near it, and the coffee sending up its pleasant steam with the smoke, when the footsteps of the unknown traveler arrested their attention; and a soft rap on the door and the announcement that breakfast was waiting, fell strangely enough on the ears of the bewildered Jacob; it was just as if his own mother had called him, except that she had not spoken his name.

More ashamed than he had ever been in his life, he obeyed the call, and with downcast eyes and a blushing cheek, presented himself, expecting, notwithstanding the mild call, to receive summary dismissal, with severe reproof. But a cordial goodmorning, and invitation to partake of the breakfast that awaited, caused him almost to think he was still dreaming, and in his hesitation, he behaved so awkwardly that Elsy would have laughed in spite of herself another time, but now, she did not know why, but she felt not only pity for the stranger, but in some sort responsible for him. He did not look like an evildisposed person to her; she did not believe he was one; and she did not care what anybody said, she would not believe it. Now no one had said anything about the young man that Elsy knew of, and it was strange her thoughts should run before and suppose an accusation, and take up a defense; but such was the fact, and such are often the curious facts with which love begins his impregnable masonry.

the lies Jacob had invented died in his heart. If she had breathed one word of blame of him, they would have come out, black as they were.

His next plan was to modify the story somewhat; he would blame himself a little more, his parents a little less; and he would say he laid down, because he was too tired to go on, and growing numb with the cold, had fallen asleep; that he discovered that morning his money was all gone, though how he had lost it, he did not know. This gave him a little more satisfaction, and he was just on the point of commencing an exculpation, unasked, when Elsy brought to the table some warm cakes she had been baking, and offered the nicest of all to him; he felt obliged to refuse and when with her own hand she laid one on his plate, he felt the second story all going to pieces.

He now wished heartily the meal was concluded, and resolved to steal away the first moment he could do so, without saying a word. He had no money with which to pay for his entertainment, and what were apologies and thanks? Nothing; he would steal away unobserved, and somewhere, and some time, try to amend.

He did not know when nor where, nor once ask himself, why then and there would not be as good a time and place as there would ever be.

When the breakfast was done, Mrs. Go

warmest corner; and having told Elsy to run over to farmer Hill's, and see if he could not spare his son John to chop for them that afternoon, she went herself to the "milk-house,” a little cellar that lay under a mound of snow, a few steps from the door.

The opportunity Jacob had longed for was come; he stole back for the bundle he had left, took it up, and there was nothing in the way of escape, nothing but a natural nobility of soul that was not all gone yet. There was the white bed, Elsy's own bed, he knew, which she had given to him; and there was the pot of winter-flowers, blooming bright in his face; and there was the Bible on the snowy cover of the table; all mute, to be sure, but they seemed to rebuke the purposes he had formed nevertheless. No, he would not, and could not, steal away

in his hands? If there had been any suspicion manifested toward him, it would have been easy to go; but he could not return basely the frankness and confidence he had met. He would see Mrs. Goforth -tell her truly his destitute condition, nothing else give her his thanks, which was all he could give, and somewhere seek for honest employment.

So resolving, and wishing the resolution were executed, he sat, when his hostess returned, followed almost immediately by Elsy, her cheeks blushing red with the rough kisses of the wind, and her eyes sparkling, notwithstanding the disappointment she had met. John Hill had gone to town an hour before, and who was to chop their wood she could not tell; but she looked at Jacob when she said so in a way that implied a suspicion of his ability to solve the problem.

Jacob ventured to say he would like to work long enough to pay for his entertainment, if he dare ask such a favor; it would not be asking, but doing a favor, Mrs. Goforth said; and throwing down his bundle, the young man took up the ax. The old dog that had kept a suspicious eye on him all the morning, arose now, and with some little hesitation followed him to the woodpile, whence the sturdy strokes, issuing presently, made agreeable music in the widow's house. That day, and the next, and the next, he kept at work, and that week, and the next, faithfully the stranger had performed all the duties intrusted to him; but he had spoken no word concerning his past life.

