Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/63

 THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD. 49

but soiled ; you must learn such common expressions from those boys ; they have no manners, and you must not associate with them." I pity the child, but I cannot interfere. She has "mannered" their childishness all away, but she ought to know better than I, since I am only a man.

Come back to me, wife of my youth ! Sit on my knee as you did when we had an airtight stove, ingrain carpet, and " Lincoln and his family." Pour my tea from the old brown tea-pot into an honest stone china cup. Come back, O doors, and leave, O currents of cold air and portieres ! Call in the chil- dren, and let us sing together a rousing Methodist hymn.

I dream wildly. Laura is asking me if I will put some wood on the open fire, and there I am again at my chief grievance. I go grimly to a something cov- ered with Turkish towelling, and made odious by flaming red dragons. This is supposed to be a wood-box. Heaven keep us when we have reached such a pass ; when a thing that looks like an overgrown ottoman is a wood-box ! Dear friends, let me draw again the veil which I fear I have lifted too rudely. But ye Gods defend me ! After a hard day's work do I deserve to have the wife of my bosom ask, in a hard, didactic voice, if I have read thoroughly the last essay on " Sanscrit Roots, " and do I not think we had better have a dado in the hall?

��THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD.

��BY GEORGE KENT.

��"Whence and wliat .art tliou, execrable shape?"

��Not in the course of Nature's fix'cl decay, Obedient to the summons, waiting all. Wiiere, soon or late, death malies his final call ; Nor yet in front of battle's fierce array, The spirit of our Chief lias passed away; But stealthily, the assassin's blow did fall, Casting the gloom of deep funeral pall Over a land where he bore righteous sway.

��He rests in peace ; not so the murderer vile.

Whose blood-stain'd hands a blacker heart betraj'S,

And tell of crime so rank ■• it smells to heaven ; "

Guilt, so atrocious that not fullest Nile,

Nor ocean's surges, e'er could wash away.

Or mercy's self implore to be forgiven.

The assassin's brand is on him, deeper far

Than brand of Cain in fratricidal war, —

This slew a brother for a private end.

That killed a nation's hope, a Father. Brother, Friend.

�� �