stand no more of it. He took Jim's hand with a cheery
laugh. "Git well in half an hour," said he, "now that you've out with
the truth."

And so he did. By the time his father came home he was sitting up; and
he ate breakfast the next morning as if nothing had happened. But he
never tried to smoke any more as long as he lived. And he never lied,
and he never swore any more.

Oh, no! this Jim that I have been telling you of is "Moral Jim," of
the Sierras. The mine? Oh, I almost forgot. Well, that blue dirt was
the old bed of the stream, and it was ten times richer than where the
miners were all at work below. Struck it! I should say so! Ask any of
the old Sierras miners about "The Children's Claim," if you want to
hear just how rich they struck it.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

OLD GODFREY'S RELIC.

A simple, upright man was he,
Of spirit undefiled,
Cheerful and hale at seventy-three,
As any blithesome child.

Old Godfrey's friends and neighbors felt
His due was honest praise;
Ofttimes how fervently they dwelt
On his brave words and ways!

He had no foeman in the land
Whose deeds or tongue would gall;
Of guileless heart, of liberal hand,
He smiled on one and all.

But most, I think, he smiled on me;
"Your eyes, dear boy," he said,
"Remind me, though not mournfully,
Of eyes whose light is dead."

How oft beneath his roof I've been
On eves of wintry blight,
And heard his magic violin
Make musical the night.

No consort by his board was set,
No child his hearth had known,
Yet of all souls I've ever met,
His seemed the least alone.

[Illustration: Keen Memories of the Thrilling Years That Thronged His
Ocean Life.]

What stories in my eager ears
He poured of peace or strife;
Keen memories of the thrilling years
That thronged his ocean life.

And oh, he showed such marvellous things
From unknown sea and shore,
That, brimmed with strange imaginings,
My boy's brain bubbled o'er!

It wandered back o'er many a track
Of his old life-toil free;
The enchanted calm, the fiery wrack,
Far off, far off at sea!

For once he dared the watery world,
O'er wild or halcyon waves,
And saw his snow-white sails unfurled
Above a million graves.

Northward he went, thro' ice and sleet,
Where soon the sunbeams fail,
And followed with an armed fleet
The wide wake of the whale.

Sout