The gravel-walk beneath his feet Cannot too sudden ope’, To gather in the wretch, who mourns The death of every hope. The swallows, whispering in a row, Seem mocking at his tear, And in the cawing of the crow He seems to catch a sneer; The cattle grazing in the field Awhile their lunch delay, To gaze at him, who moves along In such a listless way. Perhaps he’ll know a thousand griefs Ere death has laid him low. Perhaps, beside an open grave, He’ll shed the tear of woe; Perhaps he’ll turn him from the sods That hide a mother’s face, A father’s smile, a brother’s hand, Or sister’s buried grace; But there can hardly come a time When life will look so drear, Or can so little reason show Why he should linger here. A NIGHT OF TERROR. I am not the oldest inhabitant, and don’t know what sort of storms they used to have here before the flood; but I’ll wager a corner lot against a plug of tobacco, that this section, for the last twenty years, has not snoozed through a rougher night than the one just past. It would have been a glorious night for a revivalist to stir up the masses. Converts would have crowded in like grists to a mill after harvest. Since the last great earthquake I have not felt so much concern about my future state as I did about twelve o’clock last night. I arose from bed, and went to rummaging books, trying to find the description of a storm that would equal ours. I found the tempest that Tam O’Shanter faced the night he discovered the witches, and the one in which King Lear was cavorting around, bare-headed, and that which made Cæsar take an account of stock and turn to interpreting dreams, and jumbled them all together; but the product was unequal to the fury that was raging without. There was no more similarity than a baby’s rattle bears to a Chinese gong. [Illustration: A ROUSING EVENT.] Then I fished out the storm that howled while Macbeth was murdering Duncan, and tumbled it in with the others. This addition made things about even. The “lamentations heard i’ the air” of Macbeth’s tempest were a fair precedent of the clamorous uproar from the fire bell in the City Hall tower. Only an earthquake was lacking to enable us to say, “The earth was feverous, and did shake,” or boast a night outvieing four of the roughest on record, all woven into one. It had one good effect, however—one for which poison and boot-jacks have been tried in vain: it did silence the dogs and cats. Their midnight carousals were as rare as they were in Paris just before the capitulation. Quarrelsome curs postponed the settlement of their little differences and defiant barks until such times as they would be able to discover themselves whether they barked or yawned, and cats sought other places besides a fellow’s window-sill to express opinions about each other or chant their tales of love.