EDWIN MARKHAM.

EDWIN MARKHAM was born in the state of Oregon in 1852. While yet a child his father died and the family removed to California. In very limited circumstances, his mother was unable to give him the early opportunities which she desired, but he developed an unusual fondness for nature and a free, out-of-door life. Added to this liking for woods and meadows and all living things was an insatiable love of reading. This last was hard to satisfy, because of the scarcity of reading material in a new country. Deprived of books in boyhood, as soon as fortune permitted, Markham became a book collector and acquired a fine private library.

By dint of hard effort, the future poet received first a Normal, then a college education. Nevertheless he felt that in many ways school life was less free and independent than he might have wished. Believing that manual labor should constitute a part of each one's work-a-day life, he applied himself to blacksmithing. However, during months passed as a smithy, he dreamed out poems for leisure hours.

For some time Markham has made his home in New York. His poems are known in many lands, for they have appealed particularly to those who have the welfare of humanity at heart and who look for some adjustment of present social wrongs. The fraternity of man is Markham's watchword, and in his Man with a Hoe and The Sower he has sought to bring home the misery of unceasing toil to those who remain deaf to all prayers and care for self alone. Inasmuch has been compared to Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal. In lines like these the western poet continues to sing his songs for the world:

There is a destiny that makes us brothers:
None goes his way alone:

All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.

BROTHERHOOD.

The crest and crowning of all good,
Life's final star, is Brotherhood;
For it will bring again to Earth
Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
Will send new light on every face,
A kingly power upon the race.
And till it come, we men are slaves,
And travel downward to the dust of graves.

Come, clear the way, then, clear the way;
Blind creeds and kings have had their day.

Break the dead branches from the path:
Our hope is in the aftermath-

Our hope is in heroic men,

Star-led to build the world again.

To this Event the ages ran:

Make way for Brotherhood-make way for Man.

THE BUTTERFLY.

O winged brother on the harebell, stay—
Was God's hand very pitiful, the hand

That wrought thy beauty at a dream's demand?
Yea, knowing I love so well the flowery way,
'He did not fling me to the world astray—
He did not drop me to the weary sand,
But bore me gently to a leafy land:
Tinting my wings, He gave me to the day.

Oh, chide no more my doubting, my despair!

I will go back now to the world of men. Farewell, I leave thee to the world of air,

Yet thou hast girded up my heart again; For He that framed the impenetrable plan, And keeps His word with thee, will keep with man.

THE GOBLIN LAUGH.

When I behold how men and women grind

And grovel for some place of pomp or power,
To shine and circle through a crumbling hour,
Forgetting the large mansions of the mind,
That are the rest and shelter of mankind;

And when I see them come with wearied brains
Pallid and powerless to enjoy their gains,
I seem to hear a goblin laugh unwind.

And then a memory sends upon its billow
Thoughts of a singer wise enough to play,
Who took life as a lightsome holiday:
Oft have I seen him make his arm a pillow,
Drink from his hand, and with a pipe of willow
Blow a wild music down a woodland way.

IN POPPY FIELDS.

Here the poppy hosts assemble:

How they startle, how they tremble!

All their royal hoods unpinned

Blow out lightly in the wind.

Here is gold to labor for;

Here is pillage worth a war.

Men that in the cities grind,

Come! before the heart is blind.

EUGENE FIELD.

Or New England descent, but born in St. Louis in 1850, Eugene Field was a curious mixture of classical culture, roving fancy and wild West humor. He studied at more than one college, and after graduating from the University of Michigan in 1871, traveled in Europe. On his return he became a journalist, and was thus employed in several places before he settled in Chicago. Here for years Field filled a column daily with such whims and fancies, prose and verse, as enter

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,

And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is the wee one's trundle-bed!

So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,

And you shall see the beautiful things

As you rock on the misty sea

Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three,

Wynken,

Blynken,
And Nod.

JOHN BURROUGHS.

JOHN BURROUGHS was born in Roxbury, New York, April 3, 1837. He received his schooling in district schools and academies nearby, teaching now and then to facilitate his progress. The habits of roaming about in the wide country, communing with nature and nature's fur and feathered creatures, were formed in boyhood.

The writings of Emerson, Thoreau, and Walt Whitman have had deep influence upon Burrough's literary productions -Emerson largely molding his style, Whitman affected more particularly his life and thought.

For some years Burroughs filled a position in the Treasury Department at Washington, and later became a bank examiner. It was his delight when leisure hours overtook him to get out of the city at once and into the country, where he was at once at home. Returning to his fireside, he gave the wealth of his discoveries to readers everywhere, who perhaps found fewer moments to revel in nature's obscure corners, and who generally speaking lacked Burroughs' eyes and ears had they been able to follow where he went. Wake-Robin, Winter Sunshine, Fresh Fields, A March Chronicle, are among his nature studies; Notes on Walt Whitman, The Flight of the Eagle and Indoor Studies are of a more purely literary character.