Minding the lesson he received

In boyhood, from his mother,

Whose cheery word, for many a bump, Was, Up and take another!

HOBBY-HORSES.

"I had a little pony,

His name was Dapple Gray:

I lent him to a lady

To ride a mile away.

She whipped him,

She lashed him,

She rode him through the mire;

I would n't lend my pony now,
For all the lady's hire.”

OUR hobbies, of whatever sort They be, mine honest friend, Of fancy, enterprise, or thought, 'Tis hardly wise to lend.

Some fair imagination, shrined
In form poetic, maybe,

You fondly trusted to the World,
That most capricious Lady.

Or a high, romantic theory,
Magnificently planned,

In flush of eager confidence

You bade her take in hand.

But she whipped it, and she lashed it,
And bespattered it with mire,

Till

your very soul felt stained within,

And scourged with stripes of fire.

Yet take this thought, and hold it fast,

Ye Martyrs of To-day!

That same great World, with all its scorn,

You've lifted on its way!

MISSIONS.

"Hogs in the garden,

Catch 'em, Towser!

Cows in the cornfield,

Run, boys, run!

Fire on the mountains,

Run, boys, run boys!

Cats in the cream-pot,

Run, girls, run!"

I DON'T stand up for Woman's Right;

Not I,-no, no!

The real lionesses fight,

I let it go.

Yet, somehow, as I catch the call

Of the world's voice,

That speaks a summons unto all
Its girls and boys;

In such strange contrast still it rings As church-bells' bome

To the pert sound of tinkling things One hears at home;

And wakes an impulse, not germane Perhaps, to woman,

Yet with a thrill that makes it plain "T is truly human;—

A sudden tingle at the springs

Of noble feeling,

The spirit-power for valiant things

Clearly revealing.