Spangled Banner."

The source of the tune doesn't worry me none.
I never ask, "Where did they git it?"
It was destiny if, when the writin' got done,
The music was waitin' to fit it.
An' I feel that it echoes from sea unto sea
Whenever our youngest--that's Hanner--
Strikes a chord deep and full so's to give us the key,
An' we jine in "The Star-Spangled Banner."

_Washington Star._

NIGHT AND DEATH.

BY JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE.[B]

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst flow'r and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

[Footnote B: Joseph Blanco White became a lasting name in literature by
virtue of fourteen lines. His sonnet to Night, sometimes known as "Night
and Death," was spoken of by Coleridge as "the finest and most grandly
conceived sonnet in our language." Leigh Hunt said of it that in point of
thought it "stands supreme, perhaps, above all in any language; nor can we
ponder it too deeply, or with too hopeful a reverence."

Yet White wrote nothing else that long outlived him. His genius was
golden, but it seems to have been a pocket, not a vein; or shall we say
that he compressed into a single sonnet the resources which another would
have spread over many? At least we may thank him for this that he has left
us.

A few words as to the man himself: He was born at Seville, Spain, July 11,
1775; was educated for the priesthood; went to England, where he entered
the Established Church and gained the friendship of such men as Newman,
Arnold, and Whately; became a Unitarian; and died at Liverpool, May 20,
1841. He wrote several books on religious questions. "To Death" appeared
first in the _Bijou_, in 1828, and next in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for
May, 1835.]

The Beginnings of Stage Careers.

BY MATTHEW WHITE, JR.

A Series of Papers That Will