"She was always a woman without any feeling, And never loved baby, you plainly may see; But not so the father,-he fairly adored it; Hell be wild with despair when its death he is told." I sharply rebuked her. “Sir, I can afford it," She answered, “that you should esteem me too bold: But it's true what I tell you, let who will defend her; Her pleasure abroad, not her home, is her care." Then I thought of the fingers, long, shapely, and slender, Unconsciously making response to the air When the tenor sang-" La donna è mobile." They open the hall door-is that, then, the father? No! strangers! What's that from the whispers I gather? 64 At the club with a razor"-" Break slow to his wife." On disaster there evermore follows disaster Wide open the portals! Give way in the hall; The mansion receives for the last time its master; For the second time Death at the house makes a call. A shriek! On the stairway a figure descending, Glides and falls on the litter there, reckless and wild"Oh, Richard! Oh, Clara! and this is the ending! Lost! lost! and forever, my husband and child!” In the street you may hear where each gaping one lingers, Which the organ plays-" La donna è mobile. TOO UTTERLY UTTER. A few months ago a daughter of a Nassau man, who had grown comfortably well-off in a small grocery line, was sent away to a female college, and a few weeks ago arrived home for the holiday vacation. The old man was in attendance at the depot in Albany when the train arrived, with the old horse in the delivery wagon to convey his daughter and her trunk home. When the train had stopped in the Union Depot a bewitching array of dry goods and a wide brimmed hat dashed from the cars and flung itself into the elderly party's arms. "Why, you superlative pa!" she exclaimed, "I'm so utterly glad to see you." The old man was somewhat unnerved by the greeting, but he recognized the seal-skin cloak in his grip as the identical piece of property he had paid for with the bay mare, and he sort of squat it up in his arms and planted a kiss where it would do most good, with a report that sounded above the noise of the depot. In a brief space of time the trunk and its attendant baggage were loaded into the wagon, which was soon bumping over the hubbles towards home. “Pa, dear,” said the young miss, surveying the team with a critical eye, "do you consider this quite excessively beyond?" "Hey?" returned the old man, with a puzzled air; "quite excessively beyond what? Beyond Greenbush? I consider it somewhat about two miles beyond Greenbush, continuing from the Bath-way, if that's what you mean." "Oh, no, pa, you don't understand me," the daughter exclaimed, “I mean this horse and wagon. Do you think they are soulful?-do you think they could be studied apart in the light of a symphony or even a single poem, and appear as intensely utter to one on returning home as one could express?" The old man twisted uneasily in his seat, and muttered something about he believed it used to be an express-wagon before he bought it to deliver pork in, but the conversation appeared to be in such a lonesome direction that he fetched the horse a resounding crack and the severe jolting over the frozen ground prevented further remarks. "Oh, there is that lovely and consummate ma!" screamed the returned collegiate, as they drove up to the door, and presently she was lost in the embrace of a motherly woman in spectacles. "Well, Maria," said the old man at the supper-table, as he nipped a piece of butter off the lump with his own knife, "an' how d'you like your school?" “Well, there, pa, now you're shouting-I mean, I consider it too beyond," replied the daughter. "It is unquenchably ineffable. The girls are sumptuously stunning-I mean grand-so exquisite--so intense; and then the parties, the calls, the rides-oh, the past weeks have been ones of sublime harmony." "I s'pose so-I s'pose so," nervously assented the old man as he reached for his third cup-half full-“ but how about your books, readin', writen', grammar, rule o' three-how about them?" "Pa, don't," exclaimed the daughter reproachfully; "the rule of three! grammar! It is French, and music, and painting, and the divine in art that has mide my school-life the boss-I mean that has rendered it one unbroken flow of rythmic bliss-incomparably and exquisitely all but." The groceryman and his wife looked helplessly across the table. After a lonesome pause the old lady said:"How do you like the biscuits, Maria!" "They are too utter for anything," gushed the accomplished young lady, "and this plum-preserve is simply a poem of itself." The old man abruptly arose from the table and went out of the room rubbing his head in a dazed and benumbed manner, and the mass convention was dissolved. That night he and his wife sat alone by the stove until a late hour, and at the breakfast table the next morning he rapped smartly on the plate with the handle of his knife, and remarked: "Maria, me an' your mother have been talkin' the thing over, an' we've come to the conclusion that this boarding-school business is too much nonsense. Me an' her consider that we haven't lived sixty odd consummate years for the purpose of raisin' a curiosity, an' there's goin' to be a stop put to this unquenchable foolishness. Now, after you've finished eatin' that poem of fried sausage an' that symphony of twisted doughnut, you take an' dust up-stairs in less'n two seconds, an' peel off that fancy gown an' put on a caliker, an' then come down here an' help your mother to wash the dishes. I want it distinctly understood that there ain't goin' to be no more rhythmic foolishness in this house so long as your superlative pa an' your lovely an' consummate ma's runnin' the ranch. You hear me, Maria?" Maria was listening. -Albany Chronicle. SINGING ACROSS THE WATER.-WESLEY STRETCH. When the sun is setting over the Venetian Lagune, it is customary for the wives of the fishermen residing upon its islands, to repair to the seaside, whence they address their husbands in song, as they engage in their arduous labors upon the water. Frequently, owing to their distance from the shore, and to the gathering shadows of evening, the parties remain unseen by each other: but the music reaches the ears of those for whom it was destined; who, after its close, immediately respond likewise in song. When o'er proud Venice' regal crest, The fading sunbeam's golden light And far adown the balmy sky, And resting on her wave of blue, The evening zephyr gently sweeps, On smiling childhood, when it sleeps: Along the Lagune's island-shore, A happy, gleesome, shouting band, And gazing outward o'er the main, In which brave spirits strive to gain, Wafts their response-hymn to the shore,- Far out upon life's throbbing main, Nor may the eye of mortal see The splendors of that happy clime, Nor ear drink in the harmony That peals from seraph-harps sublime. Yet, when to darkness turns our sky, When frowning rocks lie threatening near, And tempest-waves go howling by, A strain of triumph and of love Come floating from a far-off shore, |