tion he holds, would in time, no doubt, be
considered ridiculous.

9. En masse (pro. aN mas), a French phrase meaning in a body.

[Transcriber's note: The last Passenger Pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo
on September 1, 1914. Population estimates ranged up to 5 billion,
comprising 40% of the total number of birds in North America in the 19th
century.]

CVI. THE COUNTRY LIFE.

Richard Henry Stoddard (b. 1825,--) was born at Hingham, Mass., but
removed to New York City while quite young. His first volume of poems,
"Foot-prints," appeared in 1849, and has been followed by many others. Of
these may be mentioned "Songs of Summer," "Town and Country," "The King's
Bell," "Abraham Lincoln" (an ode), and the "Book of the East," from the
last of which the following selection is abridged. Mr. Stoddard's verses
are full of genuine feeling, and some of them show great poetic power.

1. Not what we would, but what we must,
Makes up the sum of living:
Heaven is both more and less than just,
In taking and in giving.
Swords cleave to hands that sought the plow,
And laurels miss the soldier's brow.

2. Me, whom the city holds, whose feet
Have worn its stony highways,
Familiar with its loneliest street,--
Its ways were never my ways.
My cradle was beside the sea,
And there, I hope, my grave will be.

3. Old homestead! in that old gray town
Thy vane is seaward blowing;
Thy slip of garden stretches down
To where the tide is flowing;
Below they lie, their sails all furled,
The ships that go about the world.

4. Dearer that little country house,
Inland with pines beside it;
Some peach trees, with unfruitful boughs,
A well, with weeds to hide it:
No flowers, or only such as rise
Self-sown--poor things!--which all despise.

5. Dear country home! can I forget
The least of thy sweet trifles?
The window vines that clamber yet,
Whose blooms the bee still rifles?
The roadside blackberries, growing ripe,
And in the woods the Indian pipe?

6. Happy the man who tills his field,
Content with rustic labor;
Earth does to him her fullness yield,
Hap what may to his neighbor.
Well days, sound nights--oh, can there be
A life more rational and free?

NOTE.--5. The Indian pipe is a little, white plant, bearing a white,
bell-shaped flower.

CVII. THE VIRGINIANS.

William Makepeace Thackeray (b. 1811, d. 1863).