"Then one and all, by that churchyard wall,
Raised their skinny hands at me;

Their voices mingling like the sound
Of rustling leaves in a withering tree:
"His hour has come, he's one of us;
His gibbet is built, his noose is tied;

His knell shall ring, and his corpse shall swing,
And the law of blood shall be satisfied."

'They vanished! I saw them one by one, With their bare blue feet on the drifted snow, Sink like a thaw, when the sun is up,

To their wormy solitudes below.

Though you may deem this was a dream,
My facts are tangible facts to me;

For the sight grows clear as death draws near,
And looks into futurity."

UNFINISHED STILL.

A baby's boot, and a skein of wool,
Faded, and soiled, and soft;

Odd things, you say, and no doubt you're right,
Round a seaman's neck this stormy night,

Up in the yards aloft.

Most like its folly, but, mate, look here:
When first I went to sea

A woman stood on the far-off strand,
With a wedding ring on the small soft hand,
Which clung so close to me.

My wife, God bless her! The day before,
She sat beside my foot;

And the sunlight kissed her yellow hair,
And the dainty fingers, deft and fair,
Knitted a baby's boot.

The voyage was over; I came ashore;
What, think you, found I there?
A grave the daisies had sprinkled white;
A cottage empty, and dark as night,
And this beside the chair.

The little boot, 'twas unfinished still,
The tangled skein lay near,
But the knitter had gone away to rest,
With the babe asleep on her quiet breast,
Down in the churchyard drear.

OUR CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

Extract of a speech delivered by the HoN. ORESTES CLEVELAND, at the closing meeting of the preliminary session of the Centennial Commission.

Fellow-Commissioners:-When we were welcomed in Independence Hall, and again in visiting old Carpenters' Hall, I was impressed with the grand and glorious memories clustering round about Philadelphia, all pointing with solemn significance to the occasion we are preparing to celebrate. May we all have light and strength to appreciate that occasion as it approaches. No such family gathering has ever been known in the world's history, and we shall have passed away and been forgotten when the next one recurs. May we be permitted to rise up to the grandeur and importance of the work before us, so that the results and lessons of our labor may bless and last till our descendants shall celebrate in a similar manner the next centennial.

The vast and varied and marvelous results of inventive industry from all the world shall gather here; and it is fitting-for here, upon this continent, in this new country, under the fostering care of the wise and beneficent provisions of our patent laws, the inventive genius of the age finds her most congenial home. From the international exhibition of 1876 the education of skilled labor, in this country at least, is to take a new departure, and we hope the effect will be felt also, in some measure, by every civilized nation.

Here will be spread out before us the manufactures of Great Britain, the source of all her power. From France will come articles of taste and utility, exquisite in design and perfect in execution. From Russia, iron and leather no nation has yet learned to produce. From Berlin and Munich, artistic productions in iron and bronze. From Switzerland, her unequalled wood-carvings and delicate watch work. From Bohemia shall come the perfection of glassblowing, and musical instruments from the Black Forest.

From the people of poor old Spain, to whose daring and public spirit nearly four centuries back we owe the possibilities of this hour, shall come the evidence of a foretime greatness, now unhappily faded away for want of education

amongst the mass of her people. From Nineveh and Pompeii the evidences of a buried past. The progress of the applied arts will be shown from all Europe. From China, her curious workmanship, the result of accumulated ingenuity reaching back beyond the time when history began. Matchless wood-work from Japan, and from far India her treasures rare and wonderful. Turkey and Persia shall bring their gorgeous fabrics to diversify and stimulate our taste. The Queen of the East, passing the Suez Canal, shall cross the great deep and bow her turbaned head to this young giant of the West, and he shall point her people to the source of his vast powers-the education of all the people.

