tation, that the pure, solemn, angel voice of the boy
broke forth:

66 Regina cœli, lætare, alleluja,
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluja!"

His mother, hearing the voice of her boy, wept in
happiness, and when he came to the end of the hymn,
"Gaudere et lætare, O Virgo Maria!"

the choir children cast upon him the roses which they had in their baskets, and covered him with a perfumed cloud; but when that cloud had disappeared, there was nothing beneath the flowers-the boy had vanished! Notwithstanding every effort was made, it was impossible to find him. His mother and her friends traversed the town; the magistrates searched everywhere, but without success. The poor widow then refused to see any one; she passed her days in kneeling down and praying upon the pavement where she had last seen her son, and her nights in weeping, or in dreaming, when sleep had closed her eyes, that she saw her little boy amidst the rosy clouds of heaven, singing in the midst of the choir of angels.

Misfortune often follows misfortune, as constantly as the waves break upon the shore-so it was with the widow. The family of her husband, having never consented to his marriage, sued her for all the property which she held, as executrix of her husband's estate, for her son, and, after a tedious law-suit, she was completely ruined. The poor creature paid but little attention to this; her whole heart and affection had gone with her husband and son, and she heeded nothing upon earth. She lived poorly upon the sale of some jewels which remained to her, and never missed a day but she went and prayed before the altar of the Virgin.

In a short time her stock was exhausted, and she had nothing to live upon. She applied to the relations of her husband, but they answered her with scorn and with reproaches; and, of all her property, there now only remained the portraits of her husband and son, but she would have parted with life rather than have sold them. She at last dragged herself to the cathedral, and there knelt down upon the pavement and commenced her prayers, hoping that her hunger-for she had eaten nothing for two days-might kill her, and that she might from that spot be united to her son.

In spite of herself, of her cares, and her sorrows, she was attracted by the bustle and preparations which were going on in the church. They were decorating it with green branches and flowers, and they dressed, with unusual attention, the altar of the Virgin. It was the day of the Assumption-the anniversary of that upon which she had lost her son. She blessed heaven that she was about to die upon the self-same day—and then she knelt down in a corner and covered her head with her widow's veil.

Some persons in the cathedral recognized her, but dare not disturb her pious devotion; they, therefore, only talked quietly to each other about her misfortune, and about the rumor which accused the relations of her husband of having made away with the boy, so that they might gain his fortune.

The ceremony commenced. The poor widow ceased to weep, but with an inexpressible joy, she felt herself grow fainter and fainter as it proceeded.

The procession was formed as before; then it stopped before the chapel of the Virgin; then the organ filled the whole church with a celestial harmony; clouds of incense floated upwards, and flowers covered the mosaic pavement of the church. There was a moment of silence, during which the sighs of the poor widow could be heard.

All eyes were turned towards her, and they saw her dying, pale, poverty-stricken, and in rags, whom but a year before they had seen so beautiful and so happy. Suddenly, in the midst of the silence, a voice broke forth, pure and clear, like that of an angel, which sang "Regina cœli, lætare, alleluja,

Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluja.
Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluja."

her knelt down, weeping-for the angel which sang was
The widow fell to the ground fainting, and all near
none other than her little boy, her son, who, clothed in
his white tunic, with his fair hair falling upon his
stood upon the very stone whence he had disappeared.
shoulders, bound round his forehead with the blue fillet,

The mother crept on her knees to him, and held him with all her strength, fearing that he would again vanish.

The children of the choir covered both mother and

child with a shower of roses; and, in the midst of the assembly, the bishop, applying to the widow the words of the hymn which the boy had sung to the Virgin, said,

in a loud and solemn voice:

"O rejoice!

For him thou borest in thy bosom lives
And is arisen !"

The organ then again pealed forth, and never did so numerous a congregation pray with so much fervor and faith!

