JANUARY AND JUNE BBY BENJ. F. TAYLOR. NEW YORK: M, DOOLADY, PUBLISIIER, 448. BROOME STREET. 1866. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by D. B. COOKE AND CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court, for the Northern District of Illinois. TO JOHN B. RICE, ESQ., The True Man, and Firm Friend, this little volume is respectfully inscribed. ifirst Part. PAK Life............................................. 12 A Mystery...................................... 15 Pumpkins and Enterprise.......................... 17 Death..i.......... 18' Our Folks'..................................... 22 Jewelry......................................... 80 Finished.................................... 34'Bugs' and Beauties.............................. 37 Ploughshares and Sorrows........................ 41 Our Defences..........4................. 44 Digging for a'Subject'.......................... 50 Railway Magic................................... 57 Fourth of July.................................. 64 It Rains...................................... 69' Movements'.................................. 76 Hendom....................................... 84 Chicken Pie...................................... 91 Viii CONTENTS PAGO Happiness'at Cost'............................... 95 Aerial Rehearsal................................ 9 Domestic Enchantment............................ 100 An Unscientific Chat about Music................... 104 The Wind and the Night.......................... 115'The Stage is Coming'........................... 124 A Summer Day in Haying......................... 127 The Last Rose of Summer......................... 139.Seonb 3art, Fall.................................... 143 Indian Summer................................. 148'And Such a Change'.......................... 153 The Old Times and the New...................... 15 Queer Estimates............................ 160 A Voice from the Past........................... 164 Waiting......................................... 166 No Room for Two'..1..................... 170 The Grammar of Life........................... 172'Don't Forget'.................................... 180 Blessed Almanacs.............................. 188 The Wonders of' Galena'...................... 186 The Old-fashioned Fire.......................... 188 CONTENTS. iX PAGE Presto Change I...................... 191 Voices of the Dead............................... 195 Thanksgiving.................................... 202 The Old Garret.................................. 206 A Half-hour at the Window....................... 210 Our Paper....................................... 220 Riding on a Rail............................... 242 Winter Nights.................................... 249 The Last of Ten................................ 262' Shadows we are............................. 265 Time Indicted.................................. 267 The Old-fashioned Mother......................... 272 The Dying Musician.............................. 279 June Dews..................2................... 82 The Beautiful River........................ 40' God Bless our Stars for ever'................. 66 The Flag-star of Even............................ 136 It will all be Right in the Morning'............... 168 Moonlight and a Memory......................... 218 The New Craft in the Offing....................... 240 [Iome at Last.................................... 261 The Past is with us still........................... 271 Broken Memories in Broken Rhymes................. 276 THE WORLD, now-a-days, live too much " in the house:" souls grow angular as the apartments they dwell in, and come, like them, to have parlors and pantries, closets and coal-holes; views take color from the windows they are seen through; muffled thoughts in listed slippers, walk on carpets, and the firm, free footfall upon the bare floors of this great caravansary, are not to be heard " by ears polite." Sunlight, in-doors, is a nun and enters veiled; or it is a " grocery," poured from a tin can; or a chemical, conducted in an iron tube. The air, in-doors, must needs be beaten with fans, into a mockery of motion, and music, immured in rosewood and mahogany, is manumitted at intervals, by ivory fingers with ivory keys. 12 JANUARY AND JUNE. Whoever has time to look and listen, need only go out of doors, to wonder and be charmed. On any "quarter section" in the world, may be seen and heard, the alphabet of almost all thought, and the utterances of almost all tongues. This is not a discovery; oh, no! but only a wreath of vapor to the " cloud of witnesses" that have already testified. THE pulses of great Nature never beat more audibly and musically than just about " the leafy month of June:" life, every where life, in field and flood, in earth, and air, and sky. Life in all forms: life with a sweet breath in it, life with a song in it, life with a light in it. Life tied up in little bags of most Quakerish-looking silk, by that sly spinner, the spider; life done up in gray'bundles, and hung upon apple trees; deposited in little brown paper cups, or packed away in little clay cells, by gentry in yellow jackets, and gentry with delicate waists, whose only foible consists in their not being, always and alto. gether, like Job and Moses; life hidden in the hearts LIFEP. 