where can it be found? I have often heard of it, but I never succeeded in ascertaining its precise situation. Somewhere in the past, no doubt. I really should like to visit such a land. What a multitude of "mights" must lie there together, what aspirations, what noble deeds never destined to have been performed! Yet from whitened lips comes the whisper, "It might have been." No, dear hearers, it could not be, because you, or some one else, would not allow it. Year by year we hear the words, day after day; they have been the subject of many a discourse and essay. We hear and read them, wondering who indulges in the " might have been" delusion, instead of striving with the present and saying, "it shall be." It is useless to mourn over the past, for it does not brighten it, and the moments thus wasted will in future cause more thoughts as to what "might have been."

It is good for every heart to commune with self to a certain extent, but when hours are spent in useless repining it ceases to be beneficial. Many, thinking they have failed in nearly every great task they wished to accomplish, will also think it is useless to undertake anything more. "It might have been," if perseverance had not been lacking, but as it was, it could never have been.

Let us

Let

Let not such thoughts possess dominion over us. have a fairy picture of what is to be, drawn in gorgeous colors; let us spare neither time, pains, pencil, nor paint. our hearts be in the work, and with unfaltering trust look upon the map of the future, perceiving the destined goal we are to reach, after much labor. Turn not to the right or left; look not behind us lest we become mere drones. Leave the land of " might have been" for weary ones to people; as for us, we must build a city in the land of To Be. A city to attract strangers, where beauties of mind shall not be forgotten in dress beauty; where life shall not be devoted entirely to self and sensual gratification; where love shall erect a fortress and defend our city from intruders. And how shall love deal with enemies? It shall, by its kind teachings and gentle influence, win them to our cause. Every day we shall witness the increase of numbers, and with light hearts and pleasant countenances move among our little band, distributing peace and good will. My land is the land of To Be.

If

Away with past regrets, for if my present opportunities are improved I shall have enough to occupy my mind. we mourn for the past, we shall waste valuable time, and the future will find us with drooping heads mourning over these wasted moments. Let not "it might have been" be inscribed over our tombstone when we die, to prove that our life was a failure. Rather let it be, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter thou upon the heritage of the just."

THE LOST HEIR.-THOMAS HOOD.

"Oh where, and oh where

Is my bonnie laddie gone?"-OLD SONG.

One day, as I was going by

That part of Holborn christened High,
I heard a loud and sudden cry
That chilled my very blood;
And lo! from out a dirty alley,
Where pigs and Irish wont to rally,
I saw a crazy woman sally,

Bedaubed with grease and mud.

She turned her east, she turned her west,
Staring like Pythoness possessed,
With streaming hair and heaving breast,
As one stark mad with grief.
This way and that she wildly ran,
Jostling with woman and with man,—
Her right hand held a frying pan,
The left a lump of beef.

At last her frenzy seemed to reach
A point just capable of speech,
And with a tone almost a screech,

As wild as ocean birds,

Or female Ranter moved to preach,
She "gave her sorrow words":

"O Lord! oh, dear, my heart will break, I shall go stick stark staring wild!

Has ever a one seen anything about the streets like a crying lost-looking child?

Lawk help me, I don't know where to look, or to run, if I only knew which way

A child as is lost about London streets, and especially Seven Dials, is a needle in a bottle of hay.

I am all in a quiver-get out of my sight, do, you wretch, you little Kitty M'Nab!

You promised to have half an eye to him, you know you did, you dirty deceitful young drab!

The last time as ever I see him, poor thing, was with my own blessed motherly eyes,

Sitting as good as gold in the gutter, a playing at making little dirt pies.

I wonder he left the court where he was better off than all the other young boys,

With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster-shells, and a dead kitten by way of toys.

When his father comes home, and he always comes home as sure as ever the clock strikes one,

He'll be rampant, he will, at his child being lost, and the beef and the inguns not done!

La bless you, good folks, mind your own consarns, and don't be making a mob in the street;

O Sergeant M'Farlane! you have not come across my poor little boy, have you, in your beat?

Do, good people, move on! don't stand staring at me like a parcel of stupid stuck pigs;

Saints forbid! but he's p'r'aps been inviggled away up a court for the sake of his clothes by the prigs;

He'd a very good jacket, for certain, for I bought it myself for a shilling one day in Rag Fair;

And his trowsers considering not very much patched, and red plush, they was once his father's best pair.

