JULIA

JULIA H. THAYER.

ULIA H. THAYER was born in Keeseville, N. Y., a romantic village near Lake Champlain, where mountain scenery and beautiful natural surroundings lent their charm to the first ten years of her life. Since then Illinois has been her home, and a most quiet and secluded life, as pupil and teacher in her father's school, at Morgan Park, has been the background of her achievements. The sensitiveness peculiar to the camera-like mind of a poet, long impelled her to hide as a defect the promptings of her nature. To a loved brother she first entrusted the fateful secret, "I wrote it," as she placed under his eye one of her earliest attempts. A grandmother of cultivated taste was next lured into the critic's corner by an ingenious device of the little authoress, who, to beguile the invalid's weary hours, read to her many articles of various hues, and deftly slipped her own among them. To her horror the unsuspecting victim too often pronounced her precious musings as but "silly trash," and but rarely ascribed the meagre praise of "very good," or, "I like that sentiment." She first published her verses anonymously. Very gradually did she allow herself to be lured into plainer sight, but from 1870 until the present time the productions of her pen, chiefly poetical, and hallowed ever by an abiding Christian element of thought and purpose, have appeared in various papers and magazines. Her harp is not of narrow compass, but holds in silken meshes the human heart, and sets its tremulous chords in tune with genuine human impulses. To those who know Miss Thayer, whose features, sweet and refined as any home-saint's, have, nevertheless, a merry, wholesome spirit of humor pervading them, deepening most suggestively in the keen gray eyes, her humorous poems would seem inevitable.

Miss Thayer has found her prose writing drudgery, but Nature, in every poetic phase, is her chosen ideal. A beautiful theme is suggested to her by an “ 'Island Spring," as one example of such lessons. But turning from all her other poems, we yield ourselves, in closing, to the spell of the song called Submission." We gaze into depths of being calmed and chastened until God's own glory is reflected therein. M. E. N.

THROUGH THE MIST.

THROUGH the mist the sounds come clearest; Through the heavy, cloudy air

I can hear in tones severest

Myriad voices everywhere:

Ringing bells that no winds smother,

Childish laughter, loud and sweet,

Toilers calling to each other, And the tread of hidden feet.

Stir of life remote, that never

Crosses when the day is clear, Flies on spirit-pinions ever

Through the ghostly atmosphere.

Through the mist the sounds come clearest; Through the hours weighed down with pain I can hear again the merest

Voices of the restless brain.

Silent words ring, yearning after

Echoes that were once so sweet, Then come back old talk and laughter, Then come back the hidden feet.

Far-off sounds of life eternal

Touch me, as I, shrouded, list, With a depth of tone supernal That comes only through the mist.

ON MOUNTAIN HEIGHTS. As one who, mid the wintry surge

Of Alpine winds that round him blow, Delays beside the dizzy verge

O'erlooking tropic life below, And cries with rapture as he sees

Its glowing beauties manifold, And seems to feel its perfumed breeze, Unconscious of benumbing cold:

So often on some ledge of Time

That overhangs the steep of Years, I gaze upon another clime

Where Youth's luxuriant bloom appears. With hearing deaf to clamorous wind, With vision blind to hostile skies,

I only know that there I find
Again my vanished paradise.

It seems so long, so long ago,

Since upward from that region sweet I wandered through the fading glow, Unmindful of my straying feet

Till rude airs bade my soul resist,

And emerald paths grew bare and brown,

Till shrouded in a world of mist

And lost, at times, I sank me down.

I know I now breathe purer air

And tread the firm, unyielding rock, Above the storms of impulse where

The lightnings blind and thunders shock;

M'

MARIA LOUISE EVE.

ISS MARIA LOUISE EVE was born near Augusta, Georgia. Her father, Dr. Edward Armstrong Eve, was one of many of the same name who have adorned the medical profession. Her great-great-grandfather, Oswell Eve, commanded a man-of-war, "The Roebuck," under George III, in ante-revolutionary days. Upon the opening of hostilities, he requested to be sent on other service, as he had many friends in the Colonies." The family afterward came to America, locating first in Philadelphia, drifting thence to Charleston, S. C., and finally to the neighborhood of Augusta, Georgia. Miss Eve, from childhood, aspired to poesy, but her first literary success was a prose essay, for which she was awarded a prize of one hundred dollars, in 1866. The Mobile News, in 1879, offered a prize of one hundred dollars for the best poem expressing the South's gratitude for Northern aid in the yellow fever epidemic of the preceding year. Miss Eve won this prize, and her noble verses, overflowing with grace and tenderness, were widely reproduced here and abroad.

Miss Eve has been specially honored by the Peace Society of this country and England because of her poetry bearing upon the subject of peace. Her pure and gentle spirit is naturally attuned to unwarlike settlement of controversies.

