The dust begrimes his ancient hat;
His coat is darker far than that;
'Tis odd to see his sooty form

All speckled with the feathery storm;

Yet in his honest bosom lies

Nor spot nor speck,—though still he cries,"Charco'! charco'!"

And many a roguish lad replies,"Ark, ho! ark, ho!"

"Charco'!”—“Ark, ho!”—Such various sounds Announce Mark Haley's morning rounds.

Thus all the cold and wintry day

He labors much for little pay;
Yet feels no less of happiness

Than many a richer man, I guess,

When through the shades of eve he spies

The light of his own home, and cries,"Charco'! charco'!"

And Martha from the door replies,"Mark, ho! Mark, ho!"

"Charco'!"-"Mark, ho!"-Such joy abounds When he has closed his daily rounds.

The hearth is warm, the fire is bright
And while his hand, washed clean and white,
Holds Martha's tender hand once more,
His glowing face bends fondly o'er

The crib wherein his darling lies,

And in a coaxing tone he cries,

"Charco'! charco'!"

And baby with a laugh replies,"Ah, go! ah, go!"

"Charco'!"-"Ah, go!"-while at the sounds The mother's heart with gladness bounds.

Then honored be the charcoal man!

Though dusty as an African,

'Tis not for you, that chance to be

A little better clad than he,

His honest manhood to despise,

Although from morn till eve he cries,—
"Charco'! charco'!"

While mocking echo still replies,

"Hark, O! hark, O!"

"Charco'!"-"Hark, O!"-Long may the sounds

Proclaim Mark Haley's daily rounds!

J. T. Trowbridge.

SCENE AT THE NATURAL BRIDGE.

The scene opens with a view of the great Natural Bridge in Virginia. There are three or four lads standing in the channel below looking up with awe to that vast arch of unhewn rocks, which the Almighty bridged over those everlasting butments, "when the morning stars sung together.

It is almost five hundred feet from where they stand, up those perpendicular bulwarks of limestone, to the keyrock of that vast arch, which appears to them only the size of a man's hand. The silence of death is rendered more impressive by the little stream that falls from rock to rock down the channel. The sun is darkened, and the boys have unconsciously uncovered their heads, as if standing in the presence-chamber of the majesty of the whole earth.

At last this feeling begins to wear away; they begin to look around them; they find that others have been there before them. They see the names of hundreds cut in the limestone butments. A new feeling comes over their young hearts, and their knives are in their hands in an instant. "What man has done, man can do," is their watchword, while they draw themselves up, and carve their names a foot above those of a hundred full-grown men who have been there before them.

They are all satisfied with this feat of physical exertion, except one.

He grasped his knife with a firmer hand, and clinging to a little jutting crag, he cuts a gain into the limestone, about a foot above where he stands; he then reaches up and cuts another for his hands.

'Tis a dangerous adventure; but as he puts his feet and hands into those gains, and draws himself up carefully to his full length, he finds himself a foot above every name chronicled in that mighty wall. While his companions are regarding him with concern and admiration, he cuts his name in rude capitals, large and deep into that flinty album.

His knife is still in his hand, and strength in his sinews, and a new created aspiration in his heart. Again he cuts another niche, and again he carves his name in larger capitals. This is not enough. Heedless of the entreaties of his companions, he cuts and climbs again. The gradations of his ascending scale grow wider apart. He measures his length at every gain he cuts. The voices of his friends wax weaker and weaker, till their words are finally lost on his ear.

He now, for the first time, cast a look beneath him. Had that glance lasted a moment, that moment would have been his last. He clings with a convulsive shudder to his little niche in the rock. An awful abyss awaits his almost certain fall. He is faint with severe exertion, and trembling from the sudden view of the dreadful destruction to which he is exposed. His knife is worn half way to the haft. He can hear the voices, but not the words, of his terror-stricken companions below! What a moment! There is no retracing his steps. It is impossible to put his hand into the same niche with his feet, and retain his slender hold a moment.

His companions instantly perceive this new and fearful dilemma, and await his fall with emotions that "freeze their young blood." He is too high, too faint, to ask for his father and mother. But one of his companions anticipates his desire. Swift as the wind, he bounds down the channel, and the situation of the ill-fated boy is told upon his father's hearthstone.

