eye, and twist of his lower jaw, and roll of his thick tongue, as to make us laugh out even while we felt such true compassion.

Still another creature-character there was, who chanced to be gifted with just intelligence enough to feel sure that he was brighter than the idiotic subject; he was a clear "better-thanthou" individual, and so far as poor foolish Sam was concerned, delighted to betray it. He was a great talker, and had the eyes of a lobster, and a tongue that would crowd itself out of his mouth. If he saw that Sam was furnishing us with amusement, up he came to display his own superior parts upon so gloomy a foil. It would indeed be a pity if one could not shine, with a poor idiot to furnish the background. This voluble fellow took upon himself an immensely patronizing care of the other, as if, in some time past, he might have been. appointed his guardian. He would come up and pull down the upraised hands of the pitiful fool, and offer him advice about what he ought to do and say before us. "Seems to me" he would break out, with a proud glance around on us "Sam don't know nothin' at all! He-he-he!" Then he would order him to ask for his cracker, or his cent; and suddenly turn his back upon him, and augh, neither he nor we knew at what.

very

fellow came to

At length this most of all, though he little dreamed i We used to nudge one another, and selves all prepared to enjoy these dis his fancied superiority over the wea The trick fails to provoke the same ment now, since the world has opened view to me.

The remainder of that pauper r comes up before me in review, clad cheap and scant pauper uniform. Bla white- men and women - old and yo

alas! alas! for the pledges and promis false lights of our social system! A d unhappy, aimless race; consumed of rot;" thrust out and kept out of the world by the hand of actual benevo shut up from the living sympathy of th low-creatures; faded, worn, and broken, ing in a sort of sullen silence for the ing of the great door that swings on g hinges, and is to let them into a light no man can obstruct any more.

A Poor-house starts strange thou out of time and tune, harsh and dissona which cannot instantly be put down. find there persons whose lives had as p ising a beginning as your own, but who

been able, out of the body of their combined exertions and aspirations, to reach but this inauspicious goal. There, too, you see, close beside such, other persons whose natures had foul stains on them from the beginning, which would not wash out; and whose very presence imparts to the place a lazaar-house character, as if it were actually peopled with moral infections. And pale and suffering women, too, who have vainly followed, in the blindness of love, faithless and forgetful husbands, till their wearied feet have finally brought them to this common refuge of sorrow and despair. Or, now and then, may be caught the glimpse of a child's face, little realizing how deeply the brand of Pauper is to be burned into its after life.

And always may be found there, gathered as into a mouldering corner, the relics of an once vigorous generation, mumbling the broken histories of their early life, crouching in dim and shadowy recesses, chatting of happy times such as this world will never bring them again, sitting on long benches in the sun and idly watching the flies, and, let us hope, now and then catching a glimpse of the far-off reality which they fondly believe will one day be theirs.

Heaven keep all of us clear of house! It is a place, the sight of w check the current suddenly in your Distinct and lonely it stands out in th of the thoughts, just as it does in th the landscape. It has no other effect excite inward fears and bring on sudde ings and shudderings. There is no whatever, within it or about it, of the life that lies concealed in the single HOME! a word that, next to Mother, li lingers longest in the human heart.

THAT

THE DISTRICT SCHOOL.

HAT noted polygamist and wife-murderer, known as Henry the Eighth, did no more for the cause of learning in Old England when he invited Erasmus over to take a Greek Professorship at Oxford, than our puritan ancestry, when they built the first school-house in the New England woods. Through its humble door has passed the power that is to-day engaged in conquering and civilizing the continent.

At the time when I knew it, the little red school-house stood at the fork of the road; and though there were other school-houses in other districts of the town, this was accounted the only one of which special mention was thought worthy to be made.

Mr. John Porringer a man somewhere within the broad-growing shadows of fortyfive years" kept" this school, and was in the way of keeping it so long as he lived and liked. The notion seemed to have taken root