XVIII. 'Ah! like an angel clothed in light, XIX. 'Your arts but lengthen life's short span, I am the dearest friend of man- THE MINSTREL OF THE 'WORKING ROOMS.?' BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR. АH! these busy wheels and engines! I remember a scrap of poetry that went the rounds of the newspapers a year or so ago, bemoaning that our sylvan streams had been degraded to such servile use. They turn a mill! Every poet-aping spirit in the land declaimed against the outrage. But blessings on them, I say: it is good to hear their hum on the clear river banks. There is a life, a real poetry about them. Instead of tales of want and drudgery, their din has a tone of music in it, and it talks of thrift, and hope, and cheerful songs. Ay, it is good to look out when the summons of their bells is answered now-a-days. Forth they come, human beings from all lands and climes; thrifty Yankees, and sons and daughters of old Ireland; girls from the far backwoods of Maine and Canada; children with the sunshine of France and Spain in their eyes, and men from rovings on the broad, deep seas; all mingle on the way, and all unconsciously I had almost said, so blessed is the law of industry and social intercourse, imbibing and imparting good. Instead of losing their humanity amid the discords within doors, humanity seems only the more spiritual. There is always some redeeming angel in the room; something to love, and that calls up pure associations; a mere tame bird or squirrel it may be; or a mild-voiced old man; or, oftenest of all, a young child, to shed a halo on the spot and make the dusty arches beautiful. Thus associated, I always love to hear the people of a certain district talk of one ANTOINE. The joyous little Antoine, they will say, (I never heard him called there by any other name,) with his dancing brown locks and songs flowing out upon the air the whole day long. He alighted in their midst on a summer's morning, just as the swallows came, nobody knew how or whence; but there he was with the children on the green, singing and fluttering about to his own music, as though he had been a very bird and that spot his chosen summer-haunt his life time long. 266 The Minstrel of the Working Rooms.' [September, He might have dropped from the clouds for all that could be gleaned from him; for to all questions as of who he was, or whence he came, he only answered Antoine,' and 'I'm only the little boy, you know, that comes to sing to you.' At the end of every song, however, he held out his little soiled cap to intimate his errand; but still it never entered into a single heart to call him vagabond or stroller. No; he looked so beautiful and sent so much sunshine into the atmosphere, that before an hour he was found out to be kindred to every heart in the village, and the half-dimes and coppers were raining into the little cap at a great rate. It was ascertained at length that the boy had stolen from a circus that was going the rounds, and was now wandering unconstrained, whither he listed. But no one cared to send him back. When the day wore on and he was found still hovering about the place, there was just the same kind of rejoicing among the groups that there is in the far northern latitudes when the ice breaks up in spring. His coming was to the neighborhood like the sight of the Good Spirits' to the heroes and heroines in the old German legends. They would as soon have shut their eyes upon their sunniest day-dreams as to have driven him away who seemed sent there on purpose to tell of hope and promise. I said the neighborhood was made up of people from all lands; but he was a very child of the house, go where he would. No matter how many there were to feed and clothe already, there was not a home so poor but the door flew open to let him in, and not a hearth so crowded but there was ample room for him. And it was wonderful how the musical little stranger took to the place. There must have existed some secret affinity between his heart and theirs from the first. On the morrow his little face had found the way inside the mills, and his fingers were trying to get the ways of work. In vain the task was strangely bungled, and the child, as though in fault of other resources, drowned inquiry with a gush of song. Still he showed no inclination to depart, but, encouraged by his new friends, came and went as regularly as the best of them. And now they knew more of him, what a singularity for a child he was! Some said they had been entertaining an angel unawares. While the other children blustered up and down, he loved best of all things to tell tales with the old people by the hearth-side, or to sit down among the men and talk of times and changes; or to creep away by himself among the shade-trees, and listen to the waters. He was never rude or boisterous; and yet, save in a wondrous kind of wisdom that looked out from every thing he said and did, never unchild-like. Thus goes the story. But his work alas! he tried again and again, but again and again he failed. At last, however, it was observed that his little face was melancholy at those times, and finally the truth came out : little Antoine was almost blind. Blind!'. that explained the whole. He had not been connected with his old associates by any ties of love or kindred, and when the infirmity had come upon him, instead of making him an object of peculiar interest, it only shut him out from sympathy. He was alone in his gathering darkness, and how could his child's heart but yearn for the sunlight of home and love? So he had planned to creep in among the workers, and win him a place by the exercise of his sweet gift, and he was keeping his malady a secret, lest, as his small experience suggested, they too might cast him off for it. They?- 'not they!' Who of all the world knew what hardship was, if not they? or who ought to be readier to alleviate it? They were working people, hoping and doing; and they did not pause half so long to bewail the misfortune, as to decide upon the surest means of alleviating it. Who knew that it was incurable? Money was raised forthwith, a purse made up, no one knew how far with 'widow's mites;' and the child was carried away to an infirmary, and lo! brought back seeing! No story is oftener told; and the child now, they add, is a famous vocalist, a man in the great world, singing and composing such music that it seems like interpretations of all beauty. And who knows? Why may not its spirit echo in his music, and go forth into the world revealing its Divinity in the mysterious language of sweet sounds? A. P. SONNET: Ο Ν RECEIVING A BOUQUET. SOFT meadows lapped in sunlight; green arcades Upon thy gift, dear Lady! Ah, my heart And in my eyes the unbidden tear-drops start Washington, July, 1850. THE DEAD HEART. BY CAROLINE CHESEBRO'. R. S. CHILTON. On her twenty-ninth birth-day Evelyn Clause bent over the body of her lifeless son, and saw him, the eldest, the most beautiful, the last surviving of her four bright boys, placed in the coffin for burial. She watched and even assisted in this sad duty, with a calmness that was almost frightful to behold: and the hearts of those who witnessed the strange composure of the bereaved mother trembled and fluttered into quiet, even while their hands were busied with arranging the robes of the dead; the tears which had gathered in their eyes fell not; voices which had faltered as they strove to utter consolation or sympathy grew calm and strong suddenly; even the grief of the nurse who had watched over Frederick from his infancy was hushed, and became voiceless in the presence of the mother, who stood so calm and silent beside her lifeless child. When Clarence, the baby, died, it was far otherwise with her. Never was infant mourned with such wild, such exceeding sorrow as he. Night and day through his illness, and after his death, the young mother clung to him, until at last they were compelled by force to remove her from the corpse when the funeral hour was come. It seemed then as though she would weep her very life away; and the mourning in which her form was enrobed was not comparable in gloom with that natural mourning which enveloped her lovely face. Though three children still remained to her, it was of him who was lost that she held most constant remembrance; it was of him, the affectionate little one, who had never learned to express his love in words, who had never even learned her name, that her stricken heart held continual thought; and she who had lived all of life-real life that had been given her to live |