Only in lives of happier ones God knows. Content thee with thy night, **CHRISTMAS. What is the Christ of God? It is His touch, His sign, His making known. His coming forth from out the all-alone. The stretching of a rod, Abloom with His intent, From the invisible. He made worlds so: Christ is the dear "I Am," The Voice that the cool garden-stillness brake, The word, the thought, the breath, With man whom He had made God came down side by side. Not from the skies In thunders, but through brother-lips and eyes, His messages He said. Close to our sin He leant, Whispering, "Be clean! Holy, Utterly meek, Unto our burden bent The High, the Awful ah infinitely lowly, "Don't ever do that," said Aunt Hetty Maria. Carry your candle as straight as you can, but never go prowling back into dark closets to look after mischief that you haven't done." "It's clear fidget, I know," said mother; "but I've done it many a time myself." I had been looking for something in the little clothes-room. I knew perfectly well that my candle had n't snapped while I was there, and that I had n't held it near anything; and yet, after I brought it back to mother's room, and gave her the roll of linen she wanted, I went quietly to the closet again, and shut myself in, in the dark, and looked. When I came back the second time and sat down, Aunt Hetty Maria said that. "Don't do it," she repeated. "Clear fidget is the worst thing you can give up to. It'll come back at times when you can't satisfy yourself. It's a way you get into, and it'll follow you up. Don't get out of bed to see if you have locked the door, when you know there isn't one chance in a hundred that you have n't. Don't pull your letter open to see if the money is safe and right, when you know you had it in your hand to put in and it can't be anywhere else. Don't keep making crazy dives into your pocket and bags, to see if your purse and your keys are there, after you've started on your journey, and you can't help it if they ain't. It's an awful habit, I tell you. You'll go back into actions and reasonings and happenings, just so; into trouble, and sickness, and death too. Looking after what never was in 'em; and doubting what you know there certainly was. I tell you, for I know." There Aunt Hetty Maria had had troubles in her life, notwithstanding the silk gown and the white caps, and the looking-up-to of all Dearwood. were things she was n't sure she had n't made mistakes in, though she was a woman who had always tried thoroughly to do her duty. Perhaps in some other place I shall say more of what I know about it. I understood enough about it then, to feel that she spoke out of a deep place, and that the strong sense that advised me against the "clear fidgets" had had sore battles to fight against them, before it stood up in her so, commanding them all down. "If I had my life to live over again, there's no rule I'd lay down for myself firmer. And that's why I speak to you." As if I had my life to live-at thirty-eight! I think, sometimes, we don't any of us find out how to live till we have pretty well used up: spoiled, perhaps one life. Did anybody ever knit a perfect stocking, right off, at the first learning? Isn't the first experiment a tangle, more or less, of dropped stitches, run all through, or twisted in the picking up; of puckers and stretches, unpremeditated and misplaced widenings out and narrowings in? Are n't there patient eyes over the needles, perhaps, in our life-learnings? Is all the yarn spoiled in conquering the stitch? Are we to wear our first poor work, inevitably and always? Or when, out of the knowledge gained at it, we can accomplish a better, shall it not be given us to do and 10 possess, and the old puckers be quietly unravelled for us and laid away out of our sight? If mother and Aunt Hetty Maria give me loving and watchful counsel at thirty-eight, looking upon all these years of mine as a mere "setting up," how will the good angels, out of their deep eternity and its holy wisdoms, look at theirs? The very calm and beauty that sits upon them now, is it not the smoothing out for a fair and glad beginning again? "Don't go back into the dark closets!" It was a dear, bright word to me. Perhaps it is the word that will be said to us in heaven, when we come out into the light there that is fulfilling and absolving love. Perhaps we shall be comforted and forgiven beyond what we can think or hope. ** WILLIAM M. BAKER, WHо has graphically pictured the peculiar aspects of life in the Southwestern States before and during the late rebellion, is the youngest son of Rev. Daniel Baker, D. D. The father was born at Midway, Liberty county, Georgia, in 1791, and died at Austin, Texas, in 1857. He labored successfully as an