and underwent, and overcame,
The woman of a thousand summers back,
Godiva, wife to that grim Earl who ruled
In Coventry: for when he laid a tax

Upon his town, and all the mothers brought

Their children, clamoring, "If we pay, we starve!" She sought her lord, and found him, where he strode About the hall, among his dogs, alone,

His beard a foot before him, and his hair

A yard behind. She told him of their tears,

And prayed him, "If they pay this tax, they starve." Whereat he stared, replying, half amazed,

"You would not let your little finger ache

For such as these?"-" But I would die," said she.
He laughed, and swore by Peter and by Paul:
Then filliped at the diamond in her ear;
"O, ay, ay, ay, you talk!"-"Alas!" she said,
"But prove me what it is I would not do."
And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand,

He answered, " Ride you naked through the town,
And I repeal it;" and nodding as in scorn,
He parted, with great strides among his dogs.

So left alone, the passions of her mind,
As winds from all the compass shift and blow,
Made war upon each other for an hour,
Till pity won. She sent a herald forth,
And bade him cry, with sound of trumpet, all
The hard condition; but that she would loose
The people: therefore, as they loved her well,
From then till noon no foot should pace the street,
No eye look down, she passing; but that all
Should keep within, door shut and window barred
Then fled she to her inmost bower, and there
Unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt,
The grim Earl's gift; but ever at a breath
She lingered, looking like a summer moon
Half dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And showered the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reached
The gateway; there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazoned with armorial gold.

Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listened round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.
The little wide-mouthed heads upon the spout
Had cunning eyes to see: the barking cur
Made her cheek flame: her palfrey's footfall shot
Light horrors through her pulses: the blind walls
Were full of chinks and holes; and overhead
Fantastic gables, crowding, stared: but she
Not less through all bore up, till, last, she saw
The white-flowered elder-thicket from the field
Gleam through the Gothic archways in the wall.

Then she rode back, clothed on with chastity:
And one low churl, compact of thankless earth,
The fatal by-word of all years to come,

Boring a little auger-hole in fear,

Peeped-but his eyes, before they had their will,
Were shriveled into darkness in his head,
And dropt before him. So the powers, who wait
On noble deeds, canceled a sense misused;

And she, that knew not, passed: and all at once,
With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers,

One after one: but even then she gained

Her bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crowned,
To meet her lord, she took the tax away,
And built herself an everlasting name.

DADDY WORTHLESS.-LIZZIE W. CHAMPNEY.

"Dar's bressing in baptizing drops:
Dey dribes de debble out.
De rain dat falls upon de fields,
It makes de taters sprout.

Den sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle,
While de bells go tinkle, tinkle.
Swing low, ole chariot,

We'll dribe ole Satan out!"

The long, steep streets of Nashville glowed
With white dust, parched and dry;
The wind, as a sirocco scorched,

Like copper glared the sky.

A ghastly form strode through the town,
And at each fireside stood;

It paused at door of rich and poor,
To trace its sign of blood.
Nashville held many heroes brave,
And ladies fair and gay;

But each man's lip was blanched with fear,
And mirth all fled away.

Grim cholera reaped her harvest down,

And faster toiled each day;

While none could turn her sickle back

And none her march could stay.

Young Doctor Starr worked day and night-
Martyr of science he-

To trace the sources of the blight
And what its cause might be.
One night he started from his desk,
Pushed back his microscope,
And from his laboratory strode
All fresh inspired with hope.
"The seeds of death are in the air,
And we must beat them down.
Oh, for refreshing showers of rain!
E'en now they'd save the town.
I'll lay my plans before the Board
Of Health at break of day."

The morrow came, and Doctor Starr
The choleras victim lay.
Only a negro, gray and old,
Bent o'er his master's bed,
And listened carefully to all
He in delirium said.

"Dey calls me Daddy Wufless," thought The negro to himself.

"Dey'll take back dat ar name befo'
I'se laid upon de shelf.

I'd like to spite ole Satan once-
He tinks to him I'll go;
But I has got some money saved
In an ole stockin'-toe.

I tought dat ar money might
My freedom-papers buy;
But when a man sees duty clar,
And, sneakin', lets it lie,
It had been better for dat man,
As Judas Scarrot said,

If he'd been frown into de sea,
A meal-sack roun' his head."

And so the old man's money bought
A horse and water-cart,

And every day he drove about

The city streets and mart.

And sick men tossing on their beds

Of fever and of pain,

Said, as they feebly raised their heads, "I hear the sound of rain,

As when in nights of childhood passed,
Upon the roof and pane.

The air is fresher than it was,
And I can breathe again."
The last in every funeral train
His water-cart passed by;

And, as he went, he often sang,

With thin voice, cracked and high,

"Dar's bressing in baptizing drops:
Dey dribes de debble out.
De rain dat falls upon de fields,
It makes de taters sprout.

Den sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle,
While de bells go tinkle, tinkle,
Swing low, ole chariot,

We'll dribe ole Satan out!"

The scourge is lifted from the town;
But he who died for it

Lies buried, like a faithful hound,
Beside his master's feet.

And when I tread that burial-ground,
The tears unbidden start

To honor "Daddy Wufless" and

The old man's sprinkling-cart.

THAT HIRED GIRL.

THE CLERGYMAN'S RECEPTION ON HIS INITIAL CALL IN HIS NER

PARISH.

When she came to work for the family on Congress street, the lady of the house sat down and told her that agents, book-peddlers, hat-rack men, picture sellers, ash-buyers, ragmen, and all that class of people must be met at the front door and coldly repulsed, and Sarah said she'd repulse them if she had to break every broomstick in Detroit.

And she did. She threw the door open wide, bluffed right up at 'em, and when she got through talking, the cheekiest agent was only too glad to leave. It got so after awhile that peddlers marked that house, and the door-bell never rang except for company.

The other day, as the girl of the house was wiping off the spoons, the bell rang. She hastened to the door, expecting to see a lady, but her eyes encountered a slim man, dressed in black and wearing a white necktie. He was the new minister, and was going around to get acquainted with the members of his flock, but Sarah wasn't expected to know this.

"Ah-um-is-Mrs.-ah!"

“Git!” exclaimed Sarah, pointing to the gate.

'Beg pardon, but I would like to see-see"Meander!" she shouted, looking around for a weapon; "we don't want any flour-sifters here!"

"You're mistaken," he replied, smiling blandly. "I called to-"

Don't want anything to keep moths away-fly!" she exclaimed, getting red in the face.

"Is the lady in?" he inquired, trying to look over Sarah's head.

"Yes, the lady is in, and I'm in, and you are out!" she snapped; "and now I don't want to stand here talking to a fly-trap agent any longer! Come, lift your boots!"

"I'm not an agent," he said, trying to smile. "I'm the new-"

66

Yes, I know you--you are the new man with the patent flat-iron, but we don't want any, and you'd better go before I call the dog!"