Now when the old man saw the bear was no more,
He ventured to poke his nose out of the door,
And there was the grizzly, stretched on the floor.
Then off to the neighbors he hastened, to tell
All the wonderful things that that morning befell;
And he published the marvelous story afar,
How "me and my Betty jist slaughtered a bar!
O yes, come and see, all the neighbors hev sid it,
Come see what we did, ME and Betty, we did it."

THE DRAW-BRIDGE KEEPER.

History and poetry celebrate no sublimer act of devotion than that of Albert G. Drecker, the watchman of the Passaic River draw-bridge, on the New York and Newark Railroad. The train was due, and he was closing the draw when his little child fell into the deep water. It would have been easy enough to rescue him, if the father could have taken the time, but already the thundering train was at hand. It was a cruel agony. His child could be saved only at the cost of other lives committed to his care. The brave man did his duty, but the child was drowned. The pass at Thermopyla was not more heroic ally kept. Sir Philip Sydney, giving the cup of cold water to the dying soldier, is not a nobler figure than that of Albert G. Drecker, keeping the Passal bridge.

Drecker, the draw-bridge keeper, opened wide
The dangerous gate, to let the vessel through;
His little son was standing by his side,

Above Passaic river, deep and blue;

While in the distance, like a moan of pain,
Was heard the whistle of the coming train.

At once brave Drecker worked to swing it back,-
The gate-like bridge, that seems a gate of death;
Nearer and nearer, on the slender track,

Came the swift engine, puffing its white breath.
Then, with a shriek, the loving father saw
His darling boy fall headlong from the draw.

Either at once down in the stream to spring
And save his son, and let the living freight
Rush on to death, or to his work to cling,

And leave his boy unhelped to meet his fate;
Which should he do? Were you, as he was, tried,
Would not your love outweigh all else beside?

And yet the child to him was full as dear

As yours may be to you,-the light of eyes,

A presence like a brighter atmosphere,

The household star that shone in love's mild skies,Yet side by side with duty, stern and grim, Even his child became as nought to him.

For Drecker, being great of soul, and true,
Held to his work, and did not aid his boy,
Who in the deep, dark water sank from view.
Then from the father's life went forth all joy;
But, as he fell back, pallid with his pain,
Across the bridge, in safety, passed the train.

And yet the man was poor, and in his breast
Flowed no ancestral blood of king or lord;
True greatness needs no title and no crest

To win from men just honor and reward;
Nobility is not of rank, but mind,-
And is inborn, and common in our kind.

He is most noble whose humanity

Is least corrupted. To be just and good The birthright of the lowest born may be; Say what we can, we are one brotherhood, And, rich or poor, or famous or unknown, True hearts are noble, and true hearts alone.

Henry Abbey.

THE GRAVE OF CHARLES DICKENS.

He sleeps as he should sleep,-among the great
In the old Abbey; sleeps amidst the few
Of England's famous thousands whose high state
Is to lie with her monarchs,-monarchs too.

Monarchs, who men's minds 'neath their sway could bring,
By might of wit and humor, wisdom, lore;
Music of spoken line or sounded string,-
Of Art that lives when artists are no more.

His grave is in this heart of England's heart,
This shrine within her shrine; and all around
Is no name but, in Letters or in Art,

Sounds as the names of the immortal sound.

Of some, the ashes lie beside his dust;

Of some, but marble forms and names are here;
But grave or cenotaph,-remains or bust,-

They will find place for thee, their latest peer.

Make room, oh tuneful Handel, at thy feet;

Make room, oh witty Sheridan, at thy head;
Shift, Johnson, till thou leave him grave space meet;
Garrick, whose art he loved, press to him dead.

Macaulay, many-sided mind, receive

By thine the frame that housed a mind as keen
To take an impress, or an impress leave,

From things, or on things, read, or heard, or seen.

Welcome, oh Addison, with calm, wise face,
His coming, who has peopled English air
With types of humor, tenderness, and grace,
Than which thine own are less rich and more rare.