evangelist and Presbyterian pastor in Washington, D. C., Savannah, Georgia, Frankfort, Kentucky, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Holly Springs, Mississippi. His chief works were a Plain and Scriptural View of Baptism, and two series of Revival Sermons. William Munford Baker was born at Washington, D. C., in 1825. He graduated with honor at Princeton College, at the age of twenty-one. After studying theology one year at Princeton Seminary, and two years under his father, he served as pastor at Galveston and at Austin, in Texas, for fifteen years, from 1850 to 1865. During this period he published the Life and Labors of Rev. Daniel Baker, D. D., 1858. As a Union man, and on conscientious grounds, Mr. Baker carried his church at Austin with him, through the rebellion, in unbroken connection with the General Assembly at the North, to a Presbytery of which it now gives its name. His experiences in those troublous times, only so far modified as to impart dramatic power, are embodied in Inside, a Chronicle of Secession. This powerful tale, which consists of a series of sharply outlined scenes and as keenly individualized characters, forming a vivid panorama, photographic in its fidelity to nature, first appeared in Harper's Weekly. It was published in book form in 1866, under the nom de plume of G. F. Harrington. The hardest hits in the volume are at the men most bitter of all for secession, the Northern men then resident in the South. As the author and all of his relatives were of Southern birth and residence, it results naturally, as his works testify, that he has never written a line inconsistent with the most ardent love to his section, as well as to his country. Wmm. Baker country, he has always made his literary labors incidental and subordinate to his pastoral duties, to which he gives the chief energies of his hand and heart. Ilis later writings include: Oak Mot, 1868, a Sabbath School volume prepared for the Presbyterian Board of Publication; The Virginians in Texas, which appeared serially in Harper's Magazine; and The New Timothy, 1870. The latter sketches the odd phases of ministerial and social life in the rude frontier settlements of the Southwest, the rollicking humors, boisterousness, and vicious characters of the borders, and the experiences by which the young pastor was taught the tact of becoming "all things to all men." His latest work, Mose Evans, first appeared, in 1873, in the Atlantic Monthly. **THE HUNT OF THE BEARS FROM THE NEW TIMOTHY. "Breakfast!" says Bob Long, in the ear of our hero, and he wakes to find it broad day. He dresses rapidly. Washes out under the shed still more rapidly, as the tin pan has a hole in the bottom. Breakfast. Old Man Meggar remains bundled up in bed in a corner of the room in which they eat, only a small opening left through the bed-clothes as an outlet for his oaths. He is perishing for whisky! His sons also suffer; but being younger they can bear the privation better. The boy sent for whisky has not yet returned. As wondering curses fall on him therefore, Mr. Long looks peculiarly solemn. Mrs. Meggar pauses once in pouring out the coffee, glances at Mr. Long, and continues to pour with an inward, "Yes. Bless the Lord, I see!" The jar of plum-jelly is on the table. Mrs. Meggar's reasoning on that point has been brief but conclusive: Well, let it all be eaten up this mornin', so that he gets some more!" Very sour it is indeed! Its acidity sharpens Mr. Wall's teeth as for battle, yet, under the circumstances, he makes a religion of eating it. Out in the yard, after breakfast, he finds the canine lazzaroni in a state of wildest excitement. What remains to them of tails is being violently wagged, and the howling - Thunder augustly Thunder augustly silent is awful. Not a dog there but has entirely forgotten the hope of breakfast which fed his soul during the night, in prospect of a hunt on hand. When at last they ride off from the fence, the feast of a Montfaucon would not have held back for an instant from following the ignoblest cur there. An air of even gravity has settled down upon the men as they ride they have entered on business now. Doc. Meggar, the eldest son and sententious gentleman of the family, is now profoundly silent, swearing inwardly only as he rides, a kind of dignity, even, in the man. By common consent, after they have got a mile or two from the house into the woods, all the rest fall behind to let him ride in front. Mr. Long has the aspect of going to battle. His soul also is troubled, "Sing'lar, I never thought of it onst,' he says to Mr. Wall, riding close to him and speaking in a low tone. "How in the world will we manage to find you afterwards? After we get into the thick of