One of our noted orators laid before us the other night such evidence as he could gather of the lost arts of the Ancients, and he demands to know what we have to compensate us for the loss. I claim that we have produced some things, even in this new country, worthy of that orator's notice. Instead of tearing open the bosom of mother earth with the root of a tree, that we may feed upon the bounties of nature, as the ancients did, the green covering rolls away with the perfection and grace of art itself from the polished moulding-board of the Pittsburgh steel plow. Machinery casts abroad the seed, and a reaping machine gathers the harvest. Whitney's cotton gin prepares the fiber; Lyall's positive motion loom takes the place of the old wheel; and a sewing machine fits the fabric for the use of man. What had the ancients, I demand to know, that could compensate them for the want of these American inventions? I do not speak of the American telegraph or steam power, that we have done more than all other nations put together in reaching its possibilities. The Magi of the East never dreamed, in the wildest frenzy of their beautiful imaginations of the wonders of these!

Next year it will become the duty of the general Government to make the International Exhibition known to other countries, to the end that all civilized people may meet with us in 1876 in friendly competition in the progress of the arts of peace. Be it our duty now to arouse our own people to a sense of its great value. I know that we go out with our hearts full-let our minds be determined and our hands ready for the labor.

THE ANNUITY.-GEORGE OUTRAM.

I gaed to spend a week in Fife -
An unco week it proved to be
For there I met a waesome wife
Lamentin' her viduity.

Her grief brak out sae fierce and fell,
I thought her heart wad burst the shell;
And, I was sae left to mysel',—

I sell't her an annuity.

The bargain lookit fair eneugh

She just was turned o' saxty-three

I couldna guessed she'd prove sae teugh,
By human ingenuity.

But years have come, and years have gane,
And there she's yet as stieve as stane-
The limmers growin' young again,

Since she got her annuity.

She's crined' awa' to bane and skin,
But that, it seems, is nought to me;
She's like to live-although she's in
The last stage o' tenuity.

She munches wi' her wizen'd gums,
An' stumps about on legs o' thrums;
But comes-as sure as Christmas comes-
To ca' for her annuity.

I read the tables drawn wi' care

For an insurance company;

Her chance o' life was stated there,

Wi' perfect perspicuity.

But tables here or tables there,

She's lived ten years beyond her share,
An's like to live a dozen mair,

To ca' for her annuity.

Last Yule she had a fearfu' host,

I thought a kink might set me free

I led her out, 'mang snaw and frost,
Wi' constant assiduity.

But diel ma' care-the blast gaed by,

And miss'd the auld anatomy

It just cost me a tooth, for bye
Discharging her annuity.

If there's a sough o' cholera,

Or typhus,-wha sae gleg as she? She buys up baths, an' drugs, an' a', In siccan superfluity!

She doesna need-she's fever proof-
The pest walked o'er her very roof-
She tauld me sae-an' then her loof
Held out for her annuity.

Ae day she fell-her arm she brak―
A compound fracture as could be—
Nae leech the cure wad undertak,
Whate'er was the gratuity.

It's cured! She handles't like a flail-
It does as weel in bits as hale-
But I'm a broken man mysel'
Wi' her and her annuity.

Her broozled flesh and broken banes
Are weel as flesh and banes can be;
She beats the toads that live in stanes,
An' fatten in vacuity!

They die when they're exposed to air-
They canna thole the atmosphere—
But her!-expose her onywhere-
She lives for her annuity.

If mortal means could nick her thread,
Sma' crime it wad appear to me-
Ca't murder-or ca't homicide-
I'd justify't-an' do it tae.

But how to fell a withered wife

That's carved out o' the tree of life

The timmer limmer dares the knife

To settle her annuity.

I'd try a shot-but whar's the mark?
Her vital parts are hid frae me;
Her backbone wanders through her sark
In an unkenn'd corkscrewity.

She's palsified-an' shakes her head
Sae fast about, ye scarce can see't,
It's past the power o' steel or lead
To settle her annuity.

She might be drowned; but

go

Within a mile o' loch or sea;

she'll not

Or hanged-if cord could grip a throat
O' siccan exiguity.

It's fitter far to hang the rope

It draws out like a telescope;

"Twad tak' a dreadfu' length o' drop

To settle her annuity.

Will poison do it? It has been tried,
But be't in hash or fricassee,