If a boy has a taste for the sea, and his parents have no objections to his selecting it as a calling, he can find out a great deal about the world and not a little about himself by spending two years on board the school-ship St. Mary's.
[THE TRANSFERRED FLAG.]
BY JAMES BUCKHAM.
Frigate and schooner in conflict dread,
Banners throbbing at each mast-head;
England's jack in the smoke and reek,
Stars and stripes at the schooner's peak.
Clash and roar of the awful fight;
Sabres gleaming like shafts of light;
Crack of pistols; a musket's boom;
Shouts and groans in the drifting gloom.
Overhead, in the murk, the flags
Toss, with their edges torn to rags,
Lash at each other, and writhe and snap—
Silken musketry, clap on clap!
See! On the Yankee yard-arm stands
A daring middy, with outspread hands!
He bends, he leaps—and without a slip,
Catches the yard of the British ship!
Up, up, he climbs, till, the cross-trees past,
He reaches the top of the swaying mast.
Then, with a slash of his knife, he throws
The British flag to his country's foes.
Lo! from his bosom, like flame unfurled,
He draws the banner that rules the world,
And nails it there, with its crimson bars
And gleaming glory of unstained stars!
Quick was the brain that conceived the thought,
And brave the deed that the sailor-boy wrought;
Bright he his name on history's roll,
And far the flash of his hero-soul!
[SEED-SOWING.]
BY EMMA J. GRAY.
Gardening is said to come natural to Japanese boys and girls, but there is no reason why our amateur gardeners should not rival them.
Spring has been well named the "mother of the flowers," for then indeed nature wakes. The previously hard soil softens, gentle showers fall, the long sunny days follow one after the other, and serious mistake must indeed have been made at the time of planting if the cheerless winter garden is not readily transformed into beds and bowers of delicate richest color, and bewilderingly beautiful flowers do not send lavish and grateful odor.