blizzard come stamping in, snow-covered, from the tussle with blustering elements.

In many a human life the roads are sometimes rough and steep, and there is many a man to whom, as he tramps the long, slow miles, perhaps with some heavy pack on his back, the prospect of an open door and an unfeigned welcome at the end of that journey and a chance to halt and lie down and sleep and forget is the best hope he then has in all this mortal life; there is many a soldier on the march so exhausted that knapsack and musket are a burden, and then all his longing is centered on the time and place of camping for the night; possessed by that one thought and craving, he forgets the past and recks not of the morrow. Even to men as woeful, forlorn, dejected, and preoccupied as a certain historic two who footed it over the hills on the Emmaus road, spent from some awful days and nights of horror and anguish, it was doubtless some small comfort to look forward to finding a night's rest at Emmaus far from the cruel city when it should be toward evening and the day far spent: for nothing is more exhausting than heartbreaking sorrow, tragic and ghastly calamity, and unutterable grief, for which there is sometimes no immediate earthly relief but in sleeping and, for a time, forgetting. There may be nightfalls and journey endings when, to poor, weak, worn human nature, the dearest of all Scripture will seem "He giveth his beloved sleep." After

"the wine of astonishment," and the vinegar, wormwood, and gall, a drink of some sirup that can minister slumber is welcome to the lips. And heaven often does its best for bitter thoughts and intolerable sorrow when it sends weariness and night to administer the blessed anodyne of unconsciousness. Poor Alfred de Musset, disillusioned and heart-sick, worn out with the sordid tragedy of his Epicurean life, murmured thankfully at the wretched end of his gay career, "At last I am going to sleep."

Whether on foot, on horseback, or in coaches, we are all on a journey over the same road; we are but passing travelers who will not come this way again, who will presently go out of sight beyond the Great Divide. In the long hereafter all the annals of human history will seem but tales of a wayside inn; for this old earth is only an Inn, a temporary lodging-place, and we are "transients" in the Hotel of the World. Our psalm in this house of our pilgrimage is the hymn:

"I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger;
I can tarry, I can tarry but a night."

As one cheerful vagabond says, "We are but lodgers for a night in this old Wayside Inn of Earth; to-morrow we shall take our pack and set out for the ways beyond, on the old trail from star to star." Happy we if our path beyond be among the stars, and our journey end in the city

of Many Mansions. Well for us now if we take the New Year's advice of Dr. George Clarke Peck to his flock to "greet each new day with a cheer, looking to the Father's House at the end of the road."

SOME NEWSPAPER VERSE

BEFORE us lies a book of verse entitled Canzoni, by T. A. Daly. It is a book of gathered-up newspaper poetry not up to magazine grade, most, if not all, of it printed first in newspapers, as was also, we believe, much of Whitcomb Riley's poetry, which has had very large and, we are told, very lucrative sale. Poor John Milton, it is said, got twenty-five dollars for his immortal Paradise Lost, read now by how many of Riley's and Daly's readers, we wonder? This little book has sold many thousands. And subsequent volumes like it kept coming, until every day a new poem by Daly appeared in some newspaper, so that we had to spell his name "Daily." Most of his verses are in some dialect, a few in Irish, fewer in Negro, and the most in Italian, of which last Mr. Daly has nearly a monopoly, so far as we know. One may here see what newspapers judge that the everyday man dearly loves to read. The home-sickness of the Irishman finds sure and sweet expression in this "Song of the Thrush":

"Ah, the May was grand this mornin'!

Shure, how could I feel forlorn in

Such a land, when tree and flowers tossed their kisses to the breeze?

Could an Irish heart be quiet

While the spring was runnin' riot,

An' the birds of free America were singin' in the trees?

In the songs that they were singin'

No familiar note was ringin',

But I strove to imitate them an' I whistled like a lad. O, my heart was warm to love them

For the very newness of them

For the ould songs that they helped me to forget-an' I was glad.

"So I mocked the feathered choir

To my hungry heart's desire,

An' I gloried in the comradeship that made their joy

my own,

Till a new note sounded, stillin'

All the rest. A thrush was trillin'!

Ah! the thrush I left behind me in the fields about Athlone!

Where, upon the whitethorn swayin',

He was minstrel of the Mayin',

In my days of love and laughter that the years have

laid at rest;

Here again the notes were ringin'!

But I'd lost the heart for singin'

Ah! the song I could not answer was the one I knew the best."

These verses on "The Butt of the Loafers" appeared in the newspapers:

"O! they needn't be so sly,

All them lads when I pass by,
Wid their winkin' o' the eye

An' their jokin' an' all that.

Sure, I'm wise enough to see
That the cause of all their glee
Is the ancient cut o' me

An' me ould high hat.