Ste. Bless you, no; before them female nobs, my grammar 'll be as right as a trivet.

Jas. Female nobs! right as a trivet! Stephen, Stephen, the sad truth is, you 've got no elevation of soul! You'll live and die in

cotton!

Ste. I hope so; I mean to stick to cotton as long as cotton sticks

to me.

Jas. [taking cotton off his coat]. Cotton sticks to you too much, Stephen Plum

Ste. I wish you'd stick to cotton, dad, and get rid of all these fine, new, silk-and-satin notions of yours! The idea of your idling away your time, studying parlez vou Fransy! and then getting that whacking looking-glass, where I seed you making great ugly faces at yourself! Don't say you did n't, 'cause Toby and I catched you at it, t' other morning. How we did laugh, surely! Ho, ho, ho! Jas. What you are pleased to call great ugly faces, Sir, were postures and smiles to receive my guests, and look at the result! Behold the transmogrified Jasper Plum! Passed into the state of butterfly, out of the state of grub!

Ste. A butterfly, you? I say, dad, don't you feel a little stiffish about the wings? Ho, ho! butterfly and grub! [Suddenly serious.] Look you, dad; winter and summer, in work and out of work, I can manage to keep five hundred cotton spinners, families and all, a matter of two thousand poor creatures, and every man, woman and child, among 'em, has helped to make us rich. For my part, I can't lift a bit to my mouth, but I ask myself if any of theirs be empty. No, no! I must live and die among 'em; but what need to tell you so? Don't they love you, and you love them, as dear as dear can be? Bless your old heart, I know you do! And now, dad, I'll tell you a secret. I'm in love.

Jas. In what?

Ste. In love! and I don't mind to tell you another secret, — it's with a woman!

Jas. In love with a woman!

Ste. Yes; and, now you 're in for it, I'll tell you a third secret, -I want to marry her off-hand, directly.

Jas. The boy 's mad! His brother's marriage has got into his head, and turned it! You marry? and marry a woman, too? What next, I wonder?

Ste. Don't be angry, dad; I only want a wife of my own, like

my father before me; so you 'd very much oblige me, if you I'd just

name the time and keep it.

Jas. Indeed! before I name the time, Sir, perhaps you'll condescend to name the woman.

Ste. Ah! now comes the tug. I say, dad, you see that hook atop of the ceiling, that's just where you'll jump to, when you hear who 't is. Well, then, the woman I love, and want to marry, is the

poor factory girl, Martha Gibbs. Now, don't jump! [Holding Jasper down.]

Jas. Martha Gibbs! Ha, ha, ha! Come, I like this. There's some character about such abominable audacity! It tickles one to have one's hair stand on end! Degenerate offspring! do you want to be the death of the house of Plum? And do you think I'll ever sanction such an alliance for a son of mine? Never, never! The voice of all your ancestors exclaims, Never! never!

Ste. Then I wish my ancestors would just speak when they 're spoke to.

Jas. Reflect, rash youth, what was this creature, Martha? A beggar, asking charity!

Ste. No, she asked for wages, and paid you with hard work.

Jas. And who was she? I ask for her ancestry; she never had any. I ask for her parents; I don't believe she ever had any.

Ste. Never had a father and mother? Then warn't she a clever girl to manage to do without? Ho, ho, ho!

Jas. Reflect like a man, Sir, and don't laugh like a horse! I'll turn that intriguing hussy, Martha Gibbs, out of the house, this very day!

Ste. Stop, dad; you don't, you can't mean that?

Jas. do mean that, and I'll do it!

Ste. No, you won't; you may save yourself the trouble now, and the pain afterwards. Martha has given notice; she means to quit the factory to-morrow morning.

my

Jas. A pleasant journey to her!

Ste. I hope so, 'cause I go along with her.

Jas. What did you say, Sir?

Ste. I go along with her.

Jas. You, Stephen! go and leave-O, Stephen!

Ste. Perhaps it's best it should be so; long 's the day I've seen father and brother are ashamed of me.

Jas. Stephen Plum!

Ste. And you'd have me marry a fine lady, who 'd be ashamed of me, too; but I won't. So, if you won't have us near you, why Martha and I must love you far away.

Jas. Well, I'll reflect, let me have time to reflect.

Ste. That's but fair; I'll give you lots of time. [Looking at his watch.] I'll give you five-and-twenty minutes.

Jas. Eh?

Ste. Well, I don't mind making it half an hour; now, mind, in thirty minutes I'll return for your yes or no. If it's "No," I must pack up my carpet-bag, 'cause I can't go into the wide world without a change of linen. [Exit.]

Jas. I shall run distracted! Stephen Plum, if you've any lingering love for your half-expiring father-Stephen, I say! hour, indeed! that the house of Plum should come to this!

Half an [Exit.]

