Rides over the hill the livelong year Rides calling and calling the brave to come "What battle? What deeds did I do in the fight? Then the great blazing guns! Then the ghastly white dead But, tell me, I faint, I must cease to roam ! This battered leg aches! Then this sabered old head!Is-is this the way to the Soldiers' Home? 66 'Why, I hear men say 'tis a paradise On the green oak hills by the great red town; That many old comrades shall meet my eyes; That a tasseled young trooper rides up and rides down, With bugle-horn blowing to the still blue skies, Calling and calling to rest and stay In that Soldiers' Home. Sir, is this the way? "My leg is so lame! Then this sabered old headAh! pardon me, sir, I never complain; But the road is so rough, as I just now said; And then there is something that troubles my brain. It makes the light dance from yon Capitol's dome; It makes the road dim as I doubtfully tread. But is this the way to the Soldiers' Home? "From the first to the last in that desperate warWhy, I did my part. If I did not fall, A hair's-breadth measure of this skull-bone scar Was all that was wanting; and then this ball But what cared I? Ah! better by far Have a sabered old head, and a shattered old knee "What! What do I hear? No home there for me? And wherever a soldier may chance to roam, He turned as to go; but he sank to the grass; Leading the way the old soldier went. And the light shone bright from the Capitol's dome, JOAQUIN MILLER. DON'T BE MEAN, BOYS. SOMETIMES I wonder what a mean man thinks about when he goes to bed. When he turns out the light and lies down alone he is then compelled to be honest with himself. Not a bright thought, not a generous impulse, not a word of blessing, not a grateful look comes back to him; not a penny dropped into the palm of poverty, nor the balm of a loving word dropped into an aching heart; no sunbeam of encouragement cast upon a struggling life; no strong right hand of fellowship reached out to help some fallen man to his feet-when none of these things come to him as the "God bless you" of the departed day, how he must hate himself-how he must try to roll away from himself and sleep on the other side of the bed-when the only victory he can think of is some mean victory, in which he has wronged a neighbor. No wonder he always sneers when he tries to smile. How pure and fair and good all the rest of the world must look to him, and how careless and dreary must his own path appear! Why, even one isolated act of meanness is enough to scatter cracker crumbs in the bed of the average man, and what must be the feelings of a man whose whole life is given up to mean acts? suffering and heartache and misery in the world, anyhow, why should any one add a pound of wickedness or sadness to the general burden? Don't be mean, boys. Suffer injustice a thousand times rather than commit it BURDETTE. once. When there is so much SING A SONG A SIXPENCE. Popular Style. VOCALIZE in silver strains, and with pennies six, Measured farinaceous grain deftly intermix; Take of ebon-tinted birds twenty-five or nigh, Intersect the outer crust and a portion raise; Hark! the feathered choristers are chanting hymns of praise! Wasn't that a sight to fill the monarch with amaze? Accurately estimating coin that he possessed; Fair Regina, striving hunger's cravings to appease, Ate with bread a product of the industry of bees; A servant in the garden hung apparel out to dry: Watched by an ebon-tinted bird, escaped the pie; He, full of righteous wrath, a swift avenger proved, And quickly her nasal protuberance removed. TAR TO THE DESPONDING. JAKE this for granted, once for all— The laurel, longed for, you must earn- That another's head can have your crown And to drag this man, or the other down, ALICE CARY. A CHILD'S THOUGHT OF GOD. THEY say that God lives very high, And if you dig down in the mines You never see Him in the gold; God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across His face Like secrets kept, for love, untold. But still I feel that His embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place. As if my tender mother laid On my shut lids her kisses' pressure, Half-waking me at night, and said, "Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser ?" MRS. BROWNING. THE MODEL WOMAN. KNOW a woman wondrous fair— A model woman she Who never runs her neighbors down She never gossips after church She never meets the sewing school She never beats a salesman down, These statements may seem very strange― This woman's deaf and dumb. A WISELY ANONYMOUS MAN. |