13 of ripening plums and reddening cherries-find a sweeter cradle any where, if you can; life rocked in shells, put up in mother-of-pearl, set in ivory, chased with gold, consigned to little graves every where; laid away in "Patent Burial Cases "-just where Fisk got the idea-and fastened to rails and fence-posts; life, that, by and by, shall spread wings damp with the imprint of this great Stereotyping Establishment of the Almighty; life standing "on end," in little boats, and rising into the air, taking to bugle-ing as soon as it is born, and evincing, by the presentation of "bills " at most unseasonable and unreasonable hours, a decided talent for ledger literature; life sheltering itself beneath the leathern umbrella of the mushroom, revelling in the rose's red heart, drilled into the solid rock, domiciled in mud hovels, along rafters and beneath eaves, "playing in the plighted clouds," "laid" in a manger, peeping from holes, floating in the air, swinging in the wind, skulking under the chips, burrowing in the earth, darting along rail fences, opening nankeen throats from little baskets of twigs, floating in tatters of green baize on the ponds, advocating Solomon on birch, " poor Will," talking Greek, "brekekek koax, koax," and practising hydropathy, k'chug; life in bags and boxes, bundles and 14 JANUARY AND JUNE. blankets; in silks, satins and shells; in " tights," and flounces, and feathers and flannels; life full dressed and in dishabille; life knocking from the centre of fallen logs; knocking from the other side of shells white and blue, and mottled and dappled; and June is "The delegated voice of God," to bid them " come in, come up, come down, come out," and be, and do, and suffer; conjugating and inflecting the great active verb-" LiVE." Turn over the loam in the fields, and you turn out turtle's eggs by the score. Go " across lots" to the neighbor's, and you find the pearly treasures of the whistling quail by the dozen. Tap a sand-hill lightly, with the toe of your boot, and you will see the ladies to whom Solomon referred sluggards, by the myriad. Shake a bush, and you shake out a bird, or a peep, or a bug, or a bud, or something that's "all alive." Pluck a leaf, and you may find on it a crystal drop, such as one might dream Queen Mab would shed if "in the melting mood;" but the sun shall "set" oD it a few days, and out will come a thing all legs, o. wings, or stings-something to hum or drum-to fly or creep, or crawl; something to be something and some body, and count just as many in the great census A MYSTERY. 15 of Creation, as he who called the shades of Ashland his, or she who journeyed, of old, to see Solomon-. count just as many, " in words and figures following," to-wit: (1) one. " THINGS are working " these June days. Things? Wonders withal. Why, quiet as it is here to-day, with nothing but green and blue in sight-the fields, the woods, and the sky-and not a sound of carpentry, save the incessant hammering upon tree-trunks, of worthies in red caps, there is more going on than one would dream of between the third call and breakfast-time; things that Silliman couldn't do, nor Davy, nor Liebig. Do you see that cherry tree? Every one of four bushels upon it. There's a ripe one. Use your "pickers and stealers," and pluck it. A cherry-red, ripe and rich. Fragrance and flavor done up in a red wrapper. Set your cunning men that conjure with crucibles, to make one, and you " set " them of a surety. Depend upon them, and you might, and you would, 16 JANUARY AND JUNE. "make two bites of a cherry." Yet on that modest tree, " out of doors," that article was manufactured No furnace sighing from morning till night-no workmen in white aprons-no sugar crushed, refined, snowy-no flour superfine —no vermilion in pot or powder-no parade, no bustle; but there they are, " cherry ripe!" Winter's cold fingers were lifted from the pulses of the tree, and they throbbed full and strong. Pumps in the earth below, were rigged and manned. Signals were silently set in bud and