"EVENING STAR" SATURDAY SUPPLEMENT OF ENTERTAINING READING.

No. 46.]

AUCKLAND, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1876

[Price; ONE PENNY

Poetry.

SUNBEAMS.

OH, hasten, darling, hasten ; Throw wide the cottage door, And let the golden sunbeams Dance lightly o'er the: floor. God sends these shining blessings Our humble home to cheer, To tell us by their brightness ' That he is ever near.

Let us guide the. tiny feet, These golden.paths to tread. Then heaven's richest blessings Will crown each little head. For life is full of sorrow, So full of sin and care. That we must try forever ' To keep sunbeams dancing there, Contentment is.my portion, No glittering wealth I own ; I would not give that sunbeam, To share a kingly throne. Then, hasten, darling, hasten ; Throw wide the cottage (door, • And let the golden sunbeams Be oars till life is o'er.

MOONBEAMS.

When winter winds were sighing, And Autumn days had sped, When youth and hope seemed dying, And earthly joy had fled ; I stood beside the river, When the sun had sank from sight; Listening to its gentle murmer, Midst the dusky shades of night. ' Then the rippling of the waters, : As they wanderfed far below, ■ Seemed like a 'wail of sorrow— :As a murmering' tale of woe. _ . For my heart seem'd crush'd andbrok en, Burdened with its load of care, ', .And the night winds echoed sadly, That deep moan^bf my despair. .. ( And those ever, deepeniug shadows, Gathering.darily overhead, ' i Seemed to me1 like moving spectres,' Of the sorrows that were ftad. ; Then a faint voice whispered near me, . * That my ra c e was but begun, I'must bear my'burden meekly, For'my work whs not yet done.

Theirthe moon-beam softly stealing, Scattar,aU the.olouds ofiiriiglit j Ie i33JXi a, dim revealing, O .'ciijidim-a hi4fcocu sight. - And her soft rays are now changing, Into gold each ripples crest Like a halo that from Eden, Whore the weary are at rest . Thsn reaching,to that Kiver, Is the silent churchyard groan d, The narrow pith .to heaven, Where alone relief is found.

AWAY O'ER THE DIM BLUE HILLS

Away o'er the dim blue hills, Away o'er the deep blue sea, And afar to distant scenes, oh, bird, Would, would I:might fly with thee ! I am weary, so weary, oh, bird, Of the sea and its ceaseless sigh, • I am weary of watching the distant hills, And the line where they touch the sky. For they call me away, away— The waves, with their moaning sound — And still I am watching the hills from

afar, But my spirit hath passed their bound Away o'er those distant hills, Afar o'er this moaning sea, Where I may not go, there dwells, oh bird,

All, all that is dear unto me ;— All the music of my life, All that maketh life most sweet, And alas ! how I envy thee, thou bird, Thy pinion free end fleet !— Yet, though I must linger here, I would not delay thy wing, But oh, in the song of love, sweet bird, That over the hills thou'lt sing,

Do thou breathe a thought of me To those who shall hear the strain ; Do thou wake the music that dwells in the heart, With the love in thy sweet refrain. And come back, Oh, come back to me, O'er the dim blue hills, thou bird, O'er the moaning sea return and tell, What thou hast seen nnd heard ! Heliotrope.

I A woman named Oates was had up ''' recently, in New York, for beating her '"' husband. Onbeing sentenced toimprison- I meut, she remarked that it was very hard I a woman was not allowed to thrash her 7. own Oates. 'Jack, did you carry that umbrella I home I borrowed yesterday ?' —' No, i father, you have often told me to lay up H something for a rainy day, and as I thought }:!. it would raiu before long, I had laid my I umbrella up,'

Our Fellow Travelers.

