Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset's embers,
While the Crimean valleys learned
How English love remembers.
And once again a fire of hell

Rained on the Russian quarters,
With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars!
And Irish Nora's eyes are dim

For a singer dumb and gory; And English Mary mourns for him Who sang of "Annie Laurie." Sleep, soldiers ! still in honored rest Your truth and valor wearing: The bravest are the tenderest,The loving are the daring.

But I hushed 'em right up in a minute, and said a good word for you;
I told 'em I b'lieved you was tryin' to do just as well as you knew;
And I told 'em that some one was sayin', and whoever 'twas it is so,
That you can't expect much of no one man, nor blame him for what he don't
know.

But, layin' aside pleasure for business, I've brought you my little boy Jim;
And I thought I would see if you couldn't make an editor outen o' him.

My family stock is increasin', while other folks seem to run short.

I've got a right smart of a family-it's one of the old-fashioned sort:
There's Ichabod, Isaac and Israel, a workin' away on the farm,

They do 'bout as much as one good boy, and make things go off like a charm.

There's Moses and Aaron are sly ones, and slip like a couple of eels; But they're tol'able steady in one thing-they al'ays git round to their meals.

There's Peter, is busy inventin' (though what he invents I can't see), And Joseph is studyin' medicine-and both of 'em boardin' with me. There's Abram and Albert is married, each workin' my farm for himself, And Sam smashed his nose at a shootin', and so he is laid on the shelf. The rest of the boys are all growin' 'cept this little runt, which is Jim, And I thought that perhaps I'd be makin' an editor outen o' him.

"He ain't no great shakes for to labor, though I've labored with him a good deal,

And give him some strappin' good arguments I know he couldn't help but to feel;

But he's built out of second-growth timber, and nothin' about him is big,
Exceptin' his appetite only, and there he's as good as a pig.

I keep him carryin' luncheons, and fillin' and bringin' the jugs,
And take him among the pertatoes, and set him to pickin' the bugs;
And then there's things to be doin' a helpin' the women in-doors;
There's churnin' and washin' of dishes, and other descriptions of chores;

But he don't take to nothin' but victuals, and he'll never be much, I'm afraid,

So I thought it would be a good notion to larn him the editor's rade.
His body's too small for a farmer, his judgment is rather too slim,
But I thought we perhaps could be makin' an editor outen o' him.

"It ain't much to get up a paper, it wouldn't take him long for to learn; He could feed the machine, I'm thinkin', with a good strappin' fellow to

turn.

And things that was once hard in doin' is easy enough now to do;

Just keep your eye on your machinery, and crack your arrangements right through.

I used for to wonder at readin', and where it was got up, and how;

But 'tis most of it made by machinery-I can see it all plain enough now.
And poetry, too, is constructed by machines of different designs,
Each one with a gauge and a chopper, to see to the length of the lines;
And I hear a New York clairvoyant is runnin' one sleeker than grease,
And a-rentin' her heaven-born productions at a couple of dollars apiece;
An' since the whole trade has growed easy, 'twould be easy enough, I've a
whim,

li you was agreed, to be makin' an editor outen o' Jim."

The editor sat in his sanctum and looked the old man in the eye,
Then glanced at the grinning young hopeful, and mournfully made his reply:
"Is your son a small unbound edition of Moses and Solomon both?
Can he compass his spirit with meekness, and strangle a natural oath?
Can he leave all his wrongs to the future, and carry his heart in his cheek?
Can he do an hour's work in a minute, and live on a sixpence a week?
Can he courteously talk to an equal, and browbeat an impudent dunce?
Can he keep things in apple-pie order, and do half-a-dozen at once?
"Can he press all the springs of knowledge with quick and reliable touch,
And be sure that he knows how much to know, and knows how to not know
too much?

Does he know how to spur up his virtue, and put a check-rein on his pride?
Can he carry a gentleman's manners within a rhinoceros' hide?
Can he know all, and do all, and be all, with cheerfulness, courage and vim?
If so, we perhaps can be 'makin' an editor outen o' him.'"

The farmer stood curiously listening, while wonder his visage o'erspread, And he said: "Jim, I guess we'll be goin'; he's probably out of his head."

HICH this railway smash reminds me, in an underhanded way, Of a lightning-rod dispenser that came down on me one day; Oiled to order in his motions-sanctimonious in his mienHands as white as any baby's an' a face unnatʼral clean; Not a wrinkle had his raiment, teeth and linen glittered white, And his new-constructed neck-tie was an interestin' sight! Which I almost wish a razor had made red that white-skinned throat, And that new-constructed neck-tie had composed a hangman's knot, Ere he brought his sleek-trimmed carcass for my women folks to see, And his buzz-saw tongue a-runnin' for to gouge a gash in me. Still couldn't help but like him-as I fear I al'ays must, The gold o' my own doctrine in a fellow heap o' dust; For I saw that my opinions, when I fired them round by round, Brought back an answerin' volley of a mighty similar sound.

