r when loves grow cold,
Or something dear is hid beneath the mold!

For fates are hard, and hearts are very weak,
And roses we have kissed soon leave the cheek,
And what we are, we scarcely dare to speak.

But something deeper, to reflective eyes,
To-day beneath the sad old story lies,
And all must read if they are truly wise.

A nation wanders in the deep, dark night,
By cruel hands despoiled of half its might,
And half its truest spirits sick with fright.

The world is step-dame--scoffing at the strife,
And black assassins, armed with deadly knife,
At every step lurk, striking at its life.

Shall it be murdered in the gloomy wood?
Tell us, O Parent of the True and Good,
Whose hand for us the fate has yet withstood!

Shall it lie down at last, all weak and faint,
Its blood dried up with treason's fever-taint,
And offer up its soul in said complaint?

Or shall the omen fail, and, rooting out
All that has marked its life with fear and doubt,
The child spring up to manhood with a shout?

So that in other days, when far and wide
Other lost children have for succor cried,
The one now periled may be help and guide?

Father of all the nations formed of men,
So let it be! Hold us beneath thy ken,
And bring the wanderers to thyself again!

Pity us all, and give us strength to pray,
And lead us gently down our destined way!
And this is all the children's lips can say.

NATIONAL UNITY.

Pride in the physical grandeur, the magnificent proportions of our
country, has for generations been the master passion of Americans. Never
has the popular voice or vote refused to sustain a policy which looked
to the enlargement of the area or increase of the power of the Republic.
To feel that so vast a river as the Mississippi, having such affluents
as the Missouri and the Ohio, rolled its course entirely through our
territory--that the twenty thousand miles of steamboat navigation on
that river and its tributaries were wholly our own, without touching on
any side our national boundaries--that the Pacific and the Atlantic, the
great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, were our natural and conceded
frontiers, that their bays and harbors were the refuge of our commerce,
and their rising cities our marts and depots--were incense to our vanity
and stimulants to our love of country. No true American abroad ever
regarded or characterized himself as a New-Yorker, a Vi