MOOSE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
THE LONG WHITE SEAM. 
As I came round tho Tmrhnr buoy, 
The lights began to gleam, 
No wave the lawl-lockcd harbor stirred, 
The crags were while as cream: 
And I marked n.j lore by candle-light 
Sewing her long white seam. 
It's aye sewing ashore, tny dear, 
Watch and steer at sea; 
It's a reef and a furl, and haul the line, 
Set sail and think Of tlieo. 
I climbed to roach her cottage door; 
Oh, sweetly iny love sings ! 
hike a shaft of light her voice breaks forth, 
My soul to meet it springs 
As the shining water leaped of old, 
When stirred by angel’s wings. 
Aye longing to list anew, 
Awake and in my dream, 
But. never a song alio sang like this, 
Sewing her long white seam. 
Fair full the lights, the harbor lights, 
That brought men Into thee. 
And peace drop down oh that low roof 
For the sight that 1 did see. 
And the voice, my dear, that rang so clear 
All for the love of me. 
For Oh, for Oh, with brow bent low 
Uy the flickering candle’s gleam, 
Her wedding gown It was she wrought. 
Sewing that long white seam. 
• [Jean Inqclow. 
— - 4<-4 - 
A MAY RAMBLE. 
BY ALIQUA. 
This pleasant May morning seems to take 
you by the hand and load yon away along 
the grassy country roadsides and over the 
sunny hills. Yon pause now and then to 
listen to the song of oriole or blue bird, or 
gather from some sheltered fenoe corner a 
cluster of fragrant violets. 
And so, wandering in the warm sunshine 
that seems the kind hand of the smiling sky 
resting in blessing on the earth, yon come 
to a green wood and enter in under the 
arching branches. Ah! tills sweet May 
morning has led you in familiar pathways. 
It was here, you came in the bright spring 
days of your childhood, hurrying away from 
the school house with little companions 
when the bell rang for nooning. 
A little brook, escaped from the forest 
shadows, runs singing through the lane; a 
shallow brook with a low voice that mur¬ 
murs of pleasant things, with little irout 
skimming through its clear waters and dis¬ 
appearing in tho shadow of the foot bridge, 
with grasses bonding over it, and wild birds 
sweeping down to drink. As you waded 
with your shoes and stockings hung over 
your arms in those days agone, the rippling 
waters kissed your feet, but told no tales of 
any rougher pathways that, they might find 
to tread iu coming years. And just within 
tho wood what comfortable mossy banks 
and fallen trees whereon to rest, while 
tho brook rippled on and took no rest, 
and Maiue with the flute-like voice sung 
till all the birds and all echoes answered. 
The delicately-tinted spring beauties smile 
up at you to-day with their unchanged 
faces, though the faces of all the old play¬ 
mates are changed and gone. The tall trees 
look down and shake their heads gravely 
in seeming wonder if this bo one of those 
merry children. Their trunks are disfig¬ 
ured here and there where the letters of 
your names were cut in the bark years ago, 
and the breeze whispering all about you 
seems to sigh that some of 
“The names you loved to hear 
Have been carved this many a year 
On the tomb.” 
Where that high board fence keeps guard 
to-day there used to be one of mossy rails ^ 
you remember how like a flock of partridges 
you children scrambled through Handover 
it, with now and then a rail following after; 
how blue the violets were in its mossy cor¬ 
ners at the feet of the sweet-brier bushes 
that nodded their pink blossoms at the 
rustling corn in the sunny Helds beyond. 
You smile to think how reverently you used 
to pass around each mossy mound, thinking 
them all to be the graves of Indians who 
had passed to the Happy Hunting Ground. 
You pause where the swing used to be,— 
scene of many a fall when your little hands 
slipped from the rope and you came down 
into somebody’s arms, or to find that earth 
was hard under all her matted leaves. 
A little further on you come to the brook 
again, dark and silent here under the ever¬ 
greens, and tho log that serves as a bridge 
sways as you pass over. Ah! here are the 
old mossy nooks, the shadow and the silence. 
Here grow the scarlet berries and the long 
mosses you wove into such pretty wreaths 
and baskets, and the fadeless ground-pine 
you carried home to place about the picture 
of little Fbeu, who died. Here Elba would 
throw heraelf down, oblivious to you all, 
with a far-away look in her dreamy eyes; 
fair Ella, of whom a friend writes that she 
is passing rapidly into the shadow of death 
this sweet May-time. Just over there stood 
an old tree you called the Indian, because 
in your school-reader there was a speech of 
au ancient chief who pronounced himself 
like a dying hemlock, “dead at the top." 
