Alas! the king was wroth. Before his face
I could not go to plead my piteous case;

And, ere the rising of the morrow's sun

My bitter doom was sealed, the deed was done.
Scarce had two moons passed, when one dreary night
I sat within my bower in woeful plight,

When suddenly upon my presence stole

A muffled form, whose shadow stirred my soul,

I knew not wherefore. Ere my tongue could speak,

Or with a cry the brooding silence break,

A low voice murmured, " Vashti !" With a bound
Of half-delirious joy, upon the ground

At the king's feet I fell. Pale and still,
Hushing my heart's cry with an iron will;

"What will the king?" I asked. No answer came
But to his sad eyes leaped a sudden flame;
And when I saw the anguish in his eyes,
My tortured love burst forth in tears and cries.
Then were his lips unsealed. I cannot tell
All the wild words that I remember well.
Oh! was it joy or was it pain to know
That not alone I wept my weary woe?
Alas! I know not. But I know to-day-

If this be sin, forgive me, Heaven, I pray!—
That though his eyes have never looked on mine
Since that sad night in bower of eglantine,
And fair Queen Esther sits a beauteous bride
In stately Shushan, at the monarch's side,

The king remembers Vashti, even yet,

Breathing her name sometimes with vain regret

Or murmuring, haply, in a whisper low,

66

"Woe for the heart that loved me long ago!"

TEMPERANCE.-WENDELL PHILLIPS.

Some men look upon this temperance cause as whining bigotry, narrow asceticism, or a vulgar sentimentality, fit for little minds, weak women, and weaker men. On the contrary, I regard it as second only to one or two others of the primary reforms of this age, and for this reason,--every race has its peculiar temptation; every clime has its specific sin. The tropics and tropical races are tempted to one form of

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sensuality; the colder and temperate regions, and our Saxon blood, find their peculiar temptation in the stimulus of drink and food.

In old times, our heaven was a drunken revel. We relieve ourselves from the over-weariness of constant and exhausting toil by intoxication. Science has brought a cheap means of drunkenness within the reach of every individual. National prosperity and free institutions have put into the hands of almost every workman the means of being drunk for a week, on the labor of two or three hours. With that blood and that temptation, we have adopted democratic institutions, where the law has no sanctions but the purpose and virtue of the masses. The statute-book rests not on bayonets, as in Europe, but on the hearts of the people.

A drunken people can never be the basis of a free government. It is the corner-stone neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress. To us, therefore, the title deeds of whose estates, and the safety of whose lives, depend upon the tranquillity of the streets, upon the virtue of the masses, the presence of any vice which brutalizes the average mass of mankind and tends to make it more readily the tool of intriguing and corrupt leaders, is necessarily a stab at the very life of the nation. Against such a vice is marshaled the temperance reformation.

That my sketch is no fancy picture, every one of you knows. Every one of you can glance back over your own path, and count many and many a one among those who started from the goal at your side, with equal energy, and perhaps greater promise, who has found a drunkard's grave long before this. The brightness of the bar, the ornament of the pulpit, the hope and blessing and stay of many a family-you know, every one of you who has reached middle life, how often on your path has been set up the warning, "Fallen before the temptations of the streets!" Hardly one house in this city, whether it be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or whether it find hard, cold maintenance by the most earnest economy, no matter which,-hardly a house that does not count among sons or nephews some victim of this vice. The skeleton of this warning sits at every board.

The whole world is kindred in this suffering. The country

mother launches her boy with trembling upon the temptations of city life. The father trusts his daughter anxiously to the young man she has chosen, knowing what a wreck intoxication may make of the house-tree they set up. Alas! how often are their worst forebodings more than fulfilled! I have known a case-probably many of you recall some almost equal to it-where one worthy woman could count father, brother, husband, and son-in-law, all drunkards, no man among her near kindred, except her son, who was not a victim of this vice. Like all other appetites, this finds resolution weak when set against the constant presence of temptation.

PATIENT MERCY JONES.-JAMES T. FIELDS.

Let us venerate the bones

Of patient Mercy Jones,

Who lies underneath these stones.

This is her story as once told to me

By him who still loved her, as all men might see,—
Darius, her husband, his age seventy years,

A man of few words, but for her many tears.

