Chorus.-O for those rare, good times of old, When women, I've heard say, If winds were high, or weather cold, Quoth I, 0, wind! O, bitter wind! Why blow so chill on me? O for those rare good times of old, &c. Yet still the cold, cold wind blew on, It said to me, in quiet scorn, O for those rare good times of old, &c. I curse thee, wind, with all my might,— O for those rare good times of old, &c. "Chorus again!" shouted the old man, stamping his foot. And they sang it through again, till the old walls of the room echoed with the wild scream of their voices. "Those good old times may come again," said the old man, after they had finished the singing. "But there is a certain state of feeling to which every one must arrive, before they can vanish from earth. People in the old times oftener reached it, than at present." "What is that state? I will attain unto it," said mother Ward. "I think you will; perhaps, you have. Know then, good mother, that all things here on the earth are vanity. What is lighter than vanity? Doth not the slightest breath stir the leaf of the willow? But vanity is lighter than even the willow's leaf. I said all things were vanity; all things but love are so. It is this which binds men to earth. Were it not for the love which human beings bear to one another-puff--and away they would go, mine for ever. Now, mother Ward, tell me, have you rid yourself altogether of love? I find many who declare they have done thus, and when I wonder they do not blow away, lo! down deep in their heart, covered over it may be with the glitter of mammon, with the dross of selfishness, one little particle of love, which keeps them from being altogether vanity. But I am preaching! Tell me, I, say, have you rid yourself altogether of love?" Old Sue sat still and thought. Her mind went back through the path of weary years, to the days when a happy child she had clang with affection to those who cherished her under their roof, who called her their darling; she traced her own life as she grew up a wayward beauty; her love poured out in its wealth and tenderness upon one her parents deemed unworthy; her rebellion and forsaking of all for love of him who was to be father and mother to her: her few short months of happiness and a terrible awakening as the earth received to its boscm her love, her only joy, save an infant life which only kept her grief from laying herself by his side in the grave. Old Sue buried her face in her hands and wept as the memory of these times came so vividly upon her. The evileyed looked gloomily. But memory would not stop hereas his death and as her treasure's birth. It told over her wrongs. The consciousness of finding herself without money, and consequently without friends, in a great city; the long days of travel, with the precious little one in her arms, to the home of her childhood; the winter's night that heard her timorous knock at the door and The one at her side looked smilingly. The tears had dried, and foulest hate scowled forth from her face. And the same wild night heard a father's curse upon his offspring; it saw a woman faint and foot-worn go forth; with its winds and storms it hushed a child's cry for ever, and wrought long months of disease upon the mother. From that bed of sickness, Memory told her how she rose with vows of vengeance, but it did not dare to dwell upon the unnatural crimes which followed, of vain endeavors to escape remorse, of her flight over the sea, of the years she had wished to die. She rose from her seat-trembling and pale-for she had dared to think upon her sinful past. She had a parent's love and it had cursed instead of blessed her; she won a dearer love, and it died from her; a child's love had blossomed in her heart, but it was rudely killed and its death terribly avenged. She had no other love-all was unfriendliness and hate. "Are you ready to go?" said the old man calmly. He knew that she was his. "Let me first warm myself before my journey," replied she. Then she gathered all the faggots into the middle of the room, and kindled them. The room blazed in a moment. As the flames leaped fierce and hot. "I am ready" said she. That night good John Benton came riding from Plymouth. As he approached old Sue's hut he saw the fire burst forth from its windows, and strangest of all, two shadowy forms glided far away above the burning flames, flying into the darkness of the night, while a gust of wind mightier than ever he had before felt, almost blew him from his horse. These things he averred to the crowd who collected around the burning dwell ing. And what confirmed the narration was, that no bones could be found among the ruins neither was old Sue Ward seen any more. This is a story believed by many persons to the present day, and on account of which, every old house thereabouts has a horse-shoe nailed to its door, and this maxim prevails: CHERISH LOVE LEST YOU BECOME VANITY. A OTTILIA. LOW, sad brow with folded hair, A head, whose lordly, only crown Of pride, Olympian Juno might Have worn for the great god's delight; Deep eyes, immixed of night and fire, Unstained by any earthly soil, And only caring to walk straight Her jewelled hands across the keys, Still, while she played, you saw that hand The firelight flickered on the wall, Yet now she played some liquid song A happy lover would have sung, If once he could have found a tongue; And now the sparkling octaves ran Through the quick dance, whose tangled braid And now the boatman's evening song, Yet, howsoe'er her music ran, Of some dread voice that called us hence; A voice that even now I hear— Although the hand that touched those keys, A PEDAGOGUE IN GEORGIA. THE HUNT. IN one of the back numbers of "Pea Green," a feminine hand touched, gently and skilfully, a few items of the experience of a school-mistress in Texas. The famous picture of Shenstone's is not at hand to verify her words by quotation; perhaps, with all his sympathy for the character, the Texan adventuress could teach the poet, if living, some things out of the circle of his observation. Her narration carries internal evidence of truth to the mind of any one who has cast an eye occasionally, out of a southern school-room. The following jottings have been instigated by her description, and so far