This old t ree was dead at the top and leaned 
eastward and had a broken branch that 
creaked and sighed in tho wind. But the 
old Indian has fallen, ami his croaking arm 
is silent now. 
You return through the maple wood, and 
all tho wild flowers greet you as an old 
friend, while the squirrel races away before 
you, and tho birds seem holding a perfect 
jubilee of song in the greeu arches over¬ 
head. You come back, happy-hearted and 
refreshed, to your busy life, and no one 
guesses you have beeu rambling with ttie 
May morning iu a wood that is scores of 
miles away. 
- 4 -*--*- 
“THOUGHTS ON BEAUTY.” 
In the Ritual New-Yorker of May 4, is 
an article with the above title; and, al¬ 
though it sets forth the most common and 
generally received opinion in regard t o that 
beauty which is “only skin deep,” another 
honest thinker may be allowed a slightly 
different expression. Not that, the ideas 
are esteemed erroneous, for in general they 
are truth itself. However, we take issue 
with the writer's assertion that conscious¬ 
ness of beauty “gives the countenance an 
expression of vanity and self-conceit,.” it 
may, but t here is no reason it should Wo 
may, with all duo propriety, admire the 
beautiful iu the faces of others; then why 
may not a face see and credit each of its own 
points of beauty, wit h t he same appreciative 
eye, far removed from petty vanity? 
Beauty is a great gift from God —as much 
to be valued and recognized as the talents 
given. Then it has the appearance of un¬ 
gratefulness in the possessor of iL to be en¬ 
tirely unconscious, or to ignore it. in mis¬ 
taken self-depreciation. Much more lilting 
would it be for Beauty to recognize this, 
and, with a due feeling of thankfulness to 
the Giver, and a knowledge of the true use 
of the charms, there will be no room in tho 
heart for silly self-conceit. Moth inks, too, 
that sometimes ( lie protesting mwnnftciom 
beauty, will be found vastly more puffed up 
with vain glory than the one who can calm¬ 
ly study the merits of Self, as she would the 
loveliness of a painted picture. 
Akin to this Is the custom of belittloing 
everything we. may happen to possess when 
praised by another. Wo would honestly 
admire it. If owned by some one else; yet 
as it is ours it is more proper and becoming 
to modestly deprecate it. it may be the 
.proper spirit to manifest under tho circum¬ 
stances, but to me it is slightly bordering 
on the humbleness of Uriah Heed. 
Again—did the writer, in the last in¬ 
stance, alluding to the early death of a beau¬ 
tiful young girl, mean to sanction the old- 
time superstition that there are persons 
born into the world too good or too beauti¬ 
ful? God, wo read, after the creation of 
earth, “saw it was very good.” Iu IJis 
wisdom, then, He would plant no human 
flower iu it which would be too beautiful to 
expand and complete t he mission He gave 
it. It is an unworthy doctrine to believe of 
Him who has made flowers to bloom and 
come to perfection, even as “ fair and frag¬ 
ile as a lily.” Jasper. 
- 4 4 4 
HEART DISEASE. 
Those ladies who suffer from the dist ract¬ 
ing grievance and disability of being treated 
too much as drawing-room pets, and shield¬ 
ed too carefully from the rougher blows of 
the battle of life, may possibly learn resig¬ 
nation, if they cannot derive complete con¬ 
solation, from some dry but significant re¬ 
searches which Ur. Quain has made, and in 
which he stated the result in his first Lum- 
leian lecture on disease of the heart, at the 
Colloge of Physicians. Enlargement of the 
heart, one of the most distressing and fatal 
diseases, is more than twice as frequent in 
males as in females, tho precise proportion 
being eight to three. This remarkable lia¬ 
bility to the enlargement of men's hearts, as 
compared with those of women, is, he 
thinks, unquestionably due to tho greater 
amount of work and anxiety which, in the 
present dispensation, falls upon men. La¬ 
dies may take this fact to heart, and reflect 
whether, in claiming the rights of women, 
they may not at the same time incur the 
risks of men, and with them a new and un¬ 
expected form of disability. They might do 
wisely to rest content for their sex, with 
hearts suffering, it may be, from those ten¬ 
der affections which often pain, but never 
kill .—British Medical Journal. 
1JY c. it. o. 
The owl has a nest, in the sycamore tree— 
The old. hollow sycamore tree; 
I watch him sit there In the twilight air, 
And ho winks and ho tillnks nt me— 
That owl in tho sycamore tree. 
