WHAT MORE PURE.
Sweet is the sound of the rippling brook.
Or the wild bird's song of glee;
Or the tinkling music of herd bells,
When wafted over the lea.
But sweetest of all songs nature sings.
Is my baby's laugh to me.
A glorious sunset thrills my soul;
I delight in a grand sunrise;
I enraptured stand and watch the sea,
As its great heart throbs and sighs.
More wondrous by far than all of these,
Is the smile in my baby's eyes.
What flower wi' the lily can compare,
Of Flora's radiant band?
The rose is proud as she is fair.
None prouder in all the land;
Yet, prouder I, than lily or rose,
Of my baby's waxen hand.
Nor rippling brook, nor the sons; of bird,
Nor the herd bell sounds so sweet;
Nor sunrise gold, nor the sunset's glow,
Nor the sea I love to greet.
Hold ever so great a charm for me,
As my baby's rosy feet.
Her budding charms are many and rare,
For aye my pen could extol.
Far grander recruits than her wee form,
The Army of Life doth enroll —
But what more pure, on earth, or in heaven.
Than my baby's spotless soul?
OUR NATION'S VALHALLA.
BY ALMA J. HERBERT.
The National Hall of Statuary in the south wing of the capitol, the former hall of the House of Representatives, is said to have been modeled after the theater at Athens. It is a fine semi-circle of 95 or 96 feet chord, and 60 feet height, with floor of blue and white marbles, in octagons. It is surrounded by a line of 26 columns of the beautiful variegated breccia, or pudding-stone, called Potomac marble (from the now exhausted quarry at the great falls of that river, some 20 miles above Washington), 28 feet high, in three sections; 8 feet 4 inches in circumference, resting on bases of sandstone, capitals of Carrara marble, cut in Italy, making the height 32 feet. Eight of these noble columns form a loggia under the south gallery, with two windows on each side the corridor; high up on the north are small square and circular windows that lighted the gallery which it is proposed soon to remove; but the hall is lighted from above, by the south dome, or rather,
