“Then I crept gently on, and I moistened the feet
    Of a shrub which infolded a nest—­
  The bird in return sang his merriest song,
    And showed me his feathery crest.

  “How joyous I felt in the bright afternoon,
    When the sun, riding off in the west,
  Came out in red gold from behind the green trees
    And burnished ray tremulous breast!

  “My memory now can return to the time
    When the breeze murmured low plaintive tones,
  While I wasted the day in dancing away,
    Or playing with pebbles and stones.

  “It points to the hour when the rain pattered down,
    Oft resting awhile in the trees;
  Then quickly descending it ruffled my calm,
    And whispered to me of the seas!

  “’Twas then the first wish found a home in my breast
    To increase as time hurries along;
  ’Twas then I first learned to lisp softly the words
    Which I now love so proudly—­’Press on!’

  “I’ll make wider my bed, as onward I tread,
    A deep mighty river I’ll be—­
  ‘Press on’ all the day will I sing on my way,
    Till I enter the far-spreading sea.”

  It ceased.  A youth lingered beside its green edge
    Till the stars in its face brightly shone;
  He hoped the sweet strain would re-echo again—­
    But he just heard a murmur—­“Press on!”

* * * * *

[FROM DICKENS’S HOUSEHOLD WORDS.]

ADDRESS FROM AN UNDERTAKER TO THE TRADE

(STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL.)

I address you, gentlemen, as an humble individual who is much concerned about the body.  This little joke is purely a professional one.  It must go no farther.  I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket.  Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves—­everybody else as well as undertakers.  Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress.  So is spiritual provision; I mean the maintenance of all our reverends and right reverends.  I am quite sure that both lawyers’ charges and the revenues of some of the chief clergy are very little, if any, more reasonable than our own prices.  Pluralities are as bad as crowded gravepits, and I don’t see that there is a pin to choose between the church and the churchyard.  Sanitary revolutionists and incendiaries accuse us of gorging rottenness, and battening on corruption.  We don’t do anything of the sort, that I see, to a greater extent than other professions, which are allowed to be highly respectable.  Political, military, naval, university, and clerical parties, of great eminence, defend abuses in their several lines when profitable.  We can’t do better than follow such good examples.  Let us stick up for business, and—­I was