pocket, and stuck him into his trousers-band where he could see the world. It chanced that there stood next to him a little boy with a very loose calico apron on; the neck of the apron was twice as large as the neck of the boy, and it stood out stiffly behind, so that you could put your hand down nobody knows how far. Now, while this little boy was reciting, an idea came to Trotty. Jerusalem had not been behaving very well in the trousers-band ; he flopped over and hung down the wrong way, and would pay no attention at all to the recitation. It occurred to Trotty what a nice place it would be for him under that stiff apron. So he slowly and softly began to push his head down the little boy's neck. The little boy did not notice. Trotty pushed a little harder. The little boy squirmed. Trotty pushed a little more. The little boy gasped; a little more, the little boy choked. Spell Dog, Trotty," said Miss Pumpkin. "D," said Trotty, - push "O"-push "G" another push. Jerusalem was fairly in now. Only his feet showed over the top of the little boy's apron. The little boy began to dance about and pull at the doll, who was caught somewhere on a button, and would n't come out. "Johnny! " said Miss Pumpkin, "what is the matter? Come here! Why, Trotty Tyrol! did you do this?" "O yes," said Trotty, candidly. "Is n't he "Isn't funny? I did n't s'pose he'd dance round. I wanted to find a place for Jerusalem. I guess I'll take him out now. I'm afraid he 'll think it's a little dark." “Trotty, " said Miss Pumpkin, gravely, "you have made me a great deal of trouble this morning. You must learn that little boys cannot play in school. You may take your little rocking-chair and go and sit alone over there by the door, till I call you." Trotty did as he was told. The children all looked at him. He felt ashamed. He began to think that it was a very bad thing to go to school. He remembered the blue silk telegraph wire, and home and grandma, and felt as if it were years and years since he had seen them. He tried to talk a little to Jerusalem, but Jerusalem bung his mortified. head and would give him no comfort. Something began to feel damp in his eyes. Something choked him in his throat. Something rolled down his two cheeks and fell on Jerusalem's inky face. He began to look carefully at Miss Pumpkin out of the corner of one eye. Then he looked carefully at the door. Then he looked carefully at the children. trouble. Now, if you 'll let me have some of your blue silk string, I guess I b'lieve I'd rather grow up a dunce." **LIFE IN A COTTON MILL FROM THE SILENT PARTNER. If you are one of "the hands" in the Hayle and Kelso Mills, you go to your work, as is well known, from the hour of half past six to seven, according to the turn of the season. Time has been when you went at half past four. The Senior forgot this the other day in a little talk which he had with his silent partner, very naturally, the time having been so long past; but the time has been, is now, indeed, yet in places. Mr. Hayle can tell you of mills he saw in New Hampshire last vacation, where they ring them up, if you'll believe it, winter and summer, in and out, at half past four in the morning. Oh no, never let out before six, of course. Mr. Hayle disapproves of this. Mr. Hayle thinks it not humane. Hayle is confident that you would find no mission Sunday school connected with that concern. Mr. If you are one of "the hands" in the Hayle and Kelso Mills and again, in Hayle and Kelso, -you are so dully used to this classification, "the hands," that you were never known to cultivate an objection to it, are scarcely found to notice its use or disuse. Being surely neither head nor heart, what else remains? Conscious scarcely, from bell to bell, from sleep to sleep, from day to dark, of either head or heart, there seems even a singular appropriateness in the chance of the word with which you are dimly struck. Hayle and Kelso label you. There you are. The world thinks, aspires, creates, enjoys. There you are. You are the fingers of the world. You take your patient place. The world may have need of you, but only that it may think, aspire, create, enjoy. It needs your patience as well as your place. You take both, and you are used to both, and the world is used to both, and so, having put the label on for safety's sake, lest you be mistaken for a thinking, aspiring, creating, enjoying compound, and so some one be poisoned, shoves you into your place upon its shelf, and shuts its cupboard-door upon you. If you are one of "the hands," then, in Hayle and Kelso, you have a breakfast of bread and molasses probably; you are apt to eat it while you dress; somebody is heating the kettle, but you cannot wait for it; somebody tells you that you have forgotten your shawl, you throw it over one shoulder, and step out, before it is fastened, into the sudden raw air; you left lamp-light indoors; you find moonlight without; the night seems to have overslept itself; you have a fancy for trying to wake it, would like to shout at it or cry through it, but feel very cold, and leave that for the bells to do by and by. You and the bells are the only waking things in life. The great brain of the world is in serene repose. great heart of the world lies warm to the core with dreams. The great hands of the world, the patient, perplexed, one almost fancies at times, just for the fancy, seeing you here by the morning moon, the dangerous hands, alone are stirring in the dark. The You hang up your shawl and your crinoline, and understand, as you go shivering by gaslight to your looms, that you are chilled to the heart, and that you were careless about your shawl, but do not consider carefulness worth your while by nature or by