Down at his side, in the grass, I flung,

Pressed the dear dead face up close to my own, One maddened moment my heart was wrung, Then it was turned to stone.

Back I rode into the fight once more,

Fought with the strength and rage of ten; So may God never, till battles are o'er, Suffer that men fight men.

፡፡

THE COUNTERSIGN WAS MARY."

'TWAS near the break of day, but still
The moon was shining brightly;
The west wind as it passed the flowers
Set each one swaying lightly;
The sentry slow paced to and fro
A faithful night-watch keeping,
While in the tents behind him stretched,
His comrades all were sleeping.

Slow to and fro the sentry paced,
His musket on his shoulder,
But not a thought of death or war
Was with the brave young soldier.
Ah, ho! his heart was far away
Where, on a western prairie,
A rose-twined cottage stood.
The countersign was "Mary."

That night

And there his own true love he saw,
Her blue eyes kindly beaming;
Above them, on her sun-kissed brow,
Her curls like sunlight gleaming,
And heard her singing, as she churned
The butter in the dairy,

The song he loved the best. That night
The countersign was Mary."

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"Oh, for one kiss from her!" he sighed,
When up the lone road glancing,

He spied a form, a little form,

With faltering steps advancing,

And as it neared him silently
He gazed at it in wonder:

Then dropped his musket to his hand,
And challenged: "Who goes yonder?"

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Still on it came. "Not one step more,
Be you man, or child, or fairy,
Unless you give the countersign.
Halt! Who goes there?" "Tis Mary,"
A sweet voice cried, and in his arms
The girl he'd left behind him
Half-fainting fell. O'er many miles
She'd bravely toiled to find him.

"I heard that you were wounded, dear,"
She sobbed: "my heart was breaking;
I could not stay a moment, but,

All other ties forsaking,

I travelled, by my grief made strong,
Kind heaven watching o'er me,
Until unhurt and well?”

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"Yes, love,"

"At last you stood before me."

"They told me that I could not pass
The lines to seek my lover
Before day fairly came; but I
Pressed on ere night was over,
And as I told my name, I found
The way free as our prairie."

"Because, thank God! to-night," he said

The countersign is Mary.'

MARGARET EYTINGE.

PAT'S BONDSMAN.

"THE top av the morning to ye, Father Ray,
Ye sees it's meself as is sober the day
It's jist getting out of a schrape that I be,
And Mike, that's my b'y, he went bondsman for me.

"Shure I was in court jist a fortnight ago
"Twas when I was over in Flannigan's Row;

And I had a fight with a neighbor or two-
They said it was murther that I was up to.

"But shure it was only a bit av a row,

And ashamed I am when I think av it now;
But one of the spalpeens fell over the stair,

And they said 'twas meself as had helped him down there.

"So they brought me in court, to his honor, Jedge Shaw, He's a mighty hard one to come down with the law; And the heart in my bussom could hardly kape still When he read, Patrick Flynn, for attempting to kill.'

6

"And I trembled all over when he says to me:

Have ye got any

6

friends'll go bondsman for ye Nary one, plaze yer honor,' sez I; then he said, In a voice that, I reckon, would most raise the dead:

"Prisoner at the bar, as ye can't get no bail,
I am owthorized now to commit ye to jail.'
And then, Howly Virgin! what else should I see
But Mike walking straight to the jedge, and sez he,

"As he took off his hat, what was torn in the rim:
'Av ye plaze, Mister Jedge, I'll be bondsman for him.
I ain't got no money, but I'll go his bail,
And av he runs away you can put me to jail,

"I ain't got no mother, she died long ago,
And left me to take care of father, ye know;
And what wud she say if ye put him in jail
'Cus he hadn't got no one but me for his bail?

"He's good as can be when he's not drank a drop,
And maybe if somebody asked him, he'd stop;
He didn't push Bill; I was there, and I see;
Av ye plaže, Mister Jedge, let me father go free.'

"Saints bless the child forever! The jedge sez, sez he:
'My b'y, I 'quit your father, and both av ye are free
The bail is all-sufficient; it satisfies the law.'

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Hurrah!' spoke out the people; three cheers for Justice Shaw!"

"And the jedge had some tears in his eyes, I allow,
When he walked up to me, and sez he, with a bow:
I've let ye off aisy this time, Patrick Flynn;
For the sake av that youngster, don't come here agin.'
"So I've taken the pledge now, yer Riverence Ray,
On account of the b'y, and I'm sober the day;
It was a bad schrape, and I'd niver got free,
Only for Mike going bondsman for me."

LILIAN A. MOULTON, in Youth's Companion.

WHAT SAVED THE UNION.

Fourth of July Speech of General Grant at Hamburg.

I SHARE with you in all the pleasure and gratitude which Americans so far away from home should feel on this anniversary. But I must dissent from one remark of our consul, to the effect that I saved the country during the recent war. If our country could be saved or ruined by the efforts of any one man, we should not have a country, and we should not now be celebrating our Fourth of July. There are many men who would have done far better than I did, under the circumstances in which I found myself during the war. If I had never held command, if I had fallen, if all our generals had fallen, there were ten thousand behind us who would have done our work just as well, who would have followed the contest to the end, and never surrendered the Union. Therefore it is a mistake and a reflection upon the people to attribute to me, or to any number of us who hold high commands, the salvation of the Union. We did our work as well as we could, and so did hundreds of thousands of others. We demand no credit for it, for we should have been unworthy of our country and of the American name if we had not made every sacrifice to save the Union. What saved the Union was the coming forward of the young men of the nation. They came from their homes and fields, as they did in the time of the Revolution, giving everything to the country. To their devotion we owe the salvation of the Union. The humblest soldier who carried a musket is entitled to as much credit for the results of the war as those who were in command. So long as our young men are animated by this spirit there will be no fear for the Union.

WRECK OF THE WHITE SHIP.

IN the year one thousand one hundred and twenty, King Henry the First, of England, went over to Normandy with his son, Prince William, and a great retinue, to have the prince acknowledged as his successor by the Norman nobles, and to contract a marriage between him and the daughter of the Count of Anjou.

Both these things were triumphantly done, with great show and rejoicing; and on the twenty-fifth of November the whole retinue prepared to embark at the port of Barfleur for the voyage home.

On that day, and at that place, there came to the king Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain and said:

"My liege, my father served your father all his life, upon the sea. He steered the ship with the golden boy upon the prow, in which your father sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to grant me the same office. I have a fair vessel in the harbor here, called the White Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you, sire, to let your servant have the honor of steering you in the White Ship to England!"

"I am sorry, friend,” replied the king, "that my vessel is already chosen, and that I cannot, therefore, sail with the son of the man who served my father. But the prince and all his company shall go along with you, in the fair White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of renown.”

An hour or two afterward, the king set sail in the vessel he had chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing all night with a fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of England in the morning. While it was yet night, the people in some of those ships heard a faint wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was.

Now the prince was a young man of eighteen, who bore no love to the English, and had declared that when he came to the throne he would yoke them to the plough like oxen.

He went aboard the White Ship, with one hundred and forty youthful nobles like himself, among whom were eighteen noble ladies of the highest rank. All this gay company, with their servants and the fifty sailors, made three hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship.

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Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen," said the prince,"to the fifty sailors of renown! My father, the