her snowy cap; she has just restored a wan- dearer-but that she was ever "little." And dering lamb to its mother; she lengthened then when we begged her to sing! 66 Sing us the tether of a vine that was straying over a one of the old songs you used to sing mother, window, as she came in, and plucked a four-grandma.” leafed clover for Ellen. She sits down by the the little wheel-a tress is running through her fingers from the distaff's disheveled head, when a small voice cries "Grandma," from the old red cradle, and "Grandma," Tommy shouts from the top of the stairs. Gently she lets go from the thread, for her patience is almost as beautiful as her charity, and she touches thelittle red bark a moment till the young voyager is in a dream again, and then directs Tommy's unavailing attempts to harness the cat. The tick of the clock rnns faint and low, and she opens the mysterious door and proceeds to wind it up. We are all on tip-toe and we beg in a breath to be lifted up one by one, and look in the hundreth time upon the tin cases of the weights, and the poor lonely pendulum, which goes to and fro by the little dim window, and never comes out into the world, and our petitions are all granted and we are lifted up, and we all touch with a finger the won-hall-door was opened a moment by the wind derful weights, and the music of the little wheel is resumed. "Children I can't sing," she always said; and mother used to lay her knitting softly down, and the kitten stopped playing with the yarn on the floor, and the clock ticked, lower in the corner, and the fire died down to a glog like an old heart that is neither chilled or dead, and grandmother sang. To be sure it wouldn't do for the parlor and the concortroom now-a-days; but then it was the old kitchen, and the old fashioned grandmother, and the old ballad, in the dear old times, and we can hardly see to write for the memory of them, though it is a hand's breadth to the sunset. Was Mary to be married or Jane to be wrapped in a shroud? So meekly did she fold the white hands of the one upon her still bosom, that there seemed to be a prayer in them there, and so sweetly did she wreathe the hair of the other, that one would not have wondered had more roses budded for company. How she stood between us and apprehended harm! How the rudest of us softened beneath that gentle pressure of her faded and tremulous hand! From her capacious pocket that hand was ever withdrawn closed, only to be opened in our own with the nuts she had gathered, the berries she had plucked, the little egg she had found, the "turn-over" she had baked, the trinket she had purchased for us as the product of her spinning, the blessing she had stored for us-the offspring of her heart. Well, she sang. Her voice was feeble and wavering, like a fountain just ready to fall, but then how sweet-toned it was; and it couldn't grow sweeter. What "joy of grief" it was to sit there around the fire, all of us except Jane, that clasped a prayer to her bosom, and her we thought we saw, when the but then we were not afraid, for wasn't it her old smile that she wore ?-to sit there around the fire, and weep over the woes of the "Babes in the Woods;" who lay down side by side in the great solemn shadows; and how strangely glad we felt when robin red-breast covered them with leaves; and last of all, the angels took them out of the night into day-everlasting. We may think what we will of it now, but the song and the story heard around the kitchen fire have colored the thoughts and the lives of most of us; have given us the germs of whatever poetry blesses our hearts; whatever memory blooms in our yesterdays. Attribute whatever we may to the school and the schoolmaster, the rays which make that little day we call life, radiate from the Godswept circle of the hearth-stone. Then she sings an old lullaby she sang to mother-her mother sang it to her; but she does not sing it through, and falters ere 'tis What treasures of story fell from those old done. She rests her head upon her hands and. lips of good fairies and evil, of the old times it is silent in the old kitchen. Something: when she was a girl; and we wondered if glitters down between her fingers and the fireever-but then she couldn't be handsomer or light, and it looks like rain in the soft sun shine. The old grandmother is thinking when she first heard that song and the voice that sung it, when a light haired and light-hearted girl she hung around that mother's chair, nor saw the shadows of the years to come. Oh, the days that are now no more! What spell can we weave to bring them back again? What words can we unsay, what deeds undo to set back just this once the ancient clock of time? So all our little hands were forever clinging to her garment and staying her as if from dying, for long ago she had done living for herself and lived alone in us. But the old kitchen wants a presence to-day, and the rushbottomed chair is tenantless. How she used to welcome us when we were grown, and came back once more to the old homestead. We thought we were men and women, but were children, there. The old fashioned grandmother was blind in the eyes, but she saw with her heart as she always did. We threw our long shadows through the open door and she felt them as they fell over her form and she looked dimly up and saw tall shapes in the door-way, and she says, "Edward I know, and Lucy's voice I can hear, but who is that other? It must be Jane's"— for she had almost forgotten the folded hands. "Oh, no, not Jane, for she-let me see-she is waiting for me, isn't she?" and the old grandmother wandered and wept. "It is another daughter, grandmother, that Edward has brought," says some one, "for your blessing." "Has she blue eyes, my son? put her hand in mine, for she is my latest born, the child of my age. Shall I sing you a song children?" Her hand is in her pocket as of old; she is idly fumbling for a toy as a welcome gift to the children that have come again. One of