REV. OLIVER CRANE, D. D.

LIVER CRANE, clergyman, oriental scholar

OLIV

and poet, was born July 12th, 1822, in West Bloomfield, now Montclair, N. J.; graduated at Yale University in 1845 and Union Theological Seminary, New York City, in 1848. He has spent, at different periods, about nine years in the Turkish Empire, and has traveled extensively in different countries. He has been pastor of several churches in America, but since 1870 he has devoted his time largely to literary efforts. He published, in 1888, a unique translation of the Æneid of Virgil in dactylic hexameter, lineal and literal, and the following year a volume entitled "Minto and Other Poems." His varied scholarship has won for him repeated recognition, the honorary degree of M. A. having been conferred upon him by his Alma Mater in 1864, of M. D. by the Eclectic Medical College of New York City in 1867, of D. D. by the University of Wooster, Ohio, in 1880, and LL.D. by the Westminster College, of Fulton, Mo., in 1889. He was elected a corporate member of the American Oriental Society in 1865, and numerous other societies and associations since. He now lives in Boston in comparative retirement, still occupying his time in literary pursuits. H. B. C.

SWEET ARE THE USES OF ADVERSITY.
Shakespeare's "As You Like It."-Act 1, Scene 2.

SHAKESPEARE, thou hast nodded too,
Else thou wast but jesting,
Or wast speaking to the few,
Who, incapable of testing,
Thought, forsooth, it must be true.

Any honest mind can see

How absurd is much assertion,

And its only valid plea

Is, it was a fool's diversion

To applaud adversity.

Can adversity have use,

When the world a nuisance votes it?

Any man who, in excuse,

Other than at discount quotes it,

In plain English, is a goose.

Tell the debtor he is blest

When his property is taken, When, by poverty oppressed,

Home and all must be forsaken; He will tell you, "I know best."

Tell the prisoner in chains,

Sweet is his enforced confinement; He will tell you all his gains, By subservient resignment, Are his troubles for his pains.

To the man who, scorched by heat, Sees his house reduced to ashes, Shakespeare's silly saw repeat.

He will tell you forty lashes On his bare back are as sweet.

Tell the soldier in the ranks,

Vain is he by glory tempted, Victories are Fortunes blanks, And defeat, her prize preëmpted; Scorn will be his only thanks.

Yet adversity, no doubt,

Has advantages and uses; But it somehow comes about,

That, when slipping out of nooses, Fools are in and rogues are out.

Thieves and swindlers understand
Well the secret how to use it;
Its resources they command,
And, when victims would refuse it,
Bring it on them underhand.

Call not, then, its uses sweet; Shakespeare, it was downright lying, And the man who will repeat

What is common sense denying, Must be styled an arrant cheat.

DIES IRE.

DAY of judgment, awe-investing,
Flames the course of time arresting,
Seer and Sibyl so attesting.

What shall be the awful quaking,
When the Judge, the dead awaking,
Inquest strict of all is making?

Peals the trump a blast astounding, Through sepulchral regions sounding, All the judgment-throne surrounding.

Death aghast and nature trembling, When each creature shall, assembling, Give account without dissembling.

Then shall be the volume tendered,
Holding all by sin engendered,
Whence the world's award is rendered.

E'

EUGENIA PARHAM.

'UGENIA PARHAM was born in her father's country house, near Paducah, Ky., which home bore the poetic title of "Idlewild." Her father Dr. W. H. Parham, was a physician of ability. Dr. Parham moved to Blandville, Ky., in 1872, and it was at that place that much of Eugenia's early education was acquired. Her father, however, died before her education was completed, and she was largely left to her own resources. It is an interesting fact that a large proportion of successful women, as well as men, especially in the line of literature, were in early life teachers, and it was in this way that Miss Parham continued her education. The principal of the Blandville school soon perceived her great thirst for knowledge and her decided ability to acquire it, so he put her to teaching while she was yet a student under him. Miss Parham's success was such that she was invited to teach in the city schools of Paducah, where she taught for six years. Her religious faith is that of the Disciples of Christ. When the Disciples established West Kentucky College, she was made principal of the normal department, which she conducted three years. Later she became principal of the department of literature in the Judson Female Institute, in Marion, Ala. While teaching has been Miss Parham's chosen profession, circumstances at one time caused her to give some attention to journalism. Before she moved to Paducah, she edited for a time a weekly paper called the Blandville News. J. W. L.

TWO LIVES.

Two sons from out two distant homes one day Went bravely forth in life to win a way.

And one had wealth to shield him from rough cares; The other, poorer, took his mother's prayers.

