My friend, do you know where your boy found his amusement last night, when you allowed him to go out for an hour, and he transcended the time? No, you do not know; but somebody knows that he was in a place that would make you and his mother shudder to see him, and with companions by whom you would feel disgraced, had they entered your doors. Believe it or not, you are to blame for this. Had you kindly and pleasantly engaged his attention; had you provided him with some agreeable recreation at home, accompanied him to some interesting lecture or concert, or taken him to make a pleasant call on a friend's family, he would have escaped the contagion with which he came in contact last evening.

"What can I do?" you ask.

Provide amusement at home. If you have a piano, let the children dance. It will do them good, physically and mentally. Do not be afraid of dancing because your strict neighbor, next door, condemns it. His boy was at the same place, last evening with your sonlearning to smoke, to drink even - (did you notice how anxious he was that you should not come near enough to take his breath?) Learning to speak vulgar and profane words, to make low jests, and to copy the slang of the company he keeps. Would dancing have hurt him like that? If there are not enough in your own family to dance, call in the neighbors and their children. It will brighten them up after the fatigue of school and study hours. Occasionaly take out the checker and back-gammon board, and invite him to a trial of skill with yourself. Even noiser games may sometimes be played not rudely nor roughly, but in a way that will satisfy his exuberant spirits. Boys are like soda bottles they must be allowed to effervesce somewhat, or they will burst their bounds. Don't leave them to flatten down into insipidity, but just turn the sparkling fluid into the right direction.

Mother! you tremble, when you take your little boys to the cars, and warn them, over and over again, of the danger of carelessness in entering or leaving them. Yet, I saw your little boy with two or three others, spring upon a train that had actually started; and that, too, after dark. Had you kept him at home, he would not have been exposed to danger of life or limb; and still more, to the society of those who are hanging around depots and stables,

boy will be a milk-sop if you restrain him from these things. Teach him yourself to be manly and noble; to hate low and vicious ways, and to shun the people who practice them. Teach him that it is disgraceful to be with companions whom he would not introduce to his mother and sisters. In short, make him happy at home, Teach him to respect himself — and he will then be loth to exchange your pleasant, cheerful and refined home-comforts for the low haunts of vice that would lure him to ruin.

Gail Hamilton's Books.

Who does not relish the writings of Gail Hamilton? She is, to be sure, no smooth, sentimental writer, who invites you by gracefully turned periods and soft, mellifluous language. She knows what she wants to say, and she says it-sometimes a thought too dictatorially, but in the main, with a vigor, depth of meaning, and honesty of purpose that ought to delight, and does really delight, most readers. Her weapons are turned right and left, making stern warfare upon matters that do not come up to her standard of truth and right. Even into the depths of the very creed which, we are told, she professes, she goes, boldly, and without the fear of man before her eyes, and battles there most bravely; sometimes with a weapon that only hacks and hews, yet does most essential service in the cause of truth; and, still oftener, with the keen, brightly-polished Damascus blade, that cuts more deeply into falsehood, bigotry and self-righteousness. Every thing true and beautiful, commends itself to her; but she opens, and sifts, and lays bare with a merciless hand, assisted by a searching eye, to find out if, after all, it is not a sham. You cannot cheat her, woman though she be, with makebelieves in religion, in polities, in domestic and, we doubt not, in political economy. She knows the ring of the pure coin, and will not be satisfied with Brummagen. She can detect a falsity underlying a smooth and polished exterior, as easily as she could the brightest and newest of Attleboro' jewelry; and, you may be snre, if she does bring in the "Thus sayeth Gail Hamilton" a little too often, that there is a thought coming after it, that you will do well not to throw aside because of the pardonable egotism.

We intend to make extracts from these piquant pages as often as we have room.

EDITOR'S TABLE.
Letter from Thomas Starr King.

We do not fear to be considered as resuming a worn-out theme, when we introduce into our pages one of the sweet, familiar letters of STARR KING. So long as worth and goodness are appreciated on the earth, so long will that rare spirit hold its fragrance in our memories. Even though we cease to mourn for him, there are times when the hearts that loved and honored him will send out a cry, like that which arose from the followers of the noble Scot"O Douglas, Douglas! tender and true! tender and true!"

--

The following was addressed to his beloved friend, Dr. Ballou. It is characteristic of the writer, and imbued with that wonderful love of Nature and her works, that so often called from his lips and pen the finest and most graphic descriptions - the sweetest of word-painting.