habit; a little less shawl means a few less winters in which to require shawling. You are a godless little creature, but you cherish a stolid leaning, in these morning moons, towards making an experiment of death and a wadded coffin. By the time that gas is out, you cease, perhaps, though you cannot depend upon that, to shiver, and incline less and less to the wadded coffin, and more to a chat with your neighbor in the alley. Your neighbor is of either sex and any description, as the case may be. In any event, warming a little with the warming day, you incline more and more to chat. If you chance to be a cottonweaver, you are presently warm enough. It is quite warm enough in the weaving-room. The engines respire into the weaving-room; with every throb of their huge lungs you swallow their breath. The weaving-room stifles with steam. The window-sills of this room are guttered to prevent the condensed steam from running in streams along the floor; sometimes they overflow, and water stands under the looms; the walls perspire profusely; on a damp day, drops will fall from the roof. The windows of the weaving-room are closed; the windows must be closed; a stir in the air will break your threads. There is no air to stir. You inhale for a substitute motionless, hot moisture. If you chance to be a cotton-weaver, it is not in March that you think most about your coffin. Being "a hand" in Hayle and Kelso, you are used to eating cold luncheon in the cold at noon, or you walk, for the sake of a cup of soup or coffee, half a mile, three quarters, a mile and a half, and back. You are allowed three quarters of an hour in which to do this. You come and go upon the jog-trot. the girls lift up their tired faces to catch and keep the chorus in the rival din. You like to watch the contest between the chorus and the din; to see- you seem almost to see the struggle of the melody from alley te alley, from loom to loom, from darkening wall to darkening wall, from lifted face to lifted face; to see for you are very sure you seethe machinery fall into a fit of rage. That is a sight! You would never guess, unless you had watched it just as many times as you have, how that machinery will rage. How it throws its arms about, what fists it can clench, how it shakes at the elbows and knees, what teeth it knows how to gnash, how it writhes and roars, how it clutches at the leaky, strangling gas-lights, and how it bends its impotent black head, always, at last, without fail, and your song sweeps triumphant, like an angel over it! With this you are very much pleased, though only "a hand," to be sure, in Hayle and Kelso. You are singing when the bell strikes, and singing still when you clatter down the stairs. Something of the simple spotlessness of the little song is on your face, when you dip into the wind and dusk. Perhaps you have only pinned your shawl, or pulled your hat over your face, or knocked against a stranger on the walk; but it passes; it passes and is gone. It is cold and you tremble, direct from the morbid heat in which you have stood all day; or you have been cold all day; and it is colder, and you shrink; or you are from the weaving-room, and the wind strikes you faint, or you stop to cough and the girls go on without you. The town is lighted, and people are out in their best clothes. You pull your dingy veil about your eyes. You are weak and heart-sick all at once. You don't care to go home to supper. The pretty song creeps, wounded, back for the engine in the deserted dark to crunch. deserted dark to crunch. You are a miserable little factory-girl with a dirty face. ** WILL CARLETON, You grow moody, being "a hand" at Hayle and Kelso's, with the growing day; are inclined to quarrel or to confidence with your neighbor in the alley; find the overseer out of temper, and the cotton full of flaws; find pains in your feet, your back, your eyes, your arms; feel damp and sticky lint in your hair, your neck, your ears, your throat, your lungs; discover a monotony in THE author of Farm Ballads, was born in Hudthe process of breathing hot moisture, lower your son, Lenawee county, Michigan, October 21, window at your risk; are bidden by somebody 1845. His ancestors were of English and Scotch whose threads you have broken at the other end origin, while his father (John H. Carleton) was of the room to put it up, and put it up; are con- a pioneer settler who came from New Hampscious that your head swims, your eyeballs burn, shire. Will remained at home on the farm, your breath quickens; yield your preference for tilling the soil during the summers, and attenda wadded coffin, and consider whether the river ing district school in the winters, till sixteen would not be the comfortable thing; cough a little, years of age. cough a little, years of age. In 1861, he became a teacher in cough a great deal, lose your balance in a cough- a country school, whereby he was indoctrinated ing fit, snap a thread, and take to swearing into "boarding around," and doubtless had the roundly. pickings of some rich experiences among his farmer-patrons, of which he has made use in his writings. For four years he divided his time between teaching, attending school, and assisting his father on the farm, contributing meanwhile, under various signatures, articles in prose and verse to the local and State papers. He entered Hillsdale College, Michigan, in 1865, and was graduated in 1869. Since then, he has been engaged in journalistic and literary work, and has lectured repeatedly throughout the West. His present residence is at Hillsdale. From swearing you take to singing; both perhaps are equal relief, active and diverting. There is something curious about that singing of yours. The time, the