post-office system. It could be done at a stroke
almost. By mounting a few more rural postmen
upon carts, and making due addition to
their work and pay, the existing post-office
machinery of collection and distribution could
be adapted to the conveyance of light parcels of
every kind. The telegraphs along the railway
lines would also be available for the establishment
of a cheap telegraph post.

What need we say more? Is there not
here, enough to make it manifest that the railway
system has attained, or is attaining, the
point when, by complete assimilation to the
public needs, it is capable of making wonderful
additions to the welfare of the people? English
railway property pays a net average of four per
cent. The Belgian lines, at fares one-third of
ours, pay five and a half per cent. But we need
copy nobody. No foreign nation has all that we
desire, and all that we can, if we will, attain. By
private enterprise we have secured the finest
railway system in Europe. By converting all these
private roads into public roads, with advantage
instead of loss to their shareholders, and by
employing the ability now bestowed on their direction
as monopolies, in their administration for
the highest welfare of the public, we may take a
new lead, draw closer together all the corners
of our land, add greatly to its commercial prosperity
and its domestic comforts, and, foremost
still, set an example to surrounding nations as
instructive as that of our great measures of
postal reform. The only real difficulty is, that
the public is new to this idea of change, and
therefore not prepared sufficiently to support a
bold measure of legislation.

       THE BOAT OF GRASS.

FOR years the slave endured his yoke,
Down-trodden, wronged, misused, opprest,
Yet life-long serfdom could not choke
The seeds of freedom in his breast.

At length, upon the north wind came
A whisper stealing through the land;
It spread from hut to hut like flame,
"Take heart! the hour is near at hand."

The whisper spread, and lo, on high
The dawn of an unhoped-for day:
"Be glad! the northern troops are nigh,
The fleet is in Port Royal Bay!"

Responsive to the words of cheer,
An inner voice said, " Rise and flee!
Be strong, and cast away all fear;
Thou art a man, and thou art free!"

And full of new-born hope and might
He started up, and seaward fled;
By day he turned aside by night,
He followed where the North Star led.

Through miles of barren pine and waste,
And endless breadth of swamp and sedge
By streams, whose tortuous path is traced
In tangled growth along their edge.

Two nights he fled—no sound was heard;
He met no creature on his way;
Two days crouched in the bush—the third,
He hears the bloodhounds' distant bay.

They drag him back to stripes and shame,
And bitter unrequited toil;
With red hot gyves his feet they maim,
All future thought of flight to foil.

We shuddering turn from such a cup,
Nor dare to look on his despair;
For them—oh! let us offer up
The Saviour's sacrificial prayer.

But the celestial voice that spake
Erst in his soul, might not be hushed;
The sense of birthright once awake,
Could never, never more be crushed.

And brave of heart, and strong of will,
He kept his purpose, laid his plan;
Though crippled, chained, and captive still,
A slave no longer, but a man.

Eleven months his soul he steeled
To toil and wait in silent pain,
But in the twelfth his wounds were healed—
He burst his bonds, and fled again.

A weary winding stream he sought,
And crossed its waters to and fro;
An Indian wile, to set at nought
The bloody instinct of his foe.

The waters widen to a fen,
And while he hid him, breathless, there,
With brutal cries of dogs and men,
The hunt went round and round his lair.

The baffled hounds have lost the track—
With many a curse, and many a cry,
The angry owners called them back,
And so the wild pursuit went by.

The deadly peril seemed to pass,
And then he dared to raise his head
Above the waving marish grass,
That mantled o'er the river bed.

Those long broad leaves that round him grew
He had been wont to bind and plait,
And well with simple skill he knew
To shape the basket and the mat.

Now, in their tresses sad and dull
He saw the hope of his escape,
And patiently began to cull
And weave them in canoe-like shape.

To give the reedy fabric slight
An armour 'gainst the soaking brine,
With painful care he sought by night
The amber weepings of the pine.

And since, on that Egyptian wave
The Hebrew launched her little ark,
Faith never to God's keeping gave
So great a hope, so frail a bark.

Oh, silent river of the south!
Whose lonely stream ne'er felt the oar
In all its course, from rise to mouth,
What precious freight was that you bore!