of imaginings, while Glencoe, duped by my enthusiasm, firmly believed that I spoke of a being I had seen and known. By their sympathy with my feelings, they in a manner became associated with the Unknown in my mind, and thus linked her with the circle of my intimacy.

In the evening, our family party was assembled in the hall, to enjoy the refreshing breeze. Sophy was playing some favorite Scotch airs on the piano, while Glencoe, seated apart, with his forehead resting on his hand, was buried in one of those pensive reveries, that made him so interesting to me.

'What a fortunate being I am!' thought I, 'blessed with such a sister and such a friend! I have only to find out this amiable Unknown, to wed her, and be happy! What a paradise will be my home, graced with a partner of such exquisite refinement! It will be a perfect fairy bower, buried among sweets and roses. Sophy shall live with us, and be the companion of all our enjoyments. Glencoe, too, shall no more be the solitary being that he now appears. He shall have a home with us. He shall have his study, where, when he pleases, he may shut himself up from the world, and bury himself in his own reflections. His retreat shall be sacred; no one shall intrude there; no one but myself, who will visit him now and then, in his seclusion, where we will devise grand schemes together for the improvement of mankind. How delightfully our days will pass, in a round of rational pleasures and elegant employments! Sometimes we will have music; sometimes we will read; sometimes we will wander through the flower-garden, when I will smile with complacency on every flower my wife has planted; while, in the long winter evenings, the ladies will sit at their work, and listen, with hushed attention, to Glencoe and myself, as we discuss the abstruse doctrines of metaphysics.'

From this delectable reverie, I was startled by my father's slapping me on the shoulder: What possesses the lad?' cried he; here have I been speaking to you half a dozen times, without receiving an

answer.'

'Pardon me, Sir,' replied I; 'I was so completely lost in thought, that I did not hear you.'

Lost in thought! And pray what were you thinking of? Some of your philosophy, I suppose.'

Upon my word,' said my sister Charlotte, with an arch laugh, ‘I suspect Harry's in love again.'

And if I were in love, Charlotte,' said I, somewhat nettled, and recollecting Glencoe's enthusiastic eulogy of the passion, if I were in love, is that a matter of jest and laughter? Is the tenderest and most fervid affection that can animate the human breast, to be made a matter of cold-hearted ridicule ?'

My sister colored. Certainly not, brother! nor did I mean to make it so, or to say any thing that should wound your feelings. Had I really suspected you had formed some genuine attachment, it would have been sacred in my eyes; but — but,' said she, smiling, as if at some whimsical recollection, I thought that you - you might be indulging in another little freak of the imagination.'

'Oh no!' cried my dear sister Sophy, with the most gracious warmth; she is young and beautiful.'

From what I understand,' said Glencoe, rousing himself, she must be lovely in mind as in person.'

I found my friends were getting me into a fine scrape. I began to perspire at every pore, and felt my ears tingle.

'Well, but,' cried my father, who is she?—what is she? Let us hear something about her.'

This was no time to explain so delicate a matter. I caught up my hat, and vanished out of the house.

too

The moment I was in the open air, and alone, my heart upbraided me. Was this respectful treatment to my father- to such a father, who had always regarded me as the pride of his - the age staff of his hopes? It is true, he was apt, sometimes, to laugh at my enthusiastic flights, and did not treat my philosophy with due respect; but when had he ever thwarted a wish of my heart? Was I then to act with reserve toward him, in a matter which might affect the whole current of my future life? I have done wrong," thought I; 'but it is not too late to remedy it. I will hasten back, and open my whole heart to my father!'

I returned accordingly, and was just on the point of entering the house, with my heart full of filial piety, and a contrite speech upon my lips, when I heard a burst of obstreperous laughter from my father, and a loud titter from my two elder sisters.

'A footstep! shouted he, as soon as he could recover himself; ' in love with a footstep! Why, this beats the old lady at the window!' And then there was another appalling burst of laughter. Had it been a clap of thunder, it could hardly have astounded me more completely. Sophy, in the simplicity of her heart, had told all, and had set my father's risible propensities in full action.