us, men as we thought we were, is weeping; she hears the half suppressed sob; she says as she extends her feeble hand, "Here my poor child, rest on your grandmother's shoulder; she will protect you from all harm. Come, children, sit around the fire again. Shall I sing you a song or tell you a story? Stir the fire for it is cold; the nights are growing colder." The clock in the corner struck nine, the bed-time of those old days. The song of life was indeed sung, the story told; it was bedtime at last. Good night to thee, grandmother. The old fashioned grandmother was no more, and we miss her forever. But we will set up a tablet in the midst of the memory, in the midst of the heart, and write on it only this: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OLD-FASHIONED GRANDMOTHER. Napoleon and Mrs. Judson. BY HON. WM. M. RODMAN. Afar and lone, 'mid Ocean's waves, With lightning peaks and thunder caves, And there, where Ocean's ceaseless moan The nations quaked like palsied things, Greatest of earth's unhallow'd great, A more than king was he; The Arab, 'mid Sahara's sands, He gained the very loftiest height Of human state aud power, Then fell, as falls the riven rock From Jura's loftiest height When splinter'd by the lightning's shock, In all its wildest might. He died! and there he slept alone, In Death's cold, dreamless trance, The nation wept in robes of gloom, And the royal exile found a tomb Time rolled on, when a merchant ship, A moment let her anchors dip No booming gun from castled peak One who had track'd the pathless sea, And there, within a tranquil nook, Her peaceful form they laid, Beside a gentle-murmuring brook, Beneath a willow's shade. No sentry's troll around that grave Is heard with measured tread; And there, while Ocean rolls a wave, But when creation's work is done, Which then shall wear the victor's crown, *It is hardly necessary to say, that his remains repose in the Hotel of the Invalides; but to strengthen the contrast, I have spoken of them as being in Notre Dame, because it was the place of his coronation. A Philosopher. Spare Moments. A lean, awkward boy came to the door of a principal of a celebrated school, one morning, and asked to see him. The servant eyed his mean clothes, and thinking he looked more like a beggar than anything else, told him to go round to the kitchen. The boy did as he was bidden, and soon appeared at the back door. "I should like to see Mr.,” said he. "You want a breakfast, more like," said the servant girl, "and I can give you that without troubling him." "Thank you," said the boy; "I should like to see Mr. if he can see me." "Some old clothes may be you want," remarked the servant, again eyeing the boy's patched clothes. "I guess he has none to spare-he gives away a sight." And without minding the boy's request, the servant went about her work. "Can I see Mr. -?" again asked the boy, after finishing his bread and butter. "Well, he is in the library; if he must be disturbed, he must. He does like to be alone sometimes," said the girl in a peevish tone. She seemed to think it very foolish to take such a boy into her master's presence. However, she wiped her hands and bade him follow. Opening the library door, she said, "Here's somebody who is dreadful anxious to see you, and so I let him in." I don't know how the boy introduced himself, or how he opened his business; but I know that after talking a while, the principal put aside the volume he was studying, and took up some Greek books, and began to examine the new-comer. The examination lasted for some time. Every question the principal asked the boy, was answered as readily as could be. A colored man at the Northern Liberties Market, whose legs have been cut off above "Upon my word," exclaimed the principal, the knees, heard a couple of gentlemen com- you do well," looking at the boy from miserating his condition the other day, when head to foot over his spectacles. "Why, my he turned from the work in which he was en-boy, where did you pick up so much?" gaged, and said, laughingly, you couldn't do this without breakin' your backs a-stoopin' down." Moral: Whole legs are not essential to happiness, though a conLated spirit may be.-Philadelphia News. 66 Why, ge'men, "In my spare moments," answered the boy. Here was a poor, hard-working boy, with few opportunities for schooling, yet almost fitted for college, by simply improving his spare moments Truly are spare moments the "gold dust of time." How precious they should be? What account can you give of your spare moments? What can you show for them? Look and see. This boy can tell you how much can be laid up by improving them; and there are many very many other boys, I am afraid, in the jail, and in the house of correction, in the gambling-house, in the tippling shop, who, if you were to ask them where they began their sinful courses, might answer, "in my spare moments." Oh be very careful how you spend your spare moments! The tempter always hunts you out in small seasons like these; when you are not busy he gets into your hearts, if he possibly can, in just such gaps. There he hides himself, planning all sorts of mischief. Take care of the spare moments!—Mrs. H. C. Knight. FINE ILLUSTRATION.-Henry Ward Beecher, in speaking of trouble, makes use of this fig ure: "As the sun converts clouds into a glorious drapery, firing them with gorgeous hues and draping the whole horizon with its glorious costume, and writing victory in fiery colors along the vanquished front of every cloud, so sometimes a radiant heart lets forth its hope upon its sorrow and all the blackness flies, and troubles that trooped to appal seem to crowd around as a triumphal procession following the steps of a victor." FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE.