The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens.

Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast 5 thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. .

I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

PSALM CXXXVII

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.

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15

If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my 20 chief joy.

PSALM CXXXIX

O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.

Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thought afar off.

Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.

5 Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine

hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.

Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I 10 flee from thy presence? . . .

If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;

Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.

15 If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.

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Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. . . .

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Babylon the greatest city of the ancient world. Here the Jews had been carried as captives. These verses express their homesick longing for the holy city. - wasted: made poor, destroyed. - Zion: another name for Jerusalem.. cunning skill, dexterity.compassest: to compass is to surround.

AN OLD-FASHIONED SNOWSTORM

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER (1829-1900) was an American author. He had a keen, wholesome sense of humor, a sympathetic nature, and much literary taste. Among his entertaining books are " My Summer in a Garden" and "Back-Log Studies."

It was one of those wide-sweeping, careering storms 5 that may not much affect the city, but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense of the personal qualities of the weather, power, persistency, fierceness, and roaring exultation. Outdoors was terrible to those who looked out of windows, and heard the 10 raging wind, and saw the commotion in all the high tree tops and the writhing of the low evergreens, and could not summon resolution to go forth and breast and conquer the bluster. The sky was dark with snow, which was not permitted to fall peacefully like a blessed mantle, 15 as it sometimes does, but was blown and rent and tossed like the split canvas of a ship in a gale.

The world was taken possession of by the demons of the air, who had their will of it. There is a sort of fascination in such a scene, equal to that of a tempest at sea, 20 and without its attendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fear that the house will founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage, which is dimly seen anchored

across the field; at every thundering onset there is no fear that the cook's galley will upset, or the screw break loose and smash through the side, and we are not in

momentary expectation of the tinkling of the little bell to 5 "stop her."

The snow rises in drifting waves, and the naked trees bend like strained masts; but so long as the window blinds remain fast, and the chimney tops do not go, Nothing more serious can

we preserve an equal mind.

10 happen than the failure of the butcher's and the grocer's

carts, unless, indeed, the little news carrier should fail to board us with the world's daily bulletin, or our nextdoor neighbor should be deterred from coming to sit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange the trifling, harmless gossip of the day. The feeling of seclusion on 5 such a day is sweet, but the true friend who does brave the storm and come is welcomed with a sort of enthusiasm that his arrival in pleasant weather would never excite.

On such a day I recall the great snowstorms on the 10 northern New England hills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with no sunrise or sunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all the while dark with the driving snow, and the whole world full of the noise of the rioting boreal forces; until the roads were obliter- 15 ated, the fences covered, and the snow was piled solidly above the first-story windows of the farmhouse on one side, and drifted before the front door so high that egress could only be had by tunneling the bank.

After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and 20 the sun struggled out again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, and the scattered dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by the tempest and half buried in sand. But when the blue sky again bent over all, when the wide expanse of snow sparkled like diamond fields and the 25 chimney signal smokes could be seen, how beautiful was the picture! Then began the stir abroad, and the efforts