I touched him on religion, and the joys my heart had known;
And I found that he had very similar notions of his own!

I told him of the doubtings that made sad my boyhood years;
Why, he'd laid awake till morning with that same old breed of fears!

I pointed up the pathway that I hoped to heaven to go:
He was on that very ladder, only just a round below!
Our politics was different, and at first he galled and winced;
But I arg'ed him so able, he was very soon convinced.
And 'twas gettin' tow'rd the middle of a hungry summer day-
There was dinner on the table, and I asked him, would he stay?
And he sat him down among us-everlastin' trim and neat--
And he asked a short crisp blessin' almost good enough to eat!
Then he fired up on the mercies of our Everlastin' Friend,

Till he gi'n the Lord Almighty a good, first-class recommend:
And for full an hour we listened to that sugar-coated scamp-
Talkin' like a blessed angel-eatin' like a blasted tramp!

My wife-she liked the stranger, smiling on him warm and sweet;
(It al'ays flatters women when their guests are on the eat!)
And he hinted that some ladies never lose their youthful charms,
And caressed her yearlin' baby, and received it in his arms.
My sons and daughters liked him-for he had progressive views,
And he chewed the cud o' fancy, and gi'n down the latest news:
And I couldn't help but like him-as I fear I al'ays must,
The gold of my own doctrines in a fellow-heap o' dust.

He was chiselin' desolation through a piece of apple-pie,
When he paused and gazed upon us, with a tear in his off eye,
And said, "Oh, happy family !-your joys they make me sad!
They all the time remind me of the dear ones once I had!
A babe as sweet as this one; a wife almost as fair;
A little girl with ringlets, like that one over there.
But had I not neglected the means within my way,
Then they might still be living, and loving me to-day.

"One night there came a tempest; the thunder peals were dire;
The clouds that marched above us were shooting bolts of fire;
In my own house I lying, was thinking, to my shame,
How little I had guarded against those bolts of flame,
When crash!-through roof and ceiling the deadly lightning cleft,
And killed my wife and children, and only I was left!

"Since then afar I've wandered, and naught for life have cared, I
Save to save others' loved ones whose lives have yet been spared;
Since then it is my mission, where'er by sorrow tossed,
To sell to worthy people good lightning-rods at cost.

With sure and strong protection I'll clothe your buildings o'er;

'Twill cost you-twenty dollars (perhaps a trifle more; Whatever else it comes to, at lowest price I'll put;

You simply sign a contract to pay so much

per foot)." I-signed it! while my family, all approvin', stood about; The villain dropped a tear on't-but he didn't blot it out! That self-same day, with wagons, came some rascals great and small; They hopped up on my buildin's just as if they owned 'em all; They hewed 'em and they hacked 'em-agin' my loud desiresThey trimmed 'em off with gewgaws, and they bound 'em down with wires; They hacked 'em and they hewed 'em and they hewed and hacked 'em still, And every precious minute kep' a runnin' up the bill.

To find my soft-spoke neighbor, did I rave and rush and run;
He was suppin' with a neighbor, just a few miles further on.
"Do you think," I loudly shouted, "that I need a mile o' wire
For to save each separate hay-cock out o' heaven's consumin' fire?
Did you think, to keep my buildin's out o' some uncertain harm,
I was goin' to deed you over all the balance of my farm!"

He silenced me with silence in a very little while,
And then trotted out the contract with a reassuring smile;
And for half an hour explained it, with exasperatin' skill,
While his myrmurdums kep' probably a runnin' up my bill.
He held me to that contract with a firmness queer to see;
'Twas the very first occasion he had disagreed with me!
And for that 'ere thunder story, ere the rascal finally went,
I paid two hundred dollars, if I paid a single cent.

And if any lightnin'-rodist wants a dinner dialogue
With the restaurant department of an enterprisin' dog,
Let him set his mouth a-runnin' just inside my outside gate,
And I'll bet two hundred dollars that he won't have long to wait.

HE isn't half so handsome as when, twenty years agone,
At her old home in Piketon, Parson Avery made us one;
The great house crowded full of guests of every degree,
The girls all envying Hannah Jane, the boys all envying me.
Her fingers then were taper, and her skin as white as milk,
Her brown hair-what a mess it was! and soft and fine as silk;
No wind-moved willow by a brook had ever such a grace,
The form of Aphrodite, with a pure Madonna face.

