THE NOBLE REVENGE.

The coffin was a plain one — a poor pine box. No flowers on its top, no lining of white satin for the pale brow, no ribbons about the coarse shroud. The brown hair was combed decently back, but there was no crimped cap with its tie beneath the chin. The sufferer from cruel poverty smiled in her sleep. She had found bread and rest and health and home.

"I want to see my dear mother," sobbed a poor child, as the city undertaker screwed down the top.

"You cannot

get out of the way, boy. Why does nobody take the child?"

"Only let me see her one minute," cried the hapless, hopeless orphan, clutching the side of the charity box; and as he gazed up into the man's rough face, anguished tears streamed rapidly down his cheeks. Oh, it was pitiful to hear him .cry: "Only once; let me see my mother only once!"

Quickly and brutally the hard-hearted monster struck the boy, so that he reeled with the blow. For a moment the child stood white with grief and rage, his blue eyes distended, his lips apart; a fire glittering through his tears, as he hissed out: "Some time I will pay you for this!"

The court-room was crowded to suffocation. "Does any one appear as this man's counsel?" asked the judge.

There was silence, until with lips tightly pressed together, a look of strange intelligence, blended with haughty

reserve upon his handsome features, a young man stepped forward with a firm tread, to plead for the friendless man at the bar of the court.

The lawyer was a stranger in the place, but from his first sentence there was silence in the room. The splendor of his genius entranced, convinced.

The man who could not find a friend was acquitted. "May God reward you, sir; I cannot," said the poor man to his eloquent defender.

"I want no thanks," replied the stranger, with icy coldness.

"II believe I have never seen you before. May I know who my deliverer is?"

"Man! I will refresh your memory. Twenty years ago, you struck a heart-broken boy and drove him away from his mother's coffin. I was that The man turned white with fear.

me, then, to take my life?"

boy."

"Have

"Have you rescued

"No, I have a sweeter revenge. I have saved the life of a man whose brutal deed has rankled in my heart for twenty years. Go, remember the tears of the friendless child, as you saw them long ago."

The man bowed his head in shame, and went out from the presence of a magnanimity as grand as it was to him. incomprehensible, and the noble lawyer felt a peace in his soul, the recompense of a grand deed.

Truth alone makes life rich and great. - Emerson.

"GOD BLESS OUR STARS FOREVER!"

BENJAMIN F. TAYLOR.

BENJAMIN F. TAYLOR (1819-1887) was born at Lowville, New York, and died at Cleveland, Ohio. He published several books. His best known poems are "The Old Village Choir," "The Isle of Long Ago," and "Rhymes of the River."

"God bless our stars forever!"

'Tis the burden of the song,

Where the sail throughout the midnight

Is flickering along;

When a ribbon of blue heaven

Is gleaming through the clouds,

With a star or two upon it,

For the sailor in the shrouds.

"God bless our stars forever!"
It is Liberty's refrain,

From the snows of wild Nevada

To the sounding woods of Maine;
Where the green Multnomah wanders,
Where the Alabama rests,

Where the thunder shakes his turban
Over Alleghany's crests.

Where the mountains of New England
Mock Atlantic's stormy main,

Where God's palm imprints the prairie
With the type of Heaven again

Where the mirrored morn is dawning,
Link to link, our lakes along,
And Sacremento's Golden Gate
Swings open to the song

Here, there! "Our stars forever!"
How it echoes! How it thrills!
Blot that banner? Why, they bore it
When no sunset bathed the hills.
Over Bunker see it billow,

At Bennington it waves,
Ticonderoga sleeps beneath,
And Saratoga's graves!

Oh! long ago at Lexington,

And above those minute-men,

The "Old Thirteen" were blazing bright
There were only thirteen then!
God's own stars are gleaming through it
Stars not woven in its thread,
Unfurl it, and that flag will shine
With the heavens overhead.

Oh! it waved above the soldiers,
On the pinions of the prayer;
And it billowed o'er the battle,
On the surges of the air;

And the stars have risen with it,
Till the eagle waits the sun,

And freedom from her mountain-watch
Has counted "Thirty-one."

When the weary years have halted,
In the mighty march of Time,
And no new ones throng the threshold
Of its corridors sublime;

When the clarion call, "Close up!"
Rings along the line no more,
Then adieu, thou blessed banner,
Then adieu, and not before!

*How many stars now on the flag?

Clarion (klär'i ŭn): a kind of trumpet whose note is clear and shrill. Cor'ri dōr: a long line or passageway. Minute-man (min'it): a militiaman who is ready to march at a minute's notice. Rē frain': a phrase or verse which is repeated at the end of each stanza.

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmanent do shine.

-Longfellow