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He kept his word, and did n't die. Ten days after, he was on his feet, doing duty. The surgeon found a rifle-bullet-mashed strawberry,' the gallant fellow termed it-flattened on the top of his skull! The Indians fired from the trees on us, which I did not know at the time; but thereby hangs a tale.' I have been prosy enough; but the Doctor and the Parson deserve the infliction.'

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'That fellow had good nerves,' said the Doctor.

Ah, yes, but he was a scoffer!' said the Parson.

And profane person!' coughed the 'Squire, who thereupon painfully rose from his easy-chair, and going to the walnut secretary, brought back a packet tied with red tape, which he opened, and from it carefully poked a sealed paper into the red coals of the glowing grate.

The 'Squire, while folding his flannel gown more closely around him and sitting down, glanced with a fidgetty look at a few scrawled and irregular characters on the inside of the envelope, which he retained in his hand. It drew our attention; and we perceived stealing over his pale and sunken cheek 'the ghost of a blush,' as 'Peter Von Geist' would say, the which as rapidly departed.

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'What have you there?" said we all.

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Nothing; that is, nothing worth keeping,' said he; and yet I hate to burn it. The truth is, I sometimes indulge in rhymes; and although they are generally flung in the fire as soon as written, yet, once in a long while, I have laid one by to smile at in a lazy hour. If the Parson will look at this trifle, and judge whether it becomes a man so near his end to dwell even for a moment on so light a thing, he may read it to you, if he will.’

While the Parson was laboriously deciphering the manuscript, now turning it one way and now another, the 'Squire succeeded in stifling a coughing-fit, sipped a little wine, and re-lighted his Trabuno.

'I like it well enough, as a merely innocent worldly thing,' said the Parson; 'but I do think a devotional hymn would have come better from you. I am not an ascetic, nor an enthusiast of any stamp; yet it were meet that even with his pen a dying man should point toward the heavenly shores. GoD claims our thoughts at all times, but especially while we are robing for the tomb.'

'I see, I see,' replied the 'Squire; 'but perhaps there is no great difference between us. A devotional hymn I could not have written at the time I wrote that; but I look upon all true poetry as holy. If the poet's soul is pure, he cannot write any thing to offend the great BEING who gave the gift of poetry. Think you indeed that He does not prefer the free and happy warble of the thoughtless bird a thousandfold to the dull verse of half your hymn-grinders, and the nasal roar with which he is regaled in half your Sabbath-worship? I know you do. I know you are not an ascetic, nor an enthusiast; and I therefore know how you look on these things when you give them thought. I do not claim the title of poetry for the little thing you hold, but I do claim that the frame of mind which gave birth to it was just as holy, and just as acceptable to the DIVINE FATHER, as the best hymn you ever saw; more so than fifty in a hundred that grace most 'collections.' I will wager a hamper of true 'Johannisburg,, if the truth can be got

at, that Watts wrote most of his famous hymns under the inspiration of a severe belly-ache.

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Those careless lines of mine were penned last fall on the reception of a 'curt notelet' from DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER THE Younger, dated at Dobb, his Ferry,' and indited in the red juice of the scoke, or poke-berry, the phytolacca decandra of science. He had squeezed this extemporaneous ink' with his own hand, plucked the berries with his own hand, on the shores of Tappaän Zee; and thoughts kindred to those he felt swelled in my own bosom. DIEDRICH's heart was beating anew in the breast of boyhood, I ween. He drew in large and bracing draughts of the October air; the broad bay was now become a sweet, small lake, wherein were painted in warm reflection the clear autumn sky, the round western sun, the forest boughs, blazing with gold and crimson, the spire of a church, seen dimly afar down in the limpid wave, wild-fowl along the shores, or speeding across the sky, while to his ear came the tinkle of sheep-bells, the far-off lowing of kine, the chirp of the squirrel darting here and there among the treetops, the dropping of nuts on the rustling floor of the woods, the crack of the sportsman's rifle echoed from the hills, and on his shoulder leaned one, loved better than himself (now, alas! serenely sleeping under the violets), dreaming with boyhood's rapture the dreams that made him POET in after years; glad, pure, kind-hearted, generous, genial'OLLAPOD!' These, or like them, were DIEDRICH's sad, sweet, electric, amber-colored fancies, while he dipped his pen and wrote; and when his scarlet missive reached the 'Squire, it wrapped him also in visions sweet; erased cold, intervening years; led him to Green Brook's grassy brim, to Pine Hill's glorious summits; spread before his swimming eye the village green, the church, the old red school-house, with its ink-bespattered walls within, now desecrated, alas! with modern paper-hangings; the merry ball-play up on Furnace Hill; faces that shone with youth's health and truthfulness, now scattered, some east and west and south and o'er the wide, wide sea, and some that long ago paled and grew to marble and fled beneath the yew! But not too sad was that swift vision; nay, if there were an evening tinge that flecked it, it was that of a glowing sunset, soft, mellow and entrancing. Such, Mr. Parson, was the holy trance of feeling that brimmed my heart and overflowed in rhyme.'