*

The widow's son related what had occurred to him, as a dream which had left few traces in his mind. He remembered only the countenance of a female, more beautiful in his eyes than even his mother, although her face was black, who had nourished him with a delicions honey; and also that he had mingled his voice with a choir more harmonious and divine than those of earth. So the story is, that when they dug beneath the stone whence the little chorister had vanished, they found that which now adorns the cathedral-the statue of the "BLACK MADONNA!"

A DRY DISSERTATION ON A WET DAY.

my duck, in future: stay, there seems a more sober and quiet one-for really some of them seem to become intoxicated on water! indeed, who knows but the fumes of the thousands of public houses, in our not over-sober country, may ascend faintly to the clouds, and thence faintly descend again, and slightly alcoholize this rainwater, quite enough to puzzle and perturb the brain of ducklings? He appears to compassionate the miserable, featherless biped, man, without webbed feet.

It was a rainy, an unmistakably rainy day: that sort | dog my screech-owl, or my sweet little alligator, than f dull, dogged, determined downfall that drowns hope at once, most ignobly, in a gutter—yes, drowns her, beyond hot bricks and bellows. You cannot warm her back to life-you cannot blow new breath into her lungs you feel gloomy, heavy, unspeakably stupid. If the soul was a spark, as some bards have denominated her, she is in danger of being extinguished altogether; for your spirits are most unquestionably damped. You envy the very roof of the house: there are spouts to carry off the abounding fluid, but none to relieve your overcharged mind. There the rain seems accumulating still one grey, leaden, watery deluge. In parts of the tropics, when it rains-though sooth to say the rain is still heavier there when it does fall-there is something rather animating, rather exciting, and exhilarating in the scene. The water comes down with a rush and a roar that startles you; it is a cataract from the very clouds; the noise is almost like the noise of the sea; it is grand and wonderful-a stirring, restless, stormy, noisy, agitated scene! But here, the steady, sapping rain has so dismal a slowness, so chilly a dullness: it is such a respectable rain! so safe-going and well-conducted! it would never wash you off your horse (it washed a poor lady off her mule at Panama) or out of your gig-not it (which a tropical rain would be very apt to do). It would content itself by giving you plenty of rheumatism, and your death of cold! Aye, it might wash you into your coffin! but all fair and smoothly, drop, drop, drop-pretty fast, too, but steadily, always very steadily-persevering, quiet, taking hold of the day, and keeping hold with a sort of bull-dog pertinacity.

The country-inn that I am in seems half becoming an | ark, and floating on the bosom of the waters! The land we live in seems melting from us, to one entire sop! Heigh-ho! patter, patter, splash, splash! If there are any shower-bath makers in this neighborhood, perhaps they are more to be pitied than I am. They must see utter ruin staring them in the face; for shower-sick must every body be for twenty years to come at least so at any rate I should say, from my present feelings.

How abominably happy those unsympathizing, unfeeling ducks look! How can we use their ugly name as a term of endearment! Dear little duck, indeed!—malevolent monsters! With what wicked enjoyment they waddle and splash, there, just before my eyes, as though to say, "You tyrants, who slaughter us unmercifully full often, see how all-compensating Nature makes us happy when you are wretched! Next time you eat duck and green peas, remember this; and don't boast of your superiority too much; A puddle can make us happier than a principality makes some of you. Quack! quack!"

While gazing on that happy party, I had felt how flattered they would have been, had they known our term for such a bathing as they were enjoying was a ducking! I left the window, and took up a newspaper lying on the table. My eye is caught by the pathetic announcement that bobbin-net is dull. Poor bobbin-net! "Mule-twist is languid; potatoes are looking up (probably that species called the pink-eyes); "jaconets are depressed!" I feel for them from the very bottom of my heart! But what is this? "Flour is lively!" Ah! I groan inwardly, and envy flour savagely. I read no more: I care not, in this melancholy mood, for the information that pigs has riz, or mangel-wurzel fallen; no fall can affect me now; nothing but a fall in the barometer. Fate seems to have resigned her shears for that redoubtable instrument; in fact, empires, dynasties, constitutions, and institutions might depend on this same barometer. Imagine such a rain as this at Paris! Our volatile friends would not, probably, recover their spirits under half-a-dozen of revolutions at least. The first two or three might flash in the pan, their powder would be so damp.

