the early darkness, bright and happy, and burst, with a shout of joy, into their home.

So, on the whole, it was well with them; and Petrasche, meeting, on the highway, or in the public streets, the many dogs who toiled from daybreak to night-fall, paid only with blows and curses, and loosened from the shafts with a kick, to starve and freeze as best they might Petrasche in his heart was very grateful to his fate, and thought it the fairest and the kindliest the world could hold.

Though he was often very hungry, indeed, when he lay down at night, though he had to work in the heat of summer and chill of winter, though his feet were often tender with wounds from the sharp edges of the jagged pavement, though he had to perform tasks beyond his strength and against his nature yet he was grateful and content; he did his duty each day, and the eyes that he loved smiled on him.

L. De la Ramè (Adapted).

THE MOUNTAINS.

I saw the mountains stand,
Silent, wonderful, and grand,
Looking out across the land
When the golden light was falling
On distant dome and spire.

And I heard a low voice calling
"Come up higher, come up higher.

"From the lowland and the mire,
From the mist of earth desire,
From the vain pursuit of pelf,

From the attitude of self,

Come up higher, come up higher.

Think not that we are cold,

Though eternal snows have crowned us;
Underneath our breasts of snow,
Silver fountains sing and flow,

And restore the hungry lands."

-James Gowdy Clark.

THE SEA.

The sea! the sea! the open sea!

The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,

It runneth the earth's wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!

I am where I would ever be;

With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence whereso'er I go;

If a storm should come, and awake the deep,
What matter? I should ride and sleep.

I love (oh, how I love!) to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When
every mad wave drowns the moon,
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest blasts do blow.

I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh his mother's nest:
And a mother she was and is to me;
For I was born on the open sea!

The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcomed to life the ocean-child!

I've lived since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers a sailor's life,

With wealth to spend and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,

Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!

-Barry Cornwall.