place, the singers, characterize it sharply, the waning light, the rival din, the girls with tired faces. You start some little thing with a refrain and a ring to it; a hymn, it is not unlikely; something of a River and of Waiting, and of Toil and Rest, or Sleep, or Crowns, or Harps, or Home, or Green Fields, or Flowers, or Sorrow, or Repose, or a dozen a dozen things, but always, it will be noticed, of simple, spotless things, such as will surprise the listener who caught you at your oath of five minutes past. You have other songs, neither simple nor spotless, it may be; but you never sing them at your work, when the waning day is crawling out from spots beneath your looms, and Mr. Carleton printed a small volume of poems in 1871, for private circulation. In the following year, the most popular of his pieces, "Betsey and I are Out," appeared in the Toledo Blade, and was reprinted, with appropriate illustrations, in Harper's Weekly, wherein some other apart; I had my various failings, bred in the flesh and bone; popular narrative pictures of Western home life | Although we never suspected 'twould take us two have since appeared. Farm Ballads, a collection including "Out of the Old House, Nancy," "Over the Hill to the Poor House, ""Gone with a Handsomer Man, Betsy and I Made Up," etc., was issued in 1873. In his prefatory And Betsey, like all good women, had a temper of her own. The first thing I remember whereon we disagreed Was something concerning heaven -a difference in our creed; We arg'ed the thing at breakfast, we arg'ed the thing at tea, And the more we arg'ed the question the more we didn't agree. And the next that I remember was when we lost a And there has been days together. And I have been thinkin' and thinkin', the whole If I can't live kind with a woman, why, then, I won't at all. And so I have talked with Betsey, and Betsey has talked with me, And we have agreed together that we can't never So draw up the paper, lawyer, and I'll go home to-night, And read the agreement to her, and see if it's all right; And then, in the mornin', I'll sell to a tradin' man I know, And kiss the child that was left to us, and out in the world I'll go. And one thing put in the paper, that first to me didn't occur: That when I am dead at last she 'll bring me back to her; And lay me under the maples I planted years ago, When she and I was happy before we quarreled SO. ** CELIA THAXTER, WHOSE maiden name was Celia Laighton, was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, June 29, 1835. She was married at the age of sixteen. Since her fifth year, she has passed most of her life at Appledore, in the Isle of Shoals, a series of "low bleached rocks" in the Atlantic Ocean, shire. Appledore, the crest of whose four hunnine miles off from the coast of New Hampdred acres is only seventy-five feet above highwater mark, contains a lighthouse, and her home was in the keeper's dwelling at its base. Celia Thaster The charms and mysteries of the ever-rolling surges, through the calm and the storm, and the picturesque features of nature and life as they are affected by the changing seasons in her in a series of glowing, keenly sympathetic this eyrie of the ocean, were first described by papers in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1867-8. These were gathered into a small illustrated volume in 1873, entitled Among the Isles of Shoals. In 1872 appeared a volume of poems. AMONG THE ISLES OF SHOALS. Swept by every wind that blows, and beaten by the bitter brine for unknown ages, well may the Isles of Shoals be barren, bleak, and bare. At first sight nothing can be more rough and inhospitable than they appear. The incessant influences of wind and sun, rain, snow, frost, and spray, have so bleached the tops of the rocks, that they look hoary as if with age, though in the summer-time a gracious greenness of vegetation breaks here and there the stern outlines, and softens somewhat their rugged aspect. Yet so forbidding are their shores, it seems scarcely worth while to land upon them, mere heaps of tumbling granite in the wide and lonely sea, when all the smiling, "sapphire-spangled marriage-ring of the land" lies ready to woo the voyager back again, and welcome his returning prow with pleasant sights and sounds and scents that the wild wastes of water never know. But to the human creature who has eyes that will see and ears that will hear, nature appeals with such a novel charm, that the luxurious beauty of the land is half forgotten before one is aware. Its sweet gardens, full of color and perfume, its rich woods and softly swelling hills, its placid waters, and fields and flowery meadows, are no longer dear and desirable; for the wonderful sound of the sea dulls the memory of all past impressions, and seems to fulfil and satisfy all present needs. Landing for the first time, the stranger is struck only by the sadness of the place, the vast loneliness; for there are not even trees to whisper with familiar voices, nothing but sky and desolation reveal a strange beauty to him. sea and rocks. But the very wilderness and him wait till evening comes, "With sunset purple soothing all the waste," Let and he will find himself slowly succumbing to the village or town. But in 1840, the city of New subtile charm of that sea atmosphere. He sleeps York became his home, and for three years he with all the waves of the Atlantic murmuring in was a devotee alternately to art and to poetry. his ears, and wakes to the freshness of a summer The printing of a poem in an Odd Fellows' morning; and it seems as if morning were made journal, edited by George Hatch, and its refor the first time. For the world is like a new printing in The Tribune, led him to