Who to his plighted word and truth
Has ever firmly stood;

And though he promise to his loss,
He makes his promise good.

Whose soul in usury disdains

His treasures to employ;
Whom no rewards can ever bribe
The guiltless to destroy.

LOVE OF COUNTRY.-JOSEPH HOLT.

Next to the worship of the Father of us all, the deepest and grandest of human emotions is the love of the land that gave us birth. It is an enlargement and exaltation of all the tenderest and strongest sympathies of kindred and of home. In all centuries and climes it has lived, and defied chains and dungeons and racks to crush it. It has strewed the earth with its monuments, and has shed undying lustre on a thousand fields on which it has battled. Through the night of ages, Thermopyla glows like some mountain peak on which the morning sun has risen, because twenty-three hundred years ago, this hallowing passion touched its mural precipices and its crowning crags.

It is easy, however, to be patriotic in piping times of peace, and in the sunny hour of prosperity. It is national sorrow, -it is war, with its attendant perils and horrors, that tests this passion, and winnows from the masses those who, with all their love of life, still love their country more. We honor commerce with its busy marts, and the workshop with its patient toil and exhaustless ingenuity, but still we would be unfaithful to the truth of history did we not confess that the most heroic champions of human freedom and the most illustrious apostles of its principles have come from the broad fields of agriculture.

There seems to be something in the scenes of nature, in her wild and beautiful landscapes, in her cascades, and cataracts, and waving woodlands, and in the pure and exhilarating airs of her hills and mountains, that unbraces the fetters which man would rivet upon the spirit of his fellow-man.

It was at the handles of the plow, and amid the breathing

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odors of its newly-opened furrows, that the character of Cincinnatus was formed, expanded and matured. It was not in the city full, but in the deep gorges and upon the snow-clad summits of the Alps-amid the eagles and the thundersthat William Tell laid the foundations of those altars to human liberty, against which the surging tides of European despotism have beaten for centuries, but, thank God, have beaten in vain. It was amid the primeval forests and mountains, the lakes and leaping streams of our own land; amid fields of waving grain; amid the songs of the reaper and the tinkling of the shepherd's bell, that were nurtured those rare virtues which clustered, star-like, in the character of Washington, and lifted him in moral stature a head and shoulders above even the demi-gods of ancient story.

CHURCH REVERIES OF A SCHOOL-GIRL.
MRS. ENOCH TAYLOR.

I have a new bonnet; I'll go up to church
To hear the new preacher, young Jonathan Birch;
He's single and handsome, but they say he's so shy,
And that his sermons are long and dreadfully dry;
But, being a bachelor, I'll try for his sake
To look interested, and keep wide awake.
What a good congregation; I'm glad that I came;
That face is familiar, but what is her name?
Ah, yes! at the social she sang through her nose;
I wonder if Murray will ever propose?
The choir has finished its opening hymn,
The preacher's too pale and awfully prim.
His prayers I think tedious, and prosy, and long;
They say that he thinks even dancing is wrong.
What beautiful mantles the Burton girls wear;
I wonder if they really do bleach their hair?
They dress awful stylish and have a front pew;
They say that their father's as rich as a Jew.

Ah! there goes the sermon,-I must listen with care;
Oh, hasn't Frank Fields got beautiful hair?

I must catch, if I can, the drift of the text;

I wonder what beau Belle Laws will have next?

Ah, me! how I wish the choir would sing;

I'd give something nice for a new diamond ring.

Oh, why don't the preachers all preach to the point?
I have sat here till every bone's out of joint,
I've a crick in my neck and a pain in my back.

I declare, Mary Riley has got a new sack,
And all lined through with the finest of fur,

I never could see what folks fancied in her.

Well, the sermon's progressing, I must listen and learn,
How I wish he'd warm up and not look so stern.
Mary Gray is in mourning, I wonder who's dead,
She'd look well in black if her hair wasn't red.
In the pew right behind me is old Deacon Moore;
I don't mind his sleeping, but why does he snore?
Just hear that cross baby; I know Mr. Birch
Must hate so to have it disturbing the church;
And how can he preach and pray through it all?
They say Maggie Ross was "belle of the ball;"
That her dress was just lovely, her dancing divine,
But I won't believe it was better than mine.

