And more briery, too, you fancy!

Well, perhaps so. Thorns are ill, But Love draws them out so kindly,

One must trust him, come what will.

UNHINDERED.

Far westward is a snow-bound train;

Eastward, a soul is saying, “Though I have looked so long in vain

This is not love's delaying; For I have such a certain sense Of answer: it is prescience.”

The letter, from its barriers free,

Hastes to the love that waited. Lo! its first words: “So close are we,

That, if by snow belated, This message you are sure to feel The day before you break the seal."

Thus ran my thought, but like the wind
A strange, strong force swept close behind:
It swept the half of self from me,
And nerved my soul for mastery.
Doubt stood and questioned, “Is it God

Speaking thy soul from out the clod ?”
“No time for parleying," I said;
“Enough, I live, so lately dead.

True life, what is it but the thrust
Of all but duty in the dust;
The soul's brave motion; on, right on,
Without a prop to lean upon ?
The wind-like Power that swept me through
Moved me a simple deed to do:
To rise from out that dark of doom
And seek the nearest sufferer's room.
Nor looked I then without, within,
Nor dwelt on clouds, or care, or sin;
And, though the eye and hand alert
For others' sorrows, left my hurt,
That hurt held nothing of despair,
Nothing that I was loath to bear;
Nay, I no longer hated pain,
Since now I did not live in vain;
And saw all coming ill might be
God's challenge to fresh victory:
So high the sense, that come what might,
For self I lived not, but the right;
That, should death disappoint me even,
Unselfishness could be my heaven.

Oye, that never dwell apart,

Though half a globe may sever, Thus will it be, when heart to heart

Can show no sign forever! Though death-snows loom like Himalay, Yet soul to soul, unbarred, will fly.

JUNE SONG FOR THE OLD.

UNSAID.

The June is sweet with rose and song,
And all fair things to her belong.
Our sky is gray, and hers is blue;
Pray what have we with her to do?
Both naught and everything by right;
For June, with her transfusive might,
Quickening old Nature through and through,
Makes all things, even old hearts, new.

For days and weeks upon the lip has hung

A precious something for an absent ear; Some tender confidence but lately sprung,

Some dear confession that but one must hear.

HOW LIFE'S DARK IS LIGHTED.

The day was black with clouds and care,
No touch of brightness anywhere;
God seemed a myth, and life a thing
To which fear only made me cling.
I looked within, I looked without,

But nothing saw to light my doubt. “Oh, for the comfort of that friend,

Now at the earth's remotest end!
In such a frame, just he alone
Could, with his strength, my spi tone,
Or, through his kindred feeling, give
A solace to this life I live."

The heart repeats it over day by day,

And fancies how and when the words will fall; What answering smile upon the face will play,

What tender light will linger over all.
But eager eyes that watch for one alone

May grow reluctant; for the open gate
Lets in, with him, perchance a guest unknown,

On whom slow words of courtesy must wait.
Or when the presence waited for has come,

It may be dull or cold, too sad or light;
A look that shows the heart away from home

Can often put the dearest words to flight.
Perhaps the time of meeting, or the form,

May chill or wither what we longed to say; What fits the sunshine will not fit the storm,

What blends with twilight, jars with noon of day. KATE McPHELIM CLEARY.

Again, when all things seem our wish to serve,

Full opportunity may strike us dumb, May sink our precious thoughts in deep reserve,

And to the surface bid the lightest come.

K

And often ere our friend is out of sight,

We start; the thing can scarce be credited, We have been silent, or our words been trite,

And here's the dearest thing of all unsaid!

IN MARCH.

WHILE icy winds so pierce me to the core,

One thought can keep me sunny as the south; That spring is not behind, but just before

The one soft rapture missed at June's red mouth. Full as she is in every other bliss,

Her heaven of roses shuts the spring away. Large my content, on such a day as this,

That Ripeness is not looking toward Decay, But Desolution looking forth to Life.

Oh! that my soul esteemed her seasons so; Prizing sweet passions less than final strife,

With its one hope of all beyond the snow!