Many of the neighbors expressed surprise that Mrs. Goforth should pick up a man in the high road, and hire him to do her work; they could not account for it, except by saying she was a strange woman; they hoped she might not be paid for her foolishness by finding her horse gone some morning, and her hired man with it. But when she was seen going to church, and this hired man riding in the wagon with her own daughter, there was such commotion in the congregation as had not been known there for many a year. Some of the women, indeed, passed by the pew where the widow and daughter sat, pretending not to see them, and such sayings as that "Birds of a feather flock together," and "A woman is known by the company she keeps," and the like, were whispered from one to another, all having reference

to Mrs. Goforth and the drunken man, as everybody called Jacob. But the good woman had little regard for what her neighbors thought, so long as her own heart did not accuse her, for, "what have I done," she said, "except practice what they preach ?"

All the truth about the young man, after his arrival in the neighborhood, was speed|ily bruited about, and lost nothing as it went. Elsy believed not one word of it, for a nicer or a smarter person than Jacob Holcom she had never seen in her life. If she could believe it was true, she would not talk with Jacob so freely; but she knows better; and even if it were true, she thinks those who talk of it might find some faults nearer home to attend to.

It was about the middle of the sugarmaking season-night, and raining. Jacob had been busy there two or three days, so busy that he had scarcely been at the house, except for the doing of the necessary chores; taking luncheon now and then with him, but not remaining long enough at the house to eat with the widow and her daughter. The day we write of he had not been at home since morning; he must be very tired, and very hungry, and very lonesome, Elsy thinks; and she goes to the window often, to see whether he is not coming, but she don't see anything of the torchlight gleaming over the hill—and Jacob is used to make a torch of hickory bark to light him on his way home at night-so she keeps standing and looking out into the dark, and the rain, hoping her mother will say, "You had better run across the meadow, Elsy, and see whether some fearful accident has not happened to Jacob;" but her mother keeps at her knitting, by the fireside, and don't say anything of the sort; her heart has not fluttered her steady common sense into unnatural fears. At last she can bear the sense of the darkness and the rain no longer, for who knows, she thinks, but that Jacob may have had another of those dreadful fits, and so fallen into the fire, or the boiling water. "Mother," she says, "it is not raining much now: I think I will take Carlo, and run over the hill and see if I can tell whether Jacob is in the sugar camp; if I see him from the hill top I will come straight back."

"Very well, my child," replied Mrs. Goforth, "but I don't think anything has happened to him."

Elsy was not long in tossing a shawl over her head, nor long in reaching the hill top; she did not once think of the darkness nor of the rain; one moment she paused, and stood on tiptoe, looking earnestly into the great red light that shone against the trees, and flickered along the ground of the sugar-camp. She did not see Jacob, and therefore sped on, faster than the wind.

Before the stone furnace, where the sugar-water was boiling, a rude hut had been constructed, which afforded protection from the storm; and here, seated on a low bench, watching the jets of flame as they broke from the main body of fire, quivered a moment, and went out, sat Jacob Holcom, when Elsy, her hair dripping with rain, and her face pale with fright, presented herself before him.

"What can have happened?" he asked in surprise, taking her hand and drawing her to the seat before the fire.

Elsy's cheek grew red when she found that she was come of a foolish errand, and she stammered the truth-her fears for him as the best excuse she could make. It was Jacob's turn to be confused now, and taking up a handful of the straw that carpeted his rude hut, he pulled it to pieces, his eyes bent on the ground, and stepping aside till he was quite out of the shelter.

"O, don't stay in the rain," said Elsy, "sit here by me, there is room enough.' Jacob sat down, but kept his face averted from the gentle confidant eyes of his companion. "I am sure you have not told me true," said Elsy, "and that you are not well. O, if you should have another of those dreadful fits!"

Well might she have thought, poor simple-hearted child, from the strange behavior of the young man, that a fit was about to seize him, for as she looked tenderly up in his face, he covered it with his hands, and she presently saw the tears coming out between his fingers.

