and blood. Perhaps this was partly the artist's | portrait quite haunted me. I wondered how fault. He must have been a commonplace she could sit underneath it day after day; artist, from the stiff, formal attitude in which whether she liked or disliked to look at it, or he had placed his sitter-at a table, with an whether during long years she had grown so open book before him and a crimson curtain used to it that she scarcely saw it at all. And behind. But Titian himself would have strug- yet, as we rose to retire, those big staring eyes gled vainly to impart interest to that round fore- of the dead man seemed to follow her out of the head, long weak chin, and rabbit mouth, with room, as if to inquire, "Have you forgotten me?" its good-natured, self-complacent smile. Had she? Can a woman, after ever so sad

I contrasted the portrait mentally with the a wedded life, ever so long a widowhood, quite living face of Lady de Bougainville-her sharp-forget the husband of her youth, the father of ly-cut yet mobile features, her firm close lips, her children? There are circumstances when her brilliant eyes. Could it be possible that she might do so-other circumstances when I this man was her husband? Had I, with the almost think she ought. Nevertheless, I doubt imaginative faculty of youth, constructed a ro- if she ever can. This, without any sentimental mance which never existed? Had her life been, belief in never-dying love-for love can be killed to say the least, a great mistake-at any rate, outright; and when its life has fled, better so far as concerned her marriage? How could that its corpse should be buried out of sight: she marry a man like that! I know not wheth- let there be no ridiculous shams kept up, but er I most pitied or-may Heaven forgive me my let a silence complete as that of the grave fall momentary harsh judgment, given with the rash-between even child and parent, husband and reaction peculiar to young people!-condemned her.

wife. Still, as to forgetting? Men may; I can not tell: but we women never forget.

Yes, I was hard; to the living and to the Lady de Bougainville took my arm-a mere dead likewise. The portrait may not have been kindliness, as she required no support, and was like the original: I have seen many a good face much taller than I-and we went out of the so villainously reproduced by an inferior artist dining-room through the hall, where, in spite that you would hardly recognize your best friend. of the lamp, the moonlight lay visibly on the But, granting that he was handsome-which scagliola pillars, clear and cold. I could not from after and circumstantial evidence I am help shivering. She noticed it, and immedipretty sure of-still, Sir Edward de Bougain-ately gave orders that, instead of the drawingville could never have had either a very clever room, we should go and sit in the cedar parlor. or very pleasant face. Not even in his youth, "It will be warmer and more cheerful for when the portrait was painted. It was a pres-you, Winifred; and, besides, I like my cedar entation portrait, in a heavy gilt frame, which parlor; it reminds me of my friend, Miss Harbore the motto, "From an admiring Congrega- riett Byron. You have read Sir Charles tion," of some church in Dublin. Grandison?'"

I had, and burst into enthusiasm over the "man of men," doubting if there are such men nowadays.

"No, nor ever were," said, with a sharp ring in her voice, Lady de Bougainville.

Then, showing me the wainscoting of cedarwood, she told me how it also had been discovered, like the tapestry and the oak carvings, when Brierley Hall was put under repair, which had occupied a whole year and more after the house was bought.

"Why did you buy it, if it was so dilapidated?” I asked.

Then, had Sir Edward been an Irishman? It was decidedly an Irish face-not of the broad and flat-nosed, but the dark and good-featured type. De Bougainville was not at all an Irish name; but I knew there had been a considerable influx of French families into Ireland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. How I longed to ask questions! but it was impossible. At dinner my hostess sat with her back to the portrait; I directly opposite to it and her. The candelabra glimmered between us-how I love the delicate, pure light of wax-candles!glimmered on her softly-tinted old face, set off by the white muslin of her widow's cap, and "Because we wanted something old, yet the rich lace at her throat and on her bosom; something that would make into a family seat upon her shining black silk dress, and her nu--the root of a numerous race. And we remerous rings. As I have said, her appearance was essentially aristocratic, but she had come to that time of life when only a noble soul will make it so when the most beautiful woman in the world, if she have only beauty to recommend her, fades into commonplace plainness; and neither birth nor breeding will supply the want of what includes and outshines them both -the lamp burning inside the lovely house; and so making it lovely even to its latest moment of decay.

