Midsummer Morning In my garden hear the lark
Carol aloft;
Hear the dove her matins sing
In answer soft.
The night has fled away;
Good morrow! lovely day.
Dawn has touched with fairy finger
All things near,
Left a dewdrop on each blossom
Like a tear
Sing! merry thrush, on high
To the breaking summer sky.
Cobwebs, quiver in the sunlight
Sparkling bright,
Daisies ope their starry petals
To the light.
So with a rosy dawn
Comes up this summer morn! Horatia Browne.

[LINK TO ILLUSTRATED PAGE]


HOW TODDIE WAS FOUND.

Old Jones, the sexton, toiled slowly up to the Rectory one winter morning. He had a sad tale to tell, and the ground was heavy with snow, and poor old Jones's heart was full of a great sorrow.

The Rectory lay cosily among the sheltering trees, and gleamed warm and cheerful beneath the gloomy skies. Mr. Chillingworth, the Rector, was a good man, and greatly beloved by the people in the parish of Redhall.

Old Jones, as I have said, was the sexton; and he tried his best, with very small success, to keep all the village boys in awe of him. He always went, with them, by the name of "old red Johnnie," for he wore a red woollen comforter through winter's cold and summer's heat.

He had a champion in one boy, however, called Toddie Banks; for you see poor Toddie was an orphan, and old Jones had been very kind to him when he was just a wee toddling laddie, had taken him to his own home, and treated him like a son, for the old man had neither kith nor kin, wife nor child, so Toddie was all of them put together to him.