ero's sword will gather mould and rust:
As war disclosed the true defence in man's unarmored breast,
So has it shown a nation's strength above the dazzling crest.

The stars of union raise aloft that once on Shiloh led;
Give justice to that rank and file, the living and the dead!
And when ye see that flag on high, remember how they fared
Who sprang to meet a cruel strife, surprised and unprepared:
O children, often when I see our standard quick unfurled,
Unconsciously my steps are braced to meet those volleys hurled!
Still burdened with the memories of sad and glorious fight,
The morning breaks among the tents, by the river falls the night.

Remember, 'twas the Sabbath day--the holy, blessed time
When neighbors crowd the roadside walks, and bells do sweetly chime--
Your fathers thronged the gates of death in Shiloh's bloody fray,
Beside the rolling Tennessee:--call that the soldier's day!
And oh, for our dear country pray, that all her laws be good,
That wrong no more shall lift a hand to claim the price of blood!
For heavy was the debt we paid, in noble blood and true,
When Slavery cast the gage of war between the gray and blue.

JOEL SMITH.

_CHRISTMAS IN EGYPT._

"Christmas comes but once a year,
And when it comes it brings good cheer."

Or it ought to. But when a Christian finds himself, on that most sacred
of all the Christian holidays, in a Moslem country, say in Egypt, the
procuring of the wherewithal to make the prescribed good cheer becomes a
matter of no small difficulty.

If the Christian be an English one, the difficulties are apt to be
increased by the fact that an Englishman is nothing if not conservative.

To the average Englishman the correct celebration of Christmas means
attendance at divine service, _perhaps!_--the regulation Christmas
dinner, certainly.

Christmas means a crisp, cold day, the home bright with glowing fires--a
yule-log, maybe--and flashing with the brilliant green of ivy and the
crimson of holly-berries; a dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding; and,
to wind up with, a bowl of steaming wassail and a kiss under the
mistletoe.

When an Englishman finds himself in a country where he can sit in the
open air, under a blazing sun, on Christmas Day, and where neither
roast-beef nor plum-pudding has any place in the domestic economy, and
where the "wassail" is always drunk iced, and called by another name,
and where mistletoe does