Thou, too, his brother of our time, last lost,-
Thackeray,-bend thy brow with kindly cheer
On him, thy comrade, wave-worn, tempest-tossed,
Who, from life's voyage, comes to harbor here.

All the more welcome that he seeks his rest
Without the pomps that follow great ones' ends;
No mourners, save the natural ones that pressed
About the father's coffin, or the friend's;

No sable train, with plume, and plate, and pall;
No long parade of undertaker's woe,

Scarfed mutes, and feathered hearse, and coursers tall,-
All that bemocks the grave with hollow show.

Humbly they brought him in the summer morn,
Humbly and hopefully they laid him down,
And on the plate that tells when dead, when born,
His children's love, like England's lays a crown.*
London Punch.

*Upon the coffin was a crown of green leaves and white roses. Many of those who came to look into the grave during the day it remained open, threw flowers into it.

LITTLE NELL'S FUNERAL.

In its most pathetic and beautiful passages, the prose of Dickens runs easfly and naturally into rhyme and meter, and shows him to be a poet no less than a novelist, of high order, This tendency of his writing is very vividly illustrated by the account of the funeral of Little Nell, in the "Old Curiosity Shop," which is appended exactly as it stands in the book, with the exception of a few slight verbal alterations.

And now the bell,-the bell

She had so often heard by night and day,
And listened to with solemn pleasure,
E'en as a living voice,—

Rung its remorseless toll for her,
So young, so beautiful, so good.

Decrepit age, and vigorous life,

And blooming youth, and helpless infancy,

Poured forth,- -on crutches, in the pride of strength
And health, in the full blush

Of promise, the mere dawn of life,

To gather round her tomb.

Whose eyes were dim

And senses failing,

Old men were there,

Grandames, who might have died ten years ago,
And still been old,-the deaf, the blind, the lame,
The palsied,

The living dead in many shapes and forms,
To see the closing of this early grave.

What was the death it would shut in,

To that which still could crawl and keep above it!

Along the crowded path they bore her now;
Pure as the new fallen snow

That covered it; whose day on earth

Had been as fleeting.

Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,
She passed again, and the old church
Received her in its quiet shade.

They carried her to one old nook,

Where she had many and many a time sat musing,
And laid their burden softly on the pavement.
The light streamed on it through

The colored window,-a window where the boughs
Of trees were ever rustling

In the summer, and where the birds

Sang sweetly all day long.

Charles Dickens.

ARTEMUS WARD AT THE TOMB OF SHAKSPEARE.

I've been lingerin by the Tomb of the lamentid Shakspeare.

It is a success..

I do not hesitate to pronounce it as such.

You may make any use of this opinion that you see fit. If you think its publication will subswerve the cause of litteratoor, you may publicate it.

I told my wife Betsey, when I left home, that I should go to the birthplace of the orthur of Otheller and other Plays. She said that as long as I kept out of Newgate she didn't care where I went. "But," I said, "don't you know he was the greatest Poit that ever lived? Not one of these common poits, like that young idyit who writes verses to our daughter, about the Roses as growses, and the breezes as blowses- but a Boss poit-also a philosopher, also a man who knew a great deal about everything."

Yes. I've been to Stratford onto the Avon, the Birthplace of Shakspeare. Mr. S. is now no more. He's been dead over three hundred (300) years. The peple of his native town are justly proud of him. They cherish his mem'ry, and them as sell picturs of his birthplace, &c., make it prof'tible cherisin it. Almost everybody buys a pictur to put into their Albiom.

"And this," I said, as I stood in the old church-yard at Stratford, beside a Tombstone, "this marks the spot where lies William W. Shakspeare. Alars! and this is the spot where-"

"You've got the wrong grave," said a man,-a worthy villager; "Shakspeare is buried inside the church."

Oh," I said, "a boy told me this was it." The boy larfed and put the shillin I'd given him into his left eye in a inglorious manner, and commenced moving backwards towards the street.

I pursood and captered him, and after talking to him a spell in a skarcastic stile, I let him went.

William Shakspeare was born in Stratford in 1564. All the commentaters, Shaksperian scholars, etsetry, are

T