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CHOICE SELECTIONS.

No. 15.

WHO ARE THE FREE.-JOHN C. PRINCE.

Who are the Free?

They who have scorned the tyrant and his rod,
And bowed in worship unto none but God;
They who have made the conqueror's glory dim,
Unchained in soul, though manacled in limb,
Unwarped by prejudice, unawed by wrong,
Friends to the weak, and fearless of the strong;
They who could change not with the changing hour,
The self-same men in peril and in power;
True to the law of right, as warmly prone
To grant another's as maintain their own;
Foes of oppression, wheresoe'er it be ;-

These are the proudly free!

Who are the Great?
They who have boldly ventured to explore
Unsounded seas, and lands unknown before;
Soared on the wings of science, wide and far,
Measured the sun, and weighed each distant star;
Pierced the dark depths of ocean and of earth,
And brought uncounted wonders into birth;
Repelled the pestilence, restrained the storm,
And given new beauty to the human form;
Waken'd the voice of reason and unfurled
The page of truthful knowledge to the world:
They who have toiled and studied for mankind,
Aroused the slumbering virtues of the mind;
Taught us a thousand blessings to create ;-
These are the nobly great!

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Who are the Wise?

They who have governed with a self control,
Each wild and baneful passion of the soul;
Curbed the strong impulse of all fierce desires,
But kept alive affection's purer fires:

They who have passed the labyrinth of life,
Without one hour of weakness or of strife;
Prepared each change of fortune to endure,-
Humble though rich, and dignified though poor,
Skilled in the latent movements of the heart,
Learned in the love which nature can impart,―
Teaching that sweet philosophy aloud,
Which sees the "silver lining" of the cloud,
Looking for good in all beneath the skies;-

These are the truly wise!

Who are the Blest?

They who have kept their sympathies awake,
And scattered joy for more than custom's sake;
Steadfast and tender in the hour of need,

Gentle in thought, benevolent in deed;

Whose looks have power to make dissension cease,
Whose smiles are pleasant and whose words are peace;
They who have lived as harmless as the dove,
Teachers of truth and ministers of love;—
Love for all moral power, all mental grace—
Love for the humblest of the human race-

Love for that tranquil joy that virtue brings→
Love for the giver of all goodly things;
True followers of that soul-exalting plan

Which Christ laid down to bless and govern man;
They who can calmly linger to the last,
Survey the future and recall the past,

And with that hope which triumphs over pain,-
Full well assured they have not lived in vain-
Then wait in peace their hour of final rest;-
These are the only blest!

ADVICE TO THE YOUNG.

My son, be this thy simple plan :
Serve God, and love thy brother man;
Forget not, in temptation's hour,
That sin lends sorrow double power;
Count life a stage upon thy way,
And follow conscience, come what may;
Alike with earth and heaven sincere,
With hand and brow and bosom clear,
"Fear God, and know no other fear."

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THE DRUNKARD'S WIFE.-ELIHU BURRITT.

There are new developments of human character, which, like the light of distant stars, are yet to visit the eye of man and operate upon human society. Ever since the image of the Godhead was first sketched in Eden, its great Author and angels have been painting upon it; men have tried their hands upon it; influences like the incessant breath of heaven have left each its line upon the canvas; still the finishing stroke of the pencil will not be accomplished until the last, lingering survivor of" the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds" is changed in "the twinkling of an eye."

The hemisphere of the present age is studded all over with such pearls" and patines of bright gold," as never shone before in the heavens of the human soul. In these latter days, the waves of time have washed up from depths that angels never fathomed, "gems of purer light serene" than were ever worn before in the crown of man. We are now but half way advanced in a new cycle of human history. The race is but just emerging from the long-reaching shadows of an iron age, and coming out into the starlight and sunlight of new influences.

