“HALT! Who comes there?” The cold midnight air
  And the challenging word chill me through. 
  The ghost of a fear whispers, close to my ear,
  “Is peril, love, coming to you?”

The hoarse answer, “RELIEF,” makes the shade of a grief
Die away, with the step on the sod. 
A kiss melts in air, while a tear and a prayer
Confide my beloved to God.

Tramp!  Tramp!  Tramp!  Tramp! 
With a solemn, pendulum-swing! 
Though I slumber all night, the fire burns bright,
And my sentinels’ scabbards ring.

* * * * *

“Boot and saddle!” is sounding.  Our pulses are bounding. 
“To horse!” And I touch with my heel
Black Gray in the flanks, and ride down the ranks,
With my heart, like my sabre, of steel.

THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES.

[Illustration]

The starting-point of this paper was a desire to call attention to certain remarkable AMERICAN INVENTIONS, especially to one class of mechanical contrivances, which, at the present time, assumes a vast importance and interests great multitudes.  The limbs of our friends and countrymen are a part of the melancholy harvest which War is sweeping down with Dahlgren’s mowing-machine and the patent reapers of Springfield and Hartford.  The admirable contrivances of an American inventor, prized as they were in ordinary times, have risen into the character of great national blessings since the necessity for them has become so widely felt.  While the weapons that have gone from Mr. Colt’s armories have been carrying death to friend and foe, the beneficent and ingenious inventions of MR. PALMER have been repairing the losses inflicted by the implements of war.

The study of the artificial limbs which owe their perfection to his skill and long-continued labor has led us a little beyond its first object, and finds its natural prelude in some remarks on the natural limbs and their movements.  Accident directed our attention, while engaged with this subject, to the efforts of another ingenious American to render the use of our lower extremities easier by shaping their artificial coverings more in accordance with their true form than is done by the empirical cordwainer, and thus Dr. Plumer must submit to the coupling of some mention of his praiseworthy efforts in the same pages with the striking achievements of his more aspiring compatriot.

We should not tell the whole truth, if we did not own that we have for a long time been lying in wait for a chance to say something about the mechanism of walking, because we thought we could add something to what is known about it from a new source, accessible only within the last few years, and never, so far as we know, employed for its elucidation, namely, the instantaneous photograph.

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