THE WATER-MILL.-D. C. MCCALLUM.

Oh! listen to the water-mill, through all the live-long day, As the clicking of the wheels wears hour by hour aw. v; How languidly the autumn wind doth stir the wi.hered leaves,

As on the field the reapers sing, while binding up the sheaves!

A solemn proverb strikes my mind, and as a spell is cast, "The mill will never grind again with water that is past."

The summer winds revive no more leaves strewn o'er earth and main,

The sickle never more will reap the yellow garnered grain ; The rippling stream flows ever on, aye tranquil, deep and still,

But never glideth back again to busy water-mill.

The solemn proverb speaks to all, with meaning deep and vast, "The mill will never grind again with water that is past.”

Oh! clasp the proverb to thy soul, dear loving heart and true, For golden years are fleeting by, and youth is passing too; Ah! learn to make the most of life, nor lose one happy day, For time will ne'er return sweet joys neglected, thrown away; Nor leave one tender word unsaid, thy kindness sow broadcast

"The mill will never grind again with water that is past."

Oh! the wasted hours of life, that have swiftly drifted by, Alas! the good we might have done, all gone without a sigh; Love that we might once have saved by a single kindly word, Thoughts conceived but ne'er expressed, perishing unpenned, unheard.

Oh! take the lesson to thy soul, forever clasp it fast,

"The mill will never grind again with water that is past."

Work on while yet the sun doth shine, thou man of strength and will,

The streamlet ne'er doth useless glide by clicking watermill;

Nor wait until to-morrow's light beams brightly on thy way, For all that thou canst call thine own, lies in the phrase "to-day:"

Possessions, power, and blooming health, must all be lost at last

"The mill will never grind again with water that is past."

Oh! love thy God and fellow man, thyself consider last,
For come it will when thou must scan dark errors of the

past;

Soon will this fight of life be o'er, and earth recede from view,

And heaven in all its glory shine where all is pure and true. Ah! then thou'lt see more clearly still the proverb deep and

vast.

"The mill will never grind again with water that is past."

TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP.-J. G. HOLLAND.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching; how many of them? Sixty thousand! Sixty full regiments, every man of which will, before twelve months shall have completed their course, lie down in the grave of a drunkard! Every year during the past decade has witnessed the same sacrifice; and sixty regiments stand behind this army ready to take its place. It is to be recruited from our children and our children's children. Tramp, tramp, tramp-the sounds come to us in the echoes of the footsteps of the army just expired; tramp, tramp, tramp-the earth shakes with the tread of the host now passing; tramp, tramp, tramp-comes to us from the camp of the recruits. A great tide of life flows resistlessly to its death. What in God's name are they fighting for? The privilege of pleasing an appetite, of conforming to a social usage, of filling sixty thousand homes with shame and sorrow, of loading the public with the burden of pauperism, of crowding our prison-houses with felons, of detracting from the productive industries of the country, of ruining fortunes and breaking hopes, of breeding disease and wretchedness, of destroying both body and soul in hell before their time.

The prosperity of the liquor interest, covering every department of it, depends entirely on the maintenance of this army. It cannot live without it. It never did live without it. So long as the liquor interest maintains its present prosperous condition, it will cost America the sacrifice of sixty thousand men every year. The effect is inseparable from the cause. The cost to the country of the liquor traffic is a sum so stupendous that any figures which we should dare to give would convict us of trifling. The amount of life absolutely destroyed, the amount of industry sacrificed, the

amount of bread transformed into poison, the shame, the unavailing sorrow, the crime, the poverty, the pauperism, the brutality, the wild waste of vital and financial resources, make an aggregate so vast-so incalculably vast,-that the only wonder is that the American people do not rise as one man and declare that this great curse shall exist no longer.

A hue-and-cry is raised about woman-suffrage, as if any wrong which may be involved in woman's lack of the suffrage could be compared to the wrongs attached to the liquor interest.

Does any sane woman doubt that women are suffering a thousand times more from rum than from any political disability?

