Part 4

His heart was open as the day, His feelings all were true: His hair was some inclined to gray-- He wore it in a queue.

Whene'er he heard the voice of pain, His breast with pity burn'd: The large, round head upon his cane From ivory was turn'd.

Kind words he ever had for all; He knew no base design: His eyes were dark and rather small, His nose was aquiline.

He lived at peace with all mankind, In friendship he was true: His coat had pocket-holes behind, His pantaloons were blue.

Unharm'd, the sin which earth pollutes He pass'd securely o'er, And never wore a pair of boots For thirty years or more.

But good old Grimes is now at rest, Nor fears misfortune's frown: He wore a double-breasted vest-- The stripes ran up and down.

He modest merit sought to find, And pay it its desert: He had no malice in his mind, No ruffles on his shirt.

His neighbors he did not abuse-- Was sociable and gay: He wore large buckles on his shoes. And changed them every day.

His knowledge, hid from public gaze, He did not bring to view, Nor made a noise, town-meeting days, As many people do.

His worldly goods he never threw In trust to fortune's chances, But lived (as all his brothers do) In easy circumstances.

Thus undisturb'd by anxious cares. His peaceful moments ran; And everybody said he was A fine old gentleman.

ALBERT GORTON GREENE.

IDENTIFIED

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a kind-hearted man as well as a great novelist. While he was consul at Liverpool a young Yankee walked into his office. The boy had left home to seek his fortune, but evidently hadn't found it yet, although he had crossed the sea in his search. Homesick, friendless, nearly penniless, he wanted a passage home. The clerk said Mr. Hawthorne could not be seen, and intimated that the boy was not American, but was trying to steal a passage. The boy stuck to his point, and the clerk at last went to the little room and said to Mr. Hawthorne: "Here's a boy who insists upon seeing you. He says he is an American, but I know he isn't." Hawthorne came out of the room and looked keenly at the eager, ruddy face of the boy. "You want a passage to America?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you say you're an American?"

"Yes, sir."

"From what part of America?"

"United States, sir."

"What State?"

"New Hampshire, sir."

"Town?"

"Exeter, sir."

Hawthorne looked at him for a minute before asking him the next question. "Who sold the best apples in your town?"

"Skim-milk Folsom, sir," said the boy, with glistening eye, as the old familiar by-word brought up the dear old scenes of home.

"It's all right," said Hawthorne to the clerk; "give him a passage."

ONE BETTER

Long after the victories of Washington over the French and English had made his name familiar to all Europe, Doctor Franklin chanced to dine with the English and French Ambassadors, when, as nearly as the precise words can be recollected, the following toasts were drunk:

"England'--The _Sun_, whose bright beams enlighten and fructify the remotest corners of the earth."

The French Ambassador, filled with national pride, but too polite to dispute the previous toast, drank the following:

"France'--The _Moon_, whose mild, steady and cheering rays are the delight of all nations, consoling them in darkness and making their dreariness beautiful."

Doctor Franklin then arose, and, with his usual dignified simplicity, said:

"George Washington'--The Joshua who commanded the Sun and Moon to stand still, and they obeyed him."

MY AUNT

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! Long years have o'er her flown; Yet still she strains the aching clasp That binds her virgin zone; I know it hurts her--though she looks As cheerful as she can; Her waist is ampler than her life, For life is but a span.

My aunt, my poor deluded aunt! Her hair is almost gray; Why will she train that winter curl In such a spring-like way? How can she lay her glasses down, And say she reads as well, When, through a double convex lens, She just makes out to spell?

Her father--grandpapa! forgive This erring lip its smiles-- Vowed she would make the finest girl Within a hundred miles. He sent her to a stylish school; 'Twas in her thirteenth June; And with her, as the rules required, "Two towels and a spoon."

They braced my aunt against a board, To make her straight and tall; They laced her up, they starved her down, To make her light and small; They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, They screwed it up with pins-- O never mortal suffered more In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done, My grandsire brought her back (By daylight, lest some rabid youth Might follow on the track); "Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook Some powder in his pan, "What could this lovely creature do Against a desperate man!"

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche, Nor bandit cavalcade Tore from the trembling father's arms His all-accomplished maid. For her how happy had it been! And Heaven had spared to me To see one sad, ungathered rose On my ancestral tree.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

N. P. WILLIS

MISS ALBINA McLUSH

I have a passion for fat women. If there is anything I hate in life, it is what dainty people call a _spirituelle_. Motion--rapid motion--a smart, quick, squirrel-like step, a pert, voluble tone--in short, a lively girl--is my exquisite horror! I would as lief have a _diable petit_ dancing his infernal hornpipe on my cerebellum as to be in the room with one. I have tried before now to school myself into liking these parched peas of humanity. I have followed them with my eyes, and attended to their rattle till I was as crazy as a fly in a drum. I have danced with them, and romped with them in the country, and periled the salvation of my "white tights" by sitting near them at supper. I swear off from this moment. I do. I won't--no--hang me if ever I show another small, lively, _spry_ woman a civility.

