In this book, also, the author has aimed to give expression to the truth, that with every person, even if humble or debased, there may be some good, worth lifting up and saving; that in each human being, though revered and seemingly immaculate, are some faults which deserve pointing out and correcting; and that all circumstances of life, however trivial they appear, may possess those alternations of the comic and pathetic, the good and bad, the joyful and sorrowful, upon which walk the days and nights, the summers and winters, the lives and deaths, of this strange world.
He would take this occasion to give a word of thanks to those who have staid with him through evil and good report; who have overlooked his literary faults for the sake of the truths he was struggling to tell; and who have believed—what he knows—that he is honest.
With these few words of introduction, the author launches this second bark upon the sea of popular opinion; grinds his axe, and enters once more the great forest of Human Nature, for timber to go on with his boat-building.
W.C.
CONTENTS.
| Farm Legends: | Page |
| The School-master's Guests. | [17] |
| Three Links of a Life. | [26] |
| Rob, the Pauper. | [40] |
| The Three Lovers. | [51] |
| The Song of Home. | [63] |
| Paul's run off with the Show. | [69] |
| The Key to Thomas' Heart. | [73] |
| The Doctor's Story. | [76] |
| The Christmas Baby. | [80] |
| Decoration-day Poems: | |
| Cover Them Over. | [87] |
| The Loves of the Nations. | [92] |
| College Poems: | |
| Rifts in the Cloud. | [103] |
| Brothers and Friends. | [113] |
| Our March through the Past. | [121] |
| That Day we Graduated. | [131] |
| Poems of Sorrow and Death: | |
| The Burning of Chicago. | [137] |
| The Railroad Holocaust. | [145] |
| Ship "City of Boston". | [147] |
| Gone Before. | [149] |
| The Little Sleeper. | [151] |
| 'Tis Snowing. | [153] |
| Poems of Hope: | |
| Some Time. | [157] |
| The Good of the Future. | [160] |
| The Joys that are Left. | [161] |
| When my Ship went Down. | [163] |
| To the Carleton Circle. | [164] |
| The Sanctum King. | [169] |
| Stray Stanzas: | |
| Lines to James Russell Lowell. | [185] |
| To Monsieur Pasteur. | [185] |
| To a Young Lady. | [186] |
| Death of the Richest Man. | [186] |
| To the Smothered Miners. | [186] |
| The Deathless Song. | [187] |
| On a "Poet"-Critic. | [187] |
