enormous lapses of time, and of matters which he could not understand: war-Congress-Stony Point;-he had no more courage to ask after any more friends, but cried out in despair, "Does nobody here know Rip Van Winkle?"

"Oh, Rip Van Winkle!" exclaimed two or three, "oh, to be sure! that's Rip Van Winkle yonder, leaning against the tree." Rip looked, and beheld a precise counterpart of himself, as he went up the mountain; apparently as lazy, and certainly as ragged. The poor fellow was now completely confounded. He doubted his own identity, and whether he was himself or another man. In the midst of his bewilderment, the man in the cocked hat demanded who he was, and what was his name.

"God knows," exclaimed he, at his wits' end; "I'm not myself I'm somebody else that's me yonder--no-that's somebody else got into my shoes-I was myself last night, but I fell asleep on the mountain, and they've changed my gun, and everything's changed, and I'm changed, and I can't tell what's my name, or who I am!"

At this critical moment a fresh, comely woman pressed through the throng to get a peep at the gray-bearded man. She had a chubby child in her arms, which, frightened at his looks, began to cry. "Hush, Rip," cried she, “hush, you little fool; the old man won't hurt you." The name of the child, the air of the mother, the tone of her voice, all awakened a train of recollections in his mind. "What's your name, my good woman?" asked he.

"Judith Gardenier."

"And your father's name?"

"Ah, poor man, Rip Van Winkle was his name, but it's twenty years since he went away from home with his gun, and never has been heard of since,-his dog came home without him; but whether he shot himself, or was carried away by the Indians, nobody can tell. I was then but a little girl."

Rip had but one question more to ask; but he put it with a faltering voice:

66 Where's your mother?"

"Oh, she too had died but a short time since; she broke a blood vessel in a fit of passion at a New England peddler."

There was a drop of comfort at least in this intelligence. The honest man could contain himself no longer. He caught his daughter and her child in his arms. "I am your father!" cried he, "young Rip Van Winkle once-old Rip Van Winkle now!-Does nobody know poor Rip Van Winkle?"

All stood amazed, until an old woman, tottering out from among the crowd, put her hand to her brow, and peering under it in his face for a moment, exclaimed, "Sure enough! it is Rip Van Winkle- it is himself! Welcome home again, old neighbor. Why, where have you been these twenty long years?"

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Rip's daughter took him home to live with her; she had a snug, well-furnished house, and a stout, cheery farmer för a husband, whom Rip recollected for one of the urchins that used to climb upon his back. As to Rip's son and heir, who was the ditto of himself, seen leaning against the tree, he was employed to work on the farm; but evinced an heredita y disposition to attend to anything else but his business.

THE SNOW-STORM.-C. G. EASTMAN.

"Tis a fearful night in the winter time,

As cold as it ever can be;

The roar of the blast is heard like the chime
Of the waves on an angry sea;

The moon is full, but her silver light

The storm dashes out with its wings to-night;
And over the sky, from south to north,
Not a star is seen, as the wind comes forth
In the strength of a mighty glee.

All day had the snow come down-all day,
As it never came down before,

And over the hills at sunset lay

Some two or three feet or more:

The fence was lost, and the wall of stone;
The windows blocked, and the well-curbs gone;
The hay-stack had grown to a mountain-lift;
And the wood-pile looked like a monster drift,
As it lay by the farmer's door.

The night sets in on a world of snow,
While the air grows sharp and chill,
And the warning roar of a fearful blow

Is heard on the distant hill:

And the Norther! See, on the mountain-peak,

In his breath how the old trees writhe and shriek!
He shouts on the plain, Ho-ho! ho-ho!

He drives from his nostrils the blinding snow,
And growls with a savage will.

Such a night as this to be found abroad
In the drifts and the freezing air!
Sits a shivering dog in a field by the road,
With the snow in his shaggy hair;
He shuts his eyes to the wind, and growls;
He lifts his head, and moans and howls;
Then, crouching low from the cutting sleet,
His nose is pressed on his quivering feet;
Pray, what does the dog do there?

