Solomon,' said she, and again that merry ringing laugh sounded in I turned from her in anger. my ear. That anger lasted two full years, despite her pleasant treatment of me when we met. It was then dispelled, and with it vanished my blindness and deafness-for a man wounded in his dignity is both blind and deaf-by hearing one Sunday afternoon the banns of matrimony proclaimed between John Cumstock and Sally Ann Pitkin. Then was I in a pretty pickle! Men laughed and jeered at me for 'getting the mitten,' and the women said that I was not to be trusted, and treated me with coolness instead of smiles. From that day to this no mortal has known from my lips that once there lay between me and matrimony but a solitary green pickle!'

From the other end of the table was heard the manly tones of honest Archie McDougal, a young Scotchman, who stood holding by the hand his fair sandy-haired sister, with her downcast eye and tender smile.

'Ye maun a' ken,' said he, 'when my puir mither cam' hither, bringing Jessie and me wi' her; and ye maun remember when she died, and left us twa thegither amang ye. That was a lang wearisome day to us, puir bairns, with neither kit honor kin this side of the big water; and bitter and sad were the salt tears that we shed, as we lay her hoary head down to sleep, far frae the heather fields of bonny Scotland. Too desolate was our little cot that nicht, and Jessie and I wandered hither by the moonlight. We had heard of the Trysting Tree, and we knew we were beneath its branches by the carved letters on its mossy trunk. We stood here thegither, and vowed help and love, never-dying love, to ane anither. By your good help,.neebors and friends, our little patrimony has put bread in our mouths, and water to our lips; and your good will, and our vow well kept, has brought sunshine to our hearts. May God bless ye, ane and a' for your kindness to the dead and to us!'

'I know not,' said the gentle lady who sat near the minister, 'why I should shrink from speaking here to-day, where I too have been in happier hours, and with which is connected some of my most treasured remembrances, nor why I should be here with other than a happy face and a grateful heart. True that to me,

'WITH shadows from the past we fill
These happy woodland shades,

And a mournful memory of the dead
Is with us in these glades;

And our dream-like fancies, and the wind

On echo's plaintive tone,

Tell of voices and of melodies

And of silvery laughter gone!'

But I am not here alone; in yonder group are my children. I am blessed in these, and by my side sits my eldest son, bearing his father's name. May he inherit those virtues that made me so long a happy wife.'

She sat down, and a shade of pensiveness came across that 'merrie companie,' at the remembrance of one whom all had known and valued; but the hour was not one in which to indulge in saddened

Curled o'er my head a momentary cloud
From the light vapor that they left behind;
Then, fitting emblem of that flying crowd,
It swayed and melted in the April wind.

O thou that slumberest underneath the sea,
Down fathoms deep below all living things,
Who seeks for perfect rest must follow thee,

And sleep till GABRIEL wake him with his wings.

ENVY AND SCANDA L.

Ir is customary for us to boast of our virtue as a nation. If there is one thing more than any other which an American believes, and has been taught to believe from his youth, and is ready to maintain on all occasions, it is that he belongs to a particularly virtuous and moral community. And the reports given of other countries by that rapidly-increasing class of our countrymen who travel abroad, tends very strongly to confirm this impression. Interrogate a travelled American on this point, and he will be likely to answer (supposing him to be a man of pretensions to character and morals) after this guise: Can there be a doubt of our superiority? Compare our practices with those of Europeans. In Paris a young man speaks of his mistress as openly as he would of his horse; he would laugh at the idea of its being necessary or desirable to disguise the connection. In England parsons drink their bottle or bottles of wine after dinner, and poor men are starving by thousands, while lords enjoy incomes larger than what we consider the principal of a large fortune. In Italy' And so on; every country supplies him with unfavorable points of contrast to our own.

Now it certainly is but just to admit, that after every qualification, and exception, and drawback, and caveat, which a candid and wellinformed man would feel obliged to make, these pretensions are perfectly correct, so far as they go. Our men are decidedly more chaste than the Europeans, and the general tone of our society is in this respect purer. And in temperance, to use the word in its popularly limited and technical sense- I was on the point of saying in its slang sense-we stand far before several nations of the old world. Our superiority in both these respects may be correctly attributed to those Puritan sentiments, from the influence of which not even those of our states which were settled by the Cavaliers are altogether exempt. And it is also certain that there is among us a more general sympathy between different classes of society, which prompts the undertaking and promotes the carrying out of schemes of general benevolence to a greater extent than is customary elsewhere. And this merit is the direct result of what we conveniently sum up in the phrase, 'our democratic institutions.'

But readily granting and gladly accepting all this, it remains to be

Curled o'er my head a momentary cloud
From the light vapor that they left behind;
Then, fitting emblem of that flying crowd,
It swayed and melted in the April wind.

O thou that slumberest underneath the sea,
Down fathoms deep below all living things,
Who seeks for perfect rest must follow thee,

And sleep till GABRIEL wake him with his wings.

ENVY AND SCANDAL.

It is customary for us to boast of our virtue as a nation. If there is one thing more than any other which an American believes, and has been taught to believe from his youth, and is ready to maintain on all occasions, it is that he belongs to a particularly virtuous and moral community. And the reports given of other countries by that rapidly-increasing class of our countrymen who travel abroad, tends very strongly to confirm this impression. Interrogate a travelled American on this point, and he will be likely to answer (supposing him to be a man of pretensions to character and morals) after this guise: Can there be a doubt of our superiority? Compare our practices with those of Europeans. In Paris a young man speaks of his mistress as openly as he would of his horse; he would laugh at the idea of its being necessary or desirable to disguise the connection. In England parsons drink their bottle or bottles of wine after dinner, and poor men are starving by thousands, while lords enjoy incomes larger than what we consider the principal of a large fortune. In Italy' And so on; every country supplies him with unfavorable points of contrast to our own.

Now it certainly is but just to admit, that after every qualification, and exception, and drawback, and caveat, which a candid and wellinformed man would feel obliged to make, these pretensions are perfectly correct, so far as they go. Our men are decidedly more chaste than the Europeans, and the general tone of our society is in this respect purer. And in temperance, to use the word in its popularly limited and technical sense-I was on the point of saying in its slang sense-we stand far before several nations of the old world. Our superiority in both these respects may be correctly attributed to those Puritan sentiments, from the influence of which not even those of our states which were settled by the Cavaliers are altogether exempt. And it is also certain that there is among us a more general sympathy between different classes of society, which prompts the undertaking and promotes the carrying out of schemes of general benevolence to a greater extent than is customary elsewhere. And this merit is the direct result of what we conveniently sum up in the phrase, our democratic institutions.'

But readily granting and gladly accepting all this, it remains to be