[POPPING CORN.]
BY GEORGE COOPER.
This is the way we drop the corn—
Drop the corn to pop the corn:
Shower the tiny lumps of gold,
All that our heaping hands can hold;
Listen awhile, and blithe and bold,
Pip! pop-corn!
This is the way we shake the corn—
Shake the corn to wake the corn:
Rattle the pan, and then behold!
What are the tiny lumps of gold?
Pretty wee white lambs in the fold!
Tip-top corn!
[THE WEEPING-WILLOW.]
BY BENSON J. LOSSING.
You have seen and admired the weeping-willow tree—the Salix babylonica—upon which the captive Hebrews hung their harps when they sat down "by the rivers of Babylon" and "wept when they remembered Zion." It is a native of the garden of Eden, and not of America, and I will tell you how it emigrated to this country.
More than a hundred and fifty years ago a London merchant lost his fortune. He went to Smyrna, a sea-side city in Asia Minor, to recover it. Alexander Pope, one of the great poets of England, was the merchant's warm friend, and sympathized with him in his misfortunes.
Soon after the merchant arrived in Smyrna, he sent to Pope, as a present, a box of dried figs. At that time the poet had built a beautiful villa at Twickenham, on the bank of the river Thames, and was adorning it with trees, shrubbery, and flowering plants.