Minutes of almost eternal length roll on, and there are hundreds standing in that rocky channel, and hundreds on the bridge above, all holding their breath, and awaiting the fearful catastrophe. The poor boy hears the hum of

new and numerous voices both above and below. He can distinguish the tones of his father, who is shouting, with all the energy of despair," William! William! don't look down! We are all here praying for you! Don't look down! Keep your eye towards the top!"

The boy did n't look down. His eye is fixed like a flint towards heaven, and his young heart on Him who reigns there. He grasps again his knife. He cuts another niche, and another foot is added to the hundreds that remove him from the reach of human help from below. How carefully he uses his wasting blade! How anxiously he selects the softest places in that vast pier! How he avoids every flinty grain! How he economizes his physical powers, resting a moment at each gain he cuts! How every motion is watched from below! There stand his father, mother, brother, and sister, on the very spot, where, if he falls, he will not fall alone.

Fifty more gains must be cut before the longest rope can reach him. His wasting blade strikes again into the limestone. Spliced ropes are ready in the hands of those who are leaning over the outer edge of the bridge. Two minutes more and all must be over. The blade is worn to the last half inch. The boy's head reels; his eyes are starting from their sockets. His last hope is dying in his heart; his life must hang on the next gain he cuts. That niche is the last.

At the last faint gash he makes, his knife-his faithful knife-falls from his little nerveless hand, and ringing along the precipice, falls at his mother's feet. An involuntary groan of despair runs like a death-knell through the channel below, and all is still as the grave. At the height of nearly three hundred feet, the devoted boy lifts his hopeless heart, and closes his eyes to commend his soul to God.

'Tis but a moment-there! one foot swings off-he is reeling-trembling-toppling over into eternity! Hark! a shout falls on his ear from above. The man who is lying with half his length over the bridge, has caught a glimpse of the boy's head and shoulders. Quick as thought the noosed rope is within reach of the sinking youth With a faint convulsive effort, the swooning boy drops his arms into the noose. Darkness comes over him,

and with the words God-Mother-the tightening rope lifts him out of his last shallow niche. Not a lip moves while he is dangling over that fearful abyss; but when a sturdy Virginian reaches down and draws up the lad, and holds him up in his arms before the tearful, breathless multitude, such shouting-such leaping and weeping for joy-never greeted the ear of a human being so recovered from the yawning gulf of eternity.

Elihu Burritt.

DICK SWIVELLER AND THE MARCHIONESS.

One circumstance troubled Mr. Swiveller's mind very much, and that was that the small servant always remained somewhere in the bowels of the earth, and never came to the surface unless the single gentleman rang his bell, when she would answer it and immediately disappear again. She never went out, or came into the office, or had a clean face, or took off the coarse apron, or looked out of any one of the windows, or stood at the street door for a breath of air, or had any rest or enjoyment whatever. Nobody ever came to see her, nobody spoke of her, nobody cared about her.

"Now," said Dick, walking up and down with his hands in his pockets, "I'd give something—if I had it—to know how they use that child, and where they keep her. My mother must have been a very inquisitive woman; I have no doubt I'm marked with a note of interrogation somewhere upon my word, I should like to know how they use her!"

After running on, in this way, for some time, Mr. Swiveller softly opened. the office door, with the intention. of darting across the street for a glass of the mild porter. At that moment he caught a parting glimpse of the brown head-dress of Miss Brass flitting down the kitchen stairs. "And by Jove!" thought Dick, "she 's going to feed the small servant. Now or never!"

First peeping over the hand-rail and allowing the headdress to disappear in the darkness below, he groped his way down, and arrived at the door of a back kitchen immediately after Miss Brass had entered the same, bearing in her hand a cold leg of mutton. It was a very dark, miserable place, very low and very damp: the walls disfigured by a thousand rents and blotches. The water was trickling out of a leaky butt, and a most wretched cat was lapping up the drops with the sickly eagerness of starvation. Everything was locked up; the coal-cellar, the candle-box, the salt-box, the meat-safe, were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meager aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon: he would have