brook. He calls childhood a bough full of slumbering buds and blossoms, beneath which the child lives. Age he calls the same bough, but covered with snow, and forming a snowy tent in which one lives.

Gather then, he tells her, every flower that grows, to cheer that snowy tent. Learn all Learn all graces and accomplishments. Train the eye, the hand, and the ear; enrich your thought and feeling for the snowy time of age. Is not this what all girls must seek to do?

First and ever foremost be pure.

"Bear a lily in thy hand"

is the way the poet puts it.

And because he knew that truth and gentleness overcome very great obstacles, he said that gates of brass could not resist the lily's touch. It would be just like a fairy's magic wand.

He bids her carry everywhere a sunny, cheerful spirit, which he calls the dew of youth. He bids her wear the frank, honest smile of truth through all her life.

He tells her that these will be like balm poured into wounds and like sleep to tired eyes. Then, looking into her face so full of sunshine, he adds, kissing her as we may guess,

"For a smile of God thou art."

Would you not think that the maiden would feel like making her life all that her father had pictured to her?

THE TWO ANGELS.

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,
The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke,

Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white ; But one was crowned with amaranth, as with the flame,

And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;

Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed, "Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray The place where thy beloved are at rest!"

And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.

I recognized the nameless agony,

The terror and the tremor and the pain, That oft before had filled or haunted me

And now returned with three-fold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice; And, knowing whatsoe'er he sent was best,

Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile that filled the house with light,

66

'My errand is not Death, but Life, he said; And, ere I answered, passing out of sight,

On his celestial embassy he sped.

'Twas at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine,
Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,
A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.

All is of God! If he but wave his hand,
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,
Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,
Lo! he looks back from the departing cloud.

Angels of Life and Death alike are his;

Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, Against his messengers to shut the door?

4. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the distinguished physician and writer, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1809, the birth year of Tennyson, Gladstone, and Lincoln.

He is one of the five children of Rev. Abiel Holmes, a noted clergyman and author. His mother, formerly Miss Sarah Wendell, descended from a long line of eminent families, the Dudleys, Quincys, and Bradstreets, noted in politics and literature. He was named from his mother's father, Hon. Oliver Wendell.

His earliest recollections, he tells us, are of tumbling about in a big room full of books, with a kind, sunny-faced man sitting at a table strewn with papers.

The boy went to various schools until sixteen, when he entered Harvard College at Cambridge. He graduated in the class of 1829. Among his classmates was the author of our national hymn, America, Rev. S. F. Smith.

While at college he wrote a number of poems, and determined to be an author. But he thought a literary man ought to have some regular calling. So he began to study medicine.

After two and a half years of study in Cambridge, he sailed to Europe, where for three years

he continued his studies in the hospitals of London and Paris.

During this time he continued writing, and on returning in 1834 gave to the world his first volume of poems.

He pursued his medical studies constantly, distinguishing himself in those diseases that are detected by the ear, as well as in those which require the use of the microscope.

He became in 1838 Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in Dartmouth College at Hanover, New Hampshire; but after two years he resigned and returned to Boston that he might have a better chance to practise.

When thirty-one he married Miss Amelia Jackson, daughter of Hon. Charles Jackson, former judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. He Low moved to a beautiful residence known as Montgomery Place, on Charles Street, in Boston. Here he passed eighteen happy years; here were born his three children.

In 1847 he was offered the professorship of Anatomy and Physiology in Harvard College, where Professor Longfellow and Professor Agassiz were already teaching.

This position he accepted and most satisfactorily filled it for thirty-five years.

While professor at Harvard, Dr. Holmes not only prepared his medical lectures, but he also wrote