"I and Effie will sit together,

All alone in this great arm-chair.

It is silly to mind it, darling,

When life is so hard to bear.

"While her little soft arms grow tighter Round my neck in their clinging hold, Well-I must not cry on your hair, dear, For my tears might tarnish the gold.

"But my Effie won't reason, will she,
Or endeavor to understand?
Only holds up her mouth to kiss me,
As she strokes my face with her hand.

"But hark!-there is nurse calling Effie;

It is bed-time, so run away,

And I must go back, or the others

Will be wondering why I stay.

"So good-night to my darling Effie,

Be happy, sweetheart, and grow wise;
There's one kiss for her golden ringlets,

And two for her sleepy eyes."

The style of the above is very much like Mary Howitt's "My Little Minnie," only immeasurably superior. That they have

a fascination for children I can answer, for I have known little ones to perform disa greeable duties with alacrity and pleasure for the promise that mamma would read them Miss Proctor, and in a little time, sc much are those poems in consonance with their tastes and feelings, they could repeat them readily from memory. I think it was Beranger who said: "I care not who writes the sermons of a nation, so I may give them their songs." But here is one who combines both. The poem of Fidelis con

tains such loyalty to friendship and memory that I cannot forbear inserting some passages:

"You have taken back the promise
That you spoke so long ago-
Taken back the heart you gave me,

I must even let it go.

Where Love once has breathed Pride dieth,
So I struggled but in vain,

First to keep the links together,

Then to piece the broken chain.

"But it might not be so freely

All your friendship I restore,

And the heart that I had taken

As my own forever more.

No shade of reproach shall touch you,

Dread no more a claim from me

But I will not have you fancy

That I count myself as free.

"I am bound by the old promise

What can break that golden chain?
Not even the words that you have spoken,
Or the sharpness of my pain.

Do you think, because you fail me,
And draw back your hand to day,
That from out the heart I gave you,
My strong love can fade away?

"It will live. No eyes may see it.
In my soul it will lie deep,
Hidden from all; but I shall feel it

Often stirring in its sleep.

So, remember, that the friendship

Which you now think poor and vain,

Will endure, in hope and patience,

Till you ask for it again."

To those who have compromised their fidelity, these beautiful lines must be a stinging remorse. The consciousness of

wasted affection cannot overcome or sub

due the true and loyal heart. The line

"Where Love once has breathed Pride dieth,"

reveals the source from whence magnanimity draws its strength.

Theodore Tilton says, in speaking of Mrs. Browning: "Her resemblance to other poets. in style and thought are not infrequent." As one evidence he gives us a line from "Lady Geraldine:"

"With a rushing stir uncertain, in the air, the purple curtain,"

as like a line in "Poe's Raven:"

"And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain."

These duplicated thoughts we often find among our classic writers. But we are now