ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER (1825-1864) was of English birth. She was a frequent contributor to the Cornhill Magazine. Her poem, The Lost Chord, is her best-known production.

1. WORDS are lighter than the cloud-foam
Of the restless ocean spray;
Vainer than the trembling shadow
That the next hour steals away.
By the fall of summer raindrops
Is the air as deeply stirred;
And the rose-leaf that we step on
Will outlive a word.

2. Yet, on the dull silence breaking
With a lightning-flash, a word,
Bearing endless desolation

On its blighting wings, I heard.
Earth can forge no keener weapon,
Dealing surer death and pain;
And the cruel echo answered

Through long years again.

3. I have known one word hang star-like O'er a dreary waste of years,

And it only shone the brighter
Looked at through a mist of tears:
While a weary wanderer gathered
Hope and heart on life's dark way
By its faithful promise, shining
Clearer day by day.

4. I have known a spirit calmer

Than the calmest lake, and clear
As the heavens that gazed upon it,
With no wave of doubt or fear;
But a storm had swept across it,
And its deepest depths were stirred,
Never, nevermore to slumber,
Only by a word.

5. I have known a word more gentle
Than the breath of summer air;

In a listening heart it nestled,
And it lives forever there.
Not the beating of its prison
Stirred it ever, night or day;

Only with the heart's last throbbing
Could it fade away.

6. Words are mighty, words are living!
Serpents with their venomed stings,
Or bright angels, crowding round us,
With heaven's light upon their wings;
Every word has its own spirit,

True or false, that never dies;

Every word man's lips have uttered

Echoes in God's skies.

ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.

CHARLES DICKENS'S LETTER TO HIS SON.

CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) was born in Hampshire, England. When quite a young man he began newspaper work on the staff of the Morning Chronicle. In this paper appeared his Sketches by Boz. Following these he wrote many novels. The most noted of them are: David Copperfield, Pickwick Papers, Bleak House, and Tale of Two Cities. Dickens wrote of children and child-life with great power. He was a reformer, and by his stories he tried to bring about better schools, better laws, and better customs in social life.

1. I WRITE this note to you to-day because your going away is much upon my mind, and because I want you to have a few parting words from me to think of now and then at quiet times.

2. I need not tell you that I love you dearly, and am very, very sorry in my heart to part with you. But this life is half made up of partings, and these pains must be borne.

3. It is my comfort and my sincere conviction that you are going to try the life for which you are best fitted. I think its freedom and wildness more suited to you than any experiment in a study or office would have been; and

without that training, you could have followed no other suitable occupation.

4. What you have always wanted until now has been a set, steady, constant purpose. I therefore exhort you to persevere in a thorough determination to do whatever you have to do as well as you can do it.

5. I was not so old as you are now when I first had to win my food, and to do it out of this determination; and I have never slackened in it since.

6. Never take a mean advantage of anyone in any transaction, and never be hard upon people who are in your power.

7. Try to do to others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better for you that they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid down by our Saviour than that you should.

8. I put a New Testament among your books for the very same reason, and with the very same hopes, that made me write an easy account of it for you when you were a little child, because it is the best book that ever was, or ever will be known in the world, and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty can possibly be guided.

9. As your brothers have gone away, one by one, I have written to each such words as I am now writing to you, and have entreated them all to guide themselves by this Book, putting aside the interpretations and inventions of man. You will remember that you have never at

home been harassed about religious observances or mere formalities.

.

10. I have always been anxious not to weary my children with such things before they are old enough to form opinions respecting them. You will therefore understand the better that I now would most solemnly impress upon you the truth and beauty of the Christian religion as it came from Christ himself, and the impossibility of your going far wrong if you humbly but heartily respect it.

11. Only one thing more on this head. The more we are in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are disposed to hold forth about it. Never abandon the wholesome practice of saying your own private prayers, night and morning. I have never abandoned it myself, and I know the comfort of it.

12. I hope you will always be able to say in after life that you had had a kind father. In no other way can you show your affection for him so well, or make him so happy, as by doing your duty.

CHARLES DICKENS.

What are some of the best things that Dickens wrote to his son?

In what way could he make his father happy?
What did he say of the book he gave him?

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

-Addison.