Not so the boat and occupants, however, the former of which was broken in two, and the latter were scattered in all directions in the water, not however, before discharging their pistols at him, two balls going through his cap and three perforating his coat. The men were then told that if they submitted quietly they would be saved, otherwise he would leave them to their fate. They preferred the former, and arming himself with his pistol in one hand and a dirk (taken by him at the Battle of Bull Run from a "secesh") in the other, he took them in his boat one by one, handcuffing them as they were pulled in. In addition to which, from the stern of the enemy's boat, which floated, he took eleven hundred dollars in gold and five thousand dollars in their worthless paper money. It was with some difficulty that he reached the Fort, the gunwale of the boat being almost level with the water with its increased freight. Boston Saturday Gazette.

THE NEW-YEAR-1862.

BY MARY A. RIPLEY.

The Old Year's pulse is low. The life that blazed
And like a fiery tide poured through his veins
Only a twelvemonth since, is faint and cold.
Look on him as he lies before you now!
Where is the grace that dwelt in that still form?
Where is the brightness of the dull, dead eyes?
This is the dying year. But I can see-
I have it pictured in a hidden shrine-

The young year with fair, promising lips, and arms
O'erladen with the gifts, should make me rich.
And like a bauble-loving child, I fear

My hands have grasped the tinsel, not the gold.
And yet I would not lose my last year's life;
I had no love for the dear mother-land,
No holy pride in her free floating flag,
Till Sumter fell, and hearts beat martially,
And voices rang like trumpets in my ears,
And gathering thousands sought the Capital,

To stay the threatening flood that treason poured.

A year ago, upon Potomac's banks,

Silence was sleeping; and the stars shone down
On quiet cities, on the talking waves,
Or glanced through lovely forests.
But to-night
The hills are white with tents; the camp-fires glow;
The cannon wait to utter burning words;
The sentries keep their watch. And God looks down
Upon the infant nation as it learns

A newer, harder lesson. There are homes
That rang with mirth and song a year ago,

Whose lights are quenched in death. Young hearts

have laid

Their life upon the altar, and lone graves
Are scattered over prairies, and white hands
And marble brows lie under wintry clods;
And o'er them all the nation rains her tears,

And Fame, with diamond-point, cuts deep their names,
Upon our history's page. Beneath our flag
They struggled-nobly died. God knows their names.

The New-Year comes not with the dancing feet
Of an unburdened youth; his heritage
Is an untrodden wine-press; and our strength
Must crush the grapes that lie in purple piles,
Full of the blood-red wine. Oh! let me give
My life up in this vintage, if I may

But drain one cup of the celestial draught
That from these hills shall flow through all the earth.

NEW-YEAR IN THE CAMP.

BY MARIE,

A happy New-Year! Ho! comrades all,
Let's welcome its light nor fear it;
A happy New-Year! Ring out the call
Till the rebels beyond us hear it.
A happy New-Year! I wish you a score
Of years undimmed by a sorrow;
We'll beat a retreat from dull care once more,
Though bullets may rattle to-morrow.

Ho! gather more brands till the fire glows bright,
Let's sit where the shadows won't find us,
And dream we are back in our homes to-night,
With the dear ones left behind us.

No womanish tears for the peace we've lost,
No grief for the struggle before us;
For God and our country we'll stake the cost
With the bright New-Year before us!

You know when we sat by our hearths last year,
And drank to old Time's retreating;
We'd laugh should a vision but paint us here,
Thus shouting our New-Year's greeting.
We walked in the groves of our idle life,

Nor dreamed of what fortune brought us,
Nor fancied we'd learn 'mid war and strife,
The wonderful love she taught us.

Wonderful love! ay, I see you doubt,

You think it scarce worth the winning;
Through toil and through danger to ravel out
This web of Mis-Fortune's spinning.
But I-I would count in a higher scale,
The soul of our country's glory;
The spirit that rode on the crashing gale,
Through battle-fields red and gory.

I'd count the great hearts that so proudly broke
From the trammelling ties that bound them;
I'd count the great spirits whose life and hope
Is cast in the struggle around them.

I'd count all the listlessness crushed and gone,
All the energy waked and cherished,
And believe in the spirit of Sixty-one,
No light of the past has perished.

Then a happy New-Year to ye, comrades all,
To the brave hearts far and near us;
A happy New-Year! ring out the call,
Till the echoes laugh back to hear us.

A happy New-Year! who doubts it will be,
With such hands and such hearts to win it;
Good night, my old comrades, I leave you to see
That the future has blessings within it!
SOUTH-QUINCY, January, 1862.

"THE FLAG OF SECESSION."

A REPLY TO THE SONG OF THE SAME HEADING.*
BY JAMES S. WATKINS.
AIR-"Star-Spangled Banner."

I.

Oh! yes, I have seen by the early dawn's light, What your minions have hailed as "the flag of Secession,"

Base rebeldom's glory! a pitiless sight,

Defiantly waves o'er the Union's possessions;

*See page 34, Vol. III, Rumors and Incidents.

