THE PRESHEDENT'S HOUSE, WASHINGTON

THE residence of the chief-magistrate of the United States resembles the country seat of an English nobleman, in its architecture and size; but it is to be regretted that the parallel ceases when we come to the grounds. By itself it is a commodious and creditable building, serving its purpose without too much state for a republican country, yet likely, as long as the country exists without primogeniture and rank, to be sufficiently superior to all other dwelling houses to mark it as the residence of the nation's ruler.

The president's house stands near the centre of an area of some twenty acres, occupying a very advantageous elevation, open to the view of the Potomac, and about forty-four feet above high water, and possessing from its balcony one of the loveliest prospects in our country-the junction of the two branches of the Potomac which border the district, and the swelling and varied shores beyond of the states of Maryland and Virginia. The

building is one hundred and seventy feet front and gress votes any moneys for its decoration,) which
eighty-six deep, and is built of white free stone, destroys its effect as a comfortable dwelling. The
with Ionic pilasters, comprehending two lofty sto-oval rooms are carpeted with Gobelin tapestry,
ries, with a stone balustrade. The north front is worked with the national emblems, and are alto-
ornamented with a portico, sustained by four Ionic gether in a more consistent style than the other
columns, with three columns of projection-the parts of the house.
outer intercolumniation affording a shelter for car-
riages to drive under. The garden-front on the
river is varied by what is called a rusticated base-
ment-story, in the Ionic style, and by a semicircu-
lar projecting colonnade of six columns, with two
spacious and airy flights of steps leading to a balus-
trade on the level of the principal story.

The interior of the president's house is well disposed, and possesses one superb reception-room, and two oval drawing-rooms (one in each story,) of very beautiful proportions. The other rooms are not remarkable; and there is an inequality in the furniture of the whole house (owing to the unwillingness and piecemeal manner with which con

TALE

From the Model American Courier.

CIRCUMSTANCIAL EVIDENCE.
BY PROFESSOR P. S. RUTER.
SCENE I

Death-Orphanage.

Ir is the chamber of the dying. You can enter with ine, reader, but tread lightly. The uncarpeted floor, the uncurtained bed, the poorly-shaded windows, the scanty furniture, and the absence of a circle of weeping friends, all tell you that it is the chamber of poverty, as well as of death.

You see but four, persons in the room, the physi- those whose feelings began in compassion for or. fession, till all inequality between them should be cian, the nurse, and two others. One of these lat-phanage, and ended in esteem for merit.

ter is a manly-looking boy, of about ten years' age, whose swollen eyes betray the grief which, with a considerateness beyond his years, he strives momentarily to repress, lest he should disturb his dying mother, though his glances never for a moment turn from the low couch where she is lying. And the mother, pale and wasted, and weakened by disease and suffering, yet pe fectly conscious and resigned, she lies there; while the sands of life are falling fast, and the slow and faint beating of the pulse tolls, like a muffled funeral bell, her near and still nearer approach to the "house appointed for all the living."

"How much longer have I, doctor?" asks the patient, faintly, and with an effort, as the physician seats himself beside her, and places his fingers on the wrist.

The doctor shook his head.

"Perhaps half an hour, but probably less." "Henry!" said the mother, and instantly the boy stood beside her, gazing carnestly and tearfully on the only relative he possessed in the wide world. Ah! too well did the young lad know the meaning of the scene before him; for scarcely one year before he had stood thus by the couch of his dying father. The mother placed her pale, thin fingers, now clammy with the death-damp, upon the head of her boy.

"Oh, mother-mother ?" said he, choking in his utterance," don't go-don't leave me alone!" "It is the will of God, my child," sobbed the agonized mother," and I must go. But, Henry, I am going where I shall meet your dear father again, and we will watch over you together." The boy's pale features lighted up with almost a smile.

removed.

At first he was bound apprentice to a cabinet Fanny Easton was an only child, an amiable maker: but his master was so won over by the and intelligent girl, about four years younger than lad's correct deportment, as well as by his eager Manton, lovelier in heart and manners than in and almost insatiate desire for knowledge, that face, but still possessing sufficient personal beauty, after six years, just about the time when the ap- especially when backed by $50,000, to break the prentice's services began to be of real value to him, hearts of some score of rejected suitors. The ache voluntarily gave up the indentures, and gratifiedcident of juxta-position (Mr. Maxwell's law-offiec the youth's eager wishes by obtaining for him a was next door to the Eastons' residence) and freplace in an attorney's office, with the opportunityquent casual meetings, made her acquainted with and means of studying a profession. Henry Manton, while she was yet a school-girl of fourteen of fifteen, and he scarcely half through his law-studies. They were never formally intro. duced to each other, but a sort of spontaneous acquaintance grew up between them, and she probably made a choice as early as he, for before he was twenty-one, and withont the exchange of a word on the subject, both knew that each was an object of unusual interest to the other.

Here, as before, young Manton, in a short time, completely won the heart and confidence of the gentleman with whom he had been placed. And when, after five years of study, he was admitted to the bar, not only did the three examining judges declare him the best qualified law-student that had ever coine before them, but his late preceptor, Mr. Maxwell, a gentleman of middle age, and a lawyer of high standing, received the young man at once into partnership in business. Seldom indeed did a penniless orphan begin the world at ten years under gloomier, and at twenty-one under more promising auspices. And yet he deserved all his good fortune, for all had been obtained and secured by his own honorable behavior.

In the very first case where he was employed, he displayed an ability, talent for business and knowledge of law, which placed him at once in the foremost rank of young practitioners; and three years afterward,when the principal incidents about to be related occurred, no gentleman in the county was considered as giving better and surer promise of a virtuous and successful manhood, and an honored old age.

