tirred
To gleaming scarlet at his words.
"Forgive them all who use you ill,
She taught me that and I fulfill;
I would her hand might touch my face,
Though she's so pure and I so base."
Low Flossie bent and kissed the brow,
With smile of bliss transfigured now:
Death, the angel, sealed it there,
'Twas sent to God with "mother's prayer."

_Emma Dunning Banks._

Betty and the Bear

In a pioneer's cabin out West, so they say,
A great big black grizzly trotted one day,
And seated himself on the hearths and began
To lap the contents of a two gallon pan
Of milk and potatoes,--an excellent meal,--
And then looked, about to see what he could steal.
The lord of the mansion awoke from his sleep,
And, hearing a racket, he ventured to peep
Just out in the kitchen, to see what was there,
And was scared to behold a great grizzly bear.

So he screamed in alarm to his slumbering frau,
"Thar's a bar in the kitchen as big's a cow!"
"A what?" "Why, a bar!" "Well murder him, then!"
"Yes, Betty, I will, if you'll first venture in."
So Betty leaped up, and the poker she seized.
While her man shut the door, and against it he squeezed,
As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows.
Now on his forehead, and now on his nose,
Her man through the key-hole kept shouting within,
"Well done, my brave Betty, now hit him agin,
Now poke with the poker, and' poke his eyes out."
So, with rapping and poking, poor Betty alone
At last laid Sir Bruin as dead as a stone.

Now when the old man saw the bear was no more,
He ventured to poke his nose out of the door,
And there was the grizzly stretched on the floor,
Then off to the neighbors he hastened, to tell
All the wonderful things that that morning befell;
And he published the marvellous story afar,
How "me and my Betty jist slaughtered a bar!
O yes, come and see, all the neighbors they seed it,
Come and see what we did, me and Betty, we did it."

The Graves of a Household

They grew in beauty, side by side,
They filled one home with glee;---
Their graves are severed, far and wide,
By mount, and stream and sea.

The same fond mother bent at night
O'er each fair sleeping brow;
She had each folded flower in sight--
Where are those dreamers now?

One, 'midst the forest of the West,
By a dark stream is laid--
The Indian knows his place of rest
Far in the cedar shade.

The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one--
He lies where pearls lie deep;
_He_ was the