Then let the sovereign millions, where
Our banner floats in sun and air,
From the warm palm-lands to Alaska's cold,
Repeat with us the pledge a century old?



THE CAPTAIN'S WELL.

The story of the shipwreck of Captain Valentine Bagley, on the
coast of Arabia, and his sufferings in the desert, has been
familiar from my childhood. It has been partially told in the
singularly beautiful lines of my friend, Harriet Prescott Spofford,
an the occasion of a public celebration at the Newburyport Library.
To the charm and felicity of her verse, as far as it goes, nothing
can be added; but in the following ballad I have endeavored to give
a fuller detail of the touching incident upon which it is founded.

From pain and peril, by land and main,
The shipwrecked sailor came back again;

And like one from the dead, the threshold cross'd
Of his wondering home, that had mourned him lost.

Where he sat once more with his kith and kin,
And welcomed his neighbors thronging in.

But when morning came he called for his spade.
"I must pay my debt to the Lord," he said.