the bresh it'll be like looking for a needle in the biggest sort of a haystack. When we start, you keep as near me as you can. I'll ride as slow as I can, too. An' when you are left behind, don't be skeared too much. You listen for the dogs, an' ride for them. Ef you don't hear them, I can yell- a little. Ef it's too far for that, don't you be skeared, and try to hunt us up-don't get yourself deranged. Jest stay still where you happen to be, and keep firing your rifle every quarter or so. Climb a tree if night ketches you; and when mornin' comes agin, you jest keep a-firin'. Here's a hunk of bread, put it in your pocket, case you should need it!” This was altogether a new view of the matter to the person in question. He was about to reply, but a huge grape-vine dangling from a tree overhead at this moment separated them as they rode. In fact, riding together was now becoming impossible as the woods became thicker. Doc. Meggar, too, leading the van, sends back over his shoulder the Parthian arrow of a single oath. Silence is the law now. Mr. Wall notices that all the dogs have fallen into a solid group, and trot along with one large black dog well in front of them. Thunder is his name, as our hero knows by this time from the perpetual mention made of him last night and before starting. No tail whatever has Thunder, only one eye is left him, accompanied by the merest fragment of a left ear. A long scar extends from ear to tail. As yet the young minister is unacquainted with his bark; if Thunder had ventured on that anywhere about the house, even if it had been at midnight, not a man in the same but would have sprung for his rifle. He now leads the van, bearing with him the profound respect of every animal there behind him, on foot or in saddle. As they ride, our novice must needs entangle himself in the branches of a huge tree fallen to the ground. While toiling to force his way through, not unblessed of Toad and Zed, he catches a sudden vision of a brown animal running down the trunk of a tree. To bring his heavy gun to his shoulder and send the contents of one of its barrels after the animal is the work of an instant. "He's been hunted off of before, that horse, young as he is!" is the exclamation of Jake behind him, however, with increased admiration of the animal. Well he had been, or his rider would have been left at the shot, torn out of his saddle by the brush. by the brush. Mike only quivers, as it is, with a sense of unpleasant warmth in the tips of his intelligent ears, now browned from the discharge. Thunder pauses a moment on three feet, while his associates break ranks and plunge amidst the brush in search of the wounded animal. No wildcat there! It is a quarter of a mile away, unhurt. And so the dogs resume their trot behind their leader, now far in advance. The unsuccessful marksman disentangles himself from the brush, and reloads his gun. Mr. Long reins in his temper and his pony and waits for him, while the others ride on, disgusted, after the dogs. For full an hour our hero winds his horse around the trees and through the dense thickets in call of Mr. Long, but silent. Suddenly he observes off to the left a kind of furrow among the fallen leaves, their under and damper sides being turned up. "I say, Mr. Long, here a moment. Isn't this the path of a bear?" he calls, reining up. Mr. Long is sorely tempted to vexation. Out of courtesy he rides back to look. "Hi! Thunder!" he yells, as his eye catches the bear-trail; "good for you, Mr. Wall!" he pauses to say, and calls again and again until the woods ring. Thunder is half a mile off to the right; but in a few minutes he is under their hoofs. Silent until his nose touches the trail, then he opens like the boom of a hell, and disappears along the trail, his nose to the ground. At the sound every dog in the forest opens also through the whole gamut, and soon are following in the wake of Thunder, while the hunters spur and yell after, Doc. Meggar silent but soon far in front. Alas for Mr. Long's good resolutions! At the first sound from Thunder the existence of his friend has passed utterly from his mind. With a yell to Bobasheela he dashes after through the thicket and is soon lost to sight. Favoring Mike with a cry such as he has never before heard at least from his present master, and digging both heels convulsively into his flanks, Mr. Wall speeds along behind. Mike catches the enthusiasm, and on they tear. It would never have done for the young clergyman to have ridden at anything like this rate through the Institution grounds, or even through Hoppleton. Astonishing the degree to which circumstances alter cases! He has not gone a quarter of a mile, however, before he reins up with a jerk. In attempting