Albina McLush is divine. She is like the description of the Persian beauty by Hafiz: "Her heart is full of passion and her eyes are full of sleep." She is the sister of Lurly McLush, my old college chum, who, as early as his sophomore year, was chosen president of the _Dolce far niente_ Society--no member of which was ever known to be surprised at anything--(the college law of rising before breakfast excepted). Lurly introduced me to his sister one day, as he was lying upon a heap of turnips, leaning on his elbow with his head in his hand, in a green lane in the suburbs. He had driven over a stump, and been tossed out of his gig, and I came up just as he was wondering how in the D----l's name he got there! Albina sat quietly in the gig, and when I was presented, requested me, with a delicious drawl, to say nothing about the adventure--it would be so troublesome to relate it to everybody! I loved her from that moment. Miss McLush was tall, and her shape, of its kind, was perfect. It was not a _fleshy_ one exactly, but she was large and full. Her skin was clear, fine-grained and transparent; her temples and forehead perfectly rounded and polished, and her lips and chin swelling into a ripe and tempting pout, like the cleft of a bursted apricot. And then her eyes--large, liquid and sleepy--they languished beneath their long black fringes as if they had no business with daylight--like two magnificent dreams, surprised in their jet embryos by some bird-nesting cherub. Oh! it was lovely to look into them!

She sat, usually, upon a _fauteuil_, with her large, full arm embedded in the cushion, sometimes for hours without stirring. I have seen the wind lift the masses of dark hair from her shoulders when it seemed like the coming to life of a marble Hebe--she had been motionless so long. She was a model for a goddess of sleep as she sat with her eyes half closed, lifting up their superb lids slowly as you spoke to her, and dropping them again with the deliberate motion of a cloud, when she had murmured out her syllable of assent. Her figure, in a sitting posture, presented a gentle declivity from the curve of her neck to the instep of the small round foot lying on its side upon the ottoman. I remember a fellow's bringing her a plate of fruit one evening. He was one of your lively men--a horrid monster, all right angles and activity. Having never been accustomed to hold her own plate, she had not well extricated her whole fingers from her handkerchief before he set it down in her lap. As it began to slide slowly toward her feet, her hand relapsed into the muslin folds, and she fixed her eye upon it with a kind of indolent surprise, drooping her lids gradually till, as the fruit scattered over the ottoman, they closed entirely, and a liquid jet line was alone visible through the heavy lashes. There was an imperial indifference in it worthy of Juno.

Miss McLush rarely walks. When she does, it is with the deliberate majesty of a Dido. Her small, plump feet melt to the ground like snowflakes; and her figure sways to the indolent motion of her limbs with a glorious grace and yieldingness quite indescribable. She was idling slowly up the Mall one evening just at twilight, with a servant at a short distance behind her, who, to while away the time between his steps, was employing himself in throwing stones at the cows feeding upon the Common. A gentleman, with a natural admiration for her splendid person, addressed her. He might have done a more eccentric thing. Without troubling herself to look at him, she turned to her servant and requested him, with a yawn of desperate ennui, to knock that fellow down! John obeyed his orders; and, as his mistress resumed her lounge, picked up a new handful of pebbles, and tossing one at the nearest cow, loitered lazily after.

Such supreme indolence was irresistible. I gave in--I--who never before could summon energy to sigh--I--to whom a declaration was but a synonym for perspiration--I--who had only thought of love as a nervous complaint, and of women but to pray for a good deliverance--I--yes--I--knocked under. Albina McLush! Thou wert too exquisitely lazy. Human sensibilities cannot hold out forever.

I found her one morning sipping her coffee at twelve, with her eyes wide open. She was just from the bath, and her complexion had a soft, dewy transparency, like the cheek of Venus rising from the sea. It was the hour, Lurly had told me, when she would be at the trouble of thinking. She put away with her dimpled forefinger, as I entered, a cluster of rich curls that had fallen over her face, and nodded to me like a water-lily swaying to the wind when its cup is full of rain.

"Lady Albina," said I, in my softest tone, "how are you?"

"Bettina," said she, addressing her maid in a voice as clouded and rich as the south wind on an AEolian, "how am I to-day?"

