chair, after perusing a flowing account of the steeple-chase in one of the local papers, "men are greater fools than they are generally taken for, to risk a rush into eternity every time they venture at these insane steeple-chases."
"But this was a particularly insane one," rejoined his gentle sister, who had invariably a kind and excusing word for everybody in the village, old maid though they all called her. "And I think the authorities should have interfered beforehand, and not have allowed these poor, thoughtless lads to risk their necks."
But the authorities had not done so, and the "thoughtless lads" had to reap the consequences of their own temerity.
THE FAIRIES' HOME.
BY J. E. CARPENTER.
[In Ireland, it is said, the fairies have power to punish those who intrude upon their haunts, and that they disappear altogether when their dwellings are encroached on by the homes and habitations of man.]
In many a silent moonlit dell
The fairy people used to dwell.
But none so gay as those erewhile
Who made their home in Erin's isle.
On sweet Killarney's flower-clad hills,
Or down by Mallow's gurgling rills,
Or where sweet Shannon's waters roam,
Be sure the fairies made their home.
The bright, the mystic Elfin band
There made their name in Erin's land.
They dwelt where voice was never heard
Save whispering wind, or warbling bird;
And ah! that was a rueful day
When herdsman led his kine that way,—
For if within the fairies' ring
His wandering flock he'd chance to bring,
In danger's path 'twas his to roam,
Who crush'd the flowers of the fairies' home!
Such mystic powers that Elfin band
Possess'd of old, in Erin's land.
But now, where stood those loyely dells,
How many a busy household dwells;
The mystic, dream-like, fairy past
Was all too pure, too bright to last.
'Tis thus in life—can age restore
Youth's beauteous fairy scenes of yore?
No! but in dreams again we roam
Those sunny realms, the faries' home!
There only meet that gentle band
That bless'd young Erin's sunny land!
