t!
So time may creep, or time may fly;
_I_ reck not how the years go by,
With Nature's youth forever blent.

They beckon me by day, by night,
The bodiless elves that round me play!
I soar and sail from height to height;
No mortal, but a thing of light
As free from earthly clog as they.

But when my feet, unwilling, tread
The crowded walks of busy men,
Their walls that close above my head
Beat down my buoyant wings outspread,
And I am but a man again.

My pulses spurn the narrow bound!
The cold, hard glances give me pain!
I long for wild, unmeasured ground,
Free winds that wake the leaves to sound,
Low rustles of the summer rain!

My senses loathe their living death--
The coffined garb the city wears!
I draw through sighs my heavy breath,
And pine till lengths of wood and heath
Blow over me their endless airs!

LIES, AND HOW TO KILL THEM.

'I said, in my haste, all men are liars.'--KING DAVID.

'Ye said it in your _haste_, did ye, David? Hech, mon, were ye
leevin now, ye might say it at your _leisure_.'--DOMINIE
McPHAIL.

The Dominie was right. It's a lying world. It does not improve with age
either. The habit has become chronic, and the worst of all is, that the
world has told some lies so often, that it actually now believes them
itself. The wretched family propagates, too, at a terrible rate. Lies
breed, like other vermin, rapidly, and they are not at all modest about
intruding in any company.

I meet them in the gossiping circle, and I meet them in the courts of
justice. I find lies in politics and lies in religion, lies in the
pulpit, 'nail't wi' Scripture,' lies in the counting room railed with
false entries, religious lies, told by Deacon Longface, for the
advancement of what the Deacon calls 'the gospel,' and irreligious lies
told by Bill Snooks, and clenched with an oath, lies in good books, and
lies in bad ones, lies written, and printed in the newspapers, and lies
whispered in the ear, and any number of lies sent by telegraph! And
then, there's the walking lies, going about on two legs, saying what
they do not believe, professing what they do not feel, the most
scandalous sort of lies extant.

I meet them often, too, in 'the best society.' They are very impudent,
you know. I suppose they force their presence on people. At all events,
I know I find them in respectable company, and they seem quite at home
the