as they coincide in spirit, their features must be accorded to her as the first gleaner. Some of the good people of the Middle States, and a portion of New England, now and then, humorously sketch a Yankee teacher, in the words of the quasi proverb, that he comes up from the east with a spelling-book in one hand, and a halter in the other, prepared for either extreme, of "teaching a school, or stealing a horse." This was once so generally true, that the caustic saying of a quiet wit embraced the experience of neighborhoods. Beyond the latitude of those States, the equipment has changed in appearance, though not in reality. Halters are exchanged for patent medicines, or new inventions. Within a range of a score of miles, are five Yankee teachers, now the heads of good schools, formerly the hawkers of pills, lightning-rods, tooth-ache drops, and various syrups. Laying aside their peripatetic Galenships, they assume the stole of a master, and dispute the palm of encyclopedic knowledge with the lawyer and priest of the vicinage. Besides, they teach no schools-nothing less than an academy, ye shades of Attic doctors. The reply of Boswell's father, the Scotch "Laird of Auchnileck," to an inquirer was printed: "There's nae hope for Jamie, mon. Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He's done wi' Paoli-he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon? A dominie, mon-an auld dominie; he keepit a schule, and cau'd it an acaademy." Old Auchnileck had an eye for the pretension of his day, and has stamped well the full-grown humbug of the present the one humbug which overshadows all others of whatever marvellous presumptions. Schools no longer exist in the towns and villages, rarely in the fields; academies and colleges supplant them. All this in a parenthesis. Finding that a magisterial port and learned way procured more respect and dollars than peddling elixirs and panaceas, the change is effected in the moulting of a snake. Some found it to their pecuniary advantage, or the steppingstone to sudden competencies. Others followed, enticed by the glittering narratives of teachers, who married young heiresses, or witching widows, with much land, and many negroes. The romance is still alluring enough to draw yearly its supply of ready-made teachers. Within a few years the proverb above has become acclimated at Southern hearths; so that the reception of Yankee masters is on the wane. Such was the state of the field when your informant came hither; a change for the better quality of instructors was the quotation of the public feeling, and nothing less than "a graduate" was received. Yet some of the old regime then existed, and still rule the benches. This immigration, in spite of prejudice, was in many things much the best, as far as conscientious faithfulness was concerned. They knew the "spelling-book" and taught it; now the spelling-book is nearly effete. An illustration; a few evenings since, one of New England's originals, half actor, half tailor, who has wandered hither, under the half-spent force communicated to him by his progenitor Ishmael, became excited in a conversation with the installed schoolmaster, and exclaimed-"I reckon I know its spelling right; look in Webster; there you'll find it-in the spellin'book-I didn't teach school three months in New Orleans for nothin'--and when I quit, I was a dab at spellin'." Would that more of both instructors and pupils were orthographical "dabs." For reasonable hope might then be entertained that the present woeful tortion of the alphabet would be exchanged for a knowledge of English letters, at least, superior to the "elegant extracts" exhi bited in Dutch advertisements, and on the signs of cross-roads groceries. When the present generation of active business men has passed away, their sons may advance with capacities better trained to estimate the curriculum of a choice instruction. Advancement has been made, and further improvement in the attitude of the general understanding cannot be checked. It must come, like the wave climbing to the breast of the cliff, at whose foot the spray of the on-coming waters is now hardly cast. This half prophesy could not have been uttered years ago, as the writer lamentably felt, at his entrance upon the soil of Georgia. I had been placed in school for years-long enough to acquire, by moderate industry, some of the outlines of the wide fields open to the eye of judgment and imagination; a stubborn rust of habit had overgrown the body, and seemingly tended to the inertness of a reading life. A sudden misfortune as suddenly acted upon, wrested me from the shadows of the Green Mountains, and impelled me southward, where I expected to find rolling Savannahs instinct with majesty and quiet power, but where were found neglected fallowgrounds, overlaid with pine-knots and alive with lizards. An early frost had cut short the hope of the planter, and laid low the luxuriant beauty of Georgian vegetation. The climate seemed but the slow fever of a wasting land. Its mildness was a contrast to the repulsive features of the soil. Imagination had formed a false picture of perpetual blooms and the never-ceasing song of birds-falsely; ay, how falsely, he only can tell, who has never witnessed the fierce heats of noonday suns firing the air with tropic rays, whose vertical shafts are red-hot arrows, while a bastard simoom sweeps the land. How, then, can even a blown imagination reproduce the lithe vine, the tangled green of the thicket, the overheaped baskets of flowers wildly thrown by the early year broad-cast over forest and glade? Vivid fancy and plastic form collected the shattered beauty of the Venus de Medicis; but, when Nature drops withered remains in Autumn's lap, what spirit shall call back the once unchallenged grace of her painting to the anatomy of the skeleton, save the revolution of that stern god, Time, that binds and unbinds, creates and destroys, delighting in the change and interchange of the circle of things? My eager appetite for novel forms of natural loveliness kecked at the inferiority of the landscape of a Southern autumn, to the checkered livery of the Northern dolphin. Perhaps, this disgust was increased by the ways of some of the people inhabiting the red hills and