Some day we shall probably have a book on the philosophy of traveling, iv which we shall be told from experience how to avoid disagreeable impressions, and to turn all mishaps.to account. Those who are well up in the business of seeing the world have exalted traveling to an art. They let no mischances put them out of humor. A wretched, tavern, a broken stage coach, a railway train delayed by broken rails, overreaching landords—none of these things appear to trouble the genuine traveler. He has learned that these are the small discounts on the real pleasure of getting a broadside view of the ; world. If one is to be made miserable for a week because he has stopped at a dirty inn, or has had a sight of a frowsy or fluffy landlady, has been charged four prices by the hackm-.m, has had extras pnt into his bill which he never ordered, or has disagreeable fellow travelers, who bully, and badger everybody—then it is certain that he has not exalted travel to a high art.

With what grace and composure does the regular campaigner wrap his blankets about him and lie down under the canopy of stars ! "What complete resignation to hard-tack and spring water! But this pioneer traveler has so taken nature into his confidence, that all her resources are at his command. He could travel to far Cathay without a box of paper collars or an extra pair of patent leather boots. Indeed, the real traveler is known by his utter contempt for baggage. If he takes kindly to a bulging trunk he is only an amateur, and has hardly taken so much as his-first lesson. We do occasionally see one of this sort who has started out on his journey round the world with a haversack, a rattan cane and an eyeglass, and has condescended to take a look at this '.blarsted country' on his way. But we fancy that even he will grow riper and much more agreeable as he proceeds and gets a larger view of the world outside of the ' tight little island.'

i, But.most of us only travel when forced to it hy a disagreeable necessity. Subur ban citizens do indeed travel a distance every year equal to the diameter of the globe, and every three years they have yone over as many miles as would equal the circumference of the globe. But your suburban citizen usually travels with a newspaper before his face. He is intent on extracting in fifteen minutes the his tory of the world for one day. He lose no time, because when other news fails he has still the market reports, the stock list, and the closing price of exchange on the previous day. The suburban citizen and traveler comes after awhile to do many things in an automatic way. Ho will take the same car in a long train, the same seat if ihe can get it, will read the same news paper, beginning on a certain page and ending on another, year after year. There are citizens who cross the bay by the ferry-boat, who never vary six inches in the choice of a seat for years, unless crowded out by some one who has no respect for time-honored uSages,, and for the rights of our fellow-traveler. Then John Chinaman has, during recent years, assumed great prominence as a fellow-traveler. He has learned to choose the best seats in stage coaches, railway and horse cars. He no longer yields his seat to ladies, but plumps him self down, fat, greasy, and dirty, and as well satisfied as most people. Indeed, if perfect indifference is any part of the philosophy of travel, John Chinaman is well advanced. He has small concern as to what people think of him. He is the fellow-traveler who is bound to get the most for his money. One other notable fellow-traveler is the woman who goes a-shopping twice a weak, and piles up her bundles on the seats of the ferry boat and railway car, to the exclusion of weary citizens. Heaven be thanked that she does not trade erery day, and that there is an actual limit to the bulk of goods which can be bought on any one day and taken home on a passenger train. The days of crinoline were few, but they were, full of evil, because it was possible for one woman to spread over 'three or four seats, while business men profanely suffered martyr dom. But now • our gentle feminine traveler stacks up her dry goods in paper boxes and bundles on the seats, and is happy. They are her trophies of sharp bargains and surburban prosperity. As long as there is any chivalry left, let no one'question these mild usurpations. Is there a more harmless monopolist in tho world than our fellow-traveler, who has filled four seats with bundles of dry goods, and only remembers that standing men are a convenience when she wants her bundles transferred from one conveyance to another ?

A melting sermon being preached in a country church, all the congregation were weeping, except one man, who begged to be excused, as he belonged to another church.

A Scene in Court.

An American lawyer writing to a friend, explaining how he was getting along, gave tho following particulars :

' I haven't practised any law since Judge Cullen ruled me out of Court for contemptuousness and bound me over for twenty-four hours. Since my advent to this part of the country it has been my humble aim to be but a frugal tiller of the soil. It is astonishing, though, how the lawyer will show in a man after he has once been engaged in the legal profession. I thought I could exist here as a barrister incognito, but when our minister called on me this week and remarked that he judged from tho frank, open, analytical and metaphysical mode of my conversation that I must have at some time been an adornment to the bar, I readily saw that somehow the scent of the law still clung to the shattered vase.'

