boots do this evening-and finally fell with a crash--just such a crash, Tom, as we heard when you opened the doorand lay bathed in blood at the feet of his own Dorcas."

My uncle paused for a moment, to give due effect to this dismal picture, and thus continued:

"Ever since that day there has been a tradition in our family that the colonel was in the habit of returning to earth to rehearse the painful scene with which his life terminated. Indeed the truth of this story was placed beyond a doubt by the testimony of my grandfather, who, upon returning one evening from a supper-party at the tavern, actually surprised the colonel, Miss Dorcas, and old Retribution, going through their affecting exhibition in the front entry. Of late years, since the house has been more opened to the world, I regret to say that this interesting party have been forced to hold their meetings in the attic, where they have much annoyed my cookswho cannot be made to understand the great privilege of entertaining such aristocratic company. But the little event of this evening gives me good hopes that they have returned to the original scene of their sufferings, and that they will continue to repeat their satisfactory, though somewhat melancholy, performances every evening during the season."

"It seems strange," observed Barnard, "that these ghosts should always wish to go over their most painful experiences when on earth. One would certainly suppose that the colonel would prefer to repeat the felicitous moment, when he rose from his knees the accepted lover of Dorcas, or when he had the luck to bag a brace of Indians at a shot. But this seems to be characteristic of all manifestations, ancient and modern. I have seen mediums thrown into all sorts of convulsions to represent the final moments of the spirit who professed to animate them."

“I think it is almost sacrilege," said my uncle, "to mention these authentic and respectable apparitions in the same breath with an imposture so transparent and silly as modern spiritualism."

"You speak like one who has not examined the matter, but is ready to take up the cry of the street or press about a subject of which he is wholly uninformed," retorted Mr. Barnard. "Spiritualism may be, and in my opinion is, a delusion; but an imposture it certainly is not. The alleged phenomena, though

in many cases exaggerated and distorted, do undoubtedly take place. And we have no right to call our neighbor weak or silly, because his mind is convinced by evidence that fails to satisfy our own. I am acquainted with many spiritualists, as I am with many Catholics and Calvinists, whose peculiar tenets of faith I can by no means accept, yet upon whose judgment and information in indifferent inatters I have the greatest reliance. Nay, more; I can feel the highest respect for men who are brave enough to advocate what they conceive to be the truth, undeterred by loss of social caste, or the jeers and mockery with which the world always receives those who seek its improvement in any novel or unauthorized way."

"Well! I shall hear of you as a confirmed believer in all these signs and wonders. When people begin to talk so about it, they soon come boldly up to the mark, and swallow any absurdity a diseased imagination can invent."

"I will not say that I shall never be converted to spiritualism, because, with a certain amount of evidence, I believe I could be converted to that, or anything else. But I will say this-that after having carefully read every book of any note devoted to the advocacy of the new revelation-after having done a goodly amount of that "investigating" for which spiritualists clamor so loudly-I am infinitely further from believing, than I was before beginning my inquiries. And this is not because I have not seen many instances of that clairvoyant thought-reading which must be accepted as an established fact, but- Well, it is not worth while to detail all my reasons just now, and just here, so they shall be kept for some long morning, when you ask for them."

"It is very strange we have not had the spirits here yet," said my uncle. "They had a great run at South Wexford and Ponkussett; but they seem to have skipped Bearbrook."

"They will be upon you some time or other when you least expect them," rejoined Barnard. "The whole town will be thrown into a state of furious excitement. People will abandon their business and their pleasure and tip the tables from morning to night. Doctor Drachma will preach a series of sermons against it, and five or six families will become indignant and sell their pews. One or two people may possibly become insane from over-excitement-and then the epi

demic will gradually pass off like the small-pox or yellow-fever, and the world will go on very much as before. I have seen matters take precisely this course in more places than one."

"Well, well, all is, whenever we are favored, I shall expect you and Tom to come down here. Your experience will be of infinite use in interrogating our visitors."

We both promised the major that we would certainly come, and were about to expatiate on the satisfaction we should take in such a visit, when my aunt, with an exclamation of terror, called our attention to a mysterious singing, that appeared to come from the cellar immediately beneath us.

"Doubtless it is one of the men chopping wood," said the major.

"It can be no man," exclaimed my aunt, "for I locked the cellar-door and have the key in my pocket. I knew that John would be out to-night and did not think it was best to leave it open."