If, as we are assured, scores of new stars have taken rank with the heavenly host, during the last two centuries, stars brighter than they, have, in the same period, kindled up new lights in the moral firmament. Among these new stars, one, a little lower than that of Bethlehem, has just appeared above the horizon. It is the Star of Woman's Influence. Influential woman is a being of scarcely two centuries: up to that period, and almost hitherto, her influences have fallen upon human character and society, like the feeble rays of a rising winter's sun upon polar fields of ice. But her sun is reaching upward. There is a glorious meridian to which she shall as surely come as to-morrow's rising sun shall reach his in our natural heavens. What man will be, when she shall shine upon him then and thence, we are unable to divine; but we can found an anticipation from the influences of her dawning rays. Her morning light has gilded the visions of human hope, and silvered over the night shadows

of human sorrow. There has been no depth of human misery beyond the reach of her ameliorating influence, nor any height of human happiness which she has not raised still higher. Whoever has touched at either of these extremities or at any of their intervening points, could attest that "neither height, nor depth, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present or to come," could divert or vitiate the accents and anodynes of her love. Whether we trace the lineaments of her character in the mild twilight of her morning sun, or in the living beams of her risen day, we find that she has touched human society like an angel. It would be irreverent to her worth to say in what walks of life she has walked most like an angel of light and love; in what vicissitudes, in what joys or sorrows, in what situations or circumstances, she has most signally discharged the heavenly ministrations of her mission; what ordeals have best brought out the radiance of her hidden jewels; what fruitions of earthly bliss, or furnaces of affliction, have best declared the fineness of her gold,-still there is a scene, which has escaped "the vulture's eye," and almost every other eye, where she has cast forth her costliest pearls, and shown such qualities of her native character as almost merit our adoration. This scene has been allotted to the drunkard's wife. How she has filled this most desperate outpost of humanity, will be revealed when the secrets of human life shall be disclosed "to more worlds than this." When the history of hovels and of murky garrets shall be given in; when the career of the enslaved inebriate shall be told, from the first to the lowest degree of his degradation—there will be a memorial made of woman, worthy of being told and heard in heaven. From the first moment she gave up her young and hoping heart, and all its treasures into the hands of him she loved, to the luckless hour when the charmer, wine, fastened around the loved one all the serpent spells of its sorcery-down through all the crushing of her young-born hopes-through years of estrangement and strange insanitywhen harsh unkindness bit at her heartstrings with an adder's tooth-thence down through each successive depth of disgrace and misery, until she bent over the drunkard's grave; through all these scenes, a halo of divinity has gath

ered around her, and stirred her to angel-deeds of love. When the maddened victim tried to cut himself adrift from the sympathy and society of God and man, she has clung to him, and held him to her heart “with hooks of steel." And when he was cast out, all defiled with his leprous pollutionwhen he was reduced to such a thing as the beasts of the field would bellow at-there was one who still kept him throned in her heart of hearts; who could say over the fallen, driveling creature: "Although you are nothing to the world you are all the world to me." When that awful insanity of the drunkard set in upon him, with all its fiendish shapes of torture; while he lay writhing beneath the scorpion stings of the fiery phantasies and furies of delirium tremens-there was woman by his side, adorned with all the attributes of her loveliness. There was her tearful, love-beaming eye, that never dimmed but with tears when the black spirits were at him.

There she stood alone, and in, lone hours of night, to watch his breathings with her heart braced up with the omnipotence of her love. No! brute as he was, not a tie which her young heart had thrown around him in his bright days, had ever given way, but had grown stronger as he approached the nadir of his degradation. And if he sank into that dark, hopeless grave, she enswathed him in her broken heart, and laid it in his coffin; or if some mighty angel's arm or voice brought him up from the grave of drunkenness, the deepest ever dug for man, he came forth Lazaruslike, bound fast and forever within the cerements of her deathless affection.

Such is the sceptre; such are the cords which she throws around the wayward and wandering, and leads him back to virtue and to heaven, saying as she gives him in: “Here am I and he whom thou gavest me."

THE FORCE OF HABIT.

Habits are stubborn things;

And by the time a man is turned of forty,
His ruling passion's grown so naughty
There is no clipping of its wings.

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