-How many common figurative expressions in our language are borrowed from the art of carpentry, may "Good to make Men of." A GENTLEMAN once asked a company of little boys what they were good for? One little fellow promptly answered: "We are good to make men of.” Think of that my young friends, you are all good to make men and women of. We do not mean, nor did that little boy, that you are merely good to grow up to the size of men and women. No, we mean a good deal more than this. You are to make persons that will be respected and useful—that will help to do good in the world. No one, who is not useful, and who does not seek to make the world better, deserves the name of man or woman. You should not forget that if there are to be any men and women-any that deserve such a name-twenty or thirty years hence, they are to be made of you who are now children. What a world this will be when you grow up, if all are only men and women! Will you not ponder this subject, and "show yourselves men?" "Good to make men of." What kind of men will our youthful readers be twenty years hence? Will they be classed with the intelligent, the respectable, the industrious, the prosperous, the benevolent, the pious men of the time? for doubtless there will be such. It may require a little self denial, and hard study, and hard work; but such a character we wish all our readers to bear. Youth's Companion. HOWEVER much we may have accomplished through a long life of active and unremitted toil, when we come to reach its closing scene, and insignificant; for they are about to be our labors will then appear to us but trifling be seen from the following sentence: "The lawyer who filed a bill, shaved a note, cut an acquaintance, split a hair, made an entry, got got up a case, framed an indictment, impanelled a jury, put them into a box, nailed a wit-weighed in the scales of a boundless and mysterious Eternity. ness, hammered a judge, and bored a whole court, all in one day, has since laid down law and turned carpenter." LEAVES are light, and useless, and idle, and wavering, and changeable; they even dance; A TALENT is perfected in solitude; a char-yet God, in his wisdom, has made them part acter, in the stream of the world.-Goethe. of the oak. In so doing, he has given us a lesson not to deny the stout-heartedness with THE evil we do in the world is often paid in, because we see the lightsomeness without. back in the bosom of home. -Hare. EDITOR'S DEPARTMENT. WILLIAM A. MOWRY, Editor. Our Introductory. the editorial columns, cull the choicest gems from our exchanges and from our library, and devote a large share of each number to correspondents. We most cordially invite communications from teacher. READERS: We wish to make your acquaint-every quarter, especially from every earnest ance. We have no mutual friend to introduce us, and so we come boldly forward and introduce ourself. Your humble servant.-There, that is just what we meant to say, and we have said it. It looks well, too, and now we wish to show you that we mean it. SPECIAL CONTRIBUTORS. Arrangements have been made with some of the leading educators and scholars of our state, to furnish articles for the Schoolmaster, on a variety of topics, which will be especially interesting and instructive. One such article, at least, will appear in each number. The name of the contributor may or may not accompany the article. We will endeavor to serve you, in our humble capacity, and, as we know you are all hungry, we will set before you the best food,-plain and wholesome, that we can procure for our table, The leading article in each number, unless othand have it served up in the best style possible.erwise iodicated, will be from some one of the But let us first explain WHY WE ARE HERE. In losing our late School Commissioner, the Schoolmaster lost its Editor. To the Rev. ROBBRT ALLYN belong many and hearty thanks, from our Rhode Island Teachers, for establishing and conducting so ably, for two and a half years, the R. I. Schoolmaster. Those who knew him can testify to the ability and success with which he discharged the duties of his office, as School Commissioner, and all the readers of the Schoolmaster can bear witness to what he has done, and so well done, through its pages. All will regret his departure, but we have the pleasure of assuring our readers that his interest in us has not ceased, and that, from his western home, he will favor us occasionally with droppings from his pen. Special Contributors. In this department of the journal, we do not On the eve of his departure, and too late to mean to puff every book which publishers may make any arrangements for its continuance, the see fit to send us, but to say plainly just what we entire responsibility of the Schoolmaster was think. If we think a book a good one, we shall thrown back upon him by the publisher. A tem-commend it, and if our best judgment impels us porary suspension thus became inevitable. The present editor has now assumed the charge, and, soliciting the earnest co-operation of Teachers and Friends of Education, by way of subscriptions and contributions to its pages, he addresses himself to his work. WHAT WE INTEND. to the belief that it is not a good one, we shall say so with equal plainness. If we examine a book hastily, we shall say so, and leave our readers to examine and judge for themselves. TYPOGRAPHY. The journal will be printed upon the same type We intend that our journal shall be worthy its as heretofore. We have secured the services of name, and be, indeed, a "Good Schoolmaster." a gentleman to superintend this department, We do not mean to dwell too much upon the who, we feel assured, will give entire satisfaction technicalities of teaching, but to furnish living to all our friends, and who will be happy to wait matter, earnest thought, and practical sugges-on them, whenever they chance to call at the tions, for the teacher, and for the general reader office in our absence. who is interested in the great battle between knowledge and ignorance. OUR OFFICE, No. 9 Washington Building, will be open to We mean to write the best things we can for our friends, and the friends of the Schoolmaster, |