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careful of your words and your example be-
fore your own children, for the fruit of your
own doing you will surely reap from them
when you yourselves totter on the brink of
the grave.
I entreat you as a friend, as one
who has himself entered the 'evening of
life,' that you may never say in the presence
of your families nor of Heaven, 'Our mother
has outlived her usefulness; she was a bur-
den to us.' Never, never, never; a mother
cannot live so long as that! No; when she
can no longer labor for her children, nor yet
care for herself, she can fall like a precious
weight on their bosom, and call forth by her
helplessness all the noble, generous feelings
of their nature."

THE FLOWER GIRL BY THE
CROSSING.

BY LORD LYTTON.

By the muddy crossing in the crowded streets,
Stands a little maid with her basket full of
posies,

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The rich and the great sit down to dine,
And they quaff to each other in sparkling
wine,

From glasses of crystal and green;
But I guess in their golden potations they
miss

Proffering all who pass her choice of knitted The warmth of regard to be found in this,

sweets,

Tempting Age with heart's-ease, courting

Youth with roses.

Age disdains the heart's-ease,

Love rejects the roses;

London life is busy

Who can stop for posies?

One man is too grave, another is too gay-
This man has his hothouse, that man not a

penny;

We have drunk from the same canteen.

We have shared our blankets and tent to

gether,

And have marched and fought in all kinds of weather,

And hungry and full we have been; Had days of battle and days of rest;

But this memory I cling to and love the

best,

We have drunk from the same canteen!

Flowers, too, are common in the month of For when wounded I lay on the outer slope,

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EX-PRESIDENT JAMES WALKER.

[From the New York Evening Post, Aug. 15, 1874.]

REV. DR. JAMES WALKER, ex-President of Harvard University, reaches the venerable age of eighty years to-morrow, August 16. He was born in Burlington, Massachusetts, in 1794, was graduated at Harvard in 1814, was ordained pastor over the Harvard Congregational (Unitarian) Church, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1818, became assistant professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge in 1839, and President of Harvard University in 1853. Since his retirement in 1860 he has lived quietly at Cambridge, a constant and earnest student, and occasionally appearing as a writer and a preacher. Recently his bodily infirmity has kept him much at home, but his mind has never been clearer, and his conversation never more full of life. He and Rev. Dr. Dewey, who was eighty years old March 14, are the patriarchs of the Unitarian denomination in America.

The following poem, by Rev. Charles T. Brooks, of Newport, is to be sent to-morrow, with a rich work of Christian art in silver and gold, to Rev. Dr. James Walker, of Cambridge, ex-President of Harvard College, in honor of his eightieth birthday. The old parishioners and friends who send the gift have requested Rev. Dr. Osgood, of this city, one of the members of Dr. Walker's old parish, to write the letter in their name.

TO JAMES WALKER, D. D.
On his Eightieth Birthday.

O full of years and of the stores
Of tranquil wisdom years impart

To him who, in their flight, adores
The Eternal One with grateful heart!

O full of years, yet fuller still

Of what no earthly years can give But he alone, whose mercies fill

Pure hearts with love to all that live!

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And thousands, too, who never heard

Thy voice, have kindled o'er the page On which thy brave and lucid word

Went forth to move and mould the age.

The pulpit was thy "joy and throne;"
No less in Harvard's august chair,
Thy manly, genial wisdom shone

And breathed its blessed influence there.

To-day, O loved and honored one,
What throngs rise up to call thee blest,
And pray thy slowly sinking sun
Long linger in the glowing west!

[From the Transcript.]

