'gem,' too, 'of purest ray serene'!" I caught the old man's hand
and wrung it with positive rapture; and it is needless to go further
in explanation of how the readers of our daily came to an acquaintance
through its columns with the crude, unpolished, yet most gentle genius
of Benj. F. Johnson, of Boone.

LORD BACON

WRITTEN AS A JOKE AND ASCRIBED TO A VERY PRACTICAL BUSINESS MAN, AMOS
J. WALKER

Master of masters in the days of yore,
When art met insult, with no law's redress;
When Law itself insulted Righteousness,
And Ignorance thine own scholastic lore,
And thou thine own judicial office more,--
What master living now canst love thee less,
Seeing thou didst thy greatest art repress
And leave the years its riches to restore
To us, thy long neglectors. Yield us grace
To make becoming recompense, and dawn
On us thy poet-smile; nor let us trace,
In fancy, where the old-world myths have gone,
The shade of Shakespeare, with averted face,
Withdrawn to uttermost oblivion.

MY FIRST WOMERN

I buried my first womern
In the spring; and in the fall
I was married to my second,
And hain't settled yit at all!--
Fer I'm allus thinkin'--thinkin'
Of the first one's peaceful ways,
A-bilin' soap and singin'
Of the Lord's amazin' grace.

And I'm thinkin' of her, constant,
Dyin' carpet chain and stuff,
And a-makin' up rag carpets,
When the _floor_ was good enough!
And I mind her he'p a-feedin',
And I riccollect her now
A-drappin' corn, and keepin'
Clos't behind me and the plow!

And I'm allus thinkin' of her
Reddin' up around the house;
Er cookin' fer the farm-hands;
Er a-drivin' up the cows.--
And there she lays out yander
By the lower medder fence,
Where the cows was barely grazin',
And they're usin' ever sence.

And when I look acrost there--
Say it's when the clover's ripe,
And I'm settin', in the evenin',
On the porch here, with my pipe,
And the _other'n_ hollers "Henry!"--
W'y they ain't no sadder thing
Than to think of my first womern
And her funeral last spring
Was a year ago--

AS WE READ BURNS

Who is speaking? Who has spoken?
Whose voice ceasing thus has broken
The sweet pathos of our dreams?
Sweetest bard of sweetest th