light of an old man's tongue; why, it's like a woman's it's all he has got to hit with. Leastwise, you mustn't lift hand to him on my premises, or you will have to settle with me first; and I don't think that would suit your book, or any man's for a mile or two round about Farnborough," said George, with his little Berkshire drawl. เ "He!" shrieked Isaac. "He dare not! See! see!" and he pointed nearly into the man's eye. "He doesn't look you in the face. Any soul that has read men from east to west can see lion in your eye, young man, and cowardly wolf in his." 66 old are you, daddy, if you please?" added he, respectfully. 66 My son, I am threescore years and ten, a man of years and grief-grief for myself, grief still more for my nation and city. Men that are men pity us; men that are dogs have insulted us in all ages. ." Well," said the good-natured young man, soothingly, "don't you vex yourself any more about it. Now you go in, and forget all your trouble a while, please God, by my fireside, my poor old man. Isaac turned; the water came to his eyes at this, after being insulted so. A little strug Lady-day! Lady-day!" snorted Mead-gle took place in him, but nature conquered ows, who was now shaking with suppressed rage. prejudice and certain rubbish he called religion. He held out his hand like the king of "Ah!" cried Isaac, and he turned white all Asia; George grasped it like an Englishand quivered in his turn. แ Lady-day!" said George, uneasily. "Confound Lady-day, and every day of the sort. There! don't you be so spiteful, old man. Why, if he isn't all of a tremble! Poor old man!" He went to his own door and called, "Sarah !” A stout servant-girl answered the summons. "Take the old man in and give him whatever is going, and his mug and pipe;" then he whispered her, "And don't go lumping the chine down under his man. “Isaac Levi is your friend," and the expression of the man's whole face and body showed these words carried with them a meaning unknown in good society. He entered the house, and young Fielding stood watching him with natural curiosity. Now, Isaac Levi knew nothing about the corn-factor's plans. When at one and the same moment he grasped George's hand and darted a long lingering glance of hatred on Meadows, he coupled two sentiments by pure chance, and Meadows knew this; but still it struck Meadows as singular and ominous. When, with the best of motives, one is on a wolf's errand, it is not nice to hear a hyena say to the shepherd's dog, "I am your friend," and see him contemporaneously shoot the eye of a rattlesnake at one's self. The misgiving, however, was but momentary. Meadows respected his own motives and felt his own power; an old Jew's wild | That might my country prejudice, or thee, fury could not shake his confidence. his man. Isaac Levi said to himself, "He will not keep faith with me." But he did not know Meadows had a conscience, though an oblique one. A promise from him was sacred in his own eyes. A man came to Grassmere and left a hundred pounds in a letter for George Fielding. Then he went on to Levi and gave him a parcel and a note. The parcel contained the title-deeds of the house; the note said, "Take the house and the furniture, and pay me what you con Were he the greatest or the proudest he That breathes this day, if so it might be found That any good to either might redound, GEORGE WITHER. EARLY LOVE. sider they are worth. And, old man, I think AH, I remember well (and how can I you might take your curse off me, for I have never known a heart at rest since you laid it But evermore remember well?) when first on me. And you see how our case is altered: Our flame began, when scarce we knew what REPRESSION. ID you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just before a snowstorm, sit at work in a room that was judiciously warmed by an exact thermometer? You do not freeze, but you shiver ; your fingers do not become numb with cold, cold, but you have all the while an uneasy craving for more positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk mechanically toward it, and, suddenly awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing there. You long for a shawl or cloak; you draw yourself within yourself; you consult the thermometer, and are vexed to find that there is nothing there to be complained of it is standing most provokingly at the exact temperature that all the good books and good doctors pronounce to be the proper thing, the golden mean of health; and yet perversely you shiver and feel as if the face of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an angel. Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver, is the lot of many natures which are not warm when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to be warm, whose life is cold and barren and meagre, which never see the blaze of an open fire. I will illustrate my meaning by a page out of my own experience. I was twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favorite sister, Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar-a pale, sweet, flowery face in a half shimmer between smiles and tears looking out of vapory clouds of gauze and curls and all the vanishing mysteries of a bridal morning. Everybody thought the marriage such a fortunate one, for her husband was handsome and manly, a man of worth, of principle good as gold and solid as adamant, and Emmy had always been such a flossy little kitten of a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensitive and nervous, we thought her kind, strong, composed, stately husband made just on purpose for her. "It was quite a providence," sighed all the elderly ladies, who sniffed tenderly and wiped their eyes, according to approved custom, during the marriage ceremony. I remember now the bustle of the day-the confused whirl of white gloves, kisses, bridemaids and bride-cakes, the losing of trunk-keys and breaking of lacings, the tears of mainmaGod bless her!