This was exactly what I saw in her, and did not see in Sir Edward de Bougainville. The

quired a large house; there were so many of us then. Now-"

She stopped. Accustomed as she had grown to the past, with much of its pain deadened by the merciful anesthesia of time and old age, still, talking to me, a stranger, seemed to revive it a little. As she stood by the fire, the light shining on her rings-a heap of emeralds and diamonds, almost concealing the wedding-ring, now a mere thread of gold—I could see how she twisted her fingers together, and clasped and unclasped her hands; physical actions implying sharp mental pain.

But she said nothing, and after we had had our coffee-delicious French café-au-lait, served in the most exquisite Sèvres china-she took up a book, and giving me another, we both sat reading quietly, almost without speaking another syllable, until my bedtime.

nay, he despised them, and would have despised me, I knew, had he seen in me any tendencyalas! an hereditary tendency-to luxury and selfish extravagance. Yet I had it, or I feared so sometimes; but perhaps the very fear enabled me to keep it under wholesome control. When I went to bed-early, by her command It sometimes is so. The most strictly truthful -she touched my cheeks, French fashion, with person I ever knew said to me once, "I believe her lips. Many will laugh at the confession-I was born a liar, till I found out that lying ran but that kiss seemed to thrill me all through in our blood, and that cured me." with a felicity as deep and intense as that of a young knight, who, having won his spurs, re-mediately. I well recall the bitterness with ceives for the first time the benediction and salutation of his beloved.

I

My cure came in a different way, but not im

which, this night, I sat comparing my bedroom in Brierley Hall with the wretched attic which I tried so hard to make tolerably pretty, and could not. Was I destined always to live thus

Providence did not choose to gratify? Were they therefore wrong? Was it any blame to Lady de Bougainville that, in spite of her saying if I were as rich as she, "she should be very sorry for me," she should be at this minute ascend

When I entered my room it was bright with fire-light and the glow of scarlet curtains. reveled in its novel luxuries as if I had been-struggling vainly against natural tastes, which accustomed to them all my days. They gratified my taste, my imagination, my sensesshall I say my soul? Yes, a part of one's soul does take pleasure, and has a right to take pleasure, in material comfort and beauty. I had greatly enjoyed wandering over that hand-ing her beautiful staircase to her stately bedsome house, dining at the well-appointed table, spending the evening in the pretty cedar parlor. Now, when I retired into my own chamber, into the innermost chamber of my own heart, how fared it with me?

Let me tell the truth. I sat a while, wrapped in purely sensuous satisfaction. Then I thought of my poor father, sitting in his cold study, having none of these luxuries, nor caring for them. An ugly house to him was the same as a pretty one-a blank street-wall as a lovely view. Pleasant things were altogether wasted upon him;

room-I heard her shut its door-and laying down her lovely hair upon those laced pillows, as she must have done all her life? She had doubtless been born to all these pleasant necessaries; I, if I wanted them, must earn them. Were they wrong in themselves, or only wrong when attained at the sacrifice of higher and better things? Does a blessing, which, freely bestowed by Heaven, may be as freely and righteously enjoyed, become a sin when, being denied, it is so madly craved after as to corrupt our whole nature?

A gown of white dimity, or what had been white, but was now yellow with lying by, three little girls' frocks of commonest lilac print, two pairs of boys' shoes very much worn, and, patched all over with the utmost neatness, a pair of threadbare boy's trowsers.

I was sitting thus, trying to solve in my fool- | ion which covered it, lay one of those old-fashish, childish mind all the puzzles of the uni- ioned hair-trunks which were in use about half verse, with the gaunt, grim, reproachful face a century ago. She unlocked it, and therein of John the Baptist looking down on me from was-what think you? overhead, when a slight knock came to my door-three little knocks indeed. My nerves had been wound up to such a pitch of excitement that I forgot the simple solution of the mystery that Lady de Bougainville's room had only a small ante-chamber between it and mine; and when the door opened, and a tall figure in a dressing-gown of gray flannel, not unlike a monk or a nun, stood there, I screamed with superstitious terror.

"Foolish child!" was all she said, and explained that she had seen the light shining under my door, and that girls of sixteen ought to have their "beauty-sleep" for a full hour before midnight. And then she asked me what I was doing.

'Nothing, only thinking."

"What were you thinking about ?"

From the very first, when she put any question in that way, I never thought of answering by the slightest prevarication-nothing but the direct, entire truth. Nobody could, to her.

"I was thinking about earning a fortune; such a fortune as yours."

She started, as if some one had touched her with a cold dead hand. "What do you know of my fortune or of me?"