blossom aloft. Winds came, and swung the branches, and peeped into this and that, and went away. Birds came and looked about, and saw nothing, and went too. Unseen hands were gathering, and moulding, and refining all the while. The sun came up from the Tropic of Capricorn, and looked on-nothing more. The clouds went dripping by, and never stopped, and that was all. ED., or SILAS, or some body, planted a cherry stone, four or five years ago, and forgot it; but the "whip " of a tree went right on, and without any help that we can see, set up business, and manufactured Nature's confectionary, all by itself. Last weel the cherries were green-now they are tinted with red; not a brush lying about, not a stained fingel PUMIAPKINS AND ENTERPRISE. 17 visible. No advertisements in the newspapers, of "Painting done here;" no "Apprentices wanted," for Nature's hands are all journeymen; not a leaf with a capital or an exclamation point on it. Ah! that " May Duke" belongs to.the Royal Family ofNature. LAST summer, I remember, a little vine-a Pumpkin vine-came out of the ground in a cornfield,'up the road,' and there it was, in the midst of the corn unseeing and unseen. So there was nothing for it, but to make the best of its way out to the fence that bounded the road, some eighteen or twenty feet distant, where there would be some prospect of its being appreciated, if it could. Could? But it did, for away it went, vine and leaves, baggage and all, through the corn, this way and that, out to the fence, and up the fence, three rails, and through the fence. And what do you think it did then? Just unravelled a delicate yellow blossom, and held it there, for every one passing to see, saying all the time, as well as it could-and it could as well as any body-" It's me' 18 JANUARY AND JUNE. See what I've done-this! Isn't it pretty?" Well, there it held it, and every body saw it, and no body thought any thing about it. Passing that way in the Fall, lo! a PUMPKIN, rotund, golden, magnificent, held out at arm's length by the little vine; held in the air-held week after week, and never laid down, nights, nor Sundays, nor any time. Now, "man your brakes" —rig your levers, ye Archimedes-es, and pump up from the earth, and along that vine, and from the surrounding air, the raw material for just such another article as that, and you shall have two summers to do it in. Bring on the Alembic, wherein shall be distilled from the falling rain, the essence of Pumpkin, and we'll let it go without painting. THE world is curved round about with Heaven, and Heaven never seems nearer than in June. Its great blue rafters bend low on every hand, and how one can get out of the world, without getting into Heaven, is to us a physical mystery. DEATH. 1 9 Childhood enters life at the east, coming in, lik a young swallow, beneath the eaves; but like Desdemona's handkerchief, he is "little," and he stands erect under the low-curved roof. On he goes, into the middle of the world. How swells the dome above him, and manhood is erect still. But " westward westward," is the word, and by and by, he bends his head beneath the roof. They say he is old-that the weight of years is on him-that he is looking for a place to sleep; but it is only that he may clear the rafters. Low and lower does he bend, until, with form quite doubled, he creeps out just between Hea ven and Earth, and is seen no more. Death is not afraid of the sunshine, for he comes in June. The rustle of ten thousand leaves does not startle him; the breath of ten thousand flowers does not charm him away. Indeed he loves flowers, for has not a dainty Singer declared that he reaps "The bearded grain at a breath, And the FLOWERS that grow between 2" There's a house down in the valley-you can see it from my window-where, when they numbered their treasures, they said, and kept saying, "three, three, three," and there was melody in the monosyllable-a trinity of blessing in the "three;" but 20 JANUARY AND JUNE. DEAT11 was counting all the while, and " one " he was numbering as his own, and his count-alas for itwas the surest. One star fell from the blue air; it was Heaven aloft, still. One white rose drifted down to earth; it was summer all the same. And soand so what? Philosophy may analyze a tear, but it cannot curve a hope in it-it cannot bid it " exhale." It may make a spectrum, but it cannot make a smile. And the text for this is a brief one: DIED, On Saturday night, the 18th of June, End of the little week of Life, And it is Sunday to-morrow and to-morrow, EDITI J. DARLING, Aged 13. Amiable, she won all; intelligent, she charmed all; fervent, she loved all; and dead, she saddened all. Beside the