What a fascination there is in really good reading! What a power it gives one! In the hospital, in the chamber of the invalid, in the nursery, in the domestic and in the social circle, among chosen friends and companions, how it enables you to minister to the amusement, to the comfort, the pleasure of dear ones, as no other art or accomplishment can. No instrument of man's devising can reach the heart as does that most wonderful instrument, the human voice. It is God's special gift and endowment to his chosen creatures. Fold it not away in a napkin.
If you would double the value of all your other acquisitions, if you would add immeasurably to your own enjoyment and to your power of promoting the enjoyment of others, cultivate, with incessant care, this divine gift. No music below the skies is equal to that of pure, silvery speech from the lips of a man or woman of high culture.
PAUL REVERE'S RIDE.
BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear,
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in seventy-five—
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year—
He said to his friend: "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light;
One, if by land, and two if by sea,
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."
Then he said "Good-night," and, with muffled oar,
Silently row'd to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where, swinging wide at her moorings, lay
The "Somerset," British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile his friend, through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.