The conversation fell into short sentences. The dialogue became a monologue. I entered upon my declaration. With the assistance of Bettina, who supplied her mistress with cologne, I kept her attention alive through the incipient circumstances. Symptoms were soon told. I came to the avowal. Her hand lay reposing on the arm of the sofa, half buried in a muslin _foulard_. I took it up and pressed the cool soft fingers to my lips--unforbidden. I rose and looked into her eyes for confirmation. Delicious creature! she was asleep!

I never have had courage to renew the subject. Miss McLush seems to have forgotten it altogether. Upon reflection, too, I'm convinced she would not survive the excitement of the ceremony--unless, indeed, she should sleep between the responses and the prayer. I am still devoted, however, and if there should come a war or an earthquake, or if the millennium should commence, as is expected in 18----, or if anything happens that can keep her waking so long, I shall deliver a declaration, abbreviated for me by a scholar-friend of mine, which, he warrants, may be articulated in fifteen minutes--without fatigue.

A SMACK IN SCHOOL

A district school, not far away, 'Mid Berkshire's hills, one winter's day, Was humming with its wonted noise Of threescore mingled girls and boys; Some few upon their tasks intent, But more on furtive mischief bent. The while the master's downward look Was fastened on a copy-book; When suddenly, behind his back, Rose sharp and clear a rousing smack! As 'twere a battery of bliss Let off in one tremendous kiss! "What's that?" the startled master cries; "That, thir," a little imp replies, "Wath William Willith, if you pleathe---- I thaw him kith Thuthanna Peathe!" With frown to make a statue thrill, The master thundered, "Hither, Will!" Like wretch o'ertaken in his track, With stolen chattels on his back, Will hung his head in fear and shame, And to the awful presence came---- A great, green, bashful simpleton, The butt of all good-natured fun. With smile suppressed, and birch upraised, The thunderer faltered--"I'm amazed That you, my biggest pupil, should Be guilty of an act so rude! Before the whole set school to boot---- What evil genius put you to't?" "'Twas she herself, sir," sobbed the lad; "I did not mean to be so bad; But when Susannah shook her curls, And whispered, I was 'fraid of girls And dursn't kiss a baby's doll, I couldn't stand it, sir, at all, But up and kissed her on the spot! I know--boo--hoo--I ought to not, But, somehow, from her looks--boo--hoo---- I thought she kind o' wished me to!"

WILLIAM PITT PALMER.

A RENDITION

Two old British sailors were talking over their shore experience. One had been to a cathedral and had heard some very fine music, and was descanting particularly upon an anthem which gave him much pleasure. His shipmate listened for awhile, and then said:

"I say, Bill, what's a hanthem?"

"What," replied Bill, "do you mean to say you don't know what a hanthem is?"

"Not me."

"Well, then, I'll tell yer. If I was to tell yer, 'Ere, Bill, give me that 'andspike,' that wouldn't be a hanthem;' but was I to say, 'Bill, Bill, giv, giv, give me, give me that, Bill, give me, give me that hand, handspike, hand, handspike, spike, spike, spike, ah-men, ahmen. Bill, givemethat-handspike, spike, ahmen!' why, that would be a hanthem."

B. P. SHILLABER ("Mrs. Partington")

FANCY DISEASES

"Diseases is very various," said Mrs. Partington, as she returned from a street-door conversation with Doctor Bolus. "The Doctor tells me that poor old Mrs. Haze has got two buckles on her lungs! It is dreadful to think of, I declare. The diseases is so various! One way we hear of people's dying of hermitage of the lungs; another way, of the brown creatures; here they tell us of the elementary canal being out of order, and there about tonsors of the throat; here we hear of neurology in the head, there, of an embargo; one side of us we hear of men being killed by getting a pound of tough beef in the sarcofagus, and there another kills himself by discovering his jocular vein. Things change so that I declare I don't know how to subscribe for any diseases nowadays. New names and new nostrils takes the place of the old, and I might as well throw my old herb-bag away."

Fifteen minutes afterward Isaac had that herb-bag for a target, and broke three squares of glass in the cellar window in trying to hit it, before the old lady knew what he was about. She didn't mean exactly what she said.

BAILED OUT

"So, our neighbour, Mr. Guzzle, has been arranged at the bar for drunkardice," said Mrs. Partington; and she sighed as she thought of his wife and children at home, with the cold weather close at hand, and the searching winds intruding through the chinks in the windows, and waving the tattered curtain like a banner, where the little ones stood shivering by the faint embers. "God forgive him, and pity them!" said she, in a tone of voice tremulous with emotion.