little brother who had gone on before, an empty chrysalis is lying. Who seeks EDmImI? There is a realm where "December's as pleasant as May"where it is June all the year long. There is a Recording Angel, and a book lies open before him, and the page for " June 18th,'53," bears, in letters of light, the name-EDITH. DEATH 21 A dream-eyed daughter of the " drowsy East " lost a favorite Gazelle. It wandered away in the Persian gardens, and its young Mistress had followed it all the long afternoon. It had come at her call; it had eaten from her hand; it had rested its head on her bosom; it was timid, and she won it; tender, and she cherished it; helpless, and she loved it. And now it had gone; the shadows were deepening and lengthening, and the lost was not found. All the afternoon she had traced it, by the imprint its little feet had left upon the enamelled and emerald sod; but night came on, and, what for the tears and the darkness, the footsteps grew dim, like a half-effaced memory of something loved and lost. She knelt upon the turf, and bending low, still read the records of the truant's wanderings, and followed them. But the shadows fell too heavily at last, and she sat among the flowers and wept; and as she was mourning, there came to her the fragrance of a flower sweeter than its fellows, and with the sweetness came the thought, still sweeter: her favorite's foot had crushed it, till it uttered that fragrant sigh. So filled with hope, she followed the Gazelle through the darkness by the perfume in its pathway, and she found it at last, its lips reddened with red roses, its limbs laved 22 JANUARY AND JUNE. m white lilies, sweetly reposing in the " GADENS or PARADISE." There was joy that night amid the darkness and dews. The maiden returned, but she left her heart in token that the treasure lying there was her own; for she had read some where, but not in the Koran, " Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.";'(1( T s." "OUR FOLKS "-we have folks; folks of whose names, ages, and occupations the Census gives no account; folks as good as any body's, " and these are of them:" A flaunting, pompous, Pharisaical GRAPE VINE, with very broad, green phylacteries, bids fair to overrun the entire premises. It made its appearance, I am told, near the kitchen-door, a few years ago, in a very meek, unostentatious manner-a statement, considering the " complexion to which it has come at last," requiring about as much credulity as there is vine, to believe. Its aspirations were soon manifested in the display of divers mermaidish-looling ringlets, OUR FOLKS. 23 with two or three dainty "quirls" therein, ffing out to the wind, and fluttering very gaily indeed. Its ambitious tendencies being early discovered, a frame, large enough to satisfy any thing short of a Corsican ambition, was erected; and the Vine roofed it, and walled it, and festooned it, and hung rich clusters of grapes around it, and filled it with fragrance, and broke it down, and-and what? That's just it-and what should it do next? Those green ringlets were set afloat again, and the Vine made most insidious advances towards a respectable Apple Tree that stood near; which, being young, and inexperienced in the wiles and ways of Catawbas, Isabellas, and the like, permitted its attentions. Sp the Vine encircled its waist very lovingly with a tendril and a tendresse that would have been pronounced "quite the thing" in the first circles. Any body would have supposed, for a while, that it would be whirling away with the Apple Tree in a waltz through the Orchard. It did no such thing; but just clambered up higher and higher, and swayed this way and that, and whispered, and swung, and caressed, and made itself as agreeable as possible. By and by, it half said, half sighed,'Let me fling a wreath over you, sweet Tree,' and a wreath it was. '2-1 JANUARY AND JUNE.'Just a festoon or two;' and festoons almost hid the poor Tree from view. Now the Vine crept up, sans ceremonie, put out its great broad leaves, and disposed its clusters to the sun and in the shade alamode, and thought nothing of the means whereby it had gotten "up in the world." Meanwhile, its victim struggled on a year or two; paid a feeble tribute to Flora, and a feebler one to Pomona-if that's her name-while the Vine heaped the Summer on its half-leafless branches, and rolled up like a great green billow into the sun. Not content with this, the unprincipled thing paid its addresses to a Peach Tree, and more than half ruined it; but the Tree bore it all patiently, and never said a word, and never "peached." And so the Vine keeps "going on," to the great "taking on" of all orderly Apple and Peach Trees, and the great scandal of the neighborhood. ANOTHER OF THEIM. A GENTLEMAN in a suit of sober brown pays daily devoirs and devours to a Cherry Tree near the house, Taking one or two of the ripened rubies, dainty fellow that he is, he sits and aniuses himself by the hour, echoing the various notes that are uttered around OUR FOLKS. 