Chapter I: Preface

The "Farm Ballads" have met with so kind and general a reception as to encourage the publishing of a companion volume.

In this book, also, the author has aimed to give expression to the truth, that with every person, even if humble or debased, there may be some good, worth lifting up and saving; that in each human being, though revered and seemingly immaculate, are some faults which deserve pointing out and correcting; and that all circumstances of life, however trivial they appear, may possess those alternations of the comic and pathetic, the good and bad, the joyful and sorrowful, upon which walk the days and nights, the summers and winters, the lives and deaths, of this strange world.

He would take this occasion to give a word of thanks to those who have staid with him through evil and good report; who have overlooked his literary faults for the sake of the truths he was struggling to tell; and who have believed--what he knows--that he is honest.

With these few words of introduction, the author launches this second bark upon the sea of popular opinion; grinds his axe, and enters once more the great forest of Human Nature, for timber to go on with his boat-building.

W.C.

CONTENTS.

_FARM LEGENDS:_ PAGE

_The School-master's Guests._ 17

_Three Links of a Life._ 26

_Rob, the Pauper._ 40

_The Three Lovers._ 51

_The Song of Home._ 63

_Paul's run off with the Show._ 69

_The Key to Thomas' Heart._ 73

_The Doctor's Story._ 76

_The Christmas Baby._ 80

_DECORATION-DAY POEMS:_

_Cover Them Over._ 87

_The Loves of the Nations._ 92

_COLLEGE POEMS:_

_Rifts in the Cloud._ 103

_Brothers and Friends._ 113

_Our March through the Past._ 121

_That Day we Graduated._ 131

_POEMS OF SORROW AND DEATH:_

_The Burning of Chicago._ 137

_The Railroad Holocaust._ 145

_Ship "City of Boston"._ 147

_Gone Before._ 149

_The Little Sleeper._ 151

_'Tis Snowing._ 153

_POEMS OF HOPE:_

_Some Time._ 157

_The Good of the Future._ 160

_The Joys that are Left._ 161

_When my Ship went Down._ 163

_To the Carleton Circle._ 164

_THE SANCTUM KING._ 169

_STRAY STANZAS:_

_Lines to James Russell Lowell._ 185

_To Monsieur Pasteur._ 185

_To a Young Lady._ 186

_Death of the Richest Man._ 186

_To the Smothered Miners._ 186

_The Deathless Song._ 187

_On a "Poet"-Critic._ 187

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

"_They stood in the Shade of the western Door_" Frontispiece

"_A Class in the Front, with their Readers,
were telling, with difficult Pains_" 19

"_And nodded obliquely, and muttered, 'Them 'ere
is my Sentiments tew'_" 23

"_When grave Baw Beese, the Indian Chief, had beaded
the Neck of the pale-face Miss_" 27

"_Hiding e'en from the Dark his Face_" 35

"_E'en in your Desolation you are not quite unblest_" 37

"_Himself on the Door-stone idly sitting_" 41

"_He runs and stumbles, leaps and clambers_" 45

_Rob, the Pauper_ 50

"_And Bess said, 'Keep still, for there's Plenty of Room'_" 55

"_Several Times he, with Policy stern, repressed a
Desire to break out of the Churn_" 57

"_And there his plump Limbs through the Orifice swung_" 59

"_Alice, the country Maiden, with the sweet loving Face_" 65

"_My Boy! come in! come in!_" 71

"_The Mother, who carries the Key to Thomas' Heart_" 74

"_I threw them as far as I could throw_" 78

_The Christmas Baby_ 80, 81, 82, 83

"_They who in Mountain and Hill-side and Dell_" 90

"_And does Columbia love_ her _dead_?" 93

"_When a Man throws the Treasures of his Life_" 97

"_E'en when was fixed, with far-resounding strokes_" 109

"_How happy are We!_" 119

"_'Twas a bright, glorious March! full of Joys
that were New_" 123

"_And loudly wild Accents of Terror came pealing from
Thousands of Throats_" 141

_Ship "City of Boston"_ 147

_Some Time_ 157

"_With the World, Flesh, and--Lad of General Work_" 171

"_The Public Heart's Prime-ministers are We_" 179

FARM LEGENDS.

FARM LEGENDS.

THE SCHOOL-MASTER'S GUESTS.