December

ICICLES AT THE SOUTH

The rain on the trees has ceased to freeze;
('Twas molded with quaint device)
The bent boughs lean, like cimeters keen,
In scabbards of shining ice.

'Neath frozen cloaks the pines and oaks
Are stooping like Druids old,-

And the cedars stand-an arctic band-
Held in the clutch of cold.

Through the outer gloom the japonicas bloom,
With the lustre of rubies bright-

Like blossoms blown from a tropic zone,

A marvellous land of light!

WILLIAM HAMILTON HAYNE

December First

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL

The Fir-tree felt it with a thrill
And murmur of content;
The last dead Leaf its cable slipt
And from its moorings went;

The selfsame silent messenger,
To one that shibboleth
Of Life imparting, and to one,
The countersign of Death.

JOHN B. TABB

December Second

The avengers whose lives he had attempted, whose wives and children he had devoted to the hideous brutality of insurgent Africans, spared him all indignities, even moral torture.

PERCY GREG

(England)

John Brown hanged, 1859

December Third

The Black and Tan Convention met December 3, 1867, in our venerable and historic capital to frame a new constitution for the Old Dominion. In this body were members from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ireland, Scotland, Nova Scotia, Canada, England; scalawags, or turn-coats, by Southerners most hated of all; twenty-four negroes; and in the total of 105, thirty-five white Virginians, from counties of excess white population, who might be considered representative of the State's culture and intelligence. MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY

James Rumsey (1787) makes successful trial trip of the steamboat designed after the model of 1784, then witnessed by George Washington and others

December Fourth

A BIT OF RECONSTRUCTION ORATORY "Mistah President, de real flatform, suh. I'll sw'ar tuh high Heaven. Yas, I'll sw'ar higher dan dat. I'll go down an' de uth shall crumble intuh dus' befor' dee shall amalgamise my rights. 'Bout dis question uh cyarpetbags. Ef you cyarpet-baggers does go back on us, woes be unto you! You better take yo cyarpet-bags and quit, and de quicker you git up and git de better. I do not abdicate de supperstition tuh dese strange friens, lately so-called citizens uh Ferginny. Ef dee don' gimme my rights, I'll suffer dis country tuh be lak Sarah. I'll suffer desterlation fus!".

"I'se here tuh qualify my constituents. I'll sing tuh Rome an' tuh Englan' an' tuh de uttermos' parts uh de uth." ("You must address yourself to the chair," said that functionary, ready to faint.) "All right, suh, I'll not 'sire tuh maintain de House any longer."

HON. LEWIS LINDSAY

(From Stenographic Report)

December Fifth

Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said that if there had been no God mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.

December Sirtb

GEORGE WASHINGTON

CLEMENCY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS Honorable Jefferson Davis: My father, Harrison Self, is sentenced to hang at four o'clock this evening on a charge of bridgeburning. As he remains my earthly all, and all my hopes of happiness centre on him, I implore you to pardon him.

ELIZABETH SELF

(Telegram which secured pardon for her father)

Jefferson Davis dies, 1889

The county of Kentucky formed from Virginia, 1776

Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham,“Hero of the Koszta Rescue," born, 1802