25 him. He is a decided Robin, a querulous Cat-bird, a veritable Thrush, and a positive Goldfinch, by turns, and sometimes, as if a hand-organ should go crazy, and play all its tunes at once, he gives them all together. The northern MOCKING BIRD is a " character," though he has none of his own, and never was known to utter an original idea upon music in his life. He has many relatives who never wear feathers except in hats and bonnets, and whose chief merit is that of a blank wall, saying nothing of themselves, but giving back imperfectly, the utterances of others. This worthy in October brown is not a Bachelor, as one might surmise by his freedom from care, and light merry air, but a very respectable Benedict. His family, three members —one died in shell-dom-reside in a little Oak tree across the road, and are nearly ready to leave the old homestead, and "do for themselves." What a medley of Sparrows and Quails, of Blue Jay and Robin, lies within the circumference of that little nest; and they are all " Our Folks." "CAND SO ON." EvERY evening, a little after sunset, a WmIPPooRWILL takes up his position and his trisyllabic song on a fallen tree, not far from the house. A queer bird. 26 JANUARY AND JUNE. careless in domestic matters-for it builds no nest of any account-it sits and sings through the deepening twilight on into the moonlight; and if you creep sufficiently near, you will see that it positively beats time with its little foot upon the log, and hear, between the strains, a click like that of a clock just as it strikes the hour. A rare Music Box is the Whippoorwill, manufactured, tuned, and wound by the same fingers that keyed the spheres to their sublime harmonies. "LITTLE JEMMIY." AND there's " JEMMY," a little top-knotted, greencoated Canary of some five months, that sits in his cage, crumbles his cracker, notches his fresh lettuce, cracks his Canary seed, makes his toilet, and ogles the Yellow Birds that ride around his. prison on the swells of the air. A while ago, Jemmy was slightly depressed, and "for cause," as will be seen. Relying too much on the twist in the conjugal tie, Luc —she's one of " Our Folks," but the Census Takers have her " description' -suffered Jemmy's wife, NELLY, to fly out to a Lilac Tree in front of the house, supposing, of course, she would fly back on wings of love; but the swaying OUR FOLKS. 27 boughs, the free air, and, I sadly fear, the blandishments of some unprincipled Lothario of a Goldfinch, were too much for poor Nelly's virtue, and she never returned to her allegiance; so Jemmy has kept Bachelor's Hall ever since. "Nelly was a lady;" at least, so we all thought; but, the other day, she made her appearance in a Peach Tree, right in sight of her lord and masterdecidedly the worst thing I know of her-accompanied by a suspicious-looking fellow in buff waistcoat and "inexpressibles." We didn't-"Our Folks "much approve of the twitterings and chirpings between them; but Jemmy is a good deal of a philosopher; so he turned about upon his perch as nonchalant as a Regent Street fashionable. There was a little swelling in his throat. Was it a rising sigh? Nothing of the sort; for he warbled a ditty-not of the strongest, we confess, but then musical, resigned, Jemmy-like-the burden of which was, as nearly as I could make it out, something like this: " Not awhistle-for Nelly, Nell, Nelly, give I; not a-warblc-a twitter-a quaver-care I. This-crotchetof Nelly's a-minim-to me!" The very day that Nelly deserted Jemmy's perch and pickings, a driving storm swept over the country, and there was a sound 28 JANUIARY AND JUNE. of great lamentation for Nelly; but, alas! she was left to a worse fate. There is no telling what Coquettes, or Canaries, or any of us may come to, if left to ourselves. P.-AN EVERLASTING PEA. AN EVER-LAST-ING PEA-the last of " Our Folks" to-day-a sweet thing to look at, but with no more breath than an Oyster, has been growing neglected beside the door for a long time. Several impudent Burdocks and saucy Pigweeds had grown over it and around it; and there it was without a frame, a staff, or even a thread to help itself with, and climb out of the way, up into the air, and be beautiful, and be admired. There it was, struggling alone, and running all over the ground, and getting no where, when, one day, a bolder branch, that had gone out some where for succor, discovered the Lightning Conductor. There was a way up and out, indeed; and why shouldn't a PEA as well as a PEOPLE run on a Rail? And hero was an aerial Railway, ready and in "running order," for the creeper and climber. So it encircled the cold iron, and swung itself up; and whither it might have gone, and what it might have done, is more than OUR FOLKS. 