All at once she divined the truth, she thought she had wounded him by speaking of the fit, for people said it was a drunken fit, and Jacob might fancy she believed it. How to begin she did not know, but to sit in silence and see Jacob weeping like a child, was not to be thought of, so she stammered in some way that she did not know as anybody had said anything against him, and if they had she did not

believe it, she did not care what it was. And the more she said she did not care what was said against him, that she believed he was all that was good and true, the more discomforted the young man seemed. If she had joined her denunciations to the rest, he could have denied their justice, perhaps; but to be thought so much better than he was, made him more sadly humble, more truly good, than he had ever been in his life.

He assured Elsy, in a broken voice, that he was quite well, but that he was not worthy of the interest she had taken in him, though he thanked her for it.

"Poor Jacob," thought she, "I am sure his mind is wandering; he not worthy, indeed! then I don't know who is." And she went herself out into the rain to mend the fire, and afterward arranged her shawl against the crevices of the wall by which Jacob sat, so that wind and rain should not blow too roughly against him.

"Sit here yourself," said the sugarmaker, rising from the seat, and drawing Elsy toward it; "do, I pray, for I cannot; I would rather stand out in the rain."

"O Jacob, what do you mean?" asked the girl in affright; " sit down beside me; the bench is long enough, and tell me what it is troubles you." And there, the rain beating around them, and the fire brightening, and fading, and brightening again, as it fell, Jacob told all the story of his life, sparing himself no whit.

But if he has done wrong sometimes, thought Elsy, what of that? I suppose every one has some faults, and if everybody has turned against him I am sure there is the more need I should not. In fact, she believed he made his vices greatly larger than they were; but even if he did not, it was so magnanimous to confess them, and to come back to virtue. Verily, she admired and loved Jacob more than ever before. When he came to tell of the black eyes that had made all the woods about his home brighter than the May sunshine could do, till their loving beams changed into sharp arrows, and pierced him through and through, Elsy's little foot tapped smartly on the ground, and her own eyes looked as indignant as it was in their power to do, for in her heart she felt that the woman who could scorn Jacob, no matter what the provocation, did not deserve to have a lover. It is to be supposed that Jacob saw

all this plainly enough, for such thoughts shine right in one's face as plainly as written words; nevertheless, to make assurance doubly sure, no doubt, he said, “And you, Elsy, would have spurned me just as she did, if I had been a lover of yours?"

"How can you ask me, Jacob?" she replied, “I should have felt that you needed me most when that you were not strong enough in yourself to resist temptation." "Dear angel!" said Jacob, and the bench, which a little while before was not big enough for two, might have accommodated three very well as he spoke. But there is no need to repeat what more they said; suffice it, they forgot to make a torch to light them home, each confidently believing the full moon was shining in all her splendor, they saw the way so well.

When Jacob rapped next at the parsonage, it was not to entreat a night's lodging, and the door opened so wide, and the parson smiled so blandly, he could hardly believe it was the same house or the same man he had seen before; and when he sat next in the pew, at church, with Mrs. Goforth and Elsy, not Elsy Goforth any more, there was nobody in all the house that did not see them, and smile, and shake hands.

Jacob never had another fit, and the manly dignity and propriety of his conduct soon won for him, not only the esteem and admiration of all the neighborhood, but led the people to believe they had wronged him in their first accusation; and they kindly bestowed upon Mrs. Goforth the reputation of having a gift for curing fits, and many were the applications for advice she received in consequence. When she assured them that she practiced no art, and that simply doing as she would be done by, was all her wisdom, there was invariably disappointment and sorrow, so hard is it to understand the potency of a thing so easy; in truth, the hardest of human possibilities, and the most wonderworking. Five years after the mysterious cure, Jacob Holcom owned one of the prettiest little farms near Clovernook, and in all that time Elsy and he had never had any disagreement, except when he affirmed that she was an angel, which she always stoutly denied; but she was a good and true wife, and that is but a little lower than an angel.

THOMAS HOOD, THE POET AND PUNSTER.

THO

THOMAS HOOD is the greatest wordtwister the world ever saw. He detects analogies in words and ideas with the rapidity of intuition. He produces his most startling effects by antithesis-the sudden contrast and explosion of opposites; and by virtue of his organization he is just the personification of antithesis:large wit and small hope that means laughter next-door to tears; mirth with a mournful ring to it; merry fancies holding the pall of laughter, or letting its coffin gently into the grave; light gracefully fringing the skirts of darkness; life deftly masking the hiding-place of death.

