on the step, and yells out, "Give my love to Maria! Tell Arabella she owes me a call! Don't forget to bring William Henry and the children up to tea on Tuesday night! And tell Aunt Sarah I'd have that bombazine dyed black and trimmed with bugles!" Conductor looks like a man who would commit unjustifiable homicide upon slight provocation. In wrath he pulls the bell; the woman mounts the step, smiles at her friends, waves her parasol at them, and when she has sailed about a hundred yards up the street she calls out, "Be sure to tell Arabella, and don't let Georgie suck the yellow paint off of his mouth organ!" When she is seated, the conductor waits awhile, and then he asks for her fare. She feels in her pocket. Good gracious! she hopes she hasn't lost her purse! She dives into her satchel; it isn't there! Perhaps the tickets are under her glove; she removes it slowly; but they can't be found! She tries her pocket again, and finds, the purse there after all. Conductor looks as indignantly melancholy as an aristocratic undertaker at a funeral at which there are only four carriages and a yellow pine coffin. The woman unfolds a bundle of notes slowly; but as she doesn't find the one she wants, she puts them all back, and hunts around in her satchel for five minutes for a ten cent piece. Conductor gives her back four cents change and goes out on the platform, when he tears his hair, kicks a small newsboy off the step, and tells his sorrowful tale to a passenger who is smoking a cigar. Meanwhile the woman has found an acquaintance, to whom she is talking as briskly as if this was the first chance she had since last summer. She wants to get out at Twentieth street. Conductor stops the car; but the woman, half rising, continues her able remarks to her acquaintance. Conductor says, "Please hurry up, madam!" and she jumps to her feet, shakes hands with her friend, saying, "Oh! I forgot to ask after John!" John is well, but the woman thinks it necessary to offer some extended sanitary suggestions in reference to John's health, and to declare that she will be abjectly miserable unless Mary Jane brings the twins up to spend the day. More objurgations on the part of the degraded outcast on the back platform. The woman at last starts for the door, and is about to step off,

when she misses her purse. She goes back into the car to look for it, moves all the passengers, overturns all the hay, at last finds the purse in her pocket, says “Good-by; come up to see me" again to her friend, and gets out. Conductor rattles a volley of imprecations down the street after her, pulls the strap savagely, and transfers twenty-five cents worth of fares from his business pocket into his private exchequer as a balm to soothe his lacerated feelings.

SONG OF THE MYSTIC.-FATHER RYAN.

I walk down the valley of silence,—
Down the dim voiceless valley,-alone;
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me-save God's and my own,
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hours when angels have flown!
Long ago, was I weary of voices

Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago, I was weary of noises

That fretted my soul with their din.

Long ago, was I weary of places

Where I met but the human-and sin.

I walked through the world with the worldly,
I craved what the world never gave,
And I said: "In the world each ideal,
That shines like a star on life's wave,
Is tossed on the shore of the real,

And sleeps like a dream in a grave.”

And still did I pine for the perfect,
And still found the false with the true;
I sought not the human for heaven,

But caught a mere glimpse of the blue.
And I wept when the clouds of the mortal
Veiled even that glimpse from my view.
And I toiled on, heart-tired of the human,
And I mourned not the mazes of men;
Till I knelt long ago at an altar,

And heard a voice call me; since then
I walk down the valley of silence
That lies far beyond mortal ken.

Do you ask what I found in the valley?
'Tis my trysting-place with the Divine;
And I fell at the feet of the Holy,

And above me a voice said, "Be mine."
Then rose from the depths of my spirit
An echo: "My heart shall be thine."

Do

you ask how I live in the valley?

I weep, and I dream, and I pray;

But my tears are as sweet as the dewdrops
That fall on the roses of May:

And my prayer like a perfume from censers
Ascendeth to God night and day.

In the bush of the valley of silence

I dream all the songs that I sing;
And the music floats down the dim valley
Till each finds a word for a wing

That to men, like the dove of the deluge,
The message of peace they may bring.
But far on the deep there are billows
That never shall break on the beach,
And I have heard songs in the silence
That never shall float into speech.
And I have had dreams in the valley
Too lofty for language to reach.
And I have seen thoughts in the valley-
Ah me! how my spirit was stirred!
And they wore holy veils on their faces,

Their footsteps can scarcely be heard;
They pass through the valley like virgins,
Too pure for the touch of a word.
Do you ask me the place of the valley,
Ye hearts that are harrowed by care?
It lieth afar between mountains,

And God and his angels are there;
And one is the dark mount of sorrow,
And one the bright mountain of prayer.

