warn't nothin' else talked about; and Huldy saw folks a noddin' and a winkin', and a lookin' arter her, and she begun to feel drefful sort o' disagreeable. Finally Mis' Sawin she says to her, 'My dear, didn't you never think folk would talk about you and the minister?'

"No: why should they?' says Huldy, quite innocent.

"'Wal, dear,' says she, 'I think it's a shame; but they say you're tryin' to catch him, and that it's so bold and improper for you to be courtin' of him right in his own house,-you know folks will talk,I thought I'd tell you 'cause I think so much of you,' says she.

--

"Huldy was a gal of spirit, and she despised the talk, but it made her drefful uncomfortable; and when she got home at night she sat down in the mornin'-glory porch, quite quiet, and didn't sing a word.

"The minister he had heard the same thing from one of his deakins that day; and, when he saw Huldy so kind o' silent, he says to her, 'Why don't you sing, my child?'

"He hed a pleasant sort o' way with him, the minister had, and Huldy had got to likin' to be with him, and it all come over her that perhaps she ought to go away; and her throat kind o' filled up so she couldn't hardly speak; and, says she, 'I can't sing to-night.'

66

Says he, 'You don't know how much good your singin' has done me, nor how much good you have done me in all ways, Huldy. I wish I knew how to show my gratitude.'

"O sir!' says Huldy, is it improper for me to be here?'

"No, dear,' says the minister, but ill-natured folks will talk; but there is one way we can stop it, Huldy—if you will marry me. You'll make me very happy, and I'll do all I can to make you happy. Will you?'

Wal, Huldy never told me jist what she said to the minister,-gals never does give you the particulars of them 'are things jist as you'd like 'em, -only I know the upshot and the hull on't was, that Huldy she did a consid'able lot o' clear starchin' and ironin' the next two days; and the Friday o' next week the minister and she rode over together to Dr. Lothrop's in Old Town; and the doctor, he jist made 'em man and wife, 'spite of envy of the Jews,' as the hymn says. Wal, you'd better believe there was a starin' and a wonderin' next Sunday mornin' when the second bell was a tollin', and the minister walked up the broad aisle with Huldy, all in white, arm in arm with him, and he opened the minister's pew, and handed her in as if she was a princess; for, you see, Parson Carryl come of a good family, and was a born gentleman, and had a sort o' grand way o' bein' polite to women-folks. Wal, I guess there was a rus'lin' among the bunnets. Mis' Pipperidge gin a great bounce, like corn poppin' on a shovel, and her eyes glared through her glasses at Huldy as if they'd a sot her afire; and everybody in the

meetin' house was a starin', I tell yew. But they couldn't none of 'em say nothin' agin Huldy's looks; for there wa'n't a crimp nor a frill about her that wa'n't jis' so; and her frock was white as the driven snow, and she had her bunnet all trimmed up with white ribbins; and all the fellows said the old doctor had stole a march, and got the handsomest gal in the parish.

Wal, arter meetin' they all come 'round the parson and Huldy at the door, shakin' hands and laughin'; for by that time they was about agreed that they'd got to let putty well alone.

666

Why, Parson Carryl,' says Mis' Deakin Blodgett, 'how you've come it over us.'

"Yes,' says the parson, with a kind o' twinkle in his eye. 'I thought,' says he, as folks wanted to talk about Huldy and me, I'd give 'em somethin' wuth talkin' about.'

Stephen Pearl Andrews.

BORN in Templeton, Mass., 1812. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1886.

A SCIENCE OF THE UNIVERSE.

[The Basic Outline of Universology

T

with Notices of "Alwato," the newly discovered Scientific Universal Language, etc., etc. 1872.]

O affirm deliberately these Immense Contrarieties: That God is eternally, and reigns universally; That God is not, and that Law is all in all; That the Universe was created in Time; That the Universe is itself Eternal and Uncreate; That the Reason is the Supreme Governing Authority; That the Reason is blind and untrustworthy in the most vital domains of being; That Man is born to die; That Man is born to be immortal; That Sin is always duly and severely punished; That there is no Blame and no Punishment, and consequently no Sin-and so on to the end of a huge catalogue of Doctrinal Differences;-to affirm all of this, with the deliberate intention that each affirmation shall be accepted as true, and as part of the larger complex Truth, is, seemingly, to introduce a new order of mystery; but it is a mystery perfectly solvable and comprehensible by the human intellect, by the aid of analogy.

How tremendous are the contradictions which Science has already. taught the enlightened intelligence of mankind to accept, in the physical world! Could any belief have been more thoroughly radicated in the

natural and primitive convictions of the race than that a single fixed point in the sky over our heads is Up, and that another such point beneath our feet is Down; that the solid material earth, on which we live, must have a still more solid and material foundation beneath it on which to rest? In three hundred years all this has been changed for the civi lized nations, and we now accept and find the ready means of intellectual reconciliation with the contrary propositions: That every point in the sky may be Up, and every point Down; That from the centre of the earth it is alike Up, to every other point in Space; That the solid earth is a globe swinging in the Mid-Heavens, with no material foundations of support whatsoever; and so on through an immense list of the utter reversals of primitive beliefs, and of contradictory statements, each of which is, nevertheless, intelligently and undoubtingly held to be true.