29 any body knows; but a frame-such as it was-was built, and the truant tethered wvith a string. One thing it did was this: laid a blushing leaf close to the cold, dark iron. And what for? Why, claiming relationship, of a truth. Iron tinted that leaf to "the color of virtue." Iron makes those Roses glow in their new frames beside the path. Indeed, one could almost write poetry without inspiratioz, only give him plenty of iron: The jarring of the iron wheels along the iron rails; The anvils with their iron din beneath the iron flails; The panting of the iron forge; the twang of iron wire; The music of an iron age; of iron and of fire; The netting of the iron nerve that's thrilling through the world; The iron bayonet to the bolt by glittering tempests hurled; The thunder of the iron loom; the shuttle's plunging steel; The weaving of the zones of earth-five ribbons round a reel; The couplet of the iron song, of which TWo Arns are sung, That makes as dear as "household words" the Anglo-Saxon tongue; The clanking of the iron Press, the echo of the Age, While waking Thouglit, with iron tread, leaves foot-prints on the page; All sinews are of iron now; all breathings are of fire; And engines with their iron hearts can toil and never tire; The winds are lulled, but iron craft are panting round the globe; And iron needles ravel out old Ocean's seamless robe. In calm Pacific's golden 30 JANUARY AND JUNE but,'tis a hard theme; and, printers permitting, I'll "mind my P's and Q's" again. There was something of almost classic beauty in the sight: a green, luxuriant vine encircling a rude bayonet, fixed by the fingers of Philosophy, against the lightnings of Heaven; the rusty route of the thunder-bolt wreathed in the beauty of Summer; a token of amity extended upon the " present arms" of Science to the tempest; an offering from the warm bosom of a June earth to the genii of the cloudy caverns of the air. Does some body ask you what you think of " OUR FOLKS?" Pray, don't mind me; but utter it boldly, like a Jeffreys. NATURE was out in her Jewelry this morning, or, as some body's little Charley, or Molly, or Johnny would say, in her " Deuelry," and that's just the word wanted-glittering with the young rain that waits its wings. By the way, that Nimrod in science who went hunting the DEw, and made a fame that shall last forever: Wasn't it a pretty idea when, placing the JEWELRY 31 bulBh of delicate thermometers in the bosoms of lilies and the hearts of young roses, he felt the pulses of the flowers as they grew? Wasn't it fairy-like work for a mortal man to be doing? And then, when he found that the buds and the blossoms were all the cooler as they needed moisture the more; and the truth sparkled out that Dew is the invisible vapor floating in the air, which, chilled by the cool surfaces of the flowers, bursts into tears over the beauty that must fade; and when he found that this aerial, this gossamer-vinged water, is the singing, and sighing, and cursing, and blessing of all day yesterday-the music of the Summer all written out in legible score-notes sparkling and beautiful, every one-do you think a civic crown could have made him greater or happier? And when he found that in cloudy nights, when there was no Dew, it was because the heat radiated from the earth, was reflected down again from the clouds, and so, like a beautiful pendulum, it vibrated to and fro-the clods and the clouds, the clouds and the clods-and the earth could not grow cold, and its breath could not condense, and there, beneath the stars, like the pulses of a mighty breast, beating softly against the downy covering of cloud all the night 32 JANUARY AND JUNE. long!