returns to his coop of an office after the day's work is done, secure of the fame for which he strives and about which he fondly dreams.

If you could but behold him in that noticeable hall of justice, thus invested with the high sense of his own importance, gazing so vacantly over the crowd of staring spectators, running his hand so carelessly through his hair, hurling his high-keyed interrogatories at the abashed witnesses, watching every chance to convulse the too ready auditory with laughter, bold and brazen in his address, rarely, if ever, thrown off his guard, compelling the village Shallow behind the table to shrink into the proportions of submissive inferiority, running over at the mouth with legal phrases and the technical lingo of legal instruments, reclining entirely upon his own dignity, assured that, of all the rest, he is nearly the largest toad in the entire town puddle, and, in fine, quite satisfied with his cause, his audience, himself, and his prospects for the future!

The character of the country lawyer's occupations cannot, of course, yield any large share of refined social and domestic enjoyment. He cannot well afford, from the very nature of the case, to put his sensibilities out to school. He lives, and must hope to live, chiefly upon the

I

unhappy differences and discords of world around him. The more his fall out, the better it is for him. for new chances for a lawsuit as sh cat waits at a rat-hole. As for the ments of local friendship, he can il indulge them. They are luxuries

too much.

This is the thorough-bred p The work he performs is small drudg most. It may be necessary, much that necessity even does not redeem it imputation of meanness. Yet, if su flection ever stings him, he is conso the thought that he is pursuing a "pro

pursuing it just as much greater m done before him, and with a brand of a blazing somewhere in his heart. He gling for a name; scanning the politic zon, from time to time, as a mariner co on deck and studies the clouds; living and altogether upon, his fellow-citizens, of them, in any true and hearty sense.

He is in the full blaze of his glory County Court term. If he cannot bring before that court, he is esteemed but a pattern" of a lawyer. It is at that b country lawyer is in full feather. The

The town carWrits, summons,

little shire town of the county, at these court terms, overflows with rustic humanity, come to look after its own and into everybody's else business. The accommodations of the pair of rival taverns are put to their severest strain. Through the days, all the stalls in the stables and the stands in the horse-sheds are occupied. The judge, lawyers, and witnesses, saying nothing of the hangers-on who attend court as regularly as they do a muster, —— have monopolized stables and dormitories. ries its head erectly now. capiases, copies, mittimuses, executions, and the whole of that sort of legal paper-work, fly from hand to hand like ballots at a tight election. Sleepy crowds stand or sit through the proceedings in the court-room, or discuss, out of doors, the merits of the cases and the lawyers, as they come on. There is a stream of male and female witnesses, going up and down stairs; and the lawyers are marching them in and out of lobbies and anterooms for preparatory drill in the science of giving in testimony. It looks as if large boys were playing at trials, and not altogether like serious men, transacting serious business.

The country lawyer, however, is not what he was in the days of our fathers; and

he knows it as well as any one glory has in a great degree depart imprisonment for debt became ob debtors otherwise grew to be the mas than the slaves of their creditors, hi and corresponding importance have and disappeared. Though still a character as any other in the town his sway clipped in both wings. H with a man, now and then, who kno as much good law as he does. He that somehow intelligence has got a that the dam has been breached in so place, and the long-pent waters are ov the whole land.

Hence, he has been induced to take or two in modesty, and in forbearance a sees that it is well to pay a little more to popular wishes than the men of school were in the habit of doing. It a fact, he thinks, that men are growin human and less legal. They are begin look to other methods of persuasion tha harsh and unsympathetic ones which a prised in the technicalities, the musty le and the mandatory spirit of that grand which goes, the world over, by the na LAW.

A

THE COUNTRY POSTMASTER.

COUNTRY Post-Office, as a general matter, is simply a country store, with some odd corner railed off for secresy, if not security. Anybody can go around behind there, if he is so fortunate as to be in the confidence social or political of the village Postmaster. It is chiefly the women who step up to that desk timidly and doubtingly, as if asking a favor, or sidle along, as girls do, and inquire for a letter in the softest whisper, lest even their names should be pronounced aloud in that public presence. To the rude boys the place is caviare. For them alone is the iron rail spiked down so rigidly into the counter, to keep off trousers' stuffs and heavy swinging boots.

Kegs and barrels - nail-boxes and soapboxes customers and letter-writers

and boys

men

women and dogs - the box-stove and the department letter-boxes are all mingled at the post-office establishment with