The owl sits alone <m the sycamore bough, 
The shady, old sycamore bough ; 
Ho hoots ami he cries as tho daylight dies— 
“ Too-hoo ! Too-boo {’’ I bear him now, 
That owl on the sycamore hough. 
The little birds sleep In the pin© tree’s shade, 
In the whispering pine tree’s shade : 
They sleep without fear, though their foe be near, 
I marvel they are not alruld— 
Those birds in the pine tree’s shade. 
Beware ! gentle warblers ! your tyrant is nigh ! 
Your night-roving tyrant is nigh : 
Hark! the rush of Ills wings — destruction lie 
brings— 
Awake ! in a moment, ye die ! 
Beware ! for your tyrant is nigh. 
Sycamore Villa, L. 1. 
- 4-44 - 
LETTERS TO YOUNG RURALISTS.-VII. 
FROM COUSIN JOHNNIE. 
Now, niy dear children, l want, to say a 
few words to you this time about your 
letters. I saw Mr. Rural, when in New 
York, the other day. and he said he did not 
think they wore nearly us good as they were 
a year ago. Now shall I tell you what tho 
trouble is? I think there is a little too 
much sameness about the letters. They 
seem to lie modeled one after another, till 
wo are almost certain before rending each 
that it will tell us, “ 1 am so many years old, 
have so many brothers and sisters, go to 
school or not, as it may happen, aiul have a 
dog or a cat for a pet!” Now, why can you 
not strike out in a new direction ? Give us 
incidents of your everyday life. Those who 
live iu towns or cities describe tho plaoesof 
interest there. Those who live in the coun¬ 
try, observe carefully the habits of the in¬ 
sects, birds and animals, and toll us about 
them; or tell us the name of any pretty 
wild flowers, aud where and when we can 
find them. 
Some of you arc writing from almost ev- 
sr-ry part of the United States, and as the 
habits, customs, and even the mode of 
speaking, aro quite different in different 
States, it would be very interesting to hour 
about them. There is Wild Rose, when 
she goes home to spend her vacation, could 
write us charming letters about life among 
the Indians. B. May 0., the next time, 
might give us a description of the light¬ 
house, both inside and out. The Southern 
boys oould tell us about rice and cotton 
growing. A good many of us know nothing 
about such things, and to see a field of 
either, common as it is to them, would be 
to us a real curiosity. 
But, though many of your letters, my 
dear children, might bo made a grout deal 
better, some of them are very good indeed 
-far before the first one I ever wrote, which 
ran thus; “Dear Grandma —As I haven’t 
anything to say I can’t, say much." This 
lack of contents, I thought, was fully made 
up by the elegant sheet of paper, with its 
wide border of green and gold, and a pic¬ 
ture in the left, hand corner of a young 
woman in a garden picking flowers, and the 
handsome wafer on the envelope inscribed 
with some such appropriate motto as 
“Strike while the iron is lmt,!" 
- 4-44 - 
PROUD OF HIS MOTHER. 
“It was a cold night, in winter. The wind 
blew, and the snow was whirled furiously 
about, seeking to hide Itself beneath cloaks 
and hoods—In the very hair of those who 
were out. A distinguished lecturer was to 
speak; aud, notwithstanding the storm, the 
villagers very generally ventured forth to 
hear him. 
“ William Aunesley, buttoned up to his 
chin in his thick overcoat, accompanied his 
mother. It was difficult to walk through the 
fallen snow against the piercing wind; Wil¬ 
liam said to his mother— 
“ • Couldn’t you wulk easier if you took my 
arm ?’ 
“ ‘ Perhaps I could,* his mother replied, as 
she put her arm through his, and drew up 
as close as possible to him. 
“ Together they breasted the storm, the 
mother and the boy who had once been car¬ 
ried in her arms, but who had now grown 
up so tall that she could loan on his. They 
had not walked very fur before he said— 
“ ‘1 am proud to-night, mother. 1 
“ 1 IToud that you can take care of mo?’ 
she said to him with a heart gushiug with 
tenderness. 
“ ‘This is the first time you have leaned 
upon me, 1 said the happy boy. 
“There will be few hours iu William’s life 
of more exalted pleasure than ho eujoyed 
that evening, even if he should live to old 
age, and should in his manhood lovingly pro¬ 
vide for her who, in his helpless infancy, 
watched over him.”— Well Spring. 
■- 4-44 - 
HOW TO ENJOY LIFE. 