THE OLD CHURCH-YARD TREE.

There is an old yew tree which stands by the wall in a dark quiet corner of the church-yard.

And a child was at play beneath its wide-spreading branches, one fine day in the early spring. He had his lap full of

flowers, which the fields and lanes had supplied him with, and he was humming a tune to himself as he wove them into garlands.

And a little girl at play among the tombstones crept near to listen; but the boy was so intent upon his garland, that he did not hear the gentle footsteps, as they trod softly over the fresh green grass. When his work was finished, and all the flowers that were in his lap were woven together in one long wreath, he started up to measure its length upon the ground, and then he saw the little girl, as she stood with her eyes fixed upon him. He did not move or speak, but thought to himself that she looked very beautiful as she stood there with her flaxen ringlets hanging down upon her neck. The little girl was so startled by his sudden movement, that she let fall all the flowers she had collected in her apron, and ran away as fast as she could. But the boy was older and taller than she, and soon caught her, and coaxed her to come back and play with him, and help him to make more garlands; and from that time they saw each other nearly every day, and became great friends.

Twenty years passed away. Again, he was seated beneath the old yew tree in the church-yard.

It was summer now; bright, beautiful summer, with the birds singing, and the flowers covering the ground, and scenting the air with their perfume.

But he was not alone now, nor did the little girl steal near on tiptoe, fearful of being heard. She was seated by his side, and his arm was round her, and she looked up into his face, and smiled as she whispered: "The first evening of our lives we were ever together was passed here: we will spend the first evening of our wedded life in the same quiet, happy place." And he drew her closer to him as she spoke.

The summer is gone; and the autumn; and twenty more summers and autumns have passed away since that evening in the old church-yard.

A young man, on a bright moonlight night, comes reeling through the little white gate, and stumbling over the graves. He shouts and he sings and is presently followed by others like unto himself, or worse. So they all laugh at the dark solemn head of the yew tree, and throw stones up at the place where the moon has silvered the boughs.

Those same boughs are again silvered by the moon, and they droop over his mother's grave. There is a little stone which bears this inscription :-" HER HEART BRAKE IN SILENCE."

But the silence of the church-yard is now broken by a voice -not of the youth-nor a voice of laughter and ribaldry. "My son! dost thou see this grave? and dost thou read the record in anguish, whereof may come repentance?"

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"Of what should I repent?" answers the son; "and why should my young ambition for fame relax in its strength because my mother was old and weak?"

"Is this indeed our son?" says the father, bending in agony over the grave of his beloved.

"I can well believe I am not;" exclaimeth the youth. "It is well that you have brought me here to say so. Our natures are unlike; our courses must be opposite. Your way lieth here,-mine yonder!"

So the son left the father kneeling by the grave.

Again a few years are passed. It is winter, with a roaring wind and a thick gray fog. The graves in the church-yard are covered with snow, and there are great icicles in the church-porch. The wind now carries a swath of snow along the tops of the graves, as though the "sheeted dead" were at some melancholy play; and hark! the icicles fall with a crash and jingle, like a solemn mockery of the echo of the unseemly mirth of one who is now coming to his final rest.

There are two graves near the old yew tree; and the grass has overgrown them. A third is close by; and the dark earth at each side has just been thrown up. The bearers come; with a heavy pace they move along; the coffin heaveth up and down, as they step over the intervening graves.

Grief and old age had seized upon the father, and worn out his life; and premature decay soon seized upon the son, and gnawed away his vain ambition, and his useless strength, till he prayed to be borne, not the way yonder that was most opposite to his father and his mother, but even the same way they had gone,-the way which leads to the old church-yard tree.

LITTLE BY LITTLE.

Little by little, sure and slow,

We fashion our future of bliss or woe,

As the present passes away.

Our feet are climbing the stairway bright,
Up to the region of endless light,
Or gliding downward into the night;

Little by little, and day by day.