THE GIFT TO EX-PRESIDENT REV. JAMES WALKER, D. D., spoken of in the "Transcript," yesterday, is thus described:

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A cup and plate in silver, relieved with gold, are made to tell the lesson of his life, and the good wishes of his old parishioners and friends. The cup is nearly a foot high, with a pedestal bordered with gold, with ivy and lilies in wrought silver upon the stem, and with rich designs and inscriptions upon the bowl, which is lined with gold. Upon one side of the bowl the seal of Harvard University is given in bold relief, with the motto, "Christo et Ecclesiæ," in raised letters, and with blades of wheat on one side, richly chased, and a vine branch on the other. Upon the opposite side of the bowl is the name of Dr. Walker, with the chief dates of his life enclosed within branches of olive and oak. Around the rim of the cup is the inscription in church letter, "The Cup of Blessing which we Bless."

scription did not read "upon the eightieth anniversary of his birthday," a form of words which would convey the meaning accurately), and were sent to the Doctor in a handsome case of morocco lined with blue silk. Huntington, who saw the gift at Tiffany's before it was sent away, and whose judgment is authoritative, pronounced it a gem of Christian art; and the letter that went with it Isaid that it was meant to tell the Doctor at once that his friends believed that God had blessed him in his life, and that they gave their own "God bless you!" in this pleasant and lasting form.

[From the New York Evening Post.]

GIFT TO KING'S CHAPEL.-The late Rev. Dr. James Walker, ex-President of Harvard College, left a special gift for Rev. Dr. Osgood of that city, the nature and disposition of which are thus stated: "Dr. Osgood received the costly and exquisite pieces of silver and the richly-wrought cup and plate that were presented to Dr. Walker last August, when he was eighty years old, by his old parishioners and friends. The gift was, of course, accepted with gratitude, but the receiver thought it too sacred and impressive to be kept private in the household, and therefore offered it to King's Chapel, Boston, where Dr. Walker had so many friends, and where he was invited to be pastor after his retirement from the presidency at the age of sixty-six. The minister and wardens of King's Chapel signified to Dr. Osgood their grateful acceptance of the beautiful memorial, and the intention of the congregation to keep it with their communion plate and use The plate is a foot in diameter, with a gold the cup and plate at Christmas, Easter, and border of ecclesiastical pattern, and a wreath, Whit Sunday at Holy Communion. The vine and berries engraved around the inside. formal presentation of the gift was made in The name is in the centre, surrounded by the Chapel on Sunday morning, Feb. 28, by the words, in antique letters, "Thine old the minister, Rev. Henry W. Foote, and the age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou correspondence concerning it was then read. shalt be as the morning." Both the cup The only condition attached by Dr. Osgood and plate are inscribed, after name, "From was that it should go to Harvard University old parishioners and friends, upon his eigh-in case the Chapel should ever cease to hold tieth birthday" (it is a pity that the in- it."

JOHN BROWN.

WE print to-day a graceful and serious little poem by Dr. Parsons, addressed to a friend who had lately returned from the Adirondacks. The reader who has ever visited the grave of John Brown will be reminded by this sonnet of the great rock under whose shadow the old man rests. We take from the note-book of a friend who was there in 1870 the following description of the spot:

Visited John Brown's grave at North Elba, half a mile across the fields from Hanmer's tavern, two miles by the road. His house, unpainted, small, one story and a half, with a small addition behind, is on a cleared plateau of five or eight acres: "Whiteface,” in full sight on the north and a fine view for a full semicircle or more, all round to the east and south of the Adirondack ranges; on the west and south, woods. The chief point | about the place is the cleared, level plateau, laid down to grass, with scattered stumps now old and growing small; on this the house stands; my companion admires the taste that chose such a spot, — the finest site, he thinks, that we have seen. The grave is in a little enclosure, fifty feet square or so, close by the house, at the northeast; a huge boulder, of a flat rather than high shape (it | is about eight feet high), occupies a full third of the enclosure; it seems bedded deep in the earth; steps lead to the top of it, and there, where the side of the rock rises a little from its general slope, one reads these words, cut into the solid stone and facing the

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stone. This little enclosure is in grass, with a rose-bush or two; off at the east corner is a small maple. The rugged, massive rock is a fit companion at the grave; it is to be hoped that no other monument will be set up. ... It comes over one here that this man, more than any other one person, must be thought of as the victim of slavery, and that in him-whether it be true or not that his mind grew disordered · are shown the revulsion and the protest of human nature itself at the horrid system.

