Echoes of Life: Or, Beautiful Gems of Poetry & Song. A Choice Collection of ...

WITH

The Woman of To-day.

TH Hebrew, Greek and Latin
She's acquainted more or less;

And she's obviously pat in

All the modern languages,

She has read her Herbert Spencer,
Her Kant, and Schopenhauer,
And in logic she's a fencer

Of unquestionable power.
She is full of keen suggestion,
Be the subject what it may,
And on every social question

She has something apt to say.
You may see her quick eye kindle
With a bright and vivid flame
At the mention of a Tyndal

Or a Huxley's potent name.
Scraps of learning she will dish up
With a skill that makes them live,

She will argue with a Bishop,
Say on Church Prerogative.

With her own sex she will chance
In the proper time and place,
On some trivial household matter
With quaint and lively grace.
She instructs the untrained servant,
To perform his task with ease;
And if called on will wax fervent

Over infantile disease.

She can cook and wash and mangle,
(Though perhaps she'd rather not),
Play tennis, ride, and angle,

And is quite a champion shot.
From the public platform you will
Find her talking fact or myth,
With the vigor of a Whewell,
Or the wit of Sydney Smith.
'Mongst mere minnows she's a Triton
Who will always have her way;
She's an Admirable Crichton,
Is the woman of to day.

-St. James Gazette.

The Changefulness of Woman.

YR y

watchful sprites, who make e'en man your care,

Who 'grave on adamant all changeless things,
The smiles of courtiers and the frowns of kings!
Say to what softer texture ye impart
The quick resolves of woman's trusting heart;
Joys of a moment, wishes of an hour,

The short eternity of Passion's power,

Breathed in vain oaths that pledge with generous zeal

E'en more of fondness than they e'er shall feel,

Light fleeting vows that never reach above,

And all the guileless changefulness of love!

Is summer's leaf the record? Does it last
Till withering autumn blot it with his blast?
Or, frailer still, to fade ere ocean's ebb,
'Graved on some filmy insect's thinnest web,
Some day-fly's wing that dies and ne'er has slept,
Lives the light vow scarce longer than 'tis kept?
Ah, call not perfidy her fickle choice!
Ah, find not falsehood in an angel's voice!
True to one word, and constant to one aim,
Let man's hard soul be stubborn as his frame;
But leave sweet woman's form and mind at will
To bend and vary, and be graceful still.

The Minstrel Girl.

GAIN 'twas evening-Agnes knelt,

Pale, passionless-a sainted one: On wasted cheek and pale brow dwelt The last beams of the setting sun. Alone-the damp and cloistered wall Was round her like a sepulcher; And at the vesper's mournful call Was bending every worshiper. She knelt-her knee upon the stone, Her thin hand veiled her tearful eye, As it were sin to gaze upon

The changes of the changeful sky. It seemed as if a sudden thought

Of her enthusiast moments came With the bland eve-and she had sought To stifle in her heart the flame

Of its awakened memory:

She felt she might not cherish, then, The raptures of a spirit, free

And passionate as hers had been, When its sole worship was, to look With a delighted eye abroad; And read, as from an open book,

The written languages of God.

How changed she kneels!-the vile, gray hood,
Where spring flowers twined with raven hair,
And where the jeweled silk hath flowed,
Coarse veil and gloomy scapulaire
And wherefore thus? Was hers a soul,
Which, all unfit for nature's gladness,
Could grasp the bigot's poisoned bowl,
And drain with joy its draughts of madness?
Read ye the secret, who have nursed

In your own hearts intenser feelings.
Which stole upon ye, at the first,
Like bland and musical revealings
From some untrodden paradise,

Until her very soul was theirs;
And from their maddening ecstacies

Ye woke to mournfulness and prayers. To weave a garland, will not let it witherWondering, I listen to the strain sublime, That flows, all freshly, down the stream of time, Wafted in grand simplicity along,

The undying breath, the very soul of song. -John Greenleaf Whittier.

STE

The Female Convict.

HE shrank from all, and her silent mood
Made her wish only for solitude.

Her eye sought the ground as it could not brook
For innermost shame, on another's to look,
And the cheerings of comfort fell on her ear
Like deadliest words, that were curses to hear:-
She still was young, and she had been fair;
But weather stains, hunger, toil and care,
That frost and fever that wear the heart,
Had made the colors of youth depart
From the sallow cheek, save over it came
The burning flush of the spirit's shame.

They were sailing over the salt sea foam,
Far from her country, far from her home;
And all she had left for her friends to keep
Was a name to hide, and a memory to weep!
And her future held forth but the felon's lot-
To live forsaken, to die forgot!

She could not weep, and she could not pray,
But she wasted and withered from day to day,
Till you might have counted each sunken vein,
When her wrist was prest by the iron chain;
And sometimes I thought her large dark eye
Had the glisten of red insanity.