The Parson made no reply, but read to us

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And hie me, at last, so late to school,
That the master' ferules me a 'fool,'
With the box-wood and not the golden rule:
'Scoke-berry! Scoke-berry!

Ah, that old school-house, painted red!
The afternoon' at length has sped,
As if borne by the steeds of DIOMED,
And the truant fool' is up at the head!"
'Scoke-berry! Scoke-berry!'

And home we go, a shouting crew,
The knots in the fences stoning through,
And scaring the stage with our 'hullaballoo
'Scoke-berry! Scoke-berry!'

Gather the clouds in the gorgeous West,
Sinks the broad sun to his evening rest [drest:
Down the woods which the harlequin Frost has
'Scoke-berry! Scoke-berry!'

And when Sleep's starry curtain falls,
And I walk her grand, unearthly halls,
Still in my ear the little bird calls

'Scoke-berry! Scoke-berry!'

said the Doctor.

it may be well to destroy it,' said

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'P'shaw!' said the Lieutenant; do n't you smoke?' ' The Parson looked confused.

Hereupon the clock struck the half-hour; the 'Squire's hand was squeezed Good-night;' and the Lieutenant, loitering a second or two by the table, leaned over the back of the easy chair and whispered in his ear: 'What was it, Jack, you threw in the fire?'

'My WILL!' answered he.

'Then you are not going to die yet a-while, I see !'

Die? I'll be dd if I do!' said the 'Squire, energetically,

and aloud.

• Whew!' whistled the Doctor in the entry-way.

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Haven't any doubt of that!' soliloquised the Parson, while drawing on his red 'Canadas.'

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Speaking of mosquitoes!' said the Lieutenant quietly to them both, as they shut the front-door and went out into the snow.

ANACREONTIC

STANZA 8.

Σὺ μὲν φίλη χελιδών.

In the spring the swallow cometh,
Makes her nest and dwells awhile;
Autumn darkens, and she roameth
Off to Memphis and the Nile:
Ah! unlike the friendly swallow
Is the love within my breast;
Building, brooding, and abiding,
It will never give me rest.

I am vainly waiting, watching
For the troubler to depart:
Ah! I feel the young loves hatching;
How they flutter at my heart!
She is flown, the friendly swallow,
But the love within my breast,
Ever brooding, spring and winter,
Never will forsake the nest.

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The knights and retainers were gathered around,
And loud doth the peal of their revelry sound;
While the stout feudal baron, the chief of the band,
Hath raised thee, old goblet! on high in his hand :
The feast and the revel, the shout and the laugh,
The pledge of the gallants o'er wine that they quaff,
The clink of the goblets together that shine,

As the knights raise their cups with 'Success to the vine!'

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How oft at such revels, old cup! hast thou been?

O, wouldst thou could tell of the sights thou hast seen!
Of the dark-bearded mouths that have pressed at thy rim,

Or the red lip of beauty that breathed at its brim:
Perchance thou hast held the dark poisonous draught
Which the victim of tyrants or treachery quaffed,
And e'en while a moment upheld in his grasp
The cold hand of death has unloosened his clasp.

VI.

Or perchance, by the sick, all pallid with pain,

Thou hast held the pure nectar that cheered them again;
In the hand of the maiden, the grasp of the knight,
And glowing with deep rosy wine in the light:

All, all hast thou seen, as ages have flown

And left thee, old goblet! still gleaming alone;

And those that have drained thee, the young and the brave,
Have passed and have vanished; gone down to the grave!

VII.

And the deeds of the brave feudal barons of yore,

They glimmer but faintly in history's lore;

Their battles, their feasts, their retainers so true,

Have faded away from our memories too :

But I'll think, as I gaze on this massy old cup,

Of those merry old days when the knights took it up,

And from it a bumper I'll drain with a cheer

To the knights of old times and their memories dear!

Boston, August 21, 1850.

SKETCHES IN SOUTH AFRICA.

BY MONTGOMERY D. PARKER, U. 8. o.

LEAVING Our kind friends at St. Paul de Loando, who during the whole of our stay had treated us with the greatest attention, we replenished our sea stock of fruit by large drafts upon the orange boats, which come off in fleets to pay us a parting call (and to be paid some of good old Uncle Sam's dollars), and were soon standing out of the harbor, with a fair wind, on our northward cruise, and anchored at about sundown of the same day off Dande Point and river. Our object in visiting this place was to fill up with wood and water, which we were told at St. Paul we could do much easier and at, a less expense than any where else on the coast. We remained at anchor nearly a week, during which time I took many pleasant tramps on shore, and made quite a long and interesting trip up the river in the captain's gig; for the fatigue and discomforts of which, in being exposed to a burning sun and mosquitoes, I was amply repaid by the novelty of things in this vicinity, when compared with other parts of the coast which I had already visited.

People at home, and more particularly those having friends in the navy-indeed, officers in the navy themselves-have accustomed themselves to speak and think of the African station as the ne plus ultra of all that is disagreeable and to be dreaded; and when the disadvantages to one's own personal comfort is alone to be considered, it is not perhaps unnatural that they should look upon it, as I know many of them do, as the Botany Bay of the navy, and carry out with them

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