icy fretting.

It touched the tangled golden curls,
And brown eyes full of grieving,
Of one who still her steps delayed
When all the school were leaving.

For near her stood the little boy
Her childish favor singled:
His cap pulled low upon a face
Where pride and shame were mingled.

Pushing with restless feet the snow
To right and left, he lingered;--
As restlessly her tiny hands
The blue-checked apron fingered.

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt
The soft hand's light caressing,
And heard the tremble of her voice,
As if a fault confessing.

"I'm sorry that I spelt the word:
I hate to go above you,
Because,"--the brown eyes lower fell,--
"Because, you see, I love you!"

Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl: the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing!

He lives to learn, in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her,--because they love him.

_John Greenleaf Whittier._

Mother's Fool

"Tis plain to see," said a farmer's wife,
"These boys will make their mark in life;
They were never made to handle a hoe,
And at once to a college ought to go;
There's Fred, he's little better than a fool,
But John and Henry must go to school."

"Well, really, wife," quoth Farmer Brown,
As he set his mug of cider down,
"Fred does more work in a day for me
Than both his brothers do in three.
Book larnin' will never plant one's corn,
Nor hoe potatoes, sure's you're born;
Nor mend a rod of broken fence--
For my part, give me common sense."

But his wife was bound the roost to rule,
And John and Henry were sent to school,
While Fred, of course, was left behind,
Because his mother said he had no mind.

Five years at school the students spent;
Then into business each one went.
John learned to play the flute and fiddle,
And parted his hair, of course, in the middle;
While his brother looked rather higher than he,
And hung out a sign, "H. Brown, M.D."

Meanwhile, at home, their brother Fred
Had taken a notion into his head;
But he quietly trimmed his apple trees,
And weeded onions and planted peas,
While somehow or other, by hook or crook,
He managed to read full many a book;
Until at last his father said
He was getting "book larnin'" into his head;
"But for all that," added Farmer Brown,
"He's the smartest boy there is in town."

The war broke out, and Captain Fred