Then, with affection trifle not,
Nor smite the breast you should protect,
Lest mem’ry sad should haunt the spot,
Where lies the victim of neglect.
SELF-DEVOTION.
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BY GIFTIE.
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Upon the margin of a blue stream that ran singing through a lonely valley among the green hills of New England, there stood in the olden time, a low cottage, built of logs, and half covered with woodbine and wild honeysuckle. The small patch of Indian corn near it hardly deserved the name of a garden, and the dense forests that surrounded it, showed that as yet civilization had penetrated but little way into the wilds of the new world. Yet the variety of wild flowers which, transplanted from their native glades, blossomed around the low doorway, and the air of neatness that pervaded the rude establishment, proved a degree of refinement greater than was usual among the Indian tribes.