The fearful swelling that stopped his speech
The skill of the doctors could not reach,
And now it was sucking his breath away,
And the shadows were falling, still and gray.

Of a sudden, a voice outside was heard
And the sick man's memory strangely stirred
As a woman entered, bent and old,
Making her way with assurance bold.
She paused a moment, then stooping low
She marked a circle, with finger slow,
Across the carpet, around the bed,
From head to foot, and from foot to head;
And then, in the circle she had traced
She hobbled around with eager haste;
And why, 'mid servitors strong and stout,
Did nobody venture to put her out?
Ah, why, no man of them ever could tell,
But each seemed holden, as by a spell,-
While the woman, in voice, now high, now low,
Sang the student's rhyme of long ago:
"Here a suffering animal lies,

Faithful, trusty, and true;

If he lives, he lives,-if he dies, he dies;

And nothing more can I do!"

Then she piped, in the tone of an old cracked hell, "I hope the bishop will now get well!"

But the words her lips had scarcely left,

When the air with a quick, sharp cry was cleri,It rang through the chamber, it rang through the

hall,

Up sprang the attendants, one and all;

They stared at the sick man, perplexed, amazed-
Was the dying bishop suddenly crazed?

He laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks,
And, wonder of wonders,-" He speaks! he speaks!"
Ah, the woman had reached with her charm and
crutch,

What the surgeon's lancet failed to touch!
"The swelling is broken!" the doctors avowed,
As they clustered together, a joyous crowd.

In a tiny cot on the edge of the town,
A little old woman, in kerchief and gown,
Recounts, for the hundredth time, the tale
Which never to her grows old or stale,
With many a flourish of withered arm,
Of the cow, and the bishop, and potent charm.
"To think," she says to the aged crones,
"At last I can rest my poor old bones,
And never a thought to the future give,
But know that in plenty I ever shall live!
A wonderful man, you must allow ;—
God bless the bishop, and my new cow!"

TOWNSEND.

THE DEATH OF STEERFORTH.
From "David Copperfield."

OPENED the yard gate and looked into the empty street. The sand, the seaweed, and the flakes of foam were driving by, and I was obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again, and make it fast against the wind.

There was a dark gloom in my lonely chamber, when I at length returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell into the depths of sleep until broad day; when I was aroused at eight or nine o'clock by some one knocking or calling at my door. "What is the matter?"

"A wreck! close by!"

"What wreck?"

"A schooner from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It's thought down on the beach she'll go to pieces every mo

ment."

I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street, where numbers of people were before me, all running in one direction,-to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea. Every appearance it had before presented bore the expression of being swelled; and the height to which the breakers rose and bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling.

In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves.

A boatman laid a hand upon my arm, and pointed. Then I saw it, close in upon us.

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat,—which she did with a violence quite inconceivable,

.-beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were being made to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned toward us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes-especially one active figure, with long curling hair. But a great cry, audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore; the sea, sweeping over the wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.

The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage, flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman said, and then lifted in, and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting amidships. As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach. Four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.

There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, this bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne toward us on the wind. Again lost her, and again she rose. Two of the four men

we

were gone.

I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and I saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.

Instantly I ran to him, for I divined that he meant to wade off with the rope. I held him back with both arms; and implored the men not to listen to him, not to let him stir from that sand.

Another cry arose, and we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and

fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast. Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man, who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind.

I was swept away to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trousers, a rope in his hand, another round his body, and several of the best men holding to the latter.

The wreck was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. He had a singular red cap on, not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer color; and as the few planks between him and destruction rolled and bulged, and as his death-knell rung, he was seen by all of us to wave this cap. I saw him do it now, and thought I was going distracted, when his action brought an old remembrance to my mind of a once dear friend, the once dear friend,— Steerforth.

Ham watched the sea until there was a great retiring wave; when he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam,-borne in toward the shore, borne on toward the ship.

At length he neared the wreck. He was so near, that