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THE LAST GOOD NIGHT.

BY E. A. MATHER.

Take me in your arms, dearest,
And tell me once again,
Love is not an idle dream,
A phantom of the brain.

Tell me Death shall not touch it,
It lives in Paradise.

Oh soothe me, oh give me rest,
For weary brain and eyes,
My brain is tired with thinking
Of Death's dark mystery.

My eyes are blind with weeping,
That I soon must leave thee,
For I know that I shall die
Before the days of June.
Listen to the wild March wind,
How dirge-like is its tune,
Ah, I should love to linger
Until the month of May,
When the fields and the gardens
Are deck'd with blossoms gay;
I should like my coffined face
Covered with apple-bloom;
Its beauty and its fragrance
Would hide Death's awful gloom.
Ob, Love, you will not shudder
At my poor sightless eyes,
That so often you have said
Were blue as June-dyed skies!
And you will come and kiss me,
Upon my death-sealed mouth,
But you will not whisper then
Of roses in the South.

I have severed you a tress
Of my warm, golden hair,
When I am dust and ashes,
It will be bright and fair,
Oh, fold me closer---closer,
There's darkness on my sight.
Oh, dearest, can this be Death!
Kiss me a long "Good night."
Pittsburg, Penn.

SCRAPS,

all

"Friendly persons," says the doctor, "always make friends, certainly among right-hearted people; and as to the rest, we all have our little foibles, and for my part, I think I like a friendly-hearted man the better for having a foible or two-provided, of course, that they imply no meanness, nothing dishonorable, but rather spring from warmth of heart, simplicity; confiding frankness, and an unaffected love for some respectable, or harmless hobby."-Dr. Oldham at Greystone.

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The moment Christianity struck the earth it was evident that a new and astonishing force was in the world.-a force affecting the mass of humanity, and not merely a few individuals, a sect, or a nation.

Yes, a new force it was, that burst, as it were, from the very core of the world, breaking the old order of things in pieces, dashing down its marble superstitions, injecting a distinct peculiarity among its granite customs, and leaving a chasm between ancient and modern history.

That dividing line which no eye can miss, is the threshold whence the kingdom of God began its march through the earth. Since then it has been evident that a moral power is among men, accomplishing vast and blessed changes.

LOVE. "We can never say why we love, but only that we love. The heart is ready enough at feigning excuses for all that it does or imagines of wrong; but ask it to give a reason for any of its beautiful and divine motives, and it can only look upward and be dumb."

"A solitude is never so lonely as when the wind sighs through it."

THE PURELY SPIRITUAL. -I know not when we shall hear pure Spiritualism preached by the authorized expounders of doctrine. These have suffered the grain than in our hands."

"A scourge is better upon our backs

Editor's Table.

The wild roaring of the wintry wind is making dreary music around my lowly dwelling, to-night. My little preparations are made for the pleasant labor of jotting down the rambling thoughts and fancies that have been gathering in battalions in my brain, ready to be put to paper, for your monthly entertainment, dear reader. Yet I hardly know whether my purpose will be fulfilled. The boisterous element, without, communicating something of its own unrest to me, urges me to physical activity rather than mental, and drives me from my seat beside the hearth.

I go to the window, and try to gaze out through the panes, against which the sleety snow every now and then comes swirling, and which, spite of the glowing fire shine through the huge stove's single eye of transparent mica, are still half covered with arabesques in frostwork. Without, the sky is black and moonless. Yet, through the columns of rosy light that fall perpendicularly from the windows, upon the great snow-shroud spread out over the earth, I see the snow-swaths sweeping over the lawn and along the roadside, sifting through the horizontal bars of the fences, and piling up in huge drifts, under their lea.

It seems wild and solitary here to-night, and well it may, for I am alone in the house, and the house is far away from others. Not a thing that breathes is abroad, man and beast being alike driven to shelter, while the great wind goes wailing and moaning by, like a trubled ghost. Who is it - Gray, I think that says "There is nothing in the wide-world so like the voice of a spirit." And how many and various are its tones, reminding us now, of those who are gone from us forever, now of lonely burial-places, and anon, of war-desolated plains.

"Oh! many a voice is thine, thou Wind! full many a voice is thine,

From every scene thy wing o'ersweeps, thou bearest a sound and sign;

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Yes, buried, but unsleeping, there thought watches, memory lies, From whose deep urn the tones are poured through all earth's harmonies."

While I have been standing by the window looking out into the night, and in half dreamy tone chanting those beautiful, stately verses of the sweet English poetess, to myself, the storm has been busy and so have my thoughts. They have been hovering, semi-consciously, around the premises over which I have at present the felicity of being sovereign mistress, peering into the cattle stalls and stables, and inquiring vaguely into the comfort of their four-footed occupants; but just as the pleasant consciousness comes over me that everything that lives and breathes within the charmed circle of home is cozily sheltered from the fierce onslaught of the elements, a dreary cry reaches my ears. I instinctively understand it. But lest your sympathies, dear reader, should be too warmly interested for your peace, in its solution, I will not withhold it.