:

Even in moments of solemn agony he often broke out into bewildering freaks of farce, and made such genuine merriment, that the lookers-on may fail to see that the heart is breaking down in the tragic depths that lie below the sparkling surface. Women at such times, not being able to possess their souls to the same stretch and strain, will burst into hysterical laughter, when they want to be weeping bitter tears. Hood always appears to me to have so deep a sense, such a painful sense of the terrible earnestness of existence, that it would be unbearable if he could not get some humor out of it, and phantasie some light and merry moods of mind. His wit is often set to this tune, but so perfect is his representation, that you do not see how thin is the partition which divides your laughter from his sorrows, and that he is making fun of his own troubles, some of which are deep as death. In the sunshine of spirit which he calls forth, he sets his tears as very jewels of wit. Like Garrick, he can laugh on one side of the face and cry on the other; and some of his touches of mirth surprise you into tears. In his "Ode to Melancholy," he sings—

"Even so the dark and bright will kiss-
The sunniest things throw sternest shade;
And there is even a happiness

That makes the heart afraid!
There is no music in the life

That sounds to idiot-laughter solely;
There's not a string attuned to mirth,

But has its chord in melancholy."

I have remarked that he produces his greatest effects by antithesis; (indeed, that word is the sum of human life-the law

of the universe-the history of the world. God and the Devil-Good and Evil-Truth and Error-Man and Woman-Attraction and Repulsion, these are our sublimest illustrations of antithesis ;) here are a few examples. In the "Song of the Shirt," he tells us that the singer sat

Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt."

And she cries,

"O, God! that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!"

What handwriting on the wall is this-
"A wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there."

In the "Dream of Eugene Aram," he makes the murderer say of his victim

"A dozen times I groan'd. The dead
Had never groan'd but twice."

And, speaking of the dead body,

"There was a manhood in his look
That murder could not kill."

. But, turning to a more cheerful subject,

we shall find this antithesis come to a climax in the "Parental Ode to my Son, three years and five months old." Here we have the prose and poetry of childhood written in parallel lines, and startling but truthful contrast. Unless the reader is accustomed to have to write against time, and the brightest strains of thought jangled by a child, or children, boisterously appealing to the parental anxiety, it will be difficult to reach the full fruition of this delicious ode. But it's worth going through the necessary process, to reap its full enjoyment:

"Thou happy, happy elf!
(But stop-first let me kiss away that tear)
Thou tiny image of myself!

(My love, he's poking peas into his ear!)
Thou merry, laughing sprite!
With spirits feather-light
Untouch'd by sorrow, and unsoil'd by sin,
(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin !)

"Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing-bird that wings the air! (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the

stair!)

Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy!

In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link,

Thou idol of thy parents (Drat the boy!
There goes my ink!)—

"Toss the light ball, bestride the stick

(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!) With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down, Prompting the face grotesque, and antic brisk, With many a lamb-like frisk. (He's got the scissors snipping at your gown!)

Thou pretty opening rose! (Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose!) Balmy and breathing music like the south; (He really brings my heart into my mouth!) Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star; (I wish that window had an iron bar!) Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove! I cannot write, unless he's sent above !"') (I'll tell you what, my love,

Bacon has remarked, that there is no exquisite beauty that has not some strangeness in its proportions. Hood is a master of this unexpectedness, whether it startles with its laughter in his rich grotesquerie, or surprises with its rapid and crushing lyrical energy in thunder-strokes of thought. He said his epitaph should be-"Here lies the man who spat more blood and made more puns than any other." He was indeed a marvelous punster-monarch of Pun-land. All great humorists and

wits have been fond of this wit of words. Shakspeare was always making them, and Douglas Jerrold will speak a bookfull per day, when in the mood.

It was a great pity that he should have been compelled to break up his poetic fire into such small sparks and brilliant scintillations. He had to pick up his living at the point of his pen, and puns sold better than poetry. He could turn any and every