The truth is that there is no question before the American people to-day that begins to match in importance the temperance question. The question of American slavery was never anything but a baby by the side of this; and we prophesy that within ten years, if not within five, the whole country will be awake to it, and divided upon it. The organizations of the liquor interest, the vast funds at its command, the universal feeling among those whose business is pitted against the national prosperity and the public morals-these are enough to show that, upon one side of this matter, at least, the present condition of things and the social and political questions that lie in the immediate future are apprehended. The liquor interest knows there is to be a great struggle, and is preparing to meet it. People both in this country and in Great Britain are beginning to see the enormity of this business-are beginning to realize that Christian civilization is actually poisoned at its fountain, and that there can be no purification of it until the source of the poison is dried up.

Temperance laws are being passed by the various Legislatures, which they must sustain, or go over, soul and body, to the liquor interest and influence. Steps are being taken on behalf of the public health, morals, and prosperity, which they must approve by voice and act, or they must consent to be left behind and left out. There can be no concession and no compromise on the part of temperance men, and no quarter to the foe. The great curse of our country and our race must be destroyed.

Meantime, the tramp, tramp, tramp, sounds on,--the tramp of sixty thousand yearly victims. Some are besotted and stupid, some are wild with hilarity and dance along the dusty way, some reel along in pitiful weakness, some wreak their mad and murderous impulses on one another, or on the helpless women and children whose destinies are united to theirs, some stop in wayside debaucheries and infamies for a moment, some go bound in chains from which they seek in vain to wrench their bleeding wrists, and all are poisoned in body and soul, and all are doomed to death.

IKE AFTER THE OPERA.

Since the night when Ike went to the opera, he has been, as Mrs. Partington said, crazy, and the kind old dame has been fearful lest he should become "non pompous mentus, through his attempt at imitating the operations." The morning after the opera, at the breakfast table, Ike handed over his cup, and in a soft tongue sang:

The old lady looked at him with surprise, his conduct was so unusual, and for a moment she hesitated. He continued in a far more impassioned strain:

"Do not, do not keep me waiting,
Do not, pray, be hesitating,

I am anxious to be drinking,

So pour out as quick as winking."

She gave him the tea with a sigh, as she saw the excitement in his face. He stirred it in silence, and in his abstraction took three spoonfuls of sugar. At last he sang again: "Table cloths, and cups and saucers,

Good white bread, and active jaws, sirs,
Tea-gunpowder, and souchong-

Sweet enough, but not too strong."

"What do you mean, my boy?" said Mrs. Partington tenderly.

"All right, steady, never clearer,
Never loved a breakfast dearer,
I'm not bound by witch or wizard,
So don't fret your precious gizzard.”

"But Isaac

-" persisted the dame. Ike struck his left hand upon the table, and swung his knife aloft in his right, looking at a plate upon the table, singing:

"What form is that to me appearing?

Is it mackerel or is it herring?
Let me dash upon it quick,

Ne'er again that fish shall kick-
Charge upon them, Isaac, charge!"

Before he had a chance to make a dash upon the fish, Mrs. Partington had dashed a tumbler of water into his face to restore him to "conscientiousness." It made him catch his breath for a moment, but he didn't sing any more at the table, though the opera fever still follows him elsewhere.

REGRET.-JEAN INGELOW.

Oh, that word Regret!

There have been nights and morns when we have sighed, "Let us alone, Regret! We are content

To throw thee all our past, so thou wilt sleep
For aye." But it is patient, and it wakes;
It hath not learned to cry itself to sleep,
But plaineth on the bed that it is hard."
We did amiss when we did wish it gone
And over: sorrows humanize our race;
Tears are the showers that fertilize this world;
And memory of things precious keepeth warm
The heart that once did hold them.

They are poor
That have lost nothing; they are poorer far
Who, losing, have forgotten; they most poor
Of all, who lose and wish they might forget.
For life is one, and in its warp and woof
There runs a thread of gold that glitters fair,
And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet
Where there are sombre colors. It is true

That we have wept. But Oh! this thread of gold,
We would not have it tarnish; let us turn
Oft and look back upon the wondrous web, ́
And when it shineth sometimes, we shall know
That memory is possession.

When I remember something which I had,
But which is gone and I must do without,
I sometimes wonder how I can be glad,
Even in cowslip time when hedges sprout;