* Fact is, Bro. Peck.' said he, ' 1 have a suit on my hands which I am bound to contest, if necessary, to the bitter end of my existence. The cause of action is brought by one Plugger, the town dentist, to collect from me a certain sum for the construction and building of a set of false teeth by the said Plugger, for my help meet.' '■ Did he build 'em and launch 'em ?' ' He did, but not according to specifica tion ; they were warranted to crack hickory nuts and bite the cereal corn from its native cob, neither of which mechanical labors will they perform.' ' Very well, I'll specificate him. When does Court meet ?' ♦ Next Tuesday.' 'All right—let the teeth appear quo warranto, and the lady with them, res judice.'

Our Court-house is a splendid structure of sawed pine, with plank seats for the congregation, chairs for the bar and jury, and an elevated pulpit for the Judge. Court week had drawn together the male population for miles around, white and black —all mingling together so sociable like—whisky and sugar. As I didn't know who of them might be on my jury in the tooth case, and anxious to be sociable. I mingled too, that is when I was invited.

When the Court had assembled, and Sheriff holored, ' O, yes ! O, yes !' it was so solemn that there wasn't a dry mouth in the house. There was a hog-stealing case before our'n came on, and I had an opportunity to sort of get the hang of things and notate the Judge's rulings, being somewhat rusty like. After the darkey, who was indicted for stealing seven hogs, had been acquitted by his peers, because it 'pears he only stole a sow and six pigs, the Judge looked over his copy-book and called the case of Plugger versus Rev. Br. Sampson. Plugejer's lawyer stood six feet one-and a-half in his brogans, and had an uneasy way of smiling while he picked his teeth with a four-inch pocket-knife, After a jury of nine cullercd pussons and three white men had been drawn and quartered in their proper seats the prosecuting lawyer opened with a lecture on teeth in general, from saw teeth to fine-tooth combs, and after exhausting history, came to the point that his client had in the sympathetic course of his business made, manufactured and duly located ;in their proper receptacle a set of masticating grinders for Rev. Mrs. Sampson, for which Rev. Mr. S. refused to come down or point up, and as it was a rule of his client's business that no goods were taken in exchange he was there (sticking his knife in the table) to get his money, and he was goin' to have it! Having put Plugger on the stand, who testified to the general facts iv the case, the witness was kindly turned over to me for cross-examination.

'Mr. Plugger, you're a dentist, aren't you?'

' Yes ?' sir.'

' Yes, sir, you're a dentist—you're one of those fellows who sit a man down in a barber chair, open his mouth, tell him it won't hurt, get hold of a stump with a pair of nippers, haul him over the back of the chair, drag him around the room on his back, put your feet against his shoulders and haul his jaw out. You're one' of the chaps who take a brace and bit, bore a hole in a man's molar, go inside the cavern, scrape it out, put in a load of dynamite and blow the man's head off. You're one of the fiends in human shape who take a bucket of plaster of Paris, pour it into the mouth of a weak, delicate female woman, get a cast of her innocent gums, build a set of nut-crackers fit for an Antarctic walrus, and then come into this honorable Court with all the brazen effrontery of an incarnate '

' Your honor, I object to the gentleman's high falutin' sarcasm t'wards my client.' ' Mr. Peck, please confine yourself to the evidence, and don't give us so much commentary.' ' See here, Judge ; whose handling this witness —you or me ?' ' Don't talk back to me, sir, or I'll come down there and lay you out!'

Then I got mad and hit him square in the eye .with tho set of teeth. Then the Judge just bounced over that pulpit and lighted on .my back. 'Seems like there was a mixture of tornado and earthquake in the Court-house about that time, and all that I could remember when I was driving home was seeing the Judge with the table on top of him on the floor, yelling to the jury to give a verdict for Plugger.

