rubicund sir! You and I have been strangers hitherto; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closer intimacy, till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. 7. Mercy on you, man! The water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite into steam in the miniature Tophet, which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any other kind of dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good-by; and whenever you are thirsty, recollect that I keep a constant supply at the old stand. 8. Who next? Oh, my little friend, you are just let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life; take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now. 9. There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the paving-stones that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so much. as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine-cellars. 10. Well, well, sir, no harm done, I hope! Go, draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleasant titiilation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs and laps eagerly out of the trough. See how lightly he capers away again! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout? 11. Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence, and spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come all the way from Staunton, or somewhere along that way. No part of my business gives me more pleasure than the watering of cattle. Look! how rapidly they lower the water-mark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford time to breathe, with sighs of calm enjoyment! Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking vessel. An ox is your true toper. 12. I hold myself the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of a vast portion of its crime and anguish, which have gushed from the fiery fountains. of the still. In this mighty enterprise, the cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water! 13. Ahem! Dry work this speechifying, especially to all unpracticed orators. I never conceived, I never conceived, till now, what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, sir. But to proceed. 14. The Town Pump and the Cow! Such is the glorious partnership that shall finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consummation! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw his own heart and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength. 15. Then there will be no war of households. The husband and the wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy, a calm bliss of temperate affections, shall pass hand in hand through life, and lie down, not reluctantly, at its protracted close. To them the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of a drunkard. Their dead faces shall express what their spirits were, and are to be, by a lingering smile of memory and hope. 16. Drink, then, and be refreshed! The water is as pure and cold as when it slaked the thirst of the red hunter, and flowed beneath the aged bough, though now this gem of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow falls, but from the brick buildings. But, still is this fountain the source of health, peace, and happiness, and I behold, with certainty and joy, the approach of the period when the virtues of cold water, too little valued since our father's days, will be fully appreciated and recognized by all. DEFINITIONS.-1. Per-pe-tū'i-ty, endless duration. 2. Pro-můl'gat-ing, announcing. 3. Mu-niç-i-păl'i-ty, a division of a country or of a city. 4. Můs'ter-day, parade-day. Sun'dry, several. Una-dŭl ́ter-at-ed, pure, unmixed. Cōg'nae (pro. Kōn'yak), a French brandy. 6. Po-ta'tions, drinkings. Ru'bi-eund, inclining to redness. 7. To'phet, the infernal regions. 10. Tit-il-la'tion, tickling. 11. Re-plěn'ish, to fill again. 14. Mo-nop'o-lize, to obtain the whole. Con-sum-mā'tion, completion, termination. Squal'id, filthy. 15. Pro-trăet ́ed, delayed. 16. Slāked, quenched. XXX. GOOD-NIGHT. Samuel Griswold Goodrich (b. 1793, d. 1860) was born in Ridgefield, Conn. Mr. Goodrich is best known as "Peter Parley," under which assumed name he commenced the publication of a series of juvenile works about 1827. He edited "Parley's Magazine" from 1841 to 1854. He was appointed United States consul for Paris in 1848, and held that office four years. He was a voluminous writer, and his works are interesting and popular. His "Recollections of a Lifetime" was published in 1857, and "Peter Parley's Own Story" the year after his death. 1. THE sun has sunk behind the hills, A drowsy sound the woodland fills, Good-night-good-night. 2. The chattering jay has ceased his din, Good-night-good-night. 3. The sunlit cloud floats dim and pale; 4. The rose, so ruddy in the light, Bends on its stem all rayless now; And by its side a lily white, A sister shadow, seems to bow: Good-night-good-night. 5. The bat may wheel on silent wing, The boding owl his dirges sing; Good-night-good-night. |