And now the orchards which were once
All white and rosy in their bloom-
Filling the crystal heart of air

With gentle pulses of perfume -
Were thick with yellow, juicy fruit;
The plums were globes of honey rare,
And soft-cheeked peaches blushed and fell!
The grapes were purpling in the grange;
And Time wrought just as rich a change
In little Babie Bell!

Her petit form more perfect grew,

And in her features we could trace,

In softened curves, her mother's face:
Her angel-nature ripened too.
We thought her lovely when she came,

But she was holy, saintly now ****
Around her pale and lofty brow

We thought we saw a ring of flame!

Sometimes she said a few strange words,

Whose meanings lay beyond our reach :

God's hand hath taken off the seal

Which held the portals of her speech!

She never was a child to us;

We never held her being's key!

We could not teach her holy things:

She was Christ's self in purity!

It came upon us by degrees :

We saw its shadow ere it fell,

The knowledge that our God had sent
His messenger for Babie Bell!

We shuddered with unlanguaged pain,
And all our thoughts ran into tears!

And all our hopes were changed to fearsThe sunshine into dismal rain!

Aloud we cried in our belief:
"O smite us gently, gently, God!
Teach us to bend and kiss the rod,
And perfect grow through grief!"
Ah, how we loved her, God can tell;
Her little heart was cased in ours
They're broken caskets - Babie Bell!
At last he came, the messenger,

The messenger from unseen lands:
And what did dainty Babie Bell?

She only crossed her little hands!
She only looked more meek and fair!
We parted back her silken hair;
We laid some buds upon her brow-
Death's bride arrayed in flowers!
And thus went dainty Babie Bell
Out of this world of ours!

T. B. ALDRICH.

THE BOY'S LAST WORDS.

A mother, in giving an account of the death of her son, a promising boy of fourteen, relates the following beautiful incident:

I WAS watching by his side the last night of his sickness, when he reached for my hand, and with the tone and emphasis of the deepest meaning, and which showed he was giving unpremeditated expression to his feelings, he said, pausing between his sentences to recover breath:

"Give me your hand, dear mother,
And come to my beautiful home!
I'm going, I'm almost there —
Only this narrow bridge to pass

From a dark world of sorrow and toil and care,
To a world of glory all bright and fair.

Oh! come with me now, it's a beautiful home,
You are sick, dear mother, and faint and alone.
Oh! why will you stay? -I'm going now;
There is no sin there, nor death, nor woe;
Oh! promise me, mother, and let us go.
Come, come, oh, dear mother, come!"

I have given his words just as he spoke them. Their poetical form can be accounted for from the fact that he occasionally wrote rhymes; and is not poetry the natural language of deep emotion ?

THE DEATH AND BURIAL.

SHE was not quite one year old. I cannot venture to describe her. My heart swells, and is ready to break, at the thought of some sweet, touching feature, some winning way, the posture and motion of her hands or feet, her inarticulate noises with her lips, and pressure of her mouth against our cheeks, that being as far as she had advanced in kissing. Sights of her asleep, when her mother and I stood over her with lamp in hand, are as deeply stamped on my mind as views in the Alps. I could tell you every dimple which we detected as she lay on her back, a knee or arm disengaged from her clothing. All her mimicry of sounds and motions, and her little feats, which astonished herself and made us shout; her morning bath, she a little image, with her very straight back, plashing the water with her feet; and other nameless things, raise the question, and leave it in doubt, whether I wish there were more of them to remember, or whether it is well for me that she had been developed no more. Human bliss arrives at perfection as frequently in such scenes and experiences, as when we have made calculations for happiness; indeed we are never more happy than during

the little sudden tournaments of love with a young child; and the man who has a wife and child, supplying him with these inadvertent pleasures, will find in the retrospect that he was most happy when he least suspected it. To know when we have in possession the means of true happiness, and to rejoice in it, and feel satisfied, is rare. Would that I had thought more of this when my little child was with me.

Sometimes I looked at her with a feeling of awe. Mine, indeed she was; but in what a subordinate sense! That perfect frame, that wondrous mind, that immortal destiny, often made me shrink into nothingness at the contemplation of her,—feeling that God, in making her, had rolled a sphere into an orbit which is measureless, making it touch mine, but having a path of its own, which cannot be comprehended in that of another, not even in that of the earthly parent. I was glad that there was an infinite God to possess this infinite treasure and control it; for it was too much for me. My enjoyment of her was often overshadowed by these thoughts. Still she was to be a perfect joy. Her beautifully unfolding life left me nothing to desire

But the destroyer came.

It had been an ex