followed him like a thing of ill-omen, to the very grave! There was at that time in the office of Robert Brand, a stripling youngster who promised very little good to the world and has probably as yet disappointed no one--who thought more of play than of work, of music than of mortgages, of Burns than Blackstone, and of a rosy-cheeked girl who came into the office on some little errand to the "'Squire" than of the most proud and stately of his male clients. Among his vices, he had a fancy for jingling verse; and one day when the semi-annual visit of the pensioners had just terminated and he had listened afresh to the same old tales of glory told over again in the same faltering accents that he had heard so many times before, his one virtue of reverence for the aged and the venerable rose into an idle rhyme, which may have a fit place in this connection, and which he called THE PENSIONERS. They come but twice a year, When the pension-day rolls round,-- Old men with hoary hair And their faces to the ground. One leans upon his crutch; And one is upright still, As if he bore Time's clutch With an iron nerve and will. And feeble are the steps That so patiently they feel; And they kiss with trembling lips The old Bible and the seal; And they lay with care away, In wallets old and worn, The scant and tardy pay Of a life of toil and scorn. They love a cheerful pipe And a warm place in the sun, From an age so old and ripe To call memories one by one;-- To tell of Arnold's crime, And of Washington's proud form That beamed, in battle time, A beacon o'er the storm.-- To tell of Yorktown's day, When the closing fight was gained,-- When Cornwallis went away And the eagle was unchained; To show us, o'er and o'er, The seamed and withered scars That many a hero bore, As his passport from the wars. 'Tis pride, with these old men, To tell what they have seen, Of battle-fields, again With their harvest bright and green: 'Twill be pride, when we are old, To say that in our youth We heard the tales they told And looked on them in their truth. They are the last sad link Of a race of men with ours, Who stood on ruin's brink And built up fair freedom's towers. They are passing, as the foam From the ocean wave departs, But finding yet a home In heaven, and in our hearts. And when the last is gone, To their memory we will build A pyramid of stone Whose top the sun shall gild When the name of patriot weal And of tyrants' bitter wrong Shall be told but in a tale And known but in a song.