A farmer came from the village plain,
But he lost the traveled way;

And for hours he trod with might and main
A path for his horse and sleigh;
But colder still the cold winds blew,
And deeper still the deep drifts grew;

And his mare, a beautiful Morgan brown,
At last in her struggles floundered down,
Where a log in a hollow lay.

In vain, with a neigh and a frenzied snort,
She plunged in the drifting snow,

While her master urged, till his breath grew short,
With a word and a gentle blow:

But the snow was deep, and the tugs were tight;
His hands were numb, and had lost their might;
So he wallowed back to his half-filled sleigh,
And strove to shelter himself till day,

With his coat and the buffalo.

He has given the last faint jerk of the rein,
To rouse up his dying steed;

And the poor dog howls to the blast in vain
For help in his master's need;

For awhile he strives with a wistful cry,
To catch a glance from his drowsy eye,
And wags his tail if the rude winds flap
The skirt of the buffalo over his lap,

And whines when he takes no heed.

The wind goes down and the storm is o'er,— "Tis the hour of midnight, past;

The old trees writhe and bend no more

In the whirl of the rushing blast;
The silent moon, with her peaceful light,
Looks down on the hills with snow all white;
And the giant shadow of Camel's Hump,
Of the blasted pine and the ghostly stump,
Afar on the plain are cast.

But, cold and dead, by the hidden log
Are they who came from the town,-
The man in his sleigh, and his faithful dog,
And his beautiful Morgan brown,-

In the wide snow desert, far and grand,

With his cap on his head, and the reins in his hand;
The dog with his nose on his master's feet,

And the mare half seen through the crusted sleet,
Where she lay when she foundered down.

IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.-A. A. HOPKINS.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen

The saddest are these-"It might have been."—WHITTIER.

There's a dolorous cheat in the words so sweet,
For their sadness is hardly real;

Or the sadness they tell, as my heart knows well,
Is at most but a sad ideal.

We may picture the vanishing yesterday
In the rarest of tints, or in sombre gray;

'Twas a glad, glad time since it left us here,

And there's never a cause for a sigh or tear;

It might have been worse, and the good we sought

Might have proved with the saddest of sorrows fraught.

When the poet had sung with his silver tongue

Of a fanciful sorrow fleeting,

Had he never a line for the joys divine

That are ever our lives completing?

We may breathe of the shadows our days have known
Should our breathings forever the shades bemoan;
Should we sigh when we tell of the dim twilight?
There might have been darkness of darkest night,
And we might have been left in the gloom to grope,
With never a gleam from the star of hope.

In the struggle and strife of this wearing life,
When we long for a rest worth winning,
Let us think of the woe that our souls might know
In an idleness dark with sinning.

When we sail our bark over stormy waves
Without finding the harbor our heart most craves,
And we think had we sailed on another track,
We should never have wished to be sailing back;
Let us think, though the waters are hardly fair,
That we might have found utterest shipwreck there.

There are troubles and tears in the round of years,
When there might have been peace and laughter;
But the peace might have led to a deeper dread
And a greater disquiet after;

And the laughter outringing so clear and glad,
Might have ended in tears of all tears most sad;
For the current of pleasure more closely flows
By the river of sorrow than human knows,
And we never may tell, as they onward wend,
When the sweet with the bitter may interblend.

There were wonderful dreams with their glad'ning gleams
That were full of delight and beauty;

There are wearying ways in the long to-days,

That are part of our path of duty;

And the way might have brightened with blossoms sweet,
And there might have been roses beneath our feet;-
Ah, yes, but the way of the " might have been "
Might have led us, perchance, to the wilds of sin;
While the path of the present, though rough indeed,
To a beautiful country at last may lead.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN?

comes that sad and

'Way back from the echoing ages mournful strain, "it might have been." What might have been? Who sorrows to-night as they look backward and wish life had been different? Who mourns over some early folly and borrows trouble day after day from those unhappy words? Is it you, child of the world? Is it you, lone wanderer? Is there, I ask, a land of " might have been"? If so,