Mary B. Sleight.
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SONG OF BIRDS.
Did you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
Did you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household word are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught;
Whose habitations in the tree-tops even
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!
Think, every morning, when the sun peeps through
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the, grove,
How jubilant the happy birds renew
Their old melodious madrigals of love!
And, when you think of this, remember, too,
'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore!
Longfellow.
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JIMMY BUTLER AND THE OWL.
'Twas in the summer of '46 that I landed at Hamilton, fresh as a new pratie just dug from the "old sod," and wid a light heart and a heavy bundle I sot off for the township of Buford, tiding a taste of a song, as merry a young fellow as iver took the road. Well, I trudged on and on, past many a plisint place, pleasin' myself wid the thought that some day I might have a place of my own, wid a world of chickens and ducks and pigs and childer about the door; and along in the afternoon of the sicond day I got to Buford village. A cousin of me mother's, one Dennis O'Dowd, lived about sivin miles from there, and I wanted to make his place that night, so I enquired the way at the tavern, and was lucky to find a man, who was goin' part of the way an' would show me the way to find Dennis. Sure, he was very kind indade, and when I got out of his wagon, he pointed me through the wood and told me to go straight south a mile an' a half, and the first house would be Dennis's.
"An' you have no time to lose now," said he, "for the sun is low, and mind you don't get lost in the woods."