The Wildgrave flies o'er bush and thorn, With wild despair's reverted eye, Close, close behind, he marks the throng, Still, still shall last the dreadful chase, This is the horn, the hound, and horse, The wakeful priest oft drops a tear SIR WALTER SCOTT W A RHYMELET. HEN you're speaking of a leaflet 66 Would you call a man a thieflet" In alluding to a streamlet You would mean a little stream; A LEAD THE WAY. CANNON-BALL rolling loosely in the cannon's mouth is simply a piece of harmless metal, but with a charge of powder behind it has the breathless speed and irresistible power of the thunderbolt. Truth and character are not enough in life; both must have back of them the force of a concentrated personality, a will on fire with zeal and energy. Any study of the men and women we know brings out not so much the differences of gifts among them as the differences of impulse and motivity. Some of the most richly endowed effect little because their capital is largely unused; some of the most ordinary in natural ability do wonders because of the concentration and intensity of purpose and zeal which dominate them. Many lives are true nut hidden because their fires have never been lighted; others are luminous, even resplendent, because the flame of purpose turns everything into heat and light. St. Paul was one of these torch-bearers, and the light that was in him was the dawn of a new day for half a world. Doubtless other men of his time saw the truth clearly, and accepted it frankly, but none of them put behind it such a magnificent force of personality, none of them gave it such an irresistible impulse. Wherever he moved, the stagnant air of a dying civilization was stirred by a current that was the breath of the morning after the close and murky night. It was nothing to him that Asia and Europe lay in darkness; he needed no light from them on his long and painful path; it was his joy to let the truth aflame in his own soul stream out along the coasts of the Mediterranean, a solitary traveler, and yet more powerful than emperors. Such a life reveals the irresistible might of truth when it has set a soul on fire with purpose and enthusiasm. The world to-day is full of good men and women who are missing this sublime possibility of giving themselves in light, heat, and force; they have the truth, and they are anxious to do their duty by it, but they are not. luminous; they set no new currents of earnest living in motion through the sluggish air of the world. Instead of impressing themselves upon society, they are impressed by it; instead of leading the march, they follow in the ranks. They need to let the truth take possession of them, to lose themselves and all consciousness of their own limitations and weaknesses in devotion to the great ideal of noble living. The world is not so much antagonistic to truth as indifferent to it; it protests against being disturbed, but once aroused it is ready to follow. The fire of a strong soul, deeply moved and in dead earnest, is contagious; it has more than once set a whole race aflame, and sent its influences to the very ends of the earth. LYMAN ABBOTT. MARY'S NIGHT RIDE. [From Dr. Sevier, by permission of the Author.] ARY RICHLING, the heroine of the story, was MAR the wife of John Richling, a resident of New Orleans. At the breaking out of the Civil War she went to visit her parents in Milwaukee. About the time of the bombardment of New Orleans she received news of the dangerous illness of her husband, and she decided at once to reach his bedside, if possible. Taking with her, her baby daughter, a child of three years, she proceeded southward, where, after several unsuccessful attempts to secure a pass she finally determined to break through the lines. About the middle of the night Mary Richling was sitting very still and upright on a large, dark horse that stood champing his Mexican bit in the black shadow of a great oak. Alice rested before her, fast asleep against her bosom. Mary held by the bridle another horse, whose naked saddle-tree was empty. A few steps in front of her the light of the full moon shone almost straight down upon a narrow road that just there emerged from the shadow of woods on either side, and divided into a main right fork and a much smaller one that curved around to Mary's left. Off in the direction of the main fork the sky was all aglow with camp-fires. Only just here on the left there was a cool and grateful darkness. She lifted her head alertly. A twig crackled under a tread, and the next moment a man came out of the bushes at the left, and without a word took the bridle of the led horse from her fingers and vaulted into the saddle. The hand that rested a moment on the cantle as he rose grasped a "navy six." He was dressed in dull homespun, but he was the same who had been dressed in blue. He turned his horse and led the way down the lesser road. "If we'd of gone three hundred yards further," he whispered, falling back and smiling broadly, "we'd 'a' run into the pickets. I went nigh enough to see the videttes settin' on their hosses in the main road. This here aint no road; it just goes up to a nigger quarters. I've got one o' the niggers to show us the way." "Where is he?" whispered Mary; but before her companion. could answer, a tattered form moved from behind a bush a little in advance and started ahead in the path, walking and beckoning. Presently they turned into a clear, open forest, and followed the long, rapid, swinging stride of the negro for nearly an hour. Then they halted on the bank of a deep, narrow stream. The negro made a motion for them to keep well to the right when they should enter the water. The white man softly lifted Alice to his arms, directed and assisted Mary to kneel in her saddle, with her skirts gathered carefully under her, and so they went down into the cold stream, the negro first, with arms outstretched above the flood; then Mary, and then the white man,or, let us say plainly, the spy-with the unawakened |