"It can surely be no ghost,” said Barnard, for I never heard of one who sang, except the ombre di Nino in Semiramide."

"Be still a minute, and let us try to distinguish the words," urged the major. "If it has any connection with the apparitions of this evening, it will doubtless be some old Gregorian chant."

"Du dar, du dar," sang the voice beneath, "I went to the race with a pocket full of tin, but soon come back with my hat knocked in. Oh, du dar da.”

Why, good gracious, it's old Netleswing," cried my aunt. "He must have been locked up there all the afternoon. Why doesn't he knock to get out?"

“Du dar, du dar," ascended in reply. "Somebody ought to go and let him up," said Kate-and she looked hard at me. "I'm sure I can never go through that entry again!”

"And I can never find the cellar-door alone," I responded. "Among all those queer, dark passages that lead out of the kitchen, I should not discover the right one in a twelvemonth."

"Suppose we all go in a body," advised Barnard, "we shall then be able to defy Tolliwotte, even if he brings all his Indians along with him."

The major thought the suggestion a good one, and volunteered to lead the forlorn hope as bearer of the astral lamp. Barnard and myself marched as aids-decamp to my aunt; and in this order we passed into the entry.

"I don't see any blood,” said my uncle, pausing to examine the pattern of the floor-cloth. "It would have been very satisfactory if Tolliwotte could have left a few drops-just to show that it was really him."

"Perhaps he is coming back to supply the omission," said Barnard. "There is certainly a most extraordinary blowing and scraping at the other end of the entry."

We stood aghast as the mysterious sounds alluded to struck our ears; and my aunt very nearly fainted, as a square portion of the floor a few feet from where we stood rose from its place, and admitted a bushel basket of cranberries into the hall. The cranberries were followed by the head and shoulders of Mr. Netles wing, who was gradually continued, until we surveyed a pair of cow-hide boots, very similar to those Colonel Tolliwotte must have had on during his last interview with Dorcas.

"Well, now, who would ha' thought o' this?" said Netleswing, rather startled at finding so many spectators to his ascent. Why, Lord bless me, I thought you'd all gone to lectur' and carr'd off the cellar key, so I've been tuggin at this pesky old trap-door that hasn't been used for mor'n twenty year, just to get at them cranberries, that wanted pickin' over like all time. Cranberries I s'pose you know, Mr. Tom, when they're just a little mite touched and can't keep, is about the most fattenin' thing for hogs there is a-going. Why, then sars'ges sent down to you last November were made out o' cranberry-fed pork, and they were just—well, I'll say they couldn't be beat, nohow!"

The mysterious steps, the crash (possibly the trap-door as it descended över the head of Mr. Netleswing), admit a certain sort of explanation. But if the reader is willing to accept that explanation, and give up Dorcas and her lover, and old Retribution, for Netles wing and a basket of cranberries-he is not the man I take him to be. When Barnard attempted to account for the curious phenomena of the evening in some such manner, we treated him with the contempt he deserved.

A gentleman interested in spiritual literature borrowed my uncle's notebook, and prepared and published an elaborate account of the whole matter; though I feel it my duty to correct two slight errors that have crept into his otherwise authentic narrative, by assur

ing the reader that at no period of the evening was the major sustained in the atmosphere, and that Barnard did not mount a table, and gallop furiously about the room. In every other respect, I am

most happy to corroborate the little work in question, and so commend it to the perusal of all candid inquirers. You will find it pleasant reading for the first day of this present month of April.*

IT is a good thing to have children in the country. Children in the country are regular old-fashioned boys and girls, not pocket editions of men and women as they are in town. In the metropolis there is no representation of our species in the tadpole state. The word "lad" has become obsolete. Fast young men and fast young women repudiate the existence of that respectable, antique institution, childhood. It is different in the country. My eldest does not call me "Governor," but simply Father; and although in his ninth year, still treats his mother with some show of respect.

Our next boy (turned seven) has prematurely given up smoking rattan; and our four-year-old girl is destitute both of affectation and dyspepsia. As for the present baby, his character is not yet fully developed, but having observed no symptoms of incipient depravity in him up to this time, we begin to believe the country is a good place for children. One thing about it is certain, children in the country get an immense deal of open-air-training that is utterly impraoticable in town. A boy, a girl brought up "under glass" (to use a horticultural phrase) is apt to "blow" prematurely, but, although it is rather rough culture, still I think the influence of rocks, rivers, leaves, trees, buds, blossoms, birds, fresh air, and blue sky, better, upon the undeveloped mind of a child,

than that of a French nurse, no matter how experienced she may be. I think so, and so does Mrs. Sparrowgrass.