No patriot's afraid,

By the laws they have made,

What Nemesis insatiate still inspires
The suicide of Empires? In her breast,
Greece nursed the serpent faction with her blood,
That stung her to the heart. Rebellion's steel
Pierced the fair bosom of imperial Rome
By foreign foes unconquered; and the land
Of God's own people drank the fatal cup
Which dark dissension pressed upon her lips.
As midnight's bell proclaims with double tongue
One year departed and another born,
Swift throng around me with imperial mien
And god-like brow, and eyes of sad reproach,
As angels look in sorrow, the great dead
Who walked Mount Vernon's shades, and Marshfield's
plains,

And Monticello's height, and Ashland's groves
Still vocal with unearthly eloquence-
Statesmen and Chiefs who loved their native land
And led her up to fame. With solemn air
And thrilling voice they point to freedom's flag,
War-rent and laced with sacrificial blood
By noble martyrs shed; and thus they speak-
"O sons once named Americans, but now
The world-mocked orphans of a nameless land,
Why rush ye to destruction? Happier far

But forever, majestic, continue to wave

A terror to tyrants, o'er rebeldom's grave.

O infant Year! whose new-born limbs are swathed
And cradled in convulsion-O dread Heaven!
Unsealing o'er this land of many woes
The Apocalyptic vials-O my torn

And bleeding country! by thy sons defloured,
And stricken of thy God-how shall I sing
A festal anthem on a broken lyre-
To ears made dull by sorrow?

From her dreams,
With music lulled, all-queenly, and perfumed
With odors from the Summer's lips distilled,
The startled nation woke-awoke to hear
Rebellion's demons in her citadel,

By dark and perjured sentinels invoked-
Singing her dirge, like the volcanic bass
Of Etna's organ chiming with the sea
When groans the Titan in immortal pangs-
The trepidation of conflicting hosts,

Mixed with the wild alarm of clamorous bells,
The strife-the shout-the wailing of despair.

Time, by whose hands the mouldering dust of death
Is shovelled in the vaults of coffined realms,

From the primeval forests-the red chiefs
Who bravely perished on their hunting-grounds,
Or passing o'er the mountains of the West,
Went down in gloom, like nature's final sun,
To rise no more forever! Better thus
Than live the foul dishonor of your sires,
Whose progeny like Lucifer of old
Rebelled against the power that made them gods,
And perished in their treason. Come, ye winds,
Swift-winged couriers of the tropic sky,
Heralds of death and ruin-come, ye fires
That in volcanic caverns ever burn,
And crisp pale cities in your molten jaws-
Come, burning plagues, and ye tempestuous waves,
Who strangle navies in your watery arms-
Earthquakes and lightning strokes, all earthly ills
Which Heaven inflicts and trembling men abhor-
Fell bolts in God's red armory of wrath,
With all your terrors in one stroke combined,
Come! and in mercy blast the land with ruin
Rather than we should see Columbia's plains
Drenched in a crimson sea of fratricide,
Lust, rapine, malice, treachery, revenge,
The tall and crowning infamy of time."

I hear a passing bell-the muffled drum
Rolls its sepulchral echoes on the night
Which spreads across the sky the starless pall
Of desolation. And upon my ear
Falls the wild burden of a dismal song
Like that of mocking fiends in revelry.

Fiends who in the lurid gloom
Of hell do ply the fatal loom,
Weave a banner of despair
For Columbia's tainted air.
Like the boding raven's wing
All the land o'ershadowing,
In the murky woof embroider
Darkness, death, and hell's disorder.

On the fatal standard show
Every form of guilt and woe-
Murder drinking deep of blood,
Rolling round him like a flood,

Faction's diabolic art,

Perjured tongue and traitor heart-
All the fetid gall that drips
From the land's infected lips,
In the murky woof embroider
Darkness, death, and hell's disorder.

Weave we in the magic loom
Piles of slain without a tomb,
Cities lit with midnight fires,
Crashing walls and toppling spires,
Famine's sunken, ghastly cheek,
Outraged woman's helpless shriek,
Hoary age and infancy
Plunged in one wide misery;
In the murky woof embroider
Darkness, death, and hell's disorder.

Let the banner's folds be bound
With a fiery serpent round;
Eden's destroyer shall recal
The new temptation, sin, and fall.

We have changed the stripes of flame
To the burning blush of shame,
And the streaks of spotless white
To the pallor of affright,
And the stars which blazoned all
To wormwood in its endless fall.

The song of treason ceased-the demons fled,
And as I mused in the dark bitterness
Of grief to this sad prophecy of woe,
I heard a sound, as when the ocean moves
His moist battalions to the tempest's march,
To storm the fortress of the rocky isles,
And hosts innumerable thronged around
From every height
In panoply of war.
And every valley, rolled the martial drum,
And bugles calling to the gory charge

The loyal and the bold, while streamed on high
Gay banners glittering with the hues of heaven.

