Dreadfully staring

Thro' muddy impurity,
As when with the daring
Last look of despairing
Fix'd on futurity.

Perishing gloomily,
Spurr'd by contumely,
Cold inhumanity,
Burning insanity,
Into her rest.—

Cross her hands humbly
As if praying dumbly,
Over her breast!

Owning her weakness,

Her evil behaviour,
And leaving, with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour!

From TOWN PICTURES 1

BY ERNEST CROSBY

It is an August evening in a free roof-garden built for the people on a pier over the river.

I am in a bad humour to-night, and I come here to cure myself.

Crowds are sitting in rows on benches on each side of the stand where the brass band is playing, and

1 From Broad-Cast by Ernest Crosby. Published by Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York and London.

round them and up and down the long deck from one end to the other passes a continuous stream of promenaders under the electric lights.

I join the shabby procession; but the vulgar flirting of those shrill shop-girls with the rough young

men behind them is quite indecent, and offends me sadly.

I stop at the end of the pier, and look out at the dark river with its lights, white, red and green.

It would be altogether beautiful, if it were not for the shriek of the ferry whistles in the next slip, and the suggestion of sewage in the south breeze. But this will not do; I have not come here to complain, but to take my regular cure.

I sit down on the corner of a bench, not too near the musicians.

And now I begin to love.

At first it is an effort, and I undertake only the children, for they are the easiest.

There is a baby yonder, jumping on its mother's arm

in time with the trumpets, and another tiny tot dancing across the floor holding her pink skirts out with her hands.

Now I am loving them hard, like a new-kindled coal fire with the blower on, and I can almost hear my heart roar.

I have soon reached the point of loving all the children (and how many there are), even the most perverse, and gradually the mothers too move into my focus.

The old people come next. How I love that respectable old Irishwoman there with her cap and red shawl, watching her grandchild (or is it her greatgrandchild?)—and the sturdy German grandsire asleep bolt upright in his carefully brushed black coat! I could hug them both, and I do not find it easy to keep my hands off them.

But now my love is boiling over, and becoming indiscriminate.

I can put it to any test and try it on any one; it is a conflagration that would outstrip any fireextinguisher.

I turn my heart loose on the shabby procession, and now I pronounce it worthy of a place on the frieze of the Parthenon.

I love the pale tailor in his dirty shirt-sleeves, with his sickly boy in his arms.

I love the black hands of the machinist, and I am glad that he has not washed them too thoroughly.

I love the thin, grey-haired old maid with spectacles (how surprised she would be if she knew it!) and the young rowdies who are waltzing together.

Here come the same vulgar youths and maidens who shocked me an hour ago, quite as vulgar as ever, and yet now I love them till I see nothing that is not divine in them.

Love covers a multitude of sins-indeed it does! But the band is playing "Home, Sweet Home," and the multitude has already half disappeared.

It is time for me to close the draughts and let the fire go down.

My love-cure has worked its wonted miracle, and blues and ill humour have gone.

As a patent-medicine I should like to sing its praises and advertise its virtues, until whole cities should take it for their municipal ailments, and statesmen prescribe it to their several nations. Who says there is no panacea?

Love is the great panacea!

ABOU BEN ADHEM

BY LEIGH HUNT

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight of his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.

Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And, to the presence in the room, he said,

"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,
And, with a look made of all sweet accord,

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord!" "And is mine one?" asked Abou.-"Nay, not so,"

Replied the angel. Abou spake more low,
But cheerly still; and said "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."

The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again, with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest;
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

HARVEST

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

They heard that she was dying, and they came,
The reticent New England village folk,

And wrestled with their tongues and, stammering,

spoke

Their very hearts, torn betwixt love and shame.
The wheelwright brought a crock of flowering flame
And, with moist eyes, said: "Madam, ef a stroke
O' the axe could save ye―(and this ain't no joke)—
I'd cut my right hand off to do that same!"
When her white soul had sped, the fisherman rowed
A fare of fish-his parting gift—ashore,

And choked upon the words: "I never knowed
No one I liked so well as her afore."

And the charwoman sobbed: 'Twas me she showed How not to get downhearted any more."

A WOMAN

BY SCUDDER MIDDLETON

She had an understanding with the years;
For always in her eyes there was a light