"There is no pilot at sea to-night,"

Said Abner Jackson, the skipper's son, While over the water came the light

And booming crash of a signal-gun.

"Heavens! They are fetching past the landPast the p'int; they will strike the rock!" Said Jothan Davis. Close at hand

66

Came a crash and a rending shock.

Man the life-boat!" No man stirred :
Over the din of wind and wave,

Over the tempest's strife, was heard
Save! but no human hand could save.

Clinging to the wave-washed deck,
Men and women in wild despair
Sent their pleading from off the wreck,
Shuddering on the startled air.

Then spoke Huldah, the fisher's wife.
"Does not a man to save them dare!

Will ye stand for a worthless life

While they cry in their wild despair?

"Shame on ye men! A woman's hand Shall do the deed ye dare not try! Who'll go with me from off the land?" "I will! and I! and I! and I !

There they stood in the dying light,
Down by the boat with oars in hand,

Five brave women-a braver sight
Never before was seen on land.

Up spoke gruffly Old Fisher Ben,
Scarred old Triton of the sea;

"Man that boat! Such a sight, my men, Never on earth was seen by me.

"All we can do at worst is die,

Better die," the old Triton said, "Than to live as cowards 'neath the eye Of the women of Marblehead."

Abner Jackson then stepped out,

Jothan Davis, and Skipper Ben,

Bijah Norcross and Ireson Stout

That, they felt was the place for men.

Out past the point, where, mountain-high, Crested billows in foam were tost, Sometimes plain on the stormy sky,

Sometimes hidden, and sometimes lost,

Round the point on the stormy wave

They reach the rock and gain the wreck; Every life they seek to save

Safe is taken from off the deck.

And now strain hard, the goal is near,
Each hand presses a bending oar,

Shout, O fishermen ! cheer on cheer

Shout, for they have reached the shore, Shout for the women of Marblehead !

MAID OF ATHENS.

LORD BYRON.

(Sung by Mr. William Courtney.)

AID of Athens ere we part

M

Give, oh, give me back my heart;
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest :

By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each gean wind,
By those lids whose jetty fringe

Kiss thy soft cheek's blooming tinge

By those wild eyes like the roe,
Hear my vow before I go.

Maid of Athens! I am gone;

Think of me, sweet, when alone,

Tho' I fly to Istamboul,

Athens holds my heart and soul.

MARY STUART AND MARIE ANTOINETTE.*

隊

MISS MINNIE SWAYZE.

(Read by the Author.)

HE execution of the Queen of the Scots has been

so many times described, painter and poet and historian have so often delineated it, that it is as familiar to most readers as a nursery tale. The cold, gray morning breaks over the castle where, after sixteen years of prison pining, the wayward Queen has come at last to the end of her perturbed life. All then, or almost all, is finished -she is telling her last beads, she is murmuring her last prayers, she is writing the last pages which the weary hand shall ever trace. All her plots and plans, all the allurements of her beauty, all the sweet fascinations of a tongue which had misled to ruin so many gallant gentlemen, are over now. Shrewsbury and Kent have come down with the warrant of execution. She has "thanked God that her sufferings are now so near an end." As a last effort of a grace which never failed her, she has drained one cup of wine to her weeping servants. With a woman's fastidiousness, she

* Extract from a lecture on "Woman in the Purple."