And bloom forever round the precious urns
Of Baker and of Lyon. Fortune smiled
Upon them, casting from her ample lap,
Her lavish stores of fame and wealth and ease,
And wooed them to repose. Though sweet her song,
She sang unheeded. Honor, fortune, life
They offered freely on their country's shrine,
In the red heat and fury of the fight,
Deeming the dearest jewels of the world

Were nought when weighed against the nation's life.
He who led our faltering ranks
Up the ambuscaded banks-
He who poured his heart's red rain
Over Springfield's stormy plain,
Heeding not the volleys deadly,
Nor the life-blood running redly,
Cold in death shall lead no more
Where our country's eagles soar.

Such, O War! thy fearful pleasure,
Priceless blood and costliest treasure,
Still the victims whom thou smitest
Are the loveliest and brightest.
But the martyrs shall be glorious
When our flag returns victorious:
Death, who seals such patriot eyes,
Opens them in Paradise.

As wistfully I gazed upon their graves
On a mount
A vision passed before me.
That glowed with light ineffable, appeared
The New-Year, in imperial garments clad,
Erect and tall and godlike in his mien,
With strength immortal in his manly limbs,
And hope and courage beaming from his eyes.
In either hand a hideous serpent writhed,
Gasping and struggling in the pangs of death,
Seeking in vain to sting with venomed fangs
The hand that grasped them. On the scaly folds
Of one appeared the reptile's name-SECESSION-
The other bore the legend ABOLITION;

And these twin dragons, ever linked together,
Moved by one fell intent and mortal hate,
Still twining with inseparable coils,

Writhed with the self-same pangs, and hissed, and died.
The New Year cast the reptiles at his feet,
And lo! swift breaking from the clouds, he saw
Coming in splendor like the morning sun,
The reunited Empire of the West,
Swelled on the ear the ever-murmuring hum
Of populous cities on unnumbered streams,
And marts of commerce by a hundred lakes.
The teeming fields, with varied harvests, waved,
And tinkling bells on distant hills revived
Sweet memories of Arcadia's pastoral days.
Fair science led her train by every grove
And hill and stream, and pure religion filled
Her solemn temples with perpetual hymns
And fervent supplication to her God.
And from above the shades of years departed
Sang with a voice that filled the firmament:

66

'Hail, New-Year, hail! the noblest child of Time!
The Power which brought the fathers o'er the flood
Has saved the offspring from the seven-fold fire.
A Union healed shall date its life from thee,
Redemption's golden era. From its shield
No star shall vanish in forlorn eclipse,
Nor exiled Pleiad chant in skies remote
Her solitary song, nor sundered be

The marriage bond of States, by law confirmed
And the eternal oracles of God."

SOUTH CAROLINA GENTLEMAN.

AIR-The Fino Old English Gentleman.

utterly degrade him to pay any debt whatever, and that in fact he has at last determined to

SECEDE,

A ripping, tearing gentleman of an uncommon kind,

A staggering, swaggering sort of chap who takes his whisky straight,

And frequently condemns his eyes to that ultimate
vengeance which a clergyman of high stand-
ing has assured must be a sinner's fate;
This South-Carolina gentleman, one of the present
time.

You trace his genealogy, and not far back you'll see,
A most undoubted Octoroon or mayhap a mustee,
And if you note the shaggy locks that cluster on his
brow,

You'll find every other hair is varied with a kink that seldom denotes pure Caucasian blood, but on the contrary, betrays an admixture with a race not particularly popular now;

This South-Carolina gentleman, one of the present time.

He always wears a full dress coat, pre-Adamite in cut, With waistcoat of the broadest style, through which his ruffles jut;

Six breast-pins deck his horrid front, and on his fingers shine

Whole invoices of diamond rings which would hardly pass muster with the original Jacobs in Chatham street for jewels gen-u-ine;

This South-Carolina gentleman, one of the present

time.

He chews tobacco by the pound and spits upon the floor,

If there is not a box of sand behind the nearest door; And when he takes his weekly spree, he clears a mighty track

Of every thing that bears the shape of whisky-skin, gin and sugar-brandy sour, peach, and honey, irrepressible cocktail, rum, and gum, and luscious apple-jack,

This South-Carolina gentleman, one of the present time.

He takes to euchre kindly, too, and plays an awful hand,

Especially when those he tricks his style don't understand,

And if he wins, why, then, he stops to pocket all the stakes,

But if he loses, then he says to the unfortunate stranger who had chanced to win, "It's my opinion you are a cursed Abolitionist, and if you don't leave South-Carolina in one hour, you will be hung like a dog;" but no offer to pay his losses he makes,

This South-Carolina gentleman, one of the present time.

Of course he's all the time in debt to those who credit give,

Yet manages upon the best the market yields to live, But if a Northern creditor asks him his bill to heed, This honorable gentleman instantly draws his bowie

knives and a pistol, dons a blue cockade, and declares that in consequence of the repeated aggressions of the North, and its gross violations of the Constitution, he feels that it would

time.