"Nothing,” I eagerly answered, only adding that I wished I was as rich as she was, or could in any way get riches-with many other extravagant expressions; for I had worked myself up into a most excited state, and hardly knew what I was saying.

Lady de Bougainville must have seen this, for, instead of sending me at once to bed, she sat down beside me and took my hand.

66

"And so you would like to earn a fortune, as I earned mine, and to enjoy it, as I enjoyed mine? Poor child!" She sat thoughtful a little, then suddenly said, "I do not like even a child to deceive herself. Shall I tell you a story?"

I expected it would have been the story of her life; but no, it was only a little fable of a shepherd who, elevated from his sheepfolds to be vizier to a caliph, was accused of appropriating his master's treasures, and hiding them in a wooden box which he always kept beside him. At last, spurred on by the vizier's enemies, the caliph insisted on seeing the contents of the box, and came with all his courtiers to witness its opening. It contained only a ragged woolen coat, shepherd's sandals, and a crook.

"Now, Winifred, would you like to play the caliph and the envious courtiers? Will you come and look at my hidden treasure?"

She led the way into her bedroom, where the fire-light shone on masses of damask drapery, and mirrors which at each step reproduced our figures. How noble and stately hers was, even in the gray dressing-gown! At the foot of the bed, quite hidden by a velvet cush

This was all. I looked into the box, as I might have looked into a coffin, but I said not a word: her face warned me I had better not. Silently she locked up the trunk again; then, with a tender carefulness, as if she were wrapping up a baby, laid the cushions over it, and, taking my hand, led me back to my room.

"Now go to bed and to sleep, Winifred; but cease dreaming about a fortune, and envy me mine no more."

EVENING REST.

THE "Children's Hour" is a halcyon time,
As our own head-singer hath said;
But there cometh one more serenely sweet,
When the children have gone to bed.

As the last little feet stump up the stair,
Grandma sinks wearily into her chair,
And the last "Good-nights!" shouted back,

And her thoughts take the well-worn track

To the by-gone years when "the girls" were young,
When the boys" were around her knee;
Her fingers move softly as through the curls
Of "the baby"-now far at sea.

Now grandpa can read his paper in peace,
Aunt Julia can wind up her sunny braids
Or tell the last news from town;
Saucy Dick's rough play has pulled down.

Aunt Sue can arrange her work-basket now

In the order she loves so well:

Of the spools unwound and the buttons lost
Much she could, but she does not tell.

Baby's teeth-dints scar the Scotch-plaid box,

But she loves them every one;
And only smiles at her poor scissors bent
When Johnny bored holes in his gun.

And when the tired little mother returns
Reporting "all soundly asleep,"
The father announces a letter from Dick,
The brother far out on the deep.

Good news from the bonny midshipman boy,

Far away in tropical seas;
Ah! the smiles of love-ah, the longing tears

That fall over letters like these!

And now all join in recalling "old times,"
When Bel was unmarried, dear Ned on earth,
Before babes or gray hairs had come;

And "Middy" and "Soph" boys at home.

But after a while the talk will return

Unto those who are children now,
For whom father writes and grandmamma knits,
And those lines came in dear Bel's brow.

Kate's last bright speech must be told and admired,
Dick's mischief, and baby's new tooth;
And how little John grows daily like him
Our hearts hold in undying youth.

So the children sleep while their elders wake,
Through those quieter hours, as truly theirs
Head and hand tasked for them alway,
As the wilder seasons of play.

T'

PHILLY AND THE REST.

HEOPHILUS and I had quite a discussion, the other night concerning our Philly. Philly is a good boy, and a healthy boy. He's straight as an arrow, and would know a hawk from a hernshaw as quickly as any one, if those two birds were in the habit of flying daily before his dear little nose. But Theophilus thinks that when a youngster gets to be six years old and not only is unacquainted with his letters, but evinces a decided unwillingness to acquire them, it is time for the parents to look at each other and ask, Is this, our child, a fool?

Theoph generally is in the right; but he certainly is unduly anxious about Philly. Any one would suppose, to hear him talk, that the dear child should by this time be able to recite half of Webster's Unabridged with his eyes shut-just as if he wouldn't be an unbearable little prig if he could! For my part I love him all the more for his dear, stupid little ways. He'll come out all right in time. It's delightful to hear him try to count-" one, three, five, two, seven"-bless his heart! But Theophilus always looks grave and troubled at these attempts, and tries to teach him the proper sequence. Philly listens for a moment-but what can one do with him? He has a way of wriggling under a lesson that soon forces one to kiss his rosy, laughing little cheeks and let him go. Ah! you should have seen Theophilus just after the discussion I have alluded to. Half in fun, and half because I was provoked at him for his solemn way of taking Philly, I took up a book and began to read aloud a life of the wonderful child Candiac.