Never was poor mortal so thoroughly crest-fallen as myself. The whole delusion was at an end. I drew off silently from the house, shrinking smaller and smaller at every fresh peal of laughter; and wandering about until the family had retired, stole quietly to my bed. Scarce any sleep, however, visited my eyes that night! I lay overwhelmed with mortification, and meditating how I might meet the family in the morning. The idea of ridicule was always intolerable to me; but to endure it on a subject by which my feelings had been so much excited, seemed worse than death. I almost determined, at one time, to get up, saddle my horse, and ride off, I knew not whither.

At length, I came to a resolution. Before going down to breakfast, I sent for Sophy, and employed her as ambassador to treat formally in the matter. I insisted that the subject should be buried in oblivion; otherwise, I would not show my face at table. It was readily agreed to; for not one of the family would have given me pain for the world. They faithfully kept their promise. Not a word was said of the matter; but there were wry faces, and suppressed titters, that went to my soul; and whenever my father looked me in the face, it was with such a tragi-comical leer - such an attempt to pull down a serious brow upon a whimsical mouth that I had a thousand times rather he had laughed outright.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

He springs away with a sudden bound,
His hoof, unshouden, spurns the ground,
His nostril dashes its foam around,

Like the first faint clouds of a thunder shower:
And a stated moment he ever hath,

When he rushes forth on his iron path,
And wo to him who shall rouse his wrath,
By curbing him in, beyond the hour!

While other steeds must be champing hay,
Must repose by night, and be fed by day,
Let the Iron Horse have his level way,

And he asks for no more than his fire and water.
He wears no bridle, nor curbing-chain, ̧

He brooks no spur, and he needs no rein;

Only set him forth on the open plain,

And he'll be the last horse to weary or loiter!

All seasons and times he will fearless brave,

Whether hot shines the sun, or th' north winds rave;
He flies o'er the earth, and he rides the waves,
Like a shadowy cloud o'er the harvest fields:
He neighs aloud, as he dashes by,

And the fire-sparks flash from his gleaming eye,
And vales resound, and the hills reply,

To the rapid rush of the flashing wheels.

His breath is hot as the siroc's blast,
As it hisses forth through his iron teeth,
And it rolls up slow, when he hurries past,

Like the morning mist, in a snowy wreath.
And you'd better stand in the van of war,
Where the vollied death-shots fly free and far,
And thousands fall, ere the fight is done,
Than to cross the path that he flies upon,
Whenever the hurled and loud-rattling car,
Like a thunder-gust, comes roaring on!

But not alone for his matchless speed,
Do we sing the praise of this noble steed.
'Such a fellow for business,' the Yankees say,

Can no where be found, in the old world or new;

He will toil all night, he will toil all day,

And its hard to tell what he cannot do.

With the old-ashioned method of working with tools, Our mechanics and artists have nearly all done; For they find it much easier to sit on their stools, While the work of twenty is done by one.

Not only the SPEED of this Iron Horse
Is such, that he leaves far behind in the course
All the fleetest racers that ever were shod;
He's the fastest WORKMAN that ever you saw;
He'll set more card-teeth, and braid more straw,

Than all the fair maids from New-York to Cape Cod.

To be sure he wont work alone, but then

Not a fig would he give for his choice in men ;

Only let him have one, howe'er loose his wits, And he'll spin you a yarn, or knit you a stocking, With all the grave matrons that ever came flocking

To a gossiping party in old Massachusetts.
They say, beside, to raise cabbage and beets
In an hour, is but one of his many feats;
He will warm your room, and cook your dinner,

And when it is ready, he will tell you so;
And to this, you must add, he's a mere beginner,

Who learned his trade scarce a year ago :
The western men have taught him to mow,

To plough the field, and grind their wheat, And he's all the same, in rain or snow,

In the winter's cold, or the summer's heat.

In the land of stern habits, he turns off clocks,
With such a fearful rapidity, it shocks

All the sober bounds of a man's belief;
Give him but rags, and lo! once or twice round,
He'll hand out a book, all printed and bound,
And paged off, in order, from leaf 10 leaf!

If he learns for the future as fast

As he has for a few years past, And acquires, by the way, the habit of meddling, The Yankees will certainly send him out peddling!

Had the animal lived in old Homer's day,

When Jupiter used such a store of thunder,
The forges of Vulcan, where deep they lay,

Half rending the crater of Ætna asunder
With their ceaseless roar, and thundering shocks,

Would have proved to be built for a useless trade; And Vulcan, ruined by th' fall of stocks,

Would have turned the Cyclops off unpaid;
For a thunder-bolt, forged by the Iron Horse,
And hurled by him on its flaming course,
Would have proved to mortals a hotter curse,
Would have bellowed louder, and blasted worse,
Than all that the king of the gods ever hurled
From his starry throne o'er a frighten'd world.