One more saunter to the window, resolved to ignore the ducks, and be deaf to the exulting voice of quackery. Behold, a fly or chaise from the neighboring station has stopped at the door! I gaze on dissolving views of two nondescript creatures, that were once horses, and that now look like the damp remains of prodigious rats. If ever they had any fiery spirit of their own, after all this watering, it is assuredly only half-and-half now, and very strong of the water it must be! They look as if they would drop, and do drop too, not in the common sense of the term; but the rain is pouring off them and on them in showers. Flowing manes, indeed, and streaming tails! What weather! In our Anglo-Saxon tongue, weather seems almost to hint "wetter!" Only take out the h, and in Germany you have pretty nearly that horrible word itself!

Such discontented reflections arise in the mind, when everything is seen through a rainy medium; and then, your vexation can find no natural vent in tears in this case; no, indeed, 'tis too much water already! Might not another drop make the cup overflow, and set us all to swimming? In this damp atmosphere, too, could we ever dry our tears again? We might go

I must move from the windows; the sight of that ecstatic duck, yonder, is too much for me; my philosophy is in an inverse ratio to duck felicity. Hideous, weeping about like a willow, or the crying philosohateful things, I would sooner call a pet child or a pet pher!

HEN without rule, guided only by the vagaries of my caprice I gave things which all tend to injure me in the estimation in the of my neighbors. Besides, I have a trick of musing pre-and thinking aloud, as I wander and ramble about, and vious I have caught more than once, as I have been passing a num-group of persons, a finger significantly touched upon the ber of this mag- forehead, and meaning looks exchanged among them. azine, a brief ac- But with one class, thank fortune, I am always popular. count of "The I mean the children-and more particularly, the little Shady Side," the girls. I confess that I like little girls. Nothing arrests relation of the little love my attention so quick as a pair of pantalettes, or a sunepisode into which I was hood coming round a corner. I like to stand and watch drawn, led to the exclu- school-girls, fresh and radiant, on their way to their sion (I grow abstracted morning tasks. Indeed, I will frequently step out of my and forgetful always way when sauntering towards "Shady Side," if I think when I think of Beat- I can meet three or four little girls who pass every rice) of other matters of interest, which else I should morning near my haunts, "with satchel on arm," have been glad to have dwelt upon. I say matters of tripping, not "stealing" their way, willingly to school. interest, because while I know that my career is one The little creatures seem to like me. They will look at surrounded by simple and ordinary incidents, yet in the me blushingly, and with bright eyes, and more than pleasant relation of common-places, where truth and once, while sitting upon a green bank with my rod nature are observed, there is a something which across my knee, I have been surprised by a timid, awakens sympathy, and stimulates pleasure. I propose, smiling youngster, whom I have patted on the head at therefore, to gossip on for a few pages more, setting some odd time, coming sidling up to me, quite delighted down such simple things as I see and do, very honestly, when my outstretched hand bespeaks the coveted invitabelieve me, and very faithfully, I sincerely trust.

If I were to follow my own inclinings, I could write about my obscure home by the hour, filling up many pages with the trifling, but I am assured pleasing, incidents of my daily life; but however vain I may be in the belief of my power to please, the reader need not fear a prolix overflow of dullness and garrulousness. I shall remember Polonius-that is, his precept, and not his practice and if tediousness be the outward limbs, I am too good a gardener not to know the use and practice of the pruning knife.

