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therefore expects many self-sacrifices from us; and we cannot outrage any of its usages without being slighted and voted a bore. There are some ceremonies impossible to overlook, even between very intimate friends, however much your time may be profitably occupied; answering letters and notes is indispensable; nothing can excuse the rudeness and neglect on this point; its non-observance is always set down as a gross violation of the rules of good breeding; acquaintances seldom forget the insult, and still more rarely forgive it. Friends are bound to bear and forbear; but the practice of these little attentions is a strong cement, which in time unites mere strangers in the bonds of friendship.

Professional people only are exempt from the weariness of making morning calls; but when a lady takes the trouble to give a party, and entertains her guests to the best of her abilities, the least they can do in return is to show some mark of respect, by writing a note of inquiries after her health, &c. &c., if they have not the time to waste in making a call. When even such a trifling politeness as this is omitted, the hostess is justified in supposing her acquaintance is no longer worth keeping.

Many persons at a large soirée express themselves dissatisfied at not having been introduced to such and such a one in the room. Introductions on crowded evenings can scarcely take place, unless the lady of the house is made aware that so and so wish to be known to each other.

People when jostled together should speak to one another, if only to mention that eternal subject," the weather:" if they are too proud or too shy to be sociable with strangers, they should not accept invitations; the silence and dulness of a few individuals pass in fearful array before the mind's eye of the hostess the next morning, and she often unnecessarily blames herself for not having bestowed more particular attention upon those who certainly did not deserve it, by omitting to assist her in her arduous duties of making every one at

ease.

Small talk is no mean acquirement; a lady or gentleman who can descant eloquently on a torn glove, or withered flower, is sure to be expert in breaking those awful pauses which sometimes occur in the most finished society. Silence should always be observed when any professional performer is kind enough to give his services in playing or singing, to amuse the company; but the first note struck on the piano, however fine the musician may be, seems to be a signal for the confusion of tongues. Be careful to make no remarks on those who surround you; even a confidential whisper may be heard by some one standing at your elbow, and who is possibly related or connected with the object of discussion.

It is a great want of tact to take a friend uninvited into a crowded soirée, just because it is supposed to be of little consequence if one more is added to the number; if every guest were

guilty of the same thoughtlessness, the mistress of the festivities would find her house and her supper too small for the occasion.

Nor should it be considered as a mark of disregard if many of the lady's acquaintances are not invited to parties; there may be many reasons which prevent such and such a one from meeting; the establishment may be too small to allow of more than a limited number: it is wiser and better never to resent a slight, unless it is so palpable that it cannot be mistaken.

Endeavour not to let your eye wander, or your manner appear listless, when one older than yourself addresses you; there is a respect due to years, which should never be forgotten; and the less the conversation is worth hearing, the greater is your sacrifice in listening. Punsters are very agreeable for half an hour or so; but rational people get weary of laughing, and long for that intellectual conversation which puns destroy.

Wit and raillery are dangerous weapons, which are often turned against the possessor; those who delight in bantering others may be thought amusing, but they will never be esteemed and respected.

Sarcastic and illnatured opinions may be given with a smiling face, and the listeners may smile also; but they will not be the less keenly alive to the wound which is meant to be inflicted: ill-timed badinage has often severed the dearest friends. It should be remembered, that people are not always in the humour to be teazed; and the moment any symptoms of annoyance are shown, the teazer should at once desist using his battery; the really kind heart will endeavour carefully to avoid uttering one word which can give offence. Talking at people is very vulgar; either be silent upon their faults, or take a private opportunity of boldly but kindly telling them what you dislike; this may be done in such a manner that none of the rules of good breeding need be infringed; it is strange that human nature takes more delight in exposing the faults of mankind than hiding them under the cloak of charity. Good actions are scarcely named abroad, whilst bad ones are descanted upon in every nook and corner.

Nothing is more despicable than gossiping; gentlemen as well as ladies can play at this game of mischief.

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I have a secret to tell you," is generally the prelude to a bit of scandal, when the reputation of an innocent person is torn to tatters.

