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"Never sign a walentine with your

"Won't do," said Sam.

own name."

"Sign it 'Pickvick,' then," said Mr. Weller; "its a wery good name, and a easy one to spell.”

"The wery thing," said Sam. "I could end with a werse; what do you think?"

"I don't like it, Sam," rejoined Mr. Weller. "I never know'd a respectable coachman as wrote poetry, 'cept one, as made an affectin' copy o' werses the night afore he wos hung for a highway robbery; and he wos only a Cambervell man, so even that's no rule."

But Sam was not to be dissuaded from the poetical idea that had occurred to him, so he signed the letter—

"Your love-sick
Pickwick."

THE POOR AND THE RICH.-JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

THE rich man's son inherits lands,

And piles of brick and stone and gold,
And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old;

A heritage, it seems to me,
One would not care to hold in fee.

The rich man's son inherits cares.

The bank may break, the factory burn,
Some breath may burst his bubble shares,
And soft white hands would scarcely earn
A living that would suit his turn;

A heritage, it seems to me,
One would not care to hold in fee.

What does the poor man's son inherit?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;
King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art;

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THE ENCHANTED ISLE.-BENJ. F. TAYLOR.

A WONDERFUL stream is the river Time,

As it runs through the realm of tears,
With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme,
With a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
And blends with the ocean of years.

How the winters are drifting, like flakes of snow,

And the summers like buds between,

And the years in the sheaf, so they come and they go, On the river's breast, with its ebb and flow,

As it glides in the shadow and sheen.

There's a musical isle up the river Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing;
There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime,
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,

And the tunes with the roses are staying;

And the name of this isle is the Long Ago;
And we bury our treasures there;

There, are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow;
There are heaps of dust, but we love them so!
There are trinkets and tresses of hair

There are fragments of songs, that nobody sings,
And a part of an infant's prayer;

There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings,
There are broken vows and pieces of rings,

And the garments she used to wear.

There are hands that are waved, when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air;

And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the river is fair.

Oh! remembered for aye, be the blessed isle,
All the day of life, till the night;

And when evening comes with the beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing to slumber awhile,
May that "Greenwood" of soul be in sight.

PYRAMUS AND THISBE.

PYRAMUS AND THISBE.-J. G. SAXE.

THIS tragical tale, which, they say, is a true one,
Is old; but the manner is wholly a new one.
One Ovid, a writer of some reputation,
Has told it before in a tedious narration;

In a style, to be sure, of remarkable fullness,
But which nobody reads on account of its dullness.

Young PETER PYRAMUS-I call him Peter,
Not for the sake of the rhyme or the meter,
But merely, to make the name completer-
For Peter lived in the olden times,

And in one of the worst of pagan climes
That flourish now in classical fame,
Long before

Either noble or boor

Had such a thing as a Christian name—
Young Peter, then, was a nice young beau
As any young lady would wish to know ;
In years, I ween,

He was rather green,

That is to say, he was just eighteen,―
A trifle too short, and a shaving too lean,
But "

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a nice young man as ever was seen, And fit to dance with a May-day queen!

Now Peter loved a beautiful girl
As ever ensnared the heart of an earl,
In the magical trap of an auburn curl,—
A little Miss Thisbe, who lived next door,
(They slept, in fact, on the very same floor,
With a wall between them and nothing more,—
Those double dwellings were common of yore,)
And they loved each other, the legends say,
In that very beautiful, bountiful way,
That every young maid,

And every young blade,

Are wont to do before they grow staid,
And learn to love by the laws of trade.

160

But (a-lack-a-day, for the girl and boy !)
A little impediment checked their joy,
And gave them awhile the deepest annoy―
For some good reason which history cloaks,
The match didn't happen to please the old folks!

So Thisbe's father and Peter's mother

Began the young couple to worry and bother,
And tried their innocent passion to smother,
By keeping the lovers from seeing each other!
But who ever heard

Of a marriage deterred,

Or even deferred,

By any contrivance so very absurd

As scolding the boy, and caging his bird?—
Now, Peter, who was not discouraged at all
By obstacles such as the timid appall,
Contrived to discover a hole in the wall,
Which wasn't so thick

But removing a brick

Made a passage-though rather provokingly small.
Through this little chink the lover could greet her,
And secrecy made their courting the sweeter,
While Peter kissed Thisbe, and Thisbe kissed Peter,-
For kisses, like folks with diminutive souls,

Will manage to creep through the smallest of holes!

'Twas here that the lovers, intent upon love,

Laid a nice little plot

To meet at a spot

Near a mulberry-tree in a neighboring grove;

For the plan was all laid,

By the youth and the maid,

(Whose hearts, it would seem, were uncommonly bold ones,) To run off and get married in spite of the old ones.

In the shadows of evening, as still as a mouse,
The beautiful maiden slipped out of the house,
The mulberry-tree impatient to find,
While Peter, the vigilant matrons to blind,
Strolled leisurely out, some minutes behind.

While waiting alone by the trysting tree,
A terrible lion

As e'er you set eye on,

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