One sought and found high honors at his hand; One fought to gain a place whereon to stand.

One found his path thick-strewn with roses sweet; One struggled long through thorns, with bleeding feet.

One came at noon, wealth gone and flowers dead; One stood in calm with sunshine round his head.

One fell beneath temptation's wiles, unarmed; The other stood amid all dangers still unharmed.

VANISHED.

WHEN suddenly there passes from your sight,
And from the world around you some sweet face,
Which you have looked to as the ideal grace
Of your best being, and the guiding light
Of each and every common day and night,

By which to measure your ambitition's pace,
Your soul's high aims, your hopes for nobler ways,
Your love of truth, your purer sense of right
And better faith in men,--and when, missed so,
You realize that, as the years unfold,
You shall not greet it in the ebb and flow
Of all the human faces, nor behold

It in your loneliest hour, then you may know
How great a void so small a world may hold.

OVERRULED.

We look into to-morrow, and we dream
We see its hours swift-winged with glad-voiced

cheer

Of happiness long sought, and faintly hear The imagined sound of melodies, which seem To float triumphant to our human realm;

But when the night has passed, unto our ear Come tones, faint-touched, from chords no mortal

seer

Has heard, and through the strange, new day there gleam

Visions of things we had not planned nor known;
New forms, new faces greet us where the old
Were wont to be, and where yesterday shone
Our sweetest love light, all is gray and cold;
Among the ashes of our hopes alone
We sit and read the tale to-day has told.

A HAPPY WOMAN.

"I SHALL be happy!" she said,

As she gathered the poppies white and red. “I will pull the blue grapes over the wall And sit in the shade and eat them all, And count the butterflies one by one, As they fly along in the morning sun. I shall be happy," she said.

"I shall be happy," she said,

As they placed the orange-wreath on her head; "Life will be lovely and love will be true, I shall drink the wine without the rue; I will share my joy with the poor and sad And help to make the world more glad. I shall be happy," she said.

THE Woods are bare, which erst awhile were green
And wooing sweet the song-birds and the sky
To cradle in their leafy tops so high;
The lonely hills against the horizon lean,
And desolate the brown fields lie between,
Unkissed by any glow of fruit, or sigh

Of perfumed breeze; far as the longing eye
Can reach, nothing but solemn gloom is seen;
And this is nature's death! its after thought
Of life, when, with its brilliant dreams all done,
Its phantasies all faded into naught,
Ambitions spent, and gilded hopes long spun,
It stands upon the border-world, deep fraught
With awe at the eternity new won.

THE PAST.

OH the dear, dead days that sleep In the tangled vales so deep

Of the Past!

And the faiths, and loves, and dreams Forever by their shadowy gleams Overcast!

Oh, the hopes that in them lie, Coffined in a mute good bye

Of despair!

And the faded flowers that rest

In still hands that we have pressed, Hands, so fair!

Dear, dead days! forever gone! Whither, we can know not; God alone

Holds the key

Of thy keeping; but the soul Shall thy treasures all unroll In eternity.

THE OLD YEAR.

AGAIN the Christmas bells have rung

The old year out forever;

Its shadow on the white sands flung

Shall cross Time's threshold never.

No more its breathing hours shall swell
With hope, or fear, or sorrow;

Nor pæan grand, nor dirge, shall tell
For it a new to-morrow.

Its waves have swept the strand where, lo!
There can be no returning;

Eternal silence guides it, we but know
Love's torch beyond is burning.

The mystery of its hidden trust,
A mystery now no longer,
Has told of ashes unto dust,

Of faiths grown weak, or stronger.

Of coffin-lids beneath which lie
Vain forms of human greatness;
Dumb questioners of Life are they,
Mute prayers for God's completeness;

Has told of springtime's bloom of light, And flowers of summer's wooing, Now drifted into heaps of white,

That lonely graves are strewing;

Of cross, and crown, and scepter bright, All fallen low together;

Emblems of lives whose silent flight

Went, asking, "Why" and "whither."

We see not, hear not, but some hand
The untried way is showing;
And He who gives and takes shall send
The reaping for the sowing.

Like life, like death, we trust that still
Beyond us and our dreaming,

There lies a "Somewhere" that shall thrill
With newer beauty gleaming;

Where mist and shadow, dust and death
Our clearer sight concealing

Shall vanish but as mortal breath,
Eternity revealing.

NIGHT.

And yet in heaven, they say,
Thou shalt not ever be;
No night shall break the day
Of that eternity.

No night! Oh, glorious one!

Oh, hidden thought of God! What beauties then, undone,

Shall fall from out thy shroud?

-Night.