Tale-bearers, who repeat disagreeable remarks that others may make upon you, will be sure to convey back to the parties observations that you may or may not have made upon them. Gossips have not very clear ideas of right and wrong; and for the sake of being made welcome, will distort truth into a thousand false shapes.

Never be the repositor of a secret if you can avoid it; it is ten to one if the same event has not been confided to two or three other “bosom friends;" and when it is divulged to the world by them, the chances are that you will be accused

of a breach of trust. Married women should take care not to inspire the confidence of young girls, as husbands do not usually like their wives to possess a confidence of which they are ignorant. It is easy to know if you are thought an intruder at the house of an acquaintance by the way in which servants and children receive you; they are so accustomed to hear the free remarks that are made in the drawing-room by their superiors, that they soon understand and act upon the observations they pick up; but avoid if possible coming to an open rupture with any one you have been in the habit of visiting, as you shut yourself out of many excellent advantages which are derived from your being in general society.

DIRGE FOR A SUICIDE.

BY CAMILLA TOULMIN.

Lay your lutes and viols by ;

Close the organ's swelling choir-
Instruments of mortal make

Not for such a strain desire.
List THE DIRGE in Nature's voice,

In the Ocean's surging song,
Sighing on the pebbly beach
With a murmur deep and long.

In the Autumn's moaning blast,
Sweeping through the solemn pines,
When the air is cold and dank,

And the shortening day declines.
Listen for the fitting Dirge

In the everlasting roar,
Of the ceaseless cataract
Leaping blindly from the shore.

For great Nature's solemn sounds
Have a language of their own;
But unto the young and gay

'Tis a language never known;
Like the writing on the wall,
When Assyria's haughty king
Found for sole interpreter

The Prophet taught by suffering.

To some Natural, solemn Dirge,

Lay your brother, sister down-
Where the earth is barrenest,

And a flower has never grown.
But forbear from look or word
Of the ignorant Pharisee-
Dare not judge of one who learned
So much more of Life than ye!

Learn'd-till Life itself became

A Thought too terrible to bear!
The heart a charnel of dead hopes,
With spectral madness there
To quickly grow a despot king,
And rule with smiling nod,

And urge the Deed-but leave, at last,
The Suicide to GoD!

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"Tis from thy changeful utterance I learn
Earth's joys are but ideal; for they leave
No full contentedness. I scarce can turn
Mine ear away; for now thy throbbings weave
A strain I deem,

If nature sleeps beneath the still of eve,
The song-tide of her dream!
FREDERICK ENOCH.

LINES.

(From the German of Nicauder.)

BY MRS. W. P. O'NEILL.

Fancies are fairest while they rest
Deep in the poet's glowing breast:
Love is purest ere it speaks:
Life is loveliest when it takes

No mournful tone to vent its sighs;
But, meek and uncomplaining-dies!

It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the old superstition, that the nightingale, whilst singing, presses her breast upon a thorn.

X

BERTH A.

A STORY FOR THE THOUGHTFUL.

BY H. HASTINGS WELD.

A silent group surrounded the bedside of a dying woman. The apartment showed none of that luxury of the sick room which almost tempts the healthy poor to envy the wealthy invalid. It was nearly bare of all furniture; and its scanty moveables seemed to tell the story of one who, having exhausted all that the world had conferred upon her, and used to the utmost all that she possessed, was now going out, carrying nothing with her, and literally leaving nothing, to which she had any clain, behind.

The sound of a distant clock came into the room, with slow and funerally distinct utterance. It seemed so like a knell that the attendants of the dying woman raised their eyes from the couch of death, and, as if prompted by a common impulse, looked inquiringly and with awestricken countenances at each other. The close, warm air of the room seemed to turn icy cold; the hearts of the living no less than that of the dying appeared to cease to beat. The clock went on and finished its tale. Ten-eleventwelve! Imagination scarce could resist the persuasion that each succeeding blow fell fainter as it numbered the last seconds of the parting year.

