Spirit, my own proud spirit! We may not sleep in dust, There is a path marked out for us Of a high and a holy trust; Spirit, tried spirit, we were not born, To die as cravens die, With no proud niche for the wreathed urn, No record on the sky. We came up life together, We have lived but a few short years, We have tasted well at the fountain head Of human hopes and fears; Yet life is young, shall we not be so? Shall we not drink and sing Of the many glorious hopes that flow From many a hidden spring? Ay, and the streams shall gather In a broad and open sea, The laving of whose crystal tide Is immortality; There shall be a time when we shall rest, Some gentle summer even, With a calm content, upon its breast, And an opening view of heaven. Storms will be wild around us Before that time shall come, And the thunder of blame will fill the air, And the voice of praise be dumb; Yet as we draw from the glorious stars Beauty and light and love, Hope’s wing shall gild the closing bars That shut us from above. Spirit, my own proud spirit, Thou wilt not fail me now, Thy hands shall wreathe the chaplet well And place it on my brow; Spirit, tried spirit, we were not born To die as cravens die, With no proud niche for the wreathed urn, No record on the sky. * * * * * WILD-BIRDS OF AMERICA. BY PROFESSOR FROST. [Illustration: Sarcoramphus Gryphus, male.] THE CONDOR. (_Sarcoramphus Gryphus._) This bird is one of the largest of the vultures. The early Spanish writers on America gave the most exaggerated accounts of its size and strength; and its true history and dimensions have been only recently ascertained. The bird was compared with the Roc of the Arabian romance writers. Acosta says that the bird called Condor is able singly to eviscerate and devour a whole sheep or a calf. Garcilaso de la Vega makes them measure 16 feet from tip to tip of the extended wings; he says their beaks are sufficiently strong to perforate and tear off a bull’s hide, and to rip out its entrails; and that a single Condor “will set upon and slay boys of ten or twelve years;” which last exaggeration, though now exploded, has found its way into our common school geographies.