-would our Hunter, do you think, have chanlge fames with the tinker of the clock of Strasburg? There is one little circumstance-most awkward word is that " circumstance"-which perhaps I should bid adieu to the Dews without noting: that they have sparkled for decades of centuries, and every body, from the bards of a thousand years to the last scribbler for a scrap-book, has likened them to every thing, and every thing to them, that is lucent and lovely, and blessed and beautiful; and YET, all the while, until a few days or so ago, no body knew where they were born, whether they rose, or fell, or flew, or, as children say, "just come o' themselves." And YET philosophers, or "so they say," gurgled Hebrew before Remus was "naughty" to his brother, and leaped Rome's wall. Few there are, who dream how blessed and beautil ful, sad and solemn, are the components of Dew and here is a recipe therefor: 3 t t e Vz3 t so The breath of the leaves and the lyrics of dawn Were floating away in the air; The brooks and the birds were all singing aloud' The violets looking a prayer, With eyes that upturned so tearful and true, Like Mary's of old, when forgi-ven, JUNE DEWS. 33 Had caught the reflection and mirrored it there, As bright and as melting as heaven. The silvery mist of the red robin's song, Slow swung in the wind-wavered nest; The billows that swell from the forests of June, Almost to the blue of the blest; "The bells" that are rung by the breath of the breezy And "toll their perfume" as they swing; The brooks that are trolling a tune of their own, And dance to whatever they sing; The groan of the wretched, the laugh of the glad, Are blent with the breath of a prayer; The sigh of the dying, the whisper of love, A vow that was broken, are there I There dimly they float,'mid the ripe, golden hours, Along the bright trellis of air; The smothered good-bye, and the whisper of love, The ban and the blessing are there! Cool fingers are weaving the curtains again, Whose woofing is netted with stars; The tremulous woods on the verge of the world, Just bending beneath the blue spars, Are valanced with crimson and welted with gold. Where now are the vesper and vowThose spirit-like breathings of sadness and song,, That brought not a cloud o'er the brow, Bedimmed not a beam of the bright summer morn Not wafted away, for the aspen is still Not fled on the wings of the'hours; Not hiding the heaven-lo! the stars in the clear Not perished, but here on the flowersThose smiles of Divinity lighting the world, Whose breath is for ever a prayer; Who blush without sinning, and blanch without fear Oh! where should they be, if not there? 34 JANUARY AND JUNE. THERE is a beautiful significance in the fact that when Divinity would build a temple for Himself on earth, he commanded that it should rise without the sound of hammer, and so, "Like some tall pine, the noiseless fabric grew." The HAMMER is the emblem of man's creations. About his rarest works you will find it; hidden in a corner, resting on a column, lying behind a statue; it is some wuhcre. Heap about the pedestal whereon stands the " GREEK SLAVE" the chips and the chisels, the gravers and the hammers, and how is the magic of the marble diminished or destroyed! It is no longer a being waked from the sleep of creation, throwing off its Parian shroud, and only waiting the whisper of Omnipotence to breathe, but a stone, blasted, and pried, and tugged, and lifted from some body's quarry; perforated, and chipped, and hewn; modelled in clay by a man in an apron, and wrought out "by the hardest" by macaroni-eating barbarians in short jackets and blue caps. The dead waking, the dumb eloquent, the silent thought shaping out and FINISHED. 30 indwelling the marble, all vanish, " like the baseless fabric of a vision," at the sight of a hammer. The Yankee'sees into it,' and'guesses' a lathe could be made'to turn' the thing cut in half the time, and is'sure as preaching' he was born to make it. Ho wonders if it couldn't be' run' in a mould; if plaster wouldn't do as well; whether the least' tich' of red paint wouldn't make her lips'kinder' human, and a pink skirt more like a Christian? He' can't see why' it should cost' such a tarnal sight;' and where are the beauty and the poetry of the GREEK SLrVE? Ask, " Where are the birds that sang an hundred years ago?" as well. In the construction of this great Temple of the World, find, if you can, a moulding, a cornice, an architrave, with a rivet in it; any puttying of nails, or hiding of seams, or painting over of patches. Oh! no; every thing is finished, no matter where, no matter how you find it. All the blue masonry of Night was done without trowel or hammer. No quick clip of scissors scalloping the leaves of ten thousand flowers; no ring from the mighty anvil, whence scintiliate, nightly, the sparks of starry time; no brushes, or pencils, or patterns, lying about rose-trees and woodbines; no "staging" discovered round the 36 JANUARY AND JUNE. oak as it goes up; no mortising machines nor mallets beneath it, though the great arms securely fastened to the column, are swaying bravely aloft. Who ever sat up late enough at night, or rose long enough before the sun in the morning, to find any thing unfinished? If a bud,'twas done; if a blossom, perfect; a leaf