I bear a suspicious character among my neighbors. They call me queer. They cannot understand my habits, my pursuits, my manners, or my tastes. I am sorry, indeed, to say that there is not much assimilation of feeling between us. Their rigid, hard, utilitarian ideas do not accord with mine; and my idleness, and dreamy ramblings, my fondness for the forest solitudes, and my proneness to the siesta on the grassy slopes of cherished Shady Side," excite in them surprise, condemnation, and sometimes, among the gentler sort, commiseration. And then what with the pony, the dogs, and the other creatures about me, my home is but little better than a barn; my dress is rather odd and fantastic, and I live

66

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tion to come.

Sometimes I meet with a group of farm children coming from the fields, halting perhaps by the roadside fence to see me pass; the younger ones slily peeping out from behind the skirts of the eldest, and their round, brown faces gleaming with delight at the pleasant words I address them. If I stop to talk with them, I am pleased at the quickness with which their fear of me is overcome, at the unreserved frankness and freedom which something in me seems always to induce.

In fact, the children all appear to look upon me as a sort of Robinson Crusoe. Nothing delights them so much as an excuse to come up to my cottage, where everything is so royally free, where there are but few conventional observances; where dogs, cats, and all living creatures exist on a splendid democratic level of equal rights. Children are indeed your only true democrats. Fine linen and silks have no charms for them. A play-fellow in rags, if he only possess those requisites of fair-play, courage, and high spirits which children always exact, is as acceptable as the son of a millionaire.

It was my fonduess for girlhood as a generality,

Indeed love seems to be unaccountable when bestowed upon the grander specimens of womanhood. As I understand the passion (which after all may be very absurdly), it is a something in which there is protection on one side, and up-looking on the other. I think of it always, as if I were shrouding a form, wing-like, whose face, lain upon my breast, peers up through the enfolding embrace, smilingly and trustingly into mine.

which first attracted me to Beatrice-a fondness becom- | girlhood has afforded me some of the sweetest hours ing in her case, intensified into a passion. of companionship I've ever known? There are my nieces, from thirty down to fifteen, on Murray Hill. When I was in town last, and called there, Sally (aged fifteen), was behind the curtains buried in one of Hawthorne's volumes, and Miss Susan (aged twentyfive), engrossed with her milliner. And when I asked Miss Susan how she liked "As You Like It,' which I knew she had seen performed two nights before at Wallack's, she answered that it was very funny!! A little startled and a good deal crusty at this absurdity, I betook myself to Sally. Being crusty, as I said, I abused Hawthorne to her. She opened her eyes widely and with surprise, and very sweetly said a word in deprecation of my criticism. Then I began to unfold

Ah, Beatrice! Beatrice!

"Bah! Bread and butter!" cries the strong-minded. "Sympathy and companionship!" exclaim others. Well, I make the confession frankly. I like bread and butter girls. And as for sympathy, how is it that

many upon his short, round, ball-like back, and he manifest no disposition to kick up a revolution and overthrow the reining powers; the gardens are free to your experiments in amateur horticulture, even to the extent of the destruction of my pea-beds and the downfall of my nurslings; the fruit, green or otherwise, is none of it forbidden, with this gratuitous suggestion, however, that there isn't a doctor nor a dose of physic within six miles; in brief, whatever you see you may

to her what Hawthorne is (for Hawthorne is my | or quadruple as you please, provided you can crowd so favorite), and to lay open to her and point out his subtle excellences, to which,, with drinking eyes and animated cheek, she listened. It was pleasant to glean her own crude, vague impressions, strong in their depth, but only looking clearer in their expression. It was pleasant to see her eye light up at my suggestions, to see her quick fancy catch at, and follow the threads of my thoughts. It was pleasant to see youth in its first impressions eager for the light, swelling under its new weight of wonder, admiration, and strange sensa-put to any use your humor prompts, with this single tions of delight. I turned from this companionship to ask Miss Susan how she liked Hawthorne ?

"Oh, he's so horrid gloomy!" was the appreciative and elegant reply.

