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above all things, to help themselves, and thus to be independent in all circumstances. A woman, helpless from any other cause than sickness, is essentially a nuisance. There is nothing womanly and ladylike in helplessness. My policy would be, as girls grow up, to assign to them special duties, first in one part of the house, then in another, until they should become acquainted with all housewifely offices; and I should have an object in this beyond the simple acquisition of a knowledge of housewifery. It should be for the acquisition of habits of physical industry,-of habits that conduce to the health of body and mind,-of habits that give them an insight into the nature of labor, and inspire within them a genuine sympathy with those whose lot it is to labor.

All young mind is uneasy if it be good for any thing. There is not the genuine human stuff in a girl who is habitually and by nature passive, placid, and inactive. The body and the mind must both be in motion. If this tendency to activity be left to run loose, undirected into channels of usefulness, a spoiled child is the result. A girl growing up to womanhood is, when unemployed, habitually uneasy. The mind aches and chafes because it wants action, for a motive. Now, a mind in this condition is not benefited by the command to stay at home, or the withdrawal from companions. It must be set to work. This vital energy that is struggling to find relief in demonstration should be so directed that habits may be formed,-habits of industry that obviate the wish for change and unnecessary play, and form a regular drain upon it. Otherwise, the mind becomes dissipated, the will irresolute, and confinement irksome. Girls will never be happy, except in the company of their playmates, unless home becomes to them a scene of regular duty and personal usefulness.

There is another obvious advantage to be derived from the habit of engaging daily upon special household duties. The imagination of girls is apt to become active to an unhealthy degree when no corrective is employed. False views of life are engendered, and labor is regarded as menial. Ease comes to be

looked upon as a supremely desirable thing; so that when the real, inevitable cares of life come, there is no preparation for them, and weak complainings or ill-natured discontent are the result.

And here I am naturally introduced to another subject. Young women, the glory of your life is to do something and to be something. You very possibly may have formed the idea that ease and personal enjoyment are the ends of your life. This is a terrible mistake. Development in the broadest sense and in the highest direction is the end of your life. You may possibly find ease with it, and a great deal of precious personal enjoyment, or

your life may be one long experience of self-denial. If you wish to be something more than the pet and plaything of a man, if you would rise above the position of a pretty toy or the ornamental fixture of an establishment, you have got a work to do. You have got a position to maintain in society; you have got the poor and the sick to visit; you may possibly have a family to rear and train; you have got to take a load of care upon your shoulders and bear it through life. You have got a character to sustain ; and I hope that you will have the heart of a husband to cheer and strengthen. Ease is not for you. Selfish enjoyment is not for you. The world is to be made better by you. You have got to suffer and to work; and if there be a spark of the true fire in you, your hearts will respond to these words.

ALICE CARY.

ALICE CARY, descended from Huguenot and Puritan ancestry, was born in Hamilton County, Ohio, in April, 1820. Her ancestors, soon after the Revolutionary war, emigrated from Connecticut to the Northwestern Territory, locating in the "Clovernook," which she has characterized with great beauty and originality. Here she passed all the years of her life up to 1850. When about eighteen years old, she gave to the press, at Cincinnati, a small volume of her poems, which were warmly commended, not only for what they were, but for what they promised.

At the suggestion of many friends, she left her Western home for New York City in 1850, and was soon followed by her sister Phoebe, who is a few years younger, where they both have since dwelt. In 1850, the first volume of the poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary was issued in Philadelphia, which was well received; and from this time the sisters became prominent contributors to some of the leading magazines and journals of the country. In 1851, Alice published the first series of her "Clovernook" papers,' which gave her at once a position as a prose-writer. In 1852 appeared Hagar, a Story of To-Day; in 1853, a second series of "Clovernook" papers; and in the same year, Lyra, and other Poems. In 1854, Ticknor & Co., of Boston, brought out Clovernook Children, a juvenile, which was warmly received, and at once became the favorite of the young folks. In 1855, Miss Cary prepared a complete edition of her poems for the press, which was issued in the fall of that year. It contained The Maiden of Tlascala, a poem of a more elaborate if not of a more ambitious character than any she had heretofore given to the public, and added not a little to her already high reputation. In 1856 appeared her Married, not Mated, which embodies many of the

Entitled Clovernook, or Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West, pub. lished by Redfield, New York.

excellencies of Clovernook,' the characters being drawn with wonderful fidelity and force.

Since the issue of her last volume of poems, Miss Cary has given many fugitive pieces of great beauty to various periodicals.

LIGHT AND LOVE.

Light waits for us in heaven. Inspiring thought!
That, when the darkness all is overpast,
The beauty which the Lamb of God has bought
Shall flow about our savéd souls at last,

And wrap them from all night-time and all woe:-
The Spirit and the Word assure us so.

Love lives for us in heaven.

Oh, not so sweet

Is the May dew which mountain-flowers enclose,
Nor golden raining of the winnow'd wheat,

Nor blushing out of the brown earth, of rose,
Or whitest lily, as, beyond time's wars,

The silvery rising of these two twin-stars.

HARVEST-TIME.