She called me once to her sleeping place,
A strange, wild look was upon her face,
Her eye flashed over her cheek so white,
Like a gravestone seen in the pale moonlight,
And she spoke in a low, unearthly tone-
The sound from mine ear hath never gone!-
"I had last night the loveliest dream:
My own land shone in the summer beam,

I saw the fields of the golden grain,

I heard the reaper's harvest strain,

There stood on the hills the green pine tree, And the thrush and the lark sang merrily.

On the northern accents that dwell on thy tongue.

To me they are music, to me they recall

The things long hidden by memory's pall!

A long and a weary way I had come;

But I stopped, methought, by mine own sweet home;
I stood by the hearth, and my father sat there,
With a pale, thin face, and snow white hair!
The Bible lay open upon his knee,

But he closed the book to welcome me.
He led me next where my mother lay,

And together we knelt by her grave to pray,
And heard a hymn it was heaven to hear,
For it echoed one of my young days dear.

This dream has waked feelings long, long since fled,
And hopes which I deemed in my heart were dead,
-We have not spoken, but still I have hung

The Maiden Sat at Her Busy Wheel.

'HE maiden sat at her busy wheel,

Her heart was light and free,

And ever in cheerful song broke forth
Her bosom's harmless glee:

Her song was in mockery of love,

And oft I heard her say,

"The gathered rose and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."

I looked on the maiden's rosy cheek,
And her lip so full and bright,

And I sighed to think that the traitor love
Should conquer a heart so light:

But she thought not of the future days of woe,
While she caroled in tones so gay-
"The gathered rose and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."

A year passed on, and again I stood
By the humble cottage door;

The maiden sat at her busy wheel,
But her look was blithe no more;
The big tear stood in her downcast eye,
And with sighs I heard her say,
"The gathered rose and the stolen heart
Can charm but for a day."

Oh, well I knew what had dimmed her eye
And made her cheek so pale;
The maid had forgotten her early song,

While she listened to love's soft tale;
She had tasted the sweets of his poisoned cup,
It had wasted her life away-
And the stolen heart, like the gathered rose,
Had charmed but for a day.

-Emma C. Embury.

THESE

Ability and Opportunity.

HESE are the conditions of success. Give a man power and a field in which to use it, and he must accomplish something. He may not do and become all that he desires and dreams of, but his life cannot be a failure. I never hear men complaining of the want of ability. The most unsuccessful think that they could do great things if they only had the chance. Somehow or other something or somebody has always been in the way. Providence has hedged them in so that they could not carry out their plans. They knew just how to get rich, but they lacked opportunity.

Sit down by one who thus complains, and ask him to tell you the story of his life. Before he gets half through he will give you occasion to ask him, "Why didn't you do so at that time? Why didn't you stick to that piece of land and improve it, or to that business and develop it? Is not the present owner of that property rich? Is not the man who took up the business you abandoned successful?" He will probably reply: "Yes, that was an opportunity; but I did not think so then. I saw it when it was too late." In telling his story he will probably say, of his own accord, half a dozen times: "If I had known how things were going to turn I might have done as well as Mr. A. That farm of his was offered to me. I knew that it was a good one, and cheap, but I knew that it would require a great deal of hard work to get it cleared and fenced, to plant trees, vines, etc., and to secure water for irrigation. I did not like to undertake it. I am sorry now that I didn't. It was one of my opportunities."

The truth is, God gives to all of us ability and opportunities enough to enable us to be moderately successful. If we fail, in ninety-five cases out of a hundred it is our own fault. We neglect to improve the talents with which our Creator endowed us, or we failed to enter

the door that he opened for us.

A man cannot expect that his whole life shall be made up of opportunities, that they will meet him at regular intervals as he goes on, like milestones by the roadside. Usually he has one or two, and if he neglects them he is like a man who takes the wrong road where several meet. The further he goes the worse he fares.

A man's opportunity usually has some relation to his ability. It is an opening for a man of his talents and means. It is an opening for him to use what he has, faithfully and to the utmost. It requires toil, self-denial and faith. If he says: "I want a better opportunity than that; I am worthy of a higher position than it offers;" or if he says, "I wont work as hard and economize as closely as that opportunity demands," he may, in after years, see the folly of his pride and indolence.

There are young men all over the land who want to get rich. They want to begin, not at the bottom of the ladder, but half way up. They want somebody to give them a lift, or carry them up in a balloon, so that they can avoid the early and arduous struggles of the majority of those who have been successful. No wonder that such men fail, and then complain of Providence. Grumbling is usually a miserable expedient that people resort to to drown the reproaches of conscience. They know that they have been foolish, but they try to persuade themselves that they have been unfortunate.

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