fresh disaster momently I dread;
Is that a skunk approaching?--try to see!

Come Snip and Snap and give us song and dance!
We'll have a fire and read the choicest books,
While the black horses waiting, paw and prance!
And see how calm and sweet all nature looks.

So goes the day; the peaceful landscape smiles;
At times the live stock seems to take a rest.
But fills our hearts with worry other whiles!
We think each separate creature is possessed!

MARY W. BABCOCK.

[Illustration: PADDLING IN CHICKEN BROOK]

THE OLD WOMAN

The little old woman, who wove and who spun,
Who sewed and who baked, did she have any fun?

In housewifely arts with her neighbour she'd vie,
Her triumph a turkey, her pleasure a pie!

She milked and she churned, and the chickens she fed,
She made tallow dips, and she moulded the bread.

No club day annoyed her, no program perplext,
No themes for discussion her calm slumber vexed.

By birth D.A.R. or Colonial Dame,
She sought for no record to blazon her fame--

No Swamies she knew, she cherished no fad,
Of healing by science, no knowledge she had.

She anointed with goose grease, she gave castor oil,
Strong sons and fair daughters rewarded her toil.

She studied child nature direct from the child,
And she spared not the rod, though her manner was mild.

All honour be paid her, this heroine true,
She laid the foundation for things we call new!

Her hand was so strong, and her brain was so steady,
That for the New Woman she made the world ready.

MARY W. BABCOCK.

[Illustration: THE ISLAND WHICH WE MADE]

Here is one of the several parodies written by my brother while
interned in a log camp in the woods of New Brunswick, during a severe
day's deluge of rain. It was at the time when Peary had recently
reached the North Pole, and Dr. Cook had reported his remarkable
observations of purple snows:

DON'T YOU HEAR THE NORTH A-CALLIN'?

Ship me somewhere north o' nowhere, where the worst
is like the best;
Where there aren't no p'ints o' compass, an' a man can