One day, upon a beauteous vase
Her longing glances fell;

She toddled toward the shining thing

She wished to clasp so much,

Then-bravely turned away and sighed,

"Anoder mus'n't touch."

Nellie K. Kellogg.

SNOW-FLAKES.

OUT of the bosom of the air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

Suddenly shape in some divine expres

sion,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals

The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,

Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

BEING A BOY.

ONE of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no experience, though it needs some practice to be a good one. The disadvantage of the position is that he does not last long enough. It is soon over. Just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be something else, with a good deal more work to do and not half so much fun. And yet every boy is anxious to be a man, and is very uneasy with the restrictions that are put upon him as a boy. There are so many bright spots in the life of a farm boy that I sometimes think I should like to live the life over again. I should almost be willing to be a girl if it were not for the chores. There is a great comfort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of doing. It is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go on an errand. Perhaps he couldn't explain, himself, why, when he is sent to the neighbor's after yeast, he stops to stone the frogs. He is not exactly

cruel, but he wants to see if he can hit 'em. It is a curious fact about boys, that two will be a great deal slower in doing anything than one. Boys have a great power of helping each other do nothing. But say what you will about the general usefulness of boys, a farm without a boy would very soon come to grief. He is always in demand. In the first place, he is to do all the errands, go to the store, the post-office, and to carry all sorts of messages. He would like to have as many legs as a wheel has spokes, and rotate about in the same way. This he sometimes tries to do, and people who have seen him "turning cart-wheels" along the side of the road have supposed he was amusing himself and idling his time. He was only trying to invent a new mode of locomotion, so that he could economize his legs and do his errands with greater dispatch. Leap-frog is one of his methods of getting over the ground quickly. He has a natural genius for combining pleasure with business. Charles Dudley Warner.

MY NEIGHBOR'S BABY.

ACROSS in my neighbor's window, with its drapings of satin and lace,

I see, 'neath its flowing ringlets, a baby's innocent face;

His feet, in crimson slippers, are tapping the polished glass;

And the crowd in the street look upward, and nod and smile as they pass.

Just here in my cottage window, catching flies in the sun,

With a patched and faded apron, stands my own little one;

His face is as pure and handsome as the baby's over the way,

And he keeps my heart from breaking, at my toiling every day.

Sometimes when the day is ended, and I sit in the dusk to rest,

With the face of my sleeping darling hugged close to my lonely breast,

I pray that my neighbor's baby may not catch heaven's roses all,

But that some may crown the forehead of n loved one as they fall.

And when I draw the stockings from his liv. weary feet,

And kiss the rosy dimples in his limbs so ro

and sweet,

I think of the dainty garments some little

dren wear,

And that my God withholds them from mi pure and fair.

May God forgive my envy-I know not what I said;

My heart is crushed and troubled,-my neighbor's boy is dead!

I saw the little coffin as they carried it out to-day: A mother's heart is breaking in the mansion over the way.

The light is fair in my window, the flowers bloom at my door;

My boy is chasing the sunbeams that dance on the cottage floor.

The roses of health are blooming on my darling's cheek to-day,

But the baby is gone from the window of the mansion over the way.

༔

THE LIP AND THE HEART.

ONE day, between the Lip and the Heart

A wordless strife arose,

Which was expertest in the art

His purpose to disclose.

The Lip called forth the vassal-Tongue,

And made him vouch-a lie!

The slave his servile anthem sung,
And braved the listening sky.