Lest my parish should suppose we have forgotten graver matters in these lesser topics, I beg them to drop these trifles and read the following lesson for the day.

          Thetwo streams.

     Behold the rocky wall
     That down its sloping sides
     Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,
     In rushing river-tides!

     Yon stream, whose sources run
     Turned by a pebble’s edge,
     Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
     Through the cleft mountain-ledge.

     The slender rill had strayed,
     But for the slanting stone,
     To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braid
     Of foam-flecked Oregon.

     So from the heights of Will
     Life’s parting stream descends,
     And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
     Each widening torrent bends,

     From the same cradle’s side,
     From the same mother’s knee,
     —­One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
     One to the Peaceful Sea!

VII

Our landlady’s daughter is a young lady of some pretensions to gentility.  She wears her bonnet well back on her head, which is known by all to be a mark of high breeding.  She wears her trains very long, as the great ladies do in Europe.  To be sure, their dresses are so made only to sweep the tapestried floors of chateaux and palaces; as those odious aristocrats of the other side do not go draggling through the mud in silks and satins, but, forsooth, must ride in coaches when they are in full dress.  It is true, that, considering various habits of the American people, also the little accidents which the best-kept sidewalks are liable to, a lady who has swept a mile of them is not exactly in such a condition that one would care to be her neighbor.  But then there is no need of being so hard on these slight weaknesses of the poor, dear women as our little deformed gentleman was the other day.

—­There are no such women as the Boston women, Sir,—­he said.  Forty-two degrees, north latitude, Rome, Sir, Boston, Sir!  They had grand women in old Rome, Sir,—­and the women bore such men—­children as never the world saw before.  And so it was here, Sir.  I tell you, the revolution the Boston boys started had to run in woman’s milk before it ran in man’s blood, Sir!

But confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our streets!—­where do they come from?  Not out of Boston parlors, I trust.  Why, there is n’t a beast or a bird that would drag its tail through the dirt in the way these creatures do their dresses.  Because a queen or a duchess wears long robes on great occasions, a maid-of-all-work or a factory-girl thinks she must make herself a nuisance by trailing through the street, picking up and carrying about with her pah!—­that’s what I call getting vulgarity into your bones and marrow.