THE DUET.

They sang—and they sang; but oh, my dears!
If you had been anywhere near them,
You'd have shut your eyes and stopped your ears,
And wished that you couldn't hear them.
'Twas a brilliant effort, upon my word,
And nearly killed the canary-bird.
The Pussy-cat and the Black-and-Tan
With the music were so delighted,
They will give a concert as soon as they can,
And perhaps we may be invited.
"Bow-wow!" "Miaow!" I'm sorry, you know,
I've another engagement—and cannot go!

A LETTER TO AMERICAN BOYS.

By George MacDonald.

My dear Cousins: Shall I really be talking to you as I sit here in my study with the river Thames now flowing, now ebbing, past my window? I am uttering no word, I am only writing; and you are not listening, not reading, for it will be a long time ere what I am now thinking shall reach you over the millions of waves that swell and sink between us. And yet I shall in very truth be talking to you.

In like manner, with divine differences, God began to talk to us ages before we were born: I will not say before we began to be, for, in a sense, that very moment God thought of us we began to exist, for what God thinks of, is. We have been lying for ages in his heart without knowing it. But now we have begun to know it. We are here, with a great beginning, and before us an end so great that there is no end to it. But we must take heed, for, else, the very greatness will turn to confusion and terror.

Shall I explain what made me begin my letter to you just this way?—I was sitting in my room, as I am now, thinking what I should say to you. And as I sat thinking after something worth saying and fit to say, my room spoke to me,—that is, out of its condition and appearance came a thought into my mind. And that you may understand how it came, and how it was what it was, I will first show you what my room at this moment is like. For the thought had nothing to do with the sun outside, or the shining river, or the white-sailed boats, neither with the high wind that is tossing the rosy hawthorn-bloom before my windows, or with the magnolia trained up the wall and looking in at one of them: it had to do only with the inside of the room.