The echo died away. A smile, though a sickly one, passed over the doctor's face, that he, all used to scenes like this, had partaken of the contagion of superstitious awe. All were reassured, and ventured to breathe again-all but the dying woman. She breathed no more.

A slight convulsive struggle drew all eyes and thoughts back to the dying bed. A smile passed over the pale features, transforming the gaunt in suffering into the beautiful in death. The struggle was over. A soul was released, and the thousand clocks which told the last moment of the dead year, were its passing bells.

All were relieved. Near that bedside had stood neither kith nor kin. The stranger had been taken from amid strangers, home; and the pity of those who had befriended her, unselfish, inasmuch as it was not that of dependents or of kindred, ceased when the sufferings of the dead were over. Tears fell, in sympathy with our common frail nature. Words were said in a subdued voice in praise of the heavenly meekness and patience of the sufferer-now a sufferer no longer-and expressions of pity for the distant relatives were uttered also by those who knew the pangs of separation from friends. But there arose no wail of grief, no bursts of unreasonable sorrow; for all felt that the friendless and unknown, who had departed in the calm confidence of a Christian soul, submissive to the

will of its Maker, and trusting in the mercy of its Redeemer, had exchanged what had been indeed a bitter journey in the vale of tears, for a welcome in that heaven where tears are wiped from all faces.

There was one, indeed, who, but for the happy ignorance of childhood, might have wept-an hour or two before she had fallen asleep on the pillow, while the mother strained her dying eyes over the infant's face, and breathed many, many prayers, unheard except by Him to whom they were addressed. When the babe slept, she was removed. Now, as if the strange presence of death in the house had chilled and frightened her baby-dreams, she waked and cried in terror. The nurse, confused in her divided duty, caught up the child and returned to the bed again. The infant in her arms danced and shouted as it saw the face which all its little life had been its shield from fancied danger, and its solace in childhood's little afflictions; struggled to get down and kiss the smile which death had stamped there; clapped its little hands, and cried out" Mother!"

Day had fairly broken. Guns sounded without; shouts of early revellers rose; and the attendants looked abroad, almost wondering as they threw up the windows, now that the air was scarce colder than the clay which but a few hours before needed so many appliances to its comfort. A little time gave the apartment all the formal, icy state of death, which the decent respect of the family of man for a deceased member prescribes. The infant was carried from the house, and all unknowing what it had lost, was soon loudest in its childish glee among a knot of hospitable little ones, who forced upon it their toys, and shouted in its wondering ears-" A happy New Year!-a happy New Year!"

CHAP. II.

A happy New Year! While many raise this shout, how many others pine in sorrow! While one part of the race is rejoicing in hope, how many sink in despair! While these hear the congratulations of friends, how do those quail before the eager pursuit of enemies! As joy turns her radiant face on one, she turns from others; and misery's tenacious hold upon earth is only broken in one spot, that elsewhere it may fasten deeper and surer. Some good souls wonder how man can rejoice while there is so much distress in the world. Bless your honest hearts! None could ever be glad did they wait till all sorrow were off the earth. It is ungrate

ful not to be cheerful when heaven blesses us-, and it is sinful to be an ingrate. No sin is

worse.

A worse ingratitude than mere moroseness is that, however, which forgets the woes of others in our joys, their necessity in our plenteousness, and their loneliness in our troops of friends. Little Bertha's fate was better ordered, and she was not forgotten. It chanced that when in one house death was sweeping a mother into eternity, in another a child was called early to rest; and while in one a mother yearned for her child, and in another a child looked despair out of its innocent eyes for a mother, Providence directed the two bereaved ones. Bertha nestled in a bosom which seemed to her at first a little strange, but soon she clung as naturally to her new inother as if she had known no other.

Years passed, and the lady who had taken her into her arms even before she fairly laid her own dead child down, and into her heart while it was yet warm with living love for the departed, had quite forgotten that her adopted was not indeed her own child. Lovely she grew, and was reared with discriminating and anxious tenderness, for sorrow teaches the heart to love, and bereavement schools the afflicted how best to provide for those who are spared. There was only one thing in which Bertha's mother-for so we will call her-erred. That one error was, perhaps, a pious fraud. She coveted the child's whole heart, and did not tell her that she was not literally, and by the whole of woman's destiny, her daughter.

