Or shall our spirit eyes beholding
God's mysterious plans unfolding

In the great hereafter,

See His strength the Right upholding,
And His love the weak enfolding
In the great hereafter?

Struggling here with opposition

Gives, perchance, the strong volition
Some may need for angel mission
In the great hereafter ;
And the ills of life's condition,
To the tried may bring fruition

Of a joyous, sweet elysian

In the great hereafter.

What has seemed Fate's unfair dealing May unveil a joy, revealing

In the great hereafter,

That why unheard the heart's appealing,
Made in agony of feeling,
'Mong its broken idols kneeling,
God, a higher destiny was sealing,
For the great hereafter.

YOSEMITE.

WITH humbled heart, subdued and awed, I look on thee,

Thou time-defying granite pile; with senses rapt
I see thee, grand and world-renowned, Yosemite
Thy spray-enwreathing stream,

Thy rock-walled vale and sunset clouds, all glory capped

With evanescent gleam.

Aye, see, and wandering gaze, until the centuries swing

Their massive doors ajar and glimpses give when earth was young;

But farthest grasp of human thought but weakling reasons bring

To solve thy problem vast;

In vain we ask the voiceless silences that hung
Their mysteries o'er the past,

The far, dim past, that wrapped our sphere in shore

less sea,

The mantling gloom, that swathed its infancy in mist,

While yet the sun did wait omnipotent decree

To bless the world with light

Ere Day's first smiling morn, with rosy beams had kissed

Away the brooding night.

213

What engine wrought in Nature's great completing plan

To ope for thee thy chasms broad, abysmal deeps? Was it the glacier's pondrous plow that smoothed for man

The verdant fertile plain,

Or rolling waters, that thro' circling æons wore thy steeps

With solemn, sad refrain?

Or, from earth's central fires did fierce volcanic throes

Expel in molten mass the elemental rock,
That o'er the wilds to mountain majesty arose,
And while yet warm with throbbing strain,
Did earthquake rend with pole-disturbing shock
Thy mighty walls amain?

Oh, puny mind, be still and catch the chant sublime Of Nature's psalm, that there is poured in neverending praise;

Accept the truth' that God, by His right hand, did raise

These templed rocks, to stand thro' an eternity of time,

An altar place of worship, where

All nations come, and every heart an offering lays Of mingled praise and prayer.

THE CHRIST.

IN olive-crowned Gethsemane,
Alone the Savior sought the power
That wrought through him at Galilee,
To stay the tide of that dark hour.
With grief-bowed soul he prayed, but grace
Was His, to say: "Thy will be done.”
In brooding gloom God veiled His face
And gave the world His only Son.

Yet His displeasure hid the day,

Spread blanching terror o'er the land;
Tho' yielding hate its earth-born sway

O'er ruling Love in wisdom planned ;
While human might did glut its greed
With nod of law to sanction crime,
A good, by higher law decreed,
Went forth, encirling earth and time.

Far-reaching, 'twas to win the world;

Their cruel deeds of blinded rage, Their mocking taunts like hell-brands hurled, Still echo from the sacred page; That bitter cup, the crown of thorn Upon His suffering, sinless brow, That wail adown the ages borne, Are loving worship winning now.

O! blot the hard, blasphemous creed,
"A sacrifice for wrath of God,"
And teach the world 'twas human deed
That stained with blood Golgotha's sod.
The reeling earth and darkened sun

Proclaimed aloud Jehovah's frown,
Yet taught us that His holy one

Had by life's cross won heaven's crown.

That tho' he passed the pain, the tomb, To calm a world in maddened strife, From out its broken bars of gloom

A joy would beam to beacon life, And bless for us that morning light

That points the glory path he trod From persecution, death and night, Through resurrection, up to God.

'Tis through His bearing mortal woes We feel the throb of love divine! Though wrung with agonizing throes,

His words with God-like mercy shine; They wake the world to faith and hope; E'en from old Memnon's music trill They turn the dusky Ethiope

To catch their soul-impassioned thrill.

"Forgive! they know not what they do!"
O, holy prayer! In every tongue
Its tender pleading pulses through,

As when from Calvary's cross it rung!
O, arms of Love's infinitude!

They still reach down to earth from heaven To bind in one great brotherhood, Through Him, the rescued world, forgiven.

M

EMMA COLLINS SHARKEY.

RS.E. BURKE COLLINS was born in Rochester, N. Y., and is a direct descendant of the famous Whiting family, of New England, whose published geneology traces the family back 600 years. Her maiden name was Emma Augusta Browne. She left school at fifteen years of age and married the eminent lawyer, E. Burke Collins, of Rochester, N. Y. Immediately after their marriage they settled in Louisiana, where ten months later Mrs. Collins was a widow. Having written poems and sketches for the press since her twelfth year, and being thrown upon her own resources by reverses, the young girl-widow turned to authorship as a means of livelihood. Gifted with a vivid imagination and a warm and sympathetic nature, her novels were promptly recognized by her publishers as posessing rare merit of an emotional character. She has written almost one-hundred novels and thousands of sketches and poems. Her favorite novel, “A Gilded God," was very successful, 72,000 copies being sold within a week of its publication. At one time she was employed by four publishers to contribute four different serials weekly, besides a short sketch.

Mrs. Collins has a very expressive face, mingling strong character with intense womanly tenderness. Her wavy brown hair falls over a high brow, and her eyes have that beryl tint frequently found in the person of strong individuality and talent. Her home is in the quaint city of New Orleans, where eight years ago she became the wife of Robert R. Sharkey, nephew of the late Geo. Sharkey, of Mississippi, and also United States Senator and judge of the supreme court. They live in a beautiful home. E. B.

JOHN LAWRENCE SMITH.

N the writing of a biography historians are wont

Ito skip the details of early childhood, begining

the life of the man with the year of his majority. There is much that is significant in the early life of John L. Smith. His father was killed in the civil war, his mother died shortly after, leaving a child of five years alone in the world, and at mercy of whoever might select him from the car-load of children with which he was taken from Randall's Island, New York, in 1867, under that aspect of chill privation. There was quality in the boy's brain, and as naturally as water seeks its level he took to education. At twenty he was teaching school and by steady application finding a place in the world of earnest thinking people. In 1887 he began to edit the Dana News, a weekly, of semiliterary character, which was consicered one of the leading country papers in the State. During the years 1891-92 he was superintendent of the Dana schools. On July 4th, 1893, he was appointed postmaster of Dana.

Owing to his fondness for books, Mr. Smith has accumulated a library of 3,500 volumes, 600 of which are upon Indiana or by Indiana authors.

From time to time Mr. Smith has contributed in verse to Chicago, Indianapolis and Boston weeklies, and at present he is engaged upon the revision of a work upon Aesthetics, and also upon the collection of material for a history of Indiana literature.

Mr. Smith is a man of quiet and retiring disposition. Too much a dreamer for this sordid world, he is a man who might be often misunderstood, yet is well loved by those who know him best, and is not easily forgotten. J. V. S.

'TWIXT THE GLEAMS AND THE GLOOMS.

AT creation's dawn by divine power was hurled,
Forever redeemed from Chaos and Night,
The earth with her sisters of the stellar world,
To wander incessant through darkness and light,
Through mists and fogs, with her icy poles

Deep buried in terrors; her crust entombs
The sunshine of ages; thus ever she rolls

'Twixt the gleams and the glooms.

On ocean's wild wave, through tempests and calms, Freighted with riches a brave vessel rides;

Or 'neath the marge of sweet-breathing tropical palms,

'Midst vernal-crowned beauty in rapture she glides,