to dash through a thicket his hat has been jerked from his head, his powder-horn and shot-pouch torn from around his neck, his double-barrelled gun lies, twitched from his grasp by a grape-vine, upon the ground twenty yards behind, the bridle half plucked off his horse, and broken at that. It is dreadful to stop an instant, for the cry of dogs and men is already far ahead, growing fainter every moment. Only one course to pursue. The rider dismounts, mends his bridle, puts it on again and fastens his horse. He then mends the shoulderstrap of his powder-horn and pouches, takes off his outer coat, puts his pouches on again, his coat | horse upon the animal and beat him over the head on over that, and buttons it up from neck to waist. He has lost a handful of silver. Never mind, no time to look for that. Future antiquarians coming upon it may wonder and theorize and publish as to how on earth the money ever got there. No time for that now! He then regains his hat and forces it down upon his head, so that if torn off again his head will accompany it. Next a stout switch is cut to assist his spurs. Then the girth of his saddle is drawn up a hole or two, the blanket first pulled well forward. Last, his gun is secured. Remounting, he addresses himself to his task with a sort of desperation. All sounds of dogs and men have now died entirely away. Was he wrong in breathing a swift prayer as he applies switch and spurs to his horse? Right or wrong, wise or foolish, it was a spontaneous act. Let us photograph the man or leave him alone. with one of the stirrup-irons, which he insanely unbuckles, as he rides, from the saddle for that purpose. Mike is as excited as his rider, he gets within ten steps of the bear, but declines going nearer. In vain the spurs and switch and yells of his rider. If that rider has lost his wits, Mike hasn't his. So the insane sportsman hurls his stirrup, leather and all, at the bear, trundling so | leisurely along, a black mass of wool and fat. He felt amazed at himself as he dashed along in the direction from which the sounds had last come. Ravines over which he would not have dreamed of leaping at any other time, dense thickets through which he would never in a saner moment have supposed it possible for a human being to pass, on and on through a kind of whirlwind of saplings and forest-trees, brambles and grape-vines, he rushed, his hat down over his eyes, his left hand holding his gun upon his shoulder, his right plying the switch. Cabined up all his life, he now gave absolute rein to himself as well as to his horse, enjoying the excitement with all his soul. "And if a bear, say, or a buck had burst through the Institution ground, students, pale tutors, spectacled professors, every soul therein, would have abandoned, for the moment, Church and world too in the mad chase. Esau was born before Jacob!" So he reasons as he rides. If Mr. Wall indeed had a guardian angel, that angel used his wings to some purpose to keep in full charge of him as he dashes on, reckless of himself. He has by far the best horse on the ground; he rides at least as headlong as any man there; craziest there of all for the time, he soon makes up for his delay, comes in hearing of the dogs and men again. He observes that the hunters have been left far to the right, while the dogs are off to the other side. An idea strikes him and he turns sharply to the left, for the animal, whatever it is, is evidently making a circuit in that direction. In a few minutes' hard riding he finds that the dogs are ahead of him, while the men are shouting on his trail far behind. To be at last the foremost one in the race! The thought inspires him. He uses switch and spurs with double energy. He has ceased to shout. He finds it is only exhausting him without accomplishing any object. And so he rides silently on. He is evidently coming nearer and nearer upon the dogs. Suddenly he turns off still more to the left from their cry. Before he knows it he comes upon the object of pursuit a black bear! It seems immensely large as it shambles along; seems to be going very slow too, considering the eagerness of his friends behind. But the excitement on seeing it! The rider has for a moment forsaken his profession as a minister. He has abandoned his very senses. He yells at his horse, he halloos for the dogs, he screams to Mr. Long. In his frenzy he takes out his penknife, and opens it savagely, with the purpose of jumping off his horse, rushing in upon the monster and slaughtering him upon the spot. Then it flashes upon him to ride his Suddenly he remembers his gun. Leaping from his horse, he runs almost upon the bear, levels his weapon, with hands shaking with excitement, full upon it, cocks one barrel, and