EPITAPH WRITTEN IN THE SAND ON A BUTTERFLY DROWNED IN THE SEA. Poor Psyche, to a Power supernal wed, How strong a fate on this thy frailness fell! What strange ironic word shall here be read? Dead sign of immortality, farewell! I sigh not that the summer fields have lost One flying flower: who counts the butterflies? I sigh not that thy sunny hour was crossed: The self-same Shadow surely waits mine eyes, Thy piteous terror of the appointed end, For this I sigh! The billow, poised above, Fell on thee like a beast that leaps to rend: Thou couldst not know thy bridegroom Death was Love! How otherwise thy sister, yea, the Soul, Bent brooding o'er these broken wings of thine! Through all her house of mystery once she stole To the inmost room, and found a Face benign. Now whirl her where ye must, ye waves of Law,-- Ay, tear her vans, her painted hopes, apart! She cannot fear, remembering what she saw: Dark bridegroom Death, she knows thee who thou art! HELEN GRAY CONE. * * * * * THE PIONEERS OF THE SOUTHWEST. TWO PAPERS.--I. It is related of Daniel Boone that when (in 1764) he climbed to the summit of the Alleghanies and looked down upon the vast herds of deer and buffalo that were grazing at his feet, he said to his companion Callaway, "I am richer than the man in Scripture who owned the cattle on a thousand hills: I own the wild beasts in a thousand valleys." It may be questioned if Boone had an adequate conception of the stupendous possessions of the "man in Scripture," but he was certainly justified in boasting of the wide magnificence of this domain which, by right of discovery, he claimed as his own. An Indian might have told him that it would require "three moons, two paddles, and two stout braves" to skirt its southern and western boundaries and reach its northern limit on the Ohio; but no phraseology known to the Red Man could have expressed the boundless wealth, animate and inanimate, that lay hidden in its unexplored recesses. By the leaves on the trees, or the stars in a cloudless night, he might have indicated the countless herds of wild animals that roamed upon it; but how would he picture the leafy magnificence of its forests, or the grassy luxuriance of the many "openings" that everywhere dotted its surface? It was a tract of country larger than the combined kingdoms of England and Scotland, and, from the exceeding richness of its soil, it was capable of sustaining a far denser population than now inhabits the British Islands. And yet throughout its entire extent there was at this period not a single human habitation, not the solitary hut of a white settler nor the smoky wigwam of a roving Indian. It was the hunting-ground and battle-field of the Indians, claimed by hostile tribes, but occupied by none, and hence the more inviting as a field for civilized settlement.