Our country is not yet so degenerated from the simplicity of its purer days, but that talent and merit, backed by education, even though without wealth and powerful connections, can find or make a way into almost any desirable social circle. And into the best of these, young Manton was not only admitted but welcomed.

"Shall I see you, mother ?" asked he, earnestly. "No, my son, you will not see me, but I shall be with you still. Remember what I have often told you. Never tell a lic: never regard what others say of you: always try to do right, and trust in God. Do you understand me, Henry ?" It is perhaps generally true, with those of ordi"Yes, mother, you have told me about it so nary sensibility and not too great selfishness, that

often."

"And now, my child, farewell, and may God bless you."

a person's fondness for society is, in some sort, more or less proportioned to his early enjoyment or privation of it. And this may account partially The lad still clung convulsively to his mother's for what has probably come within the observation hand, as though his grasp could detain her. of most persons, that orphans are inclined to marry "Are you there, my son?" asked the patient, young. The bitter experiences of an early life faintly. spent in unpitied, unshared solitude-the painful "Yes, mother," sobbed the boy, whose grief re-action with which the heart's fountains flow could no longer be controlled.

"Your father is come, Henry," said the voice, low and scarcely audible: " but who are those others, in white, and so beautiful ?”—

The voice died away, the eyes rolled upward, the jaw fell, and the nurse moved round to remove the boy's hand from its convulsed grasp of the

corpse.

Henry Manton was an orphan.

SCENE II.

Manhood-Prospects-Courtship-Delay.

Years are passed, and the boy is become a man, Struggling through boyhood and youth, amid the harshness of some, the carelessness of many, and the kindness of a few, he never forgot or violated his mother's dying charge. There must have been something noble in the boy, for he constantly made friends, and valuable ones, since they were

bock upon themselves, filling their source almost
to bursting, when there is no object on which to
expend their treasured fulness-the longing desire
for sympathy, characteristic of minds of finer
mould-these and similar feelings unite to pro-
duce in the orphan a fondness for society and a
tendency towards early marriage, scarcely appre.
ciated by those whose best affections have ever
found vent and exercise in a father's a mother's, or
fraternal love.

After Manton was admitted to practice and entered society, they met oftener, but though their eyes and their embarrassment when together betrayed to each other the secret of their mutual feelings, the young man still restrained himself from an open declaration, until he should feel justified to his own conscience in making one. More-over, as his principles would not permit him to address the daughter claudestinely, he did not wish, by a prema. ture application, to risk a refusal from the father.

The latter was an old gentleman of sixty, testy and selfish, and fond of money. He had made his own fortune from nothing, in the business of a speculator and broker, and perhaps his constant handling of money had aided to give him that love of it that formed the strongest feature in his almost miserly character. There was but one object on earth on which he lavished money with a liberal hand, and that was his daughter, for whom his attachment was the very concentration of paternal passion.

The first year of Manton's practice gave such assured prestige of ultimate and brilliant success, that at its close he felt warranted in declaring him. self to his mistress. Fanny was in truth more than half angry that he had not done so sooner, and as she possessed no slight infusion of mischief, as well as spirit and humor, in her composition, she felt strongly inclined to torment him a little for his conscientious, though (as she thought) rather long silence. But as her real affection for her lover rendered it impossible to find pleasure in giving him pain, she passed it over in his case, resolving inwardly to make it up off the next luckless suitor that should present himself.

Miss Easton had lost her mother in infancy, and perhaps it was her growing up without contact with female influence, (her father being almost her only associate in childhood,) together with her utter exemption from all control, which had given a sort of Di-Vernon freeness to her manners. This, aided and still more strongly developed by her natural candor, sometimes astonished not a little those gentlemen, whose notions of a woman's proper manner and words when love is declared, were drawn from Sir Charles Grandison.

Young Manton's warm and sensitive nature was not calculated to make him an exception to the general rule. Even before he was twenty-one, he had fixed his choice; and if the lady occupied a When young Manton made known his passion, position in society, so far as wealth is concerned telling her how he had loved her for years, how, much above that he was born to, he felt the dis. even before he had finished his studies, he had reparity only as a spur to his ambition and a quick-solved to make it the great object of his ambition ener to his resolution to elevate himself by his pro-and his life to win her; even he, with his practical

Fanny is in the parlor, busily engaged in em- per cent, less in his own eyes than he ever did bebroidery. A young dandy, who has been bestow-fore, and heartily glad to get off so well. ing upon her, for the last two months, all the attention he could reasonably spare from his own person, is sitting beside her and evidently screwing up his courage to the necessary pitch for a declaration.

The hapless and almost hopeless lover did ven- "I beg ten thousand pardons for my awkward. ture to urge his suit further, but he might as wellness, but if Miss Fanny would only attribute it to have tried to coax money out of the old broker at less than ten per cent. Easton became angry, and threatened finally to withdraw even his conditional consent, if not let alone on the subject.

"What! You are not going to persist in your light shows the young man's clothes stained in sesuit, after what I have told !" veral places, with spots of a dark reddish hue, "Why, indeed, Miss Fanny-considering it was though he himself seems unaware or unmindful of no news to me before- - 99

When Fanny was informed by her despairing lover of the result of his application, she seemed momentarily quite angry with her father. "What!" said she," does papa want to sell me for twenty. five thousand dollars?" A few moments' consider. ation, however, restored her usual consciousness of filial duties, and she said, "Well, Henry, we must wait. Don't fear for me, only take care of your--Then you haven't a bit of the gentleman about self, and make money as fast as you can."