BLANKETS AND TOP-BOOTS.

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a purpose? I answer, fearlessly, No! Could we spend it better at home? I reply, most emphatically, No! True, it may be said that there are thousands of our own people who at this moment are wandering about the streets of our great cities without food to eat or rags to cover them. But what have we to do with them? Our thoughts, our feelings, and our sympathies are all wafted on the wings of charity to the dear and interesting Cannibals in the far-off islands of the green Pacific Ocean. Besides, have not our own poor the almshouses to go to; the luxurious straw of the station-houses to repose upon, if they please; the substantial pea soup, and the ever-toothsome, although somewhat scanty allowance of mush and molasses provided for them? But let it ever be remembered that our own people are not savages and man-eaters; and, therefore, our philanthropy would be wasted upon them. To return to our subject. Perhaps some person or persons here may wonder why we should not send out slippers and overshoes as well as top-boots. To those I will say, that top-boots alone answer the object desired — namely, not only to keep the feet dry, but the legs warm, and thus to combine the double uses of shoes and stockings. Is it not an instance of the remarkable foresight of this society, that it purposely abstains from sending out any other than top-boots? To show the gratitude of the Cannibals for the benefits conferred upon them, I will just mention that, within the last few weeks, his illustrious Majesty, Hokee Pokey Wankey Fum the First, surnamed by his loving subjects, The Magnificent,' from the fact of his wearing, on Sundays, a shirt-collar and an eyeglass as full Court costume,

20

RIGHTS AND DUTIES.

has forwarded the president of the society a very handsome present, consisting of two live alligators, a boa-constrictor, and three pots of preserved Indian, to be eaten with toast; and I am told, by competent judges, that it is quite equal to potted ham or desiccated codfish.

Ladies and Gentlemen: I will not trespass on your patience by making any further remarks; knowing how incompetent I am — - no, no! I don't mean that knowing how incompetent you all are - no! I don't mean that either but you all know what I mean. Like the ancient Roman law giver, I am in a peculiar position; for the fact is, I cannot sit down I mean to say, that I cannot sit down without saying that - that -if there ever was an institution, it is this institution; and, therefore, I beg to propose, "Prosperity to the Society for the Distribution of Blankets and Top-Boots among the Natives of the Cannibal Islands."

WE

7. RIGHTS AND DUTIES.

E hear in these days a great deal respecting Rights: the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound those rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.

Brother men, the Rights of Labor are sometimes considered as opposed to the Rights of Property. I cannot see anything noble in that. I cannot see anything manly in that ferocious struggle between rich and poor; the one striving to take as much, and the other to keep as much, as he can. The cry.of " My rights, your duties," I think we might change to something nobler. If we could learn to say, duties, your rights," we should come to the same thing in the end; but the spirit would be different.

My

Almost two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet, a life that every thinking man, with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to call Divine. I read little respecting His rights or of His claims of rights; but I have read a great deal respecting His duties. Every act He did He called a duty. I read very little in that life respecting His rights; but I hear a vast deal respecting His wrongs wrongs infinite, wrongs borne with a majestic, Godlike silence. His reward? His reward was the reward that God gives to all His true and noble ones, to be cast out in his day and generation, and a life-conferring death at last. These were His

rights!

8. UNCLE JOE.

I

HAVE in memory a little story,

That few indeed would care to tell but me; 'Tis not of love, nor fame, nor yet of glory,

Although a little colored with the three; In very truth, I think as much, perchance, As most tales disembodied from romance.

Joe lived about the village, and was neighbor

To every one who had hard work to do; If he possessed a genius, 'twas for labor,

Most people thought; but there was one or two Who sometimes said, when he arose to go, "Come in again and see us, Uncle Joe!"

The "Uncle was a courtesy they gave,

And felt they could afford to give to him,
Just as the master makes of some good slave
An Aunt Jemima, or an Uncle Jim;
And of this dubious kindness Joe was glad:
Poor fellow, it was all he ever had!

A mile or so away he had a brother

A rich, proud man, that people didn't hire; But Joe had neither sister, wife, nor mother,

And baked his corn-cake at his cabin fire After the day's work, hard for you or me, But he was never tired how could he be ?

They called him dull, but he had eyes of quickness For everybody that he could befriend;

Said one and all, "How kind he is in sickness,"

But there, of course, his goodness had an end. Another praise there was might have been given, For one or more days out of every seven

With his old pickaxe swung across his shoulder,

And downcast eyes, and slow and sober tread, He sought the place of graves, and each beholder Wondered, and asked some other who was dead; But when he digged all day, nobody thought That he had done a whit more than he ought.

JUSTICE AND LIBERTY.

At length one winter, when the sunbeams slanted

Faintly and cold across the churchyard snow, The bell tolled out alas! a grave was wanted,

And all looked anxiously for Uncle Joe;
His spade stood there against his own roof-tree,
There was his pickaxe too, but where was he?

They called and called again, but no replying;
Smooth at the window, and about the door
The snow in cold and heavy drifts was lying;
He didn't need the daylight any more.
One shook him roughly, and another said,
"As true as preaching, Uncle Joe is dead!"

And when they wrapped him in the linen, fairer, And finer, too, than he had worn till then, They found a picture — haply of the sharer

Of sunny hope some time; or where or when They did not care to know, but closed his eyes And placed it in the coffin where he lies!

None wrote his epitaph, nor saw the beauty

Of the pure love that reached into the grave, Nor how in unobtrusive ways of duty,

He kept, despite the dark; but men less brave Have left great names, while not a willow bends Above his dust- poor Joe, he had no friends!

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9. JUSTICE AND LIBERTY.

HE saddest thing in the Union meetings of last

THE

year was the constant presence, in all of them, of the clink of coin, the whirr of spindles, the dust