THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.

5

Alas, alas for Hamelin!

There came into many a burgher's pate
A text which says that heaven's gate.
Opes to the rich at as easy rate

As the needle's eye takes a camel in !

The mayor sent East, West, North and South, To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,

Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
10 If he'd only return the way he went,

And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor,
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
15 Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,

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And so long after what happened here "On the Twenty-second of July, 20. Thirteen hundred and seventy-six :" And the better in memory to fix

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The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper's Street-

Where any one playing on pipe or tabor

Was sure for the future to lose his labor.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern

To shock with mirth a street so solemn;

But opposite the place of the cavern

They wrote the story on a column, 30 And on the great church-window painted

1

10

The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away,
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say

That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress

On which their neighbors lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band

Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don't understand.

So, Willy, let me and you be wipers

Of scores out with all men-especially pipers!
And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from

mice,

If we've promised them aught, let us keep our

promise!

ROBERT BROWNING.

15

20

THE STARS AND STRIPES.

Probably all Americans believe that they know their national flag when they see it, yet many are certainly unable to distinguish between the standard Stars and Stripes and its spurious imitations. It is desirable for all to remember that the flag is not a haphazard 25

arrangement of alternate stripes of red and white, with stars on a blue field, but an emblem fashioned in a manner prescribed by law and official regulations.

The first national legislation on the subject bears 5 date June 14, 1777, when Congress, in session at Philadelphia, adopted the following: "Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field representing a new 10 constellation." This was about one year subsequent to the Declaration of Independence. Prior to that time colonial flags, and those improvised by the parties using them, were publicly displayed as occasion demanded, but these were in no sense the "national 15 standards." The thirteen stripes had been introduced, in alternate white and blue, on the upper left-hand corner of a standard presented to the Philadelphia Light House Company by its captain in the early part of 1775. Moreover, the flag of the thirteen united 20 colonies raised at Washington's headquarters at Cambridge, January 2, 1776, had the thirteen stripes just as they are this day; but it also had the cross of St. George and St. Andrew on a blue ground in the corner. There is no satisfactory evidence, however, that any flag bearing the union of the stars had been in public use before the resolution of June, 1777.

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Some writers assert that the first and original United States flag instead of thirteen stars each representing a revolted colony or state, contained only 30 twelve stars, because Georgia was not entitled to a