Since, on an eager mission bent,
I left my Irish home and you.

How passed those years, I will not say;
They cannot be by words renewed:
God washed their sinful parts away;
And blest be He for all their good!

With even mind and tranquil breast,
I left my youthful sister then;
And now in sweet religious rest
I see my sister there again.

Returning from that stormy world,

How pleasing is a sight like this! To see that bark with canvas furled Still riding in that port of peace.

Oh, darling of a heart that still,

By earthly joys so deeply trod, At moments bids its owner feel

The warmth of nature and of God!

Still be his care in future years

To learn of thee truth's simple way, And free from foundless hopes or fears, Serenely live, securely pray.

And when our Christmas days are past, And life's vain shadows faint and dim,

Oh, be my sister heard at last,

When her pure hands are raised for him!

A SONG OF FAREWELL.

A place in thy memory, dearest,

Is all that I claim,

To pause and look back when thou hearest
The sound of my name.
Another may woo thee nearer,
Another may win and wear;
I care not, though he be dearer,
If I am remembered there.

Could I be thy true lover, dearest,
Couldst thou smile on me,

I would be the fondest and nearest
That ever loved thee.

But a cloud o'er my pathway is looming
Which never must break upon thine;
And Heaven, which made thee all blooming,
Ne'er made thee to wither on mine.

Remember me not as a lover

Whose fond hopes are crossed,
Whose bosom can never recover
The light it has lost :-

As the young bride remembers the mother
She loves, yet never may see,
As a sister remembers a brother,
Oh, dearest, remember me.

GRIFFIS, WILLIAM ELLIOT, an American

clergyman and traveller, born in Philadelphia, September 17, 1843. He served in the Union army in 1863. After the war he entered Rutgers College, and graduated in 1869. The next year he was appointed to organize schools in Japan on the American plan. For a year he was Superintendent of Education at Echizen, and from 1872 to 1874 he was Professor of Physics in the Imperial University of Tokio. On his return to America he studied theology at New Brunswick, N. J., and at the Union Theological Seminary, New York. He then held successive pastorates in Schenectady, N. Y., Boston, Mass., and Ithaca, N. Y. While in Japan he prepared the New Japan Series of Reading Books (1872); and a Guide to Tokio and Yokohama (1874). After his return he published The Mikado's Empire (1876); The Japanese Fairy World (1880); Asiatic History (1881); Corea, the Hermit Nation (1882); Corea Without and Within (1885), and the Life of Matthew Galbraith Perry (1887). Mr. Griffis is a prolific writer and his subjects cover a wide field. Among his later works are: The Lily Among Thorns (1889); Honda the Samurai (1890); Sir William Johnson (1891); Japan in History, Folk-Lore and Art (1892); Brave Little Holland (1894); The Religions of Japan (1895); Townsend Harris (1895).

A RIDE ON THE TOKAIDO.

A frosty morning. Air keen, bracing, razor-like. Sky stainlessly clear. The Bay of Yedo glinting with unnumbered sunbeams. Blue sky, blue water, blue mountains, white Fuji. Our driver whips up the horses for sheer warmth, and we dash over the "iron bridge." A trifling bit of iron to our foreign eyes, but a triumph of engineering to the natives, who build of wood. We pass it, and then we are on the causeway that connects Yokohama with the great main road of the empire, the Tokaido. The causeway passed, and with foreign sights behind, real Japan appears. I am in a New World, not the Old. Everything is novel. I should like to be Argus: not less than a hundred eyes can take in all the sights. I should like to be a poet to express, and an artist to paint all I see. I wish I knew the language, to ask questions.

What a wonderful picture-book! A line of villages are strung along the road, like a great illuminated scroll full of gay, brilliant, merry, sad, disgusting, horrible, curious, funny, delightful pictures. What pretty children! Chubby, rosy, sparkling-eyed. The cold only made their feet pink and their cheeks red. How curiously dressed, with coats like long wrappers, and long, wide, square sleeves, which I know serve for pockets, for I just saw a boy buy some rice cracknels, hot from the toasting-coals, and put them in his sleeves. A girdle three inches wide binds the coat tight to the waist. The children's heads are shaved in all curious fashions. The way the babies are carried is an improvement upon the Indian fashion. The Japanese ko is the papoose reversed. He rides eyes front, and sees the world over his mother's shoulder. Japanese babies are lugged pickaback. Baby Gohachi is laid on mamma's back and strapped on, or else he is inclosed in her garment, and only his little shaven noddle protrudes behind his mother's neck. His own neck never gets wrenched off, and often neither head nor tiny toes are covered, though water is freezing. Here are adults and children running around barefoot. Nobody wears any hat. As for bonnets, a Japanese woman might study a life-time,

and go crazy in trying to find out their use.

Every one wears cotton clothes, and these of only one or two thicknesses.

None of the front doors are shut. All the shops are open. We can see some of the people eating their breakfast-beefsteak, hot coffee, and hot rolls for warmth? No: cold rice, pickled radishes, and vegetable messes of all unknown sorts. These we see. They make their rice hot by pouring tea almost boiling over it. A few can afford only hot water. Some eat millet instead of rice. Do they not understand dietetics or hygiene better? Or is it poverty? Strange people, these Japanese! Here are large round ovens full of sweet potatoes being steamed or roasted. A group of urchins are waiting around one shop, grown men around another, for the luxury. Twenty cash (one-fifth of a cent) in iron or copper coin, is the price of a good one. Many of the children, just more than able to walk themselves, are saddled with babies. They look like two-headed children. The fathers of these youngsters are coolies, or burden bearers, who wear a cotton coat of a special pattern, and knot their handkerchiefs over their foreheads. These heads of families receive wages of ten cents a day when work is steady. Here stands one with his shoulder-stick (tembimbo) with pendant baskets of plaited rope, like a scale-beam and pans. His shoulder is to be the fulcrum. On his daily string of copper cash he supports a family. The poor man's blessings and the rich man's grief are the same in every clime. In Japan the quiver of poverty is full, while the man of wealth mourns for an heir. The mother bears the bairns, but the children carry them. Each preceding child, as it grows older, must lug the succeeding baby on its back till able to stand. The rearing of a Japanese poor family is a perpetual game of leap-frog.

The houses are small, mostly one story, all of them of wood, except the fire-proof, mud-walled store-houses of the merchants. Most are clean inside. The floors are raised a foot above the ground, covered with mats. The wood-work is clean, as if often scrubbed. Yet the Japanese have no word for soap, and have never until