His shirt, it's very lucky I'd got washing in the tub, or that might have gone with the rest;

But he'd got on a very good pinafore with only two slits and a burn on the breast.

He'd a goodish sort of hat, if the crown was sewed in, and not quite so much jagged at the brim.

With one shoe on, and the other shoe is a boot, and not a fit, and you'll know by that if it's him.

Except being so well dressed, my mind would misgive, some old beggar woman in want of an orphan

Had borrowed the child to go a begging with, but I'd rather see him laid out in his coffin!

Do, good people, move on! such a rabble of boys! I'll break every bone of 'em I come near;

Go home-you're spilling the porter-go home,-Tommy Jones, go along home with your beer.

This day is the sorrowfullest day of my life, ever since my name was Betty Morgan;

Them vile Savoyards! they lost him once before all along of following a monkey and an organ;

O my Billy-my head will turn right round-if he's got kiddynapped with them Italians,

They'll make him a plaster parish image boy, they will, the outlandish tatterdemalions.

Billy-where are you, Billy?—I'm as hoarse as a crow, with screaming for ye, you young sorrow!

And sha'n't have half a voice, no more I sha'n't, for crying fresh herrings to-morrow.

O Billy, you're bursting my heart in two, and my life won't be of no more vally,

If I'm to see other folks' darlin's, and none of mine, playing like angels in our alley!

And what shall I do but cry out my eyes, when I looks at the old three-legged chair

As Billy used to make coach and horses of, and there ain't no Billy there!

I would run all the wide world over to find him, if I only knowed where to run;

Little Murphy, now I remember, was once lost for a month through stealing a penny bun,

The Lord forbid of any child of mine! I think it would kill me raily

To find my Bill holdin' up his little innocent hand at the

Old Bailey.

For though I say it as oughtn't, yet I will say, you may search for miles and mileses

And not find one better brought up, and more pretty behaved, from one end to t'other of St. Giles's. And if I called him a beauty, it's no lie, but only as a mother ought to speak;

You never set eyes on a more handsomer face, only it hasn't been washed for a week;

As for hair, though it's red, it's the most nicest hair when I've time to just show it the comb;

I'll owe 'em five pounds, and a blessing besides, as will only bring him safe and sound home.

He's blue eyes, and not to be called a squint, though a little cast he's certainly got;

And his nose is still a good un, though the bridge is broke, by his falling on a pewter pint pot;

He's got the most elegant wide mouth in the world, and very large teeth for his age;

And quite as fit as Mrs. Murdockson's child to play Cupid on the Drury Lane Stage.

And then he has got such dear winning ways-but oh, I never, never shall see him no more!

Oh dear! to think of losing him just after nussing him back from death's door!

Only the very last month when the windfalls, hang 'em, was at twenty a penny,

And the threepence he'd got by grottoing was spent in plums, and sixty for a child is too many.

And the Cholera man came and whitewashed us all, and, drat him, made a seize of our hog.

It's no use to send the crier to cry him about, he's such a blunderin' drunken old dog;

The last time he was fetched to find a lost child, he was guzzling with his bell at the Crown,

And went and cried a boy instead of a girl, for a distracted mother and father about town.

Billy-where are you, Billy, I say? come, Billy, come home to your best of mothers!

I'm scared when I think of them cabroleys, they drive so, they'd run over their own sisters and brothers.

Or may be he's stole by some chimbly sweeping wretch, to stick fast in narrow flues and what not,

And be poked up behind with a picked pointed pole, when the soot has ketched, and the chimbly's red hot.

Oh, I'd give the whole wide world, if the world was mine, to clap my two longin' eyes on his face,

For he's my darlin' of darlin's, and if he don't soon come back, you'll see me drop stone dead on the place.

I only wish I'd got him safe in these two motherly arms, and wouldn't I hug him and kiss him!

Lawk! I never knew what a precious he was, but a child don't not feel like a child till you miss him.

Why there he is! Punch and Judy hunting, the young wretch, it's that Billy as sartin as sin!

But let me get him home, with a good grip of his hair, and I'm blest if he shall have a whole bone in his skin!

ACROSS THE RIVER.-LUCY LARCOM.

When for me the silent oar

Parts the Silent River,

And I stand upon the shore

Of the strange Forever,

Shall I miss the loved and known?

Shall I vainly seek mine own?

Mid the crowd that come to meet

Spirits sin-forgiven,

Listening to their echoing feet

Down the streets of heaven,—
Shall I know a footstep near

That I listen, wait for, here?