Then Katie, our gentle Katie!

We thought her very fair,

With her blue eyes soft and tender,
And her curls of auburn hair.

Like a queen she looked at her bridal
(I thought it were you instead):
But her ashen lips kissed her first-born,
And mother and child were dead.
We said that of all our number

We had two, our pride and stay-
Two noble boys, Fred and Harry;
But God thought the other way.

Far away, on the plains of Shiloh,
Fred sleeps in an unknown grave:
With his ship and noble sailors
Harry sank beneath the wave.
So sit closer, darling, closer-

Let me clasp your hand in mine:
Alone we commenced life's journey,
Alone we are left behind.

Your hair, once gold, to silver
They say by age has grown;

But I know it has caught its whiteness
From the halo round His throne.
They give us a diamond wedding
This Christmas eve, dear wife;
But I know your orange-blossoms
Will be a crown of life.

'Tis dark; the lamps should be lighted;
And your hand has grown so cold,
Has the fire gone out? how I shiver!
But, then, we are very old.

Hush! I hear sweet strains of music:
Perhaps the guests have come.
No-'tis the children's voices-

I know them, every one.

On that Christmas eve they found them,
Their hands together clasped;

But they never knew their children
Had been their wedding guests.

With her head upon his bosom,
That had never ceased its love,
They held their diamond wedding
In the mansion house above.

MARK TWAIN'S WATCH.-S. L. CLEMENS.

My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery, or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But byand-by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow-regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop himtried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating-come in a week. After being cleaned, and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my

dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by-and-by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swop news with him. I went to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hair-trigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make out

the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then she would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance—a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner.

He said

"She makes too much steam-you want to hang the monkeywrench on the safety-valve!"

I floored him on the spot.

My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it.

THOSE EVENING BELLS.-THOMAS Moore.

Those evening bells! those evening bells!
How many a tale their music tells

Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
When last I heard their soothing chime!

Those joyous hours are passed away;
And many a heart that then was gay
Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
And hears no more those evening bells.
And so 'twill be when I am gone,-
That tuneful peal will still ring on;
While other bards shall walk these dells,
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.

BETTER IN THE MORNING.-LEANDER S. COAN.

"You can't help the baby, parson,

But still I want ye to go

Down an' look in upon her,

An' read an' pray, you know,

Only last week she was skippin' 'round

A pullin' my whiskers 'n' hair,

A climbin' up to the table

Into her little high chair.

"The first night that she took it
When her little cheeks grew red,
When she kissed good night to papa,
And went away to bed-

Sez she, "Tis headache, papa,

Be better in mornin'-bye;'

An' somethin' in how she said it,
Just made me want to cry.

"But the mornin' brought the fever,
And her little hands were hot,
An' the pretty red uv her cheeks
Grew into a crimson spot,
But she laid there jest ez patient
Ez ever a woman could,

Takin' whatever we give her

Better 'n a grown woman would.

"The days are terrible long an' slow,
An' she's growin' wus in each;
And now she 's jest a slippin'
Clear away out uv our reach.

Every night when I kiss her,
Tryin' hard not to cry,

She says in a way that kills me-
'Be better in mornin'-bye.'

"She can't get thro' the night, parson,

So I want ye to come an' pray,

And talk with mother a little

You'll know jest what to say;

Not that the baby needs it,

Nor that we make any complaint
That God seems to think He's needin'
The smile uv the little saint."

I walked along with the Corporal
To the door of his humble home,