Darius and Mercy were born in Vermont;
Both children were christened at baptismal font
In the very same place, on the very same day
(Not much acquainted just then, I dare say).

The minister sprinkled the babies, and said,

Who knows but this couple some time may be wed,

And I be the parson to join them together,

For weal or for woe, through all sorts of weather!"

Well, they were married, and happier folk

Never put both their heads in the same loving yoke.

They were poor, they worked hard, but nothing could try
The patience of Mercy, or cloud her bright eye.
She was clothed with content as a beautiful robe;
She had griefs,-who has not on this changeable globe?-
But at such times she seemed like the sister of Job.

She was patient with dogmas, where light never dawns,
She was patient with people who trod on her lawns
She was patient with folks who said blue skies were gray,
And dentists and oxen that pulled the wrong way;

She was patient with phrases no husband should utter,
She was patient with cream that declined to be butter;
She was patient with buyers with nothing to pay,
She was patient with talkers with nothing to say;
She was patient with millers whose trade was to cozen,
And grocers who counted out ten to the dozen;
She was patient with bunglers and fault-finding churls,
And tall, awkward lads who came courting her girls;
She was patient with crockery no art could mend,
And chimneys that smoked every day the wrong end;
She was patient with reapers who never would sow,
And long-winded callers who never would go;
She was patient with relatives, when, uninvited,

They came and devoured, then complained they were slighted;

She was patient with crows that got into the corn,

And other dark deeds out of wantonness born;

She was patient with lightning that burned up the hay,
She was patient with poultry unwilling to lay;

She was patient with rogues who drank cider too strong,
She was patient with sermons that lasted too long;
She was patient with boots that tracked up her clean floors,
She was patient with peddlers and other smooth bores;
She was patient with children who disobeyed rules,
And, to crown all the rest, she was patient with fools.

The neighboring husbands all envied the lot
Of Darius, and wickedly got up a plot

To bring o'er his sunshine an unpleasant spot.
"You think your wife's temper is proof against fate,
But we know of something her smiles will abate.
When she gets out of wood, and for more is inclined,
Just send home the crookedest lot you can find;

Let us pick it out, let us go and choose it,

And we'll bet you a farm, when she comes for to use it,
Her temper will crack like Nathan Dow's cornet,
And she'll be as mad as an elderly hornet."

Darius was piqued, and he said, with a vum,
“I'll pay for the wood, if you'll send it hum;
But depend on it, neighbors, no danger will come."
Home came the gnarled roots, and a crookeder load
Never entered the gate of a Christian abode.
A ram's horn was straighter than any stick in it;
It seemed to be wriggling about every minute;

It would not stand up, and it would not lie down;
It twisted the vision of one-half the town.

To look at such fuel was really a sin,

For the chance was strabismus would surely set in.

Darius said nothing to Mercy about it;

It was crooked wood-even she could not doubt it;

But never a harsh word escaped her sweet lips,

Any more than if the old snags were smooth chips.

She boiled with them, baked with them, washed with them, through

The long winter months, and none ever knew

But the wood was as straight as Mehitable Drew,

Who was straight as a die, or a gun, or an arrow,

And who made it her business all male hearts to harrow.

When the pile was burned up, and they needed more wood,
"Sure, now," mused Darius, "I shall catch it good;
She has kept her remarks all condensed for the spring,
And my ears, for the trick, now deserve well to sting.
She never did scold me, but now she will pout,
And say with such wood she is nearly worn out."

But Mercy, unruffled, was calm, like the stream
That reflects back at evening the sun's perfect beam;
And she looked at Darius, and lovingly smiled,
As she made this request with a temper unriled:
"We are wanting more fuel, I'm sorry to say;
I burn a great deal too much every day,

And I mean to use less than I have in the past;
But get, if you can, dear, a load like the last;
I never had wood that I liked half so well-

Do see who has nice crooked fuel to sell;

There's nothing that's better than wood full of knots,
It lays so complete round kettles and pots,

And washing and cooking are really like play

When the sticks nestle close in so charming a way."

-Harper's Magazine

THE REASON WHY.

Do you wish to know the reason
Why your neighbor often calls
On the dashing widow Wilkins,
And attends her to the balls?