As day's red flush stole o'er the cold, gray sky,
She rose, her pure face calm, her sins forgiven!
'Twas morn in heaven! morn of a day

Which knows no weary night! Around the King
Stood angels crowned with crowns of burning light!
And in their hands were golden harps, whose sweet
Melodious tones enwrapped the listening soul
In seas of joy! Deep and thrilling melody
Arose on the ambrosial air of heaven,-the song
Of the angelic choir o'er a new repentant soul.
Soon a summons came to earth from heaven;—
The pale white angel bore the stricken flower
Beyond the shadows, into eternal light.

THE STATION-AGENT'S STORY.
ROSE HARTWICK THORPE.

Take a seat in the shade, here, lady,
It's tiresome, I know, to wait,
But when the train reaches Verona
It's always sure to be late;
'Specially when any one's waitin'.
Been gatherin' flowers, I see?
Ah, well! they're better company
Than a rough old fellow, like me.

You noticed the graves 'neath the willows,
Down there where the blossoms grew?
Well, yes, there's a story about them,
Almost too strange to be true;

"Tis a stranger, sweeter story,

Than was ever written in books;

And God made the ending so perfect-
There, now I see by your looks

I will have to tell the story;

Let me see; 'twas eight years ago,

One blusterin' night in winter

When the air was just thick with snow,

As the freight came round the curve there,
They beheld a man on the track,

Bravin' the storm before him, but

Not heedin' the foe at his back;

And, ere a hand could grasp the bell-rope,
Or a finger reach the rod,

One sweep from the cruel snow-plow
Had sent the man's soul to its God!

They laid him out here in the freight-house,
And I stayed with him that night,-

He'd one of the pleasantest faces,
So hopeful and young and bright.
There was only a worn-out letter;
I know it by heart-it said:
"Dear John: baby May grows finely,
I send you this curl from her head.
We will meet at Brackenboro';

The grandfather's sad and lone,

But I read him your kind words, saying,
When we've a home of our own,

He shall sing the songs of old England
Beneath our own willow-tree."

That was all there was of it, lady,
And 'twas signed just "Alice Leigh."
So we made a grave in the morning
And buried the man out there
Alone, unmourned, in a stranger's land,
With only a stranger's prayer.

But when he'd slept in his lonely grave
Out there, nigh on to a year,

Ray's freight run into a washout

By the culvert, away down here;

There were only two passengers that night,Dead, when we found them there

A sweet little English woman,

And a baby with golden hair.

On her breast lay the laughing baby,
With its rosy finger tips

Still warm, and the fair, young mother
With a frozen smile on her lips.

We laid them out here in the freight-house,
I stayed that night with the dead;

I shall never forget the letter

We found in her purse; it said:

"Dear Alice; praise God I've got here!
I'll soon have a home for you now;
But you must come with the baby,
As soon as you can anyhow.
Comfort the grandfather, and tell him
That by and by he shall come,
And sing the songs of old England,
'Neath the willows beside our home;
For, close by the door of our cottage
I'll set out a willow-tree,

For his sake and the sake of old England.
Lovingly yours. John Leigh."

The tears filled my eyes as I read it;
But I whispered-" God is just !"
For I knew the true heart yonder-
Then only a handful of dust-
Had drawn this sweet little woman
Right here, and God's merciful love
Had taken her from the sorrow,
To the glad reunion above!

So, close by the grave of the other,
We laid her away to rest;
The golden-haired, English mother,
With the baby upon her breast.
I planted those trees above them,
For I knew their story, you see;
And I thought their rest would be sweeter
'Neath their own loved willow tree.

Five years rolled along, and lady,
My story may now seem to you
Like a wonderful piece of fiction;
But I tell you it is true.

As true as-that God is above us!
One summer day, hot and clear,
As the train rolled into the station
And stopped to change engines here,
Among a company of Mormons

Came a tremblin', white-haired man.
He asked me, with voice very eager,
"Will you tell me, sir, if you can,
Of a place called Brackenboro'?
And how far have I got to go?"
"It's the next station north," I answered,
"Only thirteen miles below."

His old face lit up for a moment,

With a look of joy complete;

Then he threw up his hands toward heaven And dropped down dead at my feet!

"Old Hugh Leigh is dead," said a Mormon, And sights o' trouble he's be'n.

Nothin' would do when we started,

But that he must come with us then

To find Alice, John, and the baby;
And his heart was well nigh broke,
With waitin' and watchin' in England,
For letters they never wrote."

So we buried him there with the others,
Beneath the willow-tree.

'Twas God's way of ending the story-
More perfect than man's could be!

THE BABIES.-S. L. CLEMENS.

Speech of Mark Twain at the banquet given in honor of Gen. Grant, by the Army of the Tennessee, at the Palmer House, Chicago, Nov. 14, 1879.

TOAST:

"The Babies-As they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities."

I like that. We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground, for we have all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby-as if he didn't amount to anything! If you gentlemen will stop and think a minute,--if you will go back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life, and recontemplate your first baby, you will remember that he amounted to a good deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family head-quarters you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You could face the death-storm of Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears, you set your faces toward the batteries and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop, you advanced in the other direction--and mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called for soothing syrup, did you venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No,-you got up and got it. If he ordered his bottle, and it wasn't warm, did you talk back? Not you,-you went to work and warmed

it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right,-three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccups. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along; sentimental young folks still took stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but "too thin,"-simply wind on the stomach, my friends! If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, 2:30 in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark—with a mental addition which wouldn't improve a Sunday-school book much-that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself! Oh, you were under good discipline! And as you went fluttering up and down the room in your "undress uniform" you not only prattled undignified babytalk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing "Rockaby baby in a tree-top," for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too,—for it isn't everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise,— "Go on!",-what did you do? You simply went on, till you disappeared in the last ditch.

The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front-yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole interior department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby;-as long as you are in your mind don't you ever pray for twins.

Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop. Fifty years hence we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still survive,—and let us hope it may-will be floating over a republic numbering 200,000,000