mong the sons of men!" And while he paused,
He heard the awful mandate of the Lord
Resounding through the air, "Give back the sword!"

The Rabbi bowed his head in silent prayer;
Then said he to the dreadful Angel, "Swear,
No human eye shall look on it again;
But when thou takest away the souls of men,
Thyself unseen and with an unseen sword
Thou wilt perform the bidding of the Lord."

The Angel took the sword again, and swore,
And walks on earth unseen forevermore.

* * * * *

MY FRIEND THE WATCH.

For two years I have had a most faithful, intimate, and useful friend,
whom I have constantly worn next my heart. I do not know him for a
Spiritualist, but by some mysterious sympathy he hears the incessant,
ghostly foot-falls of Time, and repeats them accurately to my ear.
While I wake he tells me how Time is passing. While I sleep he is still
marking his steps, so that sometimes I have a feeling of awe, as if my
mysterious friend were counting my own life away. Then again I am sure
that in the faint, persistent monotone of his voice I hear the singing
of the old mower's inevitable scythe. The Imagination contemplates this
friend of mine with wonder. But Science sees him holding the hand of a
captain in his ship at sea, or of a conductor in a train on shore, and
honors in him the friend of civilization.

His native place is Waltham, in Massachusetts, and he invited me but a
few days since to accompany him in a little visit thither. I cheerfully
assented, and we took the cars in Boston, at the Worcester Depot, and
after passing a range of unsavory back-yards and ill-favored houses, and
winding beneath streets and by the side of kennels, we emerged upon the
broad meadows and marshes from which rise in the distance the Roxbury
and Brookline hills. The whole region is covered with bright, wooden
houses. The villages have a pert, thrifty, contented air, which no
suburbs in the world surpass. If the houses are very white and a village
looks like a camp, it is because the instinct of the inhabitants assures
them that they may strike their tents to-morrow and move Westward or
elsewhere to a greater prosperity. In older countries the stained and
ancient stone houses are symbols of the inflexible state of society to
which they belong. The dwellers are anchored to that condition. There is
no "Westward ho" for them. Like father, like son. The hod-carrier's son
carries hods.