a OBSERVATION. (From "Lacon.") DERVISH was journeying alone in the desert, when two merchants suddenly met him. "You have lost a camel," said he to the merchants. "Indeed, we have," they replied. "Was he not blind in his right eye, and lame in his left leg?" said the dervish. "He was,” replied the merchants. "Had he not lost a front tooth ?" said the dervish. "He had," rejoined the merchants. "And was he not laden with honey on one side, and wheat on the other ?" "Most certainly he was," they replied," and as you have seen him so lately, and marked im so particularly, you can, in all probability, conduct us to him." "My friends," said the dervish," I have never seen your camel, nor ever heard of him but rom you." "A pretty story, truly," said the merchants; "but where are the jewels which formed part of his cargo?" "I have neither seen your camel, nor your jewels," repeated the dervish. On this they seized his person, and forthwith hurried him before the cadi, where, on the trictest search, nothing could be found upon him, nor could any evidence be adduced to onvict him, either of falsehood or theft. They were then about to proceed against him as a orcerer, when the dervish, with great calmness, thus addressed the court: "I have been much amused with your surprise, and own that there was some ground for our suspicions; but I have lived long, and alone; and I can find ample scope for observaion, even in a desert. I knew that I had crossed the track of a camel that had strayed from ts owner, because I saw no mark of any human footstep on the same route. I knew that the nimal was blind in one eye, because it had cropped the herbage only on one side of its path. And I perceived that it was lame in one leg, from the faint impression which that particular oot had produced upon the sand. I concluded that the animal had lost one tooth, because, wherever it had grazed, a small tuft of herbage had been left uninjured in the midst of its bite. As to that which formed the burthen of the beast, the busy ants informed me that it was orn on one side, and the clustering flies that it was honey on the other." 0 DISTANCE. N softening days, when a storm was near, the gray, CALEB CHARLES COLTON. And so sometimes on a moonless night, Come the trembling voices of long ago. And the throbbing rhythm of passion's tongue, MUSIC. MARGARET W. HAMILTON. USIC and rhyme are among the earliest pleasures of the child, and in the history of literature poetry precedes prose. Every one may see, as he rides on the highway through an uninteresting landscape, how a little water instantly relieves the monotony; no matter what objects are near it, a gray rock, a grass-patch, an elder bush, or a take, they become beautiful by being reflected. It is rhyme on the eye, and explains the harm of rhyme on the ear. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET. TOW dear to this heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view! The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wild wood, I found it the source of an exquisite pleasure, The purest and sweetest that nature can yield. How ardent I seized it with hands that were glowing, How quick to the white pebbled bottom it fell And every loved spot which my infancy Then soon with the emblem of truth overflowknew ; The wide-spreading pond, and the mill that ing, And dripping with coolness, it rose from stood by it, the well. The bridge and the rock where the cataract The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket arose from the well. fell; The cot of my father, the dairy house nigh it, And e'en the rude bucket which hung in the well, The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket, The moss-covered bucket which hung in the well. That moss-covered vessel I hail as a treasure, For often at noon, when returned from the field, How sweet from the green mossy brim to receive it, As poised on the curb, it inclined to my lips! Not a full blushing goblet could tempt me to leave it, Though filled with the nectar that Jupiter sips; My heart-strings round thee cling And still thy branches bend, GEORGE P. MORRIS. GEORGE P. MORRIS. COMMON THINGS. I found him gathering honey The bird to the maple bough The twigs and the stubble brings; He is building his love a cottage Out of the common things. The poet sits by himself; SAMUEL W. DUFFIELD. AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE. H, good painter, tell me, true, Has your hand the cunning to draw Shapes of things you never saw? Aye? Well, here is an order for you: Woods and cornfields a little brown,The picture must not be over-bright,Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down. Alway and alway, night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, When the wind can hardly find breathing room Under their tassels; cattle near, Biting shorter the short green grass; And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, With bluebirds twittering all around, (Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound!) These, and the house where I was born, Low and little and black and old, With children, many as it can hold, All at the windows, open wide; Heads and shoulders clear outside, And fair young faces all ablush; Perhaps you may have seen, some day, Roses crowding the selfsame way, Out of a wilding, wayside bush. Listen closer. When you have done herds, A lady, the loveliest ever the sun Looked down upon you must paint for me: grace, The woman's soul, and the angel's face That are beaming on me all the while! I need not speak these foolish words; Yet one word tells you all I would say: She is my mother; you will agree That all the rest would be thrown away. Two little urchins at her knee, You must paint, sir; one like me, The other with a clearer brow, And the light of his adventurous eyes Flashing with noblest enterprise : At ten years old he went to sea God knoweth if he be living nowHe sailed in the good ship Commodore; Nobody ever crossed her track To bring us news, and she never came back. Ah! it is twenty long years and more Since that old ship went out of the bay With my great-hearted brother on her deck; I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown, The time we stood at our mother's knee; That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea. Loitering till after the low little light Of the candle shone through the open door, And over the haystack's pointed top, All of a tremble and ready to drop, The first half-hour, the great yellow star, That we, with staring, ignorant eyes, Had often and often watched to see Propped and held in its place in the skies By the fork of a tall red mulberry tree, Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew, Dead at the top; just one branch full Of leaves, notched round and lined with wool, The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat, At last we stood by our mother's knee. I think 'twas solely mine, indeed, The eyes of our mother-take good heedLooking not on the nestful of eggs, |