With faint, swift, silken murmurings,
A noise as of an angel's flight,
Heard like the whispers of a dream
Across the cool clear northern night.
Our pipes are out, the camp-fire fades,
The wild auroral ghost-lights die,
And stealing up the distant wood
The moon's white spectre floats on high,
And lingering sets in awful light
A blackened pine tree's ghastly cross,
Then swiftly pays in silver white
The faded fire, the aurora's loss.
Edward Kearsley.
OVERWORKED WOMEN.
In traveling through continental Europe one sees in the fields certain coarse and blackened creatures who walk somewhat erect, and in that respect resemble human beings. If you regard them with attention, they will stop to offer you some rude but humble mark of respect: if you heed them not, they will go on, as they have always gone on, with the work that is before them, and from which they never cease but to sleep or die. They have hands which are large and horny: they have faces somewhat like those of men, but coarse, hideous and furrowed with the lines of exposure. They speak, they have a language, but their words are few and relate only to the heavy drudgery which is before them. These humble and debased animals are women.
I remember, while traveling some years ago through the State of Pennsylvania with Mr. Foster, who was then the Vice-President of the United States, we saw from the window of the railway-carriage in which we were sitting a woman barelegged and at work in the fields. She was digging potatoes on some mountain-patch.
"Thank God," said Mr. Foster, "that I never saw such a sight in my own country before!"