She might have been less reserved, for there seemed no danger that any would dispute her claim. A cold, dark-featured man did appear upon the funeral scene when the last obsequies were paid to Bertha's mother. He carefully paid every due, and cancelled every demand. Nay, he was even gracious enough to say that the deceased was his daughter by marriage, but having of his own will accorded so much information, he skilfully parried or rudely repelled all questions. The child seemed a sad annoyance to him, and it was certain, if actions can speak, that he regretted more that the infant lived than than its mother died. When the babe's new friend, a childless and widowed woman, timidly put forward her claim, as if she feared so great a boon would be denied, he who should have clasped the infant to his breast could ill conceal his joy at parting with it; and any less humane and tender of heart than the newly-bereaved mother would have discerned in his pleasure something more than the mere joy he professed that his dear little infant was so well provided for. If he was little curious to learn anything respecting her who adopted the child he resigned, she was well content that nothing should be known of him. It was a pardonable feeling that led her to consider the child as scarcely less than a direct gift from heaven to her lonely heart; and she was anxious to forget all in connection with little Bertha! except that the cherub came to fill a void in her being, even before she was fairly conscious that

such a void existed. Thus was her sorrow disarmed, and thus were her whole affections transferred to the orphan, so that orphan she ceased to be almost before the name had been given her.

So she grew-cheerful and happy; but when were cheerfulness and happiness ever let alone? Never, certainly, since the first intermeddler in the business of others came into the world. Bertha was wandering in the village grave-yard, as she dearly loved to do, and as every child has a passion for doing. There is something poetically beautiful in it. As our first parents wandered in Eden unconscious of death, so do little children seem to play with the tombs in the garden of graves-all unconscious that death has entered the world. If untaught by silly nurses to attach terror and gloom to the quiet silence of the spot, they find in it a place for their gambols, which is chiefly remarkable for furnishing quaint and singularly interesting reading upon its head-stones and tablets when they are weary. And what are, then, infant gambols but life in epitome? What is life itself but a game of hide and seek with the grim archer, which sooner or later must be ended by a stumble, not over the grave like the child's fall, but into it? Silly as children, but not so innocent, are those who trifle their lives through, without a thought of the inevitable close.

"Strange that you, of all children, can play here," said a woman that looked over the wall.

Bertha looked up, all wonder-her fair face mocking the chubby angel in the stone against which she leaned, and her bright eyes sparkling with half awe-struck curiosity. Her face was in a glow with ruddy health, and her hair-beautiful in its negligent curls-danced upon her shoulders in the light air that played, like her (and she no less innocently than that), amid the graves. The picture of trusting happinesswhat could have been the woman's thoughts who marred it?-Bertha at length said, "Mother told me I might."

"Your mother! Heigho!" and here a longdrawn sigh and lugubrious shake. "Your mother sleeps under your feet."

Bertha, horror-struck, looked down as if the grave were yawning beneath, and withdrew from the spot, trembling with puzzled terror-" My mother!"

The woman was gone. Little Bertha hurried home, and ran from room to room till she found her whom she only knew as mother, and burying her face in that bosom which had so dearly cherished her, cried as if her little heart would break.

"She told me you was dead-asleep-but here you are, and I will never, never leave you a minute again!"

CHAP. III.

It was a calm and beautiful sunset. The fragrance of the early summer flowers came into the open windows with a weight almost op