Certain birds, numbered among my possessions, of wilful natures, and withal arctic proclivities, that, persistently refusing to occupy the nicely sheltered roosts provided for them in the warm poultry house, have all winter long sought the highest, most exposed branches of the orchard trees for their nightly roosting places, at this very moment sit on their lofty perches, swaying in the wintry blast, clinging with desperate tenacity to the frozen branches, and every now and then, as a more furious squall than usual strikes them, uttering the dreary cries which just now startled me. Silly things! How like are they to some human creatures who, obstinately closing their eyes to their best good, cling franticly to some fatal folly, surrendering not their insane hold, even when the cruel blasts of danger, and sore (disaster rave wildly around them! Who would think that brainless turkeys and human beings could so nearly resemble one another?

Apropos to this subject. I wonder what has become of the snow-birds that a few days since fluttered under the eaves and about the door? Beaten to death, perhaps, by the wings of the tempest, as were the robins a few years ago, when, led by some deceitful instinct, they sought their old northern haunts at too early a season. The wild storm came, as it has tonight, and raved and swept over the country for three long days, throwing down chimneys, tearing off shingles and clapboards, and otherwise disporting itself in frenzied and unfeeling fashion, as it does now. It was pitiful to

see the poor birds skirring away before it, seeking in vain for shelter from its cruel asscreaming in their terror and distress, and saults. I thought of the nursery song I used to sing in my childhood:

The North wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor Robin do then?
Poor thing!

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'Hundreds of soldiers," writes one, were

obliged, last night, to leave their one blanket, and shelter-tents, to huddle around the fires. The pride of the officers did not permit them to follow the example, and they lay and shivered until morning."

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How gladly would the loyal women of the North give their blankets and other clothing to warm these poor soldiers! It is little to give these and our time and the work of our busy fingers for the war, and some men think that we "who sit at home at ease," sacrifice little enough, Ah, we do more than appears. "We empty heart and home," and sit down and wait, when waiting is ten thousand times more dreadful than acting. Well and beautifully does Mrs. Browning express this thought when she says of

LOYAL WOMEN,

Heroic males the country bears,

But daughters give up more than sons, Flags wave, drums beat, and unawares, You flash your souls out with the guns, And take your heaven at once.

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IS MARRIAGE A LOTTERY?"

Among the thoughts which I had intended to follow out to some extent this evening, was one prompted by an article I have been reading, with this most suggestive title-Is marriage a lottery?

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to me tolerably happy, and in the great majority of cases, eminently so. By this I do not mean to be understood that life to the married has no drawbacks on its felicity, or that their pathway is all one coleur de rose. Perfect hap piness is not the normal condition of the race, and the world is full of people who would nev er be perfectly happy, anywhere-people who, possessing a natural obliquity of temper and disposition, see things often askew, as you see your face askew in an untrue mirror. But even such persons, I have often had reason to believe much happier wedded than they would have been single. "The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it," and those strings are awakened far more frequently and readily under the genial hand of wedlock than any other.

"Grant all this," says one, "but I cannot afford to marry. It costs too much to support a wife and family. It is all I can do to get on alone."

It recalled a thousand remarks I have heard made by the thinking as well as the unthinking; but, as I believe, far more frequently the Very likely, young man, and it always will latter. It is the commonest, most at-hand anbe all you can do to get on while you remain swer to the question-" Why do you not mar-single. Single men as a general thing, are not ry?" • Oh, I don't know; I don't dare to, marriage is such a lottery." Or, worse still, if the one questioned belongs to the "barbarian sex," he sometimes adds-" There's no telling what a woman will turn out." If Fanny Fern were writing this article 1 have no doubt she would reverse the proposition, and with emphasis declare, "There's no telling what a man may turn out:" but while I admit the abstract truth of both assertions, I forbear to retaliate, holding, in this matter, as in many others, discretion to be "the better part of

valor."

the ones who make fortunes. The men who make fortunes, and occupy commanding posi tions in society, are the married men. The necessities of married life wake up the energies and intellect, inducing prudence and fore-cast, and teaching how to save as well as earn. It is a remark of no little suggestiveness that “It takes a wise man to save money-any fool can earn." Besides I am not giving you so little credit for good sense as to suppose that you are going to marry a doll. I am thinking of one of the sensible girls for your wife. Girls who do not consider the ends and aims of their existence all answered when they have dressed and danced themselves into the state of wedlock. But those sensible, right-hearted, rightminded ones, who have been so trained and educated as to be able to see that if a yoke is to work well and be easily worn, both ends must be held up. And that brings me to the ques tion I wish to put to the girls.