Lonesome Charley.

A STORY AND THE END OE ONE GENERAL

ouster's SCOUTS

Now that the details of the terrible battle on the Little Horn have come, we realize what an act of awful bravery that ride of Custer's was. Three hundred braver men never died in war ; there never was a sterner test of personal courage.

I see in the list of the killed the name of Charley Raynolds—' Lonesome Charley' Reynolds. He was one of those remark able characters sometimes met with in the rude lifo of the frontier. Under his rough exterior there was a soul as refined and gentle as ever reigned in a woman's breast, and, as is unusual in snoh cases, no amount of vulgar association or want of kindred sympathy could dull its lustre one degree. When Custer was at the base of Har ney's Peak in 1874, and our camp was ablaze with. excitement over the gold discoveries, Custer sent for Bloody Knife, the cheif of his scouts, and asked for an Indian to carry dispatches over to Fort Laramie, 200 miles below us. Bloody Knife Bhook his head solemnly and said in reply: ' My warriors are brave, but they are wise. They will carry a bag of letters to Fort Lincoln, but 1 cannot ask them to go through the Sioux country to Laramie.' Fort Lincoln was 200 miles farther than Laramie, although the route to the latter place was beset with tenfold more dangers. It led directly through the Sioux hunting ground, and just at this particular time of year tho young men were all out in hunting parties, so that the plans were full of them. Bloody Knife's braves were Recs—a tribe for which tho Sioux has a hereditary enmity, and he was too wise to ask ona of them to undertake so suicidal a project. But mails must bo esnt somehow, and Custer was ponderiug what to do. Charly liey nolds was sitting by on the ground, with his logs crossed, cleaning a revolver, seemingly inattentive to the conversation. Custer had been thinking but a moment, when Reynolds looked up and said : ' I'll carry the mails to Lasamie, Gen eral.'

Custer was familiar with courage in every form, but such a proposition sur prised even him. «I wouldn't ask you to go, Reynolds,' he said.

' I have no fear,' responded the scout quietly ; ' when will the mails be ready ?' ' I was intending to send something to morrow night,' replied Custer,

' I'll go to-morrow night.' And picking up his piece of buckskin and bottle of oil, .Reynolds strode quietly away.

' There goes a man,' said Custer, • who is a constant succession of surprises to me. I am getting so that I feel a humiliation in his presence. Scarcely a day passes—and I have known him three yea^s —that does not develop some new and strong trait in his character. I would as soon have asked my brother Tom to carry a mail to Laramie as Reynolds.'

The next day I saw Reynolds lead an old, ill-shaped, bony, dun-colored horse to the farrier's. I was somewhat curious t® know if he was going to ride that, animal to Laramie, and asked him.

' Yes,' he said, in his quiet way. ' The General let me pick my own mount, and I've got one that suits me,'

Noticing my surprise at his choice, he continued :

' I suppose I could have picked out a better looking one, but this is the sort for my trip.' And scanning the beast over he added : 'He knows more than a man, if he is boney. Look in his eye.'

The farrier took the horse's shoes off' and pared his hoofs neatly. Reynolds then went to the saddler and had a set of leather shoes made to fit the horse's feet, so as to buckle around the fetlocks.

' What are those for !' I asked, 'A little dodge of mine to fool the Indians, They make no trail.' Then he packed three or four days' rations in a saddle-pocket, prepared a sup ply of amunition and cleaned up a long, old fashioned rifle. Then, eating a hearty dinner, he lay down under a wagon for a nap.

About four o'clock that evening an engineering party started off in the direc tion Reynolds was to take, and saddling his horse and strapping on a canvass bag of letters, he accompanied us. We rode till about ten o'clock and went into camp in a cluster of trees near a brook. A fire was lighted, a pot of coffee made, and after drinking a cupful Reynolds mounted

into his saddle and rode silently off into the dark.

