arkened and chill, the Year lays down
The summer beauty that she wore,
Her summer stars of Harp and Crown,--

Thick trooping with their golden tread
They come, as nightfall fills the sky,
Those strong and solemn sentinels,
To hold their mightier watch on high.

Ah, who shall shrink from dark and cold,
Or fear the sad and shortening days,
Since God doth only so unfold
The wider glory to his gaze?

Since loyal Truth, and holy Trust,
And kingly Strength defying Pain,
Stern Courage, and sure Brotherhood
Are born from out the depths again?

Dear Country of our love and pride!
So is thy stormy winter given!
So, through the terrors that betide,
Look up, and hail thy kindling heaven!

* * * * *

LOVE AND SKATES.

IN TWO PARTS.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

A KNOT AND A MAN TO CUT IT.

Consternation! Consternation in the back office of Benjamin Brummage,
Esq., banker in Wall Street.

Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the
North River, to say, that, "unless something be done, _at once_, the
Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must wind up." President Brummage
forthwith convoked his Directors. And here they sat around the green
table, forlorn as the guests at a Barmecide feast.

Well they might be forlorn! It was the rosy summer solstice, the longest
and fairest day of all the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled from
Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags
a three-decker cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly sailed in
upon Credit.

As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth of every June, so on the
tenth of that June all the money in America had buried itself and was as
if it were not. Everybody and everything was ready to fail. If the
hindmost brick went, down would go the whole file.

There were ten Directors of the Dunderbunk Foundry.

Now, not seldom, of a Board of ten Directors, five are wise and five are
foolish: five wise, who bag all the Company's funds in salaries and
commissions for indorsing its paper; five foolish, who get no salaries, no
commissions, no dividends,--nothing, indeed, but abuse from the
stockholders, and the reputation of thieves. That is to say, five of the
ten are pick-pockets; the other five, pockets to be picked.

It happened that the Dunderbunk Directors were all honest and foolish but
one. He, J