the Republic, when honesty, firmness, patriotism, and stability
of character were the characteristics of public men. Under his lead, the
Republican party, disorganized and disheartened after the sad death of
General Garfield, has gradually become strengthened and united on the
eve of another presidential victory.

* * * * *

YESTERDAY.

BY KATE L. BROWN.

Adown the aisles of yesterday
What fairy notes are ringing,
And strange, sweet odors, rich and rare,
The western winds are bringing!

The deeds we counted poor and mean,
Now shine with added glory,
And like a romance, reads the page
Of life's poor, meagre story.

But vanished from our wistful sight,
Too late for vain regretting,
The joys, that the remorseful heart
With sacred gold is setting.

Ah! dearest of all earthly hopes
Within the soul abiding,
The lost, lost life of yesterday
The heart is ever hiding.

* * * * *

THE BOUNDARY LINES OF OLD GROTON.--I.

BY THE HON. SAMUEL ABBOTT GREEN, M.D.

The original grant of the township of Groton was made by the General
Court, on May 25, 1655, and gave to the proprietors a tract of land
eight miles square; though during the next year this was modified so
that its shape varied somewhat from the first plan. It comprised all of
what is now Groton and Ayer, nearly all of Pepperell and Shirley, large
parts of Dunstable and Littleton, smaller parts of Harvard and Westford,
Massachusetts, and a portion of Nashua, New Hampshire. The grant was
taken out of the very wilderness, relatively far from any other town,
and standing like a sentinel on the frontiers. Lancaster, fourteen miles
away, was its nearest neighbor in the southwesterly direction on the one
side; and Andover and Haverhill, twenty and twenty-five miles distant,
more or less, in the northeasterly direction on the other. No settlement
on the north stood between it and the settlements in Canada. Chelmsford
and Billerica were each incorporated about the same time, though a few
days later.

When the grant was made, it was expressly stipulated that Mr. Jonathan
Danforth, of Cambridge, with such others as he might desire, should lay
it out with all convenient speed in order to encourage the prompt
settlement of a minister; and furthermore that the selectmen of the town
should pay a fair amount for his services. During the next year a
petition, signed b