Oh! when the hour to meet again Creeps on, and speeding o’er the sea, My heart takes up its lengthen’d chain, And link by link, draws nearer thee-- When land is hail’d, and, from the shore, Comes off the blessed breath of home, With fragrance from my mother’s door Of flowers forgotten, when I come-- When port is gain’d, and slowly now, The old familiar paths are past, And entering, unconscious how, _I gaze upon thy face at last_, And run to thee, all faint and weak, And feel thy tears upon my cheek-- Oh! if my heart break not with joy, The light of heaven will fairer seem; And I shall grow once more a boy; And, mother, ’twill be like a dream That we were parted thus for years; And, once that we have dried our tears, How will the days seem long and bright, To meet thee always with the morn, And hear thy blessing every night, Thy “dearest,” thy “first born!” And he no more, as now, in a strange land forlorn. ❦ Among many vestiges of the ancient Saxon dialect and idiom, we reckon a small space of time by the night, as did the Saxons. Sen’night, or seven nights hence; fortnight, or fourteen nights hence, are both of Saxon origin, and both are used in modern calculation of time. ❦ [Sidenote: The Torpedo.] The Torpedo is found in the British Seas, particularly at Torbay, near Waterford, on the coast of Ireland. This extraordinary fish likes to bury itself lightly in the sand, in which situation the Torpedo gives its most forcible shock, and throws down the astonished passenger who inadvertently treads upon it. On touching the fish with the fingers, it sometimes happens that the person feels an unusual painful numbness, which suddenly seizes the arm up to the elbow, and sometimes to the very shoulder and head. The pain is almost indescribable, and bears some resemblance to the sensation felt in the arm on striking the elbow violently against a hard body. It is even affirmed that it will benumb the astonished fisherman through the whole length of the line and rod. The Torpedo is so far amphibious as to live in air twenty-four hours, and but little longer in water. ❦ Silence is not very culpable, when nothing pleasing is suppressed. ❦ [Sidenote: Wait and Hope.] Il ne faut que savoir attendre, dans cette vie: sous la neige il y a de la verdure, et derrière le plus épais nuage le ciel est bleu. ❦ [Sidenote: Mother and Child.]