But, aside from its reason or unreason, has not the remark," Marriage is but a lottery," passed into a proverb, so frequently has it been uttered 1 How it first originated is, I confess, a riddle, for it seems to me that nothing could be more false in fact, both in the letter and the spirit, and I truly believe it to be a gross libel on the divinest of earth's institutions. During a residence of a quarter of a century in the most populous city of the Union, and with an acquaintance, necessarily, by no means lim-other does all the spending? This is a queseted, I have seen nothing to justify it. On the contrary, of the many, many hundreds of husbands and wives with whom I have, during 'that long period of time, enjoyed an acquaintance more or less extended and intimate, I solemnly aver that I cannot now recollect a halfdozen instances wherein the union seemed not

Is it fair, think you, that one party in the partnership should do all the earning while the

tion which, for a great many years to come, may be of vital importance in this country. The order of things, unless signs are very deceptive, will be reversed, in a great degree, by the continuance of this calamitous struggle now going on in the land. The products of the country are being rapidly swept away, and

the producers are diminishing. Henceforth the necessities of the land will require that the spenders should earn as well as spend. Many men choose that their wives should be useless dolls, but is that any reason why a sensible girl should be satisfied to become one? Did the great and good Creator make you to lead the life of a butterfly, without care and without effort, think you? Why then did He give you a brain to calculate and plan, and hands to execute? Above all, why did He give you a soul, if He did not design it to lift you above that beautiful but useless insect? That may, with out sin, sport its little life away, for it lives but a day, and calls upon no other to wear out body and soul to feed and clothe it; and all of its race live alike, without toil and care, and die when winter comes.

How many husbands have I known whose eighteen hours a day were spent in the little, dark counting-room of the close, narrow street whence they emerged at ten o'clock at night, haggard and pale and weary, to go home to their beautiful mansions up town, and sleep their six hours, and then return to the same weary counting-room again. No relaxation, no letting up for them; their only pleasure in thinking how nicely and luxuriously their wives and children were living. Who is in fault here? Both; for strangely enough custom has established this way of living, and both husband and wife are satisfied! He is slaving himself to death, that she may live like the "lilies of the field that toil not neither do they spin," and she no I will not say it. She does not realize that he is dying by inches of an overtaxed brain, want of air and sunlight, and never-sleeping anxiety. No good woman-and the majority of them are such-- could be satisfied to spend her days in dressing, and receiving, and promenading, if the reality came home to her that it was at the awful cost of her husband's health and life. The dreadful evil is, that she does not find it out till the thunderclap awakes her, and he is suddenly cut off from the land of the living, and often leaving her poor and helpless. Less labor at the one end of the yoke and less style and indolence at the other, and a longer and more truly happy life would, in nine cases out of ten, be the result.

I am making my Editor's Table a dull one, but it may be useful; and this being the order of the day, I will go back a moment to the proposition I am combatting, that marriage is a lottery; and, granting for a moment, that it

is true, I will say that it is generally our own fault, if our number does not come up a prize. The marriage once consummated, whatever may be the faults and short-comings and ignorance on either side, the determination of both to make the best of everything, is generally sufficient among right-minded persons, to insure a reasonable degree of happiness. Small sacrifices, small duties will be found of daily necessity, and if they are yielded to with readiness and cheerfulness, each ore will become a stepping-stone to new contentment, the very act of self abnegation being itself a happiness.

Then marriage is a camera, that daguerreotypes the character and nature of the one upon the other; so that however unlike husband and wife may be at the outset, time and propinquity are ever silently at work, and every hour that passes assimilates them more and more to each other. Their minds, their dispositions, their manners, even their features, often acquire a mutual likeness.

Duty well performed, cheerfulness, and good temper on either side, a constant war against small selfishness, against" taking the prism cut of the leg of mutton, the biggest egg at breakfast, or the nicest crust in the loaf," will soon establish the fact that marriage is no lottery. "Then," says a writer, " may we delight, like Ramsay, in his Gentle Shepherd,' in the good humor and white caps of the wife who wears them, as guards to her face to keep her husband's love," and she, the happy wife, may say with her of the " Portuguese Sonnets," "When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire, At either curved point-what bitter wrong Can the earth do us, that we should not long Be here contented?"

SENSATION NOTICE OF A SENSATION NOVEL. Your humble correspondent can think of nothing but the new novel now passing through the press of the celebrated house of Biddlecome & Hazenburg. It is not to be merely the book of the season, but the great work of the nineteenth century! No one has forgotten "Homespun and Broadcloth," of which one hundred thousand copies were sold in less than seven weeks, nor the overwhelming excitement concerning its unknown author, who had thus like a blazing comet, shot athwart the literary sky. O, it was so tantalizing! not even a nom de plume, to give the slightest idea as to the sex of the writer. Ah, but true genius is modest and loves to hide in a veil of obscurity!

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