All this results from the simple recognition of the Doctrine of Diversityof-Aspects-from-Different-Points-of-View, which the Intellect propounds, but which the Simplistic Faith of childhood ignores and arrogantly repugns. The Adult Age means the Replacement of Primitive Simplisms by cautiously defined Adjustments, the Product of Science or Systematized Observation and Thought.

verse.

It is this radically revolutionary reconsideration of every question of Doctrine-Moral, Sociological, and Theological-to which the World is now summoned by the positive discovery of a proper Science of the UniThe power, in the new ideas, for ultimate conviction is simply irresistible. The New Catholicity will rapidly prevail. Integralism will replace Partialism. There remains no question but the question of Time. If three hundred years have more than sufficed to reverse or modify the whole current of opinion, with intelligent humanity, upon the theory of the World's structure; now, with the accelerated progress of events, in the mental evolution of the race, three tens of years will more than accomplish as much for all doctrinal opinion and beliefs. Every grand aspect of thought will be scientifically defined, and the sense in which it is tenable will be precisely illustrated in the Material World. Harmony will grow out of dissension and discord; clearness and ineffable beauty out of mystical dogmas and doctrinal confusion. The most stupendous composite variety will be substituted for a central undeveloped Unity, as of the old Catholics on the one hand and, for the divergent isolation of individual centres, like that of Protestantism, on the other. Each will surrender the vicious Aspiration to be the whole, for the better honor of being a Constituent Entity of the Infinite Republic of Truth and Goodness, and organized and orderly operation, in all the affairs of Mankind. The New Jerusalem, the Holy City, will have descended. The Day of Judgment will have virtually come. The Books

will have been opened. The Judgment will have been executed. The Final Restitution of All Things will have been accomplished. Grand Reconciliation will have been effected.

The

Thomas Gold Appleton.

BORN in Boston, Mass., 1812. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1884.

THE COLOSSI.

[A Nile Journal. 1876.]

ENIGNANT, calm, majestically grave,

BE

Earth's childhood smiling in their lifted eyes,
While the hoar wisdom which the dead years gave
Upon each placid brow engraven lies—
Two on the plain and Four beside the wave
Keep watch and ward above the centuries.

As is the sand which flies, our little lives
Glitter and whirl a moment and are gone;
A day it lives, then to Oblivion drives
The haughtiest empire and the loftiest throne:
Swiftly to all the appointed hour arrives,
Men-nations pass, but they remain alone,
Mute in the azure silence of these skies,
Immortal childhood looking from their eyes.

TABLE-TALK.

Nahant? That's a-la-carte French for "Cold Roast Boston."

All good Bostonians, when they die, go to Paris.

The north-east corner of Boston Common, in February, is a good place to tie a shorn lamb and test Sterne's assertion.

On a Club, ten years old, whose members sat for their portraits: "Ah, I see! Boors, after Teniers."

Is life worth living?-I should say that it depended on the liver.

I

George Ticknor Curtis.

BORN in Watertown, Mass., 1812.

MAN'S TWO EXISTENCES.

[Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry. 1887.]

HAVE seen an ingenious hypothesis which it is well to refer to, because it illustrates the efforts that are often made to reconcile the doctrines of evolution with a belief in immortality. This hypothesis by no means ignores the possibility of a spiritual existence, or the spiritual as distinguished from the material world. But it assumes that man was produced under the operation of physical laws; and that after he had become a completed product-the consummate and finished end of the whole process of evolution-he passed under the dominion and operation of other and different laws, and is saved from annihilation by the intervention of a change from the physical to the spiritual laws of his Creator. Put into a condensed form, this theory has been thus stated: Having spent countless æons in forming man, by the slow process of animal evolution, God will not suffer him to fall back into elemental flames, and be consumed by the further operation of physical laws, but will transfer him into the dominion of the spiritual laws that are held in reserve for his salvation.

One of the first questions to be asked, in reference to this hypothesis, is, Who or what is it that God is supposed to have spent countless æons in creating by the slow process of animal evolution? If we contemplate a single specimen of the human race, we find a bodily organism, endowed with life like that of other animals, and acted upon by physical laws throughout the whole period of its existence. We also find present in the same individual a mental existence, which is certified to us by evidence entirely different from that by which we obtain a knowledge of the physical organism. As the methods employed by the Creator in the production of the physical organism, whatever we may suppose them to have been, were physical laws operating upon matter, so the methods employed by him in the production of a spiritual existence must have operated in a domain that was wholly aside from the physical world. Each of these distinct realms is equally under the government of an Omnipotent Being; and while we may suppose that in the one he employed a very slow process, such as the evolution of animal organisms. out of one another is imagined to have been, there is no conceivable reason why he should not, in the other and very different realm, have resorted to the direct creation of a spiritual existence, which cannot, in