tered wall.

was something terrible in that face-something so full of unnatural loneliness-unspeakable despair, that the aged minister started back in horror. But look! those strong arms are clutching at the vacant air: the death-sweat stands in drops on that bold brow-the man is dying. Throb-throb-throb-beats the death-watch in the shat66 Would you die in the faith of the Christian?" faltered the preacher, as he knelt there on the damp floor. The white lips of the death-stricken man trembled, but made no sound. Then, with the strong agony of death upon him, he rose into a sitting posture. For the first time he spoke. "Christian!" he echoed in that deep tone which thrilled the preacher to the heart: "Will that faith give me back my honor? Come with me, old man, come with me, far over the waters. Ha! we are there! This is my native town. Yonder is the church in which I knelt in childhood: yonder the green on which I sported when a boy. But another flag waves yonder, in place of the flag that waved when I was a child.

"And listen, old man, were I to pass along the streets, as I passed when but a child, the very babes in their cradles would raise their tiny hands, and curse me! The graves in yonder churchyard would shrink from my footsteps; and yonder flag would rain a baptism of blood upon my head!": That was an awful death-bed. The minister had watched "the last night" with a hundred convicts in their cells, but had never beheld a scene so terrible as this. Suddenly the dying man arose: he tottered along the floor. With those white fingers, whose nails were blue with the deathchill, he threw open a valise. He drew from thence a faded coat of blue, faced with silver, and the wreck of a battle-flag.

"Look ye, priest! this faded coat is spotted with my blood!" he cried, as old memories seemed stirring at his heart. "This coat I wore, when I first heard the news of Lexington: this coat I wore, when I planted the banner of the stars on Ticonderoga! that bullet-hole was pierced in the fight of Quebec; and now, I am a-let me whisper it in your ear!" He hissed that single burning word into the minister's ear: "Now help me, priest! help me to put on this coat of blue; for you see"-and a ghastly smile came over his face "there is no one here to wipe the cold drops from my brow: no wife: no child. I must meet Death alone; but I will meet him, as I have met him in battle, without a fear!"

And, while he stood arraying his limbs in that wormeaten coat of blue and silver, the good minister spoke to him of faith in Jesus. Yes, of that great faith, which pierces the clouds of human guilt, and rolls them back from the

face of God. "Faith!" echoed that strange man, who stood there, erect, with the death-chill on his brow, "Faith! Can it give me back my honor? Look ye, priest! there, over the waves, sits George Washington, telling to his comrades the pleasant story of the eight years' war: there, in his royal halls, sits George of England, bewailing, in his idiotic voice, the loss of his colonies! And here am I !—I, who was the first to raise the flag of freedcm, the first to strike a blow against that king-here am I, dying! oh, dying like a dog!"

The awe-stricken preacher started back from the look of the dying man, while throb-throb-throb-beats the death-watch, in the shattered wall. "Hush! silence along the lines there!" he muttered, in that wild, absent tone, as though speaking to the dead; "silence along the lines! not a word-not a word, on peril of your lives! Hark you, Montgomery! we will meet in the centre of the town:we will meet there in victory, or die!-Hist! silence, my men-not a whisper, as we move up those steep rocks! Now on, my boys-now on! Men of the wilderness, we will gain the town! Now up with the banner of the stars -up with the flag of freedom, though the night is dark, and the snow falls! Now! now, one more blow, and Quebec is ours!"

And look! his eye grows glassy. With that word on his lips, he stands there-ah! what a hideous picture of despair erect, livid, ghastly: there for a moment, and then he falls! he is dead! Ah, look at that proud form, thrown cold and stiff upon the damp floor. In that glassy eye there lingers, even yet, a horrible energy-a sublimity of despair. Who is this strange man lying there alone, in this rude garret: this man, who, in all his crimes, still treasured up in that blue uniform, that faded flag? Who is this being of horrible remorse-this man, whose memories seem to link something with heaven, and more with hell?

Let us look at that parchment and flag. The aged minister unrolls that faded flag; it is a blue banner gleaming with thirteen stars. He unrolls that parchment: it is a colonel's commission in the Continental army addressed to BENEDICT ARNOLD! And there, in that rude hut, while the death-watch throbbed like a heart in the shattered wall there, unknown, unwept, in all the bitterness of desolation, lay the corse of the patriot and the traitor.

Oh that our own true Washington had been there, to sever that good right arm from the corse; and, while the dishonored body rotted into dust, to bring home that noble arm, and embalm it among the holiest memories of the past. For that right arm struck many a gallant blow

for freedom: yonder at Ticonderoga, at Quebec, Champlain, and Saratoga-that arm, yonder, beneath the snow white mountains, in the deep silence of the river of the dead, first raised into light the Banner of the Stars.

