L. ELLIOT.

God's pity on them! Human souls, I mean,
Crushed down and hid 'neath squalid rags and dirt,
And bodies which no common sore can hurt;
All this between
Those souls, and life--corrupt, defiled, unclean.

And more--hard faces, pinched by starving years.
Cold, stolid, grimy faces--vacant eyes,
Wishful anon, as when one looks and dies;
But never tears!
Tears would not help them--battling constant jeers.

Forms, trained to bend and grovel from the first,
Crouching through life forever in the dark,
Aimlessly creeping toward an unseen mark;
And no one durst
Deny their horrid dream, that they are curst.

And life for them! dare we call life its name?
O God! an arid sea of burning sand,
Eternal blackness! death on every hand!
A smothered flame,
Writhing and blasting in the tortured frame.

And death! we shudder when we speak the word;
'Tis all the same to them--or life, or death;
They breathe them both with every fevered breath;
When have they heard,
That cool Bethesda's waters might be stirred!

They live among us--live and die to-day;
We brush them with our garments on the street,
And track their footsteps with our dainty feet;
'Poor common clay!'
We curl our lips--and that is what we say.

God's pity on them! and on us as well:
They live and die like brutes, and we like men:
Both go alone into the dark--what then?
Or heaven, or hell?
They suffered in this life! Stop! Who can tell?

* * * * *

The last stranger who visited Washington Irving, before his death, was
Theodore Tilton, who published shortly afterward an account of the
interview. Mr. Tilton wrote also a private letter to a friend, giving an
interesting reminiscence, which he did not mention in his published
account. The following is an extract from this letter, now first made
public:

As I was about parting from Mr. Irving, at the door-step, he held
my hand a few moments, and said:

'You know Henry Ward Beecher?'

'Yes,' I replied, 'he is an intimate friend.'

'I have never seen him,' said he, 'tell me how he looks.'

I described, in a few words, Mr. Beecher's personal appearance;
when Mr. Irving remarked:

'I take him to be a man always in fine health and cheery spirits.'

I replied that he