It is human nature to make or mar;
So in modern times they have taught him war ;
And he throws a ball, they say, moreover,
With perfect ease, from Calais to Dover.
A common cannon, when once exploded,
Will fire not another shot, till loaded;
He stops not to murder by such a dull scheme,
For he pours his balls in a ceaseless stream.
Had he stood in the straits of Thermopylæ,

With only one of the three hundred men,
Who fought their last in the narrow glen,
To turn his front on that tossing sea
Of Persian plumes, as they onward came,
He had stolen the fame of the Spartan name,
And Xerxes' ranks had been widely strown,
In a sea of gore, that was all their own.
Would you know still more of this noble steed ?

The voice of the tempest is roaring loud,
And the howling blasts, in their viewless speed,

O'er the ocean are hurrying the darkening cloud. The Storm-Spirit rides on the foam-crested wave,

And the Deep is roused to his fiercest wrath;
Oh! whose is the arm that hath power to save

The vessel that flies on his stormy path ?
The wrecks are whelmed in old ocean's caves,
And the sailors sink to their unknown graves,
While their dirge is sung by the sounding waves.

But see! there's a ship! yet it hath no sail ;
Perchance it is strown on the rushing gale,
But it hath no mast! still onward it comes,

All bright and beautiful, alone,
When the tempest howls, and the roused deep foams.
She sends up a cloud, that is wreathed in fire!

Ah! her hapless fate must full soon be known!
The lightnings of heaven have smote her in ire :
But no! those wreaths are too bright for smoke:

'Tis the rolling breath of the Iron Horse!
In vain the winds from their caves have broke,

He drags the ship on her foaming course;
With convulsive heaving, he paws the wave,

And the ship hath no need of mast or sail,
For his alone is the power to save

From the gathered rage of the sea and gale!
But not alone on the stormy sea,

Not alone through the vales of the northern clime,
Where he travels now so gloriously,
Shall his destined path in the future be;
He shall cross the Alp and the Appenine,
His voice shall be heard by the winding Rhine;

By the fallen fanes of the olden time;
He shall send the roar of his rolling car,
Through the wide domains of the northern Czar;
Through Sarmatia's wilds, and the Switzer's snows,
And along the valeg where the Danube flows;
Where the Moslem hears the Muezzin's cry,
' To prayer! to prayer!' he shall hurtle by;
Where the deep blue heaven of Asia smiles,
O’er her storied plains and countless isles,
And the flowers that breathe in the balmy air,
Are bright as the pearls that are shining there;
Where the Afric sun pours his scorching beams
On the thirsty sands and the wasted streams;
Where the Pharaohs, in their kingly pride,
Were rolled by night in the Red Sea's tide,
'Neath the palm-trees' boughs, the ban yan's shade,
His iron path-way shall yet be laid.
On our mountain ridges his chariots gleam,
He follows the track of the winding stream;
He will carry us forth from our early homes,

To the fairy scenes of the glowing West,
Where the Father of Waters in grandeur roams,

Through broad savannahs in verdure drest.
Away! away! with his ceaseless roar,
The valley and stream he will hasten o'er;
Away! away! where the prairie lies,
Like an emerald sea, 'neath the fair blue skies,
With naught in view save the waving grass,
The flowers that bend as his chariots pass,
And in black and fearful hóst afar,

The countless herd of the buffalo,
That start at the gleam of his shining car,

And away, loud bellowing and thundering go,
With a speed that no foot of the deer can surpass.
The prairie-horses shall toss the mane,

Tear the ground with their hoofs, and neigh aloud,
When this stranger-steed o'er their free domain,

Comes rushing on, like a flying cloud;
But he heeds them not, as he onward speeds,
With a tread as loud as a thousand steeds.
A sound shall be heard through the mountain caves,

A sound, through the gloom of the pathless glen,
Like the hollow murmur of breaking waves,

Or the measured tramping of mail-clad men;
'Tis the Iron Horse; he hath passed the bound
Of the wild sierras that fenced him round;
He hath no more on the land to gain,
His path is free to the western main!

55

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VOL. XIV.