CHOICE

100

SELECTIONS.

No. 7.

CHEER UP.

Cheer up and bear up! life should be gay,
Not marred by trouble and sorrow,
Think not of the misery clouding to-day,
But think of a brighter to-morrow.

Cheer up, and remember for one who is brave,
And cheerful and honest and true,

Earth has no sorrow this side of the grave;
She may crush, but she cannot subdue!

Cheer up and bear up! friends may deceive you,
Poverty, even, may knock at your door;
Heaven, perhaps, in her wisdom bereave you,
As mortal was never afflicted before;
Your future may seem to you dreary and wild
As a bark on a tempest-tossed ocean;

But bravely bear up, and Heaven her child
Will guard with a mother's devotion!

Then cheer up and bear up, and laugh at old Fate;
Let her wreak on your head what she will;

With noble and fearless forbearance await

Every blow, every loss, every ill.

Hope on, and remember the dreariest way

Has nothing of sadness or sorrow

For the brave heart that smiles at the ills of to-day,
And hopes for a brighter to-morrow!

BY THE SHORE OF THE RIVER.-C. P. CRANCH.

Through the gray willows the bleak winds are raving
Here on the shore with its driftwood and sands;
Over the river the lilies are waving,

Bathed in the sunshine of Orient lands;
Over the river, the wide, dark river,
Spring-time and Summer are blooming forever.

Here, all alone on the rocks I am sitting,
Sitting and waiting-my comrades all gone-
Shadows of mystery drearily flitting

Over the surf with its sorrowful moan,
Over the river, the strange, cold river,
Ah! must I wait for the Boatman forever?

Wife and children and friends were around me;
Labor and rest were as wings to my soul;
Honor and love were the laurels that crowned me;
Little I recked how the dark waters roll.
But the deep river, the gray, misty river,
All that I lived for has taken forever!

Silently came a black boat o'er the billows;
Stealthily grated the keel on the sand;

Rustling footsteps were heard through the willows,
There the dark Boatman stood, waving his hand,
Whisp'ring, "I come, o'er the shadowy river;
She who is dearest must leave thee forever."

Suns that were brightest and skies that were bluest,
Darkened and paled in the message he bore.
Year after year went the fondest, the truest,
Following that beckoning hand to the shore,
Down to the river, the cold, grim river,
Over whose waters they vanished forever.
Yet not in visions of grief have I wandered;
Still have I toiled, though my ardors have flown.
Labor is manhood, and life is but squandered
Dreaming vague dreams of the future alone.
Yet from the tides of the mystical river
Voices of spirits are whispering ever.

Lonely and old in the dusk I am waiting,
Till the dark Boatman, with soft, muffled oar,
Glides o'er the waves, and I hear the keel grating,
See the dim, beckoning hand on the shore,
Wooing me over the welcoming river

To gardens and homes that are shining forever!

Atlantic Monthly

ELOQUENCE AND LOGIC.-W. C. PRESTON.

Our popular institutions demand a talent for speaking, and create a taste for it. Liberty and eloquence are united, in all ages. Where the sovereign power is found in the public mind and the public heart, eloquence is the obvious approach to it. Power and honor, and all that can attract ardent and aspiring natures, attend it. The noblest instinct is to propagate the spirit,-"to make our mind the mind of other men," and wield the sceptre in the realms of passion. In the art of speaking, as in all other arts, a just combination of those qualities necessary to the end proposed, is the true rule of taste. Excess is always wrong. Too much ornament is an evil, too little, also. The one may impede the progress of the argument, or divert attention from it, by the introduction of extraneous matter; the other may exhaust attention, or weary by monotony. Elegance is in a just medium. The safer side to err on, is that of abundance,—as profusion is better than poverty; as it is better to be detained by the beauties of a landscape than by the weariness of a desert.

It is commonly, but mistakenly supposed, that the enforcing of truth is most successfully effected by a cold and formal logic; but the subtleties of dialectics and the forms of logic may play as fantastic tricks with truth, as the most potent magic of Fancy. The attempt to apply mathematical precision to moral truths is always a failure, and generally a dangerous one. If man, and especially masses of men, were purely intellectual, then cold reason alone would be influential to convince; but our nature is most complex, and many of the great truths which it most concerns us to know, are taught us by our instincts, our sentiments, our impulses, and our passions. Even in regard to the highest and holiest of all truth, to know which concerns us here and hereafter, we are not permitted to approach its investigation in the confidence of proud and erring reason, but are taught to become as little children, before we are worthy to receive it.

It is to this complex nature that the speaker addresses himself, and the degree of power with which all the elements are evoked, is the criterion of the orator. His business, to

be sure, is to convince, but more to persuade; and, most of all, to inspire with noble and generous passions. It is the cant of criticism, in all ages, to make a distinction between logic and eloquence, and to stigmatize the latter as declamation. Logic ascertains the weight of an argument, eloquence gives it momentum. The difference is between the vis inertice of a mass of metal, and the same ball hurled from the cannon's mouth. Eloquence is an argument alive and in motion,—the statue of Pygmalion inspired with vitality.

YARN OF THE "NANCY BELL."-W. S. GILBERT.

Twas on the shores that round the coast
From Deal to Ramsgate span,

That I found alone, on a piece of stone,
An elderly naval man.

His hair was weedy, his heard was long,
And weedy and long was he,

And I heard this wight on the shore recite
In a singular minor key:

"Oh, Lam a cook and a captain bold,
And a mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain's gig."

And he shook his fists and he tore his hair,
Till I really felt afraid,

For I couldn't help thinking the man had been

drinking,

And so I simply said:

"Oh, elderly man, it's little I know
Of the duties of men of the sea,
And I'll eat my hand if I understand
How you can possibly be

"At once a cook and a captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo'sun tight and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain's gig."

Then he gave a hitch to his trowsers, which
Is a trick all seamen larn,

And having got rid of a thumping quid,
He spun this painful yarn:

""Twas on the good ship Nancy Bell,
That we sailed to the Indian sea,
And there on a reef we came to grief,
Which has often occurred to me.

"And pretty nigh all of the crew was drowned,
(There was seventy-seven o' soul,)

And only ten of the Nancy's men
Said 'Here!' to the muster roll.

"There was me and the cook and the captain bold, And the mate of the Nancy brig,

And the bo'sun tight, and the midshipmite,

And the crew of the captain's gig.

"For a month we'd neither wittles nor drink,

Till a hungry we did feel,

So we drawed a lot, and accordin' shot

The captain for our meal.

"The next lot fell to the Nancy's mate,
And a delicate dish he made;

Then our appetite with the midshipmite
We seven survivors stayed.

"And then we murdered the bo'sun tight,
And he much resembled pig;

Then we wittled free, did the cook and me,
On the crew of the captain's gig.

"Then only the cook and me was left,
And the delicate question, 'Which
of us two goes to the kettle?' arose,
And we argued it out as sich.

"For I loved that cook as a brother, I did,

And the cook he worshipped me;

But we'd both be blowed if we'd either be stowed

In the other chap's hold, you see.

"I'll be eat if you dines off me,' says Tom;

'Yes, that,' says I, 'you'll be,—

'I'm boiled if I die, my friend,' quoth I,

And 'Exactly so,' quoth he.