THEY WENT A-FISHING.

One morning, when Spring was in her teens----
A morn to a poet's wishing

All tinted in delicate pinks and greens-
Miss Bessie and I went fishing;

I in my rough and easy clothes,

With my face at the sunshine's mercy; She with her hat tipped down to her nose And her nose tipped vice versa.

I with my rod, and reel and hooks,

And a hamper for lunching recesses; She with the bait of her comely looks, And the seine of her golden tresses.

So we sat down on the sunny dike,

Where the white pond lilies teeter,
And I went to fishing, like quaint old Ike,
And she like Simon Peter.

All the noon I lay in the light of her eyes,
And dreamily watched and waited;

But the fish were cunning and would not rise,
And the baiter alone was baited.

And, when the time for departure came,

The bag was flat as a flounder;

But Bessie had neatly hooked her game A hundred-and-eighty pounder.

SABBATH MORNING THOUGHTS.

E. P. BROTHWELL.

Afar in the gleaming orient, the amber gates swing wide, And from his lair the day-king stalks thro' in peerless pride The darkness flyeth affrighted, the flowers look up thro' tears,

As a lost child greets its mother, forgetting all its fears.

Up, up till the walls of the city are burning like molten gold, And hall, and cottage, and church-spire gleam bright in

the shining fold;

But the city is husht and silent, her thousand tongues are dumb,

Like the tents of a sleeping army, that wait the rolling

drum.

The clock high up in the church-tower tells "Seven" in ringing peals;

Yet no tramping upon the pavement, no crash of rolling wheels;

No answering chime from work-shops-labor hath rest to

day-

No patter of little footsteps, no childish shouts in play.

Life weareth no outward tokens, until on the morning air The Sabbath bells' silvery chiming, telleth the hour of

prayer,

Throbbing thro all the city, and the worshipers come and

go,

Like the wave of the restless ocean continues to and fro.

We sit in the softened sunlight that falls thro' the tinted panes,*

With pulsing heart uplifted by the organ's lofty strains;
We echo the old petition that reverently is said,

The old all-time petition asking for daily bread;

For strength to resist temptation, from evil to be set free,
Giving the glory and honor and power, O God, to thee;
But oh, with our human passions, how scarcely dare we

pray,

"As we forgive, O Father, forgive us our sins this day.

"As we forgive, O Father!" were this the heartfelt cry
Surging from every altar, up to thy throne on high,
How we, thy erring children, should reach a tender hand
To every sin-wreck'd struggler upon life's crowded strand!