LOVE, MURDER, AND ALMOST MATRIMON Y.

IN Manchester a maiden dwelt,

Her name was Phoebe Brown,

Her cheeks were red, her hair was black,

And she was considered by good judges to be by

all odds, the best looking girl in the town.

Her age was nearly seventeen,

Her eyes were sparkling bright,

A very lovely girl she was, and for a year and a half there had been a good-looking young man paying his attentions to her, by the name of Reuben White.

Now Reuben was a nice young man,

As any in the town;

And Phoebe loved him very dear,

But on account of his being obliged to work for a living, he never could make himself agreeable to Mr. and Mrs. Brown.

Her parents were resolved

Another she should wed

A rich old miser in the place;

And old Brown frequently declared, that rather than have his daughter marry Reuben White he'd knock him on the head.

But Phoebe's heart was brave and strong:

She feared no parent's frowns;

And as for Reuben White so bold,

I've heard him say more than fifty times, that

with the exception of Phoebe, he didn't care a cent for the whole race of Browns.

Now Phoebe Brown and Reuben White
Determined they would marry;

Three weeks ago last Tuesday night

They started for old Parson Webster's, with the

fixed determination to be united in the holy bonds of wedlock, though it was tremendous dark, and rained like the very Old Harry.

But Captain Brown was wide awake,

He loaded up his gun,

And then pursued the loving pair

And overtook 'em when they'd got about half way to the Parson's, when Reuben and Phoebe started upon a run.

Old Brown then took a deadly aim,
Toward young Reuben's head;

But, oh! it was a bleeding shame,

For he made a mistake, and shot his only daugh ter, and had the unspeakable anguish of seeing her drop down stone dead.

Then anguish filled young Reuben's heart,
And vengeance crazed his brain-

He drew an awful jack-knife out,

And plunged it into old Brown about fifty or sixty times, so that it was very doubtful about his ever coming to again.

ner

The briny drops from Reuben's eyes

In torrents poured down;

He yielded up the ghost and died

And in this melancholy, and heart-rending manterminates the history of Reuben and Phoebe, and

likewise of old Captain Brown.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY.-W. C. Bryant.

THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield The scourge that drove the laborer to the field, And look with stony eye on human tears, Thy cruel reign is o'er;

Thy bondmen crouch no more In terror at the menace of thine eye;

For He who marks the bounds of guilty power,
Long-suffering, hath heard the captive's cry,

And touched his shackles at the appointed hour,
And lo! they fall, and he whose limbs they galled
Stands in his native manhood, disenthralled.

A shout of joy from the redeemed is sent;

Ten thousand hamlets swell the hymn of thanks;
Our rivers roll exulting, and their banks

Send

up hosannas to the firmament.

N*

Fields, where the bondman's toil
No more shall trench the soil,

Seem now to bask in a serener day;

The meadow-birds sing sweeter, and the airs
Of heaven with more caressing softness play,
Welcoming man to liberty like theirs.

A glory clothes the land from sea to sea,
For the great land and all its coasts are free.

Within that land wert thou enthroned of late,
And they by whom the nation's laws were made,
And they who filled its judgment-seats, obeyed
Thy mandate, rigid as the will of fate.

Fierce men at thy right hand,

With gesture of command,

Gave forth the word that none might dare gainsay; And grave and reverend ones, who loved thee not, Shrank from thy presence, and, in blank dismay, Choked down, unuttered, the rebellious thought; While meaner cowards, mingling with thy train, Proved, from the book of God, thy right to reign.

Great as thou wert, and feared from shore to shore,
The wrath of God o'ertook thee in thy pride;
Thou sitt'st a ghastly shadow; by thy side
Thy once strong arms hang nerveless evermore.
And they who quailed but now

Before thy lowering brow

Devote thy memory to scorn and shame,

And scoff at the pale, powerless thing thou art.
And they who ruled in thine imperial name,
Subdued, and standing sullenly apart,
Scowl at the hands that overthrew thy reign,
And shattered at a blow the prisoner's chain.

Well was thy doom deserved; thou didst not spare Life's tenderest ties, but cruelly didst part Husband and wife, and from the mother's heart Didst wrest her children, deaf to shriek and prayer ; Thy inner lair became

The haunt of guilty shame;

Thy lash dropped blood; the murderer, at thy side, Showed his red hands, nor feared the vengeance due, Thou didst sow earth with crimes, and, far and wide, A harvest of uncounted miseries grew,

Until the measure of thy sins at last

Was full, and then the avenging bolt was cast.