fairly ablaze, we danced like young satyrs' round the flame, shouting at our very loudest when the fire caught the tar barrel at the top, and the yellow pile of blaze threw its lurid glare over hill and houses and town and the far-away bay and wooded hills.

Afterwards I have recollection of an hour or more in a snug square parlor, which is given over to us youngsters and our games, dimly lighted, as was most fitting; but a fire upon the hearth flung out a red glory on the floor and on the walls.

Was it a high old time, or did we only pretend that it was?

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Didn't I know little Floy in that pea green silk, with my hands clasped round her waist and my eyes blinded -ever so fast? Didn't I give Dick an awful pinch in 15 the leg, when I lay perdu' under the sofa in another one of those tremendous games? Didn't the door that led into the hall show a little open gap from time to timeold faces peering in, looking very kindly in the red firelight flaring on them? And didn't those we loved best 20 look oftenest? Don't they always?

Well, well—we were fagged at last: little Floy in a snooze before we knew it; Dick, pretending not to be sleepy, but gaping in a prodigious way. But the romps and the fatigue made sleep very grateful when 25 it came at last yet the sleep was very broken; the turkey and the nuts had their rights, and bred stupendous Thanksgiving dreams. What gorgeous dreams they were, to be sure!

I seem to dream them again to-day.

Once again I see the old, revered gray head bowing in utter thankfulness, with the hands clasped.

Once again, over the awful tide of intervening years -so full, and yet so short-I seem to see the shimmer

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of her golden hair—an aureole1 of light blazing on the borders of boyhood: "For this, and all thy bounties, our Father, we thank thee."

XXXVIII.

INTO THE BETTER LAND.

BY ABRAM J. RYAN.'

OUT of the shadows of sadness,
Into the sunshine of gladness,

Into the light of the blest;
Out of a land very dreary,
Out of the world very weary,
Into the rapture of rest.

Out of to-day's sin and sorrow,
Into a blissful to-morrow,

Into a day without gloom;
Out of a land filled with sighing,
Land of the dead and the dying,

Into a land without tomb.

Out of a life of commotion,
Tempest-swept oft as the ocean,

Dark with the wrecks drifting o'er,
Into a land calm and quiet,
Never a storm cometh nigh it,

Never a wreck on its shore.

Out of a land in whose bowers
Perish and fade all the flowers,

Out of the land of decay,

Into the Eden where fairest

Of flowerets, and sweetest and rarest,
Never shall wither away.

Out of the world of the wailing,
Thronged with the anguished and ailing,
Out of the world of the sad,
Into the world that rejoices-

World of bright visions and voices-
Into the world of the glad.

I THINK I knew General Washington intimately and thoroughly, and were I called on to delineate his character, it should be in terms like these:

His mind was great and powerful, without being of the very first order; his penetration strong, though not 20 so acute as that of a Newton, Bacon, or Locke; and as far as he saw, no judgment was ever sounder. It was slow in operation, being little aided by invention or

imagination, but sure in conclusion. Hence the common remark of his officers, of the advantage he derived from councils of war, where, hearing all suggestions, he selected whatever was best; and certainly no general ever planned his battles more judiciously. But if de- · ranged during the course of the action, if any member of his plan was dislocated by sudden circumstances, he was slow in readjustment. The consequence was that he often failed in the field, and rarely against an enemy in station, as at Boston and New York. He was inca-10 pable of fear, meeting personal dangers with the calm

est unconcern.

Perhaps the strongest feature in his character was prudence; never acting until every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed; refraining if he's saw a doubt, but, when once decided, going through with his purpose whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his 20 decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high-toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendancy over it. If ever, however, it broke its bounds, he was most 25 tremendous in his wrath.

In his expenses he was honorable, but exact; liberal in contribution to whatever promised utility, but frowning and unyielding on all visionary projects and all unworthy calls on his charity. His heart was not warm 30 in its affections; but he exactly calculated every man's value, and gave him a solid esteem proportioned to it. His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one could wish, his deportment easy, erect, and noble;

the best horseman of his age, and the most graceful figure that could be seen on horseback.

Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation, his colloquial talents were not above medioc- 5 rity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short, and embarrassed. Yet he wrote readily, rather diffusely, in an easy and correct style. This he had acquired by conversation with the 10 world, for his education was merely reading, writing, and common arithmetic, to which he added surveying at a later day.

His time was employed in action chiefly, reading little, and that only in agriculture and English history. His correspondence became necessarily extensive, and, with journalizing" his agricultural proceedings, occupied most of his leisure hours within doors.

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On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect, in nothing bad, in few points indifferent; and it may 20 truly be said that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great, and to place him in the same constellation with whatever worthies have merited from man an everlasting remembrance.

For his was the singular destiny and merit of leading 25 the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quiet and orderly train; and of scrupu-30 lously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.