That perpetual life and love
Through the heart diffuses.

Some there be who have no faith
In this region fairy;
Say it is a poet's dream,
'Tis his castle airy.

True as God has made one world

Practical and real,

There's another just as true

World of the ideal.

There's a sentimental 'side
To the soberest project;
Music sometimes wakes the ear
That is deaf to logic.

Life indeed does seem a strife,
Harsh and hard with duty;
But there is a Godward side
Of poetic beauty.

Come then to my dreamful world,

To my castle airy,

Facts are dark and stubborn things,

Dreams are bright and fairy.

LIZZIE YORK CASE.

SWALLOWING A FLY.

COUNTRY meeting-house. A midsummer Sabbath.

We had come to the middle of our sermon, when a large fly, taking advantage of the opened mouth of the speaker, darted into our throat. The crisis was upon us. Shall we cough and eject this impertinent intruder, or let

him silently have his way? We had no precedent to guide us. We knew not what the fathers of the church did in like circumstances, or the mothers either.

We saw the unfairness of taking advantage of a fly in such straitened circumstances. It may have been a blind fly, and not have known where it was going. It may have been a scientific fly, and only experimenting with air currents. It may have been a reckless fly, doing what he soon would be sorry for; or a young fly, and gone a-sailing on Sunday without his mother's consent.

Beside this, we are not fond of flies prepared in that way. We have, no doubt, often taken them preserved in blackberry jam. But fly in the raw was a diet from which we recoiled. We would have preferred it roasted, or fried, or panned, or baked, and then to have chosen our favorite part, the upper joint, and a little of the breast, if you please, sir. But, no; it was wings, proboscis, feet, poisers. There was no choice; it was all, or none.

We foresaw the excitement and disturbance we would make, and the probability of losing our thread of discourse, if we undertook a series of coughs, chokings, and expectorations; and that, after all our efforts, we might be unsuccessful, and end the affray with a fly's wing on our lip, and a leg in the windpipe.

We concluded to take down the nuisance. We rallied all our energies. It was the most animated passage in all our discourse. We were not at all hungry for anything, much less for such hastily prepared viands. The fly evidently wanted to back out. "No!" we said within You are in for it now!"

ourselves. "Too late to retreat. We addressed it in the words of Noah to the orangoutang, as it was about entering the Ark, and lingered too long at the door, "Go in, sir—go in!"

And so we conquered, giving a warning to flies and

men that it is easier to get into trouble than to get aut again. We have never mentioned the above circumstance before; we felt it a delicate subject. But all the fly's friends are dead, and we can slander it as much as we please, and there is no danger now.

You acknowledge that we did the wisest thing that could be done; and yet how many people spend their time in elaborate, and long-continued, and convulsive ejection of flies which they ought to swallow and have done with.

Your husband's thoughtlessness is an exceeding annoyance. He is a good man, but he is careless about where he throws his slippers. On the top of one of your best parlor books he has laid a plug of pig-tail tobacco. For fifteen years you have lectured him about leaving the newspaper on the floor. Do not let such little things interfere with your domestic peace. Better swallow the fly, and have done with it.

It never pays to hunt a fly. You clutch at him. You sweep your hand convulsively through the air. You wait till he alights on your face, and then give a fierce slap on the place where he was. You slyly wait till he crawls up your sleeve, and then give a violent crush to the folds of your coat, to find out that it was a different fly from the one you were searching after. That one sits laughing at your vexation from the tip of your nose.

Apothecaries advertise insect exterminators; but if in summer-time we set a glass to catch flies, for every one we kill there are twelve coroners called to sit as jury of inquest; and no sooner does one disappear under our fell pursuit, than all its brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, and second cousins, come out to see what in the world is the matter. Oh man! go on with your life work! If, opening your mouth to say the thing that ought to be said, a fly dart in, swallow it!

The current of your happiness is often choked up by trifles. The want of more pantry room, the need of an additional closet, the smallness of the bread-tray, the defectiveness of the range, the lack of draught in a furnace, a crack in the saucepan, are flies in the throat. Open your mouth, shut your eyes, and gulp down the annoyances.

Had we stopped on the aforesaid day to kill the insect, at the same time we would have killed our sermon.

Our every life is a sermon. Our birth is the text from

which we start. Youth is the introduction to the discourse. During our manhood we lay down a few propositions and prove them. Some of the passages are dull, and some sprightly. Then come inferences and applications. At seventy years we say "Fifthly and lastly." The Doxology is sung. The Benediction is pronounced. The Book closed. It is getting cold. Frost on the window-pane. Audience gone. Shut up the church. Sex ton goes home with the key on his shoulder.

T. DE WITT TALMAGE.

AFTER SIXTY YEARS; OR, LOST AND FOUND.

SOME miners were sinking a shaft in Wales

I know not where, but the facts have filled

A chink in my brain, while other tales

Have been swept away, as when pearls are spilled, One pearl rolls into a chink in the floor;—

Somewhere, then, where God's light is killed,

And men tear in the dark, at the earth's heart-core,

These men were at work, when their axes knocked A hole in a passage closed years before.

A slip in the earth, I suppose, had blocked This gallery suddenly up, with a heap

Of rubble, as safe as a chest is locked,

Till these men picked it; and 'gan to creep
In, on all-fours. Then a loud shout ran
Round the black roof-"Here's a man asleep!"

They all pushed forward, and scarce a span From the mouth of the passage, the miner's lamp Fell on the upturned face of a man.

No taint of death, no decaying damp
Had touched that fair young brow, whereon
Courage had set its glorious stamp.

Calm as a monarch upon his throne, Lips hard clenched, no shadow of fear, He sat there taking his rest, alone.

He must have been there for many a year.
The spirit had fled; but there was its shrine,
In clothes of a century old, or near!

The dry and embalming air of the mine
Had arrested the natural hand of decay,
Nor faded the flesh, nor dimmed a line.

Who was he, then? No man could say
When this dark passage had fallen in-
Its memory, even, had pass'd away!

In their great rough arms, begrimed with coal, They took him up, as a tender lass

Will carry a babe, from that darksome hole