Sure, never was so wise a child, or witty!

He promised belles, boquets, balls, billets-doux, Wealth, wit, Esthetics, fame, to Jersey City,

And wedding-wreaths, and rings to-you know who!

He grieves the best gift gone-she smiles before us!—
The choicest bloom pluckt from his natal bower,
In this pale princess of the Tuscaroras,

Ka-tci-tci-sta-kwast, meaning "beauteous flower."

This princess who has words more clear and clever
Than my poor muse can either think or sing ;-
And, while I live, I never shall know-never,
Why she has also asked of me this thing.

To give you greeting-the new-year's kind greeting,
For all the crowding hours that come anon,
To wish you steadfast joys, your sorrows fleeting,
And bid you God-speed, as your days go on.

May the blue roses blossom for you, twining

Bright bowers in fancy's realm-that moon-loved maze! The fair ideal of the soul enshrining,

With glad to-morrows, and dear yesterdays.

When wave the yew's funereal branches slender,
O'er some dark hour most full of grief and ill,
May hope's star pierce the gloom, its ray of splendor
With comfort fraught, and bringing blessing still.

Time is my tedious rhyme should here have ending;
May all good things and pleasant with you dwell,
Gifts, graces, blessedness, your days attending;
Thus, O my friends, I greet you. Fare-you-well!

MYTHS OF THE IROQUOIS.

MRS. ERMINNIE A. SMITH.

Let us revere them-
These wildwood legends,
Born of the camp-fire,
Let them be handed
Down to our children-

Richest of heirlooms.

No land may claim them :

They are ours only,

Like our grand rivers

Like our vast prairies,

Like our dead heroes."

ALDRICH.

HE instinctive desire in man to fathom the great mystery of human life; to solve the enigma of

whence he came and whither he goeth;" to comprehend the beginning and history of the dim, prehistoric past, and the more undefined future; and to account for the marvels ever presented to his senses, has in all times excited the imagination and originated speculation. To account for all the phenomena of life and nature, the human mind has seized upon every analogy suggesting the slightest clue. to their solution. In the statement of these analogies they have gradually become formulated into tales, or accounts of

supposed events-these only varying with the temperament of the narrator or the exigencies of the locality, where, oft repeated, they have in time been recorded on the hearts and minds of the people either as myths or folk-lore embodying the fossilized knowledge and ideas of a previous age, misinterpreted, perhaps, by those who have inherited them.

For the ethnologist who would trace in mythology the growth of the human mind, nowhere in this direction is the harvest so rich and over-ripe as among the aborigines of our own country who have hardly passed the boundaries of the charmed mytheopic age; and among these, none are as rich in this love of "faded metaphors " as their highest type, the Iroquois, with whom even the language containing this wealth of folk-lore will soon disappear-lost through its contact with American civilization.

To what dignity this folk-lore might have attained had these people been left to reach a lettered civilization for themselves, we cannot know; but judging from the history of other peoples, their first chroniclers would have accepted as facts many of these oral traditions which none could have disproved and much tended to corroborate.

For our grandfather Hih-nunh, the Thunderer, say they, was gifted with powers which he used solely for the benefit of mortals; hand-in-hand with his brother, the WestWind, he brought from the black clouds the vivifying rain

and from his abode under the great Niagarian cataract (at that time a mighty cave reaching from shore to shore), he issued forth and with his crushing bolt destroyed the great sea monster which, poisoning the waters, sent abroad a deadly pestilence; in proof of all this were not the bones of his victims, the giant lizards, often discovered? When this earthly mission of Hih-nunh was accomplished, a powerful current of water destroyed his terrestrial home, the spacious watery cave, and he took up his abode in the sky.

Then came the race of pygmies, small in stature bu₺ mighty in skill and deeds, who carved out the beauties of rock, cliff, and cave, and were endowed with the mightier power of destroying monster land-animals which infested the forest, endangering the life of man.

And did not cliff, rock, and grotto attest the skill of that departed race, and did not the exhumed bones of giant animals bear as perfect witness to their former existence and power and the truth of this lore, as did the "Homo diluvia testis" of a century ago confirm the story of the deluge.

The historian who treats of Rome does not disdain to tell us that its founder Romulus and his twin-brother were in their infancy thrown into the Tiber by order of Aumulius, but that the gods who had ordained his destiny stopped the river in its course and, sending the she-wolf to nourish the