A DESULTORY POEM. BY W. H. D. CANTO VI. There's naught so difficult as a beginning, II. My Muse to sing in rather a different strain, III. There's naught so pleasing as a great variety, IV. Her strains might then soar up to highfalutin, And have the intermediate space to boot, in Though they may glide like ships in weather breezy, Into their port, yet that does not imply it VII. Somebody told me that I praised up women VIII. 1 gave my best impressions at that time, IX. These lines may seem but trifles light as air,- X. I have but little humor and less wit; And prove that she could sometimes truly sing, Alack-a-day! I wish I had a wife, A wife! vain wish, for who would have a poet, They know full well which side their bread is They know where bread and butter comes from, too; They are no fools, and here my praise is uttered She keeps the more important things in view, XIII. Poets are always steeped in some deep sorrow, XIV. Now all such conduct is quite mean and selfish ; That simile is rather too poetical, But I digress-"return we to our mutton," XVII. The more I write the further I digress; Now all that I would here essay to say, With cold and want and hunger all the day, XIX. O, fatal gifts divine, why should the inspired fired Have tried to shed a holier light around, A GLIMPSE AT OUR CHILDHOOD. Amid all the varied scenes of after-life, we invariably look back to our childhood's days as the happiest of our existence. We may have seen happy moments since, but none so pure and unalloyed as when we skipped the rope by the rustic schoolhouse, or gathered blue-bells and violets by the brooklet. And where have we seen true enjoyment like that of the playdays and Chistmas eves spent with our youthful companions? Few were the sorrows we then knew. Life glided along in one happy dream, filled with bright faces, sweet smiles, and gentle tones. Tears we shed at times, but they were as dew-drops-soon evaporated by the warm sunshine of a mother's love and sympathy. Perhaps sister, brother, or playmate quarreled with us, and wicked feelings would come into our little hearts; but they could not last, and were soon forgotten in the warm kiss and forgiving smile. We did wrong, and were punished, while our parents shed tears of sorrow over the waywardness of their little ones. Then, O, how we felt! It seemed as though we never could do enough to atone for the pain we had caused them. How we loved to watch the minnows playing in the edges of the lakelet, or take a skiff-ride on its gently undulating surface, ard gaze far down into its clear depths at the fish of larger growth! What pure delight it was to trip along the flower-embroidered banks of some lovely lit sped onward; and as we grew older, we attended school and, learned―0, momentous acquirement !—and learned to read. Then in our walks we always had a companion in the shape of a story-book, generally about fairies, which we would read until the whole woods seemed full of the 'little people." Sometimes we would imagine that we were fairies, too, and waving a magic wand, command the rill to cease its constant running, and the flowers to sing and dance. 66 But then there was the dread school tle brook that meandered along through learned differently. And so the time hollows and over rocks-its waters as clear and sparkling as crystal-snatching the flowers as we went, and putting them in our aprons and hats for future use. The flowers were so sweet and smiling; but they seemed to grow sad in a moment when we plucked them from the parent stem; just as we would have done, had we been taken from our parents. But some of the flowers we could not have the heart to pluck, they seemed such things of life. We talked to them, and sang to them, and they would nod their heads in the breeze as if in acknowledg-room, and the dark-browed teacher! How ment of our love; and seemed to smile still more sweetly if we talked to them of heaven and the angels, or audibly wondered why they did not speak and answer us. Then, when we were wearied, we would sit down beneath the willows, and weave them into wreaths for our heads; stopping now and then to gaze at the rill as it sparkled, danced, and sang, or, rippling along, caught up a falling leaf or flower, and carried it far, far away, out of our sight forever. And then we would wonder to ourselves where the brook went to; if it always kept flowing onward just the same, or if it would die, as the flowers did, or our little baby Willie? So one day we asked father about it; one bright warm day, when the birds caroled merrily, and every thing, even to the cold rocks and leafless branches, seemed to look joyous and smiling; a day when we had received permission to accompany him into the forest, where he was going for a load of firewood; and he told us that it emptied into a great river, many times larger than itself, and that the river poured into a great ocean, thousands of times larger than our little lakelet. And then he told us about the sea-birds that flew upon, and large whales that lived in the ocean. That gave us food for imagination during many a ramble afterwards. What strange ideas we had about them! Indeed, what we then thought about them clung to us for years after we had grown older and we hated study, and still worse the ferule. O, that ferule! How many fingers have ached and shoulders smarted from the cruel and unjust application of its smoothly-worn surface; and how many a little heart has it caused to ache and throb! We feel sure we should know it now, after the lapse of many a year. But we have no desire to see it, for we should certainly feel just as we did when we saw it rapidly approaching us, or felt it applied to our hands for some slight fault. And then, as we still grew older, there was dread composition day always staring us in the face. So our troubles grew with our growth, and increased with our knowledge; and we now look back upon. our childhood as a happy dream, and almost wish it could have continued so through life. And such is life-a dream! "a moment stolen from eternity"continuance of scenes, some of almost perfect happiness, and others of such complete misery that the joyous ones are as nothing arrayed against them. Still, if we always looked upon the bright side of a scene, there would be nothing to mourn about; for there is a bright side to every thing, be the other side ever so dark. Perhaps by always searching for the bright side when a dark scene presents itself, life may still continue as a happy dream; at least, it will not be made any worse by trying. Ye who are yet dreaming-let us make the attempt. RUTH WOODvale. SONG. BY W. H. D. [DEDICATED TO EMMA.] I. Thine eyes are brightly beaming From thy fair brow, from thy fair brow; Thy smiles so sweet, thy smiles so sweet, Where honied joys are staying; O could I greet, O could I greet Those lips with love's pure kisses, And call thee mine, and call thee mine, I'd sing how sweet