town.

CAROLINE'S REFLECTIONS ON BECOMING AN OLD MAID. HE said to herself:

"I have to live, perhaps, till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good health; half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to occupy it? What am I to do to fill the interval of time which spreads between me and the grave?"

She reflected.

"I shall not be married, it appears," she continued. "I suppose, as Robert does not care for me, I shall never have a husband to love, nor little children to take care of. Till lately I had reckoned securely on the duties and affections of wife and mother to occupy my existence. I considered, somehow, as a matter of course, that I was growing up to the ordinary destiny, and never troubled myself to seek any other, but now I perceive plainly I may have been mistaken. ProbProbably I shall be an old maid. I shall live to see Robert married to some one else some rich lady. I shall never marry. What was I created for, I wonder? Where is my place in the world?"

"Ah! I see," she pursued, presently; that is the question which most old maids are puzzled to solve: other people solve it for them by saying, 'Your place

is to do good to others, to be helpful whenever help is wanted.' That is right in some measure, and a very convenient doctrine for the people who hold it; but I perceive that certain sets of human beings are very apt to maintain that other sets should give up their lives to them and their service, and then they requite them by praise: they call them devoted and virtuous. Is this enough? Is it to live? Is there not a terrible hollowness, mockery, want, craving, in that existence which is given away to others for want of something of your own to bestow it on? I suspect there is. Does virtue lie in abnegation of self? I do not believe it. Undue humility makes tyranny; weak concession creates selfishness. creates selfishness. Each human being has his share of rights. I suspect it would conduce to the happiness and welfare of all if each knew his allotment and held to it as tenaciously as the martyr to his creed. Queer thoughts these that surge in my mind; are they right thoughts? I am not certain. Well, life is short, at the best: seventy years, they say, pass like a vapor, like a dream when one awaketh; and every path trod by human feet terminates in one bourne-the grave, the little chink in the surface of this great globe, the furrow where the mighty husbandman with the scythe deposits the seed he has shaken from the ripe stem; and there it falls, decays, and thence it springs again when the world has rolled round a few times more."

NEVER DIE OF LOVE.

A week or two passed; Caroline's bodily and mental health neither grew worse nor better. She was now precisely in that state when, if her constitution had contained the seeds of consumption, decline or slow fever, those diseases would have been rapidly developed, and would soon have carried her quietly from the world. People never die of love or grief alone, though some die of inherent maladies which the tortures of those passions prematurely force into destructive action. The sound by nature undergo these tortures, and are racked, shaken, shattered; their beauty and bloom perish, but life remains untouched. They are brought to a certain point of dilapidation; they are reduced to pallor, debility and emaciation. People think, as they see them gliding languidly about, that they will soon withdraw to sick-beds, perish there, and cease from among the healthy and happy. This does not happen: they live on; and, though they cannot regain youth and gayety, they may regain strength and serenity. The blossom which the March wind nips, but fails to sweep away, may survive to hang, a withered apple, on the tree late into autumn; having braved the last frosts of spring, it may also brave the first of winter. We can get nothing in this world worth keeping-not so much as a principle or a conviction-except out of purifying flame or through strengthening peril. We err, we fall, we are humbled; then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice or from the beggar's wallet of avarice; we are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant

against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter.

ROBERT AND CAROLINE.

Caroline was not unhappy that eveningfar otherwise; but as she gazed she sighed, and as she sighed a hand circled her and rested, quietly on her waist. Caroline thought she knew who had drawn near: she received the touch unstartled :

See!

"I am looking at Venus, mamma. she is beautiful. How white her lustre is, compared with the deep red of the bonfires!"

The answer was a closer caress, and Caroline turned, and looked, not into Mrs. Pryor's matron-face, but up at a dark manly visage. She dropped her watering-pot and stepped down from the pedestal.

"I have been sitting with mamma' an hour," said the intruder; "I have had a long conversation with her. Where, mean time, have you been? Caroline, I have sought you to ask an audience. Why are those bells ringing?"

For the repeal of your terrible law-the orders you hate so much. You are pleased, are you not?"

Yesterday evening at this time I was packing some books for a sea-voyage: they were the only possessions, except some clothes, seeds, roots and tools, which I felt free to take with me to Canada. I was going to leave you."

"To leave me? To leave me?" Her little fingers fastened on his arm; she spoke and looked affrighted.