God's blessing on the reapers! all day long
A quiet sense of peace my spirit fills,
As whistled fragments of untutor'd song

Blend with the rush of sickles on the hills:
And the blue wild-flowers and green brier-leaves
Are brightly tangled with the yellow sheaves.
Where straight and even the new furrows lie,
The cornstalks in their rising beauty stand;
Heaven's loving smile upon man's industry

Makes beautiful with plenty the wide land.
The barns, press'd out with the sweet hay, I see,
And feel how more than good God is to me!

In the cool thicket the red-robin sings,

And merrily before the mower's scythe

Chirps the green grasshopper, while slowly swings,
In the scarce-swaying air, the willow lithe;
And clouds sail softly through the upper calms,
White as the fleeces of the unshorn lambs.

Outstretch'd beneath the venerable trees,

Conning his long, hard task, the schoolboy lies,
And, like a fickle wooer, the light breeze

Kisses his brow; then, scarcely sighing, flies;

"We do not hesitate to predict for these sketches a wide popularity. They bear the true stamp of genius,-simple, natural, truthful,—and evince a keen sense of the humor and pathos, of the comedy and tragedy, of life in the country."J. G. WHITTIER.

And all about him pinks and lilies stand,
Painting with beauty the wide pasture-land.

Oh, there are moments when we half forget
The rough, harsh grating of the file of Time;
And I believe that angels come down yet

And walk with us, as in the Eden clime;
Binding the heart away from woe and strife,
With leaves of healing from the Tree of Life.
And they are most unworthy who behold
The bountiful provisions of God's care,
When reapers sing among the harvest-gold,
And the mown meadow scents the quiet air,
And yet who never say, with all their heart,
How good, my Father, oh, how good thou art!

THE BROKEN HOUSEHOLD.

Vainly, vainly memory seeks,

Round our father's knee,
Laughing eyes and rosy cheeks
Where they used to be:
Of the circle once so wide
Three are wanderers, three have died.

Golden-hair'd and dewy-eyed,

Prattling all the day,
Was the baby first that died:
Oh! 'twas hard to lay
Dimpled hand and cheek of snow
In the grave so dark and low!

Smiling back on all who smiled,

Ne'er by sorrow thrall'd,
Half a woman, half a child,

Was the next one call'd:
Then a grave more deep and wide
Made they by the baby's side.

When or where the other died
Only heaven can tell;
Treading manhood's path of pride
Was he when he fell;
Haply thistles, blue and red,
Bloom about his lonely bed.

I am for the living three

Only left to pray;

Two are on the stormy sea;—

Farther still than they

Wanders one, his young heart dim,-
Oftenest, most, I pray for him.

Whatsoe'er they do or dare,

Wheresoe'er they roam,

Have them, Father, in thy care,

Guide them safely home,Home, O Father, in the sky, Where none wander and none die.

WHAT IS LIFE?

Oh, what is life! at best a narrow bound,
Where each that lives some baffled hope survives,-
A search for something, never to be found,
Records the history of the greatest lives.

There is a haven for each weary bark,

A port where they who rest are free from sin;
But we, like children trembling in the dark,
Drive on and on, afraid to enter in.

PHOEBE CARY.

PHOEBE CARY was born in Hamilton County, Ohio, in the year 1825. In 1854, she published a volume of her collected writings, entitled Poems and Parodies. Her fortunes have been linked with her sister's, and both now reside in the city of New York, enriching, from time to time, the columns of various periodicals with their poetical effusions.

THE CHRISTIAN WOMAN.

Oh, beautiful as morning in those hours
When, as her pathway lies along the hills,
Her golden fingers wake the dewy flowers,
And softly touch the waters of the rills,
Was she who walk'd more faintly day by day
Till silently she perish'd by the way.

It was not hers to know that perfect heaven
Of passionate love return'd by love as deep;
Not hers to sing the cradle-song at even,

Watching the beauty of her babe asleep;
"Mother and brethren,"-these she had not known,
Save such as do the Father's will alone.

Yet found she something still for which to live,—
Hearths desolate, where angel-like she came,

I do not like "parodies," especially if written on any thing serious and beautiful. They may be good as parodies,-as a merchant of worthless moral character is "good" commercially if he can pay his notes,--but they are often the mark of a frivolous mind, and leave behind associations of which one would be glad to divest themselves. But one of them, by that singular law of association,-contrast, reminds me of the following exquisite gem by

JAMES ALDRICH.

Mr. Aldrich, (1810-1856,) who lived and died in New York, was much beloved for his social qualities and admired for his talents and culture. Though engaged in mercantile pursuits, he was a warm lover and friend of polite letters and the fine arts, and was for a season an associate with Park Benjamin in the conduct of a literary journal. He wrote several graceful, touching, and finished poems, of which the following, at least, deserves perpetual remembrance :

A DEATH-BED.

Her suffering ended with the day;
Yet lived she at its close,

And breathed the long, long night away

In statue-like repose.

But when the sun, in all his state,

Illumed the eastern skies,

She pass'd through Glory's morning-gate,
And walk'd in Paradise!

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