CLINTON SCOLLARD. SCOLLARD, CLINTON, a popular American poet; born at Clinton, New York, September 18, 1860. He was graduated from Hamilton College, in his native town, in 1881, and for several years subsequently was a graduate student at Harvard University. He became Professor of English Literature in Hamilton College in 1888, but resigned his position in 1894. He has travelled abroad extensively, but his home has always been at Clinton. His first volume of verse, "Pictures in Song," appeared in 1884, and has been followed by "With Reed and Lyre" (1887); "Old and New World Lyrics" (1888); "Giovio and Giulia" (1891); "Songs of Sunrise Lands" (1892); "Hills of Song" (1895); "Skenandoa" (1896); "A Boy's Book of Rhyme" (1896); "A Christmas Garland" (1897). His prose comprises two volumes of travel, "Under Summer Skies" (1892); "On Sunny Shores" (1894); "A Man at Arms," a romance (1898); "A Son of a Tory" (1897). A VENETIAN SUNSET. On the bright bosom of the broad lagoon And watched the fading of the afternoon In golden calm away. The water caught the fair faint hues of rose, Then flamed to ruby fire That touched and lingered on the marble snows A graceful bark, with saffron sails outflung, And poised a moment like a bird, and hung A dull gun boomed, and, as the echo ceased, Lambent and large from out the darkened east, Poems used by permission of Copeland & Day. A BELL. HAD I the power To cast a bell that should from some grand tower, At the first Christmas hour, Outring, And fling A jubilant message wide, The forged metals should be thus allied;- But soft Humility, and rich-veined Hope And there should be White Charity, And silvery Love, that knows not Doubt nor Fear, To make the peal more clear; And then to firmly fix the fine alloy, There should be Joy! THE BOWERS OF PARADISE. O TRAVELLER, who hast wandered far Friend, underneath whatever skies MY MAY. HARK to the joyful sound! to the revel of rills! There springeth a fire at the root of growing things; MICHAEL SCOTT. SCOTT, MICHAEL, a Scottish descriptive writer; born in Glasgow, October 30, 1789; died in 1835. He was educated at the high school and at the university of his native city. In 1806, at the age of seventeen, he was sent to Jamaica, where he was employed in the management of several estates until 1810, when he joined a mercantile house in Kingston. With the exception of a visit to his native country in 1817-18, when he married, he remained in Jamaica until 1822, when he finally returned home and became perinanently resi dent in his native city, where he died at the age of forty-six. He is known to the literary world as the author of "Tom Cringle's Log," begun in "Black wood's Magazine" in 1829, and afterward published as a separate work in two volumes. This work was published incognito "by a native of Glasgow ;" and it was not until after his death that the secret was fully made known even to his publishers. THE CHASE OF THE SMUGGLER. (From "Tom Cringle's Log.") THE crib in which I was confined was as dark as pitch, and, as I soon found, as hot as the Black Hole in Calcutta. I don't pretend to be braver than my neighbors, but I would pluck any man by the beard who called me coward. In my small way I had in my time faced death in various shapes; but it had always been above-board, with the open heaven overhead, and generally I had a goodly fellowship in danger, and the eyes of others were upon me. No wonder, then, that the sinking of the heart within me, which I now experienced for the first time, was bitter exceedingly, and grievous to be borne. Cooped up in a small suffocating cabin, scarcely eight feet square, and not above four feet high, with the certainty of being murdered, as I conceived, were i to try to force my way on deck; and the knowledge that all my earthly prospects, all my dreams of promotion, were likely to be blasted, and forever ruined by my sudden spiriting away, not to take into the heavy tale the misery which my poor mother and my friends must suffer, when they came to know it - and "Who will tell this to thee, Mary?" rose to my throat, but could get no further for a cursed bump that was like to throttle me. Why should I blush to own it-when the gypsy, after all, jinked an old rich goutified coffee-planter at the eleventh hour, and married me, and is now the mother of half-a-dozen little Cringles or so? However, I made a strong effort to bear my misfortunes like a man, and, folding my arms, I sat down on a chest to abide my fate, whatever that might be, with as much. composure as I could command, when half-a-dozen cockroaches flew flicker, flicker against my face. For the information of those who have never seen this delicious insect, I take leave to mention here, that, when full grown, it is a large dingy brown-colored beetle, about two inches long, with six legs, and two feelers as long as its body. It has a strong antihysterical flavor, something between rotten cheese and assafoetida, and seldom stirs abroad when the sun is up, but lies concealed in the most obscure and obscene crevices it can creep into; so that, when it is seen, its wings and body are thickly covered with dust and dirt of various shades, which any culprit who chances to fall asleep with his mouth open is sure to reap the benefit of, as it has a great propensity to walk into it, partly for the sake of the crumbs adhering to the masticators, and also, apparently, with a scientific desire to inspect by accurate admeasurement, with the aforesaid antennæ, the state and condition of the whole potato-trap. At the same time I felt something gnawing the toe of my boot, which I inferred to be a rat another agreeable customer for which I had a special abhorrence; but, as for beetles of all kinds, from my boyhood up, they had been an abomination unto me, and a cockroach is the most abominable of all beetles; so between the two I was speedily roused from my state of supine, or rather dogged endurance; and, forgetting the geography of my position, I sprang to my feet, whereby I nearly fractured my skull against the low deck above. I first tried the skylight; it was battened down then the companion hatch; it was locked but the ladder leading up to it being cooler than the noisome vapor bath I had left, I remained standing on it, trying to catch a mouthful of fresh air through the joints of the door. All this while we had been slipping along shore with the land-wind on our beam, at the rate of five or six knots, but so gently and silently, that I could distinctly hear the roar of the surf, as the long smooth swell broke on the beach, which, from the loudness of the noise, could not be above a mile to windward of us. I perceived at the same time that the schooner, although going free, did not keep away nor take all the advantage of the landwind to make his easting, before the sea-breeze set down, that he might have done, so that it was evident that he did not intend to beat up, so as to fetch the Crooked Island Passage, which would have been his course, had he been bound for the States; but was standing over to the Cuba shore, at that time swarming with pirates. It was now good daylight, and the terral gradually died away, and left us rolling gunwale under, as we rose and fell on the long seas, with our sails flapping, bulkheads creaking and screaming, and mainboom jig-jigging, as if it would have torn everything to pieces. I could hear my friend Obed walking the deck, and whistling manfully for the sea-breeze, and exclaiming from time to time in his barbarous lingo, "Souffle, souffle, San Antonio." But the saint had no bowels, and there we lay roasting until ten o'clock in the forenoon. During all this period, Obed, who was shortsighted, as I learned afterwards, kept desiring his right arm, Paul Brandywine, to keep a bright look-out for the sea-breeze to windward, or rather to the eastward, for there was no wind "because he knowed it oftentimes tumbling down right sudden and dangerous at this season about the corner of the island hereabouts; and the pride of the morning often brought a shower with it fit to level a maize plat smooth as his hands." "No black clouds to windward yet, Paul?" Paul could see nothing, and the question was repeated three or four times. "There is a small black cloud about the size of my hand to windward, sir, right in the wake of the sun, just now, but it won't come to anything; I sees no signs of any wind." "And Elijah said to his servant, Go up and now look towards the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times: And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand." I knew what this foreboded, which, as I thought, was more than friend Obed did; for he shortened no sail, and kept all his kites abroad, for no use as it struck me, unless he wished to wear them out by flapping against the masts. He was indeed a |