"Am I not a man and brother?" cries John in our midst, digging our gold, setting up opposition laundries and wheeling sand at half a dollar per day less wages. "No. Get out, ye long-tailed baste! An' wad ye put me on a livil with that--that baboon?" Pass round the hat. The coins mass themselves more thickly than ever. For what? To buy muskets, powder and ball. Wherefore? Wait! More than once has the demagogue cried, "Drive them into the sea!" PRENTICE MULFORD. A WINTER REVERIE. We stood amid the rustling gloom alone That night, while from the blue plains overhead, With golden kisses thickly overblown, A shooting star into the darkness sped. "'Twas like Persephone, who ran," we said, "Away from Love." The grass sprang round our feet, The purple lilacs in the dusk smelled sweet, And the black demon of the train sped by, Rousing the still air with his long, loud cry. The slender rim of a young rising moon Hung in the west as you leaned on the bar And spun a thread of some sweet April tune, And wished a wish and named the falling star. We heard a brook trill in the fields afar; The air wrapped round us that entrancing fold Of vanishing sweet stuff that mortal hold Can never grasp--the mist of dreams--as down The street we went in that fair foreign town. I might have whispered of my love that night, But something wrapped you as a shield around, And held me back: your quiver of affright, Your startled movement at some sudden sound-- A night-bird rustling on the leafy ground-- Your hushed and tremulous whisper of alarm, Your beating heart pressed close against my arm,-- All, all were sweet; and yet _my_ heart beat true, Nor shrined one wish I might not breathe to you. So when we parted little had been said: I left you standing just within the door, With the dim moonlight streaming on your head And rippling softly on the checkered floor. I can remember even the dress you wore-- Some dainty white Swiss stuff that floated round Your supple form and trailed upon the ground, While bands of coral bound each slender wrist, Studded with one great purple amethyst. * * * * * My story is not much--is it?--to tell: It seems a wandering line of music, faint, Whose sweet pathetic measures rise and swell, Then, strangled, fall with curious restraint. 'Tis like the pictures that the artists paint, With shadows forward thrown into the light From the real figures hidden out of sight. And is not life crossed in this strange, sad way With dreams whose shadows lengthen day by day?