"There comes Philothea, her face all a-glow, She has just been dividing some poor creature's

woe

And can't tell which pleases her most, to relieve
His want, or his story to hear and believe;
No doubt against many deep griefs she prevails,
For her ear is the refuge of destitute tales;
She knows well that silence is sorrow's best food,
And that talking draws off from the heart its black
blood,

So she'll listen with patience and let you unfold
Your bundle of rags as 'twere pure cloth of gold,
Which, indeed, it all turns to as soon as she's
touched it,

And, (to borrow a phrase from the nursery,) muched it,

She has such a musical taste, she will go

Any distance to hear one who draws a long bow; She will swallow a wonder by mere might and main

And thinks it geometry's fault if she's fain

To consider things flat, inasmuch as they're plain; Facts with her are accomplished, as Frenchmen would say,

They will prove all she wishes them to-either

way,

And, as fact lies on this side or that, we must try, If we're seeking the truth, to find where it don't

lie;

I was telling her once of a marvellous aloe

That for thousands of years had looked spindling and sallow,

And, though nursed by the fruitfullest powers of mud,

Had never vouchsafed e'en so much as a bud, Till its owner remarked, (as a sailor, you know, Often will in a calm,) that it never would blow,

For he wished to exhibit the plant, and designed That its blowing should help him in raising the wind;

At last it was told him that if he should water
Its roots with the blood of his unmarried daughter,
(Who was born, as her mother, a Calvinist said,
With a Baxter's effectual caul on her head,)

It would blow as the obstinate breeze did when by a

Like decree of her father died Iphigenia;

At first he declared he himself would be blowed Ere his conscience with such a foul crime he would

load,

But the thought, coming oft, grew less dark than

before,

And he mused, as each creditor knocked at his

door,

If this were but done they would dun me no more; I told Philothea his struggles and doubts,

And how he considered the ins and the outs

Of the visions he had, and the dreadful dyspepsy,

How he went to the seer that lives at Po'keepsie,
How the seer advised him to sleep on it first
And to read his big volume in case of the worst,
And further advised he should pay him five dol-
lars

For writing um, Hum, on his wristbands and collars;

Three years and ten days these dark words he had studied

When the daughter was missed, and the aloe had budded;

I told how he watched it grow large and more

large,

And wondered how much for the show he should

charge,――

She had listened with utter indifference to this,

till

I told how it bloomed, and discharging its pistil
With an aim the Eumenides dictated, shot
The botanical filicide dead on the spot;

It had blown, but he reaped not his horrible gains,
For it blew with such force as to blow out his

brains,

And the crime was blown also, because on the

wad,

Which was paper, was writ 'Visitation of God,'
As well as a thrilling account of the deed

Which the coroner kindly allowed me to read.

“Well, my friend took this story up just, to be

sure,

As one might a poor foundling that's laid at one's

door;

She combed it and washed it and clothed it and

fed it,

And as if 'twere her own child most tenderly bred

it,

Laid the scene (of the legend, I mean,) far away a -mong the green vales underneath Himalaya. And by artist-like touches, laid on here and there, Made the whole thing so touching, I frankly declare

I have read it all thrice, and, perhaps I am weak, But I found every time there were tears on my cheek.

"The pole, science tells us, the magnet controls, But she is a magnet to emigrant Poles,

And folks with a mission that nobody knows,
Throng thickly about her as bees round a rose ;
She can fill up the carets in such, make their scope
Converge to some focus of rational hope,

And, with sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall

Can transmute into honey,—but this is not all;
Not only for those she has solace, oh, say,

Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway,
Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human,
To the last slender spar from the wreck of the

woman,

Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet

Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat

The soothed head in silence reposing could hear The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear?

Ah, there's many a beam from the fountain of day That to reach us unclouded, must pass, on its way, Through the soul of a woman, and hers is wide

ope

To the influence of Heaven as the blue eyes of
Hope;

Yes, a great soul is hers, one that dares to go in
To the prison, the slave-hut, the alleys of sin,
And to bring into each, or to find there some line
Of the never completely out-trampled divine
If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now
and then,

'Tis but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen, As, after old Nile has subsided, his plain

Overflows with a second broad deluge of grain; What a wealth would it bring to the narrow and

sour

Could they be as a Child but for one little hour!

"What! Irving? thrice welcome, warm heart and fine brain,

You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,

And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair; Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching,

I shan't run directly against my own preaching,
And, having just laughed at their Raphaels and
Dantes,

Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes;
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,—
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill,

With the whole of that partnership's stock and good will,

Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as a spell, The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it well, Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,

That only the finest and clearest remain,

Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves,

And you'll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving

A name either English or Yankee, just Irving.

"There goes,--but stet nominis umbra,-his

name

You'll be glad enough, some day or other, to claim, And will all crowd about him and swear that you knew him

If some English hack-critic should chance to review him

The old porcos ante ne projiciatis

MARGARITAS, for him you have verified gratis ; What matters his name? Why, it may be Sylvester,

Judd, Junior, or Junius, Ulysses, or Nestor,