THE END.

* * * * *

WHAT THEN?

BY J. HAL.  ELLIOT.

God’s pity on them!  Human souls, I mean,
Crushed down and hid ’neath squalid rags and dirt,
And bodies which no common sore can hurt;
All this between
Those souls, and life—­corrupt, defiled, unclean.

And more—­hard faces, pinched by starving years. 
Cold, stolid, grimy faces—­vacant eyes,
Wishful anon, as when one looks and dies;
But never tears! 
Tears would not help them—­battling constant jeers.

Forms, trained to bend and grovel from the first,
Crouching through life forever in the dark,
Aimlessly creeping toward an unseen mark;
And no one durst
Deny their horrid dream, that they are curst.

And life for them! dare we call life its name? 
O God! an arid sea of burning sand,
Eternal blackness! death on every hand! 
A smothered flame,
Writhing and blasting in the tortured frame.

And death! we shudder when we speak the word;
’Tis all the same to them—­or life, or death;
They breathe them both with every fevered breath;
When have they heard,
That cool Bethesda’s waters might be stirred!

They live among us—­live and die to-day;
We brush them with our garments on the street,
And track their footsteps with our dainty feet;
‘Poor common clay!’
We curl our lips—­and that is what we say.

God’s pity on them! and on us as well: 
They live and die like brutes, and we like men: 
Both go alone into the dark—­what then? 
Or heaven, or hell? 
They suffered in this life!  Stop!  Who can tell?

* * * * *

The last stranger who visited Washington Irving, before his death, was Theodore Tilton, who published shortly afterward an account of the interview.  Mr. Tilton wrote also a private letter to a friend, giving an interesting reminiscence, which he did not mention in his published account.  The following is an extract from this letter, now first made public: 

     As I was about parting from Mr. Irving, at the door-step, he held
     my hand a few moments, and said: 

     ‘You know Henry Ward Beecher?’

     ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘he is an intimate friend.’

     ‘I have never seen him,’ said he, ‘tell me how he looks.’

     I described, in a few words, Mr. Beecher’s personal appearance;
     when Mr. Irving remarked: 

     ‘I take him to be a man always in fine health and cheery spirits.’

     I replied that he was hale, vigorous, and full of life; that every
     drop of his blood bubbled with good humor.

     ‘His writings,’ said Knickerbocker, ’are full of human kindness.  I
     think he must have a great power of enjoyment.’

     ‘Yes,’ I added, ’to hear him laugh is as if one had spilt over you
     a pitcher of wine.’