rulous, Caudle-like tone, the affectionate response. Katy!" "did!" "didn't!" "did!" "Katy!"-so it goes the woods are filled with these domestic jangles. Who is Katy, and what did she do, and what if she did, and is she pretty, were questions that found no answer, but the still asserting, still denying "Katy did," and she didn't, of these queer insect gossips. Poor Katy !

"To-whit! to-who!" Minerva save us, if there isn't her bird, calling from his hollow tree, and "towho!" "to who!" is the query still, farther and farther, till lost in the deep woods.

"Whip-poor-Will!" says some body from a tree close by the window, in a sweetly plaintive voice, and "Whip-poor-Will !" "Whip-poor-Will!" is the cry all through the forest. What for? What has Will done? But "Whip-poor-Will!" was the sole answer I received. And I fell to speculating: "Katy did,' that's certain, and from the "to who," I infer-by the way, what would you infer ?-well, I infer that Katy went to Gretna Green--so far, so good-" Whippoor-will!" Thank you, my unseen advocate of corporeal punishment-that helps us out bravely-went to Gretna Green with poor Will. There it is, now, a plausible story, and if only there were some bird of

scandal to put it together, a rare bit of gossip it would make, to be sure.

Alas! for him, may-be he is sufficiently punished without the there they go again, in full chorus, like a gathering of crones at a quilting.

A single bark from the kennel! a dozing hound is hunting in a dream. We are all hunting in a dream— happiness the game, the "little life" the dream, and how weary, ofttimes, is the waking.

"Um-m-m!" " ang, ang!" A thousand little horns nearer and nearer-here they are with an ang-k, and an uzh, as they come, like hussars, plump upon us. Now for the art of Roscius! Gesticulation, pantomime, beating the bosom of the innocent air. What were mosquitoes made for! Does any body know? Down goes the window, out goes the light, and in go I through the "Ivory Gate" the poets tell of the Gate of 'pleasant dreams.'

The Stage is Coming.

"PORT" dashed into the house yesterday, overturned two chairs and the clothes-horse, and panted out, 'the car-a-van is coming! Right on the hill!' Caravan coming! What could a caravan be thinking of, to wander away into this quiet neighborhood? Yielding to the little fingers that tugged at my coat-sleeve, I repaired to the door, PORT's tongue busy the while with, 'do you think it'll stop and show here?' and 'may I go?' and 'goody! goody!' to a provisional affirmative.

And there it was, a huge coach, and no caravan, red as the setting sun, rocking over the hill, like a ship on a swell. Down it came, rolling and pitching into the valley, thundered over the little bridge, splashed through the little brook, till its wheels ground slowly and gratingly in the yellow sand.

It was an event-indeed the event of the season. No body remembered when a stage passed here before. The driver knew it, for he sat bolt upright on the box, and handled the ribbons with an air. The

'leaders' knew it, for they tossed their glossy heads, and curvetted gaily enough.

Memory put her name on the Way Bill, and Thought took a journey, a dozen years or so, into the past.

"Bright Improvement on the car of time" and steam, has caused the old coaches to disappear altogether, in many parts of the country, and with them, a chief remembrancer of other days. Time was, when the stage, like the Crocus, was yellow-brightened with the rain or splashed with the mud, always and for ever yellow as a Sunflower. But the hand of Innovation has dared to make them a fiery red or a jealous green-to dwarf their dimensions-to turn off "the leaders," and propel the puny craft with a pair of wheel-horses.

That old yellow coach! With what notes of preparation, it entered the little villages on the old "State Road!" How that immemorial horn drawn from its sheath, was wound and wound again, till the surrounding woods rang again, and all the town were at the doors, and every lower pane of glass was a juvenile face in a frame, to see who had come, and who was going, and all about it. How the old coach rattled and plunged down the hill-how it thundered over the bridge-with what professional skill, the

driver drew his long whip from the top of the coach, and made its Alexandrine lash ring again, to the leaders' right and left-with what a sweep he whirled up before the Stage House, and reined them in, till the coach rattled and rocked like a ship ashore !

It is early morning. The Landlord comes shuffling out in slippers-the maid stays her hand at the well, to see who gets out, and smile at the Palinurus of the craft the Post Master comes across the street for the mail-a cloud of steam rises from the glittering coats of the panting team-the relay comes filing out from the adjoining stable-some body in a green veil takes the back seat, to the great discomfiture of two drowsy aldermanic personages-the mail-bag is swung up beneath the driver's feet-the door is flung to, with a slam—a short, sharp note or two upon the horn-an instant's handling of the ribbons-a drawing of the lash through the fingers, as a surgeon feels his scalpel-an "all right" from the drowsy Boniface, and crack, smack, clatter, swing, away rolls the coach, and with it, the day's excitement.

Then the acquaintances one used to form in the stage, whose memory will outlast the old coachesSome body-perhaps the lady in the green veil, whom a lurch of the stage threw into your lap two or three