It is wonderful to what an extent people 
believe happiness depends on not being 
obliged to labor. Honest, hearty, contented 
labor is the only source of happiness, as well 
as the only guarantee of IllV. Idleness and 
luxury induce premature decay ranch faster 
than many trades regarded as tho most ex¬ 
haustive and fatal to longevity. Labor in 
general actually increases tho term of life. 
It is the lack of occupation that annually 
destroys so many of t he wealthy, who, hav¬ 
ing nothing to do, play tho part of drones, 
and, like them, make a speedy exit, while 
the busy bcc fills out its day in usefulness 
and honor. 
Let. young people heed the above facts, 
and remember that industry—labor—is not 
only requisite to success in any calling, but 
also the great source of health and happi¬ 
ness. 
♦ 
ILLUSTRATED REBUS.-No. 21. 
0T Answer in two weeks, witli tho names of 
those sending correct answers. 
BIOGRAPHICAL ENIGMA.—No. 1. 
Tam composed of sixty-four letters: 
My 8, 57, », ifit, 0. 14 was a celebrated musician. 
M v 42, 54, 22, 51, 02. 41 was a famous English poet. 
My 58. li, 45, 4, 57, 58, 54, :t. 14, 53, <i, 49, 1, 35, 7, 16, 
58, 50 ts an American novelist. 
Mv II, 15, 58, 31, 5 was u famous Ifnliiui poet. 
My 37, 63, ll, 44, 61, I t, 54, til first established tho 
identity of lightning. 
My 59, 86, III, 26, 46, 1, 52, 43, 01, 3, 10 is called the 
prince of orators. 
My 4, 26, 21, 6, 13, 3, 2i, 21, 43, 3, 11, 25 is a Now 
York editor. 
Mv 55, 8, 38, 60, 13, 31 was a Roman philosopher. 
My I, 50, 29, 42, 6, 10, 28, 39, 3, 25 was a noted 
writer. 
My 14, 12, 23, 58, 38,30,41, It) was a celebrated king 
of Sparta. 
My 21, 31, 60, 5, 45, 18, 3 was a noted general 
iu tli© Revolutionary war. 
My 6, 10, 15, 53, 54 , 48, 48, 11, 20, 10 was a great 
mathematician. 
My 13, 54, 13, 17, 03, 20 was a famous Roman ora¬ 
tor. 
My whole is a verso in the Bible. 
New Hackensack, N. Y. Josie Wood. 
J37“' Answer in two weeks. 
-* 4 *- 
PUZZLE-No. 4. 
My letters five I’d like to see 
IIow you’d arrange, and what I’d be. 
One way, in me, iesthetic grace, 
Bounty and comfort you may trace. 
Another method brings to view 
A noble race—to dare and do— 
Who oft have shown, in Htst’ry’s page, 
How brave men Duty's conflict wage. 
Road backuiiwdn, and I’ll give you, then, 
Among the foulest things wc ken; 
So words, misunderstood, not. meant, 
Foml lies have oft asunder rent. 
Read riyhtly , and thy gloom I’ll light 
With heaven’s shining beauties bright; 
Most other things aro hotter, too, 
If taken rlght-*o try it, do! 
tar Answer in two weeks. 
- M» — < 
PUZZLER ANSWERS,—May 11, 
Illustrated Rebus No. 19. Napoleon Fourth 
won't hinder a Hohenzollem prince from sitting 
on the Spanish throne. Correct answers have 
been received from II. A. Norton, Fred. Snell, 
E. (}. Scekull, R. M. Bernhard, James M. Laing. 
Housekeeper’s Enioma No. 1. Many arc the 
trials of a housekeeper. Correct answer received 
from Orin S. Moore. 
Arithmetical Puzzle No. 1.— 
Nine. 
One. 
Six. 
Eight. 
Correct answers have been received from Leona 
Woodward, W. C. Parker, Levi .1. Whitlock, 
Frank E. Smith, H. A. Norton, A. Barlow, Ed. S. 
Marsh, Eva L. Reynolds, W. Van Sauti, Mary 
Atm Hull, Fred. Snell, E. G. Seekcl, Eiumu S. 
Frederick, Annie Reese. Emma M. Newton, 
Orin S. Moore, Wm. O Hillman, Charlie Set tries, 
Lizzie itlckenhrade, C. M. lfeudeishott, G. W. 
Crandall, Manly T. Blakeslee, Henry S. Seymont, 
Willie Sippell, W, L. Colgrove, Mary E. Campbell. 
A 
