nd lawn:
Woody path, or paven way--
She doth haunt them night and day,--
Sun or moonlight through the trees,
To her eyes, are melodies.

Swinging lanterns, twinkling clear
Through night-scenes, are songs to her--
Tinted lilts and choiring hues,
Blent with children's glad halloos;
Then belated lays that fade
Into midnight's serenade--
Vine-like words and zithern-strings
Twined through ali her slumberings.

Blessed be each hearthstone set
Neighboring the violet!
Blessed every rooftree prayed
Over by the beech's shadel
Blessed doorway, opening where
We may look on Nature--there
Hand to hand and face to face--
Storied realm, or Woodruff Place.

FARMER WHIPPLE.--BACHELOR.

It's a mystery to see me--a man o' fifty-four,
Who's lived a cross old bachelor fer thirty year' and more--
A-lookin' glad and smilin'! And they's none o' you can say
That you can guess the reason why I feel so good to-day!

I must tell you all about it! But I'll have to deviate
A little in beginning so's to set the matter straight
As to how it comes to happen that I never took a wife--
Kind o' "crawfish" from the Present to the Springtime of my life!

I was brought up in the country: Of a family of five--
Three brothers and a sister--I'm the only one alive,--
Fer they all died little babies; and 'twas one o' Mother's ways,
You know, to want a daughter; so she took a girl to raise.

The sweetest little thing she was, with rosy cheeks, and fat--
We was little chunks o' shavers then about as high as that!
But someway we sort o' _suited_-like! and Mother she'd declare
She never laid her eyes on a more lovin' pair

Than _we_ was! So we growed up side by side fer thirteen year',
And every hour of it she growed to me more dear!--
W'y, even Father's dyin', as he did, I do believe
Warn't more affectin' to me than it was to see her grieve!

I was then a lad o' twenty; and I felt a flash o' pride
In thinkin' all depended on _me_ now to pervide
Fer Mother and fer Mary; and I went about the place
With sleeves rolled up--and workin', with a mighty smilin' face.--

Fer _sompin' else_ was workin'! but not a word I said
Of a certain sort o' notion that was runnin' through my head,--
"Someday I'd mayby marry, and _a brother's_ love was one
Thing--a _lover's_ was another!" was the way the notion run!

I remember onc't in harvest, when the "cra