or a leaflet, alike nonpareil. Bid the " Seven Wise Men of Greece" sit in solemn conclave over a budded rose, and what one of them would dream there was any thing more to be done, any thing more to be desired? Who ever detected, any where, a leaflet half fashioned or a flower half painted? a brush's careless trail on some little thing that peeps out of the cleft of a rock, and dodges back again at a breath; some little thing of no consequence, that no body hardly ever, if ever, sees? Ah! no; as delicately finished, fashioned, and perfumed, as if it had bloomed in the conservatory of a queen, and been destined for the wreath that encircles her brow. Every thing of Heaven's handiwork is finished, frot first to last; from the Plan of Salvation,'finishei upon Calvary, to the violet'finished,' that opens blue eye to the dew. "BUGS" AND BEAUTIES. 37 Fon the last five minutes, a MILLER in a dusty suit of "silver gray" has been fluttering round the candle. Yesterday afternoon, his royal cousin, the BUTTERFLY, that some body, so Cowley-like, called " a winged flower," was fluttering round a sunbeam. But no dusty miller was this, in sober gray, for when Nature painted it, she spared no tint of the richest and rarest that would render it beautiful-that would " show" in the sun. There's a fellow in dark brown now, creeping over the sheet as I write. It stopped at the word,'Butterfly,' and crawled contemptuously over it. This Mr. Brown is never seen in the daytime, but looks well enough by lamplight, starlight, or moonlight. Any thing more would be useless, because "unsight, unseen," as the boys say. Had it been other than a night-walker, it would have been spotted with gold, specked with vermilion, tricked out with indigo-blue legs, or rigged with transparencies. Nature is altogether an artist, and though with all the dyes of the rainbow at command, and to spare, exhibits a most remarkable and commendable economy 38 JANUARY AND JUNE. in her adornings. Show me a flower opening only at night, and I will almost always show you one that has taken the white veil or affects a demure gray. She is equally judicious in her varnishing: the upper surfaces of millions of leaves-how glossy and polished! Three coats of paint and six of varnish, by the palette of Reubens! But the lower surfaces, just as nice, but neither so green nor so glossy; it would be of no use, and besides, they could not breathe freely through new paint. Speaking of coloring: isn't it a little queer, or is it just as might be expected, that JOHN GALT should come all the way across the ocean, out of two thicknesses of London fog, to tell people "to the manor born" what color an American sky is, in the summer, toward sunset? Or that they should marvel to learn it is an apple-green —the reflection of those great emeralds of earth, the Prairies, and those miles on miles of forest billows, that roll up and up, and fling their green spray into heaven? Poetasters, poor fellows! how blank they'd look —wouldn't they? should a law be passed, forbidding their babble about azure, blue, and cerulean skies; and they compelled, if they spoke at all, to say,' Oh! apple-green heavens!' Nature is not half so pains-taking with very early " BUGS" AND BEAUTIES. 39 morning as with the later day, and for the best reason in life, there's no body "up ".to see. So she makes it a neat steel-gray, inlaying a piece or two of pearl here and there, and looping up round the edges, a few odd bits of red ribbon. Noon she doesn't mind much. To be sure the coloring is rich and warm, but then, nothing like a master-piece. But'come night,' when the labor of the world is pretty near done, she'lays herself out' in the West, exactly where every body would naturally be looking, and gathers there, the pearl and gold of morning, the glow and glory of noon, and the Tyrian tints of night. She spreads there, unbended rainbows from dismantled clouds; she gives there, patterns for the sea-shells to tint bya red a4d a white that set the pattern for York and Lancaster —themes for a thousand preachers, and songs for a thousand bards. On such a night, in such a June, who has not sat, side by side, with some body, for all the world like "Jenny June?" May-be it was years ago; but it was some time. May-be you had quite forgotten it; but you will be the better for remembering it. Maybe she has " gone on before," where it is June all the year long, and never January at all; but God forbid! There it was, and then it was, and thus it was: 40 JANUARY AND JUNE. rbe b3eautiful Lituer. Like a Foundling in slumber, the summer day lay On the crimsoning threshold of Even, And I thought that the glow through' the azure ^an