blinded her. "Mother" is a story of a girl who was saved from the shipwreck of mistaking luxury for happiness and escape from duty for freedom; in pleasureloving America, with its increasing class of women of leisure, such a story, in a quiet way, has a real service to render.

And so has Mrs. Riggs's " Mother Carey's Chickens" a story of real boys and girls with a real mother, who faces a great crisis in the life of her little family with saving good sense and with the courage that is half the battle. There is no high tragedy in the retreat of a fatherless family into the country, no dramatic staging of the fight with poverty; there are loyal affection, clear perception of real values, plenty of humor, and that wholesomeness of tone and spirit which breed health, courage, and character.

These two unpretentious stories are good examples of the kind of reading which serves as an anti-toxin at a time when many demoralizing, relaxing, enervating stories are in the hands of young girls who know nothing about life, and are in danger of losing their footing on those fundamental principles sometimes covered with foam and spume, but never moved from their indestructible bases. In a time in which there is a wide and inspiring movement toward real freedom there are many who are in danger of falling victims to a false idea of freedom, only to find when it is too late that, instead of escaping from bondage to reality into a beautiful idealism, they have flung themselves against immutable laws, and the drama of emancipation has turned into cheap farce or pitiful tragedy.

If a record could be kept of the " affinities" and "soul unions" reported by the newspapers and of their results five years later, the tinsel romance would turn to tawdry melodrama.

MATERNAL GRIEF

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Departed Child! I could forget thee once
Though at my bosom nursed; this woeful gain
Thy dissolution brings, that in my soul
Is present and perpetually abides

A shadow, never, never to be displaced
By the returning substance, seen or touched,
Seen by my eyes, or clasped in my embrace.
Absence and death how differ they! and how
Shall I admit that nothing can restore
What one short sigh so easily removed? -
Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought,
Assist me, God, their boundaries to know,
O teach me calm submission to thy Will!

The Child she mourned had overstepped the pale
Of Infancy, but still did breathe the air
That sanctifies its confines, and partook
Reflected beams of that celestial light

To all the Little-ones on sinful earth

Not unvouchsafed a light that warmed and cheered Those several qualities of heart and mind

Which, in her own blest nature, rooted deep,

Daily before the Mother's watchful eye,
And not hers only, their peculiar charms
Unfolded,- beauty, for its present self,
And for its promises to future years,
With not unfrequent rapture fondly hailed.

Have you espied upon a dewy lawn
A pair of Leverets each provoking each
To a continuance of their fearless sport,
Two separate Creatures in their several gifts
Abounding, but so fashioned that, in all

That Nature prompts them to display, their looks,
Their starts of motion and their fits of rest,
An undistinguishable style appears

And character of gladness, as if Spring
Lodged in their innocent bosoms, and the spirit
Of rejoicing morning were their own?

Such union, in the lovely Girl maintained
And her twin Brother, had the parent seen
Ere, pouncing like a ravenous bird of prey,
Death in a moment parted them, and left
The Mother, in her turns of anguish, worse
Than desolate; for oft-times from the sound
Of the survivor's sweetest voice (dear child,
He knew it not) and from his happiest looks
Did she extract the food of self-reproach,
As one that lived ungrateful for the stay
By Heaven afforded to uphold her maimed
And tottering spirit. And full off the Boy,

Now first acquainted with distress and grief,

Shrunk from his Mother's presence, shunned with fear
Her sad approach, and stole away to find,

In his known haunts of joy where'er he might,
A more congenial object. But, as time
Softened her pangs and reconciled the child
To what he saw, he gradually returned,
Like a scared Bird encouraged to renew
A broken intercourse; and, while his eyes
Were yet with pensive fear and gentle awe
Turned upon her who bore him, she would stoop
To imprint a kiss that lacked not power to spread
Faint color over both their pallid cheeks,

And stilled his tremulous lip. Thus they were calmed
And cheered; and now together breathe fresh air
In open fields; and when the glare of day
Is gone, and twilight to the Mother's wish
Befriends the observance, readily they join

In walks whose boundary is the lost One's grave,
Which he with flowers had planted, finding there
Amusement, where the Mother does not miss
Dear consolation, kneeling on the turf
In prayer, yet blending with that solemn rite
Of pious faith the vanities of grief;
For such, by pitying Angels and by Spirits
Transferred to regions upon which the clouds
Of our weak nature rest not, must be deemed
Those willing tears, and unforbidden sighs,
And all those tokens of a cherished sorrow,

Which, soothed and sweetened by the grace of Heaven

As now it is, seems to her own fond heart, Immortal as the love that gave it being.

Mother!

MOTHER AND HOME

BY JOHN JARVIS HOLDEN

Home!- that blest refrain

Sounds through every hastening year:

All things go, but these remain.

Held in memory's jeweled chain,

Names most precious, names thrice dear: Mother! Home! - that blest refrain.

How it sings away my pain!

How it stills my waking fear!

All things go, but these remain.

Griefs may grow and sorrows wane,
E'er that melody I hear:
Mother! Home!-that blest refrain.

Tenderness in every strain,

Thoughts to worship and revere: All things go, but these remain.

Every night you smile again,

Every day you bring me cheer: Mother! Home!- that blest refrain:

All things go, but these remain!