30. THE UNION AND ITS GOVERNMENT.-Wm. Gilmore Simms.

GOVERNMENT

We hold to be the creature of our need,
Having no power but where necessity
Still, under guidance of the Charter, gives it.
Our taxes raised to meet our exigence,

And not for waste or favorites. Our People
Left free to share the commerce of the world,
Without one needless barrier on their prows.
Our industry at liberty for venture,

Neither abridged nor pampered; and no calling
Preferred before another, to the ruin

Or wrong of either. These, Sir, are my doctrines!
They are the only doctrines which shall keep us
From anarchy, and that worst peril yet,
That threatens to dissever, in the tempest,
That married harmony of hope with power
That keeps our starry Union o'er the storm,
And, in the sacred bond that links our fortunes,
Makes us defy its thunders! Thus in one,
The foreign despot threatens us in vain.
Guizot and Palmerston may fret to see us
Grasping the empires which they vainly covet,
And stretching forth our trident o'er the seas,
In rivalry with Britain. They may confine,
But cannot chain us. Balances of power,
Framed by corrupt and cunning monarchists,
Weigh none of our possessions; and the seasons
That mark our mighty progress East and West,
Show Europe's struggling millions fondly seeking
The better shores and shelters that are ours.

31. COLONNA TO THE KING.-Richard Lalor Shiel.

THE favor that I ask is one, my liege,
That princes often find it hard to grant.
"T is simply this: that you will hear the truth.
I see your courtiers here do stand amazed:
Of them I first would speak. There is not one,
Of this wide troop of glittering parasites,
That circle you, as priests surround their god,
With sycophantic incense, but in soul

Is your base foe! These smilers here, my liege,
Whose dimples seem a sort of honey-comb,
Filled and o'erflowing with their suavity, -
These soft, melodious flatterers, my liege,
That flourish on the flexibility

Of their soft countenances,

are the vermin

every thought
These are they
public cry. —
All dare complain
Do not think,

That haunt a prince's ear with the false buzz
Of villanous assentation. These are they
Who from your mind have flouted
Of the great weal of the People.
Who from your ears have shut the
"Who dares complain of you?"
Behind you; I, before you!
Because you load your People with the weight
Of camels, they possess the camel's patience.
A deep groan labors in the nation's heart;
The very calm and stillness of the day
Gives augury of the earthquake. All without
Is as the marble smooth; and all within
Is rotten as the carcass it contains.
Though ruin knock not at the palace gate,
Yet will the palace gate unfold itself
To ruin's felt-shod tread.

Your gorgeous banquets, your high feasts of gold,
Which the four quarters of the rifled world
Heap with their ravished luxuries; your pomps,
Your palaces, and all the sumptuousness
Of painted royalty, will melt away,
As in a theatre the glittering scene
Doth vanish with the shifter's magic hand,
And the mock pageant perishes. My liege,.
A single virtuous action hath more worth
Than all the pyramids; and glory writes
A more enduring epitaph upon

One generous deed, than the sarcophagus
In which Sesostris meant to sleep.

32. ADDRESS TO THE SWISS.— Adaptation from Schiller's play of William Tell.
CONFEDERATES, listen to the words which God
Inspires my heart withal. Here we are met
To represent the general weal. In us

Are all the People of the land convened.
Then let us hold the Diet, as of old,
And as we 're wont in peaceful times to do.
The time's necessity be our excuse,

If there be aught informal in this meeting.
Still, wheresoe'er men strike for justice, there
Is God; and now beneath His Heaven we stand.
The Nations round us bear a foreign yoke;
For they have yielded to the conqueror.
Nay, e'en within our frontiers may be found
Some that owe villein service to a lord,

A race of bonded serfs from sire to son.
But we, the genuine race of ancient Swiss,
Have kept our freedom, from the first, till now.
Never to princes have we bowed the knee.
What said our fathers when the Emperor
Pronounced a judgment in the Abbey's favor,
Awarding lands beyond his jurisdiction?
What was their answer? This: "The grant is void;
No Emperor can bestow what is our own;
And if the Empire shall deny us justice,
We can, within our mountains, right ourselves."
Thus spake our fathers; and, shall we endure
The shame and infamy of this new yoke;
And, from the vassal, brook what never king
Dared, in the fulness of his power, attempt?
This soil we have created for ourselves,
By the hard labor of our hands; we've changed
The giant forest, that was erst the haunt
Of savage bears, into a home for man;
Blasted the solid rock; o'er the abyss

Thrown the firm bridge for the way-faring man.
By the possession of a thousand

years,

The soil is ours. And, shall an alien lord,
Himself a vassal, dare to venture here,
On our own hearths insult us, and attempt
To forge the chains of bondage for our hands,
And do us shame on our own proper soil?
Is there no help against such wrong as this?
Yes! there's a limit to the despot's power.
When the oppressed looks round in vain for justice,
When his sore burden may no more be borne,
With fearless heart, he makes appeal to Heaven,
And thence brings down his everlasting rights,
Which there abide, inalienably his,

And indestructible as are the stars.
Nature's primeval state returns again,
Where man stands hostile to his fellow-man;
And, if all other means shall fail his need,
One last resource remains — his own good sword!
Our dearest treasures call to us for aid

Against the oppressor's violence; we stand
For country, home, for wives, for children, here!

33. WILLIAM TELL IN WAIT FOR GESSLER.-Schiller.

HERE through this deep defile he needs must pass; There leads no other road to Küssnacht :- here

I'll do it: the opportunity is good.

Yon alder-tree stands well for my concealment,