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THE MODERN BELLE.-STARK.

SHE sits in a fashionable parlor,
And rocks in her easy chair;
She is clad in silks and satins,

And jewels are in her hair;

She winks, and giggles, and simpers, And simpers, and giggles, and winks, And though she talks but little,

'Tis a good deal more than she thinks.

She lies a-bed in the morning,

Till nearly the hour of noon,

Then comes down snapping and snarling Because she was called so soon!

Her hair is still in papers,

Her cheeks still fresh with paint;
Remains of her last night's blushes,
Before she intended to faint.

She doats upon men unshaven,
And men with "flowing hair,"
She's eloquent over mustaches,

They give such a foreign air!
She talks of Italian music,

And falls in love with the moon, And if a mouse were to meet her, She would sink away in a swoon.

Her feet are so very little,

Her hands are so very white,

Her jewels so very heavy,

And her head so very light;
Her color is made of cosmetics
(Though this she will never own),
Her body's made mostly of cotton,
Her heart is made wholly of stone.

She falls in love with a fellow,
Who swells with a foreign air;
He marries her for her money,

She marries him for his-hair!

NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION.

One of the very best matches

Both are well mated in life;
She's got a fool for a husband,
He's got a fool for a wife!

87

NEW ENGLAND AND THE UNION.-S. S. PRENTISS.

GLORIOUS New England! thou art still true to thy ancient fame, and worthy of thy ancestral honors. On thy pleasant valleys rest, like sweet dews of morning, the gentle recollections of our early life; around thy hills and mountains cling, like gathering mists, the mighty memories of the Revolution; and far away in the horizon of thy past gleam, like thy own bright northern lights, the awful virtues of our pilgrim sires! But while we devote this day to the remembrance of our native land, we forget not that in which our happy lot is cast. We exult in the reflection, that though we count by thousands the miles which separate us from our birthplace, still our country is the same. We are no exiles meeting upon the banks of a foreign river, to swell its waters with our homesick tears. Here floats the same banner which rustled above our boyish heads, except that its mighty folds are wider, and its glittering stars increased in number.

The sons of New England are found in every State of the broad republic! In the East, the South, and the unbounded West, their blood mingles freely with every kindred current. We have but changed our chamber in the paternal mansion; in all its rooms we are at home, and all who inhabit it are our brothers. To us the Union has but one domestic hearth; its household gods are all the same. Upon us, then, peculiarly devolves the duty of feeding the fires upon that kindly hearth; of guarding with pious care those sacred household gods.

We cannot do with less than the whole Union; to us it admits of no division. In the veins of our children flows northern and southern blood: how shall it be separated?—who shall put asunder the best affections of the heart, the noblest instincts of our nature? We love the land of our adoption; so do we that of our birth.

Let us ever be true to both; and always exert ourselves in maintaining the unity of our country, the integrity of the republic.

Accursed, then, be the hand put forth to loosen the golden cord of union! thrice accursed the traitorous lips which shall propose its severance!

OUR FLAG.-A. L. STONE.

RINGED about with the flame and smoke of rebel batteries, one solitary flag went down, torn and scathed, on the blackened and battered walls of Sumter. Then the slumberous fire burst forth and blazed up from the hearts of the people. The painted symbol of the national life, under which our populations of city and country had walked to and fro with tranquil footstep, stirring its peaceful folds with no shouts of chivalrous and romantic deference, had been torn down and trodden under the feet of traitors. Every shred and thread of that mangled symbol was taken into the tender baptism of the nation's heart, and hallowed by the stern vow of the nation's consecration. It was torn down from a single flagstaff, and as the tidings of that outrage swept, ringing and thrilling, through the land, ten thousand banners were run up, on every hill-top and in every vale, on church towers and armed fortresses and peaceful private homes, till the heavens over us looked down upon more stars than they kept in their own nightly vault, and more stripes white with wrath and red with vengeance than ever flamed in the east of breaking day.

And then the cry went forth, Rally round the Flag, boys! and every instrument of martial music took up the strain, and church bells pealed it forth, and church choirs sang it as Miriam and Deborah sang of old, and mothers chanted it to their sons, and young wives gave it forth with dewy eyes and quivering lips, and sisters and sweethearts breathed it as a tender adieu to the brave lads than whom nothing was dearer to them but God and country; and the voices gathered into a mighty chorus that swept over the New England hills and across the breadth of midland prairies, and dashed its waves over the summits of the mountains, and

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down these western slopes, till they met and mingled with the waves of the Pacific-the full unison echoing here through all your streets and homes, Rally round the Flag, boys! Rally once again!

How well they followed the flag through four fateful years; how high they lifted it amid the tempest of battle; how often they baptized it with brave young blood and blessed it dying; how they bore it on to full and final victory, and planted it where we think no hand of man shall ever assail it again, is a story we need not tell to-day.

It has been blackened and torn on many a field and in many a hurtling storm, but never dishonored. It is all the dearer and more sacred for its rents and its wounds. And though so mangled and torn, it is still one whole flag. All the stars are there. Some of them, with mad centrifugal movement, sought to break from their orbit and dismember the glorious constellation. But the centripetal force was mightier yet, and held them fast in that indivisible stellar Union. And coming through such peril of loss, and waving above us to-day so restored and complete, it has for us and mankind lessons of warning and of hope, of fidelity and duty, which are the war's legacy to the nation and to history, and which we shall do well to learn and to remember.

LOYALTY.-HORACE BUSHNELL.

LOYALTY, then, is no subject of law or legal definition. It belongs entirely to the moral department of life. It is what a man thinks and feels and contrives, not as being commanded, but of his own accord, for his country and his country's honor-his great sentiment, his deep and high devotion, the fire of his habitual or inborn homage to his country's welfare. It goes before all constitutions, and by the letter of all statutes, to do and suffer, out of the spontaneous liberties of right feeling, what the petty constructions and laggard judgınents of the State cannot find how to compel. It does not measure itself by what the Constitution or the laws prescribe. It has no art of contriving, for itself

and others, how to hide from the country behind the Constitution. Why the supreme law requires not one of the duties that are so genuinely great and true in loyalty; to volunteer body and life for the country; to stand fast where leaders are incompetent and armies reel away in panic before the foe; to send off to the field, as bravely consenting women do, husbands, sons, and brothers, the props and protectors of home; to wrestle day and night in prayer, as Christian souls are wont, bearing the nation as their secret burden, where, for sex, or age, or infirmity, they cannot do more; to come forward as protectors and helpers of the children made fatherless; to give money and work and prepare expeditions of love to mitigate the hardships of the wounded in their hospitals; to vote with religious fidelity for what will help and save the country, rising wholly above the mercenary motives and selfish trammels of party-why the supreme law requires not one of these, nor, in fact, any thing else that belongs to a loyal and great soul's devotion; how then is it the measure and bound of loyalty?

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S LAST INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN:-On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it-all sought to avert it. While the Inaugural Address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in this city seeking to destroy it without war-seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish: and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves-not distributed generally over the Union, but localized over the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend

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