might have been the result of a word that remained unspoken. Might have been! Ah me!

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"

MY SOUL IS SAD.

My soul is sad, for days of yore
Come thronging on my brain,
And memories of "lang syne" to me
Are memories of pain;
Such tearful shadows of the past

Come o'er my aching eye,

I close my weary lids, and bid
The vision to pass by.

My soul is sad, for sun-bright hours
That scarcely knew a shade;
Life's colors looked so fair to me

It seemed they would not fade.
Pass on! bright visions of the past,
Ye only give me pain ;

Those happy days, too bright to last,
Will never come again.

THE OLD PLAY-GROUND.

I SAT an hour to-day, John,
Beside the old brook stream,
Where we were schoolboys in old time,
When manhood was a dream;
The brook is choked with fallen leaves,
The pond is dried away;

I scarce believe that you would know
The dear old place to-day.

The schoolhouse is no more, John,
Beneath our locust trees;

The wild rose by the window side
No more waves in the breeze;
The scattered stones look desolate;
The sod they rested on

Has been ploughed up by stranger hands,
Since you and I were gone.

The chestnut tree is dead, John ;
And, what is sadder now,

The broken grape vine of our swing

Hangs on the withered bough;

I read our names upon the bark,
And found the pebbles rare
Laid up beneath the hollow side,
As we had piled them there.

Beneath the grass-grown bank, John,
I looked for our old spring,
That bubbled down the alder path
Three paces from the swing;
The rushes grow upon the brink,
The pool is black and bare,
And not a foot, this many a day,
It seems, has trodden there.

I took the old blind road, John,
That wandered up the hill;
'Tis darker than it used to be,
And seems so lone and still.
The birds sing yet among the boughs
Where once the sweet grapes hung,
But not a voice of human kind

Where all our voices rung.

I sat me on the fence, John,
That lies as in old time,

The same half panel in the path
We used so oft to climb;

I thought how o'er the bars of life

Our playmates had passed on, And left me counting on this spot The faces that are gone.

LEARN TO SAY, NO.

A VERY wise and excellent mother gave the following advice with her dying breath: "My son, learn to say, No." Not that she did mean to counsel her son to be a churl in speech, or to be stiffhearted in things that were indifferent or trivial, and much less did she counsel him to put his negative upon the calls of charity and the impulses of humanity; but her meaning was, that, along with gentleness of manners and benevolence of disposition, he should possess an inflexible firmness of purpose a quality beyond all price, whether it regards the sons or the daughters of our fallen race.

Persons so infirm of purpose, so wanting in resolution, as to be incapable, in almost any case, of saying, No, are among the most hapless of human beings; and that notwithstanding their sweetness of temper, their courteousness of demeanor, and whatever else of amiable and estimable qualities they possess. Though they see the right, they

pursue the wrong; not so much out of inclination, as from a frame of mind disposed to yield to every solicitation.

An historian of a former and distant age says of a Frenchman who ranked as the first prince of the blood, that he had a bright and knowing mind, graceful sprightliness, good intentions, complete disinterestedness, and an incredible easiness of manners, but that, with all these qualities, he acted a most contemptible part for the want of resolution; that he came into all the factions of his time, because he wanted power to resist those who drew him in for their own interests; but that he never came out of any but with shame, because he wanted resolution to support himself whilst he was in them.

It is owing to the want of resolution, more than to the want of sound sense, that a great many persons have run into imprudences, injurious, and sometimes fatal, to their worldly interests. Numerous instances of this might be named, but I shall content myself with naming only one, and that is, rash and hazardous suretyship. The pit stands uncovered, and yet men of good sense, as well as of amiable dispositions, plunge themselves into it with their eyes wide open. Notwithstanding the solemn warnings in the proverbs of the wise man, and notwith