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Mrs. B. Then, my dear, how could you decide that she was cut out for a good wife? I am sure you could not judge of her by seeing her only two or three times, and before she was married.

Mr. B. Indeed, my love, that is a very just observation.

Mrs. B. I understand that compliment perfectly, and thank you for it, my dear. I must own I can bear any thing better than irony.

Mr. B. Irony? my dear, I was perfectly in earnest.

Mrs. B. Yes, yes; in earnest; so I perceive; I may naturally be dull of apprehension, but my feelings are quick enough; I comprehend too well. Yes, it is impossible to judge of a woman before marriage, or to guess what sort of a wife she will make. I presume you speak from experience; you have been disappointed yourself, and repent your choice.

Mr. B. My dear, what did I say that was like this? Upon my word, I meant no such thing. I really was not thinking of you in the least.

Mrs. B. No, you never think of me now. I can easily believe that you were not thinking of me in the least.

Mr. B. But I said that only to prove to you that I could not be thinking ill of you, my dear.

Mrs. B. But I would rather that you thought ill of me. than that you should not think of me at all.

Mr. B. Well, my dear, I will even think ill of you if that will please you.

Mrs. B. Do you laugh at me? When it comes to this I am wretched indeed. Never man laughed at the woman he loved. As long as you had the slightest remains of love for me you could not make me an object of derision; ridicule and love are incompatible, absolutely incompatible. Well, I have done my best, my very best, to make you happy, but in vain. I see I am not cut out to be a good wife. Happy, happy Mrs. Granby!

Mr. B. Happy, I hope sincerely, that she will be with my friend; but my happiness must depend on you, my love; so, for my sake, if not for your own, be composed, and do not torment yourself with such fancies.

Mrs. B. I do wonder whether this Mrs. Granby is really that Miss Emma Cooke. I'll go and see her directly; see her I must.

Mr. B. I am heartily glad of it, my dear; for I am sure a visit to his wife will give my friend Granby real pleasure.

Mrs. B. I promise you, my dear, I do not go to give him pleasure, or you either, but to satisfy my own curiosity.

DEFINITIONS.-I'ron-y, language intended to convey a meaning contrary to its literal signification. De-riş'ion, the act of laughing at in contempt. In-com-păt'i-ble, that can not exist together.

LXXXIX. THE RAINY DAY.

1. THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall.
And the day is dark and dreary.

2. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

3. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,

Some days must be dark and dreary.

-Longfellow.

XC. BREAK, BREAK, BREAK.

Alfred Tennyson (b. 1809 was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. He graduated at Tuty College, Cambridge. His first volume of poems was published in 1830, but it made little impression and was severely criticised. On the publication of his third series in 1842, his poetic genius began to receive general recognition. Mr. Tennyson was made poet laureate in 1850, and is now regarded as the foremost living poet of England. For several years past his residence has been on the Isle of Wight. In 1884, he was raised to the peerage.

1. BREAK, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

2. Oh, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!
Oh, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

3. And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

4. Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

XCI. TRANSPORTATION AND PLANTING OF SEEDS.

Henry David Thoreau (b. 1817, d. 1862). This eccentric American author and naturalist was born at Concord, Mass. He graduated at Harvard University in 1837. He was a good English and classical scholar, and was well acquainted with the literature of the East. His father was a maker of lead-pencils, and he followed the business for a time, but afterwards supported himself mainly by teaching, lecturing, land surveying, and carpentering. In 1845 he built himself a small wooden house near Concord, on the shore of Walden Pond, where he lived about two years. He was intimate with Hawthorne, Emerson, and other literary celebrities. His principal works are "Walden, or Life in the Woods," "A Week on Concord and Merrimac Rivers," "Excursions," "Maine Woods," "Cape Cod," "A Yankee in Canada," and "Letters to Various Persons." In descriptive power Mr. Thoreau has few if any superiors.

1. In all the pines a very thin membrane, in appearance much like an insect's wing, grows over and around the seed, and independent of it, while the latter is being developed within its base. In other words, a beautiful thin sack is woven around the seed, with a handle to it such as the wind can take hold of, and it is then committed to the wind, expressly that it may transport the seed and extend the range of the species; and this it does as effectually as when seeds are sent by mail, in a different kind of sack, from the patent office.

2. There is, then, no necessity for supposing that the pines have sprung up from nothing, and I am aware that I am not at all peculiar in asserting that they come from seeds, though the mode of their propagation by Nature has been but little attended to. They are very extensively raised from the seed in Europe, and are beginning to be here.

3. When you cut down an oak wood, a pine wood will not at once spring up there unless there are, or have been quite recently, seed-bearing pines near enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent to a forest of pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there, you will

surely have an extension of your pine forest, provided the soil is suitable.

4. As I walk amid hickories, even in August, I hear the sound of green pig-nuts falling from time to time, cut off by the chickaree over my head. In the fall I notice on the ground, either within or in the neighborhood of oak woods, on all sides of the town, stout oak twigs three or four inches long, bearing half a dozen empty acorn cups, which twigs have been gnawed off by squirrels, on both sides of the nuts, in order to make them more portable. The jays scream and the red squirrels scold while you are clubbing and shaking the chestnut trees, for they are there on the same errand, and two of a trade never agree.

5. I frequently see a red or a gray squirrel cast down a green chestnut burr, as I am going through the woods, and I used to think, sometimes, that they were cast at me. In fact, they are so busy about it, in the midst of the chestnnt season, that you can not stand long in the woods without hearing one fall.

6. A sportsman told me that he had, the day beforethat was in the middle of October-seen a green chestnut burr dropped on our great river meadow, fifty rods from the nearest wood, and much farther from the nearest chestnut tree, and he could not tell how it came there. Occasionally, when chestnutting in midwinter, I find thirty or forty nuts in a pile, left in its gallery just under the leaves, by the common wood-mouse.

7. But especially, in the winter, the extent to which this transportation and planting of nuts is carried on, is made apparent by the snow. In almost every wood you will see where the red or gray squirrels have pawed down through the snow in a hundred places, sometimes two feet deep, and almost always directly to a nut or a pine-cone,-as directly as if they had started from it and bored upward,which you and I could not have done. It would be difficult for us to find one before the snow falls. Commonly,

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