The sermon is finished, the Bible is closed,

The "collection" has wakened the deacons that dozed;
I must feel in my pocket and get out my dime,
Those boys in the gallery have a good time.
Why, there's Mary Martin! what a beautiful hat,
How pretty she'd be if she wasn't so fat!

And now we will have a tune from the choir;

I think that their singing lacks feeling and fire;

I wonder if Murray will be at the door

Or if he will join that pert Minnie Moore?

She's so proud of her eyes, with their sleepy old lids,
I do wish I had some six-button kids.

"Old Hundred" is finished and I'll get my muff,
I think for to-day I've had preaching enough.
The aisle is so crowded we'll have to go slow;
Ah! there's Minnie Moore gone off with my beau!
See how she struts in her new polonaise;
I always did hate her impudent ways.

I'll pretend not to see her and turn up my nose,
And show how indifferent I am to the beaus;
There's Jennie Jones opposite waiting to see
If I had a gentleman come home with me.
Ah, me, I just know pa and ma will be vexed
For I have forgotten every word of the text.

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NOTHING IS LOST.

Nothing is lost: the drop of dew

Which trembles on the leaf or flower
Is but exhaled to fall anew

In summer's thunder-shower;
Perchance to shine within the bow

That fronts the sun at fall of day;
Perchance to sparkle in the flow
Of fountains far away.

Nothing is lost; the tiniest seed

By wild birds borne or breezes blown,
Finds something suited to its need,
Wherein 'tis sown and grown.

The language of some household song,
The perfume of some cherished flower,
Though gone from outward sense, belong
To memory's after-hour.

So with our words: or harsh or kind,
Uttered, they are not all forgot:

They have their influence on the mind,
Pass on-but perish not.

So with our deeds: for good or ill,

They have their power scarce understood;

Then let us use our better will,

To make them rife with good!

SAXON GRIT.-ROBERT COLLYER.

At the New England dinner, given in New York on the 22nd of December, 1879, the toast, "The Saxon Grit-which, in New England as in Old England, bas made a race of men to be honored, feared and respected. It is as positive as the earth is firm," was responded to by the Rev. Robert Collyer, in the follow ug poem:

Worn with the battle, by Stamford town,

Fighting the Normans by Hastings Bay,

Harold the Saxon's sun went down,

While the acorns were falling one Autumn day.
Then the Norman said, "I am lord of the land;
By tenor of conquest here I sit :

I will rule you now with the iron hand;"
But he had not thought of the Saxon grit.

He took the land, and he took the men,

And burnt the homesteads from Trent to Tyne,
Made the freemen serfs by a stroke of the pen,
Eat up the corn and drank the wine,
And said to the maiden, pure and fair,
"You shall be my leman, as is most fit,
Your Saxon churl may rot in his lair;"

But he had not measured the Saxon grit.

To his merry green wood went bold Robin Hood, With his strong-hearted yeomanry ripe for the fray, Driving the arrow into the marrow

Of all the proud Normans who came in his way, Scorning the fetter, fearless and free,

Winning by valor, or foiling by wit,

Dear to our Saxon folk ever is he,

This merry old rogue, with the Saxon grit.

And Kett, the tanner, whipt out his knife;

And Watt, the smith, his hammer brought down For Ruth, the maid he loved better than life,

And by breaking a head, made a hole in the crown.
From the Saxon heart rose a mighty roar,

"Our life shall not be by the king's permit;
We will fight for the right, we want no more,"
Then the Norman found out the Saxon grit.
For slow and sure as the oaks had grown
From the acorns falling that Autumn day,
So the Saxon manhood in thorp and town
To a nobler stature grew alway.
Winning by inches, holding by clinches,
Standing by law and the human right,
Many times failing, never once quailing,
So the new day came out of the night.

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Then rising afar in the western sea,

A new world stood in the morn of the day,

Ready to welcome the brave and free,

Who could wrench out the heart and march away

From the narrow, contracted, dear old land

Where the poor are held by a cruel bit,

To ampler spaces for heart and hand

And here was a chance for the Saxon grit.

Steadily steering, eagerly peering,
Trusting in God, your fathers came,

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