such bliss is, Almost divine, almost divine. II. My heart with love is beating For only thee, for only thee; Upon the earth, upon the earth, [worth. Thy charms and worth, thy charms and Then come to those sweet bowers Where love is found, where love is found, There pleasure wings the hours, And joys abound, and joys abound. III. O come, there's no denying, CUMVENT THEM-RAT-SHOOTING. The miners on the creek were nearly all Americans, and exhibited a great variety of mankind. Some, it was very evident, were men who had hitherto only worked with their heads; others, one would have set down as having been mechanics of some sort, and as having lived in cities; and there were numbers of unmistakeable backwoodsmen and farmers from the Western States. Of these a large proportion were Missourians, who had emigrated across the plains. From the State of Missouri the people had flocked in thousands to the gold diggings, and particularly from a county in that State called Pike. The peculiarities of the Missourians are very strongly marked, and after being in the mines but a short time, one could distinguish a Missourian, or a "Pike," or "Pike County," as they are called, from the natives of any other western State. Their costume was always exceedingly old and greasy-looking; they had none of the occasional foppery of the miner, which shows itself in brilliant red shirts, boots with flaming red tops, fancycolored hats, silver-handled bowie-knives, and rich silk sashes. It always seemed to me that a Missourian wore the same clothes in which he had crossed the plains, and that he was keeping them to wear on his journey home again. Their hats were felt, of a dirty-brown color, and the shape of a short extinguisher. Their shirts had perhaps, in days gone by, been red, but were now a sort of purple; their pantaloons were generally of a snuffybrown color, and made of some wooly home-made fabric. Suspended at their back from a narrow strap buckled round the waist they carried a wooden-handled bowie-knife in an old leathern sheath, not stitched, but riveted with leaden nails; Dwell in thy light, dwell in thy light. and over their shoulders they wore strips My heart is thine, my heart is thine, Respond to mine, respond to mine. My angel bright, my angel bright, of cotton or cloth as suspenders-me- | reached the mines they had become very chanical contrivances never thought of superior men to the raw bumpkins they by any other men in the mines. As for were before leaving their homes. their boots, there was no peculiarity about them, excepting that they were always old. Their coats, a garment not frequently seen in the mines for at least six months of the year, were very extraordinary things-exceedingly tight, shortwaisted, long-skirted surtouts of homemade frieze of a grayish-blue color. As for their persons, they were mostly long, gaunt, narrow-chested, round-shouldered men, with long, straight, lightcolored, dried-up-looking hair, small thin sallow faces, with rather scanty beard and moustache, and small gray sunken eyes, which seemed to be keenly perceptive of every thing around them. But in their movements the men were slow and awkward, and in the towns especially they betrayed a childish astonishment at the strange sights occasioned by the presence of the divers nations of the earth. In some respects, perhaps, the mines of California were as wild a place as any part of the Western States of America; but they were peopled by a community of men of all classes, and from different countries, who, though living in a rough backwoods style, had nevertheless all the ideas and amenities of civilized life; while the Missourians, having come direct across the plains from their homes in the backwoods, had received no preparatory education to enable them to show off to advantage in such company. And in this they labored under a great disadvantage, as compared with the lower classes of people of every country who came to San Francisco by way of Panama or Cape Horn. The men from the interior of the States learned something even on their journey to New York or New Orleans, having their eyes partially opened during the few days they spent in either of those cities en route; and on the passage to San Francisco they naturally received a certain degree of polish from being violently shaken up with a crowd of men of different habits and ideas from their own. They had to give way in many things to men whose motives of action were perhaps to them incomprehensible, while of course they gained a few new ideas from being brought into close contact with such sorts of men as they had hitherto only seen at a distance, or very likely had never heard of. A little experience of San Francisco did them no harm, and by the time they It may seem strange, but it is undoubtedly true, that the majority of men in whom such a change was most desirable became in California more humanised, and acquired a certain amount of urbanity; in fact, they came from civilized countries in the rough state, and in California got licked into shape, and polished. I had subsequently, while residing on the Isthmus of Nicaragua, constant opportunities of witnessing the truth of this, in contrasting the outward-bound emigrants with the same class of men returning to the States after having received a California education. Every fortnight two crowds of passengers rushed across the Isthmus, one from New York, the other from San Francisco. The great majority in both cases were men of the lower ranks of life, and it is of course to them alone that my remarks apply. Those coming from New York-who were mostly Americans and Irish-seemed to think that each man could do just as he pleased, without regard to the comfort of his neighbors. They showed no accommodating spirit, but grumbled at everything, and were rude and surly in their manners; they were very raw and stupid, and had no genius for doing any thing for themselves or each other to assist their progress, but perversely delighted in acting in opposition to the regulations and arrangements made for them by the Transit Company. The same men, however, on their return from California, were perfect gentlemen in comparison. They were orderly in their behavior; though rough, they were not rude, and showed great consideration for others, submitting cheerfully to any personal inconvenience necessary for the common good, and showing by their conduct that they had acquired some notion of their duties to balance the very enlarged idea of their rights which they had formerly entertained. The Missourians, however, although they acquired no new accomplishments on their journey to California, lost none of those which they originally possessed. They could use an axe or a rifle with any man. Two of them would chop down a few trees and build a log-cabin in a day and a half, and with their long five-footbarrel-rifle, which was their constant companion, they could "draw a bead" |