A CHARADE.
My first the softest, loveliest grace
Nature to beauty gives;
While love and truth and modesty
Stay in the heart, it lives.
My second is so like my first,
My first its shadow seems;
It sweetens all the sunny day,
All night in fragrance dreams.
My whole, sweet one, I love to trace,
Soft glowing in that tell-tale face,
When Arthur whispers in your ear
Those "nothings" I must never hear:
Ah! then it comes, all warm and clear,
Your answering blush, Rose, my dear.
Blush-rose.
ABOUT SOME ITALIAN CHILDREN.
GIUSEPPE AND LUCIA.
In a little mountain town not far from the beautiful lake of Como, in the North of Italy, in the early part of the last war between the Austrians and the Italians, a poor peasant-woman lay dying. Beside her bed stood a fine, sturdy-looking lad, some fourteen years of age, listening reverently to the last words of his mother. On the bed, with her face hidden against that dear mother's breast, lay a little girl of six or seven, trying to keep down her sobs, and to take into her half-broken little heart the fond farewells, the tender and solemn advice of the beloved one who was going home to God.
The dying mother grieved to leave her poor children alone in the world, for they were fatherless, and had no near relatives; but she believed that the same Heavenly Father who was calling her from them would care for them and bring them home to her at last. To the tender love of that Father, and to the protection of the holy saints, she commended them, kissed them and blessed them, and went softly to sleep, to awake in Heaven.