sandy bottoms of the arable lands. Quere: Reader, how would the fop Pelham or Beau Brummel have felt, once thrown into the society of Squire Westerns and Commodore Trunnions? Similarly, in manner, if not degree, did I feel, in exchanging the precise and select demeanor of teachers for the naturally fresh, though seemingly uncouth, ways of planters. Like many others, I came well laden with introductory letters, serviceable only for the moment, valuable only in forming speaking acquaintances, as the experience of many will testify. As the hunter for schools passes about among the people, a somewhat intimate knowledge is gained of the habits of the sturdy landlords. My first essay was by no means encouraging. The resources of introductions being exhausted, and with little benefit, I determined to conceal or not exhibit an equally large bundle of testimonials of capacity. Well, that I did. I have since seen some ludicrous receptions given to these wordy and cheap papers of ability, and had cause to thank prudence in this matter. Throwing these into a corner of my trunk, I mounted a clay-bank colored nag, and rode to the hunt, thinking that fortune would smile upon the first effort--that the attempt would be of a Cæsarean type, “veni, vidi, vici." My visions of personal importance and overweening assumption were thoroughly dissipated in the course of two days. My horse proved worse than the rocking horse once used as a penalty for minor felonies. This mode of conveyance for twenty or thirty miles was novel to me, and the novelty became the greater as observation showed it to be a general custom. Light vehicles are more in vogue now, but not sufficient to destroy the custom. Every one has his horse, like the Arab, however poor he may be, even if he wants the Irishman's more serviceable companion, the cow. Has the reader ever noticed the journey of Peverel on horseback through the west of England, which the masterly hand of the great Scotch novelist has illustrated with his usual fascinating colors of national customs. If he has been lead by his curiosity in this matter, he will be pleased to note the correspondence between the times of the Commonwealth and our own day in this trivial point. The custom, and the rate of daily travel confined to an easy walk, are the same— thus continuing a journey of days and weeks in the unvarying jog. My day's ride ended in a hamlet called the dark corner," with more of truth than poetry. Morning showed what the fatigue of the previous night had hid from view-the hotel-perhaps its repute in the vicinity was equal to that of metropolitan hotels, or those of fashionable watering-places. My attempts to procure a school were limited to a few inquiries-being satisfied with appearances, often worse than the actuality. Here was another innovation on old ideas the day being Saturday, divine worship was held in the neighborhood on this and the succeeding day. Accepting the invitation of the landlord, with others, I went to the meetinghouse, prompted more by curiosity than devotion. The results of inquiry only quickened curiosity. My lot was in the midst of "HardShell Baptists." This term "HardShell" has no reference to political divisions, whether of Northern, Western, or Southern origin; but was given to the denomination because, professing the same general creed as other Baptists, they withhold all support to foreign evangelical missions, against which they set their faces like flint. They are generally very plain pecple, indulging in no ostentation or luxury, mostly with moderate means, and for their proverbial honesty and promptness in paying debts may be called the Quakers of the South. They ape no style, are led away by no fashions, hate all popular innovations upon manners and beliefs, and esteem strong common-sense, unaided by disciplinary instruction, in its disconnected utterances, as superior to all the lumber of books and graces of schools. (Hence my efforts to teach were rationally durable.) The meeting-house, whither we walked, was built of hewn logs, unceiled and unplastered, with sliding window-shutters of plank, having long benches placed, as in a school-room, for seats: it was situated in a grove, a short way from the hamlet, near a pleasant spring of water. Hither, in the course of a few hours, came numerous planters with wives on pillions, now a horse, now a mule bearing two or three girls or boys -none coming in light wagons, or provincially "buggies." Honest, quiet, and cordial greetings seemed perfectly natural to them all as they met in groups, intentionally or by accident, as by second nature, under the broad trees. Stranger as I was, I yet received the cordial grasp and the conversational coin of the day. After the discussion of planting interests and kindred topics was exhausted, a whitelocked father stood in the door, and proclaimed-" The hour for service is cum, bretheren." Instantly, the buzz and laugh outside ceased, there was a smoothing of hair, cleansing of throats, brushing of clothes, a unanimous start for the doors, women to the right and men to the left. The staid members of the church took their seats near the pulpit; others in regular bench platoons, according to grade and age of piety and years; while the frolicsome fell back in the rear seats, behind whom were the slaves. When once within, and the eyes were cast about, the interior brings to mind the quaint conceit of old George Chapman : "If ever I be worth a house again, I'll build all inward; not a light shall ope That still batters All reason piece-meal, and for earthly greatness The Elizabethan poet was a "HardShell" in his style of architecture-perhaps a little more of a non-conformist than his modern brothers. However, the present house seemed more suitable to a warm climate than to English dampness. If the "Hards"-or as they designate themselves, the Primitive Baptists-discard all claim to fashion in other matters, as sincerely as in the conduct of "service," there seems to be no place for future in-break upon the idiosyncracy of the sect. How the patriarchs regulated antediluvian worship, in their wide pasture-lands, may be a mooted question among Biblical antiquarians; yet conjecture might receive some hints touching the question, among the mod |