Yo-Semite Falls and Notch, July 17, 1860. MY DEAR DOCTOR,- This is Tuesday evening; and I am writing to you by camp-fire light in the great Yo-Semite Notch, where the grandeur of the Sierras seems to concentrate and knot itself, as it were. We arrived here on Sunday afternoon; and ever since I have been "on the go" among the marvels and splendors of the wondrous pass. And all the time I have been thinking of you,- of how greatly you would enjoy the scenery, and of the immensely greater pleasure it would give me to travel with you on foot and by horse. Perhaps, however, if you were here we should bet; and then, as you are so much more accomplished in faro and thimble-rigging and cribbage, and such clerical graces, no doubt another little paper would have to be printed, very costly to me, running, "Dic, quo pignore certes?" or something like that.

Ah, doctor! what is there not to see in this valley, in the line of majestic rock and cataract wildness? I have seen the genius loci today, sitting on an obelisk of granite (springing clean a thousand feet above the snow-line, so smooth that snow could not cling to his ashycolored poll), and, with his finger on his nose, looking this query at me: "Ah, my slim chap! so you've thought the White Mountains were some, have you? Where's your Notch now? Can you call to mind those warts on Coos County, Jefferson, and Adams, that you have written so much nonsense about? Don't you

wish you could make a bonfire of those handsome-typed books, in which you have cracked up baby-mountains as though they are full grown?" How cute and funny he looked! and how cheap I felt! But, then, there isn't room in Coos County for the Sierras; and the White Mountains are as big a dose of sublimity as the district can stand. Alas! I didn't think of this answer till the spirit had melted off from his seat on the south dome of the valley here, - a rock 4,967 feet sheer over the plain. No; I forget: it was on the obelisk, fifteen hundred feet higher than this, that he so impudently leered at New Hampshire and its mountainannalist.

You can have no conception of the variety and majesty of the rock-walls, cones, turrets, and domes of this valley. I supposed that grotesqueness would be the prominent characteristic of the cliffs and pillars. But the forms are very noble. Grotesqueness, or mere Egyptian mass and heaviness, is the exception, not the rule. We have persons in our party who have scoured Switzerland, and travelled extensively among the Peruvian Andes: and they say that no such rock-scenery is offered by Alps or Cordilleras.

And the waterfalls! I have been surfeited with the beauty and wildness of them. It has been an unusually wet spring, and the falls are all in full health and glee. While I write by this camp-fire, the roar is filling my ears of the Yo-Semite Fall,- - a mile distant, lovely as the comet of 1858, which it resembles in shape, that leaps 1,497 feet in one pitch, and then instantly takes another of 462, and then a third of 518. They are all visible in one view; and a more entrancing picture it is impossible to conceive. This is the fall, I believe, that called a tape-line, when he saw it last September. I am sorry that he could not have seen it as I have enjoyed it the last two days.

Last evening, before sunset, I visited the bridal-veil Falls, which leap 809 feet without a break, over a perpendicular granite wall. You see the curve aloft, as the tide pours off, at least twenty feet from the cliff; and the rainbows at the bottom would set up all France in ribbons the next year.

To-day I have explored one of the upper ravines of the valley, and have climbed above the Vernal Fall, where the Merced River, as large as the Androscoggin at Berlin, pours from a perpendicular granite rampart, 500 feet; and

back of this, half a mile distant, just under an obelisk 2,000 feet sheer, the river plunges 900 feet, which is called the Nevada Fall. And the walls that enclose this water-magnificence are more grand than the White-mountain Notch. Above the Nevada Fall I climbed 1,500 feet again, to see the snow-streaked turrets of the great Sierras. Two of the peaks visible there, and quite near, are 13,600 feet. On that path, Alpheus Bull, who is with me, killed a rattlesnake; and on that path, when we saw the gray old monarchs holding up the frost wherever it could loosen, I thought of my visit to Mount Hayes.

But the camp-fire burns low. Don't read this scrawl for any definite information, but only as a confession of friendship, and of sorrow, that, even among such material grandeurs, I am so far from one I respect and love so deeply. Give cordial regards to all your family. Add an especially warm greeting to Mr. Tweed. We are to start in the morning for San Francisco, where I have had great and undeserved success. Yet my heart is in New England. Do write again to your constant friend,

T. S. KING.

P. S.-We have left the Yo-Semite; and after two days' ride on horseback, are at Coulterville, where I am to mail the letter. I forgot to say that I visited the mammoth trees of Mariposas the day before we reached Yo-Semite, and enjoyed a glorious afternoon-hour with the stately old conservatives. I measured one that was ninety feet in girth at the ground, and saw more than two hundred that ranged from forty to seventy-five feet in circumference. They have a tawny bark, entirely different in color from any other trees of the California forests, and look leoline in hue as well as mass. Yet how our senses fool us! I was immensely disappointed in the first view of the ninety-feet Methuselah in the Mariposas Grove, seen among such a crowd of majestic forest-senators. But yesterday I saw one standing alone in a grove near Crane's Flat; and I said, " Here is a chap that comes up to the mark." How imposing in bulk and height he was, with his branches upstretched like a harp! I was truly overawed. Out came the tape-line. Surely he is over ninety feet! I put it around him. The fatal string showed only fifty-six. At home, among you big fellows, I wasn't much; here, they seem to think I am somebody. Nothing like the right setting! Again yours, T. S. K.