The nobly simple inscription upon the rock at John Brown's grave was placed there by a citizen of Boston.

TO A LADY,

[Whose ring bore the motto Dieu est ma Roche.] What went ye forth in that fair wilderness To look on, lady? fawns of mottled skin, Or trembling does driven to unwonted deeps, Or the wild Saranac, half its glory gone Of grace obscure and lovely loneliness, And woods unconscious of the tourists' din, Where now no torrent unregarded leaps? Or to see Autumn his red mantle don, And the free forest in imperial dress? Lady! thy legend should have graven been There in the Adirondacks, where he sleeps Whose soul, the song saith, still is marching

on.

God was his rock, and fitly in the shade
Of God's first handiwork that head was laid.

GENERAL SCHENCK, U. S. Minister to England, has been using an old American anecdote to good advantage. To the wife of a British cabinet officer, who assured him that "England made America all that she is," he said: "Pardon, madam, you remind me of an answer of the Iowa lad in his teens, who, attending Sunday school for the first time, was asked by his teacher, Who made you?' He replied, 'God made me so long (holding his hands about ten inches apart), but I growed the rest.'"

MARY BOOTH.

BY THOMAS W. PARSONS.

WHAT shall we do now, Mary being dead,
Or say, or write, that shall express the
half?

What can we do, but pillow that fair head,
And let the springtime write her epitaph, -

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As it will soon, in snowdrop, violet,
Wild-flower, and columbine, and maiden's
tear,

Each letter of that pretty alphabet

writer is in error; for, so far from "Mother Goose" being a creature of fancy, she was, we beg to assure him, a veritable personage.

The mother-in-law of Thomas Fleet, the editor, in 1731, of the "Boston Weekly Rehearsal," was none other than the original Mother Goose, the Mother Goose of the world-famous Melodies. Mother Goose belonged to a wealthy family in Boston, where her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Goose, was married by Cotton Mather, in 1715, to Fleet, and in due time gave birth to a son. Like most mothers-in-law in our own day, the

That spells in flowers the pageant of the importance of Mrs. Goose increased with year?

She was a maiden for a man to love;

She was a woman for a husband's life; One that had learned to value far above

the appearance of her grandchild, and poor Mr. Fleet, half distracted with her endless nursery ditties, finding all other means fail, tried what ridicule could effect, and actually printed a book with the title, "Songs for

The name of Love the sacred name of the Nursery; or, Mother Goose's Melodies Wife.

Her little life-dream, rounded so with sleep,
Had all there is of life, except gray hairs,—
Hope-love-trust-passion, and devotion
deep-

And that mysterious tie a mother bears.

She hath fulfilled her promise, and hath
past;

Let her down gently at the iron door!
Eyes, look on that loved image for the last;
Now cover it in earth, - her earth no more.

MOTHER GOOSE NOT A MYTH.

MR. WILLIAM L. STONE, of this city, writes as follows to the "Providence Journal: ".

In the January number of the "Braunonian” appears a well-written and interesting paper entitled "Mother Goose's Melodies." In the first paragraph is this sentence: "Here the traditional bard is Mother Goose, of whom nothing certain is known. . . . But more than the name history does not reveal." In this statement, however, the

for Children, printed by T. Fleet, at his printing house, Pudding Lane, Boston. Price ten coppers."

Mother Goose was the mother of nineteen children, and hence we may easily trace the origin of that famous classic,

"There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,
She had so many children she did n't know what to do."

ABOUT THE AGE OF HORSES. - A short time ago we met a gentleman who gave information in regard to ascertaining the age of horses after they have passed the ninth year, new to us, and will be, we are sure, to most of our readers. It is this: After the horse is nine years old, a wrinkle comes on the upper corner of the lower lid, and every year thereafter he has one well-defined wrinkle for every year over nine. If a horse has three wrinkles, he is twelve; if he has four, he is thirteen. Add the number of wrinkles to nine, and you will get it. So says the gentleman, and he is sure it will not fail. As a good many people have horses over nine, it is easily tried. If true, the horse dentist must give up his trade.

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