His path lay through a trackless wilder ness—2oo miles of it—the constant haunt of hostile Indians, and not a foot of the ground had Reynolds ever seen before. He had never been at Laramie; he only knew the general direction it which it lay, and his only guide-board was the stars. After four nights of riding and three days of sleeping he reached his destination, unharmed. I saw him afterward at Fort Lincoln on our return. He told me he got through nicely and mailed the letters I intrusted to his care.

Reynolds was tho son of a wealthy and aristocratic family in Tennesee, but was educated in the North, and when the war broke out he found himself in a painful dilemma. Her had imbibed enough of Northern ideas to make him strongly hostile to the secession movement, while his family,' consisting of a father, mother and; sister, were violent sympathizers with the South. His father entered the Confederate army as an officer early in'the war. The son could not go with him and fight against his principles, nor could he stay at home and brook the taunts and pleadings of his mother and sister, nor could he join the Federal army and fight against his father, so he left his home and wandered away to the mines on tho Pacific slope. His home was at the centre of hostilities, and all communication was cut off. At the close of the war he went to Tennessee, and what was once his home was desolation. The neighbors told him his father had been killed in one of the battles his mother had died, and his sister had married, a rebel officer whose name was not remembered, and all trace of her had been lost. The old plantation had been confiscated, and there was not a single tie left to bind him to the past.

He spent some months in search of his. sister, without Result, and finally homelessness ■ and.,.a disposition which shrank ,from fellpwshjp with men drove him back to his oid home in the mountains fo spend the rest of a weary life. From 18C5 to 1872 he was in the mines in Coler ado Montana, and .hunting and trapping along the streams, of the great Northwest, being employed occasionally by the Government to ,dp soma work for which ordinary men were too cowardly or Were not competent.

Varieties.

At New York, while a young lady, and gentleman wero playfully contending about a gold locket, the former accidentally swallowed it. The young gentleman immediately asked for the casket containing the jewel. A shopkeeper, for his virtues, obtained the name of Littlo Rascal. A stranger asked him why this appellation was given him. 'To distinguish me from the rest of my townsmen,' said ho,' who are great rascals.'

A Word of Explanation.—lf a young lady ' throws herself away,' understand, she has married for love ; if she is 'com fortably settled,' understand that she has married a wealthy old man whom she hates. Let not any one say he cannot govern his passions, nor hinder them from break ing out ana carrying him into action ; for what he can do before a prince or a great man, he can do alone, or in the presence of God if he will.—Locke.

It is well said that nothing is lost. The drop of water which is spilt, the fragment of paper which is burnt, tha' plant that rots on the ground, all that perishes and is forgotten, equally seeks the atmosphero, and all is there preserved, and thence daily returned for use.— Macculloch.

When Mark Twain stood beside the tomb of Columbus in Genoa, dropping a remark suggestive of doubt as to the de mise of the great navigator, an opinion was prevalent throughout the civilized world that: to Christopher belonged the honor of having first sot eyes on the New World. But science and research are constantly dispelling illusions, and it now turns out that America was discovered as long ago in 1170 by the Welsh. At least Rev. Benjamin F. Bowen has indulged in enough historical speculation on the subject to fill quite a book, and the public are asked to drop Christopher, and honor the name of Prince Madoc, who came to our shores in the year above stated, and in the course of a century a welsh-Indian race was developed. And yet is sad to think of dropping that good old tune. ' Hail Columbia' and boring ourselves witV± some unintelligible Welsh lingo about Prince Madoc.

There is nothing more damaging than the witness that proves too mi\ c h., Miss Edgeworth tells us somewher c of an Irish peer, who, travelling in France with a negro servant, directed mni) if questioned on the subject,aalav >ay g t0 say his master was a Frenchtp; an jj c was punctiliously faithful to \ lls or d ers ; but whenever he said, ' I,iy massa am a Frenchman,' he always a,dded ( so am I!'