"But he was bailed out," said Ike, who had devoured the residue of the paragraph, and laid the paper in a pan of liquid custard that the dame was preparing for Thanksgiving, and sat swinging the oven door to and fro as if to fan the fire that crackled and blazed within.

"Bailed out, was he?" said she; "well, I should think it would have been cheaper to have pumped him out, for, when our cellar was filled, arter the city fathers had degraded the street, we had to have it pumped out, though there wasn't half so much in it as he has swilled down."

She paused and reached up on the high shelves of the closet for her pie plates, while Ike busied himself in tasting the various preparations. The dame thought that was the smallest quart of sweet cider she had ever seen.

SEEKING A COMET

It was with an anxious feeling that Mrs. Partington, having smoked her specs, directed her gaze toward the western sky, in quest of the tailless comet of 1850.

"I can't see it," said she; and a shade of vexation was perceptible in the tone of her voice. "I don't think much of this explanatory system," continued she, "that they praise so, where the stars are mixed up so that _I_ can't tell Jew Peter from Satan, nor the consternation of the Great Bear from the man in the moon. 'Tis all dark to me. I don't believe there is any comet at all. Who ever heard of a comet without a tail, I should like to know? It isn't natural; but the printers will make a tale for it fast enough, for they are always getting up comical stories."

With a complaint about the falling dew, and a slight murmur of disappointment, the dame disappeared behind a deal door like the moon behind a cloud.

GOING TO CALIFORNIA

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Partington sorrowfully, "how much a man will bear, and how far he will go, to get the soddered dross, as Parson Martin called it when he refused the beggar a sixpence for fear it might lead him into extravagance! Everybody is going to California and Chagrin arter gold. Cousin Jones and the three Smiths have gone; and Mr. Chip, the carpenter, has left his wife and seven children and a blessed old mother-in-law, to seek his fortin, too. This is the strangest yet, and I don't see how he could have done it; it looks so ongrateful to treat Heaven's blessings so lightly. But there, we are told that the love of money is the root of all evil, and how true it is! for they are now rooting arter it, like pigs arter ground-nuts. Why, it is a perfect money mania among everybody!"

And she shook her head doubtingly, as she pensively watched a small mug of cider, with an apple in it, simmering by the winter fire. She was somewhat fond of a drink made in this way.

MRS. PARTINGTON IN COURT

"I took my knitting-work and went up into the gallery," said Mrs.

## Partington, the day after visiting one of the city courts; "I went up

into the gallery, and after I had adjusted my specs, I looked down into the room, but I couldn't see any courting going on. An old gentleman seemed to be asking a good many impertinent questions--just like some old folks--and people were sitting around making minutes of the conversation. I don't see how they made out what was said, for they all told different stories. How much easier it would be to get along if they were all made to tell the same story! What a sight of trouble it would save the lawyers! The case, as they call it, was given to the jury, but I couldn't see it, and a gentleman with a long pole was made to swear that he'd keep an eye on 'em, and see that they didn't run away with it. Bimeby in they came again, and they said somebody was guilty of something, who had just said he was innocent, and didn't know nothing about it no more than the little baby that had never subsistence. I come away soon afterward; but I couldn't help thinking how trying it must be to sit there all day, shut out from the blessed air!"

* * * * *

Apropos of Superintendent Andrews's reported objection to the singing of the "Recessional" in the Chicago public schools on the ground that the atheists might be offended, the _Chicago Post_ says:

For the benefit of our skittish friends, the atheists, and in order not to deprive the public-school children of the literary beauties of certain poems that may be classed by Doctor Andrews as "hymns," we venture to suggest this compromise, taking a few lines in illustration from our National anthem:

"Our fathers' God--assuming purely for the sake of argument that there is a God--to Thee, Author of liberty--with apologies to our friends, the atheists--

To Thee I sing--but we needn't mean it, you know.

Long may our land be bright,

With freedom's holy light;

Protect us by Thy might--remember, this is purely hypothetical----

Great God--again assuming that there is a God--our king--simply an allegorical phrase and not intended offensively to any taxpayer."

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE; Or, the Wonderful "One-hoss Shay"

A LOGICAL STORY

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay That was built in such a logical way, It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it--ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits---- Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. _Georgius Secundus_ was then alive---- Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot---- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace--lurking still, Find it somewhere you must and will---- Above or below, or within or without---- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, That a chaise _breaks down_, but doesn't _wear out_.

But the Deacon swore (as deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell _yeou_") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'N' the keounty, 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it _couldn'_ break daown: --"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain; 'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."