Girlhood is the opening flower with the dew yet unbrushed from its surface, and I am willing to let its freshness compensate for all the after knowledge which in its meridian and full blown splendor, it will come to know. I am disposed to admire the lofty qualities of "true womanhood," but I must love the lovelier, gentler kind, whose eyes and smiles look upward. It is a vain, arrogant conceit, I know, to liken myself to a rugged rock, or forest tree, up which the vine should clamber and nestle with closely-knitting tendrils to its heart, but it is an old, long treasured fancy, which women's conventions cannot batter out of me.

Let me be honest and confess to what is very likely a weighty reason for my preference for girlhood. Woman measures my height too closely with her own. She isn't to be deceived into believing me a greater man than nature gives me warrant for. This is what I don't like. Every one desires to be a hero to the sex-I am only one to the little girls unprovided with younger beaux-but to these, at least, my heart thrills with strange sensations, and old and ugly as I am, girlhood will always be a life-poem to me.

understanding, that I, individually, must be allowed to follow my peculiar pursuits, to indulge in my habits and act out my idiosyncrasies as freely, and with as little constraint, as if my poor roof were not honored by your presence.

The plan works well. We are all guests alike—a community wherein exists independence entire and perfect, and it soon grows into a kind of conceded fact that Molly, my creature of all work, many humors, and occasional tantrums, is the only real potentate amongst us-one, whose official dispensations from the kitchen we all eagerly watch, while for their sake we will even go so far as to play courtiers to her sovereignty, and propitiate her good will in whatever way we can. At dinner we always meet, but previous to that important hour we walk, ride, fish, hunt, chat, smoke, read, sleep, eat (some do a little of each), as we are individually prompted, but after dinner we usually assemble with cigars and wine in the pavilion I have recently attached to my house.

This pavilion I must describe. It is built almost entirely of glass, saving the roof and the slight iron framework. The floor is level with the sward, and thick trees which stand about it interlace their branches thickly above the roof. When its wide glass doors, that reach to the roof, are thrown open, there is air and light Sometimes when "Shady Side" needs some interven-as free and pleasant as if we were in a forest. In

ing scene to bring back its beauties more freshly, I will mount my pony, throw "Truemark over my shoulder, and ride towards the mountains in search of game. I am not always successful, and care very little whether I am or not. My main object is always gained-change and excitement. Sometimes, indeed, when hotly pursuing some creature who eludes me, I very strangely find my sympathies siding against myself in favor of the pursued the result, I presume, of some instinctive principle of supporting the weak against the strongand I will even experience a pleasure, if the hunted creature succeeds in escaping from my clutches. This is not sportsmanlike, and I dare say, excites the contempt and mirth of some of my readers, but I positively assert the feeling to be genuine-a sufficient reason for setting it down, so I consider.

I have sometimes town visitors who come up from the great city during the summer vacations. I always welcome them gladly, but at the same time with a Declaration of Independence. I say to them: the cats are to be teased and the dogs worried to any extent it may please you; the rooster's tail is entirely at your service; the pony is your peculiar property to ride double

order that the shade should be perfect, and the sun in nowise heat the structure, I have caused Venetian awnings to be erected all around the exposed sides. Vines have been trailed up the iron columns; the ceiling is tinted with a light blue-the coolest of colors, and the iron girders and supporters are of the same hue. Chairs of many forms, of light willow work, are set thickly about; tables on which are piled sundry papers and publications; on the wall to the house side, hang a few choice prints; a matting covers the floor. Indeed the reader may well believe me, that this pavilion is of all things the most envied by my guests, and on summer afternoons what with cigars, ices, fruit, such games as are voted popular, new books, cool air, the smell of flowers and shrubbery, it affords no slight degree of comfort and happiness to those gathered within it.

The above was written yesterday. To-day, among the letters by the morning post was one from Beatrice. It is five years since we parted. Only once before in that period have I heard from her. I trembled when I opened the letter, and ever since its perusal I can only sit and muse upon those hours whose light crosses the