There is one thing, however, that is mortifying about it. When our friends come up from town with their young ones, our boys and girl look so fat and gross beside them, that we have to blush at the visible contrast. Mrs. Peppergrass, our respected relation, brought up her little girl the other day, a perfect French inbow so far as dress went, and there they sat-the petite, pale Parisienne of four years, and the broad chested, chubby, red-cheeked rustic of the same age, with a frock only diversified by the holes scratched in it, and a clean dimity apron just put on, with a gorget of fruit marks on the breast that spoke plainly of last summer--there they sat, side by side, cousins both, and who would have known it. 66 My dear," said I, to Mrs. Sparrowgrass, after our respected relative had departed, "did you observe the difference between those children? one was a perfect little lady, and the other ""Yes," interrupted Mrs. Sparrowgrass, "I did; and if I had had a child behave in that way, I would be ashamed to go anywhere. That child did nothing but fret, and tease her mother for cake, from the time she came in the house till she went out of it. Yes, indeed, our Louise was, as you say, a real little lady beside her "

Finding that I had been misunderstood, I kept silent. I do not know anything so sure to prevent controversy as silence, especially in the country.

"Speech is silver, silence is golden."

There is one institution, which, in a child's-eye point of view, possesses a majesty and beauty in the country altogether unappreciable in a large city. I allude to the Menagerie! For weeks, juvenile curiosity has been stimulated by pictorial representations at the Dépôt and Post-office. There is the likeness of the man who goes into the cage with the wild beasts, holding out two immense lions at arms' length. There is the giraffe with his neck reaching above a lofty palin tree, and the boa constrictor with a yawning tiger in his convoluted embrace. If you observe the countenances of the small fry collected in front of a bill of this description in the rural districts, you will see in each and all, a remarkable enlargement of the eye, expressive of wonder.

"Conjecture, expectation, and surmise,"

are children's bedfellows, and the infantile pulse reaches fever heat long before the arrival of the elephant. At last he comes, the "Aleph "* of the procession! swinging his long cartilaginous shillelah in solemn concord with the music. Then follow wagons bearing the savage animals in boxes with red panels; then a pair of cloven-footed camels; then other wagons all mystery and red panels; then pie-bald horses and ponies, and then the rear guard of the caravan drags its slow length along. "My dear," said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, we must take the children and go to the menagerie." This seemed a reasonable request, and of course we went. When we approached the big tent we heard the music of wind instruments, the sound of a gong, and the roaring of lions. This divided our juvenile party at once, one halt wanted to go in, and the other half wanted to keep out; Mrs. Sparrowgrass joined the seceders, and in consequence, we separated at the entrance of the canvas editice. When we got in we heard that the lion tamer had finished his performance, and that the elephant had been around, but there was a great deal of sport going on in the ring-the mon

Aleph the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. and hence, the name Aleph-unt,

key was riding on his pony. At this announcement the young ones were immensely excited, and tried to get a peep at it, but, although I held them up at arins' length, they could see Leither monkey nor pony. Then I tried to work a passage for them to the front, but the ring being invested with a border of country people thirteen deep, this was out of the question. So I concluded to wait until the crowd dispersed, and to keep the young Sparrowgrasses in good humor, I held them up and let them read the signs on the top of the cages. "ROYAL BENGAL TIGER," "BLACK LION FROM NUBIA," "Yellow ASIATIO LION," "THE GNU," "WHITE POLAR BEAR," &c., &c. By and by the clapping of hands announced the close of the performance, and the dense mass of people became detached, so we made our way through the crowd towards the elephant. All of a sudden, we saw a general rush towards us, and we heard somebody say that, "something had broke loose!" Not being of an inquisitive turn of mind, I did not ask what it was, but at once retired under a wagon load of pelicans, and put the young Sparrowgrasses through a door which I made in the side of the tent with my pruning knife. The people poured out of the big door and from under the edges of the tent, but they had not run far before they stopped, and proceeded to make inquiries. Some said it was the polar bear, whereupon, several respectable looking men suddenly climbed over a fence; others said it was a monkey, at which all the boys set up a shout. The intrepid conduct of the cashtaker had much to do with restoring confidence. He stood there, at the entrance of the tent, smoking a cigar with imperturbable firmness. So we all concluded to go back again and see the rest of the show. When we got to the door we found the entrance fee was twentyfive cents. We represented that we had been in before. "That may be," replied the cash-taker, "but we don't sell season tickets at our establishment."

