Page 292 - 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 ...

And blackened the moonlit air.
But our straining; eyes, through the dense dark fog,
Saw something moving there!

And, yes— it is !— it is Jack, the dog;— ■
Crouched low on the crumbling stairs—
Staunch to his duty, tvuc to the; last,
For M ac’s little child is there!
He holds her fas': in his strong old teeth,
And clears at a single bound
The yawning chasm of flame and death,
And headlong they come to the gsound—
Headlong, on a pile of rolltitl oid thatch—-
Soft: as a feather bed.
And the child ? Why, she’d .scarcely received one scratch—
But the dog?— a ll! poor Jack was cWd !
V. M. S'LANLF"

THB OLD WIFE.
[Do Tiot aUitiipi. to rend ibis selection unless you can interpret its profound ptit;LOsj,
and casi imitate the Toitcs ofan rl mfus jwiii woman. J

V the bed the old man, waiting, sat in vigil sad and tender,
B Where his aged wife lay dying; Eind the twilight shadows brown

Slowly from the wall and window chased the sunset’s goidei>
splendor
Going down.

11 Is it night? ” she whispered, waking (for her spirit seemed to hover,
Lost between the next world's sunrise and the bedtime cares of this),
And the old man, weak and tearful, trembling as he bent above her,
Answered: "Y e s.”

‘A r e the children in ? ” she asked him. Could he tell her? A ll the
treasures