-and the jokes of irreverent Christopher, who could for the life of him see nothing so very dismal in the whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were as well off himself. And so Emmy was whirled away from us on the bridal-tour, when her letters came back to us almost every day, just like herself, merry, frisky little bits of scratches, as full of little nonsense-beads as a glass of champagne, and all ending with telling us how perfect he was, and how good, and how well he took care of her, and how happy, etc., etc. Then came letters from her new home. His house was not yet built, but while it was building they were to live with his mother, who was "such a good woman,' and his sisters, who were also "such nice women." But somehow, after this, a change came over Emmy's letters. They grew shorter; they seemed measured in their words, and in place of sparkling nonsense and bubbling outbursts of glee came anxiouslyworded praises of her situation and surroundings, evidently written for the sake of arguing herself into the belief that she was extremely happy. John, of course, was not as much with her now: he had his business to attend to, which took him away all day, and at night he was very tired. Still, he was very good and thoughtful of her, and how thankful she ought to be! And his mother was very good indeed, and did all for her that she could reasonably expect of course she could not be like her own mamma; and Mary and Jane were very kind "in their way," she wrote, but scratched it out, and wrote over it, "very kind indeed." They were the best people in the world-a great deal better than she was—and she should try to learn a great deal from them. "Poor little Em!" I said to myself; "I am afraid these very nice people are slowly freezing and starving her;" and so, as I was going up into the mountains for a summertour, I thought I would accept some of John's many invitations, and stop a day or two with them on my way and see how matters stood. John had been known among us in college as a taciturn fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his friendship by a regular siege, carrying parallel after parallel, till, when I came into the fort at last, I found the treasures worth taking. I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evans's house. It was the house of the village, a true, model New-England house-a square, roomy, old-fashioned mansion which stood on a hillside under a group of great, breezy old elms whose wide wind-swung arms arched over it like a leafy firmament. Under this bower the substantial white house, with all its window-blinds closed, with its neat white fences all tight and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy yard, a perfect Pharisee among houses. It looked. like a house all finished, done, completed, labelled and set on a shelf for preservation, but, as is usual with this kind of edifice in our dear New England, it had not the slightest appearance of being lived in, not a door or window open, not a wink or blink of life: the only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, pale-blue smoke from the kitchenchimney. And now for the people in the house. In making a New-England visit in winter, was it ever your fortune to be put to sleep in the glacial spare-chamber that had been kept from time immemorial as a refrigerator for guests that room which no ray of daily sunshine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds are closed the whole year round, whose fireplace knows only the complimentary blaze which is kindled a few moments before bedtime in an atmosphere where you can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in a bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm your at last, but warmed you out all the heat of your own body. bed by giving dent Scotch terrier. At a glance you perceive, on entering, that nothing but correct deportment, an erect posture and strictly didactic conversation is possible there. Such are some families where you visit. They are of the very best quality, like your sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality you have to get them warmed up to the talking-point. You think, the first hour after your arrival, that they must have heard some report to your disadvantage, or that you misunderstood your letter of invitation, or that you came on the wrong day; but no you find in due course that you were invited, you were expected, and they are doing for you the best they know how, and treating you as they suppose a guest ought to be treated. If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow and go on feeling your way discreetly, you gradually thaw quite a little place round yourself in the domestic circle, till by the time you are ready to leave you really begin to think it is agreeable to stay, and resolve that you will come again. They are nice people; they like you; at last you have got to feeling at home with them. Three months after, you go to see them again, when, lo! there you are back again just where you were at first. The little spot which you had thawed out is frozen over again, and again you spend all your visit in thawing it and getting your hosts limbered and in a state for comfortable converse. The first evening that I spent in the wide, roomy front parlor with Judge Evans, his wife and daughters fully accounted for the change in Emmy's letters. Rooms, I verily believe, get saturated with the aroma of their spiritual atmosphere, and there are some so stately, so correct, that they would paralyze even the friskiest kitten or the most impu ; The family, in fact, were all eminently didactic, bent on improvement, laboriously useful. Not a good work or charitable enterprise could put forth its head in the neighborhood of which they were not the support and life. Judge Evans was the stay and staff of the village and township of he bore up the pillars thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the gates for all the properties and deeds of the virtuous woman as set forth by Solomon: the heart of her husband did safely trust in her. But when I saw them that evening sitting in erect propriety in their respective corners each side of the great, stately fireplace, with its tall, glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned at either end with plated candlesticks, with the snuffer-tray in the middle, she so collectedly measuring her words, talking in all those well-worn grooves of correct conversation which are designed, as the phrase goes, to "entertain strangers, and the Misses Evans, in the best of grammar and rhetoric, and in most proper time and way possible, showing themselves for what they were, most high-principled, wellinformed, intelligent women,-I set myself to speculate on the cause of the extraordinary sensation of stiffness and restraint which pervaded me, as if I had been dipped in some petrifying spring and was beginning to feel myself slightly crusting over on the exterior. This kind of conversation is such as admits quite easily of one's carrying on another course of thought within; and so, as I found myself, like a machine, striking in now and |