Finding the discussion was likely to be violent upon this point, I retired, with some suspicions of having been slightly swindled. When I got home, Mrs. S. asked me "if I had seen the elephant?" I told her the whole story. Well," said she, "that's just the way I thought it would be. I'm glad I did not go in."

It seems to me the country is marvellously beautiful in winter time. The number of bright days and moonlight nights is surprising. The sky is not less blue in January than in June, nor is a winter landscape without its charms. The lost verdure of the woods is compensated by the fine frost-work woven in the delicate tracery of the trees. To see a noble forest wreathed in icy gems, is one of the transcendental glories of creation. You look through long arcades of iridescent light, and the vision has an awful majesty, compared with which, the most brilliant cathedral windows pale their ineffectual fires. It is the crystal palace of Jehovah! Within its sounding aisles a thought even of the city seems irreverent. We begin to love

the country more and more.

"Its dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,
With sunset, and its gorgeous ministers,
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;
And autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,
And winter, robing with pure snow and crowns
Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;
And spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes
Her first sweet kisses."

Here you begin to apprehend the wonderful order of creation, the lengthening days after the winter solstice; all the phenomena of meteoric machinery, every change in the wind, every change in the temperature; in the leafless trees you see a surprising variety of forms. The maple, the oak, the chestnut, the hickory, the beech, have each an architecture as distinct as those of the five orders. Then the spring is tardy in town, but if you have a hot-bed in the country, you see its young green firstlings bursting from the rich mould long before the city has shaken off the thraldom of winter.

One day in the month of March I heard there was to be some sport on the Nepperhan in the way of fishing, so I took my young ones to see it. The Nepperhan is a historical river-the Tiber of Yonkers. It runs in a straight line for about forty yards from the Hudson, then proudly turns to the right, then curves to the left, and in fact exhibits all the peculiarities of the Mississippi without its turbulence and monotony. It was a cold day in spring, the air was chill, the sky grey, the Palisades still ribbed with snow. As we approached the stream we saw that a crowd had collected on the deck of a wrecked coalbarge moored close to the bank, and on the side of the bank opposite to the barge, a man was standing, with one

boot in the water, holding up the end of a net stretched across the tide. The other end of the not was fastened to the barge, and the bight, as the sailors say, was in the water. In the middle of the crowd there stood upright a fair, portlylooking man of good presence. His face looked like a weather-beaten, sign-board portrait of General Washington with white whiskers. He was looking up the stream, which from this point made a rush for the south for about one hundred feet, then gave it up, and turned off due east, around a clump of bushes. What particular animosity General Washington had to this part of the stream I could not imagine, but he was damning that clump of bushes with a zeal worthy of a better cause. I never heard such imprecations. The oaths flew from his lips, up stream, as the sparks fly from an express locomotive at midnight. Dr. Slop's remarks concerning the knots in the string of the green bag of surgical instruments, beside them, was like tender pity. Such ill-natured, uncharitable, unamiable, mordacious, malignant, pitiless, ruthless, fell, cruel, ferocious, proscriptive, sanguinary, unkind execrations were never fulminated against a clump of bushes before. By-and-by a flat-boat, filled with men, turned the corner and came broadside down stream. The men were splashing the water on every side of the flat-boat to drive the fish towards the net! They had oars, sticks, boards, boughs, and branches. Then I understood General Washington. He had been offended because the flatboat was behind time.

Now it was all right: I saw a placid expression spreading over his weatherbeaten countenance, as a drop of oil will spread over rough water, and mollify its turbulent features. The flat-boat, or scow, was long enough to stretch almost from shore to shore. The shouts and splashes were frightening the fish, and below us, in the water, we could occasionally see a spectral sucker darting hither and thither. I looked again at General Washington. He had untied the end of the net, and was holding it in his hand. His face expressed intense inward satisfaction-deep-not vain-glorious. Near and nearer swept the broadside of the boat, down stream was the net, between both the accumulating fish. General Washington's hand trembled-he was getting excited. Here it comes, close upon us, and then, by the whiskers of the Great Mogul! one end of the