ATE MCPHELIM was born in Richibucto,

Kent county, N. B., August 20th, 1863. Her parents, James and Margaret McPhelim, were of Irish birth, the former with his brothers being distinguished for intellectual ability and business talents. They were extensively engaged in the timber business, and in 1856 her uncle, the Hon. Francis McPhelim was Postmaster-General of New Brunswick, and her father held the office of high sherift of the county. Her father's death, in 1865, left his widow with three small children and not very ample means, which she devoted to their education. In later years she was well repaid by the success that attended their literary efforts. Kate was educated at the Sacred Heart Convent, St. John, N. B., and later attended other convent schools in this country and in the old. Her pen which had been a source of diversion and delight to her since she was a little girl, became, when necessity required, an easy means of support. Her first published poem appeared when she was fourteen years old, and from that time to the present she has written almost continuously poetry and fiction. On February 26th, 1884, she was married to Michael T. Cleary, a young lumber merchant of Hubbell, Neb. Mr. and Mrs. Cleary have kept a hospitable home, welcoming as guests many distinguished men and women. Mrs. Cleary's stories are largely those of adventure and incident, and are published in newspapers quite as much as magazines. Her verses are delicate and often humorous and they are, above all, musical. Frank, unaffected and vivacious, Mrs. Cleary is a woman who would be noted anywhere for kindness of heart and clear cleverness of perception. She is a woman of thorough adaptability and is equally happy in society or solitude. She has three little children, whom she personally cares for. As a housewife she is more than thorough; she is original and experimental. Her face is comely, her height is medium, and her manners are cordial and simple.

C. W. M.

INTIMATIONS OF GENIUS.

A HAWTHORN bough in full and snowy bloom;
Strange birds that fitted ever by the ship;
Built on a broken branch, a little nest
Upon whose eggs brooded the parent bird;
Things unfamiliar floating on the tide-
All these to great Columbus gave the sign
Of the new land he was about to touch.
Such sights are manifold with thee, my soul!
Such hints are breaking on thine eager eye.
Strange fancies brood or else go winging past;
Fresh forms and growths of Nature's life appear;
Things old as time, yet to the old world, new;
The new expressions of accustomed thought.
Thou art already on a new world's verge,
That mighty world is Genius-ah! but know
Thou canst expect no better fate than his
Who found that other! poverty, neglect,
Follow the fate of him who finds a world,
Whether it be of matter or of thought.
Not now, not here, will be thy claim allowed,
But long years hence when thou hast left thy clay,
And all thy shackles moulder with its dust.
Then shall men know the greatness of thy work,
The littleness of those that lived with thee.
Through mortal hurts, immortal glories come, -
Push on to kneel upon thy new-found shore,
And take possession in thy Sovereign's name!

THE CORN.

When the merry April morn
Laughed the mad March winds to scorn,
In the swirl of sun and showers

Were a million legions born;
Ranked in rippled rows of green,
With a dusky ridge between,
O'er the western world was seen,

The great army of the corn.

And when in May-time days,
The buttercups' gold blaze
Firefly-like flashed o'er hill and hollow

And the pleasant prairie ways;
Each battalion from the sod,
Flags a-flutter and a-nod,
Nearer heaven, nearer God,

Crept to proffer perfect praise.

All its sweetness in the sunshine of the sleepy

summer hushes. And ever o'er it all, in a gold and crimson pall, Over mignonette grown tawny, and o’er grass a

bronzing brown, With a rustle and a whir, and a sad and solemn

stir, The leaves are drifting down, dear, oh, the leaves

are drifting down.

And when the June-time heat
Over all the land did fleet,
The melody of meadow-larks

In mellow music beat
Martial measures, to beguile
The royal rank and file,
That kept growing all the while,

To the sounds serene and sweet.

Come the mornings gray and chilly,

Come the nights serene and stilly,
Comes an airy midnight fairy, tracing fern, and

rose, and lily,
On the window-panes that glisten,

While in dreams the children listen
To the swing of skates that ring, and shouts that

echo shrilly, And ever, ever still, in the hollow, on the hill, By the roadside, where the sun-flower lifts aloft a

ruined crown, Like the dear old dreams of youth, dreams of

honor, fame and truth, Forever falling from us—do the leaves keep drift

ing down.

When the fierce sun of July
Rode relentlessly on high,
And in the creeks the water bright

All drop by drop ran dry;
nd, as from a furnace uth,
The hot wind of the south,
Racked the corn with cruel drouth,

It seemed that it would die.

But the nights benign and blue Brought the blessed balm of dew, And baptized the corn in beauty,

Ever fresh and ever new; Till, in amber August light, 'Twas so golden that you might Fancy Midas touched the bright,

Tender tassels it out-threw.

Now the sweet September's here,
And the plover pipeth clear,
And each shattered sheath of satin

Holds a guerdon of good cheer;
And the corn all ripe and high,
Taller far than you or I,
Standeth spear-like to the sky,

In the sunset of the year!

Go drifting, drifting down, dear-with the leaves

go drifting down!

BEFORE THE BAL MASQUE.

AND so you have found an old programme.

Throw it away, my dear; In its silken sheath it has lain there hid, In that old box with the sandal-wood lid,

This many and many a year.

DRIFTING DOWN.

Gone the ripple and the rushes

Of the love-songs of the thrushes,
Gone the roses in the closes of the garden, and the

blushes
Of the shy verbena creeping
By the old south wall, and steeping

Let us look! A galop with George Bellair.

Bless you, he's tamer now; A decorous deacon, and leads at prayer, And, just to look at him, one would swear

To dance he never knew how.