Labor is health! Lo, the husbandman reaping, Rich the queen's robe from the frail cocoon floweth ; Droop not, though shame, sin, and anguish are round thee; Bravely fling off the cold chain that hath bound thee; Look to yon pure heaven smiling beyond thee; a clod. Rest not content in thy darkness Let thy great deeds be thy prayer to thy God. THE LONG AGO B. F. TAYLOR Benjamin Franklin Taylor, an American poet, was born at Lowville, N. Y., in 1822. Among his works are "Songs of Yesterday," "Old-time Pictures and Sheaves of Rhyme," "Pictures in Camp and Field," "Summer Savory," and "Between the Gates." He was for a long time connected with the Chicago Evening Journal. Он, a wonderful stream is the river Time, As it runs through the realm of tears, With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme As it blends in the ocean of years. How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow, And the summers like birds between, And the years in the sheaf, how they come and they go On the river's breast with its ebb and flow, As it glides in the shadow and sheen! There's a magical isle up the river Time, And the Junes with the roses are straying. And the name of this isle is the "Long Ago," There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow, There are fragments of songs that nobody sings, And the garments our dead used to wear. There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar When the wind down the river was fair. Oh, remembered for aye be that blessed isle, And when evening glows with its beautiful smile, THE DEATHBED THOMAS HOOD Thomas Hood was born at London in 1799, and died there in 1845. He had few early advantages. He is unexcelled in humor and pathos, and yet there is a touch of melancholy running through his writings, that now and then predominates over all else. The selections given in this series of Choice Literature afford a good idea of his poetical writings. E watched her breathing through the night, WE Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life Kept heaving to and fro. So silently we seemed to speak, As we had lent her half our powers To eke her being out. Our very hopes belied our fears, Our fears our hopes belied; We thought her dying when she slept, For when the morn came, dim and sad, Her quiet eyelids closed-she had WHO WAS THE MINUTEMAN? CURTIS GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS George William Curtis was born in Providence, R. I. He came to New York in his early boyhood. His schooling was very brief. For two years he was at Brook Farm. After this he spent a year on a farm at Concord, Mass. The next four years he spent in Europe. At the age of twenty-seven he began his life work as editor, author, and public speaker. He published, within a year, "The Nile Notes of a Howadji" and "The Howadji in Syria." For two years he was on the New York Tribune, where Dana and Ripley, two of his Brook Farm friends, were employed. While on that paper he wrote "Lotus Eating," a series of letters from famous watering places. Later he became one of the editors of Putnam's Magazine. During this time he wrote " Potiphar Papers" and "Prue and I." At this time he became interested in a publishing business, which failed. He assumed debts quite beyond what the law would have required of him, and which it took him a score of years to pay. This act was characteristic of the man. After the failure of his publishing venture, he was a contributor to Harper's Monthly Magazine and Harper's Weekly. Later he became the editor of Harper's Weekly and writer of the "Easy Chair" in Harper's Monthly Magazine, positions which he held till his death. This work, and his lectures and addresses, occupied his time. During his life Curtis was better known as a lecturer and public speaker than as a writer. He was one of the most popular of Lyceum lecturers, and also took great interest in political questions, and made many political addresses. He was especially active in opposition to slavery, and later was greatly interested in the reform of the civil service. He was president of the National Civil Service Reform League, and his annual addresses exerted great influence. Two VO hundred years ago, Mary Shepard, a girl of fifteen, was watching the savages on the hills of Concord, while her brothers thrashed in the barn. Suddenly the Indians appeared, slew her brothers, and carried her away. In the night, while the savages slept, she untied a stolen horse, slipped a saddle from under the head of one of her captors, mounted, fled, swam the Nashua River, and rode through the forest home. Mary Shepard was the true ancestor of the minuteman of the Revolution. The minuteman of the Revolution! Who was he? He was the husband, the father, who left the plow in the furrow, the hammer on the bench, and, kissing wife and children, marched to die or to be free. The minuteman of the Revolution! He was the old, the middle-aged, the young. He was Captain Miles of Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march. He was Deacon Josiah Haines of Sudbury, eighty years old, who marched with his company to North Bridge, at Concord, then joined in that hot pursuit to Lexington, and fell as gloriously as Warren at Bunker Hill. He was James Hayward of Acton, twentytwo years old, foremost in that deadly race from Charlestown to Concord, who raised his piece at the same moment with a British soldier, each exclaiming, "You are a dead man." The Briton dropped, shot through the heart. Young Hayward fell, mortally wounded. "Father," said he, "I started with forty balls, I have three left. I never did such a day's work before. Tell mother not to mourn too much, and tell her whom I love more than my mother, that I am not sorry I turned out.' This was the minuteman of the Revolution! The rural citizen trained in the common school, the town meeting, who carried a bayonet |