"Don't you hate to tie your shoe-strings?" Yes, I own it that is true. "Don't you tell old stories over?" I am not aware I do. 66 Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat In a corner by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet? Don't you wear warm fleecy flannels? Don't you muffle up your throat? Don't you like to have one help you when you're putting on your coat? "Don't you like old books you've dog's-eared, you can't remember when? Don't you call it late at nine o'clock and go to bed at ten? How many cronies can you count of all you used to know That called you by your Christian name some fifty years ago? 'How look the prizes to you that used to fire your brain? You've reared your mound-how high is it above the level plain? You've drained the brimming golden cup that made your fancy reel, You've slept the giddy potion off,-now tell us how you feel? "You've watched the harvest ripening till every stem was cropped, You've seen the rose of beauty fade till every petal dropped, You've told your thought, you've done your task, you've tracked your dial round," -I backing down! Thank Heaven, not yet! I'm hale and brisk and sound, And good for many a tussle, as you shall live to see; My shoes are not quite ready yet-don't think you're rid of me! Old Parr was in his lusty prime when he was older far, And where will you be if I live to beat old Thomas Parr? "Ah well,-I know,—at every age life has a certain charm— You're going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you'll take my arm." I take your arm! Why take your arm? be told; I'd thank you to I'm old enough to walk alone, but not so very old! DAMASCUS.-SAMUEL L. CLEMENS. Damascus is the oldest city in the world. Tyre and Sidon have crumbled on the shore; Baalbec is a ruin; Palmyra is buried in the sands of the desert; Nineveh and Babylon have disappeared from the Tigris and Euphrates; Damascus remains what it was before the days of Abraham,—a centre of trade and travel, an island of verdure in a desert, “a predestined capital," with martial and sacred associations extending through more than thirty centuries. It was near Damascus that Saul of Tarsus saw the light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun. The street which is called Straight, in which it was said he prayed, still runs through the city. The caravan comes and goes as it did three thousand years ago; there are still the sheik, the ass, and the waterwheel; the merchants of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean still " occupy these with the multitudes of their waters." The city which Mohammed surveyed from a neighboring height and was afraid to enter because it was given to have but one paradise, and for his part he was resolved not to have it in this world, is to this day what Julian called "the eye of the East," as it was in the time of Isaiah, “the head of Syria." From Damascus came the damson, or damascene, or blue plum, and the delicious apricot of Portugal, called the damasco; damask, our beautiful fabric of cotton and silk, with vines and flowers raised upon a smooth, bright ground; the damask rose, introduced into England in the time of Henry VIII.; the Damascus blade, so famous the world over for its keen edge and wonderful elasticity, the secret of whose manufacture was lost when Tamerlane carried off the arts into Persia; and the beautiful art of inlaying wood and steel with silver and gold, a kind of Mosaic, engraving and sculpture united-called damaskeening-with which boxes, swords, guns, and bureaus are ornamented. It is still a city of flowers and bright waters; the “rivers of Damascus," the "streams from Lebanon," the "rivers of gold," still murmur and sparkle in the wilderness of "Syrian Gardone." The early history of Damascus is shrouded in the hoary mists of antiquity. Leave the matters written of it in the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament out, and no recorded event had occurred in the whole to show that Damascus was in existence to receive it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the writings of every country for more than four thousand years, its name has been mentioned and its praises sung. To Damascus years are only moments: decades, only flitting trifles of time. She measures time not by days and months, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper, then crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw the foundation of Baalbec and Thebes and Ephesus laid; she saw them grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their grandeur, and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given to the owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise and flourish for two thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few hundred years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were, to grave old Damascus, only a scintillation hardly worth remembering. Damascus has seen all that has occurred on earth and still lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and she will live to see the tomb of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims the name, old Damascus is, by right, the Eternal City. THE CHINESE EXCELSIOR. That nightee teem he come chop-chop He cally flag with chop so nice- He muchee solly: one piecee eye Insidee house he can see light, Ole man talkee, "No can walk, "Man-man" one girlee talkee he: "Take care t'hat spilum tlee, young man, T'hat young man die : one large dog see He hand b'long coldee, all same like ice, He holdee flag, with chop so nice— Top-side Galah! CRADLE SONG. Low in the troubled west, Ah, baby! soft and warm, What for the night so drear, Waking or sleeping, While thou art folded here Safe in my keeping. AT THE LAST.-MRS. J. M. WINTON. "Man goeth forth unto his work, and to his labor, until the evening.-PBALM eiv: 23. The stream is calmest when it nears the tide, And flowers are sweetest at the even-tide, She comes from heaven, and on her wings doth bear To shut the weary eyes of day in peace. All things are hushed before her, as she throws Until the evening we must weep and toil, THE TWO BEGGARS. A beggar stood at the rich man's door "I'm homeless and friendless, and faint, and poor," Down his thin cheek, blanched with want and cold. The rich man went to the parish church, |