pulls desperately away at the trigger of the other. The instant he had left his horse Mike entered upon the sport on his own account, and gallops furiously along in the direction of the hunt. The bear goes crushing through the thicket, the dogs now well upon him, Thunder in advance. The dismounted Nimrod can hear the faint cries of the rest of the party far behind. He dashes on after the bear on foot. See! It has turned to bay. He comes full upon it, seated upright, with its back against a tree, wiping at the dogs swarming upon it, right and left, with its huge paws, its red mouth open and foaming. The last particle of sense forsakes the young fool. He advances directly upon the animal, levels his short, heavy gun full at its breast, a small white spot furnishing the mark, cocks both hammers, pulls both triggers, and finds himself at the discharge lying flat upon his back. He has a general impression that the bear will be upon him in an instant, and he scrambles, quivering and shaking with excitement, upon his feet. He need not fear! There had been powder and buck-shot in his rifle sufficient for quite a long campaign of shooting. He was so near, too! There it lies upon the ground, the great unwieldy mass of wool, dead, the dogs yelling and biting at it in a whirlwind of excitement. He The hunter can not believe his eyes. That he - he should actually have killed the bear! drives off the dogs with difficulty with his empty gun, and seats himself exhausted upon his prey and a most luxuriant cushion it is-never king happier on his throne! Two It occurs to him, panting with exertion, to see if his pockets have not been emptied in his fall, and he takes therefrom knife, pocket Testament, and all. The shouts of the men are coming nearer and nearer. The dogs have fallen exhausted around these, too, panting for dear life. of them are apparently dying-one lies dead from the fight. Thunder is reposing at a little distance looking gravely, not so much at the bear as at the individual seated upon him, ceasing now and then to pant as if he had been struck by some new idea about it. At last he rises with the utmost dignity, approaches the young minister, smells him carefully, elaborately all around, and from head to foot, and resumes his lying down and panting. Not having a tail, it is impossible for him to express the result of his investigation. It is highly flattering to his new acquaintance, but he keeps it gravely to himself. The cries of the rest of the party draw nearer and nearer. It may be it was from fatigue, but it may be it was from affectation; at any rate our reader keeps his seat upon the bear. Here comes the foremost of the party behind - Doc. Meggar! The blood is streaming down his face from a gash laid open in his cheek by the branch of a tree. He dashes up, jumps from his sweating horse, stands a moment in stupefied astonishment, and then, most emphatically, "Look here," he says at last. "I say, you, stranger, give us your hand!" very gravely too. Mr. Wall cordially complies; it is shaken long and vigorously, even solemnly, by Doc., who then falls on the ground and proceeds to drink ravenously from a little pool of green water in which the bear is half lying. There is more mud than water, and as much blood as either, in the pool. It strikes the stranger that Doc. drinks as much for the blood as for the water. He swallows down his exclamation, however, and receives with a vast deal more coolness and indifference of manner than of heart the rest of the Meggars who now pour in, tattered from the brush, excited, wondering, and awfully profane. Mr. Wall feels called upon to apologize. "It is all a mere accident, gentlemen," he says, rising and standing off to one side. "I happened to have a tolerably good horse; and then I happened to be so I could head the bear. It is the first time I ever was on a hunt.” The Meggars have nothing to say at the moment, being busy fastening their horses and getting their knives ready for work on the bear. They have a unanimous and decided opinion on the point; and Zed and Toad know exactly what that opinion is. Not in vain have these eat at the table of the Meggars, slept on the floor of their cabin, had "chaws" from their bars of tobacco, drinks from their whisky-jugs, the use of their greasy decks of cards for so long. Had the Meggars entertained even the least hostile feeling towards the successful hunter, Zed and Toad would have proceeded in advance to curse him for them on the spot; held themselves ready to do any thing besides which their relation to the Meggars demanded. In fact, what Thunder was to the dogs at home, so are these battered, dilapidated, unutterably degraded specimens of the race to the Meggar boys. It is