For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away

The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Last of all, I shall venture to give that exquisitely tender sonnet, unpublished during the poet's life, kept, it would seem, like a dedicated thing, too sacred to be exposed to the profane gaze of the world. On July 10, 1861, the second Mrs. Longfellow met the tragic death, so often described, from injuries received by fire the day before. After the surviving husband's death, in March, 1882, his portfolio, being opened, revealed this poem, dated July 10, 1879 (the eighteenth anniversary, it will be noted, of the fateful day). It is entitled "The Cross of Snow," and is printed by Prof. Eliot Norton in his recently issued memorial volume.*

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

A gentle face-the face of one long dead

Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

Here in this room she died; a soul more white
Never through martyrdom of fire was led
To its repose; nor can in books be read
The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes
And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

After all, then, is not Longfellow the poet of the people simply because he is so essentially and so vitally the poet of the affections, of the heart? We would not seek to number him-as he, the modest, the discerning, the self-appreciative, hoped not himself to be numbered among "the grand old masters," among "the bards sublime,"

* Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. A Sketch of his Life. By Charles Eliot Norton. Together with Longfellow's Chief Autobiographical Poems. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thought suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor.

Rather is he-rather would he himself have chosen to be thought-one of those "humbler poets,"

For

Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start.

Such songs have the power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

To write such songs was his gift; to "make a purer faith and manhood shine in the untutored heart" was his consistent aim; to have won the appreciation, affection and love of untold thousands of his fellowmen has been his exceeding great reward.

IV.

THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH AND IMMORTALITY.

BY THE REV. JOHN H. PRUGH, D.D.

This earthly life has so much of beauty in it, and it affords so many opportunities to love and serve and grow, that even if we knew there was no other life, this one would be well worth living.

"When I look upon the laughing face

Of children, or of woman's gentle grace;
Or when I grasp a true friend by the hand,
And feel a bond I partly understand;
When mountains thrill me, or when by the sea,
The plaintive waves rehearse their mystery;
Or when I watch the moon, with strange delight,
Treading her pathway amid the stars at night;
Or when the one I love, with kisses prest,
I clasp with bliss unspoken to my breast;
So strange, so deep, so wondrous life appears,
I have no words, but only happy tears.
I cannot think it all will end in nought;
That the abyss shall be the grave of thought,
That ever oblivion's shoreless sea shall roll
O'er love and wonder and the lifeless soul.
But even though this the end, I cannot say
I'm sorry I have seen the light of day—
So wondrous seems this life I live to me.
Whate'er the end, to-day I have and see;
To-day I think and hope; and so for this-

If this be all-for just so much of bliss,

Bliss blended through with pain, I bless the power
That holds me up to gaze one wondrous hour."

If this is all, earnest men want to know it; that they may make the most of it.

If this is only the beginning, earnest men hail every additional bit of knowledge that helps them know the fact, that

they may lay out their life on a scale proportioned to the magnificence of its possibilities.

The unknown that may become known has always been a field of exploration to the human mind. And psychical research holds out very alluring hopes to human interest. It has kept religious men searching for evidences of their most precious belief, and it has afforded to some sceptical men a refuge from despair.

Before this critical age belief in continued existence and some sort of communion between spirits and mortals was almost universal. Against this belief, in recent times, modern science has brought about a reaction. But science would surely go too far were it to label all the strange things reported, as not only not proven, but also asserting that they cannot be true.

The work of the Society for Psychical Research deeply interests us because its investigations concern a matter of such great importance. And we rejoice that these investigations are being scientifically made by men well qualified to make them.

The fact that so many persons uncritically accept the claims. of spiritism and that so many persons are hungry for a belief which their reason forbids, led thoughtful men to feel that the truth, if possible, ought to be known. These men saw that either multitudes of people were deluded, and that it was worth while to help them out of their delusion, or that something was true which might comfort and help other multitudes who stood helpless and hopeless in the presence of the great mystery. It was out of such convictions that the movement for psychical research was born.

The prospectus of the society says:

"It has been widely felt that the present is an opportune time for making an organized and systematic attempt to investigate that large ground of debatable phenomena designated by such terms as 'mesmeric,' 'psychical,' 'spiritistic.' From the recorded testimony of many competent witnesses,

past and present, including observations recently made by scientific men of eminence in various countries, there appears to be, amid much delusion and deception, an important body of remarkable phenomena which are, prima facie, inexplicable on any generally recognized hypotheses, and which if, incontestably established, would be of the highest possible value."

The Society for Psychical Research has always been under the leadership of honorable men. Not the slightest taint of fraud has ever attached to it. And it has done invaluable service in exposing many frauds of charlatans.

The society may be said to have had its origin in the persistence of spiritualists in their claims. It was thought there might be a residuum of truth in these claims and to test the accuracy of this opinion the Society for Psychical Research was organized in 1882, with headquarters in London. The American Branch of the Society was formed, with headquarters in Boston, in 1884.

The society recognizes as a fact the existence, from all time, of a huge sum of inexplicable phenomena; it also recognizes this other fact, an intelligent human will; and it is endeavoring to discover if an equation exists between these two facts; and whether the mystery that has mastered so many centuries. may not in turn be mastered. Other secrets of force have been Other laws have eluded, and

conquered, may not this one be?
at last been grasped. May it not be so with this?

It looks as though we were standing at the gate of an unknown law or series of laws. To know that the unknown exists, is a step gained. To concede that there is something to conquer is a prophecy of coming victory.

If, in the nineteenth century an ether wave came to be understood and managed, possibly, in the twentieth century, a brain wave, also, will be understood and managed. What benefactors they will be if men will discern in this mystery, old as the human race, the substance of a verified law.

It is asserted that the greatest discovery of the nineteenth