"Candiac, John L. de Montcalm' (I began impressively), 'a child of wonderfully precocious talents, was a brother of the Marquis de Montcalm who was killed at the battle of Quebec. He was born in 1719, and at three years of age read French and Latin fluently.'"

Theophilus sighed, but I proceeded as if nothing had happened:

"When four years old he had mastered arithmetic; and before seven summers had passed over his head he had acquired Hebrew, Greek, heraldry, geography, and much of fabulous and sacred and profane history.'"

Theoph almost groaned. I continued: "His extraordinary acquirements were a theme of panegyric to many literary characters of that age.'"

"Seven years," moaned Theoph; "only one year older than our Philly-dear me! what an astonishing child! Go on, dear, what else did he do?"

"What else could he do?" I rejoined, severely, "but die? Here, read it for yourself. Born in 1719, and died of hydrocephalus in 1726." "Oh!" said Theoph.

necker, born at Lubeck, February 6, 1721. At the age of ten months he could speak and repeat every word that was said to him; when twelve months old he knew by heart the principal events narrated in the Pentateuch; in his second year he learned the greater part of the history of the Bible, both of the Old and New Testaments; in his third year he could reply to most questions on universal history and geography, and in the same year he learned to speak Latin and French; in his fourth year he employed himself in the study of religion and the history of the Church; and also to reason upon it and express his own judgment. he was able not only to repeat what he had read, but The King of Denmark wishing to see this wonderful child, he was taken to Copenhagen, there examined before the court, and proclaimed a wonder.'"

"Tremendous!" exclaimed Theoph, "but very unnatural. Still I must say I would like to have a child like that."

"Would you?" I responded, dryly, casting a glance of suppressed indignation toward the crib where dear little Philly lay asleep. "But I've not read it all yet."

"Ah, excuse me, love."

"This account of him by his teachers is confirmed by many respectable contemporary authorities. On his return home from Copenhagen he learned to write: but his constitution being weak, he shortly after fell

ill.'"

"Ah! got sick, did he? I believe that is the way often with these extraordinary children. Probably he remained always sickly— but I beg pardon, go on."

"No, Theoph," I answered, in a low but awful tone, "he did not remain ill at all. He died then and there, at the age of four years and four months."

"Oh!" said Theoph again.

In a few moments he rose and crossed the room. I knew he was bending over Philly; but I didn't look up from the book.

"Come here, dear," he said at last.

I obeyed. Well, it was strange. There lay our fair-browed little boy, rosy and dewy with sleep; one adventurous little bare foot was thrust out from beneath the soft blanket; his left hand tightly held a slate-pencil; the other, with chubby finger extended, was pointing to a slate that lay on the coverlet beside him; and on this slate was a great big A which Theoph had drawn upon it that afternoon, now crisscrossed all over with Philly's pencil-marks.

"He really does appear to be pointing at it," I said, in rather an awed voice.

"We'll take it for a sign," added Theoph, quietly. "We wont trouble the little chap with books yet a while. Plenty of time for that sort of thing when he's older!"

Then he leaned over the crib, and laid his cheek close upon Philly's; and as I thought it best not to make any remark, I went back to the table and took up my sewing.

Now the two children, Candiac and Heinecker, were extreme instances of precocity,

"Ah, here is another," I said, peering into I admit. But we sometimes need extreme inthe book; "shall I read it?"

stances to point a moral, and especially in convincing a person like Theoph, who holds out an opinion with all his might, forcing you to do the same; and then, just as you are trusting your

Of

whole weight to the obstinacy of his argument, | find an apple-tree fairly bubbling over with rapit snaps like an overtaxed rope, leaving you, as id blossoms, he would expect to find many apI may say, a prostrate victor. When he gives ples on that tree when summer came. in he does it so completely that you've nothing course he wouldn't. to say, and must just sit in silence, letting your unuttered arguments seethe within you till you cool off.

