TO AN OLD DRESS. "And slight withal may be the things that bring Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside forever." My poor old dress! how long How strange would'st thou appear! They'd smile thine ancient form, And faded hues to see, But more than costly robe Art thou, old friend, to me. O! relic of past years! I gaze upon thee now, With silent, bitter tears, Pale cheek, and throbbing brow. Sad yearnings, wild and vain, Fond, mournful memories start. The true, the loving dead, Are they not with me here? With gentle, noiseless tread, Each cherished form draws near. O blessed, happy band, Still, still remember me! Thine is a mighty spell, Thou faded, lifeless thing, Round which my heart-strings cling, Back to this aching breast, To call with magic skill- The breaking heart be still? Beneath thy folds, how light A mournful tale is thine, Its freshness to this heart- Burlington, N. J. C. THE NEW ENGLAND FOREFATHERS' DAY. BY REV. C. E. STOWE, D. D. THE twenty-second of December is a proud day for New-England. It commemorates the landing of the pilgrims on the Plymouth rock. No true descendant of the Puritans, wherever he may be on the face of the earth, can meet the recurrence of this anniversary without emotion; without desiring to pause and meditate awhile on the hardy virtues, and patient endurance, and multiplied sufferings of his ancestors, who with their own blood purchased the invaluable treasure of civil and religious freedom in the goodly land which they bequeathed to their posterity. I hope I shall be pardoned, then, if I make the homely and substantial virtues of the fathers and mothers of New-England the subject of eulogy, in a work designed as a Christmas and New Year's gift, and which may serve at the same time as a memorial of the NEW-ENGLAND FOREFATHERS' DAY. The English have their St. George's day, the Scotch their St. Andrew's, the Irish their St. Patrick's, the French their St. Dennis's, the Germans their St. Boniface's and St. Nepomuk's, and nobody thinks any harm of it; and why should not the descendants of those pilgrims, who all, even by their enemies, were denominated saints, have their All Saints' Day? In speaking well of the Puritans, we do not detract from the merits of any who are meritorious in other parts of the United States. Were the occasion a fitting one, I might tell much that is praiseworthy of the people of the Middle States, of the fruitful West and the merry South; but this cold month of December is the pilgrim's own month, and let us warm ourselves a little with thinking and talking about the pilgrims. It is now two hundred and twenty-two years since there stood on the shores of Holland a little band of Christians, weeping in each other's arms, while the ship, which was to bear a part of them away, was tossing on the waters, and nearly ready to sail. That whole day had the little church spent in fasting and prayer; and now the hour had come when half of their number must leave, to go and prepare that home in the untried wilderness, where they all hoped to meet again. Eleven years had they been strangers and pilgrims in that country; but despairing to form, in its old and corrupt atmosphere, the Christian community they sought, like Abraham they heard a call to go out "unto a place which they should afterward receive for an inheritance;" and they obeyed and went out, "not knowing whither they went." We need not tell the distresses of that cold and gloomy voyage; how they were twice driven back by stress of weather, and long tossed on the ocean; how, through the treachery of their ship-master, who had engaged to land them in a warmer latitude, they were brought on to the bleak New-England coast, amid the ice and snows of one of its keenest and hardest winters. Then, while the vessel lay tossing at anchor, a little party ventured along the inhospitable shore to find where they might land. The bitter cold froze the spray of the sea on their garments, and on land the jealous Indian met them with showers of arrows. All day they wandered amid frosts and snows, and at night slept under a chance shelter of logs and boughs; and when returning, a storm drove them on to a bleak, cold island, and the Sabbath morning found them there. Neither cold, nor hunger, nor the dashing of the sea spray, prevented their enjoying the rest of the Christian Sabbath. They built fires and sat around them, and spent the whole day in praying and singing praises to God. At length, a location being found, the vessel reached the shore; and the rock of Plymouth was pressed by feet as unfaltering and firm as if |