We carried him to a neighboring sunny parlor, where ivy embowers all the walls, and the sun lies all day. There he revived a little, danced up and down, perched on a green spray that was wreathed across the breast of a Psyche, and looked then like a little flitting soul returning to its rest. Towards evening he drooped; and, having been nursed and warmed and cared for, he was put to sleep on a green twig laid on the piano. In that sleep the little head drooped--nodded--fell; and little Hum went where other bright dreams go,--to the Land of the Hereafter. _Harriet Beecher Stowe._ THE VOLUNTEER'S THANKSGIVING. The last days of November, and everything so green! A finer bit of country my eyes have never seen. 'Twill be a thing to tell of, ten years or twenty hence, How I came down to Georgia at Uncle Sam's expense. Four years ago this winter, up at the district school, I wrote all day, and ciphered, perched on a white-pine stool; And studied in my atlas the boundaries of the States, And learnt the wars with England, the history and the dates. Then little I expected to travel in such haste Along the lines my fingers and fancy often traced, To bear a soldier's knapsack, and face the cannon's mouth, And help to save for Freedom the lovely, perjured South. That red, old-fashioned school-house! what winds came sweeping through Its doors from bald Monadnock, and from the mountains blue That slope off south and eastward beyond the Merrimack! O pleasant Northern river, your music calls me back To where the pines are humming the slow notes of their psalm Around a shady farm-house, half hid within their calm, Reflecting in the river a picture not so bright As these verandahed mansions,--but yet my heart's delight. They're sitting at the table this clear Thanksgiving noon; I smell the crispy turkey, the pies will come in soon,-- The golden squares of pumpkin, the flaky rounds of mince, Behind the barberry syrups, the cranberry and the quince. Be sure my mouth does water,--but then I am content To stay and do the errand on which I have been sent. A soldier mustn't grumble at salt beef and hard-tack: We'll have a grand Thanksgiving if ever we get back! I'm very sure they'll miss me at dinner-time to-day, For I was good at stowing their provender away. When mother clears the table, and wipes the platters bright, She'll say, "I hope my baby don't lose his appetite!" But oh! the after-dinner! I miss that most of all,-- The shooting at the targets, the jolly game of ball, And then the long wood-ramble! We climbed, and slid, and ran,-- We and the neighbor-children,--and one was Mary Ann,