'Tis night! calm, lovely, silent, cloudless night! Unnumbered stars on Heaven's blue ocean-stream, Ships of Eternity! shed silver light, Pure as an infant's or an angel's dream; And still exhaustless, glorious, ever-bright, Such as Creation's dawn beheld them beam, In changeless orbits hold their ceaseless race For endless ages over boundless space! RICHARD HENRY WILDE July Twenty-Eighth When he first set down he 'peared to keer mighty little 'bout playin', and wished he hadn't come. He tweedle-leedled a little on the trible, and twoodle-oodle-oodled some on the base--just foolin' and boxin' the thing's jaws for bein' in his way. And I says to a man settin' next to me, s'I "what sort of fool play'n is that?... He thinks he's a doing of it; but he ain't got no idee, no plan of nuthin'. If he'd play me up a tune of some kind or other, I'd----" But my neighbor says, "Heish!" very impatient.... GEORGE W. BAGBY (_How Rubenstein Played_) July Twenty-Ninth ... He fetcht up his right wing, he fetcht up his left wing, he fetcht up his centre, he fetcht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by platoons, by company, by regiments and by brigades. He opened his cannon, siege guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders yonder, big guns, little guns, middle-size guns, round shot, shell, shrapnel, grape, canister, mortars, mines and magazines, every livin' battery and bomb a'goin' at the same time. The house trembled, the lights danced, the walls shuk, the floor came up, the ceilin' come down, the sky spilt, the ground rockt--heavens and earth, creation, sweet potatoes, Moses, nine-pences, glory, ten-penny nails, my Mary Ann, hallelujah, Samson in a 'simmon tree, Jeroosal'm, Tump Tompson in a tumbler-cart, roodle--oodle--oodle--oodle-- ruddle--uddle--uddle--uddle--raddle--addle--addle--addle--addle--riddle-- iddle--iddle--iddle--reetle--eetle--eetle--eetle--eetle--p-r-r-r-r-r-land! per lang! per lang! p-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-lang! Bang!... When I come to.... GEORGE W. BAGBY (_How Rubenstein Played_) July Thirtieth Let me also recall the fact that on July 30, 1619, eighteen months before the Pilgrims set foot on American soil, the vine of liberty had so deeply taken root in the colony of Virginia that there was assembled in the church at Jamestown a free representative body (the first on American soil)--the House of Burgesses--to deliberate for the welfare of the people. RANDOLPH H. MCKIM _First Legislative Assembly in America meets at Jamestown, 1619_ _Battle of the Crater, near Petersburg, 1864_ July Thirty-First