For when faintness or disease
Had usurped upon our knees,
If he designed our lips to kiss
With those loving lips of his,
We were lightened of our pain,
We were up and hale again.
Oh! if love, the sister dear

Of youth that we have lost,
Come not in swift pity here,
Come not with a host
Of affections, strong and kind,
To hold up our sinking mind;
If she will not of her grace
Take her brother's holy place,
And be to us, at least a part,
Of what he was, in life and heart;
The faintness that is on our breath
Can have no other end but death.

Richard Monckton Milnes.

THE LAST LEAF.

I SAW him once before,

As he passed by the door,
And again

The pavement stones resound
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,

Not a better man was found

By the crier on his round

Through the town.

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring;

Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

O. W. Holmes.

SONG.

OH! for the days when I was young!

When I thought that I should ne'er be old,
When the songs came a bubbling off my tongue,
And the girl that heard the ballad I sung

Never thought if my pocket held copper or gold;
Oh! for the days when I was young!

And yet in the days when I was young,
In the days that now I remember well,
Hot words like sparks around I flung,
And snatching at honey I often was stung,
And what I have lost it's hard to tell;
So I would rather be old than young!

John Sterling.

I

FIND myself often moralizing on the present fast age, and sighing over the "good old times." Well, let me be grateful that the threads of my life have been woven into so full a web, and mingled in so many fair colors; and let my prayer be, that I may not say with Hood:

"It gives me little joy

To think I'm farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy."

But rather that I may make some approaches to that blest abode

"And nightly pitch my roving tent

A day's march nearer home."

THE soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made;
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,

As they draw near to their eternal home;
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view,
That stand upon the threshold of the new.

From "Divine Poems," written by Edmund Waller at 82.

JOYS OF OLD AGE.

PEOPLE place age and youth opposite to each other, as the light and shade in the day of life. But has not every day, every age, its own youth, its own new attractive life, if one only sets about rightly to enjoy them. Yes, the aged man, who has collected together pure recollections for his evening companions, is manifold happier than the youth who, with a restless heart, stands only at the beginning of his journey. No passions disturb the evening meal of the other; no restless endeavors disturb the cheerful gossip of the evening twilight; all the little comforts of life are then so thoroughly enjoyed; and we can then with more confidence cast all our cares and anxieties on God. We have then proved him!

Frederika Bremer,

EN

N viellissant, elle avait gagné ce qu'on pourrait appeler la beauté de la bonté.

Victor Hugo.

HEAV

BOYS AND GIRLS FOREVER.

EAVEN be thanked for the young old boys and the young old girls-boys and girls forever-who, even when the evening of life is falling around them, interchange the sweet caresses that call back the days of courtship and early marriage!

Dr. J. G. Holland.

CHILDHOOD itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful,

kind, sunshiny old age.

L. M. Child.

ONE GOOD OLD MAN.

I THINK that to have known one good old man-one man,

who, through the chances and mischances of a long life, has carried his heart in his hand, like a palm-branch, waving all discords into peace, helps our faith in God, in ourselves, and in each other, more than many sermons.

G. W. Curtis.

BY

BEAUTY OF AGE.

A Picture.

Y her side sat a woman with a bright tin pan in her lap, into which she was sorting some dried peaches. Sho might be fifty-five or sixty; but hers was one of those faces that time seems to touch only to brighten and adorn. Her face was round and rosy, with a healthful downy softness, suggestive of a ripe peach. Her hair, partially silvered by age,