air with variations. Take up a new publication, and she is equally at home there; for, though she knows little of books, she has, in the course of an up-and-down life, met with a good many authors, and teases and provokes you by telling of them precisely what you do not care to hear, the maiden names of their wives, and the Christian names of their daughters, and into what families their sisters and cousins married, and in what towns they have lived, what streets, and what numbers. Boswell himself never drew up the table of Dr. Johnson's Fleet-street courts with greater care, than she made out to me the successive residences of P. P. Esq., author of a tract on the French Revolution, and a pamphlet on the Poor Laws. 7. The very weather is not a safe subject. Her memory is a perpetual register of hard frosts, and long drouths, and high winds, and terrible storms, with all the evils that followed in their train, and all the personal events connected with them, so that, if you happen to remark that clouds are come up, and you fear it may rain, she replies: "Aye, it is just such a morning as three-and-thirty years ago, when my poor cousin was married, you remember my cousin Barbara; she married so and so, the son of so and so;" and then comes the whole pedigree of the bridegroom; the amount of the settlements, and the reading and signing them over night; a description of the wedding-dresses, in the style of Sir Charles Grandison, and how much the bride's gown cost per yard; the names, residences, and a short subsequent history of the bridemaids and men, the gentleman who gave the bride away, and the clergyman who performed the ceremony, with a learned antiquarian digression relative to the church; then the setting out in procession; the marriage; the kissing; the crying; the breakfasting; the drawing the cake through the ring; and, finally, the bridal excursion, which brings us back again, at an hour's end, to the starting-post, the weather, and the whole story of the sopping, the drying, the clothes-spoiling, the cold-catching, and all the small evils of a summer shower. 8. By this time it rains, and she sits down to a pathetic see-saw of conjectures on the chance of Mrs. Smith's having set out for her daily walk, or the possibility, that Dr. Brown may have ventured to visit his patients in his gig, and the certainty that Lady Green's new housemaid would come from London on the outside of the coach. 9. With all this intolerable prosing, she is actually reckoned a pleasant woman! Her acquaintance in the great manufacturing town where she usually resides, is very large, which may partly account for the misnomer. Her conversation is of a sort to bear dividing. Besides, there is, in all large societies, an instinctive sympathy which directs each individual to the companion most congenial to his humor. Doubtless, her associates deserve the old French compliment, "Ils ont tous un grand talent 71% le silence." pour Parceled out among some seventy or eighty, there may even be some savor in her talk. 10. She has the eye of a hawk, and detects a wandering glance, an incipient yawn, the slightest movement of impatience. The very needle must be quiet. If a pair of scissors do but wag, she is affronted, draws herself up, breaks off in the middle of a story, of a sentence, of a word, and the unlucky culprit must, for civility's sake, summon a more than Spartan fortitude, and beg the torturer to resume her torments-"That, that is the unkindest cut of all !” 11. I wonder, if she had happened to have married, how many husbands she would have talked to death. It is certain, that none of her relations are long-lived after she comes to reside with them. Father, mother, uncle, sister, brother, two nephews, and one niece,-all these have successively passed away, though a healthy race, and with no visible disorder,— except-but we must not be uncharitable. They might have died, though she had been born dumb:-"It is an accident that happens every day." Since the decease of her last nephew, she attempted to form an establishment with a widow * They all have a great talent for silence. lady, for the sake, as they both said, of the comfort of society. But-strange miscalculation! she was a talker, too! They parted in a week. EXERCISE CXVII. THE UNBIDDEN GUEST. 1. I come! Ye have lighted your festal hall, And music is sounding its joyous call, LUELLA J. CASE And the guests are gathering-the young, the fair, 2. I come! Let the music's echoing note 3. We have met before! Aye, I wandered here And many a beautiful form has bowed To the sleep that dwells in the damp white shroud! When the suns of autumn were faint and brief, Ere the suns of the passing year grow pale. 4. Then swell the proud strains of your music high, I shall come when life's morning ray is bright, When love's sweet voice is a voice of the Past! 5. Ye would quail, ye tremblers, to see me here; 6. My voice shall be sweet in the maiden's ear, As I kiss from his bright young lips the rose. Fling off the wreath,-to your homes, and pray! EXERCISE CXVIII. ASPIRE! 1 (<) Higher, higher, ever higher,— Let the watchword be, "Aspire!" Noble Christian youth; 2. 3. 4. 5. Whatsoe'er be God's behest, In the strength of Truth. Let a just Ambition fire God and Man to serve; Man, with zeal and honor due, Let not Doubt thine efforts tire, To the Highest Good! From the perils, deep and dire, Keep thy chastened feet; And, while thus a self-denier, Though alone, no soul alive But saw the battle won! M. F. TUPPER |