Page 75 - 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 ...

Sweet Brier-Rose -she heard their cries ; a little pensive smile
Across her fair fact; flitted that might a stone beguile ;
And then she gave her pretty head a roguish little cock.
"■ Hand m e a boat-h ook, lads,” .she s a id ; “ i think I'll break the l o c k ”

Derisive shouts of laughter broke from throats of young and old :
“ Ho ! good-for-nothing Brier-Rose, your tongue was ever bold! "
And, mockingly, a boat-hook into her hands was flung,
When, lo 3 into the river's midst with daring leaps she sprung !

Wc saw her dimly through a mist of dense and blinding spray;
From beam to beam she skipped, like a water-sprite at p.ay;
And now and then faint fleams we caught of color through the mist—
O 1 >
A crimson waist, a golden head, a little dainty wrist-

In terror pressed the people to the margin of the hill,
A hundred breaths were bated, a hundred hearts stood still,
For h a rk ! from out the rapids came a strange and creaking sound,
anti then a crash of thunder which shook the very ground,

■The waters hurled the lumber mass down o'er the rocky steep;
W e heard a muffled rumbling and a rolling in the deep;
W e saw a tiny form which the torrent swiftly bore
And flung; into the wild abyss, whore it was seen no more.

Ah, little naughty Brier Rose, thou couldst net weave nor spin,
Yet thou con ids t do a nobler deed than all thy mocking Ida;
lHor thou hadst courage e'en to die, and by thy death to save
A thousand farms and lives from the fury of the wave.

And yet the adage lives, in the valley of thy birth,
When wayward children spend their day's in heedless play and mirth,
Oft mothers say, half smiling, half sighing, Heaven knows
Whatever will become of the naughty Brier-Rose ! "
HjA.ev.AK H jo r m B oyseen.