write and blown rose, and in the heart of it he stands, with publish a poem in two cantos, which the critics only the caressing music of the water to break of the day gibbeted. It was called The the utter silence, unless, perhaps, a song-sparrow pours out its blissful warble like an embodied Brigand. and many of his later novels were joy. The sea is rosy, and the sky: the line of treated to titles of a similar character. The land is radiant; the scattered sails glow with the winter of 1843 he spent in Philadelphia, where delicious color that touches so tenderly the bare, he became a poetical contributor to the Dollar bleak rocks. These are lovelier than sky or sea Newspaper. His first romance, The Unknown or distant sails, or graceful gulls' wings reddened Countess, though it failed in a prize award, apwith the dawn; nothing takes color so beautifully peared in that journal a year later. In the as the bleached granite; the shadows are deli- spring of 1844, he set out for Baltimore, and cate, and the fine, hard outlines are glorified and then journeyed westward to Pittsburg and Cinsoftened beneath the fresh first blush of sunrise. cinnati, arriving at the latter city quite destitute. All things are speckless and spotless; there is no As a hastily-written sketch, literally written for dust, no noise, nothing but peace in the sweet air bread, failed to please the critical taste of the and on the quiet sea. The day goes on; the new Western Literary Journal-edited by E. rose changes to mellow gold, the gold to clear, Z. C. Judson, since "Ned Buntline" the white daylight, and the sea is sparkling again. youthful writer became an agent for that magA breeze ripples the surface, and wherever it azine, and made a tour of several months in touches the color deepens. A seine-boat passes, Ohio canvassing for subscribers. with the tawny net heaped in the stern, and the scarlet shirts of the rowers brilliant against the blue. Pleasantly their voices come across the water, breaking the stillness. The fishing-boats steal to and fro, silent, with glittering sails; the gulls wheel lazily; the far-off coasters glide rapidly along the horizon; the mirage steals down the coast-line, and seems to remove it leagues away. And what if it were to slip down the slope of the world and disappear entirely? You think, in a half dream, you would not care. Many troubles, cares, perplexities, vexations, lurk behind that far, faint line for you. Why should you be bothered any more. "Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb.” And so the waves, with their lulling murmur, do their work, and you are soothed into repose and transient forgetfulness? Mr. Bennett on his return to Cincinnati found himself in favor with the Daily Commercial (L. G. Curtiss, editor), as a reprint of his story, The Unknown Countess, had increased the circulation of that struggling journal. An engagement followed to write a novel on a local subject, for which he received his first compensation as a writer; and a second appeared in 1846, entitled, The League of the Miami. A literary venture was tried by him in the Casket, with a partner in J. H. Green, the reformed gambler; but that journal expired in nine months. Among its contributors were the Cary sisters, Alice and Phoebe, then unknown to fame. Though dated at Cincinnati, the Casket was printed at Lawrenceburgh, Indiana, where Mr. Bennett lived during its span of life. Another engagement with Mr. Curtiss resulted in the Bandits of the Osage. This story proved a pecuniary success, adding some thousands to the circulation of the Commercial, while its author Emerson Bennett was born the son of a also succeeded in selling a book edition of five farmer, in the town of Monson, Hampden thousand copies to a Cincinnati firm of bookcounty, Massachusetts, March 16, 1822. As a sellers-Robinson & Jones. This was, in all country boy, who was much given to out-of-probability, the first novel published and sold doors play and work, he acquired robust health, a passionate attachment for scenes of nature, a self-reliant spirit, and that vital force which, in his capacity as a novelist, imparts an intense interest in the plot as unfolded by successive incidents of his stories. He was also an earnest Since 1850, Mr. Bennett has been a resident student in his boyhood. The study of mathe- of Philadelphia. He was married in 1847 to matics was a delight, and he often solved for Miss E. G. Daly of that city, and has two chilhimself problems before they were reached by dren a son, who is a member of its bar, and his classmates. At the age of thirteen, he lost a daughter, who has printed occasional poems. his father. Three years more were spent on the Mr. Bennett has written some forty romances, farm, and then he began an academical course and many hundred sketches, which are in the to qualify himself for college; but the second main carefully studied delineations of manners, marriage of his mother soon led to the sever-characters, and adventures of American frontier ance of his home ties. ** EMERSON BENNETT. At the age of seventeen, the stalwart Emerson left the old homestead, and began to gratify his strong desire to visit strange scenes, so that for many days each nightfall found him in a different west of the Alleghany Mountains. The task of making a market there and then was a herculean one, for the publisher had to be convinced, by arguments and figures, that a moderate outlay for fiction would be a profitable investment. life. These have chiefly appeared in the New York Ledger and Weekly, the Philadelphia Evening Post and Saturday Night, as well as in Emerson Bennett's Dollar Monthly, which latter, started in 1860, fell an early victim to the civil |