band is, Mrs. Smith!"

Quiet! A snail is an "express-train" to him! If the top of this house should blow off, he'd just sit still and spread his umbrella. He's a regular pussy-cat. Comes into the front door as though the entry was paved with eggs, and sits down in his chair as if there was a nest

of kittens under the cushion. He'll be the death of me yet. I read him all the horrid accidents, dreadful collisions, murders and explosions, and he takes it just as easy as if I was saying the ten commandments. He is never astonished or startled or delighted. If a cannon-ball should come through that window, he wouldn't move an eyelash. If I should make the voyage of the world and return some fine day, he'd take off his spectacles, put them in the case, fold up the newspaper and settle his dickey before he'd be ready to say, "Good-morning, Mrs. Smith." If he'd been born of a poppy, he couldn't be more soporific.

I wonder if all the Smiths are like him? When Adam got tired of naming his numerous descendants, he said, "Let all the rest be called Smith!" Well, I don't care for that; but he ought to have known better than to call my husband Abel Smith.

Do you suppose, if I were a man, I would let a woman support me? Where do you

I

FANNY FERN.

FEMALE TENDERNESS.

WAS one of a party of five in the inside of a stage-coach, among whom were a jolly butcher and an elderly maiden-lady in green spectacles.

At a stopping-place the coachman was regaling himself with some foaming ale, when he was accosted by an official-looking personage, and some whispers passed from which I learned that a convict was about to be forwarded to the next seaport.

The coachman, however, to do him justice, softened the matter to the passengers with all possible skill:

"If you please, ma'am and gemmen, I wants to make room here for an individual."

"Is he a gentleman, coachman? and has he any pipe?" asked the lady in green spectacles.

"Quite a gentleman, ma'am, and not a morsel of 'backey about him, and, what's more, hasn't a ha'penny to buy a bit."

"Why, who is he? He has not much

EAUTY is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in the numberless flowers of the spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and the blades of grass; green it haunts the depths of the earth and sea and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple, and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side.

Now, this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial with our tenderest and noblest feelings and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it as if, instead of this fair earth and glorious. sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of this spiritual endow

ment.

Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest pictures of Raphael and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship, and that I were to learn that neither man, woman nor child ever cast an eye at these

miracles of art, how should I feel their privation! how should I want to open their eyes. and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice !

But every husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner Artist, and how much would his existence be elevated could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions and moral expression! I have spoken only of the beauty of nature, but how much of this mysterious charm is found in the elegant arts, and especially in literature! The best books have most beauty.

The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire. Now, no man receives the true culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished, and I know of no condition in life from which it should be excluded.

Of all luxuries this is the cheapest and most at hand, and it seems to me to be most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give a grossness to the mind. From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may partake of refined gratifications which have hitherto been thought to be necessarily restricted to a few.

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.