As gentle as a lamb with me,

But with your brothers bold;

More playful than a frolic boy,
More watchful than a sentinel,
By day and night your constant joy,
To guard and please me well:

I clasp your head upon my breast

my

And while you whine and lick handAnd thus our friendship is confessed

And thus we understand!

Ah, Blanco! did I worship God
As truly as you worship me,
Or follow where my master trod
With your humility;

Did I sit fondly at His feet,

As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine, And watch him with a love as sweet, My life would grow divine!

J. G. HOLLAND.

THE BEGGAR AND HIS DOG.

"Pay down three dollars for my hound! May lightning strike me to the ground! What mean the Messieurs of police?

And when and where shall this mockery cease?

"I am a poor, old, sickly man,

And earn a penny I no wise can;

I have no money, I have no bread,

And live upon hunger and want, instead.

sick and poor,

And neighbors turned me from their door?

And who, when I was left alone

In God's wide world, made my fortunes his own?

"Who loved me, when I was weak and old? And warmed me, when I was numb with cold? And who, when I in poverty pined,

Has shared my hunger and never whined?

"Here is the noose, and here the stone,
And there the water - it must be done!
Come hither, poor Pomp, and look not on me,

As over his head he lifted the band,

The fawning dog licked his master's hand;
Back in an instant the noose he drew,

And round his own neck in a twinkling threw.

The dog sprang after him into the deep,
His howlings startled the sailors from sleep;
Moaning and twitching he showed them the spot:
They found the beggar, but life was not!

They laid him silently in the ground,
His only mourner the whimpering hound
Who stretched himself out on the grave and cried
Like an orphan child — and so he died.

Chamisso, tr. by C. T. BROOKS.

DON.

This is Don, the dog of dogs, sir,
Just as lions outrank frogs, sir,
Just as the eagles are superior

To buzzards and that tribe inferior.

And to praise him seems a duty,

But it puts my pen to shame, sir,
When his virtues I would name, sir.
"Don! come here and bend your head now,
Let us see your best well-bred bow!"
Was there ever such a creature!
Common sense in every feature!
"Don! rise up and look around you!"
Blessings on the day we found you.

Sell him! well, upon my word, sir,
That's a notion too absurd, sir.
Would I sell our little Ally,
Barter Tom, dispose of Sally?
Think you I'd negotiate
For my wife, at any rate?

Sell our Don! you 're surely joking,
And 't is fun at us you're poking!
Twenty voyages we 've tried, sir,
Sleeping, waking, side by side, sir,

And Don and I will not divide, sir;

He's my friend, that's why I love him,And no mortal dog's above him!

How the sailors loved our darling!
No more swearing, no more snarling;
On their backs, when not on duty,
Round they bore the blue-eyed beauty, —
Singing, shouting, leaping, prancing,
All the crew took turns in dancing;
Every tar playing Punchinello
With the pretty, laughing fellow;
Even the second mate gave sly winks
At the noisy mid-day high jinks.
Never was a crew so happy
With a curly-headed chappy,
Never were such sports gigantic,
Never dog with joy more antic.

While thus jolly, all together,
There blew up a change of weather,
Nothing stormy, but quite breezy,
And the wind grew damp and wheezy,
Like a gale in too low spirits

To put forth one half its merits,
But, perchance, a dry-land ranger
Might suspect some kind of danger.

Soon our stanch and gallant vessel
With the waves began to wrestle,
And to jump about a trifle,
Sometimes kicking like a rifle
When 't is slightly overloaded,
But by no means nigh exploded.

'T was the coming on of twilight,
As we stood abaft the skylight,
Scampering round to please the baby,
(Old Bill Benson held him, maybe,)
When the youngster stretched his fingers
Towards the spot where sunset lingers,
And with strong and sudden motion
Leaped into the weltering ocean!

"What did Don do?" Can't you guess, sir?

Seized the infant's little dress, sir,

Held the baby's head up boldly

From the waves that rushed so coldly;

And in just about a minute

Our boat had them safe within it.

Sell him! Would you sell your brother?

Don and I love one another. J. T. FIELDS.

Four

!

GEIST'S GRAVE.

years and didst thou stay above

The ground, which hides thee now, but four?