EVER since the world of periodical literature began, editors have been croaking over the sorrows of confinement to the sphere of their labors during the sultry months. “Oh, for a breath of the sea!" "What would we give for the luxury of mountain air which our friends are enjoying!" Dear reader, our TABLE should not groan over your journeyings from home. If we cannot share them, we will hope to greet you with the fruit of our toil, when you return, travel-stained and foot-weary, from your wanderings; rejoicing, if one word dropped from us, has commended itself to your hearts.

Book Notices.

ALUMNI ORATION AND POEM. A beautiful copy of the Oration and Poem delivered before the Alumni Association of Tufts College, July

12, 1865, lies on our table.

The Oration, entitled "The Demands of the

Hawk war.
Postmaster at a very small office.
Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature,
and was a member of the lower house of
Congress." Published by Walker, Fuller & Co.
Now, that the smoke and din of battle has

Hewitt Capen, is a finished specimen of oratory—refined, classic, embodying severe truths in clear and beautiful language, and clothing the loftiest sentiments of loyalty in words burning with eloquence.

Brief, terse and comprehensive, are the sentences which glance backwards to the time when our forefathers sought these shores- the time "when the glorious divinities, Liberty and Learning, walked hand in hand, and the wedded pair took passage in the Mayflower," — and forward to the sad, yet glorious events of later years, which are described in glowing words.

--

The long extract from the Poem, by George Curtis Waldo, which will be found in our present number, will, we trust, make our readers desire to peruse the whole poem. The tribute to our martyred President is beyond any thing

we have seen since his death.

The Oration and Poem are bound in one volume, beautifully printed on fine paper, and in different styles of plain and ornamental binding. Published and for sale by the New England Universalist Publishing House, 37 Cornhill, Boston, at $1.25 per copy.

LESSONS ON THE SUBJECT OF RIGHT AND

WRONG. Crosby & Ainsworth have published a neat little work for the use of Families and Schools, with the above title. Seventeen questions, at the end, are answered in the body of

the work.

"THE PRESIDENT'S WORDS." Under this simple and unaffected title, a book, small in size and attractive in appearance, commends itself to American readers, and embodies sufficient wisdom and good sense, to make it acceptable to our friends across the water.

His own record of his life, comprised in a few brief words, as given for Mr. Lanman's "Dictionary of Congress," tell, better than any other could have done, how simple and unobtrusive was his character. This brief autobiography stands thus:

Born, Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. Education defective. Profession, a lawyer. Have been a Captain in the Black

and losses. A man in the cars, the other day, affirmed, with foaming mouth and profane but an increase of taxes! Hare we gained speech, that we had gained nothing, by this war, nothing? Is it nothing that slavery has received its death-blow? Is it nothing that they who have so long been pining in bondage, have come out into the glorious light of Freedom? Free to choose the path of honorable labor — free to enjoy the sacred institutions of family rights and privileges-free to worship God? Is it nothing, that the overseer's lash is to be laid upon human backs no more? If not, then indeed have the martyred hosts lain down their lives in vain. In vain have the good and the brave fallen.

Thank God! there is not one true heart among us that will echo that intemperate speech. We know how vast has been the sacrifice. We also are learning to know how grand and glorious will be the result. Only learning? Yes, only learning. Great truths may strike us at first; but it takes time to incorporate their grandeur with our deepest thoughts to take them in as a part of our very being. In after years,

it will be almost difficult to realize that the great, hideous blot of slavery ever sullied the fair fame of our nation. And when that time comes, it will be when every disloyal heart shall have renounced its sin and folly, and risen into the great principles of freedom for all.

WASTE NOT.

O, waste not thou the smallest thing
Created by Divinity;

For grains of sands the mountains make,
And atomies infinity.

O, waste not thou the smallest time,
"Tis imbecile infirmity;

For well thou knowest, if aught thou knowest, That seconds form eternity.

Soul when made of spirit is of earth no more,
Nor time, but of eternity and heaven.
"Tis but when in the body, and bent down
To worldly ends, that human souls become
Objects of time, as most are, till the hour
Coines when the soul of man shall be made one
With God's spirit; and where shall woe be then?
Where sin? where suffering? when the mortal soul
Shall be divinized and eternized by
God's very spirit put upon it?