We will not speak of years to-night;
  For what have years to bring,
  But larger floods of love and light
  And sweeter songs to sing?

  We will not drown in wordy praise
  The kindly thoughts that rise;
  If friendship owns one tender phrase,
  He reads it in our eyes.

  We need not waste our schoolboy art
  To gild this notch of time;
  Forgive me, if my wayward heart
  Has throbbed in artless rhyme.

  Enough for him the silent grasp
  That knits us hand in hand,
  And he the bracelet’s radiant clasp
  That locks our circling band.

  Strength to his hours of manly toil! 
  Peace to his starlit dreams! 
  Who loves alike the furrowed soil,
  The music-haunted streams!

  Sweet smiles to keep forever bright
  The sunshine on his lips,
  And faith, that sees the ring of light
  Round Nature’s last eclipse!

——­One of our boarders has been talking in such strong language that I am almost afraid to report it.  However, as he seems to be really honest and is so very sincere in his local prejudices, I don’t believe anybody will be very angry with him.

It is here, Sir! right here!—­said the little deformed gentleman,—­in this old new city of Boston,—­this remote provincial corner of a provincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, and was fighting before we were born, and will be fighting when we are dead and gone,—­please God!  The battle goes on everywhere throughout civilization; but here, here, here! is the broad white flag flying which proclaims, first of all, peace and good-will to men, and, next to that, the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual immortal soul!  The three-hilled city against the seven-hilled-city!  That is it, Sir,—­nothing less than that; and if you know what that means, I don’t think you’ll ask for anything more.  I swear to you, Sir, I believe that these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence!  And I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen Neptune,—­ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,—­looking on, Sir, with what organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery fusion, the accidents and hindrances of humanity or man himself, Sir,—­the stupendous abortion, the illustrious failure that he is, if the three-hilled city does not ride down and trample out the seven-hilled city!

——­Steam’s up!—­said the young man John, so called, in a low tone.—­Three hundred and sixty-five tons to the square inch.  Let him blow her off, or he’ll bu’st his b’iler.

The divinity-student took it calmly, only whispering that he thought there was a little confusion of images between a galvanic battery and a charge of cavalry.