siege to the water tank, and, I think, will empty it before we get to Salamanca. I wish to call the attention of the temperance societies to this class of intemperates. There should be a pledge drawn up and some color of ribbon-a bit of watered silk would be appropriate, I suppose—for boys of six and seven years, who are addicted to drinking water at the rate of eighteen tin-cupfuls a minute. Ten or twelve boys of this class can drink a creek dry when they are feeling comfortably thirsty.

A friendly passenger wants to talk. I am not feeling particularly sociable this morning, and consequently I do not proprose to talk to anybody. He asks how I like this kind of weather, and I say, "Splendidly."

He laughs feebly, but encouragingly, and says there has been a little too much snow. "Not for health; it was just what

we needed."

I say,

He asks if I heard of the accident on the Central Railroad, and I say, "Yes."

Then he asks me how it was, and I tell him, "I don't know; didn't read it."

He wants to know what I think of Hayes, and I say, "I think he made a very good constable."

"Constable?" he says; "I mean President Hayes."

I say I thought he meant Dennis Hays, of Peoria.
Then he asks if I "am going far?"

I say, "No."

"How far?" he asks.

"Fourteen hundred miles," I say, unblushingly.

He thinks that is what he would call "far," and I make no response. Two babies in the car are rehearsing a little, and in rather faulty time, but with fine expression. And the man, with one or two "dashes," asks if it doesn't bother me to write with a lot of "brats squalling around?"

I looked up at him very severely, for it always makes me angry to hear a man call a baby a "brat," and I say to him, in a slow, impressive manner, that "I would rather listen to a baby cry than hear a man swear."

This eminently proper and highly moral rebuke has its effect. The man forsakes me, and he is now wreaking a cheap, miserable revenge on the smiling passengers by whistling "My Grandfather's Clock," accompanying himself by drumming on the window with his fingers.

THEIR FIRST QUARREL.

BY W. D. HOWELLS.

"WE shall have time for the drive round the mountain before dinner," said Basil, as they got into their carriage again; and he was giving the order to the driver, when Isabel asked how far it was. "Nine miles.”

"O, then we can't think of going with one horse. You know," she added," that we always intended to have two horses for going round the mountain."

"No," said Basil, not yet used to having his decisions reached without his knowledge. "And I don't see why we should. You don't suppose we're too heavy,

Everybody goes with one. do you?"

"I had a party from the States, ma'am, yesterday," interposed the driver; "two ladies, real heavy ones, two gentlemen, weighin' two hundred apiece, and a stout young man on the box with me. You'd 'a' thought the horse was drawin' an empty carriage, the way she darted along."

"Then his horse must be perfectly worn out to-day," said Isabel, refusing to admit the poor fellow directly even to the honors of a defeat. He had proved too much, and was put out of court with no hope of repairing his error.

"Why, it seems a pity," whispered Basil, dispassionately, "to turn this man adrift, when he had a reasonable hope of being with us all day, and has been so civil and obliging."

"O, yes, Basil, sentimentalize him; do! Why don't you sentimentalize his helpless, overworked horse?—all in a reek of perspiration."

66

Perspiration! Why, my dear, it's the rain!"

"Well, rain or shine, darling, I don't want to go round the mountain with one horse; and it's very unkind of you to insist now, when you've tacitly promised me all along to take two."

6.

Now, this is a little too much, Isabel. mentioned the matter till this moment."

You know we never

saying you wouldn't.

"It's the same as a promise, your not But I don't ask you to keep your word. I don't want to go round the mountain, I'd much rather go to the hotel. I'm tired."

"Very well, then, Isabel, I'll leave you at the hotel."

In a moment it had come, the first serious dispute of their wedded life. It had come as all such calamities come-from nothing; and it was on them in full disaster ere they knew. Such a very little while ago, there in the convent garden, their lives had been drawn closer in sympathy than ever before; and now that blessed time seemed ages since, and they were further asunder than those who have never been friends. "I thought," bitterly mused Isabel," that he would have done anything for me!" "Who would have dreamed that a woman of her sense would be so unreasonable!" he I wondered. Both had tempers, as I know my dearest reader has (if a lady), and neither would yield; and so, presently, they could hardly tell how, for they were aghast at it all, Isabel was alone in her room amidst the

ruins of her life, and

THEIR FIRST QUARREL.

Basil alone in the one-horse carriage, trying to drive away from the wreck of his happiness. All was over; the dream was past; the charm was broken. The sweetness of their love was turned to gall; whatever had pleased them in their loving moods was loathsome now, and the things they had praised a moment before were hateful. In that baleful light, which seemed to dwell upon all they ever said or did in mutual enjoyment, how poor and stupid and empty looked their wedding-journey! Basil

spent five minutes in arraigning his wife and convicting her of every folly and fault. His soul was in a whirl:

"For to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain."

In the midst of his bitter and furious upbraidings he found himself suddenly become her ardent advocate, and ready to denounce her judge as a heartless monster. "On our wedding journey, too! Good heavens, what an incredible brute I am!" Then he said, "What an ass I am!" And the pathos of the case having yielded to its absurdity, he was helpless. In five minutes more he was at Isabel's side, the one-horse carriage driver dismissed with a handsome pour-boire, and a pair of lusty bays with a glittering barouche waiting at the door below. He swiftly accounted for his presence, which she seemed to find the most natural thing that could be, and she met his surrender with the openness of a heart that forgives but does not forget, if indeed the most gracious art is the only one unknown to the sex.

She rose with a smile from the ruins of her life, amidst which she had heart-brokenly sat down with all her things on. "I knew you'd come back," she said.

"So did I," he answered. "I am much too good and noble to sacrifice my preference to my duty."

"I didn't care particularly for the two horses, Basil," she said, as they descended to the barouche. "It was your refusing

them that hurt me."

"And I didn't want the one-horse carriage. It was your insisting so that provoked me."

"Do you think people ever quarreled before on a wedding journey?" asked Isabel, as they drove gayly out of the city. "Never! I can't conceive of it! I suppose, if this were written down, nobody would belive it."

"No, nobody could," said Isabel, musingly; and she added, after a pause, "I wish you would tell me just what you thought of me, dearest. Did you feel as you did when our little affair was broken off, long ago? Did you hate me?"

"I did, most cordially; but not half so much as I despised myself the next moment. As to its being like a lover's quarrel, it wasn't. It was more bitter; so much more love than lovers ever give had to be taken back. Besides, it had no dignity, and

a lover's quarrel always has. A lover's quarrel always springs from a more serious cause, and has an air of romantic tragedy. This had no grace of the kind. It was a poor, shabby little squabble."

"Oh, don't call it so, Basil! I should like you to respect even a quarrel of ours more than that. It was tragical enough with me, for I didn't see how it could ever be made up. I knew I couldn't make the advances. I don't think it is quite feminine to be the first to forgive, is it?"

"I'm sure I can't say. Perhaps it would be rather unladylike." "Well, you see, dearest, what I am trying to get at is this: whether we shall love each other the more or the less for it. I think we shall get on all the better, for a while, on account of it. But I should have said it was totally out of character. It's something you might have expected of a very young bridal couple; but after what we've been through, it seems too improbable."

Very well," said Basil, who, having made all the concessions, could not enjoy the quarrel as she did, simply because it was theirs; "let's behave as if it had never happened."

"Oh no; we can't. To me, it's as if we had just won each other."