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A breath, and the vision is lifted
Away on the wings of light,
And again we two are together,
All alone in the night.
They tell me his mind is failing,
But I smile at idle fears;

He is only back with the children,
In the dear and peaceful years.

And still as the summer sunset
Fades away in the west,
And the wee ones, tired of playing,
Go trooping home to rest,

My husband calls from his corner,

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It were very easy to paint the picture, after reading the poem. There stands the cottage by the roadside, whence so much of light and love have fled; the wistful face of the mother looks out of the open doorway upon the children trooping past; and through the window you catch a glimpse of the bent form, the wrinkled cheeks and whitening hair of the dozing old man, to whom life's twilight has indeed come, whose waking thought, as in days gone by, is still one of parental care and affection. Two lonely waiters! each in a certain way waiting for the sound of voices heard here no longer, for the tramp of little feet sounding only in memory-waiting for all the dear home joys so rudely broken, so sadly missed, for the som

forts of an old age longing to be comforted, and the ripening blessings which the years should surely bring. Two lonely waiters !-is there not such a pair by many a hearthstone? except, mayhap, that neither

-"is only back with the children

In the dear and peaceful years,"

and both are waiting in the same patient way to greet the absent when God's good time comes.

"Are the Children at Home?" was written in the summer of 1867, on a pleasant verandah in Norfolk, Va., overlooking the blue Elizabeth River. It was published in The Atlantic Monthly for November of the same year, was promptly caught up by the Press, and republished everywhere, and during these years since has been read as often, perhaps, as any poem in the language. It has been frequently recited in public by the Vandenhoffs; and we have heard other readers give it with admirable effect. There was nothing noteworthy in the circumstances of its composition. It was an inspiration, suggested by no incident-one of those fruitful fancies with which heaven blesses some people, that thereby others may be blessed. The author is Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster, now a resident of Williamsburg, New York, and long time at contributor to some of the best periodicals.

Mrs. Sangster has written more or less for publication since her fourteenth year. At that early age she took a prize for an Essay on Temperance, over about five hun

dred competitors, the prize offered being a small collection of standard authors, and the essayists such pupils, male and female, of the various public and private schools in New York and Brooklyn as chose to compete. She was then a member of Williamsburg Collegiate Institute a French and English school of considerable reputation, and will be pleasantly remembered by many who studied there. Mrs. Sangster's contributions have been to religious papers, in the main-Presbyterian and Reformed Dutch-and to Sunday School literature. Her warm heart has always gone out most lovingly towards the children, and they have much to thank her for. Several years ago the Boston Tract Society issued a collection of her sketches and short articles, under the title of "Heaven and Home," All of Mrs. Sangster's earlier writing was over her maiden initials--M. E. M.--behind which she now occasionally veils herself. She is not a very prolific writer, partly, perhaps, because writing is with her a matter of mood; partly because the duties of wife and mother make so continual demands upon her time, and she is compelled to pursue her literary work in what Marion Harland calls "the betweens"-yet she has written much, both in prose and verse, and has the happy knack of always writing well. That she puts more heart into what she does than do many, is one secret of her growing popularity, due, doubtless, to constitutional temperament.

Mrs. Sangster is a native of New York State, and has lived in it all her life save a few years in Virginia, and one

twelve-month during the war, in Maryland.

Few ladies

in the State have as much of the real poetic feeling, and none more beautifully, more touchingly express that feeling than does she. Nothing further were needed to prove this statement than the poem already given. In producing other of her verse, we quote first a poem which originally appeared in The Christian Union:

A VESPER SONG.

The clouds of the sunset, fold on fold,

Are purple, and tawny, and edged with gold.

Soft as the silence after a hymn,

Is the hush that falls, as the light grows dim.

And the phantom feet of the shadows glide
To the maple tops and the river's tide.

Not even the thought of a sound is heard,

Till the dusk is thrilled by a hidden bird

That suddenly sings- as the light grows dim-
Its wonderful passionate vesper hymn.

Sweet as the voice of an angel's call,
Sent to me from the jasper wall,

Is the music poured from that tiny throat,
A message of comfort in every note.

.I know not where in the leafy tree,

The dear little warbler's home may be;

Nor care I to find, by a thoughtful quest,
Its cunningly woven castled nest.

The singer was less to my heart to-night,

Than the song he dropped through the parting light.

Its overflow of a joy intense,

Came unto me, like a recompense

For the undertone of an aching care,

That was near to making my soul despair.

There are, in this world where God is King
Some that have nothing to do -- but sing!

Some that are all too blithe to keep
Pent in, the voice of their rapture deep.

Though it may be low under waves of pain,
They found the pearl of their purest strain.

And we who listen, have nought to say
Concerning their Master's rule and way.

Only this, it was surely best,

Since it taught them strains so full of rest.

And this, that never a folded wing
Should cover a heart that was meant to sing,

And show the path to a lighted Ark,

Perhaps, to some one lost in the dark.

The home impulse, shines through nearly all that Mrs. Sangster pens. You see it and feel it in the waif we have given, and it is not less recognizable in this Scotch disguise, which found place first in Harper's Bazar, for which excellent journal Mrs. S. writes much, and has been repeatedly seen elsewhere:

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