pressive. The foliage sparkled as if gemmed thought she wished to know. Now she would with diamonds, and each leaf bent under their have given worlds to know more, for while she weight. The earth had been refreshed with a did not suspect the true cause of her dear child's summer shower, and the slanting rays of the uneasiness, she fancied that if she could tell her sun twinkled, not only in the rain-drops on the everything of one parent, that Bertha would not leaves, but shone in the tears which trembled on think of the other. How strangely selfish is Bertha's eyelids. Matron and child had been woman's love for her children; strange at the weeping, but were calm; for as the rain to the first thought, and yet it is natural. She who thirsty earth, so are tears to the weary spirit. bears them in sorrow, who suffers in all their "But you are my mother, for all?" inquired infantile sorrows as much, and in their after Bertha, with a tremulous voice. The answer sorrows more than they, may be pardoned for was a long and ardent embrace. No words the delusion that she alone fills their whole further were spoken-none were needed. Mrs. | hearts. Malcolm had been telling her ward and more than daughter the melancholy story how her own mother had died; for the hint thrown out by the meddlesome woman had made such a communication necessary. Perhaps it was as well that the child should know the truth. If now no more she loved her kind friend with the blind affection of instinct, her heart every day expanded more and more with gratitude to her who, when in death her mother forsook her, had been prompted of heaven to take her up.

Poor Bertha! She was old enough to think, and what a world of care that age brings with it! Her cheerful sunny hours were clouded. She knew that children have fathers as well as mothers, until death comes in to sunder the parental tie. Hitherto, when her widowed protector had spoken of Mr. Malcolm, she had listened, attentively and affectionately, as to memories of her father. But this, she perceived, could no longer be. If we were usually in the habit of giving children credit for the faculties they possess, and the observations they make, Mrs. Malcolm might have divined Bertha's thoughts, and would have been silent and guarded on that subject. She was the reverse. The establishment of a confidence between her and Bertha led her to speak often of her own lost child whom Bertha had succeeded, and of her husband, whose loss had been her first sorrow. When she kissed Bertha's forehead, and fondly said, "You fill the place of both my child and its father," Bertha sighed she did not speak, but she longed to ask "Who was my father?" How much may a thoughtless word inflict and how little did the curious, officious woman, who clouded Bertha's paradise, suspect, as she saw her growing more pale from day to day, that it was to her own foolish tongue the charge was due! She only said to her gossips, "That child grows weakly, like her mother; and I wouldn't wonder if she went the same way, some day." The marvel is that she did not say so to Bertha's self; so indeed she would have done, but Bertha avoided her as her evil genius.

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Near the mother of Bertha, a lesser mound marked where Mrs. Malcolm's infant slept: here with her ward, after the revelation which accident had forced upon them, they often walked. How wonderful the double ties, which thus linked the dead to the dead, the living to the living, and all, living and dead, thus in one band!

As autumn with its bleak winds advanced, they felt that these visits soon must close. One day, as with this presentiment they delayed longer than usual, they perceived a stranger enter the grounds. This, though not very common, was still not remarkable. Thoughtful travellers-and it is strange that there can be any other-never omit to visit the places where the dead sleep; for there is mirrored, in the manner of their bestowal, the character of the living.

But when, as Mrs. Malcolm and Bertha were about to withdraw, they saw the stranger pause near them; the widow was astonished-shall we confess it?-almost alarmed. He had passed hurriedly and with a look of unsatisfied curiosity everywhere else; he had passed indifferently the marks of posthumous pride and the relics of antiquity; he had possessed no eye for what were deemed the notables of the place; but now having reached the grave of Emmeline, he stood, as if spell-bound. For a moment or two he gazed at the headstone, as at an object which be recognized as the companion of his thoughts and the furniture of his dreams; then bowing his head upon it his whole frame shook with unrepressed emotion.

Mrs. Malcolm was scarcely less affected. She divined all; and for an instant was half tempted to chide heaven for what seemed to her another bereavement. A thousand thoughts intruded upon her troubled mind. Once she started to draw the child away from an unnatural parent who could thus neglect her; but startled at Ber tha's half resistance, she desisted. The father raised his head, and seemed a moment annoyed, as if he now for the first time perceived that there had been witnesses of his sorrow.

Mrs. Malcolm pointed to Bertha. The stranger looked a moment, then clasping her to his heart, said, "Her mother's self! But they told me she

left no child!"

con

The mystery is easily solved. The father of the stranger, cold, covetous and ambitious, had frowned upon a union in which the parties sulted no councillors but their hearts. The young husband, scarcely out of his minority,

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