She had but meagre schooling; her little notes to me
Were full of crooked pot-hooks, and the worst orthography :
Her

"dear" she spelled with double e, and "kiss" with but one s;
But when one's crazed with passion, what's a letter more or less?
She blundered in her writing, and she blundered when she spoke,
And every rule of syntax, that old Murray made, she broke ;
But she was beautiful and fresh, and I-well, I was young;
Her form and face o'erbalanced all the blunders of her tongue.

I was but little better. True, I'd longer been at school;
My tongue and pen were run, perhaps, a little more by rule;
But that was all. The neighbors round, who both of us well knew,
Said-which I believe-she was the better of the two.

All's changed: the light of seventeen's no longer in her eyes;
Her wavy hair is gone-that loss the coiffeur's art supplies;
Her form is thin and angular; she slightly forward bends;
Her fingers, once so shapely, now are stumpy at the ends.

She knows but very little, and in little are we one;

The beauty rare, that more than hid that great defect, is gone.
My parvenu relations now deride my homely wife,
And pity me that I am tied to such a clod for life.

I know there is a difference; at reception and levee,

The brightest, wittiest and most famed of women smile on me;
And everywhere I hold my place among the greatest men;

And sometimes sigh, with Whittier's Judge, "Alas! it might have been.'
When they all crowd around me, stately dames and brilliant belles,
And yield to me the homage that all great success compels,
Discussing art and state-craft, and literature as well,
From Homer down to Thackeray, and Swedenborg on "Hell,"

I can't forget that from these streams my wife has never quaffed,
Has never with Ophelia wept, nor with Jack Falstaff laughed;
Of authors, actors, artists-why, she hardly knows the names;
She slept while I was speaking on the Alabama claims.

I can't forget-just at this point another form appears-
The wife I wedded as she was before my prosperous years;

I travel o'er the dreary road we travelled side by side,
And wonder what my share would be, if Justice should divide.
She had four hundred dollars left her from the old estate ;;
On that we married, and, thus poorly armored, faced our fate.
I wrestled with my books; her task was harder far than mine-
"Twas how to make two hundred dollars do the work of nine.

At last I was admitted; then I had my legal lore,

An office with a stove and desk, of books perhaps a score;
She had her beauty and her youth, and some housewifely skill,
And love for me and faith in me, and back of that a will.

I had no friends behind me-no influence to aid;

I worked and fought for every little inch of ground I made.
And how she fought beside me! never woman lived on less;
In two long years she never spent a single cent for dress.

Ah! how she cried for joy when my first legal fight was won,
When our eclipse passed partly by, and we stood in the sun!
The fee was fifty dollars-'t was the work of half a year-
First captive, lean and scraggy, of my legal bow and spear.

I well remember when my coat (the only one I had)

Was seedy grown and threadbare, and, in fact, most shocking bad; The tailor's stern remark when I a modest order made: "Cash is the basis, sir, on which we tailors do our trade."

Her winter cloak was in his shop by noon that very day;
She wrought on hickory shirts at night that tailor's skill to pay;
I got a coat, and wore it; but alas! poor Hannah Jane
Ne'er went to church or lecture till warm weather came again.

Our second season she refused a cloak of any sort,
That I might have a decent suit in which t' appear in court;
She made her last year's bonnet do, that I might have a hat:
Talk of the old-time, flame-enveloped martyrs after that!

No negro ever worked so hard; a servant's pay to save,
She made herself most willingly a household drudge and slave.
What wonder that she never read a magazine or book,
Combining as she did in one nurse, housemaid, seamstress, cook.

What wonder that the beauty fled, that I once so adored!
Her beautiful complexion my fierce kitchen fire devoured;
Her plump, soft, rounded arm was once too fair to be concealed;
Hard work for me that softness into sinewy strength congealed.

ID pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere.
Home! home! sweet, sweet home!

There's no place like home! there's no place like home!

An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain ;
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again.
The birds singing gaily that come to my call-
Give me them, with the peace of mind dearer than all.
Home! home! sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home! there's no place like home

How sweet 'tis to sit 'neath a fond father's smile,
And the cares of a mother to soothe and beguile!
Let others delight 'mid new pleasures to roam,
But give, oh! give me the pleasures of home.
Home! home! sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home! there's no place like home.

To thee I'll return, overburdened with care;
The heart's dearest solace will smile on me there.
No more from that cottage again will I roam;

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
Home! home! sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home! there's no place like home!