For it was springtime holiday,

A sun-tanned boy was he,

And a patch upon his knee.

The apple boughs above him flung
Their tangled sprays on high,
With one dark, bristly blue-jay nest:
Rough-sketched against the sky.

He knew the secrets of the grass,
The burden of the hour,
He saw the fierce, bluff bumblebee
Touse many a clover flower.

Orphaned and poor as poor could be,
The years before him lay
Dark billows of an unknown sea,

No lighthouse on the way.
And yet, and yet his elder flute

Could bring him comfort true; He pursed his lips and puffed his cheeks And blew, and blew, and blew! Maurice Thompson's "Poems."

MY FRIEND.

My friend is one whom I have tancied cold
In early days of converse, but whose hold
Upon my heartstrings grew to links of gold.

Deep like the sea, with riches still unguessed
I cling to what is seen and dream the rest,
Knowing that what appears is not the best.
Academy.
ARTHUR L. SALMON..