eams,
And flowers all spangled with dew.

But, even as flowers are broken and fade,
And yield up their perfumes--their souls,--
So vanish the colors of which dreams are made,--
So perish the structures on which Hope is staid,
And the treasures to which the heart holds.

In vain does it follow the wandering forms
That promise, yet always recede:--
Too briefly the sunshine is darken'd by storms:
Hope minstrels it onward, yet never informs
Of the dangers unseen, that impede.

The Heart trusts the outward: "Of man 'tis the whole."
Thus Confidence clings to decay!
It feels the sweet homage that riches control,--
And laughs in contempt at the wealth of the soul:
And behold! now, friends wait for their prey.

It trusteth in glory, and beauty, and youth,--
In love-vows that ne'er are to die:
But soon the Death-king, in whose heart is no ruth,
Enfolds it,--and mounting aloft, of Truth
Thus sings, as turns glassy the eye.

"There's nothing so lovely and bright below,
As the shapes of the purified mind!
Nought surer to which the weak heart can grow,
On which it can rest, as it onward doth go,
Than that Truth which its own tendrils bind.

"Yes! Truth opes within a pure sun-tide of bliss,
And shows in its ever calm flood,
A transcript of regions, where no darkness is,
Where HOPE its conceptions may realize,
And CONFIDENCE sleep in 'The Good.'"

[Illustration: (signature) Chas. L. Reason.]

A Letter that Speaks for Itself.

To T---- M----.

Disinterested benevolence, my dear sir, has nothing at all to do with
abolitionism. Nay, I doubt very much if there is such a thing as
disinterested benevolence; but be this as it may, there is no occasion
for it in the anti-slavery ranks.

It is selfishness,--sheer selfishness, that has thus far carried on
the war with slavery and wrong in all times; and selfishness must
break the chains of the American slave.

Self-love has fixed the chain around the arm of every leader and every
soldier in the American anti-slavery army. Where would William Lloyd
Garrison have been to-day, if any combination of circumstances could
have shut in his soul's deep hatred of oppression, and prevented its
finding utterance in burning words? He would have been dead and
rotten. It is necessary to his own existence that he should
work,--work f