Perhaps it would be a more philosophical way to put it if I said, "How would you like your trees to pop forth early in the spring with full-grown fruit? Wouldn't you miss blossomtime? and wouldn't apples be likely to be all gone before Christmas?"

Surely we should regard with reverence the blossom-time of life. If we force it into premature fruitage we must expect to rear a sickly tree. And how much we lose if, in a slow, beautiful blossoming, we find not the exceeding joy that childhood brings to itself and to us.

I might have reminded him of the wonderful boyhood of Pascal, who found mathematics in his porridge, and was forced in his infantile pursuit of geometry to call a circle a round, and a line a bar, because his wise father peremptorily withheld all book-knowledge of the subject from the precocious little one. Or I could have opened another biography and read to him of Bossuet, "The Eagle of Meaux," as his eulogists have called him. This wonderful Dwelling on my simile to illustrate another creature, when only eight years of age, preached serious phase of the subject, I might ask Theoph with unction at the Hôtel de Rambouillet. But, how he would like to have the beautiful floral as we all know, he went on preaching, growing wonders stripped from his trees as soon as they more and more able and eloquent as the years appeared, and hung in fantastic garlands all passed by, and died at last in a green old age. about the outer limits of each branch. Yet So his was not a citable case, in my regard. It that is precisely what those mistaken souls do would have been much more to the point to who turn the simple, beautiful ways of their dwell upon the dull boyhood of some of the children into drawing-room displays; who catch world's most eminent men. Of how Corneille at every bright little saying as soon as it leaves was called a dunce by his schoolmaster; of how the infantile lips, and, in the child's presence, Master Walter Scott was the blockhead of his dangle it before the admiring ears of guests. class; of how the poor sickly school-boy, New-Ah, the wrongs that are committed in this way ton, was always in trouble on account of inat--the holy childish impulses that are sent back, tention; and how impossible it was to make little Danny Webster speak his "piece" at school on declamation-days-how that was the one thing he couldn't and wouldn't do, any more than Philly would learn his letters.

despoiled, into the wondering childish heart, there to wither to a little wisp of vanities!-the sweet music that springs forth unconsciously at first, but in time halts into discords, because it has learned to wait for the perverted maternal echo! Mothers, fathers-all who drink in happiness in the love you bear to little children

But Theoph might then have turned about and renewed the defense. He might have quoted, as he often had before, the childhood revere the freshness of a young nature. Don't, of Galileo, of whom some old frump has said, please don't, let your weak, doting admiration, ecstatically, that, "while other little ones of or your still weaker pride of possession, put the his age were whipping their tops, he was scien- blight of self-consciousness upon it. I'd rather tifically considering the cause of their motion." see a child of mine playing with the molassesVery likely he would have thrown Dr. Johnson | jug, just after I had dressed the little one in and Lord Jeffrey at me, both of whom are said its Sunday clothes, than to hear it speak “My to have been profoundly wise even in their pet-name is Norval," never mind how charmingly. ticoats. Then there was the great Frenchman, I'd almost rather it should have the measles as Gassendi, who was only four years of age when a chronic institution, than to see it ready at all the study of astronomy began to engross him; times to display its répertoire of accomplishand Humphrey Davy delivering scientific lec-ments before strangers. Luckily little ones are tures to his nursery chairs; and Dr. Arnold, glad at the ripe age of three to be presented with Smollett's "History of England."

No, it was better as it was. A relapse of the argument might prove more formidable than the original attack.

not apt to fall into this latter accommodating habit. They rather protest with all their charming might against it.

"Isn't it always so!" exclaimed a mother, in despairing tones, the other day. "Can you ever get a child to show off when you wish it Dear good Theoph! What differences of to?" And there sat her obdurate toddler, outopinion could ever come seriously between him wardly serene in its enjoyment of a candy bribe, and me! And yet there is a great deal to be which had stickied its little mouth and nose in said on the subject of juvenile precocity; and a remarkable way, but all aflame with inward if ever he goes dangerously back to his old determination not to sing "Bobby Shaftoe.' views about Philly I shall have to say it. I'll"It's too bad," cooed the mother; "you ought tell him how direful a thing it nearly always is, this preternatural activity of the faculties. I'll read physiological essays to him, and I'll ask him whether, if he were to go out into his Long Island orchard on some mild day in March and

to hear him do it. He really has quite an ear for music, and his pronunciation is irresistible."

Now "pronunciation" and "irresistible" might not have been quite as comprehensible terms to that baby as to the youthful Candiac