Page 269 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

kisses upon her cheek and lips after that fatal night. God knows how
wild were my prayers that she might know, if but only once, that I
kissed her. God knows how I would have given up my very life
could I have asked forgiveness of that sweet child.
Well, grief is unavailing now I She lies in her little tomb; there is
a marble urn at her head, and a rosebush at her feet; there grow
i sweet summer flowers; there waves the gentle grass ; there birds sing
their matins and vespers; there the blue sky smiles down to-day, and
there lies buried the freshness of my heart*

WHISPERIN' BILL.

S O you’re takinJ the census, mister ? There’s three of us livin’ still,
M y wife, and I, an’ our only son, that folks call Whisperin’ 13ill;
But Bill couldn’t tell ye his name, sir, an ’ so it's hardly worth
givin',
For ye see a bullet killed his mind an’ left his body livin’.

Set down fer a minute, mister. Ye see Bill was only fifteen
A t the time of the war, an’ as likely a boy as ever this world has seen ■
A n ’ what with the news o ’ battles lost, the speeches an’ fill the nois1
I guess every farm in the neighborhood lost a part of its crop o ’ boys

’Twas harvest time when Bill Jeft: home ; every stalk in the fields of rye
Seemed to stand tiptoe to sec him off an' wave him a fond good-bye;
His sweetheart was here with some other girl?,— the sassy little miss \
An ' pret.cndin ’ she wanted to whisper ’ n his car, she gave him a rousin'
kiss.

Oh, he was a han’some feller, an ’ tender an ’ brave ail' smart,
An 1 tho’ he was bigger than I was, the boy had a woman's heart,
I couldn’t control my feelin’s, hut I tried with all my might,
A n ’ his mother an’ me. stood a cry in' till Rill was out o' sight.

His mother she often told him when she knew he was goin’ away,
That God would take care o ’ him, maybe, if he didn’t fergit to pray;