manhood; when this war has ceased, and a hundred thousand colored men can show wounds received in heroic service, or give other evidence that they have bravely fought for our country, I will put these men before the nation, and say, "they have given their blood to your blood; will you let them or their kind be trampled under foot any more?" VIII. VERY DARK. Our boys died game. quietly, "I will if I can." His arm hung shattered by his side, and he was bleeding to death. His last words brought tears to the eyes of all around. He murmured, "It grows very dark, mother-very dark." Poor fellow, his thoughts were far away at his peaceful home in Ohio.-Cincinnati Guzette. One was ordered to fall in rank. He answered The crimson tide was ebbing, and the pulse grew weak and faint, And he murmured, when the life-light had died out to just a spark, There were tears in manly eyes, then, and manly heads were bowed, Though the balls flew thick around them, and the cannons thundered loud; They gathered round the spot where the dying soldier lay, To catch the broken accents he was struggling then to say And a change came o'er the features where death had set his mark, "It is growing very dark, mother-very, very dark.” Far away his mind had wandered, to Ohio's hills and vales, Where the loved ones watched and waited with that love that never fails; He was with them as in childhood, seated in the cottage door, He was dreaming of his mother, that her loving hand was pressed That her lips were now imprinting a kiss upon his cheek, And the eye that once had kindled, flashed forth with patriot light, Gather round him, soldiers, gather, fold his hands and close his eyes, IX. THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. BY W. C. BRYANT. Come, let us plant the apple-tree! Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mould with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As, round the sleeping infant's feet, What plant we in the apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. We plant upon the sunny lea A shadow for the noontide hour, What plant we in the apple-tree? What plant we in the apple-tree ? And redden in the August noon, And drop as gentle airs come by That fan the blue September sky; While children, wild with noisy glee, And when above this apple-tree The winter stars are quivering bright, And winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, The fruitage of this apple-tree Where men shall wonder at the view, And long hours passed in summer play Each year shall give this apple-tree A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And time shall waste this apple-tree. What shall the tasks of mercy be, "Who planted this old apple-tree?” And, gazing on its mossy stem, Born in the rude, but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple-tree." X. THE UNION. D. S. DICKINSON.- -1861. Give up the Union? Its name shall be heard with veneration amid the roar of Pacific's waves, away upon the rivers of the North and East, where liberty is divided from monarchy, and be wafted in E gentle breezes upon the Rio Grande. It shall rustle in the harvest, and wave in the standing corn, on the extended prairies of the West, and be heard in the bleating folds and lowing herds upon a thousand hills. It shall be with those who delve in mines, and shall hum in the manufactories of New England, and in the cotton gins of the South. It shall be proclaimed by the stars and stripes in every sea of earth, as the American Union, one and indivisible; upon the great thoroughfares, wherever steam drives and engines throb and shriek, its greatness and perpetuity shall be hailed with gladness. It shall be lisped in the earliest words, and ring in the merry voices of childhood, and swell to heaven upon the song of maidens. It shall live in the stern resolve of manhood, and rise to the mercy-seat upon woman's gentle prayer. Holy men shall invoke its perpetuity at the altars of religion, and it shall be whispered in the last accents of expiring age. Thus shall survive and be perpetuated the American Union, and when it shall be proclaimed that time shall be no more, and the curtains shall fall, and the good shall be gathered to a more perfect union, still may the destiny of our dear land recognize the conception of the poet of her primitive days: "Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along, And a voice, as of angels, enchantingly sung, The queen of the world and child of the skies." XI. A MIRROR FOR TRAITORS. JOSEPH HOLT. —1861. Let no man imagine that, because this rebellion has been made by men renowned in our civil and military history, it is the less guilty or the less courageously to be resisted. It is precisely that class of men who have subverted the best governments that have ever existed. The purest spirits that have lived in the tide of times, the noblest institutions that have arisen to bless our race, have found among those in whom they had most confided, and whom they had most |