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Of Miss Eve's poems the best known are "Conquered at Last,' Woes of Ireland,' Unfulfilled," Filling his Place," Easter Morning," and "The Lion and the Eagle." She has written poetry for the love of it, while striving for successful recognition in the field of letters in order to While uplift humanity and alleviate its woes. true to this mission, she has carried out in her daily occupation the virtues that shine in her verses. In all the arduous duties and trials of life she has been ever unselfish, sacrificial, charitable and devoted. Her personal example is itself a poem and her presence betokens the interior peace that dwells in consecrated natures. talents given her by heaven she has used to the utmost, with a generous yet modest persistence. Possibly her life work is more distinct and individual because of its limitations. She has made the South respected and loved, and, with her woman's hand unbarred many a door to love which political disturbers had closed with hate.

The

J. R. R.

THE LION AND THE EAGLE. On reading the dispatch announcing the coming of the English Peace Deputation to America.

COME Over, come over the waters so dark,

O white-winged ship, as the dove from the ark

Returning at eve, to her master's hand,
With an olive leaf plucked in the far-off land-
A greeting of peace from our motherland-
Thrice welcome, the men, with their mission grand!
Ah well, there are many to-day that are wearing
Their badges of honor, for deeds that were daring;
But these are the men who have dared to fight
'Gainst a glittering wrong, for a trampled right.
And these are the names, in song and in story,
Shall stand on the roll of honor and glory.
Ay, peace with our kindred in blood and in creed,
Who have the same words for every need-
For mother and home, for love and for heaven;
Who sing the same songs, at morning and even;
Whose forefathers played 'neath the same roof-tree,
And lisped the same prayers at the same mother's
knee.

The Lion and Eagle, for peace, would convene,
In the grandest of Councils, the world has yet seen;-
Ye nations, be still, and know that the day
Is coming apace, when love shall hold sway;
The old flags of war forever be furled,
And "Peace" be the watchword over the world.

CONQUERED AT LAST.

Shortly after the last yellow-fever scourge swept up the Mississippi Valley the "Mobile News" offered a prize for the poem by a Southern writer which should best express the gratitude of the Southern heart towards the people of the North for the philanthropy and magnanimity so nobly and freely displayed during the pestilence. This offer called forth seventy-seven compositions from various parts of the South, and the prize was finally awarded Miss Maria L. Eve, of Augusta, Georgia, the author of "Conquered at Last."

You came to us once, O brothers, in wrath,
And rude desolation followed your path.
You conquered us then, but only in part,
For a stubborn thing is the human heart,
So the mad wind blows in his might and main,
And the forests bend to his breath like grain
Their heads in the dust and their branches broke;
But how shall he soften their hearts of oak?
You swept o'er our land like the whirlwind's wing;
But the human heart is a stubborn thing.
We laid down our arms, we yielded our will;
But our heart of heart was unconquered still.
"We are vanquished," we said, "but our wounds
must heal;"

We gave you our swords, but our hearts were steel. "We are conquered,” we said, but our hearts were

sore,

And "Woe to the conquered" on every door. But the Spoiler came and he would not spare,

The angel that walketh in darkness was there;He walked through the valley, walked through the street,

And he left the print of his fiery feet

In the dead, dead, dead, that were everywhere,
And buried away with never a prayer.
From the desolate land, from its very heart,
There went forth a cry to the uttermost part:--
You heard it, O brothers!-with never a measure
You opened your hearts and poured out your

treasure.

O Sisters of Mercy, you gave above these!
For you helped, we know, on your bended knees.
Your pity was human, but O! it was more,
For you shared our cross and our burden bore.
Your lives in your hands you stood by our side;
Your lives for our lives—you laid down and died,
And no greater love hath a man to give,
Than to lay down his life that his friends may live.
You poured in our wounds the oil and the wine
That you brought to us from a Hand Divine.
You conquered us once, our swords we gave;
We yield now our hearts- they are all we have.
Our last trench was there, and it held out long:
It is yours, O friends! and you'll find it strong.
Your love had a magic diviner than art,
And "Conquered by Kindness" we'll write on our
heart.

FILLING HIS PLACE.

YOUNG Rip Van Winkle took into his head
To go on a cruise round the world, he said;
And in three years' time he would come once more,
And all would go on as it did before.

What a blank he left, alack and alack!
But the years went round till they brought him

back.

And one lazy day in the last of June
Stood a sunburnt sailor, humming a tune,
And watching them play on the cricket-ground.
He was champion once of the country round;
But that brawny lad with the laughing face,
It was plain to see, was filling his place;
And with half a sigh he turned him away,
Saying, "It matters not, it is naught but play."
And he took the road to the old grist-mill,
Where his place, he knew, they could never fill;
For he'd miss him sore, the miller declared,
And his own right hand could be better spared.
The miller had found, on the day he sailed,
A good honest lad, who had never failed.
'Well, all men can work, but all cannot sing.
I'll sit in the choir; and they'll know the ring
Of my voice again, for the girls did say