Oh, mother, had but father lived It would not have been thus; Or, if God still had taken her, She would have died with us; She would have had kind looks, fond words, Around her dying bed— Our hands to press her dying hands, To raise her dying head. I’m always thinking, mother, now, Of what she must have thought; Poor girl! as day on day went by, And neither of us brought;— Of how she must have yearned, one face, That was not strange, to see— Have longed one moment to have set One look on you and me. Sometimes I dream a happy dream— I think that she is laid Beside our own old village church, Where we so often played; And I can sit upon her grave, And with her we shall lie, Afar from where the city’s noise, And thronging feet go by. Nay, mother—mother—weep not so, God judges for the best, And from a world of pain and woe, He took her to his rest; Why should we wish her back again? Oh, freed from sin and care, Let us the rather pray God’s love, Ere long to join her there. THE FIRE ANNIHILATOR “Water, and nothing _but_ water!” exclaimed Mr. John Diggs, the great sugar-baker (everybody knows old John Diggs), “Water, I say, is the natural enemy of fire; and any man who dares to say otherwise is no better that a fool or a charlatan. I should like to knock such a fellow down. I know more about fire than all the learned talking chaps in England, and it’s of no use to tell me when a house is in a blaze, that any thing but water _can_ put it out. Not a bit of it. Don’t attempt to say so; I won’t hear it!” Mr. Diggs gave vent to his feelings in the above oracular form at his Club, on Thursday evening last, on which occasion he happened to be the Chairman. It was in consequence of one of the junior members reading a passage from a scientific Journal, to the effect that water was almost as much a friend to fire, as an enemy—and that, at any rate, they were near of kin—quoting Mr. Phillips, the Inventor of the Fire Annihilator, as a practical authority on the subject. This was what had so enraged Mr. Diggs, sugar-baker, and chairman of the Albert Rock and Toffee Club.