amazing the swarm of just such lice as these this Meggar family are infested by! And then those who dreaded as death to offend them! They were kings-the Meggars of the whole section! Of course, they drew their followers toward all evil with vastly more ease than if they were working in the opposite direction. Yet Bob Long knew exactly what he undertook; and it was worth the effort. Bob's attempt on them was an effort, in fact, for the whole section through them an axe struck at the very root of the Banian wickedness of the entire region a Napoleonic charge upon the very centre of the forces of the devil there. "May talk of accident," says Zed for his patrons; "but it's only to fus-class folks sech accidents happen. Never happen to me!" Zed, as being the last of the alphabet. "Headin'?" yelps the other jackal. "An' a good horse? But it takes a clipper of a chap to make the dash you did, stranger, through these here woods. Wish had a drink of whisky to offer ye!" The unaccountable failure of the boy to appear with the whisky the night before, and the consequent absence of that essential beverage during the hunt, had been a grief that had accompanied the Meggars and their hangers-on, from the instant they left their suffering parent, through brush and brier, up to the present instant. Mr. Long's reasoning, from long observation and experience, had been that the excitement of the whisky, together with that of the hunt, might be a little too much even for him to manage. By a bold stroke he had cut off the supply of whisky -only the excitement of a slain bear remained. And this was of a wolfish nature. Hardly had the jackals agreed in their eulogy upon Mr. Wall than they fell into a sudden disagreement in regard to the inches of fat on the bear. Before the young hunter knew a quarrel was brewing, Zed and Toad were rolling over and over upon the bloody ground, their hands twisted in each other's hair, pounding, kicking, cursing each other. It excited not a particle of interest in the others, who were now at work upon Bruin, divesting that stray Russian of his furry robe. At ** HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL, THE gifted Union lyrist of the late war, was born in East Hartford, Connecticut, in 1820. He was the son of Dr. Pardon Brownell, and a nephew of the late Dr. Thomas Church Brownell, bishop of Connecticut. He was graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, and then studied law; but literary pursuits proved to be the more attractive. "A little volume of lyric poems, published by him as early as 1850," records a sympathetic biographer,* "gave evidence of rare power and brilliancy. For a time he turned his attention to other fields of literary labor, which if less inviting, yet offered fairer prospect of remuneration. He wrote a History of the War of 1812, giving special prominence to the naval portion of the war, and two or three books of a somewhat similar character. the opening of the late war, his whole soul was absorbed by it; he entered first the army, and then the navy, as a volunteer, was a participator in the naval battles of the Gulf and lower Mississippi, and became the intimate friend and private secretary of that noble hero, Admiral Farragut. He was with Farragut at that famous fight in Mobile Bay, and his poem, 'The Bay Fight,' which subsequently gave the title to his volume of war lyrics, was the finest descriptive poem of the war. Mr. Brownell had the dramatic power of Robert Browning, in a large degree, and a rare humanity, which softened and rendered beautiful all the creations of his fancy, all the transcripts of his large and varied experiences. He was a genre poet; he caught his inspiration directly from common things, and rendered them enduring and sublime in the spirited and picturesque forms in which he embodied them. As the war grew in dignity and scope, so grew his poems. He wrote in strong, broad American; sometimes his language was not gracious, but it had meaning; even the rough expression of the tyro soldier bent into poetic form under his facile pen." He published two later volumes of his poems, the first anonymously: Lyrics of a Day; or Newspaper Poetry, by a Volunteer in the U. S. Service, 1864; War Lyrics, and Other Poems, 1866, dedicated to Vice-Admiral David Farragut. Among these vigorous and imaginative verses occur The River Fight, on the Mississippi, in April, 1862; Bury Them (the dragon's teeth), a memory of Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863; April * Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1872, art. Henry Howard Brownell, p. 77. † Pioneer Heroes of the New World; from the Earliest Period (982) to the Present Time, 1855. The Eastern or Old World 2 vols., 1856. |