NOLA KOZMO.-BAINE. There stood a young form in the mild Was lingering in the eastern sky, Like some love-fraught but earth-dim eye: The trees waved stilly in the wind, And wild birds sang in their green homes enshrined. A mantle o'er his shoulders flung, Wrapped in his thoughts of grief or crime; Waved round his face their lustrous prime. In front, with muskets glancing keen, Wild men stood waiting in the twilight sheen. "Prisoner, commend thy soul to heaven!" A stern voice cried from out the band; And, at the word, like lightning riven, The muskets glanced in each broad hand. An upward trembling of his gaze, A motion of those small round lips, A flutter of those dark eyes' rays, Like stars beneath a cloud's eclipse, That pale sad brow one moment bared, The prisoner bowed his head and stood prepared. There was a pause,-a deathly pause; The still soft wind crept murmuring past, Each heart a fuller breathing draws, The mantle's folds aside are cast, And, as the bosom gleams to view, He sank like flowers at set of sun. They raised him, life's streams gushing warm, "I thank thee, Heaven," her faint lips spake, No father's sigh, no mother's tear." Dabbled in gore, around her swim. "Away!" a wild voice cried behind, And, backward dashed, the crowd retired, "Nola," he cried, "how, how is this? Ah, me! earth drinks her heart's dear rain!" Down dropped he that cold clay to kiss, And question those white lips in vain. "Dumb-cold!-no fire in those orbs be, Pale-pale, my love! and thus-O wretch, for me!" Then yelled he to the wild train round, "What! stand ye idly loitering still? Behold your true prey, free, unbound, Stands mocking at your murderous will, You know me not? On battle day This arm you knew, and feared it wellCowards"-a bullet winged its way He reeled and by the maiden fell: They laid them both in one red grave, And summer flowers o'er their slumbers wave. ELOQUENCE THAT PERSUADES.-GOETHE. Persuasion, friend, comes not by wit or art, 'Tis the live fountain in the speaker's heart Sends forth the streams that melt the ravished hearer. Then work away for life, heap book on book, Line upon line, and precept on example The stupid multitude may gape and look, And fools may think your stock of wisdom ample, But would you touch the heart, the only method known, My worthy friend, is first to have one of your own. A PIKE COUNTY WEDDING. An amusing incident related by "Uncle Ira Chrisman" of Blooming Grove. I used to marry a good many folks when I was Justice of the peace. They generally wanted to get spliced on the Fourth of July or Christmas. They'd come in from the woods, the fellow and his girl both riding on a load of hoop-poles or tan bark, and sometimes holding themselves on to a three-foot log that a yoke of oxen was snaking in from a bark peeling. One Fourth of July I took for wedding fees a coonskin, two railroad ties, three dozen hoop-poles, twenty-five cents in pennies, two quarts of low-bush huckleberries, and a promise to vote for me when I was a candidate. But that was an unusually good Fourth for fees. The couples that I'd hitch, taking the average run of 'em, would most likely say: "Well, now, 'squire, we'em much obleeged. When ye come 'long our way, 'squire, drop in and we'll flop an extry slapjack." But I never hankered after slapjacks with salt pork gravy and molasses, so those fees are yet to come in. One day I was sitting in my office, when in walked a big, strapping hoop-pole cutter and bark forager from 'way back 'o the Knob. He had his daughter with him. The girl's name was Mag. Mag was about nineteen, but, stars alive! she was near six feet high, and I'll bet she could lift a barrel of flour over a seven-rail fence. She was pretty good looking for all that. "Busy, 'squire?" asked the old man. "Not particular," I said. "Wall, 'squire, I s'pose you know that Jerry Elwine's got the best groun'-hog dog they is in the hull Knob kentry, don't you?" "I never heard of Jerry Elwine or his ground-hog dog," said I, plaguey mad because Mag had sot down on a straw hat of mine that I wouldn't have taken a dollar note for. "What! never heered o' that dog, 'squire?" said Mag. "Never heered o' ole Tobe? W-a-a-1, ef that don't take the grease off-n my griddle?" "Wall, anyhow, whether ye ever heered of him or not," the old man put in, "he's back o' the Knob, an' Jerry owns him, An' the trouble is, 'squire, Jerry's so 'feered of his dog that he won't let any one hunt groun'-hogs with him but hisself, an' he's talkin' o' sellin' him over into M'roe county." "If Jerry Elwine sells that air dog," said Mag, “I'll rattle the teeth out'n him; I don't care ef we are goin' to git spliced!" I began to think that the old man and his girl had come in to get an order of court on Jerry Elwine to appear and show cause why he shouldn't let Tobe hunt with any person who wanted him, and why a perpetual injunction shouldn't be issued forbidding him to sell the dog over in Monroe county. "The fact o' the matter is, 'squire," continued the father, "that dog's too vallyable to be wasted. He kin keep any family that ain't a passel o' gluttons in groun'hogs from September to the time they hole up. Some folks think groun'-hogs is too rank to set well, and I heered Joe Atkinson say onct that he'd as leaf eat a taller dip as the best part of a groun'-hog. But they ain't nothin' that goes to the spot with our family as a hunk o' that varmint. Is they Mag?" "Dad, yer shoutin'!" replied Mag. "Wall, as I was sayin', 'squire, that dog is too vallyable to be in the onsartin sittywation he is now. That dog is got to be connected with our fam'ly, an' we've jest come in to see when you kin come out our way, 'squire, an' make the connection." "You're going to buy the dog, eh? and want me to draw up the deed?" I asked, madder than a hornet at all the palaver about dogs and ground-hogs. "N-a-a-a-w!" said Mag, laughing about like a horse might. "Yer way off, 'squire. Yer see, Jerry's been a workin' for us for a good while, an' been a tryin' to shine round me for more'n six months, but he ain't much of a fighter, an' he ain't much of a shooter, though he ain't no slouch at rippin' the bark off'n a hemlock, and mowin' hoop-poles. But when I heard he was goin' to sell Tobe I weakened. That dog fastens onto too many groun'hogs to live away from our plantation,' I says. So Jerry an' me took to sittin' up nights an' the consekense is that Jerry an' me is goin' to jine an' the dog stays in the family. What we want o' you is, 'squire, to come out and give us the hitch the first day you kin, an' the sooner the better, for they's a feller from Ponco a offerin' for Tobe most enough to buy a farm with, an' Jerry may take it into his ornary head to sell him. Come any day, 'squire. We'm all ready." "That's about the heft of it, 'squire," said Mag's father. "Couldn't ye stand a leetle sumthin' on it?" I told 'em I'd be out in the course of two or three days. In the latter part of the week I took the buck-board and drove out. It was fifteen miles, over the worst road you ever saw. I was over six hours on the way. I found the house. It was a clearing of about three acres, divided up into a turnip patch, a cabbage patch, and a patch of potatoes. A man was milking a cow in the barn-yard. On a board by the front door lay the ugliest yaller dog I ever saw. "That's Tobe, I s'pose," I said to myself. When I stopped my horse the dog got up. I tied the horse to the fence and walked toward the house. Tobe walked toward me. He had only one eye. He showed his teeth and growled. I snapped my fingers and said: 'Come here; that's a nice feller." He gave one spring, and had me by the leg in less than no time. I yelled. The door opened and Mag came out. "Oh, it's you, is it, 'squire? Git out Tobe! He's only playin', 'squire. Ain't he the boss? You orto to see him shake a groun'-hog. Come in 'squire, come in. |