THE MOUNT OF THE HOLY CROSS.

This peak of the National range of the Rocky Mountains, in Colorado, is 13,000 feet high, from which Thomas Moran made his famous painting:

"I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from which cometh my help."

HERE Nature's God hath roughest wrought;

W Where spring the purest fountains;

Where, long ago, the Titans fought,

And hurled, for missiles, mountains;
Where everlasting snows abide,

And tempest clouds are driven
Along the solid, granite, side
Of yawning chasms, riven
Deep, in the Rockies' grandest pride
That lifts its head to heaven;

Amid the wilds, where awful rise
The giant peaks, that fathom

Night's starry depths and day's blue skies,
And brood above the chasm,

One monarch 'mongst the mighty hills
Rears high his summit hoary,

Like some grim king, whose legend fills
A page of olden story,

And heart o'er awes and soul enthrills
Before his regal glory.

The holy cross of Christian faith,
Above the royal velvet,

In beauty shines, an emblem wraith,
High on his beetling helmet;

Its white arms stretching through the sheen
Of silvery mist, are gleaming,

A talisman, the world to screen;
Hope's symbol in its seeming;
A wonder grand, a joy serene,
Upon the ages beaming,

PRISCILLA-REPRESENTING PURITAN STYLE.

A picturesque New England scene of early days. While Connecticut was nicknamed "The Nutmeg State," it was also called "The Land of Steady Habits." About 1633 a trading house was built in the Connecticut River region by the Plymouth Colony, followed afterwards by the Windsor Colony.

ST

To ryhme concerning thee, Connecticut? Religion was thy test when first began

Thy start and strong advance in that which makes,
For government, the standard and the base

Of citizen; the form, the substance, all
That guides the best way for a people's weal.

But firm as that old Charter Oak, wherein
You hid your rights till they had stronger grown,
You stood, loyal, stalwart and puissant,
When war for Independence came, and sent
Your doughty men, among the first, to help
The work of Washington; and of the names
That shine upon the page of history,
Marking those days of valiant hardihood,
Stands Ethan Allen, linked in bright glory
With Ticonderoga, and the mandate
From "God and the Continental Congress."

When mad and darksome came the awful day,
Fraught with disunion's threat'ning blight and woe,
Despite that not a man of arms within
Thy boundaries was then equipped for war,
Within the space 'twixt new moon and its full,

Five times thy quota of the nation's call

Marched forth, a steel-crowned column, grim arrayed, To fight, with might, for what you deemed the right,

And this is but a phase of thy career;
A hint at what thou art, Connecticut.

ONE OF THE BLUE HEN'S CHICKENS.

Many years ago, when Capt. Caldwell, of the 1st Delaware Regiment, said that no fighting cock could be true game unless its mother was a blue hen, Delaware became known as the "Blue Hen State."

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