THE CONTINENTAL SOLDIER.

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Did you ever see a Continental Soldier?  I doubt it.  Some twenty years ago there used to be a few of them scattered here and there over the country, but they must be nearly all gone now.  About a year ago there were but two of them left.  Those whom some of us can remember were rather mournful old gentlemen.  They shuffled about their dwelling-places, they smoked their pipes, and they were nearly always ready to talk about the glorious old days of the Revolution.  It was well they had those days to fall back upon, for they had but little share in the glories of the present.  When they looked abroad upon the country that their arms, and blood perhaps, had helped give to that vigorous Young America which now swells with prosperity from Alaska to Florida, they could see very little of it which they could call their own.

It was difficult to look upon those feeble old men and imagine that they were once full of vigor and fire; that they held their old flintlocks with arms of iron when the British cavalry rushed upon their bayonets; that their keen eyes flashed a deadly aim along their rusty rifle-barrels; that, with their good swords quivering in their sinewy hands, they urged their horses boldly over the battle-field, shouting brave words to their advancing men; and that they laughed at heat and cold, patiently endured hunger and privation, strode along bravely on the longest marches, and, at last, stood proudly by when Cornwallis gave up his sword.

Those old gentlemen did not look like anything of that sort.  Their old arms could hardly manage their old canes; their old legs could just about carry them on a march around the garden, and they were very particular indeed about heat and cold.

But History and Art will better keep alive the memory of their good deeds, and call more vigorously upon the gratitude of their countrymen, than those old Continentallers could themselves have done it, had they lived on for years and years, and told generation after generation how once they galloped proudly along the ranks, or, in humbler station, beat with vigorous arm the stirring drum-roll that called their comrades to the battle-field.

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A JUDGE OF MUSIC.

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It is not well to despise anybody or anything until you know what they can do.  I have known some very stupid-looking people who could do a sum in the rule-of-three in a minute, and who could add up a column of six figures abreast while I was just making a beginning at the right-hand bottom corner.  But stupid-looking beings are often good at other things besides arithmetic.  I have seen doctors, with very dull faces, who knew all about castor-oil and mustard-plasters, and above you see a picture of a Donkey who understood music.